#cm shit

What Happened:

In this recent ScreenRant article, "Paramount+'s Criminal Minds Format Change Finally Backfires", the reporter criticised the new format of CME only having 10-episodes per season. They mostly discussed how Evolution keeps falling flat in terms of plot, because it keeps introducing too many characters and subplots without actually having the time to wrap everything up nicely.

Paget saw this article, then, completely unprovoked she got on Twitter to publicly belittle and insult the reporter who wrote the article. [She later deleted the tweet, but here's a screenshot]

This immediately caused an outrage from a lot of people who follow her. Yet, not everyone was upset by her comments. She's always had absolutely unhinged stans (who think she can do no wrong), and those people not only backed her up, some of them allegedly started sending the reporter hate mail & threats. (If people have sources for this, let me know and I'll add them)

The controversy ultimately led to Paget posting an apology on Twitter [X]

Following this incident, multiple entertainment news outlets picked it up and began publishing articles about it. Which, only added more fuel to the fire, by spreading the incident and it's controversy beyond the containment of Twitter.

Reports: [Variety], [Deadline], [The Wrap], [TMZ] (there are so many more than this)

My Thoughts:

Paget's mean-tweet and the subsequent fallout are just another reminder of why I still believe in drawing a line between fandom and the powers that be.

With the rise of social media over the past 20 years, it's now become the norm for actors, writers, showrunners, etc. to publicly interact with (and in this case, lash out at) fans. Call me old school, but I miss when those interactions were extremely frowned upon by both the fandom and the PTB.

That she survived is a straight up miracle, the idea that she escaped without some serious consequences is not something i'm willing to entertain.

(That she wasn't in hospital in ICU and High dependency for months is also something i'm not willing to entertain honestly, but she can be in Paris instead I guess.)

blah blah blah 'where the wound was' and all but I don't care... I want something to have literally died on that warehouse floor.

And she's always got that -realistically-disfiguring scar on her abdomen. A permanent reminder. It wasn't Clean, it was a dirty, splintery bit of wood embedded into her stomach. That wound doesn't leave a nice neat incision scar or a little bit of wrong texture on the skin afterwards.

Maybe it even pinches a little when she stretches, where they had to pull the skin closed over the large wound. Maybe she feels it there every day physically and on top of that, has to be careful for what it did to her insides, too.

it's also evil that despite June being pride month, the cm social media team has yet to make a single post about tebecca on instagram, especially as it took weeks for them to post a Tara reel while Rebecca has yet to have one yet they make all these random reels of all the unsubs in s19 so far, despite not making these unsub reels for past evolution seasons

Think about all the screentime they SHOULD have had that was instead focused on Voit being an MC for four fucking seasons 😒😒😒 HE'S A GODDAMN UNSUB!!!!! WHY is he still here???? Why is he the one getting screentime and building profiles with Emily, or whoever... Instead of us seeing more of the actual BAU MEMBERS.

Not only have we been robbed of Tebecca screentime, CME as a whole has constantly robbed us of screentime focusing on female characters, in general!!!!

When CME was announced, I was SO hyped, because for the first time in 16 years of Criminal Minds, we were going to see a 2:1 female to male ratio on the team.

I was so stupidly optimistic when Messmaker and all the cast members kept saying, "Evolution is going to really show who these characters are outside of the job. We're going to see much more of their personal lives!", in EVERY teaser interview prior to S16.

Turns out, what they really meant was, "We put Will in every episode of S16 because we don't know how to make JJ her own character without her husband." and "Uh, Rossi is the main focus and he is unhinged, bc we once again, killed the spouse of a BAU agent, since we don't know how to write character growth outside of trauma dumping on them."

By the end of S16, that beautiful, hopeful, 2:1 ratio between female and male MCs was already back to 1:1, because they chose to make Voit and Tyler main characters. 🙄🤔😒

They literally promoted Zach (Voit) to main cast before S16 finished airing, yet Nicole Pacent (Rebecca) is still just a 'guest' even though her character works closely with the team and she's now MARRIED to Tara.

Evolution would have been SO much better, if the show runners had chosen to genuinely focus on the BAU team members we already knew and loved, instead of making the entire reboot all about Voit. 🫠

Do I think it's coincidence that CME, which is the first time MGG wasn't playing the fandom's favourite Speciale Boy™, quickly turned into a series that solely focuses on the how's new conventionally attractive white dude? Nope, no I do not. I think that was the entire reason they promoted Zach.

Because, heaven forbid the showrunners actually have to write fleshed out characterisation of their female characters and their one male POC.

* This doesn't even filter down to fics actually ABOUT Tebecca btw. If I did that it's about 40 total fics

It's been THREE years since Tebecca became the first and ONLY canonical queer ship in 20+ years of Criminal Minds history, yet they're still treated as an after thought by the fandom.

We have a canonically queer Black female MC... But people ignore Tara and her relationship, in lieu of exclusively caring about the two skinny white women 🤔

I have 184 Criminal Minds works on AO3, spanning back 10+ years.

55% of those are Jemily, the other 45% includes many different femslash ships (including 24 Tebecca fics)

AND. YET.

I ONLY ever get kudos on Jemily fics. 🙃

I often see the same reader leave kudos on 5-10 separate fics in a single day.... All Jemily. Always Jemily.