Curate, connect, and discover
it's been years but my heart remains soft for dramione and zutara. look idc if you don't like it, whatever floats your boat, but i just cannot let the idea stand that it was only a ship or only popular because "bad boy/good girl" or "fire and water." it's about the redemption. the healing. the hard work towards a connection. for draco, for zuko: the idea that if you really want to, you can change. that you're worth more than your mistakes. that there isn't a place you can't pull yourself out of if you put in the work. that you might have been better if you hadn't been where you were; that you have the chance now.
for hermione, for katara: that people have seen you the same way your whole life and now you are given the chance to break away. that you have wounds and dark moments that the motherly ones and the bookworms shouldn't have, don't get to have--but that someone has been at the bottom of that same pit, that there's a hand reaching down. that there was a bitter, cruel history that meant you had no choice but to be enemies. but that there is that choice, now.
the appeal of that can't be reduced to simple tropes