I don't think the civil war era should be untouchable when it comes to writing stories, but you HAVE TO treat it with a level of respect, *ESPECIALLY* if you're trying to write a BL off it. Romance and sensitive points in history do not mix well! You can't go into how fucked and grave these points in history were, without sacrificing the tone of a romance, that's why you don't see these a lot because it's very, very hard.
Let's use Gone with the Wind for an example (I don't know about the book so I'm going off of the film). It's a love story set between to white folks in in the south during the civil war era. The reason why people have a problem of Gone with the wind is because of how it creates this romanticized landscape of the old south, where the black character "doesn't really mind being in service to Scarlet" and she's "perfectly content." This is a trope (Uncle Tom) you see in a lot of old movies and books that try to make it seem that black and brown people didn't suffer as much in slavery because of the "good" white people not torturing or whipping their slaves. This trope was *designed* to do that by racist, guilty white people so that they, and their audience don't think that slavery was that bad.
And so yes, if this manhwa continued it could've fell into that Uncle Tom trope too (Whether the author meant to or not). I mean idk having Ezra (the love interest btw) in your story go, "I'm your humble slave," is not a good start. Then you have the white savior moment from Gerald, having him hand them money and talk to the slaves about how "You're free now. You can go back to your families!" Wow! The bare minimum! Let's also not think about the fact of how incredibly hard it was for black and brown slaves to find their loved ones, to actually escape slavery, and how useless that cart will be when they run into white men with guns who were very bitter about the lost. But he just set them off with no protection and a few kind words. He couldn't have kept them either because that would've been ruined the "good" white person he's supposed to be for our romance. Do we see the problem? I also want to highlight how the black and brown slaves in that moment could've been replaced by cardboard. Them being very passive like that, pretty much only there to establish how the main character isn't racist, puts a really bad taste in my mouth.
Could the "I'm your humble slave" line be an ironic quip from someone who is very bitter about the systemic racism they're living in? Maybe. Could this story actually be sensitive to the era it's being written in without falling into racist pitfalls? Maybe. We will never know, but I do know that the first chapter was bringing up some really bad signs, and it warrants reasonable criticism. And I am glad that the author realizes that and cancelled it. They should definitely try something else. I'm not sending them hate and I'm not going to talk about the author as if I know their intentions. I'm just pointing out why this manhwa was not going to go well based on my analysis, as someone who is of Black American descent.
TLDR because I wrote far too much for this manhwa than I should've: The manhwa was already falling into racist pitfalls chapter 1, whether or not the author meant to, it's a good thing they cancelled it because it could've gotten worse.
I don't think the civil war era should be untouchable when it comes to writing stories, but you HAVE TO treat it with a level of respect, *ESPECIALLY* if you're trying to write a BL off it. Romance and sensitive points in history do not mix well! You can't go into how fucked and grave these points in history were, without sacrificing the tone of a romance, that's why you don't see these a lot because it's very, very hard.
Let's use Gone with the Wind for an example (I don't know about the book so I'm going off of the film). It's a love story set between to white folks in in the south during the civil war era. The reason why people have a problem of Gone with the wind is because of how it creates this romanticized landscape of the old south, where the black character "doesn't really mind being in service to Scarlet" and she's "perfectly content." This is a trope (Uncle Tom) you see in a lot of old movies and books that try to make it seem that black and brown people didn't suffer as much in slavery because of the "good" white people not torturing or whipping their slaves. This trope was *designed* to do that by racist, guilty white people so that they, and their audience don't think that slavery was that bad.
And so yes, if this manhwa continued it could've fell into that Uncle Tom trope too (Whether the author meant to or not). I mean idk having Ezra (the love interest btw) in your story go, "I'm your humble slave," is not a good start. Then you have the white savior moment from Gerald, having him hand them money and talk to the slaves about how "You're free now. You can go back to your families!" Wow! The bare minimum! Let's also not think about the fact of how incredibly hard it was for black and brown slaves to find their loved ones, to actually escape slavery, and how useless that cart will be when they run into white men with guns who were very bitter about the lost. But he just set them off with no protection and a few kind words. He couldn't have kept them either because that would've been ruined the "good" white person he's supposed to be for our romance. Do we see the problem? I also want to highlight how the black and brown slaves in that moment could've been replaced by cardboard. Them being very passive like that, pretty much only there to establish how the main character isn't racist, puts a really bad taste in my mouth.
Could the "I'm your humble slave" line be an ironic quip from someone who is very bitter about the systemic racism they're living in? Maybe. Could this story actually be sensitive to the era it's being written in without falling into racist pitfalls? Maybe. We will never know, but I do know that the first chapter was bringing up some really bad signs, and it warrants reasonable criticism. And I am glad that the author realizes that and cancelled it. They should definitely try something else. I'm not sending them hate and I'm not going to talk about the author as if I know their intentions. I'm just pointing out why this manhwa was not going to go well based on my analysis, as someone who is of Black American descent.
TLDR because I wrote far too much for this manhwa than I should've: The manhwa was already falling into racist pitfalls chapter 1, whether or not the author meant to, it's a good thing they cancelled it because it could've gotten worse.