I Think There Are A Few Reasons Reid Is So Particularly Hostile Towards Emily Post-2x15:

i think there are a few reasons reid is so particularly hostile towards emily post-2x15:

most simply, she was the newest member of the team, and therefore the one he knew the least and could most easily project onto. he doesn't know her well, so it's easiest to construe her actions as whatever he wants them to be in order to have someone to direct his anger at. he'd also feel less bad about attacking her over the other members of the team, who he knows far better (this is not calculated. im saying he needs someone to be angry at and he latches onto the closest person who he knows the least)

she replaced elle. i do ship spencelle (as a tragedy) but even if you take shipping goggles off, i do think they were quite close platonically. and even if you don't think he was close with elle, he definitely feels particularly guilty about her leaving. (he says so out loud with his mouth at the end of 2x6, when he's talking to morgan about the conversation he had with elle shortly before the case took a turn, and starts to obsess over what-ifs until morgan shuts that down). so not only is emily the newest member of the team, she's also replacing someone whose departure he explicitly feels particularly guilty about

she's calling him out on his obvious issues when none of the rest of the team are. ironically, i think its her newness that makes her feel like she can, and her newness that makes him respond so irately. i think the rest of the team feels uncomfortable and unsure of how to act—they know they need to confront him, but they worry about how to go about that without the friendship imploding. i'm not saying "well emily is new and doesn't gaf about him, so she doesn't care if confronting him makes him hate her." she wouldnt confront him if she didn't care about him, but she has less to lose. tying back to the first point, i also think emily being the one to confront him while also being so new to the team lets reid project whatever motivation he wants to onto her in a way he couldn't with the rest of the team. he can pretend she has an ulterior motive and therefor disregard her concern, while that would be a lot harder to do if someone he knew very well did the same. (again—this is not calculated).

i hope this makes sense 😭 i have a Lot of feelings on their friendship (as you can probably tell from my fics about them) and its rocky start. final thing: step 8 and 9 of NA concern making amends with the people you've hurt as a result of your addiction, and i think sometimes about the conversation he probably had with emily when he got to those.

this is the cutest interaction ever i love them

even if you don’t ship spencelle romantically and u think they were platonic. im so obsessed with the idea of them just like…. Hanging out. cause they would so be the ones finding themselves always together for some reason. like elle would stop by his apartment to drop something off and end up coming in and they’d accidentally spend 7 hours together doing nothing. they’d so just lay on the floor and have random meandering conversations. spencer would literally talk with her abt anything. he’d entertain conversation topics w her he never would with anyone else just because he likes talking to elle and she similarly would genuinely engage with him in conversations abt physics or philosophy for hours. like they would just have such a good reciprocal relationship they could talk forever and they do. they go get food and stay in the corner booth until the place closes. they go on drives until they’re like oh shit we’re two hours out of town. I. LOVE. THEM. THEY. ARE. BEST. FRIENDS. WHETHER. YOU. THINK. THEY. ARE. IN. LOVE. OR. NOT. !!!!!!!!

DYING ON THIS HILL!!!!!!

i know canon suggests reid and ethan met as children but ive always pictured reid as a friendless child (sorry </3) and so to me they met in college and in my brain they Did Not Get Along at first. anyway here's my reid/ethan timeline:

reid graduates HS at twelve, takes a gap year because he's worried about leaving diana, then goes to college at fourteen

during reid's second year, ethan starts, having graduated HS at sixteen—also early, because anyone who reid can describe as someone he "competed with constantly" has to also be very intelligent

they meet one way or another, and reid fucking hates ethan. ethan likes reid at first, but when he picks up on reid's dislike of him, he responds in kind and they form a rivalry

the reason reid hates ethan at first is because he sees ethan as being him, but better in every way. growing up as a friendless, awkward child with a...complicated family, reid rationalised to himself that that was just the price he had to pay for being as intelligent as he was. so what if he's dodging cps? so what if he's facing relentless bullying? so what if he can't figure out how everyone navigates social situations so easily while he fumbles? he's a genius. it's fine, it's an exchange. it's one or the other and he's okay with that. and then...ethan. ethan is extroverted and personable and likable, has a close and largely uncomplicated relationship with his family, and is also a genius. and now reid has no choice to admit to himself that everything fucked up about his childhood wasn't the universe balancing itself, but just...fucked up. and he hates ethan for making him think about that.

i have three different ideas of how they eventually become friends: a happy one, where ethan, who, yes, responds to reid's obvious dislike of him by also being a shitty teenage boy, but who also is determined to kill him with kindness and annoy the shit out of him until reid gives in and stops also being a shitty teenage boy. then a darker one, where reid somehow discovers ethan's own demons (either his alcoholism or the issues that led to it) and is like "oh nvm i was right! we geniuses really are doomed to be unhappy people :) we can be friends now" although ethan would eventually knock some sense into him. and finally a silly one where they're mid-argument and then for reasons neither of them can name, they kiss. they argue to this day about who initiated

anyway. they decide to keep up a facade of dislike because their rivalry has become kind of infamous on campus and it would be so embarrassing if they had to admit they like eachother now. god can you imagine. so in public they have increasingly dramatic arguments and then laugh about in private. especially true if you, like me, believe there was something non-platonic going on between them, simply for safety reasons. one person sees them making out in a closet but nobody believes them when they try to spread that around because wtf are you talking about. they want eachother dead. if you're going to invent a rumour at least make it believable god.

i agree! if i could cut either reid's expression or hotch's line that immediately follows it, i'd cut hotch's line. the expressions are very good (especially the last one where it looks to me like he's trying not to be sick) and i generally like subtler moments.

man i remember liking no way out a lot more than i did. i think my issue was that yes, frank breitkopf is scary. yes, his MO is horrifying. yes, the concept is disturbing. but the characters would not stop commenting on that. i dont have an issue with them being horrified, because obviously they would be, but it just felt excessive. we don't need a close-up on reid's horrified face as they enter frank's trailer and hotch saying "i thought i'd seen everything." i dont mind them establishing that this is the worst case they've had, or that "even these people, who deal a lot with things too fucked up and weird for local law enforcement, find this too fucked up and weird." my problem was that they kept establishing that every five seconds. like. okay. i get it.

i did really like the framing device/use of in media res, though. if you haven't seen it, the episode starts with gideon meeting frank in the diner, then it goes back to the beginning and continues in chronological order with occasional returns to the diner scene, continuing until we reach the diner scene itself and continue from there. i especially liked the way they repeated the beginning of the opening to establish that we were back where we started—i got excited when i saw that waitress again lol. i like it in general when cm plays with the formula.

dont think about reid's weakening resistance to tobias drugging him until he's not arguing at all. dont think about him nodding when tobias says "it helps" the second time. i said DONT THINK ABOUT ITTTTT.