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dramioneasks · 16 days

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hogwarts fics where all of draco’s friends know he likes hermione but draco doesn’t realize it yet

A Little Something New - GreenInk_RedLetters - T, 14 chapters - “Oh? You taking a pledge for my protection, Malfoy?” She teased. He was smirking and hell but it did something to her. “I believe… They call that a knight in shining armor.” He fingered his chin. “Got an opening, Granger?” After a string of bad dates and unexpected work issues, Hermione Granger doesn’t have time for her best friend’s request to set her up on a blind date. She’s done with men wasting her time and bleh having a total lack of ambition. Draco Malfoy doesn’t expect much out of life, and he certainly doesn’t expect the Golden Girl of all people to come barging into his life again. She hates him, doesn’t she? Or is it simply his best friend playing matchmaker again? Dramione story with a myriad of misunderstandings, a matchmaking Theo Nott, alcohol-induced dinner parties, and light-hearted banter.

Friendly Interference By: cleotheo - T, 5 Chapters - When Draco refuses to ask Hermione out his best friend, Blaise Zabini steps in and vows to bring the pair together. Will Blaise be successful in getting the couple together or will he ruin any chance they have of happiness with his interference? Short five part story.

Big Dick Energy by louiseob - E, 9 chapters - After months of successfully keeping Ginny Weasley away from happy hours with her coworkers, Hermione finally relents and allows her to tag along. Unfortunately, her crassest friend wants nothing more than to embarrass Hermione and (hopefully) get her and Draco sodding Malfoy into bed together one and for all.

mischief-makers (up to no good) - riddikulus_puff - T, one-shot - Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy had been a couple since the beginning of their eighth year at Hogwarts but spilt up pretty quickly after leaving school because of pathetic arguments between the two of them. But their group of friends had enough of their constant complaining about missing the other person. So, that was how Hermione and Draco ended up forced to go on a road trip to the beaches of Cornwall with Blaise Zabini, Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter and Theodore Nott, with Pansy Parkinson and Neville Longbottom also joining them. It was like the plot from a crappy romantic comedy that Hermione had absorbed in the early weeks of her breakup. But, their friends had a plan. Project get Dramione back together! A one-shot for the 2023 Year of the OTP Fic Fest

Blind Date by zarahjoyce - G, one-shot - Harry, Ron, and Pansy - three people stupid enough to set-up Draco Malfoy on a blind date with Hermione Granger. What could possibly go wrong?

Blue Blouse - Shanxnoir - E, 2 chapters - For fucks sake why did she have to wear that colour? Every week day was a different colour blouse, but Friday’s were different. Something about seeing her in that perfect periwinkle shirt had him coming undone.

Two Desks Apart - msmerlin - T, 6 chapters - Draco used routine to work through his emotional baggage post-war, using a strict set of rules to regulate his once out of control life. His parents and friends express concern over his stagnant life in the form of setting him up on blind dates in hopes of helping Draco find ‘the one’. Little did they all know, the witch who captured his heart had been just two desk apart from him for the past two years.

-Lisa

#anonymous #matchmaking #secret feelings

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aethon-recs · 1 year

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(Themed Rec List) 9 Omega Tom Riddle | Voldemort Fics

I recently damn near lost my mind after reading @cannibalinc's new Omega Tom Riddle fic, so it made me wonder how prevalent Omega Tom (or Voldemort) is in Tomarrymort... Pretty rare as it turns out! On AO3, the Alpha Tom Riddle (Alpha Voldemort) tag outpaces the Omega Tom Riddle (Omega Voldemort) tag by a factor of 7 to 1 for Tomarrymort fics 👀

Luckily, there’s been an amazing slate of Tomarrymort authors who’ve dipped their toes into this dynamic, so I was inspired to throw together an Omega Tom | Voldemort themed rec list.

The most interesting theme underlying many of these Omega Tom fics is how Tom manages to find ways to wield power in a world that denies him power, similar to how he overcomes his meagre circumstances in canon. Seeing Tom upend the typical power structures that we see in A/B/O dynamics and break the mould of "weak" Omega expectations results in a very authentic depiction of the manipulative and ruthless Tom (Voldemort) that we know and love 😊

Please mind all the tags and warnings on AO3 before reading — some of these fics contain quite dark subject matter, and this blog abides by the age-old fandom principle of don’t like; don’t read. As always, recs are in alphabetical order by title.

Tomarrymort Recs (Omega Tom Riddle | Voldemort)

A Matter of Perspective by lemonchase (E, 3k, WIP)

A PWP featuring a very practical Minister Riddle wanting to spend his heat with Auror Potter who is blessed with quite the generously-sized package. They have a very fun chemistry and banter, and seeing Harry sheepish about his god-given gifts is always a treat.

As It Begins by @duplicitywrites (T, 15k, WIP)

I never knew I needed an omegaverse Bridgerton AU in my life, but after reading this, I realized that I 1000% need an omegaverse Bridgerton AU in my life. It was fascinating to follow along as Tom so meticulously thinks through all the machinations and second-order effects of every ball and courting gift and social interaction — the Regency-era courtship-focused setting maps really well onto Tom's social climbing ambitions. Also, the side characters are such a delight as well, especially the handsome and charming Prince Cedric, who emerges as a viable candidate for Tom’s hand as he proposes a courtship with Tom (I’m now kind of obsessed with Prince Cedric after reading this), and there’s plenty of romantic tension, UST, and juicy gossip/drama to keep Tom and Harry occupied and us readers at the edge of our seats.

complete by @cindle-writes (E, 9k, complete)

I thought this was a clever play on the widespread trope of “Voldemort is definitely an Alpha / the assumed top in every circumstance” within the Tomarry ship. In this fic, Harry also (mistakenly) assumes Voldemort must be an Alpha — after all, that's what everyone had always said his whole life. As a result, he doesn’t bother to confirm before adopting Tom, which results in a loss of control that could prove disastrous for both of them.

Enamoured by @itsevanffs (E, 5k, WIP)

Newly presented Omega Tom takes babytrapping schemes to a whole new level in this fic. He is determined to have Harry as his Alpha, and there’s both a layer of Tom wanting to be with Harry to use him to his advantage, as well as a layer of Tom genuinely wanting Harry and craving his scent, his touch, his attentions — and oh, the pining in this fic was so very captivating, especially the last part where Tom comes undone surrounded by Harry’s scent.

Honeyguide by @cannibalinc (E, 7k, complete)

This was such a wild ride, and Tom’s inner voice is both so coldly rational and absolutely hilarious at the same time. Tom is hellbent on seducing Harry, regardless of anything that stands in the way. The rut scene was so intense — probably one of the most intense things I’ve read in all of fanfic — with Harry losing control and Tom facing the consequences of his actions and manipulations (in other words, of being a little shit). The rut was absolutely glorious in how it was depicted, with the snatches of action filtering in and out giving it a very dreamlike, unhinged quality. For Tom to be happy with the outcome of the rut and still want to be with Harry afterwards shows how resolute and strong his will is, which I thought was a very nice depiction of Tom that will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

pearl by @being-luminous (E, 3k, complete)

A lovely depiction of a Harry and Tom dynamic where they’re not quite together but have known each other for a long time, and it’s very sweet how they have an implicit trust in each other, for Tom to want to spend his heat with Harry. They both clearly care about each other, more than what they reveal in words, and it comes out in their comfortable familiarity with each other’s bodies and how they take care of each other’s needs, and I’m left with a smile on my face and a hopeful feeling about their future.

Prison Blues by @metalomagnetic (E, 48k, WIP)

My reaction to each chapter of Prison Blues published has been incoherent screaming—there is a LOT of knotting, there is a LOT of slick, and there is a LOT of Voldemort being an absolute menace and Harry having the biggest heart of gold in the world. Voldemort definitely wields his power as an Omega in this fic — he’s absolutely dripping in the power he holds over others — strutting about and driving all the Alphas around him crazy — it is QUITE the magnificent depiction of Voldemort at his sexiest. I literally have no words to describe how jaw-droppingly knock-out sexy these chapters were, but after each update, I was left in a stunned daze where I didn’t know what to do with myself for the next few hours aside from read and reread each chapter a few more times. And we even get a whole chapter dedicated to Voldemort’s backstory from the time he was at Hogwarts as a newly-presented omega! (Also, did we know there's only 1 fic on AO3 that uses the Omega Voldemort tag, and it’s this one!?? 👀 Omega Voldemort has so much untapped potential!)

Tantrums by @crowcrowcrowthing (E, 5k, complete)

Tom is a straight-up brat in this fic, and his chaotic, destructive tendencies are too funny to read about. Harry happens to be the only one that has a hope of reining Tom in, but Harry’s no perfect role model either, as an impulsive teenager that doesn’t have full control over his instincts. This is a rare example of a fic with beta/omega dynamics, and I thought it was an interesting take on how betas without any special A/B/O biology or instincts can, just as much, succumb to their instincts when confronted with alpha or (in this case) omega biology.

The Ethics of Want by @exarite (E, 10k, complete)

This was the first omegaverse I read in Tomarry, and it's pretty much the perfect beginner omegaverse fic, so if you're just dipping your toes into A/B/O — highly, highly recommend starting here. Tom is SO MANIPULATIVE and SO SCHEMING in this fic, and when he sets his sights on Harry, he is absolutely relentless until he gets his way, including some questionable (and hilarious) scent-marking tactics. There's just something Exarite’s prose that feels like drinking from a bubbly well of champagne — their fics are always so engaging and delightful to read, and the smut is so unbelievably hot, top top tier. Each time I reread this piece, it always feels fresh and just as much of a wild ride as the first time I read it.

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i-just-like-commenting · 7 years

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The Northrop Frye Theory of A Song of Ice and Fire (or, why you can be certain this series won’t have a downer ending)

The affinity between the mythical and the abstractly literary illuminates many aspects of fiction, especially the more popular fiction which is real enough to be plausible in its incidents and yet romantic enough to be a “good story,” which means a clearly designed one. (p 139)

This quote comes from Northrop Frye’s 1957 essay “Archetypal Criticism” in his book Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. An influential Canadian literary critic, Fye is especially known for his work on William Blake. I’d been familiar with his theory of the four mythoi (generalized story patterns) since high school, and while reading A Song of Ice and Fire I became convinced that Martin has to be aware of it as well. Thus I decided to read the entire essay it comes from to test the idea (not an easy task; it’s 110 pages of very dense text), and that conviction has grown to the point that I want to write the man to ask him directly.

Of course, it doesn’t entirely matter if Martin has read Frye’s work, because his mythoi are archetypes. Frye’s theory of archetypes doesn’t necessitate a collective unconscious like Jung’s; rather, he’s talking about the cultural legacy Western society has inherited primarily from Hellenistic and Biblical traditions, the tropes and symbols we all recognize instinctively. It’s part of our cultural unconscious, the background noise we’ve all received since childhood.

There’s a lot in this essay that could be applicable to aSoIaF, such as how wolves and dragons are classic archetypes of evil or at least dangerous and untamed nature, or how literature versus mythology gives you more freedom to subvert archetypal meaning, but I want to focus on his idea of mythos, and how he argues that there are four major mythoi, comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony, and that they archetypally correspond to the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

You should already be able to guess a little of where this is going.

Spring is comedy, which in its broadest outline is not just a story with a lot of humor, but a story where upstarts - often young or from marginalized categories - take on an absurd obstacle (especially a social convention) and win. Villains tend to be more laughable than hated, and ideally it ends with as many people being redeemed/included as possible.

Summer is romance in the Medieval sense of the term, which is a good vs evil story. The hero has to defeat a great evil (a tyrant, a monster, a witch, etc.) usually through great sacrifice (sometimes even their deaths) but either they or their cause ultimately triumphs in the end. Quest narratives from Greek mythology or Arthuriana fit in here, as would Tolkien, Harry Potter and most comic book superheroes.

Autumn is tragedy, where a hero is doomed by their own choices but also by a sense of inevitability, where fate or a kaleidoscope of forces beyond their control or awareness force their downfall. Heroes fail or become villains themselves. Society winds up in a worse state than it started out at, or innocence is jaded by experience.

Winter is irony, where the purpose is to expose an unjust system without necessarily meaning to defeat it. Much irony uses humor to make the criticism go down easier (pure invective works well in essays but not in fiction) and becomes satire or parody, but there is a measure of anger and contempt here not present in traditional comedy. Humor isn’t required, though, and Frye includes Brave New World, and 1984 in this genre, accurately predicting that dystopia would become a trend.

Now, these mythoi are not completely clear-cut and they tend to bleed together at the edges. If a comedy emphasizes the villains and how ridiculously bad they are, it bleeds into ironic satire. If the villains are downplayed and the focus is on the struggle of the heroes, it becomes more romantic. Likewise a romance can turn tragic when a hero’s own weaknesses are the cause of evil or his difficulty in defeating, and so forth and so on.

I would argue that the seasons in A Song of Ice and Fire, once that can go on for years, for complete stories or complete arcs, correspond fairly well to Frye’s model. Allow me to present some examples:

The Dance of the Dragons explicitly takes place during autumn (harvest season in the North) and is a tragedy of epic scale, with huge amounts of death and devastation across the countryside. Jealousy and ambition - not to mention the sexism of inheritance laws and schemes laid down decades ago - lead to the near-destruction of Westeros. The next king Aegon III grows up in winter and becomes a depressed fatalist who dies young, a parody of the usual boy-king tropes associated with summer.

“The Hedge Knight” is set in late spring, and has the set up to be a spring story, wherein a self-appointed hedge knight and his squire defend a puppeteer from an evil prince. The emphasis on Dunk as a character and the underdevelopment of Aerion, however, should hint that this is already a more romantic comedy. By the end, it has indeed become a summer story, with the deaths in the combat to reach its happy ending. It is still a fairly comedic (that is, innocent and uncynical) romance, enhanced by the awareness of the reader that you are seeing the origin story of a good king and his Lord Commander.

“The Sworn Sword” takes place in full summer and presents as a simple summer story of good Ser Eustace vs the evil Red Widow, who Duncan even imagines like a witch. This is subverted as Duncan realizes his master was a traitor and the witch a victim of circumstance, but rather than lead to true parody (an ironic category) this merely means a reevaluation of what the “sides” in play are - conflict vs peace. Through a battle where Duncan even figuratively dies (near-drowning is often a metaphor for death), peace prevails and while the wedding isn’t his, Duncan still wins the lady’s heart (a common chivalry trope).

“The Mystery Knight” is a little later in the summer, and we even get dragons, metaphorically at least. This is the one that most conventionally follows a summer storyline, since the people wanting to foment another rebellion for no good reasons are clearly the wrong side here - not that all the people on each side are purely “good” or “evil,” just that a rebellion for the reasons they give serves no purpose. What’s more, from an archetypal perspective it’s actually Glendon Flowers takes the role of the hero, not Duncan. He goes through early battles, is betrayed and imprisoned, then rescued so as to defeat Daemon, vindicating himself and dissipating the rebellion. Dunk, Egg, and Brynden Rivers are his supporting characters, as fitting their positions as a rustic knight, a hidden noble, and a wizard.

That Aegon V’s reign starts in winter is sign that, for all his good intentions and successes his reign as a “good king” will ultimately be undone later, to serve only as a foil to the bad rulers we meet later. And oh would I love to know what season Summerhall burned in...

Then there’s the False Spring whose infamous tourney is mentioned so often in the books. Howland Reed gets his dignity restored by a scrappy woman, one of them is the mystery knight who wins the cheers of the common folk, and Lyanna gets a token from a prince. Total set up for a comedy, right? But of course this isn’t; it’s a false spring, immediately followed by winter resuming, so we really just saw autumn, as Rhaegar’s choices regarding Lyanna precipitates a series of disasters that ruin him, her, and the nation.

Now, what about the main story itself? Well, we start in late summer in A Game of Thrones, and the first novel does indeed resemble a tragic romance, as Ned dies as the victim of intrigues he had no way of knowing about, but his cause is ultimately taken up by his son and by Stannis. More importantly, we have another hero much more obviously go through a struggle-death-rebirth arc at the end in the form of Daenerys and her passing through the flames to become the Mother of Dragons.

Ned’s death, however, is “the sword that slays the season,” and autumn follows in A Clash of Kings and it continues until the end of A Dance with Dragons. I don’t think I will be controversial in saying that the tragic is the main tone of the series, as even heroes with the best intentions fail, and as many of the villains themselves are revealed to be tragic figures warped by their pasts or their cultures. If I were to go through every point of tragic archetype that winds up in this series, this post would be even longer than it already is. Suffice it to say that Littlefinger is an archetypal tragic antagonist (p 216) and Frye’s six descending stages of tragic hero - from innocent child to antivillain - has some obvious parallels to the ordering of tragic moments - from Bran’s fall to Cersei’s walk of shame. One of my favorite quotes of this essay should resonate with any fan of the series:

Of course we have a natural dislike of seeing pleasant situations turn out disastrously, but if a poet is working on a solid structural basis, our natural likes and dislikes have nothing to do with the matter. (p 215)

Ultimately even disaster and misery can be entertaining if well-written.

As for winter, it should also be noted that for all extents and purposes it is winter in the North for all of books 4 and 5, and the triumph of the Boltons, their farce with “Arya,” and our only potential hero being Theon of all people stinks of irony. Snowfall begins in the Riverlands just after Jaime takes Riverrun, a sign not just of looming famine but that whatever hopes Jaime had for undoing the damage his father did will ultimately be in vain. And of course the chaos that Varys’ assassination of Kevan will bring to King’s Landing is also pure winter material, and comes precisely as winter arrives.

But what will the series be overall? Certainly various character arcs or storylines have different tones, but can I predict what the entirety of A Song of Ice and Fire will be? Yes: it will be a romance.

Why can I be so sure? Frye subdivides the romance into four parts: the agon, a hero’s initial challenges and setup, the pathos, where the hero faces off against their enemy and often loses, the sparagmos, after the hero’s defeat when all hope seems lost, and the anagnorisis, either the literal rebirth or the postmortem recognition of the hero as others finish what they started. Thus Frye concludes:

The four mythoi that we are dealing with, comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony, may now be seen as four aspects of a central unifying myth. Agon or conflict is the basis or archetypal theme of romance, the radical of romance being a sequence of marvellous adventures. Pathos or catastrophe, whether in triumph or in defeat, is the archetypal theme of tragedy. Sparagmos, or the sense that heroism and effective action are absent, disorganized, or doomed to defeat, and that confusion and anarchy reign over the world, is the archetypal theme of irony and satire. Anagnorisis, or recognition of a newborn society rising in triumph around a still somewhat mysterious hero and his bride, is the archetypal theme of comedy. (p 192)

In spite of all its tragedy, in spite of all its subversiveness, this is still ultimately a romance, a hero story, good triumphing not evil. I mean, the evil is literally represented by winter, the classic mythical enemy of a romance (p 187), and the heroes aided by spirits of nature, who “represent partly the moral neutrality of the intermediate world of nature and partly a world of mystery which is glimpsed but never seen, and which retreats when approached.” (p 196)

The difference is that of mode (here you have to go back to the first essay in the book, p 33-34). Traditionally romance has been written in what Frye would call “mythic” or “romantic” mode, where the heroes are either flat-out divine (as in Greek myth or the figure of Jesus) or human but endowed with marvelous powers (as in most fairy tales or Biblical legends). Sometimes it is written in “high mimetic” form, where the hero no longer has superhuman power but is still larger-than-life in their abilities. It is almost never written in "low mimetic” that emphasizes the ordinariness of its protagonists, how they are just like us, or in full ironic mode where the “hero” is someone we’re meant to scorn or pity.

Tolkien wrote somewhere between high mimetic and romantic (though his Silmarillion is mythic) which is what we’re used to in fantasy novels. Martin’s innovation is starting us in low mimetic or even ironic and gradually pushing us up into the realms of the supernatural. That’s why it’s harder to recognize the romantic element of A Song of Ice and Fire than in The Lord of the Rings. It feels like it should be irony, a deconstruction, but it is in fact Martin’s attempt at a more realistic (in the sense of believable human characters) reconstruction of the oldest, most archetypal fantasy tropes.

And so of course it will end in spring - or at least, with a dream of spring, the hope that out of this awful mess a better society can be built in the ashes of the old. THe Republic of Westeros...? Maybe that’s asking too much. I’ll settle on Sansa Stark, First of Her Name.

#a song of ice and fire #asoiaf meta #northrop frye #archetypal criticism #theories

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