I saw your post about racism in fandoms and I’m curious. Why do you consider Fury to be a good guy? I wanted to ask separately because I don’t want to derail a very well made post that had an important point.

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Okay so I honestly have no idea how to answer this because well…

I have no idea how people could get a reading of Fury as a “bad” guy from what we see of him in the MCU. 

Like I’m not talking about the fact that any character thoroughly enmeshed in neo-imperialist government agencies like SHIELD can’t be 100% on the level, but that Fury isn’t a Loki/Kingpin/Pierce kind of character. Those are villains. They are villainous. The narrative may give the former two “good” reasons to explain why they’re the way they are but they’re still awful and murderous.

Fury isn’t any of that.

He’s not a villain.

He’s an old guy who’s seen a lot of shit, done even more, and hasn’t gotten shit to show for any of it. 

Like… fandom isn’t being critical of SHIELD unless it’s about Fury. Fandom doesn’t care about “liars” unless it’s Fury doing the lying. The things that we’d write off as normal (or absolutely benign) if M in the Bond films or any number of white guys in the MCU did them, are things fandom cites for reasons not to like or trust Nick Fury.

I’m going to be honest here, I can’t make you believe Nick Fury is a good guy if you don’t think he is. I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to change the way people think of him and other Black characters for years and I mean… It’s difficult when your argument is “in the canon they’re not bad guys in any way” when people have completely opposite readings of the text.

I will say…

Ask yourself why you don’t think Nick Fury is a good guy (if you feel this way) and then look at how you conceptualize and respond to other, actual villains in the MCU and other franchises. Because a major difference between how Nick Fury is treated when you compare him to other, actual villains is that fandom likes their villains when they’re white.

Loki attempts to commit two separate genocides (because the NYC thing counts since the Chitauri would have wiped out humanity) and he’s a poor baby that has no control over his feelings and doesn’t have to because he was adopted and fandom handles that poorly.

Rumlow and the rest of Hydra are… well they’re legitimately analogous to and descendants of N@zis. What do we get from them? Hydra Trash P@rty and assorted nonsense where Hydra “isn’t really that bad”. 

The glorification of white crime thing that I’ve talked about? Means that white villains will always be treated better than characters of color of any moral level.

Nick Fury is a complex character who deserves more than he’s got (and I am still holding out for the chance to write a Young Nick Fury series, y’all). In his appearances in the MCU, he’s been the head of an agency we know is complicity in all sorts of awfulness by virtue of the kind of agency it is. He’s also been a friend to Steve/Natasha, a mentor to Tony, and a force behind rooting out the corruption in the organization he was in charge of.

And all fandom sees him as is a lying liar that lies.