Caspian Diament: With a name like Caspian, can we expect Narnia? Or at least some gay roles? With nude Dylan and Danish dicks

 

I wanted to profile Caspian Diament (not Diamant)  because of his unusual, rather scary eyes, and his odd name -- was he named after the Caspian Sea, which would make him Russian, or maybe Persian? 

No, he's American, born in Los Angeles, son of Debra Diament, former lead singer for The Januaries.  She is of Danish ancestry.

Ok, then, Prince Caspian in the Chronicles of Narnia?  

Caspian was born in 2006, and began acting in 2012, with roles in Faerie Tales and Dragons, Toy Shop, and Peter Pan, a lot of print ads (for "straight" jeans, har har), and some tv commercials.  

 He begins his on-screen career in 2013, playing  a variety of kids.  According to the demo reels on his resume:

Scared of a monster in the closet

An obnoxious gamer kid

Responding to a friend who has killed someone.

A supportive friend offering comfort

A touching father-son moment

Angrily confronting his parents

And a confident young prince in a school play.

He doesn't mention which of his 13 IMDB credits correspond to each performance, but I surmise that the Confident Young Prince  is from an episode This is Us (2016-22), about the problems of three adult siblings.  Tess, the daughter of Randall (Sterling J. Brown, left), is cast as Snow White in the school play.  She is black.  The white parents laugh, leading to a discussion of racism. 

Later the teenage Tess comes out as gay, and starts dating the nonbinary Alex.

A lesbian co-star?  Caspian is gay-adjacent, anyway.

As far as I can tell, Caspian's movie and tv characters have all been heterosexual or heterosexual-by-default.  Plus I found an annoying heterosexist reference: "Chicks dig me."  His Mom responds "That's what I've been saying since you were born."  When he was born, how did you even know that he liked chicks, lady?

But there are also gay references. In 2018, Caspian posts a video of his hip-hop class, with the taglines "Cute Boy.  Gay.  Artist."

Left: gay hiphop artist Milan Christopher.

More after the break

"Big Mistakes": Dan Levy as a gay Christian pastor who makes big mistakes. The first was leaving "Schitt's Creek." With Patrick and Pacheco nude.

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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

Topper Guild: The youtube star breaks into tv. With Kaido Roberts, muscle men, Nick d*ck, and Topper playing with balls

 

 Something called Topper Guild Creator Essentials appeared in my Hulu recommendations.  I had no idea what it was, but the guy was cute, so I clicked on it.

Episode 1.1, "Roblox 99 Nights in the Forest in Real Life," begins in media res, with Topper, the cameraman Shutters, and a bounty hunter searching in the woods for their pal Kaido (Kaido Lee Roberts, left).  And Topper's "brain rot," whatever that is.

They discover that he has been kidnapped by cultists wearing red robes and deer masks.  

While Shutters researches the cult online, Topper, Mike the Bounty Hunter, and a muscular cop track down four other missing kids.  Each requires a different challenge to be rescued:

Dino Kid: A bucket of roaches.

Kraken Kid: A pool of sticky glop.

 

Squid Kid: A stinky, used cultist robe.  The kid asks for Topper's autograph before he escapes, suggesting that the guy is famous.

Koala Kid: Attacking the cultist guards.  At this point the Cop goes home.  I don't know why.

They are deliberately over-acting, usually while addressing the camera.  Animated images of their thoughts appear over their heads, and there are other animations for no apparent reason.  When Topper tells us "Guys, they're tied up!", the ropes start to glow.  When he says "Maybe I can find something useful in this box," the box starts to glow.  

 I think this sort of thing happens on a show for preschoolers: "Can you find the object that doesn't belong at the beach?  Right, the snowman."  But this isn't for preschoolers; it's rated PG. 

Topper and Mike the Bounty Hunter discover that Kaido is being prepared for sacrifice in the King's mansion, so they go undercover as cultists. Mike is captured, and tied up next to their friend.

Topper/Cultist claims that the King sent him to beat up the captives. While punching, he slips Mike a knife, allowing him to cut the ropes and knock out the guards.  All three escape in Topper's van.

The "brain rot" turns out to be a cutout of a squat, square humanoid formed from the number 6-7 (the meaningless number that kid chant to annoy adults).

Three cast members are listed, but only Kaido Lee Roberts appears on the IMDB: he stars in some of Dhar Man's clickbait videos.

And Topper Guild?  Not really a guild, the guy's name.

Born in 2002, Topper Guild grew up in Los Angeles, but now lives in Austin, Texas.  When he was 12 years old, he began posting humorous pranks and challenges on social media platforms.  He soon gained 84 million youtube subscribers, plus 34 million followers on Tiktok, and 1.3 million on Instagram.

The videos became more elaborate,with fictionalized plots and characters:

"I Build a Secret Room for Ronaldo"

"I Murdered K-Pop Demon Hunters"

"Surviving Evil Kids"

More after the break. Caution: explicit.