Thanks For Responding And Considering My Idea! You Even Made Wonderful Art, Thank You Very Much! I Think

some more arts on this au

and many thanks to @fandomfreakstudios for expanding it! without their wonderful posts it would not be nearly as interesting as it is now :)

apparently i am the only bobutter shipper who thinks that pb hadn't been into bojack that whole time before they began living together....

i already made a post related to this topic btw. i just think that it would be quite interesting if pb started to gradually fall in love with bojack just the same as bojack started to fall in love with him after the end of the show. the problem is, if mr peanutbutter liked boj at first sight or smth like that, it doesn't sound.... right.... he didn't know the real bojack then, he saw only his media image, and behind it - just a broken self-destructive jerk

i like to think that he started getting to know him after bojack got out of prison. he finds out that bojack is into theater. bojack is good at driving. bojack can be kind and thoughtful. bojack can be sincere and vulnerable. etc etc etc. and he starts to love THIS part of bojack. pb knows his flaws, has seen him at his worst, he also knows his good sides, and begins to love him because of this, and not because bojack is simply charismatic/handsome/he was the first to pay attention to him after another divorce. it would show his growth as a character, since all his previous relationships were kinda... superficial? he loved katrina, jessica, diane, pickles, but those feelings weren't deep in my opinion (at least initially); i won't go into details, i think many people see it anyway and btw positvty has a great video on this issue.

a real friendship began to form between them only towards the end of the show - after that scene in the bar maybe? then bojack supports pb after he cheated on pickles. they had never been close before, and boj was really open with only a few people such as diane, herb... and, according to my assumptions (bobutter propaganda), after bojack's release from prison, their relationship continues to grow. pb is the only one who stayed with boj and did not distance himself from him (he did the opposite actually), and he sees this. and there is potential here. they work great together, but i'll talk about this some other time.......

however, i respect the opposite point of view, it's quite interesting too and i consider it as plausible as mine. i like to look at their relationship from a different angle, that's all

the most loose cannon in hollywoob

also my favorite ship (you could tell by my blog)

bobutters going to the other side of the country for a few weeks between seasons 4 and 5... just a friendly trip because they both eventually got tired from life and relationships and fame... they spend time together without direct romantic interactions, go to shitty movies and sometimes drink at the bar. their classic dynamics but more of a partnership than a rivalry... and then they come back as if nothing had happened. things go pretty much the same as in the show and they don't even talk about it ever again

i agree with you in many ways (for example that pb is really not as innocent and good-natured as it seems from a superficial point of view), but i want to make some remarks!

tbh i don't think that mr peanutbutter had any special attitude to bojack.

OBVIOUSLY pb has his flaws (and you listed them) but to me he seems a rather nice guy? pb generally shows a kind attitude to everyone, it is natural for him; but precisely because he does it unconsciously, and not because of any stable principles and beliefs, in most really difficult situations he behaves incorrectly and selfishly. however, he is capable of really noble deeds - for example, the fact that he forgave diane after he found out about her lie (the scene in the restaurant). i can say that he cared about diane and loved her, just as he appreciates and cares about his other friends (giving todd a place to live, helping bojack with a doll and supporting him after that in the bar, saving a damn underwater city).

he also shows a disdainful attitude towards bojack as well as towards others. i don't even need to list it - as soon as bj starts to really tell pb about his problems, he runs to erica promising that "they will catch up later"! and the fact that he did leave bojack at the party in the last episode. or he brings him to a public event although he must understand that it will be pretty uncomfortable (to put it mildly) for bj to be there now (i'm talking about giving d to hollywoo)

it may seem to us that mr peanutbutter treats bojack in a special way because, despite all insults and the actual betrayal of the latter, he still treats him friendly. i always thought that he didn't care so much about bojack himself as about bojack's opinion of him almost right up to the end of the show, 'cause as we all know he just needs everyone to love him (bj is not special in this regard). he is extremely amiable to bj, forgives any his bad actions etc, as he tries to make bojack like him too because how can someone not like him???

at the same time i in no way exclude pb's sympathy for bojack. even he wouldn't be able to keep running after a man who can't stand him for twenty years!!!

but yes, it doesn't seem to me personally that mr peanutbutter treated bojack in any special way, he's just like that with everyone. he can do both good deeds, helping and supporting, and bad ones, neglecting his friends' feelings. because he's silly used to ignoring any negative emotions in general and because he is too fixated on keeping his image of a cheerful and carefree guy to really pay attention to others' problems.

yeah he definitely has something to work on…

I kinda realized something rather harshly. PB is often woobified by the fandom (this is rather obvious but hear me out). He is typically seen and perceived as this kind genuine and generous person. Because he is….. to Bojack

This is not bobutter propaganda I swear, hear me out

It is a well observed phenomenon in this fandom (as well as in many other fandoms with morally complex and nuanced main characters) that the viewer can often be swayed by the perspective of the main character. As a simple example, the amount of Bojack viewers that sympathize with his actions simply due to the fact that you see how he may be led to commit certain acts is staggering.

And yeah, from Bojack’s perspective Peanutbutter is kind, generous, and caring, because that’s how he always treats Bojack. Constantly scrabbling for opportunities to spend one on one time with Bojack, willing to drop everything at any moment if he needs help, forgiving him when he had no right to be forgiven. Giving up his space, money, and privacy the moment Bojack is in need of a place to stay. Putting his reputation at stake by continuing to associate with Bojack after the public turned on him. Bojack is treated with kindness, patience, and forgiveness in nearly every interaction.

And yeah, if this is how he treated EVERYONE, that reputation he has of being a total sweetheart would be fully justified, but looking beyond Bojack it becomes shockingly obvious that this is NOT the case.

Diane is an easy example, because the seeds that led to their divorce had been sewn throughout the run of the series. Peanutbutter REGULARLY ignores Diane’s needs and perspective, favouring his own ambitions over hers. I saw a post going around about hank after dark (I genuinely can’t find it again or remember who posted it i’m so sorry) but it was about Peanutbutter essentially telling Diane to go to Cordovia to do her own work AWAY from where she could possibly risk his new game show.

This is just the tip of the iceberg but it really shows that he prioritizes his own whims and his own little bubble of hyperfixation over the needs of his wife. He’s usually completely blissfully unaware that she’s often uncomfortable in her own home when it’s full of a film crew, or campaigners, or whatever the hell else he’s latched himself onto. Yes she doesn’t often express this, but to a neurotypical person this would be more obvious by simple observation (peanutbutter is NOT nt, clearly, so he’s less at fault but it doesn’t change the affect), but peanutbutter is so lost in his own whims and excitement that he doesn’t recognize the people around him (AND he tends to get defensive whenever someone tries to bring him back to reality). At least until his divorce with Diane snapped him back to reality.

Also i’m gonna talk about Pickles real quick. I love her, honestly. A lot of people don’t like her but she exists to essentially act as the culmination of all peanutbutter’s problems, and she does that perfectly (also she’s cute, sue me). Yeah, the issue with peanutbutter’s maturity is obvious to the point where Diane calls it out directly. Peanutbutter dates all of these younger girls simply because he WANTS to. He doesn’t care about the affect it may have on the course of these people’s life. He knows it’s wrong, hell Pickles’ age makes him actively uncomfortable whenever it’s pointed out. But he dates her anyways, because he chases whatever makes him happy no matter how selfish.

Yeah, him being bright and optimistic is fun and cute and you could never IMAGINE a man like that doing you wrong, but that mindset lacks real world practicality and sustainability which would in the end lead to the divorce.

Anyways! I digress. Peanutbutter treats Bojack VASTLY different from any of his partners, which is just fascinating to me. He can completely ignore and dismiss Diane’s discomfort with having their house full of crew people, but Bojack appears on his doorstep drunk and distressed and Peanutbutter immediately sends EVERYONE home and gives Bojack his full unwavering support and attention

This ended up kinda tangent-y but I think I made at least some sort of point somewhere in there. I just had thoughts I wanted to get out

So, basically, in a world where BJ and PB start a relationship very early, their only salvation is to end the relationship. In my opinion. They would have to be fine alone. And maybe, a good long time later, maybe they could come back.

in fact, we have two versions of this au. kinda sub-aus. it sounds silly yeah but it works (in my opinion). it's alpha!bobutter au and old married couple au.

i've already thought about how i want to see the result of their relationship in alpha!bobutter au. and i came to the conclusion that there is no result as such. tbh, if you think realistically, they just don't have a chance. they are doomed. they are unlikely to break up, at least completely, and even more unlikely to get rid of their demons with therapy and all that. i would imagine their ending as a slow rotting together that ends with the death of both, sooner or later. therefore, i prefer to look at their relationship in this au as a process that has no end, because it's more interesting that way.

but old married couple au! i was just thinking about them yesterday. and damn, it's such a cool concept. freak and i decided that this au is pure fluff, which i just adore, and now it's kinda my favorite au

okay. now how i see it. we take freak's post and just soften everything a little so that it fits the concept of fluff (i hope you don't mind freak. if anything, we can always make sub-sub-aus /j). almost each au is based on an assumption, and this time we assume that the relationship (friendship at first, maybe) with mr peanutbutter helped bojack become, well, more tolerant. softer. not that he fixed him, it's just that his presence in bj's life helped him to be a little more rational and not such a jerk in many moments, which is why he at least did not spoil his relationship with herb (maybe he still got fired, but bojack at least supported him after that and they didn't cut off communication). bojack wasn't so indifferent and rude to sarah lynn. didn't agree to participate in the bojack horseman show. and accordingly, he has a lot less regrets in his life, and in addition, a reliable partner who gives him unconditional love.

i'm not sure if they started dating right away or if they were friends at first, in freak's post these circumstances are almost identical to those in alpha!bobutter au. i like to think that they first became friends, and their romantic relationship began more consciously (however, a casual one-time hookup as a catalyst seems interesting in this case too), although i can't say that they were both 100% ready for it.

bojack's stormy youth is over, and pb is with him. he still turns to alcohol sometimes, and this is a problem, but not nearly as serious as it was in the original. mr peanutbutter still doesn't know how to express his desires normally, suffers from toxic positivity and is rarely sincere, and only with bojack. but they're doing better together. it's not like in alpha couple au where two bad people meet and poison each other's lives, but rather like two people with flaws meet and try to live this life, supporting each other as best they can

i just like this au because then the title of the show would be smth like "BoJack Horseman Doesn't Have Any Problems and Others Do (Well, He Actually Has Some, But It's Okay)". i mean, they definitely have problems in their relationship, and they work with it as best they can. the arcs of the other characters didn't change in general, except for some additions (pc doesn't have to get bojack out of trouble to her detriment every day, todd lives with both of them and so on).

in my opinion, this au is needed in order to look at what the events of the show would look like if everything happened under such circumstances (although almost all the terrible deeds committed by boj didn't take place because i've already explained why, and they need to be replaced with something more light and it's interesting to speculate about too). and ofc FLUFF. and can you imagine what kind of relationship they would have if they had been dating/married since they were +-30 years old??

but i still need to know freak's opinion, of course, since these sub-aus are kinda ours. but in general, i imagine it like this. i wanted to make a post about it, and now the opportunity has appeared. thank you!

swaps star in "philbert"! based on @fandomfreakstudios's post