Do Not Underestimate the Power of the Dark Side
What a busy week for me. Teen Mom (Season 5 or Original Girls, however your DVR picks it up, call it that) is going well and has some great stuff coming up that has been fun to watch come together. I’m slowly but surely finding my footing on Geek.com writing about things from The Punisher to Supreme Court cases that involve Spider-Man. The Thought Bubble just did a special about Netflix’s Daredevil, Storm of Spoilers is back for new Game of Thrones, and - of course - some trailers were released or leaked that made it a fun week to star S7AR WARS and MARVELOUS DA7E at Latino-Review.
I just wanted to jump on my personal blog an tell you all a story about the S7AR WARS, the column, not the movie.
It was something Kellvin from Latino-Review and I joked about doing after a fake Star Wars: Episode VII title card “leaked” onto the internet:
The Da7e “character” on Latino Review was doing okay (probably still is doing ok, but after almost 100 weeks of Marvelous Da7e, I’ve stopped asking and just assume Kellvin will tell me if I start sucking), and everyone from this cycle of fanboy bloggers knew everything Star Wars was going to be worth a lot of hits, so we decided to do another weekly column where I would attempt to take all the Star Wars news of one week and make some sense of a small part of it.
Kellvin, the industry professional who went through this rodeo the last time there were Star Wars movies in production, was quick to find a coverage strategy for the film, so we knew where to look (and he knew who to ask) for accurate Star Wars news and spoilers.
I’m not the person who goes into bars to meet producers. No one has my phone number (except Peter Solliet, because I want him to do a Runaways movie still- call me Peter!). I’m okay at what I do, which is combine background and speculation into a dough that I shove through the pasta maker of the current state of journalism. People call it “fanboying,” which isn’t entirely inaccurate.
But isn’t entirely accurate either.
I AM a fan. I do get excited about fan things, and yes, I can dislike everything Jeph Loeb does because he messed with The Ultimates. It’s this attitude that keeps “Da7e” from popping up on Forbes or Geek.com. “Da7e” is a fan, which means Da7e can talk to the fans, which means Da7e can be as wrong as the fans.
All my Latino-Review columns have one goal: let’s have fun on the internet in an age when the modern blockbuster is literally exactly what I wanted when I was 10 years old: Superheroes and Star Wars.
Sometimes that fun gets stressful. If you’re a frequent reader of this bullshit blog, you might remember my Comic Con Firefly fandom breakdown. Well, at the beginning of last month, something really stressful happened.
I had flown to New York City for my girlfriend’s 30th birthday. We were planning to see our friends from when we lived there, wander around Brooklyn, have some good food and generally take it easy.
It was out of my control, but we were visiting NYC the week before the new season of Teen Mom was about to air and I had to go into the post production studio to finish the first two episodes. I was pulling 12 hour days to get the show on the air while my girlfriend wandered alone through New York.
It was Friday and I was doing 200 things at once when I suddenly get a bunch of text messages from Kellvin that we have a description of the second Star Wars teaser and I need to write it up as soon as possible because apparently this trailer description is everywhere.
This is how we lose scoops: it’s suddenly everywhere. This is also how we get fooled: I only had 20 minutes to cross check anything in the report with stuff we knew was true and it wasn’t my primary focus (I HOPE YOU ALL WATCHED THE TEEN MOM:OG PREMIERE!).
That report is HERE and we know now that it is entirely false.
I got played in the middle of a 12 hour work day the day after celebrating my girlfriend’s birthday. The post I was literally writing in a bathroom so no one knew I was doing that instead of TV post-production work was completely fed to us by a member of MakingStarWars.net’s staff, a guy named Jeremy Conrad.
The fact that he made it up, along with a bunch of shitty stuff the Making Star Wars staff does to people who disagree with them, was outlined pretty well in a forum post this week.
The post has him admitting to making up the teaser description and sending it to multiple sites. It also has screencaps of Jason Ward from Making Star Wars and Jeremy using their message boards to trash talk and shame other companies and bloggers.
There’s some stuff in there that is non-relevant for sure. I came up through porn and gossip blogging, so I know that the back annals of the internet is basically all of us trash talking each other, but it’s this shit that pisses me off the most:
Yeah. We had three sources because someone parroted your dumb ass report back to us. That’s how shit gets fucked up.
As a fan of trolling, I can see why this could be funny to the MSW people who, despite their denials yesterday, knew this was happening. Instead of reaching out to Star Wars 7 News and Latino Review, Jason Ward decided to try to roll the lies of his co-horts into a “Toldja” for himself. Like a classy man.
Yesterday, I tweeted that I wasn’t linking to Making Star Wars until Jeremy Conrad was fired from MSW’s podcast, site and run off the internet.
Then, I blocked Making Star Wars and Jeremy Conrad, who immediately started to suck up to El Mayimbe.
As of this writing, I have received no e-mail.
Here’s the bottom line: I was warned about the Making Star Wars guys from the first week I wrote S7AR WARS. They are old-school Star Wars fanboys, which means they have a history amongst the Star Wars internet that is not always positive.
After Jason got in contact with me late last year to apologize THE FIRST TIME for Jeremy’s behavior towards Latino-Review, I was totally cool with them. They also got their hands on some stolen material from Episode VII like shot lists, and who doesn’t want to know that information?
But, this is the second time I’ve had to deal with this bullshit. And that’s 2 too many times.
In between these two incidents of disrespect, I’ve been watching both of them make poor fandom decisions:
I can sit down anywhere with anyone and talk about Star Wars. That’s the power of Star Wars and it’s the power of pop culture to bring people together. That’s what I want to do through my writing at Latino Review.
Who would WANT to be the biggest asshole in a group that is so massive? Apparently MakingStarWars.net.
So, on behalf of myself: Apology not accepted, you made me lie to my readers for no other reason than you wanted to laugh at us. That’s not something I forgive easily, certainly not through tweets from someone I’ve muted already. You came after my online Star Wars career, Jeremy? I WANT YOURS ON A PLATE.
On behalf of all Star Wars fans: Jason, please turn this around. Run Jeremy off the internet, never post in your own forums again, keep your bullshit mudslinging on text message where only the CIA sees your dirty laundry. Your family is beautiful and you’re a genuinely nice person. No one needs you to be the Mean Girl of Star Wars. We DO NOT WANT a Mean Girl of Star Wars.
Sorry about the inside baseball bullshit, readers, and I apologize for failing you as a journalist and fan. It is entirely my responsibility to do my due diligence no matter how many jobs I’m working at the time. This is ultimately entirely on me.
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