Alchemised, Fandom and She Who Must Not Be Named
*Disclaimer: My hope is that this can be a safe space for nuanced discussion regarding the HP fanfic to trad pub pipeline.
The past two weeks have been filled with endless discourse, ad nauseam, about three Harry Potter fanfics that have been traditionally published this year. Most recently, Alchemised by SenLinYu has been staring down the barrel of a gun, but apparently Russian roulette is my favorite form of self-immolation. Why not step into the crossfire?
The book itself states—“Alchemised is a work of dark fantasy containing wartime violence, religious abuse, depictions of complex trauma, suicidal ideation, self-harm, human experimentation, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism, sexual assault, rape, and allusions to necrophilia. Please remember that depiction is not authorial endorsement.”
Yet the only thing I constantly see are people claiming this book glorifies rape culture and torture. I hate that we’ve gotten to a point where the omission of anything not explicitly stated is treated as an admission of guilt, instead of trusting subtext. While I disagree with the arguments that Alchemised glorifies rape, they truly have nothing to do with the actual conversation, which at its heart is about whether or not this book has a right to exist.
Since 2020, there has been an annoying trend where people in affected communities misdirect their justified anger towards people within their own communities, even weaponizing their identities to drive home a point. I find this disingenuous and tedious. In an unrelated discourse, I had someone tell me I’m not black enough (literally) because I read authors like Rebecca Ross, Carissa Brodbendt and Travis Baldree. Are we in grade school again? What’s your next insult going to be, calling me an Oreo? If anything being accused of not being “black enough” is the most black thing that can happen to you, but I digress. This type of weaponization only pushes away the people who might agree with you or are, at the very least, be willing to engage in conversation about how they might be in the wrong. I know it’s complicated since Rowling is still alive and actively causing harm, but it feels like we’re being held to an impossible standard of purity no one can meet.
Harry Potter is a global phenomenon that has made Rowling a billionaire three times over. If anything, we should boycott the companies that bankroll her — I’m looking at you HBO, HBO Max, Max, Max Plus Pro…whatever. My point is, HP is a huge franchise and anyone that is going to be drawn to the IP, if they aren’t already, will not be looking to SenLinYu (SLY) for the go-ahead.
SenLinYu has repeatedly shown us through her actions, her social media posts and interviews that she’s done everything possible to distance herself from the HP IP. Now I’ve heard the argument that if she truly wanted to distance herself, why didn’t she change her AO3 pen name? I can’t speak to why someone would or wouldn’t want to change the name they feel most comfortable with, but I guarantee you when she first got signed the publishers brought the possibility of changing her name up. I’m not going to speculate on the reasons why SLY decided to keep it, but in the grand scheme of things being internet “famous” on a fanfic website is not even the tiniest sprinkle in the global bucket.
Now, do I think that if you knew about SLY’s author origins you could divorce the knowledge of Alchemised being Harry Potter fan fiction from your mind? No.
Do I think that if you decided to read Alchemised not knowing its origins, but then someone told you it used to be Harry Potter fan fiction that you could divorce its origins from the current story? Possibly. Still, that’s still such a small percentage of people who would know that fact. A majority of readers who decide to pick up Alchemised will not know it was once a Harry Potter fanfic.
Do I think you can consume Alchemised and have the story stand on its own if you did not know its origins? Yes. Someone would have to deliberately go out of their way to tell you, but aren’t we supposed to be boycotting Rowling and not intentionally drawing attention to her? Personally, I thought she was persona non grata since 2019. So why are trying to connect SenLinYu, a biracial, non-binary, queer identifying person whose parents are immigrants who survived in actual concentration camps, to Rowling?
SenLinYu has clearly done the work to make Alchemised stand on its own. She even posted a stack of books that fueled her research for the magic system and history in the story. At the start of reading Alchemised, I found myself—subconsciously or intentionally—trying to connect the characters of Manacled to Alchemised. Roughly towards the end of part one, I realized I no longer cared because the story was truly its own, taking all of the parts that made it great in the first place and polishing off other parts that were reworked for the better. Its unfortunate this is what we’re deciding to talk about instead of the parallels of what’s happening in our current reality to the themes in the book.
Trust me, I understand the harm Rowling is actively and currently causing to the trans community. She uses her money to impact legislation and spew vitriol at these fragile communities online, which has real world ramifications people in these communities experience. It’s uncomfortable. It’s scary. I know, which is why I view supporting SLY as an act of resistance. It’s clear to me that SenLinYu has worked to distance the her story from HP. She publicly and loudly rejects Rowlings rhetoric and donates her money to pro-trans charities. How much more does she have to give to satisfy your blood lust? It really is a double-edged sword. Either she didn’t publish and has supposed “fans” of her work sell unauthorized print copies of her story for profit or she traditionally publishes and has an angry mob chase her for eternity with pitchforks and rope. She can’t win. Or maybe you simply don’t want her to.
While I am an occasional fanfic reader, I have never been in the HP fanfic space. Manacled was my first foray into that world. To my understanding, it’s become a safe place for HP lovers to commiserate their love for the story without engaging with She Who Must Not Be Named. It’s one of the reasons why Rowling hates HP fanfic it so much. That and the fact most HP fic writers are queer identifying and from marginalized groups. It’s a celebration of identity, freedom of expression. It keeps the love of the story alive and best of all it gives Rowling nothing. In the case of Alchemised, outside of the correlation of the main characters being rivals on opposite sides of the proverbial good vs evil tropes or having a few run of the mill character archetypes found in almost every fantasy book, I don’t see how Kaine and Helena are Draco and Hermione coded. Just because someone loves books and is really smart doesn’t mean they’re the same.
The other argument I’ve seen is that Alchemised is being pushed heavily as a HP fic and Dramione love story in the press, so SLY is not actively distancing herself like she claims. Alright, here’s where I’m gonna push back a little. If anyone can show me real marketing assets, from the publisher or SLY herself, that presents the book this way, my inbox is open. However, I get why people might be confused.
To the average consumer, you see a profile piece on SLY in The Guardian and think its being deliberately promoted that way. Coming from a public relations and marketing background, I know that editorially you have no control over what a journalist, their editor or the publication as a whole wants to do with your story. It’s the deal you make when an interview is secured. If what the journalist has written is not factually incorrect there is nothing you can do. Any journalist who is competent at their job will investigate everything about their subject and include it in their overall editorial, regardless if the subject brings it up as a selling point or not. I myself have given journalists talking points on a client and outlined topics that are off-limits only to have those very same off-limit talking points brought up in conversation later. A phone interview is easier to correct in the moment by gently interjecting and telling the interviewer to move on from a question. However, if its a podcast, on-camera interview or in front of an audience it’s harder to circumvent. Sure, I can ask the journalist to remove certain questions or anything surrounding the unwanted topic by calling and asking nicely, but then their editor can tell me to “fuck off” and run it anyways. Sometimes you can do everything right and still get screwed over, but we do the best we can with what we’re given in sometimes impossible situations.
I’m not going to punish a new author because a publication wants to write attention grabbing headlines with HP imagery for clicks, likes and shares. I can almost guarantee you they were giving preferred press assets the publishers wanted everyone to use, but the publication decided to use photos of Emma Watson anyways because Emma’s face is famous and gets clicks. SLY’s face does not. And as we all know, people barely read headlines as it is, so catchy attention grabbing photos will have to do. I’m not saying it doesn’t perpetuate harm, in this case harm to the SLY’s legacy and the trans community, but given the impossible situation we do the best that we can.
I read fanspiraling’s article on fandom and I want to share this here —
“Fandom draws power away from the canon center, through the transformation part of transformative works. The fan writer doesn’t create canon: they’re taking that canon work and reshaping it into a fic, a meta, a character study. If enough fandom readers appreciate that fic or meta or character study and share it, add to it, or rework it in new stories, canon starts to slip, or even vanish.”
At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves how much of this ends up being virtue signaling and how much of this actually advances trans rights? Alchemised is so far removed from Rowling and her anti-trans rhetoric. SenLinYu is not directly or outwardly supporting Rowling or her views. In fact, there has been evidence of the contrary. So, do you actually want to be community and educate people with opposing views as you or do you just want to be right?
If you don’t want to purchase the book with your own money because of your beliefs there are ways to ethically consume it. You can check Alchemised out from your local library, get it from a second-hand store or borrow from a friend. There are ways around it, but to have this strict black-or-white thinking whilst ignoring the nuance in the middle is going to isolate and alienate the very people you’re trying to educate. Personally, I believe supporting SLY instead of Rowling is a great way to uplift a talented new author and give a big middle finger to a bigot I used to idolize.
But you can decide that for yourself. You don’t need the internet to validate if you’re a good person or not because of the type of books you read. Only you can decide where you draw the line.