Top!Joe (trope)

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; 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 which resulted in a conversation between certain fans about criticism versus kinkshaming, curating personal experiences, and willingness to have discussions as well as side commentary; a number of meta posts were written in response to the mid- to late-October round of discourseThere 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). 
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 for fans who preferred top!Joe exclusively over any other interpretation, a decision met with controversy 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. 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. By December 2020, fans began to leave the fandom because of the controversies, including some who felt they had been bullied out Among these users is nizarnizarblr, cited here, who deleted his entire blog, 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. The troll PSA dropped the same day that another anon attempted to start unfounded drama about Andy/Quynh content, 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.
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.A Callout post was written which included screenshots taken without permission in the Discord server; for that reason the references have been removed. 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.
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==
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. 
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.
==Example Fanworks==
==Meta==
* 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
* really wish that people made the effort to use specific terminology when talking about bias in tog fandom by lgbtmazight, a controversial writer in ToG fandom who has, since posting this meta, been accused of racefaking
* There are problems in the Old Guard fandom by nizarnizarblr
* Joe/Nicky Discourse: A Hand-Counted Survey a controversial Tumblr post by lazaefair
* 030. Love Before Good Lube on I Met You On LJ heavily discusses the Top!Joe discourse in TOG fandom through the lens of Joe and Muslims as the victims of Nicky's and the Catholics' violence in the Crusades.
*How Porn Preference and One User Made A Fandom Toxic Within A Year by Tack_Tick_245 on r/HobbyDrama
==Archives & Links==
* Top Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani works on Ao3
* Top!Joe Discord
== Notes & References ==
===Notes===
===References===
Category:The Old Guard
Category:Islam & Fandom