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Movies & TV

05th Jun 2018

Star Wars’ Kelly Marie Tran deletes all her Instagram posts seemingly after ‘months of harassment from trolls’

Toxic fandom is just the worst.

Wil Jones

Star Wars

Toxic fandom is just the worst.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi was great. After the nostalgic throw-back of The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson’s radical take of the saga’s mythos was exactly what the franchise needed. Sure, it ruffled a few feathers, but Star Wars can’t rely on throwbacks to the past if it wants to continue producing interesting and exciting blockbuster movies.

One of the new characters introduced in The Last Jedi was mechanic Rose, played by Kelly Marie Tran, who’s side-story with John Boyega’s Finn provided a lot of the film’s comic relief. She is also notable for being Star Wars’ first women of colour in a major role.

There were, however, plenty of people who didn’t like The Last Jedi. And if you are one of them, that’s cool. But what’s not cool, however, are people who use not liking a movie about space wizards for children as a reason to sending attacks against those involved.

Kelly Marie Tran has faced a lot of that abuse, and now it appears she has deleted all of her Instagram posts because of it.

As of June 5, Tran’s Instragam remains live, but all her posts are gone. There is no official indication as to why she has removed the posts, but the Twitter fan account Star Wars Facts states that it is due to trolls.

Tran seems like a delightful human being, and even went as far as befriending Star Wars fans she heard talking about the film in a pub. Moments like that were preserved on her ‘Gram, and now that’s all gone.

In a post from October (screengrabbed on Buzzfeed), she said she “avoided public social media for a long time purely because I was afraid. I was terrified of being picked apart, off being scrutinized, of being seen.” It would be really sad if she has been forced off it by a vocal minority of idiots.

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