I Know I'm Late With This. It Took Me Way Too Long, But I Had Already Startet It And Didn't Want To Wait

Hey, first of all I’d like to thank you for all the lovely words and condolences. I’m feeling quite okay right now. I am still sad of course, but my thoughts are with my friend’s husband and sister, who suffer most.

I can’t believe it myself, but I actually finished my newest Sirius painting in August! (very last day, but still 😅 Grumpy SIrius in Grimmauld place 🤭 It has been a long time since I painted a more detailed background. It was a great experience, but very exhausting. I also made some bad perspective mistakes. Please ignore them 😅 I really put much effort into it, but in the end I still messed it up.

welll....

shit.

WAIT HOLD ON

The one thing he keeps is the picture of the lighthouse??? No hold on this gets way worse.

Not only is this a reminder of Stede, but think about their conversation about the painting of the lighthouse.

YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO AVOID LIGHTHOUSES. SO YOU DON’T GET YOURSELF HURT.

STEDE WAS THE LIGHTHOUSE: TO HIS FAMILY, TO HIS CREW, TO THE MAN HE LOVED. A BIG, SHINY GOLDEN CHILD WHO ENDED UP CRACKING THEM ON THE ROCKS. THAT’S THE MEMORY OF HIM THAT EDWARD KEEPS!! THE WARNING TO NEVER GET CLOSE AGAIN!!

AND THE LAST SHOT OF THE SEASON IS HIM ALONE, ON THE WATER, HAND SPLAYED UP ABOVE HIM.

EVERYONE BE QUIET. NO ONE TALK TO ME RIGHT NOW. I’M HAVING AN EMOTION.

lily evans potter: womanhood, motherhood & morality

lily as the dream girl in canon and fan spaces

i want to talk about this while there isn't a current upsurge in the discourse

Lily Evans Potter is introduced to us as Lily Potter, the dead mother of Harry Potter. Lily and James potter, dead, leaving their poor, miraculous son to live with the dull, horrible Durselys. We only ever see her through, with the exception of her sister, the memory of men.

I've said before that I believe James and Lily are the ideal masculine and ideal feminine, both to Harry and in a metatextual way. parents are our introduction into gender roles, the "correct" way to be a man and woman. since Lily is dead she cannot disappoint Harry. she can be imagined as the perfect woman, which is, of course, a wife and mother. the dream girl!

Lily's death makes her a silent, ever-loving, beautiful young mother, for both Harry and the reader. James is slightly deconstructed in SWM, but Lily is not. She is a fierce protector, brave, clever, and only emotional (angry) once James, her future husband, provokes her enough.

in the text Lily is not truly presented as flawed in a meaningful way. the moral choices she makes: to build a relationship with Severus, to defend Severus, to break their relationship when he refuses to reject bigotry, to join the Order, to die for her child, are all the correct moral choices. these are the choices the narrative is telling us to respect.

women have, for the past 200 years or so, been conceived of as the moral center of the family.* Lily Evans Potter is the moral center of the series. her choice to die is mirrored by the main character, Harry, and sparks the beginning of victory. Harry's sacrifice is enabled by another mother, Narcissa, making the correct moral choice because the power of her maternal love urges her to this choice. finally, Voldemort's most powerful follower, Bellatrix, is killed by a housewife and mother, Molly, in a maternal rage at the idea of her daughter being murdered.

Lily's sacrifice and the emotions behind it are mirrored multiple times in the final battle because it and she are the moral center of the series.

that Harry is frequently told he has his mother's eyes, and that Dumbledore points out how his essential nature mirrors his mother's, further highlights Lily's character and her choices as implicitly good.

women, especially mothers, as our moral authorities, is an unconscious cultural belief we can see play out in the fandom and subfandoms that Lily is discussed in. we can all recall the characterization of Lily as the goody-two shoes that James has to change for, the characterization of Lily as "not like other girls", the BAMF characterization, the current near mommy dom to James characterization.

the characterization of Lily changes with our view of the best kind of woman. but she is, always, demonstrating a most "correct" way to be. maybe it's 2007 and she's telling James off—not fun, but right. or it's 2012 and she's not preoccupied with boys like her classmates. or it's 2019 and she always knows the right thing to say to Remus when he's down on himself. or it's 2025 and James is trailing after her like a puppy while she contemplates what size strap to use on him after she beats up a bigot.

We don't see a lot of moderate views on Lily. Above, I've discussed how Lily lovers tend to portray her. Lily haters, a smaller group from what I can tell, do not utilize these common fanon characterizations. They disparage her as an immoral, selfish, bad woman. The wholesale rejection of Lily as the moral center based on her perceived immorality is the other side of the coin.

I'll refer to people with this perspective as "Lily haters" though I am aware there are people who dislike her outside of the topics I'm discussing.

I rarely engage with Lily haters, though I am aware of their arguments that Lily was a bad friend to Severus, a social climber, a gold digger, or boring. All grave sins for the woman who's supposed to save everyone.

This perspective doesn't reject Lily as the moral center or the perfect woman, it is an argument that she's not fulfilling her role correctly. Her unwillingness to give Severus more chances is selfish, stuck-up, classist. Her desire for James is an further betrayal of Severus.

She's supposed to be the Madonna, why is she being a whore?

I believe Lily hate comes from a belief she failed at being the perfect woman/mother, and therefore she is worthless. A bitch. Weak willed. Oversexed. even by haters her role as the moral center is not questioned.

in both the og text and in the fandom supertext Lily is the moral center because of her role as mother. her status as the moral center is inextricably tied to her motherhood. since Lily being a mother is the point of her character, divorcing her from her motherhood often changes the foundation of her character.**

when her literal motherhood is removed from a depiction of her character, her metaphorical status as the perfect woman/mother is often still intact. this is seen in the characterizations I described earlier, and, I argue, in the belief that she's too good for James when it is used as a "justification" for shipping James with someone else.*** thereby, she is further purified, not even having been touched by a man. she's put on a pedestal, where she can't be touched, and is rarely noticed.

it is also frequently seen when she is written as a side character in a relationship with James, and the pair become the dual moral guides for the main couple.

this reflects James and Lily as the ideal masculine and feminine, as they are a perfectly harmonious couple when a side pairing. their implicit canonical roles are subconsciously reflected in fanon with little critique or commentary on the canon text.

Lily's entire character is crafted to be The Perfect Mother™️. whether she is literally a mother in her fanon depiction or not, she is still The Perfect Woman™️—and is still affected by the biases our culture has towards women and mothers.

thus, Lily is the dream girl in the text, the moral center only seen through a nostalgic veil, and a dream girl in fan spaces, as the moral guide for the men in her life who pegs her husband or is too pure for the touch of a man.

for more on gender in the wizarding world, based on gender in early modern england (pre the cult of domesticity) see this post

*see the cult of domesticity if you'd rather not read the article

**please like fucking do not fucking act like I'm saying you cannot do this. I swear to fucking god

***you don't need to justify your ships

"you wear fine things well." - Stede Bonnet

Fiction & Poetry:

A Life Apart, by Neel Mukherjee

A Thousand Dreams Within Me Softly Burn, Sahil Sood

Babyji by Abha Dawesar

Blue Boy, by Rakesh Satyal

The Boy and the Bindi, by Vivek Shraya

Cinnamon Gardens, by Shyam Selvadurai

The City of Devi, Manil Suri

Funny Boy, by Shyam Selvadurai

My Magical Palace, by Kunal Mukherjee

Ode to Lata, Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla

The Paths of Marriage, by Mala Kumar

The Pregnant King, by Devdutt Pattanaik

Quarantine, by Rahul Mehta

She of the Mountains, by Vivek Shraya

Stealing Nasreen, Farzana Doctor

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, by Shyam Selvadurai

The Two Krishnas, by Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla

The World Unseen, by Shamim Sarif

Non-Fiction & Anthologies:

AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India, by Amartya Sen and various authors

Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics in India, edited by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan

Dirty River, by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love, and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India, by Parmesh Shahani

Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, by Gayatri Gopinath

The Invisibles, by Zia Jaffrey

A Lotus of Another Color, by Rakesh Ratti

Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West by Ruth Vanita

Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India, by Maya Sharma

Made in India: Decolonializations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects, by Suparna Bhaskaran

Me Hijra, Me Laxmi, by Laxminarayan Tripathi

Neither Man Nor Woman, Serena Nanda

Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India, by Giti Thadani

Same-Sex Love in India, edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwal

Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia, by Sanjay Srivastava

Sex Longing and Not Belonging: A Gay Muslim’s Quest for Love and Meaning, by Badruddin Khan

Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don’t Tell You, by Devdutt Pattanaik

Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics, by Naisargi Dave

Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, by Ruth Vanita

With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India, by Gaytri Reddy

LOVE THIS-

dorcas: im passing the phone to the most narcissistic bitch cause every time we talk about something he always feels the need to always wanna mention himself like everything is about him

sirius: *laughs* anyways im passing the phone to the most moodiest bitch every time we talk to this hoe she always crying about something we dont know or we dont know which personality we're gonna get

marlene: boy fuck you. anyways im passing the phone to the most secretive bitch in this group cause every time we wanna know something about this bitch or his emotions he wanna hide and act like he dont know what the fuck that mean

remus: thats cause its my business sweetie get your own. anyways im passing the phone to the bitch that always wanna fight me every time i dont express some type of shit

james: and what? youre my friend bitch open the fuck up. anyways im passing the phone to the most boujiest bitch in this group

mary: peasents. anyways im passing the phone to the most messiest bitch in the group

lily: bitch the only thing messy are your relationships

SO, I’M OBSESSED WITH THEM THEN I MADE AN EDIT🥹❤️🤍💙

2+2=5. "When a lie has been told enough times, it becomes real." Two and two is five. Every morning I tell myself I like who I am. How many times do you repeat the lie?

I don't hate myself. I love myself too. I'm surrounded by myself, hounded by my own cries, caged inside my own ribs. I love myself. My body is my temple but some days it feels like the ruins of Petra. I love myself. I just don't like myself all the time.

On rainy days full of blues, I'm tired of this body, of this mind. 2+2=5. If you could sell all your bad memories, only on the condition you'd have to give away the good ones too, would you still do it? Are you your memories or are you the vessel that houses them? Are you the product of your thoughts or the manufacturer? When you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes part of the truth, expands and births itself anew.

Two plus two is five. Am I the voice in my head or the notes of my heart? Am I the lies I tell myself? Lies of consolation, lies ot condolences. If I love myself, why do I keep seeing my corpse at the bottom of the ocean, on a road, slumped on my chair, buried in the dirt? If I like myself, why do I keep hearing four, four, four? Two plus two is four. Where do lies end and god's honest truth begin? Because lord I'm tired of not knowing.

-Ritika Jyala

His brightest star I wanted to draw Sirius in casual clothes.

do you think neil ever snuck into todd’s bed at night whenever they couldn’t sleep and asked him to read him his poetry and neil would be so touched by what he’d hear but couldn’t put it into words so he instead just kissed todd in the darkness and solitude of their room like do you think that ever happened