#paget tweets

[pagetgram]

@pagetpaget: So much precious grey hair … on the floor.

@pagetpagetgram: Mature Follicles

[roseekara]

to be late entering a fandom is something else. I just found out this conversation exists 😩

they're like me and my bestie back in HS got caught by our teacher talking about her behind her back 🤣

"how could you help yourself..." omgg I can't believe this is a real convo.. oh to be on twitter during this era...

[jareauwalker]

aj cook and paget brewster being on violently opposing ends of the chronically online spectrum is so funny to me

[my-cages-were-mental]

paget brewster is the kind of person who is straight, but has kissed women in the past and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. and honestly i love her for that.

[not-that-kind-of-dr-spencer-reid]

Paget Brewster out here single-handedly keeping the hotchniss ship afloat.

[ssa-kitsune1310]

Paget Brewster never disappoints 👀😂 Hotchniss fans how are we feeling😂😂

[notallwonder]

I have good and bad news (for me; anyone else reading this probably won't give a damn). I think my advanced case of Paget brain is subsiding - almost like I had a fever that broke? It's good news because the obsession was not actually serving me anymore, it was a mechanism for avoiding some important things I'm working on irl. It's bad news because there is a certain amount of fun to be had when part of your brain is on fire in such a manner, and I was having that fun.

I still love Emily Prentiss and I still enjoy much of Paget Brewster's work, and yes I'd love to see her on stage if the opportunity is ever available to me. And I'm still "looking forward" to new CM in November (it will disappoint me! can't wait!)

But somehow I have a reprieve!! I am free (ish)!!

[meet-me-in-the-pouringrain]

Paget Brewster (an actress who has been in the business since the early 90s) just tweeted out that she was paid $990 for Criminal Minds Evolution that was broadcasted across SEVENTY countries what the fuck?? FUCK HOLLYWOOD AND TV EXECS!!

Support The WGA, Support SAG- AFTRA. Actors and Writers are humans too.

Edit : Right everyone I read this wrong coz i’m a bit of a dumbass. @storiesofsvu and @blackbird-brewster both commented and corrected it! Pls read the comments and reblogs of this before taking my word for it, she didn’t get paid $990 for CME. It was *residuals* over the entire series.

[flaminghotjareau]

ok obviously i’m excited, very much shaking crying throwing up BUT if jemily were to be canon, would paget be able to say that? i mean it would be a big spoiler so it sounds more like there’s gonna be some noncanon jemily stuff that we are gonna scream about but that’s it idk…

when aj talked about the “ultimate jemily moment” it was vague enough to give us hope but here, if jemily were to be canon, saying “beautiful and funny” would mean that they would actually get together, to me you can’t say that about two characters who idk admitted their feelings to each other but will not act on them.

but then this tweet was an answer to someone asking paget if there’s gonna be aj and paget tiktoks soon so maybe she was really just talking about tiktoks and i’m overthinking lmao

[blackbird-brewster]

Meta: Jemily Queerbaiting

With the huge influx of posts saying 'Jemily is gonna be canon', I really appreciated seeing this post because OP was completely correct. I didn't want to write an entire dissertation as a reply, so I'm making my own post with my personal opinion on this. (All sources are noted in footnotes)

Before I began this rant, for anyone who thinks this is anti-Jemily. It is not. I have shipped Jemily for 18 friggin years and that's never going to change. This post is specifically my thoughts about queer baiting.

First off, I need to note that the showrunners (and the cast members who use social media) KNOW what a huge queer following this show has and that's why we got pansexual Tara Lewis in S16 [1]. Which, in itself, was SOOOOOOO important!!! Our first canonically queer main in SIXTEEN seasons was a middle-aged Black woman!!! That's phenomenal. (The fact it was horrible rep, because they instantly ruined her relationships once her queerness served it's plot point is a whole other post entirely)

In my opinion, the 'big Jemily moment' Paget posted about on Twitter [2] (and AJ hinted at during a recent IG live) is simply queerbaiting to get people to watch S17. I know a lot of you are newer to the fandom and I love your enthusiasm, I really do, ship and let ship, but listen, let's be real, Jemily is not going to be made canon. The showrunners aren't going to suddenly say (after 17 seasons) 'Surprise, Jemily is endgame'. This show has never cared about queer rep and now that CBS/Paramount have already ticked their queer rep box with Tara, they won't be in any rush to add any other characters to it.

Please buckle in, I've got a lot of thoughts on this matter --

What is Queerbaiting?

If you aren't aware of what queerbaiting is, here's a good definition:

Historically, queerbaiting has carried two meanings: the first is an act of aggressive heterosexuality to shut down queer subtext on screen while still teasing and catering to the queer audience in advertising, public relations, and fan engagement strategies; the second is an existing homoerotic tension between two characters played up on screen while met with derision by the professionals behind the scenes. [3]

The Medium article quoted here is from 2017, a time when parasocial relationships were really starting to take over social media. In 2024, actors are now only a mention or tag away online, they have direct conversations with fans, and this process has allowed for an even deeper form of queerbaiting.

Oftentimes online, actors are asked directly about certain ships and while some ignore these questions (usually to avoid breaking their contracts or other repercussions), others (looking at you, Paget) choose to instead tease fans about queer ships. She's done this for years upon years and if I've learned anything in the past twenty-years of existing in fandom spaces it's this -- don't hold your breath. In it's original meaning, for something to be deemed as queerbaiting there had to be malicious, or at least, purposeful intent to string queer fans along by teasing them with suggestive content about the ship in question, while knowing this ship will never come to fruition in canon.

The thing to remember is, Paget and AJ aren't the only ones who know about Jemily shippers -- the network and showrunners are well aware of this ship too. When networks/showrunners figure out they have a strong sapphic fanbase, they love to use that to their advantage to get more viewers and higher ratings. Queerbaiting is a goldmine to keep fans watching long running shows, look at Rizzoli and Isles, Supergirl, and OUAT for examples of this.

Jemily and Queerbaiting:

Ever since Emily joined the BAU in S2 (2006), there have always been fans who ship JJ/Emily (shoutout to the old LJ forums!). Way before celebs were just a tweet away from fans, back when all our fics began with disclaimers so we wouldn't get sued by networks, we went to great lengths to keep our fanworks far removed from actors/showrunners attention.

As far as Jemily goes, this reply from Paget in a 2009 interview with TVGuide.com [4] (which has now been deleted from their site unfortunately, but there are quotes on Tumblr still [4.a]) confirmed some fans' worst fear -- the actors had found our fanworks online.

TVGuide.com: Of course, a band of fans want her to hook up with Hotch.

Brewster: I know! I didn't realize that fans make these videos on YouTube? A.J. Cook sent me a hilarious one that made it look like Prentiss and J.J. were having a secret lesbian affair. You know, when Hotch was blown up in the SUV, we shot this scene where he's in the hospital and I'm standing next to him, looking at his bleeding ear. Our director came in and said, "Paget, you're looking at Hotch like you're in love with him. It looks really weird." So now, every day, Thomas [Gibson] and I flutter our eyelids at each other.

This was the first time I recall anyone acknowledging Jemily shippers publicly and at the time (Jan 2009), the show was still in Season Four (just before CBS fired both AJ and Paget [5]). Paget genuinely said it's 'hilarious' that fans shipped JJ/Emily. Even now, I'll see people say 'We know Paget and AJ have seen Jemily fanvids, so they obviously ship it too' -- but those same people rarely acknowledge the full context of the original answer. Paget not only thought JJ/Emily were 'hilarious', but then she doubled down and turned her reply back to how she and Thomas liked to play up the chemistry between Emily/Hotch.

While no one can say for sure which video it was that AJ sent Paget, just knowing they were watching JJ/Emily fanvids sent a bit of a shockwave through the femslash side of the fandom. To some it felt like an invasion of privacy, fanworks are by fans for fans -- knowing the cast were poking around in fandom spaces added an extra layer of worry around what we fans were posting online. Fifteen years ago, it used to be quite taboo for actors to outwardly discuss shipping or other fanon for whatever show they were in, and we fans were usually comfortably removed from the actors altogether.

Of course, now it's the norm for fans and actors/showrunners to co-exist online and interact with one another. This connection has opened new ways for shows to queerbait their fans. Pretty much every show has some form of social media account now and there is no doubt that the people running those accounts keep up with the most popular ships and hashtags. Not to mention that actors are constantly barraged with questions about whether they ship their character with x,y,z, or whether they think a ship should be made canon, etc. These interactions only serve to benefit the shows themselves, because whether the conversation is for or against a certain ship, it's all just free publicity (Why do you think CM now has a TikTok account?)

Every time AJ or Paget say anything about Jemily, the queer side of the fandom loses their minds. But this has been going on for YEARS now and every single time, it turns out to be nothing but social media hype and queerbaiting. Remember this AJ post? [6] Or what about the notorious reply by Paget to a fan, where she talks about how she and AJ held hands under the table 'for the shippers' [7] I've seen this cycle over and over again, so perhaps I am cynical, but I'm not getting my hopes up that Jemily will ever seriously be canon.

It's widely known now, after both Kirsten [8] and Paget [9] have talked about it, that there was an early idea where Prentiss was supposed to be queer, but that was ultimately scraped before it ever made it on screen. For context, please remember, this show has been airing for nearly twenty years. It began in 2005, during the highly conservative Bush administration. Queer people didn't have rights in the US, we couldn't get married, we were rarely protected under discrimination laws, and we could even be fired for simply being queer (in some states). Diverse queer representation on screen was extremely limited to things like 'The L Word' and 'Queer as Folk' (both aired on Showtime, so they were behind a paywall. And as far as tLw goes, that show was extremely male-gaze focused and is horrible in nearly all regards if you try to rewatch it now). As far as prime time shows went, queer rep was even more rare. Which is why Emily wasn't queer from the get-go.

Yes, things have changed since 2006 in terms of queer rep on TV. We have a myriad of queer identities represented in TV and film nowadays, which is why I think it's so easy for newer fans to say 'lf she was supposed to be gay anyway, they should just make Emily queer in canon!' I know this is what fuels most fans' demands for Emily being confirmed queer, and I get it, I DO. I would be all for it! However, I do not, in one hundred years, actually believe that is going to happen after they already canonically queer confirmed Tara in S16. The fact we even got ONE queer character is ground-breaking for this show.

It's also worth noting, that in the time between Paget's departure in 2012 and her return in 2016, she became very active on Twitter. This was when more and more fans began asking her about Jemily and after Kirsten's AfterEllen interview, fans also pushed for Paget to address the possibility of Emily being gay. 'Pushed' is actually an understatement for some of the outright harassment she would receive. (AJ received some of this harassment too, but less so because she doesn't use social media ass often) Back then, neither of them replied to these things directly. Yet, no matter what either woman posted, the replies were full of Jemily stans begging for her acknowledgement. (Did you know 'stan' is literally a term coined for stalker fans?) I remember one time AJ's friend was missing and she posted info on her IG about it, you know what the replies were? People asking her about Jemily. It was genuinely sickening.

Within this context, it was no surprise to fans when Emily came back in S12 , she and JJ's friendship was seemingly erased. The two women were rarely on screen together in the late seasons, plus the writers saw fit to even give Emily not only one (Mark in London, but two, on-screen boyfriends for the first time in the entire series. I personally do not think these changes to Emily's character were coincidence, I saw the hellscape of what people would say to AJ and Paget online and I fully believe that upon Paget's return to the show, the showrunners purposely tried to distance JJ and Emily to dissuade the more abusive side of the fanbase.

Can I prove that, no. But it is the only reason I can think of as to why Emily S12+ seemingly didn't care about JJ anymore, despite their deep and meaningful friendship. I mean, they both CROSSED THE WORLD to go rescue each other in prior canon -- but when Emily comes back, they acted like they barely knew each other. This was even more prevalent in S16, when JJ's main storylines all revolved around Will, and Emily barely looked at JJ in the entirety of ten episodes. (Remember how Prentiss didn't even hug JJ after bomb, but she did go hug Luke?)

So, do Paget and AJ earnestly ship Jemily, or are they continuing the long tradition of queerbaiting us? Who fucking knows, not me. But based on the history of this fandom, I think I can make a safe bet. (Interestingly, if you search all of Paget's twitter for the word 'Jemily' [10] she only has 3 direct tweets mentioning the ship. I don't think it's a coincidence that two are within the past few months since they started filming S17 (the other one was a RT of Kirsten (who tagged something Jemily)

This is all to say --

Just because Paget and AJ have publicly talked about Jemily,, this doesn't mean it's ever going to happen on screen. And you know what, THAT'S OKAY!! There has been this constant outcry (after Tara became queer confirmed) of 'Do Emily next' or 'Why wasn't it Emily with a girlfriend!?' and 'Jemily needs to be canon in S17!' -- as if people believe their ships aren't worth anything unless they are canon.

That couldn't be further from the truth! Fandom is built on headcanons and fan interpretations and rare pairs and all types of shippers. Your ship does NOT need to be canon for you to enjoy it. I will ship Jemily forever, no matter what. I don't think there will be some magical queer plot in S17, at best, we might actually get to see Emily/JJ on screen together again and after the train wreck that was S16 -- I'll take whatever I can get.

And hey -- if I am completely wrong, if Erica Messer pulls a Korrasami out of her hat, I will be ecstatic. I will be happy to be proved wrong, but at the same time, I'm not going to lose sleep over it and I'm DEFINITELY not going to go hound the actors about it on social media.

Sources:

[1] 2022 Digital Spy article about the importance of Tara's coming out

[2] 04/18/24 Paget Tweet

[3] 2017 Queerbaiting article from medium.com

[4] 2009 Broken TVGuide link

[4.a] Tumblr quote from the above TVGuide Interview

[5] 2010 Kirsten interview screenrant.com

[6] 2019 AJ Instagram Post

[7] 2020 Paget video on Twitter (via @karasluthqr)

[8] 2015 Kirsten interview AfterEllen.com

[9] 2016 Paget Interview CriminalMindsFans.com

[10] @PagetPaget search 'Jemily'

[babygirl-garcia]

God, my CM brain rot is strong 😆😭

Last night, I had a dream where I was watching the show, and it was the end of one episode and then the start of another. I don’t really remember what the other one was about, but the second one had a cold open in like, a dark arcade or something, and someone said “There’s a weasel killing a girl over there” and someone else went “oh shit???” and the first person was like “No, the weasel is literally killing her and it cut to like, this weasel puppet fully stabbing this girl, like, SO aggressively, before it went to the credits, and I “tweeted” about it, and Paget responded and was like “Ahh, season three memories” 😆😆😭😭 I don’t remember anything else about it, other than the kid who owned the weasel was like “yeah, no, there’s nobody here , just me and my weasel” AND IT DIDN’T HAVE THE KNIFE ON IT ANYMORE BUT IT WAS BLOODY AND REALLY INCRIMINATING

[pagetgram]

@pagetpaget: Oh, hi Guys !! This is my first ⁦@criminalminds⁩ hair and make up from this morning…. I hope you’re all excited for a slightly older, sassier, no filters, grey-haired Prentiss. And if you aren’t, that’s cool, just tell someone else.

[greg-montgomery]

allow me to be delusional for a second 🙏🏻

paget tweeted this and then i saw someone on tiktok say that the official criminal minds account started following thomas again and it’s true 😶‍🌫️

[unitchiefs-blackbirdphoenix]

Can I just say, I love AJ and Paget’s friendship with each other in real life. These two have always supported each other from the very beginning, especially during the whole “dark time” of CM (season 6). Their friendship is so wholesome and sweet (and even more, their own husbands are great friends with each other, too).

These instances all happened in one day also:

- AJ basically being a Paget/Prentiss fan during the TVLine interview. She talks about how much she loves the newer version of Emily Prentiss and how beautiful Emily/Paget looks with her gray hair.

- And these two tweets from Paget replying to fans about AJ, where she calls her “extraordinary” and “my family and my friend forever”, and how much she loves her:

[wheelsuppod]

Have u seen that paget tweeted about jemily moments in s17 👀

james texted me about this tweet at literally 5:30 in the morning. yeah we've seen it we're SOOOOOOO normal about it you have no idea

we talked about it a bit on the pod recently but we feel insane about the jemily possibilities and also like. almost scared about it like???? at this point I almost don't want it girlies like the train has left the station and we are stuck with the choices we made y'know?

[neverquiteeden]

hello hello!

my parents gifted me a sticker printer for christmas which can print small black and white stickers. do you have any recommendations for stupid designs to print so i can annoy/overjoy my bookseller colleagues? :D

happy new year and a good weekend!

GREAT question leto!! My answers are going to vary depending on how detailed the printer can get so i'll just throw some stuff at the wall and see what sticks

"Always 1895" and other Holmes references to sneakily put places

Violets

carnations

file upload catastrophic failure

That tweet of "asexual gay nonbinary coworker said they're really into greek mythology i said oh i'm sure" (depends how chill the coworkers are and where you put it)

Frog wielding a sword

frog wielding an axe

frog wielding nunchucks

frog wielding (you get the idea)

chibi muriel looking after the books

acd sidney paget holmes sitting down

fanart of aziraphale and crowley with books to pepper around

outline of heartstopper leaves (i assume you have markers that would work to fill in some colours? if not ppl will still get it probably)

"BOOK!" as text and then an arrow

here comes a newt with the steel chair

dragon

crab (holding a book?)

4 horsemen of the apocalypse

greg (just the name greg. put it on a piece of furniture. tell us what happens. don't know if it's funnier if there is or isnt a greg working with you)

crow (thinking the art style in "crow time" but idk)