#an outlet... physically and emotionally... suckin n fuckin to forget how much they hate themselves

[maschotch]

I've gone a little deeper about Emily's past in my fic 'Unrequited' and 'As It Was'. I'm just obsessed with her character and the backstory both she and Hotch have. And I just finish reading the little backstory you did about Emily and I loved it!!

i’m really not much of a jemily fan (partly because i think fanon characterizations of jj are completely delusional, partly because i think fanon characterizations of emily are beyond insulting, and mostly because i cannot fucking fathom what anyone could possibly like about jj), but i went ahead and read those two pieces because i figured you came into my inbox already knowing that. it’s just… not how i see either of those characters. not even necessarily the shipping aspect, even ignoring my reservations about jj, but because of the way i think emily approaches relationships

this sounds hypocritical after writing about emily + family, but i feel like emily doesn’t really care about her biological family anymore. at least i’d like to. i’d like to think she’s accepted that she’ll never be what her mother wants and that she’ll never get what she wants from her mother. she’s 36 when she joins the bau—surely that’s enough time to realize she can’t hold onto those childish fantasies anymore. not that i disagree with what i wrote, i just think it's given her a complex ab family rather than it actually being something she truly craves. it was a setup for her life: she wasn't meant to be with others, which is something she eventually tries to change about herself

i’m a big fan of low-empathy emily, so i feel like she has to put active effort into caring about relationships. as a child raised by an extremely distant parent, she probably chalked it up to never having connections growing up, so she never learned how to make connections in the future. it’s easier to assume she’s broken, and it’s easier to blame her mom for it

but really, i don’t think there’s anything wrong with her, she’s just different. at some point i think she had to wrestle with that: it’s hard to think she fell into the job best suited for her personality just by coincidence. being a spy requires that cold, calculating observation and analysis of relationship dynamics. she can view things objectively because she isn’t naturally inclined to get emotionally attached. she can witness unfathomable horrors without a flinch—things that would rock jj to her core, things that would perturb the unflappable hotch. she knows she’s better equipped to handle those types of experiences because having empathy was never really a priority. (it's part of why i think she was the only one who could've walked through hotch's apartment that day: she wouldn't get distracted)  

that being said, i don’t think connections are impossible for her. the bau proves that, declan proves that. but i think that was a conscious choice on her part: she had seen enough—caused enough—pain and grief to realize that she should feel guilty for it. so i think she wakes up every day and decides to care. she decides to be a good person. eventually she confronts that she's tired of living a life she doesn't feel like she could be proud of

she’s not heartless, by any means. she just doesn’t become emotionally involved until she comes to the logical conclusion to do so. she has a soft spot for kids because they haven’t had a chance to truly know themselves and the world they live in. she loves the team because of how deeply connected they are to each other. so, when push comes to shove, she’s always willing to leave if it means keeping them together. it’s easy to make that choice because she loves them: in season 3 when the choice is between her and hotch and she knows hotch’s loss will devastate them; in season 6 when she’s making them potential targets for doyle’s vendetta; in season 7 when she feels the tension that never quite settled upon her return. i don’t know if any of the others would’ve made those decisions as easily, even if it was the best choice for them as a whole. not even hotch, who is terrified that his proximity is enough to hurt people he cares about. she’s detached in a way that can separate her from others, but she’s able to turn that into her strength: whether that means manipulating her way into terrorist organizations or walking away from the only chance at a family she's ever had just to keep them safe

i have my bits and pieces of evidence for it that i can scrounge into a semi-believable character analysis, but ultimately i think it’s so i can enjoy more of her character without getting irked by aspects of the archetypes she could fit that would typically annoy me. i’d like to think she’s above some of that: she’s too cool to have mommy issues, too badass to spend years pining over relationships, too self assured to be insecure about her decisions, too smart to let anyone see through her. 

i say all this as a hotch fan, who has traits very similar to these. but it suits him. it makes him more interesting, to know that there’s a vulnerability behind his stoic appearance. but with emily i think it’s far more admirable for her to choose to suffer because she wants to care. minimal loss is the perfect example of that: she makes the logical choice to put herself at risk because she wants to protect reid. she’s not running away from who she is anymore, and she’s not really fighting it either. she chooses to be a good person, not out of guilt or even love, but because it’s something she values. 

for me, emily is the cool brooding hero who could be a villain so easily. maybe, in an earlier time in her life, she was. but she’s done being selfish. she’s willing to make sacrifices for others because she decided that living by a code is better than living for nothing at all, even if it causes her pain. guilt and love—two burning sensations that were so opposite yet so intrinsically linked—were burdens she chose to bear so she wouldn’t feel so hollow anymore. and it does cause her pain. so, so much pain. to me, it makes her endlessly more fascinating. i’d rather her be a knife that dulls its edges than something soft chiseled to a jagged point.