character development questions! | ACCEPTING
(7. How do they physically engage with other people, inanimate objects, and their environment? What causes the differences between these?)
on the whole, will does not physically engage with other people much at all. he maintains a fairly wide personal “bubble” and will not usually choose to breach it, and is generally not physically demonstrative with people overall. he can be receptive to it from people he’s more comfortable with, though, and isn’t avoidant of it to any extreme degree, but it’s just… not how he is. it’s equal parts innate and deliberate—he has carefully constructed a way of presenting himself that keeps people at a distance, and doing so physically helps to do so emotionally.when it comes to objects and his environment, he engages far more on a physical level, often idly picking things up and such even if he doesn’t have a reason to, or gesturing with objects or aspects of the environment to make a point. again, this is for a combination of reasons. there’s a very prominent element of powerplay in it when, for example, he picks things up and moves things in hannibal’s office or sits on his desk, but interacting with his environment is also a means of grounding himself in the moment, and he also does think and express himself more clearly when he can physically demonstrate his point.
(17. Are they more shaped by nature or nurture — who they are, or what has happened to them? How have these shaped who they’ve become as a person?)
both. or, in terms of how will would see himself—in hannibal’s words, fittingly enough, “between nature and nurture, i choose neither.” he has a very determined resentment toward being quantified by his experience, particularly his childhood (if he has to hear anything about lacking a maternal figure during key stages of development ONE MORE TIME) and refuses to let anyone reduce him to being the product of anything, be it hannibal’s influence or anything else, but he doesn’t believe that people are born with an inherent and immutable “destiny,” or anything to that effect. he does believe that people who commit horrible acts have always had that capacity, that there is nothing that can shape a “good person” into a monster—but that’s more indicative of his view of humanity as a whole than some belief about nature triumphing over nurture.in his own case, he can’t really be reduced to either. he may not want to believe that he’s the product of his experiences, but of course they did change him. he wouldn’t be the same person had he had a different life. he wouldn’t have made the same choices. but i think the potential would have always been there. there’s a tendency to blame hannibal for turning will into a murderer, but will was aware he had the capacity long before he met him. i think he would have had that capacity regardless of the life he’d had, but in another life, that may have never come out.
(21. What kind of relationships do they tend to intentionally seek out versus actually cultivate? What kind of social contact do they prefer, and why?)
he doesn’t really seek relationships out much on his own, so what relationships he cultivates are usually with people who are persistent enough to get past the fact that he’s… not going to be putting in the effort at the outset. on the whole he’s quite asocial and doesn’t really relate to or get much out of social interaction with most people he meets, so he feels little motivation to put in the effort, and he MUCH prefers to keep people at a distance and out of his business (and not let them get close enough that rejection from them hurts him) and aids this by putting on a very deliberately unapproachable facade.the people who can manage to break through this tend to be people who he respects and enjoys the company of enough to not want to keep pushing them away as they try to get closer to him, i.e. alana or beverly. other relationships he did consciously seek out were generally ones he saw some kind of benefit in, beyond just liking the person. abigail was a means to rationalizing his feelings about killing hobbs. chiyoh was him mirroring hannibal’s own behavior toward a “protege” of his own. molly was him trying to have everything he “should” want. his feelings toward these people were completely genuine, but his motives in trying to form relationships with them went beyond that. trying to break his habit of solitude requires perceived value, though usually on a subconscious level. he’d never really admit it.as for hannibal himself, he’s more or less the only person will ever felt he could truly, deeply relate to, who could see him and understand him as he was. (see: hugh dancy’s chess metaphor that i don’t need to repeat for the millionth time.) while he never would have considered himself lonely before, having that kind of understanding in his life is worth forgiving anything done to him.(he also has a very pervasive tendency to idealize people and hold them to unrealistic standards and then take an abrupt 180 to devaluation and resentment over any perceived “betrayal” and this is a problem that arises in pretty much all his relationships.)
(38. Is there anything they wish they could change about their worldview or thought processes? What, and why?)
...yes and no. it varies. when he was younger in particular he had a propensity for mimicry and always wanted to just... be like everyone else and be accepted, or, at the point when he realized that he wasn’t going to be accepted, to blend in enough that people would leave him alone. as an adult with a more stable grasp on what his worldview and thought process is, he spends a long time bitter at himself and the grotesqueness of his way of seeing the world and the people in it. the potential for violence hannibal saw in him had been there for as long as will could remember and he knew it, but he suppressed it and resented it for years. if he could have changed, he would have.post-meeting hannibal this gradually changes. until the end of twotl it never quite crystalizes one way or the other, and his time with molly is his last ditch effort TO change, but as of the ending he has finally fully embraced everything he’d been keeping down for so long, and if he were to survive, he’d never go back to wanting to change the way he thinks.
