Frank: "It's almost as if, in them, they had a kind of... signal. "

[gsyh]

Rebecca, on the phone: "He's not Agent Gideon, is he?"
- "No Way Out II", Criminal Minds

"Intuition is always right in at least two important ways;
It is always in response to something.
it always has your best interest at heart"
― Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Trigger Warning: for PTSD,

Comments

[nwjarvis]

You really can't give too much weight to preliminary character descriptions; they're like a "first draft" of characters and are almost always modified before the characters are finalized.

Garcia was originally characterized as a very overweight Hispanic man - obvious change there. Mandy himself said (about Gideon) in an interview: "We don't know if he's divorced, if he's ever been married, if the rings [he wears] are wish rings, who this 'son' is that's been mentioned..." So nothing in those original descriptions can be regarded as canon.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Elle is a rape survivor. However, I really didn't see her action in "Aftermath" as a response to her fear. I think that when the rapist (speaking of her mistake in arresting him too soon and spoiling the case) said "You've made a lot of women very happy", the full magnitude of her fuck-up flashed into her mind and she realized that she had let a monster loose. And I think she made atonement (in her own mind, anyway) by killing the rapist and her career with a volley of pistol shots.

ALL our heroes are damaged, in one way or another. One of the themes this show constantly circles back to is how people deal with trauma, how "Some people grow up to be killers. And some people grow up to catch them." The same life experiences that shape a monster can also shape a hero. What makes the difference? And what makes one person bend where another breaks? Are we all at the mercy of our bollixed up endocrine systems? Where do choice and personal responsibility come in? IMO one of the neat things about this show is that it doesn't try to give us definitive answers to these questions; it's more of a discussion than a lecture, if that makes sense.

[full_metal_ox]

Garcia was originally characterized as a very overweight Hispanic man - obvious change there.

For whatever it might be worth, there's no reason that Version 1.0 (his name and description perhaps homage to the late Grateful Dead guitarist?) couldn't have been her stepdad.

[citjara]

From your keyboard to my comment!! I couldn't agree more, not only, but especially on Elle. She seemed to disassemble out of nowhere - because she did fairly good in the three eps/cases before then. She wasn't terribly afraid when she confroted the rapist - she wanted revenge.

[gsyh]

When I remember Elle, I remember the way she explains that rapists are cowards who target women and children all the way back in "Broken Mirror".
It's just, the way she said it, it sounded like she was reminding herself too.

Plus the way she said she could remember the Fisher King's fingers moving inside her.

People who resort to a life of crime are failures at life, but sometimes it's hard to remember that when you are a victim of violence.

I tend to take additional material like prelims, as canon until disproved otherwise.

It's my pet canon that Gideon didn't become estranged from his son until after his son was older, like, when his son was in his teens. ...and whether it happened in the same time or not, he cut off from everyone (except Reid) after Boston.

[citjara]

We may, or may not, have lost that special connotation the dub...

I do think there's some basis to what you're saying about her and I have no issues if someone wants to consider it canon based on the evidence, but for me, who hadn't heard about it, that whole Elle fiasco was sudden and odd.