Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch Recap: 2x09

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

Detailed summary model remains because I love you.

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Season 2, Episode 9: “Shiizakana”

It begins.

And what WHAT the pewtery black & white dream sequence with Hannibal all Odin-tied to a tree happened HERE?? Oh but of course it happened here, oh god, yes naturally because so many things have just broken forward for both of them. I’m so happy, this means that impulse-meets-impulse moment that closed 2x08 really was as profoundly ripple-worthy as I felt it to be!

What’s really interesting about this particular shift, I think, is that it seems to be something that sweeps over Hannibal that they then both respond to, as opposed to something unbidden in Will that sets them off, which is the more usual course. Because Hannibal curling his hand around the side of Will’s neck was exactly what it looked like from the word promo pics: a sudden, breathtaking expression of intimate affection. There have been many, many things that I’ve seen differently in this rewatch than I had the first time through, but one of the things that has remained the same is that I honestly don’t think Hannibal recognized this urge As Such until the barn, watching up close as Will held the life of a bad person in his beautiful hands.

At last something seems to have worked itself out of the tangle mess of feelings Hannibal has for Will, freed and named only to wrap around his heart and squeeze. Hannibal loves Will. And he wants to express that love to him, with gifts and touches. HO BOY. The love poem judicial kills had moved this aspect considerably along, but that was still more “you are my favorite Myrmidon and I want to help you achieve your glory,” whereas this is “you are my soulmate, dear Patroclus.”

Discounting like, myth, the love Hannibal bears for Will doesn’t have any analogue in either of their lives — because thank god there is nothing else like it on this good earth — but still, there is something in the Romance of it, the star-crossed fatefulness, hints of chivalry even, that widens the angle through which they can see their relationship. This dark, deep love has added so many more cards to the deck with which they’re playing their game. A troublesome amount, making it more and more difficult to keep those cards held close to the chest.

Hannibal’s reaction to this we will see in due time. Will’s, naturally, is to dream.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

“How To Properly Scream: the Hannibal Rewatch” Season 1 MASTERPOST

From the overwrought nerd who brought you the ‘Super Concise & Sensible Hannibal Recaps’ of S3, comes this, a live-blog-esque rewatch of S1. Observs, weird jokes, meta aside thingies, so many screencaps…. it’s all here:

1.1. ‘Aperitif’
1.2. ‘Amuse-Bouch’
1.3. ‘Potage’
1.4. ‘Oeuf’
1.5. ‘Coquilles’
1.6. ‘Entrée’
1.7. ‘Sorbet’
1.8. ‘Fromage’
1.9. ‘Trou Normand’
1.10. ‘Buffet Froid’
1.11. ‘Rôti’
1.12. ‘Relevés’
1.13. ‘Savoureux’

Plus: fabulous replies to these things can all be found in this catch-all brilliance tag, and beautiful gifs here. You all are so wonderful, oh my god.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

correct me if I'm wrong but isn't in this episode we finally see for the first time that Will called Hannibal's name casually in front of Hannibal??

Hah, I was wondering if I’d be pinged to talk about Will and naming some day!

It is shocking to me, personally, that I’m going to suggest easing back on something, given that usually I’m just piling more dry timber on the flames and hollering “LET’S ALL BURN I LOVE BURNING” while sobbing. But in the discussion on the How & Cry of when Will uses “Dr. Lecter” versus “Hannibal” as a form of address (here, also all sorts of elsewheres), I think we might be giving Will a leeetle too much credit. This is mostly based on the way he names the other characters, because there seems to be a pretty standard system there, that as far as I can tell doesn’t have anything to do with Will being purposefully withholding.

So as has been stated/bewailed, save a few moments of using it in front of him like here in 2x08, Will does not address Hannibal with his first name until 3x02 ‘Primavera’, when he calls out to him in the catacombs. This moment is, of course, HUGELY SIGNIFICANT SHOT TO THE FEELS AND YOU’RE TO BLAME etc, but for Will at least, I’m not certain how much the name has to do with it. And I’m a huge sucker for some good ~Naming Magic~ so do know that I don’t take this lightly! We might be able to work it back around to an unwitting spell-cast though, which could be fun, but I honestly don’t think Will knows what he’s doing here, and that is because:

People Whom Will Hardly Ever Addresses With Their Name
Alana
Beverly
Margot
Molly
Hannibal*

Notable, Will LIKES all these people (*a special case). Now let’s look at a different list:

People Whom Will Addresses By Name A Lot
“Jaaaack”
“Miss Lounds”
“Fred-er-ick”
“Dr. Lecter”

Watson I spy a pattern.

It looks like Will Graham is basically middle-naming people to show his annoyance, only the way he middle-names is to name at all, while either sarcastically feigning deference (Freddie, Hannibal), or using their more casual name when they clearly would prefer the fancier title (Chilton). Jack is an exception because he’s his boss and Will can’t get away with dickishly “Agent Crawford”ing at him, but he always drags out a few more disgruntled A’s for good measure. (God, Hugh Dancy is magic.)

This general history is why I’m pretty sure Will mostly uses names as a form of needling people, or just broadcasting displeasure. For instance, in my rewatch I’ve noticed that he has actually called Alana “Dr. Bloom” at one point, which was when she came by his cell to be all How Are You ~Feeling~ right after he’d ordered a psychopath hit and was in the midst of imagining himself were-ing into an antlerbeast.

So, focusing this lens on “Dr. Lecter” / “Hannibal”…..

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch Recap: 2x08

[wellntruly]

**Warning: written with knowledge of the full series

Keep reading

[awritersrejections]

As always, this recap is PERFECTION AND EVERYONE SHOULD GO READ IT NOW. I just had to add, about this screencap:

I mean, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. But also, I kind of just adore how Alana is the thing separating Hannibal and Will, and that as she does so she’s acting in a law-enforcement capacity, protecting, but not very effectively. I love Alana, this is not a dig at her character at all; no one could have done better. It’s just how the situation was set up: from the start she didn’t really have any chance of success. Sure, she could confirm suspicions, but not in any legally actionable way. Also the proportions of this shot are fantastic, with Alana so teeny, clearly not an effective barrier between Hannibal and Will, who look very much of a piece in this shot.

[wellntruly]

#I want to just go and live forever in the 18th century #french parlor that is this fandom whenever it metas

SAME, and NICE. I love it, tiny wee Alana perched in the middle, Doing A Good Job But It’s A Fool’s Errand, and speaking of fools look at these two, creating space between them only to lean into it.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

So if Will didn't consciously think that Hannibal was in love with him for the entire s2 span, but he still hatched the seduction plan, am I to infer that Will thought of himself as Hannibal's favorite plaything for that long? How do you think Will thought (consciously) of their dynamic in the latter half of s2?

genufa answered:

What’s the difference between “being in love with,” “being fascinated with,” and “considers as one’s favorite plaything”? Is it that a plaything doesn’t have feelings or desires – at least, none that matter? Is it a question of control? Is it the presence or non-presence of sexual or romantic sensation? Is it that serial killers typically demonstrate some of these motives but not others? I think Will leaned on and tested these questions, over the course of his “seduction plan,” and that by Mizumono he still didn’t have the answers. Putting neat labels on people and relationships isn’t Will Graham’s forte.

Would Will have planned differently if he knew for sure that Hannibal wanted to kill and eat him as an endgame to the befriending, versus seduce him to bed? Or both? It didn’t matter to the events that did take place in S2, IMO, and whatever that point was, it was never supposed to get that far.

[wellntruly]

Oh yeah I way agree! And following his general approach of avoiding thinking about certain things directly (given how Too Real that can quickly get), I think Will would probably keep all endgames sorta soft-focused, and just hope he can veer off before the crash.

Also, I’d guess that part of why Will doesn’t have definite answers by ‘Mizumono’ is because Hannibal doesn’t have them yet either. But questions though, hooo boy, they both have all the questions you can eat.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch Recap: 2x08

**Warning: written with knowledge of the full series

The titling difference here is subtle and made up so I’ll spell it out: we’re returning to a FULL-FLEDGED RECAP MODEL for the back half of season 2!!! Mostly because I miss paraphrasing, paraphrasing brings me a sincere joy. Also I’m curious if I can reach something like the Ideal of my Hannibal episode write-ups, that more seamlessly combines the wild present-tense ride of jokes & agony that made up my S3 recaps and those vintage S2 things, with my more staid* over-arcing rewatch meta takes of S1. This shall be my Everest.

*lol

Also, as mentioned somewhere earlier, although 2014 Wellntruly aka Past Me was no longer privately writing complete recaps, I was still jotting down URGENT NOTES to myself through the end of S2. Nerd alert, honestly. Anyway when I’m #same I’ll just weave them in, but anything that’s interestingly ajar from what I think now I’ll put in indented asides for archeological appeal, kinda like a reversal of my Contemporary Sidebars in my last four posts.

This preamble feels unnecessarily intricate, but I guess: Hannibal.

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Season 2, Episode 8: “Su-zakana”

THE. OPENING. Footprints in the snow and you can hear the wind and it’s so quiet and cold and matte expanse and it’s an empty Brechtian stage where Jack & Will sit and consider Act Two, JUST FUCK ME UP FULLERPANTS.

Perched on a sheet of ice (lol, symbolism), Jack & Will tentatively try this “teamwork” thing again. Although it’s less a joint effort than Jack’s usual approach of sending his little agent off alone into the forest where the wolf lives with nothing but a bagged lunch and a dadly clap on the shoulder. #Bedrock

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

your love for will graham gives me so much strength

wellntruly answered:

Listen. Will Graham is a beautiful disaster dragged into a beautiful disaster, and the way he deals with it is BEAUTIFUL and DISASTROUS, and that is why I love him. My deerheart, my runaway trainwreck, my Feyest Will. A size S bundle of fatalistic fuckery & eyebrows forever feeling his way forward like this sweet-eyed tousled thunderstorm all glowy with vulnerability and glowery with violence and offering himself up to his monster like a threat, like trust. It’s a bad idea but like Will Graham has other kinds.

And idk I love that and just want him to be ok??

[wellntruly]

And another thing —

do you know what’s actually one of the best parts about loving Will Graham? That monster of his. Haaaannibal, oh my Hanners, avid damnable lovelorn Lucifer. So light, so pleased, so efficiently brutal, yet beneath those steel-honed cheekbones beats this big heavy velvet heart. Chilly villain with no chill. Savage stylish murdergod who’s weaker for a pun the dorkier it is. He’s a daydreaming nightmare and I love him, because he’d eat the heavens if he could, just to feel what it’s like to have starlight in his teeth.

And they go falling into this intimacy, helpless and hungry, inconsolable, and it’s just TELL ME HOW ALL THIS, AND LOVE TOO, WILL RUIN US, and it rules.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

your love for will graham gives me so much strength

Listen. Will Graham is a beautiful disaster dragged into a beautiful disaster, and the way he deals with it is BEAUTIFUL and DISASTROUS, and that is why I love him. My deerheart, my runaway trainwreck, my Feyest Will. A size S bundle of fatalistic fuckery & eyebrows forever feeling his way forward like this sweet-eyed tousled thunderstorm all glowy with vulnerability and glowery with violence and offering himself up to his monster like a threat, like trust. It’s a bad idea but like Will Graham has other kinds.

And idk I love that and just want him to be ok??

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Dear Tarra, Thank you for your wonderful recaps! it is incredible, almost every day you give us such thoughtful insights! The human nature has no secrets for you (no wonder you are a writer). I’m very interested in what you said, about Hannibal’s attention and "how Will experiences Hannibal’s rare regard",Please can you write a little more about this because for me this is one of the keystones of show. Thank you ;) Elena

[from this]

Bahahahahaa, oh sweet Elena I can assure you human nature holds AAALLL the secrets, endless fields of them, and I have like, a handful pebbles. I think I just got lucky that I share a few pebbles with Bryan Fuller, so that when it comes to the fictional people in his stories, I do pretty ok sometimes? This probably has more to do with Me & B Fulls (a coupla weirds) than ~human nature~ though :p

And speaking of shit Fuller does to his characters, ooo boy I am very interested in Hannibal’s attention on Will too! Let me tell ya this has been WRINGING MY HEART OUT AS OF LATE. I know we joke about how Will can do very little to drive Hannibal away, I for one have certainly joked about that, but that unconditional Hanners love is RARE for Will, and I don’t think he knows how to manage it. People always tend to leave him, yknow? He’s difficult, and he knows this, and being alone is safe and safe is good, but it means he’s grown into a person who doesn’t *have* anyone. (There’s the angle that Will is difficult half on-purpose, but as that’s probably partly because he doesn’t want to drag people into his world, etc, it’s still really dang miserable.)

By the time Will meets Hannibal, he’s pretty fatalistic about it (#always), and just believes himself to be someone who doesn’t get/deserve support. Cue 1x05:

Hannibal: “You ever feel abandoned, Will?”
Will: [wry chuckling] “Abandonment requires expectation.”

And Hannibal, oh at this Hannibal’s internal soundtrack switches over from “Fascinating New Thing” to “Lover.” Will is lovely and he’s perfect and Hannibal cannot believe no one else sees this, but THEIR LOSS because by god Hannibal wants to be his EVERYTHING, everything Will doesn’t have, and then invent new things and be those for him too. And it’s that isolating, you-only-need-me move again, but it’s kinda hard for Will to see that sometimes when Hannibal’s faithfulness is such a new and nice feeling. Even when Will shares the parts of himself that would send anyone else in his life fleeing, still Hannibal stays. Over S1, Hannibal teaches Will that he can rely on him — for once, Will can expect not to be abandoned. Imagine how much that must have hurt when the floor drops out beneath him in 1x13. This is what Will Graham gets for foolishly thinking he could ever have someone.

But then imagine how strange, how impossible, when Will begins to learn in S2 that he still does have Hannibal. Hannibal’s attention is not the Good he’d thought it was, it’s corrupting and it’s dark and it will pull him down but it’s still there. And in the cold of the cell where he has been cast off by everyone else in his life, Hannibal’s regard feels like warmth. A dangerous warmth, but he bends helplessly toward it anyway — and hopes he can use it, without losing himself to it. Oh no, honey.

In 3x10, Truthbomb du Maurier (bless her), lays it out for Will very clearly, as is her habit: “Your experience of Hannibal’s attention is so profoundly harmful, yet so irresistible. It undermines your ability to think rationally.” This observation fucked me up so much that when I reread what I’d written about it I fucked myself up anew, thanks SELF.

“wooowww the idea that Will is drawn in by Hannibal’s attention, even though it’s that which poisons him. And it’s a privileged attention, too, because Hannibal doesn’t care about most people. He cares about you, Will. Aren’t you lucky. Aren’t you doomed. Hannibal’s attention like a too thick blanket, heavy on your shoulders, holding you secure, holding you down.”

for fucks sake

I’ve got a new simile for ya too: Hannibal’s attention like an undertow, forever tugging Will’s feet out from under him and pulling him deeper & deeper. So adrift after Hannibal tosses him from him in 2x13, and even after he finally staggers ashore in 3x07 and tries to live on land for a spell, he gets swept right back up again in the current of Hannibal’s steadfast passion, boding and brimming in Hannibal’s eyes.

****

a couple asides

- Hannibal’s relationship to attention is different than Will’s, in that general attention makes Will “oh god they’re applauding” Graham uncomfortable, whereas Hannibal feeds off it. Hannibal loves to read about himself, after all. He loves to set the glitterati raving over his dinner parties. He loves to obsess the best minds of the F.B.I. But as Will is more special and wonderful to him than anything else, Will’s attention is the most precious of the attention he craves, and he hungers after it something fierce. 

- In the show, Will’s wide-eyed weakness for Hannibal’s focus on him gets pretty thoroughly wound into Will’s weakness for Hannibal’s touch, which of course would make sense as touch is gonna be like a physical manifestation of attention. His reaction to it all is mostly the same, that thing where he goes so still and wondering and like, ~glimmers~

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

"to call him into doubt at this point would also call her decision to start a relationship with him into doubt ... I can’t remember what this is called but I do remember that it is a strong force." I wonder if it was affecting Will as well in S1? All the doubts creeping in from the ambulance scene onwards and he represses and represses because if Hannibal is the one killing people, then what does that say about Will's judgement? If his new BFF is the monster he is supposed to catch?

[from this recap]

Oh I am sure. It turns out that thing I didn’t land on a name for is just cognitive dissonance, the ol’ cog-dis that ru(i)ns so much of our lives. I always want to think cognitive dissonance is specifically the uncomfortableness of when the way we feel inside is different from how we are presenting in the world, but actually it encompasses a LOT of such internal or internal-external conflicts, from beliefs to actions. So here, Alana would be driven by cognitive dissonance to NOT entertain an idea about Hannibal that would would run contrary to her behavior towards him.

And yeah Will Graham is probably riddled with cog-dis stress every damn minute of his life. It surely leads to a lot of his self-dissembling — as @eridanie pointed out to me today, this cut line of Bedelia’s to him in 2x12 is basically a textbook definition:

BEDELIA DU MAURIER: You’re distorting the truth to keep who you think you are consistent.

(note: I don’t think anyone actually calls it ‘cog-dis’ but like, they should it’s fun)