Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

hanfangrahamk replied to your post “IN RETROSPECT—” Hannibal 3x10 Again”

Tarra, so sweet of you to do this during such a busy time. Aesthetic question – Will’s beauty during this arc was absolutely stunning and do you think they played it up? Past Me found Hugh quite striking for first time. With Molly, he was hooded in his beanie woodland sweater dad. And then emerged as this sexual being with blush on his cheeks and showing off his scars. He became alluring again to bait a man who he knew found him appealing. Cruel, unavailable Will.

Aw, you’re welcome! In fact, it’s actually more the LACK of being busy that’s a drag right now, that bahumbug combination of being restless and listless both — but we’re not here to jaw over my employment limbo, we are here to talk about WILL GRAHAM: CONFUSING BABE. Hilariously, it was another shot from that prison visit scene in 3x10 that I threw on the shockingly popular Vague Guilt post that one night! What are you doing there Dancy, the people are… affected.

Actually though, I think that’s most of it: what Hugh Dancy is doing. We do have an appearance-shift that we know was purposeful, and his ~Murder Husband~ transformation in mid S2 was as much about his bearing and expressions as it was a haircut and spiffed up outerwear. And yes, it was a Seduction and a Gesture of Effort and a Willingness To Play and all that, but it was also the manner Will takes on to interact with a coolly controlled monster he mistrusts and resents. And Hannibal, it turns out, is not the only person in Will’s life who falls into that category. This won’t have quite the impact without the movement of it, but this “bring it, Dr. Lecter” head tilt in 2x07

is reeeaally similar to this “bring it, Dr. Du Maurier” head tilt in 3x10

What’s INTERESTING then, is that Red Dragon Arc Will is most channeling his S2 suit with Bedelia, and not with Hannibal anymore. With Hannibal…. honestly the way I’d put it is that he looks like some sort of angel. And I LOVE THAT. I’ve no idea if the surface was purposeful, if the hair & make-up team decided to let Hugh Dancy’s natural flush glow through a bit or whatever, but it is in the acting, just look at him:

And it’s kinda perfect, yeah? Because Will didn’t come back to Hannibal as the shaking mess of S1 or the sham Murder Husband of S2, he came back as the Lamb, poised for Wrath and ruin and a red dawn for the Red Dragon.

So I guess I don’t see his preposterous beauty in the prison visits as Will being cruelly unattainable or baiting, but more like we’re looking at Will through Hannibal’s reverent, love-struck eyes.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

“IN RETROSPECT—” Hannibal 3x10 Again

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

I’m in a weird nervy mood right now, so let’s SEE HOW THIS GOES DOWN.

Season 3, Episode 10: “And the Woman Clothed IN Sun”

Heh, Francis practicing his plosives in front of the mirror, I’d forgotten.

From the outside of his laptop I would have sworn it was a Dell or something, but then the desktop is clearly Apple, so this is for sure a metaphor about Dolarhyde containing The Dragon. It’s not, please don’t believe me.

Hannibal’s lawyer is literally named Byron. You guys.

THE OVERWHELMED GASP THO. Francis is the person who brings his favorite book to be signed by his favorite author at the local Barnes & Noble and then ends up lurking by the periodicals too nervous to go up there.

Hannibal’s just like, “refreshing, someone who wants to Become.”

Unfair reviews. At last someone who recognizes the artistry of your work, Hanners. Or, well at last someone who admits it. Rough.

Huh. Dolarhyde, being perfectly amenable to a number of Hannibal’s wants in a murder protege, is sorta another Dimmond, isn’t he — proof that the traits he wants in Will on paper don’t actually gel into someone he wants in person. That, frustratingly, remains Will’s role alone. Ha ha, YOU DOOMED LOSERS.

This is totally cool. AND EERY.

“I want to see you ~meld~ with the ~strength of the Dragon~.” W O W, Dolarhyde.

Wait, a Joke:

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

'Why do you front like you’re trying to get your murder darlings to embrace their agency while actually assuming SO MUCH AGENCY OVER THEM' this so much. I constantly see hannipologists saying he is legitimately giving Will agency and I just don't buy it.

wellntruly answered:

[from this 3x09 rewatch, originally re: Abigail, but actually re: all his birds]

Ah AGENCY, that olde liberal arts college chestnut! Bryan Fuller loves to play with it though so here we are.

Anyhow, I know I’ve gotta be like, the bête noire of some Hannipologists, but actually we’re probably in the same place when it comes to his intent. I fully believe that Hannibal does intend for his murder darlings to become stronger, and does believe that he is helping them achieve that, it’s just that his methods so often work at cross-purposes to his goal. This is probably a flawed analogy, but it’s sorta like Hannibal is coming at this like exposure therapy? He’s putting people in situations where they are essentially forced into doing something dramatic (and deadly), so that they will know that they can. This, he believes, is therapeutic for them. This will teach them how to have (violent) agency in the world, the way he does. But the TROUBLE HERE is that when someone engages in exposure therapy with a proper therapist, it’s that patient’s choice to do so. The way Hannibal does it, he takes that choice from them. He orchestrates scenarios — games and traps, really — for people who didn’t realize they were #blessed to have Hannibal Lecter as their personal god.

It does get muddled with Will in the second half of the series, because when he scrambles back up from prison it’s to consciously engage with the games this time. But UNFORTCH, Will opting to walk his own self into this mess doesn’t mean Hannibal stops with the manipulative stage managing bullshit. All the way through S3, he’s still working to prune Will’s options into a path that reflects Hannibal’s preferred course for him. As is so often the case, Bedelia spells this out for Will with painful clarity in 3x12: “Hannibal does indeed have agency in the world. He has you.”

But, Will’s desperate, dangerified response to this is TWOTL, and that beautiful self-destructive hot mess has Will Graham’s Own Weird Choices written all over it, so there’s a form of hope, at the end.

[confusedkayt]

Sorry to bust in well after the fact and with material we’ve already talked about a little boot, but!  I SECOND THAT EMOTION.  I think Hanners is often trying to help people increase their agency, but has such overwhelming confidence in his own agency that he conceptualizes other people as either 1) thwarted in their agency, or 2) doing the exact things he think would help them be their best selves.

Hannibal is less duality and more like… hexality.  His emotional state at any given moment is so weird and hard to parse!  Like a constant state of detachment, and also quasi-hypomanic religiosity, sincere appreciation for the beauties to be found in the world, tooth-rattling rage about ugliness/squander of beauty.  It’s fascinating that he has this massive sense of AGENCY over the aesthetics of like… the world entire, or at least every chunk of it in his perception at any given moment.  And that includes the power to see the big picture on behalf of his Murder Interns and help them break free of their variosu chains that prevent them from exercising their visions upon the world.

It’s such a nice contrast with Will’s complex passivity, which really triggers Hannibal into trying to help Will out in his Hannersy way….

I’d submit that Will, particularly early on, feels crippled BECAUSE of the overwhelming amount of agency he feels - another identical difference from Hannibal.  I think his sort of…. random drifting is tied to that as well, because he’s convinced himself that usually when he consciously exercises agency it ends up being Bad For Everyone Who Is Good and so better to just… not and let the fickle finger of fate decide.

This is often just maddening to Hannibal, who sees Will as repeatedly rejecting the possibility of joy out of a sense that he doesn’t deserve it (which Hannibal wants to change for him, for sure, but which also comes pretty close to Religious/Saintly Abnegation and is part of the profound draw Will exercises on him, too, because how divine to CORRUPT A SAINT).  And god, how does it feel so inevitable that Hannibal thinks to MARTYR HIMSELF in “Digestivo” when Will states in so many words that he refuses to delight but tolerates only.  

[wellntruly]

I love it when our convos spill public. TO THAT END…

I think what’s interesting about Will’s Massively Complex Passivity is that while it’s sometimes a form of conscious avoidance or even self-deceit, just pretending his very real actions don’t have as many consequences like he’s Minneginia’s Charles Ryder, a) other times he is OVERLY wrapped up in the consequences of his actions (the I’m Bad For Everyone perpetual Will Graham guilt trip), and b) sometimes his passivity seems totally genuine and unable to be helped. Given that he struggles to feel his way into the right decisions after Hannibal threw the calibration of that mechanism off-kilter, he really IS just drifting along being nudged by others a lot. The thing Hannibal wanted Will to stand up against in early days, in fact, despite preying on it himself…..

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

“IN RETROSPECT—” Hannibal 3x09 Again

[wellntruly]

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

Season 3, Episode 9: “And the Woman Clothed WITH THE Sun”

So stoked to finally be making this joke you don’t even know.

Keep reading

[confusedkayt]

1.  Here’s a thing that UPSETS ME EVERY TIME IT CROSSES MY MIND.  To make music on a harpsichord, you use fingers.  To hear music, you use ears.  Hannibal is careful to leave Abigail with the things she needs to make music for him to appreciate and quite cavalier (HA OW, UNDERSTATEMENT) with the things she needs to appreciate that making.  If there is a more direct way to demonstrate Hannibal’s SELFISHNESS in re Abigail, I sure don’t know it.  And the implications about how he sees her - a possible generator of beautiful art, but fundamentally unable to appreciate it….  Yikes, yikes.  “Will, I am honing the features on this pretty toy you seem to like so much!”

2.  Oh, Jack and Hanners, talkin’ ‘bout Will.  You are so right about that constant struggle.  I kind of love this exchange for what it reveals about Jack.  I think he shares a characteristic with Alana: he has an on/off switch for whether you’re one of the Good Guys.  But he is MUCH slower to flip that switch, and I think a big part of it is that Jack is really, really low-empathy.  He can understand what people’s skillsets are and how he can marshall them to forward the cause of catchin’ bad guys and savin’ lives, but I think he sort of presumes that every Good Guy has an emotional life that is prettymuch exactly like his.  Some of his hallmarks are: 1) a performed toughness that helps him move past anything upsetting; 2) a willingness experience his soft emotions only in carefully controlled situations in the company of trusted intimates like Bella and, one upon a time, s1 Hanners; 3) unwavering, uncomplicated righteousness when it comes to apprehending Bad Guys; and 4) a personal vengefulness if a Bad Guy has slipped unnoticed into his life in part because his sense of self is closely bound up with his competence and ability to save innocent lies and so slipping through the net in that way is a super-direct threat to his self-concept (think about his plan to straight-up shoot Chilton, aside from the whole Hanners debacle).  A lot of his treatment of Will in s3, I think, can be chalked up to Jack forcing Will’s experience into an emotional script that Jack himself has already gone through.  To wit, he was willing to be soft in Hannibal’s presence when he understood Hannibal to be a Good Guy, and once it became clear that was a dreadful miscategorization, he is unwavering in his desire to eradicate Hannibal as a threat to the populace, if possible using the American-masculinity-approved method of physical violence to diffuse some of the hurt he feels from the betrayal of his confidence and friendship.

Will spends a lot of time in s3 soft of gazing softly into the middle distance talking about how Hannibal was his friend.  Jack usually responds by trying to get the Bad Guy switch to flip, and when that doesn’t have immediate results he talks to, say, Pazzi about how he broke something in Will.  I think that’s what he thinks he broke - Will’s Good Guy/Bad Guy switch.  Jack’s never had much time/feeling for the plight of victim-perpetrators; once you’re a Bad Guy, everything you do, think, or feel is a threat and Jack cares about it only insofar as it might be usable to catch you.  For his part, I think he reassessed his whole relationship with Hannibal as one where Hannibal had no investment of any kind and was only toying with him as part of his overarching Evil Bad Guy Threat.  He can’t think of Hannibal as a complex emotional creature who was toying with him and also, in some ways, a genuine participant in their friendship; that’s just not really in Jack’s emotional/empathetic range.  Even more, if he were to give ground on that, it would require a more total reconceptualizing of who Will is in a way Jack clearly never does.  (I’m thinking of Scott Thompson gleefully hollering on the DVD extras about how Jack never asks “DON’T YOU THINK THIS IS A LITTLE GAY?”)  From where Jack’s sitting, Will is just… on the fritz, in a way that leaves him vulnerable to the same kind of toying that Hannibal did to Jack himself.

And gosh, of course that makes Hannibal so very angry.  Jack is doing what he has always done - badly misunderstanding Will and maneuvering him into situations that are not good for him, without support and without any real understanding of the probable consequences even after several object demonstrations.  Hanners is sure not above using that for his own ends, but nothing incenses him like blindness to beauty and Jack’s persistent inability to see The Glory of Will Graham right under his nose is an aesthetic crime of the highest order.

[wellntruly]

What the hell Kayt I thought I was being THE GRIM ONE over here!!

Anyhow this all has your usual dash of SCINTILLATING BRILLIANCE. I love the idea that the Jack Crawford Issue stems from our morally grey FBI Agent only seeing things in black & white, that feels like a poetic sort of irony in keeping with this show.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

'Why do you front like you’re trying to get your murder darlings to embrace their agency while actually assuming SO MUCH AGENCY OVER THEM' this so much. I constantly see hannipologists saying he is legitimately giving Will agency and I just don't buy it.

[from this 3x09 rewatch, originally re: Abigail, but actually re: all his birds]

Ah AGENCY, that olde liberal arts college chestnut! Bryan Fuller loves to play with it though so here we are.

Anyhow, I know I’ve gotta be like, the bête noire of some Hannipologists, but actually we’re probably in the same place when it comes to his intent. I fully believe that Hannibal does intend for his murder darlings to become stronger, and does believe that he is helping them achieve that, it’s just that his methods so often work at cross-purposes to his goal. This is probably a flawed analogy, but it’s sorta like Hannibal is coming at this like exposure therapy? He’s putting people in situations where they are essentially forced into doing something dramatic (and deadly), so that they will know that they can. This, he believes, is therapeutic for them. This will teach them how to have (violent) agency in the world, the way he does. But the TROUBLE HERE is that when someone engages in exposure therapy with a proper therapist, it’s that patient’s choice to do so. The way Hannibal does it, he takes that choice from them. He orchestrates scenarios — games and traps, really — for people who didn’t realize they were #blessed to have Hannibal Lecter as their personal god.

It does get muddled with Will in the second half of the series, because when he scrambles back up from prison it’s to consciously engage with the games this time. But UNFORTCH, Will opting to walk his own self into this mess doesn’t mean Hannibal stops with the manipulative stage managing bullshit. All the way through S3, he’s still working to prune Will’s options into a path that reflects Hannibal’s preferred course for him. As is so often the case, Bedelia spells this out for Will with painful clarity in 3x12: “Hannibal does indeed have agency in the world. He has you.”

But, Will’s desperate, dangerified response to this is TWOTL, and that beautiful self-destructive hot mess has Will Graham’s Own Weird Choices written all over it, so there’s a form of hope, at the end.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

“IN RETROSPECT—” Hannibal 3x09 Again

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

Season 3, Episode 9: “And the Woman Clothed WITH THE Sun”

So stoked to finally be making this joke you don’t even know.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Re: your last recap, I always saw the montage contrasting Hannibal's arrest and him gazing up at religious iconography and listening to a choirboy's hallelujah as incredibly significant - it shows what a monumentous decision going to jail was for hannibal and likens it to religious devotion/supplication, as opposed to just spite/losing to basic reverse psychology lol. Which imo fits with all the love = religion stuff in season 3. What do you think?

wellntruly answered:

Oh totes. In fact, I am reminded of this after 2x07:

@confusedkayt: I am drive-by delighted by the truth that Will’s feigned submission looks like “pretty please” and Hanners’ is “I AM A GRAVEN ICON OF A SAINT.”

me:

(Though I’d still say that this move, as astonishingly GRAND AND ROMANTICAL AND DEVOTED as Hannibal thinks it, and that it is!, is not without spite. It’s self-sacrificing, but it’s not self-less, because he’s lodging himself in a cell in Will’s mind in a direct counter to Will asking him to please leave him be. It’s Hannibal once again deciding that Will doesn’t get to decide, and that’s awful, dude, no matter how much you’re martyring yourself in the process.)

[the-winnowing-wind]

I disagree that Hannibal had even one bit of intentional dickery here towards Will. Which is not to say that he wasn’t being a dick, but it is, I think, without spite.

I would argue that it can be both selfish and spite-less. Hannibal had no desire to hurt or annoy Will here. That it displeased Will that he was doing this was not BONUS! it was necessary collateral. Hannibal didn’t get any joy out of the fact he was purposefully coming up against Will’s wishes. He got joy out of the fact that he wasn’t losing Will. He was doing what had to be done from his perspective, but not doing it because it hurt Will, or because he was being a sadistic jerk here. I disagree with that. I think that’s incorrect. It’s not selfless, he is lodging himself into Will’s mind instead of doing what Will wants, but the word spite lies in its motivation, in a desire to hurt, in a deliberate action to cause pain. 

And for once in his goddamn life, Hannibal was lacking that. 

That’s what we see when Hannibal gets up in Digestivo and doesn’t argue Will word for word, or throw a fit, or react in a Hannibalish way. He shelves the spite and leaves. But he just can’t hack selfless. So yes, what he does next is selfish, but the look he gives Will at the end on his knees is hopeful, like see what I’m doing for us? Not, haha, thought you could lose me, but you can’t. Sucks for you! 

I just don’t think he derives pleasure out of thinking it hurts Will, that is counter to what he is hoping for in this entire episode.

[wellntruly]

Oh, but that’s not what I said at all! I said that Hannibal thinks it grand and romantical and devoted, and I said that I think it’s those things too! While I’m responding to something like spite in it, I neeever said I thought that was Hannibal’s motivation. In fact, for me it’s almost more aggravating and wwhHHYY for being largely unintended, because it shows how even when Hannibal is trying to make the biggest gesture of love he’s ever made, he’s still going about in a way that feels like he’s trying to win a battle.

Y’know, I’m wondering if the better word is “argument.” It’s like Hannibal is arguing with Will. He’s on his knees in supplication, but he’s tossing Will’s exact words back at him, which is where a lot of my feeling comes from.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Re: your last recap, I always saw the montage contrasting Hannibal's arrest and him gazing up at religious iconography and listening to a choirboy's hallelujah as incredibly significant - it shows what a monumentous decision going to jail was for hannibal and likens it to religious devotion/supplication, as opposed to just spite/losing to basic reverse psychology lol. Which imo fits with all the love = religion stuff in season 3. What do you think?

Oh totes. In fact, I am reminded of this after 2x07:

@confusedkayt: I am drive-by delighted by the truth that Will’s feigned submission looks like “pretty please” and Hanners’ is “I AM A GRAVEN ICON OF A SAINT.”

me:

(Though I’d still say that this move, as astonishingly GRAND AND ROMANTICAL AND DEVOTED as Hannibal thinks it, and that it is!, is not without spite. It’s self-sacrificing, but it’s not selfless, because he’s lodging himself in a cell in Will’s mind in a direct counter to Will asking him to please leave him be. It’s Hannibal once again deciding that Will doesn’t get to decide, and that’s awful, dude, no matter how much you’re martyring yourself in the process.)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

“IN RETROSPECT—” Hannibal 3x08 Again

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

Hannibal Season 3, Episode 8: “The Great Red Dragon”

Apparently I’m now at the point where I start chuckling whenever I see Richard Armitage. He’s just so…. dedicated. I don’t think he quite gets that he’s in a dark comedy, but that actually lends precisely the right Comedy Tone. Francis Dolarhyde is like, trying, y’know.

I know I’ve loved on this break room before, but now I’ll love on it with a visual.

Oh Fanboy Francis! Pressing your knuckles to your mouth because you’re so overcome with awe over the Blake.

Poll: Would you take this pilates class.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[ohvirginia]

sylvia plath - the hanging man