*skitters in* LILIA AND BO LILIA AND BO LILIA AND BO LILIA AND-
Lilia is someone Bo runs into often, but strangely doesn't know much about. In the hallways, or the cafeteria... pretty much anywhere, really. They get along quite nicely for the most part- with Lilia's love for spooking people, Bo often finds himself tense around the guy earlier on, but eases up after making it clear he despises being snuck up on (see: burst into tears after getting jumpscared one too many times)
Bo tends to drop by random club meetings a lot which is where he properly gets to know these strangers. The Pop Music Club is one of his favorites, whether they're actually having a rare jam session or not. Although it's a group effort, Lilia is the one who encourages Bo to pick up music again and helps him relearn guitar as well as share his knowledge of random assorted instruments.
They also both tend to make a lot of "old person back pain" jokes, funnily enough. Not that Bo is aware that Lilia is, in fact, one of those fabled old people. Lilia will poke fun at him for it, also constantly pointing out if Bo has neglected wearing his braces or is slouching. He will not have this kiddo dealing with joint pain that hard if he can help it.
At the end of the day, they're on good terms, and Lilia is someone Bo could reliably turn to for advice on practically anything, or really just a good story. They're not particularly close, but definitely someone Bo would call a friend.
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The thing about Hannibal's punishment of Mason is that Mason was delighted the entire time.
Hannibal could have done absolutely anything he wanted after murdering all of Mason's bodyguards and spiriting him back to Wolf Trap. One assumes that Hannibal doesn't carry his insane psychedelic mixture with him everywhere--the fact that he uses it on Mason implies that he had an opportunity to go to his office or his house. He could have disappeared Mason into his basement if he really wanted to. His plan is hardly discreet--even if he didn't want to kill Mason without Will, there's any number of fun surgical activities he could have got up to while Will was making his way back home.
He doesn't, though.
Mason has a great time being Hannibal Lecter's victim. "I am enchanted and....terrified," he says, but the terror doesn't truly seem to bother him. He says it playfully, and with laughter. His fear is only one aspect of his experience, and his enchantment is the thread that runs much closer to the surface.
The only complaint he offers the entire time, in fact, is "I'm hungry," and he seems more than content with Hannibal's proposed solution to that problem. (I suppose "a taste and consistency similar to that of chicken gizzard" might not be complementary--I wouldn't know; I don't carnivore.)
It's sweet, actually, and horrifyingly sad, the way he interacts with Will's dogs. "I just love your dogs," he says, and he genuinely seems to enjoy feeding them and petting them, but the story he tells about his own dogs is, well--
I adopted some dogs from the shelter once, two dogs that were friends. I had them in a cage together with no food and fresh water. One of them died hungry. The other had a warm meal.
The question, then: What was Hannibal getting out of this? He was more than willing to let Will kill Mason. He would have let Mason die happy--the happiest, maybe, that we ever see him. Hannibal's decision to paralyze him reads more like whimsy to me than like a continuation of his plan to bring Mason to Wolf Trap--I honestly think he expected Will to kill him. And he didn't suspect Will of being a double agent yet; leaving Mason alive is a much riskier choice than killing him and hiding the body. (And, in fact, it's a choice that ends up having consequences down the line.)
"I employ an ethical butcher," Hannibal says, in Coquilles. On the face of it, the statement is absurd, but through S2, between Gideon and Miriam and Mason and even James Gray, it starts to make sense. It seems much more important for Hannibal to be able to exert control over the subjective experiences of his victims than for those experiences to be painful, in particular. Even Gideon, fresh from his own amputation, seems to be mostly bothered by just the idea of eating himself.
I'm fiercely curious about all the murders we don't see, about Cassie Boyle and Jeremy Olmstead and Andrew Caldwell--and, and, and. It's hard to imagine that he managed to do everything he did humanely--but then again, in Naka-choko, he says, "Apart from humane considerations, it's more flavorful for animals to be stress-free prior to slaughter." --Implying that humane considerations is actually something he thinks about. If anyone could manage to cut someone's lungs out and keep them comfortable the entire time, I suppose it would be Hannibal.
The really interesting thing, for me, is the way all of this breaks down in Mizumoto and S3. Gutting Will wasn't about exerting a lofty control over Will's experiences--it was about making Will hurt in the way that Hannibal was hurt. Then, slitting Abigail's throat--and then, much later, bludgeoning Antony to death, slowly enough to allow him to allow him the faint hope of crawling towards the door.
Those are, to my memory, the times when we see Hannibal actively trying to cause pain (--and not in the middle of fighting for his life). The striking thing about them is of course that all of them are inexorably bound up in Will and his feelings about Will.
There's something perversely delightful to me in the idea that Will awakened a particular kind of cruelty in Hannibal, parallel to the kind of cruelty Hannibal awakened in Will. Every time Will imagines killing Hannibal, he imagines Hannibal calm and even pleased by what's happening to him. Will's brand of bloodlust goes outwards. He wants to rip Randall Tier's mechanical suit off his body and kill him with his hands--make him die afraid. He wants Clark Ingram to fight back before Will murders him.
Hannibal's sadism, on the other hand, seems to have a very specific target. "Did you think you could change me?" Hannibal asks, standing in the bloody wreck of his own kitchen, while Will gasps and hurts and struggles to hold his guts together. Well--didn't he?
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