Oh, I hadn't even done this exercise yet myself. Hm.
One of the best ways to get to "know" the system is to sort yourself or a character using our interactive sortinghatchats quiz here: https://ejadelomax.itch.io/sortinghatchats -- it's more like a "chat" than a quiz, so please explore all the options it gives you!
PRIMARY: Morals, motivations, drives -- WHY does this character do what they do?
LION PRIMARY - Internal & Intuitive & Idealist - Lions trust themselves and listen to their instincts; they tend to care immensely about doing the right thing. A Lion’s watchword: Some things are just wrong, no matter what pretty words you use to excuse them.
BIRD PRIMARY - External & Decided & Idealist - A Bird avoiding a choice that they think is right, but that feels wrong, will feel immoral. Consistency & integrity are key.
BADGER PRIMARY - External & Intuitive & Loyalist - A Badger prioritizes the people who need them the most. Concrete & practical in their morality, the "white tower" thinking of idealists (Lion & Bird) can frustrate them.
SNAKE PRIMARY - Internal & Decided & Loyalist - A Snake prioritizes the people who they personally value the most.
Burned Primaries have lost their comfort in, faith in, or surety in their moral desires -- they may no longer pursue them, or think of them as idealistic or naive -- but the desire remains.
SECONDARY: Methods, means, designs -- HOW does this character do what they do?
LION SECONDARY - Solid & Inspirational & Improvisational - A Lion Secondary hates to misrepresent themself. Their directness and honesty can capture the respect or allegiance of comrades.
BIRD SECONDARY - Solid & Situational & Constructed - Birds collect things-- skills, knowledge, tools-- and excel in the situations where those things particularly apply.
BADGER SECONDARY - Fluid & Inspirational & Constructed - Badgers work. They don't give up or take the easy way. They fit the space they're in, the need they're meeting, and they just keep going.
SNAKE SECONDARY - Fluid & Situational & Improvisational - Snakes adapt. Flexible, fluid, and clever, they can wear any face without feeling untrue to themselves. As long as they know who they are at heart, what does the rest matter?
Burned Secondaries do not defer or default to any particular method; they use whatever is at hand, somewhat like a flexible Snake or Badger secondary. However, there is no joy or satisfaction in that indifference, and they tend to have a general lack of faith in their own abilities or in their right to the luxury of choosing between methods or taking their own preference or comfort into account.
(We don't mean to imply that WHY (primaries) matters more than the HOW (secondaries) -- that's just the ordering of the sorting. A "Badger/Lion" is a Badger Primary, Lion Secondary).
For MAHTAH, though... let's sort some kids!
Chris - Burned Lion Primary, but he looks like a Bird. He’s not happy enough though to be a true Bird. He’s disillusioned and exhausted. It’s important to him to be a “good person” but he doesn’t trust his own feelings to help guide him in what that should look like. Instead, he makes pro/con lists and tries to calculate cost and benefit.
That’s a fine way to make decisions, and satisfying to some— but not Chris. He’s just hollowing out his own chest trying to satisfy some need to be good enough. Maybe if he thinks about it long enough, he can do it right, he hopes.
Certain choices in the game will help you move Chris down a path to “unburning.”
For secondary... Badger. He just keeps showing up. When you need him, he's there. When anyone needs him, he's there-- quiet, helpful, exhausted.
Gwyn - Gwyn is either an Idealist (Lion or Bird) or a burned Snake Primary. While she's friendly and bright, and she does love her friends, she's got that "coldness" that you can get from a smiling Idealist or a burned Snake. She loves her friends, but that love has little to do with why or how she lives her life. She, as she will tell you, is willing and ready to leave and never look back, because it's something she needs.
To sift her out between an Idealist (Lion or Bird) and a burned Snake, we'll look at two things:
- How "okay" is she?
- What was she like before, in your memories? What has changed? What were her motivations back then?
If you read Gwyn as pretty okay-- healthy, happy, satisfied -- then Idealist is more likely. She's got a lot of space in her heart. I do read her as pretty well adjusted, but I think there’s room in the prose to see her as a lot more damaged. So I’d probably call her an Idealist primary, probably a Lion (she totally makes moral calls based on “vibe”)— but I wouldn’t argue with anyone who reads her as a burned Snake instead.
For secondary, she’s a Snake. A warm, wholesome, friendly Snake who shifts and adapts to help and comfort her friends. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks or assumes about her, based on her methods, except for the people who she thinks truly “know” her (ex. Chris, Bec). Plenty of folks think she’s silly or flighty and mostly she just thinks that’s funny. At the end of the day, she still gets what she wants.
Bec - The angriest Badger Primary. Lion Secondary. Also angry there.
Daisy - Daisy is gloriously unburned, whatever her sorting is. They and Tam are likely the healthiest, happiest kids here.
For secondary, I think Bird. Daisy excels in particular skill sets— food, fancy coffee making, knowing everyone in town— but also is one of the best NPCs for answering questions and describing the world. (This is why they’re my wife’s favorite). They know a lot of things, not all of them useful, and it gives them joy.
For primary, their community-oriented priorities and interests make me err towards Badger, but I think an argument could be made for the other sortings.
Lion primary. Bird secondary. They're a straightforward young person. They go with their gut -- it's important to them that things feel right, and they're driven to go seek their truth in an intuitive, exploratory way.
That sense of exploration and discovery ties in as well with their secondary -- a magpie's Bird Secondary, with a constant need to seek and build knowledge and experiences. They fear a cage or a void more than anything; they seek (and find) wider horizons.
Original you - somewhat spoilery, but only I think in terms of "vibe." If I had to sort the younger version of the player character, I'd go with a Snake Primary / Lion Secondary (this is why they jammed with Bec so well) that burned hard.
If you want to play MAHTAH, you can do so (for free) in your browser here:
