Warning: This post contains spoilers about several Star Wars properties, including The Force Awakens and The Acolyte.
How do you write a love story? For some authors online, it’s as easy as turning their wildly popular fan-fiction into a version that keeps all of its heart — and uses none of the copyrighted intellectual property that would get them sued. It’s called “filing off the serial numbers,” and the process has transformed from a surprising way for internet-first authors to be published, to a veritable pipeline that turns fics into mainstream romances.
Because fics-turned-books often “file off” recognizable copyright material, the end results often bear only small resemblances to the storylines they’re based on, but double down on the characters’ most recognizable traits and characteristics. You remove the names, the settings, the storylines, and you’re left with the bare-bones descriptions of two characters who have to end up together by the end of the book. Successes like E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, or Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones came from Twilight and Harry Potter fan fiction, respectively. And in 2024, popular fic author SenLinYu announced that her famed Harry Potter story “Manacled,” set in an alternate universe and focused on Draco and Hermione, would be traditionally published under a new name and premise.
But the most notable ship turned publishing darling is “Reylo,” a nickname for the romantic relationship between Star Wars characters Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey Skywalker (Daisy Ridley). If fan fic-based books started taking over shelves, Reylo fics practically carved out their own subgenre. Beginning with the release of The Force Awakens in 2015, Reylo fics explore the relationship between Sith Lord Kylo Ren and the orphan-turned Jedi Rey, focusing on Kylo’s brusque demeanor, dark responsibilities, and how it interacts with his feelings for the light-sided Rey. Ali Hazlewood’s novel The Love Hypothesis, which started as Reylo fan fic, is a New York Times bestseller and has sold 750,000 copies worldwide.
Following it were dozens of other Reylo tales, including We’d Know by Then by Kirsten Bohling, The Fake Mate by Lana Ferguson, For Love and Bylines by Merrin Taylor, and Forget Me Not by Julie Soto. Now, the newest Star Wars offerings are based on The Acolyte, a streaming series following Mae and Osha Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg), a pair of mysterious twins who baffle a group of Jedi. When Mae fails to follow through on her education with Sith master Qimir (Manny Jacinto), Osha takes her place, quickly revealing that she and Qimir’s relationship might be romantic. He’s a Sith. She’s a former Jedi with untapped power. So with the debut of a new, hotter Star Wars couple, both played by people of color, could The Acolyte be laying the groundwork for another space-based romance to take over shelves?
Jenna Levine, author of romance novel My Roommate Is a Vampire, has written Reylo fics for years but got the idea for her debut novel from a Reylo joke thread on X (formerly Twitter). She notes that much of the appeal for Reylo-based romances comes from the power dynamic between the couple which can easily translate into a modern setting. “It’s kind of the ultimate power fantasy, this all-powerful, evil person will burn it all down for the person that they love, or they are brought back to the light,” she says. “If you take out The Force and the spaceships, you’re left with some character traits and romance tropes that you see in a lot of other romance novels.” Levine says this could easily explain the interest fans have in watching Osha and Qimir interact (or Oshamir as they’re known online.) As of Wednesday, when The Acolyte season finale premiered, there were 165 works on the fan-fiction site Archive of Our Own — all of which had been written and published in the past 21 days. “Manny Jacinto is really hot and looks great without a shirt,” she adds. “ I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring that up as well.”
No one is taking the phrase “seduced by the dark side” more seriously than Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland. When she spoke to Inverse about the series, she said the quote from Obi-Wan brought inspiration to The Acolyte— eventually leading her to show a literal seduction. In fact, a friend sent her a fanfiction less than 24 hours after the show had premiered. “Listen, I’m not hugely in that world, but I do think that when people get into their own imaginations — whether they’re playing Elden Ring or they’re writing fanfic — they can come up with a lot of really, really fun stuff,” she said. “People who love Star Wars really love worlds. They love living in it, they love taking their time watching it and looking at every little detail, and then dreaming about it and imagining it, and sometimes that comes out as people writing fan fiction, and sometimes it’s very smart fanfiction.”
A large draw for Star Wars fanfiction also comes from how romance has been introduced only to be sidelined or ended largely tragic in the films and later shows. In the original George Lucas movies, there’s a love triangle between naive Luke, fierce Princess Leia, and cocky Han Solo which rightfully fizzles when Luke and Leia discover they’re twins. The prequel films show Padawan Anakin Skywalker fall for the Naboo Senator Padme Amidala, only to turn Sith, attacking Padme, breaking her heart, and killing her in the process. And in the newest films, even when filmmakers finally confirm a possible romantic relationship between Kylo and Rey, the two share literally a single kiss before Kylo dies in her arms.
“There’s always been this quality to Star Wars, this sort of potential undercurrent of sexiness or hornyness,” says Kate Goldbeck. Her debut novel You, Again, was originally published on A03 as a Reylo fic before she transformed it into a modern gender-swapped version of When Harry Met Sally. “This is the same fandom that was so into Leia’s metal bikini. Reylo was the perfect storm where the way it was portrayed in the movie gave us just enough to go off of but not quite enough that the story was written. There’s something similar happening with The Acolyte. It’s impossible to say how many fics will be written and how many books will be quietly inspired by it. But what’s there so far has really attracted a lot of the same people who are into Reylo and into a lot of those enemies to lovers [plotlines]. It’s generating its own conversation and its own content, which is really cool.”
There’s no guarantee that the final episode of The Acolyte, or the unknown possibility of a Season Two will give Oshamir the lift it needs to achieve Reylo status online. But the authors who spoke to Rolling Stone note that they’re hopeful that as fan fiction becomes a more popular way to enter publishing, the success of new works can help change harmful misconceptions about the art form.
“To change fics into an original work at all takes a lot of work,” Goldbeck says. “In some ways, I’ve almost found it harder than writing original novels. There’s a lot more to the story than just changing the names, no matter what your fics look like. It’s definitely an interesting way to enter publishing, but it’s not easy or simple.”
“[Fanfiction writers] are doing it because they love it, like they’re passionate about it,” Levine adds. “Fics, like stories on Archive of Our Own, push the envelope in every single possible, imaginable way, because there’s no guardrails. And I think the idea that this is being rewarded by publishing is just amazing.”
