#hannibal meta

[patchouii]

No thoughts head empty just the fact that Hannibal canonically likes cheek-rubbing and nuzzling people he’s intimate with like a cat

Funny that Will, the biggest dog person ever, ended up with a mushy housecat of a husband who probably purrs or smth

[scarletdreamers]

If there's one thing that gives me the ick it's when people paint Will as being much less educated/knowledgeable than Hannibal and give him a distaste for all Hannibal's interest. Some of you act like this man never opened a book. He WROTE and published one?? He has bookshelves full of classical titles in his house (he has a big house. We only ever get to see his living room and kitchen, who knows what kind of study he has that’s filled with books). Including poetry (he has Shakespeare and Wilde on his shelves, who knows what else with less big spine titles). That man has a big house! He doesn't put his bed on the ground floor for no reason. And no, Will wouldn't dislike classical music and neither would he be new to it. He has a piano with sheet music (so actively playing) at home. I wouldn't be surprised if he plays more instruments. Maybe not as obscure as Hannibal's harpsichord and theremin, but more nonetheless. Will loves art, too!!! He knows a couple of things about S. Botticelli, better assume he knows other things. I mean, he can consider Hannibal's tableaus art, calls killing beautiful, that of itself is an art form and artistic vision of the world he shares with Hannibal. He can also cook. Yes, not like Hannibal, but that man wouldn't let Will sous-chef if he was a bad cook no matter how in love he may be with him. There's gotta be some skill to get permission to use Hannibal's kitchen, no matter how pretty someone may be. Hannibal can discuss any subject he wants with Will because he'll catch onto it. I'm not even going to start on the fact that some people act like Will isn't able to keep up with Hannibal's conversations and metaphors. That man bounces them back at him twice as hard. Will Graham. Isn't. Stupid. !!!.

He's not clueless, he's not uncultured. The thing about Will is that he's adaptable. Hannibal doesn't coax his darkness out of him, he brings Will's true self to the light, which is a highly intelligent, cultured, dangerous and fearless man. The fact that he prefers a minimal life, masking his knowledge and also his wealth (because he is wealthy, but that's a different story), over Hannibal's eye-catching dramatics doesn't mean that he doesn't have it. Yes, not as much as Hannibal, but they do have similar interests. If anyone would be clueless it's Hannibal, because I can guarantee that man DOESN'T know how to fix a boat motor with his Aristocratic French boarding school past. (Although he would learn really fast if Will taught him.) They are way more alike than some make them out to be, Hannibal just has a huge amount of theatrics that Will doesn't care for. Hannibal flaunts his personality, Will owns it. That's the difference. 

[willgrahamsbouncingbulge]

I know the joke is that Hannibal ruined his entire life to be with a sweaty man....No, my beautiful babies. He was lonely and going through the motions. Every part of his existence was a visage. But Will stepped beyond the veil, saw him, took his bloodied hands, and loved all of him; so much so that Will could not even die without him. Hannibal was never happier then when he was plunging into the Atlantic Ocean, entwined with the man he loves, finally feeling alive.

[bluemoonscape]

Hunger is obviously a major theme in Hannibal—it’s literally the cannibal show—but the difference in how that’s portrayed with Hannigram is intriguing.

Hannibal was starving for connection before he had Will, and then everything changed for him. As Bedelia tells Will, “Did he daily feel a stab of hunger, and find nourishment at the very sight of you? Yes.” Hannibal’s hunger is sated by so much as the sight of Will. A mere look at him is enough to satisfy him.

But Will is different. Rather than being sated by his connection with Hannibal, it is the very thing that makes him hungry. There’s a frame in the Italy chapter that makes it look like he’s trapped in a starvation cage. In the script for his sailing scene, he’s literally described to look hungry:

Both Hannibal and Will have a possessive, obsessive, all-consuming love for one another, but it affects them quite differently. Hannibal is nourished by the very sight of Will, but for Will, no amount of the profound attention he experiences from Hannibal can fully sate his hunger—it’s a high he can’t help but chase. It fuels his pathological need to return to Hannibal again and again, no matter how self-destructive it is. I think this is why Will is more outwardly possessive of Hannibal than Hannibal is of Will. Hannibal wants Will to be his; Will wants Hannibal to be no one else’s. Both forms of possession, but Will’s is more jealous because of the way he experiences Hannibal’s attention. It’s a high, it’s a hunger—it’s a need, not a want.

[asadstatue]

The way Hannibal sees Will, and how Will sees Hannibal.

Their perception of one another for sure, but there's this fact that they reflect each other. Two standing mirrors, face to face: Will sees his own beast within when looking at Hannibal, and Hannibal sees the light he still owns in his soul. The ability to love so intensely, and the state of being comfortably violent. Two aspects of them people mostly assume nonexistent.

[we-are-making-it-up-as-we-go]

I wonder if Hannibal realizes that he sometimes behaves like the orphaned child that he is. There's something missing and it's the love that he should have received but was instead violently ripped from him.

In addition, Will is the only one who notices.

Hannibal's childlike wonder with the world, his anxious attachments, his mood swings, his possessiveness over the few people he lets himself be attached to, his need for everything to be exactly how he molded it, his jealousy at being sidelined by the few people he loves...

...and most of all his stubborn idea that everybody should be kind, polite and considering to each other, and if they aren't, the scared starved child in Hannibal will see to it that those Rude People can't hurt him anymore. He desperatly wants to keep on his rose colored glasses while the world keeps yanking them away. In order to get them back, he has to defeat and quite literally put down the people who keep ruining his illusion of a world where he is loved. He needs that illusion so much that he modelled his whole life to adhere to it, starting with a higher education, a respectable job, nice clothes, nice food for guests, etc, in hope that those things and atteibutes will make people love him.

Will understood this to be true both in Hannibal and in the Ripper, way before he knew they cohabitated in the same body. He understood that they both need to eliminate everything that threatens to break them, and it's a lot of things/ people, considering how fragile Hannibal and the Ripper are.

A lot of things/people have the audacity to hurt him, and once they do, Hannibal needs to assure himself that they'll never hurt him again, while also assuring himself that he was always superior to them (he does this by eating them) so to convince himself that they never really hurt him.

This way, he can keep convincing himself that the soldiers that ate Misha did not actually hurt him, since they are inferior to him —they are, since he hunted them down and consumed them; this demostrates their inferiority— and what's inferior to him can't really hurt him. ("Nothing [traumatic] happened to me")

The problem to this reasoning is that upon further scrutiny it crubles fast. And to keep it steady and straight, Hannibal needs to reassure himself of his invulnerability more and more often, with more show of force and superiority each time.

He's one of those pitiful things born in hospitals who miracolously survive their damned conditions and will forever be more vulnerable to the outside world; their only hope to not be shattered upon contact with others is to annihilate those others.

He is starved, most of all, of affection, and you know the saying "those who never received love with spoons, adapt to lick it off knives"? (It isnt the exact phrasing, I know). Well, he doesn't willingly lick knives and cuts himself; but since he never developed appropriate armour (aka, a healthy self esteem), every small slight from other people hurts him like a bitch, and the only way to make sure the pain doesn't come back is to waste the son of a bitch that caused it.

[hannibal-lectotype]

Something the Hannibal television show does phenomenally, that the books and movies don’t really do at all, is showcase how well he actually blends in.

In the Thomas Harris works, every scene that Doctor Lecter is in manages to make it very clear that he’s dangerous, and everyone else is basically Damocles without being aware of the blade. He’s unsettling even when he’s charming, and the audience is always aware that he is the lion in the room. We can see the swords dangling by the hair over every other character.

But in the show, Hannibal is just a guy, maybe pretentious and nerdy, but charming and kind for the most part. We are taken in with him, just like the other characters. Then, when he does lash out, moving like the predator he is, we’re left absolutely shook, almost ashamed that for a moment we forgot who he is. In the next scene, he’s as soft and charming as ever, and the deception begins again. We slowly fall under the spell again, because he’s just that good. We experience what the characters do, even though we’re granted the behind the scenes knowledge that he’s the villain of the story.

[tayasui-mono]

"Finds nourishment at the very sight of you" line hits harder because Hannibal is a cannibal. Hannibal's normal hunger runs deep and ravenous; he is unsatisfied with conventional meat: He eats human beings. He craves risk, dominance, danger, and beauty. For someone capable of a gaping hunger like this to be satiated with the mere sight of Will???? For someone with so much desire and greed to be satisfied by the M E R E SIGHT of somebody??????????? OTL