Spencer Reid (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
leftinbasketforfbi) wrote2012-07-16 02:22 pm
leftinbasketforfbi) wrote2012-07-16 02:22 pm
Striatum Application
ORIGINAL UNIVERSE APPLICATION
YOU
NAME: Mab
AGE: Old enough
JOURNAL: I have no personal one, so this'll do
RESERVE: Yep!
YOUR CHARACTER
NAME: Spencer Reid
JOURNAL:leftinbasketforfbi
FANDOM: Criminal Minds
AGE: 30
APPEARANCE: Here's a link to a picture, and it's worth mentioning that Reid's played by an ex-fashion model. One of his fellow actors once described him as 'so pretty he's almost a girl'.
Spencer Reid is tall and lanky with very soft, somewhat boyish features. Even after he's hit thirty, people still sometimes treat him like a kid because he looks so young. He has brown hair and big brown eyes, but under his clothes, he has a lot of scars. He has the scar from a bullet on his leg and track marks on the inside of his elbows, among other things.
CANON POINT: At the end of season 7, after JJ's wedding and before Emily told everyone that she would be leaving the BAU.
MEMORY LOSS: Yes, he will lose all memories pertaining to his life, but he'll keep basic knowledge like how to read and times tables and stuff like that.
WIKI:Link!
PERSONALITY: Spencer Reid is a genius. That is the first thing you'll ever know about him. He has an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and can read 20,000 words per minute. He loves learning, and can prove it with multiple BA's and several PhD's. Because of his amazing intelligence, he skipped several grades and graduated high school when he was twelve, and he was bullied viciously.
Most geniuses in fiction lord their intelligence over others and look down on those with average intelligence. Not Reid. He was beaten down very thoroughly growing up--while his mother loved and encouraged him, she was schizophrenic and unable to help him cope with the bullying. He never learned how to keep his mouth shut--he still loves spouting trivia and sharing his knowledge with others--but the bullies did make him start believing that he wasn't really worth much. That notion was cemented when his father abandoned him and his mother, and that caused a massive abandonment complex in his son.
Because of all this, Reid is uncommonly humble for someone so intelligent. He's very aware that he's usually the smartest person in the room, but it doesn't always seem important to him, and he's capable of accepting that other people can think of things that he doesn't. He's good at working in a group, and despite being very socially awkward, he's a pleasant person to be around. He's a very kind man who likes helping others, but he doesn't really like having the spotlight on him. He gets nervous when a lot of people pay attention to him.
Beyond his humbleness, though, Reid is very special because of how he can see the good in people. It takes him a while to love a person because he's afraid that they'll leave him, but once he does, he always sees the best of them. He knows that they have flaws and he's aware that they're there, but he doesn't really see them. He always sees the reason that he loves them, and he has the capability to see them at their best even when they're at their worst. When he loves, he loves with his whole heart, which makes it especially painful when he's betrayed somehow.
That's a major disadvantage Reid has. When he's hurt, he's hurt. He'll withdraw and deny and pretend that there's nothing wrong, but he trusts the people he loves (and honestly, those people are restricted to his mother and his teammates) wholly, and it causes real damage if one of them hurts him.
Because of his difficulty dealing with social situations, he often depends on his own mind to keep him company. 'It's lonely on the top' very much applies to Reid, because except with his teammates, people generally avoid interacting with him because his intellect is so intimidating and his habit of spouting tangentially related trivia can be off-putting. Because of his mother's schizophrenia, he's painfully aware that his mind may not be as reliable as other people assume it is, which leads to his biggest fear being that he inherited his mother's illness. His mind is the only thing which has remained true to him through all his hardship, and the concept that it could utterly fall apart is absolutely terrifying to him. That affects him because if something happens to cause him to doubt his own sanity, he will freak out. He's spent too long being afraid not to.
Possibly because of his abuse at the hands of peers his whole life, there are times when he exudes an aura of vulnerability that attracts abusers like flies. This becomes less frequent as he becomes more confident with himself, but there's a pattern of Unsubs (the serial killers he tracks for a living) specifically targeting him when they could target anyone else on the team. This happens professionally, so it probably also happens personally. My headcanon is that he has a history of moderately abusive (and by that, I mean emotionally abusive, not physically or sexually) romantic relationships (which leads him to be wary of relationships, but that's a story for another time) that he always eventually cuts off, because despite the aura, he does have an aggressive side.
Reid is passive by nature, but if he feels it's worth it, he knows how to dig in his heels and say 'no'. An angry Reid is a very scary thing to behold, but he can and will get angry and confront people who he feels deserve it, such as teachers who told a boy to get over it when his father and peers ruthlessly abused and humiliated him, or at a man who sexually abused his daughter and then submitted her to electroshock therapy to shut her up. Even if he's kind and humble and passive, he's very brave and has a powerful sense of what is right and what is wrong. He will approach a man in the middle of a homicidal psychotic break and try talking him down, or lock himself in a house with anthrax when he knows he's already infected and won't allow his teammate to suffer the same fate, or even talk to the father who abandoned him nearly twenty years prior. He's strong enough to crush an addiction to Dilaudid all by himself and keep himself from relapsing for seven years. He's brave enough to continue hunting down serial killers after getting captured and tortured by one. He's resilient enough to be able to smile and see the good in people after working for a decade with serial killers. He's all these things, and that combines to make an amazing man.
Not that he'd ever realize it on his own, though.
POWERS: He doesn't have any magical powers.
RP SAMPLE: Musebox link!
ANYTHING ELSE?: No, I think that's good.
YOU
NAME: Mab
AGE: Old enough
JOURNAL: I have no personal one, so this'll do
RESERVE: Yep!
YOUR CHARACTER
NAME: Spencer Reid
JOURNAL:
leftinbasketforfbiFANDOM: Criminal Minds
AGE: 30
APPEARANCE: Here's a link to a picture, and it's worth mentioning that Reid's played by an ex-fashion model. One of his fellow actors once described him as 'so pretty he's almost a girl'.
Spencer Reid is tall and lanky with very soft, somewhat boyish features. Even after he's hit thirty, people still sometimes treat him like a kid because he looks so young. He has brown hair and big brown eyes, but under his clothes, he has a lot of scars. He has the scar from a bullet on his leg and track marks on the inside of his elbows, among other things.
CANON POINT: At the end of season 7, after JJ's wedding and before Emily told everyone that she would be leaving the BAU.
MEMORY LOSS: Yes, he will lose all memories pertaining to his life, but he'll keep basic knowledge like how to read and times tables and stuff like that.
WIKI:Link!
PERSONALITY: Spencer Reid is a genius. That is the first thing you'll ever know about him. He has an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and can read 20,000 words per minute. He loves learning, and can prove it with multiple BA's and several PhD's. Because of his amazing intelligence, he skipped several grades and graduated high school when he was twelve, and he was bullied viciously.
Most geniuses in fiction lord their intelligence over others and look down on those with average intelligence. Not Reid. He was beaten down very thoroughly growing up--while his mother loved and encouraged him, she was schizophrenic and unable to help him cope with the bullying. He never learned how to keep his mouth shut--he still loves spouting trivia and sharing his knowledge with others--but the bullies did make him start believing that he wasn't really worth much. That notion was cemented when his father abandoned him and his mother, and that caused a massive abandonment complex in his son.
Because of all this, Reid is uncommonly humble for someone so intelligent. He's very aware that he's usually the smartest person in the room, but it doesn't always seem important to him, and he's capable of accepting that other people can think of things that he doesn't. He's good at working in a group, and despite being very socially awkward, he's a pleasant person to be around. He's a very kind man who likes helping others, but he doesn't really like having the spotlight on him. He gets nervous when a lot of people pay attention to him.
Beyond his humbleness, though, Reid is very special because of how he can see the good in people. It takes him a while to love a person because he's afraid that they'll leave him, but once he does, he always sees the best of them. He knows that they have flaws and he's aware that they're there, but he doesn't really see them. He always sees the reason that he loves them, and he has the capability to see them at their best even when they're at their worst. When he loves, he loves with his whole heart, which makes it especially painful when he's betrayed somehow.
That's a major disadvantage Reid has. When he's hurt, he's hurt. He'll withdraw and deny and pretend that there's nothing wrong, but he trusts the people he loves (and honestly, those people are restricted to his mother and his teammates) wholly, and it causes real damage if one of them hurts him.
Because of his difficulty dealing with social situations, he often depends on his own mind to keep him company. 'It's lonely on the top' very much applies to Reid, because except with his teammates, people generally avoid interacting with him because his intellect is so intimidating and his habit of spouting tangentially related trivia can be off-putting. Because of his mother's schizophrenia, he's painfully aware that his mind may not be as reliable as other people assume it is, which leads to his biggest fear being that he inherited his mother's illness. His mind is the only thing which has remained true to him through all his hardship, and the concept that it could utterly fall apart is absolutely terrifying to him. That affects him because if something happens to cause him to doubt his own sanity, he will freak out. He's spent too long being afraid not to.
Possibly because of his abuse at the hands of peers his whole life, there are times when he exudes an aura of vulnerability that attracts abusers like flies. This becomes less frequent as he becomes more confident with himself, but there's a pattern of Unsubs (the serial killers he tracks for a living) specifically targeting him when they could target anyone else on the team. This happens professionally, so it probably also happens personally. My headcanon is that he has a history of moderately abusive (and by that, I mean emotionally abusive, not physically or sexually) romantic relationships (which leads him to be wary of relationships, but that's a story for another time) that he always eventually cuts off, because despite the aura, he does have an aggressive side.
Reid is passive by nature, but if he feels it's worth it, he knows how to dig in his heels and say 'no'. An angry Reid is a very scary thing to behold, but he can and will get angry and confront people who he feels deserve it, such as teachers who told a boy to get over it when his father and peers ruthlessly abused and humiliated him, or at a man who sexually abused his daughter and then submitted her to electroshock therapy to shut her up. Even if he's kind and humble and passive, he's very brave and has a powerful sense of what is right and what is wrong. He will approach a man in the middle of a homicidal psychotic break and try talking him down, or lock himself in a house with anthrax when he knows he's already infected and won't allow his teammate to suffer the same fate, or even talk to the father who abandoned him nearly twenty years prior. He's strong enough to crush an addiction to Dilaudid all by himself and keep himself from relapsing for seven years. He's brave enough to continue hunting down serial killers after getting captured and tortured by one. He's resilient enough to be able to smile and see the good in people after working for a decade with serial killers. He's all these things, and that combines to make an amazing man.
Not that he'd ever realize it on his own, though.
POWERS: He doesn't have any magical powers.
RP SAMPLE: Musebox link!
ANYTHING ELSE?: No, I think that's good.