#like i’m not saying buck is his religion or whatever but like. y’know

[aashiqeddiediaz]

the intimacy and soul deep love that comes with outright telling someone you’re worried about them…

buck and eddie have been individually and jointly dragged through the coals before this; but never have they explicitly said how they worry about each other or anything to that likeness

and while the whole point of tv is to read between the lines, to pick up expressions in lieu of time-restricted dialogues, there is something absolutely devastating about buck putting those words out there in the quiet of eddie’s kitchen, only to hear them echoed right back

and it’s also in the tone of his voice, something to the stubborn quiet way he sneaks past every single one of eddie’s denials to the heart of the matter that mirrors the way buck buried himself in eddie’s heart so long ago without his knowledge, and now it’s kind of like eddie’s version of confession, his safe space to repent, his safe space to find some direction in a way religion never did for him but buck does?

and there’s something about the expression on buck’s face too, the one we’ve seen so many times when he fears losing eddie, and i just think that for both of them (including eddie himself) to voice concern about eddie’s mental state essentially, something really bad is probably coming up

[monkey-network]

My Issues with Butch Hartman

Call this the sequel to my post on Mr. Enter. But honestly compared to Enter, Butch Hartman has made himself look far worse in so little time. Not only with how he uses his influence, but he basically showed his true colors not long after he left Nickelodeon. With Enter, the worst you can say about him is his opinions on media and his politics. With Hartman, there is a surprisingly lot more under his belt that made the hate towards him .

To preface this, while I’m gonna shit on this dude, I’m not shaming anyone who still likes his past content. With that said, bibbity Boppity boopity. Let’s look at the fucking scoopity.

The Telltale Oaxis

This really takes the cake as the scummiest thing Butch has done. Words and opinions can be one thing, but using your platform to basically trick some people out of their money for a project you abandoned for the most part grinds me gears a lot more. As bad as his marketing strategy was, at least Enter provided effort in his indiegogo project beforehand for god’s sake. Oaxis is one of the most pitiable crowdfunded projects I’ve seen.

It’s nearly two years since Butch got Oaxis funded and what have gotten beyond pure dead silence. Nearly two years and little to no significant updates for Oaxis’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, his Youtube, or the site’s official account. No wait, that last part’s kind of a lie. They had monthly updates on the official site up until September 2019. Could’ve posted this on their social medias but you take what you can get. 

The major takeaway from the updates, in all fairness, was that the kickstarter wasn’t enough and they still need to raise more funds for the service. The “capital-building” stage he calls it where he’s looking for more investors in addition to getting actual programs onto the service. That and Oaxis is a big vision for Butch and his wife in spite of not only giving up the monthly updates and basically secluding any mention of Oaxis from any place else. That’s basically it and I legit feel sorry for everyone that couldn’t get their refund back.

This isn’t HBO Max or Disney+ where you just expect them to have something together after their initial announcement because they’re already media conglomerates, this is an independent project. One that people, your fans included Butch, put over 200K thinking you would at least give people something. But beyond a “sizzle reel” that said nothing aside from Oaxis going to be a thing, you have presented jack after two years. I don’t expect the ins and outs of every business meeting with executives, but staying silent about everything except for monthly newsletters that offer very little encouraging progress and hasn’t updated since September of last year is not a good sign. And I’m especially hard on this topic, Butch, because this is the biggest point where it is seriously hard to trust you. It’s not criticizing your ego when after having too many cracks in your story, you really haven’t put your money where your mouth is.

I don’t wanna presume the guy’s given up on it, hoping everybody would forget it after a while, but he’s really put the effort in to make Oaxis feel like a afterthought. I’m not an expert in business, but even I can believe that after his non-apology for not being upfront with his initial intentions, that he’d try to provide updates on the project to not come off as the scam artist people have accused him as. Even with his Youtube channel that I’ll get to later, I don’t think it’s hard consistently posting about your so called vision if you have that much faith in its success. You’ve already gotten thousands of bucks initially with the crowdfund, people deserve more than your pitiful wishful platitudes and I unfortunately can’t believe you’ll have anything after a few years. It’s not that everyone forgot about it, but you mostly took the money and ran. If Butch pops up with something if he sees this somehow, I’ll eat that crow, but I sincerely doubt it after this long. Like at least post something on the Twitter, I get depressed just looking at it; that account is the textbook definition of famine.

The Childhood Reposter

I’ve brought up Butch’s youtube channel a couple times, and it’s when every time I look at it, it’s a little sad. When it comes to major creators, I typically think that after finishing their projects they’d move to newer things. People like Lauren Faust, Mike Judge, CH Greenblatt are all continuing to make new works under differing studios while new creators are getting the spotlight. Butch though? I mean, he has a new cartoon that I swear you’ve never heard about but other than that, the dude looks like he has little to say for himself nowadays beyond the 2 shows he’s famous for, Fairly Odd Parents and Danny Phantom. I would’ve added TUFF Puppy and Bunsen is a Beast but I can see that those two aren’t his major players seeing as how they’re rarely ever mentioned on the channel.

If it’s not some watchmojo level meme video, almost every other video is about either two of those shows in some varied fashion. I get that he “created your childhood” and made credulous bank from Nickelodeon, but it’s like Danny Phantom is all that stands between him and having an audience. That and drawing anime characters in his style which is... y’know, I’ll leave that to you. It’s like he retired and yet goes on about the good old days like a fluctuating ego. He’s still making a cartoon but to him that’s hardly a factor compared to his known successes.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to just be known as the guy who made two of your countless beloved cartoons. Not that that’s all he talks about, but it’s the insistence of his legacy that unfortunately gives me Bojack Horseman vibes. He no doubt has a good thing going but I believe that this isn’t gonna last. Just saying, dude has 850K subscribers and unless it’s a real hook like with the recent Danny Phantom/Jake Long death battle, he’s hardly getting a good fraction of views anymore. There’s only so many times you can milk Danny Phantom as your masterpiece before everyone moves on.

The Holy Boast

I wanna make this short because I’m not a huge talker of religion, but I stand to say that you should NOT, under any circumstance, believe BPD, PTSD, autism, fucking heart & kidney failure can be “cured” or “healed” through sermons of prayer. This here? This is genuinely something else.

https://www.healingjourneys.today/

For clarity, this was a gospel conference hosted by Butch and his wife and yes, they openly proclaim that BPD, austism, and heart disease can be cured through prayer of holy worship.

Now, I’m gonna give a full disclosure right here because this most certainly biases my point here, like I’m gonna own this. But my grandpa was a religious man that suffer from health problems. He notably prayed to carry on, yes, but at the same time he sought medical help. Even he told me that prayers wasn’t gonna keep the pacemaker going, he went to the doctors and actually did more than read the bible to improve himself. He unfortunately passed, but he was in his 70s and I honestly couldn’t believe, as hard as I try, that he was gonna live forever. My grandpa would’ve no doubt died far earlier if he followed this conference’s logic.

My point is that this is personally unsettling. I seriously cannot believe this is how autism and religion works and it blows my mind that him and his wife thought this conference was a suitable idea. I’m not bashing them as christians, but thinking mental disorders and bodily diseases can be done away with motivational seminars because that’s basically what they are is a legit slap to the face. And the seedling idea that they’ve done this before blows my mind.

The Financial Flaker

This is very recent and everything is generally explained in the 12 minute video but long story short: Butch hired an artist and never paid them for their work. The artist in question, Kuro, describes what happened between him and Butch in this video and provides receipts. Can’t really add anything to this myself beyond this just builds to the idea that Butch cannot be trusted as a professional business maker. I believe he still has people working for him but from this video, it tells me that Hartman will gladly use those lower than him in favorable pursuits and will gladly throw ignorance when he wants to because his cartoon veteran status presents that shield from thinking he can do no wrong, which can mean throttling his hires.  Let’s end this.

The Conclusion

When I get down to it, Butch is almost a Machiavellian character in a way. It’s amazing how much the trust people have had with Hartman have evaporated in less than a couple years. It’s amazing how much his ego has truly shown after he stopped being a namestay in Nickelodeon. Haven’t even mentioned the times he arrogantly deflected criticism because he was a namestay at Nick and how a couple who’ve worked with are well aware of his ego. I can’t help but believe that even after everything, he claims ignorance to his fall from grace and keeps going. Even when more and more are knowing his true self, he’s mostly just doing what he’s been doing for the past few years.

It’s respectable in a way, but shows that the world will move on without him. Again, if you like Danny Phantom and Fairly OddParents, I won’t judge you for it nor say you should be ashamed. This isn’t about cancelling Butch, or get him to stop spreading whatever wacky things he believes in. It’s my personal take of how this man whom I once respected because of what he made before has lost every bit of that from me. It really feels like he grew up with that “I Created Your Childhood” mentality being a 4 time showrunner for almost a couple decades. And when he finally left Nickelodeon, I guess the chance to be that stand out self-made success got to his head and he finally showed his true colors. I now find it hard to believe Butch cares about the little guy that were his fans as much as he rides off his success and others who tolerate him. As such, like JK Rowling, more are seeing this side of him and leaving him behind. Meanwhile Butch is gonna chug on until he just loses steam. It’s kinda like Icarus where the guy will make every effort to fly to the sun. But sooner or later, he’s gonna fall, and in the end I doubt anyone’s gonna care to see it. I know he won’t.

[chinashopbully]

‘I Like Birds’ ch. 12 PREVIEW

(~2500 words) In which Bruce is exasperated, Tony is exasperating, and the author doesn't know shit about restraining himself from adding in a brief bonus!POV halfway through the story.

(also there's a donation request stuck in there at the bottom. don't want that to catch anyone off guard.)

He’s run out of things to try.

Bruce was already on the edge of doing something that’d instantly raise the Homeland Security alert levels. Roping the other Avengers in to help was supposed to increase his options, and thereby decrease his frustration, and thereby serve the overall purpose of world peace.

But of course, since Steve got pulled away on some international something-or-other, and Natasha already came and went with what seemed like maybe twenty minutes in between, only one Avenger has been around lately.

And of course, it had to be Tony.

“Have a little faith in the kid,” says Tony.

“Says the guy who tried to hold him against his will ‘for his own good’?”

“I’m never gonna live that down, am I.”

“I’ll forgive you when he does.”

“Gonna be tough to know when that is if he’s already drunk the Kool-Aid.” Tony pauses, scratches the hair at the nape of his neck. Bruce can’t tell if Tony’s overall greasiness is from handling machine parts or not showering. Both, probably. “Okay so that,” says Tony, “that came out wrong.”

“Damn well better have,” Bruce mutters, stalking away to the other side of the lab where there’s Less Tony.

Tony’s voice covers the distance a little too well. “All I mean is that if he really is chanting Oms and preparing his body for the mothership or whatever then nothing — nothing — we do or say is gonna bring him back down to earth. We try to reach out, it’ll just drive him away. Probably even prove some point about us outsiders being ignorant or hostile…”

“Not that I disagree,” says Bruce, not as under-the-breath as he intended, “but where was this understanding when you were having your AI lock down the building?”

“And anyway I don’t see how it’s our business either way.”

“How do you not give yourself whiplash?”

“Also,” Tony says, “he has powers. It not like he’s helpless.”

Bruce stares. “…I don’t want to sound like a broken record but—“

“So it takes me a while!”

The response sticks in Bruce’s throat. Fact: Tony Stark sucks at people. Sometimes willfully, often not. Occasionally it’s hard to tell which is which.

Bruce shuts his mouth.

Tony drops the torque wrench and reaches into the bag of blueberries dangling from DUM-E’s claw (probably on JARVIS’ orders). “Are we sure he’s not, y’know. Undercover or something?”

“If he were onto something — if this were work-related he’d tell us.”

“That’d be kind of a first.”

“He’d tell me.”

“You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

“He promised,” says Bruce.

“Well did he pinkie promise?” Tony leans back, and dear lord, when was the last time that face saw a razor? “Because that’s the heart and soul of contractual obligation.”

Bruce blinks at Tony’s pointedly guileless face before deciding that it’s not even worth the effort of counting to ten. He forces a smile. “It wouldn’t kill you to be slightly less of a jackass about everything.”

“That’s never been proven.”

He’s going through a rough time, Bruce thinks. He’s going through a rough time. He’s going through… “If not us,” says Bruce, “you know he’d at least tell Deadpool.”

Something metal gets thrown across the floor when Bruce isn’t looking; he jumps, presses a palm to his chest, sucks down the panic and swallows it away only through the aid of relentless practice. He stares at Tony in unbridled horror. He’s going through a very, very rough time, if he’s pulling stunts like that.

Tony gestures violently with one hand. “One, okay, I do not know that, and neither do you. We don’t even know when or, more to the point, why the kid left his place, but I will bet you an entire goddamn casino that Wilson did something shitty to drive him off. Guy’s the human personification of a fault line. Turns on a dime. Razes entire sections of the world at random. Doesn’t know pizza from roadkill and I’ve seen him go nuclear because he didn’t like the color scheme of one of the new-generation iPhone releases.”

“Meanwhile,” says Bruce, because he’s kind of in a mood now, “your response to being kidnapped was to spend the next few years building a personal army of weaponized armor and publicly claim ownership of world peace while daring known terrorists to come hurt your very few loved ones.”

For a moment Tony turns to ice, unmoving and brittle. Only for a moment. Then: “I am a model of mental health,” he says, breezing on. “Two, in the unlikely event everything is still sunshine and roses between spider-boy and Ol’ Hair Trigger, why in the name of sodium pentathol would Wilson tell us anything? I feel like his weird daddy-issues hero-worship thing he had for Cap kinda went belly-up. Because, again, turns on a dime.”

Bruce presses his thumb against a sudden sore spot on his forehead. “I can’t believe I’m about to defend Deadpool of all people, but it’s not like that was an unprovok—“

“Sure I mean, he might show up playing the I’ve Got A Secret game to try and squeeze a buck out of the deal, but he hasn’t, which most likely means he doesn’t know anything. But if you wanna track him down and interrogate him anyway, do me a solid and gimme a heads-up first because I’ve been meaning to test the new Hulkbuster armor.”

“Tony—“

“Three, and goddammit Brucie I hate to say this, I really do, but it gots to be said — maybe Spidey Krishna has been a long time coming and has nothing to do with anything. Not us, not nobody, not no how.”

“At the same time he’s been trying to track down the source of serial suicide bombers? Come on, Tony.”

“Coincidence. Fact is he’s no more emotionally stable than the rest of us at the best of times and god knows we’ve all flown off our own deep ends before. Typically, dare I say it, at the most inconvenient moment? Joining a cult is, like, the tamest of all possible outcomes, let’s be real.”

Bruce feels a dangerous burbling in his chest. Shuts his eyes for just as long as it takes to breathe in once, all the way, through the nose. Two fingers against his inner wrist. Pulse slows. “Claiming coincidence without investigation is just plain lazy,” says Bruce, with his eyes open.

Tony’s expression sours. “You’re paraphrasing. Badly.”

“Every effect has a cause. You either care enough to find out what that cause is, or you don’t.”

Tony narrows his eyes and hums in thought. “Wasn’t there something, somewhere, at some point, in some abrahamic religion, about the devil spinning scripture to his advantage?”

“Tony, I know you have a god complex, but comparing one of your pre-bandwagon rants to actual religious texts—“

“Pushing it?”

“A little, yeah.”

“Well, we were talking about cults, so. My mind was just in the gutter already, I guess.”

Bruce maintains a careful stoneface.

“Hm.” Tony flicks a blueberry in the air, catches it in his mouth on the way down. Again talks with his mouth full, which is sort of the Tony Stark equivalent of coughing and mumbling when you have to say something embarrassing. “Okay yes, my behavior before with the whole… y’know, kidnapping thing… was less than awesome and I was… less right than usual, okay? And now I just think we should leave him alone.”

“And I just think we should find a way to help him.”

“How, though? What’s he need?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because he’s not saying.”

Bruce raises his eyebrows, waiting for Tony to make his point.

“If he’s not saying anything then he’s probably not needing anything,” says Tony.

“Wow,” Bruce says. “I thought maybe you were just putting on a show so you could win the argument, but you really have pulled a U-ie.”

“Look, if you’re right, and this has nothing to do with spandex, and he really does want to be at Jonestown, then we’d be poking our way into his personal, poorly-guarded-secret-identity life and — aside from being just plain rude — probably fucking him up even worse in the long run, even if we did manage to get him to quit the club. And if I’m right, and he’s only there to work a job or… I dunno, whaddaya call it, a case? A mission? If he’s there to do Spider-Man stuff, then we’d be poking our way into that and probably fucking that up, which could get him killed. …I feel like this is overall just a no-pokey situation.”

“As if you never benefit from people sticking their noses in your business from time to time,” Bruce says, looking pointedly at the blueberry bag and Tony’s hand reaching into it.

“How dare you. JARVIS is not a ‘people’. He’s better than that.”

“I’m not saying we barge in guns blazing. But we should try to do something.”

“Great idea, and here’s another one: How ‘bout we don’t.”

“Enough don’t,” says Bruce. “We’ve been don’ting — or, you have been, rather — ever since—“

“JARVIS, music.”

“Which playlist, sir?”

“How ‘bout the GTFO party mix.”

Bruce isn’t sure how he immediately recognizes the opening of “Back Off, Bitch” by Guns N’ Roses — it’s very much not to his taste — but he does, and rolls his eyes.

It’s been over two months since both Spider-Man and reason fled Tony, and both have yet to come back. Been a little longer than that since Pepper left — physically left the Manhattan offices, since Tony refused to do so (the adult version of a child screaming get out of my room), and while Bruce sympathizes with her choices and with her need to be geographically removed from Tony, he more than sympathizes with Tony’s need for the anchor she provided.

These days Bruce can think of Betty without risking a news-breaking incident. If you’d asked him as a younger man whether a person could experience sadness so visceral that their body interprets it as a very real threat to life and limb, his answer would’ve been different, and uninformed. He still thinks “sadness” is a hell of a way to describe the existential anguish that is Betty’s absence from his life. Mostly, therefore, Bruce only thinks of Betty long enough to remember her name, and that they love each other — and that he has a good idea of what Tony’s going through with Pepper being gone.

And if Bruce can spend as much time with Tony as he does, then he must have some kind of nebulous, intuitive understanding of both how and why Spider-Man would spend time with Deadpool.

…And if Bruce is projecting onto both Tony and Spider-Man, he can’t help it. He’s not the most empathetic person, but sometimes empathy, like rage, is unstoppable.

Hmm.

He creeps up behind Tony — already back to “tinkering” and hellbent on ignoring him — and putting his hands on his knees, leans over. His mouth is an inch from Tony’s ear before Tony is even aware that Bruce is in his personal space.

“Mikey,” says Bruce, more than loud enough to be heard over the music.

Tony swats him with a backhand without looking. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU, BUT YOU GO RIGHT ON AHEAD AND KEEP TALKING.”

“His name’s Mikey!” says Bruce.

Tony throws down the screwdriver, waves vaguely for JARVIS to mute the music, and flops his hands on his knees. Sighs, heavily. “Don’t name it, you’ll just wanna keep it,” he says.

“He looks like a Mikey, too,” Bruce adds.

“Of course he does, he’s obviously an adorable babyface who was raised on wholesome cereal that’s a part of this complete breakfast. And overlooking the question of how the hell you found this out, why in the fuck would you tell me?”

Bruce shrugs. “He’s our friend.”

“Yes! He is! Our friend who loves his secret identity! And you know me, you know I’ll never be able to unlearn that. Why would you—” Tony squashes both hands to his face and takes a breath. “Look, I may be accidentally anathema to consistency, but I like to try anyway, okay? I’ve actually had to work very hard not to learn Spidey’s IRL bullshit. Do you understand how hard that is? Do you realize how much he sucks at the secret identity schtick, Gumby?”

“Gumby. Because he’s green. I get it.”

“Seriously. Why.”

Bruce shrugs. “To remind you that he’s human?”

“I know he’s human!”

“And that we all know you’re still very, very sorry about what happened, but running from your guilt by switching from extreme overprotectiveness to an extreme hands-off policy is probably not going to solve any problems.”

Tony narrows his eyes.

Bruce shifts his weight, settling back a little.

“Okay,” says Tony in a profoundly reasonable voice as he rises from the floor. His back pops, twice, when he stretches it. (His eyes bug a little, but he manages not to groan even though he clearly wants to.) “I’ll do some remote surveillance around the place and have JARVIS ping me if anything looks weird. I mean. Dangerous-weird, not creepy-weird. We’re already way past creepy-weird. So this way we’re doing something, but not sticking our hands in up to the elbow. Sounds like a pretty fair compromise to me. Coffee?”

It takes Bruce a couple seconds to realize he just won. “Great,” he says. “I mean, about the idea, not about the coffee. I know damn well that’s not decaf. …You shouldn’t have any, either,” he adds, reaching for the cold pot and holding it out of reach before Tony can touch it.

“Of course I should. I’m a busy adult with many important things to do. And cocaine’s still illegal.” He opens the minifridge, and Bruce closes it with his foot before a can of Monster can escape.

Tony fixes him with a look. “You’re cruel to me,” he announces.

“Mm-hm. How many hours since you slept?”

Tony pretends to consider the question, then gives up. “JARVIS?”

“Thirty-one hours, sir.”

“Thirty-one hours, Brucie Boy,” says Tony.

“C’mon,” Bruce says, reaching for Tony’s elbow. “You’re going to bed.”

“Nah! Nahahah nnno!” He curls away. “You’re gonna have to wash the hell out of your hands if you want to put them anywhere near me.”

“Tony, you’re standing there in a cloud of your own thirty-hour stink and I seriously doubt if you’ve changed your underwear since the weekend. Don’t talk to me about germs.”

Tony hisses.

Bruce makes a grab for him.

“Jesus, your hands are cold!”

“Come on.”

“I need an adult!”

“Tony—“

“I’m not tired.”

“Worse than a nine-year-old…”

“Ow! Did I say you could—“

“Would you just—“

“Okay! Let go, alright! Hands off, I’m going, I’m going.”

“Go to bed, Tony.”

“You’re not my real dad.”

Somewhere in the lava flow of his subconscious, Bruce can feel the Other Guy roll his eyes, at both of them.

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