We Need To Talk About The Harry Styles Fanfic Movie (The Idea of You) 

As a twenty-something who loves fanfiction, it makes me quite sad that poorly written works lucky enough to be adapted into films have given fanfiction as a whole such a bad name. There are SO MANY talented writers in the fanfiction comunittee. And I agree! I personally cannot stand fics based on real people. They just feel very icky.

I read a comment that Aaron Taylor Johnson likely thinks that this is what his relationship looks like. He was 18 and Sam Taylor Wood 42 when she directed him in "Nowhere Man", with him becoming a dad for the first time at 20.

“So all the woman and the gay people know what I’m talking about” Never been called out so quickly.

I honestly wouldn't mind all of these fanfiction adaptations if they weren't all the Harry Styles-inspired "girl meets bad boy" story. Fanfiction has so many good stories out there, and it's a shame that people are pulling from this very shallow sample pool.

I've always enjoyed fanfiction but I draw the line at real people. To me that's creepy.

Harry Styles actually has a restraining order against Anna Todd, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s more aware of this than we think. I don’t know if he’ll ever talk about it in the future, but I think it’d be really eye opening to hear his thoughts about how he deals with all this fan fiction written about him.

ao3 supremacy honestly

"Poor Man's Anne Hathaway" snatched me by the throat with its accuracy

Harry styles really has people in a chokehold cause how is there a whole collection of movies based on fanfiction about him. First the After series (a train wreck) and now this.

fanfiction about real people is such a turn off for me. I genuinely don't know how people read it. Like you are reading a story about what you think that person is like in your head. With a fictional character, everything you need to know about their canon personality is in whatever original story they came from. But real life people stories are just fictionalized ideas of what the writer thinks that celebrity is like. It just creeps me out. Even if I'm imagining an actual person in my head while reading, I know that the story isn't attached to their personality or feelings. It's just a character. And I also feel so bad for celebrities who keep getting shipped in stories with other celebrities. It must ruin their real life relationship because of the awkwardness.

I am a long time ao3 reader and the amount of genuinely heartbreaking, gorgeous, life altering works of writing that I have read - AU and canon - makes me so hopeful for future authors and screenwriters. What makes me sad is that big books and movie adaptations of fanfiction are often just the smutty, self-insert, heteronormative stories and not the beautiful, deep, queer stories that I know are out there. I hope those writers and stories get adaptations one day and show the mainstream audience that there is more to fanfiction than "my mother sold me to one direction."

Poor man’s Anne Hathaway is hilarious sorry

Spoilers for book: Someone reviewed the book and it was waay worse. There were so many problematic aspects of it. Solene did neglect her daughter and not care about her feelings. Hayes was 19 while Solene was 40. There was a gay subplot of one of the other members liking Hayes. The band doing inappropriate stuff with minors. I am glad the movie aged Hayes up and made the relationship and story more mature. I appreciated the predictable beats because I knew how much worse this story could have been. In the movie’s case, I feel they gave Harry a small break compared to what happened in the book. But like Diana, we need to give both of them a break. Leave them be.

I wrote a fanfic inspired by Twilight and that landed me an internship and then a full scholarship so it can be a great way to get ahead. I think a lot of adaptations based on real people (musicians and celebs) makes me feel awkward because I think it encourages toxic parasocial relationships and, in some cases, obsession and stalking. Harry Styles was definitely a huge focus with fanfic, I couldn’t avoid stories inspired by One Direction members even if I tried. On Wattpad that was what got views & I always felt like writing these fanfics was an easy way to trend so I truly believe that many were written hoping to get popular, not because they actually liked the person they were writing about. They relied heavily on the support of the community, hence why many writers would use ideas provided through the comments.

I was already thinking, “pffft not A L L women, *I* wasn’t ever into fanfic…” & then suddenly I remembered my brief stint into writing Dawson’s Creek fanfic back in the mid to late 90s😂😭 Ugh dark times.

Ha, my son’s mom was a big name in the yugioh fanfiction community. She was big enough someone tried to steal her online identity at one point. Learned more about the culture than I ever expected.

I feel so iffy with Hathaway being like “we need more movies for women like this” because yes, we do But this is about a woman having sex with a younger man from a boyband she likes. The film isn’t really about a woman past her prime it’s a self insert fan fic and yeh that does make me sound very negative about fan fic

I also think it’s wild because the books are a lot more full of lust, eroticism and sex but the film won’t do that because it wants the biggest audience.

Screaming about gays and women fan fiction call out

I'd also like to point out that most of the Harry fanfic was written when he was still a minor and older women were writing their sexual fantasies about him just feels sooo wrong

As an author who started in fan fiction, I'm actually a bit put off by the way fanfic is being twisted into "original" books. I've tried reading a couple of books that started as Reylo fics, and... I love Reylo as a pairing, but the adaptations I've tried of Reylo-turned-"original"-novel have been not great. I think truly good fic is so rooted in the world that birthed it that transplanting it doesn't often go very well. (And yes, I'm sure there are exceptions! I just haven't come across any myself--from my subjective POV.)

11:46 this! I just really miss the comfort that good romance offers. 90% of Netflix rom-coms are just lacking the script and acting department, & I find The Idea of You to be decent. Really love how it explored ageism/misogyny without SHOUTING too loudly. Still, it lacks this "sweep you off your feet" spark old rom-com has on me though. Do want more exploration on parasocial aspect of the fandoms on their relationship though.

I think this is where fact and fiction (and fan fiction) blur. Unless you personally know these celebrities, I think you're always going to be writing a "character", just based on your interpretation of a real person. I think this is partially why people feel uncomfortable with it; not only is it sexualise or objectifying someone, but it's giving their accomplishments and history to someone else but with none of the struggle. It's trivialising. That being said, ultimately, it's all a fantasy being sold that people accept. If we made Anne Frank a femme fatale, we'd rightfully freak out. But if it's celebrity X, well than who cares: we decide.

We really need to stop adapting stuff that is based on real people, like imagine if a stranger decided to make a novel fully based on your life wothout talking or even getting your permission.

There are too many problems with not only the movie but the story overall, and you pointed them out perfectly. Specially about how Styles might feel about this and how everyone just ignores it. But just another thing that icks me out is the age gap. I’m not judging the 20 years apart, I’m judging when they start. I might be wrong, but I heard the guy was 20 and she was almost 40 in the book. Isn’t that, like, pretty close to all the situation involving Di Caprio? And even though he’s 24 in the movie, I think it’s weird that we are only seeing it trough the lens of “stating a woman is never too old”. Alex Meyers even points out in his video how Anne’s character thought it was weird when her husband dated a younger woman, but the main guy is even younger. Especially when, again, we consider Harry Styles had a relationship like that in the past and he might not recognize it as a woman empowering tale.

I just had this conversation with my roommate yesterday! I honestly feel bad for celebrities like this, considering how they are depicted in a lot of these fanfictions. I also read a few of the One Direction ones when I was a teenager (it started ironically... oh well), and the image they sometimes give of these real individuals is... disturbing. I definitely wouldn't like people fantasizing qbout me being a sadistic asshole, and make movies about it (After series).

My husband & I went to see Anyone But You when it was in theatres, not really having expectations, we were just in the mood for a movie & that's what was playing. We both were so surprised that the theater was packed and the audience was very vocal. Lots of laughs, "aw"s, and just general energy. We kind of marveled at how nice it was to have a lighthearted, communal movie experience. Was it a "good" movie? Meh. But it was a great experience! The people want this!

My personal opinion and as someone who used to read and write fanfiction as a teenager, I think it’s completely fine to write stories about characters from any books/movies/tv shows that you like cause at the end of the day, they aren’t an actual person. However, fanfic writers should leave real people out of it. I remember never understanding why there were so many stories written about an actor or a pop star that I liked at the time. I always thought they were kind of bizarre and invasive. Also put it this way: Would you like it if strangers wrote stories objectifying you and/or your friends, and writing verbatim or assumptions about stuff that happened in your personal life? No you wouldn’t!

I found it cheesy but I enjoyed the movie overall. I was suprised that for a fanfic movie there was a lack of the guy being a possessive, abusive asshole haha him and her just being a sweet couple was a nice surprise

As someone who was too old for one direction back in the day, I read this novel back during quarantine. I knew that Hayes was based on Harry Styles, but I never thought he *was* harry styles in the story. I put it in the same bucket as watching Succession. Logan Roy is based on Rupert Murdoch, but they aren’t the same. It’s also weird that those After movies are so awful, but I don’t remember people getting up in arms about it like they are with this movie. Hayes is practically a saint compared to that abusive sh**head of a boyfriend in After.

Hey some (most?) of the males watching your channel, like myself, are unlikely to have girlfriends ;) "The poor mann's Anne Hathaway" made me laugh out loud. You deserve the 100000 subscribers and many more, absolutely love your work

I also thought that beautiful disaster was a Harry styles fan fic turned book turned movie which was made by the same company as the after movies

God, RPF always made me intensely uncomfortable. I used to do roleplaying (especially when I had writer’s block) and someone messaged me to see if I’d want to write a rp with them. I’m paraphrasing but their pitch was “Okay so I’m Misha Collins, and my wife just died, and I go to my kids’ parent teacher interview and you’re the teacher.” “….like, you look like Misha Collins?” “No, like I’d be writing him as a character.” My god, I noped out of there so fast. Back when Meg Turney was on Rooster Teeth (RIP), she had a show with a few co-hosts, and one of the mini games they did was to read out clips from fanfic people had written about them without laughing. People got really pissy about it, and the fact that no one asked them to use the stories. My argument was to ask if they’d asked Meg or anyone for permission to be written about. Because of course not.

Fanfic in general is an amazing sphere. I personally feel uncomfortable about making them about real people though and more so when it focuses on an uncomfortable age gap.

I think someone not only writing porn about you, but then selling that porn for a profit would make anyone feel icky. And then Anne Hathaway trying to make out the story is somehow empowering to women, which is extra weird considering Harry Styles having potentially problematic relationships with older women? I'm not fan of Harry, but being reduced to a sex object like this must hurt.

As someone who grew up in and is still in the fanfic space there’s plenty of good writers in fandom and fanfic spaces…. I just don’t know why the worst of fanfics get adapted into books and films😂😭💀

I kinda wish Hollywood pick up animanga fanfic. That way, it would be unlikely for someone to be at the brunt of these uncanny valley.

I don’t really engage in RPF, but my take on especially the One Direction fanfic is that like… sure, it’s *about* Harry or whatever, but it’s not really *him*, is it? It’s the archetype, it’s the fantasy, it’s the carefully constructed Image of the hypersuccessful pop star that people are writing about. The output would be the same if the internet was as ubiquitous when, say, Justin Timberlake was the biggest celebrity in the world. The personal details would be different, but that’s emblematic of fanfic and why it’s necessarily difficult to file of the serial numbers, because the worldbuilding still has to exist in order to rally the fanbase together, to dogwhistle the characters details that fans expect. After is kind of remarkable because as an AU, it’s SO divorced from the actual reality of Harry Styles that the guy just happens to have the same tattoos. But the tattoos are where the readers come from - that’s how you draw people in to read about your self insert being Picked by a crazy hot guy or a celebrity or the billionaire sadist.

Congratulations on 100K subs Kayla!!! As a longtime viewer it's so wonderful to see your channel grow ✨✨✨

Congrats Kayla, the success of your channel is so deserved and i’m so excited to see it continue to grow!! Love your content, i always get so excited when u upload

I really think this movie wouldnt matter much to anyone and fall into the nothingness of the After films if Nick and Anne werent the main stars of the movie. Anne obviously is already a very established actor, but Nick has shown how competent and talented he is with his latest releases. And YES, their chemistry is top tier. I really dont think you get that with most fanfic films. Nick and Anne are the only reasons anyone is watching this film.

Then Ryan Guzman who plays Eddie Diaz on 911, literally said he and Oliver Stark (plays Buck) exchanged fics they found about their characters in a recent interview. I will give the man props, he said that they were really well written and in the voice of the characters. Me as a fan: *ahhhhhh! NO! Let me pretend you don't know this stuff exists.

Lol i feel very called out right now😅. I stumbled upon fanfiction in 4th grade while on a full house fan page and been obsessed ever since. I'm 21 now

Congrats on 100k Queen!!! 👑

Oof, called out. Back in 2006-2008 I used to write RPF about Fall Out Boy and various other emo bands. Not my proudest moment but it was my way of dealing with all the teenager feelings.

Congrats on 100k !!! May this be a testament to the quality and consistency of your content for over 4 years.

Me getting war flashbacks to my 5sos fanfics I wrote 10 years ago

Congrats Kayla on 100k !! we be seeing you hustling girl, so well deserved 🎉🎉

you have exactly 100k subscribers rn! congrats🎉

WOOOO NEW KAYLA VIDEO!!!!

Congrats on 100k !! 🥳 so well-deserved

Thanks for your commentary, found it interesting and as Harry Styles' fan the "Harry's House is a prison" segment title hit me in the so-called feels. I definitely do sympathize with his situation too - I think it must be very weird and I can't imagine how privacy works for a person like him and how it all must feel psychologically. That's why I didn't watch the movie, I didn't want to encourage more people to try and profit on the way people obsess and sexualize him. Especially since I feel like we allow it more when it's a guy and Harry was dealing with it from the very start when he was 16. BUT I'm doing it too and I honestly struggle with trying to find a ground to stand on as a fan and feeling like what I'm doing is okay. Because I've read tons of fanfics on 1D and I enjoyed a lot of them and until I've came across RPF criticism apart from feeling weird about instances where people involved their real life events and non-famous associates (like dead sister, a mother or once girlfriend being characters) I didn't conciously realized that it's different than fanfics I've read before about my favourite TV show characters. I guess for me it was all playing around with a public perception of someone and putting a "Harry Styles type of guy" where I would have a two-dimentional character in a romance. I've seen an opinion recently where RPF was stated as something natural (in the sense that people clearly have a need to write and read it) but it's important that it stays within the fan culture, that people don't do it for profit, that it doesn't reach society at large and therefore that person and people around them will not hear about it unless they specifically look for it. Not to mention people don't take any action towards real people based on their ships (like what you mentioned in the video - Louis mentioned many times he's not happy with people attacking his girlfriend or making comment about his child), that is clearly out of line and to me a whole another level. That sounded okay to me and like something I can live with but then I watch a video like yours and am back to square one with the fact that on one hand I understand why RPF is icky and on the other I don't feel wrong about it when I read it and it brings me joy.

I'm gonna be honest. There are probably SEVERAL movie scripts, books, tv shows and cartoons that were based off of other very popular characters or real people, we just never realized it and it was never publicly admitted. We now have the internet and it has become much easier to figure this stuff out, but people have been inspired by real people and other content and media since the dawn of time. The character of Dracula was based off of a real historical figure, and the vampire from the book The Vampyr was based off of a contemporary public figure - much like Harry Styles is to us today. Ofc it's important to discuss boundaries when it comes to using the image of public figures, but being inspired by them to make characters is indirect enough that it isn't a problem in my book.

congrats on 100K, found your channel back in January and i think I've watched every vid you've posted since then! loveee your content!

Congrats on 100k! Knew you'd make it!

What freaks me out about this is that not only is it fanfiction about a real person, but it's about a real age gap relationship that was at best inappropriate and at worst super predatory.

I’ve often had this saying that the best fanfics out there are the ones that don’t just satisfy yourself and what you want with these characters, but the audience can get some enjoyment out of too, and they can understand your love for them and why you’re telling this story with them. For instance, many comic book movies out there. Guardians of the Galaxy, for instance. That was James Gunn making a movie he wanted with characters he was a fan of, but he made it to where audiences who’d never heard of them could connect and relate to them in the way he did. If he’d have just made a movie only he would’ve wanted with these characters, it wouldn’t have worked. It’s fine to make your own fiction with characters you love, but if it’s only out in this world with you as the audience, it doesn’t work that well. At least that’s my theory, anyway.

I know it's only fantasy and consenting adults, blahblahblah, but as a 40-ish woman who works around college students all day, this movie gives me serious ICK. They are still fetuses...

I have even found WWE fan fiction fwiw

Congrats on 100k!!!!

i think this issue with romance/rom-com movies falling off applies to all genre films basically these days, and is a symptom of the broader problems with how films and tv shows are being produced. original mid-budget dramas, fantasy, science-fiction, etc. all have really died out largely in favor of big-budget movies with a lot of mass-appeal or adaptations with a perceived built-in audience.

I wrote a fanfic on AO3 when I was a teen. It blew up pretty fast then I got nervous and dipped. I will never reveal the title, but it was a Homestuck fanfic.

I actually didn’t feel ANY chemistry between Anne and Nicholas, which is weird given how hot they both are…

congrats on 100K!! I'm not sure if she's "big enough" but I would be interested in a video on how the internet fell out of love with Sophia Bush. Her recent drama with her divorce and now being in a relationship with Ashlynn Harris (and Ashlynn's own divorce) really showed a departure from being one tree hill's golden girl from the early 2000s. I would love your take on it!

The book actually does a fantastic job showing the insanity of celebrity obsession and fan pressure.

RPF has always disturbed me on a deep level, even as a teen

Harry..I truly feel bad for him… Mostly female celebrities are treated like objects and are constantly dehumanized but Harry Styles is one of the male celebrities who can totally relate to this experience… People constantly use his name in vain, they put it in every other Gen Z show…

Congrats on the subs! And thank you for reminding me to listen to Harry Styles.

I honestly enjoyed The Idea of You so much because of the chemistry of the leads. Also, I just turned 36 and the world is constantly finding ways to tell me how "old" I am while I am in the absolute prime of my life just like Solene in the movie.

harry blocked the writer of After so i think he absolutly knows people write this stuff about him and isnt very happy about some of it

congrats on 100k

i genuinely want to see a renaissance of early 2000s hanna montana-esque hillary duff like romcoms, but with a tinge of gritty realism and dark humor, show me the dark underbelly of fame, not another biopic, not another hs parody, but a story about a multifaceted characters with their needs and wants and flaws and how viscerally the public tears into every small perceived transgression.

Kayla posted!!! 😱

yay 100k!!!!!

Iirc Bella in twilight was originally a self insert for Stephanie Meyer and Edward was Gerard way. So even that franchise started as fanfic

This AND the met gala? we're being fed

there’s also a rumor that red white and royal blue used to be a social network fanfic…. lmao

Makes you wonder how a person grows and develops when they’ve been sexualized like harry styles and the other 1D members since they were 16/17/18 years old

It's sad because they don't make these movies because the story is good, they make them because it is incredibly popular. Unfortunately for Harry Styles, he was the most popular subject in fanfic 10 years ago. Before "I was sold to BTS", it was "I was sold to 1D". Only at the height of rom-coms we got more niche leading men, like Gerard Butler as a raunchy a-hole in The Ugly Truth and Seth Rogen as a manchild in Knocked Up. Before that, it was all Ashton Kutcher and Justin Timberlake or whatever. Right now, the fanfic-created stereotype of Harry Styles is gonna be what attract viewers, which means I'll never have my Dave Bautista rom-com where he's a lovable giant that can lift me with one arm at this rate and I'M SAD

Eat pray love had a middle age romance and I thought it was very touching when I watched it. U can have female centered or older woman protags and also they can be with men of a similar age 😩 we just need romance movies with characters that have actual chemistry that’s what’s missing these days 👵🏼

I used to read and write fan fics when I was younger but deleted them all and when I got older and I saw After blow up I got the ick and felt bad for Harry Styles there are so many great fanfics and stories that could get the attention but instead another Harry Styles inspired book is tiring I read that Solene was meant to be black to reflect Robin Lee but the publishers didn’t think it wound sell.

Not me getting a Louis Tomlison add after your video😂😂😂

Sorry Kayla but I asked my Mikasa pillow if she knew what AO3 is and she just stared at me blankly before slumping over off my bed frame.

I can’t wait until my mom watched this, and I tell her what it originally was, and she gets mad bc she thinks I’m making fun of her lol

I’m sure Harry isn’t losing sleep over a few movies being based on his teenage self

I never listened One Direction, have no idea the drama about Harry Styles, I've read some fan fiction here and there but never been a hıge fan... So, just as a movie, I really liked The Idea of You. I think Nicholas Galitzine and Anne Hathaway look really good together. It was just a sweet romantic movie for me.

I could tell from the moment I saw the trailer this movie was adapted from a fanfiction and when I saw the boyband and the male lead with those random tattoos I just knew he was based off Harry Styles lol I don’t watch movies based on fanfictions if I can help it (even tho I love fanfiction) I guess cus the source material doesn’t interest me but I HAD to watch this one simply cus Anne Hathaway was in it and I love her, plus I like the concept of a rom-com with an older woman and a younger man cus you don’t see that dynamic ever without the film basically demonizing the woman as society and pop culture typically does so I wanted to support for that simple narrative choice too

I write fanfiction since elementry school though I wasn't ever much into romance. Soooo ... I'm aware of ships and and self insert OCs but I might have missed a couple of trends.

As both a reader and writer of fan-fiction, I’ve never really been into real person fan fics because I personally think they go a little too far. I head a lot of fics based on the shows that I watch, and every once in a while I’ll come across a fic that’s based off the actual actors in the show, and that I personally don’t like; especially because a lot of the shows and ships I’m into feature queer characters, and the actor or actress mind not necessarily be queer themselves.

I agree that fanfic based on real people gives me the biggest ick. Someone said, "Imagine if your mom started dating Jungkook," and I can't look at this the same way. So for me, I actually didn't know The Idea of You book was a Harry Styles fan fic/Hayes is based on Harry Styles until I'd already read the book (I've read a lot of rockstar romance books so I didn't anything think of it at the end). To be fair, they either changed/cut so many things from the book

I heard from a tiktok that the main characters were originally black, but they changed so the publisher would sell the story better. We're basically getting How Stella Got Her Groove Back w/o the seasoningggggg.

Kill the Boy Band is a great read!

Your voice reminds me of Princess Carolyn from Bojack

I didn't know it was based off a harry styles fanfic before watching but when i started i was like there is no way this isn't a harry styles fanfic hahah

I think anybody being treated and thought of in that way especially without their consent, regardless of their material reality, would be discomforting. Like it doesn’t feel dissimilar to me when like people do those “countdowns” for peoples’ ages, or sending people creepy/pervy fanmail. Like the public display of it makes it more egregious but the lack of boundaries to do it to such an extent in private comes from the same place/environment/societal norms. It feels like entitlement to a person’s body/personhood to me. I think people’s perceived gender and age just sometimes makes it easier for others to swallow, or leads people to not take it seriously.

Kay-La sa-eh-ehz!

I looove fanfiction. I've read some amazing stories, everyone who is a HP fan knows about the Marauders legacy and how writers have created some absolutely fantastic fics! But real life people fanfics? It's super weird. And I do believe that Harry Styles knows about it. And he probably thinks it's weird that people somehow... "use" him and his persona. Just like Dan and Phil know, even tho they joke about it now, I do believe there is some trauma left there from the fanfiction writing stans. It's weird. I really like Ann Hathaway, and I understand why she chose to be in this movie, but I'd rather watch Nothing Hill.

I don't know why people are expecting something of movies based on harry styles wattpad stories written by a teenager

I had no idea The Idea of You was a Harry Styles fanfic. Without that, its a good movie LOL i really liked it Edit: the music was good too lol

I enjoy Nick Galitzine and Harry Styles so I enjoyed this movie overall (even though I don't always enjoy schmaltz, especially cishet schmaltz). However, it's very difficult to watch this and not think immediately of Harry. I feel like even if you went in not knowing it was based on Harry fanfic, you'd immediately think of him.