Please, your opinion on Slytherin!Dean. I'm SO excited to find someone who agree that Dean has more slytherin traits than Sam <3
Apologies for taking so long to respond! In true Terrible Person™ fashion, I’ve been neglecting my inbox lately, and this is a topic that deserves thought, so it took me a while to make sense of my thoughts on the matter.
OKAY. Yes. So, background: I got an ask a long while back about the boys and Hogwarts houses, so I just sorta binge-read everything I could find on the traits associated with houses, but then there was this blog that basically picked apart the answers assigned to each house by the official Pottermore quiz and then talked about which traits the answers on the quiz highlighted or implied were associated with each house.
Before I begin: I find it hard as heck to type fictional characters because I think people could make a pretty good case them being in a number of different houses. But here goes—my unqualified opinion.
Some people type Dean as a Hufflepuff, but based on the analysis of the official Pottermore quiz answers, he’s… not really? People look at, “Loyal, hard-working, and care about family first and foremost” and toss Dean in, but some of the most major traits just don’t add up… and the Hufflepuff traits people assign to Dean are, to the last, present in Slytherins as well.
Aside from the stereotypical traits applied to all Hufflepuffs (a love for nature, plants, and animals, for example, which Dean doesn’t really display—if anything, Sam shows more appreciation than Dean does), Hufflepuffs are strong and loyal, but they do not seek out danger. They will face great peril if they must, and face it well, but it’s not something they enjoy, and Dean does enjoy the thrill of hunting. Facing great danger with the knowledge that one can overcome it is absolutely a Slytherin trait, and one Dean shares. Dean may not have much confidence in certain aspects of himself, but he places a huge amount of his self-worth in his image as a capable hunter. Again, this is much more characteristic of Slytherin.
Slytherins are also loyal to the death to their family/in-group. Where Puffs invite one and all, Slytherins have a more selective group, which is very much Dean. At first his was literally just family, but then a couple hunters found their way in. Then Cas and Charlie and Kevin. Gryffindors and Ravenclaws don’t show the same sort of group-oriented unity that Hufflepuffs and Slytherins have, but Dean’s small, select in-group is much more Slytherin-like than the much more indiscriminate generosity that Hufflepuffs display.
Also…
While Slytherins are certainly ambitious, they see themselves as a whole as much more unified than other houses. One of the things they fear most is being ignored/unacknowledged, and one might argue that Dean’s facade might be rooted in fears like that.
Dean is a smart guy, too—but Slytherins, unlike Ravenclaws, do not indiscriminately seek knowledge. They learn in order to apply their knowledge. Dean prizes his car, so he knows machines inside and out. He values hunting, so he made an EMF meter to aid him in it and helped make other helpful innovations. Dean has a vast array of knowledge, but he isn’t just stuffing his head full of trivia. He seems to seek knowledge with the goal of applying it and has little patience for knowledge for the sake of knowledge. (Think Sam, who has a lot of Ravenclaw traits, who devours books and then randomly applies his diverse knowledge when it’s applicable rather than learning in order to address pressing situations. For example, Sam studied sign language in college but only really found a practical application for it when he met Eileen Leahy.)
Slytherins are also near-equals to Gryffindors in theirunwillingness to back down from a challenge (and if Dean is not a Slytherin, he’s chock full of Gryffindor traits, too, right down to his recklessness).
Slytherins are also tradition-oriented, and that’s Dean all over. He clings to what he knows and what has been and is slow to change. I find the way he has treated Sam in the past (clinging to tradition and traditional ideas and ignoring evidence to the contrary–at the cost of Sam’s physical and mental health) to be in accordance with Slytherin house traits.
I’m not saying that I absolutely believe Dean is a Slytherin.
If I’m being honest, it’s as much about my absolute bafflement at Puff!Dean as it is about my belief in Slytherin!Dean.
There are some things that don’t match (but of course that’s the case with all houses). However, I do think that he is much more of a Slytherin or Gryffindor than Hufflepuff. If he’s a Hufflepuff, I think he takes a very few traits to strange extremes. Personally, I think people take the fanon version of Dean and type him as Hufflepuff, but canon Dean is incompatible. He has a number of traits people might assign to any house, so I can see why people might argue for other houses, but to me, Dean’s always gonna be a Slytherin/Gryffindor (Slytherdor?) and Sam’s gonna be a Ravenclaw/Gryffindor (Ravendor? Gryffinclaw?), though I could honestly see people putting Sam into almost any house, since anyone could argue that he has a pretty generous smattering of traits from every house. I’ve seen great arguments for Hufflepuff!Sam and Slytherin!Sam, and it’s only by a narrow margin that I ended up typing him as I did. Anyway.
Those are my thoughts. I’m obviously not particularly qualified in this area, so take all of this with a grain of salt.
dennyismydestiel AAAAAAAAA I NEEDED THIS THANK YOU. Lucifer's constantly confused by Sam's appreciation and affection. He thought it was a trick at first, but Sam was so nice and sincere...well, he decided to let himself believe it after a while. Sam's super excited; his other friends from various houses warm up to Lucifer after a while, too (I'm picturing Andy, Jess, Sarah Blake, and Charlie). Meg's also added to the friend group after she's dragged into some shenanigans, of course. Dean is wary at first, but he softens up a bit after he sees how much Lucifer makes his brother smile.
