character info

[wontgraham]

PERSONALITY

At first glance, Will appears aloof and socially awkward. Neither of those are wholly wrong impressions, but he intentionally plays up both traits in order to avoid interacting too closely with people. Will has an incredibly amount of empathy for other people, and the constant stream of personal information he gleans from even strangers has encouraged him to put up walls for his own sanity. Will can read other people to the extent that it's distracting and occasionally upsetting for him.

Will has a mercurial, even erratic personality and tends to either underreact or overreact; he can be calm in a crisis that he's prepared for, but may lose his temper over a sudden perceptive insight during a normal discussion. When moved by what he's intuiting, he tends to overshare, seemingly as it comes to him - insights about the show's killer of the week, or about another character, or even about himself. He is paralyzingly honest in sudden bursts, despite intentionally trying to be secretive and closed off.

Despite his prickly exterior, Will shows compassion for other people and a sense of duty to use his 'gift' to help them - he's always worked in either law enforcement or in some way contributed to catching people who hurt others. When confronted with a suspect - a killer - who is suffering from mental illness and confused, Will reaches out to her compassionately rather than attack.

Will likewise will quickly be stained by darker personalities around him - much of the show is him grappling, again and again, with who he is versus what he is picking up from the serial killers he tries to capture. There is a definite darkness to Will, made more dangerous by how his incredible sense of patience and his ability to manipulate others can let him play the long con. As Will says of himself in the show - he is an excellent fisherman, and his strong sense of justice may see him working outside the boundaries of the law to take down what he perceives as a worse evil.

Will tends to most fear losing himself and becoming what he can understand but viscerally knows is wrong; Doctor Lecter encourages him towards killing, and Will knows he's liked it when he's done it during his job and in self-defense. Will is very afraid of becoming what he hates, standing on a knife's edge of both objective and emotional understanding with darker aspects of human nature, and not wanting to become what he's fighting.

Will tends to face his fears by doggedly approaching them anyway, to the point of self-harm and endangerment. A large aspect of season 1 in particular is about how Will is hurting himself doing what he does, becoming increasingly less mentally stable but too stubborn to stop just because he can feel himself fracturing. Will suffers openly and obviously for what he's doing, but does not stop; this is partially from pride and partially from guilt, an entanglement that never really sees closure, since he always ends up coming back to the job that breaks him.

BACKSTORY

Will's an ex-cop and ex-FBI officer, whom the audience meets once he's "retired" from both more hands-on fields into a teaching position at the FBI Academy. The specifics of both his prior professions aren't revealed in-depth; what the audience learns is that he retired from being a cop after he hesitated to fire on a suspect (and was subsequently stabbed in the shoulder by said subject), and that his work as a forensics analyst for the FBI got him in-world notoriety as "spookily good at his job".

Like many TV cops, Will is approached for One Final Job. This time it's by the head of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, Jack Crawford. Will initially refuses, because he retired for a reason: he says "looking is hard", meaning that his apparent ability to think like the killers he helps hunt down takes a mental and emotional toll on him. Evidently, that's why he retired from working directly on cases.

Well, Will goes ahead and does help out on cases, in the end, and that's where we get the rest of the show. Esteemed psychiatrist (and secret cannibalistic serial killer) Doctor Hannibal Lecter manages to get interested in Will's ability to get into the minds of terrible people, and begins manipulating him.

Will, already taxed by the mental strain of helping to catch serial killers again, begin to hallucinate after he finally actually fires on a dangerous suspect during a case, killing them. Will is aware there's a risk he's actually losing his mind, but he is adamant these are unusual symptoms even for himself — it's clear this ruse of Lecter's only goes as far as it does because Lecter, himself a physician, is able to block Will from discovering his own diagnosis. Because it turns out Will is right and the hallucinations, at least initially, aren't just a sign he's going crazy — he has encephalitis, and the inflammation in his brain is causing headaches and hallucinations. Lecter, meanwhile, murders another doctor in order to keep this information from Will, and then actively eggs it on: inducing seizures, drugging Will, and eventually framing Will for Lecter's own string of murders.

The Gang Goes To Prison (just kidding, only Will goes to prison!). Successfully framed, Will is still released within weeks due to a mistrial (the judge is murdered and physical evidence proves Will's innocence, it's...a long story), but it's clear this betrayal has messed with Will's already-small ability to remain clinical about his job.

The next several episodes are about Will joining forces with Jack Crawford (BAU head from earlier) in order to catch Lecter. This long Batman Gambit full of morally-questionable choices ends in Lecter not only escaping capture, but murdering or injuring most of the main cast. Will himself ends up in the hospital for a few weeks due to a partial disembowelment, which brings us up to speed through the beginning of season 3...which is where this writer usually plays him from.

ABILITIES

Normal human, no supernatural abilities. Will is ex-state police and ex-FBI; he has firearms training and extensive education in forensics. He is shown to have at least basic fishing/hunting/boating/survival skills. Will's main "ability" (referred to as an "empathy disorder" on the show) is not supernatural in nature, but could be considered info-modding in an RP setting. He's basically an incredibly skilled cold-reader; except it happens subconsciously, he can't turn it off (although he can intentionally focus on it and get more information than usual), and there is nothing 'cold' about how emotional Will can get about what he reads off of other people.

Re: the unique potential issue of info-modding, I always err on the side of caution and communicate OOC with all thread partners when Will's ~empathy thing~ becomes relevant. I like using it only as a plot device to incite drama, intrigue, or connection for one or both characters (and am always ready for Will to, as he does in canon, occasionally jump to the wrong conclusion).