#nbc hannibal meta

[titleleaf]

Various Wills Graham & The Man Your Haunted Eideteker Could Smell Like

I promised you a really long-winded post about why the "ship on the bottle" aftershave exchanges don't work for me in the TV show and I am here to deliver. Thoughts on Will and Clarice's respective ~*~*~*signature scents~*~*~* in the novels, how the scent motif gets updated for the NBC show, and the smells I want 2013 Will Graham to smell like. Come with me on an olfactory journey.

(That second ad: dude, ew.) Gird your loins because there is so much corny sailing imagery to come.

In The Books

Dr. Hannibal Lecter lay on his cot asleep, his head propped on a pillow against the wall. Alexandre Dumas’s Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine was open on his chest. Graham had stared through the bars for about five seconds when Lecter opened his eyes and said, “That’s the same atrocious aftershave you wore in court.” “I keep getting it for Christmas.” Dr. Lecter’s eyes are maroon and they reflect the light redly in tiny points. Graham felt each hair bristle on his nape. He put his hand on the back of his neck. “Christmas, yes,” Lecter said. “Did you get my card?” “I got it. Thank you.” Dr. Lecter’s Christmas card had been forwarded to Graham from the FBI crime laboratory in Washington. He took it into the backyard, burned it, and washed his hands before touching Molly. [...] “Your hands are rough. They don’t look like a cop’s hands anymore. That shaving lotion is something a child would select. It has a ship on the bottle, doesn’t it?” Dr. Lecter seldom holds his head upright. He tilts it as he asks a question, as though he were screwing an auger of curiosity into your face. Another silence, and Lecter said, “Don’t think you can persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.”

(Red Dragon, Thomas Harris, 1981)

Will is in his mid-to-late 30s circa s1 of the NBC show, airing in 2013; his book counterpart is ~40 at the time of Red Dragon (at least prior to some later timeline shuffling? I think?) which would make him ~34-35 at the time of his briefer encounter with Lecter in that continuity. The substantial difference is when they're born -- the early 1940s rather than the late 1970s. Show Will's Gen X. Book Will isn't even a baby boomer, he's Silent Generation! These generational cohorts don't mean very much but in some things, like fashion and marketing, they flag differences in how certain products are marketed and how they're viewed.

(all my Old Spice bottle images in this post come courtesy of OldSpiceCollectibles)

The aftershave lotion with a ship on the bottle that Hannibal is bitching about is almost certainly Old Spice -- the OG Old Spice, as formulated in the late 1970s. This was a golden era for aftershave in gift-giving (witness the dozens and dozens of different collectible Avon bottles) and while the classic Old Spice bottle very much does have a ship on the bottle, Willy might have given his stepfather any number of novelty bottles designed for gifting, all of them with roughly similar early-Americana/nautical themes. Ship's wheels, ship's lanterns, ships in general, scrimshawed whale teeth, binoculars, basically anything you could possibly want. (I'd wager this is at least in part to keep up with similar collectibles coming out of Avon, but I might have that the wrong way around, or be completely off the mark altogether.)

http://www.oldspicecollectibles.com/Bottles/novelty bottles.html

The fragrance inside the bottle is a spicy floral with resinous basenotes, what for decades has been called an "oriental" fragrance. (Mercifully some parts of the industry seem to be beginning a shift toward less racist language, and I hope that shift continues, I'm seeing people float "ambrée"/"amberesque" and other language to evoke the spicy, warm profile of some scents.) It's an alcohol-based aftershave lotion, so it stings like a mother when you put it on freshly-shaven skin, and it's not great for hydration.

For cultural context, most of this will probably be stating the obvious, but I think it's interesting with the book's themes around social class, family -- Will's little family, Dolarhyde's family of origin, Dolarhyde's victims' family -- and masculinity.

In 1981, Old Spice is already positioned firmly as a highly accessible men's fragrance in the US -- available pretty much anywhere at the drugstore level, with a coordinating line of toiletries like shaving cream if aftershave isn't enough for you. For a wide swath of people of a certain age, it carries associations with dads and grandfathers, or the transmission of rituals around masculinity and coming of age from father to son. (This is weird for me as a person who came of age during the whole "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign, which aimed at revamping Old Spice's product line and aiming it toward a younger demographic, in competition with Axe. That Old Spice revamp was probably my intro into men's fragrances and it's so fucking embarrassing to say that -- it seemed very transgressive and butch to me to be wearing men's deodorant with my Catholic schoolgirl 'fit every weekday.)

It's chronologically feasible that Will's dad also wore Old Spice, and it makes sense as the kind of gift you'd give your new stepdad -- it's an impersonal gift, reflecting a fairly conservative, mainline, American masculinity. The unease many American men still felt about using scented products — even deodorant, which remained a squeamish topic — could be mitigated by the association with shaving the face as some distinctly male ritual and one taught by fathers to sons as part of their entrance into adolescence.

Have another incredibly corny print ad from 1970:

(the text is tiny here, but the gist is: hey, all these different dudes love Old Spice! Grandpa Hal! Uncle Fred! Jack! Dave! Even that goofball Pete! Just a whole bunch of guys.)

So Hannibal's remark has layers -- he's needling Will about the fact that he knows (or suspects) that Will now has a wife and child, which he likely didn't have when they last encountered each other. He's taking a swipe at his social class and his lack of sophistication — for someone with a dainty nose and a decidedly bitchy sensibility (especially in RD) Old Spice is very much déclassé. And in a narrative level, the fact that Hannibal is distinguished by his aesthetic refinement and a certain degree of fussiness as well as viciousness sets him and Will in opposition, two different modes of masculinity. I have… a lot of thoughts about how Thomas Harris uses aesthetics and sensory pleasure and refinement — certain fabrics, certain garments, certain styles of penmanship — to frame social deviance in these books but that’s for a different post I’m definitely not going to make.

This moment gets a fun parallel to Hannibal's first meeting with Clarice in The Silence Of The Lambs (1988):

“Now,” Lecter said, sitting sideways at his table to face her, “what did Miggs say to you?” “Who?” “Multiple Miggs, in the cell down there. He hissed at you. What did he say?” “He said, 'I can smell your cunt.”' “I see. I myself cannot. You use Evyan skin cream, and sometimes you wear L'Air du Temps, but not today. Today you are determinedly unperfumed. How do you feel about what Miggs said?” “He's hostile for reasons I couldn't know. It's too bad. He's hostile to people, people are hostile to him. It's a loop.” “Are you hostile to him?” “I'm sorry he's disturbed. Beyond that, he's noise. How did you know about the perfume?” “A puff from your bag when you got out your card. Your bag is lovely.”

This is definitely a different tone than he takes with Will Graham, both because he has a very different past history with Will and because of Clarice's position as a woman, placed in front of him as an object for scrutiny. L'Air du Temps is also an old school fragrance (premiering in 1948) and had been popular for several decades by the time the novel's set — a warm floral with the kind of powdery iris note that gets really annoying people on perfume review sites fighting over the words "old lady". (FWIW I own multiple bottles of L’Air du Temps and all but one are from estate sales. The one that isn't, I... uh... bought because I was thinking about Clarice Starling a lot at the time.) This one was and is a ton of women's signature scent, and there's nothing juvenile about it. Clarice wears it, and her mother might well have worn it too. That shit is iconic but for different reasons than Old Spice is for men.

(This little '80s spray is not what any of my bottles look like. If you want more on the various ways this one's been formulated over the years, check out the PerfumeShrine piece I linked above or this blog post on how to identify its different bottles and flankers.)

Someone on Fragrantica compared L'Air du Temps to the olfactory version of a pair of pearl earrings or a cashmere sweater — conveying polished, (small-c) conservative femininity. The inside of Clarice’s handbag is the recipient of scent here, not her body (that part's conveyed through the remark about her hand cream) and the indirectness of the detail under observation is what conveys the keenness of Lecter’s senses and how closely he’s paying attention to his visitor. He also huffs her business card because of course he does.

All of these elements of class and restraint are set in opposition to the crassness of Miggs’ unwanted commentary on Clarice’s body. With her good bag and her cheap shoes Clarice is faking a certain degree of maturity and presenting herself in the most palatable way possible for this interview ("determinedly unperfumed" and all the things that can mean; pretty but serious; feminine but not too feminine; performing the right social class, all along in flight from her "common" origins) but she’s still facing virulent misogyny from damn near every direction. The book doesn’t have quite the same pointed sense of a Theme(tm) around misogyny that the film manages, though that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty going on with regard to gender, but I think the differences around how Hannibal identifies these two perfumes, and what the reader is meant to gather from each allusion or name drop, are telling and very fun.

Hannibal then goes on to give Clarice advice about how to zhuszh up her add-a-bead necklace with some semiprecious stones in order to best set off the color of her hair and eyes, which… again, I do not have time to get into that, but I’m obsessed with it.

In The NBC Show

Hannibal stands behind Will, his NOSTRILS FLARE as CAMERA SLOWLY PUSHES IN on the back of Will’s neck. WILL GRAHAM Did you just smell me? HANNIBAL Difficult to avoid. I really must introduce you to a finer aftershave. That smells like something with a ship on the bottle. WILL GRAHAM I keep getting it for Christmas. HANNIBAL Have your headaches gotten any worse lately? More frequent? WILL GRAHAM Yes, actually. HANNIBAL I’d change the aftershave. (s01e05 "Coquilles")

Love the mention of the back of Will's neck, already intimating that it's not his aftershave Hannibal's huffing here. This is something I just can't fanwank for the television show's remixed timeline -- if Will doesn't have a partner and child in his life, or really anyone else in his life in a position to be giving him presents, this recontextualized snippet about getting the offending aftershave for Christmas doesn't make a lot of sense. It works on the level of "hey, I recognize that bit!" and it establishes for the viewer (or reminds them of) Hannibal's highly developed sense of smell, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

INT. HANNIBAL LECTER'S HOUSE - KITCHEN - NIGHT Hannibal comes into the dark room. Moves toward the refrigerator. Stops. Lifts his nose to the air. HANNIBAL The same unfortunate aftershave. Too long in the bottle. Hannibal opens the refrigerator door and the light illuminates a gun pointed at his head, Will Graham behind it. - (s02e07 "Yakimono")

HANNIBAL LECTER. He lies on his cot, asleep, his head propped on a pillow against the wall. Alexandre Dumas's Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine is open on his chest. Eyes still closed, he takes a long slow breath through his nose, smelling the current of air that the CAMERA traveled. He opens his eyes. HANNIBAL That's the same atrocious aftershave you wore in court. - (s03e09 "…And the Woman Clothed with the Sun", very directly drawn from Red Dragon)

What’s the modern-day analogue of the original Old Spice in 1981 — ubiquity, maturity, connotations around class and gender? I don’t know if there is one. In 2013 Will's more likely to be wearing Old Spice deodorant, post-rebrand, still with a ship on the packaging but called Fiji or Denali. Or Bearglove, or Wolfthorn. No doubt Hannibal would find that offensive, but offensive in a different way than his book counterpart way back in the Reagan administration.

There's no shortage of drugstore-y scents in 2013, highly accessible fragrances for a person giving a generic Male Gift at an accessible price point, or habitual buys for a guy who mostly wants to smell like he's at least attempting to be a put-together human being: D&G Light Blue, Davidoff Cool Water, CK One, CK Eternity. (Or their body spray equivalents, if you really want Hannibal to suffer, and I do, every day of my life.) But in general there's a* lot* more diversity in fragrance worn by American men in 2013 than there was circa the events of Red Dragon or at whatever age book!Will might have started using fragrance. There's no one scent that stands in for such a broad section of gender and class as Old Spice aftershave would have in the 1970s.

It seems doubtful that in 2013 Will's using whatever he's using primarily for its shaving benefits, not least of all because he's a bearded king. (Presumably he cleans his beard up from time to time and trims his neck and whatnot, but bear with me here.) True aftershave is still available in many drugstores, including some venerable names — Aqua Velva, Skin Bracer, Pinaud Clubman — but they’re no longer the arena of younger men unless they're curious budding fragheads. And you can still be an outdoorsy dude in 2013 wearing Old Spice, but it's a bit more of a self-conscious put-on at that point, either someone's buying Will tongue-in-cheek dad cologne to go with his house full of boat engines and dog statues, or Will's bashful about his own taste for tongue-in-cheek dad cologne.

What might Will be wearing in 2013? This depends on which aspect we’re trying to reflect. For modest budget and ubiquity I can see him going for the OG Polo Green or one of its flankers. (There's a great piece of NBC Hannibal perfume meta by Genufa that I swear I only encountered after I already chose this, and it mentions Polo Classic in tandem with Will, so I'm glad we're in agreement here.) For stuff in an amber-spice neighborhood, CK Obsession For Men maybe? Still retro (premiered in 1986) but not 1930s retro.

What’s a step up? If I was out here somehow tasked with buying this man a nice smelling gift, what would I choose? If Will wanted to treat himself with something under that broad constellation of selling points — a single fragrance for steady wear, something unflashy and congruent with his presentation of himself -- I would be really tempted to put him in something slightly more niche, but not a lot more niche.

I am a huge fan of Etat Libre d'Orange Fat Electrician, a really fun creamy vetiver that's sexy in a clean soft-butch kind of way. It's not spicy in the least but as the scent's subtitle of a "semi-modern vetiver" indicates it has a nice timeless quality, warm and clean-smelling but not soapy. (And a very subtle gourmand aspect -- chestnut cream or marrons glacés.) Or something from DS&Durga, Mississippi Medicine, or Bowmakers, or Burning Barbershop -- there's a whole slew of "vintage barbershop"-inspired scents that might scratch the same itch for someone who wears a fragrance out of habit and to feel grounded in a solid, put-together masculinity. (Maybe especially when he's not feeling otherwise particularly grounded or put-together.)

For different ways of evoking Will's kind of dignified no-fuss outdoorsman thing, Profumum Arso ("Cedar leaves, incense, leather, pine resin") maybe, or Fumidus, though it sounds like peaty hell to me -- Will seems to be a bourbon guy and not a scotch dude. For something a little more glamorous and a little more established, maybe Guerlain Habit Rouge, idk. 

What’s the next step up from these -- the equivalent of Bella's Bolt Of Lightning? If someone (with a bankroll on par with Hannibal, or Bedelia, or Jack, or Bella) were to introduce Will to a still pricier class of fragrance, what might that look like? It's hard for me to say, since this isn't a type of perfumery I engage with, like... at all. I like my indie oils, I like niche perfumers, I love decants, but I don't have a cool $800 to drop on a whole bottle of... anything. Once you reach a certain level you can shop pretty differently from normal people, up to and including getting something one-of-a-kind commissioned for your boytoy/crime gimp/ex-husband's ex-husband/etc. (And as a gift for someone else -- since none of these people barring possibly Bella has a remotely normal relationship with Will -- it'd say as much about their intentions with the gift and their perception of Will as the reality of who Will is.) So I'm going to have to mull that a while.

Absolutely none of this gets into the bonkers Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella sequence in Hannibal, which... has a lot going on, idk. ("Starling, then. Clean, and rich in textures. Cotton sun-dried and ironed. Clarice Starling, then. Engaging and toothsome. Tedious in her earnestness and absurd in her principles. Quick in her mother wit." Please, sir!) Like basically every other element of the series, the smell stuff gets ratcheted up to 11 for that book, and it seems like its own separate thing to unpack. Hannibal fucking loves shopping in that book and I love reading about his weird little ass shopping.

#ska watches nbc hannibal #long post #nbc hannibal meta

[frasermints]

hannibal and will are good and morally correct people. their actions should not have had any consequences. they were not wrong at all ever during the entire 3 seasons. i am not taking criticism at this time.

#i am a fag apologist at heart and those men are canonically married #hannibal #hannibal nbc #nbc hannibal #hannibal lecter #will graham #hannigram #my post #hannibal meta #nbc hannibal meta #hannibal nbc meta

[pesky--dust]

the "diagnosis" Chilton gave Will during his trial was the one closest to the truth ("Will Graham has never been diagnosed. He won't allow anyone to test him. He has carefully constructed a persona to hide his real nature from the world. He wears it so well, even Jack Crawford couldn't see past it. (...) There is not yet a name for whatever Will Graham is.")

unlike Alana Bloom or Jack Crawford, he saw what a manipulator Will was and that in front of them he played a poor, confused, wounded bird ("(...) A particularly-manipulative one at that. Poor, confused, wounded bird for Agent Crawford and Doctors Lecter and Bloom. And for me, well, I get the psychopath's triumvirate: charm, focus and ruthlessness. The charm, of course, being debateable.")

he believed Will that Hannibal may be the Chesapeake Ripper and said Jack Crawford: "Hannibal once served me tongue and made a joke about eating mine. It's hard not to at least consider it.". Jack ignored him. (I think Jack was already planning some large-scale action against Hannibal, but that's a topic for another post)

he called Dr Lecter "Hannibal the Cannibal"

he understood that Will Graham was alive because Hannibal Lecter liked him that way

criticized Jack for letting Will and Hannibal get closer to each other and then leaving Will alone ("You dangle Will Graham and now you cut bait. You are letting Hannibal have him hook, line and sinker.")

when Jack expressed hope that the relationship between Hannibal and Will was one of those friendships that ends after the disemboweling, Chilton told him: "I would argue, with these two, that's tantamount to flirtation. Will is going to lead you right to him." and let's be real, he was right.

#hannibal #nbc hannibal #hannibal nbc #will graham #hannibal lecter #hannigram #murder husbands #jack crawford #frederick chilton #my dumb-dumb babygirl is actually always right #i love him #hannibal meme #hannibal memes #hannibal shitpost #hannibal crack #hannibal meta #hannibal analysis #i guess #character meta #character analysis #frederick chilton meta #frederick chilton analysis #pesky--dust crack #pesky dust thoughts #pesky--dust analysis

[cuntysalmonshirt]

Post-fall Hannigram needs to be Will running up to Hannibal snapping this photo and then sending it to Jack for no reason but to tease him.

Like just every year on the anniversary of their fall he gets a post card:

The year Will sends this Jack retires:

#nbc hannibal #hannibal nbc #hannibal meta #hannibal shitpost #hugh dancy #mads mikkelsen #hannibal

[ghostdrinkssoup]

“could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and find nourishment at the very sight of you?” is such a romantic line because despite cannibalism sustaining the illusion that hannibal can control everything and determine outcomes and reverse time, loving will has changed him so drastically that instead of consuming will, will consumes him. and hannibal hungers for him, yearns and aches for him, but is content to just exist near him. to stay in his orbit somehow, if only will allows it. hannibal, who needs to cannibalise others to stay in power, finds nourishment just by looking at will. he loves him so profoundly that he could be imprisoned forever and still it would be better than knowing he might never see will again. it sates him more than eating the pigs beneath him. in will, he finds religion

#no wonder will broke him out of prison #if he was uncertain before he wasn’t after hearing that #and for some reason people tend to edit that line out so that bedelia just answers yes?? #like I know it’s because it’s a roundabout way of saying he’s in love with you #and vague enough to be debatable #EXCEPT IT ISN’T #IT’S SO MUCH MORE ROMANTIC THAN SIMPLY SAYING YES #CONSIDER THE IMPLICATIONS #losing my goddamn MIND #nbc hannibal #hannibal #will graham #hannigram #hannibal meta #ghost speaks

[vvulcanprince]

hannibal shooting locations in florence with screencaps from the show part 2 :3

if you want to repost, please CREDIT!

and responding to a reblog on the first part, i infact made my friend wander the locations with me and compare them with the scenes from the show haha

#hannibal edit #hannibal s3 #hannibal season three #nbc hannibal #hannibal the cannibal #hannibal lecter #hannibal fanart #hannibal nbc #hannibal fan art #hannibal #hannibal meta #hannibal tv #hannibaledit #hannigram #hannibal au #hannibal and will #hannibal parallels #firenze #florence #florence italy #hannibal florence

[thedarkmongoose]

it's interesting that it pans to will fishing in the stream when chilton says "he likes to play god" bc speaking of religious allegories, will graham is a fisherman and a "fisher of men." both in the profiler sense (he catches criminals), and in the sense that he captures men's hearts (jesus urged his followers to be fishers of men to the gospel). except will's gospel is darkness, and while he doesn't forcibly push people towards it like hannibal, anyone involved with will gets dragged down into the inferno. for he is a fisher of (damned) men. subsequently, the "saving lives is just as arousing as ending them" bit could be said about god, which is a sentiment hannibal shares throughout the series.

#will has a major god AND savior complex #also funny that everything chilton says could be said about himself/hannibal #hannibal meta #hannibal memes #meta #nbc hannibal #hannibal #will graham #jack crawford #frederick chilton #hannigram #hassun

[morningstarbee]

i was looking up the driving time in Savoureax for a fic i'm writing and

Hannibal drives Will 18 hours from Baltimore to Duluth ???? What the fuck were they doing in the car that entire time??? And 18 hours is without breaks. Hannibal drove Will 18 hours and wasn't even getting dick, that's crazy, he was so whipped

All those posts going "aww Will fell asleep in the car with him he must trust him <3". No mfer he fell asleep because it was an 18 hour drive

#hannibal #nbc hannibal #hannibal lecter #hannigram #murder husbands #will graham #hannibal meta

[gothicwill]

My absolute favorite parallel in the entire show is wills response to “do you think you can change me? The way I’ve changed you?”

I see the first one as how it actually happened. Will is in pain but still delivers the line with this cutting smugness and self assuredness. His tone is even slightly playful despite the situation.

The second one is how Hannibal remembers/perceived it. Like a nail in a coffin. Will is looking at him with clear distain, even disgust. His tone is hollow and empty. Even the lighting is colder.

Hannibal remembers this moment as a tragedy while Will sees it as a triumph.

#In reality Hugh just wanted to reshoot the scene but hey I like to be delusional lol #Hannibal meta #hannibal #nbc hannibal #will graham #hannibal lecter #hannigram #nbc hannigram #hugh dancy #mads mikkelsen #mizumono

[kuroshika]

hey. *reaches for your face without warning and adjusts your glasses* where do you fall on the spectrum?

#jack was the master of rizz in the first episode fr #it’s kallies annual rewatch time #and she just finished the first episode #so get ready for some incoherent kallie brainworms #we’re back in business baby #hannibal nbc #hannibal #nbc hannibal #hannigram #hannibal lecter #will graham #mads mikkelsen #hugh dancy #hannibal parallels #jack crawford #hannibal meta #hannibal shitpost #kalypso shut the fuck up #kuroshika.txt

[honeygrahambitch]

Can we talk about how Hannibal knew from the very start that Will would be the one to figure out he was the Chesapeake Ripper.

"I don't find you that interesting."

"You will."

Not "you might", it's "you will".

He was 100% sure Will would discover him the way no one ever has. Will would see him and his darkness and his demons and he would find everything interesting, not horrible, not disgusting.

And not only does this show that Hannibal knows that Will is smart enough to put the pieces together but it also shows that he was willing to open up for Will to see the real him. Sort of "You will find me that interesting, I guarantee that, I will make sure you do."

#hannibal meta #hannibal #hannigram #hannibal lecter #will graham #hannibal nbc #hannibal series

[classicpalladium]

So in love with how NBC Hannibal clearly references the Hannibal films but instead of taking them as an inspiration for Hannibal’s character, the parallels between the movies and the series always depict Will instead.

Like this scene. This is a visual reference to Hannibal Rising (2007), where Hannibal kills one of the men that ate his sister.

In the show it’s WILL taking Hannibal’s place.

After this scene in Hannibal Rising, Hannibal continues to eat the man’s cheeks.

Sounds familiar?

Also, Will’s whole prison setup is a mirror of the setup in Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Hannibal in SOTL vs Will at the end of season 1/beginning of season 2:

They could have done the obvious, which is link the tv show Hannibal to the movie Hannibals (which, to be fair, they did in S3b; Hannibal’s prison chic minimalism was very much inspired by Manhunter (1986)). But I find it so interesting that they chose to visually mirror Hannibal’s development in Will’s storyline!! They’re the same. Will is following in Hannibal’s footsteps, he’s tracing it back to where it all began to become him. Ugh

#hannibal #hannibal meta #nbc hannibal #hannibal nbc #will graham #hannibal lecter #hannibal rising #manhunter 1986 #the silence of the lambs

[pesky--dust]

You have no idea how big supporter of the theory that the fall from the cliff never happened I am.

Like— The first scene of the series didn't even happen because Will was so immersed in the story he was telling during the lecture. It was only his imagination; at the crime scene Will quickly receives confirmation of all his conclusions, such as the fact that the marriage was tapped and I truly doubt electricians would have been called immediately to the crime scene along with the police, ambulance and FBI. And then he is suddenly “magically” back in the classroom from the house of the victims, when he says, “Everyone has thought about killing someone one way or another. Be it your own hands or the hand of God”.

And since the first scene of the series didn't take place at all, why wouldn't it be the same with the ending? During the battle with Francis Dolarhyde, Will sees him with the wings of a red dragon, something that is unreal. He is also only imagining that.

And the fall is also from Will's perspective, so did it really happen? Or is this only a metaphor for his fall as a human being? He genuinely felt that the brutal pack hunting he shared with Hannibal was beautiful, so he finally accepts his dark nature — he falls as a good and moral man, descending into the depths of crime (ocean).

I love it so much. I'm sorry.

#hannibal #nbc hannibal #hannibal nbc #will graham #hannibal lecter #hannigram #murder husbands #hannibal shitpost #pesky--dust shitpost #hannibal s03e13 #the wrath of the lamb #hannibal the wrath of the lamb #cliff #hannibal meta #hannibal analysis #i guess #episode meta #episode analysis #the wrath of the lamb meta #the wrath of the lamb analysis

[tethered-heartstrings]

If Will dies first, it is obvious Hannibal would cannibalize Will’s flesh. Hannibal mourned Mischa by eating her, and he would do the same for Will; to consume and eat and incorporate is part of grieving. But what would Hannibal do with Will’s bones? He’d eat the marrow, maybe make soup from them, but what of the calcified parts that remain, the parts that can’t be eaten?

I don’t really see him just keeping them around or displaying them, something stagnant and to be ogled. Burying them in the family plot in Lithuania makes sense because Will is family, but it also requires Hannibal to go back to a place he can’t go. Hannibal could cremate the bones, but then what? Spreading the ashes doesn’t seem like something he would do; he can’t know what happens to them. Keeping Will in an urn on his desk or a shelf also feels out of character, a memory collecting dust.

What if Hannibal had Will’s ashes pressed into pencil lead? There are ways to compress ashes into something that could be written with or drawn. What if Hannibal draws Will with his own ashes, commemorating him in a completed cycle. Sketching the man with his own remains. Remembering Will as he saw him, recreating moments they shared from Hannibal’s mind palace. Having Will live forever in depictions of himself. Hannibal would never be truly left behind. And Hannibal would sharpen the pencils as he always had; he isn’t unfamiliar with taking a blade to Will. Shaving off a layer but keeping him sharp.

Displaying and keeping art made from Will’s ashes would mean so much more than a reconstructed skeleton or an urn on a shelf or a plot that would become overgrown with weeds. He could draw Will in motion, alive, as he wished to remember him, and create moments and memories they didn’t get to experience together.

#yes ik bones are only like 15% carbon but let's live in the camp word that ignores logistics for 2 seconds #will graham #hannibal lecter #hannibal #hannibal nbc #nbc hannibal #hannibal meta #i guess? #hannigram #the speaking clown #maybe he pulls a dolarhyde and eats the drawings jk. unless? #also ty but fuck you spoon for this <3333 you are genius

[suchawrathfullamb]

when that anti claimed will didn't love hannibal back like dear friend where were you when right fucking after hannibal tried to eat will's BRAIN he still didn't think hannibal deserved to be hurt or die and manipulated everyone to orchestrate their escape and even THEN STILL didn't turn him in but simply resigned like the brokenhearted man he was and practically said "it's too hard to love you please leave me" AND THEN WOULD RATHER DIE than be away from him but knew being with him was too painful and dangerous and delicious and he knew he could never get a hold of him but he'd RATHER DIE than have him caged again, or killed, or have him leave him again like do you get this? HE CHOSE MOTHERFUCKING DEATH over separation. AND YOU STILL HAVE THE AUDACITY TO SAY HE WASN'T IN LOVE??

#pls respect our deities #have some decency #hannigram #nbc hannibal #hannibal #will graham #murder husbands #hannibal lecter #hugh dancy #mads mikkelsen #meta

[willgrahamscock]

Hannibal keeps hurting Will to see if he can take it, he believes to truly be loved the other person has to endure the enormity of the pain he has suffered, what he went through was so specifically cruel that it has alienated him from the rest of the world. He has to change Will (in his mind) to accept the love Will already had for him, and Will endures because it's what he'd always had to do to survive his empathy disorder.

#alex says things #the horror of their love #hannibal #hannigram #nbc hannibal #will graham #hannibal lecter #murder husbands #hannibal meta