TLV Application

[empathicfault]

User Name/Nick: Amy
User DW: empathicfault
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: eliada@gmail.com, siderealtime on Plurk
Other Characters Currently In-Game: None


Character Name: Will Graham
Series: Hannibal
Age: 42
From When?: At the end of season 3, when Will drags Hannibal Lecter off a seaside cliff with him.


Inmate Justification: Will has had years of various people, trauma, and frequent desperate situations eroding his morality. At this point, he believes that the world is inherently cynical, that the good aren't protected and that the bad have free reign. He has decided to embrace his own views and make his own decisions, outside law and society. Violence and manipulation are now part of his wheelhouse, and something he'll reach for if he thinks someone is being particularly evil or cruel. The Barge can help him work through the layers of trauma he's experienced, untangle his own emotions from Hannibal Lecter's, and generally give him a more 'neutral' space to reset his mind.


Arrival: He agreed to come to the Barge. He had been content to die. However, a part of him wants to see just what he is, now that he's directly murdered someone with Hannibal.


Abilities/Powers: Will doesn't have any special powers or abilities. He's a baseline human, if not a very strange one.


Inmate Information: Any warden that takes Will on is going to have their work cut out for them. He has been heavily emotionally and physically abused by several therapists, and betrayed both by friends and coworkers. Will began the TV series with a history of mental instability. He led a very lonely existence due to his 'ability' to over-empathize with nearly everyone he came into contact with.

Most of the important events for Will have happened in the past five years or so. This includes being pressed into working with the FBI to help find serial killers, and having Hannibal Lecter (a serial killer who eats his victims) assigned to him as a therapist to make sure 'he doesn't go too far'. Since Hannibal had the complete opposite goal in mind, the psychiatrist had an easy time gaslighting him, especially when Will showed signs of having developed encephalitis. Hannibal then framed Will for the murders he'd committed during that season. Will was sent to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

There, feeling clarity for the first time in ages, Will did his level best to convince everyone what had occurred. No one believed him. Hannibal eventually grew tired of the ruse and left evidence to clear him. The two of them continued to play this 'game'- Will going on the attack or manipulating others to try and catch Hannibal, and Hannibal slipping out of his grasp or catching up to attempt his own murders- for the remainder of the series.

Highlights of these times include Will convincing a 'fan' of the season 1 murders to try and kill Hannibal, watching dispassionately as a very drugged man sliced his own face off and fed it to Will's dogs, and lying to the FBI in order to get Hannibal transferred to another prison and arranging to break Hannibal out with a different serial killer (Francis Dolarhyde). That act ended with four innocent prison guards dead, but it was what he 'needed to do' to try and end the attacks from both Hannibal and Francis. Despite the rationalizations available to Will, he doesn't deny what he's doing. He also kills Francis Dolarhyde along with Hannibal as one of his final acts, and clearly enjoyed doing so.

There are numerous other painful events for Will, but his attempts at being a father- or father figure- rank high. He lost a teenager he'd been watching over, Abigail Hobbs, to Hannibal in violent fashion, and also lost an unborn baby of his when the mother's brother had the child forcibly aborted. Finally, he tried to have a 'normal life' with a woman named Molly and her son Walter. However, Jack Crawford 'needed' his help again, and he was tempted back into the world of serial killers. It put both his wife and step-son in significant danger.

It cannot be overstated just how much Will has had his manipulations and attempts at violence vindicated in his past experience. Whenever he tried to tell the truth to people, extremely few would relate to or agree with him. He tried to tell Jack Crawford that his work with the FBI was too much for him, and Jack merely pushed him forward, guilting him. Will eventually started to cross lines out of desperation to survive, or out of a sense of his own moral strength. As he spent more time with Hannibal, that moral strength began to twist into a desire to be more powerful than those he found repugnant.

The series ends with the murder of Francis Dolarhyde. Will then embraces Hannibal and pulls the psychiatrist off of a seaside cliff with him. He is concerned that he understands Hannibal too well. If he doesn't kill Hannibal, Will thinks he'll become Hannibal. His mind has latched fully onto Hannibal's personality, which unlike his own is not constantly assaulted by the emotions of others. As of now, he is convinced that he is in love with Hannibal, that they are soulmates, and Hannibal is the only one who can truly see Will for who and what he is.

Everyone else, to Will, is either weak or lying. Maybe they're both. People will not show up for others, not in a 'real' sense. It's possible that more exposure to others, and REAL therapy, will help him slough off the bits of Hannibal's mind he's collected into himself.

However, he'll start off fighting almost any form of help with every fiber of his being, especially if it seems to attack the feelings he's just recently come to embrace. He may pretend to engage with something, but his prior 'therapy' experiences have left him severely traumatized. It's unlikely` he'll trust anything from that sector for a very long time. Will's exceptionally good at visualization, and will just imagine that he's somewhere else if he doesn't want to be engaging with the process of getting better.

With his ability to empathize, Will has had multiple problems with depersonalization, worries about becoming someone else, and concerns about not existing as his own person. Breaches will likely exacerbate his issues here, and he will need help coping with this.

One of the best ways to convince Will to start actually trying to get better is to issue it as a challenge. If he deems a topic worthy, he's like a dog with a bone with it. He will work and work and work, until he either goes insane or defeats it. It has just unfortunately come down to the former too many times in the past.

Speaking of dogs, Will loves them. He especially loves strays, the outcasts no one else wanted. Dogs are, basically, a way for him to be near living things but not constantly on his guard. Animal therapy would probably be very beneficial to him.


Path to Redemption:
Will needs hope and optimism again. He'd started out on rather short supply, but by the time he makes it onto the Barge, it's all gone. He has been convinced that the world is so broken that the only way to fix it is by letting himself be a monster. With Hannibal's guidance, he's been taught to revel in it. His trust has been broken so many times that it will take multiple and repeated attempts to rebuild ANY connections, much less one with a warden. It will take someone who is very patient and all right with progress moving slowly.

More than that, Will has just been through a great change, in willingly murdering someone and enjoying all of it. This means he'll be poking around at what he might want to do and/or be as a violent predator, and unfortunately his preferred prey is other murderers. He may get worse before he starts getting better, if a particular inmate rubs him the wrong way. Again, someone with patience would be helpful.

He is less likely to connect with authority figures, despite (or perhaps because of) his familiarity with the FBI and various doctors. He needs help dealing with his massive amount of trauma, so while he's leery of psychiatrists, it would be helpful to know at least some therapy techniques.

A major milestone would be him properly opening up to at least one person. He tends to share parts of himself, far more than most would share, but it's almost always a way to push someone in a certain direction. Trusting someone with even one real doubt or worry in his mind, not couched in a joking veneer of disaffection, would show progress. Having something positive to connect his empathic abilities to would show progress as well.


History: Will Graham's History


Sample Network Entry: Hopefully this thread counts? But if it doesn't, I can write up something else.


Sample RP: Voice Test Thread


Special Notes: Nothing I can think of!