Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Recap + Rewatch: 2x07

[wellntruly]

**Warning: rewatch blogging written with knowledge of the full series

Keep reading

[confusedkayt]

THIS RECAP.  I AM DIE.  Both photoshops had me *scream laughing* in my damn office.  And….  *saga fist bump, with the fist of Breeches Aud!*  I am so glad you had a great time and even more glad that you’re back!

Three things I cannot even prevent myself from shrieking about:

1) I have wondered for a long time why Hannibal closes his eyes when Will runs right up to him and audibly cocks his gun.  It used to really bother me; why wouldn’t he want to see Feyest Will in all his burning fury?  THAT WAS THE GOAL.  *Especially* if it is to be the last thing he is ever alive to see.  The only thing I can conjure up is a belief that Hannibal is, for once, using Insouciantly Performative Submission on somebody else and bargaining on Will’s very particular sense of justice to balk at such an overt display of “helplessness.”

2) On re-watch, I couldn’t help but see Miriam Lass as a sort of… proto-Will in Hanners’ development.  Her discovery of Hannibal based on a number of punctuated-equilibrium leaps is not unlike Will’s MO.  I wonder if Hannibal didn’t dose her up and flash the lights and try to have conversations about ~being seen,~ only to feel quite unsatisfied because Miriam is much more in the Jack school of Narrow Empathetic Range, Lawful Good Only Pls.  Even the experience of partially being seen was enough to prevent Hannibal from outright slaughtering Miriam.  I mean, sure, she’s useful, but that’s a VERY long time to keep someone around just for possible future setup value.  Seeing Hannibal, even partially, “earned” her life in his eyes, perhaps?  There’s a sort of dreadful poignancy to it; Hannibal clearly longs to be seen, but will work like the dickens to erase all trace of her sight (and Will’s, but he scales the walls in the end).

3)  THIS EPISODE GIVES ME ALL THE JACK CRAWFORD FEELS.  Too many to enumerate in a succinct way here (why is he just REPEATING HIS CYCLE in the most hurtful way possible twice over in 43 minutes??!!?!), but it kills me to think of where he was at when he set up that meeting between Will and Miriam.  Sure, it’s in large - overwhelming - part to try to unearth what he needs to stop the Ripper.  But I don’t think he sees it as the exercise in ABUSIVE AWFULNESS that we do.  I imagine he thinks that Miriam will benefit from someone who understands her experience, someone who is still standing.  That it will do her good to feel like she’s fighting back - that’s she’s earned the chance to do so.  And I’d guess he hopes that Will will be given some perspective on his own troubles, and a sharp reminder of the human lives he can save if only he can do ~that thing he does.~  I can see Jack hoping for some soldiers’ camaraderie to help two people who got hurt on his watch under his half-orders, to do some of the emotional patchwork he knows is beyond him.  JACK.  JAAACK.

[wellntruly]

[fist bumps back so bold and nobly]

I gotta say I am SO glad at least one someone else laughed about that Chilton ‘shop job. I spent a very happy minute slowly rotating him to determine which angle made me giggle the most.

And yaaaayyy Kayt Takes!

1) RIGHT?? Watching it this time I was also thinking Hannibal was really pulling out all the stops on “would you really assassinate me, someone who is literally closing his eyes like a saint?”, because for a beat I think he was more than faintly worried that Will would actually kill him with this depressing distance between them. Being threatened with a gun is a lot different than Will’s hands around his throat, as will soon become GULPINGLY APPARENT in the coming episodes. It is also occurring to me that since Feyest Will’s beauty is lit by doom, Will with a gun on an unarmed man is not courting his own death the way he would be in hand-to-hand combat. Huh, I am wondering if I’m having a breakthrough on part of why Hannibal is going to be promoting this so much! Because Feyest Will is the shining overlap between Violent Will and Vulnerable Will, and therefore the most exquisite.

2) Again, riiiiggght? Continuing on all the work this show’s been doing since S1, there was a distressing mirroring of Miriam & Will in this episode, both of them pushed and pulled into place between Jack & Hannibal. And yeah, yeah, I sure had a shiver over Miriam talking about waking to the scent of fresh flowers and the sting of a needle, for its own dreadfulness as well as how I could too clearly feel that like an alt-future for a Will taken hostage. Oh Miiiriam, darling dove you deserved none of this!! :(

3) FRICKIN HELL the jarred tender look on Miram’s face when she goes “Jack didn’t mention that you were also a victim”, I almost choked. Jaaaaaaack. I bet you anything Alana found out about this and glittered with fury over his rough handling of the traumatized, again.

[confusedkayt]

I am drive-by delighted by the truth that Will’s feigned submission looks like “pretty please” and Hanners’ is “I AM A GRAVEN ICON OF A SAINT.”

[wellntruly]

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Recap + Rewatch: 2x07

[wellntruly]

**Warning: rewatch blogging written with knowledge of the full series

Keep reading

[confusedkayt]

THIS RECAP.  I AM DIE.  Both photoshops had me *scream laughing* in my damn office.  And….  *saga fist bump, with the fist of Breeches Aud!*  I am so glad you had a great time and even more glad that you’re back!

Three things I cannot even prevent myself from shrieking about:

1) I have wondered for a long time why Hannibal closes his eyes when Will runs right up to him and audibly cocks his gun.  It used to really bother me; why wouldn’t he want to see Feyest Will in all his burning fury?  THAT WAS THE GOAL.  *Especially* if it is to be the last thing he is ever alive to see.  The only thing I can conjure up is a belief that Hannibal is, for once, using Insouciantly Performative Submission on somebody else and bargaining on Will’s very particular sense of justice to balk at such an overt display of “helplessness.”

2) On re-watch, I couldn’t help but see Miriam Lass as a sort of… proto-Will in Hanners’ development.  Her discovery of Hannibal based on a number of punctuated-equilibrium leaps is not unlike Will’s MO.  I wonder if Hannibal didn’t dose her up and flash the lights and try to have conversations about ~being seen,~ only to feel quite unsatisfied because Miriam is much more in the Jack school of Narrow Empathetic Range, Lawful Good Only Pls.  Even the experience of partially being seen was enough to prevent Hannibal from outright slaughtering Miriam.  I mean, sure, she’s useful, but that’s a VERY long time to keep someone around just for possible future setup value.  Seeing Hannibal, even partially, “earned” her life in his eyes, perhaps?  There’s a sort of dreadful poignancy to it; Hannibal clearly longs to be seen, but will work like the dickens to erase all trace of her sight (and Will’s, but he scales the walls in the end).

3)  THIS EPISODE GIVES ME ALL THE JACK CRAWFORD FEELS.  Too many to enumerate in a succinct way here (why is he just REPEATING HIS CYCLE in the most hurtful way possible twice over in 43 minutes??!!?!), but it kills me to think of where he was at when he set up that meeting between Will and Miriam.  Sure, it’s in large - overwhelming - part to try to unearth what he needs to stop the Ripper.  But I don’t think he sees it as the exercise in ABUSIVE AWFULNESS that we do.  I imagine he thinks that Miriam will benefit from someone who understands her experience, someone who is still standing.  That it will do her good to feel like she’s fighting back - that’s she’s earned the chance to do so.  And I’d guess he hopes that Will will be given some perspective on his own troubles, and a sharp reminder of the human lives he can save if only he can do ~that thing he does.~  I can see Jack hoping for some soldiers’ camaraderie to help two people who got hurt on his watch under his half-orders, to do some of the emotional patchwork he knows is beyond him.  JACK.  JAAACK.

[wellntruly]

[fist bumps back so bold and nobly]

I gotta say I am SO glad at least one someone else laughed about that Chilton ‘shop job. I spent a very happy minute slowly rotating him to determine which angle made me giggle the most.

And yaaaayyy Kayt Takes!

1) RIGHT?? Watching it this time I was also thinking Hannibal was really pulling out all the stops on “would you really assassinate me, someone who is literally closing his eyes like a saint?”, because for a beat I think he was more than faintly worried that Will would actually kill him with this depressing distance between them. Being threatened with a gun is a lot different than Will’s hands around his throat, as will soon become GULPINGLY APPARENT in the coming episodes. It is also occurring to me that since Feyest Will’s beauty is lit by doom, Will with a gun on an unarmed man is not courting his own death the way he would be in hand-to-hand combat. Huh, I am wondering if I’m having a breakthrough on part of why Hannibal is going to be promoting this so much! Because Feyest Will is the shining overlap between Violent Will and Vulnerable Will, and therefore the most exquisite.

2) Again, riiiiggght? Continuing on all the work this show’s been doing since S1, there was a distressing mirroring of Miriam & Will in this episode, both of them pushed and pulled into place between Jack & Hannibal. And yeah, yeah, I sure had a shiver over Miriam talking about waking to the scent of fresh flowers and the sting of a needle, for its own dreadfulness as well as how I could too clearly feel that like an alt-future for a Will taken hostage. Oh Miiiriam, darling dove you deserved none of this!! :(

3) FRICKIN HELL the jarred tender look on Miram’s face when she goes “Jack didn’t mention that you were also a victim”, I almost choked. Jaaaaaaack. I bet you anything Alana found out about this and glittered with fury over his rough handling of the traumatized, again.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Recap + Rewatch: 2x07

**Warning: rewatch blogging written with knowledge of the full series

DELAY OVER, FRIENDS. I have returned from the frozen north to bring you a special post: our last adventure with Actual Factual Past Me. Why did Past Me stop after four of these in the middle of S2? Good question! I think what happened is that I took a short vacation to visit family over the period when 2x08 aired, and so I was busy and didn’t write a long recap of it, and then since I wasn’t ever publishing these things (hah) I sorta fell off writing them.

BUT, I have found some spare notes I’d taken while the rest of S2 was airing, so we’ll still be able to get a few Vintage Tarra Thoughts going forward. Maybe it will be like a reverse of this, in that those will be the asides? We’ll find out together!

For now though, I present the last complete recap 2014 Wellntruly wrote:

HANNIBAL Recap Novelization - Ep 207, “Yakimono”
Now With **Rewatch Hindsight**

Jack has at last called for backup at Hannibal’s Murdrona Barn. They whisk poor MIriam off to Quantico so she can stand dazedly in the middle of a room and by carefully gone over by the lab girls. It feels just like when Will was standing here last season. I don’t know, do we think that is purposeful? We do. We think that is because the only evidence Hannibal leaves behind is damaged people. Wow I just made myself so sad.

I was curious why Hannibal had dyed Miriam’s hair black but after she showers she’s blonde again so it was just THAT MUCH GRIME. Wowww. And I thought showering after a four-day backpacking trip in late August felt good.

Meanwhile Jack wishes he could wash his entire soul as he sits in his office and replays Miriam’s phone messages from last season. This feeling does not abate as he chats with Miriam in her new recovery digs. It seems that instead of being Jack’s ace in the actual-hole, Miriam is Hannibal’s: she does not remember how she found the Ripper, or who he is, just dreams of drowning, flowers and needles, chamber music, and a shifting sense of self. Hannibal is a fucking monster.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

lonewombatking:

wellntruly:

Before I move on to 2x07 in my Hannibal rewatch, I want to talk about Will Graham & Fear for a quick sec! I saw a big pile of discussion on this when I was on mobile in the airport whispering “I’ll be back” as I quick-scrolled through my dash, and sure that was well over a week ago now, but HEY.

As a good access point to this topic, there seems to be somewhat of a divide on whether or not Will is scared (openly or otherwise) when he’s negotiating with Matty B in the prison hall of shark cages in 2x05. Although Hugh Dancy is a terrific actor, doing some sort of Expression Analysis is always gonna be a bit shifty and subjective, so it’s probably best not to hinge too much on that. Besides, the important thing is surely that while none of us would ever doubt Will’s moments of wide-eyed trembling terror in S1 to be anything but that, here in S2 it is much murkier! So what we can say for certain is that there is a change in how Will is behaving in high-stress situations.

A long time ago, I made a somewhat offhand comment about how I thought Will’s transformation arc over the series might have most to do with how he learns to channel his fear. In early S1, Alana & Jack characterize Will as someone driven by huge amounts of fear, and soon after Will tells Hannibal about the ONLY TIME he feels safe in his horrorful life. Now, I’ve always been one of those Hannibal viewers who saw nerves in Will all the way through the series, but I also think that he goes through a pretty radical transformation in how he manages them. Fear at its sciencey/psychy core comes from “arousal”, or to put it another way before I surely get back to this pun-flexible version before too long, it starts with being keyed up by something. In S1, when Will gets keyed up by a frightening thing (pick yer fave example), he often goes into a patented Panting Panic™. There are less & less of those moments of overwhelmed fright in S2 and onward, as everyone has noticed — including the other characters. Dr. Bloom’s lines trace this out very well for us, thank you Alana: in 2x01 she tells Jack “Will’s terrified but that’s not stopping him,” but by 2x06 she’s now telling Jack “he’s not scared, not anymore.”

Although I fully agree with Alana that there’s a shift happening, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Will no longer feels fear at all. Or more specifically, I would say that sensitive high-strung Will Graham still feels something blaze through his nerves when he’s in dangerous circumstances — something that can become fear, or can become something else. “Don’t get scared, get angry” might be the new motto of our incensed dewdrop. I get the idea that Will, pushed to the edge by so many aspects of his life, is learning how to use his “fear” as a form of energy. Maybe he can’t control how much he’s affected by his surroundings, but maybe he can control what he does with that wild rush in his veins. Maybe it can become something like courage. Something like power.

(Where this gets real fun is when you bring in the misattribution of arousal. If you missed psych 101, there was a gem of a study that managed to convince a whole bunch of undergrad bros that the arousal they felt from walking across a high suspension bridge was in fact that other kind of arousal, directed at the cute girl “distributing surveys.” To put it more generally, it’s possible to alter what we consider to be the source of our keyed up feelings. Actually, I used to take advantage of this when I was an undergrad myself: I’d run up the stairs to the classroom where I had a hard test, so that I could (mis)attribute my accelerated heart-rate to exertion, not nervousness. Anyhow, this is something I’ve definitely laughed/sighed about when considering what Will classifies as scary and what Will classifies as exhilarating, and how & why & in whose company those begin to twine. Especially given the whole “kneaded feelings” situation, my god.)

This. This is always how I’ve thought about Will’s fear.

In the beginning of the series, it’s focused inward, concave fear. The story arc in S1 is centered around Will’s internal struggles—encephalitis, most obviously, but also its symptoms: hallucinations, “mild” seizures, losing time, and sleepwalking. In addition, he struggles with his emotional relationship with violence. Killing Garrett Jacob Hobbs in a reflex response that he’s trained to follow (from what I understand, protocol indicates that if your weapon is out, you have already made the decision to fire) haunts him throughout the entire season. The tables of reality dip and fold, and Will is subsumed by doubt. Of course, everyone’s favorite Trash Cannibal helps this along, but he’s magnifying things that are already there. Will experiences a gyroscopic reality—what he’s seeing isn’t real (all the damn time), what he’s hearing isn’t real (1.08 specifically), and his ability to trust is jeopardized. (1.05: “Are you trying to alienate me from Jack Crawford?) (Also, there is just not enough room in my brain/the universe to try tackle “Fear makes you rude, Will” rn, but have at it.)

Like Will, we experience the show in a series of veils, a lot of the storytelling done in flashbacks and exposition. And there is the repeated See? to distance his physical senses from his understanding, until we get the ultimate representation of the separation in Georgia Madchen (1.10) and Cotard’s Syndrome. Will relates to her because her understanding of reality is as warped, in many ways, as his own—and their “deaths” are parallel, in that Will continually dreams and imagines drowning and she’s incinerated. To me, when he throws up Abigail’s ear as the climax of the season is a perfect combination of all these ideas. The ear (symbolically an indicator of the senses, not strictly necessary for actually hearing) coming up from within himself to incriminate him in a series of brutal murders.

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Holy wow, concave vs. convex fear is an incredible way to think about this! And yeah I also shied off from tracking it on through S3, hah. I hope there IS a nice shape way to think about it to go with your ones for S1 and S2! Generally I feel like Will might be about as low on fear-power as he ever gets to being in the first half of S3, likely aided by the strange fated dreaminess of the Italy period, but then I feel it again during the Red Dragon arc. Where actually… maybe it ties in to something I was tossing around with @confusedkayt once, about how one way to think about Bedelia’s approach to Will + the attendant Hannibal Problem in the RD period might have been her trying to frighten him back to Molly & Maine, and stop rattling the bars of the monster’s cage (in a way that frightens her). Unfortunately, joke’s on everyone because it’s hard to ~Scare Straight~ someone who’s already scared and less straight than ever.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Before I move on to 2x07 in my Hannibal rewatch, I want to talk about Will Graham & Fear for a quick sec! I saw a big pile of discussion on this when I was on mobile in the airport whispering “I’ll be back” as I quick-scrolled through my dash, and sure that was well over a week ago now, but HEY.

As a good access point to this topic, there seems to be somewhat of a divide on whether or not Will is scared (openly or otherwise) when he’s negotiating with Matty B in the prison hall of shark cages in 2x05. Although Hugh Dancy is a terrific actor, doing some sort of Expression Analysis is always gonna be a bit shifty and subjective, so it’s probably best not to hinge too much on that. Besides, the important thing is surely that while none of us would ever doubt Will’s moments of wide-eyed trembling terror in S1 to be anything but that, here in S2 it is much murkier! So what we can say for certain is that there is a change in how Will is behaving in high-stress situations.

A long time ago, I made a somewhat offhand comment about how I thought Will’s transformation arc over the series might have most to do with how he learns to channel his fear. In early S1, Alana & Jack characterize Will as someone driven by huge amounts of fear, and soon after Will tells Hannibal about the ONLY TIME he feels safe in his horrorful life. Now, I’ve always been one of those Hannibal viewers who saw nerves in Will all the way through the series, but I also think that he goes through a pretty radical transformation in how he manages them. Fear at its sciencey/psychy core comes from “arousal”, or to put it another way before I surely get back to this pun-flexible version before too long, it starts with being keyed up by something. In S1, when Will gets keyed up by a frightening thing (pick yer fave example), he usual goes into a patented Panting Panic™. There are less & less of those moments of overwhelmed fright in S2 and onward, as everyone has noticed — including the other characters. Dr. Bloom’s lines trace this out very well for us, thank you Alana: in 2x01 she tells Jack “Will’s terrified but that’s not stopping him,” but by 2x06 she’s now telling Jack “he’s not scared, not anymore.”

Although I fully agree with Alana that there’s a shift happening, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Will no longer feels fear at all. Or more specifically, I would say that sensitive high-strung Will Graham still feels something blaze through his nerves when he’s in dangerous circumstances — something that can become fear, or can become something else. “Don’t get scared, get angry” might be the new motto of our incensed dewdrop. I get the idea that Will, pushed to the edge by so many aspects of his life, is learning how to use his fear as a form of energy. Maybe he can’t control how much he’s affected by his surroundings, but maybe he can control what he does with that wild rush in his veins. Maybe it can become something like courage. Something like power.

(Where this gets real fun is when you bring in the misattribution of arousal. If you missed psych 101, there was a gem of a study that managed to convince a whole bunch of undergrad bros that the arousal they felt from walking across a high suspension bridge was in fact that other kind of arousal, directed at the cute girl “distributing surveys.” To put it more generally, it’s possible to alter what we consider to be the source of our keyed up feelings. Actually, I used to take advantage of this when I was an undergrad myself: I’d run up the stairs to the classroom where I had a hard test, so that I could (mis)attribute my accelerated heart-rate to exertion, not nervousness. Anyhow, this is something I’ve definitely laughed/sighed about when considering what Will classifies as scary and what Will classifies as exhilarating, and how & why & in whose company those begin to twine. Especially given the whole “kneaded feelings” situation, my god.)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

Yay welcome back!!! (throws confetti) there's a debate just going around about whether Hannibal has bad taste/slavishly imitative aesthetics or not, of all things XD kinda hoping for your two cents on it!!! welcome back again woohoo

Hahaaa you are so sweet :) And wow yeah I think I stumbled upon part of that yesterday? There was a lot to scrinch your eyebrows about in that original post! The only rebuttals I’ve seen are @genufa’s, and as is my usual tune with her takes, [salutes].

Before I saw the post I was imagining what the content of the debate might be, and actually assumed it would be about Hannibal possibly imitating some of Bedelia’s style (of psychiatry as well as lifestyle). But what I was going to say in that case — that there’s a big line between taking inspiration and slavish adherence — might loop back around to applying to the actual discussion. Because Hannibal is such an advocate of embracing what you wanna embrace, yknow? Hannibal the Most Self-Actualized Cannibal, “I never feel guilty about eating anything,” etc. What he wants, he has. But what I LOVE is that all the fine rare things he takes for his own (wine, music, people’s lives) are altered by his touch. His taste is transformative. As art and humanity passes through the Lecter Vector, it tends to twist into something more monstrous. Sometimes this is subtler, in the manner of taking Bedelia’s more mild herb wall and turning out his own darkly oppressive version, and sometimes it’s overt, in that he’s butchering people to make them into macabre renderings of Botticelli paintings.

Which is all to say that for as much as Hannibal is exhibiting a traditionally classic/classy/connotation-of-your-choice avenue of taste, he always puts a certain sinister razzmatazz on it.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Anonymous asked:

did we ever find out why chiyoh was protecting hannibal for mischa?

Not explicitly, and so not explicitly that I don’t know if I would have even phrased it as Chiyoh protecting Hannibal FOR Mischa, and not largely for his own sake/fate. Hannibal & his sister are tangled together for her though, which is kinda interested as I’d mostly characterize Chiyoh herself as smoothly independent in most things. I was talking with @confusedkayt a little while back about her and Bedelia as something like True Neutrals on the alignment matrix, manifesting as them being more free from influence than other characters on the show, and involving then un-involving themselves in the main ornate opera narrative on their own terms. And I don’t think Chiyoh’s sense of honor/duty is a contrast to her independence, as I feel it kinda reflects that idea that she’s not as beholden to impulses or rules the way the Lawful or Chaotic characters might be, but to her own rationale.

Anyhow, I haven’t done a ton of thought on this question in particular, more general Chiyoh musings, if anyone else wants to take this up!

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

sherlocks-freebitch asked:

"On that note, how on earth would Will have know that Chilton discussed his therapy with Hannibal?" There was a deleted scene where Hannibal confronted Will about Chilton and the recovered memories, and Will had to do some pretty fast talking to allay Hannibal's suspicions. They are whispering to each other through the bars of Will's cell and their faces are so close together and the entire thing is disturbingly erotic. I believe youtube can help out here :)

I’m just so glad I’ve peeps who can help me out with these things! @merchantfan alerted me to this deleted scene last night as well, to which my reaction was, and I quote, “…..WHAT.” Moving beyond the baseline ridiculousness that is the fact that Tarra Wellntruly doesn’t even own the Hannibal DVDs and had never seen the S2 deleted scenes, I was surprised at how dramatically I, an inveterate apologizer, was NOT BUYING this Lost Moment. Dramatically enough that I quickly rambled on to merchantfan about how glad I was that this was cut, and then kept poking at my feelings as I was falling asleep last night, trying to figure out why I was so disgruntled.

My main ISH with it comes down to how it hauls us backward on the path of Will & Hannibal’s relationship, in a way I find to be both a loss and OOC, primarily for Hannibal. To explain to myself in detail why I was balking so hard, I went over all of their scenes together so far this season. Ha ha what a chill decision, me.

The upside to this is that I have never felt clearer about where Hannibal & Will are with each other in early S2? The downside being how much time I spent confirming that an edit was….the right edit. Anyhow if anyone cares about the products of my stewing, my ABSURDLY LONG essay “Why I Think This Scene Was Bogus and Rightly Removed” is after the cut.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Hannibal Recap + Rewatch: 2x05

[wellntruly]

**Warning: rewatch blogging written with knowledge of the full series

Keep reading

[soundingonlyatnightasyousleep]

“I just… it’s like… a physical manifestation of the way Jack is with Will, maybe? This assumption that he’s allowed power over him because Will is… Not or Other in some way. “

Right, so I actually hated Jack for the first few episodes because of the glasses thing. I still hate that aspect of him, like here he is, coming into the workplace of a guy he barely knows, and deciding that since how an actual adult’s glasses sit on their own actual body is unsatisfactory to him, he should MOVE THEM AROUND WITH HIS HANDS. What the fuck. And the mask thing–Jack could clearly have just unbound Will’s hands and let him get the rest of the restraints off himself? There is not really a need to be manhandling him at this point, he just does, without even thinking he could have done something else. Terrifyingly, the fact that Will has been institutionalized does not change their physical relationship. 

All of Jack’s paternalism make him a very good foil to, actually, Chilton. Chilton, though he is all I’mma-stand-far-away-from-this-cage-I-put-you-in, automatically believes that he is entitled to handle Will’s psyche the same way Jack automatically believes that he is entitled to handle Will’s body. And Jack’s handling of Will’s body is nonsexual but still so terrifying, even as Chilton’s attempts at Will’s mind are so creepily and necessarily sexual. 

The parts of the early show that ping most as horror for me are when Will get touched without consent. It’s so clear that he does not want to be touched, that he does not want the comfort if it means that other humans know he exists, that touch is almost always disregard for his personhood. 

(Which, the strangest part of the show: as the audience learns along with Will that unlike most of everyone he knows, Hannibal thinks Will is people, touch between them becomes tender and weighty and beautiful. And in Mizumono, Will, who is so withdrawn and avoidant, wants Hannibal to touch him. He knows he is walking into a knife, and he wants to be held anyway.) 

[wellntruly]

Yiiiiiiiiiiikes. Yikes. Yeah. ALL THIS STUFF.

I’m trying to figure out why Chilton doesn’t squick me out as much as he by all rights should, given his actions’ similarity to both Jack and Hannibal’s, who do unnerve me with how they interact with Will. And I think it’s that Will never seems as defenseless when he’s confronting Chilton. He throws Frederick’s smarmy fuckery back at him right from the get-go in S2 (it’s Will who’s always going on about being each other’s “one and only” for instance), and I’ve been noticing in my rewatch how similar this is to him throwing ~intimacy of violence~ back at Hannibal as soon as he’s out of prison. And lo and behold, my deep uncomfyness with Hannibal only kept dropping!

But Will never has the tools to battle Jack’s overbearing physicality, does he, which is probably why that scene had me shrieking under my breath.