#the love hypothesis is basically reylo fanfic

[adelfie]

hello you wrote a fanfic where Tims teacher was failing him on purpose to send him into a spiral of self doubt where in a moment of 'i can fix this' (This being his grade) he followed his teacher into his car and nearly got killed, and I find myself LOVING the mystery behind the teacher and like how he almost sucseeded and stuff and I think it would be interesting if I could read a full 50 chapter book of that so I was wondering if I could borrow the idea of a fanfic of my own?

Hello anon! So glad you enjoyed OCLAL! :) Fun fact, the idea of a murder mystery with a teacher going after students was totally inspired by the anime Erased (sorry for spoilers! still a fantastic watch tho imo). Super sweet of you to ask for permission on this idea, even if that element of it is not from my noggin originally but STILL! I'm a big believer in, as a writer, being inspired by other works in order to craft a story of your own that you personally find fun (so long as it's not direct stealing, of course), especially in fanfiction where there's not any money involved. If you do write something, feel free to share it with me bc, obviously, I love the idea too! Have fun!

TL;DR: thank you and yeah, go for it! happy writing!

[theweeklydiscourse]

I’m generally wary of any YouTube videos that discuss published reylo fanfiction (and the ship in general) because of how often people use mockery of it to get clicks and attention on any platform. Deriding the reylo shipping base is a pretty straightforward way to get clicks, which makes it very pleasant to see videos that thoughtfully engage with the fandom and don’t reach for low hanging fruit.

However, it’s always double edged sword because even if the creator is respectful and willing to engage, you can be assured that the commenters will do the opposite of that. They’ll use the typical talking points from 2016, misremember what happened in the films, spread misinformation etc. But I can at least be satisfied that there are some YouTubers out there who can examine the fandom without defaulting to cheap jokes.

[alligatorjesie]

Hey OP are you blamings reylos for the reason Ben Solo didn't get a good redemption in EP9?

Something we had no control over? Do you think we run Disney?

I fuckin' wish.

God fucking knows if a reylo did do EP9 it would have been Good.

I would give away every egg left in my body to have EP9 retold by a goddamn reylo if it meant Ben Solo got a better redemption and since I actually read reylo fanfictions I know we can pull it off.

Because we have.

Hurricane Wars is a fucking reylo novel.

The first line in the book is quite literally 'I did this for the rats'

You know, that loving nickname you feckless antis gave to reylos.

I’m pretty fucking sure there is not a goddamn interview Anywhere of Thea mentioning how this is a reskinned reylo story exploring the deep inner workings of internalized racism because that's never what it fucking was.

Did OP... watch interviews of Thea talking about her experiences with racism and now they've mashing the concept of this story together with that interview because I can’t for the fucking love of god remember an instance where Thea rolled up to an interview and said This Story:

is anything but a modified reylo fanfiction. She mentioned how she added some Southeast Asian influences into the book that were not in the original fic but the original was based in the world of Star Wars so that makes since.

I remember that interview.

Editing a fanfic to be publish friendly takes A Lot of effort and isn't as simple as using the 'find and replace' feature in Microsoft Word like I think OP is assuming it is. There's plenty of opportunity to put in whatever new worldbuilding makes since for the story.

I’ve been following this publishing since I read Landscapes With a Blur of Conquerors, back when she was actively still writing it as reylo fanfiction.

Small segway in somewhat related conversation:

The Sword of the Jedi series is still my favorite fucking Star Wars fanfic by her I can't recommend this one enough.

a story still available on AO3 for free if anyone would like to check it out.

If you liked Hurricane Wars and love Star Wars you'll love this one.

It's a really fun 'What If' on the sequel trilogy where the change is 'What if Luke and young Ben found Rey as a child on Jakku and she got to grow up at Luke's Jedi academy?'

A far better storytelling of those characters than we got out of the actual media. I fuckin' blew through it in a week the first time I read it.

Go read it if you get the chance.

Anyways, returning to @shallanspren being a prick who talks out their ass and don't know diddly fuck about this fandom.

Who has just been posting hate to this fandom's tag since 2020.

They’re not a reylo.

In fact they sound so disgusted to read reylo fics that they made this shitass post but they’re going to sit there and tell me and everyone else here straight to our faces that they sat through reading the original fics, the entire books, along with reading/watching full interviews with the authors?

OP is full of shit.

They’re lying and they’re so full of fucking shit I can smell them from here.

They’ve never read the fanfics and they’ll never read these books so how the fuck would they know what the fuck is even in it? How would they know how they differ?

Now, I HAVE read both and I can tell everyone right now from simply having read the original fic; it’s very 'Alternate Universe/AU'. I mean, yeah, it uses some of the basic concepts of the ‘Star Wars universe’ but mostly it’s just new story using well established characters and themes.

So right from the start this fic was kinda it's own thing in it's own world with it's own rules and that's when it WAS directly a reylo fanfic.

Love Hypothesis/Head Over Feet was So Fucking AU besides borrowing the characters' basic personalities and names it was a whole ass original story.

There was nothing Star Wars Universe in that one At All.

Full Stop.

Adapting these fics into books makes both of them very original works because the source material was already very Alternate Universe as we like to say in the fanfic world. Ali never admitted on record she didn’t craft her own stories and I know she never fucking has because I've read So Many of her fics on AO3 back during that blissful period between The Last Jedi and EP9 that she could publish 30 more reskinned reylo fics and still have more to go. She was And Still Is a Very Proficient Writer and a Goddamn Treat of a smut writer.

They're fucking Great!

Way fucking better than regular porn. I can only watch a unempathetic guy rail a uninterested chick moaning the most fake 'Oh! God! Yes!' for the entire length of the video before that shit gets old.

With Ali's fics you can feel the horny but most importantly, The Love, and as a furry smut artist I'm Here For That Shit.

This woman is a Goddamned blessing to this fandom and now to published books too. She writes Such Good Smut she could make a sailor blush. I hope her many more years of happy writing with hundreds more publishing deals. I hope she becomes the next harlequin romance writer so she can continue to pay reylo artists to draw covers for her books God Bless they all fuckin' deserves it after the 8 years of constant bombardment with harassment and death threats from stupid fucks like @shallenspren have thrown at us over the years.

Telling a POC her experiences of racism ain't valid just because just so happens to be a reylo and had the audacity to talk about racism during an interview once and now OP has somehow conflated those two very un related things is kinda shit.

That's a shit thing to say. It's a shit opinion to have.

@shallanspren hates reylo and they'll say any fucked up shit to make these artists look bad because they’re mad and jealous about fanfiction writers making money off their Hard Earned Skills and that's kinda fucked up of them.

What @shallanspren said are lies.

They just made up lies because they're mad someone from the fandom they've been shitting on since 2020 told them the shit opinion they posted into the main fandom's tag is wrong and if they don't like the ship they're welcome to fucking leave that fandom's space.

They got so fucking butthurt about me telling them to fix their tags and leave this fandom alone they

Made Up Two Lies About People They Don't Even Fucking Know

OP ain't got a quarter of the skill to create loved things like either of these artists have because OP has spent too fucking long being bitter and hateful to a group of people for just being super passionate about something.

Too fuckin' blinded by hate to see why these stories are flying off the shelves. Reylos got fucking shafted by Star Wars because stupid anti fucks like OP here have made it their life's mission to spread lies and hate about this fandom by being the loudest minorities I've ever fucking seen. I know of one anti reylo on this website alone who has At Least 4 accounts dedicated to being a anti to this fucking ship.

And I know they're all the same person.

That's a lot of dedication to hate.

OP is so goddamn ignorant they're getting hung up on the fact these fics started out as reylo fics not realizing They Were Always Original Works.

Gorge Fucking Lucas didn't write these fics.

JJ or Rian did not write these fics.

These are original works, regardless of the characters they borrowed to make them. These fics would not exist if the writers didn't sit the fuck down and write them.

Saying these books ain't valid all because they started out as fanfics is fucking stupid. EP9 was written by 'professionals' and had a scene with three characters who know full fucking well Stormtroopers can fly say 'They fly now' so I know for a fact fanfic writers put more consideration into storytelling than JJ fucking Abrams or Chris chuckfuck Terrio ever did.

To simply Sit Down and Write takes Skill and Effort, something both of theses writers have in goddamn spades and OP has NONE of because all they post is broken English run-on paragraphs of shitass hateful opinions no one in the tags fucking asked for.

Live long and die fucking mad about it and stop telling lies about strangers because you're jealous they're more skilled than you OP.

Fuck's Sake.

[orlissa]

I’ve started reading The Love Hypothesis--mostly out of morbid curiosity, because it’s a “big deal” right now, and there has been some controversy around it as much as I could see, about how the agent is basically holding the author’s hand and that’s the only reason she is getting published and getting published this much, plus the whole Reylo fanfic origin thing, which is you do you, I’ll not hold it against you, I just, while I think he is a great human being, don’t find Adam Driver attractive at all, so I had my doubts about how much I could enjoy a story where I know I’m supposed to imagine the male lead like him---But I digress. So, anyway, one of the publishers I work for actually published the Hungarian edition, so I snagged a free copy (the one perk of working in publishing) and started reading it the other day.

And I find it absolutely delightful? I’m still pretty much in the beginning of the book, but it’s fun and light and witty, and although the characters work in science and I’m in humanities, I can sympathize with a lot of points about the absurdity of academia, especially with that one line on the very first page that says “It was something else that held her back from surrendering herself to the most notorious and soul-sucking circle of hell (i.e., a Ph.D program).”

[ziggyevenstar]

i feel like i’ve been consuming so much cheesy media these past years and i’m turning into someone i used to think is basic and has zero personality just because she enjoys whatever it is the next girl does. and i’m fine with it, im proud. it feels liberating. to finally allow myself to like stuff just because. i mean dostoevsky and kafka are great (no doubt) but sometimes that’s not what you need. like you have too much “serious” going on in your life already and what you need are some feel-good romance books, some cozy fantasy or your emotional support fanfictions. if that means i have bad taste well, okay. i also don’t feel bad now when i like stuff that i know are just really horrible— like “seriously trashed on goodreads” horrible. like ‘shiver’ for example. that book was horrible. but at the same time i like looking at it on my shelf, i like flipping through its pages. it’s horrible and i like it because i was once around 13 years old who frequents fullybooked just to look at a copy of ‘shiver’ and now after more than a decade i finally own the trilogy.

the ‘love & gelato’ movie was horrible too (but the book was great!) but i like it because that scene where lina leaves the house in the middle of the night alone in italy to eat some pastry and read her mom’s diary gives me so much comfort. so i watch it— over and over again

the bridgerton books i read were pretty bad too because of the men and their red flags. but i know netflix will fix those— so i enjoy the romance, and the simplicity and beauty of a woman marrying a rich and handsome man (because the women in these books deserve to be taken care of). so i allow myself to fangirl over colin bridgerton even if i think it’s corny and cringey to do so

i might just like the new trilogy of star wars. yes, i think it’s horrible. yes, i think disney should stop milking the star wars franchise. yes, i think they ruined luke skywalker. yes, i think they shouldn’t have made it. but i think i like it a little bit now— not because of the plot but because i read and loved a book (love hypothesis by ali hazelwood) that was initially a reylo star wars fanfic.

the ‘summer i turned pretty’ was bad. really bad. the book series and the tv series. but i like it because the summer vibes (plus all the taylor swift songs that play in the background) puts me in a really good mood (except for when i kept screaming at the book for belly to use her brain).

i think books aren’t meant to set your moral values (can you imagine if it does and you’re reading ‘lolita’). they’re meant to entertain and make you think. you set your moral values. if a book entertains you in whatever way and for whatever reason then it’s already done what it’s meant to do, even if it’s not great plotwise, even if it’s mainstream, even if it bleeds of twisted morals. ever since i saw it like that it’s been easier to like things and not judge (i mean i still struggle with not judging colleen hoover fans but we’re getting there).

if what i enjoy about a movie isn’t the plot but the vibe, i’m still allowed to like it. if what i enjoyed about a book isn’t the storyline but the feeling, well then i love it.

this probably sounds so trivial but as someone who used to be so image conscious, this is not nothing. i try to play this game now where i ask myself “do i really like this or did i just think it’s cool to like this? do i really NOT like this or did i just NOT allow myself to like this because i thought it was uncool” and it’s been fun

[lilithsaur]

Just wanted to say that when I saw the cover for Love Hypothesis (without knowing that it was a reylo fic turned book first) I immediately screamed in my head “THATS REY AND KYLO, I KNOW WHOS ARTWORK THAT IS AND HOW THEY DRAW THEM.” But basically I’ve been following you for a long time and have been in love with your work since the beginning of reylo that if i wasn’t able to recognize your style i would have never known that the book was a reylo fanfic haha.

[klapollo]

The love hypothesis is that reylo fanfic turned into a book right? I’m super surprised that you’ve managed to read any of it without your eyes spontaneously combusting

I actually didn't know it was a reylo fic for the longest time which is funny considering the cover. I just knew it was hugely popular and has an amazing GR score which made me assume it was at least a little good. I haven't read it so I can't say for certain but the excerpts I have heard have been........uhhhhhh

also I don't really care about Adam driver but I think it's kinda weird to basically put your sex fantasies about a real person you don't know to paper and have it be huge and I'm certain eventually become a hit movie

[gemmaswriting]

Did you know love hypothesis was originally a Kylo Ren and Rey fanfic 👀

What??? I did not know this!! I mean, yeah with hindsight I can see that's basically Reylo on the cover 😂😂 Bahahah I don't think I can do that au now

[in-silks-and-flesh-and-leather]

Oh dear me. I was out of the loop but when I saw your post about The Love Hypothesis I immediately knew what it must be. I actually have read that fanfic back when it was on AO3. Yes it’s a Reylo fic—btw I don’t want to make this about Reylo, people can ship what they ship, I myself read plenty of Reylo fics as well as other fics—but let me tell you, this fic annoyed me a lot. A little background: it was tremendously popular as soon as it came out and it used to be called Head Over Feet. It’s by one of the most popular Reylo fic writers (we are talking about hundreds of thousands of views). I’ve read a number of her fics, and some fics, particularly the shorter ones, are quite well written. But this fic annoyed me a lot bc of the premise, and the characterization of Rey (or Olive or whoever you call the female protagonist now). The female protagonist is supposedly 26 years old and a PhD student but throughout most of the fic she’s incredibly, annoyingly, immature. You know how some writers like to pass this off as “endearing” and “cute”? Well, I don’t find immaturity cute. She has this internal monologue that goes like this: “oh poop! Double poop!” when she messes up ok. (People apparently loved this going by the AO3 comments I remember from back in the day.) What are we, like 3 years old? Maybe used once or twice it’s cute but in the context of this multi-chapter (I think it was like 26 or even 30 chapters) fic it was just annoying and worse of all, CLOYING. The premise pissed me off too. Basically in the original story: Hux a postdoc keeps asking Rey out and instead of Rey actually being a mature, assertive woman, she decides to randomly kiss a stranger — who has no say whatsoever in being kissed (wow what if this was a man who just grabbed a woman passing by)— to pretend she has a boyfriend so that Hux will stop harassing her. That stranger turns out to be Professor Solo. I find it so weak sauce that she couldn’t actually just stand up for herself and tell Hux off. Even Professor Solo points that out. But it’s all treated by the fic as “wink wink lol hilarious it’s only fic so who cares that Rey was being harassed by Hux and who cares she foisted herself physically on a stranger without his consent it’s only premise for a crack fic lol wink wink and oh btw don’t you love student-teacher tropes focus on that instead and if you don’t then you are a bore and a hate lol wink wink”. Yeah. It should have stayed a crack fic. I can easily overlook silly or problematic or bizarre premises in fanfic if the rest of the story is good. But throughout the story Rey (or Olive with name change) remains thoroughly immature and unsightful. There is so much emotional constipation. But all passed off as “haha so cute lol so comedic isn’t this grade A romantic comedy when adults in their 20s and late 30s can’t communicate their honest feelings”. Professor Solo is your typical brooding, rude (but only bc he’s misunderstood!), asshole to everyone else except to main female love interest type of character that if reader didn’t already know he physically is played by Adam Driver or is already a Reylo fan, would be “what is the appeal of this guy other than he’s soooo hot”??? Again, if this is purely a fanfic, fine. My expectations for fanfics are fairly low. But as an actual published fic? And people actually rave about it??? You are right, it’s the tropey-est, most standard, predictable, “romance” there is.

Now before the haters bash me and say, “but it’s got depth because it’s also about ACADEMIA!” Listen. I’m IN academia. In a STEM field. And initially I did find it kind of fun that the story was set in graduate school. It sounds like the writer was a grad student herself. There are tones of authenticity and verbiage that only someone who have worked in a lab and in academics can convey. But so what? Because as the story progressed, that novelty wears off quite quickly. I STILL came back to the same underlying issue over and over, which is that Rey (“oLiVE”) is insufferably immature. I’m surprised she’s even in grad school. Apparently many fans felt this portrayal of grad school and academia (in the US) “spoke” to them. I’m not gonna argue with that—to each their own lived experiences but it doesn’t make up for the fact that the actual characters are annoying and the premise and denouement of the story super unoriginal. I followed through the fic with exasperation, skimping some chapters, because I wanted to find SOMETHING in the end, maybe a moment, where I can root for Rey or feel like the story was all worth it but nope. This fic also falls into the unfortunate category of Reylo fics where “we are all sympathetic and highly non-critical of Rey” aka the female self insert character gets off super easy regardless of how judgmental and unfair she is to male character.

I remember a couple years ago when the author took the story off AO3 to “rework” it for publication. I can’t believe it’s actually published now and people pay for this??? I guess that is the trend now. Anything goes. Bottom line is that although there are some evocative scenes, the writing itself is adequate to above average for FANFICS, there are some attempts to address life in academia (for a younger female in STEM; but fairly glossed over), the entire story is a tropefest with a infuriatingly immature female protagonist. It should have stayed a crack fic on AO3.

Silky, your Fire Meets Water fic can singlehandedly trounce this “Love Hypothesis” to the high heavens and back. - 📖

Thank you so much for your input 📖, amazing as always ❤️

I don't care about the pairing either, as long as the story is well written, which is rarely the case with any fic I've seen. It's so great when people are able to set their expectations low for fanfics - I haven't been able to and I don't really get to enjoy that kind of writing as a result.

From the little I read, it sounded like it was written by someone in their early teens and I might have forgiven things like fetishizing his size, randomly and blindly kissing someone, the 'd'oh, zoinks' inner monologue that someone who has never read any quality literature or at least seen classic romantic movies might think passes for a quirky, endearing personality. But coming from an adult, that kind of boundary crossing, professor/student pairing and myriad transgressions are pretty inexcusable to me.

I got through only a little bit of it before the cringe repelled me, but it was pretty jarring to have this middle school mentality in a supposedly serious setting. And I see many people pointing out that the setting is largely irrelevant, like in most superficial AUs, a backdrop for the fake dating. Which, if true, is a shame as this setting has potential.

There is a lot to cover when it comes to the writing. To anyone who cares about the tenets of good writing, it's obvious within a few pages what they're in for and in how many ways it's lacking in this case. That was one of the most shocking parts to me - aside from the zero attempt to make this seem like anything other than what it originally was - that people praised how well written it was. I suppose it's people who exclusively read fanfiction or published work that is no better, like Twilight, ACOTAR and the like, so they don't have a basis for comparison. I was just so confused as to what people seemed to be seeing that I wasn't.

I'm saddened, but not surprised to hear your assessment of the characters and where it all ultimately leads. It's a true surprise that it's published, especially with that cover and the name, and that no editor was able to elevate the style/content beyond what it is.

I guess that's my overall impression - surprised and sad that this is what publishing has come to.

It's great if people can enjoy it and I hope it doesn't make the real people whose likeness and work is uses uncomfortable.

Thank you for sending in your thoughts, I'm so glad I'm not alone in my feelings.

♥️♥️