#01. ❛ file : profile. / a man can't be perfected without his trials.

[armyhoned]

going slightly against my earlier headcanons about the matter, i’m starting to lean more and more to the idea that ben simmons wasn’t really a good dad. i’ve talked a lot on this blog about how i view mi-young to have been the stronger influence in matt’s life---most of what makes him great comes from his mother, and his mother’s influence i used to attribute mostly to ben’s death and mi-young being matt’s link to his korean and asian identity, but as the season has progressed, i’m starting to get the idea that ben wasn’t entirely faultless either.

matt certainly doesn’t view him as a bad man, doesn’t seem to be particularly traumatised by his father---and yet, there’s a distinct lack of his presence in both shows, he’s only mentioned once and even that in direct relation to matt’s mother and not him, and when kristy comments on the crib colour matt chose being  ‘ daddy issues red ’, it almost looks like it cut... a little bit deeper than it was intended to, a little bit deeper than a joke that boils down to  ‘ if our child grows to hate you this crib colour will be the reason why ’  should, especially as matt can’t really excuse his apparently insecurity at the phrase with being a new dad.

i could name something about the father of almost every other bau member---a fun fact, profession, hobby, first name---and yet has never mentioned him in the mainshow. never compared himself to him, never shared his father’s wisdom;  for a character who is so largely defined by his writers by his fatherhood, that sure feels like an oddity.

i don’t think matt was lying when he said his mother loved his father, nor do i think those feelings weren’t mutual. i do think that ben, as a father was... not enough, in the broadest possible terms---not really present, not really that supportive, but also not outright neglient or abusive in a way that would have registered to matt as a red flag. he was there more in the role of a man who loved matt’s mother than he was as a father figure, and while he wasn’t an inherently bad person for that, he did leave matt with a strange emptiness that took years for him to notice, and mi-young with enough distrust or lack of faith in men to not even consider dating or remarrying to give matt a stepdad. the lack of extended family from both sides  ( due to pre-war intercontinental adoption on mi-young’s side, and due to racism on ben’s )  also meant there was no uncle or granddad to step into that role.

it wasn’t until during post-military councilling that matt came to acknowledge that lack of a father figure---it’d never occurred to him, he had a dad, and mi-young was more than enough of a parent on her own both before and after ben’s drunken fall down the stairs that matt had never knowingly felt he needed something. that perhaps, he might be disappointed in ben, for his shortcomings as a father, in working the evenings and nights even when other shifts were available, in drinking after work that lead to matt sometimes chatting with an intoxicated father before school, in failing to protect and stand up to his wife and son when his parents told him in no uncertain terms that they preferred his previous marriage and why that was.

matt doesn’t see his father as having been a bad person, as much as someone who perhaps should have not been a parent, and he doesn’t see himself as being hurt by this, as much as not quite as whole as he could be. it’s not really a hole that ben’s emotional distance left him as much as a gap  ( like i said, mi-young was an excellent parent ):  not large enough to be noticeable, not something that would cause him to malfunction---just a feeling, a knowledge of how with a little bit more support, a little bit more encouragement, just a little bit more, he could’ve done a little bit better.

david rossi isn’t quite the right shape to fill that gap, but he certainly knows how to make it feel smaller.

[armyhoned]

MINOR CANON DIVERGENCE:  A MASTERPOST.

scarred, few on places that are visible. some from military, some---specifically the facial scars, the most notable ones, especially given that one of them goes through his eyebrow---from injuries sustained during an explosion on irt’s last case.

served with luke in the military for his short time in the army rangers and then a few times more after progressing to delta force;  thanks to the largely classified nature of especially matt’s military background later on, they haven’t disclosed this to the rest of the team, so most of them isn’t aware of this. garcia could find out if it came to her to compare their files side by side and connect dots, emily knows that their time in that branch of the military overlaps but not the specifics.

( ps. i don’t force this canon upon people who play luke but have it as an opt-in---it’s just a part of my background headcanon collection based on the apparent familiarity the two seemed to have from the get-go. )

in contact with the agent group formerly known as the irt. mae is going to be present when the fifth child is born. i know it hasn’t happened yet, but i’m fixing it pre-emptively.

in general, cmbb canon overrules mothershow:

still has his motorcycle. the team knows this. probably would have not driven his pregnant wife two months away from popping to the baby shower, but. you know. the bike exists and he’s come to work on it on several occasions.

matt is more than comfortable with technology and holds no distinct nostalgia to doing things ‘old-fashioned’. a creature of habit, yes, and has a tendency to trust printed word over sourceless digital info, but shown to adapt to using new methods both for work and for comfort when the new method proves itself worth the discomfort of change:  implied to have waited for a long time before changing from his flip phone to one with a partial touchscreen and a qwerty keyboard, and didn’t seem personally interested in a smartwatch like mae, but at the same time was shown reading an agatha christie from a tablet;  the new features of the phone and the watch didn’t feel pronounced enough, but the advantages of having a tablet for reading compared to taking space in his backpack with full-size books was clear enough for him to change his ways without prompting.

what i’m saying is that yes, board games would be played and probably preferred to most video games, but if they didn’t have a functioning set of dice, there’s literally no reason why he wouldn't use his fancy new phone for it.

also just... smarter than one would probably presume from the mothershow. this is less that the mothershow has portrayed him as less intelligent than cmbb  ( though i’m sure i could find examples )  and more that cmbb was better at showing it without needing to state it out loud and cm has proven itself not particularly great at picking up on those kinds of things.

has a huge network of people he can ask for help from, and whom he’s ready to help when needed, thanks to friends made during his military years. this was stated in cm 10x19, but it seems to have been forgotten, so no harm in reiterating.

phil is not dead.

more to be added when needed.

[armyhoned]

the first time matt plays, he plays a chaotic good drow assassin rogue: he finally gets to break rules while doing good, the concept of evil races doesn’t sit right with him from the get-go, the kind of strategy you use as a rogue is one he’s familiar with, and it’s not really until the rest of the table see him pour over the bucket of dice that is a high-level sneak attack that they realise how quick matt is at counting in his head. his character is probably a sibling to mae’s character.

( mae, who, by the way, teases them endlessly about what nerds they are for the d&d, loudly declaring that they no longer get to deny that they’re 100% dorks if they’re playing dungeons and dragons. )

( she has also not missed a single session. )

his backup character is a tiefling sorcerer. apparently he’s just really into playing against suggested alignments---and also just. not using long-distance weapons or fists.

it only takes him a couple of sessions for him to start writing down ideas for a homebrew setting. he test-runs some ideas by playing the game for his kids, keeping a notebook separate for ideas not exactly suitable for kids. he writes down on it one day on the bau jet, gets asked about it, explains it roughly... a month later, he’s hosting a game for the bau, with frequent drop-ins from his irt friends whenever they’re available.

no one is safe from the peer pressure of joining in. no one. rossi tries: a few weeks, and they’re playing at his mansion.

there’s almost always a way or two to get out of encounters by talking: a way to listen or be kind or say just the right thing to avoid or seriously hamper a fight. he has. very, very long backstories for npcs, many monsters included---murderhobo at your own risk.

[armyhoned]

jon sims vc: supplemental.

i also keep going back to the dragon story. i’ve already talked about how telling it is that matt’s version of a bedtime story is one of a dragon---the archevil of all bedtime stories, the enemy for the hero to slay in every playset, fairytale, wallpaper, picture book---being lost and scared in the woods before finding a family and making a home there.

it also has all the hallmarks of the kind of storytelling where you end up projecting just a little bit.

it certainly sounds familiar  ( even if we’re to ignore the unintended foreshadowing to matt’s time after the irt was disbanded before being brought along to the bau, which, you know, ouch ). matt was alone a lot in his childhood, in the sense that he didn’t quite have meaningful, deep friendships until very late in life, and both of his parents worked a lot---especially if we add ben’s emotionally unavailability, it can quite easily be seen how he’d tell a story of a random-character-all-connections-to-real-people-completely-unintended-not-based-on-a-true-story-at-all in that manner:  of lacking a family  ( we don’t know if mi-young was alive at this point, but they must’ve known her time was coming to an end ), until travelling further and finding one, making one. 

[armyhoned]

matt only speaks korean as a second language, and is more likely to write it under ‘known languages’ than as a native language, as his mother’s skill level was not high enough to teach him for long. does speak it fluently, but it is entirely through his own persistence to learn it.

he definitely sounds like a foreigner when he visits korea. a local he asks help from in cmbb 2x04 notices immediately that he’s not local, and when matt tells him he’s from the u.s., the man tells him he can tell from how matt speaks. matt looks slightly hurt but not surprised at the remark and the tone of it.

didn’t learn to eat with chopsticks until his late teens to early twenties. not a lot of diversity in restaurant choices in carson city, so it wasn’t until he moved to detroit to study that he was first exposed to asian food to begin with, and thus came to learn the use of chopsticks.

the aforementioned contributes to why he can’t tolerate some types of spicy food to this day, as he never built up a tolerance to it.

more to be added when i think of it.

[armyhoned]

small headcanon dump again  ( some of these probably mentioned on the blog earlier but this blog is also getting Old )  re: matt & work habits.

super fast at paperwork. it was a small competition in the irt, with matt rarely being last place, and now at the bau, is almost always the first to turn in his reports and shit because he’s used to being efficient with it and not having the possibility to procrastinate lest he delays the departure of the entire team. rarely makes errors either, has a reflex of going through every paper he hands out twice: once with thought, once to just check for empty boxes or missing things. is still quick as hell with it. probably startled emily a lot with this at first.

drinks coffee, tries to remember how everyone takes theirs to bring some too. drinks his coffee black but with enough sugar to scare off a dentist. it’s bad. he knows it. it’s not even x spoonfuls, he just pours it straight out of the container. this isn’t even a headcanon this legit happened in the show and i ??? every time.

makes more than $100k a year. between him and kristy the simmons family brings in a total of roughly $200k a year. as someone who grew up in v humble origins, it’s a little bit strange to him. the money is spent mostly on Essentials of Better Than Average Quality, and into the kids and their future. and kristy’s throw pillow collection, but mostly the kids.

occasionally photographs evidence with his phone despite no one or nothing really prompting him to. another irt habit, born out of circumstances where the local authorities may decide to or have to due to their procedural customs deny access to the evidence mid-investigation. frequently, may not even realise until he’s going through his camera roll later on.

unlike many of his coworkers, does not keep a habit of harbouring days off and putting them off. because of the kids and especially since kristy’s Thing, tries to take his off days when they’re due in order to help at home, only really saving them up if he knows there’s vacations or holidays or possible snowdays coming up when the kids will be home all at once. the kids are a bit young for travels abroad yet, but that’s also something he wants to start doing once they need slightly less targeted attention during flights.

that being said, does not mind a long or late day every once in a while. he enjoys the atmosphere of the bullpen, and doesn’t mind putting in extra hours when he knows the kids will be asleep anyway by the time he gets off. those can be taken back when they’re needed to.

if the kids are away from home, matt will be either late or slightly less rested or put together when he comes to work the following morning. you gotta take those moments where you get them, man.

[armyhoned]

matt thinks himself theoretically entirely capable of having casual sex with strangers. there is exactly zero evidence to this claim. quite the opposite, the last time he tried, he ended up literally marrying the person. while sex without romantic feelings isn’t an impossibility to him, the part where you’re supposed to cut them out and never react to their presense is the obstacle here, and matt has yet to learn how to climb it.

[armyhoned]

matt is very much seen as the “back up” captain america after rogers is found. he’s someone with experience with the shield and the title, someone who can fill in the gap if rogers ever falls before someone else is found. for all of his dislike of change, matt is very quick to adapt to new things, especially within a familiar context, and he’s very aware there may come a day when he’s asked to take up the mantle for a while again.

as for himself, matt doesn’t see himself as captain america. in what’s part insecurity and a much larger part with feeling a disconnect between his mortal human life and the icon that is the real real, he sees himself as a support more than anything else: he’s glad to take it, accepts the use of the name on field, but it comes out of the place of duty---both patriotic and empathy-based. he’s willing to help shield, his country, even the legacy of steve rogers himself by being there when rogers can’t, but he can’t see himself taking the position as anything permanent.

he’s a soldier, and captain america is a good uniform---but at the end of the day, he needs to be matt simmons before anything else.

[armyhoned]

guardian angels are very specifically not supposed to prevent bad things from happening. not to shield their protectees from life and bad things, only help the find the strength from within themselves to be able to continue and flourish and achieve whatever their god-intended purpose is. they’re not allowed to save people around the protectee, not allowed to alter the path of the people of whom they’re guardians, not allowed to use their powers to leave more of an impact on the lives of their protectees than is absolutely necessary.

needless to say, matt working for the fbi isn’t... exactly in compliance of this. on a very, very technical level, he’s not breaking a rule: the lives he saves during his time walking the earth are rarely if ever related to his official assignment, and if it ever came down to that and someone from heaven accused him of it, his response would be as thus.

deep down he knows the rules would be rewritten to close the loophole and he’d likely be summoned back to heaven as soon as someone found out. he thinks he’ll come back, rejoice in the work he did even if it meant he’ll never be allowed down there for the rest of eternity, and remain disappointed but peaceful for the rest of all time.

in reality, that would likely be the day matthew falls.

[armyhoned]

reposting tags, part one.

[armyhoned]

matt doesn’t hate you if u work for the cia. he might even like you as a person---though, always ‘despite’ the fact and never ‘even with’---he just wants to stay as far away from your employer as occupationally possible, and even the most positive of thoughts about it as a whole, as well as examples of individuals there, are filtered through annoyance at best and mixed terror and disgust at worst.

[armyhoned]

matt watches both soccer world cups and eurovision song contests and i will not be accepting construtive criticism on this.

[armyhoned]

the extended answer to this ask:    even with his family with kristy excluded, the things that brighten matt’s day are and always will be people-based. not only are there a hundred people who directly have that effect on him, it’s also just seeing other people’s happiness that radiates directly to his mood. it’s very easy to name people who brighten his day before they even notice he’s there  ( mae jarvis, penelope garcia, russell montgomery... )  but seeing people he cares about get overjoyed at the sight of a face revealing from behind elevator doors, or start laughing when a projectile they’ve flinged at another bullpen gets thrown back at them, or visibly get energy from embracing someone else... it’s all those things, too. i’ve talked about matt’s empathy before and how it makes him a great profiler, but it’s also the thing that brings him the most small joys in day to day life---and is also exactly the reason why he loves being in love and having a family so much.

[armyhoned]

late october through january, the simmons fam are preparing for a new holiday or celebration like every week bc of not only all the holidays there, but kristy and matt’s anniversary and the boys’ birthdays land on that timespan too.

cons: holiday stress amplified like fuck, decorations need to be put up and taken down and put up again very quickly, so much shopping pros: so many opportunities for regifting

[armyhoned]

okay, but re: matt and reid’s info dumps---matt has a very strong attitude of “i asked, and regardless of if i planned to get an answer, i did ask, so now i’m listening to the answer and try to keep up while looking as interested as i can”

and that’s the thing  ( and something this gifset sorrowfully cut out ): matt asks. and in that case, not only does he ask but he does it despite jj trying to give him the hint that he’s going to get a much longer answer than he’s probably expecting. when he can tell spencer is offering a topic to discuss, when there’s something to pick up on what he’s telling him, matt asks to not only show that he’s listening but to possibly learn something fun to share when its relevant, even if it doesn’t directly align with his personal interests.

this is something i largely pin on the presence of clara and monty in his life: matt has been on a team with two infodumping geniuses before and thus been in a situation where an innocent question leads to a more complicated answer than he’s expected---and the difference between the two and reid is what gets him occasionally, and earns being called “rookie” by jj: reid has a wider range of knowledge than either of the two, doesn’t leave a lot of room for asking questions when he talks, and has a tendency to expect a higher level of pre-existing knowledge from the people he conversates with, and it’s that combination of characteristics that matt frequently forgets and that leaves him in that state of “i’m not going to understand half of what i’m being told here, but fuck, i’m not gonna make him feel bad for answering a question i asked so i might as well try”

[armyhoned]

matt gets the “no one else” tattoo about two weeks following the events of ex parte, shortly after talking and catching up with collin marks. kristy has a matching one on her person. while the idea of making them match was based on self-empowerement, matt considers his ink to be a tribute to kristy more than to himself.