Latest news with #fanfiction
Gizmodo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Daisy Ridley's Husband Cast in Adaptation of Former Reylo ‘Star Wars' Fan Fiction
The behind-the-scenes story of an upcoming romantic comedy could, on its own, be a pretty fascinating movie. Here's the pitch. A young Star Wars fan writes a piece of Reylo (that's Rey and Kylo Ren for the non-shippers out there) alternative universe fanfiction. The fan is approached about turning the story into a novel, only, it can't be specific to Star Wars anymore. So the names change, but the intention and romance stay the same. That book becomes a smash hit bestseller, Hollywood comes calling, and when the movie version finally comes to fruition, the filmmakers cast the real-life husband of one of the actors who played the character who originally inspired the story. Roll credits. It's a little wild, a little convoluted, but exactly what has happened to author Ali Hazelwood with her debut novel, The Love Hypothesis. The story was originally published online as Head Over Feet, a an alternate universe collage romance between Daisy Ridley's Rey and Adam Driver's Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. Once it got picked up by an actual publisher, though, the romance stayed the same, but everything Star Wars was removed… save for the male lead being named Adam, after Adam Driver. And now, for the movie adaptation, Adam will be played by Tom Bateman, the British actor married to his Murder on the Orient Express co-star, Daisy Ridley. Yes, the same Daisy Ridley who played Rey in Star Wars. The other lead, named Olive, will be played by Lili Reinhart of Riverdale fame. So was the casting intentional? We don't know, but the wonderful harmony of it is impossible to ignore. And, frankly, it's pretty damn delightful too. Sure, most people who read The Love Hypothesis during its 10-month run on the New York Times bestseller list didn't know its Star Wars roots. And people who eventually see the movie, directed by Claire Scanlon and adapted by Sarah Rothschild, will never realize that either. But the people who do can certainly enjoy it on a whole other level. The Love Hypothesis joins a growing list of stories that started as fan fiction and eventually made their way into the book market, and then beyond to the movie and TV adaptation. The most famous is probably Fifty Shades of Grey, which was inspired by Twilight, though Dakota Johnson isn't married to Robert Pattinson in real life. At least not yet. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Geek Girl Authority
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Girl Authority
How to Turn Your Favorite Geeky Obsession Into a Creative Painting Hobby
Obsessing over a book or TV series? Can't stop thinking about your favorite movie? When your home is full of merch, you've exhausted all podcasts and commentary videos, and your motivation to write fanfiction has run out, you might be wondering how you can continue to immerse yourself in your favorite world. One fun, unique option to consider is painting. And no, you don't have to be skilled with a paintbrush in any way for this, all thanks to the invention of diamond painting kits. These make it easy to get creative and produce something worthy of hanging on your wall, regardless of your artistic abilities. What Are Diamond Painting Kits? Diamond painting kits are a form of DIY art that involves carefully sticking hundreds of tiny multi-colored diamonds onto a canvas to create an image. You place the diamonds according to the colors and symbols on the canvas underneath, so there's no guesswork involved—you follow the template to eventually produce a highly detailed image. There are dozens of kits you can choose from online, but some sites also allow you to choose your own custom image to recreate. That means if you have a favorite character or location from your geeky obsession, or maybe even a photo of yourself at a convention or live performance, you can turn it into a diamond painting masterpiece. Why You Should Try Diamond Painting There's a reason why diamond painting is trending right now: it's relaxing and looks really effective, making it possible for anyone, regardless of skill, to create something they're proud of. Diamond painting isn't something you can get done in a couple of hours. Most people spend several weeks or even months completing their painting, which means the value for money is excellent. Plus, you get professional art once you finish, so you're not just paying for hours of enjoyment—you also have artwork that you can hang on your wall. Art, particularly painting, is well known for its depression- and anxiety-alleviating properties , so much so that art therapy is effectively used as a therapeutic treatment for these mental health disorders. It's easy to see why diamond painting is so beneficial to mental health: sitting down with a cup of tea and your favorite podcast or playlist while sticking diamonds, watching your image come to life, is deeply relaxing and satisfying. What to Know When Buying a Diamond Painting Kit When you're buying a diamond painting kit, you'll usually be able to choose from various canvas sizes as well as two types of diamonds (round or square). You'll get to pick any image you like for your painting. Our advice is to go with a colorful image with lots of detail, so you don't end up with a load of browns, whites, or blacks dominating your canvas (unless you don't mind a slightly more boring application process!). Make sure to go with a company that uses superior quality materials, so your image looks as professional as it can be once it's finished. 6 Slice-Of-Life Webtoons That Will Help You Chill RELATED: 5 Tyrants That WEBTOON Made Me Fall in Love With
The Verge
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Even AO3 could not withstand the awesome power of horny.
Posted Jul 8, 2025 at 2:22 PM UTC Even AO3 could not withstand the awesome power of horny. Archive of our Own went down for a few days over the 4th of July weekend, upsetting the holiday fanfiction reading plans of the site's millions of users before service was restored. AO3 goes down occasionally for all sorts of issues, but the reason for this outage was special and hilarious. When Horniness Becomes A Storage Issue [
The Verge
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Fanfiction writers battle AI, one scrape at a time
In the online world of fanfiction writers, who pen stories inspired by their favorite movies, books, and games, and share them for free, there are unspoken codes of conduct. Among the most important: never charge money for your fanfic, and never steal other people's work. It makes sense then that fanfic writers were among the first creators to raise the alarm about their work being fed into learning language models powering generative AI without their knowledge or permission. But their efforts to stop the encroachment of AI into fan spaces is an uphill battle. The latest salvo came in early April, when user nyuuzyou scraped 12.6 million fanfics from the online repository Archive of Our Own (AO3) and uploaded the dataset to Hugging Face, a company that hosts open-source AI models and software. Nyuuzyou's upload was quickly discovered by the Reddit community r/AO3, where hundreds of users posted furious reactions. A Tumblr account, ao3scrapesearch, built a search engine that allowed authors to search their usernames and see if their work had been scraped by Nyuuzyou. 'This is something that takes time and effort and your heart and your soul, and you do this in a community.' Fanfic writers flooded the comment section of the dataset on Hugging Face, getting into arguments with AI defenders. Dckchili defended nyuuzyou's scrape, claiming that it didn't matter because Big Tech crawler bots have already scraped the archive numerous times. RaraeAves argued that 'the creeps' are depending on fanfic writers to not fight back when their labor and creativity are being exploited. When Nikki, a Star Wars fanfic writer who goes by infinitegalaxies online, typed her name in the search engine, she saw that more than 70 of her fics had been scraped. But one jumped out. It was a collective essay she'd co-authored with 11 other writers to raise awareness about the threat of AI to fandom and uploaded to AO3. The irony did not escape her. Nikki mostly writes fanfiction about Reylo, the romantic pairing (or 'ship') of the characters Rey and Kylo Ren from the Star Wars sequel trilogy. The Reylo fandom is close-knit and prolific, with more than 30,000 Reylo stories posted to AO3. About half are set in the canon Star Wars universe of light sabers and space adventures, but the other half take place in alternative universes and explore everything from coffee-shop romances and workplace dramas to medieval knights and fairy kingdoms. One particularly beloved fic in the fandom is set in 1994 and recasts Kylo Ren as Kyril, a mafia boss in newly post-Soviet Russia. The fandom has produced writers like Ali Hazelwood and Thea Guazon, who have made the leap from fanfic to become highly successful, published romance authors. For Nikki, the Reylo fandom offered a new sense of belonging. She found a home in the supportive community of writers and readers and relished the freedom to write whatever she wanted. 'Fandom is largely a gift economy. We're just here to have fun and do things out of the goodness of our heart. And to give things to each other and make work in community,' Nikki says. This sentiment is echoed by many others in the Reylo community, including Em, who writes under the pen name okapijones. Em fell in love with the characters of Rey and Kylo Ren because they represented the enemies-to-lovers light / dark archetypes that reminded her of Beauty and the Beast and Pride and Prejudice. But she hated the way their story ended in the Star Wars sequel trilogy and went looking for other fans who wanted a different ending. 'Fic changed my life. I have met some of the best friends that I have ever had through fic and through the fanfiction community,' Em says. 'There's no rules, there's no editors. It's a pure creative playground, and that is going to breed innovation. Some of the most creative stories I've ever read, some of the wildest storytelling, is fanfic. And that excites me as a creator, because you can just do whatever you want.' 'This is something that takes time and effort and your heart and your soul, and you do this in a community,' Nikki says. 'And then you're telling me you're just going to poop it out two seconds on a screen. And I was just like, who asked for this? This is gross.' In 2023 came Sudowrite's Story Engine, powered in part by OpenAI's ChatGPT. Nikki remembers watching a video about the new 'writing assistant' AI software that allows users to enter details about characters and plot points and generate an entire novel. She was so appalled that it made her cry. Nikki, who works for a software company, had already seen her workplace shift toward integrating AI. But she hadn't imagined her hobby would be impacted by it too. 'Trying to knock this stuff down, that's probably the best thing that one can be doing now.' Later that year, the prevalence of highly specific sexual terms related to the wolf-biology fanfiction trope of Omegaverse appeared in Sudowrite, revealing that ChatGPT had likely been trained on fanfic without the authors' knowledge. Since then, Nikki and many others have been advocating against AI in all its forms in fandom, including using AI to generate fanfic or fanart. 'It's theft at its core. There's no ethical use of something that's built on stolen labor,' Nikki says. Although she's against genAI in principle because of its reliance on data taken without consent, she also says it breaks with fandom norms of free exchange. 'I did it because I love those characters, because I wanted to play in that sandbox, because I wanted people who also love them to read it. It is a gift.' Em says. 'They stole it without my permission.' But over the last few years, fanfic writers say there have been numerous examples of genAI entrepreneurs trying to cash in on their work — such as people like Cliff Weitzman, the CEO of text-to-voice app Speechify, who was found to have scraped thousands of fics from AO3 and uploaded them to WordStream, a website linked to his app, without the authors' permission. (He swiftly removed that after fans pushed back on social media.) Then there was a text-to-speech app from Wishroll Inc, which marketed itself on TikTok as 'Audible for AO3.' The app was announced in May 2024 but was withdrawn later that month after fan pushback. 'It's like a whack-a-mole thing. Every time you turn around, there's, like, another grifter trying to steal your shit,' Nikki says. It may seem odd to hear such a strong sentiment from a writer who, like most fanfic creators, uses copyrighted intellectual property as a 'sandbox' to make up their own stories. But advocates for fanworks say they are 'transformative,' meaning a 'fanwork creator holds the rights to their own content, just the same as any professional author, artist, or other creator,' according to AO3. This is very different from what a LLM does when, for example, it generates a novel based on prompts. AI can't replicate the creative human process of 'transformation,' which involves inventing and integrating new ideas. LLMs can only reshuffle and regurgitate content that already exists. And, unlike the AI-generated books flooding Amazon, one of the principles of fanfiction is that writers do not make any profit from their work. That hasn't stopped AI infiltrating fandom in other controversial ways. Some readers, eager to get new updates of their favorite fics, have taken to uploading them into ChatGPT to generate new chapters, much to the consternation of some authors. Some have taken to locking their stories, requiring readers to have an AO3 account to access them or deleting them from the internet altogether. In the case of nyuuzou's scrape, fans coordinated online to file take-down notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that administers AO3, also filed a takedown. On April 9, Hugging Face disabled the dataset. OTW responded to user concerns about fanfics being scraped in a board meeting on April 26, saying, 'We have added a CloudFlare tool to prevent AI scraping and other bots. This helps a lot but is not perfect. However, more robust solutions would have a significant negative impact on some of our users, especially those using older devices.' Nyuuzou remained unrepentant, filing a counternotice and reuploading the dataset to sites hosted in Russia and China, which are far less responsive to DMCA complaints. Contacted by The Verge via a Telegram account linked on his Hugging Face profile, nyuuzou said he was an 18-year-old student and IT worker in Russia who is 'not interested in fanfiction' and uploaded the dataset for 'legitimate research purposes.' 'My goal was to support community research in areas like content moderation, anti-plagiarism tools, recommendation systems, and archival preservation,' nyuuzou wrote via Telegram. 'I think a lot of the disagreement comes from misunderstandings about why these datasets exist. This was never about creating chatbots or large language models for commercial use.' Founded in 2016 by French entrepreneurs, Hugging Face started out building chatbots for teenagers. Since then, the company has expanded to hosting open-source models with the stated aim of 'democratizing AI' by making machine-learning development accessible to the public. 'Our goal is to enable every company in the world to build their own AI,' Jeff Boudier, Hugging Face's head of product, told Amazon Web Services (AWS) in February. But Hugging Face is deeply connected to large companies. In addition to its ongoing collaboration with AWS, IBM invested $235 million in Hugging Face in 2023 and announced it was collaborating with the company on watsonx, IBM's generative AI platform. Nyuuzou said he was surprised by OTW's aggressive reaction to the dataset, writing, 'I had hoped for dialogue about how research datasets might align with preservation goals.' 'That's really disingenuous,' says Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and author of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want. She's skeptical of the idea that any dataset uploaded to Hugging Face wouldn't ultimately be used to train LLMs. 'Why would you have a large tranche of unstructured data available on the web if not to train a language model?' Although individual scrapers like nyuuzou are small fry in the wider economy of genAI, which is dominated by billion-dollar companies like OpenAI, Hanna says it's still up to sites like AO3 to aggressively protect their users' work. As for fanfic writers themselves, she thinks Nikki's strategy of whack-a-mole is the way to go. 'Trying to knock this stuff down, that's probably the best thing that one can be doing now,' Hanna says. Nikki and Em, the fanfic writers, had a more heated response to nyuuzou's explanation for the scrape. 'Fuck you, dude,' Em says. 'We do free labor for the love of the game and are not profiting off of it — other than creating a community, gaining practice for our craft and creating content for characters and stories that we love. And that is being stolen to fuel things that have such larger implications.' Nikki says she's determined to keep pushing back against AI's encroachment into fandom spaces. 'I don't go looking for a fight,' she says. 'But when people come to us with a fight, I will fight.'
Geek Girl Authority
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Girl Authority
The Premise and How STAR TREK Fans Created Fanfic as We Know It
Happy Pride Month! In the world of Star Trek, everyone is accepted for who they are. This is true whether they are gay or straight, trans or cis. But here in 2025, we've still got a long road getting from here to there. However, one way many Trekkies envision the world of tomorrow is through fan fiction. For this week's Trek Tuesday , we're exploring how Franchise fanfic (including queer fanfic) paved the way for all of the fanfic we enjoy today. Cover art: by Margaret Domenick for Spockanalia. Fan Fiction Today, fan fiction, or 'fanfic,' is a popular way for fans to express their affection for their favorite works of published and onscreen fiction. Thanks to the internet, fanfic writers have been able to widely share their stories with other fans hungry for the same content. Releasing a professional movie, show or prose story requires the approval of many individuals and organizations. This can result in the avoidance of certain topics that might be considered 'taboo' or 'controversial' by some (often very outspoken) individuals. Unfortunately, this means that LGBTQ+ representation is often left out of commercially released stories. However, one of the benefits of fanfic is that anyone with internet access can modify their favorite commercially released stories to include queer rep. RELATED: Star Trek : Tracing the Holodeck's History Fanfic can mix together characters from different properties, rewrite continuity to better suit the individual creating the story and lead to innovative storytelling that feels different from any story that is commercially released. This can include veering into full-on 'adult content' territory. But fanfic doesn't have to be 'adult' in nature. For one example, fanfic can offer stories where beloved characters never died earlier in the series. And in some cases, fanfic simply offers additional stories that fit the tone and continuity of the commercially released stories on which it is based. The prehistory of fanfic traces its origins back to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. However, modern fanfic cites its foundations in the fandom we all know and love: Star Trek. Spockanalia The origins of Star Trek fanfiction, and thus modern fanfiction as we know it, came from the pages of Spockanalia. This Franchise fanzine was first published in September 1967. It was edited by Devra Langsam and Sherna Comerford. Over the course of three years, five issues of Spockanalia were published. It included fanfic stories, poetry, fanart and commentary. Because of this last inclusion, this very column is a descendant of Spockanalia as well. RELATED: Star Trek Episode Trilogy: Revisiting 'Unification' Furthermore, the Vulcan term 'Ni Var' originated in a story included in the first issue of Spockanalia. This was the lyrics for 'The Territory of Rigel' by Dorothy Jones Heydt, which was meant to be a song written by Spock. Decades later, Ni'Var became Star Trek canon in the Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 episode 'Unification III.' Spockanalia had a significant effect on the Franchise. Many of those behind the scenes of Star Trek: The Original Series were aware of the fanzine. In fact, the likes of Great Bird of the Galaxy Gene Roddenberry and writer and script coordinator Dorothy Catherine 'D.C.' Fontana were among those who acknowledged the existence of Spockanalia. And according to many scholars, the fanfic that appeared in Spockanalia is the forerunner for all of the fanfic that populates the internet today. The Premise While Spockanalia included some Star Trek fanfic, it did not include any stories that depicted Spock and Kirk in a romantic relationship. However, this subset of Franchise fanfic stories soon became one of the most popular types available. This type of fanfic is known by many names. These include 'Spirk,' a portmanteau of the two characters' names. Another is 'K/S,' which has led to the term 'slash fiction,' which now describes any fanfic that pairs two characters romantically. And one of the oldest terms for Kirk and Spock fanfic is 'the premise.' RELATED: The Origin of Tropes: We're Not Gay, We Just Like Each Other Although Sprik has been heavily discussed for almost as long as Star Trek has existed, interest in the topic remains high. Surveying any online Star Trek space, you can easily locate Trekkies discussing the topic today. True, a romantic relationship with Spock and Kirk may not be canon. At least not yet — you've got a chance here, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. However, the premise lives on through a plethora of fanfic and discussion among Trekkies. STAR TREK: 5 Alternate Lives Avery Kaplan is the author of several books and the Features Editor at Comics Beat. She was honored to serve as a judge for the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize Award and the 2021 Prism Awards. She lives in the mountains of Southern California with her partner and a pile of cats, and her favorite place to visit is the cemetery. You can also find her writing on Comics Bookcase, NeoText, Shelfdust, the Mary Sue, in many issues of PanelxPanel, and in the margins of the books in her personal library.
