#I pop in once every 100 years and disappear back into my cave
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A dramatic movie poster WIP of an animatic I’d like to make someday when I’m skilled enough based on a song.
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AO3 Link (HERE)
Prologue
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
It’s the beat.
Kim notices it before anything else. It pulsates throughout the night club, like a strong and steady heartbeat, overtaking her senses as soon as she walks in through the doors.
The beginnings of a smile slide across Kim’s lips. She closes her eyes for a moment, allowing herself to get entirely lost within its soothing siren song.
It’s always been about the beat.
Ever since that very first time, Kim snuck into a club during the summer between her freshman and sophomore year of high school. It was the beat that hooked her. Like a mythical elixir, it somehow managed to instantaneously drown out all of her underlying fears and self-doubts and for once allowing her to just simply exist in the moment.
And Kim found she couldn’t get enough of it.
So she returned. Again and again. Until one day, one of the usual DJs asked if she wanted to have a go.
At first, Kim had balked at the offer. She had never even touched vinyl before, let alone knew how to work a table.
But with some convincing and persistence, Kim found the nerve and finally gave it a go. And the rest was history. She had been spinning ever since. At least one night a week-- if not more-- for well over a decade now.
Most people in Kim’s life had no clue that she moonlighted as a DJ, and frankly, she preferred to keep it that way. Not that it was a secret or anything. Just that DJing was in some ways her own personal sanctuary. The one place she could always retreat to no matter just how fucked up her life seemed to get.
Back to the beat.
“Kimmie!” Zack exclaims. Kim opens back up her eyes just in time to spot a lengthy Asian boy with unruly black hair, and an infectious grin emerges from the crowd of people. He scoops Kim up into an all-encompassing hug, unable to contain his excitement. “Thought you had to bail on tonight.”
“Last minute change of plans,” Kim replies, returning the hug to the boy who has slowly become a regular in her life over the last few months. “Still got the room for me?”
“Always for my favorite DJ. Tigre should be finishing up in the next five, and then it’s all yours.”
“Tigre?” Kim questions, unfamiliar with the name.
“Yeah. She’s the one on the table now… Pretty good, right?”
“Not bad.” Kim nods as her eyes wander over towards the DJ booth in an attempt to get a glimpse of the mysterious girl in question. But no sure luck. She can’t see anything beyond the human wall of club-goers. “Where does she normally play?”
“She doesn’t,” Zack says with a bit of a smirk.
“What? You’re shitting me.”
“Swear to God. She’s just in town for a few and swung by to say hi. She saw the table and asked if she could dick around on it.”
“Impressive,” Kim responds, eyes still fixated on the DJ booth on the far side of the club. “And her name is Tigre?”
“Eh, it’s what she likes to go by when she’s hanging out here, but yeah… You should pop into the booth and introduce yourself. She mentioned she wanted to meet you.”
“Me?” Kim asks.
“Yeah. I might’ve talked you up a little bit.”
“Zack…” Kim shakes her head in mild disbelief.
“It just came up. She asked who drew the biggest crowds and how could I not mention you... We’ve had a packed place ever since you took over Thursday nights. You’re freakin’ amazing, Kimmie.”
“When are you going to stop calling me that?” Kim runs her hands through her wavy, raven locks and then rests them on her custom set of matted pink headphones that are hanging around her neck.
“Probably never,” Zack responds. “Oh, and also she’s a big-time taco lover.”
“A what?”
“You know… She doesn’t drive stick.” Zack follows up, punctuating his point with a wiggle of his brows. “She is a muff--”
“I get it. Thanks,” Kim cuts him off.
“Cool. Just don’t tell her I told you. She’d rip my balls out barehanded if she ever found out.”
“I won’t say a word. Promise. You and your boys are 100% safe.” Kim replies, giving Zack an extra reassuring wink.
“Thanks… I’ve gotta go check on that new barback but catch you in the booth in a few?”
Kim nods and then watches as Zack once again up and disappears into the sea of people.
She had first stumbled across this place about a little over a year ago. It was right around the time when the shit hit the fan down at the precinct, leaving Kim indefinitely suspended from her job as an Angel Grove detective and with nothing but an overabundance of time on her hands. She hadn’t planned on making it a regular gig. Just was looking for somewhere to go and play every now and again when the urge struck. But then one thing led to another and somehow the club owner Zack had convinced Kim late one night over endless rounds of whiskeys to make it a weekly set. And she found that she couldn’t say no. Especially not to someone like Zack.
The music transitions from Missy Elliot’s Get Your Freak On to a remix of Jlo’s Jenny from the Block and instantly Kim is intrigued. The tracks by themselves are nothing out of the ordinary. Both must-haves in any decent DJ’s collection.
But there’s another beat.
One that’s buried amongst the rest of the music. Just waiting for someone to discover it. It’s a familiar beat, and yet Kim can’t quite put her finger on it. The more she listens, the more she itches to know who’s responsible for it.
Kim flows through the crowd, cutting a path with the bare minimum of effort, eyes never once straying away from the DJ booth. She inches closer and closer and yet still no sign of the mysterious Tigre. There’s only the music-- and the music alone-- to lead the way.
It isn’t until Kim reaches the base of the booth, though, does she get her first glimpse of who’s behind the overwhelmingly addictive beat. She spots a sleeveless yellow flannel shirt accompanied by a pair of glistening toned arms, and instantaneously her mouth goes dry. Kim’s no stranger to being in the presence of a beautiful woman or two. It naturally comes with the territory. But the woman standing before her is so much more than the run-of-the-mill beautiful. No. She’s like no other woman Kim’s ever laid eyes on before.
Petite yet powerful, Tigre has an endless array of soft, supple curves that are still more than noticeable even though semi-buried beneath her attire of an oversized flannel and baggy jeans. And not to be outdone by her sleek jet-black bob that perfectly swaying back and forth to the beat, accentuating her razor-sharp jawline.
Kim melts into nothing more than a hot bi mess of human as she’s unable to do anything more than gape at the goddess of a DJ before her.
“You gonna stare all night, Princessa?”
Kim snaps out of her trance to find a pair of rich chocolate brown eyes slowly sizing her up. She re-adjusts the sleeves on her worn-out leather jacket and runs her hands through her hair. “Maybe…”
Tigre hums a response, half-returning to the table. She makes another seamless transition all the while never fully taking her attention off on Kim.
And Kim can’t help but continue to watch. There’s an exotic quality to how Tigre flows between the gear and vinyl. It’s beyond hypnotic with the sway of her hips perfectly keeping time with the beat. “Or maybe I just wanted to see who was manhandling my collection.”
“Ah…,” Tigre says as a slight look of recognition spreads across her face. She slips off her headphones and inches closer to Kim. “You must be the elusive Kimmie.”
“Kim.” Kim extends a hand, and after a slight hesitation, Tigre takes it into her own. A definitive spark instantaneously jolts through Kim’s body. She sharply inhales and for the briefest of moments swears she sees a flicker of pure shock within Tigre’s eyes as well.
There’s no denying it. She felt it too.
Kim lets go of Tigre’s hand. “Tigre, right?”
“Yeah. Something like that,” Tigre responds with a hint of a smirk. A silence creeps in between the two of them as the music fills the void. Kim tries her best but can’t quite seem to read Tigre. There’s something there… Something buried just beneath the tough facade. And Kim can’t help but want to know more.
“Zack mentioned you were just passing by… What brings you to Angel Grove? Work? Pleasure?”
“Work mostly. But I’ve never been one to turn down a bit pleasure every now and then…,” Tigre says as her eyes slowly make their way down Kim’s body. “Especially with the right type of person.”
“And what type of person would that be?” Kim matches Tigre’s smirk allowing her eyes to wander as well.
Tigre moves even closer towards Kim, invading every last inch of personal space. It’s a dance. One that they both know how to play very well and yet…
Kim swallows thickly in bated anticipation, silently praying for the smaller Latina to make the first move.
“Wouldn’t you like to know, Princessa.”
“I’m not a princess,” Kim exhales in nothing more than a whisper.
“You sure about that?”
And time seems to stand still as they stand there face to face, eyes locked upon each other, silently waiting to see who will cave first. In any other situation, Kim wouldn’t even have to think twice. She’s never been one to hesitate before. But yet something is holding her back. Something buried deep within Tigre’s eyes that all but screams that making a move now would lead to nothing but instant regret.
The track suddenly fades out, and they are both snapped back into reality.
“You mind?” Kim motions towards the table.
“Be my guest,” Tigre says, stepping out of Kim’s way.
Kim takes off her jacket and starts to get set up, all the while feeling Tigre’s eyes still upon her. She takes a moment or two to collect herself, adjusting and re-adjusting her headphones, desperate to shake off her nerves.
“I don’t normally allow anyone up here during my sets, but you’re more than welcome to stick around if you--” Kim trails off. She turns around and suddenly discovers that--
Tigre is gone.
Kim quickly scans the crowd, hoping to get a brief glimpse of the mysterious, flannel-clad woman but no such luck. There’s not a single trace or sign of her existence whatsoever. Almost as if she was never even there to begin with.
“Fuck,” Kim lets out a slightly frustrated sigh and then with one more adjustment of her headphones, she selects a vinyl from the pile and gets to work.
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Tay’s fav new artists, songs, albums of 2019; decade favs too <3
Hello friends. I have listened to 20,000 songs this year (#brag). Some of them I have listened to more than once, and some of them are all together on one really good album I like. Here's some lists of the songs, albums, and people who make them that I liked a lot.
For your listening convenience: a Spotify playlist with the artists, songs, and albums in question. One song from each artist, one song from each album: checka me out
5 new artists from (roughly) this year (unordered)
Slayyyter
Slayyyter is the logical conclusion of the early 2000's pop wave, absolutely bubble gum but no longer pulling and punches with its sexual desire. "He wanna get in my guts" indeed.
100 Gecs
I love high energy, I love noise, and I love catchy. Synthesize major electronic musical movements of the last 10 years and then kick that in the dick and you get 100 Gecs.
Stef Chura
A consistent AF album, with great single songs and a slow procession as well, I'm very hyped for more!
Glass Beach
This band is cutting edge, they know a shitton about music, their hour long album feels like it's only 30 minutes, it teleports you away.
Nilüfer Yanya
Clearly someone who is making music with a succinct style and aesthetic, I find it great to see a full album form around (relatively) simple concepts like an imaginary mental health spa.
10 Songs from this year (ordered)
10. "Good News (Ya-Ya Song)" by MUNA
Unexpectedly a smash hit for me, this is such a simple song but something in the melody stirs a deep and warming feeling within me.
9. "Falling Down The Stairs Of Your Smile" by The New Pornographers
New Pornographers always have great singles. Their albums never quite capture the same feeling, and it breaks my heart every time. Still love the band.
8. "Can't Believe The Way We Flow" by James Blake
A many month throwback, this song was a go-to for the whole year. Seemingly forgotten by many (surely not Dave tho), this album and song really showed additional depth for Blake in my eyes.
7. "24" by IDK
Should to DJ Big Fan. This song is fun as fuck and has so many good one-liners. "She says she not a THOT she a nymphooo"
6. "Clarity" by Kim Petras
This song is a guilty pleasure, not because I am ashamed of its content or sound, but because Kim consistently works with Dr. Luke, the fuckhead who absolutely abused Ke$ha. This song absolutely bops though. Oof.
5. "All I Do is Lie" by Stef Chura
A very small sleeper hit for me, and a big regret when I missed Stef playing nearby, but I love the winding and twisting of this song and the simple mantras bouncing back and forth between meanings.
4. "Lark" by Angel Olsen
This song encapsulates all of Angel's album. It's the lead-in to the album, and it truly matches the scope and grandeur.
3. "Stupid Horse" by 100 Gecs
A song so strong I also want to beat the shit out of a jockey. Distill 100 gecs and for me, this song is at the center. High energy, nonsense, and just total fun. I don't feel bad saying I kind of wish all music sounded like this (sometimes).
2. "Jelmore" by Bon Iver
14,115 feet above sea level, I look out to the sweeping arc of the horizon, a cloudy sky blankets the landscape I left behind. Play this song on your rental car speakers when you choose to conquer fear and ascend a towering mountain.
1. "Gretel" by (Sandy) Alex G
I adore the slow fade in, the garbled vocals, the familiar guitar. The garbled mix slowly devolves into a clear message. Alex G has said he never looks up lyrics, that there is an ambiguity to all words in songs. Is that why he sings this with such clear conviction? There's no misinterpretation here: "good people got something to lose."
20 Albums from this year (ordered)
The first ten are great, but I didn't want to blurb for them all!
20. Clarity by Kim Petras
19. MAGDALENE by FKA Twigs
18. Midnight by Stef Chura
17. Miss Universe by Nilüfer Yanya
16. Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen
15. Two Hands by Big Thief
14. Assume Form by James Blake
13. basking in the glow by oso oso
12. Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? by Deerhunter
11. Pang by Caroline Polachek
10. Animated Violence Mild by Blanck Mass
I became stuck in place while listening to Blanck Mass on a plane this summer. One of the only albums I downloaded, it was all I had at 30,000 feet, thrumming engines piercing all the other music I had handy. The cacophony only added to this album, noise layered on noise but turning into melodies and stretching into songs.
9. Father of the Bride by Vampire Weekend
I don't know a ton about jam bands, but I definitely feel it when everyone else says this album was made in hopes of becoming one. This long ass album has some great highs, some charming lows, and honestly a really good chunk of Danielle Haim. Really a soundtrack to 2019 in a lot of ways. But it's really fuckin' long.
8. IGOR by Tyler, the Creator
Tyler's career has had the craziest arc. Rapping about killing women and progressing all the way to IGOR, which, is it even a rap album? The album contains such clear direction and vision, and far less of the reckless anger that Tyler became known for. The energy and sound has been honed down to a fine point, and there's a conciseness that sticks with you for hours after listening.
7. House of Sugar by (Sandy) Alex G
Alex G has always done so much for me. Bedroom music that has transformed each time into bigger and more detailed versions of itself. House of Sugar is no exception. While maybe a little less thrilling for me than Rocket, it's another evolution of this stripped down style, still laid bare but richer all the same.
6. U.F.O.F. by Big Thief
A lot of lists are going to feature some Big Thief. Big Thief is good, their music pierces you through the flesh and hits you in the bones. It stirs the spirit of a time now lost, sidelong glances through thickets of woodsy pines, listening to a friend play a simple song on their new guitar. It's great to celebrate a band and an album that puts a lot of pretense to bed and creates a simple, pleasing experience.
5. Charli by Charli XCX
Charli delivers an album after years of PC Music collaborated mix tapes and psuedo-album releases. Charli isn't some sort of second coming, but is the pinnacle of her expertise: fantastic collaborations, cutting edge beats, and familiar tales of her love and loss.
4. All Mirrors by Angel Olsen
Angel wasn't really known for her grandeur. Her songs and albums were dynamic, sure, with strong emotions, but All Mirrors dives into the direction of a grand pool, crystal clear and vast. "Lark" is a sweeping masterpiece, while "All Mirrors" has a methodical build and release. Angel is fully putting her voice and composition to work with an album this magnificent.
3. the first glass beach album by Glass Beach
My favorite description for this band is "post-emo." Many of my compatriots are not fond of band genres in generally, but for me this really nails it. It's a combination of an emotional, DIY scene with an online mentality, which I feel is representing the pace of the world. Also the music absolutely blasts, grand and epic and quiet and pensive, meandering as it wants.
2. Ghosteen by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Until about two months ago, I wasn't even a huge Nick Cave fan. Serendipitously, I happened to look into his backlog a couple weeks before this surpirse release. I spent a small amount of time looking into his older style, but when Ghosteen popped up, it floored me. That tangible loss, the grief that winds around you and grips you from within, it's on this album in full force. It's an album I know I will listen to sparingly, but lovingly, for ages and ages.
1. 1000 Gecs by 100 Gecs
I typically do not measure these kinds of lists by the number of listens. Usually albums with emotional weight or impact are not so accessible or listenable. This album is an absolute exception, it is crystalline and pure, it is powerful and subtle, its energy infectious. For me, it's a clear message describing the future of music I love.
Honorable menties, not conclusive or ordered, from this year:
Albums:
IDK's Is He Real?
Holly Herndon's PROTO
JPEGMAFIA's All My Heroes Are Cornballs
Battles's Juice B Crypts
Bon Iver's i,i
American Football's American Football (LP3)
DIIV's Deceiver
Anamanguchi's [USA]
Sir Babygirl's Crush on Me
Sharon Van Etten's Remind Me Tomorrow
Hemlock Ernst & Kenny Segal's Back At The House
Jay Som's Anak Ko
Florist's Emily Alone
Songs:
"Harmony Hall" by Vampire Weekend
"Superbike" by Jay Som
"Aute Cuture" by ROSALÍA
Many many others!
Roughly 10 of 2010-2019's best albums (unordered)
Halcyon Digest by Deerhunter
Encapsulate all of the indie rock I listened to and make it so dramatic it oozes lackadaisical energy.
The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do by Fiona Apple
The title is as long as the album is great. I am chomping at the bit for Fiona to follow this up with literally anything.
Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens
Many feel Sufjan could do no wrong, but it's not that he's unimpeachable, it's that he is able to shift his sound in pivotal ways at pivotal moments.
Cerulean Salt by Waxahatchee
Waxahatchee captured the post college ennui I was so suddenly thrust into, and continues to kick ass even after I got over the dread.
Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
This album kicks ass, but also I have an undying emotional connection to it since I listened to it on repeat the months after pops died! "We Drift Like Worried Fire" is entwined in my soul.
Good Kid, M.A.A.D City by Kendrick Lamar
There is a lot of great Kendrick to choose from, but the one absolutely stacked with bangers will remain my favorite (but I totally acknowledge the artistic merit and beyond of Damn. and TPAB).
The Monitor by Titus Andronicus
I only got into this album like four years after the fact, but it scratched the civil-war-concept-album-actually-about-the-Northeast I didn't know I had! Pumped it also taught me a cool Abe Lincoln speech.
E•MO•TION by Carly Rae Jepsen
This album guided me from toeing around pop music to going all in and finally have a good time in life.
Song of the summer:
"Steal My Sunshine" by Len
Remarkably, for the 20th year in a row, the song of the summer is Len's "Steal My Sunshine." What a powerhouse.
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The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
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Dragon Age 100 - 2 (Love)
Summary: Kaaras has a crush. Maybe one day it’ll turn into something more. (Set 2 years before Dragon Age Inquisition.)
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“Alright, rest up. We got a long way to go in the morning.”
Light was fading fast as the small mercenary band settled into camp for the night. This small section of Valo-Kas had been hard at work over the last few days, cleaning out bandit dens that someone had paid them for. It was a challenge, but nothing life-threatening. If someone got a little creative with a maul swing here and there, it didn't really matter. Just made the story more interesting when they got back with the main group.
Kaaras sighed as he rotated his sore shoulder. All the terrain had left him relying more on his weaker right side, and he was definitely feeling it. The only thing on his mind right then was to head into his tent and try to massage the pain out. Judging from how tight he felt, that was going to take a while. Oh well, it was safe anyway.
“Need some help, big guy?”
His stomach flopped and flipped in ways it had learned to do over the last few months. Right then, his face would have been hot enough to boil water to nonexistence. Heart pounding, he turned to face the source of the voice, the one giving him so many uncomfortable dreams and awkward situations. There he was.
Ataashi was a tall man, definitely well past the 7 foot mark even without his gazelle-like horns. His smile lit up whatever room he was in. The worst part were his eyes – they always seemed to focus on where Kaaras was. What that meant, he didn't know... but it did awful things to his insides. But there he was, striding over with the ease of someone with a lot of confidence in himself. Just watching him made the young man weak in the knees.
“O-oh, Ataashi.” His voice trembled – damn it, keep it together! - as he spoke. “N-no, uh... my shoulder just hurts as all. The cave wasn't exactly designed for left handed fighters.”
The Tal-Vashoth chuckled as he patted Kaaras on his uninjured shoulder. “So much for dual wielding, huh?”
He walked past Kaaras, heading for the tent they just so happened to share. “Well, if you need help working out the tension, I'm game. Can't have you getting your head chopped off because you didn't have a full range of motion.”
Kaaras' heart was still beating after Ataashi had disappeared. He lingered outside the tent, willing it to slow. If he got too close to the man – which he probably would – it would be obvious. No, he needed to be calm... or at least as calm as he could get. When it came to the other man, it was impossible to be completely serene.
Damn him for being so attractive. And funny. And... looking at him like that.
“Get it together, Kaas.” He hissed to himself under his breath, reverting to his Dalish roots. Unlike common, nobody in Valo-Kas spoke it. He was safe then. “Focus. He's just helping you with your shoulder. It's a normal thing for someone to do.”
Of course, those thoughts went to hell the moment he entered the tent. There was Ataashi, looking ever so comfortable and just waiting for him to arrive. The way his eyes lit up made Kaaras' heart and stomach ache. Damn him and his wonderful, liquid-gold eyes that glittered like stars. They turned him into a complete fool with one look.
“Going to take me up on that offer, big guy?”
Kaaras kept his eyes to the ground as he sat nearby, rubbing the offending article. “It's hard to reach back there with my horns.”
“That it is.” Ataashi chuckled and move closer, to the point Kaaras felt his breath on the back of his neck. “Well, this shouldn't take too long. Just get comfortable.”
That was going to be difficult, but he did his best. Soon the man's strong fingers were probing his sore shoulder. He hissed once, but then he quieted down. Pain was part of making it feel better. It was what his uncle had told him once as a boy.
“You're pretty tight back here, big guy. Take it easy and leave some for the rest of us next time.” Ataashi hummed a note as he worked. He was always humming something to himself, most of the time nonsense. It was a pretty sound, though. Kaaras had grown to love it, especially in moments like this when they were so close. It gave him something to focus on that wasn't... well, like he had said. Ataashi was a handsome man.
His face heated up still. “I'll remember that for next time.”
“You better. Would hate to see that pretty face of yours messed up.” A sudden pop released the tension in Kaaras' shoulder. “Up, there we go. Should feel much better now.”
Sure physically he was better – but mentally he was in hell. It didn't help that Ataashi was still touching him and was so damn close. His heart continued pounding until he was sure the other man could hear it. And if he did, what was he going to do about it?
Damn it all... why couldn't he open his damn mouth and say something?
What would he even say besides you're hot and can I kiss you? It wasn't like he had any experience in these matters. The only men his own age in the clan either were related to him or had seen him fail out of every training there was. It didn't exactly inspire a robust romantic life to say the least. In this, he was completely lost. And it wasn't a good feeling.
So... he kept his mouth shut.
Ataashi kept rubbing his sore shoulder, maybe to work out some minor kinks. “Today was pretty messy in the cave and all. I'm glad you were with us with those eyes of yours.”
“Can't exactly see well in the light, might as well provide my services elsewhere.” Kaaras could talk about this – it was easier. “You were handling it pretty well without me, though.”
The larger man chuckled as he moved closer to Kaaras' neck. Tension built up there a lot – it was the horns. “Old training kicked in. Used to do night shit with the Beresaad. You get pretty good at finding your way in the dark I guess.”
A sick weight dropped to Kaaras' stomach. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Ataashi was a Tal-Vashoth. Half the group was in the end – others were like him, qunari but never Qunari. One letter made a hell of a difference in things. One of those he didn't like to mention. Just thinking about it made his stomach churn.
Ataashi must have sensed it. “You ok, big guy?”
“Oh uh... yeah, guess I spaced out there. It was a busy day.” True, his eyes were drooping closed. However, that was more from the touching than any exhaustion. Maybe he was a little touch starved after time away from the clan. Nothing could beat his family, but this... wasn't bad. And he would've loved to keep it that way.
If he talked... well it wouldn't.
Another note hummed from Ataashi as he rubbed away a bit of soreness in his neck. “By the way, you need another haircut soon. The sides are starting to come in.”
That had also been his idea. Kaaras still blushed at the thought. Really, they had had a lot of time together since he had joined with Valo-Kas. Maybe more than two friends would. But he wasn't sure, not yet anyway. Maybe he needed to sit on it.
“Mind helping me with that?”
That earned him a chuckle. “Yeah, sure. Maybe tomorrow. My eyes are kind of shot tonight and I might mess up.”
He stopped rubbing, then tapped Kaaras in the back of the neck. “There, that should keep you in one piece before you mess it up again. Quit pulling left like that, big guy, and it'll stay longer.”
Ataashi then hummed again as he went back to what he had been doing before – looking for his horn balm probably. He was always losing it, even in their small space. Just watching him made Kaaras want to chuckle. Former Qunari, yes – but he had certainly forgotten everything he'd learn about keeping his things in order. Somewhere a tama was weeping.
“Here, let me help you. You'll turn the tent upside down like that.”
And like that, things were settled. There was horn balm to look for and complaints to be made about where it had gotten to in the mean time. Kaaras was glad for the activity, and the brief moments where their shoulders touched. He wasn't sure what it was yet, but... maybe it could be something. If he was lucky.
Until then, he was happy for those little moments that weren't so little to him. For him, they were a world he was only beginning to experience, one that ended in a four letter word he ached to say one day. Only time would tell.
#ramblinganthropologist's Dragon Age 100#ramblinganthropologist's writing#Kaaras Adaar#and introducing Ataashi the Ironhead
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Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #97
Sun March 18 2018
[15:32:14] <Wackd> BEEEEAAAACH EEEEEPIIIIISOOOOODE!!!
[15:33:09] <Wackd> oh it's not a beach episode
[15:33:12] <Wackd> just a cool cover :(
[15:33:29] <maxwellelvis> And an odious tradition begins...
[15:33:30] <Inbarfink> Boooooooo!
[15:33:47] <Wackd> They WERE vacationing by a beach
[15:34:25] <Wackd> But the story starts in media res, after their vacation has been interrupted by the Navy asking them to investigate sinkings in Lost Lagoon
[15:34:35] <maxwellelvis> I take it Ms Harkness would not be joining them in that vacation
[15:34:50] <Wackd> It's vampires that burn in sunlight, not witches!
[15:35:02] <maxwellelvis> I know
[15:35:07] <Wackd> Also so hey, uh.
[15:35:23] <Wackd> Maybe if you didn't want ships to disappear here ya shouldn't have called it Lost Lagoon.
[15:36:16] <maxwellelvis> Yeah
[15:36:34] <Wackd> So, Reed, Johnny, and Ben (no Sue I guess) are attacked in their vessel by a killer whale. They suspect it might be Namor for a hot second, but then realize he'd probably just show up and start punching them, which checks out.
[15:37:04] <Wackd> Ben thinks the whale mighta caused the sinkings, but it turns out that many of the survivors have reported sightings of "a monster in human form".
[15:38:11] <Wackd> Also, apparently Tony Stark designed this submarine. Which is weird, right? With the exception of that one thing they got from T'Challa, I kinda figured the implication was that Reed built all their weird vehicles.
[15:38:36] <Wackd> I can't imagine Tony sitting down and going "hm, you know, robot suits are cool, but I could *really* do with a submarine."
[15:38:44] <Duraz> are they trying to keep people in their specialties?
[15:38:53] <Duraz> I mean, they're usually bad at that
[15:39:01] <Inbarfink> Does Reed have a specialty?
[15:39:16] <Inbarfink> I thought he was a scientist, that studies science
[15:39:27] <Duraz> my take would have been, like, particle physics
[15:39:34] <Wackd> Transport kinda IS Reed's specialty! Like, he investigates deep space and microverses and negative zones, and then build things that take his team there.
[15:40:13] <Wackd> Insofar as he's been confined to a field--and I'm not saying he's never dipped into other fields, especially when un-Thinging Ben is concerned--exploration has been it.
[15:40:26] <Duraz> true enough
[15:40:38] <maxwellelvis> I think, iirc, the last few times they went underwater, transport was provided for them, and I guess Reed never thought to build a submarine.
[15:41:33] <Wackd> Man, I know we've already got Namor and all that stuff, but I would dig an arc where the Four had a deep-sea exploration and found, like, really bizarre shit down there.
[15:42:04] <Wackd> I think people underestimate how much of the ocean floor we've actually covered, and just because Atlantis exists in Marvel doesn't mean that Atlantis is on the same level as giant squids or whatever.
[15:42:35] <Duraz> reminds me of a time when I was playing Ultimate Alliance with a friend who doesn't read comics
[15:42:49] <Duraz> "Looks like we're going to Atlantis," I said. "Okay. Awesome!" he replied.
[15:43:14] <maxwellelvis> "Oh fuck," I think. As I recall that being the worst level in that game.
[15:43:44] <Wackd> 1. Johnny, it's okay to be emotional. 2. oh my god that righthand panel is fantastic on so many levels
[15:44:46] <maxwellelvis> Strong men also cry, Johnny. Strong men also cry.
[15:46:38] <Wackd> Admittedly, I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the first 100 issues, especially since I read many of them back in 2016. But this take on Johnny as a lady magnet feels new to me. If nothing else, it's leaning into him as the "youth culture" member of the team more than we've done in a damn long while.
[15:47:19] <maxwellelvis> It's been part of his character in Spider-Man, at least.
[15:47:30] <maxwellelvis> As part of the contrasting between Johnny and Peter.
[15:47:46] <Wackd> Makes sense. Has he been a regular over there?
[15:48:15] <Wackd> (I mean, Spider-Man as a book also has a lot more time for civilians than Fantastic Four tends to, Alicia excepted.)
[15:50:26] <maxwellelvis> Wackd: He pops up every now and then
[15:50:57] <maxwellelvis> In the early years, mostly to be everything Peter wishes he could be:
[15:51:13] <maxwellelvis> Cool, confident, popular, a hit with the ladies, beloved by the public, etc
[15:51:37] <Wackd> I like that Reed just sort of assumes that his being around isn't a prerequisite for Sue to enjoy herself, as though on some subconscious level he knows how shitty he is.
[15:53:34] <Wackd> SO! Turns out the monster has some sort of chemical that can change him into a human being (or vice versa?) He's currently "undercover" as a dolphin trainer at an aquarium.
[15:54:38] <Wackd> I like that Reed immediately cracking the plot is depicted here not as him being incredibly smart, but as him being a workaholic who's reaction to a fun trip to the aquarium is "what if the dolphin trainer is a villain?"
[15:55:11] <Wackd> (Also, uh, can you sit on dolphins like that without hurting them? That seems wrong.)
[15:55:47] <Duraz> I guess they ought to be able to take a lot of pressure
[15:56:35] <Wackd> PROBABLY not this much pressure, though, right?
[15:57:09] <Wackd> I feel like you PROBABLY can't toss a pilot whale INTO A WALL without something going horribly wrong somewhere.
[15:58:47] <Wackd> The whale lives! (But Ben won't enjoy it.)
[15:59:57] <Wackd> So! It turns out our baddie can't speak in human form. (Possibly also in monster form?) I didn't notice, because villains having an ongoing internal monologue is par for the course at this point, but huh, yeah. This guy hasn't said a word so far.
[16:01:16] <Wackd> (In an earlier panel, Ben jokes about him being "a real chatterbox." Because the baddie hadn't had a chance to say anything yet, I assumed Ben was making a joke about Reed not being able to shut up, but nah, he's making jokes about a guy he just met not talking, cool)
[16:02:07] <Wackd> Indeed, as our baddie volunteers to lead Reed, Ben, and Johnny on a deep-sea expedition, it is CONSISTENTLY pointed out that he can't talk, with Reed finding it odd.
[16:02:16] <Wackd> Does...does Stan not know mute people exist?
[16:02:49] <Wackd> Like sure, it's not like this guy is using sign language or writing things down--he doesn't even seem to use body language, which makes me wonder how it was determined he wanted to tag along.
[16:03:48] <Wackd> Anyway. Ben determines the baddie has led them into a bog, and that it'd be difficult for them to maneuver out, like he's trying to get us stuck down here with no way out!"
[16:04:19] <Wackd> So this story is basically about our heroes assuming some rando is a villain because he doesn't speak and is too good at doing dolphin shows for tourists, and being validated in that belief. Cool.
[16:05:59] <Wackd> The baddie busts up their submarine, and only Ben can hold his breath long enough to save Reed and Johnny. All the while thinking about how his life is worthless compared to theirs.
[16:06:12] <Wackd> Ben: capable of hating himself while saving people from drowning.
[16:07:56] <Duraz> hmm, whales were able to ram wooden ships, but still...
[16:08:21] <Wackd> So, Ben fights the monster, then Johnny and Reed wake up, and then all three fight the monster. Fight fight fight. The monster makes a retreat.
[16:08:33] <Wackd> Monster design, by the way? Real boring. Basically just a Creature from the Black Lagoon ripoff.
[16:09:05] <Inbarfink> So when will Johnny start banging the monster?
[16:09:13] <Wackd> pffffffffffft
[16:09:49] <Wackd> So Ben's solution to having lost track of the monster is to just. Punch the walls of the cave they're in so all the walls collapse and the monster will have nowhere to hide.
[16:10:02] <Wackd> Which I'm sure is a thing you can do while maintaining structural integrity.
[16:10:28] <Duraz> he's gonna get buried if he keeps doing that
[16:12:20] <Wackd> I mean, I suppose it's possible Ben knows enough about this sort of thing to make it work. https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/2ED37f5X/IMG_1564.PNG
[16:13:44] <Wackd> ...well, now I feel like kind of a jerk.
[16:14:20] <Wackd> Turns out the baddie wasn't a baddie at all. He's a stranded alien who was only trying to collect water for him to breath once he repaired his spaceship and could make a return trip.
[16:14:43] <Wackd> He was attacking the boats because he thought he'd be attacked if discovered.
[16:15:24] <Wackd> So the entire POINT of this issue is that you shouldn't jump to conclusions about people just because they're strange.
[16:15:53] <Wackd> Maybe, if they wanted that to work, they shouldn't have had Reed been right every time he suspects anyone ever in all previous issues?
[16:15:57] <Wackd> Just a thought.
[16:16:48] <Wackd> anyway fish boobs
[16:17:12] <Wackd> (maybe they're just friends, reed, you don't know)
[16:17:34] <Wackd> OH HEY ALSO! The monster STILL can't speak! Reed is still just jumping to random conclusions!
[16:17:49] <Wackd> So I guess the actual moral is that Reed is always right even when he's wrong.
[16:18:04] <Inbarfink> Goddamit Reed and his Heteronomativity
[16:18:19] <Wackd> those last three words are superfluous
[16:19:09] <Wackd> HEY BEN MAYBE YOU SHOULD'VE BEEN A BIT MORE UNDERSTANDING IN THIS SITUATION
[16:19:31] <Wackd> didn't i just do a thing a few issues ago about how it's weird that ben is the quickest to judge considering his own issues
[16:19:35] <Wackd> is that just a trait he has now
[16:22:56] <Wackd> yeah, here--where he has no sympathy for mole man https://f4liveblogarchives.tumblr.com/post/171974975823/fantastic-four-vol-1-90
[16:23:44] <Duraz> not very introspective, for all the time he spends in his own head
[16:23:59] <Wackd> Anyway the alien takes off, Reed works out the alien and the murder dolphin guy were the same dude, the issue ends
[16:24:11] <Wackd> That sure was a thing
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The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
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The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
original post
0 notes
Text
The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
original post
0 notes
Text
The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
original post
0 notes
Text
The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
original post
0 notes
Text
The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
original post
0 notes
Text
The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
original post
0 notes
Text
The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
original post
0 notes
Text
The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
original post
0 notes
Text
The Real Dark Side of Star Wars: Spoilers
[This is a repost of a post I wrote about two years, which has inexplicably disappeared from the site.]
I need to talk about something pretty shitty, but it requires a little background information, first.
Many of you probably already know this background info, but some of you don’t, so I’m filling it in for them; everyone else, please bear with.
I doubt it will surprise anyone to know I’m a long time Star Wars fan boy.
Am I the biggest Star Wars fan boy who’s ever lived? No, most certainly not.
In fact (and this bit will shock the less-super-nerdy out there), there are groups of folks out in the world who, after examining the extent of my exposure to Star Wars “stuff”, would decide quite seriously that I’m not a real Star Wars fan at all, or at least not a serious one.
The funny thing is, it’s hard to even explain this without getting at least somewhat nerdy, but I’m going to try. (In my head, as I write this, I’m talking to my sister, which is how I approach more posts than anyone would imagine.)
Now, a lot of people – most people – who say they like Star Wars mean they like the movies, because that is literally the only Star Wars thing they know about. I’m going to call these folks “mainstream fans.”
Obviously (because as a species, we really can’t leave this kind of shit alone) there is a lot more Star Wars stuff out there – more stuff than you’d readily believe. Games, of course. Comics – fucking walls of comics – and enough novels to fill a library.
Collectively, all the stuff that isn’t the movies has been (until recently) referred to as the Star Wars “Extended Universe” or “EU”. The quality of the stuff varies, and by “varies” I mean some of it is pretty good, and some of it is pants-on-head fucking idiocy that makes Jar Jar Binks look as cool as Chewbacca, by comparison.
How does stuff like that get the official stamp of approval? Pretty simple: George Lucas really likes making money, and people are willing to pay him a whole shit ton of money to play in his backyard, so he lets them write novels with Force-nullifying space-sloths (yes, seriously) and puts the Official Rubber Stamp on it, because (a) he got money and (b) he knew if he ever came out with a movie that contradicted stuff people had written, his version would invalidate all the drek he’d authorized in the past, so who cares?
In general, I don’t follow the EU stuff, and (with the exception of the first Star Wars roleplaying game that anyone licensed) don’t know much about it.
The quick summary: there is miles and miles of EU stuff, set anywhere from 30 thousand years before to several hundred years after the movies ‘mainstream fans’ know; the whole thing is an virtually unchartable hot mess…
And there are fans out there who know every single inch of it. Or most of it. Certainly more of it than I do. I’ll call them super-fans.
Now: I have no beef with those super-fans. None.
Okay so far? Good.
Now: Enter Disney.
A few years ago, Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars intellectual property and announced they were going to start doing stuff with it, and that George Lucas wouldn’t have very much if anything to do with it. (Which, after the prequels, was kind of a relief to hear.)
And Disney took a long look at the Extended Universe stuff and, after some thought, said “Yeah that’s… nice and all… but… yeah. None of that shit is official anymore.”
Basically, they boiled down “Official Star Wars” to the movies, the Clone Wars animated series that ran a few years ago, and whatever stuff they make from here on out (like the totally amazing and fun Star Wars Rebels show, a couple new novels, and of course the new movies coming out).
All that EU stuff? It’s not the “Extended Universe” anymore; it’s “Star Wars Legends” which, honestly, I think is a great name – it implies these are stories about the Star Wars universe (which they are, of course) but just that: stories. Unverifiable. Unverified. Unofficial. Enjoy them if you want – please, by all means – but know them for what they are.
Most – and I do mean most – super-fans were fine with this: they get to keep the stuff they’re into, and they get the biggest pop-culture engine in the world cranking out new Star Wars stuff until the heat-death of the universe finally invalidates Disney’s copyrights.
Some of the super-fans are not happy, and have decided to be unapologetically shitty human beings about the whole thing. I will call this small, vocal-like-a-screaming-howler-monkey subset of super-fans the “spoiler fans,” and here’s why:
These people have decided that it’s not enough that they have this stuff they like. Because Disney has said it’s not official stuff anymore, that somehow makes it impossible to love that stuff as much as they once did – their love is somehow capped by its lack of an official stamp, and this cannot be allowed to stand.
What do they want? This is pretty funny, actually: they don’t just want Disney to go back and say “okay, that stuff is still at least as official as it was when George Lucas was taking your money and planning on invalidating anything he felt like, whenever he felt like it” – they (apparently) want Disney to keep making EU stuff, in addition to the stuff Disney is already making.
“Well, that’s nice,” you might say, “maybe they want a pony, too?”
And yeah, it’s kind of funny, until you realize the internet has allowed shitty people to be shitty on a far greater scale.
See, they’re trying to hold Star Wars hostage to get Disney to do what they want.
How? They have vowed that they will spoil each and every spoil-able moment in the new movie as loudly and as broadly as possible (which, today, is pretty loud and pretty broad), if Disney doesn’t cave.
You’ve probably seen those image memes on Facebook or whatever, asking people not to spoil the movie. I have, and thought “yeah, it would suck to be spoiled ahead of time.”
Because that can happen by accident. Well-meaning, happy, enthusiastic fans can get on the internet and broadcast out to their friends, joyfully exclaiming about all the stuff they loved about the movie, and accidentally spoil something for someone who hasn’t seen it yet, because how have you not seen it yet?!?
This isn’t that. This is not an accidental thing. This is not your friend loving the movie so much he spills something.
This is a guy standing outside the movie theater before The Empire Strikes Back, waiting for the line to form, and then telling every single person in line “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.”
Except the guy has a megaphone the whole world can hear, if they aren’t careful, and he shouts the message at unexpected times.
I’m telling you about this, because it already happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to you.
I leaned about this little movement of spoiler-fans via a friend’s post on Google+.
The very first comment to that post was one of these guys, and all he posted was a spoiler, and I am pretty sure he spoiled probably the biggest plot twist in the movie for me.
Now, obviously, I haven’t seen the movie yet, so how do I know?
Let me put it this way: if that guy who came up to you in line at Empire Strikes Back had said, perfectly straight-faced “Darth Vader is Luke’s dad,” would you have believed him?
Maybe you think about it a bit, and it syncs up with everything you know about the movies thus far, and it syncs up with what you’ve seen in the trailers, and it just seems like a very Star Wars-y plot twist.
Maybe you don’t believe it, completely and totally, but you believe it enough that you will sit down in the theater and, basically, spend the whole movie waiting for that moment to come. Or not.
Even if it doesn’t, you will not have enjoyed the movie as much as you might have, because you were distracted. And if it does happen just as that guy said? Well.
That’s the kind of thing this guy posted. One line. Ten words, and there goes my 100% unmitigated enjoyment of the new movie.
Now, shut up: this isn’t about me. Yes, you’re very sorry about this happening. Yes. I love you. Thank you, now shut up for a sec.
Listen.
These fuckers are out there. They are doing this on purpose. They’re enjoyment of their pile of stuff has been somehow – idiotically – damaged; Disney made their Masters-level knowledge of a made-up universe less important than it already was, so they have decided to shit on every other person who wants to enjoy the new movie, because (apparently) “Fuck anyone who is enjoying themselves, if I am not.”
I don’t care about me. I’ve watched Empire Strikes Back probably thirty times, if not more, and I know – know I will enjoy it when I watch it again, because I’ll be watching it with my kids, and the shine hasn’t come off for them.
Because of that, I know I will enjoy this new movie when I watch it, because I will be watching it with my kids and even if I don’t feel the same sense of surprise and wonder as I might have, they will, and I will still get to feel that, through them.
And I know they will get to feel that, because I’m going to protect them from these… infantile man-children and their shit-spattering temper-tantrum.
Now: why did I write all this? Because I want to try to protect you, too.
When you see spoiler warnings, heed them. Stop thinking of spoilers as “that one little thing my super-happy friend let out after he saw the movie” and start thinking “halitosis-reeking stranger who wants to dip his filthy index finger in my morning coffee.”
From here until you see the movies, absolutely avoid comment sections on any Star Wars-related post on any kind of social media.
Just… for a few days, expect people you don’t know to be kind of shitty for no good reason.
I realize that’s kind of a downer message, but seriously: I want you to enjoy the movie.
And also, yeah: I want those petty fuckers to lose, because fuck them.
(Comments on this post are disabled, for obvious reasons.)
original post
0 notes
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