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Hi! I'm a gay fan of 911 and I have a question about the whole Buddie fandom. As much as I like Buck and Eddie, it's frustrating that a HUGE part of the fandom is pushing for these two characters to get together instead of putting energy into supporting Hen & Carla and Michael & Dave. Not to mention Carlos and TK in Lone Star. Can you explain to me the appeal of wanting these two men together? Wouldn't it be more interesting to see two heterosexual males just be able to bond in a non-toxic fashion? That's something we don't get to see often on television.

Hey! This is MAD long lmao I am so sorry! You caught me on a day I felt like talking! Also this took like a year to answer you lolololol. This does have a few ʻhot takesʻ so please be warned! So like in this essay....

So first I am also apart of the LGBTQIA+ community, so I do understand how it could come across as a fetish or being non supportive of the current canonically LGBTQIA+ characters, however I think a lot of the interest around Buddie and the want for them to be confirmed as a couple is how they are being written. Me personally I knew since s2 e1 Buck and Eddie were written not as rivals but as two people who would eventually become friends, but it wasn’t until the Christmas episode with the elf assuming Buck was Chris’s dad and Eddie’s partner that I was like ‘hold on!’ because I was really hoping Abbey would return and I didn’t see Eddie as a possible Buck live interest because of that. The elf’s comment wasn’t played off like most other shows would (think Dean and Sam arriving anywhere in Supernatural) it made me go back and look at the other episodes to see exactly how Buck and Eddie were being framed/written. And as we have moved into further seasons I think there has been a shift in how Buddie is being written, in s3 it was very much like two people progressing into a deeper friendship then the blood clot/lawsuit gets in the way and they both have to deal with emotions surrounding that, then Buck’s response to Eddie being trapped (we see how is he when Boddy is trapped in a fire WITH A GUNMAN, it’s emotional but not to the point is is with Eddie), even the love interests feel very pushed on us and there’s so little banter between Buddie about their gfs and how they feel about these new beginnings. It feels off, not like a friendship in the slightest, more like two people trying to force something and not wanting to deal with any other feelings. Then when Eddie gets shot and reveals Buck is Chris’s legal Guardian in the event Eddie dies, that’s huge, and he did this after only a year of knowing Buck (I have friends with kids. I’ve known one of them for FIVE years, I’m at their house every week, the kid calls me family. I’m person #10 on the list of ‘who gets my kid if I die’, not #1 lol) It just feels like it’s all building up to something, and people are getting tired of waiting for that something! We’re all emotionally tired from the past two years, and probably from many shows queerbaiting us and this is something that could happen, seems to be something the actors are ok with and the fans want. So why do they keep drawing it out. This isn’t about us demanding they ignore the chance to write a healthy platonic male friendship, or forcing two characters to be gay, it’s about holding the writers to what they’ve implied and seeing what could come of it.

Also think of it like this; If Buddie is confirmed it will still be a good example of a healthy friendship which then developed into something else, like Booth/Bones! Showing the natural progression of friendship to relationship that happens a lot in real life. It’s two men who previously (on screen at least) have only been with woman, but now they have an emotionally connection with someone which they then develop and explore. This could be 911’s first nontoxic depiction of two gay characters coming together, because sorry not sorry the canon couples aren’t perfect (which does humanize them) but they also reenforce harmful troupes that plaque the LGBTQIA+ community, which I’m sure you understand: TK was a drug addict, who only got with Carlos at first cause he was hot and sex was TK’s new addition (all gay men are sex addicts who do drugs and sleep with anything that moves). Carlos was ashamed and wanted to keep TK on the downlow (poc gay men want to pretend to be straight but have free access to gay sex). Hen cheated on Karen seemingly the first chance she got (lesbians can’t handle monogamy when pushed, and cheat on their long term partners). All known and documented troupes that happen far too often.

I’m not saying Buddie is some gay jesus ship that’s gonna save the entertainment industry but if done right it could prove to be one of the few healthy depictions of two men getting into a gay relationship we have. If they plan it out correctly, show us the relationship development, like they did with Maddie/Chim for example, Buddie could be used as a positive example of a gay fictional relationship (I really could go into depth about this. I probably should tbh).

As for not supporting Hen and KAREN, or Michael and DAVID, I think fans do support them! The writers don’t. If you read fanfics Henren and Michael/David are featured heavily in many fics, and ik some people might say ‘well they’re only there so Buddie can talk about their gay side!!’ but both these couples have their own fans and fanfic tags! They aren’t just plot devices in Buddie stories. There is a huge side of the fandom that supports Henren and wants to see more of them and their family. Same with Michael and David, during the episode where Michael and Bobby team up to find that plastic surgeon who was working illegally many people where ecstatic that we were getting more Michael/David content and that David was getting more than a couple lines. But sadly it seems like the writers only want to delve into these story lines when they need filler, they even miss opportunities to include these other LGBTQIA+ characters when it makes sense;

(Someone came for me about this but I am going to bring it up again)

When Chris is sad and wants more human connection, instead of bring Harry + Michael/David and Denny+Nia+Henren back into the picture (and yes I understood at the time the pandemic was bad (lmao still is!!), but all the actors at some point would have/had crossed over into each other’s ‘bubbles’, so ALL the actors would have been exposed to each other so getting the children together with adults they had ALREADY been with during shooting wouldn’t have been a super spreader event) but instead they brought in Ana after only two on screen dates and pretended like it was a logical thing for someone who’s up to that point been extremely careful with their child.

They really could have pushed the ‘118 is a family!’ message here and included the canonically gay supporting characters, and the lesbian main character(s) but they did not and instead chose to push the Ana/Eddie coupling even though they hadn’t properly developed it yet. The writers themselves don’t seem to care about developing their canonically gay characters and including them more than they have to but fans are continuously developing Henren and Michael/David with hc and fics.

I’d like to use your logic against you for a second, in s1 we have a very healthy, platonic friendship between Chim/Bobby but that got written out to the point they are more like boss/employee unless the scene calls for them to seem closer, we now have Bobby and Michael friendship but again we hardly see Michael. On Lone Star we have Owen and Judd as a really, really good example of a healthy male friendship but we see Judd more often with Tommy now then we do with Owen, and in s2 it’s overshadowed by Owen trusting Charlie from Twilight and constantly getting fucked over! Why can’t the writter just be happy with these happy, healthy, emotionally well male-male friendship they’ve already included and expand upon them. There’s enough drama because the show literally involves burning buildings and people’s lives being at risk from some natural/man made disaster ever 12 seconds. Does it need to have so much interpersonal conflict and male peacocking??