#the vitriol for john boyega

[bookishfeylin]

On finnrey. Tbh I'm not a big SW fan (tho im still planning to watch the original trilogy cuz IK it's amazing), but my fam is and when TFA first released I was forced to go with my dad (don't remember why, just was). By the end a small part of me shipped Finnrey and was certain they'd be a thing. wasn't forced to attend the other 2 films, but from a YTer I learned of crazy Reylo fans and was so confused. Finnrey should be the main couple, not whatever the fuck Reylo is. Vent over lol

Oh, anon you're bringing back memoriesssssssssss

So I got into Star Wars in 2016 exclusively for the sequel trilogy because I heard there was a Black lead. I watched episodes 1-6 in order and LOVED the originals, though I wasn't too impressed with the prequels at the time.

TFA was already out, so after watching it I became a sequel stan waiting eagerly for TLJ, specifically for Finn, and I remember seeing fanart on Pinterest, clicking the link, and being brought to tumblr and discovering this website for the first time years before I actually made an account. I used to browse just for Finn fanart, Rey fanart, fanfiction... it was nice. But I remember there was a bit of Finn hate here and on reddit I didn't understand and some posts about how he was abusive and Kylo Ren was not and was healthier for Rey, and teenage me didn't truly get that at the time. I didn't truly flag it as racism (namely, people jumping to stick Finn with the "dangerous violent Black man" label) but it was big red flag for what was going to happen. TLJ came out, and I was disappointed that Finn was pushed aside for Kylo Ren. I came for the sequels because of the Black lead, not for the white villain. Why should I care about the emotions of a white space neonazi? But things got... so much worse. I remember Reylos calling Finn a coal boy. A dog. A monkey. The actor, John Boyega, spent years being harassed for "getting in the way" of their ship (and he'd already dealt with harassment earlier for having the audacity to be a Black male playing a lead in a big franchise, so this just added to that). Of course, when the actor received harassment in real life and the Reylos started calling the character a monkey, I knew by then it was racism, and I kind of just... stopped poking around on tumblr, Reddit, and even pinterest for sequel trilogy content. One of the people I remember calling out this behavior before I disengaged fully was @diversehighfantasy (check out her blog from the years Star Wars was coming out, from 2015-2019. She talked about the fandom's racism all the time) and she warned that unless fandom positively engaged with Finn more, his character would continue to be minimized as Disney, like all companies, is only after money and will promote whichever characters will bring in the most revenue. But white people (mainly, Reylos) didn't listen. And ofc, Finn was demoted even more in TROS.

Racist Reylos aside, I'd grown disillusioned with the sequel trilogy because, for all the prequel trilogy's weaknesses, it was very strong thematically, and I'd grown to love it for how it complemented the original trilogy. The original trilogy is amazing, but the prequels enhance the originals because the themes of the originals are truly compounded by knowing the full story, the full stakes, and Anakin's fleshed out character as revealed in the prequels. (I also watched The Clone Wars show which was AMAZING, and though I now prefer the prequels to the Clone Wars, the show played a great part in making me love the prequel era worldbuilding and characters and whatnot). The prequels and originals tell a full tale, and so between TLJ's release and TROS I was already feeling... iffy about the sequels walking back on that and the sequels essentially being a poorly made copy of the originals. When TROS came out and the movie completely sidelined Finn, the Black lead we were promised, to shove in a redemption for the white man who'd brutalized him and Rey over and over, and it spat on the face of the entire POINT of the prequels+original trilogy by, uh, having Rey do the thing she does (no spoilers :) ) instead of Anakin having fully completed the job in Return of the Jedi, I fully noped out.

The racists (both the Reylos and the people before them who freaked out over John Boyega having the audacity to be Black and exist in the Star Wars universe) got what they wanted--the white man took center stage, and the "dog", the "coal boy", the "monkey", was sidelined. And the themes of Star Wars and the entire point of the first 6 movies were utterly destroyed, with a variety of retcons and changes in the worldbuilding along the way (and if y'all know me by now you know I DESPISE retcons of any kind).

So for my own sanity, the sequels do not exist. Finn wasn't treated like that. The themes of the first 6 movies weren't walked back on and absolutely trashed as they were. Reylo is not thing, the racists didn't win, and life is good. It was basically an exercise in how I'd treat ACOMAF and all the other books after ACOTAR--they do not exist until I have to honestly critique them.

And frankly I could do it easier here and not for ACOTAR because they weren't technically made by the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas, so the sequels are essentially glorified fanfiction anyway.

Anyway: good on you for avoiding the mess the sequel trilogy ultimately became. I wish I could say the same :)

[generalpierrotdameron]

The cancellation might make sense from a numbers standpoint, as The Acolyte's budget was reportedly $180 million for eight episodes. (Never mind that a Star Wars show with fewer connections to existing IP was always going to be a riskier bet.) But from a storytelling standpoint, the decision does a major disservice to Star Wars going forward. It sends the unfortunate message that any attempts at original storytelling will be sidelined in favor of more self-referential slogs. Nothing new is allowed, nor is any show given the chance to grow past its first season unless it's an instant smash hit. So why even bother getting invested in a new Star Wars series in the first place? (Notably, Andor, the best Star Wars series, was guaranteed a Season 2 from the jump. Could you imagine if its low viewership resulted in an Acolyte-style cancellation?) 'The Acolyte' gave me hope for the future of Star Wars. Now, I'm not so sure. The loss of The Acolyte is also a blow to its audience, many of whom, like me, saw the series as a way to reconnect with a franchise that had otherwise lost their trust and interest. Whether people were seeing themselves in The Acolyte's diverse cast or rejoicing in Star Wars actually embracing an enemies-to-lovers romance, it was a joy to watch viewers geek out every week over the show's every twist and turn. Of course, there is a nasty flip side to that fandom. Bigoted, so-called Star Wars "fans" took every opportunity to attack the series with racist, sexist, and homophobic rhetoric, all because The Acolyte dared center women and people of color. Stenberg has been a target for this vitriol since her role in the show was announced, the same kind of racist attacks Star Wars actors like John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, and Moses Ingram faced before her. Following the cancellation announcement, comments on Stenberg's social media have been a parade of hateful gloating. (Thankfully, there is still quite a bit of support.) Clearly, this subset of the Star Wars audience views The Acolyte's cancellation as a moral victory and as proof that Star Wars remains "theirs." That Lucasfilm and Disney did little to speak out against this hate during The Acolyte's run speaks volumes.

👉 Renew the Acolyte - Sign the petition!

[starblightbindery]

Editor's Note from my bind, Designs of Fate, an anthology of Star Wars stories by Patricia A. Jackson.

Patricia A. Jackson is a criminally underrated Star Wars author.

I’ll explain.

Growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was challenging to be an adolescent Star Wars fangirl, particularly an Asian American one. Back then, fandom meant negotiating male-dominated online message boards where identifying as a teenage girl meant inviting a ‘fake geek girl’ grilling at best and sexual harassment at worst. Most of the published Star Wars books were about Han, Leia, and Luke. Han and Leia were in their thirties and the parents of three children...not super relatable for preteen me. As far as character development was concerned, our “Big Three” had established characterizations coalesced firmly on the side of good. For our heroes, there was no moral ambiguity as, novel by novel, they tackled the galactic Threat of the Week.

Bildungsromans, those books were not. When Jackson started writing Star Wars in the 1990s, there were no women Jedi or protagonists of color. If you wanted stories with original characters coming of age, your primary recourse was the West End Games’ Star Wars Adventure Journals and their published anthologies, Tales from the Empire (1997) and Tales from the New Republic (1999). I remember avidly poring over my dogeared paperback copies and stalking the internet for scans or transcriptions. Although I never played the D6 role-playing game, the short stories from the Star Wars Adventure Journals helped me envision that a character like me—a young Asian girl coming into her own—did have a place in Star Wars after all.

As evinced by the vitriolic reactions towards John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran during the production of the sequel trilogy, Star Wars fandom can be a hateful environment for proponents of diversity and inclusion. A small but irritatingly loud faction of fascist-leaning, cishet, white male fans are actively hostile towards fans who advocate for change; they are more troubled by the presence of queers, women and BIPOC than our absence. Because of the ubiquity and popularity of Star Wars in America’s cultural milieu, the sentiments from these self-appointed gatekeepers have been—and continue to be—amplified by right wing extremists, and, to some extent, even by the Internet Research Agency as tools of Russia’s psychological and cyber warfare against the United States. During his Ph.D. candidacy with the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, Morten Bay, PhD., studied negative tweets about The Last Jedi and found that 50.9% of negative tweets were “bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists using the debate to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality.”

“Russian trolls weaponize Star Wars criticism as an instrument of information warfare with the purpose of pushing for political change,” he wrote, “while it is weaponized by right-wing fans to forward a conservative agenda and for some it is a pushback against what they perceive as a feminist/social justice onslaught.”

The creation and inclusion of characters with minoritized identities in Star Wars is, therefore, an act of resistance. As far as I’m aware, Patricia A. Jackson was the first woman of color and Black author to write for the Star Wars expanded universe. Jackson has described the fan environment in the 1990s thusly; like many minoritized fans of color, she would be given pithy justifications such as "Well, there’s no Africa in Star Wars, so there are no Black people." Jackson noted, aptly, "That was just translation for “’You don’t matter. You don’t need to be here.’” Jackson's work for West End Games, particularly her sourcebook The Black Sands of Socorro, is a subversion of those expectations.

Before anyone else did, Jackson showed fandom that dominant mayo masculinity did not have to be the only way to tell Star Wars stories. Her stories existed before the prequel trilogy and three decades of Star Wars publishing, before FanFiction.net, Archive of Our Own, or Wattpad. She is the forerunner for BIPOC writers in Star Wars, followed by other luminaries like Steven Barnes, Daniel José Older, Nnedi Okorafor, Rebecca Roanhorse, Ken Liu, Greg Pak, Alyssa Wong, Sarah Kuhn, Saladin Ahmed, C.B. Lee, Justina Ireland, Alex Segura, Zoraida Cordova, Greg VanEekhout, Mike Chen, Charles Yu, R.F. Kuang, Sarwat Chadda, Sabaa Tahir, and Renée Ahdieh.

Jackson had and continues to have an incredibly prescient understanding of what makes a good Star Wars story. Any of the stories in this anthology could find a home as an anime short from Star Wars: Visions (2021). Ideas from Jackson’s Star Wars short stories have appeared in later media, sometimes decades later. Whether convergently evolved or directly influenced, the parallels are astonishing: Kierra, the snarky feminine droid consciousness who inhabits Thaddeus Ross’s ship, is a spiritual predecessor to L3-37, Lando Calrissian’s snarky feminine droid companion from Solo (2018) who ends the film uploaded to the Millennium Falcon. Jackson addressed concepts like slavery and Force healing predating the prequel and sequel trilogies. In “Idol Intentions,” she created an adventuring academic on the hunt for artifacts long before Kieron Gillen brought Doctor Aphra to life. Squint and the upturned red salt on the planet Crait in The Last Jedi becomes flying red soil on the planet Redcap. Dark haired, dark side tragic emo boy starcrossed with a fiery girl Jedi?—I think Jackson understood intuitively the appeal of this trope to a woman-dominated contingent of fandom well before “Reylo” topped Tumblr’s fan favorite relationship charts in 2020.

Jackson’s work is also significant for deepening world building. Much like how Timothy Zahn introduced analysis of fine art to Star Wars with his villainous art connoisseur Grand Admiral Thrawn, Jackson’s stories introduced concepts such as the evolution of Old Corellian, the acting profession, and Legitimate Theatre. These elements added verisimilitude to the expanded universe; it makes sense that different cultures in Star Wars would have archaic languages, folk songs, and old stories of their own from even longer ago in galaxies far, far, away. More recently, the franchise has started to flesh out in-universe lore in Star Wars: Myths and Fables (2019) by George Mann. Still, Uhl Eharl Khoehng in “Uhl Eharl Khoehng” (1995) remains the finest example of mise en abyme in any Star Wars related work.

Themes from Jackson’s Star Wars works, particularly around Drake Paulsen and Socorro, also connect contemporaneously with our real world. When the Seldom Different is essentially ‘pulled over’ by Imperial authorities in “Out of the Cradle” (1994), stormtroopers lie about Drake Paulsen having a weapon as a pretense to terrorize the teenager. It’s a collision of space opera with Black youths’ past and current experiences of police brutality and state-sanctioned violence. Accordingly, this capricious encounter is the rite of passage that jars Drake out of his childhood. I cheered when I read The Black Sands of Socorro (1997) and saw that the Black Bha'lir smuggler’s guild is named for a bha'lir, depicted in the book as a large...panther. Few Star Wars expanded universe authors—particularly in the 1990s—leveraged their influence to center characters of color or to allude to racial justice movements. Jackson did both.

For this anthology, I have copy edited and also taken the liberty of, when applicable, substituting some gendered or sanist language with more contemporaneous wording.17 The stories are otherwise intact. It would be remiss of me if I did not note; however, that one of the stories, “Bitter Winter” (1995), has sanist and ableist tropes that could not be contemporized without making dramatic changes to the story. In this story, the fictional disease brekken vinthern drives those impacted to violence; while it’s real world correlate of major neurocognitive disorder can include symptoms of aggression and agitation, extreme violence is rare and people with this condition are also at great risk of being harmed by violence. The tropes “Mercy Kill” and “Shoot the Dog” are depictions of non-voluntary active euthanasia, typically from the perspective of the horrified “killer” placed in an impossible situation. These tropes frame murder and death as “putting someone out of their misery” while downplaying any alternatives (ie: sedation to alleviate suffering, medical attention, or, say, ion cannons to render a ship inoperable without killing.)

Like in our society, the societies in Star Wars have consistently framed mental illness pejoratively. There are certainly valid critiques of the utter inadequacy of health care in Star Wars. Ableism is ubiquitous in entertainment media, and even with it’s problematic tropes, “Bitter Winter” remains one of the more humanizing depictions of a mental health condition in Star Wars fiction. I have included it in this anthology as a rare example of moral ambiguity in the franchise.

With the exception of “Fragile Threads” and “Emanations of Darkness,” the stories here are presented not in published order, but in chronological order as they would have occurred in the Star Wars universe. Ordering the stories chronologically helped clarify timelines; it also allows the anthology to begin with “The Final Exit,” which was a fan favorite back when it was first published. I’ve interwoven the Brandl family stories with Drake Paulsen’s coming of age adventures, as the Paulsens are such a strong foil to the Brandl family.

Since “I am your father” dropped in 1980, Star Wars has been big on Daddy Issues—intergenerational trauma, parental relationships, broken attachments, identity development, and initiation into adulthood (or, as Obi-Wan Kenobi would put it, “taking your first steps into a larger world.”) With Drake, we see that Kaine Paulsen is a father who is gone but ever-present. With Jaalib, we see that Adalric Brandl is a father who is ever-present but clearly far gone. Drake knows his Socorran roots; he has community and found family. Fable’s identity is adrift; she was torn from her roots after her fugitive Jedi mother’s death. Jaalib’s roots are scaffolded by disingenuous artifice. There is a diametric interplay of identity formation and parental legacy in these short stories that captures classic themes from Star Wars. And, the stories challenge readers to consider how we interact with shame, guilt, and obligation. Through the morally ambiguous dilemmas that are her oeuvre, Jackson’s characters discover who they are and where they stand.

While the thrill of having an Imperial Star Destroyer drop out of hyperspace is pure Star Wars energy, Jackson’s stories also disrupted what fans had come to expect. Published online as fan fiction, “Emanations of Darkness” (2001) polarized fans of the previous Brandl stories, particularly with Fable’s decision to throw her lot in with Jaalib and his father. At the time, Star Wars fan commentator Charles Phipps noted how the story dealt with the insidiousness of the dark side by taking potential heroes and crushing them. “Star Wars, I've never known to leave a bitter taste in my mouth,” he wrote, stunned. “I don't like what it's brought out in my feelings or myself...Bravo Brandl, you have your applause.” Although the Brandl stories were written and published before Revenge of the Sith (2005), Fable and Jaalib’s relationship mirrors the relationship between Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker, down to both Jaalib and Anakin selling their souls to the same Emperor in hopes that will spare the women they love.

The prequel trilogy introduces the Jedi Council’s detached approach to attachments—don’t feel it, emotions like fear or anger are to be shunned, else suffering will follow. Anakin Skywalker’s broken attachments to his mother and Padmé lead him to turn against his values; his inability to integrate or tolerate his attachments is his downfall. It’s the same in the Brandl stories where, trauma bonded, Fable and Jaalib cannot let each other go. While Jaalib credits this as how he was able to preserve a bit of himself while under the Emperor’s thrall, his inability to extricate himself from his father’s influence or to let go of Fable ends up dooming her.

This is why I was thrilled to discover “Fragile Threads” (2021) on Wattpad twenty years later. In this story, Drake Paulsen helps his lover Tiaja Moorn save her sister, at the cost of losing their relationship when she decides to remain on her homeworld. Drake doesn’t fight her decision, he accepts it. He can hold onto that connection to Tiaja, just as he knows he will always be connected to Socorro, his father, and the Black Bha'lir. Drake can love freely because he knows what Luke Skywalker told Leia in The Last Jedi: “No one is ever truly gone.” He is able to straddle the fulcrum of attachment and love without letting it consume him, and that is balancing the Force.

Contemporary fandom discourse is also a struggle with attachment; the parasocial relationships we form with characters and stories are similar in process to how we attach to the important people in our lives. We imbue with meaning and carry these stories with us. As Star Wars storytelling enters its fifth decade, the divide between affirmational fandom (allegiance to manufactured nostalgia) and transformational fandom (allegiance to iterative and transgressive fan engagement) has factionized fandom. When Star Wars is seen as a totemic object, right wing fans have agitated for a return to a mythic past where white men were centered and morality was Manichean. From where I stand, at the heart of this debate is whether or not the reader or Star Wars is permitted to “grow up”—to leave the cradle, to evolve new identities and explore shades of grey.

To me, Jackson’s stories are a reminder that characters of color and complex moral dilemmas have always been a part of Star Wars. We have always been here. No other Star Wars author has been as exquisitely aware of the significance of storytelling; how it can help people challenge existing beliefs and discover themselves. Since the beginnings of the expanded universe, Patricia A. Jackson has spun yarn, and those fragile threads have tethered readers like myself to a galaxy far, far away.

Ol'val, min dul'skal, ahn guld domina, mahn uhl Fharth bey ihn valle. (Until we next meet, may the Force be with you.)

[destinyc1020]

I don’t know if you saw, Destiny, but Tuwaine tweeted something that seemed to imply that Tom perhaps advocated for a diverse cast. I’m not 100 percent sure that’s what he meant, but that’s how people took it. Anyway, that could be why the criticism is so focused on Tom right now, people wanting him to realize that being an ally doesn’t stop at making sure everyone has an opportunity, they must be protected and advocated for throughout.

Thanks Anon for informing me of this. I didn't see Tuwaine's tweet, so I can't share whether I would get the impression that his tweet had anything to do with Tom and the R&J play. But thanks for providing more background info. I do agree that when you're an ally, it's not just enough to give talented and well-deserving poc opportunities, but you also have to protect them when they get inevitable hate as well.

I think about.....

the hate that Halle received for TLM

the hate that John Boyega received for being in the Star Wars franchise

the hate that Candice Patton received for playing Iris (Barry's gf) in "The Flash"

the hate Zendaya received for playing MJ in the Spiderman franchise

the hate that Amandla Stenberg received for playing Rue in "The Hunger Games" franchise

the hate that Leah Sava Jeffries received for playing in the "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" series

and now, the hate that Francesca is receiving for playing Juliet to Tom's Romeo in R&J

Notice a pattern? It seems that whenever a black actor/actress plays in a role or filming project that is assumed to be "meant" for a white actor/actress", for some reason, people (racists especially) go NUTS! 🥴 They start spouting such vitriol and hatred for the actor. As if, they feel like white people are being erased or something, when white actors make up the BULK of all entertainment already. 😒🙄

It is the wildest thing to me.

Anyway.... I really do hope that going forward, poc can be protected more when given roles in mainstream media.

[thevisibilityarchives]

The Expanse [TV Series] (2015-2022)

Network(s): SyFy, Amazon

Creators: James S.A. Corey

BIPOC

Summary: 200+ years in the future, humanity has ventured into the far reaches of the solar system, colonizing the Milky Way and spreading the political turmoil of Earth among the generations to come. A fragile peace exists among the three factions that arise, a peace that cannot last when something greater emerges that threatens them all, changing the course of humanity for all time to come. 

Full review: For every generation, there is a defining sci-fi television show that captivates audiences, tapping into visions of the near future while simultaneously managing to address modern sociopolitical themes and changing mores. 

Can The Expanse be ranked as one of those shows, among the likes of Star Trek, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica? Undoubtedly, it’s a question deserving of consideration and debate.

In a time before streaming, the impact would be more obvious thanks to ever-present television ratings data, fights over family television screens, and demands for network advertising time. But when a show exists solely within the realm of the digital sphere, on a streaming service like Amazon Prime, there’s a bit more nuance to consider when judging its success and audience impact. 

Conceived by authors Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham under the pen name James S.A. Corey, The Expanse originally aired on the SyFy network in 2015, a high-budgeted adaptation of their book series that was well-received by critics and audiences alike until its early demise (due to said budget) at the end of its second season. With a bit of luck, the show was picked up by Amazon Prime studios, given the Jeff Bezos Budget, the TV-MA stamp of adultification freedom, and was renewed, allowing it to take off for the remaining four seasons which concluded in 2022. 

The series retains the core features beloved by sci-fi fans, the formula complicit in defining those generational sci-fi hits: space exploration, the imaginativeness of the near future, the role of politics, and perhaps a central and often missed detail – its diversity and multiculturalism. 

There is a sharp division between the science fiction and fantasy crowds when it comes to multicultural representation. Often, the two genres are clumped together, their metadata schema combined as one – sci-fi/fantasy. Yet within these two genres, the approach to racial and cultural diversity could not be more different. 

This reaction has never been more pronounced than in the past year, during the airing of Prime’s Rings of Power and HBO’s House of the Dragon. Both shows cast actors of color into roles wherein the networks, as well as actors themselves, received criticisms, not for their performances, but simply for the color of their skin.

Commenting upon reactions to Stephen Toussaint, who portrays Corlys Velaryon in House of the Dragon the LA Times reported

“Toussaint is just the latest actor of color to address the racism he faced just for being cast in a major property. Others include Moses Ingram of Disney+ series “Obi-Wan,” and Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega who dealt with similar online abuse over their roles in the newer “Star Wars” films.”

The vitriol has extended beyond just message board gripes, with actors and fans of color alike receiving flooded inbox messages and even in-person harassment over their simple existence in various fandoms as people of color. 

There is something of an irony here. For fantasy, which is rooted mostly in imagination (with some inspiration from real-life events) seemingly has set up a world where all manner of monsters, magic, and scenarios can be envisioned: and yet a black elf, a brown knight, or an Asian queen magician cannot. Whereas sci-fi, often depicted within the confines of near-future scenarios, has historically been more flexible, even to the point of breaking immense taboos like The Kiss Seen Around the World on Star Trek, only a year after interracial marriage became legal in the United States. 

This emphasis on multiculturalism, combined with the glory of high-stakes drama, the exploration of the final frontier, and the imaginings of what technology still can be creates a formula that appeals across multiple generations still today, a tapestry of impossibility, variability, and sensibility. 

Over the course of six seasons, what begins as a hard-boiled detective seeking to return a trillionaire’s daughter who has joined up with a group of anarchists in the far-flung reaches of the solar system unfolds into a whirlwind of high-stakes political machinations, doomsday scenarios, and interpersonal drama. 

Keeping in touch with an examination of what upward trends of the future tell us, the lives of those depicted onscreen are flush with different types of diversity. Multiracialism is prominent in certain parts of the solar system, Creole dialects are a natural development. Polyamory, new ways of eating, body types,  and religious ideologies emerge. Unlike other media which often falls out of date quickly when looking at the way trends have aligned with the passage of time, The Expanse follows what thus-far seems to be a natural trajectory of what our path looks like (assuming we are still alive by then). Its actors range from Caucasian-American to Iranian, Samoan, Ojibwe, Cambodian, Black, multiracial, Jamaican, and ethnicities far and wide. 

The show is heavily rooted (and its source material, by extension) in the very definition of what multiculturalism is and can be, and a prime example of a thoughtful and true representation of all television sci-fi has given us and shows us is possible: a world in living color in which reality is possible, and no one can tell us otherwise. 

You can find hard copies of seasons 1-4 of The Expanse at major retailers, your local library,  some copies of seasons 5 and 6 via online sellers like eBay and stream it on its home, Amazon Prime here.

Citations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_and_Uhura%27s_kiss

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-08-22/dragons-being-more-plausible-than-a-rich-black-guy-irks-house-of-the-dragon-star

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/loving-v-virginia

[explorerrowan]

Everyone was far too hard on Ahmed Best. And really, on Jar-Jar Binks. Jar-Jar Binks was FAR from the silliest thing in sci-fi, or even in Star Wars, and Star Wars "fans" just shit all over him and the actor that played him for basically no reason. Ahmed Best did a great job with the part he was given, and deserved none of the hate this community heaped on him.

Star Wars has seriously one of the most toxic fandoms I've ever had the displeasure of identifying with, to the point that I don't anymore, and actively distance myself from most things Star Wars. Y'all were awful to Jake Lloyd, y'all were awful to Ahmed Best, y'all were awful to John Boyega, y'all were awful to Alden Ehrenreich, y'all were awful to Kelly Marie Tran... Honestly, the Star Wars fan "community" has been just awful in general, and I'm not sure what about this property evinces such vitriol.

I'm very glad to see Ahmed Best get the recognition and appreciation he deserves.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE THAT THEY BROUGHT BACK AHMED BEST BUT ALSO THAT THEY CAST HIM IN THE ROLE OF SOMEONE WHO ALL THE JEDI ARE SAYING TO GET GROGU TO HIM, TO GET THE CHILD TO KELLERAN. IT’S A NOD TO THE ADORABLE JEDI TEMPLE CHALLENGE SERIES WHERE KIDS COMPETED IN A GAME SHOW TO GRADUATE FROM PADAWANS TO JEDI KNIGHTS. HIS NAME WAS KELLERAN BEQ, JEDI MASTER, IN THAT SHOW, SO THIS IS CANONIZING HIM AND DOING SO IN A WAY THAT IMPLIES HE’S EITHER A CRECHEMASTER OR SOMEONE WHO WORKS WITH THE YOUNGLINGS A LOT. I AM SO READY FOR THE KELLERAN BEQ, JEDI CRECHEMASTER, REVIVAL. PUT HIM IN COMICS AND GIVE HIM CAMEOS IN SHORT STORIES AND WHATEVER ELSE YOU CAN THINK OF, LUCASFILM.  GIVE ME MORE AHMED BEST PLAYING HIM BECAUSE I AM GOING TO BE ON CLOUD NINE FOR A WEEK AFTER GETTING KELLERAN BEQ OFFICIALLY CANONIZED INTO SERIOUS CANON.

[short-wooloo]

I will not hear anything against Reva or Lil Leia

Because you fuckers are doing it again

You all learned nothing from Jake Lloyd, John Boyega, and Kelly Marie Tran

Every damn time

Every time sw fans are unhappy with a character or an actors portrayal, you asshats take it as a blank check to harass the actors

ESPECIALLY if they're non-white, women, and/or a child

Hell I'd say y'all only do this when an actor is one or more of the above, because I can't help that notice how when adult white male actors play a role or gives a performance that isn't liked, they receive NOWHERE near the same amount of vitriol

So can I just say from the bottom of my heart:

Fuck You, Go To Hell

[brydeswhale]

I think what really weirds me out about the whole “Alex bashing” in the #tarlos fandom is just how gratuitously unnecessary it is.

I mean, again, we really know very little about this guy.

Just that he dated TK, and he fell out of love with him, so they broke up. And also that TK wanted to marry him(moved on pretty quick, tho, so I suspect a great deal of the fantasy in regards to that wish).

The only ppl who would logically have bad things to say about Alex are TK and Owen.

And the only thing Owen really says is that TK is moving too fast(which he is).

And as far as TK is concerned, he says that Alex fell in love with someone else and that the break up was hard.

Which, sad, but also fairly neutral statements.

And yet, despite this glaring lack of evidence, fandom is rife with such hot tales as, “Alex is abusive/Alex forced TK to relapse/Alex cheated on TK”.

All of which are basically silly.

There’s no evidence that Alex was an abusive partner. It’s never mentioned by anyone who knew him, and certainly not by TK. And in a show that milks drama like a freshened cow, you’d think that kind of thing would come up. But nope.

And as far as TK’s relapse and subsequent, as sad as it was, there’s just one person responsible for that, and that’s TK. While his illness does make the relapse understandable, he did have other options. He chose, of his own volition, to relapse.

And the cheating thing would have also come up in the show. It would have been a huge component of TK’s relationship with Carlos. But again, it’s never been a thing.

He fell in love with someone else and ended his relationship. That’s actually a mature and healthy thing to do. He’s not responsible for how TK reacts to that. He’s only responsible for doing the right thing and being honest. Which he was.

So, why so much animosity?

And, I mean, it’s not like Tarlos shippers even want him around. Alex isn’t an obstacle for the relationship, he’s just an ex. He’s just a bit of drama to spice things up for Carlos and TK.

So, why so much animosity for someone who, for all intents and purposes, is basically part of a back ground plot point to get TK to Texas?

Alex isn’t there. He’s not trying to get between them, the extent of his presence in the show is(like so many things in TK’s character) all about TK, and it’s quickly discarded after the first season.

Fandom does love a villain, tho, in more ways than one. It’s not uncommon to grab a random character and make them the bad guy, even if they’re realistic innocuous in reality. Alex, being an ex, would naturally fill that role.

But the sheer level of vitriol aimed at a dude who, quite simply, isn’t present in any substantial way, is kind of messed up.

Having said all that, this is a pretty obvious pattern when it comes to fandom and characters of colour, ESPECIALLY Black characters.

You can see it in things like the Star Wars fandom, the Flash, and many others.

It’s how “holding her hand to draw her away from a fire fight” becomes “unwanted sexual contact”.

A close friendship blossoming into love becomes “ew, incest, I like the piss kink lady better!”

But at least Finn and Iris had an actual presence that could blossom into love.

Alex just, like I said, exists in the backstory. His piece of TK’s arc is over and done with and he’s in New York, one presumes, living his best life.

(And, I mean, given the level of harassment that both John Boyega and Candice Patton have experienced in the past few years, I kind of think that’s for the best, for the actor’s sake, at least.)

Before I continue, let me tell you what I’m NOT saying. I’m not saying every Tarlos fan who uses these tropes is a card carrying KKK member. What I AM saying is that these people seem to have a lot of subconscious biases they need to examine.

To be blunt, fandom stereotypes characters of colour, especially Black characters, as abusers, drug pushers, cheaters, etc, because those are prevalent stereotypes about Black people in many countries around the world.

And no matter how much we might SAY we’re immune to propaganda, God and Garfield both know otherwise.

So it’s worth examining one’s motivations in who one chooses to make into a villain and why, and maybe to avoid doing it.

[icedsodapop]

Again, I just want to reiterate to White pple, esp White pple who consider themselves liberal/leftist/progressive/left-leaning in general, that y'all need to reflect on why y'all are so quick to jump to mockery/criticism/vitriol/outrage whenever people of color, esp women of color, fucked up or are perceived to have fucked up.

I included "perceived to have fucked up" becos y'all will jump on people of color over non-issues like what happened with John Boyega, Constance Wu and Marie Kondo

I'm seeing White liberals/leftists getting angry at Oprah over the situation at Maui and I just want to say this real quick:

Again, I want to preface this by saying that I'm not defending Oprah Winfrey for owning Hawaiian land, because she shouldn't. But I also want to point out that the White pple getting angry at Oprah specifically is problematic becos:

1) it individualizes the problem and does not allow for further interrogation of US colonization of Hawaii and how the US goverment created the very conditions that allowed wealthy Americans to own Hawaiian land in the first place.

2) of the fact that Black women, will face harsher scrutiny than their White counterparts for every action they do, and Oprah is a hypervisible wealthy Black woman. I don't see the same vitriol targeted towards White wealthy celebrities who own property in Hawaii like Jeff Bezos or Owen Wilson or Woody Harrelson or Willie Nelson or Jim Carrey, and so many more if you do a quick google of "celebrities who own Hawaii property".

That is why I get wary when I see White and non-Black pple criticize Black public figures, simply because a lot of them, even if they are left-leaning, don't examine their antiblack bias and hence, don't question why they react so excessively vitriolic towards Black women. And sometimes, the criticism devolves into microaggressions, like it did with Lizzo and Carlee Russell.

[sunflowermp4]

thinking about how john boyega was only 22 when he was cast as finn in star wars. thinking about how joyful he was during those initial press tours and interviews. thinking about the vitriolic anti-Black racism he had to endure with minimal support. i'm so happy to see him thriving now with multiple projects + wide acclaim and so pissed at what he went through before getting here.

[worfianism]

I know this sucks but it is my blog so I feel like I get to rant a little bit. I've only been a star wars fan for like a year, maybe a little more than that. Obi-Wan Kenobi is probably the biggest star wars property to actually come out during the time that I've been a fan and like its honestly so stressful to see what this fandom does sometimes. Like the vitriol towards Moses Ingram, to Reva (a character we've seen for 2 episodes) and to the young actress playing little Leia is so sickening. Like I just don't get how people just say shit and don't actually think about the fact that those are real people. Also does this fandom not learn??? After Jake Lloyd, Ahmed Best, John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, even Daisy Ridley and Hayden Christensen???? I've been in my fair share of toxic fandoms but I think Star Wars really does take the crown. It doesn't matter what it is but there's always someone complaining, there's always someone being horrible to the people involved in making it. I'm not saying don't criticise but like don't be a prick about it.

ALSO QUICK PSA: it doesn't matter if you think an actor is untalented, calling them a diversity hire or a quota filler IS racist. I legit don't care if they are the worst actor in the world, its racist to call them a diversity hire. Also, there's legit no point being a dick to child actors. There's not even a point in criticising them, they're children. They're still developing their skill, they don't need faceless people on the Internet being dicks to them, it's not gonna help them get better at acting, it's just gonna put them down. Also they're kids. Leave them the fuck alone.

[shewhotellsstories]

@alligatorjesie Wow, calling out fandom racism means I'm bullying people trying to pay their rent? Look, if you ship Reylo and you're just minding your own business and didn't engage in the vitriol against John Boyega, then congrats. Not only are you not an asshole, but I'm not talking about you. Still, a hot dog will holler as the saying goes and pro-tip harassing, demonizing, and degrading a man of color in the name of empowerment is everything wrong with white feminism. And "you people" have got to dig deeper than, "It's not white women being racist in fandom, it's just the guys."

“Making white women complicit in the racism they have since been all too eager to blame solely on white men. Because, as Stephanie Jones-Rogers reminds us, white women were not passive bystanders to the racial crimes of white men: “They were co-conspirators.”

-White Tears, Brown Scars, Ruby Hamad

But seriously it was such a wild experience seeing white women with #blm in their Twitter bios decide Mechad Brooks and John Boyega’s experiences with racism were invalid last summer because they disliked them. Now that I’ve finished White Tears/Brown Scars I get the psychology a little better, but the lack of self awareness was fascinating.

[urcadelimabean]

I found my tag for "weekly star wars nonsense roundup." Those were darker times.....I think I ingested a lethal dose of salt going through that tag.

Honorable mention to the mental gymnastics needed to claim that being attracted to Adam Driver is progressive because he's "not conventionally attractive" (implying that attraction should be progressive which is whack) whereas being attracted to John Boyega, a man routinely sidelined by lucasfilm and subjected to vitriolic racist harassment from fans, was the man favored by the franchise and the one we were "supposed" to be attracted to and is therefore boring

Huge honorable mention to the reylo blog who posted negativity in the finn tag, was offended at John Boyega for his innocuous "laying the pipe" comment, and in a key move wrote a highly educational dialogue between Kylo Ren and Rey in which Kylo asks Rey if she would like to "lay the pipe," thereby demonstrating that this user has no idea how to use the phrase "laying the pipe" as the above interchangeable actually implies that Kylo is asking to be pegged, because if he was doing the dicking, he'd be laying the pipe, not Rey. Reylo pegging bingo square, checked...finally.

But really Ive seen a lot in the star wars fandom but the idea of hux feeling unsafe at his fascist desk job and this being a bad thing nearly broke me.

[universe-on-her-shoulders]

I think the sad thing about Time Lord Victorious is that it shows the BBC have lost faith in Doctor Who in its present form and Jodie as the lead actress. They seem to have caved to the vocal minority of fans who have refused to accept Jodie, and they seem determined to pander to those fans by offering them an EU storyline based around a “safe” Doctor (10), which leaves fans of 13 out in the cold with limited merchandise options which are geared at younger audiences, or else extremely out of most people’s price range.

It’s exactly the same thing that happened with Peter Capaldi; the BBC seemed to bow to pressure from a vocal minority of fans who didn’t like Peter’s Doctor; the end of Peter’s run was almost totally overshadowed by Jodie’s announcement (which was exciting, yes, but Peter’s departure was almost totally eclipsed by it) and he was marred by poor reviews of his final season.

The BBC’s attitude seemed to be “well, nobody likes him so we don’t need to try”, and this seems to have become their attitude to Jodie’s Doctor too. They have put all their effort into Time Lord Victorious and very little into viable or desirable merchandise for 13; what merch there is available is predominantly aimed at children or is hugely expensive, as though fans of 13 are either under 10 years old or serious cosplayers with large budgets - which just isn’t true.

The intent with Time Lord Victorious seems to be to bury Jodie’s upcoming festive special, as though doing so might make her “go away”, although Jodie has signed on for at least 1 further series. The virtual panel held at SDCC was geared towards TLV; recent merch releases have been the same - TLV characters who the audience haven’t even met yet were given action figures before Ryan, Yaz and Graham, who have been part of the Whoniverse since 2018. Tim Shaw has a Funko figure available, but there is still no Funko of Ryan, Yaz or Graham (or Bill Potts).

The BBC appears to be echoing Disney’s treatment of Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega in Star Wars; they’re caving to a minority of vocal fans rather than advocating for their actors. Jodie and her Doctor receive almost daily vitriol on all of Doctor Who’s social media channels, but other than a single press statement following her casting, the BBC have never commented on this or attempted to moderate their platforms, instead allowing fans to voice spiteful, malicious and cruel views without repercussion.

It could not be clearer that the BBC has lost faith in Jodie in the same way it lost faith in Peter. And it’s all thanks to a vocal minority of fans who spoil things for everyone else.

(Please note: this is written by a pro-13 and pro-12 fan. No shade to either Peter or Jodie here.)

[shewhotellsstories]

My love you are the one who went on a tirade, not me. And I will do a lot to prove someone wrong, but combing through nearly three years of racist tweets to prove to a stranger who’ll dismiss me and or say it was deserved just isn’t on the list. Yet, because I like to suffer, apparently, I did spend hours in 2020 reading all the vile things you and your ilk were saying about John Boyega which ranged from Donald Trump comparisons to implying he's a predator. Considering your reading comprehension skills are so low, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed online unsupervised. But you got me, none of the nice white ladies in your fandom participated in the vitriol John Boyega and any other actor of color faced. And people are there characters, apparently. Plus, today I'm learning that if you wouldn't say it about/to your grandmother you can't say it about a character. So educational. And I believe you when you say you have no life and nothing else to do today, but the same isn’t true for me. You harassing and trying to convince me that John Boyega is a predator who wants to fuck his co-star has wasted enough of my time today. 

But I will leave these here in the event you ever want to try and act like a decent human:

http://fansplaining.tumblr.com/post/144557202888/in-race-and-fandom-part-1-flourish-and https://fansplaining.tumblr.com/post/631886309494046720/episode-135-race-and-fandom-revisited/amp

https://medium.com/@beccaeharrison/its-a-trap-reylos-racism-and-the-whiteness-of-data-in-the-harassment-of-women-online-be3a7fed040b

https://gamoradianastar.medium.com/john-boyega-and-the-racism-of-white-fandom-f578ca3da331https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/race-and-fandom-revisited-part-2/id1024216991?i=1000493360106https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/135a-race-and-fandom-revisited-part-1

Well you just went on a right fucking tirade didn't you @shewhotellsstories?

You don't need to flood our tag with your racist bullshit. You can stop acting like an actual fucking child and fix your tags whenever.

So please, I'm begging you.

Show me those racist reylo screenshots.

Show them to me.

Go on.

We got time. It's the weekend, assuming you don't fuckin' block me again.

I ain't got shit to do but make some violet syrup and can some dandelion jam while reading my reylo smut on my tablet.

It's a Western AU right now and Rose and Finn AND Poe are all in it and Hux dies of dysentery and somehow to still feels better than how they offed him in ep9.



I wanna get inside the head of the person who hears that a grown man they admire said the line 'Lay pipe' which means 'To Have Sex With' about a coworker and somehow that isn't sexual harassment to you?

Hey can you say that to your grandmother? Would your grandfather appreciate you saying that about his wife?

Is that normal to you?

Because I work for a dildo factory and I think what he said was out of fucking line

And there's giant dildos going into assholes at such a depth it would take your breath away just blasting in the background from time to time and even I heard that John Boyega said the line 'Laying pipe' aimed at his coworker Daisy Ridley, a person who was already harassed off Instagram by these same alt-right nazi fanboys





And thought 'Wow that's fucking inappropriate.'



And I mean this isn't the first time John's had some pretty shit fucking takes.



Ya'll remember that time he called his coworker, Kelly Marie Tran, 'Weak' because she refused to deal with online harassment and just deleted her accounts that she was very active on?

He walked back on it, which thank fuck because my god how callused can you be, but this is what I mean when I say John can sometimes say shit and not think about what he's saying and how it can be interpreted badly.



I make bad jokes all the fucking time and when someone calls me out on it I'm adult enough to walk it back and not double down on being a fucking prick.

You are not helping him by mindlessly worshiping the ground he walks on. He's a real human and can make real mistakes and you need to be big enough to know even your idles can say and do bad things, that's just... living in the real world man.



Either way

No one in the reylo fandom even gives a fuck anymore.

John must not have been too fucking bothered by the harassment regardless because last I check he still has an Instagram and a twitter. He never left either.

You don't need personally fret over John's mental health.

He's doing fucking fine and making more money than everyone who has liked this shit post combined.

Who you should still feel bad for is Daisy Ridley who ain't been on social media still to this fucking day. Kelly, An Asian Woman, ain't been online until just recently because she was still so gunshy after the first bout of harassment.

By alt-right nazi fanboys.

Not the reylos who once 4 years ago got a little upsetty at one actor because he made a bad sex joke.

The fandom who likes to harass black members or really just everyone involved in these movies is and historically has been The Fandom Menace, a very real group with a very real history of harassment.

Not the reylos.

Not the chicks who write A/B/O soulmate fics or draw the characters as cute animals for funzees.



Weird. It was the fandom menace the entire time.





Regardless.

You are tagging your shit wrong.



The tag you are looking for is

Anti-Reylo

or

Antireylo



NOT

Anti Reylo



because tagging it like this means you're tagging opening in the regular tags and the normal fandom can see your shit.



Better yet, don't be a fucking anti. No one ever fucking wants to see your bullshit in our tags.

No person on this website should need to go through extra lengths to block antis from posting in our fandom spaces. I or any new user should not need to first and foremost block the 'anti' tags to insure we don't see anti posts in our fucking tags.



You Shouldn't Be Here.

So please.

Stop being a mindless fucking cunt for a few fucking moments and fix your tags then please fucking leave this fandom space.



You are not welcome here.

[shewhotellsstories]

I was watching a reaction video last night and a really tone deaf rant brought back some memories. I can’t help but continue to feel troubled by this awful trend of shippers and stans being horrible to actors who play characters they feel are a threat to their ships. I’m reading a bit about about Kat Graham getting hate from Delena stans in addition to the run of the mill fandom racism (didn’t follow the show for it’s last two seasons). Candice Patton has really gone through it in her years working on The Flash. Rahul Kohli’s appearance on Supergirl was brief, but the stans still descended to harass him. Same story with Staz Nair regrettably from what I’ve seeing from the sidelines. SC and Reylo stans were so aggrieved that they decided it wasn’t a total dick move to invalidate John Boyega and Mehcad Brooks’ experiences with racism just because they decided something isn’t racist if you don’t like the person involved over the summer. Which like, yeah, we’re discussing systemic racism and police brutality but sure. Your ship’s the most important thing here obviously. Troublingly I remember a faction of stans from the ATLA fandom call an actor a pedophile over a ship, which yikes. Seriously, yikes. In that vein I notice the level of vitriol gets dialed up if the actor is a person of color. But I also vaguely remember OUAT actors after another being driven off of twitter one by one because things got so nasty in the fandom. And Chris Wood has spoken out about being cyber bullied too.

I just don’t get what the people who do this are hoping to accomplish. Based on my understanding actors have little control over scripts and even though I have many opinions about the shows I’ve watched, I haven’t felt the need to be awful to actors over it. There is a fascinating psychological study here somewhere.