Adam Driver is Goodreads’ Darling
Blog Writer // Madelynn Graham
My first exposure to Adam Driver, like most, was in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Tall, brooding, long hair, a tastefully placed scar across his eye and cheekbone…was much more than nine-year-old-me was able to appreciate at the time. I still have yet to find myself that entranced by Kylo Ren, but I can see how one could.
My second exposure was his character, also named Adam, in Lena Dunham’s Girls. His imposing frame in comparison to Dunham’s much shorter one emphasizes the imbalances of their dynamic that extend throughout the show. Adam Sackler is a struggling actor in New York City with a personality that could be described as “complicated,” but really just means “emotionally abusive, but somehow still endearing.” Like most characters on Girls, he is not meant to be likeable. Adam is a volatile, typically irrational, and manipulative character whose relationship with Hannah, the main character, hinges on his degrading sexual fantasies that attempt to be balanced with his “quirks” (ie. his eclectic wood-working). The consensus of most fans of the show is that Adam Sackler is a terrible person and no one would ever want to meet him—yet, Driver’s portrayal turns him into something compelling, even lovable at points.
Authors finding inspiration from actors and characters on screen is nothing new; Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander empire began with an episode of Doctor Who, the Mortal Instruments series started with a Ron x Ginny Weasley fic. There’s no shortage of fanfiction writers creating whole worlds out of characters in films and series, but where is the line between “inspired by” and “fanfiction of” drawn?
The two most popular examples of Adam Driver-inspired romance novels on Goodreads are The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, of course, and Forget Me Not by Julie Soto. The former follows the “fake dating” trope between a Ph.D candidate and a young professor, and the latter features a wedding planner forced to work with her ex, the florist. Neither book makes any attempt to hide the “Reylo” (the ship name of the enemies-to-lovers Rey and Kylo Ren) roots. It makes sense as a source of endless inspiration because of the extensive build up in comparison to such a short union. Three 2.5 hour long movies culminating in one 8.45 second kiss leaves much to be desired, which fanfiction is an easy fix for. There are, at the time of writing, 15,180 Reylo works on Archive of Our Own (AO3) and Wattpad hosts another 36,200, including continuation stories, one-shots, “what-if”s, and AUs. An AU, alternate universe, is when an author takes characters from an existing work and inserts them into a new and completely different environment. AUs are especially important in considering traditionally published works that began as fanfiction, notably 50 Shades of Grey and the After series. In placing their characters in a new environment and changing just enough details, their stories can be passed off as inspiration while the characterization remains relatively the same as the source material.
Reddit is my favorite source when getting a broad consensus from a niche group. Getting other people with too vague of interests and too much time on their hands to do the work for me is a blessing; a blessing to come from that is a link to the original fanfiction that later became The Love Hypothesis. First published on Ao3 in October of 2016, the only discernible difference between the first few chapters of Head Over Feet (the fanfiction) and The Love Hypothesis are different names and slightly different descriptions as well as a liiiiittle bit of editing to some of the phrasing to make it half worth a hard copy. Overall, it’s pretty much the same, down to the “Ben Solo. Destroyer of research projects,” and “Adam Carlsen. Destroyer of research careers,” and also! The most uncomfortable sex scene I’ve ever read twice. Honestly, I don’t think Hazelwood likes Rey (or Olive) given the description of her “small and insignificant” breasts. This is the first time I’ve ever read a sex scene that feels like the author is viscerally jealous of her own main character. Not that I would be in this situation considering that it starts with her whole breast fitting into his mouth, but one large difference in the published version includes a very ill executed attempt at demi-sexual representation, by which I mean “I don’t know what’s wrong with me [. . .] I don’t seem to be able to experience attraction like other people. Like normal people,” is a direct quote.
Reviews of The Love Hypothesis are sure to mention how often the male love interest, Adam Carlsen, is described as big, chiseled, sculpted, etc etc, with black hair that falls in his face…far from any iteration of Adam Driver I know, clearly. And Forget Me Not also makes no mistake in flaunting its origins, with the author discussing her collaborations with the cover artist in an interview, “Yeah, it was definitely more of a Reylo inspired story. But I know that Nikki (the illustrator) specifically is not personally attracted to Adam Driver. […] ‘Do I have to make him look like Adam Driver?’ [the illustrator asked]. I’m like, ‘No, dear. You don’t have to. It’s just that’s how I described him in the book.’” Featuring a tall, dark haired, muscular man who bends down to the figure of the main character, it still looks like Adam Driver.
There’s nothing wrong with taking a concept or ideas of characters and making them your own, but for the sake of your Lexile level at least be good at it! There’s certainly nothing wrong with having a crush and having your main love interest emulate the traits of that crush, my question is simply “Why Adam Driver? And why so many?”
There are plenty of listicles and Goodreads lists of “Books inspired by Adam Driver” with both Reylo and purely Driver inspired fics, but one common theme that appears in many is some form of the “Grumpy x Sunshine,” “doesn’t like anyone but her,” and sooooo broody! They are always described as moody and broody! Which makes sense considering Kylo Ren is one of the broodiest and moodiest characters I’ve ever seen, but Adam Driver really is not.
He’s a 6’2 Marine and Julliard graduate. He’s a little awkward in his interviews and red carpet interactions, and his SNL monologues tend to play into the intensity that the image of Kylo Ren has given him. I can’t analyze his personality, and though many an internet thread has tried to pin down his MBTI type, I only know what I’ve seen in interviews and SNL monologues. Even interviews which say “His agent probably doesn’t know whether to put him in a movie or the Kentucky Derby.” When he is acting as himself, he seems very unlike his erratic, starving artist/galactic war criminal/sexually liberated New York City hipster characters. More reserved, typically, and dedicated to his work, quiet about his personal life, and rarely –if ever– in any sort of tabloid or gossip column.
Some articles are way on board with the image of him as the pinnacle of non-toxic masculinity, and others like to tout him as an “unconventional movie star” because of his look. Often compared to older, serious actors like Marlon Brando and Robert de Niro due to his style of acting and general persona, Adam Driver is the kind of actor that film guys (this is a bold statement to make in an Emerson College publication, I know) love because of the movies he’s in, and his movies are the kind that millennial straight women love because he is in them. Maybe it’s the intense and wayward sex scenes of Girls, or the steely, yet vulnerable gaze of Kylo Ren, or the loveable, albeit shortly seen Lev of Francis Ha. Whatever it is, dozens of thousands of people (if Goodreads reviews are any measure to go by) see Adam Driver as a brooding, hot, desirable, and intense figure of masculinity that they wish to fit into their fantasies, and do so by way of creating rude to everyone (except for her), too tall, too sculpted, too broody characters to pair with any variety of female main character. I understand the motivation, it makes sense to me, which is probably why I had the idea for this article after walking through Target’s book selection and finding at least 5 covers with startlingly similar looking men on them. It’s an interesting phenomenon, especially given its success and ability to regenerate its own new iterations when one BookTok bestseller goes stale. From here, I wonder who the next fanfic to Goodreads darling will be.