White Fannish Entitlement Strikes Again

Near the end of June, I made the mistake of commenting on Star Wars fandom stuff when I saw screenshots of some members of that subfandom gloating about John Boyega briefly losing his blue check/verified status on Twitter as well as kind of assuming the worst about his exit from Rebel Ridge – especially once people started kind of claiming that he was “difficult“. (Like fully going “perhaps he will have his MeToo moment and people will know that he’s truly garbage… like we have all along” in some tweets I glimpsed.)

Aside from the comment calling me a bootlicker of color (for making a thread about fandom nonsense from their camp and not immediately writing a Teen Vogue article about John Boyega, who I have no access to and still cannot reach for clarification or an interview), one comment that stood out to me called me a coward because I didn’t like… leap into the way of actual non-fandom white supremacists in defense of Rey/Kylo fandom. Again, a fandom full of people that hate me for pointing out their co-fans’ racism.

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When Does Online Harassment From Fandom Stop?

If you’re a person of color… Never

If you’re marginalized in some way – queer, a person of color, not a cis dude – you can expect to be subject to months or even years of online harassment from people who insist that you deserved it. Mind you, you will deserve this unending harassment solely because your presence on social media, in a given fandom, writing for any platform at all, or your appearance in a show they like angers them so much that they need to punish you for it.

People will doctor screenshots, lie about their online behavior and yours, forge evidence, and just… make shit up to punish us for being in “their” spaces or in “their” way.

In September, Teen Wolf will have been off the air for four years. In December, it will have been two years since the premiere of The Rise of Skywalker. The first episode of The Flash aired in 2014. May of this year marked three years since I left Tumblr for good and three months since I permanently locked my main Twitter account after the latest escalations from a multi-fandom disinfo and harassment campaign.

Tyler Posey, John Boyega, Candice Patton, and myself.

Four people.

Years of harassment.

All for being inconvenient, for being in the way (of a ship), not playing ball, and speaking out about racism and other firms of harassment in the spaces they’re in.

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Thread Collection: Like With Meghan, Coded Antiblackness Comes (1/11/2020)

Originally posted on Twitter January 11, 2020.


This trash article about Meghan and Harry is actually super relevant to what’s been going on with @JohnBoyega, the Rey/Kylo fandom, and coded racism from people in fandom/media that think we can’t see what they’re doing.

At no point in this article does the writer mention Megan’s actual race or mention her Blackness.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s not racist? Look at the second screenshot and how it continues the condescending attitude towards her.

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When Transformative Fandom Passes The Buck On Representation In Fandom

“Well if there were more well-written characters of color, I’d focus on them,” is a recurring excuse for the way content is unfairly weighted towards white characters in Western media fandoms.

I have heard it used for over a decade and it’s an excuse used to successfully argue that the thing stopping them from caring about Black/brown people in their shows is… quality and quantity.

Back when we were hearing the first rumblings of rumors for Pacific Rim Uprising’s John Boyega connection, my friend Holly over at DiverseHighFantasy posted on Tumblr that:

The PacRim fandom is already chanting for no romance in 2, but wait till they see whiteguy Jaeger Tech #3 and whiteguy cafeteria server in a 2 second shot together.

The post on Tumblr currently has over fourteen thousand notes and considering how from the jump people were insulting Holly, accusing her of “a homophobic microaggression”, saying “let women like things”… .it probably hasn’t gotten much better. From John Boyega’s interviews and how he talked about why he wanted to be a producer – this film was his production company’s first outing – we knew that the film was going to probably have a diverse cast of characters.

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What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Weaponized White Womanhood

Note 3/31/21: Are you here because you googled “Jenny Nicholson racist”? Did a Twitter user link this to you to explain why ~people~ don’t like Jenny in the replies to a tweet calling out a breadtube user? Let me clarify a thing for you:

THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT JENNY AND IT IS NOT ABOUT WHAT SHE MAY OR MAY NOT SHIP. She’s mentioned in one segment in the article and over like 4-7 tweets (out of over 100) in the supplemental PDF/thread. It is literally not about her or about my beef with what other people ship in the Star Wars fandom but about white women and BIPOC who ship Rey/Kylo who tried to say John Boyega was a danger to Daisy Ridley over an IG comment about REY. Please learn to read and think critically and then GO AWAY. Thanks!


Content notes: As with a majority of my pieces, this one focuses closely on antiblackness including the antiblackness inherent in weaponizing white womanhood to excuse dogpiling and slandering John Boyega as a misogynist, as a potential sexual predator, as a bunch of other gross and untrue things. I talk briefly about some examples of Rey/Kylo fics from the fandom’s past including non-graphic (I believe) mentions of sexual assault and include links to a recap of one and an image of the other.


White women have most (if not all) of the actual observable power in transformative fandom spaces.

White women are the image of the typical “fan” in Western transformative fandom spaces.

They are frequently the most popular Big Named Fans (BNFs) in online spaces, the people who dominate discussions about and displays of Being A Fan. If you’re in transformative fandom and you see a particular set of headcanons or a white dude slash suddenly get supremely popular out of nowhere, chances are that a group of white lady BNFs are behind it.

White women in fandom often get to “graduate” from fandom, dominating what we and outsiders think about transformative with staff writer, researcher, and professor jobs that they can tie directly into their experiences and time in fandom.

(Look at the overarching fan studies academic field for an example or fandom-focused journalism on sites like WIRED, The Daily Dot, The Nerdist, and CBR. Chances are that many of the names you know in these fields, if you know any names, belong to white women.)

With that much power already, it can’t be a surprise that many white women in fandom will do pretty much anything in order to keep the status quo level.

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[Signal Boost] Boyega Brigade Boost for Theatre Peckham

From the GoFundMe:

“I admire Theatre Peckham’s continued mission to increase diversity in the creative industries, inspiring young people like myself to be the change we want to see in this industry.” — John Boyega

Hey, fellow John Boyega stans! John put his heart and soul into bringing the amazing Finn to life in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Many of us who never saw ourselves in major sci-fi franchises found a champion in Finn’s journey from slave to hero. John told us from the door that he lives, breathes, and bleeds Finn, and his dedication to the role and to his fans have been a high point of the entire series.

In honor of his fantastic portrayal of Finn — and the effortless cool, poise and sense of humor he maintained offscreen — we’re raising money for something near and dear to John’s heart — Theatre Peckham, the South London-based training theatre company where he was a featured player from ages 9 to 14, and of which he became a patron in 2016. The group recently unveiled a mural  of John, and as a patron, he has helped TP kick off its 2020 fundraising drive to celebrate “talent that has come from Peckham and looking towards the future of those who will become.”

All money raised here will be sent directly to Theatre Peckham in aid of its programs and its mission of building a diverse talent pool for creative industries. Since 2020 is the year that John brought in with a bang, we’ve set that as an initial target.

(TP takes donations in pounds only, so this will work out to about 1600 GBP depending on currency exchange. If you feel most comfortable donating directly to TP’s donations’ processor , that’s cool too!)

Please consider donating to this worthy cause if you can. Thank you!

Boyega Brigade Boost for Theatre Peckham

For me, John Boyega’s performance as Finn changed the game.

I wasn’t a die hard Star Wars fan before the sequel trilogy. I’d liked the franchise, sure. But I was well in my teens before I saw all of the previous films. I didn’t have opinions on favorite characters or any of that. I saw a cool space opera and that’s about where it went for me. I wasn’t invested.

And then John Boyega, my Attack the Block bae, gets cast in The Force Awakens and I pretty much got sucked into further fandom-ing for him – but also for Finn. Finn remains a character I adore and who I would love to write some day. I’ve seen myself in him and I know many other John Boyega fans and Black people in the general (non-nerdy) audience did too.

Like Em says in the description for the GoFundMe above, “Many of us who never saw ourselves in major sci-fi franchises found a champion in Finn’s journey from slave to hero.”

As far as I can remember, there are only four Black people playing human characters in Star Wars. John is the first to be a main character. That he’s playing a character with as much power and potential as Finn – who broke his own conditioning and rebels against the fascist First Order that took him away from his parents…

I get chills thinking about it.

I am a huge John Boyega fan and that’s why I want to ask that my friends and followers alike donate whatever they can to this GoFundMe and share it with anyone that might be interested! This way, we can all show our appreciation to John by can supporting the place that helped set John on his path to stardom.

Let’s help light the way for future generations of actors to find themselves and practice their craft at Theatre Peckham!

Quick Coverage: John Boyega Ends 2019 With a Bang (And a Hearty ‘Fuck You’ To Rey/Kylo Shippers)

Note: I have an ongoing thread about this entire situation and the fans’ responses that fully covers the majority of what this fandom’s been up to with John.


In case you missed my lengthy post about how Rey/Kylo shippers really don’t like John Boyega, I’m here to remind you of that fact by covering the sheer unsubtle nonsense that’s been going on in this fandom for the past twenty-four hours.

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