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thrilling-oneway · 2 months

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Really good and well detailed thread on twitter about the queer coding of some characters, took a couple of hours for discourse to start on Rui. Why is the discussion of queer coding so bad around Rui? Is it people who ship him with the girls feeling threatened about the idea of queer coding that would imply he might be gay? Or is it something else?

I think I saw that thread a few hours ago! Assuming we're thinking of the same one that would make it the second or third time that user specifically has talked about Rui being gay coded & had discourse start on their post. This fandom is insane.

As far as I'm aware it is casued by shipping. Literally every time I've seen someone try to make a thread about his gay coding it primarily jumped on by people saying "X m/f rui ship is better". Alternatively people tend to pick on stereotypes even if they are valid. Individually some of it could be written of as "he's just like that", but it kinda piles up and up and it's kinda obvious imo he is meant to be gay coded.

Also on tvtropes when I added on the gay subtext page a list of evidence pointing to why he might be gay someone nuked the entire paragraph with the reason "lack of attraction to women does not imply that he's gay". Shout out to that person. I added it on his character page instead and it hasn't been removed yet so so far so good.

Yeah I think it largely just comes down to kids being upset that it doesn't fit with their ships. I think it comes down to a moral thought process of "I should not ship the implied gay character with women" -> "therefore he is not gay". If not it's just plain ignorance. Idk. This fandom is really weird about it.

I've made a lot of posts about it in the past (around september last year i think) with how this fandom has begun to treat. literally anything queer. Due to how centered this fandom is on shipping and the overwhelming popularity of m/m and f/f ships over m/f, there are a small (i hope) group of teenage prsk fans who seem to genuinely think that they are in some way oppressed for liking m/f ships, and then accusing people of biphobia for not liking m/f or saying that a character is implied to be exclusively gay/lesbian.

It's an incredibly fascinating phenomenon that somehow a group of kids have convinced themselves heterophobia is real (except they label it as biphobia idfk dude) and that m/f ships are somehow oppressed. This is summed up well by the akian card edit discourse over the last couple days that I don't want to explain.

Also it's weird that by a lot of the fandom bi headcanons are treated like straight plus. Why do you only use bi hcs for the characters you put in hetships. Why not the characters you ship slash/femslash. Why is "bi people exist" an excuse to try and prove your hetship has some sort of canonical validity. Have you thought about that.

Oh yeah this was about Rui. Rui's implied gay and this fandom can't handle it because they want to ship him with women (i don't think anyone is stopping them but whatever, this fandom has a weird desire for their ships to be the ones implied in canon or at least possible to happen in canon)

#shout out to the person i once saw countering a post about rui's gay coding with ruimino. that's some next cope icl icl #this is a social experiment atp #asks #i was gonna say 'i wonder how some of the ppl in this fandom would react to a piece of media where they didn't like the canon/implied ship'#and then remembered that people not liking the canon/implied ship is how we got here. still think they need that experience in their life #come to terms with the joys of not liking the canon and enjoying ur noncanon insanity. speaking from the personal experiences of 15 y/o me #oh ye some1 tried to use a aki/an promo art for sekai symphony w the wtwg outfits to say The An/hane Card proves nothing in terms of wlw or #ankh's relationship in general and i thikn it's genuinely one of the funniest things i've seen from this fandom #ik i said i wouldn't bring up the card edit discourse. srry. twas funny. like just ship aki/an without trying to say ankh has no basis oml

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scribblesandsorcery · 4 months

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So a few weeks ago, I got a certain anon ask that had been going around the fandom. I was fairly amused, since the anon had to have either scrolled back a couple years in the Bedannibal tag or had to have dug through the notes of certain mutuals' posts to have found me.

My policy usually is "don't feed the trolls", but the ask arrived when I had been awake for far too long and I had to stay awake for another six hours for real life reasons, so I took that time to word-vomit a rebuttal into a Google doc. Now that I've caught up on sleep a bit and have had a chance to read it back I decided it was, in fact, worth posting.

Anon: Hello!! Do you think he was ever in love with Bedelia like he was in love with Will? I ask this because Bedelia says they were both the "brides of Hannibal". But Hannibal never courted her like he did with Will in s2b despite knowing her longer, Bedelia came into Hannibal's life much before Will but he never pursued her like he did with Will. Mads said he wanted a future with Will unlike with other people he hooked up with Alana, Bedelia or Anthony. He took her to Italy as a consolation prize when Will betrayed him. Even in Italy H was pining about Will all the time and telling Bedelia how much he loves Will. I know he slept with Bedelia but he probably slept with Anthony too and he slept with Alana, Hannibal is a hedonistic guy who sleeps around. For him sleeping with someone doesn't mean he is in love with them. But when Will confronts Bedelia, she pretends as if Hannibal held them in the same regard which is obviously not true. Hannibal would choose Will over her in a heart beat and even she knows it (she even says my relationship with Hannibal is not as passionate as yours) but yet she acts as if Hannibal sees them both equally. I don't understand why? 😭 Why do you think?why make herself seem like a competition when she is clearly not? And then get scared shitless when Will actually took her as a competition and released Hannibal which led to the leg eating scene?

You’re asking me to address a billion different things, but the short answer is: yes, I think Hannibal was in love with Bedelia.

For the long answer, I’m going to address your points one by one:

But Hannibal never courted her like he did with Will in s2b despite knowing her longer

Really? I think there’s a pretty strong parallel between Hannibal’s actions towards Bedelia and his actions towards Will. The initial connection is professional, Hannibal arranges a situation for each of them where they kill someone and continually pushes at their “professional” boundaries. After Hannibal betrays Margot to Mason leading to her forcible sterilization and the termination of the pregnancy, Will says to Hannibal “You don’t want me to have anything in my life that isn’t you” (Tome-Wan script, page 16). This parallels to Bedelia’s situation with Hannibal: Hannibal’s actions lead to her retirement, but his refusal to accept her retirement leaves him as her sole patient (which has some interesting implications that what Will always wanted was a family and what Bedelia always wanted was her career, but I digress).

He offers them both the same thing: the chance to know him, just in different ways. Bedelia is much stricter about boundaries and professionalism, and so Hannibal gets close to her through his professional connection to her and offers her glimpses through their therapy sessions. Will has more issues with maintaining such boundaries (from telling Hannibal that they shouldn’t get too friendly to more or less adopting a child together over the span of a couple episodes), and so Hannibal is able to woo him in what could be regarded as a more ‘traditional’ fashion (their dinners, conversations, professing to care about him, their…ahem…shared hobbies in season 2B).

Overall, to me that suggests less that he wasn’t trying to court Bedelia in any way and more that he had different approaches because they’re two different people with different relationships to him. And even though Bedelia is stated to have refused invitations to dine with Hannibal, he still finds a workaround by bringing her dinner in Savoureux.

Mads said he wanted a future with Will unlike with other people he hooked up with

I admit I don’t remember the precise quote from Mads Mikkelsen, but did he say he *wanted* a future with Will unlike the others or that he *saw* a future with Will unlike the others? Because if it’s the second then it’s very possible to interpret it that he wanted a future with any/all of them but that Will is the only one he thought would accept the future he offered them.

Even in Italy H was pining about Will all the time and telling Bedelia how much he loves Will.

I’d say this is not entirely true. Will is not a topic of conversation in all of Antipasto, and in later episodes it’s Bedelia who tends to turn the conversation back to Will. She’s the one who draws the comparison between Hannibal’s feelings for Will and Mischa, and in Contorno Hannibal is talking about snails and fireflies and Bedelia is the one who mentions Will (page 4).

I know he slept with Bedelia but he probably slept with Anthony too and he slept with Alana, Hannibal is a hedonistic guy who sleeps around. For him sleeping with someone doesn't mean he is in love with them.

I’m inclined to agree that Hannibal isn’t necessarily in love with everyone he sleeps with and has probably slept around a reasonable amount. But beyond just hedonism, I don’t think Hannibal regards sex as the ultimate intimacy. The ultimate intimacy, the intimacy that he is continually seeking, is being known and understood completely, and here we get into where his relationships with all these different people diverge.

Anthony was never particularly meant to understand him. In fact, he could be seen as presumptuous in assuming he understands Hannibal and his situation better than he actually does.

With Alana, it’s stated explicitly in Digestivo (script page 23): “Could I have ever understood you?” “No.” You can quibble over whether Hannibal was being honest, but I think Hannibal overall is actually quite honest unless he has a reason not to be. In that moment, she knew what he was and she also needed him to save Will and help deal with Mason, so I don’t think he had a reason to lie in that situation. If anything, it could be read as him being kind and giving her closure by telling her she never stood a chance. There’s a sense of finality to it.

With Bedelia, I think it’s important to go back to their very first scene together in Sorbet (page 18). By the time the show starts, she has an awareness that he is not entirely as he presents himself, that he wears a human veil. Even though she says that they are not friends, she also says “I see enough of you to see the truth of you. And I like you.” And, most significantly, in the script it is followed by the direction “Hannibal smiles, liking her, too.” That is, in fact, the only direction given in the script in that entire exchange. It was important enough to note in both the dialogue and the direction that these two people like each other.

When she tells him she is no longer his therapist in Sakizuke, he is hurt by this (the exact directions in the script read “Hannibal pauses, an imperceptible wound”, page 6). He is hurt by her rejection, just as he is hurt by Will’s rejection later in the season. When they reunite post-Mizumono bloodbath, he is still clearly hurt (“You’re not in a position to ask, Dr. Du Maurier. You ended our patient-psychiatrist relationship.” It’s downright petulant). But he does say something else very significant: “I never found you to be lacking” (Antipasto script, page 17). He fully believes that she has the ability to understand him and engage with him in the way he wants her to.

she pretends as if Hannibal held them in the same regard which is obviously not true

Will is the one who dubs her “Bride of Frankenstein”, and she replies “we’ve both been his bride”. This isn’t her elevating herself, she’s calling Will out on his hypocrisy. I’d also like to point out that “not the same” does not inherently mean “less than”.

she even says my relationship with Hannibal is not as passionate as yours

That is in response to Will asking her if she ever considered killing Hannibal. She’s pointing out to him that the way he and Hannibal express their passion for each other is attempted murder and is telling him that is not how her relationship with Hannibal works.

why make herself seem like a competition when she is clearly not?

Again, I don’t think she does? She repeatedly turns their conversations back to Will’s relationship with Hannibal and how he feels about him and whether his experiences with Hannibal and his feelings for him are informing his current actions. Directly from their conversation in “And the Woman Clothed in Sun” (page 23):

WILL GRAHAM How is one patient worthy of compassion and not another? BEDELIA DU MAURIER I'm under no illusions how morally consistent my compassion has been. (then) How is one murderer worthy of compassion and not another?

And then get scared shitless when Will actually took her as a competition and released Hannibal

Once again, I’d like to refer to the directions in the script (The Wrath of the Lamb, page 14-15). “She sits motionless, staring into the middle distance, absorbing what she’s just been told.” After he tells her he doesn’t intend Hannibal to be caught a second time, it describes “a flicker of alarm”. And finally after he outright threatens her, “Bedelia is enraged in a way we’ve never seen.” Shock, a flicker of alarm, and then rage. “Scared shitless” is your interpretation, there are other interpretations of what is actually shown and written.

which led to the leg eating scene?

Even though Bryan Fuller stated that his intention with the stinger was that Hannibal and Will had gone after Bedelia, he also mentioned a couple other interpretations of that scene (that Bedelia did it to herself, or that it was someone else, potentially Hannibal’s uncle Robert). When commenting on scenarios he’d imagined for a season 4 he also mentioned a scene of Bedelia walking down the street and then arriving home and removing her prosthetic leg, indicating that he intended for her to not only survive but remain at large, which has some interesting implications. But aside from that, I don’t think loving someone and eating them are mutually exclusive actions to Hannibal. After all, he did take a bone saw to Will’s head with the intention of eating his brain.

So to get back to your first question: Do you think he was ever in love with Bedelia like he was in love with Will?

I realize that this is a slightly unpopular opinion, but yes. Furthermore I believe that Hannibal was capable of loving Alana. The sticking point with all of these relationships is whether they were capable of loving him for what he is.

I believe Mads Mikkelsen made a comment that when Hannibal seems to like people - Jack Crawford, Alana Bloom, Bella Crawford, etc. - he is not simply pretending to manipulate them, he does genuinely like them. To me, there is a real simplicity about Hannibal as a character, in that he does what he wants. “I was curious what would happen” is a major motivating factor for him - he wants to see what will happen if he does something, so he does it. In that way he’s very honest. Furthermore, I’d say that he is, at heart, a romantic. He romanticizes everything, including things that most of us don’t (pain, death, cannibalism). It isn’t a stretch to think that he is romantic enough to love anyone he considers worthy of his time and attention.

Of the three we see involved with him through the show (Alana, Bedelia, and Will), there are a lot of similarities. All three of them are intelligent, attractive, and all three of them have the potential capacity to seek to understand him in the way he wants most.

In spite of what I wrote about his relationship with Alana above, I think there was some real potential. They have a decent amount of history together. Alana is a psychiatrist, and she has a real curiosity, enough that she has to resist the urge to be too near Will Graham because she would not be able to separate professional and personal interest. That sort of curiosity could potentially lead someone to want to understand Hannibal, but in the end that curiosity doesn’t extend to actually being able to truly understand or (more importantly) accept him (see above).

Will’s empathy means that understanding isn’t the issue, which is what first appeals to Hannibal and what he talks about with Bedelia in Fromage (page 33):

HANNIBAL He’s nothing like me. We see the world in different ways, yet he can assume my point of view. BEDELIA How has he demonstrated that? HANNIBAL He’s demonstrated the capacity. BEDELIA By profiling the criminally insane? HANNIBAL As good a demonstration as any. I find it reassuring. BEDELIA It’s nice to have someone see us, Hannibal. Or have the ability to see us. It requires trust. Trust isn’t easy for you.

He sees the understanding that Will is capable of and it’s something he’s always wanted, but even though Will comes to see Hannibal by the end of the first season, he does not accept Hannibal or his own ability to be like Hannibal. That’s the central conflict for Will for the remainder of the series. Even though he admits that them killing Dolarhyde together is “beautiful”, he still pulls both of them off the cliff, and the intention behind that is debatable. Is he rejecting his Becoming by trying to destroy himself and Hannibal? Is he trying to fake their deaths so they can escape together? Was it something he planned all along? Was it impulsive when he realized how far gone he was? Since the show doesn’t continue there are multiple ways to read it. That’s where fanfictions and headcanons come in. I’m not dealing with that scene in my fics so I’m not required to have strong feelings in any particular direction at this time.

When it comes to Bedelia, it’s obvious from the first scene that she and Hannibal have known each other for a long time. As pointed out above, their first scene is very clear about the relationship they have: Bedelia may hold to certain professional boundaries (and those are a little fuzzy what with the after session glass of wine and all) but ultimately they are two people who like each other.

Her first scene also establishes that she is, at that point, far more aware of Hannibal than anyone else is (her comments about a “human veil”). She knows enough to know he is not being honest, and yet she still continues to be his psychiatrist.

There’s also a significant scene in Fromage (page 32). Most of the scene remained in the finished episode, but some lines that are in the script didn’t make the cut:

HANNIBAL For the first time in a long while I see a possibility of friendship. We are -- 25 INT. BEDELIA’S HOME OFFICE - DAY 4 25 Hannibal sits opposite Bedelia. BEDELIA Is there someone new in your life? HANNIBAL I met a man much like myself, same hobbies, same world views. But I’m not interested in being his friend. I’m curious about him and that got me curious about friendship. BEDELIA That’s progress. I always considered you an individualist. The social anti-social. HANNIBAL A polite way of saying sociopath? BEDELIA I’m not sure how to categorize you in those terms. And I think you prefer it that way. HANNIBAL I’m afraid once you figure me out, you’ll lose interest. BEDELIA Whose friendship are you considering? HANNIBAL Oddly enough, a colleague and a patient. Not unlike how I am a colleague and patient of yours. We’ve discussed him before. BEDELIA Will Graham.

Now, the cut lines are extremely interesting (“I’m afraid once you figure me out, you’ll lose interest” pretty clearly indicates that he wants Bedelia’s attention and interest), but even with those lines cut, it’s an interesting scene. Hannibal draws a comparison between his relationship with Will and his relationship with Bedelia. That could be interpreted as pushing at her previously stated boundary of “you are my patient and my colleague, not my friend”, maybe saying “see it’s totally possible to be friends as well as having a therapist/patient relationship. Or it could be interpreted as him taunting her slightly (“since you insist that you aren’t my friend I’m looking elsewhere”).

A little later in the conversation, this exchange is in the script (page 33):

HANNIBAL (CONT’D) You’ve helped me to better understand what I want in a friendship. And what I don’t. BEDELIA Someone worthy of your friendship. The word “worthy” rings true for Hannibal. She can see it.

Hannibal is seeking someone worthy of his friendship, and since he has extended overtures to Bedelia and continues to extend them (the dinner in Savoureux) we can extrapolate that he has deemed her worthy and continues to consider her worthy (“I never found you to be lacking”).

Furthermore, there are a few choice quotes on love from Hannibal in season 2. First is from Naka-choko (page 13): “You failed to murder your brother because you still love him.” There are a select number of people that Hannibal fails to murder throughout the series: Will, Jack, Alana (although that can be put down equally to Abigail) and Bedelia. What’s more, he could be considered to have failed to kill Bedelia twice: in Sakizuke when he shows up at her house in his murder suit and again in Dolce when she says goodbye to him in a way he hadn’t planned.

This second quote is technically less firm since it occurs during a dream/vision sort of sequence, but the writers still saw fit to put it in Hannibal’s mouth, so I think it counts: In the opening of Shiizakana (page 2), he says: “No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them. By that love we see potential in our beloved. Through that love we allow our beloved to see their potential. Expressing that love, our beloved's potential comes true.”

Everything that is said there applies to Bedelia as much as to Will. Hannibal saw her potential for violence and placed Neal Frank in her path as a conduit to realizing that potential. He continues to push at her in that regard in Italy (“technically, you killed him”).

Furthermore, in Mizumono, during his “breakup” with Will (page 33), this is what he has to say: “I let you in. I let you know me. I let you see me.” Who else does he let in? Who else does he let know him and see him? Bedelia.

So yeah, I think it’s totally reasonable to assume that Hannibal loved Bedelia.

#bedannibal #my meta #the funniest thing about this is that bedannibal isn't even my primary ship in the fandom #and the fic i'm working on is canon divergent so most of this doesn't even apply to it #anyways #don't come to my blog trying to start shit #i am an opera diva and a theatre kid #you are neither meaner nor more annoying than i am

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