Bamboozled

There was no in between for him.  It was either all or nothing.      

It was only when I touched his arm that he roused himself..

~ JW

Silver Blaze (1892)

He glanced across at me and smiled

~ JW

The Greek Interpreter (1893)

..said he, pinching my arm.

~ JW

Silver Blaze (1892)

For two hours we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately.

~ JW

The Yellow Face (1893)

..said Holmes, leaning back in his chair and looking keenly at me from under his half closed lids.

~ JW

The Stock-Broker's Clerk (1893)

Holmes, to my unutterable astonishment, leaned over in front of me..

~ JW

The Reigate Squires (1893)

“I could see that you were commiserating with me over my weakness...I was sorry to cause you the sympathetic pain which I know that you felt."

~ SH

The Reigate Squires (1893)

He still came to me from time to time when he desired a companion

~ JW

The Final Problem (1893)

My Dear Watson, believe me to be yours.

~ SH

The Final Problem (1893)

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893)

Omg yes this is one of my favorite tropes! TBH I think I’ll add this as a category to my index hehe. Here are some recs:

Carnivore, Won't You Come Digest Me? by HigherMagic [words: 64,019]

Role Reversal AU: Following the execution of Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Hannibal is forced to see Doctor Will Graham for a psychiatric evaluation before he can return to the field. Once cleared, Jack insists that Will shadow Hannibal in the hopes of catching the Shrike's copycat. Hannibal has become a master of making sure the FBI stays blind to his extracurricular activities, but Will is a man who sees far too much, and won't be so easily overcome.

The Voices and the Shadows by darlinghogwarts [words: 114,625]

“The Chesapeake Ripper? The serial killer? That's a grisly thing to find at the bottom of a drink. Most people say oblivion ...or possibly sex.” Hannibal sips his wine again. “Why are you thinking about a murderer on your birthday, Will? Is it part of your degree?” “He is a part of my degree by my own choice. My supervisor didn’t approve, but…” He sighs. “I insisted.”

Where the Albatross Crash-Lands by HigherMagic [words: 40,220]

Everyone has two marks on their arm: one is the name of their soulmate, the other is the name of their mortal enemy. There's no way of knowing which is which. This same trick of fate makes it so that your Marks are the only two voices you will ever hear when you go deaf at sixteen. Hannibal has a nice voice. Will hopes he's his mate. He hopes he never hears the voice of the Chesapeake Ripper.

Out of Order by HigherMagic [words: 7,346]

Hannibal’s car breaks down on a long road in the middle of West Virginia. In his quest to seek help, he ends up at an abandoned gas station, with a little house and a large barn. Living there is a man, Will Graham, who offers to take a look at his car and drive him to the next town so he has a place to stay. Hannibal cannot resist digging into Will’s mind and personal life during the drive, learning that Will teaches remotely for the FBI, and in particular, lectures on the Chesapeake Ripper.

Page Six by ThisBeautifulDrowning [words: 66,839]

Crime reporter Will Graham’s column on page six of the Baltimore Sun garners him the attention of many: fans, hobby detectives, the FBI…and others. Hannibal cut off a piece of meat with surgical precision. “I find your company rather engaging.” “Maybe I don’t find you all that engaging.” Silence. Hannibal grinned. “I see that it will take more than one dinner to earn your forgiveness. Challenge accepted.”

Not Interested by Watermelonsmellinfellon [words: 64,333]

Will Graham, an Omega of forty-four years, finally finds himself interested in an Alpha. The only problem... that Alpha is not interested in him! And he can't stand it!

Falling Away with You by Shotgun_sinner [words: 192,007]

Will Graham is a private detective with a fiancée who doesn't understand him, his empathy disorder, or his obsession with catching the Chesapeake Ripper. His night terrors force him into an ultimatum; couple's therapy, or their relationship is done. Will meets his new therapist, Hannibal Lecter, and his entire world is turned upside down.

The Back Foot by spqr [words: 8,468]

When Hannibal finds out that the hooker he’s spent the last month romancing up and down the isle of Manhattan is also the author of the NYT’s monthly Dark Minds column, he reacts much the same way Will expects a normal man would react upon finding out his new girlfriend could deep throat.

Hold for Release by cloudsarefluffy [words: 8,547]

“But?” “Will, I think you’re obsessed with the Chesapeake Ripper.” For a moment, Will just blinks at her, but after what she says sinks in, a chuckle starts building up in his chest until it grows into a laugh. He’s almost coming apart at the seams because of Beverly, but as he notices he’s the only one finding it funny, his giggling dies off into silence. “Oh… You’re serious.”

They Made It For Me by zombieboyband [words: 8,844]

Overcoming

Between The Lines

Peccavi 

San Junipero

Dancing with the Beast

Fire Meet Gasoline  

La Vita Nuova  

Provenance  

Pygmalion  

Sympathy for the Devil 

Morphology  

Ladders 

Two Solitudes

What Dreams  

Our Place in Time  

Mentor Tormentor 

and built a little house that we could live in

a tower to broadcast all our dark dreams

deus ex machina

Anatomy of a Monster

Folie à Deux

Giving Themselves

Namaste, My Love

This Dangerous Game

Bright Hair About The Bone

The Shape of Me Will Always be You

Dread and Hunger

The Voices and the Shadows

The Fault in My Code

When the Devil Smiles Back

The Weight of your Touch

The Sacrificial Lamb

Sensates

Page Six

Jingle Knells

T-I-J-P

Pattern Break

The Fruit of the Tree of your own Wickedness

Pioneer to the Falls

Faded Fantasy

Faded Fantasy - It Takes A Lot To Know A Man

Pirates of the Baltic

Rescues

Shark Tank

Hi, glad to know you liked my analysis. And welcome to the fandom. I will answer your 2nd question first. Why did he try to kill him when he had forgiven him already? 

Forgiveness

Will is going through a difficult journey - from not knowing himself fully to coming to understand his darker side and enjoying the macabre with Hannibal, he is also coming to understand Hannibal and the extent of love Hannibal has for him or he has for Hannibal. Post Mizumono he sails to meet him, is regretting losing Hannibal, regretting lying to him. We also see him in the kitchen pining for Hannibal and the the family he could have had. All this culminates in “I forgive you” in the catacombs. It reflects that he thinks has understood Hannibal’s actions.

Doubts 

At the same time, he is still not free of doubts about Hannibal, so he says 

(paraphrased) - Hannibal will always have one train of thought that’s only self-serving, for his own amusement. 

We had seen these doubts time and again in season 2 when he questioned Hannibal if he has a better side or probing how many protégé-patients he had other than him and Randall. Will and Hannibal’s relationship had always been dogged with Will’s insecurity about Hannibal’s true feelings and motives. Seeing Abigail alive in Mizumono had temporarily convinced him that that the feelings are true.

But later, he travels to Hannibal’s ancestral home where two things happen – He meets Chiyo. And he sets up events that leads to Chiyoh killing the prisoner followed by making his snail-firefly murder tableau. This confuses him, he thinks Chiyoh could be one of Hannibal’s abandoned projects like he has now been abandoned by Hannibal. And then he meets Jack and Bedelia, Jack reminds an already emotionally compromised Will the need to cut out the part of him that wanted to run away with Hannibal, and to kill him. When he meets Bedelia – he sees the person Hannibal tried to replace him with, he might have felt Hannibal had been leading a fine life in Europe while he languished in a hospital. And Hannibal is letting Bedelia go unscratched with an alibi. All this reinforces the idea that Hannibal doesn’t value him. 

Trying to be free of each other’s influence and Reciprocity 

What he feels for Hannibal also affects what he feels about his own dark side, about his becoming and vice versa. When he sets up events that gets Chiyoh’s prisoner killed, his dark and chaotic side is unleashed once again and he tries to deny it, Chiyoh points out that he did it -because he was curious what would happen, like Hannibal does. Will engages a lot in self-deception and denial, he tries to assure himself that by killing Hannibal he can be free of him and the dark side, trying to attribute inner workings of his own mind to an extraneous agency. There is also the idea of reciprocity, where they mirror each other’s actions. Sometimes this is in jest like even-steven, sometimes more sinister like the knives. 

A half-hearted attempt - Everything said and done, Will’s attempt at killing Hannibal felt weak to me – trying to attack him in a crowded place with a tiny knife. I would lean more on the side that he was taking out emotional frustration since the attempt was so weak.

Now the first question, why he rejected Hannibal in Digestivo

Will had a long bad day, and the memory of Hannibal cutting his head had not faded yet. The doubts and denials I discussed in the first question are still clouding his mind – Hannibal’s motives, impulsiveness, his own becoming. He really needed the time to think. There is also a fair amount of angst in the discussion Hannibal points out his true nature to him 

“You delight in wickedness and berate yourself for delighting”, 

and Will is defensive trying to distance himself from the truth, due to emotional dispute with Hannibal. If we look at the bigger picture – everything that happened in the story were key to the becoming of both men. Will had to resolve his inner conflicts and Hannibal had to give up control. So the events which followed – Will temporarily leading a normal life to finally accept the inevitable that it is not for him, and Hannibal giving up control and freedom (to an extent) – both were necessary for them to reconcile. 

There was a line towards the end of season 3 where Will says 

‘You turned yourself in so that I will always know where you are but you’d only do that if I’d rejected you’, 

Bryan claims it’s a twist and the idea was from Hugh and Mads. I am not too convinced though, Will at that point wasn’t in a position to actively manipulate Hannibal (unconsciously though it’s possible). But he can definitely retrofit the story like that in order to twist the knife, since he had clear intention of emotionally hurting Hannibal in the scene. 

If suppose Hugh and Mads are right and he consciously manipulated Hannibal- then he was aiming for the surrender, so that he knows ‘where he is and he can find him’. It looks not too plausible since Will wasn’t sure of Hannibal’s depth of emotions for him. May be he was litmus-testing then.

Hope this answers most of the doubts :) 

Ugh. Honestly, I have no idea why so many people seem to enjoy taking Will’s agency from him. @bloodsmile wrote a great meta on it here.

Some more useful related reads: goals of Hannibal’s therapy  + this addition; progression of Will’s darkness; Will and control; Will’s person suit; Will’s motivations; Will and his views on free will + this, and Will’s moral conflict.

All these analyses cover the foundation and nuances of Will as a character as well as Hannibal’s goals for him. But let me briefly elaborate.

I feel like the whole ‘Hannibal is cultivating co-dependency and takes everything from poor Will’ stems from E12 of S2 in particular. This is what Will accuses Hannibal of:

Will: You’re fostering codependency.

Hannibal is not so sure.

Hannibal: Is that what I’m doing?

Will: I bond with Abigail, you take her away. I bond with barely more than the idea of a child, you take it away. You saw to it that I alienated Alana, alienated Jack. You don’t want me to have anything in my life that’s not you.

This might be what Will feels, sure. But is this actually justified? Or is he misinformed, dodging the blame and refusing to take his part of responsibility? Let’s break it into parts.

1) I bond with Abigail, you take her away.

Not true. Will is resentful and hurt because he doesn’t see a whole picture yet. Abigail is alive and Hannibal intends to reunite them.

2) I bond with barely more than the idea of a child, you take it away.

Partly justified. Hannibal did raise the topic of children to Mason after learning Margot is pregnant from Will - he’s impulsive when he’s jealous. But later on, he actually tried to get Mason to accept this idea, and he was angry and regretful over what happened to Margot (which is why he risked by letting Mason live and leaving him in a vulnerable state.) You can see the analysis of this here.

3) You saw to it that I alienated Alana.

Not true. Will was the one who alienated Alana. He realized that she isn’t in love with him even before the court, in this scene. (Taking everything from the script.)

Alana: I don’t have romantic feelings for Will Graham. I have a professional curiosity.

That sits in the air. Brauer breaks it. Pleased.

Brauer: I like “professional curiosity.” It’s so… indifferent. Unless you look like you’re lying when you say it. But you didn’t.

Will: She wasn’t lying.

Alana is looking at Will, the painful truth of this hurts.

Alana started losing even friendly interest in Will the darker he started to behave. In and after E5, after Will sends Matthew after Hannibal, Alana doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. She’s scared and wary of him. Instead of trying to mend the relationship with her, Will is acting creepy and menacing - just look at how he behaves after faking Freddie’s death - he scares her deliberately. He’s hostile and arrogant during discussions of his and Hannibal’s bond. It’s Will’s choices that pushed Alana away + Alana’s own absence of interest in a real version of Will.

4) You saw to it that I alienated Jack.

Not true. For one thing, Will and Jack are a team now, they technically work against Hannibal together and everything is fine. In reality, Will is actually betraying Jack over and over again. He lies to him, he sides with Hannibal, he covers for him with Mason, and he warns him in the finale. Like with Alana, it’s Will’s actions that damage and ruin the bond between him and Jack.

Now, as for co-dependency in general. Yes, Hannibal is possessive - Will is as well. Yes, Hannibal wants Will to choose him above everything. Will wants it, too. In fact, this is what Will says to Jack in E7:

Will: You have to create a reality where only you and the fish exist, where your lure becomes what he wants most, despite everything he knows.

Will himself admits that he plans on fostering co-dependency between himself and Hannibal. Will ends the conversation about Hannibal taking things from him with the following phrase.

Will: You’re right. We are just alike. You’re as alone as I am. And we’re both alone without each other.

This is like, the glaring co-dependency proof. Will is participating in it as actively as Hannibal. Hannibal is the one who’s going to give up his whole life for Will, and he has many things to lose: his excellent reputation, his patients, his multiple friendly connections, etc. Will doesn’t have much in the first place. They are both obsessed with one another, and they choose to go back to one another again and again. It’s a choice, a conscious choice on their part.

And there is also another very important dimension to Hannibal’s general possessiveness of Will, some impulsiveness and jealousy aside he isn’t so aimless about the agenda. People tend to rationalise the relationship as per normal people standard, but Will-Hannibal’s relationship is more than rapport between two people, it also represents a concept. All Hannibal wants is to support Will’s becoming and help him see and accept himself, if s-1 was about helping Will ‘see’ what’s within him, then s-2 was about keeping him on that path and s-3 was about the last nudge Will needs. Everything Hannibal does also helps Will be on that path of becoming, removing distractions (Margot’s baby), removing easy bonding devices (Abigail) and removing people who can confuse him (like Alana, who is a normal psychiatrist and till then was in no position to understand him) 

How do you know Hannibal?

JJ is Jeanne Jo, a woman MF dated from late 2017 right until the end of 2019. You can read most of the timeline here

Eight things we learned from Martin Freeman’s Desert Island Discs (x)

Actor Martin Freeman made his breakthrough as everyman Tim Canterbury in The Office and has gone on to play Dr Watson alongside Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes and the intrepid Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy.

Born in Hampshire in 1971, Martin grew up in Teddington, the youngest of five children. After five years of playing competitive squash, making the national squad as a junior, he realised he didn’t have the killer instinct required to be champion and switched to youth theatre instead where he found his true calling.

1. He was inspired to act by Sir Michael Caine

Martin’s natural, seemingly effortless performance style is not, he suggests, as straightforward as it might seem. Of his acting he says: “I think it’s your job to not show any work. If you wouldn’t do it in real life, don’t do it in front of a camera or on stage. The people who made me want to be an actor when I was a kid were people who didn’t seem to be doing anything. The best of Michael Caine is like he is doing nothing and I believed him.”

2. Disadvantages in his childhood helped to give him confidence

“I was the youngest of five by a fair way, Jamie the next brother up from me is six years older. By the time I came along, my parents’ marriage had pretty much broken down and I was ill, I had a dodgy hip and asthma and eczema and hayfever. I was in and out of hospital occasionally for various things. But I had a sort of confidence, I just had to because I was a little… so like a lot of small people you either fight, probably not going to happen because I’m much smaller than everyone. Or you circumnavigate other ways round it.”

3. His original ambition was to play squash

Martin was a talented squash player at junior level, playing for Surrey and in national squads, at one stage he was the number one in his age group. “I thought I was going to be a squash player until I was about fourteen,” he explains. “I loved it. Until I started to not love it, because it’s a big commitment – a lot of training, a lot of travel. I wasn’t competitive enough. I’d be two games to love up and be on a match point and I’d immediately be thinking, ‘What’s this other guy feeling?’ So that tells me, in hindsight, that’s much more attuned to being an actor than it is to being a champion sportsman. “

4. He describes two-tone as being like a religion for him

Martin loves music. He has guest presented on BBC Radio 6 Music’s Funk and Soul programme and has co-released a jazz compilation album. Two-tone, a genre blending ska and punk, has been hugely influential on him. “There was something very direct about it; I was one of millions of kids in Britain who felt like it was speaking directly to me,” he says. Choosing Baggy Trousers by Madness, Martin claims that hearing the song for the first time set him on a path for the rest of his life.

5. He had more fun being naughty than studying

Uninterested in many of his lessons, Martin suggests that he wasn’t the best student while he was at school: “I was easily distracted, I was lazy, I was unfocused. I only got three GCSEs which disappointed even me. I was a smart arse and like a lot of teenagers I thought I knew everything.”

6. He left drama school to do ‘very little’ at the National Theatre

After a year as a kitchen porter, Martin gained a place at the Central School of Speech and Drama, but left in his third year to play minor roles at the National Theatre. He insists that this was the right decision: “If someone says to you, ‘Do you want to come and work at the National Theatre?’ you don’t say, ‘Let me get back to you!’ I was doing very little at the National, I was basically set dressing, what they call a ‘spear carrier’ really. But you were spear carrying at the National Theatre working with Michael Gambon and Simon Russell Beale and Diana Rigg and I realised that as soon as I’d got there that I’d made a good career choice.”

7. He’s starred in Hollywood blockbusters, but can still remember his TV debut in The Bill

Martin moved into television by following the oft-trodden path of aspiring actors, by auditioning for a host of British soaps and TV series. His first TV role was in The Bill. “I was a man called Craig Parnell… and I was probably quite bad in it, but it was exciting!”

8. He didn’t get the part in The Office that he auditioned for

Hey Nonny!

Ahhh, yes, I remember that fic, just can’t remember which fic it is 🤦‍♀️I’m so dumb I’m sorry D:

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Concussions And Good Old Fashioned Awkwardness by Belldere (K+, 894 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Hospitals, Mild John Whump, Misunderstandings, Platonic Relationship, Concussions, Not-Gay John, Possessive Sherlock) – When John lands himself in hospital... again, all he wants is to just get out of there as soon as possible, too bad his doctor has other ideas about where John may be getting his injuries. Good thing concussions make everything strangely funnier.

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