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Why Tristian is Rory’s real Endgame.

We’ve already established that this blog is pro-Dramione. I think this provides the necessary background to why Trory holds the only key to my heart for the Gilmore Girls fandom. In many ways, Tristan Dugray and Draco are really similar. Blonde. Misunderstood. Bad boys. And I know that everyone hates on him, but wake up and smell the roses #TeamJess, Tristan was the original Jess before he had to leave for One Tree Hill. So, basically, if you’re hating on Tristan your hating on Jess. Logic. Now we just need a new revival with Chad Murray. Rory needs someone witty, someone she can basically start over with. Think Logan and Jess, mutant baby. YES.

P.S. I also love Tristan with literally all of my heart.

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Dramione Fanfiction

I’m pretty sure everybody knows about this one, but I can never emphasize enough how good Isolation is. It’s long, yes, but definitely a heart wrenching read.

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What if the whole Harry Potter series was a figment of Harry’s imagination that he made up to help himself through his rough childhood?

Dumbledore says something along the lines of “Just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean it’s not real.” Was Dumbledore on to something?

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[courageous-raven]

The Argument for Dramione Part III: The Story Isn’t Always All Of It

Whenever you aren’t with a friend or a best friend, do you always know exactly what’s going on? Do you always know what they’re doing at any given second? I for one, do not. And unless you are a super secret James Bond type spy, you might not always know when someone’s lying to you either.

This brings us to the topic of Part III. Why you cannot trust anything that happens in literature.

Ok ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic. Let me explain a little more. The Harry Potter series is written as a limited third person piece of literature. This means that while the book does use the he, she, they pronouns it is still told from the knowledge of a single person. And throughout the Harry Potter series, Harry is a kid. He doesn’t know or fully understands everything that’s going on, especially earlier in the series.

No one ever knows the whole truth. It’s a fact of human society.

This brings us to the problem with the credibility of the narrator. As the reader, you don’t know who lied to him or what his point of views, ideas, and perspectives changed. One of the big things that this might have affected was the Dursleys. Harry Potter never knew any other family except for his Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin. When they were mean to him, who knows what else that changed in Harry’s view of them.

This is also one of the reasons that Draco may have come off worse than he actually was. Draco had many things that Harry didn’t when he was growing up. Parents that loved him unconditionally, money at his disposal, someone who was expecting things of him. And at the top of the list, power. It’s entirely possible that Draco was skewed in the books by Harry’s jealousy.

Another note, if you’re the best friend of The Boy Who Lived and you were in cahoots with the boy he hated, would you tell The Chosen One? Hermione, for one, probably wouldn’t. She’s an extremely smart cookie. Basically, all I’m saying is there’s nothing to say that there wasn’t not anything going on between the Slytherin and the Gryffindor. That’s a mind twister.

The books were called “Harry Potter” for a reason. They were about Harry Potter. But in an epilogue, Harry Potter isn’t the only one that needs an ending. So if the epilogue was more along the lines of this...

“Hermione was double checking Scorpius’ bag, making sure he had all the things that she insisted he needed. Scorpius was looking around bored and Draco wrapped an arm lovingly around his wife’s waist. She was starting to show, her baby bump just starting to poke out under her cream sweater. Pregnancy left Hermione in a constant state of cold, which Draco always aided with warm blankets and cuddles. ‘Love, he has everything he could possibly need.’ Draco whispered into her ear. Hermione smiled and lowered the bag. Scorpius grabbed it. Hermione cooed one last time at Circinus, the large Blakiston's Fish Owl and arguably the rarest owl in the world. Draco had insisted in nothing but the best for his son. ‘Have fun Cor. And send us a letter every once and a while.’ Draco called as his son who was boarding the train. He gave a last wave to his parents before disappearing onto the Hogwarts Express. Hermione rested a head on Draco’s shoulder before waving to Harry...”

Can you imagine people’s reactions?! Everyone would have had whiplash so bad even the people who lived under a rock without Harry Potter would have felt it. This is because there was no point in which explaining how Hermione and Draco got together after the war would have made sense. It wasn’t about them. So, naturally, it made more sense to pair Hermione with the person the reader knew best besides Harry. (Because Harry had to officially become part of the family that he had been apart of since the beginning: The Weasleys)

I could write as many parts as I wanted about the evidence behind why Dramione would work, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Part of the fun of books is the creative freedom that comes with the What Ifs. Everyone is entitled to their own ships and opinions. Mine is that Dramione would totally work out and be the best romance story of the century. But that’s just me.

(But think about how much better it would have been with that ending...)

[courageous-raven]

And even in a time of darkness, there was light.

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The Argument for Dramione Part II: The Thing About Ships and “The End”s

So, say you are walking down the street. You get to the corner. A big “THE END” flashes across the screen. Do you melt out of existence? Does your walk to Starbucks story end there? What’s to say you don’t fall off the curb, sprain your ankle and have to go in a crazy expensive ambulance because a Russian lady didn’t understand you saying that she didn’t need to call 911? Not only have you changed- your ankle is the size of a teenage grapefruit, but you have gained new knowledge and experience and now you’ll never trust an old Russian lady again. You’ll have tons of hospital bills too. This all happened because your story keeps going and didn’t end at the corner of 34th and Atlantic.

My point? If your story doesn’t end there, why should Hermione’s? Or Ron’s or Draco’s or Harry’s or any character in literature ever? Life will keep going, even after the author stops writing. The characters will change and evolve because that’s what people do. The way they are at the end of the book isn’t necessarily how they would be ten years from that point in their life.

This idea of people constantly changing even after the last page is also means that what they need out of a relationship and what they can put into one changes and fluctuates. This is where people get different opinions about what characters are most compatible.

Hermione and Ron may have been the perfect couple while they were at Hogwarts. 97% compatibility rate on one of those compatibility testers you download from the deep tween part of the app store. Twenty kids in the future or whatever. But would it stay true after Hogwarts and after the war?

How much a character changes though, does depend. It depends on internal and external environmental factors. This is especially true for the Harry Potter series because the Harry Potter series isn’t really a children’s fantasy series.

The Harry Potter series is a brutal war story about the effects of power and fear.

Ok so, J. K. Rowling stopped writing. She typed the epilogue up and sent it off to the editor. So what?

One of the things that aren’t really touched on during the books is the aftermath of the war. I’m not talking about what jobs the three decide to choose, because really they could have chosen anything. War is an ancient and brutal part of human history and nature and it has an effect on people. Aside from physical effects, veterans experience anxiety, PTSD, and depression- to list a few.

Another thing? Most of the characters were kids. So, Hermione in the books isn’t necessarily the Hermione that adult Hermione would be after the war. Hermione took the memory of her existence away from her loving parents. She had to live in a tent on the run. And then, in the end? She had to fight the very people she was so proud to be. She had to watch the people that had treated an eleven year old girl who had never felt like she belonged as instant family, die.

This is from where people go into different directions because their opinion of what she would be like and what she would need after the war differs. Personally, I think that what happened would greatly affect her. She would become more independent and withdraw into herself. She would be afraid of getting hurt again or hurting again. Her trust levels would almost be nonexistent. She wouldn’t ask for help, even when she needed it. She would feel guilty. Deep down, she might have wished to go back to the first time she was boarding the Hogwarts Express when things were simpler.

This is where Romione seems faulty to me. Ron needs someone who is as dependent on him as he is on them. Hermione couldn’t be that person for him. This is their downfall. Ron likes to feel needed. Hermione just doesn’t need him. But that’s just me. You might think otherwise.

Draco went through a lot during the war (see Part 1). In my opinion, Draco would look for something that doesn’t need him to be perfect. Someone who he can go to when the nights get cold but that he doesn’t have to stress about finding the perfect diamond for on Valentine’s Day. He needs someone that’s just as jagged and ruff on the edges as he always felt. Because, the real question is, what if their torn edges line up?

Basically, people don’t stay together just because that’s where they were during the epilogue. People change. The end won’t be the end. So next time a movie or book ends, where would you go from there?

Look out for Part III: The Story Isn’t Always All Of It

[courageous-raven]

The Argument for Dramione Part I: Grey Characters

When I told my friends that I ship Dramione, I was nearly disowned. To them, Draco was the “bad” guy. But Draco isn’t a “bad” guy. Here’s why.

Growing up, many of us are told fairytales, or stories that include a good and a bad guy. And it makes sense why we would be told these stories. For people, especially for younger ones, the idea of every character either being distinctly good or bad is easier to understand, comprehend and accept. The analogy I like to use is “white” for good characters and “black” for bad characters (this has nothing to do with race). If you ever hear the saying “in black and white” when referring to someone’s view of something, this is kind of like that. But I digress.

This form of categorizing into good and bad is basically a form of stereotyping. It’s easy to pass over the surface of a character or person, not thinking about the deeper parts of one’s personality, soul and mind. It’s easy to judge someone by their apparent morals. It just is. That’s why so many people do it, and that’s why so many people do it with our boy Draco.

But in my opinion, Draco, and many, many others in literature are neither white or black. They are grey characters. Before we get to Draco, let’s look at Draco’s mother dearest.

Narcissa Malfoy is a wonderful character to dissect for this. Her husband was one of Voldemort's closest and she can appear to be cold, hard and of having the same views as her husband. But when faced with a decision that puts Harry’s life in the balance, she picks the unexpected one. She lied to the very people she had pledged her loyalty to, changing the course of one of the greatest wars in Wizarding History. Why?

Narcissa, like so, so, so many morally questionable characters, was driven by fear. It was fear that ultimately made her become a death eater. She was fearful for her family that if she didn’t pledge her loyalty that they would be killed. She loved her family so much she put them above everything else. She made an unbreakable vow with Snape to help keep her son alive. She was so driven by the fear of losing her family, more specifically her son, that she went through all the lengths just to protect him as much as she could.

This idea of fear is what usually makes a character grey. As soon as us, as readers, learns more about a black character, it's like looking at a building from a different angle. If you go from looking at a building from above to looking at a building from the side, you can see the lights of all the rooms inside for the first time. All of the rooms have a purpose and an affect on the building’s use and purpose. It’s after we learn about all these rooms that we realize that this character isn’t a bad guy. This character is fighting their own battles and challenges. Now, this is sometimes no excuse, but it becomes easier to understand why the character is the way they are. And sometimes, why the character changes.

Now, let’s apply this to Draco. Draco was the only child of a very proud, prestigious, righteous line. He grew up always being told the right from the wrong. There was always this immense amount of pressure, even when he was eleven. In his childhood years, Draco wasn’t exposed to much diversity. So when he came to Hogwarts, he followed what he knew he had to do to make his father proud. He had such high expectations that he didn’t see any other way. He only saw what his father would approve of and what was wrong. He was driven by the fear of disappointing his father, his family, and being a failure.

Sirius Black explained this all perfectly. He told Harry that “...the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part of we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

Sonder. I recently learned of this beautiful word. The definition of sonder is along the lines of the realization you get when you realize each passerby has a life of their own. This is similar to what happens when you learn more about certain characters. So, before you call a character evil or brutal or nefarious, ask yourself what you would do in their situation. How different is it from their actions?

So next time you’re reading a book or watching a movie, think about why the apparent bad guys may be the way they are. It is likely that there you will find many answers to the questions you didn’t know you had.

The answer to the question “Is Draco a bad guy?” will be different for everyone. Everyone views shades of black and white differently. And that’s part of the beauty behind literature and grey characters. And the truth is, we’re all a little grey.

(There is no argument to make for Umbridge: The real villain of the Harry Potter series.)

In Part II: The Thing About Ships and “The End”s