#project: decolonize fandom

[eldritchdemigodskywalkers]

honestly, to all the pro jedi fans who rattle off about chinese philosophy: just do us a favour and get into kung fu panda instead. you really can't narrow the complexities of star wars down into a singular real-world asian philosophy. especially when the western christian influences in the source media are just as permeating, if not more so.

[eldritchdemigodskywalkers]

what do you think about the fact that so much of fanon jedi culture is pulled from east asian traditions? whilst always leaving out filial piety?

…there are SO many layers to this, i can't even. this is gonna be a long post.

orientalism

first off, let's start with the obvious, as to why fanon jedi culture pulls so much from east asian traditions: george lucas kind of did it first. star wars first began as a genre mishmash in part inspired by samurai movies: a martial arts disciple betraying their mentor and turning evil is a stock wǔxiá trope, for one. and obviously, east asian aesthetics are very cool and look very pretty, i do get that much.

but the problem comes in if the "aesthetics cool and pretty" is rooted in "aesthetics exotic and thus cool and pretty": that usually reeks of orientalism: a romanticized, eurocentric dichotomy seeing the east (MENA and the rest of asia) as foreign and other and even inferior or evil, or just generally exotic and/or underdeveloped when compared to the european west. and george lucas, a white guy, is indeed guilty of orientalism in film history: in particular, indiana jones and the temple of doom (1984, a year after ROTJ!), which he wrote, is infamously criticized for its inaccurate portrayal of india. the fact that star wars carries part of that legacy is unfortunate, but i think it's still salvageable: the key is to not see it as east asian-inspired media, and to look at it through a transformative lens if you do want to examine that angle.

the PT-era jedi order vs. chinese culture

as for the jedi order, now let's look at the prequels: it's a space fantasy greek tragedy styled after classical european literature, with an underpinning of american political critique. to me, when examining the jedi through an east asian lens, or at least a chinese lens, i'll highlight a couple of points:

part of the reason the jedi have calcified to serve the ruling class of the galactic core is because they have tied themselves to the senate. this is in direct contrast to the jiānghú (martial arts world, essentially fantasy imperial china), where the xiá (martial arts warrior, knight-errant) usually deliberately distance themselves from the corruption and ineffectiveness of law and government to enact justice and chivalry based on their own moral codes, often becoming wandering warriors and outlaws: they are lawful, but the law they follow is not governmental but their own chivalric code. i've written about this before: by aligning themselves with the corrupt and ineffective government and getting entangled in "courtly" politics, i see the PT-era jedi order as a deconstruction of the xiá, as they're dragged down alongside the corrupt government as it inevitably falls.

more pertinently, regarding filial piety, the jedi are portrayed as antagonistic in TPM/AOTC in part because it forces anakin to be separated from shmi, his own mother. in chinese culture, as much as martial arts lineages consider each other family and are supposed to treat each other as such (hence wayward apprentices being considered evil, as it's considered betraying your family and violating filial piety), "birth" families are acknowledged and aren't supposed to be abandoned: in the legend of the condor heroes by jin yong, the two protagonists are raised by their mothers while receiving martial arts training from their respective mentors; in the kung fu panda holiday special, po's martial family lets him go home to his adoptive dad's noodle shop for the winter solstice (a festival commonly associated with family reunions in chinese culture). from a chinese perspective, an arrangement like that of the jedi in canon (forcibly separating children from their families and not ensuring their well-being) would be fundamentally absurd. @praetor-canis wrote about it here as well, with additional references to japanese traditions.

but once again, the jedi are not east asian-coded: textually, they are more heavily inspired by the knights templar, a medieval christian order whose members were forbidden to hold possessions or be in physical contact with women or their own families, and were ultimately wiped out by political machinations. just because the jedi's aesthetics take cues from east asian traditions does not make them east asian-coded.

this isn't even going into how filial piety and confucian values are criticized even among east asians in the modern era (in part due to western imperialism and reforms in response to that), and even if many of us are still influenced by confucian values in daily life, we often don't apply them as rigidly as our ancestors did. the assumption that this is not the case (i.e. that east asian culture is static and unchanging) is orientalism at its finest again!

a critique of fanon

all of the above is simply an analysis based on the films, and now, to address the pro-jedi fanon: do better. just because george lucas injected a dose of orientalist trappings into his films (and the EU followed in his footsteps) doesn't mean you have to as well.

the jedi order being portrayed as having their own culture and traditions is not something i fundamentally object to: it's natural for a community to develop a shared culture that bind them together, even if the films (which are my core canon) don't elaborate on them much. the problem here is cultural appropriation of east asian traditions: as mentioned, the jedi order's main historical basis is a european christian order, so forcibly assigning them east asian traditions and erasing said traditions from their original cultural and symbolic context just for the ✨aesthetic✨ is highly disrespectful.

for instance (and most egregiously to me), i've heard this one idea floating around about the jedi having "tea ceremonies", which is probably a blatant rip-off from east asian tea ceremonies. east asian tea ceremonies have their own cultural and symbolic values, and the wikipedia pages/sections of chinese and japanese tea ceremonies each have extremely detailed rules for where, when, how, etc. to make, serve, and drink tea. i once again reiterate, the jedi order are NOT east asian-coded, they're medieval christian-coded. therefore, i find that particular headcanon to be inappropriate.

as for why the pro-jedi folks leave out filial piety? it's more convenient for them to justify the jedi's actions for the sake of their skewed rewrite of the narrative if they selectively apply the concept of filial piety only to their "east asian-coded" jedi. (that could potentially part of why jedi lineages are such a major talking point in the fandom, but that's an argument for another time.) shmi skywalker's enslavement and unconditional love for her son are inconvenient for them, so they rewrite her into a caricature and mouthpiece for their own views on canon. this applies more broadly to every character in star wars, really, but when discussions of filial piety are concerned, shmi is probably the biggest victim of this mischaracterization (as well as anakin himself, but that's a given in this fandom).

disclaimer to everyone else: i am a hongkonger (ethnic han chinese) who has studied postcolonial literature and linguistics for my minor degree. that's enough qualifications to criticize this fandom trend, right?

conclusion

fanon jedi culture appropriates traditions from east asian culture because canon started it first, which is no excuse for fanon additionally assuming the jedi to be based on east asian traditions (and thus east asian-coded), even though they only take visual aesthetic cues from them and are more textually influenced by european christianity than anything else.

my proposed solution is a fandom-wide decolonization movement, starting with learning about the knights templar and postcolonialism (with orientalism by edward said being a foundational text for the field), as well as actually (re)watching the movies with some critical thinking and media literacy. because i swear, the next time i have to read about "jedi tea ceremonies" or anything along those lines…

[eldritchdemigodskywalkers]

An open statement as an Anidala fan of colour

On June 14th/15th, @anidalaweeks announced that their chosen theme for their Anidala Week 2026 event would be "A Love Across Time", with event prompts spanning both the Star Wars and real-life timelines. While the prompts have inspired many fans to create various forms of fan art of their ship, they have also attracted criticism from other community members for several reasons, one of which I would like to address here.

The real-life AU (or as phrased in the announcement post, "modern AU") prompts are as follows, skipping the Free Days: 80s/90s/2000s, Medieval, Victorian, Western, and Futuristic. The Victorian era and Western prompts are the main subjects of this discourse, in part because they largely overlap in time scale: the Victorian era was 1837–1901, whereas the age of the Wild West was 1840s–1910s/20s or 1865–1910s/20s, depending on whether you count the American Civil War and the years leading up to it.

However, more pressingly lies a deeper issue of Westerncentrism (i.e. Eurocentrism and Americentrism): the Victorian era is defined by the reign of Queen Victoria of the British Empire, whereas the concept of the "wild west" is based on American expansionism, both of which are characterized by White imperialism and colonization of non-White nations — especially the forcible displacement, genocide, and oppression of Indigenous peoples.

Although the mods have stated that it was not their intention to exclude non-Western fans and that the community is free to use any other events from those time periods, the fact remains that these time periods as they are currently labelled were defined by Westerners to convey their own history, which is still inherently exclusionary towards non-White historiography, e.g. me using Chinese dynasties to help contextualize timelines as a Hongkonger (e.g. Did you know that the medieval period spanned from before the Suí Dynasty to halfway through the Míng Dynasty in China? That is a lot of time to cover!).

It is hoped that the mods will use more open-ended and universal prompts in the future for inclusivity, e.g. "19th century" in lieu of the two disputed prompts mentioned above. That said, no matter how well-intentioned, there is no time period in history that isn't ugly and hateful in some way (especially the 19th century, re: colonialism; I recommend looking up the First Opium War, the Tàipíng Rebellion, and the Boxer Rebellion for the perspective I am personally examining such prompts from as a Chinese Hongkonger), and in a fandom where several main characters hail from marginalized communities and pertinent topics such as enslavement, genocide, prejudice, and systemic failure are critical plot points in the main storyline, the depiction or discussion of similar events in fan-works in general are unavoidable. The best we can do as a community is to be more aware of socio-historical contexts and seek to portray different settings with appropriate nuance and respect (and creativity if we can make it work!); I have faith that we as a community will be able to learn and grow from this and do better in the future.

Disclaimer: I do not hate anyone involved in the current situation, mods or participants of Anidala Week, and I have nothing against anyone who has been inspired by these prompts (yes, Victorian-era fashions and Western aesthetics are both very pretty, I understand the appeal). I am not saying that anyone who holds subconscious biases is a bad person — we all do. All I wish to do here is remind our community that we should be more mindful of how we view history looking forward.

[eldritchdemigodskywalkers]

the problem with the "liberal girlfriend, republican boyfriend" modern au trope is that it's an immense flattening of the characters and the setting in so many ways:

it refuses to engage in the characters' actual canonical political views in a meaningful way

our real-world political parties do not exist in that universe, and neither do the fictional political atmosphere/issues directly correspond to real life, so flattening it to a 1:1 comparison removes a lot of nuance

it's severely americentric as a premise! not everyone in real life is american! not every modern au takes place in the us! why assume that to be the case?!

[eldritchdemigodskywalkers]

PSA that i did not expect to have to make: i am not, in fact, american. i have never stepped foot in the us in my life. please refrain from assuming

[eldritchdemigodskywalkers]

saw a post discussing how to adapt unorthodox star wars names to a modern/earth/etc. au and there was a section discussing the erasure of "asian elements of star wars" :/

as an asian, my stance is that i literally do not see or thus treat any of these guys as actually asian because half the "asian elements" are rooted in orientalism, which is probably a more pressing matter than star wars names not conforming to earthly conventions

[eldritchdemigodskywalkers]

one interesting thing about confucian teaching methodology (as in a method used by confucius, e.g. analects 11:22) is the principle of tailoring instruction to a student's individual needs (因才施教). y'know. just some food for thought for the people claiming that the jedi are east asian-coded.

[eldritchdemigodskywalkers]

how do hong kongers choose their english names? and, if it's alright to ask, is it something that is done because you want to, or because you feel like it is expected of you by the western world?

don't worry, i'm fine with answering questions like these! context for this ask here. i didn't intend for this to get so political, but my identity as a hongkonger is political in itself, so here we go.

background: although over 90% of the hong kong population are ethnic (han) chinese, many of us, especially in the younger generation, have english or otherwise non-chinese names in addition to our chinese names. for some of us, these names are (part of) our legal english names, while for others they are not; some people may choose to use the same name throughout their lives (especially if it's part of their legal names), whereas others may not (e.g. when i was in secondary school, two girls had the same english name and surname, so one of them decided to go by another name for easier differentiation).

the reason for a person going by a certain english name (whether given or chosen) may vary: it sounds nice or cool, it sounds like their chinese name, it's the meaning of their chinese name translated, it's a pop cultural or religious reference, it's an inside joke, it makes them stand out and be unique, etc. it's also for this reason that while some hongkongers have very conventional english names (including mine IRL), others decidedly do not (article linked for examples).

as for cultural background, while the reason we go by western names at all is definitely rooted in british colonization (i.e. english fluency as prestige) and globalization, to me personally, it also somewhat derives from the practice of the courtesy name, an additional name given to people upon reaching adulthood in traditional chinese culture, used by one's peers to be respectful. nowadays the practice of the courtesy name has gone out of fashion (because modernization), but i feel that relevant attitudes still remain: among many (but not all) chinese people, referring to a person by their chinese given name (or nicknames thereof) is very intimate and often only reserved for family (only one (1) teacher has ever referred to me by given name; i refer to even my closest friends by their full names because it would feel disrespectful otherwise), so using a "preferred" english name helps bridge the gap between formality and intimacy/disrespect. in contemporary hong kong, english names are used in all facets of society as a semi-formal or informal form of address: in the workplace or other professional environments, at school by teachers and classmates, between friends, even within the family in some cases (like mine).

as for whether we choose to go by an english name or not, there are plenty of people out there who don't do that at all, whether it's because they're old and don't speak english often/fluently, they think it's a marker of colonialism and are actively rejecting the practice, they just prefer not to, it doesn't matter: unless it's an authority figure bestowing a name on a child, we call people whatever "english/chosen" name they prefer. but like most things related to colonialism, there's a lot of nuance in it: while some people use english names for westerners' convenience and/or because of the "english is prestigious" mentality, others might do so for their own convenience, or because they want to distinguish themselves from others, or they may think of it as a marker of identity as a hongkonger.

and here's the thing about hong kong in particular: unlike most other colonized regions, we as a city, a place, a people, are defined by our colonial past. hong kong as a concept or an independent entity did not exist prior to the first opium war, so our version of decolonization is bound to go quite differently from most other places. we don't vibe with the mainland's political encroachment because we don't want hong kong to be "just another mainland city" dominated by the very authoritarian government that our grandparents and ancestors fled from; some protesters went as far as to claim they would prefer to have remained a british colony than be ruled by the CCP, but at the end of the day, i think what we as a city fear the most is a loss of autonomy and identity, which go hand in hand.

in short, hongkongers choosing to use english names alongside our chinese names can be, in its own way, decolonization and resistance: a part of carving out our own identities, both as individuals and as a city's people.

(as for my personal experience, i was legally given an english name at birth because my parents didn't want westerners to mess up my name if i ever went into academia; i use it to this day because i grew up with it being my name and i'm fine with others calling me that. there are some minor complications in 1) me being mistaken for being diaspora at least once because my chinese given name isn't part of my legal english name, unlike most hongkongers, and 2) me being not quite as cis as anyone would have expected, but i don't want most people to call me by my chinese given name because that's too intimate IMO, so the english name will do as of now.)