Hey all! Elisha C. very kindly stepped up to help us transcribe this episode. Please enjoy!

Emily: Hi, I’m Emily.

Kat: And I’m Kat.

Emily: And we are Sorting Hat Chats.

Kat: And today we are going to sort Avatar: the Last Airbender, the animated Nickelodeon show from my childhood.

Emily: In our Sorting Hat Chat system, we sort people into primary houses, which is why characters do things, and into secondary houses, which is how characters do things. We define the terms we’re using here in a little more detail in our pilot episode, on our WordPress, and on our Tumblr. But in the meantime, let’s get to sorting.

Kat: I don’t remember how we sorted Azula the first time we did this, but I get the feeling she’s a Slytherin primary? Kinda similar to Aang, all of the times when she totally freaks out or when the people closest to her betray her, which for some reason wasn’t totally intuitive to me. I think maybe just because she presents so much with her secondary, and we don’t really see much decision making other than doing what her dad says.

Emily: I also wonder if she’s a little burned, and that kind of also screws it up.

Kat: The whole emotional, mental breakdown at the end doesn’t speak to someone who’s been solid and happy in their way of going about the world.

Emily: Right? Because that sort of gets triggered by Mai and Ty Lee betraying her, and that seems to, for her, really push her back into specifically then the time her mom also abandoned her. And so she has this long line of like abandonment trauma, and that’s the sort of thing that breaks her.

Kat: Yeah. Oh Ursa.

Emily: Right? And so she doesn’t—Azula doesn’t seem to love Zuko in that way. She wrote Zuko off early, he was never in her Slytherin. But her dad is. Her mom was, I presume, at least enough that being abandoned by her really shook her.

Kat: Yeah, I have to imagine when Azula was really young, she was still close with her mother, but then when Ursa fell out with Ozai, and the parents each decided which kid was evil and which kid was great, then y’know.

Emily: Oof. Yeah, and then with, and it’s interesting, but there’s where I think—’cause she, like she has connections, so. But the reason I think she’s burned as a Slytherin anyway, cause generally burned Slytherins just don’t connect with people, she makes some very one-sided—it’s about, sort of, in some ways like possession? And she’s shook by betrayal, but she would also betray Mai and Ty Lee really easily, but she’s expecting loyalty from them while only ever really giving loyalty to her father, and even then it seems a lot more like fear and desperation than it does like loyalty.

Kat: Yeah, well Azula initially coerces Ty Lee into joining, because if I remember right Ty Lee said, “No, I’m really happy here with my family in the circus,” and Azula was like, “Cool, I’ll burn down everything unless you actually do come with me.” So starting off on that foot and then later being confused as to why Ty Lee doesn’t like her and betrays her. Unfortunately, that does smack of Burned Slytherin primary.

Emily: Right, she’s trying to like artificially create the bonds that she would have as a healthy Slytherin, that she would have as someone who was bonding and giving loyalty and having these tight knit connections and instead she tries to create them using fear or power or leverage the same way her father does to her.

Kat: Yeah, because then she feels like she has control over it and control over them, and then they can’t hurt her. She can just hurt them, and that makes it safe.

Emily: And then the thing that shakes is when she realizes even that, that fear and that power dynamics that she’s using, they aren’t in that. They’re still going to leave her.

Kat: Yeah, because that’s not, that’s not real. It’s just—it just looks like what she wants, but she can’t actually have what she wants unless she actually approaches it authentically.

Emily: Her mother didn’t love her enough to stay, and Mai and Ty Lee didn’t fear her enough to stay, and she doesn’t know what she could possibly have left to offer.

Kat: So we think she is Burned Slytherin primary. What about her secondary? Probably also Slytherin secondary?

Emily: Slytherin secondary and not burned at all. She’s so confident in her abilities and her power, that’s not a place she has any doubts, but it’s all improv. It’s all manipulation. She’s a really classically villainous Slytherin secondary. It’s clearly evil and slippery and playful in ways that are some of the stereotype, which is interesting because it’s a show that I think is pretty heavy with Slytherin secondaries of really different flavors. Cause I think Aang is a Slytherin secondary too, but he is not at all villainous in his.

Kat: No, he’s so playful with his Slytherin secondary.

Emily: It’s happy and joyous and generous.

Kat: He’s flighty.

Emily: Yeah, he’s flighty, but it’s still that same secondary, which is really really interesting. There’s a really beautiful diversity of nuance of how they present Slytherin secondaries in Avatar.

Kat: Yeah, especially once we get into Toph.

Emily: Toph, I also think a Slytherin secondary, and she just does it completely differently than either Azula or Aang.

Kat: Yeah, but we see how competent she is in Ba Singh Se when decides, “Ok, it’s going to be helpful now for me to turn on my class performance. I will go ahead and turn on my class performance. Oh, look, it’s perfect because I remember how to do this, and I am just able to interact in those contexts.”

Emily: Yeah, and she finds that satisfying. It doesn’t feel like a model she built to survive her early life, it’s just something she does, and she’s like, “Yeah, this is what you do. Katara why are you bothered by this?”

Kat: Yeah she’s like, “It’s kind of annoying, sure, but like it’s not a problem.”

Emily: Yeah, and then we also see her utilize that same sort of flexibility and ability to transform in areas of life she thinks are fun, like when they’re doing all the cons in the fire nation. But she spends most of her time in sort of a neutral state, where she’s not putting on anything. She’s just like whatever, which is also a Slytherin secondary thing.

Kat: It is! It’s great, and it’s—instead of adapting, it’s just calling it like she sees it. She could use the information that she’s learning from everything around her that she would usually use to inform her improvisation, and instead she could just point at it bluntly and say, “Well that’s dumb.”

Emily: And it’s—she’s just existing. She’s not—it looks a bit like a Gryffindor secondary, which is somewhat confusing, right? Because Gryffindor secondaries are sort of forthright, honest, direct, blunt house. But Slytherin secondary has this thing which we call the neutral state, cause Slytherin secondaries normally are really adaptive, flexible house, but when they’re feeling comfortable or they’re feeling they don’t have to do things, they just drop a lot of that play and a lot of that work they’re doing, and they just are. And what makes it different from a Gryffindor secondary is they don’t feel obligated to that honesty. Y’know, they don’t feel like they have to be themselves, and that’s part of their self and their power is to have integrity and to act as they are. It’s just that when they don’t give a shit, they don’t give a shit, and then they’re just there. And they’re fine. And that’s, that’s the neutral state of the Slytherin secondary.

Kat: Definitely reminds me of the idea of being comfortable with uncomfortable silences.

Emily: And Toph’s just so confident and okay, and she has sort of, in some ways, very minimal ambitions as a person. She wants to brawl sometimes, she wants to see the world, she wants to make Sokka squawk, and like she doesn’t really—she’s pretty fine. There’s nothing she’s really chasing after the way a lot of the characters do, and there’s not much she’s really afraid of. So she gets to just live in this neutral state all the time where she’s just really comfortable, and she’s just not performing at all. But she’s still a Slytherin secondary because a) she doesn’t feel obligated to be honest the way a Gryffindor secondary would, who also kind of looks blunt, but also because we see her step into that flexibility and adaptation and even manipulation just easily and comfortably and without any angst in her soul. It’s not a model that she’s covering her true self up with. It’s just what you do.

Kat: So that kind of brings up an interesting question which is, if she is to some extent, not in a bad way, but she’s a little bit along for the ride. She’s there because she’s teaching Aang earthbending. I think she’s also there because she’s excited about the idea of going on an adventure and seeing the world. So what does that say about her primary? Because on one hand, she’s … I don’t really get a loyalist vibe from her. I guess I could see a very chill loyalist house, either Slytherin or Hufflepuff, but there’s nothing specifically pointing to that. It seems more like it’s—it seems like an internal primary cause I don’t see her really looking outside for any of it. So do we think it’s maybe Gryffindor?

Emily: I definitely agree she’s an internal primary and not an external one cause yeah she, whatever her morality is, whatever her drive is, she gets it from inside herself. She does not care what anyone else thinks, people or society or any of that. She’s just like, “I’m right.” But yeah, our two internal houses being Slytherin or Gryffindor, it’s sort of a hard call because whichever one it is, she doesn’t—she’s chill.

She doesn’t really—if she’s a Slytherin, her parents aren’t in her Slytherin. If she’s a Slytherin, no one was in her Slytherin when they first met her. Y’know, it might be the Gaang later grows to be and she builds those sort of bonds with them, I think is possible. If she’s a Gryffindor, she’s a Gryffindor who doesn’t care about a lot. Her internal gut, her internal sense of morality and justice, does not hang on a lot of things. She’s not Korra, to use an in universe example. So, but you have Gryffindors like that. Like Jayne Cobb from the Firefly series. He’s a Gryffindor, he just doesn’t give a shit. His main morality is like, “I’m good, ok, whatever.” And that’s still a Gryffindor, because he’s still driven first and foremost by what he thinks is right. It’s just there’s not a lot of right and wrong that inherently matters to him.

Kat: Yeah, and if she’s a Slytherin, then I think mostly she’s in her Slytherin, and then she also likes other people sometimes.

Emily: I would think that by the end of the series, the Gaang is probably in her Slytherin. Like she does definitely grow closer to themand value and worry about them. But that could just be friendship. People who aren’t Slytherin also have friends.

Kat: That’s true! Thank goodness.

Emily: Are there any points where she’s really driven into a corner? Where she has to like make decisions between conflicting options? I think part of the problem might just be that Toph isn’t given many places where her choices are really challenged.

Kat: I think you’re right. Like I can’t think of many. I mean, she decides to leave home and travel with them, but that doesn’t actually give us data one way or the other. That just tells us that if she’s a Slytherin, her parents aren’t in her Slytherin.

Emily: Yeah, but she does, remembering that episode, she does seem to like them. Her parents. She doesn’t seem to value them. And so that kind of pushes me towards Gryffindor for her because it’s not that she didn’t care for them. It’s just that when it went to “I want to leave and see the world” vs “You don’t want me to,” the place she fell where she really felt satisfied and free was “I’m gonna do it anyway. It’s more important to follow my heart than to listen to you and to keep you happy.” Which like, that seems pretty Gryffindor primary. It’s just divorced from like justice or ideals, which is fine. That’s still Gryffindor.

Kat: Yeah, and I think that also explains why we don’t see anything specifically Slytherin about her relationships with the rest of the Gaang, that we don’t notice any point at which she’s like, “Ah yes, you’re in my inner circle now, but this other person is not.” It seems to be so much more a continuum of affection and not really intrinsic to her decisions or even how she treats people.

Emily: Okay, so Gryffindor. Gryffindor/Slytherin. I kind of want to go back to Aang a bit and talk about his Slytherin secondary as our third Slytherin secondary example.

Kat: Yeah, I would like that. We did a bit skip over him to get to Toph.

Emily: Well, Toph is great, so that’s extremely fair.

Kat: And it’s interesting too because when Aang is learning how to earthbend, he and Toph just don’t see eye to eye at all.

Emily: Yeah, even though they’re both using their Slytherin secondary for their bending, you know, he’s flexible and he’s avoiding obstacles, and he’s, you know, reacting to everything. He has this really fluid way he [bends] that gives him a lot of power to kind of be a step ahead. I think we see that most whenever he fights with Zuko because they’re both really active fighters, and Aang is just running circles around him. It’s very Slytherin secondary, but so is how Toph earthbends.

Kat: Yeah, the way Toph earthbends is very much from her neutral state. It’s very much from her just acknowledgment of reality and deciding what it is and kind of telling the metal or the earth what to do. It’s so straightforward and blunt in this really elegant way. I love Toph a lot.

Emily: Yeah, without being charge-y, right?

Kat: Yeah, no it’s not charge-y. It’s so chill.

Emily: Yeah, we talked sometimes that Gryffindor secondaries are the unstoppable force, right? They move, they act. And Slytherin secondaries and their neutral state are the immovable object. Once you get a Slytherin secondary down to their neutral state where they’re not feigning and dodging and reacting the way Aang does, they’re just solid. 

Cause there’s a lot of sort of self-knowledge and self-comfort and self-awareness in the Slytherin secondary? It’s part of why a Slytherin secondary feels comfortable, you know, adapting and putting on all these other faces and acting all these ways that maybe aren’t inherently who they are, that thing that drives Gryffindors crazy. Because the Slytherin knows who they are, so what does it matter what they act like? And so when you get them down to just who they are, and they’re not acting anymore, you don’t have any power to change them at that point.

Kat: No, especially not if they’re a Gryffindor primary.

Emily: Especially not if it’s Toph. You have no power over Toph.

Kat: Yeah, but I do—I think that Aang doesn’t learn that lesson. It’s not like Aang gets in tune with his neutral state. That’s not the feeling I get, and it’s—I don’t really get neutral state from him kind of ever.

Emily: Yeah that kid is always moving.

Kat: Yeah, and that’s actually—that’s kind of cool too and that’s something that I’m not sure we’ve called out explicitly that not all Slytherin secondaries really engage with a neutral state.

Emily: It’s sort of a term we came up with to explain how someone could be a Slytherin secondary when sometimes they just go blunt. Even though that still seemed to be where they fit in our system. But it’s an option for a Slytherin secondary. It’s not like if you don’t do this then you aren’t. But Aang doesn’t. So how do we think he’s doing the earthbending then? If he’s not paring down to a neutral state that acts as it the way Toph is.

Kat: He eventually figures out earthbending kind of at the end of that episode, when Sokka’s in trouble, and Aang needs to save him, and that’s very typical of a lot of when Aang suddenly gets his shit together. After a long time of failing to get his shit together, and I think it speaks to his Slytherin primary. “Oh, my friend’s in danger. Oh okay, this actually matters then.”

Emily: Yeah, that’s what drives him forward, and so it’s like, with earthbending, you need to find a place where you’re solid, where you can stand your ground, and Toph does that with her neutral state, but Aang has to use his Slytherin primary because that’s where’s he’s solid. That’s where you can’t sway him anymore, is on: this rampaging moose creature shouldn’t kill Sokka. Aang can stand by that.

Kat: Yeah, that’s a very clear, clear decision in his mind. That’s a solid foundation with which he can move rocks.

Emily: Yes, exactly. Yeah, cause Aang is—it’s sometimes a controversial sorting when we’ve talked about this before, but Aang is a Slytherin primary. I’ve had a lot of people tell us that we’re wrong on that.

Kat: And like, I see why. I mean, his job is the Avatar, it’s to value all people. His goal is to save the world.

Emily: Yeah those seem like not terribly Slytherin things.

Kat: Yeah, he cares a lot about people. He likes doing what’s right. He likes taking care of people and helping people, it’s something that he finds compelling and brings a lot of action, and you know, he’s the protagonist.

Emily: Yeah, and you also get—he also has a lot of his conflicts, especially his final conflict in the finale, wrap around this airbender ideal of pacifism. He cares a lot about this kind of idealistic question. “I’m a pacifist, I don’t want to kill Ozai,” and that’s a major conflict for him, and that also doesn’t seem very Slytherin.

Kat: No, and there’s also—we see his big dilemma when he’s opening up his chakras to reaccess the avatar state, and we spend like several episodes, or possibly just one episode that made a large impression on me, where he has to let go of Katara in order to finish opening his chakras and be able to access the avatar state in a way that he needs to, and at first he says “No, I won’t do it,” which is very Slytherin, but at the end of the day, he does do it. He lets her go, and he makes that decision, and that doesn’t seem—that seems like him maybe even choosing not to be a Slytherin primary in action. But I think that’s one of the things that is kind of cool about our system, is that you don’t always have to make the decision that would make your primary feel the most satisfied.

Emily: Yeah, your –the sorting depends what you want to do and what makes you feel a good person or what makes you feel satisfied, more than it is what you actually do. So I think, Aang is in a similar position as we decided that Lan Xichen was in our Untamed episode where he is a Slytherin primary. That’s his drive, and we see that a lot. We see it with when Appa is taken, whenever Katara or Sokka are in danger. That’s when Aang is suddenly just running on instinct and doing these major things. At the end of the day, he loves his people, his small set of people, and he will just tear things apart to keep them safe. But, we also see these really important moments with struggling over pacifism and killing Ozai, struggling over opening his chakras where he’s sort of making other choices.

Kat: Yeah to some extent, I think it might be an intellectualizing over the priorities that he holds closest because we see that a lot with Lan Xichen too when he—not to go off on that too much because not everyone has watched the Untamed—but when he decides that it is better for him to let his little brother be punished instead of turning up the entire society. That’s ultimately probably better for everyone, right? And I think with Aang, you see something similar where it’s ultimately going to be better for everyone if he ends this war the way that he feels is actually right.

Emily: Yeah and I think those struggles that look like they’re not Slytherin, in Aang’s case– which is actually different than Lan Xichen’s I’m realizing. Cause Lan Xichen actually squishes his Slytherin because he thinks Ravenclaw’s probably more ethical, and he kinda thinks he’s a bad person. It’s complicated– But with Aang, I think they’re actually evidence of his Slytherin primary. So we look at the two we talked about with Aang trying to unlock his chakras and at first refusing to let go of Katara to gain the avatar’s power. The thing that eventually convinces him to let go of Katara is that he realizes he can’t protect them if he’s not powerful, so he gives up Katara and his love for her—his connection to her—so that he can save her. Cause they’re in danger, and that’s what finally triggers him to make that choice and that sacrifice. It’s still a Slytherin motivation.

And with the finale and him struggling so hard over killing Ozai and giving up his pacifism, I think it’s about Gyatso. I think it’s about the air nomads. His entire world died. His father figure who he loved entirely, who triggers his first avatar state explosion, he died, and there’s nothing of them left except for Aang. And so he desperately doesn’t want to let go of one of his last connections to them, which is their pacifism. Which is his father’s belief that he trained and raised Aang in, and they’re really important to him, I think not because they’re right or because he’s thought about them and decided they’re ethical or because he believes they’re ethical but because they were Gyatso’s, and it’s the last part of Gyatso that are alive.

Kat: Yes. Yes yes yes yes. That. That thing you just said, yes.

Emily: Right? And so he’s still—he’s acting in this Slytherin way. It’s more important to keep Gyatso alive than to defeat the fire lord and save the world. It would hurt him so much. He might still do it, because you know, Katara is alive, Sokka is alive, but it would hurt him so much to kill that last bit of Gyatso to save the world. And in the same way, it would hurt him—he can’t let Katara be hurt, so he has to give her up to open his last chakra. His choices are always, at the end of the day, about the people he loves.

Kat: Yeah and about not betraying them, even betraying their memory because I think that’s something that was kind of implicit in what you said, but I just want to make it a little bit more explicit, which is I feel like Aang would feel like he was betraying Gyatso if he went against that pacifism.

Emily: Yeah and we even see it somewhat in Korra, which is where Aang clearly spent his life trying to keep the air nomads alive. And he succeeded. They’re still in the world now. Even though in ways he doesn’t seem very Slytherin primary, I think he is. You also see it a bit in the moments where he gets to be selfish. I’m thinking of the Bato of the Water Tribe episode, where it’s for the first time he’s really afraid that Sokka and Katara are going to leave him to go back to their father.

Kat: That’s right, and he hides the letter.

Emily: He hides the letter. It’s—That was one of the first episodes that convinced me of both his primary and his secondary because he just—it felt like sort of the very typical, sinister Slytherin secondary for the first time, which helped me reframe all of his playful antics. Oh that’s Slytherin secondary too! You’re much happier there, please stick with that. But that’s the first tool that falls to his hand, and the thing he feels guilty about is betraying his friends, not lying to them. You know, it’s his reasons, not his methods that bothered him there.

Kat: Yeah, definitely. Yeah I can’t remember off hand other times when he’s lied to them to protect them, but I’m sure there were those times, and I’m sure he didn’t feel bad about it.

Emily: Oh yeah, he lies all the time. He’s just chill with that. It’s only when the lying is a betrayal that he’s bothered really, and that’s actually—that’s in season one. He’s a really immature Slytherin early on, and he grows a lot over the seasons. And being able to not just want to possess and have people, but wanting to, you know, support and love and protect people, which are sort of different mindsets of the Slytherin primary. He’s a healthier and better friend as he grows.

Okay. So, those are our three Slytherin secondaries, who all look very, very different in how they perform that secondary. I don’t think either Katara or Sokka are Slytherin secondaries.

Kat: No. No, I don’t think so. 

Emily: They’re bringing some other tools to the table.

Kat: Yes. Katara is so fiery. She charges. We see that at the end of season one, or kind of close-ish to the end of season one, when she’s like “No. I will learn waterbending.” Like I feel like she finds such strength in standing up for herself and others and speaking her truth.

Emily: She’s also really inspirational. There are a bunch of moments where Katara like stands on piles of things and like shouts? Like in the prison episode. The floating prison with all the captive earthbenders? She like starts a prison riot, and she does that in different circumstances. She has a really strong ability to lead and inspire and act in ways that make the people around her also then be driven to act.

Kat: She also really does enjoy caretaking. We see those episodes where she’s very motherly, but that doesn’t seem quite as intrinsic to her.

Emily: Yeah, so it seems like we’re kind of torn for her between Gryffindor secondary, which is forthright and honest and bold integrity and inspires others by example, and Hufflepuff secondary, which would be hardworking, dedicated, supportive, warm. And I think a lot of people see Katara, especially early on, as a Hufflepuff secondary. She’s team mom. She does maintain that throughout the season. She very much acts in many ways as a surrogate mom to Sokka, even though she’s his baby sister, and she’s mothering towards a lot of the characters, even Aang, her … boyfriend. Anyway, different conversation. But I think it’s a model. I think it’s what she’s supposed to be doing. I think it’s a model she got from the water tribe.

Kat: Yes, I agree because so much of her character arc is in her embracing that desire to stand up and be inspirational, and it doesn’t mean that she has to give up her caretaking. It becomes less important to her. It becomes less vital in comparison to standing up for what she believes in.

Emily: She likes caretaking, and she will do it. It’s a good skill, and it gives her a lot of good things, but at the end of the day, Katara just really wants to punch a fire nation soldier in the face. I mean it’s—I think it’s in that first season you get a really strong arc for Katara, specifically about her behavior and her role in the society and in the group. So she starts out in the Southern Water Tribe, where she’s basically the little mother, right? And then we end with the conflict with Pakku, the waterbending teacher in the North, where she’s explicitly told, “No women are supposed to heal and cook and caretake. Men are supposed to punch.” And Katara is like, “I have discovered I really like punching, and I would like to also punch please, and if you will not let me, I will punch you.” 

And it works, and she gets to kind of transform and break some barriers there, and she gets to feel allowed to do that. She’s allowing herself to do that, to say “No, I don’t care that this is what I’m supposed to be, that I’m supposed to be, you know, my mother. I’m going to fit here in this space where I want to be, and I’m going to punch things really hard.”

Kat: It brings her a lot of joy.

Emily: It does! And it’s also really interesting how it ties into her gender performance. It’s so gendered, explicitly in the show. “No, you’re supposed to be a Hufflepuff,” “Sorry, I’m a Gryffindor, I punch things in the face.” And we also get this parallel journey that’s also gendered with Sokka. Cause he starts out looking like a Gryffindor secondary.

Kat: He does. He puts on such airs.

Emily: Yeah, right? He’s supposed to be the leader, and he’s supposed to be the leader for being inspirational and brave and powerful, the ways that his father is and the ways that the men of his tribe are supposed to be.

Kat: But he’s just not that.

Emily: Yeah, it’s not who he is, which is interesting because he is actually a strong leader character. You get that a lot in, especially season three where he’s one of the commanders and the strategist, but that’s it. He’s a strategist general. He’s not an inspirational general. He’s not a Gryffindor, he’s a Ravenclaw.

Kat: Yes, he is, and watching him build his skillsets is so enjoyable, and we see that even from the earlier seasons too. We see that in his interaction with the Kyoshi Warriors.

Emily: He meets them and he’s like, “Hey you have a power I don’t have. Can I learn it?”

Kat: Yeah, but first he has to fight his own pride. He has to fight his own Gryffindor secondary performance of “Hey ladies. I’m a strong man. I can punch stuff. I’m already on top of this.” And then they show him that no actually. He’s wrong. And at first he responds with pride, and it’s only after he is really just like beaten a lot in sparring that he’s willing to come back and accept that it’s not his place to be the teacher. It’s his place to be the student here.

Emily: Yeah, he sort of gets to—they help him dismantle this story his society has told him about who he is and how he is supposed to act and this sort of pride and power he’s supposed to be giving, and it gets to move him to this place of humility where he’s finally able to learn, which is what he’s good at. Learning and growing and building new things out of that knowledge. Just like Katara is figuring out that the Hufflepuff she’s told she’s supposed to be, she doesn’t have to be, she can actually be the Gryffindor that she is, the skillset that comes naturally to her, Sokka is realizing he doesn’t have to be a Gryffindor secondary to be a man, to be himself, to be useful. He actually can just be a Ravenclaw secondary.

And unlike Katara, Sokka just dismantles Gryffindor. He doesn’t bring it back, which is a fun contrast. Because Katara does like the Hufflepuff. She keeps it around. She keeps supporting and caretaking. It’s something that she values even though it isn’t what she wants to be at her heart. But Sokka just goes straight Ravenclaw, which is really fun.

Kat: Yeah, because I think he’s really Ravenclaw even in the beginning. Like in the first episode, he’s just already struggling with his pride while trying to assure Katara that actually he is the best fisher, and he can catch the fish, even as Katara is showing him she is much more qualified at efficiently catching fish, but it’s still his pride about his skillset that he knows he wants to have, he knows he should have.

Emily: Yeah, he just needs to get to the place where he’s actually capable of learning and having that humility, which lets him actually really interact with his Ravenclaw. And interestingly, Katara is also totally being her Gryffindor secondary self in the beginning. It’s her rage and her need to set injustices straight and yell at her brother that breaks the iceberg, starts the story, and brings Aang back into the world. Her Gryffindor secondary and her allowing herself to be angry at injustices is what kickstarts the story.

Kat: Yeah, it’s a really satisfying gender subversion.

Emily: Yeah, and I love that the brother and sister get paired gender subversions because so often—I do feel like we often get stories where it’s like, “Oh, the woman doesn’t have to be the caretaker. She can fight,” and I like that a) Katara is still allowed to caretake, even though we establish it’s not natural for her necessarily, and I love that Sokka gets the parallel journey of “You don’t have to be that type of manly, shouty leader. You can be this type of power instead, and you’re still gonna get respect and interaction. You get to decide what kind of man you want to be, but there’s also flexibility in masculinity and the sort of person you can be inside of that gender.”

Kat: Yeah, we get an example of not just his beginning, when he’s suffering from toxic masculinity, but also a really great example of dealing with that and really moving past that and coming into what’s a lot more satisfying for him.

Emily: And both in a personal way where he’s figuring out how he wants to act to be, what it is to be a man in society, and what it is to be himself, but also how he wants to interact with the people around of him of various other genders and the power dynamics and the respects and his transformation of his relationship with Suki from the very heavy-handed, feminism for 11 year olds Kyoshi Warriors episode to the Boiling Rock stuff, where they’ve come a lot farther and he’s a lot more fettled and able to interact in that space. It’s a fun time and a cool thing to see in a kids’ show. So that’s Katara and Sokka’s secondaries. Gryffindor for Katara with a nice Hufflepuff model she keeps, Ravenclaw for Sokka and a Gryffindor model that he does not keep. What do we think about their primaries?

Kat: I could see either Gryffindor or Hufflepuff for Katara.

Emily: Yeah she’s very felt. She doesn’t think about it.

Kat: No, no she doesn’t. It’s about her learning to listen to her gut in a lot of ways.

Emily: Trust herself .

Kat: Yeah, it’s a lot about self-trust. I think her—I’m leaning towards Gryffindor for her because while people definitely matter to her, we do see a lot of that “No but this is right, this is wrong. There are ideals here and I care about them.” 

Emily: I do feel that all the ideals though, they’re always triggered by people in need directly in front of her.

Kat: That’s true.

Emily: Y’know because she’s constantly distracted from their main mission.

Kat: Oh that’s an excellent point.

Emily: Which is this idea of what’s right and wrong, to be like “Oh, this village? There’s a village right here that needs help.” But with the Painted Lady episode, where she slows down their quest to go save the entire world because this one village needs help and she saw their suffering.

Kat: Oh that’s a really good point yeah.

Emily: Right? Because she’s always seeing there’s an individual suffering, and she’s like “Hello, you are now my purpose.” And then she charges at it and punches the evil in the face because she’s a Gryffindor secondary. It’s great. But I think she’s a Hufflepuff primary.

Kat: Yeah that makes sense.

Emily: Sokka, I don’t think is a Hufflepuff primary.

Kat: No.

Emily: He’s—he makes decisions. He’s not a felt house, he’s a decided house I think. His morality comes from like once he really comes into being a moral person. He thinks about things, and he makes decisions, and then he sticks with them, which leaves us with either Ravenclaw or Slytherin, are our two decided houses. Slytherin’s decide on their people where their loyalties lie, and Ravenclaws decide on what is right and wrong. They have to assess things and not feel them.

Kat: Yeah. Of those two, I think Ravenclaw. I do not get Slytherin vibes off of Sokka.

Emily: Yeah, he does seem to be interacting much more in the ideal space than a loyalist space. But he loves people, he loves his sister, but he’s trying to do the right thing. That’s what’s driving him places.

Kat: Yeah, he decides that he was wrong about the Kyoshi Warriors and changes his mind about sexism in a way that he’s spent a lot of time thinking about.

Emily: Yeah, once he realizes, “Man, I shouldn’t be sexist,” it suddenly really important for him not to be that. Then he puts in the work to learn it, and it sticks with him for the rest of the show. And it’s very much not a gut decision. His gut is still saying, “Oh, why bother? You called me girl. What I have to wear a dress?” He’s interacting with all these things, and he has very strong gut reactions to everything, but it seems really important to him to put those gut reactions aside and do what is actually right. Yeah, and that kind of divide of what you feel is right and what you do is a very Ravenclaw way of interacting with that. 

Okay, yeah so Sokka’s a Ravenclaw/Ravenclaw then. And he doesn’t even keep his Gryffindor secondary, so he’s just straight up Ravenclaw and very happy with it.

Kat: Sokka. I love him. Yes. 

Emily: Yeah he’s one of my favorites. I always love in a magical adventure party, the guy with the boomerang. The guy with the boomerang is almost always gonna be my favorite. 

So this leaves us with, of course, one of the most important and engaging characters in all of Avatar: Zuko. We’ve haven’t talked about it at all yet. He’s one of the most interesting redemption narratives in fiction, I think. They do a wonderful job. They avoid so many pitfalls that everyone else hits in redemption narratives, and they come out with this really really satisfying character who goes from a villain in episode one to not in season three in a way that feels just entirely satisfying.

Kat: Yeah, they really take their time with it. They really take us through step by step. There’s not a lot of redemption that happens off screen.

Emily: Yeah, I think showing it all is really important, not making us take it on faith, and then something else that’s really powerful about Zuko is they start doing it in season one. He doesn’t swap to their side until mid-season three, but he’s starting to see that journey in the first few episodes of season one. Part of that is having Iroh there to be a sympathetic point of view, part of that is setting him up against Zhao all the way through season one, where he too is fighting the fire nation. Setting him up in a position of also being an underdog, with being banished and being—the scar from his father. All of that set up, he too is wronged by the actual villain. And part of that is episodes like The Storm, where we get to see his beginnings of a journey to being able to act in a heroic and compassionate way. The things that he is told that he was originally not supposed to do but have always been part of his instincts. Because that’s why he got banished originally, right? He was protesting the sacrifice of young troops with a cause.

Kat: Yeah. So that seems—to me that sounds very Hufflepuff. It seems like a lot of his morality is changing as his community changes.

Emily: Yeah, as he sees other people’s humanity, it becomes harder for him to stand against them. Like his whole arc in season two where he’s interacting in Ba Sing Se and in the earth nation in general. Like the Zuko Alone episode is amazing. He’s meeting people, and he’s caring about them and driven to help them in ways that then make him—that make it much more of a struggle for him to stick with his father. But he still does make that decision at the end of season two. He just feels really shitty about it.

Kat: And that’s interesting too because it was framed for him as choosing between two different communities very much tied together with two different moral paths.

Emily: Also his whole journey is he wants to go home. That’s the ambition he starts the show with is he wants to go home.

Kat: Yeah, only then he realizes that home wasn’t as good as he thought it was.

Emily: Yeah, and that more important than him wanting to go home, is him wanting to be part of a world that isn’t broken. And in the course of him going off and deciding he’s going to fight for having a world that’s less broken, he finds a new family, but that wasn’t his intention at that point. He’d grown out of it. It’s sort of like how we were talking about Aang becomes a more mature Slytherin. He goes from wanting to possess people and not lose them to wanting to love and protect them, Zuko goes from wanting desperately to have a community that accepts him to wanting to help the community around him. That’s his ambition in the second half, and that’s changing to be a mature mature and moral character like that, and it does seem to be in a very Hufflepuff way, is what eventually gives him the original thing that his heart was after, which is a home and a community. Which is—that’s sweet.

Kat: And it’s similar to Katara’s Hufflepuff in the way that a lot of the times where he makes those important decisions and these changes, it’s about the people in front of him. It’s about choosing to steal the ostrich horse, and then it’s about helping and learning about the refugees.

Emily: Yeah, his sympathies are triggered by people who are standing in front of him. But it takes him like two seasons to act on those in a more holistic way than a social moment by moment way. Because he starts off struggling a lot. But yeah I think he grows in to a nice, mature Hufflepuff primary. What about secondary for him?

Kat: We do see especially as a kid in Zuko Alone, we see him really step up and kind of get shouty. He’s very shouty. 

Emily: He’s very shouty. Very punchy. Just very firebendery thing.

Kat: But he also becomes less so as we go through the show. He becomes a little bit less punchy and a little bit more open to listening and to talking things through, and he finds some humility that doesn’t seem to be compatible with his punchiness, so I feel like if he were a Gryffindor secondary, then he would’ve renegotiated his relationship with that kind of forthright advocacy instead of how he actually changes, which feels a little Hufflepuff maybe?

Emily: Yeah, I think, we were talking earlier about how bending was kind of representative of some of people’s primaries and secondaries and how they were sort of implementing them in the real world, and one of the things that Zuko learns that’s pretty thematically important to him is the lightning bending. Specifically, he has no ability to lightning bend. He cannot trigger lightning. It takes a cold, internal sense of power and surgency that Zuko just does not have. But he does learn how to redirect, how to take violence directed at him, and take it in and hold it and send it elsewhere where it can’t hurt anyone, which is really interesting.

Kat: It is, and we see him doing a lot of hard work from the very first episodes, even though it’s not helping him much, but he spends hours meditating. It’s just the meditating doesn’t help much.

Emily: Yeah and he also, the search for the avatar itself is like nose to the grindstone, “I’m just going to slowly scour the world and never give up.” Though I think that kind of perseverance can be—I think both Hufflepuff and Gryffindor are really good at that kind of perseverance. Just beating their heads at brick walls until the brick wall goes away. I think … I do think he might be a Gryffindor secondary still though. I think he likes Hufflepuff secondary? I think he might grow that model. I think it’s what Iroh is. I think Iroh’s a Hufflepuff secondary, and Zuko learns a lot from him. But I’m thinking about the dragons that teach him how to firebend better. Because he was firebending with rage. Very punchy, very violent Gryffindor. He was firebending with rage, and once he leaves his father’s domain, he stops being as full of rage, and he stops being able to firebend, and so he and Aang go on their field trip to figure out what firebending really is.

Kat: Oh, and you think he might start firebending from his primary.

Emily: I’m having thoughts. I think he gets told, you don’t have to be angry to fight. You don’t have to be angry to step up and be brave and powerful and strong and forthright. It doesn’t have to come from that place. It can come from a place of love and connection, and I do think that’s driven by he’s now finally got this Hufflepuff that is actively trying to make the world better and is reaching out with love and generosity, and that’s triggering why he wants to firebend? But I think he might still be firebending with his Gryffindor secondary.

Kat: Yeah, because he does continue to be inspirational.

Emily: Yeah, I think it’s changing the context in which he’s seeing his actions. He’s not acting out of rage anymore. He’s acting out of love, but his actions are still forthright and honest and blunt and powerful. But now he gets to be inspirational and warm and protective and part of an army that’s fighting for a good cause. And so it’s so much more satisfying for him. Part of this is I just really want him to house-share with Katara. I just think they’re really good foils. Because they’re definitely both Hufflepuff primaries. Katara’s like, “The fire nation are monsters. They’re not people. We can just kill them, it’s fine,” and Zuko’s really like, he’s also got that whole “My people are people.” Then he’s like, “Oh shit, everyone is people.”

Kat: Yeah, that’s true. They both are coming at it from those different perspectives. Katara finds it so difficult to acknowledge Zuko as a human being.

Emily: Yes, which is a wonderful journey. His Hufflepuff gets healthy and expansive before hers does, which is really fun, and I just love them as foils. I just—I kind of just really want them to have the same secondary? But it’s like, their field trip, more so than any of the other field trips that Zuko has in that third season, is just really illuminating to how similar they are as people. He looks at her, he looks at her rage, and he looks at her desire for revenge and her bitterness and her love and her inability to let things go and says, “Okay. I get that. I really do. That’s an understandable place for you to be at, and the way we deal with that is I take you to the person who killed your mother, and we stand in the rain and we look at him. And I say do you wanna kill him? Cause I will let you, and I will help you.” 

And that’s the thing that Katara needed, which Aang does not understand, and Sokka just does not either, and Toph doesn’t care, which is great. I love Toph. But Zuko understands that that was the closure Katara needed, was to look at this man and be like, “You hurt me in the worst way I’ve ever been hurt. You did an inarguably evil act, and you are a person, and I recognize that, and I could murder you in this rain right now. I have the power, and I’m not going to. And it’s for me and not for you.” And that works. Zuko’s like “Yeah!” and Katara’s like “Oh, you are a person,” and it’s a great little journey, and I think it’s coming of a place of them being really similar with their love and their rage being so intermingled.

Kat: Yes, I love that, and it reminds me of when Zuko at the end of season three confronts Azula, and I don’t remember verbatim what he says, but he essentially confronts her, and he confronts her in a very honest and straightforward way that matters to him a lot that he does that.

Emily: Yeah, and when he confronts his father as well, the thing that’s really satisfying for him that he needed to do was to stand in front of his father and tell him straight on, “You hurt me, and you shouldn’t have, and you can’t hurt me anymore, and I’m a good person who deserves to live.”

Kat: Oh, I didn’t realize that—I’m not sure like how intentionally it was, but that’s such a callback to what we just talked about with Katara standing there in front of the person.

Emily: Oh! You’re right, yeah. They both went and they confronted the person who hurt them most.

Kat: Yeah, and that person was like, “You could kill me,” and they were like, “Yes I could, but I’m not going to.”

Emily: And it’s—yeah, there’s a reclaiming of power they needed, and there’s a—not forgiveness but recognition of hurt they really needed to do, and they just have really similar pathways there for their childhood hurts. What they have to do to go confront them. Whereas Aang did not need to go confront the person who murdered his whole society.

Kat: No, that would change nothing for him.

Emily: You know, Sokka who was also deeply hurt by their mother’s death, by the constant war, by all of that, he also has no need to confront with that. Sokka’s moved on. Sokka’s thinking about sexism and society and how to build flying air balloons. Sokka’s satisfied with that kind of building. That’s how he lives his life and grows. But Katara and Zuko both have this deep seated need to go and say what they needed to say and stand where they need to stand and decide what they need to do. It just feels really similar.

Kat: Oh, I love that they house-share.

Emily: Right? No, it makes me really happy. And they also both model Hufflepuff secondary I think. I didn’t realize Zuko did, but I think you’re right that you pointed that out. I think maybe he burned his Gryffindor after his father burned him cause that’s the thing he did. His father said, “Ok we’re gonna put all the new kids on the front line cause they can just die and slow stuff down and that’ll be fine,” and Zuko stood up in the chambers and said “No, that’s wrong. We can’t hurt our people. That’s bad.” And he feels the need to speak out, and that’s what gets him punished, and that’s what gets him banished. 

So it’s not what he thinks he should use once he’s banished trying to find the avatar. He builds this Hufflepuff model instead because maybe hard work and dedication and grinding himself into the ground will be what lets his father bring him back in. He doesn’t think being honest and standing his ground and being brave and good will get him home.

Kat: Yes. And then he’s able to come back into his Gryffindor secondary once he feels like his feet are on firm ground again, and once he’s found his Hufflepuff again in a real way and feels solid with how he’s seeing the world and feels like he’s moving in the right direction.

Emily: Yeah once his main drive, his main motivation and dream, is no longer to get back home, to get his father to let him come back home, but to build a better world, he’s finally able to lean into his Gryffindor and not rely on what will father not be mad about. So yeah, he starts with a Burned Huffle—no not a Burned Hufflepuff. He starts with a Hufflepuff that’s driving him in a really narrow way to get back home and to do whatever it takes to get back home.

Kat: Yeah, it’s not a Burned Hufflepuff, it’s just a small Hufflepuff.

Emily: Yeah, and he starts with a Burned Gryffindor secondary. He’s still using it some, it still comes easy to his hand, but he doesn’t think it’s the right method. He’s trying to go with these Hufflepuff secondary methods, and over the course of the story he learns to expand his Hufflepuff primary and make it less selfish in a way and to lean back into that Gryffindor secondary and know that being brave and strong and forthright and full of integrity to lead and protect the people around him is what he needs to do and wants to do and is good at doing. I think you even see it in The Storm episode, where he turns away from chasing the avatar to protect his crew. Yeah. It’s a good journey, and I love that he parallels with Katara. That’s just really satisfying to me.

Kat: It is, yeah. I think it’s probably one of the reasons why I shipped them so hard when I was a kid watching this show.

Emily: Do you like narrative foils, Kat?

Kat: What? Me?

Emily: Do narrative foils give you joy?

Kat: Oh, they do. They really do.

…

Emily: And that’s a wrap. If you’d like to learn more about our system, we have a quiz as well as explanatory and other sorting posts at WordPress and Tumblr at sortinghatchats.

If you liked this episode, consider donating to the National Center for Transgender Equality, and tune in next month to listen to us sort She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.