#damien if you see this thanks for complaining with me about this in the gc im still angry about it lol

[carmillasboywife]

Like okay, if we changed just one detail about chiyoh's story she would have so much more character. Hear me out.

As far as is explicitly stated in the show (which is not much and everyone is a liar in this show so who knows but) chiyoh arrived after mischa died and only met hannibal. She prevented him from killing the prisoner, they spent time together and bonded, before he left her with the prisoner and went to Florence. So why's chiyoh a prisoner who holds a prisoner? Because it went against her belief to kill this guy who ate a child and instead it was best to torture him and herself? Why does Chiyoh feel so indebted to Hannibal and to Mischa especially?

But now imagine this: Chiyoh did meet Mischa and Hannibal before everything, but she returns to Japan for a bit, and when she returns Mischa's dead. Now we have that sibling connection between the three and guilt on Chiyoh's part for not being there to protect Mischa. Maybe she does want to torture this prisoner instead of giving him a quick death and her imprisonment is an atonement.

The Castle Lecter setting is a monument to Mischa. We see her grave, we see her handprint, Chiyoh is there because of her really. It might be one of my favorite settings in the whole show in that it's really layered in grief and guilt for Chiyoh and Hannibal (he can't even go back). I don't mind how vague they are on the details of what happened to Mischa and I don't mind the tweaks to the book version because it gave us Chiyoh who I love, but the sparse details they do give us contradict Hannibal's character and flattens Chiyoh imo. It would just take one sentence change in the dialogue, one.

The conflict of wanting this zine to be as near to a canon compliant character exploration as possible versus wanting to tweak one detail mentioned on the show to make it make so much more sense