issue sixty-nine

sometimes your creative genesis can be girlblogging about a crime procedural

If you don’t mind, today we’re going to do a bit of time traveling. Let’s go back to … hmm … let me think —it was March of 2020! We all know what happened then.

Slogging through Zoom ballet classes, virtual school that was more of a nuisance than an education and baking my way through a Pinterest board of recipes, I quickly realized that I would need something substantial to occupy myself and my attention during a time of global crisis. Aside from journaling like mad (a habit that didn’t quite stick) and playing Roblox for hours on end (too much eye strain), I really wasn’t watching or reading as much as I would have liked to. Enter my younger sister, having just soldiered through the entirety of The 100 and ready to embark on a new 15-season long journey: CBS’s long-running FBI procedural, Criminal Minds. 

Never mind that we were both definitely too young to absorb hundreds of hours of violence and copaganda for entertainment, we were hooked. At first I scoffed at my sister’s dedication to starting a show from so long ago that dragged on all the way to our present day. 15 seasons of anything at all seemed like a chore, much less a drab crime show that followed a by-the-book structure in every 45-minute chapter. But by Season 2, I was just as enveloped in this fictional family as she was. 

For those who aren’t familiar, Criminal Minds follows the work and lives of the fictionalized Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. This unit uses the (pseudoscientific and highly exaggerated) technique of “profiling” to analyze patterns of behavior from violent aggressors such as serial killers, bombers and kidnappers — addressed as “unsubs” (Unknown Subjects) until found otherwise and stopped with the brandishing of a badge. The series premiered in September of 2005, and ran until February of 2020; a one-season revival aired last year. The show was a huge hit for ratings after several seasons of growing an audience, preceding the glossier network fed dramas like Scandal and rivaling NCIS at its prime.

At the very beginning of quarantine, something crazy happened. I guess millions of other Gen Zers had the same idea my sister and I did, and in a matter of a month, the show had skyrocketed to the top of Netflix’s streamed programs. Thirst edits and meme slideshows from the series got hundreds of thousands of likes, and exponentially more views. On TikTok particularly, audiences that were new and by and large 20 years younger than the original target flocked to the show; from beginning to the gradually dwindling end, Criminal Minds became a hit again. 

It wasn’t hard to see the appeal of the show: the comforting thrum of the 2000s rock soundtrack, repetitive rhythm of daily operations and casework at the BAU, and a lovable cast of characters that grew alongside one another and bore the weight of magnificent evil for the sake of the greater good. There was mystery, action, romance, eye candy (lots of it) and everything in between. And it was on Netflix at the time.

I say that this meteoric resurrection was crazy, because beyond being spurred by seemingly nothing but boredom and horniness for an aughts-era Matthew Gray Gubler, this period of virality hit right before a national racial reckoning in response to police brutality. CM didn’t catch much heat, and ultimately coasted by due to the rose-colored glasses of many of its watchers. I’ll dig into this in a sec, but this fact absolutely informed my watching experience in several ways. 

Though I listened in on the TikTok hype, as soon as I finished the show, I knew exactly where to go: Tumblr. 

criminal minds, “the big game” // leah ollie, senior in high school

Like many things on the internet, I was running significantly behind; my age, upbringing and proclivity for literary fiction over socials at age 13 sheltered me from a lot of stuff that I’m now catching up on — Tumblr was one of them. When I joined in 2020, many would have considered the platform dead, but I discovered that many pockets of the app were still full of the vitality and interaction I’d seen described of its Golden Days. The first being the Percy Jackson/Riordanverse fan space (which is gonna have to be another issue to unpack at a later date) and the next being the modern day Criminal Minds fandom. 

Never had I seen such an amalgamation of twisted and brilliant minds. 40 year olds with children. High schoolers. Less than high schoolers. Girlbloggers. Boybloggers. Everyone in between — they were here in this space. There was room for everybody, truly! Maybe there shouldn’t have been, but there was! I made mutuals and gained a modest following between PJO posting and CM posting; it felt fun and fresh to be able to discuss and dissect media I loved with others who just got it. I figured out how the platform worked, and navigated it with ease and politeness; in other words, I caught up on what I had missed. 

It was in the Tumblr fanbases I acquainted that I was first introduced to critical thought surrounding pieces of media I loved, particularly in the wake of a sociopolitical coming of age that the pandemic yielded to me. You could be excited and entertained by something, and step back to see a lot of harmful and violent elements baked into its story; I totally didn’t know you could do that. I was exposed to writing and arguments from truly some of the most intelligent people I’ve crossed paths with, explaining the importance of authorial intention, audience impact, sensitivity readers and issues of representation. There were smart people on here, anticapitalist and antiracist people, forming a new guidebook for interacting with a narrative in front of me in live time.

It was a right place, right time effect, that trained new analytical muscles in my brain for better or worse. I was getting smarter, getting older, and storing new tools in my toolbox for approaching storytelling in a more realistic, holistic way. 

As I learned to read and watch in a more critical, complex way, I started writing. Between text post blurbs and mini essays, I honed in on how to most effectively communicate a scathing critique or gush of affection. I was already working as a freelance culture journalist, but now felt ready to develop my own pitches and responses with the same dedication I would a beat listicle. I was dropping several thousand word treatises on Emily Prentiss’s botched characterization (which you can read here if you want to hear the voice of a baby, disorganized Leah) before I was reviewing things on here, but we’ll get to that in a second. I felt smart and I felt heard, and had a fairly safe space to develop that confidence in on my blog. 

On the other side of this digital coin, I have seen some truly wack shit, y’all. Discourse like you wouldn’t believe, with adults arguing the nastiest points over fictional cops, or magical 12-year olds or something. There was a really obvious dissonance between fans of the FBI propaganda show and everyone I interacted with in my actual day to day life in the summer of 2020; if you can catch my drift, the CM fandom wasn’t exactly the first to jump into resurveying their relationship with glorified cops. Myself and several mutuals were vocal about this dissonance, and defended each other against any weirdos who pushed back. In a kind of twisted way, some of my posts with the highest notes only blew up if they were calling out some sort of racial injustice in my internet bubble or real life; nobody really cared if I was liveblogging the Season 7 finale again (the best one, mind you). 

The closest I got to controversy or cancellation on Tumblr was when I made a callout post for some user who had written a slavery AU Criminal Minds fic, and a bunch of grown ups decided that THAT was the hill they had to die on to preserve. All in all, I also learned how to pick battles and not be afraid to hit that block button, as one wise Skai Jackson once said. Seriously — by the time I started becoming inactive on the platform (mid 2022) I had blocked more people than I followed. 

It was because of these lessons and personal growth that I started this newsletter. Real ones know that after years of writing essays and critical text posts surrounding reviews, specific elements of pop culture and fandom, or whatever I was reading, I had cultivated an audience of thousands of people who were truly interested in what I had to say. Those real ones were the incredibly kind people who sent me an ask to let me know they liked the latest Substack, or wanted book recommendations here and there. People asked me for advice on how to write or start a newsletter, and I gave them the best I could while stumbling my way through my first semester of college. I saved every single sweet note under a specific tag (#rainy day tag) and screenshotted them into a treasured iPhoto album. I still look at them all the time.

It was through this gateway that I gained my first 100 subscribers on here, pitched ideas and refashioned talking points my mutuals and I had already mulled over. I’ll never forget the pride of writing, editing and posting my essay on the cockroach trope after my followers had chosen it. I also figured out that it was like, valid, and even cool to think deeply about culture and entertainment? Before I even had the chance to grow into my tastes and opinions, much less consider this as a career, I saw that if I wanted to write a deranged 5,000 word treatise on how incredible (or awful) Netflix’s Outer Banks was, I could — and people would read it. I know a lot of those people are reading this now, and it pulls at my little online heart to remember that. 

Those people were the OGs, and however much or little this family expands, I’ll always be indebted and overwhelmingly grateful to those who affirmed me enough to start this whole thing. To write original essays or long-winded reviews, or just check in when I can’t offer either. 

Though I’m not as active on Tumblr anymore (I’m currently somewhat determined to go down with the sinking ship of Twitter) I still chime in here and there, and remember why I loved it so much. Freedom, art, organizing, literature, analysis, friends, laughs – all in one place. Hopefully you can find a bit of that here. I owe more than a bit of the spirit of this newsletter to the lessons I learned from Tumblr, and consequently from Criminal Minds. Which I am rewatching, and will be liveblogging — you know where to tune in if you want to see that. In the meantime, I’ll be back next week with a new review. Watch this space!