Into the Flames

Awhile ago, an author whom I follow on FF.net posted a Hetalia story based on the shootings and bombings in Norway in July. In fact that is how I found about it.

 

However what I am writing about today is the response she got. Whatever your opinion is about Hetalia or Hetalia stories based on events like that, I hope you never ever react the same way many of  these people did.

 

 While I’m not going to use any names, if you know what I’m talking about you probably would know the fanfic author.

 

I was a bit late to the party when I heard of the fanfic, so i had the pleasure of getting a chance to also read the reviews. The fanfic itself was short, mature, tried to capture the horror of what had happened and while it feature two male characters (Norway and Denmark) there was no yaoi.

 

But she posted this less than 24 hours after the shootings, which was her biggest and stupidest mistake in my opinion. She should have waited much longer until everything settles and the emotions weren’t so strong.

 

Oh, the reviews… There was a lot of them, most of them anon and almost all where flames. They insulted her, told her to go to hell, sent death threats, many claimed to be ‘Norwegian’  when she had low traffic from Norway, and insulted her gender. Of course, not every reviewer was like this. Some where very level headed but the majority not so much.

 

But it didn’t stop there.

 

They also insulted her nationality and country (America), her ‘white knights’ (as in the people who didn’t hate her for this) and even said they hoped her own family would die along with her.

 

The insults spread in a facebook group she was in, even.

 

The next day she updated it with a few apologies for some stuff from the author’s note that people kept taking out of context and called the anons out for insulting those who had nothing to do with it.

 

The flames and hate just kept coming.

 

At one point, it was informed by someone in the facebook group that the story was being sent to all kinds of people and that her PERSONAL INFORMATION had been leaked to over two hundred other people. She even changed her facebook name and took off what state she lived in on her FF.net profile, just to be sure but she never found the rat.

 

She did eventually take the story down but one anon would not stop and went on ahead to troll her other stories and calling her a lower life form. She no longer allows anonymous reviews on any stories.

 

Even after that, an old wiki for the pairing her most popular story was about had been found. I only saw one page but it had been trolled over with the story and her author’s note along side some horrible pictures from the Norway bombings and shootings.

 

It made me feel sick.

 

I am not a big fan of author or fan hate unless it’s called for, so this whole thing just angered me at how… ugh immature it really seemed.

 

She got all this hate for posting one story on the internet. It just makes me so sad for humanity.

 

TL;DR: sometimes the people who think they are defending the world from Weeabos and Hetafags can go completely overboard until they are even worse then the person who did the offending act.