application ( ryslig )

[versusnurture]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Anne
Contact: porphyrogene
Other Characters: Lila Zacharov (gitanes), Giorno Giovanna (digiorno)

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Abigail Hobbs
Age: 18-ish
Canon: NBC's Hannibal
Canon Point: Her last linear canon appearance will be in 1x12, Releves; however, timeline-wise, I plan to take her from a few weeks after 1x13, the season one finale, after she's been in Hannibal's captivity for a little under a month.
Character Information: Abigail in Season 1

Personality:

Without a doubt, the first impression Abigail Hobbs gives off is of an intensely fearful young woman. It becomes clear eventually that some of this is an act, an impression she wants to give off — but not all of it is. No, however she wants to seem, underneath all of the layers Abigail is not just scared but terrified, and not just sometimes but almost always. Years of trauma have left her certain that the next disaster is just around the corner, and unless she does something now, right now, it's going to bring her to her knees. At her calmest, she's caustic but nervous; at her most agitated, she's an animal backed into a corner, liable to lash out at anyone who could conceivably be a threat, or even anyone who reminds her of someone who used to be a threat. This makes her simultaneously a very vulnerable and a very dangerous person, unpredictable and seemingly wild, ready to do anything and everything she must in order to survive.

Part of what makes her so dangerous, too, is that she's constantly, almost pathologically curious. Curiosity is frequently depicted in Hannibal as dangerous — Hannibal himself "was curious what would happen" when he manipulated Abigail into murdering Nicholas Boyle, for example — and Abigail's own curiosity is no exception. She could be described as voracious for information, whether about things or (more often) about people. This is in part a survival mechanism, because the more she knows about her situation the less likely it is that something will take her by surprise. On the other hand, it is in no small part a malicious desire to see what makes people tick; in this way she's not terribly dissimilar from Hannibal, their desires to see how a situation will change if tweaked just so springing from the same source. Furthermore, sometimes Abigail's curiosity puts her in danger. Her consistent pushing at Hannibal just goes to show that not every hornet's nest is worth kicking.

Her curiosity doesn't only stem from those twin desires for safety and entertainment, however. It's obvious from Abigail's first visit back to Minnesota with Hannibal, Will, and Alana that she's incredibly intelligent, both academically and intuitively. She has (or, well, had) high academic ambitions, applying to a number of colleges cross-country (and killing girls with her dad along the way), but that's in no way the limit of her intelligence. She's got a great deal of knowledge of the natural world, of hunting techniques, of biology, of psychology — but more than that, she relies on her ability to read people and reflect back what she thinks they want to see in order to get what she wants.

So it is that Abigail's intelligence leads directly into her manipulative tendencies. It's probable that, once again, her instinct to manipulate those around her developed as a survival strategy; she was faced with the reality of her father's desire to kill her and the understanding that if she didn't do what he wanted and be who he wanted, she would certainly die. Even after his death, she doesn't feel safe, and so she continues to manipulate those around her, presenting a slightly different face to everyone she meets. With Alana she's the backtalking, sarcastic teenager, because she anticipates presenting as "normal" will lead to her release from psychiatric hospital; with Will she's the damaged, broken girl in need of a father, because she senses that will put him on her side without question; with Jack, she's the quaking, defiant survivor, because she desperately wants him to believe in her innocence; and with Freddie, she's the savvy, ambitious young woman she believes Freddie sees herself to be. Abigail tailors her self-presentation both to what she wants from the other party and what she believes the other party wants from her, so that she can sail out the other side of the encounter or relationship undamaged and, ideally, with a new ally.

It's worth noting, too, that her manipulation leads more than once to overtly duplicitous behavior. Abigail doesn't have a problem bonding with people as such, but she does have trouble prioritizing other people's safety over her own. As such, she's far more likely to go behind someone else's back when threatened than she is to allow even the threat of harm against her to persist. The best example of this is when she sneaks out and uncovers Nicholas Boyle's corpse from where it had been buried, her greatest act of defiance against Hannibal. When he asks her why she did it, apparently upset and worried about his culpability in the cover-up, she tells him that before she couldn't control when the body was found; now she has, so it's no longer hanging over her. Hannibal's culpability was never a concern for her, not even for a moment. She also has no problem whatsoever throwing Will under the bus to Hannibal, telling him immediately about Will's erratic behavior even though it would likely have tanked Will's career if it had gotten out. A final example, which is still relevant despite being from a later canon point, is when Abigail surprises Alana by still being alive, stunning her with her sudden appearance for just long enough to push her out a window. Abigail is apologetic for this, but she still does it without much hesitation, because it's Alana or her.

The ironic thing, though, is that despite Abigail's intelligence, savvy, and manipulative tendencies, she's still highly manipulable. The reason for this is actually quite simple: she is tired. She's spent so much time fighting to survive, hating herself for what she's had to do to stay alive, trying to figure out why the one person in the world who's supposed to protect her above all else wanted to kill her; she's had so much blood on her hands, and all she wants is someone to trust. But like so many abuse survivors, she gravitates to people like her abuser. Most of all, despite what she might say, she wants a father figure, someone like who her father should have been to her, someone to protect her and listen to her and love her unconditionally. If someone's on the lookout for that craving, it's easy enough to spot — and if you add to that her desperate desire to disclose some of her secrets to someone, anyone, she can trust, it's easy to become that person, too. It just takes a few kind words and a shoulder to cry on, and she'll trust you with her life. Ask Hannibal; it really works!

An enterprising manipulator will also find her a source of constant entertainment, because, as aforementioned, she is incredibly volatile. Trauma, especially consistent exposure to violence and betrayal, have made her quick to snap from low-level fear to homicidal lashing out. At this point, she doesn't understand how to temper that impulse, how to protect herself only far enough that she can get away. Instead, if she's triggered, she's much more likely to do what she did with Nicholas Boyle: gut the offending party quickly but methodically from belly to throat like a fish or, well, let's be honest . . . like a deer. Furthermore, her understanding of power is deeply skewed by her time spent as her father's accomplice. When she was with him, violence against other young women who looked just like her was the only way to keep herself alive; she equated the violence that enabled her survival with power, and psychologically speaking, that association wore down quite a groove in her. After killing Nicholas Boyle, she confesses that it felt good and implies that it was less the action of killing and more the taking of power from another than made the experience worthwhile.

None of this is to say that Abigail doesn't feel guilt for what she's done. On the contrary, she feels an extraordinary amount of guilt. Some of her guilt manifests in a purely pragmatic desire to keep the true nature of her association with her father's crimes under wraps; however, it seeps into her life in countless insidious ways, too, some surprisingly subtle. She has constant nightmares, waking up frequently from dreams in which all of her father's victims sit in group therapy with her, accusing her and claiming that her father should have killed her instead — a belief she occasionally seems to agree with herself. She seems agonized when she sees the word CANNIBALS painted on her house's door during the trip to Minnesota. Most tellingly, with Hannibal, the person she's most honest around, she calls herself a monster when she finally confesses to her culpability in her father's crimes. It's important to note, too, that in some ways she seems to want a do-over. This is part of why she seeks out father figures. There's a strong implication that she believes there was something wrong with her, not her father, and that's why he wanted to kill her; that if she could just try it again with a different person, she could do it better, somehow.

Despite all of this, Abigail is remarkably resilient. If things had gone differently for her — if she hadn't gotten the unlucky dice roll of being noticed by Hannibal Lecter — there's a very high chance that she would have gone on to recover well from her experiences. One of her first priorities after losing everything important to her in her life was reestablishing some financial security; this points to her ability to plan and to look to the future, both crucial when recovering from trauma. Even with Hannibal's influence in her life, she still makes a consistent attempt to pull herself away from the effect her father had on her life, as is most evidenced in her desire to tell "her story" (even if a highly edited version) to the public.

Above all else, Abigail seeks agency. Admittedly she seeks it in the wrong places very often, but that's hardly her fault. She's spent all her life influenced by a man with an unhealthy, obsessive attachment to her, so she doesn't quite understand what's normal and what isn't. Even so, almost everything she does can be traced back in the end to a desire for agency, something she's never had. Certainly she seeks safety first, but even that is an avenue towards autonomy in the end. Her tendency towards manipulation, too, is a sometimes-desperate, sometimes-calculated grab for autonomy; she desires freedom, so she models it, even though most of her models are manipulative in their own right — and she sees her own agency as crucial enough to manipulate others to achieve. Even her need for reassurance from Hannibal is a building block towards her ultimate independence, something she expresses a constant desire for. She wants to get out of the psychiatric hospital. She wants to be financially stable. She wants to have a home again. She wants to tell her story in her words with her lies built in. She wants to define her relationships, all of them, and refuses to let others (especially Will) define them for her. More than anything, she wants to define herself. She wants to be Abigail Hobbs, not the Minnesota Shrike's daughter — and her terrible luck in this endeavor sure as hell doesn't stop her trying.

5-10 Key Character Traits:

➵ fearful
➵ curious
➵ intelligent
➵ manipulative
➵ duplicitous
➵ manipulable
➵ volatile
➵ guilt-ridden
➵ resilient
➵ agency-seeking

Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either, please!
Opt-Outs: werebear, kelpie, minotaur, troll, shade (lila), arachne (giorno)

Roleplay Sample:

Her first day in Ryslig . . . well, it's actually not that bad. Comparatively, at least. She's sure to someone who comes from somewhere else, from a different kind of environment — to someone like that, maybe it'd be awful. And part of her is afraid. She doesn't want to become something she's not.

It's just.

It's just that it seems that, of all the things she's been or could be, the idea of becoming a monster hardly registers. At least here people know on sight what she is, and soon they'll know even better. Soon the only ones who'll be caught in her traps will be the ones who are actually foolish, the ones who deserve it.

There's something refreshing about the concept of hunting, really hunting, instead of fishing. There's a power to it — although she doesn't care to think about that too much, not just yet — and a sense of animal justice, too. The strong eat the weak, so the strong survive. The strong deserve to survive, by that logic.

She deserves to survive. And if she doesn't, she'll just die. When it boils down to something so simple, it's kind of reassuring.

So she gets ready. In fact, her whole time leading up to the first change is spent in preparation, after she gets her information straight. She finds a place to live; she finds a job; she quivers and quakes and widens her eyes at the right people, the people who might take pity on her if she plays her cards right, the people who will be (or are becoming) truly monstrous. And she learns the ways that the others, the ones who are still human, can be tricked.

In the end, based on what she learns, it's her oldest tactics that she goes back to. Out of nowhere, a few days before the fog, she wobbles over a crack on a near-abandoned street and collapses in a heap with a soft whimper of pain. There's just one other person on this side street; she takes care not to look at him, not to catch his eye, just watches him in her periphery as she grasps her ankle and presses her lips together tight.

He pauses, just for a second, then starts to move again. She tries to stand, gets a little weight on her ankle, and collapses again with a quiet curse. He hesitates.

After a few moments, and begrudgingly, he mutters, "All right?"

She looks up at him with a sheepish smile, tears in her eyes but not falling. "I'm okay! I'm okay, it's just—" A sharp intake of breath. "I twisted my ankle. But, I mean, I'm sure it's not broken, so—" And she's cut off by another apparent gust of pain.

He eyes her doubtfully. "Seems like it's sprained pretty bad."

"It's okay!" she insists, ducking her head and tucking her hair behind her ear, the one that's still there. "It's okay, I j— I don't want to inconvenience you. I can find my way home, it's only a couple miles from here."

That seems to decide him; he shakes his head and steps forward, offering her his hand. "Don't be ridiculous," he says, voice gruff. "I'll get you somewhere you can sit for a while, at least. Somewhere not in the road."

With a warm, grateful smile, she rests her hand in his and levers herself up to standing, high enough that she can lean her weight on his arm. He gives her an awkward pat on the shoulder across his own chest.

"Thank you," she whispers. "Sorry, this is so embarrassing, hurting myself just walking."

His smile's gruff, just like the rest of him. She almost feels bad, a few minutes later, when they turn a corner into a dark alley and she guts him, knife in at the bottom of his belly and jerking up to his ribcage. He looks surprised, staring down at his blood spilling out over his hands and hers. She twists her lips, apologetic.

"Sorry." And she really does look it, even as she wipes the knife off and takes some bundled butcher paper out of her pants pocket. "I wish it weren't you. But I don't want to be hungry."