#*drives into the star wars fandom for the baby yoda memes* | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the-writer-is-always-write · 4 years

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Y’all need to stop acting like Baby Yoda is purely another money-making scheme by Disney. Baby Yoda is not like the Porgs. The Porgs served no purpose in The Last Jedi other than looking cute in order to sell toys. That’s a money-making scheme. Baby Yoda is one of the most crucial plot points in The Mandalorion, and without him, the show would be entirely different. His existence is what’s driving the show’s narrative, and it poses interesting questions and dilemmas for the other characters and even the Star Wars universe at large. Sure, he’s cute, and perhaps cuter than he needed to be, but so what? The creators have still done a remarkable job making a show with new, inventive stories that millions of people watch and love.

And you know what’s interesting? All this hype surrounding Baby Yoda, and pretty much all of it is coming entirely from the fanbase. I don’t see the Star Wars social media pages or even cast members posting copious pictures/gifs/videos of Baby Yoda. I didn’t see Baby Yoda merch plastered in every Walmart and Barnes & Noble as soon as the first episode was released. The fans are the ones I see posting all the memes, the theories, the fanart, etc. Basically, everything that’s giving Baby Yoda its traction in the media and world is because the fans genuinely love him as a character and want to share that with others, not because they were force-fed by a corporation in order to make money.

I get that it’s cool and trendy to hop on the “Let’s Hate Disney!” train right now, and while I’m definitely not expressing any sort of support for Disney as a company or their business practices, it’s sad to see the sort of cynicism that causes people to assume that everything produced by Disney is just another building block for the capitalist agenda. Lots of good people have worked on this show, and striven to make quality content with lovable characters and a story that matters, and also invests the viewers. The Mandalorion is one of the best things to happen to the franchise in years; it’s united one of the most divisive fandoms in the world, and people of all ages are watching the show and admiring all of the work and dedication that’s been so lovingly poured into it. Don’t undermine all the hard work and effort that these people have put into the show just so you can stand on your pedestal and screech about how terrible Disney is every time they produce something that gets popular. There’s a time and a place for addressing the faults inherent in Disney and their business practices, but not everything related to Disney needs to turn into a sermon against corporate America. A lot of people have worked very hard to create a show with quality characters and stories that people will genuinely enjoy and remember, and even if it’s not your cup of tea, you should respect their work and let people celebrate its success without dumping your anti-Disney rhetoric onto every conversation.

#and that's that on that #my rant of the day #the mandalorian #baby yoda #disney #disney plus #disney+#mando #star wars

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callioope · 4 years

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Good Things in 2019

@theputterer and @the-strongest-stars tagged me in the awesome annual end-of-year Good Things meme! I’ve done this in 2018 & 2017 and always think it’s a fun exercise of both reflection and looking forward.

Oh boy, though, my first thought was, what even happened in 2019? (Looking at a calendar helped! It reminded me of a few things I forgot)

It’s been a Rough Year, friends. Between OCD and basically travelling almost every weekend in the latter half of 2019, I am very much ready for a new year and hopefully a new slate.

But this is about the positives!

Personal

Played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons! I am now officially in two campaigns. This year, I endeavored to recruit more women to play, including the wonderful @allatariel. I play both my beloved cleric, Maritsa (who I’ve been playing her years now) and my new character, Noara, a ranger elf with a red panda familiar (yeah, my DM let me do that for funsies, so I could get an animal sidekick but also still try out the Horizon Walker subclass).

Speaking of red pandas, I accomplished my LIFE GOAL of meeting a red panda face-to-face. I got to feed Harriet at the Cincinnati Zoo for 30 minutes. She was adorable.

Completed all my dental work and had a clean bill of dental health two cleanings in a row!

Attended DC’s Around the World Embassy Day event, always fun

Attended Star Wars night at a local library, where I got to participate in a short demo/lesson on how to fence with a lightsaber!

Attended 50th Anniversary Celebration of Apollo 11 / landing on the moon (dude they projected the rocket on the Washington Monument and it looked so cool)

Returned to the NY Ren Faire and upgraded my ren faire garb

Celebrated at THREE friends’ weddings and got to catch up with old friends I hadn’t seen in awhile

Ate ice cream at the Ben & Jerry’s Factory in Vermont

Went to NYCC for the third year in a row. Got to wear 2 costumes this year: a 1920s flapper interpretation of an occamy and my Endor!Leia costume (repeat of 2017). Learned the True Pain of sewing. Created feather shawl for my occamy costume. Learned the True Pain of crafting.

Celebrated one year anniversary with hubbie down where we got married: visited the museum we got married in and actually got a chance to enjoy the exhibits, went to our favorite brunch place down there, got to check out Fleet Week and tour an aircraft carrier and uh... I think it was a missile cruiser?

Went up to PSU for a women’s hockey game for sister’s birthday (made embarrassing HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign for the cameras); also it was an absolutely wonderful fall drive on the way up there

Got to see The Rise of Skywalker in IMAX at the Smithsonian Air & Space Center with the awesome @allatariel! (thank goodness we had each other to get through that movie lol) also got to reuse my Endor!Leia costume. I did my own braids for the first time ever! (usually my talented sister does them) They looked like braids done by a n00b, but I didn’t care because they were passable and I did them myself and that was a Big Thing for Perfectionist Me (to not just... say screw it and undo it and just. give up. but to just let them be as is)

Worked hard at therapy and self care

Got a Sleep Number bed and holy shit let me tell you. i can actually sleep now.

OH! I almost forgot!!! Started playing Assassin’s Creed! I’ve only ever really played the LEGO Star Wars and Harry Potter video games so like. This was big for me.

Writing

Finally finished Learning Curve. TBH I was a bit shocked that this was in fact the only fic I published in 2019. What a travesty.

However! I have been writing

@allatariel & I sat down, overanalyzed You’ve Got Mail, and drafted up the outline for my in-universe AU, something I’ve been dreaming of starting for years. Have about 4300 words so far.

Just under the wire, I did manage to start my NatGeo AU, which I’ve been dreaming of since my honeymoon in Nov 2018

Started editing/revising my original young adult fantasy novel

Poked a little at my epic fantasy pirate travel novel idea

Books

I read exactly one book, Among the Red Stars, which I enjoyed. It’s about women fighter pilots in Russia in WW2. Inspired by real people.

Music

Saw Panic at the Disco! in concert. I went along with my sister. Not like a huge fan, but they put on a pretty fun show!

Saw Waitress on Broadway!! OH MY GOD. And Sara Bareilles was starring in it. Amazing. I freaking love her music (”How does she know / what a heart sounds like?” gahhh). She was so good, and the show was so good. I literally cried all the way through it just because I was so happy to be there, but also because of the content. Man.

Saw Sara Bareilles again, in concert, in Philly. I love her so much.

Television

Finished Critical Role Campaign 1! Oh man, what a ride. Gosh, I love that show. I really need to catch up in C2 now. I’ve started it but I’m only on episode 26 or 27.

I’m not sure whether I finished The Clone Wars in 2018 or 2019. I think it was early 2019. This show was amazing and this was the character development that Anakin Skywalker needed. I love Ahsoka Tano. I cannot wait for the last season.

Finished Rebels!!! AGAIN, what a ride!!! I still love Ahsoka Tano. I also love Hera Syndulla and Sabine Wren. Sabine’s Darksaber arc was fantastic.

The Mandalorian OMG BABY YODA!!! Yes, I have succumbed to the adorableness of Baby Yoda. Most adorable SW character forever. But also just an enjoyable story in general. This, this is how you craft a story. still NOT over the darksaber omg.

The Good Place is continuing to be good. Not as crazy about season 4, but I’m so glad they decided to limit the seasons.

Got my sister to watch Rebels!! And then even a few episodes of The Clone Wars!!! Mwahaha >)

Finally got around to watching The Great British Bake Off, what a sweet show!

OMG I ALMOST FORGOT Anne With an E!!! Gosh what a wonderful wholesome delightful show. No I haven’t watched S3 yet because I am Lawful Good to a fault and just patiently waiting for it to come on Netflix

Film

So, I woefully neglected to mention The Aeronauts in this post about my favorite movies in the 2010s and that was a Mistake. Because I really enjoyed this one

But otherwise probably check out that list. Because I don’t go to the movies that often, actually, and anything I really loved from 2019 is most definitely listed there.

Did I meet my 2019 Goals?

Writing: Fandom

Finish Learning Curve YES

...and How to Lose a Spy in 10 Days Uh, no, not so much

Begin and complete the in-canon universe You’ve Got Mail AU YES, it is begun but no it is not complete

Try to knock out a few other projects on my 30+ SW ideas Umm, I did start / poke at a few things in addition to the YGM and NatGeo AUs, but nothing really “knocked out”

Try my hand at creating more visual fan works (like moodboards/photosets, step 1, learn proper terminology) ahahahah, no.

Writing: Original

Query more agents for my completed original novel YIKES, No. But I wasn’t anticipating that I’d decide to heavily edit/revise my manuscript.

Actually get around to deciding which idea I want to work on next and work on it Yeah, sure, I decided. How nice of past!Liz to make this goal so reachable as “deciding” lol

Reading

Be more supportive in helping my friend run Book Club so that it can actually meet more regularly HA, oops. Book Club died, but kind of in favor of being able to start a second D&D campaign. At least that’s the trade off I’m looking at. I had some OCD-related glasses issues this year that inhibited reading a lot.

Try to read at least one book for myself outside of Book Club lol WELL the one book I read this year was not part of Book Club sooo

Goals for 2020

Writing

I’m not going to make this a completion goal, but instead...

...I’d like to just focus on creating a regular writing schedule/habit. Whatever the project, I just want to make sure I carve out significant time each week just to write. I don’t want to set a specific goal like “x hours a week” for now, but I want to make sure that I am writing each week.

To achieve that (because what are goals without maps):

If the words don’t immediately jump onto the page, then I’m going to try outlining or summarizing. I’m going to let go of overthinking how sentences are phrased, and just pretend I’m describing the story idea to a friend.

That blank page is staring at me and I’m just going to fill it with words no matter what I might think of them!

And I’m going to let everything else expand from there. And see how that works.

Edit my original manuscript

Query more agents re: original manuscript

Look into the idea of perhaps forming or joining a writer’s group for original writing oh gosh that is so scary

Other

Get back into reading

Develop a routine for working out

Eat healthier

Continue focusing on therapy goals

Get around to watching: Black Sails, Mad Max: Fury Road, Arrival

Get better at responding to things in general

Tagging: @allatariel, @magalis, @mythologicalmango, @skitzofreak, @threadsketchier, @brynnmclean, @ruby-red-inky-blue, @siachti and anyone else who sees this and wants to do it!

Happy New Year y’all!

#tag meme #the latest with liz #annual good things post #happy thoughts #for future reference #goals

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biofunmy · 4 years

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The Rise Of Skywalker” Misinformation Hell Is The New Future Of Everything #ReleaseTheJJCut

Woody Harrington for BuzzFeed News

Last week, a post on the r/SaltierThanCrait subreddit — a forum that started as a place for Star Wars fans to pick apart 2017’s The Last Jedi — caused an eruption. Written by a user named egoshoppe, the message claimed director J.J. Abrams’ original cut of The Rise of Skywalker was 40 minutes longer than the film’s two hour, 22-minute theatrical runtime and contained a large chunk of material that would have made some fans happier, including a scene featuring actors Hayden Christensen and Samuel L Jackson, reprising their roles to help fellow Jedi Rey defeat the resurrected Emperor Palpatine.

Why would Disney, the media conglomerate that bought the science fiction franchise from its creator George Lucas in 2012, cut huge chunks out of Abrams’ final edit? According to egoshoppe, the reasons were twofold: to make the film more palatable to the Chinese government and to damage the professional reputation of Abrams, whom Warner Brothers was courting to work on films set in the DC Comics Cinematic Universe, which includes characters like Batman and Superman.

“Marvel’s biggest threat is a well-operational DC. They want to keep DC in the limbo that they’re in right now,” the post reads. “Abrams jumpstarting that franchise with something like a successful, audience-pleasing Superman movie makes them nervous. Their goal is to make JJ look bad to potential investors/shareholders.”

The post inflamed long-running Star Wars fandom paranoia that Disney has been using social media to manipulate fans. In it egoshoppe warns that all previous leaks about the The Rise of Skywalker were shared by users “tied to Disney directly.” (Fans have accused Disney of molding social media for years.)

It was impossible for Redditors to ascertain whether egoshoppe was telling the truth, trolling for fun, or lying to help Abrams, whose film has faced a critical and fan backlash. Regardless, #ReleaseTheJJCut trended on Twitter as fans pieced together links and quotes from the cast, screenwriters, and directors that seemed to prove a different cut of The Rise of Skywalker existed.

The Star Wars fandom is now a nesting doll of speculation, paranoia, and anxiety about corporate overreach — growing more insular and reactionary in the eight years since Disney took over Star Wars.

The misinformation and anger inside the Star Wars fandom is what happens after decades of corporatization and anonymous decentralized networking. It is a glimpse of a future in which anxieties over the motives of the megacorporations that drive our culture — down to our very mythologies — set off conflicts between warring information tribes who inhabit their own artificial narratives. What began with small but vocal insurgent online communities like 4chan or the alt-right has now come for the mainstream.

Except there is no “mainstream” culture — just as there is no central Star Wars fandom anymore. Today, popular culture is just Gamergates of varying size.

Frank Trapper / Getty Images

A Star Wars fan works on a computer while waiting in line to see The Phantom Menace in Los Angeles on April 15, 1999.

Fandom isn’t new. Most of the tropes we associate with modern fan communities, like fanfiction, letter-writing campaigns, zines, conventions, and infighting entered the American consciousness in the ’60s, thanks to the female audience of a different star-based sci-fi franchise: Star Trek. The girls and women who loved the show were excluded from male-dominated fan spaces and so created the networks that built the foundation for how communities now find each other online. Women all over the US started creating zines and sci-fi clubs as a way to share Star Trek fanfiction. Star Wars, released in 1977, was a late entrant.

But Star Wars fans have used the internet to socialize (and bicker) since the beginning of the franchise and the internet. The earliest archived Usenet posts about the movies date back to at least 1983, the year that Return of the Jedi came out. “Are you sure other scenes showed an abnormal (or no) star field while in hyperspace,” one user writes in a thread — which wouldn’t look out of place on Reddit in 2019 — titled “Continuity error in STAR WARS – the ANSWER.” Through every stage of internet development, Star Wars fans have been at the forefront — two of the first viral memes were “Star Wars Kid” and “It’s a trap!”

And for as long as there have been Star Wars fans, there have been discontented Star Wars fans. According to a 1999 Empire interview with George Lucas, some have been angry with him since A New Hope. “Fans absolutely hated R2 and C3PO in the first film; in the second film they hated Yoda,” Lucas said.

In 1997, Lucas, still the owner of the franchise, released a remastered version of the original trilogy. The most infamous change in the special edition concerned a shootout between the smuggler Han Solo and the Rodian bounty hunter Greedo. In the original version, Han shot first. In 1997, Greedo shot Han first, missed, and then Han shot back. Fans were outraged. The “Han Shot First” meme spread on early blogs, via novelty T-shirts sold at conventions, and in forwarded emails. The issue is still debated. (In the version of the film just released on Disney+, a new change was added. Greedo now shouts the word “maclunkey.”)

A Han Shot First moment occurs when a previously unified fandom is suddenly given two realities to choose between. Once an HSF moment occurs, it’s impossible to bring the fans back together. And Star Wars has experienced many such HSF moments since.

The Phantom Menace and the subsequent prequels Attack of the Clones and Revenge Of the Sith were never going to appease every fan, but the frenzy around the lead-up to the movies, led by early internet communities, imploded when they arrived in theaters.

There was no longer a central agreement about what Star Wars actually was. There were older fans who thought Empire Strikes Back was the only good movie, younger fans who thought the podracing in Phantom Menace was wizard, fans who thought Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith should have been edited differently, and critics who retroactively decided the whole series was just embarrassing. The actor Topher Grace cut the prequels down into one 85-minute movie. There’s also the Machete Order, a way to reorder all the films. There’s even an infamous 20,000-word “Ring Theory” blog post, in which a fan spent two years writing about how the prequels and the original trilogy “rhymed” with each other when viewed within a concatenated structure. There was also Red Letter Media’s viral-before-viral 70-minute demolition of The Phantom Menace, uploaded to YouTube in seven parts, most of which have been viewed over 9 million times each.

Walt Disney Co. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Daisy Ridley as Rey (left), and Adam Driver as Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker.

Things move a lot faster now. Something like Baby Yoda from the Disney+ show The Mandalorian can balloon into a worldwide phenomenon in days. And fandom toxicity can now manifest instantaneously. In 2016, fans of Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe harassed one of the show’s artists off Twitter because they were upset that an episode didn’t confirm a same-sex romance between two characters.

Disney, the current owner of both Star Wars and Marvel, has, more than any other company, figured out how to harness this chaotic energy into a massive financial engine. Marvel’s 23-movie, $22.5 billion cinematic universe is a direct descendant of Star Wars. The studio made $13 billion in worldwide box office in just 2019. And once The Rise of Skywalker crosses the $1 billion mark, Disney will have released seven movies last year that grossed that amount. Armed with a nearly unlimited portfolio of intellectual property, an integrated network of theme parks, and the new Disney+ streaming service, Disney is inching closer and closer to a completely seamless transmedia reality its audiences can live inside. Once fans would have had to travel to Disneyland for that immersion — now it travels to them online.

It isn’t just Disney. As corporate monoliths amass more money and power, consumers become more feverish, fanatical, and paranoid. Supreme hypebeasts, Fortnite players, PewDiePie commenters, VSCO girls, K-pop fans, Tesla evangelists — there seems to be a divided fan community for nearly every form of media or product or service.

And as quickly and strangely as modern fandoms form, so are they mutated by Han Shot First moments. These schisms are rarely deliberate — rather, they are sparked by a director’s cut of a popular film, an offhand remark made in an interview. They are willed into existence by conspiracy theories, by fanfiction, by leaks of material never intended to be seen.

Since Disney took the reins of the Star Wars franchise in 2012, fans had a racist meltdown over the casting of a white woman and a black man as the leads of the sequel trilogy. Some of them brigaded against 2017’s The Last Jedi because they thought it was too woke. (This campaign was amplified but not created by Russian trolls.)

These campaigns have had real consequences. Vietnamese American actor Kelly Marie Tran, who played mechanic Rose Tico in the film, suffered so much racist abuse she deleted her Instagram. Tran ended up with significantly less screentime in The Rise of Skywalker. Disney has been accused of caving to a racist and misogynistic vocal minority of fans. The film’s cowriter, Chris Terrio, said that Tran’s character Rose appeared in fewer scenes because of the difficulties that arose in repurposing footage of the late Carrie Fisher.

Walt Disney Co. / Courtesy Everett Collection

Writer Chris Terrio and director J.J. Abrams consult on the set of The Rise of Skywalker.

On websites like Tumblr, vicious fights have broken out about which characters should be shipped, or romantically paired together. Those who believed the villain Kylo Ren and the Jedi hero Rey should end up together — Reylos — have waged extensive flamewars, and in the wake of the Kylo Ren’s death at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, are sending Abrams death threats.

And it’s not just the fans: Star Wars actors have gotten in on the HSF moments too. Oscar Isaac, who played pilot Poe Dameron, has told every news outlet who will listen that he thought he and John Boyega’s character, former stormtrooper Finn, should have had a romance. Meanwhile, Boyega spent New Year’s Eve trolling Reylos on Twitter, arguing that his character should have ended up with Rey.

Any one of these things could be true. Or they could all be false. It doesn’t matter.

Whether it’s fans of the K-pop group BTS believing there’s a missing eighth member of the group, fanatical Facebook groups for enthusiasts of smart home devices like the Ring surveillance cameras, the near-constantly forming pockets of misinformation on TikTok, or the DC fans who purchased an ad at the FA Cup demanding Warner Brothers “#ReleaseTheSnyderCut” — a reference to that group’s struggle to see a different cut of the Justice League movie — we’re awash in our own home-brewed misinformation.

Seventy-one days before the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, a Reddit user named JediPaxis published a post titled “The Rise of Skywalker: Reshoots and Edits (Story Summary v3.0)” on the r/StarWarsLeaks subreddit. The post was JediPraxis’s fifth post documenting information gleaned from what they claimed was a “trusted source.”

JediPraxis’s story summaries nailed down details with shocking accuracy. They knew the name of the planet Emperor Palpatine was hiding out on. They guessed the movie’s twist — that Rey was his granddaughter. They even knew about Babu Frik.

As with egoshoppe’s #ReleaseTheJJCut conspiracy theory, JediPraxis’s predictions meant one of three things. They’re telling the truth and had a source involved with the film’s massive production who was comfortable leaking. Or JediPraxis was actually working for the production. Or JediPraxis’s leak was sanctioned by Disney, as part of a meta-campaign by the film’s producers to fuel a grassroots hype cycle.

“I’m pretty sure [LucasFilm] is feeding a ton of [bullshit] to leakers,” one commenter wrote under the post, two months before Rise of Skywalker had hit theaters.

“It’s now MORE likely this than anything else,” another commenter replied. “What’s more likely, that a Reddit user has a direct line to the top .01% of people involved in one of the most anticipated films of the last several years, and this person is still employed despite leaking the ENTIRE plot, AND that they managed to reshoot this much of the movie AND cut it in — or that someone is taking the piss?”

Any one of these things could be true. Or they could all be false. It doesn’t matter. There will be fans who believe whatever gets posted and fans who don’t. Every leak or fan theory creates a new reality. Han shot first. Or he didn’t. ●

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