Some Men Are Lesbians And So Can You!

bloodaria:

i thought about why the firefly man will created in secondo had his hands clasped together in prayer, and it led me to a new realisation of where exactly i’d seen something like that before -

the angels from coquilles. in coquilles, the angel maker thought he could sense evil in people and would kill and turn those people into angels, purifying them in the process.

the prisoner killed mischa and will delivered justice for that crime through chiyoh, and elevated him in the process, just like what the angel maker did to his victims (will would come to be known as the “lamb of god” who takes away your sins in the red dragon arc). another reason why the angel maker created the angels was so they’d watch over him, because he didn’t want to die in his sleep. though will doesn’t sleep under the firefly man, he spiritually died in mizumono and references to him being dead are brought up more than a few times in the first few episodes of season 3. and consider this scene just before will creates the firefly man -

jack is in the norman chapel along with pazzi. jack tells pazzi, who asks him if he’s a believer, “aren’t we all? belief comes with imagination. we also imagine the possibility that we all live on after death. will graham died. he was dead. i was dead. we didn’t imagine that”. before he says this though, he lights a votive candle. votive candles are used as divine offerings to god, and combined with jack’s words about imagining the possibility of life after death, we can see will creating the firefly man as an answer to jack’s prayer, since with this tableau, he literally created life after death.

how did will create life after death? when they first meet, chiyoh tells will the prisoner is only allowed the sound of water like what the unborn hear. the firefly is the last stage of metamorphosis from the pupal form, so the prisoner goes from the unborn stage to the mature adult stage because of will turning him into the firefly. we also see the prisoner eating snails, which as hannibal tells bedelia in contorno, is the fuel which the firefly larvae use to transform themselves into delicate creatures of such beauty.

something chiyoh also says is that will is not allowed to look at the prisoner or speak to him, saying he’s cast aside the social graces afforded to human beings by killing mischa. since chiyoh says that the prisoner is unborn directly after saying this, there is a direct link between the prisoner not being looked at, or “seen”, and his being unborn.

“belief comes with imagination”, and what is will known for? his imagination, his empathy. it’s will’s empathy which allows for the possibility of life after death. will grants his gift of being seen to the prisoner through his empathy and gives him a rebirth, just like he did with randall tier who wanted to be seen and who had his becoming when he was turned into a beast and displayed in the museum. the prisoner lived his whole life in a dark, damp prison, so with his wings and with the lights reflecting off of him and around him, will sets him free and gives him what he couldn’t have in life in death.

not only is the prisoner reborn, will is as well. will has just created the imago, the flying insect which is the final stage of transformation which he and hannibal discussed in mizumono. and think of the journey will undergoes to get to this point, it occurs entirely through water -

“he’s only allowed the sound of water. it’s what the unborn hear”.

we also see hannibal’s kitchen being flooded with blood in primavera, and a close up of will’s guts in aperitivo, which is compared to a womb in the script, while hannibal embraces him and then stabs him.

will sinks in this bloody water in primavera, and walks on its surface to get to lecter castle in secondo (walking backwards because he’s going backwards in time like when he lets the pendulum swing and recreates a crime scene - he’s recreating mischa’s crime scene, going back to when the teacup first shattered so that he can understand hannibal).

what about jack and his belief that he’s dead though? it’s in aperitivo that jack lets go of bella and puts her to sleep permanently. bella had told him before that he’s not going to go into the ground with her, so we can see this as jack beginning to accept that he belongs to the land of the living. in contorno, he tells hannibal that after he’s gone, he’ll feel alive, before pushing him out a window. coming back to the angel maker, the angel maker had cancer and would make angels to watch over him so that he doesn’t die of cancer in his sleep. bella directly compares hannibal to a cancer within jack, saying he can cut out what’s killing him. was jack as successful as the angel maker or bella in cutting out his cancer (read: not successful not all)? the evidence suggests so, since in the red dragon arc he’s again back to his old ways and back to his old dynamic with will and hannibal, making use of them to solve cases in an effort to save lives.