It's intersting how the Rey character in these books is often so closed off when the canon Rey is so desperate for connection and finding somewhere to belong. I always felt she was a very earnest character
Like if she wasn’t so desperate for anyone to understand her reylo wouldn’t have kind of sort of worked! Or at least resonated with me when I was a teen
That's because a lot of Reylos don't really understand or care about Rey as a character. Mostly, they view her as a stand-in for the reader/author to insert themselves into to ship with Ben Solo or just Adam Driver. Or at least that's what other Reylos I know feel about their fandom.
I read exactly two Reylo fics that I liked and it's because they both had excellent Rey characterization. In one they bond because she's so charmed by the different landscapes of the planets she's traveling to (especially watery ones) that she just HAS to share it with someone and it happens to be Kylo through their Force bond. She's like, "MURDERER! VILLAIN! Why did you kill-- HOLY SHIT THERE'S A BUNCH OF WATER FALLING OFF A CLIFF!?! It's beautiful?? I didn't know such things existed!!!" And he's like, "Er, a waterfall?"
The WILDEST thing to me is that there are apparently literary agents reading AO3 to find clients to sign???? WHAT. I think if someone emailed me wanting to represent me for filing-off-the-serial-numbers fanfic novels, I’d think it was a prank at first.
I had a friend who was a moderately popular Reylo author and she did get a DM from somebody on tumblr about being a literary agent who was interested in her writing (which even though I didn’t really Star Wars at the time (more into Anime tbh) was pretty good on a craftsmanship basis) … and she blocked that account because she thought it was a scam
real. I have never been angrier about a piece of media than I have been about the way he (and most other characters) were done dirty in The Last Jedi onwards
Yep! And also, please be original and STOP publishing your barely-disguised fanfic as original books. Change it up more. Say what you will about EL James, but at least her books are so divorced from Twilight that they end up being the culmination of her unique ideas. I hate the idea of people making money off of stolen IPs. There's a difference beteeen publishing free content online for fun, and monetizing other people's original ideas and characters. I'd hate for companies to start cracking down on fanfiction because of a few bad actors.
wait dude you're telling me they made the Gaston character Finn?? FINN??? ok first of all I'm taking him away from the Reylo girls and putting him on the top shelf where they can't reach him. He is literally the only character in the new trilogy I was actually invested in, he's perfect he's my baby and I love him Leave Him Alone. I am so personally offended why would they do that to him. it's so contradictory to his personality I'm like, in order to cast him as a Gaston-type villain you would need to change so much about him as a character why not just make a weird OC at that point???? 😭there was literally no reason to drag my favorite guy into this leave him alone
Reylos have a long history of making Finn the bad guy for no reason, it’s always felt really gross especially considering how many reylos were blatantly racist in regards to not only Finn but John boyega as well.
Finn's character had so much potential. I wish the movies did more. It feels like the writers forgot about him and then had to wedge a plot involving him into the movie
@@Graycata I knowwwww, I was so sad about that. honestly I think the lack of good Finn stuff was the thing that really made me start to lose interest in the new movies lol. that guy was my blorbo
Finn was done so dirty in the movies as well, he was the character I was most interested in when I watched it as a kid. I haven’t seen the other movies but hearing how little his story got explored makes me so upset
re: the first order/Kylo Ren giving alt right vibes - when TFA was being promoted, JJ Abrams specifically referred to the First Order as "what if the Nazis went to Argentina and actually rebuilt instead of fading away". That man doesn't know subtlety, so any alt-right vibes Kylo had were probably deliberate.
It's super intentional. The First Order is the Alt-Right, and Kylo Ren is the tragic way young men are socialized into toxic masculinity, and our diverse, feminist cast represent the only way out of these regressive, patriarchal problems. Both the first two movies are incredibly of their time politically. This also means that Kylo Ren is a domineering, aggressive man who is secretly sad and vulnerable which is like, one of the biggest archetypes for straight romance going back to like, the 19th century.
To be fair, like... Star Wars isn't known for subtlety. George Lucas was out here telling everyone explicitly that the Empire is the US and the Rebel Alliance are the Viet Cong.
Regardless of the quality of those books (I have only read a few and there were just fine), there is something very wholesome in the way all the writers gathered together to beta-read their fanfic, exchange gifts, and edited each other query letters. Truly a fandom on its peak.
It's never that one fanfic with the most poetic and earth shattering writing that you read once at 2 am and think about for the rest of your life that get published..... Edit: omg i reached the part of the author who wrote that alpha/omega reylo fic and i remember vaguely one of my friends telling me about the racism undertones about Finn in this fic... I never knew the author had published a book oh man
One of the only pieces of fiction that brought me to tears was a like 560 word Maedhros/Fingon fic about how Maedhros lost hand meant he couldn't braid Fingon's hair anymore and both Maedhros and I shared a breakdown. I don't have much to add beyond that but yeah
It’s kinda cool to think that a group of (presumably) online friends all collaborated and spurred eachother enough that Reylo fanfiction is now it’s own sub genre.
50:05 i am enchanted/horrified that all of the Reys and Bens in Ali Hazelwood's books are friends. i know that having all of your protagonists in your books be in the same/adjacent social circles is the thing you do in romance novels and i tend to find it very charming. but they're all the same guys...... imagine all of your friends are you just with a different hair color, and you're all dating versions of the same guy and again the only real difference is hair color!
Honestly, I'm surprised how Reylo started so many writing careers while still be a mediocre-level written ship. The sequel trilogy did the new (and old) characters so dirty!
In my experience, well-written canon ships are less likely to generate fanfiction and fanart, because canon satisfies the fans' hunger better than it does for poorly-written or non-canon ships
i was a jedistormpilot shipper in 2015-16 (I'm ot3 trash lol) so I do remember this time. I think one issue you missed is the Reylos cross tagged everything. part of this was because tumblr did away with only having the first 5 tags of an original post appear in main tag, so not the fans fault nessiaraly but still annoying. Additionally the tag wrangling on AO3 meant that Ben Solo, Kylo Ren and Matt the Radar Technician (yes from the SNL Skit) where all different characters and many new AO3 users didnt know the difference between the / and the & which meant of you wanted to exclude Reylo fic your search you had to block SIX TAGS. I think that irritation certainly added to anti reylo sentiment in a way I've not really seen discussed.
@@sarcomeresarecool I was confused too because Netflix and Voltron seemed so closely linked at the time but!!! Voltron: Legendary Defender is actually a DreamWorks production. Netflix loses the streaming license six years after the release of the final season. The same thing has already happened to other DreamWorks shows that used to be on Netflix, though none that were quite as notable as Voltron. (I'm curious about whether She-Ra is similarly going to leave Netflix in 2026) No idea what DreamWorks intends to do with the show afterwards or how other IP holders factor into it...
from what i understand voltron: legendary defender is the reason proship/anti discourse is so widespread today, and for this i think the showrunners should face criminal charges. (for legal reasons this is a joke)
@@yesplease8805 They are and at the same time arent, the VLD fandom was like *that* because it was the big fandom on a very specific socio/political climate, it was the "trump election, post gamergate, gen z entering the world fandom" and so it showed how fandom would be in the future (as in, the idea that evryone out there is secretly a bad person who wants to hurt others and you can't trust anyone and evrything they do is a posible slip of the mask that will allow you to protect yourself)
I think the biggest moment that shows that The Hurricane Wars didn't want to grapple with its implications was when Rey/Talisin is oggling Kylo/Alaric's lips...while he's talking about how he's going to wipe out all her people
god, i remember being 14 and reading all those 'reylo is abusive' posts, and feeling so morally righteous because i also hated reylo 😭 looking back i did not at all have the critical thinking skills to realize that i just... didn't like the ship... and that the narrative that shipping it meant condoning abuse never really added up. like, imo (at least in fiction) there's a pretty big difference between abuse happening between people that are (for all intents and purposes) on the same side (ie in a relationship), vs abuse that's happening in the context of literal war, between political enemies. as a sidebar, beyond being a classic finnpoe shipper i also liked finnrey and was hoping that if rey got a (male) partner it would be finn.. alas... :(
Yeah, the reason Reylo gives me the ick isn't so much what he did to *her* it's the fact that he blew up multiple inhabited planets and killed billions. And Rey's just...fine with that
I was also a huge FinnRey shipper! Their relationship was so wholesome and I felt like it had the potential to be interesting too. Ended up getting completely sidelined even as a friendship. ALAS.
@@whiteraven562Well…I wouldn’t really say that Rey was just fine with it. The whole planet destruction thing is largely pinned on Hux and Rey never attributes that galactic crime to Ben. But she’s clearly not fine about him killing Han and wanting to rule the galaxy
@@gracedilawri9741that’s kinda part of the problem, no? Kylo was still heavily involved but they don’t actually want to think about the narrative implications and deal with his role in multiple omnicides
This is such a refreshing addition to the I read [blank] so you don’t have to genre. I loved that your recaps also contained a lot of good commentary. I usually don’t pay attention to these but I was actually super interested in what you had to say! Also I love that you focused on actual numbers for your stats it was actually so interesting. (I know this sounds like a response in a college discussion board I promise this is genuine)
I know this isn’t the point of the video but I’m one of the people who actually really liked the last Jedi and I hate how Rise completely cowtowed to the backlash making both the movie worse and the two previous films worse. Either JJ should have had a plan from day one or JJ should have taken off from where rian Johnson left off
@@MsIvalane Im pretty sure that's a line in Overly Sarcastic Productions's Episode III detail diatribe. I super recommend all of their detail diatribes they are SOOO GOOOD
@@zenmaster8 Have watched, do agree and nah the sentiment has been around at LEAST since the prequels era lolol I've been hip deep in the slog since ...... '94? Whenever X- wing and TIE Fighter came to Windows originally. Damn I'm old
"i'm not going to add nuance to this" is a wild thing to say but sums up the vast majority of ship arguments i've seen in the only seven years i've been involved in fandom spaces
i used to feel the same about reylo but after recently getting into this one toxic genshin ship that causes a huge split and a ton of discourse among the fans of noe of the characters... i think i'm willing to look at reylo with a perspective other than "everything about it is bad and if you ship it you're a terrible person"
the whole "if you like [fictional thing] then you're a bad person" is still the single most baffling shift in fandom and while most fanfic-books aren't great, i'm glad so many people pushed on with their passions despite all the shit they got
had to immediately go look at ao3 after hearing that phrase and was completely shocked to see that there are over FIVE THOUSAND works in the tag. effervescent
Aah yes, 2015/16 Star Wars fandom. I was a FinnRey shipper so I was caught in the middle of having two of the characters in my ship being part of more popular ships (Reylo and Finnpoe) so I was basically eating scraps. I kept waiting to be justified with new release but after each one, I basically walked out the theater with clown makeup.
reylo wants to be edgy but comes across as milquetoast. out of all the het ships that exist, it's the least interesting one for me, but that could just be that i don't find kyle very compelling.
i think this is why i’m completely uninterested in reylo. rey is an interesting character but kylo has always come off to me like a prep school trust fund baby in boating shoes who is salty that his successful parents never came to his little league games
You pretty much summed up my confusion surrounding the ship’s insane popularity. I don’t even like star wars that much, but even I thought there were more interesting relationships to be invested in *cough* finnpoe *cough*
As an actual romance author, this one is on my “absolutely never” list of things to write. But I’ve never seen one that’s more than enemies-to-lovers grumpy-sunshine. Now FinnPoe? 👀👀👀
As far as Kylo's redemption goes, I strangely feel like Hux was originally meant to be the ultimate big bad in JJ's version of the Trilogy. Maybe it's because he was the one talking when all the planets blew up (spoilers, I guess) or maybe because he was the most obviously Nazi-Like of the bad guys but I definitely see a version where Kylo slowly realizes how he's been brainwashed, paralleling both the Storm Troopers and Darth Vader, the main he idolizes, while Hux leans into the power and control he's gained as a member of the Space Nazis. Not sure how Snoke plays into all of this, he'd probably still be killed off but by Hux this time. Sorry for the rant, great video, Poe and Finn deserve each other
I kinda disagree with the take that Star Wars character designs are supporting the whole neoclassical notion that beauty=moral goodness. Especially since I remember watching a video about all the different alien designs throughout the series and at one point in the video they go over how the notes in the production of return of the Jedi had Admiral Akbar designed the way he was specifically to undermine that sentiment of inherent beauty=natural goodness and why there’s a lot of aspects to his design that feel distinctly inhuman in a way that if taken out of context could be played as grotesque and horrifying but Star Wars never does that. Hell Chewie is practically a walking bear who’s actively called ugly by Leia, a character who fits typical beauty standards and yet he’s shown as no more heroic than the main crew. Hell in return of Jedi the dude who was the rancor’s master who dies and is not at all fitting into typical beauty standards especially in the 80’s is given time to respect and show his loss when the rancor dies and we’re meant to feel bad for me him even though we know Luke had no other option really. Even in the prequels dexter jexter whose design overplays the whole slovenly bigger dude aesthetic that is usually played as something I like to call, “fat evil,” where the bigger the person is weight wise the worse they are morally. Yet he not only is obi wan’s friend but he’s the reason obi wan knows anything about the clones and is crucial for the plot of the movie he’s in with him having a beneficial effect on one of the protagonists. Granted it’s not really flattering portrayal of heavier set people but it still betrays the neoclassical beauty standards that say goodness relates to beauty and underlies how aliens have always sort of been used in the series to undermine that notion.
if macmillan hadn't put me in the high school textbooks section, kylux fic would be the ones getting published ... unfortunately educating the youth is probably more important
I'm still looking for books that scratch that particular itch. Seems weird that the ship that had been the most popular one at a time never got one of their writers published. :/ But who knows: maybe it's better this way...
@@Naniru87 ever since i've been hired i've wanted to sneak a printed manuscript of Flyboys by Gefionne to the trade publishing floor and just leave it around for someone to find... i'm 100% convinced that fic could be adapted into an original novel SOOOOOO EASILY
Your eight months of dedication to this is _deeply_ appreciated and I love how insightful your video has been and it's only the second one on your channel!!! Literally praying for your mental health as you're sitting there explaining ABO 😭
ship wars is the answer you're looking for; people who invest themselves wholly emotionally in a singular ship, and don't just reject but outright attack any ship that operates with one of the participants in *their* ship
this was an absolutely FANTASTIC watch, thank you so much for sharing! I’m shocked this only has 3.7k views, the amount of effort and production value that’s gone into this deserves way more recognition. keep up the good work! very glad this popped up in my recommended!!! :>
As someone who WAS a reylo when the sequels were coming out, I hate all the backlash Finn/John Boyega got. I may not have shipped him with Rey, but I enjoyed his character for the most part (ultimately I think the writers did him dirty and wasted his potential, just as they did with everyone else) and I always thought of him fondly. People who automatically make Finn the Gaston archetype for reylo are stupid. I always used Hux for that role 🤦♀️
nah cause its so annoying that only the bad/weird fics get published there are so so many good writers out there, even very popular within the right fandoms
it’s annoying, but it also makes sense as to why it happens. a lot of the really good fanfictions are often built upon a sense of true love and understanding of the source material, and more often than not, they directly take place within that original source material’s world. it much harder to “file the serial numbers” off of these fanfics, because to do so would be to fundamentally change the entire story into something new.
as someone who was VERY deep in reylo fandom from 2017-2020 this video is amazing and so accurate to the fandom drama and context at the time, you did crazzzzzzy good! ali hazelwood recently just released an audio book “two can play” and it will be getting traditionally published later, but that was originally on ao3 as “gorgeous”, just thought i’d mention in case you wanted to explore this one too!
Not finished yet, but your presentation style and script are so engaging I've been zoned in the whole time! I've noticed this phenomenon a lot as a fic reader/writer and library worker. Even if it's not a filed-off fic, new romances often have notable "face claim" depictions of the love interests. Back page blurbs reference terms I used to only see in fandom spaces. And the books themselves contain stuff I used to only associate w/ fan-interaction, like playlists and jokey cw lists. My assumption is that its easy money for publishers since they get a story with a pre-established fanbase, a writer with a portfolio of works they've written with no expectation (originally) for profit, and that hits within a profitable niche. Bc even if I don't know the fandom a book was from, it can be easy to guess that it's fic: spelling and continuity errors, weird pacing for original fiction, expectations of pre-existing knowledge about characters or the plot that haven't been divulged, lack of physical descriptors. Basically, stuff that makes sense in an ao3 fanfiction where you have an understanding of characters and tropes, but doesn't translate to original fiction and was never edited for. The publishers do the bare minimum for a book to sell, rather than helping authors flourish, because that isn't their priority. And a lot of fic writers could excel as novelists (ofc many still do) if anyone helped them navigate original fiction, which stretches a different writing muscle from fanfic. Ah, this became a ramble. I just find it fascinating seeing this pipeline from both ends. Amazing work, you're so fun to listen to!
I had a friend in college who was into writing Reylo stuff and I don’t really Star Wars but they were pretty good fics from like a technical standpoint. She even got messaged by one of those publishing agents on tumblr… but she ended up blocking them because she thought it was a scam. Fast forward a couple of years to when she became the bookstore that she worked at’s designated Booktok curator…
I used to be anti Reylo but then I realized that nowadays they are a pretty insular part of the fandom who mostly just want to be left alone while the alt right anti-woke Fandom Menace continues to grow and I find the ‘facist’ criticisms really funny because guys there is a facism issue in this fandom but it’s not coming from the women who just find Adam Driver attractive
A few weeks ago I had a dream that Rey and Kylo were revealed to be twins, and since it was the second time this had happened, everyone started calling George Lucas "George Incest" He then started a star wars themed podcast about how hard it was for him to be cancelled, and was bullied so hard he never made another movie.
It's incredibly interesting to me how popular Enjoltaire was because as someone whose life otherwise revolves around Les Mis it passed me by completely
Kylo ren was not supposed to be redeemed. He was supposed to be the reverse vader. starting with doubt and ending fully convinced he did right vs. anakin being convinced he is right and ending with doubt which leads to a change of heart. I'm also not sure if he can be called conventionally attractive. During my screening of TFA, when he took his helmet off the girl next to me whispered to someone next to her "ok, put the helmet on again D:" and apparently this wasn't something rare to be said. Even in FF he is often called unconventionally attractive bc of his facial features. Surprisingly, HUX gets that conventionally pretty treatment at least in FF much more often (at least in the kylux ones). And one little point about the John Boyega hate: he posted a montage of screenshots where Kylo and Rey fought and wrote something like "so romantic" over it or something which got the reylo's attention. This is why they kind of hated him? Still incredibly stupid (I mean - he was poking fun at it nothing more and he's right.).
oh no they hated him before that too, that was just when he poked back (...which got a lot of reylos who weren't involved mad at him for doing so "out of nowhere"). the source is unfortunately trust me bro bc this is just what i remember but boyega got a lot of harrassment from day one
@@Naniru87 im honestly not 100% of what their purported motives *were* but that sounds plausible-there were also some people conflating (their racist perceptions of finn's character with boyega too, iirc. the gaston finn thing was a very obvious incident but ultimately indicative of a larger trend at the time
Love how comprehensive the history portion was! I love learning about fandom behavior and how it ties into something more mainstream like book publishing. Can't wait to see more fandom history videos from you! Subscripted!! ❤️
this is incredible. you put so much work into all of this. the look on your face as you mention kylux took me back to a dark time lmao. looking forward to more vids from you!
thank you for your service brave soldier o7 it always bothered me how reylos treated Finn so I'm glad you mentioned that. I also always found any pairing other than finnpoe so bland LMAO we could've had it all..... they had such a good dynamic and then they were pushed to the background. Finnpoe you will always be famous
Amazing work. Your calm and nonjudgmental presentation style is such a breath of fresh air, *and* you're really funny when you want to be. As someone who's never seen a full Star Wars movie (and especially not any of the newer ones), but still knows about reylo from various fandom controversies (which is why I was interested in watching the video), I really appreciated the background information.
This video is sooo well made! Thank you for the research and the time consuming effort of reading bad books!! Also: Your pet peeve about the Hurricane Wars name dropping their war every other chapter is so true lmao
I love this video essay so much! As someone who has never really been into Reylo but loves ships like Draco/Harry and Draco/Hermione (the latter having loads of overlap with Reylo obviously), I have enjoyed some of those traditionally published books a lot! But I never knew the history of reylo or the reylo fic to traditionally published works timeline so this was so informative and fun. Especially as someone who adores fandom history. You obviously put so much work into this and it really shows! This video essay is incredible!
“if you ship or explore this fictional character dynamic with harmful/toxic elements, then you’re inherently supportive of those behaviors in real life” is just the new “if you play violent video games, you’re guaranteed to become a serial killer or school shooter in real life”
the algorithm is algorithming a little too hard 😭 i was an og reylo in 2016 and then promptly forgot about them after the last jedi. something about ship actually becoming canon soured my opinion of it
I've never seen your stuff before, but I salute your sacrifice. I have never understood why people even liked reylo, like ooh, a fantasy supremacist fascist with incel vibes. And then the racists in the fandom flocking to it meant it was even more offputting. Like, I like villain ships & enemies to lovers, they're usually great fun, but reylo was just so... Bland. And then ending on him being "redeemed" in the most predictable & boring way... Yeah. I don't get the appeal. Also finnpoe rights. Edit: I might have to read the vampire one, that sounds hysterical
Yes, please do a video about Voltron. It also had a ship between one of protagonists and one of antagonists, but it made a lot of sense (and then they break it).
I'm in this video....and I like it. Great work. Seriously. The height of this fandom was so intense and fun and weird. Fanfiction unexpectedly changed my life and introduced me to some of my greatest friends. You're right in that fanfic writers generally aren't on panels and at book signings, but the actual act of *writing* fanfic is so much more fun and fulfilling than writing novels. Personally, I absolutely love the serial posting, the comments, the collaborations. I really miss it.
I know this isn’t really important to the video (which is great btw) but I would argue that Star Wars argues less the evil is ugly and more that it’s corrosive. In the original 3 movies aliens are constantly weird, be it evil slug monsters or bug eyed fish heroes, but when it comes to the dark side we see how it affects them. The Emperor looks less like someone that unattractive and more like a corpse. This is expanded on in the prequels where we see until he rose to power and let the mask drop he looked exceedingly average. With Maul he’s much more scary that ugly, and there are plenty of people that would even say he’s hot, but aside from his eyes being yellow his appearance hasn’t changed because he’s evil; he would still have horns and tattoos on his face if he was a good guy which we see with other aliens like him in the series. As for Dooku, he’s played by Christopher Lee who if I look half as good as him when I get that old I’ll be very happy. Anakin is a good example of this. As a hero he’s a dashing young man, but when he goes evil he gets those yellow eyes which work as a signifier not because it’s unattractive but because it’s unnatural. Him choosing to do evil is corroding away at him, and the fact everyone going full dark side gets yellow eyes drives that unnaturalness in. When he becomes Vader he’s presented as, well, a cool and powerful warrior in a suit of armour. We’re not shown how this has effected him until he’s dying and it’s all removed and we’re shown his real face. When it’s all removed, the movies not showing us he’s a hideous creature, it’s showing that he’s a crippled old man, and where only shown this side of him once he stops being evil. The dark side is presented as something cancerous in Lucas’ work, something that harms life around it, eats at everything to sustain itself, and needs to be removed for healing to occur. None of this is important to the point of your video but I wanted to throw it out there.
i know you also asked how this is only your second video, but holy shit, how is this only your second video?? the quality, the depth, it's all so good! you can already clearly tell the effort and care that goes into these videos, and i can't wait to see more of them :)
the thing about children in romance novels that make you wonder if the author has ever met a child is so true...... but it is a pitfall I have fallen into before and I really can't blame authors for doing it because it is very fun. But it kind of flattens the genre when every single child character is precocious and witty and picks up on everything the MCs are too dense to notice.
as someone who lowkey liked the sequel trilogy (& only bc i have fond memories of watching it with my dad who's a big sci fi and movie nerd), i never found reylo all that compelling 🤷♀️. i liked rey A LOT and i thought kylo kinda brought her down and made her kinda boring. i mean i get why people love ships like reylo so i can't really be mad or whatever, but man they were SOO boring. kylo just felt like a whiny baby to me and i didnt really see how he could be sooo devoted to rey based on what these fics or novels are insinuating. AND ALSO??????? WTF ABOUT FINN BEING GASTON?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!????!?? HELLO???????? HOW COULD THEY DO THAT TO HIM 😭😭😭 I DONT THINK THESE REYLOS EVEN LIKE STAR WARS 😭😭😭 oh well. great video tho!!! thnx for the cc!
This is genuinely a top tier video essay- great production, interesting and funny the whole way through. I can't wait to force a bunch of people to watch it. Outstanding work.
I wanna express how inspired your video has made me feel and how grateful I am for that. I never expected for a deep dive on Reylo fanfics and books to open up an introspective look into my own connection to fandom, to community - and all the wonderful ways that it has coloured my life. It's also led me to a deeper realisation of the incredible reward you get from giving to others, from truly expressing who you are and letting yourself be seen - which is what you're doing! And it is what I've always yearned to do but not had the courage to yet. This has been such a fun and insightful video, and anyone can tell that you put a lot of work into it. These eight months have not been wasted. I hope your videos go viral, and you deserve all the success!
Also this is one of the best essays I have seen so far. I was enthralled the whole time and didnt noticed it was almost 2 hours long. Thank you for your work and dedication these past 8 months! May I suggest you do one or the Marauders fandom or the Leakira fandom (the subset fandom of Voltron)
i am super fascinated by the Hurricane Wars. Thea and I used to be friends back when she wrote under a different fandom, Enjolras x Eponine. She was 23 while I was 12 and she was such a kind person, I remember that during a "ship war" someone messaged her saying they wanted to send her anon hate but emotionally couldn't because she was too nice. I can concur with that! I later became an anti (I was 15 in the Voltron fandom, okay) and eventually unfollowed her on Tumblr although I am still in sporadic contact with her. As a fanfiction author who also writes original works, I have complicated feelings about fanfiction publishing. There was a time in my life where I would have been interested in that but now it feels a little bit cheap, as well as the fact that I am afraid of fanfiction becoming a legal grey zone again. But Thea was actually my main literary influence when I was 13, and affected my writing style on a deep level. Also, fun fact: The Hurricane Wars was originally the title for another book that she wrote for Nanowrimo- and that book was PHENOMENAL. It was a novel set in a lighthouse in a post-Nuclear Winter Philippines and I remember rereading it many times. I don't know that I will ever read her book or that I will even like it, but I will always be proud of her. She's a really cool person and she has come really far.
this is the best video on internet fanfiction that surprisingly turned out to be a fanfiction-writers-friend-group that i ever seen and i had so much fun watching it. thank u for your research!
I never watched star wars but I remember experiencing the fandom and reylo in real time from the outside on tumblr so this video is still interesting. I like your channel and the videos you've done so far! I look forward to any more you make in the future!
I had no idea Gabriel's Inferno was Twilight fanfiction, but when I originally watched Kennie JD's videos on the series, I noticed the parallels and everything makes so much more sense now.
listened to this entire video while simultaneously writing an essay about book bans. 10/10 experience. subscribed. had to refrain from comparing ao3 to actual libraries but with more freedoms
I was randomly recommended and watched two (or rather, the two) videos you made, which is notable because i don't usually watch recommended videos. I also liked both of these videos, which means I'm subscribing right now.
It's me, but in a different location! This is such a good video!!! Really well done, thank you for doing the dirty jobs even Mike Rowe wouldn't think of
No comment on her character and not saying this to mock her but there is something kind of funny about someone who went by kylotrashforever torpedoing her Kylo fandom presence. The eternal peril of the Forever fandom username. EDIT- I remember withcindy actually did a video a while back about some author drama that offhandedly mentioned the Reylo pro community connections! I remember a lot of them having shared Discord servers and so on- kinda incredible the way they bring each other up in a very fandom-y way after breaking into the industry because I feel like that was NOT present in the Twilight wave. It's super super representative of contemporary AO3 based fanfiction communities I've been around on Tumblr and Twitter though! You hype up your peers and friends and pull them up with you. Interesting to see where that mentality goes!
Absolutely Banger video. Great analysis of star wars fandom and I feel like I learned a lot on the history (despite mildly being involved back in the day). I think it's incredibly fascinating what Kylo Ren has done to the male romantic lead archetype and the overall rise of enemies to lovers in the current publishing world, even to people who didn't directly base their work off of a Reylo fanfic.
this was a very fun look at a weird niche intersection of fandom and publishing that has honestly always baffled me personally! you also made an interesting point about how contemporary adult romance featuring somewhat ridiculous/contrived plot points, no more or less so than fanfiction, and honestly looking at your rating system for these particular novels you looked at, i find those criteria are really useful for evaluating the relative quality of or just personal thoughts on a lot of romance-focused books (regardless of whether there's a suspicion a given book may be based on a fanfiction lol). also, thank you for one of the most concise yet spot-on overviews of A/B/O i've ever seen in a fandom-focused video.
as someone who's read reylo fics without having seen any starwars source material this was a really interesting video, cause to me the fanfics were essentially already original novels
FINNPOE RIGHTS. NEVER FORGET WHAT THE MOUSE TOOK FROM US
they deserved so much better 😭
@@Taradoxxi It might have given us the Live Slug Reaction, but at what cost?
I could talk about the character assassination of both Finn and Poe for dayyysss
REAL.
finnpoe :(((
It's intersting how the Rey character in these books is often so closed off when the canon Rey is so desperate for connection and finding somewhere to belong. I always felt she was a very earnest character
Like if she wasn’t so desperate for anyone to understand her reylo wouldn’t have kind of sort of worked! Or at least resonated with me when I was a teen
That's because a lot of Reylos don't really understand or care about Rey as a character. Mostly, they view her as a stand-in for the reader/author to insert themselves into to ship with Ben Solo or just Adam Driver. Or at least that's what other Reylos I know feel about their fandom.
I read exactly two Reylo fics that I liked and it's because they both had excellent Rey characterization. In one they bond because she's so charmed by the different landscapes of the planets she's traveling to (especially watery ones) that she just HAS to share it with someone and it happens to be Kylo through their Force bond.
She's like, "MURDERER! VILLAIN! Why did you kill-- HOLY SHIT THERE'S A BUNCH OF WATER FALLING OFF A CLIFF!?! It's beautiful?? I didn't know such things existed!!!"
And he's like, "Er, a waterfall?"
@kajamiletic3223 okay you can't just say that and not drop the fic names!! That sounds amazing!
@@kajamiletic3223 Don't be shy drop the link
The WILDEST thing to me is that there are apparently literary agents reading AO3 to find clients to sign???? WHAT. I think if someone emailed me wanting to represent me for filing-off-the-serial-numbers fanfic novels, I’d think it was a prank at first.
Ahh I got pinned! Thank you, love the video, love the channel, can't wait to see what fandom nonsense you cover next! :D
I had a friend who was a moderately popular Reylo author and she did get a DM from somebody on tumblr about being a literary agent who was interested in her writing (which even though I didn’t really Star Wars at the time (more into Anime tbh) was pretty good on a craftsmanship basis) … and she blocked that account because she thought it was a scam
@@phoenixfritzinger9185 Many of them are scams so she wasn't wrong in thinking that lol
Where else can you scout talent for free without being hounded
I'd think it was a phishing scam more than a prank honestly
Finn got done so dirty. He had so much potential as a character and he just ended up on the sidelines.
real. I have never been angrier about a piece of media than I have been about the way he (and most other characters) were done dirty in The Last Jedi onwards
Not a reylo problem
I used to be happy that fanfic authors were getting deals. Now I just want them to STOP publishing them. Let them simmer! They're not ready!!!
Yep! And also, please be original and STOP publishing your barely-disguised fanfic as original books. Change it up more. Say what you will about EL James, but at least her books are so divorced from Twilight that they end up being the culmination of her unique ideas.
I hate the idea of people making money off of stolen IPs. There's a difference beteeen publishing free content online for fun, and monetizing other people's original ideas and characters. I'd hate for companies to start cracking down on fanfiction because of a few bad actors.
fr its never the good shit its always wattpas type crap sadly
in what world is a 5'8'' woman petite???? thats tall enough to be a runway model????
sorry ill continue the video now.
She's a goblin woman with small bazoingas, thus petite.
As a 5’10” woman I’m insulted! /hj
hurt me deep in my soul to hear “only my second video” and see released one day ago when i thought i just found my new person to binge watch
What I learned in school today: any romance book can be a surprise reylo fanfic.
pride and prejudice was a reylo fanfic?! O_O
@@Uneeriemore like reylo was pride and prejudice fanfic 🤭
wait dude you're telling me they made the Gaston character Finn?? FINN??? ok first of all I'm taking him away from the Reylo girls and putting him on the top shelf where they can't reach him. He is literally the only character in the new trilogy I was actually invested in, he's perfect he's my baby and I love him Leave Him Alone. I am so personally offended why would they do that to him.
it's so contradictory to his personality I'm like, in order to cast him as a Gaston-type villain you would need to change so much about him as a character why not just make a weird OC at that point???? 😭there was literally no reason to drag my favorite guy into this leave him alone
Reylos have a long history of making Finn the bad guy for no reason, it’s always felt really gross especially considering how many reylos were blatantly racist in regards to not only Finn but John boyega as well.
Finn's character had so much potential. I wish the movies did more. It feels like the writers forgot about him and then had to wedge a plot involving him into the movie
@@Graycata I knowwwww, I was so sad about that. honestly I think the lack of good Finn stuff was the thing that really made me start to lose interest in the new movies lol. that guy was my blorbo
Finn was done so dirty in the movies as well, he was the character I was most interested in when I watched it as a kid. I haven’t seen the other movies but hearing how little his story got explored makes me so upset
It's called "die for our ship"
re: the first order/Kylo Ren giving alt right vibes - when TFA was being promoted, JJ Abrams specifically referred to the First Order as "what if the Nazis went to Argentina and actually rebuilt instead of fading away". That man doesn't know subtlety, so any alt-right vibes Kylo had were probably deliberate.
i'm pretty sure the actor for hux said he studied hitler speeches for his scenes too
It's super intentional. The First Order is the Alt-Right, and Kylo Ren is the tragic way young men are socialized into toxic masculinity, and our diverse, feminist cast represent the only way out of these regressive, patriarchal problems. Both the first two movies are incredibly of their time politically.
This also means that Kylo Ren is a domineering, aggressive man who is secretly sad and vulnerable which is like, one of the biggest archetypes for straight romance going back to like, the 19th century.
To be fair, like... Star Wars isn't known for subtlety. George Lucas was out here telling everyone explicitly that the Empire is the US and the Rebel Alliance are the Viet Cong.
Regardless of the quality of those books (I have only read a few and there were just fine), there is something very wholesome in the way all the writers gathered together to beta-read their fanfic, exchange gifts, and edited each other query letters. Truly a fandom on its peak.
It's never that one fanfic with the most poetic and earth shattering writing that you read once at 2 am and think about for the rest of your life that get published.....
Edit: omg i reached the part of the author who wrote that alpha/omega reylo fic and i remember vaguely one of my friends telling me about the racism undertones about Finn in this fic... I never knew the author had published a book oh man
It's cause those authors don't do it for money
One of the only pieces of fiction that brought me to tears was a like 560 word Maedhros/Fingon fic about how Maedhros lost hand meant he couldn't braid Fingon's hair anymore and both Maedhros and I shared a breakdown.
I don't have much to add beyond that but yeah
It’s kinda cool to think that a group of (presumably) online friends all collaborated and spurred eachother enough that Reylo fanfiction is now it’s own sub genre.
50:05 i am enchanted/horrified that all of the Reys and Bens in Ali Hazelwood's books are friends. i know that having all of your protagonists in your books be in the same/adjacent social circles is the thing you do in romance novels and i tend to find it very charming. but they're all the same guys...... imagine all of your friends are you just with a different hair color, and you're all dating versions of the same guy and again the only real difference is hair color!
It's so funny to be honest
Picking up dates with the girlies at the clone factory
The real clone wars were the Reys and Ben's we picked up on the way
Honestly, I'm surprised how Reylo started so many writing careers while still be a mediocre-level written ship. The sequel trilogy did the new (and old) characters so dirty!
In my experience, well-written canon ships are less likely to generate fanfiction and fanart, because canon satisfies the fans' hunger better than it does for poorly-written or non-canon ships
I now have a much better appreciation of how Cait Corrain's fabricated Reylo friend was found out so quickly.
i was a jedistormpilot shipper in 2015-16 (I'm ot3 trash lol) so I do remember this time. I think one issue you missed is the Reylos cross tagged everything.
part of this was because tumblr did away with only having the first 5 tags of an original post appear in main tag, so not the fans fault nessiaraly but still annoying. Additionally the tag wrangling on AO3 meant that Ben Solo, Kylo Ren and Matt the Radar Technician (yes from the SNL Skit) where all different characters and many new AO3 users didnt know the difference between the / and the & which meant of you wanted to exclude Reylo fic your search you had to block SIX TAGS. I think that irritation certainly added to anti reylo sentiment in a way I've not really seen discussed.
fellow jsp shipper here, and I totally agree on this, the crosstagging was inescapable, and that was with me diligently blocking tags
I'm begging you for the Voltron video essay. Please? Pretty please? That fandom was so messy and I desperately need to see it analyzed
And apparently the show is being taken off Netflix in December so it might be now or never 👀
@@nah6024 didn't Netflix produce it? Why would they take it off?
@@sarcomeresarecool I was confused too because Netflix and Voltron seemed so closely linked at the time but!!! Voltron: Legendary Defender is actually a DreamWorks production.
Netflix loses the streaming license six years after the release of the final season. The same thing has already happened to other DreamWorks shows that used to be on Netflix, though none that were quite as notable as Voltron. (I'm curious about whether She-Ra is similarly going to leave Netflix in 2026)
No idea what DreamWorks intends to do with the show afterwards or how other IP holders factor into it...
from what i understand voltron: legendary defender is the reason proship/anti discourse is so widespread today, and for this i think the showrunners should face criminal charges.
(for legal reasons this is a joke)
@@yesplease8805 They are and at the same time arent, the VLD fandom was like *that* because it was the big fandom on a very specific socio/political climate, it was the "trump election, post gamergate, gen z entering the world fandom" and so it showed how fandom would be in the future (as in, the idea that evryone out there is secretly a bad person who wants to hurt others and you can't trust anyone and evrything they do is a posible slip of the mask that will allow you to protect yourself)
I think the biggest moment that shows that The Hurricane Wars didn't want to grapple with its implications was when Rey/Talisin is oggling Kylo/Alaric's lips...while he's talking about how he's going to wipe out all her people
god, i remember being 14 and reading all those 'reylo is abusive' posts, and feeling so morally righteous because i also hated reylo 😭 looking back i did not at all have the critical thinking skills to realize that i just... didn't like the ship... and that the narrative that shipping it meant condoning abuse never really added up.
like, imo (at least in fiction) there's a pretty big difference between abuse happening between people that are (for all intents and purposes) on the same side (ie in a relationship), vs abuse that's happening in the context of literal war, between political enemies.
as a sidebar, beyond being a classic finnpoe shipper i also liked finnrey and was hoping that if rey got a (male) partner it would be finn.. alas... :(
Yeah, the reason Reylo gives me the ick isn't so much what he did to *her* it's the fact that he blew up multiple inhabited planets and killed billions. And Rey's just...fine with that
I was also a huge FinnRey shipper! Their relationship was so wholesome and I felt like it had the potential to be interesting too. Ended up getting completely sidelined even as a friendship. ALAS.
@@whiteraven562Well…I wouldn’t really say that Rey was just fine with it. The whole planet destruction thing is largely pinned on Hux and Rey never attributes that galactic crime to Ben. But she’s clearly not fine about him killing Han and wanting to rule the galaxy
I’m still so sad finnrey never got as huge as reylo did, they had such amazing chemistry!!
@@gracedilawri9741that’s kinda part of the problem, no? Kylo was still heavily involved but they don’t actually want to think about the narrative implications and deal with his role in multiple omnicides
this is INSANELY underrated, i know its only been a day but i hope this goes viral, your research is amazing
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This is such a refreshing addition to the I read [blank] so you don’t have to genre. I loved that your recaps also contained a lot of good commentary. I usually don’t pay attention to these but I was actually super interested in what you had to say! Also I love that you focused on actual numbers for your stats it was actually so interesting.
(I know this sounds like a response in a college discussion board I promise this is genuine)
I know this isn’t the point of the video but I’m one of the people who actually really liked the last Jedi and I hate how Rise completely cowtowed to the backlash making both the movie worse and the two previous films worse. Either JJ should have had a plan from day one or JJ should have taken off from where rian Johnson left off
Or they maybe could’ve kept Rian on and just let him cook… or just let anybody cook for that matter whole trilogy was half baked
@@phoenixfritzinger9185 so true they should have let him cook. Honestly the fact they had no plan for the ST is one of its worst qualities
Being a star wars fan is all about loving it so much you hate it, a la "God I love Star Wars, I wish it was good" lolol
@@MsIvalane Im pretty sure that's a line in Overly Sarcastic Productions's Episode III detail diatribe. I super recommend all of their detail diatribes they are SOOO GOOOD
@@zenmaster8 Have watched, do agree and nah the sentiment has been around at LEAST since the prequels era lolol I've been hip deep in the slog since ...... '94? Whenever X- wing and TIE Fighter came to Windows originally. Damn I'm old
"i'm not going to add nuance to this" is a wild thing to say but sums up the vast majority of ship arguments i've seen in the only seven years i've been involved in fandom spaces
i used to feel the same about reylo but after recently getting into this one toxic genshin ship that causes a huge split and a ton of discourse among the fans of noe of the characters... i think i'm willing to look at reylo with a perspective other than "everything about it is bad and if you ship it you're a terrible person"
@@twistedhyruleI’m curious, what was the Genshin ship?
the whole "if you like [fictional thing] then you're a bad person" is still the single most baffling shift in fandom and while most fanfic-books aren't great, i'm glad so many people pushed on with their passions despite all the shit they got
your eight months of sacrifice are appreciated
"Starsky and Hutch fanfiction" well and truly stunlocked me for a few minutes.
had to immediately go look at ao3 after hearing that phrase and was completely shocked to see that there are over FIVE THOUSAND works in the tag. effervescent
Omg a couple years ago I went down a Tumblr rabbit hole of that ship. It's a deep fucking hole man.
The three Reys all being friends is taking me out
Aah yes, 2015/16 Star Wars fandom. I was a FinnRey shipper so I was caught in the middle of having two of the characters in my ship being part of more popular ships (Reylo and Finnpoe) so I was basically eating scraps. I kept waiting to be justified with new release but after each one, I basically walked out the theater with clown makeup.
The cringe away when you were trying to shoot confetti made me laugh out loud because that would be me too
I got scared
I wonder who so many Kylos are chefs in these...
reylo wants to be edgy but comes across as milquetoast. out of all the het ships that exist, it's the least interesting one for me, but that could just be that i don't find kyle very compelling.
i think this is why i’m completely uninterested in reylo. rey is an interesting character but kylo has always come off to me like a prep school trust fund baby in boating shoes who is salty that his successful parents never came to his little league games
they wish they could be as edgy as mgk and megan fox and it shows
You pretty much summed up my confusion surrounding the ship’s insane popularity. I don’t even like star wars that much, but even I thought there were more interesting relationships to be invested in *cough* finnpoe *cough*
literally nailed my exact thoughts
As an actual romance author, this one is on my “absolutely never” list of things to write. But I’ve never seen one that’s more than enemies-to-lovers grumpy-sunshine. Now FinnPoe? 👀👀👀
1:35:03 Oh no. The Reylo collective is a like a fanfic-turned-original Habsburging. Oh no. Oh noooooo.
I used to think Rey’s name was reylo☠️
As far as Kylo's redemption goes, I strangely feel like Hux was originally meant to be the ultimate big bad in JJ's version of the Trilogy. Maybe it's because he was the one talking when all the planets blew up (spoilers, I guess) or maybe because he was the most obviously Nazi-Like of the bad guys but I definitely see a version where Kylo slowly realizes how he's been brainwashed, paralleling both the Storm Troopers and Darth Vader, the main he idolizes, while Hux leans into the power and control he's gained as a member of the Space Nazis. Not sure how Snoke plays into all of this, he'd probably still be killed off but by Hux this time.
Sorry for the rant, great video, Poe and Finn deserve each other
I kinda disagree with the take that Star Wars character designs are supporting the whole neoclassical notion that beauty=moral goodness. Especially since I remember watching a video about all the different alien designs throughout the series and at one point in the video they go over how the notes in the production of return of the Jedi had Admiral Akbar designed the way he was specifically to undermine that sentiment of inherent beauty=natural goodness and why there’s a lot of aspects to his design that feel distinctly inhuman in a way that if taken out of context could be played as grotesque and horrifying but Star Wars never does that. Hell Chewie is practically a walking bear who’s actively called ugly by Leia, a character who fits typical beauty standards and yet he’s shown as no more heroic than the main crew. Hell in return of Jedi the dude who was the rancor’s master who dies and is not at all fitting into typical beauty standards especially in the 80’s is given time to respect and show his loss when the rancor dies and we’re meant to feel bad for me him even though we know Luke had no other option really. Even in the prequels dexter jexter whose design overplays the whole slovenly bigger dude aesthetic that is usually played as something I like to call, “fat evil,” where the bigger the person is weight wise the worse they are morally. Yet he not only is obi wan’s friend but he’s the reason obi wan knows anything about the clones and is crucial for the plot of the movie he’s in with him having a beneficial effect on one of the protagonists. Granted it’s not really flattering portrayal of heavier set people but it still betrays the neoclassical beauty standards that say goodness relates to beauty and underlies how aliens have always sort of been used in the series to undermine that notion.
if macmillan hadn't put me in the high school textbooks section, kylux fic would be the ones getting published ... unfortunately educating the youth is probably more important
I'm still looking for books that scratch that particular itch. Seems weird that the ship that had been the most popular one at a time never got one of their writers published. :/ But who knows: maybe it's better this way...
@@Naniru87 ever since i've been hired i've wanted to sneak a printed manuscript of Flyboys by Gefionne to the trade publishing floor and just leave it around for someone to find... i'm 100% convinced that fic could be adapted into an original novel SOOOOOO EASILY
I just assumed you were a seasoned RUclips video essayist until you said this was only your second video. Excellently done dude I look forward to more
I am CRUSHED that Black Moon Rising wasn't included in this. Though I guess it wasn't traditionally published afaik.
Black moon rising lives rent free in my mind
Imagine my shock when I saw who wrote booktok’s latest smutty romantasy novel “Quicksilver.” Just look at the cover……..
If you haven’t seen it, Jenny Nicholson does a really great video on that one!
haven't even finished it yet but this is the best youtube content i've ever experienced with my eyeballs and ear holes, thanks Eli
Your eight months of dedication to this is _deeply_ appreciated and I love how insightful your video has been and it's only the second one on your channel!!! Literally praying for your mental health as you're sitting there explaining ABO 😭
i dont really get why its presented like you can only ship either reylo or finnpoe (stormpilot). those ships are not mutually exclusive??
ship wars is the answer you're looking for; people who invest themselves wholly emotionally in a singular ship, and don't just reject but outright attack any ship that operates with one of the participants in *their* ship
I've been waiting for someone to disect the reylo fanfic to published pipeline
Now I must ask: How is Reyfinn
Fandom racism wouldnt let it thrive
this was an absolutely FANTASTIC watch, thank you so much for sharing! I’m shocked this only has 3.7k views, the amount of effort and production value that’s gone into this deserves way more recognition. keep up the good work! very glad this popped up in my recommended!!! :>
As someone who WAS a reylo when the sequels were coming out, I hate all the backlash Finn/John Boyega got. I may not have shipped him with Rey, but I enjoyed his character for the most part (ultimately I think the writers did him dirty and wasted his potential, just as they did with everyone else) and I always thought of him fondly. People who automatically make Finn the Gaston archetype for reylo are stupid. I always used Hux for that role 🤦♀️
nah cause its so annoying that only the bad/weird fics get published there are so so many good writers out there, even very popular within the right fandoms
it’s annoying, but it also makes sense as to why it happens. a lot of the really good fanfictions are often built upon a sense of true love and understanding of the source material, and more often than not, they directly take place within that original source material’s world. it much harder to “file the serial numbers” off of these fanfics, because to do so would be to fundamentally change the entire story into something new.
as someone who was VERY deep in reylo fandom from 2017-2020 this video is amazing and so accurate to the fandom drama and context at the time, you did crazzzzzzy good! ali hazelwood recently just released an audio book “two can play” and it will be getting traditionally published later, but that was originally on ao3 as “gorgeous”, just thought i’d mention in case you wanted to explore this one too!
Not finished yet, but your presentation style and script are so engaging I've been zoned in the whole time!
I've noticed this phenomenon a lot as a fic reader/writer and library worker. Even if it's not a filed-off fic, new romances often have notable "face claim" depictions of the love interests. Back page blurbs reference terms I used to only see in fandom spaces. And the books themselves contain stuff I used to only associate w/ fan-interaction, like playlists and jokey cw lists.
My assumption is that its easy money for publishers since they get a story with a pre-established fanbase, a writer with a portfolio of works they've written with no expectation (originally) for profit, and that hits within a profitable niche.
Bc even if I don't know the fandom a book was from, it can be easy to guess that it's fic: spelling and continuity errors, weird pacing for original fiction, expectations of pre-existing knowledge about characters or the plot that haven't been divulged, lack of physical descriptors.
Basically, stuff that makes sense in an ao3 fanfiction where you have an understanding of characters and tropes, but doesn't translate to original fiction and was never edited for. The publishers do the bare minimum for a book to sell, rather than helping authors flourish, because that isn't their priority. And a lot of fic writers could excel as novelists (ofc many still do) if anyone helped them navigate original fiction, which stretches a different writing muscle from fanfic.
Ah, this became a ramble. I just find it fascinating seeing this pipeline from both ends. Amazing work, you're so fun to listen to!
I had a friend in college who was into writing Reylo stuff and I don’t really Star Wars but they were pretty good fics from like a technical standpoint. She even got messaged by one of those publishing agents on tumblr… but she ended up blocking them because she thought it was a scam. Fast forward a couple of years to when she became the bookstore that she worked at’s designated Booktok curator…
I used to be anti Reylo but then I realized that nowadays they are a pretty insular part of the fandom who mostly just want to be left alone while the alt right anti-woke Fandom Menace continues to grow and I find the ‘facist’ criticisms really funny because guys there is a facism issue in this fandom but it’s not coming from the women who just find Adam Driver attractive
Heh. Fandom Menace
A few weeks ago I had a dream that Rey and Kylo were revealed to be twins, and since it was the second time this had happened, everyone started calling George Lucas "George Incest" He then started a star wars themed podcast about how hard it was for him to be cancelled, and was bullied so hard he never made another movie.
I feel like eli would be SO GOOD at explaining the marauders fandom please please please please please
It's incredibly interesting to me how popular Enjoltaire was because as someone whose life otherwise revolves around Les Mis it passed me by completely
Sometimes youtube recommended gives me a banger. Subscribed so fast
Kylo ren was not supposed to be redeemed. He was supposed to be the reverse vader. starting with doubt and ending fully convinced he did right vs. anakin being convinced he is right and ending with doubt which leads to a change of heart.
I'm also not sure if he can be called conventionally attractive. During my screening of TFA, when he took his helmet off the girl next to me whispered to someone next to her "ok, put the helmet on again D:" and apparently this wasn't something rare to be said. Even in FF he is often called unconventionally attractive bc of his facial features.
Surprisingly, HUX gets that conventionally pretty treatment at least in FF much more often (at least in the kylux ones).
And one little point about the John Boyega hate: he posted a montage of screenshots where Kylo and Rey fought and wrote something like "so romantic" over it or something which got the reylo's attention. This is why they kind of hated him? Still incredibly stupid (I mean - he was poking fun at it nothing more and he's right.).
oh no they hated him before that too, that was just when he poked back (...which got a lot of reylos who weren't involved mad at him for doing so "out of nowhere"). the source is unfortunately trust me bro bc this is just what i remember but boyega got a lot of harrassment from day one
@@byuones why though? bc of his character being a 'threat' to their ship?
@@Naniru87 im honestly not 100% of what their purported motives *were* but that sounds plausible-there were also some people conflating (their racist perceptions of finn's character with boyega too, iirc. the gaston finn thing was a very obvious incident but ultimately indicative of a larger trend at the time
@@Naniru87 the shortest and easiest answer to why was racism. that's p much it.
Love how comprehensive the history portion was! I love learning about fandom behavior and how it ties into something more mainstream like book publishing. Can't wait to see more fandom history videos from you! Subscripted!! ❤️
this is incredible. you put so much work into all of this. the look on your face as you mention kylux took me back to a dark time lmao. looking forward to more vids from you!
thank you for your service brave soldier o7
it always bothered me how reylos treated Finn so I'm glad you mentioned that. I also always found any pairing other than finnpoe so bland LMAO we could've had it all..... they had such a good dynamic and then they were pushed to the background. Finnpoe you will always be famous
Amazing work. Your calm and nonjudgmental presentation style is such a breath of fresh air, *and* you're really funny when you want to be.
As someone who's never seen a full Star Wars movie (and especially not any of the newer ones), but still knows about reylo from various fandom controversies (which is why I was interested in watching the video), I really appreciated the background information.
This video is sooo well made! Thank you for the research and the time consuming effort of reading bad books!!
Also: Your pet peeve about the Hurricane Wars name dropping their war every other chapter is so true lmao
I love this video essay so much! As someone who has never really been into Reylo but loves ships like Draco/Harry and Draco/Hermione (the latter having loads of overlap with Reylo obviously), I have enjoyed some of those traditionally published books a lot! But I never knew the history of reylo or the reylo fic to traditionally published works timeline so this was so informative and fun. Especially as someone who adores fandom history. You obviously put so much work into this and it really shows! This video essay is incredible!
THIS IS YOUR SECOND VIDEO???! looooord i feel like you’ve always been here!! haha can’t wait to see what you put out next!
I was genuinely throwing this video idea around in my head for about a month.
Thank you so much for taking one for the team
“if you ship or explore this fictional character dynamic with harmful/toxic elements, then you’re inherently supportive of those behaviors in real life” is just the new “if you play violent video games, you’re guaranteed to become a serial killer or school shooter in real life”
the algorithm is algorithming a little too hard 😭 i was an og reylo in 2016 and then promptly forgot about them after the last jedi. something about ship actually becoming canon soured my opinion of it
It’s cannon now… but at what cost
No! No! not like this…
No! No! not like this…
I've never seen your stuff before, but I salute your sacrifice. I have never understood why people even liked reylo, like ooh, a fantasy supremacist fascist with incel vibes. And then the racists in the fandom flocking to it meant it was even more offputting. Like, I like villain ships & enemies to lovers, they're usually great fun, but reylo was just so... Bland. And then ending on him being "redeemed" in the most predictable & boring way... Yeah. I don't get the appeal. Also finnpoe rights.
Edit: I might have to read the vampire one, that sounds hysterical
Yes, please do a video about Voltron. It also had a ship between one of protagonists and one of antagonists, but it made a lot of sense (and then they break it).
I happen to know for a fact that Eli has done a Keith cosplay, so this is not at all out of the realm of possibility 👀
I'm in this video....and I like it. Great work. Seriously. The height of this fandom was so intense and fun and weird. Fanfiction unexpectedly changed my life and introduced me to some of my greatest friends. You're right in that fanfic writers generally aren't on panels and at book signings, but the actual act of *writing* fanfic is so much more fun and fulfilling than writing novels. Personally, I absolutely love the serial posting, the comments, the collaborations. I really miss it.
your editing?? your humor??? I am now an EliEvilEye stannie
I know this isn’t really important to the video (which is great btw) but I would argue that Star Wars argues less the evil is ugly and more that it’s corrosive. In the original 3 movies aliens are constantly weird, be it evil slug monsters or bug eyed fish heroes, but when it comes to the dark side we see how it affects them.
The Emperor looks less like someone that unattractive and more like a corpse. This is expanded on in the prequels where we see until he rose to power and let the mask drop he looked exceedingly average.
With Maul he’s much more scary that ugly, and there are plenty of people that would even say he’s hot, but aside from his eyes being yellow his appearance hasn’t changed because he’s evil; he would still have horns and tattoos on his face if he was a good guy which we see with other aliens like him in the series. As for Dooku, he’s played by Christopher Lee who if I look half as good as him when I get that old I’ll be very happy.
Anakin is a good example of this. As a hero he’s a dashing young man, but when he goes evil he gets those yellow eyes which work as a signifier not because it’s unattractive but because it’s unnatural. Him choosing to do evil is corroding away at him, and the fact everyone going full dark side gets yellow eyes drives that unnaturalness in.
When he becomes Vader he’s presented as, well, a cool and powerful warrior in a suit of armour. We’re not shown how this has effected him until he’s dying and it’s all removed and we’re shown his real face. When it’s all removed, the movies not showing us he’s a hideous creature, it’s showing that he’s a crippled old man, and where only shown this side of him once he stops being evil.
The dark side is presented as something cancerous in Lucas’ work, something that harms life around it, eats at everything to sustain itself, and needs to be removed for healing to occur.
None of this is important to the point of your video but I wanted to throw it out there.
i know you also asked how this is only your second video, but holy shit, how is this only your second video?? the quality, the depth, it's all so good! you can already clearly tell the effort and care that goes into these videos, and i can't wait to see more of them :)
I'm gonna read Cowboy Blues and make a serial number-less fanfic about it on AO3 now
the thing about children in romance novels that make you wonder if the author has ever met a child is so true...... but it is a pitfall I have fallen into before and I really can't blame authors for doing it because it is very fun. But it kind of flattens the genre when every single child character is precocious and witty and picks up on everything the MCs are too dense to notice.
truly fantastic work, godspeed on reading all those books. cant wait to see more from you
as someone who lowkey liked the sequel trilogy (& only bc i have fond memories of watching it with my dad who's a big sci fi and movie nerd), i never found reylo all that compelling 🤷♀️. i liked rey A LOT and i thought kylo kinda brought her down and made her kinda boring. i mean i get why people love ships like reylo so i can't really be mad or whatever, but man they were SOO boring. kylo just felt like a whiny baby to me and i didnt really see how he could be sooo devoted to rey based on what these fics or novels are insinuating.
AND ALSO??????? WTF ABOUT FINN BEING GASTON?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!????!?? HELLO????????
HOW COULD THEY DO THAT TO HIM 😭😭😭 I DONT THINK THESE REYLOS EVEN LIKE STAR WARS 😭😭😭
oh well. great video tho!!! thnx for the cc!
the long sigh before and after explaining A/B/O was FELT
"we are gonna rate them on a scale of 5 star destroyers"
me: "heyyyy. that's the thing from the movie"
love your vids, keep kicking ass.
This is genuinely a top tier video essay- great production, interesting and funny the whole way through. I can't wait to force a bunch of people to watch it. Outstanding work.
I wanna express how inspired your video has made me feel and how grateful I am for that. I never expected for a deep dive on Reylo fanfics and books to open up an introspective look into my own connection to fandom, to community - and all the wonderful ways that it has coloured my life. It's also led me to a deeper realisation of the incredible reward you get from giving to others, from truly expressing who you are and letting yourself be seen - which is what you're doing! And it is what I've always yearned to do but not had the courage to yet. This has been such a fun and insightful video, and anyone can tell that you put a lot of work into it. These eight months have not been wasted. I hope your videos go viral, and you deserve all the success!
You have a very pleasant cadence to your voice, I started watching on a whim and finished the whole video in one sitting lmao
Also this is one of the best essays I have seen so far. I was enthralled the whole time and didnt noticed it was almost 2 hours long. Thank you for your work and dedication these past 8 months! May I suggest you do one or the Marauders fandom or the Leakira fandom (the subset fandom of Voltron)
i am super fascinated by the Hurricane Wars. Thea and I used to be friends back when she wrote under a different fandom, Enjolras x Eponine. She was 23 while I was 12 and she was such a kind person, I remember that during a "ship war" someone messaged her saying they wanted to send her anon hate but emotionally couldn't because she was too nice. I can concur with that! I later became an anti (I was 15 in the Voltron fandom, okay) and eventually unfollowed her on Tumblr although I am still in sporadic contact with her.
As a fanfiction author who also writes original works, I have complicated feelings about fanfiction publishing. There was a time in my life where I would have been interested in that but now it feels a little bit cheap, as well as the fact that I am afraid of fanfiction becoming a legal grey zone again. But Thea was actually my main literary influence when I was 13, and affected my writing style on a deep level.
Also, fun fact: The Hurricane Wars was originally the title for another book that she wrote for Nanowrimo- and that book was PHENOMENAL. It was a novel set in a lighthouse in a post-Nuclear Winter Philippines and I remember rereading it many times.
I don't know that I will ever read her book or that I will even like it, but I will always be proud of her. She's a really cool person and she has come really far.
this is the best video on internet fanfiction that surprisingly turned out to be a fanfiction-writers-friend-group that i ever seen and i had so much fun watching it. thank u for your research!
I love your videos!!! This is so good! Thank you for blessing us with this masterpiece. I'm not even a fan of star wars and i ate this up.
I never watched star wars but I remember experiencing the fandom and reylo in real time from the outside on tumblr so this video is still interesting. I like your channel and the videos you've done so far! I look forward to any more you make in the future!
This is the deepest of deep dives and my gosh I appreciate it
I had no idea Gabriel's Inferno was Twilight fanfiction, but when I originally watched Kennie JD's videos on the series, I noticed the parallels and everything makes so much more sense now.
listened to this entire video while simultaneously writing an essay about book bans. 10/10 experience. subscribed. had to refrain from comparing ao3 to actual libraries but with more freedoms
57:17 i did NOT expect to see mirotic by TVXQ! in this video i'm crying
your videos are so good and i appreciate the amount of work you put into them (8 months especially!!)
I was randomly recommended and watched two (or rather, the two) videos you made, which is notable because i don't usually watch recommended videos. I also liked both of these videos, which means I'm subscribing right now.
It's so nice to hear a discussion of the sequel trilogy that isn't somehow centered on the anti-woke backlash to its very existence.
Holy scrap the Hurricane Wars cover is GORGEOUS. The gold, and purple, the illustration, the thypography, holy shit
It's me, but in a different location!
This is such a good video!!! Really well done, thank you for doing the dirty jobs even Mike Rowe wouldn't think of
How dare they touch when Harry met sally! Harry being a short king is integral to the plot and themes
No comment on her character and not saying this to mock her but there is something kind of funny about someone who went by kylotrashforever torpedoing her Kylo fandom presence. The eternal peril of the Forever fandom username.
EDIT- I remember withcindy actually did a video a while back about some author drama that offhandedly mentioned the Reylo pro community connections! I remember a lot of them having shared Discord servers and so on- kinda incredible the way they bring each other up in a very fandom-y way after breaking into the industry because I feel like that was NOT present in the Twilight wave. It's super super representative of contemporary AO3 based fanfiction communities I've been around on Tumblr and Twitter though! You hype up your peers and friends and pull them up with you. Interesting to see where that mentality goes!
IIRC back in the day especially pre 50 Shades filing off the numbers was seen as a bit of a fandom faux pa, like you were selling out
Just wanted to say I have lovveeddd your two videos so far, such fun topics and so engaging im excited to see what else u post!!
And let me add your research knows no bounds Who else is out here exposing the reylo mafia??
Absolutely Banger video. Great analysis of star wars fandom and I feel like I learned a lot on the history (despite mildly being involved back in the day). I think it's incredibly fascinating what Kylo Ren has done to the male romantic lead archetype and the overall rise of enemies to lovers in the current publishing world, even to people who didn't directly base their work off of a Reylo fanfic.
this was a very fun look at a weird niche intersection of fandom and publishing that has honestly always baffled me personally! you also made an interesting point about how contemporary adult romance featuring somewhat ridiculous/contrived plot points, no more or less so than fanfiction, and honestly looking at your rating system for these particular novels you looked at, i find those criteria are really useful for evaluating the relative quality of or just personal thoughts on a lot of romance-focused books (regardless of whether there's a suspicion a given book may be based on a fanfiction lol). also, thank you for one of the most concise yet spot-on overviews of A/B/O i've ever seen in a fandom-focused video.
as someone who's read reylo fics without having seen any starwars source material this was a really interesting video, cause to me the fanfics were essentially already original novels