Vespertine

Fanfiction
Title:	Vespertine
Author(s):	jelenedra (ritualist)
Date(s):	October 30, 2020
Length:	4,626 words
Genre(s):	m/m slash
Fandom(s):	Mo Dao Zu Shi
Relationship(s):
External Links:	AO3
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

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 Cloud Recesses burn, and Lan Xichen runs. He is not fast enough. Held captive in Qishan, he meets a concubine named Lianfang.

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.

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.

[merelydovely]

they bury their books!!! they bury their BOOKS

[ritualist]

My ongoing campaign to inflict Jewish traditions on the Lans... <3

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. 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?" The author replied,

it’s been kind of a running joke in the group chat that the Lans, with their many rules and their love of libraries, are Jewish, and I have taken to sneaking in references here and there. In this case, LXC talking about burying the books is a reference to burying the genizah 😹

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." It's never made clear who did the blocking; in later tweets the author implies that the person was upset that Chinese Jews existed.

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.

[jelenedra]

It is really incredibly hard to believe that someone who gets upset about a Jew talking about their Jewishness and identifying parallels to said Jewishness in a piece of fiction is acting in good faith.

[jacytheblue]
i am uncomfortable not because "identifying parallels" as much as the erasure of canon elements and setting to overlay another. please stop saying i must not be "acting in good faith" when i explain why i am uncomfortable.

[jelenedra]

I am uncomfortable because you (a) have not read my fic but feel entitled to make sweeping statements about it, and (b) are trying to turn a tweet about my personal experience with someone who thinks Chinese Jews don’t exist into some kind of ideological battleground.

[jacytheblue]
your initial tweet you stated it was due to you referencing the Lans being Jewish. your fic was never mentioned. i also don't understand why you can dictate why I am not allowed to feel uncomfortable. this is my background, my history, my language?

quigonejinn weighed in:

[quigonejinn]
You claimed you had not been writing Lans as Jewish in canon era. In the tweet I quoted, as well as the one you quoted at me, you acknowledge giving the Lans a cultural practice utilized by Jewish people, with the hope that the reference would be recognized by folks.

[jelenedra]
Referencing one Jewish tradition as a fictional practice isn’t writing the Lans as Jewish. It’s also close to real Chinese traditions, as @ShuFlyPie26 pointed out. Many readers - including Chinese readers - didn’t clock it as out of place until I mentioned the inspiration.

I, personally, don’t think slipping in a reference to my own traditions, amended to fit better with canon context (there is no genizah in the Vespertine version of burying the genizah, for a start), and hoping that other Jewish members of the fandom will feel seen is a bad thing.

[quigonejinn]
I don’t think it is inherently a bad thing. And I don’t have a problem with it by itself.But it’s hard for me to accept that you have not written the Lans as Jewish when you have intentionally written them as having Jewish cultural practices with the idea that they would be recognized as being Jewish practices by people who share your identity. Which is fine! And yes, the big question of Jewish identity and who and what counts as being Jewish which I am absolutely not qualified to offer any input in — but to my eyes, you’re not NOT writing the Lans as Jewish, especially if you’ve done it over multiple fics.

[NieDaddy]
Rhod, respectfully, I have no idea what this means.

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."

merelydovely explained that the original tweet had been taken out of context:

1. actual anti-semitic person claims Chinese Jews did not exist
2. Mill complains about this person specifically, reiterating that Chinese Jews did exist
3. somehow this is interpreted as Mill saying Chinese ppl can't be uncomfortable with erasure of the Lan's canon culture

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,

...there Chinese diaspora here who experience cultural erasure on a daily basis, who may be uncomfortable with characters like the Lans, being very Taoist / Confucian coded, being characterized as Jewish. It may feel like cultural erasure to them. I personally read your original tweets as unnececessarily antagonistic towards Chinese people who may be uncomfortable with that, and you posting the article also comes across like a microaggression chinese minorities face where foreigners, notably white people, try to explain our own culture and history to us."

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:

Saying that describing a genizah is "trampling all over Chinese culture" but writing the characters as American Christians is all in good fun is just antisemitism, nonny. It's not about whether or not someone said some magic words.

Deeply exhausted by all the fighting on mdzs twitter about whether it's okay to headcanon the Lans as Jewish ever.

I'm not even in the fandom, but I went and gave all the tweets in question a gander and wow I think I have to be on the author's side here, even though their tone is a bit irksome. How is having a character bury damaged texts in a fic (alluding to a jewish practice) offensive when a million and one fics that completely remove the canon and religion setting aren't? Sure feels like this is people finding the judaism specifically icky.

Of all the things to find offensive I cannot believe qgj picked THIS as her hill to die on, lol. Especially in the wuxia/xianxia genre in particular, where hiding books and secret manuals in obscure places that the protagonist accidetally stumbles upon is a staple trope. People definitely buried books!! Or cut open an animal's belly and sewed a secret manual beneath its skin to conceal their Very Secret Books!! It's not disrespectful ffs, not if you have even a passing familiarity with the genre.

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,

the white jewish author of a popular bdsm au who is known for stealing chinese fans' meta and basing fic on it without credit wrote a canonverse fic in which lans follow jewish practices for burying old texts and then got mad when chinese fans pointed out that erases confucianism

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. 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. 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".

The person who had thought jelenedra stole from their tweet thread then apologized.

Later commentary from fail_fandomanon, reacting to adspexi's tweet in particular:

GOD this tweet makes me feel insane because like

(a) jelenedra asked for permission before writing fic based off the meta,
(b) quigonejinn liked the fic and only changed her mind about it later for ??? idk, reasons, as if rhod has ever needed a real problem before they decided to hate on and harrass someone
(c) while jelenedra explicitly stated the book burying was a Jewish ritual, they didn't make the Lans Jewish (not that it would matter if they did tbh because it's a fucking fanfiction). It is a HELL of a reach to suggest they "erased confucianism" by including a single reference which was maybe a hundred words max out of a 4-5k fic
(d) TAOISTS ALSO BURIED BOOKS, it's not even an exclusively Jewish practice!
(e) the resulting dogpile was very clearly almost 100% antisemitism and a scooch of misogyny, given the number of people who went from using they/them pronouns when they were friends with jelenedra to using she/her pronouns when they were mad at them

I know it's been months and months now but I'm still mad about this wtf

And fail_fandomanon's reaction to quigonejinn's tweets:

The thing that made me absolutely crazy about this wank is that QGJ posted this giant callout on Twitter, *with* supposed deets (screenshots of those DMs) and I can only imagine literally none of the multiple thousand people who retweeted and liked that thread ever clicked through to the supposed deets because THEY DID NOT SAY WHAT QGJ CLAIMED THEY SAID. I lost a lot of respect that day for people on my own timeline who retweeted something this incendiary without apparently reading it at all.

(quigonejinn's plagiarism callout tweet had 165 retweets.)

saturnalyia also wrote a twitter thread in support of jelenedra:

as a chinese diaspora person, it frustrates me to see myself, my identity, and my culture weaponised to perpetuate what I see as fandom-typical bullying. person-to-person conflict about credit in fandom has been turned into a cultural conflict that it simply isn't.

this anti-mill sentiment culminated in people jumping in on an unrelated post mill made and being frankly quite anti-semitic in an attempt to accuse mill of "erasing chinese culture" for talking about their headcanon of the Lans as jewish. (srsly wtf)

it was only when called out for this shitty behaviour that these accusations about mill's "stealing" started pouring out into public, as if to justify why everyone was targeting mill. so excuse me if I have trouble believing in the good faith of the accusers….

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."

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:
  • Re: Cnovels - MDZS twitter drama, ^{Archived version} (2020-12-16)
  • Re: Cnovels - MDZS twitter drama, ^{Archived version} (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
  • mdzs fandom, diaspora, and cultural exchange, ^{Archived version}
• discussion of the statement by pumpkinpaix on fail_fandomanon: Re: Cnovels - MDZS, ^{Archived version} (2021-01-04)