If you haven’t heard already, well here it is: Disney Star Wars The Acolyte has been cancelled after only one season. It’s been all over Twitter/X and the only thing I really have to say about it is: “Okay.”
I am not angry or happy that the show was cancelled, I was not involved in its cancellation, I just don’t care. I haven’t cared for Star Wars for a long time, especially after The Last Jedi, with the character assassination of Mark Hamill’s character, Luke Skywalker and the fact that it would be the last time we would see Carrie Fisher (R.I.P.) as Leia Organa on screen. I’m apathetic and you can blame the current fans of Disney Star Wars for that.
This news does not come as a surprise to me, especially with some of the reviews of the show I’ve seen on YouTube. As I understand, the show had a coven of space witches that could create life through the Force, ended up making twins and the twins are of one mind, yet are two separate people? So, that trivializes and outright shits on the immaculate conception of Anakin Skywalker.
I shouldn’t be surprised at all that they are erasing the rich lore and history of the iconic Star Wars franchise because they’ve been doing this for years.
(Source: United Spacers Alliance YouTube channel)
Imagine disregarding 30+ years of work to expand upon the lore, just to pretend that it doesn’t exist so that the people behind Disney Star Wars can pretend like they made something completely new and original, while at the same time pushing out long time fans of the franchise just because they don’t fit with your agenda.
Yes, I said Disney Star Wars, because I am firm in my stance that the George Lucas films are the only canon, as well, that Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is the end and nothing will change my mind. Hell, I didn’t even mind the Prequels that much, in fact, I feel like, while they did have their problems, we had no idea how good we had it, but I’m getting off-topic.
Similar to The Last Jedi, I feel that The Acolyte is an evergreen joke, because not only do the cast and creators of show know absolutely nothing about Star Wars:
(Source: Asmongold Clips YouTube Channel)
But the creators of the show having no idea how storytelling works and that is going to be funny forever.
(Source: Fludded Clips’ YouTube channel)
And, that’s really it, I am not pleased nor disappointed that this series is cancelled, I just lack the capacity to care. Ironically, I am looking forward to what kind of (alleged) money laundering scheme Disney Star Wars plans to launch next ($180,000,000 to be exact), furthermore what kind of work Harvey Weinstein’s former personal assistant: Leslie Headland (again, allegedly, I can neither confirm nor deny) will land in the future.
Though this is not the first series that has been cancelled after its first season, anybody remember that absolutely awful Resident Evil Netflix series that got shitcanned, where the best part of it was Lance Reddick?
(Source: TheEvilDedolok’s YouTube Channel)
This one?
Yeah, me either, mostly because it not only wasn’t good and completely shit on what Resident Evil was in order to push a race-swapped Wesker (from what I hear Lance Reddick absolutely killed it), girlbosses with questionable sexual appetites and… you know what, I don’t care. I have never watched the series, nor do I plan to because, as with The Acolyte, I was told that this series was not for me, so, I didn’t watch it.
And that’s one thing that I will never truly understand:
Why is it that when something new comes out that looks completely awful and is rightfully mocked that the usual suspects come out of the woodwork to loudly screech that: “thIs frAncHisE isN’t mAde FOr yoU!!!!111!!” And yet, are completely surprised when those that were told that said content was not “for them” do not consume said content? Not just that, but proceed to berate, mock and ridicule the people who didn’t watch it after said content inevitably fails because it didn’t meet the required ratings for more money to be invested into it. I’ll go a step further and ask the same thing, but said content causes studios to be completely shut down, putting the employees out of a job.
(Forspoken, a game developed by Luminous Productions and published by Square Enix and consulted on by Sweet Baby Inc.)
Don’t even get me started on the above game, was so poorly received that Luminous Productions was shut down just four months after Forspoken’s release. I will admit, when I saw the initial previews of this game, I was intrigued and wanted to see more, then something happened, the same thing that always inevitably happens even while development of the game was still on-going, people got offended by something in the game. Consequently this led to the game being talked about for years until its release, this caused me to just push it out of my mind, until the day it came out.
“Oh yeah, that’s a thing…” was my exact response, as reviews came in on YouTube, Twitter. At the time I didn’t really care, because I was looking forward to seeing Distant Worlds in Nashville late that month, as well as being preoccupied by a D&D campaign I was running at the time (this was before the OGL scandal that would plague Wizards of the Cost and Hasbro). I feel like I wasn’t missing much, especially after seeing gameplay footage, it wasn’t great, it wasn’t terrible, it was mediocre at best.
The same could be said for the absolute vandalism that was the Netflix Cowboy Bebop series, which like Resident Evil, was cancelled after its first season.
(Source: itsagundam’s YouTube channel)
This, like Resident Evil before it, deemed to attack their potential audience for perceived wrongthink, becoming needlessly antagonistic against them because it wasn’t like the source material.
It too died a sudden and quite frankly deserved death, and while the cast behind the series attempted to gaslight viewers for it’s failure, I failed to care. I have no need to watch something by people who apparently hate me, merely for existing.
It was around this time that I started to put together a sort of formula that has been used in the past to market these horrible ideas, in an age of social media where confrontation is rewarded, outrage is farmed for content, misery is generated for and by the masses and profit is made from the conflict. Feels a bit like profiting from war, in this case: the war for Pop Culture.
For those who don’t know how things like this play out, I’ll lay it out for you:
An IP is chosen to either expand upon, re-release, remaster or reboot.
Cultural vandals are hired in, proclaiming their love and devotion to the IP and work begins.
Nitpicks are singled-out, targeted and proclaimed to be bad, this could range from something as simple as fanservice, a perceived injustice involving whatever hot button issue is on the cultural vandal’s mind. In a more recent example: the removal of reward for taking pictures of a woman’s assets in the Dead Rising Remake.
A call to action to change the offending material starts to appear in publications, the ones in favor proclaiming that the change is necessary to appeal to an undefined “modern audience”.
Changes are made to the IP which involve the issue, either by censoring or removing the content entirely. Publications in favor shower the developer of the IP with praise, while at the same time, angering fans and the audience at large.
“Discourse” is started and buzz is generated surround the issue, which gathers individuals who both agree and disagree, increasing the discussion surrounding it.
Conflicts arise surrounding the issue or change, articles from publications, major, minor and independent continue the discussion, which ends up resulting in echo chambers.
Once discord has been sown among the masses, which was the goal, who are we kidding, buzz continues to be generated, with people either looking forward to the release of said IP or waiting to see its downfall and often times, inevitable failure. In most cases previous fans are shoved out and even denounced by the cultural vandals within the IP.
The masses in defense of the changes to said IP become increasingly confrontational, leading to social media outrage, personal attacks and in some cases doxxing.
The IP is eventually released, usually followed up by undeserved or sometimes even manufactured praise, all while loudly denouncing previous fans and the audience.
The product or IP inevitably fails, which leads to more outrage, leading to publications further smearing the previous fans pushed out in favor of newer fans and the phantom “modern audience”. Those pushed out are blamed for the failure of the IP and are almost always followed with labels of “-ist” or “-phobe” or whatever derogatory terms they want to demonize the previous fans with.
Return to step 1 and the cycle continues once again.
Maybe I’ve oversimplified it, so I’ll help to illustrate with this meme, which still rings true today:
It’s truly a sad state of affairs for the modern entertainment industry. I have watched IPs, Publishers, Developers and even people who I viewed as heroes fall prey to the woke mind virus that seems to permeate just about everything. The things I once loved, lost, because I am apparently hated for enjoying content for the sake of simple enjoyment, or that I don’t buy into the current narrative being spun by the Dying Legacy Media, who continues to fearmonger about whatever issues are hot at the time. Or that I refuse to bow down to people who are allegedly my betters because they believe themselves morally superior and on the “right side of history”.
As I’ve said before and will repeat until the day I am no longer walking this Earth:
Life is too short to harbor hatred in your heart.
Hatred is a destructive emotion that requires a great deal of misplaced energy and creates more problem than it solves. This is not to say that I am completely without hatred myself, far from it. That being said, I do not hate people, I hate what people do, especially to others, usually without any reason or logic behind their actions but instead by a feeling or need for validation from peers that will inevitably turn on them for even the slightest sway from the current propaganda.
At this point, I can honestly say, that I don’t give a fuck anymore, furthermore, I am okay with it.
I don’t care to listen to the words of people who hate me merely for existing. I also don’t have the hate in my heart to live such a miserable existence nor join their shared misery. If you are able to hate me for the color of my skin, who I choose to love or how I think, then in my opinion you are not worth listening to.
I refuse to respect the people who want to silence me for perceived “wrongthink” and will do anything to silence me. If your ideas can’t stand up to scrutiny in the open marketplace of ideas, then that’s a you problem, not me. And no amount of censorship on their part will silence me forever.
I refuse to be lectured about racism/sexism by a person who commits those crimes themselves, by disparaging straight white men for no other reason other than they feel that is fair to do so because of past injustices. You cannot fight fire with fire (at least outside of video games, fantasy novels, movies, anime or tabletop games).
I respectfully decline to join in their hallucination, furthermore, if they come at me with “their truth” what I will respond to them with is this: “Okay, there’s only one word for your truth and that’s bullshit.”
And with the upcoming release of games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws, which is a whole other can of worms I won’t get into because I do not have that kind of time. There are others far better than myself who have done that better than I ever could. I’ve enough games in my backlog, my steam library, my GOG library among others to last me for a lifetime. I’ve got my library of tabletop role playing games, which continues to grow and have worlds I can explore, whether by myself or with others. In fact, I’ve got something brewing for my return to the Castle Keeper’s chair, as well as the next episode of Night Shift.
In the Glass Age, a term coined by a favorite YouTube creator of mine: Den of the Drake, where people spend a majority of their time staring at our phones and mindlessly scrolling, self-diagnosing mental illness and consuming whatever crap comes up on our social media feeds, it is important to hang on to the things you enjoy.
(Source: Den of the Drake’s YouTube channel.)
Because as technology evolves, IPs get vandalized and physical media continues to disappear or get memory-holed by people so miserable its a wonder that they can exist in civilized society while glued to a glass rectangle.
They don’t want us to consume the things that “aren’t meant for us”, while at the same time, changing the very things that made them great and taking away all of our other options so that we have no choice but to listen and believe.
Don’t let them.
Instead, pull up a chair, nod your head, grab your popcorn and watch the dumpster fire burn. At the very least, we can take some solace knowing that not only do their ideas fail on every level but there will come a time when they will have to adhere to the same standards they’ve set for everyone else. Eventually and as farfetched as it is, they will have to take accountability for the double-standards they’ve set.