#but I figured I’d leave them ambiguously open while I continue to post and update now

[taytei]

Commission request form!

Hey y’all! I know it’s been a hot minute but I’ve officially reopened my commissions - and with a shiny new form to fill out

Also if you don’t have access to the form, feel free to DM in place of filling out the forms and we can talk details out

[k-s-morgan]

I'm a Reddit lurker, no account, and since the Netflix update am posts daily here and in reddit. A recent post on S3 caught my attention. Don't you feel that in S3 Hannibal's struggle at 'moving on' in Italy was far more intense that Will's? I agree with that poster that Will looked ok - readily gets married.. wife, kid. There were subtle things, true not touching, weak communication but he could have carried on fine. I didn't see him suffering the way Hannibal was. And felt angry at him.

Hello! Oh, I definitely agree that Will is frustrating to the point of being maddening. I think it goes back to his versus Hannibal's ways of expressing emotions. Will's been spending the majority of his life in denial in several respects at once, and his feelings for Hannibal is something he struggles with displaying. However, I think we still see enough of his struggles, and I don't believe he would ever succeed in carrying on without Hannibal indefinitely.

Will's journey is divided into 2 parts in S3: post-Mizumono and post-Digestivo.

Post-Mizumono

In the first part, Will is operating under the knowledge that Hannibal loves him, and his emotions come to the surface more openly. He can't and doesn't want to move on: the first thing he does upon waking up is voicing his pain at Hannibal leaving him to die, then berating himself for lying to him, then realizing Hannibal left him alive deliberately and that he wants to be found. Will begins to analyze their conversations and quickly figures out where he should go to look for him. After being released from the hospital, he starts building a boat to travel to Hannibal by sea. The nature of this action is romantic by itself - also, this scene is intercut with his Mizumono memories, namely, with Hannibal's face that emerges every time he moves yet another part of the engine. This is a vivid demonstration of Will trying to repair what is now broken. He openly admits to Jack that he wanted to run away with Hannibal.

Similarly, Will spends some time sitting in Hannibal's empty house. When Alana tries to reach out for him, he rejects her soundly and asks her to leave. He basically admits that he still loves Hannibal in their conversation, telling Alana about their pact of ignoring "the worst in one another in order to continue enjoying the best." These instances show that Will is pining hard, that his feelings are so intense that he no longer even bothers to hide them from Alana and Jack. The whole E2 is Will's love letter to Hannibal - he's reverent about him, he thinks about him non-stop, and he tries to find him very hard, even literally chasing him down. He even lies at the place where Hannibal left him his "broken heart," as if needing closer physical contact.

Things begin to shift as Will meets Chiyoh. It deserves a separate meta, but I feel like Will starts drawing comparisons between them and comes to a conclusion that Hannibal doesn't love him after all. That if he abandoned Chiyoh, whom he was supposed to love, so easily, for so many years, without bothering to return to her, then maybe he's just not capable of love. Seeing Bedelia as his replacement just reinforced this idea, so Will returned to his bitter and vengeful state, hence his attempt with a knife in Dolce. The end of Dolce and the whole Digestivo put Will through hell, and by the end of it, he's absolutely done. A big part of him doesn't believe Hannibal loves him, and at this point, he's no longer motivated to find out whether it's so. Will of Digestivo is a huge contrast to Will as he was in Primavera: the hope, the glow are gone, he retreats into his shell again.

Post-Digestivo

Fast forward 3 years and Will is still a shell. He might be married, he might share some lovely moments and jokes with Molly, but he's not happy. The first time we see their family, they are apart - and not just apart, Molly and Walter are actually fishing, something Will loves, while Will chose to stay alone and brood. Jack comes to find him and that's where everything starts.

First, let's consider the fact that Will didn't hide away from Jack even though he could. If he truly wanted the old life to be over, he'd have moved somewhere where neither Jack nor the FBI would be able to find him, cutting all ties. He could do it. Instead, he remained more or less visible. Instead of kicking Jack out, Will allows him to share the details about the case with him despite his half-hearted protests. Will is not a malleable person who's easily subdued or intimidated: he might go with the flow because he finds it more comfortable, but he's more than capable of sending someone to hell, especially now. This Will is the one who lied to Jack repeatedly, who chose to beat a man almost to death instead of shooting him, who mutilated his body and ate it, using his suit as a trophy. This Will chose Hannibal over everyone else, ignored the fact that people like Jack and Alana suffered and forgave him, hinted to Pazzi that he might join Hannibal in killing him, coldly set up Chiyoh to kill or be killed, made a display from the body of a person who might have been innocent, for all he knew, and so on. So, this Will was fully capable of laughing in Jack's face and telling him to leave. He doesn’t do it.

More than that, Will told Jack to not show photos to Molly and then somehow ended up having him for dinner with them. In the middle of it, he conveniently gets up to follow Walter outside, leaving Molly and Jack alone. Like... come on. Will knew perfectly well what Jack was going to do. He *wanted* him to do it because he wanted to go. He was bored with this fake life, he "craved change", like Hannibal tells him later. Will manipulated the situation from the start, though how conscious this manipulation was remains ambiguous.

He lies to Jack about having to see Hannibal to restore his mindset even though we saw how perfectly he recreated everything just a few scenes ago. Will didn't bother to wait even for a week, he demanded a meeting with Hannibal right away. This betrays his impatience and his longing. Soon after that, he hunts Bedelia down and verbally attacks her. He's openly jealous and he's trying to establish what relationship she shared with Hannibal. "Is Hannibal in love with me?" is a very important question for Will because here, he finally admits to himself once and for all that yes, Hannibal does love him, that he (Will) does have complete influence over him.

So, these three years was Will taking a break from wondering about Hannibal's feelings, their history, and trying to pretend to live a normal life for the last time. A part of Will had to know it was doomed to fail, but he still gave it a half-hearted attempt.  He wasn't okay, though, and based on everything, I'd say he was getting close to snapping again. Maybe he'd live with his family for several more years, but the boredom would get to him eventually, and the longing to finally figure out whether Hannibal loves him or not, the need to be his true self and Become would drive him back into Hannibal's world.

We don't see the intensity of Will's suffering for the most part because we almost never saw him in any other state, so we find it familiar. He lived his whole life surrounded by lies, denial, and self-hatred. He's used to not being happy and complete. He was most open in the post-Mizumono period because he allowed himself to hope for something then. In all other instances, he's stiff and very reserved.

I'm annoyed at Will as well because his inability to decide on something and the whole miscommunication thing start to drive me crazy in S3, but I understand his conflict and I accept that he and Hannibal have very different ways of showing their feelings. I do hope that if there is S4, we'll get to see Will appreciate and love Hannibal more openly. Happy Will should be a big contrast to every other state we’ve seen him in.