#i need a reading buddy

[whataducktruck]

bro literally everything i see about don quixote is literally batshit insane. like. thought windmills were monsters?? the book is certified crazy and it makes me want to read it all the more

[collgeruledzebra]

the thing about trying to recommend fiction podcasts to someone who isn't familiar with them is that not only are so so many genres represented but also the level of production can fall anywhere from "basically an audiobook" to "major motion picture minus the pictures"

[idgafimjustmandy]

[thatbuddie]

on the issue of shannon being the love of eddie's life:

i think that so many people misunderstand those of us who are adamant that shannon is not, and was in fact never, the love of eddie's life as us dismissing the love they had or completely denying that their relationship was crucial and irreplaceable for eddie. but this is not the truth. someone does not need to be the love of your life in order to be incredibly important for you. someone does not need to be the love of your life in order to shape you and impact you in ways that no one else can. this is what i believe to be true for eddie and shannon.

let's ignore the philosophical debates about the concept of "the love of your life" for a second because we could be here all day discussing whether there even is such a thing, whether society pushes us to value romantic love more than platonic love, etc. i think it's clear 911 is having the "love of your life" conversation through the lens of romantic love in its biggest form. they're nudging us to think about "the love of your life" as both the person you romantically love most in the world (the love) and the person you are meant to be with (your life). "meant to be with" in the sense of creating a healthy and loving partnership and life with, one the extends for the rest of your life. and the idea is that this partnership is based on your romantic love for them. not what ties you to them practically or even emotionally in general. this lifelong partnership is a conscious romantic choice. hence, the love of your life.

i think it's clear to see that both henren and madney are shown to us as being couples that are "the love of their lives." they have those practical attachments now in the sense that they are parents together and will always be tied through that but there is the conscious romantic love there. and these are not perfect relationships. these are not couples that have never hurt each other. that is absolutely not what being "the love of someone life" is. making mistakes and cheating on someone and running away does not automatically disqualify you from being "the love of someone's life" let's get that very clear. but those things would and could break a relationship that was not with "the love of your life." you stay with someone through those things because the love you have for them is stronger than the mistakes you make. the romantic bond you have with them is so big and so strong (the love) that you choose them over and over and over again (your life).

there is a very interesting conversation to be had with bathena and the concept of "the love of your life." i believe bobby is a perfect example of someone who could be seen as potentially having two loves of his life. marcy was tragically lost for him but i truly think had she survived the fire it could be a possibility that bobby and her would have kept choosing and choosing and choosing each other through the tragedy and grief. or maybe not! maybe the pain of losing their kids would have pushed them away from each other. we don't know. so we can only take their relationship for what it was before she died: they did choose each other constantly based on the romantic love they shared. so they were, somewhat, the love of each other's lives. and then we have athena. athena had an over a decade long marriage with someone we can see was not the love of her life. and yet michael and athena's relationship could never be matched by anyone else. they loved each other deeply and i believe in athena's case even romantically at points, and yet michel was not the love of her life. bobby is.

because this is another thing about the "love of your life" concept that i think 911 is trying to showcase: there is a reciprocity to it. as i said it's about who you share your life with as much as it is about who you romantically love most so someone will not be the love of your life if you constantly love them from afar, or if you are married to them but the romantic love was lost long ago.

now let's dissect that a little for eddie and shannon.

it could be argued that shannon has been, until this day, eddie's biggest romantic love, or at least that eddie still sees it this way. so sure in the surface this would meet the first requirement to make shannon the love of eddie's life. and shannon died while her and eddie were still married so they shared her life together, so that could also meet the second requirement. but we can clearly see that both aspects just don't hold up at all.

why were shannon and eddie really sharing a life when they were married? was it their love that kept them together through eddie's running away and shannon's running away and the fights and the heartbreak? we have been shown over and over again that it wasn't. christopher was the main reason they stayed together and then came back to each other. there was also the familiarity. and there was love in the mix, yeah, but that was not why they chose each other the times that they did. so they are not the loves of each other's life if the feeling of romantic love was not the strongest thing that tied them outside of who they are to each other (the parent of their child, the first person they were ever with, their spouse on paper.)

and let's be honest, were eddie and shannon really choosing each other through it all? i don't think so at all. eddie was choosing his family, his son, his wife. but was he choosing shannon? shannon as a person? and even if he was (which i personally don't think so) shannon literally asked eddie for a divorce before she died. the reciprocity of "the love of their lives" would be absolutely lost on the fact that, had shannon stayed alive, her and eddie would be divorced by now, hence breaking the second requirement of "the love of your life" concept: choosing each other over and over and over again.

shannon is not, and was never, the love of eddie's life.

shannon is a person who has shaped eddie beyond belief. she has shaped eddie's views on romantic love, family, duty. she has shaped his view of himself, his identity as a husband and man.

shannon is a person who eddie loved and loves very deeply. maybe romantically, maybe not. we can all have our own perceptions here. i think he loved her deeply but not romantically, as i do think eddie is gay. but even if it is romantic, i think the reason this love is still to this day the biggest love eddie has ever had is not because he can't love harder or even with the same intensity, but because he won't allow himself.

those two things can be true (eddie loved her and shannon impacted him) without "shannon is the love of eddie's life" being true as well.

eddie thinks shannon is the love of his life because he still confuses "we got married" with "we chose each other." he confuses "i loved her" with "i was in love with her." he confuses "i wanted to keep my family together" with "i chose her." he confuses "i miss her terribly and will always wonder what could have been" with "i can never love anyone else."

shannon is not, and was never, the love of eddie's life.

whether or not you think buck is the love of eddie's life (which i could write another essay about), i think we should all see that part of eddie's healing has to come from realizing this fact and finally being able to move forward into seeing the love of his life is still out there for him to fully give himself to.

[clonehub]

Tell me what y'all think of this headcanon:

CCs get their own quarters, but sometimes they'll sleep in an empty bunk in the barracks.

It's an unspoken thing. CC will check the logs and see which squad might have a space open, which happens on occasion. Regs say that clones can't be swapping bunks and rooms all the time, but this is one of those things that a command clone is kind of above.

Getting your own quarters is a privilege. The privacy is novel. The silence can be unbearable.

The clones spend almost their whole lives falling asleep to the sound of their brothers breathing. So sometimes a commander will bunk with a squad. I headcanon that after Teth happened and the 501st went from a formidable foe to just six men, Rex and those six men all slept in the same barracks.

[ananxiousgenz]

I honestly do not think I've ever experienced as much agony over a fictional character as I have over oscar malevolent. he's just the winning combo of religious trauma, blood, devotion, queer pain, endless kindness and optimism, and vengeance yk?

[mourningeddiesfagstache]

whatever you do don’t think about a scene after buddie goes canon where they wake up in eddie’s bed together and say they’re going to take separate showers but they end up getting in together anyway. and then when they’re out of the shower they’re standing in front of the little mirror in the diaz house bathroom with just their towels on, both trying to see themselves while they shave so they’re pushing each other out of the way and laughing and threatening each other with “if i cut myself because you won’t move-!!” and then eddie says maybe they need to upgrade to a bigger bathroom? maybe in a bigger house? for a family of three?

[sightofsea]

coffee theory and immediate reconciliation sucks btw I wanna see them duke it out like divorcees going to court over a beanie baby collection and getting obviously sad about it but also being too stubborn to admit it until they end up making out on the negotiation table

[lover-of-mine]

Inspired by The Definition of Love and All Things Ineffable by @elvensorceress on ao3

Everything is still. Quiet. He stares like he’s never seen. He probably hasn’t. But it sings through every cell in his body. Eddie… the things Eddie sees as love…

Eddie breathes slowly and wets his lips. “All I know about the kind of love you’re asking about? Is you. Love, to me, is you.”

Buck knows it’s true because he feels it. He’s always felt it. He’s never really doubted the strength and depth of their bond, just how to qualify it.

[buddiedaydreamer911]

me waiting for ao3’s shields to go down so i can read more buddie fics

[the-amber-raven]

I would never delete my fics

I got linked to a reddit thread today where people were being advised to download my mortifying ordeals/Buddie fics, since apparently "now that I'm a BuckTommy shipper", I might be "petty" and delete all my Buddie fics.

So. I'll move past the complicated feelings it gives me to have people hoarding my fics while actively shitting on me as a person (and seemingly not even telling me that they enjoyed my work, although in fairness that could just be a difference in usernames.) That's the nature of fanfic, fandom, and putting things out there on the internet and I accept that.

But I do want to reassure people that I would never delete my fics. I still have the cringy-as-fuck Harry Potter fics I wrote in high school up; believe me those would be first on the chopping block if I was inclined to delete my work. And all of my 9-1-1 fics hold a special place in my heart, but none more than the mortifying ordeals series, which consumed basically a full year of my life and reminded me why I love writing. Hell, I got engaged while writing the final chapters of I once was lost. That fic is indelibly tied to my life now.

And look... I don't think it really matters, nor should I have to explain and justify what I do and don't enjoy about a show or fandom, but this whole experience has upset me more than it probably should have and I can't help but want to get it off my chest anyway.

My favourite thing about this show is the found family feels. I either love or am at least intrigued by every single character that has appeared. You'll notice that family is the central theme of every story I write, whether the story is Gen, Buddie, or BuckTommy.

Because yes, the idea of BuckTommy and how that plays into the family themes of the show has intrigued me and captured my muse.

I've also said before that I didn't think Season 7 left Buddie in a great place in terms of romantic relationship potential - in my opinion, the ghost of Shannon would be an absolutely massive barrier to them getting together right now. The post season 7 Buddie fics have also heavily featured character bashing, which isn't something I generally enjoy seeing, and infidelity, which I really don't like seeing romanticised especially since I've had a partner cheat on me.

So yes, I've distanced myself from the post-S7 Buddie fandom because I just don't enjoy the pervasive negativity I've seen and the way that cheating and violence is suddenly celebrated by a significant subset of the fandom.

That does not mean I've given up on Buddie altogether. I still have a whole list of pre-S7 buddie fics in my to-be-read list that I've been making my way through and 2 out of my 5 WIPs are Buddie fics (both in the mortifying ordeals 'verse, just to make it even clearer that I'm not at all interested in deleting that series.)

But two of those 5 are BuckTommy, because as I said above, their relationship was intriguing to me and it captured my muse.

I don't think those opinions make me some kind of betrayer, or that they inherently make me a "petty" person but I guess I just didn't realise that not-exclusively-shipping-Buddie was such a High Crime in this fandom.

[momowoah]

Not to bring up yesterday's discourse but the reason why some people think Buck has never had a breakdown is because they want his breakdown to be him crying nonstop and leaning on the people he loves but that's just not him. His breakdowns (yes, plural) in the past that we've seen have shown that he tends to get angry and run away from everyone. That's what he did when Maddie couldn't leave with him. That's what he did during the lawsuit era. That's what he did when his parents came back in s4. He lashes out and he isolates. Eddie is the one who cries and seeks help in the people around him (post-therapy at least, he had his fight club era lol) but y'all refuse to acknowledge him as someone who can be vulnerable and be taken care of unfortunately.

[aetherixs]

juno steel, unhinged bisexual lady detective that he is, will always resonate with me but buddy’s monologue in ‘the heart of it all’ is my roman empire

[wikiangela]

tease tidbit tuesday

tagged by @daffi-990 @dangerpronebuddie @sunshinediaz @honestlydarkprincess @underwater-ninja-13 @exhuastedpigeon💖

don't have a lot of new stuff for the fics i've been sharing lately, so today smth different - coffee shop au is back! progress is constantly being made (slowly, but still lol) - so here's a lil buckley siblings moment (I haven't shared a buck and eddie moment in a minute lmao need to fix that soon haha)

prev snippet

___

“What?” he rolls his eyes.

“You’re crushing so hard.” she teases, and he feels his cheeks heat up.

“Shut up.” Buck grumbles, as he grabs a cloth to wipe down the counter just to have something to do. “Not like it matters anyway, he has someone.”

“Really?” Maddie frowns, tilts her head. “Did he tell you that?”

“Not in so many words.” 

“So how do you know?” she prods.

“He ordered for two people.” he says, and only when Maddie laughs, he realizes how stupid and presumptive that is. It could be for anyone, even for himself. Hell, Buck would often order something for himself and for Maddie. Didn’t Eddie say he had an abuela and a tia here? “Shut up, I know.” he groans and covers his face with his hands – and the dirty cloth that’s still in his hand.

“Ew, gross.” Maddie chuckles and pries the cloth out of his hand, dumping it on the counter. “You can be so dense sometimes.” she shakes her head. “When Eddie saw you today, his face literally lit up. He’s been waiting for you to get him his coffee, even though I could’ve done it. If you ask me, he’s crushing, too.”

“Good thing no one asked you.” Buck mutters, and Maddie playfully swats at his arm. “Ow!”

“Just ask him out, Buck, what’s the worst that could happen?” Maddie asks, before turning away just as the door opens and a customer walks in.

___

no pressure tags: @elvensorceress @gaydiaz @thebravebitch @silentxxsoul @shortsighted-owl @eddiebabygirldiaz @transbuck @911onabc @housewifebuck @watchyourbuck @eowon @loserdiaz @evanbegins @ladydorian05 @wildlife4life @diazpatcher @lover-of-mine @monsterrae1 @thewolvesof1998 @puppyboybuckley @weewootruck @loveyouanyway @spagheddiediaz @rainbow-nerdss @epicbuddieficrecs @pirrusstuff @spotsandsocks @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove @hoodie-buck @nmcggg @jesuisici33 @rogerzsteven @hippolotamus @fortheloveofbuddie @steadfastsaturnsrings @disasterbuckdiaz @tizniz @theotherbuckley @diazsdimples @giddyupbuck

[icyfox17]

Im at a palace rn (yayayay it's so cool) and the actual castle is closed till 12 so im exploring the gardens (plural. There are so many of them) and i cant stop thinking about royalty 911 au with king and queen bathena and smol prince buck growing up running around on the castle grounds and hiding from his whatever babysitters back then were called LMAOO

The squires or whatever theyre called being like ur majesty im sorry we cant find him

And bobby Sighing and going to the gardens himself, knowing exactly where buck has run off to to hide (secret garden that only bobby and athena and like the closest guard to them know about) and finding buck whos not even trying to hide, hes distracted by making a giant pile out of the fallen leaves that he plans to jump onto, and he just watches buck for awhile, content to see his little boy having fun (hes a Softie) and eventually buck turns to him and is like "daddy look!!!" and shows him the giant pile and gives bobby puppy eyes and so bobby sighs and picks up buck and throws him onto the pile (gently) and buck laughs and asks for him to do it again and bobby listens but eventually they need to go back to the castle lest athena send a search party for them bc they have dinner soon and the two of them need to clean up before it and so he picks buck up with a swing, making buck giggle as his stomach drops, and then after walking with buck dangling over his shoulder for a bit, he readjust and places him properly sitting on his shoulders andd i justttyyjfjdjdjfjd sosbsisbsodbdjdb

Smol!buck running ahead in one of the many castle mazes being like I GOT THIS and ignoring bobbys calls to slow down and then getting lost and scared and crying until bobby finds him and picks him up in a tight hug and ensuring buck that no matter what, he'll always come to find him, he'll always find his way back to him shfdohsfndkbs sosbsosbsodbdjshfjf

And ofc when buck grows up you could have knight eddie from another kingdom whos retiring from being like in the Guard after the last battle (yknow like him being an ex soldier yayayayaya) but he doesnt want to stay retired and one of his higher ups knows that bobbys been looking for a personal knight (bodyguard) for his son whos been refusing every candidate ever, insisting he doesnt need one (ignore the threats theyve been getting from other kingdoms as tension and war is breeding) and eddies unsure but Holy Shit the pay and benefits are amazing his son will be able to be taken care of better than he could here and so he takes the gig and enemies to lovers buddie guys ddo u hear me

[lazybakerart]

wilson coming to house's defense by going on the offense and telling stacy 'you can't toy with him'