wiccamoody

literally every day - especially since That movie came out, and damn near every day i've been in this fandom like i have circa tfatws airing - there's someone stinking up the air in sam's tag (on every website, not just on tumblr) with some version of sam as a consolation prize, sam as a blow up doll, sam as a therapist, stucky with a side of sam, "i liked him better as falcon"/"he's not leader material", disingenuous reading of canon to make sam seem evil and/or hold him to standards no one has ever held a white character in the mcu to, and every way you could think to be antiBlack short of calling him a slur (and sometimes calling him a slur!). it's so frustrating as a fan of the character, and often disgusting to witness. and the fact that some people will hide behind "it's fandom, anything goes, no censorship" when they're being racist and antiBlack is vile.

(as an aside, i've spent some time looking at dead blogs just for circulating some old content/616 edits, and while i think it's obvious in a lot of different ways what happened since endgame came out to encourage this shift, it's really sad to see how much more general appreciation and genuine conversations there was about sam, on a WIDE scale. again, lots of factors as to why that's shifted, but it's still sad when that shift straight up didn't happen at all to some white characters in the same universe, or hell in the same vicinity as sam.)

anyway, i do stand by what i said in that ask, and i think - with hindsight - it was really shitty of that person to come up in my inbox and tell me how much they liked my fic posted during a celebratory month held for the character celebrating the character but wanted me to talk about his negative traits too, and then double-down and get pissy with people being pissy with them (who are upset in the first place because of the aforementioned constant barrage of bullshit in the tags) and also later ask me to think of "real" negative character traits that apply to sam. but that's how this fandom loves to move about him.

and look, like i said, sam is not perfect and he absolutely has ways he can "better" himself, but the reality is also that sam is a character who, while fulsome in many ways, ultimately exists to drive specific narratives. and with superheroes, the kind of heroing they do and the type of cape they wear, and especially who they are with and without the cape on, is indicative of that. sam is very consistently written in that way. the desire to twist sam into something he just straight up isn't to try and make him more "interesting" (is he not interesting enough?) begs some key questions: do you actually understand this character? can you interact with the character and material closely and critically enough to derive the - in my opinion - obvious themes and morals? and most importantly, do you actually like this character you're in this fandom for?

I also don’t like how they race-bend the character who’s supposed to be bigger like a bear with someone who’s skinny. It’s like show wanted to deny any accountability with saying any blacklash to the Harris casting is because of racism. Which there’s of course people who will use fatphobia to hide their anti-blackness, but I still don’t like it. Not saying race-bending Troy, Harris’ love interest in the books, would be better because Troy is canonically a racist in the books so it already bad that he going to stay being white in the show and is going to the love interest to the now Black!Harris. They really said, “oh look, Troy can’t be a racist. He’s dating a light-skinned Black man.” I wish this show got cancelled, honestly.

pause.

they cast a Black man to play the love interest for a canonically racist character?? oh i know she's not in charge of casting but rr is never beating the allegations lmfaoooo (and neither is the show runner tbh)

and ofc they would cast someone who is thin to play a bear-like character omg. look at carrie. look at shit like the fucking DUFF. and this isn't a slight against justice, i've been a justice smith fan since paper towns (i'm serious! and if yall aren't on the justice smith train GET ON THE TRAIN), but what an interesting "blind" casting.

anyway, i don't go here, and i don't want to go here. atp everything i learn about this fandom and this show is against my will. i could barely get through those first two books to do my due diligence to talk shit about it lol. but man. i'm already feeling for justice because if it's not them being antiBlack, the fans are going to eat him alive for hollywood fatphobia, and again i have no fucking idea what happens in that book but if the racist character has an arc where he like, gets over his racism or something and that gets cut because they cast a Black man, there will be fans who will be mad about this and will want to see him be racist. which i just think it's another can of worms gross and weird.