ήρθα, είδα, έφυγα

this was sketched out so quickly but i think the vibes of what i wanted are there :)

something I find really interesting about hannibal’s character is how he uses people’s expectations and ingrained assumptions to hide himself. no one suspects he’s a serial killer because he doesn’t present as one. he’s elegant and refined and isn’t cruel to animals. he’s highly sophisticated, a polyglot and has a deep admiration for beauty and life. he appreciates saving lives just as much as he appreciates ending them. in fact, this particular aspect of his character is partly why it takes will the entirety of s1 to accept hannibal’s true nature. will saw hannibal save abigail and accompany her to the hospital in apéritif and he also saw hannibal save a man’s life by performing emergency surgery and taking over the operation at the end of sorbet.

this moment in particular is interesting because of how it’s framed to make hannibal look almost godly from will’s point of view:

1) hannibal is positioned immediately higher than will due to being in the ambulance, meaning will is looking up at hannibal, while hannibal is looking down on him

2) hannibal is standing under a bright light as he works to save this guy’s life, while will is standing in almost complete darkness

3) the usual orchestral, classical music is playing in the background, emphasising the apparent “holiness” of the act and framing hannibal as some sort of saviour

the impact of this scene is even more potent when considering the context of the rest of the episode, since will has already stated that the ripper is not the type to save people or enact mercy on anyone. his style of murders doesn’t suggest this characteristic whatsoever, and although will’s assessment is correct, hannibal’s personality and overall demeanour doesn’t match what we’d imagine a person like that might look like. I think will is confronted by this as well, because even if hannibal’s surgical skill means he matches the ripper’s profile (which makes him a valid suspect) his actions contradict will’s image of the ripper, while simultaneously affirming it:

it’s difficult to reconcile these facets of hannibal’s character. it’s inherently contradictory and defies our cultural expectations. nonetheless, hannibal’s inclination to save people is sometimes more insidious than his murders. he doesn’t save people out of altruism, he does it because he thinks he’s superior and enjoys deciding outcomes. he doesn’t view himself as insane, he views himself as god. this is most aptly explored in takiawase, through the acupuncturist/beekeeper killer. here we see a murderer who confesses that she killed a man to quiet his mind, and tells jack that it’s beautiful that she managed to protect him and her other patients. this is one side of hannibal’s character, the one who’s a doctor and therapist and sees death as a cure from disease, even if the ‘disease’ itself is literally just discourtesy. it’s ultimately an act of power.

and yet in this same episode he flips a coin and saves bella on a whim. this of course is framed to others as an act of mercy, however the reality is he took bella’s power away in an act disguised as kindness. once again, he hides in plain sight. this is the other side of his character, and it’s just as deadly.

it’s still about power.

but we don’t associate acts of mercy with monstrosity. when hannibal comforts abigail in trou normand we question whether he’s as bad as we think, because what negative connotations are tied to paternal tenderness? we miss that hannibal is fostering dependency, that he literally looks dead in the eyes as he holds her, and that he blatantly just told us that he’s using abigail to manipulate will:

hannibal often does this actually. he either directly says what he’s doing or suggests that he’s the culprit (often through cannibal puns, as we know) but no one ever interprets him correctly because doing so would contradict the image he’s carefully constructed for himself. it would cause too much dissonance.

and what’s fascinating is that on a subtextual level this is largely what the show is about. the story is an exploration of societal roles and the struggle to fit into stiff categorisation and expectations. will parallels hannibal in this regard because he’s desperately trying to repress his identity by taking on certain roles. and the audience is lured by this persona the same way the characters are lured by hannibal because will defies our understanding of certain tropes. on a genre level, will assumes the detective archetype, meaning we are primed to think he’s inherently good. when we see him say he wants to save people we believe him, even though he often only does so to prove to himself that he’s a good person. will is indeed righteous, a characteristic we often view positively, however he’s violent, wrathful and actively enjoys murder due to how powerful it makes him feel. he’s not dissimilar to hannibal, we just don’t see this straight away because doing so would disrupt our understanding of good and evil.

will hides the same way hannibal does, except will hides from us as well

I have pores. Humans have pores. I have fingerprints. Humans have fingerprints. My chemical nutrients are like your blood. If you prick me, do I not……. leak?

Brent Spiner as Data STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION (1987-1994) — Season 1

very upset i can't find a specific cat sculpture I like

FOUND THE BITCH

by Karen fawcett

Train on the Way, Isaac Levitan

Miranda was always what Flint needed, and to her last moments, she remained exactly that. Flint needed a sacrifice to his cause, a martyr to fight in the name of, and that’s what Miranda became.  Because ten years and Flint was still fighting the trappings of civilization for all Miranda said that he had abandoned it. Because Miranda was civilization. She and Flint and Thomas were all parts of some unique machine, and Thomas might have have been been the engine in the machine, and Flint the weapon, but Miranda was the outer shell, the body, the thing that upheld both those things. She was music and bitter hope and china cups and antiseptic on Flint’s wounds. She was someone to bring home books to and someone to write I’m sorry to and someone to say, “you’re getting blood on my floor.” She was the last person who had any idea whatsoever of James McGraw, the only person who knew him as James McGraw, who once called him lieutenant, who once knew what he looked like in a navy uniform, who once knew what he looked in like in the candlelight of a London drawing room. And in turn, he knew her. Knew her as the woman she once was, knew how she looked in fine silks and jewels and pearls in her hair, knew what she looked like with Thomas on her arm, who knew her as a wife and socialite and lady and a scandal, as all the things she never was on Nassau.    And if Flint was ever to try to take true and exiting revenge, she needed to die. Because as long as she was alive, she was the promise of civilization, of peace, of memory, for Flint to return to. And that’s what she realizes when she puts her head down in Peter Ashe’s drawing room and asks him about the clock. The façade of civilization, the dinner, the pleasantries, Flint and Ashe shaking hands, the talk of a trial, a pardon, it needed to be broken, because in that moment to allow it to exist was intolerable. And she broke it, destroyed it with six words. But she was civilization, and she destroyed herself. 

Tomorrow we can be on our way to anywhere in the world, with enough money to live however we like. Given where we was when we started, some people might even call that a success. ANNE BONNY & JACK RACKHAM, SEASON 3

Look. We all make our choices. And those choices… they put us on a road. Sometimes those choices seem small, but they put you on the road. You think about getting off. But eventually you’re back on it. And the road we’re on led us out to the desert and everything that happened there and straight back to where we are right now. And nothing… nothing can be done about that. Do you understand that?

— Better Call Saul, “Bad Choice Road”

im having thoughts and idk if they'll be articulate but here goes anyways

hannibal's keenest sense of pain and loss being the death of his baby sister. he carries this with him forever from the moment it happens, it affects every decision he makes for the rest of his life. for him, its the difference between the past and the future. with mischa and without mischa.

will betrays him, lies to him. its a pain like no other, comparable to only one other thing – immense loss. will doesn't understand how he's made hannibal feel, so hannibal will make him understand. he inflicts the greatest sense of pain and loss possible in that moment. a young girl loses her life, and will carries that with him for the rest of his life. thats reciprocity.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, episode 5x22: Children of Time, 1997.

A Sylvester McCoy outtake from Survival [x]

nbc hannibal is a romcom purely because the central conflict results from hannibal not understanding his feelings for will and being a total loser about it because he’s never had a friend or been in love before which makes him act so silly and do the most insane things that will interprets being framed for murder as hannibal having something against him (as anyone would), and this series of misunderstandings is not resolved until hannibal’s ex girlfriend and former psychiatrist tells will that hannibal is so in love with him it makes him look stupid. after that will does not hesitate to break hannibal out of jail and douse himself in blood which is this show’s equivalent to the protagonist running to the airport to stop their love interest from leaving the country and marrying someone else before they’ve had the chance to confess that they’ve loved them ever since they’ve known them

(op tags)

man this is like the worst year for tech and websites

discord is forcing a username change that no one wants, twitch nearly banned sponsored streams, imgur is banning NSFW and removing old pics, reddit is restricting their API usage and killing off all mobile apps, apple introducing some shitty overpriced AR headset, the amount of fuckups twitter is doing i cant even count on my own two hands its all becoming too much i hate technology i hate you silicon valley

tumblr has been desperately pushing its merch and digital cosmetics with flashing gifs and popup ads. some of these products feature user-made jokes & content, repackaged without compensation or credit. tumblr live cannot be turned off for longer than a week, and might’ve inadvertently revealed underage users’ locations to strangers. flashy promotions (like the y2k thing) are getting more invasive and obnoxious, and might even trigger epilepsy in some cases. the mobile app remains barely functional, and plays loud ads unprompted half the time when i open it. pornbots remain rampant, and cleanup on your end now often involves scrolling past actual porn gifs in order to block them. one of the tumblr staff members is a die-hard potterhead. social media platforms are all corporate products. they’re all run by inept businessfolk who will go to bizarre and troubling lengths to try and squeeze a profit out of your favorite website. they’re not your friends. tumblr is no exception.

charley definitely is traumatized but it’s very funny to view her in relation to the doctor and c’rizz who are both like “the darkness within me…. the blood on my hands….” and are so tormented about it and then there’s charley just boppin along saving the day with the power of positive thinking or whatever 

View from Poggenmühlenbrücke

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the best period of doctor who is in the late 90s/early 2000s when it was just a bunch of books written by gay people and none of the higher ups cared enough about the franchise being palatable to a wide audience to stop them from saying dr who was gay

it was also a bunch of radio shows and none of the higher ups cared enough about the franchise being palatable to a wide audience to stop them from frequently making it r rated absurdist horror

OKAY, i’m gonna go off, hear me out: fans and writers alike assumed that Eight was going to be the last Doctor ever, and that the show had come to a permanent end, more or less. it might’ve lived on in the hearts of hardcore fans, but Doctor Who would never be the same as it once was.

so what did they do??

they made the best, more genuine, most original, most emotionally raw and psychologically devastating and ecstatically joyful era that the entire franchise has EVER seen. i love every era, but this one is honestly unparalleled.

Doctor Who THRIVED when it was (nearly solely) fan-driven and fan-supported. it was so original and experimental and free-form because the stories were made by passionate fans for passionate fans, and with very little focus on profit. but as soon as it got popular and profitable again, around the end of the Tenth Doctor’s era and the beginning of Eleven’s, it became increasingly predictable and formulaic. not to say that these eras aren’t wonderful, but they could’ve been so much more.

basically, i feel like pure shit, just want early 2000s Paul McGann and India Fisher back