HI anon! Whew I’m really sorry this sat in here for so long, once I spiraled and then went into hiding, I was scared of the inbox. But I braved it to answer some of these.
I’m sorry your brothers are making you feel like their kind of SW fan is the only kind of fan. It’s not true – you don’t have to have all the merch, or an encyclopedic knowledge of Legends. Those things are all just for show, to show others how much you love Star Wars.
But really, being a fan of Star Wars is pretty simple – like the theme, the lore, the universe, the characters (even some of them?) – you’re a fan! And let me tell you, just the fact that you’re following star wars news/blogs (of any kind, even THE DIRTY SHIPPER KIND 😉 means you like it a lot.
For bizarre, man-culture reasons, it has become the in-thing to not like Rey and think Kylo is a wimp. It’s really bizarre to me, but not surprising. I’m not one to spout off about sexism, but that’s really (imo) what it is – maybe they don’t realize it, it’s definitely subtle, but the fact of the matter is:
Rey in TFA had an almost exact same story/etc. as Luke did in ANH, but because she’s a woman, they subconsciously held her to higher standards (lol wtf she can fly? wtf she can just suddenly fight with a lightsaber – ignoring that they showed her fighting skills with the staff before this – wtf she can just MIND TRICK ALREADY?) – all things that Luke did similarly easily in ANH. But because she’s a woman, again the higher standards (and they’ll say a lot of it is because they didn’t want TFA to be a copy of ANH – and it wasn’t, she’s her own character, but if you boil everything you don’t like down to the above, then they themselves have proven they don’t care about it and thus that’s an invalid argument).
Kylo showed weakness by having compassion, emotional outbursts, and losing fights (~and these are dirty women things and totally not like Vader at all no – of course they disregard the fact that Anakin was very much like that before the turn. In fact, they ignore that Darth Vader was even Anakin to begin with TBH).
Anyway, I went on a rant I’m sorry – and this isn’t to say that your brothers are being deliberately mean or exclusive with you – but just an effort to make you feel better.
You’re not a fake big-time fan, your love for SW is just as real as theirs, but for maybe very different reasons. And that’s okay.