#orphan black

Orphan Black is one of our favorite shows. Tatiana is extraordinary.

Note: the way we play this game, “primary” is WHY you do things and “secondary” is HOW. If you want to learn more about how we define things here, check out our tumblr or sortinghatchats.wordpress.com

Allison, probably one of the more frightening of the clones, is a Hufflepuff Primary/Gryffindor Secondary. Her worldview is wrapped around her little community of proper suburbs people, and all the expectations of culture and niceties that go with that. She’s a good example of a Hufflepuff who dehumanizes to shrink her circle of care — look at how she first reacts to “lowlife” Sarah. Allison’s classism defines the scope of her Hufflepuff; it’s when she reframes her sisters and sister-brother Felix as people that she circles the wagons around them.

Allison’s Gryffindor Secondary is what drives her brusqueness, honesty, and fervor. It’s what makes her tie her husband up in the basement; but it’s also one of the driving factors of their marriage — when they finally click again in the end of Season 2 it is with Donnie getting caught up in Allison’s strident Gryffindor Secondary’s certainty and leadership.  

Sarah is a beautiful, beautiful Slytherin/Slytherin heroine. You don’t get that very often. She’s selfish and coarse (she spends a lot of time in her neutral state). She is intuitively comfortable with the manipulations and adaptability of the Slytherin Secondary. The shows takes and treats her Slytherin Primary’s loyalties of “mine first” as something admirable, powerful, and warm. It’s such a nice thing to see.

Helena has a burned secondary. Years of abuse and control have stripped that from her and she uses whatever tool falls into hand. From the second season, and the ways she likes to love and care, she might be growing into a Hufflepuff Secondary as she heals and rebuilds.

For Primary: The only way Helena was able to hunt down her sisters was to declare them “sheep.” She had to dehumanize them to be able to hurt them. Even when it is framed to her as “right” and “holy” — which a Gryffindor or Ravenclaw who valued her captors’ morality system would have latched onto— Helena turns it into a “them and us.” Or, often, “them and me.” I am real. They are not. I am the original and they are sheep for the slaughter.

A Slytherin might have turned it into something about her own safety, or in the valuing of the views of her captors and psuedo-family/handlers. Idealists would have convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, even if people got hurt. That need for dehumanization suggests a Hufflepuff Primary; and the way she jumps and hopes and loves so hard at the chance to have a family and sestras of her own backs up that sorting too.

Cosima is a Hufflepuff Primary, too. She loves easy and broadly, especially with the people who most fit into her communities (her clone family, and also other scientists, which is how Delphine first gets close). She is one of the driving organizers of the Clone Club— not with a Puff secondary’s warmth and community building, but a Hufflepuff Primary’s valuing of people and groups. They are important to her and she is spending her life (literally) trying to help her people.

Her Puff is also apparent in her interactions with Delphine — when Cosima continues loving Delphine it’s not with a Slytherin’s “mine” possessiveness which can bulldoze over flaws; or a Gryffindor’s ability to fully and intuitively forgive a changed soul. Cosima loves like a Hufflepuff — despite flaws. Delphine is a person, and a beautiful and brilliant one; Cosima may not trust her always, may disagree with and dislike her choices, might even leave or turn her back on her when Delphine goes too far, but Cosima will still love her. Because Delphine is a person, and people deserve that.

(Delphine is a Slytherin Primary, continuing that common tradition of squishy, driven Hufflepuffs and the flabbergasted Slytherins who fall helplessly into their orbit.)

Both Delphine and Cosima have Ravenclaw Secondaries delighted at the discoverable and quantifiable nature of the world. It can be an amazing thing to have a lover who looks at the world with the same flavor of joy as you do.

We haven’t seen enough of Tony to point out his Primary, though Slytherin isn’t unlikely. However, his Slytherin Secondary is easily identifiable and a delight.

Tony’s Slytherin was so striking and powerful it actually prompted us to change our ideas of Felix’s sorting. We had brother Felix sorted as a Puff Secondary— but when Felix got stuck in a room with Tony’s dynamic and honestly unsafe Slytherin, Felix’s own Slytherin Secondary rose to meet that threat and that… flirt.

Felix loves living in a model of a Hufflepuff Secondary, being kind and warm, teasing and friendly — but when prompted properly, apparently, that Puff is something he can just drop. (Which makes both Felix and Sarah Slytherin/Slytherins, except that Felix likes to pretend to be a Hufflepuff and Sarah doesn’t pretend to be anything.)

“It’s part of who Felix is is avoiding the deeper, murkier, messier territory and surfing the text and just surfing the surface of the character.

Tony offered me an opportunity to take the masks off, drop the theatrics, drop the defenses, the armor, and you see what real discomfort and fear looks like on this human being, this person. You saw him vibrate or exist in this fear; this uncertainty. And also, self-confront.

Tony holds a mirror up to Felix and, conversely, Felix holds up a mirror to Tony. And that was pretty spectacular”
- Jordan Gavaris (Felix’s actor)

Rachel is a cold primary, certainly — either a Ravenclaw or a burned Slytherin. We think she’s the latter. Watching the home videos over and over again, stealing Kira, wanting her father so desperately— this is a woman who doesn’t have people but who wants them so badly. The beautiful scene with her and her drink in the video room, laughing and crying, is her re-burning I think, after allowing herself to hope for her father’s presence in her life.

The way Rachel achieves things is, while conniving, cold, and complicated, done in advance and from a distance. She needs control; plans and power, a particularly ruthless Ravenclaw secondary. There is nothing softening in Rachel. She uses her secondary like a scalpel and a noose. She sets traps and contracts, lays the groundwork, lets Dr. Leekie destroy his own self. It is with preparation and planning that she manages to snatch Kira, and it is Sarah’s adaptive, on-her-feet Slytherin secondary that so confounds and frustrates Rachel, who does not know how to respond to that kind of power.

tl;dr

Sarah is a Slytherin/Slytherin. Loyal and cunning, she puts her own self and people first with no qualms. So is Felix, but he likes to pretend to be a Hufflepuff when he can. 

Rachel is a burned Slytherin/Ravenclaw.

Allison, Helena, and Cosima are all Hufflepuff Primaries, who love those they see as their kind of people. Allison has a forthright Gryffindor Secondary and Cosima an analytical Ravenclaw Secondary, while Helena, who has been burned bad, is growing back into a warm, community-building Hufflepuff Secondary.

fozmeadows:

derinthescarletpescatarian:

wemblingfool:

fantastic-nonsense:

fantastic-nonsense:

Tatiana Maslany was literally insane for playing like 12 different people with the same face and then interacting with multiple versions of herself for five whole seasons

she really Did That™ and we are all incredibly grateful

No! No, but here’s the important thing! She did it so flawlessly, that you would actually forget these characters are the same actress.

I found myself feeling bad for the actor who plays Alison’s husband, because “he never gets to work with Maslany,” because in my head I kept equating her with Sarah, when literally he only worked with Maslany!

The special effects were so seemless, and her performances were so flawless that we have never seen this gimmick done this effectively, this naturally. And I don’t think we ever will again.

Shedeserved that emmy.

It’s impossible to describe how phenomenally good a job Maslany did with these characters. Like, it wasn’t just that she played every one of these characters so genuinely and distinctly that you forgot they were the same actress. It was also that the characters, being clones, would deceive people by playing each other.

Alison would be on the screen, and you’d be like, “that’s Alison”. Then Sarah would be on the screen, and you’d be like, “that’s Sarah”. Then someone who looked exactly like Sarah would be on the screen, and you’d be like, “Oh, Alison is pretending to be Sarah.” And some of the clones were better at pretending to be each other than other clones were. And you could always tell who you were looking at and who they were trying to imitate.

back in 2014, I got to speak very briefly to the showrunners at the Hugo Awards afterparty, and they said that, even on set, it was easy to forget that Tatiana was playing all the different clones. they’d finish a take with her as Sarah and then turn around asking, “All right, where’s Rachel?” because she inhabited them all so distinctly that you’d instinctively look for the other actress