I know; I thought I was done with Star Wars too.
It happened because of one post yesterday that has already had over 446 thousand views:
https://x.com/CrungoCyle/status/2058872716233519316
No woman will ever understand how it feels to watch an IP that was made for guys, be turned into girl-boss dogshit, all in the name of “inclusion” & to cater to people that were never interested in the IP to begin with.
Please excuse the language I have reproduced, but please take note of the ridiculous sense of aggrievement.
I know there were Star Wars movies playing on television yesterday. That's not unusual for a holiday weekend, but there may have been some extra push with the release of a new movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu.
We should also note that this is a reply.
https://x.com/taskmasterfan/status/2058594492467310867
no man will ever take away how it felt to see rey leading the franchise
In this case, the poster profile lists bid / rey as "taskmaster, star wars, mon mothma’s stylist. effie trinket irl!" So, in addition to some devotion to The Hunger Games (and if "bid" is a reference to The Hunger Games or some other franchise, I do not know), it is reasonable to assume that she has a strong emotional connection to Star Wars in general and Rey in particular.
She does not have a huge following (1180), so I assume most of her over 217 thousand views comes from people checking what CrungoCyle was responding to. Checking, I see an apology for her tweet bringing forth so many misogynists.
It was not her fault.
There are people who go around looking for ways to make trouble. In this case, the reply brought forth many responses arguing not only that there have always been many women and girls in the fandom, but also that Rey was far from the first "girl-boss" in the series, pointing mostly to Leia but also --to a lesser extent -- Padme, Jyn Erso, Mon Mothma, Ahsoka, and Holdo.
There are probably a lot more that could come up if we look at all the properties.
Of course, that was a big part of Crungo's complaint: they keep adding more girls, with their cooties. I suspect he is not thrilled with the inclusion of more characters of color. His profile and other replies show an affinity for the R-word and disdain for designating the word that way instead of just using it... that gives some character clues.
Other men jumped in with various excuses going in two different directions with different arguments for each.
One area was about the intended audience. Some argued that there may be outlying female fans, but it was geared toward boys. The gold bikini is one way of proving it, ignoring that putting Leia in the gold bikini directly led to her personally strangling Jabba. So there's that. Some also said that girls liking it was a later thing after the franchise started pandering to women; shame on Kathleen Kennedy, their special target of disgust.
She was not the only executive involved in those films, but she was the most prominent woman and I suspect that relates.
It is historically true that girls will often watch material focusing on boys, while the reverse has not been true. This is one reason why Disney princess movies often have titles with some plausible deniability. The Princess and the Frog was perceived to have performed poorly due to having "princess" right there in the name, hence Tangled and Brave.
It is also logically true that capitalism is motivated toward making as much money as possible. A marketing strategy that shuns half the population is generally a bad idea. However, you can try and attract a smaller base but with stronger loyalty by making them feel like they are unfairly a minority.
The other range of arguments related to Leia's inclusion. Here many of the examples were ignored other than Leia and Rey, though sometimes Padme was mentioned with Leia as a well-written character in contrast to Rey. Well, that was what they said then, right? That Rey was just not believable. I argued about that at the time.
That also had men chiming in that Leia wasn't so great. She was ungrateful to her rescuers, disparaging, and she didn't even have good ideas; going down into the trash compactor could have gotten them all killed!
Of course, being shot at in a narrow corridor by storm troopers wasn't exactly safe, and getting killed or re-captured would not be great. It didn't look like Luke or Han had any other ideas, but still, she needed those men to put her in her place.
She wasn't the one who blew up the Death Star! (She was a key person in getting those very necessary plans to the Rebellion, as was Jyn Erso, but Luke!)
(Most of these dudes appear to align with the "great man" theory, which conveniently gets rid of the need to give credit to the many who are contributing.
Okay, maybe I have some strong feelings too. I did not reply to any of those posts. I did like some that made good points, but there is no point in arguing.
Crungo has 37 followers; that's considerably fewer than bid / rey and all he does is get angry about feminism and men not being centered. Again, I am sure he could get really into racism and ableism and many other terrible things -- I have confidence in him for that -- but why should he get any attention at all?
Nothing is going to convince him.
If you have loads and loads of women attesting to their love for the series, and then they are just told that they are outliers or not real or that it somehow doesn't count, why put energy into that argument?
Unfortunately, there is an aggrieved base out there eagerly looking for it and responding to it.
It is frustrating that individuals can be so wrong and so loud about it without getting called on it, and maybe some of the arguments will make good points that some other people will see, but it feels wasteful.
I do often see tweets from blue checks that are designed to get reactions -- good or bad -- ("engagement farming") and it is my policy to ignore them. I am trying to connect to real people.
Sadly, I think Crungo is real, but he also really seems to suck; what point would there be in engaging?
It's just unfortunate that the block function has been neutered.
Regardless, please note that there are people for whom no fact or personal testimony matters. It often corresponds with a hatred of wokeness.
That might seem to be something connected to right wing politics, but the closed minds insisting on their point against all evidence is really prominent on the left as well.
What it really relates to is dominator culture.
Related posts:
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/01/rey-does-stuff.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-moral-philosophy-of-star-wars.html
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