Sister Floriana

Author's Note: Answers About The Story

After having been banned from two different sites for the content of Sister Floriana without having any chance to defend myself, I want to clear some things up. 

If you have not read any chapters in the story, I strongly suggest you go do so before reading this essay. There's no need for you to get caught up in the drama. Just enjoy the cute anime nuns.

People have slandered my work as being "pro-fascist propaganda", claiming that I'm violating Diva's intellectual property rights, and that I'm somehow corrupting other people's enjoyment of the drawings.

Let's address these claims one by one. Starting with the "fascism" allegations.

In case you're not aware (and I repeat, you should be at this point, because you read the story first) the story takes place in Spain, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Here's a little history lesson- Spain's problems began in 1931, when King Alfonso XIII was deposed, and was replaced by the Second Spanish Republic, which promised the people liberty and democratic reforms. In practice, this actually meant an extreme shift into Marxism, as well as the oppression of the Catholic Church. Under the constitution, the Jesuit society was outlawed, priests and nuns could no longer be teachers, and a huge amount of Church property was stolen and given over to the government. People of the cloth were considered unpersons, and violence against them was common. 

The most powerful party for much of the Republic's existence was the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, a group fighting for a Marxist state in Spain. They were extremely corrupt, and not above using violence to achieve their aims; in 1933, when a right-wing party known as CEDA swept through parliament, six members of their campaign were murdered by leftists, with no retaliation. Despite this, the Socialists demanded that the President overturn the election results for no other reason than that they were right-wing and the Republic was a "left-wing project." 

The President partially acquiesced to their demands, appointing the centrist Alejandro Leroux as his Prime Minister instead of CEDA leader Gil Robles. No members of CEDA were allowed into the cabinet, until parliament forced them to accept three ministers on October 1, 1934, an entire year after the election. 

This led to the Asturian Miners' Strike, a mass uprising of leftists against the government, that resulted in 58 churches and convents being destroyed, and thirty six priests and six seminarians summarily executed. This reign of terror went on for two weeks until the government finally took action to protect its citizens. 

This battle was widely considered to be the prelude to the War itself, and it certainly exacerbated tensions between the left and right- the left refused to recognize the act as a bloody warfare, insisting it was a political protest that got out of control, while the right demanded retribution against these murderers, and respect for the rule of law.

But of course, the left had no respect for the law, and this was proven at the next election in 1936, which was openly rigged against CEDA. Now working in a conglomerate of socialists, communists, and anarchists known as the Popular Front, they celebrated their "victory" by rioting and destroying even more churches and conservative political centers. While right-wing leaders demanded that order be imposed on the streets, the Republicans caved and offered the leftists reforms to get them off their backs.

It was only in this radical, anti-Christian, anarchistic environment, that military generals such as Francisco Franco began to plot a coup to overthrow the Republic. If your enemies are killing you without consequence, flaunting the rule of law, and the people in charge are doing nothing to stop them, what other choice do you have? And yet, in every other story I've read, the Republicans are portrayed as defenders of democracy and human rights, when in every single instance, they did the exact opposite. I wanted to write a story, where, for once the Nationalists were portrayed as exactly what they were: men who were disillusioned, disenfranchised, and had to use violence as a last resort to protect themselves and their values.

Now, the story does not actually feature much of the war itself. The war rather serves as a backdrop to add drama and weight to the story. It makes the nuns' happiness all the sweeter when you consider that they're finding all these happy moments even in the midst of this brutal conflict. While it does come up from time to time, I specifically wrote it to be possible to enjoy the story even if you staunchly disagree with Francoism. What you have to understand is that the nuns' support for him comes almost entirely out of a sense of self-preservation. It simply isn't historically accurate for religious Catholics to support the side that raped and murdered them for being Christian. The Catholic Church at the time supported Franco wholeheartedly; like him or not, you cannot deny that he was the more moral alternative to the leftist radicals. 

The long and short of it is, Sister Floriana is about young nuns making the best out of a bad situation. And if you really can't stand the fact that these characters support the guy that wanted them to be safe and free, then don't read the story. 

The second claim is that I'm somehow infringing on Diva's intellectual property. This is the claim that seems the most absurd to me.

I have never denied this story is a fanfiction. That is how I listed it on TV Tropes, that is how I promoted it back when I had a Twitter, and that is how it's listed on this very website. On this page, and on every single tweet I made promoting it, I made sure to credit Diva, AND the creator of the cover art, SHIHO. 

No, Diva has never given me permission to write this. Do you think J.K Rowling has approved every single fanfic writer for Harry Potter? Or Rick Riordan, for Percy Jackson? At the very least, she did like some of my tweets promoting it, so I don't think she has a problem with it. I actually did use to message her about collaborating and making the stories into a manga, but I never got a response so I stopped trying. 

I am no more an infringer than the countless fans who have made fanart. Think about that the next time you wanna lay this at my feet.

And third, the idea that I'm somehow ruining this for other fans of Diva is ridiculous, when you consider the sheer popularity of the story. Despite the fact that I haven't posted any new chapters since Christmas, it's steadily gained new readers. Currently, the reads total on Wattpad is sitting above three thousand, by far my most popular story of all time. Virtually every response I've ever received to the story, outside of TV Tropes and the Discord Diva Fan Server, has been exceptionally positive. Diva's fans have encouraged me, telling me they find my work funny and that it's fun to get names and deeper personalities for the characters (which, by the way, I've always tried to keep true to how they're portrayed in the original drawings). 

Another ludicrous claim I should address is the discord mod claiming I spammed chapters at him until he blocked me. While I sometimes linked my work to the same people more than once on accident, I tried to mix up who I promoted it to. Looking at the mod's history, he seems like he's one of the fans always posting one of the meme formats to Diva's replies, so there's no way I would've been spamming him on purpose. Maybe he was always changing usernames, so I didn't even know he was the same guy. 

Overall, the fan response to my work has been overwhelmingly positive, and anyone who says otherwise is the definition of an SJW- not merely a liberal, but someone who has to take away other people's fun if it's immoral somehow. 

So anyhow, if you still haven't read this story for some reason, I'm sincerely asking you to ignore all the drama, and just enjoy the story however you want to. You can enjoy the drawings while completely ignoring it. You can enjoy the story while ignoring or disagreeing with the mild political themes in it. Or you can read up more on the War's history, and enjoy everything about it. 

But if you don't like it?

Buddy- just don't read it.