Curate, connect, and discover
When you said fanon Neil exists as a phenomen, what did you mean? What is the fanon version of Neil like?
fanon neil is the product of two unspoken shipping culture rules 1) whoever’s the bottom becomes a very passive, sweet, soft, feminine, non-confrontational cinnamon roll as opposed to their tough very masculine possessive top (aka “the bottom treatment” - the term coined by my colleague @writingpuddle) and 2) the “someone will die - of fun!” dynamic has to be present at all costs so if one character or both don’t fall under the sunshine one vs the grumpy one personality types fans will make them so.
canon andrew’s already very masculine and grumpy so he’s fine and these sides of him don’t get erased, so his partner must necessarily be the blushing sunshine uwu boi. the fact that canon neil is much more active than andrew, very rude and confrontational, can stand up for himself, is also much more “masculine” than “feminine”, can say horrible things and handle very stressful situations without outwardly showing how he feels, is manipulative and tough af, has probably killed people - all of this gets discarded bcs it doesn’t fit the binary (and very heteronormative) tough boy/soft boy dynamic.
obviously not all fan works portray neil like this but there are enough to form a very unsavory trend