hey, so i read your wwii au thing, and i wanted to let you know that although it doesn’t seem to be intentional, your post was very insensitive and a horrible example of holocaust-based media.
i am an actor and a dramaturg who has a lot of experience with specifically portraying holocaust stories through art or media. im also a queer, disabled person of color. i know what i’m talking about, and this isn’t intended to be some preaching, but i do think it’s important you know this for the future because this is not how you write a holocaust au.
i love historical aus. im currently working on one that takes place in and discusses the horrors of the industrial revolution in america. but these things that are based around real life have to be done with a certain level of tact, or else they are rendered ineffective.
yes, i hate the death eater characters. and yes, i hate jegulus. but my critiques have nothing to do with my personal biases and would have been just as prominent if different characters had been used.
now, here are all the issues as i see them (this is without all the personal issues i have with the ships and the characters and all that)
1. the overly sympathetic tone of regulus’ description. regulus was a nazi. he wasn’t some gentle, sweet freedom fighter. if you’re going to do the death eater -> nazi comparison, be real about it and commit to it instead of making your favorite “one of the good ones”. it softens the nazi regime and it’s just incredibly unrealistic. if regulus was rescuing people at such a large scale, it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed, and he likely wouldn’t have been placed in that position to begin with if there was any indication of doubt about the regime.
2. the fixation on the romantic relationships between nazi x nazi, as well as nazi x holocaust victim. to turn something as terrifying as remus needing shelter to hide from nazis into a cute romantic situation, is insensitive and frankly, ridiculous. it would be like making a romance spin off of anne frank’s diary. in fact, that’s exactly what it is. i also don’t understand the relevance of all these romantic relationships to the historical education. the fact that EVERYONE is gay is also just another layer of disbelief (there’s nothing wrong with gay rep, but balance is necessary), and to me, only weakens the concept that you claim to be backing. these people were nazis. they were torturing and killing millions purely for being different. why are we focusing on them going on midnight strolls or having sex in the bathroom. why do you care so much about that, but barely write about jack shit when it comes to the actual horrors of the concentration camps that these exact same people are doing? it seems to be less about gay representation and more about using queerness as some sort of shield to try and make these nazis seems less like “bad guys”. and i find that not only very bad storytelling, but just incredibly annoying.
3. barty and lily getting along and having children is absolutely ridiculous, especially considering that lily was more than likely a holocaust victim if we are basing this off her muggleborn status in the books. it seems like lily is not only having her trauma dismissed, but she’s also being treated like a walking womb with no sense of self. this is just bad practice in any media, not just holocaust-centric media.
4. the “bloody gory sex” bit at the end was completely unnecessary and seems to be just making light of all this. this whole post seems like you’re taking real horrors that happened to people who are still alive today, and turning it into some shippy trope soup with a historical background.
i appreciate the research put into it, but clearly, not enough was done for this to be effective, educational, or sensitive. i don’t believe in censorship, so i’m not requesting that this be deleted or anything, but i just wanted to express the very blatant issues of the post so hopefully you will put more thought and care into these types of things, not just on a research level, but in a human respect sort of way.
hey uhm, thanks for the actual constructive criticism, i can do way more with this than people simply asking what is wrong with me. so yeah, thank you for that. I did took that post down because i saw that it hurt a lot of people without me wanting to, and because in the first place i wrote this because i wondered what it would be like to put the characters in the situation, so it really isn't important to post. i was having doubts about posting it from the start and wondering if it was too insensitive but at some point i thought fuck it I'll just do it... i now know I shouldn't have done that. i would like to mention that im also a minor, its not like i wanna excuse myself but just so people know that even though i tried to make this a bit educational, i wasn't aware of how many feelings this would stir up and I've never done a post like that before so I didn't really know what to do.
I'll now answer all of your points separately as good as possible.
1. I wasnt really noticing that I've done that, truly I wrote my notes to this in at the beginning of August last year, and I myself had some doubts about my ideas when writing them down on here, but thought that no one would see it anyway and was a bit too tired to edit the entire thing.
2. My reason for them being queer is that in my head, they are. i know that realistically they wouldn't have been, but this can be said about the entire marauders fandom in my opinion, so I don't/didnt understand why it was problematic. as I said, i put my own representation of them into it. I believe it would have been better if the post would have only featured my idea of their positions, because that way i dont think I would've hurt anybody. The reason i put the situation of Remus hiding in there was because I know that there's many jews and other people who have done this during the war, and i wanted to make it realistic, at least for that part. Really I simply thought about how the usual shippings would work during this time without realising how big of a part it played back then.
3. The reason for this is that I really like the dynamic of Lily and Barty together and genuinely forgot that Lily would've been a holocaust victim. I know it sounds weird and if i think about Lily in general of course i know that shes got muggleborn status, but i didn't make the connection there for some reason. I put the fact they they might even have kids in there not to display Lily in a misogynistic way, but to show that they have a positive connection.
4. Not gonna lie... i agree with you on this. the end of my posts are always a bit... well, im always just happy to be finished without really caring what the end is, as long as its an end. maybe its because for me rosekiller just has sex like that often so to me, it would only make sense in a torture situation... I did not think of the impact towards the historical background.
All in one I can say that it was a big mistake for me to post the au the way that it is, and that I thought it would be able to separate the romance layer from the historical layer to a certain level. For that reason, I deleted it and thanks to actual criticism i understand why people have such a big problem with it and I want to sincerely apologise for this. I will keep my hands of the topic, i might post historical AU's, but nothing in the direction of ww2 (the only thing i could realistically write is an au after ww2 in eastern germany bc i did a scientific work thing on that but i dont think i will). When i wrote the AU, that was 9 months ago. I didn't yet write my scientific work, i didnt understand the complexity and importance of the entire subject. Truly, you can ask why I posted it now... the truth sounds silly and childish and very unfitting the situation: I wanted to empty my drafts. sure i thought that this wasnt my best post but with so much time it has spent rotting in my drafts i should finally post it. As i said, I now deleted it for the reasons which I've specified above, and I want to ask everyone to stop insulting me without any constructive criticism or to make this a big topic. I understand the severity of my mistakes and no matter how sorry I am, I can't do much more but to ask for your forgiveness, addressing the problems, taking the post down and doing better in the future.
best wishes back to you, annie, once again thank you very much.
