Hi all!

I would be very interested to start an online book club for dramione fics. What I am really missing is someone to share on-line comments while I'm reading but also discuss ideas we found in the fics more at length. Examples of thoughts from recent readings: the unrealistic standards of motherhood of Narcissa in Draco Malfoy's ledger of perceived slights; dynamics of abusive relationships (Limerence, Late night wanderings) and why we like reading about them. Of course most of the time it would be light-hearted chat!

Details:
📐Size: Ideally it would be only a handful of people so we can really share our thoughts and get to know each other. However if there's a large interest we could also have parallel channels for smaller groups reading different fics.

📌Format: I am very open to how we could organise it. We could comment every few chapters or once or twice per fic depending on how long it is. I'm thinking about a discord server so there's also the possibility to voice chat and hide spoilers.

🔞Age: I think age is quite important and we should all be at least 18+ but maybe even better matched (I'm 35 😅).

🔥Themes: unless it becomes a larger group, it would be ideal to have similar tastes. I am into darker stories with broken Draco and Hermione, with some angst but HEA. But I also like lighter, funnier fics with banter and bamf characters. Not a fan of very romantic stuff. I read pretty fast and prefer complete works. But I'm also open to reading different things!

So if you read it until here, this is the link to a brand new discord server, let's discuss!
https://discord.gg/wcqSdkUMy

argh - I don’t know how to fix this one.

I posted a less-inspired, less-weird chapter of my silly crack fic, because it felt overdue. And today I realized I had some fun, absurd, smutty elements I meant to include and forgot about (because I hadn’t checked me notes). 

So I wrote up the funny smutty chunks today and now I don’t know where to put them.

1. If I go back and add them in to the prior chapter (where they fit most naturally), won’t my most dedicated readers miss them entirely? or
2. Do I force them into a new chapter, where they don’t quite fit flow-wise?

Help!

(Thanks for the help. I did my best to manage it. The smut is now… inserted).

(With a hopefully not-confusing note)

You may now all breathe a collective sigh of relief. I know I did, but that’s only because I broke the event page four times (but hopefully fixed it before any of you noticed). 

In the spirit of the event, we are not posting “winners” but have maintained top voted fics by category as standouts throughout the event. They are available for your browsing pleasure at tinyurl.com/bestofdramione2026. 

Some of you may have noticed a lot of fic recs on social media in the last 72 hours, featuring the #BestofDramione2026. That’s because over one hundred fandom enthusiasts have been following this event and were waiting in the wings until it ended to support writers. Many have already posted, some are still working, and there is still more to come (that takes a little longer in terms of content creation). Others noticed a social media flood about this before the event closed. I’d like to formally apologize about how excited people got…but I can’t genuinely do that…so I won’t. 

Fandom is built on acts of love, and we’re incredibly grateful to each and every one of you who nominated, voted, and celebrated with us. Writers remember kindness for a very long time, and my hope is that we keep making that our top priority. 

Now, quite a few of you have asked whether this is the end.

In the interest of good fun, the answer is absolutely not.

Today, we’ll tell you three things, then for the next nine days, we’ll keep telling you more.

• Day 1: The first fic nominated for this event was When the Wisteria Blooms by counterfeiit1 under the category Best Wholesome Fic. 
• Day 2: The lovely Candlelight_Narrations (@candlrhttc2 on TikTok) is selecting a work to record as a podfic and will announce it once she's received confirmation from the author. Follow her for updates.

We have compiled a list of both writers and (separately) fics, sorted by the highest amount of votes and will release the names of the top ten over. Also before you ask, no, these are not released in order of ranking, we're just pulling them in a random order.

• Top 10 Writer:
  • Alexis_Vale 
  • LyraMBlack
• Top 10  Fic:
  • Green Light
  • The Bride

As a reminder, fics were capped at 10,000 kudos at the time of nomination for inclusion in this event. If you have ideas or suggestions for future iterations of this, let us know!

Happy DU-Awards-Month! Welcome to our monthly discussion thread.

What are you:

Recommending?

Promoting?

Reading?

Writing?

Looking for?

Complaining about?

Y'all, its July. Its so hot outside my feet cook without shoes on and fandom feels like its going through a pressure cooker moment too. Can we have an escape space chat? Lets talk about where we've messed up.

I'll go first. When writing, I once killed off a minor character only to invite him casually to lunch later. I changed the name of another minor thing by accident roughly three chapters after I'd introduced it because I swapped a vowel. Dialogue tags are the bane of my existence. I'll write around a dialogue tag that has a question mark at the end and a lower case subsequent word because even though its technically correct it feels wrong. Writing battle scenes leaves me in a physical state of stress, but I love stories that have them so I do them anyway.

As a reader, I've read so many fics that the name or author alone being referenced will now (rarely) give me the context I need to remember what that fic was without skimming the actual work.

What is messy about your writing process? About your reading process?

In light of the AI kerfuffle that is coming out over the HR fandom and the sheer amount of AI generated fics that have been exposed, and in light of the amount of drama that comes about from readers who don't want to read AI generated fics, I have a genuine question to ask of these registered users who feed prompts into an AI site and get a large amount of words that resemble a story in return:

If you are cognizant enough to create a fic that has been made with the use of AI, and then post it, even though you know that readers do not want to read AI written fics, WHY do you do it anyway? Why do you betray the trust of readers who want to support HUMAN creativity, and post words that did not come from yourself? Why do you lie to your readers about this, and deny any accusations of using AI?

What prompted this? Was it because of the hyperconsumerism of the book community that spilled over into fanfiction during COVID? Was it because of grasping, entitled behavior of readers who were new to the community, who didn't understand how much time, effort, energy and talent went into writing fanfiction? Was it jealousy of seeing the Big Name authors getting so much attention, that you had to try to get some of it for yourself? Were you too worried about your writing skills that you didn't think that you had enough in you to write a fic? Were you intimidated by the long fics that are over 300k words, that seem to be the preferred length for the readers?

If you have been doing this, I beg of you: PLEASE STOP DOING THIS. PLEASE. Learn to write with your own brain. Embrace the imperfections of Human created writing. Learn to authentically write with your own voice. AI will all sound the same, and it is disturbing to read the same feeling fics over, and over, and over again. It hurts our collective mentality and our collective souls, and emotional intelligence. We need as Humans to read the experiences of other people that have lived and gone through the circumstances that drove them to need to write these specific stories. Feeding prompts into artificial intelligence, dumbs down your own ability to convingingly tell a story and convey your emotional imprint into the world. We as readers will not truly experience what you are trying to communicate, because it is being filtered by a preprogrammed algorithm, and that which is uniquely yours is stripped away, and feels lifeless and bland.

Start writing your fics out by hand, on paper. Start with this step, because this will force you to rely completely on yourself. Stay away from Claude. Stay away from every type of AI generator. You can break the cycle. You can be the change in the world that needs to happen. It starts with people all realizing that change begins with themselves.

I am aware that this is me basically screaming into the Void with this post, but I would actually like to have some real answers. Because there are a very large amount of Dramione fics that are new, that are discouragingly, AI generated, and that has been an ongoing problem for the past few years. And it's not just Dramione, it's in pretty much every fandom and every major ship. And there are prominient "authors" who have popular fics that are definitely AI, and are now going to branch out to rare pairs, and will infect those smaller ships with AI generated "stories" and it just makes me so upset as a reader, and an author, and as someone who grew up watching movies like Dune, The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, Alien, and every other science fiction story and/or movie that showcased the dangers of artificial intelligence, and to see society embracing the dangers without any qualms.

It is frightening to witness.

You should truly try to understand why people like myself are blowing an alarm on this situation. It really should be something that you take seriously. Humanity should not have to make a stand against this. It should have been glaringly obvious.

written by an author who started as a reader, and made the executive decision to not heavily edit the run on sentences and glaring typos in this post, to make a point.

Ive been thinking about character bashing in Dramione fics, especially in “the Malfoys are actually the good guys” stories, and I’ve come to the conclusion that bashing is just lazy writing.

(Not always ofc. Sometimes a fic is intentionally crack or parody or a very specific AU where the author knows exactly what they’re doing, tho sadly most of the time bashing just comes across as bad writing)

The reason I think it’s lazy/poor writing is because instead of doing the harder, more interesting work of showing us *why* the Malfoys are good/changed/misunderstood/strategically aligned with the right side/moraly complicated, the story just makes everyone else worse.

Like Harry becomes a terrible friend (not because he’s the oblivious abused boy he is in canon but because he’s selfish and uncaring, not to mention he’s lost ALL his positive traits). Ron somehow becomes secretly blood prejudiced (or straight up someone who’ll beat up his gf). Sirius is an abusive, stupid drunk. Molly is the Devil Incarnate (completely with pitch forks and horns and an insane amount of greed that wouldn’t be satisfied with all the gold in gringotts, or at least all of Harry’s). And with all the “good guys” being evil or incompetent or stupid or vile, suddenly the Malfoys look like the best people in the world. NOT becuse they’ve been developed or has more depht, but because everyone around them has been butchered and they look good by comparison.

It’s so freakin LAZY!

I don’t need the Malfoys to be soft or secretly perfect people in order to enjoy a “Malfoys as the good guys” fic. In fact, I’d rather they not be. I want them to keep some of their canon traits (I love stories that really focuses on or amplified their ambition, cunning, pride, political intelligence, self-preservation, loyalty to family, sharp edges, questionable methods etc). Show me how those traits could be redirected for good. Show me Lucius and Narcissa outplaying their opponents. Show me Draco learning, changing, and still being recognizably Draco. Show me the Malfoys switching sides for complicated reasons that make sense within their worldview (don’t show me them having been good all along and the “light side” secretly being a bunch of manipulative racists who don’t realize they’re racists).

Bashing makes it seem like the author doesn’t know how to write complex, nuanced characters. Like ppl don’t do evil things because they wake up thinking, “Ah yes, time to be evil.” In their own minds, they have *reasons*. They think they’re protecting someone, preserving something, surviving, obeying some fucked up code or whatever. That doesn’t excuse their actions but at least their choices make sense.

And that applies to all characters, not just the ones we want to redeem.

If Ron has prejudices, show where they come from. Show how they manifest. Show whether he recognizes them, denies them, grows from them, or doubles down. If Harry is a horrible friend, show me why and what happened to change him from canon (not that he was the best friend to Hermione in the books, but like he’d never stand by and not care if ppl called her mudblood for example). If he’s going to shit on Hermione, show us WHY (give him a reason, trauma from his past, fear of abandonment etc) don’t make him do it just because the plot needs Hermione to abandon him and run into Draco’s arms (she can run into his arms even if she has a support system?? If he’s not compelling enough to draw her without everyone else being shit then you need to work on your characterization)

The problem with bashing is that it often removes complexity from one character in order to create sympathy for another (which cheapens the whole thing). A well-written redemption or allegiance shift doesn’t need canon “good guys” to be destroyed in order to work. The Malfoys can be interesting, sympathetic, and even morally superior in certain moments without turning everyone else into caricatures. Hermione can choose Draco without Harry and Ron being monsters. Draco can grow without being secretly innocent the whole time. Narcissa can be loving and ruthless. Lucius can be clever and morally compromised. The Weasleys can be flawed without being villains. Harry can be traumatized and imperfect without being irredeemable.

So yeah. Rant over I guess😬😆

(If anyone has any really good Malfoy redemption stories with morally complex characters and no character assassinations, PLEASE send them my way!!)

Edit to clarify: some of my favorite fics actually have “bashing” tags, and when done “right” (when it makes sense, when it’s rooted in existing traits or history or we see the reason why or we’re shown the progression of a characters descent etc) it can be quite enjoyable. I don’t think ALL bashing is lazy (like I said at the beginning of this post, there are exceptions) there’s just so much of it that is. Especially when it’s used as a prop solely to elevate other characters.

I've tagged it as a discussion because I didn't know what other flair is best suited. I used to be one of those readers that got mildly annoyed at the "bullocks" (for bollocks) and other often-made typos - the 'Zambinis', the 'Legiminencies', the 'petronuses'. Even the Americanised "moms" etc.

I imagine these are young writers or simply writers with English not as a first language, but the community is always shitting on these mistakes (including on the larger sub-reddit where posts and comments making fun of these mistakes are recent and still up).

But recently I have read a bunch of pics with these mistakes and all it made me feel was happiness that this was evidence it isn't AI. Kind of like when I grade student essays full of typos and feel happy for the students lol. I read bad dialogue and I am just happy it's not that awful chat gpt three adjective sequence (not tired, not sad. Simply disappointed etc.)

Honestly, good for them. Hopefully they will eventually figure out the correct spellings and get better at their craft.

That's all. I just wanted to express this somewhere given that this is the only fanfic outlet I have.

Has anyone else noticed this? I have seen a number of fics this year with Hermione being treated awful by Draco but it's not tagged as a dark romance. I am genuinely baffled by this. No hate to creators. I respect the right to create whatever stories you like. I'm just noticing and wondering why. Is there a correlation between the current dumpsterfire that is our world, especially here in the States? I have probably come across at least five fics this morning with the general premise that Hermione is degraded by Draco in some way, sometimes with physical violence (and this is adult Draco after the war) and then they go on to have a relationship. I just wanted to have a space to talk about it and the why of it all. I am still rather new to fandom, having only discovered Dramione in 2024. Has this type of story been commonplace in fics for a long time? Thanks for letting me ramble.

Why are dramione fics so heavy on the inner monologue / continuous explanation of feelings in every interaction, overuse of gestures - eyes gazing, swallowing, swiping hair, blinking? Assessing feelings of others, using the famous line of - had an inscrutable look or an unreadable expression.

I find I am unable to read the fic if after every dialogue there’s an over explanation and repetition of the emotions, despite how interesting the premise/plot is (which is making me sad coz I feel am missing on great stories)

N don’t get me wrong, I skip n skim but then, the joy of reading is gone!

Is it just me who likes plot-dialogue heavy stories where I don’t need to be spoon fed abt what’s going on in a characters mind every step of the way?

I turned 18 this March and feel a bit embarassed as I still love reading dramione fanfiction

I started reading Harry Potter and HP fanfiction at 11-12. Then stopped at 16 as I was drowned in studies. Now done with school and discovering my interests again at 18

Also is it wierd to still have crush on Draco Malfoy? Like he always used to be older than me and now in the books he was max 17 and I feel embarassed reading smut about him. Though Draco and Hermione are in their twenties/thirties in the fics i read

Also my other two friends who used to also read HP fanfiction have moved on from it and I feel embarassed when I tell them that I still do

***Posted on a sub that literally says “18+ only” in the description.***

ETA: also, you heathens better read the flair. It’s a circlejerk post! 😘 Good girl.

We all love a slightly toxic, slightly jealous, slightly possessive Draco- but where do you draw the line?
I personally read (and love reading) dynamics that I'd probably run from in real life.

Morally grey, but to what point? Forced proximity is lovely, but at what point does it stop being forced proximity and spiral into overstepped boundaries? Jealousy is 🔥 to read, but when does it become controlling?

Sometimes I wonder if reading Dramione (especially the darker fics, not talking about the sweet ones lolol) has made me a little more tolerant of fictional red flags than I should be, or blind(er) than I already am subconsciously.
Does anyone else feel like that, or do you keep fiction and real-life standards completely separate?
What do you guys think?

This post is for every reader that feels like a drabble, one shot, two shot, or any other fic less than 50k is not a "real fic" or "not enough", and feel like they "have" to have a "full length fic".

I just saw a post in a Facebook group, and yet again, the reader comments truly bothered me.

It was a post by an author about a prompt that had been floating around. They shared the prompt, and the link, and the fact that it's a two shot. Awesome and amazing. I absolutely love this for that author.

However! There were some readers who posted comments that I found triggering. Here they are, and I quote:

"Please for the love of everything wonderful in the universe make this a full length fic (3 sobbing emojis) I just saw this like 5 mins ago and rushed to read it and I need more than 2 chapters (2 sweating forehead grinning emojis))"

Another:

"Can this be more than two chapters please?! (hands praying emoji) this needs to be multichapter full blown fic based on that prompt!!!!!!! Please please with cherries and sprinkles on top!!"

And can I just say, that I find this behavior extremely off-putting?

Please allow me to give some context:

I'm friends with another author who is an ESL writer, and she does not use AI. She has an extremely active imagination, and comes up with amazing story concepts, and they flow through her like a burbling spring fed brook. I'm amazed at her range of ideas. She has a Tik Tok account with thousands of followers, and she posts videos that have her drabbles on them. And she has hundreds of short stories on her AO3. She doesn't write long form fics for the most part. She is exclusively a drabble writer. She is constantly begged by her followers for long form fics. She'll post a drabble that tells a story, and is concluded in the single post. And she'll receive so many comments of:

"OMG when will the fic drop!!"

"Tag me when you write the story!!!"

"Please write a full length fic!!"

And the kicker is: She'll start a longfic, and tag the reader, and they don't engage any further in the story. Which discourages her.

Here's where I am bothered. Drabbles ARE real stories. Just because they're not a long fic, doesn't make them less of a compelling story to read. And just because you want to know more about what happens in the world that the short story author created, does not mean that you are entitled to have more from them, then they are willing, or capable, to give.

Speaking as an author who has 6 fics posted, 5 of which are oneshots, and the other being a long fic WIP, I have to tell you this very important thing to remember as a reader:

Writing a story is HARD. And the longer the story is, the harder it is to write effectively and compellingly. Especially if you are not using generative AI. Some writers are quicker than others, but trust me, if you've never attempted to write a long, multichapter fic, it is much harder than you realize.

I wrote a Romione for the Non Con Ron fest, and it was less than 4k words, and that took me a couple of weeks to write. I wrote a sci-fi Tomione for another fest, which was 12k, and that took me 2 months. I wrote another fic as a birthday gift, which was 10k, and that took me 3 weeks. And I wrote a 3k fic as a gift for another author which was a "What If" AU for a chapter in her story, and that took me another 2-3 weeks. The point being, it takes time to write a story. It doesn't automatically come quickly and easily. Demanding longfics from authors, and demanding updates quickly, is entitled and grasping behavior.

Drabbles ARE real stories. They're a lovely art form in the creative writing catalogue, and they have just as much of a right to exist exactly as they want to be written by the author, as any other fic that you deem as "long enough" to meet your (speaking to the entitled readers here) hyper consumption standards.

The demand for longer and longer stories, causes more authors to feel the pressure to use AI. If you are a reader who feels entitled to longfics, and tries to beg and plead for a longfic from an author who only had it in their hearts to write a shorter fic, because that was what their Muse was telling them to write, you contribute to imposter syndrome in authors, and contribute to the rise of the use of AI. If you are also a reader who doesn't want to read AI, please come to terms with the fact that you are contributing to the problem that you claim to not want.

Please come to terms with the stories as they are written. Please learn to accept not knowing all of the answers to your questions. If you wish to know a little more for the aftermath of a story, politely asking for an epilogue is sometimes received well by some authors, but please don't be grasping when you do so. Just because you have become accustomed to 100-500k stories in the fandom doesn't mean that all fics have to be that length. And for the short stories, it also doesn't negate the validity of their right to be read and loved.

Before I end this more lengthy than normal post for me in this sub, I wish to reiterate again: If you keep demanding longer and longer stories from fanfic authors, you WILL contribute to more AI being used to write them. Because of how some people will only want to see the higher numbers, and automatically assume that this means that the story is better. More is not always more. Sometimes more equates less than. And: Sometimes less is more.

As an exercise in learning to appreciate the shorter fics that are posted, I highly recommend that you seek out one-shots. And maybe even read just one-shots for your next 10 fics. Its merely a suggestion, but I feel like it's a good way to reconnect with shorter stories, and to learn more appreciation for the world an author is able to build in a smaller set of words.

Fanfiction is a community. Please learn how to be respectful of all members of the community.

Narcissa Malfoy here with a message for the DramioneUncensored subreddit...

I am extremely disappointed in all the uncensored OPINIONS I've seen in this sub the last 2 days. I myself do not participate in this so-called community, but I became aware of these OPINIONS from somewhere else.

In that other place I do not wish to disclose, we have been talking about what a terrible sub this is and how everyone who posts here should be shunned from good society. It's not bashing when we do it though. Because it's private. I can tell you about it so that you will feel properly ashamed of yourselves, but you can't see what we said. That's what makes it acceptable.

This is what you mudbloods don't understand. Sharing your opinions out in the open where someone might accidentally find them because I sent them a link to your comment thread is rude and...dare I say it...déclassé.

All of the best people belong to private communities with like-minded individuals. They don't sully themselves by posting thoughts here on Reddit, unless it's to remind the unwashed masses (that's you) to mind their betters (that's me).

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

I am told this is where you heathens gather to give solicited opinions.

I am writing something right now and I’m trying to decide to what extent to dive into other arcs.

I have built out a pretty elaborate world in my head and I want to know if when and how you like to see side characters have side plots.

I plan to write dual POV Hermione and Draco but with multiple third person POVs sprinkled in, for example I have half a chapter in Daphne’s perspective, a prologue that follows Minerva, a get ready with Narcissa Malfoy chapter opener, a childhood Draco scene from Theo’s perspective ect.

I am worried because of that if I lean into a side plot romance or professional evolution it will be annoying for readers instead of fun.

I tried using Pinterest and Google images but have a hard time imagining Hermione’s hair when it written as a braid. Is it a long braid down the back or is it a ponytail that’s then tied into to a braid. She has a lot of curls so the curls come out of the hair in a cute way.

When Ginny’s hair is written braided- I picture something more intricate like when she has a big quidditch game and it’s like all criss crossed