Okay. Confession. Part Of The Reason I Haven't Updated Anything In So Long Is Because:

okay. confession. part of the reason i haven't updated anything in so long is because:

a. i had no energy for a while

b. i regained energy, but by that point it had been long enough that i got the itchy feeling of needing to edit/revise all my wips before continuing them. i know that's silly. i don't know if anyone else does that. if i spend too long between updates, i have to go back and edit all the older stuff before i can even think of writing new stuff. in the past, this has been bad as "the gap was too long between chapter 5 and chapter 6, so i have to edit chapters 1-4. oops, the gap was too long between chapters 2 and 3 and now i have to edit 1 and 2 again before i edit 3-6 before i write 7. something is wrong with me!

c. this i think is actual writing advice that i got from Somewhere. or maybe there's another thing wrong with me. either way: the way i edit is by retyping the whole thing and figuring out things i want to change/spotting mistakes as i go, rather than reading it over, where i skim and skip over things.

d. i have generally had less time to write than i did before.

if you've ever gone back and reread a fic i wrote, you might have noticed stuff changing (it's never anything major. usually it's a paragraph or two being cut, added, or replaced. what i'm about to share is probably the biggest edit i've done in a bit.

anyway, rn im rewriting the opening scene of "like the strength of an army", and my weird process wound up with a change that i really do like.

Emily cleared her throat. "Hey, Reid?" "Hm?" He didn't look up from his new file. "Lunch is in twenty." This did get his attention. He raised his head and glanced at his watch, eyebrows shooting up. Hm. Reid usually had a clock running in his head. For him to have lost track of the time... "Oh. Uh, okay." He blinked and went back to the file, apparently not catching the invitation in the statement. Of course. Silly her. Reid would never believe that anyone would like him enough to voluntarily spend time with him. He needed to be smacked in the face with a social cue if he was to notice it. "You. Me. Indian food. Twenty minutes." That should do it.

I realised as I was rewriting that I didn't like the original exchange that was in place of the last two paragraphs. it read as being too long because it had five lines of dialogue, interrupted the flow, and served mostly as a reference to a line from canon i think is funny. that's not a good enough reason to exist at the expense of the pacing! so. that'll change...within the next few days. i'm sorry, i flipflop what i'm revising/working on from day to day. because there's something wrong with me.

maybe feel slightly comforted to know that i'm restraining myself from starting another wip until SOMETHING is marked as complete.

lmao nobody is reading this. i'm yelling into the void about my incredibly strange writing/revising process that makes me take eons to update. thank you for listening, void.

the fox is a really good episode that i had less to say about than i thought i would. karl arnold is scary, his actor is excellent, and it's a in general a very tight episode. the ending is especially good and haunting, with the reveal that arnold has killed six other families of four (and therefore twenty-four more people) than we're initially led to believe.

i understand that karl arnold is returned to in a later episode? i've never actually gotten to that one before, but hopefully i will now.

it's getting really hard to watch just one episode a day, especially since i've already seen every episode up to 5x02. but im trying.

i do have one other thing to say about the fox, i just need to go back and grab a couple screenshots for it.

masterlist

cm:

absolute lithops effect: series of one and two-shots. in which spencer struggles with self-harm, and emily is a great friend. genfic. angst and hurt/comfort. definitely some fluff in there but it hurts first. (not updated in over a year, but not abandoned)

brave young cowboys: one-shot prequel to an eventual longfic. in which the team doesn't figure out spencer's message in revelations in time, and both he and hankel go missing. nobody is coping, but derek is taking it especially poorly. (longfic progress: chapter one complete. 7.3k)

death is promised to the bee: two-shot, work in progress. in which emily decides that the best way to protect her team from doyle is to remove herself from their lives. permanently. jemily if you squint. angst with a happy ending. (chapter two progress: incomplete. 3.2k)

garcia's furry friends: multi-chapter. in which spencer needs to use a cane for the rest of his life following s05e01 and derek creates a groupchat so the team can keep up with him and hotch during their respective recoveries. genfic, chatfic, fluff with brief moments of angst. (not updated in over a year, but not abandoned)

irrationality of a thing: multi-chapter. in which hotch and spencer are on their way home from a consult when the world ends. cue the most stressful cross-country roadtrip of all time. zombie apocalypse au. genfic. angst and horror with light at the end of the tunnel. (not updated in over a year, but not abandoned)

sun sinks into the atlantic: one-shot. in which gideon kills himself at the end of 3x1 and spencer finds his body. genfic. heavy angst/hurt with little comfort.

atla:

birds sing after a storm: one-shot. in which iroh gains custody of zuko after his burn, and zuko struggles with fathers, anger issues, and his sister. modern au. genfic. angst and hurt/comfort.

so. this scene has been talked about a lot:

I think this scene is a really interesting example of the criminal minds writers giving tiny pieces of character backstories that are never elaborated upon, (or, more broadly, forgetting early established character details) because unlike a lot of examples where lines are said and immediately forgotten about, I do think this revelation informs a lot of Hotch's character. I'm not necessarily saying that the writers always had it in mind when writing Hotch that he experienced childhood abuse, but I do feel like you can see the ways in which he was affected. I don't know—this made more sense in my head, but it feels a little less forgotten about and a little less thrown in than some other examples. I think a big difference between this scene and some later ones is that:

The trauma happened pre-series

and

It was established in the first season.

criminal minds isn't great at letting their characters be affected by their in-series trauma for more than a few episodes (and then maybe it'll come up once or twice down the line because the writers remembered it happened) and a lot of later instances* of characters being revealed to have some major pre-series trauma suffer because the impact it would have reasonably had on them isn't consistent with earlier portrayals and sometimes even contradicts established information.

not that it can't be interesting to look at those earlier portrayals of their characters with the backstory that is added later. again, this all made more sense in my head: essentially, the reason i think this feels different to me is that the writers knew when they started writing hotch that he was abused as a child, while other characters who have traumatic backstories revealed have those backstories added much later, and so the writers have a not-great choice between showing the effects their trauma had on them when there was no sign of it earlier, or moving on with their character as if none of it ever happened.

*i'd like to quickly establish that i'm not talking about morgan here. that was also a pretty early reveal and feels consistent enough with early characterization that i wouldn't be shocked if the idea was first floated while season one was being written

anyway: last thing about the fox.

I think the order in which the team reacts to frank fielding* hurting himself is pretty interesting.

Gideon and Morgan are first, simply because they're the ones closest.

Hotch and Elle are next, with Elle a little behind...

But when it comes to actually restraining Frank, Elle, who is still new and less experienced, lingers behind. If you watch the scene carefully, she actually backs away, too.

And finally, Reid stands at the very back. He enters the room but doesn't go any further, and the camera pans down to show him rocking back and forth on his feet, like he can't decide if he wants to run into or out of the room. I think it's possible that Diana self-harmed at some point in the past (although granted, the self-harm in this scene is a different "type") and he may have been having some unpleasant memories.

*the brother of one of the victims, who goes to her house despite her husband not wanting him there, is seen by her through the window, and thinks she mouths "go away" at him when she actually mouths "help me"

god i love tony todd. i get distracted by this scene every single time because TONY TODD!!!!

if my voice sounded like that i would make it everyone else's problem.