(2/2) this is kinda personal so feel free to ignore if you dont want rl abuse mentioned to you rn but i remember reading some of the early assessments from when i was brought into foster care. that there was more than one note taken of me being “manipulative” as if that were the fault of someone whod been emotionally abused the first 15 years of their life among other things. in a series that makes so much comment on how others perceptions affect and change you, it seems like a cheap oversight
I super hope you don’t mind me publishing this whole thing; I think it’s important and I definitely appreciate you sending me this bc it’s actually something I’ve wanted to talk about but didn’t really have the platform for
As someone who also has severe manipulative tendencies as a direct result of growing up in an abusive household, I feel you completely, and it bothered me a lot that the show acted as though there were any reason at all to hold Abigail accountable for what she might have done to help her father????????
Like. Abigail’s father was a murderer and a cannibal, who they literally know based on his pathology and kill pattern was murdering girls so that he wouldn’t kill her. You absolutely cannot hold a LITERAL CHILD responsible for actions she took to prevent her father from murdering her???? There should have been no question of her being arrested for having been the bait; that was very obviously done in self defense
And as much as Hannibal manipulated the situation with Nick Boyle for his own gain……. He was absolutely right, based on the actions of the other characters and especially Jack Crawford’s attitude, to suggest that she would not be treated fairly for having killed him in self defense
tbh i don’t even think it was “risk” at that point… it was “die a good man or become a monster”. Will fought so hard and for so long to do good, to fight the thing in him that does delight in violence and blood and to fight his love for someone for whom violence and blood are all there is
He’s been trying to be a good man, he’s spent years trying to be Molly’s Husband™, someone who is kind and soft and loving, who went through some bad shit with a bad guy but put that behind him and is trying to rebuild his life into something normal and hopeful and good.
And when he comes back to see Hannibal in prison, he still wants to be able to be that man. He worked hard to build himself that Good Thing and he wants to keep it. Wants that to be someone he could really, stably be.
But he spends all this time with Hannibal and he realizes… that isn’t him. That’s a character he’s been playing, and maybe could’ve kept playing, but it’s not him the way the man he is in Hannibal’s presence is. He still wants to be able to go back (that life is so much softer and easier and he has fought this so hard and for so long that giving up feels like rendering every sacrifice made along the way worthless) but he knows that he probably can’t
And after they kill Dolarhyde, he knows he can’t. There’s nothing for him there that could possibly compare to the way it felt to kill at Hannibal’s side. To the way it feels to lean his head against Hannibal’s chest, blood soaking the both of them, and just be held. Now that he knows what this really feels like, how utterly incomparably beautiful it is, there’s nothing else for him
He’s in love, and he is loved in turn, and he can’t hide that from himself any longer.
He’s in love with a monster and he wants to be with that monster. He wants to kill with that monster. He wants the horrible blood soaked life that monster is offering him, and that’s the only life he can see himself wanting now at all—but he still, desperately, wants to be good.
“Bedelia is sitting down to a marvelous roast of her own leg. It’s wrapped in leaves and it’s surrounded with flowers and tropical fruit and beautiful roses. And also ice and coal, which represent Dante’s sixth and ninth Circles of Hell. In the last episode there were many references to Dante: some spoken and most just in the set decoration and the food and other subliminal references. “
"Technically, you killed him." 