What You Own

I think fandom gets mixed up into a thing where we want — or rather, demand — a thing be to our liking. Cooked and prepared in a way that we have already imagined it in our mind — we have pre-written the menu and expect a pop culture narrative to serve us our prix fixe dinner. …

So when STAR WARS dares to do something different — when it is, in effect, refusing your prix fixe expectations and instead going with omakase, chef’s-motherfucking-choice — you’re going to have a higher quotient of ACTUALLY MADE PEOPLE. Not just because it has defied their expectations, but also challenged them in a way where the film is literally disagreeing with some things you have taken in as strongly-held-beliefs. …

But fandom complicates that — especially a BIG BIG BIG FANDOM — because they accumulate ideas and view stories less like narrative trustfall exercises and more like pre-packaged history lessons. But stories are *always* trustfall exercises. It is literally our job as storytellers to *not be trusted* but, at the same time, to have *all the trust.* Which sounds paradoxical, but I mean it like this: you can’t trust us to do the thing you want us to do, but you must trust us to tell a great story anyway.
–Chuck Wendig (Truncated from a Twitter Thread that is gold and you should read if you’re a fan of stuff)

After my rambling post to nowhere last week I’ve been thinking about fandom or rather the dark side of it. Ever since I saw The Last Jedi I’ve been thinking about why fans of things feel like they own them or know the story better than their creators/writers.