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What does your character think of mine?

We haven't had one of these in a long time, and anything written here can totally be used for filling out/updating CR charts!
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Albert and Carmen on Reid?

Okay, I've said this a million times before and I will probably continue to say it a million more, but Reid reminds Albert of Coop (circa five, ten years ago) so damn much that there's definitely some projecting going on there, but it's mild and not at all in a bad way. The thing with Reid is that he still seems to have a lot of that whole "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new kid on the force" thing to him — and that was really what originally made Albert peg him as so much younger than he was, not his looks — and Albert's kind of old and jaded and cranky, but he remembers being like that once. He remembers Coop being like that once, too, and there's some history there with that, because there was a case in particular where Coop ended up dead for two minutes before they were able to bring him back, after which he fell into a pretty hefty depression, and Albert has always been kind of the one who pulls him back up out of that and sort of anchors him when he's in trouble. And he sees a lot of that in Reid, too, that need for anchoring and the occasional (or frequent) kick in the head, and it's natural for him to do it, so he just kind of does.

The other two ways that Reid has really had an advantage in terms of getting on Albert's good side are that a) he's fucking smart and b) he's FBI. Albert likes smart people, and he's very much used to being the smartest one in the room at any given time — he was first in his class at Yale, for one thing, and if you pay close attention to his behavior in canon, his insults are pretty much always targeted toward disparaging the other party's intellect. It's never about how they look or some other cheap shot; it's always "god, you're stupid, and I am so much smarter than you." So with Reid it's like OH. A SMART PERSON. OH THANK GOD. SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS. Particularly since Albert remembers what it's like to be the weird kid who nobody likes because he's too smart for his peer group, and so he can commiserate on that, too.

But the easiest one is that Reid is FBI, and Albert operates on a pretty firm Bro Code when it comes to the Bureau. In canon he takes a pretty strong "us/them" mentality, where the "us" is "people who are FBI agents" and the "them" is "everyone else". He's HUGE on the idea of Bureau men looking out for their own, because that's just what you do — you take care of your guys. Period.

So basically, as far as Albert is concerned, Reid is one of the few actually tolerable people in Johto and he legitimately cares a lot about him. Granted, he'll probably always be "the kid" in Albert's book, but he's absolutely as much a member of The Team as Gordon and Coop are by now.

FBI AGENTS CANNOT RESIST HER.

Okay, but no, the very simple answer is that Carmen really likes brilliance. There's a part in canon where she says outright, "Competition's fine, but I'd rather someone showed me something they were good at. Then I'd really learn something, wouldn't I?" (this following an adventure where one of her henchmen tried to impersonate her and usurp her title). And she really does just like people — meeting them, learning about them, seeing what they're good at, sampling what makes them unique.

The other thing that she's good at is (predictably) education, but not just in the sense of teaching people; she's good at looking at a person and seeing their potential and then doing things designed to draw it out. Conversely, she'll figure out a place where someone needs work and she'll throw something at them to try to fix it, or take it upon herself to motivate them to do so and so on.

There's an episode in canon where Carmen actually sets up an entire caper specifically to draw out this one detective who's obsessed with catching her (and has been for years) to try to tempt him into giving up sleuthing and becoming her accomplice — basically, the same choice she made herself ten years ago. Reid, I think, has a lot of that same potential for her. She gets invested in the lives of brilliant people because she wants to push them and challenge them and drive them to keep reaching past their own limits so they'll see just how far they can really go. And if, god forbid, she thinks they have a problem that they're not overcoming on their own, she'll scheme a way to address it because LOL SHE'S HELPING.

So with Reid, the interest is kind of twofold. The obvious one is that he is brilliant and it doesn't take a genius to see that, and so she's naturally inclined to be like OMG SHOW ME EVERYTHING YES OMG STUPID TRIVIA BABBLE FOREVER THIS IS FASCINATING AND OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO SMART THIS IS MAGICAL, because she is a nerd and it's pretty obvious that nerdiness is what he excels at. When he starts putting his other talents on display, she'll get enthralled by those, too — particularly the magic, because then that's like a game in itself.

The not-so-obvious one is that she's also spotted that he's not the greatest with people, and so it's her inclination to fix that, in her own Carmenish way — which in this case happens to be forcing him to deal with her. Her guess thus far is that she can make him subconsciously comfortable by enabling and encouraging his geekiness, while simultaneously making him address and practice the social stuff he's not as good at by, y'know, getting all up in his business and flirting the hell out of him.

(Also, she's just naturally flirty. She flirts with everybody. Meaningful long-term social interaction, she's still kind of fail at, but that is neither here nor there.)

So yeah, basically Reid is fun and smart and he hits a lot of her pings, and most importantly he's fun to play with — and since Carmen's greatest flaw is her tendency to get bored, it's always good to have things that interest her around.

Yay, Reid is part of The Team. :3 That can be the source of some awkwardness for him since he's extremely aware of the fact that Gordon, Coop, and Albert have all been working together for years, and he isn't certain about his place in that dynamic beyond 'also there's this other agent'. He feels a little like he has to prove himself capable all over again, although luckily, neither Gordon, Coop, nor Albert have ever dismissed him based on his age or youthful appearance so far, so he at least doesn't feel like he needs to work to get them to listen to something he has to say.

And luckily, Carmen's plan has been working so far. Simultaneously encouraging his nerdiness and giving him a topic to practice social interaction and flirting with is actually a really effective way of building his confidence and giving him some experience to work with if a different person approaches him. And he hasn't even noticed her doing it! Congrats, Carmen. You're awesome. (And also, I'd love to play out a few of her 'let's help you work through your issues' schemes, because Reid has a lot of issues he won't address.)

CLEARLY MORE TEAM FBI POWWOWS ARE NEEDED. (also I am actually writing up a Thanksgiving log right now so hopefully we can all hit that for team bonding shenanigans aplenty.) The part I like is that he actually does fit really well into the existing team dynamic — Albert had previously been occupying the sort of "smart guy" niche, but Reid's actually a really nice balance of Albert and Coop, all quirky insightful profiler while still being a wealth of facts. He makes an excellent addition to the existing team. o/

Yes, see, she's awesome like that. And if she were in the know about his trust issues, she'd probably point out that in a way, she's a completely safe outlet in terms of the trust thing because there's no uncertainty — he should already know not to trust her for reasons having nothing to do with his social awkwardness and everything to do with her being a wanted criminal. Which seems like weird logic (LOL, CARMEN LOGIC IS SO WEIRD ALWAYS), but it does effectively take the question of trust entirely off the table and gives him a solid answer, which in its own way is safer and breeds less hesitance than not knowing. And if that works to set him at ease, well. Problem solved. :|b

(Granted, she's of the opinion that she's completely trustworthy, but for the sake of facilitating the plan, she's willing to point out the other side of it.)

HAHAHAHA OH GOD YOU JUST SAID THE MAGIC WORDS. Reid, you in danger, son. You pick an issue you want her to drag out and I am on it, you have no idea. Possibly through hilarious thieving shenanigans, but one way or another IT WILL HAPPEN.

I think bonding shenanigans will be great. :3 Albert and Reid rushing around the kitchen, everyone drinking wine and/or scotch, everyone trying to make sure that Mio and the Viking kids don't drink any wine and/or scotch, so on and so forth IT'LL BE AWESOME. And also Amanda will try bugging Albert when Reid isn't looking because she's mature like that.

I think that would be a pretty good argument. If Reid knows he can't trust someone, he doesn't have to worry about whether or not he should allow them to get close. That hasn't quite occurred to him yet, although even when it does, he'll still probably end up trusting her with time. Yes, she's a thief and a wanted criminal, but she has morals and she's careful about not getting innocent people hurt. In his eyes, that's still pretty good.

Oh god, where to start? You can take your pick, if you like: issues letting people close to him, abandonment complex, issues admitting that he's hurt or affected by something, constant lingering fear of being schizophrenic and Johto being a massive psychotic break, issues admitting to his need to numb extraordinary pain and thus his continued cravings for Dilaudid, issues standing up for himself if someone is beating him and only him down, issues about second-guessing himself and blaming himself for various deaths, traumas, (and in one case, the survival) of and to people even if he couldn't always help it, his lack of confidence, etc. etc. etc. etc. Kid's a mess and obviously the best way to deal with that is with a really determined thief plus SHENANIGANS.

http://route-1065.dreamwidth.org/236234.html

LOG'S UP, GO NUTS FOR DONUTS o/

And all of these are excellent issues. The ones Carmen is probably most likely to latch onto are the abandonment complex (which she'll notice probably because she's the one used to leaving at the drop of a hat), the confidence stuff, and possibly the issues letting people close to him — though that one, she might leave alone because she can understand wanting to hold people at arm's length on a personal level. The confidence one would probably be the easiest for her to handle, but I have to believe she'll inadvertently end up hitting a lot of them anyway, if only because she's dealing with similar issues herself in her own ways, and it might end up being a sort of "look, if I can do it, you can too" kind of scenario. I'll keep tabs on what topics seem to come up when they talk and work on having her poke at them as the situation warrants, okay? C:

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What does your character think of mine?

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Albert on Reid

Carmen on Reid

Streamlining this into one reply...

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