The Conflict Within: When Wrong Things Happen(and Why Fandom Needs To Get a F***ing Grip)

Okay, folks. Today is a dual-purpose blog post, and although it might look too long for the TL;DR crowd, I promise you the paragraphs are short. But I’ve been fuming all week, because I’m part of a “fandom” from which ‘verse one of my two current primary fronters originates from... and I finally decided fuck it: recent events have made me decide to both “come out” more bluntly about that fact — this person is from the SW universe(I’m a “fictionkin”, if the blog title hasn’t made that clear, have been for almost thirty years; although I HATE the word/the “kin” association) — and the fandom has become overrun with shitty, toxic people. 

I have a few choice words to say to them, as well as on a subject that’s been bothering me. So here are both as one, and I’ll kick it off with this: every week or so, I have at least one full-blown panic attack over the contents of Episode IX.

(Stick with me and read to the end. It’s relevant.)

 I’ve talked before about the difference between static characters and dynamic people: this is one of the cornerstones of what makes us different from RPers, “wish-fulfillers”, etc. I’m not going to beat that dead horse again, but imagine our situation for yourself. 

You spend a year — or two, or three, or ten — coming to grips with the things you’ve done, the way you feel. You’ve begun(or, possibly, made significant progress in) processing events that shaped you, interacting with people in and outside of your own “universe”’s people, and just, generally, being a real person that grows and changes. This is what everyone experiences, and we’re no different. No one who “crosses over” into this reality/‘verse/pick your term is simply frozen as a caricature of what they were.

Because these people consider themselves “the real people” — just like, if anyone asked, you’d consider yourself the “real” you — and have their memories and motivations that never change, they tend to assume that they’re the authority on their own lives. Who wouldn’t? And who’d know better why someone does things, or what they were thinking, or what they want, than that person themselves? So even though watching “fandom” endlessly speculate can be(often) painful, uncomfortable, depressing, and embarrassing by turns, we know what really happened, and that knowledge persists despite all circumstances.

But what, then, happens if Episode IX comes out in 2019 — after years of struggle and emotional work — and completely contradicts everything we know and remember? What happens if their desire for a “dramatic story” causes a complete upheaval in any and every detail we’ve grown past, worked through, or put to rest? And not only that, but then millions of people will then talk about those events, debate them, re-live them, and integrate them into the “reality” of what they know, thus making us look like we’re simply playing at being real?

What if the theoretical biopic of You, the Movie™️ was accurate to your life, more or less... right up until the sequel, when it put you into situations you don’t remember, attributed words to you that you never said, or ended with your death when you’re still right here?

Let’s get one thing out of the way right up front: it hurts. It does hurt. (This is why I keep using this fictional Story Of You as an example: so that maybe, dear reader, you can try just a bit to empathize. Even if you can’t, just set aside your skepticism for a moment and imagine it.) Anything that’s going to happen in IX is going to hurt, I guarantee it, but I’m confident enough in our reality that I don’t think anything is too likely to contradict our personalities too terribly. But you never know. So what if that happens?

Realistically speaking? Nothing. Because we’re real people, we were here and valid before any new “canon” is out there, and since we exist in this reality now there’s very little we can do to change the people we’ve become. And while some SUPREMELY world-shattering events have been known to cross over/sort of “absorb” into what we remember — they have to be things with impact so profound that it’s like that computer update metaphor; mostly involuntary and necessary to function — in a lot of cases our viewpoint is simply that these new canon dramatizations happen in an alternate ‘verse or are creative license taken with the lives of the people we are.

 And as uncomfortable and painful as that may be, we are us, did not ask for it and cannot change it, and can only hope that the people who know us/believe in us will be compassionate enough to ask and understand. The end result? We’ll keep living our lives no matter what happens.

But regardless of how we feel about having our actual lives dramatized, possibly completely diverging with the people we are, you know what we’ve NEVER done? Insisted the new events aren’t “canon” because we disagree with them. Screamed and yelled and pulled our hair claiming that they’ve “pissed all over” something or “ruined our childhood” or anything like that. Gone online to rant and rave EVERY SINGLE TIME that thing is mentioned about how we hated it, hated it, HATED it, and god damn it, EVERYBODY HAS TO HEAR ABOUT IT. Deliberately poisoned review scores. Or, worst of all, harassed the fucking creatives involved in the process — directors, actors, producers, etc. — so badly that they’ve left social media, given up working, or other horrible repercussions of people being stupid manbaby fucksticks.

So I’ve gotta ask this question, and it’s not rhetorical? If we, who see these films as a representation of our actual lives — and you CANNOT get more serious about it than that — don’t feel that we “own” the franchise, that things “suck” because we didn’t like this or that thing, that we have the right to fucking gatekeep the “fandom” or claim XYZ is “not Star Wars” or any other ridiculous White Male Nerd Rage Fuel™️... WHY THE FUCK CAN’T THE REST OF THESE IDIOTS GET THE MEMO?

We understand that you care — or you think you do. And you have the right to like or not like ANYTHING you choose. But if you think that gives you exclusive rights to somebody else’s art, or that they’re “shit” because what YOU imagined isn’t what happened, or that it makes you entitled to hurt someone else, YOU ARE A HORRIBLE GARBAGE PERSON and have no right to claim otherwise, or membership in a “fandom” about choosing hope, redemption, faith, and kindness over hate and fear. Educate yourselves with your mouths closed, THEN come back. The rest of us will be here.

(Also, independently of my people — who are obviously involved for emotional reasons — I LOVED The Last Jedi. Suck my lemon drops.)