Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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

[confusedkayt]

Oh man!  Could I be any happier hearing your thoughts about what the Be(deal)ia!  I mean, I hard co-sign so so much of this, as I bet you know!  :D

If you think about it, we have only seen Bedelia dispense therapy to two (well, three, if you count Zachary Quinto) folks, both of whom are notable for refusing to acknowledge their emotional realities.  Both Will and early-season Hannibal definitely don’t let themselves know things about their own feelings, and that willful ignorance drives a lot of bad outcomes.  Bedelia is constantly lobbing truth bombs in part, I think, to remind her patients that refusing to acknowledge feelings doesn’t make them go away.  That’s…  pretty good therapy!

Also, Bedelia has plenty of good reason to try to steer Will out of Hannibal’s path and I quite agree that she usually is trying to tell Will things he needs to hear.  I am less sure she was so strongly driving Hannibal to kill Will in Season 3, so much as doing her Dispassionate Therapist thing and trying to force Hannibal to acknowledge that his choices were having and would continue to have consequences.  In particular, I think you can read this particular truth-bomb in several ways:  “If past behavior is an indication of future behavior, there is only one way you’ll forgive Will Graham.”  I mean, Hannibal is still openly reeling from the loss of Mischa.  Suggesting that he has feelings of comparable strength for Will, and then following up like this, felt like basically asking Hannibal to interrogate himself as to whether forgiveness would be worth the painful price.  I mean, she’s been hinting around that forgiveness is not unlike love and generally pushing Hannibal to be clear with himself on the topic.  Maybe I’m a Bedelia apologist, too, but I think she’s dropping truth bombs in this scene to make Hannibal aware that he’s facing a really grave, impactful decision.  It would be bad psychiatric/personal practice to hand down a decision in a dicey, fraught matter like this, but Bedelia is not willing to let Hannibal kind of Fate And Hannerstance his way through what is clearly a big deal for him.  Does she argue once he himself has settled on the “I have to eat Will Graham” course of action?  Well, no.  But I do think she was fully prepared to spend time exploring the alternate answer of “I can’t eat him, I won’t lose him” with Hannibal and had a certain amount of… amoral distance where she would entertain either answer as viable so long as Hannibal actually made a decision.

Ahhh, I may come back and dither at you about Bedelia/Chilton paralells later (and HAhahahaha, that backlash placement tok me to a place of great and implausible mental images).

[wellntruly]

<3 I feel like you ghost-co-wrote this, I’m not even kidding.

And yeessss yes oh my god, my new favorite thing is the idea that Dr. du Maurier finds herself trying to get BOTH Will and Hannibal do just STOP DITHERING AND OWN UP TO A CHOICE ALREADY SO WE CAN MOVE ON.

This is also making me consider a neat flipflop, in that how Will spent much of the back half of S2 sorta half-stepping to see what Hannibal did first, Hannibal in the front half of S3 is inclined to skulk around in the shadows to see what Will might do. How the turn-tables.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

RE: Your (excellent) Bedelia post: there's one aspect of the Bedelia-Hannibal-Will triangle that fascinates the fuck out of me and that I haven't really seen addressed in meta. Someone at the AV Club referred to her as "the primary commenter on Will and Hannibal's relationship," and that's true, so I'm particularly struck by the fact that she's never seen them together. One of the things that excites me the most about a potential S4 is getting them all in one room. Can you imagine?

Aw thank you! And that’s so true! She puts it together from the signs they’ve left on each other, not direct observation. Actually, shoot that’s true for Chilton too — maybe you can only see it if you’re not looking directly at it. ~Their Love Is The Sun~

The idea of Bedelia, Hannibal, and Will all together in one room is wild, and UNSETTLING. There are a lot of currents there. I feel like no matter what, Will & Hannibal do not come out of that feeling particular great, given Bedelia’s MO of lobbing ice darts right into the corners of their hearts they pretend they don’t know about. Hannibal has a history of getting on with Bedelia despite this, their Italy adventures mostly falling on the good side of the Fun/Frustrating fulcrum, but the problem is adding Will into the mix, given what a dab hand he is at always Making It Weird. This would get…. soooo weird. With a quickness.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

I enjoyed your Bedelia meta! It made me think that the most dangerous people in the show are the 'helpful' ones. Like Freddie is self-serving (she acknowledges that about herself) yet she does the least damage overall? Clearly everyone should back off from helpful instinct in the Hanniverse x)

Oh I’m glad! And oh gosh yeah — if ANYONE in Hanniballand wants to help you, it’s probably time to start being veerry wary. Maybe with the exception that if you are a cinnamon roll in distress, Alana can do a good job with that rescue. You might even get to marry her!

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

On Bedelia

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.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Hello! This is just to say that there was something really bothering me about TWOTL... I was unclear about How Much Will Planned in terms of Hannibal's Escape, Dolarhyde's involvement, Jack's knowledge and the deaths of those police officers... It has been bothering me for months, because I found that the episode really didn't make it clear... But I just read your recap again and you really helped me sort it out. I am unspeakably relieved. Thank you! Can't wait for S2 recaps <3

Oh gosh, always happy to bring RELIEF, I feel like normally I’m peddling agony!

I actually got a message recently asking about the Plan (““Plan””) in TWOTL, from someone wondering what all Will told Dolarhyde about the escape. With the benefit of time and hindsight, my feelings are….actually quite similar to what they were in my recap, I see after reading that again!

Fresh Thoughts:

“I think that in the hotel room, Will probably just told Dolarhyde to keep an eye out for an opportunity. I mean, even the plan as Jack & Co know it depends on the Dragon figuring out that Hannibal is being moved, so they’re trying to be really obvious about it. I don’t know if Will was specific about whether or not he intended Hannibal to escape and THEN meet up with Dolarhyde, or if he wanted Dolarhyde to play a PART in the escape, because I don’t think Will himself is specific about that in his own mind. Because: Will.”

Continuing to think about this right now, I’d say that with Will’s gradient guilt, he tends to start off a series of actions, but then quickly lets Fate & Hannerstance take over. He’s gambling with other people’s lives right along with his own, no two ways about that, but that being said he’s given Dolarhyde an opportunity not really an advantage, given that the officers are armed and expecting the Dragon to get close enough to take out, as follows their lure operation. Honestly I think that Feyest Will would actually prefer to Götterdämmerung this bitch and throw himself, Hannibal, and the Dragon all into one room and set the door on fire behind them, but if Dolarhyde were to simply get himself killed attempting to get to Hannibal, that would still take care of one of his problems. There’s definite shades of Matthew Brown and Mason Verger in this situation, as has been pointed out by others! (if any of you have still not read genufa’s Murder Games meta yet pls do it is like my favorite thing)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

boo-cool-robot asked:

More Will's hand-splay thing opinions: 1) Will reads to me as not usually having that much bodily sensation, so at least for that moment he has some kind of tactile feedback. 2) I do stiff hand positions myself when doing something physically difficult so it suggest that Will is finding this moment of existence that difficult. 3) But unlike so much of his body language, this is making him larger in a way, not smaller. 4) It is v. conducive to imagining his hand splayed on Hannibal's chest.

AAAHH

Also, am now considering: it’s like the gesture you make when you’re on ice. Will’s whole life is slip-slidey and he’s trying to gain purchase.

Anyway comparative analysis is the basis of intellectual discourse and I am nothing if not INTELLECTUAL, so I went through my folders and here’s every moment of this I had capped during my season 1 rewatch, assembled for anyone who’s like, “yeah I could look at that. for analysis.”

What was UP with Hugh Dancy during 1x08 and 1x10, is possibly the real question here.

(Actually he was probably being very smart, because Will spends ‘Fromage’ vibing with a murder luthier who probably has pretty dextrous fingers, and in ‘Buffet Froid’ he’s highly conscious of having woken up with blood on his hands that didn’t go away when he blinked.) (The watch check is all on him though.)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch: 1x13

[wellntruly]

Season 1, Episode 13: “Savoureux”
or, OH, THE SCALES / TUMBLING FROM MY EYES

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

Keep reading

[confusedkayt]

YOU RANG?  :D

OH MAN.  Time had healed the “oh no” created in me at the sheer forceful gracelessness by which Hannibal insists that Bedelia eat in this episode.  I will never forget the cold shocky feeling of reading these thoughts from @genufa​ here.  To badly summarize, even if you don’t know the food is people, Hannibal has big blinky control issues regarding feeding others, and Bedelia has clearly made a very conscious choice to sidestep that as part of her own package of control problems.

For my part…  there’s a LOT going on in a very brief scene. Here’s one of the first iterations of the Carousel Of Hannibal-Bedelia Destruction that I love so much - Hannibal does some creepy thing intended to physically overwhelm Bedelia, Bedelia responds with icy calm and one of her Patented Truth Bombs, Bedelia feels like she wins and Hannibal is delighted by her boldness/insight/iciness enough that he doesn’t really mind.  And this is the first echo of “Hannibal will stuff Bedelia into the Will Graham shaped hole in his life when Will becomes unavailable,” basically a direct foreshadowing of the stinger for Season 2.  

I say “stuff” rather than something like “substitute” because it’s VERY clear here that Hannibal is wrenching Bedelia into a place on his stage that she has no desire to occupy at this point.  She’s already given him a shades-of-Franklyn “we are NOT friends, Hannibal” boundary speech, and even if she greatly mixes that message with a side note about friendly colleague time, it’s clear that she wishes to enforce a sharp separation between therapy sessions and wine-and-chat time.  (She’s also clear about her disapproval of Hannibal’s rapidly eroding boundaries just generally in life.)  But here’s Hannibal, who is strongly implied to have called her asking to talk.  Ok, fine, the public version of what happened to Hanners this day would be the kind of thing that might precipitate a crisis session with your therapist.  But rolling up to same with a glass butler tray full of dinner is an AGGRESSIVE MOVE.

And then there’s the presentation.  It’s also aggressive to smoke your unasked-for veal in such a way that the smell will pervade the room and linger in it.  And the way he acknowledges in so many words that Bedelia is “indulging” him - read, probably does not want to partake - and that she has refused to be cooked for on all occasions in the past?  And then (shudders) is so bold as to police the timing of her consumption and make sure that she is taking bites?  RUDE, Hannibal, shockingly rude.  I can’t imagine commenting on whether or how fast someone was eating a dish at my table.  He can’t even be bothered to veneer it.

My read on what precipitated this is that Hannibal is both riding high from the success of his carefully-orchestrated setup, and bottoming out from the unexpectedly acute distress of the loss of Will’s trust and company.  He perpetuated this siege of Bedelia because he wanted a decisive victory that comes without pesky conflicted feelings, and is confident enough of same that he allows himself to be extremely ham-handed about his control tactics.  At the same time, he wants and someone to talk to and to keep him company.  (This is…. not 100 percent satisfying to me.  Why now, Hannibal?  ARGH,  Bears more thinking.)

But Bedelia is a boss, and denies him.  I adore how she segued straight from talking about veal (and ~~insouciantly performative submission~~ in the ingestion of same) into laying real talk on Hannibal about his patterns and vulnerability to Jack Crawford.  If Hannibal won’t veneer, she won’t, either.  Under the circumstances, that’s a BOLD LIFE CHOICE.  It borders on outright threatening Hannibal and, wow, Bedelia, r-e-s-p-e-c-t.  I loved that you could see her deciding mid-meal that she had no fucks left to give and was clearly going to have to get out of dodge so she might as well burn down all the bridge supports on her way out.  THE BEST.

[wellntruly]

Just FYI to everyone, I’m gonna ping confusedkayt in every rewatch from now on in a crystalline clear fish for MOAR THOUGHTS SUCH AS THESE. I’m just like, ~sunning myself~ in the thoughts.

Also this IS 100% satisfying to me as an explanation! Especially with timing, because the scene immediately before this is the one where Jack tells Hannibal that Will has been “broken,” and I can see Hannibal beginning to get a sneaking sick feeling of doubt in his own hideous, offhanded awesomeness. What if you truly broke your plaything, Hannibal? What if (oh god how disquieting), what if you regret it? Maybe it’s time to finally break the glass on forcing Bedelia to dine with him, just to reassure himself that he’s still the Baddest Man In The Whole Damn Town.

- Hannibal to himself, with just a faint ring of desperation (Bedelia put the ring on it) (bless)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

It's really interesting to think of Hannibal as someone Will still sees as keeping him safe, which I think on some level is true. Especially juxtaposing will's inherent dislike of danger and desire for control with his desire for Hannibal's danger and loss of control to Hannibal. I find it hard to read someone who is as drawn to Hannibal as Will is as not having a degree of desire for pain, turning himself into Hannibal's knife etc, especially when it compromises his primary motivation-safety.

Anonymous said: I think it could be read as an extension of the performative submission - controlled (dubiously consensual throughout the series) danger.

[spinning off from earlier]

I was going to try to comb out some thoughts about Will & Hannibal both, each with their dark complicated shifting between wanting to hurt and be hurt by the other, but why bother when there is already THIS:

“For us, eating and being eaten belong to the terrible secret of love. … That is, we slide down that razor’s edge of ambivalence. The story of torment itself is a very beautiful one. Because loving is wanting and being able to eat up and yet to stop at the boundary. And there, at the tiniest beat between springing and stopping, in rushes fear. The spring is already in mid-air. The heart stops. The heart takes off again. Everything in love is oriented toward this absorption. At the same time real love is a don’t-touch, yet still an almost-touching. Tact itself: a phantom touching. Eat me up, my love, or else I’m going to eat you up. Fear of eating, fear of the edible, fear on the part of the one of them who feels loved, desired, who wants to be loved, desired, who desires to be desired, who knows that there is no greater proof of love than the other’s appetite, who is dying to be eaten up yet scared to death by the idea of being eaten up, who says or doesn’t say, but who signifies: I beg you, eat me up. Want me down to the marrow. And yet manage it so as to keep me alive. But I often turn about or compromise, because I know that you won’t eat me up, in the end, and I urge you: bite me. Sign my death with your teeth.”

-  Hélène Cixous, from “Love of the Wolf”

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch: 1x13

Season 1, Episode 13: “Savoureux”
or, OH, THE SCALES / TUMBLING FROM MY EYES

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

Ok moment to talk about the “Previously On Hannibal”, if you can believe it, because they used the clip where Abigail asked Will if Hannibal had told him about her involvement with her dad’s murders and Will responding that he hadn’t, which, u may recall, I was fantastically floored to discover was a conversation that took place all in Will’s head. So the Previously On has ALSO gotten so wrapped up in Will that his imaginings are presented as part of the factual objective recap, and that’s marvellous to me. Because god, we’re in “Savoureux.” It’s the finale of Season 1, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and from here on out, the relationship this show had with Will is fracturing. What tilting ice sheet are YOU gonna jump on as the glacier breaks apart?

LET’S FEEL IT OUT, as is our way.

Live Feed:

NOPE NOPE NOPE, T minus nope seconds into this and it’s THE BULLROARER. And that thing travels RIGHT down my spine to the tune of nOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOOOPE. Curse these nice headphones, fucking MONSTER TUNERS.

It sounds like hunting and the Gods and being encircled. All of that. I mean it’s, pun-intended, pitch perfect for where Brian Reitzell is using it, don’t get me wrong, that’s WHY I’m so upset. Because here’s Will, oh Will Graham, finally trying to hunt down the monster always in the corner of his eye. And he chases the Ravenstag, until at last he finds —

the Wendigo, hunched by a tree in the enchanted forest like Voldemort feeding on a unicorn. Angular and so hungry, crimson wet pools in the leaves. Will, run.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Do you think that Will Graham has a thing for danger? I mean we can call it lack of self preservation but i think it goes deeper than that. I especially find it interesting to think about that when we look at the second half of s2. Will says that he made the call because Hannibal was his friend but i think part of it was that he DIDN'T want this game they'd been playing to end because he enjoyed the danger. But idk i could be going wildly off base.

I hadn’t really put direct thought to this before, so thank you for this opportunity to do so!

Alright, at first blush I am feeling like…. hmm, I’m not really getting that Will has a general Thing For Danger, in that he would seek danger out if left to his own devices. What he does seek out though, is Hannibal. I think Hannibal is an exception to the rule for a whooole lot of things with Will, [insert joke here]. Someone like Bedelia, on the other hand, I’d say gets a thrill out of an array of dangerous situations, both Hannibal-related and not, and takes pride & pleasure in how she is able to comport herself in them. Yet again contrasted with Will (god they really are such perfect polarities, I am repeatedly amazed), she relishes an opportunity to test her control, whereas he experiences danger as an assault on his already tenuous stability. They both get a strange wild high from endangerment (part of why Hannibal likes them, and why they’re drawn to him in turn), but where Bedelia’s enables her to survive, live & thrive, Will tends to go into that Fey Fugue State thing where he’s about as likely to shoot you as welcome your knife. If he enjoyed that state any more than the selective way he does with Hannibal, there’s a fair chance he’d be dead long before this.

We could probably look at their attitudes toward others, too. Hannibal & Bedelia both get a kick out of watching other people in danger, Will decidedly Does Not. There are different ways to interpret Semi-F.B.I Agent Graham, but for me at least, my preferred explanation of why he would ever end up in the career he did is that his urge to protect is strong enough to make him throw himself in harm’s way. That’s why I’d guess Jack always seems to play that card to get him to stay, and why 100% of Will’s Deadly Attacks are to defend someone.

I guess to put all this a slightly different way, there’s certainly A LOT that Will enjoys with Hannibal, and danger is definitely a part of their game, I think you’re totally right, but I don’t think he enjoys it much at all in other realms. If we’re gonna trust him on this, and I don’t see a reason not to take this S1 characterization as honest, Will likes to live in tiny isolation out in the woods mostly because that’s where he feels relatively safe, and it’s where he returns when he tries to leave all this behind for three years. I’d say Will seeks safety, and a large part of his tragic irony is that he’s beginning to think the safest place for him might be in the loving embrace of Danger himself. Or y’know, maybe the bottom of the sea.