1M+ Sales & Movie: Leftist Malfoid is About Force Breeding Hermione Due to Demographic Collapse

While our circles have been going hard on Malfoid fanfiction, progressive women have been having Malfoy fantasies of their own. Let’s just say they’re weirder—so weird we can’t resist but dive deeper and pull you down this debauched rabbit hole with us.

We therefore invite you to join us today on Based Camp for a peek into the viral hit that is Alchemissed, a dark romantasy (or is it dark fantasy???) book that’s taking the female romantasy-reading world by storm and already being turned into a movie. It’s based on Manacled, a Harry Potter “dramione” fan fiction (a subset of Harry Potter fan fiction in which Draco and Hermione are paired) involving… well, let’s just say is kind of a version of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tail with plenty of nonconsensual you-know-what forced by followers of you-know-who that packs in necromancy, cannibalism, and plenty of other forms of gore, just for good measure.

We explore the book’s enthusiastic fan response as well as the uncomfortable tension readers feel between their concept of romance and the dark realities that turn many of them on (not to mention the horror some Alchimissed readers experience upon realizing they purchased a book that was based on a Harry Potter fanfiction when, in these circles, JK Rowling = Bad Person for her status of TERF Queen).

Show Notes

Wrote E;R on X: “I’ve just learnt, while the boys are reading Malfoid rn, the girls were reading fanfic about Draco graping a mindwiped Hermione in a Handmaid’s Tale repopulation program and it was republished as a legally distinct dark romantasy called “Alchemised” that sold over a mil last year”

Truly great responses ensued.

But it’s actually worse than what ER said; here’s a Hollywood Reporter headline from September 10th: Big Deal: Legendary Pays 7 Figures for ‘Alchemised,’ Book That Began Life as ‘Harry Potter’ Fan Fiction (Exclusive)

Google Alchemissed and you’ll get the following AI overview:

“Overview and Plot

• Premise: Set in the war-torn city-state of Paladia, the story follows former alchemist and healer Helena Marino. Awakening with two missing years of memory after a lost war, she is imprisoned on a crumbling estate and sent to the High Reeve, Kaine Ferron—a powerful, ruthless necromancer and former academic rival—while navigating a brutal Repopulation Programme under the High Necromancer, Morrough.

• Length & Structure: The massive, 1,000+ page book is divided into a non-linear three-part narrative focused on trauma, memory, and systemic oppression.

Genre and Tone

• Dark Fantasy vs. Romantasy: While marketed and shelved by many readers alongside romantic fantasy due to its underlying emotional core and central relationship, the author, fans, and various critics emphasize that it is a harrowing, low-spice dark fantasy rather than a traditional romance.

• Content Warning: The novel deals with extremely dark themes, heavy psychological distress, and war trauma, carrying extensive trigger warnings.”

Reviews

Both the good AND bad reviews are entertaining

Some peeks at Goodreads, where it has 387,253 ratings and 69,345 reviews (I’m only including excerpts from much longer reviews)

Some choice quotes from fan reviews:

* Ana writes: “♾️ nothing will ever compare…”

* Marianna Moore writes: “Infinity stars. Nobody talk to me for like 8-10 business months. I’m in severe emotional pain. Without out a doubt one of the best books I’ve ever read. God tier. Perfection. Nothing will ever compare but my god did it HURT. I have so many thoughts I cannot put into words right now.”

* I found the trigger warnings from Angie’s five-star review (with 7,921 followers) to be particularly amusing: “Trigger Warnings: wartime violence, religious abuse, depictions of complex trauma, suicidal ideation, self-harm, PTSD, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism, s3xual assault, r4pe, and allusion to necrophilia.”

Negative Reviews

The top complaints are

(1) bad writing,

(2) how dare you do anything related to Harry Potter written by Bad Woman JK Rowling and

(3) being angry that trigger-warning-inducing subjects are actually a feature and not a bug in this incredibly popular romance novel.

Even fans of the book admit the writing is bad.

* In her four-star review, Emily May writes: “I have a lot of thoughts about this, the first being: for goodness sake, get an editor in here. Nothing needs to be this long. The second thought being: damn it, though, this was pretty good.”

Writes Em: “DNF: This has the most egregious grammatical errors I have ever seen in a Del Ray, Random House published book. The prose structure is shockingly poor.”

Writes emma: “read this in the same way nellie bly admitted herself to the asylum.”

It’s a long review, but she later continues with:

“i don’t read dark romance. i don’t like romantasy. i am a harry potter hater and when the protagonist in the book FANGIRL defends her right to submit knockoff hogwarts fanfiction to a TEACHER in a CLASS it makes me cringe so hard it could convert coal into diamonds.

this is possibly the final boss of my reading career.

this book has EVERYTHING, and by everything i mean every trigger warning. off the top of my head: violence, torture, sexual assault, necrophilia, execution, kidnapping, abuse, death, suicidal ideation, roofies, self-harm, forced pregnancy, war, racism, cannibalism, misogyny.

it throws every edgy and dark subject a hot topic-shopping seventh grader could think of at you in the hopes you won’t notice it’s strung together with info dumps, cardboard cutout characters, and a dream.

it moves from one violent seizure to the next physical attack to the next kys attempt at breakneck speed, so maybe you won’t figure out that even a copyeditor couldn’t make it through this book.

or i guess we might have needed to read about helena being covered in dried blood every other page for three straight chapters.”

Writes Noelia: “I was today years old when I found out that this was actually the trad-published version of a very popular Dramione fanfiction (apparently, Dramione fics have become a thing since my long-gone days as a hardcore Potterhead of the first dawn).

But I was even more today years old when I learned about its controversies, mainly due to the presence of sexual assault scenes and its very problematic takes about it (I’ll come back to this later on, I promise).”

She proceeds to write:

“I wasn’t aware back then that I was setting myself up for the most traumatizing, discomforting and twisted story I’ve ever experienced as a reader.

But also, and without a question, one of the poorest written and edited ones, making it the worst book I’ve read in my life, by MILES.”

Sreegita: “EDIT : AS A SA VICTIM MYSELF, CAN Y’ALL PLS GET OFF MY ASS?

how beautiful to see a fic where draco r@pes hermione is getting trad published meanwhile everyday actually talented bipoc and qpoc authors are struggling to get even a deal

loveeeee to see r@pe fantasy books dominating the romance space!!!”

Fan Response

The fan response is unbelievable. You could scroll for ages on Tiktok going through it.

There’s AI-generated fan art:

Plus the reactions are top tier:

Heated Debate

Genre Quibbles