These Curious Times Interview with coloredink

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Interviews by Fans
Title: These Curious Times Interview with coloredink
Interviewer: curious
Interviewee: coloredink
Date(s): September 1, 2015
Medium: online
Fandom(s): Hannibal, Sherlock
External Links: online here, Archived version
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These Curious Times Interview with coloredink ("On Being Consumed by the Hannibal Fandom") is a 2015 interview with coloredink.

Part of a Series

See These Curious Times Fan Interviews.

Some Topics

Excerpts

I’m always interested in how people choose their fandom handles. How did you come up with coloredink?

Believe it or not, it just kind of popped into my head when I was 13 years old. I was signing up for my first blog and at the time I was really into anime, so I was going to sign up with a sort of Japanese kind of handle that I’m sure would’ve embarrassed me five years later. But when I sat down and was all set to type it in, this phrase popped into my head, coloredink. And I was like, “I’ll use that instead of this fake Japanese thing I made up,” and so I did. I’m really happy about that because when anyone asks about my handle, I tell them this story and they’re like, “Wow, when I was thirteen, my internet handle was daisy butterfly or something…”

I’ve been very lucky to have a handle that I’ve been able to use at all stages. I imagine when I’m 60 years old, I’ll still be fine with being coloredink. There’s nothing offensive, or embarrassing, or weird about it.

You went from writing exclusively for Sherlock for four years to exclusively writing in the Hannibal space. How did you discover Hannibal fandom?

I’m pretty monogamous when it comes to fandoms. When I’m writing for a fandom, it takes up all the real estate in my head. I can’t even really write original fiction at the same time because it just comes out a mess. So when I’m really into a show, I’m not even necessarily watching a lot of other shows. I’ll watch sitcoms and stuff, but nothing that I know will suck me in deep.

One of my friends had been trying to get me to watch Hannibal, but the thing is that I’m really relentlessly contrarian. If you call me up and tell me, “You have to watch this thing!” I’m immediately like, “Nope, I’m never watching it now.” This friend knows me really well though–this is an old, old friend of mine–so she would just be like, “Hey, I’m watching this Hannibal thing and there’s a lot of dogs…”

I really like dogs... [snipped]

Season 3 of Sherlock (TV series) Sherlock aired and really didn’t do it for me. It didn’t give me any fic ideas, and actually it closed a lot of doors. This is going to sound weird given what I’ve been writing for Hannibal, but I’m not super into writing AUs actually, and I didn’t want to go in the AU direction in order to keep ficcing for the show. Basically I didn’t like the show’s new dynamic. I wrote a couple of missing scenes, you can see them on my AO3, they’re like short, 500 words, little scenelets, and after that I was kind of done.

“His Last Vow” really pissed me off in a lot of ways, when it came to the ending I was like, “What is this? Oh man, this show has jumped the shark!” I could see the teeth as we went over it. I’m going to abandon ship here. I’ll still watch Season 4 when it comes out. It’s not like I hate the show now. I’m just not that excited about it. I’m not going to hang around twiddling my thumbs for another year-and-a-half hiatus, that’s not going to happen.

So I figured I’d give this Hannibal thing a try.

A lot of people talk about fanfiction as a way to fill in gaps in canon, or fix things they feel the show didn’t get right, or explore missing scenes or different themes that the showrunner hasn’t covered. Is there an element of that in your writing for Hannibal?

Hannibal is a really well and tightly written show, so as far as I’m concerned there aren’t that many missing scenes. I think the things that I really want to explore, what I really like about Hannibal, is that even though the show has zero commitment to reality in the sense that somehow Hannibal can decorate his food with skulls and random jawbones and stuff, nobody is like, “Hey this guy is kind of weird…”

Like, okay, somehow Hannibal has this really robust social life, he goes to the opera and the symphony and he has a thriving psychiatric practice and somehow he still has the time on the side to murder people and display them in really intricate ways, and also throw a dinner party afterward. How many hours does he have in a day? Does he have a time turner?

So time is really strange on the show. People drive from Virginia to Minnesota in like an hour. So the show doesn’t have a really good commitment to reality in that sense, but it’s really emotionally honest and emotionally realistic in the sense that it’s a show that really understands that people are complicated, and that people aren’t just good people, and people aren’t just bad people.

Hannibal is a complete monster obviously, he kills and eats people for fun and displays their bodies in interesting and artistic ways afterwards, but he also loves, and he also cries, and he also loves art and he has all of these really genuine emotions, but he also happens to be a serial killer. That’s just a quirk of his.

That’s the thing that I really love exploring. The show goes to this really uncomfortable place. At the end of the Season 2 finale, it becomes really easy to sympathize with Hannibal’s sadness. Who hasn’t been betrayed? Who hasn’t wanted to lash out at the betrayer? I’m not advocating that people should lash out at their betrayers by stabbing them! But these are, I think, fairly universal human emotions and the kinds of things that happen in real life too.

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