Idealist v. Loyalist, Constructed v. Felt, Internal v. External
April 24, 2021 8:37 AM Subscribe
Sorting Hat Chats, a character taxonomy by writers Emily and Kat: podcast, blog, Tumblr, and the guided tour of the system via quiz.
Primary Houses are about moralities and motivations... it's important to understand all characters have the capacity to feel compelled by any and all of these motivations: their gut, logic, their community, the protection of their loved ones; the distinction rests on which of these sources of morality is prioritized.... Mal of Firefly is a Hufflepuff Primary, while Simon is a Slytherin Primary deeply (and, initially, solely) loyal to his baby sister, River. While the two men begin the show at odds, when Mal fully adopts River into his Hufflepuff loyalties and Simon becomes loyal to more members of Mal’s crew, he and Simon suddenly have very parallel priorities.
The basics of the taxonomy: People can vary hugely in how they embody their Houses; in this system, Aang, the heroic protagonist from Avatar the Last Airbender, shares Houses with Voldemort.
What does it mean to be Ravenclaw Secondary, Hufflepuff Secondary, a Slytherin Secondary, or a Gryffindor Secondary.
From their first episode (podcast episode, transcript), on the Hunger Games:
Primary Houses are about moralities and motivations... it's important to understand all characters have the capacity to feel compelled by any and all of these motivations: their gut, logic, their community, the protection of their loved ones; the distinction rests on which of these sources of morality is prioritized.... Mal of Firefly is a Hufflepuff Primary, while Simon is a Slytherin Primary deeply (and, initially, solely) loyal to his baby sister, River. While the two men begin the show at odds, when Mal fully adopts River into his Hufflepuff loyalties and Simon becomes loyal to more members of Mal’s crew, he and Simon suddenly have very parallel priorities.
The basics of the taxonomy: People can vary hugely in how they embody their Houses; in this system, Aang, the heroic protagonist from Avatar the Last Airbender, shares Houses with Voldemort.
What does it mean to be Ravenclaw Secondary, Hufflepuff Secondary, a Slytherin Secondary, or a Gryffindor Secondary.
From their first episode (podcast episode, transcript), on the Hunger Games:
Emily: The heart of her morality– her moral thoughts come from her love for other people. Which is the heart of our Slytherin Primary... Slytherin Primary is a really personal house. I think that’s one of the reasons why it comes off as so intense. Why even– in some books, you have the Slytherin framed as evil and selfish and only caring about themselves and their people. And they’re not, always! And that’s certainly not inherently evil. And we see in Katniss, I think, a really interesting example of someone who doesn’t add on much morality on top of her Slytherin Primary....
Kat: I think it’s really important that the core for WHY she is fighting for the rebellion is to make a better world for her family, for Prim– where Prim can be safe and where other people’s version of Prim can also be safe.
I'm impressed by the work that went into this. This seems like fun, even though I don't really understand it.
posted by eotvos at 9:54 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
When you sit down and consider the terrifying lack of objective truth in our reality, how do you feel?Deeply tempted to argue with the question itself.
You might be a Ravenclaw Primary.I'm gonna have to do more than watch the first film a decade ago on an airplane in order to actually understand this, aren't I? But, it sounds about as right as personality tests with lots of publications and credibility.
posted by eotvos at 9:54 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm likewise very impressed by the work they put into fleshing out what always seemed like a somewhat haphazard source typology, but man did I bounce off that quiz hard. I'm not sure I got a single question where one of the answers rang immediately more true to me than any of the other answers, and some felt entirely unanswerable (surely what you should do to make a decision is different from what you would do to make a decision, and "I'd freeze up" answers one but not the other).
Admittedly, I've had similar problems with pretty much every personality quiz I've ever taken, so possibly it's me. Is that a personality type?
posted by eponym at 10:13 AM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Admittedly, I've had similar problems with pretty much every personality quiz I've ever taken, so possibly it's me. Is that a personality type?
posted by eponym at 10:13 AM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
I am likewise impressed by the depth and thoughtfulness of the quiz but ultimately it felt like several different ways to justify your emotional attachment to whatever house you decided you were when you were 14. I never developed that attachment so it just felt wishy-washy to me.
posted by restless_nomad at 12:16 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by restless_nomad at 12:16 PM on April 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
In it's Hogwarts-houses-as-astrology, it's crude personality test as moral lesson and in it's precisely targeted cultural references this may be the most American Millennial thing I've ever seen.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:44 PM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:44 PM on April 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
Sheesh, MeFi is in a mood today. SHC is (for me) a fun way to think about how other people and/or fictional characters make decisions, but if you hate personality discussions like that, no, it's not going to rock your world.
posted by tautological at 2:10 PM on April 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by tautological at 2:10 PM on April 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
Quiz thinks I'm a Slytherin primary and Hufflepuff secondary, I think I'm a Gryffindor primary and Ravenclaw secondary.
What to make of this, I do not know. Though I think the quizmakers have a nicer viewpoint of Slytherin than I do, I think almost all of them are so awful in HP-land that I'm with Harry Potter in the whole "Not Slytherin, not Slytherin" thing.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:05 PM on April 24, 2021
What to make of this, I do not know. Though I think the quizmakers have a nicer viewpoint of Slytherin than I do, I think almost all of them are so awful in HP-land that I'm with Harry Potter in the whole "Not Slytherin, not Slytherin" thing.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:05 PM on April 24, 2021
The 'burned' traits are a neat addition here. It's nice to have something in the framework to articulate the gap between how I would like to be and the compromises that my mental health and the realities of moving through the world force me to make without necessarily landing on the most cynical/manipulative description.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 7:59 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 7:59 AM on April 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
i mean, it's kinda hard to say it's just a mood today re: the fruit of jkr, but yeah, some of us might find it exceptionally difficult to divorce the (admittedly, impressive) work that went into this from the source material that inspired it
posted by i used to be someone else at 7:39 AM on April 26, 2021
posted by i used to be someone else at 7:39 AM on April 26, 2021
It's a fun lens to use when developing characters -- or talking about them in fandom -- but yeah the "burned" traits are quite necessary, because otherwise the answer is that any active adult character with a speck of sense is a Slytherin. (On the other hand, the modeling stuff is a little squishy to me, or at least not terribly useful beyond talking about characters who have attended Hogwarts.)
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:41 AM on April 26, 2021
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:41 AM on April 26, 2021
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Many questions seem to be variants of "something you never questioned as being real turns out to be an illusion, what are ya gonna do" In keeping with the series, and also very 2020's.
posted by otherchaz at 9:46 AM on April 24, 2021 [1 favorite]