a vitally important question

[gogollescent]

Given the chance, how would you sort the Vorkosigan characters into Hogwarts houses?

Don't look at me like that. This is clearly key information that I am gathering. Is Cordelia the world's most ruthless Hufflepuff, or would she at eleven be hustled off to Ravenclaw, only later in life to develop interpersonal convictions? Does Miles con the hat into putting him into Gryffindor despite the fact that if cut him open you would find a great big S drawn in green on his heart? For that matter, where would Aral have wanted to be put when he was eleven, a pretty formative year for him by any yardstick? Are Illyan and his chip in different houses entirely-- no, don't answer that one--

And so on. 

This inquiry definitely not made for gruesome fusion research purposes of any kind, of course.

Comments

[lannamichaels]

Everyone's a Slytherin. No, really.

[gogollescent]

This actually is almost always what happens to me the first time I try to sort a bunch of characters from a non-HP canon-- I just find Slytherin qualities really charming in a protagonist. But I agree that the cast of the Vorkosigan books is particularly good for it. That's what happens when you make your series all about the well-meaning aristocrats who high-handedly set about to induce widespread change.

[lannamichaels]

That's what happens when you make your series all about the well-meaning aristocrats who high-handedly set about to induce widespread change.

Yeah, and their surrounding characters, like Illyan. Slytherin basically equals any kind of complexity, whether it be of morals or of motives or of anything. Slytherin is only equal to "evil" in the sense that not being a mythological hero or a bookworm who does not exist outside of books ("beware the quiet ones" indicates a level of cunning/sneakiness/underhandedness/playing-nice-so-you-can-get-away-with-stuff, which means Slytherin) or a self-less, again, mythological character, means that you're evil by process of elimination.

Slytherin as written in the books really should be the biggest House ever, since it's everyone who is cunning or driven (aka "ambitious") or sneaky or, um, anything. If you're an interesting character, you're probably a Slytherin, because otherwise, you're not particularly interesting.

(Is it very obvious I love Snape/Harry? ;) )

[gogollescent]

One of the frustrating things about the HP books is that they establish these interesting if rather fragile categories and then go ahead and spend the next several thousand pages talking, in the main, about Gryffindors, who are necessarily varied enough to make one wonder why anyone takes sorting seriously at all, when you have Peter Pettigrew in under the umbrella of "courageous". But yeah, when the abilities to prioritize and solve problems without martyring yourself and run cost-benefit analysis on a situation are all repeatedly described as Slytherin traits, it gets a little hard to find plot-furthering, competent adult characters who wouldn't fit comfortably within that purview.

(It's been a while since I read any Harry Potter fic that wasn't a Homestuck crossover, but when I did I was pretty fond of Snape/Harry too. Though I think my tolerance for Snape himself has lowered a little in the intervening period-- more because of his Gryffindor qualities than his Slytherin ones, aha. All that damn everlasting unrequited love!)

[legionseagle]

I agree. Except for Simon Illyan, who I think of as a Hufflepuff (who but a Hufflepuff would have volunteered for that chip in the first place?) and Ekaterin, who's a Gryffindor.

[lannamichaels]

Simon's a spy then spymaster; hence Slytherin. ;)

[legionseagle]

Slytherin's ambition, Hufflepuff's duty. I submit that Simon, while successful, is successful without being personally ambitious (and he gets the job by being in the right (wrong?) place at the right time).