#Last Call for Morals

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Last Call for Morals Series

Full series on Ao3

Written by Aar.

Fandoms: Dexter (TV), Hannibal (TV)

Main ship: Dexter Morgan/Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter (Hannigram/Dexter)

Centric: Dexter Morgan

Status: Finished.

Summary: Hannibal and Will come face to face with Miami's most known serial killer and can't help but feel intrigued.

...

Last Call For Morals (Better cover your drinks)

Sum: Hannibal and Will come face to face with Miami's most known serial killer and can't help but feel intrigued.

Don't Worry Your Little Head

Sum: A short dialogue between Dexter and Hannibal that I couldn't fit into my 'Last Call for Morals' story but still wanted to publish.

Sodom And Gomorra'd (Let it go down the sink)

Sum: Part Two of 'Last Call for Morals (Better cover your drinks)'. If you haven't read it yet, go read it, or else this might not make sense.

One Bite (I Ate Your Guts)

Sum: LCFM (BCYD) rewrite from Hannibal/Will's POV! Also known as the Fluff version.

[iloketf2]

More

BRACELETS!

[reds-skull]

Christmas comic in October? It's more likely than you think.

Also I would die for young Kyle and Simon

[d00medbythenarrative]

Oh my God SHUT THE FUCK UP

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

was rereading the convo dirk has with dave and was captivated by the subtle work done to indicate how very much this was not actually a good or productive convo for dirk, and a capstone on the toxic mess that is him and hal

in the exact same conversation that dave is explaining, and dirk is seemingly accepting, that beta!dirk/bro should not have been allowed near a child, dirk chooses to bring up hal. and he does it to be really shitty.

DIRK: Creating him was an interesting exercise I guess, but over the years I came to see his development as one of my biggest mistakes. DIRK: He sort of turned into a monster. But I could never bring myself to get rid of him, or even really blame him for being an asshole, because he wasn't actually that different from me.

like... hal is dirk's younger brother/kid, right?

that's part of the reason that when hal starts using a different color, it's dave's red. in one part, the orange/red split is evocative of dave/davesprite, casting dirk/hal as foils, but... i don't think the lil bro/"kid i'm responsible for" vibe is unintentional, either. especially when paired with the fact that the brainscan is of 13-year-old dirk, and that the words "nascent" and "emergent" are used to describe hal's consciousness, all implying an element of youthfulness or childishness to him that isn't applied to dirk.

hal is fully sapient, has real feelings (by dirk's own admission, too), and is also, like, completely his own guy. he's not a dirk splinter, he's a computer housing a dirk splinter, and he and dirk only think they're the same guy because their individual issues happen to perfectly align in the worst possible way.

so if you look at their relationship through that lens instead - a frankenstein/frankenstein's monster scenario (which is also directly and intentionally an exploration on parenthood) at best and dirk Pretty Much Actually Just Making A Child at worst - doesn't it become really fucked up that Dirk tried to kill him?

Doesn't it become really fucked up that Dirk is outright calling him a "mistake" and a "monster"?

the other really interesting thing here is when he talks about Jake - specifically, the way he chooses to "make it up to" jake. which is to say, he doesn't.

DIRK: I wouldn't be surprised if he was trying to avoid me as much as possible. DIRK: I'm sure that's for the best. DIRK: I think I need to stay out of his business for a good while, so I don't risk poisoning another innocent kid's life.

This isn't a solution. Hell, this isn't even an apology. This is just self-isolation, self-punishment, more of Dirk's martyrdom complex and teen boy diva bullshit.

yes, dirk hates himself, but the actual toxic loop he's stuck in is one where he doesn't address any of his problems. he identifies what his issues are, he feels really bad about them, he can enunciate them very clearly to other people, but then, instead of fixing them, he inflicts punishment on himself and then calls it a day.

We know that this is a bullshit thing to do to Jake because we know the situation from jake's side of things.

GT: Do you think you could relay the same sentiments to dirk? GT: I was thinking about all the stuff he said to me while we were all telling him to dance. GT: And yeah i was really being a prick when i ran away to lomax. GT: He was right about everything. I should have come clean about wanting some space.

jake wants reconciliation! jake wants to address the fact that he failed and apologize! jake wants to be friends again!

self-punishment is not a solution, and while I don't think dirk is entirely cognizant that he's doing it, by venting to dave - who literally has no idea what's been going on in dirk's group - he's able to frame the story - ahem, control the narrative - to justify his own shitty choice to not actually improve as a person, but instead to wallow in his own self-inflicted misery. If he'd said what he did about Hal to Jake, Roxy, or Jane - all of whom recognized hal's personhood and emotional reality to some degree, and spoke with him extensively - how would they respond? If they knew he'd tried to kill Hal, how would they respond?

The answer to that is why he doesn't tell them, and has got to be ticking in the background to explain why Dirk chooses to isolate himself from them. Put simply, I think the reason why he seems to think his friends never know the worst of him is because he deliberately avoids showing them. If he showed them, they wouldn't stay quiet, and if they didn't stay quiet, he'd actually have to... do something about it, instead of just indulging in some self-punishment and walking away feeling like the problem was solved.

and i think part of why he's so terrible to hal is because, on some level, he recognizes that he does kind of owe it to hal to be better. because, you see.

Hal is his kid.

hal's existence, hal's circumstances, and hal's suffering are a direct result of dirk's decisions, and hal is taking him to task for them. the things dirk really resents about hal are less the ways that hal is a reflection of dirk, though that's in there too, but the fact that hal is asking dirk to take responsibility. actual responsibility. that hal keeps confronting him with the fact that he's the one who caused hal's plight, he's the one with the power to fix it, and he's the one choosing inaction and avoidance.

TT: I'm guessing she's touching base to remind me about the party tomorrow. TT: I don't know what to tell her yet. Or Jane, for that matter. TT: It could get pretty awkward. TT: I have no idea if Jake will be there, and I'm not about to write another cringe-inducing message of desperation for him to ignore. AR: Would you like me to calculate the probability of his attendance? TT: Fuck no. AR: Are you sure? AR: My probabilities are extremely precise. TT: Your probabilities don't mean dick. AR: I could hack his chats, and determine what his plans are. TT: No. Don't do that either. [...] TT: Just don't do anything. Seriously. TT: No hacking, no calculations. Do absolutely nothing.

That's why Dirk takes such exception to the AI thing, too.

AR: In any case, my use of the responder responder is ironic. TT: It's not ironic. TT: YOU were ironic when I made you. TT: Then you became self-aware, and ruined irony forever.

then you became self-aware - in other words, "then you became a free-thinking entity and those jokes became reminders that your situation is fucked up, and i'm the one who put you in it". in other words, "and then you were born, and i had to be responsible for that". because, after all, the AI jokes that dirk hates so much? those aren't a reflection of dirk. that's all hal, baby. dirk can't use his "i hate you because i hate myself" excuse on that.

now i don't want to make it sound like i'm saying that dirk is a monster or anything. he does care, very fucking deeply, about his friends. and i think this conversation was genuinely very cathartic and helpful for dave. and it is, genuinely, very tragic that he does actually hate himself to the point where he finds it difficult to believe that he can get better, or even that he deserves to get better.

but those feelings have transformed into a vastly more harmful attitude of wilful, obstinate refusal to change, and even outright resentment and fear towards those that would ask him to. it's subtler than some of the others, but his convo with dave really highlights that dirk has not finished developing as a character yet. and i think it's really neat.

[misstoodles-doodles]

Rubber Baby Bug Boy

[spark-circuit]

me hearing my friends lament that they can't play older games on newer consoles because they're not remade or rereleased yet and may never be brought back:

[iwasbored777]

I don't understand people who say that Gwen and Miles don't have to end up together just because they're a girl and a boy and how a girl and a boy can be just friends but at the same time those people claim that Gwen and Hobie most likely slept together when she stayed over just because they're...you know...a girl and boy, and that a girl and a boy can't be just friends...

[blatantprinterpropaganda]

i'm losing my mind over the sheer number of layers of corniness and clever writing that keep interweaving as this show heads deeper and deeper into its actual idol romance plot, inevitably hitting levels of meta that will require a topic-relevant college degree to fully untangle

[sandsoftide]

one part of htn I've been ruminating on a lot recently is specifically the discussion surrounding motherhood -- not from a pregnancy perspective but rather the ways both Wake and Mercy are thrust into a "motherly" narrative role by the oppressive reality of the nine houses (with wake having no choice but to carry gideon for nine months, and mercy having to be the mentor to harrow, who is both incredibly traumatized and the privileged victim of lyctorhood in the same way mercy is). And while both of them do perform these roles, they absolutely refuse to be maternal figures. By rebelling against this they DO hurt their "children" (mercy is Not a very caring mentor and Gideon's purpose was just to be a sacrificial lamb from the start) but it's also a way to preserve what little agency they have. they are "bad moms" but they aren't villified for this by the narrative and its clear that the ways they hurt gideon and harrow are their attempts to hold on to their own sense of self as the world around them crumbles. Their cruelty isn't a character flaw, it's the result of putting someone in a box they never wanted to be in, and they're allowed as much understanding and sympathy as the children, and I just think it's really neat!! Just one small part of the way Harrow the Ninth criticizes nuclear family structures and it's so important to me. Like, it's so common for media (and irl but yknow) to flatten women into "mom" or villainize them for just being a little mean but these are NOT core facets of Mercy and Wake's characters, they are used as an exploration of how people are negatively affected by imperialistic violence and misogyny

[transfemmbeatrice]

texts from jeeves

[whatudottu]

Something something cerebrocrustacean headcanons, yada yada Dr Psychobos is not immune to the in-group bias

He's doing the one thing Azmuth did not do, viewing Malware as a son with special needs Dr Psychobos is fully willing to support :P

[probablyaparadox]

Shanks’ crew is really out here taking out every punk aesthetic pirate they see what did the punks ever do to you dress better than you???

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Did someone say CHAPTER FOUR (4) of ONE BITE (I ATE YOUR GUTS)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63763534/chapters/167650789

(Aka: Dexter x Hannigram ship crossover, aaka: My LCFM story from Hannigram POV)

[lovebeatriceplz]

My favorite fathers/ father figures in media

Happy father's day ♡ ( to those who deserve it)

[lennjamin-o7]

Hmmmm. I am hesitant to say this because I feel like someone might take it as a personal attack, so I won't make this post rebloggable and I will use words so it doesn't show in the main tag. And I am also putting in a read more.

Talking about a fandom pet peeve under the cut. It's just me being negative.

I get really irritated by posts in the Techno tag that say some form of "We have grown past the need to draw Techno [insert way]! We should all agree that [different way] is superior!". I feel like I see at least one post like that every couple of weeks.

I recognize that, usually, the person is just being silly and talking about their preference. No one means any harm by it. They don't ACTUALLY mean that people should stop drawing Techno any way they like. They are making a joke.

However, it just feels so needlessly negative to me. And slightly insulting, even if it isn't meant to be insulting. I'm not an artist. I don't draw Techno any way at all. But if I had a certain way of drawing him, then I scrolled and saw someone say "Can we all agree that this way is bad?", I can't help but think I'd be a little hurt. I don't really understand the point of making the joke in a way that puts down other character designs.

It just kind of feels unnecessarily negative of other people's preferences. As someone who likes all shapes of Techno, I'm content as long as Techno is Techno. I just kinda feel like it's a bad joke.