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while my computer was broken. (Hi, my computer was broken. Um. Still is, but I've fixed the problems even if I haven't fixed the actual computer. Mostly by transferring all my data elsewhere.)
Of course, the way my brain works at the moment, my reaction to an ensemble-cast show is to want to Sort the characters into Hogwarts houses, which is a thing that is perhaps encouraged by encountering a recent Sorting of the Hamilton main characters done by sortinghatchats of Tumblr. Which has an interesting system - they do primary House as a core nature and motivations thing, and secondary House to indicate what toolset is the default in use for achieving those motivations. I think there's a third, sort of - the "what do you get mistaken for in dim light" thing - but that's a superficial sort of thing. Just one I find interesting. (My character Misha is a Slyth primary, Huff secondary, and mistaken for a Ravenclaw, so, y'know.)
So anyway, my thoughts about Sense8, mostly in terms of character sorting, with a few other bits besides. Spoilers minimised, because polite, but there will be allusions to things and a couple of dialogue quotes. Also a little commentary on some of my critiques of the thing (some of which are about where I feel it falls down on race issues).
Capheus is hands down the easiest character to sort. Capheus is a Hufflepuff. He is loyal, hardworking, a bit stubborn, relentlessly optimistic, and fair-minded, and believes that these things will triumph. Fortunately for him, he also occasionally has his cluster in his back pocket for when being decent isn't enough to deal with his problems. I feel he has the standard 'how do we involve the badger with the story' problem - he's too busy doing his damn job to get seriously involved in shenanigans - but that's somewhat aggravated, I think, by the fact that he's just not terribly involved in the A plot. The shenanigans he gets involved with are all local, without any apparent connection to the A plot at all, and their resolutions - even when his survival comes about through having a cluster - are all local. I think this is aggravated by the fact that the white characters had the A plot ball and were bouncing it among themselves - so he, particularly, got the very short end of the stick.
Kala is also fairly easy: Ravenclaw. She's a scientist, and one who is very much dedicated to her work (she is also, interestingly, something of a mystic), though I feel that this got very sidelined to the other side of her sort of Being A Ravenclaw: not being sure how to deal with emotional stuff. Her plot is in many ways about her responding to the logic of other people's emotions, the arguments they make based on what they want, but not having the articulacy to deal with what she wants at an emotional level or even, clearly, know what it is. I also feel that she got the actual worst integration with the plot - since her professional skills are very much not relevant to the story arc she has in the series, while it's not surprising she has them when she cranks out an I Know How To Solve This, they weren't in any way foregrounded like Capheus's, and they also all come at the end of the story, where Capheus had something relevant to contribute to the cluster elsewhere. Which is rather problematic for the second-brownest character. (Also, having the most intellectual character basically 100% emotional soap opera all the time has its problematic overtones.)
I keep going back and forth on whether Will is a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff, and I think I am coming down on "more Gryffindor", between his stepping in for Kala when he does and his Gamble Everything On A Slim Chance Of Survival plays; while both of those were also loyalty plays really the Do Or Die nature of the latter is quite the thing. ("You're the one who got on an airplane without a plan!") He has his strong loyalty and diligence streaks - it's unclear whether or not his choice to go into the police has more to do with his father being a cop or [spoiler], after all - and that deep 'every human is valuable' badgerish decency that he showcases early - but he is also very motivated by Being A Hero. But still very pleasantly complex for the obvious White Guy Protagonist.
Sun, however, is a Gryffindor. Very simple and straightforward about it, too, at least once one gets past the superficialities of family loyalty and work and intellectual standing. She's a Gryffindor who's stuck in a suit, but in the end what it comes down to is that she takes what she feels, she puts it into her fist, and she fights for it. Which could practically go on a Gryffindor motto banner. "If they want to stop us they're going to need more men." Fucking lions. They're all mad.
(Also I was really hoping that Sun's financial plot and Kala's job would be related, and possibly connect from there to the A-plot. I would like to see Kala and Sun spend season 2 unravelling that web from both ends in order to resolve [spoiler], the factdrop that those shenanigans involved medical companies never connected up to anything and I want it to. Also, plot interactions involving the WOC! That were clued as possible!)
The glorious melodramatic goofball that is Lito is the cluster's sole Slytherin. ("Lying is easy. It's what I do.") He is also reasonably isolated from the A-plot (there are reasons for the characters in particular positions to be the ones on the A-plot, but there is no particular reason for them all to be white; of four apparently white characters, three are the core characters on the A-plot; the supporting characters on the A-plot are white male villain, white woman, and Naveen Andrews, who has an "I'd listen to you reading the phone book" sort of voice). Anyway, Lito's personal plot is poised between his individual ambitions and his devotion to his beloved, and really, if there's a more classic engine for Slytherin character development I cannot think of one. He wishes he were a Gryffindor, but is a coward; that is an amusing chunk of what drives his ambitions.
I rather suspect a lot of people would sort Noni into Ravenclaw for her computer skills, or into Slytherin for her black hat hacking. I think these things are terrible ideas (but under sortinghatchats I'd give her a Ravenclaw secondary, using intellectually oriented methodologies to achieve her ends). But she orbits around her loyalties so hard that people at several points greet her with variants on "After what you did for us, of course we'll help". And her speech in the art gallery is such a gloriously Hufflepuff declaration about the importance of each individual and the importance of respecting their fundamental human value. Also, you know, "If the government's going to spy on us, it's only fair we get to spy back", right?
I suspect that my sorting of Wolfgang is the thing most likely to cause people to want to argue with me; I expect that a lot of people would put him in Slytherin because of his profession. (I will use the sortinghatchats Slytherin secondary, maybe? He is a sneaky sort, and he does have certain being-the-best ambitions even if they don't strike me as being emotionally core to him.) The heart of my understanding of Wolfgang is actually a comment I made on an Alternity discussion: that there is nothing quite like the terrifying inevitability of Ravenclaw logic. Wolfgang is clearly smart, given what he's able to do, and the way he constructs plans and contingencies, but he's no academic (even if he gets someone using "smart guy" as a term of derision at him); what he is is a screaming personification of terrifying Ravenclaw logic. It does not matter what the emotions are; if the thing Must Happen then there are Logical Steps That Must Be Taken To Make It Happen and he will follow through them with a methodicality that simply does not let his emotions win. It's not that he doesn't feel them; it's that they don't matter compared to The Logical Necessity. (And he does not have any idea why Ludicrously Gryffindor Felix latched on to him, but that brings with it certain Logical Necessities too.)
It was very hard for me to place Riley in a house, because of the way she is so very much at the mercy of events in her life and buffeted around like a leaf in the wind. However, given that she was both destroyed and saved by loyalty, I'm going to call her a badger until further notice.
Of course, the way my brain works at the moment, my reaction to an ensemble-cast show is to want to Sort the characters into Hogwarts houses, which is a thing that is perhaps encouraged by encountering a recent Sorting of the Hamilton main characters done by sortinghatchats of Tumblr. Which has an interesting system - they do primary House as a core nature and motivations thing, and secondary House to indicate what toolset is the default in use for achieving those motivations. I think there's a third, sort of - the "what do you get mistaken for in dim light" thing - but that's a superficial sort of thing. Just one I find interesting. (My character Misha is a Slyth primary, Huff secondary, and mistaken for a Ravenclaw, so, y'know.)
So anyway, my thoughts about Sense8, mostly in terms of character sorting, with a few other bits besides. Spoilers minimised, because polite, but there will be allusions to things and a couple of dialogue quotes. Also a little commentary on some of my critiques of the thing (some of which are about where I feel it falls down on race issues).
Capheus is hands down the easiest character to sort. Capheus is a Hufflepuff. He is loyal, hardworking, a bit stubborn, relentlessly optimistic, and fair-minded, and believes that these things will triumph. Fortunately for him, he also occasionally has his cluster in his back pocket for when being decent isn't enough to deal with his problems. I feel he has the standard 'how do we involve the badger with the story' problem - he's too busy doing his damn job to get seriously involved in shenanigans - but that's somewhat aggravated, I think, by the fact that he's just not terribly involved in the A plot. The shenanigans he gets involved with are all local, without any apparent connection to the A plot at all, and their resolutions - even when his survival comes about through having a cluster - are all local. I think this is aggravated by the fact that the white characters had the A plot ball and were bouncing it among themselves - so he, particularly, got the very short end of the stick.
Kala is also fairly easy: Ravenclaw. She's a scientist, and one who is very much dedicated to her work (she is also, interestingly, something of a mystic), though I feel that this got very sidelined to the other side of her sort of Being A Ravenclaw: not being sure how to deal with emotional stuff. Her plot is in many ways about her responding to the logic of other people's emotions, the arguments they make based on what they want, but not having the articulacy to deal with what she wants at an emotional level or even, clearly, know what it is. I also feel that she got the actual worst integration with the plot - since her professional skills are very much not relevant to the story arc she has in the series, while it's not surprising she has them when she cranks out an I Know How To Solve This, they weren't in any way foregrounded like Capheus's, and they also all come at the end of the story, where Capheus had something relevant to contribute to the cluster elsewhere. Which is rather problematic for the second-brownest character. (Also, having the most intellectual character basically 100% emotional soap opera all the time has its problematic overtones.)
I keep going back and forth on whether Will is a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff, and I think I am coming down on "more Gryffindor", between his stepping in for Kala when he does and his Gamble Everything On A Slim Chance Of Survival plays; while both of those were also loyalty plays really the Do Or Die nature of the latter is quite the thing. ("You're the one who got on an airplane without a plan!") He has his strong loyalty and diligence streaks - it's unclear whether or not his choice to go into the police has more to do with his father being a cop or [spoiler], after all - and that deep 'every human is valuable' badgerish decency that he showcases early - but he is also very motivated by Being A Hero. But still very pleasantly complex for the obvious White Guy Protagonist.
Sun, however, is a Gryffindor. Very simple and straightforward about it, too, at least once one gets past the superficialities of family loyalty and work and intellectual standing. She's a Gryffindor who's stuck in a suit, but in the end what it comes down to is that she takes what she feels, she puts it into her fist, and she fights for it. Which could practically go on a Gryffindor motto banner. "If they want to stop us they're going to need more men." Fucking lions. They're all mad.
(Also I was really hoping that Sun's financial plot and Kala's job would be related, and possibly connect from there to the A-plot. I would like to see Kala and Sun spend season 2 unravelling that web from both ends in order to resolve [spoiler], the factdrop that those shenanigans involved medical companies never connected up to anything and I want it to. Also, plot interactions involving the WOC! That were clued as possible!)
The glorious melodramatic goofball that is Lito is the cluster's sole Slytherin. ("Lying is easy. It's what I do.") He is also reasonably isolated from the A-plot (there are reasons for the characters in particular positions to be the ones on the A-plot, but there is no particular reason for them all to be white; of four apparently white characters, three are the core characters on the A-plot; the supporting characters on the A-plot are white male villain, white woman, and Naveen Andrews, who has an "I'd listen to you reading the phone book" sort of voice). Anyway, Lito's personal plot is poised between his individual ambitions and his devotion to his beloved, and really, if there's a more classic engine for Slytherin character development I cannot think of one. He wishes he were a Gryffindor, but is a coward; that is an amusing chunk of what drives his ambitions.
I rather suspect a lot of people would sort Noni into Ravenclaw for her computer skills, or into Slytherin for her black hat hacking. I think these things are terrible ideas (but under sortinghatchats I'd give her a Ravenclaw secondary, using intellectually oriented methodologies to achieve her ends). But she orbits around her loyalties so hard that people at several points greet her with variants on "After what you did for us, of course we'll help". And her speech in the art gallery is such a gloriously Hufflepuff declaration about the importance of each individual and the importance of respecting their fundamental human value. Also, you know, "If the government's going to spy on us, it's only fair we get to spy back", right?
I suspect that my sorting of Wolfgang is the thing most likely to cause people to want to argue with me; I expect that a lot of people would put him in Slytherin because of his profession. (I will use the sortinghatchats Slytherin secondary, maybe? He is a sneaky sort, and he does have certain being-the-best ambitions even if they don't strike me as being emotionally core to him.) The heart of my understanding of Wolfgang is actually a comment I made on an Alternity discussion: that there is nothing quite like the terrifying inevitability of Ravenclaw logic. Wolfgang is clearly smart, given what he's able to do, and the way he constructs plans and contingencies, but he's no academic (even if he gets someone using "smart guy" as a term of derision at him); what he is is a screaming personification of terrifying Ravenclaw logic. It does not matter what the emotions are; if the thing Must Happen then there are Logical Steps That Must Be Taken To Make It Happen and he will follow through them with a methodicality that simply does not let his emotions win. It's not that he doesn't feel them; it's that they don't matter compared to The Logical Necessity. (And he does not have any idea why Ludicrously Gryffindor Felix latched on to him, but that brings with it certain Logical Necessities too.)
It was very hard for me to place Riley in a house, because of the way she is so very much at the mercy of events in her life and buffeted around like a leaf in the wind. However, given that she was both destroyed and saved by loyalty, I'm going to call her a badger until further notice.
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