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the-far-bright-center · 6 years ago

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eventually, even stars burn out

“Sometimes there are things no one can fix.”

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve become increasingly concerned that my days in the SW fandom (or at least, the tumblr side of it) may be numbered.

I very much hope I’m wrong about this. So, on the slight chance that it might help somehow, I’ll try to explain why I feel this way right now.

As most of you know, I have an extremely fraught and complicated relationship with Disney’s so-called ‘new canon’ material, which all began when TFA left me so heartbroken that I’ve been unable to trust anyone at all with Star Wars ever since. I struggle to believe that the Skywalker saga will ever be treated with the adequate respect and care that it requires, and I fear that new material will only attempt to further erode its original mythic meaning....just so the ‘story’ can be continued on indefinitely. It is therefore difficult if not impossible for me to be excited about ‘new canon’ content, because ever since TFA I view every single piece of SW media released by Disney with (imo warranted) mistrust and skepticism.

After a certain SW animated series ended earlier this year, I had thought I would finally be free from the strain of constantly worrying about ‘new’ content. My blacklists covered most of the major things I didn’t want to see, and tumblr’s filter feature seemed to take care of the rest. It still took some careful navigating not to run into sequels-related crap and other random shit, but it was not impossible. I’d breathed a sigh of relief, and carried on minding my own business, living in my SW happy place where the things that distressed me didn’t exist.

But then some news broke, and suddenly, my hard-won calm was shattered. It felt like someone had kicked the heart right out of me. My carefully constructed safe space felt safe no longer. I’d thought the PT and TCW era would be safe from Disney, at least for a while. But I was wrong. It was like all the faint hope I had left for my ability to withstand the current Disney!SW onslaught fled from me in a single instant, and have been in a state of anxiety, depression, and despair ever since.

I’ve been so scared, because the last time I felt this despondent was after TFA, when I honestly thought I would never feel anything warm and light and beautiful about Star Wars ever again. And it ended up taking me YEARS to move beyond that, and to reclaim my feels and to get into the headspace I needed to be in to truly enjoy it again.

And I just... don’t know if I have that kind of energy anymore. The last three years have taken a huge toll (in RL I mean, not just in fandom). On top of my seemingly never-ending mental health struggles, I’ve had some physical ailments that went un-diagnosed for a long time and for which I’m only just starting to receive treatment. I’m always tired, mentally, physically, and emotionally. All of this makes the prospect of going through that same process all over again seem daunting, if not completely impossible.

Because back then, after TFA, when I felt that I’d ‘lost’ the Original Trilogy, I still had other places to turn. I was able to go back in time, and re-ignite my passion for SW again by re-watching the PT and TCW. But now? will those be taken from me too? have they already? is too late ?

(Have I just been delaying the inevitable, all this time?)

Horrible thoughts like this keep coming into my mind. Despite this, I haven’t given up totally...not yet. I’m still hanging on, or at least ...trying to. But in the midst of all this, I’ve been attempting to figure out what exactly is going on here. Why do these things upset me so badly that it causes me such intense emotional reactions? To the point that I can hardly converse with friends online anymore, without fear what they will say? To the point that I can’t even talk to my (very supportive) husband about Star Wars anymore without freaking out about spoilers?? To the point that I even end up feeling suicidal at times? Why does it feel like my whole world is collapsing?

Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that, when I was growing up, ‘Star Wars’ was always, from as long as I can remember, something that was ‘finished’. Complete. It was over. And its completeness was a source of comfort to me from the start. Here was a story that contained darkness and struggle, but which had an ending. And an uplifting, mythic, and spiritual one, at that. And even later, when I was a teen and in my early 20s during the release of the Prequels, it was still something that had an end in sight. From the beginning of the PT, we knew that once those three episodes were over, the saga would be complete.

And that’s just the thing. With Disney’s Star Wars, there is no end in sight. It is something that, for all intents and purposes, could be dragged on indefinitely. And that thought is terrifying enough to make me start feeling panicky all over again. Years and years of feeling like this, all the time?? Dear Force, make it stop. D:

It’s becoming clear to me that it’s not just about one particular piece of media that I want to avoid. It’s not just the fact that something so close to my heart has at times been treated disrespectfully or even threatened with annihilation, and that I’ve felt helpless to prevent it. It’s not about my various and sundry issues with Disney’s version of SW. It’s not even that I believe that all of Disney’s SW output is inherently ‘bad’ or bound to be terrible just because it’s under the brand of Disney. I mean, I’ve been willing and able to ignore the aspects of ‘new canon’ that I loathe, and pick and choose from the bits that I do enjoy (which are few and far between, but do, occasionally, still exist). And law of averages would suggest there would have to be some decent or even, gasp, quality content at times (see: Rogue One, for instance).

So what, then, is *really* causing me so much pain and anguish on an almost daily basis? What is making my continued attempts to be part of the ‘fandom’ feel so incredibly futile?? It’s not the additions to canon themselves, but rather the frequency and sheer number of them, along with the fandom reception of these potentially infinite ‘additions’ that are causing me so much turmoil.

In the years since TFA, I’ve attempted to deal with this by viewing Disney’s ‘new canon’ as just another version of an Expanded Universe—in other words, as something optional that is not required in order to understand and appreciate the original, and that only needs to ‘exist’ in my mind and as a part of my headcanon if I wish it to. So, despite how much some of this material hurts me on a personal level, and despite the fact that the sheer amount of it makes it difficult to navigate around, up til now I’ve been able to continue as at least a semi-functional SW fan in its wake.

But lately, I’m beginning to be concerned that this method is not an adequate way of dealing with this. Because, even though *I’m* perfectly capable of ignoring the ‘new canon’ material that I don’t want to see, my need to ignore it makes it almost impossible for me to interact with 99% of the rest of the fandom.

And without interaction, a major component of fandom itself is missing. And it’s that sense of isolation and alienation that is killing me.

While tumblr as a platform has changed the face of online fandom for many (and made it unrecognizable to me in so many ways), I am still very old school in that I believe that the main purpose of fandom is to a) enjoy what we love to the nth degree, b) share what we love with each other, and c) through discussion about our shared fictional passions, create transformative fanworks, such as fanfiction, fan art, edits, fan vids, metas, etc.

This may seem like I’m stating the obvious, but unfortunately for a vast majority on tumblr, “fandom” has become less about the above, and far moreso about keeping up with actors’ and creators’ social media accounts, using fiction as a platform for ‘performative’ social justice in which people show off how ‘woke’ they are, and, worst of all (for me), constantly fixating on announcements, trailers, and news about ‘the next big thing’. It seems like, for many fans, speculation about upcoming releases is more important than enjoying the content that already exists. It’s what they LIVE for. And the minute those new pieces of media appear, everything else that came before is just... forgotten, or cast aside, in favour of it. This leaves me feeling like I’ve been left in the dust. Because, for me, the mere idea of ‘the next big thing’ fills me with nothing but extreme anxiety, depression, panic, as though I have a giant black hole in the pit of of my stomach. I live in utter DREAD of SW news. So my ability to relate to other fans and to interact with them on any meaningful level has greatly diminished due to this factor alone.

In a smaller fandom, where announcements maybe happen once or twice a year at most, I can often weather it. For example, several years ago, I left a fandom for a certain popular tv series, but remained semi-active just for the sake of one particular ship from it that I still loved. I was able to avoid most news and spoilers because it was just one show with one season per year, and that was it. But with SW in its current form, with Disney’s need to pump out new content on what seems like an almost weekly or even daily basis, it’s becoming too much for me to bear.

As I said in a previous post,

“.....one of my many problems with Disney’s current treatment of Star Wars is that there is such a thing as ‘too much canon’. In the days of the EU, it didn’t matter how much of that was released, because any and all of it could be dismissed at a given time, because it was never official canon. But nowadays, EVERY DAMN THING has a film, book, show, comic series, animated short, video game, etc. about it. And this actually angers and distresses me, because it begins to leave less and less room for headcanons and for fans’ imaginations to run free. When there is SO much ‘official’ canon that it covers all the backstories and little ‘in between moments’, where is the freedom for writing fic and just…imagining things? Star Wars is not Marvel-verse, and should not be treated as such. Not all canon is (or even SHOULD BE) considered ‘equal’, and this is something that, in pre-Disney times, was understood and respected. The main saga films were canon. That was it. The rest of it fell into various gradations of ‘sub’-canon. And imo, that is how it should, ideally, still be.”

To have constant ‘additions’ to a canon that is as long-established as Star Wars feels completely disingenuous to me. So each time something new is announced, it feels like a breaking of the fourth wall. A chipping away at my ability to continue *believing* in Star Wars. It feels like someone keeps bursting into a completed story to try to mansplain it to me, saying, ‘ha, just kidding!! it’s been 30 years, 20 years, 10 years, 5 years (etc) that you’ve loved this and believed in this, but ACTUALLY the story is not REALLY over! look over here, we want to make money off you so we’re pretending the story is continuing even though it’s fake and forced!! haha!!!’

Most of my Star Wars ‘feels’ are predicated upon a very simple premise, and that is the fact that the Skywalker saga (aka the PT and OT), AS IT EXISTS IN ITS ORIGINAL STATE, is the story of Anakin Skywalker, and that it is a complete and coherent myth, and an ultimately uplifting and redemptive tale. Everything I love about Star Wars comes back to Anakin Skywalker, his cosmic role as the Chosen One, and his eventual redemption. The fact that he, through the power of his son’s unconditional love, returns to his True Self, breaks free of his chains and sacrifices himself for his loved one, setting himself and the galaxy free. Everything depends on it, and revolves around it. My love of Anakin and Padme, my love of Obi-Wan and Anakin. My love of Snips and Skyguy, my love of Luke and Vader. My love of the Skywalker family, and their entire PT and OT storyline. And of course, my love of Anakin himself.

And what is more, all of the above is likewise dependent on the fact that the OT generations’ tale is an unequivocally heroic one, and that its heroism is complete and lasting, on both familial and galactic scale. It is not something left unfinished for the subsequent generation(s) to ‘complete’. The original saga as *I* know it does not require the ‘next generation’ in order to make it truly heroic. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the tragedy of the Prequels is completely redeemed by the end of Return of the Jedi. It is NOT carried forward as some kind of ‘curse’ onto the next generation. The Skywalkers are representative of the state of the galaxy, and, through Anakin and Luke’s story in the OT, both they and the galaxy itself are reconciled and made whole again once and for all. That is the entire point of the Chosen One prophecy, and of the metaphysical, galaxy-freeing role that redemptive love plays in the (original) Skywalker saga. If that seems ‘unrealistic’ to contemporary audiences, well, you know what?? Too freaking bad!! Star Wars is not supposed to be ‘realistic’, it’s supposed to be a MYTH.

Take that away, and there IS no Star Wars for me.

And yet, that is exactly what TFA attempted to do. It attempted destroy this basic long-held truth, and with it my ability to love and feel even anything remotely positive about Star Wars, its story, and its characters. And so it is understandable, I would hope, that ever since then I would greet new ‘additions’ to the original canon with extreme mistrust, skepticism, and even outright despair.

But despite my (imo) perfectly legitimate and justifiable reasons for feeling this way, I still realize that having such, erm, extreme reactions to even the mere prospect of new or additional content is not ‘normal’. ‘Normal’ fans are happy when they get new ‘canonical’ content right?? Unfortunately, I am not and will likely never be able to be a ‘normal’ fan in this way. When it comes to Star Wars, I will never be able to feel even the remotest bit of excitement for any such new canon content. (Which, in this case, more often than not simply means ‘officially sanctioned by a giant corporation, created under a set of confusing, disjointed, and entirely arbitrary standards, and deemed permissible for you to consume and ‘believe in’ as a real version of characters and events’, but I digress...).

Everything I love and understand about Star Wars existed before Disney ‘did’ anything to it, and everything that I still value about Star Wars to this day is likewise not dependent on whatever Disney might try do to it in the present or future. But even though I know this on an intellectual level, whenever there is new content coming out, it nonetheless still feels like a mortal threat, looming on the horizon. It feels like it’s going to try to take away everything I love all over again. And I fall into despair because I honestly lack the strength to fight it.

(Or at least, I lack the strength to fight it alone.)

And so unfortunately, from my perspective (even though I know that of course people don’t intend it to come across this way), when other fans get so excited about the new stuff, and when it seems like they so readily just accept it without question, it ends up leaving me feeling as though I’ve been left behind. As though what *I* love is, in their eyes, not enough. That somehow, the original Skywalker saga is not enough. That loving Lucas-era canon, but not Disney’s, is just me limiting myself or ‘missing out’ somehow. Whereas, from my perspective, the original material IS ‘enough’. It feels complete. It IS complete. Believing it’s not complete seems to me to be exactly what Disney wants people to think, so they can justify all of their never-ending additions, re-writes, retcons, and continuations.

And thus every time Disney churns out more content, and I see people around me acting like this content is not just a fun (and entirely optional) addition, but is rather something essential that all fans ‘deserve’ and need (despite having been perfectly fine without it for years, if not decades), just makes me feel even more alienated than I already do. Again, it’s not merely the existence of the constant stream of ‘new’ content that is killing me, but rather the fact that this content is greeted with elation by what seems to be the majority of fans these days. Yeah I know this makes me sound like I’m just resentful and bitter that other people are happy. Please know I don’t begrudge others’ happiness. Rather, I’m just struggling with the fact that while others are excited, I cannot be, thus leading me to feel isolated and left out.

But since the last thing I want is to rain on anyone’s parade, I try to be sensitive to this. Other than my various early anti-TFA rants (which I got out of my system years ago), for the most part (with the occasional exception), I’ve been keeping mum on these matters. But more often than not, in order not to be a source of negativity to others, I just end up hiding away, not talking to anyone, retreating further and further within myself to the point that I wonder what I’m even doing here anymore.

The level of pain and anxiety and stress that all of this—from the constant stream of new content, to fans’ reception of it, to my own desperate attempts to avoid and ignore it—causes me cannot be adequately summed up in just a few words. I struggle to convey how I feel to most people because I honestly don’t know how to explain it. I feel ridiculous for even writing it down. It sounds so silly when I type it out, even though in my heart and mind, this is a very real and debilitating issue. Every time something new is announced, I become sick to my stomach, I can’t eat or sleep, I have intrusive, racing thoughts, and I feel that I have to hide out for days, weeks, or even months. I have to limit who I can talk to, and WHAT subjects I can talk to them about. And each time, it begins to feel more and more futile to even bother trying to avoid everything. Like trying to swim upstream, or to remain upright in a tidal wave. It is a constant onslaught, and I’m not sure how much longer I can weather it.

(Yes, there are some underlying mental health issues going on here that no doubt contribute to things on some level. However, it’s a complicated situation, because for many years I have been turning to fandom as a sort of therapy for myself. My most beloved fictional universes, characters, relationships, and stories are a safe-space for me, a refuge I can retreat into when my existence becomes unbearable. A coping mechanism. I don’t use that term lightly either... some days, it literally keeps me alive. And so when that coping mechanism feels like it’s being ripped away, my downward spiral into the abyss is terrifyingly swift indeed. But this is an extremely personal matter, which I won’t go into any further here, because I don’t want to diminish the topic at hand, which is a legitimate and very real struggle of mine, and is something that affects me regardless of the state of my mental health at a given time.)

Just to be clear, I’m not trying to worry anyone. I’m not planning on going anywhere just yet, and hopefully not for a while. This blog is too important to me. The people I’ve met here are too important to me. Star Wars, such as it exists in my heart, is too important to me. Despite the fact that I’m struggling emotionally, and despite the fact that it’s increasingly difficult for me to find content for this blog, I have been determined not to abandon it, and have made sure that I have a queue ready for the days when I don’t feel up to posting.

That being said, I do feel the need to be honest here about just how much of a struggle it has been to hold on, and just how alienated I have felt from so much of what is considered the normal fandom experience. And to express my anguish and despair over the fact that I can never, ever be innocently excited about new content being released in this Disney era. Doesn’t matter what it is, or who makes it. Ever since TFA, I am simply unable to ever feel happy that it even exists in same world that I inhabit. And this makes me fear for my longevity in a fandom that seems to thrive on the very thing that I abhor most and that fills me with constant dread.

While I’m uncertain these days as to whether ‘happiness’ is even possible for me in this physical existence, I do feel that my fandom experience ought to be, at the very least, a source of comfort. But as more and more of my SW safe-spaces are eroded, as more and more words must be blacklisted, as more and more tags become ‘off limits’ to me, I have fewer and fewer corners of this fandom to which I can turn.

I wish things were not like this. I wish *I* were not like this. It would be so much easier if I could just be happy like everyone else. But sadly, it seems that when it comes to being able to participate in and enjoy SW fandom in its current form, something in me is fundamentally, irreparably, broken.

What I hope to accomplish by writing and posting this, I’m not entirely sure. Obviously, I am not trying to make anyone feel bad for enjoying what they enjoy. Nor am I even seeking ‘validation’ on this matter. Because, while there are no doubt others out there who feel similarly (and *big hugs* to them if they do), I am not actually looking for commiseration or to ‘wallow’ in misery at this time. For some reason that just makes things a hundred times worse. Because...I’m still trying to hold out hope that even someone as damaged as myself can nonetheless continue to love Star Wars and even be part of an active online community.

So for now, I just needed to get this off my chest in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, by doing so, I can find a way back from this.

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