hey, have you ever sorted the women of the mcu? (love your 'bringing the war home' series btw) :)
*makes furtive noises* No, sir ma’am or other, I have not stayed up until three in the morning sorting every MCU character with doctorcakeray. No. Certainly not. Ahem.
Anyway. Here we go.
Natasha Romanoff is a Hufflepuff.
She’s got a Slytherin secondary the size of good plate armor, certainly. She lies, manipulates, calculates, shapeshifts to achieve her goals. She breaks down in front of Loki, gets her Russian captors to give her everything, plays the PA for Tony. She only pretends to know everything. She becomes what she needs to be to get the job done. It’s a hard way to live but a good way not to to die.
Those are her tools, her methods, her changeable skin, but what is her drive? This is a woman who got out of being an assassin and threw herself into SHIELD’s service, looking to finally be a white hat. She hangs her worth on other people. This is not a healthy Hufflepuff, but she’s Puff all the same.
Natasha throws herself into chaos for other people. She doesn’t have to love them. She doesn’t have to think she’ll make it out. There’s a particular face she makes, when deciding to answer the comm to go after Hawkeye, when deciding to launch off Cap’s shield at the Chitauri, when waving help away when she was trapped and the Hulk was changing. Resolve. Steady, quiet service and sacrifice.
When SHIELD’s rotten core is revealed, Natasha is heartbroken. Look at Steve Rogers, the very best of Gryffindor, how he sat there grinning, finally given an enemy to fight head on with a team at his back (Steve’s secondary is Puff; his unmovable morals come from inside of him, but he builds his strength in other people: the Commandos, Nat, Sam. When Steve finally fully invests himself in the Avengers, they are going to be a force terribly worth reckoning with).
Look at Maria, who shrugs it off. (Hill’s a Ravenclaw, her morals all self-defined). And look at Fury—he is not untouched by SHIELD’s fall, though he is the same Gryffindor that Steve is; but that’s because SHIELD was his responsibility and his job. Fury is guilty, a Gryffindor and a leader whose people turned from the light.
But Natasha is heartbroken. While Steve grins, Natasha sits across from him, shaken, doubting her own worth because she had hung it on SHIELD’s white hat rack.
She looks for direction from outside herself. She’s a Hufflepuff stripped of her own self worth, so she defines herself by the people around her. She looks to SHIELD. She looks to Steve, and he hands that trust right back to her.
One of the best things about CATWS was the slow beginning of Natasha making decisions based on herself. And it culminates beautifully: Natasha going off, alone, to build her own self in her own image for the first time in her twisted life.
I read Maria Hill as a Ravenclaw with a Gryffindor secondary. She purposefully, deliberately, and stubbornly hammered out the person she wanted to be and that person was brash, non-nonsense, fearless. SHIELD falls and she barely bats an eye, just moves on to some other place where she can choose to stand to save the world. I haven’t done my Pepper study yet— need to rewatch those movies. But my first instinct is Slytherpuff. Loyal, ambitous, and healthily selfish, she achieves her goals with hard work, practicality, community buillding, and deliberate empathy (see: the way she interacts with Coulson and Natasha, vs. how Tony does. She creates assets).
Jane Foster, a Gryffindor with a Ravenclaw secondary, makes choices with her heart and pulls them off with her clever hands. Jane moves too much with her gut and internal compass to be anything but a Gryffindor at her core. Her secondary is deliciously loud, though— a Ravenclaw who solves problems by science-ing at them. I hope at some point in her life she has yelled/whispered EUREKA at the top of her heart. Sif is a Hufflepuff with a Gryffindor secondary—there’s a reason she and Melinda May bond so instantly. A strong sense of service and loyalty acted upon with a direct (and often, but not necessarily, violent) strength, a tendency for breaking rules.
Darcy— I read her as Slytherin/Slytherin. I took her apathy and irreverency as a very clever smokescreen for a young girl faced with the uncaring difficulties of the world. Ravenclaw/Slytherin I could also get behind. Sharon Carter is a straight Gryffindor. I like to think she learned it from Peggy. tl;drNatasha and Sif are both Hufflepuff, but one uses subtlety, manipulation and coercion to get her way (Slytherin secondary) while the other uses brash directness and strength (Gryffindor).
Sharon Carter and Jane Foster are both Gryffindor, heartfelt and honest. Sharon is full Gryff while Jane uses a Ravenclaw secondary to chase down her goals.
Maria Hill is a Ravenclaw who chose brave, straightforward Gryffindor as her way to operate. If she’s not just a full Slytherin, Darcy might be a Claw too, but she’s got the same adaptable, clever secondary as Natasha.
Melinda May is what happens when all the faith and optimism is burnt out of someone like Skye.
Like Natasha, May has been burned enough to not exude Puff, but May invests so heavily and emotionally in her little crew that I can’t imagine her as anything else. She is dedicated, dutiful, and sacrificing. And to hear Coulson describe her before Bahrain: “Warm. Fearless in a different way. Pulling pranks.”
Melinda and Skye (and Sif too) are both Hufflepuff with a Gryffindor secondary. “Rule-breaker” as a character trait and not a last ditch resort or a tool is pretty good short hand for Gryffindor secondary.
Jemma Simmons is a Ravenclaw with a Hufflepuff secondary. She uses all the tools of Puff— kindness, hard work, “I like following rules; it makes me feel nice”—without the internal steadiness and service that’s apparent in Melinda, Skye, Coulson, and even Ward.
(This Bus is filled with Hufflepuffs, it’s great. Ward is one of my favorite depictions of a Puff, actually, but he’s not within the scope of this question. He makes Natasha look well-adjusted, though, and just wow. The only non-Puffs are FitzSimmons. I really look forward to conflict over that).
The plane scene in FZZT: when Jemma jumped out it was because she knew it was the right thing to do. She knew the protocols and she had dedicated her life to SHIELD’s lines in the sand.
May, Coulson, or Skye would have jumped for their team. Fitz would have done it for Simmons. (The kid is an adorable little Slytherin).
But Jemma does it because that choice was one she had decided on a long time ago. She defined “good” for herself a long time ago. Most of the time it looks like Puff’s kindnesses, making sandwiches, following rules, but when she’s put up against a hard choice, the Ravenclaw comes out.
This was not a Slytherin’s sacrifice for their own, a Hufflepuff’s service, a Gryffindor’s moral compass. She knew the protocols. She had written them into herself and she knew what she had to do.
This is why Simmons can write off SPOILER CHARACTER when they turn, and Fitz can’t. This is why when she stands down Victoria Hand, it’s not her love for her people, it’s her faith in their integrity which keeps her chin up. This is why when SHIELD falls she has no crisis of conscience— this was never about the organization. This was about their values, and she still has those. Fitz makes up excuses when the people who he loves let him down, and Jemma just stops loving them. They are not worth her honorable heart.
When you are, though, she’ll make you your favorite sandwich and tell you you’re a hero. tl;dr part twoMelinda May and Skye are the same House (Hufflepuff/Gryffindor) on different sides of a shattering existential crisis. Having Skye around might help build Melinda back up.
Jemma is a Ravenpuff among Hufflepuffs, with a Slytherin Fitz bobbing in her wake, and we can hopefully squeeze some good conflict out of that.
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Thanks for the ask, nonny. I’m glad you’re liking my stories, too <3.
Also, @langxue, who asked about my Natasha sorting a very long time ago.
