Heartstopper's Imogen Heaney Vs 9-1-1's Evan Buckleyan Ally, You Say....mmhmm Sure, Sure....

heartstopper's imogen heaney vs 9-1-1's evan buckley an ally, you say....mmhmm sure, sure....

This starts out as a nice gesture, then quickly becomes absolutely ridiculous.

1,024 dice. Man.

can’t help but root for him.

DO YE WORK UP AN APPETITE

Athena Grant and Copaganda in 9-1-1

okay, so I love 9-1-1 and like everyone, I am frothing at the mouth over the Bi Buck of it all.

But I want to talk about Athena Grant for a minute. Athena is a fascinating character, because she is a great friend, a loving wife, a caring parent - and then, on a regular basis, she and the show will forcefully remind us that she is a Cop First. And all cops - including Athena Grant - are bastards.

As a character choice, I don't inherently have a problem with this framing. I think it is interesting to look at the ways that a character who is otherwise a good person, becomes a bastard as a cop, because there is no such thing as a good cop. The show repeatedly depicts Athena throwing her weight around, abusing her power, and intimidating civilians. Sometimes that is framed as a bad thing, sometimes it's framed as her standing up for the little guy. But rarely does she face any meaningful consequences for those behaviours.

Where it comes to the systemic racism of policing, 9-1-1 has a long history of trying to have their cake and eat it too: they want to demonstrate that they understand the realities of systemic racism in policing, but they don't actually want to acknowledge that one of their main protagonists is contributing to a system that kills people.

And more importantly, the show still wants her to be right. It's telling to me in 7x04 that Harry apologised to Athena but she never apologised to him. And, even more telling, neither she nor the show answered Harry's question: what was he supposed to do in that situation? Based on what we're shown, there was no safe way out of that interaction for Harry. But rather than acknowledging that the justice system first puts Black men in danger and then punishes them for responding to that danger, we have Athena saying that she's a parent first, but in all of her actions she shows us that she still puts the system first. For evidence of this, we only have to look at how the plotline ultimately resolved: via police intervention, and without a single lawyer present.

I'm not saying we can't still enjoy the fun wee woo show, but I would really like fandom to talk a bit more about the uncomfortable tension at the heart of Athena's character and how the show frames her behaviour.

k but rewatching 2x01 and it's gotta be Buck's pov of ugh, this new guy who's all handsome and perfect or whatever

Be curious about Eddie's pov bc I feel like it would be 70% Panic like omg pls don't mess this up and also 30% Gay Panic like why doesn't the pretty guy like me :(

(fair warning, this may have spiraled past 2x01......a lot. bear with me.)

i don't think we've ever gotten eddie's pov the way we've gotten buck's (2x01 and 7x04 for example) HOWEVER i do think we more or less know who buck is from eddie's pov through his actions.

which, considering their characters, tracks so hard.

buck didn't realize he was queer until a man quite literally kissed him on the mouth. seeing eddie from buck's pov is safe because buck has no idea what his feelings are. we watched buck's complicated feelings of jealousy towards eddie unfold TWICE and neither time did he realize what the feelings actually were (physical attraction and y'know. being in love with the guy). buck's pov is one we're allowed to see through as the audience, because it's not actually gonna tell us much, seeing as buck hasn't realized anything.

eddie, though?

reservoir of catholic guilt eddie? the guy who had panic attacks about the idea of being married to his girlfriend? the same man who was diagnosed repressed by a cardiologist?

he knows. he knows and he's been pushing it down since he and buck met, and if we were to ever see buck through eddie's eyes it'd give away everything. the eddie we've seen through buck's pov is just. pure golden sunshine, laughter, love, and buck's best friend in the whole fucking world. buck's best friend that he's in love with, sure, but buck hasn't put those dots together yet, so we, as the audience, won't see that.

buck, to eddie, is home. is family and warmth and comfort. and, obviously, eddie is the same to buck, but eddie knows this. eddie is fully and completely aware of who buck is to him, he's just shoving it all the way down. eddie gave buck a place to land ("it's eddie's house, i'm not really a guest"), eddie trusts buck wish christopher more than he trusts his parents with christopher (ramon and helena saying to eddie 'don't drag him down with you' and him leaving for LA -> eddie saying to buck 'there's nobody in this world i trust with my son more than you' after the tsunami), eddie let buck in when he was at his absolute lowest.

and, you know.

the will.

we've talked about it a half dozen million times in this fandom but we're gonna talk about it again because it's brain melting. we've never seen buck through eddie's eyes but we've seen exactly who he is to eddie through his actions. eddie trusts buck. eddie needs buck to know he has a reason to stay, that eddie and chris are his reasons to stay. eddie told buck flat out that his life means something. that buck thinks he's not worth anything but he's wrong because he means everything to eddie. eddie loves him.

eddie loved him when he held his hand when buck got pinned under a firetruck and eddie loved him when he dropped chris off before the tsunami and he still loved him when the water went back to the sea and eddie loved him when buck sued the city because the worst part of the whole lawsuit was how much he fucking missed him and eddie loved him when he was trapped under a well and all he could think about was his son and how, if he goes too soon, christopher deserves to be with someone who will love him the way eddie does and eddie loved him when he thought buck was the last thing he was ever gonna see, bleeding out on the streets of los angeles and eddie loved him when he told buck in the only way he knew how to (because, evan) and eddie loved him through panic attacks and mental breakdowns and lightning strikes and new girlfriends and a broken ankle and a new boyfriend because there is no version of eddie diaz that isn't in love with evan buckley.

and eddie knows that.

which is why we don't see it.