#my personal interpretation of the final episode in - how else could it be - text post format

[misspoetree]

[rocketturtle4]

Okay I’ve got to stop scrolling Tumblr and make the actual post or else I’ll run out of time, so if someone else has already done this before me, my sincerest apologies. I am going FULL CLOWN.

This is just going to be a wall of text sorry,

@dribs-and-drabbles who tagged their post with major parts of this theory on this post

@shouldiusemyname this is not the main post we’ve talked about, I will get to that I promise

Firstly I wanted to address my perspective on this post by @lurkingshan on the cat and mouse dynamics of Piseang showing up at his house

I think Piseang was legit seeking comfort from Kawi even if we got later resolution with the mum, and this implied all was well because 1, WTF and 2 even if it was resolved he still might be seeking comfort after such an emotional scene

Having condoms etc. doesn’t, in my mind, mean he was only pursuing sex because there’s nothing wrong with being prepared.

BUT I actually think if we assume he was there to kind of trick him a bit it’s MORE POIGNANT for my theory so…

Part 1

I THINK PISEANG TIME TRAVELLED WHEN HE SPUN THE CRYSTAL BALL.

I was unsure about this interpretation during the episode but the next episode preview sealed it for me. Piseang went into the future before he went to sleep next to Kawi, while Kawi was pretending to sleep.

If I stick with things being frozen in the future as @grapejuicegay has continued to build on, then this time we are going to get Piseangs growth by jumping forward because this time, THIS TIME

Piseang was about to make a serious misstep and he jumps forward in the future only to find his and Kawi’s relationship remains unresolved and perhaps the tension is reaching a breaking point.

I’m not going to clown too much on the details but basically

No matter how far forward in time he goes (not sure it will be the full 12 years lol) he and Kawi will not have had sex and WILL NOT HAVE COMMUNICATED ABOUT IT

They will still be together (I wasn’t sold on this point till dribs-and-drabbles post but now I think maybe they will) but the relationship will have Kawi’s fear of intimacy/aceness as a central untalked about problem

There will be some sort of breakdown with future Kawi that gives Piseang perspective and then he goes back to fix things.

Lol that was a lot of clowning

PART 2

Piseang is back in the past.

Now we clearly don’t see that his (hypothetical) future knowledge has lead him to a clear understanding of Kawi’s issues (whether they’re fear of intimacy or aceness).

I honestly think his:

Lets stay in

Why are we only eating

Lets try the rollercoaster and lastly

Please talk to me at the restaurant

Were him taking multiple different approaches to get Kawi to talk to him about whatever he found out in the future.

Lastly I think they DID talk in the restaurant and I TRUST this show so I think there talk is going to make our final scene make sense

I personally am leaning slightly more towards ace rep than intimacy fears and I intend to make a post about it but I’m not attached, and this post by @shouldiusemyname is an excellent hopeful read on how this could be intimacy issues.

[man-down-in-hatchet-town]

Pulp Musicals and... Thoth??

I would say apologies to all of my followers having to deal with my incredibly wordy Pulp Musicals melt-down this morning, but mostly I just want to say "please please listen to these I promise you want regret it."

Now back my regularly scheduled wordy meltdown. Spoiler alert: I think I figured out what the green statuette on top of MAIA is!

So this morning I posted my analysis of the default MAIA drawing (here) and talked a bit about the green statuette, and how I couldn't figure out exactly what it was but suspected that it somehow linked to Samuel. I also mentioned that it looked vaguely Egyptian. @its-short-for-jackalope then put in the notes that Samuel is after all a writer and reporter, so the statuette could perhaps be an Egyptian scribe. I googled Egyptian scribe statues and none of them really looked right, so I then looked up the Egyptian patron God of Scribes.

His name is Thoth. He's often depicted as just a guy with a bird's head, but there are several depictions both from ancient times and from more recent eras (which doesn't bother me, as Pulp itself takes place way after Ancient Egypt... so far) where he wears a certain type of headdress and looks like this:

And here is once again the blown-up image of the statuette from the MAIA drawing:

I mean... I might be crazy but there's a definite resemblance there. It's a front angle, so our view is pretty odd, but could the blue smear I previously called a beard instead be a long, hooked beak? It's a definite possibility, and I did say there was something inhuman about the face (though at the time I went with "dog" oops).

So I'm pretty much convinced that the statuette is Thoth.

And here's the kicker: in addition to being the patron god of scribes, Thoth is the God of sacred texts, mathematics, science, and magic, as well as the master of knowledge and the messenger and recorder of the Gods. And, maybe most importantly of all, he is the God of the Moon.

So, yeah. Good enough for me.

So what does this mean if each item represents an episode or member of our quartet?

Well, one interpretation is that Ancient Egypt, and perhaps her Gods, will come into play as a central element of a future episode. This would mean that Samuel is instead represented by the globe (unlikely as the Earth is much more within John's line of symbolism), the rocket (unlikely for young man from 1835), or the crack in the wall (also not likely but by process of elimination nonetheless the least unlikely...which is terrifying), or else I'm completely wrong about each of the four protagonists having their own symbol (which makes Rose and Margaret having their own objects when the boys don't very, ah, weird and interesting).

But personally I think the Thoth statuette could still represent Samuel. Thoth is the god of scribes, after all, and that's what Samuel is. And just as Thoth is the messenger and recorder for the Gods, Samuel accidentally woke something inside of Margaret, essentially sending a message from the moon to her latent "divinity" (let's be real, by Ancient Egyptian standards Margaret and the Traveler would be Gods), and is now in a position to record for posterity what he sees and learns of these godlike beings. I'm also working on a theory that Samuel is literally the key to Margaret's gate, and I think that would fit with him being represented by Thoth, especially if the gate ends up being in/on the moon. But more about that after we've finally gotten to see Episode 3...

Unless that Episode completely discredits that theory before I even have time to post it. We'll just have to see.

But that statue is almost definitely Thoth, yeah?

[chaosthatsmellsgreen]

Netflix's Avatar The Last Airbender thoughts, part 5/5

And finally, about Aang. The need for a trigger warning is nuts; it's about a certain interpretation of a plot point and the warning is repeated before the paragraph where I talk about it.

Also, if you actually read this whole thing, thanks! I just had so many thoughts about this adaptation and I needed to get them all out. A few months ago I did a Supernatural rewatch and I did a meta on the last episode and the general storytelling of S1-5, and I thought that was long, oh man. I was incorrect. That one actually fit into a single post! If you read this and have comments please feel free to talk to me, I've been scrolling through the #natla tag on tumblr for two days trying to see how everyone else reacted. There is also probably like fifteen other bulletpoints I could make but I've started this at like noon and it's 1 am and this is already a five parter text post which tbh nobody is going to read because I know I wouldn't! ADHD brain be like "hey, write this!" but if I see a even a ling single part meta post it just goes "too many words, bye." Potentially expect further relatrf thoughts and/or a lot of reblogs in the near future.

Aang: idk about Aang. he's got good moments and weak moments, i don't love his arc so far. i think Aang is a bit of a debated character in the original, but i personally liked his 3 season arc. now i've been a little worried about what they're going to do with it when they were talking about making some changes to it? and after seeing season 1, i feel like i was right to be worried. so in general i think Aang's "arc" is really weak in this. he's basically just going back and forth between "well i don't wanna be the avatar" and "well i've got to stand up as the avatar" and he just sort of goes through this in every episode without making any progress. i also really hate that this season went so hard on the whole "The Avatar's burden is a lonely one" thing, because while that's relevant, i think it works much better in the original where Aang (and the audience) gets a lot of time to build up a connection with the rest of the Gaang and the Guru telling him that he needs to let go of earthly attachment and therefore Katara at the end of book 2 is such a sudden cold shower.

Aang (TW: SUICIDE): also his decision at the end of the season is so sad. i mean not for nothing but he's basically suicidal? like... that's so depressing, i really didn't want to be thinking about Aang wanting to literally die because he's so sad and lonely? i'm not saying it's not like realistic or whatever, it just made me feel like shit. it's like Bumi being so cynical and angry. it's not unreasonable of this Aang, who's being told on a weekly basis that whatever he does, he's going to lose everyone he loves, that after all his people have been killed, he's now going to have to bear this enormous burden he's never wanted completely alone, and that if he tries to find help anywhere that's not within himself, his past lives, he's also going to get everyone fucking killed. and i know it's sort of framed like a sacrifice, which it is, but the way he talks right before he does it, like "I should've been lost a 100 years ago, this isn't my world"??? despite what i think was the intended framing it felt so much like he just wants to die, like this is the only use for himself he can see in this world is to fucking. DIE. IT'S JUST SO FUCKING SAD. from this (originally) optimistic and resilient character this is sooo very out of character (the sacrifice wouldn't be. this basically suicide-thinly-veiled-as-sacrifice is.) okay i'll stop harping on about this, you get it.

Aang is out of character overall: anyway. another real bad moment was Aang telling Katara not to fight, all i'll say about that is that this is clearly not the Aang who said "if you don't train Katara, i won't learn from you either" putting his avatar training in jeopardy because someone tried to tell Katara what she can and cannot do. idk what else to say about him, i'm not really vibing with this adaptation of his character. OG Aang shines through here and there but he's lost a lot of his optimism, his inner strength, his charisma and his wisdom. i hope some of these issues get addressed if we get around to more seasons.

PART 5/5

START // PREVIOUS

Thank you for reading!

[sennqu]

Cleaned up a few posts to reorganize them into a more coherent write-up with less fluff.

So, here is my interpretation of Will's romantic arc spanning S3 to S4: (with some mentions of S1 and S2)

To start, my interpretation is that Will has already fallen for Mike once S3 begins. my evidence for this are

the script for the snow ball scene where Will was said to be looking at Mike

the filmed scene when he looked to Mike when a girl asked him to dance

Will's line about not falling in love at the beginning of S3.

setting this up to ask the question: when did Will realize his feelings? in-between S2 and S3? during S2? or is it possible he was already developing feelings for Mike in S1?

i think the likeliest scenario from the text is that Will was already starting to develop feelings for Mike before S2 but he fully realizes he is in love during that season. My personal headcanon is that the definite moment was in the shed after Mike's tearful recounting of when they first met. With that, we can then assume Will might have been jealous of El before he even met her since Mike talked about her often. This then builds up to his outburst in S3E3 months later.

Will's jealousy of El is possibly a big part of why he was so insistent on playing DnD in the early episodes of S3. it's not just a wish of returning to childhood but to a life before El, before Will felt like he lost Mike to her. And of course the fight with Mike after cements it in Will's mind how stupid the notion was and how stupid he was to think that maybe he could be with Mike forever.

Additionally, I think Mike's outburst at the cabin ("i love her!...") forced Will to confront his own feelings even further. Then Hopper 'dying' and El staying with the Byers, along with the 3 month timeskip, is what really propelled Will to finally let go of his jealousy. Mostly because he had to. I think a lot of Will's arc in S3 is moving on/growing up because he felt the need to. I think that's what the scene with Lucas trying to apologize was implying. Mike and the rest of the party were "growing up" and moving onto serious things so Will felt he should too.

Now, Will leaving his DnD set behind is seen as like this gesture that DnD will always be his and his best friends' thing: their connection to one another. Will's not going to play with anyone else. The popular byler interpetation is of course that Will will always love Mike ("Not possible") and not want anyone else. I agree with this for the most part but I do somewhat think that leaving behind his DnD set was also part of an intent to leave his feelings for Mike behind in Hawkins. He doesn't want to, but he has to. Mike will always be his first love, but like the DnD set, it'll be a remnant of his childhood in Hawkins.

Then we get to S4 where I believe Will is still trying to get over Mike. And this is where the painting comes in.

I believe it's likely that Will made his painting as

a platonic gesture, and

as a form of closure and way of moving on from Mike romantically.

Like putting all his feelings into it so he could give it to Mike and rip off that yearning like a band-aid. That's why it's a painting of their DnD group and why Mike has a heart on his shield.

This is why he brought it to the airport. What better way to move on than by giving it to Mike on the day Will is third wheeling the best friend he's getting over and Mike's girlfriend who is also now Will's sister? Except Mike then starts acting oddly and (from Will's point of view) starts ignoring Will the moment he arrives. Then Will's mood darkens ever further when he is continuously ignored throughout the day. Does Mike even still think of him as a best friend? Finally, we get the fight ending with both of their feelings hurt and out in the open.

From Will's perspective, it's possible that after their fight in the roller rink, he thought he'd ruined his friendship with Mike. But Mike making amends with him gave him the hope that they still could be best friends. not just a team, not just friends, but back to best friends status. So he brings along the painting with the intent of giving it to Mike at an appropriate time as way to also make amends. Because during that convo, you gotta admit that Mike barely let Will get a word in, lmao. So Will probably felt he had to do something special to make up for his own culpability in their fight/drifting apart.

This ties into why I think Will giving Mike the painting in the van was done unintentionally on Will's part. He wasn't planning on giving it to Mike there and then, but seeing Mike so insecure and so upset had Will giving it to Mike in the spur of the moment and inadvertently confessing his own romantic feelings (under the guise it was El's) so he could make Mike happy. When Will is overcome with the realization of what he's done, he starts crying.

Will's arc in S4 was him attempting to move on romantically and tragically failing by a magnitude no one expected, making it clear to himself and to the audience that there is no one but Mike for him.

[jumpscaregoose]

I finished the Shaman King again

loserbrain thoughts under cut because it's me and shaman king and I am very Normal about it (also spoilers duh but you probably already know them all)

so ya boi rewatched shaman king this past month or so.

realized I'd never actually done that (I'd rewatched it with friends or went through my favourite episodes but I'd never went through it again start to finish). I told myself no skipsies but I broke that rule almost immediately and I did skip some parts (sorry episode eight you're just boring to me).

anyways my general thoughts

I appreciate this silly little ghost show more every time I watch it it's just really good. my enjoyment has not decreased in the slightest. found myself understanding some parts I thought were lackluster before because for like a year I was a dumbass and didn't get that It's a Metaphor, You Idiot. the text literally spells out "this is a metaphor for a person's mindset and strength of will" like every 3 seconds and I just. ignored it I guess??? turns out a lot of stuff makes more sense if you look at it less like smashing two action figures together and more as mushy brain stuff. who could have ever possibly guessed that (not past me). thought it was overall very very good and its lackluster parts (random aliens a la midichlorians I'm looking at you) were made up for by its great parts (basically everything else).

went into the last episode to try and iron out my thoughts on the ending (went from hating it on my first watch to tolerating it on subsequent watches) and I think it is consistently decent. could have used some more episodes and is just really confusing if you're not a pathetic loser nerd who can Well Actually it. I like it a lil bit. thought I'd reconciled my feelings about renmei to "my god that could have been so good we were ROBBED if they'd explained how this HAPPENED it would have been SO GOOD" but now it's "the same thing as before except I'm angry and yelling now" because it's true renmei could have been great and I mourn the loss of that every day. episode 51 remains the best episode (despite the midichlorian aliens) purely for the hao awakening scene. episode 50 is fun because major character revelation 2 episodes before the end and I think that's Neat (affectionate).

telling you all that one time a while back I watched the Bear Episode and wanted to fact check if there would actually be bears there and I asked my friends who live in Colorado and they thought I didn't think bears lived in Colorado.

FINALLY figured out all the symbolism behind the training in hell arc. have had a theory that the scenery represented Funky Brain Stuff™ but just. couldn't. understand. joco's part. sat down and thought about it for a bit and realized I forgot that the themes of Dante's Divine Comedy (Rodin's Gates of Hell is there and all) where the same as those happening for that part of the story and focused on the floating islands for eight months like an idiot. should probably make another post with my interpretations of hell stuff because I'm fairly confident I get it and also it's cool.

appreciate hao even more after this rewatch he's an excellent antagonist and also my precious meow meow. will not elaborate go read this.

ost does funky stuff with leitmotif sometimes but also I like it

generally forgot that I actually like quite a bit of early shaman king. my brain defaulted to episode six is fantastic and forgot about the rest. it's very nostalgic to me which is weird because I first watched it last year but it's true don't fight me I'll win.

top ten episodes for me are 51, 40, 6, 15, 45, 9, 50, 47, 27, 2 (most favourite first, with no bias towards anyone at ALL).

shaman king really good me really likey

might actually watch the 2001 version if pleaded with (it is my archnemesis)

[tundrainafrica]

[Part 1] Hi Sav! What are ur thoughts on Kamiya's (Levi's VA) words regarding Levi? Here are two translations I found on twitter. Since you know Japanese I think you're the perfect person to ask this from ^^ " Today at Anime Japan Kamiya Hiroshi said, “Levi hasn’t changed. The loss of Erwin is so huge that afterwards his life in a sense is like ‘yosei’.” Yosei (余生) means like, the rest of one’s life (after raising kids or retiring) where you have nothing left to do"++

Disclaimer: Please I have no intention of starting a ship war with this, I just wanna drop my own interpretation for my own Levihan stanning heart. 

Note: I had no plans of watching the Japanese Seiyu panel for the last episode of Attack on Titan for many reasons and 90% of it is because Romi Paku didn’t show up and I’m still salty overall about how AOT and the narrative is treating Hange altogether and literally the only comfort I get about Hange this whole AOT season is that she looks great in all her scenes but anyway, enough about the rant. I’m still low key salty about not getting our Levihan reunion yet… But whatever. 

I got all of these asks in succession and soon after I did some research on twitter to see what all the fuss was about and apparently, a lot of Eruri fans are likening Levi to a widow--- A WIDOW of all things. 

And I dunno, I feel like this conclusion for one kinda cheapens Levi’s character altogether and just cheapens the bond of Levihan so I kinda realized I just cannot stand and watch some obviously Eruri-biased Japanese translations of that statement run rampant on twitter without my own take. 

So anyway, I’m gonna drop my own take on this, my own interpretation as a Levihan stan.

Disclaimer: I am in no way trying to push any Levihan agenda on anyone. If you like Eruri and you wanna stick to your widow interpretation feel free too. I just feel like a pro Levihan take, and a more ‘non Eruri’ take on that statement should exist as well so I’ll just drop this here for Levihan fans to seek comfort and possibly for any casual reader or Eruri fan to get some other perspectives on this statement I guess?

This is the original Text

声の方「団長、エルヴィンを失ったことはとても大きかったと思うんですよ」

「だからそこから先ってある意味余生みたいな感じになってる気がする」

Isym先生「エルヴィンの最期を看取って役割を全うし、現在宙ぶらりんな状態」

リヴァイ本人「…俺達の役目は」「あそこで終わりだったのかもしれない…」

And if I were going to translate it word for word. 

“For Levi, losing Erwin was a big thing. And everything after that became some sort of ‘retirement’ (Yosei) for him. Since he took it upon himself then to follow Erwin, right now it feels just dangling in space.”

Okay these are obviously Eruri crumbs at first glance and I recognize why exactly Eruris would celebrate over something like this because if we had a Levihan thing like this too, I’ll probably be celebrating too

But Let me offer my own interpretation of this as a Levihan stan

Yes, I recognize that for Levi losing Erwin was a big thing, but I’d like to paint some of the terms in a positive light for Levi. And the main key terms above were ‘Yosei’ and “Levi dangling in space’

So I’ll be focusing on those two: 

余生 (Yosei)

余生 (Yosei) isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Yosei literally translates to ‘the remaining years of someone’s life” So it doesn't necessarily mean Levi’s a widow or Levi is lonely because Erwin’s not there anymore In fact, Yosei is used a lot from what I see, to mean, retirement years. So after you’re done with your job and you retire, your last few years playing golf, playing with grandchildren, those are your ‘yoseis’ 

And there are lots of takes I saw online to this Yosei thing 

There was a meta in Japanese I found  where they discussed the fact that Levi was approaching his twilight years. and the main reason he was facing ‘retirement’ wasn’t necessarily because Erwin was gone but because soon after Erwin died, the basement happened and it turned out there were enemies much stronger than titans out there. 

The ‘Yosei’ meant, Levi retired from his role as ‘humanity’s strongest soldier’ because Levi was the ‘strongest soldier’ against titans, not against humans, the rapidly changing world and technology. I mean if we actually are objective about this, we could see the most capable survey corps member for handling the new enemy which is Marley and the Hizuru and just all the other countries and the impending war, was Hange since she is the best at navigating politics and she would be the quickest to adapt to technology.  

So yes, if it’s obvious, I do not like the ‘Levi is a widow take’ AT ALL.

「エルヴィンの最期を看取って役割を全うし、現在宙ぶらりんな状態」

 Since he took it upon himself then to follow Erwin, right now it feels just dangling in space.

But I’m not gonna discount the role of Erwin in Levi’s life. I think it is actually very important to understand why Levi feels like ‘he’s dangling in space.’ 

We all remember that last scene from ACWNR after Isabel and Farlan died and I’m sure we can all connect those last words from Erwin all the way until Levid decides to follow him to the role implied above. 

Erwin was Levi’s compass. Erwin gave direction to Levi’s life and suddenly Erwin dies and at the same time the world opens up and Levi starts to realize he’s not as needed anymore and his role as humanity’s strongest is gone.

So obviously all those events at once would leave Levi in some sort of limbo right. And that’s why he gets this feeling that he has reached his ‘yosei’ years and he’s also dangling in some limbo

I can think of two more specific reasons he ends up ‘dangling.’ 

First reason is: Killing the beast titan, the last order Erwin gave Levi wasn’t so easy to do anymore given the political nuances, the environment and of course the fact that the world was already more complicated than killing titans. And to think that Levi makes a promise to do that right before Erwin died? 

So I’m thinking the ‘dangling’ refers to Levi grappling with such complexities and nuances while trying to fulfill a goal which would have been so much easier if the basement thing didn’t happen and the world didn’t open up. 

And my second reason is: 

Warning: Before I go to this, I wanna warn you that this is my Levihan stan self reaching for pro-Levihan interpretations so feel free to ignore this if you don’t want crazy Levihan delusional interpretations. 

Anyway, my second explanation which I like to play with and I like to keep close to me, being a Levihan fan is that Hange of all people, was the last veteran stuck to Levi and as we all know, according to Yams old interviews about Hange’s gender...

Hange’s a free soul. She’s like the balloon, the kite that just floats in space and just continues hanging, dangling and flying. And she’s the person who Levi ended up sticking to after Erwin’s death. And since he ended up with such a free sould, he didn’t necessarily find much direction again, the same way he found direction with Erwin. 

Hange didn’t give a straightforward direction for Levi. But Hange provided comfort. 

And I’d just like to introduce a pro-Levihan interpretation this. 

So maybe ‘dangling in space’ and leaving the remaining years of his life like that isn’t such a bad thing? I mean I like to interpret this ‘retirement’ and ‘dangling’ as Levi finally being free of whatever ‘Ackerbond’ or whatever compass or order Erwin has set for him. 

Because Hange went about her position as commander more as a parent to the cadets and more as a comrade to Levi than anything else. And with title of ‘humanity’s strongest soldier’ not so relevant anymore post season 3 with titans becoming a not so big threat compared to the impending war, I think the ‘yosei’ and the ‘dangling’ could be interpreted as freedom for Levi from his role as Erwin’s right hand man and freedom from the burden of being ‘humanity’s strongest.’

And the transition from having to report to Erwin to having to report to Hange, I think this can be interpreted as a breath of fresh air for Levi.

Yosei after all can be interpreted as freedom. When people retire, people are free right? They’re free to try out different things, they’re free to focus on other things. Even if people have to experience the pain of ‘loss’ when losing one position, the remnants of it, the ‘yosei’ isn’t inherently bad although it can be interpreted as that. 

And the crumbs for this? I always believed that Levi generally acted freer under Hange than under Erwin. And I feel like I have created metas about this before about Hange’s leadership style: here and here

Anyway if you got this far, thanks for reading! 

[americasass81]

Make Her Mine - Chapter Three

{Warning: 18+, Dark theme, Smut, Fingering, Drugging, Mild Somnophilia, Non-con, Swearing, Choking, Mention of oral, Violence, Male Masturbation, Real Persons Mentioned}

Seriously do not read if any of this upsets you.

A/N: Okay though this started out as something to keep me occupied while I was without Wi-Fi for a week and never really planned on posting it, here at chapter three I would like to thank everyone who seems to like it and hope they get the same kick out of reading it as I’ve had writing it.  Having started out with an original female character, I have decided for those reading to remove the reader's name.  As such it’s now dark!Tony Stark x Reader and I figured it was about time I posted this chapter which was written months ago.  Hope you all enjoy it.

 Word count:- 2,490

Waking the next morning well rested, you started the day by emailing Sabrina the vague outline of your plan to escape Tony as well as how Sebastian might get involved should his infatuation prove stronger than you hoped.  Titled Operation Goldfish, you figured it was a handy enough codename to quickly slip into a compromised conversation.  Once satisfied, you then ordered breakfast before heading downstairs to rebook your room for five more days.  Getting off the elevator and walking towards the reception desk, you took a sharp turn back to the seating area when you saw Tony walking through the front doors.

'Fuck.' you thought, 'what was his problem.  Was his ego really so bruised, that he was determined to track you down?'  Looking around, you quickly picked up a paper off the table and hid behind it, while you waited to see what happened next.  Noting the time it was taking him to be dealt with, you instead seized the opportunity of his distraction to make it back to the elevators unseen, and quickly returned to your room.

Running through the suite, collecting all your belongings, you were just about to text Sabrina regarding the situation when you heard a beep and the sound of the door opening.  Heart pounding and cursing that you didn't feel comfortable having Sabrina retrieve your weapons as well, you slowly walked towards the bedroom door to be greeted by the sight of Tony Stark standing in your suite.

"Well Darling, have you any idea all the bother you've caused me.  Now I hope you're not planning on going anywhere after I gave clear instructions as to what was expected of you."

"How the fuck did you get in here and why are you doing this?  Is your ego really that fragile?" you asked, while quickly trying to assess how you were going to get out of this.

No sooner were the words out of your mouth however, when you found his hand around your throat as your body hit the jam of the door.  "You'll find being Tony Stark I can pretty much buy my way in anywhere.  Now listen to me very carefully, the money you're using to hide from me was earned in my employ.  That means Darling, that I own your pretty little ass."

Trying to hit him with one hand while using the other to pry his off your throat, he released you and you slumped to the floor, gasping for air as tears leaked from your eyes.  Glaring at him, your temper flared and you couldn't hold your tongue.  "So what, you think you're entitled to do whatever you want with anyone who works for you?  That is seriously fucked up and illegal on so many levels."

"Oh no, Y/N, not anyone." he purred, helping you up while forcing you to look at him as his fingers caressed your chin.  "Just you.  There's something about the way you think you're too good for me, that makes me want to see you kneeling naked before me while choking on my cock."

Disgusted at his words and brimming with fear and anger, your knee came up to connect with his family jewels as you reached your hand around the wall and pulling a floor lamp towards you, brought it down on him.  Though all this only stunned him, it gave you enough of an opening to hit him again, before reaching for your getaway bag and running from the room.

Not looking back to see if he was following you, you forgot the lift and started down the stairs as fast as you could.  Reaching the street, you made it two blocks before you felt a sharp prick in your neck.  Slowly slumping forward, you weren't conscious as iron arms wrapped around your chest and a booming voice told passersby that everything was under control.  Taking you to an Avengers controlled facility because of the publicity surrounding your episode, the next phase of his plan was to extricate you from those determined to keep you from him. 

                   *************

Having received the unexpected call from Tony Stark, it didn't take long for Sabrina to show up at the facility with Sebastian and two of his goons in tow.  Being greeted by a kindly nurse, they were allowed to see you for a few minutes before being ushered into one of the unused offices where Tony sat waiting.

Closing the door behind him, Sebastian had to hold his wife back as she lunged at Tony.  "What did you do to her, you sick fuck?  I swear, if anything happens to her the full might of the New York Mob will tear you and your costumed freaks to ribbons."

"Firecracker, calm down.  At least let the man explain."  Sebastian coaxed, quickly glancing at Tony.

"Fine." she said, sitting in the nearest vacant chair while keeping her eyes fixed on Tony, as Sebastian took the seat next to her.

"Well it's good to see you have some control over your woman, but I wonder Mr. Stan, does she actually speak for you."

"Mr. Stark, please don't interpret my love for my wife as a sign of weakness.  While she may not speak for me on Mob business, where Y/N is concerned we act as one."

"Fair enough.  I was on my way back from a routine rescue when F.R.I.D.A.Y. alerted me to a pedestrian in distress.  I reached her before she could hit the ground and only discovered it was Miss Y/L/N when I saw her face.  I then brought her here and immediately called you, of course." he said, turning his gaze on Sabrina.

"And what exactly is wrong with her?  The nurse Charlie wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information." Sebastian stated, reaching out to take his wife's hand.

"That I'm afraid is a question I don't yet have the answer to.  F.R.I.D.A.Y. is running every conceivable test, but if nothing comes up, we may just have to accept it's something else and simply let it run its course."

"Something else?  As in stress related?" Sabrina snapped, glaring daggers at him.  "I wonder what could possibly have stressed her out that much?"

"Yes Mrs. Stan, I'll admit it, I didn't handle her rejection of me very well.  But I've since gotten over it.  Which is why I now intend to make sure she gets the best medical care my resources can provide."

"Mr. Stark," Sebastian interrupted.

"Tony, please." he stated, turning to face the mob boss once again.

"Tony.  Given the issues these past couple of days have thrown up between you and Y/N, surely you can understand our concern.  I don't think my wife and I are very comfortable with this arrangement."

"I totally understand your reservations, but as a Stark Industries employee she is also covered under the company's medical insurance, which means I can insist on the best possible treatment available anywhere.  I will of course be more than happy to keep you updated on her condition.  Now perhaps we can leave it there for today?  I have your number."

"Sebastian, we can't just leave her here with this arrogant douchebag.  This is exactly the opportunity he's been waiting for." Sabrina explained, locking eyes with her husband.

"Sabrina, sweetheart, his concern seems genuine and he should be made pay for her care.  She'll be okay."  Turning back to Tony, he looked him over once, before he spoke again, "Remember what my wife told you, Stark.  In the meantime, I'll expect regular updates." he stressed, rising from the chair and taking his wife's hand to lead her from the room.  Left alone with you incapitated down the hall, Tony couldn't hide the satisfaction he felt, knowing he finally had you in his grasp. 

Suspecting that your friends didn't believe a word he said, Tony walked down the hall to your room where he couldn't help but gaze on your sleeping form.  Though the sedative he'd hit you with should give him until tomorrow to get you moved to his secret location, part of him was disappointed that it had come to this.  He had hoped when you left his office you would do as he asked, but it seemed you weren't as meek as you pretended to be.  Still, he did love a challenge and he would enjoy breaking you.

Leaving you temporarily to deal with the paper trail and the nurse, he returned quickly and went about removing what medical equipment had been hooked up to lend some reality to the scene.  Next, pulling back the sheets, he frowned at the hideous workout gear you still wore but couldn't help himself as his hand made its way up the inside of your thigh.  Though he knew he wanted you awake for all he had planned, he told himself he simply wanted to see how effective the drug was at keeping you sedated.

Reaching your waist, he gently eased down your leggings before running his hand along your panty covered folds.  Moving his hand up and down a few times, he brought his fingers to his mouth and coated them in his saliva before shoving your panties aside to feel your flesh against his hand.  Slowly gliding up and down your folds, he moved up every now and then to circle your clit before he poked your entrance with a finger.  Moving it gently in and out, he was surprised by the small amount of moisture this single digit was producing.  Deciding to experiment further, he slipped in a second finger and was rewarded with a tightness that wasn't there the first time.  Pumping his digits harder and faster into your pussy, he marveled at how well the drug was working, while still allowing your body to slick up his fingers.

Hearing movement out in the hall, he quickly removed his fingers, replaced your clothes and licked your juices off his digits before pulling the sheets back up.  Bending down to softly kiss your lips, he pulled back before whispering "soon darling, you'll feel more than my fingers and you'll never be empty ever again."  Then when a dead quiet once again fell over the place, he released his armor, eased you out the window and gently flew you to the secluded spot where his car was waiting.  Placing you on the seat and securing your belt, he swept the hair back from your face before shedding his armor, getting behind the wheel and driving off to your new home.

                    *************

Pulling into the secluded, underground hideout, he thanked all the gods above that no one knew of its existence or its connection to him.  Housing a garage, living quarters and state of the art lab, he knew it would be the perfect place to hide you until you finally accepted him.  Taking you gently from the car and depositing you in your room, he still had things he needed to do before you woke up.

Removing your leggings and panties, he hurried to your bathroom to clean you up after his earlier exploration, before slipping into his room to retrieve a pair of boxers.  Left to him, you wouldn't need clothes any time soon, but he figured after the hotel you might not take too kindly to waking up naked.  As a compromise, the drug should afford him time to wash your lower garments and return them before you knew anything was amiss.

Heading to his room to shower, his mind wondered how you would react when you regained consciousness.  Oh he could easily have tied you to the bed already and after the hotel maybe he should, but where was the fun in that?  The contrast between the meek 'Mr. Stark' spouting you in his office and the fiery you that had evaded him and attacked him in the hotel suite excited him more than any woman had in years.  He couldn't wait to see which you would open your eyes or what it would take to tip you in either direction.

So consumed was he by you that it took him awhile to realize his hand had strayed to his throbbing erection.  Continuing to pump his hand up and down while thinking of your tight, warm and wet walls squeezing him like a vice, his mind wandered back to his fingers buried in your pussy and working himself harder he came with a groan, his cum coating his hand.  Looking down at his release, he quickly washed up, exited the shower and changed his clothes before making a bite to eat.

Once fed, he headed back to check on you, to find you just as he left you.  Though fairly certain about the timeframe of the sedative, he thought it best not to dally and headed off to his lab to set up a cover that would hopefully keep your mob friends off his back.

His first act was to wire money to associates in Europe to make it look like his private jet had landed with himself, you and the nurse Charlie aboard.  Next was the setting up of a false trail that currently had you under the care of the best doctors in Denmark, no way he figured would your meddlesome friends travel there.  Then he fished your phone out of your getaway bag, while marveling at the amount of cash you had stashed away.  He knew he paid his employees well, but the ingenuity of someone your age to even think of something like this both amazed him and made him wonder why you did it in the first place.  But that was a mystery which could wait.

Unlocking your phone, a pathetically simple task he noted, he quickly cloned the whole thing and then, placing it back with your cash and passport, hid the bag in the lab's secret safe.  Once done with that, his next task involved combing through every voicemail you had in order to synthesize your speech pattern should he have a need for it at some point.  He also contemplated freezing your accounts, but figured that might raise some red flags.  When all that was done, he then redirected his business calls, thus making the whole thing look legitimate before instructing his A.I. V.I.R.G.I.L. to shut down most of the building.

Satisfied that his efforts were enough, he returned to your room with your freshly washed clothes and redressed you before settling on the couch to spend some time watching the gentle rise and fall of your chest.  Knowing it would be a while before he got to see you this peaceful again, he savored every minute until his eyes started to close and so rising, he kissed your forehead before reluctantly returning to his own room.  Laying down, he drifted off to sleep, wondering what the days ahead held in store.

Tagging:- @nsfwsebbie , @hoseokchild , @malloryharris , @ironlady1993 , @floatingdaisy7 , @taintedgenre , sorry if I missed anyone.

[himbo-buckley]

The Big Buddie for Dummies Guide

Hello party people and welcome to whatever this was supposed to be!

Quite a while ago I got an ask by someone about doing a guide on all the canon indicators for Buddie to explain the ship to non-shippers and about 5 anxiety attacks and four weeks later, I finally did it!

So read, enjoy, reblog, validate, disagree!

Also here are some notes before we get started:

Buddie has been around a while now and there are some incredibly people writing about them and doing meta posts for them, some of which I asked for their opinion which I will link at the end and some of which I am quoting in a way / have been inspired by (Also feel free to send me all and every post related and I will link it in the text as I will try to do the same)

This Guide is organised by the following themes we find in the show with Buddie: trust - coparenting - connection and love life - subtext

I’m not gonna lie, this is incomplete af because tbh? There is so much stuff that can be interpreted as evidence for Buddie but this is too long already so I left some stuff out, I hope ya’ll don’t mind … (also the reblog  option exists for reason, just add on what I missed, I’m not gonna bite!)

I’m gonna assume the person who reads this has a general understanding of the show and its scenes because I cannot explain every scene down to it’s very detail (I mean I can but that’s another 20000 words worth of meta and not sure anyone wants to read that … again) but I will try and link fitting gifsets (again, send them my way if you feel I should include sth.)

I should also add a warning for the fact that I, personally, think I am hilarious but others might not but fellas, Idc! (Also I cuss, some people don’t like that?)

So let’s get this show on the road then, shall we? I call this meta : „We might end up real close.“

(alternate title: „Buddie stans ship hard but canon ships harder“ or „This is Timbo’s story (of becoming more famous than Joss Whedon) and I’m just it’s vessel“)

Trust

We’re gonna start this off strong (I mean all of them are strong themes) by talking about the biggest theme with Buddie which is trust. It goes all the way back to 2.01 and the gym scene and Buck basically telling Eddie he doesn’t trust him (complaining about Eddie’s comfort level, anyone?) and that he needs to earn that - which rude but also I get it.

In fact there are two main themes which I combined into Trust which begin in 2.01:

„You’re my problem“ and „You can have my back any day“ both of which sort of sum up Buddie, because from the get go Buck decides hey, this guy is my problem and then he proceeds to make everything about Eddie his business. Eddie meanwhile tells Buck he’d love to have him watching his back - meaning Eddie trusts him and wants Buck to be his partner.

(Side note: isn’t it beautiful how that is a complete reverse of their usual attitudes? Usually Buck trusts way to easy and Eddie never does but with each other it’s the opposite!)

Let’s look at the episodes in order, okay?

2.01: „I think I’ve seen this happen in porn before“

- „You’re my problem“: I’m gonna talk about the gym scene later a bit more but this sort of establishes the dynamic Buddie has? Because both are fascinated by and focused on each other from the get go. I mean: Eddie got to the 118 and everyone seemed to be nice to him except this one guy and instead of giving him a few days, thinking he’ll come around , Eddie is like: nah, I’ll confront him! Why? Maybe it’s gay, maybe it’s Maybelline, maybe Eddie „I am not enough“ Diaz was just sick and tired of everyone putting trust in him because soldier and craved the vibe check?

- „You can have my back“: Basically what happened was, they got the bomb out (being partners and in sync even when they didn’t like each other yet) and they stood outside and Eddie tries a new approach cause for some reason Eddie decided out of everyone at the 118 he needed Buck to like him specifically and so he pays the guy - who was nothing but rude to him so far but who is also very competent - a compliment and Buck gets all flustered and thankful - and „You’re my problem!“ gets rephrased into „Or you know, you could have mine!“

(Also the look of pure elation on Buck’s face when Eddie compliments him, you know the person Hen has basically said is so awesome and pretty it transcends sexualities? And he picks Buck of all people to have his back? Buck has no choice but to stan!)

- In terms of Trust we also get the pool scene which is our second instance of them being in sync and partners by both jumping into the pool and getting the guy out basically at the same time

2.02 / 2.03: „Why Edmundo Diaz hates earthquakes part 1 and part 2 (of 2)“

- „Where do you want us, Cap?“: Now looking at the timeline of 2.01 they’ve known each other for approximately four days as this is their fourth shift together (we see) and yet Eddie is already comfortable enough to answer for himself and Buck several times. He’s the one who decides they will go in and he answers the roll call later for the both of them. This is our first real instance of them being in sync and just their whole interaction, from Eddie going along with Buck’s plan about the elevator to everything else just shows how much they already trust each other.

- „I, uh, I love kids“: Also Buck in this episode, why was it so important that Eddie knows you like kids? Please share!

- “Eddie, you’re kid is in the safest place he can be.“: Connected to this is a sub-theme I like to call: ‚They know each other better than anyone else does‘ which is established here with Buck realising that Eddie is full of shit when he pretends not to worry about Chris so Buck spends some time trying to assure Eddie Chris is safe at school.

- „Is everything okay?“: Of course, the fact that Buck was the only one to check in with Eddie’s mental state from the truck scene onwards is very telling, because everyone else likes and trusts him but they don’t really care (yet)

- And the episodes end with everyone reuniting with their families, including Eddie - while Buck watches from the car because Buck drove him there because he has his back (also see Subtext)

2.04: „Hearteyes, motherforker“

This whole episode is what made several people ship Buddie and well, I can see it and I will talk about a lot of it with the other themes but for now:

- „I just feel bad for him. (…) Eddie’s working on it“: This episode really leans into the whole „You’re my problem“ with Buck apparently driving Eddie to the hospital (or at least coming along) to Buck clearing Chris coming to the station with Bobby to worrying about them at home until finally he introduces him to Carla.

Mind you, they haven’t known each other that long, yet Buck feels the need to meddle in Eddie’s life and fix his problems for him which, yes, is very Buck thing to do but still: Considering Eddie was introduced to us as this super capable guy, it’s interesting that Buck immediately saw through him and decided: yeah, that guy needs me to take care of him.

Or you know, to have his back.

2.07: „*Tommy Wiseau voice* Oh, hi Shannon!“

- „I needed someone to have my back“: This episode establishes the significance of „You can have my back“ even more because in this episode Shannon comes back and you know what they fight about? Eddie not having her back. Shannon quite literally says „I needed someone to have my back“ which is almost the same exact  Eddie tells Buck in 2.01 and with that wording as well ...

In the same scene Shannon also says how Eddie always knows best and is the one to make the decisions which  is another parallel you can draw to Buddie where Eddie began like that in 2.01 (the scene at the mechanic’s) and then began to follow Buck’s lead (the elevator shaft) / let Buck help him (Carla))

2.10: „It’s all about ‚figured it was none of my business‘“

I love this episode very much because there are several Buddie hints in there.

- “I think it’s none of our business.“: Connected to the topic of Trust is the scene between Chimney and Buck when they buy the Christmas tree and Buck keeps talking about Shannon coming to the station and the fact that Shannon and Eddie hooked up while Chim seems exasperated by this and frankly doesn’t care and he tells Buck as much, saying it’s none of their business. Except it is because Eddie is Buck’s problem, remember?

- „So … not gonna say anything?“: And then the „None of your / my business“ gets repeated in the scene when Buddie sits at the fountain talking about Chris and Shannon and they both say it’s none of Buck’s business. Yet Eddie then still tells Buck all about it sounding all defensive.

- It’s also the first instance of Eddie willingly searching out Buck’s advice about Christopher.

- And related to the topic of knowing each other well, considering how surprised Buck is by all of this, one sort of has to wonder how often they hang out outside of work. Because the way Buck acts makes one assume it’s quite a lot, which is why Buck is so hurt he doesn’t know about it.

- Also the fact that they so casually go somewhere with Christopher and the way Buck talks about him making it clear they have done this before.

- „Trying to protect your kid.“: On the topic of Trust I also wanna mention the fact that Eddie doesn’t trust Shannon with Christopher. Which is a direct parallel to 3.03 when Eddie tells Buck there is no one he trusts more with his son. And also 3.09 when Buck gets to be back in Chris’s life after the lawsuit as soon as Buddie made up yet Shannon needs to really beg for it? I mean, yeah.

2.13: „ Evan *I colour coordinate with bae while my sister is abducted and my brother is dying* Buckley“

- „Oh, no, I know what you were thinking.“: The scene at the hospital between Buck and Eddie does have a bit of subtextual relevance but I do think we should note the fact that this scene was in the show at all like this because wouldn’t Bobby have made a bit more sense? After all they spent one and a half Season before that making him the guy Buck goes to for advice and he has sisters as well, yet here we get Eddie being the one to talk to Buck.

We get Eddie basically telling Buck exactly what he needed to hear and while not exactly condoning his actions, he is also not judging them. Instead Eddie is telling Buck he might have done the same, because Eddie and Buck know each other and see each other.

So I wouldn’t necessarily call that scene Buddie-hinting but it does definitely play into the whole ‚having each other’s backs‘ and ‚knowing each other well‘ thing they got going on.

Also compare it to 3.06 in the way that both times Buck did something wrong and it was Eddie who actually took the time to listen to Buck’s reasoning and be the one to understand him, which is a very important part of their dynamic.

And the line „I wasn’t worried about that.“ in response to how Buck thought he would get away with all of this might be one of the top 10 heartbreaking lines of this show for me and that is saying a lot with 911!

2.14: „‚It’s a miracle… bro #nohomo’“

I am not fully sure if the scene of Buck freaking out about Eddie going back in to save the kid really fits in here, but I’m also very unsure were else to put it, so Trust it is!

- „Eddie, what are you doing?”: It does fit into the whole having each other’s back thing with Buck immediately jumping into action to try and help Eddie

- But in all honesty prior to 3.14 this would have not made the cut as I would have been like: eh, that’s just who Buck is as a person - but as 3.14 will proof / has proven, he can be calm and collected even when his sister, his ACTUAL family is in danger and while I would argue it was in part because there was less he could do to actively help in 3.14, it still deserves to be mentioned now

- Side note: considering 2.13 / 2.14 and 3.14 / 3.15 this marks two occasions were Buck being worried for Maddie’s life was followed by an episode of Buck being worried for Eddie’s life and that too deserves mentioning

2.18: „insert *Jane Austen film*-gif: It’s about the hands!“

- I’m not really sure if this is really connected to Trust but Eddie holds Buck’s hand the whole time, even after he has dragged him out from under the firetruck until they disappear in the ambulance.

- Also the fact that Eddie, who is probably stronger than Chimney, is the one helping Hen drag Buck out from under the fire truck while Chimney helps lift it is … worth a mention.

- Definitely connected to Trust is Buck’s insistence to going to Eddie’s ceremony because this is Eddie and he has his back

3.01: „How you know he no sleep naked?“

Yes, this scene has a lot to unpack. In terms of *trust* / how well they know each other:

- „He’s just sulking, Cap“: Eddie says about Buck. In my opinion the phrasing combined with how before that they were talking about how Maddie can’t get Buck to leave the house and he won’t answer any of Bobby’s calls implies that either a) Eddie too has tried to contact Buck with no success or b) is actually in contact with Buck, has talked to him and has concluded based on what he saw that Buck is sulking - and yes, I am leaning toward b).

- “Maybe you’ll learn something.“: Which brings me to the fact that it’s Eddie who makes the  plan to get Buck out of his funk and prove to him that he still has stuff to live for, despite how dismissive he had been about Buck’s feelings before, calling it sulking and saying Buck should just brush it off. Because Eddie has Buck’s back despite it all and is there for him and trusts him.

- „He’s hanging out with his Buck today“: In terms of actual Trust there is the fact that Buck is very much depressed in this episode - and what does Eddie do? Puts his son in his care, you know, the most important person in Eddie’s life, convinced that Buck will be able to take care of him despite how low and bad he is feeling about himself. One) because it has been the case for Eddie probably. Two) because this is who Buck is as a person even while depressed and Eddie trusts that. And three) because even before the Tsunami Eddie was very sure about how much Buck loved Chris.

- „Honestly I don’t know how to help him.“: This also parallels Maddie with Eddie in an interesting way because Maddie spends the whole episode worried about Buck and thinking he cannot take care of himself, while Eddie trusts in Buck to not only take care of himself but also his son. Which yeah, interesting.

3.02 „Eddie hates earthquakes - the remix“

- The episode sort of proves that while the others may have known what Eddie was gonna do, Operation „Buck up Buck“ was his plan because he is the one who has Buck’s back. (Considering for example Maddie doesn’t know about it as she thinks Buck is home and had Chim been involved he would have told her beforehand meaning this was Eddie’s plan and he executed it and then told the others about it while at work.)

- Also in terms of literal Trust: LA is hit by a Tsunami and Eddie doesn’t worry about his son once because Buck said they are going to the movies next and also because Eddie trusts Buck to protect Chris like he would.

3.03 „‚Do it for the trauma!‘ - Buck-edition“

Once again a subtext-mill but there is some textual evidence as well:

- “How do you tell your best friend that you lost his son?“: At the VA hospital Buck calls Eddie his best friend when he talks to Maddie which I always found weird in this context? Because it should always be hard to tell another person about how you got their child killed (which is not my opinion but the way Buck sees it here, okay?), yet the writers choose to put in a reference to how much Eddie means to Buck.

- Which connects to another subtext and text thing which is the voiceover which has Buck say the lines: „To be seen. To be found. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for?“ after talking to Eddie, which no longer just implies this is about Eddie but actually straight up says it - and it connects to the sub-topic of how well they know each other, cause Buck says in this episode: Eddie is my best friend and he sees me for who I really am. Which, yeah, is stuff one usually finds in connection to a love interest. (Will talk about it more with Subtext though)

- Also before that the voiceover has Buck say „Sometimes being lost is not knowing how to get from where we are to where we wanna be, where we need to be.“ right as Eddie knocks on the door, which basically states that Eddie and Chris might be where Buck wants to be but also how Eddie apparently knows how to get Buck there. Because he knows him so well. (He literally calls Eddie his life raft in the voiceover!)

- „Buck, there is nobody in this world I trust with my son more than you”: Now the Trust theme in regards to the loft scene is interesting in how it compares Buck to two people in Eddie’s eyes / life: Shannon and himself. Shannon, as I already said, we have with 2.07 and 2.10, both of which talked about how she left Chris (and Eddie) and how Eddie no longer trusts her because of this and refuses to let her back into Chris’s life. Which is different to how he always lets Buck back into Chris’s life, even after the lawsuit with virtually no hesitation once they made up as far as we can see. Meaning he trusts Buck more than he trusts Shannon. Who is, you know, his wife?

As for Eddie himself, I’m gonna flashforward a bit to 3.08 and the conversation between Eddie and Bobby. Because in 3.03 Eddie talks about messing up with Chris, yet how he never stops trying and how he knows Buck is the same way - which is interesting considering 3.08 has Eddie basically say that he has not forgiven himself for all those mistakes. Yet he forgives Buck both for the Tsunami and abandoning them during the lawsuit.

And now I wanna say something very controversial and hurtful but also connected to how I read Buddie and Trust which is that in my opinion? Eddie includes himself here. Eddie tells Buck here he trusts him more or at the very least just as much as he trusts himself with his son. Which is pretty big, considering he barely trusted his wife, the mother of said son, who he has known for at the very least about 11 years during Season 2? Someone he himself said he loves? Someone he at one point planned his future with? (Meaning he most definitely plans his future with Buck in it now…)

3.04 „discount!Buck in the house“

- Two things are in this episode, both of which are very much not about Trust in the literal sense but how much time Buddie spends together outside of work:

“Can’t fight city hall.“ Eddie being the only one on board with the fire drill Buck’s leading because he is a boy scout who follows all the rules but also because Buck probably talked to him about his job as fire marshal beforehand and so Eddie knows how important what is happening here is to Buck.

„You don’t know math.“: now, you can think this is another dig at Buck’s intelligence but you also have to acknowledge that at one point Eddie might have either heard someone reference Buck’s math knowledge in front of Eddie or Eddie has seen Buck try doing math and has remembered that well enough to immediately be able to pull out that dig. (Which brings us to a parallel I will talk about later!)

- “Uh, who - who’s that?“: I also firmly believe that Buck would have not been as willing to go along with the lawsuit, despite Bobby’s betrayal, had Eddie not immediately rushed off toward Lena at the firehouse, making Buck think Eddie (his partner) has replaced him. Does no longer need him to have his back.

3.05: „What if we fight like a married couple in a grocery store downtown LA, bro?“

Ah, yes, that episode! Filled with Buddie signs!

- “And if Cap says he’s not ready, he’s not ready.“: What I find interesting in terms of Buddie and Trust is the fact that Eddie apparently trusts Bobby’s judgement more than he trusts Buck’s. Which I find OOC. Or not because Eddie is a soldier and Eddie grew up fairly authoritarian it seems his first instinct will be to follow the chain of command / do as the person in charge tells him to.

- Now everything else that happens after including and specifically the street fighting storyline? That was a direct result of the lawsuit and the deposition in which Buck betrayed Eddie’s trust by revealing the info about Shannon. Which Buck is aware of because up until this point we see him still looking up, yet after this he drops his eyes and doesn’t really look at anyone again during the deposition.

- “And I’m not allowed to talk to Buck.“: Yet. YET despite this massive betrayal in Eddie’s eyes what stops him from calling Buck later is the fact that he wasn’t allowed to do so! Nothing else. Also the phrasing is very interesting as it gives us three entities Eddie considered to call: his abuela, Buck and the 118, meaning Hen, Chim and Bobby - the people he will call his family about 6 episodes later - are an uniformed mass but Buck is his own person - because up to this point Buck always had Eddie’s back. And we all know he still would have had! (Sidenote: this line is what made me an actual shipper and why ya’ll can read posts like this, so maybe say thank you to Lyndsey Beaulieu? Or fuck you, depending on your opinion of me ;P)

- „And now I can’t even talk to you.“: This whole scene gives huge character exposition and I’ve talked a shit ton about the fight in the grocery store before as have a lot of other people, but basically what it boils down to is that Eddie is mad at Buck because he revealed things about them to his lawyer but mostly because Eddie thought they had each others back and trusted each other and apparently Buck doesn’t trust and care about him the same way Eddie does for him because he didn’t even consult Eddie about the lawsuit? And Eddie misses Buck a lot. And Chris misses Buck a lot. And Eddie is already mad because Shannon wanted a divorce despite how hard he tried and then she died, meaning she left him again and now Buck left him as well and why is Eddie never enough for anyone?

And of course, as always, Eddie is mad at himself the most because he wasn’t enough for Shannon and he wasn’t enough for Buck and he’s probably not enough for Chris who is struggling so much and Eddie just feels angry and lost all the time!

I think this is the moment Buck finally understands how much he means to Eddie truly. How Eddie meant every word in 3.03. How for once someone actually trusted him, depended on him - and he let them down. Which was never his intention because Buck never understood that he could (which is not the topic of this post though).

- “Why can’t you see my side of things?“: On Buck’s side, while he isn’t nearly as mad as Eddie, he does raise the question of why Eddie didn’t have his back - which is a very fair question but Eddie is still too mad at Buck here to hear it.

- What is also very interesting about this scene is that no one, not even Bobby who was actually sued by Buck, is as mad at him as Eddie is and no one dares steps between them. Probably because everyone recognises they are closest with each other, so the conversation hits a bit different and also is about a lot more than the „stupid lawsuit“. Yeah.

(Real talk I have been very mad at friends before and I am known to make scenes but damn, this scene does not read platonic at all, it reads ‘married couple fights in grocery store in LA - what happens next will surprise you. News at 11.’)

- In other news, Eddie didn’t come to the rage room in the end and Buck was very very sad about it.

3.06: „*cries about the framing*“

(Sidenote: I feel Eddie so much in this episode, I too would be too embarrassed to talk to Buck had I just screamed at him in a grocery store in full view of all our coworkers. I too would avoid everyone like the plague and maybe join a fight club just so I would not have to deal with those feelings. I get it, my dude!)

- “Whew, dude, are you okay?“: We’ll talk about it with 3.08 as well, but it is very significant and pointed that Buck immediately knows something is wrong with Eddie when no one else at the station had seemed to be aware of that.

- “I don’t know what you want from me, Buck“: The apology scene is very subtext heavy but what it comes down to in the whole having each other’s back / knowing each other well / Trust - column is the fact that after being mad and avoiding him all day Eddie still sticks around and more importantly actually listens to Buck - which, as shitty as that sounds, but considering how he acted before if Eddie hadn’t wanted to still be Buck's friend he could have said something shitty and left or stayed and not actually listened to what Buck had to say - but he didn’t because as hurt as Eddie had been by Buck’s betrayal he still trust him and he wants to understand, which I do think sets Eddie apart from everyone else because Hen and Chim forgive Buck but they don’t ever try to figure out where he is coming from while Bobby is … being Bobby about all of. Eddie meanwhile, who has the most or maybe the only right to actually be mad about the lawsuit, still trusts Buck enough to know that he had his reasons and actually takes the time to listen to them. Even if he is being sassy.

- And on Buck’s side we do have his need to reconnect with Eddie the whole episode and we have him notice stuff about Eddie no one else did and we also have the really beautiful and mature line of Buck saying: „I just want you to talk to me. Even if it’s just to say you’re still mad.“ Which I love very much and tells us a lot about Buck and communication, because Buck values openness so much.

- “And I just wanted to…“ - „Punch someone?“: Also while it was important for Buck to explain himself to someone - it was especially important for him to explain himself to Eddie, both because he considers Eddie his best friend and also because the grocery store scene showed him how much he means to Eddie which probably floored Buck because as we learned before and also after: Buck is not used to people needing him as much as he needs them.

3.08: „XOXO gossip (fire)fighters“

- “Whoo. Nice truck.“: One thing about 911 is that it’s a very plot and action driven show, meaning sometimes it will lack the time to actually show us certain things, especially when it comes to relationships, so it relies a lot on telling us things about characters and their relationships and as these scenes here show us they do a good job at it. Buddie talking about Eddie buying a new truck is very casual and banter-y / flirty (this is a Buddie post so I call it like I see it) and light and shows us: hey, they are friends again and close again and they know each other very well - while also showing us: Eddie still keeps stuff from Buck but Buck knows something is off.

- “Eddie too.“: Which brings me to my next point and the thing I love most about this episode aside from Heidi which is Buck running around and going: ‚something is wrong with Eddie‘ while everyone else is like: ‚Eddie? Are you sure? I haven’t noticed anything‘

Which leaves two ways to read this:

Eddie and the rest of the 118 aren’t as close as it seems and they do not care about Eddie that much - which considering all the deep talk between Eddie and Chimney in 3b especially and the fact that he calls them his family would be fucked up and also doesn’t seem like the vibe they are going for OR

BUDDIE! I mean, look at what has been going on with the street fighting storyline, essentially the writers went: okay, so Eddie can't talk to Buck so he goes completely off the rails but no one will know because Eddie hides it so well - EXCEPT Buck will realise sth is wrong the second he looks at Eddie and once the lawsuit is done he will spend two episodes running after Eddie and trying to figure out what is going on

3.09: „#tw: mild adult themes & implied sexual content / #pwp - porn without porn“

- “He’s kind of obsessed with natural disasters.“: Honest question: Is Buck really obsessed with natural disasters or does Eddie have earthquake related trauma and Buck has been googling stuff and telling him facts to calm Eddie down every time the earth vibrates a little because a train or something passes them by?

In any case it’s a very cute scene with Eddie once more revealing how well he knows Buck and the writers confirming to us that yes, these boys spent a lot of time with each other and talking to each other - without needing to show the scenes

- “I could still take you“: AFTER ALL they needed the runtime to do this other little scene this fandom has not talked about at all ever mainly because it is so very straight basically people stopped shipping after.

I’m just kidding, obviously the whole scene was very queer both in subtext but especially in text, I mean, what even was that line about still taking him, Buck? There is a child not even 15 feet away, where is your sense for decency and decorum? DO YOU WANT TO TRAUMATISE HIM EVEN MORE???

A few notes on this scene:

- It’s been pointed out to me that Maddie complains about how everything around there gets shared with the 118 and how Buck … turns around and shares everything about his sister with Eddie, which I love because it seems so normal and comfortable between them like they do that all the time, which is way cute and domestic!

Added to that considering the conversation Eddie had the week before with Bobby about Shannon and the throwaway reference about thinking his marriage having been complicated, I wonder: Did Eddie talk to everyone about the street fighting and Shannon after his talk with Bobby in 3.08? Did he just talk to Buck about it? Did Buck know about Shannon wanting a divorce all along? (Yeah, you know were I am leaning, right?)

- “Especially if you aren’t around to see that they need saving“: As for the apology in and off itself, I’m not gonna talk about the character implications again cause been there done that, send an ask if you wanna know more, but what it comes down to is: Buck acknowledging that he should have been there for Eddie and he didn’t consider the Eddie of it all when he sued Bobby, which is interesting because OFFICIALLY Eddie really is just his best friend and coworker at this point so did he really have to consider his feelings all that much?

Also Buck is saying - and Eddie is not contradicting this - that Eddie street fighting would not have happened if Buck had been around, which, to quote a good friend of mine: Uff!

I think we can admit that while Eddie was mad at Buck, his anger was not primarily about Buck but it was amplified by Buck abandoning him. We can admit that Buck was what ultimately caused Eddie to lose his control and considering everything that Eddie went through in the past year with Shannon and considering everything Buck went through in the past two years: this is as close to unconditional love as these two can manage at the time and that is very beautiful and does support Buddie 100%. They are each other’s anchor and person the one they turn to in a crisis.

Or well, Buck is for Eddie. Buck does have more people like that in his life with his sister there and I do think before the lawsuit he wasn’t fully aware that he could depend on Eddie so fully because Buck always doubts how committed other people are to him because abandonment issues.

3.11: „Bist du single? Nein, eher Album!“

- „This is Eddie’s house. I’m not really a guest.“: Incredibly strong indicator / implications toward how much time these two boys spent with each other, considering how comfortable both of them are in each other’s space (and I don’t mean physical but material space). Eddie has a key to Buck’s apartment and just let’s himself in willy-nilly, while Buck is around in Eddie’s place often enough to not think of himself as a guest there. (And while that might be normal best friend behaviour to some of us, Maddie’s words imply that it is not for her / the Buckleys.)

3.14: „Frank says ‚Thank you, this paid for my new house!‘“ / 3.15: „MY therapist also says ‚Thank you!‘“

I’m gonna group these two together, since 3.14 in itself doesn’t have any relevance considering Eddie isn’t even in the episode but it does become relevant in regards to 3.15!

- Basically what it all comes down to is the contrast between Buck’s reaction to Maddie being in danger and his reaction to Eddie nearly dying!

Now I already said while talking about 2.14 part of it was that Buck was aware he was in no position to help Maddie and might actually make stuff worse if he intervenes while with Eddie he was HIS ACTUAL LIFELINE! He was actually responsible for getting Eddie out of the well and home to his family. BUT (!) it’s still very pointed, especially remembering they apparently changed the order of episodes around? Meaning we are really hit with the contrast and we have to consider the implications of it all!

- Also just Buck’s reaction in general, even with Chimney and Maddie in Season 2 he wasn’t this frantic, he wasn’t freaking out like that! This really seems like all those scene’s shows like that usually do to confirm one person is in love with the other by having them completely loose it at the prospect of the other dying.

And damn, does 911 delivers here, not just with Buck literally trying to dig down to Eddie with his bare hands but also with his conviction for the rest of the episode before going sort of catatonic near the end. Basically Buck was going through the 5 stages of grief over Eddie during the course of this episode and we just? Let him?

- Of course we should mention Buck has Eddie’s back always, so he doesn’t give up on him and doesn’t entertain the notion of Eddie possibly being dead for even a microsecond because this is Eddie and Buck needs him!

- And to add to the list of heartbreaking lines we have Hen saying: „Why? So we have two cut lines?“ because yes, Buck would choose to stay down there rather than let himself be saved if Eddie was already dead - and if Eddie wasn’t he would force Eddie to trade lines with him so Buck could be the one to die because Buck thinks Eddie’s life is more valuable than his and also he is a selfless idiot who loves Eddie more than himself - which frankly is a mutual thing if we look at 3.03

Option #3 btw would be that Hen knows Eddie has a legitimate reason to cut his line and he would explain that to Buck and - considering who they are - Buck would immediately agree and cut his line as well.

Anyways, no matter which option the writers were thinking off this line is heartbreaking and the implication interesting!

To sum it all up, the episode basically said: Buck would die for Eddie and he loves him more than anything else

- The Eddie implications of this episode are mostly Subtext, so we’ll get to them later in case you thought I forgot!

3.16: „The rope was a metaphor after all“

Tbh I do not think that this episode was really about how no person can be happy / live without regrets / not be lonely unless they are in a relationship with someone or they would not have put that much focus on the relationship between Maddie and Buck and the fact that his abandonment issues stem from her leaving.

- “He’s not gonna do it alone“: As for Buddie, the episode goes back to them being partners and in sync with the roof thing and yay, it has a different ending then the reversed situation the episode before but also it features a metaphor we will talk about later

- “Hey, you’re more than welcome to come and celebrate with a bunch of 9 year olds.“: Just like we will talk later about Eddie inviting Buck to the sleepover! Because while I don’t think the invite was all that serious and I don’t think even considering everyone else, Buck would have taken him up on it because celebrating with a bunch of 9 year olds around isn’t what Buck had in mind, it’s very interesting that the first person taken out of the equation is the guy Buck is closest to and probably spends the most time with.

- And now let’s talk about the playing pool scene because it once again shows that 1) Buck and Eddie are very alike, 2) they know each other very well and 3) they care about each other the most!

Because for 1) I do wanna point everyone to the fact that Eddie doesn’t have anyone outside his family and the 911 either or they would have mentioned him staying in contact with his army buddies or something.

2) Eddie is the only one who actually listens to what Buck says and gets what Buck is really asking, while Bobby, Hen and Chim are all too focused on their own experiences to get that the reason Buck tries so hard to help Red is because he thinks he is Red (I mean they do get it, but they don’t really realise how serious this is for Buck - yet)

3) There is also a lot of focus on Eddie in this scene which we will talk about later as well but it picks up the whole ambiguous „us“ from the grocery store which technically refers to the whole firefam but the way it’s said still implies that it is about the two of them especially.

To anticipate a bit: every time the word „Us“ is used in this scene Buddie only looks at each other. When Buck says „I mean that would never happen … to us.“ he looks at everyone else but turns to look at Eddie as he very pointedly says „to us“ and keeps his focus there for a moment. Eddie meanwhile technically turns to the pool table while he says the word „us“ but he only focuses on Buck before this and doesn’t look at anyone else because to him: Buck is the important aspect here. And no one else!

Not to mention the intense look Buck gives Eddie (and only Eddie) when he says „Better not.“. Like damn, in 3 Seasons Buck has never sounded this threatening before!

Basically the way this scene is acted combined with the words that were written it sort of reads like them going: We’re all family here but you and me will most definitely never leave each other!

I mean there is a reason why Buddie used the ambiguous „us“ while everyone else talked about the firefam being friends or being family.

(And yes, that might be a bit of a reach but this is a Buddie guide after all, so we are going with the buddie-est interpretation!)

3.17: „‚Don’t say her name‘-challenge“

- “Uh no, someone else.“: More of a subtext scene but it does seem pointed that Buck refuses to admit that he was thinking about Abby here, considering Bobby most definitely knew that Buck was talking about Abby because he was there for the hot-air balloon date, so even if he did not remember right away he knew the second Buck said he didn’t know from Maddie and since Hen and Chimney weren’t there in the truck (and also, they probably would have known who Buck was talking about as well) the only one Buck was hiding from was Eddie.

Which makes sense, even if you only look at them as best friends, because Eddie only saw the aftermath and what we canonically know that he heard about Abby were things like Buck’s speech in 2.08, so … even as just Buck’s friend he must really dislike her

(Also there is that whole parallel one can draw between Abby and Shannon which I talked about here)

- „Buck invites Eddie“: So I’ve been going back and forth on what to write here for a few hours now and what it comes down to is this: despite being 6500 words deep into a meta on Buddie and knowing full well the writers so far have no intention of actively doing Buddie, I would not accuse 911 of queerbaiting. HOWEVER, if the show ends and Buddie doesn’t happen I will consider this scene queerbaiting because there would have been ways to write this that did not leave the implications it did because the way it has been written the text is:

„If I bring my romantic life-partner to dinner with my best friend he will bring his romantic life-partner who will invite her brother who will invite his best friend and then we have to invite this other couple we are all close with.“ and well, one of them is not like the others, right?

(Well, technically two but Maddie and Buck are most definitely siblings despite that scene in 2.01)

Because essentially what that scene did here was say: If I bring my wife the evening turns into this couples night with all our friends - except Buck and Eddie aren’t a couple.

And sure, just like all great queerbaits there is a reasonable explanation as well as a completely platonic way to read this because of course Buck would not wanna be all alone with two couple so he would bring his best friend and the we’d have to invite the other couple we know as well so they don’t feel left out.

EXCEPT - and this is why it feel pointed and queerbait-ey: We have already seen the 118 hang out without Athena and Bobby at Chimney’s birthday and it was never mentioned to us whether they were invited and didn’t come - or Chimney didn’t invite them. Both explanations sort of make Hen’s point moot because it does proof that they can hang out without their boss slash friend and his wife slash her best friend without it being a big deal meaning especially if this was a make-up dinner for Chimney’s birthday they wouldn’t have needed to be there.

There is also the fact that supposably Alfred is still in town? You know, Chimney’s brother? So if they wanted to avoid the Buddie implication they could have also thrown in how Chim might bring his brother like:

„I invite you, so he invites Maddie, Maddie invites Buck, Buck invites Eddie, Chim might invite Alfred,  and now we gotta invite Athena and Bobby“ - see how that has a completely different feel? Now there are three single guys and two of which are siblings of someone else in the group while the third is friends with the rest of the group, making this sound less like couples night out and more like a group of friends hanging out.

But they didn’t do it like that so now it feels like they are pointedly equating Buddie with the canon couples of the show which is quite queerbait-ey.

3.18: „TrainCRASH? More like train WRECK? *cries*“

Okay, so this episode is a little hard to do because there is so much going on and a lot of it is very hard to categorise! As for the topic of Trust and having each other’s back:

- I do think that a lot of Eddie here come down to having Buck’s back - even when Buck might not think that’s what Eddie’s doing like in the train car, but he probably realised later which is why we see Buck talk about it with Bobby but not with Eddie because they are at this point where you no longer need to have clarifying talks (about stuff like that, once romantic!Buddie hits they’ll have to do all the talking).

And that’s basically it when it comes to Trust because most of what is happening in the episode when it comes to Buddie is Subtext!

Coparenting

I think this theme needs less of an explanation - though I do wanna point out that while I think Buck has fatherly feelings for Chris and Chris loves Buck a lot, Buck is not actually his parent / father. He is slowly getting there and if or when Buddie happens he might become Chris’s other parent but right now he is not. So this theme is about Buck being a honorary member of the Diaz family in general and Eddie’s treatment of him most of all.

Because the way I see Eddie him dating anyone would always be tied to his son. Eddie has been shown to be someone who would do anything for family and his son in particular, so the fact that Buck is tied into this family is important. It also shows how much they are already a family without actually dating and proofs they spent more time with each other than we see and more than with anyone else.

I should also say that there is a very heavy overlap between this and the category of Subtext so some things will be repeated but all of them deserve to be repeated so there is that.

2.02 / 2.03: „Why Edmundo Diaz hates earthquakes part 1 and part 2 (of 2)“

- Like I already said when I discussed Trust Buck is the only one asking who Eddie is trying to reach, he is the only one trying to reassure Eddie and he does so even though Eddie is being sarcastic and pretending he doesn’t need to be comforted - also a staple in their relationship

And I think this is also were their dynamic of Buck being Eddie’s go to person when it came to Chris came from. Buck told Eddie he liked kids and then he proceeded to actually show Eddie he means it and he cares and considering Eddie says the mother isn’t in the picture and Chris has no one else (which as we learn throughout the show is not 100% true because technically Eddie's parents are there, even if they have no idea how to properly raise Chris, but in LA Eddie doesn’t really have anyone (yet) he feels comfortable burdening with his fears about Chris), so that must mean one hell of a lot.

- “Hey. Service.“: There is also the moment at the end of 2.03 when Buck immediately tells Eddie: hey, service is back! and then he drives Eddie to pick up Chris which is a scene that has so much subtext so we’ll talk about it later! It does however give us our first‚ Diazs plus Buck‘-family moment because while we see everyone reuniting with their loved ones, we see Buck with Eddie and Chris and yeah.

2.04: „Hearteyes, motherforker“

- One of my favourite things about Buddie is how they manage to be exactly what the other person needs - or in case of this episode figure out exactly what the other person needs and giving it to them. It’s happening here and again in 3.01 and 3.03 and some other smaller moments as well (see 2.01 honestly).

It’s also interesting that Buck is the one to drive Eddie again because we saw he has a car! So why is that? Maybe because he knows the way better?

As for the coparenting happening here, aside from Buck introducing Eddie to Carla because he knows she is what Eddie needs, we also have Buck clearing Chris coming to the station with Bobby which is something Eddie apparently hadn’t considered but Buck had and instead of telling Eddie he needs to do that - he does it for him! Because that’s who Buck is but also because Buck realised in this episode how much Eddie really needs someone to have his back and just do stuff for him.

2.07: „*Tommy Wiseau voice* Hi Shannon“

- And in terms of having each other’s back this episode really shows the significance of this phrase with Shannon pointing out, like I said before, that from her point of view Eddie didn’t have her back. She needed him to be her husband and her coparent and he wasn’t.

Now we can argue whether that is true or not but it’s still an important parallel and puts Eddie turning toward Buck for advice into a new light.

Because as Shannon points out Eddie was never good at letting other people make decisions for him or with him before yet we continuously see him turning toward Buck for exactly that: sharing the load with him. And to put that even more into perspective: Buck is the youngest from their friend group, he is the one considered immature and he is the one without kids or younger siblings, yet he is the one Eddie choose for helping.

2.10: „It’s all about ‚figured it was none of my business‘“

- The interesting thing here is that Buck as Eddie’s friend really doesn’t have any right to know about what was happening between Shannon and Eddie if Eddie didn’t want him to, but Buck as Eddie’s family does (a little).

But either way this episode gives us another instance of Eddie confiding in Buck about his family problems - problems he again is the one most inexperienced with. In other words Eddie talking to Buck about it was really about Eddie wanting Buck’s opinion specifically.

There is also the fact that Buck came to see Santa with Eddie in the first place which is most definitely a family affair as far as I know US customs? (We don’t do this in Germany / Bavaria, okay? We have the Child of Christ and around the 6th we gather in the town square and shoot at it.)

It’s even brought up in text with the Elf telling Buck they make a beautiful family - and Buck not disagreeing because honestly it’s just easier and he probably knows how they looked. But yeah. That!

- Also not to repeat myself but the topic of trust is important here! Eddie not trusting Shannon in 2.07 / 2.10 with Chris vs. trusting Buck in 3.03 / 3.09 / 3.10 is important!

Yes, sure Shannon is his actual mother so Chris has stronger feelings for her and the potential to get hurt is way bigger. Yes, Buck was only gone from their life for a few weeks while Shannon was gone for about 2 years. Yes, Buck apologised twice while Shannon just played the victim card tbh (even though she did have a point with some of the stuff she said). But still:

Eddie is very hesitant to let Shannon back into his son’s life (and really his as well) while he does have no such qualms about Buck once Buck apologises to him in 3.06. In fact their relationship returns to normal with Eddie asking Buck for help with Chris numerous times while say 2.15 makes it clear Eddie still keeps Shannon at arms’ length and out of a lot of aspects of raising Chris.

Of course, giving advice to Eddie is not the same level of involved as actually parenting the child and part of it is probably growth on Eddie’s side when it comes to Season 3 but right here: it’s a stark contrast and it deserves a mention!

2.17: „*fridges female character for man pain* Haha, we’re so random!“

- „Ice cream? Oh, I do not envy you putting him to sleep tonight!“: There is the scene here where Eddie facetimes with Shannon and she is out and about with Chris and Abuela and they are getting ice cream and Eddie is all like: damn you’ll regret that later - which is the same thing he says about Buck in 3.02

3.01: „How you know he no sleep naked?“

- Buck gets a card from Chris which is a child thing to do but also should be mentioned because Buck does not get a card from Danny or Harry. And considering how much Buck likes children and how good he is with them we do have to mention that we only see Buck interact with Danny once and never with Harry while it’s been implied several times before the tsunami already that Buck does spend a lot of time with Chris. (Of course, in part this is due to how much closer Buck is with Eddie than Hen and especially Athena but still)

After all the season ends with Chris giving a card to his literal father, tying these two scenes together. And pointing out once again how important Buck is for Chris and the Diaz family.

- Also as I mentioned during Trust there is that parallel / contrast between how Maddie and how Eddie see Buck with Maddie sort of treating him like a child who needs to be dealt with while Eddie is basically like: let’s give him something to do so he feels less useless! (Guess who had the right idea! Just guess! And you have one try!)

- „Are we the only one’s without kids?“: There is also the cut from Madney talking about being the only one’s without kids and then remembering Buck to Buck getting woken up by Eddie so he can babysit Chris which I won’t say confirms Buck being a father to Chris but does accentuate everything he does for Chris after and gives the vibe that Buck does indeed have some fatherly feelings for Chris. It does at least place the idea of the Diazs WITH Buck being a family firmly into our heads.

3.02 „Eddie hates earthquakes - the remix“

- „How’s operation Buck up Buck going?“: Buck sending Eddie updates and pictures of Chris and himself hanging out is just really cute

- Also Eddie isn’t worried about his son at all!

- And we do have that tweet from Oliver Stark about jumping into the receding water at the end of 3.02 being basically suicide but Buck still doing it because the director told him, he’d do it for his own kids.

3.03 „Do it for the trauma - Buck-edition“

- I talked about it before with Trust but basically Eddie, who has parents who are still alive and physically able and love his son very much, even if they have different ideas of how to raise his son, and a sister with at least one child not that much older than Chris and a grandma and an aunt and probably some more family in LA AND Carla who he literally pays to take care of his son, literally tells his best friend he is the one he trusts the most with said son. That is fucking meaningful!

3.05: „What if we fight like a married couple in a grocery store downtown LA, bro?“

- „You know how much Chris misses you?“: The fact that Eddie brings Chris up at all and to hurt Buck specifically is - in part about Eddie deflecting from himself but also about Christopher actually missing Buck, which says a lot about the relationship Chris and Buck have and how much time they spent together if that is something Eddie would bring up here.

3.09: „#tw: mild adult themes & implied sexual content / #pwp - porn without porn“

- „I’d rather be at home with my kid, enjoying the one good thing I got going on.“: Eddie says these words during therapy and where do him and his son spent the following evening or at least an evening that same week? With Buck at his loft. Because even though Buck wasn’t mentioned here as part of the family time Eddie would much rather have, apparently he is part of it.

3.10: „Parenttrapping for Beginners“

- „Well, I thought it would be nice to bring the boys together for a playdate.“ - „All three of `em.“: this speaks for itself, Buck being invited in the first place was … an interesting choice? A dig at Buck’s mental age? Exposition? What exactly, Tim? Like what was the vibe in the writers room here?

- „Hey, Buck? (…) Can I spent Christmas with you?”: The fact that Chris would rather spent Christmas with Buck than with his grandma and the rest of their family is interesting as well and again points toward Buck being an integral part of the Diaz family.

- The way Eddie looks at Buck here and the little head shake implied to me that Buck and Eddie had the same conversation Eddie and Hen have right then already.

3.11: „Bist du single? Nein, eher Album!“

- “Well, that’s what the 118 is. The family we chose.“: Again maybe more subtext than text but when Eddie talks about the 118 being his family the camera pans to *drumroll* Chris, his actual blood family, Albert, Chim’s actual blood family - and Buck, who is basically Chim’s little brother and Eddie’s, well, best friend? Coparent? Partner in work and life? SOULMATE?

Yes, it’s a little subtext, but it’s interesting that this scene shows only one character neither of them are related to and it’s Buck, emphasising once more that these two and especially Eddie (because he’s the one talking here) think of Buck as their family.

3.12: „There’s a horse loose in a hos… school“

- “(…) we should try it together”: Again with the emphatic inclusion of Buck in family scenes! (But this time Carla gets to be there as well - though only to record them?)

This episode introduces Ana Flores as a potential love interest for Eddie and then spends the whole episode contrasting and paralleling her with Buck, as one does …

In this episode as well Eddie gets advice about Chris from several people and it’s interesting that the one person whose advice he follows without disagreeing or trying something else first is once again Buck. 

The episode also maybe implies that Buck was the one to built or buy or find out about the skateboard.

But really what matters here is Eddie reaffirming that there is no one he trusts more with his son (because he refused to take Carla’s advice right away but he did listen and think about what Buck had to say right away - despite his joking) and Buck being included in the family scene.

3.15: „MY therapist also says ‚Thank you!‘“

- „I’m always gonna fight to come home to my family.“: I’m not gonna comment on the lack of Shannon in the montage because I do believe part of it was that they didn’t really have scenes that fit and would have had to film them specifically which would then have to fit into the timeline / storyline before and also mostly it was about Shannon already being dead meaning she is no longer part of the family Eddie can come home to, so it makes a hell of a lot of sense for her not to be included, guys!

That being said I do believe Buck being in it quite a lot means something about how much of a part in Eddie’s family he is! Which is a big part and something I love about them a lot!

- Also Buck was so very happy Chris came to visit and then immediately walked over, which doesn’t really have any relevance except I thought it was cute and this is my guide.

3.16: „The rope was a metaphor after all“

- Obviously it was meant jokingly, but Eddie would have loved if Buck came and not just because being alone with a bunch of 9 year olds is no one’s idea of a fun evening and Eddie could probably use the help (still hoping Carla was there with him and still surprised Eddie was in such a good mood during the pool scene after), but because he likes to spend time with Buck and he did wanna celebrate with him - but he was also very aware that spending the evening with 9 year olds was not what Buck envisioned so he said it jokingly.

3.18: „Traincrash? More like train WRECK? *cries*“

- “Whoa! Whoa! Two weeks from home? Isn’t Chris kinda young for that?“: I don’t think I need to say more about that scene really, I think everyone who saw it understood that it confirmed the 118 but especially Buck being fairly involved in Christopher’s life and how that confirms: Buck = part of the Diaz family.

- Also all the interactions between Buck and Chris at the party both with and without Eddie around I mean, yeah, again, meaningful!

- In conclusion: Eddie, Chris and Buck are family and dems the facts!

Connection and love life

Now, this is where we are slowly going subtext and also really interpretation heavy!

The title might be a bit missleading but I didn’t really know how else to sum all aspects up. Basically this theme is about their love live but also about the parallels between their storylines - especially when it comes to their love life!

Also this theme isn’t organised by episode but by subtopics because I summed up so many different aspects here.

Parallels in their storylines:

- 3.15 / 3.16 and the rope metaphor as a metaphor for their dating life:

Technically the rope is a metaphor for their lives and them letting go of things in general but especially about their dating life because for Eddie in my opinion this is when he really fully comes to terms with Shannon’s death while Buck finally admits to his abandonment issues, in part caused by Abby leaving.

(Side note: the fact that Eddie choose to cut his line just like he choose to actually do therapy to deal with his issues for Christopher’s sake while Buck’s burns away and he is literally forced to deal with his issues through being confronted with Red and running into Abby at the train crash is … something.)

Their dating life is being paralleled:

This really isn’t technically something that explains why you should ship them but I do think it’s interesting that from the get go their love lives have been happening in parallels / contrasts to each other? As if they were connected? Magnets?

So yeah, that and also it goes like this:

- 2.01: Eddie references Buck being single

- 2.02 / 2.03: Eddie first mentions Shannon but indicates a break-up / Buck meets Ali and seems to bond with her

- 2.04: both refuse to hook up with any of the girls at the bar and don’t want to date because they consider themselves taken (I know Eddie says it’s about Chris but Buck called bullshit here and text told us to trust Buck on what he says about Eddie)

- 2.06: Buck flirts with Taylor and Eddie acts a bit jealous

- 2.07: While Buck finally comes to term with his break up with Abby in her absence, Shannon returns and we learn that Eddie has sort of been holding out hope so far (they kiss in the end) (Also Eddie and Shannon and Buck and Taylor both happen in parking lots which probably only means they ran out of location money but still!)

- 2.08: Buck hooks up with Taylor, then meets with Ali and begins dating her

- 2.10: it’s revealed that Eddie has been sleeping with Shannon and Buck is miffed

- 2.11 - 2.16: we get a few mentions of Ali and some scenes between Eddie and Shannon reminding us both these relationships are happening and they are growing closer

- 2.17: Shannon thinks she is pregnant, Eddie wonders about their relationship, Shannon wants a divorce but dies before they can go through with it

- 2.18: Buck gets a new apartment because of Ali, their relationship seems ready to become more serious, then Buck gets hurt and Ali is traumatised by this and tells Buck she needs to rethink the relationship

- 3.01: it is revealed that Ali and Buck broke up

- 3a: both of them work through the trauma of the past few months, no references to either of them dating are made, romantic and / or domestic scenes happen between them instead, the ambiguous „us“ happens

- 3.11: they are asked about their relationship-status to remind us about them being single (AND THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER? Wow.)

- 3.12: It’s pointed out again that Buck is single but he says he prefers it that way while Eddie meets Ana and shows some interest in her, then during a call Buck indicates that he might not be as happy being single as he told Madney and Josh while also seeming a bit happy Eddie won’t be dating Ana (probably)

- 3.15: Eddie finally fully comes to terms with his past, including his relationship with Shannon and her dying

- 3.16: Buck reveals he might still be hung up on what happened with Abby and he realises he needs to move on, the ambiguous „Us“ is brought back

- 3.18: Buck runs into Abby and actually moves on

- Side note: considering 2.08 and 2.10 and 3.09 and some remarks made throughout the show, Buck and Eddie are somewhat aware of the relationship struggles the other had which isn’t really relevant but also sort of is

Parallels with canon couples

This is TV and TV and especially shipping lives through tropes and parallels inside the story to subtext tell you something you need to know without actually having to say the words, but just to plant the idea in the viewers head.

For example, and please I am just spitballing here, you are writing a show about Lifeguards. And there are these two characters who are named … Paddie and Tucker. They have amazing chemistry and they are best friends and love each other a lot. Now, you, as the showrunner, are considering making them a romantic item but you need to do it slow cause while you do have queer characters and a queer following this show is fairly mainstream and also the characters have presented as straight in text so far. So you need to do crumbs, right?

Okay, so how do you best do that? Well, Tucker is known as this really caring guy and very open with his feelings and he freaks out when someone he loves is in danger - so you put Paddie in danger, right? Proofs he loves him, right?

But then you want it to have some deeper queer implications, right, in case you do decide on making them romantic? So how do you best do that? Well, lucky for you, Tucker has a sister. And you were planning on putting her in danger as well this season anyways, so you just have Tucker react a bit more subdued here, right?

But then you really want it to hit people, like you need people who are more casual and mainstream and might not have noticed the romantic undertones Tuddie has had to notice that, right? So you put these two episodes back to back.

Except „Paddie Begins“ is set to air first and well, Tucker IS known to lose his shit about people he cares about being in danger, so they might not actually notice anything more. Or they will just consider Tucker not reacting as hard about his sister, Sadie, being in danger bad writing. And you can’t have that!

So how do you fix that? Well, you just change the episode order! Now the episode with Sadie in danger airs first and people will spent a week complaining about how out of character Tucker was and it will be still on their minds when „Paddie Begins“ happens and Tucker goes feral and it will hit EVERYONE! Like damn, apparently Tucker cares more about Paddie than Sadie? Why? What makes Paddie so much more important?

Anyways, this is how you test out an idea in TV and why tropes and parallels are important…

Moving on:

- 2.14: „‚It’s a miracle… bro #nohomo’“: Now I have already written a bit about Buck’s reaction to Eddie potentially dying to safe the kid and while it is fairly tame for Buck it’s still something you usually see a guy do for a love interest (Any of ya’ll watch „Chicago Fire“? Because I watched like the first two Seasons and the main „Will they / won’t they“ - couple had a scene like that about once every three episodes. Cause it’s a trope!)

- 3.02 „Eddie hates earthquakes - the remix“: This is a teeny tiny bit of a stretch and there wasn’t even any nice cuts to anyone in the firefam to indicate they were referenced (which I found odd, considering this would have also fit for Bobby) but the guy who got impaled with his son in law said: „She‘s the love of my life but he‘s her‘s.“ which considering this episode has Buck doing everything to protect Christopher means a lot and I think about it once a day, okay?

- 3.14 vs 3.15 vs. 3.16 vs. 3.17 vs. 3.18 - Losing the love of your life and how to deal with that:

This may be the biggest parallel of all, and maybe I could have included 2.14 as well but I didn’t because it’s a whole season removed. It also seems meaningful that this episodes happen one after the other, making us naturally compare the scenes and see / look for patterns.

But to explain real quick:

In 3.14 Maddie is in danger and Chimney, who is her boyfriend and told her he loves her just one episode earlier, freaks out completely

In 3.15 Eddie might die / is considered dead by several of his friends already and Buck utterly looses it! We are talking frantic screaming and trying to dig Eddie out by hand and running around trying to figure out ways to save Eddie only to turn full on catatonic when none of that works. I mean, his mood turns faster than mine when I am hangry while on my period and that is saying sth!

3.16 could be considered a bit of a stretch but we do see Red lash out a lot when he realises that Cindy, the woman he considered the love of his life and someone he pined after for quite a while doesn’t exist like that anymore.

In 3.17 Athena is put in great danger and Bobby is forced / able to listen to it and while I am not sure if the blank look on Bobby’s face is bad acting, a deliberate but accidental acting choice OR done consciously in a way that mirrors Oliver’s acting in 3.15 - it’s there and it’s a parallel and we can watch it and compare it and see it.

To bring this whole thing home for us they contracted another outside player in the form of Connie Britton playing Buck’s ex-girlfriend Abby, who similarly to Red and Buck, turns frantic upon possibly loosing her fiancé and starts panic and lash out a little, which is fair and also part of a motherforking pattern, ya’ll!

- Another fairly obvious parallel between 3.14 and 3.15 is Buck telling Sue - as the watch Maddie and Chimney hug - that Maddie already has everything she needs when Sue asks him why he didn’t immediately rush toward his sister. Which can be compared to 3.15 were he does immediately rush to Eddie’s side and support and hug him!

-  I’ve already written about 700 words on 3.17 and the line „Buck invites Eddie“ so I’ll just point you back toward that part of the guide where I pointed out that Buddie was actively compared to the three main canon pairings here. Which is a lot and also could have been avoided and probably queerbaiting.

- Again, teeny tiny bit of a stretch maybe but like, we’re here to talk about anything in canon pointing toward Buddie and also this is my guide and I do what I want but in 3.18 we learn that Abby is now engaged to a single father and considering she was only gone for about two years (Season 2 takes place over the course of one year and in 3.13 we learn that Madney has been dating for just under 11 months so unless there was a time jump somewhere in the last 5 episodes we weren’t really told about, we clock in at about 2 years and maybe one or two months, tops, at the end of Season 3), they have been together for less than that time, even if we think Abby already knew him when she was still dating Buck. Which timeline wise puts them meeting maybe around the time Buck met Eddie, maybe a bit after, meaning Abby met and began dating and fell in love with and decided to marry a single father in the same timespan Buddie did … whatever it is they are doing! Which is meaningful because for the viewing of the Abby/Buck relationship which I am glad more and more people are realising was very unbalanced and provides an interesting parallel to Buddie because this means Abby and Buck met and developed feelings for a single father around the same time. Idk, I understand that the whole father thing was to make Buck care even more but damn, it’s a parallel so I mention it!

- Michael and Doctor Hale vs Eddie and Ana (3.17/3.18 vs. 3.12ff.)

Now, of course we need to realise that Eddie and Michael are fairly different characters and Michael has way less relationship related baggage than Eddie has which is why he goes after what he wants way faster (also, carpe diem, he just found out he won’t die). Also of course, there is no moral component to address in Michael dating some doctor vs. Eddie dating his son’s teacher, but still:

Michael and Dr. Hale had one scene together and it wasn’t even overly flirty and yet, we knew where it was heading, we felt the chemistry and everyone ended the episode saying: I ship it, more of that - which they did give us, just one episode later. They had some awkward moments, yet the show never left a single doubt in your mind where this is heading.

Now look at Eddie and Ana:

First of all we learned more about Doctor Hale in the two short scenes than we did about Ana in four scenes. That seems deliberate.

Second, while we do realise Eddie thinks Ana is attractive from the get go she repeatedly shuts him down by pointedly saying „Mr. Diaz“.

Third, every scene between Michael and Doctor Hale was romantically coded and we know where this was heading while aside from the initial scene between Ana and Eddie and maybe the second scene there were no hints of romance between the two. In fact in 3.15, an episode that is about Eddie moving forward in his life and letting go of the past she is both mentioned and actually appears, yet there are no hints of romance and romantic interest, not from Eddie and not in form of teasing from Buck and especially Carla, who pointed out Eddie’s interest in her previously. Soooooo…

Parallels with Love Interests

Now, obviously we also cannot talk Buddie without talking about them dating in general and then relating this to each other. In other news: there are parallels between each and every love interest Eddie ever had and Buck and also between Eddie and Abby.

(Side note: I could probably also find parallels between Eddie and Taylor and Eddie and Ali but tbh both of these barely qualify as love interests, especially Ali, who despite actually being in a relationship with Buck we know nothing about (hi, original Ana! You did good and I am sorry people hate you for having boundaries!))

Eddie paralleling Abby

I mean the truth is we don’t even need Eddie paralleling any other girlfriend of Buck cause there are so many between Abby and Eddie!

- Abby and Carla vs. Eddie and Carla:

The biggest one might be parallel that both employ Carla and why. Which is in part because Buck brought Carla to Eddie but goes deeper than that.

There is that conversation between Bobby and Buck about Abby and her mother in 1.09 when Buck wanted to break up with Abby and Bobby basically said: if you wanna date someone you have to love them baggage and all and should be there for them as well - and while Buck did try doing that with Abby, well, Patricia died before he could fully step into the ring and then Abby left, BUT he showed no hesitation after that to step right into Eddie’s life, into his issues, with him. And he even brought in Carla as a baggage carrier, isn’t that nice?

Also the whole reason why they need Carla around in the first place as both of them are taking care of a family member (plus the fact that Christopher is a literal child so even without CP Eddie would need help taking care of him working the hours he has).

Also tía Pepa quite literally calls Eddie a saint and I am pretty sure Abby was called sth similar by Carla and Bobby in Season 1 though I don’t care enough to check mainly because the implication was there all through the first ten episodes about how Abby was such a great person for taking care of her ailing mother.

But really it comes down to the parallels between Bobby telling Buck that a real relationship is about sharing the load and the conversation between Maddie and Buck as well as anything else in 2.04 where Buck is so desperate to be there for Eddie and help him.

- There is also a definite parallel to be drawn between the conversation Abby and Buck had in the Jeep while looking for her mom about how Abby hasn’t had sex in a year and Buck asking Eddie about dating in 2.04. It’s a little subtextual, but between the expression on his face and the topic and the teasing and the walking shoulder to shoulder it does feel alike to me so I mentioned it.

- street fighting vs. the apology: losing yourself

Now this one I love a lot because while it does happen half a season apart and isn’t explicitly expressed on the show: Eddie’s whole ark in Season 3a is about losing control and by extent losing himself because Buck wasn’t around. Abby meanwhile talks about how she found herself after she left LA and how she would have lost herself again if she returned to Buck (which is absolute bullcrap but not the point).

- There are also some parallels to be drawn between Buck, Eddie, Abby and Shannon (and technically also Maddie) and the whole leaving each other thing, with Eddie leaving Shannon for the army without consulting her about it while Abby left Buck for Ireland and then also the lawsuit where in a way Buck left Eddie like Shannon did, being so caught up in his own feelings he didn’t consider what Eddie (and Christopher) were going through.

But we can also acknowledge how it must have felt to Buck with Lena / Eddie taking Bobby’s side like he was once again replaced / left for someone else, much like Abby left him for Ireland and Maddie left him for Doug.

Buck paralleling Ana, Lena and Shannon

Buck on the other hand side parallels Eddie’s love interest a lot sometimes down to the clothes (and yes, technically Lena isn’t a love interest but Ryan Guzman thought she was and aside from the fact that he’s into women that could beat him up (which for once, not judging you, bro) and considering the parallels with Buck … that means if Buck was a woman, well, ya know?) so let’s talk about that

- Buck and Shannon:

I’ve already talked about that one a lot so I will only mention it here real quick but the whole Eddie not trusting Shannon vs. trusting Buck despite his betrayal again like right away once he apologised (which yes, what Buck did was not as bad and far more justified) and letting him back into Christopher’s life IS a parallel, considering for example how Shannon asks about Chris missing her (though it’s been over two years, at one point children just stop asking as we know Chris did) and Eddie telling Buck Chris misses him in the grocery store scene.

Also Eddie not trusting his wife and Chris’ mother with him fully even after they reconciled and him telling Buck he was the one he trusted most in the world when it came to his son is … something.

There is also a little parallel to be drawn between 2.17 when Shannon goes for ice cream with Christopher and Abuela and Eddie is all like, well, don’t come crying to me when he won’t sleep because sugar high and saying basically the same thing to Hen and Chimney in 3.02 when they ask about „Operation: Buck up Buck“ because Chris ate loads of pancakes.

Also Shannon in 2.07 said she needed Eddie to have her back and Eddie says he always did but Shannon disagrees (which might be a little how Buck felt with the lawsuit) and you know, Buck and him agreed to have each other’s backs just six episodes earlier.

- Buck and Lena:

 Now, with Lena, despite her being most connected to Eddie, the first (and second) time we actually see her is in 3.01/3.02 through Buck, which connects the two from the get go.

Eddie then finds out she was at the pier in 3.02 (before meeting her) just like Buck (though he doesn’t know that) and then meets her in 3.03 and she spends the whole episode running around LA trying to find her Captain while injured, much like Buck is doing in the same episode.

I also mentioned in my meta-series how I think one of the reasons why Eddie likes Buck so much was that Buck wasn’t impressed by his military background like everyone else (or his looks, I mean, it was probably more about his looks tbh) and how when Buck started liking him it was really about Eddie and not whatever he had heard about him - yet Buck was / is still never afraid to call him out bullshit, much like Lena from moment one.

There is also the fact that Eddie goes to her for advice and she literally uses Buck’s locker (and will I ever stop laughing about the tape? Probably not, I think it was hilarious, okay?)?

Then of course we have Buck in 3.04 reacting quite similar to seeing her for the first time as he did with Eddie in 2.01, even saying basically the same thing.

- Buck and Ana

Now, Ana is an interesting case because we see her a total of four times and she is mentioned two more times throughout the show and each and every single moment is connected to Buck somehow and sometimes so very unsubtle to.

In „Fools“ we cut from Buck saying he likes being single to Eddie doing parent-teacher conference and yes, meeting some other teachers first but also Ana, showing us that while Buck is fine with being single - Eddie might not be. And then Eddie introduces himself as Eddie and Ana knows immediately this is short for Edmundo - unlike Buck in 2.01 who guessed Eduardo? Also, Carla’s „big blue eyes“ line which is a little clown-y, so take it with a grain of salt that it could connect us to Buck.

Then of course her next scene is Eddie getting in her face about Christopher being hurt. Later in the episode we see Buck reference this on a call, meaning either Carla or Eddie told Buck about it (I am leaning a little toward Carla making fun of Eddie in front of Buck and Eddie then having to come clean about all of it, because I cannot wrap my head about the idea of Eddie telling Buck about having a crush, I’m sorry.) (And will I ever be over Buck being so gleeful that Eddie will now be dating the teacher after all? Because boy was close to cackling which even if he was in love with Eddie at the time and therefore happy he wasn’t off the market - still quite rude for a best friend if you ask me! Like, sure, do that but in front of strangers?)

Her next scene is Eddie coming to apologise to her and she gives her speech about limitations - which we can of course connect to Buck and Eddie talking about Christopher and his limitations before that and then afterwards going skateboarding with them. (It does feel a little deliberate.)

And then of course we have „Eddie Begins“ and you guys, they could have very very easily have either Carla or Buck make a joke about Mrs. Flores and Eddie’s crush in the firehouse scene, but they didn’t! And then we do get to see her at the end where she has one whole line and Eddie barely looks at her and you know what happens? They have a child ask the same question Buck asked at the beginning about ever just wearing the medal (which sounded very not straight in its delivery, Mr Stark, what were you thinking about?), making us think of Buck. Like, it would have been enough to establish Eddie doesn’t feel like a hero if the question was asked only once - twice in the span of 45 minutes constitutes a callback, meaning we are supposed to think of the other scene and that means thinking about the other person that asked, which was Buck.

Is this … flirting

Now, some of these are quite ambiguous but there are several scenes that imply they consider each other attractive or feel like flirting and here they are:

- 2.01: „I think I’ve seen this in porn before“

Now, we all know Buck’s initial dislike of Eddie was about Eddie being to good at the job and Buck being afraid of being replaced, but considering one of the first things we hear about Eddie is Hen saying that boy is so fine it transcends sexualities and considering they talked about the calendar which chooses them based on hotness just before and then all the references to the calendar throughout, it stands to reason that Buck considers Eddie attractive.

Also their whole conversation during the gym scene, what was any of that? I mean, Buck thinks the pictures of Eddie are professionally done which means he thinks they are good which means, yes, Buck thinks Eddie looks good in those!

Plus the whole scene is riddled with (sexual) tension. From Buck constantly increasing the weight he is lifting, while throwing looks at Eddie as if double checking that he sees he could bench press him and the way he gets in Eddie’s face to Eddie’s veiled barbs about the girlfriend breaking up with him and doing the same thing as a firefighter but he was getting shot at. I mean, what was that if not the beginning of a porno? (And here we have our first parallel between Buck and Eddie as we find out later because Eddie, too, has been left by a woman. Now the real question would be does he consider them broken up?

Not to mention that when Bobby tells him at the end of the episode that he wasn’t chosen Buck immediately assumes Eddie was and also is so very happy for his new friend, because he thinks he’s hot (right?).

- 2.04: „Hearteyes, motherforker“

In 2.08 Buck has a conversation with Chimney about his pick up technique and well, did anyone in production watch this episode because when Buddie walks away from tailpipe-girl-emergency he literally does everything he described.

Also Maddie says the words „Does this man crush on Eddie mean you are finally over Abby?“ to Buck and his only reaction is „Cute.“ meaning one) Maddie has teased him about his Eddie gushing before and two) maybe Buck does have a bit of a crush?

- 2.06: „Bucky Barnes murder strut - 911 edition“

Again with the Maddie and Buck scenes!

Basically what happened was Maddie talked about how cute Chimney was but Buck assumed she meant Eddie because apparently if someone says cute, Buck thinks Eddie. This is just a fact, okay?

- 2.14: „‚It’s a miracle… bro #nohomo’“

Like my name for the episode already says, there is this scene were Buck and Eddie stand next to each other and Eddie says „That was incredible!“ and Buck who is already standing in Eddie’s space leans in further to basically whisper the words „It’s a miracle.“ into Eddie’s ears and then lean back a little and I am not sure if that wouldn’t fit better with Subtext but also Buck looks at Eddie like he wants to eat him alive and Eddie looks like he would let him and say thank you after while still embarrassed because he cries during sex.

You know, acting.

- 3.04 „discount!Buck in the house!“

Listen, I am convinced this is all Ryan considering the reaction of Kenny / Chimney and Aisha / Hen but that doesn’t change the fact that they used a take which had Eddie stare at Oliver / Buck’s butt the whole time and I mean, what horrible things happened in the other takes that made production choose this one unless they want us to see Eddie looking at Buck’s butt while Chimney and Hen stand around looking amused?

- 3.09: „#tw: mild adult themes & implied sexual content / #pwp - porn without porn“

Listen, from the moment Buck says „Cause you would prefer working it out in the ring?“ and then does this dorky thing with his arms while Eddie smirks into his beer about how he fought in a cage not fenced in (which, I’m a little unclear on the distinction I think, but I am nitpicky af so who am I to judge? Probably just stuff getting lost in translation) that whole scene changes vibes, going from apologising to teasing. And I think it’s very interesting that this is when Buck chooses to come closer (and then keep coming closer until he is right in Eddie’s personal space while touching his belt which we all learned by now means he is thinking about sex) and they have this whole conversation about who could take who which happens in sort of half sentences and does not feel like they are talking about fighting each other at all.

I mean, Buck keep coming closer, while Eddie stands there rooted to his spot, leaning against the bar, smirking, like every hot guy in a bar ever who knows one smile and a bit of smolder and they will come to him (which Buck does, playing right into it, I mean, come on, bro, weren’t you once a serial dater? How do you not know how to play hard to get?) and holding the beer (you know, phallic shaped obj- okay, I’ll stop here, it’s a reach), occasionally drinking, like maybe he tries to draw attention to somewhere or he has a very dry throat and honestly: this is how porn starts!

I don’t think my writing (or anyone’s writing really, not that ya’ll aren’t talented af) can properly express how very not platonic and innuendo-heavy this scene felt.

- 3.13: „‚Bro, what if I flirted with you in a bowling alley while out on a call?‘ - ‚Bro, what if I invited you out to lunch after telling a friend to say I love you before it’s too late?‘ - ‚BRO 😍‘“

Again, the title gives everything away but like so many scenes between these boys that moment at the bowling alley when Buck channels Arnie and Eddie is all: you’re a dork and also wrong! and then later when Eddie invites Buck to get lunch (which is sort of Eddie’s thing, remember 2.01?) after earlier telling Chimney to tell Maddie he loves her if he has a chance because he might regret it. And to really drive the point home or maybe make it in the first place, after Eddie asks Buck - and only Buck - to have lunch with him, Buck then declines because of a little blood (Evan, come one, you’ve seen worse! I know I have!) - only for Chimney to consider this the push he needed to invite Maddie for dinner so he can tell her he loves her.

So, you know, platonic.

- 3.16: „The rope was a metaphor after all“

I mean, what was that scene in the locker even with Eddie leaning against the doorway all cheeky and grinning like: yeah, come hang out with me! - obviously it was about Buck never saying yes to babysit a group of nine-year olds when he could be out drinking (as someone who works with kids, I approve), but yeah, that’s not what it felt like? So unless ya’ll cannot act anymore this was deliberately a bit over the top and ambiguous.

Jealousy

Now, no good ship works without jealousy and neither does Buddie so here are some examples of Buddie being jealous.

- 2.06: „Bucky Barnes murder strut - 911 edition“

Now, your probably saying: Bucky Barnes murder strut? That’s a tall order! But damn, Ryan nailed that, okay? Listen, we’ve seen Eddie walk out of uniform several times at this point and NEVER before and never after has he struted this predatory. Eddie walks tall and military, you know, the way he stands, Eddie doesn’t strut!

Yet, here he does! And what I love about this scene is that we see him in the background while Bobby talks to Taylor, working out with no care in the world - and then Buck comes over and flirts with her, suddenly Eddie feels the need to be part of the conversation?

And he doesn’t even wait until he is standing next to them to talk, he calls over while still sitting on the lifting things.

So yeah, that one is him being jealous.

- 2.10: „It’s all about ‚not my business‘“

- Now 2.10 is a great episode for Buddie and in part it is due to Buck’s facial expressions in the background and out of focus of the camera when Shannon comes to the station.

I mean, Oliver always plays Buck very intense and expressive and with his whole face but that was a bit much, you’d think he just found out Eddie broke a vow of chastity or had an affair while being married (which technically is what Buck compares it to later so kinda makes sense he looks like that but also doesn’t, Buckeroo, what’s the big deal? Did Eddie show up at your doorstep a week earlier telling you what a punk ass bitch his wife was, or…?)

- 2.17: „*fridges female character for man pain* Haha, we’re so random!“

„Talk to Bobby. Maybe he can get you guys a discount.“: There is a point to be made about Buck just not liking Shannon considering everything he knows about her and has heard about her, the same way Eddie doesn’t Abby, but still. This scene and this line, Buck does not sound happy for Eddie or truly interested and yeah, it’s off and it seems jealous.

- 3.04 „discount!Buck in the house!“

It’s actually not just my interpretation, it’s actually - between the similarities to 2.01 and everything that happens after with the lawsuit and how Buck explains himself - literal text that Buck was jealous here with Lena. So there!

- 3.09: „#tw: mild adult themes & implied sexual content / #pwp - porn without porn“

Tim Minear please send me over some scripts or have someone call me and explain what they were going for with the „You had sex with your therapist?“-scene because Eddie was so huffy and offended and I need to know!

- 3.12: „There’s a horse loose in a hos… school“

Buck sounds awfully gleeful Eddie will probably not date Christopher’s teacher and while that might just be him making fun of his best friend being so very overprotective and short tempered when it comes to his son (Mr. Control has left the building!), still, it reads a little like jealousy over some unknown pretty woman Chris might have mentioned some time and Carla probably described in great detail when she told Buck all about Eddie losing his cool!

- 3.17: „LegsTM“

It’s technically not really a jealous moment because it’s not Eddie being jealous but Buck simply refusing to mention his ex-girlfriend here, but considering 3.18 and also and most importantly the fact that there are only two other people in the truck, one being an unknown firefighter driving the truck and the other Bobby, who very much knows how Buck was supposed to take a hot air balloon ride with Abby, for who but Eddie was Buck concealing her identity for because Bobby already knows?

There really is only Eddie left, who probably figures out what Buck was about as well because bro may not be Buck and his out of the box thinking smart but he is fucking smart and he can figure shit out as well! Yet Buck refuses to mention Abby’s name and for what? So he can pretend Bobby and Eddie don’t know he is still bitter about her? I mean, fucking hell, send over the motherforking scripts, Minear, I am done with you!

- 3.18: „Traincrash? More like train WRECK? *cries*“

While I think Eddie is being more protective than jealous here, he is awfully involved and he is uncharacteristically out of control and emotional here and I wanna know why? Does Abby being back remind you of Shannon? Is it jealousy? WHAT IS GOING ON??? WHY YOU SO MAD, ARMY BOY???

Subtext

Now, I am first gonna talk about Subtext things in general like clothing choices, music and cuts between scenes and I am gonna be honest, I probably missed quite a few!

- One of my favourite is that while Buck wears the same colours in 3.03 as Shannon does in 2.07, Eddie wears the same exact shirt - and considering the fact that Ryan got buff between Season 2 and 3 that was deliberate, someone bought that shirt again because we are supposed to connect these scenes with each other!

- As I wrote before in 2.10 we can see Buck and his reaction out of focus when Shannon comes to the firehouse to talk to Eddie and ya know, why?

- Tim Minear himself said the elf in 2.10 was an easter egg for us Buddie shippers and he also said we can make out of the fountain in the background what we want, so there, Buddie is talking about Shannon and Eddie having sex and how much that messes shit up while a fountain shoots water in the background and yes, that is an innuendo and subtext and I hate it a little.

- 2.13 has this hospital scene I love a lot and you know what? Buddie is basically dressed the same, because the subtext of this scene is these two are alike and connected and they GET EACH OTHER.

- Another scene I really love is in 3.01 when Buck comes in for the surprise party because not only does he not hug his sister or Athene but runs up to Eddie first, Bobby actually shoves Eddie at Buck so he is the first person Buck hugs (and then the hug itself, what was that? The way they hold onto each other for a moment just looking while their hips are still touching?! Is that how you two hug because I want in!).

- Also they are dressed basically the same, should we discuss this as well?

- And still in 3.01 when Buck thanks Bobby and they talk and Bobby tells Buck he’ll find someone better and then asks him if he is doing okay, the first person the show cuts to is - nope, not Evan Buckley’s sister who is also there but his best friend, Eddie! Jup!

- And still in 3.01 when the firefam talks about helping Buck in the firehouse, Eddie first acts dismissive but the scene ends with Bobby saying Buck has them even though he may not believe that right now and half of that is said while the camera is on Eddie’s face who looks thoughtful - only to cut from them to Maddie and Josh discussing the same thing and mainly how Maddie doesn’t know how to help Buck and what he needs from her. Which you know, the episode ends with Eddie basically giving Buck a swift kick in the butt like she though he might need (and then 3.03 has Eddie basically telling Buck everything is gonna be okay, so we see Maddie talking about helping Buck but never see her doing it and instead we get two scenes of Eddie being there for Buck and also no Maddie in relation to the lawsuit but an extreme focus on Eddie? Writers, I see you and you aren’t wrong!)

- Also worth another mention is the cut between Madney talking about children, saying Buck didn’t have any either - to Eddie waking up Buck so he can babysit Christopher and specifically calling Buck „his Buck“ to make us think on their relationship and let us know how close they are and also to tell us to not trusts everything Maddie says about her brother because she gets shit wrong.

- In 3.03 after Buck tells Eddie he lost Christopher and then Eddie sees Christopher and rushes over and and Buck collapses and while Eddie holds Chris after he checked for injuries and Chim and Hen and Bobby hold Buck and Bobby asks Buck if he is okay, well, this whole time Buck is staring at Chris and Eddie and Eddie is staring back at him and Bobby, if you wanna know about me, gotta tell you, I am not okay?!

- And then we have the loft scene and yeah, okay, this deserves 5000 words of his own, from the fact that they played „Photograph“ by Ed Sheeran which includes lyrics about how they will never be alone and how loving can heal and mend your soul and the fucking song ends on the words „Wait for me to come home“ just as Eddie knocks and brings Christopher over and tells Buck there is no one he trusts more with Christopher than Buck and I am sorry, what are we supposed to think here? This show is from the US, these people speak english, it’s not like these lyrics leave much room for interpretation!

Not to mention the whole monologue Buck did about being lost and not knowing how to get from where you want to be to where you need to be before Eddie showed up and then talking about how a few choice words can sometimes be the life raft one needs to get home and how we are all just searching for someone to see us? I love Maddie and I love the Buckley siblings, but damn, she’s not the one he has been searching for!

(And I keep bringing up Maddie here because as his sister she is the person Buck could feel closest to and should care about the most and be cared about the most by and yet all canon evidence points to Eddie being that person! Also she is the person next to Eddie Buck has the most scenes outside the firehouse with.)

- This one is a bit of a stretch but Buck looks very uncomfortable during the whole deposition in 3.05 but he looks everyone in the eyes until the lawyer mentions Shannon and suddenly his lap is so much more interesting and yes, after is when all of them get asked the really hurtful question but still, this is when Buck stops being despondent and realises, fuck, I went a bit to far

- Someone please find for me where the director talked about purposely framing them as romantic in the apology scene because I cannot find the post for the life of me, but never the less: In 3.06 during the apology, in the beginning of the scene we see Buddie from quite a distance and Eddie has his back turned toward Buck and there is a column in the shot to visually indicate the divide and yeah, the whole framing is quite something and the way the camera angle goes from far away making it seem like unbridgeable distance cutting to closer shots and how we slowly see alongside the words hey, they aren’t actually that far apart, like yeah, this scene was something else!

- Not a direct cut but during therapy Eddie talks about how he wants to be at home with Chris because he is the one good thing he has going for him and the one thing he gets enjoyment out of (because he is so fucking depressed and I cry), yet when we later see Chris and Eddie together it is neither in Eddie’s house nor are they alone, nope Buck is there as well, meaning Buck is considered a part of that one thing even if he wasn’t explicitly mentioned!

- During 3.10 when they take the photo with all of them Buck is grouped between Madney and the Diaz family, like right between and not just next to them. Also earlier when the eat Buck sits next to Christopher who sits next to Eddie and therefore on the opposite side of his sister and her boyfriend.

- Yes, they were probably amused by the meddling mom asking then „Are you boys single?“ in 3.11 but come on! They look at each other and smirk? For real? Hand over the script, Timbo!

- Also as mentioned before the fact that when Chim and Eddie talk about family and the 118 being the family they choose the camera is on Albert, Buck and Christopher, no one else is in the shot. And of course the song that is playing here, another song about home.

- The callback to Buck in 3.12 of Ana immediately guessing Eddie is short for Edmundo unlike Buck as well as Carla saying blue eyes (which Buck has) is also Subtext.

- Said it before but: the scene in 3.13 when they arrive at the hospital and Eddie asks Buck out to eat and then Buck changes his mind but Chimney runs off to call his girlfriend because he wants to have dinner so he can tell her he loves her like Eddie told him to do at the beginning of the episode is … interesting.

- I already explained why I think Shannon wasn’t in that many scenes in the video in 3.15 yet Buck was in most of them but it bears repeating. Also again it’s subtext that Buck is part of Eddie’s family and Buck is very important to Eddie and Eddie loves Buck.

- Also the question about the medal in 3.15 and the little boy at the end repeating the question, sorry, were we not supposed to think of Buck here, Tim???

- Also just in general 3.15 focuses very very heavily on Buck and Buck’s reaction - much like 3.18 later does with Eddie. All the non-Eddie scenes feature Buck and Buck freaking out about Eddie potentially dying and Buck making plans and being frantic and the driving force of hope cause homeboy cannot even for a second entertain any thoughts on Eddie’s passing.

- The rope metaphor in 3.15 / 3.16 is of course also subtext but I already explained that one and don’t have anything to add really.

- This one is a little bit of a stretch but I do think there is a reason Eddie was the first one to be taken out of the equation in 3.16 and because of his son and not a love interest.

- Also the pool playing scene in 3.16 there visually we see Eddie and Buck together in nearly all shots, there are two shots of Eddie without Buck in it but not a single one of Buck without Eddie in it and considering camera angles and actors literally being told were to stand it is deliberate that Buck is only seen with Eddie by his side here.

- I’m repeating a lot of things here but Buck refuses to say Abby’s name in 3.17 even though Bobby clearly knows who he is talking about.

- „No. He stopped waiting for me a long time ago.“ cuts to „Summer Camp?“ I mean sorry, what were we supposed to think here? Because this does imply he really did stop waiting because now he has Christopher and Eddie!

- Not to mention it sort of hammers home what I wrote before how Abby is dating a single father and Buck is sort of dating a single father.

- Also 3.18 puts a lot of focus in general on Eddie and his reaction to everything when say, Bobby, who actually knows Abby and was there for the relationship would have made more sense - unless they are pushing an agenda here!

The first person we have Abby interacting with at the traincrash is Eddie and then Buck joins them and the scene literally goes: Eddie *talking to Abby* > cut to Buck, coming closer > Buck: „Abby?“ > cut to both Abby and *Eddie* > Abby: „Buck?“ while the camera is still on her and Eddie > cut to just Eddie’s face having a realisation > cut to Buck

So sorry, why do we focus so much on Eddie here, Mrs. Lynch? Is there a particular reason, oh director, who art also directed 3.01 and which has also loads of Buddie subtext?

There is also Eddie coming to stand visually between Abby and Buck when Sam is loaded into the ambulance as if he is physically putting himself between them and then Buck running back toward the traincrash and Eddie following him after and all the shots of them and Christopher during the party together and once again having Bobby asking Buck if he is okay visually connected to Eddie, though in reverse this time because the scene goes from Eddie and Chris having fun to Buck and Bobby talking. (And should we talk about how this is the first time Buck actually answers the question because finally he has an answer or are we thinking about that right before sleep today when it’s easier to cry?)

- Also very interesting subtext is the fact that Buck and Eddie wear nearly the exact same colour and a similar cut pullover when Buck talks to Abby at the end and when Eddie says goodbye to Christopher and I mean, thematically both scenes are about saying good bye and letting someone go? But also it connects Buddie with each other and connects these scenes, which Idc, I probably wouldn’t have done without the clothes?

Not sold seperatly

- Also subtext / visual thing is the fact that Buddie is basically always with and next to each other at the firehouse and on calls (and before anyone says: well, they are partners, Hen and Chim aren’t as much), and that is a long list so I am just giving examples: in 2.05 they sit next to each other at the table while in 2.06 they sit next to each other on the couch and in 3.08 they sit next to each other at the table again and then we have 2.02 standing outside and 2.04 walking away from the scene together and Eddie handing Buck a weapon in 3.17 and walking toward the ambulance together in 3.13 and several other times, the point is there are a shit ton of scenes of them being right next to each other in case you thought that was a fanfic thing!

„The Buck lens“ / „The Eddie lens“

I’m pretty sure there is an actual technical term for what I am trying to describe here but basically there are several instances where we see Eddie the way Buck does, meaning while the scene shows us Eddie doing something the focus is on Buck watching this. Sort of POV but not quite I guess? Also the reverse is true as well, even if those scene aren’t as pronounced!

- Let’s talk about 2.01 once again as we have done for most of this meta and finally, finally look at Eddie’s first scene which we all know is sort of gay and the first time we see Ryan shirtless because Tim accidentally wrote a certain quota of shirtless scenes he needed to do into Ryan’s contract and he needed to get started on those right away.

Also please remember while we as well as the core four are watching Eddie get dressed „Watta man“ plays in the background, which, considering we are introduced to Eddie through Buck’s point of view might be the song playing in his head here? Anyways, back to the topic at hand and how we as the viewers don’t see Eddie until Buck turns around and sees him as well. Which is significant because several times through the conversation between Buck, Hen, Bobby and Chimney we see the locker room in the background so they could have filmed that differently.

Instead they had Chim, who stands off centre, noticing something while Buck banters with Bobby about how he will get to represent the 118 in the calendar, then the camera changes angle so we no longer stand between Bobby and Chimney but rather behind Buck, making him centre stage and putting a focus on his reaction to Eddie. In this scene we have Buck framed by two people commenting on Eddie’s attractiveness. Now we don’t get to see Eddie until we have gotten all reactions of the core four to him, with special attention to Buck, both in filming and text with everyone taking a jab at Buck before walking over to introduce themselves to Eddie which leaves Buck alone, watching.

(Now keep in mind this scene also has Hen basically say Eddie is so hot it transcends sexualities while „Whatta man“ plays as Buck slowly turns around and Idk, mate, that does seem shippy to me.)

- Another scene that focuses very heavily on Buck is when Eddie rushes and hugs Chris at the end of 2.03. In fact for most of the scene we see Buck in the car watching them.

- Also, the hospital scene in 2.04 and how once again we see Eddie interact with Chris while Eddie watches them because fuck knows why.

- Similar to the Buck lens we have 3.10 where Eddie talks to Hen about Chris while the two (or rather Eddie since he sits at the centre) watch Buck play with Chris and Danny. This is significant because Buck is also placed in the middle, putting him opposite Eddie and also making him the focus of the camera for most shots when the scene was about Christopher and Eddie feeling guilty. Huh, we say!

- Something similar happens in 3.11, which is the next episode several months removed when Eddie talks to Chimney about the 118 being their family and while this time Chris is the one sitting in the front, Buck once again is in the middle and also in focus in a scene shot from Eddie’s POV.

Other people reacting to them / commenting on them

Now, I am not sure if this is really Subtext but who knows where else it fits in? (This is a rhetorical question, only my opinion counts around here while I write!) So It goes here! And I think the title is self-explanatory enough.

- I’m a little on the fence on the Bobby looks because - no offence to Peter Krause - he doesn’t have that many facial expressions in general, but yeah, at the mechanics Buck watches Eddie and Bobby watches Buck.

- Our first real one of those scene is the truly savage tía Pepa who is a woman after my own heart because she says the mean shit to your face and the nice things behind your back because she loves you but she loves vibe checking egos more! And well, she is understandably confused by Buck’s being there at the hospital and asks Eddie who that is and why he is here and gives one of the best lines of the show by being so sarcastic, because oh, you work together? Damn, wouldn’t have guessed from the fact that both of you wear LAFD t-shirts! (I love her!)

- In the same episode Maddie comments on Buck’s boycrush on Eddie and while I am unsure whether that is supposed to make it sound less gay or it’s Maddie saying: Bro, you sound 12! but oh well! It’s a comment on them!

- I loath a little to include the elf in 2.10 because Tim has said that was an easter egg for Buddie shippers and a tongue in cheek thing but yeah.

- Also Bobby watches the whole „It’s a miracle“ exchange in 2.14 with that look.

- In 2.18 we get some text on the screen when they help instagram girl about how hot the both of them are and also how THEY should be dating which I’m putting into the same box as 2.10.

- The fact that Bobby shoves Eddie at Buck in 3.01, like sorry, why was it so relevant that this is the first hug?

- When Eddie / Ryan stared at Buck’s / Oliver’s ass in 3.04 we see Hen and Chimney grin about it.

- I know I have said myself that Maddie’s reaction in 3.08 was due to the fact that she just said: can ya’ll stop gossiping - and Chim and Buck were like: sure thing! and then started gossiping but still.

- There is Buddie flirting at the bowling alley in 3.13 and once again Bobby gives them the look and yeah.

- In 3.15 everyone seems very worried about Buck especially and they keep reassuring as if he were Eddie’s next of kin.

- Again a Bobby look I am unsure of but in 3.17 we see him giving them the look in the truck and yeah.

Other people’s heartache

Now, as I’ve said in the beginning, I didn’t wanna just include my perspective on Buddie, so I asked a few other people about this and while this isn’t a representative statistical number it’s still interesting, right?

(Also originally this Guide was organised by episode and I would have included the comments when the things came up but alas that didn’t work and I think I turned a little grey because of that)

@buckleysbabe:

When i first watched 9-1-1, I had no idea that Buddie existed (i hadn’t been on tumblr a lot at the time so I hadn’t seen gifs or anything) and when i started s2 I really thought they were just best friends, but then 2x10 and the ”you two have an adorable son” scene happened and Buck’s ”thank you” and the shy smile AND I WAS ON BOARD!! That was really the first moment, then I got the confirmation after 3x03 and the scene where Buck sees Eddie in the tsunami scenery, and then the whole Eddie saying theres nobody in this world....like in that moment I felt like they were seriously in love 😍❤️

About the 2x10: that scene has so many things. Like the water fountain in the back, Chris in the scene with them (like they are a family), then the elf saying what she said, Buck being for a second like ”huh?” and then you see the light bulb going on when he’s like ”ohhhhhhhh yeah” and then he says thank you 😍😍😍 saying HE IS CHRIS’S COPARENT. AND THEN THE SHY SMILE

@theleftboobgrabber

Right off the bat I thought they had chemistry but I think the entirety of 2×04 is when I genuinely started shipping it. Like.... the constant heart eyes, the support, Buck trying so hard to be there for Eddie and Eddie absolutely never questioning it, the look Buck gives Eddie at the fire house was absolute fire (when Bobby tells Eddie Buck asked for Chris to stay with them) like Eddie's like you did this for me??? And Buck has just this massive Big Buck Energy from where he's sitting like "get used to it" and I remember absolutely loosing my mind that Bobby got the hug and not Buck at the end of the scene like in what universe??? And yeah the rest of the episode is just the same but that feeling of 'that's the wrong man you're hugging' was the tipping point

@emotionalsupportfirefam

Okay so mine was kinda two moments?1) when Buck took Eddie to Chris' school after the earthquake and we see his reaction to Eddie's joy and relief as he holds Christopher and then spends the next episode trying to find ways to help Eddie with finding a suitable caregiver/ support for Chris and 2) the fact the took them whole of five minutes to go from 'rivals' to the 'dynamic duo' after the grenade call.

@evaneddie

Honestly? Literally every scene they have is romantically coded. The first scene of them, with Eddie being shirtless and us seeing it from Buck's perspective with „Whatta Man“ playing? That's subtext.

You can have my back any day? Yo.

The scene when the elf Blair(e) said they have an adorable son and Buck just said thank you instead of correcting her before he literally skipped away?

Eddie showing up at Buck's apartment and Buck not even questioning how he got in?

The way Buck is like a second father to Chris and protects him like one in the tsunami?

"THERE'S NOBODY IN THIS WORLD I TRUST WITH MY SON MORE THAN YOU"?! REALLY EDDIE? WHAT ABOUT LITERALLY ANY OF YOUR FAMILY? OR CARLA? Baby, that's love.

THE HALLOWEEN HUG?!

THE KITCHEN SCENE, THE WHOLE SEXUAL TENSION IN THAT SCENE?! BUCK'S HAND ON HIS BELT, THE GLANCES, "I'D STILL TAKE YOU", ON THE COUCH EDDIE LOOKS TO BUCK'S LAP, LIKE COME ON!

"You boys single?" *Looks at each other*

"This is Eddie's house, I'm not really a guest"

Buck's breakdown when he lost Eddie under 40 feet of mud. That was not the breakdown of losing a friend, that was the breakdown on losing someone you love. There's a meta I saw once literally just for this scene alone, the way Buck dug so desperately at the mud with his bare hands, the screams of heartbreak, the way he collapsed into Bobby, the pure dissociation as Bobby was giving instructions later on, Eddie's memories filled mostly with Christopher and Buck. Sure, the others were there, but, it was FILLED with Buck and Chris.

Then the ending scene of the season?! What was he trying to do with the necklaces? Thrusting his hips towards Eddie, hitting him in the face, then that soft touch on his face?

@adamngoodbuck

Hey! Nice question and for me really easy to answer. I started watching the show back in 2018 when it first aired but I was a casual viewer. Very casual. So casual I actually watched everything up to 2x10 and then I thought it was the season finale so I forgot about it. And then season 3 started. And nothing made sense. So I checked and welp, I had to catch up. And I did and something started brewing inside of me. I wasn't part of the fandom yet. And then. The THE SEARCHERS happened. And that scene. The there's nobody in this world I trust with my son more than you scene. My icon scene. And I was done. Hook, line and sinker.

@the-family-we-choose-118 

My main ones were all the big ones: the kitchen scene, the end of 3x03, the Christmas episode one where Buck is helping Danny and Chris make gingerbread houses and then plans a whole party for the firefam, Buck clawing at the ground in 3x15, Eddie interrupting Taylor Kelly when she came to the station to do the documentary in Dosed, the fact that Eddie was introduced from Buck's POV with „Whatta Man“, the entire earthquake episode where Buck is reassuring Eddie his kid is okay and then drives him to get his kid later on, and the scene where Buck introduces Eddie to Carla in (I'm pretty sure it's) the same episode where Maddie asks him if his boy crush on Eddie means he's over Abby (that was my main one). And I was fully convinced when Eddie walked in Buck's apartment in the beginning of S3 and ripped his blankets off him and was so sure he doesn't sleep naked/wouldn't have anybody over.

And the „official“ part of the guide is done but I do wanna say something else real quick which is:

You have just read about 20.000 words I painstakingly wrote over the course of several weeks and while I get that meta is even more harrowing to reblog than gifsets or fics because meta involves so much opinion and interpretation and what if you disagree with parts of it?

Well, again, I invested a lot of time in this and also: IF YOU DISAGREE TELL ME!!! TELL ME IN THE REBLOG OR IN THE TAGS!!! Because different to fics and gifsets meta is a dialog and I can’t have a dialog unless people talk to me! I’m not here to lecture you on right or wrong, I am here to tell you: okay, this is how the scene looks from my point of view, what do you say? So honestly, please consider liking and reblogging and tagging and maybe talking a little about it with me, because screaming into the void is so very boring

(And also in general: reblog reblog reblog! All these funny posts you see on buzzfeed and instagram screenshoted from tumblr? Half of them were made great by reblogs and all of them were noticed by these sites because of reblogs)

Anyways, before I (REALLY) let you go it would be hypocritical now to not talk about some people who inspired some of this (but ya’ll have to understand I cannot talk about everyone)!

I can however say these four especially helped me write this:

- @diggorypuff , who I have never talked to but whose posts about interesting parallels actually sort of got me into thinking deeper about this show: (X)

- @ingu, who fairly recently did a series of gifsets on Buddie and how Buck is framed as Eddie’s love interest which gave me life: (X)

- @matan4il, who is such an amazing friend and does the most concice and well thought out metas on Buddie without having to watch the show a million times like other people we shall not name have to (me, I am talking about me). Find her buddie metas here: (X) 

- And most importantly my girl, my babe, my love, @chimbuckleys who is the voice of reason between us and always lets me rant about stuff and was the sounding board for this and so much else I have written - I couldn’t do this without you! (ALSO I AM GOING TO BED NOW, BABE!!!)

AND DEAR READER, you made it! Now go have a blessed day and plant some trees because earth is dying and we with it!

[feathersandblue]

Dean Winchester, Character Death, and Frodo’s Return to the Shire

This will be a LOOONG post that has been stuck in my head for a while in bits and pieces - about Dean’s death, what it was and what it wasn’t, and incidentally, the Lord of the Rings has found its way in here too.

It’s pretty clear that Dabb always meant for Dean to die.

And while I strongly disagree with that, on so many levels, I think it might have been more palatable if framed in a different way, and so I’ve been trying to figure out what the ending might have looked like in a world that wasn’t quite as shitty as ours. Still shitty, but marginally less so.

Dean is notoriously bad at letting bad things happen if he can prevent them. I find it difficult to believe that Dean would ever quit hunting entirely, and for as long as he kept hunting, the danger of dying would always be present. It’s not unrealistic at all for him to die on a routine hunt. Life is unpredictable; life as a hunter, even more so. I understand that the writers might want to make that point. And it might have been valid if – and that’s the real problem – Dean’s death hadn’t otherwise been devoid of meaning.

The thing about character death – any sort of character death – is that it needs to have purpose.

And there are different ways that it can have purpose, but it depends on what sort of character we’re talking about.

Minor, often unnamed characters – the redshirts in every narrative – die to illustrate injustice or to highlight evil. Their death is a catalyst or a consequence of the events as they unfold, part of the conflict the heros have to solve. An army led into battle by a tyrant. Refugees in a camp dying of malnutrition. Murder victims of a serial killer. In all these cases, death fuels the plot but has little meaning beyond that.

There are minor characters whose death both fuels the plot and gives the hero a more personal motive to act. Supernatural is full of these. Mary and Jessica burning at the ceiling; Charlie dumped in a bathtub. Minor characters can have their own arcs, but ultimately their deaths are only important for the impact they have on the main characters.

The death of a protagonist is markedly different. Protagonists need to have agency even in death to maintain their status.

Their death has to be the reflection of their character development up to that point but it also has to tell us something about them that we did not already know – show us how they make a final decision or draw a final conclusion that marks the end of an inner conflict – which is what all storytelling is about. Character death has to serve a purpose to have meaning, and for a protagonist, the purpose must be personal.

And If it fails to do that, then that’s either a sign that we’re no longer dealing with a protagonist, or that something weng very, very wrong in the writers’ room. There is no inherent value in tragedy. In storytelling, tragedy is justified when it achieves something, otherwise, it’s just capriciousness.

Buffy’s death at the end of season 5 of BTVS is a classic example for the death of a protagonist. Harry’s decision to go and face Voldemort in the forbidden forest, even though it doesn’t ultimately kill him, is another. When Sam jumps into the abyss in Swan Song, that is his heroic sacrifice, but if he’d permanently died in season 2, that would have been bizarre and nonsensical because it was entirely beyond his control – it did not reflect his decisions, gave him no agency, and reduced him from a protagonist to a side character. In that moment, his death was something that happened to Dean. It worked because his death didn’t stick – he regained his agency after resurrection. But as an ending to his hero’s journey, it would have been singularly unsatisfying.

Dean is our protagonist, and he has been for 15 seasons. What does his death tell us about him that we didn’t know – what decisions did he make, what inner struggle got resolved, what meaning did his death have for him, personally, and then, in extension, for us?

The problem is that the finale, as is so often the case in Supernatural, tells two stories at once.

Whe the episode starts, it appears that Dean moves on with his life just fine, a well-adjusted model citizen. He’s ready to get a job, seems to be moderately happy. He even has dog. The decision to keep hunting is his, and death just accidentally happens, which of course is not unrealistic in his line of work. On the forefront, his death is brought about by the fact that he exercises free will. It tells us that he is a hunter and will always be one, that he keeps protecting people because that’s just who he is.

None of that, however, is new. It is just more of the same. All of Dean’s decisions in the finale tell us nothing about him that we did not already know. He’s trying to move on from the death of the people closest to him, as he’s always done. He chooses the hamster wheel, as he has always done. He follows in his father’s footsteps, as he has always done.

As he gets impaled, he has no choices left to make. There is no agency in his death, no inner struggle. His death furthers neither his character development nor the plot. That Dean simply accepts his death is as unsurprising as the fact that his final moments are spent reassuring Sam and telling him that he has to keep fighting.

The conclusion? Dean ceases to be a protagonist.

He dies not as the hero of his story. His death just happens to him.

After Sam and Dean had presumably freed themselves from the constraints of Chuck’s narrative, the final episode should have emphasized their agency, their freedom of choice, through change. But in the end, it only led them both to making the same choices as always, the unsurprising ones. And even the choices that did indicate a change (like Dean’s job application) were not shown to bear fruits.

What meaning does free will have when it doesn’t change the outcome? All the finale does is tell a bleak story about humanity and how we are incapable of making meaningful, consequential changes in our lives.

It’s almost like Lucifer is talking to us all the way from the Endverse of 5.04: “Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up – here.”

Devastating as that is, there is another interpretation of the finale that is arguably worse, a different reading strongly suggested by both text and subtext.

Dean, as mentioned before, is trying to move on with his life but ultimately fails. The situation is different from the way he behaved when he lost Cas and Mary in season 13 where he was outright suicidal – his desperation is more quiet but also more profound. He seems determined to honor Cas’ and Jack’s sacrifice. But determination is not enough. Dean only goes through the motions, and it shows. He clings to the dog in the morning; the dog sticks to him closely throughout the day as dogs tend to do when they feel that their owner is in distress, almost like a therapy dog. His room looks messy, he makes an attempt to fix it but then abandons it as it requires too muh effort. Ultimately, he can’t be bothered. There are alcohol bottles standing around, a sign that he’s drinking, though not as heavily as in the past. All the while, he sems very laid-back, presumably relaxed and at peace and coping well with the loss but also weirdly detached.

When Sam mentions Cas and Jack at the pie festival, he says, “Yeah, I’m thinking about them too. You know that pain’s not going to go away. Right? But if we don’t keep living, then all that … sacrifice is gonna be for nothing.”

He feels an obligation. And he’s trying. It’s just not working very well.

He barely reacts when Sams pies him in the face.

When impaled on the rebar, Dean actively prevents Sam from calling for help. He tells Sam not to bring him back. And in the end, he asks Sam to tell him it’s okay to go. Which isn’t something he would do if he was simply dying – it strongly indicates that he wants to be allowed to die.

Prompting the conclusion that Dean is giving up on life the first opportunity he gets, not even knowing whether he’ll end up in heaven.

In this reading, Dean does have a little bit of agency. He makes a decision, sort of. His death marks the resolution of an inner struggle: He gives up.

He dies as a protagonist.

In the worst way possible.

In all honesty, I can’t decide which interpretation I hate more.

But what could the writers have done differently, if Dean was meant to die all along?

Back when the SPN finale had freshly aired, I was describing it like this:

Imagine that the One Ring is destroyed. But Merry died in the battle and Pippin went missing and was never found again. Frodo and Sam return to the Shire; Pippin and Merry are mentioned once in passing. Upon their arrival, Frodo is attacked by Wormtongue and slowly bleeds out over the span of thirty pages. Sam marries someone else than Rosie; Rosie is never mentioned again. Somehow, both Frodo and Sam are teleported to Valinor, where we are told that the real fun begins.

At the time, I only used this as an example to illustrate what a mess the finale had been. But in the weeks that have passed since, then, I’ve started thinking about the LOTR comparison some more, and it got me thinking about Dean’s death in a different way.

And it has everything to do with the difference between running from and walking toward.

As mentioned before, it’s not unrealistic that Dean would die on a random hunt. Would the Dean Winchester we know ever stop hunting? Maybe. We might want him to. Then again, would be still be Dean Winchester if he did? We know that Dean can’t help but feel responsible. He is someone who is incapable of staying hands-off.

Dean, as we see him in the finale, is trying to honor Cas’s and Jack’s memory by living, although he’s not very good at it – not outright suicidal but worn-out. Exhausted. And still he makes the decisions to keep hunting because he can do nothing else.

When Frodo and Sam returned to the Shire in LOTR, they had earned their happy ending. But Frodo, who had carried such a heavy burden that he was permanently altered by it, could no longer find happiness in Middleearth, and ultimately decided to depart for Valinor along with Gandalf and Bilbo with the promise of later being reunited with Sam. The journey had changed both of them, but it had changed Frodo to a greater degree, his responsibility had been greater, the weight on his shoulders heavier.

And I started to wonder whether the intention had initially been to show Dean in much the same state – and to frame his death as a decision to move on, the same way that LOTR has Frodo move on to the West.

Imagine the following: Cas is pulled into the Empty. His happiness and love change the Empty; he merges with it or otherwise changes it so that it’s now a more demon-friendly environment. Everyone there is at peace. Cas, in whatever form, moves on to Heaven – or maybe his soul does as it’s now mostly human.

Dean goes on a hunt and dies. Jack, or some other entity, shows up where you would expect the curiously absent reaper in order to give him a choice. Learning that Cas is in Heaven, and knowing that he will never be able to stop hunting if he remains on earth, Dean makes the conscious decision to move on. For the first time, Dean prioritizes his own happiness over his perceived duty. His death is no longer suicide by proxy, and neither is its sole purpose to illustrate the inherent meaningless of free will by turning him into a hamster-by-choice. Instead, it becomes a decision because he’s given back agency. He resolves an inner conflict and there’s even a final bit of character development as he breaks the chain of mutual co-dependency that ties him to Sam and allows himself to be with Cas. He remains a protagonist throughout the end.

And because he acknowledges his love for Cas and decides to be with him, he no longer just runs from, he walks toward.

The parallels to The Lord of the Rings get even more obvious when you take Sam into the equation because much like Samwise, Sam remains on earth in order to have a life that, for him, still holds meaning and the chance of happiness – whereas Dean can no longer be happy on earth as long as Cas isn’t there.

To be completely clear: I’d still think that such an ending would suck because it puts too much emphasis on an afterlife, and it would still send the message that characters like Dean could only find peace in death, and unless some adjustments were made to Sam’s arc as well, the ending would still suck for him.

But seeing as SPN plays in a universe where an afterlife exists, I could probably learn to live with Dean’s death if it had any sort of meaning, for him, besides dying and waiting for Sam to arrive, if it allowed for that final bit of character development. If he got to choose.

While I’ll never be able to see the finale that we actually got as anything but a complete atrocity.

[sortasirius]

“Last Call” and Canon Bi Dean

This is going to be very long, very rambly, and very emotional.

Really though, I had high expectations going into this, and quite honestly?  Jeremy Adams blew me away.

This episode is about Dean’s growth, it’s about who he was to Lee, and who he is now, about overcoming his own desire to just stop caring and keep on fighting for the innocent.  But most importantly to me?  This episode canonized bi Dean.

So let’s just get right into it, we know from the beginning that we’re meeting Lee, Dean’s old friend that Sam doesn’t really know or isn’t really close with, but the way Dean leaves?  He doesn’t want to bring down the mood of Sam and Eileen in his post breakup depression funk?  Good grief.

The bar is cool and right up Dean’s alley, and right out of the gate we get the promo scene with the waitress that we were all wigging out about.  And my hunch was right, Dean just kinda rolls right by, which man, Dean from season 1?  Hell no.  She’s just his type, clearly into him, and yet, Dean’s world literally falls away when he sees Lee Webb singing onstage.

You can’t really do justice to the way with words to the way that Dean looks when he sees Lee and realizes who he is, Jensen and Christian have so much NUANCE in their scenes together, and the history behind them is palpable, even though we don’t know the extent of it.  And Lee is just the same way, looking Dean up and down and “Dean Winchester,” just to hammer home that something is going on here and we should not ignore it.

“You got time?”  “Always.”  Bruh. There are so many details that we can pick up on about them, their relationship, who they were to each other.  Even Dean’s little “you sound good,” come on guys, what the fuck?

That’s another thing: why don’t we know the history?  Why do they shy away from talking about why they split apart?  Dean is clearly upset when Lee mentions Arizona, what happened?  Why did John and Dean never mention Lee? And obviously Lee knows John, hell he seems more sorry than Dean does that John’s dead, but then again, the Dean that Lee remembers idolized John, so that’s definitely a big change for Lee, because Dean clearly doesn’t idolize John anymore.

I just want to hear about everything that’s mentioned in the episode in more detail: Lee and Dean went hunting together, presumably alone, since John caught them drunk on a hunt.  What went on?  I think we know. How often did they hunt together? How long had they known each other? D E T A I L S please Jeremy Adams!!!

“I don’t think I have seen you since Sammy was in college.”

“Right.”

“I mean, hell, I thought you were-”

“Dead?”

Also Lee does this little teasing laugh and everything about them is soft and my chest hurts.

“I mean, that’s usually how this ends, isn’t it?”

And what I want to talk about here is Lee’s reaction, because he doesn’t shrug and do the usual “so it goes” that so many hunters do, he looks at Dean, like really looks at him, he sighs and says a simple “yeah” with this look that’s so soft and so full of something and Dean looks away (doing his eye motion thing he does with Cas) and Lee breaks contact too and looks down and smiles and oh my god.  I told yall this was going to be rambly but I didn’t draw breath while typing that lmao.

I wanna know about the Arizona thing, I want to know why it made Dean uncomfortable when Lee mentioned it, and I want to know why it’s glossed over.  These two were like best friends, you can tell, and for them to just stop talking?  Hm.

They swap tales, talking about the triplets that they “split em up fair and square” even though that’s not possible and they had an orgy obviously.  Dean has this look with the waitress again and you can tell he appreciates it but like?  That’s the end of it?  In the next scene she’s gone and it’s just Lee and Dean talking, Dean making Lee laugh and enjoying it, it’s just so...romantic?

And even though, the second that Lee doesn’t recognize someone he should puts all of us, as the audience on alert, it doesn’t even cross Dean’s mind that Lee is doing something wrong, it’s not even on his radar.

“There’s nothing you can’t have, man.”

“Then who’s gonna kill the bad guys?”

“Somebody else.”

And Dean looks away, because it’s clear what Lee is asking.  He’s asking for Dean to stay.

When Lee starts up the band, I was just struck by how much they look at each other, getting in each other’s space, Lee leaning forward, Dean watching him walk away.  Guys.  This happened in front of our faces on screen.

“Can’t sit around lip syncing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ when no one’s watching.”

This is a callback to the ghost sickness episode, but also an intimate moment that no one gets to see of Dean.  Sam catches him in the act of it on that episode, so how does Lee know he does this?

And then, let’s get to the singing.  Dean’s always postured to Sam that he can’t sing (which we all know Jensen has the voice of an angel) and the buildup to him actually singing was so beautiful, because Lee knows he can, he teases him with the “Eye of the Tiger” thing, winks at him, keeps trying to pull him onstage, stands there and bites his lip when Dean’s singing.  I mean.  I’m at a loss to what else you would think about them, it’s just plain as day: they were together.

The whole thing is just so playful, and we never see playful like this from Dean.  It’s flirty and funny and sweet and just such a nice change of pace, so good for Dean to be with someone that clearly wants to be with him, who he has history with (amidst the divorce he’s currently in w Cas).  Even when they sing together they can’t keep their eyes off of each other and the whole thing is honestly too much it’s so fanfic-y and I can’t handle it.

And then, the big thing, Lee slaps Dean’s ass in the middle of the song, and Dean doesn’t blush, he doesn’t stand up straighter like that’s weird or wrong, he grins this huge amazing beautiful grin and says “you son of a bitch.” What else are we looking for here?  He’s bi.  He’s bi.  With the lighting behind him and the bar named Swayze’s and Lee staring holes through him, we finally saw onscreen, canonical proof that he’s bi.  Sure, it’s been hella subtextual before, but this is text, and no one can ignore it.

At the end of the song, one of Lee’s hands is gripping Dean’s shoulder, and Dean’s arm is around Lee’s waist??????????  Help??????

They round it all out with kicking some gross guys out of Lee’s bar, and Lee stares at Dean and says “still got it.” I mean....I’m running out of ways to say the same thing over and over.

“Best friend’s don’t just leave without saying goodbye.”

“They do if they deserve it.”

Hmmmmmmmm, something to think about with these lines.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on okay, but this is not you.”

Compare that with:

“Cas, this isn’t you, this isn’t you.”

Cool.  Fine.  I want to die.

Lee became the monster because he thought there was no point in being a good person anymore.  You can’t stave them off so you might as well “have a little fun.”  Which I think is interesting because of how apathetic and hopeless Dean’s been since Chuck, since Jack, since Mary, since Rowena, but when it comes down to it, he’s always going to care, which is why we love him.

But what I really want to talk about is the way Dean’s face twists when Lee touches him, he turns his head away, his face contorts, like he wanted Lee to touch him, but not like this.  We’ve seen Dean’s heart break so much in this show, he’s lost so much and so many, but this is something so different.  It’s not only betrayal, or a realization that he has to kill Lee, it’s the loss of what he had with Lee, what he felt for him.  It hurts to watch as an audience member, and I can’t imagine how it is for Dean.

Dean’s voice also breaks when he tries to call Lee back, in case you still had any tears left to cry.

The gunfight is intense, but not nearly as intense as what’s coming.

“I don’t know you.”

“You don’t Dean?  I am you.  I’m just you that woke up and saw that the world was broken.”

“Then you fix it.  You don’t walk away, you fight for it!”

No double meanings in this episode are there?  Perhaps this is a little bit of what happened between them all those years ago bubbling to the surface?

And then we get one of the best fight scenes in the show, and you know when Dean gets that cue stick, that it’s game over for Lee, but what I wasn’t expecting is the sheer heartbreak on Dean’s face.  They both look down at the wound, like they’re both surprised, and Lee holds Dean, he fucking holds him, and this fucking piano music plays when Lee says “okay” and drops to the floor, and Dean leans against the pool table because fuck, how much more can he lose?

And because not even THAT is enough, ten seconds of divorced Destiel distress?  Where Dean clearly wants to talk to Cas but Cas is still giving him the cold shoulder and it breaks Dean’s heart but he doesn’t know how to fix it????

There’s just so much to unpack here, the show is teaching us new things about Sam and Dean and Cas all the time, and yet I feel like I really know Dean know, I;ve seen a little bit of him that I had never seen before, and I’m just grateful. I’m grateful for Dean, grateful for these writers, grateful for his growth.  I’m grateful for the angst and the happiness he had with Lee, however fleeting, and I’m grateful that I get to leave this episode with the fact that Dean is oncreen bi.  Sure, it can be up to interpretation, he didn’t come out and say it, but that’s because he didn’t have to.  Lee knew, so we knew, and that was all that mattered.

This silly, weird show is important to me for so many reasons, (clearly, since I talk about it all the damn time), but Dean especially is so important to me, I see so much of myself in him, and him being allowed to be him, without some grand coming out scene is even better than I could have ever hoped for.  So thank you, Jeremy Adams, for giving us bi Dean, and one of my absolute all time favorite episodes in the show.

[chibimyumi]

Hello, I am the person whom asked you about your view on Sebastian’s words in chapter 137, when he explains to Ciel how he came in to the human world.

First of all, thank you very much for your translation of the original text in Japanese, which I could not have done myself. I am very grateful that you offered us even further insight into the text and clarity for a better understanding of the story.

However, that being said, I still maintain my viewpoint that Sebastian didn’t lie. The reason for that lays in the word “sacrifice”, which to me, reveals why one brother was the sacrifice of the other. Because a sacrifice, a true sacrifice, implies the offering of that which (or in this case, who) is valued; of that which is precious, loved, adored and cared for; in one word, valued.

Because it was obvious that the people there thought nothing of the act of taking of human lives or of the children: hurting and degrading them to the point of death without a care in the world, rather than something precious to them, they were more akin to ingredients for a potion, a soup of depravity, a checkmark on a list to be ticked off.

And at that moment in time and in that place, who valued that child whom was killed more than his brother?

For him, his twin had been hope and light and bravery, strength and affection, the surviving memory of goodness and perhaps, most importantly, the memory, the sense of who they truly were, of their identity.

The cultists, by comparison, thought and felt nothing of taking his life, ergo, he wasn’t their sacrifice.

He was his brother’s.

For he valued him.

...To be honest, during that part where the twin is selected as a sacrifice and then killed, what quickly flashed through my mind at one point, was the episode of Abraham and Isaac from the Bible and just how tragic that started out as well, with God asking his follower, who’d already been through so much, to sacrifice to him his beloved son. Of course, that ended differently and it may not even have any actual bearing on the narrative of the manga, however, I feel like the point stands.

What makes a sacrifice true is the heart.

Because there was no heart in their act of sacrifice.

Because the heart of the surviving twin was never the same after his sacrifice.

Additionally, I understand that from the way Sebastian spoke, he implied an active participation on the sibling’s part and I would argue that there was such an engagement from him, not in deed, but in feeling and thought.

What I mean by that is, take a look at all the people gathered there; some are scared and asking for God, some are in disbelief of what’s happening and yet others are already asking to have their wishes fulfilled. But the way I see it, none of them have abandoned their faith in God; for them, doesn’t it look more like they see God as being on one side and the Devil on the other? And they simply chose the Devil? However, following this train of thought, it could be argued that for them, the existence of the Devil also validated the existence of God.

Except for the surviving child.

For him, the apparition of the Devil constituted further evidence against the existence of God. For if God existed, it would surely have been Him whom saved them or not even let anything happen to them in the first place.

And Sebastian does mention that the denouncing of one’s faith was also needed for his calling in to the human world, doesn’t he? That may even be how he identified a child as the one set to become his Master, as the one who’d summoned him: by the change producedin him by the death of his brother.

By the part that was missing inside of him.

The invitation and door that would allow for the demon to seep in to his soul and pour a part of his essence inside, where previously, there may have been the faith in God to reject him and not allow him entry.

There is, after all, the idea that evil has to be let in, right?

And well, even if we don’t actually see an obvert importance being placed of faith in this series and even though the character’s abandonment of his belief in God may be understandable, given what he had and has to endure and even if it may not seem like an important aspect, maybe, just maybe that abandonment was the final string needed to be extended in order to summon the demon and anchor him to a soul.

What do you think?

【Response to: Did Sebastian lie to his master about his brother?】

Dear Anon1,

H-how...do you even send an ask in essay size???? (ÔAó) DUDE!

Well, about what you say. You are free to think as you like, but my answer was and remains that Sebas lied because he said that O!Ciel made an active choice, which he did not. The original Japanese gives very little room for different interpretation if you read carefully.

As I explained in the original post, the verbs and particles Sebas used are ACTIVE, referring to a presence of intention behind O!Ciel’s actions. In the original Japanese words chosen by Sebas, he means that O!Ciel deliberately chose to have somebody take specifically R!Ciel instead of himself, place R!Ciel on the altar, and stab him for the purpose of summoning a demon. This is obviously not true.

Lies are lies, and range from claims of something entirely delusional, to minor exaggerations or twists of the truth. For example: If a mother is forced to let go of her children in an ugly divorce case because she is otherwise made to pay so much money it’ll ruin her financially, and I say to the children: “your mother dumped you because she rather keeps her money”, it is still a lie. That is basically what Sebas did.

Dear Anon 2,

Sorry for shoving you under another Anon’s ask (judging from language and content you’re probably someone else, but I can’t be sure). I thinkkkkkk the answer to your question is the continuation of what I want to say to Anon1, so I shall answer the both of you together here.

I never read a single word of the bible except the title “bible”, so I have no idea. But it is possible that what you say about a “sacrifice” is similar. It is possible that because the sacrifice was O!Ciel’s - albeit a transaction performed by the cultists - O!Ciel became Sebas’ master. In English O!Ciel did ‘pay a sacrifice’ passively, but that is not how it works in Japanese, which I already explained.

For easy comparison’s sake, let’s say the sacrifice R!Ciel is money, and Sebas’ service a cup of coffee.

R🧒 = 💴        |      👿＝☕

The cultists stole the money out of O!Ciel’s pocket, and put it on the counter. The fair barista then gives O!Ciel the cup of coffee, because he knows the credit card was stolen from the boy’s pocket.

That is how I reason O!Ciel ended up with the demon, and why Sebastian’s lie of O!Ciel having actively paid with his brother’s life to buy a contract hit the boy so hard. Because even though O!Ciel did not choose for the transaction to happen, he did end up with the purchase, so he did “profit” from his twin’s death. Sebas was clearly preying on that survivor’s guilt because he is Trash™.

TL;DR: Sebas f*cking lied.

[eleutheramina]

Is Scoopshipping Good Writing? An Extremely Long Text Post

This is partially a response post to criticism of the ship and Jack’s development in the Dark Signers arc, and partially my own analysis of Jack and Carly’s relationship--specifically whether it is congruous with Jack’s Fortune Cup characterization and whether it says anything meaningful besides just invoking the Power of Love. 

Introduction

It’s been over 10 years since 5D’s first aired, which is surreal. I still remember thinking the whole concept was ludicrous at first, but it eventually became my favorite Yugioh series (though I usually ignore the series post-episode 64 and consider the first 64 episodes by themselves). It was really primarily because of these two fools that I started watching in earnest:

I shipped them big time. Even now, I still really adore their relationship. Most of my ships I end up becoming less obsessed with over time, but Jack/Carly continues even to this day to captivate my heart and imagination. 

Recently, though, I’ve been thinking about the question, is their relationship good writing? Especially in how consistent it is with Jack’s characterization in the Fortune Cup arc, and whether or not it works to develop him as a character afterward.

(Of course, my personal stakes in the question is, should I be shipping them? While ships obviously don’t have to be well-written in canon or anything like that for someone to ship them, it’s significant to me because so much of the reason I liked Jack/Carly in the past is because it did feel decent character development, especially in contrast to what came after the Dark Signers arc.)

Why I’m Writing This

This sense of doubt about the writing of their relationship is especially spurred on by this character analysis of Jack:

“A lot of people seem to think that the introduction of Carly and the whole romancey subplot developed Jack as a character and for the better. I could not disagree more. If there's one word I'd associate with Jack prior to his entire development and dignity as a character going down the crapper, I'd have to say it's 'ego'. How did Rex/Jaeger get him to sell out his friends, steal Yusei's stuff and join him? He appealed to Jack's ego. How did he persuade him to stay after his first loss to Yusei? By telling him about the signer and reassuring him, again, that he was special. Overall, Jack just struck me as a very focused and driven character, intent on achieving his own goals on his own. He actively pushed away everyone who tried to get close to him, most obviously Mikage, who is consistently worrying over him but whom he never spares as much as a thought or a kind word for in return. Ever. This egocentric attitude is also, at the risk of over-analyzing, consistent with Red Dragon Archfiend, both in its moving away every defensive obstacle in its way and in its actively destroying any monsters that didn't join it in attacking. I generally don't like going onto this level of symbolism because it so easily devolves into semantic nonsense, but given the parallels here and the similarly fitting effects of Yusei's Stardust, I thought it worth mentioning. This would also lend a bit of further significance to him handing the card over to Yusei before the tournament, not only affirming his egocentric wish to beat Yusei at his strongest (and thus redeem himself for their last duel) but also his rejection of the self-sacrificing/others first mentality that the card represents. His obsession with Red Dragon Archfiend after that duel is also consistent with this interpretation, with Jack pushing himself even harder to prove to himself that his way is correct.

“Overall, I don't object to the notion of Jack learning to be less ego-centric as development, but the way the dark signer arc handled it was beyond contrived and ham-fisted, pushing him into an impromptu romance that was completely inconsistent with egocentric personality thus far and completely glossing over the far more interesting questions of how he'd rebuild his ego after essentially losing his entire self-image as the king in front of everyone. Instead, apparently all he needed was for a crazy lady to abduct him from hospital, blackmail him for the sake of her own career, then give a few lines of generic encouragement and invoke the power of love. From where I'm standing, it was obvious that he was intended to be Yusei's main foil, representing a pragmatic, egocentric worldview to contrast with his idealistic views on bonds and friendship, but equally clear that that idea was quickly scrapped in favor of shipping bait and deifying Yusei.

“Jack Atlus, he deserved a far better closure to his development than Stockholm syndrome.” --Aea (http://neoarkcradle.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=26&pid=735)

Before I get to what I think is actually pretty solid about this analysis, I want to address some points. The idea of Carly being “crazy” is pretty hyperbolic. Calling what she did “abduct[ion]” is just inaccurate--after all, Jack asks her to take him out of the hospital, and he also refuses to return when Mikage and Ushio go to get him. Of course, he tries to leave her place in episode 31, but he also seems to willingly return there at the end of the episode. Because she wasn’t really kidnapping him or holding him at her home against his will, their relationship isn’t Stockholm syndrome.

I do think there’s some validity to the idea of her blackmailing him for her career. She does try to draw attention to him when they’re out in public in episode 31 in order to get him to stick around so that she can get a scoop from him. As comically as it is presented in the episode, that’s nonetheless what she does (and she also tries to leverage his lack of gratitude, too!). But she does ultimately feels remorse for that and resolves to not write any article that would hurt a duelist (even despite the fact that Jack lets her write what she wants about him), which is glossed over in this analysis of Jack.

I also don’t think that the encouragement she gave Jack was super original. Here’s the exact quote (which she says in response to Jack divulging his past to her):

“If you get the picture that much, why don’t you just start your life over again? The old Jack died in that battle with Yusei. Now it’s time for the real Jack Atlas to live. Plus, it’d help you in becoming a real King, right?”

Essentially, she tells him that he can get back up again after his loss and be even better than he was before. Yeah, at face value, it is pretty generic. But I do think that it does speak into a lot of what he was struggling with, at least as it is depicted after his defeat.  Now, whether these are things that make sense for him to struggle with is a different issue that I’ll discuss in a later section.

And finally, I do think that Jack/Carly invokes the power of love trope. At least, Jack invokes it himself when he is talking back to Godwin in episode 63: “No matter how much I deny it, I cannot escape from what’s known as ‘bonds.’ And what helped me understand that was one woman’s love!” I don’t think the power of love is necessarily a bad thing, and I think it makes sense for someone who gave up their bonds from the past to pursue his own goal to be able to be moved and changed by someone genuinely caring for them.

Now, whether or not it was a good decision to have love be the driving force in Jack’s character development during the Dark Signers arc is a different question, which brings me to the points of Aea’s analysis that I find really compelling and want to grapple with.

What I read Aea as primarily saying is that Jack in the Fortune Cup arc is depicted as a highly egocentric person, and that his plotline with Carly in the Dark Signers arc is a) inconsistent with that previous characterization and b) not as interesting as a plotline in which his egocentrism could continue to serve as foil to Yusei’s worldview.

I think a lot of that makes sense. I do think Jack was driven by his ego, and I do think that it might’ve been more interesting if his self-driven worldview were able to be given as much validity as Yusei’s idealistic, others-driven worldview, which is ultimately what is privileged. I can also see how Jack being primarily motivated by saving Carly during the latter half of the DS arc may be incongruous with his egocentrism just 20 or so episodes before.

At the same time, though, I think there are a lot of directions 5D’s could have gone which have the potential to be more interesting than the one it actually went, so rather than wondering about what could have been, it would be more worthwhile to examine Jack/Carly’s plotline and see whether or not it is inconsistent with Jack’s previous characterization, and also to see if it has any merit of its own as far as it develops Jack’s character. 

Particularly, I am going to argue that a) although perhaps not as well executed as it could be, it made sense for Jack’s character to need to change after the Fortune Cup arc, and the way it changes is not incongruous with his previous characterization. Indeed, Jack’s character development in the Dark Signers arc centers around him reconceptualizing what being a King is.

Also, b) Jack and Carly’s relationship ultimately deals with and says interesting things about the idea of being driven by oneself that, rather than totally undermining the mentality that initially drove Jack to abandon his friends to become King, gives it some nuance.

Point A: It made sense for Jack’s character to need to change after the Fortune Cup arc, and the way it changes is not incongruous with his previous characterization. Indeed, Jack’s character development in the Dark Signers arc centers around him reconceptualizing what being a King is.

So throughout the course of one arc, Jack goes from being a man who is motivated primarily by himself and his desires (to the point of being willing to put down others for them), to a man whose main reason for action is someone else’s well being. It does seem like a stark change. Rewatching the Jack/Carly duel, the sheer amount of concern for Carly that Jack shows is pretty astounding.

But I think that it’s understandable for there to need to be a change. For one, the particular reason why Jack lost to Yusei in episode 26 in the first place is because he tried to win using the same strategy as before--he wanted to redeem himself for his first near loss. Clearly there is a need for a change: Jack loses not once but twice to Yusei in the same season, and Yusei also cites Jack’s pride as a King as his reason for his loss.

The drama between Yusei and Jack during the Fortune Cup arc is driven by Jack losing to Yusei and needing to duel and beat him again to redeem himself and prove he’s the better duelist--that he truly deserves the title of King. In episode 6, when Jack realizes he would have lost to Yusei, it’s clear that he’s not driven by how his fans perceive him. While his fans have no idea that he lost, he’s nonetheless still bothered because he, the King, knows. In episode 8, Jack feels like he’s not the King anymore, even though Mikage says he still seems like one. The cheers of his fans sound hollow because he knows he doesn’t deserve them.

Something I find interesting is Jack’s awareness of his counterfeit Kingship revealed through his calling himself a clown. After his initial defeat, Jack asks Mikage if he’s a clown in episode 8, in episode 25 he asks Godwin to release Rally and co as “reward for a clown,” and in episode 31, he also uses the language of a clown when he talks to Carly: “Back then, I gave up everything, and what I gained from it was the path to being a King who continually acts like a clown as he lies about his true identity.”

Because of this, the way I see Jack’s character is that his identity as the King was made counterfeit at almost the very beginning of the series (episode 5). He then spends the entire rest of the Fortune Cup arc trying to regain his original conception of his King identity, only to ultimately fail. From Jack’s own language, I think we’re meant to see this as Jack’s foolishness. While it may have seemed fine for two years, the King identity that he had held onto no longer worked for him. When confronted by someone from his past, his King identity starts to crumble--first he’s defeated not once but twice, then it’s revealed he’s actually from Satellite, etc. In episode 25, he even shows awareness that Godwin baited him with the idea of being a duel king; when Godwin asks if that isn’t what he wanted, Jack says that he wanted to rule as “the King [he] truly desired to be.” Indeed, it’s revealed that he wasn’t even valued by Godwin for himself, but rather as a means of getting to Yusei. It makes sense, then, that his development after his defeat should center around letting go of his original conception of his King identity and discovering something more true.

All of these realizations are those that Jack comes to more or less on his own; Carly even says that Jack already “get[s] the picture.” So I do think it is congruous with Jack’s Fortune Cup characterization for him to need to find a new way of being King in the Dark Signers arc. Hence the need to start over, as Carly suggests. (And which is revisited in episode 37 when Jack talks to Mikage again, episode 59 when Carly does her fortune telling stuff, etc.)

I think it’s because Carly gives him hope after he loses his King identity that she makes such a mark on him and effectively becomes his main motivation in the DS arc. And I mean, Jack in the DS arc is still pretty aloof and pushes others away—he makes it clear to Yusei that he “hasn’t become anyone’s friend” in episode 45, and he really doesn’t rely on anyone else even as he angsts over Carly. No one even knows the identity of the Dark Signer he’s fighting. While Yusei still draws on his friends for strength, we see Jack continue his independent streak. Heck, he even pushes Carly away! (And she honestly probably would have been better off and not have gotten killed if she had just stuck with him, but that’s for another AU...)

An aside - I sometimes read people saying that they think Mikage could have filled the same role Carly did. Maybe, if written differently, she could have. But I think it’s notable that when Jack is angsting about having lost his sense of being a King in episode 8, Mikage is not really able to understand or speak to him in a way that actually meets him where he is. She clearly cares about him, but I think she’s not able to get past the image of the King that she and his fans project on him. I think Carly is able to empathize with his pain more. When Jack calls himself foolish and a clown, Carly doesn’t try to convince him he’s wrong--instead, she says something more like, “Sure, that’s true--but that doesn’t have to still be who you are.”

Point B: Jack and Carly’s relationship ultimately deals with and says interesting things about the idea of being driven by oneself that, rather than totally undermining the mentality that initially drove Jack to abandon his friends to become King, gives it some nuance.

I would argue that this is because Carly’s own character, as well as their relationship in general, deals a lot with themes of selfishness. While not presented as starkly as Jack’s self-drive is, it is obvious that Carly is someone who is self-driven and desires to achieve her goals, not completely unlike Jack. Her first appearance has her going past a swath of reporters to talk to Godwin, and her subsequent interaction with her boss shows that her job is precarious and that the scoops she seeks after are at least in part to keep her job. Like Jack, she came from a lower class background (although “the streets” rather than Satellite), and she doesn’t seem to have any close ties (Angela the reporter might count, but that’s a stretch). And when she goes to talk with Yusei and Dick Pitt after their duel, her concern is not with their wellbeing but about getting information from them for a scoop. “Straight ahead is the only way for me,” is something she repeats, showing that she knows where she wants to go and is determined to get there.

Indeed, Carly would not have met Jack at all if she had not snuck into the hospital trying to learn if he was truly from Satellite. She is someone who is driven primarily by herself, albeit more innocuously than Jack is. This also underlies why she was willing to “blackmail” Jack into going to the amusement park with her. She needs a scoop and is ready to do what it takes to get it.

But, we see how in the same episode, she starts thinking less of herself and more about another--Jack. She thinks, “He’s really hurting inside. And here am I trying to write an article about it. Am I a bad person for that?” She considers what he is going through, rather than just her own needs. When she defends Jack to Angela, she is driven not by her desire to keep Angela from getting her scoop, but a genuine care for Jack. And when she figures out he’s going to the tower to look at Satellite, it’s only by inhabiting his point of view and thinking about what he may want. Yet the question she asks herself--whether or not it’s bad to be writing a scoop about him (after all, it is her job, as Angela points out)--is an important one for her.

As self-driven as Carly is, she realizes she has limits--that is, she would not go as far as to hurt another person to achieve her own goals. Jack, on the other hand, has already done that, putting Rally in peril and taking Yusei’s card in order to get to Neo Domino City and become King.

We see again how Carly can be self-driven when she tries to get closer to Jack after he leaves, and when it is ultimately an illusion of happiness with Jack that causes her to fall back into her Dark Signer persona. Yet even then, it is clear that she does not want to hurt anyone, and Jack repeatedly reiterates this.

This culminates in the conversation she has with Jack before she dies: Carly: I loved cheering people on who tried their hardest like you, Jack. Despite that, because I tried to wish for such selfish happiness, I must’ve been wrong for doing so, huh? Jack: That’s nonsense! Everyone has the right to wish for happiness. If you’re saying that’s a crime, then I’m just as guilty!

Carly says herself that she was motivated by her own desires. Jack, in affirming her desire to obtain happiness, also affirms the ambition that drove him to abandon his friends. However, we see in how Carly is reluctant to hurt others that while it is not bad to want to pursue one’s goals and happiness, it is important to consider the impact on other people. It wasn’t bad for Carly to want to be with Jack, but it would obviously be bad for that to necessitate the deaths of many; it’s not bad for her to want to write a successful story, but it’s bad for her to take advantage of duelists’ like Jack’s pain to tell that story. This allows us to view the Jack in the FC arc in a new light: his desire to escape Satellite and become a King wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t right of him to harm others in order to get there.

Ultimately, Jack and Carly’s relationship is about two people learning how to pursue their happiness and also learning to put each other’s happiness first.

[phynali]

more spn discussions, just skip this post y’all

 @queerbluebird​ thanks so much for engaging with my post/reply! i really enjoyed reading your response and i have a long reply here.

i’m responding to your post/reply here rather than reblogging it because honestly that thread is - so long. so very long. 

so first - 

i agree there is a difference between entitlement and what i would call, not promise, but instead “narrative follow-through”. A story that completely lacks narrative follow-through does end up feeling disappointing, or frustrating, or rage-inducing, depending on what’s happened. to me there’s a fundamental difference between critiquing a story based on follow-through and bad storytelling (which your post aims to do), versus say, creating hashtag campaigns about a character being silenced because and spreading conspiracy theories about a bad dub (among other things honestly).

and also - queerbaiting totally sucks, we definitely do agree on that.

where we disagree, i think are these two core points:

i do not see the narrative build-up that demands a follow-through. i do not see supernatural as having built up to the story that many destiel shippers seem to think was there, and no one has ever been able to point out to me any actual textual reasons that do craft that narrative build-up  

i fundamentally do not believe that destiel was ever a queerbait. queerbait involves active intent on the part of creators to tease a ship or queer representation in order to draw in $ from queer audiences without ever making it canon, so as not to alienate straight audiences. so, refering to point 1., i do not see the canon text as having laid the groundwork for a queerbait and those romantic tropes, at least not at any point in the past 7 years. and beyond the canon, the writers and producers and jensen ackles all indicated dean was straight, and that they were not writing a romance. if anyone queerbaited the fans, it was misha collins who kept teasing the possibility, and personally i would argue that was irresponsible of him. but that’s a different discussion altogether and tends to piss people off when it’s framed as such, because misha means a lot to them and it hurts to see the man who validated their feelings get criticized for the manner in which he validated them. so i’m gonna leave that aside.

beyond that, I want to engage with some of your specific quotes:

Supernatural loves to say “wait for it.” And I don’t think it’s entitled to feel betrayed if an author uses their story to say “wait for it” in order to convince you to stick with their story and then delivers the opposite after you do.

May i ask, where was the “wait for it” with destiel? this ties in directly to the queerbaiting. i indicated in my post/reply that while i see it from cas, there’s been little to no hint of any reciprocation of feelings from dean, and if anything the past 7 or so years have driven the point home that it isn’t happening. i personally am not able to see the “Wait for it” and that was the point of my question. without the “Wait for it”, i also can’t see the queerbait. 

I asked for specifics and while i totally get not having the spoons, you provided a few:

(off the top of my head for Dean though, the mixtape, his response to Cas’ death at the end of 12, subsequent grief arc, and reaction to Cas’ return in the front half of 13 rank highly. His reaction to Lucifer’s prank call in 15x19 might rate, but maybe just because it’s so recent.)

not trying to be unkind here, but i quite genuinely don’t see any of these examples as framing cas and dean in a romantic light, or as hinting at a “what if”. the mixtape is like.... okay, maybe. i had read that as being symbolic of something else, but i can see wanting to read it from a shipping lens. (i don’t however think i’d read it as baiting or “what if” - it was quite textually not framed that way. shipping, 100%, but canon build-up, not for me).

for the other examples -- grieving for someone you consider family? and being happy when they come back? that’s not shippy to me. i mean - contrast the grief he showed over cas’s death compared to his grief over, say, mary? or, less extreme, charlie? and nothing compared to how off the rails he goes when sam is dead or he thinks sam is. so i -- i just can’t see those as creating a narrative that demands a follow-through. and when your friend who is dead calls your phone? of course you hop to the door - i don’t know what is romantic about that. sam would’ve hopped just as quick if “cass” had called his phone instead.

and look - i see what is fun to ship about all that. if i shipped it, i’d be happily collecting these moments with a smile and grinning to myself about how cute they are and much they mean. but shipping it vs. it being romantically framed in the canon are two fundamentally different things. shipping doesn’t imply narrative buy-in or deliberation from the creator.

moving on, you also spoke at length about 15x18:

15x18 made the sort of statement that drew back even people who did exactly what OP said they should do, turning off the TV years ago. It wasn’t a quiet “if you’re still watching, keep waiting,” so much as a shouted “hey we’re gonna do this thing, watch this!”

i guess destiel fans vs. those of us who don’t ship it really see this as fundamentally different. because you discuss that moment as one which requires follow-through, and say that if this were heteronormative m/f love declaration, there would be that expectation of follow-through. not necessarily reciprocity, but more - more conversation, more acknowledgment, more something.

(i mean - if there was more, but that more was “hey i love you too but only platonically, sorry man” would that be better?)

but no - i actually just... disagree with your point on that front. i can see why you feel the way you do and i acknowledge that it can be read as the start of a conversation. to me though -- and clearly, now that the finale is out, how the writers saw it -- that was actually the end of a conversation. the end of, like you pointed out, 12 years. a 12-year conversation that ends in a gorgeous declaration of love, and specifically how love isn’t about being together, it’s simply about being - it’s about the fact that you love someone, and that feeling alone is the most beautiful thing in existence.

to me, that declaration can only be written and interpreted as an ending.  a sacrifice, a declaration, and a goodbye. so - while i kind of expected seeing more people in episode 20 and realize that didn’t happen largely due to covid - i’m not disappointed we didn’t see cas, because that culmination of his narrative (and then knowing he was with jack, after, rebuilding the heaven that he rebelled against and finally completing his narrative circle by fixing all the problems with it alongside the good god he sought to find all along) is kind of perfect. 

and i genuinely don’t think if cas was in a female vessel this entire time that that would change. maybe some audience members would feel differently, but i think many of us would see it for the end it was nonetheless. there’s plenty of stories with m/f ships that are one-sided and that character sacrifices themselves for the person they love, so i don’t see why this would be any different (except the bury your gays issue, but that’s a whole other and very real conversation about media tropes).

moving on to the series finale.

As many people have pointed out in praise of 15x20, Sam is the absolute most important thing in Dean’s life, his priority above anything and everything… And yet there, at the actual end of the world, Dean ignores Sam’s call and instead cries over the loss of Castiel. Dean’s loss of Castiel plays in tandem with the loss of literally the whole world. But we’re not to take that as a promise that Castiel means more to this story, or to Dean, than a couple seconds of wistfulness after the dust settles?

I... yeah. i don’t see what this even is arguing. that dean taking a minute to himself to grieve his best friend, who just died in part because dean decided to go hunt down billie (who was literally dying anyway). he’s hurting. there’s nothing about this that’s a promise - it’s an end. it’s grief. it’s the horror of losing someone you care about, and the silence that comes after. it’s fundamentally human in it’s pain. and we, the audience, are invited to grieve with dean.

so I mean - of course cas means more to this story. of course he’s meant more than a few seconds of grief, after 12 years. but just because that’s the last time we see him on screen doesn’t mean we don’t value his story, and celebrate how it too came full circle.

You mention cas as a sort of avatar for a different potential ending for the brothers, and highlight him representing:

An ending where higher powers stop yanking them around and they get to actually live in the life they’ve built for themselves.

So while i never considered cas an avatar for that, i do think we all wanted the brothers to have their freedom. “finally free.” so we can agree on wanting that end. but we disagree on whether it was delivered, i guess? because i feel it was.

you also talk about what you and many other fans conceivably wanted a happier ending to look like. can i -- i’m going to be totally honest. i have not seen a single person who’s critiquing the end saying “i just wanted sam and dean to grow old hunting together with their dog until they retire together and die of old age.”

would that be satisfying to those who are mad about the end? i personally don’t think so, but maybe my opinion is being coloured by the most vitriolic fans i’ve seen. if sam and dean got to have the life they wanted free of chuck, and dean didn’t die, and they kept going (or retired and opened a bar together!). maybe sam still had a kid, but again because romance wasn’t the point, the wife wasn’t important and they left her blurry still so we could interpret ourselves if she was a wife or a co-parent or a surrogate or what. maybe dean has a kid too, with a similar question-mark-wife. maybe we get a few images of them having a holiday with jodie and the girls. and then getting to heaven together in old age, greeting bobby with a beer, and going for a drive.

would that be an end that wouldn’t cause fandom uproar? i would enjoy it, soft an slightly discordant as it would be to me. i prefer the ending we got, bittersweet and heartbreaking though it was, but i wouldn’t be taking to social media to yell about it if we got a softer epilogue, so to speak.

on the other hand... would that still not be enough, at least not for so many of the angry fans? i’m genuinely unsure. it seems to me that so much of the ire is about destiel itself, even if people are pretending it’s about more and other things than that. not everyone, but like, a big portion of them. which leads me to believe that nothing short of dean and cas at least interpretable as together is what they wanted. if every other single thing about the existing finale was the same except that cas was the one to greet dean instead of bobby, and even with the same basic dialogue, without discussing the confession, but they have a lingering smile, and dean leaves to drive and wait for sam with the promise he’ll see cas later - 

if everything else stayed the same except who greeted dean, i genuinely don’t believe i’d be seeing almost any critique of the finale on my dash. maybe i’m cynical, but that’s where i’m at.

which is part of why i really struggle to believe that people are engaging in good faith when they critique the finale. because i feel like if it offered them either a) everything they’re purportedly asking for but still no cas and zero hint of destiel, vs. b) every other thing they claim to hate stays the same except there’s a wink and nod to destiel - i believe they would take the wink and nod. 

   On to some other things you raised:

But how can you know to walk away from a tragedy if the tragedy says “the end won’t be a tragedy, keep watching” right up until it ends in tragedy?

Oh i Get this. I hate thinking i’m consuming fun media only for it to rip my heart out at the end. i’ve literally - well, i’ve had a very unpleasant and distressing experience of this, actually. so i get it. also the opposite: i sometimes feel disappointed when i’m consuming media that is gripping and intense and painful, but then the end is too easy, too soft and happy?

BUT - supernatural never pretended it would have a happy end? the end was so. much. happier. than i ever expected. the Swan Song end was going to have Sam in hell being tortured by lucifer for eternity. according to something i read which i am fundamentally too lazy to link because who knows if it would have turned out this way but -- kripke was apparently going to have Dean jump in the cage with him at that end, if the series ended on S5? the ‘horror’ ending. completely devastating sacrifice for mankind (sam), and completely devastating sacrifice for his brother (dean). just -- oof. even if that wasn’t the plan and the series would’ve ended as the episode did - sam was still in the cage and cas was off waging war in heaven and dean was living every day knowing he was alive and his brother was being tortured.

i’m sorry if you thought you were watching a happier show. i know how much that hurts. that doesn’t mean the story was actually that happy though. sometimes, it’s on us as consumers to acknowledge we were misreading the media. i’ve had to do this. it’s hard, it hurts, but it helps you consume things healthier. i’ve had to do this growing recently, and i’m better off for it.

regarding the specific manner of dean’s death - that’s really not what my post was about and i’m not gonna address it here. i’ve talked about it elsewhere and so have others, and @lovetincture‘s original post spelled it out beautifully, in how human it was. i have feelings on how and why i loved dean’s death, and why it was the absolute opposite of what Chuck’s ending was and what he wanted (no blaze of glory), but i’ll leave those for another time.

They cast aside all the relationships they’ve built. [...] They lost/walked away from the life and home they built in the bunker. Dean got a season 1 death. Sam got a season 1 life.

I feel that there is a very huge difference between regression and progression when it comes to cyclical storytelling. And that difference seems to be missing from the ongoing discussions i’ve seen about this in fandom.

Coming full circle to season 1 does not at all mean that the development is ‘undone’ or that the story has regressed or that anything has been lost or destroyed. It can mean that, if the storyteller doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing, but in this case i don’t (personally) feel it’s a fair critique.

Dean’s death might parallel his s1 not-quite death from Faith, but the s15 result of that death is night and day. Dean is no longer alone. Dean does not go up to a lonely heaven filled with bittersweet memories, where even his canonical soulmate and him have wide gulfs between the memories they fill their shared heaven with. Dean dies a hunter, but he dies a hunter who literally saved earth and changed heaven and gets to spend eternity with his brother, side-by-side and together without all the pain and miscommunication, and he gets to see his family and loved ones too. he died having literally made the world so much better.

even without that though?

his story comes full circle, but dean’s character development isn’t about his death, it’s about the fact that in the first several seasons dean could hardly admit he cared without acting like his teeth were being pulled. he was too afraid of abandonment to ask for someone to be by his side. he was too afraid of rejection to let anyone in. and in the end? he asks sam to stay. he tells him that he loves him. he pours his heart out and says all the things that 15 years ago were stoppered in his throat, words trying and failing to claw their way free but his hurt and fears were too deep.

dean is free.

the point of dean’s story coming full circle to season 1 parallels was specifically to highlight this incredible development, not to undermine it. he is different. he is free. 

god it makes me tear up just thinking about how happy i am for him despite how gutted i was by that scene??

(i could write a similar analysis for sam, about how he left for stanford to escape his life and how his finale life montage bits were the opposite of that, but honestly this post is long enough already).

Destiel is loosely a part of that promise in the sense that Castiel is a part of that promise. The symbol of free will

You make a super interesting argument about Cas being a symbol of free will. I don’t have much to say about it, because I’m gonna mull it over, because I think it’s kinda cool and I’ve never thought about it.

That’s - all i’ve got. thanks again for engaging. i’m happy to continue the convo if you have questions or want to reblog/reply 

(though my followers might hate me omg, i’ve been spamming long spn meta posts for weeks now, it’s just been so confronting to see the ongoing fan reaction on twitter and how divided it is...)

[aer-in-wanderland]

구미호뎐 | Tale of the Nine Tailed - Ji Ah’s Fate & the Korean Mythology Surrounding It (requested by @kestrel-of-herran)

Ask: One of the most fascinating things for me is the prophecy the fortune teller told Ji Ah when she gave him the fox bead. I feel like that's important foreshadowing for the drama's ending. How would you translate and interpret that?

Note: words/terms left in Korean require context and will be discussed below.

EP06 The Four Pillars of Fate - Ji Ah Trades the Fox Bead

Ji Ah: I’ll repay this eunhye no matter what, please? 

Fortune Teller: Okay, okay! You were a princess in your past life, do you think you’re a princess now? You think if you whine enough you can have anything. Ei! Your hand. Give me thine hand. (Ji Ah extends her right hand). Left hand!

Ji Ah: (changing hands) Left hand. 

Fortune Teller: You were born with a very special saju weren’t you! Water and fire vie on par, earth is clouded, but metal will subdue it, so though darkness should surround you (literally: all four directions, heaven, and earth), a moon rises in your sky. 

Ji Ah: I’m not sure what you mean...?

Fortune Teller: You have the fox bead! For that is your moon.

Ji Ah: Excuse me?

Fortune Teller: Give to me the fox bead. Even without a moon, your saju is overflowing enough. Therefore...!

Ji Ah: I’ll give it to you! I don’t believe in such things as palja. 

Fortune Teller: The deal...has been accepted. 

Ji Ah: Pardon? Already?

Fortune Teller: Your palm lines. Your palm lines have changed. 

(Note: I translated this working from the raw, so I haven’t seen the subs to be able to comment on them). 

Eunhye (은혜)

Commonly translated as a ‘favor’ or ‘debt,’ ‘eunhye’ is distinct from both of these both linguistically and conceptually. When Yeon says that foxes are obligated to repay ‘debts,’ he’s actually talking about eunhye. ‘Debt’ is another word entirely (빚) and it does appear occasionally. The two are distinct. The glowing ring bonds formed between Yeon and Ah Eum, and Rang and Sajang are both manifestations of eunhye. 

One Korean folktale in which eunhye features famously is the tale of the Grateful Magpies (은혜갚은 까치, literally: ‘the magpies who repaid their eunhye’). Shin Joo refers to this in EP02 when Yeon tells him about returning Ji Ah’s eyesight to her even after she tranquilized him:

Shin Joo: And you’re saying you just let her go? And returned her sight, too? 

Yeon: Since rules are rules.

Shin Joo: It’s not as if we’re magpies meticulously repaying our eunhye! Geez, how long do we have to be bound by that sort of premodern contractual relationship?

Eunhye is difficult to translate but can be approximated as ‘help or favor (as in ‘to favor someone’) given willingly.’ In my mind, rather than a debt which is a negative concept, eunhye is more of a positive concept. There’s a voluntary, good faith/good will element to it. So you’re ‘indebted’ as the result of a good deed done for you. Except it’s not so voluntary if you’re a gumiho, apparently. 

In contrast, when Yeon tells Eodukshini, ‘I’ll repay this debt shortly,’ in EP08 (could also be translated sarcastically as ‘I’ll return the favor shortly’), he uses the actual word for debt (빚) - no good will to be had here on either side. 

Saju Palja (사주팔자）

Literally ‘four pillars eight characters’ (四柱八字), commonly translated as the ‘four pillars of destiny/fate.’ The concept comes from the Chinese astrological concept that a person’s destiny or fate can be divined by the two sexagenary cycle characters assigned to their birth year, month, day, and hour. For more on that, I’ll refer you to Wikipedia. ;) 

In EP02, when Yeon asks Taluipa to look into whether Ji Ah’s parents are alive or dead, he has Ji Ah text him their saju (birth dates and times). 

I’m not sure how palmistry fits in with the concept, and am no expert in astrology, western or eastern, so I can’t offer any interpretation of the fortune teller’s prophecy, but if anyone wants to try looking into it I’d be intrigued to hear what you find. Apparently, the writer spent 2.5 years on the script, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there’s actual meaning behind it. 

The Fox Bead (여우 구슬)

Fox beads are a common earmark of gumiho lore in both Korea and Japan (and probably China, too, but I don’t know enough Chinese to speak to that). In most tellings I’ve encountered, a fox can’t live without their bead, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for Yeon. I was also intrigued by the following exchange he has with the Magistrate in EP06:

Yeon: That’s the Mirror of the Moon. Do you mean to harm (literally: catch) a human with one of the four great mountain gods’ four great treasures meant to protect all creation? 

Magistrate: And so, did your fox bead protect all of creation? Or did it protect one person?

To my thinking, this implies that Yeon’s fox bead is being attributed to his status as a mountain god as much as it is to his being a fox. None of our other foxes seem to have one, but none of them are gumiho (gu = nine, ie. the number of tails), much less cheonho (heavenly foxes) like Yeon. 

I’m actually a little unclear on this front as well. According to the excerpt from the Hyeonjoong’gi (玄中記) at the start of the first episode, foxes that live to be a hundred can take human form and foxes that live to be a thousand become cheonho. Shin Joo is obviously at least 600 years old but he doesn’t appear to be anywhere near Yeon’s caliber (or even Rang’s who is half human), something he says himself, and in the spin-off he only had one tail. Yoo Ri is younger still. It’s unclear to me whether they will ‘level up' if they live long enough, or if they will never be as powerful as Yeon, regardless of how long they live. I get the sense it’s the latter. Both Yeon and Shin Joo have said that Yeon was of a different caliber from the very beginning (in EP02 and EP03, respectively). 

Finally, we haven’t been told much about the fox bead’s powers other than emitting an aura only Yeon can see (sometimes) and suppressing Imoogi inside of Ji Ah. I’m hoping we see it again before the series wraps, but not convinced they’ll have time to recover it given everything else that needs to happen.

On another note, based on the preview for EP15, it appears that the Magistrate’s Mirror of the Moon will be coming back into play. My guess is that Imoogi is going to steal it from the Magistrate and use it on Taluipa. She was shown turned to stone in the background while Yeon and Terry-Imoogi fight. That’s originally her power, so I think Imoogi may use the mirror against her similarly to how the Magistrate ‘absorbed’ the sword Yeon sent flying at him and re-directed it at Ji Ah. 

The Jeo Seung Shi Wang (저승 시왕)

The Ten Kings of the Afterlife (jeo-seung-shi-wang) [저승 시왕], as they’re known in the drama, are more commonly called the Ten Kings of the Underworld (myeong-bu-shi-wang) [명부 시왕・冥府十王]. In the subs they appear as the Afterlife Judges, which is accurate in that this is one of the key roles that they perform. As we're told in EP13, the fortune teller is actually one of them. 

Yeon: What’s the word? That fortune teller, did you find out about him?

Snail Bride: I’ve been asking around via our patrons. 

Yeon: He didn’t seem to be just another low-level native (Korean) god. What’s the geezer’s deal?

Snail Bride: This seems like just a baseless rumour, but there was talk that one of the Ten Kings of the Afterlife who rule over hell leaves his position without notice at odd times.

Yeon: Heh...Interesting. In any case, relay any news you hear about that geezer to me as soon as you hear it. 

While the Snail Bride seems to doubt the validity of the rumour, Yeon appears confident it’s true. He later relays this to Team Fox at their strategy meeting:

Yeon: Do you remember the fortune teller we met at the Korean Folk Village?

Ji Ah: Of course I remember! (Shooting Rang a dirty look) Because of someone [your] fox bead was stolen from us.

Rang: I heard rumour he’s a major big shot. Is it true?

Yeon: He’s one of the Ten Kings of Hell. 

Rang: What?!

Yeon: They say he’s also in possession of the Uiryeong’geom (geom = sword). 

Rang: No way~

Jae Hwan: What’s the Uiryeong’geom?

Shin Joo: It’s a sword that cuts evil (literally: sins). 

Jae Hwan: Cuts...evil, you said?

Shin Joo: It’s sword they say was made in ancient days by King Yeomra himself from a branch he broke off of the Uiryeongsu (su = tree) that weighs sins. But, didn’t that disappear from the world several thousand years ago? 

Yeon: (Shaking his head) Uh-uh. The Snail Bride just picked it up.

As you may recall, the Ten Kings are the ones who put a celestial hit on Rang which led Yeon to track him down and pretend to kill him (thanks for the angst), and they’re the ones who passed judgement on Yeon after he killed the mudang (shamanness) and sentenced him to time in the Snow Mountain Prison. 

It appears that there was some confusion going around that the fortune teller is King Yeomra. Given the above dialogue, I can see where people may have understood his possession of the sword to indicate that, and, in truth, we don’t know which of the Ten Kings he is. That being said, I think if King Yeomra was frequently vacating his post without notice, someone would have said something. I also think Yeomra is a big enough name that if it were him they would’ve just come out and said so. Yeomra is also Taluipa’s brother so she, at least, would know. My assumption was that he was one of the other, less well known kings. 

To conclude, this has all been a long way of saying that I have no idea what Ji Ah’s palja will mean for her fate. What I can provide is a little context. I’m not familiar with the sword, and it doesn’t turn up when I google it, so I suspect it was invented for the purpose of the show. Whether it remains a red herring until the end or shows up in the final hour remains to be seen. 

[redantsunderneath]

On Analysis - Introduction (the “why” part)

“He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.” ― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

Maybe some broader personal context would help understating why in god’s name I write shit about how Age of Ultron is a remake of Eraserhead and Marvel crossovers are inherently about self hating creatives going to war with editorial. Like everyone else, I love a well told story but want to be surprised - seeing Star Wars is still the single biggest event in my life in supercharging my interest in narrative art.  But from early on, I had this left brain/right brain conflict going on. I was super interested in details and loved anything that required getting all the pieces to understand (that one episode of Speed Racer where they explain all the buttons I only saw once but I must have excitedly told everyone in the schoolyard about it 2 or 3 times) and I’ve always been down for the even the shittiest world-building that makes you dig for details (maybe this why Star Wars’ gesturing at a larger canvas lit my fuse so hard and how my introduction to Marvel comics became the second stage rocket booster 3 years later - see my retropseudonostalgia post). This also is probably common, especially here.

But it’s the right brain impulse became an overriding unconscious attractor. I saw The Man with the X-Ray eyes very young and had some serious nightmares, but mostly remember actually wanting to recapture that dread.  This became a pattern.  Anything that unsettled me or made me feel weird, my brain interpreted as a good experience. 1977 was a real flashpoint for me: Star Wars, sure, and 8 is the right age for Thanatos to start haunting you, but I also got super fucking sucked in to the Prisoner and imprinted on BBC’s Dracula (especially the baby eating scene where I remembered the brides actually eating the baby on camera until the clip showed up on YouTube and, turns out, it was just a cut to a flame effect and the baby eating was all in my and Q anon’s head). The thing that unites these later two is a the feeling of Unheimliche, or something - a sort of out of body experience due to transgressive touching of something in the reptile brain, recognizable but hard to formulate in language.  

Again, not saying this is an unusual experience, but I sought after this diencephalonic impact aggressively and spent years chasing this particular dragon before I figured out what I was doing. Rank and file horror didn’t cut it because I wanted not only to feel it but to understand what it was telling me and doing to me, to wrestle with it, so needed to something resonant to be there. Kubrick’s one neat trick was having an entirely rational approach to relentlessly assembling this kind of ineffable experience… depth of meaning by design.  I think Christopher Nolan is only popular because we have so few architect directors today so we’ll take a B- stab at it (though the thematic waters he sails on are a bit shallow). This is what I was doing receptively, wanting to cognitively reverse engineer the texts that moved me and autopsy my reaction .  There were elements the things that got to me had in common - there was an existential abjection that felt like a kind of rapture, a transgressive daring in showing me something I shouldn’t see, a experience of Mark Fisher’s version of the weird and/or the eerie, but most of all a feeling that there was a story underneath there being told in an abstract language that I innately understood but my conscious mind couldn’t quite get to.

On the other side of my brain, I was sparring with narrative structure and was captivated by the way periodical narrative produced this fuzziness and that trashy or disreputable forms were better at doing some really complex things. After a late 70s of consuming everything I could, like sitcoms no-one remembers, 1930s and 40s franchise B movies, Godzilla, ABC hourlongs (it was the time that Fantasy Island and the Bionic Woman strode the airwaves), etc - just absolute garbage - Comics hit me in 1980 and hijacked my brain for half a decade.  This mostly satisfied that architectural impulse, though, and the need for the uncanny reasserted itself as a shifting obsession to pop/rock music, “hard” books, and catholic moviegoing (and I guess some of that right brain stuff is intrinsically libidinous and the pubertal timing seems right).  

My childhood book consumption till 77 was all atlases, history, and encyclopedias.  77 to 83 it was SF/Fantasy.  The one work of fiction I strongly remember as a small child was There’s a Monster at the End of this Book which is a work of absolute intersubjective terror that implicates the crap out you - I never bought the ending and saw it as a necessary contrivance to make it OK for kids but I repeatedly endangered Grover anyway, enjoying the transporting dread, and learned meta in Kindergarten as a bonus! But in 1984 (during the Sarajevo Olympics, that’s etched in my brain) I read Moby Dick, which was my first formative struggle with understanding subliminal story.  I was already in love with symbolism and conversant with nuts and bolts MFA program bullshit, as any ironically pretentious HS student would be, but reading that and writing about it and other “tough” books (especially the next year in Junior English where I learned to write, full stop) taught me I could think about this stuff and hold these abstractions in my head long enough to see what was happening under the waterline.

Movies really dominated the late 80s, though, and I became obsessed with everything from the Godfather to Die Hard, but I was only just peaking under the hood, until the left brain brought me back to TV and and thinking about narrative structure.  Twin peaks (and Wild at Heart) made me a real Lynch fan and I sensed what I sought was in that direction, but it wasn’t until I watched the whole show and movie in one weekend in 1997 that I had my conversion experience. Moby Dick opened the door a bit, but that weekend kicked it in.  My first real resource for understanding (other than HS English, a couple of hits of acid, and dorm room bull sessions with sort of smart people) was alt.tv.twin-peaks where there were many amateur scholars trying to understand the red room and above the convenience store scenes, complete with ascii maps.  

The final inciting event was Inland Empire.  The thing about David Lynch that is so perfect for my hobbyhorses is that he works within a scene entirely intuitively, connecting to really primordial stuff, and puts everything together by “painting” with feelings instead of paint, never thinking about it, just knowing when it’s right. But he usually works with a writer and editor who helps shape everything into something at least fitfully comprehensible for someone wanting to follow the surface story. You get the general idea and can meditate on the areas that are clearly not “real” in some sense and require either aesthetic surrender or a lot of thought and one hell of an interpretive toolkit - you can see the frame even if you don’t understand every bit of the picture.  Inland Empire, which he made with no other behind the camera people, is pretty much all the mind-blowing bits with very little skeleton, an abstract painting with no frame. This forces you, if you want to understand in any way beyond just enjoying the moments viscerally, to effort like hell.  The project of this for me, the reason I started this Tumblr, was using the internet for procuring and learning to use interpretive tools and, in so doing, writing my way to constructing an understanding of this one movie.  As a result, my approach to all narrative art was changed.  I figure it is time to unpack this into a framework and try to recall the specific things that helped me get here.