Eh. I’ve been known to use the Harry Potter house metaphor occasionally (though not, as best I can recall, here), and I find it attractive mainly because it’s a casual and vaguely silly typology on its face: it gives a useful shorthand for stuff like “conviction-driven personality; values justice and courage” or “ambition-driven personality; values winning” without pretending to be anything more than that.
The MBTI’s dressed up in more scientific clothes, and if I used it in the same contexts I’d be giving the impression of more rigor than I’ve actually got—but it’s got too many internal problems for me to use it when I actually need rigor.
(This is sorta tangential to your comment, Nornagest, but to express the emotivation behind my original comment: sure, MBTI is a scratched up magnifying glass, not a microscope, but magnifying glasses can be pretty handy and there’s no reason to scoff at them. Not that you (Nornagest) were sneering at MBTI, but a lot of folks do and it strikes me as masturbatory.)
One problem with HP/HPMOR house is that even in HPMOR some of the houses sound awesomer than others. (Subjectively).
Which ones precisely? (I am reminded how Gryffindor is glorified in HP to the extent that even Hermione is put in there whereas HPMoR tends to present it as the least of the four.)
Broader than ‘awesomeness’: Hufflepuff doesn’t seem very awesome, people might not feel they deserve Gryffindor or Slytherin, to a certain naive sort of person Slytherin sounds about the way it does in canon!HP and to a certain sort of cynic Gryffindor sounds even worse than it does in HPMOR.
I’m not sure if they are “conscientious”, “Kind”, difficult to classify, or lacking traits of the other houses. If it’s conscientious, Hermione belongs there and Neville does not.
I prefer “Kind”, because that is the trait that complements the other houses nicely—in real life, human motivations do seem to classify nicely into [ambition, altruism, knowledge-seeking, justice-seeking] …but both the cannon and hpmor seem confused on whether Hufflepuff is “altruistic” or simply “rule abiding”...
coughharrypotterhousescough
Eh. I’ve been known to use the Harry Potter house metaphor occasionally (though not, as best I can recall, here), and I find it attractive mainly because it’s a casual and vaguely silly typology on its face: it gives a useful shorthand for stuff like “conviction-driven personality; values justice and courage” or “ambition-driven personality; values winning” without pretending to be anything more than that.
The MBTI’s dressed up in more scientific clothes, and if I used it in the same contexts I’d be giving the impression of more rigor than I’ve actually got—but it’s got too many internal problems for me to use it when I actually need rigor.
(This is sorta tangential to your comment, Nornagest, but to express the emotivation behind my original comment: sure, MBTI is a scratched up magnifying glass, not a microscope, but magnifying glasses can be pretty handy and there’s no reason to scoff at them. Not that you (Nornagest) were sneering at MBTI, but a lot of folks do and it strikes me as masturbatory.)
One problem with HP/HPMOR house is that even in HPMOR some of the houses sound awesomer than others. (Subjectively).
Which ones precisely? (I am reminded how Gryffindor is glorified in HP to the extent that even Hermione is put in there whereas HPMoR tends to present it as the least of the four.)
Broader than ‘awesomeness’: Hufflepuff doesn’t seem very awesome, people might not feel they deserve Gryffindor or Slytherin, to a certain naive sort of person Slytherin sounds about the way it does in canon!HP and to a certain sort of cynic Gryffindor sounds even worse than it does in HPMOR.
I don’t know, Hufflepuff seems pretty awesome to me; they’re the people most likely to Get Shit Done.
They’re also poorly defined.
I’m not sure if they are “conscientious”, “Kind”, difficult to classify, or lacking traits of the other houses. If it’s conscientious, Hermione belongs there and Neville does not.
I prefer “Kind”, because that is the trait that complements the other houses nicely—in real life, human motivations do seem to classify nicely into [ambition, altruism, knowledge-seeking, justice-seeking] …but both the cannon and hpmor seem confused on whether Hufflepuff is “altruistic” or simply “rule abiding”...