#lily is cutthroat—her comparing james to snape; the way she shut snape down; how she had no patience

[padfootastic]

I agree with you and the anon about Lily’s shortcomings. I think fans create an image of Lily having no faults, even though there’s no canon to back this up - part of this is down to jkr, who limited Lily’s character to the male relationships in her life (but that’s a whole issue I won’t go into)

I think what people ignore in SWM, is moments like Lily berating Snape for staying friends with DEs, even after what they did to Mary, even though she herself is still talking to Snape! We don’t know what they did to Mary, but it’s safe to assume it was more than a couple of hexes. This cannot have boded well for her relationship with Mary, but a majority of Gryffindors, who probably saw the situation with Snape far more clearly than Lily did.

I also think people gloss over the fact that Lily was both stubborn and able to hold a grudge. Let’s not forget, as different as she was from Petunia, they were sisters. I’m sure Lily also had, in smaller doses, a lot of the negative traits that we see in Petunia throughout the series - quick tempers, vindictiveness, and a Slytherin cunning. I actually think Sirius and Lily were alike in a lot of ways (clearly James had a type), which also parallels the way that Harry and Sirius are quite similar in temperament, especially after OOTP. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think James was a Gryffindor with Hufflepuff traits (he considered it the height of dishonor to suspect his friends), and Lily, Sirius and Harry were Gryffindors with Slytherin traits.

lily definitely enjoys a saint position in fandom, ngl, and i think part of that (in addition to only being defined by the males in her life + her sacrifice) also comes from what a solid example of james’ assholery we got in swm. it’s easy to demonise him, and prop her up on a pedestal because of the stance she took in that scene.

re her negative traits, i don’t entirely agree she had a quick temper, i would put it more along the lines of slowly building and erupting in the form of something aimed to hurt? and not necessarily physically, but wherever the other person’s weakest point is. there was an excellent meta on it a while ago that i can’t find 😭 but it said something like, it took a while for lily to snap but when she did it was final. and yes!!! someone else who thinks those two are super similar—i’ve been thinking that for a while now and it led me to the natural conclusion of james potter with a humiliation + degradation kink (whoops i apologise u had to read that 💀) but yeah, lily def had slytherin traits in my mind (i also hc her as being competitive, a bit self absorbed, and not great with feelings and atleast two of those lend itself to the house of snakes)