Must Watch Video on why the Star Wars Fandom Hates LGBTIAQ+ People

Well, but what if I want to see the video because their view on a certain topic interests me. I think it js totally fair to criticise someone for making too long videos.

ETA: just saw that your post's title is "must watch video...". But than you tell someone to just not watch it??

Hbomberguy makes long videos yes, but he doesn't make six hours long videos. He still makes his points concise and presents them in interesting and entertaining ways. Only in his last video does he cross the threshold into 3 hours long videos, and in that one he even says, in the video, that there was an entire section that he wrote and edited and then cut out because it muddied the point of his video.

Maybe it's a question of where to draw the line, but I think hbomberguy is very much not the norm for long-form content creators. And I do not appreciate having long videos for the sake of having a video be long.

The real problem with the sequels, is that they're a poor rehash of the other films, so for anyone who's watched the original trilogy and the prequels, all that's left in the sequels are some slightly better SFX, some different goofy parts, plus some poorly added racial elements that come from nowhere and go nowhere (see: Rose x Finn). Of course it didn't help that Carrie Fisher would pass away and they had to use CGI to paste her in, but even Rey's "hero journey" is kind of "meh" compared to Luke's or Anakin's, and IMO they didn't give her enough screen time.

It really is! I definitely think fandom spaces like YouTube do tend to be disproportionately male, with all the toxicity that comes with it. Not that the more female and LGBT dominated fandom spaces don't have their fair share of toxicity, but I'd rather deal with "my preferred gay couple is better than your preferred gay couple" than "gay couples shouldn't even exist". It's much easier to agree to disagree when the disagreement is about personal taste rather than whether some people even have a right to live.

Only blue and green dragons would systematically choose gay riders, and those were largely considered disposable - although a few appeared in the narrative, most often they were only mentioned in the stats of how many of each colour hatched and how many died. Gold, bronze, and brown dragons wouldn't choose gay riders, and riders of those dragons were the only ones eligible for any leadership positions. So by default, gay riders were automatically and permanently relegated to subordinate positions due to their sexuality. When you combine dragons being picky about their rider's sexuality while also insisting that each colour of dragon prefers certain personality types, you end up with some really unfortunate implications. The best thing the Pern fandom did for the fandom was decide that dragons don't care about someone's sexuality, severing the implied link between sexuality and competence (since green dragons were persistently described as being flighty, unreliable, and dramatic.)

And the classist elements are there all through the entire series. It's supposed to be some amazing feminist story because only women can ride gold dragons, and gold dragons are the highest ranking ones. But they're also only a tiny handful of all dragons, less than 1%, and all the other women on Pern are largely treated like shit because they're only seen as breeders for the next generation. Conveniently, most gold riders also seemed to come from particular bloodlines, with it being noted that Ruatha Hold in particular provided a lot of them. So basically the message here is that a small portion of women, if they come from sufficiently good bloodlines, are worthy of being treated with respect, but none of the others are.

Pern is absolutely classist as hell, and any stories about characters from lower classes always inevitably end up with them becoming a higher class, whether that's Impressing a dragon (preferably bronze or gold), joining a crafthall (preferably the Harpers, given that being a musician, archivist, or spy has more "prestige" than being a tanner or blacksmith), or being given land in the Southern Continent to become members of the aristocracy themselves. So one could argue that there's an aspirational element, but "lower class person can only achieve anything of note if the upper class give them the opportunity to become upper class" is still pretty classist, especially given that with the dragons, it's related to a genetic trait and also requires a specific combination of sexuality and personality.

There were also specific rules about what colour Pernese people had to be, but because this simultaneously made blonde haired and blue eyed people incredibly rare as well as black people, you can argue the toss about whether Anne McCaffrey was also a racist. Obviously by modern standards, "all the human races interbred so much that everybody averaged out to looking kind of Latino" is not a great look, but it was common in a lot of sci-fi of the 70s as a means of implying that everybody stopped caring about race. But the Ruatha Hold family were specifically established in one of the books as founded by red haired blue eyed people, so Anne McCaffrey's most favoured family line on Pern also happened to be really, really white...

And the problem is that it's not just that the world was like this, because obviously what an author writes is different to what they believe. But the portions of the fandom aged 35+, who were active in the fandom in the early days of the internet, can confirm that Anne McCaffrey actually believed it, and regularly attacked fans who didn't agree with her, either on her forums or through cease and desist letters from her lawyers. (I got one. I was 16.)

Don't get me wrong, I do love Pern as a setting. I still dabble occasionally, but only because when Anne died, Todd McCaffrey did away with sending threatening letters to any fan who stepped out of line, and the fandom as a whole decided to make Pern less homophobic, less misogynistic, less classist, and less racist. I feel like fans today, who have only experienced the adjustments fandom made to Pern, have no real idea of just how toxic it was in the past.

I'm always down for a 6 hour Hbomberguy video, but I accept that treatment from nobody else.

Essayists gotta earn my trust first, and the more people making super long videos, the higher the standard I expect them to meet to be worth my time.

It's why papers in college have word limits - you need to be able to pick what's most important and make your point.

With this video it's the second option. They had lots of content and did not condense it sufficiently. They repeat themselves all the time and it's hard to tell what's new information and what they've already mentioned before...

Of course, because Star Wars has such wide appeal. Extremists shout louder and more often than moderates, which is why you’ll find way more extremist content than moderate content. Which lends to the perception that Star Wars fans are bigoted and lunatics.

But this is selection bias. You’re more likely going to find people shouting about how something sucks and potentially even being a bigot than people who happily enjoy Star Wars for what it is.

Labelling fandoms as inherently toxic or bigoted or whatever else just oversimplifies it all. Under these definitions, I fall within the fandom of Star Wars. Under the same definitions in this video, I’m anti LGBTQI and a supporter of Jungian psychology and Jordan Peterson. This is counter to reality though.

I think analyzing the story and context through a critical psychology lens and determining that all of the fandom must have a unified ideology is silly and the product of someone having way too much time and imagination on their hands.

I liked action and lightsabers and space ships as a kid. Doesn’t mean I’m a fascist or anti lgbtqia+. This reductive thinking that often is pushed here serves no purpose other than to further divide and classify people.

Jedi are idealogues just like the Sith. They complete each other because they’re both extremists on opposite spectrums. The Jedi had big gaping flaws throughout their history, obviously so have the Sith.

I’m just here for Jar Jar.

While I agree with you it would make a more interesting story to have a balance of dark and light, it's important to note George Lucas' interpretation of the Force is that there is no 'light side' but rather there is The Force and there is going against the will of the Force, aka the Dark Side. Therefore, to Lucas' POV, the Jedi are sometimes misguided but intrisically good while the Sith are intrisically evil.

In my personal interpretation tho (which I think Clone Wars and other media tend to agree with me) Jedi in the prequels were blinded by the power they achieved and hence were ignorant and complacent to the bad stuff they indirectly and directly did or helped do. Which is why Gray Jedi (Jedi that didn't follow the Council) were closer to being like what Jedi were supposed to be, than the others were.

Second these. I also love her video about RoboCop as an allegory for the transgender experience.

Thanks for the recommendation. Will check them out!