Star Wars: Aftermath Author Offers Scathing Response to Criticism of Gay Characters
Talk about sexuality. I can literally trace the moment I hit puberty back to this very scene.
Fed up with all the criticism aimed at his decision, Wendig took to his blog [http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/09/07/star-wars-aftermath-reviews-news-and-such/comment-page-1/] to address the notions that he was using the Star Wars universe to push his own political agenda. What followed was a takedown of epic proportions.
And if you're upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you. Sorry, you squawking saurian - meteor's coming. And it's a fabulously gay Nyan Cat meteor with a rainbow trailing behind it and your mode of thought will be extinct. You're not the Rebel Alliance. You're not the good guys. You're the fucking Empire, man. You're the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars. It's like trying to picture Jesus kicking lepers in the throat instead of curing them. Stop being the Empire. Join the Rebel Alliance. We have love and inclusion and great music and cute droids.
(By the way, the book also has an older woman, a mother, rescuing a man. So if that bothers you, you might wanna find a bunker for hunkering down. And I dunno if you noticed, but the three new protagonists of the movie consist of a woman, a black man, a Latino man. The bad guys all look like white guys, too. So many meteors. So little time to squawk at them.)
#BOOMHEADSHOT
Now, it bears mentioning that Wendig's book hasn't received such a poor Amazon rating due to its inclusion of gay characters alone. Several reviewers have noted that Wendig's reliance on present-tense voice, cardboard characters, and jarring tonal shifts are truly the source of the novel's downfall.
"It reminds me of the worst of the EU (Expanded Universe)," wrote one Amazon user.
"As I read, I found myself not caring what happened to any of [the characters]. Whether they lived or died made no difference to me, and that's a bad sign," wrote another.
Other Amazon critics of Aftermath addressed the "diversity" (as Hall would put it) head on, writing, "This book includes 3 gay characters that feel so forced into the story. Disney is stuffing diversity down our throats and it's taking me out of my suspension of believe because it feels forced. I myself am a minority but when I read star Wars I don't want to be thinking about racial consciousness or sexual identity."
And you know, maybe some of the detractors are right. Not every form of escapist fiction has to serve as some parallel or satire of a real-life issue. The problem is, Star Wars has kind of always done that. The original trilogy, aside from creating a philosophical mythology heavily rooted in Taoism, was modeled after the fall of the democratic Roman Republic and rise of the Roman empire. Likewise, the rise in authoritarianism beginning with the Clone Wars has often been looked at as a metaphor for the United States government's actions after 9/11 (ie. The Patriot Act). Whether or not Lucas meant for these to be direct parallels remains a mystery, but the point is, it's damn near impossible to build a universe as complex as Star Wars' without drawing some influence from the one in which we live.
In order to get to the point where one's sexual, racial, and religious background is as commonplace as the car you drive, we must first introduce a wider audience to said diversity, whether it be through a Congressional act, a character in a major work of art, or otherwise. Is that up to Lucas & Co. alone to figure out? Hardly, but can we really fault them for trying to help?
Source: Pajiba [http://www.pajiba.com/star_wars/star-wars-aftermath-author-has-perfect-response-to-complaints-about-gay-characters.php]
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Talk about sexuality. I can literally trace the moment I hit puberty back to this very scene.
Fed up with all the criticism aimed at his decision, Wendig took to his blog [http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/09/07/star-wars-aftermath-reviews-news-and-such/comment-page-1/] to address the notions that he was using the Star Wars universe to push his own political agenda. What followed was a takedown of epic proportions.
And if you're upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you. Sorry, you squawking saurian - meteor's coming. And it's a fabulously gay Nyan Cat meteor with a rainbow trailing behind it and your mode of thought will be extinct. You're not the Rebel Alliance. You're not the good guys. You're the fucking Empire, man. You're the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars. It's like trying to picture Jesus kicking lepers in the throat instead of curing them. Stop being the Empire. Join the Rebel Alliance. We have love and inclusion and great music and cute droids.
(By the way, the book also has an older woman, a mother, rescuing a man. So if that bothers you, you might wanna find a bunker for hunkering down. And I dunno if you noticed, but the three new protagonists of the movie consist of a woman, a black man, a Latino man. The bad guys all look like white guys, too. So many meteors. So little time to squawk at them.)
#BOOMHEADSHOT
Now, it bears mentioning that Wendig's book hasn't received such a poor Amazon rating due to its inclusion of gay characters alone. Several reviewers have noted that Wendig's reliance on present-tense voice, cardboard characters, and jarring tonal shifts are truly the source of the novel's downfall.
"It reminds me of the worst of the EU (Expanded Universe)," wrote one Amazon user.
"As I read, I found myself not caring what happened to any of [the characters]. Whether they lived or died made no difference to me, and that's a bad sign," wrote another.
Other Amazon critics of Aftermath addressed the "diversity" (as Hall would put it) head on, writing, "This book includes 3 gay characters that feel so forced into the story. Disney is stuffing diversity down our throats and it's taking me out of my suspension of believe because it feels forced. I myself am a minority but when I read star Wars I don't want to be thinking about racial consciousness or sexual identity."
And you know, maybe some of the detractors are right. Not every form of escapist fiction has to serve as some parallel or satire of a real-life issue. The problem is, Star Wars has kind of always done that. The original trilogy, aside from creating a philosophical mythology heavily rooted in Taoism, was modeled after the fall of the democratic Roman Republic and rise of the Roman empire. Likewise, the rise in authoritarianism beginning with the Clone Wars has often been looked at as a metaphor for the United States government's actions after 9/11 (ie. The Patriot Act). Whether or not Lucas meant for these to be direct parallels remains a mystery, but the point is, it's damn near impossible to build a universe as complex as Star Wars' without drawing some influence from the one in which we live.
In order to get to the point where one's sexual, racial, and religious background is as commonplace as the car you drive, we must first introduce a wider audience to said diversity, whether it be through a Congressional act, a character in a major work of art, or otherwise. Is that up to Lucas & Co. alone to figure out? Hardly, but can we really fault them for trying to help?
Source: Pajiba [http://www.pajiba.com/star_wars/star-wars-aftermath-author-has-perfect-response-to-complaints-about-gay-characters.php]
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