Let it rain: how The Sandman and Goblin turn sorrow into weather and eternity into weight

In Goblin and The Sandman, sorrow has a scent. It smells like wet stone and old paper. It moves like fog between two centuries. It waits by a girl’s umbrella, or the shadow of a man who can’t die. Neither series treats time as linear or grief as something to be healed. Instead, they return to it again and again, like rain pooling where no one is looking.

The weather changes with the characters, not as symbol but as memory. Rain falls when Kim Shin remembers what cannot be undone. Dreams crack when Morpheus realizes what cannot be held. In these worlds, eternity isn't glorious. It's a room you can't leave. And sorrow, when it comes, doesn't knock. It seeps.

When it rains, it remembers

In Goblin, the sky cries before Kim Shin does. Rain becomes the answer to the questions Ji Eun-tak has not yet learned how to ask. It falls when she is alone on her birthday, lighting a candle no one else will see. It follows her like an echo, steady and unresolved, as if the world is mourning something it cannot name. The goblin himself treats weather like breath. When he returns, it begins to rain in her world again. No warning. No forecast. Only memory.

In The Sandman, rain is never empty or just background water. When Morpheus returns to the Dreaming after his capture, he finds a realm broken, wet with sorrow. Lucienne and the others wait for him in a quiet storm, the kind that does not cleanse but confirms what has been lost. Later, when Dream visits Hob Gadling in 2022, rain falls again. Death teases him for it, for crying, for caring, for making it rain. As if even the sky knew what it meant to be left behind.

Neither Goblin nor The Sandman uses weather as ornament. In both, it is history. It is grief. And it stays behind, even when the scene ends.

Eternity is not a gift

In Goblin, immortality begins as punishment. Kim Shin is forced to wander through centuries with a sword in his chest and no peace in sight. He cannot die until his bride removes it, yet he falls in love with her before she is old enough to understand what he carries. Time does not move forward for him. It loops. He watches wars change uniforms, but never purpose. He watches people grow old while he remains a relic. Even love, when it comes, brings no rest. His eternity is not sacred. It is suspended.

In The Sandman, Dream rules the Dreaming but remains its prisoner. He walks through eons with perfect posture and unbearable restraint. He claims control over stories and nightmares, yet cannot rewrite his own loneliness. His relationships erode under the pressure of time. When he finds Hob Gadling every hundred years, the meeting becomes less about curiosity and more about hope, a single tether in a sea of repetition. Like Kim Shin, he carries too much memory and too little change. Immortality does not elevate him. It traps him in cycles he refuses to break.

Both Goblin and The Sandman show eternity as accumulation. It gathers not clarity, but burden. The longer they live, the heavier they become. And when they love, it is not with abandon. It is with hesitation, because love demands endings, and they are not allowed to end.

Time leaves and takes things with it

In Goblin, time is never in sync. Kim Shin waits for his bride across centuries, cursed to live until she removes the sword from his chest. Ji Eun-tak, still a high school student when they meet, carries the mark of fate without understanding its cost.

Their lives unfold in separate rhythms. He has witnessed kingdoms fall. She is still learning who she is. The distance between them is not just age. It is weight. Even when they are together, time hangs between them like fog. It creates beauty, but also uncertainty. The more they love, the more they notice time bending away from them.

In The Sandman, time fractures everything it touches. Dream returns to the Dreaming after a century of absence, and nothing is where it was. Lucienne has waited. The realm has thinned. Dreams have gone rogue, or decayed. In the waking world, his absence has created ripple effects that cannot be undone.

When he finally meets Hob Gadling again in 2022, they stand together in the rain, still tethered by the promise of friendship. Earlier, Death had teased him for it, for crying, for caring, for making it rain. As if even the sky knew what it meant to be left behind.

Both Goblin and The Sandman show how time haunts. It forgets to arrive, then shows up all at once. It does not offer symmetry. It brings distance and distortion, and leaves love trying to find its place inside the gaps.

Death stays close

In Goblin, death wears a suit and keeps his ledger. The Grim Reaper waits without rush, offers tea without explanation, and opens doors when the time feels right. He guides souls gently, but lives with no memory of his own life. His presence is constant, precise, and heavy with unfinished guilt. When he meets Sunny again, the ache returns before the facts. His sorrow exists in shape, not memory. That is what remains.

In The Sandman, Death walks with quiet hands and kind eyes. She sits beside people in their final breath and lets them speak. She listens. She touches gently. Her role is not to end stories, but to hold them. She brings gravity without sorrow. When she teases Dream for crying in the rain, her voice carries affection. She knows what he hides. She sees that grief is a mirror. She understands that every tear confirms something mattered.

Goblin and The Sandman give death a shape that remains. It watches. It listens. It stands nearby, not to take, but to witness.

Goblin and The Sandman: what remains after the rain

In Goblin, the Grim Reaper stays behind. He offers tea to the dead, checks the names, follows the rules. But his own name never returns. His past was erased as punishment, yet its weight follows him in every silence. When he meets Sunny, he feels something before he knows what it is. His hands hesitate. His breath shifts. Guilt comes without explanation. His sorrow exists in shape, not memory. That is what remains.

In The Sandman, Dream walks through the Dreaming with less certainty. His steps are slower, his voice quieter. He restores order, but his presence has changed. Death sees it. Lucienne adjusts to it. Desire waits for the consequence. Morpheus does not explain. He carries the shape of everything he has endured. It sits in the space around him, like fog after a storm. Nothing was erased, but something was left behind.

Goblin and The Sandman understand that some truths are not spoken. They are felt in repetition, in distance, in stillness. After the sword is gone and the Dreaming is rebuilt, what remains is not memory or clarity. It is weight, and it is presence. It is what continues, even when nothing else does.

After the rain, what remains in Goblin and The Sandman is a bittersweet memory of love, not always clear, not always shared, but deeply felt. A happy day will eventually be forgotten. Everything is. The scent fades, the name disappears, the voice slips out of reach. But when that love becomes part of a story, it stays. Perhaps not in the heart, but in the telling.

That is what stories do. They hold what the world cannot keep. They stretch across time. They catch what memory drops. And when the rain falls again, the story remains, waiting to be heard once more.