Canon Trufax: Criminal Minds edition
Once again I fail at producing actual content, but since I managed to go on at considerable length when electricchicken asked for people's personal fanon over on criminalxminds, I'll reproduce my Deep Fannish Thoughts here. For posterity, & c.
Reid
+ Has (comparatively) limited formal background in disciplines such as encryption mathematics, physics, and bioengineering for a multitude of reasons, and that pure mathematics isn't really his strongest talent is only one of them. A bigger reason is that his mom always guided him away from certain sciences, because she was convinced that the government would exploit him in some horrible weapons development project. This is the only respect in which Diana Reid has ever deliberately hindered her son.
Consciously, Reid has always thought that she was overreacting out of paranoia. Unconsciously, though, he's soaked up some of that paranoia himself-quite apart from knowing that scientists sometimes are exploited. So when he does work in subjects that he can just imagine freaking his mother out, he doesn't publish. It stays as doodles in his notebooks.
+ That lack of collaboration has stunted his growth in some respects, and he knows he's fast approaching the end of his mathematical prime (mathematicians and ballerinas both have narrow windows for their best work). Even though he's satisfied with the work he does, even though he knows these things were never his chief talent or chief passion, even though he knows he was never going to be the next Richard Feynmann... he can't help wondering what other things he could have been, and he sometimes resents not finding out.
+ That Guy from That Episode about a mole in the CIA has thus become a sort of Ghost of Christmases Possible for him.
+ A Separate Peace is one of his favorite books, though he hasn't re-read it since he was about 19.
+ Doesn't have a Single Target Sexuality, but he does have a target-specific sexuality. It's not that he doesn't like sex or any sort of romance at all, it's just that he can take it or leave it, and he's got to have something specific to go on to get really excited about it.
+ I'm going to have to play devil's advocate here and say that Reid could as easily be a virgin as not, without feeling like he's missing out. Asexuals are not always aromantic, and I could easily see Reid having romantic impulses while being "w/e, I'll go with the flow" on sex.
+ Has pretty damned good alcohol tolerance. Did you see how many empty glasses that kid had in front of him during that Star Trek drinking game?
+ Once drank Rossi under the table. Dave didn't see it coming.
Garcia
+ Never met Reid while she was at Cal-Tech. However, they have once or twice stayed up late in her apartment, having milk, brandy, and cookies and bitching about the departmental politics they both vivdly remember.
+ Has an open relationship with Kevin, by mutual consent. The relationship is stronger for it.
+ Has an almighty, massive glasses display rack where some women would have a shoe collection. You wish your boudoir had something that awesome in it.
+ Could find Gideon easily, but the only time she's even thought about it was when Reid appeared to be having a backside around "Elephant's Memory."
+ When she was in high school, she briefly went through a phase where she was really into brutal crime fiction like Silence of the Lambs and gory video games. She feels guilty about it now, which compounds her low tolerance for the horrible things that are the BAU's bread and butter. It's part of why she needs to surround herself with sparkles and colors like a shield.
+ Has all the talents to be a fairly magnificent engineer... except for the patience for research.
+ Sings along with the car radio, but never the main vocal line; she always improvs her own harmonization. Reid doesn't get it. (Morgan does, though he doesn't join her.)
+ Has written fanfic. PWP fanfic.
Elle
+ Has been tormented by many things since leaving the BAU. Guilt, however, isn't one of them.
+ Has never replied to any of Reid's letters.
+ Gideon doesn't blame her.
Morgan
+ Outside of criminal law, his favorite courses at law school were in Con law. He was good at Contracts, but he never really got off on it the way some of his classmates did. First year interviews confirmed what he was already starting to suspect: He could fit into legal culture, but he could also think better things to do with his time. He did his second and third years on scholarships reserved for law students planning careers in public service and joined up with the Chicago PD.
+ Does not get off on mind games. Does not invest them with mystique. Is not impressed with that shit.
+ Mutual loss of faith is one of the things that draws him to Prentiss.
+ Gets most of his temperament from his mother.
+ Carl Buford does indeed have something to do with his protective tendencies as an adult.
+ Has a hard time letting other people take care of him. Partly it's down to preferring the sense of security he gets from being the one dispensing protection, and partly it's sheer cussedness. That's one reason Garcia's so good for him; she (a) has oblique, disarming ways of taking care of the people she loves, and (b) won't generally take no for an answer.
+ He liked A Separate Peace, too. It's never come up in a conversation with Reid, though.
+ Hasn't written fanfic, but does occasionally write sci-fi short stories of his own.
Prentiss
+ Whoever conjected that she still likes lots of the things she did in her riotous teen years (and that she really did attend a Siouxie and the Banshees concert), ITA. The main reason she likes them isn't nostalgia, but that she can enjoy them without taking them as srs bsns. She surrounds herself with them in the same way that Garcia does with glitter pens and adorable figurines. (Well. In less quantity.)
+ A Kinsey 4 or so. Because I fancy Paget Brewster.
+ Her mother never tried to get her to follow a career in diplomacy or politics. Partly this was because her mother didn't have time to spare to try to force her daughter down any career paths, but partly it was because whatever else she was, Elisabeth Prentiss was perceptive enough to know that it would be a match made in hell. For both Emily and politics.
+ Her interest in criminal psychology dates from her high school years, when serial killers were a popular topic among her acquaintances and few friends. Her curiosity was more profound and less prurient than theirs, though, and her reading broader and deeper. Bizarrely, this interest was one of the things that grounded her, and ushered in the more serious, adult Prentiss the team knows.
Gideon
+ Feels guilty about it… but he just doesn't like his son that much. It's not so much that there's a broken relationship there as that there was never much relationship to break.
+ And he knows that he shouldn't get to play daddy to Reid just because Reid is there and so terribly clever and conveniently invested in the same life's work and is basically the ideal son Gideon might wish to have, prepackaged and wrapped in a bow--not legitimately. He knows, but it doesn't matter. It's Fatherhood Lite, and if he were a better father and person, he supposes he'd feel bad about it. As it is, though... it just sort of is what it is.
+ Does get off on mindgames. A lot of profilers do, if they keep at it long enough.
+ Doesn't blame Elle. He blames her even less after Frank.
Hotch, JJ, and Rossi: I don't really have thinky thoughts about those, yet. However, I do have a JJ fic rec: Family, Order, Class, by Kshar. I believe I originally found that via falena84's recs.
Reid
+ Has (comparatively) limited formal background in disciplines such as encryption mathematics, physics, and bioengineering for a multitude of reasons, and that pure mathematics isn't really his strongest talent is only one of them. A bigger reason is that his mom always guided him away from certain sciences, because she was convinced that the government would exploit him in some horrible weapons development project. This is the only respect in which Diana Reid has ever deliberately hindered her son.
Consciously, Reid has always thought that she was overreacting out of paranoia. Unconsciously, though, he's soaked up some of that paranoia himself-quite apart from knowing that scientists sometimes are exploited. So when he does work in subjects that he can just imagine freaking his mother out, he doesn't publish. It stays as doodles in his notebooks.
+ That lack of collaboration has stunted his growth in some respects, and he knows he's fast approaching the end of his mathematical prime (mathematicians and ballerinas both have narrow windows for their best work). Even though he's satisfied with the work he does, even though he knows these things were never his chief talent or chief passion, even though he knows he was never going to be the next Richard Feynmann... he can't help wondering what other things he could have been, and he sometimes resents not finding out.
+ That Guy from That Episode about a mole in the CIA has thus become a sort of Ghost of Christmases Possible for him.
+ A Separate Peace is one of his favorite books, though he hasn't re-read it since he was about 19.
+ Doesn't have a Single Target Sexuality, but he does have a target-specific sexuality. It's not that he doesn't like sex or any sort of romance at all, it's just that he can take it or leave it, and he's got to have something specific to go on to get really excited about it.
+ I'm going to have to play devil's advocate here and say that Reid could as easily be a virgin as not, without feeling like he's missing out. Asexuals are not always aromantic, and I could easily see Reid having romantic impulses while being "w/e, I'll go with the flow" on sex.
+ Has pretty damned good alcohol tolerance. Did you see how many empty glasses that kid had in front of him during that Star Trek drinking game?
+ Once drank Rossi under the table. Dave didn't see it coming.
Garcia
+ Never met Reid while she was at Cal-Tech. However, they have once or twice stayed up late in her apartment, having milk, brandy, and cookies and bitching about the departmental politics they both vivdly remember.
+ Has an open relationship with Kevin, by mutual consent. The relationship is stronger for it.
+ Has an almighty, massive glasses display rack where some women would have a shoe collection. You wish your boudoir had something that awesome in it.
+ Could find Gideon easily, but the only time she's even thought about it was when Reid appeared to be having a backside around "Elephant's Memory."
+ When she was in high school, she briefly went through a phase where she was really into brutal crime fiction like Silence of the Lambs and gory video games. She feels guilty about it now, which compounds her low tolerance for the horrible things that are the BAU's bread and butter. It's part of why she needs to surround herself with sparkles and colors like a shield.
+ Has all the talents to be a fairly magnificent engineer... except for the patience for research.
+ Sings along with the car radio, but never the main vocal line; she always improvs her own harmonization. Reid doesn't get it. (Morgan does, though he doesn't join her.)
+ Has written fanfic. PWP fanfic.
Elle
+ Has been tormented by many things since leaving the BAU. Guilt, however, isn't one of them.
+ Has never replied to any of Reid's letters.
+ Gideon doesn't blame her.
Morgan
+ Outside of criminal law, his favorite courses at law school were in Con law. He was good at Contracts, but he never really got off on it the way some of his classmates did. First year interviews confirmed what he was already starting to suspect: He could fit into legal culture, but he could also think better things to do with his time. He did his second and third years on scholarships reserved for law students planning careers in public service and joined up with the Chicago PD.
+ Does not get off on mind games. Does not invest them with mystique. Is not impressed with that shit.
+ Mutual loss of faith is one of the things that draws him to Prentiss.
+ Gets most of his temperament from his mother.
+ Carl Buford does indeed have something to do with his protective tendencies as an adult.
+ Has a hard time letting other people take care of him. Partly it's down to preferring the sense of security he gets from being the one dispensing protection, and partly it's sheer cussedness. That's one reason Garcia's so good for him; she (a) has oblique, disarming ways of taking care of the people she loves, and (b) won't generally take no for an answer.
+ He liked A Separate Peace, too. It's never come up in a conversation with Reid, though.
+ Hasn't written fanfic, but does occasionally write sci-fi short stories of his own.
Prentiss
+ Whoever conjected that she still likes lots of the things she did in her riotous teen years (and that she really did attend a Siouxie and the Banshees concert), ITA. The main reason she likes them isn't nostalgia, but that she can enjoy them without taking them as srs bsns. She surrounds herself with them in the same way that Garcia does with glitter pens and adorable figurines. (Well. In less quantity.)
+ A Kinsey 4 or so. Because I fancy Paget Brewster.
+ Her mother never tried to get her to follow a career in diplomacy or politics. Partly this was because her mother didn't have time to spare to try to force her daughter down any career paths, but partly it was because whatever else she was, Elisabeth Prentiss was perceptive enough to know that it would be a match made in hell. For both Emily and politics.
+ Her interest in criminal psychology dates from her high school years, when serial killers were a popular topic among her acquaintances and few friends. Her curiosity was more profound and less prurient than theirs, though, and her reading broader and deeper. Bizarrely, this interest was one of the things that grounded her, and ushered in the more serious, adult Prentiss the team knows.
Gideon
+ Feels guilty about it… but he just doesn't like his son that much. It's not so much that there's a broken relationship there as that there was never much relationship to break.
+ And he knows that he shouldn't get to play daddy to Reid just because Reid is there and so terribly clever and conveniently invested in the same life's work and is basically the ideal son Gideon might wish to have, prepackaged and wrapped in a bow--not legitimately. He knows, but it doesn't matter. It's Fatherhood Lite, and if he were a better father and person, he supposes he'd feel bad about it. As it is, though... it just sort of is what it is.
+ Does get off on mindgames. A lot of profilers do, if they keep at it long enough.
+ Doesn't blame Elle. He blames her even less after Frank.
Hotch, JJ, and Rossi: I don't really have thinky thoughts about those, yet. However, I do have a JJ fic rec: Family, Order, Class, by Kshar. I believe I originally found that via falena84's recs.