sunnyhatchats

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lion vs snake secondary, again

i could be reading too much into this for #content but contrast the absolute joy and relief mac feels at getting to say and or eat what he wants, to frank's attitude "yeah, I always hated this restaurant, I just chose to not say so, and then I didn't, idgaf."

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automatic vs non-automatic secondary

#iasip #it's always sunny in philadelphia #sortinghatchats #shc #sorting hat chats #Youtube #don't really know what the waitress is honestly

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burnt idealist primaries:

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bird secondary vs. lion secondary (and snake)

"banter cards."

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how bird secondaries view themselves

#shc #sortinghatchats #bird secondary #iasip #Youtube #“clearly none of you have ANY IDEA how to run my system!”

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the two loyalist primaries

bar full of Irish people Charlie just met: "THE KELLY LADS! THE KELLY BOYS!"

Frank, desperately attempting to remain Charlie's Person: "...and I'm Frank! and I factor in somehow..."

Charlie, immediately after toasting the whole damn bar: "just go you're embarrassing me"

#iasip #it's always sunny in philadelphia #sortinghatchats #shc #badger primary #snake primary #Youtube

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badgers:

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the double snake in action

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improvisation vs. preparation secondary

#shc #sortinghatchats #iasip #Youtube #I really want to find a badger secondary but it's not that kind of show

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sorting the gang: frank reynolds

Previously: Dennis, Mac, Dee, Charlie

This is going to be short because I've written like fifty novels here and also because it's anticlimactic. Fully admit this is largely vibes-based. But I mean.

Primary: Snake

Seriously Frank is the OG Snake, the stereotypical Snake, the person you think of when you think of Snakes. Frank is out for himself, for Charlie, and arguably in a toxic codependent way for Dennis and Dee. Simple as.

in season 16, when Frank thinks Dennis and Dee are trying to kill him, his reaction is "thanks for not doing it in front of Charlie"

idk even what else to say here, not much needs to be said on the subject I think. literally the only other thing it could be I think is an extremely twisted Lion, but that would be a real hot take and just no lol

Secondary: Snake (Bird model) (possibly Bird w/ Snake model?)

Again: Frank is the OG Snake. Specifically he is a Snake that loves being in neutral, maybe a bit too much, and spends most of his time around the Gang whom he doesn't mind going neutral around.

But when he wants to, he can play people pretty effortlessly, is good at it, and has zero qualms or reservations whatsoever about the lying involved. (content warning: mild antisemitic comment, Frank's not a great dude)

So what about the Bird model? Super strong actually. Maybe this is just Frank being older compared to the rest of the Gang and having more time to accumulate a bunch of random skills and networks, but boy has he done that. He has a bunch of random contacts - in his words he's "got a guy for everything." His shady fixer lawyer in "Time's Up for the Gang," Bingo the shady dealer, the shady people Duncan and Z hang out with, his cutthroat business crew in "Frank's Back in Business"... He's an accomplished boxer and uses those skills in the "Hundred Dollar Baby" scheme. He has all these personas he pulls out -- Dr. Mantis Toboggan for pretending to be a doctor, the Warthog for shady business shit, etc. He always carries a gun, including on the toilet. Arguably even his "infinite wealth" is a tool he uses to solve problems.

Shit now I'm kind of talking myself into switching them except Frank has the strongest double Snake energy. Take the Ongo Gablogian scene. Frank's actually modeling this off Andy Warhol some old buddies of his: "I used to run with an art crowd. I know these people." So there's that scaffolding. But the rest? Totally on the fly. 90% of this scene is totally in the moment.

Plus there are all the little things. Like in "The Gang Wrestles for the Troops" knocking Cricket out with a trashcan lid. Suddenly leaping in front of the hose during a wet T-shirt contest because he just realized there's someone underage there. In "Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties" his face gets bruised and puffy when he's supposed to present the pageant and his solution is to go to a mortician to get heavy makeup done (I mean it doesn't WORK well but...) There's this great moment in season 6 where Dee has glued herself to the door of her apartment in an attempt to not get evicted, and Frank just scrapes her hand off with a spatula.

idk, it's evidence over vibes here, I keep finding Bird-y Frank stuff but I mean. - - -

Which brings us to the end of the Gang. It's been fun, fun revisiting, fun parsing this out. (Also I have written more about this than on my actual homework so fun in misplaced priorities sense...) Thanks for reading!

#sortinghatchats #shc #iasip

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sorting the gang: charlie kelly

Previously: Dennis, Mac, Dee

Two more to go, one obvious, one maybe less?

Primary: Badger (Snake model)

Something I've been taking into account is that everyone on this show is going to be biased toward looking and behaving like a Snake, primary and secondary. The Gang is a strong mutually negatively reinforcing influence on each other, there's an entire episode about that dynamic. (More on that episode later.) So I've had to kind of correct for that the whole way through. Plus it would be very boring for everyone to be the same type.

So, Snake model, pretty clear. Charlie is very attached to Frank - when Frank starts dating his mom he stages an elaborate plot to get him "back in my arms." Obviously for most of the series he has an unhealthy stalker obsession with the Waitress. He goes to extreme lengths to protect them, or at least to do what he perceives as protecting them, and will go to great lengths to get revenge on anyone who'd hurt them...

...but those extreme lengths get superseded all the time. In "The Waitress Is Getting Married" he agrees to go on some dates with other people at the Gang's suggestion, and at the end when Brad says he's going to trick Dee into thinking he likes her, he gives Brad a box of hornets to punish him. (Although he was planning on doing it anyway) He involves the Gang in his proposal musical in "The Nightman Cometh." He is generally willing to join whoever in the Gang on whatever they're scheming to do. And also people outside the Gang, whenever there's a storyline about genuinely bonding with an outsider, Charlie's usually the one doing it: Buster in "The Gang Gets Whacked," the girl in "The Gang Solves the North Korea Situation," the juggalo kid in "Dee Reynolds: Shaping America's Youth..."

This is because Charlie is, out of everyone in the Gang, the one most attached to the idea of it as a group. When his place in the group is threatened he gets really upset. In "The Gang Gets a New Member," he is fixated on Schmitty replacing him and devastated when the Gang chooses Schmitty over him when he gives an ultimatum about it, unlike in high school when he gave the same ultimatum and they didn't.

(Idk about dehumanizing but maybe his being totally negative at Schmitty or his sisters counts?)

Charlie is super identified with his role in the Gang even when that role makes him the butt of jokes, being the one doing the Charlie work, etc. He can be susceptible to peer pressure, admitting in "The Gang Misses the Boat" that he only picks on Dee because the Gang does. Charlie did this in high school too: he really identified with being "the Dirtgrub" even though that was a nickname given to him by a bully, and threw himself right back in the role in "The High School Reunion."

Also, intangibles. I feel like Badgers have "nice guy energy" even when they aren't nice people. Charlie is an unstable, delusional stalker with severe anger issues and a vindictive streak that shows up from time to time, has literally killed people, but it is almost universally agreed upon among fans that he's "the good one."

Secondary: Lion (lowkey Snake model, highkey Badger model)

Everyone's secondaries in this show are pretty exaggerated. Mac is a Lion of the loud exploding at situations variety. Charlie is a Lion of the guileless and do-whatever-I-want variety.

"I am who I am." "OK but let's pretend like you're not who you are..."

Basically, Charlie is Charlie. The Gang is constantly frustrated with Charlie being Charlie. Think of Dee complaining in "Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats" that she can't take him anywhere because he insists on stuff like eating spaghetti at the movies and a spa. Or of him being the WILD CARD. His guilelessness endears him to other characters as often as it screws everyone over. And like Mac he also takes the direct approach to situations - think him suddenly kidnapping the critic in "Paddy's Pub: The Worst Bar in Philadelphia," or knocking down the wall in "Risk E. Rat's Pizza and Amusement Center" last season.

The Snake model comes with the territory, he schemes like everyone else does, and he pretends to be various characters to execute the scheme. But it's usually on his own terms - including when people tell him not to do it - often on the fly, and usually something he does because he wants to, for fun. Think the Texas oil tycoon from "Frank's Pretty Woman," crashing everyone's schemes by playing Green Man, anything regarding "bird law"...

The Badger model is the more visible one. When he cares about something he really cares about it being done thoroughly. "Charlie Work" is an entire episode about this.

galaxy brain tier prepwork

You also see this in "Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties" and "The Nightman Cometh" when he gets put in charge of directing shows and bossily micromanages them. There's a correlation between Charlie being put in charge of something and him insisting that everything is done right. In his own... unique fashion.

In conclusion, a Lion theme song.

#sortinghatchats #shc #iasip #Youtube

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unhealthy snake primary (cw: blood)

(if you haven't seen s16 the context here is that charlie's family heirloom is a jar of teeth passed down through generations, charlie asks for it, and his mom... does this)

#honestly the post title speaks for itself #shc #sortinghatchats #iasip #snake primary #Youtube

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sorting the gang: dee reynolds

Previously: Dennis, Mac

Dee is obviously a giant Bird. OK now that we've got that obligatory joke out of the way let's do this for real.

(There aren't very many standalone Dee clips on YouTube so some of these come out of compilations, sorry! Most of those compilations need content warnings.)

Primary: Super burnt Badger (self-centered Snake model), maybe super burnt Snake

I mean it's definitely one of the Loyalists and it's definitely super burnt. (Interesting how both the Reynolds children have burnt primaries and are the only ones who do.) Dee desperately craves others' approval, is totally unable to get anyone's approval, pretends that she doesn't care about others' approval, and in doing so further sabotages her chances at gaining others' approval, usually through doing some egregious shit. That's it, that's her tragedy.

I don't know. It's hard because Dee in a healthy community and Dee with people she loves both seem equally impossible. I want to say double Snake because she definitely acts like one (and if she is burnt Badger then she has the strongest possible Snake model). Dee is in it for herself alone, and honestly she isn't even in it for herself most of the time because her self esteem is just that bad. Her character "growth" (as opposed to growing as a person) involves becoming steadily more and more OK with being loyal to herself alone, no matter how terrible of a person she becomes to do it. Becoming Frank basically.

But Dee also is pretty focused on doing whatever it takes to be accepted as "part of the Gang" or as part of a group of sophisticated ladies or popular high school bullies, or just "part of" in general. (Which she has in common with Charlie and it'd explain why they connected so easily in "The Gang Misses the Boat"... until she sabotaged it by being a terrible person obviously.) She cares about the group in the abstract, not the people in it; if anything, people having their own wishes and doing their own thing is an annoying inconvenience to her. Probably no coincidence that Artemis's roast of her starts with "the outcast."

Either way, there's something kind of telling and also kind of sad that Dee's fantasy from "The Gang Saves the Day" involves getting everybody to praise and admire her, then killing and/or betraying them immediately afterward, and now she's alone:

too soon

Secondary: Snake (occasional Badger model)

This one is pretty obvious I think. Dee's way of dealing with problems is to think fast, lie and manipulate her way out of them, and then when her lying doesn't work, come up with a different lie.

I mean she "succeeds" in getting the therapist to tell her she's good and to not have to do actual therapy

There's an important distinction here between "compulsively lies to get out of situations" and "is good at lying to get out of situations" and most Dee plots exploit how she is bad at it. ("...did it not go through?") Constant string of failure. Every time she says "goddamnit" is like her own personal Pokemon cry for going into neutral.

But honestly? She's not THAT bad at her Snake secondary. She is the only person who ever managed to get out of Dennis's "escape room" (MAJOR CONTENT WARNING on this link for rapey behavior), by finding a way to get out the window. After getting insulted by a pageant kid she wants to ally with in "Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties," she persuades berates the kid's sister to ally with her in less than 1 minute. She legitimately saved her and Dennis's lives in "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore": they've witnessed a murder, the guy who did the murder has them both at gunpoint at the beach ordering them to bury the body, and Dee suddenly throws sand at them so they can both escape. (Also worth noting how totally useless Dennis is during all of this.)

Even her supposedly incompetent-Snake method of berating people and escalating shit and being generally crude gets results... but not good results for her or anyone else. The former is how she does her own version of Dennis-like predator. The latter, well, she improvises this revenge "magic trick" almost immediately, gets even more revenge than she wanted, and desperately tries to talk herself out of everyone else's horrified reactions. Because it gets all the results she could possibly ask for... besides being genuinely liked. (For an even worse version of this revenge plot, there's "PTSDee.")

note: she didn't plan any of this, in fact she got volunteered for the trick

The Badger model is kind of a weird thing but the show keeps dropping these bits of backstory about how Dee worked really hard to win a boxing match, to win pageants, to become a great bowler, etc. And it's always like "she really practiced and did all the things until she got good at it." It seems so out of character except the show keeps mentioning it!

#iasip #it's always sunny in philadelphia #sortinghatchats #shc

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sorting the gang: mac

Previously: Dennis

We started with a non-obvious sorting so now let's move on to one of the easier ones.

PRIMARY: Snake (extremely dysfunctional), Bird model (extremely dysfunctional) (or the other way around?)

OK maybe it isn't THAT easy. Honestly you could go either way on this. I think part of it is that Mac's character gets written really differently depending on the episode/season (and a lot of fans LOVE complaining about this, "omg they ruined Mac's character" etc., despite both sides of his character being there early on)

Mac obviously is pretty attached to his worldview, usually his religion. He builds his entire identity around it and spends a lot of energy trying to work out the contradictions, the biggest example being being gay vs. being Catholic. He is very proud of how he can view the whole world through whatever lens he has glommed onto at any given point.

science is a LIAR sometimes

Idk I had an entire paragraph here about how everything he says in that video is wrong and how malleable these identities actually are for him in practice until I thought maybe that was still what Birds do especially less mature ones so idk. (Full disclosure I don't really "get" Bird primaries so I might not just be good at recognizing them?)

But I think a picture speaks a thousand words, especially when it is a picture that contains a thousand words:

"just like everyone else in the group" lol ok mac

Mac is a Snake whose people don't give a shit about him. His people are his dad, his mom, Dennis, and to a lesser degree Charlie. "The Gang" isn't really a thing for him as a unit, those are the only people he cares about. And he really cares. ("We're like the best friends in the whole goddamn world and goddamn them for making me think otherwise!")

It isn't a good kind of caring. On his end, they are deeply codependent up to the point where he smuggles drugs for his dad because he's his dad, calls the cops on Dennis when he is out of the apartment for an hour, poisons Dennis to try to make him dependent on him... (Can you be Exploded about more than one person?) And obviously on their end all these people either openly hate Mac to an abusive extent or only give a shit insofar as they can use him. And Mac is deeply in denial that this is possible for his people.

like, even just the idea that OBVIOUSLY Luther wants to see this picture of his mom because OBVIOUSLY she's really important to Luther just like Mac is OBVIOUSLY important to him because OBVIOUSLY he would also care as much, that's how relationships OBVIOUSLY work...

And most importantly, the idea that other people in the world have things to offer does not register. It's not on YouTube but there's a legit tragic scene in the last season where Mac meets his uncle Donald. Donald is a family scapegoat for all the same reasons Mac is, and he is lonely and eager to connect. He is the perfect father figure for Mac, who desperately wants a father figure... and Mac doesn't give a shit about him. He sits through all of this with total disinterest. Charlie sits there the entire scene getting increasingly frustrated: "You have everything you've ever dreamed of right here, but we're gonna just blow right past it, aren't we?"

SECONDARY: Lion (Snake model except he is bad at it?)

This is the easy part, I mean like do I even have to explain it? Mac reacts to things. He reacts to things like a bomb does. Or like whatever the most badass and/or powerful action is at the time. ("Mac sees himself as the boss in most situations and the gang constantly complains about his bossiness.")

it like personally offends him that the mafia does things other than be badass at people

There are three common Mac plots. One is that Mac and someone else (usually Charlie) escalate each other into chaos. Two, someone (almost anyone) manipulates him with zero effort. Three, someone (usually Dennis) attempts to do a scheme with him that he derails loudly. Basically Mac is earnest, in a way that only Charlie really matches. I think that's probably part of why they're the two members of the Gang most likely to be interpreted as kinda-maybe-salvageable deep down even when they objectively do just as bad things as everyone else.

This is Sunny so Mac has a baseline ambient level of lying and scheming, i.e. lowkey Snake modeling. Notably he got a double dose of that model from hanging out with the Gang and beforehand from growing up with career criminals as parents. But he's the worst person in the Gang at scheming and it isn't remotely close. Which is not to say that he doesn't try to manipulate people, he just....... fundamentally doesn't get the concept:

"Oh shit... right, don't give away the information." feel like I'm using all my memes on these

Obligatory disclaimer that again this is the most exaggerated and cartoonish and just incredibly dumb version of Lioning so just like if you're a Bird secondary don't be offended about sharing it with a serial predator, don't be offended about sharing Lion with this incredibly dumb individual

#iasip #sortinghatchats #shc #it's always sunny in philadelphia

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Sorting the Gang, Pt. 1: Dennis Reynolds

OK so this is the one I expect to be the least obvious so let's get it out of the way first.

First of all it goes without saying that literally nobody on this show is a healthy or morally sound example of anything, and everyone is also highly exaggerated and generally is going to be the sociopathic version of whatever they are. They almost never help anyone without ulterior motives, themselves included. Everyone on this show is also in a Snakey environment with an codependent, crabs-in-the-bucket influence on one another. Most of them are going to have that model and I think two people in the Gang are double Snakes. Dennis isn't one of those two people though.

Primary: Burned Lion (Snake model)

I think I read somewhere that Patrick Bateman was a burned Lion primary? Same thing with Dennis.

The way I think of it is, every character on the show has their Thing. The thing that defines how they are personally messed up and causes them their angst. Someone like Mac, his unreciprocated relationships with other people and his continually sabotaging them by being himself is a big Thing for him. And Dennis's supposed lack of feelings is a big Thing for him in a way that it just isn't with the rest of the Gang. ("This is crazy -- I'm having feelings again, like a 14-year-old boy. You remember feelings, right?" "...Yeah? I have feelings every single day of my life.") He has some of the other Lion stuff going on, like his being OK with being or feeling separate from others (semi-joke example) if something offends or disgusts him, or his insistence that he is always right with no reasoning besides obviously he is and why would you even dare to question him? But his internal emptiness is his Thing.

It's pretty clear that Dennis doesn't actually have no feelings ("I have big feelings!"), just has zero ability to deal with them besides exploding into a rage or posturing that they don't exist. It causes him a lot of angst, which manages to peek out from the rage from time to time. The "God hole" scene is an example of this assuming you think it's sincere:

(This scene also demonstrates the modeling pretty well, probably Snake given the hedonism and also given that he loves to keep people dependent on him, much like Frank.)

Secondary: Bird (Snake model)

The Snake model here is pretty obvious. Dennis loves scheming and manipulating and charming people and generally gets off on the thrill of wearing another man's skin.

But let's look at how he actually does it. Everyone else in the main cast. is an improvisational secondary Dennis is not. This causes him no end of frustration:

We immediately escalate everything to a 10. It's ridiculous. Somebody comes in with a preposterous plan or idea. Then all of a sudden everyone's on the gas, and nobody's on the brakes, nobody's thinking...

By contrast Dennis thinks of himself as the only smart person around and the quintessential Renaissance man ("The question isn't what do I do -- it's what don't I do?"), with a lot of skills he loves to demonstrate and give literal presentations on. He has a distinct system for seducing women -- and, as of season 16, a separate distinct system for seducing men. He has kept a dossier on every member of the Gang since childhood. He keeps "a bunch of weird tools" in his car for unclear future purposes and carries an onion with him in case he needs to cry, and When Dee shows up with a giant lump on her head before a TV shoot, he offers to help because he knows how to cover up blunt force trauma. (Obviously these are all tools for being sociopathic and/or predatory, which, see the disclaimer above.)

The other part of this is that if even literally a single thing is out of Dennis's control, bad things happen. 90% of Dennis plots involve either someone else in the Gang or circumstances in general screwing up his plan, at which point, within seconds, he becomes untethered LIKE THE CRASHING OF A THOUSAND WAVES. (The fact that he has speeches prepared for all these things...) Or else he is forced into a situation that he can't plan for, in which case he completely falls apart. One of many examples below:

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actor bird secondary

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snake secondary flirting vs. lion secondary flirting

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