serendipitouslover

[serendipitouslover]

Hot Take: Spencer Reid is a character with a fascinating premise that was completely wasted on execution.

In seasons 1 and 2, Spencer Reid is one of my favourite characters ever. But when I think about him as the show went on, I care about him less and less. Because nothing that made him interesting ends up being important.

The most important thread of Reid’s characterisation was always that he was “afraid of [his] own mind”. That’s interesting. This is a young man who has been taking care of his schizophrenic mother all of his life, now in the age when schizophrenia is most likely to present. His job revolves around seeing people who commit horrible but elaborate crimes and getting inside of their heads. He is shown to connect to Unsubs who are mentally ill, and is narratively paralleled with several of them (most notably Nathan, a young man who is afraid that he will become a serial killer because of his desires, Owen, who was bullied like Reid and who Reid projects onto, and Tobias, who is of a similar age, height, physical description, and family background). He is forced to use drugs that in that same episode are linked with the psychotic break of the man holding him captive. He is tortured, and while the physical damage Tobias does is huge all the worst torture is psychological. Reid is forced to choose who to kill on multiple occasions and watch while it happens, he is forced to align himself with the killer (”I serve you”), and he identifies with Tobias. 

You can make an entire argument about how “Revelations” is a re-birth metaphor, but I won’t here.

My point is that Reid’s character arc doesn’t work because none of these elements are ever resolved. Reid is never forced to confront the parts of his mind that scare him, or even given a reason to really be afraid of them in the first place. He is consistently linked with Unsubs in the narrative but is never given a reason for it.  His first quote is “There is a question that sometimes makes me hazy– am I, or the others, crazy?”, but Reid’s mental illness concerns are dropped unceremoniously after “Corazon” (aside from a quick mention of his migraines in the Maeve arc, only raised to discount it). 

I’m not saying Reid had to be an Unsub for his character arc to work. I’m not even saying Reid needed to be schizophrenic for his arc to work. But there had to be something to show that these facets of his character were developing. Nothing about his character in seasons 8+ was built on the foundations of what his characterisation was originally made of. The only thing that is remotely consistent is addiction, even though his addiction was just a symptom and not the cause. There’s no natural development of his character, no point A to point B to point C. 

This is why I find it so difficult to care about Reid in the later seasons. The Maeve arc is actually why I stopped watching because I was so fed up with waiting for Reid to be Reid again, instead of a quirky facts machine. And that was before Cat. And prison. And Cat again. And getting shot in the throat for no reason. And…

[serendipitouslover]

drawing people i see in the city (54/?)

[serendipitouslover]

Guys I've COOKED

This was supposed to be the same redraw of the sprite as the previous one, but my hand had other plans) This is the sprite

[serendipitouslover]

congratulations to mia fey for, in the middle of investigating the disappearance of her mother, a corrupt corporate executive, and a serial killer (separate people) she somehow found time to get in two messy situationships that ended tragically. no one’s doing it quite like her. queen shit honestly

[serendipitouslover]

A screenshot from previous piece. Please bear with the blurriness I clipped it from timelapse.

Not gonna lie I like this one better than the final version.It looks more like him ( I am terrible at grasping Kenshi’s facial features 🫠

[serendipitouslover]

Thanks for sexualizing peoples trauma fuckhead

anytime

[serendipitouslover]

Got reminded again of my old coworker who was a massive misogynist but also trans inclusive. Told me he believed trans women are indeed women because "only women would be stupid enough to want to be women"

I wonder what he's doing now

[serendipitouslover]

[serendipitouslover]

BOYS NIGHT, 15th March, Senate! bring your own booze! remember what happens in the senate stays in the senate ;). BOYS NIGHT BOYS NIGHT BOYS NIGHT

[serendipitouslover]

frankenstein(s): weird science

[serendipitouslover]

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

[serendipitouslover]

new rule you have to live to be 34. you cant kill yourself until you turn 34. jesus died at 33 you can do better

[serendipitouslover]

Happy 8th Anniversary!

[serendipitouslover]

hey ao3 can you like give the extra $38k you made from this month’s funds drive to charity

[serendipitouslover]

Sometimes you see the moon during daylight because I miss you and I sent her to check in on you

[serendipitouslover]

The whole bullshit with AU!Silco being like "Forgiveness is the way to go :))" is so bad because.. Silco did forgive Vander. In episode 3 he was talking about he doesn't even care about what Vander did to him anymore, he's just mad he's playing lapdog to Piltover. He hates Vander because he was supposed to be a fighter, and now he's refusing to fight.

The rift between Silco and Vander was ideological differences. That's why Silco ended up killing him. But I guess the writers forgot about that?

[serendipitouslover]

as much as i love jinx and isha’s relationship, i have to agree with fans who say that isha felt like a cheap way to cure jinx of her mental health issues and have her not be actively involved in the piltover-zaun conflict. after watching the s1 finale and seeing the s2 teasers, i fully believed that she would embrace her more violent impulses and take silco’s place as a figurehead for zaun. imagine my surprise when that isn’t the case and the piltover-zaun conflict is sidelined after act 1. i do think it’s valuable that isha was able to help jinx heal her inner child, but it did feel abrupt due to the timeskip between act 1 and act 2. s1 ends with jinx fully embracing her identity by bombing the council, but in s2 ep4, she claims that jinx is dead?? what was the point of her identity crisis throughout s1 then? knowing the mess that is arcane’s ending, it’s not crazy to believe that jinx, along with many other character in the show, were purposefully written to have a passive role in the piltover-zaun conflict in s2 because it would contradict the centrist messaging that the writers wanted.