I’ve spent some time reading through all the comments on this manhwa, and I’m genuinely disgusted. When the hell did so many openly racist, bigoted people enter a space like this?
The BL community has plenty of flaws, but this is genuinely one of the first times I’ve seen so many people openly defend something like this.
Let’s start with this: it is okay for an author to face criticism when they do something wrong. This author clearly understood that what they wrote was a bad decision, which is why the comic was cancelled. People are allowed to be upset, especially when the subject matter is something as historically painful and deeply rooted as slavery and colonial violence. That doesn’t mean death threats are okay, they absolutely aren’t, but dismissing everyone who was uncomfortable as “snowflakes” is ridiculous. You do not have to baby the author. They’re a grown adult who made a poor creative decision, and criticism is part of publishing your work.
And as for the people defending the premise… I genuinely don’t understand it.
This wasn’t just an “age gap” or “problematic romance.” The story was built around a relationship between a white former slave owner and a Native American man in the aftermath of the American Civil War. That isn’t just “dark fiction, its taking a real history of oppression, genocide, forced displacement, and dehumanisation and turning it into the backdrop for a romantic BL fantasy.
People keep saying, “It’s just fiction,” but fiction isn’t created in a vacuum. Authors can absolutely explore horrific periods of history, but there is a massive difference between depicting historical atrocities and romanticising the power imbalance that came from them.
And before anyone says, “Well, every country has experienced slavery,” exactly. That’s why you shouldn’t do this to anyone’s history. It wouldn’t be okay if the enslaved group were African, Indigenous, Irish, Korean, Chinese, or anyone else. It doesn’t suddenly become acceptable because the victims are Native American. Real people suffered through these atrocities, and those histories still affect communities today.
No one is saying authors can’t write difficult or uncomfortable subjects. They absolutely can. But if you choose to write a romance built on one of history’s most brutal systems of oppression, you cannot act surprised when people find it distasteful or offensive.
The amount of people mocking people in the comments, calling others “too sensitive,” and acting like basic empathy is censorship has honestly been more disturbing than the cancellation itself.
Criticism is not censorship. People expressing disgust is not “cancel culture.” If you publish something publicly, people are allowed to tell you they think it’s in poor taste. That’s how art has always worked.
You don’t have to agree with the criticism, but pretending people are irrational for finding this premise offensive says far more about you than it does about them.
I’ve spent some time reading through all the comments on this manhwa, and I’m genuinely disgusted. When the hell did so many openly racist, bigoted people enter a space like this?
The BL community has plenty of flaws, but this is genuinely one of the first times I’ve seen so many people openly defend something like this.
Let’s start with this: it is okay for an author to face criticism when they do something wrong. This author clearly understood that what they wrote was a bad decision, which is why the comic was cancelled. People are allowed to be upset, especially when the subject matter is something as historically painful and deeply rooted as slavery and colonial violence. That doesn’t mean death threats are okay, they absolutely aren’t, but dismissing everyone who was uncomfortable as “snowflakes” is ridiculous. You do not have to baby the author. They’re a grown adult who made a poor creative decision, and criticism is part of publishing your work.
And as for the people defending the premise… I genuinely don’t understand it.
This wasn’t just an “age gap” or “problematic romance.” The story was built around a relationship between a white former slave owner and a Native American man in the aftermath of the American Civil War. That isn’t just “dark fiction, its taking a real history of oppression, genocide, forced displacement, and dehumanisation and turning it into the backdrop for a romantic BL fantasy.
People keep saying, “It’s just fiction,” but fiction isn’t created in a vacuum. Authors can absolutely explore horrific periods of history, but there is a massive difference between depicting historical atrocities and romanticising the power imbalance that came from them.
And before anyone says, “Well, every country has experienced slavery,” exactly. That’s why you shouldn’t do this to anyone’s history. It wouldn’t be okay if the enslaved group were African, Indigenous, Irish, Korean, Chinese, or anyone else. It doesn’t suddenly become acceptable because the victims are Native American. Real people suffered through these atrocities, and those histories still affect communities today.
No one is saying authors can’t write difficult or uncomfortable subjects. They absolutely can. But if you choose to write a romance built on one of history’s most brutal systems of oppression, you cannot act surprised when people find it distasteful or offensive.
The amount of people mocking people in the comments, calling others “too sensitive,” and acting like basic empathy is censorship has honestly been more disturbing than the cancellation itself.
Criticism is not censorship. People expressing disgust is not “cancel culture.” If you publish something publicly, people are allowed to tell you they think it’s in poor taste. That’s how art has always worked.
You don’t have to agree with the criticism, but pretending people are irrational for finding this premise offensive says far more about you than it does about them.