as small as a world and as large as alone

5:18pm July 1, 2014

madeofpatterns:

chordatesrock replied to your post “chordatesrock replied to your post:Politics need Slytherin. Why?…”

The… essence/values, not necessarily people dominated by them?

I think we need people who are Slytherin in their approach to politics.

I’m not one. My approach to things is Hufflepuff-oriented.

But that’s not because I think we can get by on Hufflepuff alone. We need all the things.

Yep.

We need Slytherins badly.

I know a Slytherin in real life, at least I see her as a Slytherin.  She’s ambitious, even a little arrogant, very intelligent, and she wants to be a doctor.  I honestly think that her arrogance and ambition will both serve her well on the way to becoming a doctor, and that hopefully life experience will temper the arrogance once she becomes one.  But I told her to hang onto the arrogance through med school because she’ll need it to carry her through.  Arrogance can be a strength in a situation where you’re being ground down and need that extra confidence.  I think she finds it funny that I openly talk about her arrogance and call it a good thing.  I also think people see her ambition differently than a man’s ambition because she’s a woman, but I see her ambition as a really good thing.  She has big plans for herself and that’s good.

We also need Gryffindors and Ravenclaws.  We need everyone.  And we need all the people who are mixes.

I’m a Hufflepuff at the core with strong Gryffindor tendencies around the edges.  I think madeofpatterns is the same way.  I can’t help being like this, it’s just who I am.

I used to be ashamed of being a Hufflepuff – before Harry Potter even existed, I was ashamed of my Hufflepuff traits.  Harry Potter allowed me to take pride in my Hufflepuff traits, to see that they could get me places, to see that they had a good side, to see that they could help me do things in a way that Gryffindors and Slytherins and Ravenclaws can’t.

And everyone in every house has that – they can do things in a way that people in the other Houses can’t.  And that’s an amazing and good thing.

My friend Anne and I feel like we’re kind of complementary in certain ways.

She is a Ravenpuff with some Gryffindor tendencies, I’m a Gryfflepuff with some Ravenclaw tendencies.  

I don’t know if she’d be in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff at the core it’s a close call.  I think maybe she’d be Ravenclaw, but she’d potentially do well in Hufflepuff too.  I’m definitely Hufflepuff, not Gryffindor, but my Gryffindor tendencies are quite pronounced.  My Ravenclaw tendencies, like Anne’s Gryffindor tendencies, are not as pronounced, but they do exist.  And for some reason Anne and I are both very lacking on the Slytherin front, but we have great respect for Slytherins nonetheless.  (How could we not, Anne has the most amazing Slytherin cat in the whole world?)

At any rate, we need all of it, we need all of the types of people, for the world to work how it should.  Every House has ways that it is amazing and useful and has everything to contribute.  Every House has a dark side that’s horrible and can go completely awry and wreck everything.

Learning about the Houses has actually made me more aware of both my strengths and my weaknesses as a person, and has made me more able to consciously think about these things rather than go around oblivious to them.

For instance, loyalty.  Most people think it’s a good thing.  I’ve never trusted loyalty exactly.  It always felt like… loyalty may be good in some circumstances, but it can also mean sticking up for someone who actually has done something very wrong, just because you’re their friend.  And that’s the sort of thing I do, even though I hate to admit it.  And that’s a potential failing of Hufflepuffs.  Also Slytherins.

Knowing about my Gryffindor side, and the fact that it is not my innate temperament exactly… that’s useful too.  Like knowing that this is a secondary set of traits for me.  Knowing that I can do Gryffindor things but it’s always going to take more effort for me because it’s not what I do naturally.

Like I don’t naturally put myself out there as a target.  But I do it all the time.  I have a friend who is 100% pure Gryffindor and she doesn’t just do that, she thrives on doing it.  And for me, it’s like a necessary evil that serves my Hufflepuff values in a Gryffindor-shaped way.  I don’t enjoy it but I will absolutely do it, over and over, as many times as it takes.

And yes we need Slytherins in so many different ways, they have a lot of skills that are versatile and amazing.  They are good at getting things done regardless of what it takes to get that thing done.  They are good at breaking the rules when necessary, and not giving a fuck.  They’re good at not giving a fuck when fucks don’t need to be given.  They are good at self-preservation.  They’re good at a lot of things and they get a bad rap.

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