#i totally straight up fucking answered this ask earlier it jsut… didnt post?? didnt even leave my inbox?

[maschotch]

same anon as the morgan ask lol - no you’re so right about the weird vibes of hc’ing reid as transmasc. like if it was just sometimes… but it’s all the time, it’s disproportionately him, much more rare for hotch or morgan or luke or anyone to be transmasc. and like… people are always calling reid their /babey boy/ and it’s kinda the same with a lot of popular transmasc hcs, it’s young, skinny, white, shy or "socially awkward", "feminine" in some way, characters. it rubs me the wrong way. depends on the reasoning. but for reid it’s always,, "oh cause he looks young for his age, he has long hair, he’s so /cute/, he’s my baby boy, he’s shy and girls are shy" etc. like. classic infantilising of trans guys, classic transphobia against transmascs. nothing against some reidgirls but can they stop being weird about it? can they explain why they’d not hc hotch or morgan as transmasc, unless they’re doing t4t reid and someone? why i’ve only ever seen one hc of any of the women as transfem? & don’t feel bad about preferring to talk about hotch - i’m a morgan fan but i’m a (low empathy) prentiss fan first, i don’t mean that everyone has to obsess over morgan, i just wish people would appreciate his strengths & flaws & experiences & overall character a bit more in general.

admittedly i’m also the person who sent that last low empathy prentiss ask btw, big agree with all you say. of course i don’t mind that people have different opinions on her to me but just…. sometimes i’m like, did we watch the same show? a lot of the things they consider "empathy" moments from her are just being somewhat kind, and like, yeah i don’t think she’s evil so of course she has the capacity to be kind and exhibit some compassion. but every time she gives a grunt of disgust at a crime scene or whatever, it’s just to show that she disapproves of what the unsub did, not that she’s devastated or shocked in the way that many of the others on the team seem to be. and probably somewhere between having a shit relationship with her mother, the way she canonically has said she would change everything about herself to get approval from other teens when she was moving schools all the time in high school, and her undercover missions at Interpol… somewhere in all that, she clearly developed some acting skills, the ability to manipulate people, mirror and read people but *manually* rather than by having empathy. for her job, that’s necessary, idk how to say "manipulate" in a way that doesn’t sound that bad but i don’t mean it as inherently bad lol. and having less empathy would help her stay calm, logically analyse problems, not be fooled by people pretending to be upset, not have too much guilt get in the way of manipulating suspects (necessary to her job obviously), etc. however, it can diminish her ability to comfort friends from an emotional POV, might make her more impulsive/reckless because she doesn’t consider the effects it might have on herself and others, and it probably would contribute to how in those Lauren eps she just assumes her team members would be mad at her because she doesn’t *know* how they would emotionally feel about that. and maybe she does worry that she’s a bad person bc of her low empathy! who knows! i haven’t actually thought *that* much about it, i’m just kinda rambling about a few patterns i see, but i do think she has low empathy. and that you’re very right about the writers just… being inconsistant and weird with her character a Lot. i’m glad someone else sees what i see with her.

signed, the only morgangirl 😔 lmao

yeah :// like it’s tricky to be overly critical of trans hcs without being disrespectful or belittling people’s experiences (bc there are some people who i know identify with reid’s gender ambiguity (???)) but idk… it’s hard to ignore the pattern of the internet favoring their submissive breedable skinny white little twink as the main char seen as trans. like. what are we saying here lol

and yeah same thing w characters… you cant really fault anyone for preferring certain characters but when they take character traits/experiences/plotlines from morgan and give them to reid?? it just feels?? distasteful? like if youre gonna change everything about reid to make him/his backstory more like morgan, just… write about morgan? idk how to describe it. it’s like… if there’s a set of angsty tropes that are pretty standard—used by both official network writers and fandoms—that the showrunners divvy up between characters, and the fandom enjoys certain tropes that apply to certain characters, and the fandom’s favorite character is different, then they’ll give those same tropes to their favorite character without acknowledging the other character at all. idk if that makes any sense, but it’s just glaringly obvious when it’s the exact same type of skinny white guy that becomes the fandom’s favorite every time

but yes i am a very big fan of low empathy emily <3 i think it’s one of those “repressed lesbian jj” concepts that explains away a lot of the shitty character inconsistencies?? emily’s inconsistent bc she’s acting, bc she’s playing a part, bc her mask is changing as she tailors it to the group dynamic and her place within it. which is just FASCINATING to me lmao i love it so much. it’s something i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, but despite that i feeel like i dont have a lot to say on it? it’s less like a “here’s a list of headcanons for this character” and more of a “here’s a lens to watch the show through.” it doesnt necessarily addd anything, it’s just a different perspective that imo makes things make more sense lol. i think she’s made peace with who she is and doesn’t spend too much time fretting over whether she’s a bad person. like i don’t think she’s answered that question necessarily, i just think she knows it’s kinda pointless trying to figure it out. n e ways yes i like that you also see it :)))