i will protect the baby star wars fans who’ve only been here for less than a year from the nasty 40 year old veterans who think they own the saga with my life
Protect them from…what, exactly? The thing is, the “baby” Star Wars fans are essentially the majority now. They are the ones who loved the original movies, maybe liked the prequels, and then, along with 95% of the world, embraced the “new” Star Wars. The Star Wars tag on tumblr is filled with Finn, and Rey, and BB-8 and Poe. The Star Wars tag on A03 is filled with stories about Kylo Ren and General Hux. The tumblr banner on May 4th was BB-8. The world is full of fans making fan art, writing fic, and generally flailing all over the new Star Wars. Hell, even Wookiepedia has sectioned stuff into “canon” and “legend”. The stories that I loved, the characters that I grew up with (including some incredibly strong women who were pilots and smugglers and jedi and sith) have been trashed. The family saga, the story of a family who overcame the dark, who were better than their parents, who saved the galaxy and then remade it, those stories are gone. Finished, done. And the thing is, sure, I can collect the books, read them over and over again, but going forward? They will be lost. Lost, because new fans would have no reason to read stories about Han and Leia’s three children or Luke’s wife Mara. They will have their new stories. So the 30 some odd years of collaboration, and world building, and love for this shared, combined universe is gone. Forever. Once the generation of “nasty 40 year old veterans” goes, who will be left to remember anything of what was created in the time since Return of the Jedi and before Disney? The new fans won. You get a new movie every year, new comics, new games, new tv shows. You get countless works of fan art, fan fic, fan anything. You get it all. Us bitter old fans can’t even comment about the mechanics of the existing Star Wars universe (because Star Wars isn’t ye old scifi) without getting screamed at for being a bitter old fan who is ruining everyone’s fun. My stories, my characters, are gone forever, but if I’m not jumping for joy over the new disney Star Wars, if I don’t shout my love for Rey to the heavens, then I am nothing more than a bitter old fan who just needs to sit in the corner and shut up and let the kids have fun. It’s like a bunch of kids on the playground who discovered a new way to play hopscotch that has nothing to do with squares and numbers and when the one kid who always played it the other way says “but wait, what about what we used to have” they gets shoved into the mud and told to stop complaining and being bitter already. So, no, I’m not going to protect new fans. I’m not going to worry about being inclusive in the fandom. You have 95% of the rest of the world to do that for you. I’m going to take my 26 year-old, bitter, nasty self, and quietly collect what I can from the old canon and mourn my stories in peace. And yeah, sometimes I’ll interject on a post. Sometimes I’ll be bitter. I think I’m allowed that much.
Signal boosting this because I think it’s worth reading and knowing.
To me, it’s not the new fans who need to be held accountable for Disney taking three decades worth of EU and going “yeah, none of that is canon anymore. Just focus on the stuff we’re trying to sell you now! :D“
But I also don’t like the pressure I’ve seen brought to bear on the part of the fandom that knows / cares about / remembers the rest of Star Wars. This flurry of defensiveness, asserting that the only reason anyone would possibly not love TFA is [insert disparaging remarks about everyone who isn’t relying on JJ Abrams to introduce them to Star Wars] has been presumptuous, insulting, and single-mindedly focused on shutting up anyone who didn’t like this film.
I get that a lot of money hangs in the balance. If older fans were to criticize TFA on social media as openly as they lambasted the PT, Disney would be very screwed indeed. But I care a lot more about fandom being a space where people can express their feelings honestly than I do about protecting some company’s profits.
And if your immediate thought is “but what about fans who act like massive douchebags?“ they enable themselves. My focus right now is on people who do feel the sting of social shaming and are feeling pushed to embrace the ST, or be silent if they can’t be positive. Because fandom should be diverse enough that at least some of us can listen to and commiserate with the longtime fans who feel like they lost, and feel like the new stuff just isn’t for them, and are disappointed about it.
I’m saying this even though “Leia and Han got married and had three kids“ never appealed to me. I can still look at what @djemsostylist is saying and really get that the new films have written people she loved and admired out of existence. And changed the course of Luke and Han and Leia’s whole life. And that because the old-EU was Jossed, most of the fannish energy going into Star Wars now will completely bypass the stories she grew up with.
Until she pointed out what that felt like, I hadn’t understood what a significant loss it was. But I’m certainly thinking about it now.
The conclusion I’m drawing is that
the EU gave the SW franchise a handy and relatively
low-profile way to go left where the movies went right, thus
appealing to people they would otherwise lose. And that in the marked
hierarchy of what SW is willing to risk money on, ground-zero
of what constitutes “real” canon continues to focus on Skywalkers and
Solos (and potentially Kenobis) and center the life and times of white men.
Is it less like that
than it was? Yes. I don’t think they can afford not to change. But if
this recent “none of the old canon counts anymore unless we incorporate
it into what we’re making now” should telegraph anything, it’s that the stories that only get told in
the EU are uniformly vulnerable to being dismissed at any time, for any
reason. And a lot of fans will argue that the low quality of the
books justifies their being Jossed.
Now – a lot of the books are
canon-endorsed action adventures with Gary Stus and Mary Sues in space.
There is an overabundance of mediocre white guys saving the galaxy and
angsting over the force and getting laid. But we also lost POVs and
characterizations and stories that the movies have zero time for. Lando
Calrissian had a trilogy of books dedicated to his adventures. So did
Boba Fett, who thanks to the PT retcon, is PoC and arguably also
books-canon asexual. Several of the villains got books
dedicated to them. And so did a number of the members of the Jedi order
who weren’t central in the movie. The PT
got fawning publicity for being so fair and enlightened,
because three whole women got to hold lightsabers
onscreen. Regrettably, AFAIK no one who didn’t fixate on them can remember
their names, because they weren’t allowed to do anything. But – all these people who were basically extras on camera,
in book-verse some of their characters got adventures. And people read the books and loved them hard because it was
that or nothing.
It’s not great. It’s not even
adequate. But it was something, and now that has all been shoved aside.
Reblogging because this is important.
There are many, many people who were introduced to Star Wars via the OT, expanded their repertoire with the books and comics, and then some of them grew to love the PT and animated series as well. And many of those people were also shocked and hurt and felt abandoned by the franchise when Disney and Abrams did their thing. And one of the strongest threads that I have seen in common for many of these people is that it’s because the new Star Wars doesn’t… feel like Star Wars to them. And that’s a very personal thing. It’s like being evacuated from your house by the sea and then being told that now you’re living in the mountains. But you get there, set up all your things in a house that looks exactly like your previous one, has the same layout, the same architecture style, but… it doesn’t feel like home. And now you have your new neighbors telling you “Well why? Same house. Same things. Feel comfortable. Enjoy the mountains. They’re huge. You were just spoiled living by the sea so long.”
But it’s not about that. It’s about very personal feelings of belonging, and… your home by the sea might have had all kinds of problems and nothing was perfect, and maybe you complained about the plumbing or hated the salt in the air, but it was still home. And now it’s gone, and you’re being told you can’t go home again except by looking at all your old picture books and watching your old home videos. Sometimes your new neighbors will watch them with you, and some of them say “Well this looks pretty fantastic. The ocean looks amazing.” And that feels pretty great. But when most of them tell you “Yeah, yeah, ocean this and ocean that. You miss it but come on, there’s a mountain right there. Let’s climb it,” of course you don’t feel heard. And it feels like nobody cares, because they’ve never lived by the ocean or maybe they visited on vacation once, but… and here’s the crux of the matter, it’s not the same. It’s not meant to be the same, but whether it was meant to or not has little bearing on the way you feel about it.
And a loss is a loss, whether it is a house you lived in for twenty years or if it’s a fandom that has changed hands overnight. And people should be allowed to mourn their losses without being shamed for it.
Some people never adjust to mountain life. The elevation makes them feel weak, heights make them dizzy, the winding roads and the sudden weather changes are disorienting and intimidating, and the horizon makes them feel claustrophobic. But… some people do. Some people take up skiing, some people discover they love playing in the snow, and some people fall in love with the stark beauty of the rugged scenery.
And just the same, many people into the old Star Wars also made a personal choice to love the new Star Wars stuff, despite it all. Not because they felt they should, but because they found something there they could also enjoy. And grow to cherish. And that’s great, it’s fabulous, but it’s not a requirement and it’s not a gauge of how right or wrong one is over the other.
So yes. Protect the Star Wars newbies, for everyone should be able to enjoy what they love without having someone rain on their parade, but. Also. Protect the Star Wars oldbie who may or may not like the new stuff, for they are still a part of this fandom too, protect them because their parade has already been rained on and they’re still here, still loving it, and their emotions are just as valid. Please protect them both, please treat each other well.
the real tragedy is that we lost two things today. carrie fisher, a bright, beautiful soul, and any possibility of a future star wars movie where general leia slaps the shit out of kylo ren
Billie Lourd, Fisher’s daughter, confirmed the death today in an official statement. Issued by family representative Simon Halls, the statement to People reads: “It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning.” Her legacy is incontestable – and probably a lot more than you knew.
Steel Phoenix Studios 