Please direct black- mail to my office

Dr. Chilton's perfectly ethical copycat blog. Formerly purely a place for imagines, eventually deteriorated into a salt-blog.

[imaginefrederickchilton]

Since Star Trek: Discovery is starting to come out and people are having justifiable complaints about it, I feel like I’ve failed in warning my friends that Bryan Fuller is a snake bitch

[imaginefrederickchilton]

No offense but the decision to focus on/ canonize hannigram was almost certainly pure marketing because the show was being threatened with cancellation, and the only reason most of you fuckers would have ever wanted it to come back was for your ship.

[raegefilth]

“But it’s interesting for me as a gay man, writing two characters that I think are very clearly heterosexual, because I don’t want them to be gay, necessarily - they do terrible, terrible things to each other and I don’t think that’s a healthy role model for gay culture!” [x]

[hannibalsbattlebot]

Date of article: May 2014

[imaginefrederickchilton]

Don't be cute with me. The point is that his concept for the show even in mid-2014, which was when SEASON TWO aired, was not to have them be explicitly romantic. That he considered the two of them more or less heterosexual, and not only that, but that they were in a deeply unhealthy relationship that he didn't want to be associated with gay romance. I would argue this easily fits on the pile of evidence that Fuller and co. were intentionally pandering to their fanbase in the wake of the explosion of hannigram.

[raegefilth]

“But it’s interesting for me as a gay man, writing two characters that I think are very clearly heterosexual, because I don’t want them to be gay, necessarily - they do terrible, terrible things to each other and I don’t think that’s a healthy role model for gay culture!” [x]

[withswords]

"Will" hannibal says in a slurred and unintelligible accent for the umpteenth time, "its becoming difficult to have poetic and meaningless discourse while simultaneously devouring your ass" Will moans and ruts back against hannibals angular face and cuts his ass on the psychiatrists cheekbones "eat your way to my brain and we wont need to even speak we will be one"

any given hannigram fic, probably (via gayswithswords)

[imaginefrederickchilton]

Thomas Harris: Women are people and deserve to be written with the same complexity and respect you'd write a male character

Bryan Fuller: I can't read suddenly...I don't know

[sirenja-and-the-stag-deactivate]

AU where Will teams up with Frederick in S3

[femsolid]

Its showrunner Bryan Fuller refuses to depict sexual assault.

[teachustobestill-blog]

filthybonnet:

teachustobestill:

radically-feminist:

“I don’t want to do rape stories on the show because I don’t find them entertaining. I think that they’re exploitative,” Fuller told BuddyTV in 2014. ‘A character gets raped’ is a very easy story to pitch for a drama,” he added. “And it comes with a stable of tropes that are infrequently elevated dramatically, or emotionally. I find that it’s not necessarily thought through in the more common crime procedurals. You’re reduced to using shorthand, and I don’t think there can be a shorthand for that violation—it’s an incredibly personal and intimate betrayal of something that should be so positive and healthy.” In a TV landscape where rape is nearly universally used as a springboard for a male character’s development or as a way to stress how brutal the world is—while glossing over rape’s impact on survivors—Fuller’s refusal to enter the fray is refreshing. Neither sexual assault nor its survivors are props to be thrown on-screen to make a scene more “dramatic.” When shows treat them as such, they perpetuate rape culture. Turning on the television should not be an invitation to watch a laundry list of ways to destroy women.

… but nearly all the violence done to women in this show for the male characters’ development. There are many crimes out there that victimize women, just because he only avoids one shouldn’t be lauded for abusing the others. The only difference between Sansa Stark and Abigail Hobbs is the crime that’s done to them. Their suffering happens to develop a male character’s angst.

THIS!!! You don’t get a medal for avoiding rape if you replace it with another trope that uses violence against women for the same reason.

So there’s this novel.

And this novel takes a female protagonist who tries her best to follow the way of the world; try to listen to it’s heteronormative rules and finds herself at a crossroads, feeling furious that the stories about these dead women won’t ever be known. That men won’t fully understand their stories. She eventually breaks from those rules to go and save the latest of those girls whose story is only known because of the power she’s connected to (which is also feminine, so kudos!) rather than the fact she’s a missing person.

It was written nearly 30 years ago. 

Basically, the series that focuses upon telling women’s stories as heroines and victims has been reduced to: ‘At the least they’re not raping anyone! :D’ (I can go how by not saying Francis is a rapist and avoiding that part of the Red Dragon story isn’t a good call at all; though it’s amusing on a level.)

It’s not so much that there’s a crime done to these girls; it’s so much that they lose agency. No one expects them to be a hero but their viewpoint and their story needs to be told. Fuller can say ‘Oh, that’s actually how it happened’ but the only person who knows this and sees this is Hannibal, we are seeing it through Hannibal’s eyes. He is the framing device. Theon is the framing device and his horror is focused upon during Sansa’s scene.

[filthybonnet]

Basically, the series that focuses upon telling women’s stories as heroines and victims has been reduced to: ‘At the least they’re not raping anyone! :D’

Not even. He took a very female positive series (written by a male, which we need more of) and made it male focused. The fact that it’s homosocial, homoerotic or queer baiting or whatever is supposed to make it okay but it doesn’t. You can argue he didn’t have the rights to Clarice so he choose Will till you’re blue in the face (and I am so fucking sick of people telling me that, like you don’t think I know that? Where the fuck do you think I’ve been for 3 years?) but that’s no excuse for what he’s done to the females he has or the lack of focus on female issues. He could have made that fake Clarice he’s always talking about.

I know somebody will want to jump in here and tell me the focus of the show is Will and Hannibal’s relationship but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying Fuller took source material that focused on female issues, even Red Dragon (Reba much?) and swept it aside to focus on male angst. He then changed some minor male characters to female and was like “Look how feminist I am. Shh ignore the fact that I’m no longer focusing on BS women in these types of jobs have to put up with. It’s almost been 30 years since that book came out; clearly that’s all water under the bridge. But you know what’s still a daily struggle: men’s pain.”

[forestardenne]

One thing that I think the show started out doing and has stopped doing is examining the effects of all violence on the people who are involved in it – the victims, the killer, and the people that have to deal with it on a daily basis, like Will. Rape and sexual assault are one group of violent acts, but there are many violent acts depicted on the show that happen, and we either sort of accept them or perhaps even root for them to happen.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been rereading James Gilligan’s Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic (that one and Baumeister’s Evil and Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain are my favorites on this topic), but I feel like the show started to look at the negative effects of violence in season 1, particularly on characters like Will and Abigail, and then sort of stopped. I think that exploration of grief and the resilience of the soul in spite of exposure to repeated acts of violence added a spiritual element to the show that we completely lost, I think, when Bella died. Bella, really, was our guide into this world more than any other character – confronting her own mortality gave her a grace and levity that none of the other characters have.

One of the remarkable things about Harris’s novels is how feminist they are: both Dolarhyde and Jame Gumb are not only killed by women and not only killers of women themselves, their violence is also a result of a dual love and hatred of women. Both men were abandoned by their mothers and that loss permeates every act they do. (Will, too, also has no mother, but unlike Dolarhyde and Gumb, he doesn’t hate women.) Clarice is the ideal person to solve the Buffalo Bill case precisely because she, as a woman, is able to see the world differently – the FBI only has men on Gumb’s trail and this is a huge part of why their investigation fails. Clarice’s FBI is still an old boys’ club operating by masculine rules and ideals, and her refusal to conform to those ideals – her “smart mouth” (i.e. her refusal to submit to male authority) and her refusal to be Krendler’s mistress – ultimately ends her career.

This feminist bent also translates into the novels’ approach to violence: that nature is both cruel and kind but these conceptions are mankind’s constructions. Nature is but man does; man makes choices that nature doesn’t. As Dr. Lecter discovers at the end of the novel Hannibal, we can try to force our own ideas of a thing’s nature upon it, but ultimately we have no control over it, no idea of whether it will be bad or good or even a bit of both.

I feel like this discussion has been absent from the show for a while and I had really hoped that the Dolarhyde arc would bring it back. This is also precisely why the show needs its female characters and why the fact that they have continued to come secondary to the development of the male characters has, I think, weakened the show. Dolarhyde’s victims are voiceless to him, merely materials to fuel his “Radiance” – his desperate desire to conform to some bullshit masculine ideal about power – but they don’t have to be (and aren’t in the novel) to Will.

[imaginefrederickchilton]

(This critique is so interesting to me as I haven't read the books myself, partly because I'd always gotten the idea (from other fans of the show) that they were unfeminist or anti-women.) It's funny how in the interview Fuller said that he wouldn't tell a rape story because rape is exploitative, when his Hannibal as a show became pure exploitation at least halfway through season 2. I remember how every new episode was promoted with this sort of weird nauseated glee, like, what crazy spectacle of absurd violence will be in this episode? That was the show's niche. And, there could be something to be said about a narrative that actually explored these themes of exploitation in an interesting or meta way, but quelle surprise we didn't get that. It's disappointing, because I feel like we're lacking recent content with an earnest critique of exploitation and consumption rather than aping 'self aware' writing on top of plain ol' exploitation. Also, Margot's assault and forced abortion read heavily to me as a VERY EXPLICIT metaphorical rape, and I had a lot of conversations with friends who got the same impression. Fuller's assertion of a no-rape story seems like a bizarre attempt to win 'feminist showrunner' points in contrast to the upset caused by GoT?

[imaginefrederickchilton]

Tfw you get back into an old fandom just to talk shit about it

[filthybonnet]

So everyone’s talking about how Hannibal and Will could survive that fall. You kind of forgot the part where they were also bleeding out when they fell. Then again, Chilton has survived being gutted, shot and burned alive. The only people who die on this show are the women.

[filthybonnet]

When your post from a year ago comes back and you’re like I don’t remember a post outside of “SOTL and Chill” having this many notes. Then you look and you’re like “Oh yeah this is the post that one popular blog in the fandom hijacked because they missed the point and it took something that was supposed to feminist commentary and turned it into misogyny justification. “But look these unimportant male characters died, your point is moot! But looked this female character survived JFC shut the fuck up!”

Those of you who have recently became a fannibal/didn’t watch the show as it aired live on NBC or who have recently become critical of aspects of  it, take a look at some of the comments in these notes. You’ll get a taste at what us early critics had to live through when it was either BRIAN FULLER AND HANNIGRAM ARE THE GREATEST THING EVERS or you were harassed and then marked a bully for standing your ground and arguing.

Fannibals want you to believe it’s one of the nicest fandoms ever and I believed that too when I entered. But it’s a lie. It might be now if only because everybody who got tired of their shit left.

[evievigilant]

Half the men on the fannibal’s list of the men who died didn’t even have a name, let alone a huge purpose in the story.

Also, my friend brought up a good point and mentioned how the male characters that DID die were usually bad guys, nameless, or those that you rooted against- Tobias Budge, Francis Dolarhyde, Garrett Jacob Hobbs, etc. You felt rather triumphant when they died. You knew they did horrible things.

The women that died were either victims with little backstory or were the good guys that you wanted to root for- Abigail Hobbs, Beverley Katz, Bella Crawford, Georgia Madchen, etc. You felt sad when they died. They were used to build up male tears (Beverly is a good example).

So it’s not necessarily the AMOUNT of characters that died, but what it MEANT and if it was DESERVED.

[imaginefrederickchilton]

Not to mention the number of women who straight up disappeared from the story after serving their purpose as story props (because their presence would have been Inconvenient probably)- like Kade Purnell, Miriam Lass, and Chiyoh. Meanwhile male characters it would have made sense to completely shelve due to being taken out of commission- like Abel Gideon, Mason Verger, and (as much as I hate to admit it) Frederick Chilton- ended up getting additional arcs and scenes that were either pointless or just poorly executed. To add insult to injury, the women who did survive to the end either had their characters completely rewritten, hardly ever appeared once they were plot-extraneous, or never got developed beyond 2 dimensions in the first place. (Also, a comment on the fandom politics of hannibal: the reason my fiance and I basically stopped running these blogs was because he was bullied out of the fandom for not being into hannigram for his own personal reasons. It's nasty.)

[imaginefrederickchilton]

When a fandom has canon lesbians but nobody cares because two white guys look at each other frequently

[imaginefrederickchilton]

“#wtf #we’re just as nuts about alana/margot as we are about will and hannibal #jesus#there’s a lot of shows you could hit hard with this but hannibals not one of them”

Gotta be honest, this was absolutely bewildering to read. ‘Could I really have missed that?’ I thought, staring at my phone as I caught my bus downtown. ‘I’ve only ever seen like two gifsets of Margot and Alana, compared to the veritable thousands of gifsets of m/m pairings. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a POST about their relationship. Am I just following the wrong people? Am I complicit in this?’

So I figured I would put it to the test. Does this fandom love Marlana the way it does all of its non-canon m/m ships?

(This one was obvious, so I won’t count it against Marlana. Hannigram is a fucking juggernaut and I don’t expect Marlana to come close to the numbers it has.)

How does Marlana, a canon ship, stack up against all of these moderately popular m/m ships? I’m sure, given that this fandom is CRAZY about Margot and Alana, and they’re actually more major characters than Zeller and Price, that–

Oh. Yeah.

So I mean… that sounds fake, but okay.

[evievigilant]

Also…when those actual canon lesbians get pushed to the side in a rushed relationship while the white guys who look at each other in a diet no homo™ way get way more screen time on the actual show

[imaginefrederickchilton]

Honestly, nothing drove me crazier when s3 was airing than people wetting themselves over what "Good Representation" the show had with marlana, which was shoehorned in with a super objectifying sex scene, seemingly as an attempt by fuller + co to prove that this was a Queer Show or something

[s-squishysquibbles-deactivated2]

if no one else will excessively hate on hannigram then i guess i must be the one to do it

[rentnerschnitzl]

I wanted to try out my new ink pen and of course the first thing i drew was chilton in questionable clothing.

@drgaybelgideon

[drgaybelgideon-deactivated20160]

I’M LAUGHING MY ASS OFF, THIS IS WONDERFUL AND THANK YOU! XD

[drgaybelgideon-deactivated20160]

HONESTLY IN AN IDEAL WORLD I WOULD BE ASLEEP RIGHT NOW AND WEARING THIS SHIRT IRONICALLY BUT NO, I’M RUINING @rentnerschnitzel‘S NOTIFICATIONS BY COSPLAYING DRAWINGS AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER TO BE WEARING A MILF SHIRT

[imaginewillgraham]

@imaginefrederickchilton

[gayserblast]

my good pal @drgaybelgideon and i are trading raúl related works and his prompt was nevada in hotpants and cat socks. I promptly deliver. 

Bonus - The Butt, feat. less clothes 

[imaginefrederickchilton]

Sorry mom

[gayserblast]

F is for Flowers

“Patience is a virtue.”

Frederick never claimed to be patient, let alone virtuous. What he lacked in that, he made up for in persistence; the nurse had told him it could be weeks, even months before Will Graham could take visitors. So Frederick had sat down in the waiting room anyway. He wondered how many days of waiting it would take before he would have to arrange a new bouquet. He sometimes got the feeling that being back in the hospital, even just as a guest, should have sent him running the other direction. The barren white walls, the smell of anesthetic and Windex, the sounds of heart rate monitors and oxygen machines, were the same whichever hospital you went to. The familiarity struck him somewhere between pain and comfort, like nostalgia. Will would hate it, he assumed. But he would appreciate the flowers. Frederick certainly would have.

Okay, this is my submission to the ABC Chilton Challenge arranged by @drgaybelgideon ! I wanted to do something inspired by a scene that actually broke my heart (and led me to write a massive post on the flower language in the bouquet). I would have done this earlier, but my tablet had to be replaced recently. (shoutout to my fiance for reworking my microdrabble for me)

[imaginefrederickchilton]

i know it’s been about a year but i can’t get over how convincingly this fandom pretended that alana/ margot was good representation. 

because let’s be real, for all that they got married and had a kid they didn’t really have a relationship? they had like three conversations- and i know the argument against that is ‘well they would have talked off screen!’ but that doesn’t matter unless we have evidence of that, and we really don’t. considering if you cut all the annoying repetitive bullshit and stock footage out of the europe arc you’d only have about 4 episodes of content, there’s really no excuse for alana and margot having so little chemistry and so little to establish a relationship on other than ‘*fuller voice* hey how great would it be to put male-gaze lesbian porno in the middle of an episode lol’