Lima (1) is a project that packages Linux distros for MacOS and executes them via qemu in the backend. Maybe you could solve your problem by launching one of their vms and inspecting the command line it generates. You might find an option you were missing.
I'll check this out.
There are many different systems out there like UTM and such, but I want the most basic / minimal amount of dependencies, which will work basically anywhere - which is just QEMU.
Not UTM, or maybe parallels, sometimes Lima, for Mac and then virtualbox for windows, and QEMU Linux type of nonsense. Just QEMU should suffice everywhere, and it's much more secure that way.
(1) https://github.com/lima-vm/lima