There are a lot of franchises out there that let you "sort" your characters according to their personality traits, from their Homestuck classpect to the color of their lightsaber. Non-fandom sorting systems like the MBTI are also welcome here! Talk about how you would sort characters from your stories or others' stories, ask people where they see particular characters being sorted, share sorting systems/quizzes for people to try out, or talk about character sorting more generally.
Since we've been talking about MtG colors on the Discord recently, that seems like a good place to start. The Magic: the Gathering card game revolves around five colors of magic, and different personality types tend to have affinities with different colors. Here's a quick run-down, with descriptions ganked from this article:
A character can be any combination of colors, but is usually 1-3 out of the five, and two-color combinations are probably most common. unrepentantAuthor shared a good quiz for figuring out your characters' color combination: https://still-anchorage-15218.herokuapp.com/
What color(s) do you think your characters are? Or, if you're not sure, talk about them and see where others think they fit!
Since we've been talking about MtG colors on the Discord recently, that seems like a good place to start. The Magic: the Gathering card game revolves around five colors of magic, and different personality types tend to have affinities with different colors. Here's a quick run-down, with descriptions ganked from this article:
White seeks peace, and it tries to achieve that peace through the imposition of order. White believes that the solution to all suffering and unhappiness is coordination and cooperation and rules and restraint. The archetypal white organization would be a church, and a white dystopia would be a fascist regime such as the one in George Orwell’s 1984, or a stagnant society like the one in Lois Lowry’s The Giver
A white agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what is the right course of action to take, where “right” depends on their moral or cultural framework.
A white agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what is the right course of action to take, where “right” depends on their moral or cultural framework.
Blue seeks perfection, and it tries to achieve that perfection through the pursuit of knowledge. Blue believes that things could be almost arbitrarily good if we could all just figure out the truth, and then apply that understanding to its fullest extent. The archetypal blue organization would be a university or a research lab, and a blue dystopia would be one in which efficiency were pursued without morals or limits, or in which intelligence were the sole axis of a meritocracy.
A blue agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what course of action makes the most sense, where “sense” is determined by careful thought and the application of knowledge and expertise.
A blue agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what course of action makes the most sense, where “sense” is determined by careful thought and the application of knowledge and expertise.
Black seeks satisfaction, and it tries to achieve that satisfaction through ruthlessness. Black wants power and agency so that it can act upon its preferences at any time, reshaping the world around it into whatever it wants. It recognizes no limits upon this pursuit except those which emerge from its own desires and self-interest. It is capable of cooperation and alliance, but only consequentially, as in game theory; at its core, black is amoral, not immoral, since it doesn’t think morality is even really a Thing. The archetypal black organization would be a hedge fund or a startup, and a black dystopia would be a totalitarian dictatorship.
A black agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what course of action will leave me best off, where “best off” includes having power, influence, safety, and wealth, as well as having moved closer to one’s goals.
A black agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what course of action will leave me best off, where “best off” includes having power, influence, safety, and wealth, as well as having moved closer to one’s goals.
Red seeks freedom, and it tries to achieve that freedom through action. Red wants the ability to live in the moment and follow the thread of aliveness and passion. It’s a bit strange to speak of a red “organization,” but to the extent that it’s possible to have an archetypal red organization, it would be one of those art studios that’s owned by no one where there’s paint on every wall and it’s almost impossible to move around what with all of the dancing and debating and half-finished projects. A red dystopia, on the other hand, would simply be anarchy.
A red agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what do I feel like doing?
A red agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks what do I feel like doing?
Green seeks harmony, and it tries to achieve that harmony through acceptance. Green is the color of nature, wisdom, stoicism, taoism, and destiny; it believes that most of the suffering and misfortune in the world comes from attempts to cast off one’s natural mantle, step outside of one’s natural role, or fix things which aren’t broken — it’s the color of Chesterton’s Fence. It seeks to embrace what is — the archetypal green organization would be a hippie commune, or the pop culture interpretation of a Native American tribe (such as in Disney’s Pocahontas), while a green dystopia would be something like the society in Divergent or a tribe with absolutely rigid traditions and an unchanging and unchangeable relationship to its environment.
A green agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks how are these things usually done? What is the established wisdom?
A green agent, when presented with a decision or quandary, asks how are these things usually done? What is the established wisdom?
A character can be any combination of colors, but is usually 1-3 out of the five, and two-color combinations are probably most common. unrepentantAuthor shared a good quiz for figuring out your characters' color combination: https://still-anchorage-15218.herokuapp.com/
What color(s) do you think your characters are? Or, if you're not sure, talk about them and see where others think they fit!