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ice-and-starlight · 1 year

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I’m jumping you back into the hp fandom. I need to know your in depth opinions on jily!

Are you sure? I mean, are you sure?

...Alright, then.

WARNINGS: This is going to be so very extremely anti. Anti-Lily, Anti-James, Anti-Jily, Anti-JKR. Just... so much negativity. Seriously, please don't read this if you like even a part of any of these.

Are we clear?

Okay.

So, to begin with, James and Lily are held up as paragons of virtue for a lot of the first half of the series, and I'm honestly convinced that's what JKR intended them to be. Even when she tries to make them more like characters than ideals, it's fairly half-hearted from an author who has brought us such great examples of depth and complexity as Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore.

There is so much room for extrapolation and fan interpretations, not least of all because both of them exhibit some deeply disturbing behaviour that mostly gets glossed over by the narrative. And my interpretations aren't going to be kind. Mostly, I'm sad to say, as a reaction to 1) fans of Jily trying to shove it down my throat when I was a teenager and 2) JKR's anti-trans warmongering making me highly critical of a lot of her attitudes towards gender, sexuality, and relationships.

So, first, I'm going to try and detail what we actually know about them from canon. Then, I'm going to talk a bit about how knowledge of JKR's prejudices and biases have affected my interpretation. Then... I'm going to drag Jily through the mud.

So, James and Lily met on the train to boarding school at eleven. James picked on her friend based on a social prejudice that's new to her, and she removed them from the situation. Over the following years, James picks on her friend frequently, which she doesn't ever seem indignant about, culminating in the event where James, who's had a crush on her for a while and obviously enough that Severus noticed it, tries to threaten her into dating hi., Lily puts him down harshly, and then leaves her newly ex-friend to his mercies after he insulted her. At some point about a year to a year and a half later, they start dating after 'James deflated his head a little'. They marry straight out of school, and join a vigilante group to fight terrorists together. Also, James goes into training to become an Auror. There is no mention, afaik, as to what else Lily is doing in that time, besides that we know that she and James 'thrice defied' Voldemort, presumably in person, given that I'm sure a lot more couples 'thrice defied' him in some way during the course of those three years. They have a child two years into joining this war, and go into hiding to protect him. They know there's a spy in the Order, and this fractures their friendships (well, James's we're never told who Lily's friends are besides Severus except that she has them), while James chafes at the restrictions of being in hiding. Eventually, Voldemort finds them, and James tries to hold him off without a wand while Lily runs upstairs to get Harry, then stands over his crib begging Voldemort to spare her baby.

That's... pretty much all we know of them from canon.

Metatextually, we know that Lily is meant to represent the unconditional love of the mother, the selfless sacrifice, and James is meant to represent the ideal that Harry's striving to become. (Ask me some time about how disturbing I find the parallels between Jily and Hinny.) And that together, they are meant to be the shining example of love and happiness and bravery and justice. (Also ask me some time about how there isn't a single adult in Harry's life who looks at him and cares (or doesn't care) about him for him, instead of because of who his parents are.)

And given what I now know about JKR's ideas about gender, gender roles, and therefore the standard hetrosexual relationships of our society... The disturbing inconsistencies between what we're told about Jily and what we actually see of their relationship begin to make a lot more sense.

So on the one hand, I fully believe that Lily and James belong together and deserve each other. On the other, I don't really mean that as a good thing.

James's feelings towards Lily are not selfless and they're not kind. He bullies her friend and tries to use that as leverage to get her to date him, and literally only stops where she can see him after that. Lily... finds that good enough. Frankly, given some of the details and turns of phrase in the the Prince's Tale, I would go so far as to say she passively encouraged him even before that. Look at the way she talks to Severus about the bullying. She condemns James's behaviour once, in passing, to stop Severus from bringing him up so that she can continue to scold him. (I'm not passing judgement on whether that scolding was justified or not, that is a whole different meta.)

We don't know what they looked like while they were dating, but we do know they probably weren't even dating for a full year before they got married. Understandable given the state of war their world was in, but... not something I'd hold up as a sign of good decision making on either of their parts. James 'got the girl' (I don't think I need to elaborate on why I find that whole dynamic skeevy) and Lily... I get some serious 'I can fix him' vibes from her decision to date him, and that never ends well. After that, we're told that James and Sirius are trying/want to become Aurors. (I think. I can't actually remember where... Please correct me if I'm wrong and that's only fanon.) With no mention of what Lily's doing afaik.

We know she fights for the order, but... I expect, if you asked JKR what Lily's career was, the answer would be 'housewife'. Within a year or so, she's pregnant, a year later, she's in hiding, a year later, she's dead.

Now, I do understand that part of the justification for all of this will be 'it was war, they were young and in love', but it seems like a really stupid thing, to me, when they've been personally and repeatedly targeted by Voldemort himself, to have a baby. They're really young, James can't possibly be out of training yet, there is a mass-murdering dark wizard gunning for them, Lily is part of his preferred demographic to torture and kill, and their reaction is 'you know what would make this situation better? A baby!'?!

Now, why would Lily, who from what we've seen was a passionate, (self-)righteous person, be willing to take time off from fighting a war that's both extremely personal to her and also escalating fairly quickly, to dedicate herself to raising a baby? Because motherhood is the epitome of womanhood. How could she not?

Hello, JKR, I can see you there behind the curtain again.

As for James in all of this... Well, I've written a draft ranting about James Potter that I didn't post because I try not to spew negativity all over the internet anymore (I tried that once, it wasn't fun for anybody). But I will say that I think there are some deeply sinister interpretations of a rich spoiled bully immediately going into law enforcement after school while his 'headstrong' wife ends up staying home to watch the baby.

TL;DR: Lily and James are that perfect married couple who on the surface appear to be every romantic dream made real, but when you scratch the surface, a lot of ugliness oozes out. At best they were young and stupid and made some significant mistakes that they never got the chance to learn from and reflect on because they died so young. At worst they were a toxic, abusive mess vying for power over each other and we only never got to see them fall apart because they died so young.

(Of course, they never would have, because we know that this is JKR's idea of an ideal relationship. Yikes.)

They are so severely fucked up, and if they'd actually been presented that way, I might have actually found them engaging and interesting, as individuals and as a couple. But I took a hard right into 'I'm fucking done' because so many people bought into the stereotypical heteronormative love story of a couple who can do no wrong.

#ANTI #anti Jily #anti James Potter #anti Lily Evans #anti JKR #I am not kidding #I am not kind to anyone in this post #and while I am happy to have a friendly debate on this #don't try to come at me because you're pro any of this #it's behind a read more for a reason #just keep scrolling #I am answering this because I crave social interaction #and this is the first ask I've gotten in a w h i l e #but I AM aware that there's a high likelihood #of this being an attempt to stir shit #rather than a genuine question #...I am a fool #I am aware

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bokkerijder · 3 months

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pro-AI in the sense of "they taught a bread scanning computer to recognize cancer cells" etc etc

against AI in the sense of "we stole artwork from hundreds to thousands of artists, didn't credit them and didn't financially compensate them"

#rambles '24 #ok to reblog btw #all my posts are ok to reblog #if not i would make them unrebloggable lmao #edit: i am a fool #i said that thinking this would maybe get 5 notes or something #and now we're here lol

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rythyme · 1 month

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me when i fucking Boop you

#boop #sorry i am obsessed i will be like this for at least this evening #april fool's day #tumblr #cats #april fools day #boopometer #april fools #theo.txt #1k #500 #100 #10k #5k #20k

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canisbeanz · 6 months

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Silly doodle bc it was the first thing I thought of when I saw Pomni.

#ik the yellow things are probably pom poms but I love bells so here we are #i'm so happy the pilot is out #now i can stop rewatching the first teaser lmao #the blue hand may or may not be on the wrong side bc I am directionally challenged #the amazing digital circus #tadc #pomni #tadc caine #my art #canis art #artwork #digital art #glitch animation #the fool jingled miserably across the floor

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the-tired-commander · 30 days

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Happy April Fools Day

#i had to make it after getting booped 100 times in an hour sjdfhksd #i am being BOPPED #april fool's day #april fools 2024 #i'm putting it on this blog cause i am being booped the hardest here sdjhkfsd

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cozylittleartblog · 10 months

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@staff if you [change] the [design] of the fucking [dashboard] i will kill you

edit. i want it on the actual post that i am not actually making a de-th threat against the staff. that's shitty. the caption quotes the fucking costco hot dog meme, which i originally said in the tags. if any staff member sees this please do Not take it personally