By H. C. Anderson
When I was a kid I loved Ewoks. I thought they were so cute and I loved them very much. They were my stepping stone into the larger world of Star Wars and are still near and dear to my heart today. It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned how poorly people thought of the Ewoks, and it made me consider what it meant to be a Star Wars fan. If older fans hated the Ewoks and I loved the Ewoks and the older fans knew more and had a better understanding of the media and were more involved and LOUDER then surely I was wrong. Surely, I had missed something along the way and would need to spend time making up for it by learning more about the movie series and to become more serious about my opinions. As I got older, I learned to stand up for my interests, but I was reminded how it felt to question my place as a fan when [[Loot, the Key to Everything]] was spoiled.
As soon as I saw the art I was smitten! I love cats and was just taken in by Loot’s fluffy head and big eyes. The comments from the community were less enthused, calling him a ‘marketable plush’ or ‘generic Pokèmon.’ An outright objection of the creature placed in front of them. But why? What crimes was Loot actually guilty of and what was I missing that I hadn’t come to the same conclusion? The answer is actually buried in the Magic culture and the growing pains it was experiencing prior to Loot’s unveiling.
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic led to an influx of new people joining previously niche fan spaces. These communities were once composed, mostly, of social outcasts who had found commonality and companionship in the shared love of a piece of media. They had made their own spaces where traditional social norms were often side-lined in to make room for a larger diversity of fandom celebration. However, when people who were normally social and outgoing had to stay home and fill their time in other ways they, like everyone else, turned to new media and discovered that the things they had previously made fun of were actually cool and interesting, and that they too wanted to participate in these fan spaces. Fandom as a hobby became much more mainstream, but the new members were less open to embracing the pre-existing culture of these spaces.