![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
On Manacled
Nov. 16th, 2025 09:12 pmI went to a bookstore today, with a friend visiting from afar (who knows I read fanfiction but not that I write Dramione), and of course, Alchemised was on the shelves.
This friend proceeds to tell me about it: it's a Harry Potter fanfiction, they say, where Hermione is placed into a breeding programme and then proceeds to make Draco switch to the good side after she gets pregnant through rape. It's gruesome, they said. Horrific.
Reader, I bit my tongue.
This friend has good reason to hate Harry Potter - they are trans and non-binary, in a homophobic, transphobic place. And I hear (secondhand - I have only read Manacled, not Alchemised) that accusations of excessive gore are not unfounded.
But that's not Manacled! It's not!
Aside from the fact that I think one can create fannish content about media they're not a fan of, or media they take issue with -- or take issue with the creator of -- it's just simply not true.
Manacled is -- and I know for a fact SLY said this herself, at some point -- first and foremost about war. It's about the cost of war, the toll that it takes on people behind the scenes, about the small solaces we manage to find in a hopeless world. It's about hope, and resilience, and survival.
I know that it was just an offhand comment. I know that it was probably just something heard through a grapevine, and that it has no bearing on the Dramione community as a whole.
But it irked me.
This friend proceeds to tell me about it: it's a Harry Potter fanfiction, they say, where Hermione is placed into a breeding programme and then proceeds to make Draco switch to the good side after she gets pregnant through rape. It's gruesome, they said. Horrific.
Reader, I bit my tongue.
This friend has good reason to hate Harry Potter - they are trans and non-binary, in a homophobic, transphobic place. And I hear (secondhand - I have only read Manacled, not Alchemised) that accusations of excessive gore are not unfounded.
But that's not Manacled! It's not!
Aside from the fact that I think one can create fannish content about media they're not a fan of, or media they take issue with -- or take issue with the creator of -- it's just simply not true.
Manacled is -- and I know for a fact SLY said this herself, at some point -- first and foremost about war. It's about the cost of war, the toll that it takes on people behind the scenes, about the small solaces we manage to find in a hopeless world. It's about hope, and resilience, and survival.
I know that it was just an offhand comment. I know that it was probably just something heard through a grapevine, and that it has no bearing on the Dramione community as a whole.
But it irked me.
