BookTok Bits and Bobs
Updates on some of our pet topics, and a fanfiction AI scandal
Hi friends!
This week, we’re checking in on some of BookTok’s pet topics: film adaptations, fanfiction, and fun. Let’s dive in!
Adaptation Central
As romance adaptations ramp up at major studios across film and TV, are we going to be stuck in a constant outrage cycle? It’s starting to seem like it!
First, reactions to set photos from Beach Read continue to dominate BookTok, Instagram, and Threads:
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Speaking as a corny millennial, not totally sure what this one means, lol. I do think based on social media feedback that there is a disconnect between the aesthetic readers imagined for this movie, and the film’s actual aesthetic. Is all buzz good buzz? We’ll see next summer.
One movie that people do seem excited about, at least so far? The Love Hypothesis. Lili Reinhart has understood the assignment since the beginning - posting TikToks and joyfully embracing the source material.
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Transcription of the above: “And do you know what, maybe 2026 isn’t so bad, because I just watched The Love Hypothesis movie trailer, and what do you mean we’re getting a romance novel turned movie adaptation, rated R, where both main characters are hot. Both main actors are hot. I used to dream for days like this.”
At the same time, it was announced this week that Love, Theoretically (one of my top Ali Hazelwood books, and probably yours, too) is being adapted by Amazon and produced by Colleen Hoover. The news has not gone over well.
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I actually think this had the potential to be a good thing - Colleen Hoover understands romance readers and has the Hollywood clout after the success of her previous film projects to make sure this book is adapted correctly. As we’ve previously discussed, romance readers have reasons to be wary of film adaptations. But as more and more romance novels are adapted, there will be more hits and more misses (as long as everyone stays calm long enough not to torpedo the chances of every high profile upcoming adaptation). Can this level of discourse really be sustained for every project to come? We shall see.
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Meme Corner
I’m constantly impressed by the endless new ways content creators on BookTok find to talk about their recent favorite reads. I thought this one was particularly good:
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I also enjoyed this story:
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Always good to remember that everyone is coming to romance from different places! I tend to think one of the reasons big romances break out is because they reach readers who haven’t ever encountered a true steamy romance novel in the course of their everyday reading, and they are introduced to a beautiful new world. Meanwhile, my brain is so broken that I don’t think Lights Out is particularly shocking either.
The State of Fanfiction
Fanfiction is more popular and mainstream than ever, and with that comes its fair share of controversy. Heated Rivalry fanfiction is the hot new game in town, with fics routinely receiving hundreds of thousands of reads and thousands of kudos.
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That said, Dramione fanfiction is still going strong - the trend that will never die? After all, what is Dramione if not extreme enemies to lovers:
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I always say fanfiction is where trends start, and we’re seeing some interesting trends causing controversy on AO3 that I fear are soon to arrive to indie publishing, followed by traditional publishing. Namely, gen-AI usage by authors in fandom. Fanfic readers have taken it upon themselves to spot and call out AI use, which has provided some very interesting insights about the hallmarks of AI-generated fiction writing (did you know that the most common names for original characters selected by AI are Marcus, Chloe, Elias, and Thorne?). And if I never have to see a sentence structured like “not this, not this, but this” again, I’ll be happy. But some of these callouts have felt a little bit arbitrary, given that there is no surefire way to determine if an author has used AI to write their story.
But that changed a bit this week when an enterprising twitter user named John Doe (@heatedrivalryai) discovered that fanfiction copied and pasted from Claude directly into the ao3 editor retains HTML code fragments that indicate it was created using Claude, therefore indicating fairly unequivocally that AI was used in the creation of the work. The user also created an ao3 skin that sought out instances of this code fragment and turned the page red on any fic with this code in the HTML. Popular fics from the Heated Rivalry, Stranger Things, and The Pitt fandoms were all highlighted as having this code fragment embedded in them.
This has, of course, stirred up an enormous amount of controversy.
And as more new methods of detecting AI use in writing are developed, I’m sure there will also be more ways to skirt them. This feels like just the beginning of attempts to ensure that writing is human-created in fandom and publishing spaces.
I’m hoping to use the long weekend to finish Dungeon Crawler Carl, so fingers crossed that next week, we’ll be going long on LitRPG. Let me know what you’re planning to read over the holiday in the comments. xoxo!
I've got the last two books in the DCC left. Hoping I get through them quickly because I'm not getting anything else done in the meantime!!