#btw this is just my opinion - i'm not looking for critiques or drama

[intrepidradish]

Media: NBC Hannibal

Year/my age: 2020/30

What drew me to the media:

I had long been a fan of Hannibal Lector. Silence of the Lambs was one of the first suspense thriller movies I watched, and it's so good. I think it's a perfect movie for me. It never gets stale. Hannibal is good too. Red Dragon is pretty good (but I think I liked Manhunter better). I haven't seen Hannibal Rising... oops. I wonder where that is playing. Guess I know what I'm doing later.

So it made sense that I was intrigued by the show. I didn't just launch from Farscape into Hannibal btw. I actually took a detour through some animated shows. The one I remember the most was the new She-Ra. That show rocked, but I always felt a little weird about the concept of writing porn for a show aimed at children. I had the inclination too, and then backpedaled. People that can do that are way more dedicated to the craft then me. Hats off to you.

Also REMINDER the shutdown happened in March of 2020. I was trapped inside. I watched Hannibal. Probably not amazing for my brain, but....eeeeehhhhh.... we were in an impossibly difficult situation and trauma be where trauma does. (that sentence purposely makes no sense)

What made me a fan:

I'd like to say I was already a fan as stated above. I love Hannibal Lector. I was already truffle snuffling for monstrous men. Mads Mikkelson is a weird babe, etc etc. I also really dug the religious imagery and over-the-top murders (but if we're critiquing, the dialogue was very heavy handed, perhaps too much)

I'm not a serial killer fan. I'm not particularly interested in true crime. Procedural television bores me. But season one was so refreshing for Hannibal! I think there should be more really fucked up detectives (looks at Disco Elysium, yeah! YEAH!) and that's coming from someone whose favorite detective is actually Poirot, the most uptight fussy ponce imaginable.

What drew me in is also what draws a lot of people into Hannibal. The romantic tension and the fooooooooooood. I love food. I love making love with a good meal. I love the flouncy, fantastical elements of expensive dining mixed with DEATH DECAY DESTRUCTION EAT EAT EAT DESTROY DEVOUR. Would you like some more wine with that? It's a three hundred year old vintage that cost $2K from a province that was burned in ww2 and never recovered.

Like...It's great.

It's also a very pretty show. It's also a very different show.

Like I watched Killing Eve too, and that show is fun, but it's like....not nearly as deranged as this one. Like Hannibal is a crazy show. I can't imagine what kinds of hoops people jumped through to get this thing made.

Have I written fanfiction for it? Why or why not?

I have written ONE fanfiction for it. Doneness is a very weird story. I had two people edit it. One being iterations, who said it wasn't gross enough and the ending was disappointing (she's very honest) and the other being Pierrot_dreams, who I know in real life and is a fantastic writer/editor but also writes insanely violent porn. We were talking recently and reminiscing on Doneness. She was like "that story was fucking weird."

It is.

But I wanted to write a fanfiction with the same tone as the show, which is difficult, because the show is, as mentioned, fucking wonky. The dialogue is intense. The symbolism is heavy handed. Food is really important. The romantic tension is like a cut vein, you're bleeding out, and in love.

I wanted it to be a procedural murder mystery like from the first season but with all the drama of the second season. I wanted it to be gnarly. I wanted the villain to be understandable. I wanted a lot. I think I deliver on that, but the fandom for Hannibal is also a little weird.

I'm not disappointed with the reception of this very weird story. I only wrote one story, so I never built up a fanbase for my own writing there. Every time I reread it, I enjoy it a lot. It's well written, and well edited, and also crazy (and the sex is hot).

Opinion on the fandom:

I think people want to make this show much softer than it is. I think people see these two violent insane characters and want them tamed. They want them in their coffee shop au, where there is no killing only fine dining. That's fine. I never ever want to be a gatekeeper to what people want from a media. I'm just not going to read it.

I liked the show because it was violent and vengeful and it was never going to be fixed. The situation was untenable. I hope those two bastards did die. I hope they aren't on their honey moon in Italy or whatever. I hope they got smashed against the rocks and took hours to die looking at each other with blood and salt water in their mouths, unable to move. I hope Bedelia got eaten by another food fetishist.

It's grotesque obsession and sometimes that's love. That's the story. I wouldn't want to change that. That's what stories are for, for me to live as someone else for awhile because WOW that's absolutely never going to happen to me. Hahah. Thank GOD.

Would I read it again?

Sure! Terror loves Hannibal. I really want to get in the mood to read all her stories because I bet they are amazing. Some of the best fanfiction I read for Hannibal were these quickies written by ScarletteStarlett. I'd read those again because wow they are great.

[miceenscene]

What was your writing process with the first SoPDoE story? For example, did you have a general concept for the story outlined ahead of writing it, or did you write first and see where it took you? Or maybe your process was totally different--I'd love to know any of your experience and process that you're willing to share!

Did you learn anything while writing it that may help other writers in terms of writing a longfic, improving craft, etc?

I'm going to go ahead and put this beneath a cut because I can already tell it's going to be long. :P also SoPDoE spoiler warning?

SoPDoE began as a spite fic. I read (well, started reading) a different shakarian arranged marriage au and found myself frustrated that the plot wasn't being handled the way I wanted it to be--which is really the best way to begin a story because it means you have an Opinion. The first chapter just sprang forth fully formed [their parallel "Absolutely Not" answers and Garrus' "With all due respect, what the fuck?" and Shepard just verbally bitch-slapping in their first interaction]. And then major pathways became clear very quickly. I knew that the Council was going to break them up quite early on in the writing. I knew that Galena dying would be a major catalyst to push them together. But some things came later, like the whole Garrus starting a Pier Earth Imports for Shepard plot-line came. And a whole slew of kissing scenes had to be removed/reworded because their relationship arc wasn't making sense for the drama I wanted in act III. (I did save those scenes, btw. they're in a doc called Kissing Graveyard XD)

There's this concept you've probably already come across of plotters vs. pant-sers. Aka writers who plot out their whole stories before beginning writing and writers who just jump into the story without anything planned more than the next sentence. If I had to pick, I'm definitely in the plotters, but realistically, I'm in both. I like knowing where the general flow of the story is going, even if I'm not sure how to get there or what getting there will actually look like. For SoPDoE, I always knew that Garrus & Shepard would finish the story Together, but the exact details of Together changed over time as the story progressed. (At one point Garrus & Shep were duo spectres, till I realized that would make no sense for a turian who just turned his back on the whole Hierarchy.) And that's really the best way to do things, at least in my opinion. You have your heading so you have momentum, but you also aren't so driven that you can't stop and smell the roses along the journey.

I think the biggest thing that SoPDoE taught me was how much work goes into writing a whole-ass novel. Knowing that makes me feel better about starting wip's that I eventually abandon, because I know that the idea wasn't worth the effort. It's a good way to grant myself permission to move on and find the next idea that actually Is worth the effort.

The other thing SoPDoE taught me was how to keep myself engaged in a story. People write for all different reasons and when I began I don't think I knew what mine was. I know now. SoPDoE was catharsis for me. Garrus was my self-insert in this fic, especially through the Galena plot line as I am also losing a parent to a long drawn-out terminal illness that will one day take a sudden turn for the end. This is what they mean when they say Write What You Know. But besides catharsis, SoPDoE and all of my writing really are performance. I love having an audience beyond just my wonderful readers. I have a close circle of friends who see my stuff before anyone else does. I trust their opinion, their critique; I strive to surprise them, to delight them, to make them bust into my DM's in a frothing rage. They've taught me so much about writing, and they are who I write for when I can't write for myself. If you can figure out what type of carrot will keep you plodding along the path of writing, you'll be leagues ahead of so many.

As far as improving craft, the best advice I can give is to write. You gotta write. Better to write a full page of utter garbage than to not write anything at all. Even the garbage will teach you something.