NPR. A lot of us have first loves when it comes to pop culture. For Alia Piat, hers was Star Wars. She went to her first ever comic

convention in 2014, dressed up as Han Solo.

I had thrifted like a men's blazer and cut the sleeves off, and then I just like took an old pair of jeans and like some ribbon and sewed it on the side and then just added the stripes with markers.

That was the start of Aaliyia's journey as a cosplayer.

She's also been towed from Super Mario and Lieutenant Uhura from Star Trek.

She once sewed an entire Cinderella ball gown from scratch.

Let's just say Alia knows her way around a hot glue gun.

Every cosplayer, like, it'll be 3 a.m.

And you're crying and you're just hot

gluing elements on because you don't want to sew it anymore. Cosplayers are a huge part of

fan culture. You see people dressed up at movie theaters for big releases and at conventions like

Comic-Con. And often their costumes and accessories are so detailed that they look like

they stepped off to screen. But there can be a fine line between homage and intellectual property

theft. And corporations like Disney and DC tend to be very protective of their creations.

After all, there's billions of dollars tied up with licensing juggernauts like Star Wars.

And yet, Aaliyah has never been sued or told to stop. That's because of a long-standing

arrangement between companies and their cosplaying fans. This is the indicator from Planet Money.

I'm Darym Woods. And I'm Waylon Wong.

We're doing a special series this week about Hollywood.

Today on the show, the story of how Star Wars cosplayers and Lucasfilm found a kind of economic symbiosis and helps up the tone for how companies relate to their super fans.

The term cosplay came out of Japanese anime and manga communities in the 1980s.

And as you can probably guess, the word is a mash-up of costume and play.

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