Not sure how true this is, but Will daiting other women feels and sounds like a way to play with Mia's heart and even mind, making her go crazy because he just knows how devoted she is to him.
Also it's kind of good to see people talking about these dark topics, I don't see a lot of people discussing or even putting in consideration to talk about these kind of topic. Thank you, even if it hurts to read the thruth sometimes like these new posts but at the same time is interesting in a twisted way😭
-🐛
Aw yes, it’s hurtful but so healing for some of us.
Haha yes, I think Will tries dating in one hand to truly attempt getting away from his attachment to Mia, but then also to provoke her and reinforce the relationship’s dynamic.
Does Mia feels attraction for girls too? If yes, is Will okay with that, and with her potentially having experience in dating girls?🩰
Rotten Meat Major Spoilers:
Yes, Mia is actually unable to feel attraction to men because either all men are repulsive to her, for being way too different than Will, or they are dangerous, she feels unsafe. She doesn’t feel any attraction to men whatsoever, realizes that around 18. She tries but Will ruined that for her. Will will be happy when he finds out because he doesn’t feel threatened by women, just as she doesn’t feel threatened by men, hence why she’s not jealous of Hannibal.
Will does not possess a conventional form of empathy. His relationship to killers is not rooted in emotional resonance or moral concern, but in psychic permeability: a structural openness that allows external identities to inhabit him. However, this permeability is not universal; it is specific. He does not absorb just any identity, he absorbs those that reflect a latent structure within himself. In this sense, his ability is not methodical nor voluntary. It is not emotional empathy, nor is it rational profiling. It is an involuntary resonance…a deep, structural identification with acts of violence that mirror something pre-existing in his psyche.
This is why Will only “empathizes” with killers. The violent act serves as a key that unlocks his inner architecture. He does not become possessed by killers in the supernatural sense, but rather, he temporarily dissolves the boundary between himself and the killer, allowing their psychology to animate his own body. The result is not compassion, it is identification. He does not simulate their actions analytically; he experiences their intentions as if they were his own. He embodies the logic of the crime because its logic echoes something in him that was already unspoken.
When he occasionally empathizes with victims, it is never spontaneous, it only happens when the victim reflects an identity Will already contains: isolation, fragility, misunderstood innocence. But his natural point of entry is not vulnerability…it is violence. This doesn’t make him violent, necessarily (but it can) but it does mean that violence has a language that his psyche understands.
In this light, his permeability is not passive openness, it is selective attunement. The killers don’t impose themselves on him; they are invited in by the haunted architecture of his own self. He doesn’t “catch” their consciousness like a virus. He reflects it, because it was already latent.
Thus, Will Graham is not empathic: he is a mirror. But only to the shadow.
If you think Bedelia told Will that Hannibal was in love with him, you’re wrong.
When Will asks her plainly, “Is Hannibal in love with me?”, Bedelia does not offer the comfort or constraint of a simple “yes.” Instead, she replies: “He daily feels a stab of hunger and finds nourishment at the very sight of you.”
This is no evasion, but precision. Bedelia is the consummate observer, the only one perhaps capable of reading Hannibal accurately not through empathy but through pure intellect, refrains deliberately from naming the feeling as love. Because she knows better.
To say Hannibal is “in love” would be to reduce him to the category of the ordinary. It would be to align his experience of desire with that of humans, those who love and pine, who miss and regret, who fall and suffer. But Hannibal does not fall. He devours. He consumes. His longing is not sentimental but carnivorous. He is not wounded by love but sharpened by appetite.
Hannibal and Will both occupy a liminal space beyond the structures that define conventional emotion. They are not simply men, but something Other. Beasts, Fallen Angels, mirrors of each other’s darkness. For Bedelia to claim that Hannibal loved Will would not only be false, it would betray her own intelligence, and her understanding of what Hannibal is. Hannibal does not love in human terms. He feels hunger, fascination, aesthetic rapture, a sublime compulsion that transcends the human vocabulary of affection.
And that is precisely why Bedelia’s choice of words matters. He finds nourishment at the very sight of you.That is not love. That is need on a mythic scale. So, no, Bedelia did not tell Will that Hannibal was in love with him. She told him something much worse.
here's Will and Lola sailing. I remember watching a movie where the female protagonist experienced a traumatic moment with her father and it was sunset and they colored it extremely orangy/reddish. It reminded me of them.
Holy shit! You made this? This looks hauntingly beautiful. Fanart of my fic is…Beyond words. Thank you. Thank you.
What bad relationships Mia had during teenagehood, if you want to tell us of course, and will they be said in RM?🌳
I can tell you because it will only be briefly mentioned in RM. Mia got involved with a much older man, who she almost ran away with. But he got her hooked to some bad things, so she eventually left him.
im writing a Hannibal fic with an oc (a patient suspected of murder) who has anorexia and purges. i've already got my take on it but i was wondering what yours is? i always love your takes and i LOVE rotten meat.
(im really hoping for a great minds think alike moment)
My take on anorexia and purge? Generally speaking I’d say is an attempt at control. What type of control really depends on the context and the character’s backstory. If you want to be more specific, let me know and will happily help you out.
Run away with an older man? Will knew about that or Mia was good enough to hide it from him?🤔
That happened when Will almost got married. So naturally Mia was devastated and tried to run. Mia was able to hide the man from Will, yes, but he did find out about her running away.
If it won’t be addressed in Rotten Meat, how did Amara first react to finding out everything about Hannibal? Did he slowly introduce it to her, or was it just normalized from the start? Wonderful writing by the way <3
Oh he raised her in it ahaha. Her psyche was modulated by his way of life and thinking.
Do you envision a post-canon future where Hannibal stops hurting Will?
I think Hannibal would do anything to keep Will around. I think canon sort of proved this, in a way. So if hurting Will became unfunny to Will, then yes. But the problem is that Will enjoys that aspect of the dynamic and keeps circling back to it. I don’t think he’d enjoy it as much without getting marked by Hannibal. So Hannibal would only stop if Will genuinely wanted him to. Because Hannibal doesn’t actually need violence, but Will does, he’s the one who craves it so intensely he repressed it. Hannibal craves something else, not violence itself. Like Will, like Francis.
Could Will and Hannibal still fall in love without the violence?
The short answer is: no. Not truly. Not completely.
Perhaps Hannibal maybe, just maybe, could have. His love, though monstrous, is contemplative. He knows there are other means of influence. He understands tenderness, charm, seduction, patience. He knows how to be still and let another unravel themselves before him. But Will understands violence. And not just in the physical sense, but in its existential form. Love, for Will, is not real unless it wounds.
Molly offered him love, the kind that is soft, steady, human. And it was not enough. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for her, but that her love asked nothing of him beyond presence. It didn’t consume or threaten him. It didn’t make him feel unique.
Because for Will, love is only meaningful when it comes from someone whose affection is rare, impossible, unreachable. He wants to be chosen by the one who cannot be swayed. He needs the attention of the one who pays attention to no one. And that’s Hannibal.
Will doesn’t enjoy being looked at. He shrinks from attention…except Hannibal’s. Hannibal’s gaze is his drug. Bedelia says it clearly: Will becomes so addicted to Hannibal’s attention that he stops thinking rationally. After the end of season one, everything Will does becomes an orbit around Hannibal’s gravity. It’s not logic. It’s hunger.
He wants to be the one who changed the monster. That’s what distinguishes Hannibal’s love. Not its purity, but its cost. Its impossibility.
And that’s why he hates Bedelia. Not overtly, but deeply. Because Bedelia was left untouched by Hannibal. She slipped past his teeth. Will mistakenly interprets that as softness, as vulnerability. Something Will thought he alone provoked in Hannibal. Bedelia’s existence challenges Will’s uniqueness. And Will’s love is possessive. He needs to be the one.
When Hannibal kills Abigail, it is not cruelty, it is retaliation. She was the symbol of Will’s power over him. Her survival meant Hannibal had changed, had bent. When Will saw that she was alive, he told Hannibal, “I already did (change you).” He believed he had changed the unchangeable. That Hannibal was no longer the monster. And that shattered Hannibal’s carefully preserved self-image.
So he made a choice. He destroyed Abigail, not to punish Will, but to remind him: You didn’t win. You don’t own my heart. I am still the monster. I choose who I am. Remember who I am.
But the tragedy is, Will had already accepted him. In that moment, Will might have run away with him. If he had known Abigail was alive sooner, if he had known there was hope, he would’ve gone. Because Hannibal wasn’t the monster anymore, not to Will. But it was too late.
Could they love without violence?
Maybe Hannibal could.
But Will cannot.
He doesn’t recognize love in its gentler forms. He rationally knows it exists. But he does not feel it. Not when it is safe. Not when it is soft.
For Will, love must undo him. It must destroy. It must leave something broken in its wake because only then does he believe it is real. And Hannibal knows this. He has always known this. That is why, of all the means at his disposal, he chooses violence.
Because that is what Will understands.
That is what opens his heart.
Not in spite of the violence, but because of it.
But why does Will only seem to recognize love when it ruins him?
Perhaps the answer lies in his deepest, most hidden places, the ones he keeps even from himself. Will is not whole. He is repressed, folded inward, suffocating beneath layers of self-restraint and ambiguity. His own mind is a cage, and though he keeps the door closed, something inside him longs to be undone. Maybe he doesn’t want to be himself, not the self he performs, not the self that pleases, not the quiet man with the dogs and the pain he never names.
He wants to be taken apart.
Because he believes, deep down, that the truth of him is buried beneath the rubble of everything he was taught to be.
And only destruction can dig that deep.
This is why he was drawn to his work…because, without realizing it, it broke him. It wore away his boundaries, cracked open his empathy until it spilled everywhere. His sanity frayed not by accident, but by unconscious desire. He walked into the fire without knowing he wanted to burn.
And then there was Hannibal. Hannibal, who did not flinch.
Hannibal, who watched Will unravel with interest, not pity.
Hannibal, who understood that love is not just affection…it is force.
To Hannibal, love is not kind. It is not tender. It is not soft music and easy mornings.
It is gravity. A law of the cosmos. A magnet drawing opposites into union. A force.
But union is not peace.
Union, true union, is violent. Because when two become one, both must be destroyed. The ego, the fear, the separation, everything that says I must dissolve so that we can be born.
This is not romance. This is alchemy.
Will only recognizes love as destruction because, in its truest form, that’s what love is. It dismantles. It tears open. It annihilates everything false.
And he wants that.
Not just to be loved, but to be unmade.
To find what lies beneath the performance of humanity. To reach the raw core.
And he knows he cannot do it alone. So he seeks the one who is willing to ruin him, who sees his ruin not as a tragedy, but as a revelation.
That is why he does not run. That is why he cannot stay with Molly.
That is why he will always come back to Hannibal.
Because the love he believes in, the only love he feels, is the one that makes him disappear, and through that, he can finally see himself.
Just wanted to say that I actually headcanon Will would behave like Rotten Meat given the opportunity but some people fail to understand that canon has restrictions but it doesn't mean it limits the actual character on their core.
Yes, Bryan said he wanted to avoid certain things for Hannibal and Will’s character, and nbc would not allow many things to be shown. It’s funny how people have a literal mindset of “no see no real”, including obvious things like Bedelia and Hannibal sleeping together or even Hannibal and Anthony. Everything on the show was made to let the audience know without needing to be explicit yet most failed to see it anyway. This just shows how tiring it is to deal with people like this because you need to speak the entire bible for them to understand two paragraphs.
Watching Hannibal and picking up on the foreshadowing that Will was meant to die at the end
sacrificing himself for Hannibal
“he became Achilles on the field of war, he died for him there, wearing his armour”
not that Will was wearing Hannibal’s armour in TWOTL but be finally accepted himself and shed his own ‘shield’
I see that and I raise you: the opposite.
We are often thrown between roles while watching the show, just as Will and Hannibal are. And in the moment where Hannibal is drawing Patroclus and Achilles, him and Will are bonding, but are still victims of their own inability to fully see themselves. They are lying to themselves about what they feel, and who they are. Will, not accepting the part of himself that wants to run away with Hannibal, and Hannibal, not accepting that Will changed him.
But who steps in front of the bullet, taking Will’s place and is shot? Hannibal does. Who, despite all of his life being extremely egocentric and individualistic, accepted to die at Will’s hands/choice? Hannibal did. Who truly shedded his previous self to become empathetic? “My compassion for you is inconvenient”. Hannibal did.
Who really became the other on the field of war and died for and with the other? Hannibal did. He wore Will’s armor, fighting wildly, which wasn’t Hannibal’s style but Will’s. Hannibal could’ve run and left Will to die with Francis, but he became Will (compassion/empathy) and sacrificed himself to save him, knowing he planned to kill them both.
“People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden.”
So begins Fight Club.
Not with a name, but with a question—already casting doubt on the speaker’s existence.
It begins not with answers, but with the dissolution of the questioner.
You have been told you are someone.
You have a name, a voice, a history.
You believe your thoughts come from you.
That the story you tell yourself, about yourself, is real.
Stable. Whole. Linear.
But what if “I” is just a narrative device—
a convenient illusion sewn together from fragments, masks, and echoes of others?
When we begin to open the mirror, we find that it opens back.
I. Ego, Persona, and Shadow: The Inner Theater
Let’s start with the basic triad from Jungian psychology:
- The Ego is the conscious “I” you believe in—the narrator, the one who organizes the story.
- The Persona is the mask worn for others—crafted to meet expectation, to protect, to seduce.
- The Shadow is what remains repressed—instincts, desires, truths too raw or wild for polite exposure.
None of these are “false.”
They are roles. Filters. Distortions.
Each one reveals by concealing.
Imagine your identity as a stage:
The Ego is the actor,
The Persona is the costume,
The Shadow is what waits in the wings, watching.
You think you are the actor.
But often, the mask speaks louder.
And sometimes, the shadow takes the stage.
II. Identity as Performance
Erving Goffman described life as a series of performances. You adjust your posture, your laugh, your gaze depending on who’s watching. There is no “authentic” self waiting behind the mask—only more masks. You are always becoming someone in relation to someone else.
Judith Butler extends this:
Gender is not something we are, but something we do, a repetition of gestures, roles, codes that feel natural only because they’ve been rehearsed.
To perform is not to lie.
To perform is to exist.
But the performance is not you.
It is the surface of something deeper, or more empty.
III. Case Study: Fight Club and the Dissociated Narrator
The narrator of Fight Club doesn’t have a name. Or, more accurately, his name keeps changing. He introduces himself to support groups with fake ones: Rupert, Travis, Cornelius. He is searching for meaning—through insomnia, through consumerism, through identity theft.
Enter Tyler Durden:
The manifestation of what was repressed.
Masculinity without compromise.
Violence without consequence.
Freedom from the dullness of being one thing.
Tyler is not a hallucination.
He is a mask—peeled from the narrator’s own face. The shadow given voice. The persona taken too far.
Eventually, the narrator realizes:
He is Tyler. But also, he isn’t. He is the one who needed Tyler.
This fragmentation isn’t madness.
It’s revelation. The self as story—written in third person, re-narrated, redacted.
IV. The Mirror as a Portal
What is a mirror, truly? A tool of reflection? Or of distortion?
Mirrors show us what we wish to see—
And also what we fear: That nothing is behind the eyes, only a performance perfected by repetition.
In ancient rites, mirrors were portals—not to the self, but to the other side. To look too long was dangerous. You might see yourself split. Or worse—someone else staring back.
V. Final Question: The I as Fiction
So we end where we began:
What if “I” is just a narrative device?
Not a soul. Not a core.
But a sentence in motion.
A lie that believes in itself.
You are not being asked to abandon the self. Only to loosen its grip.
To wonder: What if I am not who I think I am? What if the real me is a shifting stage of masks, mirrors, and desire?
-
Suggested Assignment:
1. Write a two-paragraph monologue from the point of view of your Persona.
We don’t want them to kiss/have sex because we’ve been conditioned to validate love through physicality. We want it because their desire for one another could only be quenched in totality. Soul, mind and body. It’s too much, it transcends humanity. They become animals when facing the availability of fully having one another.
Is Will's son biological or stepson? What do the books say?
Do you mean Wally? In the show he’s obviously a step son, I mean…He’s twelve. Will has been married for three years besides it is stated he’s a stepson. In the books it’s different but the show and the book are different universes, so no one in the fandom mixes them up nor is it logical to do so since book Hannigram doesn’t actually exist.
Do you mean Wally? In the show he’s obviously a step son, I mean…He’s twelve. Will has been married for three years besides it is stated he’s a stepson. In the books it’s different but the show and the book are different universes, so no one in the fandom mixes them up nor is it logical to do so since book Hannigram doesn’t actually exist.
Yessss thissss. The show and book are definitely different universes and need to be recognised as such.
But on that note, he’s a step son in the book too, when Jack talks about him being taller than Will and Will says his dad was is a quote from Harris (I’m pretty sure) - but his name is Willy in the book. I guess the show changed that because it’s too similar to Will?
Am I the only one seeing the double meaning in “Will Graham is not a lesbian?”
1. “Margot, you are a lesbian and you need a lesbian, why did you sleep with a man?? Will Graham is not a lesbian.”
2. “Will would be into women only if he was a lesbian. Why did you sleep with him? He is into men, he is not a lesbian”
yes! word play! they do it constantly on the script! the normal way to phrase this would be “Will Graham is not a woman”, since Margot is a lesbian. To say “Will Graham is not a lesbian” implies he doesn’t want to gender Will, too.
Trauma is the soul’s version of a tectonic shift, an internal landscape so deeply altered that even time flows differently afterward. It’s like a rift in ontological alignment. And the world never earned your affection again. Until him.
Who is your least favorite character on the show (Mason doesn't count), and both in personality but also in writing terms? love this blog 💕
Thank you 💗. My least favorite character in terms of bad writing is Alana. Poorly developed, confusing purpose besides being “the girlfriend”, then had an obvious attempt at making her a little worse but ended up making it forced.
My least favorite in terms of them as a character (after, of course, Mason) is Molly. I just cannot with a woman of her age thinking it’s okay to let her own child near Will Graham. He wasn’t some random guy. He was on literal news, all over the world, he had an extremely questionable past, and regardless if he was “innocent” or not, that’s not the point. You do not just drag a child into the life of a man like Will. Do what you want, but be responsible and leave the kid out of it. And this is simply non-debatable because the show proves my point: she and her child almost died.
A fic where Hannibal lost his memory in prison, and only remembers Will. He never fully recovers and Will faces the dilemma: if his identity has been erased, can the wounds he inflicted also disappear?
How do you think Alana could've been better as a character?
First of all by not being connected to Will in a romantic way. It was forced, looked like something the network made them do for the sake of following criteria for heterosexuality on television.
Then, making her more keen on Will’s symptoms, directly posing a threat to Hannibal’s plans. Making her an actual intelligent person and genuinely purposeful. Maybe Will was attracted because she seemed normal or as normal as he could ever get, but she wasn’t. Maybe she already had her own thing going on outside of that.
She could’ve genuinely bonded with Abigail, making Mizumono’s betrayal much more painful. As well as making Abigail’s arc more interesting by her actually having a choice between Hannibal and someone safer, but choosing Hannibal still, instead of her choice being more based on having no other choice.
The Margot thing was so flat, I wish they’d at least show the development of that couple. The chemistry was terrible and they looked like strangers. Could’ve actually shown her arc as becoming gradually okay with murder, instead of it being out of nowhere or just vengeful. And this isn’t about screen time, specially since they chose thirteen episodes which was a rarity at the time, and shortened the time for depth of side characters, but then they had useless scenes with her character that could’ve been better overall.
To the separated mind, the gods appear terrifying: they arrive as fate, as obsession, as punishment. They move beyond the reach of the will, acting through dream, through compulsion, through suffering. We fear them because they seem other, and so we name them: war god, love goddess, underworld keeper. We build temples not to worship, but to negotiate. Please, don’t destroy me. Please, don’t possess me.
But when the inner world begins to open through self-inquiry, rupture, or devotion, we realize the gods were never separate. They are not outside of us. They were the unacceptable desires, the unbearable instincts, the divine chaos we refused to integrate. The moment we turn inward and name them as our own, yes, I am the god of wrath, of lust, of sacrifice, they lose their threat. They become allies. They become organs of the psyche. And the fear dissolves into power.
Hannibal as the god of death, of manipulation, seduction, the forbidden, moves in the shadows of Will’s mind, shaping him, haunting him, violating his moral structure. And Will resists not because he doesn’t desire, but because the desire terrifies him. To love Hannibal would be to surrender to a part of himself he has never claimed. A part that kills, that craves, that knows.
But Hannibal is no more external than the gods of old. He is a mirror. A calling. The ritual madness that forces Will to confront the violence, the eros, the omniscience within himself. And as Will stops resisting, as he lets go of his human moralism and steps into the myth, they merge. Not as a couple, but as a single intelligence, a godform, indivisible. The hunter and the hunted, the empath and the predator, the sacrificial lamb and the priest. The line between them ceases to exist.
What once was feared as separate is now understood as the self. And the punishment was never real…it was the resistance. The horror of becoming what we already are.
Do you think show Hannibal was in love with Mischa?
If we go by what was said on the show, yes, very likely. Particularly because of Bedelia’s line “the standard psychological and sociological explanations about how one grows up and where don’t apply here. What your sister made you feel was beyond your conscious ability to control(…)”. She’s saying that the background is irrelevant (siblings/family) when it comes to this situation because what he felt for her was not something he could predict or control. She equates that to his feelings for Will, after suggesting he was in love with him. So, yes, everything in canon points to him being in love with her which makes the whole thing make much more sense, “she influenced me to betray myself” + him eating her to “forgive” her. It would make more sense for him to feel betrayed by his own mind to be in love with his sister. But then again…How Hannibal loves is beyond the normal realm.
How do you think trauma connects to Will and Hannibal's kinks? What kinks do you think they have in canon and what are some of your headcanons? I don't just mean the trauma that they share during the show but also their individual history with trauma and the development of kinks possibly intertwined with those experience's. Do you think that kinks can be empowering to people with trauma backgrounds if treated carefully. Thank you!
Sorry it took so long to respond! TW sex talk.
I think kinks are incredibly empowering when we know how to engage. They offer a safe vessel for trauma to be expressed and dealt with in a somatic way, which tends to be the most effective type of approach since it avoids the tendency to intellectualize emotions and repress them further.
Well, Hannibal clearly has a noncon kink, if we consider his pleasure in feeding people human meat without their knowledge. Although I’m not sure if that’s non consensual or…Non awareness lol. He also has this same type of behavior when it comes to some victims, like Miriam and Will. So he certainly enjoys power play in a less conventional way than what we expect from this dynamic.
His type of power play seems to be that in which he takes away the other person’s ability to even have a choice. It most likely stems from the powerlessness he felt as a child, so he doesn’t really try to offer choice, he probably feels unsafe this way. Hence why he was so fascinated by Will and Bedelia (both offered some type of resistance).
Will clearly has bondage kink, but he prefers when the bondaged is pleased, indicating that Will is aroused by stable personalities (Hannibal rarely shows reaction), those who don’t wield easily. He doesn’t find vulnerability attractive, hency why he likes to care for the vulnerable, as an attempt to overcompensate, probably. Hannibal is aware, that’s why he never shows vulnerability in front of Will, and when he did, it was lethal.
So Will might enjoy punishing as a kink, with a partner who doesn’t react, or asks for more. He seems good at humiliation, too (if Dolarhyde is anything to go by) + he’s incredibly arrogant.
Hannibal might enjoy surprising Will with weird ass equipment shoved into his holes. Will wouldn’t like it at first, but Hannibal would train him to enjoy it by associating it with pleasure and comfort. So this could look like trapping Will and experimenting with unusual toys or things not really meant for sex, but offering intense orgasms and comfort afterwards.
Will might enjoy Hannibal allowing him to tie him up, cuff him, and make cuts on his skin with a knife, while he verbally humiliates him. Hannibal naturally enjoys it because he enjoys Will enjoying him (that’s his kink lol)
That Bedelia was in love with Hannibal. And that Hobbs was weird towards Abigail but Will couldn’t see it because he was empathizing with Hobbs and he obviously did not perceive what he was doing as weird or incestuous, hence why Will said “he would never dishonor them like that”. That Will did not love Molly (he could not verbalize it) but he tried.
what’s your dream fic plot that no one ever did or you haven’t found yet? cause mine is circus AU. It used to be saint hannibal/devotee Will but then I took it upon myself and wrote the damn thing (Libertine, in case you’re interested).
Actual horror Hannigram. I love domestic bliss, sexy adventures and all but I’ve never found a fic that was written as true horror, it’s all variations of romance, which is fine but I do love the idea of something truly gruesome (still with romance but more focused on the horror aspect).
We don’t want them to kiss/have sex because we’ve been conditioned to validate love through physicality. We want it because their desire for one another could only be quenched in totality. Soul, mind and body. It’s too much, it transcends humanity. They become animals when facing the availability of fully having one another.
Every time i see a post that justifies sex as conjoined totality of two souls, I realize how love is so intertwined with physicality that they’re seen as almost synonymous. How can you love someone deeply and not worship the very essence of their body in a sexual way? Want them like you’re deprived of air?
Amatonormativity is a bitch and of course, an ace will always feel invalidated. Does that mean totality of being can only be achieved through sexual physicality? Can the ferocity of love never be in the comforts of silence? Of clutches in the dark? Of conversation by a warm fire and warm eyes?
Asexual desire — of love not defined by this amatonormative hold — can it ever be quenched? Asexual love….can it ever be enough?
Once again, the discussion is derailed by ace projection. This is precisely why it’s difficult to engage in meaningful dialogue when we critique the tendency to center every narrative around personal experience. Nearly every post I’ve made about Hannigram and sexuality ends up attracting a response rooted in asexual projection.
You’ve said you don’t believe Will feels sexual attraction toward Hannibal and ended it with “fight me on it.” But truly, no one is interested in “fighting” you on it. There’s no productive ground for discussion when the framework you’re operating from is fundamentally detached from the dynamics being explored. Any attempt to engage is met with distortion, bending canon, people’s words, and subtext to fit an ideological mold, then positioning yourselves as the marginalized voices silenced by the sexual majority.
But what’s continually demonstrated, post after post, is that it’s not about being silenced. It’s about how often expressions of sexuality are demonized, diminished, or shamed within these projections. If you feel that your vision of “asexual love” is constantly invalidated or “not enough,” perhaps the more constructive path is self-reflection or even therapy, rather than using others’ spaces as dumping grounds for unresolved frustrations.
Your contributions don’t clarify your stance, they obscure the conversation, reduce the richness of the narrative, and ultimately reveal a refusal to see beyond your projection. I recently came across a video of an ace person discussing exclusion within the LGBTQ+ community, and while exclusion is a valid topic, the irony is how frequently this community turns around and casts judgment, positioning sexual people as shallow, inferior, or incapable of genuine love simply because we include sex in our experiences.
How are we supposed to include you in these discussions when you enter them not to listen or build understanding, but to impose judgment? The exhaustion doesn’t come from disagreement. It comes from the cycle: project, distort, judge, then claim victimhood. It’s no mystery why your experience often feels isolating. It’s not retribution. It’s consequence.
How would you characterize Hannibal's memory palace in terms of psychology?
The memory palace is a very real thing, anyone can do it. I do it and it’s so wonderful for many different reasons. It’s a great way to store memory, and for meditation as well. Of course, as anything, it could become an escape mechanism, but honestly I’m not really one to judge escapism since sometimes it’s all someone has.
Regarding Hannibal, I’d say it did serve as an escape, when he was in prison, as well as memorization and yes, he used it as an elegant way to fragment his painful memories as well.
media literacy would automatically go up 100% if people knew how to consume stories without self-inserting themselves into the characters’ shoes. “if i were him…” you’re NOT. you may relate to his story, his past, his traits, his quirks, his identity but the moment you start treating the story accepting what you feel/think as what the character feels/thinks, you’re misunderstanding the story.
I love the idea of Chiyoh, not so much the execution…She ended being yet another plot device for the male characters. A pretty flat one at that, too. Her sole purpose was to be a storytelling shortcut for Will to find Hannibal then have a reason for Hannibal to drug him, etc. She had no actual backstory or even an identity aside from Hannibal. Fuller managed to make her worse than Alana in these terms and the only thing that saved her was that the actress made the role less obnoxious than Alana, so no one dislikes her as much. She had a more “strong female” costume so she got away from the hate, but haha…Pretty awfully developed character. Awesome concept, though.
Hello, hello! I dunno if you have already made an analysis on that topic but I would love to hear your thoughts on what kind of police officer was Will <33
Sorry for taking forever to reply! Great question. I think Will was a very reasonable yet skeptical cop. Definitely not the typical American cop who will target minorities for no reason, and I honestly don’t think he’d even bat an eye or waste time with anyone who didn’t pose an actual threat to themselves or others. I can see him as the type that would gently escort a homeless drug addicted woman into the vehicle to get her somewhere where she could get help, or would grumpily take a minor home after they tried to steal food. He would mostly be paying attention to actual criminals. But erratically so. He’d get his hunches and tremble as he brings the radio to his lips to ask for backup. Hands shaky on his gun, not because he was nervous but because he was scared of how eager he was to see blood.
Worst parallel to Will and Hannibal was definitely horse guy and Peter. Peter was genuinely good. Will was so eager to think they were the same, to empathize, feel less alone in his pain, yet…In the end, what matters most is exactly what he told Peter himself, “I envy your hate”. As much as Will wanted to relate to Peter, he still chooses to let his killer live. He would always choose his killer. And he knows. It’s why, when Hannibal suggests that Peter is in the same darkness as him, Will says “I’m alone in that darkness”.
hello milk! feel free to ignore this if it feels too personal.
i read that you’re a psych major, are you also seeking to become a therapist or are you already a therapist? just curious because i love the way you psycho analyze things.
Hello! I am primarily a researcher. I have worked as a therapist in the past, and funnily enough I’ve counseled some fannibals after starting this blog! I guess it’s comforting to talk to someone you can divulge your strange fantasies about freely because you know they appreciate the obscure haha <3
We gotta talk more about this. They were tossing shade at one another in this scene. Specially Will. He’s literally outing his strategy here, actually. But the interesting thing is that…This is completely turned around. Because Hannibal says “could also be resentment”, Will is resentful of him. So Will is talking about H, H is talking about Will. And He couldn’t bear to be touched by her is such a telling line. There’s just so much there. Hannibal touched Will on the end of this episode.
“His eyes are dead,”
And also Will factually uses Hannibal’s eyes as a way to gauge his vulnerability. We get total blackness when Will perceives him as a monster and we get normal eyes when Will perceives him as vulnerable or human.
