#we have like. polar opposite communication styles lol it is quite an experience we are having

[spoppersonality]

How MBTI & Enneagram affect character relatability

I have a theory, and I’m going to illustrate it with the help of Adora and Shadow Weaver. I also have a personal story there.

Fun fact:

I share an MBTI type with Shadow Weaver (INFJ)

and an Enneagram type with Adora (Social 9w1).

(Not going to go into more specific subtypes right now.)

What makes this interesting to me, is how I am, in this case, pretty much a perfect example of how people tend to relate to fictional characters with similar Enneagrams, rather than similar MBTI types. My “evidence” is anecdotal of course, but I have noticed a pattern there. I think this tendency is at least one of the reasons behind some interesting phenomena in fandom and might set some light to questions like why some characterizations are more popular in fanfiction than others. (Such as why people write characters like Keith, Sasuke, Zuko and Catra as artsy emos.) But I digress. (Might get into that another time, though.)

I had watched SPOP about three times before it even crossed my mind that Shadow Weaver shared a personality type with me. While it was apparent to me the first time around, that I shared a personality type with Adora. So, why? Because one is a hero, and one is a villain, and I would rather identify with the hero?

That seems like a nice and clean answer, but I don’t think it’s quite that simple.

I think it has more to do with how I, and I think most people, relate to fiction from an emotional point of view. We tend to watch and read stories for emotional reasons, more than intellectual ones. Not that intellectual reasons don’t play a part, just that the driving force is often emotional. We’re looking to connect emotionally with the characters, otherwise we would be watching a documentary or reading a science book instead. At least that’s how it works for me, and in my experience, a lot of other people.

MBTI is about cognition, while Enneagram is about motivation. Sometimes I like to distinguish MBTI as your “intellectual type” and Enneagram as your “emotional type”. At least from that angle, it makes perfect sense, that we would relate to a character with a similar emotional type: a similar Enneagram, when we are immersed in something with our emotions.

And this is true of MBTI “thinkers” and “feelers” alike. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen INTPs claim Sherlock Holmes simply MUST be an INTP because they relate to him. When I first got into MBTI, I was guilty of that too. I thought every character I emotionally related to, was an INFJ. LOL, NOPE. I just didn’t know anything about Enneagram. After getting into that, I can easily see that the characters I most relate to, tend to have a very similar Enneagram type to mine.

Actually, it was the fact that I related to Adora so much that made me especially blind to the possibility that I might relate to Shadow Weaver in any way. That’s why I find this personal example so juicy. It’s because in the emotional dynamic between Adora and Shadow Weaver, I related to Adora a 100% and then some. I’ve had my Shadow Weavers, and reacted to them in a way a Social 9w1 will. We are people pleasers because we lack a solid sense of self, and we do exactly as we are told to avoid conflict, separation and loss (our worst fear).

In the worst case scenario, we believe we need to constantly excuse our very existence.

(Like seriously, it can get ridiculous. When I was around ten, if I was at a friend’s house, I didn’t have it in myself to ask for a glass of water if I was thirsty. Even when it was offered to me without asking, I found it hard to accept, because I had done nothing to pay for that water. Even though I live in a country with the best access to clean water in the world, so one glass of water costs practically nothing.)

Given all that, it makes sense that I wouldn’t even consider relating to Shadow Weaver, because to me she very much represents everything toxic that I experienced as a child and needed to unlearn in adulthood.

But after taking a step back from that emotional angle, it’s pretty easy for me to see that cognitively speaking, I’m not Adora, who is an ESTJ. I’m pretty much the polar opposite. Which is Shadow Weaver, as weird as it feels to me.

As INFJs, we are very good at understanding another person’s psychological make up. We easily take anyone’s point of view and use that to influence the people around us. We don’t naturally gravitate towards the spotlight or a leadership role, we are at our most effective in one-on-one communication.

Obviously, Shadow Weaver uses all this to manipulate and abuse people, to get her way and her narcissistic supply. I use it to help my friends see their problems more accurately, and themselves in an encouraging light. (And to write fiction!) Shadow Weaver uses it to cause conflict between people by distorting their view of reality, I use it to ease conflict by an attempt to bring more clarity.

But that doesn’t mean we are not both INFJs, because we definitely are. Upon a closer look, I find many things about Shadow Weaver relatable.

She’s definitely an introvert driven by her internal vision, her idea of power, and she’s thinking leaps ahead, like she does the moment she sees Adora as a baby. (Ni) She’s a great communicator, but it’s more of a means to an end to her than it is a passion. (Fe) It seems like the very concept of power interests her more than what practical things she can do with it (Ti).

And her vision is SO MUCH BIGGER than her abilities. That’s exactly how I’ve felt my whole life, because inferior Se will do that to you. You don’t see the step-by-step approach to your GRAND VISION even though you can see the end result so clearly in your head that you swear you can touch it. Your insight can be so accurate that you can (deliberately, or accidentally) make people think you’re connected to some mystical higher power even though you’re mostly just full of sh*t (=ideas, abstractions).

It’s like, your whole life, you’ve been working towards one goal, one vision, that is just on the other side of a river, but you CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW to get across. If you could JUST do that, then on the other side ALL your dreams would come true, everything you’ve worked for, for your entire life would COME TOGETHER in pure AWESOMENESS because you’ve been thinking, and planning and fantasizing and putting all of your mental energy into it, and just aching to get across that river. And then, a f*cking ESTP (Catra) shows up, farts a bridge, gets to the other side, and once they’re there, they have NO. CLUE. WHAT. THE F*CK. THEY. ARE. EVEN. DOING. THERE.

I’m getting carried away.

Emotionally, or, motivationally speaking I don’t relate to Shadow Weaver. Like, at all. I couldn’t care less about having power over other people. I can’t bear the thought of hurting another person. (I still cry at night sometimes because I once called my brother’s helmet “stupid” as a child, when he was annoying me.) I don’t need to be the most powerful or put others down in order to feel whole. The idea of hindering someone’s growth into their happiest and truest self is horrifying to me.

But still, my brain works similarly to hers. I’m full of ideas that are connected to the same big vision I’ve had my entire life, but getting there efficiently enough requires a lot more brain work and trial and error from me than some other types.

Emotionally speaking I relate to Adora so much. I get anxious if I’m not constantly doing something “useful”. I feel responsible for other people’s happiness. I feel tremendous guilt every time I have to say “no” to someone in order to rest and take care of myself. I feel like a failure when I’m not able to fix someone’s problem. I feel obligated to sacrifice myself because I “can”. When I was voted the least desirable girl in my class, I was just relieved it wasn’t anyone else, because I knew my friends would have shattered if it were them. (Hint: it wasn’t because I had better self-esteem. It was because my self-esteem wasn’t a concern for me in the first place.)

And yet, I’m also nothing like Adora when it comes to cognitive make up. It would be interesting to dive deep into why the ESTJ 9 combination is totally fascinating for me, but this post is too long for that already.

My point is:

1) In terms of relatability in fiction, Enneagram might play a bigger role than MBTI.

2) Sometimes people get into heated arguments about a character’s type because they can only see a character they relate to, as their own type, and that’s intellectually dishonest. (As a personality junkie, I care.)

3) It’s OKAY to relate to a character with a different MBTI from you. MBTI is not everything. Enneagram is not everything either. There might be another reason.

4) Sometimes people seem to feel like they need to be like their favourite character in EVERY way, to justify their experience of relating to that character. Well, you don’t. Having the same cognitive type doesn’t automatically lead to the same motivational type, or the same life experiences, or the same relationship style or the same neurotype, or anything else. These can all be different, and your experience is valid no matter where the relatability comes from.

5) If you relate to a character, there’s a reason for it, and you’ll get the most out of it, if you try to discover that reason as honestly as possible and not automatically assume it must be your MBTI (or something else). Those four letters are not the most important thing about anyone, so you don’t need those to “claim” a character to your side of things.

6) You have no obligation to emotionally relate to a character with the same type as yours. I can assure you my feelings towards Shadow Weaver did not become any warmer after discovering we shared an MBTI type, and that’s okay too.