Mudblood (fanfiction)

Mudblood is a complete multichapter Harry Potter fic by ComfortableSilences. It is sexually explicit and features the het pairing Draco/Hermione. The fic broke containment and was deleted on February 28, 2024 after notorious TERF Helen Joyce was spotted reading the fic on a train by Amelia Hansford, Pink News, 28 February 2024.. 
The fic was reasonably popular on the AO3 and had 1,209 comments; 3,442 kudos; and 1,048 bookmarks shortly before it was taken down.Wayback Machine copy, 28 February 2024. It was also featured in a few "best of" collections by other users. 29,329 fanworks are posted in the Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy tag on AO3, and the fic would have been in 318th place for kudos and 184th place for comments before its deletion.Results from AO3's Works Search query on 28 February 2024.
==History==
ComfortableSilences said in Mudblood's author notes: "This is the first fic I've actually had the nerve to post!!".
==Fan Reactions/Reviews==
The fic on AO3 had many positive comments from readers.
The fic was recced in several places., Dramione subreddit comment, 13 August 2022. by katesthoughtsonthis on Tumblr, 26 April 2022.
The fic also appears on Goodreads, where it has 64 ratings with an average of 3.66 (out of 5) and 6 reviews. Reviews are mixed, with one calling it "one of the worst dramione fanfics I've read" and another describing it as "Smutty and oooooh so so beautiful". (Accessed 28 February 2024.)
==Helen Joyce Incident==
In February 2024, a user on Twitter wrote a thread claiming they spotted Helen Joyce, a well-known TERF activist and director of the anti-trans lobbying group Sex Matters, reading an underage Harry Potter smut fic on the train. After looking up phrases that were visible on Joyce's phone, the twitter user identified the fic as "Mudblood" on FF.net.tweet (privated). archive.is. , 27 February 2024.
Later, Joyce posted tweets asserting that she was researching how fanfiction could be used to convince young cis women to become trans, , 27 February 2024., but didn't directly acknowledge the train incident. (Sex Matters posted a press release the following day that did acknowledge it., press release on the Sex Matters website. (Accessed 28 February 2024.)) The tweets were criticized for several reasons, not least the claim itself, but also as being highly likely false in regards to supposed 'research' given the fic in question appears to have very little to do with trans characters or representation, even by the skewed standards of TERFs, instead being primarily a non-con Dramione fic between two heterosexual cisgender characters.
Many folks started to refer to the fic as 'child porn' and similar variations, given the characters are underage (likely around 16-17). As the fic had broken containment, many of the folks commenting on the fic were doing so outside of the realm of fandom. Other people criticized some of the reactions against Joyce, most notably the ones accusing her of being a paedophile, arguing that people were repeating similar sexist, anti-trans, anti-fanfic claims TERFs used in order to dunk on Joyce for being a hypocrite., tweet by SiliconeAndBone, 28 February 2024., tweet by GojiraSpouse, 28 February 2024., tweet by hysterekal00, 28 February 2024., tweet by assortedpuzlpcs, 28 February 2024., tweet by larvalLamped, 27 February 2024., tweet by varlinheau, 27 February 2024., tweet by goth_gunnywolf, 27 February 2024., tweet by NemoEntropy, 27 February 2024. Some folks instead focused on the hypocrisy of gender criticals like Joyce reading the kind of content that any trans woman or transfem seen reading would be baselessly accused by them of being a groomer.
There was also some confusion about the title of the fic: some folks stated it was called 'Mudblood Bitch' or 'Mudblood Btch'. In truth, the latter was the name of the chapter, with simply 'Mudblood' being the name of the fic itself.
The fic began to get comments referencing the event, including one pretending to be Joyce. Others attempted to warn the author that the event had happened. After learning about the incident, ComfortableSilences decided to delete the story both from fanfiction.net and AO3, along with a few other fics set at Hogwarts, so as not to get caught in the crossfire. by comfortablesilences110, 27 February 2024. ComfortableSilences also expressed support for the trans community., 27 February 2024.
==Further Reading==
*Fail_fandomanon thread: (2024-02-28)
==References==
category:Het Fanfiction
category:2019 Fanfiction