A Buncha Stuff Revealed

[kantayra]

I now officially no longer feel like a weirdo for claiming to have written 72K words this year, when my actual AO3 account has way less than that, because tons of exchanges revealed over the last week+. Here's stuff I wrote and my various incoherent thoughts on it:

• I don't think I ever talked about what I wrote for the Lunar New Year Wood Snake exchange. Anyone who has ever read my Doctor Who stuff will be in no way surprised to discover that I wrote the Eighth Doctor/Goo!Snake Master fic, Serpentime. It really was one of those things where I was like, "well, if you're going to create a whole fest that caters to one of my weirdest pairings..." Anyway, I am happy to report that Goo Snake is as fun to write as ever! GOO SNAKE! 🐍


• I grabbed a lul_soulmatesex Pinch Hit and wrote a Phoenix/Edgeworth fic, Turnabout Psycholock. This is a classic example of why I love pinch-hitting. I would've had difficulty coming up with a full sign-up for this exchange, but I loved seeing "ooh, super-cool prompt!" and being able to dive in.


• I also did a Pinch Hit for rarefemslashexchange a while back for How to Survive Camping, titled the man with the skull cap is now the woman with the skull cap. and probably also my wife?. Apparently it went over like a ton of bricks, but I had fun trying to emulate the original's style and I enjoy it, so there's that!


• I missed sign-ups for fffx but went a little crazy with Pinch Hitting. I actually liked doing PHs for this one because I could wait until I was 90% done and guaranteed to finish before snapping them up. 😝
  
  • I took the full 10K PH for Hannibal/Will, Seven Stages, which was another fic of me playing around with post-Fall 'what ifs'. I had fun with the imagery in this one; it did make me a little sad, though, because if I had good enough artist's skills, it would've made a fantastic comic, but that is, alas, not part of my skill set.
  
  
  • And then I was all happy and done, when a second PH popped up for Doctor Who, and I started on that secretly hoping someone would grab the other half because I could tell my fic wasn't a full 10K, and - yay - someone did, so I did a half/5K PH for the Third Doctor/Delgado!Master, Tea for Two. It's funny: when I first started writing DW, I preferred writing NuWho, but now I think maybe I enjoy writing Classic Who more? I don't know: I definitely go back and forth in my favoritism. (It also doesn't help that I don't have Disney+, so I'm behind in NuWho now, which makes me anxious.)

As for what I wrote last week:

• I have outstanding assignments for: worldbuilding_exchange, wickedloveex, and smut4smut, and my goal last week was to complete 1-2 fics. And that's exactly what I did! I have 1 complete, and 1 80% complete, except it's the smut4smut one and the 20% that's still outstanding is the smut part, so that's super important, oops! My goal this week is to finish up that fic, and try to fit in another 1/2 fic here, because there will be an incoming higher priority...


• unsent_letters_exchange & the_mane_event assignments should be coming my way today! The latter is due early, so it's going to jump the queue for what gets written next. Hoping to get that done this week. And, unless something crazy changes with sign-ups post-close, I know which assignment I'm getting for that one. Unsent Letters will be a big mystery, though, since I love the theme of that one so much that I offered broadly and with intention to review canon if I need to.


• Femslash Salad Bar: I had a goal to get one of my 3 outstanding fics done for this last week, but failed to do so. I'm setting it as a goal again this week.


• I'm skipping Rare Kink Buffet entirely. Only one of my fandoms was requested, and I wasn't excited about the prompts. I do have a much higher barrier for fests than I do for exchanges, which seems backwards, but that's the way my mind works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


• fangfrenzyficexchange, fluffityfluffexchange, and kinkluckydip are all things in nominating stage that I'm sorta watching, but suspect I might not do. Fanged Frenzy had someone nominate some of my fandoms, so maybe I'd consider that one - if not to sign-up, then for PHs or treats. The others I'm still not sure on. Later in March, idproquo & everythingisfemslashex are starting nominations, too, so those might take up my April docket instead.

In other news, my synchro team had our competition this week, which took up my entire day Sunday, since the venue was about a 2-hour drive away. It went well! But I am looking forward to a couple weeks' break before I have the big freestyle competition the first week of April.

I also have some pointless thoughts on why I didn't like the Francis Dolarhyde arc in Hannibal:


Okay, so here's my thought: I found myself really bored through many of the Dolarhyde scenes in Season 3b, in a way I didn't for anything else in the show, and I think it's because those scenes were too distant from anything else. It was actually pretty weird because I really liked Reba's character, but Dolarhyde himself did nothing for me, and even with the Reba scenes, it felt like I was watching something else.

So I came up with a big stupid analysis of every Hannibal villain to retroactively justify myself and create a pattern to make my brain happy, because that's what I do:

1. Hannibal himself: A++ villain. Deeply embedded into the core of the show (as makes sense, because he's one of the leads!). I will admit, though, that with the first few episodes, I was like, "Why is Hannibal Lecter randomly in this procedural show?" But then I got to the first dinner-party episode, and I realized "Oh! It's not a procedural at all! It's a comedy! Makes total sense now!" I do think a big part of my buy-in was how tangled Hannibal got up in everyone's affairs. By that point in the series, Hannibal is 1) Will's pseudo-therapist and clearly eye-fucking manipulating the fuck out of Will, 2) besties with Jack and Bella and having cannibal dinner parties with them, 3) worming his way into Jack and Bella's marriage since he knows first that Bella has terminal cancer and he's become her therapist too, 4) strategically killing people as The Copycat Killer to pseudo-help with investigations, 5) is Abigail's other adopted dad along with Will, 6) is vying with Alana over who is Abigail's therapist, and 7) is for the first time actually tagging along with investigations with Will. So he really started to feel necessary to the show around that time; it just took a while for me to buy into that, but once I did, I was all in. (And, of course, he just gets worse (= better) as the show progresses.)


2. Abel Gideon: Now here is the first genuine A-villain, after Hannibal. Abel Gideon was a great agent of chaos all in the middle of everyone's business from day one. Consider: 1) He imitates Hannibal's kills, confesses to Hannibal's crimes, and is flirting his way into Hannibal's attentions from the get-go, 2) Jack and Dr. Chilton are immediately debating whether he's the Chesapeake Ripper, which brings up their past fucked-up case, ties in even more plotlines between them and Hannibal, and lays the groundwork for the whole Miriam Lass "proto-Will" captured by Hannibal plot (so much character work and relationship building smashed into so few scenes! 🤩), 3) Alana had previously been his therapist (and the only one he respected), 4) once he breaks out, Will's tasked with hunting him down, 5) Chilton's been manipulating/psychic-driving him in the same way that Hannibal is with Will, 6) Alana (and Chilton) are on his hit list (and he drags in Freddie Lounds as his second for killing Chilton). He just has so many in-built connections to all of these people right from the start, he's basically the show's little black dress for character arcs. He got a lot of scenes (including with Chilton, who was also recently introduced but also fit in from the start), but I almost didn't notice, because they were all necessary and included all the other characters I already cared about. Fantastic character/villain introduction, no notes.


3. Tobias Budge: I would say he was...okay. He's basically a slightly promoted MOTW, but it's clear the writers are toying more with the idea of elevating MOTWs to more serious villains. I don't think he could've sustained more episodes, but he worked well for a couple episodes. Things that worked about him: 1) He had the indirect connection to Hannibal via Franklyn so it was a good character introduction, 2) He and Hannibal sniffing around each other as potential murder husbands was delightfully tantalizing at the time and some good foreshadowing/hinting at what Hannibal actually wanted from Will (even though, at the time, I legit thought that that was just my slash-tinted goggles, lol), 3) Will (+ Jack) were also hunting him. So, when you look at it, he basically has the same amount of connection points to the cast that Dolarhyde did (or even slightly more, given Franklyn) but much less screen time, and I feel he was moderately successful as a villain: good for raising stakes and introducing some themes, but not in the sense that I was genuinely awaiting his screen time. He was a solid B+ as a villain, for me.


4. Mason Verger: Okay, Mason's a weird one, because I genuinely do hate him (as I am supposed to). However, I do not resent his screen time, and I think he was a good villain. (Especially because it's hard to get me to genuinely hate a villain: either they're my fave, or I find them 'meh'.) And I feel like Mason was also worked in well (and even reworked), but more slowly. I would not have guessed from the start that Mason was going to end up being as big of a villain as he was, and the gradual build-up helped with that. At first, Mason's only significance was via Margot, who was the latest of "Hannibal's murderous patients", which was all well and good. Margot's importance was built-up first, where she met Will and they had a little rapport of "Is Hannibal trying to get you to murder people too?" And, whatever you think of Will and Margot sleeping together (It sounds like that was a network mandate? If so, bless the cast and crew for filming it in a way that made it look more like Hannibal and Will were having sex than anything else!), having Mason murder their baby was sure a great way to get Will to hate Mason too! And also got him enmeshed in everyone's business PDQ. That said, Mason was just one player in the Hannibal-and-Will Happy Back-and-Forth Murder Attempt Game in S2, and he worked well enough for that. I wouldn't have guessed in S2 that Mason was that much more important than, say, Matthew Brown or Randall Tier, except that Mason was more convinced that he wasn't a pawn. Then, by S3a, Mason was fully entangled with the rest of the cast by the time he got full arc-villain status: 1) He was on a revenge kick against both Hannibal and Will, 2) He was still playing sadist power games with Margot, 3) The season opened off with Jack being suspicious that Hannibal was involved with Mason's injuries, 4) Alana was pretending to being Mason's loyal hench-profiler, while she and Margot were having an affair behind his back and trying to figure out a way to kill him. If anything, my only complaint about Mason as a villain in S3a was that we didn't get enough screen time for the cluster of characters centered around Mason. Alana and Margot's relationship could've used a lot more scenes, and the creepy threatening dynamic that Mason put over their 'secret' relationship. There's a whole separate psychological-horror situation going on within Muskrat Farm that could've been its own mini-season, honestly (and I want all the fanfic around this).


5. Francis Dolarhyde: Here's the first time I get genuinely bored with a major antagonist. Dolarhyde's connections to the cast are...limited. He does, at some point, start pretending to be Hannibal's lawyer to call Hannibal up in the BSHCI. But I'm not exactly clear why Dolarhyde chose Hannibal, to begin with? Is he an ex-patient? I would think not, because Jack could've figured that out without Will. Dolarhyde doesn't have any prior relationship with Will, either. They needed a serial killer to get Will back in the game, but Dolarhyde's significance felt MOTW to me. I know the background explanation is the Dolarhyde's the big bad from the book, but the show never sold me on him being anything more than a very dragged out MOTW. And, like, Fungus Man and the Muralist and the Human Totempole Guy and Bee Lady were fun for an episode, but I didn't want 6 episodes of their personal lives, y'know? The villains I tolerated with more screen time, I did so because they showed me aspects/relationships with the main cast. Dolarhyde doesn't do this: like, he has no connection to Jack, Alana, or Bedelia, or any scenes with them. That's 3/5 of the cast! He only has, I think 3 scenes with Will and maybe 2-3 (mostly phone calls) with Hannibal? That's ridiculously low. Most of his scenes are with Reba, who has no connection to anyone in the main cast. And I did like her, but it was like a totally separate mini-series had been inserted into the show. So I just resented most of Dolarhyde's scenes. If I were going to 'fix' (Ha! Like I could write anything half as good...) anything in the show, it would be some combination of:
   
   1. Give Reba some connection to the cast. Maybe she does photography stuff for the crime lab (so works with Price & Zeller, and knows Jack). Or either Alana or Bedelia (or Chilton 🤣) are her therapist. Or she's friends with Margot or Molly. Or some combination. And that way you get her talking about her new boyfriend with someone connected with the Dolarhyde investigation, and it brings in added tensions. (Actually, now I think about it, I love the idea of her being friends with Molly: They have a "Is this behavior normal?" conversation, and both Will and Dolarhyde do it, therefore must be normal, oops!🤣)
   
   
   2. Either give Dolarhyde more connections to the cast, or break up S3b between multiple killers. Okay, so, I get why Jack wants to hunt down Dolarhyde and why Jack drags in Will (and that Will only drags in Hannibal because he misses his murder husband and needs an excuse, lol), but I never really got why Dolarhyde fixated on Hannibal or (before Will deliberately taunted him) Will. I am going to say something now that will immediately get me et if I ever get isekai'ed into the Hannibal-verse: Hannibal is not that important or interesting, in universe. I mean, obviously he is to a certain degree, and if he existed in our universe, he sure as fuck would stand out, but we had 2 full seasons where there was basically a Hannibal-esque serial killer each week. If Dolarhyde just wants to pick a cool, older serial killer to glom onto, he has dozens of in-universe choices! I need more on why he picked Hannibal (or Will!), in particular. But let's say it plays out this way: S3b starts out with some non-Dolarhyde terrible killer that Jack pulls Will in for. Will doesn't need Hannibal for this first case, but it sucks him back into the mindset. He catches the first killer in a couple episodes. Dolarhyde, who's been more subtle about his killings, hears about this story via Reba, who has one of the secondhand connections to Will mentioned above. Dolarhyde feels a little bit persecuted but also a lot excited that he's so close to Will, who is potentially so dangerous to him. He escalates. Will, in the meantime, is secretly "oh, thank god, there's another one, and this one is really tough, so I have a legit excuse to go visit my bf in prison!" (Make Will work for it, but also make Jack more reluctant to allow it: Jack knows them reconnecting ain't going anywhere good!) In the meantime, Dolarhyde's also become fixated on Hannibal and gets in contact with him the same as in canon, because of the Will connection. You get basically the same set-up but less dispersed.
   
   There are probably other ways to do it, too. But now I want an AU S3b of this, which is basically just "existing S3b, but make Dolarhyde more interesting" which is useless as a fic concept or anything else. Hence my babbling about it meta-style instead.

Anyway, that's my post-hoc rationalization for why I didn't like Dolarhyde. I think it's a pretty impressive bit of fanwanking, personally. *pets it*

Goals This Week: 1) Finish the exchange fic I've done all but the smut scene for. 2) Write my fic for the_mane_event. 2) Get started on one of my remaining exchange assignments. 4) Get one of my 3 outstanding Femslash Salad Bar fics done.

We'll see how that goes. I've noticed that, with all my other obligations, I have the remaining brainpower to get roughly 5K written per week. So, assuming that pattern is accurate, I may fall a bit short. On the other hand, I actually have time to do stuff this week, so that can only help, even if it's just for resting up my brain for next week!