Vespertine

Vespertine is a Lan Xichen/Jin Guangyao fanfic written by ritualist (formerly known as jelenedra) for an October 2020 gift exchange, Wei Wuxian's Birthday Gift Exchange. It was the subject of controversy in December 2020 over the author's tweets about the inclusion of a Jewish practice in the fic. 
The incident was characterized variously as an example of sinophobia, antisemitism, or grudgewank.
==The Fic==
The fic is rated Mature, tagged No Archive Warnings Apply, and tagged for tropes including Canon Divergence AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, and Pre-Slash.
Author's Summary:
The fic was originally posted publicly, but as of July 2023 is archive-locked. 
==Fan Response==
The story was well received, with many enthusiastic comments from readers.
As of July 2023 the work on AO3 has 185 comments, 891 kudos, 159 bookmarks, and 5330 hits.Vespertine (Accessed 24 July 2023.)
==Burying the Books==
In one scene Lan Xichen briefly mentions a Lan tradition of burying damaged books. This piece of worldbuilding is based on a Jewish tradition of burying texts that contain the name of God. See Wikipedia:Genizah.
Several people commented on the book burying reference, and the author, who is Jewish, replied with comments about incorporating this element of Judaism.
==The Controversy==
There does not appear to have been any controversy initially about "Vespertine" itself. However, on December 12-13 some of the author's tweets about the fic's references to Judaism sparked wank.
The author commissioned fanart from twitter user pakhnokh; the art was shared on twitter on December 11, 2020., 11 December 2020. In the replies, one person commented, "I see you with the Jewish Lan agenda. :D", and the artist asked, "Which Jewish Lan agenda?? What did I miss?"tweet thread, 11 December 2020 (Wayback Machine copy) The author replied,
A discussion followed about the history of Jews in China and whether the Lans could have been Jewish.
The next day, December 13, the author tweeted that "someone had blocked me because I reference the Lans being Jewish too much and this is erasing the real religions of China, which have never included Judaism."tweet by jelenedra (wayback machine copy), 13 December 2020. It's never made clear who did the blocking; in later tweets the author implies that the person was upset that Chinese Jews existed.tweet by jelenedra (wayback machine copy)
Other people responded to the author, some of whom had not read the fic and believed that the Lans were written as Jewish or that jelenedra was arguing they should be read as Jewish.
quigonejinn weighed in:
quigonejinn characterized their own criticism as "I firmly but kindly pushed back on what I saw as @/jelenedra's erasure of Chinese culture + them furiously backtracking when called to account.", 16 December 2020.
merelydovely explained that the original tweet had been taken out of context:
===Chinese cultural erasure or antisemitism?===
In the original tweet thread and elsewhere, there were two contradictory interpretations of what was happening.
In the first view, ignoring the original cultural context of the Lan Sect in favor of (re)writing them as Jewish was erasure and disrespectful. asideoftrashpi1 tweeted,
Meanwhile, a number of observers thought that jelenedra was being subjected to an antisemitic double standard, whatever the merits of the original criticisms. Comments from fail_fandomanon:
Another point that fans debated, because jelenedra had stressed that the Lans weren't actually Jewish in the fic, was whether the charge of cultural erasure would have been fair if the Lans had been Jewish in the fic and whether the setting - modern AU or canon setting - would make a difference.
===Accusations of plagiarism===
Criticism of "Vespertine" was mixed in with, and may have ultimately been caused by, a complaint of plagiarism against a completely different fic written by jelenedra. On December 13 adspexi tweeted,
Shortly after posting "Vespertine", the author had posted another MDZS fic on AO3 titled "Dragon's Gall" that was to be printed in a horror zine. It also received many enthusiastic comments from readers on AO3, who praised it highly. As of 2023 the notes section credits quigonejinn, "whose excellent meta on Madam Lan and gentian symbolism provided a number of elements, and without whom this would not exist." 
However, according to quigonejinn, they were not originally credited and had to ask for the note to be added. In a December 16, 2020, twitter thread, quigonejinn said that many details of jelenedra's fic were lifted from tweets by quigonejinn and that jelenedra did not add a note crediting them until five days after "Dragon's Gall" was posted, after quigonejinn asked them to. quigonejinn also alleged that the lack of credit was part of a larger pattern., 16 December 2020. (Accessed 5 August 2023.) quigonejinn implied but did not state that jelenedra did not have permission to use quigonejinn's ideas.
After the complaints about "Dragon's Gall" went public, jelenedra was subsequently accused of plagiarizing another meta twitter thread for their "apples" fic. 
On December 17, jelenedra responded to the accusations, posting a long tweet thread in which they apologized for their mistakes in forgetting to credit people and explained their side of the story: they had discussed in advance their plan to write the fic using quigonejinn's tweet thread with quigonejinn, who was very enthusiastic about the fic, but while posting jelenedra had forgotten to include the credit due to their ADHD-related memory problems. jelenedra showed screencaps of their correspondence with quigonejinn. They also denied the "apples" accusation, using screencaps that showed they had been working on the fic in question before the tweet thread., 17 December 2020. They concluded their thread by saying that after they had finished posting their current backlog of fic they would "re-evaluate whether I should remain active in fandom"., 17 December 2020. archive.is copy. 
The person who had thought jelenedra stole from their tweet thread then apologized., 17 December 2020.
Later commentary from fail_fandomanon, reacting to adspexi's tweet in particular:
And fail_fandomanon's reaction to quigonejinn's tweets:
(quigonejinn's plagiarism callout tweet had 165 retweets.)
saturnalyia also wrote a twitter thread in support of jelenedra:
saturnalyia went on to say that they had witnessed some of the accusers criticizing, mocking, and misgendering jelenedra in a discord server. saturnalyia concluded that "some genuine and valid concerns have been maliciously stirred into something they're not, and people who were genuinely hurt have been manipulated to join a crusade against someone who has made mistakes but also owned up to them.", 17 December 2020. archive.is copy.
==Other Jewish Lans Wank==
A month later a different Jewish MDZS fanfic writer, unaware of the incident related to Vespertine, wrote an AU in which the Lans were Jewish. This writer also suffered backlash, in part because it was assumed that the fic was purposefully written in response to the first wank. See Bashert.
==Meta/Further Reading==
*fail_fandomanon:
** (2020-12-16)
** (2020-12-17)
*statement by several members of a Chinese diaspora Discord server, compiled and shared by pumpkinpaix on twitter and tumblr, 4 January 2021:
**twitter thread
**
*discussion of the statement by pumpkinpaix on fail_fandomanon: (2021-01-04)
==References==
Category:Mo Dao Zu Shi
Category:Slash Fanfiction
Category:2020 Fanfiction
Category:Judaism & Fandom