Writing meme

[brigdh]

Stealing a meme from tumlbr, because I think I like doing such things better over here. I can't quite decide! Tumblr is more active, but writing thoughts of more than a sentence or two is so much easier on LJ. I dunno.

Anyway! Meme: Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and stick that selection in my ask/fan mail. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My fic on AO3
My fic on LJ
(It's the same stories at either site, it's just a matter of where one prefers to look.)

Comments

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

(AH, ran over, sorry!)

Anyway, the scene the night before is like a bubble out of time (whether it's this fic's version with them making out, or just the canon version with them talking. Both scenarios are Ben not really behaving the way he usually does, and therefore them being able to met each other on a level that doesn't take into account normal daylight social rules), and so now they have to deal with what it means, if they're going to pretend it didn't happen, or how to try and bring it into alignment with 'the custom of the country'. There was a lot of stuff in the first draft that maybe made this more explicit (there was a conversation between them about if Ben should call him "Sir", and then a thing about white dudes in Paris who had hit on Ben in an explicitly, like, "hot exotic savage" sense, and then a historical digression about the Hottentot Venus), but all of it I felt like was giving Hannibal too much credit for basic human decency, so I cut it out. But my goal was to show how they went from a sort of unique isolated moment of connection to an actual living friendship.

"Hello, Benjamin," Hannibal said. "Won't you sit with me?"
Benjamin's gaze met his own, then shifted down to take in Hannibal's pralines, and then moved to the bowl he held. "I was about to eat," he said, his voice cool and carefully implying nothing.
One of the things I find really intriguing about Hannibal in canon is his choice to eat with black people in public, and what exactly he thinks he's doing. Is he deliberately making a political statement? That seems too aggressive for him. Did he, at the start, genuinely not realize it was unusual? He seems too socially competent for that. Is he a ghost and therefore anything he does is not entirely real and doesn't affect his surroundings? I do like it better if Hannibal already has a reputation for doing this before he meets Ben, but Ben has just arrived and so wouldn't necessarily know that.
Whatever the hell Hannibal is thinking, Ben definitely knows the rules, and wants to eat his dinner and not sit around being hungry while a white dude talks at him (since, going by the usual format, if they're sitting together Hannibal could still eat, but Ben would not be allowed to). But he's equally socially bound not to just refuse, so he's trying to get out of it without saying anything he could get in trouble for. Ben has no idea what to expect: Hannibal could be about to treat him horribly, to be all sorts of racist, or he could go to the other extreme and, I don't know, proposition Ben in the middle of marketplace. He has no reason to have any trust in Hannibal at this point.
Also I think Hannibal choice of "Benjamin" is very specific – it's not "Ben", it's not "boy", it's not "Monsieur Janvier". It's intimate but not derogatory. (Hannibal generally seems very aware of the subtext of names; when he talks about Ben to other white men, he does often use "Monsieur Janvier" instead, for instance.)

"Yes, so am I. Would you like to do so together?" He waved a hand at the crowded market. "I have an excellent table and you seem to have none. It would be churlish of me not to offer to share.”
Benjamin sank slowly into the empty chair, though his posture remained rigid and his shoulders stiff. Hannibal was conscious of a group of people at a nearby table glancing at Benjamin, then back to him with intrusive force. Hannibal ignored them, and said, "I quite like your coat."
Aaaaand Hannibal is basically refusing to acknowledge any of the general rules of behavior and just does what he wants. I was trying to do the weird doubling of thoughts thing here – Hannibal notices that people are staring, but he doesn't comment even to himself why or what it means or what his own emotional reaction to that is. Ben, on the other hand, is feeling incredibly self-conscious about it and is still not really sure what Hannibal is doing.