Multi-purpose room

I have been waiting all year to post this.

Buddie Countdown to Season 8b:

Please stay I want you, I need you, oh God Don't take These beautiful things that I've got

"The ride to the scene is tense, since getting the rundown from dispatch. Buck can still hear it in his head.

A mass-cas event, a bus got hit going 80… jumped the barricade and got hit by oncoming traffic… still on fire, rolled over into the ditch on the side of the road. Looks like it was one of those airport buses, going from LAX to downtown.

Getting stuck in traffic going to Los Angeles International Airport is the bane of all Angelinos, but getting stuck in traffic, sirens blaring, on your way to a devastating medical scene has to be a special level of hell. "

or; Christopher gets injured and asks Buck for what he really wants.

For all of Buck's partners, I think it just comes from the fact that Eddie thinks that no one deserves Buck but especially these people because they don't even know how to treat him the way he deserves and that's why he is unsurprised and supportive when he gets broken up with.

There are easy answers, like that it’s just fetishizing.  And like, I find men attractive, yes.  But I also find women attractive.  I don’t have a problem with enjoying het romance, assuming I can find good ones.  I enjoy stories with female characters I can relate to.

But there’s something much deeper at play, IMO.  A friend of mine who is a gender studies professor was the first person to point this out to me, but a lot of women enjoy m/m romance and gay porn because of the lack of women.  It removes a source of pressure and sexism.  Without any women present, you don’t have to constantly evaluate the sexism of their portrayal, or be reminded of negative experiences in your own life.  It allows women to experience romance and especially sexuality without all the baggage that comes with it in our patriarchal society.

This was recently illustrated to me rather dramatically.  I read a recommendation for a het romance.  And it sounded cute, and came highly recommended.  The tropes at play were fun.  Until I read a snippet and realized this was a romance between a woman and her boss.  I had a visceral negative reaction.  

Instantly I’m thinking of sexual harassment stories I’ve read and heard from other women. I’m thinking of how uncomfortable it would be to have your boss develop feelings for you.  How icky the power dynamics would be, etc.  

And then I realized…this wouldn’t bother me if it were two men.  Now, there’s no logical reason for that.  Sexual harassment is just as wrong when its object is a man.  But I know I’ve read fics with a similar premise and never thought about it.  Because when it’s two men I can accept this is just a light romance, a fantasy, meant to be fun and sexy and not to represent the real world.

But I can’t when it’s a het relationship.  There’s too much baggage there.  Too much societal history of abuse.  I can’t relax enough with the premise to enjoy that story.  

Now some people can.  And that’s fine.  And some people are never going to be okay with power imbalances like that regardless of gender.  That’s also fine.  I don’t think having either reaction makes one morally superior.  It’s okay to just enjoy light entertainment for what it is without going into deep analysis.

But I wanted to highlight one set of tags (via @reallifepotato​ )

Because I AM comfortable with my sexuality and fairly comfortable with my body, but still, this resonates so hard as someone who has always been overweight.  The amount that our society teaches women to constantly compare ourselves, almost always negatively with every other woman out there, can utterly ruin our enjoyment of this kind of thing.  Like how many times have you tried to watch a mainstream romantic comedy where some utterly gorgeous actress is bemoaning that she can’t get a date, or WORSE is made out to be less than attractive.  And you look at her and go…but she’s fucking perfect?  And you just want to puke.  

How does Chris react when Buck and Eddie first get together and tell him that they are an item?

I think Chris, in my head anyway, pretty much always just calls buck buck but at a certain point of the Buckley-Diaz dynamic becoming romantic he does acknowledge that he sees Buck as a father-type figure and cares for him as such. I just think he's always been Chris' buck and neither one of them would really want that to change even if buck goes from Dad's Bestie Who's Kind of Parental In Some Ways to Step Dad Who Can't Just Be Fun Buck All The Time or whatever.