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Note: in the way we like to play this sorting game, “primaries” are WHY you do things and “secondaries” are HOW. If you want to learn more about our system’s definitions, check out our other tumblr posts, our blog at sortinghatchats.wordpress.com, or our quiz at https://ejadelomax.itch.io/sortinghatchats.
Malcolm Reynolds is our go-to example for the Burned Hufflepuff Primary. An Unburned Hufflepuff Primary values community, fairness, and empathy. A Burned Hufflepuff still has those inner values, but thinks it’s impractical, naive, unsafe, or foolish to prioritize them. They tend to think of themselves as bad people – practical, sensible, maybe, but not very good.
It can be tempting to consider Mal perhaps a burned Gryffindor instead, but look at him in the war, before he burns. His faith isn’t in the righteousness or the cause, but their people—”hear that? That’s our angels coming.” Mal has a big heart and he wants both to help and to believe in other people. (This is one of the reasons River is so vital to him—but we’ll talk about that later).
Mal after the war is no different in what he wants — he’s just had to settle, injured, for a smaller world. “You’re on my crew,” he tells a bewildered Simon. (Simon’s Slytherin Primary is absolutely flabbergasted by Mal’s stubborn loyalties to him and River, which is based in their need and their being part of the family, where Simon’s loyalties are razor-edged and individualistic).
Mal can’t love the whole world anymore, or even just the Browncoats, because he knows that would destroy him— it already almost did. But he can love his crew. He can make Serenity a home.
Mal’s Puff Primary shows up in other places, too, sneaking past the Slytherin Primary model he’s used to keep himself alive and sane after the breaking of his too-big heart, like when he gives the medicines back in Train Job, risking Niska’s wrath.
Zoe, who first fell into step behind a Hufflepuff years ago, questions him about it in the movie—an unburned Mal, the one from the war, would never have left a man behind. This Mal shot the bystander begging for rescue (a mercy) to save his crew. That prioritizing (or, rather, the instantaneous decision of it) points to his Slytherin model—but it eats Mal up the way it would never eat up Simon, an actual Slytherin Primary (“remember, River, it’s okay to leave them to die”).
Mal wishes, deeply, quietly, that he could save everyone. But war and loss burned his young, faithful Hufflepuff into a man who thinks one of the basic truths of the universe is that you can’t save everyone and that it will destroy you to try. So he’s sunk his stake into these eight Serenity-boarded souls and decided it’s enough.
This is one of the things that makes his relationship with River so interesting. The Burned Puff knows he should not be trusting and investing in this broken bird and her verse-wide bounty, her untrustworthy triggers and destructive lethality. But in letting them stay in the pilot, in pulling her back to the ship in Objects in Space, in joining her crusade in Serenity, he defies all these hard lessons he’s learned and he trusts her, he fights for her, he believes. By ignoring his “better judgement” and investing in this one unlikely young woman, he’s starting to heal his Hufflepuff and have faith in the good fight once again. The last moment of the Firefly-filmed universe is Mal Reynolds teaching River how to fly.
(For a definition of teach, anyway.)
For secondary (the “how”) — Mal’s a Gryff. “If I shoot you,” he told Simon, “You’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.” Badger mocks him for it in the pilot— Mal wants the world to be honorable. He wants to be fighting the good fight, and he wants to do it in the good ways.
Gryffindor secondaries are an interesting mix of stand-up integrity and mischievous (even deceitful) rule-breaking and chaos (think Fred and George). These potentially conflicting traits come from this— Gryffindor Secondaries are self-defined.
Their integrity and their honesty is a deal with themselves, not others. They stand firm to their own rules, but find other peoples’ or organizations’ insignificant, or even downright offensive. The other secondaries all can and do break rules—a Slytherin Secondary might play the system, a Hufflepuff Secondary might invest in it, a Ravenclaw might find its loopholes—but a good rule of thumb for identifying a Gryffindor Secondary is this: is rule-breaking a tool? or is it a personality trait?
Simon, who destroyed his whole life to get to River, and was willing to let Kaylee (the epitome of the innocent bystander) bleed out in order to keep his sister safe, is a Slytherin Primary. He looks slightly Puff occassionally—this is because he’s tied part of his worth to the Puff-like doctrine of a surgeon: service and do no harm. You see it when he saves the patient on Ariel and then chews the attending physicisian out, offended to his core. These are beliefs he holds close to himself, that help define him—but at Simon’s core, no matter how Ravenclaw clever or kindly even bumblingly Hufflepuff he can seem, he puts his people first and he loses no sleep over that.
He’s got a Ravenclaw Secondary—asked to describe his usefulness, Simon would first and foremost claim his intelligence and his skills. He’s best when he’s in his “element,” drawing on skills, knowledge, and tolls he’s already learned and comfortable with.
Simon’s got a Slytherin Secondary model on top of his Slytherclaw heart, which I suspect he learned from his dad. The Ravenclaw/Slytherin combo in the secondary/model space (in either order) often looks a little bit like a criminal mastermind (or someone who wants to be one, anyway). When Simon is uncomfortable, falling back on his model, his starts to look a bit like a plotting villain—in the pilot, on Ariel, and at the beginning of Serenity the movie.
Zoe is a Gyffindor Primary who really likes Hufflepuffs (see: Mal, Wash). Like Mal, she’s been burned by the war. Puff Primary Mal has become disillusioned by a cruel ‘verse that requires you to abandon some people to save others. He has lost faith in both the fairness of the universe and his own ability to make it more fair. But Zoe, a burned Gryff, has lost faith in her own ability to tell right from wrong.
She’s not deeply burned—more a light char—but instead of trusting her own gut these days, she trusts Mal’s. Her internal moral compass feels like it’s gone awry or silent. She feels lost. This is a burned Gryffindor, and it’s not uncommon for a burned Gryffindor to try to find their morality somewhere outside themself. Zoe finds hers in Mal.
Part of it is that she knew him in the war when he was fearless, his Puff effortless, and because it’s easy for her to fall into the structured hierarchy of their roles– sergeant or captain. She has given him not just practical but also moral authority. She questions him, but she trusts him in the end, almost always. And, though it’s framed within the “sir” and the war, the reason for it lies on the quality of Mal himself. Zoe would never give her allegiance to anyone who did not deserve it. But she feels she cannot trust her own internal compass, so instead she trusts Mal’s heart.
For secondary: Zoe does not charge, comfort, or connive. She’s straightforward because it’s useful, not because it’s a moral imperative. Ravenclaw Secondary I think—look at the comparison with Mal’s Gryff Secondary in the “tin of beans” flashback in The Message. Where Mal shouts and hollers and charges, a different school of thought, Zoe is organized, efficient, deliberate (and deadly).
The way Inara freaks out and skiddaddles when she realizes how important the Serenity crew (and esp. Mal) have become to her — that is a Slytherin Primary trying so hard to Petrify. She’s mourning Nandi and she’s mourning herself, and she just wants everything to stop hurting.
Inara looks a lot like a Puff Secondary, because she performs Hufflepuff so damn well, but she’s not. In her introductory scene, on the job, we get snatches of her “inner” thoughts while she smiles and pours tea— she’s sighing, shifting, rolling her eyes. There’s clearly a disconnect between how she feels about this man and what she’s doing.
A Slytherin/Hufflepuff Inara (which, on the very surface, would look very similar to most of her behavior) would have to convince herself to “mean” the affection for her clients, even if only for the allotted time slot. Eyerolling, internal or external, wouldn’t happen until she was back on the ship, curled up with Kaylee, telling stories, and that’s if the eye-rolling happened at all.
Inara talks like that, though—that she chooses people she ‘connects’ with, that kind of thing. She’s got a lot of respect and wishfulness when it comes to Hufflepuff, which I think is where she bonds best with Book— he performs Puff, too, and wishes that giving warmth was closer to his core.
Inara has a Slytherin Secondary model, which she uses to excel at the “performance” of her job. The flexibility and cultivated appearance of that secondary work for her well. However, her actual secondary is Ravenclaw, a learner, a studier, and a collector of skills. Slytherin’s adaptability is just one more skill her Ravenclaw has worked to learn.
When Inara’s with the crew, she tends to live simply in her Ravenclaw secondary, giving off an impression of precision, clarity, and certainty. Her Ravenclaw and Mal’s Gryffindor secondary, both strident, solid houses, like to have sparring matches/bonding times while their Loyalist House primaries make doe-eyes at each other. Dweebs.
Jayne Cobb displays neither a Slytherin Primary’s strong loyalty drive, a Hufflepuff’s need-based service, or a Ravenclaw’s constructed, systematized morality. He appears to be a Gryffindor Primary whose felt morality is “whatever I want.”
If you read him really complexly, you could maybe imagine a Ravenclaw Primary there, who’s settled on that morality of self-serving ruthlessness. But moments like the one where he joins up with Serentiy—he shoots both his buddies on Mal’s suggestion—suggest against that. The betrayal doesn’t make Ravenclaw any more unlikely than Gryffindor, but the instantaneous decision to make a moral choice he’d never considered or run through his system before suggests that his is an intuitive “gut” morality—just a really unsavory one.
His selfishness looks temptingly like a Slytherin Primary, but he lacks any of the loyalty. He’ll betray anyone and it doesn’t seem to be because he’s Petrified—he still likes and bonds with people. He cares not just practically but emotionally about what they think of him (his plea to Mal not to tell the others about his betrayal in Ariel). But when push comes to shove, he doesn’t seem to be driven strongly by that affection, the way a Slytherin is tied to their personal loyalties. A Gryffindor, then, just an ugly one. Sorry, Gryffindors.
His secondary, though, we think is Slytherin. He looks a lot like a blunt Gryffindor Secondary, but it’s just his Slytherin Secondary neutral state, which he likes to live in and which shares the blunt or even abrasive honesty and delighted tactlessness of some Gryffindor Secondaries.
When Jayne needs to lie, deceive, connive, or betray, he does it easily and without a touch of dismay. He schemes and jockies for advantage. He’s a good example of the uglier stereotypes of a Slytherin Secondary. Sorry, Slytherins.
Kaylee Frye is a Gryffindor Primary like Jayne and Zoe, but where Jayne’s is self-serving and Zoe’s is quietly shattered, Kaylee’s shines bright through her Hufflepuff Secondary. She community-builds like nobody’s business and even her technical prowess is described in terms of intuitive empathy.
In the episode where they pick up Simon and River, she’s sitting outside Serenity asking people why she should let them onto her ship, why they want to be on her ship. And the only answer she accepts, Book’s, is a philosophy of wandering and traveling that sits close to her heart. It’s a Gryffindor recognizing someone who looks to share her view of the world. It’s a Gryffindor who’s bonding over shared ideas and ideals. And what does she do with this information? She brings Book aboard the ship. Welcome to the family, you share our philosophies, and I think we’ll get along great.
One of the (many) ways she does her part on Serenity is by community building with people who are good, who are worth getting to know, or who are interesting– who aren’t just picking their ship because it’s a ship that they happened to see, but because they’re able to pick up on that something special that Kaylee values so much about Serenity.
Book is a burned Gryffindor with a Slytherin secondary and a Hufflepuff performance. He’s devoted himself to the truth of the Word, of the Bible, of his religion– like, Zoe he doesn’t have faith in his own ability to tell right from wrong. Where Zoe places her faith in Mal, Book places his in his religion.
His secondary is a bit hard to sort, but from his laid-back, go with the flow skills and his comfort with lying or gilding the truth, he reads as a Slytherin Secondary to us.
Wash is a hard sort, because you can read or not read so many different depths to him. Is he really as utterly transparent as he seems? He looks like a Hufflepuff Primary, but maybe he’s a Ravenclaw with a loud model—because if he’s a straight up Puff, then the boy wears his heart and thoughts on his sleeve all the time.
But Zoe has a pattern—she likes Puffs—so we’re gonna go with that.
Wash really is that honest and straightforward, his emotions obvious on his face. I think someone with the sort of built layers that are easy but not necessary to read into Wash wouldn’t be the kind Zoe would fall in love with. She likes hearts that know what they’re doing, that are instinctual in their kindnesses. Wash is himself, all the time, and that self plays with dinosaurs, loves his wife, and headbutts with Mal over ethics with the thoughtless confidence of two Puffs who disagree.
Ravenclaw Secondary—he’s quirky, delights in sarcasm and wit even when what he’s trying to be is kind. His Puff center makes his secondary look a lot warmer than burned Gryffindor Zoe’s Ravenclaw secondary, but the fact that this couple shares a secondary makes sense.
We think River was originally a Ravenclaw/Ravenclaw with Slytherin Primary and Ravenclaw Secondary models — basically, as a kid she modeled Simon’s Slytherclaw. She’s not a Slytherin Primary herself, but she finds comfort in Slytherin loyalty and she often sees the world through that lens—an emphasis on interpersonal connection, a sense of “mine first,” and loyalties owed.
By the time she’s on Serenity, however, she’s been rubbed so raw she doubts her Slytherin model (“I didn’t think you’d come for me” “Dummy,” says Slytherclaw Simon, who never could have done anything else) and she has almost entirely dropped the show-off Claw performance of the little girl who had corrected her big brother’s spelling. As the show goes on, she grasps more and more of her Slytherin model: she gets to bring back one of her layers, regain her trust in Simon’s Slytherin, rebuild her model of a world in which one universal truth is that her brother will always come for her.
But River’s drives and connection to the world are understanding it. She wants to know what’s going on, both in the observant, academic sense of the Ravenclaw Secondary and the more abstract Ravenclaw primary—she’s looking for purpose, shoulds and shouldn’ts, for identity.
A Slytherin Primary in her situation might have attached themselves to Simon like a baby sloth, but River doesn’t. He’s her solid ground, but not her reason.
A young Gryffindor might be reactive, responding with their gut, or perhaps cynical and shattered after their self had been so invaded. In rebuilding, a Gryffindor would be looking for something inside themselves, a sense of solidity, a sense of purpose — River is looking outside.
A Hufflepuff Primary might have clearer eyes for the people of the ship— River views them with a detached fondness. There is genuine affection there (see: Objects in Space), but when it comes to River feeling steady in the world she’s almost more interested in the engines than the crew— not their mechanics, but the beat of them.
She’s a Romantic sort of Ravenclaw Primary, sure, but she’s got a need for systems to build and inhabit. Her sense of reality has been shattered and the first thing that gives her some peace and stability is this — not safety, certainty, or community, but a sense of knowing what is going on.
River’s trying to figure out how this all works and the heart of this show (because River more than any of them lives in the meta-text) is Serenity.
River’s trying to find a base from which she can build. Her world, her models, and her ability to perceive and believe reality have been shattered. Mal pulls her back to the ship at the end of the last episode—it’s a homecoming, yes, but perhaps more than that he’s giving her a place to stand.
That episode is easily Firefly’s most existential/meta and it’s fitting that we start it with River detached from reality—ocean wave audio, mistaking a gun for a fallen branch, pushed to untrusted outskirts—and that we end it with River landing firmly feet first on Serenity, beaming through her suit visor.
P.S. Spoiler for new Epd 5 - Not to be evil but Anyone think it would be faster to get rid of them if they just put delayed poison into their food supply so in a couple of weeks they just all drop?
Here you can see fireflies, a type of beetle that glows.
Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light from enzymes called luciferases. In nature, many organisms such as jellyfish and fireflies ‘glow’ using these enzymes.
In scientific research, bioluminescent proteins are used to monitor changes to cells.
In the bottom images around 7000 bacterial colonies have been printed on an agar plate.The bacteria have been genetically engineered to display the bioluminescent enzyme from the firefly Photinus pyralis.
The images were taken with a sensitive camera which can detect the light output from luciferase in each colony. The light output of different types of luciferase can be analysed to discover which ones have enhanced characteristics that could be used in research.
Image credits: Terry Priest, s58y, Cassandra Stowe
I don’t know who this is from, but I found it too hilarious to not share.
How it makes me sad that some don’t know this reference. Every single person on tumblr should. Prerequisite: at least one episode and two recognizable quotes from firefly.
