Like a lot of people — entrepreneurial and Type A people, in particular — I’ve fallen victim to the romanticism of DOING ALL THE THINGS. Yes, I can absolutely work a full-time job, manage a household, be a good wife/daughter/friend, grow my author business, exercise four times a week, and pursue other personal goals all at once. And yes, that does make me something of a super-human. Yay me!
Whether I’m living in windy Kansas, snow-packed Connecticut, or sunny California, January always seems to be a strange month for me. While I’m filled with excitement and optimism for the year ahead, I also struggle with the mid-winter sluggishness that plagues so many of us. Yes, even in California’s freakishly warm weather, I can’t shake that winter feeling.
Kind of feel like there’s an easy solution for Hannibal which is that he just doesn’t eat people. Like you don’t need to do that king
Right. So.
Hannibal kills people because he feels like he’s doing a service to society. The people he preys on are whom he sees as the lowest of the low, which is an interesting aspect showing that while a deranged maniac he also acknowledges that what he’s doing is generally frowned up, and so he does what he does in a way that he can convince himself (and possibly others) that the people who died didn’t deserve to live in the first place. It’s kind of like the saw guy.
Now there’s not really an “intimacy” feeling when he eats people. While real life cannibals do tend to think that way, hannibal’s reason for consuming his victims is completely different. One of the lines in silence of the lambs where clarice is attempting to find out who Buffalo Bill could be is something along the lines of “some people keep trophies of their kills” and clarice says “you didn’t, you ate yours” and Hannibal just kind of shrugs it off. It’s a habit he’s adopted but he isn’t attached to his victims, nor does he want to be. They’re too low class for him to care about.
The reason Hannibal got into cannibalism is because during ww2 his family escaped to their hunting lodge. Soviet soldiers came and his parents as well as every other adult present died (other than the soldiers), which left him and his sister stranded throughout the cold winter with them. There was little to no food, and they were all starving. The Soviet soldiers saw that his sister was becoming deathly ill, and as a last ditch effort to survive throughout the spring they killed & ate her—and by that I mean they fed Hannibal his dead sister, too.
They are finally all found, Hannibal goes to an orphanage, the soldiers get new identities that don’t tie them to their past and move on with their lives. However, Hannibal is unable to move on, and he starts planning his revenge. Throughout his teen and young adult years he tracks every single soldier down, kills, then devours them—just as they did to his sister and made him do.
Hannibal does not consider eating people intimate. He actually thinks it the most repulsive thing a human can do to another person (going back up to earlier where I said that he might be trying to convince himself it was necessary to do so). It’s not about intimacy, and at first it was about avenging his sister. His entire personality is forged around Misha’s death, which traumatized him, and once he had rounded all of her murderers up and gave them their just deserts (it his mind), he continued to kill the lowest of the low to rid society of those he believes are anywhere from absolutely worthless to simply a nuisance. When he eats people he is twisting the knife, showing them they are nothing more to him than fuel and eventually waste. It is the most dehumanizing thing you can do to someone, and he knows this, which is why he continues to do it—not because of the connection to the victims, but to make a statement that they are worth nothing more to him than the act of unwrapping a granola bar would be to us, the same way the hunger-crazed Soviet soldiers saw Misha.
You had a light blue notebook, the plan was to write everything you could remember down- dates, time, how he had looked when he came home; anything that would be useful.
It lasted roughly two days before Michael got a hold of it, curious as to what the hell you’d been writing about for hours in that damned thing- of course, he wasn’t shocked when he read through the pages of his murder, you had been more jumpy and secretive lately.
He doesn’t bring it up, instead he places the notebook a tad different each time he reads through it. His way of letting you know he knows.
“Michael,” you yelled from your standing position, looking for your keys in your beige purse. “I’ll be back in a bit, gotta drop something off to a friend!” the notebook was held tightly between your arm and side, today was the day you showed it to the police. “Lov-“
Within seconds, you become his newest victim, red pouring from the wound in your back as you hit the wooden floor.
Hannibal
You were working with the police- tasked to get as close with Hannibal as possible. He was a suspect, you agreed.
It started off easy enough, you became one of his patients and you went from there. It wasn’t until he invited you to one of his dinner parties that things picked up.
Soon enough, you were dating. You had been friendly for around 10 months before the first date. Hannibal was a careful man, you noted.
He was hosting a dinner party and you had agreed to help him prepare, until you saw him pull out the human thigh, a knowing smile darkening his features. “I know you know, I’m surprised you’ve let it get this far.”
You tried to run, to call your supervisor and tell him not to come- that Hannibal was in fact the criminal and you we-
Hannibal wasted no time in killing you, a tad disappointed his little lamb was so unloyal- but, you’d make for a fine main course, he decided, getting to work on cutting your flesh.
Billy Loomis
He takes the longest to catch on, Billy doesn’t have the slightest clue until that little black notebook slips out of your purse one day, contents inside confusing him- it couldn’t have been you to write all this,
Billy takes the most humane approach, still hopeful it wasn’t you, and mentions the notebook to you at night.
“I found a notebook with all my murders logged, it was pretty detailed,” he muttered, head turning to face you. “I think someones after us, must’ve planted it in your bag, huh?”
The look on your face, the pure dread at the mention of the notebook confirmed the worst. “(y/n)..” Billy trailed off, eyes widening as he watched you scoot away from him. “You wouldn’t do that to us- to me, would ya?”
You did, but you violently shook your head, denying the claims. “No- no, I have no clue how that got there, Billy I-” you were silenced by a knife to the stomach, looking up to see Billy’s tear filled ones.
“You were the last person I ever wanted to do this to, Doll. Forgive me.”
just at the moment when I finally decided to finish something on Hannibal, I finished watching the last season after three years and now I’m just devastated and want to draw flowers lol
Imagi…
Whether I’m living in windy Kansas, snow-packed Connecticut, or sunny California, January always seems to be a strange month for me. While I’m filled with excitement and optimism for the year ahead, I also struggle with the mid-winter sluggishness that plagues so many of us. Yes, even in California’s freakishly warm weather, I can’t shake that winter feeling.
