#tldr: jennifer jareau deserved better

[beware-of-you-98]

JENNIFER👏JAREAU👏DESERVED👏BETTER👏

��it’s rant time✨

buckle up lads bc it’s gonna be a doozy 

tw// suicide mention, tw// canon typical cm violence, tw// je— 🤢 jei—🤢🤢 i can’t even fucking say it 🤢🤢🤢 je*d

so yesterday i was watching criminal minds again (wow shocker) again for the first time in like,,,, 3 months??? [that’s not important] on weTV (which was just so happening to air reruns from season 3) and there was one thing that really stuck out to me that i didn’t necessarily think about much until i went into work today

season 3, episode 15 “a higher power” shows the team going up to pittsburgh to investigate a spike in suicides rates in the community under the suspicion that it’s the work of a serial killer (okay, cool, normal fucked up every day BAU life, nothing really sus there)

but what really kinda just hit me out of the blue today was just.... how unaffected jj was by the whole case in general

the team is maybe at most, a few hours away from her hometown, with the main topic of the case being surrounded by multiple suicides and taking her past into consideration (she’s literally a stone’s throw away from her hometown where she lost her sister to suicide) and yet she just.... remains unbothered... she never toys with the necklace around her neck or ever seems uncomfortable despite this case hitting way too close to home

i guess just rewatching this episode really just... opened my eyes into how underdeveloped jj was character wise for a really long time (i mean really we know more about gideon and elle in season 4 than we do jj and they had been gone for at least a season and a half at this point)

i mean.... i guess in in heat we get... something??? when we find out that she’s been seeing will for nearly a year?? cool i guess??? and we do get an episode named after her but really it doesn’t tell us much about her background or dive more into her story other than “oh strauss is forcing me to leave that sucks” but it doesn’t really go much into detail about anything beyond that

oh hotch handpicked her to join the unit but i don’t think it ever gets any deeper than that (when it should have!!!!??!!) [correct me if i’m wrong]]

by season 5 we have a detailed idea about every other character on the team (with the only exception possibly being garcia but i digress)

we know hotch has a younger brother that looks absolutely nothing like him and said brother wants to be a chef

we know rossi came back to the bau because of a cold case that’s gone unsolved for twenty years

we know every year, morgan goes home for his birthday and visits the grave of the john doe he found when he was a teenager

we know way too much about reid and his issues jesus christ

fucking hell we even know about emily’s dark past, how much it still haunts her even before we get the ian doyle arc

even ashley seaver has a deeper storyline than jj at this point like ffs

jj.... well..... she has that boyfriend down in louisiana ig?????

and that’s what becomes annoying

jj’s character really isn’t developed past more than i have a boyfriend and i’m pregnant up until maybe, and that’s a really generous maybe, the episode will gets held hostage at a bank and damn near gets himself killed (we see her with henry.... again, i’m being very generous here)

really, we don’t see jj get any sort of deep development the rest of the team has been getting until 200

i loved seeing her finally get some depth, for her character to finally be treated as if she’s an important asset rather than a pretty face that deals with media

she becomes a character we can sympathize with!!! she has issues and fears and traumas!!! finally!!!

and then they keep expanding on her as the seasons continue!!! like yes!!! this is what i wanted from the beginning!!! jj deserved this!!!

and then

it all comes crashing and burning into a pile of shit with five words

five

words

you know the words so i really don’t have to type them out and become unnecessarily angry

but wtf

all that character development they had spent building up over the years, after finally starting to get the ball rolling to making jj a solid character the writers decided “,,,,,,let’s just boil her down romantic feelings she kept hidden for....reid.” (of all people????? confusion)

the biggest sigh i just let out

first of all, that’s such an overdone trope in hollywood and in modern times we’re sick of it we need way more flavor than that

second of all it just..... ruins jj’s character right there on the spot

a majority (maybe i’m just generalizing) but most people in the fandom are reid stans and of COURSE they’re going to be absolutely livid at that bitch jennifer jareau pulling that card on their favorite little twink

it makes her look like a bitch

and it literally makes no sense whatsoever

they went on one “date” once in season 1 and it’s never mentioned again until jj confides to emily in the bathroom in the first episode of season 14

they have about as much romantic chemistry as two planks of wood

what was so wrong with jj and reid being best friends/having a sibling like relationship (which would have been a big deal for jj!!! to let someone that close again!!!! but no!!!!!!! jj is woman!!!!!! reid is man!!!! they must have romantic chemistry!!!!!! gross)

why did jj have to have hidden romantic feelings for reid

please tell me why that was a thing

and then the writers (probably sensing that they in fact fucked up big time) just kinda.... brush it off in 15

“u were my first love” reid: “oh okay (is sad for the duration of the season)”

it doesn’t fix what happened

it doesn’t change what happened

jj still looks like a huge bitch to a majority of the fandom

and it was overall a completely useless and pointless arc that just set out to completely ruin jj and it’s so infuriating

what was the reason

what was the reason

why u gotta do it to her like that writers

i’m sad jj deserved so much better than what those stinky writers did to her

tldr: jj deserved better