#I'm going to be honest and vulnerable here: I hate drarry as a ship name

[blorger]

Based on the discussion over the last couple of days, I feel like Drarry fandom has become very...dour? It seems people are bothered that not everyone on here wants angsty enemies to lovers stories all the time?

Draco's redemption is an important aspect of his character and has been brilliantly explored in hundreds, probably thousands of fics and I've read and enjoyed many of them. But, my god, sometimes I want to read something light or I don't have the time to invest in reading 50k+ words about how Harry is finally seeing Draco as more than just a Death Eater. Sometimes I want to see them just be together without the author feeling the need to insert a tangent about what a good boy Draco has been since the War and how he's totally changed now. I can infer that from the fact that Harry has chosen to be with him, he can tell the right sort for himself, you know?

It's as if we're not allowed to say we enjoy Draco as a character unless we explicitly put him through emotional and moral hell first. Also, I feel like by focusing so much on Draco's character arc, we tend to forget that Harry also has shit to work through, beyond needing to accept that he wants to bone Malfoy now.

This is not about calling anyone out, it's just a general trend I've been noticing with the fic and commentary that's been coming out lately. We can enjoy Drarry, but there always needs to be an asterisk to it, always. Have you noticed this or is it just me using the wrong filters/being in the wrong bubble/losing my mind?

I'm going to be honest with you here friend, I had no idea this was happening. I generally tend to stay away from, like, confrontational corners of the fandom (on account of I really don't have the constitution for it), but I know that sometimes these things have a way of reaching you even when you're not looking for them. For your peace of mind, I recommend maybe trying to curate your fandom experience to be less stressful to you because at the end of the day this is supposed to be fun. If you already are and it's not working, I'm fresh out of sage advice :(.

I do see the trend you've mentioned, I think it comes from attaching too many IRL things to a fictional world and adding complexities where there aren't, sometimes it enriches the fandom experience and sometimes it causes people to judge individual characters too harshly. I am but a passing ship in the turbulent waters of the marauders era fandom but it's something I especially notice there, with strictly segregated factions who each have very exacting parameters.

The problem with fandom squabbles like these is that no-one is wrong because we all are; we're all seeing things that aren't there in a series of books written by a terrible person; for all that we can share the joy of flipping the script on jkr, the fandom is never going to be totally unified because we're all making shit up as we go.

I also don't enjoy overly angsty fics where Draco has to martyr himself in order to be redeemed, because the Draco in my head doesn't need to do all that. The beauty (and curse) of a ship as big as Drarry is that there's multiple accepted interpretations of Harry, Draco and their relationship; hell, there's some fics where I feel like the author just slapped the names Harry and Draco on two OCs and called it a day but that just means said works weren't meant for me.

Curating our fandom experience as best as possible is really the only thing we as readers can do; one of the best strategies I've adapted is starting to exit out of fics the moment I realise they aren't working for me. I don't know how many fics I had to force myself to slog through because they are beloved classics, hoping I'd also see what everyone else is seeing, only to learn I should have trusted my instincts and abandoned ship. Ultimately I had to learn to stick with what works for me, even if it means there's significantly less fandom output I get to enjoy.

I honestly don't know if any this helped,

xoxo