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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

6 Comments

  1. Sean Dillon
    December 5, 2017 @ 5:19 pm

    Which I’d have gotten to, but fine. He can have credit, and I’m almost definitely not going to kill and eat him for it.

    [Starts to sweat nervously while thinking about the Watchmen post for his own blog]

    Also on the subject of Jerusalem’s notions of free will, when I read that part it felt like it was excusing dickish behavior as being the actions one is supposed to have done. I might have misread it, as I was dealing with some extremely personal issues that should have forced me not to read Jerusalem until a later time (due to both the book’s size and themes), but I feel there’s a kernel of truth within that read.

    Reply

  2. Przemek
    December 6, 2017 @ 12:52 pm

    Good observations about the many worlds hypothesis. What I find interesting is that although Will’s “Has to end well, and it has to end badly” followed by “Has to end every way it can” suggests moving past the duality of good vs. bad endings, Will clearly can’t truly move past it. His newfound distant curiosity only applies to future events; he can’t apply it to past ones. In most examples I’ve seen the idea of parallel worlds is clearly connected to regret over events not happening the way they were supposed to. Will’s mental space for Abigail is also a sort of comforting fantasy, as is his assertion that the universe in which Abigail didn’t die “did happen”. No wonder she disappears after Will forgives Hannibal.

    It’s also interesting that Will compares his beliefs to science fiction. Sci-fi “gods” are usually not true gods but impersonal, distant and alien forces shaping human lives, like the cruel logic of economy or natural disasters. In this light Will’s line that God “can’t” (not “won’t”) save us – as if he didn’t have free will – is indeed closer to science fiction depictions of deity than anything else.

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  3. mx_mond
    December 7, 2017 @ 8:22 am

    “Abigail, meanwhile, clearly resists this interpretation, asserting Hannibal as an author figure who privileges one ending over another.”

    Essentially, Hannibal occupies God’s position withing the narrative.

    “But the bit about thinking God would like a church collapse points to a far more enticing idea given Hannibal’s obvious and oft-demonstrated love of temptation and of turning people on to new appetites – the idea that Hannibal lives his life in order to convert God to his way of thinking.”

    In light of the above, Hannibal is probably right – he would know what God would love, because they share the same characteristics. At the same time, given that he also tries to convert Will to his way of thinking, it seems that he tries to put Will in God’s position. I sometimes think of Hannibal as a story of Satan falling in love with a human and trying to get him to fall. But it seems that it might be more complicated than that: it’s a story of a luciferian demiurge who tries to elevate a human to the position of God so that he can then lead him to fall.

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    • Aurora
      December 11, 2017 @ 1:30 am

      This is a very elegant way of distilling the show!

      Reply

  4. Sabina
    December 7, 2017 @ 5:05 pm

    The original plan for the season apparently was that Abigail would survive and leave with Hannibal. So the God in the position of “ending it every way it can,” but canonizing the path of formal elegance (of closing the circle with Mizumono only to shatter it) over that of mercy is Fuller, and he’s haunted by the decision. His way of dealing with this apparently to have Hannibal divine (and Will beginning to, here) the edges around his own existence, like Deadpool’s ability to see his own comic’s narration.

    Will does conjure Beverly briefly in S2, too – she talks to him and steadies him before he reconstructs her murder.

    Reply

  5. Aurora
    December 11, 2017 @ 1:29 am

    Such an insightful comment: “post-”Mizumono” Will – one who has seen his ending, lived past it, and now views his life as in a key sense unreal and existing only to resolve the puzzle of its own continuation.”

    Reply

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