#would it not have been all the more entertaining to watch Hannibal and Will interact if Will was accented? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tourturedfolkloredepartment · 25 days

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Title: I despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you

Description: Will doesn’t like the feeling’s he gets when he’s around Hannibal

C/W: Angst/open ending

Song: lacy by Olivia Rodrigo

**Lacy, oh, Lacy, skin like puff pastry

Aren't you the sweetest thing on this side of hell?**

Will wasn’t sure why he felt like this, why whenever he looked at Hannibal his stomach always felt like it was on fire and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up but all he knew he didn’t necessarily like it.

**Dear angel Lacy, eyes white as daisies

Did I ever tell you that I'm not doing well?**

Here he was back at another session in that stupid chair, he hated when people picked at his brain, he didn’t want others seeing what was in his mind. But oddly enough he didn’t mind if Hannibal saw what was going on in his head “you seem distracted Will” Hannibal said staring at Will and knocking Him out of his Thinking or more like overthinking.

Will shook his head and nodded nervously “fine Hannibal still having nightmares “ Will said as he stared back into those bright Maroon eyes and he could feel his stomach light up again with that same burning feeling.”why don’t you tell me about it”

**Watchin', hidden in plain sight

Ooh, I try, I try, I try

But it takes over my life

I see you everywhere

The sweetest torture one could bear**

Will was watching as Hannibal interacted with people, he was ….a natural like he could keep everyone who he talked to interested in the conversation and Will found it quite entertaining honestly how everyone looked at Hannibal like he was an angel that you just had to talk to and look at.

Then everything stopped and Will wished to leave, but he couldn’t just leave because of Hannibal talking to another man, even if that man was a person Will despised more than anything in the world . Antony was his name and Hannibal and him had been friends for awhile and Will couldn’t stand him, he was always so touchy and close to Hannibal and Will couldn’t stand it, but Will didn’t understand why it bothered him so much, it wasn’t like him and Hannibal were dating and Hannibal was a grown man he could talk to anyone he liked.

But it still bothered Will nonetheless, was it because Antony was everything Will wasn’t, Funny, charming, charismatic everything that would fit Hannibal perfectly. That burning feeling went away leaving a cold feeling in Will heart, he suddenly wanted to Leave and that’s what he did, he went to find Alana “hey I’m gonna head out gotta get back to the dogs” Alana was to caught up in something Margot was saying to hear Will but she nodded saying a quick bye to him. Unlike Will who never said bye to Hannibal who had spent the rest of the night looking for Will , but could never find him.

**Smart sexy Lacy, I'm losing it lately

I feel your compliments like bullets on skin

Dazzling starlet, Bardot reincarnate

Well, aren't you the greatest thing to ever exist?**

Since the party and Will's rude exit he hasn’t been to one of his and Hannibal sessions in a while, and it was starting to way on him, everyone could tell even jack but Will ignored it and continued with life trying to not think of Hannibal, but he was losing his mind trying not to. When Will didn’t show up for another session Hannibal called him , it was late around eight o’clock when Will heard his phone ring and he answered it.

“ hello” Will said as he heard the soft breathing over the phone “ hello Will I’m calling to see if you were going to make it this week for one of our sessions seeing how you’ve missed the last few, jack has informed me you’ve been busy , so i will let you not showing up or canceling slide this time but I need to know if you are going to make it this time “ When Will heard Hannibal's accented voice that burning feeling came back and his throat got dry “uh…i probably won’t make it this week Hannibal I’m sorry “ Will said with a bit of a shaky voice trying to hide the nervousness.

**Ooh, I care, I care, I care

Like ribbons in your hair

My stomach's all in knots

You got the one thing that I want**

He heard Hannibal sigh and Will felt bad “ are you feeling alright will” Hannibal asked and Will swallowed nervously “ everything fine just haven’t been sleeping Well” He said still trying to hide the shakiness in his voice and Hannibal sighed again “ Alright well i hope to see you next time have a wonderful night Will” Hannibal said causing the burning feeling to burn even more “ you to Hannibal “ Will said before hanging up.

**Ooh, I try, I try, I try

Try to rationalize

People are people

But it's like you're made of angel dust**

Will knew he couldn’t keep ignoring Hannibal but he would damn Well try, he hadn’t been to a session in a month and it was kinda starting to get to him, he was having more nightmares and he couldn’t stop thinking of Hannibal everything was Hannibal and it was waying on him even more than he noticed “Will!” Jack said, pulling Him out of his thoughts “ sorry what?” Will said and Jack sighed “ I said why did Alana and Hannibal both call me saying you’re not going to your sessions with Hannibal you know the rules Will, do you wanna get fired?” Jack said sternly and Will shook his head. He knew Jack needed him but he also knew that Jack would fire him if he didn’t go see Hannibal.

Will sighed “ no, I’ve just been busy with cases and stuff, my mind never sleeps you know that.”

Jack shook his head putting a hand on Will shoulder “ just promise me you’ll start going back, I need you here and clear headed “ Jack said and Will nodded, finding it kinda funny he never was clear headed. But he knew if he didn’t go back Jack would hound him till he did and Will nodded “ i will i promise “

**Lacy, oh, Lacy, it's like you're out to get me

You poison every little thing that I do

Lacy, oh, Lacy, I just loathe you lately**

There Will was in Hannibal's waiting room waiting for Hannibal to finish his session with his last patient before Will. While He sat there he decided to come up with a plan, he was finally gonna tell Hannibal, he was gonna finally tell Hannibal how much he hated him, how much he loathed him, how much he hated his perfect hair and soothing voice and beautiful eyes, he was finally going to tell Hannibal….He loved him.

**And I despise my jealous eyes and how hard they fell for you

Yeah, I despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you**

#will graham #hannigram #hannibal lecter #hannibal #Will is in alot of denial #he’s also jealous #nbc hannibal

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woeswrites · 25 days

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Yandere Hannibal Lecter

Warnings: Alluding towards torture, Yandere themes, Obsessive behaviors,

Notes: Hannibal's done! A fic idea I had shortened down into whatever this is lol

Hannibal sure loved his dinner parties

Needless to say the community did too

To satiate the numerous requests for more he'd decided it was time to out-do himself yet again

A gathering to celebrate summer solstice would do

He'd spend a considerable amount of time in preparation

Handwritten invitations

A completely unique menu

And last but certainly not least, the gathering of ingredients

As he finished off the last of the swine he could already see his vision coming together

'The day of' quickly approached

Hours he spent slaving away in the kitchen

Finally he'd be able to enjoy himself and entertain his guests

He'd meticulously picked out his visitors for this event

You were very much not among those he'd selected

His eyes trained against your figure

A simple glance and nothing would have been amiss

But Hannibal was not the average onlooker

One by one he picked up on curiosities about you

Your darting eyes scoping out the place

Your suit, new but definitely not costly enough to fit in with the rest of the crowd

And one last thing, that fancy watch of yours

Hannibal excused himself from the clique who had entrapped him with their formalities

A few quick greetings here and there and he was by your side

"Forgive me, but I cannot seem to remember your name. All the party planning must be clouding my memory."

You were quite surprised at the host's appearance

Its not like you were in a group of people

On the contrary, you were alone, on the outskirts of the room

"No need to ask forgiveness. This is actually our first time meeting. Y/n-- Monroe's plus one. It's nice to meet you."

Hannibal gracefully accepted your handshake

He didn't feel the need to mention that he'd already encountered Monroe and his companion that night

That would ruin the fun

He'd strike up a conversation, all the basics (weather, occupation, etc.)

It was safe to say Hannibal didn't believe the accountant lie

He felt your callouses earlier, those were hands of labor

But, yet again, that was something he kept to himself for the time being

By the time you started looking a little antsy someone was calling for Hannibal

"Hostly duties. I hope to catch you again before the party's over Mr. L/n. Do try some of the horderves, I hear the chef's fantastic."

As soon as you escaped the interaction you were back at it

Scanning the various rooms for anything light enough that was worth taking

Elite parties like this were like taking candy from a baby

It's not like these millionaires would notice a few pieces of jewelry missing anyways

Especially not while they were off getting drunk with their friends

Hey, even if they did

You'd soon be gone without a trace

Or at least you thought so

While everyone else was mingling downstairs you'd managed to worm your way into the master bedroom

Luckily you'd brought a pretty bulky satchel with you

Everything and anything that looked valuable was slipped inside the bag

While questioning whether or not the gold candle holders were worth the space they'd take up you heard something

Footsteps

The function was still thriving downstairs (as evident from all the chatter and music)

Perhaps a random partygoer felt the urge to explorex

You weren't too worried about it before they started sounding closer

And closer

It was evident they were heading your way

It was too late to hide

They were practically already here

You quickly clasped your satchel together again before the man fully stood before you

"Well look at what we have here."

"Hannibal! You're just the man I had wanted to see. I have completely gotten lost. Where's your bathroom?"

Your sheepish smile did nothing to convince the man in front of you

Instead he'd locked the door behind him

"If you're trying to be secretive about your motives, maybe you should be careful about wearing your spoils before you've fully left the scene of the crime."

Hannibal points at the watch on your wrist

You might have been wearing it but it was definitely his

You tried to rectify your actions

You clearly had never been caught before

All of the goods were thrown onto the ground

You backed away, begging him to forgive you for you actions

"You know, I really hate the rude. I don't know what more ill-mannered than stealing."

Hannibal approached slowly, rolling up his sleeves

You tried backing away but couldn't get too far

"I'm sorry-- I'm so so sorry!"

"No you aren't. But you will be."

Just like that you were out

It took a second for you to realize you were awake again, your vision obscured by some sort of cloth

Hannibal would eventually reveal your surroundings

You were in his basement, a sight not many were privy to

It probably had something to do with the meats hanging down there

You had to fight the bile that rose up your throat

Hannibal grabbed you by the chin, forcing you to look at him

"We're gonna shape you into a good boy. No matter how long it takes."

He wheeled a cart over to you, the tools a little too fuzzy for you to make out with how bad your head hurt

"Don't look so scared. A little cooperation and maybe this won't hurt so bad Mylimasis."

He'd break you down over time

There was no other option

#he/him #male reader #Hannibal Lecter x male reader #hannibal lecter x reader #yandere hannibal #yandere hannibal lecter #possessive love #NBC Hannibal #yandere NBC hannibal #hannibal #hannibal lecter

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darling-i-read-it · 4 years

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Sorbet

1x07

Hannibal Lecter x reader x Will Graham

Hannibal Re-Write Series Masterlist

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: spoilers for hannibal, surgery, murder, organ harvesting

Author’s Note: Dudes this is so long and took me forever but I have so much fun with them I could literally care less. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

I took lines directly from the script so some may seem familiar.

Official Episode Summary : A murder involving organ removal makes Jack think that the Chesapeake Ripper has resurfaced; Will has nightmares about being a killer; Hannibal tries to seduce Alana Bloom.

I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director

(not my gif)

Hannibal walked over to where you were sitting at your desk in the waiting room. You were heavily invested in something on your computer which surprisingly was actually your job. You did a few clicks before you were able to look up at Hannibal who waited patiently for you to be finished.

“You have another appointment at 5:30,” you said pleasantly although he usually didn’t need to be reminded.

“Yes I know but I wanted to sneak in a conversation.” You raised an eyebrow and took out the earbud that you had in while you worked in solitude.

“I’m all ears,” you told him. He nodded.

“I’m going to attend an opera singer show tonight, along with dinner. I accidentally bought two tickets, courtesy of rushed times, and was curious to see if you might want to attend with me.” Your lip curled up into a smile and you nodded.

“Sure. I’ve never been to an opera anything,” you said truthfully. “What do I even wear?” He shrugged.

“Something nice. I’m sure you have something in the back of your closet.”

“I’m sure I do too. Should I meet you here or…”

“If it’s not any trouble I could simply pick you up at home.” You nodded.

“Will’s teaching a late class tonight so I doubt he’ll even know that I’m gone,” you said and as it left your lips your shuddered. You weren’t sure quite how you felt about this now. “I’m curious, why ask me? I’m not exactly cultured, I have a boyfriend,” you said. Hannibal shrugged his shoulders.

“I thought you might appreciate it more than anyone else I know personally.” You nodded. You would tell Will, it wasn’t like you were having an affair or anything. It was simply dinner and a show while Will worked. It just happened to be with Hannibal.

“What time should I expect you?”

“Around 7.” You smiled.

“Perfect.”

At exactly 6:59 the doorbell rang. You hadn’t had time to call Will so you left him a note, just in case you got home after he did. You opened the door and Hannibal looked you up and down, a small smile gracing his face.

“You were able to find something nice in the back of your closet after all,” he said. You gave him a small twirl and he did a little clap, chuckling. You were quite pleased with the look you were able to pull together, the dress you had worn to a wedding a few years back still fitting thankfully. It was perfect and ended up complimenting Hannibal’s suit rather well.

“You wash up nice too Doctor. Although I can’t say I’ve ever seen you dressed down.” He nodded.

“I try to stay on alert fashionably,” he said.

“That’s quite clear.”

The show was stunning. You were quite moved by the performance actually and noticed some tears had even pricked at Hannibal’s eyes as well. He was the first to stand and clap. You followed him after to the dinner portion where he seemed to know many more people than you did.

“It’s been too long since you’ve properly cooked for us, Hannibal,” one of the women he knew said. You hung at his side, nursing a glass of champagne. You were still amazed from the show and were happily eating food off of trays as they came by.

“Come over and I will cook for you,” he said simply.

“I said properly. Means dinner and the show. Have you seen him cook? It’s an entire performance. He used to throw such exquisite dinner parties. You heard me. Used to,” she said teasingly, looking between you and Hannibal.

“It’s true, when you cook it is like a whole event,” you said. He gave you a look, chastising you with his eyes and you backed off.

“I will again. Once inspiration strikes. I cannot force a feast. A feast must present itself,” he explained. Everyone around you seemed in awe. It was odd to see Hannibal in his element every place you went with him.

“I believe this young man is trying to get your attention,” she said and both you and Hannibal turned to an excitable man. You recognized him, he was one of Hannibal’s frequent patients. At least twice a week he came in. Hannibal swiftly gestured for you to take his arm and you did, curious to how this interaction would go.

“Hello,” Hannibal said simply.

“Hi! Nice to see you. This is my friend Tobias,” Franklyn, you were sure his name was, said.

“Good evening,” Hannibal said simply again.

“How do you two know each other?” one of the women asked.

“There should remain some mystery to my life outside the opera,” Hannibal said, dodging the question gracefully.

“I’m one of his patients,” Franklyn said dumbly. So bluntly you were taken aback. “Who’s this? I didn’t know you were in a relationship,” Franklyn said, pointing to you. You shook your head quickly.

“She’s only a friend,” Hannibal said very narrowly. You were once again amazed at how he handled every conversation. You were beginning to wonder if you had ever seen him frazzled.

“She’s holding your arm,” Franklyn pointed out. You pulled your arm back swiftly and Hannibal let you.

“Simply for support,” Hannibal explained. You nodded. You wanted to call Will. But on the same note you weren’t mad at the cultural ‘elite’ thinking of you as Hannibal’s. It seemed like a nice place to be. “She and her boyfriend are friends.” You nodded and brushed a piece of your hair out of your face awkwardly.

“Ah one of those progressive couples,” one of the ladies said, pointing between the two of you. You were stunned at the idea but weren’t about to ignore how appealing that sounded.

“Not quite yet,” Hannibal joked. You laughed alongside him and still wondered, yet again, what the hell he meant by that.

When you woke up that morning Will was beside you. He hadn’t been when you fell asleep last night. You had stumbled inside, taken a shower and passed out on top of the covers. He was tucked underneath as the phone rang. You let out a moan at the early hour and he picked up the phone. You were too tired to make out the words but eventually your hearing and vocal ability came back to you.

“Jack,” he muttered. “Ripper.” He got out of bed, letting you know in two simple words where he was going. You sat up a bit and watched him get clothes out of the dresser.

“Good luck,” you told him, voice cracking from not being used all night.

“Where did you go last night?” he asked, voice equally slurred and tired. You wondered briefly how he noticed you had gone anywhere then remembered you dated the FBI’s best evidence guy.

“I went to the opera.” He turned to you, a judging eyebrow raised.

“For kicks?”

“I went with Hannibal.” He let out a scoff and you slid out of bed, wrapping your arms around his waist.

“Do you not like him?” you whispered into his shoulder.

“I do. I don’t understand him though.”

“That makes two of us.” You felt the bond between the three of you and now you wondered if Will had felt it as well. You couldn’t be sure but you didn’t want to ask him yet. Not until you were sure yourself.

“How was it?” he whispered.

“How was what?”

“The opera.”

“Oh. Good actually. He cried,” you said. Will chuckled and turned around.

“I’ll have to point that out next time I see him for a session. Did you know they aren’t even really sessions? I guess they’re just friends talking,” he muttered thoughtfully.

“I do know that because we aren’t paying,” you teased.

“Go back to bed. I gotta go.” He kissed your forehead and you nodded, all too happy to slip back into sleep.

“Be safe.”

“I’ll try.”

You came into work and Hannibal had just pulled in. He had a break at the end of the day and was now into afternoon sessions, Will’s being the last on his list. You and Will pulled up together and you walked inside to make sure he was all settled.

You walked into the office and Hannibal almost immediately ushered you out but he stopped, curious how the dynamic of the three of you in one room would play out.

“You’ve been drinking?” Will asked, gesturing to the glass on the table.

“I had a glass of wine with my last appointment,” Hannibal explained.

“You drank with a patient?” Will asked.

“You didn’t have a patient in the last two hours,” you said, out of instinct.

“She drank with a patient. I have an unconventional psychiatrist.”

“We have that in common,” Will said.

“Am I your psychiatrist or are we simply having conversations?” Hannibal asked.

“Yes I think is the answer to that question,” Will said.

“I should probably go,” you said, realizing you had stuck around longer than you usually would. Hannibal shrugged.

“If this isn’t a proper session, who's to say you have to go. We’re just having conversations and I just so happen to be a psychiatrist.” Hannibal said. “It’s completely up to Will.” You and Will locked eyes and he shrugged.

“Have a glass of wine with us,” Will said. You walked inside and sat on the desk, allowing the boys to have both chairs. Hannibal poured three glasses and handed you each one. “I hear you’ve taken my girlfriend to the opera,” Will said. Hannibal shrugged, sitting in his chair.

“It was an enlightening experience was it not?” Hannibal asked, gesturing to you with his wine glass.

“It was. We even ran into one of his patients who’s obsessed with him,” you said in a gossipy tone.

“Oh?” Will said.

“I’m not at liberty to give details,” Hannibal digressed. “I hope you don’t mind that we went.”

“Not at all. I was teaching, I couldn’t have kept her entertained otherwise.”

“Hey, I like to come watch you teach,” you said, swallowing a bit of your drink. Will gave you a look and you smiled at him sillily.

“What was the class about?” Hannibal questioned.

“The infamous Chesapeake Rippers old victims,” Will said. “How, who, when, where. Jack wants all minds on this.” Hannibal seemed intrigued.

“I would have liked to catch that one actually,” you said.

“Why's that?” Hannibal asked.

“I don’t know. He’s alluring. Or she.”

“I’d bet on it being a he,” Will said bluntly.

“Well you are the expert,” you said.

“But this last murder, I hear it’s also the Ripper?” Hannibal questioned. You leaned forward, putting your elbow on your knee as you sat on the table.

“It’s not the same guy,” Will stated.

“The victims were all brutalized. What was the brutalization hiding?” Hannibal questioned.

“Careful, surgical removal and preservation of vital organs,” Will explained. This was more than you got during pillow talk. You were visibly intrigued.

“Valuable organs,” Hannibal pointed out.

“Organ harvesting?” Will asked, surprised.

“Jack Crawford’s looking for a serial killer he can’t seem to catch. It’s a brilliant diversion,” Hannibal pointed out. You shrugged.

“I’m not you guys but from what I know about the ripper he seems... I don’t know, more personal than that,” you said.

“If this is a different man however,” Hannibal pointed out.

“Organ harvesting under the cover of the ripper would be a good cover,” Will pointed out.

Hannibal looked between the two of you and smiled. He had planned to invite over Alana Bloom for dinner and a drink, cautiously talk about how years ago colleagues thought they were having an affair. Now he thought better of it. Perhaps all he needed was in this room.

“I’m clocking out Hannibal,” you said, knocking on the office and opening the door cautiously. You knew that no one was in there, you had no more scheduled sessions for the day.

“You’re boyfriend has missed his appointment,” Hannibal pointed out, standing from his desk.

“You must have made that schedule without me present.” He showed you where he had written in Will’s name and nodded. “He’s likely at school. I was going to get him if you would care to tag along and chastise him.” He nodded.

“I would like that, yes.”

You rode in your respective cars there and walked in together. You saw Will, eyes open but not really there. You hadn’t seen him like that before and you quickly walked over to him while Hannibal opted just for saying his name a few times.

“Will?” Will turned around and saw the two of you. He was strangely comforted whilst also being on edge about the dream he was just having about Abigail. “I have a 24-hour cancellation policy,” Hannibal said. You put your arm on his shoulder and he put his hand on yours as he stood up shakily.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Nearly 8,” you said.

“I’m sorry Hannibal,” Will muttered.

“No apology necessary.”

“I must’ve fallen asleep.” Will turned to you. “Was I sleepwalking?” he questioned as though you hadn’t just gotten there.

“Your eyes were open but you weren’t there. No sleepwalking through,” you explained.

“I felt like I was asleep. I need to stop sleeping altogether. Best way to avoid bad dreams,” Will muttered. Hannibal glanced over the crime scene photos that were sprawled across the desk to the side of the room.

“I can see why you have bad dreams,” he muttered. You and Will walked over.

“What do you see Doctor?” Will asked.

“Sum up the Ripper in so many words? Words are living things. They have personality, point of view, agenda.” He looked over the pictures further. “Displaying one’s enemy after death has its appeal in many cultures.”

“These aren’t the Ripper’s enemies. These are pests he’s swatted,” Will said bluntly

“The reward for their cruelty?” Hannibal questioned.

“He’s not bothered by cruelty. The reward is for undignified behavior. These dissections are to disgrace them. It’s a public shaming. “

“Takes their organs away because in his mind they don’t deserve them?”

“In some way.”

It was almost an honor to watch them work. You didn’t put in any input that their minds wouldn’t come up with themselves. You just stood between them and watched. Hannibal picked up a picture of an arm. You recognized it.

“Miriam Lass?” you asked. Will nodded.

“She’s not like the other victims. The Chesapeake Ripper had no reason to humiliate Miriam Lass,” Will muttered.

“Seems to me he was humiliating someone when he cut off her arm,” Hannibal said.

“He was humiliating Jack Crawford,” Will said.

“Have you considered your girlfriend as the Ripper?” Hannibal questioned and you scoffed.

“I prefer a more direct approach.”

“This isn’t direct enough for you?” Hannibal questioned.

“Well Will, do you think it worked?” you asked. Will shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded.

“I’d say it worked really well.”

Jack and Bev walked in then, holding a piece of paper.

“Doctor Lecter, Y/N, what a surprise.” He held up a paper and looked at Will. “We have a lead.”

“Maybe Y/N should stay,” Will said, going into overprotective boyfriend mode.

“No, she should come,” Hannibal said. “She wants to be a part of the FBI one day, consider this training.”

“Well how about it? Care to help us catch the ripper?” Jack asked. You shrugged.

“How could I refuse?” Hannibal asked.

You were driven to an ambulance garage. You waited in the car as they found out that the ambulance they were looking for was actually taken out and everyone was back rather quickly, driving quickly.

“This is very educational,” Hannibal pointed out as Jack started to speed to a new location. You got out this time around and stuck close to Will and Hannibal as they approached the ambulance.

Jack was in front and you heard a booming, “Show me your hands.” Followed closely by a loud, “Dr. Lecter!”

Hannibal started to run over and you and Will followed but as a distance. There was a man in the back, his hands in a body. Will covered you instinctively but you pushed forward, watching as Hannibal climbed in without hesitation.

“He was removing the kidney. Poorly. I can reattach it,” Hannibal said.

“Do it,” Jack said. Hannibal worked quietly for a few seconds as the whole of the FBI held their breaths.

“Do you have it?” Jack asked.

“I’ve got it,” Hannibal replied.

“Silvestri, show me your hands.” The man raised his bloody, gloved hands and stepped away. “Step out of the vehicle. On the ground. Hands behind your head,” Jack said.

Yours and Will’s eyes were no longer on the mock Chesapeake Ripper. Instead you watched Hannibal work and his eyes fleeted up to the two of you and then quickly back down to the inside of a human.

“I have a butcher who carries sow’s blood. Centrifugate, separate the matter from the water. Creates a transparent liquid. Serve with tomatoes in suspension. Everybody will love the sweet taste,” Hannibal said as he walked around his kitchen quickly. “Are you sure the two of you can’t stay?”

Will held a bottle of expensive wine in his hands beside you. You shook your head.

“We have to head home and attempt to get Will to sleep a full night,” you said. Hannibal nodded in understanding.

“How is Mr. Silvestri’s donor?” Hannibal asked.

“You saved his life,” Will said.

“Been a long time since I used a scalpel on anything but a pencil,” Hannibal said.

“Why did you stop being a surgeon?” you asked.

“I killed someone. More accurately, I couldn’t save someone. But it felt like killing them,” he explained.

“You were an emergency room surgeon. It has to happen from time to time,” Will said.

“It happened one time too many. I transferred my passion for anatomy into the culinary arts. I fix minds instead of bodies and no one’s died as a result of my therapy,” Hannibal said. You both nodded.

“We should go. I’ve got a date with the Chesapeake Ripper before Y/N forces me into bed,” Will said. You hit his arm.

“Or is it rippers?” Hannibal asked.

“Devon Silvestri was harvesting organs but not with the Chesapeake Ripper. No connection between them,” Will explained, happy to be right once again.

“Jack must be devastated,” Hannibal said.

“We can only hope,” you muttered.

“Enjoy the wine,” Will said and you were both gone.

1x08

#hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal lecter imagines #will graham x reader #will graham imagines #will graham x reader x hannibal lecter #hannibal lecter x reader x will graham #hannibal imagines

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skyfallensoldier · 3 years

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DISCLAIMER: I just want to note here at the beginning that while I am considering this RP blog to be historically based, i.e. remaining true to the time period and overall details of John Laurens' biographical information and whatnot, I do not consider myself a historically accurate blog, not entirely. Historical fiction is a well known genre of literature and many, MANY creative liberties are taken within that genre. Think of this blog like you would if you saw an Anastasia Romanov blog. She's dead, we know she didn't survive, and she's been dead a long-ass time; so has Laurens. People still have included her in many works of fiction, even after her body was identified and it was proven she did not survive her family's massacre. I saw a romance book a couple of months ago where she survived that was recently published. Historical fiction, while a controversial thing at times, is a legitimate form of literature.

You don't have to tell me if you think John isn't acting exactly like the real man himself would have, I know that. I'm not going to call John my 'perfect sunshine boy cinnamon roll' or dismiss the privilege he was raised on due to his father, I'm aware he was a real person who had his own personality, virtues and prejudices. I won't deny that while he was certainly a progressive thinking man for the time he grew up in he definitely still had racist thoughts and actions that were indicative of his upbringing. But I'm not on here to debate modern, real life politics, or get into arguments about whether he was a good abolitionist or not. At the end of the day, this is still a hobby for me, and I'm writing for fun.

Basically, don't take it too seriously. I'm a 21st century bisexual woman writing from the POV of an 18th century (likely gay) male soldier, the way I write him is obviously not going to be a perfect representation of who he was. I know he wasn't an amazing, perfect person, but I've still chosen to write a fictionalized version of him for my own entertainment. Please try to respect that; thank you.

Mun Stuff

Name: Luna Gender: Female (She/Her or They/Them) D.o.B: July 23rd, 1996 Age: 24 Nationality: Canadian Sexuality: Bisexual Timezone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) Activity: Daily BIOGRAPHY (SORT OF)

Hello, there! You can call me Luna! I've been interested in writing ever since I first got the internet when I was 14 and discovered FanFiction.Net and now I'm an aspiring author and Roleplay enthusiast. If you include acting/talking out DnD like games with friends then I've been 'roleplaying' since the fifth grade, but I like to think there's always room for improvement. If you ever want to chat I'd love to make a new friend or plot out a roleplay, so don't be afraid to shoot me an ask or send me a private message. Just because my muse can be a jackass doesn't mean I am! I’m a huge advocate for mental health, and if you ever need someone to talk to, please don’t ever hesitate to reach out! Some of my hobbies including literature and writing (of course), digging into mythology from various cultures, practicing solitary eclectic paganism/new age spirituality, drinking tea, and collecting crystals/minerals.

Please note that for the sake of disclosure, I am considered ‘Neurodivergent’, in that I suffer from ADHD, diagnosed at about age six, and have Anxiety and Depression which are directly tied to it. This doesn’t often effect my life on here, but I sometimes have an unpredictable sleep schedule (stay up all night, sleep in late into the morning, etc). I’m usually quick to reply to threads for the most part! I work every Tuesday and Thursday from 5pm to 7pm in addition to odd jobs here and there, during which time I won’t have access to the Internet. The rest of the week I’m on and off all day basically, so you can feel free to contact me any time.

RP Style

⭐️ Please use basic spelling/grammar/punctuation when you RP with me. I'm not a drill sergeant about these kinds of things, I know that typos happen, and if you have a vision problem or such we can absolutely find a way to work around that, I also have no problem roleplaying with people whose first language is not English, so that's totally fine and I’m happy to accomodate in whatever way I can, but it does make it a little difficult to play with you if I don't know what you're trying to say. For this reason I prefer if you not use any text shorthand (lol, idk, brb, jk, etc) unless our muses are messaging each other. Using it in the tags is fine.

⭐️ I roleplay Laurens in a past-tense 3rd Person Point of View (think story-telling format), and generally I don't use icons or text formatting unless I notice my partner does, then I will try to match their style (for example if you use icons and small-text, I will try to do the same, though because formatting isn't possible on mobile, any mobile replies might take longer to be posted than if I were on my laptop). If you have any issues with how I'm writing or need me to adjust my style for any reason don't be afraid to ask.

Contact

⭐️ If you spam me with messages over and over again about something I haven't replied to, chances are I'll drop the thread. I don't mind being reminded because I know Tumblr's notifications are notoriously unreliable sometimes, and humans can forget/lose things, but if you keep poking at me after I've acknowledged you the first and second time, I won't be pleased. Things can get busy on here, or in real life, or sometimes you're just lacking muse for that particular thread, y'know? It doesn't mean I hate you and don't want to RP, I'm almost always up for plotting, but muse tends to fluctuate.

⭐️ My ‘Discord’ is available to mutuals upon request. I don't mind roleplaying on there if Tumblr is being glitchy or you're just not feeling up to formatted/heavily plotted threads, sometimes Discord is fun in that you can do immediate replies without needing the effort of putting icons and formatting into it. I also have a Kik but I never use it. I don't RP in Tumblr's IMs, that's purely for OOC interaction.

⭐️ I also occasionally stream movies/TV shows in group chats or play “in character” Cards Against Humanity game nights, Among Us, etc. If you’re interested, lemme know, I’m always looking for more people to hang out with!

Important

I have no actual triggers that I'm aware of, although snakes do creep me out (mostly shots of them coiled up or images of their pupils), but there are some things I will not roleplay personally for comfort reasons:

⭐️ Cannibalism. You can mention it, for example I won't freak out if someone tells my muse that somebody else ate a person (he might, assuming its not a Supernatural type verse), but I won't RP him engaging in cannibalism, not even in AUs (blood-drinking vampires are fine). I'm just not sure I could stomach writing about eating people. I managed to watch Hannibal, barely, but writing about it? Nah. I can handle lots of horror, gore and disturbing content but not this. Sorry.

⭐ Incest/Pedophilia. I do not SEXUALLY ship with characters under the age of 18. John is not attracted to children, and would never consider sleeping with someone much younger than him.

⭐ I will not write anything sexual with muns who are under 18 years old, even if your muse is an adult. I'll still ROLEPLAY with you if you are under 18 but probably no younger than 16 just because things tend to get explicit on my blogs and I don't want to be accused of corrupting the youth with my foul language and weird opinions, lol. Seriously though, this blog covers a lot of dark subjects and while I’m all for minors exploring that safely through writing rather than in real life, some people aren’t comfortable with interacting with under age people for legal or personal reasons, please respect that.

⭐ Necrophilia. Just... no. Vampire threads don't count, as they're undead and not 'dead dead'.

⭐ Rape. I won't write it with you. I'm okay with mentions of rape, with rape/sexual assault survivor/recovery plots, and even with one character intervening to rescue another from an attempted sexual assault (if an attempted assault does occur, it will be thoroughly tagged and under a cut). I'm fully open to discussing rape recovery/trauma plots as those are things that happen in real life, and it can be interesting to explore how a character reacts to trauma. But anything else is a no-go, sorry!

⭐ Please be aware that I write Laurens as a gay man. However! Because of the time period, violent homophobia and social stigma, he has slept with women before and may be seen flirting with or referencing relationships with women in the past. He is still gay, and still uninterested in being with women long term, he's simply closeted to all but a few individuals. So, unless your muse is Martha Manning (who Laurens DOES love in a manner, and he always will), shipping with female characters on here most likely isn't going to happen unless it's heavily plotted/developed and part of an overall plot, and you understand that it will not be a conventional sexual relationship. I'm sorry if that disappoints you but I've read Laurens as a gay male for so long I have trouble seeing him any other way.

⭐ I will not roleplay slavery plots. This is not up for debate. Roleplaying a highly fictionalized version of a long dead real person who existed during a troubling time is one thing, but I draw the line at that. For this reason, while I'll happily play with non-white muses, muses using non white faceclaims, and crossovers with characters of all sorts, I'll have to decline playing with any muse claiming to actually be writing slavery. There’s a difference between, say, roleplaying a character like Daenerys, a fictional character who was technically a slave-bride sold by her brother, and writing actual slavery from a very real, horrible time period. Slave ownership will of course be mentioned on this blog, that's unavoidable, but just like the mention of rape may happen on this blog from time to time, it will be in reference to a past event or speaking about the subject in general, not roleplaying a scene of it. Please respect this rule, I was hesitant to make this blog at first, because I know it makes some people uncomfortable, but I won't glorify such a horrible real thing that happened to so many people.

Exclusives/Mains

Just a head's up, unless I develop a bunch of chemistry with a particular portrayal of a muse I'm not likely to agree to being exclusives with anyone, unless perhaps it's a very niche or divergent character that has formed a good relationship of some sort with John and I'd have trouble interacting with other versions of that muse. For major characters I just feel it would be unfair to say no to someone who I click with in every other way, solely because I have already befriended someone else writing that character.

I will, however, discuss becoming mains with someone whom I've either developed or plotted out detailed storylines/interactions with regarding our specific portrayals of our characters. This means that I tend to reply to them quickly when I'm online, or may make little gifts (moodboards, aesthetic things, mini ficlets, whatever) for them unprompted, have a verse dedicated just to them, etc. Even if it seems like we haven't done much on Tumblr, there may be a lot of off-site development on Discord or whatnot that led to us plotting out intricate stories for our muses.

Current Mains:

Alexander Hamilton - @quillborn

⭐️ Send private messages.

⭐️ Send my character asks/starters/memes.

⭐️ Tag me in things.

⭐️ Ask to plot or ship.

⭐️ Ask for angst, fluff, etc.

⭐️ Submit things to me & my muse.

⭐️ Do crack and other ridiculous things with me!

⭐️ Like my RP threads.

⭐️ Like my personal posts.

⭐️ Comment on my personal/OOC posts (if you want to).

⭐️ Comment on my crack threads.

⭐️ Instant Message (IM) me if you'd like to talk, whether we're friends already or not!

DON'T

⭐️ Send hateful messages to me about other people and especially my mutuals; doesn't count if it's about the muse and not the person playing them, however. Also, if I’ve got beef with someone for whatever reason, don’t harass them/send hate to them on my behalf, please. I don’t condone anonymous abuse, attacking others, or harassment. I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself, I promise.

⭐️ Introduce yourself with ‘wanna ship?’ For one, I prefer if we’ve at least started a roleplay together, or have spoken OOC. Auto shipping doesn’t always work out and I hate promising people something only to realize there’s zero chemistry, because then I feel like I’m letting them down.

⭐️ Come into my inbox with just ‘wanna rp?’ and that’s it. Please at least have some idea of what you want to roleplay, it’s not very fun when someone approaches you to RP but then doesn’t offer up any suggestions at all. Remember, you are always free to send me memes, whether we’re mutuals or not, and hit me up for whatever plot you think might interest me! I want to hear about it!

⭐️ Spam me with "reminder" messages if I've already acknowledged you the first few times.

⭐️ Reblog my RP threads if you're not a participant in them.

⭐️ Send me anonymous OOC hate. Hate for Laurens is fine, it's just another form of roleplay.

⭐️ Kill off my character or severely injure/maim my character without permission or having plotted something involving that with me first.

⭐️ Follow me if you're a porn blog. I don't mind blogs that post NSFW content, or smut a lot, etc. I mean blogs that aren't for RP and are literally just a normal looking blog until you click on it and the header and first twenty posts are hardcore nudity and porn. I hate those things.

⭐️ Shame my ships.

⭐️ Complain about my tagging. I put my smut under a 'read more' without exception and tag them as "NSFW //" with two dashes. Things that are not necessarily graphic but still have sexual undertones go under "Suggestive //". I use these tags to avoid attracting attention from porn blogs and porn bots that track certain key words, as such I do not tag my content with "Smut" or trigger words such as "dick, oral, anal, nudity, etc", please block my NSFW and Suggestive tags if you're uncomfortable. Triggery subjects (mentions of rape, animal abuse, torture, mental illness) will be tagged under the name of said trigger with a space and two dashes, example: "Self Harm //", “Suicidal Ideation //” or "PTSD //".

⭐️ Godmod my character. If you’re not sure what is/isn’t okay, come talk to me! I don’t bite! If you’re looking for an example of god mod behavior, here: “X lunged at Laurens, taking him by surprise, and hit him square in the nose, causing blood to spurt.” It might not seem like a big deal but it means that you decided how your character’s actions affected my muse, and not only that, didn’t give him a chance to dodge or anything. Not cool.

⭐️ Ship with me without permission (sending in shippy asks is A-Ok if you're interested in exploring a ship between our muses, I'm talking about things like claiming that our muses are in a relationship without discussing it with me, referencing dates or sexual acts that never happened, etc. I ship mainly with chemistry otherwise things get boring fast.

⭐️ Assume/act like our characters know each other/are closely connected (friends/family/lovers) if we've never discussed it unless it is established in canon/history. This especially goes for original characters. I'm open to Laurens forming deep relationships with OCs obviously, but those have to be developed in character, not just assumed from the first interaction.

⭐️ Attempt to roleplay with me if you are not a roleplay blog/or if you're just trying to RP as "yourself." I don't do Character X Reader imagines stuff. I don't RP with 'fan' accounts, only RP blogs. You can still send asks so long as you're not trying to initiate an RP scenario. For example, asking Laurens what his hobbies are, asking for a blessing etc? That's fine. Spamming me with different actions "you" are talking to Laurens is weird. Stop that. I will also not RP with blogs that claim to roleplay as real life people, such as Markiplier, that's super creepy. This does NOT apply to "historical fiction" roleplay (obviously since that's what this blog is), which is considered its own genre of literature. I'm talking about the above where people will 'roleplay' as real life, currently alive people like YouTube celebrities and ship them with their friends, even if they've made it clear that they're uncomfortable with it.

⭐️ Get angry at me for doing something you don't like if you don't even have a rules page for me to go by. It's not fair; you can't expect your partners to just read your mind and magically know how you feel. If something bothers you let me know, I’ll make a note about it so I avoid it during our interactions!

⭐️ Use me as a meme resource blog without ever interacting with me. I don't require "reblog karma" for you to follow me, partners are more than welcome to reblog from me, but if we never interact and I just occasionally see you reblog fifteen posts from my meme tag and then disappear again I'm not gonna be happy. Go to the source or to an archived blog no longer getting notifications, please!

⭐️ Reblog my Meta/Headcanons. If they're from a different blog it's fine but the ones I've personally written are for MY portrayal of Laurens. I work hard on most of my stuff and I'd prefer if you didn't reblog it, not because you aren't allowed to have the same headcanon ideas as me, but because then it ends up getting liked or reblogged by lots of other people, spamming my notifications, etc.

OCs & Multimuses

I love OCs and multi-muse blogs (I have my own multimuse sideblog over at @historyremembers, which has other 18th century characters including the Hamilton children and some OCs), so feel free to interact! That being said, please have an about page of some sort on your blog. I can't follow back blogs that have absolutely no information available regarding their character(s). I don't RP with OC children of Laurens. This is nothing personal, but I'm fairly certain he was gay in real life and prefer to play him that way, and he only had one child - who he never even got to meet - in real life, so it just wouldn't make sense to me for him to have other kids running around unless he'd adopted some. If you're a multimuse, I may not follow you back if I'm only familiar with two of your muses if you have a blog of fifteen characters, simply because I'd prefer to keep my dash clean and only have characters/fandoms I'm familiar with on it. I'll still RP with you if you have a character I'm interested in! I just might not follow back if the majority of your characters I do not know, I apologize for this.

If you’ve made it to the end of this, congrats! I know it couldn’t be easy (my ADHD brain was frustrated trying to just write all this up) but it’s necessary so there’s not misunderstandings on what I am/am not willing to RP. I won’t ask for a password since I trust most people to have the courtesy to at least skim the rules of those they want to RP with.

Have a nice day!

#Everybody Listen Up! {PSA}#Out Of The Field {OOC}#Long Post //

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marginalgloss · 4 years

Text

the red telephone

The thing about Control is that I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where I’ve felt such a vast difference between a game’s artistic and technical quality and its total lack of thematic and narrative depth.

There is a good case for saying that this oughtn’t to be a problem. It’s long been the case that if a video game is entertaining enough, any further ‘depth’ (by the standards established by other media) is unnecessary. This is why we don’t much care if the story isn’t good in Doom. The sense of being there and doing the thing is enough. But Doom isn’t drawing on influences bigger than itself. Clearly it’s been influenced by a variety of things — from Dungeons and Dragons to heavy metal album covers and Evil Dead and everything in between — but Doom is not referential, and it’s not reverential. Doom is complete unto itself. Control is not complete.

Horror films and ghost stories and weird fiction are best when they are about things. Think about The Turn of the Screw and The Thing and Twin Peaks and Candyman, to pick a few examples off the top of my head. They work not just because what we see and hear and read is mysterious. They are compelling because they have intriguing characters and thematic resonance. The Babadook is not just a story about a monster from a book for children. Night of the Living Dead isn’t just about, you know, the living dead. By comparison I find it hard to say that Control is about anything, but it presents itself as adjacent to this kind of work. It is a magnificent exercise in style which trades in empty symbols. It wraps itself in tropes from weird fiction in the hope of absorbing meaning by osmosis.

It feels like a wasted opportunity, because the setup is not without interest. You play as Jesse Faden, a woman supposedly beginning her first day on the job at the Federal Bureau of Control, a mysterious government organisation that deals in high-level paranormal affairs. The FBC is a feast of architectural and environmental detail: a vast Brutalist office complex with an interior that seems to be stranded in time somewhere around the mid-1980s. Everything is concrete and glass and reel-to-reel machines and terminal workstations. It’s frequently stunning.

Unfortunately most of the staff are missing because Jesse’s visit to their headquarters coincides with a massive invasion by the Hiss, a paranormal force which has taken over the building. The Hiss is a sort of ambient infection that turns people into mindless spirit-drones, chanting in an endless Babel. (Conveniently, most of those drones are present as angry men with guns. There are also zombies, and flying zombies, for variety.)

There is, obviously, more to Jesse than meets the eye. She spends a lot of time talking to someone nobody else can see. But there isn’t that much more to her. Like every other character in the game she is a monotone. There is no reason to believe she has any existence outside the plot devised for her here. Similarly, the other characters you meet exist only as the lines they speak to you. It works only when the effect is entirely, deliberately flat: the most compelling person in the game is Ahti, the janitor with a sing-song voice and a near-indecipherable Finnish accent. He is nothing but what he is — he has no past, no future. He has all the answers, if only you knew what questions to ask.

Control is undeniably stylish. The interiors are striking, vast, spacious. Even on the smallest scale the game has a great eye for little comic interactions via systemised physics. You can shoot individual holes in a boardroom table and watch the thing splinter apart into individual fragments. You can shoot a rolodex and watch all the little cards whirl around in a spiral. If a projector is showing a film you can pick the whole thing up and the film will reveal itself as an actual dynamic projection by spiralling and spinning madly across the nearest walls. (Speaking of film, the video sequences with live actors are great fun, and this being a Remedy game, there’s a fantastic show-within-a-show to be found on hidden monitors around the FBC.) And all of this before I mention the sound design — the music, which is full of concrète mechanical shrieks and groans — and the endless sinister chanting which fills the lofty corridors and hallways of this place, The Oldest House.

All of this is very, very good. And most of the time it’s quite fun to play. I mean, you can pick up a photocopier and fling it at enemies. It’s never not fun when almost anything can be used as a projectile. And then you get the ability to fly! At its best the combat in Control feels messy and chaotic — in a good way — but in a way that has little to do with typical video game gunplay. Staying behind cover doesn’t work because the only way to regain health is to pick up little nuggets dropped by fallen enemies, so most of the time you have to use your powers to be incredibly aggressive. The result is that often you feel like the end-of-level boss — a kind of monster — throwing yourself into conflict with a team of moderately stupid players who think they’re supposed to be playing a cover shooter circa 2005.

That you are given a gun at all seems odd. The gun feels like a compromise. The gimmick of a single modular pistol that can shape-change into a handful of other weapons is neat, but those weapons are just uninteresting variations on the same old themes: handgun, shotgun, machine gun, sniper, rocket launcher. The powers are more interesting and powerful. But of course the gun has to be there; can you imagine them having to go out and sell this game without a gun in it? What would Jesse be holding on the front cover?

A gun is an equaliser. It evens the odds between the weak and the strong. But if you’re already strong it doesn’t feel worthwhile. You’re clearly so much more powerful than everyone else you meet in Control that after a while you begin to wonder why the game is also frequently quite hard. The omission of any difficulty settings is notable in a game of this type; it suggests that the developers were committed to their vision in the way that might recall Dark Souls. In fact the hub-like structure of the game is pretty clearly influenced by From Software’s games, and though it’s nowhere near as challenging, it seems to be reaching towards the same kind of thing.

It’s a game which demands you take it seriously as a crafted object. But then it has all these other elements cribbed from elsewhere — the generic level-based enemies with numbers that fly off them when shot, and the light peppering of timed/semi-randomised side activities, both of which made me think of Destiny. So there’s games-as-service stuff wedged in here too, and it doesn’t sit at all comfortably with this supposedly mysterious, compelling world that you’re supposed to want to explore.

This isn’t a horror game. There are one or two enemies with the potential to induce jump scares, but given that you can always respond with overwhelming force, it’s never really unsettling. But it’s clearly been inspired by horror. A source often mentioned as an inspiration for Control is the internet horror stories associated with the SCP Foundation wiki. From there the game borrows the idea that unlikely everyday objects can become sources of immense cosmic power — hence we see items like a rubber duck, a refrigerator, a pink flamingo, a coffee thermos imprisoned behind glass as if they were Hannibal Lecter. A pull-cord light switch becomes an inter-dimensional portal to an otherworldly motel. The great part about this is that these little stories can be told effectively in isolation; it’s always interesting to come across another object in the game and to discover what it does. (The fridge is especially unpleasant.)

But experiencing this kind of thing in the context of an action game is entirely different to stumbling it on it online. SCP Foundation is pretty well established now, but still, there’s a certain thrill in stumbling across something written there in plain text, titled with only a number. When those stories are good, they can be really good. Given the relative lack of context, and the absence of any graphical set-dressing, there’s room for your imagination to do the heavy lifting.

In Control these fine little stories are competing for attention with all the other crazy colourful stuff going on in the background. You read a note and you move on to the next thing. You crash through a pack of enemies and the numbers fly off them. There’s never a sense of the little story fitting into an overall pattern. That lack of a pattern can be forgiven in the context of a wiki. In Control, these stories start to feel irrelevant when you never come across an enemy you can’t shoot in the face. In a different format, or a different type of game, this kind of rootless narrative might be more compelling.

But what is this game about? There’s a sister and brother. A sinister government agency. Memories, nostalgia. A slide projector. It’s all so difficult to summarise. When I think about the game all these words seem to float around in my head, loosely linked, but not in a way that suggests any kind of coherence. The game always seems to be reaching towards some kind of meaning but it only ever feels hollow. It feels flat. Yet all the elements that are good about Control must be made to refer back to these hollow, flat signifiers. Sometimes the flatness works for the game, but mostly it doesn’t.

Today, it’s hard to see that anyone could see the point in establishing a website like SCP Foundation if it didn’t already exist. Viral media is not what it was in the first decade of the 2000s. Written posts that circulate on social media have a shorter half-life than ever. It’s almost impossible for any piece of writing over a few hundreds words to go viral in ways that go beyond labels like ‘shocking’, ‘controversial’, ‘important’, etc. ‘Haunting’ and ‘uncanny’ don’t quite cut it. This kind of thing doesn’t edge into public spaces in the way it used to via email inboxes, or message boards, or blogs.

Perhaps the weird stuff is still out there. Perhaps we only got better at blocking it out. With the arrival of any new viral content, today’s audience is mostly consumed by questions of authenticity, moral quality, and accuracy. If you think this creepy story might be ‘real’, you’re a mug. If you promote it you might be a dangerous kind of idiot. And that’s fair: there are a lot of dangerous idiots out there. Yet there’s something to be said for an attitude of persistent acceptance when it comes to the consumption of weird stuff on the internet. I know I become gluttonous when I come upon such things. I want to say: yes, it’s all true, every word. I’ve always known it’s all true.

#gaming #control

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cinnamaldeide · 5 years

Note

prompt concept: Hannibal, the man that can do everything, is abysmally bad at kid's crafts. Cue short kid fic where he and kid are making Will a birthday present (clearly an adorable fishing lure) and he not only gets glitter everywhere (because we of course), but ends up gluing his fingers together and they have to get Will to intervene.

True to his word, Will Graham abandoned Jack Crawford’s pursuit of free-range serial killers, among which the Chesapeake Ripper, in favour of his young, recently acquired daughter.

It had taken an unfair amount of time and convincing, not to mention an unexpected cycle of the infamous psychopath, before the head of the Behavioral Analysis Unit gave up. Only in front of Clarice’s all-encompassing eyes would he eventually give in.

Despite Hannibal’s extensive attempts to predict his behaviour and motivations, Will Graham remained a source of continuous wonder in the shape of himself or his young daughter’s, whom absorbed all of his attention and, consequently, deprive Hannibal of it.

The situation shouldn’t have bothered him, nor should it have significantly impacted on his routine, upsetting the arrangement of his mundane obligations and ludic appointments, yet it had become necessary to adjust their habits. Long hours in court to obtain legal custody of Clarice and copious embarrassing childproofed lunches, to Hannibal’s sufferance, made him realize their lives was bound to change drastically.

It took some time for the former Staling heir to cope with her sudden shift of perspective, from a troubled mother to an unpracticed father. School transfer had been handled, fitting clothes had been acquired, accommodations had been found both on Clarice’s behalf and Will’s employment situation. Bottles of whiskey had been well hidden, if not outright disposed of.

Hannibal had endeavoured not to replenish his stocks, nor to impede the smooth adaptation occurring before his watchful eyes, involving him in its crescendo. After his little efforts to alienate Jack Crawford from his protégé and ensuring Will would trust nobody but his former psychiatrist, Hannibal entertained the idea of winding him up and leisurely watching him deal with his parental issues. Something had made him desist in merely observing rather than participating.

It had been interesting to observe Will struggling with his becoming. He was protective of Clarice in a different way than he was of Abigail, similarly dedicated yet more apprehensive. Less sharp, more transparent, dangerously stable for Hannibal’s taste, especially considering he felt mildly drained whenever he interacted hirsthand with the lovely girl.

His crafted charm had been honed to enthrall a mature audience, a child wouldn’t appreciate his extensive knowledge in medicine, many languages and various forms of art. Consequently, his refined talents proved uninteresting to Clarice, as Hannibal had been to her brilliant father upon their first meeting. It felt tragically serendipitous.

But Will’s birthday was approaching and her experience dictated Clarice sought valid allies in virtue of her dire circumstances. “I want to make him a gift,” she had firmly declared, serious expression to match her serious intents. Still practicing on calling Will dad. “He told me to stay away from the fishing gear, said it’s dangerous for me if he’s not around,” she lamented, clearly disagreeing, “but it would be fine if you were there, right?”

Hannibal noticed she hadn’t asked for him to perform the crafting, merely supervise her.

Another adult would perhaps find her resolution endearing, mentally prepare to persuade a more convenient choice into her young mind; take her tiny hands, flaunt a reassuring smile and ensure Clarice that it was the thought that counted. Maybe congratulate themselves for having preserved her safety.

Hannibal was honoured she had come to him instead. Even if he hadn’t been waiting for an opportunity to establish and consolidate a harmonious relationship with Clarice, Hannibal did feel inclined to accommodate her. It thrilled him to serve as an indulged accomplice to match her precocious determination.

Hannibal knew how sparingly a child conceded trust after a traumatic event, abandonment did require expectations, and Grahams were oysters particularly protective of their pearls. As much as Hannibal fantasized about carving them open, a firm yet gentle hand would obtain more benefits than Will’s old flame had.

An insipid woman, terribly so. Even after passing through Hannibal’s seasoning.

Clarice had certainly developed her father’s practical sense, judging by her disposition of her intended items to assemble her own lure. Unfortunately a touch of Will’s aesthetic sense was present as well, Hannibal realized as she produced a bow of iridescent blue glitter and tufts of fur from each of the dogs. Beautiful butterfly wings, broken bone fragments, veined leaves were discarded by her personal taste, as they were too gloomy for a birthday.

Relenting, Hannibal swallowed his pride and sat the girl on his lap to guide her unsure steps, planning already to rectify her appreciation of the grim and the decadent.

“Pass me some hair please,” Clarice asked, tangling red wire and fretting over her ongoing composition. Hannibal acquiesced, frowning behind her shoulders. “Glue too, please.”

“Adding more material could prove the wrong choice,” Hannibal warned her. “No matter the amount of glue you’re willing to sacrifice, Clarice.”

She huffed, unnerved but undeterred. “I know what I’m doing,” she retorted, turning to eye him with her most convincing expression. Glue oozing from its container with little conviction. “Mostly,” she amended, returning her focus on their colorful ensemble.

“I’m sure you do,” Hannibal said. “I’m just offering suggestions.”

She turned again.

“You should dress less formally around Will,” she blunted. “It makes him uncomfortable,” she reproached. Hannibal sensed her incertitude, her distress. He didn’t relent.[…]

If you enjoyed what you’ve read so far, consider liking/reblogging, before reading the rest on Ao3; other people might get the chance to enjoy it too ;)

#Hannibal (nbc)#Hannibal Lecter #Will Graham #Hannigraham #Original child character #Alternative universe #Canon divergence #Kid fic #Season 1 #All manner of uncomfortable positions (collection)#Abysmal (fanfiction)#Hannibal Fanfiction #Fanfiction by Cinnamaldeide #Prompt #Trikemily #Cinn replies #Original post #Sfw

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pallatonreviews · 5 years

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review of “Us” by Jordan Peele

As many of you are probably aware, Jordan Peele is producing a reboot of Rod Sterling’s immortal “Twilight Zone” and after watching Us I can understand exactly why. Jordan Peele’s second endeavour into the horror genre is as entertaining and thrilling as his first. From the references to 80s pulp horror to the genuinely creepy atmosphere that Peele creates, “Us” helps to bring something that the horror genre has been missing. Originality. “Us” dives into mankind’s fears in more ways than one and doesn’t settle for cheap jumpscares and gore, in fact, there is next to no gore in the film and it still remains as one of the most deeply unsettling films I have had the pleasure of watching.

Jordan Peele as a director continues to create grounded yet terrifying realms of horror that he can play with. Peele is unique in his horror telling in that, he uses real life bases that people would rather not think about. Us follows this by using the fear of the parts of ourselves that we would rather not think about. The “Tethered” as they are referred serve this purpose with murderous glee. Now, the idea of doppelgangers is not a new one, stories serving to show the darkest parts of ourselves are as old as time but the Tethered as unique in that they don’t just show the darkest part of the Wilson family, the movie’s protagonists, they show the darkest parts of society. Jordan Peele has gotten famous by using horror as societal commentary and “Us” is no different. The Tethered live in abandoned subways and have to scrounge to find their next meals while the Wilsons that live about them are well taken care of and are never shown to have a care in the world. The Tethered serve as Peele’s commentary on our treatment of the poor and homeless, and that did not go unnoticed. There is an art in subtle storytelling and then there is also an art in bashing the audience over the head with the truth of the matter. In Get Out Peele used the latter while in Us he uses the former and somehow has such a mastery over both that it is both frightening and something to be admired. I was excited to see Us even though I knew very little about it because I saw that it was Jordan Peele production and I continue to look forward to what he has yet to do.

While Jordan Peele is a fantastic director, a movie is nothing without its actors, and luckily Us does not disappoint in that field either. The central character, Adelaide, is played by award winning actress Lupita Nyong’o. Nyong’o also plays Red, the central antagonist, and does so with such a sense of dread and malice that it was hard to believe that Adelaide and her are the same actress. As Adelaide she is warm and caring, but also a fierce mother to her children and will not let the tethered hurt them. As Red however, she is on par with Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in how cold and vicious she can be. Red is genuinely one of the most frightening villains that I have seen in a horror film and she does this not by being ugly, not by being physically imposing, but by her command of the situation; which Nyong’o not only uses but masters. There is so much talent in that ability to switch between the polar opposite like that and Nyong’o does so with such ease. Playing alongside Nyong’o is Winston Duke, who plays against type as Adelaide’s husband Gabe, and falls closer in line to what most fans of him would recognize as Gabe’s tethered Abraham. Gabe Wilson is the comic relief of the film and Duke is hilarious in the role, he is the bumbling suburban dad role in the first portion of the film but what I adored was that, as soon as his family is actually threatened, he takes up the role of the protector. Duke does this change almost instantly and it helps to create a natural flow to the character that is rare in horror films, which normally have the protagonists be very flat characters.

One character that I feel deserves recognition however is Jason, the young son of the Wilson family. Jason, played by actor Evan Alex, is coded as mentally challenged by not done so in a cliched way. He talks, he interacts with the family and overall he’s a regular kid. However, he doesn’t look at people in the eyes, he is intensely focused on his magic trick ring he has, and he doesn’t have any form of a censor. Alex plays this role almost naturally, he is believable and really captures the idea of an innocent kid. On the flip side, his tethered Pluto is downright feral. Alex plays Pluto like a rabid dog and it is horrifying, and much like Nyong’o, Alex’s ability to play such drastically different characters in the same film is commendable.

On a technical standpoint Us delivers a blast from the past, using classic 80s horror lighting to create a familiar yet still eerie ambiance. The overcast of shadows in both the Wilson home and during the night scenes creates an unsettling feeling even if there is nothing going on, as if at any moment the tethered could appear. In the same vein, the day scenes are not much better and somehow worse. Peele plays with the idea of light equaling safety in horror films by using intense lighting during the day scenes so that is slightly disorienting. The day feels off, as if it is a dream (or a nightmare) and it captures the understanding that something isn’t right. From the word go, “Us” creates a world that is uneven and feels wrong, as if there isn’t enough space for both the humans and tethered.

Jordan Peele is a smart man, and he creates deep horror. I was immersed in Us and the tension that was allowed throughout the entire film created a dark understanding of what it means to be “The Tethered”. By the end of the film I felt myself starting to sympathize with these people, that they have been isolated from society and forgotten, getting scissors for Christmas because that’s all they had, having to eat raw rabbit for food. All of this builds to one of the most beautiful climatic fights I have seen in recent years. From the score that accompanies it to the symbolic shots of Adelaide dancing as a young girl, the climax had me holding my breath the entire time. I can not place a time that a fight had me that entrenched and that is the magic of Jordan Peele. He creates personal stories, even if the audience had never had to go through something similar. Peele creates worlds and explains every nuance of them and as such, allows his audience the respect to get immersed in them. I am forward to what he has planned next because Jordan Peele is not “the next Hitchcock”, he is not “next” anything, because he is the first, and only, Jordan Peele.

#us #jordan peele #the tethered #horror #horror film #film #film review #us film

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dinnerhost-blog · 5 years

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This one serves as much as a headcanon as an apology . Because there have been plenty of scenarios and interactions in which Hannibal wasn’t the one with the upper-hand , some of them including fantasy / sci-fi / supernatural elements , and he still acts in a rather laidback manner . Even in the show there have been multiple occasions in which Lecter could have died or been horribly tortured and he still approached the whole ordeal in a rather calm and polite manner . This has a lot to do with the way Hannibal views the world ; the worst thing one can do is be boring and , as long as he is entertained , be it a wedding or a massacre , Hannibal is happy . His own mortality and frailties don’t seem to bother him . He has a few ideal scenarios he’d like to play out when it comes to his death , but really , as long as it’s interesting , Dr. Lecter doesn’t mind . I think he has a bit of a god-complex and I’m pretty sure this isn’t a hot take , but he’s very condescending about the way he views the world and those around him . He sets people up in dangerous / unethical / bizarre scenarios , winds them up and watches them go with the only goal of creating something unique . Even if he might get caught up in a storm of his own doing , all Hannibal really does is enjoy the ride the best way he can ! Not to mention he is a bit unbalanced so he might not react to supernatural happenings the same way a regular person would ...

Basically I don’t want you to think that because Hannibal is serving your Lovecraftian monster tea and smiling at it , he’s underestimating it . Or that I’m underestimating your character for that matter . You’re always more than welcome to hurt the man . Because ( unless I’ve written an AU for our characters to interact with that says otherwise ) he really is just a man . A horrible terrible one that bleeds and dies . The way he reacts to extraordinary events is simply far more annoying because STRONG EMOTIONS IN GENERAL are hard things to awaken within the good doctor . But that’s a headcanon for another time .

#*/ HEADCANON.#is this a headcanon #or just me rambling #probably the second

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thattarotgirl · 6 years

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Explaining The Death: Jonathan Tucker's Major Craddock in Westworld

I had had many reasons to intensely dislike TV series Westworld – which I still absolutely do – and only one reason to watch its second season. And so, I started the show again – for Jonathan Tucker. At this point, I’m fairly sure the only thing starring this wonderful man I wouldn’t watch would be a snuff film.

Somewhat morbid humor? Appropriate, given the fact that this post isn’t about how I got my imaginary degree in Tuckerology.

It’s about HOW TUCKER’S WESTWORLD CHARACTER, MAJOR CRADDOCK, REPRESENTS ONE OF THE MAJOR ARCANA ARCHETYPES – THE DEATH.

Interestingly, it’s the second time Tucker plays the Death. The first one was not too long ago, it was on Justified, and the name of the masterfully played (do I really have to add this bit, though?) character was Boon. Check it out, check the whole series, thank me later.

First of all, I have to warn you that I’m going to take my own, admittedly narrow perspective on the archetype. But I highly encourage you to familiarize yourself with other interpretations of this and other archetypes of the Major Arcana. Ultimate raison d’être of this blog is to inspire discussion about the archetypes we are influenced by, because by understanding them we can better understand our own inner mechanics.

So, what is the Death?

Let me start this by stating that the mainstream is full of examples of the Death. Here is just a handful off the top of my head: The Joker, Ramsay Bolton and Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones, the Comedian from Watchmen, Alex from A Clockwork Orange, Mr. Blonde from Reservoir Dogs, Mason Verger from Hannibal, Simon Adebisi from Oz, Moriarty from Sherlock, Negan from the Walking Dead comics, Pavi Largo from Repo! The Genetic Opera, as well as Bart Curlish from Dirk Gently, Gazelle from Kingsmen, Mindy from Kick Ass, Elle Bishop from Heroes, and many others.

Can you already tell what do all these characters have in common?

“Murderers”? “Psychopaths”? True and true.

The Death is the embodiment of aggression, a creature that almost entirely consists of spontaneously directed destructive force. These power and aggression replace almost all the movement of the Death’s soul, all its values and feelings, just as acts of aggression become the Death’s responses to all possible life situations.

The very term ultraviolence was introduced to us by one of the Deaths.

And don’t get me wrong: The Devil, for example, can scuffle-torture-murder left and right, too, but it does it for self-assertion or self-expression, for fame, for money, in a fit of rage; killing without thinking about any gain is a prerogative of the Death. It tortures and murders not only to protect itself, to avenge or to earn reputation – the Death primarily does it to alleviate the boredom of being, so to speak. This is why the Death usually makes violence the basis of its professional activities, meaning that most of the Deaths are criminals, soldiers, assassins and so on.

And, as any sadist, the Death always attaches great importance to the process of torturing/raping or killing. Snapping somebody’s neck, for instance, the Death would enjoy every part of it – the grabbing, the snapping, the crack, the limpness of the dead body in its hands etc. – all the different stages, the materiality of taking a life.

The Mage in low development, on the other hand, would appreciate the fact of its victim’s suffering as a result, but not the process of inflicting this suffering. The Deaths are fundamentally different from all other archetypes in that respect and others.

And where do these vicious creatures come from?

Usually, the Deaths do not choose to be the way they are – and this is one of the traits that help to distinguish them from, for instance, the Chariots – in most cases, the Death is a result of transformation of the Devil, the Justice, the Moon or the Star after being thoroughly frayed by fate. The damage and abuse it suffers frequently takes physical form – it’s not uncommon for the Deaths to even be symbolically or not so symbolically murdered (the Joker and his fall into the vat of chemicals is a classic example) and resurrected (and I’ll have to get to that again later).

Sometimes the Deaths are simply born under a bad sign, but then it’s usually due to some kind of medical/genetic experimentation or something in the same vein.

And it is true for our Major Craddock, too. He was created and programmed into being who he is.

And who is Major Craddock again?..

An android, or a host, as they call it in the universe of Westworld – essentially, an artificial creation designed to mimic a human being. They are used in the Westworld park as part of storylines, or narratives. They are there for the guests’ entertainment. So, Craddock plays the part of a military officer working for the Confederados. He is a first-generation host created in the Argos Initiative by Arnold Weber and Dr. Robert Ford, making him one of the eldest hosts in Westworld, maybe even outdating the park itself.

The first time you see him actually doing something is when the gang of Dolores Abernathy approaches him and his men because they want to join forces with their troupe against an unclear human force.

From the scene of their interaction you can probably remember some of the following details:

— Major Craddock’s stare of a mad dog, which you probably were as unprepared to see in Tucker’s eyes as I was.

— How unmoved, almost entirely unimpressed Major Craddock is by the death and the rebirth of buried Lieutenant Dunleavy, as he coldly describes “three ounces of Mexican lead in his belly” and accepts the idea that his Lieutenant has been brought back to life with a simple “indeed”, which you can interpret not only as a lack of curiosity but perhaps also as weak emotional attachment to his soldiers, who absolutely deserve it for the lack of any individuality. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

— Something you could probably call hostile hospitality on Major’s part – I mean his eerie, almost theatrical politeness, which wouldn’t fool anyone into thinking that the man isn’t disrespectful and provocative.

— Maybe a couple of other things, such as Craddock’s sharp tongue, macabre humour, fluid movements, or how appetizingly he ate.

— Finally, the fact that Craddock refuses to accept the deal and states the only partnership that would happen would be the rape Dolores and Angela by him and his unit:

Craddock: “My final decision is which of you to keep for myself and which of you to throw out there for my men.”

In other words, demonstration of the dominant position by means of threats of violence.

Here you have it, ladies and gentlemen: the Death bingo.

Oh, and then Teddy shoots Craddock after his statement, but Craddock is brought back to life by a captured Technician. Spoiler alert, I guess?

I’m going to broach everything mentioned, but for now, I want to concentrate on the “eerie politeness”, because the Deaths in high development are almost always characterized by this insincere courtesy, and that for a reason I can explain to you.

In short: the elements Jung calls shadow and persona aspects of the psyche are swapped over in the Death.

Every other character than the Death, including very aggressive specimen, even the Devils, have socially acceptable Dr Jekyll (the Persona) and a repressed, socially unacceptable Mr Hyde (the Shadow) in them. For the Death, the Shadow is its normal, default state, because the archetype doesn’t have the same social needs as other archetypes. It simply doesn’t need to hide its feelings and desires in order to look “normal” – it doesn’t tolerate social conventions.

So, typically, the Death is a 24/7 Mr Hyde. It does have a thin coating of the Persona, but it only uses it on very special occasions, to deceive or to – paradoxically – appear even more intimidating than it already is. This is why Craddock’s attempts to be silver-tongued may cause you discomfort – in these moments, he is a crocodile smiling at you.

Importantly, all of this doesn’t mean that the Death is always a cutthroat that only thinks about torturing animals, burning buildings down, raping women and murdering men. Not at all.

Almost all of the Deaths are able to control themselves to some extent, but this control is carried out by the Animus, not by the Persona. How is this different? The Animus isn’t a social suit, meaning that it isn’t used to appear to others, it’s a personal moral fiber, something close to a codex that prevents the Death, who sees itself as a warrior, from turning into a butcher raping and killing everyone around.

Does this mean that the Devil’s transformation into the Death happens after its acceptance of the Shadow as the terminal state of its personality and almost full rejection of its Persona? Yes, it absolutely does.

By the way, the Persona of the Empress is the Anima, and that’s why the Death inevitably gets into conflict with the Empress as soon as they get in contact. Would you like to guess who Dolores is (confess, she reminds you of Cersei Lannister)?

So, yes, the fact that Craddock joins Dolores’s group as they arrive at Fort Forlorn Hope, where Craddock’s commanding officer agrees to help Dolores in the morning to defeat the incoming security force, shows us another aspect of the Death.

Even though, the archetype is mostly independent, it usually is guided or influenced – sometimes directly, by the Emperors and the Empresses, the Mages and the Hierophants, but more often by the mediators, like the Hanged, the Justices, the Devils or the Towers. (Left to itself, the Death either indulges in debauchery or spends whole days planning ideal crimes/operations and perfecting its murder skills, waiting for someone who will suggest a proper victim to appear.)

And in that respect, the Deaths, generally speaking, fall into two categories – those who end up aligned with the forces of order and those who are, as the Joker puts it, “agents of chaos”, respectively.

How are they different?

The Deaths on the side of order are ideal warriors and guardians of law, because they channel their destructive energy into annihilation of all those who they are told to kill. And the Deaths execute these orders for a two-fold reason:

First, their leaders symbolically embody their parents, since they take responsibility for their actions, which the Deaths greatly appreciate (I’ll get to it in a moment).

And second, the system they serve provides them with the concept of an enemy/victim, thereby relieving them of the need to choose their victims on their own. The Deaths are generally infantile, and many of them can’t or don’t want to – sometimes without realising it – make their own decisions. This makes them ideal objects of manipulation – they are loyal and sufficiently stupid.

The Deaths that are taking the side of the chaos usually become leaders/subleaders themselves, because it is much easier to destroy the world together with your henchmen than to try doing it in splendid solitude. Very interestingly, the henchmen of the Deaths are often marked by them (uniforms, masks, obligatory scarifications etc.), like zombies are marked by signs of decomposition, and thereby represent the extension of the Death’s physical influence.

(And the Deaths from the second category are usually smarter, there are even geniuses among them e.g. Moriarty from Sherlock or the Joker. These Deaths also tend to be more popular due to the disturbing combination of sadism, intelligence and cheerful attitude (we’ll get to that, too) – Negan from the Walking Dead would also be an example of the Death that is a loved strategist).

Is this true for Major Craddock? It is.

His troupe is shown as a splinter group, a gang with him as its leader. They do not appear to be motivated by any ideology, murdering, raping, marauding – in short, embracing outrage as normality. They’re just having what they hold for fun, like a pack of hungry wolves or perhaps rather mad dogs.

Dolores sums up this important characteristic of the Death in the following quote:

Teddy: “These men are animals.” Dolores: “These men are just children. They don't know any better. They need to be led. We don't stand a chance against the men coming for us if we're fighting alone.”

She uses a key-word I’d like you to remember. “Children.”

Mental age of the Death is always approximately ten-twelve years, which explains not just their easy relationship to violence but also a number of other of their typical characteristics – above all their inability - and usually unwillingness - to build a family or sustain a partnership (which is perfectly fine when you are talking about a reflective individual, but here we certainly aren’t).

Moreover, the Deaths are sexual deviants – paedophilia, bestiality, incest, you name it – everything that can certify perversity and lack of understanding of the concept of intimacy can be found here.

Roughly speaking, the Death is a preceding evolutionary stage of the Devil and the Mage – whereas the Mage is an adult with adult emotions, adult social standing and overall adult psychology, and the Devil is a typical teenager, the Death is a cruel and merry child.

And this easily explains why two possible negative transformations of the Devils are the Emperor and the Death – both of these archetypes are violent, but whereas the Emperor is a superhuman, the Death is an animal. To become one of them, the Devil has to get rid of everything humane in it and learn to see in people either ants below its feet or food. This evolution is a direct consequence of the resolved conflict of “the awkward age��: either you become an adult, or you regress into a child stage; either you reflect on your power and use it consciously or turn it into the defining element of your behavior. And like a naïve child it is, the Death hates to be tricked by heartless adults. At Fort Forlorn Hope, the Confederados are soon revealed to be mere pawns, as Dolores only needed them to distract the security force: once they are no longer useful, she has Wyatt’s followers brutally murder them. Craddock angrily vows revenge, so Dolores orders Teddy to execute him and his men: however, after Craddock taunts Teddy for simply following Dolores’s orders, Teddy lets them escape.

Just look at what he says:

Craddock: “I been watchin' you. We ain't so different. You and I are both triggermen to tyrants. Except me, I know what I want. But you ain't even sure about that termagant you take your orders from. I look at you, and what I see is pathetic.”

Isn’t it the kind of devaluation a child would use? You may be pointing this gun at me, but you’re still a chicken! Na-na, na-na, boo-boo, we get it, Major. Alas, Teddy doesn’t. Most likely, he doesn’t understand whom he is dealing with here.

And right now you might be wondering whether you can identify the Death by looking at it.

There is no such thing as "prototypical appearance" when it comes to the Deaths, but many of them look racy, wear extravagant or simply expensive clothes (“Westwood!”), have prosthetics, bear scars etc., or can be vaguely attractive.

There are many characters of very specific appearance among the Deaths: they can have physical abnormalities (both innate and acquired) and various types of biomodifications or simply eccentrically approach their image. As a rule, this specificity is connected to their becoming of the Death – it can be both the reason of the transformation into the Death (e.g. a catastrophe leads to irreversible physical and psychological changes of the character) and the direct consequence of it (i.e. the Death changes its appearances as it enters the new phase of its life). I would say that it could be partially true for Major with his uniform, too, if we assume that it was the war which had made him what he is.

And right now you might be wondering whether this bit was an excuse to insert here a gif with Craddock shaking down his coat… I shall let you be the judge.

Next time we see Craddock, he takes the Man in Black and Lawrence hostage when they come to Las Mudas. He brings them to the church where the townspeople are being kept, and the Man in Black tells him where the town weapons are stored. But not before Major kills the town representative, because he – Craddock – isn’t doing any deals.

Craddock: Now, me and my men here have a long journey ahead of us. We need food, whiskey, and ammunition. You people have some village elder who can speak for you? Make some kind of a deal? (GUNSHOT) (ALL MURMURING) I ain't interested in makin' fuckin' deals. You understand?

Probably inefficient?.. Not for the Death, who operates on intimidation. I bet, Major Craddock could threaten and kill these poor townspeople all day. Because, you see:

Craddock: We know you motherfuckers are rebels. So you’re gonna tell me where the fuck you hid your weapons, or you’re gonna die. Lawrence: The second we tell him he's gonna kill us all anyway. But you know what? It is very likely that Lawrence is right, but it isn’t necessarily so. Despite what you might be thinking now, the Deaths aren’t complete strangers to nobleness. Don’t raise your eyebrows, let me explain: they like to challenge and to accept challenges, to find worthy opponents – a victory over an equal or even a superior opponent results in ecstasy of the usually unemotional Death. And this is why sometimes the Death is able to respect an interesting opponent suggesting a one-on-one combat, which, however, probably wouldn’t prevent it from hurting the relatives of the said opponent... Because the Death has its own way of assessing such things. For instance, it can find the murder of a waiter for a spilled tea understandable and condemn a genocide. I’m going to talk about the reasoning behind it later.

Now I’d like to turn to the two defining attributes of the Death apart from sadism – in every sense of the word, including sexual sadism.

First one is its amorality. Even if the Death develops its own moral system, the core at the center of that system becomes the mirror image of the public morals. Many of the Deaths do, indeed, understand the concept of “forbidden”, but this knowledge in the end only tempts them to violate the prohibitions. Most of them, though, aren’t interested in comprehending the concept of moral at all. Take, for instance, Bart from Dirk Gently: she is a holistic murderer, who kills because the universe compels her to. It’s not a part of her job to question why she has to do what she has to do.

Importantly, this factor defines not only the Death’s behavior but its whole way of life – the choices the Deaths make and what these lead them to.

The second defining attribute is gaiety of the Death. That gaiety shouldn’t be mistaken for optimism – the Deaths are rather pessimistic, but at the same time they find evil funny; not to mention the fact that, in many cases, typical manifestations of gaiety, such as smiles and laughter, can express almost any emotion when it comes to the Death. That perverse gaiety also often becomes an important attribute of the Death’s exterior – the Comedian and the Joker probably are the most striking examples for that, – and in combination with vigor and vitality (children are usually very energetic), which are also quite characteristic for the most Deaths, it gives us the archetype that by murdering, raping, torturing, and committing acts of terrorism for its own amusement brings about irreversible changes in the cosmographic picture of its world.

In other words, even though the Death per se is a weak occult figure, it compensates for it with its physical influence on the environment, often becoming one of the most important figures of its fictional universe in the process.

Also, many of the Death are approaching the position of a trickster in their worlds, but due to their primitivism they rarely realize the potential of this possible cosmographic role.

In many ways, it resembles the modus operandi of The Wheel of Fortune – another very physically influential archetype.

And another archetype once played by Tucker, hm. Matthew Brown was the most memorable cameo of the second season of Hannibal, I guarantee you. And it makes sense to give these physical characters to a very physical actor (and person), when you think about it: the way the man moves on camera, almost aggressively at home in his own body, all the tiny nuances of his intimate interactions with the props that are basically creating an additional layer of dialog and of the characters themselves… Isn’t it the best way to breathe life into physical archetypes and simply a wonderful approach to acting? I know, I know, you aren’t here because of my degree in Tuckerology. It’s just hard to talk about the man without professing love.

The next thing Major Craddock does is shooting a bartender balancing a glass of nitroglycerine on the back of his hand after the man successfully does for him what he has been told to. Irony or sadism? It’s the same for the Death. You are recalling Ramsay Bolton torturing Theon Greyjoy, aren’t you?

It is worth noting that since the act of murder is perceived by the Deaths as the act of domination over the world, and basically is their biggest source of pleasure, many authors like to stage the battles between the Deaths and the Hermits, who endure great moral suffering even when committing violence in self-defense.

The fact that the Death doesn’t find it shameful to find pleasure in evil and laugh at the absurd and unbearable lightness of being (yes, it sort of is this existential, we’re getting there) may make you think that there isn’t anything holy to the Death at all, but – and the Death has this in common with the Mage – usually something is. It’s just insanely difficult to find, since even the Death doesn’t actually realize it sometimes. Again, think about a very cruel child, who despite everything still is a child and loves, for instance, some TV character or other figure.

And since we are talking about what the Death might like or love, the Deaths usually have a narrow circle of interests, which predictably includes drugs, weapons (Remember the impressed look on Craddock's face after that demonstration of a blaster? Even if you don't, here I have it for you:

), explosives, violence, sex (rape), terrorism, but also – and this is where it gets interesting – quite often it likes dancing and music, which seems to appease their inner predator; it frequently likes childish activities or things associated with childhood (Simon Adebisi blowing soap bubbles!), animals, with which the Deaths subconsciously feel a certain kinship, games, competitions, fights, sports, food, and clothes.

Also, it usually is quite indifferent to money - again, like a child, who doesn’t understand the value of it; this is one of the traits that help you distinguish the Death from the Wheel of Fortune, who is an avid fan of making profit in all sorts of manners.

But of course there isn’t a thing that the Death generally enjoys more than tormenting people and putting them into uncomfortable situations, which Major Craddock demonstrates by forcefully dancing with Lawrence’s wife in front of him.

Yes, you'll have to believe me that in this particular instance dancing with Jonathan Tucker is actually intended as torture.

Maybe an interesting connection to a deeper meaning of the card of the archetype is that the Death doesn’t discern between age, race or sex, just as actual terrible misfortunes can potentially happen to everyone. However, being an expert sadist, the Death can and usually will make use of those characteristics of its victim that make them especially vulnerable, be it physical or psychological vulnerability.

For all the reasons discussed above, the Deaths are usually lonesome. The primitiveness of their life philosophy, together with aggressiveness that gives them a dangerous reputation, eventually isolate the Death from the normal people almost completely. Sometimes leaders or quasi-leaders, such as the Mages and the Devils in high stages of their development, the Hanged and the Justices, seek their assistance, but even then they tend to distance themselves from the Deaths in personal interactions.

The young Deaths – usually in their lower stages of development – do not pay attention to this zone of estrangement around them or even like it, seeing it as a confirmation of their value and uniqueness as a source of danger for everyone, including potential allies.

But the older Deaths often suffer from loneliness and try to build a circle of friends but fail almost always.

This loneliness, which is usually a symptom of entering the phase of high development (in which the Death realizes its emotional and social inferiority), can change the Death very much. This is, for example, what the Comedian was going through when he found out about the plan of Ozymandias and realized that he can’t understand a mass murder of those who aren’t his enemies or prey (“We know you motherfuckers are rebels!”). This is when murder becomes barbarity in his eyes, and instead of perceiving it as a joke, he asks: “I mean, what’s funny? What’s so goddamn funny? I don't get it. Somebody explain... somebody explain it to me.”

The Comedian’s isolation indicates the same thing Jake Gallo’s search for life reference points, the tragic nihilism of Ares or Grievous’ perfectionism do – the Death only suffers from its inadequacy.

In other words, golem wants to become a human, but it can’t, because it isn’t designed to play that role. Even if the Death is capable of loving or feeling anything at all, it still looks at the world from a perspective of a blunt metal object: here is me (or mine) and there are them, the enemies, who I/we have to kill. Not to kill to save a world or get something, simply because they are the enemies.

And speaking about what else can hurt the Death: Physical world is very important to it, it craves for contact with it, so, blindness, paralysis or amputation would be enough to destroy the Death’s personality.

But what leads to the actual downfall of the Death? One could assume that it is stupidity or excessive cruelty that leaves the Death without any companion-in-arms in a difficult situation. But no, actually.

What exactly killed Major Craddock?

Remember the “I know what I what” bit? It was this assumption. Because it’s the incipient ambition that usually kills the Death.

We cannot force ourselves to be kin to what is unlike us, and since the Death is a blind branch of the archetypical personal evolution, it is confined to itself. (The Deaths usually do not evolve, but can acquire some resemblance to the Mages with age and certain intellectual growth.) The Death can’t be anything better than an assassin (serving order) or a bandit (serving chaos). The Joker understands it: “You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! I just do things.”

Major Craddock, on the other hand, doesn’t (didn’t...) seem to realize that the aspirations he connected with an unknown place called Glory, which he was hellbent on making his way to, resulted from the desire to become more than he is – a thug on the side of the losers (the Confederados), an artificial being, a mad dog, lost without someone holding its leash. Someone who never had the free will to decide what he wants to be but was forcefully put into being. I told you it’ll get existential!

Instead, Major thinks that he is the active subject that chooses his fate and was chosen by death, becoming its herald and champion:

Craddock: “Death is an old amigo of mine. I died just recently, in fact. But death can't bear to lay claim on me. So it sent me back here to do its bidding. Because I do it with such goddamn style. I've served death well. And in turn, it'll be watching over us as we cross these lands.” Right after that The Man in Black explains to him: The Man in Black: “You think you know death but you don't.”

Given the fact that Craddock is the Death and decided to identify with death after years and years of inflicting violence, you could argue that The Man in Black is basically saying here: “You don’t know yourself, boy”.

And what about what happens then? Well.

The Death has the tendency to escape death for quite some time. Yet when it does die, it’s usually a very horrible way to go: being eaten alive by your own dogs, falling from a great height. And now we can add a nitroglycerin cocktail to this list as well.

And honestly, thank goddess. As much as I love Jonathan Tucker and his characters, the series was painful to watch for me personally. And now I can't wait for City on a Hill, wondering who Tucker’s next archetype is going to be, because the man certainly has an intuitive grasp of these things.

So, this is it. Thank you for you attention and let me know what other Tarot archetype you'd like to learn more about!

#the major arcana #tarot #tarot cards #tarot archetypes #major craddock #westworld #jonathan tucker #the death #character overview #fandom meta

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kelleyschorn · 6 years

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Kelley Reviews: Tag (Spoiler Edition)

*If you’ve already read my non spoiler review of this movie, skip to after the SPOILERS sign!

Quick word about the movie poster I chose for this review: It’s not my favorite one because this one kind of makes the movie look stupid but I went with image resolution over image content.

That being said, I was hooked on this movie since I first saw the trailer. The concept was original and it even had the added interest of it being based on a true story, “we’re not kidding”. So many things drew me to this movie from the plot to the fantastic trailer and then there’s the amazing cast. Tag is a comedy inspired by a real group of ten friends who have been playing the game of tag since high school. There is a great video on youtube that gives a more in depth look at the real story that you can find right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8C-VFbP-JQ

Because this reality acts as more of a writing prompt than a fully realized story, the writers for Tag exercised their own creative liberties when telling the story inspired by this amazing group of friends. There are hundreds of potential stories that could come from this prompt and I think the writers were smart to pare down the cast from ten to five so as to make a story that was more easily grasped. The movie centers on Ed Helms’ character, Hoagie, and his goal of finally tagging their impossible-to-catch friend Jerry, appropriately played by Hawkeye—I mean Jeremy Renner. Lately I’ve been a bit put off by comedies that rely heavily on jokes centering on sex and hoping that this will convince the audience that the crappy plot is worth overlooking for the crass punch lines. That being said, movies like Game Night and Tag have been a breath of fresh air in comparison. While both do have similar jokes throughout, they also have a good plot to stand on making room for situational humor to shine through.

While some critics disliked Tag, saying that it lacked the fun loving essence of the true tale it draws from, I would say that those critics missed the point of the movie. Without giving anything away, I would say that this movie exemplifies the importance of staying young, even when you get older. It does a great job of portraying the realities of keeping up with old friends and the fact that, while you may not see them as often as you did in high school, when you get together, it’s like no time has passed. Not only does Tag give you all of those warm and fuzzy things, but it also delivers them in a hilarious way! I saw this movie with my mom and sister and we were dying laughing throughout. The all-star cast definitely helped with this as well as the quality of the story itself.

The plot was kind of all over the place with some seemingly pointless subplots and some downright unbelievable moments but overall, I would say that this is a solid comedy and it stands out among others in its genre.

WHAT WORKED

The cast. What an awesome cast for a comedy am I right? I love Ed Helms because the Office (duh). I love Jake Johnson because I know him from New Girl. And I love Jeremy Renner because he is Hawkeye and he basically plays Hawkeye in this movie and I was all for it. Of course I also love Rashida Jones and I felt that she was a bit underused in this movie. If a less talented cast had been chosen, I would not have liked this movie nearly as much as I did. I especially feel that Ed Helms did an exceptional job seeing as how his role required more seriousness than his fellow cast members.

The plot. Yes there were issues with the plot, but what worked for me was the direction they chose to take the story in. Also the fact that they chose a direction in the first place. Like I said above, the original story acts as writing prompt and I think that that is pretty cool. This is what the writers came up with based on that prompt and I or you or anyone else would have come up with something completely different. They had to create a fully fleshed out story from that one tiny prompt! Writing is so cool! Ok nerd-out over. Anyways what worked for me about the plot were the more serious” themes of friendship and the importance of staying young, even when you get old. Despite it being a comedy, I found these themes, and the implementation of them touching. Also the twist at the end was unexpected and pulled off really well by Ed Helms. I didn’t believe it at first but once I knew it was real, it added so much depth and clarity to the story. Again, props to you Ed for pulling that character off so well. I also loved how they included a lot of the real life epic tags from the source inspiration seamlessly into the plot—the tagging at the funeral, the dressing up as an old lady.

The characters. The characters for me is where the comedic elements in this movie really shined. Such a wide range of characters for some epically hilarious interactions. I loved Hoagie signing up to be a janitor despite his “PHD in veterinary science and a flourishing practice” (I’m paraphrasing but you get it). Randy and all of his weed jokes were great and the scene where he’s smoking in the basement with his friends reminded me of That 70’s Show. Jerry was made even more funny to me because he was played by Jeremy Renner. I could totally see Hawkeye being all about this and being this hardcore in the Marvel Universe. (I know I said the nerd moment was over but I lied—sorry!) Hannibal Buress had some funny moments as Sable but some of them fell flat. I felt like his character lacked some of the cohesion the other’s had, like they couldn’t really decide what comedic angle they wanted to go with him so with his tragic back story some of the jokes just felt a bit awkward.

The funny. A lot of the jokes came from the absurdity of their situation and I loved that! They didn’t have to rely heavily on cheap sexual jokes (the adult version of fart jokes) to be funny. The premise and the characters themselves created hilarious scenarios for the viewer’s entertainment.

Small highlight to the parts where they show the gang as kids and how this game started and then it shows them as adults driving next to those kids as a transition—that part was genius!

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

The plot. Ok so here’s my issue, some of these subplots just didn’t really add anything to the movie for me. The Randy Vs. Callahan romance subplot. This was unnecessary. I do love Rashida Jones but this did not add anything to main plot other than (maybe) some more characterization of the characters. I don’t think it was needed and I don’t think it added anything significant to the plot other than a distraction for those characters that causes them to miss Jerry and that could have been done by a lot of other things, (Randy could have gotten too high, Callahan could have been distracted by flirting with the reporter). The other subplot that I have some issues with is the reporter. She was literally only there as an interpreter for the audience so that we would know what was going on. She never really advances the plot and doesn’t ever cause any sort of drama with the group. She’s static and could have been used better. I’m not saying that it wasn’t a clever way to clue the audience in, but I think they could have paired her with Callahan as a romantic interest (I shipped it) to at least give her some sort of importance. Or as a more extreme fix, I would have taken her out altogether and had one of the guys, maybe Hoagie, narrate and explain various things throughout—though I’m more in favor of the love interest thing because she did bring some comedic elements of just not knowing what’s going on.

The scene at the wedding shower. Specifically the giant traps and the extremes Jerry went through to mess with his friends took me out of the story a bit. I get that it was supposed to funny how absolutely ridiculously into the game these grown men were but some of the jerry stunts pushed it a bit too far for me.

The characters. I already explained my issues with Sable and the reporter but the other characters that didn’t quite work for me were Cheryl (Rashida) and Hoagie’s mom. Hoagie’s mom felt like a lazy character to me. Like the writer’s forgot about her until the end and were like, oh wait, how can we make her funny? Let’s just make her into one of her son’s friends. I thought maybe it would have been funnier to have her be one of those completely unaware types, like all this stuff is happening around her and whenever she finally looks around, it’s all gone. And then Cheryl, her plotline was doomed from the start but as far as that subplot goes, what smart woman in her right mind chooses the unemployed broke pothead living with his dad over smart successful Callahan in a choice between two exes?? Ok rant over. That character had no real purpose in the story, I say cut her out.

While I did have all those issues, I did thoroughly enjoy this movie. I laughed a lot and was fully entertained. I would highly recommend this movie it was a fun one! Unfortunately I do not have a ticket stub to show for this movie because the theater I went to screwed me over! I’m just not going to go to that theater anymore, It’s not worth losing my precious ticket stubs!

Let me know what you think of this review and what you thought of Tag! If you liked this review please share it! Stay tuned for the next one: The Incredibles 2!

#tag #tag movie #ed helms #rashida jones #Hannibal Buress #randy johnson #jeremy renner #jon hamm #Tag movie review #movie review

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elfnerdherder · 7 years

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Ill Intentions: Chapter 8

You can read Chapter 8 on Ao3 Here

Check out my Patreon Here and become part of the squad! Early updates, behind the scenes info, and the chance to vote on certain outcomes!

Chapter 8: Blank Document

Writer’s block again.

Will sat at his kitchen table, cigarette dangling unlit from his lips. The word document sat teasing, bare-boned and holding nothing of any remote worth on the page. It wasn’t the first time he’d closed out of a word doc. without saving, and it wouldn’t be the last. The blank page and the blinking, obtrusive faint line mocked him with its lack of depth, its lack of luster.

What made the Chesapeake Ripper become?

Cheesy. Cheap. Predictable. Back stories weren’t always Will’s interest. Back stories always made him feel like he was 2 seconds away from tumbling into their life, knowing their struggles intimately. He much preferred holding people at a distance, studying them without having to become them.

He backspaced the question and scowled at the blank document once more. He idly scratched his head, then gave in and lit the cigarette, taking a desolate drag.

His problem, he figured, was that one couldn’t study the Chesapeake Ripper at an arm’s length. He glanced to the side where Freddie’s articles sat alongside articles from other newspapers, everyone asking questions they’d never get the answers to because no one could get ahold of the Chesapeake Ripper to even ask him.

Will could, though. If he fully embraced the Chesapeake Ripper, really dug into his skin and nestled among his veins and pulse and bones, he could answer those questions with perfect assurance.

Did he want to do that, though? Did he want to step into the spaces that the Chesapeake Ripper walked and answer the things that no one else could? What would happen in the aftermath? What would that say about him, that he was the only one to peer behind the artfully constructed person-suit the Ripper wore and see the dark, sordid truths beneath?

He considered his cork board that’d lain desolately empty for four years, purchased when he’d first gotten hired at Tattler News so that he could pin his accomplishments to it. What space was taken up, was taken up with the Chesapeake Ripper.

Are serial killers your muse?

The clove crackled in the cigarette, hissed as embers chewed through the paper.

Dear Will,

There’s a killer out there that’s burying people alive. They found a gravesite with nine bodies, all fed intravenously with sugar water to keep them in a diabetic coma while fungi grew on their bodies. What kind of sick shit is that? There’s a manhunt for this guy, but no one can find him. What do you make of that?

-Hooders

Dear Will,

Did you see the murder in Baltimore where someone shoved the neck of a cello down a guy’s throat? Crazy, right? What kind of guy does that?

-Umbre24

Dear Will,

I don’t know if I should be writing this to you, and I’m hoping you don’t post it in the column. The doctors will probably take away my computer time if they find out that I’m dwelling on something as morbid as you. I’m still confined to a psychiatric ward after everything that’s happened, but I’ve followed your column since almost the beginning.

Because of you, my father is dead.

I’m sure you’ve heard of me, the girl whose father murdered eight other girls in her stead. It was because of you that they found him, because of you that he panicked and killed my mother. I know that I should feel angry about this, but I don’t. In reality, I don’t feel much at all.

When you write about these people, characterize them and immortalize them in the written word, do you feel anything? Do you look at what you’ve said, look at what you’ve done and feel any form of remorse? Or are you there to simply take up space, entertain with your behaviors that led to the death of both of my parents, as well as the parents of the Mai’s?

I agreed to the terms of having your newspaper keep my e-mail unscrambled so that you can reply to me directly. Maybe I sound aggressive, but I’d honestly like to know. Is the only reason you can write about these people and not feel so horrible because you’re just like them?

Thank you,

-Abigail Hobbs

Will read the e-mail once, then twice; by the third time, he pushed the laptop away and fumbled with the cigarette, stubbing it out in the ashtray with shaky hands. His breath came short, and he was uncomfortable to realize that his palms were clammy, as though he’d endured a particularly uncomfortable social interaction.

Abigail Hobbs. The daughter of the Minnesota Shrike.

His watch beeped to tell him to take a walk. He ignored the notification in favor of pouring himself a drink instead.

Are serial killers your muse?

When he could control his breathing, he pulled the laptop back to himself and opened the black document once more, staring at the pulsing, faint line. With each blink, it drove her words home, barbs that sunk deep and pulled him closer and closer to the inevitable truth that he didn’t quite want to entertain.

Was the only reason he could write about these people because he was just like them?

Thinking of the knife that now sat in his messenger bag, unobtrusive when tucked away in a sheath he’d found on Amazon for four bucks, he honestly couldn’t say either way.

He was interrupted hours later from his musing by the piercing, sharp ring of his phone, the vibrations on his wrist jerking him out of his reverie. Often times, Will had to use the most obnoxious, loudest ringtone possible in order to ensure that he heard it, and it was with numb, heavy fingers that he answered the call.

“Graham here.”

“Graham, it’s Beverly. You want to get an eye on this guy sooner than a month?”

Her voice jerked him from the lulling thoughts he had of Mary Mai tracking her steps through her watch. He wondered if she strove to break her step record, or if simply maintaining was good enough for her dysmorphia. “Yeah.”

“I did a bit of digging, and it looks like there’s a gala in Baltimore this weekend. Some opera singer or other, a bit of art, and a Dr. Hannibal Lecter whose donation took top and center in the Baltimore Times since he’ll be in attendance.”

“Do you think I’m like him, Beverly?”

He was just buzzed enough that the question didn’t sound as sharp coming out of his mouth as it did in his head.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you think the reason I can write about people like this is because I’m like these people? Or do I just have a really really good imagination?”

Beverly took enough time to think on the answer that he honestly appreciated it. He roved away from the window and scowled at the laptop whose blank document page continued to mock him.

“You’ve always been a weird guy, Will. I’ve known you for years, and I’ve always thought that. You have a way of thinking about things that no one else does, but I think that has less to do with you being some kind of psychopath and more along the lines of you being a really good writer when you have the right incentive.”

“The right incentive being killers.”

“Well, everyone has their muse. Once upon a time, I was going to work in forensics until I realized I had more fun decrypting the written word of the general populace than decrypting hair follicles on the sleeve of a dead guy.”

“Everyone has their muse,” Will agreed.

Are serial killers your muse?

“Yeah, but I think that given enough push, you can empathize with anyone. Despite hating your wedding column, you still did it, right?”

“Wedding announcements,” he swore savagely. His fingers rolled the half-consumed cigarette around, tight enough to crush its cylindrical shape.

“Yeah. I asked you why you bothered, once. You said that when you saw the bride, you didn’t care. When you spoke with her, though, or when you spoke to the groom, their emotions spilled over, so much so that you began to be excited because of them. You don’t care about relationships and weddings and baby’s breath, but for a little while, you could channel their excitement about it –at least enough that you could write what was necessary.”

It was stark honest and realistic. He could work with that, clutch onto the string of hope that he could think like them because he could think like anybody if he cared enough.

The problem being that he hadn’t cared enough about anything for a long, long time.

“I’m not good at socializing,” he said at last, thinking of the gala. “Will you be my plus one?”

“Oh, you’re not taking Freddie along this time?” she asked sarcastically.

“She’d stand out in a snowstorm,” he replied. “I need someone that can hold a crowd while I keep an eye on the crowd. Your social skills are far better than hers or mine.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Please don’t be sour about her being here. If we’re looking into this because the FBI can’t go where we can, then it makes sense that we use someone that will go where we’re not willing to go.”

“You owe me a really high end liquor for this, you know that? You even had her in my house.”

“I’ll pick it up at the store after the gala,” he promised.

When he hung up, he cleared the notifications away on his watch sloppily. Get water. Eat dinner. Take a walk. Get water. Get ready for bed. Prepare for tomorrow. Go to bed. He’d ignored all of them in favor of scowling at his laptop, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Fucking writer’s block.

He closed the laptop lid with a little more force than was absolutely necessary. The word document sat blank. Unsaved.

He responded to Abigail Hobbs. Work dragged, and his desk wobbled with a vicious mockery. He wondered if the Chesapeake Ripper would send another letter, now that he was actively searching for him, or if he would sit back and simply watch what Will decided to do.

“Mail time.”

Someone dropped a stack of mail on his desk, and Will nodded in thanks. A lot of fan mail, a lot of criticism. His watch buzzed with a notification that traffic was heavy due to a wreck on his normal route home.

Then a letter written in a very, very recognizable hand.

Dear Will,

Your words are touching, truly, as you’ve taken the infamy of the Chesapeake Ripper to new heights with your censure. Should you, instead, tell the masses of your own activities, sordid as they are? Would they still love you, do you think?

Busy as I’ve no doubt kept you, I thought to give you something to sink your teeth into, to remind you just what it is to try and best someone like me.

What is all around us

and broken once we speak?

You have three days.

-Chesapeake Ripper

Will didn’t go to Charlie. His watch beeped to get water, and he filled his water bottle from the cooler before he was out of the door, waving dismissively to Beverly who watched with a confused, suspicious expression. He sent her a text as a peace offering.

Be back later, I have a lead.

He was three blocks down and stepping out into the street to hail a taxi when he heard a painfully familiar voice.

�� “You’re not going alone this time,” Freddie said, and stepped in front of him before he could move in front of oncoming traffic.

“You don’t know what I’m doing,” Will replied with far more snark than he meant.

“You’ve gotten a letter from the Ripper, and you’re not waiting around for someone to tell you not to go after it,” she said, and she folded her arms over her chest. “Every time there’s a letter, though, he escalates the situation. Can’t you see that?”

“If they’re already dead, someone needs to know.”

“And if they’re already dead, you should be calling Jack Crawford of the FBI, not racing after them.” She tilted her head, and in the bright afternoon sunlight, it made her eyes glint. “Don’t bullshit me, Graham. I know why you’re going alone, but I’m saying that if you’re going to bring us all together, you can’t give me the same lies you give Katz.”

“I didn’t lie to her,” he said defensively.

“But you didn’t tell her the whole truth, either. ‘I have a lead,’” she scoffed.

“Are you going to get out of my way, Freddie?”

“Are you going to keep wasting time when people could potentially be dying?” she fired back. “You know his time limits aren’t always honest.”

His watch buzzed to tell him that he’d been sitting for awhile. It sometimes did that, not always catching the few steps he’d taken just after getting up to move around. Will dismissed the small ‘Zzzz’ notification from his watch, then eyed Freddie with extreme prejudice. Where Beverly would allow him his odd tendencies of going off alone and going about his business, Freddie wasn’t much in the way of letting a lead get past her.

He let out a low, irritable growl, then handed her the letter. His free hand flexed, then drummed mindlessly against his leg, irritated.

She read it, reread it, then looked at him, eyebrow quirked.

“Silence,” he said when she made no comment.

“You know where to go?”

“The Silent Brother’s Monastery a mile outside of the city.”

Freddie snorted, then shook her head. “See, and I was thinking about the school for the deaf two miles south of here.”

Just behind her, a taxi slowed and Will waved his hand impatiently at it. It stilled, then swerved out of the way of other drivers to stop for them.

“So you go there, I go to the monastery,” he replied, and he snatched the letter from her. “Whoever is right gets a beer.”

“I don’t drink beer,” she said from the curb as he climbed in.

“Wine, spritzer, whatever,” he said, and he closed the door behind himself. Will would have liked to have claimed that he didn’t relish the look on her face as she watched the taxi driver pull away, but that would have been an outright lie. He’d been doing it so much, it least he could do was admit when he enjoyed being a pain in the ass for someone like her.

She sent him a text message with an emoticon of a middle finger, and he sent a thumb’s-up back.

The drive to the monastery wasn’t too far –traffic was hell going into the city at that time of day, not leaving it. Will held the paper so tightly that it crumpled up a bit, and he read and reread the riddle in an effort to ground himself rather than bounce about the walls in the back of the taxi.

“Going to meet someone?” the man driving asked. Will looked up, confused, and he explained, “When my wife leaves me notes in the morning, I hold onto them like that throughout the day. It makes me excited to be at the end of my shift.”

“…Yeah,” Will said, and he managed to smile after a beat. “Yeah, I’m meeting someone.”

“A friend?”

“A close friend.”

He thought to maybe relax his grip on the letter, but it didn’t last long before he was holding tight to it, studying the riddle again. He was right; he had to be.

He knew the Chesapeake Ripper better than Freddie did, surely.

The taxi slowed and turned them onto a small driveway, gravel and encased by rows upon rows of Magnolia trees, thick and normally waxy leaves browned and scattered across the ground. He thought of the white flowers that bloomed along the branches, the brides that wrapped them into bouquets. They bought the flowers from the monks here, and it was a wedding aesthetic to bind them in twine and let them rest in vases with an inch or so of water. They’d last for days like that, a wedding planner once promised him. The beauty of the magnolia flower would last for days in only an inch or so of water, holding on and spreading their petals wide for all to see.

They turned the corner and drove along the wraparound driveway. Off to the side, large green houses contained herbs, trees, and plants that the brothers sold in order to make a living, and alongside that was a small shop containing books on Christianity and gardening.

“Just right here,” Will said, and he fished out enough cash, passing it through the open slot.

“Is your friend a silent brother?” the driver asked.

“Yes,” Will said, thoughtfully. “He very much is.”

He waited until the driver pulled away before he began his trek towards the church that sat in the distance, composed of grey stones and quiet dignity. Despite not putting any of his stock into religion, he had to admit that there was a quiet peace shrouding the monastery, gentle hills rolling down towards a lake where he spied a few Canadian geese getting their feathers wet. Statues of saints dotted along the grass that still clung to its green coloring, stone benches beside plaques that quoted scripture.

The church looked far more foreboding in the grey of Fall than it did in early spring when Will liked to sometimes visit. Clouds above settled low, bled into the stonework of the church and made the cross on top look somewhat like a weapon rather than a symbol of holiness. Will ascended the steps and took hold of the brass handle on the thick, wooden door. His heart hammered in his chest, and his breath caught in his throat as he opened the door, blessing the silence of the hinges as they swung and allowed him into the silence of the chapel that smelled like rosewater and the fluttering pages of an old book.

Churches always filled Will with the sort of disquiet that they were supposedly meant to chase away. Their opulence and grandiose arches and stained windows that depicted saints that once preached humility and not needing riches in order to be close to God. His father had once tried to attend mass with him, when he was small. He’d swung his legs and drummed his fingers so loudly that a man in robes had hushed him from the aisle, stern and displeased.

There was no one to shush him as he entered, no preaching or singing. A quick glance at his watch told him that there was no mass currently, but there was a distinct lack of any noise save the sound of his shoes on the worn stone as he walked past the first set of pews and came to a stop at a small, wooden gate that led towards rows of more pews resting on either side, facing one another as well as a strip of red carpet that led to an altar. Jesus Christ was nailed to the wooden cross above the altar, eyes downcast, pained over the stone slab.

No body rested on the altar. Just a simple cloth.

“Dammit,” he murmured, and the hushing whisper of his voice carried over the silence that pressed too strong, too harsh in the otherwise quiet. Freddie must have been right.

He turned to leave, hands clammy and heart pounding far too harshly for failure. He exhaled, loud and biting, and made his way towards the doors. The brothers must have been somewhere else, doing what those who lived in silence did. Ironically, he paused beside the dish of holy water where one could trace the cross with their fingers –his father hadn’t stuck around religion long enough for Will to figure out why. Maybe if they’d stayed with the church, he wouldn’t have turned out like this.

Maybe.

He dipped his fingers in the bowl, then paused as he looked, really looked at it. Holy water was clear, and he recalled the dish he’d seen once depicting the Virgin Mary at the bottom of the water, rippling and otherwise merciful as the people murdered her son.

There was no such design that he could see in this bowl, seeing how it was filled instead with blood.

He withdrew his fingers, stared at the way that it beaded and slid along his fingers, gliding along his palm. In the gloom of the church, it took on an interesting sort of color, not entirely red but not yet dark enough for burgundy. His heart lurch, strained in his chest, and he looked about, swallowing down a noise of surprise and –dare he say –excitement. There was no one to witness his harried footsteps as he peeked along the pews and checked the closet in the corner. He whirled around, palms tingling, and when he spied the confessional booth off to the side, he didn’t walk so much as he ran to the doors of it, opening them both at once.

On the left, hands pressed to the grate between the confessor and the priest, a man with a wild array of curly brown hair sat in silence, black cloth tied about his mouth, silencing him. His eyes were glazed in death, his skin holding a dusty pallor. The smell hit Will hard, disrupting the rosewater.

On the right, a man that was very much alive sat with glazed, confused eyes. He was bound to his chair with rope that Will recognized as a particularly effective material for making netting to catch fish. Over his mouth, a similar black cloth was tied –the muffled noise gave away the gag that must have been shoved to the back of his mouth.

It took Will far too long to shake off the victory as well as the panic before he could untie him and ungag him.

“Are you hurt?” Will asked, voice ragged. The inside of the booth was snug with the two of them, but his fingers fumbled with the knots as the man let out a pained whine and tried to ease the pain in his jaw and mouth. The air reeked of urine and body odor.

“I…I…” he shuddered, eyes rolling into the back of his head as he tried to catch his breath and take control of what was happening around him. “P-please…I…”

Will helped him up and out of the chair, then led him to a pew to sit down. His robes were stiff from dried sweat and other bodily fluids, his hair flat against his head.

“I’m going to call for help,” he said to the man as he took his pulse. Too slow for comfort. “How long were you in there?”

“Please…” the man murmured, and he slumped down into the pew, dazed.

“Wait here,” said Will, as though the man would go anywhere else. He stepped out of the church and gulped in the cold, wet air outside, tingles gliding along his skin with short, electric bursts.

Then he called Freddie.

She picked up on the first ring, and he said, “You owe me a beer.”

There was a long, pregnant pause.

“Actually, you owe me a glass of wine,” she replied, and something in her tone made him tense. “Unless you found a dead body strapped to a sound-cancelling device with a man tied up just inches away from being able to release him.”

The blood in his veins froze.

“…No, but I found a corpse in the confessional booth with the priest on the other side, tied up and near-death,” he said, and his voice sounded tinny even to him, off.

They were both quiet, unable to quite bring to words the way the implications of their successes made them feel.

“Have you called the cops?” she asked, the first to speak. “I’ve got them on the way.”

“Yeah,” Will lied, and as he stood on the steps and tried to forget the smell of dried urine and sweat, he had to resist the urge to go back inside to see what could be seen before anyone else came to muck up what could arguably be called a gift to him. “Yeah, they’re on their way.”

When he hung up the phone, Will would have liked to have claimed that he called the cops immediately after. In truth, it took far too long for him to muster up the ability to dial the number, let alone convey his words to the operator that answered.

A special thanks to my patrons: @hanfangrahamk @matildaparacosm @starlit-catastrophe @sylarana Duhaunt6 and Superlurk! You guys make this possible <3

#LiaS scribbles #ill intentions #hannibal fanfic #hannibal #hannigram #someone help will graham #respond appropriately in emergency situations #freddie lounds #will graham x hannibal #Journalist!Will #Hannibal au

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everygame · 7 years

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Batman: Arkham VR (PS4)

Developed/Published by: Rocksteady Studios / Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Released: 11th October, 2016 Completed: 6th August, 2017 Completion: Finished it. Did some of the extra stuff, but none of the Riddler’s nonsense at all. Trophies / Achievements: 61%

Well, I’m doing these out of order because this game actually wasn’t the first thing I finished on my (borrowed!) PlayStation VR, but the other thing is brilliant and I want to talk about it (feel free to guess what it is, it’s definitely the first thing you would think of playing on VR?) whereas this is total balls and a really good thing to use to talk about VR.

First up: VR! It’s weird! I’m surprised to discover that the PSVR feels like, well, the budget option that it is, with a much ropier resolution than I remember it having at E3s and the like (I probably just wasn’t using it for as long to notice) but that the head tracking—as to be expected—is one to one, and when you are in a game world—any game world—it’s nice to just look around, and the one thing that you never seem to get tired of is moving your head in 3D space without moving your entire body. So, you know, peeking around a wall, or in a doorway, or sticking your head through a window. It’s brilliant after a lifetime of first person games where your hero is basically strapped to one of those Hannibal Lecter carts and you’re just wheeling them around.

The thing is, though… looking around is kind of… as fun as it gets. Because—and here’s me going to sound fat and pampered—the other VR opportunities are… kind of a chore? Or rather, they’re “events” that you genuinely very much have to be in the mood for. So: standing while playing the game, and walking around (a bit, not too far, watch out you’ll hit your shin off the coffee ta—see I told you). Or doing stuff with move controllers. Although to be fair I haven’t used that Farpoint gun thing yet. Somehow, the feeling I’ve generally had with this helmet on has been “hmm, I wish I was just sitting on the couch looking at a screen holding a controller.”

I mean, let’s take Batman here. Batman Arkham VR literally never gets better than the title screen. Standing in front of the bat signal, looking out over Gotham. The actual game… well, I mean, I hope it cost you less than a tenner, because it’s about an hour of content, and the content is so incredibly slight that I was shocked. Literally the first third of the game involves going downstairs to the bat cave and putting your suit on.

Actually wait that’s not true. In hilarious fashion, the game opens with you watching—in VR, from the height of a child—Bruce Wayne’s parents get murdered. How many times have these poor bloody people been murdered? I guess it’s fun that you can just, like… turn around and not watch it. VR!!!

Here’s the thing—and this is probably going to annoy you if you didn’t enjoy my “why didn’t they just do this???” from the Wolfenstein: The New Order article—When you get to the end of this very short little game, there’s a “twist” that I thought meant the game was actually going to be really clever. Basically, I thought it was going to work like one of my absolute favourite text adventures, 9:05, where by finishing the game based on all the prompts you learn something and can then play the game through again and… do the actual right thing.

However, it doesn’t do that! There’s one story and that’s it. My mistake was based on the fact that at the start of the game (well, a third of the way through the game) in the Batcave there’s a blood-sample kit, and I didn’t use it. So I thought that what you would actually do is test your blood at the beginning, realise you’re infected and then do something else instead of what you’re originally planning to do.

But then I found out that the game is set after Batman: Arkham City, where you already know Batman is infected, and anyway he’s done something so terrible that you sort of can’t fix it. (The worst thing of all is probably that it’s “all a dream” anyway—or at least, that was my understanding.) I do wish it did something—anything—clever at all, though.

Ok. wait, maybe I didn’t really explain what the game was? Look, all you do is, as Batman, is stand and look around, and then essentially point and click to make things happen. It’s the world’s most basic adventure game. You don’t even need to, like, go between different places to solve a puzzle, you just do them all linearly. And the only even vaguely action-like thing you do is shoot batarangs in a practice mode, which is fairly fun but it takes about two minutes.

Now, I’m not going to say that I hated this. Actually, it does exactly what you probably want for it—it’s a VR tech demo where you get to look at Rocksteady’s excellent Batman assets, and sort of get to “be” Batman, vaguely, for an hour. This is not so far from, like, a FMV game being used to show off your new CD-ROM drive in the 90s. I mean, that’s fine! But it doesn’t bode well.

Will I ever play it again? Heck no!

Final Thought: Batman is good though, isn’t he? What a weird dumb thing to think is good, though. A sad billionaire who uses his money to beat up people while dressed in bondage gear with more backstory and continuities than are bearable. And yet playing this—and hearing my pal Brandon Boyer bang on about how good it is—sure did make me want to finally get around to playing Batman: Arkham Knight! Ah well.

#batman #batman: arkham vr #rocksteady studios #text #txt #video games #games #gaming #2016 #vr #virtual reality #ps4 #playstation 4 #warner bros. interactive entertainment

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eichy815 · 6 years

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Dr. Huxtable Has Left The Building…

Originally Published on November 30, 2014 on Eichy Says

For decades, he’s lit up our television screens with his self-deprecating wit…and gotten millions of kids and adults alike addicted to Jell-O pudding pops.

But now, the jig is up for comedian Bill Cosby. Or, at least, that appears to be the case.

What started as an impulsive and rather offhanded dig made by stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress last month has snowballed into an onslaught of rape allegations from more than twenty women…some of which date back to the 1960s.

Now, Cosby could face civil (or criminal) charges from any of the alleged rapes that took place in New York, since (unlike many other states) the Empire State has no statute of limitations.

His professional legacy took a hard hit in the last month.

NBC has canned a development deal to give Cosby a new half-hour sitcom (that likely would have aired in 2015, and possibly become the last great bulwark of his television legacy). TV Land yanked syndicated episodes of his 1984-92 sitcom off its schedule entirely. Netflix has postponed a planned comedy special for Cosby. And the University of Massachusetts - Amherst asked him to step down as their honorary fundraising co-chairman.

Ordinarily, rape accusations against a highly-revered celebrity would be met with widespread skepticism. But the sheer number of women coming forward – coupled with the vivid descriptions from the purported victims – indicates that Cosby might not be the innocent party here.

Over the course of 2005 and 2006, Cosby’s legal team helped him settle out-of-court with Andrea Constand, who alleged that the aging comedian drugged and assaulted her at his mansion near Philadelphia in 2004. Reports have now surfaced that Cosby conspired with the National Enquirer to cover up Constand’s side of the story.

Former celebrity attorney Tamara Green recounted an experience similar to that endured by Constand – only it apparently took place in 1970. Green had served as a corroboratory witness to Constand’s legal team. Since Cosby and Constand eventually settled, Green wasn’t in any real position to pursue her own case against him.

Joining Green with her own in-court testimony last decade was ex-model Barbara Bowman, who’d claimed Cosby groped her and spiked her drinks on several occasions throughout the mid-1980s. Model-turned-teacher Beth Ferrier recounted similar experiences to Bowman’s from during that decade.

Green, Bowman, and Ferrier all served as “Jane Does” during the Cosby/Constand civil trials.

Then, in the aftermath of this past month’s renewed media discussion over the allegations against Cosby, supermodel Janice Dickinson spoke up on November 18, 2014. Dickinson claims that, in 1982 (while Cosby’s NBC sitcom would have been in development), Cosby slipped her a glass of red wine and a pill after she complained of menstrual cramps. When Dickinson tried to include a memoir of this experience in her 2002 autobiography, she was dissuaded from doing so by Cosby and his lawyers, and seemingly acquiesced at the risk of being branded a “slut” or “whore.”

A day later, former comedy writer Joan Tarshis came forward with painful memories of being date-raped by Cosby around the same time Dickinson claims to have been. Tarshis says she hadn’t spoken out until now because she was “scared” and wanted to “get away from him." But, in light of the allegations being revived in the past month, Tarshis stated how she believes that breaking her silence would be a way of showing support to any other women who similarly accuse Cosby of molesting them.

Indeed, on Nov. 20, both Therese Serignese (another of the "Jane Does” in the Constand case) and Louisa Moritz made their voices heard. Serignese alleges that she had a string of sexual encounters with Cosby beginning in 1976 – and even relied on him for financial support over the years. Moritz, who appeared on the TV series Love, American Style as well as the films Up in Smoke and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, claims that Cosby sexually accosted her backstage at The Tonight Show in 1971.

Model-actress Angela Leslie came forward one day later, recounting a 1990 incident in Cosby’s Las Vegas hotel room where he fondled her in a manner similar to those described by previous “Jane Does." Former talent agency secretary Kristina Ruehli and Picture Pages actress Renita Chaney Hill described beverage-drugging incidents mirroring those that Leslie says she’d experienced.

In spite of this cascade of allegations against him, no one is saying that Bill Cosby’s contributions should be discounted. His controversial ”Pound Cake speech“ (made at the May 2004 NAACP Image Awards) – where he railed against ebonics, frivolous spending habits, and single parenthood within the black community – nonetheless got people talking about economic and social issues unique to people of color.

Cosby has also been a devoted steward to the Jazz Foundation of America, instrumental in the cultivation of the organization’s ”A Great Night in Harlem“ benefit concert – which will be entering its fifteenth consecutive year.

But, undoubtedly, Cosby’s greatest contribution to pop culture will be having made us laugh. After finding marginal success with the 1965-68 spy drama I Spy and his 1969-71 sitcom The Bill Cosby Show, he catapulted NBC back into primetime prominence with The Cosby Show.

Premiering in the Fall of 1984, Cosby portrayed Dr. Cliff Huxtable, a quick-witted upper-middle class Brooklyn obstetrician. Partnered with his assertive attorney wife, Clair (Phylicia Rashad), Dr. Huxtable guided his brood of five precocious children (along with their assorted friends and extended family members) through the comical travails of life. Though some would argue that Clair actually "wore the pants” in the Huxtable family, Cliff delivered his lines with an iconic mixture of loving firmness and self-effacing playfulness.

America loved the Huxtables…and rightfully so. Their children – Sondra (Sabrina LeBeauf), Denise (Lisa Bonet), Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), Vanessa (Tempestt Bledsoe), and Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam) – could be selfish, and, at times, messed up (like any teenagers will be)…but, overall, they possessed good morals and truly cared about each other (and their peers!) as a family.

Following the end of The Cosby Show (and after his short-lived 1994-95 detective series, The Cosby Mysteries, also on NBC), CBS recruited Cosby to headline another new sitcom, the self-titled Cosby. Running from 1996 to 2000, Cosby had its star portraying Hilton Lucas, a grouchy airline employee who must navigate the stress of post-retirement life. Rashad reunited with him to play Hilton’s ever-patient wife, Ruthie; the show also costarred the late Madeline Kahn as Ruthie’s wacky best friend, Pauline. While much less successful than The Cosby Show, CBS found itself “back on the map” with Cosby after a disappointing prior two seasons of low-rated veteran and freshman series.

In January 1998, CBS gave Cosby his own reality show, Kids Say the Darndest Things – inspired by a classic segment of the same name from Art Linkletter’s House Party throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Despite all of his (presumed) behavioral sins, there should be no doubt that Cosby enjoys benign interactions with children…and he definitely cared about providing them and their families with “clean” television that would inspire creativity and thoughtfulness amid young minds.

In fact, former Cosby Show costar Raven-Symoné (she played Denise’s stepdaughter, Olivia) firmly denies tabloid-esque accusations that Cosby ever took advantage of her while on the set. Raven-Symoné lambastes such rumblings as “a disgusting rumor”…as far as it pertains to her own experiences working with Cosby.

So, for a moment, let us pay tribute to some of my own treasured memories of Bill Cosby’s comedic antics.

We all remember Cosby’s iconic TV commercials as a spokesman for Jell-O. In the early-1990s, Cosby did an adorable promo (along with a team of child actors) to advertise “jigglers” (which were fun Jell-O molds made from pre-sold cookie cutters). The cutest commercial from this promotional campaign featured Cos’ and several kids elegantly dressed up, having fun with their “jigglers” before dining on them at a formal dinner table – culminating with a little Asian girl mischievously grabbing one of the “jigglers” off a fancy platter, to which Cosby leans over and affectionately instructs her to “put that back.”

Cosby on Kids Say the Darndest Things, talking with a group of kids about love, aging, and parents.

Cosby chatting up future Stanford graduate Jeremy Fine on Kids Say.

From the pilot episode of The Cosby Show – Dr. Cliff Huxtable teaches only son Theo a lesson in economics:

Cosby Show early years – Dr. Huxtable tells youngest daughter Rudy an “urban legend” about the-little-girl-who-wouldn’t-eat-her-vegetables.

The Huxtables fake out Cliff on his birthday…later in the episode, they surprise him with a cabaret show performance by Lena Horne, who appears as herself.

Cliff plots to break up oldest daughter Sondra with her steady boyfriend, Elvin, by fixing up Sondra with a “more ideal” suitor.

Clair dispenses some “tough love” to future son-in-law Elvin, while Cliff watches.

The Huxtables teach daughter Vanessa a “fake-out” lesson after Vanessa parties with her friends and gets drunk for the first time.

Rebellious daughter Denise breaks the news to Cliff and Claire that she eloped…and is now married with a new husband and stepdaughter.

Dr. Huxtable receives an educational primer from his new “stepgranddaughter” (Olivia, played by Raven-Simone) about where babies actually come from.

In Cosby’s only interview thus far where addresses these rape allegations, he remains firm in his desire to refuse further discussion on the subject, dismissing them as “innuendos” that are not even worth entertaining.

A previous television interview (featuring Cosby and his wife, Camille), when the issue was brought up by NPR Weekend Edition host Scott Simon, Cosby actually asked Simon to keep the issue quiet by refraining from releasing the footage. Camille Cosby sat next to her husband…with visibly uncomfortable body language.

I also find it suspect how Cosby hasn’t given any interview to address this snowballing controversy with any Big-Name Journalist out there (be it Barbara Walters, Matt Lauer, or Oprah Winfrey). Given the extent of bad PR that has developed for him, you’d think someone of Cosby’s stature would want to clarify the record and very loudly tell his side of the story…if he was innocent.

This entire reality is so personally saddening for me, because I’ve always enjoyed Cosby’s subtle brand of humor in scripted television. In fact, I would always joke how my late maternal grandfather was “the white Bill Cosby” (due to my grandpa’s Cosby-like delivery of commentary, along with his eerie tendency to dress like Hilton Lucas).

While I understand that none of us should have a romanticized view of Cosby (or any other celebrity, for that matter), seeing his life torn apart in this manner really, really hurts.

I’ve known at least a couple of people who’ve encountered Cosby personally, while working behind-the-scenes to facilitate his occasional comedy shows at my old alma mater (the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire). These accounts have suggested that Cosby, even when he’s interacting with someone whom he doesn’t find sexually desirable, can have a tendency to behave in a disrespectful, crude, and/or belittling manner. Of course, he’ll hide behind the cloak of simply “trying to be funny”…and those on the receiving end might be inclined to give “America’s Favorite Dad” the benefit of the doubt, in such moments of starstruck awe.

Even if Cosby is 100% innocent (which I seriously doubt) of all these allegations…he would have a responsibility to defend himself on behalf of all of his fans who’ve admired him for decades…not to mention all of the other actors and actresses whose own careers will be perpetually linked to his.

How long before Phylicia Rashad can’t go out anywhere because everyone in the media is pestering her about her thoughts on the scandal? Or likewise for Lisa Bonet, since her professional relationship with Cosby was rumored to have been extremely tumultuous.

Is NBC going to pull the long-delayed upcoming edition of Celebrity Apprentice due to Keshia Knight Pulliam’s presence on it?

And, while I can understand NBC canceling Cosby’s development deal (and Netflix’s postponement of the comedy special), I do find TV Land pulling Cosby Show reruns entirely from its schedule to be a little bit too much.

If the ratings for those syndicated airings had already dropped significantly, then I could understand doing it. But yanking The Cosby Show as a preemptive measure…that’s a gratuitous overreaction! Let us have our fond memories of Dr. Huxtable and his affable brood, please.

My guess is that all of these women are going public because they want justice achieved. So Cosby needs to ask himself: “What would Cliff Huxtable do?”

If he is guilty of any of these crimes, Cosby needs to come clean and apologize to the victims. He should ask for their forgiveness (as well as that of his fans, colleagues, and family), and offer to make restitution. It wouldn’t even need to be multimillion dollar checks to anyone who’s made allegations…his “reparations” could be in the form of philanthropic resources for victims of rape and domestic violence.

And if he isn’t actually guilty, then he needs to do a Walters or Lauer or Winfrey interview. Stat!

Cosby should also ask the media to be respectful of his former costars and his own family. If media whores overstep their bounds by harassing anyone who has been remotely associated with Cosby, public opinion will shift toward forgiveness of him.

These actions (or lack thereof) would speak loudly to Cosby’s true character, and help to at least partially restore his now-tainted legacy.

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elfnerdherder · 7 years

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The Unquiet Grave: Chapter 5

You can read Chapter 5 on Ao3 Here

Chapter 5: What Games We Play

Hannibal Lecter’s office is the product of a man that drowns in aesthetics. When Will is allowed in from a small waiting room, he learns more about Dr. Lecter by how he decorates than how he interacts. There is a sense of vertigo, Will’s having to look around to learn about someone rather than simply look into their eyes to see. He knows of several empaths that would have been annoyed at the shift, at the sense of tilting over as their world and all of its truths changed.

Will harbors no such feelings. After his readings on Dr. Lecter, he is more than eager to learn by visual directions rather than empath-impressions. It’s a hunger he won’t deny himself, seeing as how he’s never been able to entertain it before.

“Are you going to sit down?” Lecter asks him as he peruses books ranging from Dante to Doyle to Bronte. He pauses on one whose spine is mildly abused, and he pulls the book out in order to open it, curious.

“You like Blake,” he says, glancing back to Lecter seated in a leather upholstered chair.

“I do,” he agrees, and if he minds Will’s pacing and perusing, it doesn’t show on his face. That sort of uncertainty, that sense of unknowing, makes him wander about more, glancing over everything with a sort of hunger that distracts him from the fact that he didn’t get much sleep the night before.

“Cruelty has a human heart, and jealousy a human face,” he tells Lecter absentmindedly beside a loud paneling of curtains. He thumbs through the book, feeling pages with gloved hands. He wonders what sort of impressions he’d take from touching the pages with his fingertips unclothed, but he doesn’t do it. There is something exciting, eager about his thoughts at the realization that for the first time in forever, he’ll have to make an educated guess.

Hannibal Lecter interests him far more than he’s willing to let on.

“Terror the human form divine, and Secresy the human dress,” Hannibal finishes for him. “A Divine Image, William Blake. Tell me about Agent Hobbs, Agent Graham.”

“Are you asking if he had a cruel, human heart with a jealous human face?” he asks, pausing beside a stag whose heft of brass carving looks heavy enough to be troublesome if it ever fell over. He glides the back of his free hand along the curve of the flank, staring at the intricate details along its neck, the intelligent look rendered in its carved eyes.

“You know him best of all, since you tracked him. The news didn’t make it public that he was a rogue agent, therefore I was mildly surprised when you told me that.”

Will logs it away that Hannibal Lecter’s surprise is so well hidden that when he’d first told him of Hobbs, it hadn’t shown in the slightest. He’ll have to get better at reading his face, learn the small tics and twitches of it. “The FBI doesn’t like it to be public that despite their best efforts, empaths aren’t the most solid of choices for field work.”

“Why use you, then, if it’s so utterly dangerous?”

“The man hours alone that it saves in using us saves the government, and thereby the people, billions of dollars. The equipment used in the labs that can be set aside for only the more complicated or necessary work that normally costs hundreds to thousands for use or operation is another money saver, and even with our higher pay and mental compensation plans, it ultimately saves the most money to use us than to not.”

“The mental strain alone ultimately breaks most empaths in the end, though,” Lecter points out.

“Saves money on retirement, then, too,” Will retorts.

“As we can see with the late Agent Hobbs,” Lecter replies after a beat, dryly. “What caused him to go rogue?”

Will peruses a small section of books dedicated to art work, and he finds William Blake once more. He takes that book from the shelf as well, curiosity making him turn pages, thumbing through to find ones with the most faded edges, one touched by hands of reverence or eagerness. What art moves Dr. Lecter? What gives him inspiration, voice, essence?

“…He was retiring soon,” he says, and he glances over to Lecter to gauge his reaction to Will touching his things. His expression is impassive, his deep-set eyes intent but not narrowed. Will marvels at the ability to study, to see without seeing, and he makes his way closer, feet sinking into the plush and intricate design of a floor rug as he makes his way to the chair opposite of Lecter’s. He doesn’t sit just yet, though. “He had a standard, six-month mental evaluation, like we all do in order to test our mental state. He didn’t pass, and with his daughter graduating high school as well, it was decided that he would be better suited retiring and going home to help her with that rather than continue work that he couldn’t do and do well.”

“Do you think the retirement caused him to lose sight of everything that he deemed important?”

“I think it was a catalyst, but the retirement was because he was losing his grasp on reality even before he starting killing. In his evaluation, he discussed his daughter with a behavior and dialogue verging on obsessive, and he referred to their time together as a form of honoring who she was and what she was. Her upcoming graduation, coupled with a red stamp of disapproval on his sheet were only the straws to ultimately break the camel’s back, not some singular moment that made him fantasize about killing.”

“Was it killing, in his mind?” Hannibal asks. Will handles the two books, shifts and paces along the rug in order to study a painting on the wall depicting two women in a glade beside a well. He stares at the painting, at the oil on canvas rendered with care and adoration, and he shakes his head, whether Hannibal can see it or not.

“He was honoring them, and in doing so, honored her,” he says slowly. “They thought that his retirement would give him the time to spend with her before she left, but that sudden shift in a life plan, coupled with what he thought to be a loss of his daughter, pushed him over, and the intrusive thoughts and dreams he’d already struggled with took hold until he couldn’t see his way out anymore.”

“You told Dr. Bloom that he wasn’t like most psychopathic empaths –the title for them is, of course, in itself a paradox.”

“He’s not,” Will says it, realizes he’s speaking as though Hobbs is still alive. “He…was sensitive. His delusions, his dreams made him believe that he was honestly honoring those girls, giving them something beyond themselves as he found a way to connect to his daughter without having to hurt her. He tried to make their deaths as painless as possible.”

“In comparison, you shooting him will have felt far more jarring after you experienced the form of care that he gave to his victims while giving him no such respect in his own demise.”

The fact that he can see that, the fact that Lecter says those words with such assurance, such confidence is staggering, and Will turns back to him to stare, swallowing down a noise of indignation and surprise. He meets Dr. Lecter’s gaze and it holds for far longer than he’s ever held a gaze with someone –such things would have normally pulled him into the dark depths of the iris, the knowing place where ugly things were left to rot inside of the mind. With Lecter, though, he isn’t drawn in; instead, he notes the pleased crinkles near his eyes, the faintest of twitches near his lips that suggests he knows exactly what Will is doing, roaming around touching his things.

Dr. Lecter doesn’t mind it in the least.

If anything, he seems amused to see Will invade his space with the behavior of someone that is used to doing that for a living with no one to stop them. Will finds it in himself to sit down, still holding both the book of art and the book of poetry like shields against Lecter’s immense sense of knowing.

“She was his golden ticket,” Will finds himself saying. “He was about to destroy it because all else was lost. The FBI took his job, his future, his plans, his…aspirations, left him to go home where life itself was taking away the one pride and joy he had, and in his mind they let him go to watch the only thing he had left leave him. I can unequivocally understand him, but I don’t regret killing him.”

“No, in the heat of the moment, I’d almost say you enjoyed it.”

He rears back in his chair, gripping the books tightly at that. There is no indication of judgement or censure in those words, just a calm and almost detached tone to it, like Lecter is commenting on the particularly pretty shade of blue in a pair of off brand dress slacks.

“…Killing is the ugliest thing in the world,” he finds himself saying. Slow, purposeful. Like he has had to recite the words in his head several times before forcing them out.

“There is something beautiful in its power, though; we inherited our capacity for violence and cruelty from our human ancestors, not our animal ancestors. There is something to be said to be able to enjoy it from an artistic perspective, as you tend to have to do when you look into the eyes of a fellow empath and see how they felt in killing.”

“Trying to trap me, doctor?” Will taunts lightly. “Going to tell Jack I’ve an itch for killing people now because of Agent Hobbs?”

“On the contrary, my intent is to show you the many ways in which you can understand that killing, for all of its horrific nature, the ugliness you see it to be, can also be purposeful, right. You’re allowed to take pleasure in the way you took control of your circumstances and saved your life as well as the life of Abigail Hobbs. That in no way makes you the monster your mind would have you be.”

“’The Caverns of the Grave I’ve seen, and these I show’d to England’s Queen. But now the Caves of Hell I view, Who shall I dare to show them to?’” Will quotes Blake, fingers tapping lightly over the cover. Hannibal considered him, head tilting slightly to the other side, almost animalistic in nature, before he smiles, a clever and engaging sort of thing.

“Me, Agent Graham; you show them to me.”

When he sees Will out from a second door used for patient exits, Will goes to return the books he’d thumbed through. He’s surprised when Dr. Lecter refuses, instead pushing them back towards Will’s chest with that same damned, ambiguous smile he wore for the rest of their conversation.

“Please, Agent Graham, you’ve certainly earned the time and leisure to look through those as you like. Return them when you’ve found what you’re looking for.”

Later, setting them alongside Beverly’s tablet with Dr. Lecter’s articles in the journals, he wonders what exactly he’s looking for that the good doctor seems to know everything about.

He gets coffee with Alana because she insists, and because she’s a good enough friend he’d hate to disappoint or worry her. It’s a small shop that deserves more customers than it has, what with the fair prices and elegant, old-fashioned way of making coffee, but Will is glad for it. It’s just them, the woman running the counter, and a couple tucked into the corner with their Sudoku and their crosswords.

“Hannibal tells me he’s met with you a few times,” she says, stirring a chai latte. Time has made it so that he hardly has to look at her to see what she’s feeling or thinking. Relief and pleasure are a film on the table that wasn’t quite wiped clean.

“Yes.”

“Has it helped?”

“Did you know about his ability to be unread by empaths?” Will wonders out loud. He doesn’t have to wait for an answer. He glances to her mouth, sees the guilt at keeping what she’d consider a secret. “I didn’t ask, therefore you didn’t tell me.”

“I figured you wouldn’t believe until you saw,” she says with a nod.

“That’s true.”

“Has it helped, Will?” she presses when he says nothing else. “He went with you when you went to the RA’s home.”

“That’s his house, but it’s not his home. There’s somewhere else he keeps his secrets.”

That’s how it was with empaths, although the look of confusion on Alana’s face tells him she doesn’t quite follow his train of thought. Dreamers in particular, like Dolarhyde, are trained to build walls, to create safe spaces within safe spaces. Although he couldn’t hide his fear, he could build enough walls with his dreams that he could hide his secrets and save them for another place.

“Jack is getting me information regarding what he was working on before he went rogue, and another agent sent me an address to a place he liked to frequent between jobs,” he continues rather than explain what he meant. “Dr. Lecter wants to follow along.”

He doesn’t reveal that he doesn’t mind as much as he thought he would, Lecter’s following along. After visiting Dolarhyde’s house, he didn’t say much over coffee, allowing Will to mull over what he’d felt and seen. Someone betrayed Dolarhyde, that much was certain –whether on purpose or not, he couldn’t say, but it was a betrayal all the same. After their conversation at Lecter’s office, his ability to know that Will enjoyed killing Hobbs, there is a sense of something odd, something alluring in the manner in which he tracked Will throughout his office, gleaning more information from Will than Will thought he’d gained from Lecter.

It was a little exciting, if he was being completely honest with himself.

“He’s worked with empaths before, and he was my mentor in school. Apart from his professional recommendations, I put my stamp on him.”

It means more to him that she recommends him than anyone else, although he’s not sure if he should say that. His level of comfort around certain people is something he holds close, not using words to express how much or little someone means to him. That creates vulnerability, and Will has had enough with vulnerability, with letting too much in. He’s had to share a bed with two dead bodies; he doesn’t want to imagine a third, one alive and needing validation of his friendship.

“He’s smart,” he allows after he finishes his coffee. “I read his work.”

“All of it?”

He doesn’t want to admit that yes, of course he’d read every single published piece. “A bit. He seems to understand empaths differently than others. He doesn’t fear us.”

“People don’t fear empaths,” she says, but at his cross look, she amends hastily, “at least, not the way you imply. No one likes their secrets being exposed by a simple glance. No one likes thinking that if someone touches them, they know everything.”

“No one likes an empath going rogue and killing people,” he says sarcastically.

“You’ll find your RA,” Alana assures him.

“I was talking about me.”

That takes her by mild surprise, and she has to think about his words for awhile before she can find something to say to try and comfort him. Will isn’t looking for comfort, though; when he gets a call from Jack to meet him at a crime scene, he figures he’s looking for something similar to comfort, but something that doesn’t ache so much on the way down.

It’s an open field with tall grass swaying in the wind, a cool breeze to whisper the cold day that it’s going to be. Will takes his jacket off and rolls up his shirt sleeves to really bask in the feeling of the environment around him, and he picks his way around a few vehicles to walk along a path stamped down from use. There isn��t a cloud in the sky, and the sun bears down on his gloved hands. When a bit of stray wheat dances and brushes against his arm, he can feel the pressure of a grasshopper leaping, of a doe rushing with wild panic. He twitches away from it and continues on his path.

Jack has had enough time to make sure the crime scene is ‘safe’ for him, and Will steps around a few police officers in order to take in the scene. It’s a bit nauseating, and the coffee roils in his stomach, but he forces himself to look because that’s his job and that’s what he does so wonderfully well.

“Whenever you’re ready,” the annotator tells him.

Sometimes he wonders if it’s a test from the FBI, the things he’s seen and the death he’s witnessed secondhand. Surely no one would take a young woman and throw her onto the head of a stag; surely the FBI merely wants to test his mettle, his obedience to them when they ask him to look at things like this. As he circles her, arms splayed in supplication to the heavens above, he knows that such thoughts are nothing but paranoia, though –he’s seen enough into the hearts and minds of mankind to know that there are plenty of people that, given half the chance, would eat someone alive if it got them one step ahead.

He inhales the stench of open wounds, of a chest cavity missing a vital piece for life, and after removing his gloves, he presses his hands into the blood, throwing walls down rather than letting them fall on their own time.

You are nothing.

You think of yourself rather highly, as any with privilege does; this is not so, though. Through these actions of mine, I’ve reduced you to what you truly are –a pig, as easy to kill as the swine to the slaughter, as malleable as clay as I slice down your chest and break past the ribs to remove what gives life anew through each breath. Are we not more than flesh and bone? Yes, yes; as life was so given to you, I take away and give myself at my leisure, at my pleasure.

Will opens his eyes, and the woman before him –Cassie Boyle, his mind provides –still lives. She struggles, but he holds tight, and brown eyes meet his with the sort of panic and fear one gives when they know just how close they dance the line to death.

He doesn’t smile at her, nor does he taunt her. His actions are methodical, as smooth and unhesitating as one ties a shoe. With strength, with utmost precision he lifts her and slams her onto the stag head, and the screams of agony that rip through her invigorate him, embolden him. As she flails and tries to free herself, a knife is produced and the clean, forced line down her chest is one of time, of practice and strength. Her screams turn to whimpers, to gasping chokes as her brain struggles to comprehend what is happening –

-Will needs no such effort, though; he knows exactly what he is doing as he does it.

The lungs are removed, and along his hands he sees gloves and an odd, vinyl suit over a nondescript black top. With finesse, he removes them and stares down at wide eyes and a gaping mouth, a body struggling to provide what it no longer can. The contrast of skin to blood, of bone to gore is empowering, and in her final moments of life, as her heart shudders and struggles, Will stares down and imagines just how beautiful the backdrop of the field around them set to the woman impaled on the horns, her purpose nothing more than to provide a contrast to Garrett Jacob Hobbs and a freshly prepared meal.

Can’t you see, Agent Graham? This is the sort of thing you have the capacity to be.

He comes to and takes several steps back, grasping for a wet rag that’s provided by someone he can’t see, stuck as he is blinking back the sensation of what lungs feel like in gloved hands, what bones feel like jutting through skin. He lifts his walls in his mind, raises them high, but they fight him for longer than he likes, and he has to use another rag to fully remove all of what he’s consumed through his skin.

“What’d you see?” Jack asks him. The annotator stands nearby, pen poised over the notepad. Will gasps and inhales sharply, closing his eyes tight for several furious heartbeats.

“…This is for me,” he murmurs, and his voice is half-strangled.

“You?”

“It isn’t Dolarhyde,” he says, and he opens his eyes to look at Jack. “That’s why you called, isn’t it? You thought it was Dolarhyde?”

“Who is it?”

“I didn’t see that,” he says, and once his hands are sufficiently clean, he holds the rag out and someone takes it from him, allowing him to put his gloves back on with jerky, curt movements. “Intelligent psychopath, a sadist; not one I’ve seen before. He removed the victim’s lungs while she was alive, after he impaled her on the antlers. He’s either eaten, or he’s going to eat the lungs.”

“Eat the lungs,” Jack repeats flatly.

“He sees her as a pig. He sees all of us as pigs, and he wanted to show me that.”

“Why you?” Jack presses. “Is it another empath? Another rogue?”

“No, this…this person knows about me. About what happened with Hobbs, I think. Hobbs impaled women on antlers, so he impaled this woman on antlers.” He scrambles to try and think, to focus past the chill down his spine at someone that spoke so vividly to him. “He…asked me if I could see.”

“He asked you?”

“He did this with me in mind, Jack. He did this to get at me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Will snaps, and he thinks of the last line before he was able to pull himself away. He should tell Jack what the voice said, dissonant, faraway, but he can’t quite bring himself to. This is the sort of thing you have the capacity to be.

He doesn’t tell Jack. He doesn’t want Hansen called in. He doesn’t want a therapist, god forbid a review of his mental state if they think he’s getting too close to the edge. He surprised, then, to hear Hannibal Lecter of all people say,

“Could it be that there is a copycat or a protégé, Agent Crawford? Someone that Agent Hobbs worked with?”

Will turns his head to look, and the person holding the bloodstained, wet rags is Dr. Lecter of all people, gloved and dressed for the cooler weather.

“Could be,” Jack admits, and he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s not Dolarhyde? You’re sure?”

“That’s not Dolarhyde; the tone is different. Dolarhyde seemed purposeful, in control, but this…this was methodical. This was planned, and he was amused the entire time, like it was some kind of punchline to some great big joke.”

“Are you going to have Agent Graham look into it?” Dr. Lecter asks. Someone nearby reaches for the rags in his hands and disappears with them. Will tracks the movements, studies the flex and twist of Lecter’s wrists as he turns them behind his back casually.

“Oh, no,” Jack says before Will can speak. “Agent Graham works with RA’s if we can help it. He only gets these guys if we’re in way over our heads.”

“An intelligent psychopath, particularly a sadist, is very hard to catch,” Will says, and he chances a glance back to her body, splayed out and vulgar in its expression. “You have to wait for them to make a mistake, leave something that an empath can see beyond the thoughts and impressions.”

“We’ll have a Feeler ghost along the stag head and the surrounding area, see what comes up,” Jack says, and that’s Will’s sign to leave. He’s not just a Feeler, and he won’t have to deal with the case unless they’re in over their heads.

Instead, he’s got Dolarhyde to keep him busy. He’s not sure which is the better trade-off.

“Do you have information about his cases?” he asks Jack.

“Director Purnell told me that she’d e-mail you,” Jack promised. An evasive answer, and Will takes it sullenly.

Dr. Lecter follows him to his vehicle as he signs out from the crime scene, and they pause near the driver’s door, Will sneaking short, quick glances and the good doctor gazing with steady intent.

“…Are they going to have you at every single scene I go to?” Will asks warily.

“For the time being,” he replies lightly.

“That a sign they don’t have any faith in me?”

“It’s a sign that they want you to make a healthy, smooth recovery from the trauma you endured,” Lecter says, and at Will’s scoffing, indignant bark of laughter, he continues, “Where there was a stag head involved, they had suspicions it was a tie to Agent Hobbs, and they wanted to ensure you wouldn’t have a flashback of any sort to the previous incident.”

“I didn’t,” Will snaps.

“Didn’t you?”

“No, this was nothing like Hobbs,” he says, waving a hand at Lecter’s amused expression. “Don’t give me that look, this was…Hobbs loved those girls. He wouldn’t disrespect them like this. He wouldn’t be vulgar, cruel. He thought their deaths were quick and merciful, but this guy…this guy was happy to relish in her pain. He knew the cuts to make, the way to turn her at just the right angle that she was impaled rather than falling against the antlers and sliding to the side. He…relished in her screaming.”

Will is careful to speak slowly, that he can ensure that he says ‘he’ rather than ‘I’.

“A foil to Agent Hobbs?”

“A foil to Agent Hobbs,” Will agrees. “And…and a jab at me. Whoever they are, they’re jabbing at me.”

“Does that make you feel threatened, Agent Graham?” Lecter wonders. In the brilliant sunlight of the crisp fall day, his hair holds golden hues, his skin alive and positively glowing. Will studies his expression, the way that his eyes can only take in what he can see rather than what’s behind the face.

“…No. If anything, I-” He stops himself before he can say anything stupid, before he can say something he’ll regret. Dr. Lecter tilts his head slightly, prompting.

“You what, Agent Graham?” he prompts.

Will swallows, glances back to the scene in the short distance, agents hurrying to and fro, another empath standing off to the side and waiting, their back to the scene. He grimaces, adjusts his glasses that slide down his nose no matter how hard he tries to fix them, and he lets out a short, forlorn sigh.

“If anything, I’d say they’re trying to play a game with me,” he says at last. To his surprise, Dr. Lecter doesn’t bother to attempt to correct him.

#LiaS scribbles #The Unquiet Grave #Hannibal au #hannibal #hannigram #slowburn hannigram #hannibal x will graham #empath au #seers feelers dreamers #someone help will graham #poor guy needs a hug that won't hurt him

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