No. Really.

Prospective titles for this book include

Don’t Know Much About (Economic) History, The One Percent Solution,, and Hey, If You Turn That Chart Upside Down It Looks Great!

She starts by asserting that Winter Wipeout is proof that gay people want heteros to suffer and… it actually manages to go downhill from there.

Also, watch the guy behind her. His reactions are hilarious.

“Yes,” he says, “on the one hand, George Zimmerman did hunt down and kill your unarmed son in cold blood after being instructed by police not to follow him. That’s certainly half the problem. But just as importantly, well…your son wasn’t exactly dressed formally, was he? I think we have to place at least as much of the blame on your son’s clothing choices as we do on the decisions of the raving paranoid who followed your son down the street and then shot him in broad daylight. If he hadn’t been so, well…slovenly…then I feel that there was a very good chance that Zimmerman might have decided your child was ‘one of the good ones’, and left him alone. We’ll never know, of course, but I think that if black people don’t follow the unspoken dress code that white people have decided on for you, then any consequences of that are really on your own head. But, you know, I’m not blaming your bad parenting or your son’s sloppy dress choices. You just didn’t know that wearing a hooded sweatshirt in a nice neighborhood was a possible death sentence for a young black man. Now that you’re aware, I’m sure that you and all your kind will remember your place from now on, and unfortunate incidents like this won’t happen again.”

And he wonders why someone hit him in the face with a chair once…

In all seriousness, what does make ‘The Shining’ such a popular subject for such a diverse range of “cryptic meaning” essays? Surely if Kubrick really had a message he was trying to convey, no matter how cleverly he concealed it, you’d expect to get some kind of consensus as to what it might be. But (for those of you who really don’t feel like sitting through a 40-minute YouTube video, or spend an hour or so looking at screenshots) Kubrick’s film almost seems to become a sort of Rorshach test, continually revealing cryptic messages that just happen to exactly coincide with the researcher’s personal perspective. Why? What is it about ‘The Shining’ that makes it more confusing than ‘The Prisoner’? What makes this film the one that people fixate on, while ‘Donnie Darko’ (to name another cult film that plays its cards close to the vest) seems to avoid these kinds of questions? I don’t know that we can ever know for sure, but here are my suggestions.

1) Kubrick isn’t talking. Well, I mean…of course he’s not talking now, but even when he was alive, he wasn’t talking about his movies. Kubrick had a reputation as a notorious recluse, but it would be more accurate to describe him as someone who just didn’t give interviews. He was perfectly content to be social, but he also hated the way that filmmakers who loved to talk about their work had reduced watching a movie to a sterile exercise in spotting the things the director had talked about in a magazine. He didn’t want you to be thinking about the technical reasons that the hedge maze had replaced the hedge animals (budget constraints, for the record–moving hedge animals weren’t technically feasible in 1980.) He wanted you to be watching the movie, and to let you come to your own conclusions about it. Seen from a certain point of view though, a reclusive movie-maker who doesn’t want to talk about his movies because he wants you to “work it out for yourself” can sound like someone who’s embedded a secret meaning. The more mystery invested in the process, the more people expect from the ultimate solution. “Some people are just crazy” is not going to satisfy them.

2) Kubrick had a reputation as a perfectionist. Time and time again, as you read these analyses, you’ll come across a phrase that’s almost word-for-word identical every single time: “A legendary perfectionist like Kubrick certainly wouldn’t allow such an obvious continuity error.” It is a prima facie assumption made in all of these analyses that any apparent mistake in the film must be placed there deliberately, as Kubrick was known for being a perfectionist. These must be hidden messages, because Kubrick doesn’t make mistakes.

This is, of course, an assumption so wrong that it almost has to be unpicked word-for-word. Kubrick was a notorious perfectionist, true, but “perfectionist” in this case doesn’t mean “meticulous about set continuity.” Kubrick’s reputation came from his habit of shooting far more film than was necessary, sometimes doing 80-100 takes of a single scene, in order to get the widest possible ranges of performance from his actors and to force them to genuinely inhabit their characters. ‘The Shining’ was no exception; Kubrick spent 200 days in principal photography for a 144-minute film. (This means that on average, Kubrick shot about 45 seconds of usable footage per day. Almost certainly, there must have been whole months worth of days where he shot nothing at all that he used in the final film.) Kubrick was a perfectionist in that he wanted the perfect take, and was willing to shoot as long as was needed until he got it; and once he was armed with all those perfect takes, he would go into the editing room and spend months assembling them into a finished film.

But there’s a big difference between that and being precise about continuity. In fact, Kubrick’s approach works against tight set continuity; when you’re shooting 30, 40, 50 takes of one shot, even going back the next day for more, then of course tiny details aren’t going to be the same from shot to shot. Kubrick wanted the perfect emotional resonance, not the perfect amount of sandwich eaten from moment to moment. Even if he did notice the continuity problems (and he almost certainly did) what was he going to do once he was in the editing booth? Throw out the best performance because the scrapbook was on the wrong page? Kubrick had to be aware that only obsessive viewers notice continuity mistakes to begin with, and he almost certainly had more important things to concern himself. But to the ‘Shining’ enthusiast, each of these tiny mistakes has to be a deliberate message, because they assume Kubrick is a genius who doesn’t do anything by accident.

3) The movie is different from the book. This is true of just about all adaptations, of course, but there’s a little more to it here. One, Kubrick didn’t discuss why he made the changes he made when adapting the novel. (See above.) Two, it’s assumed that a legendary perfectionist like Kubrick wouldn’t make arbitrary changes unless he had a grand vision to them. (See above.) And three, King and Kubrick were legendarily at odds over the adaptation, with King going so far as to write and direct his own adaptation that was more to his liking. With the theme of “changes from the book” highlighted, everyone’s attention is drawn to them. And again, we’re back to the “hidden messages” territory, with every tiny alteration assumed to have cryptic meaning, from the hotel’s origin to its final fate and everything in between.

Again, though, this assumes that Kubrick was able to work in the realm of pure art, with no concessions needing to be made to practicality. Subplots like the simmering conflict between Ullman the hotel manager and Jack, or backstory like his assault on a student at Stovington Prep? Dropped for time, perhaps, because the movie is already over two hours long and there’s not even a mention of them. Wendy and Danny seem different because the characters wound up being interpreted by actors, and because certain elements had to be emphasized and dropped to get the film down to a manageable running time. Logistically difficult effects, such as the destruction of the Overlook Hotel or the moving hedge animals, had to be dropped completely. Nobody ever gets to do everything the way they want to entirely…except maybe George Lucas, which may explain why it’s not such a good thing…and Kubrick is certainly no exception. But if you’re not willing to believe that, then each change takes on a special significance.

4) The ending is ambiguous. Sure, we know that Jack died. But then we get that last cryptic scene, of the photograph in the empty hotel filled with mysterious people and Jack at the center. The caption, “July 4th Ball, 1921.” It has to mean something. It’s the final shot of the film, the one that Kubrick wants us to leave on, the one he wants to resonate in our heads as we’re leaving the theater. He actually went so far as to cut an epilogue out of the film after it reached theaters, so that all we see is the cut from Jack’s body to the mysterious photo. A cryptic ending like that is one that demands endless analysis, deeper investigation, because we want things to make sense. And that ending really, really doesn’t, at least not in a logical and linear sense. (It says a lot that even after “notorious recluse” Kubrick came out and blatantly explained the ending to everyone, people still don’t believe it.) Whatever conclusions you come to about the final shot, you bring something of your own ideas and experiences to it…which leads us to…

5) People really, really like to create patterns. It’s human nature, and the final element that brings the first four together. Once you’ve decided that there is a hidden meaning to ‘The Shining’, once you’ve started looking at it not as a film but as a series of cryptic messages encoded into tiny details, then there’s a sufficiently large mass of data present that you can draw any number of connections between data points based on your own personal viewpoint as a lens. Think that Kubrick was a numerologist? Examine the time codes, you’re bound to find a pattern of significant shots at significant times. (Because Kubrick didn’t really put in any scenes that he didn’t think were important.) Want to find messages about your own personal political, mystical, or historical views? They’re bound to be there if you think symbolically enough and are willing to put in some work massaging the data. (Remember, numbers are infinitely transformable. Add, subtract, multiply and divide and 7/4/1921 can become any set of numbers you care to name.) And ultimately, you will come away convinced that Kubrick’s message was about exactly what you want it to be about. It’s a comforting thought, really. Kubrick must be a genius for hiding such an intricate message in the film, and you must be a genius for being able to find it. The two of you no doubt think alike, and wouldn’t we all want to think of ourselves as being in the company of geniuses?

For myself, I don’t think there is a hidden message in ‘The Shining’. I think that Kubrick, like all great artists, loved ambiguity, and loved to insert it in the work instead of forcing his own conclusions onto you. You are required, by design, to think about what’s going on in front of you because the answers are not provided, and Kubrick isn’t telling because your answer is probably better than his anyway. I think he’d probably be impressed at some of the creativity people have brought to finding meanings in his film…even if I can easily picture Wendy looking at Jack’s manuscript and reading, “It can be ruled out that Stanley Kubrick didn’t notice this obvious mistake as he precisely edited the shot that way for a reason and we all saw it happen…”

In comparison, when a kid speaks up against gay marriage, we get this:

I really feel bad for the kids who have two parents of the same gender. Even though some kids feel like it’s fine, they have no idea what kind of wonderful experiences they miss out on. I don’t want any more kids to get confused about what’s right and OK. I really don’t want to grow up in a world where marriage isn’t such a special thing anymore. It’s rather scary to think that when I grow up the legislator or the court can change the definition of any word they want. If they can change the definition of marriage, then they could change the definition of any word. People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice.

In order, that’s

1.) An endorsement of traditional straight marriage as “special” and “wonderful” without bothering to explain why it is special or wonderful
2.) A suggestion that homosexuality is wrong without bothering to explain why it is wrong
3.) The old saw that same-sex-marriage will make straight marriage less special, which is an argument from privilege
4.) Sky-is-falling assertions about the powers of the courts to change legal definitions (which have existed since there were courts, basically)
5.) The suggestion that homosexuality is chosen behaviour despite mountains of evidence to the contrary

On the bright side, this young woman’s career path is most likely already mapped out for her. In ten to twelve years, expect to see Sarah Crank (and oh my god is that not the most appropriate last name ever) either writing for National Review or on Fox News, depending on how conventionally pretty she is.

Q: How many “Let’s Just be Friends” does it take to change a light bulb?

And right here, we have the basic and fundamental problem the Nice Guy has, stated right up there at the beginning so that we can get it out of the way quickly. “Let’s Just Be Friends”, in ironic quotemarks so that we all understand that it’s obviously BS. This woman isn’t “just” a “friend”! They’re a woman, and therefore a potential sexual partner! The whole idea that a man and a woman can somehow have interactions between each other that don’t lead to sex is absurd on the face of it; relationships between members of the opposite sex can only have two phases. Courtship, and screwing. If the woman is still on speaking terms with you, they must therefore understand that you are courting them by definition; continuing to have voluntary social interaction with you is just “stringing you along.” Sure, they might say that they’re just a friend of yours; sure, they might say that the relationship is strictly platonic; sure, they might say that they’re not interested in you sexually and you are just like a brother to them! But the Nice Guy knows that this is just playing “hard-to-get”.

A: Only one, who will…

… call you up every night for three months and talk to you for hours on end, about how bad her current light bulb is, how it goes out without warning, and never provides her with the kind of light she would really love to have.

This one comes up time and time again, in every one of these Nice Guy rants. Again, do women ever really do this? Ever? I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it does always seem like the sort of thing that people like this talk about as examples of how much support they provide to “women”, when it sounds more like the sort of thing that guys who’ve never actually spoken to a woman but have seen lots of Julia Roberts movies might come up with as an example. Most of the women I know wouldn’t go three months in a relationship with someone who treats them badly to the point where they call up their friends to complain about them every single night, but maybe I don’t know the right people.

Either way, though, the implication is loud and clear; because you provided this woman with emotional support, she is obliged to respond with sex in order to even the score. Setting aside the obvious problem (if you only provided them with emotional support to get some sex out of them, you’re really not much of a friend, are you? I do nice things for my friends because I like them, not because I’m banking up favors for later…) Why is it that Nice Guys assume that emotional support should always be repaid with physical affection? If she’s been calling you every night for three months to unload her troubles on you, and then blows you off when you’re feeling bad because she’s got better things to do than listen to you mope, then it’s an issue. Then the friendship is one-sided. But if you listen to them, all you can realistically expect is that they should listen to you.

… tell you what a wonderful light bulb you have, and how any woman would die to have such a light bulb.

…and it’s about here that “light bulb” formally becomes a euphemism for “penis”. Guys, I have news for you. Despite the vital evidence provided by that classic documentary series, “Sex and the City”, women do not have a grapevine of dating info that ranks men according to their penis size and prioritizes their relationships accordingly. If a woman is not into you, and you’re insecure about your penis size, these things are not necessarily related anywhere but in your own head.

Other than that, this is primarily a social skills issue; Nice Guys generally don’t interact with other people enough to know that whenever someone says, “Oh, you’re a wonderful person, I’m sure there’s someone out there for you, lots of women/men would love to have a boyfriend/girlfriend like you,” they’re just saying it to be nice and both parties know it. It may actually be true, but it’s not meant to be taken in the same way as, “The train for London leaves at 6 PM.” It is reassurance, not prediction.

… tell you it’s amazing that your light bulb has been sitting alone in it’s little corrugated cardboard tube for the last six months and even more amazing that you don’t have a dozen sockets to screw it into.

…

…..

…….um, dudes everywhere? If you’re trying to convince people that you don’t have a simmering undercurrent of misogyny beneath your attempts to laugh your frustrations about dating off with jokes, don’t refer to women as “sockets”. It’s just not going to go well. Trust me.

(Also, if you’ve been living in a corrugated cardboard tube for six months, your dating prospects will go down. Try looking into government assistance and local shelters.)

… call you up at three o’clock on a Monday morning, (destroying any chance you had of being alert, much less coherent at that crucial business meeting at 8 am) to agonize about the fight she had with her light bulb, and to tell you that she finally lost her temper with it and unscrewed the light bulb forever.

Again, note that her relying on you for emotional support is considered to be grounds for getting tail, not for getting emotional support. If you call her up at three o’clock on a Monday morning, distraught over a breakup, and her response is, “Unnnn…tell you what, why don’t you just take a couple of sleeping pills to get through the night and we’ll talk about this later, okay?” Then you have grounds to be upset. If she doesn’t promptly agree with sex to you out of a misplaced guilt reaction, you do not have grounds to be upset. See how it works?

… be shocked at your offer of a replacement bulb, and will tell you that she could never screw your light bulb into her empty socket, that doing so would ruin the light it gives out, and that it’s too good a bulb for her anyway, but that she hopes she’ll still be able to come over and talk to you about her light bulb problems.

And again, this makes perfect sense if you start from the premise that women are automatically being disengenuous when they tell you that they don’t see you as a romantic partner. If you assume that every time a woman says, “No, I see you as a friend,” they’re really just stringing you along romantically, then of course it hurts when you finally make your romantic interests known and she says that she sees you as a friend! Because you know she’s lying! Just like she’s lied every time she talked to you! The fact that she showed interest in you as a human being must mean that either she’s after sex herself, or she knows that you’re after sex and wants to get other things out of you by pandering to your interest in sex! And she turned you down for sex so SHE MUST BE A LYING TWO-FACED GOLDDIGGER OMG SHE’S JUST LIKE ALL THE REST

Let me break it to you gently but firmly, Nice Guys. If a woman tells you she sees you as a friend, and you don’t believe her, it is not her fault when you get upset. She is not lying, she is not pretending that the relationship is anything other than what it is, and she is not stringing you along. She is your friend. Everything else going on is baggage you are bringing to the friendship, and being upset at people for not living up to promises you imagined they made is the sign of a crazy person.

Or to put it another way, if you had a male friend that helped you move, that hung out with you and watched sports, that commiserated with you after break-ups and congratulated you on promotions…and they then explained a couple of years down the line that they did it all because they were gay and were really picturing their cock in your mouth the whole time…would you feel obligated to have sex with them? And if you did turn them down for sex, do you think they’d be justified in getting furiously angry with you for “stringing them along” and “using them for emotional intimacy”?

… go home, rummage through the trash can, find the defunct light bulb, lovingly clean it off, screw it back into the socket, and sit there in the dark.

… call you up every night for three months…

Because of course, the proper emotional response to a friend who’s trapped in an abusive relationship is a sense of irritation that they aren’t giving you sex! That’s how you know that you’re their friend, because your first thought when they’re in trouble is about yourself and how their problems inconvenience you.

It’s very simple. If a woman acts like they’re your friend, says they’re your friend, and behave like they’re your friend…then they’re your friend. This doesn’t mean you can’t want more, but their emotional consistency is not a personal slight against you. Suck it up, deal with it…and that doesn’t mean stop being their friend. What nine out of ten Nice Guys need is a female friend that they know they have no chance with, just so they can figure out that it’s not the end of the world if you hang out with a woman just because you enjoy each other’s company and not as some sort of secretive platonic dating gambit.* It helps you treat women like actual people instead of orifices-in-waiting, which women tend to look for in a man, and it helps your social skills, ditto, and it also helps you figure out exactly what the real signs of “I am interested in you” are, so you can pick up on a hint when a woman actually drops one. And if you can’t enjoy the company of a woman in any context other than sex, and you really don’t understand how to deal with a woman as anything other than an object to be fucked…then you’re one of the other ten percent. Get mental help. For your own sake as much as everyone else’s.

I hope this clarifies things.

*The phrase “secretive platonic dating” is copyright and trademark Melora Creager, of the band Rasputina. All rights reserved.

So funny how everbody jumps on the bandwagon an the females aplaud the author for being totally one sided and saying exactly what they want to hear, while he totally disregards the other side of the story, that some females indeed are bitches who just use males when they are in the need, e.g. if their asshole boyfriend dumped her again (because he just wanted sex and nothing more, and that was clear from the beginning for everyone except for her), perfectly knowing that the guy they are using is loner who wants a girlfriend (and sex, of course) and will do pretty much anything for her, and instead of saying “You? Never!” or just talking to another person they just throw him away after use and forget it.

TL;DR: There are always two sides to a story, and it DOES matter if you are in a relationship and can talk down to people who are not, or if you are part of the folks which are not in a relationship and try like crazy to get into one only to see all their efforts crumble to dust. A rich man can lightly say that money does not really matter in life, while the poor man will certainly say the opposite. So don’t be so fucking full of yourselves because you were lucky and others were not.

Have fun with it, everybody!

But my problem with Gene Marks’ drivel isn’t that it’s privileged. My problem is that his underlying argument is simply morally abhorrent.

Gene Marks barely concedes at the beginning of his screed that poor black kids have it tougher than, say, middle-class white kids. What is Marks’ solution to this problem? Ah ha, that’s a trick question because so far as Gene Marks is concerned, there is no problem:

But that doesn’t mean that the prospects are impossible for those kids from the inner city. It doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for them. Or that the 1% control the world and the rest of us have to fight over the scraps left behind. I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. Still. In 2011. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia.

Marks then goes on to describe how poor black kids can should just get ahead with Technology ™ and how you can get a cheap computer or a free one even (from generous accountants!). And this is of course its own brand of stupid, ignoring the basic truth that a kid isn’t gonna know how to buy a cheapo computer at the age of eight much less be able to afford one.¹ But he soon comes back to reaffirm the idea that the way things are is merely a minor setback.

In Philadelphia, there are nationally recognized magnet schools like Central, Girls High and Masterman. These schools are free. But they are hard to get in to. You need good grades and good test scores. And there are also other good magnet and charter schools in the city. You also need good grades to get into those. In a school system that is so broken these are bright spots. Getting into one of these schools opens up a world of opportunities. More than 90% of the kids that go to Central go on to college. I would use the internet to research each one of these schools so I could find out how I could be admitted. I would find out the names of the admissions people and go to meet with them. If I was a poor black kid I would make it my goal to get into one of these schools.

And if not – then what? “Tough luck, kid – we know you wanted to go to a good school, but it turns out there was at least one more kid than you who was just too qualified to pass up. I bet you’re wishing you spent more time on math so you didn’t only get an A-minus in it three years ago, huh?” No, wait, Gene Marks has you covered too!

Or even a private school. Most private schools I know are filled to the brim with the 1%. That’s because these schools are exclusive and expensive, costing anywhere between $20 and $50k per year. But there’s a secret about them. Most have scholarship programs. Most have boards of trustees that want to give opportunities to kids that can’t afford the tuition. Many would provide funding for not only tuition but also for transportation or even boarding.

You know, it’s not often I say this any more, but what the fucking fuck.

His next answer is private school. Really. Look, I know from private school tuition assistance. More often than not, they’re willing to help out. But for those students who have nothing? The competition for those plum spots is insanely tight and makes the magnet school spot competition (which is already crazily intense) look like a relaxing garden party.²

It continues in that vein, of course. If you can’t go to a magnet school or a private school you can work with your school’s guidance counsellor. You can always learn to code software (and I have plenty of friends who work in software and I will say, straight up, that the idea of coding as a universal panacea to aid all social mobility problems is wildly overrated whether it is coming from Stupid McRichdude or Cory Doctorow). In Gene Marks’ world there are always opportunities. I know this because he says so repeatedly, and if a poor black kid has to work harder to get those opportunities, well, maybe that’s not fair, but that’s just how things are.³

And this is where I just throw up my hands because I was not a poor black kid. I was a middle-class white kid, possibly quite like Gene Marks. I did not have to memorize half a dozen pieces of software in order to study or learn skills that would be valuable to future employers instead of sneaking out with my friends to play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.⁴ Indeed, I got into an elite private school and got kicked out of it. And I still went to university and got a degree, and then eventually got into law school. Because I was a middle-class white kid, I got to spend my childhood playing rather than working tirelessly to have a decent future. And that’s all right. What isn’t all right is expecting that poor black kids are just going to have to work their asses off to get even a fraction of the opportunities I got.

Everything about Marks’ stupid, stupid essay assumes as unchanging truth that a poor person will have to work ridiculously hard in order to have a future where they are not poor, and this is the root of the problem that Marks not only doesn’t address but asserts is just not that big a deal in his preamble when, after applauding Barack Obama for talking about income inequality, claims that the superrich aren’t getting vastly more than their fair share. Because there’s nothing wrong with expecting someone to work hard to rise above their current status. But there’s plenty wrong with expecting kids to load themselves to the bone with work in order to have a chance to rise above their current status.⁵ He’s willing to pay lip service to the idea that inequality is wrong, but he’s not willing to suggest that something be done to address the problem of inequality. It’s just another hurdle for poor black kids to jump, and he’s ever so gracious to admit that he, Gene Marks, did not have to jump these hurdles – and that’s just how it is. Tough luck, poor black kids! Those of you who cannot do these incredible and amazing things to struggle upwards, well, there’s always McDonald’s.

In the end, Gene Marks’ prescription for the societal problem of inequality is that individuals be exceptional. But that doesn’t work, because everybody can’t be exceptional. That’s kind of the opposite of what the word means. And that’s why his essay is abhorrent and stupid: because it doesn’t address the problem. Indeed, it’s barely willing to admit the problem exists. His entire idea consists of tinkering around the edges with stale, stupid advice that comes as no surprise to anybody who’s thought even for a second about it,⁶ and that just isn’t enough.

1. Also, some of Marks’ ideas about how Technology ™ can help are kind of stupid. What makes Project Gutenberg better than, say, a public library?
2. And let us not forget that many private school scholarships oddly have a tendency to go to poor kids who are also athletes.
3. It’s worth remembering that in order for a poor black kid to receive all of this useful advice, the poor black kid has to be reading Forbes magazine. You know – as poor black children are wont to do.
4. Granted, I probably should have been getting high instead, but there you go.
5. And even in Marks’ scenarios, he admits you need to be lucky.
6. Did this guy not see Waiting for Superman? I mean, it’s a flawed movie, but at least it makes the point about poor parents being willing to bust ass to get their kids into good schools and failing.

So some ad agency had the Muller people come in and say:

“Okay, so KITT is driving down the street and he parks all-awesome like, but a cop gives him a ticket, so this Muller truck nearby is actually a Transformer and it turns into a robot and it eats the cop, but then it spits out Yogi Bear because the Muller Transformer has turned the cop into Yogi. Yogi is happy so he dances down the street, but he runs into a crowd of rude businessmen, so the Muller Transformer spits out a rain of giant fruit and that turns them into Mr. Men and Pikmin and things. So they all dance happily but suddenly they see that a crane is about to knock down a small house in between two skyscrapers! Luckily, Muttley is flying his plane which has a giant hammer made from a giant Muller yogurt tin attached to it, and knocks the crane into the sky, where it dissolves into a rain of coloured birds. Then it looks like rain – oh no! But then another giant container of Muller is opened, and the yogurt forms giant hands which scoop up the rainclouds into a ball, then twist that ball into a rainbow with a smiley face on it. And scene.”

Why don’t I have that job, and the hallucinogenics that come with it?

Captain America: An obvious choice for an Avenger, but a less obvious decision over which house he winds up in. On the one hand, you can’t question the courage of the star-spangled Avenger; this is a guy who wanted to join World War II before it even started, because despite the fact that he weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, he wanted to go sock Hitler on the jaw. And that’s before you even get into the “standing toe-to-toe with Thanos despite Thanos having the Infinity Gauntlet and Cap having his fighting spirit” thing. But courage, while it is an important trait of Cap, is not his defining trait.

The recent Cap movie actually showed it best, in the scenes between Steve Rogers and Professor Erskine (some of the best scenes in a great movie.) Cap doesn’t join up because he wants to go out and prove his courage fighting Nazis, he joins up because he believes strongly that he should stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves and it never even occurs to him that he’s one of them. He joins out of a sense of duty to protect others, and if that’s not Hufflepuff, I don’t know what is.

Iron Man: Lately, of course, it seems like Tony is a prime candidate for Slytherin; somewhere around the time he conquered his alcoholism, desperate writers have settled on “asshole control freak tries to use technology to control his surroundings and finds out the hard way just how badly that turns out” as his default story arc. (That is, when he’s not being mind controlled to kill lots of people. You begin to understand why they rebooted him three times.) But underlying the whole desire to control is a naive, almost pathetic belief that he can solve all his problems just by inventing cool enough stuff that it will fix everyone’s problems in the whole world. Tony Stark thinks that if he can create a better process, a better system, then he can create a better humanity. This belief that intelligence, properly applied, can solve any problem makes him a perfect Ravenclaw!

Thor: Thor routinely goes out and fights giants. Because he can. You’d just have to wave the Sorting Hat in his general direction to hear “GRYFFINDOR!” shouted out in the Great Hall.

Hawkeye: He’s one of my all-time favorite characters and a staple Avenger (who has, in my personal opinion, been mishandled worse under the Quesada/Bendis era of the series worse than any other character in the entire franchise, and that includes the decision to make Power Man and Iron Fist Avengers.) He’s also a joyously uncomplicated character, a brash manchild who found purpose and meaning to his life by joining the Avengers and adopting their ideals as his own. Arguably, Hawkeye’s turn under the Sorting Hat would involve a long, telepathic argument over whether or not they should just make a fifth house, because it’s downright insulting to stick Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in a bunch of lesser outfits. But eventually, the Sorting Hat would decide that a guy who deliberately forgoes Hank Pym’s growth serum to  battle mad gods and alien armadas armed with a bow and arrows belongs in Gryffindor.

Hank Pym: Okay, maybe Hank Pym was handled worse by Bendis than any other character…let’s call it a toss-up, okay? (Yes, I have issues with Bendis’ handling of the classic Avengers characters. Specifically, I have several hundred issues, and all of them establish clear character beats that Bendis ignores because paying attention to established characterization takes up time he could be using to plot his latest three-issue long halting conversation.) The point is, Hank Pym’s defining character trait isn’t anger or emotional instability. He had a major nervous breakdown at one point that caused him to lash out against his friends and loved ones, but what caused that breakdown was the stress of trying to be a superhero even though he was never really cut out for it. He wanted to be a scientist, helping people through his inventions instead of hitting people, but duty to the people he cared about kept calling him back to it. It’s that sense of dedication to the Avengers that makes the Sorting Hat choose Hufflepuff over Ravenclaw, even though it might take a while to choose.

Wasp: Let’s see. Janet became a superhero because her father died and her new boyfriend suggested she help him avenge that death (two emotional connections early on.) She spent her free time volunteering at a local hospital reading to sick children (duty to the helpless.) She met a bunch of superheroes and immediately suggested they all bond together into a common group (more dedication to community and family.) She eventually wound up becoming the chairwoman of the Avengers–not because she was ambitious, but because a chairwoman was needed and it was time for her to step up and help the team. She eventually sacrificed herself…um, sort of, because Thor did something, or…*sigh* Bendis… *sigh* The point is, when you look at the Wasp’s career, she’s always been about dedication to her large, self-made, extended family. She might never have become a hero if she’d been left to her own devices, but she cares about heroes enough to want to help them out. She’s a Hufflepuff if there ever was one.

Bonus non-Avenger characters! While I will maintain, to my dying day, that the inclusion of Spider-Man and Wolverine into the ranks of the Avengers was a colossal mistake that shows that Bendis not only never understood any of the characters he was writing, he actually never understood the core concept of the book he took over and should not have been allowed near the series with a ten-foot pole, I also know that people probably want to know where they wound up. So for the record, Spidey‘s a classic Hufflepuff (“with great power must come great responsibility”), while Wolverine would be a Gryffindor until he got expelled for sneaking non-butter-beer into the dorms and wound up getting kept by Hagrid as a pet.

Which still leaves a lot of Avengers. Let’s face it, unlike the JLA, the Avengers has a constantly fluctuating line-up; feel free to add your favorite Avengers in the comments!

Superman, like Harry himself, would be a good choice for more than one house. His steely-hard integrity and devotion to friends like Jimmy and Lois (when he’s not in the Silver Age and “teaching them a lesson” about one thing or another by subjecting them to absurd robot-double based humiliations) could land him in Hufflepuff, while his intellect would also make him a good fit in Ravenclaw. (Although that’s an element of the character that’s been played down post-Byrne reboot…it used to be that Superman used the Fortress of Solitude to do his own elaborate experiments too dangerous or complex to be carried out in labs on inhabited continents, but these days he mostly subcontracts out the “being smart” to STARLabs.) But ultimately, Superman is someone who isn’t afraid of anything. It’s what makes him such an inspirational superhero; he’s what we could be if we were freed of our insecurities and vulnerabilities. And it’s what would make him an excellent Gryffindor!

Batman, of course, has already been covered with devastating accuracy by Chris Sims. I’d recap his logic here, but that’s what links are all about; suffice to say that he’s dead right, and Batman would be in Ravenclaw. (Where he would be joined by Batgirl, Oracle and at least one or two Robins, if the crossover was big enough.)

Wonder Woman is interesting, because while she’s every bit as brave and heroic as Superman, what defines them as different is Wonder Woman’s boundless compassion. She’s always been more interested in reforming villains and showing them a better way to live (anyone remember the Golden Age Paula von Gunther?) It’d be pretty easy to see her and Helga Hufflepuff commiserating on the plight of those poor students scorned by the other three houses and making a commitment to ensure than nobody goes through Hogwarts alone. She understands that “loyalty” and “dedication” are more than just being a tireless worker or a good friend, but being someone anyone can rely on. Which is what makes her the best Hufflepuff!

Green Lantern has, of course, already been through a glorified version of the Sorting when he became Green Lantern. Sure, it was funny-colored aliens instead of battered old hats, but who knows what the Sorting Hat is actually made out of? It looks kinda leathery; maybe somewhere in the mists of time the four founders of Hogwarts skinned themselves a Guardian and made it into a hat, and the tradition just evolved from there. In any event, “fearless” as a requirement for Green Lantern-hood makes it pretty obvious that whether Hal, Kyle, John or Guy, they’d all be Gryffindor!

The Flash…Barry’s the easiest to categorize, but all of the Flashes over the years share a certain reliability and dependability to them. The different Flashes, no matter which one you’re talking about, never had any particular trauma in their past that made them “driven to dispense justice” (except in the TV show, of course…) They just got powers, looked at the world around them, and said, “Hey, I should help out with this.” For Barry, it was an extension of his job, and for Wally, it was an extension of his friendship with Barry. Jay shares the same matter-of-fact approach to heroism, the kind of steady and old-fashioned nature that would make them excellent Hufflepuffs!

Martian Manhunter is another very easy one; he’s classically been seen as the team’s tactician ever since the characters stopped being merely a collection of superheroes that followed a writing formula and started being an actual team that people wrote stories about. (Which was sometime in the 1970s, probably..) We see it clearest in Morrison’s JLA, but it’s usually Martian Manhunter who is coming up with the plan and telling everyone else (with his mind) how to get it done. As such, he’d be right at home with Batman in Ravenclaw! (Anyone who does not want to see a storyline where Batman and Martian Manhunter forge a group of teenage witches and wizards into a merciless, steel-hard magical justice dispensing machine has no poetry in their soul, dammit.)

Aquaman is unique among all the Justice League in that he’s actually more important in his “civilian” identity than in his superheroic one. As King of Atlantis, he is responsible for guiding the destiny of a nation and commanding its people…and while he’s at times a reluctant ruler, and he’s certainly no despot, he is nonetheless accustomed to being the leader of a nation. He has to set an agenda for a whole country, he has at times had to fight challengers to the throne, and even when dealing with his own teammates, you can tell that he expects them to follow his direction…and while you couldn’t say that it’s the only aspect of his character, any more than you could claim that Batman isn’t brave or Wonder Woman isn’t smart, Aquaman is a rare example of a good character whose strongest aspect is ambition. As such, he would be a fine example of something sadly lacking in Rowling’s actual novels…a good Slytherin!

There’s the basic seven; if you have thoughts on other DC characters and their treatment by the Sorting Hat, feel free to leave them in the comments!*

*Yes, it is distinctly possible that I’ve gone completely insane. As it’s the kind of insanity that leads to Batman giving ninja-training to a horde of telepathically-linked Ravenclaws, I make no apologies.

I need Jimmy Kimmel to show up and just give this post a long, long stare.

For the record, this story ends when the emperor is driven insane by a plague-harmonica of his own creation.

I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence. But there you go. Weird War Tales is like that; the only way this could be more weirdly-warrish is if somehow it was revealed at the end that vampires were somehow to blame. Or, alternately, Space Hitler.