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Just for a bit of randomness on a slow day, I thought I'd Sort the cast of Once Upon A Time into Hogwarts Houses? Because that seems like a good idea?
Well. Some of the OUAT cast, anyway. And we're going by the stated values of each of the Hogwarts Houses, not by the track record of sorting in Harry Potter itself, because consistent, it wasn't. Um. At all. House values below:
Gryffindor: Courage, bravery, nerve and chivalry
Hufflepuff: Hard work, patience, justice and loyalty
Ravenclaw: Intelligence, creativity, learning and wit
Slytherin: Ambition, cunning, leadership and resourcefulness
Well. Some of the OUAT cast, anyway. And we're going by the stated values of each of the Hogwarts Houses, not by the track record of sorting in Harry Potter itself, because consistent, it wasn't. Um. At all. House values below:
Gryffindor: Courage, bravery, nerve and chivalry
Hufflepuff: Hard work, patience, justice and loyalty
Ravenclaw: Intelligence, creativity, learning and wit
Slytherin: Ambition, cunning, leadership and resourcefulness
Once Upon A Time Cast and Their Houses:
Snow White/Mary Margaret Blanchard - Slytherin
I realise this will probably be a controversial choice. There's no doubting that Snow has all the courage of a Gryffindor, and the reverance for justice of a Hufflepuff. There's also a question mark over the 'ambition' part of Slytherin's values, since she mostly wanted the throne back to protect her people.
However, I would argue that 'cunning, leadership and resourcefulness' are all bang on the money, especially as Snow White, and given the life she's led, they're the attributes that I think came out on top. Whether as Princess, Bandit or Queen, Snow's been going toe-to-toe with incredibly powerful foes through a combination of courage, cunning and resourcefulness, a willingness to consider dodgy options, and the kind of leadership that includes a firm sense of obligation to those who fight for her. She's the kind of leader who can muster armies on the sly, and draw resources from nowhere to defeat a superior foe. And in her darker moments, especially as Mary Margaret, she has more than a touch of the more vicious type of Slytherin cunning (Cora's heart, glimpses with the cell key back in S1). She has many of Slytherin's flaws, but she's also perhaps one of the best examples of what a Slytherin leader, with all a Slytherin's cunning and resourcefulness, could be.
All in all, then, I'm going to plump for Slytherin.
Prince Charming/David Nolan - Gryffindor
Not exactly a difficult decision, this one, though you could make a strong argument for Hufflepuff either, given Charming's attachment to justice. I think the Gryffindor arguments of courage and chivalry do come out on top, though, especially when you consider cursed!David's distinct lack of them (you can also make an argument for Mary-Margaret's lack of cunning to be the same deal). He may be practically the stereotypical Gryffindor, but that makes a lot of sense since Gryffindors are basically modelled from chivalric knights and the cliché of the Prince Charming in the first place. Charming is, in a lot of ways, the ideal Gryffindor, and in his case it's no bad thing.
So, despite a detour towards Hufflepuff, I'm going to vote for Gryffindor.
Rumpelstiltskin/Mr Gold - Hufflepuff
I know, I know. Slytherin, you'd think, given the sheer amount of cunning. Or Ravenclaw, given the massive amounts of research he did once he became Dark One, and the regular answers he has to just about any question under the sun. However, I think that underneath it all, Rumple's defining characteristic and the thing that drives him to do pretty much everything he's done has been a baseline devotion to those he loved. In other words, loyalty. Rumpelstiltskin is essentially a truly stunning example of what might happen if a Hufflepuff went really, really wrong.
He also has the other aspects, if in rather twisted ways. He has patience. Three hundred years worth, in fact. He's willing to do a lot of hard work, both as a spinner trying to support his family, and as a sorceror willing to spend 300 years working towards a single purpose. You could also put his massive knowledge base more under Hufflepuff work ethic than Ravenclaw love of learning, since despite his magpie tendencies, Rumple doesn't seem to value knowledge for its own sake so much as for what it might do for him. 'Justice' is dodgier, but if you look at his deals, he definitely does have a very strict (and rather warped) sense of fairness, from which he will not deviate unless you shortcircuit his emotions first. And, as we said, he's got loyalty down. To the point of 'I will destroy worlds to return to you, and have horrific vengeance on all who hurt you'. So ... yeah.
Possibly counter-intuitive but, yes, I think Rumple comes down as a Hufflepuff.
The Evil Queen/Regina Mills - Gryffindor
Again, possibly counter-intuitive. You'd think Slytherin, maybe, but looking at the attributes ... She's not all that cunning. Regina generally favours brute force over all other approaches. And she's actually not that ambitious - her desire to be Queen was initially forced on her by her mother, and then became more a facet of her vengeance than anything desired for its own sake. Once she had power, she tired of it quickly, it was love and loyalty that she actually wanted.
But what she does actually have, is courage, ruthlessness, and a crap tonne of nerve. The kind of nerve it takes to force her way to a queenship, to brute force a world-ending vengeance upon her enemies, to bulldoze her way through any and all obstacles that stand in her path. She also, once upon a time, had a strong sense of chivalry, given her introduction to the story by saving Snow White from the runaway horse. You could even argue that her vengeance in a sense came from that chivalry being offended by the treatment she received (not a strong argument, but it's there). This is the woman who walked into Neverland, slapped the Dark One upside the head, choked out a shadow, hunted down Peter Pan and ripped her son's heart out of his chest. I think above all else, Regina's defining characteristic is nerve. For the wrong ends, usually, but nerve nonetheless.
And, hence, I vote for Gryffindor.
Emma Swan - Gryffindor
Again, I think this one is fairly straightforward. Though Emma does have touches of cunning about her, you get the impression that this is more because she's learned from having cunning deployed against her than from any native duplicitousness of her own. She doesn't have much in the way of Ravenclaw learning to bring to the table (though she's fantastic at using information that's presented to her), she can't necessarily outthink the kind of sneakiness people like Gold can bring to bear (as we saw with the Sheriff's election), but when she's thrown in at the deep end of a situation that she doesn't understand and that is rapidly becoming lethal, it's her courage and her sense of fairness that pulls her through. That, and her loyalty to her son. None of this shit should be real, and even if it was real it shouldn't be happening to her, but when you're actually faced with a dragon or a curse or an ogre, well, you do what has to be done. In that sense, I think, Emma really is her father's daughter.
So, yes. I'm going to vote for Gryffindor again for Emma.
Henry Mills - Slytherin
You could make an argument for Gryffindor, because the kid most definitely has guts to spare (poisoning himself to save his mom, anyone), or Ravenclaw, because aside from Gold and Belle, Henry's the only one of the cast who consistently looks shit up. But I think, in the end, I'm going with Slytherin because Henry is also quite possibly the single most cunning and resourceful person on the damn show. If Emma takes after her father, I think Henry most strongly takes after his maternal grandmother, and possibly his paternal grandfather.
This is the kid who, when he needed to break a curse that held an entire town in its thrall, stole someone's credit card, took his ten-year-old self to a strange city, and emotionally blackmailed his mother into helping out. This is the kid who successfully juggled two highly antagonistic mothers for three seasons, who's probably as good at lying-by-exact-words as his grandfather is, who poisoned himself to manipulate people into getting their asses in gear, and who took up his grandmother's tradition of mustering forces while sneaking beneath the notice of the Evil Queen like a champ. The one time Henry tried to abandon cunning and embrace pure bravery, against Pan, was also the one time someone manage to completely fool him. The only ones with better records of doing end-runs around their enemies are, again, Snow and Rumple, and Snow and Rumple aren't eleven year old kids.
In summary, then, I think I'm voting Henry for Slytherin Head Boy.
Belle/Lacey - Ravenclaw
Okay. It's possible I'm putting her as Ravenclaw because Ravenclaws are sorely under-represented thus far. You could argue for Gryffindor, given 'do the brave thing and bravery will follow', or for Hufflepuff, given her loyalty and kindness to those around her. However, cliché though it is, I actually do think Ravenclaw has the strongest argument, both for the strengths and weaknesses of the House.
She is, as I said, one of the few members of the cast to actually look shit up regularly (saved Philip and defeated a Yaoguai by reading a book), and she has a love of knowledge and reading for its own sake (librarian in either world). But more importantly, I think, is the fact that most of Belle's worldview is, in the end, informed by things she's read in books and her attempts to live those things in real life. The ivory-tower academic who struggles and fights with the betrayal of those ideals in the world around her - Rumple's betrayal of True Love, the messy truth of sacrifice once the grand moment of choosing is done with, the fact that True Love is so consistently tested by destiny. She wanted to be the storybook hero, and life basically decided to show her why that's a really, really dangerous wish in practice.
So, yes, despite it being as stereotypical a judgment as Gryffindor for Charming, I think I will put Belle as Ravenclaw after all.
Baelfire/Neal Cassidy - Slytherin
I have trouble with Bae - he gets so little independant action that isn't tied to either Rumpelstiltskin or Emma that he's hard for me to pin down. He's also ... kind of wishy-washy with his convictions. Most of his life is about avoiding things rather than fighting for them. He's a wee bit problematic, therefore. There's maybe an argument for Hufflepuff, in that he has some of his father's sense of loyalty (seen mostly towards Henry and Wendy). I think, though, given his successful career as a conman and his escapist leanings that included successfully escaping Peter Pan, that I might plump for Slytherin once again? Resourceful and cunning and a good man to have onside if you need to get out of somewhere quick. Distinctly lacking in ambition, unless you count his drive to escape as an ambition in-and-off itself, and probably not leadership material in the way his son is, but given that he's lived a life based on cunning since he was tossed into (several successive) new worlds, I'd say he's of the survivor model of Slytherins.
*nods* Yeah, okay. Slytherin it is.
Queen of Hearts/Cora - Slytherin
Because if Charming is the stereotypical Gryffindor and Belle is the stereotypical Ravenclaw, Cora is without at doubt the stereotypical Slytherin. Ambitious, cunning, ruthless and resourceful, that's a check on all of that. Cora is a force of unrivaled ambition within the cast, more determinedly so than anybody else, and she's also one of the most cunning and manipulative. She manipulated her daughter for years, Snow White at exactly the right moment, and both the man she married and the man she loved. The last one deserves special mention, of course, because this woman managed to do an end-run around Rumpelstiltskin, which next to nobody has managed to do, and she did it at the cost of love and in the pure pursuit of power. And in the end, she was defeated only by another Slytherin in the form of Snow White, and a Hufflepuff who's been stewing in deception so long he might as well be. Cunning for cunning, though, she scared the pants off them first.
Bit of a no-brainer, really. Cora for Slytherin.
Captain Hook/Killian Jones - Gryffindor
Much like Regina, I think Hook is mostly a Gryffindor twisted by circumstance (though not nearly so badly as her, in the end), the dark side of what courage and chivalry can get you. Mind you, I think he also has a touch of the betrayed academic going on, a-la Belle, in that his biggest damage came from having what he thought was his story betrayed (the truth of his king's honour led him to become a pirate, and the death of his true love led him to become a vengeance-obsessed pirate), and a touch of Slytherin cunning as well (my, the boy can lie).
Mostly, though? Courage and honour/chivalry that's been twisted by circumstance into vengeance and piracy. 'Good form' turned on its head. You can't deny the man has guts - he went up against the Dark One knowing he hadn't a hope, and was willing to defy the demonic Peter Pan for the sake of his vengeance and/or his chance to have a family with Milah's son. And he has a sense of chivalry, or at least he does when it doesn't get in the way of vengeance (see Belle, Aurora, Emma) ... Okay. So maybe chivalry's a stretch -_-; But still.
Hook for Gryffindor. Even if Gryffindor wouldn't necessarily be happy to have him.
... And I think that's probably enough to be going on with -_-; There are a few more I've instincts towards (Archie and Granny for Hufflepuff, Jefferson for Ravenclaw, Peter Pan/Malcolm for Slytherin, Ruby for Gryffindor), but I think those are the main ones.
Conclusions: There is a dearth of proper Ravenclaws in this cast, though on the other hand there's one truly spectacular Hufflepuff in a driving position, which you don't normally see. Most of the main plot movers/instigators (aside from that one) are Slytherins, a lot of the plot maintainers and champions are Gryffindors, and there's a lot of Hufflepuffs and Slytherins in survivor positions.
*grins, shrugs* So. That was a nice bit of randomness. Heh. Would any of that gel with other people's interpretations?
Snow White/Mary Margaret Blanchard - Slytherin
I realise this will probably be a controversial choice. There's no doubting that Snow has all the courage of a Gryffindor, and the reverance for justice of a Hufflepuff. There's also a question mark over the 'ambition' part of Slytherin's values, since she mostly wanted the throne back to protect her people.
However, I would argue that 'cunning, leadership and resourcefulness' are all bang on the money, especially as Snow White, and given the life she's led, they're the attributes that I think came out on top. Whether as Princess, Bandit or Queen, Snow's been going toe-to-toe with incredibly powerful foes through a combination of courage, cunning and resourcefulness, a willingness to consider dodgy options, and the kind of leadership that includes a firm sense of obligation to those who fight for her. She's the kind of leader who can muster armies on the sly, and draw resources from nowhere to defeat a superior foe. And in her darker moments, especially as Mary Margaret, she has more than a touch of the more vicious type of Slytherin cunning (Cora's heart, glimpses with the cell key back in S1). She has many of Slytherin's flaws, but she's also perhaps one of the best examples of what a Slytherin leader, with all a Slytherin's cunning and resourcefulness, could be.
All in all, then, I'm going to plump for Slytherin.
Prince Charming/David Nolan - Gryffindor
Not exactly a difficult decision, this one, though you could make a strong argument for Hufflepuff either, given Charming's attachment to justice. I think the Gryffindor arguments of courage and chivalry do come out on top, though, especially when you consider cursed!David's distinct lack of them (you can also make an argument for Mary-Margaret's lack of cunning to be the same deal). He may be practically the stereotypical Gryffindor, but that makes a lot of sense since Gryffindors are basically modelled from chivalric knights and the cliché of the Prince Charming in the first place. Charming is, in a lot of ways, the ideal Gryffindor, and in his case it's no bad thing.
So, despite a detour towards Hufflepuff, I'm going to vote for Gryffindor.
Rumpelstiltskin/Mr Gold - Hufflepuff
I know, I know. Slytherin, you'd think, given the sheer amount of cunning. Or Ravenclaw, given the massive amounts of research he did once he became Dark One, and the regular answers he has to just about any question under the sun. However, I think that underneath it all, Rumple's defining characteristic and the thing that drives him to do pretty much everything he's done has been a baseline devotion to those he loved. In other words, loyalty. Rumpelstiltskin is essentially a truly stunning example of what might happen if a Hufflepuff went really, really wrong.
He also has the other aspects, if in rather twisted ways. He has patience. Three hundred years worth, in fact. He's willing to do a lot of hard work, both as a spinner trying to support his family, and as a sorceror willing to spend 300 years working towards a single purpose. You could also put his massive knowledge base more under Hufflepuff work ethic than Ravenclaw love of learning, since despite his magpie tendencies, Rumple doesn't seem to value knowledge for its own sake so much as for what it might do for him. 'Justice' is dodgier, but if you look at his deals, he definitely does have a very strict (and rather warped) sense of fairness, from which he will not deviate unless you shortcircuit his emotions first. And, as we said, he's got loyalty down. To the point of 'I will destroy worlds to return to you, and have horrific vengeance on all who hurt you'. So ... yeah.
Possibly counter-intuitive but, yes, I think Rumple comes down as a Hufflepuff.
The Evil Queen/Regina Mills - Gryffindor
Again, possibly counter-intuitive. You'd think Slytherin, maybe, but looking at the attributes ... She's not all that cunning. Regina generally favours brute force over all other approaches. And she's actually not that ambitious - her desire to be Queen was initially forced on her by her mother, and then became more a facet of her vengeance than anything desired for its own sake. Once she had power, she tired of it quickly, it was love and loyalty that she actually wanted.
But what she does actually have, is courage, ruthlessness, and a crap tonne of nerve. The kind of nerve it takes to force her way to a queenship, to brute force a world-ending vengeance upon her enemies, to bulldoze her way through any and all obstacles that stand in her path. She also, once upon a time, had a strong sense of chivalry, given her introduction to the story by saving Snow White from the runaway horse. You could even argue that her vengeance in a sense came from that chivalry being offended by the treatment she received (not a strong argument, but it's there). This is the woman who walked into Neverland, slapped the Dark One upside the head, choked out a shadow, hunted down Peter Pan and ripped her son's heart out of his chest. I think above all else, Regina's defining characteristic is nerve. For the wrong ends, usually, but nerve nonetheless.
And, hence, I vote for Gryffindor.
Emma Swan - Gryffindor
Again, I think this one is fairly straightforward. Though Emma does have touches of cunning about her, you get the impression that this is more because she's learned from having cunning deployed against her than from any native duplicitousness of her own. She doesn't have much in the way of Ravenclaw learning to bring to the table (though she's fantastic at using information that's presented to her), she can't necessarily outthink the kind of sneakiness people like Gold can bring to bear (as we saw with the Sheriff's election), but when she's thrown in at the deep end of a situation that she doesn't understand and that is rapidly becoming lethal, it's her courage and her sense of fairness that pulls her through. That, and her loyalty to her son. None of this shit should be real, and even if it was real it shouldn't be happening to her, but when you're actually faced with a dragon or a curse or an ogre, well, you do what has to be done. In that sense, I think, Emma really is her father's daughter.
So, yes. I'm going to vote for Gryffindor again for Emma.
Henry Mills - Slytherin
You could make an argument for Gryffindor, because the kid most definitely has guts to spare (poisoning himself to save his mom, anyone), or Ravenclaw, because aside from Gold and Belle, Henry's the only one of the cast who consistently looks shit up. But I think, in the end, I'm going with Slytherin because Henry is also quite possibly the single most cunning and resourceful person on the damn show. If Emma takes after her father, I think Henry most strongly takes after his maternal grandmother, and possibly his paternal grandfather.
This is the kid who, when he needed to break a curse that held an entire town in its thrall, stole someone's credit card, took his ten-year-old self to a strange city, and emotionally blackmailed his mother into helping out. This is the kid who successfully juggled two highly antagonistic mothers for three seasons, who's probably as good at lying-by-exact-words as his grandfather is, who poisoned himself to manipulate people into getting their asses in gear, and who took up his grandmother's tradition of mustering forces while sneaking beneath the notice of the Evil Queen like a champ. The one time Henry tried to abandon cunning and embrace pure bravery, against Pan, was also the one time someone manage to completely fool him. The only ones with better records of doing end-runs around their enemies are, again, Snow and Rumple, and Snow and Rumple aren't eleven year old kids.
In summary, then, I think I'm voting Henry for Slytherin Head Boy.
Belle/Lacey - Ravenclaw
Okay. It's possible I'm putting her as Ravenclaw because Ravenclaws are sorely under-represented thus far. You could argue for Gryffindor, given 'do the brave thing and bravery will follow', or for Hufflepuff, given her loyalty and kindness to those around her. However, cliché though it is, I actually do think Ravenclaw has the strongest argument, both for the strengths and weaknesses of the House.
She is, as I said, one of the few members of the cast to actually look shit up regularly (saved Philip and defeated a Yaoguai by reading a book), and she has a love of knowledge and reading for its own sake (librarian in either world). But more importantly, I think, is the fact that most of Belle's worldview is, in the end, informed by things she's read in books and her attempts to live those things in real life. The ivory-tower academic who struggles and fights with the betrayal of those ideals in the world around her - Rumple's betrayal of True Love, the messy truth of sacrifice once the grand moment of choosing is done with, the fact that True Love is so consistently tested by destiny. She wanted to be the storybook hero, and life basically decided to show her why that's a really, really dangerous wish in practice.
So, yes, despite it being as stereotypical a judgment as Gryffindor for Charming, I think I will put Belle as Ravenclaw after all.
Baelfire/Neal Cassidy - Slytherin
I have trouble with Bae - he gets so little independant action that isn't tied to either Rumpelstiltskin or Emma that he's hard for me to pin down. He's also ... kind of wishy-washy with his convictions. Most of his life is about avoiding things rather than fighting for them. He's a wee bit problematic, therefore. There's maybe an argument for Hufflepuff, in that he has some of his father's sense of loyalty (seen mostly towards Henry and Wendy). I think, though, given his successful career as a conman and his escapist leanings that included successfully escaping Peter Pan, that I might plump for Slytherin once again? Resourceful and cunning and a good man to have onside if you need to get out of somewhere quick. Distinctly lacking in ambition, unless you count his drive to escape as an ambition in-and-off itself, and probably not leadership material in the way his son is, but given that he's lived a life based on cunning since he was tossed into (several successive) new worlds, I'd say he's of the survivor model of Slytherins.
*nods* Yeah, okay. Slytherin it is.
Queen of Hearts/Cora - Slytherin
Because if Charming is the stereotypical Gryffindor and Belle is the stereotypical Ravenclaw, Cora is without at doubt the stereotypical Slytherin. Ambitious, cunning, ruthless and resourceful, that's a check on all of that. Cora is a force of unrivaled ambition within the cast, more determinedly so than anybody else, and she's also one of the most cunning and manipulative. She manipulated her daughter for years, Snow White at exactly the right moment, and both the man she married and the man she loved. The last one deserves special mention, of course, because this woman managed to do an end-run around Rumpelstiltskin, which next to nobody has managed to do, and she did it at the cost of love and in the pure pursuit of power. And in the end, she was defeated only by another Slytherin in the form of Snow White, and a Hufflepuff who's been stewing in deception so long he might as well be. Cunning for cunning, though, she scared the pants off them first.
Bit of a no-brainer, really. Cora for Slytherin.
Captain Hook/Killian Jones - Gryffindor
Much like Regina, I think Hook is mostly a Gryffindor twisted by circumstance (though not nearly so badly as her, in the end), the dark side of what courage and chivalry can get you. Mind you, I think he also has a touch of the betrayed academic going on, a-la Belle, in that his biggest damage came from having what he thought was his story betrayed (the truth of his king's honour led him to become a pirate, and the death of his true love led him to become a vengeance-obsessed pirate), and a touch of Slytherin cunning as well (my, the boy can lie).
Mostly, though? Courage and honour/chivalry that's been twisted by circumstance into vengeance and piracy. 'Good form' turned on its head. You can't deny the man has guts - he went up against the Dark One knowing he hadn't a hope, and was willing to defy the demonic Peter Pan for the sake of his vengeance and/or his chance to have a family with Milah's son. And he has a sense of chivalry, or at least he does when it doesn't get in the way of vengeance (see Belle, Aurora, Emma) ... Okay. So maybe chivalry's a stretch -_-; But still.
Hook for Gryffindor. Even if Gryffindor wouldn't necessarily be happy to have him.
... And I think that's probably enough to be going on with -_-; There are a few more I've instincts towards (Archie and Granny for Hufflepuff, Jefferson for Ravenclaw, Peter Pan/Malcolm for Slytherin, Ruby for Gryffindor), but I think those are the main ones.
Conclusions: There is a dearth of proper Ravenclaws in this cast, though on the other hand there's one truly spectacular Hufflepuff in a driving position, which you don't normally see. Most of the main plot movers/instigators (aside from that one) are Slytherins, a lot of the plot maintainers and champions are Gryffindors, and there's a lot of Hufflepuffs and Slytherins in survivor positions.
*grins, shrugs* So. That was a nice bit of randomness. Heh. Would any of that gel with other people's interpretations?
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