#gadling (1) - chaucer (0)

[wyvernquill]

Now, this may be obvious to others, but I haven’t seen much discussion of it here on Tumblr, so I thought I’d draw some attention to it!

In my n-th rewatch of the 1389 scene (I keep checking and re-checking the details for accuracy in my fics), I noticed something interesting towards the beginning of the scene: I think Dream was about to “poach” Geoffrey Chaucer, similarly to what he did in 1589 with Shakespeare.

It’s subtle, but you can see Death and Dream pause in front of his table, listen to their conversation, and Dream is noticeably interested - and why wouldn’t he be, Geoffrey here is practically catnip for the Lord of Stories! So he steps closer, he leans in, we can even see him open his mouth as if to strike up some conversation about those “tavern tales”...

...and then Hob Gadling says “Look, I’ve seen death”, and both Dream and Death stop in their tracks, and the scene proceeds as we all know and love it.

Now, I really adore this little moment for multiple reasons:

1) I suspect Death planned this. She dragged Dream into the tavern and led him over to Chaucer’s table, and was going to make her silly little brother talk to a promising storyteller in the waking world for once - but then they found an even more interesting human to spark Dream’s curiosity instead, which, still a win in Death’s book.

2) It’s just so Dream. Of course he wouldn’t be able to resist a storyteller in the wild, of course he would be drawn to that conversation. Of course he would do his whole “oh, is this your wish then?” spiel and play patron of the arts for a little while. This is what he does and is, which only makes it more interesting that he then turned towards Hob instead (and didn’t talk to Chaucer after, I’m pretty sure we see Dream leave at the end of the scene?) Which brings me to

3) IF ONLY HOB KNEW. Hob “probably still mad at Shakespeare for stealing his date once” Gadling would be OVER THE MOON to know that Dream of the Endless snubbed Geoffrey Fucking Chaucer to talk to him, albeit only because he mocked Dream’s sister within earshot. Please, somebody tell him, it would be the highlight of his century, I just know it.

#the sandman #dream of the endless #death of the endless #hob gadling #the sandman meta #dreamling #the level of detail in this series is astonishing #i keep discovering new fascinating tidbits every time #so much storytelling in blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments like this #and gosh i really want hob to find out about this now #it'd give him a massive ego boost i'm sure #gadling (1) - chaucer (0) #let's forget about will shaxberd (1) though #he doesn't count #(look at me making an original post that isn't art for once)