Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

birth-of-the-phoenix asked:

Hi! I've just been thinking: How did Hannibal realize he was in love with Will, as man who has probably never experienced such a thing before? Did he slowly piece the puzzle together analyzing his own reactions, or did it suddenly hit him like a ton of bricks all at once, out of nowhere? Did he try to make comparisons between his feeling for Will and Mischa ...or his feelings for Will and his art to better understand what's happening? You can take this as you like: a simple question or a prompt

damnslippyplanet-archived answered:

I’m putting that on the prompt list because some day I may feel moved to write the thing.

But since I don’t know when that day will come, let’s try just a plain old answer for now.  I think it would have to have been sometime in season two, to start with. Will locked away, unavailable for Hannibal’s little games, would have eaten away at him like something itchy under his skin, and he wouldn’t have had words for it.

I think, and I’m just thinking aloud here, this is not a question I’ve specifically asked myself before, so bear with me, that Hannibal being Hannibal, love and sex and violence are - not exactly separate things for him.  So I think the two most likely candidates for The Big Realization are:

1) Mukozuke.  Balanced on that damn bucket, bleeding out, hazy, not fully understanding why this is happening, and then finding out: Because Will has agency in the world and he’s using it for this.  Will sent him an avenging angel. The depth of emotion that implies. And then a few moments later, the bucket gives out, the rope tightens, Hannibal’s life goes flashing before his eyes and things get very, very clear and one of the things that gets very clear is that if he didn’t love Will Graham before (and he probably did), he does now. He’s glad to know that, before he passes out. 

2) Yakimono: The kitchen. Will’s his own avenging angel now, he’s trembling again but it’s not fever or fear, it’s righteous fucking anger and he’s beautiful. Hannibal’s almost sure he’s not really going to pull the trigger, but he’s not entirely sure. Will was hard to predict before and he’s a force of nature now, he might do anything. He might become anything, his life upended and his feet set on a new path that could go in any direction. Hannibal wants to see which way Will Graham goes.  He wants to see Will Graham.  He wants.  And when Will eventually lowers the gun and leaves his house, he stands in the kitchen in the dark, for a long time, as the nature of that wanting begins to coalesce into something nameable.  He thinks love. He thinks I am in so much trouble.  He thinks if he were as smart as he likes to think he is, he’d take a bag and one of his false passports and leave Baltimore right now.  He knows he won’t.  He hasn’t felt so alive in a very, very long time.

Huh. Apparently I have more thoughts on this than I thought I did.

Your long-shot third answer, if you prefer a slow burn, could be Bedelia.  A slow unfolding over a series of sessions, she never outright says “love” but she prods and insinuates at the edges of Hannibal’s stunted wordless emotions and somehow even when they’re not talking about Will Graham he feels like they’re talking about Will Graham and the realization takes root so slowly that afterwards he never can pinpoint the exact moment he knows.  The day he finally says the word, Bedelia just stares him down, coolly, and she ends the session early.  She thinks they both need a drink more than they need another twenty minutes of talking about Will Graham.  She pours the wine with a heavy hand and they drink it silently without further discussion and Hannibal goes out into the night feeling as if the architecture of his bones has subtly shifted somehow.

[theglintoftherail]

scream scream scream

I vote for Option 2. (I also like how both options involve Will threatening Hannibal’s life, clearly we are on the same page there)

[wellntruly]

Great great, also screaming.

Would also wish to add that I considered this a week ago or so and thought, hey wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were this:

the moment Hannibal realizes he’s in love with Will as also the exact moment he realizes he doesn’t have him.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

after-the-ellipsis asked:

Your observation about the closeness of Bedelia's personal involvement correlating to her companion's respective level of self-preservation is soooo on point. She is really Queen of Self-Preservation, isn't she? Once we understand that about her, a great deal of her mystery falls away. Which is really saying something, considering how much mystery there was to begin with. Methinks she and Abigail wouldn't have gotten on like gangbusters.

after-the-ellipsis said: Err, that should have read, ‘Bedelia and Abigail //would// have gotten on like gangbusters.’ Or maybe not! Maybe my typo is actually revealing. When you have two players of the Self-Preservation game in the room, they know each other to be players, and the tension rises…

[from this]

!!! I was hoping you meant “would” because I LOVE the notion of Bedelia as Abigail’s Murder Mom, and that if you let her get a new mother instead of two (two) new fathers, this is how you could get a Bloody Chamber-style ending of this whole Bluebeard’s Wife fiasco.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

I stumbled onto your blog the other day and have been thoroughly enjoying your Hannibal recaps! Might have missed this in one of your write-ups, but reading about Abigail I was really struck by her as Iphigenia-like figure... sacrificed by her father(s); sometimes saved by the gods, sometimes not, depending on version of the myth; when she is saved, she's replaced by a stag on the altar. Idk if this will come up at all in Season 2 recaps, but thought you might appreciate the image.

Thank you, and you know me well, dear mythology anon, because I do appreciate this image — in fact I’ve used this image, buried in my mythnus opus!

It occurs to me that Anne Carson has translated Iphigenia Among the Taurians in the last few years, which would surely be a fount of good Abigail lines for graphics, we should get on that. (Man, now I want Anne Carson and Angela Carter BOTH to rescue Abigail from her narrative. That would be a different show though. That would probably end up being somewhat like Stoker, really.)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

We know that there was a two year period when there were no Ripper murders but do you think that meant that Hannibal stopped killing all together or do you think he just changed his methods to something that wouldn't be recognized as a ripper murder a la the copy cat kills?

Huh, another good question! Well, as you point out, he’s fully capable of changing his killing methods to avoid/invite attention, depending, so it’s fully possible that he was still nomming down on Baltimore, just in a non-public-shaming way. But given that the grisly theatrics seem to be a major part of what he enjoys about killing in the first place, I don’t know about that…. Perhaps everyone was Good those years so Father Cannibalmas had no need to pay anyone a visit. Naw, that’s impossible, rudes are always gonna rude…. Oh, maybe he chilled for a spell to let the cases go cold? Hannibal could be like a wise hunter, careful not to over-hunt because he wants to ensure he can keep hunting in the future. Though in his case it wouldn’t be decimating the population that he’s concerned about, but making sure he’s not just killing constantly and giving the F.B.I. too many reasons to sniff around, given that those noses could eventually point in his direction.

Regardless of whether or not you want to think he stopped with Art Murders or just stopped with All Murders, he certainly gave up something he likes, and I think for the Hannibal we meet in S1, the best motivator for that is gonna be self-preservation. He starts to lose his self-preservation instincts pretty rapidly once Will Graham tumbles into his life, of course, but I think this is actually evidence for how he used to have strong ones, given that A) he wasn’t caught, and B) Bedelia is still fine with him. Bedelia, I’m pretty sure, deals in a world deeply informed by the concept of self-preservation, which is why she engages and disengages with Hannibal when he’s showing more and less of this trait, respectively — and also why she’s never quite able to *get* Will, as he nearly has negative self-preservation most of the time.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Good job on the recap! Now I wonder if Freddie ever got ~murder vibe~ from Hannibal? Or did she misapply it to Will? I still want to know what happended in 1x02 after "What shall be done about that?" I legit thought Freddie died after that. She looked so scared.

Thank you :) and that’s a good question! Yeah I thought Red was a goner for sure in 1x02. I know that’s what they wanted us to think, setting the tone in those early days and what all, but his predatory vibe does seem painfully obvious in that scene, as does her fear, so you’d think there would be some sort of lasting impression from that. Hannibal is also taking things away from Freddie and telling her “no,” so we can’t just chalk it up to his usual Giving People What They Want thing.

Really, if you want my honest boring realism answer, I think creating a feeling of danger for the audience was more important to the writers at this point than being realistic about Freddie’s suspicion, and when they have her drop that line in 1x12 about knowing a murderer when she sees one, casting doubt on Abigail & Will is now what is most important to them, and her earlier brush with Death Hannibal was not really on anyone’s mind.

But if you want an ENTIRELY fanciful ~apologetics~ explanation (and who doesn’t, amiright), I have a half-baked idea that perhaps Hannibal & Freddie came to some sort of accord in that missing scene. I had a vague impression that something like that happened when I first watched it, especially since she’s being introduced as a sly heartlessly curious gambler. They are kinda Like in that way, so maybe we can imagine that they traded something, fae to fae, and each allowed the other to keep doing their thing. Maybe?? But it’s been a while since I watched S2 and I’m pretty sure the events in that season would complicate the hell out of this #headtheory, so ehhh, you’re probably better off with Answer 1.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch: 1x12

[wellntruly]

Season 1, Episode 12: “Relevés”
or, THERE WAS A WHOLE EPISODE BETWEEN “RÔTI” AND “SAVOUREUX” WOW

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

Keep reading

[confusedkayt]

Ack, everything about this BREAKS MY LITTLE HEART.  I am like…. overwhelmed with the number and quality of insights and so to prevent just penning an epic I want to focus on Abigail and Will.  Yikes, how painfully true on re-watch that, as you say, it’s not at all clear that Abigail ever wanted to get close to Will.  The Abigail who is soft with him, who even seems to like him very much?  Yeah, that is, in retrospect, all completely in Will’s head.  I find myself genuinely uncertain as to whether Will’s intense attachment is an artifact of his intense assumption of Garret Jacob Hobbs’ viewpoint, or whether it’s Will’s attempt to cobble together his assumed place in the standard Avenging Hero Who Saved The Day narrative that is what we would have watched play out in basically any other show or movie.  “Abigail Hobbs is a success for you,” Alana even tells him at one point.  But she doesn’t act the way Save The Cat school of screenwriting would tell you that a rescued damsel should act, and looking back I think that’s a big factor in Will’s faltering belief in his own goodness, already ground down by Hannibal’s unceasing efforts.  In either case, it’s heartbreakingly clear that Will’s Abigail is constructed without any regard whatsoever to the Abigail that exists in the world.  She’s a Manic Pixie Dream Victim.  Even as evidence mounts that she worked with her father, killed Nicholas Boyle, is ~at best~ a shade of grey, Will persists in forcing her into a Standard Good Girl mold that neither fits nor does her credit.  And he imagines a warm relationship with her when she is usually something close to outright hostile, which, no wonder.  Will sweats and shakes and says weird things and in general acts like a bundle of instability every time she sees him, a fact thrown into sharp relief by Hannibal’s implacable steadiness.  Yikes.

What a character.  Abigail, still a child, faced with the reality of her father’s fixation and his constant threat to her life and safety (thinking about the whens and hows of her knowledge and involvement with her father’s murders is such a depressing minefield).  Abigail, who knows one when she sees one and plays the few cards she’s got so well that she almost, almost made it out of the path of three separate once-in-a-lifetime destructive forces.  It’s also such a wonderful and interesting way to look askance at the Avenging Hero narrative; even if Abigail had not been made complicit in her father’s acts, it’s…  strange to think that the default narrative beat would be gratitude and a transfer of affection toward the guy who swept in and killed her dad in front of her. 

[wellntruly]

W O W. Ok now I’M overwhelmed. Manic Pixie Dream Victim, that is so on point I feel stabbed in the heart with it. And I’d never thought about Abigail’s refusal to Play The Rescued Role (fully her right and I love & respect her for it) as feeding in to Will’s belief that what he did was ugly. Everything about this is terrible! And I didn’t think it could get worse!

God it really is such an incredible corruption of that Avenging Hero story. I’m glad Abigail got to rip those pages out, given how much she was trying to write a different version of her life. Goddamn Hannibal though, with his constant playwrighting of other people’s lives, spiriting her away to be a princess in the tower after all.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch: 1x12

[wellntruly]

Season 1, Episode 12: “Relevés”
or, THERE WAS A WHOLE EPISODE BETWEEN “RÔTI” AND “SAVOUREUX” WOW

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

Keep reading

[soundingonlyatnightasyousleep]

“Georgia is weirdly reassuring with how UNreassuring she is about doctors, how does that work.”

Well hello you have unlocked my favorite topic of Constructions of Disability in Hannibal!

Georgia is the best possible friend for Will at this point. She knows from experience that doctors are unreliable, and sometimes even malicious. Especially in Hannibalverse, where every medical professional is a murderer. Everything is working to say that Will cannot be trusted because he is mentally ill. Like, the hospital tells Hannibal that Will has been what they call “having wandering behaviors” and what he calls “going places with purpose and good intentions. (”Wandering behaviors” aka EXACTLY THE KIND OF TERMINOLOGY USED TO PATHOLOGIZE NEUROATYPICAL BEHAVIOR.) Georgia gets it. She has lived in the system, and she has lived with her mother, who is the kind of person who both loves her very much, and wishes that she were dead. (Call forward to Yakimono and Jack’s “I gave up on you. I thought [Lass] was dead. I thought you were crazy,” yes thank you for explicitly equivocating that Jack.) Georgia is an someone who is scared and exhausted but also still holding on to okay. Georgia is the exact opposite of Hannibal’s “mental illness is isolating” crap. So Hannibal had to kill her.

And on a completely unrelated note: I think I say this every time I see the chicken soup mentioned, but EVERYTHING IN THAT SOUP IS A HEATY FOOD. Meaning that in Chinese medicine, that soup is supposed to increase inflammation. Will should be having a nice bitter melon soup, as that is a cooling food and also has the advantage of not being people.

[wellntruly]

Are you KIDDING ME?? Hannibal is using CHICKEN SOUP, THE Make-Better Food, as a MAKE-WORSE FOOD??? This right bastard, I don’t know why I ever forgive him for shit.

Anyway, “Georgia is the exact opposite of Hannibal’s ‘mental illness is isolating’ crap” — oh god that’s so true and wonderful and sad. I love that one of the few characters who they really came down sure on saying “she has a mental illness” is portrayed as a fatalistic yet funny person, full of darkness and sweetness both, and the capacity for change! Also, rare in Hanniballand, honest & helpful. Moreover, to take this to the magical realism level this show is always layering below (or occasionally above) the Real Shit, it’s so fantastic that a character who has been crossing the borders of Death starts to take on the role of Will’s Guide.

But mostly, thank you so much for all of this meta on disability in Hannibal dear, it’s so valuable! 

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Rewatch: 1x12

Season 1, Episode 12: “Relevés”
or, THERE WAS A WHOLE EPISODE BETWEEN “RÔTI” AND “SAVOUREUX” WOW

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

I feel like I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting next to Will Graham, thinking about him and worrying about him, and as a result, neglecting my other dear disaster: Hannibal Lecter. Which is probably somewhat understandable, given that I’ve been rewatching season 1, and, as soundingonlyatnightasyousleep once put it, in S1 it’s easy to just see Hannibal as the force of nature that contextualizes Will’s struggles. You are impressed and fascinated by a force of nature, but you don’t spend a lot of time fretting about the state of its soul.

Which is why I find I’m glad to be at the penultimate episode of this season, about to move into S2 where we are afforded much more access to Hannibal’s mindset, and subsequently where we learn that Dr. Lecter is pretty much just an OMNISHAMBLES. It would adorable if it weren’t so destructive. Well, frankly, it’s kinda both ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Incidentally, let’s talk about Hannibal Lecter’s planning skills. I like to joke about him being a terrible planner, but that’s not really true. It’s more that he has a TON prepared, he just doesn’t know which way it’s gonna go when he lets Fate & Hannerstance take over. But the way he sorta simulplans follows with Will’s observation in S3 that Hannibal always has multiple trains of thought going at once. He deals in multiples — multiple perspectives, multiple goals, multiple feelings, multiple auxiliary murder properties…. He’s got it all in place so he can always jump tracks if he wants to (or needs to).

If I were to make a grand connective statement about Hannibal, which sure I’ll do that, what else am I doing, I’d say that part of the reason why he keeps so many irons in the fire at once is because he would hate to cut himself off from something, because he wants it all. Hannibal is a glutton. The consummate consumer. He wants all the finest things and as much of them as he can eat, often literally. And he has such an array of delights. He delights in the most delicate order of a perfectly set table — and he delights in throwing a worthy foe across his desk and stabbing him with a letter opener. He delights in being able to predict just what people will do in situations he has carefully arranged for them, and he delights in being utterly surprised by one person in particular: Will Graham. “I could never entirely predict you,” Hannibal tells him in S2, just glowing with love. He would never want to deprive himself of any of his pleasures, and Will, along with Will’s unpredictability, is one of them.

This is something that’s tricky to see when you’re first watching S1 (by design, I think). It usually seems that Hannibal is trying to control Will, so that ultimately Hannibal would land Will in prison seems like the darkest timeline of that darkest timeline, because what more obvious result of increasing control is there than eventually putting someone in a cage. But, one of the joys of looking back after the later seasons is that Hannibal’s cracks and foibles and general flailing dorkiness bc ~feelings~ are a lot more apparent. And in “Relevés” in particular, you get to now see him much more on the back foot, and annoyed & saddened that he is having to move far quicker down one of those tracks he’d laid that really he’s not sure he wanted to go down at all, given that he’s going to self-defeat in a pretty amazing way: in order to maintain his freedom of Not Being In Jail and able to pursue all his many interests, he has to lose his primary interest: ready access to Will Graham.

“Frick.” - Hannibal Lecter, during most of “Relevés”

Also me during most of “Relevés,” though with differing inflections. Let’s live-blog and I’ll tell you all about it!

Live-bloganation:

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Thank you for the whole is-Will-a-killer post. Now I want to read that fic where Will tries to safe keep Hannibal in some way (God I can imagine Hannibal sending murderers their way if that were to happen. He'd risk his life for his aesthetic, murdreous bae)

This is The New Prob, surely. I honestly do not know if Hannibal would be content having Will but not also the art kills. It would probably become a game of how much each of them are willing to give up for the other, combined with what else they could do to hold focus and not go spinning apart like a beautiful destructive firewheel.

It sounds like FANFIC, is what it sounds like. This is the thing I run into whenever I try to suss out what would come next, I stg. Because ultimately they end up having to have a conversation or at least some sort of negotiation that’s all Am I Enough For You?, and that’s just very romantical and dramatic no matter which way you slice it.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

bedannibal-lectaurier asked:

"You can say objectively that there are some things a poem is about and some things it is not, but ultimately, its power is in what meaning you find in it. Similarly, when we watch Hannibal, it seems that people get different mileage out of different stuff, and really that’s what makes it good art."---Thank you for saying this! Hannibal is a complicated show and it frustrates me as a fan when people get caught up in saying Will or Hannibal or Bedelia or Abigail are definitively anything. Bless u

Aww, I meant every word! This is my attitude towards most things, really, but with Hannibal it’s like they went out of their way to make it ~artfully ambiguous~ and changeable, which I try to remember when I’m watching it, and also when I’m writing about it. I do not always succeed! Hopefully more often than not, though. And hopefully everyone knows they can always call me on being unnecessarily didactic — I would really want that.