Zarily

Zarily
GENERAL
Duolingo
Character	Zari
Character	Lily
Canonical?	Fanon
Status of Relationship	Best Friends
IN FANDOM
Type (?)	Femslash
Also Known As	Lari, Zalily, ZariLily, LilyZari, 🩷💜
Tropes	Night and Day Duo Opposites Attract Light Feminine and Dark Feminine Odd Couple

Zari – “Do you think we're friends in every universe?”

Lily – “(smiling) ...Maybe.”

— "I hope so." video from Duolingo's Instagram Account.

Zarily is the femslash ship between Zari and Lily from the Duolingo fandom.

Canon

Zari and Lily are characters within the famous language learning app, Duolingo. They help users learn all languages Duolingo has to offer. They can be seen in stories within the app that further pushes the language a user desires to learn. In the stories, their friendship is explored and they are discovered to be best friends. Other than interacting within the app together, they appear in Duolingo shorts as well.

In said shorts, Zari and Lily participate in Lily's family event; Zari claims she was tagged along to be emotional support for a nerve-wrecked Lily. She assists her best friend with "besos" since the latter is afraid of screwing up the gestures. In another short, Zari creates a "Fun With Diminutives" video with Lily much to the latter's disinterest. She manages to convince her to join in with pleading eyes. Throughout the video, they overuse filters whilst teaching the audience the uses of diminutives.

Zari and Lily fit within the Opposites Attract trope for their majorly different personalities. Said personalities also activate the Night and Day Duo trope since Zari is energetic and optimistic in comparison to Lily's stoicism and unenthusiasm. Their relationship sparks the Odd Couple trope as well because of these major contrasting traits that make them seem unlikely to coincide. Despite this, Lily is open to Zari and willing to participate in activities with her, and Zari reciprocates this. Details on how they first encountered and formed their friendship are left for interpretation.

Fanon

Zarily is a very popular ship within the fanbase, despite them being language assisting characters and not meant to be a source of fandom entertainment.

Fans assumed that they may have had a romantic connection with each other, but they are later confirmed to be best friends. Along with this, the two don't express romantic and or sexual relations with the same gender, proven in their absence in LGBTQ+ social media posts by Duolingo featuring the characters who are within said community.

Their contrasting personalities that influence the Night and Day Duo trope plays a main factor in their ship popularity. Fans point out how the two look painfully similar to Lumity for their physical and psychological similarities to Luz and Amity. This could be an additional factor for their ship popularity.

Fandom

FAN FICTION

Lily/Zari tag on AO3

Lily & Zari tag on AO3

TUMBLR

Zari x Lily tag on Tumblr

Lily x Zari tag on Tumblr

Trivia

• Duolingo's official social media accounts appear to ship Zari and Lily, as evidenced by the number of promotional content they have made of them, most often following specific (and most of the time, romantic) trends:
  • The Instagram Reel titled, "I hope so 😌" from Duolingo's official account features Lily reading a book as Zari happily asks her "Do you think we're friends in every universe?". The sequence continues with 3 redrawings of the same scene in different art styles, symbolizing Zari asking the same question to Lily in alternate universes (where they are still friends). Lily smiles and answers, "Maybe," the title of the video implying she hopes they are. This video follows the TikTok trend "In Every Universe".
  • On 10.09.2024, Duolingo's Japanese TikTok account released a two-slides slideshow featuring Zari and Lily drawn in Duolingo's official artsyle, quoting Togachako, a popular Femslash ship from My Hero Academia trending at the time. Lily was given Toga's dialogue, asking Zari, "私 …カァイイ?" ('am I... cute?') while Zari answers "世界一" ('world's number one.') as Ochako does. The TikTok is captioned, "今日レッスンした人、世界一かわいい" ("The person who gave me a lesson today is the cutest person in the world.")

Gallery

Promotional Content

From Duolingo Japan's reference to Togachako.