Club Jade

I don’t think this will come of any surprise to anyone who’s actually been following this blog recently, but it’s time to make something official: I’m done with regular blogging.

Club Jade itself, as a group and a community to discuss Star Wars, began in 1995. I wasn’t a part of that – I joined a little bit later – but I did eventually end up taking over the website, sometime in 1997. In 2004, just a little under a year before Revenge of the Sith – the second “final” Star Wars – was released, I turned the site into this blog. Our focus wasn’t really the movies back then, but the Expanded Universe, specifically the stuff set after Return of the Jedi that is now the most Legends of Legends. The aim has changed quite a bit over these 15 years, as Star Wars itself has changed. But it’s begun to be too much, and I always knew I was too much of a taskmaster to pass things on.

I will never not be grateful to the sequel trilogy, for not only revitalizing the fandom, but for giving me these five years of… Well, overtime. Before the Disney sale, I was foundering with the franchise. The prequel era never did it for me in any format, the post-ROTJ books weren’t getting any better, and I’d finally lost faith that they ever could. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi returned my faith in the franchise, and even if The Rise of Skywalker is a bit of a let-down, well. We can’t say we’ve never been here before. Sooner or later, Star Wars disappoints us all.

I made the decision to quit months ago – there are a few people who’ve known this was going to happen since April’s Celebration Chicago – so please don’t go on about how the movie or toxic fandom drove me off. I’ve been in internet fandom through six movies – nine if you want to count the Special Editions – and no reaction this fandom has to anything will ever truly shock me at this point. It’s always been “toxic,” in one way or another, in the corners and margins if nothing else. Hell, I’ve lit plenty of little fires of my own over the years, both intentionally and unintentionally. Nature of the beast.

I’ll still follow these things, and be “in fandom” – I’m not sure I know how not to – but I need a break from the obligation to write about Star Wars, to follow every little (and not so little) drip and drab of news. I don’t just need a hiatus, because even if I couched it in those terms it would be a lie. As I’ve pulled back on things over the past year or two – so many things – I’ve realized that it’s time. I want to be done. I’m not saying I’ll never do a blog post here again – who knows, maybe someone will find more bathroom graffiti! – but I need that to be an option.

And, frankly, we know so little about the future of the franchise right now, and what we do know… None of it really thrills me. None of it makes me want to keep doing this for another year, let alone three. And there’s so much of it! Even without movies, we have at least four seasons of TV coming up and who knows how many books.

The funny thing is, this was always an old-school kind of blog – even back in 2004. I found things, I linked things. I expect you to follow the links. And social media has taken the place of that sort of thing. You don’t need me – not on a regular basis, anyway.

My advice, if anyone even wants that, is to find what you love about fandom, and find the people who love it like you do. I was lucky enough to find my people in Club Jade early on, and they’re the ones that gave me this foundation to build on. Thanks to them, and those of you who’ve kept reading.

May the Force be with you. – Dunc