Not an essay-length post like the last couple of times, my late S1 rewatch thoughts from 1x09-1x10 are gonna be way more scattered. I’m sorry, three weeks of not posting rewatch thoughts have done this to me.

Judging from TK and Owen’s convo, this must be indicative of the “equals” dynamic they have going on when they’re off the job or don’t feel the authoritative need. And it says something about TK when even though he’s really going through a full-on PTS existential crisis he not only doesn’t blame a little boy for acting out of fear, he’s pretty chill about Zoe and keeping in contact with her even when god knows how many times he went through the emotionally mountainous peaks and valleys that made up his dad’s love life and 2 failed marriages. (Tbf, timing of meeting your parent’s love interest when you’re coming out of the wrong end of a medical emergency— that timing is awkward). Also I’m low key bitter that we didn’t get a scene of Carlos visiting conscious TK during the rest of the hospital stay or his at-home recuperation. That was quite a lot that happened offscreen. But, all the same, I’m glad TK decided to take a chance and renounce his semi-renouncement of his relationship with Carlos. It’s beautiful.

Having watched Overly Sarcastic Productions’ thoughts on gender-reveal parties (look up the name on YT, then for a video game livestream of Journey), that family is gonna have their hands full with their now 4 sons.

Also late shoutout to the 911 Lone Star Roundup podcast! I am a local Hawaiian so felt so seen when they brought up kalua pork in their 1x02 discussion (btw, kalua pork is very similar to Texan barbacoa but they wrap the seasoned pig/ fish/ chicken in leaves before cooking). Now veering back to 1x09… I feel like the father and son (“Keithan” has very similar hybrid vibes to “Renesmee”, huh) might view the word “spelunking” cold comfort after that experience in… the… the Birth Canal??? (HOW DID I NEVER REALIZE THE INNUENDO?! God, the comments section is bringing out a louder side in me)

The Blake family’s mystery arc, I thought, was pretty good. There could’ve been more to be shown, like most things on the show (like, did the sisters catch a ride to the hospital after Iris saved Michelle? Walk? Wait it out? There was a district-to-citywide electronic shutdown, that doesn’t bode well for unstable mental health) but otherwise? It was good for what we got to see, I think. Low key fight me. Iris bringing up Carlos keeping Michelle out of trouble? Admittedly it is a bit of a stretch to say that it was foreshadowed for season 4, but it was nice to hear him in her thoughts. And the parallels with TK’s past with addiction were subtle, but there in a few more ways than with Owen and Michelle’s talk.

Thinking on the astronaut call, there’s one more late 911 Lone Star Roundup shoutout I wanna make, plus one more retrospective parallel. If the 126 had had TK on the call, or… if TK had heard that call? Yeah. That would hurt him hard. And with what happens to him and his mom two seasons later (in flashbacks to 2017, but still)? … a moment of silence. And I JUST came up with it off the top of my head today.

As for my timeline measurements, I admit defeat now.

But I will pick it back up and try assembling everything again. Not yet, but soon. Just… look. I get that suspension of disbelief in narrative timelines exists for a reason, but please. Some help from a stable continuity would be more than welcomed. I’m not-so-surreptitiously peering at @thisbuildingwithfeelings.

Hey, first of all your feelings are completely valid. I didn’t necessarily feel the same way about the finale, but you’re completely justified in your experience. I did want to say that I enjoyed the wedding a lot more when I did a rewatch of just the wedding. Idk if you’re interested in doing that, but it helped me focus in on the happiness of that moment. Much love

Thank you anon. I actually rewatched 4.17 and 4.18 tonight after many lovely people recommended doing it. You're right... I enjoyed the wedding a lot more. I even shed a tear and rewinded the vows. It still isn't my ideal situation by any means and I could pick apart a lot of things that continue to frustrate me but I can appreciate the Tarlos scenes we did get.

Much love right back to you!

9-1-1: Lone Star rant (and very brief 9-1-1 mention)

Am I also the only one who feels annoyed that TK has pretty much never been held accountable for any of his actions? It’s kinda like Buck even though Bobby HAS took him to task a few times when Buck deserved it. Owen really hasn’t where TK is concerned. Neither has Tommy.

I mean, first there’s the boyfriend in the beginning of season one who has never been on screen as far as I’m aware and is nothing more than a name really but now has this whole completely fandomized backstory where he’s a complete controlling dick and was even abusive just because his rejection of TK’s marriage proposal caused him to overdose. But all I can tell is that he rejected the proposal and he IS allowed to do that. 

Second is TK regularly ignoring direct orders when he was still a firefighter yet none of his superiors ever took him to task for doing so, and I guess Owen gives him a LOT of slack because he’s his kid. Judd really couldn’t do anything because Owen would probably and very likely override him anyway.

Third is TK’s incredibly short temper and his tendency to take it out on friends and family. Tarlos is adorable really but I went through a phase and still kinda feel that way where I believed that Carlos deserved BETTER. Especially when he went to tell TK about Owen getting arrested, had TK start trying to physically assault him as a response even though Carlos was not to blame which forced Carlos to restrain him only for him to promptly be “othered” and kicked out of the firehouse by Judd who then, along with the others, sucked up to TK instead. Don’t even get me started on the brief split in the beginning of Season 3. I can see how the cause affected both of them really but when TK pointedly stared Carlos down upon running into him out on the job, while Carlos couldn’t even meet his eyes had me leaning more toward his side. 

I do fault Carlos though for accepting TK’s marriage proposal even though he’s apparently married to Iris Blake? Who won’t divorce him of course. Like what? Who the heck thought up that storyline?! I haven’t kept up with this one though, can someone clear it up for me?

I don’t know, I’m just tired of both Eddie and Carlos getting the short end of the stick repeatedly where their respective relationships with the woobies are concerned hence this rant(and TK’s apparent privilege where the writers and fandom are concerned). TK screws up, it’s Carlos’s fault according to the fandom. TK lashes out and basically tries to assault Carlos? That’s Carlos’s fault too. TK doesn’t know how to use his words and expects Carlos to read his mind(season 3 fight), shame on Carlos for not being a telepath! 🙄

And in 9-1-1, NOTHING Eddie does where Buck is concerned is EVER good enough. And it’s irritating to read and see. Where the hell was all this blame when Buck caused the lawsuit and got everyone rightfully mad at him? It became everyone’s fault except Buck’s. Bobby has been utterly vilified several times for rightfully calling Buck out when he deserved it. Same with Eddie. Buck was also excused from every freaking direction in the fandom after he lost Christopher in the tsunami and absolutely refused to tell Eddie even though Maddie was telling him he should and the fact that Christopher is Eddie’s child. But Buck had reason! But no one explained WHY it was okay for Buck to do this. I also hate how everyone craps on Eddie for not loving loudly like Buck does and just ignoring the fact that isn’t how he is.  

I'm already seeing the takes from people about how "Carlos stans" wanted Carlos to have development, but since he's no longer Mr. Perfect, we're being unreasonable about season 4 blah blah blah...

Look, if folks want to continue giving their time to Lone Star because it’s worthwhile to them, that's valid and their choice. But please don't try to dismiss and minimize the valid critiques and opinions coming from a subset of the fandom who simply want stronger and sensible storylines not just for their "fav" but also for all the other characters in Lone Star who honestly deserve so much better. 

I love it when my characters are flawed--- in the hands of quality writers. In LS 3x13, Carlos was in the wrong, but he was given the space in that episode to develop and understand where TK was coming from, and he showed this empathy through action. LOVED IT. (Miss you, Season 3!)

We have gotten none of that development or empathy on-screen this season (the tasteless marriage jokes are not it). The pacing and the execution are just all wrong. You cannot repeatedly drop these storyline bombs and expect the audience to do all the heavy lifting with their imaginations.🤷🏽‍♀️

carlos thinks he's so cute with that joke about TK assuming he didn't have a wife either but like, my dude... you are literally just bringing up another prime example of a thing you absolutely should have communicated and discussed already with the man you love and are engaged to! are you adorable with that ridiculous wink? yes! are you absolutely killing me this season? also yes!

why do toxic buddie stans log on to twitter every monday and act brand new about ronen being active. like yeah ofc he would tweet about the brand new promo of him in his show even if it’s monday. he does it every monday. if he started tweeting about buddie they would accuse him of not staying in his own lane. kinda weird how y’all make literally EVERYTHING he does about buddie just bc he’s a queer man playing a queer character in the same franchise

re: feeling like tk should’ve been more angry with Carlos about keeping the secret from him… I feel like part of the reason people felt that way was because of how much of a big deal was made out of Carlos having his big moment of being angry at a comatose TK in the previous season. It felt a little like Carlos was allowed to be angry and TK be in the wrong and kind of told off a bit (even if he wasn’t technically conscious lol) but yet when Carlos was in the wrong by not sharing this big secret TK just expressed nothing except concern for everyone but himself essentially the entire time? While I like the growth and maturity it showed from TK, I think it just kinda felt unbalanced given their previous history. That’s just my thoughts though! Who knows if anyone else feels that way about the two seasons together.

That probably is a factor, and that's fair! Like I said, I don't personally wish TK had been angrier, I think the circumstances are different between those two storylines and I don't think exact one-to-one reciprocity is the same thing as equity in a relationship. If someone isn't angry about something, that is what it is. TK isn't real, right, so it's not like someone was preventing him from being angry. He just wasn't, because that's how it was written and he doesn't exist outside of the writers' imagination. And obviously, giving Carlos a secret wife four seasons in when there was no actual planning is not good writing. I don't dispute that at all. But looking beyond that because that also is what it is, I do like the way they wrote TK's reaction and it feels in character to me. I don't have any ill will toward people who wish his reaction had been written differently, I just don't agree.

Listen preferring lonestar to the og is fine if you want to but don't be the ass who is like "atleast ours has queer rep" like my brother In Christ henren is here and developed and happy and loving and genuinely so???1?1? Also Micheal and David??

And also learn the definition of queerbaiting I BEG

(also ik this isn't most ls fans most of y'all are chill)

alright, i have slept, i have thought, i have done my normal wednesday stuff. so here it is.

firstly, thank you all the anons who sent me messages. i'm really sorry but i can't reply to them all individually, and many of them are along the same themes anyway, so consider this my reply to all of you. there may be some asks i do reply to separately because they're about a slightly different topic, but on the whole i can't.

i'm not mad anymore. i don't have the mental space, time, or energy to be mad about fiction right now. that being sad, i can't pretend to like this plotline and i am extremely uncomfortable with it. tarlos has always been presented as a strong couple who do have their flaws, yes, and they fight and they fuck up - but overall they have a good, healthy relationship

this has blown that to pieces.

tim says this has been in the work since season 1? well, maybe so. but they didn't lay any groundwork - they even cut that scene with carlos talking about iris in 1.05 - and the way they have developed these characters over the past three years does not match up with carlos being secretly married. i mean, we've also been told that carlos knew as soon as he saw tk in the pilot that he was going to marry him. sure, he thought iris was dead at the time, but that was revealed as wrong before tk and carlos properly began their relationship.

i'm actually fine with the marriage. i can even get past carlos staying married. usamerican healthcare sucks, it was the only way he could help her, fine.

what is upsetting me is that tk didn't know.

and you know what? maybe i do see the point about characterisation, because carlos has been proven to be somebody who doesn't fully think his actions through when it comes to helping the people he loves and he will do things that aren't particularly morally correct. but there is a huge difference between buying the loft and hiding a whole marriage from his literal fiancé.

by the start of s4, tk and carlos have presumably been engaged for several weeks, if not several months (and tim tends to work on a real life timeline so it's probably a safe enough bet that it's been seven months). even if you thought you had over a year to sort the issue out, that is a disgusting amount of time to hide an existing marriage from YOUR FIANCÉ and it's deeply unfair, not only to tk but also to iris.

(mostly to tk though)

there's literally no getting around that he deserved to know from the very beginning of their relationship. or at least from when it started to get properly serious. definitely from when they moved in together and by the time they were engaged......far, far overdue.

so, i guess i lied. i am mad. and i'm mad that tk didn't get to be mad, but after everything.... look, it's hard to parallel between this and the breakup or between this and 3.13 because they're all very different situations. so all i'm going to say is that tk has shouldered the blame (from both fandom and show) for basically everything, and carlos has been allowed to be angry and passive aggressive - in 3.13 it was even played off as comedic which honestly boils my blood because i've been in that situation on tk's side and, believe me, it's not fun.

i don't want tk to yell at carlos. i don't want another blow up. all i want is for tk to get to say - what you've done has hurt me deeply and i need some time to think. we will get through this and i know your heart was in (more or less) the right place, but you have fucked up and this does change things between us.

i will keep watching the show; i know i said i might quit should this happen but that was when i was sure it wouldn't. i'm in too deep to quit, we all know that. we'll see how they handle this. but it has certainly changed how i view carlos and the tarlos relationship, because now we have to look back over three full seasons, knowing carlos was lying to tk the entire time

I'm noticing so many new lone star fan blogs here that weren't a part of the fandom before so i just wanna say hiii and welcome to the daily and weekly chaos of watching our local wee woo show ✨

Hoping this doesn't start OG vs LS discourse but it's so annoying that ppl praise LS more just because Tar los is canon and Buddie isn't. I'm seeing it a lot here and it's frustrating because people seem to think that canon always means better and that's not true.

I'm in the camp of Buddie fans who would be so happy if it was canon but ultimately doesn't care if it doesn't happen because I love their story and the rest of the show regardless, and it's annoying that ppl are reducing the OG to that one pairing and acting like its value is less and that all of 911's other well done (and diverse, if that's what LS fans care about) stories don't matter because the popular mlm ship isn't canon.

this is such a weird take that i always see from them. personally, if buck and eddie went canon and it was anything like t arlos, i'd be devastated. i'd rather their relationship stays the way it is without going canon, rather than turning into...whatever LS has going on. aside from the fact that it's incredibly homophobic to act as if two gay ships are interchangeable, there's an entire universe of difference between both pairs. buck and eddie have almost five seasons worth of development and we've seen every bit of it, every conflict, every major scene, every shared trauma. and that's not even taking into account the christopher of it all 🤷🏽‍♀️

and yeah, like you said, the OG has a lot more going on for them than buddie, and even if buddie did go canon, they would in no way be the 'main' dynamic at the focus of the show because the OG actually knows what an ensemble is. also this argument is such an insult to their own preferred show? 😂 like you're basically implying that it has nothing else going on for it other than this one ship, and that is...not a good look. lol.

I don't know if you watch 911 as much as 911ls or how active you are on twitter, but how do you feel about the buddie vs tarlos wars that are a constant thing? I see it start more from the buddie fans than the tarlos fans, because every time we get a new spoiler, picture or anything posted about tarlos at all, they always slide in to start talking trash and about how buddie is the superior ship. It can get quite irritating especially when most of the time they're actually complaining about the LACK of buddie/buddie screen time.

these fandom wars are exactly why i am not on twitter anymore. i have never unprovoked shat on buddie the way those fans do on tarlos. i tend to keep quiet about my opinion on this bc i know a lot of my moots and friends watch both (as do i) but i’m gonna say this very loud and clear as my stance on it.

if you support attacking fans of a different ship just to make yourself feel good or even worse, to make them feel bad, you are discrediting your ship and pushing apprehension towards it.

i have dealt with so much shit from buddie twt stans that any fiber of my being that ever wanted buddie canon is fucking gone. the ppl attacking tarlos to ‘prove that buddie is better’ have pushed me to a point where i don’t get much enjoyment out of og and interacting with the fandom much anymore because even though i know my og moots are wonderful, kind, beautiful people, it just seems overwhelmingly buddie buddie buddie and any mention of them sparks fight or flight in me, and it sucks.

i’ve been watching og since day one. i was quite literally 15 when 1.01 came out, and i fell in love with the format and the stories and looking into these characters lives, and at this point all i see while watching it is how ‘buddie stan’s are going to have a field day with this’. i’ve kind of distanced myself from og bc of this, and i know a lot of people who have distanced themselves from ls because of a few toxic ls creators out there (y’all know who).

comparing ships is not going to get you anywhere when everything in media is subjective. i hate horror, my friends love horror. i’m indifferent towards buddie, my friends love it, and i will support them in that if they don’t fucking attack me for being attached to my boys.

fandom is based off of mutual love of a piece of art or media, and in my opinion, one of the biggest foundations of live should be respect. please just respect one another, regardless if they like tarlos or buddie, because they can have a favorite without discrediting the other.

tldr this fandom discourse is quite literally so exhausting pls put ur energy into something that isn’t bringing others down for their interests.

Honestly I thought the OG final was wayyyyy better than the LS one. Personally killing Gabriel felt gross and needless. Especially considering how they simply carried on. Like Andrea living in the same house Gabriel died in.

When I lost my dad… I couldn’t even enter the house for days… I can’t imagine living in the house that he was MURDERED in.

Also the way they killed Gabriel was so stupid. They legit murdered him. How do make sense of that? How to do go on and marry someone when your life is falling apart.

I found the entire episode ridiculous.

I definitely do still need to watch the OG finale. Especially because I've seen spoilers that good things happen for my favs (Bathena, Henren, Madney).

I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Andrea maybe move next season but also everyone grieves and processes differently so she may want to stay in the home she shared with him and have those memories associated in her day-to-day. I'm not sure how they will approach it.

I just damn well hope this is not another traumatic event that is glossed over. We need to see the effects it will have on Andrea as well as Carlos.

@maxbegone made a really important post about having Gabriel pass in a gentler way (if they felt they had to do it). What they did was legit traumatizing and horrific. Rafa talked a lot too in some post-finale interviews about having Gabriel stolen from them. Like a car accident, health issue, work incident would have provided more closure. Maybe that's also true.

I guess the marriage was a way for Carlos to take back some of his life that the gunman took away? Honestly the wedding will always have that heavy cloud hanging over it for sure.

So TK and Carlos got engaged without discussing their future plans for a family and kids?

Yes, it's a short clip, but the word choice is very specific, with TK asking pointedly, "Since when do you not want to have kids," and Carlos replying, "Since when did I ever say I did." 

So TK proposed marriage with the assumption Carlos wanted a family. That's what is being said here. It’s canon. 

They’re legit surrounded by kids in their close circle/found family every day, and the “writers” are saying it’s canon that it has never come up until now. I—

It keeps coming back to this for me: story execution > story idea. 

Season 4 insists on following through on the delivery of ideas and arcs that, yes, could have been fascinating for character development if introduced much, much sooner. Exploring them now is terrible execution and character derailment (looking at you Carlos “flippantly jokes about the marriage I never mentioned” Reyes). 

No matter how you spin it—at its core—it remains nonsensical. The writing on Lone Star has always been a rollercoaster when it comes to consistency, but Season 4 takes the cake. 

Finally caught up on the finale, still working through all the content from it, so reblogs are incoming!

All negativity and discourse will be tagged as "911 ls wank". There will be a bunch of that, so filter at your own discretion. I will try to space out the posts but there's so much that I'll still tag the new stuff with "911 ls spoilers".

why are twt ogs SO MAD everytime lone star is mildly successful?? like they’re acting like this emmy nomination is a personal insult. 911 is a FRANCHISE your favs get more money/attention when either show succeeds. chill out and let lone star stans celebrate