Top!Joe (trope)

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Tropes and genres
Synonym(s)Top!Joe/Bottom!Nicky
Related tropes/genresSex Positions
Related articles on Fanlore.

Top!Joe is a controversial trope in fanfiction and fanart produced for the pairing of Joe/Nicky in The Old Guard fandom. Joe/Nicky became the dominant pairing of this fandom immediately after the films release, and discourse soon arose in fandom about the way Joe in particular was presented in sexually explicit fanfiction.

Fannish discourse about sex positions has long been a feature of slash fandom. Within the Old Guard fandom there is a subsection of fandom which believe it is problematic and racist to portray Joe, a Muslim person of colour, as a dominant and/or aggressive sexual partner. This has led to a push back against works featuring Top!Joe.

Some fans argue that Top!Joe/Bottom!Nicky is a fic writing or reading preference and does not imply that an individual story will feature racist elements. Other fans believe the less controversial Top!Nicky/Bottom!Joe trope can also be problematic, as it requires Joe to submit to the white character.

Development of the Discourse

Early fandom commentary regarding sex positions was focused around preventing Joe from being exclusively portrayed as a top in fanworks (fanfiction, kinkmeme fills, and fanart) when topping was presented in combination with other stereotypes perceived as harmful towards Muslim men[1][2][3]; the specific position itself was not considered an issue in these posts.

Throughout late summer and early fall 2020, many fans were able to acknowledge that fandom policing was an issue from some members of the fandom in various directions, but reiterated that mindfulness was being called for and not policing of works. However, some fans who enjoyed top!Joe felt that they were being unfairly criticized, including through vagueblogging or over anon messaging[4] which resulted in a conversation between certain fans about criticism versus kinkshaming, curating personal experiences, and willingness to have discussions[5][6][7] as well as side commentary;[8][9] a number of meta posts were written in response to the mid- to late-October round of discourse[10][11][12][13][14].

Fans participating in the discussion holding a multiplicity of opinions or stances reported that they’d received messages ranging in tone from criticism of their perspectives to openly harassing, mocking, or personally attacking. It became clear that there were some fans who had read the posts critical of racist stereotypes and interpreted them to mean that top!Joe was inherently problematic; the authors of some of these critical posts pushed back against that interpretation and insisted it wasn't an accurate summary of their stance, but fanfic writers and artists who created works featuring top!Joe in some cases received comments on their works to the effect of 'it's inherently racist' anyways. In late October, a moderated discord server was created[15] for fans who preferred top!Joe exclusively over any other interpretation, a decision met with controversy [16][17] as well as excitement. One of the users who created and moderates the server later discussed why it was created and her perceptions of how it had been received by others in the fandom.[18][19] Some of the fans most critical of the discord server later expressed that they wished they'd handled things differently.

Some fans felt that the reaction of those running / participating in the server derailed conversations happening about racism in fandom which had been ongoing since August or misrepresented key arguments; more meta posts or ask responses were created on the subject.[20][21][22] By December 2020, fans began to leave the fandom because of the controversies, including some who felt they had been bullied out [note 1], that their concerns about racism were being ignored, or that the wank was pointless.

In mid-December, a fan noticed there may have been a troll in the fandom intentionally stirring up drama, given the similarity between the anons received by one fan author calling top!Joe ‘inherently racist’ in November and later anons received by another blog around a month later with a similar tone.[23][24] The troll PSA dropped the same day that another anon attempted to start unfounded drama about Andy/Quynh content,[25] and other blogs soon lent credence to the reading that the troll was using classic techniques including playing ‘both sides’ of an argument to cause drama. The OP of the troll PSA and some other users speculated that the troll was intentionally trying to create more conflict, give people legitimately discussing issues a bad name, and make some users feel unwelcome by attacking them or their works.[24]

In late December it became apparent that related drama was happening in off-Tumblr spaces when the creator of the top!Joe server, a prominent artist in the fandom, had art reposted without credit to a separate Old Guard-focused Discord server.[note 2] Someone affiliated with the server later responded to criticize the Callout; however, it was clear in the notes of the callout post that the vast majority of onlookers disapproved of the art reposting, and that there were general concerns with the moderation style of the Discord mods in question unrelated to the incident. One user later wrote a post decrying the incident and other trends she felt were occuring in the fandom.[26]

By February 2021, many fans considered the discussion around top!Joe as a trope to have devolved into a culture war, with the original focus of the discourse lost amidst the shouting, and other fans were frustrated that the wank kept re-igniting periodically.

After several months of increasingly bitter verbal feuding between those who believed that Top!Joe was a signifier of authorial racism and those who believed that Top!Joe was simply a fic-writing preference, Tumblr user Lazaefair created a post in February 2021. Joe/Nicky Discourse: A Hand-Counted Survey apparently showed the disparity between fics on AO3 that featured Top!Joe as opposed to Top!Nicky. The dataset included every E-rated Joe/Nicky fic on AO3, but Lazaefair released a controversial spreadsheet of all of the Top!Joe fics counted along with the post about data. The post and spreadsheet drew immense ire from the fandom.

Fan Comments

[eiseul]
Highkey I’m realizing there is a problem in fandom of people misusing labels as a guise to push their preference. Please, I read the metas about and I understand problematic patterns but also how is forcing bottom position joe also not racism or fetishization? I can use similar arguments in reverse, all brown people must be subjugated by white people? If you like bottom Joe, that’s totally fine because that’s just your preference and not some racist intention behind it.[8]
[lazaefair]
The sexual positions are not the point. The sexual positions are proxies. Symptoms. Symbols. Low-hanging fruit, the easiest to point to when building an overall picture of racial trends in fandom. In a vacuum, I don’t actually care about who tops and who bottoms - I headcanon everyone as vers anyway. But in a culture where giving and receiving penetration is observably tied to -
  • who is meant to be the writer/audience surrogate
  • who’s the three-dimensional character the writer identifies with versus who the writer treats as their two-dimensional sexual fantasy
  • who gets to have expanded interiority and whose interiority gets reduced or stripped from them
  • who gets dumped with most of the work without much, if any, reciprocation (either emotional or physical)

[...] But here’s the thing: I have read fics featuring Top Joe/Bottom Nicky where Nicky gives care and affirmation to Joe just as much as, if not more than, Joe gives to Nicky. (Thank you a thousand times to the writers who bless fandom with such fics. They’re delicious.)

And that’s really what I’m looking for. It’s not about sexual position logistics, it’s not about demanding some kind of quota. It’s about the representation.[1]

In a podcast comic creator Greg Rucka claimed Nicky originally proposed exiling Booker for only 20 years. This led some fans to headcanon that Nicky was the more forgiving of the Immortal Husbands, and led to more discourse related to sexual dynamics.

[viridianpanther]
Because what has happened is that this brief conversation in a podcast has been used as a jumping-off point for some obtuse logical gymnastics, by a small minority of people in this fandom who are desperate to headcanon Joe, a Maghrebi Muslim, as possessive, protective, violent, and vengeful, and to headcanon Nicky, a white European Catholic, as soft, diffident, and gentle. And this somehow extends to the idea that some of them are ‘top’ or ‘bottom’ (as if general personality traits are an indicator of preferred sex positions.) And I and so many others are so fucking tired of this discourse.[10]

Some fans also complained that time had passed and the focus of discussion on characters' sexual positions was still on the rise, when there should have been better things for the fandom to worry about.

[shadowhannibad]
We’re 7 months into The Old Guard fandom and we’re back on this bullshit.

I’ll be as brief as I can.

We all had to endure this discourse that goes way back to july (literally as long as the fandom existed) and we have gotten nowhere. Nowhere. I don’t know how many times and in how many ways I can say this but sexual positions tells you nothing about how a character is/will be portrayed in a fic. Nothing.

Top!Joe has racist implications? Yes.

You know what also has racist implications? That’s right...Bottom!Joe.

You know what other types of fics could have racist implications? Fics that have no sex at all!!

I love it how some of these blogs have said that top/bottom is a small part of the problem and the focus is actually Joe’s characterization but it all starts, ends and goes back to freaking top/bottom dynamics. I wonder, do these people read T or G-rated fics? Does those count at all when speaking about characterization or it all really boils down to who gets to insert what inside the other??

I’m tired of having to justify my likes and dislikes, of the vagueblogs, being called racist and seen as less than by people who probably don’t even read topJoe fics just because I prefer to consume and create content with topJoe.

READ. THE FICS. FIRST.

You don’t like topJoe? Great.

You think they switch? Also great.

I don’t care!! I only care when you start caring and judging what I like. There are so many different reasons as to why someone might prefer topJoe and automatically putting a stamp of racism on it reeks of performative activism. So it doesn’t matter how much research and care I put into writing Joe, if I still headcanon him as a top...I’m still racist??

If you’re new in the fandom, this is for you: WRITE WHATEVER YOU WANNA WRITE.

You have a really cool headcanon that has been in your mind for months and you just need to type it down? DO IT.

You have a really niche story idea that you think no one would care about? DO IT.

You have an epic WIP planned of 30k words? DO IT.

You have a desire to write about Joe railing Nicky until the ends of time?

FUCKING DO IT.

You like the opposite? FUCKING DO IT AGAIN.

I want people to write the content that they wanna see out there and that makes them happy - not because they feel pressured, their white guilt is telling them to, or because they feel morally obliged to close alleged gaps (yes, alleged). But simply, because it’s what works best for them. Because at the end of the day is not about what you write it, is about how you write it.

The only thing this fandom owes each other is respect. And not even that is present here with the harassment, death threats and bullying (funny how that’s never mentioned).

Check your biases, create the content you wanna see and have fun.

This discourse was never because there is rampant racism in the old guard fandom. it’s just because their prefered sexual dynamic to read about isn’t the most popular one. Fandom will always skew a certain way first and will never be 50/50. Most creators and fans in this fandom agree that they switch and writes them as such. This is legit one of the most equal fandoms when it comes to top/bottom dynamics I’ve ever been in.

Most importantly: READ THE TOPJOE FICS AND SEE IT FOR YOURSELF.

Racism is a factor. It unfortunately will always be a factor, but discussing it with no nuance and context and just waving the racism card everytime someone writes something that you don’t like, without giving any factual, plausible argument as what exactly makes that particular fic racist, is bastardizing the entire conversation.

Vagueblogging, sending hate anons and making passive-agressive posts is not education. It’s performative activism.

The responsability of educating ourselves is ours first and foremost. But answering people with disdain and dismissing them as immediately racists is not contributing to writing Joe sensitively as a more fully-fledged character. I assure you.[27]

Example Fanworks

Meta

Archives & Links

Notes & References

Notes

  1. ^ Among these users is nizarnizarblr, cited here, who deleted his entire blog
  2. ^ A Callout post was written which included screenshots taken without permission in the Discord server; for that reason the references have been removed.

References

  1. ^ a b lazaefair (2020-08-27). "Listen. The sexual positions are not the point". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2020-09-21.
  2. ^ one day fandom is going to have to reckon with the reality that gender is racialized and race is gendered by lgbtmazight, Sept 7 2020, Archived version
  3. ^ i’m going to say this bluntly; if you are twisting yourself into pretzels in my inbox to avoid admitting that race might have something to do with your preferences and preferences of fandom at large, you need to sit down and really, really think about that. By of-scythia, Sept 9 2020, Archived version
  4. ^ problematizing Joe/Nicky - a thread between karanoidandroid, shadowhannibad, magrib-genova, mewbotz, and lazaefair in early Oct 2020, Archived version
  5. ^ Tumblr post entitled "Conversation vs Criticism in the Old Guard Fandom" by mewbotz, Oct 6 2020, Archived version
  6. ^ Addition to mewbotz's post by shadowhannibad, Archived version
  7. ^ Addition to mewbotz's post by lazaefair, Archived version
  8. ^ a b eiseul (2020-10-14). "As a POC fan, I'm going to add my two cent although apparently poc opinion doesn't matter …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2020-11-10.
  9. ^ elamae56 comments on karanoid's post (2020-11-19). "Okay two things here from anon I want to address. First, this is the take I don't get, …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2020-12-16.
  10. ^ a b anon ask for viridianpanther (2020-10-29). "I genuinely beg everyone clinging to Rucka saying Nicky said 20yrs to remember that GINA a black woman …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2023-06-01.
  11. ^ Saucer-shaped equines, who does what, perceptions and portrayals of (queer) male characters of colour, and why the heck this is a Thing by unstaple-yourself, Nov 2020, Archived version
  12. ^ specific terminology with respect to bias in TOG fandom by lgbtmazight, Nov 2 2020, Archived version
  13. ^ it was never about the top or bottom dynamics and i NEED you guys to get that - Mewbotz, Oct 20 2020, Archived version
  14. ^ There are problems in The Old Guard fandom that should be pointed out post by nizarnizarblr, Nov 8 2020, archived Nov 9, accessed Jan 3 2021)
  15. ^ we have an idea to make a top!joe/bottom!nicky discord server… is anyone interested? (Oct 21 2020), Archived version
  16. ^ response to anon by polarcell, Oct 27 2020, Archived version
  17. ^ response to anon by mewbotz, Nov 8 2020, Archived version
  18. ^ about top joe discord, LET ME ADDRESS A FEW POINTS by karanoidandroid Nov 21 2020, Archived version
  19. ^ karanoid (2020-12-03). "LISTEN YOU LOST SOULS!! I really love joe and nicky but my preference is joe topping, I think it caters more to me …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2020-12-17.
  20. ^ avengersnewb (2020-11-15). "Top!Joe Discourse Anyone? Is there anything specifically wrong with …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2020-12-16.
  21. ^ anon ask for polarcell (2020-12-10). "im saying this a a PoC who's had death threats in this fandom due to WHITE PEOPLE …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2023-06-02.
  22. ^ anon ask for polarcell (2020-12-10). "I am annoyed that legitimate conversations around Joe's characterisation has been reduced …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2023-06-02.
  23. ^ anon ask for lazaefair (2020-12-11). "hey girl, just a heads up that top joe in inherently racist and has a lot of issues, …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2020-12-16.
  24. ^ a b lightdescending (2020-12-16). "I noticed something odd, and I'd like to share it …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2020-12-30.
  25. ^ anon ask for karanoid (2020-12-16). "I think it is funny that there is still this annoying discussion about top!joe = rascist, …". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2020-12-17.
  26. ^ socvrates (2021-01-03). "Bullying, Racism, and Hypocrisy in The Old Guard Fandom". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2021-01-03.
  27. ^ shadowhannibad (2021-02-24). "Again...a-fucking-gain We're 7 months into The Old Guard fandom and we're back on this bullshit". Tumblr. Archived from the original on 2023-06-02.
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