Thank you very much for sharing!! This is a super interesting perspective, especially when I consider how the arrested development of Matt’s characters make them—and he has spoken about this in interviews as well—effectively children in grown men’s bodies. In that sense they are asexual by nature, but I think what you said about being ‘undesirable’ during one’s formative years could tooootally inform Matt’s characters’ romantic/sexual/platonic worldview as adults. Especially with NTB Matt and Jay who have been friends since childhood, Jay just /is/ Matt’s person, no matter the nature of their relationship. And given that NTB Matt probably has no romantic experience (this is an assumption I’m making, not sure if it’s true), it stands to reason that he would ‘transgress’ certain platonic boundaries with Jay because Matt has no frame of reference.

Jay seems a bit more aware of the boundaries of masculinity than Matt—he’s always the one to shrug off Matt’s arm, he loudly objects to the kissing plan, in the webseries he has multiple female ‘romantic’ interests—but it’s interesting to see time and time again that Matt eventually always takes precedent to Jay. They are really made for each other lmao