Adam Basil: Bodybuilder, gay pirate, gay-subtext creature, gay-icon zombie. Are you getting the idea? With his mushroom, nude Spartacus and Sherlock Holmes

  

In the original stories, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes shows no interest in women and a lot of interest in his "roommate," Dr. Watson.  But most film and tv versions aggressively heterosexualize the guys, sometimes with queerbaiting first.  So I had no faith in the new Amazon Prime series Young Sherlock Holmes. 

With good reason: he meets the Girl of His Dreams almost instantly.  Plus the reviews say that he's nothing like the traditional Sherlock; he's a gormless, idiotic, girl-chasing rapscallion.

Left: The rapscallion's rear.

But there was something of definite interest in the first scene: Mycroft Holmes goes to Newgate Prison to spring his wastrel brother (set up for pickpocketing, although he always returned the wallets after swiping them), and finds him at fisticuffs with the shirtless muscleman Barney (Adam Basil, top photo).  

Pecs, abs, biceps...dude, you're breath-taking.  Why have I never seen you in anything before?

Turns out that I've seen him in a lot of things, but he's playing characters named The Beast, The Butcher, and The Demon, under heavy stage makeup, so you can't really see his face.  Or physique.

Pity.

I didn't find a lot of biographical information, just what is listed on the IMDB: Adam grew up in the east of England, studied acting, and performed traditional British theater.  His "unusually high levels of athleticism" (meaning his muscles?) led him to creature work.

After a few small roles, Adam became Disney-famous for the live action version of Beauty and the Beast (2017) -- as the Beast, before the spell is broken and he turns into Dan Stevens.

Disney today, Marvel tomorrow: in 2021, he starred in Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage as the sarcastic, gay-coded symbiote who shares the body of journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy). Shares the body?  Tell me more.

Left: Tom's dick.

But it was his role as The Bloater in The Last of Us (2023) that sealed Adam's popularity with gay fans.  

Wait -- The Last of Us is about a zombie Apocalypse caused by a mutated wheat fungus.   The Bloater is completely covered with fungal pustules, which act like iron plates, making him impervious to bullets -- and giving him super-strength, so he rips people's heads off their bodies, like the zombie Samson in 28 Years Later.  

They also make him so disgusting that I had to avert my eyes whenever he appeared.  How does a being like that gain gay fans?

But in interviews in Out and The Pink News, Adam states that the Bloater has become a sex symbol in the gay community.  He gets erotic DMs that call him Big Daddy Mushroom.

Are you sure that they are referring to the Bloater, and not your mushroom...

More after the break

Manny and Gavin Scharf: Gay-coded Wisconsin brothers, a wrestler and a bodybuilder, aren't into girls, until.... With some d*ck pics

 

Several years ago, I became a friend of Gavin on Facebook and some other social media sites.  He was a college wrestler from Wisconsin, about 200 miles away from my college town.

I don't give the real last name of non-celebrities, so I'll call him Scharf, "Sharp," German slang for "Hunky."  For obvious reasons.

He never mentioned girls, but he mentioned other boys quite often.  And he posted n*de photos.  I figured that he was gay, but not quite ready to come out yet.

His younger brother Manny was quiet, artistic -- also gay-coded.  

Apparently Manny was feeling left out, with two wrestler brothers and a sister who was a gymnast. At age 14 he joined the wrestling team, then began bodybuilding combined with intermittent fasting.  Strength training is fine for teenagers, but they are generally discouraged from bodybuilding until their bone structure is fully developed, and their body fat should not drop below 6-10%.  

 Manny shredded down to 3%, then down to an unhealthy and unattractive 1%.  Soon he was competing in venues like the Brew City Classic in Waukesha, and was the the subject of adulating video and articles "Insane 16 year old bodybuilder!"; "The Wonderkid Bodybuilder"! 

More after the break

Daniel DiMaggio: The queerbaiting boy of "American Housewife" grows up to play Count Chocula and post n*de photos

 

You may be familiar with Daniel DiMaggio, no relation to Joe DiMaggio, as Oliver Otto on American Housewife (2016-21).  I never heard of it, but I wouldn't have watched anyway.  Who wants to watch a sicom about June Cleaver or Donna Reed?  

It starred Katy Mixon as Katie Otto, a housewife who, although not pretentious herself, is immersed in the ultra-pretentious world of ladies who lunch in Westport, Connecticut, along with her husband (Diedrich Bader), two daughters, and son Oliver (Daniel). 

She has a lesbian best friend, and there's a gay character (Jake Choi) in Season 5, so there's a bit of representation.  The main problem fans had was queerbaiting Oliver.  

He is presented as gay, with everything from pictures of muscular men on his bedroom wall to an interest in ballet to a boyfriend, the wealthy, femme Cooper (Logan Bell).  Everyone thinks they are boyfriends, anyway, including Cooper himself, who is upset every time Oliver claims that they are not dating.  But then he backs off and gets a girlfriend.  

Logan Bell (the femme one) is gay in real life, and states that he played Cooper as gay.  So why five seasons of "crumbs" that led nowhere?  Fans were irate when the showrunners were too cowardly to let Oliver come out.

Daniel already has two strikes against him (baseball metaphor, har har) for five years of queerbaiting.  Let's check on his other projects.

He was born in 2003 in Los Angeles, and began acting at age nine in the short Geisho (2010): a man (Horatio Sanz) wants to become the world's first male geisha.  Kind of gender-fluid.

Next, a 2013 episode of Burn Notice, which, I discovered today, is not about a hospital burn unit, in spite of the misleading title.  It's about a spy who was "burned" (fired). How the heck are potential viewers supposed to know that?   Daniel plays the young version of focus character Michael (Jeffrey Donovan). 

More after the break

The mystery of Kaito Daiki Diver's adult video

  

The nude celebrity subreddit had an adult video of someone named Kaito Daiki Diver.  But there is no  diver with that name.  The closest I could find was Japanese swimmer Daiyo Seto.

There is no Kaito Daiki Diver actor, singer, or any other celebrity.

But there's a character named Kaito Daiki in the Kamen Rider franchise.

Created by Shotaro Ishimori in 1971, the Kamen Riders are tokusatsu, special-effect powered superheroes like the Power Rangers.  Motorcycle-riding loners (until they team up), they wear special belts that transform them into masked, muscled, insect-motif beings.

The belt is called a doraiba, or driver in English.  Maybe the "diver" in Kaito Daiki Diver is a misspelling of "driver"?

To date there have been 36 Kamen Rider tv series in Japan (some are streaming in the U.S. on Amazon Prime).  Plus countless movies, video games, manga, toys, homages, parodies, fan conventions....

In the tv series Kamen Rider Decade (2009),Tsukasa Kadoya (Masahiro Inoue) must travel through the nine universes to fight space-time anomalies.  He encounters Daiki Kaito (Kimito Totani, left), a charming interdimensional thief who eventually reforms and becomes Kamen Rider Diend (named after his home world).  

In an interview, Kimito stated that the guys are involved in a romance, but I think it's subtext rather than text. 

Ryota Murai (left) plays Kamen Kuunga.  Dozens of actors have played Kamen Riders, but this is the only guy I could find with nude photos.  

Except for the adult video.  But first I have to research Kimito Totani.

Born in Tokyo in 1990, Kimito  broke into on-screen acting with the martial arts movie Tsubaki Sanjûrô (2007) and a 2008 episode of the teen angst drama Gokusen.  But Kamen Rider sealed his career: he went on to play Daiki Kaito in twelve tv series, animes, and video games.  His most recent Kamen Riders are:

Kamen Rider Zi-O (2018): Sougu Tokawa (So Okuno) wants to become king, so he transforms into the titular Kamen Rider, but this has the side effect of collapsing the universe. 

Kamen Rider Zi-O Next Time: Geiz, Majesty (2020): In an alternate universe, some high schoolers try to achieve their dreams by  Kamen Riders. So Okuno is still trying to become king.

Kamen Rider Outsiders (2023): a cross-over anthology series.

Presumably he's played the character as gay throughout.

Shots from the video after the break