Hannibal parallels | Read these recaps by @wellntruly
Oh you know what’s lovely: that Alana is so urgent that what happened to Will be a matter of record. It’s the same sentiment Will was expressing after Georgia was killed, that he can’t bring her back but he can make sure her narrative is as clear as he can manage. This urge is one of Alana & Will’s strongest similarities I think, a facet of their Tiny Awful Angel of Judgment thing.
The Seventeen girl was trained for making decisions about whom to get intimate with. She rationalised her emotions in terms of ‘needs’ and ‘rights’, and rejected commitments that did not seem compatible with them. She was raised in the Regime of Choice. By contrast, classic Russian literature (which, when I was coming of age, remained the main source of romantic norms in my country), described succumbing to love as if it were a supernatural power, even when it was detrimental to comfort, sanity or life itself. In other words, I grew up in the Regime of Fate.
I’m linking/quoting this not actually to talk about Russia or the West (although Russia is a topic I am super interested in but that’s for another day with more brain cycles) but because it reminds me heavily of a Hannibal (I KNOW) romance discussion that genufa and coloredink … and others? SORRY … were having about how different readers and writers were coming in with clashing models of How To Romance.
(And now I’m like, well, I suppose Hannibal Gothic is not that different from a somewhat less verbose Russian Doorstop, come to think of it, complete with opaque motives and lots of death.)
Me and Ink and a whole lot of other people, because it’s one of the main sources of bafflement people have with the show – if they believe love is by definition a positive force for individual fulfillment (”Otherwise it’s not really love,” they say). But there’s a reason why the Russian Hannibal fandom is so huge, though “Russian” is as much a synedoche of “people with a solid grounding in pre-1900 literature” as anything.
Oh yeah I’ll swing my whole weight on this, it feels solid. Especially enjoy how, if we carry this entire article through to Hannibal, they’ve cast a psychotherapist as the anti-‘psychological man’, that’s fantastic. Oh, oh and also: the way Hannibal seems suddenly without a script at the moment his divine unreachable Beloved actually reaches back.
Anyhow I’m learning a lot about myself in this moment, and the (previously) unexamined way I’m always describing Hannibal & Will’s love as “doomed”, and not necessarily meaning that’s to be avoided. at least on aesthetic grounds
whitewindows asked:
A) that’s pretty funny Hettienne, B) oh dang I’d forgotten about the Murder Haus! Yeah it is definitely less of a discover risk to keep Abigail out there, although, as @awritersrejections mentioned in tags, Hannibal does bring her back for serial killer finishing school at some point.
There were actually several replies to this and I’m just gonna assemble them all here in a nice little pile, how bout!
THAT. IS. HORRIFYING. and I would say certainly fits with “just think of the worst thing imaginable,” but perhaps luckily, we’re not here yet! Abel Gideon is still to arrive at the BSHCI again to speak in parables to everyone and only tell the truth to Alana and generally Make My Day.
Ohhhh, [shivers] I like that TOO, like Bev you had nooo ideeaaa what fuckery was going on here. I had never considered Hannibal already being home when Agent Katz came sniffing around, but if he was this feels plausible.
And I…. had also forgotten about the Murder Barn. Goddamnit Hannibal Lecter how many murder properties does one high society cannibal NEED.
Anonymous asked:
Hahahahahaaaaaahaha, that is a fun image, thank you. In my head all the hearts are the prettiest candy apple red, like sweets.
I think there was B Fulls talk at some point about how Beverly was supposed to have seen Abigail in the basement, but that feels off to me because later Abigail seems pretty well cared for, in a I’m-not-living-in-a-dark-basement kinda way. I mean Hanners has an entire house, almost seems a shame he’d be the only one living there, y’know. In my mind she has her own suite, and any window that outsiders could see into is carefully & impossibly shuttered, but otherwise he lets his caged bird have light. (Huh, wait… Joanna feelings. Interesting Sweeney parallel I hadn’t hit on yet!)
Anonymous asked:
Past Me is SO BOTHERED isn’t she! I’m glad I was recalling my emotions properly, hah. Though it wasn’t so hard, given that I still get upset over how non/dubcon-y the first half of the Hannigram timeline is.
I’ve got an idea right now about a key turning point (hint: the use of “first half” was nearly mathematically accurate), which I’m waiting to see if Past Me actually admitted, or if I’ll have to put words to it for her, but there is definitely a shift coming up. Though when it comes to proper violin-scored shipping, I suspect I didn’t break on that until Will was imagining Hannibal letting him slip to the floor over & over again. Actually, as has been and will only increasingly be the case, if you want an idea of how I felt about Hannigram at any point, a good start is looking at how Will felt about Hannigram at that point. I particularly laugh at how much time we both spent somehow obsessing over it while simultaneously repressing it.
**Warning: rewatch blogging written with knowledge of the full series
*screaming* OK, the intense structure of these recaps is reflecting back the INTENSITY OF MY EMOTIONS DURING THIS EPISODE. YOU ARE A WIZARD.
There are so many things I want to talk about! Let me try to winnow down to three about which I hope I can be relatively concise:
1) Hannibal flipping Bella’s rooster coin.
Here are my #speculations about what’s going on inside our chilly charmer. I think there are two major trains running here. The first, which you discussed so ably, is Hannibal’s fondness for playing god and echoing the ruthless randomness that he perceives as the defining aspect of the deity. Typhoid or swan, Bella? Cold chance will decide, and I will execute. The other, I think, and this is what twists up my insides and keeps me feeling dirty in my sympathy for Hanners: we’ve seen him give Jack actual good advice, and enjoy his company at table. I think there’s a real friendship in there - mixed in with liberal helpings of Hannibal’s love for baiting his pursuers and his special delight in feeding his victims to the extremely appreciative head of FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. [Rather unsupported sidebar: I imagine that Hannibal appreciates Jack’s resoluteness and Old Testament Judgement qualities, fueling that friendship.] On the other hand, he sort of radiates Murder Cat respect and approval for the majesty that is Bella Crawford, his patient; we’ve talked before about how Hannibal appears to try to actually help his patients, albeit through his terrifying Picasso-prism view of what constitutes “help.” But here, to help one Crawford is to hurt the other. He’s tied to and responsible for both of them. Which one will he hurt? Let fate take the wheel.
2) Abel Gideon in the flashbacks to Will’s seizure
I couldn’t agree with you more that Hannibal has experienced a major emotional thaw between the Gideon confrontation and the present. But the thing that drove that home for me slash made me want to sit in the dark and shivercry on my bed like a certain sweaty profiler: Hannibal: “… a mild seizure.” ABEL fucking GIDEON replying, with a sort of trepidatious wonder, “You don’t seem bothered by that.” QUIT IT, HANNERS, YOU ARE CREEPING OUT THE OTHER MURDERERS.
3) Dreamscape Abigail
Oh, who needed this heart, not me I guess. Because, yes, yikes, even in his heart of hearts Will knows that his relationship with Abigail was largely imagined and one-sidedly intense. In other recap discussions we have talked about how Will’s doubt in his own goodness was heartily helped along by Abigail’s [justified! well-within her rights! quite badass!] refusal to play his fantasy version of Rescued Victim. This scene plays into that so strongly: he’s suggesting to himself, to Abigail’s imago within himself, that that fantasy can be realized/redeemed if he just catches the biggest monster, the one that got her in the end. You’ll cherish me, Mind-River Abigail, if I can fish successfully for Hannibal Lecter. OH NOES. WILL, BB. People, especially dead people, don’t love you just how you want them to if you only do the right things HARD ENOUGH.
1. Hannibal of the Typhoid & Swans, oh that is beeaaauutiful paired with the coin flip, Kayt how do you do it! And I’m very here for Hannibal letting fate decide which Crawford he moves his hallowed hand for today, that feels very in keeping. I imagine if Bella were simply his patient and not also Jack Crawford’s wife, the toss may not have happened. Mostly because Hannibal had to have LOVED how beautifully mythic Bella’s actions were, and how gracefully she cast him in his role as Asclepius. She let him be a god! The god who attended her death, no less! It was an honor, and I believe that if Jack were not a factor, Hannibal would have honored Bella’s death in turn. (Although, Asclepius got in hot water for bringing people back from the dead, so maybe he was just playing his part A LITTLE TOO WELL.)
2. Re: Hanners getting the creep on Gideon, I like to imagine that all the other murderers on this show are like the goblins in Moria, and Hannibal is the Balrog that merely has to boom in the distance and they all lose their nerve and scatter before the Bigger Bad.
3. Nice, nice, UPSET ABOUT IT. And if you want to get even more sads into the River Daughter scene, there’s the idea that since Real Abigail does not cherish Will back, the charm won’t stick to his hook and he’s never gonna catch that fish for her. It’s almost like his construct of an Abigail who loves him prevents him from being able to avenge her properly. In fact, it’s not until Will finally lets his fantasy of Abigail bleed out in the chapel that he ever stands a chance, isn’t it? Wow. Good work, show.
Also, this is the most inward-turned interest of all time, but nonetheless, am I ever FASCINATED by the sensation of rewatching a scene of Hannibal, having Thoughts ‘n Feels, and then immediately reading the Thoughts ‘n Feels I had two years ago. So I get it about the “intense structure,” hoo boy, because this was intense to put together!!
Hannibal parallels: 2x08 & 3x07
“If you really want to kill your brother, Margot, wait until you can get away with it.”
“Then you have to evolve, Alana. You have to spill blood.”
**Warning: rewatch blogging written with knowledge of the full series
OH YES MY FRIEND, YOU READ THAT HEADER CORRECTLY: we are doubling down with this, the first of four ~Vintage Hannibal Recaps~ that I wrote almost precisely 2 years ago, while the season was first airing. Oh ho ho yeah, you’re gonna meet ACTUAL FACTUAL PAST ME, what a rare adventure this shall be!
My plan for structure is to mostly let Past Me take the wheel, given that she wrote complete summaries of the episodes like I used to do in S3. Present Me will just do sidebars at the end of each scene as needed, with my #Hot Contemporary Takes. Which will hopefully not bring down the overall ROLLICKING TONE of these recaps, like what the shit Past Me, what were you on and why did we stop taking it.
Also — I wrote these back in 2014 for no one but myself and my best friend Jen, and if you’d told me then that some day I would not only be publishing them on the internet, but that I’d have a ready-built readership of some of the most supportive, engaging people around, I would have gotten lightheaded and had to sit down. It’s just, it’s just an incredible beautiful surprising world, I don’t even know. Ok! Ok let’s go BACK IN TIME….
HANNIBAL Recap Novelization - Ep. 204, “Takiawase”
Now With **Rewatch Hindsight**
We open with Will standing in his Stream of Consciousness, wearing adorable fishing garb as per usual. Not usual: he is also adorably explaining how to bait a fly fishing hook. He is teaching Abigail Hobbes. Abigail is there! Hi Kacey Rohl I missed you!
SPEAKING OF ADORABLE
The knot he teaches her is called a “blood knot,” so, there’s that for all your familial ties / adopted daughter symbolism needs. Also all your blood needs. Also possibly your fly fishing needs? I don’t know your life.
Write a Hannigram fic between 100-1500 words with a specific color palette (2-3 colors that go together). Post your ficlet to tumblr and tag three people + @curveofherthroat.
Tagged by @awritersrejections (you are too sweet and this is wonderful work!)
Tagging @confusedkayt, @genufa, and my friend Daisuke, who once wrote me Bedelia fic in a text message while we were each at work. Daisuke if you see this write us something and I’ll post it here.
So for a second I was worried I wouldn’t be able to shoehorn this prompt into my wheelhouse — meta-theatrical vignettes of existential fluff, naturally — as “Will Graham & Hannibal Are Dead” directly takes place in a matte grey sea of vagaries, and indirectly on a soundstage filled with dry ice. Still grey, of course.
But then as soon as I fiddled with the light board I got this, so here have slate and ivory and more Richard Siken references than usual:
************
It was dark.
The sky was dark, and the sea. Will’s eyes, too, they were dark when he looked at Hannibal. “Night has fallen,” Hannibal had announced, drawing his attention. “At least that’s a development.” Will did not respond.
Hannibal looked over the darkened ship. Boat. Craft? he considered. No, craft was worked on stages. He imagined himself raising the moon on a crane, for effect. Its light would spill across the water like cream. He wondered if that would make Will say something, stir him like violins. He wanted to make this for him, a moment of cream and ink, where Will could be. He wanted —
“Will,” Hannibal began. And Will turned to him, cream and ink, Artemis eyed, and Hannibal gave up on the rest of that sentence as a bad job.
Will’s brows were drawn low, but he held his voice light. “Am I still making our ending?” he asked.
This Hannibal could manage. “We all make our endings, in one way or another.”
“Though only some make other people’s as well.”
“Gods and tragedians. Aiming for the point where everyone who is marked for death, dies.”
“Marked.”
“In this way.”
Will’s fingers spread on the wheel. “Are you?”
Will did not need to ask about himself. Hannibal wondered if Will knew how beautiful his doom looked on him.
“In certain lighting, I shouldn’t wonder,” he replied, then tilted his head up to the moon, rising on cue, after all.
Sometimes, Hannibal thought he could smell candle flame, a ripple in the brine and sailcloth. He strung up the moments in his head like a map of the stars, traced them together to find the pattern. It came up “Will,” but that wasn’t helpful — everything came up Will.
And sometimes, Hannibal’s interest in his own powers of observation served to occlude his powers of observation. It was so here. In his reverie, he hadn’t noticed that Will had slipped closer, was slipping right into his arms, pressing into him point by point like the stars in his head. And oh, and candle, flickering through his hair.
“If I’m to be dead,” Will informed his collar, “I’m taking you with me.”
“That’s the spirit,” Hannibal assured him, and steadied his arms around the small of Will’s back.
.
