Alchemised: The Fanfic Of It All
I read Alchemised partially because I’m sort of academically fascinated by the fanfic-to-published pipeline, and especially in this case, where it’s not entirely an AU. Like, it’s one thing to take your Stucky hockey AU and change the names to turn it into Game Changer, but another entirely to take your post-Order of the Phoenix Voldemort-wins Dramione whumpfic and backfill worldbuilding/character building.
So let’s talk about it!
I’m assuming you’ve read the regular blog post and therefore are aware of the plot points I’m going to be discussing.
For background, Alchemised began its life as a Harry Potter fanfic called Manacled. As I mentioned above, it diverges from canon after Order of the Phoenix, and gets pretty dark. As someone who used to be a fan of Harry Potter (before Rowling took a hard dive into transphobia) and has read a lot of fic, Harry Potter and non, in my time, I do feel like something of an expert when it comes to this.
In the general:
I think a lot of the weirdness about the book make a lot more sense in the context that it began as a fic. Fanfic doesn’t need to obey the same rules about pacing that you would expect from published works. Furthermore, you only need to fill in the details about the differences since the canon divergence, which explains I think why the worldbuilding feels so haphazard early in the novel.
How did the author do in terms of backfilling? In my opinion, they did okay from a worldbuilding perspective. It is explained to the reader in a haphazard way, but I think it has decent bones. I actually like the necromancy stuff, I think it works while being something distinctly different. It gives the book a specific horror-adjacent vibe that I was kind of into, though I think the gore is a bit over the top. The alchemy stuff is a little less developed, it feels more like an afterthought.
Character-wise, I don’t think they did a great job. Like I said in the main review, none of the characters feel fully realized with the potential exception of Helena and Kaine, but even then, I would have liked a lot more interiority from Helena. There are times where it barely feels like she’s reacting to what’s happening around her; I don’t feel like I’m in her head in the way I’d like to be. In a fic, you can superimpose your existing understanding of the characters and their relationships and I bet this makes all of it easier.
The genre and tone also make more sense, in my opinion, with the fanfic context. A lot of this story, especially that gruelling first 25%, feel like whumpfic to me. Whump is a genre of fic in which a character is put through physically or psychologically painful situations, sometimes as a lead-in to comfort or sometimes just as exploration and processing for the writer. The focus is on the trauma and the suffering for cathartic purposes. It’s not really my genre, but I think this book makes a lot more sense as whump than as like, horror, or gothic romance, or any other genres that don’t quite fit.
The published book maintains some little tongue-in-cheek references to Harry Potter, and honestly, I think these are fine, even kind of fun. There’s a reference to that “what is right vs what is easy” line at one point, wherein necromancy is painted as the “easy” option, and Helena kind of just rolls her eyes. Soren and Lila’s mother (Mrs Weasley) knits sweaters for people for Christmas I mean winter solstice.
In the specific:
So, I found a pdf of the fic, and I skimmed it, because I was curious how it compared. Here are my more specific translation thoughts.
Kaine Ferron is a much more sympathetic romantic lead than Draco Malfoy. One of the major changes from the fic is the absolute lack of distinction between Muggleborns and Purebloods. Helena is looked down on a little for being a foreigner, but it does not feel like it compares at all to getting slurs thrown at her. In the fic, where Kaine is distant, Malfoy is hateful.
In fact, a lot of Kaine’s character seems smoothed over. In the fic, Malfoy gleefully kills Kingsley Shacklebolt essentially for being mean to Hermione. While Kaine does some pretty horrific stuff, circumstantially it feels better for him to, say, put some children out of their misery so they don’t get tortured to death. I don’t know what it says about me that I at least did not find Kaine viscerally off-putting, but there you have it.
In addition to this, the history between them is changed. Whereas Hermione and Malfoy obviously have an existing dynamic and years of history, Helena barely knows anything about Kaine. They went to school together and were both top of their year, but they had zero meaningful interactions prior to the events of the book basically. Again, this has the impact of softening the enemies-to-lovers thing, but then I wonder, is this book doing some false advertising? Like, if you’re a hardcore Dramione fan, and you pick up this book because of it, will you be disappointed by it? I guess based on sales, no, but still.
Almost all of the moments I actually liked are not present in the fic, which is kind of interesting to me. Ron does not go down fighting so that Hermione can necromancy him; he just quietly dies at the end. Similarly, Harry and Hermione kind of reconcile after falling out, but it didn’t feel nearly as compelling as the equivalent scene in the book.
A small detail I just found a little funny: so the fic is also kind of A Handmaid’s Tale crossover, in that the “repopulation program” is much more of an important plot point, and it comes in way earlier. In fact, when she and the other Muggleborns are sent off to be bred by their new masters (blech), they are given exact replicas of the outfits from A Handmaid’s Tale (red dress and bonnet). Obviously the author liked this imagery enough to come up with a somewhat convoluted reason for Helena in the published book to always be wearing red dresses.
Omg also I have to mention that at the end of one fic chapter (after another agonizing argument about morality between Malfoy and Hermione) the author puts the Nietzsche “the abyss gazes back at you” quote into the author’s notes. I know cringe is dead but oh my god.
Basically the book does, to my reading, seem to be an improvement over the fic, partially because work clearly was put in to edit and distinguish it, but that almost makes its failings more confusing to me. Clearly the author has original and even interesting ideas, but in terms of character, at least, so little of that shines through.
Like, I didn’t mention the character of Shiseo at all in my recap, because I decided that he wasn’t important enough to mention. He’s from “the East” and he helps out Helena in her lab. Eventually we learn he’s the brother of the Eastern Emperor, and he uses this to become part of Morrough’s government, so that he can help Kaine from the inside. And then he dies off-screen and therefore none of it matters. In the fic, this role is played by Snape, and it’s a little more involved: while he still dies off-screen, we get some reference to him collecting evidence against Voldemort’s government that later gets publicized. Also I get to picture Alan Rickman and that’s always nice.
Anyway, I kind of feel like this whole storyline could have been cut from the book, or changed, but it feels like the author was too attached to pieces of it to do so. And yet it’s also not interesting at all; despite Shiseo trying to help Helena, I feel zero emotional attachment to their relationship or to him as a character. When he died off-screen I just rolled my eyes and moved along.
Lessons? Idk man, I guess my advice is that if you’re pulling from fanfic, maybe rip it apart a little more. Ask yourself if the characters really feel like people. Kill your darlings, then necromancy them into something better. Authors have been pulling from things they love for the entirety of human history, and still managed to write better than this.
I believe in you.