Bruna. 28. Bisexual. Brazil. I've got a film degree.
Sometimes I post mature content, so I'll ask to only follow me if you're 18+.
This is a multifandom blog. Expect lots of Hannibal and Star Trek. Also Vampire Chronicles. Lots of movies. There will be on occasion rock bands and singers. Also books and TV shows and random stuff.
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Bedelia and Will as the “brides” of Hannibal are mirrors for each other. That much is obvious. But when it came to Hannibal, which one was altruistic and which one was opportunistic? Let’s look at the different reactions to similar situations they each have:
Bedelia feels like it isn’t safe to keep contact with Hannibal, so she stops her sessions with him and leaves. “You are dangerous.”
Will decides to go back to therapy when he knows Hannibal is dangerous. “I’d like to resume my therapy.”
Bedelia decides to cooperate with the FBI and try to help them capture Hannibal. “If you think you’re about to catch Hannibal, it’s because he wants you to think that.”
Will decides to lie to the FBI and help Hannibal. “When Hannibal tries to kill Mason Verger, I’ll arrest him. And you’ll have two witnesses.”
Bedelia decides to leave Hannibal again and claim brainwashing/drugging and never wants to see him again. “I’ve seen enough of him.”
Will decides to leave Hannibal but he goes back to him. “Did you just miss him that much?”
Bedelia keeps a distance from Hannibal when it comes to their feelings. “Our relationship is not as passionate as yours.”
Will isn’t shy about his feelings for Hannibal. “Because he was my friend, and I wanted to run away with him.”
Bedelia keeps a distance from killing as well. She kills her patient, but after that it’s all “participation” and “proxy” at best. “Technically you killed him.”
Will kills and maims again and again by participation, by proxy, by his own hands, by manipulation etc. “I felt a quiet sense of power.”
Will’s reaction to Bedelia in Season 3 is very jarring. He taunts her and seems offended by her very existence and extremely jealous. She didn’t really do anything to him so what is his negativity really about? Why doesn’t he give her the same benefit of the doubt she gave him? Again, I think it’s to highlight their different motivations when it comes to Hannibal, altruism vs opportunism. “You are here visiting an old flame” she says and maintains her own objectivity and distance from Hannibal. When Bedelia admits that her instinct is to crush a vulnerable bird, she says that she wouldn’t do it. When Will says that his instinct is to help a vulnerable bird, she basically implies that his kind of “help” isn’t really help at all, but destructive. “Extreme acts of cruelty require a high degree of empathy. The next time you have an instinct to help someone, you might consider crushing them instead. It might save you a great deal of trouble.”
When they seem to choose the same path the way they deal with it highlights their different motivations too.
Bedelia decides not to shoot Hannibal and gets with him on the plane to Italy. She starts building an alibi and doesn’t do much in the way of helping Hannibal to kill. Hannibal says she wanted a confrontation between Anthony Dimmond and himself, but they never really establish that onscreen. She doesn’t really show enjoyment of killing, at least not in front of Hannibal, to the point where he almost yells at her in annoyance.
And she seems to be trying to get him to realize he’s not making a peaceful stable life for himself in Italy by killing so recklessly. “I’ve killed hardly anybody,” he says, as if it was a topic of conversation between them and he was a bit defensive. Bedelia claims she was trying to treat Hannibal covertly when she went with him. She wanted to help him and save him in some way it seems.
Will, on the other hand, manipulates Hannibal to kill, encourages it, and shows enjoyment in killing. He smiles as he eats Randall, he smiles as he tells Hannibal to do whatever he wanted to Mason and Hannibal smiles back at him. Will isn’t interested in “saving” Hannibal except when it came to helping him escape justice. He’s interested in the “experience” they “afford” each other. The opportunity he sees in Hannibal. Until it gets to be too much for him to handle at times.
Bedelia seems to think that Will was trying to “save” Hannibal too, which is pretty laughable. I think we can safely say that Bedelia is projecting some of her own intentions and motives onto Will when it comes to Hannibal. Even if we buy that Will tricked Hannibal into giving himself up, that also isn’t “saving” him, since Hannibal is in jail as Bedelia says to Will that he did not succeed in saving him. Putting him in jail is obviously not Bedelia’s definition of “saving” Hannibal.
Her definition of saving Hannibal was trying to get him away from Will in my opinion. She was very adamant about trying to keep him from Will in Season 1 and 2 and she seems to be at least ok with him killing Will in Season 3. “I thought Mr. Graham was finally going to be the patient who cost you your life.”
Bedelia seems to think that Hannibal was leading a stable life until he met Will Graham. She wanted to get him back to that point. It didn’t so much matter to her that he was a serial killer, but that he was under the radar, successful both professionally and socially, and relatively happy. But once he got mixed up with Will his life was spun out of control. Bedelia wanted him to get back to the stable life and mentality he had before Will came into his life.
Hannibal obviously didn’t want to go back to his stable life before he met Will. He chooses Will even when Bedelia offers him her company and a chance at the life he used to have. Bedelia tries to treat both Hannibal and Will, but they’re the patients who cost her, her life in the end.
He didn’t murder those families. He changed them. [3x11]
(Long ass meta coming up soooo yeah if you can’t be arsed to read it, just focus on the gifs)
This scene basically just sums up how fucked Will Graham is when it comes to Hannibal ft. Change vs Family Values. His feelings totally undermine his moral compass and ability to think rationally.
I have just finished watching episode 1x6 (Of Monsters and Men) of NBC’s Dracula and find myself moved to speak about it. Initially I had my reservations about this show. The costumes were garish, the liberties with myth and story abundant, and the only saving grace at the time seemed to be the eye candy that is Jonathan Rhys Meyers. But was that enough? As it turns out this show is a delight for the senses that never seems to fail to push the boundaries of sex and violence and has an uncanny awareness of its own cheekiness to boot. Not to mention the multitude of “shipping” opportunities for those of that ilk. But that’s not what I want to talk about today.
Today I want to talk about how this show has broken my heart time and again and done so with grace and tact and insight into the lives of gays/lesbians/bisexuals. In episode 1x2 (A Whiff of Sulfur) we are introduced to Daniel Davenport and Lord Laurent who are secretly in love with each other. It is a secret by necessity due to the culture and times they live in. By the third episode Lord Laurent is killed in furtherance of the story (ie, Dracula’s greed via blackmail), and at the end of the episode his lover, Daniel, takes his own life because he is so heartbroken over the loss of the man he loves. He leaves this note for his father to find:
Dearest Father, I have decided that I cannot go on this life without my beloved. Stephen.After the the humiliation and destruction Alexander Grayson has caused. The whole of my world has been taken away from me. I hope that you will see me in the next life. Your Loving Son, Daniel.
As you may or may not know, gay men are six times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual peers are, and this show, this silly, inaccurate show, managed to illustrate in just two short episodes the pain and fear of being gay in a society that is not accepting of such things.
Then we have Lucy, Mina’s best friend, who just happens to have more than friendly feelings for Mina. In a show rife with on screen sex acts this attraction could have been played as something paltry and meaningless. It would have been so easy for the show runners to exploit the male gaze and make it about heaving bosoms and heavy petting between two women. Instead they chose to make it about love, about a young girl confused by her feelings as she watches the object of her affection become betrothed to a man and drift ever further away from her. In episode 1x5 (The Devil’s Waltz) there is an absolutely gut wrenching scene where Lucy collapses on her stairs in tears as it hits her that she is truly losing Mina, that she never really had a chance at all with her. I am not going to lie. I cried with Lucy because I have been Lucy.
The dynamic between Lucy and Mina, which comes to a head in the most recent episode, is one I can relate to on a deeply personal level. As an openly bisexual woman I have been Lucy numerous times in my life. In Of Monsters and Men Lucy is encouraged by Lady Jayne (for nefarious reasons) to admit her feelings to Mina, an action that may yet prove fatal to Lucy and Mina’s friendship. Emboldened by Lady Jayne’s words, Lucy makes her move and confesses her love to Mina who rebuffs her with much disappointment and disgust.
The thing about being bisexual (and I imagine this is true for lesbians and gays as well) is that people don’t wear signs over their heads stating what their sexuality is. So unless you have completely immersed yourself in gay culture and only ever meet gay people (which some people do for this very reason) you will at some point in your life develop feelings for someone whose sexuality does not mirror your own. It is also extremely likely that if you are gay or lesbian or bisexual you have also experienced hatred and bullying and harassment for being that way. And thus creates a sort of vicious cycle of fear. Not just fear of rejection but fear of being hit or raped or murdered or of having your secret revealed if you aren’t out.
NBC’s Dracula has beautifully portrayed all of the confusion and fear that’s part and parcel of not being straight. Whether you’re bi or gay or lesbian there’s a strong chance you had that moment in your life where you realized you weren’t like other people and then, even once you’ve come to terms with that, you have the first time you actually fall for someone of your gender. For many of us it’s a terrifying feeling, especially if you don’t know the person’s orientation. You have to decide whether to suffer in silence or to speak up and potentially be rejected or worse, physically or emotionally harmed.
Watching the character of Lucy come to terms with her feelings for Mina has been a gut wrenching and heartbreaking journey and it’s not over yet. We’ve seen her struggle with her feelings, finally accept them, and then bare her heart to Mina. Mina’s disgusted rejection of her is something the LGBTQ community has to face every day of their lives, not just from potential partners but from friends and family and coworkers. Lucy stands not only to lose her friendship with Mina but her standing in society and potentially her life as well, consequences that are far too real for many of us even now, after all the advancements we’ve seen in gay rights.
I say kudos to NBC’s Dracula for actually portraying these characters with heart, for showing the spectrum of emotion within same sex relationships instead of resorting to the fetishizing of same sex intimacy, and for tackling the very real and all too often very dire consequences of falling outside the heterosexual paradigm.
If you aren’t already watching this show I urge you to give it a chance. In addition to being highly entertaining it is also highly moving and, so far, a boon to queer representation in television. I sincerely hope, pun fully intended, that they continue in this vein.
