It's a "Different World" than where you come from. There are gay guys at Hillman College now, with muscular physiques and cocks

In 1987, daughter Denice (Lisa Bonet) of The Cosby Show spun off into college, "A Different World than where you come from."  It aired between Cosby and Cheers, so we had no choice but to watch.  But no problem: there was a lot of beefcake -- I especially liked Short Guy Ron (Darryl M. Bell) -- and some gay-subtext buddy bonding; the snobbish aristocrat Whitley stole the show; and the historically black Hillman College was interesting, "a different world" to many viewers.

It wasn't actually a comedy, at least not after the first season, when Denice leftt and Whitley was promotd to focus character. The world became a cold, dark place, with episodes about sexual assault, abusive relationships, AIDS, and a lot of racism. I especially disliked the constant victimization of math major Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison), who for some inexplicable reason starts dating Whitley, his polar opposite. Eventually we stopped watching. No point in getting depressed every Thursday night.

Nearly 30 years later, a new generation of first-years has arrived at Hillman for a rebooted Different World on Netflix. The focus character is Deborah Wayne, the daughter of now-divorced Dwayne and Whitley.  Hillman is her safety school, even though her dad is provost or something --- all of the old gang have stuck around, and now have important jobs at the college.

A homophobic Redditer complained, "Why do they have to make 99% of the characters on every tv show gay? It's like straight people don't even exist anymore."  So let's look for the gay characters.  The character and episode descriptions on Netflix and Wikipedia offer some clues.

There are seven main male characters.  Five are identified as heterosexual:

Superstar basketball player Shaquille Johnson (Cornel Young IV, left), son of Short Guy Ron, chose Hillman against his dad's advice that he go to a Big 10 School and then turn pro. He starts dating Deborah.

Jalen (Elijah J. Roberts, left) is a "sexy point guard" on the basketball team, who starts dating Deborah's friend Hazel.

Ghanian-Nigerian fashion design major
Koji (Chbuikem Ujike, left) is in college only to please his parents. He actualy wants to drop out and start his own fashion company.  Sounds promising, but Netflix says that his main pastime is "charming girls."

Left: I went through the cast list, looking for nude photos of the male stars, and found Michael Vargas being oiled up in a video on XYMen.

More after the break

Jake Silbermann: Coming out on a soap, crushing on a dude off-Broadway, with some film roles and a beautiful, humongous cock

 

Two Jakes with familiar-sounding names had impressive j/o shots on the celebrity penis subreddit.  Yesterday I profiled the first Jake, McDornan, from Quints, Greek, What We Do in the Shadows, and Mrs. Davis. The second Jake, Silbermann, is not instantly familiar, but I know him from somewhere.

Researching him proves problematic: a comedian/ musician named Jake Silbermann is much more famous, and gets 99% of the internet search hits.  I'll have to go with the IMDB biography for our Jake:

Born in New York City in 1983, and received a B.A. in Theater Arts from Syracuse University in 2004.  After some commercials and guest spots, he landed his most significant role to date, Noah Meyer on 222 episodes of As the World Turns (2007-10).  

Noah and Luke were praised as soap opera's first gay power couple, Nuke.  But it doesn't seem like they were together very often, or for very long. I'll try to piece together their convoluted storyline.

1.Noah is a student at Oakdale University and intern at WOAK television, dating fellow intern Maddie.  he thinks that Luke (Van Hansis) is after his girlfriend, until the dude reveals that he is gay.

2. Noah and Luke start dating on the downlow.  Maddie finds out and dumps Noah.

3. Noah's Dad (Daniel Hugh Kelly) finds out and disowns him , tries to "cure" him, and finally tries to murder Luke.  He ends up paralyzed, but eventually recovers.

4. Noah marries a young Iraqi woman so she won't be sent back to her country, but she falls in love with him and wants to make the relationship physical.  Then she disappears, but it turns out that she has been kidnapped by Noah's Dad.  In the ensuing confrontation, Dad is killed.  Or is he?

5. After some skulduggery, Luke realizes that he still has feelings for his ex, Kevin (Karl Girolamo), and breaks up with Noah.

6. Later Luke starts dating Reid, but when Noah is in critical condition in the hospital, he rushes to his ex-boyfriend's side.

7. Luke gets back together with Reid, who then has a car accident and dies. Meanwhile, Noah gets back with his ex-girlfriend, Maddie.

8. Noah is blinded in an accident. Luke starts dating Brian (Lawrence Lau), the doctor in charge of restoring his sight.  

Or is Brian his grandmother's new husband?  Wikipedia and the fan wiki give different stories.  I guess it doesn't matter: everybody that Luke dates dies. 

So naturally Noah calls off the latest attempt to start a relationship and leaves town. Just before the soap opera ends, cancelled after 54 seasons.  But at least they got to kiss twice.

Jake hasn't had many significant on-screen roles since. Guest spots on The Good Wife, Person of Interest, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and The Blacklist.

Let Me Make You a Martyr (2016), about siblings who fall in love and plot to kill their abusive father.  I can't tell from the plot synopsis if the siblings are same-sex or not, or who Jake plays.

The Report (2019): Adam Driver  (left) uncovers "shocking secrets" of CIA interrogations after 9/11.  Jake plays a Yoked-Up CIA Officer.  

"Yoked-Up" means having a muscular, well-defined physique.

And some shorts. He wrote three and produced six, mostly about women seeking the men of their dreams.

Stuffer (2010): A female soldier returns from Afghanistan to her husband and kids.

Consciousness (2017): A female programmer creates "the perfect man" AI.

Little One (2024): A cat turns into a human woman and becomes the object of her owner's "toxic fixation."

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Jake McDorman: Ryan Pinkston's brother goes on to date a superhero, a vampire, and a nun. With nude and j/o photos.

 The celebrity penis subreddit usually doesn't offer much of interest: famous cock shots that we've seen a thousand times and obscure actors showing their stuff while making out with ladies.  But yesterday it offered very impressive j/o photos of actors that I've actually heard of, Jake McDorman and Jake Silberman.

McDorman got his start on the Fox comedy Quintuplets (2004-05), as the tall, athletic, popular quint.

Ryan Pinkston played his shorter, much hotter brother. 

Left: A guy is impressed with Ryan's equipment.

Jake went on to Greek (2007-11), playing a wealthy collegiate preppy, president of his college fraternity (Greek, get it?).  I watched on occasion for the gay character.

After Greek, Jake became a fixture on network tv, with recurring or starring roles on Manhattan Love Story, Limitless, Murphy Brown, The Right Stuff,  Mrs. Davis, and Class of '09.

With many opportunities to show his physique and backside.

According to the IMDB, Jake is "most famous" for:

Lady Bird (2017): The unfortunate title kept viewers away, thinking that it was a biopic of Lady Bird Johnson, President Johnson's First Lady.  It's actually a coming-of-age story about a girl in contemporary California with that name. Jake's character does not appear in the plot synopsis.

Watchmen (2019): A tv series about the incredibly homophobic comic book vigilante. Jake plays 1930s superhero Captain Metropolis, who starts a romance with regular character Hooded Justice. 

I checked: Hooded is a guy, played by either Cheyenne Jackson or Jovan Adepo, depending on whether you believe Wikipedia or Decider. 

I'm probably going to go with Jovan. 

Hey, what  happened to the homophobia?  The Watchman comic was impossibly offensive.

More after the break

Robert Rhodes: The visual difference hasn't stopped him from playing a dragonrider, a cultist, and a thug, and finding a boyfriend (or two).

In House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel, the crowning of King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) has led to civil war in the Medieval fantasy world of Westeros, and several dragons left without masters. In Episode 2.7  (2024), a group of Dragonseeds is  ordered to try to claim them.   Sorry, after researching two fan wiki and wikipedia, I'm still not sure who dragonseeds are, and why they have to be the ones to tame the dragons.

Silver Denys (Robert Rhodes) volunteers to go first, but as he reaches out to touch Vermithor the Bronze Fury, it breathes fire and incinerates him, along with most of the other dragonseeds. Finally a blacksmith named Hugh managed to trick the dragon into obedience.

Silver Denys was on screen for only about a minute, and had no lines, but he became the subject of extensive fan debate.  Was he brave or foolhardy?  Some fans also criticized his appearance: the stage makeup was amateurish, not realistic, grotesque, an obvious symbol of his incestuous parentage, and so on.  Others stepped up to "defend" him: it's his real appearance, he's  "deformed."

Robert called them out: "Call it a scar or a difference. The word deformed isn't very pleasant and insinuates I am half formed/incorrectly formed.  I'm not incorrect, just a bit different."

For a long time, Robert responded to the stares with anger, but now, if he's not tired from telling the story 1,000 times a day, he'll say "Is there anything you want to ask about?"  

The story: he was born with a congenital melanocytic nevis -- a birthmark that covered half his face.  Doctors worried that it would become cancerous, so he spent his childhood in and out of hospitals, undergoing tissue expansions and skin grafts.  He had his last surgery at age 17.

When he was in high school, Robert realized that he was gay, and worried that he'd be doubly stigmatized when he tried to make connections.  Would he ever be able to find a partner? Was he going to live as an perpetual outsider among his own people?

Then he auditioned for Hairspray -- and won the part of Link Larkin, the hunky heartthrob  (played by Zac Efron in 2007 and Garrett Clayton in 2016).   That's when he decided to become an actor, to have people look at him for his hotness and acting talent, not for his scar.

After high school Robert attended the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in South London, where he received a B.A. in Performance in 2018.  He started filling up a resume with acting roles:

Commercials for Enterprise  and Kandar 

The lead in the music videos Heroist (left)  and God for a Day 

Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame 

Bill Sykes in The Invitation 

It was a little harder to break into on-screen acting.  Robert is an ambassador for Changing Faces UK, which combats the stigma around people with visible difference.  Especially in mass media, where they are portrayed as "shy, broken, desperate" outcasts, or more commonly as villains:

Kylo Ren in the Star Wars universe

Tony Montana in Scarface   

Scar in The Lion King

The Joker.

So he tries to find roles where his visual difference is irrelevant to the character.

 His first  professional acting role was in a tv adaption of the Agatha Christie novel Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2022).  Will Poulter plays as a golfer who stumbles upon a dying man.  His last words are "Why didn't they ask Evans?" I don't know what Robert's character does.

Next he played an orderly in three episodes of Masters of the Air (2024), which I thought was a steampunk series with dirigibles flying over London.  It actually stars Austin Butler, Callum Turner, and Anthony Boyle (left) as bomber pilots during World War II.

More after the break