I liked the Sandman show BETTER?
Dec. 1st, 2022 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: Vaaaaaaxpooooosting!
Our roommates have been watching the Sandman show. Normally I wander in and out at best while they watch stuff, but Sandman has drawn me in. Which is crazy, because: I don't like the Sandman comic. I like the show better, WAY better, and that NEVER HAPPENS. Why?
So a while back, I went to the library, grabbed the volume the show was on, and compared and contrasted. And not only did I realize why I liked the show better, I realized why I have so much trouble connecting to Gaiman's work!
I have read a lot of Gaiman, trying to make myself like him. He is a beloved author, and I didn't get why I didn't like him. I've read most of Sandman, all of American Gods, Neverwhere, Good Omens, Coraline, Graveyard Book, and at least one of his books of short stories, and the only one I really liked was Graveyard Book... and it is the exception that proves the rule.
See, in most of those books, none of Gaiman's characters really seem to connect or care about each other. In Sandman the comic, Rose Walker gets sent to find her little brother, but she doesn't really remember him or seem that motivated. She's just doing it because Mom and Grandma told her to--and she doesn't seem to care that much about THEM either. She just notes how weird the situation is, and seems uncomfortable with her mother's emotional reaction to being reunited with her long-lost mother.
In the show, Rose DOES remember her brother. SHE is the one searching of her own volition, because her mother died never able to find him, and her great-grandmother doesn't know of the boy's existence till Rose tells her. Rose is very motivated and very worried.
In the comic, little brother Jed's head is holding runaway dreamfolk: Brute and Glob, who are using him exclusively as a hideout. They do not care about Jed except as a flesh bunker, and they barely interact. Jed is being horrendously abused at home, but Brute and Glob don't care; when it's clear the Sandman is tracking them down, one of them suggests killing Jed and wearing him as a skinsuit! They do not care. The Sandman doesn't care, except about his runaway nightmares. Even Jed's own dreams have nothing to do with him! It's stuff like that that made me feel dirty inside, reading Sandman. This kid is surrounded by people, and none of them seem to give a shit about what's happening to him. Even the narrative mostly treats him as a MacGuffin, the thing people want to make the plot go.
In the show, Brute and Glob don't exist. Instead, there is Gault. She too is a runaway nightmare, hiding out in Jed's dreamworld, but with one major distance: she cares about what is happening to him. She tries to make his dreamworld a comforting, healing place for him, to the best of her ability, and when the Sandman comes for her, she pleads that Jed needs someone, something to help him survive this. She doesn't want to be a nightmare anymore, now that she has seen the power she has for good. The Sandman still banishes her, but at the end, he rethinks his decision and remakes her as a good dream.
In the comic, Lyta is just a passive sleepwalker. She too lives in Jed's dreamworld and supposedly loves her dead dream husband, but again, she barely interacts with either. She doesn't seem to feel or care about much of anything, until the Sandman banishes her dead husband: then she erupts in grief. She doesn't seem aware of Jed at all, and despite being very strongly themed with motherhood (she's been pregnant for years in the dreamworld), she never acts in that capacity to Jed. In the show, though, Lyta very obviously cares about her husband. She's not in a daze; she's spending every moment with him that she can, and she's clearly aware that he is dead and these are dreams. She also acts very much a friend/big sister to Rose. (In the show, she's been relocated to being with Rose in the waking world. She's not in Jed's head at all.)
Reading the comic again made me realize that it felt like following a bunch of disconnected, disaffected people who didn't care about much. It was very Gen X, which makes sense. But that was a frame of mind very familiar to me as a dissociative, and it was never pleasant to re-experience. And it made me realize: that was true for all the Gaiman work I could remember!
In American Gods, Shadow's only relationships are with gods who use him and he knows better to trust, and his dead girlfriend, who died while cheating on him and is spooky and Not Right. The whole point is that she can't let go of him, and he's trying to walk away very quickly. Her great triumph, iirc, he never sees or even knows about! She's the only one who really seems to CARE, and it's a creepy unhealthy obsession!
In Coraline, the writing is so stark and minimalist that I had trouble telling any of what Coraline was feeling, or why she'd go to this creepy, obviously dangerous world. It really felt like being in a numb, dissociative bubble, which... no thanks, I have some already.
And then there's the Graveyard Book, a book about family and community. The ghosts, Silas, the Hound of God teacher, all clearly care about the protagonist! So of course, the book ends with him having to leave them all behind and never see any of them again. I guess it's supposed to be about growing out of childish things, but jeez, NEVER again? Even my disowned loony ass still managed to reconnect with a few folks from my childhood! I daresay I made about as clean a break as anyone, and there are still four or five people I speak to every once in a while!
I don't know why this is such a theme in Gaiman's work. Obviously Gaiman is a well-regarded author, and many of our friends adore his work. But man, with the exception of the Graveyard Book (sans ending), all of it I've read feels like suffocating in a glass bottle alone and surrounded by people. It is a very unpleasant feeling, and I have to assume I'm reading it wrong or something, because I've never heard of anyone else having this reaction to his work.
But at least now I know what my problem is, and I can quit trying to make myself like his stuff!
Our roommates have been watching the Sandman show. Normally I wander in and out at best while they watch stuff, but Sandman has drawn me in. Which is crazy, because: I don't like the Sandman comic. I like the show better, WAY better, and that NEVER HAPPENS. Why?
So a while back, I went to the library, grabbed the volume the show was on, and compared and contrasted. And not only did I realize why I liked the show better, I realized why I have so much trouble connecting to Gaiman's work!
I have read a lot of Gaiman, trying to make myself like him. He is a beloved author, and I didn't get why I didn't like him. I've read most of Sandman, all of American Gods, Neverwhere, Good Omens, Coraline, Graveyard Book, and at least one of his books of short stories, and the only one I really liked was Graveyard Book... and it is the exception that proves the rule.
See, in most of those books, none of Gaiman's characters really seem to connect or care about each other. In Sandman the comic, Rose Walker gets sent to find her little brother, but she doesn't really remember him or seem that motivated. She's just doing it because Mom and Grandma told her to--and she doesn't seem to care that much about THEM either. She just notes how weird the situation is, and seems uncomfortable with her mother's emotional reaction to being reunited with her long-lost mother.
In the show, Rose DOES remember her brother. SHE is the one searching of her own volition, because her mother died never able to find him, and her great-grandmother doesn't know of the boy's existence till Rose tells her. Rose is very motivated and very worried.
In the comic, little brother Jed's head is holding runaway dreamfolk: Brute and Glob, who are using him exclusively as a hideout. They do not care about Jed except as a flesh bunker, and they barely interact. Jed is being horrendously abused at home, but Brute and Glob don't care; when it's clear the Sandman is tracking them down, one of them suggests killing Jed and wearing him as a skinsuit! They do not care. The Sandman doesn't care, except about his runaway nightmares. Even Jed's own dreams have nothing to do with him! It's stuff like that that made me feel dirty inside, reading Sandman. This kid is surrounded by people, and none of them seem to give a shit about what's happening to him. Even the narrative mostly treats him as a MacGuffin, the thing people want to make the plot go.
In the show, Brute and Glob don't exist. Instead, there is Gault. She too is a runaway nightmare, hiding out in Jed's dreamworld, but with one major distance: she cares about what is happening to him. She tries to make his dreamworld a comforting, healing place for him, to the best of her ability, and when the Sandman comes for her, she pleads that Jed needs someone, something to help him survive this. She doesn't want to be a nightmare anymore, now that she has seen the power she has for good. The Sandman still banishes her, but at the end, he rethinks his decision and remakes her as a good dream.
In the comic, Lyta is just a passive sleepwalker. She too lives in Jed's dreamworld and supposedly loves her dead dream husband, but again, she barely interacts with either. She doesn't seem to feel or care about much of anything, until the Sandman banishes her dead husband: then she erupts in grief. She doesn't seem aware of Jed at all, and despite being very strongly themed with motherhood (she's been pregnant for years in the dreamworld), she never acts in that capacity to Jed. In the show, though, Lyta very obviously cares about her husband. She's not in a daze; she's spending every moment with him that she can, and she's clearly aware that he is dead and these are dreams. She also acts very much a friend/big sister to Rose. (In the show, she's been relocated to being with Rose in the waking world. She's not in Jed's head at all.)
Reading the comic again made me realize that it felt like following a bunch of disconnected, disaffected people who didn't care about much. It was very Gen X, which makes sense. But that was a frame of mind very familiar to me as a dissociative, and it was never pleasant to re-experience. And it made me realize: that was true for all the Gaiman work I could remember!
In American Gods, Shadow's only relationships are with gods who use him and he knows better to trust, and his dead girlfriend, who died while cheating on him and is spooky and Not Right. The whole point is that she can't let go of him, and he's trying to walk away very quickly. Her great triumph, iirc, he never sees or even knows about! She's the only one who really seems to CARE, and it's a creepy unhealthy obsession!
In Coraline, the writing is so stark and minimalist that I had trouble telling any of what Coraline was feeling, or why she'd go to this creepy, obviously dangerous world. It really felt like being in a numb, dissociative bubble, which... no thanks, I have some already.
And then there's the Graveyard Book, a book about family and community. The ghosts, Silas, the Hound of God teacher, all clearly care about the protagonist! So of course, the book ends with him having to leave them all behind and never see any of them again. I guess it's supposed to be about growing out of childish things, but jeez, NEVER again? Even my disowned loony ass still managed to reconnect with a few folks from my childhood! I daresay I made about as clean a break as anyone, and there are still four or five people I speak to every once in a while!
I don't know why this is such a theme in Gaiman's work. Obviously Gaiman is a well-regarded author, and many of our friends adore his work. But man, with the exception of the Graveyard Book (sans ending), all of it I've read feels like suffocating in a glass bottle alone and surrounded by people. It is a very unpleasant feeling, and I have to assume I'm reading it wrong or something, because I've never heard of anyone else having this reaction to his work.
But at least now I know what my problem is, and I can quit trying to make myself like his stuff!
no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 07:34 pm (UTC)So, dead girlfriend is intended to be creepy and Not Right. She's a sad tattered corpse who keeps dragging on, even as she clearly becomes more and more putrefied. (Oh man, the scene where she gets fired from her gas station night job for rotting and she's like, "I had a skin condition, I told you I had a skin condition," is just the saddest thing ever to me, because I have been there, trying to go through the human motions and failing and unable to understand why.) But IIRC, she's the one who saves everyone! She's the one who saves the day, and she does it in a way that nobody will ever know about, and she does it through supreme self-sacrifice.
It seems appropriate, in a backassward way, that she's the one who does, because even though she's That Ex-Girlfriend, she's also the only one in the book who I felt like she CARED. I feel like her sacrifice has more meaning, because you know she actually WANTS something, and she's giving it up with her sacrifice! No, she is never getting Shadow back, no their relationship clearly was never going to work out, no she doesn't even truly want Shadow but the image of what her life was, but nevertheless, she lets that illusion go for a much greater purpose! Which ends up serving Shadow better than the illusion ever could!
I felt like the character of Shadow worked in the book because he was just the straight man deadpanning his way through the utter mythological absurdity that keeps happening to him... but I still felt like I never truly knew what he wanted, what he felt. I would've loved to! But just about all Gaiman protagonists feel weirdly empty to me, like I never get to truly know them.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 10:26 pm (UTC)I think Shadow's strongest emotion is resignation, which is not precisely a thrilling and reader-grabbing emotion, ha.
Also I have to admit one of the aspects of American Gods I loved most were the side stories.
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Date: 2022-12-01 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 08:14 pm (UTC)I guess in most of his characters I see inner lives which were, IMO, at least hinted at or implied, but I can certainly see the stereotypically Gen X thing you're talking about; also feels stereotypically English, all the emotions contained and at a bit of a remove. It maybe doesn't bother me since I don't have the unpleasant dissociative experiences to be reminded of.
I think Gaiman perhaps does better with side characters. I'm very neutral about most of his protagonists,* but I'm also used to finding protagonists boring or mildly unlikable in media, so it doesn't necessarily bug me unless I really hate them.
*Dream being an exception; I'm extremely fond of him in that way where I also want to smack some sense into him. I think he's one of those characters who embodies that caring meme: "'I don't care,' I say, caringly, as I care deeply."
Anyway! Interesting analysis. You might like the Good Omens show, too. Harder for me to judge when I already loved the book, but Crowley and Aziraphale are much more emotional than they were in the book. (I still can't defend Newt and Anathema getting together, though. Possibly I'm laying the blame for that one at Terry Pratchett's feet. I've been rereading some Discworld books and having Thoughts about his writing - which I like quite a bit, to be clear - but I think I've gone on long enough for one comment.)
~Elle
no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 08:28 pm (UTC)I feel like it works decently with Shadow; he's the straight man doggedly deadpanning through all the ridiculous mythological nonsense happening to him. But it still felt like I was watching him from a distance. I had a more positive reaction to American Gods than I did to Sandman, but I still have no intention of ever reading it again.
That's true, his side characters tend to be more colorful. A bunch of his protagonists feel very... I dunno, distant to me. Not devoid of characterization or personality, not at all (Bod and Coraline are both curious, Bod is especially self-reliant, Shadow's the straight man), but I always felt like I was watching them from afar. Which works for Dream, since he's not human, and his motives and ethics aren't either. I feel like they did a good job with the actor for him on the show! That can't have been an easy role to cast! That one scene where Cassiopoeia hugs him and he just stands there like a post until finally being like, "okay, I suppose this is a hug thing we're doing now" is touching, sad, and hilarious. I really felt like it communicated this tightassed gloombucket who cares but can't express it well.
Honestly, I don't think I was into the premise of Good Omens enough to want to watch the show. It just wasn't for me!
I think with Sandman, the dissociative feeling might be worse because the comic, by nature, jumps from plotline to plotline, story to story. One issue will be a completely separate story in the middle of a different one, and I dunno, it just seems to hit the ruts of my mind where biographical memory is broken into different threads and strands. It's really weird!
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Date: 2022-12-01 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 12:06 am (UTC)That said, I've read plenty of works with a more detached, ironic, or flatline expression before, and none have given me that weird, suffocating feeling that Gaiman's work does. How Loathsome, for instance, is full of disaffected Gen-X queers being cynical and above it all, but it doesn't get that reaction out of me. Neither does Murderbot, and Murderbot sees itself as a literal object at the start! Something about Gaiman's work specifically seems to hit my buttons in a weird unpleasant way that these other works do not.
Maybe because both How Loathsome and Murderbot, even though the characters are self-objectifying, depressed, or addicted to heroin, still care about SOMEONE, even if they can't articulate it or show it in a traditional way. Even when they're isolated, they don't feel sealed behind glass to me.
I don't feel like I'm explaining this properly.
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Date: 2022-12-02 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 08:28 pm (UTC)Gaiman himself seems like a perfectly decent person, and for that reason, I wish I enjoyed his work more.
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Date: 2022-12-01 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 10:05 pm (UTC)God, I kind of wonder what you'd think of Gideon the Ninth. It is a fucking gory traumatizing ass book, and for a lot of the story the characters seem to violently hate each other. Until they don't. Kind of. But it seems almost the opposite of this in that the main characters try to maintain this disinterested affect, but when shit hits the fan, they care so goddamn much.
-Artemis (they/them)
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Date: 2022-12-01 11:43 pm (UTC)I actually tried to read Gideon the Ninth and also just couldn't get into it, but that too is for much simpler, more obvious reasons. I felt like I spent 100 pages waiting for the plot bus, and it was finally arriving when my brain just went, "Nooooo... nonfiction... FOREVERRRRRR" which it does periodically. Since I've heard it's doomed to a sad ending, I probably won't end up reading further. (Call me a sap, but I have a really hard time reading unhappy endings and people hating each other. I feel like I have enough unhappiness in my head and nonfiction at the moment, so a lot of the fiction I read is happy shit. Plus, those hundred pages of them truly hating each other felt like pulling teeth. I knew they'd come out of it eventually, but...! A hundred pages is a long time!)
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Date: 2022-12-02 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 12:10 am (UTC)When I want harder, sadder fare, I read nonfiction. Or I guess some fiction, but not romance. I am okay with a super bumpy ride, but gotta have me that happy ending!
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Date: 2022-12-02 07:09 pm (UTC)We can trade! I give you all of my fluff, you can give me all of your tragedy. :P
-Artemis
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Date: 2022-12-03 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 11:33 pm (UTC)!!! yeah it's not just you it's definitely a thing like.
to summarise a whole lot of context, a couple years ago we got really into American Gods (the show), then while waiting for season 3 we got really into Good Omens (show then book, loved both really hard). since we also really liked Coraline (movie, can't remember if we read the book) from years prior we figured we'd read Gaiman's other work, found American Gods (the book) just okay but really unsatisfying in a way we couldn't... quite place. this didn't really make us want to read anything else by him so we went to Discworld instead like, checking out the other author's work, and it turned out nearly everything that made us love Good Omens? was present in Pratchett's writing and absent in Gaiman's (enjoyed Discworld so much particularly the later books).
and while some of it was to do with the fact Pratchett is more of a, if not outright comedy, definitely an optimistic writer compared to Gaiman's bleakness -- a lot of it also had to do with like, i remember how we phrased it to friends at the time, "Pratchett gets people and builds his characters in a way Gaiman... doesn't really seem to?", in the way that Gaiman is good at atmosphere in general but Pratchett writes much more vibrant characters and interactions. and reading your post just now, i think we hit on kind of the same thing you did, just didn't necessarily think of it in terms of dissociative elements or disconnection at the time but god yeah can't unsee it now you've said it
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Date: 2022-12-01 11:56 pm (UTC)I absolutely agree regarding how Pratchett writes characters. You know EXACTLY why his characters do the absurd shit they do. Never once have I felt they were distant.
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Date: 2022-12-02 05:01 am (UTC)I've always liked Gaiman's work for the settings and the atmosphere he builds, and I often find myself focusing more on those points than characterization. In the case of something like Neverwhere, I did read it as Richard Mayhem being very British, but I could have misread that.
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Date: 2022-12-02 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-03 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-07 10:18 pm (UTC)The comment should be, "That's so true. There's a stark bleakness to his stuff that we sometimes find appealing but sometimes not, that feels like the kind of dissociation when the world's just too real.
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Date: 2022-12-07 10:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-12 09:49 pm (UTC)As a longtime fan of Neil Gaiman, I'm actually going to agree haha. I've always liked his stuff most for the general setting and atmosphere, even though for most fiction I prefer heavy character focus... which is why I've liked his shorter books and stories a lot better than longer ones. Could never get into American Gods despite how much other people adore it, barely remember anything about it aside from a couple concepts that I liked a lot, because there was just no interesting substance for my brain to latch onto, such that some of his stuff I read and go "ah that was nice/interesting" and then just... never think of it again.
The shorter stuff I think can be carried much further by concept alone, so it doesn't start bothering me.
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Date: 2022-12-13 12:38 am (UTC)