kindlyk - Tumblr blog

kindlyk · 4 years

Text

Cheer Up, Sad Slytherin!

In the vein of the Sad Hufflepuff and Sad Ravenclaw posts, by request. Sad Gryffindor is coming soon.

So you got Slytherin House and you’re unhappy? But why? Slytherins are awesome!

But all the bad guys were in Slytherin!

Nope, they weren’t. Have you forgotten about Gilderoy Lockhart, Quirinius Quirrell, Peter Pettigrew (who completely belongs in Gryffindor - not just because he wanted to be brave, but because he actually had more Gryffindor qualities than any other House), or even the unpleasant classmates Harry has to deal with like Zacharias Smith?

Also, don’t forget that the books are from Harry’s point of view - and Harry is predisposed to be anti-Slytherin from the first time he meets Draco and decides he doesn’t like him. They may look an “unpleasant lot” to Harry, but Gryffindors probably look the same to your average Slytherin student.

Now, this is a fandom that is nothing if not fanatically loyal to its creator, but JK Rowling has some problems with Slytherin that she doesn’t have with the other Houses, and these issues extend even to Pottermore (not in the Welcome Letter itself, but in the quiz questions and supplemental information regarding Salazar Slytherin.) But this is a House that is better - or, at least, should be better - than its portrayal in canon.

Slytherin has some really great traits!

Ignore the problematic-ness of including “pure-blood” in the Sorting traits. We none of us are pure-blooded, or have blood prejudice, and if the Sorting was real, you’d have to reprogram the Sorting Hat to make this not a factor post-Wizarding War II (especially as “pure-bloods” in the vein of the Blacks, Gaunts, etc. are basically unsustainable and would die out within a few generations.)

Let’s look at what should be the heart of Slytherin House, and what Slytherin is all about according to the Welcome Letter: it’s about a desire for greatness. It’s about ambition. It’s about wanting power - not necessarily power in the evil sense, but wanting the power to change things for the good, and wanting to have power over your own life. It’s about being resourceful, cunning, and shrewd; it’s about being willing to break the rules when you know the rules aren’t doing any good; it’s about being able to go out and make your dreams a reality. It’s knowing that, to do any good, knowledge has to be applied; that discretion is the better part of valor; that hard work doesn’t mean anything if you’re not working towards a goal of your own.

Contrary to what JKR suggests a lot of the time, wanting power is not inherently bad, and wanting power as a goal does not automatically make you unfit to use it. Ambition is value-neutral, just as intelligence, creativity, hard work, loyalty, and bravery are: what you value doesn’t matter as much as what you’re using those values to accomplish. Slytherins get things done; they can lead; they want to do great things and often manage to achieve them.

And the Slytherin Welcome Letter does a great job of pointing this out. By definition, Slytherins want to be extraordinary. They want to do great things; they want to be great in their lifetime, and they’re least concerned with the judgments of history: they want greatness on their own terms. They may want to be acknowledged by others in their lifetime - but they may be content with just having authority, and a few people acknowledge that. What they really care about is actually having that authority, control over their own life, and the ability to accomplish what they want. That’s not an inherently evil goal - it’s a smart one.

Slytherin’s Welcome Letter is the most revealing of the four Houses

While Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff’s letters are helpful and give new insight into their House, Slytherin’s Welcome provides a revolutionary view of the House - one that, for once, doesn’t focus on blood purity and the Dark Arts, but portrays Slytherin as a House founded on brotherhood, togetherness, and striving for greatness.

Slytherins are good to one another - they give respect to those who’ve earned it, and they protect each other. Given that Slytherin gets ostracized a lot by the other Houses (Slytherin makes up the entire Inquisitorial Squad in-books, there are no Slytherin DA members because they weren’t invited, Slytherins have no opportunity to stay and fight as a whole in Deathly Hallows), this protectiveness makes sense within the context of the series. But, even though we don’t see it, Slytherins are just as protective of one another - just as teamwork-based - as Hufflepuffs! Slytherin should be a much more closely-knit House than Gryffindor or Ravenclaw; there aren’t the intra-House divisions. It’s a close-knit, supportive atmosphere. Slytherins are loyal to one another; they’re good friends because they won’t betray you, and because they can help you achieve greatness. Slytherins might be competitive, but not with one another: it’s a group effort, as opposed to Gryffindor’s individual striving for glory or Ravenclaw’s individual striving for good grades.

Slytherins are also revealed to be focused on greatness, and not nearly as Dark as their reputation suggests - the reputation for the Dark Arts turns out to be more about protecting themselves from outsiders and people who would misunderstand them than about actually performing Unforgivable Curses.

Finally, Slytherin has Merlin as a member. Merlin, in the Potterverse, did great things; he was strongly and staunchly pro-Muggle-rights, and the Order of Merlin was originally instituted to reward wizards who helped foster good relations between wizards and Muggles. This means that, despite the Sorting Hat’s occasional lines about pure-bloodedness (which are certifiably untrue - “took only pure-blooded wizards of great cunning, just like him,” might have been true for Salazar, but is obviously not a hard-and-fast criteria for the Hat, which Sorts half-bloods and Muggle-borns into Slytherin) and all of the series’ Unfortunate Implications about Slytherins, Death Eaters, and prejudiced pure-bloods being largely synonymous, Slytherin is not automatically the House for bigots, and prejudice is not a defining trait of the House. Merlin is supposed to be the single greatest member of the House, someone who embodies the best of the Wizarding World - and he was strongly pro-Muggle-rights.

Canon certainly has its problems - and Slytherins are right to be upset about the House’s portrayal within the books alone or even the continued background about Salazar in Pottermore’s CoS - but if you consider the best and most accurate portrayal of the Pottermore-Sorted House to be in its Welcome Letter, then Slytherin isn’t about bigotry or Dark Magic - it’s about greatness, ambition, and unity: it’s being supportive of people who are supportive of you so that you can all achieve your goals.

The Common Room is awesome!

Seriously, you get an underwater pirate ship. The Pottermore quiz does rely too heavily on love of water to Sort people into Slytherin, but if you love water, then you should love this common room. It’s a super-luxurious, super-secret hideaway that is hugely reminiscent of an underwater ship.

You get to watch awesome things under the lake. Do you have any idea of how jealous that makes Ravenclaws, who’d love to know those secrets? Do you have any idea of how jealous you could make Hufflepuffs, with your description of underwater plant and animal life, or of Gryffindors, if you wanted to taunt them with rumors of buried treasure? It’s a gorgeous common room, and the bedrooms sound pretty awesome, too: silk hangings and medieval tapestries, with silver lanterns reflecting water patterns. (If you’ve ever been in an underwater room or tunnel, you’ll know that the reflection of water from underneath is pretty freaking awesome.) I mean, the tapestries are even kind of an incentive: do awesome things and one day you might be on a tapestry depicting your great deeds, inspiring new generations of future Slytherins.

The merchandise! YOU HAVE MERCHANDISE!

Even if a fictional common room doesn’t do anything for you, consider that you have a HUGE advantage over Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff: YOU HAVE OFFICIAL MERCHANDISE. You have none of the Ravenclaw worries of mixed-up House colors or animals, and none of the Hufflepuff worries about “nobody makes merchandise for us!"

Generally, when HP merch gets made, it’s made for Gryffindors and Slytherins. The WB will make you plenty of stuff, and even when they don’t have it, sites like Etsy are going to have Slytherin-related items in much greater supply than Puff or Claw. But the Noble Collection has a lot of items that are tailored for you, specifically for members of Slytherin House, and that’s before you consider things like being able to buy a lot of Slytherin-related Horcruxes: I’ve seen 2-3 versions of the Slytherin Locket made, both officially and unofficially. And, because so many of the named characters are Slytherin, you can get many more Slytherin character wands than you can for Hufflepuff or Ravenclaws.

Seriously, a huge advantage to being Slytherin is that it’s so easy for you to show your House Pride. You might have to deal with ignorant bigots who haven’t yet realized that Slytherin and evil are not synonymous, but you can always taunt them over their lack of merchandise (or, if they’re Gryffindor, over their lack of a proper Welcome Letter.)

Slytherin has some of the most interesting, complex characters!

Love him or hate him, Severus Snape is probably the single most well-developed, multifaceted character in the Potterverse - love him or hate him, admire him or pity him, (maybe do a bit of all of the above), he’s incredibly likely to spark debate, and is utterly fascinating when it comes to doing a character study.

Same goes for characters like Draco and the rest of the Malfoys: Draco’s arc in HBP is probably the single most interesting thing about the entire book. HBP manages to take a wholly unlikable character and make him a lot more sympathetic than he was for the first five books put together.

Minor Slytherin characters like Andromeda Black Tonks or Regulus Black are more interesting to me than the minor characters from other Houses, largely because you know there’s built-in conflict, interest, and drama. I’d rather read about the Marauders-era Black family than about the Marauders themselves: how did Andromeda decide to marry a Muggle-born? What was the breaking point for Regulus, in terms of his service with Voldemort? Even characters who are barely developed, like Theodore Nott, are much more interesting to me than a slightly-more-developed Gryffindor character like Parvati Patil, if only because knowing less gives you more room to fill in the gaps. So much can be done with pure-blood family dynamics and character development - and, since we know about Slytherin only from Harry’s point of view, having the chance to fill in the blanks from the other side can be really, really interesting.

Slytherins may get unfairly demonized and villainized as a whole, but Slytherins also have the best chance at playing in the moral gray areas, and that makes even the smallest of canon Slytherin characters fascinating. (You want examples? Blaise Zabini: his mother’s been married many, many times, and whose husbands have apparently died under suspicious circumstances. Is she a serial murderer? Or is she extremely unfortunate and easily misunderstood? Have all her husbands been pure-blood? Is Blaise pure-blood himself, or is he a half-blood trying to shield himself from suspicion? If Blaise is pure but husbands #3, 5, and 6 weren’t, then how does he feel about that? Or Theodore Nott, who’s a cunning loner, can see thestrals thanks to his mother’s death, and spent some time home alone after his elderly Death Eater father was imprisoned following the Ministry break-in. What about the inevitable Slytherin Muggle-borns we know exist, or the Slytherin half-bloods with Muggle parents? We don’t know of them the same way we know about Seamus or Dean’s parentage, but we know they exist, and we know they’d have to be fascinating.)

Slytherin characters tend to show more shades of gray in terms of morality, and Slytherins can often recognize that there are more shades of gray to morality than, say, Gryffindors.

Your House gets misunderstood a lot, but fanon is wonderful

Yeah, this is probably the biggest drawback to Slytherin, and the biggest reason that people get upset about Slytherin Sortings. JKR mistreated the House pretty badly in canon, and it’s hard to say that the Welcome Letter alone makes up for it. It can also be frustrating to have casual fans or people who don’t delve deeply into the books insisting that all Slytherins are evil or that identifying as a Slytherin means identifying as a Death Eater. And, of course, you have portions of fandom insisting that being Sorted Slytherin gives you a license to act up to that horrible House stereotype - that "oh, I’m Slytherin so I can be a horrible person” or “I’m Slytherin because I’m a horrible person,” both of which are terribly, terribly wrong and discouraging to the “…but I’m not evil?” portions of Slytherin-identifying fandom.

But this is where fandom comes in! Most of fandom is really, really wonderful: not only are there members of each and every House who’ve been protesting against the portrayal of Slytherin all along, there are some really fantastic Slytherin fans who will argue to the death about Slytherin being about ambition, being realistic, and getting stuff done, rather than about being evil bigots who save themselves first. (Seriously, Phineas Nigellus said that, not the Sorting Hat, Salazar Slytherin, or someone who’s actually an authority: note that the Malfoys don’t jump to save themselves first in the Battle of Hogwarts, and that the only person we specifically see being true to the maxim “given the choice, we will always save ourselves” is Zacharias Smith, a Hufflepuff. Remember, Slytherins weren’t given a choice - as far as we know, none of them knew about the DA, and they wouldn’t have been allowed to stay and fight if they’d tried, since McGonagall summarily orders them out because of one person’s choice.)

But I’m getting sidetracked, because the point is that there are elements of fandom that have helped make a tremendously awesome Slytherin - look at Hogwarts Sorting communities, or at fanfic portrayals of what Slytherin House is like from the inside, or at the people who are like you - who are ambitious and want to do something great but aren’t evil, people who are able to plan ahead and evaluate risks better than Gryffindors, people who want to have power for good reasons. Fanon!Slytherin is an awesome House, bolstered by the Pottermore Welcome Letter, but created largely by fans who’ve decided that the series itself isn’t giving enough credit to this fantastic House.

Because Slytherin is fantastic, and there are plenty of reasons to have Slytherin Pride. And if people don’t understand that, well, then…you can always point out that Slytherins get dinged for things that Gryffindors get away with scot-free in the narrative (Unforgivable Curse usage, for example), or you could ask someone if they really believe that 25% of the population is determined to be evil at the age of 11. People who hate Slytherin are people who haven’t thought enough about the books and their portrayal of Slytherin - and if they still won’t listen, then what do you care? After all, you’re destined for greatness, and they’re not. And Slytherins get shit done. Don’t let people get you down: Slytherin is a wonderful House, and, like all the Houses not named Gryffindor, doesn’t deserve the hate it gets.

More on Slytherin fans…

Some of the best and most invested Pottermore fans are Slytherins: mirrormere over on CoS, for example, has been brewing Polyjuice for people of all Houses forever, helping them to get into the Common Room. (And there’s a bonus for you if you are Slytherin on Pottermore - you didn’t have to brew that blasted potion because you got free access to your own common room. Seriously, if you have never had reason to curse the bottle of lacewing flies, be very, very grateful.) And there are several Slytherin-specific Tumblrs: while slytherinsofpottermore has died away, slytherinconfessions is a Slyth-only confessions blog, while speaking-in-forked-tongues is a Slytherin graphics blog. Both of those are hugely active, and slytherinconfessions is the only House-specific confessions blog that I know of. (Other blogs, like harrypotterhousequotes, update regularly and are for all 4 Houses.)

Still unhappy?

And if you aren’t convinced, remember: this Sorting is really fallible! It’s not the end-all and be-all of existence, and Slytherin in particular can be really tricky.

I got Slytherin and don’t identify with it!

Slytherin is bad for this, since you can be Sorted into Slytherin solely on your love of water, depending on which questions you get. (Seriously, there are 2 different ways to get a water-based Slytherin Sorting only based on water.) There’s also a bit of overlap on some questions between Ravenclaw and Slytherin in particular - there are answers ranked primary-Slytherin that are picked by over 50% of Claws but only 25% of Slyths, and the Merlin-related answers tend to draw more Ravenclaws than they’re meant to (in one case, the Claws overwhelmingly go for the Merlin-related answer instead of their own.) So it’s entirely possible that you got Sorted based on Merlin + water instead of on ambition vs. knowledge. Or you could be a mischievous Gryffindor who likes jinxes, but got Slytherin because all the hex/jinx-related answers give points solely to Slytherin.

I feel Slytherin but can’t get it!

Again, you might suffer from the problem in reverse: an ambitious, power-loving person who likes Herbology is probably going to end up in Hufflepuff, depending on question selection, and one who likes forests instead of water runs a good chance of getting Gryffindor or Ravenclaw.

In addition, the Pottermore quiz has some natural bias against Slytherin! There are a ton of answers where 5% (or less!) of the overall population will pick the Slytherin answer, and it’ll still be in last place and have only about 15% of the Slytherin vote. Slytherin gets stuck with some really bad answers that nobody chooses, and is put at a significant disadvantage, particularly opposite Gryffindor, on a couple questions that are heavily weighted. Question 5, in particular, has a lot of questions where Slytherins just don’t pick the Slytherin answer (and nobody, really, picks it.) The nightmare question is also pretty infamous for having Slytherins pick the Ravenclaw answer, where Ravenclaws pick the Gryffindor answer, and nobody is picking what JKR thought they would.

So, what to do?

If you’ve read this and the Welcome Letter and just can’t identify, then you should try sorting on another account. That will probably give you another House; if you want to submit a 27-question Sorting to see what you’re more likely to get, then go ahead.

If you read another House’s Welcome Letter and connect with it more than you connect with Slytherin, then you probably belong there. But re-read your Slytherin Welcome Letter and think about what I’ve said. There’s no reason to cry over an Internet quiz, especially one that’s as flawed as Pottermore’s!

Hopefully this helps. If not, message me again and tell me why, exactly, you’re so unhappy to be in Slytherin - the House has plenty of good qualities! Like the letter says, it’s “sleek, powerful, and frequently misunderstood” - and it’s gotten a much worse rap in canon than what it deserves. Slytherin qualities are good qualities, just like Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, or Hufflepuff.

If you just don’t see yourself in this list of qualities, or if you know it’s not you, that’s one thing - but if you think that being Slytherin means that you’re evil, bigoted, elitist, or doomed to be a Death Eater, then you’re completely and utterly wrong. (If you’re disappointed by the way Slytherin was portrayed in canon, well, we can always hope that Pottermore improves it - and we can look at the good Slytherins, like Andromeda or Regulus. I’m betting Kingsley Shacklebolt will be a Pottermore-designated Slytherin, but even if he’s not, there’s enough proof that not all Slytherins are evil - starting with Merlin and maybe even ending with Albus Severus Potter, Scorpius Malfoy, or another member of the Next Generation!)

960 notes · View notes