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🍴 ( 009 ) Video
[Hannibal is seated at his desk, the camera balanced against something there: he is dressed in a tux, legs crossed, a glass of champagne in his hand. He sips it gracefully.]
Consider the ortolan.
[He smiles faintly, as if it's a joke he knows no one will realize.]
It was the practice of certain gourmets to eat these small birds for centuries. A rite of passage, of sorts, where one must hunt but not kill. Capture it alive and keep it so, for a time. It was best to blind the bird, placing it in a small cage filled with grain. Its reaction to the darkness is to gorge itself. If you were particularly thoughtful, you would add oats and figs to this diet as well. Once it had fattened itself, these gourmets would drown it in brandy - Armagnac, preferably. On high heat, roast it whole for six to eight minutes.
There is a tradition for consumption as well; of course there is. You would place a cloth over your head, to contain the aroma, to make it last, but also to hide your soon-to-be atrocity from God.
[He smiles again.]
Place the bird in your mouth, with only its beak escaping your lips. Bite down, and place the beak in your place. Chew slowly. Savor it. There is the sweetness of the flesh and fat, the brandy and the fig you have forced it to eat: this is God in all His wonder, from whom you must hide this act. I wonder if they tasted shame, too. Next there is the bitterness of untended innards, of organs uncleaned: this is the suffering of the Son, His blood on your tongue. It will soon be joined by your own, as your teeth crack hollow bones, as those bones slice your gums. Your blood, the sweetness, the bitterness - this is the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity come together in one mouth. A rite of passage, a mystery revealed.
It is terribly cruel. And terribly delicious.
[Spam for Ned]
[Shortly after his post, Hannibal heads for the pub sans champagne but still wearing his tux, and knocks at the door. He's already begun the set up, but there is one thing he still requires.]
[Open Gallery Spam on the Deck]
[Hannibal has been hard at work. With little to do between death tolls and less to occupy himself, he has been drawing. Mal was kind enough to supply him with tools enough for his art, though his pencils are never quite sharp enough without a scalpel to do the job. When he has finished, there is only one thing to do with his art.
Setting up takes time, but he goes as quickly as he can manage: Mal requested presentation dividers, which makes it feel just professional enough to satisfy Hannibal. The sketches and portraits are spaced out on the deck, providing plenty of room to walk around and observe. There is a small table near the pub entrance with glasses of champagne, and a very serious pie maker making certain that nobody does anything untoward to the champagne.
Hannibal himself can be found wandering through the little corridors he's made, observing his art on occasion but mostly observing those who have come to look.
It's opening night.]
(Hannibal is paraphrasing from Brendan Kiley's The Urban Hunt.)
Consider the ortolan.
[He smiles faintly, as if it's a joke he knows no one will realize.]
It was the practice of certain gourmets to eat these small birds for centuries. A rite of passage, of sorts, where one must hunt but not kill. Capture it alive and keep it so, for a time. It was best to blind the bird, placing it in a small cage filled with grain. Its reaction to the darkness is to gorge itself. If you were particularly thoughtful, you would add oats and figs to this diet as well. Once it had fattened itself, these gourmets would drown it in brandy - Armagnac, preferably. On high heat, roast it whole for six to eight minutes.
There is a tradition for consumption as well; of course there is. You would place a cloth over your head, to contain the aroma, to make it last, but also to hide your soon-to-be atrocity from God.
[He smiles again.]
Place the bird in your mouth, with only its beak escaping your lips. Bite down, and place the beak in your place. Chew slowly. Savor it. There is the sweetness of the flesh and fat, the brandy and the fig you have forced it to eat: this is God in all His wonder, from whom you must hide this act. I wonder if they tasted shame, too. Next there is the bitterness of untended innards, of organs uncleaned: this is the suffering of the Son, His blood on your tongue. It will soon be joined by your own, as your teeth crack hollow bones, as those bones slice your gums. Your blood, the sweetness, the bitterness - this is the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity come together in one mouth. A rite of passage, a mystery revealed.
It is terribly cruel. And terribly delicious.
[Spam for Ned]
[Shortly after his post, Hannibal heads for the pub sans champagne but still wearing his tux, and knocks at the door. He's already begun the set up, but there is one thing he still requires.]
[Open Gallery Spam on the Deck]
[Hannibal has been hard at work. With little to do between death tolls and less to occupy himself, he has been drawing. Mal was kind enough to supply him with tools enough for his art, though his pencils are never quite sharp enough without a scalpel to do the job. When he has finished, there is only one thing to do with his art.
Setting up takes time, but he goes as quickly as he can manage: Mal requested presentation dividers, which makes it feel just professional enough to satisfy Hannibal. The sketches and portraits are spaced out on the deck, providing plenty of room to walk around and observe. There is a small table near the pub entrance with glasses of champagne, and a very serious pie maker making certain that nobody does anything untoward to the champagne.
Hannibal himself can be found wandering through the little corridors he's made, observing his art on occasion but mostly observing those who have come to look.
It's opening night.]
(Hannibal is paraphrasing from Brendan Kiley's The Urban Hunt.)
no subject
It isn't, mostly, armor. Mostly it's for fun.
She takes a glass of champagne (and anyone who gets on her case about being twenty will have another thing coming), and strolls, browses. She gets wry, quirky smiles on her face for Riddick and Charles and Harvey and Chris, a faintly sympathetic look at Jonah's. She frowns slightly at Arthas's, disappointed more than upset. It seems the obvious tack. Then again, Arthas himself is far from subtle. She sees Abigail's and makes a note to herself to warn Ben, and to watch a little more closely for the next few days, just in case, but doesn't linger or outwardly react to it any more than the others.
She gets to Ben's, and she doesn't turn impassive - that kind of blankness would just be an emphatic tell of its own. It's public enough that she and Ben are close, so she allows faint signs of controlled anger - slightly narrowed eyes, mouth, tightened jaw - but no sign of how much anger, or how much effort it might be to control. She moves on.
It's Dean's portrait that draws the first real reaction from her, arrests her, arrêter, to halt, to be halted. She doesn't gasp but her mouth opens slightly, and there's light in her eyes. Not hunger - not just hunger. She used to force him to hurt others, on the mirror barge, do it with his own hands or let Ben make it ten times worse. He'd beg, in the early days, for her to do it to him instead, and once or twice, in a moment of weakness and mercy and love, she obliged.
It was real, she had agreed after, it was me, and she feels that part of her alive now, named, called out to. She wishes the clawed doctor had a woman's frame instead of a man. She's glad it doesn't. It's not that she isn't sure of herself: she knows. Both these things are true. She takes a steadying breath without looking away, and then continues.
She looks at Zane's picture the longest, not because it is particularly horrifying or because she is closer to him than anyone else - not true, although she is close to him in a unique way - but because she simply finds it the most visually interesting.
When she reaches her own portrait, she breaks into a real smile, slow and warm as the dawn.]
no subject
And when he sees her stop and smile, he matches it, and approaches.]
Would you like to keep it?
no subject
May I please? I love it.
[She really does.]
no subject
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[Her eyes are drawn back to it; she basks, a little. She's sure the layers of it don't mean the same to him that they do to her - but that's a hazard of art, and also at least part of the point. But she loves it unreservedly anyway. If she is prey, she is her own favorite prey. If she is a predator, she is at her own mercy. If she is divided against herself, she still holds on to all her pieces. The spines mimicking the stripes. She is still mobius: there's only one side.]
No self-portrait?
no subject
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[She doubts he will. But it would be terribly interesting if he did. So she allows herself to speculate.]
Showing us how you ought to be seen.
[There will be enough disrespect here that he will be, she is certain, at least slightly tempted by the idea.]
no subject
It would be interesting, [he concedes, looking back at her.] But misconstrued, I have no doubt.
no subject