Do you think he was ever in love with Bedelia like he was in love with Will? I ask this because Bedelia says they were both the "brides of Hannibal". But Hannibal never courted her like he did with Will, Bedelia came into Hannibal's life much before Will but he never pursued her like he did with Will. Mads said he wanted a future with Will unlike with other people he hooked up with Alana, Bedelia or Anthony. He took her to Italy as a consolation prize when Will betrayed him. Even in Italy H was pining about Will all the time and telling Bedelia how much he loves Will. I know he slept with Bedelia but he probably slept with Anthony too and he slept with Alana, Hannibal is a hedonistic guy who sleeps around. For him sleeping with someone doesn't mean he is in love with them. But when Will confronts Bedelia, she pretends as if Hannibal held them in the same regard which is obviously not true. Hannibal would choose Will over her in a heart beat and even she knows it but yet she acts as if Hannibal sees them both equally. I don't understand why? 😭 Why do you think?why make herself seem like a competition when she is not?
So, a few things.
To answer the first question - basically, no. I think the show is fairly clear on the fact that Bedelia wasn’t an adequate substitute for Will. (Though I will say that the question of whether or not X character was “really” “in love” with Y character, or - as I sometimes see people writing on, when they fell in love - is not particularly compelling or generative to me as a meta topic. Personally, I’d rather focus on the specifics of relationships, the patterns of interaction characters have with one another, what they represent to one another, etc, than trying to definitively categorize their feelings.) Also, if this is in response to this post, then I don’t really consider the question of whether or not characters were “really” in love, or preferred other people, particularly relevant when shipping something. Shipping to me is applying an erotic lens to a dynamic I find compelling, not about whether the character were “in love” with each other or would make a dedicated or long-lasting couple.
I don’t consider myself to be beholden to the opinion of Mads, or anyone else in the cast and crew, in my analysis. Their sentiments can be interesting, and can inform readings (and tbh I’ll pay more attention to Fuller than the rest of them, given that I respect his vision as a creator), but they are not canon, and I think treating them as such is stifling to fandom analysis. Furthermore, in this case, I don’t need to consider Mads’ opinion, because… I have the show itself, which devotes considerable attention to Hannibal’s feelings towards Will and puts forth a lot of effort in positioning Will as somehow exceptional to him.
It’s not really clear that Hannibal did sleep with Bedelia. The exact nature of their relationship is pretty deliberately left ambiguous. (My personal interpretation is that they didn’t sleep together, though they were both aware that it was a possibility.)
Hannibal had practical reasons to sleep with Alana outside of his own enjoyment - namely, grooming her as a character witness, and keeping her close such that the threat of him hurting her would keep Will in line (hence his “I’ll give Alana Bloom your best” line after Will’s attempt on his life). I do agree that he doesn’t seem to see sex as sacrosanct, and has no qualms about using it as a manipulation tool, but that’s about as much as the show gives us as to his feelings about it. (It is plausible, given everything else about him, that he’d enjoy it for hedonistic reasons, and that is pretty in line with my own headcanon, but the show itself doesn’t specify exactly, because “how the characters feel about sex” is a question it’s relatively uninterested in devoting a lot of attention to.)
With that out of the way, I’ll get into Bedelia, namely this:
But when Will confronts Bedelia, she pretends as if Hannibal held them in the same regard which is obviously not true. Hannibal would choose Will over her in a heart beat and even she knows it but yet she acts as if Hannibal sees them both equally.
She doesn’t actually, though. In fact, in her interactions with Will in 3B, she's often emphasizing the romantic and obsessive nature of Hannibal's feelings towards Will specifically.
Consider:
Will: You hitched your star to a man commonly known as a monster. You’re the Bride of Frankenstein.
Bedelia: We’ve both been his bride.
Will is the one who raises the “bride” comparison, and Bedelia’s answer is to impress on Will the fact that he also should be taken to hold this position. And then later in the episode, we get her saying “my relationship with Hannibal is not as passionate as yours.”
And then in 3.12, we get this exchange:
Will: Bluebeard’s wife. Secrets you’re not to know, yet sworn to keep.
Bedelia: If I am to be Bluebeard’s wife, I would have preferred to be the last.
So when Will again raises a romantic analogy for Bedelia and Hannibal’s relationship, Bedelia responds with a conditional, rather than confirming it, and then implicitly gestures towards the romantic nature of Will and Hannibal’s relationship (and the fact that Hannibal seems to value Will more).
So Bedelia fairly consistently maintains that Hannibal holds Will in special regard. And while she seems to have been jarred out of her usual patterns of behaviour with Hannibal in a comparable way to Will (hence the “why is one patient worthy of compassion and not another”/“why is one murderer worthy of compassion and not another” exchange), she doesn’t appear to be carrying a torch for him - when Will asks her if she’s been to see Hannibal, she responds, “I’ve seen enough of him.”
So, as to her motivations - I’d say she’s invested in impressing on Will the force of Hannibal’s influence on them, hence why she pushes the angle of the romantic intensity of their bond. For example, this quote:
Your experience of Hannibal’s attention is so profoundly harmful, yet so irresistible, it undermines your ability to think rationally.
And then her pushing to get Will to accept his culpability in what happened to Chilton, and chalking it up to Hannibal’s influence:
Bedelia: Is this what you expected?
Will: I can’t say I’m surprised.
Bedelia: Then you may as well have struck the match yourself. That’s participation. Hannibal Lecter does have agency in the world. He has you.
And then, in the wounded bird exchange, there’s her claim that Will isn’t truly a killer, and that his compassion is what drives his violence:
You’re not a killer. You’re capable of righteous violence because you are compassionate. …The next time your instinct is to help someone, you should really consider crushing them instead. It might save you a lot of trouble.
Well, taken in tandem with her emphasis on the intensity of the bond between Will and Hannibal, and on Hannibal’s influence on Will, the conclusion I’d draw is that she wants Will to recognize and recoil from Hannibal’s pull on him and what it brings out in him, and she wants him to direct his compassion towards Hannibal in the form of killing him. (I think her trying to get Will to “crush” the next person he feels the urge to help is also referring to Dolarhyde, ftr, or at least has narrative resonances in that direction, though that ofc backfires onto her).
So, I don’t think Bedelia feels threatened by the bond between Will and Hannibal out of romantic jealousy. It’s more a sense of self-preservation. I have a longer post in me about this, but suffice it to say, that’s why she tries to get Hannibal to eat Will in 3A - because it’s Will or her - and the interpretation that she’s trying to get Will to kill Hannibal in 3B works well as a parallel to that and makes sense as to her motivations. Because she knows that if Will and Hannibal join ranks, she’s toast - and going by the stinger in WOTL, she was right about that.
I hope this was helpful!
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everything regarding bad boy is just depressing me. i just want to block the tag at this point. i am a person who loves analysis posts but damn. i can’t take these. i understand why so many people are writing them and that’s their prerogative but it was 15 pages and people are assuming so much random shit and speaking it as facts as if isayama said it himself and don’t get me wrong some of the analysis i have read from moots is amazing but its just truly fucking killing me.
i mean i get talking about what happened but why are we enjoying adding more and more and more pain to him. fuck, idk maybe i just am a big ass fucking baby cause i’ve seen just way to many assumptions based on such little content. like it was literally just a story about his powers awakening and yes it was fucking tragic what he went through but stating all these mental illnesses as fact and than stating he was raped (which how tf did we get there?) as fact is crazy. like we really don’t know, you can speculate all you want but only isayama knows at the end of the day and since levi’s story is over you can’t say anything for sure. also people on twitter going wild with theory’s and lies. twitter is the worst of it tbh…it’s all just to much…like damn i just want levi to be happy
i think people are infantilizing his adult self and from what i saw of him as an adult in the canon material it seems like he processed everything quite well and came out as an amazing human being. and once again i will say his stoic/crude personality is not a mask it’s just who he is and that’s okay and we gutta stop pretending it’s a bad side of him.
anyway these are all just my thoughts and opinions. if you disagree with me that’s okay too i sometimes people don’t agree on things and can still be cool with each other…that’s life 🤍
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100 notes task: find micro label
So, did some general research and I’m leaning toward the Quoisexual label
Quoisexuals do not understand and/or are unsure if they experience sexual attraction.
Tbh I don’t feel all that strongly about my Ace-ness because I know I am definitely uncomfortable when it’s associated with ME. Especially when it’s with someone I don’t know. On top of just not caring because I’m pretty strongly asexual, I don’t really want to delve any deeper into it.
As for aromantic, that’s harder.
I would just slap on demiromantic and call it good but im also really inclined to Bellusromantic (someone who has interest in typically romantic gestures but does not feel romantic attraction or wants a romantic relationship ship)
The only reason I’m hesitant with bellusromantic is because I want to participate in romantic gestures but don’t want to be in or be viewed as being in a romantic relationship. But that is probably also because people seem to obsess over romantic relationships and that has ended some good friendships for me. Because of their pressure.
Pretty confusing isn’t it?
I think I’m just gonna stick with bellusromantic. I don’t want to be in a romantic romantic relationship ship and that’s that I think.
So yeah, quoisexual and bellusromantic is what I’m going with.
Also I will talk to my brother and my friend soon!!!! I did not expect the sheer amount of notes I’d get this morning.
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So…nobody asked for a Pure Vanilla/Black Raisin fankid, but I’ve had this dude bopping around in my head for a good while, and now with this, I decided to actually make him. So this is Golden Raisin Cookie
Also I was working on the Pastry/Herb one but since I had already started at one point, left for a bit then came back with a new idea, it wasn’t really working out so I needed to start from scratch, so I just made him in the meantime
Alright, so there’s a bit of backstory for his name. So I’m at college, and since I live on campus, I need a dining pass, and I always use it for breakfast. So one morning, I’m out at one of the halls, getting some chocolate chips for my pancakes over in the oatmeal section (because the waffle toppings don’t have chocolate chips), and I notice they have raisins there, but instead of your typical black raisins, they were gold. And so I thought “you know, golden raisins would make a good pureraisin fankid” since they’re raisins like BR and they’re a yellow/gold color like PV. But the thought didn’t really go much from there at the time. Then I started doing these fankids, and it came back to me.
Golden raisins: (note these raisins are not that colorful, I’ve seen them in real life)
In my free time I’ve mused about him and one other fankid idea (mostly since I was under no obligation to make them and had no perceived time limit), and I just decided “why not?”
So as for his design, I’ll be honest, I’m a bit underwhelmed by the final result. I dunno, something about it looks too plain. I mean yeah, I based it off of the Raisin villagers mostly, since they’re probably the people he’s growing up with, and he strikes me as the type of person to just wear plain and simple clothes, but still, in my head he looked a lot better. Guess that’s what you get when you try to build a design up in your head long before you actually draw it
Also his hair was going to be in a ponytail, but then I thought it looked better just down. Also he was just going to have yellow eyes initially, but then I toyed with the idea of him having black eyes, and eventually I came to the compromise of just having both, just in both eyes instead of heterochromia like PV. His pin for his cape is supposed to be based on young Pure Vanilla’s outfit (which is where a lot of inspiration for his outfit comes from), but it’s rotated slightly from the sort of cross shape to more of an X because of his kind of magic. Also his stick is crooked so that crows can sit on there
JuSo moving on to Golden Raisin himself, so I imagine him to be a pretty friendly and nice guy, helping out whoever needs it, similar to Pure Vanilla. But he definitely has a bit more a penchant for violence. Speaking of which, while he is a magic user like his father, instead of healing magic, he uses offensive magic and is a bit of a powerhouse, though he does still know a few healing spells. Also, he’s close with the crows and can probably summon them at will. I imagine he has one particular crow that’s albino/golden, sort of like him, and they’ve been friends for a long time. That one’s probably the one that often sits on his staff’s perch
He reminds me of this character from Fire Emblem Awakening, I didn’t see much of him but he was a dark mage who also had a thing for crows (and a bit of a violent streak, which Golden Raisin doesn’t have (at least not much), but he does have some darkness). The Wiki says his name is Henry. Also, his eyes are often closed just like Pure Vanilla, but I decided not to keep that for GR since that’d make him look too much like his old man
Also another thing about Golden Raisin (and the darkness I mentioned), he’s become rather interested in the dark/forbidden magics, but as you might imagine, he’s been unable to get his hands on them. However, perhaps opportunity could present itself…
But yeah, that’s Golden Raisin. I like him
I also imagine he’s friends with the other fankid I’m working on in my head, I just haven’t figured her out yet. Mostly her name though. If you’re curious, that one’s a darklico fankid
I realize the particulars of who their parents are might make their age similarities and friendship a little strange, but given the presumed timeline, I suppose it works out
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