Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is fading in the rearview mirror, but we’ll stop talking about the sequel trilogy when the fandom says we’ll stop talking about the sequel trilogy. Fans can keep stories in the discourse long past they take their “official” bows, bringing passion and humor to bear in a ways that can often be more entertaining that the things that started it all.
For example, take “Fix Your Attitude,” a 38-chapter fan fiction all about Kylo Ren written in 2016. The story has been out there for years, on Tumblr, Wattpad and Archive of Our Own, the largest repository of fan fiction on the internet. It’s a second-person fanfic about Kylo and you — that’s you, the reader — getting to know each other, sometimes intimately. There’s one scene where Kylo does something unconventional with a lightsaber that’s attracted an especially large amount of attention.
"@cursedwomb##kyloren ##bensolo ##starwars my magnum opus ##fyp ##foryoupage ##alarmclock ##BestThingSince ##foryou ##CoolRanchDance♬ BLAKE IS THE ORIGINAL lol – theofficialblakethompson"
"@thiccsaladass69i’ve had this idea all day lol ##kyloren ##bensolo ##fixyourattitude ##starwars ##fyp ##fanfiction##greenscreen♬ original sound – sxkaar"
The author, Anna M, told Insider that she was surprised at the response to that bit. “That, for some reason, truly shocked people (though I found it fairly obvious, hello, phallic object), and created an influx of lightsaber-related memes.”
She also talked about the decision to write the story in second person. “[It] seemed natural to me, because I don’t want anyone else to be with Kylo Ren — I want to be with him! I wrote the first chapter of ‘Fix Your Attitude’ about a week later with the thought it would be a few chapters. But I kept writing. Oops.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I hear about an erotic fanfic blowing up in popularity, I have to fight a reflexive eye-rolling instinct I wish I didn’t have — I’m working on it. The earnestness of fanfiction can be off-putting and make you want to approach it ironically, if at all, although that method has drawbacks:
"@pixelatedcomfortQuarantine got me actin’ up. ##fixyourattitude ##kyloren ##adamdriver ##starwars ##fyp ##bensolo♬ original sound – bugdealer"
As you can tell, the story is blowing up on Tik Tok, where folks are meme-ing the hell out of it; as of right now, the #FixYourAttitude hashtag has amassed well over 10 million views. She’s gotten praise for it, but also plenty of hate and distain, which seems part and parcel of the internet’s tendency to dog-pile on anything it judges goofy or frivolous — it’s part of that reflexive eye-rolling thing I mentioned earlier that we should really train out of ourselves, because in the end, who does homemade Star Wars softcore hurt, regardless or how well-written it is?
Some fans have compared “Fix Your Attitude” to “My Immortal,” a legendary Harry Potter fanfiction that has for years borne the standard as the “worst fanfiction ever.” Anna M, for her part, is rolling with it. “They said, ‘I feel like Fix Your Attitude is the My Immortal of our generation,'” she said. So how did she cope with that? By adding the tag “The My Immortal of Gen Z” to the story on Archive of Our Own. She also added the tag “Overhyped and Cringeworthy,” so clearly she has a sense of humor about this.
"I’m just really blown away and incredibly grateful for the engagement with my writing. I think this is the type of response most writers, especially fanfic writers, only ever dream of, myself included. I feel overwhelmed with the feedback and am genuinely thankful for every bit, even those who might condemn it."
I’ve always been fascinated by the way fans create their own narratives around things, whether it’s a piece of fanfiction or the story that develops around that fanfiction. However you feel about the actual story “Fix Your Attitude,” I’m glad it exists so we can talk about it.
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Quarantine got me actin’ up.