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felizusnavidad · 7 months

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"i don't think i'll ever understand musicals the way you do" is something i've heard from one of my friends a couple of days ago when i told him i'm about to cross the whole country just to see one of those (my favourite one!) live in theatre. and i can't blame him. if you'd have told me a year ago that i would do something like that, i'd probably have laughed in your face. life is so unpredictable. i guess i have changed a lot. and i could write thousands of essays about how musicals helped me get through the shittiest period of my life, but we are not going to talk about this today. today we are talking about in the heights, the first musical i got a chance to experience live in theatre, hopefully not last. so grab a cup of coffee and make yourself comfortable, this is going to be the longest essay you've ever seen, friends.

a little warning: spoilers. a lot of them actually. so if, by any chance, you haven't seen/heard it yet and you are going to, don't read it.

first thing i feel like i need to mention is that they had this mini bar inside the theatre and you could order a lot of different drinks there and one of them was called abuela's coffee. i heard one lady explaining to someone that it's actually coffee with condensed milk. my jaw dropped and i was like CAN I STAY HERE FOREVER, PLEASE? for those who don't understand why, here's a quote from the first song:

USNAVI: abuela, my fridge broke, i got café but no con leche ABUELA CLAUDIA: try my mother's old recipe: one can of condensed milk

so this was my first "OH! THEY GET IT!" moment (a little note here: i had a lot of oh, they get it moments, mostly because i don't have any people around me who understand musicals the way i do... honestly, you'd have to live inside my brain). that was the first time ever when i could actually be in the room where it happens with all those people who get it and care about it as much as i do (mostly actors and people responsible for the whole show tho, but we will get to this later).

let's get to the show. so when i finally went inside and i saw the stage, i already had tears in my eyes (don't judge me please). usnavi's store, abuela's door, daniela and carla's salon, all those puerto rican, cuban and dominican flags (one couple behind me was trying to figure out which one is which and it was funny because i knew and i wanted to scream)... listening and memorizing the whole soundtrack is one thing. being able to experience it all live is something else. all those things around me were so familiar and this was the first time in months (MONTHS! OR EVEN YEARS!) i felt really understood. after all, it was all like a little celebration of lin's story (the one i love with all my heart) and i truly felt like home. so that was another OH! THEY GET IT! moment.

i don't think i'm going to talk about every single song here, that's not the point. i will talk about my favourite moments, but also about things that didn't work very well in my opinion (again: this was a polish version so all the songs were translated into polish. and they did a really great job here, surprisingly. but it wasn't perfect, more about that later).

one thing you need to understand is that i will never be normal about musicals so of course i had to burst into tears at the very first song (i don't even know why, i think i was a little bit too excited). i was actually crying in the most random moments like when i first saw nina or at the end of carnaval del barrio because I KNEW WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT (who the hell cries at carnaval del barrio when everyone is having the time of their lives lol, me apparently).

ok, so the first song. the choreography, oh my god. it was everything. the translation was also pretty good here, i need to say this was probably one of my favourite moments. imagine me leaving today giggling like a child when usnavi came on that stage and started rapping, i was in heaven. also, i have to admit, the cast was amazing. i could never imagine anyone better for this role (and again, i am talking about polish actors because everyone knows who's the best usnavi of them all). he was cute and charming and awkward and so adorkable and also really handsome. he was actually perfect in my opinion.

i kinda lost my mind when i saw nina for the first time. first of all: i already knew who was going to play her and let's just say i fell in love with this actress before i even saw her live on that stage. this was important to me, because (as some of you know) nina rosario is my favourite character. and oh my god, she was an absolute perfection. what a voice, sweet jesus. i'm being serious, this girl is so talented, give her every award (i honestly hope i will have a chance to see her again one day, i'm just crazy about her). and breathe was so good! polish version was amazing, i was so scared they would screw it up, but they didn't, so all's good (this song is very important to me, ok?). also, she's a phenomenal actress, i could feel all her emotions for real. and of course i cried, what did you expect?

i don't have that much to say about benny, except that he was really cute and he had amazing chemistry with nina, so once again, the casting was really good. i mean, he is not chris jackson of course, but i have decided i'm not going to compare all those actors because everyone knows at this point how much i love OBC, i was trying to have an open mind. vanessa was also pretty great, amazing voice and her dancing skills, wow, just wow. i could talk about all those actors for days actually, but i'm not going to do that, so i will just quickly mention that i absolutely loved daniela and carla, abuela claudia made me cry, sonny was the funniest character in the whole play and i don't think i will ever recover after piragua guy's performance (i was the only person in the audience who was laughing when he came on that stage, they don't get it, ok? polish people have no sense of humour and that's a fact). actually, there were a lot of funny moments (obviously) and i was the only person who was laughing, god help me.

so let's get to the first thing that was a little disappointing for me. you will not believe it, but it was actually... 96,000 (this is one of my favourite songs and i seriously can't live like this). it's not the translation tho (it was honestly fine), it's the voice overlapping part at the end (again, the best thing ever, just listen to we don't talk about bruno from encanto and non-stop from hamilton and you will understand why it works so well in every lmm's song). the thing is, you could actually only hear vanessa's part and i wanted to die, because EXCUSE ME. i always sing usnavi's part and you could barely hear a word from it. but apart from that, the rest was fine, the choreography was amazing and it's just something i needed to mention because i had thoughts about it.

paciencia y fe! ok besties, i have thoughts, again. abuela claudia was absolutely incredible, also, her relationship with usnavi is something that you can't see in the movie version (they were so sweet i wanted to curl up and die. i knew about it before, i saw slime tutorial with obc on yt, ok? i'm pretty sure lin would be mad at me for watching bootlegs lol. i just wanted to say this). the translation didn't work out at the very end of the song tho, because when in the og version abuela sings about the "winning ticket", everyone knows already she won the lottery. i don't remember polish translation exactly, but it was something with double meaning, depends on how you interpret it, and i'm 100% sure people who didn't know the plot just didn't catch it. the rest of the song was absolutely beautiful tho.

when you're home. i was so afraid of this one, because i am totally crazy about this song (did i ever mention lin wrote this one after one of his first dates with vanessa? no? yes? ok i'll shut up about this now). oh, they did a really great job with it and it's a relief. i have nothing else to say, except that i was crying like a baby, but this song always makes me cry so what did you expect exactly? one of the best moments for sure. again, nina and benny's chemistry was absolutely incredible.

as much as i loved the club, i was actually really disappointed with one part, which is usnavi's famous "jealous i ain't jealous, i can take all these fellas, wHaTeVaaaaa". i've been waiting so long for this! and they messed it up with their stupid cringy translation which i don't even remember at the moment but usnavi was actually mad at benny and he cursed? ANYWAY. the rest of the song was great and the choreography was absolutely phenomenal, oh vanessa! let me get the next one! (i love her so much, she was amazing here). a little note from me: no one was laughing at the "no hablo ingles" part, NO ONE BUT ME!!! THEY DON'T GET IT! WTF! i was so mad (i am aware of the fact that most people probably didn't even know this story before and they just wanted to see a musical, not THE MUSICAL, which is totally fine. but sweet jesus, where is their sense of humour? they left it at home or what?).

and blackout was that part where the voice overlapping effect worked very well, so all's good. actually, one of the best moments for me as well. people were actually so confused when all the lights went down, but that was just so amazing. all the panic! everybody was screaming, crying! WE ARE POWERLESS! THE END OF ACT I!!! oh, i had the time of my life.

i had this weird feeling that they didn't exactly know how to translate most of hundreds of stories so they just made this song shorter than it actually is. which is fine i guess. honestly, it's better than bad translation, so i can forgive them. what i absolutely can't forgive tho is that the audience wasn't laughing at US NAVY. polish people, you have no fucking taste. i said what i said. and then again, usnavi and abuela's relationship was so sweet this song actually made me cry (mostly because i knew what was coming but also, i was just this weird girl who was sitting there in the second row and was crying at the most random moments).

ok, guys, honestly. carnaval del barrio was the best moment from the entire musical. oh, how much i want to experience it again! daniela was absolutely incredible, carla was so sweet, piragua guy stole the whole fucking show for me (seriously guys! he was just so amazing!). also, those little details i have never noticed before? i can't even tell if the same thing happened in the original version (the quality of that bootleg is actually terrible), but benny dancing with american flag somewhere in the background was so fucking funny and i don't think i will ever get over that part where at the end they were all still dancing and celebrating and nina and usnavi just ran away as fast as they could because... because you guys know what just happened. also, this is the moment i started crying.

i was so scared of it. let me tell you one thing, i experienced abuela's death at least fifty times and i still cry every single time. so atención is something i have to mention, because all the emotions and kevin's shaky voice made me burst into tears right away, and this time i wasn't the only one because i saw a lot of people crying when they realized what happened (i also heard a lot of OHs when he said abuela passed away, so yes, most of them didn't know this story and they were surprised). and alabanza was something else. believe me when i tell you i am writing this with tears in my eyes, i have never cried so much in public. this was the moment i was the most scared of and i was absolutely right because holy fuck. i was a mess. all the actors with those candles singing alabanza a doña claudia! (yes, they didn't translate it, all the spanish parts were left like in the original version and i am so grateful for that), it was just so sad and so beautiful. and this time i was actually like oh, they get it now (everyone was speechless and people were crying).

everyone must know at this point how much i adore champagne and i wasn't disappointed (thank god!). once again, usnavi was absolutely adorable here and people were actually laughing this time (also thank god!). how do you get this gold shit off? (my favourite line from the whole musical) was translated really well and the moment when usnavi and vanessa kissed! with all lights on them! this was so emotional and the audience reacted so well! we were all clapping (it was so funny to pretend like i didn't know it was gonna happen haha i was just as excited as all of them and once again i was like OH! THEY GET IT!). 10/10, would recommend.

if you think i wasn't crying during the last song, think again. one thing i absolutely hate about the movie version is that they actually changed the graffiti that made usnavi stay in washington heights, but i'm not gonna talk about that and i'm not gonna talk about vanessa also being there in the movie. in the original version it was a portrait of abuela claudia made by graffiti pete and oh boy, i lost my mind (i knew about it but i still lost my mind because it was absolutely beautiful). i got the feeling it was a little rushed in our polish version, but i can forgive them because it still made me cry. also, at the very end, usnavi did not only finally acknowledge he's home, when the song was over he pretty much told the audience that we are all home right now and may i just say... i felt that. i was home. they made me believe for the first time in my life i was where i belong, and somehow that was everything.

one thing about me is that this is actually all new to me. this was my first musical i saw live in theatre (and also lin's first child, which is exactly how it was supposed to be i think), and believe me when i tell you i've never had this much fun in my entire life, not even at all the concerts of my favourite artists. it was worth every money. it was worth spending 11 hours on the train and 11 more on my way back home, which by the way we should normalize (people are doing crazy things just to see their favourite artists on the stage and it's considered normal, so why can't we consider THIS normal?). anyway, i don't expect anyone around me to understand it the way i do, but i feel like i really found my thing, and it's all because of lin-manuel miranda, our beautiful puerto rican genius. he made me believe musicals can be cool and i truly wish i could thank him for that one day.

and like i said, in the heights is my favourite story with my favourite characters and i listened to it so many times i have memorized all the little details. experiencing it live is something completely different tho and i think it's safe to say this was the best night of my entire life. even tho most of the people in the audience didn't really get it, i finally felt like i was a part of this world created by my favourite genius and for the first time ever i felt understood. so i think i can say that now: i found my island, guys, i'm there, i'm home!

#if you were able to read the whole thing: congrats #also another note from me: i apologize for all those “they get it” “they dont get it”#i swear to god i am not making fun of anyone #you guys just know how much i am into it #and if other people were just there to enjoy it it's totally fine!#not everyone has to be obsessed!#but i am!#so i just wanted to explain it ok?#good.#also i apologize for it being so long but i had so much to say and i still feel like i didn't say everything i wanted #feel free to leave a comment or ask any questions if you want #now if you think i will finally shut up about in the heights on my silly little blog think again #i love it even more now if that's possible #and another explanation: i'm gonna tag this as my countdown because again i want all my ith posts in one place #thank you for your attention #it won't be long now*#why do you write like you're running out of time*#(not gonna tag this as ith cause this is only for my moots cause you guys get it)#(the last time one of my ith posts was seen by people who dont even know what that is i was depressed for days but that's another story)#(iykyk)#(and you know cause you left me tons of sweet messages guys i love you)

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sempercredens · 6 months

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Post about fannicalcascade because I have a lot of throughts and using this situation to ramble a bit, yay. Inserting myself in some fun conversation here, only. Let it be said, I don't wanna be tooooo standoffish and just formulate my own reading of the show and give some counterarguments to the points they make. :D

Just to start off with: different from them, I'll use an ''the author is dead'' approach, so for my own reading and interpretation of the show it doesn't matter what Bryan Fuller or any of the actors said or read into it. I wanna try and go solely by the three seasons of text that we've been given. I just find it way too easy to just appeal to authority, especially, as fannibalcascade admits themself, Bryan Fuller has said contradictory things, so going by his words just seems counterproductive to any discussion.

I've collected some of the points fannibalcascade has repeated on their blog and while discussing them will probably make them blur into one another, I'll try my best to do it orderly.

1. Basically their big point is that Hannigram is one-sided from Hannibal's side. Will doesn't really love Hannibal.

Where I believe, we agree is the subject of Will's internal conflict throughout all three seasons, really. That being that Will is torn between his own darkness and propensity for violence and killing, his enjoyment of it even, - for brevity's sake I'll just call it his ''darkness'' from here on out -, and his compassion for others, a certain sense of justice, and ''normalcy''. I think we'd also agree that Hannibal represents a personification of that darkness. The difference of opinions lies within whether or not that makes his attraction to Hannibal romantic.

My reading of this conflict and how it plays out in the show and the s3 finale is that for the conflict to work at all, it is a necessity even that Will does love Hannibal. What fannibalcascade majorly focuses on is Will's desire for a ''normal'' life like the one he has with Molly for a few years, or just Will's ''good'' qualities if I were to generalise. A huge fear of Will's is to become like Hannibal, after all. What this approach ignores, imo, is exactly the immensity of the other half of the conflict. The half of Will that does love Hannibal, as a symbol of his love for his own dark urges.

From what I read of them and how I understand it they subscribe to the interpretation that, ineloquently put, Hannibal's manipulations are the sole reason Will's morals got fucked up in the first place. Which is a reading I disagree with. We're told in s1e2 already that this darkness has been within Will from the beginning when he confesses to Hannibal that he liked killing Hobbs. This is why Hannibal becomes so infatuated with him in the first place, because he sees the potential in Will and attempts to help him to reconcile with his darkness. Hannibal sees this - uniting Will with his dark aspects - as an act of friendship.

The crux of the matter here is that Will doesn't hate committing violence and murder. He hates that he likes it. And this is an important distinction. Again, I'm of the opinion that for Will's internal conflict to work and play out as it does, it necessitates that Will loves Hannibal in some way. When he attempts to ''honeytrap'' Hannibal throughout s2b there is a real and genuine ambiguity to his actions that makes one question whether he really is still working for the FBI, f.ex. the Randall Tier situation in s2e10 and e11. Finally: that he does call Hannibal to warn him about Jack in s2e13 Mizumono is a strong indicator that Will cares for Hannibal enough to want him to get away. The same ambiguity carries into s3a when Will sets out to find Hannibal in Europe with no decided objective of what to do when he finds him eventually, even telling Jack that ''part of me will always want to run away with him''.

My point here is that while you can of course always call into question whether Will's love for Hannibal is romantic, you cannot argue that there is no love at all.

Which brings us to:

2. Will throwing Hannibal and himself off the cliff is a murder/suicide attempt to free himself and the world of Hannibal. A rejection of Hannibal.

fannibalcascades likes to quote Bedelia's ''Can't live with him, can't live without him'' for this debate, and solely this quote, which I find a little lackluster because this too ignores a lot of other dialogues in the show. In fact, it ignores the context this particular piece of dialogue appears in.

There are many instances in the show where Will acts very much like Hannibal, going with the theme that they've ''begun to blur'', which is even visually demonstrated at many points. F. ex. when he plots to kill Hannibal via Matthew Brown and his embracing of his darkness is visualised by him growing antlers in s2e5. This, being a dialogue from s3e13 is where Will is arguably at his most Hannibal-ish, openly taunting Bedelia by essentially going ''yeah, I'll free Hannibal and then we're coming for you'' - which is what ends up happening if you want to believe the Bedelia post-credit scene.

Going back to the internal conflict Will's character is concerned, fannibalcascades argues that the quote opens a dilemma which can only be solved with Hannibal or both of them dying. Which is certainly one way to interpret. It is interesting to me how fannibalcascades seems to think that the best outcome for Will is to be without Hannibal, wishing that in a hypothetical s4 Will would leave Hannibal, when Bedelia's words would imply that that, too, would not be ideal for Will because he's too attached; he's ''found religion''.

I wouldn't even necessarily disagree that the answer to the dilemma is both their deaths. But I do disagree with the specifics. When Will tells Hannibal ''It's beautiful'', the final words spoken in the series, we are coming full circle from s1e3 where he tells Abigail that ''[killing] is the ugliest thing in the world''. In that very episode you can interpret that as denial since he told Hannibal only one episode earlier that killing Hobbs felt good and just. To reiterate: Will doesn't hate committing violence and murder. He dislikes that he likes it as much as he does because it conflicts with what is expected of him by the FBI and of himself in regards to complying to ''normalcy''. The reason Hannibal is attractive to him is that Hannibal is the only one to offer a complete acceptance of that darkness in him, should Will cultivate it.

So while ''can't live with him'' implies that Hannibal is indeed destructive to Will's life and well-being and those surrounding him which would be a good reason to want to be rid of him, ''can't live without him'' also implies that Will and Hannibal have become to entangled with one another to rid each other. Will even muses in s3e6 whether they could survive separation and Bedelia's words would suggest that no, they couldn't. Being without Hannibal would be equivalent to death, if one'd want to phrase it so drastically.

Repeating my point again that for Will's conflict and how it plays out to function, it necessitates that he does love Hannibal in some way. Just as fannibalcascades points out in this post how:

it has to be equally true that his struggles make no sense if you just say ''oh, he never loved Hannibal''. After all, Will did many Hannibal-ish deeds, especially in s3 when he orchestrates for Chiyoh to kill the prisoner in Lithuania and goes on to string the guy up in a very Ripper-esque, artful display - for no other audience than himself, or when he orchestrates Dolarhyde's mutilation of Chilton. He actually shows very little remorse for his actions in these instances, even going back as early as him killing Hobbs (s1e2)

and he shows even less remorse when he and Bedelia hold their dialogue as shown above.

All in all, my point here is that a reading such as fannibalcascades reads Will as leaning primarily towards normalcy, as opposed to acknowledging the extent of which Will also leans towards Hannibal.

As already mentioned, Will's fear resulting from this conflict is that he fears becoming (like) Hannibal. But the thing is that becoming like Hannibal is not entirely unappealing either. Because if it was there would be no conflict. It's really a testament to how complex a character Will is.

So returning to the cliff scene, Will admitting that ''it's beautiful'' is a self-acceptance of his own darkness, by extension an acceptance of Hannibal. fannibalcascades argued, however, that if it were a confession, Will would not attempt to kill himself. Sure, tipping them over might speak for a motivation of murder/suicide but that is rooted in the very same conflict Will's been dealing with this entire time. It is the culmination of both conflicts being solved, if you wanna see it that way; Will's darkness and his want for normalcy both won in some way. To put in convolutedly: by his acceptance of his darkness and Hannibal, Will triggered his fear of becoming like Hannibal because he just admitted to having become Hannibal, causing him to choose murder/suicide to fight said fear.

Is it tragic? Yeah. Is it romantic? We'll get to that.

3. ''it's a horror show first''

In my reading, I very much identify Hannibal as a Gothic show, which is not that far off from horror and overlaps in significant enough ways to be conflated. I hesitate to call the show horror because horror films aim to make you scared and scream along with the characters, whereas Hannibal doesn't.

There is no exact definition of what the Gothic is. It's not as much as genre as it is a mode that can be applied to different genres, such as Gothic horror, Gothic fantasy or Gothic romance. But what is important to note is that the Gothic has its roots in Romance, the 18/19th century kind with a capital R. So while you've got tales of chivalry and enlightenment and such, you've also got those revolving around the conventionally less savory themes and topics; death, trauma, all those ugly emotions, murder, torture, incest even or generally speaking any kind of perverted or ''forbidden'' love. Within the Gothic mode, these topics are allowed to be explored and discussed without outside conventions impeding upon it. That inherently makes its grasp on clear morality-binaries of good and evil null and void.

We see this in the show when the film language of sweeping camera shots over the displays of the dead bodies seems to emphasise the beauty of them more than their grotesqueness. When Hannibal's cooking is presented to us in extravagance so that we forget that he's serving human meat. Hannibal the character is endeared to us by film language (and also through Hannibal's humour. He's a funny lil man and because we can understand his jokes but the other characters can't, we can feel like we're conspiring with him). By these means, the show is very little concerned with actually condemning him. He even argues himself that he is no more evil than storms or fires (s2e10) and often pulls the ''well, God is worse''-card (ex. s1e2, s2e9).

Point being: we cannot apply a basic morality of ''murder bad'' onto the show and much less the development of its characters. There is no longer a clear separation between ''this is a good thing to happen'' and ''this is a bad thing to happen''. Especially when the characters begin to work against each other and good/bad becomes entirely subjective to whichever character's view point you'd want to take. The closest we probably get to a ''normal'' pov is Jack Crawford. Catching serial killers to make the country safer is obviously a noble goal. We can empathise with that, and how he is stressed enough to let it out on Will by using him as a shortcut to catching said killers. To the detriment of Will's health. And Hannibal does point out in s1 that working for Jack is unhealthy for Will, which is correct.

However, regarding Will we must ask: what is his best outcome? Is there really an objective ''good'' ending for him, or just a subjective one from his own perspective? And what would that look like?

In the light of that, a reading wherein Will finds his good ending in self-acceptance, indulging in how good violence and murder make him feel, and accepting Hannibal after Jack had nothing more than used him to the detriment of his health, after Alana rejected him for the same things Hannibal accepts him for, after he antagonised essentially everyone else, should be equally valid to one wherein Will gets to return to his average American family. And even his relationship with Molly is shaky and not as ideally happy. I'm not denying that Will loves her and she loves him, but the series also shows us that not all is so idyllic as Will still reads Hannibal's letters that he hides from her and she still watches Baseball because she's also not quite over her late ex-husband.

So in summery, I guess:

fannibalcascades' lines of arguing do little to convince me, personally, because I feel like a lot of context is omitted from the argument and lines like ''can't live with him, can't live without him'' are being cherry-picked.

I probably made my point pretty clear about how I think that they neglect half of Will's internal conflict in favour of arguing against any notion of Will loving Hannibal in whatever way. His conflict hinges on how his love for Hannibal is equal to his adherence to common morality, so the idea - as they present - of viewing the show through ''a realistic lense'', aiming for a ''nuanced understanding'' doesn't work for me because denying that Will loves Hannibal is omitting a large part of that very nuance.

Furthermore, reading their blog, I found myself unsatisfied with the lack of specification regarding Will's wants and needs, surrounding the point around what his ideal outcome would be. Most notably, a post they reblogged from bonearenaofmyskull, which contains the lines ''there’s no reason to believe that Will “went completely dark,” that he’s killing with Hannibal, that he’s alive at all, that he’s in his right mind after that fall'' made me wonder what Will's ''right mind'' would be. Because in my reading of the show, the state of Will's mind or what would be the truly right and beneficial thing to do for Will has always been a subject of ambiguity.

fannibalcascades is a self-admitted fan of the ambiguity in the show (x) (x). However, from what I read on their blog the overall tone of their posts nevertheless seems to be vehemently against any other interpretation of the s3 finale than their own, strictly anti-Hannigram one.

In the end I just find it a real shame to hold such a rigid position in media analysis as to omit the whole romantic aspect of the show's central relationship, canon or not, when the joy of media analysis is precisely to analyse a thing you like from every angle possible. So I don't want to dismiss their personal reading and interpretation of the text as invalid - everyone is entitled to have their opinion after all, and this is mine and I hope I explained why I disagree with theirs - and I personally also did try a reading of non-romantic Hannigram because thought experiments are fun.

Lastly, I want to ramble briefly about the Gothic again and how its inherent ambiguity has historically lent itself amazingly for the telling of queer stories, precisely because the ambiguity allows for queercoding. And how as discussed above the feeling of lacking self-acceptance and resultant self-hatred that Will goes through that could all be solved because Hannibal accepts him serves as a metaphor slash wish-fulfillment for the queer experienceTM - which is why we here on tumblr dot gay flock to this pairing lol. It's the romance of the unconditional love, it's the romance of loving even one's most fucked up parts, it's the romance of being seen (and the whole theme of ''being seen'' is not one I'm gonna start now but I have a lot of thoughts about that too) And lastly - really lastly - I want to propose the question whether romantic is synonymous with healthy. Especially in the context of this show in particular, with all the stuff about Gothic mode I went into, is the romanticising of the cliff scene really that terrible? Or just an exploration of unsavory themes and topics? Is perverse love not still love?

Bonus thing where I go a little ad hominem, I'm sorry

I think it comes across as very strange to send multiple anons to an active Hannigram blog essentially baiting them into discourse only hours before starting their own blog about it. From the timing I very much assume it's the same person at least.

I find it very odd how fannibalcascades claims that they're not anti-Hannigram and ''uphold the freedom to ship as you please'' (x) and then tag their posts as #there's no murder husbands and #anti-Hannigram, invading the actual Hannigram tag, and also reblog pro-Hannigram posts to play moral apostle

Just doesn't look very ''ship as you please'' to me. Also the anon thing.

Starting of one of their posts with a big, bold red heading of ''It's tragic that people don't understand what the story really is'' which just gave me the same feeling as glancing at boulevard magazines does. Sorry to be sarcastic here but, yeah, sure, you're the only one who knows the real story, you're the only one who's eaten wisdom with spoons while everyone else picks at the wisdom soup with forks. I'm sorry but just the way that post was presented came across as kinda conceited.

Okay, post over.

Have a list of recommended further readings because I'm totally normal about this show and the Gothic mode, I promise, please believe meeeeee

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen: Monster Theory

Deborah Russell: Gothic Romance in Romantic Gothic

Julia M. Wright: American Gothic Television in American Gothic Culture

Andrew J. Owens: Queer Gothic in Twenty-First Century Gothic

Linda Williams: Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess

Alexandra Carroll: 'We're just alike' - Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter, and the Monstrous-Human

Ewa Ziomek: Hannibal Revived: an Aestheticized Portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in NBC’s TV Series Hannibal

Stephanie A. Graves: 'A breach of individual separateness': Multivalent Queerness in Bryan Fuller's Hannibal

#hannigram #nbc hannibal #hannibal lecter #will graham #hannibal meta #question mark? is this meta?#i'm normal about this show i swear #i didn't just spent over four hours writing and compiling this. it's totally not 4.30am :)#i just........ love media analysissss so muuuuuuuch....................#last time i made an op my post didn't show up in the tag #so maybe this was all for nothing lol. unseen post #oh well will loving hannibal is just as much part of his character and conflict #as him trying to adhere to whatever social construct 'normalcy' is send tweet #can you tell i also watched a certain 4h video essay on plagiarism and am now paranoid about citing sources hahahahaha

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