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The State of the Star Wars fandom 2019

/rant on

I’ve seen a lot of stuff that I don’t agree with on social media lately, more so than usual and I just can’t let it slide. I don’t begrudge a person their own choices and what they do or don’t support / ship or otherwise in any fandom, but it annoys me when people start being mean and ugly about it.

I know people get angry because let’s face it, Star Wars is serious business to a lot of people, including myself, but I didn’t sign up for pettiness or hate or flame-wars or trolling. And yes, you can block people, but you can’t block an entire fandom, and that’s pretty much how things are right now.

As an example, the hate going around about John Boyega. Here’s a little tidbit, I don’t actually like John Boyega all that much, and I’ve never liked Finn – yes, it’s true! But the stuff people are saying about him because he decided to take a stand and voice his true feelings about The Last Jedi is just wrong. You don’t get to stan someone one day and then rip them apart on social media the next just because they disagree with your views on Star Wars. He’s allowed to say what he wants, just as you are but hate him because he did? Wow, such a fickle bunch you are.

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Just remember that being famous doesn’t make you any less human. When a celebrity looks in the mirror, they see the same thing you do, a person, a human being, someone with feelings and thoughts all their own. How about you start acting like a decent human being who also has feelings and ideas and treat him and anyone else the same way you would want to be treated yourself! Also, what would your parents say about your hatred and vitriol? Nothing good, I expect.

I know my father would be turning in his grave right about now at all the bullshit that goes on in the Star Wars fandom today. The landscape has changed with social media and new technology and all that but seriously, when and why did people forget to be nice?

You guys hurt me, you really, really do.

/rant off

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Blog Cleanup – looking forward to 2020!

So I’ve been thinking about blogging, in general, a fair bit and I’ve decided that I will be reverting back to blogging about life on this blog *like I used to way back when*. I actually stopped doing that because of work-related issues arising from my personal blog posts, but I’ve since decided that none of that is essential now. I think it’s more important for me to continue writing about life regularly rather than keep it all in. I also don’t really have time to dedicate to another blog. Now that my writing and reviewing is all separate and located on my other website, I can use this one to talk about Star Wars and other stuff maybe not necessarily relating to Star Wars.

Next week is a big week – we all know what next week is right? So, I’ll definitely be blogging about my experience once I’ve seen The Rise of Skywalker. I anticipate I’ll have a lot to say.

To any of my new followers, if you are following me solely for book reviewing, writing and related topics, please follow my other blog The Broken Quill instead. Feel free to unfollow me here, it’s all good 🙂

 

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Just when I said I wasn’t going to be blogging …

Ugh, sometimes I just hate fandoms. This is why I mostly never talk in forums or anywhere online where my personal opinion is subject to every tom, dick and harry passing judgement. Some might say that is the way of the internet, it is the way we can express and speak freely. But I don’t like doing that when I know, there are people in the world who look for a reason to troll someone or annoy them just because they can.

Here is what I am talking about – a reply to a twitter thread that I thought was really going to be light-hearted banter. Boy, was I wrong! I said one thing about Luke Skywalker and how I felt his character was mistreated in The Last Jedi and the whole galaxy decided to chime in – some liking my replies and others taking pot-shots at me for not being “educated” enough or for not taking the time to read through the thread. I think most people were annoyed because I didn’t read the thread and couldn’t, apparently, provide “evidence” to back up my reply. I just couldn’t be bothered finding the evidence (is Mark Hamill confirming he didn’t like what they did with Luke in The Last Jedi evidence enough?) because I knew it would only fuel the fire further.

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The person that replied and started the thread @JacobSHall is a managing editor at Slash Film so more important than I am, I guess. Perhaps I should have spent 15 minutes of my time reading through his tweets mentioning how he spoke to Rian Johnson about TLJ. But I really didn’t care to, to be blunt. I was made to feel pretty bad about that whole thread, and I am continuing to get people tweeting things to me telling me I was rude or that I don’t know how to think. So people being trolls because they have nothing better to do with their time.

I will say that the original thread was interesting and I do not have a personal problem with @JacobSHall or anyone else. I just don’t want to keep getting tweets about it two days later. I’m over it and I am blocking anyone else that sends replies to me about that thread.

Thank You for reading, I hope this doesn’t happen to you or anyone you know because it can be a real downer 😔

 

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I haven’t talked about Star Wars in a while…

A strange thing happened to me. I stopped writing about Star Wars here. I don’t quite know why that happened, but I guess it had something to do with the emotional rollercoaster I experienced recently. I felt utterly overwhelmed. I have felt this before about other things (like my day job), but I never thought I would feel it about Star Wars. It was like something inside me just snapped, and I needed time away from the thing that I love.

My other blog has helped a lot with my focus. I have been trying to focus on other things as I have set myself some personal goals for the remainder of the year and for 2020. Assuming all things go to plan, I will be working from home again, doing what I love. But that’s still a goal to achieve, I am slowly pressing forward towards this.

And so far, I have discovered a few hard truths about myself. One of those things relates to Star Wars. Star Wars will always be a part of my life, but for me to achieve what is truly in my heart of hearts, I have to focus hard on working towards this goal and spending less time on social media.

I am still writing for Dork Side of the Force but I have filtered those posts down as well. I was blogging every week, but now I am focusing more on writing, book reviews and getting back to copywriting/editing and proofing. These are the things I used to do when I worked as an editor and freelance writer. A part of me can’t believe I ever gave up these things in the first place. But there is no point crying over spilt milk. What’s done is done. I can only move forward.

I’ll still be making edits and posting those here and writing about Star Wars when I can. This website is a huge part of who I am and I will never stop updating it. Speaking of edits, here are a few animations I made recently:

Dark Side Rey by Rory Kurtz

RORY KURTZ DARK SIDE REY - ANIMATED

The Mandalorian by Darren Tibbles

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Status Update – Social Media and Grammarly

I haven’t done a social media update in a long time, too long, in fact. I was hoping to keep this up regularly but now that I’m reading a lot more and reviewing I find that I have a lot less time to dedicate to these types of posts. I do think it’s important to remind yourself of your successes. It is all too easy to remind yourself of your failures which is why I try to keep focused on the positive (I am one of those people that can easily get bogged down by the feeling of failure). I suggest that everyone does this every now and then to keep your “eyes on the prize” or your goals relevant so-to-speak.

I actually broke a significant milestone on Pinterest that I’ve never done before – I’ve remained at 1 million unique views for more than a month and broke that this week – 1.1 million unique views from the 22nd of October to the 22nd of November. Out of those views, I have a total engaged audience of 80.25 thousand so roughly 20k Pinterest users a week engaging with my content. I actually work quite hard on my Pinterest content, and I am pleased to see it growing. I just need to somehow get that happening here on WordPress 😁

Previous monthly stats were taken way back in June!

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My current stats as at 22/11/2019:

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As you can see, the stats have improved a fair bit in four months, but I can still see areas where I can continue to grow. In my total followers, I had 579 in June, and that’s increased to 1,356 followers, so I have more than doubled my follower count from June this year.

I haven’t blogged about Grammarly stats before, but I do think as a writer, it’s essential to take note of how far you’ve progressed, no matter how small. Even the smallest of improvements is still an improvement, and it is still one step closer to becoming better at what you do, right?

So here are my latest Grammarly stats. I thought about moving these posts to my writing blog (where they would be a lot more relevant), but this is my place to blog about all things, not just writing so I’ll continue to post these updates here:

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I wonder if any of my followers do the same? Do you regularly keep track of progress on your goals? As a writer, do you keep track of how many words you are writing in a week or a month? Why or why not? I’d love to hear how you keep your goals in check and relevant. 😄😁

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The lastest TV Spot and EW Cover Images!

Devoted Star Wars fans were treated to a bevvy of images, behind the scenes footage and a new TV Spot this week! It almost felt like Christmas, to be honest, but the pièce de résistance of all of this was, of course, Kylo Ren without his mask! No, really. Almost every piece of promotional material released since the trailer has been with Kylo Ren/Ben Solo with his mask on. And that was a bit disappointing. We got to see him unmasked in the trailer, but there were no promotional images anywhere of Adam Driver as Kylo Ren unmasked. Some fans even thought that the images with Kylo Ren wearing his mask were made using a body double and not Adam Driver (hence the reason for the mask in every image). That could actually be correct since some of the promo images did not look like Adam Driver underneath the Kylo Ren costume. Adam Driver is not only tall but he’s also very broad. These things are giveaways when you have a person that doesn’t look tall or broad in the promo images.

Whatever the truth of the matter is, we were very happy as a fandom to finally see Kylo Ren standing without his mask on the Entertainment Weekly December cover:

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As you can see, Adam Driver is a very imposing figure in his black Kylo Ren garb. Not everyone could pull off this look very well, even with the mask on.

SPOILER ALERT – If you’re avoiding spoilers don’t watch this TV spot!

The TV Spot was also pretty damn cool:

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Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker Allegiance Kylo Ren Animation

I’ve been looking through the latest star wars comics and as you know, creating animated comic covers and comic art is kind of my thing. So I saw this image of Kylo Ren and really wanted to animate it so here it is – plus I promised to upload more content. I did this one today. What do you think?

Original Image – Art by Luke Ross

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… and the animated art:

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I’ve also started watermarking the stuff I edit and animate because too many people are taking my edited images from Pinterest or this website and reposting as their own. So unless they’re wizards in Photoshop, they’re not getting this image without a watermark any time soon… 😅