#because i don't like getting into fandom drama

[thebroccolination]

Hi Key, your post is the second I've seen that hinted at Joss but without further explanation. He generally has a positive public perception and I only know him from 3WBF (which I liked), so I'm curious where this shift in perception is coming from recently.

Would you mind making a post or directing me to where I can learn more about his general...situation.

I apologize if this is intrusive since I know you don't like to engage in Fandom Drama and like to keep your space positive, but I don't have XTwitter and his Tumblr tag is usually quite dead.

Thank you in advance!

Why I Don't Fuck with Joss: An Extremely Academic Essay of Words and Screenshots

Hi Anon!

I normally would have DM'd you an answer to this, but since you sent the ask anonymously and you were very kind in how you asked, I didn't want to ignore you.

However, two things:

I do generally make it a policy to keep my negative personal thoughts about certain actors to private conversations or, y'know, Discord servers, just to keep it off public platforms where toxicity is already rampant. In this case, though, I think the situation is interesting enough to comment on. (Plus, y'know, I'm amazed he was even managing a comeback when he's been known to Be Like This for years.)

I didn't get a lot of primary sources for this post because quite frankly I don't like Joss and I don't want to look at his face any more than I already have. However, friends who've been following this more closely than I have were able to verify that there are sources out there for everything I'm going to mention. Just, y'know, don't use me or this post as a source. This isn't one of my Citations Included Posts, this is just a Why I Don't Fuck with This Guy Post.

So, for context, I made this post last month, and someone made a more explicitly worded reblog here that's honestly better if you're going in without any context.

Essentially, Joss has had a dodgy reputation for years, but I think because fan turnover is high in interfandom and he's never been in a BL series before, most interfans just know Joss as A Tall Man Who Likes Sportsball.

But when I got into Thai BL back in 2020, Joss was one of the first actors I heard of as ~Problematique~ so I looked into him, and what I learned made me go, "Ew," so I just keenly ignored him from then on. (General gross stuff like the Domundi boob-grabbing prank and some assorted Dudebro comments about women. I don't remember specifics anymore because he was barely on my radar, but a friend at the time who'd been in fandom longer basically told me, "Yeah, that's Joss, lol.")

Interestingly, before JossGawin became a thing, most interfans were rooting for JossLuke, but I think given how vocally left-leaning Luke has proven to be, I wouldn't be surprised if Luke saw the prospect of tying his public reputation to Joss and went, "lol no goddamn thank you."

Gawin, on the other hand, seems to be down for whatever GMMTV wants him to do, so he probably just sees Joss as a colleague he makes out with (acting is a weird job). He went to high school in western Pennsylvania, he has white relatives on his dad's side, and he hangs out with the Gym Dudes of GMMTV, so I'm sure he's completely desensitized and is one of those guys who thinks, "Nah," but doesn't go so far as to say, "Not cool, dude." The Gawin Caskey Method seems to be: throw a basketball, make out with a dude on camera, go home and eat an edible. Dismount.

Unfortunately, even though Gawin's never really made any political statements or taken any major stand for the queer community, he's gained goodwill that some people are now calling into question because of Joss.

Anyway, apparently Joss used to follow Andrew Tate on Twitter until Tate was suspended, so it seems a lot of people assumed Joss unfollowed Tate, but yeah, between the sexist comments, Boobgate, and admiring Joe Rogan, that was enough for me to physically recoil from the screen when I saw the teaser for MGB.

Okay NOW, everything from this point onward is new stuff I've learned over the past month that made me go, "Oh. So he's worse now."

Joss has apparently had that Joe Rogan quote pinned to his Twitter account since 2020, but people just shrugged it off because they like his man stomach or something? (I don't find him attractive, but even if I did, I truly don't understand how he made it this far. It feels like he's been pretty firmly canceled every year since I got here, honestly.)

I also didn't like him weight-shaming Gawin. There's some older clip of him calling Gawin fat, and I know in Asia it's more common to comment on other people's bodies and weight, but I also recently found out that he got Gawin a meat cake for his birthday because idk actual cake is for pussies? (Sorry, Anon, I was trying to aim for an objective tone but I abandoned it because I reeeally don't like this man.) And apparently a lot of JG fanservice is just Joss and Gawin at the gym so Joss can teach Gawin self-control or something? I've had their tag blocked from the beginning, so you'll have to look into that if you're curious.

Ah, and at some point in the last few months, Joss was apparently asked what his "type" is and he said something like "white, skinny English-speaking Europeans/Americans"(?) Which apparently made Asian women go, "Hey, c'mere real quick: good. Bye."

I also thought it was a huge red flag that Joss has been in the industry for years, and his domestic fanbase is still quite small. Others have pointed out that very few fan interactions with him are in Thai, and he's clearly courting a western audience both in his individual engagement and by partnering with a mixed American actor. When he did the LGBTQ+ panel last summer, apparently the reaction from Thai commenters was, "lmao why Joss?" not, "Oh yes, of course, Joss!"

So it seems like GMMTV has been trying to do a rebrand for Joss using Gawin and interfans more generally since Joss speaks English and interfans don't generally seek out the resources to do research. Remember last year when GMMTV announced that Y-MIND script competition? It was originally domestic only, but after Thai fans overwhelmingly went, "The contract terms here are wildly exploitative, so fuck off," GMMTV rereleased the promotional material in English and went, "HEY INTERFANS WANNA SEND US STUFF :D?"

That told me they really don't think especially highly of us.

On December 15th, someone pointed out that Joss didn't just follow Trump on Twitter, he also followed a ton of extreme alt-right accounts on Instagram. Not normal political figures, either. Obscure figures like Pearl, Candace Owens, that guy who was saying Your Body My Choice, and Andrew Tate's right-hand man, and more! Some of his fans tried to point out that he follows progressive Thai politicians, but as far as the American side, he only followed alt-right conservative accounts with zero liberal accounts.

Though, in fairness, someone did point out that Joss also follows famous progressive Democratic figures [checks notes] comedian Chris Rock and basketball player Stephen Curry.

So. Whoohoo for that, amirite?

Since Joss's fans weren't having much success defending him on their own, they threw some @'s at his account to get him to make some kind of statement that would somehow explain away why he was following a deep, deep alt-right fanatic like Pearl. (Spoiler: He didn't.)

The JossGawin International fan club even released the above statement to address the issue, then received such alarmingly vitriolic backlash from the JossGawin fandom for "betraying" Joss that the fanclub decided to deactivate entirely. (I have no idea if they reactivated or not, since I stopped keeping up with this whole debacle shortly afterward.)

One Thai(?) JossGawin fan actually seems to have used ChatGPT to create an English comment to chastise the fanclub for their lack of support in Joss's dire times:

Amusingly, rather than address his fans' concerns or unfollow any of the accounts causing the chaos, Joss instead just started deleting any comment on his Instagram that called on him to comment.

Five days later, he unfollowed 137 accounts. No idea how many of those were alt-right extremists and how many were just extra padding to make it look like a general cleanse, but it was at least fifty last I heard, and the fact that 1) it took him nearly a week to do anything but delete the comments calling him out, and 2) his first tweet after this whole mess was a quote-retweet of GMMTV's message welcoming Barcode into the company saying, "lol this kid looks like if me and Gawin had a baby" just goes to show how unthreatened he feels.

After all, Joss has been this way for years, and his upcoming series with Gawin is probably going to do numbers regardless. He's successfully rebuilt his stagnant career off the support of interfans, and he knows he'll be fine.

Even Foei has a show with Tay! We're all good here. \:D/

So yeah! That's why I don't fuck with Joss. \:D/

This'll be the last I say on Joss publicly.

I just figured I'd make one all-encompassing post so I can link back to this in case anyone asks why I'm not supporting any of Gawin's projects with Joss. It's a shame because I do really like Gawin, but this isn't even a hard choice for me to make.

Oh, and while we're on the subject: the director of MGB, Ark, is also Not a Good Dude by all accounts I've heard from multiple people who've interacted with him privately. I mean, he sure is queer, but he's also said to be a misogynist with some white-people-worshipping tendencies. He doesn't have the highest opinion of BL fandom in general, either, especially when you look back on his whole direction of IT'S NOT A BL Shadow. Just, y'know, another reminder that queer people aren't Virtuous or Evil by nature. We're a big ole clusterfuck of nuance, so you don't have to support MGB for Ark just because he's a queer man. I have zero proof that I can share publicly, so you don't have to take my word for it. Just, y'know, in case you were on the fence, I've heard he's a dick.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go write absolutely filthy gay porn to purify myself from writing Joss's name so many times.

[windyskiez]

BSD FANDOM: STOP TAGGING YOUR POSTS OR FANART WITH THE AUTHOR'S REAL NAME OR FULL NAME.

I know it's too late but PLEASE-

Reason number 1: It's making it hard for people to research the people that the characters are based on and certain information about them.

Furthermore, Asagiri switches the authors' relationships in BSD. For example, Dazai treated Akutagawa badly in BSD, but irl wise he idolized him. The more you use the authors' names around BSD related media, the more misinformation might be spread.

Reason number 2: If the wrong media gets to the wrong people, (let's say, the authors' relatives or into political issues) You might get yourself sued or backlashed.

Confused? Aight lemme explain. There was a fanartist in another fandom, bungou related but not from BSD. The character was also based off an author, and one day, a political newspaper company interviewed the artist, deciding to use their works. Without consent. (Because obviously the other fandom has copyrighted material, and tagging the author's name makes it seem like the character is associated with the author.)

Anyways, the article AS WELL AS THE ARTIST faced a lot of criticism. Even though it wasn't the artist's fault, they still got hate from fans because of it, and eventually they had to leave the fandom. Meanwhile the fandom faced backlash because a character, based on an irl author, is associated with politics.

And that's why people from that fandom started to separate irl author tags from characters. To avoid drama and such.

BSD FANDOM I NEED YOU GUYS TO BE AWARE OF WHAT Y'ALL ARE TAGGING.

You can tag your posts like #bsd dazai or #bsd chuuya, but DON'T tag them as #dazai osamu or #nakahara chuuya stuff like that.

[bambooswordwielder]

So funny to see the different demographics that each MXTX book series attracts and how that affects the way the fandom interacts with each other and themselves.

SVSSS is a Fandom full of people who embody the 'dont-like-dont-read-it' mindset I believe we need more in fandoms. You wanna ship Shen Qingqiu with Tianlang-jun, Luo Binghe's father? Go ahead. Wanna write a 300k fic about Shen Qingqiu as a bird that follows Luo Binghe around during his childhood? Where's the bloody link. Wanna make memes about Skinzun? Me too, send me all the memes and drawings.

The nature of SVSSS being a meta-retelling of stereotypical Male fantasy harem novels means it references and is heavily influenced by Fandom Culture, especially during Airplane's Extras of his past life.

It's because of that fact it means to read and finish the books, you automatically just have to be a person who's been dealing with fandom culture for a long time. You've learnt to accept that other people ship other ships, you've learned to love the random rare pairs that show up on your homepage that you never would've thought of but now will be hunting for on AO3, you've just learned to have fun with the source material.

This mentality is further pushed by the fact SVSSS doesn't have alot of Canon Material being produced, meaning a majority of content is fanmade for fan consumption. This builds a level of community that means there's not that much discourse, and any discourse there is is usually shut down with a simple "Oh hey Shen Yuan, nice to see you here."

MDZS has a bit more diversity in the people it can attract. It has a well-written love story between WangXian, it has Sibling Angst in the form of the Yunmeng Siblings, Nie brothers, Lan Twin Jades, and the entirety of the Jin Family, and it has deep political intrigue and discusses/dissects discrimination of your birth status (Sexism, Classism, Merit VS Blood). MDZS is also the novel with the most adaptations (The OG Novels, a Donghua, a manwha, audio drama, Life Action in the Untamed, and a manga), meaning more people can consume it in their preferred style.

However, it's due to these reasons that MDZS tends to have a lot of fights/debates in it in terms of interpretations of the characters/plot. Someone who watched the Untamed primarily is going to have a vastly different interpretation of Jiang Cheng’s character than say someone who read the original novels, and someone who watched the Donghua will have different scenes than in the Novel. People who came primarily for the Sibling Angst might wish for Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian to reconcile, while someone else for came for something else might be happy they don't interact.

There's also the fact the story deals with a lot of characters going through extreme circumstances over a long period of time, meaning characters make decisions that might make some fans hate them and some fans want to defend them for it. This overall just causes a lot of debate.

Love the works, love the Fandom, but 99% of fighting is caused by people reading/watching different adaptations which has different portrayals of characters (I'm staring directly at you Jiang Cheng).

I will update this when I finally finish TGCF and can get a glimpse of the Fandom, though would love to see any statements about it or the other fandoms.

[thestrangerthingsgirl]

okay look, at this point, i do not care about what you guys ship, I do not care if you ship mileven or if you ship byler, ya'll need to be patient and relax, don't go hating on others just because you don't like the same ship as each other, iti's always "byler this mileven that" and like calling the ship names different names just to make the ship look bad, it's 2025, ya'll are still fighting over ships and the show is ending any moment of this year, do you guys really want to just keep on fighting even AFTER the show ends? the show will end with the ship that will end up endgame after a while and we'll have to deal with the consequences with what ship ends up endgame, if i'm being honest, I like the show, I love it obviously but not just for the ships and the love, but just mainly for the plot, for it's story, i'm sorry if your tired of me bickering about the hatred that goes around with the stranger things fandom in here (obviously other sites like instagram, tiktok, x etc has different opinions on ships i just feel like tumblr is mainly more about the hatred around the ships) but i'm just going to be completely honest, I don't think we should worry too much about whatever ship happens, we should just worry about what characters the duffers are deciding to kill off in the end, like there's a lot to worry more about what ship will end up endgame, I know there's a lot of proof on both sides but it's not like the duffers want to use fan service for the last season.

and if you are wondering what side i am on, i'm on neither, I like both ships but I don't hardcore ship mileven or hardcore ship byler, I find them both nice ships but I don't go hating on others for liking mileven or liking byler, I just feel like we all need to relax and be patient instead of just assuming that all mileven or byler fans are mean and cruel, like of course not all of you guys are cruel and I see you, I see you looking at my posts and I understand that you aren't here for the drama and the hatred, and I want to see more of that, I would like to see more honest respect about opinions, I don't want to see anyone hating on each other just because they have a different preference or a different opinion, it's not the end of the world if you ship doesn't end up endgame and you are not delusional for enjoying mileven or byler.

I don't want to say anything about my opinion on the ships, I obviously don't care what happens other than the characters happiness, like I would rather see them happy with each other than one of the characters being disgusted or angry about them liking the other character (for example: el upset about will falling in love with mike because that's her bf or something) i obviously think that el wouldn't really care much or understand, just being honest but after the whole massacre she really did lose her memory so she basically has to understand everything that she learns about like learning about sexuality. I mean I don't really understand why people would think that El would hate Will for liking Mike? like it's valid that he likes mike and El likes Mike too but it shouldn't be something to like reconsider, let's just trust the duffers, like we're not the writers of the story, and the actors don't write the script they act out the script but other than that, I think we all need to relax which I know that doesn't help to say so but I feel like people just need to stop attacking each other for people's opinions, even the actors had said stuff about their opinions on the ships whether or not they want to talk about it especially since they don't want to deal with getting in trouble for spoiling something, like yes i have heard about noah saying that will has a crush on mike, like that's obviously something we know about, and millie, she doesn't need to talk about mileven if she wants to avoid questions about that, or finn also, like i feel like when it comes to the actors, whenever they do panels and such in cons I feel like the most majority of questions that people ask is about the ships and what their opinions are on it but maybe we should ask them about what they think themselves about the ship war or maybe ask about their character arcs and such, and there's also the fact that sometimes maybe the ships won't exactly end up what we want as sometimes the actors will say "don't be upset if byler doesn't happen" as that's something noah has said in a live stream before but he could be wrong he could be right but he can't get im trouble for spoiling especially since NDAs are very strict.

Okay i see that the name is something so it doesn't show up on the tags of the opposite ship, I don't be calling byler something else that seems rude okay, I'm putting this into the tag of both ships for a understandment of both ships, obviously this post isn't here to hate on each others ships or anything, I'm not here to hate on y'all for liking mileven or byler don't get me wrong but don't go saying assumptions that I'm hating on one of the ships when I'm not hating on any ships whatsoever, i'm just talking about how ship wars are stupid and unnecessarily.

If you don't agree with me on this that's okay, just scroll ahead, I just don't want to cause any trouble but I wanted to say like my opinion around the ship war.

Another note, don't go assuming that i hate a specific character, I do not hate el, will or mike, i just hate the ship wars involving the 3 of them. I do not technically have any predictions about the 3 of the characters but i do hope they are all happy with whatever decision they are in.

One last thing, I do not hate mileven nor byler, I just hate the ongoing fight about whatever ship should end up endgame, You are entitled to what you ship and I respect that, I am just here to state how I do not enjoy the ship war that always tends to be a problem in the fandom.

[moccasins]

how are there people in this fandom that are transphobic or homophobic? what fandom do you think you're in?

[rythyme]

the universal bl drama fandom experience of making a post about a crazy gay thing some characters did only for several unsuspecting souls on a completely different corner of tumblr* to assume this is one of those "imagine your ship" posts and start reblogging it with tags like #i want a fic of this sooooo bad! or #omg this is sooooo [insert ship name** here]... like i truly love that for you but this is not a hypothetical. i literally watched two men do that last week on my tv screen. this is not a fanfic prompt. we have insane gay ppl here.

*western media fandom, usually

**i swear it's always either house md, hockey fandom, or those 911 guys who just became canon bisexual (good for them)

[instantpansies]

life is hard for us oz fans who are only meh about wicked. have half a meme.

[spill-to-t]

"Rick cries so much" "Daryl cries too much" "Maggie cries too much"...

Imagine one day this whole world changes and you see your loved ones dying in front of you. You see your best friend, husband/wife, child, brother/sister dying in front of you. You feel responsible because you weren't there or didn't act the right way. Imagine you feel guilty for so many bad happenings. Imagine that you are just confused and overwhelmed sometimes. I really don't understand why you would say this? Doesn't matter which character, they all lost not only one person, some of them lost their whole family. This show is about the fucking death and it's a fucking drama show. WHAT THE HELL DID YOU EXPECT? How can you be annoyed by people crying when they just lost someone? What else should they do? Have a little dance?

I don't get it

[non-un-topo]

I realize I've been so flaky with responding to asks, finishing my drawings or fics I promised, etc. I've kind of been drifting in and out of tumblr without interacting much. Real life just finally started, and I need to build up a ton of motivation and find time before I can work on a fandom project. Just wanted to say that I'm still here and still working on stuff, just slowly.

[sangcreole]

.

[pinkyjulien]

Sometimes there's simply no such thing as being "neutral"

Everyone is allowed to hang out and befriend whoever they want; just as others are allowed to notice it and take their distances if needed

It's not even about ""choosing a side"", it's about reading the room, having critical thinking or realizing that things aren't always "personal beefs" - sometimes people are just assholes and shouldn't be comforted or encouraged in their behaviors; hell, if you're their friends, you should even call their bullshit out, that's what friends are supposed to do

and if you're too scared to call their bullshit out cause they might attack or bully you, well I don't think that "friendship" is worth it in the first place but y'know

[lokiinmediasideblog]

Talking shit with nuance in the DMs with someone who's also seen the horrors of Loki TWT is nice ^_^

For context, I really HATE Loki TWT (I find Lokiblr more tolerable, maybe because it's easier to avoid shit as I have the algorithm recommendations turned off. Y'all should try that.). Everyone's awful over there, be it anti series, Sylki, or Lokius.

Like do they all know they can express grievances without getting ableist and nasty?

But some people from Loki TWT unfortunately are also on Tumblr...

[vynnyal]

Unga bunga these take 3 hrs to make

[doodlingwren]

It's again that time of the week where I have to go and report the spam and/or porn bots from the tags I follow because every time I see one of their posts on my dashboard I die inside a little bit

[hyruviandoctor]

I am both intelligent enough to know that Targe should not have done that, and wise enough to know that people rarely do the most logical thing in the heat of the moment. Protecting the people you care about sometimes means doing dumb shit

[hauntedtotem]

ppl when they find out teenagers act like teenagers 😱