Holy shit I do the same thing too! Why do you think that is??

Probably because Hannigram is a relationship born not from identity politics or queerness as a community, but from archetype. It’s mythic, not modern. It exists outside of gay or straight, it lives in eros, in domination, in mirrors, in transformation.

In much of fandom (and particularly in slash fan culture), one character often gets assigned “the feminine role”, emotionally, narratively, sexually. With Hannigram, Will is often placed there because he resists, suffers, emotes, and is transformed. That doesn’t necessarily feminize him in reality, but it codes him in the aesthetic tradition of the one who is penetrated, not just sexually, but psychically.

And yet Will isn’t submissive. Not really. He’s ambiguous. Which breaks the visual shorthand of most depictions of gay sex, especially pornographic or mainstream ones. He’s not a “bottom” in the pop-cultural sense. He’s prey, then predator. He seduces by fleeing, commands by yielding.

Women, particularly straight or bi women, are often drawn to slash pairings not to see “gay men” represented, but to see a relationship stripped of gendered expectations. However, they often end up reproducing hetero-dynamic frameworks in the way they imagine it: dominant/submissive, pursuer/pursued, active/passive.

This is why some women imagine Hannigram more easily through het content, not because they don’t appreciate gay sex, but because the heterosexual framework is deeply embedded in how they read tension and surrender.

So when they watch gay porn or read gay sex scenes that don’t replicate that tension, or worse, that feel performative, sterile, or too anatomically focused, it feels false to what Hannibal and Will actually are to each other.

Mainstream portrayals of gay sex often rely on visual, mechanical rhythms that flatten the emotional or psychological dimensions. They don’t reflect ritual, which is what Hannigram is. When my friend said “that’s not what Hannigram would do,” they’re not talking about positions or acts, they’re talking about ritual atmosphere. About the texture of their eroticism.

And Hannigram’s eroticism is full of slowness, possession, powerplay, and mutual psychic invasion. Aesthetic gay sex in porn just… doesn’t look like that. And het porn, especially the kind that focuses on domination or eye contact or slow devastation, often does.

Hannigram isn’t about “being gay.” It’s about being consumed. About becoming someone else through closeness. It’s about spiritual possession disguised as love. So fans drawn to that don’t think in terms of what “gay sex” looks like, they think in terms of what their version of eros looks like. And that eros, for many women, has been visually coded through years of seeing that intensity only in heterosexual content.

So it’s not wrong, it’s not homophobic, and it’s not even necessarily about feminizing Will. It’s about needing to adapt the visual language of desire to fit the archetype we see in them. Because what Hannibal and Will share is not same-sex romance. It’s mythic tragedy. It’s divine union. And very little explicit media, gay or straight, can look like that.