theta

avid does have fun with the occasional Bit(TM) but Does Not like being flirted with for the sake of attracting audiences who want to see m/m shipbait and nothing else

a decent chunk of male ccs do this sort of thing and apparently don't always back off when asked/rebuffed. notably though the shipbaiting with other men is like. a huge thing that a lot of MCYTers do and have done

(and we mean huge as in "there's a paper over a decade old on a few different Yogscast members doing this that is widely considered one of the most notable instances of any form of MCYT analysis in academia". like it is not a novel phenomenon)

while avid has fun joking with his friends, it seems to us like he's started to feel like he's being used as the butt of the joke by others (mostly creators incentivizing this) at times, where the joke is "zomg two guys???? and those guys KISS? 🤯" as somehow an absurd and unserious concept, often one that fandom overplays instead of engaging with the actual fiction

(again, that is not a new thing, that is what the paper is about and it is, however subconsciously, why many people engage in this behavior. the punchline is very often "haha wouldn't it be funny if we were gay" in these circumstances and we can't imagine it feels great to be trying to embody yourself as a newly out queer person in a field that treats your existence as an unserious punchline.)

if we had to guess, part of why he's started being more out as nonbinary is that people who do this for "press button get yaoi #content" tend to step off when you're not an open-and-shut Man anymore and they have to think about it first (because they at the very least want to keep a "progressive" image and "haha wouldn't it be funny if i was in love with a nonbinary person" is far harder to use as a Joke -- when stated clearly like that it borders on being actively transphobic and that's not exactly good for someone's image)

"nonbinary people can't be yaoi" is questionable phrasing but in this case, again, avid is referring to the fact that creators who shipbait/flirt with other men "for the bit" and fans who ship any men that stand next to each other "because yaoi" will both have a harder time doing that without looking transparenty reductive and rude

JudeLow post 😎 New fixation under the belt peeps. Design will NOT stay like this for future drawings, the head and pants look too boring as of now. Cross posted in the JudeLow Discord server.

i spent these two days just. trying to find the perfect jude design idk

im happy for now