Home Letter from the Editor Holo-message: What the Force?, the Fandom and our Place in Star Wars

Holo-message: What the Force?, the Fandom and our Place in Star Wars

Stories and how we talk about them matters.

Star Wars is a fundamental lens many use to view the world. It’s more than media we consume, or a transmedia story we use to escape. It permeates all aspects of our culture in North America and has a global impact. We use it as shorthand language to describe complex ethical and moral situations. Through Star Wars, we analyze our history, our culture, our philosophy, and ourselves. It is essential because it touches the surface of our collective unconscious and dives deep into it, resonating so much with our human nature that we become possessive and protective of its mythopoeia. 

I try to explore the impact Star Wars weekly with reverence and sensitivity. The way I examine this one story on my podcast What The Force? is like analyzing a megalithic Rosetta stone carved into our shared experience, and it has been a privilege to discuss Star Wars in a meta-analytic way for two and a half years. However, I have always felt like I don’t have enough time to cover everything that deserves to be covered, so I prioritized the topics that would shine on the Podcast, and put the other ideas on the backburner, where they have been sitting, waiting, stewing.

Listeners have sent me constant feedback about how What the Force? has changed the way they think about Star Wars by giving them new words and ways to discuss and express what is important to them. The podcast helped them to find their own Star Wars by focusing a conversation that no-one was having, and gave them the words and the tools to talk about the parts of Star Wars that mattered to them and to advocate for the content they want. The resulting conversations were powerful and uplifting.

Although I was the one that created and drove What the Force?, the podcast and community became a team almost from the beginning. I have aimed for a long time to uplift transformational works and increase fem-gaze perspectives in fandom conversations. 

And that led to this expansion of What the Force? I want to produce more Star Wars analysis – the intersectional and meta way, with a website where we can publish articles, reviews, news and meta—analysis from a myriad of new perspectives. We will also focus on seeking out exceptional contributors to join What The Force? and we will double down on covering and highlighting all the fan creators who keep our love for Star Wars growing.

We will start slowly with What the Force? site, prioritizing content quality and amplifying women – particularly women of colour – and non-binary voices. To accomplish that, I wanted to bring those voices to leadership, curation and decision-making positions from the very first step of this journey. I’m grateful to Hammie, Nowreen and Bea for helping drive this challenge, and very excited to start down this path with you! 

Lastly, thank you to the fans and community of What the force? You brought me hope. You made me brave. You supported the podcast and my way of looking at Star Wars and kept asking for more. I look forward to seeing you come along on this journey with us. 

Cheers,

Marie-Claire Gould
Executive Editor/Host
What The Force?

Marie-Claire Gould
Marie-Claire is the creator, host, publisher and editor of What the Force? A Star Wars Fandom Podcast and the Executive Editor of What the Force?

5 COMMENTS

  1. This is absolutely amazing and I am so excited to get even more excited about Star Wars thanks to this wonderful community. Here’s to the epic years ahead!

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