I Need To Talk About The Goalpost Scene Or I'll Explode. Tw For The Sexual Assault Of A Minor, Because.

i need to talk about the goalpost scene or i'll explode. tw for the sexual assault of a minor, because. that is what reid is describing here, honestly:

i tried to gif it but the scene is quite long (especially because reid is constantly pausing to compose himself :(( ) and i realised while doing it that it's hard to gif a monologue, so instead here it is in text.

REID: I was in the library and, um... Harper Hillman comes up to me, and she tells me that, uh... Alexa Lisbon wants to meet me behind the field house. Alexa Lisbon's like, easily, the prettiest girl in school. MORGAN: So what happened? Alexa wasn't there? REID: No, she was there. So was the entire football team. They... stripped me naked and tied me to a goalpost. So many kids were there, you know, just watching. MORGAN: Nobody tried to stop it? REID: I begged... I begged them to, but they just... just watched. And... finally, they got bored and they left. It was like midnight when I finally got home. And my mom had... mom was having one of her episodes, so she didn't even realize I was late. MORGAN: You never told her what happened? REID: I never told anybody. I thought... it was one of those things that I thought if I didn't talk about it, I'd just forget. But I remember it like it was yesterday. MORGAN: Oh, Reid, you don't need an eidetic memory for that. You know, we forget half of what they teach us in school, but when it comes to the torment and the people who inflicted it, we've all got an elephant's memory.

i think about this a lot and honestly it makes me feel ill. because correct me if i'm wrong, but this is sexual assault, no? like yes reid is relating to owen as someone who was also severely bullied but he's also relating to owen as someone whose bullies committed a sex crime against them

something that i think gets missed a lot—reid was at the very oldest, twelve. again, correct me if i'm wrong, but football teams are big, right? reid even says "so many kids were there". just an unnecessary amount of people to restrain a pre-teen and a horrifying amount of people capable of standing there and watching. that is some stephen king level bullying honestly. not that ""normal"" bullying would be okay, of course, but just. jesus.

the implied length of the ordeal hurts too. a few things:

"they got bored and they left" to me implies that they left without untying him. had they done so, it would have made more sense to say "they got bored and they let me go." the phrasing reid uses implies they left him there and he had to get himself free. how long would that have taken?

reid also uses the word "finally" which. yeah. you know what the word finally means

the part that hurts the most is where reid says "[my mother] didn't even realize I was late." late. not gone. as in reid didn't go home inbetween speaking to harper and going behind the field house. this wasn't a "hey alexa wants to meet you behind the field house. nine pm" and the whole ordeal is "only" three hours. at best, it was right after school let out. at worst, he left the library and went straight there. so, at best, we're looking at...what, eight hours between going behind the field house and getting home?

this all happens in nevada. specifically vegas, which, from my understanding, is surrounded by desert. if it's winter/fall, the sun goes down relatively quickly and reid spends several hours freezing (i think? wikipedia says nighttime winter temps in vegas average at 4.4C/39.2F. is that cold in that region? canadian, sorry). if it's spring/summer, the sun takes a longer time to go down and reid spends several hours in the heat. ive usually headcanoned the second but the first is equally painful. but anyway, point is: take your pick. preteen reid gets either hypothermia or heatstroke. (also part of the reason i hc it was spring or summer is because i headcanon the goal post, which would have gotten very hot in the sun, scarred him. sorry to anyone whose day i just ruined <3)

sidenote: im always a little surprised by how calmly morgan reacts in this scene. not that he has a bad reaction, or isn't visibly troubled, but given how protective of reid he is normally...the first time i watched this scene i expected him to pull out a pen and paper and ask for names. so im headcanoning that the reason he's so calm in this scene isn't because he is calm, but because he's a good friend who knows that that isn't a productive response at the moment. and then he goes back to the bau and has garcia hunt them down (without telling her why) and uh. i dont know. maybe she destroys their credit scores or something.

[ID: The metronome meme. One side of the dial says "i want TMA's ending to be kept vague and open-ended it's better that way" and the other side reads "MY FUCKING GUYS GRAAAAHHHH". The metronome rapidly swinging from side to side reads "me rn". end ID]

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how are we fucking feeling gamers

the day i stop thinking about the ending of s02e11 sex, birth, death is the day i die.

like. reid coming extremely close to needing to be dragged away from nathan?

both garcia and reid's expressions here? reid, who cares for and identifies with nathan, garcia, who has (i believe) never seen a dead body* in person? (also, you can't see it here because it's a still image, but reid's breath is hitching here and he looks close to hyperventilating)

*i know nathan is not dead here, nor does he die at all—the point im making is that having never seen a dead body in person before would make you more unprepared for seeing the aftermath of an unsuccessful suicide attempt than someone who has

reid makes no movement to clean the blood off his hands until gideon is right in front of him. he just stands there and stares like hes dissociating until gideon comes up and, in my opinion, sort of startles him into acting.

and gideon putting an arm around reid and taking him away from the scene while morgan does the same to garcia. hhhh.

this is the most emotional we see reid get up to this point. he's yelling while he's trying to keep nathan arrive, enough to strain his voice. i dont think hes so much as raised his voice at all up to this point.

i wonder how long he washed his hands for before he deemed himself "clean".

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Criminal Minds 3.07 'Identity'