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

LETS GO MADDIE HAN BREAK YOURSELF OUTTA THERE GIRL. YOUR FAMILY MISSES YOU AND IS WORRIED

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.

The thing about 911 is that the shipping drama and discourse surrounding it completely belies how insane this show truly is. A man is attacked by a shark on the freeway. Ghosts are probably real, and so are curses. The most recent season opens with a bee-nado that segues into a plotline about an autistic half-orphan child landing a broken plan. The most dramatic moment between the fandom's favorite ship is one of the characters getting shot by a sniper in broad daylight in the suburban streets of Los Angeles. Buck's introductory scene of the entire show is him stealing a firetruck to have sex with a Tinder hookup. The fire captain's backstory is an addiction that led to the death of 148 people. He's best friends with his wife's ex-husband and once proposed to said ex-husband's boyfriend on his behalf while that boyfriend was performing brain surgery on a man in the middle of a burning building. There's a guy who sneezes every time he lies and then lies so hard he almost dies. One of the main characters gets rebar impaled through his skull and is back to work the next month with no lasting side-effects. They basically never fight fires.

800 miles between them but still have each other’s backs🥹

Coping HARD rn

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.

Further thoughts on Buddie following episodes 8x11.

I'm speculating here, but I think this episode was about setting up a coherent and satisfying narrative around Buck and Eddie's feelings for each other. Look. Buck's recently figured out he's bisexual. If he's going to end up dating Eddie, Eddie needs to come out too. But how do you get two main characters to come out as queer when they've only ever dated women before? That's a wildly convenient coincidence.

(Audiences hate convenient coincidences.)

Now Buck is insisting he's not interested in Eddie. Why isn't he interested in Eddie? Well, Eddie's straight. Okay, that's not really an answer. But it doesn't matter! Because Eddie's straight! Why does everyone think he's in love with his best friend? His best friend is straight!

Suddenly Eddie's sexuality is a question. Is Eddie straight? Why is that important to Buck? What would happen if he wasn't? Fandom has been asking these questions since day one and we've already got more than a few answers of our own. But now Eddie's sexuality is being made salient by the narrative. And we're being told, Buck is not in love with his straight best friend.

So, hypothetically: Eddie comes out as Not Straight. This is no longer a wildly convenient coincidence. It's a complication. (Audiences love complications). Because now Buck has to answer the question that we've just established he does not want to answer. Are you in love with your best friend?

They can also reverse the order. Have Buck answer that question and move on to What Now? In this case, Eddie coming out is now a resolution. (Audiences also love resolutions). I think this is the less interesting path but it's also possible.

Usually when I dissect narratives like this I think in terms of "what I would have done." This is not what I would have done. This is better than what I would have done, because I've never had to convince my audience that People Can Be Queer, Actually, Yes Even Him. I would not have thought to structure it this way. I didn't think to structure it this way, and I've given a lot of thought to how I would hypothetically structure a getting together arc that would be convincing to a mainstream audience. I've been thinking that the only options for Eddie coming out are either Buck is supportive and excited for him as a friend, or Buck is painfully hopeful because he's been pining. Way, way better: Eddie comes out and Buck, who's been insisting for months that just because he's queer doesn't mean he's in love with his best friend, immediately realises he's in love with his best friend. And spirals.

bobby’s boybestie and co-dad michael won’t even be at the funeral. btw. which is not only sickening for the sanctity of male friendship which everyone seems to worry about but is so mean to athena bc michael would never leave her and the kids alone at a time like this. tv sucks.

Sorry I don't care Bobby's mom should've taken him with her. I don't believe in not giving children a choice but I think abuse is one of the moments you can enforce that "I'm an adult you do as I say" thing.