Brnine/Gucci

Pairing
Pairing:	Kalvin Brnine/Gucci Garantine
Alternative name(s):	Bucci, Brucci, Brnucci
Gender category:	NB/F
Fandom:	Friends at the Table: PALISADE
Canonical?:	It's complicated
Prevalence:	Popular
Archives:
Other:
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Brnine/Gucci (a.k.a. Bucci, Brucci, or Brnucci) is a popular Friends at the Table ship featuring Kalvin Brnine and Gucci Garantine from the seasons PARTIZAN and PALISADE. In canon, Gucci is Brnine's commander, and it has been strongly implied that she has feelings for them.

Canon

Brnine and Gucci first met in PARTIZAN, where Brnine (then known as Broun) was a mechanic and member of a mercenary group that Gucci occasionally hired for work with her "radical reformist" organization. During this period Brnine exploited Gucci, who is an aristrocrat, by wildly upcharging her for goods and services.

Over the next several years of canon, they both became members of the revolutionary organization Millennium Break, fought together on several occasions, and ultimately joined the revolutionary cause on the planet Palisade with Brnine as captain of their own ship and Gucci as their commander. In PALISADE, their relationship develops from a working relationship to one in which they both care about each other on a personal level, and it is implied that Gucci has romantic feelings for Brnine.

History

Spoiler Warning: This article or section contains spoilers about some events in PARTIZAN and PALISADE. If this bothers you, proceed with caution.

While Brnine and Gucci had numerous interactions during PARTIZAN, the ship had little if any presence during the time in which that season was airing; instead, the most popular ships for their characters during that time were Balence and Clem/Gucci.

PALISADE began airing in March 2023, establishing quickly that Gucci had become Brnine's commander over the five-year timeskip between seasons and featuring in its second episode an awkward interaction between Brnine and Gucci, and fan interest in the ship began to pick up shortly thereafter. For example, two Brnine/Gucci fics were posted to AO3 in April 2023, and an anonymous poster on FFA mentioned that the interaction in the second ep had sold them on the ship. By early May, one anon on FFA said:

[Anonymous]
I’m also really starting to ship Brnine/Gucci to the point that I want to go back and relisten to the Partizan episodes that had significant scenes between them… but once I start a relisten, I’ll probably never stop.

On Aug 11, 2023, the 21st episode of PALISADE aired, featuring a fraught phone call between Brnine and Gucci with shippy overtones. In it, Gucci expressed anger and concern about Brnine's willingness to recklessly throw themself at a dangerous mission, asked why they pretend to care about her, and perhaps most importantly, confessed to Brnine that she had imaged the two of them could work together on the planet Palisade "like a Primary and a Satellite." This is a reference to historical roles in the setting that appeared in a previous season, Twilight Mirage, in which the Primary and Satellite pair who appeared "onscreen" were the fan-favourite canon queer couple Demani Dusk and Gray Gloaming.

bodyfrmabalcony's Wow Cool Robot meme

Fans quickly picked up on this reference, produced fanart of the conversation, posted fic, and made reaction posts, many of which characterized Gucci's feelings for Brnine as romantic. A popular Demani/Gray quote from Twilight Mirage describes the Primary/Satellite relationship as inherently violent: "I love you, Satellite. I love us. But we are a loaded gun, and the second that you start thinking that a loaded gun is romantic is the second you stop being like us, and start being like them." bodyfrmabalcony posted a Wow cool robot meme using this quote alongside Gucci's speech to Brnine, with the text "wow!! what a romantic loaded gun!!!"

Another popular Tumblr post from this period humorously re-envisioned Brnine and Gucci's relationship in light of the romantic overtones of that canon phone conversation:

[ahcoffeebeans]
imagine if you were a mechanic and one day some no-name aristocrat is like "hey... i heard you're like... pretty tight-lipped, right?" and you're like "sure, I need money to pay for my space taxi off of this rock" so you do tune-ups for this aristocrat's kinda mid revolutionary group and you flirt with them a little so they'll ignore the fact you're charging them 300% up the ass until one day a space gas furry shows up at your door and changes your life, worldview, and relationship to politics and maybe you got a romance thing going on but you never clarify it and you wind up in a revolutionary cell with them and who is also here but your mid aristocrat but you're like "hey, just one more step on the road to getting out of here :/" and then the space gas furry buys you a spaceship so you can leave but you kinda wanna see where this space gas furry relationship goes until one day the space gas furry explodes themselves at a funeral to kill a CIA director and then its just you, your other buddies, and your mid aristocrat for five years until the mid aristocrat starts quoting some MCR lyrics at you over the phone while blushing like a closeted fifteen year old and you're like 30 now but it kinda hits anyway and then you decide that because of the space gas furry you're a better person and therefore have to overthrow the government and then the government threatens to blow up the sun and your mid aristocrat accuses you of wanting to blow yourself up to be a martyr and how romantic they thought it would be to live without the threat of an explosion tearing you apart and then you get onto a little bullet spaceship and one of several thousand space gods asks you straight up what you feel the most guilty about and you say "can't worry about that now, I have to stop this explosion" like you couldn't stop that explosion then so that maybe you can go back to that mid aristocrat and your name is Kalvin Brnine and you're canonically the most awkward person alive

The 29th episode of PALISADE aired on Oct 15, 2023. It featured a conversation in which Gucci seemed to confess to having romantic feelings for Brnine. Following the episode's airing, the ship saw another surge in posts and fanworks. Some artists depicted the interaction itself with a decidedly shippy bent while others began to post art speculating about scenarios in which Brnine and Gucci are in a relationship going forward.

That same fall, Brnine/Gucci tied with Balence for the most-requested ship in the 2023 round of Secret Samol. Balence had previously maintained its position as the most-requested ship for two years running in 2021 and 2022.

Ali's retweet of dril

Creator Response

Brnine's player, Ali Acampora, is herself a Brnine/Gucci shipper. Following PALISADE episode 21 she has repeatedly referred to Gucci as her "girlfriend" during episodes of the show, even going so far as to correct another player when they described Brnine as Gucci's ex: "Hey, when did we break up? Excuse me?!"

She has also made multiple jokey tweets about the ship. In one such tweet, she quote-retweeted dril with the caption "[insane voice] brucci". At least one fan has made fanart inspired by that quote-retweet.

Example Fanworks

Fanfic

• baby put your arms around me, tell me i'm a problem ^{Archived version} by lailou. A PWP and the first Brnine/Gucci fic posted to AO3.
• high pressure days ^{Archived version} by inward_outward. A Brnine/Gucci pre-relationship fic set during the timeskip between PARTIZAN and PALISADE. This was the first Brnine/Gucci fic posted to AO3 after PALISADE episode 21 aired.

Fanart

• "What do you need?" by courbet-nft. Fanart depicting the phone call between Brnine and Gucci in PALISADE's 21st episode.
• "I got it in my head that you and me were like a Primary and a Satellite" by guccigarantine. Depicts the same scene as the above work by courbet-nft.
• How long do you think they feel cold by dancy-nrew. Refers to the canon arc in which Brnine goes on a mission near the sun, which was airing when this art was posted.
• 🤕🫡✨💕 by mrmarielda. Fancomic illustrating the conversation between Brnine and Gucci from episode 29, with the artist's interpretation of what was happening visually in the scene.

Other

• Honesty and Integrity by nvrlernd2-reid. Fan song from Gucci's point of view.

Archives and Communities

• Kalvin Brnine | Kal'mera Broun/Gucci Garantine tag on Archive of Our Own
• Tumblr tags: Bucci, Brucci, Brnucci, Brnine x Gucci

Other Fannish Resources

• Relationships § Gucci Garantine section of Kalvin Brnine article on FatTWiki
• Relationships § Kal'mera Broun / Kalvin Brnine section of Gucci Garantine article on FatTWiki

See Also

• Balence
• Gurbalence
• Clem/Gucci
• Kalvin Brnine's polycule