In People Magazine “Couch Surfing” Mr. Oyelowo who voices AGENT ALEXSANDR KALLUS in STAR WARS REBELS shares that Star Wars fans disappointment that he voices this ANIMATED character. The animated character appears differently than Mr. Oyelowo — ie The character is white and Mr Oyelowo is Black.
https://peopletv.com/video/david-oyelowo/
Of course that should NEVER matter. One is a very REAL PERSON, PROFESSIONAL AWARD WINNING ACTOR and the other is a fabricated animation in the mind of artists. What brought this character to life is Mr. Oyelowo’s creative voice performance. Nothing else brings any animated character than a professional voice actor’s performance. To deny his ability is to be racist and bigoted.
There is bigotry in Star Wars fandom. We saw it best with Ahmed who voiced and CG MoCAPped JAR JAR BINKS. The harassment he endured nearly caused him to commit suicide. Only until recently has he opened up to speak about it.
While it is not Disney’s or Lucasfilm’s fault at the hands of racist and bigoted fans, it has proven very difficult to quell ignorances and cognitive biases of some ugly sides of fandom.
The Star Wars Actors Guild 77 has been at the attacks by bigots since 2008. We have fended of bigots in ways at first that seems cruel, but when encountered, the sufferers begin to understand why we did what we did. From a small business standpoint, our acts are justified, because we cannot afford a large lawyer representation. Disney and Lucasfilm does not support our efforts. Their people were told lies about us and are fearful of our ire. But our ire was in place for our use until their own workers incurred utterly racist and bigoted attack for the last few years. All the while, our attacks are minimal.
We have our hate on our SENATOR YEMAJA pages.
So here is our small business auto block procedures:
Any post or comment that uses profanity without cause directed to us. We delete, sometimes report, and ban the attacker. Those attacks typically look like “what the f*ck is this sh*t” and use of hateful real life epithets like the N-word.
Massive number of posts when we have never interacted with you. Those attacks appear like more that 3-4 posts. We are not rated to deal with your stalker obsessions. We do not DM people we do not feel comfortable around.
Tag team attack. We don’t play that. Those attacks appear like @1, @2, @3-10 on a post that could be about art from a famous artist.
Telling us what to post — you don’t pay for our accounts, you don’t tell us how to post to it. Who died and made you gods? These attacks look like “you cannot say that. You can only post ____________”
Most of character accounts are in character. They will block on any attempts to learn who the MUNDANE is behind the account. These characters are stuck on social media, that is it. No more, no less. Forcing exposure is OUTING what SWAG77 is trying to do. If a user does not agree, move on, there are other accounts. We find irrational attacks, we will block. These attacks look like, “so you hate the [real life political issue today]?” to gain a confirmation of their beliefs than what we are doing — which is Star Wars.
It is our pages, our user names and involves what we are doing, and deciding to force us to admit something from long ago or unrelated to performance will get you blocked and we will move one. With that, we give you an in kind directive and you get snarky, you are ruining our ability to do business on our streams. Either you stay into the agreement or walk away. If you refuse — such as saying I can post what I want freedom of speech–we will block you. We do not go to anyone’s feeds intentionally to ruin their process, but for you to feel entitled to our posts and your not paying us, it is better for us to silence your bad behavior. What this attack looks like is the user intrudes into the conversation uninvited and speaks outside of the primary post, the user account request redirection and the attacker say “free speech, you should feel one over the other, that hasn’t been what I have expected–” the issue is it separates from the primary goal which is Star Wars online.
We do not sell your stuff. Overriding our ad links, will get you blocked. We have affiliates that we meet our business goals, like a fan table at Star Wars Celebration. When you interfere with our money, illegally, we just block since going after you legally cuts out of our budgets.
Refusal to read our blogs and not staying on topic. We are not only doing this for you. We are organized into a Star Wars fan group to portray our fandom respectfully. Just because you do not like one post is your decision. These attacks generally look like “I am going to UNLIKE this page because I hate XYZ Star Wars Established Canon Disney or otherwise” — you will be banned, your comment will be reported and/or erased. We do not care about your approach, it means you failed to read our blog notes on how we perform our MUSES and that we perform under a storyline arc. If you aren’t going to read and respect that, then we feel our accounts aren’t for your interactions.