“Deepfakes of living performers without consent are a violation of publicity rights in at least 24 U.S. states,” says intellectual property lawyer Miriam Hodge. “Fan-Topia advocates will cry ‘fair use’ and ‘transformative work,’ but replacing an entire performance—the literal sweat and motion of one artist with the likeness of another—is not parody. It is digital identity theft.”
In the golden age of geek culture, the concept of “canon” has become increasingly fluid. We live in what scholars and super-fans alike have begun calling —a boundless, decentralized universe where intellectual property is no longer owned by studios but co-created by the audience. In Fan-Topia, every frame of film is raw clay; every actor’s face is a mask waiting to be swapped; every alternate casting choice is a doorway into a parallel edit of reality. Fan-Topia.Mondomonger.Deepfakes.Karen.Gillan.as...
Mondomonger’s response: “Then sue me. I’m a ghost in the machine. You can’t delete the multiverse.” Perhaps the most melancholic aspect of the “Mondomonger x Karen Gillan” phenomenon is that Gillan has already played a version of this story. In the 2021 sci-fi drama Dual , she stars as a woman forced to fight her own synthetic clone. The film’s climax hinges on the horror of being replaced by a perfect copy—one that the world prefers. “Deepfakes of living performers without consent are a
Moreover, Gillan represents the almost-cast . Rumor has it she auditioned for Captain Marvel, for Lara Croft, for the new Star Wars lead. Mondomonger’s deepfakes serve as a “visual rebuttal” to casting directors who passed her over. In one video, titled “Karen Gillan as Elizabeth Swan” , the algorithm redubs Keira Knightley’s lines with a Scottish lilt. It is brilliant. It is also unsettling. The timing of Mondomonger’s rise coincides with Hollywood’s most aggressive crackdown on AI. The 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike explicitly won protections against digital replicas without “informed consent and compensation.” Yet those rules govern studios, not individual fans in their basements. It is digital identity theft