#ALSO buck and eddie being the same age but having such vastly different experiences is making me sob

[littlespoonevan]

for what it’s worth re canon and ages, the only confirmation of ages we’ve ever got are buck, hen, athena, abby and the kids

buck tells us in s1 he’s 26 and in s4 he’s 29 when he finds out about daniel but that’s messed up now bc in 6x11 they tell the hospital he’s 30 a whole 2 and a half years later after 4x04/4x05 lol

hen tells us in s4 she joined med school at 40

athena makes a comment about getting into a relationship again at 50 in either s1 or 2

abby tells us in s1 she’s 40

we know chris is 7 in s2 and may, harry and denny can all be worked out too by grades or mentions of ages throughout the show

maddie can also be figured out bc we find out in s4 she’s 9 years older than buck which would’ve made her 38 at the time

i’m currently up to s4 in my rewatch and can’t recall any mention of bobby or chimney’s ages but if there’s one thing I know for certain: we have never, ever been given an indication of eddie’s age. And actually the idea of him only being 19 or 20 when chris is born and when he goes off to war makes that whole story even more tragic than I ever could’ve thought possible quite frankly 😭😭😭

[procrastinatingfeminist]

I saw your anti chimney post in the tag which sadly only has 2 posts?

I'm curious because I disliked him in season 5 because he not only hit Buck but chased Maddie across the country to try and force her to come back, but I was never really his biggest fan.

Did you always dislike him or was that a tipping point for you?

It is a bit of a long answer, so I will put the answer unter the cut.

I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not conflating Chimney and Kenneth Choi. An actor is not his role and vice versa. From what I have seen, Kenneth Choi is somewhat clunky and awkward in his interactions on social media, likely because like me he didn't grow up with it (and maybe also because he is old enough to not give a lot of fucks about pleasing everyone and being 100% pure), but has a very dry sort of humor and judging from some vids with JLH is hysterically funny.

I have started watching 911 after having been sucked into the fandom through fanfic, and that was mostly not exactly Chimney-friendly one, so I had come in somewhat spoilered. But that is not exactly new for me - I tend to seek out spoilers before deciding if watching a tv show will be a waste of my time or not, because it is a time investment. Because of that, I also repeatedly made the experience that my experience of fanfic and canon can be vastly different, and I tend to like the asshole characters anyway, so while spoilered, I was prepared to give him a chance. (I wasn't much impressed with Buck in the first seasons, either, fanfic overhyped him waaaay too much, but he grew on me. Like fungus.)

So, to answer your question - I knew that there was a higher than average probability that i might not like him, but I didn't dislike him from the outset. There was no tipping point, exactly, it was the conflagration of a lot of irritants that just culminated in that shitty storyline in season 5.

He is introduced as a middle-aged guy who is so desperate for female attention that he comes off obsessive and stalkerish, and not above constantly lying to someone he plans to marry to keep that relationship. If at least he had been self-aware enough that it was built on lies and nothing real can out of it, I would have been able to put him into the 'well, plenty of people lie about who they are when they want to have sex, what else is new' pile and forgot about it, but that he seriously proposed to Tatiana while constantly lying to her? And then blew off at everyone when called out? That is some serious break from reality, dude. It also didn't endear him to me that he was constantly grumbling jealously about Buck's success with women all the while, when Buck had been one of the three people who had been at his bedside in the hospital post-rebar incident and had looked up to him. Envy is not pretty to look at.

Then there is his inability to shut up about the most private and hurtful things that his friends and coworkers might prefer to disclose at their own discretion and maybe also not to complete strangers, and pretty much 99 times out of 100 it is something about Buck. For fucks sake, the man works in a medical profession, and while HIPAA, as far as I understand, applies to paramedics the same way as to doctors and nurses, anyone else would and should have been sued several times, if they blapped off to strangers about all the things that Chimney did. Why exactly did Eddie need to know about Abby's ghosting on his first day? Why would he even think to joke about Dr. Wells' raping Buck during the appointment (and I don't care that the show doesn't follow up on that plot point, she was his therapist and she slept with her patient, who was in an emotionally vulnerable place, that equals rape to me)? In what world it is appropriate? There are too many incidents to count. The point is, this behaviour of constantly blurting out other people's business to strangers involves Buck so often that it feels targeted. Because I don't remember him blurting out willy-nilly about Bobby's alcoholism or Hen's cheating, especially not in front of the Fire Chief or in front of Councilwoman Ortiz or social workers. Those two would have eaten him alive if he did something like that, but everyone thinks its funny haha just because it's about Buck.

And the storyline about Daniel? When the only person who had a right to find out about his brother was the last to know? Even the bomber knew it before him. The one time when Chimney's diarrhea mouth might have given him some brownie points, he keeps the secret.

And then the wedding episode, when Chimney loses his memories. He sees Buck - he recognizes him, even if he doesn't know who he is exactly and he sees him wearing a firefighter uniform, so someone who is public servant and marked as a person of trust - and his subconscious makes it out as if Buck is someone he should fear? That is either a sign of enormous guilt that he never bothered to work through or that he genuinely thinks that Buck is a threat to him. And that.... tells me very unfortunate things about Chimney.

All that listed are things that don't even go into the whole PPD/casually threatening to cut off contact to the only family Buck has any interest in/the punch/the stalking arc. In short, there are plenty of reasons to dislike Chimney and not a lot of character growth that i have seen from him over the span of 7 seasons.

But on the other hand, I have been slowly rewatching 911 again, just a bit out of order. And sometimes, there are moments where I can see them having a moment where the writers could have spun off a subplot to give them a better relationship, like the catfishing episode; or sometimes I hear him making borderline jokes and think, yeah, okay, I can see how this could be taken out of context and on its own could be just chalked up under 'caustic humor'. (The problem is, that that context exists and points to a pattern of abusive behavior. If his abrasive humor was all that I had to judge him on, I would have thought people were overreacting over their weeaboo being picked on). He is also not the only one I have a problem with - Maddie's behaviour is super manipulative and reinforces Chim's bias, no matter how well meaning or fucked up from her own trauma she is. The culture of ignoring the way Chim talks about his coworker at the 118 doesn't paint anyone at the firehouse in the best light.

But that is the reason why I post my griping in the anti tag. Because people love what they love and his character speaks to people with different experiences than me on a different level. I have made my peace that plenty of people hate Snape and though it always is very unpleasant to suddenly come across a hate tirade in a fic in a completely unrelated fandom, I don't make it my life's mission to bash those authors in comments; and here on tumblr it is even easier to separate those posts out. What I found ridiculous was that I explicitly posted it in an anti tag, and still that nonnie came onto my dash to berate me. Like, what did they expect?

Hope that answers your question, nonnie.