The Many Battered Wives of Fandom: The Beginning of the End (Part Two)

How it all started, and where it's going...

If the following article seems a bit disjointed, know that everything you’re about to read, was, at one point, the second quarter of a much larger piece that could easily be divided into fourths. When I began to write, I didn’t have a roadmap set out, where I told myself, first, we tackle this subject, which leads nicely into this one, which will dovetail into that, and, oh, well, maybe we take a detour here - no. Like most creative endeavors, I threw myself into it and let the muses guide me along. Unfortunately, rather than a statuesque, well-composed, and careful muse who guides the hand of an artist along with steady intent and unwavering discipline, mine tends to be a manic, excitable, moody, and most of all, capricious, who will become hyper-fixated on one small thing to the point of self-detriment, only to discard it at a moment’s notice in favor of something more novel. She’s a bit difficult to work with, but she usually gets me where I need to go, albeit never along the most direct route. So, I ended up with an article that was both too long and too varied in focus. My muse, waspish as she is, had taken everything I wanted to say and thrown it all on a canvas, and left me to sort it out myself. While I must thank her for giving me words with which to articulate my thoughts, I do wish she’d be a little more… thoughtful about the order in which she delivered them.

That being said, this article feels a bit brief for my taste, but at the same time, I have to remind myself that just because I prefer long-form content I can sink my teeth into, there’s virtue in brevity.

Now, let’s get back to the story where we left off last, shall we? Star Wars fans around the world had just been suckered in to a false sense of security by the devious machinations of the Mouse, who’s gloved hands, in turn, were guided by something more foul still.

The year is 2017. The general atmosphere in America two years prior, when the first installment of Disney Star Wars was released to rapturous applause, was a bit uneasy, but by The Last Jedi's impending launch, conditions in the country had deteriorated in a way that many Americans had never seen in their lifetimes. After almost two years of being reassured by every figure of authority in the country that Donald Trump (or, as many would refer to him at the time, Cheeto Hitler) had a snowman's chance in Hell of even claiming the Republican nomination, Donald Trump defeats Hillary Clinton in a contentious election, claiming the presidency and sparking political unrest across the country as strange mutants crawl out from the sewers to gnash their teeth, howl in protest, and compare the new President to a former obscure Austrian painter and a fictional villain from a series of children's novels.¹

It was at this very moment I knew that the next four years were going to very, very long.

Hollywood is thrown into disarray by a flurry of sexual misconduct allegations that reach the highest levels of the entertainment industry, prompting the movers and shakers of Tinsel Town to offer up the hideous, slovenly swine-man and acclaimed movie producer, Harvey Weinstein, on a silver platter to the media as a scapegoat in order to save their own miserable hides. The largest mass shooting in American history rattles the nation as a man - for no reason at all, so they say - guns down fifty plus concert goers from a hotel room in Las Vegas. Personally, I was in a relationship that was rapidly disintegrating like cotton candy in water, working a job I couldn't stand for a boss with whom I shared a smoldering, mutual resentment, living with my parents in a dead-end suburb, and suffering suicidal ideations from seeing Darth Vader on a fucking baked potato wrapper.

The worst thing about this marketing blitz was that it set the precedent to see Minions on literally everything a year or two later.

Again, I must stress - we didn't know how good we had it.

For many Star Wars enthusiasts, however, the worst would patiently wait until December to unleash a devastating sucker punch in the form of The Last Jedi.

Now, the Star Wars community at that time was in an interesting place. While The Force Awakens was still widely enjoyed across the fandom, that new car smell was beginning to fade, and little imperfections were beginning to be acknowledged by an observant few. Of course, in some corners of the internet, it was nothing short of apostasy to speak of the movie in any less than glowing praise. With Disney's army of online shills, staffed with professional and irregular volunteers, the most controversial discourse that I can remember were mentally ill teenage girls on Tumblr sending death threats to one other over disagreements over which was a better romantic pairing - Kylo Ren and Rey, or Finn and Rey (by the way, you would be a raging racist committing an actual hate crime if you didn't go with the latter) - and the fact that there were apparently not enough Rey action figures out there to meet the demand from clamoring fans who absolutely needed the most generic white woman in all of science fiction in plastic, three-quarter inch scale. If I recall, the issue was mostly bullshit that had been taken out of context and artificially inflated by the media because it made for a decent reason to hurl baseless claims about misogyny at Disney, LucasFilm, Hasbro, and the rest, and other parties that someone thought they could milk a few quick bucks out of them in arbitration. Interestingly, this story is probably at least partly responsible for setting the stage for a future catastrophe in Star Wars merchandising that dogs the franchise to this very day. Don't worry - we'll come back to that.

Now, I remember that if there was any real criticism levied towards The Force Awakens on its merits as a film and not just There aren’t enough Glup Shitto toys! or If you don’t ship Reylo you need to die immediately, it was this - “It's basically just A New Hope.” Which is true. I figured that one out pretty quick. Even the most stalwart defenders had to admit it was true, too. But, they had a ready response prepared:

Now, I’m old enough to remember when this infamous Lucas-ism was clowned on. But, the franchise had enough good will with both the general public and the fans that this flimsy defense was accepted. Besides - it was just the first of three movies. All we had to do was give it a little time. Let them find their stride. A New Hope, most would readily admit, was not superior to The Empire Strikes Back, after all. Even I'd grant them that.

So, most people shut up. They grumbled a bit, and a few chronic contrarians crowed about how the movie was actually abject shit this reason and that, though, they seemed like trolls more than anything, and were mostly ignored.

In the land of the Normies, however, far from the insulated echo chambers of Reddit, Facebook Groups, and Discord Servers, the glamour around The Force Awakens was beginning to thin with people who cared a whole lot less about Star Wars. Not to say they didn’t care, but I feel like LucasFilm had blown their metaphorical load hyping up The Force Awakens, and given that this wasn’t the wasn’t the long-awaited return of the franchise after a long, grueling, arduous wait of… ten years. But Disney would be damned if they weren't going to try and make them care. The marketing juggernaut was on a carving warpath through every form of media both known and unknown to man, slapping Kylo Ren, Storm Troopers, and Yoda's muppet mug on everything from packs of toilet paper to cartons of raspberries to car commercials, which kept the franchise firmly lodged in people's frontal cortex and the name Star Wars on the lips of the general public. Still, I recall most normal people… well, maybe not normal people, but just people who weren't either huge nerds or into Star Wars - i.e. my parents, my girlfriend, the cashiers at the liquor store - who had all been enthused about a new Star Wars with The Force Awakens, were lukewarm to apathetic about The Last Jedi. Just for reference - I can count the number of times my dad went to the movie theater in my entire life on one hand. Once was to see some Peter Pan movie when I was a kid, once was because my mom made him take me to see the cinematic masterpiece, Pokemon: The First Movie, once was to see the Revenant, and once was to see The Force Awakens. He did not, however, care to return and see The Last Jedi.²

I remember seeing it with the girl I was dating at the time. It would be funny if I could say that we saw the movie, disagreed on the quality of it, and broke up in spectacular, explosive fashion then and there, but, in reality, we had managed to staunch the bleeding in our relationship at that point, and we lasted another good six months afterwards until a fateful trip to Arkansas finally, mercifully put our time together down like the pitiful, truck-stricken deer laying on the side of the road that it was, hollering in pain and desperate for the release of death. But that’s a story for my future memoirs, once I’m a successful author and/or internet personality of mild notoriety, if I ever get around to penning them.

I can recall walking out of the theater, and both of us coming to the same conclusion; we liked it. It was fine. Acceptable. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The next morning, we went out for breakfast. My girlfriend was staring at her plate, brows furrowed, lips pursed, pensively poking at a syrup smothered pancake with a fork.

“What's up with you?” I asked.

“The movie last night…”

“What about it?”

She hesitated for a moment. Then, she sighed.

“Y’know, I… I don't actually think I liked it that much.”

I heaved a sigh of relief - for a moment, I thought she was about to tell me something I really didn't want to hear. Fortunately, while I was laying sleepless in bed, staring at the ceiling as she had been kicking me in the throes of her own deep, impenetrable slumber, I'd come to the same conclusion.

I didn’t just not like it. The more I thought about it, I came to hate it. And I was not the only one.

At the very moment my girlfriend and I were drearily picking our way through an mediocre and overpriced breakfast at the local IHOP, entire swathes of the internet were engulfed in chaos. The night before, the nerd equivalent of the shelling of Fort Sumter had taken place. That isn't a comparison I make lightly. Much like the War of Northern Aggression American Civil War, though one event sparked the succession of South Carolina, the other Confederate states would only join in the coming weeks and months - many reluctantly. Just as Americans citizens wept bitter tears as they watched the Stars and Stripes lowered and the Confederate flag take it's place, most Star Wars enthusiasts took no joy in lobbying criticism against a franchise that, for a non-negligible amount of individuals, had defined much of their life.³

But, the thing is, the Fandom Menace was already established by this point. In fact, by the time The Force Awakens was released, some of the biggest names in the group were already well-established, though not as big or recognized as they will shortly be. Many channels I will mention soon first began speaking up after The Force Awakens - not so much because they hated the movie, but due more to incendiary comments made by Kathleen Kennedy. She was already a divisive figure, but, at that time, it seemed as if the fandom was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, or, at the very least, wait and see where things went with cautious, guarded optimism.

More importantly, many of the key players had already cut their teeth on another little movie that released in 2016.

But that movie and the resulting hurricane of drama is a story unto itself, best reserved for another day.

The point is that the bones of the Fandom Menace were already there. Remember those chronic contrarians I mentioned earlier? Yes - that would be them; a radical group of dissidents who had dared to speak out against the House of Mouse. And their numbers were about to explode.

But, truth be told, I understand why people felt compelled to come together under this Fandom Menace banner. I know about the Fandom Menace chiefly because, as I stated at the beginning, I was and still am sympathetic to them. Even though I was largely removed from the fandom at this point in my life, I had yet to turn entirely on the franchise and still held a fondness for it. Luke Skywalker was still a childhood icon of mine, and one of my main issues with The Last Jedi was that they made him a crotchety, bitter old man who'd given up on everything that had made him great to begin with. As someone who was rapidly aging out of what was the acceptable angry young man phase to bitter, jaded, cynical adult who really needs to get over himself, I can't say I really liked seeing a character that I, rightly or wrongly, thought was an admirable, heroic figure worthy of imitation suffering the exact same graceless slide into ignominy and crippling depression I was already speed-running at the time. I know many of my fellows in the Millennial cohort felt the same.

The drip was immaculate.

I think there are worse movies than The Last Jedi. This may be a wildly unpopular take, but I don’t even think what Rian Johnson wanted to do with Luke Skywalker was inherently bad so much as critically flawed in execution. When I say I am sympathetic to the Fandom Menace, I mean exactly that - sympathetic. I don’t exactly agree with them on every count. While I would agree the direction they took Luke in was not what I would have done, probably wasn’t what should have been done, and that Rian Johnson was definitely not the right man to have attempted it, let alone helm a Star Wars movie, I don’t think the idea of deconstructing the concept of the Jedi in the movie was a bad one. In fact, I think it’s rather intriguing. Unfortunately, Johnson didn’t execute it with much in the way of tact, subtly, or any particular depth, so what could have been an interesting, nuanced, and multi-faceted inspection of the Jedi as a concept from many angles felt like a backhanded slap across the face to anyone with even a shred of respect for the original movies than a careful and thoughtful examination.

Also, despite the how often we rag on the guy, let’s be honest - Lucas did it better (albeit no more gracefully) in the prequels.

There’s a couple other aspects of the movie I politely disagree with them on, but there’s plenty I can find where we share common ground. I won’t go into all of them, since I don’t really want this to turn into a review of The Last Jedi, so I’ll just say this: Every single minute of the material with John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran’s characters on that stupid casino planet was aggressively bad. Insultingly stupid, even. And, this really should go without saying, but it isn’t because either of them are bad actors. In fact, I quite like John Boyega in everything else I’ve seen him in, and his character, Finn, was completely, totally, and shamefully squandered. Kelly Marie Tran seems like she’s a decent actor, too, but I can’t say I’ve enjoyed anything she’s been in, for reasons that have nothing to do with her. A friendly piece of advice for you if you happen to stumble upon this, Miss Tran - fire your agent.

Now that I’m thinking about it, everything with Oscar Isaac, Laura Dern, and Carrie Fischer might have been worse. But, as I said - there’s really nothing I could say about it that hasn’t been said a million times over by a million different mouths. Which brings me neatly to some of the prominent figures within the Fandom Menace, who were very clearly and very loudly articulating these issues and more from their soapboxes on YouTube that weren’t rising so much as taking off like a Boeing 737.

Now, the description of the Fandom Menace varies depending on who you ask to define it. If you ask people in it, they’ll tell you that they’re jilted fans of various pop culture IP’s pushing back against the" “woke agenda” that’s being artificially shoe-horned into media where it doesn’t belong. As said above, though they named themselves after a Star Wars movie, and that Star Wars was what really caused these separate channels and individuals to congeal under a single banner, they were and are vocally opposed to any progressive politics being included in any legacy franchise. The Matrix, Star Trek, hell, Charlie’s Angels - nothing was outside of their purview, whether they liked the original movies or shows to begin with. If you ask the other side of the spectrum to define them, they’re racist, bigoted, sexist, and homophobic right-wingers who are afraid of progress and don’t want to allow girls or minorities into their White Boy’s Only club. The Disney shills would want you to believe the group is about as diverse as a Gentleman’s Club in rural Georgia at the peak of segregation, but it’s worth noting that many prominent figures in the Fandom Menace are black and/or women, frequently feature black and female commentators as guests on their streams, and I can’t think of a single one of them that has ever said they disapprove of equal rights for homosexuals, transsexuals, or any other stripe of the rainbow coalition. Most are self-professed libertarians, moderates, or left-leaning in their politics. I would go find evidence of this - and many other things, as well - but, unfortunately, I have not the time to slog through thousands of hours of meandering, rambling streams to find exact quotes, so, you'll just have to trust me on this. But I digress.

Despite all of that, I will give the detractors of the Fandom Menace some leeway in their accusations, untrue though they may be - when you build a YouTube empire by crowing about the “woke agenda”, most of which is They made Glup Shitto gay! or It’s a tragedy - the new Marvel movie has a woman as the main character!, even if a gay Glup Shitto is just a blatant cash grab or publicity stunt meant to appeal to progressive consumers, you make it extraordinarily easy for the other side to paint you as every stripe of bigot possible, especially when the other side is acting in bad faith and will use your words out of context.

I’m getting a little off topic. That was really all to say that, as a group, the Fandom Menace is a motley mix of individuals that run the gamut of race, nationality, political ideology, gender, sexuality, and BMI, and, more importantly, it’s rather difficult to discern who is and who isn’t actually part of it. There are several very large names that often get brought up as key players in the Fandom Menace scene, but I’m not sure if they’ve ever expressed that they are or aren’t part of the group. Yes, these people are sympathetic to the Fandom Menace, and yes, they all tend to run in the same circle and are frequently participating in one another’s streams, but I don’t know if some of the people I’m going to mention have explicitly claimed to be part of the Fandom Menace proper.

But, that we’ll wait a moment and catch our breaths before we jump into some brief examinations of some of the most prominent - and infamous - figures in this little band of internet crusaders and culture warriors - those that would style themselves the Hercules to do battle with the detestable Hydra strangulating their beloved cultural icons.

1. There is a very real chance - and desire - to explore this series, which I will not name here, as I would be so bold as to claim it caused real, tangible cultural damage to the fabric of not just American culture, but the entirety of the Anglosphere, and an entire generation.

2. He cited the death of Han Solo as souring him on the entire new trilogy. If you read between the lines, you can probably guess my very boomer dad didn’t appreciate a boomer film icon being run through by his own son.

3. And yes, I am acutely aware of the hyperbole on display here.