#i love you quintessentially unredeemable yet loved characters

[bionicallywriting]

Dramione & Reylo: Parallels

I'm always amazed at the first people to start shipping a relationship. Who are these creative geniuses? What did they see that nobody else saw? I, for one, never saw the possibility of Dramione until I started delving into the goodness that was the fanfics. Never imagined the possibility of a relationship that was the dream of a romance reader. The juxtaposition of the classic Romeo and Juliet conflict, but with more depth to it than two horny teenagers caught in the crux of a family feud they didn't really care about.

Hermione and Draco have history together--the type of history that binds them together just as surely as it forces them apart. They are possibly even more at odds with one another than Draco's and Harry's unfortunate first meeting, with even less background in common. They despise each other, with good reason. They're not drawn to each other just on the basis on anonymity, as with the older, more outdated, and substantially more simplistic Romeo and Juliet--there is a history of hatred and propaganda and bullying that goes beyond their own lifetime behind their relationship, and that's why their supposed would-be attraction is all the sweeter. Without this attraction to everything he is taught to hate, then the character of Draco is unredeemed, unexplored, unfinished.

Draco was the promised prince of the new wizarding world, the bright shining beacon that represented all the good things of the old world, with breeding and looks and money and intelligence. The fact that someone so privileged becomes the dark prince leaves so much area to be unexplored, so much more than Snape, who receives his redemption in canon.

(But note how Snape was also supposed to be an antihero archetype, thus the half blood PRINCE.)

I suspect that this relationship dynamic is exactly why so many Dramione shippers turn into Reylo shippers. In fact, if not for these fanfic artists and writers, I wouldn't have been able to see the appeal of Kylo Ren. Who was this whiny, angry, out of control brat who slashed out whenever something displeased him? He seemed more dangerous than Vader just on the basis of how unpredictable he was.

Kylo Ren is Draco Malfoy.

The shining scion of his world. The name that everyone knows. Deemed as spoiled, but bound by strictures more stringent than anyone truly spoiled could be. The privileged, talented prince from a background that set him on the path to become a hero, and when he couldn't live up to the promise of his background and name, the downward spiral into an unwilling villain, lured into the dark side, aided and abetted by the regrettable decisions of parents, and thus with the capacity to have a redemption arc as the antihero.

When I rewatched the Force Awakens and the Last Jedi (as well as read the novelizations for insight), it was to find that this was the quintessential love story background. This characterization is what draws people to Dramione, and I believe, what they managed to do so well for Reylo.

Without romance and love tied into the mix, Kylo Ren is unable to be the textured tapestry of the perfect antihero. He would simply be another whiny privileged brat who would be best rewarded for being an annoying emo by being kicked off the bridge of a ship.

The only way his character makes any sense, the constantly alluded power and potential--all of which were unseen on-screen--would be if all his actions and inexplicably mysterious one-liners were all for the love of one obscure rat from Jakku.

That's the only way he makes sense as a character, or lives up to the promise of a complex antihero.

His moodiness and rages. His prolonging the fight with Finn, who's supposedly nowhere near his equal. His drawing out the fight with Rey. His ineptitude in battle and command of military matters. None of this renders him in any way competent or even likable as a main character or even as the endgame villain--unless it were justified by an underlying romantic theme of loneliness, jealousy, and obsession.

There's always been something fascinating about the coming together of opposites. Black and white. Ice and fire. Earth and air. Ying and yang. There's something about being attracted to opposites that simply is dynamic, at least if it's fiction.

At the core of these two very similar OTPs is the heroine, and heroine they definitely are. They are, within the confines of their own tale, the makers of their own destiny, impetuous, moral, and feminine.

Make no mistake about it. Hermione was supposed to be feminine, despite all the extra words depicting her as unattractive. The fact that she was supposed to have a romance of her own and received a makeover of her own in GoF, as well as an international star who was infatuated with her, someone who then later vocally claims her as pretty--Hermione definitely was never meant to be a spinster friend.

As for being a heroine of her own tale, I sometimes wonder if the author felt she made a mistake not having Hermione as the protagonist, since she ended up being just as big a protagonist as Harry, what with her very compelling background and even becoming the one who is tortured on-page--there's surely not much more you can do to make someone the protagonist heroine than having her be captured and tortured in lieu of the hero.

Rey, also, similarly has the same scene--in her own battle against the villain in front of the male protagonist. Parallels.

And of course the most obvious would be their status in this world as the complete opposite of their antihero. Nonentity to Kylo's infamy. Muggleborn to Pureblood. Years of breeding to a complete freak of nature. Flowy white-ish attire to structured black armor. Jeans to suits. A spectrum of color versus black, the absence of color.

And yet. And yet. These two women have that something that makes them a match for their counterpart. The force. Intelligence and fierceness. Determination. Idealism. Willingness to sacrifice oneself.

For Draco to want Hermione simply makes sense, in a literary cosmic way, and a lot of writers must have sensed this.

This is the heroine & antihero redemption storyline, the Beauty and the Beast. This is probably why so many writers put these characters into a captive & captor role, of feminine defiance winning against the reluctant conqueror. Reylo is Dramione, the canon no one got. The similarities are the reason both are seen as a trash ship, unhealthy and unwise. Why would anyone fantasize about Draco/Kylo?

But as in Beauty and the Beast, this is the ultimate fairy tale, to find the prince instead of the monster you saw. It isn't just enough that you found the perfect man, but that you found an imperfect man who realized his own imperfections and wanted to change them. Because no one wants cardboard perfection and no one wants what's so easily attainable. What one cherishes is the ability for self-reflection and that diamond that's all the brighter when your hands were the ones to rub away the dross.