andi

the majority of it can be seen in fic. people will write aus where neil meets andrew differently and pretty much speedrun their relationship. they’ll write neil being interested in andrew from the beginning, ignoring the fact that in canon, he hated andrew at first. or they’ll write neil being interested in andrew sexually but still dislike and distrust him as a person. even if you don’t ship andreil, other ships involving neil will do similar things. i know some of this is people wanting to write shorter fics and skip to the relationship parts, but its really not difficult to extend it even just a little bit to better represent how neil needs trust and connection to fall for someone. do a timeskip if you must. just put in the effort

another example is people joking that neil’s stalker binder is an example of neil having a crush on kevin. first off, if you’re going to say this, then you have to say that he had a crush on riko too. riko was ALSO a subject of the binder. the reason neil made the binder was because until he learned the truth of why he was there, playing exy with kevin and riko was one of his happiest memories even despite having to watch nathan kill a man. he had thought he was going to be allowed to have friends for the first time and he grew up watching them in the public eye. to him, they represented everything he could never have, so he followed their careers with his binder because he couldn’t have what they have. an added bonus of it is that it’s so clearly obsessive that most people would be freaked out and not look further and find what else he’s hiding. none of this is because of a crush, and he didn’t even like kevin at first. hell, it takes ages just for him to respect kevin

more things fans do is talk about neil’s attraction to andrew (or whoever they ship him with) in ways that misrepresent how demisexuality works. i tend to immediately scroll the second a post does this, so i don’t remember many specific examples off the top of my head because my brain thankfully deletes them from my memory so i don’t have to dwell on it and get mad, but a fairly egregious one i do remember is someone saying neil only got with andrew because he didn’t want to die a virgin. still makes me beyond angry

on the other end of the spectrum that is aphobia, another point that @andrewminyard-josten made in this post is that people often write neil as embarrassed about his inexperience (a lot like the person who said he didn’t want to die a virgin) because they view sex as this important milestone of adulthood. sex is just a thing people do and neil doesn’t care about it until andrew. he also catches on quickly once andrew starts leading the way in that regard, so he’s not shy about it either. in trying to portray his demisexuality like this, you are dehumanizing and infantilizing aspec identities by acting like sex is more important than it is

lastly, you see this in more than just fanfic and text posts. there’s a piece of fanart going around right now of neil and andrew with pride flags where the flag on neil is for bisexuality instead of demisexuality. even if you want to argue that neil could easily fall for a woman in the same way he fell for andrew if the circumstances were right and he grew to trust her like he does andrew - and for the record i don’t even disagree on that front, especially since we know when he was trying to figure out his sexuality as a teen he looked at girls and not boys - that doesn’t mean he’s not demisexual. only putting the bi flag on him is blatantly erasing that he’s demi in favor of another sexuality