"Yaoi slop"
So you might've seen like a variation of this post from me, that's because I accidentally posted it earlier and deleted it because I hadn't finished typing it out. If you haven't then like hi, this is going to be a post being made in response to Avid's most recent streams and the general state of the mcyt community from the perspective of someone who's kinda been here for a minute.
Introduction
Now, before I really get into it, this all started off as a conversation about how marginalized genders tend to be underrepresented within fandom spaces and I think this shift in the conversation due to avid's streams is really redundant. I'm sorry, just because your yaoi stock plummeted after these 2 streams shouldn't turn the conversation away from that original topic at hand. It just shouldn't. Period. There are plenty of amazing people who don't get the attention they deserve on the basis of gender, and that as a conversation is WAY more important than any of this.
Shipbaiting in the mcyt community
With all that out of the way, let's talk about "shipbait" in the mcyt community.
Shipbaiting, as I'm using it, talks about the phenomenon within the mcyt community where people, often men, flirt or just in general act romantically with one another as a means to tease the fandom or gain an audience. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I should note, this is a widespread behavior that has happened for literal years and I'm not attacking anyone for doing it, even if I use more negative words to describe it. Also I have heard people refer to this as "queerbaiting" which while yes it oftentimes overlaps with queerbait, I find even openly queer people do this and to call queer people flirting with one another queerbaiting feels cringe so...... I'm not doing it!
I honestly find shipbait to be a foundational pillar to this age in the mcyt community starting all the way back in the days of... sigh Dreamnotfound, the ship between, the now mutually controversial, Georgenotfound and Dreamwastaken. (I even argue the seeds predate that with the popularity of Septiplier specifically showing a shift into shipping gaming youtubers in general, but that's semantics)
And on some level I think the rise of shipbait is only the logical conclusion of mcyt smp content. I say this because within the modern day of mcyt the content you're selling isn't really Minecraft itself, but rather what you do with minecraft. What story are you telling with minecraft? Who's your character? And what are your dynamics, relationships?
And that's where you get shipbait from.
I mean in the eyes of a fandom romantic relationship have always been the end all be all, and if you're selling your character and relationships, why not flirt with your friends?
And I should mention my definition of shipbait includes everything, yaoi, yuri, and everything in-between. This entire section talking about shipbait, what it is, why it is, and simple analysis... though there is an elephant on the room because, fandom wise, not all shipbait is equal, is it?
YAOI...
In the modern day fandom, mlm in general is... prominent, to say the least. This is due to the historically poor female representation within media. Oftentimes the given love interest (a woman more than not) in a media was given more a token status and thus wasn't given any interesting character traits, meaningful relationships, or any real impact on the story. Due to this, many people began finding relationships in other places... by shipping guys together.
This is fine on its own, but as female representation has improved, the fandom treatment of women and general nonmen hasn't. This is a problem widespread throughout all fandom, but for mcyt this has the added yikes that these people are real people, actors, and storytellers. These aren't side characters because inherently within smp content no one is a side character, every pov, even ones that don't address the "main plot" of an smp matter.
Furthermore with the divide of mlm shipbait vs shipbait of marginalized genders, is that in an smp with either the mlm ships get way more attention! If you don't believe me look at the amount of cryptidclues (shubble x infinitedrift) vs aviscott (avidmc x smajor1995). Or hey! You're likely in this fandom if you're reading this, compare whatever yuri ships exist in your smp of choice vs yaoi ships and see what comes out of it.
Not all mlm ship content is bad however, I'm not saying that. There is just an objective divide between mlm and everything else. I like plenty of yaoi ships, I mean look at damn blog for fucks sake, for a year my @ was "mean-gills", not mentioning, well...
...SLOP!
This section is where we have to make the very important distinction between shipbait, intentional romance, and fanon romance as ideas within mcyt. Shipbait, of course, is flirting or general romantically inclined action between 2 content creators as a way to tease an audience, most of what I've talked about falls into this. Intentional romance is when 2 content creators explicitly make a romantic relationship between their characters this is more common within lore focused smps, however if 2 content creators are dating irl it can fall into this too. And lastly fanon romance is where 2 content creators never do anything explicitly romantic per say, but fandom ship them anyway, I think most older smps fall into this category, but honestly category purely depends on content creator awareness of Fandom.
Now that I've given you 3 fun categories to play with........ particularly disregard them because the overlap is CRAZY!
When talking about the entire idea of "slop" within the mcyt community I find these distinctions to be important as it gives quantities to what is a more subjective read. An explicitly romantic relationship will always feel less like slop than a more ambiguous relationship, however if the content creator's explicitly motivated by fandom input it can feel more like slop. On the flip side a more ambiguous relationship can be less slop if the two creators involved aren't really motivated by fandom input. (There is also an audience factor here, a ship is more likely to be read as slop if its popular no matter the other factors)
The power of Audience
Within any media, audience holds a lot of power, but in content creation with platforms like YouTube, TikTok, ect, the audience holds a LOT of power, and even give power...
Content creators with larger audiences hold power over those who have smaller audience. Period.
This is a relevant detail to any dynamic between content creators. Even if irl they are good friends, on camera one side has more power over the other. For how small this seems, it does matter. For this essay's sake, it effects fandom perception.
Oftentimes, in shipbait terms, the smaller of the 2 creators will be defined by the ship with the bigger creator by the fandom. (This is true about any dynamic romantic or not) In the worst cases, you'll see fans bombard the smaller creator with ship content to the point of harassment.
Again, to ignore this is to ignore a very important of on screen dynamics.
AvidMC
This is where this essay turns from a broad analysis of the fandom to a specific example. I completely understand if this is where you stop reading, I've managed to keep it pretty broad up to this point. And if you do, goodbye, have a nice day and hope you liked my analysis. If you want a lesson from all of this then I'd say please be more aware of your behaviors, appreciate the amazing nonmen within this community, and don't fall into the fanon hivemind.
When it comes to Avid's vampires pov I understand why people who were either attached to aviscott as a ship or avid's narrative of queer acceptance would dislike what Avid has came out about his vampires smp pov on stream.
I had conflicted feelings myself.
With this said, in media literacy, the author's intent is integral to understand the meaning of the story being told. And Avid outright confirmed his narrative went the way it did due to fandom motivation.
...Which sucks, but that doesn't make it any less true. And on some level that makes aviscott more "slop-like" by my definition.
That doesn't mean you need to dislike the ship or Avid's ending, but to ignore the out of story context is ignoring something very important. Also if you feel attacked by the out of lore context then, well, that says more about you, I'd say.
