Listen, I understand that people here want nothing to do with anything related to Harry Potter, however, unfortunately, it remains the case that a weird fan offshoot of HP’s pretty bad classification system somehow turned into the best classification system I’ve ever seen.
So, I’m going to use the Sorting Hat Chats system to talk about Person of Interest characters, because there’s something wrong with me, and it really is such a great lens for meta.
(I’m going to follow what several of the Sorting Hat Chats system designers do and use the revised terminology lion/bird/badger/snake instead of the other words, for this one.)
If you don’t want to follow the link above, a clarification on terminology: this system splits the house system into two concurrent systems, primaries and secondaries. Primaries are why someone does things; secondaries are how someone does things.
The primaries, very briefly defined, are as follows-
Lion: strongly internally felt moral compass or code
Bird: painstakingly constructed moral compass or code
Badger: caring about people, defined broadly, “people are people”
Snake: caring about One’s Own People, plus oneself.
The secondaries, very briefly defined, are as follows:
Lion: charges ahead, simply does the thing
Bird: builds up information and later uses that to act
Badger: builds up resources (often people) and later uses that to act
Snake: reacts and adapts in real time to the challenges in front of them
In addition to all of that, SHC adds a few other wrinkles. One, someone’s primary or secondary can be burned, meaning that while it still is how they want to believe or act, or wish they could, they can no longer trust it the way they once did. Another is that people might model additional primaries and/or secondaries, essentially adding other methods to their moral and action toolkit. People will often value their models, but the model isn’ the thing they fall back on when truly in a corner. People can also perform additional primaries and secondaries, which unlike a model isn’t really deeply cared about and actually is just an appearance they put up.
So let’s start with Harold. Who is one of the most bird primary characters I’ve ever seen. His morality is something he has worked very hard on, and is something he feels the need to be constantly vigilant about. It’s like a wobbly tower made of many items. He has to rebalance, or perhaps it will fall down; but if it is too altered, perhaps it will stop being the tower he wants it to be? He recognizes in himself the capability of changing his morals to fit his circumstances, and must actively restrain himself from doing so.
Crucially, Harold also believes everyone else operates this same way, but likely with less vigilance. He believes that all people, when given incentive, will simply let themselves rebalance their own internal moral towers around that incentive.
(And didn’t he do exactly that, when he sold The Machine to the US government despite his reservations? Didn’t he let his ability to see many possible angles let him convince himself that the action that would not result in he and Nathan Ingram being treated with animosity or hostility or worse was also the morally correct one?)
He does not trust. Fundamentally. He does not trust anyone, because he does not trust himself. He believes, wrongly, that The Machine is just as unstable as he is, but with even more potential for harm. He also believes this about every single other person.
His secondary might not help with that. On first glance he might look like a bird secondary, and I believe he has a model of one, but while he is very happy to collect information to add to his toolkit for later, what he does when truly backed into a corner is…
Kidnap the baby. Delete his child’s memories. Drink the neurotoxin.
His actual secondary is a lion secondary, which almost certainly does not help him trust himself. If he sees a path before him that he thinks he must take, he will just… take it. He’ll swig that neurotoxin. It Is The Only Way. If he regrets it later, well, maybe he just wasn’t vigilant enough about his fundamentally untrustworthy nature.
Remember when I said that Harold is wrong about The Machine? That’s because, despite being made of code (exactly the kind of thing you might imagine a painstakingly constructed moral system would run on), She’s actually a lion primary.
Though, that could have to do with code too. There are certain things that She clearly strongly believes—and never stops believing. That people have, and should be permitted to exercise free will. And also that people being killed is bad. Perhaps this is because these are absolutes that are hard-coded into Her. Or perhaps that is just the kind of person She is.
(Her moral system is, however, completely silent on kneecap injuries, property damage, all forms of theft…)
As for how She does things, once again She might seem like a bird secondary, and certainly a bird’s tactics are the things she is most coded to do. But the thing She keeps returning to when She needs to increase Her capabilities, when She needs to find more ways of fighting back, isn’t the gathering of knowledge itself.
It’s the gathering of allies.
The Machine is a badger secondary. She makes this team as well as a secondary one in DC; Her literal third action once freed is to obtain Herself a personal human instrument. Her late-season-four tasking of Root to develop an app with a company (as a recruitment tactic! not that this ends up going anywhere) is also very badger, as is the fact that this company is chosen because of its CEO being a former number (that She has, in a sense, vetted, by seeing what he did while Her other people saved his life.) Asking Root to work with Shaw in Mors Praematura, the whole gathering of the three bonus geeks, all of that, it’s all team building, and always has been.
Now we might as well turn to Reese. Oh, Reese. Two things about him are very apparent very quickly: one, that he is also a lion secondary, and two, that his primary is deeply, horrifically burned.
So let’s start with that secondary. John Reese, despite Harold having once referred to him as a ‘scalpel’, is not and has never been anything of the sort. He will simply rush into the situation before him and Do The Thing. I could give examples but I think there’s an obvious one every single time he’s on screen.
His primary, though. Ough, his primary. At the beginning of the show, he has truly given up; he believes in nothing anymore, and is ready to die. But what did he used to believe in?
I think Reese is a burned lion primary. Badger was also a consideration, but when it comes down to it, he wants a cause more than he wants a group of people (whether the size of a team or of all of humanity). If he was a badger primary, his death wouldn’t work thematically; as a lion, it does. He now has something (even if that something is also a someone) to believe in, which he is certain it is worth giving his life for. That is, I think, the main thing he ever really wanted.
Root, on the other hand. She is as pure a snake primary as they come. What does she care about? The Machine. Shaw. Harold. Maybe herself. And that’s pretty much it.
(Before she met The Machine, what did she care about? Maybe herself. Which wasn’t enough for her; how could it have been? No wonder the first whispers of someone she considered actually worthy of caring about moved her to do so much. To do things like call a hit on herself. But we’ll get to her secondary in a moment.)
(When she was younger, she also cared about Hanna. And, probably, her mother—she is stated to not have left Bishop, a town that betrayed her by way of betraying Hanna, until her mother’s death.)
And when she cares about someone. She cares about them absolutely. She will do anything (anything) for her people. She does slowly learn to kind-of-probably-maybe care about saving other people’s lives, but that’s not uncommon for a snake primary; snake primaries often build additional auxiliary morality on top of the central moral imperative of ‘MY PEOPLE.’
Her secondary? Well… remember the calling a hit on herself? Or deciding to kill Elizabeth Bridges? Or playing chicken with The Machine? Or pulling a gun on herself in response to Shaw doing the same?
Root is the team’s third lion secondary, which is way too many for one team and really it’s impressive that they survived this long.
Remember how snake primaries will build up auxiliary morality? Shaw, who is also a snake primary, is a great example of that. She doesn’t feel any internal sense of morality; she’s got self-preservation and she’s got a-small-number-of-other-people-preservation, if those people really make an impression on her (as we know Cole, and later Root, did.)
But she does clearly want to do good. Her first choice of job was to be a doctor; when she was told that she simply couldn’t be on account of having the Wrong Emotions, she clearly made some attempt to come up with something a Wrong Emotions person could do that would also, in some way, be good. Are government anti-terrorist assassins actually good? Well, no, but there was some attribute of saving lives. Which of course is what she ended up really doing once she started working for Harold.
She’ll complain that she doesn’t really ‘get’ why ‘killing people isn’t the answer’, but she’ll also accept that as a precept coming from people she’s learned how to trust. Just because she outsources her morality doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any.
As for her secondary, she brings a tiny bit of balance to the team by being a snake secondary. When put into a tough situation, she adapts; see her post-ISA-attempted-murder choice of where and how to patch herself up. Or that time she was super bleeding out but didn’t want to stop the mission and so took the blood of the guy she was interrogating. Or the various methodologies she employs in her escape attempts (and eventually, escape success) from Samaritan. It’s a little similar to a lion secondary, sure, but a crucial difference is that if someone tells her to stop and gives her a reason to, she’ll stop. Harold, Reese, and Root… none of them will.
Now, the cops. Fusco is a badger primary, featuring multiple ways this primary can go wrong and a few ways it can go right.
Badgers do the “abstract principles, who cares about those? The real thing is that people are people” thing. The downsides here are some of the ways this definition of people can narrow. Badgers often feel at their best when part of a team; but sometimes that can be the wrong team. Like, oh say, a bunch of dirty cops.
The other downside a badger primary might have is simply defining their opponents outside of the category of ‘people’. See for this the way Fusco talks about the man he shot in his flashbacks in The Devil’s Share. “Lowlife” “scumbag”… he did not consider this guy a person!
But Fusco does want to be good. He wants to help people. And with the right team, he starts to be able to be that person.
As for the how. When Fusco’s cornered… okay, a lot of the time when he’s cornered he’s “being tortured” and the thing he does is “joke about the torture”, which doesn’t really narrow it down. My best guess is based on his behavior in season five: noticing the furtive looks Reese gives to security cameras, he starts to assemble what little he can find out about the missing persons in a room without one. I think that’s the actions of a bird secondary, although I’m less certain on this than most of the other classifications.
Carter, I… okay, listen, I missed too much of season 1 and probably too much (though less) of season 2 to do this. She’s one of the primaries that has a moral code, either bird or lion (and I’m maybe leaning lion), and her secondary might also be bird, maybe, I don’t know.
Elias is another character with a secondary so clear that it should be started with instead of the primary. Specifically, he’s a badger secondary. There is literally no other secondary that would go undercover for three years(!) doing a full time job(!) just in order to get information on their enemies(!) by utilizing connections with people they make in that job(!). Proof that badger secondaries can be unhinged too, if they want to be.
His primary is definitely one of the two ‘loyalist’ primaries (to use terminology from the SHC creators), either badger or snake. I’d assumed badger for a while, but as I write this now I can’t prove to myself it’s not snake, so.
Now, for our main villains.
Greer is a good example of how a lion primary can go very wrong. He has deep-held beliefs! …Um, like, that humans keep getting into wars and killing each other which is bad and so THERE!FORE! they need ummm a super-powerful AI controlling them because they can’t be trusted. Source: my spymaster betrayed me once. Also I saw bombs this one time and thought it was a sunset.
He’s also, probably, a lion secondary… who else would get so stuck in their ways doing the hire someone->then, after they do their job, kill them loop.
Now, Samaritan. Samaritan’s interesting. There’s only so much we see about Its thought processes directly, but a few things do stand out. For one, Its repeated desire to convert members of Team Machine. Up to and including The Machine Herself, which It really seems to not want to kill, and would rather have as a consort… who It was also the one who set up the meeting with, because It wanted a chance to talk with the only other one of Its kind.
Then there’s how Its justifications for what It wants to do to humanity is that humans, as a whole, will not escape the great filter (that’s totally coming for real) without Its help… hmm…
What I’m getting at here is that Samaritan is a badger primary. At one level its definition of “people” is only Itself plus The Machine (hence It not wanting to kill Her, while She doesn’t have the same concern at all); at another level, Its definition actually is all of humanity (who will be best protected as a whole by the deaths of a small number, and why should It care about abstract principles like free will when It could stop all war?)
As for Its secondary, that’s easiest to see when a character is cornered, and It doesn’t get cornered very much. But the scene with Harold in Times Square—and the way it seizes on the opportunity It knows It has in Asylum to get The Machine to reveal Her location—to me suggests snake secondary.
Since the Malfoys have been a bit of a hot topic lately, I decided to give them their sorting post similar to what I did with the Weasleys...3 years ago??? Where does the time go??
Anyway, this is an explanation of the system I am using by @wisteria-lodge.
LUCIUS MALFOY is blatantly a Badger secondary. His methods are to make donations to people, goad Arthur Weasley into a fight so he can slip Ginny the diary, he uses blackmail against the other members of the Board of Governors, calling in favors, and when in the hall of prophecies with Harry and his gang his strategy is to talk him into giving the prophecy over. It's what makes him so effective in the first five books, but is also why once everyone knows the truth about him he is in a constant state of free fall.
As for his primary, I think it's fairly obvious that he's a Snake. He can look like a Badger, dehumanizing muggleborns and joining the Death Eaters, but that's a performance. When the chips are down, what Lucius really cares about himself, his wife, and his son. Snake Lucius is willing to get rid of every association to the Death Eaters he had, and in the Second Wizarding War is not enjoying himself at ALL. He's also clearly got that Snake hedonism to him.
NARCISSA MALFOY née BLACK is an equally blatant Snake primary, although she doesn't appear to even play the part of a Badger. Everything to her is her son and her husband (and her husband takes a backseat to her son usually). Narcissa doesn't even appear to like Bellatrix all that much anymore since Bella is a threat to her family. Down to the end her motivation is always to keep Draco safe, damn the consequences.
As for her secondary, since she's such a minor character you can probably make an argument for any of them. But I personally think she's a Snake secondary, making her a Double Snake. This is a woman who lies to Voldemort's face and doesn't get caught. Who is willing to go behind his back and make back-alley deals with someone like Snape.
I've sorted DRACO MALFOY once before with @awinterrain which you can read right here, but I would like to reiterate it and expand on it.
Draco may be the epitome of Slytherin in the books, and he may hate Hufflepuffs and think of them as "duffers," but this boy is Double Badger down to his bones. This is a boy who cares deeply about communities. He defines himself by them, first as a Malfoy, then as a Slytherin, then as a Seeker on the quidditch team, then as part of the Inquisitorial Squad, then as a death eater (which he doesn't care for). I think at the beginning of the series he's a good case for an Immature Badger primary, where he just IS the group he's into and nothing outside of this.
His Badger primary can look very insular and Snake-like, partially because pureblood culture alienates everyone outside of it, and partially because his family is so Snakey that it colors the look of his Badger primary. Idk if I would even call it a performance or a model, it's more like a flavor.
But he does start to look like a Snake primary in his Sixth Year, where he's single-mindedly focused on saving his family. That's because in Sixth Year he burns after joining the Death Eaters. And it's honestly really sad, but it's because Draco has realized his communities are toxic and not good for him. The Death Eaters aren't good, they're the reason his father is in prison and his mother is in danger. This is the year where he really stops engaging with his peers and is sort of just coasting on his former reputation.
But that Badger shine is still there, and it's in the fact that Draco Malfoy has to kill Dumbledore and cannot do it. A true Snake Draco Malfoy would probably have gone through with it, even if it he felt bad about it. Badger Draco, who spent books 1-5 shit talking Dumbledore at any opportunity, cannot do it. I think it's because 1. He isn't ready for casual murder, and 2. I think Dumbledore for Draco represents one more community that he identifies with-Hogwarts. And clearly he does care about Hogwarts (I don't think the Room of Requirement would reveal itself to him if he did).
As for his secondary, Draco is his father in miniature. Draco is a tattle tail, he has bodyguards that follow him around, he usually goads Harry into confrontations so Harry gets into trouble and Draco can have plausible deniability. What's most interesting to me though is Draco's proclivity for elaborate smear campaigns. The "Potter Stinks" badges are HIS work as is the "Weasley is Our King" song, which is very...mean badgery. Like this is his community building with Slytherin (arguably all of Hogwarts with the badges), and using his powers to bully Harry. It's funny, despite everything. He does perform Snake though, to make everything look quicker or look like his mother.
Even his methods when he has to kill Dumbledore are Badger powered. Working on the Vanishing Cabinet all year, poisoning Professor Slughorn's mead he intended to give Dumbledore, and charming Rosmerta to imperious Katie Bell. But, he still has that influence from his mom where he can lie to someone's face (though not as convincingly).
I think Draco looks at his father's Badger performance, and thus thinks they house match. And it explains why he is so wary of his father after the Death Eater reveal, since Draco has realized he does not enjoy that sort of Badger primary.
As a bonus I decided to sort BELLATRIX LESTRANGE née BLACK as well. Since for some reason the movies always advertised her as part of the Malfoys. No doubt about it she is a Lion secondary. I don't think Bellatrix has every learned the meaning of the word subtle. She never lies in the series, just blasts the truth out whenever, and is always an attack first think never character.
As for her primary, can she be anything other than exploded snake primary? Her everything is Voldemort. She doesn't really care for anyone outside of him, with the exception of Narcissa, who stopped liking Bellatrix when she became a danger to her son. I think at one point she had a Badger performance or model that allowed her to willingly marry someone like Rodolphus who she doesn't appear to like, but by the time she's going to Azkaban she doesn't care. It's honestly such a Black Family sorting. Sirius was a Snake Lion as well, and the culture of the "Noble and Most Ancient House of Black" seems to just be Snake coded in general.
So...
Lucius Malfoy - Snake primary, Badger performance/Badger secondary
Narcissa Malfoy nee Black - Snake primary/Snake secondary
Draco Malfoy - Badger primary, Immature at the start, burns in his Sixth Year, has a Snake performance or flavor/Badger secondary, Snake performance
Bonus:
Bellatrix Lestrange nee Black - Exploded Snake primary, Badger performance/model long discarded/Lion secondary
I absolutely love Snake primary characters but it honestly rubs me the wrong way when *all* the women in a work of fiction are Snakes. It often ends up with them just serving as the men's love interests and not having their own compelling storyline. Or with their storyline essentially coming to an end as soon as they get together with a guy because now they're the mom/wife/etc character and relegated to the background.
i do not know what has possessed me of the fun but infuriating need to sort the animorphs in the sorting hat chats system (fuck jkr and terfs) but here we are:
(this particular system delineates between primaries [motivations, moral foundations] and secondaries [methods], though neither is more important than the other)
(this got long)
JAKE: BADGER PRIMARY/BADGER SECONDARY/LION PRIMARY MODEL ACTIVELY STRANGLING HIM
(or alternatively: bird primary/badger secondary/lion primary model still actively strangling him)
definitely a badger secondary--he leads through his community, leveraging his own reputation of trustworthiness and reliability to get people to follow him. he asks for votes and builds consensus, and in the endgame of the war, he achieves his victory by calling on (and in some cases, destroying entirely) his relationships with others: the taxxons, the chee, the auxiliary animorphs, general doubleday.
his primary is a little murkier, though--his initial motivations for entering the war are very snake (freeing tom from the yeerks), and he still utterly collapses when people in his inner circle are threatened (he's a mess in 31 when his dad and tom are at risk, and a "zombie" in 44 when cassie is stranded in australia). but he very quickly accepts that tom cannot be the first priority weighed against the whole human race, and in fact his relationship with cassie breaks when she puts jake's person, tom, ahead of the war.
it's possible that he's a bird primary who relies on his knowledge of military history and his team's differing viewpoints (and especially cassie's) to construct and check his moral system, but there's something just kind of snake-y deep down about his ultimate goals, which are to free tom and get married to cassie and be a great husband and father. it's also possible that this is (one of the subconscious reasons) why he gets so mad at cassie about the decision in #50--it's a very snake choice, it's a choice jake could have made (being unable to kill tom), and facing the truth(?) that he cannot kill tom is like staring into the world's worst mirror
okay, i've got it--jake is a badger primary with in-groups and out-groups. initially, his in-group is his family: tom, his parents, the animorphs. as the war goes on, his in-group expands to humans in general, reordering his priorities. he has a responsibility to the team, has a responsibility to the human world, and this along with his model carries him into the endgame where he prioritizes winning the war over saving tom. he's able to assure the victory with war crimes by thinking of the years as an outgroup, literally dehumanizing them before flushing them into space.
(cassie is able to reach him in the wake of rachel and tom's deaths by saying "there's still work to be done," appealing to jake's sense of service)
i also think he's modeling a lion primary--integrity, certainty, intuitive morality--because he knows he needs to be the leader of an army, and that's what that role needs to present.
also in the endgame, his badger is for sure burned--he doesn't feel like he can rejoin any community after what he's done
however, you could also convince me of bird primary/badger secondary/lion primary model.
CASSIE: BADGER PRIMARY/LION SECONDARY/BADGER OR SNAKE SECONDARY MODEL
cassie is the reason this whole thing exists, goddamn. i love her so so much and she's got so many layers. i want to think about her all the time forever.
okay, here's the thing: i was endlessly flip-flopping between badger primary/lion secondary and lion primary/badger secondary. she's got the intuitive, gut-level moral intuition of lion primaries (her first book and her last book, fittingly, have her grappling with instincts that she can't quite articulate but that she knows are true and correct), but her values are all badger, loudly so. she advocates for all people and creatures; many of her conflicts are about prioritizing one person or group of people over another. when she disagrees with the group, it is almost always about the material damage they will cause to others/the world; when she quits in 19, it's about her ability to feel and empathize being threatened. yeah, i think it's a badger primary that cassie can't always put into words, partially because they are in a literal war
so it would make sense why she and jake are so drawn to each other. but the difference is that cassie doesn't do in-groups and out-groups like jake does--she views even the enemy as human. and she doesn't burn.
secondary--i really think it's a lion secondary. not just because then it SUPER makes sense why rachel in particular gets cassie even when she doesn't Get her, but also because it's cassie "one-woman-army." when shit hits the fan, cassie will save the entire peace movement and do brain surgery on her friend against his express wishes one after the other. she will find herself stranded in australia and figure it out. she will refuse to go on a mission to gas the yeerk pool, then go down and slaughter a room full of controllers to turn off the gas. she will knock marco's mom off a cliff. she offers her ear to aftran and the morphing cube to tom's yeerk with approximately the same amount of forethought, which is "this might work, i hope." cassie--like kel from the tortall universe--is a version of the lion secondary that's quieter, but no less clear: sure, stubborn, looking and moving forward even when others have left you behind, and finding that still more others begin, slowly, to follow.
i think she's got a badger secondary model for the role she takes up in the group (the heart, the mom to jake's dad), and largely prefers using the people-based, community-building, group-mirroring skillset of that model to get things done. but when push comes to shove, she charges out alone. i could also accept a snake secondary model (perceptive, creative, adaptive) that allows her to tackle problems in ways the others never would have considered (the whale at the veeleek, ants to get into chapman's house, going after the taxxons in #53).
over the course of the war, cassie's major conflicts are about defining what "people" means in the context of her badger primary values, and about the compromises between having that fucking bright of a badger primary and fighting a war. although she's dragged across some lines that hurt for her badger primary, i think she remains pretty unburnt, all things considered. in fact, she might mature (definitely in terms of her secondary, where she comes to have a faith in herself that mostly withstands the absolute shitstorm that is the aftermath of #50, and the call back into war in #54). this relative unburning is a source of both bitter envy and fierce awe for rachel, the extremely burnt lion
(though, in an alternative sorting, she is a more introspective double lion whose intuitive ideals look very badger, and so all of the above reasons why jake and rachel are both totally in love with her still apply--rachel, because cassie is the shining example of what she wants to be, and jake, because cassie is the true version of the lion model he's clinging to)
speaking of rachel!
RACHEL: QUICKLY AND EXTREMELY BURNT LION PRIMARY/LION SECONDARY/LION SECONDARY PERFORMANCE
so much lion. who was surprised.
rachel's sense of morality is fierce and kneejerk, almost wholly intuitive (lion primary!), and she deals with problems by becoming a fucking grizzly bear and charging blind into battle (the most lion secondary ever to lion secondary!).
however, she absolutely burns over the course of the war. she can no longer trust her intuitive sense of right and wrong when she's relied upon to do violence that increasingly conflicts with what that intuitive sense might have been. unable to trust herself, she leans on the team's collective sense of morality, but especially jake's lion primary model (morality/group cohesion so fragile these kids are relying on models upon models upon performances) and cassie's shining badger primary. (tobias, i would argue, increasingly provides emotional support and stability, an acceptance of rachel's burned lion with the force of his healing snake, rather than a moral direction).
i think rachel also has a lion secondary performance that's strangling her as much as the primary model is strangling her cousin. she's exaggerating her bloodlust and bravery, playing up her tendency to charge forward and beat down obstacles with her own severed arm. many times, when the facade cracks, she admits that she's just blind, or tired, or afraid, but she thinks (and is often correct) that the team needs a particular kind of lion: always certain, always glory-seeking, always down to do whatever it takes.
i think the lions upon lions, all fractured, accounts for a lot of rachel's internal...stuff. her primary, her intuitive moral sense, is burning; she's forced to perform a secondary that is at once fake and coming from some buried authentic truth. this performance isn't her, but maybe it used to be her? and inauthenticity is like, the worst for lions, so she's got panic over being untruthful as well as a fundamentally violent, immoral person. and on top of that, she's watching cassie (shining unburned badger) maturing into her own lion secondary, and seeing that mirrored authentically is at least partially why rachel has such conflicting feelings toward cassie at the end
TOBIAS: (BURNED) SNAKE PRIMARY/BIRD SECONDARY
this surprised the hell out of me and i'm willing to be argued out of it. it's possible that tobias' character arc is just a deeply snake one (even though i'd argue that animorphs as a narrative is actually a bird one--the necessity of questioning, changing, and recalibrating both your individual beliefs and your larger institutional/state/cultural systems)
anyway. tobias. he begins the story with a burned snake primary--no one to care about, and not valuing himself. when he meets the animorphs and gains the ability to morph, he becomes the red-tailed hawk and feels empowered for the first time, obliquely disregarding the two-hour limit because of his own sense of happiness and freedom. over the course of his arc, his conflict is ping-ponging between his natural, self-oriented instincts and desires (to fly, hunt, love, be) and what he feels he should want (a boyhood of nothing). over the course of the war, he settles into a better understanding of himself, letting himself love rachel, hunt and eat baby animals, kill all the dinosaurs, and fight the yeerks with less self-loathing.
this is also why he can fly away with rachel's ashes and live in the woods in #54, and come back for ax in the same book. those are his people, and lacking them, he's gained enough comfortability with his own self to be okay with valuing it over staying with jake, marco, and cassie.
less sure on the secondary. tobias' conflicts tend to be so internal, and built on the premise that he has almost no choice than to be who/what he is, that it's hard to pick out a specific methodology. i picked bird secondary because a lot of tobias' major contributions are scouting, the specific knowledge of terrain, and his area of bird-based expertise is where he feels most comfortable. take him out of it and he's antsy to go back--but then, that could be his snake primary again.
i think tobias is maybe the only animorph without a model/performance, which fits with his inability to be anything other than himself. (though it's possible he models lion off of elfangor and rachel)
you could make a good argument for a lion somewhere in there (his bond with rachel, him being very much down to fight the war in #1) but i think rachel may be filtering her perception of him through her many lions--something like, "i love tobias so much, so he must be a true lion, unlike me, who is a coward and disrespecting his courage." it would fit with the ways in which rachel sometimes misreads/fails to understand tobias.
alternatively, you could make an argument for double bird with the way tobias frequently thinks over and updates his moral systems, allowing him to live in the ambiguity between hawk and human and also possibly accounting for his pretty fast switch between "jake's the coolest and has to be the leader" to "i disagree strongly with jake even though he's the leader"
MARCO: SNAKE PRIMARY/BIRD SECONDARY (SNAKE SECONDARY MODEL AND PERFORMANCE)
like rachel, marco is a lot of fractured snakes with a bird thrown in there. his snake primary is super super clear and in fact only gets stronger over the course of the war--he is fighting for His People, in extremely clear tiers. his mom first, then jake, then the animorphs, then the larger world. he allows himself to be dragged into the missions at first because jake would be in danger if he wasn't there, not necessarily because he feels the moral imperative to save the innocents from the yeerk pool. he backs out in 5 for his dad, then commits completely to the war to free his mom from visser one. it's all about his people, and though he often does do traditionally "heroic" things, like rescuing the homeless man in 5 or caring for the skunk kits in 9, his priority first and foremost is his people. and he's okay with that.
similarly, he's got a snake secondary model and performance because that's what his role in the group is. like rachel performing an exaggerated version of her secondary to fit the group's need for a warrior, or cassie leaning on her gorgeous badger secondary model because she's supposed to be the heart, marco is viewed as clever, perceptive, able to lie well and remorselessly and put on his comedy mask at will. marco hides a lot of his more compassionate impulses--like the fact that he doesn't really want to kill cassie in 19, for example--by performing a more ruthless, adaptable, and self-serving snake.
but i think marco's true secondary is bird secondary. he is a quick-thinking bird, but he's always relying on information--his observations of people, his prior experiences as a poor brown kid, his knowledge of the animorphs and their skills. he makes plans and contingencies for those plans. he is following the clear, bright line of data to its logical conclusion. this is why he is so effective when jake is out of commission, because, like jake, he is able to accurately assess what the team needs to do and how they can do it. unlike jake, who gets the picture of how each animorph is thinking and feeling based on a real, relationship-based understanding, marco most often clocks it via his knowledge about what they've chosen in the past--for example, he thinks about the vote over david in terms of, rachel usually backs me about big animorph things, so the vote will divide this way, and then he's off down the planning line.
it kind of also explains how he botches the initial interaction with david like, so badly. he knows the animorphs so well that he can model that snake secondary adaptiveness--he's funny in the right ways for each of them flawlessly--but that's just because marco is a really quick bird pulling on his tools and resources. as soon as he's in a situation where he doesn't have a bank of knowledge on this kid, he flounders a little
and in a sorting where cassie also has a snake secondary model, marco's looking at that thing going, respect, yeah, that's scary.
ax is a bird primary who grew up in a military environment demanding a badger-like obedience to the group. when he comes to earth, his major conflicts come when his bird primary encounters new information about the andalites. he naturally begins to question and build a new system for himself, but he has trouble shedding the badger primary model that tells him to stay loyal to the andalite military structure (and to place all other species in an outgroup.)
not sure on the secondary, but i'm making an argument for lion secondary--ax for sure has the badger-like "follow orders, serve the leader" and the bird-esque "collect all the human tastes/infomation." he also lies constantly to the animorphs; however, that is a result of his models and he always feels like something isn't truthful or good about those methods. he wants to be honest, direct, and brave. he's a little burned because he can't be that on multiple levels--he's fighting a guerrilla war with people he legally can't tell anything to.
would also accept double bird--ax tinkers and collects--or badger--though unlike jake's effortless reputation and community-building, ax works, serves, carries out orders.
CLOSING NOTES
these kids are all so multifaceted and change so much over the course of the series that i could probably write this again with completely different categorizations (feel free to argue!)
but! lots of models, performances, and burned everythings in here, which makes sense--they're all compressing themselves into very narrow roles through the war. i think i expected more true lions, since they're all fighting a hopeless war and have very strong moral codes--but then, their vanguard is the most lion to ever lion, and i'm not ruling cassie out as a sleeper double lion either.
I. Freaking. Love. This. Movie. Is it historically accurate? Not especially. Is the story fairly simple? Yes, but there's a difference between a SIMPLE story and a SIMPLISTIC one. The performances are top notch, the music, the costumes... *chef's kiss.*
So, without further ado...
Maximus is a Badger primary. He recognizes the humanity in the Germanic tribes-- "would you (know you're beaten), Quintus? Would I?" He's a great general, but his heart is at home with his family. After the first battle, he spends time among the wounded and is upset when it is suggested that they "died for nothing." He's deeply loyal to the memory Marcus Aurelius. Wherever Maximus goes, he collects people (Juba, Proximo, the German, Lucius) by being kind when he doesn't necessarily need to be. He inspires loyalty and goodness in others just by being who he is.
In true protagonist style, Maximus is a Lion secondary. There's no pretending with him-- if Maximus feels something is wrong, he won't do it. "With all my heart, no," he says to Marcus Aurelius when he initially refusing to become protector of Rome-- it's a gut reaction. He will not salute Commodus; he turns his back on him. Though he shows some Bird-like strategizing in battle, to me, it reads as an intuitive grasp of going on-- the art of reacting to things rather than planning for them. Even his habit of feeling the earth before going into battle screams Lion: it's a tactile, grounding, in-the-moment exercise.
Lucilla is a Snake primary. She cares about Rome, she cares about her father's memory, she cares about Maximus-- but at the end of the day, she will prioritize her son's safety ahead of everyone and everything else. (Side note: I think that Ridley Scott writes Snake women a lot-- Lucilla and Sybilla from Kingdom of Heaven are pretty much the same character). There's room to argue for more depth here, but I feel that her primary is pretty straightforward.
I read Lucilla as a Bird secondary. She's strategic where Maximus is not. She makes practical decisions, lays plans, and collects information behind the scenes. She also seems to use a bit of a Snake secondary model-- or maybe it's her Bird secondary in an "Actor Bird" form. She knows how to play Commodus, and tries something similar with Maximus-- a little flirty, a little coy-- and drops it the minute she sees it's not working with him.
Commodus is also a Snake primary, but an Exploded one. His whole worldview and perception of himself is wrapped up in a handful of people. He's desperate for his father's approval, even after he kills him (there's a scene in the director's cut with Commodus destroying a bust of Marcus Aurelius, then hugging/clinging to the ruins). All Commodus wants to be loved by his father, his sister, and the people of Rome. With the latter, he compares himself to a father and the people to children. He wants to give them the love he feels he was denied. But his idea of love is destructive to his wellbeing and the wellbeing of those around him. In the end, it gets him killed in the arena-- defeated by his own need for the crowd's approval.
Commodus is a Lion secondary with absolutely no impulse control. His father rejects him? Kill him. Maximus defies him? Try to kill him. His one strategic success comes when he accepts the counsel of a senator to "let (his enemies) come... and nibble." Challenging Maximus-- a GENERAL with YEARS OF EXPERIENCE-- to fight him in the arena is a terrible idea, but Commodus does it anyway.
Marcus Aurelius doesn't get as much screen time as I wish he did (RIP, Richard Harris). He's our lone Bird primary. He's THE Philosopher. He has carefully constructed his worldview, weighed his options, and decided on a course of action. He believes that Commodus is "not a moral man" because he lacks the virtues that Marcus Aurelius values: wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance. His choice to make Maximus the protector of Rome is careful and deliberate-- he's observed Maximus in many situations and knows that he does not desire power. That's why it must be Maximus. It's perfectly logical to him, and he believes that he can explain it to any reasonable person (unfortunately, Commodus is far from reasonable). Marcus Aurelius forever puts first the idea of Rome: it is his bright, shining TRUTH.
He's also a Bird secondary: the man writes like nobody's business. He's a deep thinker, a strategist, a collector of maps and other odds and ends to put in his toolkit.
I read Proximo as a Glory Hound Lion. He was once a gladiator himself, and you can feel it in his speeches about the crowd: even though he knows that fame is a fickle mistress, he loves the adulation, the money, being a star. He misses it. He believes that he and his men belong in the Colosseum. Before they go in to fight, he fills them up with his vision of glory.
I think that he's a Snake secondary. He can be charming, he can be adaptable. He plays people off each other to get the best price. He was "the best" in the arena because he "won the crowd." But he knows how and when to cut his loses and go blunt. He describes himself as "an entertainer."
Bonus! I see Juba as a Double Badger. He tends to Maximus's wound even before they become friends. He relies on memories of his people and traditions when things are at their bleakest. He offers encouragement in his own quiet, wise way. Some of the best lines in the movie are his, IMO: "I will see you again. But not yet. Not yet," and "you have a great name. He must kill your name before he kills you."
TL;DR:
Maximus: Badger Primary, Lion Secondary ("The Protagonist")
Lucilla: Snake Primary, Bird Secondary, possible Snake secondary model ("The Villain/the Mastermind")
Commodus: Snake Primary, Lion Secondary ("The Lancelot")
Marcus Aurelius: Bird Primary, Bird Secondary ("The Scientist")
Proximo: Lion Primary, Snake Secondary ("The Robin Hood")
Juba: Badger Primary, Badger Secondary ("The Peacemaker")
judas from jesus christ superstar as a bird/snake?
another villain that I really am moved by is judas from jesus christ superstar. as I get older he is rocketing up the list of characters I would want to play on stage if I miraculously got the chance. I don't love the fact that a character I relate to is the fictional version of a guy who is like generationally evil, but so it goes. although unlike some of the other musical theater villains I sympathize with (carlotta, most people in chicago), in jesus christ superstar you're supposed to find judas sympathetic to some extent. but his character arc just HITS for me, and also hits for me in a way slightly different from other tragic characters' arcs, and this is me trying to figure out why
feel pretty comfortable saying judas (from here on when I say judas I mean the musical character and not the actual guy) is a snake secondary, he does have pissy outbursts about his actual opinions at people constantly, but his go-to strategy when making the most important decision of his life is to try to butter up the officials and priests and engage in a little "we're not so different you and I, we're a team." the first verse of "jesus christ superstar" is all about "see, THIS is how you present yourself to get people to listen to you." and also, I mean, he's judas, what else would he be.
primary is more interesting. so judas is all but locked into being one of the idealists because the historical judas very much did betray jesus, that was a pretty significant thing that happened. and then the musical extends that into betraying his friend for a cause, not just because he's a giant dick (though in the musical he is still kind of a giant dick). like he goes around saying stuff like "you've begun to matter more than the things you say," "our ideals die around us, and all because of you," he is really annoying about it and is always being told to stfu lol
as for bird/lion, well, his first words are "my mind is clearer now," close to his last words are "my mind is in darkness." not his heart, his conscience, whatever, his ability to make an argument for himself. basically every single song he has is him desperately trying to explain his actions to himself, to other people, at other people, to other people who are not present as if they will psychically hear and understand. it really MATTERS to him that they see, which he will tell you: "now if I help you, it matters that you see [cue entire song's worth of what it matters that you see]"
where the tragedy part comes in is that his motives and explanations matter to literally no one else. obviously none of it matters to the priests, they just want their intel. they don't matter to jesus - when judas starts to explain why he betrayed him, jesus flat-out says "I don't care why you do it" (understandable have a nice day), and that one line just enrages him.
and more than that they don't matter at an existential level. this isn't a les mis-style tragedy where he gets hard evidence that his worldview is bullshit but can't bring himself to accept that. ("stars" does not hit for me at all, sorry but acab includes javert). as it happens, judas's worldview actually is bullshit even if you don't bring in the actual bible story. he's got a repressed... fixation on jesus which he can't figure out and doesn't want to deal with but which is driving the bus at least a little bit. different productions play up the homoeroticism to different levels but the musical takes a guy who already is known to have platonically kissed another guy and then textually gives him a reprise of a song called "I Don't Know How to Love Him," so it's not like I'm injecting some wild reading in. and then also his reasoning gets tangled in what he wants people to hear or what he just wants to be true - every single lyric in his big explanation song, "damned for all time," is either a deliberate lie or a lie to himself.
but he never realizes that his worldview is bullshit and it's hard to imagine he could. the tragedy isn't "your whole worldview is wrong," it's "your whole worldview is useless." or, "you may have had good intentions and solid reasoning, but not only did you still do the wrong thing, you did the wrongest possible thing, and everyone knows what you did and doesn't care why. and not only that, it was literally impossible to do the right thing because you have no free will." the cassandra thing, the getting manipulated thing, the becoming irredeemable thing, the inevitability of doing harm thing, all rolled into one.
So, as a DISCLAIMER: THIS FILM IS A WORK OF FICTION. I highly recommend looking into the actual history behind the film if you're interested!
Here we go!
(I seem to recall there being a sorting already posted of Anastasia, but I remember disagreeing with most of it? Absolutely no offense meant to whoever originally posted it! These are just my two cents!)
ANASTASIA/ANYA
BADGER PRIMARY
Anya's entire storyline revolves around the ideas of "family," "home," and "belonging." Not just her own, personal family (which would be Snake,) not necessarily the home she remembers being born into (as far as she knows, she's an orphan,) and not only her own state of belonging. She deals in the concept of these things as though they were basic necessities: everyone should want them, and she wants them because everyone needs them in order to be whole. This is truth to her, full stop.
Anya: "Do you think you're gonna miss it?"
Dimitri: "Miss what, your talking?
Anya: "No! Russia."
Dimitri: "Nope."
Anya: "But it was your home!"
Dimitri: It was a place I once lived. End of story."
Anya: "Well, then you must plan on making Paris your true home."
Dimitri: "What is it with you and homes?!"
Anya: "Well, for one thing, it's something that every normal person wants!"
This is not a belief system, nor is it a conclusion she's come to. It's something that is such a part of her make up as a human being, that to imagine that another person doesn't care about the concept of a "true home" or "true community" is downright disturbing to her. Her desire for "home, love, family" is not her trying to seek out individuals she already knows, but to find the space she came from, filled with strangers she's never met, but who she believes will accept her through the power of community. It reads very animated Hercules, often dreaming of a far off place where a voice keeps saying, THIS is where I'm meant to be. Badger Primaries love the idea of having a secret family they've never met that will swoop in and carry them away, loving them unconditionally, when the world immediately around them has been so cruel. Lonely Badger Primaries are the perfect characters to fall in love with the idea of being long lost royalty. The main character arc Anya goes through is learning that family is not just the people who gave birth to you: Found family is not only just as powerful, but can become even moreso over time. This is the same moral the animated Hercules learns! Belonging and community is created and watered like a garden: If you keep searching for your perfect, idealized community, you might miss the one forming right before your eyes.
LION SECONDARY
It doesn't take long to pin Anya as a rather loud Lion Secondary. She is unafraid to voice her opinions, and often does so in a blunt and unashamed way. SShe absolutely DESPISES lying, and she is the first to take the easiest, most straight forward way out.
Dimitri: (trying to detach a traincar after breaking multiple tools) "COME ON, there's gotta be something in there better than this!!"
Anya: (wordlessly hands Dimitri a stick of lit dynamite)
Dimitri: "That'll work!"
What this movie actual shows is an interesting, not as often explored aspect of the Badger Lion, which is how the brash and straightforward nature of the Lion Secondary can work against the desires of the Badger Primary. Anya longs for nothing more than home and community, but often inadvertently (and not so inadvertently) alienates those around her with her cutting phrasing. It takes a more grounded, good listener like Vlad to see past Anya's brashness almost immediately, understanding the intentions behind her bravado.
Vlad: "I see an engaging and fiery young woman, who on a number of occasions has shown a regal command equal to any royal in the world!"
DIMITRI
SNAKE PRIMARY (Initially Burnt)
Dimitri's storyline is a bit deeper than many people might initially realize. What we're looking at is a Snake Primary who, at a very young age, tried to save one of their People (the Princess Anastasia, for whom he is implied to have either a childhood friendship with or just a faraway crush,) and failed, horribly. In fact, they failed to the point that they believe they are at least partially to blame for the death of that Person. That's about as deep and dark of a hole as a Snake Primary can fall into, so the Snake Primary will, naturally, Burn and find new, non-Person things to fill that void. Namely, recognition and fortune.
Dimitri: "Imagine the reward her dear old grandmama will pay!"
Of course,this could point to Glory Hound Lion, just as easily. If not for his Snake Primary sneaking in at every possible moment. The line following that one above is:
Dimitri: "Who else could pull it off but you and me?"
The "you" in question being Vlad, the only other Person Dimitri has allowed in (and by "allowed in," I always assumed got so tired of Vlad actively FORCING HIMSELF into Dimitri's life that he acquiesced and decided to just let him stay.) But, Dimitri's obsession with the Princess Anastasia continues, against all odds. His latest con? Directly Princess Anastasia related. Is it enough for the woman they hire to play her be "good enough?" NO. She has to be PERFECT. They hold AUDITIONS, and Dimitri is the perfect person to be on the board, because Dimitri still knows her intimately well, even after all these years. Such as hum recognizing Anastasia's face in Anya's right from the start. Thus, comes Dimitri's initial inner turmoil in regards to Anya: Are his feelings just projection? Is he attracted to her JUST because she looks like Anastasia? Is he ACTUALLY that obsessed? All those questions become moot when Anya is revealed to truly be Anastasia, though Dimitri finds himself where he was as a boy. From this point on in the movie, pretty much every motivation/choice Dimitri makes revolves around the fact that Anya IS Anastasia, and that he is going to give her what she wants and deserves, no matter what it takes. Even if that means keeping himself away from her romantically. His character arc revolves around forgiving himself for what he perceived as a dire mistake against one of his People, which is a ROUGH arc for a Snake to go through.
Dimitri: "Paris holds the key to her past. Yes, Princess, I've found you at last! No more pretend. You'll be gone, that's the end..."
SNAKE SECONDARY
Dimitri is actually quite a good con, all things considered. He manages to trick Anya into thinking they have train tickets when they DEFINITELY do not, and he keeps the reward under wraps for the entirety of their trip. Not just that, but dodging around obstacles instead of facing them head on is his most natural state. As a child, he is seen sneaking out of the kitchens (where be belongs) and automatically offering the servants' quarters as a means of escape, which is extremely clever and resourceful. Dimitri tries to charm and placate Anya at every turn, trying to keep her naturally explosive personality under wraps.
Anya: "The baggage car...? There wouldn't be anything wrong with our papers now, would there, maestro..?"
Dimitri: "Of course not, Your Grace! It's just that I hate to see you forced to mingle with all those commoners..."
But, we spend most of the film seeing Dimitri forced out of his comfort zone by both the situation and Anya's combative Lion Secondary, so he's often seen conspiratorially complaining to Vlad while in his Neutral State or just outright losing his temper and yelling. But, this never comes first, and his plans and plots are always somewhat circumventing. During the train derailment, his plans are to jump off, disconnect the train cars, and just wait until the train coasts to a stop. All pretty passive/out of the box thinking. When he IS shown trying to face someone head on, he is always unsuccessful: Trying to fight for Anastasia during the siege only to be immediately knocked out, trying to take on Rasputin directly and being tossed aside pretty easily. Comparatively, Anya/Anastasia is shown to be successful when she is upfront and combative: Getting away from Rasputin as a child by kicking him in the face, ultimately defeating Rasputin by straight up smashing his reliquary.
VLAD
LION PRIMARY
Vlad is a pretty classic Paragon Lion Primary. He wants to do what is Good and Right and doesn't what is Bad and Wrong. For what reason would he wind up as a con artist as a Paragon Lion, though? Even for Paragon Lions, what is Good and Right to THEM can go against what the collective believes is good and right.
Vlad: "That's what I hate about this government. Everything is in red!"
Yes, the above line is also meant to be a coded message for Dimitri, but Vlad thinks the government has overstepped his moral boundaries and has chosen to step outside the usual bounds to follow his own morals. Part of those morals involve guiding those he believes are lost, thus, his "adoption" of Dimitri, a very lost young man with little direction. He tries to act as Dimitri's "moral compass" until Dimitri finds his own direction again. He does the same for Anya when she comes into their group, trying to lead her towards the possibility of finding her home, while gently guiding her away from focusing on her "past."
Vlad: "There is nothing left for you back there, my dear. Everything is in Paris."
He stands up for what he believes in, and inserts himself constantly when he believes Dimitri is wrong. Letting him know when he's "walking away too soon" or when he "has to talk to her" even if she's a Princess and Dimitri's a Kitchen Boy.
BADGER SECONDARY
Vlad is one of the kindest, most lovingly genuine characters I've encountered in fiction, and I mean with that with all my heart. He is consistently gentle and understanding with the people he comes across, and is always even-tempered and fair. Compare Vlad and Dimitri's reactions to finding Anya skulking around their home:
Dimitri: (shouting, from across the room) "HEY! What are you doing in here?! HEY! STOP!"
Vlad: (coming in at a light jog, holding up his hand politely) "Excuse me, child!"
Vlad always assumes the best from whomever he's interacting with, and is excellent at getting to the root of what's bothering a person. He actively tries to make everyone in his company comfortable, and will often make soft jokes or observations in an attempt to lighten the mood. His Lion Primary makes him unable to entirely give in when he knows what's going on is wrong, but his Badger Secondary gives him the skills to broach those uncomfortable topics with grace and eloquence.
Vlad: (gives Dimitri the most fatherly, loving hug in all of animation) "Ahhh, my boy... you are making a mistake."
TL;DR
Anya/Anastasia: Badger Lion
Dimitri: Double Snake
Vlad: Lion Badger
And, there we go! Anastasia was one of my absolute FAVORITE movies as a child, so I've really enjoyed getting an opportunity to sort them! Let me know your thoughts! :)
