sorting hat Sorting the Arrowverse (Joe West)
Note: I use the sortinghatchats system - +here’s (M to be safe) a link to their ‘basics’ post. To briefly summarize, though, they sort everyone on two different (and equally important) aspects of their personality: the first (your “primary” house) is why you do things, where the second (your “secondary” house) is how you do things.
Today, I'm tackling Joe West from the Arrowverse.
Primary (the “why”)
Joe West is a very strong Slytherin primary:
Slytherin Primaries prioritize individual loyalties and find their moral core in protecting and caring for the people they are closest to. They often construct a morality system to deal with situations that are not addressed by their loyalty system.
Joe has dedicated his life to the police force, and he talks a good game about the law… but when it comes down to it, his moral code is perfectly encapsulated in what he says in season three: "I’ve taken two oaths in my life. One is to uphold the law, and the other to protect my family. Guess which one takes priority."
It’s not the only time he says something like that, either. When Earth-2 Harrison Wells shows up in S2, Joe gives Iris a gun and says, “I’m praying that Barry’s right and this Wells means us no harm, but… you can’t murder somebody that everybody thinks is dead, right?” There’s some benevolent sexism at the heart of Joe’s treatment of Iris that makes him particularly overprotective of her, but the same tendency to put on blinders and protect is true across the board. His morality revolves around his family. There is no right or wrong when Iris, Barry, or Wally is involved. There’s just Iris, Barry, and Wally. (I think that's probably true of Cecile as well, but we've seen a bit less of it.)
He will lie to them and everyone else if he deems it necessary, shield them from even consequences that they probably should face, and use others for exactly as long as is necessary to keep them safe. It's not that he doesn't care about other people - he does! - but when it came down to it, even Eddie was a tool to keep Iris away from metahumans first and his partner second. He stopped objecting to the Arrow's kill-happy past when it was clear that the Arrow could help Barry.
When his family isn't in danger, Joe reverts back to a more standard cop moral structure, but it's just a model.
Secondary (the “how”)
Joe is a Slytherin secondary, too:
Slytherin Secondaries improvise. They are the most reactive secondary, finding their strength in responding quickly to whatever a situation throws at them. They improvise differently than the Gryffindor Secondary, far more likely to try coming at situations from different angles than to try strong-arming them.
He routinely breaks the rules and manipulates the people around him in ways that they’re not necessarily comfortable with to ensure that his family is kept safe, no matter what, and we never really see him express guilt or remorse over it. His focus on their safety sometimes leads to conflict with all three of his children, but Joe doesn’t care - if he feels that what he’s doing will keep them safer, he’ll continue to do that at any cost.
Sometimes that means keeping Iris’s mother away from her, or covering for Barry at work when he’s tardy (pre-Flash). Sometimes that means pressuring Iris, Barry, and Wally to stay away from superhero-ing, or the broader group to keep his kids out of it. Sometimes it means working with a man he distrusts, shrugging off the team’s incarcerating people without a fair trial, or letting a mass murderer go free in exchange for information. Joe doesn’t care: he’ll use any means he has at his disposal to keep them safe.
Summary: Joe is a Slytherin primary and Slytherin secondary. How he ended up with three Gryffindor primary/Gryffindor secondary kids, two of whom he actually raised, I really don’t know.
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