Lily Evans-Potter Bashing

[lunalotte88]

So, I was surprised when I first found out about Lily-bashing.

Comments

[winter_ruins]

The only person in the entire books who I'd consider a Sue/Stu is Harry Potter. In the first book. He definitely got fleshed out in the next six, but the first was almost painful to read.

I... what? I didn't even realize people were calling Lily a Sue. What?

[lunalotte88]

I would consider James Stu-ish, because he was very talented and everybody seemed to like him, despite being a bully. We have been told that he has changed his ways, but we haven't seen how he acted then; we've just seen how he acted as the teen bullying Snape. Now, I don't hate James, but I'm not really a fan of his, and I can see where the pro-Snape anti-James camp is coming from.

[summeriris]

We know that Lily would not have married him if he had not changed his ways, she married him, ergo he changed his ways. We know he supported Remus because Remus tells us. We know he and his family provided a safe home for Sirius because Sirius tells us. The facts are in the books, true in this instance we are told rather than shown, except for the one glimpse of James playing with Harry as a baby. Ad he did save Sbape's life with no thanks from Snape.

[chalts]

James can't be a Stu for the same reason Lily isn't a Sue: he's a background character, certainly integral to the plot, but never there to remove the tension. Mary Sue and Gary Stu came to be hated tropes because of their effect on the story, not because of some nebulous idea of people liking them.

(Also, people liked Tom Riddle too, aside from Dumbledore.)

[randomneses]

Basically

[lunalotte88]

There should be a similar icon which says "Not a Sue".

[chaos_by_design]

Mary Sue used to be a term that meant something that while broad, still had a pretty definite meaning. Now it mostly seems to mean "female character that's disliked, often because she's deemed to be 'too competent'". It's become a glass ceiling of sorts for female characters; they can't be too cool or too skilled or too competent at anything, lest they get slapped with the Mary Sue label, while male characters can be as improbably skilled as ever with no repercussions.

I'm not sure if that's what's happening with Lily though. My guess is that it's not that she's too competent, but that people feel she's veering too close to being a Purity Sue. I still dislike using the term Mary Sue for canon characters though, for the above mentioned glass ceiling phenomenon.

[pathology_doc]

Interesting perspective. I hadn't considered that.

Makes you wonder if they're projecting onto Lily their jealousy of the girl they went to school with who was always top at gym, math, getting the boy they wanted, etc. etc. etc. and never got over the bitterness.

[sunlit_music]

What the...Lily is too minor a character to be a Sue. She doesn't warp the story around her. The story is all about *Harry*. For crying out loud.

Makes you wonder if they're projecting onto Lily their jealousy of the girl they went to school with who was always top at gym, math, getting the boy they wanted, etc. etc. etc. and never got over the bitterness.

maybe some, but not all. Different people have different definitions of 'Mary Sue', and different reasons for disliking a character.

I've read some rants at deathtocapslock with interesting arguments on why they think Lily is portrayed as "being portrayed as being likeable/good when she isn't" (even though several characters are portrayed as being likeable/good when they are bad/unlikeable. Yet these other characters don't get the Sue label, but Lily does. It sucks.). Either way, Lily isn't a Sue. She seems like an ordinary flawed teenage girl. Harry pings my Sue radar more, but that's another different story.

[ext_1641310]

I don't know, I mean, if she was a real friend to Snape, she wouldn't have just abandoned him. Yeah, he called her a mudblood, once, and she just joined in on the teasing and wouldn't accept any form of apology from him. He slept outside her dorm, and the only thing she said to him was basically I don't like you, never want to see you again, so be off. If you think about it, if she had just talked to Snape and at least given him some closure, therefore allowing him to move on, he probably wouldn't have become a death eater, wouldn't have told Ol' Voldie about the prophesy, and the whole "Lily and James Potter dead" thing would have just been avoided. I don't hate her, but I do think that she was a bit shallow. This was from a girl who reads WAY to much into things. Hope you enjoyed a fresh perspective from a person who doesn't think Lily is perfect.

[lunalotte88]

Thank you for your perspective. I may be biased because I like her, but I do agree that there seems to have been a communication gap between Lily and Snape. Even though he called her a mudblood once, the fact that he hung out with people that dislike Muggleborns may have been equivalent to calling her mudblood multiple times, in her eyes. She actually asked James to leave Snape alone; she didn't join in on the teasing (besides a small mouth twitch which she tried to control). But yeah, if she did talk to Snape, it certainly wouldn't have hurt. :) Even so, there may be irreconcilable differences between them.