Fundamentally this story has a problem, and that problem is nazis. I read quite a way into it, and despite some lip service to the idea the story didn't seem to portray its protagonist's relationship with the Empire-88 as all that bad a thing.
Now I'm not saying that you or your readers are inherently bad. If you want to write something like this, though, you don't get a presumption of innocence regarding the themes of your work. Because, at the end of the day, if a white supremacist wrote a worm fanfic or was looking for one to read it'd look an awful lot like this one.
I think you're being wildly unreasonable here, and I think you got there by misunderstanding what Dystopian fiction is all about. Yes, Worm is highly Dystopian, and yes, this particular fanfiction belongs in the same genre. But to imply that an author should be held accountable or suspect because people do immoral or unethical things in their fictional work is both ridiculous and insulting. Dystopian literature is, at its core, concerned with the exploration of a world in which doing bad things is, or at least seems, necessary. Perhaps even more importantly, it's goal is frequently to cause the reader to experience the context involved with making those immoral or unethical decisions.
In Ex Machina, the main character, from whose perspective the story is told, is a highly traumatized, socially isolated, mentally unstable teenager. The kind of long-term physical and emotional abuse she goes through in canon (and thus, this story as well) would legally qualify as torture in any reasonable real-world justice system. It's important to keep this in mind when discussing Ex Machina because the end result is a protagonist who is emotionally compromised and a narrator that is very much unreliable. So when you say things like:
Fundamentally this story has a problem, and that problem is nazis. I read quite a way into it, and despite some lip service to the idea the story didn't seem to portray its protagonist's relationship with the Empire-88 as all that bad a thing.
...it makes me question if we were reading the same story. Who is going to speak up and provide Taylor that reasonable counter point to joining her Nazi friends? Her father, who she barely interacts with and hasn't provided moral support in nearly two years? Sure he tries in the story, but he possesses neither the emotional context nor the required rapport with Taylor at the time to get through to the (emotionally compromised) teenager protagonist with a trauma-enforced mistrust of authority figures. Frankly, him successfully convincing her to do a complete 180 and join the Wards or something in that vein would make no sense from a literary perspective. It would also reek of that same politicizing that you seem to be on edge about. In other words, when a major theme of a story is exploring how a character's context could lead to them being friends with nazi's, it's disingenuous to insinuate that the author should be judged for including nazism in the story. Inclusion of those themes does not indicate support for nazism, nor does it implicate the author.
Of course, I strongly suspect what you're really saying is that, as far as you're concerned, the inclusion of racism in
any story, regardless of context, without subsequently beating the audience over the head with repeated reminders that Racism Is Bad, is the same as expressing support for that Racism. You are, in effect, advocating for the same politicized storytelling methods (i.e. all authors must express explicit agreement with your ideals, or not express at all) that you seem to believe exists in Ex Machina. Should we apply this to other works that include actions that we find objectionable? Should we label Orwell as an authoritarian and a despot because the Dystopian system in
1984 ultimately won? Oh, but the main character wasn't doing bad things! So how about Starship Troopers? Heinlein included
blatant fascist and xenophobic themes in
Starship Troopers, and the main character was the metaphorical Captain America. Do we stop reading his work because he might have believed differently than we do? Oh, but maybe it's different when the theme is specifically racism? How about
Divergent? Or even the
Hunger Games, teenage angst aside?
Now, I'm NOT arguing that Dysopian fiction should be immune to criticism merely because of its stated goal. I AM arguing that there is a difference between expressing support for an ideological opinion and exploring the thought process behind that opinion. If you think Ex Machina is guilty of the former, by all means speak up and explain why. But when you hand-wave over the story and generalize...
Because, at the end of the day, if a white supremacist wrote a worm fanfic or was looking for one to read it'd look an awful lot like this one.
it sounds to me like you're missing the point. Because I too have read Ex Machina, and I was able to follow the main character's thought process through each chapter. Her actions were understandable
in context, and it's that context that I think you're glossing over in favor of decrying anyone who puts fleshed-out nazi characters in their story.
