There's no classification for fan fiction? Fanfiction has been around for generations! Surely, there are scientists with a passion for fan fiction and its history, how have they not carved out of space for it? Is there not even a debate about this?
Specific books about fan fiction have been categorized under 809.3 (literary criticism of fiction), 808.3 (rhetoric of fiction), 813.6 (american fiction since 2000), and 346.048 (intelectual property law). I can't tell you why, cause I don't know.
We are Back!! I was so excited for this episode and boy oh boy did it deliver! The costumes Buck and Eddie wore in this episode have given me plenty to talk about so let’s dive straight in!
I'm going to do this meta scene by scene as its far more about the colour combinations the costumes make rather than the individual costumes themselves. But before that we’re starting with a little background information.
under the cut as its long!
Eddie has a pretty narrow colour palette and so it tends to be more noticeable when he wears something outside of that palette. His palette is khaki and olive greens in various shades, black, white and cream, maroons and burgundy’s with the occasional grey top thrown in, and we also see some browns. It’s why the pink we saw him in, in season 7 and 8 was so notable and why the yellow shirt from 601 and 806 was also important. Eddies most common colour is black - followed by the green and then the whites/creams, all three colours we see in this episode.
Buck meanwhile has a much more varied colour palette, wearing a wider variety of colours, which also tend to be fairly balanced across the seasons. Blue is by far and away his most dominant colour, mostly because of season 6, but it’s always one of the colours he wears most in each season. This is followed by black and then white and grey red and green. Through season 7 Buck wore his lowest number of costumes overall and the lowest range of colours as well - its his most muted season in terms of colour as well - even when he’s wearing colour it tends to be dark or muted.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, it’s always interesting to see the trends in colours characters are wearing and if they step outside of their usual colour palettes at all. It’s something we are seeing with both Buck and Eddie - with Eddie we’re seeing a widening of his colour range and with Buck we’re seeing a narrowing. I find this interesting because it shows them coming together - that they started off in widely different places and are slowly coming to a similar place. Think of it like this - the brighter and wider variety of colours Buck wears are symbolic of his character being more impulsive and less mature while the more muted and narrow colour palette of Eddie shows his more staid and more mature personality.
The fact their palettes are changing to become more similar is indicative of them learning from each other - Buck’s maturing and Eddie getting to become more carefree - they are balancing each other. This balancing brings them in line with all the canon couples on the show - which is rather telling.
If you look at Hen and Karens colour palettes or Chim and Maddies colour palettes and also Athena and Bobby’s palettes, you will see that generally speaking they are much closer together in tone - Hen and Karen’s being generally more bright, Maddie and Chim in similar tones and colours at similar times. Even Athena and Bobby - who do have a wider disparity in colour ranges than anyone else, tend to be in bright or muted tones at similar times across the seasons.
Our first scene is the one showing the house to potential sub-letters.
We start out with the dark olive khaki green long sleeve top - very much a pretty standard Eddie top - we see him in various long sleeved olive khaki green tops throughout the seasons - so this one very much fits in with his theming. It’s also a colour heavily connected into Eddies army past - as I’ve spoken about multiple times in previous metas. Since the start of season 7 we’ve seen Eddie in khaki greens and browns a lot more - they form a bigger percentage of his colour wheel than we’ve seen in previous seasons.
All of the scenes we’ve seen him wearing these khaki tops in have been connected in some way to his internal battles, especially connected with Chris and Shannon - this is a theme that we can trace back through all his seasons on the show. So it fits that here - at a point when he is trying to find someone to sublet his house, something he is doing so he can be closer to Chris, despite being loathe to leave LA and the 118 - he is wearing a colour so closely associated with the military and its indicative of his internal battle about leaving.
In contrast we have Buck in white and pale pink. The white tee has a distressed collar and it is a white tee - so things are not going to go well for Buck - which we see play out with him sabotaging Eddie. its Buck in white colour theory playing out once again!
The pale pink fluffy cardigan is playing on multiple levels - we’ve seen Buck in a cardigan a couple of times before, but this is the first time we’ve had such a fluffy one on him. It serves to be both disarming and really plays up the naïveté of the pale pink, whilst also making him look bigger than he already is - the colour might be pale and in direct contrast to Eddies dark green top, but he fills the frame far more and the space in the house.
The other connection here is the tsunami arc - buck is in a darker pink then, but we have the same set of colours for his entire outfit - pink and white tops, grey trousers, white shoes. We haven't seen him wearing the same combination at any other time, but we do have a loose commonality between the two uses of this specific colourway on Buck.
Him being in a bad place mentally and fearing the loss of the most important thing to him. In the tsunami, its his job - at this point in time he still views his job as the most important thing in his life - we even have the members of the 118 commenting on the fact - they all have families etc but Buck doesn't. Now in 809 Bucks job is not the most important thing in his life - his family is - namely Eddie and Christopher - he's already lost half of that equation and now he is facing losing it in its entirety with Eddies imminent departure.
The other and most important aspect of these two costumes though is that they are building on a theme with Buck and Eddie that we’ve seen at play since 403, but which we’ve seen especially coming into effect this season.
So we have the Hildy prank in 403 - with Eddie in green and Buck in dark pink.
Then in 706 we have Eddie in pink and Buck in (very pale) green
And then in 806 we have Eddie in pink (and white) and Buck in green
And now Buck in pink (and white) and Eddie in green.
That is a very clear theme we have at play especially with the last two being so similar tonally and taking place in the same location.
in all of them the shades of pink and green used are complementary - warm greens and pinks that sit in similar places in the range of their respective colours. I would argue that in all the scenes above we have a case of Buck and Eddie being there for one another but in a way that is connected with angst and joy. - Eddie is being a bit angsty about technology and buck brings some levity to it and feels joyful at his prank, buck is angsty about the party going well - it becomes joyful once he's had some alcohol and loosened up. Eddie is joyful and buck is angsty because of his break up and in this latest one - Eddie is hopeful and there is an element of joy at the thought of being reunited with his son before long, while Buck is full of angst over the thought of loosing his best friend as well as having already lost Chris
The thing is though, this is not the only costume/scene paralleling we have going on in this episode with Buck and Eddie because the final scene does as well - but more on that scene later on.
We’re taking a slight detour in to flowers land because there are flowers all over the buddie scenes in this episode. The first scene gives us bright flowers in the yellow and purple range - with sunflowers, purple asters, some chrysanthemums, and I think there might be some yellow roses in the kitchen bouquet. Chrysanthemums mean optimism and friendship and white ones specifically mean loyalty and yellow ones mean neglected love. Purple asters mean wisdom hope and valour. Yellow roses (in the kitchen bouquet!) are a symbol of friendship and the sunflowers mean admiration, strength and resilience, loyalty and optimism.
the other thing about this arrangement is that its a nod to both the art over Eddies mantle, but, blue flowers are almost impossible to get - especially in bouquets (without resorting to dying them and that always looks fake!) so the purple are essentially a stand in for the blue - not to mention the fact that we actually only see the bright yellow sunflowers agains a blue background - the couch is behind Bucks arrangement and its also behind Eddies - along with his jeans and technically the tray is teal - which is a blue in the green end of the spectrum!
Moving on from flowers - we have Eddie arriving at the firehouse in a cream tee with a dark brown distressed leather jacket with orange/tan undertones.
He is the only one not in uniform in the firehouse which is about separating him from the rest of the 118 and effectively turning him back into a civilian rather than a member of the team. The other aspect is that the colour palette amusingly is the same as Blaze/Bingo the beagle!
Spot the difference!!!
In this specific incidence these colours are not about their meaning, they are about connecting Eddie and Blaze - we are meant to view them as interchangeable within the scene and the costumes are helping the audience subconsciously connect Eddie to the dog.
And then we have the final scene, with Eddie in a black linen shirt and camel/tan cargo pants with his ‘Christopher’ watch
and Buck in a very mismatched outfit of navy pants, a dark brown/green tee and a blue denim jacket with a black corduroy collar and a new 80’s/90’s style digital watch.
Other than the silver watch he wore for the poker date, this is the first time we’ve seen Buck with a different watch outside of work from his work watch. They needed to ensure that we'd see a watch on camera during the hug closeups - because Buck is actually wearing one on both wrists - I made a separate post about it, but if you look at the picture above - you can see the watch on his left wrists - his normal wrist, and then in the close up below - it is on his right wrist.
Eddies watch is bigger and more obvious, and Ryan wears his watch on his right wrist (like a leftie generally does - hooray for all the lefties!!) so I think they chose to have Buck who is in a jacket (which makes it much easier to hide watches!) wear one on each wrist so they could make sure to get it in shot whichever wrist was on screen - it proves the fact they are using the watches to help tell the story and provide information to the audience - and this is the first time we have had such a clear focus on each of them wearing watches - suggesting we are now in a count down to buddie canon!
I can’t wait to see if this watch is going to become a common out of work wear for him or if it’s just for this scene. Only time will tell, but we do know that he isn’t wearing it in the goodbye in the rain scene.
I do believe that Eddie is wearing a new watch in that scene, but I’m not 100% because all we have is blurry bts footage from TikTok right now. To me it looks like a black watch strap with a silver watch mount/face, but its next to impossible to be sure as they are so pixelated
The appearance of these new watches might very well be about setting a timer on Buddie - the Christopher watch appeared at the moment when Eddie started dating again and it became all about Christopher and not about Eddie himself. I can’t wait to see if we’re about to get Buck and Eddie wearing watches that connect to each other!
The costume themselves though mirror two other very important buddie scenes. The loudest and most obvious is the Buck coming out scene - when we had Eddie in a black button up shirt and Buck in a denim jacket that mirrors the blue he was wearing from that scene.
But we also have a match to the kitchen scene tm with the tee that Buck is wearing - which is a greenish grey/black and we have Eddie in a black shirt with tan cargo pants
the other throw back we have going on is also Bucks goodbye to Abby in the airport, yes the jacket is black in the airport goodbye scene, but we have a denim jacket with a black collar in a different fabric and a dark greenish/grey/black shirt underneath. The content of both scenes was remarkably similar as well. The show has taken pains to remind the audience of Abby - to ensure that her abandonment of Buck is back in everyones minds and this costuming is also about re-enforcing that connection.
The fact the denim is blue rather than black - makes it a source of hope and ties into Bucks blue colour theming - this is about connecting the two scenes but contrasting them at the same time - in the airport goodbye Abby was never coming back for Buck - but in the 809 scene we are being told that Bucks blue is still very present and we have the yellow tones of the background all pointing us to a more hopeful outcome - that Eddie will be back for Buck.
One last look at the flowers before I sign off from this meta! Where we had the bright and cheerful purples and yellows in the previous scene in the Diaz house, here we have a much more low key choice of flowers - but one which somehow reveals so much more.
wedding bouquet anyone!!! So we have roses - and I have spent a lot of time trying to decide what colours they are and have decided they are white and green roses (they are the wrong colour to be cream roses), White veronica, babys breath, dusty miller (the slivery leaves), some evergreen sprigs I can't identify the specific species of, and thorow wax. All of them are flowers traditionally found in wedding bouquets and all have similar meanings.
White roses - purity, innocence and eternity, new beginnings nad everlasting love
green roses - renewal, rebirth, growth, excitement about things to come and optimism
White veronica - commitment, devotion, fidelity and loyalty
babys breath - innocence, purity and faith, sincerity, hope and everlasting love
dusty miller leaves - strength and persistence, resilience and determination
evergreen sprigs - eternal life, peace, promise, and the triumph of light over darkness
thorow wax - resilience, endurance, prosperity and protection and deep lasting love that will endure no matter the length of time or distance.
So to have those flowers (the thorow wax especially as it not that common in flower arrangements) in that display for that scene - its a pretty loud choice
Anyway - I have written far too many words at this point! Tagged people below - let me know if you'd like adding to the list!
