Following @hannibalsimago’s example, these are respectively my most and less popular fanfictions, according to their respective kudos :] thanks for the tag!
Your delight, my tolerance (2107 words)
Dropped bites often go uneaten (6051 words)
All manner of uncomfortable positions (10317 words)
Tea before the Cake (1614 words)
Dionysus Hall (4457 words)
Nothing beats omegaverses and multi-chapters, to no one’s surprise.
It is also very important to see what has been beated, so let’s take a look at the less kudoed works as well.
-5. Animal I have become (418 words)
-4. Pullin’ Me Backwards (494 words)
-3. Apart at the Seams (411 words)
-2. Beautiful Hands (1243 words)
-1. Hunting Scene (1074 words)
Apparently, short works and not-explicitly-Hannigraham works don’t get much attention in this fandom. Also to no one’s surprise. To be fair, some of these are really not spectacular, despite my best efforts.
Tagging @fhimechan, @mazephoenix, @niceven-silace, @littlethingwithfeathers :)
Filling in @hannibalficwriters self rec prompt, simply to cheer myself up since today is doom-y and gloomy.
The First Cold Day of October
A few weeks or months after surviving the Fall, somewhere up North, Hannibal and Will are carving a present for themselves. Until one day, they feel the first cold day of the season.
===
1. What does the piece mean to you?
I had, until recently, completely abandoned writing. I had half-started some series/ideas more than a year ago, but due to time I eventually gave up. After some unbelievably inspiring chats with @pragnificent, I started very meekly to post a few ideas, here and there. This piece is the first “original” concept I explored in a non-draft format in over a year, and it has been absolutely massive for me.
Apart from it being monumental because I actually wrote it down, it is important to me because it deals with chronic pain. Which is close-and-personal. But also it is one of my more light-hearted Will and Hannibal stories; I am happy with where they are, in relation to each other, even if there are moments of struggle, consent issues and other unpleasantries. I adore them together in this fic, because they are still raw and potentially dangerous to each other, but they are willing to listen and act in whichever way makes the other happy, in the end.
2. What was your favorite line in your piece/what was your favourite comment that you’ve received on the work?
Oh boy!
Will’s eyes focused on him. A gentle serenity eclipsed the frown. “You have been good. I never tell you that, but you have been so good since.” The thought broke.
“Since when, Will?”
“Since we eloped.” He allowed a smile, and Hannibal could feel the sun kissing his skin in the middle of the cloudy Autumn day.
It is more than one line, but fuck me I love them.
I LOVE all comments, adore treasure and hug them close, but I think Somethingeasy’s resonated with me in about every single level.
3. What are you most looking forward to in Season 4?
I... actually wrote a meta about that. Hannibal S4, Relative time & Relations, and this is my ‘realistic’ approach to S4. When it comes to entirely emotionally driven, Hannigram progression of forgiving one another and healing, tentatively, mind and body, slowly and occasionally painfully but always in love, well this series is where I put all my hopes and dreams in: https://archiveofourown.org/series/570961
I hope this was not too self-indulgent! This is the story link: AO3
In any case, thank you for bearing with me, and for every kudos, view and comment! And now back to writing...
Scooting in just under the wire for @hannibalficwriters‘s Fannibal Self Rec event!
I have to rec the work that is nearest and dearest to my heart.
Title: Widow’s Walk
Rating: Explicit
Pairing: Hannigram
Tags/warnings: case!fic, blood and murder everywhere! But also sexy time. Check the tags on the fic itself for a more detailed list. The sex scene isn’t until the final chapter so if you want to skip it, you’re not missing anything plot relevant.
1. What does the piece mean to you?
For me, this is my best stab at a post-season 3 arc. I’ve written some others like “The Apple Tree,” and “Whither Must I Wander,” but they felt more like personal flights of fancy. This fic feels more like an actual, plausible scenario... or at least as plausible as anything ever is in the Hannibal universe. I wanted it to feel very rooted in the world and the established canon.
And this is venturing into spoiler territory for the fic, but the whole thing with Scorpio looking like it was eating Mars is a celestial thing that actually happened during the summer that I was writing this. I watched it happen over the course of months... it was pretty amazing and I still think about it even now.
2. What was your favorite line in your piece/what was your favourite comment that you’ve received on the work?
Favorite line: “Dear Will, we are here with all the sanity and reality that we are ever going to be afforded by this world.” Hannibal replied, his smile parting to bare the slightest glimpse of his teeth.
And my favorite comment wasn’t really a comment, but @crossroadscastiel made a beautiful graphic when she recced this fic awhile back and I have treasured it ever since.
3. What are you most looking forward to in Season 4?
I want to see more exploration of Will’s character. I feel like we’ve only gotten warped peeks until now. And I want to see Hannibal being truly unguarded around Will.
But those two aside, I’d really like to see more of Alana, Margot, and Chiyoh. Especially the latter. I feel like without one more season to round out her character, she feels very strange in the mix. Not like she’s a bad character or that I don’t like her... I just want to see more of what she’s about.
Thanks to @hannibalficwriters for organising this, I’m looking forward to checking out everyone’s recs :)
I nearly decided not to take part - I have problems with self-reccing, especially when I think something has received ‘enough’ attention. It just seems greedy. But that’s a) stupid and b) I have a story I want to tell about the writing of this fic.
I have literally only one (1) which qualifies. Others have strayed too far into AU-land to count as taking place in S1. That fic is *drumroll*:
Cathexis
Hannibal/Will ~ 57k words ~ Explicit
A Season 1 BDSM AU
Summary: What if Hannibal's sadistic tendencies only find expression through consensual BDSM relationships? Set in a Season 1 AU where Will is allowed to continue teaching, relatively undisturbed by Jack, and seeks Hannibal's professional help of his own accord.
The story I want to tell is how I went from not even thinking about writing, to writing something which juuussst about qualifies as a short novel (if we go by word count) in the same bound. (And how you can too! No, just kidding - I hate those kinds of terrible advice blogs. But stick with me, there’s things in this story which might be relevant for anyone reading.)
Before this fic, I wasn’t writing. Anything. Not only that, but I wasn’t even a frustrated writer who wanted to write but couldn’t. The idea of writing had never occurred to me. Sure, I was a frustrated creative person - I have been all my life, even since I was a very small child. Just before this fic, I had been studying fine art with a load of other adult learners and trying to engage with the contemporary arts scene in a fairly amateurish but genuine way. I would have described myself as an artist. My creative friends are sculptors and printmakers and painters. We had just finished putting on a group exhibition - just to see if we could - and were thinking vaguely of other things we might do together in the future.
Enter fandom. I had come to Hannibal post-cancellation and watched all three seasons breathlessly, then wandered around Tumblr reading meta and finding great fic and thinking WHY OH GOD WHY ARE THEY LIKE THIS in a way which is familiar to anyone who has just Found Hannigram.
My gf is a fandom-savvy individual and we usually talk about our obsessions, whether they're shared or not. We came up with something which we found funny and which you most likely won’t - after steeping ourselves in Hannibal's god-complex we thought it would be hilarious to reduce him down to a common-or-garden bedroom sadist. He would make bad bondage puns and have a dungeon instead of a murder basement. Lololol etc. I even went so far as to refer to this as Fifty Shades of Graham, which if you know me, demonstrates how un-serious I was about it.
I DID NOT INTEND TO WRITE THIS is what I am trying to say. It was a joke, a bad one, and a private one. I never intended to be a writer* at all.
Because apparently, unbeknown to me, that’s what I’ve been all this time. Secretly, under the surface somewhere. And what I think is this: I just wasn’t ready to be a writer before. I wasn’t ready to discover this about myself. The things that I did before - all the visual art, all my academic studies and crap jobs - all have, in differing and subtle ways, all fed into this part of me which wasn’t ready to come out yet.
And I also think that this is happening to all of us. It’s just as true for you as it is for me. We all have hidden pockets of potential, things even the most self-aware of us do not know about, or refuse to look too closely at. Those pockets might not lead directly to anything life changing, they may be paths to other, deeper and more difficult to find pockets. Or simply to activities and interests we find enjoyable, a way of doing something just for ourselves or of meeting people we need in our lives.
A wise person on the internet said “follow the rabbit-holes”. They all lead to the same place anyway, and the easiest path there is the one of least resistance. Follow that strange tug, dive in, see where it leads you without worrying about the destination. You might end up being very surprised.
*It took me maybe six months to start to feel I could use the hallowed word Writer when talking about myself, and now I can even tell complete strangers this without blushing and feeling like a fraud.
18 months later and I can't imagine not planning all my not-work time around writing - I think about it constantly. It nags at me when I’m prevented from doing it by other commitments. My weeks and weekends are based squarely around which project I'm working on and how much time I have until that deadline, self-imposed or not. I have so many projects lined up they are constantly being juggled and re-ordered so I can try to maximise my available writing time in the most effective way. I’m even looking beyond fandom and beginning work on an original novel. And it all started with this fic.
For the really curious, here is how Cathexis got written (under the cut):
I read even more fic (really amazing and intimidatingly good fic too) and even more meta and I thought more and more about Hannibal and Will’s complex dynamic. The BDSM AU became less of a joke and more of a place where that could be explored without getting too tangled up in the difficulties of Will’s relationship with Hannibal. I thought about it often. There was so much discussion and activity in the fandom that the idea of putting down your feelings in the form of a story didn’t seem so strange.
But still, it didn’t seem like that was the route for me. Until, one morning after Christmas, I woke up with dialogue in my head (those moments just before and after waking are so good for weird happenings like this). I didn’t move, didn’t do anything at all, before I wrote it down on my phone. It felt like a strange thing to do at the time - trespassing in a place I didn’t quite belong. It was a compulsion. I just knew I had to do it.
I had no idea if more would follow or if I even wanted more to follow. But more did. I wrote that down to, in the same place (which, by the way, was the note app *not* anything as official as a Google Doc - the very idea :0 !!)
It took me maybe three-four weeks of this to brave the idea of doing something with the snatches of dialogue and scattered notes which had built up. They had become pieces of a puzzle which I needed to solve - until then, I knew I wouldn’t find any peace.
I had been talking with @wraithsonwingsposts about the show and had encouraged her to work on a fic idea she had been playing around with. She returned the favour and was so fantastic and supportive all the way through - and therefore, this is all her fault, as she already knows ;)
The rest of the story was the same for anyone undertaking a piece of writing - one word at a time, much time staring at a blinking cursor, a lot of editing. But overall, I think what got this written and completed was keeping my aims simple. The were 1) see it through to the end (i.e. solve the puzzle), and 2) try not to make a complete tit out of myself.
I know for certain I hit one of those goals.
**************************************
Bonus: for the very-very-very curious, here is the original and un-edited version of the I wrote that morning (a version of which appears in Chapter 8), and the first thing I wrote since school:
"What kinds of things do you say when you... afterwards?"
"I thought you found it too difficult to hear?"
"I want to know. I can catch the odd word, but the way you say it... I like the way you sound."
Hannibal hesitated for a tiny moment. Will smiled and said, "I thought it was for my benefit only you don't say it in English."
Hannibal sighed and conceded, "Perhaps it's easier, sometimes." He moved closer to Will, made it almost impossible for Will to escape from what Hannibal had to tell him, and to study his face as he spoke. "I call you my darling, my lovely Will, so precious to me. I tell you how beautiful I find you, how complete my desire is and how abandoned you make me. I tell you that you are mine and belong to me, that I shall never leave you, that you have made me yours. I praise you, for being so very good, for indulging me, and for indulging yourself also. I tell you that you deserve it, and more, and I tell you I love you."
Will went very quiet, almost not breathing. He had known what to expect but to hear it stated so simply was almost too much. Hannibal continued to look steadily at him, waiting.
Will turned over suddenly, so he no longer could watch Hannibal's face, and pressed himself back into his body. Hannibal moved to accommodate, folding him arms around him and holding him tight. He brought his legs up so his thighs pressed into the back of Will's, and his ankles tangled with Will's also. They lay there for a few moments without speaking, bodies perfectly aligned. Will felt safe again.
"If you wish to explore these issues, I have a suggestion. There are things you could wear, even in public, which could serve to remind you of my possession. Something more concrete than a bruise or a bite mark."
Will considered how it might feel to have such a reminder, one he could feel wherever he was. An image came to him of a collar made of plain but good quality leather. It could be concealed under his shirts, especially if he wore ties. It would be slim but solid, with one heavy buckle to fasten it. He could almost feel it's weight resting on the back of his neck, like Hannibal had placed his hand there.
Will opened his mouth to speak and then realised Hannibal was holding and touching his hand gently. The gesture was so soft and specific that Will had to look, to watch Hannibal's hands. Realisation dawned on him. Hannibal was meditatively rubbing small circles up and down in between the second and third knuckles of his third finger on his left hand.
Will turned over to catch Hannibal around the shoulders and demanded, "Did you just ask me to marry you?"
Tagged by the lovely @zigzag-wanderer, who gave the most interesting answers :o I hope mine will be at least not boring!
What is your total word count on Ao3? At the moment, around 53500. Wild, isn’t it?
How often do you write? I aim to publish twice a month, drabbles aside, so I’m more or less always writing some thing or another. I wouldn’t say it’s any good to the quality of my production, but I certainly keep myself fit entertained :)
Do you have a routine for writing? I open my English dictionary, my online translator, my gdoc, my Ao3 account, I systematically end up staring at Tumblr and my work magically appears.
What are your favourite kinks/tropes/pairings? Given that I don’t clearly distinguish between kinks and tropes, I’ll say I like Omegaverse, Kid fics, Role reversal, Gentle Dom/sub, Orgasm control, Greek Deities, Different first meeting, Improbable alternate/alternative universe, Crossdressing, Genderswap, fics where characters are animals or asexual. I’m usually not into vampire AUs, but I do make exceptions. For all I might be confused on tropes and kinks, it’s however safe to say my favourite pairing is still Hannigraham :9
Do you have a favourite fic of yours? Rags and Bones has some sentimental value to me, I ruminated on that idea for years before actually writing it on impulse xD
What is the the fic with most kudos? Your delight, my tolerance, with 166 kudos, immediately followed by Dropped bites often go uneaten, to my great joy ♥
Anything you don’t like about your writing? I never get commas right, I never seem to have a plot, I never use the right amount of adjectives, I’m incapable of writing porn or more than 3k words on the same subject-- I can keep going.
#FannibalSelfRecs: Hannibal Season Four - September 22nd-24th
Seems like we have once again the possibility to promote our own works, and this time it’s all about what comes after the fall; fortunately a lot of us made a guess on what’s waiting for us. Thanks to @hannibalficwriters, we have an excuse to talk about that, and sure enough there’s someone out there eager to fall down into the rabbit hole ;)
Tea before the Cake by @cinnamaldeide
Summary: How is Hannibal in bed, Bedelia just asked with incredible nonchalance, considering her missing legs.
Mature
No Archieve Warnings Apply
Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham, Bedelia Du Maurier; Hannigraham
After Hannibal and Will survived their physical-more-than-metaphorical-but-still-romantic fall, meat can’t be delayed from the menu much longer. After losing both her legs, Bedelia decides she can give up her composure too. Will knew that her statuary beauty, so similar to Hannibal’s, wasn’t the only reason why Hannibal liked her so much, but all the same Will hadn’t imagined she could make him feel so uncomfortable.
When I started to write this story, I was a week late to participate to #BottomHannibalDay. I was so lucky that they extended their deadline... So I started to work as soon as I had a computer once again in front of me. I wanted to produce something that spoke of bottoming Hannibal, without necessarily describing it happening. After a while, I realized I set my story after the fall, so I could present it for the #ItsStillBeautiful event, which would start in a matter of days. I waited, and @cannibalcuisine @timeandteacups and @feyestwords were kind enough to add my work to their collection, even if it was far from fashonably late. Thanks again, sweethearts!
Apparently, this is the third initiative to which this fic participates.
♦ What does the piece mean to you?
This piece means I can write whatever I want and my personal attachment to the story won’t change its success with other readers; more or less, I only sat and wrote whatever came to mind, when I worked on this story. The classic thing you write on the spur of the moment and ends up with more comments than the one on which you worked a month; other stories didn’t have the same luck, despite my love and devotion. It’s sort of freeing, knowing that the appreciation my fanfiction receives is somehow completely out of my hands.
♦ What was your favorite line in your piece?
There’s this line, which is sort of out the general dangerous but playful mood: “Will felt so betrayed, when Hannibal took advance of his faith.” It’s just some words, really. I don’t think I managed to express how much my heart ached, remembering how bad Hannibal treated Will in Season 1. It just stuck me. I was there, writing about Will sassying Bedelia, and in the blink of an eye I had this stab of cold anger. It still hurt, despite everything. That’s the line that gives some reality to their little unrealistic exchange.
♦ What are your most looking forward to in Season 4?
What comes after the Wrath of the Lamb will always surprise me, and I want to let myself be surprised; fanfictions help. Some scenarios are nice, some other not so much (Oh God please read the tags!), but I always marvel at our originality, after two years since they left us on a cliffhanger. We still have a lot of time to imagine Will and Hannibal surviving or not and reconstructing their new lives, but I’m positive we’ll manage somehow. I just hope Bryan will make Hugh admit there’s every premise for a sex scene, they just decided to not film it.
Self-promotion is always challenging, but isn’t it also one of the best thing you could possibly do to yourself? Take some time and allow yourself to love your creature so much that you admit you want others to love it too; a little bit, if not as much as you do. If you need motivation, read this.
You never know if your story is worth receiving praises until you write it down and do whatever it’s in your power to let others know it exists, even if it doesn’t become succesful. Just write it, write it for yourself, write it because writing helps you sorting out what’s inside you, and maybe someone, somewhere, might like it four years from now, but don’t write it for them to thank you afterwards, they might not. And you don’t have to feel bad about it: just be proud that, contrary to thousands of other people, you tried.
#FannibalSelfRecs: Hannibal Season One - July 14th-16th
Despite my lack of works set in Beautiful Season One, this event represents an important occasion to make some useful self-critical analysis; I had to read my own story, consider it from the perspective of a reader, instead of a writer, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to actually rec something of mine.
You can leave your had on by, well, me
Summary: When Will first heard about the journey to Italy from Jack, he had pictured it differently.
Explicit
Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham, Jack Crawford, Beverly Katz; Hannigraham
In this Alternative Universe, the art critic Will Graham already possesses a dangerously grey moral, even if it’s still hidden, so Hannibal is drawn to him, wants to peel off his layers of civil person and stimulate his beautiful mind; Will lets him, since in a couple of day they’ll never see one another again. As usual, nothing goes as planned.
I try to regularly promote my own works, here on Tumblr or on my Deviantart account, because self-promoting is supposed to be the first step to encourage new readers and let them know you’re proud of your waste of time personal creation. If I am not my first promoter, no one else will be.
@hannibalficwriters intelligently suggests to provide some detail on what’s beyond the veil of every creation; I doubt that anyone would be interested in readiny my story after reading these answers, but not everything is for the reader: authors like me feel special when someone asks them about their personal experience.
♦ What does the piece mean to you?
This piece meant I was ready to start writing something above the 500 words; I wasn’t sure I’d make it, but I was committed. Chapter one was my own personal way to say I had a story to tell, something to say that only I could say, and that I was finally ready to try and say it, ready to fail and don’t be ashamed.
♦ What was your favorite line in your piece?
There’s not a particular line I’d say is special, I equally enjoyed writing every line I wrote, what Beverly says to Will, what Will says to Winston... “Will recognizes his hat on the man’s curly head” maybe is the line that sort of changes the tone of the story, so there must be something special in it.
♦ What was your favourite comment that you’ve received on the work?
I had an interesting exchange of opinion with @50shades-of-violet, since it was their manip that started this whole fanfiction. I was glad I could find them, since I didn’t know to whom the manipulation belonged and I had no way to know; I had the picture sent.
♦ Did you learn anything new and unusual from writing it?
I didn’t learn something new from writing it: I learned something new, so I wrote it; I went to the exibition I described, I saw the paintings, I felt like I could see Klimt’s Judith II and see the murderer in her. I told myself that this could be how Will Graham felt, while looking and seeing, so I decided to write my experience.
♦ What consideration did you take after re-reading your work?
I struggle a lot with how bad everything has come out: the consecutio temporum is all messed up, the story is complex and confused, not to speak about how dense it results. Heavy to read. Good thing I asked @phenobarbitalfiction to beta it, otherwise it would be also full of grammatical errors.
♦ Tell us something unique about the process.
I didn’t know how to finish the story, so my partner, who is not particularly into Hannibal, stepped in and told me “Make Hannibal send him a painting, so that they can fuck on that too,” since the original prompt was “I see them on vacantion, fucking on their boat, on the sofa, on the bed, on every surface-”
I hope this has been interesting for someone; I know now I can do better, but it’s difficult for everyone in the beginning, myself included. I was glad I could write such a long story, even if it didn’t arise much interest. I still love my ugly little son ;)
