#( profound knowledge of others

[groveofsouls]

tag dump nine ft. general charas part four !!

[everardentarchived]

tag dump ten ft yet more chara tags !!

[vagandfags]

Day Six: Favorite Underrated Character - Jason Gideon

"Agent Gideon, in many ways, is damned by his profound knowledge of others, which is why he shares so little of himself, yet he pours his heart into every case we handle."

@bxbyjjsupremacy

[juniorgman187]

Spencer Reid basically grew up to be Jason Gideon and here’s why:

CRIMINAL MINDS SPOILERS AHEAD!

1. Most obviously, Spencer and Gideon both lose the love of their lives at the cost of their job. Gideon’s love, Sarah, is murdered by Frank, a serial killer whom Gideon let walk free in exchange for the safety of young children that Frank had kidnapped from a school bus. Similarly, Spencer loses Maeve to her stalker, Diane, who makes an unpredictable move that takes the lives of both of them. While the impact of their loved one’s death is different for Spencer and Gideon, each event is a significant tragedy for their respective characters - just as Haley’s death is significant for Hotch, even if the impact is different.

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2. If you can recall from way back in the first ever episode of Criminal Minds, Gideon is called back (by Spencer, I should add) to solve a case with the team, wherein Gideon’s medical leave from the BAU was revealed to be caused by Adrian Bale, a serial bomber. Before incarcerating Bale, Gideon was the lead profiler in the case and gave an order to move in. This proved to be a fatal, almost careless, mistake on Gideon’s end because they would lose 6 agents in an explosion Bale deliberately intended to happen. And just like Gideon, in Season 15 Episode 9, Spencer tells the Captain of the SWAT team to breach, confident that it’s safe to enter the premises. Unfortunately, the house explodes into flames and takes the lives of several policemen, even causing Spencer’s brain injury that acts as a main propellant of the plot of the Series Finale.

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3. When Hotch profiles the team in the finale of Season 2, he tells Strauss that, “In many ways, Jason Gideon is damned by his profound knowledge of others.” Which is also a true statement for Spencer. His evolution into a grown man is often marked by the abundant amount of traumatic experiences that jaded him, but really, it’s his knowledge that transforms him into the man we know in the later seasons - a man not too far off from Gideon. Like Reid, Gideon too was bright-eyed, naive, and relatively untouched by tragedy at the beginning of his career, which we observe during the flashback of the episode entailing Gideon’s murder. Here, we see a young Rossi and a young Gideon, who have just recently started the BAU (which at the time is actually called the BSU). Young Gideon and young Spencer are all too alike. Furthermore, the ripened, more mature Spencer that we observe in Seasons 12-15 is a reflection of the older version of Gideon we see in Seasons 1-3.

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4. And in the end, (literally because that’s the series finale’s title) they both end up (physically) alone, but with the hope of a happy ending for both of them. Gideon leaves the BAU soon after Sarah’s death, disclosing to Spencer in a letter that he’s just searching for happy endings again, but seeing as Sarah can’t be physically by his side through this journey, he’s going at it alone. Likewise, in the Series Finale, Max is visibly absent from the BAU’s party, leaving Spencer to go stag, but without an explicit statement that they’ve ended things, we’re to assume that they’re still seeing each other and that there might be a happy ending for them after all. (Finally, Spencer’s happiness might last longer than an episode!) Gideon and Spencer both get bittersweet endings, but there’s still hope for them, which is all we could possibly want for those two, especially considering what we know they’ve been through to get there. 

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People who I think might enjoy reading this:

@andiebeaword @pomsephone @imagining-in-the-margins @thelovelyrose @veraiconcos @psychedellic-phase @gublertoon @sunlight-moonrise @watermelongubler @ssa-cinnamon