Joshua David King and Collateral Damage
How A Cookie Tried to Sell a Book
If one were to search the name of Joshua David King on Google, the result comes up for “Behind the Voice Actors” which describes him thusly: “Joshua David King is a voice actor known for voicing Cream Unicorn Cookie.” Cookie Run Kingdom, of course, was not his only role, his one other from the English dub of the anime Given which is characterized as a Boy’s Love (BL) series adapted from Natsuki Kizu’s manga of the same name. As a gay voice actor whose break was in the English dub of a BL anime, JDK naturally loves BL mangas and animes—or does he?
In a confusing bunch of tweets over a set of days, JDK made some interesting statements not only about the BL genre itself but about the primary target demographic for BL content, taking aim at “fujoshi” and calling out women who “fetishize” gay relationships. Entirely ignoring that his role in Given was possible only due to the writer being exactly what he claimed to hate (a fujoshi), JDK doubled down on his statements, claiming that the entire BL genre should be “burned to the ground” in order for it to be rebuilt, presumably in a way that satisfies his personal tastes. It turned out that all of this was leading to his promotion for his own book which is, allegedly, an example of “good” representation of a homosexual relationship in media.
This is not the first time that authors and creators have bashed on whole entire demographics to promote their own mediocre pursuits, as plenty of antis make a constant “example” out of the webcomic Boyfriends in order to drum up support for their own webcomics that they think do polyamory or gay relationships better based on their hatred for the creator himself or people like him. This is also not the first time, as well we all know if you’ve been reading my substack, a queer creator has called for burning books that do not match their specific ideology—that is, one of sanitized queer representation without any rough edges as not to offend or alienate those who’ve already hated them for decades.
The JDK discourse brought up a lot of older trends in anti discourses including a shocking amount of anti-Asian sentiments targeted mostly toward “nasty fujos” and women in general, the erasure of race as many Japanese twitter users were assumed to be white women as it made it easier to dehumanize them, erroneous topics conflated with the one at hand such as anti-Black racism (confusingly, Black users who confronted JDK about his anti-Asian comments were called the “weakest links” and blocked en masse), an intense amount of sex-negativity including the shaming of 30+ women for their personal fantasies, and of course the moral grandstanding we’ve come to know and love. The connection between women identifying as “fujos” and their transmasc self-discovery attracted Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) to Joshua David King’s posts, their arguments against the genre including that it “destroys” women (by turning them into men). One thing is for certain: this battleground has harmed more than just the minorities that Joshua stepped on to promote his book—it has also probably harmed his book’s sales even before the title has even dropped.
To add to the fire, Genshin Impact voice actor Shara Kirby jumped in to accuse people who were trying to correct JDK and others who criticized him of being anti-Black, supporting just about any and all of his comments that disrespected queer, Asian, and other marginalized people with interest in the BL genre. Even after Joshua’s strangely insincere and ranting “apology” post (which invoked the anti usage of the term “proshipper”), he continued to retweet and post tweets that were blatantly disrespectful to not only women but also transgender readers as well, accusing them of fetishizing “his experiences” as though the people of whom he spoke had been secretly watching him personally (through some kind of secret camera network?) and getting off. Not only this but this English dub voice actor with two projects total in his career also replied to one aspiring VA in a fashion that suggested he was going to get in the way of their career for them having expressed disbelief at his very public and very blatant actions.
All of this has culminated in Joshua blocking what amounts to hundreds of accounts likely through a blockchain (not to be confused with the type of blockchain associated with crypto currencies, these blockchains allow an application to go through followers or tweet reactions to block en masse) effectively cutting off the very people who might have been interested in reading his own book. Not only this but the demographic he is catering toward (the under-30, sexless puriteens) don’t tend to exhibit any kind of loyalty and certainly do not spend the little money they have on sexless media—why would they? They can’t complain about it and there’s no taboo or excitement to be had by reading it under the radar.
With all this in mind and with the unforgiving nature of the internet, to Cream Unicorn Cookie, I say: Good luck with your book. I look forward to the Good Reads reviews.