Like I want a REAL answer

Copy pasting a comment I made as a reply to someone else "Nobody said it's inherently racist to tell a story set during slavery. The problem is how the story is told. When your protagonist is a slave owner's son who's portrayed as "one of the good ones," loses his wealth, frees a slave, and then gets treated like a saint by the very people his family enslaved, you're not really telling a story about slavery. You're telling a story about how noble a white character is. The issue is that the enslaved characters seem to exist mainly to validate the white protagonist's morality. That's why people call it a white savior narrative."

I’m creole descent with literal tracking of how I came from slavery bred with the French and Spanish and Native Americans. Who is college educated per my job on the civil war. I am also confused. (Everyone is saying twitter though, I don’t have twitter, so I don’t know) I’m just mad new content was taken from me)

Ok, I can understand that, thanks for the perspective, I guess I did not think of the white savior concept.

Well read my comment

I’m crying why did you bring up your DNA. Also calling it “slavery bred” is crazy lmaooooo you’re literally evidence of how horrible colonizers and slavery was

I get it… but Manhwa artists also feel a certain way about making a story in the way you’d want. They are Korean. If they make one wrong move drawing a black person wrong they get hell and hate forever. That’s why we have Webtoon. If it’s that big of an issue, there are plenty of manhwa and webtoons with ALLLL of the inclusion and political correct happiness with not white savior complex made by Americans over there. Do they get shit for making stories about their slavery and savior complex behavior over there? She is Korean, why does she have to cater to us?

And again, that is literally YOUR understanding clouded by your own understanding and past experience of the world. The freed slaves thanked the white guy, and went on their way. But I guess thanking people is equivalent to treating them like saints?

The story has one chapter, we don't know how the story would go.

Well I made one too :/ I guess having a white daddy washed away all of my concern about white savior complexes when he personally participated in the American civil war and saved the whole country including my mother from her poor slave life here in the south lol. Jesus Christ. We care way too much here.

Dawg the author researched this and realized her story was ignorant. She CHOSE to be educated. She CHOSE to apologize. She could’ve ignored it like every other korean author but she decided to have the balls to be educated! Koreans don’t actually give a shit about their western audiences bro. She’s a fully grown adult who realized her mistake and decided to listen to her western audience because she wanted to not because she was forced to.

Why is everyone so upset that she decided to learn about american history and be respectful? Americans get upset over a lot of things but Koreans usually never care dude cause it barely affects them. But the moment a Korean with a backbone decides to be a good person and understand human rights, everyone is upset? It’s not like she died she’s probably gonna come back with a better story now lmao

That's the thing, I can understand the white savior concept...but there should be one right? As opposed to keep being slaves?

That’s not “my understanding clouded by experience,” that’s basic narrative reading. If the only Black characters in the story exist as freed slaves who immediately thank the former slave-owning family member and drift off with no agency, no interiority, and no impact beyond validating him, then yes that’s exactly why people call it a white savior trope. You don’t need 20 chapters to establish a pattern when the first one already sets the framing your defense that it's only the first chapter isn’t a good defense of what’s already on the page. You critique what exists, not hypothetical future rewrites that may or may not happen.

That's the way with background characters, or mob characters in manga, they do their shtick and leave. You won't get any character development from them. What we will never know is if there would've been any well-written secondary characters.

You can't critique what exists when the story never even started. 1st chapter is a short prologue at best, not any indicative of how black characters or indigenous characters would behave beyond the main lead and the love interest's introduction. They haven't even really interacted yet, so we don't even know what their dynamic would be beyond master/slave.

Again, you are all entitled to your opinions and beliefs, but there should be room to tell stories that leave some people uncomfortable. I'm not personally invested in this series cancellation, but I think it leaves a dangerous precedence for storytelling. Especially now that we're starting to see book banning in conservative communities.

This isn’t about “mob characters” or whether side characters get development later. The problem is the framing, if your opening setup is slavery, and the emotional center of the story is a slave owner’s son framed as morally admirable while enslaved characters exist mainly as background validation, then yes that’s exactly what people are reacting to. You don’t get a free pass just because you label it a “prologue", and again "Maybe it gets better later” isn’t a defense of what’s already been published. People are allowed to judge the narrative choices that are actually on the page, not hypothetical rewrites that might never happen.

And no, this isn’t about “dangerous precedent” or book banning. Criticism is not censorship, saying a story uses slavery as a backdrop for a white savior/slaver-centered narrative is not censorship, pointing out why that framing is going to be read as racially tone-deaf and exploitative is not censorship.

Sure, but then the series shouldn't need to be cancelled, but the author should be allowed to reflect and make adjustments. The backdrop doesn't inherently make it racist, and narrative tropes are often used but then subverted, so we genuinely don't know what this story could've turned out to be.

Authors shouldn't have to cancel series because of hate and criticism.

No one “forced” anything here that’s the thing you’re ignoring. The author chose the setting and framing herself, and after seeing the criticism, she also chose to step back because she didn’t feel she could handle the material with enough sensitivity. That’s not “cancellation,” that’s an author making a decision about their own work and capacity to do it justice. The idea that authors “shouldn’t have to cancel series because of criticism” doesn’t match reality anyway. Plenty of problematic or tone-deaf BLs do keep going despite backlash, because the author chooses to continue and the publisher allows it. So clearly, criticism doesn’t automatically stop anything it just exists as part of the feedback loop. At the end of the day, publishing a story isn’t a one-way entitlement where you put something out and get immunity from response. You can’t demand an audience and then insist that audience has no right to question how sensitive or harmful the framing is.

And there's the crux of it. No stories should be cancelled because people find them uncomfortable. Don't like it, don't read it. Sending hate and criticism so authors cancel their stories IS censorship. And people already use "sexual themes/adult themes" as excuses to ban and censor queer stories.

And I can agree that perhaps the right choice this time was to cancel the story because of how raw the subject matter is to people alive today, but I think it's dangerous to talk about the "problematic BLs" in the same vein. At the end of the day BL and stories like it is art, it's fiction. Don't like it, don't read it. Stories are allowed to make you uncomfortable without needing to be cancelled or censored.

“Don’t like it, don’t read it” stops being a meaningful argument the moment a work is being publicly released and discussed. Nobody is obligated to consume it, but everyone is allowed to critique it that’s not censorship, cancellation also isn’t some magical external force. It’s a mix of author choice, publisher decision, and audience reception. Sometimes creators step back because they don’t want to continue under controversy that’s not the same thing as being “silenced.” Lumping all criticism of problematic storytelling into “censorship” is just flattening the conversation. People can defend queer stories and still point out when specific narratives rely on harmful tropes or insensitive framing. Those two things are not in conflict.

Art doesn’t become immune from criticism just because it’s fiction. If anything, fiction gets more scrutiny precisely because of the ideas it normalizes or challenges.