Loulover911 - Kinard217

“Just uh, Just watch where you step alright? Pumpkin likes to dart out infront of you.” Tommy warned as he unlocked his front door.

“And what IS pumpkin? You know I still havent been told what kinda animal you have.” Buck pouted and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“Baby I wanted it to be a surprise- besides he’s not er.. well a conventional pet..”

“Thomas. What do you have? Is it illegal?” Evan gasped

“No! No - it’s not like that- I have a permit to own him.”

“I swear to god if I walk in there and see a tiger-”

“Evan. Just relax.” Tommy rolled his eyes and opened the door, walking inside as Evan cautiously followed behind him.

“Pumpkin! Tch tch come here boy.” Tommy called out as he switched the lights on.

Buck heard the scurrying of paws, and a bell jingling on the creatures collar. Poking his head over Tommy’s shoulder he watched as it emerged from the kitchen.

It was..

just.. a possum?

“Oh.” Buck laughed and stood up straight, no longer feeling anxious about the situation.

“I found him in my garage a few years ago- just a tiny baby at the time- I waited and waited but the mother never came back- and by then he had imprinted on me and well..” Tommy sighed and Buck watched in amusement as the possum climbed up Tommy’s leg to be held.

“I just dont really tell people about him cause- well you know people think possums are dirty.” Tommy frowned and ruffled the animal’s fur.

“I do know that yes. But Possums actually groom themselves quite regularly- they also eat ticks- which is good because I hate ticks.” Evan reached over to gently stroke the possum.

“Can.. can i hold him?” He asked and looked up at his boyfriend.

“Of course.”

Tommy handed the possum over to Evan, who immediately clung onto him.

“So.. adorable.” Evan couldnt help but smile.

“Yeah- you are pretty cute.” Tommy hummed and kissed his cheek before walking towards the kitchen to start dinner

Perfect

Most of the time, I'm pretty confident that Buck (Evan❣) and Tommy will find each other again because so much point to that!😀 But then I think about how this is THE season of missed storyline opportunities on 911 aaand I'm back to questioning my own reasoning.😭 And repeat, ad nauseam...

Stop gaslighting me, Tim!

ah anon i get it! me, i’m too hopeful for my own good and after the initial shock and upset of the breakup, i immediately found hope (one could call it cope lool) in the idea that buck and tommy could very well get back together. really, the only thing that made us think so definitively on the contrary were the interviews and after revisiting them with a clear head, i realized that they don’t make anything very final in the way it felt immediately after the breakup. and for me, it always comes back to how open-ended they left the breakup in the narrative. and not just open-ended like it could happen one day but one that leaves a lot of room for a make-up and reconciliation sooner rather than later. like. if buck and tommy hadn’t essentially declared their love for each other during the breakup and if tommy’s reason for breaking was something other than the fear of getting his heart broken one day, i think i’d be less confident. but their breakup, to me, only further established that they really are it for each other. in fact, the breakup made me believe in their love and want for each other even more so. and i think if tim had wanted to really end them for good good - and leave tommy as buck’s “first” and not his last - he would’ve went about it in a way where the breakup would’ve ended on more positive note. still sad but like - it was time to move on. but the fact that it was sooo devastating and heartbreaking …making us care about buck and tommy even more….i’d like to think that maybe it was intentional. especially when i go back to what tim said when he was talking about why he likes to break couples up:

obv this is mostly just my spec and feelings but i am hopeful and will remain that way until the end of 8B <3

Okay, so I've been thinking a lot about some of the choices the writers made in season 7 re: Buck, Tommy, and Eddie, and about the conversations people in fandom are having about them. This is really long and tedious as hell, and I'm sorry for that, but I kind of needed to spill all my thoughts somewhere to organize them in my own brain.

Huge disclaimer: I am not Tim Minear's secret BFF, so I'm talking out my ass with the spec about writers' motivations and thought processes. Season 8 could air and prove me wrong on every single point.

As someone who started watching 911 in season 3, I latched on to the potential of Buck/Eddie as a ship right away. I was never somebody who necessarily expected or believed that it would become canon, but I loved the characters, and I loved the pairing. I was content to enjoy it as a well-fed fanon ship, but I’ll admit I did have moments where I thought they could have gone there: the shooting, Eddie’s breakdown, the lightning strike/couch theory era, etc. The season 6 finale poured cold water on the small hope of it ever going canon for me, and I think season 7 has put the nail in that coffin (which is fucking wild for me to say, considering one half of the pairing is now canonically bisexual).  

Here’s the thing: I had a moment before 7x04 when the press was clearly hinting at a bisexual Buck arc and we suspected a Buck/Tommy kiss was going to happen where I thought, Oh, man, they could do it! They could have Buck come out and discover he has feelings for Eddie. My assumption was that if they did, Eddie would return or at least acknowledge his feelings for Buck an episode or two later, because the idea of two totally separate coming-out arcs has never made sense to me in the context of the business of television.  

Although the fandom itself leans young and queer, 911’s general audience is heterosexual, middle-aged, and unfortunately has limits about how much queerness it believes is ‘realistic’ in a procedural genre television show (see: all the backlash on social media after 7x04 about how 911 is “woke” because they “turned Buck gay” despite the show always featuring queer characters; see also: all the het women whining on Facebook and Instagram about how Buck is now unattractive because he’s “gay” and thus unavailable to them, despite him being bi and not a real person, lol.) Like it or not, the show’s survival depends on this middle-of-the-road audience of casual viewers, not a few thousand passionate fans on the internet, and the network is always going to prioritize keeping its biggest demographic happy. 

I think it’s clear that the writers had a hell of a time fighting for queer Buck, and we now know that they were flat-out unable to manage it on Fox. ABC was willing to take the risk, although I do find it very interesting that they greenlit two more queer male characters, Buck and Tommy (one main, one guest/recurring) after the show had already lost two queer male characters, Michael and David (one main, one guest/recurring.) It was a lateral move. Just food for thought. 

In any case, getting two queer mains -- both Buck and Eddie -- would be much harder to pitch to a money-focused executive suit. Given Oliver Stark’s comments on a queer Buck storyline being considered in season 4, the (dubious) Twitter leaker’s supposed knowledge of queer Eddie being pitched in season 5, and Lou Ferrigno Jr.’s comment about Tommy being floated as a love interest for both Eddie and Buck at various points in the planning process, I think that paints a pretty solid picture of what might have happened: Fox shut down the possibility of making either Buck or Eddie queer, and ABC okayed it for one of them, not both. And the writers sat down, thought about both characters’ storylines and queer-coding, and decided that Buck made the most sense for the story they wanted to tell with Tommy. 

Let’s consider the other option, though -- that ABC was convinced in season 7 to greenlight Buck and Eddie coming out, with the understanding that it would lead to a relationship. The fandom would be thrilled, of course. But how would you, as writers and producers, sell this to the very important general audience? 

If the show was really going to go there with their two most popular “hot guy” male leads and they wanted to get the general audience’s buy-in that they would badly need, they would probably want to frame the arc from the beginning as a story about two friends who discover that they love each other. (As a queer person, I don’t love the tired old trope of “I thought I was straight but maybe this person is my exception and/or I don’t know what my sexuality is but I love you,” but I could definitely see them thinking that would be more palatable to an audience that had never considered Buck and Eddie to be anything more than platonic friends. In fact, they actually did kind of use this method with Buck/Tommy, in that Buck’s arc is focused on one person and he hasn’t yet explicitly called himself ‘bisexual’, but I’m somewhat optimistic that they’ll remedy this in season 8.)  All that’s to say, if they wanted to make Buddie work for an audience that wasn’t already primed to scour the material for subtext, they would need to make Buck and Eddie’s realizations explicitly about each other. They would need the audience to accept the idea of them being romantically linked to each other early on even if they didn’t immediately have the two of them get together. 

The show didn’t do that. They linked Buck’s bisexual arc to another character. And not just a new, throwaway character that could be easily discarded  – a character who already fit into the 911 universe, a fellow firefighter who would be easy to integrate into future storylines, and a character with a distinct and established personality (love him or hate him, you can’t deny people feel strongly about his character).  

So now Buck has come out, and he’s in a relationship with Tommy. This arc was thankfully received well – or at least wasn’t controversial enough to have an effect on the ratings, which is what ABC cares about – and for the general audience and new viewers, this facet of Buck’s journey is associated with Tommy. In real life, of course, it’s reductive (if not offensive) to say that somebody’s sexuality is about one person; if he were a real person, Buck would be bi whether or not he met Tommy and whether or not he ever dated a man. But because Buck is fictional, and this storyline was written specifically in the context of Buck discovering his feelings for a particular person, that person is now linked to Buck’s bisexuality in the minds of the general audience.  

That choice alone gave me pause. If you wanted to convince a skeptical audience that Buck and Eddie were meant for each other, why would you introduce such a solid rival? Still, a love triangle could work. After 7x05, there was speculation in the fandom about setting up a jealousy arc, in which Eddie would realize his feelings after seeing Buck and Tommy together. Theoretically, this could be a way to ease the audience into the idea of Buddie, if you did it early enough in the story. But there are two big things the writers did in the ensuing episodes that pivoted the characters in the opposite direction:  

The writers doubled down on Eddie being in-your-face heterosexual in a way that he wasn’t in his oddly chaste relationship with Ana. They used valuable screentime on postcoital scenes demonstrating that he’s happily down to pound town onscreen with Marisol; it's the nun thing that throws him off, not her being a woman. He very much seemed to enjoy having sex with her before that and is sexually frustrated when his religious guilt prevents him from continuing to have sex with her. More significantly, the arc with Kim at least implied, if not outright confirmed, that Eddie is still in love with Shannon – his feelings are strong enough to blow up his entire life for the chance to recapture even a pale imitation of what he believed they had together. The writers made an effort in season 6 to reframe Shannon as the great love of Eddie’s life, where it was sort of messier and less rose-tinted in previous seasons. The fact that they doubled-down on this in season 7 makes it extremely unlikely that the general audience would believe that Eddie could go from pining for his wife years after her death to secretly in love with Buck the whole time. Not only did seeing Buck with Tommy not trigger any latent feelings for his friend in Eddie, but he spent the entire second half of the season stewing in his unresolved feelings for Shannon instead.  

The writers portrayed Buck as being fully “in” with his budding relationship with Tommy. He is explicitly attracted both sexually and romantically to Tommy. He doesn’t express any doubts or reservations about his choice after 7x05 and in fact is the one to pursue it as something serious. They didn’t have Buck choose time with Eddie over Tommy, even when the blow-up with Chris would have provided them with a perfect narrative reason to do so. They didn’t have Tommy express any jealousy about Eddie or even seem slightly concerned about his friendship with Buck, even though there were opportunities to do so. The writing went out of its way to frame Buck’s friendship and his relationship as two separate parts of his life that aren’t in conflict with each other. Eddie has been openly and enthusiastically supportive of Buck's new relationship. Eddie likes Tommy. Christopher likes Tommy. Tommy likes both Eddie and Christopher. Buck loves them all. There’s no drama there, and if this was supposed to lead into a love triangle ending in Buddie, I really believe they would have made that clear to the audience with blatant foreshadowing.  

All that’s to say, this show isn’t subtle. If they were intending to convince the general audience to buy into the idea of Buddie, they would be working hard to muddy the waters surrounding the Buck/Tommy/Eddie of it all from the beginning; they would want the audience to have doubts about Tommy as soon as the relationship began and establish Eddie's jealousy right away. Why on earth would they take the trouble of getting their viewers (many of them new to the show after the network switch) attached to Tommy as a character and get them invested in Buck and Tommy as a couple in a happy little romcom if they were going to turn around and jettison it all and say Surprise! It was Buck/Eddie the whole time!? From a writing perspective, that’s a bad twist. If you want that reversal to work, you need to build it up beforehand and plant seeds of conflict from the start. And for that casual, general audience, there are no seeds; they aren’t scrutinizing every word and glance for proof that Buck and Eddie have feelings for each other. They’re not pulling from past episodes to draw parallels in the narrative. The vast majority of them probably don’t even have an inkling that Buck/Eddie is a thing that people ship. They’re not reading Tommy’s every action in bad faith and looking for hints that he’s actually terrible for Buck. They sit down to watch an episode, take it at face value, and then don't think about the show again until the next episode. For them, a Buddie twist would be unsatisfying if not outright unbelievable, because it would come out of absolutely nowhere. 

911’s writers have been known to make baffling and offensive choices, but they are capable of creating a careful story, and I don’t think they would fumble this so badly when so much is at stake for the future of their creative choices. ABC took a risk with bi Buck, and if the writers and Tim have any sense at all, they wouldn’t want to invite backlash from the audience or from their bosses.

If they were going to go forward with queer Eddie and a love triangle in season 8, they could and should have set it up in season 7, given that they actually had their renewal in the bag early enough to plan ahead for once. To me, season 7 read as Eddie being finally and definitively cast into the role of platonic best friend, while Tommy was cast into the role of romantic partner. If Tim and Co. truly wanted to make Buddie canon this whole time and finally got permission to go ahead, I don’t believe they would have made any of the choices they made in season 7. 

I swear people better not leave negative reviews for this upcoming episode because I’ll be so mad. And they already saying the storyline will be weird as well. But what else would expect because the spin outs were happening pretty quickly after the screeners went out!

There’s some fan initiatives to support Aisha’s directing debut!

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Post by @bisexualbrainrots

Supporting Aisha's Directing Debut Hi everyone, I don't know how much traction this post will get, but I wanted to post this in anticipation

i was yapping at @sazzynatural about my hurdle headcanon and then my hand slipped and now here we are, i guess!

"Hey, Evan?"

"Yeah?" Buck calls, from where he's checking through his cupboards, making a shopping list. Tommy doesn't respond immediately and he turns back from where he's surveying the spice rack to look at him. "What's up?"

Tommy has that fond look on his face that, as far as Buck is concerned, might as well just be what his face looks like. The way that Tommy looks at him lights him up inside. He doesn't think anyone has ever looked at him that way, the way that he catches Tommy looking, so soft and endeared, like just looking at Buck makes him happy. It's - 

"I love you."

Buck's heartbeat roars in his ears. 

"Y-you - um. What? No, wait, I mean. I heard you. Tommy, that's - "

"Evan." He still looks fond, and that should be impossible, because Buck is screwing up, he has ring-side seats to this, is actively watching himself screw up, and Tommy's still looking at him like - like that. "Stop spiraling. You don't need to say it back, I just wanted you to - "

"No, no, it's not - uh - I, uh. I said I'd meet Maddie for coffee during her shift and if I don't leave now I'm gonna be late, so I, um. C-can we talk about this later? O-over dinner, maybe?"

Tommy's shoulders slump a little at that. "Uh. Sure. If you like."

"Uh-huh, yeah, that'd be great, I'll be back, don't uh - don't go anywhere, I won't be long, I just really - really need to get that coffee with Maddie, I can't be late but uh - that's - that's great, Tommy."

He sees Tommy's eyebrows go up, sees him mouth great, and then he's out the door.

Oh, shit.

***

The drive to dispatch goes in a blur, and he must look pretty freaked out because as soon as Maddie sees him, she quickly finishes her call and drags him into the breakroom.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"I - I thought we could get coffee," Buck says lamely, and she gives him the big sister eyebrows. "Really," Buck says a bit frantically. "Can - can we have coffee?"

Maddie rolls her eyes, but she pours them both a coffee and hands him his, putting the table between them and leaning against it.

"I have fifteen minutes. Talk."

"Tommy said he loves me," Buck blurts.

"Buck, wow. That's amazing." Maddie's eyes widen at him over her coffee cup. "Wait. Not amazing?"

"I didn't - uh. I didn't say it back?" Buck says, and feels his heart sink. 

"Wait, you didn't?" Maddie tilts her head, looks honestly baffled. Which - fair. Buck is a little obsessed. "Do you - not?"

Of course I do, Buck thinks. How could I not?

"I - I'm being intentional," Buck says, and it sounds hollow already. "I don't wanna rush it and I had like - a timeline."

"Did - did you tell him about the timeline?"

"N-not in so many words," Buck admits.

"Evan! Please tell me you didn't just run out on the poor guy," Maddie pleads, over the sound of the breakroom door opening again. Buck doesn't even care about a potential audience, he's so suddenly miserable at the way he left Tommy at the loft.

"I - I didn't run," he says although - it was probably a close thing. "I…I told him I had to get coffee with you and we'd talk about it later," he admits, his voice getting smaller with every word.

Maddie's face does the thing - the scrunched up pout like she's holding back on telling him that he's a damn moron. Buck scrubs his hands over his face.

"Is this Buck's hot pilot?" Josh asks from where he's pouring coffee.

Buck hears Maddie's mm-hm. 

"He said he loves me," he says, still hiding behind his hands.

"Con…gratulations?" Josh says dubiously. "Or, how awful for you? I'm really not clear on the desired response here."

"He thinks it's too soon," Maddie says. "He had a timeline. Which he did not share."

"We were taking it slow!" 

"I hate to break it to you, but the way that man looks at you is not slow," Josh says.

"He's not wrong," Maddie says, and Buck hangs his head. Because they're right. They're both right.

"Look, you know me. I stumble into things, I end up too serious too fast and it blows up in my face. I - I really didn't want it to blow up in my face. And then he just goes and - and looks at me like that, and says that, and I don't - guys, I think I really screwed up."

Maddie gives him a sympathetic look. 

Josh gives him a deeply, deeply unsympathetic one. "Oh, I have totally dated a Tommy."

"I'm sorry, what?" Buck glares at Josh who looks supremely unimpressed.

"Calm down, ankles," he tuts, and Buck is absolutely going to kill Eddie. Or Chim. He's going to kill someone. How does everyone know about that? "I said I dated a Tommy, your man's virtue is safe."

"What does that mean, you dated a Tommy?"

"Look, not everyone knows when they're five like me, and not everyone goes from adorably clueless to out and proud as fast as you. Sometimes, and I know this might be a little revolutionary for you, Buck, but sometimes the queer experience? Fucking miserable for a really long time. So sometimes you just want to grab happiness where you can find it, as soon as you find it."

Buck thinks about the things he's learned about Tommy over the months they've been seeing each other, each one a little treasure to be hoarded, a part of the puzzle that makes up the man that he already can't imagine life without - the asshole father, the dead mom, the army, the closet, the loneliness - and he wants to slap himself. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he pulls it out, his heart sinking further at the message Tommy's sent.

Do you want me to cancel the reservation?

Buck turns his phone to show Maddie and Josh the message.

"What reservation?" Maddie asks

"Dinner," Buck says miserably. "Date night."

"Okay," Josh says. "Some of us are supposed to be working and don't have time for your little baby bi crisis. Evan Buckley, are you actually going to fumble that man? Before you answer, be aware that two thirds of the population of WeHo will get a hard-on the moment he's back on the market even if they won't know why."

"He's not going back on the market," Buck snaps. "I just - I just need to talk to him."

"There we go," Josh says, rolling his eyes and disappearing with his mug of coffee, and an idiot called back over his shoulder.

Maddie's a little kinder, hugging him quickly. "Tell him how you feel, Buck. Talk it out."

***

By the time Buck gets back to the loft, he has another message from Tommy.

Hey, I headed back to my place. Let me know if you want to talk, or if you want dinner. I'm sorry if that was too much. It doesn't have to change anything.

"Goddamnit," Buck grumbles, throwing the Jeep back into gear. The drive to Tommy's has never felt so long, and he sits outside for long enough that the neighbor across the street is just openly staring through the blinds. It's enough to propel him out of the car and up to the door.

It takes Tommy a minute to answer when Buck knocks and he looks - surprised to see him, honestly. Buck feels a horrible twist of guilt.

"Can I come in?"

"Evan. Of course. You want a coffee or something?"

"No," Buck says, trailing Tommy into the kitchen. "I - I did have one with Maddie, I'm kinda…vibrating out of my skin enough as it is."

"I'm sorry. That's not what I was aiming for."

"Y-you don't need to be - Tommy, I - "

"Hey, look, it's fine," Tommy says, and it looks like he really believes it. Like it really is completely fine that he told Buck he loves him and Buck's response was to buffer internally for a minute and then run out of his own damn apartment like his ass was on fire. Tommy taps his knuckles on the table between them in what Buck recognises as a nervous gesture. "I know that I'm not - I'm not the forever guy, and that's okay. I didn't say it to make you say it back. I said it because it's true and I wanted you to know."

"What are you talking about?"

"That I - " Tommy honestly looks a little puzzled. "What I said, this morning. It wasn't - there weren't any strings attached."

"You're not the forever guy? What the hell does that mean?"

"Just that - that I know I'm not exactly a…long-term prospect, and that's okay."

Okay? It's so far from okay. It's the worst thing Buck has ever heard.

"How are you not a long-term prospect? That's - that's the dumbest thing I ever heard, take that back."

"Evan. I used the L word and you couldn't get out of there fast enough. It's okay. You don't have to try to make me feel better. It's fine."

"It's not fine," Buck snaps, rounding the table to get closer to Tommy, catching hold of his wrist. "I'm not - look, I had a timeline, which, Maddie pointed out I didn't actually tell you about that, so that's my bad. But it was a timeline for me, to stop me going too fast and falling too hard and - and going full Buck. I didn't expect that you would - "

"Stomp all over this mysterious timeline?" Tommy asks, his eyebrows going up.

"And I'm now realizing how stupid that was. Did - did you mean it?"

"Evan. Of course I meant it." He glances down at where Buck is still squeezing his wrist, not quite holding his hand "I - honestly, I didn't think it would come as a surprise, I'm not exactly - "

"I love you."

Tommy blinks. "Evan - "

"Please believe me. Tommy. God, I screwed this up so bad, but - I do. I do love you. You are the forever guy. You're my forever guy. I promise. I just - I was just scared. But about me, not about you. Never about you. Tommy, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I - "

"Evan. Say it again."

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

Buck lets himself sway forward, lets his forehead meet Tommy's shoulder. "Not the forever guy. You're a goddamn idiot is what you are."

"I'm your idiot," Tommy promises, and Buck laughs shakily.

They love each other. They love each other.

Upon her return to shore, Athena's son finds himself in trouble with the law. Meanwhile, Buck grows envious as Eddie forms a close bond with someone else, and the 118 rescue a woman who's stuck on receiving a rose at an iconic mansion.

-Sue Zhao

9-1-1 -> 8x5 ❝ masks ❞

Ships

Week Ending October 28th, 2024

Bucktommy +19 Evan Buckley & Tommy Kinard, 9-1-1

Billford Bill Cipher & Ford Pines, Gravity Falls

Phan -2 Daniel Howell & Phil Lester, YouTubers

Buddie +7 Evan Buckley & Edmundo Diaz, 9-1-1

Agathario -1 Agatha Harkness & Rio Vidal, Agatha All Along

Poolverine -3 Wade Wilson & Logan Howlett, the Marvel universe

Megop +2 Megatron & Optimus Prime, Transformers

Lestappen Charles Leclerc & Max Verstappen, Formula 1 drivers

Satosugu -2 Gojo Satoru & Geto Suguru, Jujutsu Kaisen

Fiddauthor -4 Fiddleford McGucket & Stanford Pines, Gravity Falls

Ineffable Husbands +1 Aziraphale & Crowley, Good Omens

Narilamb Narinder & the Lamb, Cult of the Lamb

Zosan -5 Roronoa Zoro & Vinsmoke Sanji, One Piece

Farcille +4 Falin Touden & Marcille Donato, Dungeon Meshi

Ivantill Ivan & Till, Alien Stage

Symbrock Venom (symbiote) & Eddie Brock, the Marvel universe

Loustat -3 Louis de Pointe du Lac & Lestat de Lioncourt, Interview with the Vampire

Destiel -13 Dean Winchester & Castiel, Supernatural

Radioapple Lucifer Morningstar & Alastor, Hazbin Hotel

Bakudeku -5 Bakugou Katsuki & Midoriya Izuku, Boku no Hero Academia

The number in italics indicates how many spots a ship moved up or down from the previous week. Bolded ships weren’t on the list last week.