Joe Mantegna suddenly catblock / why I like Rossi

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

There is something about Rossi that is always sweet and hilarious. Gavin de Becker said that men are worried that women would laugh at them, while women are worried that men would kill them (for laughing/rejecting them). Well Rossi had always struck me as the kind of men who wouldn't be afraid or angry at a woman who laughs at him, even if it was in bed. Is this weird? The fact that he stayed friends with his first wife have me reading Rossi less as a man who have failed three marriages, and more as a man who have moved pass three failed marriages (or mistaken match-ups) - his id is not dependent on any conduct of 'his woman'.


http://criminalminds.dreamwidth.org/16741.html

Comments

[chreesko.livejournal.com]

Rossi knows he's an asshole.

This. I mean, not that exact point (though I do agree) but the idea that one of the things that sets them apart is Rossi's self-awareness. Not only of his flaws, but of his role as a cog in the machine. I find that aspect of his character very interesting, since he seems so much more outwardly arrogant and ostentatious compared to Gideon's more unassuming appearance, at least at first glance.

And yet Rossi is the one who makes an effort to recognize his flaws and sometimes even works to correct them so that he can better fit into the world (his sudden transformation into a guy who's all about the team, for example) whereas Gideon expected the world to change to accommodate him. I know there's been a lot of discussion of the show playing with stereotypical gender roles, and I think they're sort of doing the same thing here by playing with our expectations of certain character types and the tendency everyone has to judge a book by its cover.

You wouldn't think that Rossi, of all people, would be the one to give Hotch the the-world-will-go-on-without-you speech (though I do think some of that was just him saying what Hotch needed to hear in that moment), and yet he is. And I think he even sort of believes it because, hey, he did leave, and the job did go on without him.

I don't know, I just think the transformation he's undergone over the years has been kind of cool. Even though the job is incredibly gruesome, working with the team has had such a softening effect on him. It's smoothed out his rough edges a little. He'll still try to buy his way out of cheap motel rooms while the rest of the team has to suck it up, but when it comes to the really important things, he's there for them. The David Rossi of 2003 wouldn't have been.

Not that he wouldn't have been capable of it; the potential for that interaction with the team was always there, if we look at the relationship he maintained with Carolyn. I do think his remaining friends with his first wife (and the fact that she came to him to help her commit suicide) speaks to his loyalty and the incredible friendship they must have had, but I'm actually not sure that could be said for his other wives. People don't remain static, and it could have been that he became so consumed by his job or his trauma or his ambition that he was quite the asshole to wives #2 and #3.

OP, adorable macro is adorable. That cat.

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

I don't think Gideon so much expects the world to change, as he expects it to be a certain way, if that makes sense.


You know how there are some unsubs (most actually) who are driven by sexual fantasy?


I can't see Gideon being one of those guys, if he snaps, and I can very easily see him snap the way I couldn't see Rossi snap, he'll be that Mercy Killer guy who kills to preserve innocence, like in nebula99's Angels:
fanfiction.net/s/3331405/1/Angels
Gideon would do that because
1. Gideon is driven by the desire to protect
2. Gidoen is driven by the belief that there is no one else who could protect him or what he loves (beliefs that are hardly baseless, but welll...).

Rossi in the same situation wouldn't have done that, because Rossi is, as his ex-wife have noted, not the type of guy who could kill (take power), AND Rossi is all about autonomy. I read both Gideon and Hotch as the rare kind of sexist who don't have a misogynist bone in their body, but they do put women (especially the women in their personal life) on a pedestals. Rossi, in a subversion of the Italian Macho Male stereotype, doesn't do that.


...but back to fantasy, while Gideon is not the kind of creeper who is driven by sexual fantasy, because Gideon is not a very sexual person, there is a fantasy he's driven by, in spite of knowing otherwise: happy endings. He doesn't expect the world to change, whether, he compartmentize the horrors he sees and maintain a delusion that the world is a better than it is - typical of people who have experienced great trauma as children.




Word Smith I Ain't (other than purple posy porn), oldwickedsongs puts it way better than I ever could:


Title "Lonely Ghosts”
Author oldwickedsongs
Characters Dave Rossi, with a cameo by Jason Gideon and mentions of the team.
Rating PG
Word Count 1,302
Summary A character study of the hunter and watcher: in which we find triumphs are never without reminders, and just because someone is gone doesn’t mean they’re erased.

http://oldwickedsongs.livejournal.com/3212.html

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

Also, I didn't make the adorable cat macro, it was in my cat folder! (yes I have a folder full of cat pictures)

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

Dunno if this is teh one true sauce:
http://pinupmgg.tumblr.com/post/5466092529/catblocking-rossi-always-alert-with-a-fresh-cat

...but excellent caption from pinupmgg:

"catblocking rossi: always alert with a fresh cat on hand"


We Mad?

No.

[chreesko.livejournal.com]

The Hotch-Rossi dynamic works so much better, because it doesn't seem like Hotch is constantly propping him up. More equal.

I just rewatched Riding the Lightning, so this really stuck out for me. Hotch is so much more authoritative now than he was then. And I noticed that in some of the scenes where Rossi advises Hotch or acts as a confidant, there is often a lot of physical space between them, like in the hospital scene after Hotch was stabbed, or the counseling scene in Hotch's office after everyone thought Prentiss had died (though some of that space was probably supposed to symbolize how isolated Hotch was from everyone), or in Hotch's office when Rossi was trying to get him to go out with Beth, or in that one deleted scene from S4 where Rossi asks Hotch about how he's doing after Kate's death.

The only time I recall Rossi and Hotch getting touchy with each other during scenes where Rossi is imparting wisdom was the alley scene in Omnivore, and even then, there was a fair amount of space between them. It seems like, by allowing that space, by standing back and giving advice and then letting Hotch work through it himself, he's being the advisor and letting Hotch be the leader.

Gideon, on the other hand, was usually all up in Hotch's space, both physically and mentally. In that sense, I think he was more intimate with Hotch than Rossi is. But while he knew him well, he never really knew how to advise him. Gideon would use himself and his own reactions as a template for what Hotch should or shouldn't do, which was a bad idea because Gideon was pretty screwed up. It goes back to his lack of self-awareness, I guess. Rossi recognizes that his dysfunction shouldn't be an example for others to follow. He may not know exactly what Hotch is thinking at any given moment the way Gideon sometimes seemed to, but he's better at recognizing what Hotch needs and how to give it to him.