echoes still - extended authors notes
Jun. 28th, 2011 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weaselettExtended Author's Notes to accompany my fic 'echoes still'. DO NOT READ UNTIL YOU HAVE FINISHED THE FIC UNLESS YOU DON'T MIND BEING SPOILED.
Of all of the things I could have chosen to write as my first proper, big bang length, Criminal Minds fic, this is probably the worst. I hope the characters don’t seem too OOC, I’m still figuring out how they work in my head and it was difficult getting into pre-series Hotch’s head. Hopefully the end result isn’t too bad.
I choose to do the duel timeline because I wanted to mirror baby!Hotch and Ashley. I know it’s not something other people might have automatically thought of, but when I was plotting out ‘alternate Seaver introduction’ this was where my brain went, and I ended up connecting her introduction to how Hotch’s first experiences with the BAU might have been. That was of course helped by the vague timeline I have worked out in my head, based on canon time references.
Rossi and Hotch worked on the Redmond Ripper case, Rossi had been retired from the BAU for about ten years before he returned to the team in 2007. Add in the fact that ‘Zoe’s Reprise’ in season four was him on the tenth anniversary of the release of his second book (and I place that as being early 2009), and the best time line I could come up to work in Hotch’s backstory, 1996 seemed like the most likely time for the Redmond Ripper case to have taken place.
After that it was just a matter of deciding where I wanted Ashley’s part to sit in within my timeline. I decided against setting it in season five, because I wanted there to be some distance between the events of 100 and Ashley meeting the team. At the same time, I wanted it JJ in the fic, so I fudged it so it fits somewhere between 6x01 and 6x02. All of that probably seems like I thought way too much about the setting of this fic, but I tend to do that ;)
At some point, somewhere in the future, I may rework this fic. I’m not completely happy with it, and when I was doing my research, canon made working out the plot and the profile of the killers even more difficult.
According to Reid in 6x10, Charles Beauchamp, the Redmond Ripper, killed twenty five women over ten years in rural North Dakota. Which, as it turns out, is a really evil piece of canon to have to work with.
According to crime statistics for North Dakota (such as the ones found here) murder really isn’t that common. In fact, North Dakota has one of the lowest murder rates in the US. Add to that the fact there aren’t many prostitutes, though there are a lot of runaways, and it makes the Redmond Ripper a really tricky guy to work with.
Especially if you then find Redmond, North Dakota on a map. And look into law enforcement in North Dakota.
Then add in the commentary provided by my dad, who informed me that there probably was a real life serial killer in North Dakota, in the 1800s. He then suggested that the Redmond Ripper could be a trucker, delivery driver or Native American ghost. The first two could have worked, possibly, if it wasn’t for the case in What Happens At Home (6x10). Rossi, Hotch and Ashley all seemed to see a lot of similarities between the two situations, and a local delivery driver didn’t really fit. So I made Ashley’s father an accountant (not because it’s automatically boring, I know accountants who love their work, but because it worked).
For his MO, I borrowed from Jack the Ripper, because of the two Ripper nicknamed serial killers I tend to think of, that was the MO more suited to what I was thinking of. I did not want rape to be part of the MO (my advice? Do not look too closely at the crime scene photos in ‘What Happens At Home’, rape is never mentioned, but the mocked up crime scene photos show it).
The only problem I found was that Jack the Ripper’s MO doesn’t fit any of the ‘serial killer types’ as listed in Holmes and Holmes. I went through the checklists and decided to just go for the one that worked best. I plan to hunt for some more decent books on profiling at some point.
Honestly, I probably got stuff wrong, I know I ended up making a lot of stuff up. Hopefully I haven’t managed to offend anyone. So take this as a disclaimer: I have never been to any of the places described in this story. I haven’t even been to America, so I’ve done my best to avoid going into detail of the scene and locations of the crime scenes for that reason.
Writing the copycat, I decided really early on that it was going to be a woman. Then I did a search to see if I could find anything on real life female serial killers, but most of the ones I found worked with men, used poison or ‘killed for profit’. And the profiling books I read gave ‘comfort killer’ as the female serial killer profile. None of which fitted the copycat, and none of it really fitted The Redmond Ripper she was copying. So, again, I made a lot of stuff up, and played around with what I could get out of the books. I’m fairly sure I got some stuff wrong, but then the show does too ;)
I also got to play with the differences between the profiling in 2010 and 1996. Rossi, as we met him, was used to researchers, something he took out on poor Garcia, and while 1996 is around the time that Geographic Profiling was starting to edge into use, it’s not likely that the BAU would have been using it. I also don’t have them using computers much, they are present, but not like they are in 2010/present day.
Oh and they don’t have the jet, and I figured that budgeting for two cars being driven, especially given the relatively short notice, seemed more likely, even if it was slower than a train or plane would have been.
I had Katie Cole, because in her sole appearance in Criminal Minds, she and Hotch seemed like they’d worked together for a while. He’s comfortable enough to touch her, and she’s happy enough to let him take over from her. And I wanted to have a girl!profiler in the 1996 section.
I would love to see more fics based pre-series – especially during the time that Gideon, Cole, Rossi and Ryan were working together. There really aren’t enough.
Finally there’s Ashley. I took a lot of liberties with her, but I kept to how she has been shown in canon as much as possible. She seems to struggle with staying detached, though she’s been getting better. She’s dated guys, that’s been mentioned, but there’s been nothing to say she hasn’t had girlfriends.
With FBI background, I’ve read fandom discussion enough, especially in numb3rs fandom, to have picked up the basics of the FBI selection and training process. I also read though information on the official FBI website. The age for recruits is 23-37, which means Ashley has to be over 23, has been through the 20 weeks of training and then typically, for your first two years you get assigned to an office. As far as I can tell, you don’t get to put your name forward for anything until after that initial two years. I may well be wrong, and it’s not hugely important for the purposes of the story.
She also needs to have a degree, or some skill that made her suitable to join the FBI, and given that she’s 23 when she joins, and wasn’t in the police force or military, she should have a good degree. What in, I’ll leave it up to you to decide ;)
Other than that, I just picked up on the bits we’ve been given in canon, using them to shape her a bit more. I wanted her joining the BAU to be a little more believable, for her to have some experience to bring to the table, and as canon doesn’t seem to have said that she was a cop, giving her a few more years in the FBI only seemed fair.
Ashley said that her father killed before she was a teenager, which I took as ‘under thirteen’, and I figured that she’d been alive the entire time he’d been killing, so I had her be eleven, coming on twelve, in 1996. Come 2010 and she’s in her mid-twenties.
I fully intend to write Ashley more, whatever happens with her in canon, because I enjoyed writing her sections of this fic. Not just because using her POV meant I could get away with fudging the profile.
And now, as a random note: Hotch borrows a lot from Roger Depue, and what he doesn’t Rossi has. In a way that’s what makes Ashley a little more interesting, she doesn’t seem to be based on any of the real life profilers (the same can be said for Reid and Emily, and Garcia is, of course, entirely original ;)).
I am plan to continue getting lots of books out of the library that make the librarians give me the stink eye. And a few people as you wander along the street with an armful of books (especially the title of Depue’s book, which I’ve just gotten hold of, ‘Between Good and Evil’ in dramatic font on the front). It makes life more interesting.
If you have any questions, or any comments or corrections, feel free to throw them at me. I’d love some feedback. Hopefully my first full length Criminal Minds fic isn’t too terrible a read.
-
Of all of the things I could have chosen to write as my first proper, big bang length, Criminal Minds fic, this is probably the worst. I hope the characters don’t seem too OOC, I’m still figuring out how they work in my head and it was difficult getting into pre-series Hotch’s head. Hopefully the end result isn’t too bad.
I choose to do the duel timeline because I wanted to mirror baby!Hotch and Ashley. I know it’s not something other people might have automatically thought of, but when I was plotting out ‘alternate Seaver introduction’ this was where my brain went, and I ended up connecting her introduction to how Hotch’s first experiences with the BAU might have been. That was of course helped by the vague timeline I have worked out in my head, based on canon time references.
Rossi and Hotch worked on the Redmond Ripper case, Rossi had been retired from the BAU for about ten years before he returned to the team in 2007. Add in the fact that ‘Zoe’s Reprise’ in season four was him on the tenth anniversary of the release of his second book (and I place that as being early 2009), and the best time line I could come up to work in Hotch’s backstory, 1996 seemed like the most likely time for the Redmond Ripper case to have taken place.
After that it was just a matter of deciding where I wanted Ashley’s part to sit in within my timeline. I decided against setting it in season five, because I wanted there to be some distance between the events of 100 and Ashley meeting the team. At the same time, I wanted it JJ in the fic, so I fudged it so it fits somewhere between 6x01 and 6x02. All of that probably seems like I thought way too much about the setting of this fic, but I tend to do that ;)
At some point, somewhere in the future, I may rework this fic. I’m not completely happy with it, and when I was doing my research, canon made working out the plot and the profile of the killers even more difficult.
According to Reid in 6x10, Charles Beauchamp, the Redmond Ripper, killed twenty five women over ten years in rural North Dakota. Which, as it turns out, is a really evil piece of canon to have to work with.
According to crime statistics for North Dakota (such as the ones found here) murder really isn’t that common. In fact, North Dakota has one of the lowest murder rates in the US. Add to that the fact there aren’t many prostitutes, though there are a lot of runaways, and it makes the Redmond Ripper a really tricky guy to work with.
Especially if you then find Redmond, North Dakota on a map. And look into law enforcement in North Dakota.
Then add in the commentary provided by my dad, who informed me that there probably was a real life serial killer in North Dakota, in the 1800s. He then suggested that the Redmond Ripper could be a trucker, delivery driver or Native American ghost. The first two could have worked, possibly, if it wasn’t for the case in What Happens At Home (6x10). Rossi, Hotch and Ashley all seemed to see a lot of similarities between the two situations, and a local delivery driver didn’t really fit. So I made Ashley’s father an accountant (not because it’s automatically boring, I know accountants who love their work, but because it worked).
For his MO, I borrowed from Jack the Ripper, because of the two Ripper nicknamed serial killers I tend to think of, that was the MO more suited to what I was thinking of. I did not want rape to be part of the MO (my advice? Do not look too closely at the crime scene photos in ‘What Happens At Home’, rape is never mentioned, but the mocked up crime scene photos show it).
The only problem I found was that Jack the Ripper’s MO doesn’t fit any of the ‘serial killer types’ as listed in Holmes and Holmes. I went through the checklists and decided to just go for the one that worked best. I plan to hunt for some more decent books on profiling at some point.
Honestly, I probably got stuff wrong, I know I ended up making a lot of stuff up. Hopefully I haven’t managed to offend anyone. So take this as a disclaimer: I have never been to any of the places described in this story. I haven’t even been to America, so I’ve done my best to avoid going into detail of the scene and locations of the crime scenes for that reason.
Writing the copycat, I decided really early on that it was going to be a woman. Then I did a search to see if I could find anything on real life female serial killers, but most of the ones I found worked with men, used poison or ‘killed for profit’. And the profiling books I read gave ‘comfort killer’ as the female serial killer profile. None of which fitted the copycat, and none of it really fitted The Redmond Ripper she was copying. So, again, I made a lot of stuff up, and played around with what I could get out of the books. I’m fairly sure I got some stuff wrong, but then the show does too ;)
I also got to play with the differences between the profiling in 2010 and 1996. Rossi, as we met him, was used to researchers, something he took out on poor Garcia, and while 1996 is around the time that Geographic Profiling was starting to edge into use, it’s not likely that the BAU would have been using it. I also don’t have them using computers much, they are present, but not like they are in 2010/present day.
Oh and they don’t have the jet, and I figured that budgeting for two cars being driven, especially given the relatively short notice, seemed more likely, even if it was slower than a train or plane would have been.
I had Katie Cole, because in her sole appearance in Criminal Minds, she and Hotch seemed like they’d worked together for a while. He’s comfortable enough to touch her, and she’s happy enough to let him take over from her. And I wanted to have a girl!profiler in the 1996 section.
I would love to see more fics based pre-series – especially during the time that Gideon, Cole, Rossi and Ryan were working together. There really aren’t enough.
Finally there’s Ashley. I took a lot of liberties with her, but I kept to how she has been shown in canon as much as possible. She seems to struggle with staying detached, though she’s been getting better. She’s dated guys, that’s been mentioned, but there’s been nothing to say she hasn’t had girlfriends.
With FBI background, I’ve read fandom discussion enough, especially in numb3rs fandom, to have picked up the basics of the FBI selection and training process. I also read though information on the official FBI website. The age for recruits is 23-37, which means Ashley has to be over 23, has been through the 20 weeks of training and then typically, for your first two years you get assigned to an office. As far as I can tell, you don’t get to put your name forward for anything until after that initial two years. I may well be wrong, and it’s not hugely important for the purposes of the story.
She also needs to have a degree, or some skill that made her suitable to join the FBI, and given that she’s 23 when she joins, and wasn’t in the police force or military, she should have a good degree. What in, I’ll leave it up to you to decide ;)
Other than that, I just picked up on the bits we’ve been given in canon, using them to shape her a bit more. I wanted her joining the BAU to be a little more believable, for her to have some experience to bring to the table, and as canon doesn’t seem to have said that she was a cop, giving her a few more years in the FBI only seemed fair.
Ashley said that her father killed before she was a teenager, which I took as ‘under thirteen’, and I figured that she’d been alive the entire time he’d been killing, so I had her be eleven, coming on twelve, in 1996. Come 2010 and she’s in her mid-twenties.
I fully intend to write Ashley more, whatever happens with her in canon, because I enjoyed writing her sections of this fic. Not just because using her POV meant I could get away with fudging the profile.
And now, as a random note: Hotch borrows a lot from Roger Depue, and what he doesn’t Rossi has. In a way that’s what makes Ashley a little more interesting, she doesn’t seem to be based on any of the real life profilers (the same can be said for Reid and Emily, and Garcia is, of course, entirely original ;)).
I am plan to continue getting lots of books out of the library that make the librarians give me the stink eye. And a few people as you wander along the street with an armful of books (especially the title of Depue’s book, which I’ve just gotten hold of, ‘Between Good and Evil’ in dramatic font on the front). It makes life more interesting.
If you have any questions, or any comments or corrections, feel free to throw them at me. I’d love some feedback. Hopefully my first full length Criminal Minds fic isn’t too terrible a read.
-
