#long posts for ts

[titleleaf]

Can you talk a bit about your introduction to the Hannibal Lecter tetralogy? Did you see any of the movies first or did you read the books and then watch the films? What drew you to the series initially?

Absolutely!

I was really really into Demme's Silence Of The Lambs as a preteen in the era where you could just turn on the TV and the same 20 movies would be playing on cable —it’s interesting to look back on those really naive viewings where I wasn’t really aware of the world enough to grasp the film’s themes around misogyny (or the turbo-problematic elements, never mind the literal edited-for-TV censorship) and also not really astute enough to grasp why Hannibal Lecter was supposed to be a frightening presence. Hopkins’ Hannibal is having so much fun in that movie and when you can’t really detect the layers of irony and cruelty at play it’s a really different film. (The big thing in hindsight that's strange is that I perceived the museum bug guys as much more threatening figures — and they certainly do represent an ambivalent part of Clarice’s experience moving through the world as a woman, including being flirted with when you're trying to investigate an active serial killer but Foster plays Clarice's responses to them very differently to me now. I also just took it as a given that Clarice and Ardelia were girlfriends, not in a “I ship it” way but where I didn’t understand how it would be intended otherwise. I do ship it now as an adult, ofc #clardeliahive.) Something about Hannibal's combination of prickly sparring and weird courtliness was a blast for me even at that young (and dumb) age. I watched the film Hannibal later, probably on one of the zillion illicit movie streaming sites that used to exist and only let you watch 45 minutes of video a day, pretty miffed at the actor change but enjoying the weird villain/heroine loyalty kink soooo much… cannot remember, for the life of me, when I picked up the film adaptation of Red Dragon but there's a nonzero chance it was because of a gifset of that stabbing scene back in, ugh, oh god, 2012? Still an absolutely delightful dynamic, ponytail and all. I'm meh on it as an adaptation of the novel RD now (the novel's grim ambivalent ending makes people so uncomfortable that it seems to be nerfed in every adaptation) but it really blew my little mind.

I was dubious of the NBC series when it was announced (as a big Clarice boi), then watched s1 and enjoyed it, then got as far in s2 as Beverly getting sliced up and bailed. I didn’t finish the series until some time last year, but I'm glad I came back when I did, having boned up on the books in the meantime. Some of my frustrations remain (short version, I do think the show’s writing has a sexism problem, and I'm never as enamored with Hannibal as the writing seems to be) but it’s still so compelling to me and it’s one of those things I can turn over and examine from a million angles. Also it is stacked with hotties from start to finish, and it introduced me to the finest wettest Will Graham. Brain chemistry-changing shit.

Books-wise, I think I read Hannibal Rising first, which is probably not the way people should engage with those books — I still think that book and its film adaptation have a lot of fun stuff going on with them, it’s just not necessarily… necessary. The rest of the books only came along for me after my most recent revival of interest in the NBC series. (Which… came about after I went completely off my shit about Primal Fear and joking with a buddy about Aaron Stampler's summer internship in Italy got me rewatching the 2002 Red Dragon film for the first time since college.) I think I was scared away by the way people talked about the book Hannibal, but it ended up being my second favorite of all four, it’s gonzo and turns up the Grand Guignol nastiness to 11 but it’s also terribly fun.

I was a latecomer to Manhunter also for similar reasons — people loved to call that movie cheesy or act like it was some strange early effort superceded by the obviously superior adaptation of a different book — but simply as cinema I think it’s the finest of all the film adaptations, and Demme's SOTL owes it a massive debt. Mann gives Dolarhyde a tragedy and a dignity that no adaptation is willing to give to Jame Gumb and I’m sore about that but also. Tom Noonan’s double-l Dollarhyde being the only blond Francis on film is so funny, and I love Will Graham's tiny purple shorts. I miss the things it cuts/changes, especially with the friction within Molly’s marriage and the location specificity of the book, but it also has such a wonderful encapsulation of what’s at the core of both Will and Clarice to me — you can’t save all of them, but you still have to try to save as many as you can. Brian Cox's Hannibal is his own beast, and really compelling.

The CBS Clarice procedural is such a fun idea but it gets so tangled up in rights issues and the CBS procedural-ness of it all that it really impedes things. Some of what it adds is brilliant imo (I love the character of Julia, a married trans lesbian in the 1990s corporate world who makes tough choices and brings a fun element of the novels’ boring RL forensics to the fore as well as exploring the in-universe consequences that Clarice's explosively well-televised confrontation with Gumb has for innocent people who have nothing else in common with a skin-stealing serial killer than being queer and societally despised) but other choices it makes are totally inexplicable. (Several questionable choices made wrt Catherine Martin, and also what the fuck are they doing with PAUL KRENDLER… it felt like a Mindhunter rehash, very much pejorative.) Other elements suffer from the absences dictated by the rights issues involved — not just no Hannibal Lecter but no Jack Crawford, no mention of Will Graham as the maimed and miserable failure-state for what Clarice is risking, no nothin'. I miss Jack! Also they just cannot commit to it being a full on 1990s period piece, which is a crying shame. If it were on another network, or made by a different team, it could have been really great, but it’s ultimately a frustrating watch for totally different reasons than NBC Hannibal is a frustrating watch.

I also listened to the musical parody of Silence Of The Lambs a lot in college and it's still major earworm material ten years later. I'm just trying to mind my own business and blammo, it's If I Could Smell Her Cunt on mental loop.

[vanessa-rafesgirl]

me since april 19th

[keirahknightley]

Costume appreciation series: Barbie (2023) dir Greta Gerwig

Costume Design by Jacqueline Durran

[lady-arryn]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON SEASON 2 APPRECIATION WEEK day 1 — dragons

[galedekarios]

Gale + Being Chosen

"I'm what one might call a wizard prodigy, who from an early age, could not only control the Weave, but compose it, much like a musician or a poet. Such was my skill that it earned me the attention of the mother of magic herself. The Lady of Mysteries. The goddess Mystra. She revealed herself to me and became my teacher. In time, she became my muse, and later, even my lover."

"I know what it is to have a closer connection than most with the gods."

[gojuo]

Remember what they're taking from you

Fire and Blood, p. 398:

Fire and Blood, p. 387:

Fire and Blood, p. 390:

Fire and Blood, p. 401:

Fire and Blood, p. 402:

Fire and Blood, p. 409:

Fire and Blood, p. 424:

Fire and Blood, p. 425:

Fire and Blood, p. 437:

Fire and Blood, p. 473:

Fire and Blood, p. 561:

Dangerous Women, The Princess and the Queen, p. 783:

Fire and Blood, p. 506:

Fire and Blood, p. 381:

Fire and Blood, p. 380:

Fire and Blood, p. 533:

Fire and Blood, p. 541:

Fire and Blood, p. 542:

Fire and Blood, p. 550:

[eddiediaaz]

Oliver Stark about Buck/Eddie on the Zach Sang Show (04.19.2024) [x]

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

i hadn't gotten around to watching staged 3 before good omens 2, and now i can't get over how great michael and david are together

[elvenlords]

I think it's you that's changed. How so? I think I know why we still meet here, century after century. It's not because you want to see whether or not I'm ready to seek death. I don't think I'll ever seek death. By now, you know that about me. So, I think you're here for something else. And what might that be? Friendship.

How's he faring up after all this time? Who? Hob Gadling? Hmm. I don't know. I was forced to miss our last appointment. Well, I'm sure he'd love to see you.

THE SANDMAN 1.06: “The Sound of Her Wings"

[moonlightsdreaming]

SAILOR MOON X NAMCO

[why-i-love-comics]

Action Comics #1069 - "In Love. At Work." (2024)

written by Rainbow Rowell art by Cian Tormey & Romulo Fajardo, Jr.

[sersi]

THE BUCCANEERS (2023) 1.03: The Perfect Duchess dir. Richard Senior

[holdnarrytight]

Jumping on the incorrect quotes bandwagon

[tsmidnights]

[lady-arryn]

LOTRWEEK 2024 Day 1 — the road goes ever on

[galedekarios]

seeing a post that basically confirmed the obvious disparity in content made me think more about a scene i would have liked to see with gale and that i've been thinking about for a while now.

i always felt a bit sad that his condition is so often treated as a joke by the fandom and to a lesser extent by the game itself. i always thought that this is partially down to the fact that we don't truly get so see gale actively be in pain due to his condition, other than brief glimpses and hints:

we do hear the urgency in his voice when he explains when and why he needs an artefact and the relief in his voice when the protag chooses to help him.

we see it, too, when he is afflicted by the arcane hunger condition:

we get glimpses of it when he consumes an artefact:

he mentions it, too, in his dialogues, but it's very much downplayed by gale or phrased in such a way that is meant to overplay it with humour, or perhaps even to distance himself from it by using metaphors:

that is until we actually get to see it through his eyes, if only for the briefest of moments:

*Its teeth, its claws, it's unstoppable as it digs through and becomes part of you. And gods, it is ever-hungry...*

gale also has an idle animation where he--quite often--reaches up to touch the orb, perhaps because it flares with pain, like an old wound is wont to do:

(gif by @bladeofavernus)

from the last conversation we have with gale, and after catching all of these little moments of things he says or does with how the orb affects him, we learn that consuming the magic from artefacts no longer has any effect at all. the only solution that tara and he were able to find no longer works:

it would scare him and imbalance him, and it would finally destabilise the orb, make it more volatile.

but what happens in the game after that? the orb becoming volatile enough for the artefacts to no longer have an effect has no consequences at all: you are able to do the tiefling party, all quests in the underdark, the entirety of the grymforge, and, should you choose to do so, the entirety of the mountain pass and rosymorn monastery without an incident at all or any mention of the condition itself/any discomfort or fear it might cause.

there's no urgency here, no follow-up, to what the narrative set up... and then we meet deus ex elminster and the orb is stabilised, and the urgency that came before literally is handwaved out of existence.

what i would have liked instead to happen--or at least to bridge the gap between the artefacts no longer working and elminster stabilising it to be used on mystra's behalf--is the following:

i think it would have been nice to have a scene with gale where we do get to see--on a much smaller scale--him losing control over the orb, have the protag and the companions see what he is trying desperately to keep contained within himself, what gnaws at him, what continues to haunt him.

it could happen perhaps after a particular gruelling and intense fight--and there are enough of that in the underdark and at the mountain pass. it could have been a ! conversation, providing both friendship and romance content.

have the orb act up after expending so much energy to manipulate the weave to the fullest of his abilities, have gale manage to reign it in, but barely, show that it takes a lot of power and effort for him to do so.

that it hurts, with none of gale's metaphors to hide behind or jokes to play it off.

have the audience truly see the gravity of what he is going through.