Bashert

Bashert is an MDZS AU written by nirejseki in which the Lan and Nie sects are Jewish. Many fans incorrectly assumed that nirejseki's fic was written in response to twitter discourse the month before about whether MDZS Jewish AU fanfic was cultural erasure. In reality the author had been unaware of the discourse. The fic and the author were heavily criticized, and the author decided to delete the fic after a few days.
==The Fic==
Author's Summary:
As of January 25, the additional tags were: "Alternate Universe, Lan and Nie Sects are Jewish, Canon Compliant, in other respects, really this fic is an exercise in how many obscure Jewish traditions I can use to make MDZS jokes, not a reliable source of information as to Jewish traditions, also if they can have potatoes they can have Yiddish"Bashert - nirejseki (Archive of Our Own), Wayback Machine copy, 25 January 2021. (Accessed 13 August 2023.)
As of January 27, the "Canon Compliant" and potato tags were removed and replaced with "ahistorical conflation of traditions, complete alternate universe given the divergent traditions, canon compliant only in the sense that all the novel events take place, not meant to be canon compliant in any other respect"Bashert - nirejseki (Archive of Our Own), Wayback Machine copy, 27 January 2021. (Accessed 13 August 2023.)
Also as of January 27, the fic had 241 comments, 325 kudos, 40 bookmarks, and 3237 hits.
===Deletion===
The January 27 Wayback Machine capture of the fic has commenting disabled and a bolded note from the author:
==Controversy==
The controversy started before the fic was even posted.
nirejseki was a prolific writer of short AU fanfics and frequently accepted fic requests submitted by readers through her tumblr account, robininthelabyrinth. The idea behind "Bashert" was one such request., 25 January 2021. 
nirejseki mentioned the fic at least twice on her tumblr blog before posting the fic, once on January 2 and once on January 24. The first post was about her writing process; it had a few responses from users excited about the Jewish Lan premise., 2 January 2021. The second post was made the day before the fic was published; nirejseki asked her readers to vote on which of her unposted fics should be released first. "Jewish Lan Sect" was one of the options. The post has 100 notes of people trying to rank their favorite ideas or enthusiastically saying that they all sounded great and they couldn't decide. by robininthelabyrinth, 24 January 2021. (Accessed 10 August 2023.)
Unbeknownst to nirejseki, who was active on tumblr, MDZS fandom on twitter had just undergone a different "Jewish Lans" drama in December, sparked by comments made by the author of Vespertine, jelenedra. Vespertine did not feature any Jewish characters, but did include a veiled reference to a Jewish cultural practice. 
At some point between the first time nirejseki mentioned the premise and the time she posted the fic, she received some anon comments that were not shared publicly. Whether the comments were friendly advisories about the dangerous wank waters ahead or outright antisemitic remarks is unclear. In any case, the author interpreted the anon comments as motivated by antisemitism, which only strengthened her resolve: "I was unfamiliar with the prior incident and was surprised and offended by some of the asks I was receiving prior to me posting the fic (particularly ones that insisted that there was no room for any Jewish content whatsoever in the fandom)", 27 January 2021.
In turn, nirejseki's own angry responses prompted backlash, creating an unpleasant feedback loop of misunderstanding, hurt, anger, and defensiveness. The author was harassed, and the fic was inundated with angry comments, some antisemitic, from people who may not have even read the fic. (See the Wayback Machine's capture of the comment section.) It has been alleged that much of the backlash against the author was the result of a bigoted harassment campaign, possibly involving quigonejinn, 2021-04-11., 2022-11-18., who also spread misinformation during the earlier backlash against a different Jewish fanfic writer.
===MDZS as Taoist=== 
On the same day that "Bashert" was posted (whether before or after is unclear), nirejseki also posted some responses to an anon ask that became a major aspect of the controversy. Some of her comments dismissed the importance of Taoism to the worldbuilding in MDZS. The anon argued,
nirejseki's answer, which argued the anon was holding MDZS to a different standard than Western fantasy novels, contained a phrase that angered many Chinese diaspora fans: "MDZS (a bunch of common cnovel fantasy tropes in an extremely well-written trenchcoat with exactly zero references to Taoist texts or customs or culture)"
nirejseki later deleted the post; as of 2023 a surviving reblog has 50 notes. (Accessed 12 August 2023.)
Around the same time she made another tumblr post on the same topic, but added further commentary in the tags that people objected to:
Again the original was deleted, but the surviving reblog has 111 notes as of 2023., 25 January 2021. (Accessed 12 August 2023.)
People argued against nirejseki's characterization of MDZS as generic fantasy. 
shuflypie replied to nirejseki's posts:
In a reblog of the author's posts, genderqueernerd explained several Taoist references in MDZS and that contemporary Chinese people still hold Taoist beliefs.
soursoppi posted on tumblr:
Peanut_Poppy on twitter posted .
On fail_fandomanon, where anons were sympathetic to nirejseki being harassed, some people agreed that nirejseki had made false assertions:
However, not everyone agreed with the interpretation of MDZS as Taoist:
nirejseki apologized for the tumblr posts:
===Spitefic?===
Before posting the fic, nirejseki made a tumblr post indicating that she would prioritize "Bashert" to spite the anons (who she had thought were being antisemitic):
Other tumblr users seemed to share the author's view and encouraged her with replies like "Go for it!!!!! Honestly fuck those anons" and "SPITE POSTING FOR THE WIN!"
However, other tumblr users argued that the author was misrepresenting what the anons had said:
Meanwhile, on twitter quigonejinn accused the author of writing racist spitefic:
quigonejinn's twitter thread had 500+ retweets and over a thousand likes, with angry comments in the quote tweets like "If you are supporting this horrendously racist fic along with the actions of the author of the said fic, please go ahead and unfollow me", 27 January 2021. and "It seems the more ppl point out fandom racism, the more racists are doubling down & deliberately writing shit that they know will hurt. And they'll keep doing it as long as there are no real consequences to them.", 26 January 2021.
===When Is A Jewish AU OK?===
Many Chinese diaspora fans were angry about the erasure of Taoism, but expressed very different views about what the author had done wrong - whether the problem was the author's tumblr posts, the tags on the fic, or the fic itself. Opinion was divided on whether the AU setting made a difference in whether it was OK to make the characters Jewish. Some of the comments were contradictory and displayed a lack of awareness that other people were angry at different things.
Some people argued that AUs were fine, but the problem was that the fic was tagged "canon compliant" (it was also tagged "Alternate Universe"). Some AO3 comments on the fic:
Someone posted a similar criticism in a bookmark on the fic, emphasizing that the problem was the author's tumblr posts and not the story itself:
However, some fans believed that the content of the fic itself was the problem. Replies to nirejseki's apology post:
On twitter, not_h8, who is Jewish, had this to say:
Two other twitter users debated:
===Antisemitic Double Standard?===
Many other fans, including the author, were skeptical about why a Jewish AU was so heavily criticized in a fandom where generic Modern American AUs, stripped of all Chinese cultural context, were so popular:
Twitter comments about the backlash being antisemitic:
People also took note that quigonejinn was involved in the discourse for both Bashert and Vespertine:
===Antisemitic Dogwhistles===
In addition to pointing out the double standard of how only Jewish AUs were getting criticized, fans noted that some people were leaving comments on the fic that were antisemitic dogwhistles. Examples:
Criticism of these comments by other fans:
===Chinese Nationalism?===
Others pointed out that not everyone who participated in the backlash was Chinese or Chinese diaspora, and that this framing was itself reinforcing racist stereotypes of Chinese people as racist., 2021-01-29.
==Aftermath==
The incident may have contributed to the overall perception of MDZS fandom, especially the twitter fandom, as a wanky mess best avoided. There are unsubstantiated reports that fans left the fandom over this and related incidents. Some fans who had already been critiquing the prevalence of sinophobia in English-speaking MDZS fandom were disappointed that this incident only muddied the waters and did not promote productive conversation, while others thought the incident was simply yet another example of the fandom's sinophobia. Meanwhile, others were confirmed in their belief that MDZS fandom was antisemitic.
It is reasonable to assume, but is hard to verify that the incident had a chilling effect on other fans who would have wanted to write Jewish AUs or incorporate Jewish elements in their fic for this fandom. Jewish fics have been written in many fandoms, but the percentages are very low. A look at some large AO3 fandoms where someone also tagged their fic with a "Judaism" tag shows 0.14% Jewish fanworks for Harry Potter, 0.36% for MCU, 0.06% for Supernatural, 0.33% for Good Omens (TV), 0.09% for Star Wars, and only 0.01% for MDZS and The Untamed.Counts taken from AO3 fandom tag work pages, while logged in, on 13 August 2023. 621/452,478 for HP; 1,915/538,106 for MCU; 160/280,392 for SPN; 178/53,501 for Good Omens; 226/238,797 for Star Wars; 5/70,367 for MDZS; 4/49,521 for The Untamed.
==Further Reading==
*fail_fandomanon
** (2021-01-25)
** (2021-01-26)
** ( 2021-01-29)
* by superborb (Jan 26, 2021)
==References==
Category:Mo Dao Zu Shi
Category:2021 Fanfiction
Category:Slash Fanfiction
Category:Judaism & Fandom