#but this is the first time we see the visual effects take on the appearance of various life stages of a plant | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

neonscandal · 4 months

Text

Manga with Me: Sad SatoSugu Edition (Because That's Literally the Only Flavor There Is)

So I mentioned wanting to list out all the canonically most heartrending things I could think of as it pertains to Satosugu during an Anon Ask sometime ago and since the Christmas holiday is nigh upon us... what better time (because I started this a while ago)? If you would like to wallow in the heartbreak, you can always peruse this tag because this is truly something that rots my brain on the reg. So let's get into it, let's recount all the details that bounce around my head like an old school DVD logo in case anyone else wanted to be miserable too.

Part 1 | Part 2

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: Includes information up to chapter 236. This will be an exhaustive list to include details that haven't been animated. If you want to stay spoiler free, stop reading when you see the ⚠️

A/N: This basically just turned into an overly indulgent retelling of everything that happened because all of it is sad? Read at your own risk.

Let's start with a little bit of autobiography so we're all on the same page.

Gojo Satoru, heir to not only one of the Big Three sorcerer families but inheritor of their two familial cursed techniques. The occurrence of which hadn't been recorded for a century. His birth effectively tilted the scales and, subsequently, is responsible for the stronger breed of curses that sprung up to create balance in the world (in the same way Sukuna's finger woke other curses). We don't know much about his family except that he's been the target of unsuccessful assassination attempts since he was a kid. Subsequently, he's got an untempered ego that's largely unchecked and an unexplored power ceiling.

Why we love him: Real ones recognized a deeply traumatized person who hides it with a smile. ✨ Little did we know, the missing piece to that origin is what lurks in the shadows.

Geto Suguru, strong in his own right and implicitly guided by the belief that the weak should be protected. Leans into this enlightened ideal by also donning iconography that likens him to Buddha well before he considered being a cult leader. In my opinion (since I said this would be canonical, this needs to be called out as a headcanon), I think this was done to kind of cover the spread of his own insecurity coming into Jujutsu High as a society outsider. Especially when you consider Gojo's in his class.

Why we love him: While they appear to not get along, they really look to one another for balance. Ideologically and morally, Gojo will consider his perspective as he's the first person to really call Gojo on his flippancy and yoke him up. We love to see it.

CHRONOLOGICAL and rapid fire

They are two of only three special grade sorcerers at the time, the other being Yuki Tsukumo. It promotes this identity tied to their strength which Gojo is frequently sizing others up (sorry, Utahime) but also undoubtedly inspires a level of comfort Gojo probably hadn't known previously, to know that he had someone he could rely on.

In this, we see that Geto tuts at Gojo, keeping him in line from a social and moral perspective. He also weighs keeping the peace of citizens' minds believing that society should protect the weak and keep the strong in check. He rationalizes that jujutsu exists to protect non-sorcerers as if its their righteous responsibility. Sidebar: I love that the anime shows this convo taking place in a gym to visually use their shots missing vs going in as another way to show how they're at odds.

Subsequently, tasked with increasingly dangerous missions even though they are just kids because there's a shortage of strong sorcerers. There's a shortage of sorcerers at all. Undoubtedly, creates a sense of superiority in both and, likely, a greater sense of responsibility in Geto. As though the stronger he gets, the stakes continue to get higher as well.

Assigned a mission which effectively could impact the fate of the world wherein they have to protect Riko Omanai, another child and the Star Plasma Vessel, who is selected to merge with Tengen. Unbeknownst to us at the time but, even as students, they realized how shitty that was and had agreed unanimously to allow whatever Riko wanted to happen, whether she chose life or merge. Gojo propositioned it first and Geto's half-assed warning was simply that they might have to fight Tengen. Their overconfidence here kills me? But, essentially, protecting the weak and keeping the strong in check also meant enforcing what was right regardless of the mission and, more over, they could likely contextualize how unfair it was that they were child soldiers, as well.

Even with their difference in opinion or ideology, Gojo is reassured by the fact that, regardless of the demands of the mission, "we're the strongest". Which is huge when you consider that, for the longest time, he was always wary of others, likely kept people at arms' length, always had to protect others, etc.

I can only imagine the number of silly goofy selfies these idiots exchanged while on missions together or apart. Again, it just undercuts how, in spite of everything else, they were just goofballs.

This, I think, is important. Geto was the first person to rationalize Riko's desires to still go to school and be amongst her friends to Gojo. Geto had a sense of protecting the youthful life she knew from the start. Letting her enjoy herself was a part of the mission Tengen specified but Geto seemed moved by it without influence. Even if Gojo initially mentioned "calling it off" if the Star Plasma Vessel didn't want to move forward, this indicates the importance of, not just living (which Gojo will defend because he can), but living well which Geto is in support of.

Geto reassures Kuroi that she is Riko's family and, we can extrapolate, that he probably has his own bonds that are not blood but are still beloved like family. Even then.

Something I didn't take into consideration before but... it's Geto's fault/carelessness that gets Kuroi kidnapped. This likely causes a snowball effect of guilt as everything else transpires and ultimately leads him to his breaking point.

The fact that, where Gojo was once really intolerant of frivolity during the Star Plasma Vessel mission, he decided to show compassion by allowing for sightseeing and an extended stay in Okinawa, likely after taking Geto's previous rationale under advisement. Life is more than just surviving, afterall.

Usually when someone is strong, people lack the ability to comprehend or acknowledge their possible vulnerability. But Geto unabashedly expresses concern for Gojo potentially wearing himself out at the expense of extending their stay. It's small but its something expressed amongst equals and is shown to be such as Gojo says, "You're here too." TBH this altered my brain chemistry. Probably altered Geto's brain chemistry too. Can you imagine that reciprocation of trust and safety?? Ego boost.

What's especially funny about the exchange is highlighted by Geto's typical characterization as the fox eyed character or "kitsune no me" (even if its inconsistent). It can imply wisdom or someone who is mischievous. Given his other style choices, I assume its more for the wise aesthetic. But when he checks up on Gojo he gives the classic one-eye-open visual cue of being focused but with an air of confidence in response. Like, just puff out your chest and tell him you love him, already.

Literally, the soft way Geto watches Gojo be an immature little shit. For all the banter at the beginning of their origin story, this panel and, honestly, Okinawa really demonstrated how Gojo was endeared to Geto which hits a climax when they get back to Jujutsu High.

We only see Geto lose his cool when harm comes to Gojo. Toji getting the drop on Gojo was a shock to everyone but Geto sprung into action.

The fact that the first time Geto gives into his confidence and echoes Gojo's belief that "we're the strongest,", believing that, between the two of them, they could protect Riko's future... is precisely when Toji guns her down?? BRO. Irrevocably shattered his whole world view in a moment.

We only see Geto lose his cool when he believes harm has come to Gojo.

The fatal flaw in the Star Plasma Vessel mission was truly their combined hubris from being strong individually and being doubly reassured by their confidence in one another. Combine that with their loftiness of being sorcerers and it exposed them to a predator who doesn't need cursed energy to see footprints. The simplicity of it is aggravating. Toji's whole plan focused on a false sense of security but they were effectively already surrounded by an insulated false sense of security because of their power and standing in jujutsu society.

Moreover, the fact that Toji made such a big to do about how to defeat the Six Eyes but voiced the fact that Geto was negligible so long as he wasn't a shikigami user. Even if they were both strong, it still presents this idea that Gojo was stronger, he was the bigger threat.

Mind you, they were both bested by the same person BUT THE FACT THAT THEY BOTH LATER ESPOUSE SOME ELEMENT OF TOJI'S ESSENCE?? Geto takes on his vernacular (re: monkeys and essentially equates jujutsu as an evolution) and Gojo takes on the fit (which is crazy). More specifically, the fact that down the line, Gojo takes Toji's "Blessing" and Geto inherits his curse[d worm]. Ya know, maybe I was wrong about JJK antagonists because Toji really is the fork in the socket for a lot of what ends up happening.

This, is quite honestly, one of the most disrespectful coincidences of the whole ordeal because, while Geto shares physical characteristics with the Buddha and generally has a more humble and righteous understanding of the world, when Gojo experiences his power up at the beginning of his second fight with Toji, he experiences what we can assume is enlightenment as he boasts "Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the Honored One,". In many ways, this is just another thing scratching at the foundation of who they are.

Geto and Gojo are constantly set at odds, ideologically is the least of their differences as they learn to take one another's perspectives under consideration. The divide comes from Geto, born of non-sorcerers, who has a cursed technique that forces him to ingest curses which he equates to swallowing a cloth that had been used to wipe up vomit. How can one be clean and pure when forced to regularly imbibe something so disgusting? It makes sense as to how he solemnly would feel this sacrifice to be noble and necessary in practice with the tradeoff of being able to help the weak. Gojo, born into a sorcerer family, has cursed techniques that not only prevent the need to even touch a curse but also allows time and space to think through whatever comes his way as a Six Eyes user. An argument could be made for nurture vs nature respectively but, ultimately, I think the chasm between hard work vs natural talent is what breeds bitter resentment down the line which is further embodied in this moment. Where Geto tries to do right and walk the straight and narrow as best he could, it is still Gojo who is blessed with the enlightenment that should come with such discipline. What I also find interesting about this is the fact that, as someone who chooses to dress and carry themselves as Geto does, his undoing is ultimately tied to other famous Buddhist quotes that speak of finding sanctuary only within oneself and how attachment is the root of all suffering. It feels like in looking to Gojo, relying on Gojo, being attached to Gojo.. it filled a hole that was present within Geto and wasn't sated by his discipline or moral compass.

The above is also shown in how Gojo could immediately find where Toji was with all the hideouts where Geto had to work harder to still show up late. Everything is just so easy with the Six Eyes or I suppose that's how Geto started to feel.

The fact that, knowing they were equals before his power up, Gojo lied about Shoko healing him when Geto asked. Gojo, at the unset, haughtily believed that the strong shouldn't make excuses for their strength, and yet, hid a facet of his strength from Geto, the person who understood the burden of power best.

Gojo accepted blame for messing up during the Star Plasma Vessel when, empirically, Geto lost Kuroi first and failed as the second line of defense against Toji. I wonder how Geto felt hearing that admission when his own guilt was probably swelling within him.

After everything, Gojo still turns to Geto to determine what's right, questioning whether there needs to be a reason to kill the Time Vessel Association followers as they celebrate Riko's death.

Riko's death and their subsequent failure saw Gojo spending the year to optimize his power and prevent being felled by any vulnerability going forward. Geto was effectively sidelined and recognized the disparity between them as Satoru became "the strongest". Even so, with all of Gojo's bells and whistles, with Six Eyes at his disposal, he could not really see Geto's descent or chose not to properly address it because Gojo was never really one with typical emotional responses. It's something he goes into greater depth with Nanami in the light novels, acknowledging his lack of emotional intelligence.

As with his birth, which saw an increase in powerful curses born to keep the balance, his latent power up also had consequences like more frequent curse spawnings. This kept them busy and, as we discover apart. Since he could handle more missions on his own, by default, now Geto had to as well. They were the strongest together but they were together less and less. This effectively sent Geto further down a spiral and moral dilemma.

In spite of not being seen by Gojo during his time of strife, his first impulse when asked what kind of souvenir he'd like is to lean toward something Gojo would want. We don't know much about Geto's preferred tastes (anything is better than vomit rag) but this concession is so touching. Like, previously, we see where Gojo considers Geto time and time again when faced with a moral gray area but the consideration does go both ways.

When assessed to be a good person by Haibara, Geto challenges the idea which we can infer stems from his shift in worldview but, I also question if it is a manifestation of how he may feel about Gojo's power up, too.

The premise of Geto's defection can be broken down if we were to liken non-jujutsu sorcerers to harmless sheep. If curses and cursed users are wolves, then sorcerers are the guard dogs that protect the herd, lucky to have teeth to fight back. Geto believed it to be the duty of the sorcerers to protect the weak but hadn't confronted that even humans are capable of grotesque things, they are just as susceptible to evil. Riko's death illustrated this while also challenging his ability to protect. With the shortage of sorcerers, why must they sacrifice themselves for the good of those who are equally capable of being monsters, regardless of their perceived weakness? Haibara's death reiterated that there was no point for such sacrifice when such a fate can befall someone so good and wholesome. The nail in the coffin was, of course, finding the twins who'd been abused and imprisoned by humans because they could manipulate cursed energy.

We only see Gojo lose his cool when it comes to Geto. The reveal of his crimes, against the villagers and his own parents is outrageous given his rigid stance but that really doesn't have a place in jujutsu society. Those who cannot bend... break. As one of the only other special grade sorcerers, the fact that Gojo must subsequently become Geto's executioner is cruel and unusual punishment.

Again, we don't know much about Geto's tastes but we know that he'll ask for sweets for Gojo and carries a lighter for Shoko and that's really heartbreaking because I think we can infer he considers them family.

We only see Gojo lose his cool when it comes to Geto. Screaming about murder in front of a chicken joint is one thing, but when you find out that KFC is really popular on Christmas, there's an added layer of zest that really just twists the knife.

"Are you the strongest because you're Satoru Gojo? Or are you Satoru Gojo because you're the strongest." This was like... a critical hit when I read it. Up until this point, they were a unit who only had one another to rely on. Geto could recognize Gojo beyond Limitless, beyond Six Eyes as Satoru. There's safety and comfort in feeling understood by someone especially when you've lived a life so isolated. They were on a first name basis. While Geto had been undeniably stewing for months and suffering this turmoil, this moment is what finally pulls the rug from under Gojo. It's the moment that Geto does what everyone else does. Always burdened by his strength and now, the only person who sought to understand him beneath the weight of it all just conflated him with his power. It shakes Gojo's sense of self. Later, I think Geto thought this drove a wedge between them, likely as intended. But we know that, for Gojo, it didn't. Further, it was like an abdication of his place amongst the strongest. He acknowledged that Gojo was capable of forging the world as Geto wanted but never once asks him to join him. This also altered my brain chemistry? Because, as we've seen, Gojo would follow Geto's direction as his moral compass. Down the line, we also know that nothing changed Gojo's perspective on Geto. But Geto never bothered to ask.

Gojo couldn't follow orders and kill Geto. When Geto turns his back to him with a simple "if you want to kill me, kill me. There's meaning in that too," I wonder what went through Gojo's head. But when asked why he let him go, Yaga doesn't need words to understand. We also see that Geto's words, as intended, struck a chord within Gojo. This conversation is especially interesting because we see the flip side of what Geto couldn't consider. With all of Gojo's power, even he knows being strong isn't enough. His technique is famous for what it keeps away which is offset by the fact that Gojo is someone who craves connection.

The fact that cult leader Geto chooses to masquerade as a monk is not surprising, again, he'd been lightly cosplaying all throughout high school. But the fact that Akutami gave him a gojo-gesa? Akutami is a sadist.

The irony of Geto adopting Nanako and Mimiko and Gojo taking in Megumi and Tsumiki is not lost on me. They both tried to protect the youth of Riko and we can see how they understand that they are not allowed protection because they are strong... but then take on children? Geto seems to do so with different intentions, still protecting the weak. Gojo is basically forging his own battle bro and hoping that, by making all subsequent students strong they won't know the loneliness he suffers.

With JJK0, we see that ignoring the orders of elders is actually not at all uncommon for the strongest sorcerer. Whether that be carry out a 10 year death sentence against his bestie or anyone else deemed too powerful to control is really just dependent upon how Gojo feels about it. So he saves those the elders seek to destroy starting with Yuta by finding common ground in their loneliness. He presses forward in the face of the elders because they are "trying to take away the best years of your youth like that. There's no way I'm gonna let them do that. No matter who you are." It's something he knows all too well.

"I've always believed... love manifests the most distorted curses."

Here's what we know of last words and wills in JJK. We can infer that those who receive the last wishes of someone dying are cursed to see them through. We see that with Yuji and his grandfather as pointed out by Yaga. Even Nanami, before passing, worries his last wish would be a curse and a burden to Yuji so he chooses to send him with words of encouragement. Miguel makes a half-assed threat to curse Geto should he die in battle against Gojo. As we see in JJK 0... Yuta, the living, actually cursed the near departed Rika by begging her to stay and it is a manifestation of one of loves most twisted curses.

The fact that, even after 10 years... Geto will arbitrarily change someone's name so it rings a little closer to "Satoru" was one thing. BUT WHEN YOU HEAR THE WAY THE GETO VOICE ACTOR PURRS "SATORU" IN SEASON TWO!? I just- the affection is still there.

THE FACT THAT, EVEN AFTER 10 YEARS, GOJO STILL RECOGNIZES GETO'S RESIDUALS. Let a SatoSugu-anti explain this, please. Heterosexually. Because I've had friends who I've regularly seen over the course of 10 years and I still wouldn't be able to pick the homies out in a scent line up.

Even after 10 years... they still refer to one another on a first name basis. Culturally, it speaks to a comfortable intimacy, wouldn't you think?

As Toge and Panda sprung into action to defend Maki and Yuta, I wonder if it struck a chord of remembrance in Geto. For the times he'd lept to defend Gojo. is that what evoked his tears in that moment?

Their final exchange on paper is bad enough. But the fact that they set it to a musical score called "This Is Pure Love" in the movie?? Get out of my face. Outside of the JJK 0 parameter and nestled within the story around Shibuya, we see that Geto thought that their KFC fight ended their friendship. But we see, through Gojo's trust that Geto wouldn't kill his students and the reciprocation of not killing any of Geto's family members... Gojo's feelings never changed. They still know the inner machinations of one another's minds, even after all this time, but Geto couldn't see that.

Gojo effortlessly makes Geto smile once more with words we still don't know after Geto talks about not being truly happy from the bottom of his heart. Sir, if you don't malewife your way back to Gojo's side and put down the eugenics... SO HELP ME.

In Japan, Christmas Eve is considered one of if not thee most romantic holidays of the year. It's a lover's holiday where Gojo and Geto reunited and Gojo was finally forced to carry out his sentencing. Even so, having been killed with cursed energy, Gojo could not bring himself to destroy the body of his best friend. His one and only. This sentimentality is what leaves Geto's body susceptible to the likes of Kenjaku who works in the shadows and hyper aware of, not only Gojo's affection for Geto as his weakness, but also his ability to intimately recognize his residuals.

The fact that Geto is a recognized weakness for Gojo is known to others at all is what makes me constantly wonder whether Geto was doomed by the narrative.

1. You know people were talking in the TEN YEARS Geto just ran amok. After declaring war, he was so bold as to tell Gojo where he was going and Gojo still couldn't bring himself to follow. I'd be whispering, too. 2. In chapter 79, immediately following the Premature Death/Hidden Inventory arcs, Utahime is with the Tokyo first years following up on Gojo's belief that there's a mole. She specifies two or more people could be a leak and that "one has to be highly ranked, even higher than the principals" 3. Gojo and Geto were essentially the clean up crew for anything other sorcerers couldn't handle, they'd be known to the elders. I wonder if they knew how principled Geto was and exploited that. Lining him up for missions, just so, including the one that caused him to rebuke jujutsu society. Or if, his inflexibility would have always been what got him in the end. Hypothesis: I maintain that Kenjaku and/or someone who was tied to Kenjaku was involved in pulling those strings. Specifically with designs on Geto to get a bead on Gojo. Even if Geto wasn't doomed by the narrative, he was doomed all along by his connection to Gojo.

This isn't expressly a SatoSugu observation but.. the fact that Yuji is concerned about Gojo going into Shibuya alone? It is a SatoSugu observation because it precisely serves Gojo's mission of no one ever having to be alone again. The fact that Yuji still recognizes Gojo as someone who should have back up is so reminiscent of Geto in Okinawa but is also a poignant manifestation of the ideal world Gojo is trying to achieve. Even in this, we see Gojo with his goal in sight long after Geto's will has fizzled away. Imagine what they could have accomplished together.

Specific to the anime, the fact that they animated Gojo akin to the way the devils ran in Devilman Crybaby was both so unserious but also calls upon Akira Fudo's specific experience with power and humanity.

⚠️ Spoiler Warning for plot of Devilman Crybaby.

The imagery evokes the visual of another damned pairing of Akira Fudo and Ryo Asuka (above). Ryo is a white haired prodigy (sound familiar) who, after discovering the existence of devils, tricks Akira (good natured dark haired boy who he met when they were both children) into merging with a devil "to better defend humanity". Akira's purity allows him to maintain his humanity as he subsequently overpowers the devil seeking to possess him but retains his strength and physical prowess (... really familiar). The story devolves into hysteria as humans turn on the Devilman and anyone he's associated with due to fear of the very devils he protects them from. As this happens, the bitter side of humanity rears its ugly head and manifests in torture, paranoia, mob mentality justice and indiscriminate murder, enough that the demons take a break to watch as society crumbles and Akira questions whether humanity is even worth saving. The shit kicker of this whole situation is the fact that Ryo had been in cahoots with the devils all along. In fact, he'd been pulling the strings to eradicate humanity and let devils reign supreme for a very long time as the fallen angel, Satan. His true objective in converting Akira was to thank him for being by his side and because, unbeknownst to him, he was the only person he'd ever loved. He realized this after Akira's death (which he'd caused), of course.

Strongest sorcerer in the world and he is bested by the appearance of the man he shared his youth with. Couldn't have been overpowered by anyone on the board at the time and, with all the information available to him from Six Eyes, the only hope the villains had was to outsmart his heart. Do we realize how insane that is? Mans is a loverboy, for real.

In the anime, the fact that they animated a brief smile as he reconciled that it was actually Geto standing before him before reality hit was just for the sake of emotional damage. PLUS, they somehow made "my Six Eyes tell me you're Suguru Geto. But my soul knows otherwise!" more dramatic by adding "my heart" and that just tells me there are certified SatoSugu shippers on staff.

Kenjaku has been bodyhopping for centuries. But, when confronted with causing Gojo harm, Geto's body is the first to fight against him. Both in his memories entering his mind after changing bodies but also in the way he tried to choke himself. Just as Gojo's soul recognized Geto and not Geto, Geto's soul recognized Gojo's.

Ken!Geto was the last person Gojo saw before being sealed.

As two of the closest people to Geto after his defection, Mimiko and Nanako harbored resentment toward Gojo for killing him but would not seek revenge as even they knew that Gojo was Geto's one and only best friend.

⚠️ Beyond the Animation ⚠️ Spoiler warning for JJK chapters 217-236.

Of Love and Strength

We interrupt this SatoSugu doom scroll to highlight a very pertinent theme that writhes through the cast of the strongest sorcerers. We see it with Kashimo, this restlessness of being the strongest and how others sought him out for his validation because... they admired his strength. Frustrated by the isolation of never finding a worthy fight, he cut them down mercilessly, always seeking a bigger battle. He's not the only reincarnated sorcerer who found second life just to flex on these modern sorcerers (the dude with the pompadour comes to mind right before Yuta called him bitchless). BUT the most interesting comeback is that of Yorozu, possessing Tsumiki, who seeks to prove her love by besting Sukuna in Megumi's meat suit. Through Yorozu's mission, this obsession with strength and equals is contextualized with a romantic undertone. She believes the cure to his loneliness (and I suppose hers) would be forged if she defeated him.

The battle itself even relays their attacks as a form of intimacy. The stakes of the fight are marriage, even though they both intend to kill one another. Yorozu takes offense at being fought with someone else's cursed technique. Even as she use's her Domain Expansion, she is flattered that Sukuna is able to make light work of it saying, "what...? You know all that about me? I'm so happy." It speaks to a familiarity, a consideration that Yorozu seems to be thrilled by. As if, having bared the breadth of their power to one another, that that honesty puts them closer than those who couldn't have made it this far in a fight. Hypothesis: Whoever taught Sukuna about love before and whatever Yorozu gave Sukuna prior to succumbing to the battle is going to raise the stakes down the line because, of course Gege has something else to devastate us after being lulled into a false sense of security. All in all, I think this fight served a larger purpose than burdening Megumi's soul as it showed how pervasive this link between strength and isolation is even back to the Heian period. It's what inspires Gojo's countermission after Geto defects but, prior to their split, we see the express knowledge of one another which implied an earnest connection. What I find funny is the fact that all these other characters assess their equals in these knockdown blow out fights but Gojo and Geto just... existed in harmony, acknowledging one another without all that? Away from Geto, we see Gojo is freest when he can go all out against Toji and Sukuna. Even with Sukuna, he believed his fists and power to be a means to earnestly communicate that he, too, knew that loneliness well. I include all this to say that it had to have been really sad to have finally found your equal, someone you chose to be by your side... only for them to leave and for you to never fill the gap that they left. This isolation was so despairing that he wished to liberate even his foes of it.

To not mention Shoko voicing her annoyance at Gojo's belief system centering not leaving anyone alone while she was beside him the whole time is a necessary trio inclusion. This is not commentary on the official translation that suggests Shoko's in love with one of them. Instead, this is a testament to the fact that, at the end of the day, Gojo felt alone if Geto wasn't beside him. Where one could argue Geto's mission was informed by a number of factors, re: protecting the future of people like Riko, preventing the sacrifice of people like Haibara, negating the abuse/bigotry experienced by Nanako and Himiko and lessening the burden on people like Gojo and himself, Gojo's sole motivation has always had Geto and/or what happened with Geto in mind. Shoko living in the reality of Gojo's vision gives me a bit of the sad, too.

Upon finally being unsealed from the prison realm and with the imposter Ken!Geto being the last face he saw, his first inclination is to track down Geto's body rather than reuniting with everyone else [that's left].

Mourning Geto's body is also imminently on Gojo's to do list pre-Sukuna fight.

When given the opportunity to pick the date of his fight with Sukuna... Gojo picks Christmas Eve, the anniversary of Geto's death. Once more, this is a lovers' holiday that even Kenjaku mocks upon hearing the selection.

"We seek not to be born on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. We merely hope to die on the same day, in the same month and in the same year. May the Gods of Heaven and Earth attest to what is in our hearts. If we should ever do anything to betray our friendship, may heaven and the people of the earth both strike us dead." -Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Let's just let that marinate.

At the end of Gojo's life... Geto's is the first face he sees. Still, in his mind, the cherry atop the satisfying fight with Sukuna would have been Geto being among those congratulating him. Not high school Geto as we see him in this afterlife. But cult leader Geto who Gojo never once lost affection for. Truly maddening.

I was going to include stuff from the light novels and the OP and EP's (since there are so many visual easter eggs in season 2) but this got to be really long and kind of just an obsessive retelling of events so.. if you've made it this far, you are probably crazy like me. In which case, I am sorry.

80 notes · View notes

astoundingbeyondbelief · 5 months

Text

Kaiju Week in Review (December 3-9, 2023)

I made a frame from this shot Wikizilla's Image of the Week. No regrets. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, I love ya. When I was a teenager, explicit queerness was anathema to most big-name franchises. Those dominoes have been slowly falling, often in lower-profile tie-ins first, and to me this is a huge one: 69 years without a queer live-action Godzilla character are over. And Cate's the main protagonist of the show! I'm not under the delusion that media representation will cure all society's ills, but it sure doesn't hurt. Now, the non-Tumblr parts of the fandom are being completely normal about this, right? Right? Whatever, that's why you'll never get rid of me here. Cate had a couple more sweet moments with May in this episode, and Mariko Tamaki wrote episode 7, so don't expect her to stop kissing girls. Hopefully she's learned a valuable lesson about cheating though.

"The Way Out" is also another gift to those of us who have always wanted to see more of the ramifications of a world where Godzilla exists, from underground towns for the super-rich to ruined cities where federal troops shoot looters and harass people experiencing homelessness. And the show continues to find ways to use kaiju to talk about COVID, from Cate and Kentaro's exchange about San Francisco truthers ("It's easier than waking up every day and thinking, at any moment, the same could happen to you") to the blink-of-an-eye speed at which the threat went from on the news to her front door in the flashbacks.

youtube

As I foretold, we got a Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire trailer, an amusing contrast to the weighty Toho flick and Apple show already fore of mind. It's Adam Wingard unbound, that's for sure. The human cast seems pared back, a longstanding Monsterverse problem, and the kaiju fights were far and away the best part of Godzilla vs. Kong, so hopefully this approach will play to his strengths. But that movie also had excellent VFX, and some of the shots in here are rough. There's time to fix them, at least... which probably can't be said of Godzilla's design. I like that he's pink (did some Warner Bros. executive take the wrong message away from Barbie?) and sporting a thagomizer on his tail, but his proportions are uncanny. And I see Kong found the Infinity Gauntlet; good for him.

I am, of course, not done talking about Godzilla Minus One. It added over 200 screens and made $8.3 million in its second weekend in the U.S., a minuscule drop considering that its $11.4 million opening "weekend" spanned five days. Almost a third of all tickets sold this weekend were for Godzilla or Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron, remarkable in a market so allergic to foreign imports. That brings its total to $25.3 million (more by the time you read this). With an avalanche of Christmas blockbusters on the way, its grip on premium-format screens is about to slip. Still, I see it hanging around theaters for a while. I have never seen the fandom so united in praise for a film before, and it's making plenty of new fans.

Some of those fans are in high places. Variety leaked that it's on the 20-film shortlist for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars (to be narrowed to five nominees), something I, again, never expected to read about a Toho Godzilla film. Alas, it's locked out of this year's Best International Film category due to the quirky nomination period.

Much has been made of how great the film looks on a $15 million budget. I have two caveats, one in each direction. No one is quite sure where the $15 million figure came from; Yamazaki said at a recent con appearance that he only wished he had that much to play with. (He has yet to divulge the actual budget, just that it was above ¥1 billion.) Now, unions in the Japanese film industry are much weaker than in Hollywood, so a given production budget goes a lot further in Japan. All the same, I doubt that alone explains Minus One looking better than most superhero movies made for twenty times the cost. I'll offer a couple more reasons: Yamazaki has extensive visual effects experience (he's been the VFX supervisor of all but one of the live-action films he's directed), and the film's big effects scenes aren't as busy or lengthy as many of the Hollywood counterparts. I don't know if Disney will ask Yamazaki to direct the next Star Wars movie (that would require there to be a next Star Wars movie), but the studios here should be taking notes.

the sphinx, a blog with a ton of American Godzilla rarities to share, has outdone itself—behold a continuity and dialogue script for the U.S. version of King Kong vs. Godzilla! Included in the download is a detailed comparison with the film. No huge differences, apart from the script giving the secretary added to the U.S. version a name, but a fascinating piece of history all the same.

The Minus One incarnation of Godzilla (MaiGoji?) has joined Godzilla Battle Line, accompanied by [SPOILER]. To be honest, my enthusiasm for this game has been flagging, and I'm not caught up on the strategies developing around these two, so I'll just refer you to Sir Melee's channel as usual. This Godzilla's also doing a collaboration with the Japanese mobile game Fleet of Blue Flame.

Tiffany Grant, Asuka's original voice actress, will narrate the audiobooks for the Neon Genesis Evangelion: ANIMA light novels which explore an Instrumentality-free path for the show. Seven Seas Entertainment published them in English from 2019 to 2021, which, to be honest, was also news to me.

This one's for my fellow library workers: the obscenely popular Who HQ nonfiction series for children is publishing a book about Godzilla next June. I don't know if this will have quite the same impact on today's young Godzilla fans as the Ian Thorne tome had on Gen Xers and Millennials, what with the Internet and all, but it's certain to be more factual. Expect illustrations instead of licensed photos, and not just because of Toho.

I can finally talk more about the Godzilla x Kong: Titan Chasers mobile game without fearing a DMCA. Not that there's much to talk about; it's freemium through and through and I'm not sure I know a single person who's excited for it. Interesting to see some critters from the comics break into another medium, at least. Here's the trailer.

#kaiju week in review #godzilla minus one #monarch legacy of monsters #godzilla x kong the new empire #kaiju #godzilla

82 notes · View notes

tornrose24 · 9 days

Text

So when I rewatched TGAMM’s ‘The End’ and got to Scratch’s backstory, there was an interesting detail I missed regarding Todd that I took for granted that also explains some things.

The detail was that even before Scratch lost his soul, he always had that pale, tired-out look. That post-soul regained look was NOT his default look.

For comparison, here’s how he looked before he lost his soul (it’s not a super flattering image on him, but it’s one I tried to take with natural lighting that also shows off his appearance):

And here is after he regained his soul (not sure if the color of the image is the best, but there should still be a noticeable difference in his skin tone):

The only time in the flashback that he even comes close to a healthier skin tone is when he first wears the blue shirt, but you can see that he still has those dark eyelids. I’m not sure if it was intentional or a slip-up on the animator’s part.

My takeaway is that Scratch’s issues slowly and gradually effected his natural appearance, which we do see when he’s at work. He started to take on that tired look with the bags and dark eyes, and his body language gradually changed to reflect his gradual slipping into a numb state. And it appears that no one really noticed when he instantly lost his soul because in a way he was gradually losing it before it finally slipped away. It’s likely not even his co-workers noticed the change because it was gradually happening under their radar, and I suppose no one actually cared enough to check in with Todd to see if he was doing ok. He likely contributed to this himself as well if he didn’t want to take a risk on making any friends or find love with another.

I repeat–no one noticed Scratch’s physical state was changing to reflect the loss of his soul. I don’t know if Adia noticed, but it would partly explain why she tried so hard to get him to come join her besides fulfilling their shared childhood dreams. When he finally lost his soul, he just became this person who simply existed and nothing more–no one bothered reaching out to him besides him getting snapped at by Mayor Brunson. As for Molly, she just saw him as some random person who seemed naturally gloomy and who had no life in his eyes.

When I mentioned this visual difference to @jackie-sugarskull she brought up that the physical change to Todd’s appearance–upon regaining his soul–was further proof of how much Molly changed him for the better. Molly didn’t just help Scratch change his outlook on life or encourage him to become human again–she indirectly and unknowingly helped transform the man’s physical appearance as well when it was time for body and soul to merge back as one. His new outlook on life only further helped complete the transformation.

#the ghost and molly mcgee #scratch the ghost #todd mortenson #character design

29 notes · View notes

gentlemean · 6 months

Text

I know the fandom loves throwing ideas around for a hypothetical adaptation, so why not chime in.

I think most of us agree that an animated series would be better than the dreaded life-action adaptation. Regardless of format, any adaptation would have to somehow preserve the peculiarities, the absolute whiplash, and way the narration shapes the narrative. In my opinion, an animated series could do this quite well.

We start off with Gideon the Ninth. It's shown in heavily stylized 3d animation (think, at least Arcane-style), with strong contrasts in the colors. The Ninth house is dark and desaturated, the lights in the eyes of animated skeletons and Gideon's hair positively burn among the dreary surroundings. Then, getting to the First, the world is vibrant and bright, lots of elaborate light refractions in the broken windows of Canaan house.

Characters are accompanied not only by small, individual musical themes, but also by visual clues. Each house might have distinct little particles and effects that appear in scenes in which the respective characters act. They might synergize in scenes where characters cooperate or contrast in scenes in which they fight. (example: the Niners are always accompanied by shadows, ink-blots staining the scenery around them. The Third are too graceful to be real, all of their animations use exaggerated smear-frames in overly grandiose flourishes. When Naberius fights Gideon, his strikes stir the shadows around Gideon, cleaving bright rifts into the inkstained dark.)

The story is told as we know it, without reordering or large ommissions. One thing we see not nearly often enough in modern television is actual narration in the background. We don't need it for all of the visuals and happenings, but so much of gtn profits from Gideon's thoughts and feelings.

A few scenes look differently though. When Gideon allows Harrow to take over her vision, the animation style changes. It gets a bit more abstract, the surroundings are textured like oil paintings, and Gideon herself has trails of smoke and ink following her movements. This is how they see the world together, and it is reflected again at the very end of the first book, when Harrow ascends. Except this time there's no borrowing, it's something deeper. The world is painted, more abstractly this time, and the characters appear almost like paper cuts.

And then the fun begins. We leave gtn and start htn. There is no more Gideon in our narrative, and yet there is her narration. As in the first series we retain parts of the narration, and it is her voice - mostly. Now, this is a source of great confusion in the book, right? The series would have to make it explicit that it is her voice, but it can have fun with it nevertheless. Some words are garbled, overlapping, distorted. Sometimes, Harrow's voice seamlessly takes over the narration, drifting in and continuing, while still using Gideon's pronunciation and vocal flow.

The visuals, on the other hand - now, that's an entirely different thing. At this point we know what the world looks like when Gideon sees it and what it looks like when they see it together. htn gives us two exciting new variations: 'Harrow with very little Gideon' for the Mithraeum story, and 'Harrow entirely without Gideon' for the river bubble. In the main, physical-world story we retain broad strokes of thick oil paint for the world around Harrow. The characters are too clean on a messy background, with some of the paint steadily bleeding into their shapes. The paint seems almost like it is an active participant in the narrative, crawling across inconvenient truths to blot them out, staining everyone but keeping it's distant from John, who therefore remains clearer than clear, shiny and bright, squeaky clean and lemon scented. But then there's the river bubble, and we get full Harrow, with a teeny bit of Wake. The scenery around the characters is vague and misty, swathes of color arrange into a distorted background like ink being poured into water. The entire scenery bleeds color and light into the surroundings of dark, barely saturated characters. It breaks at the seams when the uncomfortably realistic fleshy pipes wind through the walls, something too concrete for a tearstained world.

Towards the final act, we see a few changes: Abigail summons Nonius, and the shape language changes. Everything's still illustrated the way it was before, but the stark, desaturated characters in his proximity stop being mere dark blots in this scenery, and instead become almost comic-like. Their strikes and attacks are supported by respective action lines, their poses and moves adapt to the newly imposed genre conventions. Meanwhile, on the Mithraeum, Gideon is keeping the fires burning. We're almost back to the way we used to see the world in the beginning, Gideon's stark contrast and smooth environments. But there's the ink bleeding into the scenery from dark corners and bright red puddles, there's enough of Harrow here to stain the world.

And, well. We get to Nona. And Nona's world fundamentally isn't like the one the other's see. Nona's world is mismatched and chaotic and charmingly odd. Most of it is claymation, interspersed with some other materials. Cam's swords are real metal, the dust of New Rho fills the air, and most of the food is probably actual food that looks as dreadfully out of place in this world as it feels in Nona's mouth. There remains a touch of Harrow, expressive movements are exaggerated with her flowing ink, action lines like calligraphy. Of course, there are also the John chapters. Here, we get to have proper fun with the visuals. Let's recap: it's Harrow getting to experience a memory of Alecto, narrated by John. We already know Harrow's flowing colors that stain the backgrounds, and we get mixed medium animation with it: articulated plastic dolls, of course, with some natural materials (moss, wood, some metal scraps) as set dressing.

I'm still not entirely settled on the Nona Epilogue. As long as Alecto isn't out I'm not sure whether I want to keep in line with something from the next book, or whether it's its own thing. Until we know more: illuminated manuscript.

---

Well, that was more than I originally intended to write, but I've had those thoughts in my head basically since I've started the books, and they needed an outlet. There's plenty more ideas where those came from, please please talk to me. 'The Unwanted Guest' as an actual play, anyone? (When Cam makes contact with Babs, and the fight initiates, the camera zooms out from the now frozen claymation, revealing it's situated on a table in the front row of a theatre hall BTW)

#the locked tomb #tlt #Gideon the Ninth spoilers #Harrow the Ninth spoilers #Nona the Ninth spoilers #I could keep talking for hours. Anyone want a full concept for the soundtrack?#just tell me

73 notes · View notes

drawingducktalesducks · 1 year

Note

You make great art!

Your opinions on Vi’s alternate designs?

I could stare at her all day. Perfection.

Design wise? Her final one is (chef's kiss) SUCH a good balance of showing and contrasting Violet’s personality.

And the alternates show why!

She’s a nerd. Shorthand for that is usually glasses, as seen in almost all her alternative designs. (Think Velma from Scooby Doo.) Not a bad trope.

But at the same time, does her character need a visual short hand for smartness?

Just the way Violet SPEAKS tells you she’s a nerd. She uses big words, and calls people by their full names. When we first meet her it’s in a LIBRARY and her and Webby instantly start switching between various ancient languages.

We don’t need glasses to know she smart and a nerd.

So unless the show is willing to commit to some moments or gags where Violet loses her glasses / takes them off specifically not to see something / cleans them regularly as a character tick (think Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Conservation of Character Design says get rid of them.

Which the show creators did.

(also her introduction scene includes Quackfaster, and I appreciate that, instead of them both wearing glasses- a thing that isn't actually about smartness literally it's just wanting to be able to see- the thing Violet shares with the Terrifying Librarian is... hair tie / hair band, including the color thereof.)

(It's a more personal choice. And it's message is "Practical")

Next is clothing style. Most of her alternates have a more fancy, ‘outfit’ kinda look to them. Like this is something she put together to get a specific Look. Nothing wrong with that. Nerds can be fashionable (Ellie Woods queen thereof).

But… there isn’t anything in Violet’s personality, story, or situation that connects to that idea.

Her things are Books, Learning, Forbidden Magics, Honorable Conduct in Contests and Duels, Adopting Stray Shadow Teens Off The Street As Her New Sister, Brining Pie To A Sleepover, Smacking Invading Moon People With A Spiked Mace, and Using Tibetan Breathing Techniques To Survive Eating Three Bowls Of Deadly Hot Spices In A Row.

The closest she gets to caring about her appearance is when her and Webby (and then her and Lena) put on gruesome costume make up and prosthetics for fun.

So a snazzy outfit, while cool, doesn’t really… jive with the vibe of Violet Sabrewing.

Nerd clothes, like a vest, isn’t needed the same reason glasses aren’t. Also the details would be a pain to draw over and over again. Even Webby’s clothes don’t have that much little bits in them.

High collars again look cool… but Lena’s already got that covered. Stand them next to each other, and where’s the contrast?

Violet wouldn’t “pop” next to Lena if they had that on top of Violet’s dark color scheme and Lena’s dark sweater.

Wearing the same thing (to show characters are connected to each other) works best when either the color or the style DOES contrast sharply

(Huey Louie Dewy and May June wearing basically the same thing as their siblings, but in very different colors)

(side note I’ll make a separate thing for someday: Lena and Webby with button down collar shirts worn under something, but with different style, effect, and colors)

The leggings are seen on two of Violets alternates and I think that got picked for Meta Simplicity and also In-Character Practicality.

They’re athletic, the kind of thing that isn’t at risk of snagging on stuff (befitting an eventual Senior Junior Woodchuck), and the dark color balances out with her hair. And they’re VERY easy to draw. Very good!

Sweater.

Sweater with turtle neck (unless it’s one of those very loose ones) usually gets used as shorthand for “Comfort over Appearance” (Velma again, contrasting Daphne)

And in this case it’s a contrast with Lena who LOOKS like she doesn’t care at first glance but actually has put maybe the most effort into her outfit (sweater stolen from favorite band, dyed her hair, wears bright colored converse in a world where most people go bare foot)

and Webby, who is wearing basically a uniform (picked by her Granny or by herself while daydreaming of experiencing Normal School Things???)

So to balance out Lena’s rebel teen punk look, and Webby’s prim and proper look, Violet has a comfort and practicality look.

BUT!

They kept the eyeshadow.

A VERY GOOD MOVE.

See, eyeshadow on someone who wears an ‘outfit’ (Lena, Daisy) says fashion minded and image conscious.

(this includes Beakly the former spy taking up the role of grandmother).

Eyeshadow on someone who wears a non-snazzy turtle neck and legging with her hair tied away from her face in a simple ponytail says something else completely-

It says, Violet likes eyeshadow, and that is the ONLY reason she wears it.

Either she doesn’t notice that it’s unusual to do this, or she doesn’t care.

THAT is showing her personality.

If it’s that she doesn’t know it’s unusual, then that fits with her in the Woodchuck Challenge not knowing about smack talk until Lena teaches her, and in Friendship Hates Magic brining a pie to a sleepover, and in The Split Sword of Swanstantine wondering in the middle of a fight if she should change in to more occasion appropriate clothes instead of, you know, running.

Smart yes, savvy to social norms? Not so much.

If it’s that she doesn’t care, then that fits with her direct and blunt way of getting what she wants out of situations, never mind others' objections-

-Instantly running to Webby’s loft so she can see the picture of the demon lord and confirm the crookedness of his fang, repeatedly pressing for using the runes to try contacting the shadow realm despite Webby’s nervous boggle deflections, happily employing smack talk so she can learn it properly without stopping to ask what it’s effect on her competitor might be..

So the clothes of her final design all work really, REALLY well telling new parts of Violet’s personality, without just repeating what we’d instantly know from listening to her talk for half a minute.

Hair.

One of her alternates has loose floofy hair, which I imagine is what canon her would look like without the hair tie, and it rocks.

But the hair tie is kinda important.

Violet isn’t a book nerd who never leaves the library- She’s active, she gets in the thick of things, she’s happy to jump in a fight, and she’s a Junior Woodchuck. Practicality, again, makes more sense. Keeping her hair out of her face works with her character.

Her little flop of bangs is really fun to me too because… well…. It reminds me of Lena.

Again, it’s different enough to pop while the two stand together, but it’s there. Lena has flopped bang thing. Violet has a curly bang thing. They are sisters. It’s cute!

Also helps her silhouette stand out more against Webby and Lena, who’s hair is pretty smooth and down in general. Gives her this sharp thing that moves around and makes her extra easy to pick out, even when you just see part of her head. Important for a main side-character.

If you're going to add detail, add it to the silhouette -> very big visual payoff.

Colors! COLORS!!!!

Already mentioned the pants balancing her hair nicely, dark on top, dark below, but then there’s her eyeshadow and sweater!

They ALSO tie her with Lena!!!!

Lena’s shirt, hidden under her sweater, is pale blue- the same color her friendship magic is later- it’s the color of Lena being happy and being connected to people.

And Violet’s eyeshadow, is also blue? And Lena’s eyeshadow is purple! Like Violet!

Eyeshadow! That thing both her and Lena wear, them the Sabrewing Sisters, but Webby doesn’t!

That’s so cool! That’s a way to show a connection between them AND their personal tastes, before they even become family! And once they ARE family it helps them visually LOOK like one!

Also, Violet’s green sweater?

Again we’ve got the color contrast compliment thing (huey red dewy blue louie green) this time with Team Magic: Webby pink, Lena blue, Violet green. It helps them feel… individual in scenes they’re all in frame together, while also making them look good next to each other.

The choice of all of team magic’s colors to be either more pastel or duller than the Primary Colors Trio also lets all six of them work together visually, like in Nightmare on Killmoter Hill.

But again, LENA.

Lena has two other bright colors tucked into her design, aside from her pale blue.

The pink in her hair (visual cue to Webby) and her lime green shoes. Green. GREEN. It’s enough of an important color for it to ALSO be in her friendship bracelet.

And it’s the main color Violet, her adopted little sister, wears.

Oh my heart….

Finally, it’s looks like they tested out ideas of Violet being some kind of, parrot maybe, or wren, or such.

I love her being a humming bird for one very queer reason.

Female violet sabrewing humming birds are actually green, not purple.

And Violet.

Is purple.

Just like her dads.

(also name puns for the win yeeeeessss)

So on the whole, looking at the designs Violet could have had, I guess I’d say they’d make nice occasional outfits for her...

but if you’re going to make her an important supporting member of the cast and if you have to draw her over and over again, almost always with the same other two characters… and if those characters are Webby and Lena...

Then they picked exactly the right design to go with <3

#Ducktales (2017)#Violet Sabrewing #character design meta #Sabrewing Sisters #Lena and Webby mention #i love her i love her i love her i #everything about her design presses the happiness button in my head

242 notes · View notes

biceratops7 · 10 months

Text

Good omens leak talk under cut, literally just vivid descriptions, keep away unless you’ve seen it and it’s too late:

Ok I have literally been staring at that image periodically whenever I think about it for several days. Because I am normal and like things neurotypically. So here’s literally just a big list of observations no matter how minute. If you read this whole thing then the brain worms have made it to your prefrontal cortex.

Crowley has his glasses on (already explained my theory behind that)

Crowley is obviously the instigator but it’s unclear whether or not Azirphale is currently an active participant, or if he’s still processing. I’m leaning on still processing, but it’s hard to tell with the shadow on his brow obscuring his expression and not being able to see his hands

Speaking of that shadow, what the hell is up with the lighting in this scene?? It’s not bad except for making things in an already blurry still unclear, it’s just strange to have something softly back lit but also clearing having another additional light source else where. It’s an interesting choice because it can lead to inference of the circumstances here.

Second, related question: where the hell are they?? So let’s just take stock of everything BUT Azirphale and Crowley we see here. First of all it’s mostly in shadow, however there is a prominent light source behind Aziraphale, possibly close to him. The light we see on Crowley’s hair is likely from the doorway behind them.

Quick detour, the doorway is the brightest thing in the frame, creating a slight silhouette effect. Silhouettes are often used in film for moments that are a big deal but visually obvious. It shows weight through simplicity because you still know what’s happening and why it’s important with way less visual info than normal. We all IMMEDIATELY recognized what was happening and lost our shits even though it’s in shadow and currently obscured by giant text.

Ok so anyway this all leads me to believe they’re in a mostly dark room with one bright but not very far reaching light. I wanna say it’s almost fluorescent? Or an exposed lightbulb? It certainly doesn’t look warm like a lamp to me.

In addition I believe they’re inside a room to a larger building. The light coming from the door is almost certainly NOT day light. It’s purely white as if it’s a very well lit room or hall. There also is what I think looks like an exit sign near the top next to the doorway, or at least idk what else it could be. Because of that I don’t think this is anyone’s home or small shop.

I find this EXTREMELY interesting because the only prominent location we really see fit that vibe or description is the office building of heaven and hell. This season seems to be particularly highlighting that “neutral ground” between then, with the elevator showing up three times.

Now this one is just me trying to interpret literal blobs, but there either appears to be some sort of rounded extension to the top of the door way, or the walls are just thick. Make of that what you will

the room appears relatively spacious but mostly bare, almost like a holding place. But obviously with such a tight frame this can be hard to tell. I did take note of the fact that you can see some brown lines behind Aziraphale in the first frame, so there is clearly something there.

Alright enough waxing poetry about the damn walls, I know that they're probably standing up. Crowley might be in a position where he can twist into it from a sitting position, but with Aziraphale' shoulders so far forward and his back entirely angled to face Crowley, he'd either have to be straddling a chair or his lower spine is snapping like a glowstick.

Aziraphale is not being pushed against anything, he’s rocking backwards despite the force being applied to pull him forward, so in other words our boy Crowley’s REALLY shooting his shot, lmao

Aziraphale’s arms are confusing. They’re clearly not holding onto Crowley even out of frame, but they also don’t seem fully relaxed at his sides to me either.

WAIT, ok so the standing is still a strong contender, but they could also be sitting across from eachother at a small table. Crowley seems hunched over a bit more than is warranted for Aziraphale’s height, and Aziraphale’s arms could propped up at the elbows supporting his weight.

So damnit this adds a whole new layer to the location question

#this is so unhinged please forgive me #good omens spoilers #good omens #good omens leak #ineffable husbands #analysis #speculation #aziraphale #Crowley #season 2 #biceratops

100 notes · View notes

heliphantie · 9 months

Text

It's not symmetrical or perfect But it's beautiful, and it's mine

Some long ramblings about Isabela under 'read more':

I originally didn’t use to be interested in Isabela, brushing her aside as yet another emancipated princess character, but with time, I figured she’s more dimensional and distinctive character of her kind, and possibly, most multifaceted one next to Bruno. More than that, the two, as opposite they look on the surface, have enough things in common for him to have more rapport with her than with Mirabel, as movie seems to suggest.

First of all, magnitude of their powers. All of original triplets have got gifts that surpass any others in the family, outright divine in nature – abilities of healing, conduct the weather and foreseeing future. While out of third generation, Isabela has got an ultimate divine power – of bringing life out of thin air, and in accordance with her emotional state no less. Thus, her powers also require thorough control, which may be another hidden reason for her always needing to keep herself straight. And it’s apparent too, bearers of greatest gifts are also under hardest pressure, with Bruno and Isabela even visually (in the sequence of “Dos Oruguitas”) indicated to be most subjected to.

Second thing is, external and internal presentation. Out of all characters, the two have the most conflict between public perception and genuine expression, and an array of different facades in case of both – from impassive and contemptuous to caring and heartful. We don’t get to see any objective view of Bruno’s behavior in the past, but from how he’s perceived in retrospect, it appears he used to give off impression of distant and uncaring to people around him, which could’ve been simply an effect of his professional duty, including acting impartial to the events he gets to witness as local oracle and avoiding personal interference with anybody’s fate (just my conclusion, anyway). Which is rather similar to Isabela’s acting around people – pleasant, but not extremely intimate, more like performer than participant, and impression of egoistic, haughty person she leaves on Mirabel. (Did encounter with and insight of real Bruno give no clue about what her sister’s situation would be? It’s not a Mirabel-bashing article, but she’s one dense protag, I must say…) In that, they’re two people in family who appear to bottle their feelings and maintain the constructed façade the most of all (“So much hides behind my smile…”). In addition, as parallel to Isabela’s built image of conventional feminine “perfection”, Bruno has his own invented persona of Hernando, which seemingly serves as “perfect”, and more stereotypically masculine version of himself. (Their natural selves are, of course, still properly feminine/masculine, just of more subtle and nuanced variety.)

And what is fundamental trait shared between two: the extreme selflessness and devotion, and sense of responsibility, being prone to self-sacrifice with long-lasting consequences and openly declaring their willingness to give it all for the family. Which also slips into coming to well-intended, but misguided, and even hurtful in perspective, decisions: no, making yourself a traitor in the eyes of your relatives, never getting rewarded for your good will, while for noble reasons, is not going to bring family together, and neither does confining yourself to lifetime of fake love relationship (and hell knows how suppressed discontent seeping through would manifest itself in the end of things… Mariano dodged a bullet, also not deserving such misery). Anyhow, willfully getting your freedom cut short for the rest of your life for the sake of wellbeing and benefit of your loved ones is tremendous sacrifice (and yet again, it’s such a short sight on Mirabel’s part to take confession of that sacrifice lightly, beside of not realizing she is a case of Isa’s predicament, what with approving a proposal behind her sister’s back). And that’s where Isa is deconstructing Disney rebellious princess archetype even before her breaking out: unlike Jasmine or Merida, she actually holds her family in priority over whatever carefree life she could lead, and makes mature move, total opposite of pampered princess Mira thinks she is. It should be said, marriage is not something exactly forced upon Isa, but rather silently accepted on the assumption she does return affection of would-be fiancé. While Isabela seemingly doesn’t have the same luxury as Jasmine to reject suitors left and right (it doesn’t seem there’s a lot of options…), nor fiancé in question is as obnoxious as any of Jasmine’s, or, say, Gaston, she definitely has enough authority around the town to deem any suitor unworthy of herself or make her own choice, so she’s not that submissive in that situation as it may look. (And nothing indicates any of older Madrigals were forced into arranged marriage, which makes me think that is not entirely in Alma’s hands to decide on whom or if her children going to marry.) It appears, based on observation of similarities between Alma and Isa being possible reason for her singling the granddaughter out as her favorite, Alma might just have been projecting her own perfect romance on the young couple, being convinced they’re destined for each other just as she and Pedro were, and have to make up for her own abruptly cut matrimonial bliss, not taking in account Isa doesn’t have to be her carbon copy. Note that, entering marriage, Isa is not simply getting what she (presumably) wants, she puts herself in a role of next (after Julieta, most likely) matriarch, a head of family, a ruler of town, accepting huge responsibility, quite an opposite of effort-free fairytale life.

Which brings me to connection between characters affirmed in the movie itself: what was exact output of Bruno’s words – either prophetic or not – for Isabela? She is the only one, whose prophecy wasn’t appearing to fulfill itself, and she doesn’t comment on it even in the moment of honesty. We never get closure on that issue, let alone any conversation between two (because poor Bruno was denied of opportunity explaining himself properly by his kind relatives…). One answer that seems to be likely correct in context of Bruno’s reputation: because his vision always undoubtedly becomes reality, promise of the dreams coming true was taken for granted, and Isa considered that, as long as she goes with the flow and doesn’t take the initiative in deciding for herself, she obtains happiness by default. So, she’s basically another princess in waiting for the miracle (hm…) until she gets to break free on her own, which is consistent with modern trend of Disney subverting and defeating their own fairytale standard.

But other possible interpretation is: what if that promise, while leading to wrongful and harmful conviction, was giving her strength to follow her path and assigned duty, vested with faith she, by doing right thing, eventually will become a master of her life and achieve fulfillment. (And probably, it makes sense for her to think Mirabel, revealed being linked with imminent destruction of miracle, somehow also leads to her miraculous destiny being dissolved with no hope left.)

Worth noting, it brings up a parallel with classic story about destiny – and also another one of Disney fairytale standard – tale of Sleeping Beauty, blessed with magical gifts and cursed with ominous future, outcome of which tale being basically the same as Encanto movie: fighting future is dangerous, some losses are inevitable, but what’s matter is what we learn and take from it to improve even more distant future. Also, there’s even visual parallel – Aurora’s two-colored in funky manner dress as result of fairy godmothers fighting over its color, and Isabela’s multicolored holi’d dress, I wonder how intentional it was.

And one another minor and not instantly obvious connection, not clearly visible in the movie: both Isa and Bruno may be “brains” of the family! Some concept arts depict Isa being something of a bookworm, and while you have to be really observant (or peek at production art), there’s hints in Bruno’s environment he’s one himself – in addition to some books in his hideout, there’s drawings on the walls showing doodles of rats in casting of stage plays of Shakespeare’s tragedies and “Don Quixote” (both are not exactly light literature).

And while Isabela being an intellectual isn’t something directly stated in the movie, it’s still part of her development and isn’t contradicted by anything on screen. Though she probably may give preference to non-fiction on the topic of biology. Speaking of nerdy inclinations…

One last (rather tangential) thing worth of discussion: abandoned Bubo storyline and its connection to ultimate version of story. For the aspects that justify it being scraped for good: first, as I stated above, her being actually loyal to family, instead of trying to elope, makes for all more powerful presentation of her character. Second, is unfortunate implication of her being driven to person simply because he understands her (which is valid on its own) rather than because she likes him for his own qualities and personality. But it may be just lack of context for single scene, otherwise dynamic of two people with connection to nature and such contrasting behavior and appear is pretty endearing. (Official source states the storyline is written off so Isa in the end does not “defined by a man”, but then, Mirabel is treated like hero and she’s “defined” by two men, given she’s in need the word of Bruno on what action to take, and if we take literally statement that she was “send by Pedro” to save the family…) So while I appreciate her ending as more independent and decisive person, I still like how concept of that relationship speaks of her personality, and it did find its way in final version, even if in funny way, by replacing man with cactus:) Even as brief moment leading to big reformative number, having her admiring the “imperfect”, peculiar creature gives evidence of her carrying deep fondness for unconventional forms of beauty, fascination for irregular, whimsical (as opposed to what she’s assigned for - Mariano, while having his own depths and not entirely flawless as well, kind of dorky in his own way, is simply that – conventional and too ordinary for Isa to spark interest). And considering that trait of her was maintained through the variations of story, it seems more than plausible she may develop profound fondness and connection with her eccentric (and definitely “fish out of water”, as Bubo is described) uncle, which makes it a loss that the story didn’t even tipped toe into interaction between the characters. (And it’s hard to overlook, Bubo’s personal and even physical traits also seem to transfer into final version of Bruno, so the character’s concept wasn’t entirely lost either.)

On the final note, bunch of random musings about the character of Isa, that neither here nor there:

Speaking of unpredictable nature of gift and popular parallel between Isabela and Elsa: may it be that Isabela had to teach herself to regulate her power for pretty much the same reason, given connection between emotions and outcome, and inability for child to properly control it? Even in suppressed state, Isa’s powers have dangerous side to them: we see her being able to use vines to restrain people, making flowers grow from every surface, and later she creates carnivorous plants and just unleashes botanical chaos all around the town, not to mention that her negative emotions resurface itself as plants that unsafe for handling. Between Alma’s worried notion that Isabela got “out of control” and Bruno’s reluctance to face her (which he only partially admits to be for the fear to meet Alma), there could be something that young (and simply not being in existence yet) Mirabel might not knowing about full effect of Isa’s power when unbound and under emotional affect.

And one aspect that felt conflicting to me for some time: as for type of person with “green thumb” she’s supposed to embody (and more prominent “child of nature” image with which her character was conceived at first), Isabela acts rather violently, shown destroying her creations, plucking roses out of her flower bed, ruining topiary and such. But considering she’s not simply nature lover and expert (who she seems to genuinely be), but embodiment of nature itself, like Pepa is an embodiment of atmospheric forces, it’s organic for her to having embraced its destructive side as well, as part of death and resurrection circle. /So she’s a bit of like Stitch, with equally creative and destructive inclinations at one because of immense abilities she’s packed with:)/

I definitely have a little more to say, and contemplate, about the character… but some of it going too far into speculative and fanfic-y territory, so it’s a topic for another time. And sorry for all incidental Mirabel kicking:) – I have things to say about her too, but in its own turn.

#encanto #encanto fanart #disney fanart #isabela madrigal #bruno madrigal #ramblings #lot to say about isa #phantieart #phantie ramblings

82 notes · View notes

tnbscans · 4 months

Text

Inside Sunrise Interview

Inside Sunrise interview with Masayuki Ozaki and Kazuhiko Tamura. This is transcribed from an Anime News Network video linked below.

The Origin of Tiger & Bunny

Ozaki:

The idea for Tiger & Bunny came from two different roots. The first was Director Keiichi Sato's sentiments. To Director Sato, it's a story about heroes with mundane problems. The director said he wanted to depict a superhero drama with a sense of life to it. The other was my sentiments, as a producer. I wanted to depict the conflict and drama one sees when they've belonged to an organization for a while.

The impetus for the project came from the controversy over the competition swimsuits in the Beijing Olympics. I saw in an interview that wearing one particular kind of swimsuit gave you a chance at setting a record but, well, the athletes who had contracts with Japanese companies couldn't wear that fast swimsuit.

At the time, we were coming up with the project, so we thought the conflict of those athletes who belonged to those industries was very interesting and intriguing. And so we thought it would be nice to take the Director's desire to make a hero story, the story of heroes who have to bear the weight of sponsors, and depict the conflict, drama, and culture that lies behind all of that. So that's, well, how the idea came to fruition.

Tamura:

This is where we work on the storyboard for Tiger & Bunny. We're very particular about using pencil, and, um, the expression of performance, you could say. There are things you can't express without using pencil to depict motion, so we pay extra attention to those parts.

This is called the layout. A layout, you see, is this image, framed here by the screen. It's an image we use to make sure how it'll fit in the television frame. We use this as a base to create the key animation.

Oh, this character is Blue Rose. It's a scene where Blue Rose is drinking soda. It's part of a TV ad campaign in Japan. The drink is for one of the sponsors, but this is the test layout for that. We'll use this as a base to draw the animation.

Thoughts on the Characters

Ozaki:

When we were working on the costume design for the heroes of Tiger & Bunny, we paid special attention to their variety. There are 8 heroes who appear in this work, but from the start we had the idea that their suits should be diverse. We set the story in a near-future city that's anethnic melting pot, so the characters themselves were set to be a variety of races. There's a Russian character, a Chinese one, a Hispanic one, and a Japanese one too. We thought the hero suits should be designed to match those different characteristics.

Character Designer Masakazu Katsura, himself is very knowledgeable about superheroes. He loves superheroes, in particular, those from American comic books. Director Sato really liked that aspect as well. So Mr. Katsura pulled out a whole lot of ideas for what he wanted the superhero designs to be like. Fire emblem really is the kind of suit-wearing super hero you might find in American comic books.

A hero made with a bull as it's motif. Rock Bison is the kind of design you'll find in Japanese Tokusatsu, but not in American comics and that was the kind of variation we wanted it to have.

Tamura:

This right here is the CG check movie. We're running a check on the motion. We work on drawing the animation after we first make the CG.

Visual Effects Efforts

Ozaki:

Also, one of the visual aspects of Tiger & Bunny we were really conscientious about was depicting the heroes primarily through CG. The female character Blue Rose is the only one that's frequently hand drawn, but basically Tiger, Barnaby, and the others are all CG. They're designed to actually bear industry logos so since those industry logos would change over and over, we'd have to draw it over and over if they were hand drawn. That'd make it very difficult. But by making them CG, that kind of work, the swapping out of corporate logos, is not big deal.

One other reason is, we were keeping the world market in mind, and because of Pixar and Disney, CG animation is the visual style people around the world are most used to seeing. Hand-drawn animation certainly has its own good points, but in the end, we thought CG had the most universality and we designed each hero in CG. In doing it that way, we're able to come up with some pretty detailed imagery. For example, the hero Fire Emblem wears a cape, and that cape constantly flickers with fire as a pattern. If that was hand-drawn we couldn't do something like that. Those are the kinds of visual effects we focused on.

About Kotetsu

Ozaki:

The design for the character Kotetsu was clearly risky. For starters, he's middle-aged, has a beard, and is a single father. Characters like that in animation are, well, how do I say…it's a fact that they're hard for viewers to accept. The truth is, we were half hopeful and half fearful, but in the end we went with that design for the animation, and luckily, he's well accepted right now. We're actually getting word from the fans that they can empathize with him, and we're very happy to hear that reaction.

Kotetsu wasn't the only character, there's his partner, the younger Barnaby. This is a buddy story. By having another main character, we think we've established a very nice balance. Kotetsu's a middle-aged guy who used to be popular back in the day, but lately he's not doing so well. That's his character background. That said, there were things we wanted to illustrate thematically with him, like the importance of never giving up, of the bonds between people, things of that nature.

Plus, Hollywood movies, especially lately, are getting lots of sequels, and as the main character's actor gets older, they write the character to age with him. By part 4 or 5, he's already middle aged. Their refusal to give up, their continued fight, gave us some queues as well. You can say it's targeted more towards adults. As for me, I want to create dramas with universality, dramas that people of any generation can sympathize with and to keep making them in the future. That's what I hope for.

Source:

youtube

#tiger & bunny #translated #interview #masayuki ozaki #kazuhiko tamura #Youtube #2011

28 notes · View notes

rogueddie · 5 months

Text

Stranger Things: The First Shadow

This is going to be a full review; starting with production, some characterization issues and some of the plot holes.

But, before I get into the spoilers, I would just like to clarify my biggest issue; these characters are not the same characters that we see in the show. Every play demands suspension of disbelief, but it was completely impossible with this play.

I knew the play would be bad when I got my tickets. I didn't think I would have a bad time watching it.

warning; I am about to level a truly gruesome amount of critisism at the stage show. if you liked it, I'm glad you did; this is just my opinion and experience xoxo

My Review:

The production was, physically, beautiful. The designs and use of space was extremely well done. Some of the ways they used the screens and projections was stunning. It had the potential to add a lot to the story.

The sets are easily the strongest part of the production. The use of screens, levels and painted background- especially in the introduction- were stunning. It doesn't feel overwhelming and it makes it almost easy to remain engaged in both scenes playing out at once.

The design for the lab, too, is extremely well made. Having a box that can be rolled onto the stage is the perfect idea for the scene- it appears even smaller thanks to the contrast with the larger stage and the bright lights in white walls, the set feels ominous.

Unfortunately, the production ended up sabotaging itself. They default to special effects, screens and pyrotechnics to create the experience instead of trusting their designs or actors. It makes it seem like they are trying to hide their designs instead of enhancing them.

The introduction scene is the perfect example. The smoke machine initially added to the scene, it added an element of reality that could have drawn the audience in.

But, with how the smoke machine was overused, it ended up hiding the second set used in the "boat scene". In the stalls, I could barely see anything and was drawn out of the show completely and immediately- instead of watching a play, suddenly I'm worrying about whether I need to get my inhaler or not.

They overused everything. The screens were used so often that I have to wonder why they didn't just make a short movie instead of a play.

Similarly, the pyrotechnics were immediately overused- the first scene should not be making me wonder if you are using all of the visually compelling tricks in the first five minutes. But to keep using them at the same frequency? It makes it seem like you are more interested in making something look cool and care very little for the story you are supposed to be telling.

The lighting and music was simply poor. Half the time I couldn't hear what the actors were saying due to the music blasting at a painfully loud volume and, in scenes where the actors are clearly giving a brilliant performance, they are so poorly lit that they might as well not bother.

The poor lighting was very similar the show though. Props to them for managing that horrendous feat.

The directing definitely didn't help. The actors use of space is so poor and unnatural that, at least, I hope it was the director.

The lab set, for example; the actors both left the box set made. Henry's character roams the entire length of the stage, which makes the small lab set feel entirely pointless. His character never feels trapped or in any way boxed in by the box set. Instead of adding to the scene, it takes away- it's a giant set design that is ignored or takes up space in a way that is obtrusive.

On a positive note, I would like to point out that most of the actors did a phenomenol job. But I would especially like to emphasize how well Anika Boyle, Christopher Buckley, Oscar Lloyd, Louis McCartney and Isabella Pappas did. I can't wait to see what they do next.

Unfortunately, they're brilliant performances could do nothing to save a script that had already doomed them and their characters.

Doctor Brenner is easily the biggest problem when it comes to the characters. I'm not sure if it was the actor, the director or simply the writing, but he is the worst part of the entire play. He has no discernible motivation, none of his actions make sense with his character- if he can even be called a character. The show twists him so much that he becomes a caricature that bares no resemblence to the Doctor Brenner we see in the show.

Throughout the show, he's constantly encouraging Henry to kill. Literally, he verbally tells Henry to kill people. It's completely different to the sly and manipulative Brenner we see in the show- and not in a way that would make sense for him to have evolved from the stage Brenner to the show Brenner.

"Kill her," Doctor Brenner, The First Shadow, 2k23. Why does he say this? Uh... he wants the big scary interdimensional monster. Why does he want that? Uh... HEY, LOOK OVER THERE, PYROTECHNICS!

Henry Creels issues mostly stem from plot holes and retconning well established canon. In the show, he is not a victim and that fact is made abundantly clear. It's not that he's tricked into thinking he's in control, he simply is. The stage show tries to completely turn that on it's head and make him the poor little victim to something that, in canon, he made.

If he was a different character, or if we are to take the stage show as an au of sorts, I think he's pretty well written. His motivations and powers are well established. We, as the audience, understand his thought process. He is a believable character... even if the 'siezures' do often come across as nonsensical, borderline silly.

Hopper, Joyce and Bob were almost perfect too. It's something that has been slowly irritating me more and more- they could have easily been the protagonists, taking attention away from plot holes and poor characterization. They were strong enough as a trio and well written enough to be- almost- convincing.

I'm not sure how to explain my issues with Hoppers character in the show without it boiling down to 'dissappointing'. Nothing about the arc he goes through makes sense to me and it feels like the show forced him into the ending he had simply to remind the audience of the show, despite it making no sense with the story or arc that his character went through during the show.

My issues with Joyce are both- it breaks canon for her to know so much, so intimately, and her ending is also incredibly forced. The budding enemies-to-lovers that she had with Hopper also led to the ending feeling unsatisfying. It feels like the growth is for nothing.

The characters in the background too, somehow, are full of just as many flaws.

Claudia is the perfect example. When her cat is killed by Henry, she is immediately ready to start a literal witch hunt. She's insistant and frequant about it. There's even a small scene where she is seen to be irritating with how much she brings up her witch theory.

Yet, she stops talking about that very suddenly. She doesn't express as much as distaste for the play- about witches and killing. She's actually excited.

Her pets death and her character are important, but only until the plot demands she be quiet so they can move on, hoping that the audience will somehow forget this somewhat major B plot.

I could go on forever about the characters. A lot of the plot holes stem from how poorly they're handled and how much they immediately change to fit the narrative around Henry. None of them act like people and the play does not treat any of them like they, as characters, matter at all. They are just people to fill the space whilst Henry and Patty have a love story.

But, even then, the characters the play seems to care about are completely mishandled as well.

Joyce, in her introduction, spends most of in trousers and a bra. She's supposed to be a student in high school. It feels weird to ask your audience to watch someone standing on a stage in their underwear whilst also asking them to believe she is underage. It is so incredibly uncomfortable to think about. She didn't need to be topless for as long as she was.

Pattys ending made no sense. She died, but also she went to see her mother. So... she's alive? But also she's dead. But she's there, physically, so she must be alive... but also it's made clear that she died.

Eleven being 10(ish?) in the end made no sense with the timeline. They reduce characters to badly told jokes; Ted the idiot and Karen the blonde "slut".

I don't have the energy to go over the plot. There are so many holes and problems that it would take forever to deal with act one alone.

But, to summerize; this play had a lot of potential. There are parts that were almost brilliant and there are a lot of incredibly talented people working on it behind the scenes. The way all of that talent and potential is wasted for something as simple as lack of effort in the writing and directing? Dissappointing is not a harsh enough word.

0.5 / 10

#stranger things #the first shadow #tfs

26 notes · View notes

olet-lucernam · 3 days

Text

A Hollow Promise [27] chapter vi, part iv

{_[on AO3]_}

main tags : loki x original character, post-avengers 2012, canon divergence - post-thor: the dark world, canon-typical violence, mentions of torture

summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of New York, the Avengers need a few days to build a transport device for the Tesseract. With the Helicarrier damaged and surveillance offline, SHIELD sends an asset to guard Loki in the interim: a young woman who sees the truth in all things, and cannot lie.

Even long presumed dead, her memories lost to her, Loki would know her anywhere.

And this changes things.

Some things last beyond infinity. And the universe is in love with chaos.

(Loki was never looking for redemption. It came as an unexpected side-effect.)

chapter summary : astrid gathers her allies, and draws the attention of her enemies. loki pays a heavy price for a victory.

recommended listening : what you waiting for?, gwen stefani

tag list: @femmealec @mischief2sarawr

[PREVIOUS] | [MASTERLIST] | [NEXT]

54 weeks and 1 day out

“Sir. We have movement.”

Tony felt the lines of his spine and shoulder blades pull straight, almost reflexively, swivelling into motion at his holographic worktable like a well-oiled gear.

He was going on a self-imposed work diet- an attempt to rebalance, after living in his work for the past few months, building and breaking and remaking in an endless beta-testing phase, a Sisyphean attempt to patch every vulnerability he could imagine- but it had been pushed back, under the circumstances, and he had rationed out enough time for him to deal with the situation, before starting the full detox.

“Where are we, J?” He asked, with a casual upwards flick above the table.

The gesture summoned a hologram above the desk: an architectural scale model of the Tower, crafted in vitrified blue light.

“There is some unusual activity near the roof.”

The area in question turned orange on the three-dimensional map, zooming in for an exploded view of the topmost two-dozen floors.

Tony had remodelled the top of the Tower, after the Battle of New York. Damage had given him the excuse, and the team had provided the reason. Repaired and restructured, several stories added to its height, the broad, smooth curves and open layout modelled after his cliffside home in Malibu were scrapped, the exterior cleaner and sharper- streamlined, from the slanted crown of its roof, through the convex glass-faced layers of the penthouse floors, to the landing pad extending out into the open air.

Locals had taken to calling it Avengers Tower. None of the roster aside from Tony had taken up residence yet, but they all agreed that it was a good base, and Tony kept the personal suites ready for whenever they might need to drop in.

The luminescent A badge shimmered on the side of the building, level with the landing pad. Just below it- within the three floors dedicated to Tony’s private laboratories, workshops, storage, and fabrication facilities- a red diamond marked his current location.

“Surveillance feeds and motion sensor detectors are offline,” JARVIS announced, highlighting the locations in a chain, “as are the door sensors.”

Tony visually tracked the path that it created.

It led from the roof access, into the emergency stairwell, before terminating at the door into Thor’s suite: no more and no less than would be needed to gain access to the building.

It was more than twenty floors above him- a distance that would take several minutes to traverse. He had time.

“You locked out, buddy?” Tony asked quietly, summoning his touch keyboard with a sweep of his palm. “Or are they trying to be subtle?”

“Neither, sir. As with the first occurrence, this appears to be a mechanical failure, not a cyber-attack.”

His gaze narrowed briefly, jaw moving.

Somehow, that was both more and less plausible than JARVIS being hacked.

“Shall I prepare to go into lockdown protocol, sir?” JARVIS proposed. “It should be possible to isolate intruders to one of the penthouse floors, once they are inside.”

Tony contemplated the offer for only a heartbeat.

“No. Clear the way down for her, J,” he decided breezily. “Let’s hear what she has to say.”

There was a brief, audibly judgemental pause in the response time.

“As you wish, sir.” Tony could hear the mild disapproval and concern behind his AI’s cool, crisp tones. “Shall I at least stand by with security protocols?”

“Doubt we’ll be needing them, but- feels like this one’s got a few fireworks up her sleeve.” He conceded blithely, pre-empting the reproach about putting himself at unjustifiable risk. “Alright. Safety off, but finger off the trigger.”

Tony turned in his chair, scanning the room. The workshop was cluttered with a rich confusion of half-finished projects, both metal and digital, strewn across screens and surfaces between discarded coffee cups and various tools.

“And clear the decks, J. Window Dressing Protocol.”

At the command, the screens cleared.

Detailed blueprints and test data were replaced with generic schematics and randomised code, like cellophane pasted on a device fresh out of the box. They reflected in the wall of glass that faced the length of the room- diluted against the dark hallway beyond.

With a gentle swipe, Tony dismissed the render of the Tower.

Rising to his feet, he slid the rolling chair aside, summoned a program and began typing, looking to all the world like the very image of productivity and genius at work.

He wasn’t kept waiting for long.

A gentle rap of knuckles sounded on the reinforced, shatter-proof glass.

Tony’s head snapped up.

The girl whose real name definitely wasn’t Alethia waited just outside, painted like day in the light spilling from the workshop.

She was dressed for the winter night, a New York romance in a soft black sweater and jeans the colour of dried roses, champagne hair pinned in in a braided coil, emphasising a pretty set of cheekbones and long eyelashes. Backs of her knuckles still raised to the glass, snow-dusted and pleasantly windswept, she tipped chin down slightly in greeting.

She looked better, Tony observed. Her skin was clearer, her eyes brighter, expression smoother- less tension-soured, less angry, and more like the person that she had sounded like, aboard the Helicarrier.

Without looking, he tapped a command into the control panel.

The electronic lock switched open with a heavy snap.

Alethia turned the handle, stepping inside, flawless and measured.

“Dr Stark.”

There was a low thrum in her voice, as though cautiously pleased to see him.

“Not-agent.”

Tony’s reply was blandly jovial. Shunting the lines of code aside, he stepped away from the workbench, one hand tucked into his pocket. He had remained outfitted in dark sweats and a gym shirt, standard gear for the workshop, but his posture was that of when he was in a three-piece suit and a boardroom- eyes fixed on her face, chin tilted up slightly, sizing her up with an air of casual challenge.

To her credit, Alethia remained unaffectedly at ease.

It had reminded him a little of Pepper- but not by much.

Virginia Potts was like a ceramic knife. There was a deliberate poise to her, born of a consciousness of her disadvantages in the industry, a refusal to be anything less than a worthy player of the game; she was everything prim and correct and refusing to be intimidated, the result of thousands of observations and lessons learned and choices made, constructed into a statuesque, pleasantly intimidating facade.

Alethia reminded him far more of someone else.

Tony had realised it when she was leaning over the Tesseract transport device, her voice focused and softly mirthful.

Relax. I have steady hands.

For a moment, he had been hurled back in time. He had tasted metal, and dust, lung tissue still burning from the water with each breath, the heat of the forge at his back and the dim cold of the caves at his front, the weight of a car battery slung over his shoulder, and a pair of lean hands- Yinsen, sure and calm and steady, mild-mannered yet ruthlessly insightful, guarded and tired and yet earnest- pouring molten palladium into its cast.

Relax, he had chided Tony gently, tilting the long handles of the tongs, inclining the lip of the crucible over the mould. I have steady hands. Why do you think you are alive, ah?

After removing it from his chest for the second time, Tony had quietly returned the first miniaturised arc reactor to the display mount that Pepper had commissioned, sealing it back in glass.

It was still powered by that delicate ring of palladium, poured by steady hands under a mountain in Afghanistan.

With a steady sweep of her lashes, Alethia looked past Tony’s shoulder, at the screen display where he had been typing.

Her head tilted.

“Was there any particular reason that you were translating the lyrics of ABBA’s Dancing Queen into base64?”

Huh. Well.

Tony had more or less expected that she would see straight through the chains of randomised letters and numbers, like an awl punching through leather, but- the casual quickness was a little disorientating. It was like expecting a card trick, and getting shoved into a swimming pool instead.

“Everybody needs a hobby,” he said, bald-faced and shameless.

“Mm.” Hazel eyes flicked to his, warm as vanilla and laughter. “I’ve heard worse.”

They trailed into silence.

“Ran a trace, on the phone number you left,” Tony admitted boldly. “Before I called.”

Alethia smiled slightly.

“Ah. Were you disappointed?”

“I think I’d be disappointed if it was that easy.” Tony decided, circling the desks, feigning distraction. Alethia was missing a coat that would make sense for the cold. Her nails were trimmed neat, without polish. The only traces of makeup were a swipe of soft black kohl at the corners of her eyes and the sheen of lip balm. Practical, yet impractical. “Complete no sell, though. Impressive. That SHIELD tech?”

The corner of her mouth pulled up further.

“No.”

“You still with them?”

“If I ever was, I’m not now.”

“So you’re a free agent?”

“Free not-agent.”

“How long?”

“Is this an interrogation?”

“I mean, I’d call it due diligence, but I’ve got a pair of cuffs somewhere, if it’d make you more comfortable.”

Alethia’s smile bloomed into a brilliant grin.

“Didn’t think you’d be into that, Dr Stark.”

She sobered slightly, clear as glass.

“Ask me what you want to know. I wouldn’t have left a way for you to contact me, if I wasn’t willing to talk.”

Tony held her gaze for a long moment.

He tapped at the keypad.

Several pages opened across the screens.

Pages of instructions, formulas, tables, calculations, and skeletal molecular structures illuminated the digital glass.

Alethia kept her gaze on Tony.

“What is this?” Tony asked, quiet and direct.

She breathed a slow exhale, hip cocking.

“The formulas, chemical synthesis processes, and medical procedures for stabilising the biological effects of the experimental serum known as Extremis,” she announced clinically, “when introduced to the human body intravenously, subcutaneously, or intramuscularly.” Alethia paused, pointedly. “I did include an abstract.”

“And you broke into my building to leave it here.”

“I apologise for the necessity.” Alethia replied evenly. “It was safer, than a courier.”

“You couldn’t think of another way?”

She arched an eyebrow.

“So- a package, delivered to this building, or a file sent to the general inquires inbox for Stark Industries, addressed directly to you, from an unknown sender- wouldn’t have been lost in the system?”

Despite the lingering irritation, he could admit that she had a point.

And at least she hadn’t tried to hack JARVIS, or threatened to taser him, or ripped the arc reactor out of his chest, or thrown him through a window.

All in all, this break-in was probably in his top three.

Tony flicked his hands into a shrug, keeping his expression blank and blithe.

“Alright. Let’s say I buy that.” He did buy it, but she didn’t need to know that yet. “You wanna tell me what this really is?”

He saw the subtle shift in her eyes, becoming a little shrewder, a touch sharper- and a little pleased.

She pulled up one shoulder.

“A gift? Or a bribe, perhaps. Gratitude. Diplomacy. A resumé.”

“What, you’re in the market for a job?”

The quip was as pithy as he intended, but in the split second that followed- huh.

Actually.

That wasn’t a terrible idea.

Tony acknowledged that he needed to step back from Iron Man- at least until he could reorganise his head and redraw the lines so that it wasn’t the all-consuming furnace of fear and duty and penance and freedom-safety that it had become- but the work wouldn’t wait. The planet was on a deadline, and Tony had more resources than most to pull the necessary defences together. Having good people on board, who could keep his projects ticking over while he reorientated, was essential.

And Alethia knew. She had recognised the monsters lurking in the dark between the stars, and had looked for someone to warn when she decided that Fury couldn’t be trusted to listen.

And then there was the truth in all things, and cannot lie aspect. That was a hell of an ace up Earth’s collective sleeve- if, if, if-

“I don’t need a job, Dr Stark. What I need is an ally.” Alethia spoke as clear and calm as daybreak upon the mountains. “We both do. As many as we can get.”

Tony swallowed, carefully.

He turned his head to look at the screens, grappling down the swoop of intermingled terror and relief.

“So this is your pitch.”

“I was working on other areas, but- I saw the news,” Alethia said mildly. “The bombings. Malibu.”

She hesitated.

“I was worried.”

Tony flicked a slightly surprised glance back at her.

Alethia’s gaze was on the screens, inscrutable.

There was a note of quiet sincerity in her voice that rattled something within him, like marbles in a jar.

“Well.” Tony began, turning back towards the illuminated text. “I’ve come back from the dead before.”

“Even so.” She demurred. “You were- you were kind to me. I didn’t forget that. So I was glad to find that you were alright. Then I found out about AIM, and Extremis, and I- thought you could use the assistance.”

Tony didn’t know what to say.

He still couldn’t decide, even after a moment to reboot.

Instead, he deflected.

“I knew you weren’t an engineer.”

“Hm?”

Tony flicked a practiced, flippant gesture at the screens- a quick upturn of his palm, fingers loosely curled- turning away.

“Back then. The instructions you provided for the Tesseract device- I mean, we talked about it at the time. Hot garbage, right? Intentional hot garbage, but still. There was a solid working understanding of the physics and the mechanics, but it wasn’t written by someone au fait with the field. There are things that you only learn if you’ve studied it, read the books, learned how to speak the language. It’s all in the common practice- the jargon, the shorthand. That was missing, from your papers. There were a few pieces, but not enough. You’re not an engineer.”

Tony turned to face her, expression a flat, inscrutable mask.

“You are a doctor, though.”

Alethia didn’t flinch.

He would expect nothing less, from someone who had kept secrets from Nicholas Fury and was still walking around, doing as she pleased.

“This,” Tony raised a finger to his shoulder-line, indicating the screens behind him. “Is perfect. Flawless. You could send this for peer review and get it published in The Lancet.”

A chink appeared in Alethia’s expression- something that she had allowed to break through, intense as sunlight striking on a shard of glass.

Pride.

It was earned. As far as Tony could tell, she had whipped up the antiserum formula within a matter of days; any sane research institute or private company on the planet, including the medical subsidiaries of Stark Industries, would be putting a bounty on her corporate headhunt if they knew.

Blasé as he could afford to be with money, however, Tony rarely made a purchase without knowing the price.

“So. What are you?” He paced back towards her, gathering a slow momentum like the wind of a crank, closing in. “Biochem? Cellular biology? Genetics? What’s your speciality?”

Alethia smiled.

“Neurosurgery.”

Tony’s brow twitched at the admission, taken aback.

He wasn’t actually expecting a straight answer. He wasn’t expecting that answer.

And he wasn’t expecting its wistfulness.

“You’re a brain surgeon?”

She let out a short laugh.

“I should probably introduce myself.” An incandescent, media-ready smile lit up her features, relaxed and confident. “Dr Astrid North, MD.”

Tony stilled.

That was her name, he could tell. Not an alias.

Tony quickly calculated the risk, that she was taking.

“Date of birth recorded as the twenty-ninth of February, 1988,” she continued, as though this time she was actually reciting and submitting her résumé for consideration. “Graduated from Columbia in the class of ’03, summa cum laude, completed my neurosurgical residency in 2010. I also worked under the surnames Stephenson and Stephensdottir- spelt like the doctorate, not like the super-soldier. There should be records of me available here in New York, as well as the UK, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, and Brazil.”

Tony could feel the staccato of his heart, stuttering behind the arc reactor, a thrum of anticipation.

“Hm. SHIELD know any of this?”

Alethia’s- Astrid’s- lip curled with a hint of contempt.

“No.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

She lifted her shoulder. “I thought you’d want an insurance policy.”

“And what have I done to earn that?”

“You listened.”

“I passed the test,” Tony inferred. “That’s why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I would like to trust you,” Astrid said coolly, “and because I think there’s a more than fair probability that I can. And- because I would like you to trust me. Even if only enough to work together.”

Tony observed her for a few dragging seconds.

“What’s your endgame?” He challenged. “You told me back then that you’re not an altruist.”

“Oh, I’m not.”

“Then why? What’s in it for you?”

Her brow tensed slightly.

“Enlightened self-interest? Or, is I don’t want the planet I currently live on to be destroyed insufficient for you?”

“Eh, plenty of people don’t find it compelling. Look at climate change.”

Astrid’s lips parted to reply- before she grimaced, glancing aside in admission.

“Alright, fair point.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But maybe I’m just more circumspect.”

“Or you have another reason.”

She lifted her eyes to the ceiling with a slow blink.

“You are being very obstinate about this.”

“You know, I don’t actually care, what your actual reason is,” Tony blurted out, sharp and caustic as battery acid, a sudden flare of anger and impatience shoving him forwards, “because you’re right. We need allies. Including each other. So I’m willing to work with your reason why. But only if I know what it is.”

The moment that Tony stopped speaking, he became aware of how Astrid was looking at him.

Tony felt like he was being taken apart, disassembled, the cover plate pulled off to check the hardware.

Truth in all things.

She hummed, soft in the back of her throat. It was the kind that he could feel in his sternum, even with most of it carved away for the arc reactor.

“Alright,” she said softly. “Fair’s fair.”

She straightened, looking away.

“There is- someone.” She said carefully. “Someone that I love.”

Tony blinked.

It was like the twist of a kaleidoscope, patterns reforming, in four simple words.

“And the one responsible for- that-” Astrid snapped a finger heavenwards, her entire being smouldering with a leashed, soul-deep hatred, “took them, at their most vulnerable. Captured them. Tortured them. For months. Years. Twisted their memories, tainted their emotions, and manipulated their pain until they no longer knew where they ended, and the sceptre began. They barely kept enough of themselves to ruin it all, and break free of the control.”

Tony felt a muscle in his bicep and jaw twitch, flicking an appraising, calculating look across her.

Interesting.

“The one that I love will be hunted as a traitor. Or, as a failure- I don’t think it matters, and I don’t care. It all has the same end. What matters is that the one I love will never be safe, until and unless that is no longer a threat.”

Astrid dropped her hand, meeting his eyes addressing him with a tone of complete, terrifying certainty.

“I have decided that it is not going to be a threat.”

The floor of Tony’s stomach dropped out, the room seeming to tilt.

He was suddenly struck with a strange thought- like some survival instinct coded into his evolutionary ancestry, tapping at his nerve endings, lingering like a chill in the vertebrae of his neck. It was the feeling that he was looking at something ancient, and angered- half-mad and unhinged and doing an admirable job of containing itself to its human skin.

He realised, in a split second, that Astrid was probably something not entirely human.

And she was baring her teeth at whatever was threatening to swallow Earth whole.

Fuck it. He could work with this.

“All of the sake of love?” Tony asked.

He took pride in the fact that his cadence was even-keeled, despite the stagger of his pulse.

A humourless, self-deprecating smile wrung through her features.

“You can laugh,” Astrid told him, rueful and without rancour. “I know how I must sound.”

Tony forced himself to shrug, nonchalantly. “I’ve heard worse.”

And he had. Tony had been worse. He had cut deals with worse, because he was a realist, and anyone pursuing utopia had to be willing to drag themselves through purgatory first.

After a long moment, Tony inhaled sharply, pulling his shoulders back.

“Okay,” he said powerfully. “If this is a bluff? I’m calling it. Cards on the table.”

A spark ignited behind Astrid’s eyes, like a struck match.

“Pepper’s been injected with Extremis,” he continued brusquely, “I need to get her stable, along with any other test subjects that AIM decided to turn into literal walking time bombs. That’s why you gave me these papers, right? You thought I could use it, and I can. So let’s get to it. You in?”

Astrid looked startled- before her entire demeanour snapped into a honed, clinical focus.

“Wh- are you monitoring cortisol levels? Internal temperature, heartrate, WBC-?”

“Per doctor’s orders.” Tony flicked his head towards the reams of detailed medical instructions, listed out on the glass. “Followed your procedures to the letter. We’re tracking down anyone else who might have taken part in clinical trials, but it looks like there were a limited number, at least.”

Astrid tugged up her sleeves with an efficient pinch of fabric, pulling the soft knit clear of her wrists and forearms. “How many potential patients?”

“Caps out at a dozen, maybe.”

“The antiserum? You’ve started synthesising it?”

“As we speak, lab’s running on auto.”

“How much?”

“About two hundred and fifty milligrams, in the first batch.”

“Not enough. Triple it. And quintuple it for the others, per patient. I don’t want to be caught out with less than we need. Have you started on the round of pre-antiserum IV fluids?”

“About three hours ago.”

“And no adverse effects, contraindications?”

“Nada. Smooth sailing, all in line with where you said we should be by now.”

“Good, but keep Miss Potts closely monitored. And we’ll still need to test the antiserum on a live tissue sample, if possible.”

“I’ll get on it.”

Tony swiped two fingers down through the air, dismissing the pages on the screens, the room dimming slightly as they slid away.

“If this works,” he said, his enunciation crisp, “we can talk.” In one fluid motion, Tony plucked a StarkPad from amongst the chaos of the workbenches, flipping it in his grip to hold it, outstretched, within her reach. “Sound good, doctor?”

Astrid smiled, light and wild, and Tony felt his decision settle in his chest with a feeling of rightness.

This could work.

She took the tablet.

“Lead the way, doctor.”

Astrid made an addition to her list.

Flour.

50 weeks and 3 days out

Brunnhilde would be the first to admit that she was not made for subterfuge.

She was a woman of brash, blunt action, more inclined to punch her way straight through her problems that to deconstruct them. As such, her vocation suited her. The Valkyrie were the vanguard, the cavalry, the elite corps, revered shieldmaidens who cleared the field with a swift, graceful brutality that was immortalised in legend and song and carving.

They had been thralls, once. Slaves.

Most of Asgard had forgotten that.

As war raged across the Nine, they had been appropriated by the throne- a form of tax levy, on the wealthy of Asgard- and dispatched to the battlefield in the wake of Asgard’s armies, to collect corpses from the slurry. Choosers of the slain, the golden-plated Einherjar snickered into their cups, leering over the rims.

Then there was a shortage of disposable warm bodies. It had seen weapons pressed into their hands, shoved to the front lines to fill out the ranks.

Against all expectation, the Valkyrie had fought. The fought, and lived, and bought victory to Asgard.

In recognition of their deeds, Bor had purchased their freedom. The Valkyrie became the pride of Asgard, a symbol of its might, arrayed in battle armour of bright, sun-catching pearl-white and star-silver.

Their origins were probably why the Valkyrie could be found working, even in peacetime- conducting funerary rites, serving at great state occasions, maintaining Folkvang- while the Einherjar regressed into nothing more than decorative doorstops scattered throughout Gladsheim.

Brunnhilde had once remarked as such to Loki. Months later, he had presented her with a gilded doorstop for her nameday, crafted into the shape of an Einherjar in full regalia.

It had sent Brunnhilde into a fit of delighted, undignified cackles.

I’m calling him Sigurd, she declared with a feral grin.

Ah, he’s not going to last a week, Loki had commented, clicking his tongue with a convincing veneer of faux-pity.

Even now, few if any of Brunnhilde’s sisters were of noble blood or wealthy backgrounds. Most of them came from labouring families, apprenticed in a trade before they turned old enough to apply to the corps, and they bought their skills to Folkvang. The Valkyrie’s halls, sheltered in a chilled, fertile basin in the mountains, was almost entirely self-sufficient thanks to their collective knowledge. They raised fields of wheat and flax, milled their own flour and spun their own linen, wove and baked and built, felled timber and hunted and fished, tanned leather and cured meat, cut stone and dug wells, even kept bees and pressed oil and fermented wine and made candles.

And then there was the lace.

A few girls who knew how to weave had taken it up, transforming thread into pretty swatches of aerated cloth. They had begun teaching the craft to a few others, when they showed interest. Then the pastime became an additional source of income, to supplement the stipend provided by the crown.

And within a few centuries, Valkyrie lace was considered amongst the most exquisite craftsmanship in all the Nine. A single spool of inch-wide trim commanded a small fortune. When a Valkyrie was wed, it was customary for her sisters to spend the year and a day between engagement and marriage- or longer, if they saw the union coming- making as many yards of lace as they could manage, as her dowry.

Brunnhilde loved her sisters, admired their work, and hated lacemaking with a virulence that she usually reserved for bilgesnipe and strutting lordlings who thought that bedding a Valkyrie was a notch in their gilded belt.

Fortunately, she also had absolutely no talent for it. The others had quickly banished her from their tatting pillows and needles and bobbins, gently shoving her off towards work that actually made sense to her.

And Brunnhilde was content to have nothing to do with it. She honestly couldn’t understand what the others envisioned in the countless threads, or why crossing one here or knotting another there would somehow create a magnificently intricate motif several thousand more motions later, even if she was capable of appreciating the result.

In that sense, subterfuge reminded her of lacework.

She couldn’t see all of the threads, where they were leading, or how they locked together into a single bolt of woven fibre and air- but Loki so clearly knew exactly how each and every loop and twist and knot would build outwards, and took quiet satisfaction in seeing each one tighten into place, like a miniature noose.

There was an aching patience to it, each miniscule snag changing the fall of the delicate mesh, and Brunnhilde was often caught by the impulse to just hack her way through it.

She didn’t.

Instead, she did exactly as he asked.

Asgard underestimates him, a memory whispered- that of a warm voice, accompanied by a smile that darkened the eyes above it into amber. Or thinks it sees him, or thinks it knows what it’s looking at. A trick of the light. A shadow on glass. It is a mistake, you know.

The darkened eyes had begun to glow, instead, when they saw that Brunnhilde was paying attention.

I think he might be the most real person that I have ever met.

“I was surprised,” Loki admitted, on a low, distracted hum, “that you didn’t ask.”

The dungeons were quiet, at least in the wing where Loki was being held. It felt like an archive, a place for lost and forgotten things to be kept, shelved and stored out of sight until they were needed- the air settled as silt on the bottom of a riverbed, barely stirring with the sparse rounds of the guards.

Brunnhilde had counted eleven weaknesses that she could exploit, if it came to it.

She would have counted three dozen more in a fraction of the time.

She felt her heart clench strangely. It was the feeling of old scar tissue, untouched for so long, flexing and moving once more.

She and Loki were seated at the front of his cell, arranged parallel against the golden barrier on either side. Swathed in worn, nondescript suedes, Brunnhilde slouched on the stone steps, bare shoulder shoved against the forcefield; the air felt thicker the closer she came to the curtain of spellwork, like magnetic resistance, but she found herself leaning her weight into it, defiant and testing, like pressing her thumb down on a new bruise.

On the other side, Loki was sorting through several sheaves of handwritten notes, stacks surrounding him like panes in a half-rose window. His black hair was braided back at his crown, dressed in soft leathers and deep green linens and lightweight boots, finely made with immaculate quality, but far simpler than would be expected of an Asgardian prince- at least outside of the privacy of the residential wings of the palace.

Brunnhilde knew that he could have dressed himself in illusions, if he wished.

The choice not to was- interesting. In a way that she refused to think about.

There were a lot of things she refused to think about, with regards to Loki.

Not when it made her feel all those mollusc-soft sentiments that she had decided to kill years ago, for her own survival, after the gold plating of Asgard had begun to flake in her eyes.

In that, at least, she knew they were both in good company.

“I asked about this,” Brunnhilde countered his comment, tapping a nail against the arm ring that sat flush against the curve of her bicep. It was a deceptively simple band of brass, seeming to blend in against her, unremarkable regardless of lighting. Between it, and Loki’s magic, they were shielded from the Gatekeeper’s watch- Loki as a glaring lacuna in the script, a blank space, and Brunnhilde as though from behind a fine, misting rain, the specifics blurred out of focus.

Loki rolled his eyes, in that prissy, superior manner that left Brunnhilde more amused than irritated, these days.

“Yes, about whether it would turn your skin orange or set you spitting toads, of all things.”

“It was a valid concern, knowing you.”

“Hm.” There was a slight upturn at the corner of Loki’s mouth- the closest thing to agreement that she would probably wrest out of him.

Brunnhilde slipped loose a smirk.

“I didn’t bother asking,” she admitted, in a crisp-consonant drawl, “because I knew that I probably wouldn’t understand it anyway. It would be like asking to read a contract before I sign, when I don’t know the language it’s written in.”

Loki’s eyes sliced up from the papers, without lifting his head, fixing her with a serpentine gaze.

“You do yourself a disservice, Brunn.”

Brunnhilde paused, a little surprised by his quiet vehemence.

She shrugged it away.

“This is just not something I’m suited for. Politics and subterfuge and spywork. Moving the pieces by moving entirely different ones, lightyears away. It’s like my sisters, and their lacework,” she admitted blithely. “I understand the theory. But even if you had told me where this was going, I wouldn’t know enough to tell if you were lying.”

But.

Brunnhilde wasn’t entirely ignorant to Loki’s plans. She had made certain of it.

She had heard the gossip, on dozens of planets across the Nine. The arm ring not only shielded her from Heimdall’s sight, but also from the perils of using the secret passageways that were specked across Asgard- allowing her to move freely between worlds, at Loki’s direction.

Steadily, disparate pieces and seemingly unconnected incidents were coalescing, into a clear picture.

Muspelheim had struck an unexpected trade deal with Ria. When the revival of the disused trade route had attracted Marauders and Ravagers, a new defence coalition had formed, stationed at crucial waypoints to prevent piracy and smuggling.

The Crown Prince of Vanaheim had headed a diplomatic envoy to Alfheim. By the time he had arrived, Niflheim’s queen just so happened to be also be visiting her fellow monarch. The triumvirate meeting occurred without a single Asgardian dignitary present.

A few weeks later, the realm of the light elves had also hosted several representatives of dwarven guilds.

The Nova-Kree War was turning cold. The Nine had become neutral ground. The Nova Corps had offered aid to those on the outskirts and most affected by raids, and had sent engineers to retrofit their older, short-haul vessels with swifter engines and stronger defences. The Kree were in tentative talks with Nidarvellir, to have the dwarves invest in maintaining local jump points, in exchange for Kree arms to protect their merchant fleets.

The realms were moving, like the interlocking turn of dials and gears. And for the first time in millennia, Asgard was excluded from its workings.

And it was Loki’s doing.

At his instruction, Brunnhilde had bribed and baited Ravagers to harass Nidarvellir trade routes. She had placed bets at various ports, on the likelihood of a Kree civil war. She had sold information on Knowhere, changed figures on shipping manifestos, stirred up bar fights and complained about the export tax on goods out of Ria, destroyed shipments and switched documents and delayed correspondence, paid off and blackmailed and persuaded civil servants and stewards and aides into suggesting or omitting a minor detail from a report, or handing a project to a different department.

Brunnhilde was the stage hand in a great, orchestrated play. The Nine were being gently herded into a strengthening current- one that was looking outwards, into a galaxy where the balance of power was shifting.

It was a coup.

And Loki hadn’t even left his cell.

Brunnhilde refused to be impressed.

After a moment, she realised that Loki was looking at her with a glinting amusement.

It wasn’t the kind that was intended to mock, but rather the prelude to bringing her in on the joke.

“Of course you can’t see where this is going, Brunn,” he said softly. “You’re the needle.”

A memory clicked into place, flickering in like guttering lamplight.

There was a bolster pillow in her lap, a lace pad template pinned atop it, embroidery needle gripped uncertain and rigid between her forefinger and thumb. The chatter and bickering and teasing of her sisters was a cloud of ambient sound that seemed to glow like nimbus, in the apple-golden autumn afternoon.

A warm shoulder brushed near her own.

Gently, Brunn! A voice laughed. Treat your needle with respect. Relax your hand. The needle can feel where it needs to go- you’re just guiding it.

This is a terrible idea, Brunnhilde had muttered. We all remember what happened when Svanhit tried to teach me.

Stay away from my bobbins, Brunn! Came a sharp call from across the hall, to a few snickers. Olrun, Hervor, keep her away!

Brunnhilde had made to wave a vulgar gesture at her, and almost stabbed herself with the needle.

Needlepoint lace is more straightforward, a clear voice interjected. Brunnhilde had looked over to her- the glint of her needle moving in brisk freehand stitches, looping and tightening, all deft skill and focus, one moving part, one thread. You don’t have to keep track of seventy different bobbins, and the order you need to cross or twist them in.

Your prince prefers bobbin lace, doesn’t he? Brunnhilde asked, smirkingly.

Brunnhilde received a gentle, reproachful elbow to the ribs.

A flush, through golden skin, head dipping and pearl-white hair slipping forwards.

Prince Loki has a mind for it, she replied, deliberately and damningly neutral. The dance of it, the complexity- it suits him.

Well, what do you prefer?

She had paused, head cocked.

I like both, I suppose, she hedged. Bobbin lace is essentially weaving- looping the strands together, pulling them into place against each other. It tends to be- lighter, more of a fabric with motifs created inside of it. Layers of opacity. Needle lace is often studier. Like- scaffolding. The pattern is all that there is. And the needle has to work back and back and back to bring it into existence, to make sure it holds in place, knotting back where it has already been.

Her eyes sharpened.

No- I think I prefer bobbin lace. Needle lace is- putting a great deal of trust on just one thing.

Brunnhilde blinked back into the present.

Oh.

Loki had learned some lacemaking. He would have likely received that same explanation, heard the same comparison.

After a moment, she scowled, looking away.

“I still hate lacemaking.”

Loki laughed.

Worlds away, Astrid made a cautious addition to her list, framed in brackets.

(Lace).

[PREVIOUS] | [MASTERLIST] | [NEXT

12 notes · View notes

sihaya74 · 5 months

Text

NEW The Lessons of Bryan Fuller's Hannibal S1: E6 -- HOPE IS THE THING WITH SURGICAL TROPHIES

Lessons of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal

S1:E6 – HOPE IS THE THING WITH SURGICAL TROPHIES

Hello readers and #FannibalFamily! Yes, it’s been a hot minute since I have updated this blog. What can I say? Life has a tendency to intervene. A few real-life events knocked me out of my daily writing pattern and I am just now beginning to regain my balance. This blog is, however, something I am committed to finishing no matter how long it takes, and so, I am digging back into the scripts of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal and prepared to create my next installment – an analysis of the theme, the message, the universal lesson in the happenings of Season 1, Episode 6: “Entrée.”

I must make an important note that at this point, I have rewatched the show some five or six times. But this is my first time delving into the scripts for all the episodes. I have to occasionally remind myself about scenes in these episodes or lines of dialogue that wound up being cut or moved to a different episode. But since I am approaching this project as an English major and analyzing both the show and the scripts as a TEXT – (my literary theory professor, Dr. Hogue, always said that everything in life is a TEXT and he was damn sure right about that) – then I see no issue with the fact that sometimes the words I am analyzing didn’t always make it to the screen in the exact form they started out in. Hannibal is a series that is a feast for all the senses – its visual beauty, its soundtrack and score and sound effects, the effort put in to rendering the most beautiful depictions of food on the screen and so perhaps the viewer can imagine their taste – (I have dreamed feverishly about those High Life Eggs more than once, I can tell you) – but all of it begins where good stories start – on the page. And so, it is to the page and the words that I remain loyal.

This episode of Hannibal, “Entrée,” had two authors. Kai Yu Wu conceived the story and Wu and Bryan wrote it together. The episode was directed by Michael Rymer.

In the order of our French dishes, by which each episode of the first season is named, at this point in the series, we have partaken of the following: a pre-dinner drink, a little bitty appetizer, a bowl of hearty soup, some eggs, and a chicken or fish dish baked in a sauce and served in a scallop shell or scallop-shaped dish. And so now, a viewer must ask, “What’s next?” That or: “I need to take a break because I’m full.” At which, Bryan Fuller points at the viewer’s plate and says, “You’ll clean your plate and you’ll like it. You’ll love it. You’ll beg me for another season when we’re done.” Just trust him. He’s the chef. You always trust the chef. They know what they’re doing.

In a classic French meal, the entrée is not necessarily the main dish and it is not always served – sometimes they skip courses. When it does appear, it is usually a meat dish, in a sauce (GOTTA HAVE A SAUCE), and with sides. In American cuisine, entrée has come to mean a MAIN COURSE always. And what an entrée is in American cuisine varies wildly by what is on the menu, who is eating it, and how many fried cheese sticks and jalapeno poppers the person had prior to the entrée arriving at their table. Still, the idea holds. When you say the word “entrée,” people expect a main course – something substantial, something that sticks to your ribs. And in this episode, there is definitely a lot of meat – meat that has been rubbed and aged over the last five episodes and is now sliced and steaming from the oven. This episode is mostly about advancing the MAIN storyline – that of the Chesapeake Ripper and the FBI’s and namely, Jack Crawford’s, attempts to catch the seasoned killer. (Seasoned… see what I did there? YOU GOT PUNNED!)

And on a thirsty side note: After viewing the scene in which Will Graham reenacts the murder of nurse Elizabeth Shell, the fact that the episode is named “Entrée,” makes complete sense. Hugh Dancy in that scene is an entire meal with ample meat for leftovers. (Seriously – JFC – if you haven’t seen it, or seen it lately, do yourself a favor and have some GOOD FOOD.)

We start the episode with our introduction to one of the series’ completely original characters, Dr. Abel Gideon, a former transplant surgeon, who after being convicted of the murders of his wife and her family, has been incarcerated in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, for the last two years. The character is portrayed with amazing skill, subtlety, and awesomeness, by Suzy Eddie Izzard. I have been a longtime fan of Izzard’s work and was insanely pleased to see the actor amongst the cast members.

I must point out the literary significance of the character’s name – Abel Gideon, a smorgasbord of Biblical allusion. The import of the Doctor’s first name is obvious – Abel, in the Biblical version of things, was the first murder VICTIM, slain by the hands of his jealous brother, Cain, who was angry that God liked Abel better and had a right fit about it. The character of Gideon is slightly more complex, but basically it goes as follows: Gideon was a prophet in the Old Testament. He destroyed the idols of Baal and others in his town’s temple because the townspeople were worshipping false gods. An angel told him to. Then, Gideon led the Israelites against other “heathen” tribes and won. They wanted to make him king, but he told them their only king was God. Still, he had them melt down the golden earrings of all their enemies who had fallen in battle and they wove the golden thread into an ephod, a priestly garment that is worn under the breastplate. Gideon put it in the temple and the people started worshipping it as an idol, because I guess, it was gold. Old Testament people always seem really impressed by gold. The Scripture is unclear, but it does say that the ephod was “a snare unto Gideon, and to his house” (Judges 8: 27).

You could say Gideon was a hypocrite, or more accurately, a terrible fool because he tried to stop the people from worshipping false idols and then he just led them into doing it again by creating something they would see as a sacred object. At best, Gideon was naïve. At worst, he was a fraud.

Dr. Abel Gideon’s name therefore could translate into something like: Dr. VICTIM FRAUD – or Dr. VICTIM FOOL. Despite his intelligence, he is lured directly into Dr. Chilton’s trap to believe and admit he is the Chesapeake Ripper solely because of Frederick’s needy ego – Frederick wants more feathers in his cap – he doesn’t have near enough and Hannibal Lecter’s are brighter and bespoke and where the fuck did he even find a custom featherer in Baltimore?

Then, later in the series, Gideon is led directly into the trap of the true Chesapeake Ripper and probably desperately wishes he had stayed in the BSHCI and eaten his stewed apricots and minded his own business.

Poor Abel is nothing but a puppet for two different egotistical psychiatrists. Unfortunately for him, one of them happens to be Hannibal Lecter.

And so, we begin the episode with the scene of Gideon passed out on the floor of his cell in the BSHCI and a team of prison guards approaching his limp form very cautiously and eventually shackling him, hand and foot, to a gurney, and wheeling him into the hospital infirmary, where he is treated by the aptly named Nurse Shell.

As evidenced by my previous discussion of Gideon’s name, I have come to realize the significance of character names in Bryan Fuller’s work. They are often allusions or tributes – homages to the work of other writers, directors, artists, scientists, and so on, that Bryan admires. For example, one has to assume that the surname of Bryan’s beloved Bedelia (another original character), Du Maurier, is a tribute to author Daphne du Maurier, author of many books and film adaptations of suspense – such as Rebecca, which Bryan and many of his horror colleagues discuss in the fabulous AMC/Shudder series Queer For Fear, on which Bryan was an executive producer and director. Basically, Mrs. Danvers was either literally or only metaphorically all up in Rebecca de Winter’s undergarments and when the woman died, Mrs. Danvers decided to make it everyone’s problem. The movie is awesome. Go watch it if you haven’t already. And then watch Queer For Fear. I believe they discuss Rebecca in both episodes two and four.

Anyway, Nurse Shell is correctly and tragically named because a shell of her former self is what she winds up as when the deluded Gideon is done with her.

As Nurse Shell turns her back, Gideon extricates the broken-off tine of a fork he has hidden in an incision in his palm. I believe this scene is an homage to the scene in The Silence of the Lambs when Dr. Lecter unearths a metal fragment from the back of his jaw, the inner workings of a ballpoint pen that has fallen into his hands. He uses this makeshift lockpick on his own handcuffs, much to the chagrin of Lieutenant Boyle and Sargeant Pembry. Classic scene.

Anyway, Gideon uses this tine to pick the lock on his handcuffs and when Nurse Shell turns around upon hearing the heart monitor hit a flatline, it’s lights out for the poor woman. We do not see Gideon kill her, but we see the results of his work soon.

Next, we see Jack Crawford and Will Graham vaulting up the front steps of the hospital, Jack explaining that based on the method of Nurse Shell’s murder, Freddie Lounds has run an unconfirmed story suggesting that Abel Gideon is the Chesapeake Ripper, which would explain the lull in murders for the last two years. Will is indignant that he is “fact-checking for Freddie Lounds,” but Jack coddles him with the statement, “You’re fact-checking for me” (Wu and Fuller 2).

There is heavy foreshadowing in the following exchange between Jack and Will before they enter the hospital:

WILL GRAHAM: I’m always a little nervous going into one of these places. Afraid they’ll never let me out again.

JACK CRAWFORD: Don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you here.

WILL GRAHAM: Not today (Wu and Fuller 3).

I really do recommend you watch the series more than once so this dramatic irony is not lost.

Once Jack and Will enter the hospital, we see the first appearance of another of our main characters and one of the most important in the Hannibal canon: Dr. Frederick Chilton.

In Fuller’s series, Chilton is rendered flawlessly by actor Raul Esparza, a deep daddy of mine (see ADA Rafael Barba of Law and Order: SVU fame). Esparza is another Fuller Favorite, having appeared in one of Bryan’s previous masterpiece shows, Pushing Daisies.

There have been three actors who have portrayed the petty and obsequious Dr. Chilton, starting with Benjamin Hendrickson in 1986’s Manhunter. The second actor, and perhaps the most well-known portrayal, is that of Anthony Heald who took on the role in both 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs and reprised the role in 2002’s Red Dragon.

Heald’s portrayal of Chilton is masterful – the Doctor is intelligent, but smarmy – officious and gladhanding – his pass at Clarice in the early moments of the film immediately puts the viewer off on him. Hannibal only seals the audience’s hatred of the Doctor by regaling Clarice with Chilton’s petty tortures of him, which are effectively contrasted by the treatment Hannibal receives from the ever-present orderly, Barney Matthews, played by awesome Frankie Faison, who treats Hannibal with a cautious respect, as a zookeeper might treat a venomous reptile. Barney never forgets what Hannibal is capable of. Chilton supposedly knows as evidenced by his relation of Hannibal’s biting attack on a nurse – he left only one of her eyes, ate her tongue without his pulse getting above 85 – but still, Chilton prods and humiliates Hannibal in unnecessary ways that LITERALLY come back to bite him in the end.

Esparza’s Chilton is as intelligent as Heald’s, but slightly more savvy, ounces more petty, a bit more of a drama queen, and as opposed to Heald’s Chilton, who is ostensibly tortured and eaten by Hannibal at the end of The Silence of the Lambs, Esparza’s Chilton, in Fuller’s hands, is the favorite whipping post of killers and law enforcement alike – being practically disemboweled by one murderer, shot in the face by a traumatized Ripper victim, and later suffers the fate that Harris’ original Freddy Lounds suffers, a lip-ectomy and burning at the hands of Francis Dolarhyde. Freddy Lounds dies in both Manhunter/Red Dragon from this attack, but in Fuller’s Hannibal, no matter what, Frederick Chilton continues to survive, almost Fuller’s own version of the endlessly respawning Kenny of South Park fame.

By my calculation, at the end of Season 3, Chilton is down 3 lives, so logic dictates that he has 6 left. If Fuller ever gets to make the full 7 seasons of Hannibal he imagines, if Chilton averages a death per season, he should survive the completed series with 2 lives left over, proving him to be the true winner of The Hannibal Games.

But, once again, I digress…

As Jack and Will sit in Chilton’s office, Chilton can barely seem to contain his curiosity about Will. Chilton’s open is clunky and obtuse; he says, “Doctor Bloom just called me about you, Mister Graham. Or should I call you Doctor Graham?” (Wu and Fuller 3). From his first line, Chilton seems to embody his later Season 2 remark, a gem from Harris’ canon, that attempting to analyze Will “makes [him] feel…like a freshman pulling at a panty girdle” (Fuller and Lightfoot 20). Chilton’s questions are telegraphed from a mile away – his overtures for more information are blunt and tasteless. Chilton’s questioning of Will, throughout the series, is contrasted with that of Hannibal – the difference is like watching a skilled surgeon with a scalpel as compared to a poorly trained medical student with a plastic spoon. Chilton can’t cut it, in any fashion. Will seems to understand this from the beginning – he sizes Chilton up correctly from their very first meeting.

In their conversation, Chilton betrays himself a little, saying of Nurse Shell, “I can’t help feeling responsible for what happened. I had sessions with Gideon for years…I had no idea what he was hiding. And now one of our staff is dead” (Wu and Fuller 4). Of course, this is foreshadowing of Hannibal ascertaining later in the episode that Chilton is indeed COMPLETELY at fault. However, the most interesting thing about this exchange is Jack Crawford’s reaction. The script indicates that after Chilton’s remark here, it “strikes a chord with Jack…who can relate” (Wu and Fuller 4). Undoubtedly this “relation” is about Miriam Lass, Crawford’s lost trainee, who is first introduced in this episode.

This is all important because of our lesson in this episode and because it highlights one of the driving motives of Jack’s character. In Episode 1, Jack and Alana agree that one of Will’s deepest motives is fear. If that is the case, then we can say that one of, perhaps the most, significant of Jack’s driving motivations is GUILT. Jack’s guilt is so present, so prevalent, so real, it is almost tangible. He feels guilt about Bella, about Miriam, later about Beverly, about Will, about Pazzi. His guilt is so weighty, so integral to his being, that often it overwhelms him, wobbles his sense of reason and the health of his psyche. Our lesson is not about guilt, but it is about an emotion Jack Crawford will not allow himself. In his position as Special Agent Jack Crawford, head of the FBI’s storied Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico, Jack does not allow himself much in the way of the easier emotions in life – laughter, joy, wonder – these are not things he can traffic in. Jack Crawford lives in a chapel of death. He is a chronicler of pain.

As Chilton continues to prod Will for information, Jack finally states, “Graham isn’t here to be analyzed” (Wu and Fuller 5). It’s funny to me how people in the show, including Will, keep insisting that he’s NOT THE ONE to be analyzed, but since the very first moments of Episode 1, even the murders seem secondary to everyone else’s analysis of Will. It’s ironic, but I imagine purposefully so. Chilton retorts that “perhaps” Will “should be” analyzed; Chilton wants Will to speak to his colleagues in the hospital, but then he stops himself, saying, “no, no, not this trip. Dr. Bloom was very severe with me on that point” (Wu and Fuller 5). I also find it quite ironic how no one listens to Alana’s advice about handling Will. It speaks to the usual patriarchal pooh-poohing of women, even when they are extremely accomplished members of professional fields. Thankfully, Bryan saw to it that everyone who discounts Alana’s advice winds up paying for it.

Just before escorting Jack and Will to the infirmary where Will can view the crime scene, Chilton says, “Next to a battle lost, the saddest thing is a battle won” (Wu and Fuller 6). This sentiment is attributed to the Duke of Wellington, and later to writer Robert Jordan, but to me the importance of it here is how it so perfectly illustrates the difference between Harris’ Chilton and Fuller’s Chilton. Every once in a while, especially in Season 3, Chilton seems to disinter these gems of wisdom from the muddy bottom of his intelligence. Often, lines like these, coming from Frederick are like an icepick of truth stabbed into the temple of the scene. A viewer who is familiar with all of the Hannibal canon can see – Fuller’s Chilton is smarter and more poetic than Harris’ Chilton, who is a slick, sad functionary who is both out of his depth with Hannibal Lecter and out of his league with Clarice Starling. Fuller’s Chilton is never in Hannibal’s league, but at times, real insight flashes up from the shallows of his brain, and it makes his character more sympathetic to the viewer. We feel sorry for Fuller’s Chilton. Harris’ Chilton never arouses such pity.

When Will and Jack finally view the nurse’s body, it is described as follows:

She’s IMPALED on the BROKEN FRAMES of several PRIVACY CURTAINS that have been fashioned into SPEARS. They PROTRUDE from wounds over the entire canvas of her body. Additional shards of wood and metal prop her organs above her corpse, giving them the appearance of floating outside her body.

(Wu and Fuller 6)

The visual of this tableaux is important, as it will contrast with the Chesapeake Ripper’s actual rendering of the famous medieval Wound Man shown later in the episode in a flashback. Later, Will calls this murder “plagiarism.” The viewer, especially one who has watched the entire series at least once, can understand Will’s assessment easily. The Chesapeake Ripper is an artist – even when his tableaux are deconstructionist in nature, like Beverly Katz’s murder scene in Season 2, there is still a lingering sense of the whole that once was. The essence of the thing that has been taken apart is still suggested by the Ripper’s composition. Gideon’s attempt at mimicry is just that – a sad parody. He merely skewered organs like Nurse Kabob. He merely jabbed implements in her like Nurse Pincushion. There is no whole left to be had. In Act One, we see the replaying of the gurney scene at the beginning of the episode, except this time with Will in Gideon’s place. This time, we see the attack on Nurse Shell; this time at the hands of Will, who is doing his mental recreation (pendulum swingy – this is my design-y) of the scene.

Will’s recreation here is filed very lovingly by the #FannibalFamily under the title, “THINGS THAT HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING INSANELY HOT,” but Goddamn it… it is.

It’s not just Will’s torn open shirt – it’s not just the visible sweat on his muscled chest and furrowed brow (although those things REALLY HELP) – it’s the power and the confidence Will exudes when he is in the mental guise of the killer. In truth, every time Will does a mental recreation of a crime, he becomes inordinately hotter because he is not the unsure, confused, flinchy Will Graham of outside-his-mind – he is the take-charge, aggressive, Will Graham with some goddamned agency, that he only seems to be able to muster when he slips into the minds of other people – that is until the end of Season 1, anyway. Will’s agency gets a glow up in “Savoureux,” just wait.

I will say that when Will gouges Nurse Shell’s eyes out with his thumbs, that’s a major ick for me. Eye stuff always deeply bothers me. I had two very invasive eye surgeries as a child and I think it makes me sensitive. The needle in the eye scene in Fire In the Sky is a trauma from which I will never recover.

After Will’s recreation is finished, the viewer is then treated to a flashback three years earlier when the character of Miriam Lass enters the series. It is well known that Miriam Lass, played astonishingly by Anna Chlumsky, is Bryan’s substitute for/homage to the character of Clarice Starling, who, because of copyright issues, Bryan could not use in Hannibal. This, of course, is a damn shame, because Clarice is a god-level character and I would love, love, love to see what Bryan could do with her. (I would also like – if we ever get future seasons – to see Ardelia Mapp, Barney Matthews, and Multiple Miggs show up, but I digress…)

Miriam and Clarice share similar backgrounds – they were both FBI Forensic Fellows – Clarice had the great distinction of studying under fingerprint examiner par excellence, Jimmy Price – but they both came through the same program there and at the FBI Academy. Their university degrees differ a little – Clarice is the daughter of a lawman, which Miriam does not seem to be – but both women are the same with regards to their stunning intellects, dogged determination, and their fascinations with and devotions to “the Guru,” Jack Crawford. It reminds me of a passage from The Silence of the Lambs. At the end of the chapter, (I tell you, Thomas Harris knows how to end a fucking chapter) – after Starling and Crawford return from the Potter Funeral Home in West Virginia, Harris writes, “She watched him walk away, a middle-aged man laden with cases and rumpled from flying, his cuffs muddy from the riverbank, going home to what he did at home. She would have killed for him then. That was one of Crawford’s great talents” (96).

Jack tells Miriam that he has culled her from the herd of FBI hopefuls to work for him in the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP) because she is at the top of her class, has impressive credentials, and wrote him a fan letter when she was accepted into the Academy. When Jack brings up the Ripper, he says, “The Ripper is very hot right now” (Wu and Fuller 10). Jack is, of course, indicating that the Ripper is on a spree, having taken “his last two victims in six days” (Wu and Fuller 10). But I can’t help but think of Zoolander every time I hear Jack make this remark. “Ooooh, that Ripper – he’s so hot right now…” And let’s be honest, if there’s anyone who could pull off a perfect “Blue Steel,” it’s Mads Mikkelsen.

Miriam impresses Jack with her assessment of the Ripper – not a “true sociopath,” but a killer with “some of the characteristics of what they call a sociopath,” but that in truth, “they don’t know what else to label him” (Wu and Fuller 10). Jack then begins briefing Miriam on the case and we are flashed back to the present and find ourselves sitting with Alana and Will in Frederick Chilton’s office.

Alana and Will are both there to interview Gideon – they will be conducting their interviews separately and then comparing notes. Chilton is “convinced” Gideon is the Ripper (when he knows damned well he’s not), Will is convinced Gideon is NOT the Ripper – Alana is unsure. Chilton informs Alana that even though she only had two sessions with Gideon when he was first admitted to the BSHCI, Gideon has “given [her] a lot of thought” since then (Wu and Fuller 12). It ups the creep factor and of course mirrors the novel Red Dragon, like much of this scene does, except that the inmate is Hannibal Lecter and the person he’s “given a lot of thought to” is Will Graham. Hannibal thinking a lot about Will is deep canon. Always has been. Always will be.

Alana goes into interview Gideon first – when she does, the script indicates, “The STEEL DOOR of the maximum security section closed behind Alana Bloom. She hears the bolt slide home” (Wu and Fuller 13).

I’m always deeply thrilled at how often the writers of Hannibal return to the “Forward to a Fatal Interview” from Harris’ Red Dragon and snatch little phrases from it they leave like glistening Easter eggs for fans to find. This is one such bejeweled egg – a Faberge of one, in fact. This forward is about how Thomas Harris came to create the characters of Will Graham, Clarice Starling, and most importantly, Hannibal Lecter. In the final paragraph, he says, “When in the winter of 1979 I entered the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and the great metal door crashed closed behind me, little did I know what waited at the end of the corridor; how seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home” (XIII).

An adaptation is a beautiful thing when you have such beautiful source material to work with. I am forever fascinated by what different filmmakers and actors have done with the Hannibal canon, but we cannot, should not, ever forget the mind that created it and created such compelling characters that withstand the test of time and are enriched every time a new generation of writers and viewers return to them.

The interviews between Alana and Gideon and Will and Gideon are now intercut with each other, a wonderful technique that allows the viewers to compare and contrast for themselves, the differences and similarities between Alana and Will in their questioning, the differences between Gideon’s reactions to Alana and to Will. The most important fact that seems to arise from the interview is when Will says to Gideon about the death of Nurse Shell, “Brutalization of the body was done posthumously. The Chesapeake Ripper usually does that sort of thing during, not after” (Wu and Fuller 15). Will never buys Gideon as the Ripper. His other murders were spontaneous, not planned. Gideon is not an artist; he’s a plagiarist. What Will can’t figure out is why Gideon is copping to murders he didn’t commit.

We begin Act Two with Jack Crawford arriving unannounced at Hannibal’s office, just as the Doctor is about to leave for the day. Hannibal asks if Jack was just “in the neighborhood?” – Jack answers, “Something like that” (Wu and Fuller 16). This line is one of those TV/film chestnuts that you hear over and over and it never actually happens in real life. I have never in my life had someone show up at my door saying they were “just in the neighborhood.” Just like I have never had a cat suddenly jump on me from some unseen elevated position when I am in a darkened alleyway or corridor and things feel all spooky. It’s film logic. It’s kooky, but it works.

Bella is out of town and Jack has come to Hannibal to pry some sort of information out of him about Bella’s cancer – how she’s feeling, what she’s saying, what she thinks – all of which she is not telling Jack and all of which Hannibal cannot tell Jack due to doctor-patient confidentiality. Jack becomes angry. Their conversation is enlightening with regards to Hannibal’s character:

JACK CRAWFORD: You talk to me about Will Graham.

HANNIBAL: Will Graham isn’t officially my patient. We have conversations.

JACK CRAWFORD: What do you consider this?

HANNIBAL: Desperate coping.

(Wu and Fuller 17)

The line here – “desperate coping” – is such a wonderful illustration of how accurately Hannibal is portrayed as having some sociopathic tendencies or at least the tendencies of a narcissist. Throughout the series, Hannibal shows how he can go cold at a moment’s notice – how he can so easily shift from a seemingly caring, compassionate individual to a nightmare of stone-faced, murder-eyed calm. It’s terrifying. I was once very much in love with a man who could do this – he was not a murderer, but he could go dead-eyed and cold on you like this in seconds – and you never knew when it was coming. It scared the shit out of me.

Some might say that Hannibal’s line here is compassionate, that he feels for Jack and his attempts to handle the imminent death of his wife – but I think the line is meant to cut Jack to the quick – he slices right into the meat of Jack’s pain here – as if to say, “Yeah, your wife’s dying. Pull it together, wimp.”

It is canon that Hannibal prods people to cause pain – it is entirely for his own pleasure. A good example is from The Silence of the Lambs. When Hannibal meets with Senator Martin, supposedly to tell her the “real name” of Buffalo Bill (ha ha), he makes a cutting remark about the Senator breastfeeding her daughter when she was a baby. Then this happens: “When her pupils darkened, Dr. Lecter took a single sip of her pain and found it exquisite. That was enough for today” (201).

The man drinks pain. What else is there to say?

Then Hannibal immediately “salves” the wound he has created (“Salve” is the word used in the script directions) – saying “I’ll offer this one insight: she thinks she married the right guy” (Wu and Fuller 17). See Hannibal playing with Jack? Always playing.

Jack then says, “I look at her side of the bed and wonder if she’s going to die there or where she’ll die and I feel myself going uncomfortably numb” (Wu and Fuller 18). I believe this to be a reference to Jack’s actual, canon death that Thomas Harris wrote for him in the novel, Hannibal. It is a death that I completely understand but hate like fire because I think a character like Jack deserved a lot better. I feel that Bryan was writing a better end for Jack.

The end in question is as follows. Clarice Starling has already been drugged and hypnotized, pulled into a strange “relationship” with Hannibal – they live in Buenos Aires together under assumed names. Clarice finds out that Jack has died from the FBI website. Apparently, “after Crawford was home for a month from the hospital, the chest pains came again in the night. Instead of calling an ambulance and going through it all again, he chose simply to roll over to the solace of his late wife’s side of the bed” (483).

I understand it, but dammit Jack deserves better. I believe Bryan was going to give him better. At least he gets to go to Italy and kick Hannibal’s ass. At least he gets another chance.

Jack and Hannibal have a conversation about loss, which leads Hannibal to ask, “Who else couldn’t you save, Jack?” (Wu and Fuller 18). Once again, Hannibal pokes at the wound, tugs at the scab. We know full well that Hannibal has Miriam Lass hidden in a damp, darkened oubliette of a well in a secret farmhouse – all wet and cold with a missing arm in a dirty nightgown and in desperate need of some wet wipes and dry shampoo. We know this – which means all of this questioning about “the lost trainee” is just Hannibal enjoying himself, just Hannibal savoring Jack’s pain. I really do think he lets Miriam live because he likes her – (the same reason book/film Hannibal lets Clarice live – she’s a “deep roller”) – but I also think he lets Miriam live solely to give her back to Jack – just like he gives Bella back to Jack when he thwarts her suicide attempt. Just as he takes Abigail away from Will, then gives her back, then takes her away again – Lucy and the football. Hannibal is “curious” what will happen, but also because he loves the pain. Pain is so much more than hum-drum everyday life – and Hannibal doesn’t like mundane pain – like the worries and neurotic spoutings of Franklyn Froidveaux or Neal Frank, no. Hannibal wants Greek tragedy level pain – a boy who wants to be a killing monster, a girl who wants to kill the brother who has been raping her all her life, a man watching his wife die, a man torturing himself with guilt because he lost another girl, and Will Graham, whose pain is beautiful in its kaleidoscopic, ever-changing qualities – it is always the pain of the killer he is profiling, the victim he is investigating, and sometimes, Will’s own deeply buried pain, abandoned by mom, distant from dad, outcast at school, outcast among colleagues, always alone and beautiful, always alone and confused – in terms of pain, Will is 31 Flavors.

At this point, Jack refuses to tell Hannibal about Miriam Lass – but later on he breaks. The breaking is always Hannibal’s favorite part.

We are now flashed back again to three years earlier; we see Miriam and Jack surveying the Wound Man tableaux rendered by the authentic Chesapeake Ripper. The victim is lashed to his worktable, and all of his tools from the peg board on which they once hung are dug into the man’s body in varying places all over the corpse.

This is not an unfamiliar moment. Jack with a whip-smart profiler assessing the carnage of a crime scene; he has also cleared the way for that profiler by sending all “the others” – the crime scene techs and photographers and forensic creatures -- away. Jack seems to understand that the brilliant ones need to be unfettered by noise and stimuli, even before Will Graham joins his pack. Miriam concludes several important things about both the murder and the murderer, namely that the victim was awake during the attack, and that the Ripper was selective about the organs he harvested. Miriam calls these organs “surgical trophies” – in this way, she is half right (Wu and Fuller 19). It is Will who will determine that the Ripper’s trophies are edible and et. The Ripper is a medical doctor, male, and – and I love this line – “exotic somehow” (Wu and Fuller 19). I believe the “exotic somehow” is meant to refer to the fact that Hannibal Lecter is European. I assume Europeans do not consider themselves “exotic,” but most Americans are flabbergasted by anyone with an accent different than theirs, so… If “exotic” is referring to the fact that the Ripper is being played by masterful and devastatingly beautiful actor Mads Mikkelsen, then yes, he's EXOTIC AS FUCK. Point is, he’s not your run-of-the-mill American. He owns a cravat – more than one probably. He probably has a bidet – he calls sedans “saloons” – and he buys all his table linens and china at Christofle. Miriam compliments Jack’s “peculiar cleverness” and we move out of the scene back into the morgue at the BAU, where Team Sassy Science is examining Nurse Shell’s body and Will is observing (Wu and Fuller 20).

The team is discussing the similarities between Nurse Shell’s murder and the Wound Man murder. They are attempting to rule Abel Gideon IN or OUT. They are unsure how Gideon could have known about the wound patterns the Ripper inflicted on his victims because those details were kept away from the press. Will says, “I see the Ripper but I don’t… feel the Ripper. He’s an artist. This is… plagiarism” (Wu and Fuller 21). Will has his finger on Hannibal’s pulse from the very beginning of the show – whether it be Hannibal as the Copy Cat or Hannibal as the Ripper – when Will finally realizes the two are one and the same, it seems like something that has been on the tip of his tongue since the very beginning. And Will is also very correct in assessing that the real Chesapeake Ripper is not going to let Gideon take credit for his work.

We end Act Two with Jack Crawford at home, asleep in his bed alone, his wife still out of town at a NATO summit. The phone rings. Jack shakes awake and picks up the phone. The clock reads 2:47 A.M. Clocks are an important motif in Hannibal, especially in Season 1. I will address what I think the motif means when I get deeper into Season 1, when Will’s encephalitis begins to worsen, but needless to say – clocks are humankind’s desperate attempt to not only measure but control time – and quite frankly, time rarely cooperates.

When Jack answers the phone, he doesn’t recognize the voice at first – or perhaps he doesn’t believe what he is hearing. The words said by the caller are important because it is these words used to torment Jack for the rest of the episode:

MIRIAM LASS’S VOICE: Jack… Jack… Jack… It’s Miriam. I don’t know where I am. I can’t see anything. I was so wrong. I was so wrong. Please… Jack… I don’t want to die like this. (Wu and Fuller 20).

And then the line goes dead.

We start Act Three back at the BAU. Beverly Katz has checked all the online databases for telecom systems and says she cannot find a trace of any call to Jack’s home at 2:47 AM. As Brian Zeller continues to question Jack’s skills of perception and memory (that maybe Jack dreamed it, that he doesn’t remember what Miriam sounds like), Jimmy Price points out, “whoever called could have tapped in from that little box outside your house. Or the junction in your neighborhood. There would be no trace signal to track” (Wu and Fuller 23). We, the viewer, know this is exactly what the Ripper – Hannibal Lecter – has done, solely because he is Hannibal Lecter, the James Bond/MacGyver of serial killers. He is a psychiatrist, a medical doctor and a surgeon; he speaks/reads/writes at least four languages that we know of. He is a world-class chef, butcher, snail cultivator, beer brewer – he can tie knots, sew, handle a variety of weapons. He can fist-fight – he can ballroom dance. He can give lectures on Dante in the medieval Italian. Obviously, he knows how to tap a phone line. I also feel very certain that Hannibal can fly a plane, hack into any computer (although he finds it distasteful), make his own soap (Fight Club style), and he knows at least one martial art, if not more.

Incidentally, tapping into phone lines is also something Francis Dolarhyde can do – both later in Season 3 when he taps into the phone line at Hannibal’s office and calls Hannibal in the BSHCI with the call masked as Hannibal’s lawyer. But, according to Bryan, the Marlow murder in “Apéritif” is one of Francis’ early murders, and he had to tap into the Marlow phone line to record Mrs. Marlow’s call to the security company. It occurs to me that being a serial killer must create endless hobbies, solely based on things you have to learn, like phone tapping, lock picking, glass cutting, tree-climbing, and “this-is-my-designing.”

Will points out that the 2:47 call obviously didn’t come from the BSHCI, and therefore, could not have been Abel Gideon. When Brian Zeller again suggests that perhaps Jack dreamed the call, Jack shouts at him, “I know when I’m awake” (Wu and Fuller 24). The script then indicates, “Will reacts to that, not always sure he knows the same” (Wu and Fuller 24). Poor Will’s encephalitis is worsening. It only serves to isolate him from others who might possibly help him. And the only person he thinks can help him is actively worsening his condition. I forgive him later, but from this point through the end of Season 1, I am mad as hell at Hannibal. My loyalty is to Will. Hannibal not only doesn’t help my poor baby, he purposely alienates Will from the people who could help him. Grrrrrrr…

Next, we see Will in his classroom at Quantico. Soon, he hears the clacking of hooves on the floor of the corridor. When he looks up, he sees the Black Stag sidling toward him – then this vision morphs into the reality of the circumstance, Alana Bloom and Jack Crawford walking into the room. Jack floats the idea of baiting the Ripper with a well-placed story in the media, a story that will anger the Ripper because the reporter will heavily suggest that Abel Gideon is the REAL Chesapeake Ripper. Will thinks the scheme is dangerous. He says, “You might push the Ripper to kill again just to prove he isn’t in a hospital for the criminally insane;” to which Jack replies, “I have to push, Will” (Wu and Fuller 26). Jack’s statement is very telling – not just about his relentless pursuit of the Ripper, but of himself as a person. Jack does indeed “push.” He pushes everyone. He pushes Will so hard he practically has a nervous breakdown. He pushes him into the hands of the Ripper himself. He pushes Miriam so hard, he pushes her into that same man’s hands. He pushes his wife so hard, she flees to that same man for advice.

Considering that Hannibal and Jack don’t officially meet until Episode 1, Hannibal is already WAAAY involved in Jack’s life and already deeply embedded in Jack’s head. It’s funny upon their first meeting in “Apéritif,” that Jack is meeting his nemesis and doesn’t know it. The man who took Miriam from him, who will take Will from him, who will take Beverly from him, who will almost take Jack’s own life. Talk about “a bolt of fate sliding home.”

Will is disgusted with the idea that Jack is going to cahoot with Freddie Lounds, but you know how Jack has to push, so the next scene reveals Freddie Lounds entering a conference room at Quantico to meet with Jack, Will, and Alana. Jack and Alana are amiable and friendly to Freddie; Will is cold and bitchy (and insanely hot…) Jack tells Freddie he wants her to confirm her story about Gideon being the Ripper. Alana promises to talk to Chilton to get Freddie an interview with Gideon. In one of my favorite of Freddie’s lines, she says, “Not to snap bubblegum and crack wise, but what’s my angle? Is he the Chesapeake Ripper or you just want me to tell everybody he is” (Wu and Fuller 28). Jack suggests he could be because Gideon is a surgeon. The three then discuss the fabled list of professions which psychopaths most favor – journalists and law enforcement being two more. I often wonder if there is also a list of professions that psychos LEAST inhabit. Like, in the bowels of the BAU, a criminal profiler is saying, “Well, we know he’s not a pet psychic, a cupcake baker, or a crossword puzzle author, so we can rule those out! Thank God!”

We are then transported to the high security sector of the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane and see stylishly dressed and coiffed Freddie Lounds entering the prison and introducing herself to Abel Gideon.

When Freddie’s story is finished and published to Tattlecrime.com, we then see Hannibal at his desk with his little tablet reading it – his face as close to “bothered” as you ever see Hannibal come. This is the same face he makes when Franklyn leaves a soiled tissue on his end table, when Mason Verger stabs his chair. I like to call it Hannibal’s “I’m About To Cut a Bitch” face. This is one thing I will say for Mads Mikkelsen over and over again – he acts with every part of his body, including his beautiful face. Fannibals love to discuss Mads’ microexpressions – the little twitches at the corners of his eyes, the dead-eyed, yet sarcastic stares, the tears that appear from nowhere, the minute turnings of his lips into wry smiles – and the most prized being the MIKKELSNARL, the King of All Expressions. The look on his face when reading Freddie Lounds’ story makes you fear for her. Amazingly, she survives. It’s actually insane.

We then see Dr. Chilton and Alana dining with Hannibal at his home. Hannibal says that the dish is a lamb tongue served with Duxelle sauce and mushrooms, created by famous French chef Auguste Escoffier. After some tongue wagging amongst the diners, Hannibal says to Chilton, “Don’t give me ideas. Your tongue is very feisty and as this evening has already proven, it’s nice to have an old friend for dinner” (Wu and Fuller 30). This line is, of course, a tribute to the ending scene of The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal’s phone call to Clarice in which he implies he will be soon killing and eating the bumbling Dr. Chilton. As previously stated, Fuller’s Chilton stubbornly survives every season.

Alana, Frederick, and Hannibal begin discussing Abel Gideon. Frederick proudly claims Gideon to be the Ripper. Alana begins questioning Frederick and asks, “Is it possible that you inadvertently planted the suggestion in Gideon’s mind that he was the Ripper?” (Wu and Fuller 31). Frederick replies, “Psychic driving is unethical” (Wu and Fuller 32).

I have to admit that I NEVER heard the term “psychic driving” before Hannibal. Truly, it sounds like a Cronenberg video game for the Atari 2600. Hannibal says that psychic driving is allowable “in certain circumstances” and actually seems to arouse some gentle suspicion from both Alana and Frederick (Wu and Fuller 32). They don’t seem suspicious that Hannibal is the Ripper – we are a looooong way from that – but they both seem a little shocked that Hannibal might condone the practice, even in narrow cases. Hannibal so desperately wants to play, I think he actually overplays his hand here. He so rarely gives anything away and usually only does so on purpose – perhaps Hannibal’s admission is just to facilitate the conversation Hannibal has in the kitchen with Frederick, in which he states that he believes Frederick already has “psychically driven” Gideon, but it seems a little haphazard to me. Perhaps he’s still amped up because Freddie Lounds has landed a hit on him.

Speaking of Gideon, we now see him in his cell at the BSHCI, this time being questioned by Jack, who states point blank to the prisoner, “You’re not the Chesapeake Ripper” (Wu and Fuller 33). Gideon tries to convince Jack, tries weakly to explain why he, supposedly as the Ripper, takes surgical trophies, why he didn’t display the bodies of his wife and her family, and so on. Gideon ascertains that Jack is not concerned with those prior crimes.

DR. GIDEON: But you’re not here to talk about my wife or even the night nurse.

JACK CRAWFORD: What am I here to talk about?

DR. GIDEON: Your trainee. Miriam something.

(Wu and Fuller 34)

This minor detail, the fact that Gideon does not know Miriam’s last name, proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Gideon is not, cannot be the Chesapeake Ripper. The real Ripper, Hannibal Lecter, has a meticulous memory palace built in his mind. Thomas Harris explains the grandiose proportions of the Doctor’s psychic estate in both Hannibal and Hannibal Rising. In Hannibal, Harris even treats us to a description of the palace’s interior. It has a “Great Hall of the Seasons… [a] hall of looms and textiles…[and a] Hall of Addresses,” just to name a few wings (252-254). Hannibal actually retrieves Clarice Starling’s address from this cognitive library, buried in a mental construction that Harris says, “is vast, even by medieval standards” (252).

I know for a fact that Hannibal Lecter remembers the name of every victim he ever killed, how he killed them, what organs/limbs he took, what dish he made with them, and how they tasted. There is no way he forgets a victim’s name. With the exception of the incidental goons from the Questura in Season 3 or Mason Verger’s goons, Hannibal knows the name of every victim he chooses. No way he would forget Miriam’s last name. Gideon is an amateur.

As their conversation continues, Jack’s phone rings. He walks out of Gideon’s cell block to answer the call as the caller ID announces the number as “HOME.” Jack misses the call and redials. He believes the caller to be his wife, having returned early from her trip. Whoever answers the phone (you know who), then plays the same haunting recorded message – Miriam Lass scared, alone, and begging Jack to help her.

Immediately, we are in Jack Crawford’s bedroom, where Team Sassy Science is pulling and processing evidence from Jack’s bedroom carpet, bedside phone, and even his wife’s pillow. Will is once again observing. Jimmy Price pulls three sets of prints from the phone – the first two sets are identified as Jack’s and his wife’s. The third set is later identified as belonging to Miriam Lass. Beverly even finds a long blonde hair on Bella’s pillow. Will, of course, asks questions: “Did Miriam Lass know where you live?... Did you know you were sending her after [the Chesapeake Ripper?]…” and then states, “Whoever made that phone call thinks you were close to Miriam Lass and feel responsible for her death;” to which Jack replies, “She was my trainee. I am responsible for her death” (Wu and Fuller 36). Jimmy Price floats the idea that Miriam may be alive since her prints are on the phone. Jack cannot accept the idea.

This new evidence spins Jack into another flashback – the circumstance of Jack’s last meeting with Miriam – the last time he saw her alive. They are back at Quantico – Miriam has skipped a class called “Exclusionary Rules of Search and Seizure” to ask Jack’s opinion about a report she left on his desk (Wu and Fuller 37). Jack seems needlessly cruel to Miriam in this scene. He tells her “go back to class” and “Frustrated, Lass? Better start forming a callus or frustration is going to wear you through” (Wu and Fuller 37).

This is perhaps one of the reasons Jack feels so guilty about Miriam’s death, or what he believes to be, death. In their last conversation, he wasn’t very nice. This is one of the unfortunate things about life. The last time I saw my father, the night before he died, the last thing I said to him was, “Dad, don’t eat all that ice cream.” My father was a diabetic and my mother and we children fought him tooth and nail to eat better. Towards the end of his life, he merely circumvented us – he hid Snickers bars in the clothes hamper, peanut butter crackers in the visor in his truck – he finally just broke down and started buying all the sweets he wanted himself since my mother refused to buy them. He was unstoppable. The last time I saw him, he was digging into a half-gallon of Blue Bell chocolate ice cream, and so I told him not to eat it all. All he said to me was, “Bye.”

If I had known that was the last time I would ever see him alive, I would have told him that I loved him. I would have told him that even though he was a shitty dad, abusive and obstreperous, that I still loved him, and I always would. I have to content myself with the idea that either my dad knew that I loved him or he just didn’t care.

Miriam’s report makes a smart but dangerous suggestion in the hunt for the Chesapeake Ripper. She explains, “If the Chesapeake Ripper is a surgeon, we should look at medical records of all the known victims” (Wu and Fuller 38). Jack points out that this search would obviously be illegal – medical records fall under very tight privacy laws. Then, the following conversation proves yet another thing to the viewer about Jack’s character:

JACK CRAWFORD: It’s one thing for a trainee to go poking around private medical records without a warrant, very much another if “The Guru” did it…

MIRIAM LASS: Better for a trainee to ask for forgiveness than an FBI agent to ask for permission?

JACK CRAWFORD: In my experience.

(Wu and Fuller 38).

There is something to be said of the fact that this is exactly the way that Jack “loses” people. This strategy is how he loses Will, how he loses Beverly – sending subordinates to do things he can’t do. I suppose it is a comment on larger patriarchal culture – how men in power get little people to do their dirty work for them – everything from cleaning their toilets to fighting their wars. It is not lost on me that two of the people that Jack “loses” this way are women. Strong, stubborn, beautiful women who went off doing things Jack couldn’t do because of “rules.” I love Jack Crawford with all my heart – but he should feel guilty. The loss of Miriam Lass IS very much his fault.

After this conversation, Miriam wanders off to begin her search of the medical records and we are flashed back into the present where we see Alana Bloom again at the BSHCI, again interviewing Dr. Gideon. Two scenes here at the end of Act Four and the beginning of Act Five, one where Will has a conversation with Chilton, and one where there is a lockdown in the prison were cut from the final episode, so I shall skip them.

The scene we alight upon is Jack, back in the present, walking down a hallway at the Academy, and once again his phone rings. Jack accepts the grim possibility that the call might once again be the Ripper taunting him and answers it. It brings us to one of the most interesting and important locales in the series, the abandoned observatory. The real location is the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. We see the observatory several times in the series – it is always a place of gruesome revelations.

We see Will, Beverly, and Jack approaching the building – Beverly explaining that the last call Jack received from the Ripper “traced here. Or within a 100 feet of here” (Wu and Fuller 42). Jack then redials the last number the Ripper called from – one that wasn’t masked or anonymous. They hear a distant ringing coming from inside the observatory.

They enter the building, and underneath a bunch of discarded equipment, at the base of the main telescope, they find a severed arm, the hand holding the ringing cell phone. A note on a card beneath the arm says, “What do you see?” (Wu and Fuller 43). The viewer understands that this is Miriam Lass’ arm – it explains the fingerprints on the phone in Jack’s bedroom.

I must say, I do find the image kind of funny… Hannibal in his squeaky murder suit – which I affectionately call his “garment bag” because DAMMIT that’s what it looks like – a garment bag with sleeves turned sideways – in Jack’s bedroom, opening a plastic bag and tweezing out one of Miriam’s head hairs, laying it on Bella’s pillow – making the call from Jack’s bedside phone and then laying Miriam’s decapitated hand over the receiver – pressing the finger pads down with his own to make sure the prints stick. I always imagine Hannibal waving Miriam’s arm around with a dramatic flourish when he’s done – like some morbid maestro conducting an insane symphony all of his own composition.

The episode ends with a flashback – Miriam Lass showing up at Hannibal’s office door to question him. The Wound Man victim was a “Jeremy Olmstead” Hannibal had treated for an arrow wound in his thigh the man received while bow hunting – when Hannibal worked in the emergency room, most likely at Maryland Misericordia Hospital in Baltimore. Hannibal says he doesn’t remember the man (he totally remembers) – but under the guise of going to retrieve his notes from the years he worked in the ER, he leaves the room, removes his shoes, and then in his stocking feet creeps up behind Miriam, just as she discovers Hannibal’s own Wound Man drawing and begins to realize the trouble she is in. Hannibal begins choking Miriam – this is the episode’s second installment of “THINGS THAT HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING INSANELY HOT.”

The script describes the scene as follows:

Hannibal is like a column of marble, motionless as Miriam twists and throws, trying in vain to knock him off balance. She reaches behind her head, clawing at Hannibal but he presses his face almost sensually against the back of her neck to protect face and eyes from her slashing fingernails. Miriam’s eyes roll, defeated, tear-filled, knowing she’s going to die. She begins to go limp in Hannibal’s arms.

(Wu and Fuller 48).

This scene is an homage to the same scene in Red Dragon when Hannibal attacks Will from behind, just as Will spies a medical book on Hannibal’s bookshelves that contains the Wound Man drawing. Will’s gut is slashed by Hannibal in this attack – in Fuller’s Hannibal, Will’s gut is spared until the end of Season 2.

This is why I adore Bryan’s Hannibal so much – it is not just an adaptation; it is a remix. Scenes are moved and laid in the hands of different characters. Conversations are shifted – things Hannibal said to Clarice, he says to Will – characters are gender-swapped or their fates are interchanged. Much of Bryan’s remix remains the same – like the tiger scene between Reba and Francis in Season 3 – but so much of it is recut, reimagined, broken down and put back together. Hannibal is an artist of deconstruction and reconstruction and so is Bryan. I still say and always will that Hannibal is the best show ever on television. Good God, it is that fucking good.

But, you ask, “JESUS CHRIST! WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET TO THE LESSON?” I shall now deliver.

The lesson takes place in the scene just before Miriam’s attack. After having discovered Miriam’s decapitated arm, Jack is badly rattled and goes to see Hannibal at his office. When questioned by Hannibal as to what he believes the Ripper’s motives are for trying to convince him that Miriam is alive, Jack responds “Hope. The Ripper wanted to cloud my vision in the fog of hope;” Hannibal then says, “It can sometimes be brave to allow yourself hope” (Wu and Fuller 44).

Hannibal then asks Jack when he gave up hope that Miriam would be found alive and then makes the leap from one woman in Jack’s life to another saying, “Don’t give up hope for your wife. Not yet” (Wu and Fuller 44). At the end of the scene, Hannibal coaxes Jack into telling him about Miriam, even asking what her name was. I have to say it, but making Jack tell him, as if he is absolutely unknowing of the details, about Miriam Lass and her disappearance seems almost masturbatory to me – Jack is talking dirty to Hannibal and doesn’t even know it. Hannibal sits there, absorbing every minutiae, every crease of pain in Jack’s face, every flutter of guilt in his eyes, enjoying every moment knowing exactly where Miriam is, and how she disappeared. Perhaps it is in this discussion with Jack that Hannibal decides to spare Miriam’s life. Perhaps that was always his plan. Hannibal couldn’t have known he would be called in to consult with Jack on his beautiful, but twitchy profiler, so who knows how long he was willing to wait, keeping Miriam alive, bleeding her for info that would bring him directly into Jack’s domain. All of it is devious and cruel.

It is perhaps the cruelest of things for Hannibal to talk to Jack about hope. The viewer knows that Hannibal is the one who has given Jack this “false kind” of hope (Wu and Fuller 44). It is important to remember that on a first time viewing, an audience member is not aware that Miriam is still alive. Just as on a first time viewing, the audience does not know that Abigail Hobbs is still alive after her ear turns up in Will’s gullet and then his sink. This “give the desperate loved ones a piece of their missing people and taunt them with hope” like a sadistic kidnapper, but one with no asking price, is a pattern Hannibal uses twice in the series – both times to manipulate people he cares for – to spin them in circles and watch the motion – no doubt in this spinning, Hannibal searches for weak spots, but he also delights in their pain and confusion.

It is interesting to think that the people Hannibal seems to care most about are the ones he plays with in this way. Will, Jack, Bedelia – he offers hope; he yanks it away. He lies and lies until suddenly, at the precise moment it will make the greatest impact, he tells the truth. A colossal tease is Hannibal Lecter. But he plays with these people because they interest him enough to invest time and effort into them, into both their pain and their pleasure.

Hannibal pokes at Jack’s hope not just about Miriam, but about Bella. As a surgeon, Hannibal knows the hope for Bella is even more of a longshot than for Miriam. But he wants Jack to hope because without hope, there is nothing to lose. It is best that Jack, Will, Bedelia, Alana – that all of them have something to hope for, something to lose. They will all become truly dangerous to Hannibal if they don’t. Which is basically what happens with most of Season 2 to Will, and for Jack and Alana in Season 3 – vengeance arcs – when Hannibal has stripped them of hope.

Our lesson resides in Hannibal’s line: “It can sometimes be brave to allow yourself hope” (Wu and Fuller 44). Leaving aside Hannibal’s qualifying statement of “sometimes,” the most important diction in this line is of “brave” and “allow.”

Mostly, we allow hope for others. For a sick friend, a family down on their luck, a whole group, a whole country – a sports team or a heroic dog – we can give our hope to them. That makes sense. And it feels good.

But often, hope is not a thing we are willing to give ourselves. It seems like something only for other people, like compliments or compassion or birthday cakes. Hannibal says it’s “brave” to allow ourselves hope because when our lives are in abject turmoil, hope is the last thing we want to give ourselves because… hope hurts. When things don’t turn out as we want – when we don’t get the promotion – we lose the contest – we fail the test – we screw up the date – or worse yet, our loved one dies – when we crash and burn, utterly crash and burn – we remember the hope we had beforehand and say, “You fool. You stupid fucking fool. How did you even dare to hope?”

And so the lesson, dear reader, is this – as he often is – Hannibal is right (the bastard…)

It is brave. Let yourself have it.

ALLOW YOURSELF HOPE. BE BRAVE.

I know it seems easy for me to say. It’s not. It’s hard for me too. Some days, I just can’t do it. But you and me… we’ve got to keep trying. I deserve hope. And so do you.

It seems impossible is this world full of pain and death and smiling villains.

But if Jack Crawford can muster hope from a decapitated arm and a dying wife who won’t talk to him, you and I can too.

Here endeth the lesson…

References:

Fuller, Bryan and Steve Lightfoot. Writers. “Kaiseki.” Hannibal, season 2, episode 1, Chiswick Productions, 2014.

Harris, Thomas. “Foreword to a Fatal Interview.” Red Dragon, by Harris, Berkley, 2000, pp. IX-XIII).

Harris, Thomas. Hannibal. New York, Delacorte Press, 1999.

Harris, Thomas. The Silence of the Lambs. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

“Judges 8:27.” King James Bible Online, www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/

Judges-8-27.

Wu, Kai Yu and Bryan Fuller. Writers. “Entrée.” Hannibal, season 1, episode 6, Chiswick Productions, 2012.

#lessonsofhannibal #hannibal #fannibals #fannibalfamilyforever

25 notes · View notes