This is the full transcript of a thread I made on Twitter earlier this year, about a subject dear to my heart:

THE PREQUEL TRILOGY IN THE 2000s -- A WOMAN-RUN STAR WARS FANDOM

One thing that gets lost when discussing the history of Star Wars is how heavily female-dominated the fandom for the Prequel Trilogy was, particularly in the 2000s. Fan-site after fan-site, fan-shrine after fan-shrine, the userbases of which were overwhelmingly girls and women. People today speak about Rey bringing a generation of women and girls into SW as if that's an absolute first, when a female generation was brought in by Padme and the handmaidens. I was there since 1999, I saw it all, before people got their love and enthusiasm battered out of them by the larger fandom's consistent toxicity and negativity.

Women and girls who'd fallen in love with SW through The Phantom Menace congregated on female-run fan-sites such as The Moons of Iego and the Royal Handmaiden Society. There were entire sites dedicated to cataloguing every single costume in the films, along with every scrap of information about fabrics and creation methods, religiously followed by both fashionistas and cosplayers. Women also made whole forums, sites and Yahoo Groups solely dedicated to the shipping of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. My baby queer self first came into contact with other queer women in such spaces. TheForce.net 's fanfiction archive was dominated by girls and women who were fans of the Prequels and who wrote about everything from Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan to predictions about how ROTS would go, well before the film hit theaters, to fix-it!AUs. Women gleefully and shamelessly made entire web-portals solely for shipping their self-insert Original Characters with their favorites from the films, with Acaciah's Realm being one of my regular haunts as a teenager, containing both fic and art. The Jedi Council Forums' Prequel fanfic sections were also mainly the domain of female fans, where I met wonderful writers such as rhonderoo and Jedi Trace. There were male writers as well (shout-out to AnakinHeartbreaker, he was a sweetheart!) but in small numbers.

"The fanfic side of fandom has ALWAYS been woman-dominated," you'll say to me and that's correct. But Prequels fandom in the early 2000s was unique in that it wasn't just the transformative corners of fandom where women made up most of the participants. As I pointed out above, the curative side of fandom (the one responsible for gathering, curating and cataloguing canon info), which is usually male-dominated, was primarily the domain of women as well, as far as the Prequels were concerned. The Fashion in a Galaxy Far. Far Away sites, responsible for cataloguing every outfit in the films, were ran and populated largely by women and girls. The Royal Handmaiden Society catalogued every appearance of every handmaiden in the PT, along with her name and background in an effort as impressive as that of other super-fans who can identify and name background characters that appear for only a moment in front of the camera. I was in on the work as well and spent dozens of hours drafting backstories for the handmaidens.

As you can see from the lack of links / the archive links, we lost much of this to time and, ultimately, to toxicity. Many girls and women left the fandom when they couldn't put up anymore with the constant belittling of their opinions and tastes and un-maintained sites went dark. The Royal Handmaiden Society set up a presence on Tumblr, its original fan-shrine having gone dark somewhere in 2017. We lost many other sites much earlier than this. For archivists, people who appreciate fannish history and PT fans, much of our early work online is now gone. This, I feel, is what allows everyone from journalists to Big Name SW People to completely miss or outright ignore this part of SW fandom and its history, given that much of it isn't online anymore and many of its members were driven away. This is what leads to articles about girls and women in SW fandom that talk extensively about Leia, Rey or Jyn Erso, but make just a one-line, off-hand reference to Padme and absolutely nothing on the handmaidens or Shmi, despite how important all of them were to my generation.

How are things with the PT fandom in the present? Different from when I was growing up. The newer fans are disconnected from much that came before them and I don't blame them. The fandom itself, I feel, is more gender-balanced now, with boys and men brought in through TCW. We also have a significant number of people who jumped on the Uber-Hate train for years, out of a desire to appear 'cool' online or to not be singled out in their fannish spaces, who are now admitting to genuinely liking these films, both men and women. It's a bittersweet thing. On the one hand, more and more people from the generation that came of age with these films is speaking out about their affection for them and that can only be a good thing, in the pit of negativity that is SW fandom even on a relatively good day. On the other, I feel that we lost almost an entire generation of passionate female content creators and curators, in the time between the launch of ROTS and the premiere of TFA. There are so many places I want to visit, but they're only available as truncated web archives.

I'll end this on a positive note. I'm optimistic about the direction the fandom is going in and about the future of young female fans who come to it now, whether through the PT, the ST, TCW, Rebels or other official content. Also, here is a link to an article arguing for a Star Wars series exploring the lives and adventures of Naboo's Royal Handmaidens. It took twenty years, but appreciation of these characters moved from small shrines and girls' games to mainstream sites.

LINKS:

The Moons of Iego (an Anakin/Padme fansite): http://moonsofiego.thepensieve.net/
The Royal Handmaiden Society: https://royalhandmaidensociety.tumblr.com/
The Padawan's Guide to Star Wars Costumes: http://www.padawansguide.com/
Acaciah's Realm: https://web.archive.org/web/20110208090909/http://www.acaciahsrealm.com/
Master and Apprentice (A Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan Slash Archive): https://www.masterapprentice.com/html/index.html
TFN Fan-Fiction Archive: http://fanfic.theforce.net/
On the Royal Handmaidens of Naboo: https://www.slashfilm.com/royal-handmaidens-of-naboo/