thedeathofthelamb:
gay-mooshrooms:
I will always be in love with the number of Clarice and Hannibal lines they made Will and Hannibal lines in the show
but one I will NEVER forgive them for leaving out if Hannibal saying “people will say we’re in love” when Clarice visits him in prison again
like cmon that would’ve been so good during the Red Dragon arc omg
yes agreed buuut they did simply made people say they were in love, murder husbands and all
Considering the writers were quite meticulous about the lines and they omitted anything too on tge nose from the final cuts, I don’t think this line would make sense for tv Hannibal, as much as I like it.
He was way too resentful of his affection for Will and his ego to say something that could lead to Will scoffing or dismissing him.
Hi milk,
I recently read in a Hannibal fanfic something along the lines of "Hannibals manipulation is psychological while Wills manipulation is emotional" and think that this is quite fitting.
But I wonder what your opinion on this matter is.
-🧀🍄 Y.G.
Well, psychological manipulation is the umbrella term, and emotional manipulation is a subset targeting affective states. Emotional manipulation refers more narrowly to tactics that exploit or influence a person’s emotions, like guilt-tripping, playing the victim, love bombing, gaslighting that targets emotional states specifically. The goal is to influence someone’s emotional reactions to achieve control or a desired behavior.
And psychological manipulation is a broader term. It includes emotional manipulation but also encompasses tactics that affect cognition, beliefs, perception, memory, identity, and judgment. This could include more strategic deception, framing, coercion, or undermining of someone’s sense of reality, often with more long-term or systemic intent.
So technically, I agree with that statement. But I’d say it’s interchangeable. When Will manipulates Hannibal’s emotions, he automatically changes Hannibal’s sense of reality, and he also engages in strategic deception. And Hannibal, when manipulating Will psychologically, also aims to elicit emotional reactions from Will.
Milk as a psych major jow would you do therapy on Will?
—🍑
Although I am not a psychiatrist, I do have a major in psychology and biomedicine which gives me enough knowledge to understand his mind at a clinical level. Soon I’ll have a PhD in pharma so let’s play around cause I could also add a few prescriptions too, just for fun lol.
If we’re going by the book then the first thing that would stand out to me is the possibility of OCD, so I’d get some assessments like a scrupulosity subtype, so Y-BOCS modified for moral themes. Maybe autism spectrum, so RAADS-R or ADOS-2 for differential diagnosis. I’d like to use SIPS (Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes) too, for the hallucinations that remained even after he was treated from encephalitis. And definitely a CAPS-5 for complex trauma.
So I’d prescribe a SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) for OCD, a low-dose Atypical Antipsychotic for hallucinations and a non-addictive antihistamine with anxiolytic effect for insomnia. And 100% a mood stabilizer (makes me very upset that Alana never even suggested to Hannibal considering how persistent she was about Will being unstable).
But…to be completely honest, in terms of therapy I don’t think the traditional frameworks would be good for him. I’d try schizoanalysis. Symptom is production, not dysfunction
Will’s hallucinations, empathy disorder, and moral OCD are seen as desiring-machines creating new connections.
Instead of asking “why do you feel guilty?” schizoanalysis might explore:
“Where does the guilt want to go? What does it connect to? Does it create loops or blockages?”
For example, his guilt about understanding killers connects to authority (Jack), law (cop identity), and intimacy (Hannibal). These assemblages aren’t to be judged, they’re to be mapped and re-engineered.
Hannibal is not seen as a father figure or shadow self, he is a machine Will is connected to.
I’d ask: “What does the Lecter-machine do to the Graham-machine? Does it open you up? Does it decode your world? Does it overcode you? Does it plug you into death?”
This language bypasses ego and goes straight to flows: of power, desire, representation, violence.
In this system, Will is not to be healed, but rewired, made more aware of the mechanisms he’s part of and how they trap or liberate him. He might not feel better (as he wouldn’t in any other type probably) but he may gain agency over how he assembles himself, which ultimately what he needs. I’d really want to help him and for a mind like his, that is so intelligent and intuitive…Traditional therapy won’t work or it would make everything worse (specifically CBT for example).
thedeathofthelamb:
found Will Graham commenting on Tiktok about him and Hannibal lmao
aspd Hannibal and bpd Will are my favorite headcanons!
thedeathofthelamb:
okay but have you ever schizoanalyzed your fic ideas? because oh ho bOY
Love mapping the desiring machines <3
irreparableteacup:
“they should’ve let will smoke weed” will graham smoked one (1) time in college and had a panic attack so bad that his roommate called an ambulance don’t give that man marijuana
he needed a 600ml daily dose of lithium
“Occasionally, I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor on purpose. I’m not satisfied when it doesn’t gather itself up again.”
This line always makes me think of Hannibal as having multiple personalities. Not dissociative in the traditional sense, yet still at the mercy of his subconscious triggers. It makes him sound almost a third party to the teacup shattering, as if he had no idea why he actually does that.
mia-graham:
thedeathofthelamb:
imagine being Will’s daughter and having the thickest ass and being like “yeah, I got it from my dad” lmao
um…
omg mia
Milk do you think Will or Hannibal had condensation and dislocation?
Condensation and displacement you mean, right? Yeah, it’s a common defense mechanism that most people partake in. Hannibal is harder to interpret in that way, but Will, even in regards to his relationship with Hannibal seems to displace quite a lot.
Why is Mia competitive towards Molly but not Hannibal?
Because Molly is a woman, Mia feels too alike, and as if she could fulfill anything that Molly could, whereas Hannibal isn’t comparable, in any way.
Hello milk, I keep wondering what's the meaning of your background picture? (The two animals with sun and moon)
Not sure there's any deep meanings to it and you probably just pick it because it's beautiful but I just want to know.
-Lily
Ah haha! I chose it because I frequently contemplate the nature of duality, most of my essays and analysis end up being about contrast without intention :)
kookiedeadbutterflies:
thedeathofthelamb:
schizoid Will Graham you mean the world to me, beloved
Will isn’t Schizoid and here’s why.
Schizoid Personality Disorder is an ego-syntonic personality disorder which means the patient’s symptoms are consistent with their self-perception and desires, causing them minimal distress.
But Will is always in distress about how he is and craves social interaction and touch. He’s proud and even arrogant about his intelligence and how he perceives the world, but he hates how it affects his ability to have a normal life. He purposely keeps people at arm’s length so they never find out about his disturbing love for violence and gore.
He self-isolates by choice, but he’s not at peace with it.
Everything about Will in fact is ego-dystonic when it comes to his self perception. He hates himself. However, ironically he also has narcissistic tendencies and toxic masculinity which are both ego-syntonic in nature and always causes people around him harm because he’s not always self aware of just how poisonous he is.
The claim that Will cannot be schizoid because he craves intimacy and suffers distress is based on a misunderstanding of Schizoid Personality Disorder. SPD does not mean a total lack of desire for closeness, many schizoid individuals experience a conflicted pull toward relationships but ultimately find intimacy intolerable or unsafe. What matters is their default orientation toward detachment and self-sufficiency, which defines Will’s entire life: his reclusive home, his avoidance of ordinary social ties, his preference for solitude with dogs, and his identity built around withdrawal.
The idea that he is not ego-syntonic is also overstated. While Will does feel distress, the distress is not primarily about isolation itself but about his empathy disorder and violent imaginings. In fact, solitude is his comfort zone. His isolation is not a torment but a defensive baseline, exactly consistent with schizoid structure. His suffering stems from intrusive thoughts about morality and violence, not from detachment.
This is where moral OCD (scrupulosity) becomes a more precise explanation. His obsessive fear of being “poisonous,” his compulsive self-monitoring to see if he is like the killers he empathizes with, and his overwhelming guilt about potential harm all mirror classic moral OCD patterns. And so, the ego-dystonic qualities the post points to are not evidence against SPD, they are evidence of comorbid OCD layered on top of a schizoid foundation.
I think Will can very well be schizoid: his life structure, comfort in solitude, and selective, obsessive attachments all align with SPD. His guilt, self-hatred, and torment about morality are better understood as moral OCD, a comorbidity that explains his distress without negating a schizoid diagnosis.
Besides, post season one Will shows a schizoid personality a lot more than the classic suffering puppy Will in season one.
I’ve worked with a lot of schizoids and it’s a shallow understanding that they don’t crave intimacy and touch…Most of them, when they do open up, explain that they simply do not believe they can actually find worthy touch/intimacy and that they never thought anyone was truly interestig enough for that, which fits Will, who clearly wanted to get with Alana for superficial reasons, did that with Margot with classic schizoid detachment, and then later, used Molly as well (whom he had no problem allowing to nearly die).
do you think will would ever realistically ask hannibal to kill for him?
Hell yes lol.
Will gets off on power dynamics, and he’s a raging jealous girlfriend haha. He’d certainly ask for it, if not directly then through his favorite hobby: manipulation :).
Is this your own oc or are you using someone else's character without permission?
mia-graham:
ooc.
With permission.
thedeathofthelamb:
And then it suddenly hit me: what if Will only got married to see if Hannibal would react?
It can definitely sound too simplistic at first glance, like he cynically dragged a woman into his orbit just for the sake of an experiment. But Will’s choices rarely work on that clean, rational plane. His decisions tend to bloom out of a moment, a mixture of impulse, pressure, and a strange curiosity that refuses to be pinned down.
Marriage, for Will, was never something that made coherent sense. There’s no steady buildup toward it, no real narrative logic in his arc that suggests that was his natural endpoint. Instead, it feels as if he stumbled into it in the same way he stumbles into many of his actions…pressed by circumstance. He’s someone who, when confronted with the necessity of a choice, often just does the thing right in front of him rather than plotting out where it might lead. In that sense, marriage to Molly reads less as a grand plan and more as a whim that calcified into permanence.
But whims for Will are never innocent. His impulses are always laced with the undercurrent of Hannibal, that shadow presence shaping every move. Curiosity, perhaps his most Hannibal-like trait, often drives him to test boundaries, not just of morality, but of emotional entanglement. And so, one could read his marriage as a kind of experiment: not a conscious scheme to make Hannibal jealous, but an instinctual wondering. If he took the most binding human ritual, marriage, and gave himself to someone else, would it break through the bars and reach Hannibal? Would the reality of Will belonging to another force Hannibal to react?
And also, Hannibal had his own mock-marriage with Bedelia. Will may have been unconsciously responding in kind. Two men circling each other through the language of ritual and performance, using the marriage bond not as a sincere commitment, but as a gesture loaded with meaning: possession, exclusion, provocation.
So perhaps Will’s marriage really was about curiosity…what happens if I do this? It was about Hannibal, because even in his absence, Will’s actions are never free from him.
Hi milk, I don't know if you already answered this question but how did you come up with your name?
I think I did but essentially it was because I know the fandom loves essays and analysis and that’s like food for us + Dragons are my favorite way to refer to the fandom because fannibals are fine but Dragon is the crazy beast inside Dolarhyde that he then tosses to Will, the “freak on his back”, and what are we if not freaky dragons? So instead of food for dragons because meh, I thought milk sounded cuter lol
Hello, Milk! I just want to ask for your opinion on a question that has been bugging me for a while.
Besides showing us that Will and Hannibal are alive and have reached Bedelía, what else could the last scene of TWOTL be for? To show that they have some sort of revenge or kill list?
That's the obvious answer, I know, but there has to be more to it— or maybe I am being delusional at this point.
Thank you in advance <3
I think the purpose of that scene was just to show that they survived, if you think the fall was literal, which I personally don’t, given some things Bryan said. I think it being Bedelia was just because she was the most obvious victim Will wanted to go after.
I think the extra scene of them in the church is much more loaded, to be honest. That one seems to be pouring with hidden meaning.
