#i thought i'd be way more invested in destiel but no. i am here for the women

[jcrchie]

supernatural is just the story of two dudes getting to hang out with the greatest women of all time before said women die brutally and tragically

[flying-elliska]

So idk if you still watch 911 but I’m feeling some type of way about it lol. So I’ve always been on the camp that buck and eddie are 100% queer coded but I never really thought the show would take it there because that’s the tale as old as time lol. But it’s never changed the fact that I definitely see a romantic quality to them. More so than other ships in shows that are canon 😂. But one of the peeps in charge basically said something along the lines of: it was never intentional on our part but when it goes out into the world people can interpret it how they want. People will see what they want to see and I’m not gonna tell them they’re wrong. And then she kind of proceeded to justify why people who see buck and Eddie has romantic as wrong 😂😂 what do you feel about them as a pair? I’d thought I’d lost any hope but what she said made me so mad. Not just buddie not being a thing or whatever, but more so what she said felt triggering in the sense that people across time have always told queer people that they read too much into things that aren’t there. When they are! And queer ppl are made to feel like they’re crazy. Idk it’s gotten me down that this shit is still happening. I’m glad that a show like that show you’re now reblogging about a lot exists. Not only pirates but gay ones. Subtle but the context is that they’re into each other. No reading subtext “wrong”. It’s refreshing lol

hello anon ! sorry that you're feeling down, let's see if I can lift your mood with one of my customary rambles lmao

I wasn't impressed with 911's last half season but I will probably catch up at some point. Anyway, I am also a Buddie shipper but I've always tried to keep my expectations low, because I've been there before.

Like, some of my first OTPs were a lot like this, and possibly worse (Destiel/Supernatural or Stucky/Marvel, for instance) - two badass dudes who'd go to hell and back for each other, closer relationship than with any female love interest, high levels of chemistry and subtext, would 100% be seen as romantic if it was a man and a woman, massive queer following writing meta and fic with more depth than canon ever had...and creators who kept insisting again and again and again that it was entirely straight. I got really tired of it, honestly. I know how it feels to get super hyped and to really see it and to end up feeling delusional. It's a waste of emotional and creative energy for me these days, so I'd rather invest in actual canon queer pairings - or keep my expectations very low.

I think it comes down to the same thing : heteronormativity. See, I think the creators are telling the truth - they didn't intend it as romantic. But sometimes stories get away from their writers, they end up writing something they didn't intend ; the question is, are they flexible enough to go with the flow, or are they going to stick to their first idea even though the characters might have evolved beyond it ?

I think there is very much a generational gap here. Most of the showrunners and writers involved in this grew up in the old school world where queer stories were almost inexistant, and the queer stories that did make it were firmly segregated - queer characters existed in this sort of contained ghetto where they were clear stereotypes, doomed to be tragic, evil, unhappy, etc - still at the very best there was always this very clear line between gay and straight people (and simply forget about bi/trans/nb/etc characters). Viewers had to be told right away who was gay and who was straight, otherwise it was uncomfortable. And generally if a character came out it would immediately become their entire story. You had Gay Stories TM - it was a genre in itself. The best version is where the gay character exists to carry a message, teach a lesson, or Provide Good Representation TM - but they still have to be Gay for a Purpose. There is this belief that there is a deep and fundamental division between straight and gay people. There's a reason why the rare bisexual in this model is almost always an evil slut - because they threaten this strict division, so their sexuality has to be attributed to their lack of morals or mental instability. Now, in these more progressive times, a lot of older people want to do better, but I think these writers still have this line in their head that separates gay from straight characters and it's impossible to cross. Even if they're queer themselves.

Meanwhile you have a newer generation of writers and audiences that are getting increasingly used to better, more explicit representation, where queer people are just people with complex stories that are just as rich and diverse, where the queerness is an explicit part of who they are that's not shoved under the rug but not the entirety of who they are either. Boundaries are more fluid, some characters experiment with gender and sexuality and it's less and less of a big deal, some people don't feel a need for boxes. Queer culture is acknowledged, queer identity is uplifted and analyzed in its full richness and nuance, it's part of the humor, there's obvious flirting, joy, playfulness - we delight in queerness, it's not just An Issue TM. A macho macho guy might turn out to be gay after several seasons and it's not considered absurd or weird. There is no longer this belief that that somebody's gayness has to be visible from outer space, or that there is something fundamentally distinct about men and women, or about m/f or m/m or f/f relationships - in fact some people might be neither or both and that's also great. Queerness bleeds into the mainstream instead of just seeking to assimilate. Some characters start out not written as queer but then the writers realize that wait, actually, this character being queer or these two characters being in love might greatly expand the story in incredible ways, so why not seize the opportunity and make queer fans really happy on the way ? And this is also a new language of love in general, based more on equal partnership, intimacy, wonder, mutual respect and support, transformative love, or even in more toxic dynamics, a mutual level of change and impact, etc - rather than an old fashioned thing with the strict gender roles where the dude is the savior/protector/etc and the girl is the prize/damsel in distress.

So, let's go back to the old school generation of writers. Under the heteronormative model, you write m-m and f-m relationships very differently (this is also the logic behind 'men and women can't be friends' - and lazy straight romance that assumes you will see a m/f pairing as romantic simply bc they stare at each other for too long). A m-f set of characters's default is romantic and a m-m pairing is platonic by default. So the same scene - for instance, a charged, long stare - is going to be seen as romantic for the m-f pairing and platonic for the m-m couple. This is what the writers assumed the audience would see. If you want a m-m pairing to be seen as romantic you have to explicitly label it as gay (generally with a lot of angsting, clichés and Lessons etc to signal to your straight audience that this is a Gay Story TM so they can prepare mentally and distance themselves without having to question their assumptions)

But our dear new generation doesn't fucking get that. They think it's absurd, and for good reason. Why should the same gesture be interpreted so differently depending on the gender of the people involved ? So then you have this m/m type of ship. The shippers are going to see the same language generally used in straight romances - heart to hearts, life or death situations, agonized looks, sacrifices for the other, symbolic parallels, commitments, long gazes, teasing, emotional intimacy, etc etc...and read it as also romantic, without the heteronormative lens that prevents the older generation from seeing this potential queerness.

Ok but - what happened in the writing room for us to get there ? Why do old school writers do use those tropes so damn much for their male characters ? Why are so many modern stories centered around 'bromances' ? Well, they're popular, for one. But another thing : homosociality is at the core of traditional masculinity, which is build by excluding anything female/feminine. And yeah, that's kind of gay, actually. But straight people have been raised to ignore that as hard as possible. And to go one further : queerness is one of the pillars of traditional masculinity - but straight people don't see it. Not just because this masculinity constructs itself with queerness as a boundary, as an other of 'what you should not be' (but end up being anyway because the ideal is impossible. under the regime of idealized toxic masculinity any man is always on the edge of falling into queerness. it's a regime of perpetual threat that always needs to be enforced harder and harder. lmaoo gay) Historically a lot of the typical, glorified spaces of masculine socialization and action hero icons - rugged cowboys, sailors, pirates, adventurers, soldiers, etc etc - tended to attract a lot of queer people, and so the same stories that serve to codify ideal masculinity are actually deeply queer in their fabric. Also there has been this tradition of idealizing these deep, 'brotherly' bonds between men, who tended to play a big role in idealized male socialization, as more noble and true and free than the utilitarian relationships between men and women that are limited by the constrained ideal of marriage, reproduction, family and home life. And these supposedly platonic male relationships are ultimately closer to the modern ideal of romantic love based on equality and partnership and emotional intimacy.

So you have your old school writer setting out to write a tough, cool action hero. He needs to get the girl to be cool but he can't get too close or emotionally involved with the girl or see her as an equal, because that's not cool. So any kind of deep relationship by default ends up being with men. Second step, your old school writer is going to use lots of macho very masculine tropes without realizing they're actually pulling on queer culture. One of the text book examples of this is SPN's Dean Winchester, whose creator, Eric Kripke, said he was inspired by Dean Moriarty from the beat novel On the Road. Now, Dean Moriarty is inspired by a real guy, Neal Cassidy, who was bisexual in real life, and there's actually an uncensored version of On the Road that is a lot more explicitly queer. Did Eric Kripke know this ? No, probably not. He pulled from On the Road because he wanted to allude to that sort of drifter, unattached, adventurous masculinity, he wanted that macho glory for his character - without knowing that in real life, a lot of those guys were, obviously queer as hell - makes sense for queer men to congregate at the margins of society, to need that freedom and that wilderness of the road, just as it makes sense for fans to read Dean Winchester, living on the margins, always fighting his demons and that heavy masculinity imposed on him by his father, as queer. The delusional ones here are not the fans ; really the problem, I would say, are the heteronormative blinders and lack of culture of the old school writers. They are using a slowly fading (but still annoyingly persistent) language, that of this willful ignorance that allows the heteronormative illusion to persist, this idea that the relationships between people can be arranged in neat little boxes.

I think when it comes to the 911 writers, they're obviously trying to be more progressive and enlightened than anything SPN ever did, but it's still a mainstream American procedural show, and I think they still have a lot of those old boxes in their heads. I don't think they intended it as queer and yet it's kind of crazy to me nobody realized the gay vibes of Eddie's introduction to the show and his rivalry with Buck at the start lmao like that gym staring scene ???? can you imagine if Eddie or Buck was a woman how that would have been read ? That's some heteronormative blinders right there, damn

And there's a reason why a lot of these controversies tend to happen around pairings of two tough, action hero, hyper-masculine characters. They're the last great bastion of heteronormativity. For a long time intimacy btw men was only shown in the context of death and violence, to mitigate any accusation of softness. Can you imagine how incredibly threatening it would be for your average straight dudebro viewer if this cool action hero guy they identified with turned out to be gay 'out of nowhere' ? (ie, without the usual Gay Story ahead please disidentify warning signs). The 911 writers know this, and they wouldn't risk it because I don't think they have either the guts or the creative leeway. On the other hand they know that the gay reading is popular with another viewer segment that is younger, more queer and female, so they keep playing up the vagueness and the allusions a little, which for me is the more reprehensible aspect of it all. This is how you get queerbaiting.

Anyway, what is my point ? Well, you're not delusional, darling anon. But I would also advise you to guard your heart a little, and maybe feed yourself with more explicitly queer stories, who do deserve your investment more with their courage. But I don't blame you for wanting more from these big mainstream stories that everyone watches on prime time TV. You deserve more, we all do.

I think we need to keep talking about heteronormativity and double standards and old hat narratives. The conversation around these ships frustrate me so much because they often, to me, focus on the wrong things - about what the creators secret intentions are or aren't. I think we should take them at their word when they say they didn't intend to make it queer, and then we should keep talking about how it is, anyway, and if they didn't intend that, that's their problem, not ours. We need to keep talking about the lazy, flimsy straight instalove story lines that are somehow held up as more valid romances than these really intense and intimate connections between men - why ? We also need more super tough macho guys to be revealed to be queer after a whole season at least of them kicking ass (did you see Black Sails yet lmfao best heterobaiting in history)

Now with Buddie I do have to add a caveat - there is this argument that because Buck and Eddie are basically co-parenting Chris, they have to be in love. I don't like that - I deeply believe in the importance of showing more platonic, friendship centered family arrangements and stuff that deviates from the nuclear family ideal, gay or straight. Like, some of my parents' friends basically helped raise me, they weren't in love with my parents lol. That said, this didn't convince me Buddie were not in love either. But my point is, I would find this story of platonic family bonds more interesting and revolutionary if it was actually a man and a woman helping each other raise a child without ever being romantically involved, just as friends. I want more stories that center the importance of friendship too, but I think it should be about m-f dynamics first. It's only fair lmao, because this whole 'they're just friends' thing has been used for way too long to dismantle queer readings of closeness.