#hannigram is in fact the best example though

[thesebright-lights]

My favorite ship dynamic is “actively making each other worse”

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 1

Propaganda Under Cut

Alana Bloom

she kissed will graham in s1 and dated hannibal in s2 so you can imagine how bad the fandom is to her. fun fact she's in a canon lesbian relationship now tho <3

The show literally does the yaoi treatment of victimisation for the benefit of the male leads to her. And then the fandom mistreats her

I'm not sure if this even counts but...Literally a victim of Yaoi along with several other characters in-series, but she got it almost the worst. The entire show is just people dying because the two male leads are OBSESSED with each other and can't be normal about anything. Alana Bloom, actual PhD of psychology and consultant to the FBI, got kissed by one guy, fucked and fed people-meant by the other, and pushed out a window by the murder husbands' forced-surrogate daughter. Like. Actual victim of several crimes caused by yaoi. She's probably one of the few examples of a Yaoi Victim overcoming and evolving past her yaoi-related trauma into a stronger person/character, though: She gets an entire character overhaul and a hot, millionairess for a wife. She kills a man with an eel. She becomes head of the BSHCI, effectively putting her in complete power over her jackass cannibal ex-bf. She does quite well. Unfortunately, the rest of her screen time is spent trying not to get killed in the ongoing fallout of Hannibal and Will's fucked up courtship, but hey. Can't have everything. I don't even know if I'm saying anything valid here: the fandom loves her, but I supposed her position outside of the Hannigram relationship relegates her to a non-subject in a lot of Hannigram-focused fanwork. She's an 'obstacle' to their relationship only in the sense that Will had a crush on her once that went nowhere and Hannibal started an actual relationship with her SPECIFICALLY to piss off Will. I guess she's also a more literal obstacle as Hannibal's jailer and Will's friend who's constantly pointing out to him that Morals exist and he should try having some of those, maybe.

Gwen

She stands in the way of Merthur, by far the most popular ship in the fandom. I haven’t seen it as much in recent years, but back in the days of fanfiction.net she got slut shamed so badly for having been romantically interested in three of the male characters over the course of the show, which is just... normal straight woman behavior, meanwhile Merlin crushed on pretty much every woman who even looked at him in the early seasons of the show and got no hate for that whatsoever. I barely even read Merthur fics (not because it’s m/m, just because certain aspects of their relationship don’t appeal to me) but the “Gwen is a slut” attitude was so pervasive across the fandom, even fics that weren’t explicitly anti-Gwen would “jokingly” call her a slut. I even saw a few fics demonizing her for having an affair with Lancelot despite the fact that SHE WAS ENCHANTED when that happened, and surprise surprise, Lancelot (who was also under the influence of magic) got none of that hate, and neither did Arthur, who got enchanted to fall in love with multiple women over the course of the show.

Canonically Arthur Pendragon's love interest and an important and interesting character in the show who's completely shoved aside and ignored in favour of the medieval bbc yaoi ship. At best they put her and Morgana in Lesbian Timeout (ie make them get together and then reduce them to wingwomen at best because god forbid we focus on the medieval bbc yuri). Justice for Gwen right now!

She is prince Arthur's love interest (eventually wife). Arthur is MADLY in love with her. He tells his tyrannical father he would give up his crown to be with her (she's a servant in the series). He forgives her cheating on him with Lancelot (!), which in the show is caused by an evil enchantment, but the characters never find out about it. He chooses her time and time again. His love for Gwen is literally never put into question. Many fans insist to this day that there was no chemistry between Gwen and Arthur compared to Arthur and Merlin. Arthur isn’t even particularly nice to Merlin most of the time! The funny thing is that Merlin himself ships these two so hard and does everything he can to help them get together!! Gwen & Arthur are adorable and too many fans were drunk on the yaoi fumes to see it. ARTHUR WAS A SIMP FOR GWEN.

[ladymoonveil]

Been venturing back into Reaper76 lately, and even though activity has died down a lot compared to when Overwatch was in its heyday, this is still probably my favourite pairing to sink my teeth into. 

The fandom is also a much nicer space to be in, especially since that annoying, vocal group of people who loved to villainize Jack Morrison based on the colour of his skin has stopped harassing and policing people after it was canonically revealed that:

1. Gabe was the more experienced leader during the Omnic Crisis, but Jack was the one who held the team together and brought out the best in the people around him.

2. Jack was ultimately chosen as Strike Commander because Gabrielle Adawe and the UN found him to be the more suitable candidate for rebuilding, especially since this is now a much more political role after the war has ended.  (Valkyrie short)

3. Unlike a lot of incorrect assumptions that were made, the promotion was not the main cause of the rift between the two characters.  Gabe was, in fact, a supportive friend and teammate who didn’t jump to bitterness over this.  If anything, it was Jack giving Gabe too much leeway and defending his sometimes questionable actions in the years that followed which resulted in his downfall.

There was a year or so that felt like stepping into a minefield where Reaper76 works were written by people who actively hated half the ship, and the sole reason for one character’s existence is to grovel for forgiveness.  It’s character bashing but tagged as the main pairing.  (Something similar happened to MCU!Stony, which is why I’m mainly into comics!Stony now.)  Some of the excuses I saw trying to justify Reaper working for Talon, a literal terrorist organization behind horrifying acts (and not a double agent either), was mind boggling.  It’s made worse because they don’t judge Jack by the same standards, and actively went out of their way to paint him as some useless white guy who barely contributed to the war effort and “stole” the promotion.      

I remember some of my favourite creators being harassed and bullied to the point that they straight up deleted their stories and left the ship.  The “moral high ground” fandom police held up their own headcanons as the be-all end-all for everyone (because I guess they never learned the basic fandom etiquette of “Your Headcanon Is Not Canon”), and if you disagreed with them you were called a bunch of names and had to deal with some truly terrible BS.  

It’s such a disservice to Gabe and Jack too, because they’re complex characters whose relationship got reduced to one of jealousy and hatred, and the things that each of them were allowed to explore ended up being severely limited in fear of pissing off said fandom police. 

Luckily this isn’t really the case anymore, and with a bit of digging you can find many fics that aren’t one-sided.  My favourites have always been the ones that allowed them to explore their own shades of grey. 

After many years of being in various fandom spaces, I feel like I’m generally not as interested in participating anymore unless I know that the source material is aimed at a mature audience, or the people I am interacting with will behave like adults.  Some positive examples of this would be:

1. Hannigram, where the fandom has pretty effectively shut down policing (because seriously are you going to try and police the “murder husbands” ship that contains a cannibal serial killer?)

2. A lovely Taiwanese Top Gun discord server where everyone is very well versed in their fandom etiquette of “Ship and Let Ship”, “I Am Responsible For My Own Content Consumption”, and the aforementioned “Your Headcanon is Not Canon”. 

Things like this really make such a big difference towards having a good time, instead of dealing with all sorts of fandom wank.

[queerhannibal]

Since we're at the topic of The Fosters...I've recently read all the Will/Walter/Molly scenes in the scripts and there were so many changes that made shifts in tone between those three and some scenes were deleted and I've been wondering why. Basically in the scripts Will and Molly seem a lot closer/warmer to each other and especially Will seems much more loving toward her. For example when he finds her in the hospital he "quietly weeps" by her bed and hold her hand lovingly. [1/2]

[2/2] (As far as I remember). And they also kiss which is weird that they never do on screen?? (I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing that at all). I wonder what was the reason for making their relationship more distant than from the script. AND I soo wish we knew more about them! We’re just left to wonder how real it was (we know it was real, but HOW real was it, yk?) I like Molly a lot and I’d like to know if Will was good to her the way he should have been, not just, you know, “trying his best.”

!!! I know, I’ve noticed that too!!! It seems like they decided to cut some pretty significant scenes between Will and his family and also some pretty significant discussion of what life was like for Will during that time… the tone of how it ended up being shown in the show and the tone shown in the scripts are almost completely different

The only real explanation I can think of for it is that they decided it would read better to have hannigram as endgame if they downplayed Will’s love for Molly? Because even as it is it’s….. supremely shitty that Will ends up leaving his lovely wife and son to be a serial killer. I mean it’s the right choice imo but like. How awful. 

And it would’ve felt even more awful if we’d had to watch him being super loving with Molly, yeah? Like. As it is we can look at the fact that he was kind of distant with her and say “oh maybe it wasn’t really that good of a relationship”, but if they’d really made it seem like everything between him and Molly was super wonderful and warm and affectionate… idk that would make it harder

but then again idk why they’d think that was a bad thing lol like this whole show is about things being as rough as possible for Will at all times, and it would have made the choice to free Hannibal and choose him more significant if we’d gotten to see more of how deeply and genuinely he loved Molly

As it stands, I do believe that Will loved Molly in a very real and good way!! I imagine he was a bit of a mess when they met (and some lines from the script that didn’t make it into the show imply this as well) but it seems like they built a really good, solid, stable relationship. It reads to me more as being a warm and comforting and chill thing than a super passionate relationship though? Like. Really good friends who enjoy having sex with each other kind of romance, you know?

Which is a good solid kind of romance!! It’s an excellent foundation for a marriage bc it tends to be very stable, and I see that with them, a stability and a comfort that season one Will never would have imagined being able to have with someone

But unfortunately it was also always going to pale in comparison to the electric soul bond thing he’s got going with Hannibal, especially once Hannibal stuck his fingers into it and fucked it up

[nalyra-dreaming]

  So I always post a recap, mostly for myself 🙂 (for later^^), but I hope you will enjoy as well! (Got a kiss from Will there and Hannibal didn’t kill me!  – Win win!!) 🙂

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon this time, planning on working on Ravage stuff that evening with Romina, but we ended up with Electra and room service instead, which was awesome. (Thank you soooo much for the little firefly man dear!!!)

Thursday was Ravage ToDos then and London – going by Fuller’s on the way

getting my daughter a Harry Potter „Hedwig“ (as requested^^)

and dinner at the Michelin-star „Aquavit“ (Skandinavian Restaurant – the Blood Pudding was DELICIOUS!)

  and then Pinter’s Theatre, watching Martin Freeman’s performance.

    (We tried to catch him at the Stage Door, but he came out after 2h(?) and we left after 1h in the snow, because you know, Mads and Richard wouldn’t go so well with pneumonia^^).

Friday I spent a LOT of time trying to catch all the Fannibals I saw, say hi and invite them to sign „my Mads“ – bought back then for the German Comic Con 2016 (when he canceled) this has now been utterly filled up with Fannibal love from all over the place! (And Evalie brought her Will! It’s the same one from the meme photo you might have seen btw^^)

(And I had him sign it, too :))) Picked up lots of beautiful things from the con, but they’re mostly in the big package still and on their way home.

Opening ceremony had standing ovations, driving home the fact, that these people were actually there!

  Truly amazing.

Meet and greet was fun but short, they only did a few minutes each.

  Still enough time to realize a few interesting things about them, Scott being really aware of what we put on the table for example and interested in Radiance (looking through it ) and trying the Hannigram smarties that @TheCakeIsPeople brought, Aaron loving that people liked the Go-Getters and his other projects so much, Jeremy very unsure at that point still (Twitter feed later showed he always said the same things^^) but very deep and elaborate answers already, Richard interested in where everybody was from and commenting when he knew the place, Mads on beer 4 (afaik) at our table and a bit brisk, recognizing fans he met before, talking swedish with the Fannibals there and refusing to put on the bite mask we had laid out (as decoration) on sight^^^^. Darn. 😛

  On Saturday I had 5 (!) photo ops, group with Romina, Aaron & Scott, 2 Mads and a Mads and Richard one. I took the cardboard to the photo op with Mads and we had to redo the photo 4 times, because of the glare :))) (Starfury put them all up for digital download, wohooo) and he was amazed by all the signatures on it!! Also – really life size 😛

The other was with something for the Kickstarter, I can’t show you yet^^.

Richard didn’t really pose that day, he was very stiff, hands in his pockets, standing to the side – we wondered if he maybe had a bad con experience before. (That was different day 2, yeah, good job Fannibals!!). Unfortunately you cannot see the “I’m fine” on my shirt, that’s what I was pointing at^^

Panels from noon, with Aaron and Scott being their usual hilarious selfs, Mads kind and witty (even though some of the questions were really… ugh. Disgraceful – someone asked him if he got „excited“ in the sex scenes for Polar(!) and someone else told him he didn’t have a fashion sense (like what the actual fuck?)).

Richard had an introduction interview with Sean on the first day, with only a few audience questions. Again, I think he was a bit … IDK, careful. On Sunday he did an open panel and was way more relaxed there as well! And he is SO WITTY and intelligent! And much more good looking in person than on screen somehow. Like really. A bit scary. :))

  Mads is very nice, smelling lightly of cigarettes (well, duh^^), it was funny to watch/experience the poses he switches through for photos^^. Very easy to ask and stand next to. My hands were shaking nonetheless^^.

Aaron and Scott gave me one of the best hugs ever, I already had my pose with them from last time and told them so, just wanting a hug 🙂

Signing was fun, Mads and Richard, with Mads signing my three books (not showing you Ravage yet!), and I showed him the scene with the illustration of „Will pushing Hannibal in a wheelchair, at Bedelia’s dinner“ – because he had said in his panel that Will would have really enjoyed having the upper hand in S4, pushing Hannibal around in a wheelchair(!!). AND I FUCKING WROTE THAT. (Not actually in „A blackish red hue“ (at least the Ao3 version! (The book version has that scene)) but the image has created for a scene EXACTLY of that (and then adapted into the book, with permission of the artist(!)). I just…. I WANT TO SEE THAT, DAMMIT!! He said „Very good call“ :))) And then personalized it to me <33

  Also, at that point he knew about the cardboard cutout being from the GCC, so they must’ve talked about it backstage! And I asked him to sign it all over his own face which he did, grinning. 

And he’s finally on the LA Times ad, completing it.

AND on the sword sheath, checking all the signatures and commenting on them. He wanted to know where it was from and I explained and he was amazed. (Since he and Richard signed so small (in comparison to Eddie Izzard^^), I was able to put Scott, Aaron and Jeremy on it as well – you can’t see Scott here because he didn’t press that hard, his signature is above Aaron’s).

Oh, and Mads didn’t know that Hannibal got an Emmy nom that year we put up the ad in the LA Times – he was surprised and asked me which ones and of COURSE I’d had forgotten. Hope his team relays him the info via the tag on Twitter^^.

Richard just grinned a bit when I told him that the book is my S4-8 and that it starts at the Motel. He had an interesting expression on his face, I can’t really describe it, maybe a „would’ve sported dimples if he actually had them“, you know. Amusement-tinged. Also very interested in the signatures on the sword sheath!

Life goals. :)))

I had dinner in the bar late afternoon (the London Pride ale is very good imho^^), and then the cosplay contest was on and Noah won, yay, as flaming Chilton!!! They put up the incredible Wendigo-Cake there, from KitchenConjurer – it was cut up the next day, because Mads wasn’t at the cosplay contest.

Don’t remember what I did after the cosplay, lol. Ahem. 🙂 I think I went to my room because I was exhausted. ^^ All the nerves shot from the photo shoots and signings^^.

Next morning were more photos – another with Richard (and a little red dragon by PersephoneSiren!!!!!), who was so much more relaxed that day, and one with Jeremy – who was a bit bewildered by my ask to give me Bunny Ears – and THEN went and did the same expression Hugh Dancy and Joe Anderson did!!!!!! ROFL. Amazing!

  Incredible panels followed – I would invite everyone who hasn’t to read through the Twitter transcript tweets – Aaron and Scott gave Mads a run for his money – aka he never stood a chance :))))

And then they went and cut the ear and nose/chin off the Wendigo cake and Scott kissed Aaron with its lips and you should have seen Mads’ face :))))) Hilarious! ❤

  Jeremy is a panel revelation(!), I would pay REAL money to have him, Richard and Hugh on one stage, talking. These three must be so extraordinary together. (They already are separately, just saying… that would be like an intellectual orgasm).

Had to queue early and so I went and got my autos from Aaron and Scott and Jeremy then, who were soooo sweet and appreciative. And Aaron smiled when he saw the Go-Getters DVD, gave the DVD inside a little pet and signed it to me with a very sweet personalization.

Can’t wait for his new film btw, because the Go-Getters is hilarious and you should definitely watch it!!!!!

Another bar visit for food and ale and then the closing ceremony. Already.

It’s been almost 5 days and yet the time flew.

I cried.

And then I went to my room and packed up everything, creating an impromptu bubblewrap-suitcase. Went through fine, fortunately.

It’s been incredible and I will gladly come back no matter the guests (though these were incredible of course!), who knows maybe I can go to FFT3 if/when it happens as well, and I hope I manage some meat-ups. I met more people than I can remember, spent some very precious times in deep discussions on not so easy subjects, which I love and which is so, so, SO important.

If you’re reading this – thank you for doing so!

And if I met you there – thank you for making my weekend. Because the guests is one thing, but meeting you guys…. that is incredible.

I hope you enjoyed this 🙂

Feel free to ask if you have questions!

Personal RDC5 recap So I always post a recap, mostly for myself 🙂 (for later^^), but I hope you will enjoy as well!

[bonearenaofmyskull]

How does one write meta? I am someone who is terrible at critical analyses and has trouble even finding themes in books (eng lit was hell for me!!) but I would love write meta for shows/movies. I just don't know what to look for and how to break it down. Please help me, if you don't mind! I want to be able to articulate/explain why I like or don't like and what I think about the work, character, relationship or topic. I feel like I need a guideline. Also how do you know if a work has substance?

Uh…….

Welp, if all your years of education including, evidently, college hasn’t taught you how to critically read a text (written or media) and write about it in a way that you feel confident in, then I seriously doubt there’s anything I can say in a single post to instill that confidence. That said, I can say what and how I do it, more or less. 

1. Watch the thing. A lot. And then some more. 

My typical schedule for when Hannibal aired in S2 (I wasn’t posting regularly in S1 and S3 was over summer so my schedule got shot all to hell) was to watch the episode the night it aired (Friday), read the questions I’d get about it in my inbox, watch it again right after, get up in the morning on Saturday and read the next set of questions, watch it AGAIN, start drafting answers, and watch it again at least once more that day and two or three times on Sunday. I would get an Amazon copy of the episode so when I wrote anything about any detail in it, I would go find that spot and rewatch it again, maybe two or three times. So my meta responses, unless it was something super quick and easy, typically had no less than five viewings. After the end of a week, no less than ten or twelve. 

At this point, I’ve watched “Aperitif” 27 times just for my job. Overall I think it’s around 70. Meta is time-consuming.

(A small tangent: This–along with the fact that each ask I answered tended to spawn two or three more asks–is something that informed my occasional testiness when someone would come along, say something inaccurate that would mislead or confuse people, and then, when I would say something to them about it, would say, “This is only my opinion!” or “I’m not writing for school!” or “I’ve only watched it once and I just wanted to share my feelings!” or “All interpretations are valid and equal!” Well, some of us are putting in a lot of time and effort into our interpretations and into helping people understand things before and in the process of publishing meta, and others’ lack of these directly makes my work more difficult and time-consuming. It’s frustrating.)

2. Look for patterns.

Hannibal has fairly obvious patterns because Bryan Fuller is many things, but–generally speaking–subtle he is not. So you see the same lines repeated (”They know”), the same images repeated (eyeballs with reflections), the same strains of music (go go Brian Reitzell), the same general topics (transformation, consumption, the human propensity for violence, God), and so forth. But this is true in all texts: if it bears repeating, it will bear examining. This is where themes (in books or otherwise) come from, along with the kinds of lessons that characters learn (or should have learned) through their experiences. 

3. Back up your opinions with text.

If you can’t back it up with text, you don’t have meta. You have headcanon. And sometimes headcanons are just wrong interpretations not because anything in the text directly counters them them, but because multiple things point toward countering them. Interpretations are fine, but they need to have multiple and/or significant portions of text to support them. 

I occasionally get into “the author is dead” debates with people, but as a rule of thumb, if you want to maintain any respectability in this endeavor, imo it’s worthwhile to look at a thing from the perspective of what you think the authors (including actors, directors, writers, etc) were trying to accomplish, and then look for details that support that. So like the “Bedelia cut off her own leg” argument–in the sense that you can’t definitively argue that she didn’t cut off her own leg, since they don’t show on screen who did, the claim that she cut it off herself is weaker than the claim that Hannibal and/or Will did it for her. There are pieces of evidence that imply that Hannibal and/or Will did it, but there is only conjecture to support that Bedelia herself did (”she could have…” this that, or the other). You cannot argue from an absence of evidence, and the evidence of an author’s thinking will be there, in the details. 

4. Study, look things up, and learn to write and argue. 

If Hannibal decides to quote Nietzsche, it don’t matter that you ain’t read Nietzsche in twenty-odd years and never read that particular piece at all. Go do your research, cuz somebody gonna ask. Not only that, but somebody gonna read that shit that is a fuggin philosophy major, so you better get your goddam ducks in a sweet little tidy row. 

Read what other people write about the topic you want to write about. If you want to write MCU meta, get your ass in the MCU meta tag (or whatever it is that they use) and read what people are saying. Some of them are going to be hella smart and help you understand things you didn’t know you misunderstood.

Same with writing. Learn to do that shit, if you don’t know already, on all levels: we’re dealing with ideas here, but there are also organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, and conventions. Reread and edit your shit. I recommend being linear in your organization–I’ve known people who wrote beautiful meta that you wouldn’t ever get any sense of what the point is till the absolute end. Don’t do that to people. Make a point, support it, draw a conclusion. Writing 101 stuff.

Learn to recognize logical fallacies so that you don’t do them when you don’t want to, and so that when you do want to, you can hide them so people won’t call you out on them. And so that you can call out others on them. 

Make no mistake: meta is argument. It’s only pretending to be expository.

With that in mind, know what you’re capable of. If you can’t run with the big dogs, stay on the porch. Especially if you’re easily hurt and/or have self-esteem issues. So much of fandom is all about lovey feelings and not leaving unasked-for criticism on people’s fic and all that–and I support that–but meta is an exception to this. It just is. Everyone is going to be jumping for a chance to tell you how wrong you are, even if they don’t write meta themselves and only watched the show once and just have feelings. 

5. Know your audience. 

Here’s an example of what I mean: I received an ask some years ago about whether or not Hannibal ever was in love with Bedelia, maybe even just a little? Even if it wasn’t like how he feels about Will??? 

Look, I’m a Hannigram shipper, and I wasn’t making any bones about that matter at the time I got that ask. But obviously that was from someone who shipped Bedannibal and really just wanted their poor soul to be soothed, and I can guarandamntee you I found some way to answer yes, in a way that was honest and that I could textually support, even though I myself would not call that relationship “in love.”

If you can, be on the side of your readers. They will be the people who are asking you questions. It doesn’t hurt to demonstrate kindness, as much as you can, without sacrificing the integrity of what you have to say as a meta writer. I’ll be the first to say I’ve made a lot of enemies on this blog because of various arguments I’ve gotten into, and I haven’t always known how important this is. But the people who come to you with questions deserve the best you can possibly give them.

How do you know when a work has substance?

It should be able to check several if not all of the following boxes:

Addresses the human condition in a non-trivial way (needs to be arguable and worth arguing about)

Contains complex characterization (no black and white major characters)

Displays text complexity (you gotta put in some effort to get it)

Exercises intertextuality (allusions to the greater world, other texts, history, etc.) 

Displays artistic quality (in all areas: writing, cinematography, acting, etc.)

Utilizes multiple varying artistic tools (metaphor, symbolism in writing, for example, or an appropriate variety of camera angles)

Controls and maintains a tone appropriate to subject and message

Note that being contextually relevant (dealing with important social issues) is not something that I listed here. Many on Tumblr would say that it should be. You should be at least vaguely aware of how your particular venue (Tumblr vs. reddit, for example) is going to affect your audience’s expectations of such things. 

[convenientalias]

ALL TWELVE OF THE INTIMATE FANFIC ASKS

HOLY SHIT OKAY.

1. what’s your all-time favorite fic? why? could we get a line or twofrom it? 

This question is like asking someone their favorite book. Except worse,because at least you usually have a couple books prepared for that question, acouple standard books. No one ever asks you about fics so you only have likethis really sloppy conglomeration of faves that you have never criticallycompared to each other. Yikes.

So tbh I can’t name a single fic as my favorite, but two of myfavorites are The Finer Shades of Why by Yesac, and The World on His Wrist bybendingsignpost. I will give you a maybe kind of long excerpt of each.

TheFiner Shades of Why (Chapter 30) Fandom: Star Wars

"What are you hoping to gain?”

Again, Dooku stops, this time just at the perimeter of Obi-Wan’s lineof sight. Any further and he’ll be off down the hallway, striding past otherempty cells where Obi-Wan won’t be able to see him.

In the back of his mind, Obi-Wan finds himself wondering just what partof the detention area of the temple he’s in.

"Gain?” he asks slowly, and although Dooku’s back is turned, Obi-Wan canalmost imagine that he sees his lips slowly forming the syllables, like he’sphysically chewing them as he mulls the concept over in his mind. “It is notwhat I stand to gain, Master Kenobi. It is what I stand to lose. You cannot, willnot, give me anything. You have made that clear. But you will find that you canno longer take either.”

The WorldOn His Wrist (Prologue)Fandom: Sherlock

The early days are hard. He has but one watch then and uses it only totell the time. When it begins, it begins like this: First, he is shot in Afghanistan. Second, he wakes to a phone call in Chelmsford, Essex. The call is urgent, a summons to Broomfield Hospital. Car accident on themotorway, massive. He responds in the affirmative, rising out of habit,dressing automatically. He knows the hospital, can’t place this house, andaccepts it as a dream. He has yet to realize he will never dream again. Twenty hours later, focused past any danger of confusion, he settles down.Limbs were lost, lives were saved. Most lives. He drinks his coffee and optsfor a nap before he drives home. Third, he wakes to Bill’s voice and face and more pain than he has ever known.He passes out.

2. what’s your go-to lazy sunday morning fic, the story you like to readunder fluffy covers with 11 AM sunshine slanting through the windows?

I’m hoping this is supposed to be a type of fic and not a specific ficbecause I have never read fanfic under such circumstances, but extrapolatingthat it’s supposed to be a low-key feel-good fic I would say I would probablyread some Teen Wolf fic focused mainly on romance. Possibly a stupidly tropeyAU.

A good example would be the fic Fireman Derek’s Crazy Pie [CheeseburgerBaby] .

3. which trope makes your heart go absolutely weak at the knees? 

This seems to indicate epic romance which is not really my thing. So it’shard for me to come up with anything. Ummm….identity reveals in fics where themain conflict has been secret identities. Are nice. Idk if that qualifies.

4. what trope are you most embarrassed to like? 

Probably definitely non-con.

5. what’s your favorite gross guilty-pleasure pairing? 

Prooooobably Hannigram. You can never quite escape the fact that one ofthem is a cannibal and the other is a mentally unstable FBI profiler. And thatthey try to kill each other and are genuinely obsessed with each other. I mean,I’ve seen it played out in less gross ways and more gross ways but even if youcover your ears and hum really loudly it is still pretty bad.

I enjoy a lot of other guilty pleasure ships but none of them are aspurely, as consistently gross and terrible as Hannigram, so I give Hannigramthe award.

6. is there a setting or time in your life that you strongly associatewith reading a certain fic? (ex: reading star wars slash on a specificvacation)

Not really. Strongly associate it with my desk. Other than that since I am currently at that time in my life I can’t get the nostalgia out of it, I guess.

7. what image or place do you remember from a fic most vividly? whathas left a lasting impression on you?

Ummmm...There’s an NCIS fic called The Window that is really, really effective as a) a kidnapping fic, b) a fic about isolation and mental instability and c) a hurt/comfort fic. The first chapter is terribly long and it takes place over a couple months in a single, mostly empty room, and it’s brutal.

8. have you ever had a shameful experience involving fic? whathappened?

At the end of last summer I was in a restaurant with two friends, a guy and a girl. The guy asked me what I hadd written over the summer because he knew I wrote fanfic. I said I’d actually tried writing some slash and femslash, warning him not to judge.

He said he didn’t judge but he thought “he at least had the right to an explanation.”

It was completely humiliating.

So I told him I had been questioning my sexuality and writing was part of how I thought through things. But now I kind of regret giving him an excuse. Because frankly it was none of his business. It’s not like I was doing anything wrong.

9. if you could meet your favorite author irl, would you? what wouldyou say to them? 

Megan Whalen Turner? I would kind of like to. Probably I would just saysomething typical like, “Your books are amazing.” Actually I sent her fanmailonce so I would probably just reiterate something like that.

10. name a fic that you’ve read more than once. or maybe five times. orten. 

Keep Throwing Things and Slamming the Door by Traincat the basic starter Spideytorch fic, probably the first or second Spideytorch fic I ever read. SECRET IDENTITIES.

Also A Stalking Surprise by Lucifer Rosemaunt, the best of her three Erik/Raoul oneshots with werewolves, just imo. (Yes, she wrote three Erik/Raoul fics with werewolves. I agree, she’s amazing.)

11. what fic do you wish you had written?

 Can’t think of anything off the top of my head. Usually, if a fic is that good, either I take it as inspiration and I write something similar, or I just enjoy its existence because now I don’t have to write it because it already exists.

12. tell me a short story about how fanfiction has intersected withyour life.

Once one of my irl friends dared me to write a fic where Eugene from the movie Gattaca took up throwing knives as a hobby.

I wrote it.

He never actually read it, though. To be fair it’s about 7000 words long. Which is pretty long for a crack prompt. BUT HE WAS ALSO THE GUY FROM QUESTION 8 SO I GIVE HIM ZERO LEEWAY ON THIS.

Anyways this has been a very long answering session, I hope you’re satisfied.

[territorializethis]

WEEK 5, ENTRY 2 of 2: Surrealism, reconsidered.

In terms of a surrealist “canon,” a continuum of texts in that tradition that make the kind of interventions that surrealism does (juxtapose reality and unreality, draw attention to the things we casually accept through that juxtaposition, use strategic discomfort to narrative ends, etc...), I began to consider what a good “counter-text” would be for a movie like Belle du Jour... a visual piece that a. traffics in the surreal image, b. considers, in a Foucaultian way, the Transgression of the Limit as an act of self-definition, a becoming.

For the demarcation I wanted to draw between text and counter-text, I could not shake Belle du Jour’s obsession with sexual violence, its exploitativeness, and its gross, squicky implication that “nono.. its cool.. she really WANTED to be violated.” This demarcation led me to my PERFECT counter-text, a surreal watch that does surreal better than the surrealists themselves (I feel COMPLETELY comfortable asserting that. Fight. Me.). I give you, Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal on NBC, 2013-2015.

Hannibal is based on the prequel novel to Silence of the Lambs, entitled Red Dragon. Interestingly, Red Dragon features an primary antagonist serial killer who sexually exploits his victims (the man Hannibal Lecter is to help Will Graham catch), but in adapting this killer to the big screen, Bryan Fuller refused outright to focus on the sexually assaultive aspect. In explanation, he said: “There are frequent examples of exploiting rape as low-hanging fruit to have a canvas of upset for the audience. The reason the rape well is so frequently used is because it’s a horrible thing that is real and that it happens. But because it’s so overexploited, it becomes callous. That’s something I can’t derive entertainment from as an audience member,” and also, “ I find that it’s not necessarily thought-through in the more common crime procedurals. You’re reduced to using shorthand, and I don’t think there can be a shorthand for that violation — it’s an incredibly personal and intimate betrayal of something that should be so positive and healthy. And it’s frequently so thinly explored because you don’t have the real estate in 42 minutes to dig deep into what it is to be a victim of rape.” (Slay, Bryan, you are KING amongst showrunners.)

Underlying his explanation of why it is distasteful to him to exploit assault on the screen is his appraisal that doing so is unnecessary -- assault is not the only, or even the best, or even a good, way to create a “canvas of upset” for the audience -- so what we get with Hannibal is a show about violation in a different way than sexual exploitation of the female body (and holy crap does it showcase violations), without being a vehicle for impressing the audience into the most predatory of audience gazes for a cheap point.

Now, Hannibal as “surreal.” And boy, is it surreal. The juxtaposition of reality and unreality is on FULL display.

SPOILER ALERT, NBC HANNIBAL.

Our main character, Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham, inhabits the positionality of Catherine Deneuve’s in du Jour -- it is he who will transgress limits to “become himself.” If Deneuve in her role explored becoming a sexually expressive woman in a sexually repressive space / culture (though, arguably, presented in the film as becoming a sexually expressive woman in no less exploited of a form), Will Graham’s becomings are two, double, and intertwined -- one is becoming the exact sort of psychopath that he is so good at mentally inhabiting in order to help his employers at the FBI catch them, and one is becoming one who can homosexually commune with one who is like him, with another person who has underwent that first becoming, a becoming-monster. The first becoming is what introduces a lot of the surreal imagery, some pictured above. Graham’s mindscape is inhabited by the specters of those he has killed, or other serial killers who he has empathized with, and it is also inhabited by strange forms, feathered stags, and a collossal man with onyx black skin and giant stag antlers, who periodically raises out of rivers or appears in mirrors or ... in one scene... curls up on the ground while Will claws his way out of his pregnant body. (The reality/unreality dichtomy is on full display, however, with the crime scenes, which are not Graham’s imaginings, but “real events” of the show -- see the “tree” and “eye” tableaus above). The dreams of Belle du Jour that surrealistly show Deneuve, outside of temporal logic, dealing with the symbolic dream-content of her becoming, are present in Hannibal in this way, in Graham’s fever dreams. In fact, they both have a tree-tying vision, as it turns out.

It is this second becoming, the one toward homosexual (or really, pansexual) communion, that is for many the most interesting aspect of the show. Hannibal is a very, very, very gay show, and in a very fascinating way, that has a surrealism of its own, even aside from the visual surrealism. This has to do with the fourth-wall breaking conversation that this show began to have with its audience as the show progressed. Right here on tumblr, a robust community of individuals began to ship (short for relation-ship, or to pair romantically) “Hannigram” and to write mountains of fan fiction of varying levels of explicitivity about them fucking, killing together, both at the same time, etc. Well, the strange occurance that happened is, the show began to enter into active conversation with the Hannigram shippers. It was to the point where the tweeters and tumblrs would coin “Murder Husbands,” and it would appear in the next episode.

This is a very different kind of relationship between reality and unreality, one that arguably would not have been possible in the days of film development and cinema-release debuts.... rather than portraying a relationship between reality and unreality, Hannibal embodies it, conversing with the audience-in-the-Real’s sexual experience of the characters. Will Graham’s becoming-gay is the audience’s becoming-shippers. For a show with only two sex scenes in it, and only one of which with easily distinguishable bodies, I don’t know that I have ever seen a show with more tension of desire written on the faces of the characters, the presentation of which is part of the show’s relationship with its audience. In a word: the camera’s Gaze is aware of Queer Desire. And somehow, the transgression of a norm, a limit, represented by an audience coming to love a MAJOR NETWORK lead-character pairing in a very, very, gay way and have that investment paid off in real-time seems more transgressive than a bougie lady hob-knobbing in brothels with women who have to do it to even eat, Belle du Jour, but maybe that is just me. Speaking of, in terms of the figure of the Woman on this show, there is a lot going on with very complicated characters such as du Maurier, Chiyo, and Reba as important recurring characters and many others who stop in for an episode, but a very important pairing and Becoming that the show showcases is the relationship between Margot Verger and Alana Bloom.

The show got criticism in Season 1 for seemingly trying to push romantic relationships between Bloom’s FBI psychiatrist and both Will and Hannibal, but it was actually Bloom’s actress Caroline Dhavernas and Verger’s, Catherine Isabella, who asked the showrunner Bryan Fuller if they could do a sex scene together. It was in that way that we get one of the most powerful (and surreal) depictions of communion I have ever seen on a screen -- the kaliedoscopic blurring in and out of the two women’s bodies, so that it is not until a minute into the scene that it is even clear whose bodies we are seeing. Margot, an exceedingly wealthy heiress of a pork empire who is exploited brutally by her brother, first-in-line heir apparent, and Bloom, who over the course of the show suffers deeply by her involvement with the Murder Husbands, have a sort of becoming-woman-together in which they become a queered family that is isolated from the self destruction of the serial killers and safe from the controlling hand of Mason Verger. In short... Hannibal contains as a damned side story (that is still longer than du Jour’s runtime) a very comparable becoming to Catherine Denuvue’s in Belle du Jour, only less problematic and arguably more visually impressive.

But back to the film’s surreal imagery, and what that might have to say about the body, and about audience’s relationship to text...

Hannibal has a lot to say about gaze.

In the very first episode, Will Graham kills a serial killer in a police shooting whose last word to him sticks in his head throughout the entire show... “See?” Indeed, Will’s “power”, in the sense that the lead cop in crime procedurals always seems to have some almost extra-sensory kind of power, is to “see” -- the FBI leads Graham to a typically impressive and elaborate murder-tableau crime-scene, and Will “sees” the intention or “design” of the killer almost as if it were his own memory. In this sense, Will is like an art critic -- he “sees” the art, and he “reads” it as a text, “seeing” a phenoumenal world behind the text. Of course, this is exactly what we as audience do as we watch film. If in La Ley del Deseo, Almodovar played with the typical Male Gaze by comparing it to the manipulative and murderous character of Banderas, here, Fuller compares all of us binge-watchers watching violent TV on Netflix in 10 episode chunks to serial killers daydreaming about bloodscapes. Same thing that Fuller, a vegan, does with Hannibal Lecter’s beautiful food presentation by comparing the presentation of human meat to animal meat. Fuller’s Hannibal “sees” with a camera that certainly is a desiring Male Gaze, but a Gaze that contains an implicit critique of the way that that cinematic gaze works... female bodies are present, and fabulous, but not exploited; males and females both are murdered and their bodies transformed, but their bodies are not sexualized; violence is shown, but to critique the way that we see violence, instead of to participate in the traffic of such imagery without self awareness. In many ways, the particular Male Gaze shown on Hannibal is the “sick” Male Gaze, the gaze of the psychopath who would mass murder...

...only to turn that Gaze on us, and say: hey, look how comfortable you are “Putting On” that Gaze, isn’t that the Gaze of most action / horror film?

“See?”

Hannibal uses the cinematic gaze as a mirror to force us to look at the cinematic gaze, and as such, as its critique of our gaze’s “sickness” has me wondering what another kind of Gaze would look like.

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 1

Propaganda under the cut

Alana Bloom

she kissed will graham in s1 and dated hannibal in s2 so you can imagine how bad the fandom is to her. fun fact she's in a canon lesbian relationship now tho <3

The show literally does the yaoi treatment of victimisation for the benefit of the male leads to her. And then the fandom mistreats her

I'm not sure if this even counts but...Literally a victim of Yaoi along with several other characters in-series, but she got it almost the worst. The entire show is just people dying because the two male leads are OBSESSED with each other and can't be normal about anything. Alana Bloom, actual PhD of psychology and consultant to the FBI, got kissed by one guy, fucked and fed people-meant by the other, and pushed out a window by the murder husbands' forced-surrogate daughter. Like. Actual victim of several crimes caused by yaoi. She's probably one of the few examples of a Yaoi Victim overcoming and evolving past her yaoi-related trauma into a stronger person/character, though: She gets an entire character overhaul and a hot, millionairess for a wife. She kills a man with an eel. She becomes head of the BSHCI, effectively putting her in complete power over her jackass cannibal ex-bf. She does quite well. Unfortunately, the rest of her screen time is spent trying not to get killed in the ongoing fallout of Hannibal and Will's fucked up courtship, but hey. Can't have everything. I don't even know if I'm saying anything valid here: the fandom loves her, but I supposed her position outside of the Hannigram relationship relegates her to a non-subject in a lot of Hannigram-focused fanwork. She's an 'obstacle' to their relationship only in the sense that Will had a crush on her once that went nowhere and Hannibal started an actual relationship with her SPECIFICALLY to piss off Will. I guess she's also a more literal obstacle as Hannibal's jailer and Will's friend who's constantly pointing out to him that Morals exist and he should try having some of those, maybe

Maya Fey

OKAY SO She's definitely NOT the love interest coz she's like 16 n he's 24 or smth but in literally all fandom she's just... the wingwoman. that's all. EVEN WHEN SHE'S IN A LESBIAN RELATIONSHIP IT'S IN THE BACKGROUND N SHE'S SUPPORTING THE YAOI GROWN ASS MEN..... it's horrible... detestable... she's a main character... she has ARCS..... and yet.. her own most popular ship tag is just.. her n her gf as background yuri who are supporting and wingwomaning the fucking main guys. it's a tragedy. Maya Fey would make Phoenix Wright buy her burgers everytime he made her listen to his love problems and then she'd tell him that every complaint he makes will cost another burger. SHE WOULD NEVER BE SUPPORTING YURI.. 

Phoenix’s best friend and partner in solving crimes. She often gets shunted aside by the fandom, reduced to Phoenix/Edgeworth cheerleader and matchmaker. 

okay i wouldnt say shes exactly mistreated, shes pretty well liked in the fandom, HOWEVER shes always seen as like an accessory to wrightworth, her only role being to make jokes about how in love they are etc. i feel like a lot of people ignore her depth and backstory to just use her as a tool in wrightworth stories. she plays a very important role in the games as well and has been through a lot, and has always been helpful to wright, so she deserves to be more than the setup to a joke about wrightworth