melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote2021-09-07 10:49 pm
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100 days of enemy recs: 36. Hannibal

I did in fact read Silence of the Lambs, decades ago in college, in my earliest X-Files phase when I was reading everything profiler-related I could find, but honestly it did not make much of an impression on me. The serial killer stuff I could get by reading Mulder whumpfic and actual profiler memoirs was better anyway. And by that point Hannibal's cultural impact was already enough that the book could never live up to what I'd imagined.

I suspect the Hannibal TV show has more of what I want in serial killer stories! It sounds like a show that knows exactly what people are there for and goes hard for it. But I also suspect I would be really bad at watching the show, in that I would be annoyed by the lack of useful lighting in the cinematography, unable to follow what was going on at any given time because it expects its watchers to pay attention, far more interested than the show in the killer-of-the-week puzzles, and frustrated at what happens to all the secondary characters I like. So I haven't even tried it.

I do read fic though! An urbane cannibalistic serial killer and a scruffy profiler hanging onto sanity with his fingertips, mutually obsessed with each other in an unfinishable homoerotic chase that switches polarity at unpredictable intervals: what's not to love? Well. I guess some people can't take the gore and cannibalism and torture and manipulation and, okay, I suppose it is kind of a fandom for very particular tastes. Even I have a problem with a lot of the fic because I don't *mind* if the food (in a story) is people, but I want to *know* if the food is people, and you can't always *tell*.

I read fic in this fandom when I am in a very particular mood and have recs to lead me to the specific kind of fic I want to read, so here is another Extremely Specific Recs set, being 'Hannibal/Will AUs summarized by the old joke about the man who picks up a hitchhiker and says "Don't you feel unsafe? How do you know I'm not a serial killer?" and the hitchhiker says, "Because the odds that we're *both* serial killers are astronomical!"'

  • Astronomical Odds (2562 words) by xzombiexkittenx
    Chapters: 1/1
    Fandom: Hannibal (TV)
    Rating: Mature
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
    Additional Tags: Serial Killer Will Graham, Pre-Season 1 AU, Hitchhiking
    Series: Part 2 of Bad jokes and alternate professions
    Hannibal may be traveling for work, but he can stop for an intriguing hitchhiker.


  • Black Rock Mountain (23964 words) by bokunojinsei
    Chapters: 1/1
    Fandom: Hannibal (TV)
    Rating: Explicit
    Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
    Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
    Characters: Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter
    Additional Tags: Explicit Sexual Content, Explicit Language, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Blood and Gore, Minor Original Character(s), Murder, Rough Sex, Disturbing Themes, Cannibalism, Dark Will
    Series: Part 1 of Hitchhiker's Guide to Murder

    Hannibal may be traveling for pleasure, but he can make a stop for an intriguing hitchhiker.


(Only two more fandoms with a Hannibal left on the list after this.):
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tei: (Hannibal: Jack flower crown)

[personal profile] tei 2021-09-08 05:33 am (UTC)(link)
lack of useful lighting in the cinematography, unable to follow what was going on at any given time because it expects its watchers to pay attention, far more interested than the show in the killer-of-the-week puzzles, and frustrated at what happens to all the secondary characters I like ... all of this is highly accurate hahaha. (The lack of useful lighting was strategic; apparently whenever they called up NBC Standards and Practices and were like hey so how about we put xyz insane thing on TV? The answer was "sure, just turn down the lights and make the blood black instead of red")

anyway I love these fics and having a fandom where there are multiple two-serial-killers-in-one-car fics
melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)

[personal profile] melannen 2021-09-08 07:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Good for them! Red filter might actually work better for me, since part of my issue with muddy lighting is that I have a pretty intense red filter on my screens in the evening, the better to go to sleep, so if it's designed for red filter maybe double red filter would be okay? (Gory murder does not disturb my slumber but blue light does.) But mostly it's just so much stuff these days is shadow-on-shadow and not interesting to look at.
ambyr: a dark-winged man standing in a doorway over water; his reflection has white wings (watercolor by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law) (Default)

[personal profile] ambyr 2021-09-08 06:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Knowing you, when I saw Hannibal in the post title, I was actually expecting a set of Hannibal/Scipio recs. But I guess from the postnote that's still to come!
melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)

[personal profile] melannen 2021-09-08 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh no, that one already happened! You must have been busy that day. :D

We still may have Hannibal Chau to come though!

And possibly Hannibal Sefton, though if I get down to that fandom I'm not really sure which ships I would use. Chloe/Dominique and Hannibal Sefton/Himself are about as close as it gets to enemyfic.
out_there: B-Day Present '05 (Default)

[personal profile] out_there 2021-09-09 03:23 am (UTC)(link)
Even I have a problem with a lot of the fic because I don't *mind* if the food (in a story) is people, but I want to *know* if the food is people, and you can't always *tell*.

For Hannibal, assume it's people. It's almost always people.

Hannibal is one of those shows that left a very strong impression on me but I doubt I will ever re-watch a single episode. It's got a bit too much of that slow-mo, blood-is-art thing going on and I find that hard to watch. Yet it also has one of the most heartbreaking break-up scenes (Will and Hannibal, obviously) and Bedelia is amazing and I love that we got our canon WLW pairing managing to escape with their child. (On a show like Hannibal, being able to escape with your sanity and all your limbs is as close as you're getting to a happy ending.)

Intense and fascinating, but wow, so creepy.
melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)

[personal profile] melannen 2021-09-10 03:33 am (UTC)(link)
But the thing it it's fanfic! Sometimes it's not people, sometimes it's a no-murder AU. But sometimes it's an AU, still murder, and it's not always clear which until everybody has already eaten some maybe-people! And it surely can't *always* be people? I understand he does manage, like, people vegetables and people beer, which seems unlikely. but there's only so much meat on a people! He would run out!

Oh I am happy to learn that the lesbian couple and their child made it out with all their limbs though! That's better than I expected.
out_there: B-Day Present '05 (Default)

[personal profile] out_there 2021-09-10 12:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh I am happy to learn that the lesbian couple and their child made it out with all their limbs though! That's better than I expected.

Weirdly enough, it's one of my favourite parts of Hannibal. So many people have terrible ends, but I love that Margot and Alana got out safely. (Props to them, of course. Alana gets massive points for realising that the sensible response to finding out Hannibal is on the loose is to gather your family and get on a helicopter out of there.)
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