Fandom Filled With Horrors: Day Ends With Y - Blog Posts
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.