Literally god bless the actors who see the fans/fandom shipping and headcanon-ing their character in a queer way, and wholeheartedly dive right in to just go with it
Either explicitly stating that they know their character is in queer ships and giving it the enthusiastic go ahead, or even just giving a happy little nod to how fandom is treating their character
From the top of my head I know that actors like Noshir Dalal (Charles Smith, RDR2), Nick Martineau (Horangi, CoD) and Andrew Bowen (Johnny Cage, MK1) are encouraging about their characters and how fandom perceives them, specifically about the queer ships they're in, and it makes me happy to no end to see it. And I'm seeing it more and more these days!!
It fills me with such JOY to see actors have genuine interactions with fandom and love what we do, as much as we love them ❤️
(In no way do I mean or condone this as a 'omg X actor knows we put their character in gay ships therefore it is canon/okay to do or say whatever we want to them'. Respect is paramount. Actors don't owe you anything. You still have to treat people with courtesy and respect their boundaries. Being online doesn't make you anonymous, don't push that line.)
I've been seeing a lot of screenshots and videos going around recently about the cod fandom and the VAs that I thought I'd touch on. I've seen some people mention this topic and I'd just like to reiterate that people need to separate the character from the person. That person has boundaries and deserves respect just like everyone else.
Especially with a fandom as interactive as the cod fandom. Neil and Nick particularly are people. As human as us. They don't deserve to be impersonated on the internet or AO3 (it's illegal).
They deserve space and are allowed to do what they want. Specifically people yelling at them not to find AO3 or Wattpad or sending them edits and fanart. At the end of the day I understand why people would act that way, but they are not their characters. A lot of people have said this probably better than I have, but I just want to try and remind people that there is a difference and anything you wouldn't want done to you on the internet, don't do to the VAs. We are blessed to have interactive VAs like Nick and Neil. And even Alain, Barry and the others even if it's not as much. We are a good community and it only takes a couple bad apples or interactions to push them away.
I've seen how happy people are to have the two and I am one of those people. But there are some people that can take that further than it is meant to be taken.
I know that at the end of the day if they find what I've written about the characters I'm not going to care. They are adults, they can handle it. If they want to explore it and find the art, fics, and whatever else they don't need us yelling at them to not look or throwing stuff at them.
There are other Twitter posts about this that I'm having trouble finding but please remember to respect decent human boundaries and any other boundaries set by the VAs.