I think Hannibal is melancholic as fuck but no one gets me
No. I’m not melancholic. I’m something else. But it’s precisely that difference which allows me to recognize melancholy in those who don’t wear it in obvious ways. Melancholy isn’t about a downcast expression or visible sorrow, it’s not a look, it’s a state of being.
It lingers in his eyes, in the way decay is not avoided but absorbed. That’s what I see in him. He doesn’t flee from his sadness, he inhales it. He doesn’t resist the rot, he sets a table for it, turns it into a feast. That, to me, is the essence of melancholy: not in the tears shed, but in the quiet devotion to pain as something sacred.