Testaments to the Boom Times to Come (Posts tagged storytelling)

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
genufa

On Bedelia

wellntruly

I’ve been noticing a fair number of “???? what even is a Bedelia” sort of posts floating around lately, and sure, I have du Maurier thoughts. And actually, they are pretty different from a few of the ones I’m seeing? So I’ve decided now is the time for me to spool out some of my own feelings, for what they’re worth! (As always, views are simply mine not The Only Right Ones, this show is subjective and ambiguous as hell, you all are great.)

Ok, so, disclaimer: I love Bedelia. I also love Hannibal, and Will. All of them are strange and sneaky and hilarious. They’re great tv, the lot of ‘em. But Bedelia, it seems, is often put into a difficult place between Hannibal & Will. Difficult for fandom, I mean — it’s difficult in-world as well but Bedelia du Maurier can handle it (part of why I Loooove Heeeerr). I feel like there’s a VERY strong urge to set her up against Will, and a mild-to-moderate one to set her against Hannibal as well. This has always felt a little off to me though, because I actually saw Bedelia as oddly helpful, to both of them. I also feel like the ways she engages with them are more similar than they are different, which might actually be part of what leads to her final & only downfall, but we’ll get to that.

Keep reading

genufa

I sometimes joke that I am Bedelia, though I never explain what I mean by that – basically, through all my teens and my twenties I was The Psychologist Friend. I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist and have no training in talk therapy whatsoever, but that’s like saying The Mom Friend is not actually her friends’ adoptive mom. I’m a writer, I like not only to observe but to model human nature, so I am a good listener when I’m learning something new, I don’t judge hastily, and as has recently been observed by Anon, I default to sounding reasonable. That seemed to be all it took, in many quarters. What it looked like from the outside – if anyone had bothered to look – might have been a morbid attraction to drama, as long as the mud didn’t touch my pant cuffs. I didn’t subjectively experience it as an attraction to drama (I’m not sure if Bedelia does), but it is a form of problem-solving that the implicated actors themselves cannot engage in, by definition. And problem solving is a savage pleasure.

(I have, among others, the specific life experience of having counselled people through the fallout of a betrayed friendship – awful, life-ruining stuff. And of coming to the realization, fairly early on, that this disaster had happened because one of the parties had been in love with the other, and said other had no idea. I didn’t tell them that: they wouldn’t have believed me and it wouldn’t have done any good. I talked them through to the point where they figured it out for themselves. Just like Bedelia did.)

wellntruly

I love this a lot. For meta bona fides and also I think because it gets to something about this show that I really treasure, but I don’t think I’ve talked much about: for something as grand/Grand Guignol as Hannibal is, we still see ourselves in some of these characters. Not that we’re all of us therapists or killers or heirs to a meat fortune, but that we recognize something in these heightened haute couture versions of our own struggles played out on a fantasy stage. AUs of our lives. Myths of our lives. They’re unreal, these human creatures on our screen, “not flesh, but light and air and color” etc, but they’re there by us, and for us. “Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between,” as Nabokov once put it, a “prism.” Hannibal is one.

Anyway. Bedelia taking a savage pleasure in problem solving is just, sterling. Thank you for all this @genufa, you always have such a knack for letting beams of light come glancing through this shimmer show.

replies genufa Hannibal Hannibal spoilers other people thinkin about cannibalism thinkin about cannibalism storytelling
awritersrejections
mooncoffin

@ziggyhurts - here is your gift for the @hannigramholidayexchange :D

a simple little storybook comic that might be the jumping-off point–if you’ll forgive my terrible cliff pun–of a long-term project that properly traverses the series as a whole. though if i end up continuing it i swear i will try not to spend two hours on the fiddly architectural details every time i draw a house or interior shot (but i probably will anyway lmao)

''in retrospect'' aaaugh so good the frickin snail their little faces comics storytelling Hannibal Hannibal spoilers fanart
marammio
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
All murder’d: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour’d thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
William Shakespeare, Richard II (Act III, scene ii)
why is Richard II so goood Richard II Shakespeare theatre storytelling
theparisreview
Well, fuck the plot! That is for precocious schoolboys. What matters is the imaginative truth, and the perfection and care with which it has been rendered. After all, you don’t say of a ballet dancer, ‘He jumped in the air, then he twirled around, et cetera …’ You are just carried away by his dancing.
Edna O’Brien, born on this day in 1930
(via theparisreview)
wait who are you I love you Edna O'Brien writing storytelling criticism thesis statements relatable content
Top Photos