#genuine question l

[subhiscoop]

why does everything. Everything depend on my relations with people?

[wellnoe]

How would you describe Jean’s personality (like in a list of adjectives)?

hmm in a list of adjectives.....nice, sanctimonious, idealistic, devoted, private, and dramatic, to end on a slightly ambiguous note. also maybe explosive...i'm trying to land on a word to describe the way i think her anger and frustration work, and that's not quite it, but its close.

[froggybirdtaco]

So I was told L and Misa is a pro ship but the person who told me shipped Light and L. isn't Misa two years older than Light? Wouldn't that consider Light and L to be a pro ship? Is L and Misa a pro ship? Are they both pro ships?? /Gen question

[ice-and-starlight]

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.

[halfyearsqueen]

the way she’s so genuinely fond of helaena is so dear to me actually

[fred-from-fred-the-show]

resident evil fans who hate mia winters are insufferable

[landfilloftrash]

once more i apologize to everyone in a 140 mile radius of me i am deeply unwell

[sorryferretstudios-official]

How exactly does one host a voice acting audition? My sibling and I are still working on most designs for a show we plan on making, but I just want to be prepared.

[smallblueandloud]

DIVERSITY LOSE! THE GAYEST CHARACTER IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION IS KISSING ANOTHER WOMAN!

[reineyday]

i was thinking about a reverse todosibs au where shouto is the oldest and touya is the youngest but like... would there even be more than shouto and natsu if shou was born first? would they have the rest of their kids exist out of happiness?? would there even be family angst if shouto was born first, or would shou just hold up enji's expectations all on his own? bear the brunt of the weight of his dad's legacy and keep it away from his other siblings?

enji seemed like a pretty good dad till touya's quirk started failing on him, so if he had the opportunity to train shou's "perfect" quirk then would things have ever snowballed into being that bad?

[arisveah]

its not all doom and gloom…

he regenerated early, and now he’s waiting for his friends to get out of the hospital/mechanics room/cadaver study???? its been a long day…

[luci-z-wont-shut-up]

Actually you know what

[thebiscuitrule]

hello! what is your favorite book-canon-compliant scene from the show, and your favorite book-canon-divergent scene?

p.s i love your header/blog design. NICKING TWO IN TIMES OF STRESS JUST ISN’T DONE

Favorite book-canon-compliant scene is definitely Lucy’s interview. It’s always been one of my favorite scenes from the book, so seeing it on screen was awesome even if they did change a few little things up

Favorite book-canon-divergent scene is either the stuff they added with Norrie (yes yes I know that’s technically multiple scenes) or That Scene in episode 4 with Lockwood cleaning and dressing Lucy’s wound because I’m absolutely weak for things like that, and the dialogue was fabulous

[cheerstotheelites-if]

Hey @ my fellow Filipinos in the Philippines (or any of my international followers who are experiencing similar problems)

Is it just me or is itch.io being weird out of the blue.

As in most/all images won't load, and if you play any browser game it won't work and just give you an error page. I'm using the itch.io app for my phone, and the website itself on my laptop is acting up as well. I'm unsure if the itch app on my pc is experiencing similar problems since I haven't checked that yet, but seeing that the website and phone app are, it's safe to assume that it most likely is too.

This has been going on for nearly two months now, and only when I got a vpn today that the site worked properly. For now I have a vpn on my phone, and I have yet to download one for my laptop. I tried switching DNS's and clearing cache and cookies from chrome, and even tried other browsers like Opera and Firefox, but itch still wouldn't work with those methods before I decided to download a vpn.

If you're wondering, yes, I can download and upload games from and on itch. I just can't play any web browser games and media wouldn't load.

[hyah-lian]

I made it home.but the from car.to.door is.... too much.

[youngestdaughtersyndrome]

prob should switch therapists bc even tho i love my current one shes like wayyyy too nice and i need someone to literally carve information out of me otherwise i simply wont say anything