Chuck Wendig of terribleminds.com wrote a book. It’s called Star Wars: Aftermath. It debuted at #4 on the NYT Bestseller List. A book about a fandom that’s been around since the fucking ’70s was on the NYT bestseller list? AWESOME. Everyone should be happy right?

No.

Because it has a gay character in it. The first gay character in the Star Wars universe, apparently.

I”m not a big Star Wars fan. I mean, I love Princess Leia like most women of my generation (except for the whole slave Leia thing), but it’s just not the fandom where I feel at home. Which probably raises the question of why I’m even bothering to talk about this. If it’s not my fandom, why do I care?

Well, I care because one of the oldest fandoms out there has changed, and I believe change in fandom is good. I belong to a very old, very conservative fandom: Sherlock Holmes. But Sherlock Holmes has been adapted, and changed. The Mary Russell books by Laurie R. King brought a woman into the Holmes fandom, and that didn’t push me out, but it brought me closer to stories that previously had really only been about men.

Changing fandom is good.

Fandom shouldn’t be a closed circuit. The stories that get told in fandom – when the stories are still being told – should change. And that’s what Chuck did.

Chuck told a new story, and a story we needed to hear in a fandom that is older than I am. Showing LGBTQIA fans of Star Wars that their stories exist in Star Wars doesn’t make Star Wars bad. it doesn’t change what Star Wars is, except for the people who needed to know they were welcome. Diversifying an ever ongoing story doesn’t change the core of what Star Wars is to the people who love it – and it shouldn’t. Because any world that large is going to have all kinds of people. In the Star Wars world, we’ve got disabled folk (even if we haven’t heard about them yet) we have self rescuing princesses, we have wookiees, and ewoks, and yes – now we have a canon gay character. Because gay people already existed in that world, we just didn’t know about them yet.

Fandoms aren’t ruined by diversification – they’re enriched by them. Not just because it opens up the options about the stories we get to see told, but because it allows more people to join the fandom. It gives more people a way to enter the lovefest of the fandom that so many people already belong to.

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