becketted:

regionsofkindness:

I wish I could say I was surprised by how racist and gross people have been about Andrew, but we’ve been at this point so long that W*rd stans complaining about Andrew getting sympathy when he’s just as bad – in a scene where W*rd is literally torturing Andrew to bring Lash out – and a post by a big name ph*linda fan comparing meldrew to sky*ward getting 100+ notes are just another day in fandom.

Honestly, far beyond these individual posts both groups have come so close – or gone right past – the point of implying reverse racism when it comes to Andrew, implying that he has it good compared to their white faves, and just, how? In what universe has Agents of SHIELD treated black men more kindly? Andrew has been turned into an Inhuman killing monster against his will, been robbed of his agency, spent months fighting the force within him, tortured by W*rd, and forced to say goodbye to the love of his life – and that’s just canon.

And come on, in what universe has the AoS fandom been kind to Andrew? Shipping fandom has been desperately invested in having him gone from the moment a rekindling of his relationship with Melinda seemed possible. Andrew’s been called emotionally abusive, actively wished harm and death upon, dragged through the mud for no reason other than daring to exist and loving Melinda. He’s rarely written in fic but to be a stepping stone or plot device to getting ph*linda together, his ‘death’ was revelled in and celebrated, he has been treated without an ounce of sympathy or empathy or any trace of compassion. People have said they’d rather Melinda dead than with him. That a storyline where they’re together and happy would somehow be antifeminist because it would be used to ‘sex the show up’, to turn Melinda into a ‘sex crazed housewife’, because despite a show giving us this tender, nuanced relationship where sex isn’t a shorthand for intimacy, people can’t possibly imagine an interracial relationship – and without a white person at that – as anything but being about sex.

(I’ve written something up here about Lash being a terrible, racist storyline, but Melinda/Andrew as a relationship is sound, and I’ll expand on that distinction later.)

This has been an ongoing issue – there’s no denying canon is terrible, but it has made clear enough the Andrew/Lash divide that we know Andrew’s agency is severely compromised. We know that Andrew is brilliant and kind and compassionate and loving. We know how much Melinda loves him, how much Daisy loves him, how much Coulson loves him, how much our heroes love him. And yet fandom has taken a shovel and kept digging, instead of doing better.

Every time I write something like this I always get a response of ‘not all [x] fans,’ or people justifying why they as an individual are not racist, and it would be so fantastic if that happened in actions and not words? It’s not just one or a few extreme individuals perpetuating the behaviour, despite how easy it is to think that – look at those notes, look at how many people I thought of as people who would never perpetuate this reblogging that meldrew/sky*ward gifset with comments like ‘this is the best thing ever’ – and fandom could definitely be finding better ideas to echo. 

So. I’m far from surprised, but very much disappointed still. I’m so tired. So so so tired.

Andrew has been treated like shit for merely existing since the episode he was introduced – and episode where all he did was help Daisy with her trauma and make May smile as we had never seen her smile before.