Exploring-the-cosmos - Unending 9-1-1 Brainrot

My thoughts on the episode:

• ⁠I’m so angry that Eddie wasn’t there, whether Bobby’s death is real or a fake-out. He’s a main character who’s been so sidelined it’s insulting, an integral part of the 118, and maybe the character most similar to Bobby himself, with their connection to Buck, their Catholic upbringing, being both widowers and having PTSD/PTSD-type issues.

• ⁠For real. They could’ve shown Buck answering Eddie’s videocall and Eddie immediately understanding that something went wrong from Buck’s devastation. It would’ve taken one minute at most and said so much. But no.

• ⁠I’M NOT A BIOTERRORIST. But if I was one, I would have FOUR doses ready: two of the superstrain and two of the antidote. a. 1 superstrain to unleash onto the world, b. 1 antidote to use on myself in case I catch the superstrain, and c. 1 dose of superstrain and 1 dose of antidote to sell to Big Pharma for millions so they develop both the antidote and a vaccine. But I guess crazy clouds your mind.

• ⁠They could’ve just escorted Moira out of the building before she had the chance to do anything.

• ⁠So Bobby caught the illness from a tiny tear in his breathing system but Hen didn’t catch it from having HER CHEST CUT OPEN AND INTUBATED??? Ok

• ⁠THEY COULDN’T HAVE TRIED A HAIL MARY OF DOING A TRANSFUSION OF CHIM’S NEWLY CURED BLOOD TO BOBBY? If he was gonna die anyway, couldn’t it have been tried?

• ⁠I guess Athena now will have to pretend she didn’t just try to kick her children out of the house.

• ⁠Also, how will Athena stay connected to the rest of the cast?

• ⁠If Bobby’s death is real, it’s a terrible decision on Tim Minear’s part. 9-1-1 is comfort TV, and striked gold with the cast from season 2, but now they’re messing with the formula. The GA watches mainly for Athena and Bobby (who’s now dead) and the fandom watches mainly for Buck and Eddie (who’s being sidelined). It’s a New Coke situation - if there’s a moment for executive meddling on ABC’s part, this is it.

Okay I have so many thoughts about that episode but chief among them is the amount of allusion we got to the relationships within the fire fam. The whole episode was dedicated to reminding us how interconnected they are and how deep those ties run. Like obviously there’s the couple dynamics of Chim and Maddie, Hen and Karen, Bobby and Athena, (and Buck and Eddie), but there was also the little reminders that Buck is Chimney’s brother in law (went home with him after the dinner), that Karen and Chimney are friends outside of Hen and have their own relationship (that actually predates him knowing Hen), that Eddie and Chim are friends (Eddie went running to him right away!). All to drive home that Maddie fought like hell to get back to her FAMILY and Chimney loves her so much that he wouldn’t let himself fully believe she had run away!!

All of this in the same episode we got “it’s not nothing” and “I hope you know you do matter to me” is CRAZY

yeah idk man maybe i just don't like it when characters whose whole story is about choosing to live and overcoming suicidal ideation end up dying in a hero sacrifice. kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth, not gonna lie.

oh Christ shut the fuck up with your holier than thou shit, pretending you're not just another toxic buddie shipper while parroting their favorite lies and bullshit at the same time. block shit you don't like and shut the FUCK up. y'all been showing your asses for literally years, being misogynistic and racist to every single female love interest that gets in your way and adding some violent homophobia for the actual queer rep, all because you fetishise straight men kissing. y'all are the ones posting child rape fics to the archive and to inboxes. y'all the ones harassing people because you're blocked. y'all the ones trying to dox people and fail because you're just that pathetic. I've been in this fandom from day one and there's a reason buddie shippers are infamous outside this fandom for toxic bigotry. shut the ENTIRE fuck up I'm so goddamn sick of y'all. I'm genuinely embarrassed to ever have BEEN one of you. entitled, pathetic, friendless trash, every single one of you.

Hey, so what is this supposed to accomplish?

To be clear, I DO block content I don't want to see. I DO filter for ships I don't usually want to regularly interact with. The point of the post I made was to address a pattern I was noticing with anti-Eddie and anti-Buddie sentiment that I had seen multiple BIPOC creators also talk about.

Now, to address some of your points because I feel like you are projecting SO MUCH onto me.

Misogyny. I never made a single comment on my feelings regarding any of the characters' canon past relationships, but since you seem so sure I hate them like every other Buddie shipper supposedly does, I will make my views of them quite clear. I like most of Eddie and Buck's previous girlfriends/wife. I really liked Shannon, Abby, Anna, and Taylor. The other past relationships that I don't actively like I'm pretty neutral about. There are various reasons why I didn't think those relationships would work out, and they didn't, but I don't hate any of their past partners. I think people are free to dislike their past relationships if they want, but misogyny directed towards them isn't okay.

Racism. Any and all racism targeted towards the characters and their actors is unacceptable, full stop. Any acts of racism that any of those actors themselves have engaged in or excused is also unacceptable, full stop. Both are true statements, and I find it really shitty that in response to a post where I was attempting to respectfully point out behaviors directed at a character, which I found may have had racial bias underpinning them, I got this kind of response. As a community, we should all be concerned about racism, queerphobia, ableism, etc. regardless of who it's coming from and regardless of who it's being done to.

Harassment/Threats/Innappropriate Behavior/Etc. To be very, very clear. None of the horrendous behaviors that you have described BuckTommy shippers receiving from Buddie shippers and/or anti-BuckTommy shippers is okay. I have never and will never defend anyone doing those things. Those are examples of behavior I was referring to when it comes to toxicity I would like to see weeded out of fandom spaces. From BOTH sides of the shipping discourse. I feel like I made that clear when I acknowledged that Buddie shippers can and do engage in toxicity and racism as well. Literally NO ONE is exempt from criticism.

Fetishization/Fetishizing Straight Men Kissing. Um. What. To be clear, I am queer. I read, write, listen to, and engage with content that is almost exclusively queer or made by someone who is. I am just as concerned and interested in queer rep as the next queer person. I also have just as much right as any other queer person to critique that rep if I am unsatisfied with it and think it could be improved upon. And you do, too. I am not saying there is NO issue of some folks fetishizing mlm relationships, but I do think this narrative is incredibly overblown and lacks nuance, but I digress. The specific comment about wanting two straight dudes to kiss is what I am particularly concerned about. Buck isn't straight. He was initially written and acted that way throughout the majority of the show, but he ISN'T. Plus, as someone who is themselves bisexual and relates a lot to his character, I always kinda headcanoned him to be as well. There is also no reason why we should assume Eddie can't be gay. Personally, I headcanon him as a repressed gay man. For many, many reasons. What I find very interesting is the way you throw that statement out there like that as if Tommy wasn't introduced into the show initially through "Hen Begins" as, presumably, a straight man. Of course, we learn later that he was repressing his feelings and had previously dated and been engaged to a woman before he accepted himself fully and started dating men. He is still a gay man despite his past experiences. And at the very beginning of the show, when we are introduced to Michael, we get the reveal that he is gay and had recently come out to his entire family, who he had hid this from for over a decade. The presumption of straightness/cisness until explicitly stated otherwise annoys me so much, so I wanted to address that point specifically.

I have absolutely no ill-will towards you, and I hope you receive this well. I am sorry it seems you have been on the receiving end of a lot of negativity in the fandom. I would like to encourage you to keep an open mind that not everyone online and in this space is a person that hates you or is acting in bad faith just because they diagree with you or have expressed a critical view about something you like. I wish you well.

hereditary alcoholism. childhood ice skating stardom. con artist mother. who's doing it like the nash family?

I DON'T HAVE TO SLEEP WITH EVERYONE I HAVE FEELINGS FOR EVAN BUCKLEY YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW

sorry i got so caught up in maddie being chained up in a basement that i overlooked the fact that buck was being a fucking weirdo about moving into eddie’s house at dinner

hot take but its possible to enjoy the angst of buck being sad wet dog abandoned in the rain AND acknowledge that his grief is not Eddie's responsibility and that eddie is in fact not a horrible person for putting his son first by leaving and maybe some of yall need to stop infantilizing a fully grown man again

getting my 8x11 meta in under the wire. i’ve been thinking a lot about maddie’s “maybe it’s time to learn the lesson again. how to be alone” line and how it fits into the context of the conversation. bc i know i’ve joked about it like oh buck fucked up maddie’s advice to get friends so bad that she told him to be alone instead but the thing is is that she’s NOT telling him to like . cut all ties and be completely alone. obviously. he still has her and the 118. his friends and family. shes not telling him to not have friends. so then what is she saying? surface level it’s her telling buck to not get back with tommy just to not be alone bc buck literally said "i was using tommy to avoid feeling alone" right before. but the logic here that was set up from the beginning of the episode is buck missed eddie -> buck used tommy to avoid feeling alone -> maddie tells him to be okay with being alone. so the type of being alone that maddie is talking about here isn't general loneliness or the loneliness that comes from not being in a relationship but buck specifically being alone without eddie and missing him. it's just interesting how, in the same conversation that buck refers to his and eddie's friendship as "what me and eddie have" that maddie is ALSO putting their friendship on a different level than normal friends. and buck doesn't correct her. its how you would talk about getting over an ex and not jumping straight into a new relationship just to be in one. it's not how you talk about your friend moving away. except it's how buck talks about eddie bc he's insane and thinks that it's normal. and everybody around him is also doing it bc it's just how their relationship is universally understood.