Star Wars: Aftermath Author Offers Scathing Response to Criticism of Gay Characters

[Basement Cat]

Okay, so there are 3 gay characters in a Star Wars novel.

My question is: 3 characters out of how many (named) characters? Twenty? As many as fifty--though most of them are merely mentioned in passing without any character development at all?

I tried to Google it but I got nothin'.

I'll probably buy the book. I've read some good Star Wars EU novels and some profoundly terrible ones---though it's been so long I'd have trouble recalling the bad ones. Mental scarring, perhaps. ^_^

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

#BOOMHEADSHOT

I don't try to criticize much journalism, and the topic at hand may be a hot button issue that, depending on perception both public and personal, tends to start flames or cataclysmic burns of some sort to the people who respond. However I feel on the topic, the journalistic unprofessional nature of that moment in the piece, you lost credibility as a journalist to me. I understand opinions and news pieces are different things but even if you're attempting to write your biased views, that hashtag destroyed it all.
You might as well have mic dropped there. In a forum reply, or a longwinded PM, I can see that but in a published piece of journalsim its not only tacky, its low as hell and destroyed whatever credibility your point may have had. It was petty.
I'm not going to apologize for pointing it out, but there were so many other routes with class and integrity that could have been taken on this issue. This was not one of them.
No memes, no harsh language, no hate speech here, just a disappointment in reading what I thought would be a professional piece.

 

[Karadalis]

Just as an aside, the author said there was, "an Latino man", but do Latinos exist in the star wars universe? Is there an earth with a Latin american population or some other explanation? I can understand black, because that describes skin color. I suppose the author could of gone with the concept of latino ~~ brownish dudes, seems a bit of an oversight though.

That just shows how bad this author is.. there are no "latino" in the star wars universe. There are only humans of different skin colors.. latino is more of a culture thing and im afraid there is no space spain or space mexico in star wars. Thus the author fails at star wars by inserting real world culture into a universe where earth has at best been described as a lost world.

 

[Bat Vader]

I admit I haven't read the book yet but the Star Wars galaxy is a large galaxy with many different races and I presume different sexual interests. I believe the author shot himself in the foot with the way he responded to critics but at the same time I don't see the big deal with a few characters in Star Wars being gay.

 

[Callate]

I'm kind of falling on the "no one comes out of this looking good" side of things.

The author has a right to include homosexual characters in his work; hopefully he does so with some thought, viewing them as characters rather than just spearheads of an agenda. I haven't read the work in question, so I can't really judge.

But... the readers of that work- a work of popular fiction- also have a right not to be happy about it. And to make themselves heard. And they may come out of that looking like intolerant buffoons- but the author's response rather sounds like he was more interested in provocation than storycraft, and that doesn't make me feel terribly sympathetic. Clearly some people have fond memories of the universe and this particular implementation of it made them unhappy; I don't entirely feel it's my place to say that their unhappiness, with regards to a piece of pop fiction that they bought for their own enjoyment, is somehow less real. I can imagine feeling angry if I felt someone waylaid something that was important to me to advance their purposes without appreciation of why I cared in the first place.

And dragging sexism and racism into the response where none was readily apparent was a particularly crappy way to try to score points, frankly.

It's a Star Wars novel. There have been a lot of Star Wars novels, many of them awful; in the grand scheme of things, it makes very little difference. But I think if I were Disney, I wouldn't be in a great hurry to offer this particular author a second chance to play with my toys.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Just as an aside, the author said there was, "an Latino man", but do Latinos exist in the star wars universe? Is there an earth with a Latin american population or some other explanation? I can understand black, because that describes skin color. I suppose the author could of gone with the concept of latino ~~ brownish dudes, seems a bit of an oversight though.

That just shows how bad this author is.. there are no "latino" in the star wars universe. There are only humans of different skin colors.. latino is more of a culture thing and im afraid there is no space spain or space mexico in star wars. Thus the author fails at star wars by inserting real world culture into a universe where earth has at best been described as a lost world.

OT: I may have been willing to stay out of it having not read the book, but I can see where this level of writing is going when there are space Latinos. Also echoing other posters on the authors poor forms.

EDIT: I started looking up DBZ stuff (god help me) and found out that Jeice is from the same solar system as Salza, who was Cooler's space Frenchmen...

 

[Sleepy Sol]

What exactly is the news supposed to be here? What's up with some of the weird quirks in this opinion piece here? It's not like they're that huge of a deal but they're just...odd for a place trying to pass as some measure of "journalistic." It far more fits the tone of just some dude's blog. Which is fine, I guess. But just mark it as a quick little opinion piece and I think reactions would be better.

No one came out looking better here to me. Bigots were bigots (why are we paying attention to these people, what makes them worth paying attention to, Amazon reviews aren't any particular reason to get in a tizzy over anything because they're fucking Amazon reviews). And the author doesn't seem like he's always going to respond level-headedly to criticism regardless of whether it's bullshit or not.

 

[xaszatm]

then we share a similar sense of humor, and was purely coincidental.

We good fam, just noticing a connection

A connection that of course leads to....

THE ILLUMINATI

I already made you a God, so don't go around claiming you're Illuminati as well.

 

[Azure23]

Just as an aside, the author said there was, "an Latino man", but do Latinos exist in the star wars universe? Is there an earth with a Latin american population or some other explanation? I can understand black, because that describes skin color. I suppose the author could of gone with the concept of latino ~~ brownish dudes, seems a bit of an oversight though.

That just shows how bad this author is.. there are no "latino" in the star wars universe. There are only humans of different skin colors.. latino is more of a culture thing and im afraid there is no space spain or space mexico in star wars. Thus the author fails at star wars by inserting real world culture into a universe where earth has at best been described as a lost world.

So him using widely understood cultural signifiers instead of saying, "and also these kinda brown people that have this particular accent" is what makes him a bad author? I'm assuming he doesn't out and out refer to race in his novel, that's not happened in any Star Wars media I've consumed, it's not like his "Latino" character is referencing having grown up in space Spain or something. I'm sure the author has other faults, (I mean the low reviews weren't ALL from space bigots, just a lot of them), but it just seems odd that that's the thing you're pointing to to make your case for his badness.

Also, "fails at Star Wars?" We had a good laugh over that one.

 

[Damian Porter]

That aside, it does look like the author was trying to make the point that if you criticise him, you MUST be a White male. It's a poor job all round there, compounded prejudice.

Well white guys do have a near monopoly of whining about stuff online.

Except for the fact that they don't.

 

[Phil the Nervous]

Chuck Wendig is a F***ing liar. The criticism of his book is because it sucks. No one for the side that supports the EU cares about gay characters. In fact, The EU had Gay characters 16 years ago and no one made a big deal about it. Chuck is just screaming bigotry as an excuse, and because MEDIA will just accept it without question. The way he's using homosexuality as a shield is actually quite disgusting and bigoted and I'm shocked sites like this fall for it.

Hey Jared Jones. If you want to get some information from the pro-legends side of things, I'd be willing to talk to you any time. Don't let this turn into another #GamerGate thing.

100% accurate, well said.
Wiki link to Wendig's oh-so-profitable logical fallacy: <a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring>Red Herring

 

[Wary Wolf]

Looks like a case of the author trying to get some free publicity by branding anyone who doesn't like the book with homophobia. Granted, some idiots have sparked this response, but at the end of the day a bad Star Wars book is a bad Star Wars book. From my general experiences, it's more the fact that it's 'Star Wars' that the book is not received well, rather than have anything to do with rainbow politics

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I'm not really sure what to think about all this. For starters, this article seems more fitting to a blog or facebook post, rather than an actual article. Seriously, a hashtag and a dated phrase combined into one?

Although the idea of people throwing a whiny tantrum over LGBT characters merely existing doesn't sound out of the ordinary, I'm a bit more sceptical that this is so clear cut. While I've never been fond of the idea that all characters should be straight and any deviation from this needs to have an entire essay's worth of justifications, it's not so hard to believe that there might be some degree of tokenism going on here. Not that it really matters, since if other comments are to be believed the book itself isn't all that good regardless of sexuality. There are troubling reports of bland characters and an overall air of fan-fiction that hovers over it (an EU book that's basically fan-fiction? Say it ain't so!)
It seems perfectly possible that a great deal of the review bombing is coming from fans of the old EU, if there is any significant review bombing to begin with.
One thing that's worth noting: many of the reviews I just read seem to be aware of the backlash and accusations of tokenism, so many of them seem to feel obligated to at least address the issue, even if it's only to point out that it's a non-issue and not responsible for the negative review. Make of that what you will.

Edit: Okay, I've been reading even more reviews, in fact, I've been exclusively reading the 1 star reviews, and what I've seen does nothing but cast doubt on the accusations of homophobia and review bombing. Only a handful of them have even mentioned it coming across as forced (and none have outright condemned homosexuality, as far as I can see), and even then it's only a footnote in their overall criticism, which seems to mostly be about poor prose, distracting first person present tense, flat characters that lack any development, a boring plot and poor editing to top it all off. So either we have a hoard of rabid homophobes stealthily hiding their bigotry behind a veil of legitimate sounding criticism, or, there is a lot of legitimate criticism to make, and the accusation of homophobic review bombing is completely unfounded.

 

[Rastrelly]

So if that bothers you, you might wanna find a bunker for hunkering down.

Why would I? I just won't buy this book. I'm not gay, I'm not into gay, and I have no wish to experience gay perspective of world view. I hope gays will enjoy reading this book. It's obviously for them.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

So if there's a boring, bland straight white guy is he a token straight white guy just there to pander to white people? Or are white guys the default and you need a damn good reason to deviate from that. "Wait, that character's not a straight white guy? Why not? What's your reason?" Or is it okay to include gay people without any real motivation other than "gay people exist"

Don't be silly, that's not pandering, it's "target marketing".

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I am angry that they felt the need to include a robot of each size, males of each defining age and a wookie just for the sake of it, in the old films. Jeez, talk about pandering to the white, hairy, dwarven robot crowd! It's like sesame street in space without needing a 5-day amphetamine binge to compensate.

Edit: To anybody who is getting upset that a hashtag and dated phrase is being used on their beloved website, I could be wrong but I believe it is being used ironically for irony's ironic sake. Weren't you kids all down with that humour recently or something? Why do I feel like oreos now?

 

[Karadalis]

Just as an aside, the author said there was, "an Latino man", but do Latinos exist in the star wars universe? Is there an earth with a Latin american population or some other explanation? I can understand black, because that describes skin color. I suppose the author could of gone with the concept of latino ~~ brownish dudes, seems a bit of an oversight though.

That just shows how bad this author is.. there are no "latino" in the star wars universe. There are only humans of different skin colors.. latino is more of a culture thing and im afraid there is no space spain or space mexico in star wars. Thus the author fails at star wars by inserting real world culture into a universe where earth has at best been described as a lost world.

So him using widely understood cultural signifiers instead of saying, "and also these kinda brown people that have this particular accent" is what makes him a bad author? I'm assuming he doesn't out and out refer to race in his novel, that's not happened in any Star Wars media I've consumed, it's not like his "Latino" character is referencing having grown up in space Spain or something. I'm sure the author has other faults, (I mean the low reviews weren't ALL from space bigots, just a lot of them), but it just seems odd that that's the thing you're pointing to to make your case for his badness.

Also, "fails at Star Wars?" We had a good laugh over that one.

Whos "we" exactly?

That he refers to "latinos" in a star wars setting is allready idiotic in on itselfe. It shows that hes a poor author, simple as that. A good author would have created a character based on the lore and setting of the fictional universe, its a huge galaxy with endless possibilities... and yet all he can think of is "latino in space"? What... do they hang around the bad parts of coruscant and call people gringos?

Its lazy and unimaginative and shows that he really doesnt give a shit.

What next? Space africans? Space chinese? Space indians? Space native americans? All onboard the lazy train! At this point good ol george could have written a better book... and he gave us the most cringe worthy romance since the twilight books for crying out loud.

Also to the person that quoted DBZ abridged...

Allways relevant!

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Is there any actual proof that the review bombing is being done by bitter old EU fans? I don't recall seeing anything like it for books like Tarkin or A New Dawn.