scaleshavefallen

will graham
the scales have fallen from my eyes. i can see you now.

stats

NAME: Will Graham
NICKNAMES: None
AGE: mid-30s
GENDER: male
HAIR: Dark brown, messy
EYES: Brown
HEIGHT: around 5'10"
WEIGHT: Slender, could stand a bit more meat on his bones
BUILD: Slightly fit
GENERAL: Most often has stubble or a few days' worth of facial hair growth. He's not necessarily unkempt, but rather appears to not care about his appearance, or is completely unaware of how good looking he is. Favors dark colors or earth tones for clothes, particularly plaids.

MARITAL STATUS: Single
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual
OCCUPATION: In canon: professor at FBI academy, special consultant/profiler
At AI: To be determined

info

LIKES: Dogs, fixing things with his hands, being alone
DISLIKES: Cannibals, murderers, liars
MOVIES: None
TV: None
MUSIC: None, though I see him having a soft spot for old jazz

PARENTS: Didn't know his mother, grew up with his father
SIBLINGS: None known

notes.

Will arrives at AI from episode 1x13 of Hannibal; therefore, please note that this entire profile contains spoilers for the first season. Any spoilers incorporated from future seasons will be noted. It's entirely possible to play against Will without experiencing any spoilers for the show, as he probably won't want to talk too much about his canon experiences, but if you want to make extra-sure, please just drop me a note in the dropbox to give me a heads up.

For general character permissions and other OOC notes, please see this post.

Will most often comes off as aloof or disinterested, due to the way he consistently withdraws or holds himself apart from people. This isn't because he's snobbish or stuck up, but because of his very heightened sense of empathy which can lead to something like sensory overload, so it's more of a survival or defense mechanism than anything else.

As canon has given us little to go by in regards to how Will's empath abilities play out in areas not involving crime scene reconstruction and profiling, I probably will not play much with it, but it's probably safe to assume at the very least that if your character is in an heightened emotional state that Will will pick up on it, even if your character is trying to hide it. He probably will not comment on it unless he has reason to feel suspicious.

personality.

One of Will’s defining characteristics is his heightened sense of empathy; that is, in the context of his job, he can very easily see a crime scene before him and extrapolate the killer’s methods, and often their motive and a profile of the perpetrator, in a way that puts him not just in the killer’s shoes, but in the killer’s head. He doesn’t see things from the perspective of the victim; instead, he imagines himself as the killer. He sees the absolute worst of humanity, the worst atrocities, and he envisions himself committing these terrible acts. It makes his mind a terrifying, upsetting place to be. As Will tells tabloid journalist Freddie Lounds, you don’t want to piss off a man who thinks about killing people for a living.

While in canon, his gift for empathy and reading people is only ever experienced in the context of crimes, it can be assumed that even engaging with people in normal, mundane contexts can be too much for Will. Will counteracts this sort of sensory overload by withdrawing from people. He lives alone, in a small, ramshackle house on a large plot of empty land, with only a pack of formerly stray dogs for company. He has no close friends to speak of, except for Alana, and even that is, well, complicated -- for the longest time, she wouldn't even allow herself to be alone in a room with him. Will shies away from eye contact; he purposefully blocks others from meeting his eyes with the rims of his glasses, or a hat, or body language. He enjoys teaching because he can talk at people instead of with them -- it’s not a conversation, it’s a transfer of knowledge, and that makes it okay.

For all the evil he sees in his job, he seems to see the good in others far more readily than the bad. He gets too personally involved in the crimes he’s investigating; consequently it takes him far too long to realize that Abigail had culpability in her father’s crimes, or that Jack was pushing him too hard, or that Hannibal was using him as a real live experiment. And despite the toll that Will’s work takes on him, he doesn’t quit. He feels a sense of responsibility to continue consulting on these murder cases, because often times, his insight is the first route the FBI has to anything approaching a viable clue or suspect. He keeps working long after his physical and mental health deteriorates because he needs to see these cases through to completion. He also feels responsibility towards people he cares about: Abigail, whose father he killed; Alana, who he cares for as a friend and something more, if she’d let him; and even Hannibal, who Will initially believes has been dragged down into a dark world because of their association.

history.

Will Graham is a former police officer turned professor/profiler for the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. His perceived psychological issues kept him from becoming an FBI agent, but a new case has Jack Crawford, head of the BSU, eager to “borrow Will’s imagination”. In the field, Will investigates a series of murders of teenage girls and is shadowed by psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter.

As Will tracks the killer, Hannibal secretly interferes, calling their suspect, Garret Jacob Hobbs, to warn him. Upon arriving at the Hobbs house, Will finds Hobbs’ wife dead and Hobbs holding his daughter, Abigail, at knifepoint. Hobbs is presumably Will’s first kill-- Will shoots him as Hobbs slits Abigail’s throat --and from there, Will’s life changes. Will feels responsible for Abigail’s trauma and takes on a parental role towards her, as does Hannibal.

Everyone swears Will won’t get too deep into fieldwork, he won’t need to go so far into someone’s mind that he won’t be able to find his way back, but he gets lost anyway. The crimes Will consults on are grim: totem poles of corpses, angel wings of flesh, worse. Along the way, a copy-cat killer repeatedly strikes, committing murders close to, but not the same as, the originals.

Will loses track of time, hallucinates. There are gaps in his memory. He travels from place to place without knowing how. He has an increasingly difficult time determining what is real. At one crime scene, he loses control and inadvertently contaminates the scene. His colleagues are concerned, but no one intervenes to help. Will is fragile, but as long as he’s doing good work and catching murderers, everyone, Will included, is reluctant to do anything about it.

Will is left with only Hannibal’s guidance as his informal psychiatrist, but Hannibal doesn’t have Will’s best interests in mind. After the crime scene incident, Will receives an MRI, diagnosing him with advanced encephalitis. Unfortunately, Hannibal convinces the doctor to lie about the results, making Will think his issues are psychological rather than physical. He’s finally given medical care after a seizure and, later, collapsing after shooting a murderer stalking his next victim (Will’s friend/somewhat-reluctant love interest Alana Bloom), but by then, the damage has been done.

No one saw Hannibal manipulating everyone to get what he wants: new toys to play with. Hannibal set everything up so that when Will puts the pieces together regarding the copy-cat murders, it’s far too easy to turn the FBI against Will. Stray remarks questioning his sanity, an out-of-context recording of a therapy session played for Jack which implicates Will, blatant lies: they all lay the groundwork for what comes next.

Abigail Hobbs disappears after Will takes her to her family’s home to revisit where the copy-cat murders began. He had another dissociative moment, hallucinating that he’d killed Abigail, but things take a turn for the worse when evidence turns up that he may have done just that. Her blood under his fingernails, scratches up his arms. Her severed ear, in his sink. Fishing lures, made with remains from the individuals killed by the copy-cat. All planted over time by Hannibal, for an end game that no one saw coming.

Will is arrested for the series of murders and, having nothing but free time to think, finally connects Hannibal to the murders. He could have believed that he’d killed Abigail-- he wasn’t well, then, and he knows it --but now, with a clear mind, he knows for a fact that he couldn’t have committed the other crimes.

Will Graham comes to AI towards the end of episode 1x13, after he has been imprisoned for the murders.

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