While it's cringe to get upset and seethe over your ship, especially towards a creator of a show, I can understand where Hannibal/Clarice shippers are coming from. Before the show, the fandom was small, but had a steady flow of fanfiction and -art. Mostly H/C related, but not only. Silence of the Lambs was the most successful of the adaptions and the one most people thought of when you talked about these characters and even in the movie there were subtle, but very telling gestures towards a relationship, no matter how odd, between H/C. And this stood for decades (oh, I know about Hannibal the movie, but that added to the drama and angst fics. I'm not sure how many people read the book, but I can tell you it was much weirder there. The movie kind of handled it better, but that's up for debate. Hannibal Rising imho had a retarded backstory for the main man so I won't touch that). I remember very well browsing through the Hannibal page on FF.net years ago and it had strong, dedicated fanbase.
So then many years later the show drops and iirc for a while people had no idea there were issues with using Clarice's character. There were people patiently waiting for her to show up. But ofc that never happened and eventually Hannibal/Will became a thing. And the fandom exploded in popularity. AO3 won't give the most accurate statistics considering it's younger and FF.net had the majority of the early overall fandom's fics, but we can still look at the numbers there and, well
yeah, H/C got fucking buried. Now, I never cared for the show (style over substance and I think Hugh Dancy is shit; Mads is lovely tho, a great Lecter), so I didn't really bother with a fandom I was never really even that involved with, but I do almost feel sorry for the H/C shippers who could not compete against this new hot gay ship. Whether it justifies reeing about it towards Fuller is ofc another thing. Lifetime is making a Clarice-centric show (unless someone has info it's been shelved again), which could potentially ease the fighting since she's getting some new material now, but I think it'll just breathe new drama into the fandom. And Alex Kurtzman is developing it so in my book its already dead on arrival.
So then many years later the show drops and iirc for a while people had no idea there were issues with using Clarice's character. There were people patiently waiting for her to show up. But ofc that never happened and eventually Hannibal/Will became a thing. And the fandom exploded in popularity. AO3 won't give the most accurate statistics considering it's younger and FF.net had the majority of the early overall fandom's fics, but we can still look at the numbers there and, well
yeah, H/C got fucking buried. Now, I never cared for the show (style over substance and I think Hugh Dancy is shit; Mads is lovely tho, a great Lecter), so I didn't really bother with a fandom I was never really even that involved with, but I do almost feel sorry for the H/C shippers who could not compete against this new hot gay ship. Whether it justifies reeing about it towards Fuller is ofc another thing. Lifetime is making a Clarice-centric show (unless someone has info it's been shelved again), which could potentially ease the fighting since she's getting some new material now, but I think it'll just breathe new drama into the fandom. And Alex Kurtzman is developing it so in my book its already dead on arrival.
