#and prefer other cultures *cough*mandalorians*cough* exclusively because they have something closer to a western family system

[vashti-lives]

After vague blogging about fanfic and YA I will say that the issue of media for teens mixing poorly with all ages and adult media is not a problem exclusive to fanfic writers. 90% of the conflict in the star wars fandom stems from the fact that star wars’ YA and children’s media is to some degree canonically and philosophically incompatible with the mainline movies. In the movies the Jedi are unequivocally the heroes and we’re supposed to respect them even as they get backed into a terrible corner. They’re wise heroes doing their best.

In the media made for kids by necessity the adults of the Jedi order have to make absolutely wild and absurd decisions in order for the kid protagonists to get chances to do heroic stuff actual kids would find fun and exciting. This naturally puts their behavior at odds with the goals of the movies.

Add in that the movies don’t hold up to close reads because they’re intended to be fun summer blockbusters, and the fact that the Jedi are based on a fairly shallow understanding of a non-western collectivist lifestyle without nuclear families which is extremely foreign to western audiences and what do you get? Decades worth of discourse over whether the Jedi are actually good guys which can never be resolved because they're based on completely different ways of analyzing media. Worse, nobody can agree on what parts of star wars should be counted in the first place so even if you're analyzing things in the same style you might still be doomed.