Life After Being Cancelled
What happened, and how it changed me.
Something that many people do not know about me is that in May of 2020, I was cancelled by Star Wars fans on Twitter. It was stressful, scary, and undeserved for me to be mobbed and doxxed by stans. Tensions were high, the fandom was changing, the world was changing, and I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
My crime? Writing a lore-based analysis on the possibility that clone troopers could be gay.
This article will walk you through the headspace I was in that brought me to this point, the details of my argument, and the fallout of the whole ordeal.
Setting the Scene
Surprisingly, the most embarrassing part of the story revolves around how I got enmeshed in the Star Wars fandom space in the first place. Anyone who knows me knows that I typically shy away from entering and participating in dedicated fandom spaces. While the way it is now is partially influenced by the events of this article, I have notably held this belief for my whole career online. With the exception of One Direction, I never truly aligned with fandoms and online communities. Even in my BBC Sherlock and Hunger Games middle school Tumblr phases, I was averse to the social implications of enthusiastically displaying my interest in things generally considered nerdy.
So why did that change for Star Wars? Well, you must take into account the timing of this incident, May 2020. Picture this: I’m a junior in college, a chaotic 20-year-old business student wilding out in New Orleans, LA thousands of miles from any family when everything suddenly shut down. Out of nowhere on that fateful March day I lost my access to the movie theater, my college campus, the bars I frequented with my friends, and all my typical activities. I remember making a Disney Plus account so I could watch Frozen 2 at my apartment just to feel something, when I saw something that would influence my next several weeks.
The Disney Plus app showed that Star Wars: The Clone Wars would be receiving a seventh and final season to celebrate May the 4th. With all the time I had on my hands and my fresh access to the entire Star Wars canon, I embarked on the ultimate rewatch marathon. It was only a matter of days before my twitter profile transitioned into a full on Ahsoka Tano stan account.
As May the 4th creeped closer and closer, I met other Ahsoka stan accounts and we shared about our excitement for the upcoming Ahsoka content. After gaining a few new mutuals and proving my Star Wars knowledge to the people who sit above me on the nerd hierarchy, I was added to a special group chat for Ahsoka stans to live chat during the premiere of season 7. Little did I know that this fateful group dm would change my outlook on the internet and fandoms for the rest of my life.
“So, Can the Clones be Gay?”
The question was asked innocently enough by a fellow stan in the chat. This gal in particular was from New Zealand, so the question was posed at an odd time. Luckily, I was battling extreme insomnia and was right there to academically engage with the inquiry and research the source material to understand the possibility of different sexual orientations in clones.
Ultimately my findings came to three potential conclusions:
Clones are asexual only.
The Clone Wars season 6, produced by Netflix after the series was dropped by Cartoon Network, introduced the concept that when clones are grown in the labs on Kamino, they are each outfitted with an inhibitor chip in their brains. The canon purpose of these chips was to make the clones more submissive when the eventual Order 66 came out from Emperor Palpatine. The content shows us, however, that the empire experienced many auxiliary benefits of the inhibitor chips beyond that purpose. The chips influenced the Clones to follow all orders despite moral or ethical objections and also prevented Clones from having the courage to desert or abandon their military posts in favor of personal pursuits. If the empire wanted to optimize their clone army, it would make sense to me that the inhibitor chips include compulsory asexuality to prevent distractions from their factory soldiers.
Clones’ sexual orientation aligns with the population.
If the Clones sexual orientation is not predetermined to be asexual by their creators, the sexual orientation of the clones likely varies at the same rates as the general space population. the whole purpose of The Clone Wars series was to bring that period of galactic history to life and to show the true scale of the tragedy of the clones. Since the series went to such lengths to show that each clone is an individual with a unique personality, it seems to track with the philosophy of show that sexual orientation has no genetic component but is rather determined socially. Earlier seasons of The Clone Wars showed the story of a clone who deserted the grand army of the republic to get married and have kids with a Twi’leck on another planet. That being said, it seems canonically appropriate that clones have sexualities and can be gay.
A deserter clone and his family Clonecest.
Now this was apparently sooooooooo controversial for me to discuss, but please hear me out. For this scenario, we’ve ruled out predestined asexuality and accepted that clones can identify as any sexual or gender orientation. However, when confronted with the reality of the clones’ lives, you have to ask yourself what sexuality and libido imply for the clones’ quality of life. Think about it, they grow to be full adults in one year while sequestered in a complex with nothing but genetic clones of themselves and incompatible alien anatomy. Once they’re stationed, they’re too proper to have relations with anyone above them in the chain of command, they don’t have opportunities to mingle with the locals, and they truly only interact with their twins. So, dare I say, that if the clones have any natural urge to have relations with another human, other clones might be the only option. Obviously I don’t headcanon this, I don’t wish for this to be the case, I just wanted to cover all of the lore-appropriate responses to the question at hand.
Getting Cancelled
Getting cancelled was a whirlwind. May I remind you that this happened in the dead of night, so I suffered two waves of chaos, the first from the Australian crowd, the second from the US crowd. The barrage of insults I faced for days could have taken me out in a more sensitive time.
Suddenly I wasn’t a stan twitter insider anymore, but a disgusting and gross homophobic incest supporter. To this day, I still feel that my post did not warrant a response. I tried to engage with the subject matter neutrally and logically. Even if I had inserted my opinions, I am an ally of the LGBT and also an incest hater, but I was not afforded the opportunity to defend myself.
The immediate response I had was to block everyone from the group chat, go private, and change my username, but it wasn’t enough. The next day they had already found me again. the movement against clonecest was growing out of control across the fandom. On the third day, someone contacted my college trying to get me expelled. My college obviously didn’t care. Someone found my LinkedIn account and tried to submit a mean recommendation saying I did a bad job tutoring them in math.
These people had no real power over my life, but the pestering and online harassment was ridiculous. By the end of the week, I had locked down all of my socials, written a statement to my school about the incident, changed my usernames over a dozen times across platforms, and I vowed to never become a stan again. Not on purpose.
Life Since Being Cancelled
It’s been five years since this incident, and the fallout still affects me in some unexpected ways:
Star Wars fans cancelled me, so I cancelled Star Wars fans. There are people out there fighting for the right to discriminate against gay people, a federally protected class. But me? I’m discriminating against Star Wars stans. Be careful who you tell about your stan activities because it could cost you professional opportunities in the future. If you’re that obsessed with Star Wars, that is okay, just please don’t shove it down my throat.
I’m not touching controversy. Not to be like one of those old man comedians, but why do people have to get so offended over just the mention of controversial topics. No matter how neutrally or responsibly you communicate about the issues, it seems like people’s problems start when you open your mouth and NOT when you say something particularly bad.
Stanning is an inside activity only. Everything I currently stan, I keep close to my chest. My close friends know who and what I stan, but I try to maintain a neutral and unaffiliated appearance in most social situations. Whether its KPop, Booktok, or Star Wars, the act of stanning and being a stan is just too embarrassing for me, and the connotations of standom don’t represent what I stand for.
I hesitate to post. After something like that happens to you, it becomes a fight to get anything posted publicly. The threat of being cancelled again looms heavy each time I write a post here on Substack, tweet out a one liner, write an informational piece on LinkedIn, or even change my profile picture on Facebook. It turns out that if you want someone to shut up forever, you can just get them cancelled for no reason and it might work out.
What would you do differently after being cancelled? Do you think I deserved it? Do you want to hear more lore analysis? Let me know in the comments!
About Quintessential
Thank you so much for reading! Quintessential is a collection of personal writings about how I am managing to live my life authentically as myself. You may be interested in this publication if you:
Are a young woman trying to make it in this world;
Enjoy niche topics;
Care about your communities around you;
Don’t take life too seriously; and
Want to know what makes me, me!