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First of him saying nb people can’t be “yaoi”, which putting my personal discomfort with that term aside, just isn’t true. It’s true for him don’t get me wrong but saying enby people can’t be Yaoi at all ignores the large subset of nonbinary people who are also men, identity as masc or sometimes do (myself included! we do exist!). It’s largely a personal thing, men can be dating nb people and have that considered yaoi, it’s up for the people involved. Straight and Gay man can date nonbinary people and no it doesn’t invalidate their identities. You can’t just slap being nonbinary on a character and expect that to stop men from flirting or whatever. Because by that logic it would also stop straight women or lesbians from flirting if they wanted too. It’s also implies the only people who can date nbs are other nbs and multisexual people? Which. Ew. That’s not how it works. Avid doesn’t want to be in yaoi which is valid and fair but it’s also fair and valid if an enby in a relationship with a man wanted to call theirs ‘yoai’. Nonbinary is a large spectrum that’s so much more complex than “not a man or woman” and I feel the way Avid talked about this he unintentionally was pushing the “enbies are woman-lite” narrative. Which we’re a marginalised gender identity (which is a sick fucking term this whole thing exposed me too hell fucking yeah btw) but we’re NOT women by default. Some enby people are women too like some are men but only if they personally identify as such.

Also very very minor thing that doesn’t really matter at all and was a joke but did bother me was someone in chat saying he was “double bi” on account of being nonbinary and bi. I know this is like a joke and Avid did respond to it as a joke but no. No no. He would be double bi if he was biGENDER and bisexual. I’m tired of multigender identities being ignored (which is a whole nother thing but something I feel strongly about) even if it’s a silly joke. But it does prove to me that Avid doesn’t have large knowledge on the nonbinary or trans communities yet.

Like, respect the creator before you respect the craft, and I have a lot of respect for Avid, so if he wants to do better in regards to his stories, I feel like we should respect that

That’s just me getting caught up in the drama and getting really sick of rude people

this is not pointed to you Beanie just an observation in general I wanted outta my head <3

OH GOOD, AN EXCUSE TO TALK ABOUT THIS. Verdant ily, this is not directed at you, I just need to ramble and half of this probably doesn't make sense but i need to get it out.

I did not manage to catch Avid's stream yesterday since it happened while I was asleep and my YouTube is acting up too badly for me to find the VOD, but from what I've heard he's been talking down about the way he ended his pov of VSMP - which really saddens me, but I do understand where he's coming from on it.

Avid's finale was amazing in all senses of the word, and I do recall that he was talking so happily about how proud he was of it not long ago. It might be him figuring out his gender identity that's had somewhat of an impact on how he sees it, since he's probably become a lot more conscious of transphobia, misogyny and exorsexism in the community now. Still, it doesn't feel great to see him talking so horribly about something he was recently very proud of. It kinda feels like he's been caught up in the negative side of the fandom himself and is repeating what other people have said.

When talking about his characters being excessively flirted with and their stories being ignored, Avid wasn't talking about the wider problem: he was talking about an issue that s specific to HIM. Something HE SPECIFICALLY has experienced. Making it about the wider issue in mcyt fandom (even though that is an important subject) is highly invalidating towards Avid.

Jumping to conclusions is not something we should be doing, and Avid is fully valid to change his opinion on his own stories - heck, I know how that feels, I do that all the time. Still, hearing him call his VSMP finale "yaoislop" felt.... bad. This post sums up what I want to say better than I could. Two queer people acting out a queer romance isn't yaoislop- two straight men queerbaiting is what yaoislop actually would be. Sure, v!aviscott was rushed, but it was an improv series and everything was messy. They only had eight episodes and two hours per episode, iirc!

Also - another thing Avid was talking about in the stream I believe was the sidelining of female creators to have them used as a plot device for his own story. Which... I feel like, is much more of a fandom issue than a creator issue, but Avid seems to be trying to pile the guilt completely on himself. v!Drift and v!Shelby in particular: they have their own Povs, their own stories, they aren't being sidelined. Everyone is a main character in their own Pov and a side character in everyone else's! I'll reference this post and this post, and this one as well. Other people are putting my thoughts into words better than I can.

I think that Avid did a very brave thing by speaking up about not wanting to be flirted with on camera and how he's frustrated with being seen only as shipbait while people ignore his actual character work.

I also think it's not productive to start pointing at specific people and accusing them of harassment when Avid has not named names and its been made clear this is about a pattern of behavior and not one or two people. Yes, its clear Avid and Scott had some kind of fallout, or at least that Avid has deleted the photos of them together. But unless Avid specifically says "XYZ did XYZ" I think its unproductive and inflammatory to point at the most popular example of a man he is shipped with and say that Scott's guilty of harassment. Again, it has been made clear that this is a pattern of behavior and not from one or two people. If Avid wanted us to think it was just one person and to start pointing fingers, he would have said names.

You can't ask someone why they're not human! /ref