criminalxminds | Because I'm curious like that

Because I'm curious like that

In spirit of the show hopefully coming back soon :) CM really made me realize how many great potential ships there are that I never would have thought about till I found fandom.

So wondered, do you ship?
If yes:
What's your favorite CM ship? (even if you have more, which is the one that truly has your heart)
At what point did it win you over?
Which episode(s) do you think best represents your ship?
Out of the people involved in your ship, which one did you fall in love with first?

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Thanks for the great and detailed response :) I'm with you, I think it would distract if any of the pairings really became canon. One thing that's so great about CM is that it's so well balanced and if two characters got a romantic storyline, I think it would take away the spotlight from both the cases and the team to some extent? It just wouldn't fit.

Though there are times where I think that maybe there should actually be more outside the team significant others. I mean, ok, as much as we as shippers might loathe them because they might "get in the way", there a moment where it feels almost unrealistic to me that all these people would be this single at their age/level of pay/level of looks/level of intelligence.

But I love how good the show is about Reid/Morgan. I remember when I first peeked into the fandom it seems like everybody was shipping a combination of Hotch/Reid/Gideon, but to me it came out more and more that a lot of the good stuff was given to Reid/Morgan. Popular Kids being the first "major" one to me (as opposed to cute subtle subtext ones).

You bring up a really interesting point about Reid making assumptions about Morgan. I never really thought of that and how it might be a problem in a closer relationship. Interesting food for thought.

See, I wouldn't mind more outside-the-team significant others. Honestly, as much as I love Garcia/Morgan when I'm in the mood for it, I really do prefer her with Kevin; I think they're adorable together, and I love how the writers have handled their progression from flirty kind-of-hookup to boyfriend/girlfriend, to Kevin having his "man to man" talk with Rossi, to them having their disagreement in "Roadkill" this past season. Then there's Gideon and Sarah, and I understand why killing her was a conveniently jarring way to write Gideon out of the show when Mandy wanted out, but I would've liked to see more from them; likewise, I'd like to see more of Rossi's ex-wives, but I don't really think it suits his character to just bring them up unless there's a point to it, like counseling Hotch through his and Haley's divorce or making Hotch chill out in "Omnivore" after the Reaper goes after the bus full of civilians.

And no discussion of outside-the-team significant others is complete without them: Hotch and Haley. I loved the honesty and realism in their relationship, and of all the things I'm excited for in season five, I'm really hoping that something happens with them. They don't need to get back together at all, and I honestly doubt that they would, considering what Hotch is going to go through, but since the divorce, we've mostly seen how Hotch deals with Jack and being "the dad who's never there." And honestly, I'm a sucker for divorce drama, but I'd really like to know how they're both dealing with being apart and how they'll deal with the fallout from what goes down between Hotch and the Reaper.

Reid's assumptions about people are one of the big things he does that I've picked up on him. He'd pretty much be my unquestioned favorite character in any circumstance, but I got into reading and writing CM fic through roleplaying CM opposite a friend who writes Hotch, Nathan, and Tobias, and getting into ficcing through RP meant that I got used to watching everything Reid does and trying to figure out all the rationale behind everything. Honestly, I think Reid walks a very fine line where he could all too easily turn into a sort of Mary Sue, being a crazy-genius with an upsetting past, whose biggest and most apparent flaw (his social awkwardness) really just makes him more endearing (it does to me, anyway, and in the overall team dynamics, I think it works with a lot of factors, like his age, his prodigy status, how close he was Gideon, et al).

But the writers haven't gone that route with him, and not just from the Dilaudid storylines, which is a great credit to them -- and a lot of what they've given us, I think, could be a series of huge stumbling blocks to having closer relationships. I've noticed -- and I could be way off base because I don't read every M/R fic by every person or writing team, but I have noticed that there is a sort of idealization of their relationship that occurs in some fics, where it's portrayed as functional and romantic beyond just the two of them having sex, the issues that both of them have aren't handled in a way that I like that well. They may not be present at all, depending on the genre of the fic in question, or they may be present but downplayed or exploited to get some hurt/comfort (which is all well and good, but sometimes I want to see it done differently), or only really a factor if the fic is meant to be angsty.

No, no, I love your ramblings. They are totally fascinating. I have to admit that at the beginning I didn't really connect to Reid, precisely because he felt to much of a Mary Sue or "teacher's pet" of the writers to me. But then I realized that the show is actually quite a bit smarter than that, and I'm really a lot in love with a lot of the unexpected choices the show made, stuff that one might not have predicted when looking on the show just superficially (like that they gave the sexual abuse backstory to the guy who is sold as the hot guy and the action guy rather than what you might predict, the woobie or any of the others; I thought that that was a really interesting and daring choice).

It happens on both ends, but because of my personal biases, I notice it more with Reid: because yes, he is very sweet and innocent in a lot of ways, and there's the addiction around to consider, but underlying the addiction is his problem of dealing with hard things in a constructive manner. Most of the time, he doesn't run right to drugs, but when things do get difficult, as Hotch put it in the s2 finale and as we see him doing with Gideon leaving in "Scared to Death," his intellect is his shield -- so he hides behind it and rationalizes things, without really allowing himself to deal with the emotional levels of the problems at hand, which could really get in the way of forming a close romantic relationship with someone in the first place, let alone carrying it on that long. Besides the shield of his intellect, I think he does tend to be very guarded about his personal life -- like, sharing magic tricks or his wealth of random knowledge is easy, but it took putting his mother in immediate danger, in the "Fisher King" episodes, for him to talk about her to anyone on the team -- which makes sense, because from his dad leaving to his mother being ill, to his suffering in school, to Gideon leaving, and debatably even Ethan running off on him without an explanation, Reid has been hurt by people. Then there are his assumptions about people and situations, which, I think, come out of his being on such a high plane of intelligence, getting used to being right about a lot of things, and not stopping to consider that he could be wrong about whatever he's assuming, because his ego can be very fragile, when it comes to being right or risking a screw up, and since there usually aren't immediate, life-or-death troubles to consider, it's easier to assume he's right and protect himself.

One of my favorite pieces of dialogue, and the one that best describes a lot of Reid's flaws for me, is what Hotch tells him at the end of "Elephant's Memory": "You're the smartest kid in the room, but you're not the only kid in the room." And watching Reid interact with people in general really fleshes that out and shows where he could/would have problems sustaining a long-lasting romantic relationship, which is something I wish I could see more of in shippy fics in general, but especially in M/R fic. ...And now it appears that I've hijacked your post for a bunch of rambling that's probably not so relevant anymore, so I'll let you get back to your regularly scheduled questioning. ♥

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Because I'm curious like that

no subject

(fair warning, folks: spoilers ensue in this comment)

Re: (fair warning, folks: spoilers ensue in this comment)

(this one generally spoiler-free)