a Beauty and the Beast sideblog

*Spoilers ahead for DnD: Honor Among Thieves* 

I have a lot of love for subtle, well executed storytelling like the blue dragonfly that shows up throughout Edgin’s arc. The editing in that death/resurrection scene really sells the emotion beyond the literal content of the scene while placing trust in its audience to make the connection. I appreciate the symbolic meaning behind the dragonfly, but my little gremlin brain can’t help but take it one step further and wonder about its literal presence within the world of the movie. Even if it is not meant to be the same individual insect, the timings of the blue dragonfly’s appearances seem too perfect to be a random (e.g. dancing on the flames of Zia’s funeral pyre, landing on Edgin’s forearm after Holga passes). It’s almost as if it is following Ed around.

On the way to the Orifice, Xenk offers Ed some wisdom on the subject of resurrection: “I’d only ask that you consider that this plane we call ‘life’ is but one of many. To drag your lady love back to her old life is to deprive her of her new one.” This is a great character moment that also delivers an important piece of worldbuilding: when people leave the material plane through death, they are reincarnated or otherwise continue their existence on a different plane. You may see where I’m going with this.

Enter the Zia-Dragonfly extraplanar visitor hypothesis. Yes, the name could use some work. It is already widely accepted that the dragonfly is a visual representation of Zia living on in Ed’s memories. In addition to this reading, I propose that the dragonfly may be a subtle physical manifestation of Zia’s extraplanar influence within the world of the story. Even if she cannot physically return to the material plane, something about her new existence may allow her to visit or influence it in a small way. If true, then the recurring appearance of the blue dragonfly has sentient intention behind it, with Zia selecting this form for her messenger to evoke a specific memory in Ed and communicate its associated life lesson at key moments. This would provide a diegetic explanation for why the dragonfly appears when and where it does while offering Zia’s character more agency in the narrative in a way that feels appropriately subtle, yet satisfying.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Like they had a sibling relationship despite both being straight and single and I love that.

Plus her being into little twink men was so fucking iconic.

Legendary.

Saw a post on here about how remarkable it is that in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Edgin chooses platonic love over romantic love at the end. And I gotta say, that's not quite what's happening there.

Earlier, when he was finally honest with Kira (Sofina), he acknowledges "I was trying to bring my wife back. I wasn't trying to bring your mother back."

And then later he reunites with the real Kira. And she forgives him. And he goes through the character transformation to become a real hero.

And that point is when he is faced with a pretty classic choice. Does he repeat his mistake or does he move forward as a better person? Does he bring back his wife, which is what caused his separation from Kira in the first place? Or does he bring back Kira's mother (who is really, for all intents and purposes, Holga)?

He chooses the selfless act of bringing back the person Kira cares about.

My point is that his choice wasn't between romantic love and platonic love. His choice was between romantic love and parental love.

That said, it is still remarkable that Edgin and Holga have not a whiff of romance between them. It is very uncommon to see a platonic different-gender couple raising a child together in a movie, for sure. And very uncommon for a male character and female character to be depicted as being so close and so familial with each other without them being in a romantic relationship (or related).

1. They dragged behind her when she walked

2. They never faltered

3. She could always trust them

And I'm thinking about how after she lost them, she asked Diaval to be her wings, and

1. He trailed along behind her throughout the movie

2. He never faltered in his loyalty, for 16 years

3. When she turned him into a dragon, she immediately collapsed in relief, even though she was still in severe danger, because she trusted him completely to deal with the threats

Angelina Jolie’s girlboss characters being paired with malewife cinnamon roll himbos

Diaval: Don't be silly, I'd never let you die.

Maleficent: Death is inevitable. One of us has to die first and with my track record, it's going to be me. Now answer my question, I need to know whether or not I'll be haunting you for betraying me.

Diaval: Mal, I promise you that if death ever decides to take you from me, I will march into hell myself and drag your reckless ass back.

Maleficent: How dare you disturb my immortal slumber, I've been waiting my entire life for this.

Diaval: I don't care, I'm not living without you.

Maleficent: What if I-

Diaval: No, haunting me is not the same.

Maleficent: Fine.. wait, how do you know I'll be in hell?

Seriously, let Aurora's parents finally get their true love with each other !

Draco was prepared to get Hermione away to safety without her memories restored until she fell pregnant and that wasn’t possible anymore. Again believing that this would be the least harmful option to Hermione in the long run, being alive, safe, not remembering their past and being able to perhaps move on from her suffering at his hands and the war eventually—but, Hermione may not have shared that opinion had she been fully cognizant of their relationship, and I’ll circle back to this.

I understand why people struggle to accept Dracos choices and Hermione’s forgiveness as what she suffers is terrible, but that is why this story is a tragedy. Their love is not perfect. They make terrible choices to save each other. Including hurting the other when it is the only option but will keep them alive. Draco didn’t think he would get to keep Hermione after the rape. He didn’t expect her to still want him if her memories returned. Like the reader, he doesn’t think he deserves her or her forgiveness. Draco underestimated, for the second time, just how much Hermione loved him. And sometimes the reader does too.

I don’t believe Hermione ‘just accepts it’, she realises the situation Draco was in, that she ultimately put him in, and yes, in the moment accepts the choices he made in order to keep them both alive, but she still struggles with that choice as is also evidenced in the text, she doesn’t just immediately get over it (she flinches, she’s afraid, she has flashbacks) but she is determined to save them both and now their baby after everything they’re both still alive and there simply is not the time to deal with that trauma whilst trying to figure out how they can escape. I think it’s something they would both deal with at a later point in their story that wasn’t entirely on page but was clearly implied in the text. Narratively, throwing in them dealing with that specific trauma (throughly) wouldn’t have fit in this particular book format. This also addresses “is the rape okay if they loved each other and had a past” no, of course not, but in the complexities of this story readers should remember the lack of other choices available to them, it wasn’t an okay choice, how can it be, but it was a necessity that prevented more harmful things (being given to someone else in the breeding programme, death if discovered the act wasn’t being carried out, torture if Dracos deception was revealed) and it was a choice that would have affected them for years to come.

I feel readers can get stuck considering what /they/ would do and how /they/ would react in this circumstance and not what /the characters/ built within that universe would actually do. Draco and Hermione are shown consistently to choose to do terrible things for their love for one another and they never love each other any less after each one. People forget or don’t realise how similar to Draco that Hermione becomes. And each time they make a choice the entire situation gets worse. By the time we reach the present they have both killed people to save each other and besides Ginny, everyone they love is dead. What would all those sacrifices be for if at the end they didn’t have each other?

Some might still say, well Hermione should never have forgiven the (perceived) choice to rape her and she could have been happy without Draco—but I would say, would she? With her memories returned, after everything she did for Draco to survive, how much she loved him, how he became her sole source of solace, the people she killed for him, the choices she made for him, would she have been happy after that without him? I don’t think she would.

The entire story is them making terrible choices. The terrible things they do for love. If Hermione’s patronus becoming a dragon indicates how in love they were then why would anyone think Hermione herself isn’t just as possessive over Draco as he is over her and they will both do terrible things for that love, and accept the terrible things the other does for /their/ love. Dracos rape is only one of the horrific things that he does among all his other atrocities, although again, most of the time he tries to do the least harmful option if there is one available (straight avadas and not torture), but Hermione forgives his atrocities because in her mind she believes that he had no choice because he was committed to fulfilling the vow to the order that she made him take, and that he was committed to saving her—just as she was committed to saving him.

These aren’t choices that the reader might make and the reader doesn’t have to agree with them, but should hopefully /understand/ why the characters made those choices. It truly is a tragedy even with it’s somewhat happy ending (another debate for which I say, yes it is happy /for them/). Stories aren’t an endorsement of the characters actions, stories don’t have to be morally correct and readers don’t have to agree with the characters choices. Manacled is not perfect romance and many of the choices Draco and Hermione make are not good or moral choices. This is not a romance meant to be emulated. Theirs is a possessive love, a dependent love, an entirely unhealthy love that consumes them both. Manacled is the tragic commentary of their truly destructive yet powerful love.