#Tros novelization had real gems

[earisridesagain]

Star Wars Misfit

I find it very hard to be a SW fan. I never did the full SW fandom thing when I was a kid and all we had was the OT and a bunch of books.  Part of that was that the fandom seemed to revolve around stuff you had to buy - toys, games, aforementioned books.  The library didn’t carry all the books.  My parents were not going to shell out $$$ for lego sets and action figures.  And I have never played video games. I basically sat in my corner, loved the movies, and wrote out some essays on my thoughts about the SW Universe.  I wish I had kept some of them.

Then, there was the PT and the internet and I got into fanworks.  And that was great.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the PT, but the world-building, and resultant fanfic, was superb. I wore a Jedi padawan braid for at least half of high school.  But the fandom at large still seemed to revolve around buying things and knowing bits of information and arcs from a series of books that I frankly didn’t care very much for.  Some of the books were great, but a lot of them . . . were not very good at all.  I am not judging people who like them.  Fuck, I read absolutely anything that has Tolkien on it.  I’m in no position to judge anybody.  I still don’t play video games.  I have 2 Funko Pops.  At first, the internet based fanworks were more my jam.  Fanfiction, videos, hilarious comics (he killed the yuenglings!).  But no matter how I tried to be happy in SW fannish spaces, it all came back to arguing about trivia and people being 100% possessive of the source text and gatekeeping like a mother fucker.  Any appreciation for the PT made you NOT a ‘real’ SW fan.  And let’s not get into the sexism. Part of my dislike of the Slave!Leia outfit stems from the fact that most of the straight male SW fans I knew made that their primary appreciation of my favorite character.  I know it’s more complex than that, but when a 14 year old girl is told and shown over and over that Leia’s legacy is being a sex symbol, it fucking hurts. (Long live the Huttslayer).

Clone Wars began to get me back into SW fandom at large.  CW was great.  It was fun and sad and mythic and silly.  It was romantic and touching, it gave us great world building, awesome action sequences, great new characters, fleshed out old characters, and made me rethink me dislike for some of the PT.  And the fandom was lovely!  So many smart people writing snark and slash and het and comedy and making drawing great fanart and comics and it felt so right.  Rebels followed in that vein.

The came the ST.  TFA kicked my latent SW obsession into high gear.  I loved the new characters, especially Rey, and Finn, and Poe, and Kylo Ren.  The world got bigger.  New books started to be published, from authors I actually enjoyed reading.  (Shoutout to Claudia Grey and Christie Golden and E.K. Johnston and Jason Fry and everyone in the FACPOV collections).  I still wasn’t ready to get big into the fan-spaces, but I did start reading some fanworks, mostly StormPilot.  And also, Reylo.  As my journey in SW grew, I found myself drawn more and more to Reylo.  It was hilarious.  I’d never had a het!ship before.  And the Reylos I knew were talented, and smart, and lovely, and never made me feel bad for not knowing something or having a weird idea.

But people HATED Reylos.  I genuinely don’t know why.  And don’t give me that ‘the pairing is problematic’ bullshit.  That ship is fucking tame.  I’ve obsessively shipped way worse pairings.  It’s fanfiction - not reality. The pairing is rich and meaningful, it has deep parallels in folktales and myth, it encapsulates many of the themes of SW.  Oh yeah, and I happen to find it fucking hot.

People also hate the ST.  I agree, it has its problems (the biggest of which is TROS). But the PT is no gem of filmaking. TPM breaks in the middle for a fucking video game ad that sucks all the air out of the room.  AOTC is tragically paced.  And ROTS (far and away the best) feels like the culmination of a very different trilogy.  Even the OT has flaws.  There is nothing wrong being critical of something.  But some people can’t see a picture of Kelly Marie Tran without launching into a tirade about how much they hate Rose.  Rey, Finn, and Poe are there for representation, and Kylo Ren is the worst villain ever.  I have very little time for people who feel that Luke’s journey in TLJ is some sort of slap in the face of the character (Luke faces his guilt and regret and ends up saving the day just like Obi Wan Kenobi and Kanan Jarrus and all the other Jedi who have chosen defense over aggression and laid down their lives for others.) The vitriol astounds me. 

Once again, I was a SW misfit. The people that I loved in the CW world ragged on the people I loved in the Reylo world.  The rabid OT fanboys can’t see a picture of Rey without yelling Mary Sue. People keep chanting about wiping out the ST, as if there aren’t people who fucking love it and it’s got CARRIE FUCKING FISHER’S LAST PERFORMANCE AS LEIA ORGANA. PT fans who loved Anakin and Padme turn around and abuse ST fans who love Reylo.  Mandalorian fans have started to try and out-Easter Egg each other, and dump on people who are watching for story.  We’re back to gatekeeping and people lunging at each other’s throats about little bits of information and trivia. 

So, why did I write all of this?  I just needed to get it off my chest.  I like being in SW fan spaces, especially Reylo and CW and Rebels spaces.  I love the novels.  I love the music.  I love the concept art and the fan art and the fan fiction and the comics (well, some of them) and people making reaction videos to the Mandalorian.  But, once again, I’m sitting in a corner, afraid to speak up.  

I guess I’m not a real fan.