good morning! today i want to talk about james potter.
(note: this is solely based on my interpretation of him, thr very same way other writers write james in their own way. this is the essay on how i see him, as a person, a writer, and someone who relates to him, and i am not implying that my characterization is better than someone else's; just my five cents on this!)
we're all aware of the general fandom consensus and characterization for him; sunshine boy, always willing to help everyone around him, never has any sort of problems and is often see through the prism of his relationships.
to start off with my last point, with him being seen and characterized through his relationships, i think it is tied to the fact that he, himself, sees himself that way. the relationships that he has with characters are often strong and intense, either like or dislike, and therefore, said relationships take a toll on him. he always surrounds himself with people, in order to not be alone with his thoughts, and have the time to see deep within him not what the world sees him to be, but what he really is, as imperfect as everyone else.
i also consider james to be the kind of person who runs away from his problems, and this is one of the fundamental differences that he and sirius have (while sirius confronts his problems — and the fact that he ran away from home is not running away from his problems, but actively confronting them. he ran away from home, his home life being a problem, which is exactly confronting it — meanwhile, james never confronts his problems because he's scared of the feelings that might be triggered in him in that case, he's scared of how deeply he feels things, and therefore he like busies himself with other people's feelings and other people's problems in order to not work on his own.).
this also plays into euphemia and fleamont's funeral. james was more focused on comforting the people around him about the death of his parents and not sitting down and thinking on his parents' death and allowing himself to grieve, because he was scared of the impact that it might have on him. (he had a son, and he had to be strong for him; which is also the tying himself to his relationship and putting other people above himself, his feelings, and his needs). after he did sit down on his problems, he started taking more missions and becoming more rash and being more reckless in general as a coping mechanism, which, in turn, hurt him.
moreover, him running away from his problems and helping other people instead of himself often times leaves him seeking something else in order to protect himself and to make himself forget everything he's thinking about; in some cases it may be quidditch, music, pranks, and, sometimes, more dsngerous things. he's a man of stability, in this regards, so therefore i don't thìnk he would do something as dangerous as to put the lives of himself and others in danger. (we see this with the prank; sirius is the one who takes rash decisions, james is the one who puts everything back together.).
james also suffers from savior complex. the criteria and definition for it is as follows "they only feel good about themselves when helping someone, believe helping others is their purpose, spend so much energy trying to fix others that they end up burning out", and "a savior complex, or white knight syndrome, describes this need to “save” people by fixing their problems". i see this more often than not played in jegulus fanfiction, but this behavior of his expands to other characters, too.
last but not least, and this is something i only see being talked about with sirius, respectively regulus, is the pressure put on one's shoulders to perform well when part of a circle of upper-class and talented people. his father invented multiple potions which significantly helped and improved the everyday lives of the wizarding world (i.e.: pepper-up). whether this pressure is put on by parents or yourself, the need to achieve as much as your parents did can both mess up the aspiring young person and burn them out. despite james being naturally talented, much like his parents, i feel like james definitely related to this pressure to perform.
so, in order to sum up; i believe that james potter, too, is a deeply complex and flawed individual, the very same way we believe of other characters to be. being a good person with a warm heart does not mean that one is always happy and that they are inherently a morally white character.
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