Hi! Don’t feel any pressure to answer this if you don’t want (I know it’s a bit more personal than most of your questions), but if you don’t mind answering… Are you and Jim the Editor boyfriends? O:
(For context, I know you’re gay [I am too, so it made me so happy when I first saw you mention that], but I don’t know if it’s come up on the blog whether he is, nor if you’re an item.)
Again, sorry if this is too personal or awkward! I’m just curious, ahah.
I don’t think this is the first time it’s come up, but it’s definitely been a while. Anyway, I can kinda see how people might get that impression, but with apologies to anyone who’s been shipping us – no, Jim and I are not a couple; he’s straight, and lives on a different continent. We became friends in our last year of high school and studied classics together at university, after which we both went overseas to do our PhDs: me to the US, him to the UK. He actually just handed in his thesis recently (US PhDs take a lot longer; I still have a couple of years to go), so you could start calling him Dr. Jim the Editor, if you like. Also, by sheer coincidence (and we only found out about this when he met my parents), Jim’s dad, who is an anaesthesiologist specialising in epidurals, was one of the doctors present when I was born.
Jim the Editor is literally the editor – he proofreads pretty much everything I post here. This blog was also actually his idea in the first place; we had a lot of friends who used to play Pokémon and thought they might get a kick out of my addled raving about them newfangled gen-V Pokeymans. I suspect he and I will battle to the death upon the corpse of a fading star at the end of time, when the last words of the gods have faded from memory, but until then, he’s my best friend, and that’s a constant I’m glad to have in my life.
Pokémaniacal 
I love you too!
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❤
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I am very disappointed that there aren’t any other post tagged “gay things” yet.
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Heh; I guess I’ll work on it? There’s probably one or two old questions in the blizzard of posts that I haven’t gotten around to tagging and categorising since moving from Tumblr that would fit the bill.
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Let’s not forget dear old Grunt B 😉
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I have to say you two have a really awesome friendship, people often are so focused on “shipping” and often miss how friendships can be just as important (if not more). 🙂 also I loved getting a little background on the origin of you two meeting!
P.S. tell Jim I still miss his YouTube videos!
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I miss them as well. But I’m working on something… Can’t promise results just yet but if it works out, you’ll love it!
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I have occasional sex with some of my best friends (I am gay too :D) even if we are not dating. Of course, they are all bi or gay themselves. Friendships with benefits are great as long as everybody involved is ok with it.
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Ah, that’s fair!! I’m not disappointed or anything, don’t worry – that’d be kinda silly!
(I mean– how dare you have ***platonic*** relationships? The mere thought repulses me! As a fantastic role model who also happens to be gay, your existence MUST revolve around that fact and everyone I know you know must be your boyfriend or else!!)
But yeah, in perfect seriousness, I think shipping real people so avidly that you expect them to be together and are upset when they aren’t… well, that just sounds like it has the potential to be VERY harmful – I promise this was just idle curiosity, not anything like that!
And on a related note, I’ve never been romantically involved with anyone, but I have plenty of strong platonic relationships I can’t imagine living without – the idea that romantic relationships are inherently “stronger” or “better” than platonic ones is honestly kinda silly to me, and it’s especially ridiculous to impose such an idea on people who aren’t even romantically compatible to begin with! (I mean… I’m a guy and only into guys, and my best friend is nonbinary and only into girls – I’m closer to them than anyone else I know, but that doesn’t mean we should “take our relationship to the ‘next level'” and make it romantic?)
I’m happy for you! I really hope my asking this didn’t send the wrong message or imply that I thought you “should” be a couple. XP
(And congratulations, Dr. Jim the Editor!!)
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No, no, it’s fine! Like I said, I can sort of see how someone could get that impression from reading the blog. Because we are very close, and that relationship means more to me than any other outside my immediate family, and that fact is kind of implicit in the way I talk about him.
On a slightly different track… I do think sometimes that maybe I should talk more about this kind of thing, beyond the occasional joke or reference. Because, like, on the one hand I don’t know that I have much to offer in terms of talking about “the gay experience”; I’ve chosen a lifestyle/career path that is infamous for making romance very difficult (which for the most part I’ve been kinda fine with), I’ve never been very much into gay culture, and not being in a relationship makes my sexuality largely “invisible” to discrimination. But on the other hand, I do think that maybe people sometimes need to hear a message like “even if you’re not in a relationship, or otherwise regularly having sex, your sexual orientation is still “valid” and real.” And frankly, when one is Gay On The Internet, there is a sort of responsibility that comes with that, just because representation is good. Even from a purely selfish perspective… well, again, this is the internet. Authenticity sells.
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Are… are there people who have been shipping you two? That’s pretty hilarious actually because my uni best friend (who is English, and straight) and I (an Indonesian, also straight) have both been mistaken as gay separately, and also mistaken for a gay couple at least once, maybe twice. So I definitely know how you two feel (well, maybe moreso Jim on account of our shared sexual preference), and is also probably why I always knew you two were most definitely *not* an item. You do bicker like an old married couple though, which is great!
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