The Liberator

The first War Era fic in JD's universe, The Liberator is a five-chapter short story set in 1945 Poland which follows the interactions between a German traitor, Rolf Ziegler, and an American Captain, James "Breaker" Winecott which lead them to become mates in Winecott's attempt to save Ziegler from an uncertain fate in a broken Post War Germany.

## Fic Summary

> It is a chilly moonless night in April of 1945 and the commanding officer of the SS overseeing a small death camp in Poland waits for the Americans who would come to liberate it while searching for valuable intelligence.
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> Rolf Ziegler has two secrets. The first is that he is a traitor. The second is that he is an Omega. He hopes the tragically handsome American Captain who's pointing a rifle at him will find out neither before he pulls the trigger.
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## Characters

### Main

Rolf Ziegler

James "Breaker" Winecott

### Secondary

Ike

Peter

## Controversy

The most contentious of J.D.'s works despite its short length and relatively small original reach, The Liberator caught the attention of a few readers who seemed to take issue with several aspects of the story and the story's tags on Ao3. In response to this, JD\_Riley has altered the "inaccurate history" tag and replaced it with "counterfactual" to reflect the historical inconsistency regarding Americans liberating a death camp in Poland while under the orders of Operation Paperclip.

The original summary of the story included the phrase "Polish Death Camp" which was brought to the author's attention and altered to reflect that the camps were not constructed or operated by Polish citizens or military.

Mid-September 2020, the fic caught the attention of fandom academic Dr. Rukmini Pande who proceeded to characterize it as sympathetic to Nazism, creating a five-day Twitter discourse in which she refused to link the fic to her followers and advocated for the censorship of the fic in direct contrast to the stated ideals of the Archive. Followers of JD\_Riley expressed confusion to this characterization as the fic expresses in no uncertain terms a condemnation of Nazism and censorship. As a result of this discourse, the author has set comments to "moderated" on the Archive and continues to face harassment on Twitter and Curious Cat.

### Author Statement

At the tail end of the heaviest criticism, JD\_Riley replied to a Curious Cat with this statement about the story which reveals a basic idea of authorial intent within the narrative:

> I think there are a whole heck of a lot of people who are missing the point of the story. Mostly because I think they're not reading it or the story wasn't made for their demographic. The reason I didn't write it from a Jewish point of view is because, well, the story wasn't made to tell that story. There are hundreds of stories that illustrate Jewish suffering during the Holocaust but that suffering isn't MINE to tell. Frankly, this is my story. And I think it would have been far more disrespectful for me to write a Jewish main character to press forward a narrative that wasn't something I had any right to touch. Jewish people were MOST CERTAINLY the center of that tragedy and there is NO QUESTION. But that story isn't mine and to use it disingenuously for...porn? Well...wouldn't you rather I cheapen a Nazi? (A "not-Nazi" actually, as I've come to call him.)
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> The story itself is a blatant and explicit condemnation of Nazism expressed by a character who has been born into a destiny he MUST deny for the sake of his own humanity. The antagonist of the story is Nazism. His conflict is born from the fact that he will never be ENOUGH. He will always be the villain. He cannot escape it. He will be a traitor here or a Nazi elsewhere but he will never escape that cruel destiny no matter what he has done, good, bad, whatever. He believes that he is capable of evil because he is human and there are no such things as monsters. Only humans. And this is what drives his conflict.
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> It's a five-chapter story with proper tagging and an EXPLICIT condemnation of Nazism and censorship. It's the story I wanted to tell and the story that best fits with the themes I wanted to express. Any misinterpretation of that fic is unfortunate but ultimately something they will have to deal with on their own. It wasn't that hard to figure out. Most of the people who expressed anger toward it either didn't read it or didn't WANT to understand it and wished only to have an outrage response because outrage is easy. It is very clearly not "Nazi Propaganda" or even "Redemptive." Rolf doesn't GET a redemption. At the end of the story he is simply forced to live with the fact that he is going to be seen as a villain...it is only that there is ONE person who thinks otherwise that makes it possible for him to take another step forward and believe that survival is worth it. That's not a redemption and to characterize it as such is to lose the entire point of Rolf's character arc. This is not "Holocaust Fanfiction." It's just one writer's weird and ultimately pretty tame sexual fantasy coupled with a little dose of humanism.
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> Oh...and censorship is bad, etc etc etc.
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