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What If?

Thu Sep 14, 2023

Put a character from one of your favorite stories into the world of another. What would happen to them? What would they do? How would they interact with the characters of those stories?



Character: Will Graham (NBC Hannibal) in American Horror Story


The story of Hannibal Lecter has always been intriguing to me, and though the older adaptation “Silence of the Lambs” was great at portraying the intensity of the characters, I want to focus on the modern NBC adaptation for its dark comedy. I also enjoyed the dark humor of American Horror Story, so I’d like to put Will Graham into the universe in Season 1 - Murder House.





Will Graham is a special agent who is a renowned criminal profiler and hunter of serial killers. He has a unique ability to identify and understand the killers he’s tracking, even if the killers are already dead.


Will enters the Rosenheim Mansion or otherwise known as “The Murder House” and immediately can sense the dark history of the house. He feels that murders have definitely happened in this house.







He can imagine many scenarios of past crimes and murders as he walks around inside the house. He sees the homeowners, Ben and Vivien, arguing about their marriage and infidelity. Will quietly withdraws from the room as this is out of his field of expertise.



As he leaves, he runs into an older woman named Constance who asks if he is also intruding to welcome the new homeowners. Will senses a lot of bad energy from the woman and politely mentions that he is an agent who was called here to examine a potential serial killer crime scene but that he hasn’t found anything so he will be leaving the house.



Constance says that she is the one who gave the tip on the homeowners as she believes they may be holding dark secrets. Will leaves, knowing that though this was not the man he was searching for, he’ll likely be back at this residence soon enough.



 


Think of 3 interesting and intriguing "what if" questions. Write each one out in one or two sentences. Then pick the favorite of your "what if" scenarios. Write 3-4 paragraphs to tell us about the world it would be taking place in and the main character.


What if everyone aged in reverse?

What if the norm in future societies is to raise children equally among a commune rather than being raised by their birth parents?


What if humans could only see in monotone vision?






Ray was an anomaly. He was a man who could see colors, each dancing across his vision with an unspeakable beauty. In this world, the majority of humans live in a monotone world only seeing the distinctions in shades of gray.


Ray's unique sight made him a laughing matter at school, a curious subject for researchers, and a starry-eyed storyteller to those who would listen to his fables. It's not to say that his condition was one that was discredited but that it was so beyond belief for those who have never seen color that he might as well have been telling them about flying pigs.





In fact, when he had participated in a study once to understand his condition, believing he may have had some mental disorder, he had found that he was one-of-a-kind, that no one else could perceive as many colors as he could even in the company of those who were "colorsighted".



His condition roused him to become an abstract painter. Though to others his pieces were appealing but repetitive, to him they were each unique, bold expressions of the many different emotions of life. Not even his favorite fans nor his family could see what he saw on the canvas but he had long come to terms with it. After all, can humans every truly see eye to eye or understand what the other saw when they looked at the same landscape?



He'd humored the thought before about how the world would be if everyone saw in all the colors he did, but perhaps adding more factors to divide people would further escalate the problems within society and the socioeconomic disparity. Science can provide answers for why humans evolved to see the way they do, but can it ever dispel the profound loneliness experienced by those who perceive the indescribable?

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