Risa

I mean, if it informs the performance meaningfully, it's part of the end product. Doesn't mean it's necessarily canon or whatever, but it certainly has the potential to impact later performances if direction moves away from the actor's previous internal preparation.

I could see it being off-putting to work under a director or with writing that bleeds your public personality into your role, especially if it's one you've gotten to a certain place with.

Like even as a roleplayer, any character i might embody in the moment has a life of its own that's distinct from mine, and would make decisions that I wouldn't. If someone tried to push me into acting a way that's more typical of myself out of character or that's more in line with a different character I play, or if they reacted to the character based on that outside stuff, I'd certainly resist it.

To be fair, John Cho played Sulu straight until it was revealed that he was gay. And even then, there wasn't much gayness to his acting. Unless you count bringing a sword to a skydiving phaser fight, but I'd consider that more bad ass than gay.

It's not just how Takei played it, the first thing an inhibition-free Zulu does in The Naked Time is to go after Uhura - and Mirror Zulu obviously has the hots for her too.

Why wouldn't the original actor be the authority on the subject? If they immersed themselves in the material and have a good memory, wouldn't that be "the truth"?

But why would the headcanon of an actor be more important than any other

Idk perhaps because actors can imbue characters with unwritten properties through their portrayal?

all those characters were exclusively shown in heterosexual relationships.

That's not exactly evidence against them all being bi

Don’t get baited

I got suckered into arguing about this very topic some days ago, and only had my sexuality questioned when they ran out of arguments. Suffice it to say that there is plenty of wishful thinking involved

Sure, but that doesn't mean they were exclusively heterosexual.

Julian and Garak were clearly in a relationship. Just ask Garak.

He only loved his waifu, the transporter room.

Slight disagree, he only loved his waifu, constantly breaking systems.

Miles "I can fix her" O'Brein

He's a straight green goblin.

Gender: fluid

Not necessarily. It'd be for how he views himself. While the shapeshifters kinda' explore the concept in some episodes, it may be fair to assume they identify as they present, because they can literally present how they want.

Granted, I could see Odo having some odd identity issues with presenting to please others or over duty to his job more than personal identity given his upbringing...

Did they explore his gender identity in that episode(s) or did they leave it all allegory? Ugh it was so long ago... Maybe time for a rewatch.

Naw it's not missing. Always been there.

Cis refers to gender identity where as straight refers to their sexuality.

Well, trans as a root means across from, or on the other side of.

Cis means on this side of. Both are from latin roots.

When using it in gender discussions, it means someone that isn't trans, aka the gender normative, aka the folks that match in terms of inner and outer gender expression.

Cisgender started out as a term back in the nineties, as a way to be able to refer to the majority that are gender normative with a simpler term when discussing transgender/transexual issues. As you can see, it is incredibly cumbersome to describe the cisgender people of the world without using cis. Pain in the ass when you're writing or talking about the subject. And the nineties are when that kind of discussion became more prevalent.

There's also the fact that people have put unnecessary weight to the word "normal", and tend not to understand the word normative. Because of the way normal has been used for a very long time now, despite it really meaning something that's typical, any use of it implies that everything else is abnormal in a bad way rather than just not typical. Largely because in most fields, abnormal is a bad thing. Abnormal blood work as an example.

So, we have heteronormative and cisnormative for the straights and non trans people behaving in typical ways for those groups as well as cisgender meaning aligning with one's nominative gender.

Now, can cis be used to denote "straight" people? Kinda, but not really. It would be a very unusual usage because straight in terms of non normative sexuality being discussed almost always refers to sexual orientation. Using cis to mean straight isn't unreasonable, particularly since you'll run into situations where gay people and trans people might just use straight as a shorter word for cis-hetero. But you won't see that in anything but casual settings because of the very confusion you're dealing with. Most of my close friends are gay or otherwise under the lgbtq+ heading, and I've never actually heard anyone use cis as a synonym for straight, but I have heard "straights" used as a term that includes cis.

Yay for language!