#this is literally just me going on a long winded and poorly organized tangent 😭

[ahli-stuff]

The Corinthian: more than an object but less than a human and a wretched reflection of his creator

My obsession with the Corinthian is so funny because at first it's like ok. Cool. He's this gay serial killer nightmare with creator issues who's turns out to be a charming antagonist while he's pitted against dream and going about his nefarious plans on screen. What's not to love?

But then there's the next layer of oh...he has preferences and quirks and interests, but he's not a person enough to be a human he's a tool.. that's why he gets unmade in the middle of the street by his lord!! That he had a couple millennia of history with!! Because it's easy.. Dream has the blueprints, therefore remaking the Corinthian and editing out these faulty design aspects is pragmatic. It's efficient. It's less effort and way less emotionally taxing that trying to wrangle in your rogue creation and trying coax them back into doing their job. A human makes a mistake, you correct and reprimand them and offer a better course of action. But if your wrench rusts, you throw it away and buy a new one. It doesn't matter if it's your prized or even your favorite wrench, if it's been rusted to the point of uselessness, you toss it.

And the Corinthian, the agonized wrench, can probably only think: "Did I really mean so little to you?"

I think it totally fucks with his mind. The fact that Dream refers to the Corinthian as his masterpiece and yet he is still lesser in every form of his being—his agency is lesser in every form.

But you can't really blame Dream, can you?

Dream treats the corinthans agency like he treats his own—unnegotiable. For him, it has always been perform your function or die.

Dream: We are, each of us, born with responsibilities. Even I am not free to choose to be other than what I am.

And the Corinthian, in his own eye teeths, has performed his prescribed duty perfectly without hesitation or fail for thousands of years as well and worn as a well used knife—but he knows he can do more, so he does. Because if his function is to chase and slaughter in the dreaming, what's to say can't do it in the waking too?

Besides, in the waking, he's realer. More combobulated. More valued. If you're a mirror for long enough you start to crave a look of your own.

And oh, even with the thrill of newfound freedom, he loves his lord. He's eager for to give to him—to share with him—everything that's ever been dreamed of. In the Corinthians long, long, life he has only ever had his purpose and his lord and for a while that was enough, but his expectations evolve, he changes.

And that's really what dooms him.

Over the course of The Sandman you can see that looking deeper into Dream's ideology "perform your function or die" reveals one of the true themes of the sandman which is "change yourself or die." The Corinthian, whether intentionally or unintentionally serves as a mirror to dreams own character arc and the way dream treats himself.

Like how people put facets of themselves in their original characters, I think that in the corinthian Dream put a version of his own insatiable hunger; to break every rule, to run freely, to enjoy hedonistically. In creating the Corinthian as a mirror Dream unknowingly reflected a distorted face of one of his own buried desires—and i think he couldn’t accept that.

The Corinthian even calls dream out for it at the serial convention (even though he's advocating for murder) he's also jabbing at Dream's unwillingness to show emotional vulnerability and the cage he's built around himself.

Corinthian: Or you might actually feel something.

The dream the Corinthian knows he always cared exceptionally little for humans save for a select few, so what remains is this. Dream might've cared for the Corinthian, but he would unmake him, his prized creation, not for any moral justice, not for a personal slight, but for his rules and nothing else.

For the corinthian, who has spent years upon years upon years with his lord, fighting in his wars, chasing after his approval, pouring every ounce of love and loyalty to him—it stings.

And then there's this scene.

Dream: You're right. This was my fault, not yours. I had so much hope for you. But I created you poorly then.

This is the Corinthian, knowing he is about to die, spilling his frustration and spite to his creator for maybe the first and last time and trying, desperately, to make dream understand that none of this is fair (it's never been, for either of them. It's been the function and nothing else for an eternity but they could be happy.)

This is Dream purposely misinterpreting the Corinthian in the way that is guaranteed to hurt the him the most. Dream, with a writer's indifference, reduces the Corinthian's complicated desperate desire for freedom, rebellion, and his creator's love to his typo. Like a character’s grievance towards their writer, like a man’s outrage towards their god, Dream decides not to deign the corinthian with even the right to call his treason his own. He will not even let him have that bit of agency. No, Dream made the Corinthian wrong.

And then Boyd Holbrook does a phenomenal piece of acting here—he knows how to play evil and charming so well but the Corinthian’s vulnerability is so starkly on display it feels like a knife.

And when you imagine he is about to burst into bloody tears and anguished final words, this is how it ends: they leave each other cruel and jagged, because the corinthian will not end pathetic and he will have the last word.

The Corinthian: I am only sorry I won’t be here to see Rose Walker do the same to you.

The first Corinthian never gets a happy ending.

I don’t think there’s any universe where he doesn’t bite more than he’s allowed to and there is no world where he can really be forgiven. As there is no universe where Morpheus Dream does not stubbornly tie himself to his function and hurt himself and those around him with his pride.

In objectification and the inability to change, they exist as wretched mirrors of each other: The first Corinthian, sick of his function and executed for abandoning it, and Dream, unendurably tired, taking his sister's hand in his when he can no longer bear to perform his duty.

#sandman spoilers #this is literally just me going on a long winded and poorly organized tangent 😭 #the sandman #the corinthian #dream of the endless #corintheus #character analysis #musings #long post