Really in love with this idea of Hannibal and Will being exceptional in the sense that they’re each lonely people and yet they both try to connect with someone; trying to be seen and heard by Bedelia and Alana respectively (and I am NOT talking about romantic/sexual love here), so they have this yearning to reach out and have someone understand– and there’s a limit to that, where Bedelia cannot tolerate the specific kind of devilry Hannibal executes and Alana cannot look at Will objectively and in some cases, smudges both his and her own agency. It’s just a sort of– it’s sort of pathetic, and yet they’re both identical in their loneliness and privacy. I really like this aspect of their persons, that you can be adults and have trouble forming and maintaining relationships; not the angst of it, but the complexity of having a personality like that and how it makes their attachment to each other just that much more precious. Will and Hannibal can despise each other but there will always remain the love and intimacy of the fact that they are dear to each other.

Not to turn this into the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ sort of thing, this has nothing to do with patriarchy and everything to do with Will and Hannibal’s minds working at a frequency that is not easily matched by anybody, regardless of gender.