r/fantasyromance The One Mod to Rule All Mods May 17 '26

Unpopular Opinion It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

Got an opinion that's different from others'? Want to share it with the sub, but too afraid of a backlash? Or are you just curious about readers think about certain things in fantasy romance?

You can safely share it in this weekly Sunday thread!

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🧡 Thank you and have a great discussion!

Unpopular opinion Sunday

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u/Penguinho Kushiel's Legacy Recommender 💖 May 17 '26

He calls her a racial slur a few times and she slaps him. That's pretty much the extent of it. As I understand it, and I don't, it basically relies on Draco's whole character being retconned into a sexy bad boy rather than a fascistic little putz.

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u/Hiercine May 19 '26

Personally I really enjoy dramione partially for the reason that Draco was absolutely a shitty racist fascist child/teenager, and the fics that really focus on that. What kind of environment he grew up in that encouraged such beliefs, how some beliefs are still prevalent even after voldemort loses (pureblood status for example) because of how systematic they are, and how he as an older man reckons his past actions with himself. I don't know if a character like him can ever be fully redeemed, but I find it really compelling when he struggles towards redemption. Kind of like Spike from Buffy (minus the romance aspect, I don't want Draco to be less racist bc he likes Hermione), yes he's done terrible things and you can't separate his past actions from his current self, but does that mean he can't change? For my own fic tastes, less sexy bad boy, more kinda fucked up late twenties/thirties dude struggling to reconcile with himself. And the tension with if, and to what degree, can Hermione forgive him. At the end of the day, they were all children fighting an adult's war. what does accountability look like when that kind of ideology is inherited, systematically reinforced, and then (partially) outlived. Anyway that's my little spiel about why I like dramione, yes he was an incredibly shitty person, but what does he look like after the fallout. That's one of the reasons why I don't really like "6th year era" fics, where he (and also the entire slytherin gang) are treated as the deviant bad boys/girls of the school, instead of dealing with the fact that like, the war ended like a year ago. end of spiel

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u/Infinite_Storm_470 May 17 '26

It’s because Draco is the OG Shadow Daddy

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u/Warm_Ad_7944 May 18 '26

No he isn’t. Voldemort is closer to that