Trigger Warning: The mentions of cannibalism, blood, and eating other people may be triggering for some people. It is advised to administer self-care while reading.
Love is soft. Love is pure. Love is the kind, gentle feeling of being wanted and appreciated. At least, that’s what most people believe love to be. But there is the type of love that runs deep in someone and it’s too much for them to handle. They look at the person who holds their affection with such desire they can’t keep it in. The only logical thing to do with so much love is to eat it. More specifically, eat the people you love (because that makes complete sense).
But once that person is gone, it’s time to put that love on someone else. Of course, don’t do that in real life — it’s a crime and morally wrong. But it’s fascinating to read and watch. How a person thinks consuming someone’s organs and blood as a way to possess love is scary. If you like to explore the mental capacity of these types of people and find it interesting how they come to end and consume a life, then these fictional characters will entice your scary appetite. Might I suggest adding these as part of your Halloween horror marathon?
Maren Yearly from Bones and All
In the movie adaptation of author Camille DeAngelis’ Bones and All, protagonist Maren eats the people who show her love. In the movie, she has an insatiable urge to eat whenever she feels like it, without remorse. Murdering her first victim at the age of three, Maren is abandoned by her father at eighteen due to being tired of having to move cities every time Maren kills someone. Traveling the U.S. to find where she fits in the world as an outcast, she discovers others like her, coming to grips with the horrors that run deeper than her desire to feast on human flesh. As she falls in love and learns more about herself, she questions the ethical morality of her cannibalism.
Himiko Toga from My Hero Academia
Himiko Toga has a quirk (or superpower), called Transform that allows her to transform into the person whose blood she drinks. This power warped her mental state, making her think at a young age that a bloodied bird was cute. Himiko also thinks it’s normal to want to suck the blood of the people she loves as it’s normal to kiss your loved ones. Becoming the people who she loves is how Himiko views love, taking it to the extreme by killing them. It’s also due to the forced suppression of her quirk that her breaking point was attacking a bruised boy in school, sucking his blood from a straw.
Shauna from Yellowjackets
When their plane crashes in the deep wilderness of Ontario, the high school soccer team, the Yellowjackets are forced to survive in the most horrendous way possible. When teammate Jackie dies first, Shauna is the first to taste their deceased friend. Eating Jackie’s ear that fell from her frozen corpse might have been a way for Shauna to cope with Jackie’s death, hallucinating her ghost taunting Shauna’s hunger even more. Failing to cremate her body, the rest of the starving team eats Jackie’s cooked body. At this point, survival comes by any means necessary, but Shauna’s first bite of human flesh stands out the most.
Riz from Beastars
Riz is a bear in an anthropomorphic world in which predatory animals are forced to suppress their urge to hunt for their prey in order to coexist with herbivores. By taking a government-mandated medication that weakens him, the medicine’s side effects only enforced Riz’s appetite for meat. Killing his close alpaca friend Tem, Riz begins to hallucinate his last encounter with Tem out of immense guilt. Believing that Tem agreed to be eaten, Riz considers eating an herbivore as a celebration of life. But Riz Ignored the fact that Tem fled from him and tried to fight back before his death. Now Riz hides in plain sight, killing off anyone who gets too close to pin him as the murderer.
Hannibal Lector from Hannibal
Hannibal Lecter is infamous for his fancy dining on human organs. At first, he killed and ate those he saw as beneath him, seeing himself as intellectually superior. Hannibal doesn’t consider himself a cannibal, viewing the term to mean eating an equal, leaving those he respects alive. Since meeting Will Graham, an FBI profiler, his definition of the word has changed. With an obsession for the profiler, Hannibal’s psychiatrist Bedelia answers Graham’s question about the authenticity of Hannibal’s love for him: “Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and feel nourishment at the very sight of you? Yes.” In a painful cycle, Hannibal does want to eat Graham but loves him so much that he resists the urge to keep him around. So, now Hannibal eating habits are a more gruesome form of love that’s more disturbing.
In fiction, cannibalism is a metaphor for the dark side of loving someone. But which one would you be able to stomach? Would you watch Hannibal’s deep obsession with Will or Shauna’s disastrous coping skills after Jackie’s death? Let us know your thoughts on our socials.
For more scary fun, click on Bookstr’s 5 Classic Novels That Will Scare and Delight You!
Want something to keep you up at night? Check Bookstr’s list of Nail-Biting YA Thrillers, Mysteries, and Horrors Reads on Bookshop.org!
