Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

hey i know its Literally Years Later but ive been going through your hannibal recaps again and ive made it all the way to the end of the Super Concise ones and 3.12 seems to not exist anymore? it just says Not Found. I know a couple of the s1 ans s2 ones got caught up in the december purge so im assuming thats what happened here. TLDR hi i love your stuff, do you still have a copy of that one so i can read it again? thanks

FROM ALL THE WAY BACK IN 2015…..

HANNIBAL RECAP: S3E12

Last time on Hannibal: Hannibal tried to get Will’s family killed and Will was all “I hate you and I know you still like me but i don’t like you i don’t care what your stupid friends say you make me touch your hands for stupid reasons u accidentally say you hugged me i will never like you again I HATE YOU I HATE YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THIS DAMN WORLDDDDDDDDDD”

But Hannibal’s just like, “you don’t hate me you just hate change.”

This time on Hannibal: You are cordially invited to the Third Annual CHILTON MAIM-FEST 2015

Season 3, Episode 12: “The Number of the Beast is 666…”

So, this is the longest recap I’ve written yet? Seriously, pack a snack my friends, it’s the PENULTIMATE EPISODE and we’re diving headlong here.

We begin, Will in Bedelia’s home-office again, talking about his troubles. In a development I couldn’t have even dreamed of, it seems that Will is legitimately seeing Dr. Du Maurier now, as his new therapist. HOW WONDERFUL.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Recap + Rewatch: 2x06

Originally posted February 2016 (with most content actually from April 2014, in a further twist), reposted March 2019 after the original was lost somewhere in the roll-out of SFW Tumblr. But we’re back baby!!

And better than ever? Because hey 2019 Tarra thinks we should all admit that 2014 Tarra was WAY more entertaining at a Hannibal recap than 2016 Tarra, so I’ve just cut a lot of her sections. Listen those asides were only weighing 2014 Tarra down, who is my fucking inspiration right now holy shit. Her!

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And WE’RE BACK, with another installment of Past Tarra & Present Tarra Talk With Each Other About Hannibal. Remind me why any of you follow me again?

HANNIBAL Recap Novelization - Ep. 206, “Futamono”
Now With **Rewatch Hindsight** 

It begins. Hannibal composes at his FUCKING HARPSICHORD. You insufferable cannibal dandy, I swear to god.

The lines of his sheet music dissolve into the bars of Will’s cage and well, crap that’s beautiful.

Just plain as perfect symbolic day.

Will: “You are moving smoothly and slowly, Jack; carrying your concentration like a brimming cup.” I gauge Will’s handle on his own weird lovely soul by how bad his metaphors are (more embarrassing = more Will), and this is actually pretty moderate on his scale so we’re still very much in the woods. 

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch: 1x13

Originally posted January 2016, reposted March 2019 after an algorithm looked at this post and thought “oh, no that’s far too explicit” and ate it whole without giving me a chance to appeal. Enjoy guessing which of these one thousand screenshot honked them off! I have my favorites.

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Season 1, Episode 13: “Savoureux”
or, OH, THE SCALES / TUMBLING FROM MY EYES

**Warning: rewatch blogging, written with knowledge of the full series

Ok moment to talk about the “Previously On Hannibal”, if you can believe it, because they used the clip where Abigail asked Will if Hannibal had told him about her involvement with her dad’s murders and Will responding that he hadn’t, which, u may recall, I was fantastically floored to discover was a conversation that took place all in Will’s head. So the Previously On has ALSO gotten so wrapped up in Will that his imaginings are presented as part of the factual objective recap, and that’s marvelous to me. Because god, we’re in “Savoureux.” It’s the finale of Season 1, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and from here on out, the relationship this show had with Will is fracturing. What tilting ice sheet are YOU gonna jump on as the glacier breaks apart?

LET’S FEEL IT OUT, as is our way.

Live Feed:

NOPE NOPE NOPE, T minus nope seconds into this and it’s THE BULLROARER. And that thing travels RIGHT down my spine to the tune of nOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOOOPE. Curse these nice headphones, fucking MONSTER TUNERS.

It sounds like hunting and the Gods and being encircled. All of that. I mean it’s, pun-intended, pitch perfect for where Brian Reitzell is using it, don’t get me wrong, that’s WHY I’m so upset. Because here’s Will, oh Will Graham, finally trying to hunt down the monster always in the corner of his eye. And he chases the Ravenstag, until at last he finds —

the Wendigo, hunched by a tree in the enchanted forest like Voldemort feeding on a unicorn. Angular and so hungry, crimson wet pools in the leaves. Will, run.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

I've literally never seen anyone talk about this so maybe I'm the one who's wrong, but in S3 when Will is talking to Bedelia about faking an escape, and he says 'I don't intend Hannibal to be caught a second time.' What does that mean? Because I've always thought that 'ohh, Will is going to escape with Hannibal and they're going to be murder husbands, and it was all bluntly said.' or 'oh my god, he literally said he's going to help Hannibal escape 4 real!' But no one has said anything about it??

Why hello, it’s a Hannibal meta question! I haven’t gotten one of these in a while! [chalks hands]

Alright, so to my eyes, that line was designed to be deliberately unclear, to keep everyone on the edge of their seats as we move into this last act. Maximum suspense! Maximum drama! Maximum Hannibal, the show that fed on ambivalence and always resisted straight answers (puns intended).

Will does not intend for Hannibal to be caught a second time — because he intends to ensure Hannibal’s freedom? Or because he intends to ensure Hannibal’s death? Both are plausible in the narrative, the latter even being the stated plan of the F.B.I. cabal that likes to plot the murder of murderers while sipping whiskey in Crawford’s office and looking ~moody~

I don’t think the show or Will Graham wanted there to be one right interpretation of that line, but I do think Bedelia’s gasped response of “Can’t live with him, can’t live without him — is that what this is?” not only perfectly captures the seesawing Impossibility that Will is facing, but also puts voice to perhaps the only way out of this dilemma: not living at all.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[crossroadscastiel]

Everything that can happen happens. It has to end well and it has to end badly. It has to end every way it can. This is the way it ended for us.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[idontwikeit]

Doomed to Love
             -
Doomed to Death

[insp @wellntruly recap]

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

"#I love Will Graham he is so charmingly useless" Agreed, ultimately, but do you ever think he'll make a wish and be proactive about it? People have all sorts of hopes and dreams about season 4, and mine are along the lines of hoping that Will will get his butt in gear and learn to decide, even if the decision is more ~of the heart~ than of the moral code he usually whips himself with.

genufa answered:

I have hoped and dreamed for that since 2/3 of the way through season 2. XD But then, Will does make decisions, he just makes them according to a different heuristic from a Bedelia type of person (like me). It all comes from the heart, including the moral factors of guilt and regret and contempt – the key is which part of the mix bubbles over and when. If there’s any morality in Will that’s not naturalized as feeling, it’s not enough IMO to influence his decision making. But by the same accord, there’s no segregating his decisions from said moral factors.

You know: Will never knows himself as well as he does when he’s with Hannibal, which includes knowing exactly whether he has or intends to kill, because Hannibal is the only one who’ll confront him with that as a practical scenario. If you ask Will to consider whether he’s theoretically a killer, he is like, ohgodmaybe? But he never killed Marissa Schuur, and he never would have killed Marissa Schuur, whereas he absolutely did kill the hell out of Francis Dolarhyde. Those are, on some level, the result of an ethical triage.

Anyway, from a Doyleist perspective Will usually gets hit on the head and swoons to avoid any tiresomeness with him deciding to (not) help kill various mooks, cops, and guards, or even feeling obliged to save them. It’s not so much a cop out as an effort to pace the episodes.

[confusedkayt]

Three cheers to all this.  @wellntruly and I have had a fascinating series of chats (one of which is here) about how Will Graham often feels crippled by his sense of overwhelming agency, and just as often reacts to that by trying to sort of surrender agency altogether and be buffeted around by ~circumstance~.  

On the “overwhelming agency” side of the scale, we have Will himself and often others around him holding him fully responsible for things he has thought but not acted on as though those are exact moral equivalents.  I’m pretty sure he’s convinced that any soft action on his part will injure the object of his softness and so he’s got to keep a very tight reign on that.  And there are so many examples of the “well, I guess I’ll just refuse to admit what I am doing to myself, ignore obvious and predictable outcomes, and sort of surf the waves of my feels and see what happens.”  My fave example of this is the knife in his hand after the gallery in Dolce.  Like, what was the plan there?  Kind of half-heartedly stab Hanners in full public view with a teeny knife in broad daylight?  Or was it much more like “do something that will provoke Hannibal into being the instrument of the pain and destruction I kind of really want/feel deserving of right now?”  I know where my money is.

So much of Hannibal’s time with Will is a process of trying to get Will to own his decisions.  Of course the fun and messy part is that Hannibal conceives of “owning your agency” as “doing the exact set of things Hannibal wants you to do,” but, well, nobody’s perfect.  :P

[genufa]

I love that thread you linked, actually! Especially the observation that Hannibal finds it maddening, because he sees it as Will refusing to be happy – because Hannibal absolutely equates owning his agency, not just to doing what Hannibal wants to do, but to happiness itself. It never occurs to him that exercising his agency in the world and Doing What He Wants could lead to his own unhappiness as a consequence (setting aside the question of injury to others), even though this FACTUALLY HAPPENS TO HIM about 45 times onscreen. I guess he’s never emotionally shot himself in the foot like that, before Will, and the mental habit of 40-odd years is hard to break.

It’s funny that this has come up, because the current fic is really running head-on into this territory – as usual I feel by a certain point that Will and Hannibal have headed off on a bizarre and unexpected avenue of inquiry and I am just along for the ride. Speaking of abdication of agency. XD;;

[wellntruly]

I LOVE AND SUPPORT ALL OF THIS SO MUCH.

Oh man, I feel like I should talk about agency but I’m just stuck in a little delight loop over how many times this show lovingly bashes Will unconscious. It’s almost like when his Feelings Are Truth compass gets spinning too chaotically, the ~powers that be~ are like “maybe it would be kinder if we just…. [bonk].” Also: more efficient! Though god, honestly one of my faaavorite things about Will Graham is how non-amenable he is to like, plot. He’s so swayable in his life but so difficult in narrative, bless his contrary heart.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

tealtintedglasses-deactivated20 asked:

In your Shiizakana recap you touched on Hannibal's "warped finishing school for the damned". In a post S3 world, do you still feel like Hannibal would be compelled to turn out any would-be murderers and watch them go? What would be Will's reaction? Would he be jealous? Annoyed? I guess I've always had a hard time understanding Hannibal's intent, are these just amusements for him to sate his curiosity or on some level does he care about these people?

Compelled is one thing, would he be able to is another! I mean, we know Hannibal must like doing this, because he does it constantly throughout the show, with Randall Tier as at least one pre-series example. As a noted murder cat, he’s curious, and Fledgling Killer Grooming certainly feeds something in his weird dark soul (perhaps Hannibal’s version of collecting strays?). Though whether he “cares” about them in the traditional sense is pretty dubious. Arguable the only person Hannibal truly cares about from 1x01 on is Will, and frankly that’s far from any comfortable definition of the word as well. But regardless, while Hannibal has a definite interest in pushing people toward their ~gruesome glory~, we also know that he can press the mute button on his urges if his security & freedom require it, as seen in the long periods of time that pass without Ripper kills. Whether it’s murder art or his murder protégées, being freshly escapered from a hospital for the criminally insane would be a time to lie low, one would think.

And of course, there’s another mitigating factor: Will Graham. Hannibal once gave up his favorite hobby not for his own continued freedom, but ALONGSIDE IT, all for the sake of his precious biscuit who hates him. There is not a lot Hannibal wouldn’t do to keep Will’s attention! Buuuuttt on the other hand…. there’s not a lot Hannibal wouldn’t do to keep Will’s attention. And bringing other people in for them to play off of/at each other is another thing Hanners has found very rewarding indeed. In fact, the most recent student of Dr. Lecter’s Finishing School For the Damned was Francis Dolarhyde, and in one of the interviews on the S3 DVDs, Mads Mikkelsen #confirmed my feeling that Hannibal was primarily treating (and treating) Dolarhyde as just a means to a Will. Given how VERY gratifying the results of that were, I imagine this would be the arrangement Hannibal would want to keep pursuing, if given the chance.

And if Will doesn’t manage to convince him to [grits teeth] stop it, given how terribly distressed this always makes him. Up to and including the part where he ends up doing just what Hannibal hoped for all along: proving he does love him. Uugh. Roll me into the sea about it, literally.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

i dont really know who to ask, so i'm just coming to an active hannibal blog :'D ive recently watched hannibal and am confused as to why hannibal started cutting will's head with the saw in dolce? after everything that happened in season 3 it just seemed really strange to me for him to do that (although i mean it /is/ hannibal). i know its in the books with a different character but idk why they added it in the show with will. do you know why? i cant really find an answer online ^^;;

super-queer-hannibal-obsession answered:

Hey guys! Anyone want to link to some really good metas or people who write metas for this anon? I don’t feel like my answer would be adequate.
Thanks!
@feyestwords @the-winnowing-wind
@hannigram-hell @cannibalcuisine @bonearenaofmyskull @ishipthemsogoddamnhard (just tagging people off the top of my head)

[h4nnibalism]

Not a great meta, but a short explanation while pushing this on; so people who actually tag things neatly might step in… anyway.

Bedelia fed the idea Hannibal had already in his head: he must eat Will to get rid of his feelings for him.

Because after Will’s betrayal, Hannibal has to assume they’re one-sided, and he can’t stand hurting and …you know. All this unrequited love pain bulls hit, normal people have to get over with by help of alcohol.

Bedelia suggest Will’s death to secure her place at Hannibal’s side; kinda better to dine with the devil than become food herself.

The saw/brain eating, because will has that beautiful mind, Hannibal wants to understand.

Eating him at all, because he gets to keep part of Will with him, always.

[hannigram-hell]

@bu0nanotte actually answered this a little while back in an ask. I totally agreed with what she said. I looked through the archive, but couldn’t find the post. I couldn’t find it in mine either. Perhaps ask her for the link, anon? It was very well written and anything I say would just be repeating, so better to read the original. :)

[v-e-l-v-e-t-g-o-l-d-m-i-n-e]

I hope you don’t mind me stepping in - Dolce is my favorite episode, but I don’t think I really talked about this on here and I love to babble about it.

I honestly wasn’t very surprised when Hannibal started to cut Will’s head, because it seemed very natural for me. It was the culmination of the museum’s scene.

Will and Hannibal’s reunion in Dolce is a tender, breathtakingly beautiful moment - and it’s not only a reunion between them, but also a goodbye. A temporary truce where they appreciate each other company before getting on with the game again.

For me both Will and Hannibal are planning on kill each other since the beginning of the season. I don’t think it’s quite fair to Bedelia to say that she was the one to put the idea on Hannibal’s head, really - Bedelia is a very smart character with a strong sense of preservation, but her cruelty is more theoretical than practical. She thinks about crushing wounded birds because of their weakness… but in the end she doesn’t really crush them.

I think Hannibal already planned on eating Will because let’s face it, that’s how he deals with his problems. Bedelia’s words may have given more strenght to this idea, but the impulse was already there. And I don’t think Will was quite certain about what he would do when he saw Hannibal - I see Will very much as a character that plays a lot with his options - but murder was a very valid, strong option in his mind.

Hannibal cutting into Will’s head was his last, desperate, failed attempt to force a separation between them. Will breaking up with Hannibal was his successful attempt to force a separation between them.

[empathalitis]

Another active Hannibal blog here! I wasn’t directly tagged but this is a topic I’m fascinated by. Dolce was a beautiful episode, and also one of my favorites! ♥︎ :)

I found these to be two very insightful pieces of meta on the subject: here and here.

My personal interpretation of the scene follows similar patterns of thought. I think it’s a combination of various factors. Remembering that this takes place after Will is shot by Chiyoh (whilst drawing the knife he had hidden in order to presumably injure and quite possibly kill Hannibal, though I don’t think he would have gone through with it) – we have Hannibal mentioning that Will “dropped his forgiveness” and that he “forgives the way God forgives”. Regardless of whether or not you choose to equate/draw parallels between Hannibal and God, Will’s intentions and Hannibal’s intentions (which were very similar) functioned as their way of forgiving each other. With Chiyoh’s help, Hannibal proceeds with his forgiveness, convinced that the only way he can forgive Will is by eating him.

Keep reading

[ishipthemsogoddamnhard]

@wellntruly a little help?

[wellntruly]

Sure! But fair warning that I’m about to tack hard to one side here, and talk about this from my position as a television producer, looking at something other people have made.

Having Hannibal cut into Will’s head was a story decision made by the collective of people who wrote this show, and no matter how much good thought they may have put into it, it would become the single most confusing turn of events in a show that at times seemed built of confusion and turns. This is a non-personal conclusion I have come to after having been asked “wait wtf?” about this one specific moment WAY more times than anything else in this entire series, and that’s in addition to the posts like this always going around! Objectively, just looking at the numbers, this scene is the one that has been the hardest for fans to wrap their heads around, forgive me.

So why did it happen? Well, most likely because:

1. there is an iconic moment of head-cutting in the original Harris canon that Bryan Fuller & Co wanted to sample, as part of their oft stated “Thomas Harris mash-up DJs” approach to the series
2. [repeat No. 1 at louder volume, set to a sweet spooky Reitzell tune]
3. the writers needed some large-scale fuckery to justify (both for Will and for us) Will breaking up with Hannibal For Realz This Time in the next episode, which they in turn needed to happen so that they could time-jump to the circumstances in Red Dragon
4. there is some nice full-circle symbolism in literally getting into Will’s head
and
5. the show called Hannibal was always going to need to include him saying, about Will Graham, a line like “I have to eat him.”

While certainly not all of it, IMO those probably make up the practical majority of Why. Sure, there are also a range of emotional/historical/metaphorical reasons we can come up with for Hannibal doing this — some that were surely tossed around in the writers room as well, others that I’d bet are wholly original to the fans — but from what I have seen in my inbox and on my dash for over a year now, no amount of in-world explanations has ever been widely accepted as completely satisfying.

So to reach peace with it, I recommend adding the real world lens and a jovial shrug. With a show this wonderfully intricate and ambitious, there are always going to be parts that don’t line up quite right, and honestly that’s a great time to take a sorta BTS step back, so you can appreciate just what a miracle it was that it even got made. TV shows are put together very much like a big ol’ jigsaw puzzle, by a group of people working to balance their artistic visions against each other’s and the network executives’ (as well as balancing everything against budgetary realities and cast/crew availabilities, which are often interrelated and widely invisible to an audience, if you’re good). As a scriptwriter, you just gotta make the best decisions you can with all the moving pieces & opinions you need to work with. And as with a lot of creative group projects, ~perfect clarity of vision~ is always the goal, but sometimes we just land near it. And sometimes just, ehh…a little bit further off than…usual….

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Confusedkayt’s Top Ten Hannibal Episodes

[confusedkayt]

Inspired by @wellntruly‘s delightful list, here’s my top ten favorites!  “Best?”  I don’t even know what I’d mean by that but golly gosh darn these are my faaaaaaves.

1.  3x03:  Secondo.  I just…  here:  I did some screaming here.

2.  3x01: Anitpasto.  This is not the season opener of a show that gives a good goddamn about ratings.  This is the season opener of a show that is letting you know that everything is going to be GLORIOUSLY BONKERS.  Keep everyone stewing in mortal terror after the Mizumono mike-drop!  Let’s throw in a lot of untranslated Dante, literally project an image of Satan onto the title character’s face, propose smarmy threesomes, turn the interior decorating over to Liberace’s Italian second-cousin and make an in-canon Leather Daddy AU.  Featuring, also, flashbacks to the recently-quadroplegic Abel Gideon giving Mariah Carey a run for her shade money in his crisply piped pajamas.  YES.  HI.  GIVE ME WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW I WANTED.

3.  3x13:  The Wrath of the Lamb.  Suddenly everything is a road-trip romcom with various fetish outfits and a Bond theme and I am still not and never will be ok.

4.  1X02 : Amuse-Bouche.  I will never get the vision of the mushroom people out of my mind.  This was the ep that hooked me - I had watched the pilot and turned my attention elsewhere LIKE A FOOL and then they threw this bonkers nonsense at me and I was just like, WELP, BUCKLE UP.  Also, peak Beverly.  “Hi, I’ma just touch you while you sweat and shoot badly and then ask what you know about gardening.”

5.  2x03: Hassun.  I know,  I KNOW.  But this is the ep where, on my first watch, I truly LOST MY SHIT.  I had to stop and re-wind because I was actually squealing too loudly at the tv and missed some stuff because HANNIBAL CAME TO TESTIFY FOR HIS BOO.  His boo, who, it transpires, bring ALL the murder-boys to the yard, and damn right, you’re gonna get gored.  He could teach you, but you’d have to wallow in misery forever.  And Lawyer Brauer is the bit part we deserved.

6.  3x07:  Digestivo.  Presented without comment because WHAT IS THIS LIFE.

7.  3x02:  Antipasto.  Ow.  My heart.  Peak Manic Pixie Dream Victim - and yet, please try to ever emotionally recover from the Will-gets-treatment/Abigail-gets-autopsied sequence. Also featuring everyone looking at Hannibal’s embarrassing old Myspace (”Let me just LITERALLY RECREATE THE PRIMAVERA BUT WITH BODIES.  IS THIS… ART?!?!?!”)   Will tries to even the embarrassment stakes by stepping backward into darkness with bad Italian pronunciation and his collar popped, and Hanners makes Graven Icon Of A Saint faces like four times.

8.  2x07: Yakimono.  Chilton snivels, Jack roars after clearing his busy schedule of re-traumatizing the two agents who have been ground into emotional hamburger because of his cyclical commitment to bad decisions, Hannibal makes Graven Icon Of A Saint faces while trying to conceal a sudden boner after being interrupted in the act of obtaining wine before he took off his coat or turned on the damn lights, Will Graham Combs His Damn Hair And Tries To Seduce A Murderer.

9.  2x08:  Su-Zakana.  What.  WHAAAAAAT.  Somebody hug Peter Bernadone.  Hannibal has already got the “hug Will Graham” situation under control, albeit with hands that are likely dripping with sheep lanolin.

10.  1x08: Fromage.  Franklyn has chosen his Michael Jacksons hilariously poorly and has made the apparently fatal mistake of hoping that he is the protagonist of this murder-harem anime.  Actual Harem-Having Protagonist Will Graham is on the receiving end of so many disappointed sighs, heart eyes and heaving thighs, not to mention a ~serenade~.  Does Zombie Garrett Jacob Hobbs count as a harem member?  CHOOSE YOUR OWN SLOW-CLAP ADVENTURE.  Zeller’s side-eye will go down in history.

[wellntruly]

AN EXCELLENT LIST, explained beyootifully

True facts 1x02 ‘Amuse Bouche’ could make a strong case for my #11! Faaaabulous fucked up, this welling sense of dread lightened-then-heightened by absurd morbid jokes, and Will spends the whole episode circling down down down through Hannibal’s office until finally taking a seat at the very end and only then does Hannibal take his place across from him and we are OFF, MY FRIENDS.

Also, delighted at the ~scandal~ that you too did not include ‘Mizumono’ in your Top Ten!  RENEGADES UP IN HERE.