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You'll have to forgive me for not knowing the background: what exactly is this?
Sorry. It's a MMF romantic relationship.
To be fair to the yaoi fangirl hypothesis, the artist is a woman. To be slightly more descriptive, the comment section has an absolute ton of guys wishing for one of the two slots.
Ah, ok, I think I see it now. I thought that was MMM at first and simply missed the context clues from the post.
I do notice that the pairing appears to be highly masc/androgynous masc/actual girl, though, which is interesting. Seems like it's really convenient to have both a physical rock of the relationship, and then one who's more 'aligned' with the girl's other interests, yet also have them not be the same person.
It makes me suspect that there are a couple of possible attraction modes for the modal woman: one for physical dominance where it would be unattractive for them to worry about the alignment/feels stuff, and one for alignment/feels where it would be unattractive for them to worry about the physical stuff, where one man also serves as a stabilizing force for the other, or rather, isn't going to be turned off by the attribute that's unattractive to the woman. I get the distinct impression that trying to do both ends poorly.
And I see no indication why that wouldn't hold sexually as well, or even necessarily be unworkable in practice- though it does mode-lock the more andro male into a role that might not necessarily have been the most productive thing for them to do.
(And really, if there's only one objection I have to being in/trying to start a gay relationship with someone, it's this. Sure, I could lock myself into the physically dominant role, which is what he clearly requires of me to bother flirting back, but that's not where I get most of the joy out of a relationship... and so inevitably I'd end up doing the exact same threesome thing to do the emotion/build-up things I couldn't do with that partner, which from other experience is inevitably going to feel like cheating, because in truth it kind of is.)
My read on yaoi fangirls is that they're more aware of this dynamic than the general populace. Which, if it's written by more-aware-than-average women, seems correct, but falls short on productive ways to deal with that (other than explicitly form a polycule, which seems like a hyper-autistic solution to both recognize and resolve the cognitive dissonance about 'cheating' I described earlier... and evidence bears that out).
(As an aside, I notice that there are some women who sometimes aren't always aware of this, and get kind of confused when this 'threesome' dynamic asserts itself under certain conditions, because [if you only consider the existence of the physical dom position] the andro man is by that definition malfunctioning because there is no 'andro' role, so what is [in full context] male co-operation can only [from the first perspective] be observed as 2 doms fighting over the single position. Maybe men instinctively understand this dynamic better, but good luck getting them to tell you it exists.)
I don't know if this effect is symmetric or mirrored across to yuri fanboys or by extension MFF couplings. More research is clearly required.
There's a real pattern there in broad strokes, and with more layers than you'd expect, in no small part because there is a genuine contradiction. The physical rock character's stoic, good at problem-solving, traditionally masculine... and this is simultaneously desirable and absolutely infuriating to most women, since it seems belittling even in its best form where it solves problems easily and correctly. The Other One is emotionally open, in touch with his feminine side, risk-taking, and very understanding any triggers from past relationships/male authority figures... and also doesn't really come across as the sort of person a woman she be chasing, and not just in the stereotypical 'bad boy' way, either. Which, to be fair, can also be a fun taboo violation of its own, but still an awkward matter in a real relationship.
Yaoi fangirls are aware of a dynamic, because the genre formalizes one. Ukes are feminine, emotionally open, perceptive (often to a fault), shorter, and a bottom. Semes are masculine(ish), emotionally steady, inscrutable and less perceptive, taller and tops. In some circles, this can get as formal as hair color or blood type. Obviously, many of these associations are not real -- a lot of traditionally feminine skills in particular end up being pretty top- or switch-coded in practice, and a uke/seme excludes a pretty wide variety of real-world physiotypes -- but my guess from the outside is that they're part of what make yaoi attractive to women.
And in the real world, it doesn't really break down easily into one role or the other all the time, either in gay relationships or in M/M/F ones. In the trivial sense, there's a lot of switches, but more broadly it's extremely rare for people to have the same level of confidence and awareness in all fields, or just daily variation in personality expression. It's hard to actually set up a reciprocal norm when at the raw flirting stage, but it's something that tends to evolve pretty quickly in a real relationship in my experience and in those I've seen second-hand.
I have absolutely no idea on yuri/FF. Not really my thing, and while I'm aware of butch/femme people and how they act, I can't say much as to how well they generalize.
I'm kinda curious which one of spudyjek's guys seems androgynous masc to you. In her adult content, they tend to swap (the gray-furred bat is socially confident but physically vulnerable, the white-furred rabbit is socially vulnerable but physically confident... most of the time, but between furry genre assumptions and knowing about that content, I'm not going to get the same read as an outsider would.
I take the opposite view, where the genre (and its conventions) exist as a natural extension of how people subconsciously act -> it works because it inherently resonates. Categories for the (wo)man, and all that.
And sure, that's complicated by the lowest-effort to express, perhaps like love triangles are for het or yuri romance (such that I believe this is just something the typical man likes and that criticisms that it's "tropey" are more from people who have enough mental capacity to both notice that pattern and get bored of it), but if it works for most people in the target audience, then it's probably a signal about that audience.
Which is why it seems that a solution to that paradox is to spend effort abstracting that tendency into a symbol [of... attraction, acceptance, devotion, I... guess?] and move on (and so places where that abstraction breaks down re: 'mansplaining' are going to feel worse, since that abstraction is broken -> proof/meaningfulness of accepting it happens is not only denied and the person/group for whom that emotional work was done is now the exact thing denying its worth). Reminds me of how certain Christians approach God for what I'm pretty sure are the same reasons. (See also: notice me, senpai!)
If I recall correctly, the second quick pass of the given examples suggested it was the black one. The white one does have some signals of this (most stereotypically the glasses), but he also appears to be quite a bit larger and isn't usually doing the 'girly' thing in the linked example.
This is more trying to compare and contrast how straight men see MFF throuples in opposition to how [straight?] women see MMF throuples (I guess I could just read Ouran High School Host Club for a bunch of other examples that I remember even the show just outright stating, but anything other than MM non-twins aren't currently in scope and that's not really the only dynamic featured in there). Gender isn't a symmetric "object" so it's not just "the same thing but flipped" should you examine it in front of a mirror, so to speak (for instance, men and women both might find opposite-sex-twins-on-self-insert hot, but I don't get the impression that men are attracted to the cascade of background of emotional connection leading up to whatever it is they're doing that women seem to be), or rather, examining "what lines up with what" seems to me to be the wrong tool with which to examine the question.
Yet you still seem to require some background awareness of it, especially when you're trying to flirt with someone who doesn't know that. And then that background awareness colors every other interaction (even when it's not meant that way).
For example,
Yeah, totally a mystery as to how that would be appealing to straight women at all- either of the two modes it's going to go into (which is either 'why yaoi has that name' or focused a lot more on the emotional side, which is something that isn't really found much in yuri made by men even though it's something I would naively expect from both sides of a lesbian relationship [but for different reasons in each participant]). Then again, I'm also aware that lesbians are very unusual, so...
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This either/or thinking doesn't check out to me. Scan women's romance literature and you'll find countless instances of the ideal being a strong and physically protective male partner who's also tender and emotionally attentive, something like having a guard dog who's tough to other people but a sweetie to you.
I suspect some women don't have a lot of experience meeting this type IRL, so it's likely that the splitting into tender partner + strong partner is a workaround for someone who's been traumatically convinced that strong + tender (or, as Sabrina Carpenter says, "jacked and kind") combo doesn't exist in a single man. You see something similar in the many romance heroes who are constructed as dashing and brash while also having some kind of physical handicap or emotional wound, which is perceived as making them safer to be around.
Then, too, there are a lot of people who falsely believe they display unappreciated "tenderness" when actually they're just passive or defensively/anxiously polite, neither of which is especially attractive.
I think it's just rare and a natural adaptation for there not being enough for those types for everyone.
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