#mpp rambles about jily

[mppmaraudergirl]

if jily had lived, do you think they would’ve stayed together? i mean they got married when they were 19 in the middle of a war and basically had a teenage pregnancy. would they have lasted past the honeymoon stage if their circumstances weren’t so tragic and extreme?

Lot to unpack here if I am understanding your questions (and I might not be because I'm exhausted rn, but I digress).

Do I think Jily would have stayed together had they survived the first war with Harry? 100%

I'm not saying it would have been easy, but I think they would have built such a strong relationship that they could face the future solidly together. I don't think they ever had a real honeymoon stage in canon, when you consider they had (at most) 9 months together in 7th year before they joined the Order. How I wrote them in IR is how I'd see them post-war: enjoying life together with Harry, talking about having another baby, looking into careers/hobbies that might have been their lives without the war, etc.

Do I think Jily would've lasted past a honeymoon stage in a non-LV world (that is to say, with less tragic circumstances)? Probably? They'd have as good a chance as any boomer wizard couple in the 70s at least lol.

I won't pretend to be an expert, but from what I've experienced in my life, marrying out of high school or shortly thereafter was not uncommon in the 70s (at least in the USA). Would I (as a woman in my 30s in 2023) hope they wouldn't rush into marriage as teenagers? I mean, yes, lol. But it seems like based on what we see of wizarding society, they probably would have been okay.

#i won't get into the whole soulmates thing...which is a thing #bc love and commitment is a CHOICE above everything #but yeah... i think these crazy kids would've made it #in my completely biased opinion #mpp rambles about jily #haha

[jfleamont]

I have a kind of specific question that I'm hoping you and your followers could help me out with.

I'm writing my own version of the classic marauders fic, but I suck at writing the death eaters I don't enjoy writing antagonistic characters particularly and don't even have a super clear idea of who is who/ who fits to include(besides perhaps the main ones like Snape and regulus) especially since there's so little canon, so the majority is often fan made. of course they are essential to the plot though!

I want it to obviously be my own work, but I would really appreciate any pointers of where to start with these characters, even just a list of the right characters to start developing my own interpretations of.

this is obviously a very big ask, so any help or pointers anyone can offer to give me a nudge in the right direction I'd be so grateful for!

Hello! Sorry for the late reply, I had two exams and I have two more coming up but I've been dying to reply to this ask since you sent it :)

I'll preface this by saying that, much like you, I'm really not into these kind of characters and I don't enjoy writing them, nor do I have the skill to do so. I have only written one-shots and none of them had any Death Eaters in them; however, I do have a WIP (that I started almost one year ago and that I plan on finishing sometime this summer) that's going to be around 10k and it will most certainly feature those kind of characters, so this is actually really helpful for me too and it might help me get out of this funk since I haven't worked on that WIP in months.

That said, let's get to work!

The first name that comes to mind is Lucius Malfoy. We have quite a bit of info about him in canon, and I believe he's 6 or 7 years older than the Marauders. He was a prefect and was in the Slug Club, and was friends with Snape for the brief time they were at Hogwarts together. After leaving Hogwarts he married Narcissa Black, another pureblood, got a job at the ministry and at one point he met Voldemort. If you want to write him into your story, depending on the year your fic takes place, you could show him taking Snape under his wing and giving speeches about blood purity. I think by then he was already a prefect so he probably abused his power and gave detentions to Gryffindors and Muggleborns/Halfbloods for no reason; I don't know if he'd use violence or hexes, because he's far too diplomatic for that. I think he was really good at convincing people, he manipulated them and made them do the dirty work for him. He'd occasionally hex people for fun but due to his upbringing, he knew better than picking petty fights in the hallways, and he strikes me as the kind of person who was very driven and who thought about the bigger picture. He had, after all, a place in the wizarding world by right of birth, and his family was quite openly in favour of blood purity and all that racist bullshit. Snape, on the other hand, had always been picked on and he learnt at a very young age how to defend himself (and was easily triggered). Lucius didn't need to. He didn't have Snape's rage and didn't want revenge. If you want to start your story when the Marauders are a bit older (16 or 17), you could say that the wannabe Death Eaters at Hogwarts sort of idolised him because he was so young but already in Voldemort's inner circle; furthermore, you could have him actually recruit students, and have them take Unbreakable vows, teach them the Unforgivable Curses and make them get the Dark Mark. They could meet in Hogsmeade (since he's no longer a student), kinda like Harry does with his first DA meeting.

Barty Crouch Junior is another Death Eater that comes to mind and it could be an interesting character to work with. He was at Hogwarts during the 70s and roughly the same age as James & his friends. He came from a pureblood family, but I don't think they were the kind of people who actually wanted Muggleborns dead; after all, Crouch Senior was already a prominent figure in politics, and he was head of the DMLE (Department of Magical Law Enforcement). But he did have an aggressive approach towards criminals, which partly explains his son's obsession with violence. Barty Junior also had a very complicated relationship with his father, a man who was probably incapable of showing affection and was too busy working to take care of his son. I think Barty hated him but wanted to impress him at the same time and, in a very fucked up way, he did those horrible things because he wanted his father to pay attention to him. We don't know why he chose to become a DE, but my impression is that he was a very lonely, insecure kid and he found a sense of belonging at Hogwarts, something I don't think he ever felt when he was at home. Whether he joined the very people his father was after out of spite or not, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that he did believe in those things by the time he was older. He was also very intelligent - he disguised himself as Moody for nearly a year - albeit highly unpredictable. He was delirious and insane in some scenes, but overall quite reasonable when he pretended to be Moody, so he could have had a personality disorder, but if you want to write about that you should do some research and be careful, because associating villains with mental illnesses could do more harm than good if not done well, and it's a slippery slope. All I'm gonna say is that he definitely had some daddy issues, that's for sure.

Then of course we have Regulus, whose family was very much against Muggleborns. We know quite a lot about the Black household thanks to Sirius, and there are different headcanons floating around about the kind of bond the two brothers had. In my opinion, Regulus looked up to his brother and was envious of him: even at eleven years old, Sirius had already made up his mind about his parents' view of the world and wanted nothing to do with them. It shows that he was an independent thinker, and I think Regulus wondered for a long time how he could do that so easily. Was Regulus not strong enough? Or did he feel like he didn't have a choice? Because Sirius had James, so he wasn't completely alone. Regulus had no one. Obviously, I know he did have a choice, and he shared his parents' (and Voldemort's) political views. When Voldemort hurt Kreacher he turned against him, which is very interesting and unusual, mainly because pureblood families do not have any sort of respect or affection towards elves, while Regulus clearly did.

As for the others, I think Mulciber and Avery are mentioned by Lily while they were in Hogwarts, and they're the ones who cursed Mary Macdonald (this is mentioned in SWM). I think they went to Azkaban after the first war, unlike Evan Rosier (mentioned during Karkaroff's trial) who was killed when they tried to arrest him.

I suggest you also look into the Sacred Twenty-Eight - a list of pureblood families from which the Potters were excluded because they had been pro-muggle for a couple of generations, I think - to get an idea and maybe an inspiration for an original DE character.

So, if you want to include Death Eaters in your fic, you could make a list of possible characters and mention their relationships and friendships; you could make one of them really good at dueling, and another one good at flying (and make them James' rival during Quidditch matches). Death Eaters were Voldemort's followers first, and friends second, so it makes sense that there was a hierarchy: you can choose one of them as a leader, and the others could be the minions, the brawns and the brains (Snape would probably be the latter since he was smart and actually invented some hexes that were very useful to the DEs). And if you want to make things even more interesting, some of them could also be from different Hogwarts houses (not the ones I've mentioned because they're all canonically Slytherins), and they could also be girls!

If you want more ideas, there's a 2014 film called 'The Riot Club' (which I didn't like to be honest, but that's not the point lol) that explores the violent behaviour that often occurs in these kind of social circles; and while you're at it, you could also research 'hazing', a phenomenon that is often associated with fraternities and sororities in college that, while pretty disturbing, could also make for a much more compelling story.

Historically, boarding schools have often been described as toxic environments: for the majority of the year these young kids are separated from their families and while this is beneficial for some, for others it's very dangerous. During the most vulnerable period of their lives, they have to rely on authority figures that do not, however, provide the love and affection that parents do; this creates a dissonance, and kids either isolate themselves, or create their own 'families', and some are more dysfunctional than others (i.e. the Marauders vs. Snape's gang).

This is all I could think about, but as always people are welcome to add their own thoughts and headcanons!

Hope this helps, and feel free to ask me whatever you want :)

#oof this was a long one #was gonna put this in the jily tag but it has nothing to do with them #but i also don't wanna tag the DEs I mentioned bc I don't want to attract their fans #I loved talking about this tho #very interesting and i'm definitely gonna think about this a lot in the future #mainly bc it makes their world even more fucked up and i'm even more mad at dumbledore #harry potter #marauders #marauders era #mwpp #mpp #death eaters #jfleamont rambles #asks

[mppmaraudergirl]

not for anti honesty hour, but why do so many authors write james as this super fit adonis? he is never once described in the books as handsome like sirius is or pretty like lily. all that’s said is that he looks like harry and has messy hair and a long, thin face. in fact, he sounds much closer aesthetically to snape and i always got the idea they were supposed to be two sides of the same coin only james grew up healthy and loved

I honestly could not disagree with you more on your last point. I can acknowledge the parallels of James/Snape's childhood but that in no way directly correlates to their basic looks.

James, in the books, is described as looking exactly like Harry. Harry never describes himself as handsome/attractive because he's a fifteen year old boy who is a bit preoccupied with not being murdered every year. What we do hear in canon is that the summer between fifth and sixth, Harry had a growth spurt that according to Hermione, made him very enticing to the female population of Hogwarts. He was doing just fine in the looks department.

As far as embellishing the "super fit Adonis" narrative, which despite your claim seems very pointed based on one of the running jokes I've written in a recent story, I chalk that up to the fact that most of us are writing romance stories and thus James is written in a very attractive light, especially from Lily's POV. He's the main love interest. I haven't read many pieces of fiction where the main love interest isn't described extremely favorably/attractive.

None of this is to say that he is on Sirius' level. Clearly that would be untrue as no one is described to be as handsome as Sirius (not Remus, not Regulus either). But that doesn't mean I'm not going to write that to Lily and in her eyes, he is the more attractive man. I can only speak for myself, but I suspect other authors may feel something similar.

#mpp rambles about jily #mpp rambles about james potter #its also not just the looks... its the personality that is shown in the playful smirk the messy hair etcetc

[mppmaraudergirl]

idk who first wrote the fic that had james incessantly asking lily out and not taking no for an answer but i hate them and i hate that it’s almost become canon, that’s how prominent it is in JL fics. if james was constantly asking lily out, why would snape tell lily he fancied her like it was a big secret and he was revealing something huge? lily clearly didn’t know which means james wasn’t constantly harassing her. james seemed to keep his crush quiet with the way he erased the doodles with her initials on it and the way sirius told him she thought he was conceited, like they’d never really talked about it before.

Ooh okay yeah. I've made posts about this before. There is only canon evidence of James asking her out once yadda yadda. Completely agree with your take on it re: Snape's comments to Lily. I love Sirius giving him shit for it, tbh. That exchange at the end of SWM is perfection.

As for the fandom, I won't say I'm guiltless in writing James that way in the past (though it was years ago and there is a fine line between asking her out several times and "badgering her constantly"). But on the whole, I feel like the James "badgering Lily/school playboy/only in it for the chase" fandom interpretations have really died out in recent years(??) at least in Jily writers. Unless I am missing all of these fics where this is happening.

Now if you're talking about wider fandom (anti-JP) spaces or perhaps even the "new" Marauders fandom that couldn't correctly identify Sirius Black if he stood in front of them wearing a name tag, then yeah I'm not surprised that particular fanon interpretation still runs rampant.

I'm grateful for the pro-Jily space we have that shows James (and even Lily for that matter) in much more realistic, human light than what was the norm 5, 10, 15 years ago.

#jily #jple #mpp rambles about jily #mpp rambles about fandom #james potter #my beloved