beforeastorm

[beforeastorm]

If Eddie wants to date Buck he's gonna have to change his name to Tedmundo Kdiaz.

[beforeastorm]

A play in three acts

[beforeastorm]

Are people familiar with the parable of the drowning man? I fear we're seeing the fandom version... 

Eddie: Sorry, I'm straight.

Fan: No, Buddie is going canon; the show will deliver!

A little later:

Buck: I'm not in love with Eddie. 

Fan: Buddie is going canon; this is a sign!

A little later still: 

Oliver and Ryan: "BROTHERS" "He wasn't lying" "No you're absolutely wrong"

Fan: This means Buddie is going canon TOMORROW.

Buddie does not go canon, and a while later, the fan runs into Tim Minear:

Fan: Tim, I can't believe you queerbaited us!

Tim: what do you mean? I sent Eddie to tell you he was straight, I sent Buck to tell you he wasn't in love with Eddie, and I sent everyone's favorite pair of miscreants on a press blitz. What more did you want from us? 

***

Listen, I love Buddie - I wouldn't have published 140k+ words of Buddie fanfics if I didn't - but the allegations of queerbaiting are not it. I do have sympathy for the folks who had predatory journalists and BNFs whispering in their ears, taking quotes out of context and insisting that you just needed to see the vision and believe... But truly, honestly, the writing's been on the wall for a while. And guess what - I don't need Buddie to be canon to love it and neither should you

The show hasn't lied to you. Chemistry isn't a promise of something more. Not everything has a secret double meaning where things are actually the opposite of what was said. A journo or someone with a lot of followers don't necessarily have secret knowledge or insight, and let's not even get started on media literacy. 

People may have lied about buddie, but it wasn't the show or the actors; queerbaiting this is not.

[beforeastorm]

The past few weeks have been pretty rough, and losing someone is never easy.

Buck spent his time making some crumpets with strawberry jam and Cap's "Nightcap" Hot Chocolate with oat milk.

Like to take, reblog to share. Remember you're always loved and all your feelings are valid ♡

[beforeastorm]

my favourite hugs on the show are chimbuck hugs I love the way chim just snuggles in there

[beforeastorm]

Seriously, what is wrong with people? These are some comments from a TikTok about David Meyer, a Chicago FD Captain who died in the line of duty this past week when a garage roof collapsed:

I'm sad about Bobby too, but can we the fuck not? David is a real life person, a father of four, whose family and colleagues now have to say goodbye.

Anyway, if you're able, all donations to the Chicago Fire Department Foundation are going directly to his family for the next month: https://cfdfoundation.com/2025/04/captain-david-meyer-lodd/

[beforeastorm]

I'll fully admit to being a pedantic asshole, but can someone please point me towards when Tim actually uses the word realism? I've searched every interview I could find and I can't find the reference.

Tim talks extensively about the stakes feeling real, or the characters or world feeling real, but (again, I'll own my pedantry), that means something different than "it's about realism" or "it's realistic" or whatever permutation people are claiming he said.

If he said it, let's see it; I could've missed it (you can win the great satisfaction of proving an insufferable know it all wrong in front of the entire internet).

If, he in fact did not talk about realism... People are still welcome to offer criticism, but can we do that without putting words in Tim's mouth or creating some kind of straw man?

The only time I can find "realism" is in Peter's statement, but the context of that is thanking the on set firefighters and technical advisors for their assistance over the years.

All Tim's references to things feeling real that I could find, as well as the relevant portion of Peter's statement are below the cut.

Deadline

"Once I had made that choice, suddenly the world of the show seems so much more real to me"

Hollywood Reporter 

“So it was time for there to be some real tragic fallout from a story.”

TV Insider

“Look, I know this is the right decision, because as soon as it started to happen in my head, the whole world of the show felt more real to me. These people felt more real to me.”

"but this time I think we all just felt like we were losing a real person, someone that we loved"

TV Line

"On the other hand, if the stakes are never real, if there’s really no chance that any of this peril in which these characters find themselves amounts to anything, I think the show could die."

"The stakes are real is kind of what I want to say. When I landed on this idea, the world suddenly felt more real to me. The characters felt more real to me. They felt like real people."

Variety

"how suddenly the whole world felt more alive. It felt more real because this thing had happened.”

"I had to convince them it was real"

The Wrap

"[The show] needed a major character death for the audience to feel that there were real stakes in any of these cases"

"I needed a major character death if I wanted, going forward, for the audience to feel any kind of suspense or that there were real stakes involved in any of the cases … If you feel like everyone’s going to be fine, I think that the show just dies of inertia at that point"

"It’s because now life means everything to him, and it is a real sacrifice and actual atonement for what his origin story was. It makes sense in every way."

"but as soon as I committed to this, it felt like the world of the show just felt much more real to me"

"But on this show that takes place in a heightened version of the real world — where I could always land the plane or right the ship, or get them out of the tsunami — on this particular show, I think to everybody, the crew and the cast, this death just hit differently."

Peter's statement

"Humbled by working in step with our technical advisor, Chief Mike Bowman, and real firefighters, I wish to thank you all for helping me bring a sense of dignity and realism to the character in our larger-than-life emergency landscape. Your kind and complimentary words have meant the world to me."

[beforeastorm]

when my time comes around

lay me gently in the cold, dark earth

no grave can hold my body down

i’ll crawl home to her

[beforeastorm]

// and you know when it's all gone, something carries on //

[beforeastorm]

the kids are not alright.

Ave Atque Vale, Bobby Nash. Your rowdy firehouse fandom children are in mourning </3.

First - just some appreciation for the amazing creators who are inviting us to join in their grief by sharing their works. I've read an embarrassing number of these over the past couple days and have cried during all of them. More info under the cut

Since 4/17, there've been 160 AO3 works posted with the major character death tag. This consists of over 15% of the MCD tagged works in the 9-1-1 fandom.

If we exclude multi-chaptered works with a last update in these past three days, those creators have written almost 260,000 words and their works have over 120,000 hits in just three days.

If we go back to the leaked funeral procession, we're talking 247 works in about three weeks. For comparison, after the first MCD tagged work was published in January 2019, the 247th work was posted in November of 2022 - almost four years later.

Here's basically the same chart, except the fics are broken down by day instead of month - it's a bit harder to read, but is striking:

(This is a split axis graph: - the blue line uses the left y axis counting in the hundreds; the orange bars use the right y axis - counting by tens). Notes:

This only includes works that are tagged as MCD - plenty of authors are using "creator chose not to use archive warning" tags, or, unfortunately, I've seen quite a few works that based on the summary clearly contain MCD but are not tagged as such. Please tag correctly! (and not for my weewoo data projects, but so that people have what they need to make an informed decision whether to read your work!)

Only unlocked works were counted. Data was gathered at 4:00 p.m. on 4/20/25 EDT

[beforeastorm]

fanworks for the networks

you know the drill, notes etc. under the cut

So, in this Screen Rant article, the author notes that "9-1-1 has the devoted audience of something more like a cult sci-fi drama than a network procedural" which, of course, made me want to compare it to, well, other network procedurals. And what better thing to compare them against than ao3 works?

TV genre conventions are muddy at best, so lest I mischaracterize a Crime Drama as a Police Procedural, I expanded the scope to live action (not cartoon) scripted series that are part of the US major networks' (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC) 2024-2025 seasons.

And whoo-ey. Not only does 9-1-1 have more than twice as many fics as the next show - that show has been running for three times as long!

Notes:

Pulled the data about 8:00 p.m. EDT on 4/15/2025.

Crossovers are a conundrum. If a work is tagged with multiple fandoms - how do you choose which, if any, fandom to count it towards? I went with the easiest option: all of them. (This is a silly little project, not a dissertation, so I was not about to individually evaluate thousands of crossover fics.) If a work is tagged with the Rookie, Chicago Med, S.W.A.T., and NCIS fandom tags - it gets counted each time.

The numbers are from the Fandoms -> TV Shows page. For whatever reason, there almost always is a slight difference between that number and the fandom works page (Lone Star, for example, is 10,509 vs. 10,492).

Here's a chart that didn't fit in the infographic but I thought was really fun! Just a stacked column chart, showing # of fics by network and show.

[beforeastorm]

if I don't see something like this in live action in 8x15, i'll have words 🫵🤨

[beforeastorm]

Tommy Kinard; 08x06 (Confessions)

She Is Made of Chalk by L.M. Dorsey; We Must Meet Apart by Jennifer S. Cheng; The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays by C.J. Hauser; So The Stream of Life by Clarice Lispector; i am an observer, but not by choice by fatima aamer bilal

[beforeastorm]

it’s still april 4th somewhere! happy bi buckiversary 💖💜💙

companion piece to this 🫶

[beforeastorm]

[beforeastorm]

Methods, notes, etc. under the cut

Happy one year anniversary to "Buck, Bothered and Bi-wildered", to the kiss, to Buck discovering something new about himself, and to BuckTommy.

Methods: I used a data scraping tool to collect information from the works pages for the 'Evan "Buck" Buckley/Tommy Kinard' relationship tag on AO3. Although we're celebrating the one year anniversary, data for all works regardless of publish date were included.

The scraping tool can only collect information for unlocked works. No, data scraping is not prohibited by AO3's terms of service, but they reserve the right to boot you if you abuse it; I deliberately slow walked the tool to be a good partner. Information was collected on 4/4/2025 between 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. EDT. As this is a snapshot of dynamic data, it will already be out of date. Notes: Recognizing that not making editorial decisions is in fact making a decision, I did not exclude any tags or use additional filters to limit which works were included. I know some people may prefer this, but I decided to honor authorial intent: if they tagged it, I included it.

I am open and interested in potentially doing something similar for other ships/tags, but my artistic skills are very limited. If you'd be interested in collaborating on something, send me a message! Information from infographic:

Words: 38,688,046

Hits: 24,598,761

Kudos: 2,313,022

Bookmarks: 310,154

Comments: 215,801

Works: 7,396

Unique Authors: 1,567

many thanks to @aainiouu for their assistance with the infographic!

[beforeastorm]

What if I said that Bobby's death is actually the scene in Les Misérables where Valjean dies? Bobby's Valjean, Buck's Cosette, and there's a passed loved one from each of the fam (Marcy, Daniel, Kevin, Emmett, etc.) as Fantine and Eponine.

Take my hand, and lead me to Salvation;

Take my love, for love is everlasting;

and remember, the truth that once was spoken;

To love another person is to see the face of God.