Every so often, a story comes along that takes the world by storm. A story becomes so ingrained in our collective imagination that it gets woven into the very fabric of our culture. It inspires fans to write. And sometimes, the products of that inspiration have meteoric trajectories of their own.
Fifty Shades of Grey follows an inexperienced young woman who enters an entangled love affair with a rich, older man of mystery who pulls her into a dark world beyond her imagination. Ring any bells? That’s Twilight. Ever wondered: what if Kylo Ren and Rey Skywalker from Star Wars were scientists who fell in love? You’re in luck. Ali Hazelwood thought of it first and published it as The Love Hypothesis. These are just a few in the increasingly common assembly line that transforms works that have been previously published on fanfiction websites into mass-market literature.
Naturally, the biggest story of the 21st century is no stranger to this. Following the release of its seven books and eight movies, Harry Potter became an unprecedented phenomenon that impacted people worldwide. Fans have written countless works that follow the beloved characters, some of which have garnered major followings of their own. All the Young Dudes, for example, explores the Marauders’ (Harry’s parents and their friends’) time at Hogwarts, and has 280,190 kudos on Archive of Our Own (AO3), a prominent fanfiction site, and a 4.77 star rating on Goodreads. However, All The Young Dudes and most other Harry Potter fanfics never leave the sites they’re posted on, or crucially, make a profit.
Alchemised by SenLinYu is doing both. The dark fantasy novel officially hit bookstores worldwide on Sept. 23, an achievement that would have been impossible if the author hadn’t read Harry Potter and asked two questions: What if Voldemort won? And, what if Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy fell in love? That’s the original premise for Manacled, the 77-chapter story SenLinYu began posting on AO3 in 2018. Now, the story has been reworked to erase traces of Hogwarts, Voldemort, Hermione or Draco, and instead features Helena Marino in Paladia, a war-torn world of necromancy. Bella Swan, meet Anastasia Steele — the connection persists.
The enormous release was listed among Penguin Random House’s Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2025 alongside the likes of Margaret Atwood (who it also pulls inspiration from), Dan Brown and Nicholas Sparks, and already includes a seven figure movie deal. For many, it's also raising the question of the ethics of this fanfiction to traditional publishing pipeline, which seems to be an issue of the blurry line between inspiration and appropriation.
We don’t exist in isolation and neither does our art, which means that intentionally or otherwise, all artists draw from others when they create. The world we live in, the media we consume and the people we talk to all influence our ideas and, in turn, our art. That’s why distinguishing a piece from its wells of inspiration is such a vital part of the artistic process; individuality is when art comes alive, when it becomes, instead of imitating.
And while there is definitely a degree of creativity and inventiveness in fanfiction, the practice is fundamentally built on the appropriation of another person’s art, and lives in a legal gray area. When SenLinYu wrote Manacled, they used the structures, characters and worldbuilding of the Harry Potter World, and explicitly manipulated intellectual property that belongs to JK Rowling. At that point, the work was freely accessible and didn’t turn a profit, so it could fly under the radar without raising ethical red flags. That’s no longer true.
The market-ready Alchemised has been sanitized of obvious connections to Harry Potter, technically making it legal to sell, but the point still stands: what does it mean when a story only exists because its literary elements were created by an entirely different person first?
Victoria Aveyard, New York Times best-selling author of the Red Queen Series, weighed in on the issue. Aveyard comments that the current standing of this process that aims to “reskin” and sell work “derived from another artist’s creation” in the mass market, makes her “uncomfortable,” and proposes a possible solution to the iffy ethics of the issue other than attempting to remove all traces of the original author: “credit, compensation, and consent.”
Currently, no such guidelines exist. Readers who pick up Alchemised at their local bookstore may be unaware of the book’s connection to Rowling’s series and might attribute all of it to SenLinYu. Yes, the plot follows an alternate reality that Rowling never explores and includes innovative elements, but ultimately, Alchemised is built on a foundation that its author did not construct and profits off another person’s audience in doing so. The book attempts to present itself as a completely original work, but the traditional publishing deal likely wouldn’t exist without the Harry Potter fandom that popularized Manacled in the first place, so by extension Alchemised wouldn’t exist without JK Rowling.
See the conundrum? The fanfiction to traditional publishing pipeline is starting to look a lot like plagiarism’s younger cousin.
Unfortunately, this is an entirely modern issue that is unfolding before our very eyes, which means it’s still a work in progress. While some might argue that books like Alchemised err on the side of inspiration, not appropriation, others like Aveyard are highlighting the ethical problems of masking original creators’ roles in these stories’ geneses.
Is legality the only standard we should hold artists to? How should we, as readers, judge the integrity of a work of fiction? What does inspiration look like in the internet era?
These are all questions that might remain unanswered for a long time, but the important thing is that we continue to ask them. It might be the only way to ensure we can sustain an environment in which powerful stories can continue to change the world.
Rafaella Gonzalez is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at rgonzalez@cornellsun.com.
