#idk. theres a reason i never became a reidgirl

[maschotch]

Just to popcorn off the anon post about the fandom obsession with Reid’s autism and/or angst surrounding it and/or angst about him, I completely agree with their and your take. There is such a hyper fixation around this in general with him, just because he’s the most popular character in the show. Idk, I’ve been in other fandoms and I’ve only ever had 1 fandom favorite be my fav in the show, and it was EXHAUSTING. Any fanfiction was obsessed with either 1) riddling said character with various mental illnesses and making them suffer to uncomfortable amounts 2) making said character queer and/or trans IN ORDER to make them a victim of a hate crime 3) dump a ridiculous amount of physical/s*xual/mental abuse on character for angst. I adore angst, but it gets exhausting when it seems the fandom favs, USUALLY less masculine male characters (or overly feminized by fandom and are usually white/white passing) consistenty are burdened with these tropes. It just makes me feel gross, especially in the case of criminal minds where Morgan, the canon victim of s*xual abuse, gets far less attention in this fics related to this trauma than Reid (or Hotch, who has the whole situation with Foyet that could be easily interpreted as and analogy for r*pe). But no, both are older, masculine, less soft fem boy then Reid (which just adds to the misconceptions about who can be victims of s*xual assault). Other than r*pe, people also wrote more pregnancy fics related to Reid than, I don’t know, let’s say Emily, who literally has the whole story about getting pregnant at 15 and having an abortion. Give me a story about her!

I guess I’m just sick of the hyper feminization of Reid (mostly in fanfiction tbh). It just speaks to a larger trend in fandoms, and is a general commentary on the weird views of gender and sexuality/perception of autism in our society. A certain type fits into a certain box, and people run with it.

thats such a good point…. i think white twink chars in most fandoms get treated like that but especially the very ~~gnc~~ reid??? its almost like that justifies all the shit fic authors put him through? like ive seen more pregnant reid fics than i have other mpreg fic for other, more popular characters in much bigger fandoms. its such a weird fixation that ive never understood

and like… ok people can hc what they want i guess but sometimes i’ll see people theorize that reid was sexually abused by his father and im like ???? where do you get that?? again, you’ve got morgan and hotch right there who have storylines specifically around that, but apparently thats not good enough bc they’re too masculine?? theres just a lot fucked up with that

i feel like people use their own projecting on/identifying with reid to justify the extremely homophobic/transphobic/ableist/whatever treatment, but its such a prevalent pattern in reid fics that its really just concerning. its really hard for me to believe that this is therapeutic for this many people when its much more likely that the majority are just continuing the trend of fetishizing gnc, neurodivergent, queercoded skinny, white men. especially by majority white, abled w depression or anxiety so it doesnt count!!, cis but i was questioning so it doesnt count!!, straight but i think jj is hot so im probably queer!! women—its the same story every time