I'm writing a paper on the female characters of Criminal Minds!

[x-forgetromeo.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to get a survey going so that I can get a good idea on a direction for this paper, so can we have a discussion post on female characters? 

What I need for my paper:

• Your gender
• Your age (an age bracket is fine if you're not comfortable giving a solid number)
• Your views on Elle, JJ, Garcia, Prentiss, Seaver, and Haley Hotchner: Do you like/feel indifferent to/dislike/hate any of them? Why? 

Otherwise, let's just have a free-for-all discussion on female characters of the CM verse. :) 

(Also, my laptop monitor is dead, so I might be slow replying to people, but I really appreciate anyone who comments.)

Mods? I'm super hoping this is okay. I didn't see anything against it in the rules, and it's technically a discussion post?

Comments

[just-chiara.livejournal.com]

GENDER: Female.
AGE: 23

ELLE: Never liked her. I felt indifferent in the very beginning, but after a few episodes I just hated her. It's her attitude. She tries too hard to be 'badass' and she never really felt like a member of the team.

JJ: I love(d) her. She's a strong, successful, smart woman who is also caring, sensitive and loving. She gets emotional, but also knows how to keep her feelings in check until the case is over.

GARCIA: She's one of my favorite tv characters. She's an amazing person and I would love to be her friend if she were real. She's the most human part of the team (not to say that the others are robots, but she's the one 'allowed' to show her feelings in the privacy of her office), the one who most often mirrors what the viewers are feeling about the case. I love her attitude towards life and how she's rather proudly stand out than blend in.

EMILY: Oh, Emily. My girl. While I think that from an objective point of view Garcia is the best female character created by the writers of CM, I personally just LOVE Emily. She's effortlessly badass (for real, not like Elle) and cool, she's independent, and underneath all that tough skin, there's the heart of a nerd. I didn't love her immediately like JJ or Garcia, it took a few episodes, but then she had me. I also love it that she has a troubled, mysterious past. I am going to miss her more than JJ, and I'm not sure the team can recover from losing her.

SEAVER: I hated her from the very first scene. I hated that they did an episode about her when we had to wait SEASONS to know something about the other characters. I hated how they introduced her. I hated the idea of her, more than her actually. It didn't make sense in the beginning: why would they keep around this kid whose only qualification is being the daughter of a serial killer? You don't get into the BAU that easily and you don't get into the BAU without any experience (unless you're Reid, but it makes sense in his case - tv sense, at the very least). But her? No, thanks. I was glad they weren't replacing JJ with another media liason, but at the same time I thought they could have done a better job creating a new character. And then... then something slowly changed. First, they gave her a reason to stay: Emily took her as her intern. And then, when she came back after the winter hiatus, she was written better. Especially in last week's episode. Sure, I still roll my eyes sometimes and say 'yeah, okay, I could intern for the FBI too then' when she says something really obvious. But it's okay. She's starting to feel like a member of the team and I think there's potential there.

HALEY: I never cared much for her. She was always Hotch's wife and that was it. When Foyet killed her, I cried because I was sorry for Hotch, not for her. She never got a lot of screen time (obviously ;)) so it's hard to say. I didn't like her, didn't dislike her. She was just... there.