Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Recap + Rewatch: 2x05

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

In case you missed the last one, what we’re doing here is a weird omnibus situation where I’m bouncing between a Full Recap I wrote two years ago while the series was airing, but never showed to anyone besides my best buddy, and Fresh Rewatch Commentary written by the me of today. It’s a little unwieldy! But at least Past Me had an investment in visual punchlines? Thanks Past Me, and also now I have to fight you.

HANNIBAL Recap Novelization - Ep. 205, “Mukōzuke”
Now With **Rewatch Hindsight** 

Breakfast time!

Classical music is playing everywhere, Hannibal is cracking eggs by catching them on the edge of a metal spatula while wearing only a crimson sweater and Will is receiving a tray of prison food while back in his skimpy underthings. It’s my fastest Nope yet. Only 00:01:06 in and I’ve already paused, due the combined attack of V-Neck and Return Of the Boxer Shorts. But I’ve paused on a lovely shot of Hannibal’s crawdad-ful breakfast table, so here’s a cap of that for you.

Goddamn I’m hungry.

Contemporary Sidebar

Ok but seriously this breakfast is so beautiful. If it were Present Me in charge of the recap portion you would be inundated with screencaps of it.

Un-jumpsuited on his mattress, Will is looking smaller than normal (dear you need to eat), gazing forlornly down at the different bits of glop that is his breakfast (oh). Meanwhile, Hannibal is trying to convince Jack that he too needs to eat. No one really wants to eat this morning except Hannibal, who consumes his scrambled eggs with relish. Nothing like a little late-night murderin’ to work up an appetite!! I hate everything.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

aeon.co

Russia against the Western way of love — Polina Aronson — Aeon Essays

Love in the West is consumerist – we choose a partner to give us what we think we need. But Russians do things differently

[technocraticglasses]

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.)

[genufa]

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.

[wellntruly]

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

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

whitewindows asked:

I think in commentary Hettienne says that the 2x04 script originally didn't specify & that she was told to think of the worst thing imaginable; then the Abigail comment came after the season was over. I kind of like the vague horror of not knowing, but in a post S3 context, it could have been Abigail in the form of video monitoring from the house on the cliff. Hannibal mentions here staying there in 3x13 and it would certainly be easier to keep her presence there a secret.

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.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

On the 2x4 Hannibal Recap: DAMN IT, I can't stop wondering what Bev saw in that basement. Corpses probably, but how many and in what shape? Maybe Hannibal has transparent freezer cabinets for different body parts.. just imagine a line of heads or hearts behind the glass and you have to type a number like you would on a vending machine for whichever "treat" you want, like wtf brain how did we end up here :'D

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!)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

past you is clearly still shuddering away from Hannigram :) at what point do you think it started to change for you? Was it sudden or gradual?

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.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Recap + Rewatch: 2x04

[wellntruly]

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

Keep reading

[confusedkayt]

*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.

[wellntruly]

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!!

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Recap + Rewatch: 2x04

**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.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch: 2x03

Season 2, Episode 3: “Hassun”

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

I promised I’d not screencap any of this initial sequence, so here let’s just look at the incredible focus and lighting on this shot of Hugh Dancy’s beautiful eyes and beautiful sea-change irises, and talk mostly in the abstract about Will’s internal struggles in S2, as we do.

Alrighty, so Will Graham A TV Character is in a difficult position for a protagonist, because last season we were allowed to get up so close to him, could practically feel him tearing under Hannibal & Jack’s hands as they pulled him apart between them. Not only could we SEE him drowning, water flooding the frames nearly as often as light, we could HEAR him, because he would tell Hannibal how he felt. Will was open in S1 — too open, and he got hurt so, soooo badly. Now in S2, he’s trying to close off from others, reluctant to tell anyone how he really feels, terrified his words will echo around this dark stone chamber for anyone to grab and use against him. So he swallows down that scream perched under his chin, traps it inside where it synaesthizes into these searing visuals. Does Will feel conflicted? I don’t know, let’s take a look again at that cap up there, his face cleaved in light and shadow. Does Will feel self-destructive? I don’t know, let’s look at the scene where he imagines himself executed by his own hand.

It’s fantastically done, because as S2 Will’s words & behaviors toward the people around him change to something more filtered and defensive, his ~true~ thoughts & feelings & Will Grahamness becomes something contested — amongst the other characters, and amongst the audience. But for those of us watching the show, we get something more than Alana, or Jack, or Chilton: Will’s nightmares, his visions made of antler and blood. They’re something Will feels that only we can see, and we take this and we intuit, we come to conclusions about Will, think that we, at least, do know him.

There’s a character who feels like this too, of course.

Oh yeah, they’ve gone done it again, those brilliant storynerds: they’ve Lecterized us. And you know what happens to Hannibal Lecter this season? He gets surprised by Will Graham a fair few times. Something we’ll be able to…empathize with.

THIS. SERIES.

Alright let’s live-blog another chapter of this damn masterpiece:

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Heyy, I've been reading your very entertaining recaps after I newly discovered Hannibal myself. I love the series but the story between Bedelia/Hannibal, her running off with him never made sense to me. They talk about the sexual tension between them and that she goes with him because of the whole deal with her patient. She was smart enough to back away because she knew what Hannibal was in S2. What she does in S3 is suicidal. It's like they simply wanted her there even if she has no reason.

Thanks bud, and yeah I can definitely talk about this! Preemptively though, I’d recommend this big ol fascinating wonderful dialogue about Bedelia du Maurier: Her Life & Interests. I’d started it because I’ve seen a fair number of fans express confusion over Bedelia, so I tried to paint a hopefully clearer picture of her based on what I’d gotten from her on the show, and then all these brilliant people jumped in with more takes, and now it’s just about as glorious as Bedelia’s ice blonde curls, frankly.

There’s a lot in there on the aspects of Bedelia’s personality/motivations that would seem to apply to her decision to go off with Hannibal at the end of S2, but as for direct discussion of that, @genufa has written some on it here that I find to be some Good Stuff.

To sorta paraphrase from all these sources and also add more of my own thoughts on when she stays & when she leaves…..

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

It's amazing how static Jack is considering he lives in Hannersverse. While everyone is having an identity crisis, he goes right back to being him (a bedrock though not always a helpful way) Like, he's not curious about knowing himself better like Bedelia, Will, and Hannibal? Hmm, so maybe being not curious about yourself(s2!Alana, Jack) makes Hannibal deceive you, and being curious about yourself makes you walk into Hannibal's deception?

Haha! I’d nearly made a “bedrock” dig at Jack myself, *high five*. Oh Jaaack, this is not the way we would want you to be steady if it means you’re never gonna learn from your mistakes.

But yeah, I’d say Jack usually seems pretty secure in himself, based on the high similarity of his actions over time if nothing else, although the Will Issue of early S2 definitely rattles him. The way Jack sees it, either he was wrong in his judgment of what Will could handle, or he was wrong about Will just entirely, and both are a blow to his faith in his ability to assess people. As he is literally in charge of a BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE UNIT, that would be a doozy. But he has a (normal) therapist to help him though, and then it turns out Will isn’t a serial killer after all! So no need to worry about that anymore, whew.

Although I’d agree that Jack & Alana aren’t as intensely curious about themselves as the Unholy Trio up there, I do think that Alana’s S2 choice to start seeing Hannibal, for instance, is largely about her wanting to explore the part of herself called Being In A Relationship. I think she’s curious if she can be the kind of person who dates after all. But the key difference is probably that where Bedelia & S2 Will know what Hannibal is and are curious about how their own true selves reflect off the true him, Alana has not been afforded that dubious privilege. She’s reflecting off the person suit, so although that’s still interesting to Hannibal, her curiosity is not gonna have the same dangerous draw as that of his favorites.

It looks like I’ve talked myself into a place where Hannibal is attracted to introspection, which to bring it all back to Jack, who surely has the lowest drive to self-analyze, we could joke that that might be part of why he’s the only one of the four Hannibal doesn’t try to date :p