Stitch Talks Ish

[Stitch Talks Ish] Episode 2: Stitch Talks About The Rey/Kylo Fandom and Weaponized White Womanhood

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Episode Notes:

Transcript:

Hi, everyone, welcome to the second episode of Stitch Talks Ish.

It’s been about two and some change months since my first episode where I talked about like five minutes of The Tablo Podcast. And, and right now I’m back to complain again — not about Tablo this time.

If you follow me on Twitter, which you could if you wanted to, (and weren’t blocked,) I’ve been talking about the Star Wars fandom’s antiblackness from pretty much at the beginning of 2020. We’re only 12 days in. So I’m going to cover, as best as I can for podcasts, everything that’s happened, and about some really frustrating, and even worrying things that I’ve noticed about what’s been going on with the Reylo fandom, which is the ship name for Rey and Kylo Ren, and just overarching, transformative fandom.

So to start, I guess we have to begin from the beginning.

December 31 I’m sitting on my couch with my nieces and I see a tweet that has a screenshot of an Instagram comment. And everybody I see sharing it is, like, “Oh wow, John Boyega snapped. This is amazing. He’s finally, you know, giving them hell.” And he wasn’t really. But what it was was John Boyega left a comment reply to a comment left on his Instagram post that was like… it was talking about how Kylo Ren died, now Finn and Rey can end up together. And John Boyega responds, and I’m not saying it verbatim, but the gist of the sentence was that it doesn’t matter who kisses Rey, but “who lays the pipe.” So that part is actually verbatim. But it doesn’t matter that Rey and Kylo kissed at the end, next to the end, of The Rise of Skywalker, but that Finn will put it down— y’know.

It is a sex joke. It’s not even a very subtle one, actually. If you have any familiarity with, like, African American vernacular English, you will know that not only is this a sex joke, it’s, like, pretty… it’s, like, mild, like basic. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I, maybe, [laughing] I’m a sex joke connoisseur. I don’t know. But, like, I thought nothing of it, aside from, you know, like, Oh, wow.

And almost immediately though, from when I saw the screenshots on Twitter, I realized that Rey and Kylo shippers were kind of, like, losing their shit over it. And I mean, seriously, like, people were @-ing John saying, like: “@JohnBoyega,” you know, “You make me uncomfortable as a woman.” “@JohnBoyega how dare you disrespect women? How dare you disrespect Rey.” And these were coming- Some of these are coming from people with usernames, like, “rey’s-a-whore.”

And, like… there’s there are very, very not safe for work usernames, amidst the crowd of usernames telling Fi- telling John Boyega how disrespectful he is to to his costar Daisy Ridley— because John Boyega and Daisy Ridley aren’t grown ass adult people who can make sex jokes sometimes.

And it kept going, so that was the 31st, and he was actually engaging with them. And it was clear that the clock was winding down, 2020 was about to start and he’s in England. And he posts a four panel, four panel tweet, with four images, of Kylo Ren and Rey and it’s just, like, their, primarily, their canonical interactions of violence and, well her stabbing him I guess. And he is, like, basically mocking the idea of the Rey and Kylo romance. Which you know, like— same. I’ve done it. Not gonna say I haven’t. And I’m not gonna say he shouldn’t have because primarily, of the people who were scolding him shaming him like, you know, he was a child they needed to spank. Those were primarily Rey/Kylo shippers. They were people who kind of zeroed in on that semi-canon ship in Star Wars, as of The Rise of Skywalker, like the last five minutes, whatever, and decided that Star Wars had to revolve around this pairing. So these were people who were coming out the gate biased against John and in favor of the ship he was, like, lightly roasting.

And the thing is that it has been going on since then. Like, I every day I find something new, I stopped actually actively looking. I’ll go on the Shit Reylo Says- Reylos Say Twitter [@ShitReylosSay] every once in a while. But I really, outside of keeping an eye out for escalations, I don’t really see the point in all of this, because it’s been going on for 12 days. These are people who are saying, “Oh, Kelly Marie Tran was harassed and by people on Twitter, and that’s bad” and blah, blah, blah. And they’ve spent every single day of 2020, so far, talking shit about John Boyega.

Ostensibly, they’ll say it’s because he made a gross joke: laying the pipe. Wow, from people who are kind of obsessed with the idea that they were robbed of the chance to see Kylo Ren bust his nut in Rey, in a PG-13 Disney movie. Like, this is what this fandom is. And you’re going “Oh, man, I’m gonna clutch my pearls” because John Boyega made a single sex joke. Not even that… not even close to explicit. Like, I’ve said more explicit things about members of BTS in 2020, so far, because it wasn’t that explicit. Just saying. Really wasn’t. And we’re going on this is the 13th. Actually, so it’s, I think it’s about two weeks! Straight up it’s been about two weeks as of tomorrow, that Reylo shippers have lost their ever loving minds over his comments.

And one of the things that I’ve noticed, and you know, this, this, this whole event is actually going to feel a lot of my writing in 2020, I know it, especially depending on how it is eventually finished. You know? But there… One of the things I noticed is how womanhood, especially white womanhood, is weaponized against John Boyega, and against any black man, or man at all, that speaks up. Because one of the first users that showed up was a Twitter account with a black woman, a beautiful profile picture of a black woman, who quote retweeted John’s… something John did. And was like “Oh, as a black woman, I’m disappointed in you. I’m upset I ever defended you.” And turns out that was a catfish using an Instagram models’ selfie, to try and use their blackness to shame him.

Because primarily, Rey/Kylo fandom is predominantly, at least in the United States, (I mean, obviously, if there’re Reylos in India, they’re unlikely to be white women, or all white women,) but in Western media spaces the predominant Reylo shipper is a white woman. And so white women rushing to be like, um, you scare me scary black man— the optics don’t look good. They’ve of course given up on that. We actually see a lot of it across the coming days, following the first, where people were, like, “worried” about Daisy’s safety. But that first one, that black woman who wasn’t actually a black woman, kind of set the tone that they were going to frame this as John Boyega out of nowhere attacking these “poor, innocent women” who just wanted to ship their ship. Never mind that these women had spent hours and hundreds if not thousands of tweets, insulting him either directly or via indirects. Y’know, Never mind that.

This is a continuation of what happened in December, the beginning of December, December 11, when Lindsey Romain, of the Nerdist, took it upon hers- just herself, to basically, make up shit, when John made a comment in Variety about weakness and dealing with social media. Lindsay Romain, who had already that day, had an article published in the Nerdist where she interpreted John’s comments in another magazine as a dig on Kelly, she was already primed for that. She’d already started this narrative that John doesn’t like Kelly, that John is a misogynist. And she ran with that on the 11th. And because she has 14,000 followers, probably more because people who, who encourage racism in and out of fandom spaces or ignore that it happens get lots of fucking followers. So she kept at it, like, she doubled down, she was blocking people, she was liking tweets insulting John.

And John clarifies, like, maybe 24 hours later, maybe two days, later clarifies that he was talking about himself the way that many of us, his actual fans, thought he was. And she [Lindsey Romain] goes through about three apologies. The third apology, which is her quote unquote best one is prefaced by, maybe an hour or two before, her going and posting a tweet that is explicit suicide ideation, where she… and so she deletes the tweet. But now you have this fear of this poor, innocent white woman in Lindsay, who is now “just so upset and hurt and oh, she’s being forced to apologize.” Like, it is incredibly, incredibly manipulative.

And that is what I’m seeing across this fandom: manipulation and using this fear of white womanhood under fire from black people, not just John, but John stans, who are primarily black people. Y’know, black celebrities who are talking about it, black writers, y’know, people in publishing, we are being framed as opposite these poor, innocent white women who just would, who loved John, but his joke made them feel unsafe. You know, his joke made him- made them feel like he doesn’t respect women.

Again, we’re talking about a fandom that thinks asking people or creating content where Rey’s impregnated while dead at the end of The Rise of Skywalker. We’re talking about that fandom, a fandom that has written stories, where sexual assault, popular stories, where sexual violence features heavily between Rey and Kylo Ren, from his part to her. We are talking about this fandom, pretending that it cares about any of this, like, this is disingenuous. This is manipulative.

And people are falling for it. I mean, people are I’ve blocked a lot of people who’ve been like, “I don’t even go here but I see women under attack, so I had to defend them.” Women under attack, really? Women under attack by a guy who played a character in Star Wars made a single joke. I mean, he made a joke that, like, I’m pretty sure I could have made when I was 12. It is not even remotely a big deal.

Except that Reylo fans have made it such because at this point, they know what it looks like they know the power of white womanhood. And I’m seeing it. Because they have, like, Lindsey Romain is out here writing her articles about how the Reylo fandom doesn’t deserve hate. I think at this point, the fandom does, definitely, deserve hate. You have supposedly unbiased reporters writing articles, you know, blasting John, you have Reylos once again swarming, like Qanon but obsessed with a different fascist, hopping into the mentions of celebrities and reporters who are talking, or news outlets, who are talking about any of this with anything less than a critical slant, and shouting them down and claiming all kinds of stuff.

So you have people I saw, I’ve seen multiple tweets that, that are like “John Boyega is a danger to women,” a lot of “he’s lusting after Daisy, and that’s why they were separate.” There is a rumor that they’re trying to spread about John supposedly being an abusive partner. And considering the timing of it is just… I don’t even have words for what I’m witnessing aside from it calls back to what white women have always done when under fire from [a] black man— under threat. They get everybody else worried that they’re under danger or under fire, from sexual violence, that some poor, innocent white woman is being sexually uncomfortable by this black guy.

I’ve seen people compare him to Kevin Spacey to try and say that they want to derail his career the way Kevin Spacey, his career has been derailed. Kevin Spacey is a goddamn rapist. We know this. But because John Boyega made a single joke, dunked on your ship couple times, you guys put them on the same level.

And people keep going, you know, like before I, you know, when I when I go to block people, when I see them in the different tags I track on Twitter, I see people go, and they’re like, oh, the Rey/Kylo fandom always calls out it’s racism. No you don’t. No you don’t. And maybe it’s because you’re not seeing it.

Maybe it’s because you do only follow like a small handful of the shippers. But there’s something deeply racist about the fact that every single day of 2012- of 2020 Reylo fans have been on John Boyega’s ass.

They’ve been trying to figure out ways to tank his career. And they’re doing this publicly, to the point where they went, “oh, maybe we shouldn’t do this publicly. Because he’ll attack us.” Y’all are out here planning on destroying his career because he doesn’t like your ship and you’re worried about being attacked.

And let’s talk about the “attack.” It’s him lightly sassing people who are accusing him of being an awful, monstrous human being. It’s him making like a 30-40 second video on Instagram, you know, where he’s, you know, punching down, kicking comments from these people. You know, like, how messed up is it that fandom in 2020 is a space where folks will watch a video like that, where he’s dunking on fans, clearly overstepping their boundaries, his boundaries, and dogpiling him and say, “oh, his behavior looks like anti behavior” that they fear will infect fandom or that they think will make fandom think it’s okay to behave like that?

John is defending himself, or John defended himself. He defended himself, through light hearted humor at that, from people out here comparing him to Kevin Spacey, to people who write his character in Star Wars as a black brute, that Kylo Ren needs to protect them from. He’s defending himself from a fan base that is clearly super comfortable with destroying his life, because that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re- I’ve seen multiple boycott John Boyega movie tweets. And it’s like, Sweeties, we know you don’t watch things with black people in them. So calm down. Star Wars was a fluke, we know.

But, they’re going through, they’re- they’re… trying to derail and destroy his career, because of what he said about a fictional ship. What he said about a fictional ship is milder than I’ve said about… I mean, a lot of things. I mean, I called the rapper Zico a shit weasel. I said he can meet me in the pit. John Boyega hasn’t even gotten anywhere near those levels of straight up pissed off— not on his social media platforms. And folks are out here acting like he is a straight up clear danger to these poor pure women.

And fandom is falling for it. Fandom is falling for it. They are blocking the quote unquote antis. I have a thread that’s been going on since December 31, I believe, maybe the first at the latest. They’re not going to read it because they’ve all decided I’m an anti, because I must ship Finn and Rey. This is bigger than ships y’all.

This is about a fandom that is so obsessed with Kylo Ren that they’re willing to try and destroy John Boyega’s career because he made a joke, because he dunked on their ship, because he’s not rolling over for them. And, and they’ll say like I’ve seen multiple, multiple people go “the tweets he was putting in his video aren’t racist. You can’t say he was calling out racism.” He was being dogpiled by hundreds of Rey/Kylo shippers. He was being insulted and harassed by people who apparently see themselves as champions of womanhood and fandom, despite pretending that the only people who are being critical of their behavior are dudes. Like, thanks for erasing other women and fandom and acting like Reylo shippers run the world, but you don’t. You really don’t. But he was defending himself. He was poking fun at a fandom that has consistently been up his ass and on his case.

And people are gonna like, “Oh, well, the Fandom Menace, why isn’t he calling them out?” Well, the Fandom Menace hasn’t spent the past two weeks fucking losing it in his mentions. Y’know, like, for once, they’re not the problem. For once, or for the first time we’re being allowed to acknowledge it, white women in fandom are. They’re the problem.

And they’re not stopping. You know, every day I come across new tweets that just make me regret fandom. That make me regret being in fandom because this isn’t normal. Like it’s absolutely not normal. That John Boyega has made a single comment, one joke, and they’ve acted like he’s just sullied their daughter. Like, that’s how they’re talking about it. Like, they’ve portrayed white womanhood is under fire, as, as being attacked. And the people who talk about toxic fandom aren’t talking about this. They’re not detailing this. They’re not documenting this. They’re not even acknowledging that these fans are still doing it, and that they’re trying to actually hurt John. You know, I cannot get over this, that this is something that people aren’t talking, about that we are seeing this play out.

And I actually paralleled it with what’s going on with Harry and Megan, in the UK and with the media. But that whole thing where people are, like, “Oh, that’s not racist” when we’re looking at a clear discrepancy between reactions, you know, between how Megan is received versus Kate. You know? And you can see that in how John is received versus Adam [Driver.]

You know, how like Jenny Nicholson has this whole huge, like, she just, Jenny Nicholson sucks, and like I would absolutely say that to her face, but I think at this point, we’re in a mutual block, and I’ve never gonna see her so— I guess. But Jenny Nicholson, who’s apparently not really said too many nice things about Finn across her endless YouTube videos, has, like she just zeroed in on all this. She 100% as a Reylo shipper, believed the hype and blasted this to her 50’leven followers. You know, like, like, she is a celebrity, right? And she’s blasted out to her tons of followers. And one of her things on her tumblr post about this, Jenny Nicholson— the original post, by the way, is now deleted. But in her original post, Jenny Nicholson goes, I mean, on and on, right? I mean, endlessly on and on. About how about how this is really about well, protecting the children, right?

He made a misogynist joke about a children’s character played by his coworker. Jenny Nicholson, Jenny Nicholson apparently read, censored I guess, but not safe for work regardless, Rey/Kylo fanfiction on her YouTube channel. She was part of a not safe for work-ish reimagining of My Little Pony that was not appropriate for children. Jenny Nicholson has how many followers on Twitter again?

And at the end of the day, what it is, is that this is another hypocritically hornt fandom. Like, you guys can do what you want, but let a black person say shit, and it’s like, “oh, man, we have to protect our object of desire, we have to protect whiteness.” And I don’t have time for that. And John doesn’t have time for that. You know? And it’s just I wish more people could see what’s going on. I wish that outlets like the Nerdist weren’t up Lindsay Romain’s ass, and could, you know, have an actual, differently biased(?) person on.

Because I mean, that’s the whole thing. Like, I know there are people who are like all Stitch is biased because she ships Finn and Rey. And it’s like, a) do you actually know what I ship in any fandom? Come back to me when you do. And like currently, let’s talk about that currently. But why is my bias, as a as a potential Rey/Finn shipper, me and my opinions are worthless because they’re so biased, but Lindsay Romain, a whole ass Reylo shipper from a fandom that is consistently anti black towards John Boyega, and about Finn, why is Lindsey seen as an unbiased voice for fandom reporting? Why Are any of the Rey/Kylo writers who are writing articles for CVR, for the Nerdist, for the Mary Sue? Why are they seen as more… neutral? Why is that an assumption they get to have? You know?

And then a lot of this also boils down to tone policing. Let us be very clear here. Because I’ve gotten tone policed over this. And that’s always really funny because I have a delightful tone. But I am snarky. It is how I carry myself. It’s how I get my coverage across. You know, I love to be snarky. I love to be like, “Oh, is this what we’re doing? Okay.” And the thing is that people will go to any extent to have an excuse not to listen. In John’s case, it is pretending that he is now an abuser out to doxx people, to doxx poor, innocent women, you know, by posting his snarky little video or his tweets or whatever, right? In my case, it’s that I mocked the pain of Reylo shippers, people who of course, wouldn’t respect my trauma if I trauma vomited on them. So like, why should I respect theirs?

But even if I wasn’t respecting theirs, which I’m not, I literally empathize with the idea of losing your favorite character, y’know, I do not empathize with their behavior across the past week, two weeks. Like, grow the fuck up. Stop shitting your pants at the sight of a black guy not doing what you want. Because that’s what this is. And this fandom is at a point where I don’t think it is capable of hiding its antiblackness anymore. Like, I mean, I’m seeing people who are saying things, like, like, this, this Reylo shipper, use the word colored people:

“Reylo’s when antis call you racist even if you’ve never said a thing about colored people don’t shrug as if it’s something to laugh at. You’ve to report them if they harass you, they’re going too far. If no one is willing to stand up for us, we need to do it all by ourselves.”

And then:

“I wasn’t referring only to blacks. That’s why I use that word. I was speaking in general, but I really didn’t know is perceived as an insult. It’s Italian translation is not felt like that. You can’t imagine how much I’m mortified. Sorry, again.” in a tweet where she uses the word blacks, which is dehumanizing to black people.

Like then they’re the people who are just, like:

“maybe this is a person who’s just making shit up, maybe If John didn’t make a sexist joke, say Kelly Marie Tran was weak for getting off social media,” (he definitely didn’t say that,) “support Chris Brown,” and Bitch, if we gonna to start follow policing people, a lot of y’all Reylos well need to get off the internet, “and target an entire group of women to take the heat off himself he wouldn’t be in this position. Sure, on the outside with the basic facts, it looks like racism. But I promise you that the only people saying racist things to him are The Fandom Menace. And they’ve done that for years.”

With the basic facts, it looks like racism, because it is, Bitch. It is entirely racism. It is racism because they are targeting him in a way that they would never do to any other performer. I guarantee you, they wouldn’t. You know? And, and the thing is that Adam Driver has said he doesn’t like Reylo. He doesn’t see the point of it. He just been, like, perplexed at the potential for Reylo. But because he said it in an interview, you can ignore him, because it wasn’t his voice saying it, because, because, because. They’ve ignored it. They’ve ignored it, and they continue to say that if, if he had, of course they would call him out. But they wouldn’t. It wouldn’t.

This is a fandom full of people say- accusing black people of pulling the race card accusing people who are- who, who generalize Reylo shippers of sounding like racists. Like, this person quotes someone that I seen around, “I’ve seen enough bullshit from your horrible group,” the quote, “you know, that sounds a bit like the relentless, uncaring racism that black people had to suffer for centuries.” This is a white person. This is a white person saying that generalizing fandom, and not really this fandom has spent 12 days being really fucking racist. But this is the person saying that generalizing against the fandom is akin to centuries of systemic antiblack racism— that black people still do fucking suffer through, by the way, just saying.

Like, I have a solid hundred and so tweets, you know, I… I am not blocking every single shipper, I have not blocked every single shipper. I know that there are people who are screenshotting my tweets, like, that’s fine. I mean, if it helps you learn, go for it. But to then go through all of that, you know where my Twitter is, you can go through it, I am not stopping you, (beyond blocking you, but whatever.) And then be like, I have not seen any examples of racism in this fandom. When this thread, my thread, is full of examples, recent examples of racism from this fandom.

And I don’t want to stop talking about it. I can’t stop talking about it. Because no one else was anything resembling… I guess a reputation for talking about racism and fandom. And the relative, like my platform isn’t large again, this is the most followers I’ve ever had on any social media platform. You know, I don’t have a lot of followers on my blog. But it’s still more than a lot of my friends do, a lot of the people I’ve seen talking about this do, and so I have to keep talking about it. I have to because I cannot imagine the Nerdist doing anything— that isn’t up Lindsay Romain’s ass. I can’t imagine the Mary Sue, you know, letting someone like me post about this— paying someone like me to post about this. And I know how this goes.

If we forget that this is what the Reylo fandom is trying to do to John. They’re trying to literally destroy his career. They’re trying to punish him. They’re trying to rewrite fandom history so that they are innocent, sweet young women, who just want to write fanfiction. Nevermind that that fanfiction is really fucking racist all the time when Finn is present, even when he’s not, you know. They are trying to rewrite the narrative.

And I have receipts. I have receipts upon receipts, and unlike the Shit Reylo Says account, I tend to post with the usernames attached so that you can go and look for them.

The Reylo fandom has a problem. And that problem is entitlement and antiblackness. So as two problems. And I do not want to see how this will escalate, or how it can escalate, but I don’t know how- I don’t know when it will stop. I don’t know if it will ever stop, because people are out here trying to… trying to spread really horrifying rumors about John Boyega and his dating life. They’re trying to plan to boycott him. They’re trying to get other Star Wars actors in on it. Like…

They are mobilized. And if you thought that there was something wrong with GamerGate swarming female game devs and writers, if you thought ComicGate, endlessly attacking Renfamous, and other women in comics was bad, if you thought that the weird anti Ghostbuster dudes attacking Leslie Jones was bad, you need to look at this. And you need to go “Shit. The white women are doing it too.” Because they are. And they are being incredibly toxic across this fandom.

And of course, I know that the thing is always a token there to be like “as a black or brown Reylo shipper I.” I don’t care when you work in service for white supremacy and fandom. Because that’s what this is. That’s what harassing John Boyega, smearing him, lying about him, talking shit about him for two weeks, because he doesn’t like your fucking ship. That’s what that is. So 20 tokens who think I should care, or that anyone in fandom should care about their opinion because they are black or brown? You don’t give me the same courtesy so why should I give it to you? Please understand that I don’t care and that you are just as complicit as the white women who are running around acting like… acting like it’s the 1940s again. Like, like a black man in proximity to a white woman is the ultimate threat.

I’m glad Kylo Ren died. I am. I mentioned it in my— I mentioned one thing in my post that those stans deserve all of that. I said why. Because for four years, I’ve had white feminists in fandom, their pick-me people of color, their tokens, constantly show up to talk about how canon Reylo is, and how great it is, and how this, and how that. And, like, whatever, I actually do not care what you ship— person on the internet who I’ve never interacted with, and probably never will. Why would I care? What I do care about is watching this fandom come together to slander someone because they don’t like their ship, and seeing all of these anti anti blogs, these anti discourse blogs, these anti fandom police blogs support these people in their harassment of John Boyega, and in their shipping discourse.

This is bigger than a ship. And a lot of you guys are on the wrong fucking side. When it comes to antiblackness in fandom. And you guys need to figure it out because fandom history will not be kind to you. I mean it because I won’t be. I’m not letting this go.

Wooh, that was um… that was an intense second episode. I know. I feel very strongly about the Star Wars fandom, always have, always will. And I think right now it needs to be better. Where will we be next month? Where will we be be six months from now? Where will we be next year in this fandom?

One thing that’s clear is that what the Star Wars fandom is doing, what Reylo shippers in particular are doing, isn’t healthy. It’s frequently racist. And it’s dripping with the kind of entitlement that we generally have associated with male nerds. And because we’ve associated it with white male nerds, and by we I mean really you guys, because primarily, this is what my fanish experiences look like— white women getting really upset with me, or something I love that’s, y’know, black. But because mainstream fandom thinks that the only people capable of being monstrous in fandom, and toxic in fandom, are white dudes are the neck beards, when situations like what’s been going on with Reylo fans for the past two weeks comes up people just short circuit. They glitch.

And that’s not a good thing, because it makes it really hard to talk about what is actually going on and why this isn’t about anti-Reylo versus Reylo. How, even if I were to say this is more about anti-John Boyega versus pro- John Boyega as I wouldn’t even be accurate, not really. It is about white women in fandom, White Feminists, capital W capital F, in fandom using the language of social justice, the language, also, of fragile white womanhood, language that has gotten black men hurt and even killed across the years, in service of their ship, in an attempt to silence John Boyega, to silence his fans, to try and shut his job down. They’re trying.

He’s not even gonna be Finn again, you can clearly tell that that Disney check has cleared he is done with Star Wars. And the fact that this is who John Boyega is in 2020, snarking at fans, should tell you something about what being in the Star Wars franchise does to people of color. John Boyega is the only member of the sequel trilogie’s main cast, who is active on social media. Since Kelly Marie Tran left social media in 2018, he is the only cast member of color with social media. He has been subject to things that we will probably never know the whole of when it comes to racism from fandom, within fandom. And I do not blame him for his very mild backlash, to his very mild mocking. I don’t blame him for it because when I saw John Boyega in press stuff prior to the release of The Force Awakens he was so excited about Star Wars, y’all. He was so excited to be part of the community. He was so ready for the fans. And from day one, from all corners, He has been under attack by these fans, by this fandom by people who should be able to treat him better.

And it sucks that people are not willing to go “Wait. I’m trying to get this dude fired from a job he doesn’t even currently have. But I’m trying to ruin this dude’s life over a ship. What does that make me?” And it makes you a bad guy. And it makes your fandom look really bad. And if this was just one instance, that’d be something. If it was just a heated moment of shipping, that’d be another. But this is actually a standard and fandom— when white feminists don’t get what they want. And I hope you do not succeed in popping John’s bubble any more than it’s already been deflated. Because I really cannot get over the fact that this is what this fandom is doing.

What will we talk about in the third episode? Probably Kpop. we’re about a week into BTS is next comeback. They’re doing a six week comeback leading up to Map of the Soul: 7. We’ve already had one single release. Yoongi, Suga, has released the trailer which will be the title, not title, the intro track, I believe, for the CD called Shadow. And I guess I’ll have very strong opinions on that too— in six weeks.

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2 thoughts on “[Stitch Talks Ish] Episode 2: Stitch Talks About The Rey/Kylo Fandom and Weaponized White Womanhood”

  2. I’m not a part of the active star wars fandom but white women in the fandom remind me so much of the way the suffragettes used misogyny to take away from the rights of black people. I see John’s humor towards Reylo shippers as the only way he feels he can defend himself. Like he’s so used to the racism this is the only way he sees he can protect himself. If he came out and flat out talked about the racism he experiences I’d be shocked because I know white women (being a white woman myself) would say he’s over reacting. I cannot even fathom what he is going through. I’m glad you are not cushioning this. Also have you seen John in the doc that came with the TFA release? He was gloriously happy and with the most wonderful smile. It made me happy to see. This makes me angry at what they’ve done to him.

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