Days like these sometimes I honestly want to just delete my AO3 and move on with my life and take my incredibly Jewish stories elsewhere. Every time I create an OC for a story, the nexus is always "how do I get a Jew in here" because there is a part of me, this naive and impossibly stubborn part of me that thinks if I craft a story around Jewish issues and Jewish identity and Jewish alienation and themes of assimilation and belonging and isolation and loneliness and the struggle to be seen as a human being rather than an idea, that maybe it will reach the people who need to hear it and make them change their minds about the way they talk about Jews. That maybe if they read about a Jewish trans woman who hunts vampires for a living they'll stop running their mouths about (((ZOG))), that maybe if they read about a Jewish anarchist militant who gets abducted and dropped into a Dungeons & Dragons setting they'll stop demanding Jews prove whether they are Good Jews or Bad Jews, that maybe if they read about an autistic Jewish girl getting trapped in the Christian Hell and struggling to adapt and survive her surroundings, maybe they'll start holding other corrupt fascistic regimes to the same standards they hold Netanyahu's piece-of-shit ass to. Maybe if I showcase my own humanity through my art, someone will take it seriously for once, and listen, and understand that we're people. Not just some vague intellectual exercise.
And IDK, but there are times I don't even want to anymore. There are times I get so angry and hurt and scared that I don't even want to keep giving my art and my creativity to the world. Because why should I, when it all hates me so much? There are times I think that maybe the people who, for as long as I can remember, tell me to shut my big mouth for once and just move along in silence and fade into the shadows for good were right about something.
And then what do I do? I open the file, and I do it again, and sometimes it physically hurts.
But then, every now and then, I'll get a comment from a Jewish person who felt seen by my stories, or someone will tell me getting the transfemme perspective in a fic was fascinating, or that they're grateful for the chance to learn about Judaism through my works as a window into Jewish identity and struggles thereof. And those comments keep me going even in a sea of endless, utterly banal sadness. I don't know if there's longevity in that, or if some day I'll quit and take my ball and go home and bury myself away, but I keep doing it anyway because it seems to be all I know how to do.
