#sorry if this is painfully obvious but

[mybleedingboy]

Hobbs V. Hannibal: Cannibalism and Empathy

(Thesis: Will’s fears about being Hobbs is all based on the differences between Hobbs and Hannibal as cannibals who can love.)

Standing at the front of the hall, Will tells his students, “Everyone has thought about killing someone.” By the time he’s said this, Will, pre-season 1, has already created a barrier between himself and killers regardless of his empathy disorder. Okay, he’s thought about killing, but so has everybody. And he is like everybody. He loves and fears like everybody else.

He’s subscribed to a clinical other-ing of killers. This is the Will whose first instinct dubs Hobbs as a type of psychopath he’s “never read about.” Then he follows, “I don’t even know if he’s a psychopath.” The foundations of his other-ing are shattering.

It’s easy for Will to see himself in Hobbs because as far as S1 goes, Hobbs is the closest to what Will knows he is. Hobbs is a monster capable of love, something he’s never seen before. He can feel guilt, he can feel pain. He has a fear of abandonment. All things that Will feels on a regular basis.

Pre-Season 1 Will convinced himself he’s a good person by thinking “sure, I think of all these things but I also feel love and remorse. I’m not a monster. I’m human.”

When he’s confronted with Hobbs, he’s shocked. He can’t claim normalcy when his claims were founded on something Hobbs by existence proves is untrue. A killer can both be a monster and a father (lover).

To compensate for his connection to Hobbs as both, he fully goes in on the positive trait as father, but that’s not really who he is. A father requires things he doesn’t have the faculties for. And Hobbs is somebody who he shouldn’t replace—nor can he.

Hobbs’ modus operandi makes use of all parts of the human body. It’s a devouring to the extremes, monstrous and loving. But it’s brought to the surface with a loss of control.

To empathize is to devour, to take a person’s loves and fears and to swallow it whole, to allow it to grow you. When you devour wholly, you let them take the reins. They’re the pillow that hugs you in your dreams. A skin to slip beneath your skin. Meat to fatten your meat.

In season 1, Will is often consumed—and so consumes—serial killers whole. In that way, Season 1 Will does what Hobbs did. S1 Will and Hobbs both refuse the title of murderer through utility. Will reasons that his empathy (his devouring) is necessary for justice. His utility christens his sins before they’re committed. Hobbs’ utility baptizes.

(It’s very fun then to see Will’s commitment issues/ reluctance to commit to sin and commit sin play out.)

The utility, the christening, the baptism—all of this is a mode to search for forgiveness. And what is forgiveness if not a relinquishing of control and judgement to another being?

BUT.

Season 1 Will in the moments he confronts his inner monster is far from the real Will. Encephalitis ignites that loss of control which is NOT inherent in Will. This is why at every instant, he insists that he knows who he is. He’s not Hobbs, and he’s disturbed by the prospect of being Hobbs not just because Hobbs is a monster—it’s just that he’s not the right one.

Hannibal represents control. While the prospect of bones-and-all Hannibal is fun, it’s not true to who he is. According to the cast, not all of Hannibal’s meals are human. Sure, an all-human breakfast, lunch, and dinner would require Pyramidic efforts, but this is Hannibal. Reality usually doesn’t make sense here. I think the reason why Hannibal doesn’t eat human meat for all meals is that it’s a delicacy. And he’s very selective.

Unlike Hobbs, Hannibal doesn’t use all of the body. He uses very little. The lung, the liver, the meat in the arm or in the legs.

His portions are insanely small. Against Hobbs the sizes of their bites mark the difference between utility (eating to satiate hunger) and delicacy (eating because it pleases you to).

Season 2 Will takes back control by using his empathy to sample instead of devour. He forks into Alana’s sense of guardianship, chomps down on Jack’s growing guilt, laps up Hannibal’s loneliness. But he doesn’t become them.

While we often characterize Hannigram’s inability to separate by a complete convergence, Will is picky. They’re less conjoined at whole, and more conjoined at half or arm. Seamless at that part but changeable in all others.

Will and Hannibal are incredibly alike, but where they differ, they differ.

Will at his core is built around his sense of justice. He will never have the Hannibal impulse to eat the rude. He might eat the rude with Hannibal, but he will never seek that out by himself except to carry justice. His justice is vague. Justice for Will Graham is whatever makes him angry. Whatever’s unjust to HIM. He kills Bedelia because her replacement of him is, in his view, unjust. His murders are carried by anger which is not characteristic of Hannibal’s.

Something interesting though is that Hannibal actually takes the opposite journey. While Will recovers from forcibly being Hobbs, Hannibal goes there.

The killing of Hobbs is for Will the start of his becoming Hobbs. The wounding of Will in the same manner as Hobbs is for Hannibal the start of his becoming the monstrous, loving, uncontrolled cannibal. Except this time, Hannibal remains selective. He will not honor a pile of wind-chafed-skin corpses. He will only honor this one living body.

Hannibal Lecter doesn’t seek forgiveness from Will Graham. His whole consumption is not utility at all. In fact, it’s inconvenient. The growth of his empathy for Will is not steeped in an inability to commit and commit to sin. He feasts to worship.

[justaz]

merlin (immortal) giving arthur (pendragon) the only blade that could kill him

[cowardlykrow]

insert so-and-so lyrics from Army Dreamers here ect, ect

(Believe it or not this is not finished and these are only small cropped screenshots. I wont finish it but i did spend way too much time on it so i'll give it the honor of this.)

[dr-yung]

Maxie keeps a model boat that matches with the one in Archie's base, and takes such good care of it, that not even a spec of dust taints it, which could mean nothing.

Maxie refers to Archie as a friend and a rival, but never an enemy, and simply states they chose different paths, which could mean nothing.

In Masters, Maxie revealed part of why he keeps the rivalry going is because he knows Archie likely feels just as dedicated to his ideals, and wants to take his feelings into account, which could mean nothing.

In AniPoke, Maxie stayed on the island until Archie regained consciousness, even being seen standing behind Shelly and Archie, wanting to see if he's alright, even after Archie tried to drown the island under Kyogre's heavy influence, which could mean nothing.

In Alpha Sapphire, even when Archie was the one who awakened Kyogre, Maxie subtly refused to let him take all the blame acknowledging his own ideals faults (with words like our and we) + in the AS Delta Episode, Archie is shown to overtly blame himself, even when it's partially others fault... which could mean nothing.

The Magma grunt stating they used to be on the same team together, implying they used to be on good terms, and Maxie likely knew and cared for Archie (and likely still does), given Maxie's goal to help humanity would've always included Archie, which could mean nothing.

How in the Seafloor Cavern scene, Archie said he wished at least Shelly would understand, which implies that he feels misunderstood often, and how Maxie disagrees, but never once misreads Archie's intentions or methods, and shows an active desire to take Archie's feelings into account, which could mean nothing.

[kinou]

Rambling about the moralintern (spoilers under cut) from a new de fan. Writing this out to organise my own thoughts mostly

I've seen a lot of people interpret the ending to the moralist questline (where harry is taken away by warship archer) as him getting killed or sent to sad centrist 1984 jail. But if that's the case, why do they give him the chance to just walk out right before they pick him up?

I don't think they're cartoon villains. They genuinely are very concerned about the pale - enough to hear harry out and even work with him. This isn't to say they're "the good guys". They're happy to ignore or even *cause* any amount of mundane human suffering, it probably doesn't even register on their contingency spreads. But the pale is an existential threat to humanity (and to ze stabilité!).

But whatever you consider the pale to be a metaphor for, it seems this type of thinking is, if not the cause of it, at least the furthest thing from the solution.

It seems the only way to push back against the pale is the belief that things can be better, through communism, anodic dance music, being totally HARDCORE. Valuing stabilité above progress, being indifferent to individual suffering (at least beyond "the poor can have a little food aid, as a treat"), is the opposite of that. So the moralintern is inherently self-defeating.

All of which already makes them interesting antagonists/social commentary, but then you have the innocentic system which...!

God I can't stop thinking about this game I want to talk about it nonstop forever

[very-poorly-drawn-tgcf]

Go work off that debt Xie Lian! ....with an extra babysitting job.

Meme template for y'all under the cut + examples I made.

Anyway hopefully next episodes won't take too long. The thing is. The Ghost Groom arc is a lot longer than I remember. I'm still racking my brain over how the hell I'm gonna summarize it because I am not going every single instance

[gavinom123]

my friends and i can't stop shouting LIMBUS COMPANYYYY in don quixote voices i think we need to be stopped

[bloggingboutburgers]

Hey there's something you might wanna know

George Cubbins/Karim from Lockwood and Co. is aroace :D

It's not openly stated or anything but like c'mon its obvious as shit

For example, in the last episode of the show George is helping Lockwood walk after he got injured and says "This is so touchy-feely." And you might think thats just his autism or something BUT THEN Lockwood replies "It's a medical necessity, George, it doesnt mean a thing."

:DDDDDD

Hey! Thank you so much for the recommendation^^

Personally, I haven't touched upon it much in my latest post but I'm pretty strict with what I consider rep and if asexuality or aromanticism isn't explicitly named in the story, or at the very least laid on very very very veeeeeeery thick with no possibility AT ALL to interpret it any other way (but really mostly... Yeah explicitly named), I don't consider it actual representation. (On that note, no, mere Twitter-or-Tumblr-confirmations don't count as proper representation to me either, if you have to go to a social medium to know about more things that "are in the show" then they're not really "in the show", are they.)

The reason is I think a- people who watch the series and don't know what asexuals or aromantics are won't know any better if it's not named, and b- I actually trust society on that so little that I doubt most writers even know what asexuals or aromantics are, OR if they do, CARE about representing them at all, so unless it's actually named, I'll mostly come to the conclusion that it's done by accident. In short... Maybe it's obvious to US who recognize ourselves in that orientation but to the average person, characters that only exhibit traits of asexuality and aromanticism without it being explicitly named are "haha so quirky" and kinda nothing more.

Basically we're at a point where asexuality and aromanticism are not public knowledge enough yet for mere hints to count as rep imo. Which is tricky because mere hints are enough for most orientations, but... I don't think the knowledge about us is there yet to the point that it'd be enough.

But... Yeah that's my take on it, and I AM pretty strict about those things, so I don't mean to ruin that for others if that's enough for them TwT Cus regardless it can be pretty great to recognize oneself in a character. So this is pretty good to know for people who don't need the orientation being named for it to count as rep in their book! So thank you for that^^

[bugslastegg]

Thinking about the mysterious records because you know what they kinda look like???

And you know what we heard a lot of in the background of Eddie's little episode? The static behind a record playing. So, uh. Yeah. I think Eddie's gone sentient.

[stars-n-spice]

Younger brother came up with the best thing-

Was out shopping with my siblings and while in stores my younger brother started a "Point out things the Bad Batch would wear" type of game. Forgot what he pointed to but he was like, "This is something Hunter would wear and then go to a gay club." Then he found something else and went, "And this is what Crosshair would wear to a gay club."

Then I was like, "Oh, imagine Hunter goes to a gay club, spots Crosshair across the room and is like, 'What are YOU doing here, huh?? 🤨🤨'"

My brother thought that was hilarious and agreed. He also found a bunch of stuff that he said Hunter would wear, "If he had a sense of style" and I added on that Crosshair probably has killer fashion sense and is habitually ashamed about his brother's lack of a fashion sense because it's a "disappointment to the queer community."

Anyways, happy pride!

[front-facing-pokemon]

i think english isn't your first language because you sound so ruba sometimes....

really? did this video i made not convince you? i'm not taking this as an insult or a compliment or anything but i am curious as to what gave you that impression, especially considering i showed an american flag while doing Me Voice in that video. maybe you're just in denial that your favorite blog runner could possibly be american and i know i'm sorry. but i am. born and raised in indiana. technically i was Born in ohio but i've never lived there. i've just always lived in eastern indiana right next to the ohio border so my parents just Happened to go to an ohio hospital. which means i ended up with an ohio birth certificate. and fellow trans buckeyes know what a fucking death sentence that is

i'm getting off topic. yes, english is my native language. specifically midwestern american english, which means sometimes i just delete the third person present verb conjugations when i'm being informal. i don't know what ruba means. google is not helping. sorry to disappoint :/

on the bright side, nose rating:

honestly this was one of the funniest dex entries tpc ever put out i think. the fact that EVERYONE remembers it just goes to show how good it was. i dunno if there's another dex entry that is so widely remembered and referenced by literally everyone. it's so good

[navree]

unfortunately the percy jackson show means percy jackson discourse which means i once more have to see dogshit takes about rachel elizabeth dare, who did literally nothing except have a relationship with a boy she liked for a couple months, but the freaks are at it again because there's no worse crime in the world than being a girl getting in the way of a ship for a nanosecond

[royalarchivist]

Boss: You seem like you're having fun, what are you listening to?

Me:

[samwichitos]

GioGio 🐞

[tirednotflirting]

hi what’s up im thinking about all the fics ive read where the vibes were good but then there was a Moment where a background ship was given some attention and the whole fic just immediately got like three more layers of depth and the story skyrocketed to the top of my faves.

ya know?

[lungfuls]

When the LA-based interior design influencer who is constantly purchasing $$$$ furniture and reselling it bc she was in the mood for something else informs her viewers that unfortunately, you CANNOT create a worthwhile space with cheap new furniture and you MUST wait until you find the perfect vintage piece secondhand and there is NO valid excuse for not doing so. -_- k.