Sorting Hat: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Recently I decided to re-read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, the Harry Potter-inspired fanfic by Eliezer Yudkowsky a.k.a. Less Wrong. There's a lot of discussion in HPMoR about the Hogwarts Houses, what they truly stand for and how all of that gets corrupted by the polarization of the Muggleborn issue, and therefore the whole Death Eater/anti-Death Eater axis, around the time of the story. This has inspired in me the impulse to Sort characters from various other fictional universes into the four Hogwarts Houses. See this previous post, in which I Sorted figures from American political history, for some guidelines, although my Rules of Sorting won't be exactly the same since politics has its own particular pathologies, specifically the ubiquity of ambition. Anyway, for my first foray into Sorting other fictional universes, let's try the Buffyverse! (Obviously, if you're not familiar with Buffy the Vampire Slayer or its spin-off show Angel, don't read this. In fact, let's say don't read this if you haven't watched both of those shows in their entirety, unless you don't mind spoilers.)


Buffy Summers: Gryffindor. Not a close call. She's a hero fighting nobly against vampires and demons to protect the innocent; how much more Gryffindor do you want?

Xander Harris: Hufflepuff. Another easy one, though in no small measure because he just couldn't fit anywhere else. Still, he's the quietly-loyal-friend-offering-constant-emotional-support type, even if he sometimes gets a bit prejudiced against people he defines as being Not Friends.

Willow Rosenberg: Ravenclaw. So far, we're not taxing the Sorting Hat much. Genius, scholar, intellectual, witch, it pretty much all points to Ravenclaw.

Rupert Giles: Ravenclaw. Very much about scholarliness and knowledge, also inclined toward the magical side of things (which, admittedly, doesn't work well as a determinant for actual Sorting at Hogwarts!).

Cordelia Chase: Slytherin. Couldn't possibly be Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw (she's smart, but not exactly intellectually curious). If I were a little more convinced by the way they try to make her character all heroic and stuff in Angel, I might say Gryffindor, but since in Sunnydale she's all about status, gotta go with Slytherin. Not a particularly evil Slytherin, though.

Angel: Gryffindor. Most of the same reasons as Buffy, he's a Champion of Light who likes beating up the bad guys.

Angelus: Slytherin. Like, distilled essence of Slytherin, with the less-evil parts evaporated away. It's not just that he's got cruelty to at least match that of Voldemort himself, it's that he mixes his cruelty in with this whimsical craftiness, manipulating people to inflict as much psychological trauma as possible before he actually goes to kill them.

Spike: Gryffindor. Sure, he's an evil vampire, but unlike Angelus he's not particularly about the cruelty or the evil, he's about the love of the fight and the desire for glory.

Daniel "Oz" Osbourne: Hufflepuff. This one's a close call, because like Willow, Oz is absolutely brilliant. But unlike Willow, he's not exactly an intellectual, what with the whole pronounced tendency to blow off tests. (Okay, admittedly Hufflepuffs are supposed to like hard work, but that's a less-important House trait in my opinion.) He is both a very friendly guy (in his own eccentric way) and fiercely protective of Willow in particular, so I think I'd have to say Hufflepuff.

Faith Lehane: Gryffindor. Obviously she's not the very best of Gryffindor, what with the whole "mass-murderer" phase, but if you look at how she descends into darkness it's all about being overly aggressive, loving the fight too much, etc. She's neither a loyal friend nor a hard worker, not remotely into the intellectual side of things, and neither sly and cunning nor possessed of a desire for glory and greatness. So, an at-times dark-side Gryffindor.

Wesley Wyndam-Price: Ravenclaw. Sort of boring that he's a Ravenclaw, as like Giles he's a Watcher and a minor sorcerer. Still, it's clearly true.

Riley Finn: Hufflepuff. He is enamored of hard work, and is also very much into the whole loyalty thing. Makes a good soldier, really. And, of course, his entire point (in Season Four, anyway) is the divided-loyalties thing, which is extra hard for him because he is such a Hufflepuff.

Tara Maclay: Ravenclaw. Okay, yes, I am just putting all the witches and sorcerers into Ravenclaw, but they all deserve it.

Allen Doyle: Hufflepuff. He's very ordinary-bloke-ish, and he also sacrifices himself, not in some big Gryffindor crusade against evil, but to protect his friends.

Charles Gunn: Gryffindor. Leader of a big violence crusade to protect his people from vampires. Tends to view things less in terms of shades of moral grey than his associates at Angel Investigations.

Dawn Summers: Ravenclaw. Finally, a non-magical Ravenclaw! Although she does show more interest in witchcraft than most of the other non-sorcerers around. But she does display a healthy dose of intellectual curiosity, and I think says at various points that she liked school.

Lorne: Gah, I have no idea. He's not much of a moralist (though he's very moral himself), emphatically not into doing work, not an intellectual, and not personally ambitious. Actually, I know where in the whole Sorting scheme Lorne fits in: he's the Sorting Hat!

Winifred Burkle: Ravenclaw. Really, really, Ravenclaw. She's a brilliant physicist; I'm pretty sure all of those are Ravenclaws.

Kennedy: Gryffindor. Heavy into the whole big, violent struggle against evil thing.

Illyria: Slytherin. "To never die and to conquer all, that is winning." I say again, Slytherin.

Okay, that's everyone I feel like sorting. In the end, we have:

Gryffindor:
Buffy Summers
Angel
Spike
Faith Lehane
Charles Gunn
Kennedy

Hufflepuff:
Xander Harris
Daniel "Oz" Osbourne
Riley Finn
Allen Doyle

Ravenclaw:
Willow Rosenberg
Rupert Giles
Wesley Wyndam-Price
Tara Maclay
Dawn Summers
Winifred Burkle

Slytherin:
Cordelia Chase
Angelus
Illyria