Bpdnanaseharuka - I Deleted But Remade

so I saw this trend like 84 yrs ago (yes I’m that late)

lost number 13 , elendira the crimsonnail

ok in my opinion, many things are wrong with the idea that sakura viewed sasuke only as a prize to be won to boost her self-worth; that when it comes to sasuke, she's forever frozen in time as a 12-year-old girl who can't see beyond his good hair and great grades. this post is my attempt at thoroughly unpacking and refuting that notion

when we meet sakura in part 1, she is obsessed with societal standards and her admiration for sasuke is almost entirely rooted in that. he's the ideal future husband -- from an ancient clan, stoic, intelligent, skilled, and by sakura's own description, "cool" -- these are things that she has been conditioned to want! so this is the sasuke that she envisions, until...

until they get put on a team together, and sakura gradually comes to realize that perhaps sasuke is not what she's made him out to be in her mind. he talks about crying, about being afraid. he's paralyzed with fear in their first mission. naruto may very well be stronger and more capable than him! oh, and sasuke gets into silly fights with naruto all the time. none of that is "cool." suddenly he seems less like the ideal future husband and more like a real person with flaws and baggage of his own.

that sakura's view of sasuke changes is so apparent through how radically her behaviour around him shifts between the early formation of team 7 and the chunin exams (and any point after). sakura goes from being unable to listen to a bad word about sasuke (maybe even the ones that are deserved) to defying him when she deems fit. she even praises naruto at his expense, because societal views are not at the forefront of her mind when it comes to the two boys anymore -- they're just naruto and sasuke. they're her friends! she goes from calling kakashi out for bad-mouthing the uchiha clan because she's doesn't want to risk sasuke getting mad at her, to calling naruto out for a similar statement, not due to personal involvement in the equation, but simply because it's not right.

and people typically agree with me up to here. it's when we get to sakura cutting her hair in the forest of death that opinions diverge, and some people tend to think that sakura should have "gotten over" sasuke to propel her character development forward. i don't necessarily find this reading invalid -- it's certainly a more straightforward direction for her character to take. sakura's goal was sasuke, now sakura's goal is to be strong. the problem is that there was always more nuance to her goal of winning sasuke's heart than people afford it in fandom discussion, and similarly, i don't think that the progression needed to be as clear-cut as "sakura gets over sasuke" to still be meaningful. in this case, i feel like people's expectations about what should have happened following this scene might preclude them from seeing the growth that this moment did produce.

sakura cutting her hair in the forest of death is the critical point her arc built up to for all of part 1. sakura is insulted by the sound nin for pouring so much time into her appearance when her training is clearly not up to par, and she cuts her shiny and perfect hair in a declaration that she will no longer derive her self-worth from the validation that would come from romantic attachment (to sasuke, or anyone else). instead, it will be from standing shoulder-to-shoulder with (or even ahead of) her teammates in battle -- so that she can protect them rather than the other way around. then the flashbacks during her fight with ino make it explicit that sakura has wanted to become a skilled shinobi -- one who could match up to ino -- all along, but since that is not a socially acceptable goal from a girl, she instead declares them rivals over sasuke's heart. the boy is not important here (haha, it always sticks out to me that when she asks him out before the chunin exams, sakura is more bummed about sasuke's assessment of her skills than his rejection). she doesn't even think of sasuke while fighting ino, lol -- she grandstands about how only she can "get him," but that's for the purpose of riling up ino, so that there's no chance she'll go easy on sakura. sakura wants to know, definitively, that she can match up to ino. and she does.

in light of all of this, people often say sakura had "no reason" to like sasuke -- after all, i did spend the entire last paragraph establishing that sakura's pre-series crush on sasuke was an immature infatuation that had nothing to do with sasuke and everything to do with ino. but, again, team 7 spent months together on a team and sasuke and sakura became actual friends! he was a good teammate to both naruto and sakura, if a little rough around the edges. i don't think it's implausible for sakura to develop real feelings for sasuke during this time. and if that is not enough, if you need deeper, thematically fulfilling reasons -- well, i sort of object to that on principle. i think friendship, having fun with one another, being at ease around each other -- these are all perfectly good reasons to fall in love with someone. and you may say that naruto also fulfills this criteria, but if sakura was physically attracted to sasuke and not naruto -- well, i think that's fine too, and it certainly doesn't warrant any moral judgment. people say often that sakura should have ended up with lee or naruto -- the first of whom stated outright that he loved her because she was beautiful, and the latter who introduced her as a "pretty girl" -- but whether their feelings are shallow is not endlessly dissected. (it's not narusaku or leesaku i protest to here, just the double standard)

but for the record, i think kishimoto did write in enough for us to understand why sakura would fall for sasuke in particular. i discussed this in another post, but alongside ino, sasuke sparked the most significant character growth for sakura. he was the first to make her reevaluate her treatment of naruto (and by extension, her rose-tinted view of the world), he was the first (and only) of their teammates to express disappointment that she wasn't investing in her own skills, he figured out when she felt insecure and reminded her of the areas in which she was more proficient than the rest of the team. sakura's initial idealized view of sasuke does not endure for a number of reasons, one of which is that the real sasuke actually expects her to hold her own and sees potential in her. for sakura, whose main motivation as a character is to become stronger for her teammates, this must mean a great deal! we mostly lose track of this element of sasuke and sakura's dynamic in part 2, which is a shame, but when she cracks open the earth with only her fist, naruto and kakashi are utterly astonished, while sasuke just smiles -- like it is no surprise, like she's been capable of it all along -- so there is that, i guess.

(and for more on thematically fulfilling, see this post on what i think could have played out if sakura were not relegated to a side character in all but panel presence in part 2. but really, i find it so interesting that sasuke and sakura both repeatedly have a lot of trouble suppressing their compassion to do what is expected of them as shinobi. apart from sasuke, i think sakura is also the only character to express that human life has inherent value -- at least, she says something along those lines when she fights sasori.)

anyway, post-forest of death, sasuke version 1 has pretty much dissipated in sakura's mind -- the only place he ever existed -- and sakura's treatment of sasuke changes further. she stops intruding on his physical boundaries, stops flirting, stops asking him out -- she's there for him, but as a friend first. she hugs him in the hospital, but that's not necessarily a romantic gesture (she's physically affectionate by nature, which is why she ambushes naruto with a hug in the same manner at the end of the pain arc) and sasuke finds it comforting (signalled by many things, chief among which is that naruto leaves the room after observing sasuke's face). and yes, she confesses to being in love with him twice afterwards, years apart, but that is only because she is extremely stressed and panicked and wants him to stay for his own (and the second time around, add in naruto's) safety. her first confession is too centered on her own feelings, while the second is just woefully oblivious (through little fault of sakura's -- she doesn't know why sasuke is so intent on destroying the shinobi world), but neither of them come with the condition of sakura wanting sasuke to stay only so he can be with her. sakura wants sasuke to be safe! she wants him to be mentally sound! she lets him know that she cares about him!

i absolutely need to reiterate: at no point in part 2 does sakura display any sense of entitlement to sasuke. she always pleads with him to stay, rather than demanding anything of him. and even in the privacy of her own thoughts, sakura ponders bringing sasuke back in a few contexts: she wants sasuke to be okay, she is so sorry for burdening naruto, she needs to help naruto, and if sasuke comes back, they can all be a team again. romance does not even enter her mind. it is such a willfully egregious misread of the text to say that she only wanted sasuke back so they could be together.

moreover, it is honestly just nonsensical to me when people say sakura wanted sasuke as a prize, because it laughs in the face of her entire character arc and completely ignores why her pre-series crush existed at all. back then, sakura wanted sasuke as a status symbol. as of part 2, though, he is decidedly not what konoha's society would see as the ideal man. in the eyes of the state, he is a wanted criminal. sakura, meanwhile, is a student of the hokage, one of the most skilled medics in konoha at the ripe age of 16, and one of the most powerful shinobi of her generation (a feat achieved entirely through her own labour). she has stood next to her teammates in battle and helped take down a literal god. she does not need sasuke to feel fulfilled. nevertheless, she chooses, every day, to care about him, even though it would be infinitely easier not to. and if sakura wanted to haul around a status symbol in the form of a boyfriend, if only to bolster her already impressive profile (which she would not. that's the point!) -- naruto, konoha's new favourite traumatized teenager, is like. right there. but sakura loved naruto before he was proclaimed a hero by konoha, just like she continues to love sasuke even though he is very far from the coolest boy in their class.

my feelings on chapter 699 are... mixed, because the way things resolve for sasuke is just so sad, but what we see play out between him and sakura is: 1. sakura asks to come with him 2. sasuke is 100% comfortable saying no (how do the "sakura forced sasuke to be with her" truthers reconcile with that one, lol) 3. sakura appears mildly disappointed but like. she'll survive. that's it. then he thanks her, taps her on the forehead (but promises he'll see her soon, in an inversion of what that gesture meant from itachi), and we leave them in a pretty hopeful place, all things considered. there's room for reconciliation, for growth, for love. (and i don't want to hear about post-699 because i don't care. i don't consider it canon, and pretty much no one on tumblr does either, except to occasionally shit on ships they don't like)

this ended up being way too long, but i want to say: if you don't like sasusaku, that's your prerogative. i'm not here to change your mind. i certainly think they should have been written better in part 2 (but i'd argue that, like, 99% of those issues are just a natural consequence of sakura being continually sidelined by the narrative, rather than problems inherent to the relationship itself). regardless, i think too often people let their opinion of a ship impede character analysis. to claim that sakura relentlessly propositioned sasuke and that she saw him as a prize does such a huge disservice to how much she has grown and what she has accomplished over the course of the series.

i like drawing meryls for my mental health tbh

there should b a white woman equivalent of toxic masculinity bc the amnt of times white women have used their supposed fragile femininity to shut down any criticisms regarding their racism is fucking astounding.

it’s like,, u call them out for being racist and IMMEDIATELY the tears start to fall, they accuse u of being a misogynist, they accuse u of being anti-feminist, they pretend (or, in some special cases, genuinely believe) they’re incredibly hurt by ur words and “wrongful” accusations, and in general do everything in their power to weaponize their white womanhood so as not to be held responsible for their actions.

if you then get frustrated and/or angry at them for not getting it, you “prove their point” of being ~aggressive~ and ~unwilling to compromise or educate~. if you hold your tongue and instead console and apologize to the very person hurting you, you’re back to square one while also implicitly letting them know they can get away with being racist and even get called right for doing so as long as they play their cards right.

it’s a no-win situation for people of colour.

*shoves all of my lux I aquired during last month of khux into your hands* Young Xehanort. The time travelling one, in organization coat. Please good sir, I'm starving.

Poor soul. I'll have pity on you

It’s 2020, so of course there’s sexy Holocaust fic on AO3

If you know me, you might know I’m a huge a/b/o fan. I love the trope in all of its variations, I’ve led panels about it at cons, I read a/b/o as my comfort food. My academic background is (among other things) in sociology and a/b/o is basically like a marriage between my academic and fannish interests. It’s so versatile, it’s so different in every fandom, it contains so many different takes on power dynamics and oppression. There’s fluffy a/b/o and fucked up a/b/o and I will read and enjoy pretty much any flavor. 

This might seem like an odd intro, but I wanted to give this as context for how I stumbled on the fic we’re about to discuss. One of my favorite places on AO3 is the “original work” tag, filtered by the a/b/o tag. When I have nothing to read, that’s where I go to find new stuff. There’s so many interesting, innovative takes on the trope there, it’s great. 

But three days ago, when I filtered by those tags, at the head of the results page was an original story set during the Holocaust. 

I’ve made the decision not to link to the fic directly, I’m sure you can find it very easily on AO3. But I want this to be, above all else, a record of what happened, and I don’t want anyone to claim I was trying to drum up outrage to attack the author directly. Even though their fic is publicly posted, and as you’ll see they have absolutely no qualms about anything they’re doing.

So, a screencap of the header of the fic:

(Edit: ugh, I see tumblr is resizing the images to an unreadable level, so you can click here for a larger version of the image where the text is legible. For every other screencap in this post I’ll also offer a transcript.)

In the past the fic used to have more tags, including one for “inaccurate history”. I didn’t think things were going to unroll as they did, so the screencap is from the time of writing this post, not from when this all started. 

The story, very broadly, is about a romance between an SS officer who runs  “a small Polish death camp” and an American officer who comes to liberate that camp (US forces never liberated camps in Poland, hence the “inaccurate history” tag, according to the author. Yes, that’s why that tag was there.) The “twist” is that the SS officer is secretly a traitor who’s trying to save some of the inmates. 

Now, look, it’s debatable whether it’s possible to write Holocaust a/b/o porn about completely made up characters, with a list of kinks and focusing on hunt/comfort and porn, in a way that does more good than harm to the general population of ao3 users. For many people from backgrounds affected by the Holocaust, just seeing that on the results page makes them feel unsafe and unwelcome in fandom. 

But there’s an argument it’s possible to have about whether it can be done “right”. 

I’m not going to have that argument, because any way you slice it, if the author of a fic like that isn’t from a family that was directly affected by the Holocaust (as this author has confirmed that they’re not), their primary goal has to be to make sure their fic - which they’re writing for their own enjoyment - doesn’t harm people whose family history they’re borrowing for drama. 

It means the author has to actively seek out those opinions prior to and during the writing process, be willing to listen, and potentially scrap the whole thing even after it’s up, if it’s clear it’s doing damage to the people whose personal traumas (and ongoing oppression because antisemitism, for example, and nazism are still very much a thing in 2020) the author decided to borrow for the sake of their story. 

Instead, the author of this fic decided that anyone who came from a family that was affected by the specific real life tragedy they felt like using as a backdrop for their porn could STFU.

Specifically, whenever someone was critical of the fic in the comments, the author would (1) ignore them (2) send friends and followers to confront them (I assume by posting about each critical comment on the author’s public twitter, but I don’t really know).

After 3 pages of mostly adoring comments, with every bit of criticism shut down by the author’s friends, I honestly thought there would be absolutely no effect to another comment by the descendant of Holocaust survivors, but for some reason that day 2020 had just been Too Much and I decided to leave a comment anyway and take the abuse that would surely follow. 

If things had ended in some ugly responses from the author and their friends, you probably wouldn’t be reading this post. But that’s not what happened. 

So, this is the initial comment I left: 

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Transcript:

“Hi! I’m sure your readers will quickly respond to this comment to tell me how wrong I am, but while I’ve heard of this happening in fandom I’ve never just casually stumbled on it while looking through tags on AO3 before, so I guess I felt compelled to leave a comment despite the fact that you probably profoundly don’t care how many people are made to feel unsafe and unwelcome in fandom through fics like this.

For the record, since I’m sure it’s the first thing people will wonder about: I’m Jewish, my grandparents either survived the camps or died in them. I grew up with first person accounts in my family, my parents grew up with parents who were survivors.

Look, there are a billion powerful fictional stories you can tell by using the holocaust as a setting/prop. SO many powerful, amazing, emotional, fucked up, sexy stories. I can tell you about the actual, historically accurate fucked up, hilarious, sexy stories that actually did occur during that time in that setting. This isn’t about things being black and white or only a certain tone being appropriate.

I’m also basically the biggest a/b/o fan on the planet. It’s my favorite trope. I’ve done panels about it at cons. I read tons & tons of it, of all kinds of tones and flavors.

It’s really fucked up that you wrote this fic and posted it publicly. It’s really fucked up that I feel gross about ao3, myself, the world right now, just from seeing that it exists. It’s really fucked up that you haven’t offered any explanation to any of the people from backgrounds who were affected by this history and complained about this fic in the comments, especially since if I understood correctly from the things you did respond to, you yourself are not from a family that was directly affected by this tragedy.

It’s gross, how many people who lost family members and face discrimination in various forms themselves are going to scroll by this and feel like fandom doesn’t see them and doesn’t care about them.

It’s 2020, you know? I guess it makes sense that this is the year I casually come across a sexy holocaust fic tagged “inaccurate history” like that’s totally acceptable.

It’s not acceptable. I’m sure it won’t matter, but in the spirit of the history this fic “inaccurately” relies on for angst and drama, I guess I just needed to say that for the record, no matter how little change it affects, and how many “stfu” responses it garners from your readers.“

Apparently in response to this the author screencapped my comment and posted it on their public twitter (I’m not going to screencap those tweets, you’re welcome to think this is untrue) and of course the next day I woke up to find confrontational comments from the author’s friends in response. 

The author themselves initially responsed with this succinct gem:

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Transcript:

“You got all the way to Chapter 5 before you wrote me a 429-word thesis about a single tag on my fic.“

It was… pretty much the reply I would have expected. I knew this author gave not a single flying fuck who their fic caused damage to, even as they were borrowing real, painful history, from people who faced oppression that the author themselves did not. (In multiple comments the author confirmed they were not Jewish and their family had not been directly affected by the Holocaust.)

I decided to respond to this extremely disingenuous pretense that this was just about an incorrect use of an AO3 tag. This was my response, which the author later deleted:

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Transcript:

“lol yep it’s definitely about that one tag and not literally everything else that I wrote.

I guess it hit a nerve since you actually replied to me, unlike the unworthy AO3 users who told you about their trauma and how gross this fic is before and you ignored them and let your readers respond to them instead.

Some of your readers asked me to engage further, I can believe some of them did it in good faith, but since you’re clearly adamant to not give a single fuck about the real harm you’re causing to real people (because what harm could be worth taking down a fic you’ve actually received kudos and comments on???) I’m not going to waste my energy on this anymore. I mean, I knew I wouldn’t have time/energy to engage anyway, but certainly not with an author who’s so desperate to pretend people are just uptight or not into their kink that they’re not even asking questions. lol yes this is DEFINITELY just about that one tag, and all “offensive” content is like all other “offensive” content and everyone is just out to attack you for no reason while you’re bravely breaking down the censorship barriers lolol“

At this point the author, who remember was claiming this was all about the use of a tag (which they indeed removed because apparently removing “inaccurate history” from inaccurate Holocaust porn made it accurate?) responsed with this amazing piece of writing:

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Transcript:

“How many other authors have you guilted into burning their own books?

The reason I’m not really concerned about this is that I can’t really tell why you’re mad. Is it the sympathetic Nazi? Does it harm you to know that Germans were real people and not just vague shadows of evil? Making humans into monsters allows people to distance themselves from that evil. Those who want to consider the horror of the Holocaust as the work of monsters removes the darkness in the heart of humanity and makes it impossible to fathom that it might happen again. Humanizing Nazis is how you remind yourself that the Holocaust is not a singular isolated and solitary event and is not trapped in the realm of history.

My degree is in History and I took specific courses in 20th Century Europe and Germany Post-1919. Every piece of reading you are given defines the reasons why NORMAL people turned into Nazis. Because there are reasons. Because it could happen again. Because it could happen to you. Darkness is not foreign to humanity and to pretend that it is is foolish.

You don’t even realize the irony here. You want to be on the council that gets to decide which books to burn. And you think you want to burn mine. And that makes you righteous.

Now I know you didn’t read it. Because I wouldn’t have had to say any of this if you did. When you’re out there trying to get authors to delete their works, you think about this. How big is the pile of burning books behind you, marina? Did you do good?“

I… was not surprised, I guess, that an author who thought their desire to write fic set during the Holocaust trumped any harm to anyone whose family was actually affected by the Holocaust would think it was cool to turn criticism of their fic on AO3 into “you’re the REAL nazi who’s trying to BURN BOOKS!” on someone whose grandparents lived through the actual camps. 

The thing about history courses on “post-1919 Germany” was also pretty amazing, I’m not gonna lie. 

How would we know Nazis were real people and darkness is in all of us, if this fic wasn’t here to tell us, in the midst of a/b/o and kink tropes?

Anyway, aside from reacting to this snarkily in my own head, I knew I wasn’t going to respond further. I was out of energy and out of mental resources. Arguing with someone who thinks my family history is theirs to exploit for kudos and comments is devastating, and I personally certainly can’t sustain it for long. I wanted there to be a public record of how this fic was affecting at least some families of survivors, and I’d done that, it wasn’t surprising the author didn’t want to listen and came up with increasingly ridiculous justifications.

There were a few other threads where people tried to explain what was wrong with this fic, how harmful it was, and of course they were shouted down as well. In one of those threads the author compared writing about SS officers to writing about “sympathetic sex offenders”. I explained the difference between writing about social ills that have existed in every human society and can affect any person on the planet, and writing about a specific historical event that affected specific people (who are not the author).

But then, the author started deleting comments.

They deleted my explanation about the difference between this fic and fic about “sex offenders”. They deleted my initial response to their “this is just about a tag!” comment, they deleted their OWN comment in which they boasted about their history degree, explained that they were just trying to educate people about real nazis and besides, I was the real book burner here. 

Honestly, I wanted to believe that somewhere in the process of sharing these comments with their followers to get sympathy and attention, the author had received negative responses as well, and realized fucked up their behavior was. If they’d just deleted their own comments and responses, I would have understood them not wanting to have things they regret saying being up anymore.

But that isn’t what happened. Instead they left some of their own comments up, but deleted my responses. 

I knew they were probably not going to allow any further criticism of their fic (an amazing stance for someone who’s supposedly so committed to freedom of expression), but I had to try and leave at least a record of how much they’d deleted and effectively silenced their critics. 

So, I left this comment:

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Transcript:

“Oh wow, you deleted every comment I’ve made in this and other threads, except the original one that started the thread. That’s certainly a sharp turn from the “I’ve done nothing wrong and YOU’RE the nazi here!” tone of your now deleted comments to me. I mean, I say tone but you did literally say I was asking you to “burn your book” just like the nazis did, which honestly, if that’s your response to the grandchild of Holocaust survivors telling you your Holocaust porn is doing harm to real people living today, I would urge you to swiftly return the history degree you boasted about in your now deleted comment.

For the benefit of anyone who might be reading this in the future (although of course, you’ll likely delete this too, since I guess you realized it makes you look bad, but not bad enough to actually do anything to mitigate the harm you’re causing), in a different sub-thread you compared writing about the Holocaust, a specific historical tragedy you’re not personally affected by, to writing about “sex offenders”, and when I explained why those two are the same you deleted that as well. 

So let’s just keep the first line of my original response to your comment above, back when you were pretending you didn’t understand what the fuss was about instead of writing long explanations about how you’re just trying to humanize nazis for The Greater Good, which you’ve now deleted. I guess criticisizing fics on “like book burning” but silencing critics by deleting their words and pretending nothing was said is just a brave act of anti-censorship:

lol yep it’s definitely about that one tag and not literally everything else that I wrote.“

That comment got deleted within a few minutes of me posting it. 

I also responded to the author’s friends who’d left comments that I didn’t engage with, to let them know the reason I wasn’t engaging was because the author was deleting comments and clearly wasn’t interested in learning or changing their behavior, so I didn’t feel it was worth my good faith efforts to engage. Here’s an example of a comment like that:

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Transcript:

“FYI, the author is deleting replies in this thread, including several of the ones I wrote, including things that were not responses to things the author later regretted saying. I was already over-extending myself to try and explain, in good faith, why this fic was fucked up. I’m sure it won’t matter to you, but I’m just putting here as an explanation for why I’m not going to engage with commenters when the author of the fic, the only person who has the power to mitigate any of the damage it’s doing, it actively disinterested in listening or changing their behavior in any way, and is in fact happy to delete comments so it looks like they don’t care/had the last word. More about this here, unless the author deletes my reply there as well: [link to now deleted response]

This is just a “FYI this is the person you’re defending and this is why investing effort into this in good fath is more than a reasonable person who’s affected by this harm would be capable of. I’m not going to engage further, for the reasons I stated.“

Those comments were also deleted within minutes of being posted. 

At this point, it was pretty clear the author was trying to silence and cover up any criticism of their actions because defending themselves was no longer sustainable and I assume (although I don’t know, this is all speculation) they were getting negative responses from their own followers the deeper they tried to go into the battle of “telling descendants of Holocaust survivors that they’re the REAL nazis for criticizing my fic” and pretending their fic was a necessary educational tool for demonstrating the darkness of the human soul. 

But the true cherry on top of the “desperately trying to appear like I, the author, is the victim here” cake is the end note the author added to the fic the next day, to explain, I assume, all the whispers about them deleting comments. 

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Transcript:

“As a Note, this story has produced some strong reactions and sometimes the comments to this fic contain elements that some folks might not want to see. It is one thing to read fiction about making a traitor-Nazi cry, it is another to read death threats and graphic depictions of real events that commenters have decided to share for shock value in my comment sections. I have deleted some comments but I have left some others up that might be uncomfortable for readers to see. There are no graphic written depictions of any prisoner abuse in this fic but there ARE in the comments. Please be careful and use your own discretion when reading the comments.“

So, the author is now claiming the comments they deleted contained “death threats” and “graphic depictions of real events” that they were just trying to spare their readers from having to experience. (The irony of doing this on a fic that uses the Holocaust as a backdrop is truly too exquisite.)

As you can see, my comments didn’t contain any death threats or graphic descriptions of anything, and still were all deleted, just to prevent any criticism from appearing on the fic. 

To recap: author writes Holocaust porn, gets criticized for it, claims to not understand what the fuss is about, then claims the fic is educational in how nazism can happen to anyone + they’ve taken some courses on Germany + the critics are the REAL nazis asking for a book burning! then deletes all those comments and claims it’s because they contained “death threats” and “graphic descriptions”. 

So, this is hopefully the end of my engagement. I wanted to make it known that this shit is not ok, that it hurts people, that it causes real harm. Apparently the author was not OK with having that information available in the comments, or rather, were only OK with leaving up the parts that they felt didn’t make them look bad.

Finally, I’d like to say that this is not about purity politics or even “cancel culture” (I don’t believe in that term but maybe some people will try to throw it at this). We’re all people who are on a journey, learning and changing all the time. I am not some saint, the author is not some villain, I’m not doing this to score likes or followers from this drama (I haven’t even been on tumblr in years before this). We all fuck up and we all get up again and the only factor is how willing we are to learn and improve and make amends. 

Writing fictionalized porn about the Holocaust is, imo, fucked up by definition. But even if you don’t think that’s true, the minimum requirement is to make sure that when you borrow someone’s dead grandparents you don’t cause living people harm in the process. That’s important, and I wanted there to be a record that Jews and anyone else whose family was directly touched by the Holocaust deserves that basic respect. 

the thing about the “oh of course fandom gravitates towards pretty white boys & ignores female characters and characters of color and especially female characters of color, it’s the creators’ fault because they don’t give those characters any depth/plot relevance!!!” argument is that it’s just….. not true. sure there are lots of shows where that happens but there are also LOTS where it doesn’t and fandoms still behave exactly the same. it doesn’t matter how prominently the creators place women of color, because you all will still fight to ignore them at any cost in favor of white men. despite what you might think from looking at tumblr, prominent & complex main characters of color exist–& in tons of popular shows!–and yet the fandoms are consistently, overwhelmingly saturated with white characters because FANDOMS ARE RACIST, and it’s frankly annoying as hell for you guys to try and blame that exclusively on the creators. own up to that shit.

request on twt (2024 artt)

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