Some of ya’ll are just batshit crazy..and not in the cute way. I’ll probably post an intolerable amount of feminism and other opinionated crap - I’ve been alive a while...lots of things to fan squirrel over..(and by all means feel welcome to @ me. If it’s a slow day, I may even answer)
I can’t help but wonder if tptb at 911 have realized “oh shit. Maybe a happy healthy relationship is more of a draw than this stupid shit we’ve been pulling for years now”
Imagine if we had just let Tommy and Buck be happy? Nah let’s draw this shit out forever until…oh wait where did everybody go?
how do you know the guy that chased you with an axe wasn't in the closet himself. not very compassionate of you not to consider what he could have been going through in life tbh :(
the first thing tommy does when he sees chim is crack a racist joke totally unprompted, that has nothing to do with him being closeted. and neither does him being cruel and misogynistic about abby in 8x06 when he's very much not in the closet. it's not 'privileged' to be angry about that lmao.
JHFC. Then be angry. Scream into the void if that feeds your soul. I’m so tired of dealing with you nutty squirrels.
It’s almost like people don’t remember what it was like to be gay and have to hide who you are to survive.
You want me to tell you what being queer was like for my circle of friends in mid-late 90’s early aughts in Washington DC?
It was always going out in a group. Rarely or never alone.
It was that small sense of relief when you got a parking space close to the doors at Traxx. Because it was shitty part of town and homophobes were everywhere. And sometimes they had an axe (yep..We were chased by a guy with a fucking axe)
It was not even admitting to yourself who you were, so you dated and sometimes even got engaged to a woman before coming out of the closet.
It was standing with a group of people and laughing when your boss, your co-worker or your frat brother made a gay joke because what the fuck else could you do?
Let me tell you I knew plenty of closeted gay men who were just like Tommy and worse, at work and in mixed company, before the world starting barfing rainbows and singing RuPaul songs.
So when you continue to spit vitriol and tear down Tommy Kinard over previous words and actions when he was in the damn closet.
All you’re showing is your ignorance. And perhaps your privilege
A Buddie shipper was thoughtful enough to use Buck & Tommy tags to make sure the fans of this relationship could all be able to see it..(just in case you know, we had the buddie tag blocked)
But..
Either you recognize the petty hypocrisy and irony in your post and you’re just shit posting and tagging Buck & Tommy fans because you’re..well petty af?
Or you don’t see how hilariously ridiculous taunting us about the end of a CANON relationship is from your ship that all indications are will never sail..
“omg why are you bt shippers acting like we didn’t have queer rep since day one oh em gee yall just care about bucktommy”
firstly the fact that it comes from the same group that accused oliver of queer baiting for years is rich.
other than that i’ve said it a hundred times and i say it again, this show has queers in it but does not treat them right!!
god forbid josh be more that maddie’s little gay bestie ( the last time he went on a date he got fucking beat up)
henren’s last kiss was apparently in 6.06! remember when karen said something like their marriage doesn’t feel like a marriage but a sisterhood years ago??? their child almost died in front of them but they didn’t even huged!
we are not gonna see michael and david again ( yes bcz of the things that happened in irl but still)
buck is apparently a confused baby bi cuz god forbid if bisexuals know what they want
and tommy is gonna be alone forever (something that is possible the same ending for josh too) cuz gay men will always be alone
so you tell me if only including queer characters like this is really representation or not??
let me take you back to spring 2023 and season s6 of 9-1-1 for a moment. this is going to be the scenic route, but i promise i have a point. (and audhd.)
my cat, who was not only my companion for almost a decade, but also—idek how to explain it. i’m neurodivergent and physically disabled, and he accepted me more than any human i interacted with. anyway. my cat passed suddenly from acute kidney failure in the fall of 2022, and the prospect of a found family show that had quirky moments (for being a network procedural) and queer characters sounded like a balm for my aching heart.
i watched from the pilot to 6x09 in about three weeks. (then watched “there goes the neighborhood” multiple times, because there is no such thing as too much trash.)
i did not understand buck until 1x07, but then it all fell into place, and i did, and i adored him. i shipped buddie, sure, but i loved the show for the show and the found family of it all. to me, it was the gay firefighter show from day 1, because we had michael and hen and karen and a plethora of characters from calls, and then we had josh, and breadcrumbs leading to bi!buck, and i may be forgetting something (brain fog whomst)
ultimately, i just wanted stories in this universe that made sense, because i believed the characters i enjoyed deserved that.
i still do.
(more under the cut, because this is a long boi.)
and i ignored the stories that didn’t make sense, some that downright infuriated me and shook my faith in the show’s ability to tell stories that made sense, because the show did a great job with the stories that did make sense (imo the athena & tonya kingston line was exemplary of this).
so i made it to season 6.
i made it to “no, kid. if what matters to you the most is how other people see you, then you haven’t learned a damn thing”/“i was buck”/“and that’s enough?”/“i think it is”. and i thought: holy shit. this is—he’s finally on the right track.
& then a few weeks later, in a cemetery: “i feel like she sees me, you know? like she really sees me for who i am, and what i’ve been through.”
so for one, i think this is where my hope for canon buddie died, or at least this is where i started to detach from it in my mind. but even more than that: hwhat?
did—did buck’s realization in his coma dream literally four episodes before just…mean nothing? he died, and came back to life because being buck was enough, only to fall into the same patterns four episodes later?
look. i’ve been to church camp, and also work conferences. i know mountain top experiences exist. i lost the two beings i felt actually knew me, “sees me” best, as well as my livelihood and health, within not even three years of one another. i know grief and recovery are not linear. but to me, this would have been around the time they should’ve been shoring up buck’s newfound ethos in the story, not trying to dismantle it before it had even been fully realized in his waking life.
i watched through season 6, through the cancellation, through the picking up by abc. and i grieved at the end of season 6, when they decided to give buck and eddie girlfriends, both of whom they met on calls (which, canonically, makes them hypocrites), for the sake of a “happy ending” at what they saw was the end of the series—not because they didn’t end up together, but because of the amatonormativity of it all. The toxic “they won’t be happy unless they’re dating someone.”
it took me fully until february of the next year to be able to even read 9-1-1 fic again.
i wanted to give them a chance on abc. so i did.
and boy, was i rewarded—at least for a time—for my efforts. (though. can we really call them efforts? it’s watching a tv show)
but here i am, the morning after. the morning after the worst possible way to lose this story that gave me and so many other queer folks hope.
dare i say: i at least felt like the show really saw me, for who i am and what i’ve been through.
i felt like they finally saw buck, for who he is and what he’s been through.
i felt like they saw tommy, for who he is and what he’s been through.
i felt like they saw josh, for who he is and what he’s been through.
i felt like they saw us, for who we are and what we’ve been through.
and what did we get? in a sense, “death, death, death”.
look. i know buck is still bi. nothing can ch—
well. ackshually. the show can change that, and at this point, with how biphobic the breakup played out both on- and offscreen, i wouldn’t put it past them to fully turn this into a “phase” with their whole chest. don’t get me twisted: i don’t hope this happens, but i’m feeling pretty damn jaded right now. i trusted them to be good stewards of this queer storyline, and after last night, that trust is shattered into a million pieces, and if i turn it into a kintsugi project, it will likely be with fanworks, and not with future canon.
but. yes. buck is still bi. we still have hen and karen and josh and past episodes of michael and david. we still have calls featuring queer characters. this is still the gay firefighter show.
but it’s missing one gay firefighter in particular, and i don’t have words to describe just how tremendous a fumble they made with tommy kinard. (and with lou. but i’m talking about the story making sense, or not, within the show.)
tommy kinard was not someone i was fond of in chim begins, but he maybe grew on me at the end. i wasn’t impressed with him in hen begins, but it was clear by the end that he wasn’t completely useless. i loved his dynamic with chim and hen in bobby begins again, and thought it was neat that chim could call him up in broken. so when they brought him back, i thought, oh, neat!
it was like the reverse stages of grief to watch the fake mouth static and the shoulder clap in 7x03, then the sneak peak at harbor in 7x04, and then the 7x05 promo on youtube before i saw the episode because i was trying to avoid spoilers and got whammy’d anyway.
after 7x04, my hopes for buddie in canon were somewhat reignited, since at least half of them is canonically queer now, until i realized i was quite fond of tommy, and wanted to keep him for as long as they’d let me. he deserves more than to be a stepping stone. he’s interesting. he had potential! i didn’t know if they’d be endgame, but the care the entire show showed with the coming out storyline gave me reason to hope that, if they did break up, it would be done well. with love. with care.
tommy is a character a lot of people have judged to the point of unfairness since his return in season 7. to those folks, i say: did you grow up in a post-glee world, or a pre-glee world? did you see matthew shepard’s story on the news and end up gripped with a fear you couldn’t describe? did you grow up in a repressive and likely abusive home environment, in a repressive and abusive society, at least compared to, say, 2015? have you worked in repressive and abusive work environments for supervisors who remind you of your family of origin? have you had to lie in order to survive, to the point where you don’t know what’s actually you and what’s your coat of armor anymore? have you had to make the conscious choice over and over again to show up for yourself, because showing up for others is that much harder to do when you have no idea how to show up for yourself first? have you ever had to just get out even though you know that wherever you end up, you’ll still be there with the self you probably hate? have you ever felt like your world was ending, but you had to keep going, because you haven’t had a chance to live as yourself yet?
(am i describing tommy kinard, or am i describing myself. and i am not the only one. are we fools, because we claimed him with our whole hearts?)
and yet: tommy kinard shows the fuck up.
tommy kinard takes a fucking chance, even though he may get burned.
tommy kinard has read and internalized that mortifying ordeal of being known article. he’s human. he has moments where the fear swamps his desire to reap the rewards of being known. but he knows, ok? he knows.
which brings us to last night.
the breakup itself—because tommy gets scared when buck asks him to move in—was for the most part understandable, though the biphobia instantly soured it. it set up potential for buck to come back and say, y’know what? no. i know what i want. i want you. i want to work on this. with you. and maybe i moved too fast because i was excited. but i was excited about a future with you, tommy, not some hypothetical other person out there in the future. it’s you.
it set up potential for tommy, who, as we saw in season 7, is very intentional about things (but also sometimes impulsive), and puts effort into processing and understanding things (autistic king), to step back and evaluate his trauma response, and his impulse to fly once again, this time from something real and true and beautiful. the love he’s been looking for was within arm’s reach. someone wanted to work on it with him. because of him. because he is tommy. and that was enough.
that is what canon told us.
interviews are not canon, and yet those interviews were the ones to inform us that, despite what we just saw, this is likely the end of this beautiful, beautiful story of everyone finally having a chance to get what they want, dammit. & not just what buck and tommy have been looking for romantically, but the lost brother of it all for maddie and chimney. the tired gays solidarity for hen. the science bros dynamic for karen. the bros-bros dynamic for eddie. (not to mention this is another person who loved chris, but is leaving chris behind too.) the “he’s good people and he’s good for you” care for tommy that bobby has. & the potential for violent poultry shenanigans with athena. the pre-glee understanding he could share with josh.
(never mind the interviews done with lou were done by journalists who supported anti-tommy views and behaviors, and in one case, couldn’t even be arsed to spell tevan correctly.)
it’s such a fucking waste.
and then: they filmed 8x05 after this because they wanted it to hurt more.
let me rephrase: they crafted the end of this storyline to intentionally inflict maximum pain on their queer viewership, who liked tommy, loved tommy, felt kinship with tommy and his experiences.
they made tommy a bona fide curse-breaker, knowing he would be gone after the next time we saw him. you don’t mess with curse-breakers. you just don’t.
and not only was the how of the breakup biphobic in canon, but it was biphobic out of canon too.
i can hear you say, catfud, you’re aroace, you just think sleeping around is icky. to which i reply: you don’t fuckin’ know me. you don’t know my alphabet.
the “issue” i have with buck 1.0 is that he’s clearly searching for real connection, even with groovyheels297, in the pilot, and he’s not finding it, and it’s not even an issue with him—it just makes me sad, that he’s searching, he’s always been searching, and all he’s ever told is that he is not enough. let’s not ruin it by actually getting to know each other.
some parts of buck and tommy’s relationship strongly reminded me of just how aroace i am, how i don’t get it, and never will; how other i feel in this world of allonormativity. but much larger and stronger was the connection and hope i felt because of them—that queer storylines were being handled with care, and these two (neurodivergent-coded. i mean what) characters i enjoyed and related to were making something special with each other.
i had such queer joy at the end of 8x05. our people are what makes life worth living. i don’t have much right now, but i do have my people, including the friends i have made because of these two goobers, and in this time of scarcity and insecurity in my life irl, i value my posse so much.
i am so grateful that they gave us a buck who finally felt free, who could see a future with someone who kept showing up for him and choosing him, boils and all. i am so grateful they gave us the eddie & tommy show. i am so grateful they gave us tommy kinard, with all of his scars and crinkly smiles. heck, i’m even grateful they gave us billy boils.
they can’t take that away from us.
but the how of this breakup.
maybe i’m wrong. maybe i’ll be pleasantly surprised.
but the how of this breakup shattered the trust that viewers—queer folks, fans, and the GA—put in this show to tell meaningful, watchable, cohesive, coherent, understandable, and entertaining stories. stories that make sense. from this point forward, the stories 9-1-1 tells are fruit from the poisoned tree.
can we trust that henren and josh and whoever else won’t get queerphobic treatment? (no, because josh was already in the blast zone of “abby turning men gay”.) can we trust that athena won’t further abuse her police powers, especially in situations that affect people of color? (no. full stop.) can we trust that neurodivergent/-coded characters won’t be called stupid or childish for a laugh? (no.) can we trust that sexual assault won’t be minimized and played for a joke? (no.)
i get that the show is “edgy”. i get that it’s going to be uncomfortable sometimes.
but i already had growing discomfort at its tendency to punch down, just rarely enough so people won’t stop watching. and maybe that’s an indictment of me, as a white queer, that i didn’t stop watching before. maybe the stories 9-1-1 tells were already fruit of the poisoned tree, because we live in an imperfect world, and people are imperfect, and perfection cannot be borne of imperfection…but good can.
but this: the intentional cruelty. the two-faced “stewardship” of a unique queer story. the now-irredeemable biphobia in canon, and the unchecked, unrepentant biphobia of the people bringing this story to life.
there is a way to bring queer stories to life responsibly and humanely, even if they come to an end. there’s a way to end them responsibly and humanely, too.
The irony is so strong it should burn in those of you who are slagging Tommy Kinard (a character) for some of the awful shit he said years ago. When he was hiding a big part of himself. (And it has never been confirmed one way or another if he ever apologized to Hen and Chim for what he said) meanwhile ya’ll -ACTUAL PEOPLE- are saying some really shitty awful things to and about the actor, another -ACTUAL PERSON-
Not to even mention how many times I’ve seen people say they wished bodily harm on his character.
So, what exactly do your words and actions in the present make you? Bullies? Assholes? Seriously disturbed individuals who can’t seem to separate fiction from reality?
In all of my decades of fandoms have I never seen such embarrassing examples of rabid fan squirrels who have lost the fucking plot.
How can you be so lacking in self awareness regarding your own words and actions? Do you live in a vacuum?
One saying they’re really disappointed and frustrated and pissed off at the lazy writing and how they ended a relationship. As well as what OS had to say in an interview. “That was disappointing” “my heart is broken” “wtf is that?” “Why would OS say something like that, it’s kind of an asshole thing to say” “I thought he wanted this?”
And the other saying “I wish they’d just killed him” “I hate him so fucking much” “really fuck that guy” “I hate LFjr” “so glad that fake ass guy is gone”
The fucking toxic side to a fandom isn’t hard to see.
Ya’ll can wrap it up any way you wish. But you’re some angry hateful vipers who are way too invested in being assholes.
8.06 post mortem - Buck/Tommy - General - 9-1-1 Zombified
Many of us wondered why a cut emergency case from episode 7.04 was used. A novelty and if you look closely, you'll notice that the characters appeared very different from how they did in the rest of season 8, and the scenes felt erratic. This inconsistency is reminiscent of the writing from Andrew Meyers, who also wrote episode 7.04. However, in that episode, he had a co-writer who was clearly more talented. Episode 8.06 was poorly written compared to 7.04. Alone the scene in the beginning. Buck could have pointed out that this chick was interrupting the date he had with his boyfriend. Tommy then mentioned the Kinsey scale
Our walking encyclopedia had no idea what his boyfriend was talking about. Seriously? Also, Buck doesn't want to buy a present for their 6-month anniversary, and Tommy gives him 2 Lakers baseball cards and awkwardly mentions that Buck could go with Eddie? Is this dinner supposed to be romantic? Well, they could have gone to McDonalds. Meyers should have consulted his co-writer at this point; we're heading straight for disaster. Then Tim had this wonderful idea with Abby and thought it was hilarious. The guy's humour isn't just weird, it's kind of crude. Abby never mentioned that she went out with a guy from the 118. Isn't that weird? No one ever knew about it? Not Hen, not Chim? For two years? Did Tommy keep her locked in his basement? This plot is so poorly constructed that it's cringe-worthy at best. And that's when Himbo's jaw hit the floor… along with the audience.
The only good scene was Josh's GLEE speech. And I may be reading between the lines, but I felt that the way Josh talked about post and past GLEE and how Buck can't blame Tommy for his actions because times were different was a wink and a nod to the haters. I really had the impression that this was a cunning move to address why Tommy was who he was back then and why he has changed now.
But seconds later I nearly choked on my lemonade, and I can tell you it's orgasmic when a sip of Pepsi comes out of your nose, when Maddie said, "She wondered how many men Abby had turned gay." Because I was chatting to a friend before I watched the episode and I almost said the same thing. I live in Europe, so I watched it the next day, knowing what was coming, but nothing about that particular scene. Which, frankly, was terrible.
Forgive me for ignoring the emergencies in this episode. They were repetitive, to say the least, just with different protagonists.
So far we have a recycled episode, a recycled ex, a recycled emergency and a recycled scenario, Maddy is pregnant (hooray). It begins to reek of decay.
Brownie points to those who aren't already traumatised or bored to death. Now for the highlight: Tommy shows up at Buck's apartment in a great mood. He is looking forward to a date with his friend and hot sex as the icing on the cake (that's what I had in mind). Tommy gets suspicious when Buck asks him to sit down. It doesn't take long before he pulls out his phone and shows his friend photos of Abby and a younger Buck. This is followed by an awkward explanation of why he didn't share the news in the restaurant, and Tommy's reaction is a little awkward too. But this is only the overture to the worst retconning I have seen on television in a long time. The coincidence is swept under the carpet in the blink of an eye, and now it gets creepy.
Compare the scene in the coffee shop with this one. It has the same structure, bit by bit. Buck invites Tommy to the wedding in the coffee shop, and Tommy says, "What?" Here it is: "I want you to move in with me." We have a mashup of the first kiss and the coffee shop scene, and Oliver plays it similarly. The worst part is when Tommy turns into his zombie version. Excellently played by Lou. No doubt about it. He gave it his all. He maimed that shitty script, which felt like Meyers had raided AO3, picked the worst written fics and went for the most cringe-worthy insult he could find for a bisexual. "I was your first, but I won't be your last." Hello? This topic only comes to Tommy's mind after he is asked to move in together? I was expecting "I can't move in with you because I wouldn't know where to put my car lift and Muay Thai studio". No, it's because all the trust and love Tommy put in Buck is wiped out by the retconning of Tommy's personality. He succumbs to total chaos. This is not the Tommy we met in S7 and certainly not the one we met in 8.05. Fuck me! It didn't make sense. We would have needed a lot more background information ON SCREEN to make it believable. A scene from Tommy's past. Who hurt him so badly? It wasn't Abby. She only managed to traumatise Buck. Was it after he met Abby? Was it another guy?
Hello writers, are you still in your right mind? We have no clues. Neither the loyal fans and certainly not the new ones. You're reducing a character to a sad laughing stock. You rob him of all his merits, which you had Buck recite like a poem in school. And then you expect us to believe it? You steamroll over everything that's been painstakingly built up to this episode? It's actually convenient, I let the whole relationship run off screen. We don't see any flying lessons together, no training together, no cosy get-togethers in front of the TV, no exchange of affection, nothing. It's all headcanon. Guys, I've seen shows and movies where a sequence like this lasted five minutes and you knew where the couple stood. Maybe a flashback or two into Tommy's past would have helped. But no, instead the audience had to put up with the same old nonsense. A ridiculous story about an urn, a guy who sneezes and his intestines fall out, a kid who doesn't fall down a drain but slips down a pipe. They give us nothing, but we're supposed to believe everything, retconning is so great. If any of us wrote fanfiction like that, we'd be banned from AO3. And as if that wasn't enough, Tommy stands up and says, "Believe me, I didn't see this coming either. Tell me, were you on drugs when you were writing? There are a thousand ways to respond sensibly to "Let's move in together" without turning it into such a dumpster fire. The crowning glory of all this madness is when Tommy says "I'll see you around Buck" instead of Evan (the same words he said to Evan when he left him standing outside the restaurant on their first date). Where did that come from? It's as if Tommy had lost all respect for his lover, or as if he wanted to punch him in the face while he was already on the ground. We, the viewers, also had this feeling. And Tommy's behaviour was completely disturbed. I wonder if he checked himself into a mental facility right after that.
I won't say anything about the rest of the episode because I'm a polite person.
Conclusion: Please take the pen away from this lunatic and never let him write anything again or give him a co-writer like in 7.04. The guy is totally unhinged.
What the fuck is it with this fandom that some of ya’ll are just unhinged?
Jesus Mary Joseph and twelve carpenters.
Threats of violence against the actors you want gone and against anyone who dares to have an opinion about whatever actor/character you’re worshipping?
For fucks sake, get a goddamn grip. It’s creepy af.
If someone wants to be pissed at or disappointed in Oliver for things he said in that interview. And you disagree. Scroll the fuck on.
He’s a grown ass man and doesn’t need some batshit-crazy fan squirrels to be his keyboard gladiators.
Honestly the worst thing about this show is some of its fandom.
“Never Use Alone” is a number you can call when you have no choice but to use when you’re alone.
If you call (800) 484-3731, an operator will answer your call, and ask for your first name, location and whether you have any allergies, or medical conditions. After you’ve given us this information you can go ahead and inject your substance. After you’ve ingested the substance, we will continue communicating with you. If you do not respond after 30-45 seconds, we will notify emergency services of a possible overdose at the location you’ve given us.
We will never shame you, judge you, or preach at you to quit. If you are ready to quit though, we have treatment resources for every state in the US. Regardless if you have insurance, or not. We will do our best to connect you with the help you need. please call. We are on standby.
—-
This seems like a solid and real thing, I did my best to vet them and found their FB:
https://www.facebook.com/Neverusealone/
Never Use Alone doesn’t have an app (yet) but there are two apps that can be used all over the world. One that is available only on iOS last time I checked is The Canary Overdose prevention app and the other is Be Safe by The Brave Coop. They are both very easy to use.
from this reddit thread that has a lot of people talking about the hotline, including sharing their own experiences. additionally, it looks like there are also similar overdose prevention hotlines in other countries now, such as canada and scotland
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dailybridgerton
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kaledo-art
snowghoul
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