#also important to know that i didnt even let novel girl finish her sentence like. get it together

[skrunksthatwunk]

yesterday i was talking with my friend who reads a lotta kindle unlimited het romance novels (ok girl live your truth) and apparently the sports romance market is like 80% about hockey players and she was like "I wonder why that is" and i, a little too fast and a little too loud, went

oh it's the violence for sure

and then had to pretend that was a conclusion i came to from a place of cold impersonal logic and worldly wisdom and not literally anything having to do with me as a person

[headofhelios]

Ok I am a single follower but I like hannibal tv but would enjoy ur movie thoughts I like some of the books too and have been meaning to get around to the movies 😳😳

OKAY I'M EDITING A READMORE ONTO THIS LOL I REALIZED THATS SOMETHING I CAN DO! so now my incredibly waaayyy too long answer abt my thoughts on 2002 will is under there. apologies bc this is less "movie thoughts" and more "2002 movie will thoughts" but well thats how the chips fell

GOD okay sooo for the record i am reading the red dragon book and am like 7 or 8 chapters in and full transparency im not like. enjoying it lol. the book pisses me off with its misogyny (all the women in it are either dead or it feels like you're supposed to think theyre Selfish Bitches or theyre just there for like. bizarre and uncomfortable sexual moments like the guys talking abt that woman in the elevator, or that one part of mrs. leeds diary which is like. i guess could be there to Show Her Humanity or whatever but 1. there are more ways to do that 2. the book doesnt seem particularly concerned with her humanity considering she's barely even given a first name and so far the novel hasnt seemed to disapprove of how will thinks of her as a possession of her husband) and its inconsistency with will's most important character trait or whatever (he's so intensely, extremely empathetic towards EVERYONE, even serial killers, which makes him really good at finding them! and he can never turn this off, to the point where every time he has a conversation with someone, he ends up mimicking the way they talk, even if he tries to stop! but also he never empathizes with the victims or HIS OWN FUCKING WIFE? HELLO? so it really feels less like "extremely strong empathy for everyone that he cant control" and more like "he can empathize with serial killers extremely well and also other people if we want to Make A Point in one scene instead of letting the point show through the whole book") BUT UHHH ANYWAY. MOVIE THOUGHTS. THE MOVIE THOUGHTS YOU ASKED FOR COMING RIGHT UP!

okay this is what i am worried will either 1. draw annoying tv will graham stans to my blog like flies or 2. end with me being hanged in the town square BUT. it must be said. i prefer 2002 red dragon will graham to tv will graham. and quite frankly? so far? i think 2002 red dragon will graham is better than book will graham. i cannot lie.

my reasoning: because 2002 will actually empathizes with more people than serial killers and his boss! y'know! like you'd assume someone with constant extreme empathy would! the difference between the first scene with molly in the book vs in the movie are SO striking to me now that i've read that part of the novel. in the novel he seems very... rough, i guess, and like he doesnt care about molly's worries. he doesnt seem to see things from her perspective, which especially feels like a kick to the gut because MOLLY! SEES! THINGS! FROM! HIS! PERSPECTIVE!!! she literally empathizes with him more than he does with her! what the fuck! MEANWHILE in the movie, he does seem to care about her. his assurances that he wont get too involved seem like assurances rather than him trying to get her off his back. he hugs her and tells her he loves her and i actually believe that yeah, he loves her, he knows she's worried about him, and he wants to comfort her and ease her worries. and the victims! AGAIN such a stark difference to me! in the book, will is like... uncomfortable empathizing w the red dragon, of course, but he doesnt seem to empathize with the victims all that much, ESPECIALLY not the women. he doesnt care about them. he sees them as possessions belonging to their husbands and its so fucking gross. despite already suspecting that the red dragon chooses families based on the women, he decides to waste time focusing on the husbands as a way of "asking permission to look at [their wives]." what the fuck? meanwhile in the film, he feels for the victims so much that he can barely even say that the kids were shot in bed! when he watches the tapes, he focuses on the women! because that's his fucking job!!! and we see him empathizing with them! wow!!

siiigh okay im gonna stop talking abt the book vs the movie now bc again im only like 8 chapters or so deep. but now we come to tv will vs. 2002 will, which is admittedly gonna be more subjective and part of that it bc i cant remember a whole lot of specifics from the show bc my memory is Very Bad. but anyway

let's get the shallow stuff out of the way. yes i prefer ed norton's face to hugh dancy's. call hugh dancy "gender" or whatever have your fun i support you and your right to call any blood covered man a gender but by god is that not even REMOTELY my experience. next shallow thing to get out of the way: ed norton's line delivery is like music to my FUCKING ears compared to hugh dancy's i am so sorry. like the jokes about will shaking like a damp chihuahua before taking 5 minutes to stutter out "he's killing them....... On Purpose, jack." are funny and all but christ i had SUCH a hard time watching the show bc of that im not lying. literally hearing 2002 will just say "he's not keeping them. he's eating them." nice and quick, matter of factly is better than well im actually gonna end that sentence there but you get the idea. like YESSS you little blonde bitch get to the point i love you!!!

OKAY NOW less shallow points but also less uhh idk man i just dont remember a lot of hannibal. but basically: after seeing how caring 2002 will is, i'm kind of... idk i'm just so over tv will and how abrasive and harsh he is in comparison. like i fell in LOVE with how vulnerable 2002 will is, how he feels like he cares deeply about the people around him (and honestly... idk i cant remember a moment in the hannibal tv series that made me feel the way i felt when 2002 will can't say "the kids were shot in their beds". it's like... yeah this is a guy who feels so deeply for everyone around him at all times. i believe that.) and i just dont remember getting that same feeling from tv will. i have been gently spoon fed the most excellent chocolate pudding and everything else in my memory is just a snack pack. i guess tv will has those moments (what comes to mind is when he brings gideon to hannibal's house and is crying and he says "please dont lie to me") but idk they just didnt really do for me what 2002 will does. and then their scenes with reba! wow! i rewatched the tv version after watching red dragon, bc the film version made me tear up, meanwhile the tv version i barely remembered and i wasnt sure if that was just bc of the different mindsets i was in while watching them or what. and ok i just rewatched the tv version again and like... yeah. it's the wills lol. i LOVEEE tv reba SO much she is giving everything in that scene!! she sounds so like... broken, both bc of dolarhyde's apparent suicide and bc of finding out who he was + what he was doing, she sounds so fragile and guilt ridden! she's amazing!! but will. idk. tv will's delivery just seems... idk this feels dumb to say but it sounds like writing. i admittedly LOVE the line "people who study this kind of thing say that he was trying to stop because you helped him." and his delivery there is good. but between tv "you didnt draw a freak, you drew a man w a freak on his back" and the 2002 version, the 2002 delivery seems more genuine while the tv delivery sounds rehearsed. idk overall the 2002 version of that conversation just makes me feel more? its like. idk i can feel the 2002 version gently holding my heart while the tv version is a scene that is nice in h/nnigram gifsets or w/e.

umm ok this is already suuuper long and my brain is getting a bit mushy so i'm gonna start wrapping it up lol. i'll probably compare book will and 2002 will again after i finish the book, and then i miiight rewatch hannibal, or at least parts of s3. but right now my thoughts are basically: book will is a fucking dick who has an easier time empathizing with serial killers than with his wife. tv will is a nothing girl after being so completely catered to + also idk he doesnt have the same fragility that i want from my wills now. and 2002 will is my little caramel apple. he has this delightful vulnerability and feels like he cares so much and empathizes with more people than serial killers and his boss and 4 people in a diner for one scene! 2002 will made me care about will graham! which is honestly kind of a feat!

[x0401x]

hiii so i was going through the VE tag and saw your posts about how much you dislike anime gilbert compared to novel gilbert; im so confused though about how you said he was shallow and a dick because i didn't get that vibe when i was watching? i liked the anime gilbert, and then when i read the novel, i just liked him even more. but it didnt make me hate the anime version. so i just wanted a breakdown of what anime gilbert did so wrong, thank you!

Okay, this sure took up a lot of time to reply to, so I’m sorry for answering so late! I tried to keep it simple, so keep in mind that there’s a lot more to unpack from anime-novel comparissons when it comes to VE. I just didn’t want to turn this into an essay, because that’s what it would’ve become otherwise.

I’ve broken down five main reasons why anime!Gilbert is an asshole if you put him side-by-side with novel!Gilbert. And I want first to stress out that I know the intention of the adaptation wasn’t to make him an asshole at all. The studio really seemed to believe they were doing it right, but it turned out as the same old “so close yet so far” thing. The director did say before that he had made changes to the original because the source material was “too righteous and orthodox”, so I guess novel!Gilbert was one of the “too righteous and orthodox” things that he deemed in need of alterations. Apparently, loving someone way above yourself is just not realistic if you’re a man and the other person is a woman (totally okay if it’s the other way around, though).

Anyway, here are the main negative points about anime!Gilbert (long post in-coming):

He only ever did the bare minimum for Violet.

KyoAni is hellbent on insisting, not just in the anime but also in episode summaries, the starter book and the official fanbook, as well as other medias, that Violet loved Gilbert because he was the “first person to be nice to her”. It makes me want to rip my hair off, because this means it could’ve been anyone. The novel states time and time again that it was fate, because Gilbert was the only character in the VE universe who would watch this monster-child brutally murder five men and still take her blood-covered hand and try to protect her. She was a kid being led to commit crimes by fucked-up adults, and even though there was a chance she might kill him too, he still wanted her to live, because she was ultimately innocent. He also wasn’t just “nice” to her. He tried to defend her from his brother for real. The hotel scene is actually very important and not having it takes away a lot of Gilbert’s weight in Violet’s life.

Other than that, he wasn’t shown doing even half the stuff he did for her in the novels. He constantly protected her from harassment, threw shade at any lesser officer who badmouthed her, tried to make it so that she wouldn’t have to risk herself too much during battle, often attempted to convince her into less reckless stunts, and was always the first and only one to rush to her aid. He personally took her meals to her bedroom and ate with her, arranged for her to have a room for herself, took her shopping for civilian clothes so that she could wear them after the war, and requested that her personal needs were seen by officers from the female division. He quit smoking because it made her cough, gave her his old clothes to wear when she grew out of her pajamas, took care of her whenever she fell ill from overworking, and the list goes on.

All of this aside, I think the most important was that he was always trying to bring out the human side of her. He was always testing out her interests in mundane things, and always wishing that she would show signs of having a personality. It didn’t have to be girly stuff; anything that didn’t have to do with him was fine. He often tried to instigate the humanity in her, because she was unquestionably human to him despite not knowing what being human even meant, and this is the most essential part of Gilbert in the Great War arc.

He didn’t care about her that much.

I know this might seem like a drastic claim. I mean, he did show that he cared for her, just not nearly enough, and quite certainly not as much as he cared about himself.

It starts with the fact that he let her into the military simply because his brother had already told everyone about her. Anime!Gil didn’t see her kill five people in that hotel. All that happened was Dietfried throwing at him the vaguest-ever argument that “this isn’t a child; it’s a weapon”. Like... that was literally all it took for him to send a ten-year-old amnesic, orphan girl who couldn’t understand the local language to a war that had been dragging itself on for several decades. In the men’s troops, no freaking less.

The eptome of anime!Gil’s fake selflessness is when he gets shot at the end of the war. When Violet takes him by the arm, he just... lets her carry him. She gets shot and shit, and she could very well have died (anyone explain to me how they managed to hit him in the head but not her even though they were walking so slowly), but he still clung onto her. He literally put his own life above hers.

A++++ parenting.

He was dry with her most of the time.

In the novel, Violet and Gilbert have a bond of respect and trust. In the anime, this bond is wholly one-sided. We don’t see this respect or trust from Gil’s perspective, and neither do we see any bigger signs of affection other than occasional guilty faces that show him regretting something, but don’t exactly make clear what it is. Does he feel guilty that he took her to war? If so, then he contradicts himself during certain moments. He literally thanks her for “always fighting so well” at one point and only refrains from finishing the sentence because he sees the bruises on her neck. Meanwhile, while novel!Gil asserts that she should have former recognition for her deeds (like ranks, medals and people’s well-earned respect), she should also not be in the battlefield at all because she’s just a child and constantly berates himself for keeping her there.

The dedication and devotion to her is also basically all gone. We don’t see him vowing to raise her as someone worthy of a flower goddess’s name, we don’t see him doing his best to make this happen, and we don’t see it happening until Violet is out of the hospital. Novel!Violet had a fame of grim reaper, witch and god of war because she was an extremely fierce and skilled killer. Anime!Violet is all over the place when she fights, slamming rifles into people’s faces and choosing hand-to-hand combat instead of having the common sense to fire the weapon she’s holding. There’s no such rumors about her other than that she’s “dangerous”, and she’s always injured, with her hair perpetually disheveled. She’s an absolute mess, making it impossible to forget for a single minute that she’s just a little girl being made to serve in the frontlines, and yet anime!Gil still pulls bullshit like “you fought good”.

He abandoned her to sheer luck.

As if the fake grave weren’t bad enough, he apparently offed to the woods without giving much of a fuck about her. In the novel, we see that Gil keeps aiming for higher positions in the military and to have as much power as he can so that he’ll have all the means possible to protect her. He might have been contacting Hodgins in the meantime, but this isn’t nearly enough to ensure her safety.

There’s a lot he had to do when it comes to Violet. Covering up her identity and making sure nobody tried to use her for killing ever again are examples. He also needed to be ready for whenever he had to go for her rescue, like in the case of the hijackin, so staying in the army was of utter importance. It was also important to show that this was a sacrifice he did for her, because all his responsibilities were pushed onto him due to Dietfried running away from them.

He is portrayed as being the complete opposite of her.

You might be wondering what this has to do with anything. It’s very obvious in the novel that Violet and Gilbert are mirrors in the novel. This also has to do with the fate thing: they’re basically one soul dwelling in two bodies. The two had keenly similar life stories where they went through different situations that were actually alike in essence and brought out the same results. This is basically the reason why Gil empathizes so hard with Violet and why he’s so insistent in allowing her to experience what he didn’t get to have. It’s not because he’s “righteous and orthodox”. It’s because he sees himself in her. She’s him, and he’s her. They’re one and the same at the core. But apparently a guy relating so much with a girl isn’t realistic either.

This is it (or more like a condensed version of it)! I hope it cleared things up.