If you had told me in 2019 that Reylo fanfiction would keep me sane during a global pandemic, I would have had several questions. The first hundred or so would have been about the pandemic of it all, but at some point I would have added, “Wait, I read Reylo fanfiction?”
“Reylo” is the romantic pairing (or ship) between Star Wars characters Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), aka Ben Solo. I’d casually shipped the pair since The Force Awakens but had never taken the plunge into fanfiction — partly because of embarrassment over the whole “Is Kylo Ren hot?” thing, partly because I was wary of the legitimacy of fanfiction altogether.
I began to reconsider these senses of embarrassment in March of 2020, when a good friend of mine (and fellow Reylo enjoyer) sent me a link to a Reylo fanfic that was currently in progress. This was just days before the U.S. declared a state of emergency over COVID-19. During the period of isolation that followed, that fic helped the two of us stay connected. We counted down to each update and texted each other our wildest fan theories. She curated a list of other fics she thought I might like, and I edited some of her own fics, cheering every time she received a gushing comment or Kudos on AO3. It was a form of escape, for sure, but it was also a way of connecting with someone I cared about. And through it all, I gained a new appreciation for fanfiction as an art form, growing to love certain writers’ work and the ways in which they transpose canon elements into their own narratives.
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But Reylo fanfiction is no longer something you can just find on sites like AO3. In fact, several Reylo authors have made the jump from fanfiction to traditional publishing in recent years, transforming their fics into original works you can find at your local bookstore. That includes Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, a STEM-focused romance with a fake-dating twist, and Thea Guanzon’s The Hurricane Wars, a “romantasy” set in a Southeast Asia-inspired world. Both hit the New York Times Best Seller list.
Fanfiction becoming traditionally published novels is not a new phenomenon. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James started out as Twilight fanfiction, and elements of City of Bones by Cassandra Clare were drawn from her Harry Potter fics. But why are we seeing so many reworked Reylo fanfics hitting the shelves now? And what does it take to bring such an online art form to a larger audience?
The appeal of Reylo and the enemies-to-lovers trope
Credit: Lucasfilm/Disney/Kobal/Shutterstock
What we’ve got with Reylo is a pretty classic example of the enemies-to-lovers trope, where two characters who start out from a place of hate inevitably end up falling for each other. Online spaces like AO3 and especially BookTok have helped further popularize the trope. The “enemies to lovers” tag on TikTok has 10 billion views, while the more specific “enemies to lovers books” tag has 392 million views.
Despite its popularity, the contentious nature of the trope can be pretty polarizing. Some members of fandoms love an enemies-to-lovers storyline, while others label it as toxic or abusive. And I get it: There are ships and tropes that simply aren’t for me, and I even have my own fair share of criticism towards ships I enjoy, including Reylo. However, there are times when fandom in-fighting over a ship can get personal, with detractors believing that enjoying a villainous character or an enemies-to-lovers ship means endorsing their characteristics in real life. But does finding Rey and Kylo Ren’s dynamic compelling mean you support real-world fascism?
“I think it’s kind of patronizing,” Francesca Coppa told Mahable in a video interview. Coppa is a professor of English and Film Studies at Muhlenberg College, as well as one of the founders of AO3. “There’s a way in which women are not given credit for understanding the difference between reality and fiction. Nobody’s confused about this: We know not to marry Loki of Asgard, we know not to marry the sparkly vampire who plays baseball.”
Reylo is a ship that is built on a lot of traditional narrative conventions for romance.
Instead, Coppa sees Reylo shippers as picking up on textual signs about the relationship between Rey and Ben, signs that are rooted in decades worth of other media. “Reylo is a ship that is built on a lot of traditional narrative conventions for romance,” she explained. “And in fact, these narrative tropes were created by women.”
Coppa cited Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, Catherine and Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and even Buffy and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as examples of analogous pairings to Reylo in other media.
“These are not nice men in the objective sense. If your sister is dating Rhett Butler, if your sister is dating Spike, you have a conversation with her,” she said. “But they’re fantasy figures, and they follow the type of a bad guy that the good woman brings back to himself.”
She continued: “With Reylo, I really feel like there was a way in which the films were playing into this ship of redemption, especially the way in which they were set up to mirror Luke and his father. I’m not claiming that there’s a right read, but I am claiming that people who had the reading of a ship like Buffy and Spike or a ship like Reylo are not crazy. They’re following a series of trends that make that ship very plausible in the history of romance literature, and literature generally.”
On top of the frequently linked tropes of enemies-to-lovers and redemption, Reylo benefits from the interplay between light and darkness — something visualized perfectly in Star Wars by the light and dark sides of the Force. It’s an aesthetic The Hurricane Wars author Thea Guanzon concisely described as “chef’s kiss.” (I concur!)
“There’s a very Death and the Maiden image to [Reylo],” Guanzon told Mashable in a video interview. “One character represents a brokenness, winter, something scarred, and then another represents light, rebirth, springtime. The really compelling thing about that is watching how these two opposites play off each other and how they connect — I feel like that really speaks to a primal part of ourselves.”
The really compelling thing about that is watching how these two opposites play off each other and how they connect — I feel like that really speaks to a primal part of ourselves.
Guanzon has written Reylo fanfic for years, including several novel-length stories that have amassed millions of hits on AO3 altogether. Her work spans everything from Alternate Universes (AUs) to Canonverse fics. At this point, she’s an expert in all things Reylo, or, as she affectionately describes the pairing: “a moody emo space prince and a feral sand goblin who gives as good as she gets.”
One of these fics became the basis for The Hurricane Wars, her debut novel which came out in Oct. of 2023. This makes her the latest in a line of Reylo authors whose fanfiction has been rewritten and traditionally published. Others include Ali Hazelwood of The Love Hypothesis, Kirsten Bohling of We’d Know By Then, and Jenna Levine of My Roommate Is a Vampire.
The Reylo fanfiction-to-traditional publishing pipeline
Credit: Lucasfilm/Disney/Kobal/Shutterstock
Guanzon’s journey to publishing The Hurricane Wars began during the Philippines’ COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. An editor who had read her fanfiction reached out about her potentially writing an original novel. “I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s give it a shot! There’s no better time to do that than now,'” Guanzon said. Later, an agent who was also a fan of her fics DMed her to offer representation. (During this very time period, my friend and I were busy devouring Guanzon’s work on AO3, which features intricate world-building and juicy, slow-burn romances.)
In addition to (and thanks to) the caliber of her fics, Guanzon amassed a considerable following online. That following is key to the decision to bring fic writers into traditional publishing, Coppa says.
“There’s certainly fanfiction that is high quality enough and well-written enough that large numbers of people will read it, which is why that kind of stuff is moving into the publishing market,” Coppa explained. “Everybody’s looking for a safe bet, so when you read a really popular Reylo writer who’s already got a pretty big audience, [publishers] are using that as a metric to say, ‘This story is so popular in its community, it’s probably going to sell well.'” She also noted that fanfiction of straight ships has historically benefited the most from the fanfic-to-traditional publishing pipeline.
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Of course, given that copyright laws exist, fic writers have to change large amounts of their work in order to create something fully original. (Fans call this “filing off the serial numbers.”) Guanzon estimates that only about five to 10 percent of her original Reylo fanfic made it into The Hurricane Wars, describing the two works more as “cousins.”
The novel shifts away from the sci-fi of the Star Wars canon and into a high fantasy continent at war with itself. Here, rebellious Talasyn crosses paths with Prince Alaric, with their respective Lightweaver and Shadowforged powers making for a solid twist on the Force. Sparks aren’t the only things flying here: Massive storm-powered battleships and rare dragons are just some of the new lore Guanzon crafted for her story.
“There’s also a lot of Southeast Asian references in The Hurricane Wars,” Guanzon added. “Everything in that world is basically Southeast Asian, particularly Filipino. So that alone has made it really different from the fic, because the story and the themes are informed by my own cultural heritage.”
Another major difference between fanfiction and traditional publishing that Guanzon encountered while writing The Hurricane Wars was the shift in pacing between the two. The middle section of her original fic is far more loosely plotted, as she was able to play with as many tropes or interactions as she wanted in her weekly updates. “With traditionally published work, you have an editor making sure that the story flows well, and that the plot is tightened up,” she explained. “I feel that the love story in The Hurricane Wars really benefited from the traditional publishing angle, because there’s more of an organic progression.”
The legitimacy — or perceived lack thereof — of published fanfiction
Credit: Lucasfilm/Disney/Kobal/Shutterstock
There are plenty of valid criticisms of fanfiction-turned-published novels, including questions of ethics around real person romances. However, the one criticism I absolutely cannot stand is the dismissal of all fanfiction as poor writing.
“People try to delegitimize or shame fanfiction by saying, ‘Well, it isn’t very good.’ And that’s just not true,” Coppa said. “The difference between fanfiction and the published novel is you don’t read all the novels that were ever written — you read three that were curated for you by agents and publishers.”
Finding and reading fanfiction you enjoy requires a similar curatorial experience, which is why filtering mechanisms on sites like AO3 are particularly helpful. These filters and tags — the same kind of tags we now see highlighted in BookTok recommendations — help you discover stories to your taste, much like browsing a preferred section of a bookstore or library. They also help publishers find the kinds of work larger audiences gravitate towards, like the romances of Reylo fanfictions.
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“I do think that Reylo is constructed in a certain way based on classic women-authored romance tropes, so I’m not surprised that Reylo shippers can move very easily from writing that dynamic in Reylo to writing it for money,” Coppa said. However, she is also admittedly wary of the intersection of fandom and money, including what it might mean for fanfiction as a hobby.
“I think that part of the shame around [writing fanfiction] is that women are expected to be productive all the time,” Coppa said. “Anything that women do for fun that doesn’t earn money is already seen like a problem.”
So, while it is exciting that fanfiction has given writers a path into traditional publishing, there should be no sense of pressure within a fandom that that should be the norm. “There’s no shame in not becoming a published writer, and there’s no shame in just enjoying yourself as a reader or as a writer,” Coppa said. In her book The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age, she writes: “Fanfiction is made for free, but not ‘for nothing.'” Like other hobbies, it’s a source of fun, creative and intellectual stimulation, and community.
For Guanzon, a key aspect of the conversation surrounding fanfiction is the opportunities it affords writers from all over the world, especially fic writers for whom the arts weren’t necessarily a viable career option.
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“Speaking about it from the point of view of someone who lives in the Global South, we don’t have a lot of support or infrastructure for the arts here. We don’t have literary agencies, and I don’t think any of the big publishers have much of a foothold here in the Philippines,” Guanzon said. “Given the type of career paths here, it’s just not a very conducive environment for someone to pursue their passion and writing. So, given this kind of background, I would venture to say that fanfiction opened doors for me that I would never have had access to otherwise.”
Fanfiction opened doors for me that I would never have had access to otherwise.
Guanzon also acknowledged how her fanfiction following is a definite plus when it come to marketing her new world to potential readers. “This is a romantasy that’s set in a world inspired by Southeast Asian culture, so no one in this story is white. I feel like this would have been a harder sell if not for my fanfic background, if not for how publishers knew that I already had a bit of an audience,” she said.
With The Hurricane Wars now out in the universe, Guanzon has been relishing in hearing from Filipino readers about their love of her world-building. “Filipino readers from all over the world have been messaging me as well, saying that my book made them miss home and made them feel seen because of all the cultural touches that they recognize,” Guanzon said. “That’s why I will always defend fanfiction to traditional publishing as valid, because all of this probably would have been harder for me to achieve, if not entirely impossible altogether, without it.”
