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I'd say if you're at the point of writing fan fiction about a setting you're past the point of being "superficially" a fan of something.
A fan is not defined by how much they "get" their chosen obsession, it is defined by the level of enthusiasm/passion for it.
Being moved to write gay fanfiction that completely misses the point of the setting makes someone as much a fan as a person that memorises pointless trivia (who also misses the point of the setting, but in a male way rather than a female way).
See my other comment - I'd say that they are not superficial, but fanfic writers engage "across" the media, not "with" the media.
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Are they fans of Star Wars or are they fans of romance between attractive famous male actors that take place in an exotic setting? Star Wars, or any other IP, may be the vehicle here, rather than the object.
"Are they fans of Star Wars or are they fans of explosions and swordfighting?"
What exactly constitutes really liking Star Wars?
Once upon a time, I would have said it requires meaningfully engaging with the core themes of the work. The Zen-like sayings of Yoda which are some of our only glimpses into Jedi philosophy. The broad conflict between the light side and the dark side, and all the things those sides represent. With the light side representing love, friendship, individualism, courage and heroism, and the dark side representing fear, anger, hate, conformity and cowardice.
Star Wars wasn't queer. Star Wars wasn't commie or capitalist. Star Wars wasn't feminist and/or against the patriarchy. I get that people point to certain lines or characters and try to spin it at "Star Wars was really X" all along. But no. They were not core themes of Star Wars. You can see anything in anything if you are willing to squint hard enough at 6 hours of footage.
I do wonder sometimes what made Star Wars nerdy. In the sense that when I was a kid in the 90's, being a Star Wars fan was weird. I wasn't alive for it, but it was a massive nationwide phenomena when it came out. It's not like only nerds saw it. But I guess it was the nerds that stuck around for 20 years, watching the original Trilogy over and over again. Playing the West End Games RPG because they just didn't want to let go of the world. The EU didn't really start proper until the 90's. Return of the Jedi came out in 83! None of the Video Games were that good until Lucas Arts was finally allowed to make some, and that was in the 90's as well. Being a Star Wars fan in the late 80's and early 90's must have been profoundly lonely and boring.
I mean, Christ, I was hoping to find some documentation, but look at this downright quaint blog talking about Star Wars Celebration in 1999. Or this threadbare article about a 10 year anniversary convention for Star Wars in 1987.
Anyways, the point I was winding to, is that Star Wars has no core themes anymore. There is no longer anything there for a true fan to intellectually engage with. So the teen girl diddling herself to 80's Luke and modern Kylo Ren dicking down may as well be just as much a fan as anyone else geeking out over laser swords, cool looking space ships, or pausing the VHS at their favorite frame of the Twilek in the slave dress dancing and rubbing one out.
I would agree with this as regards the sequels. I only saw The Force Awakens, but the lack of any depth or engagement made it instantly absurd. Everything that happens in the original trilogy is instantly made redundant. You could skip straight from RotS to TFA, and anything you missed is covered by the opening crawl. Episodes IV-VI, the classics, the strongest entries in the series, the ones that made Joseph Campbell best friends with George Lucas, are actually the least important in the series, reduced to side quests.
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Maybe you need to like the unique aspects of Star Wars to count as a Star Wars grognard. Telepathic monks with laser swords? But then there's the rest of the setting that doesn't feature Jedi at all.
Not an accusation against you in particular, but this strikes me as an isolated demand for rigor. A male fan who loves lasers won't be asked to recite "There is no death, there is the Force" before he's allowed in the tree house. This accusation is only used to police female fandom. The main reason being that fandoms are so full of incels that a woman gets outsize attention, which is resented.
I've dated two functionally very straight women in my life who were huge (like tells me about why Kyber(?) Chrystals are symbolic levels of fandom) Star Wars fans. Maybe that's just an odd sample, but it's a real thing that happened. Gender does not strike me as a useful filter, outside of people who just kind of hate women and don't want them around.
Idk, I shouldn't chime in, I haven't watched or consumed any of the Disney content after seeing the first sequel in theaters. Maybe the whole thing has changed by now.
This falls under "killed his parents and then demands mercy for being an orphan". There used to be gender-neutral standards in fandom that said that people should know something about the fandom before being considered a fan. (For instance, I suggest you look up trekkies versus trekkers.)
It was women who said that fans had to stop "gatekeeping" and forced them to get rid of those standards.
There were never neutral standards, they were enforced against those who were suspect. Meaning women.
No, people only paid attention to them being enforced against women.
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Honestly, yeah, that's pretty much how it works. I remember a time before the wider internet when things were far more niche, and getting two star wars(or your niche topic of choice) together and watch the sparks go. There was very much a sense of 'Okay, exactly how much can I let my freak flag fly around this person' with alot of this stuff, alongside the simple passionate releif of 'Holy shit, this is someone who UNDERSTANDS'.
Statistical outliers. Growing up, I never once encountered a fan of Star Wars who was a woman.
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One of the very early culture war battles against nerd culture was exactly against fans demanding these sort of things from each other. This was deemed "gatekeeping", and supposedly sexist because of the disparate impact on women / girls.
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