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bonearenaofmyskull · 7 years

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I enjoyed your S4 speculation a lot. One potential direction I haven't seen in yours yet is the possibility of acquiring Clarice's rights. With the anticipation and expectation of getting her rights, do you think Bryan would prepared S4 in a way to follow up with Clarice - like 'hannigram' will eventually dissolve to make way for the book canon endgame couple? I would like your thoughts on that. I often see Will's death, or 'friends' route so there's room for lovers+soulmate for Clannibal.

I imagine Bryan Fuller has had some plan for Clarice ever since he pitched the first 247 seasons of the show to Mads Mikkelsen back in 2012.

However, from the sounds of the discussion at RDC3, it doesn’t sound like he anticipates there being movement on the rights issue, and additionally, that he thought it would be a shame to lose the investment and development that audiences and he have put into the Hannigram relationship. I believe the audience at RDC3 emphatically insisted that he keep his investment in Hannigram as well, and to my knowledge, he heard them loud and clear. But I wasn’t there, so you might be better off asking for opinions on this from @existingcharactersdiehorribly, @genufa, or @the-winnowing-wind. Whatever has happened to his plans for using an expy if he had to is not clear to me, and his discussion then of how you can’t copyright a performance and why he couldn’t use Will (or Jack?) if he used Clarice and or use Clarice if he used Will, but he could use Hannibal with either when he had previously said that MGM didn’t have the rights to Will, Jack OR Hannibal…well, none of that makes a lick of sense to me to this day. Maybe he was just brain-farting. Or I am.

Bryan’s talked a fair bit about potentially bringing Clarice on as a black woman, someone with a little more biting way about her than Jodie Foster’s version from the film, and someone who is less susceptible to Hannibal than Will, but tbh, he hasn’t said much that has been particularly concrete and what he has said has seemed to run a little hot and cold depending on whether he expected at the moment of any given interview to get the rights. I’ll let you Google his comments for yourself.

I have written a number of speculations about Clarice entering the show and what her relationship with Hannibal, Will and Jack might be like. They’re probably buried deep in my “s4 speculations” and “s5 speculations” tag, or you could alternately look up “clarice starling” or “clannibal.” Buyer beware, though–for a long time in the fandom early on, there was what I would call ship passive aggressiveness (not outright ship war) from Clannibal shippers who felt threatened by Hannigram, which then became reciprocal, and you’re likely to find me saying in no uncertain terms what I thought on that matter if you look back in the tag far enough. It’s not really pretty.

I don’t think I’ve written on it in a while, though, so in terms of my own opinion today, I’d say that right now I’d be surprised if they did more than introduce Clarice/expy in S4, and tbh, I’m not even expecting an introduction at all. Bryan had said that he’d written S3 to end in the way it did without the intention of going to SotL directly after and S4 would be the most interesting story yet for Will Graham, whatever that means. Bryan seeming somewhat negative at RDC3 about having Clarice and Will together and the fan response at the time makes me think that he’d set her to the side, at least for the near future, and whatever pitch he’d have to make in August/September would probably be without her.

In terms of the ultimate question about whether or not Hannigram would dissolve to make room for Clannibal…

…I’m going to go with no. Hannibal has generally relegated being lovers to a position of less significance than being friends, so who knows where they might go with Clarice’s love life, if they even pursue it, but Bryan saying that Clarice will be better able to withstand Hannibal’s influence than Will tends to make me think it’s not likely.

But the soulmates question–honestly, I don’t even think they could tell that story at this point. That ship has sailed, pun intended. That’s the effect of telling a story with such a strong emphasis on parallels and inversions, beginning with the thesis “You and I are just alike.”

S1 set up Hannigram’s basic connection of being similar in seeing the art in killing and having the profound empathy and understanding of other people, especially the monsters, and if you had asked me at that time if Clarice’s presence could “dissolve” and replace that relationship, I couldn’t have honestly answered no.

But since then S2 and S3 happened, and the show doubled down on their oneness: Hannibal was “the new Will Graham” while Will took Hannibal’s canon place in the last hospital cell on the left; Hannibal slept with Alana largely to “give Alana Bloom [Will’s] best” (the 5-way sex scene was not about Hannibal and Will wanting to sleep with each other, shipper commentary to the contrary–it was about them wanting to become each other, which I would argue is far more intimate and indicative of the soulmates story); Will’s becoming was about changing to be more like Hannibal (more murderous, more manipulative, more likely to indulge his curiosity), just as Hannibal changing was about becoming more like Will (more emotional, more loving, more able to connect meaningfully); Will deceived Hannibal as Hannibal had deceived Will; all the imagery of their faces morphing together and becoming one, continued through reflections into the third season; each searching for completeness without the other and failing to find it; Will sent a killer after Hannibal and Hannibal sent one after Will, even Stephen; all the God imagery and references and music and them each being the light in the other’s Great Eye as they look to God and see reflections of each other; Will setting Chiyoh up to kill as Hannibal had set up Abigail; Hannibal choosing to try to eat Will to forgive him; the both of them only overcoming the Dragon when they started fighting as one; and then finally, going off the cliff to some kind of death together.

Holy Moses!

I mean, even if Clarice got introduced right away in S4 and the show got all the way to a sixth season and there was the equivalent of 13 episodes per season AND Will Graham died at the end of the “most interesting chapter” of his story…I just don’t think even a great writer like Bryan Fuller could collapse that structure and rebuild Clannibal on top of it in a way that would seem meaningful. Clarice will simply never have the time investment given to her–it’s mathematically impossible at this point.

Moreover, I don’t think a great writer would want to do that. Why shift away from the investment in both character and relationship that he had worked so hard to develop?

No, whatever involvement any future Clarice may have in the story–assuming we get the show back for enough seasons to get her and the Rights Gods are smiling on Bryan–will have to be entangled with both Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, together. They’re one.

#hannibal meta #hannigram #bryan fuller #will graham #hannibal lecter #clarice starling #clannibal #s4 speculations #anonymous #bear answers #Anonymous

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