I’m up early thinking about how fast people went from being cool about Tommy (and Lou) and the first kiss to absolutely hating him and wanting him dead.
At first, seeing the kiss brought everyone together, but also not really. Everyone was excited about the kiss, how it was executed and the fact that Buck was bisexual, but the thing is, many people were excited for completely different reasons.
Some people were excited because they thought Buck was written as bisexual for them. For their ship. To fit into their headcanons.
So at first, they were willing to ride the wave of Buck and Tommy, thinking he was only gonna be around for 4 episodes. They read Lou’s interviews, thought it was great that he improvised the chin grab, and he received a great deal of approval for how gentle he was with Buck. It wasn’t just bucktommy shippers that wanted to interact with Lou on twitter at one point in time.
Then, people started showing interest in Buck and Tommy as a ship and not a stepping stone and bucktommy shippers were being side-eyed like “hey haha wtf are you doing, this is temporary.” There was a lot of disappointment and resentment because people were “closing” on one ship to enjoy a very real and canon ship, and then the ship itself grew to 1,000 fics in a very short period of time and again, people were like “hey haha wtf, can you literally fucking stop? you’re being weird over a 4 episode fling.” and then people were showing Lou a lot of love, booking his Cameos and constantly praising bucktommy as a couple. And once more, people were like “yo, what the FUCK, you’re gonna make them last longer STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.”
So then the heavier resentment began and there was a very nasty shift. It was “bucktommy bones xx episode trust” every week until it wasn’t, and people became angrier and angrier about it.
Some people already didn’t like Tommy, but they were willing to speak on it either privately or not very aggressively until, well, Tommy received a lot of support and was *checks notes* around for too fucking long. And then hundreds of people started being so aggressive about it that some people felt forced to pick a side for sanity.
People were showing interest in Tommy in a way that was upsetting to people because it made him too significant. Like, when people asked for a Tommy begins episode and fatphobic jokes were made in response.
Shippers have been single-handedly blamed for Tommy being around beyond the 4 episodes. A lot of people thought he would simply disappear and Buck would move on to the relationship people believed he was made bisexual for.
I watched this happen and things became more and more uncomfortable with every week that passed until it was insufferable and I deactivated my old twt account and recently made a new one and blocked a bunch of people.
