Zombies Ruin Everything

A great representation of the INTJ who’s real master plan you never saw coming until it was too late, Severus Snape’s backstory has got to be the saddest in all of Harry Potter lore.

We’ll be going over some aspects to the INTJ they don’t like to talk about until you pretend they don’t understand that side of humanity. What am I talking about? You’ll see.

The biggest jerk in school, Snape was clearly the villain at Hogwarts, pulling all the strings from behind the scenes, making sure that if this giant monster living under the school didn’t kill the little four-eyed twerp, the next thing would.

Hammy done messed up now

Except of course, he wasn’t the villain. And was he even a hero?

Yes and no. Snape is a hero in the way nobody saw coming. Like something in your life you’re probably not even aware of because a billion things are happening in our lives we’ll just never find out about. Similar to all the car wrecks you might have just missed without ever even realizing it. But at the same time, Severus was the dude getting picked on by the heroes. And then he has to teach the heroes’ kids and have them smart off to him, the entire time knowing that this kid is bound to do great things. And the Professor in question? Well, there’s only one end for him.

And it doesn’t seem heroic.

The INTJ can be the same way. As mentioned before in the Heroes post, there aren’t a lot of good guy INTJs in fiction and the few there are often seem like villains themselves. Snape might be the best example of this due to the fact that everyone thought he was the villain. This isn’t coincidence obviously as Snape had set himself up to look that way for an overall goal of saving the school. But the INTJ lot in life may have them playing a similar role.

The fictional versions of INTJs will usually be villains cackling in a dark room at the ingeniousness of their evil plan but the hero INTJs of fiction will…still be in a dark room thinking about their plan. The difference with the hero, aside from the obvious, is that their heinous past will be weighing down on their shoulders in a way that makes them sadder than most.

When it’s your turn to bring coffee to the -NTJ meeting.

Real-life INTJs may appear in these two categories as well. While people online would have us believe INTJs are just as cold and ruthless as their fictional counterparts, there are plenty of proclaimed INTJs that don’t mind spilling their guts about the overall weirdness of their life and how difficult it can be to fit into a world that values certain traits over others. Traits that don’t come natural to the INTJ and in fact, feel like they run opposite the INTJ programming; charismatic directness, friendliness, and the general persona of acceptance that appear easier for an ESTP or ENFJ type.

Snape plays this role in the story well. While for the first few books and movies, he’s thought to be the bad guy that either just eludes conviction or any actual involvement, he’s eventually shown to be not only have been protecting the hero the entire time, but to have even known Harry’s dad and have been bullied by him.

But this shouldn’t only imply that Snape is completely innocent and only pretends to be a villain while daydreaming of his doe Patronus. On the contrary, Snape was not only a member of House Slytherin, the villains’ resident domicile but he became a Death Eater and was apparently one of, if not the, most capable. This is similar to the INTJ way of doing things in that they not only tend to shy away from the spotlight, they’re not very reserved in their reasoning why. Upon asking an INTJ a question about why they’re not comfortable with one thing or another, a generic, unfriendly response, with a cold tone will be delivered.

Something like, “I just don’t want to.”

You don’t get a super cool Death Eater mask if you’re not a little bad.

Should you proceed to get a more in-depth answer, you’ll be met with defensive reasoning rather than a short explanation. Why? INTJs want to cut to the answer and to do anything past that seems wasteful to them. Like Snape, INTJs see any outward expression, even if just in the tone of their voice, as being a sign of weakness and one they feel they’re exposing  if they take part.

So while it can be difficult to understand them, just let them be them, allowing whatever happens naturally to occur. They might leave you alone, you might become friends. Point is, you can’t force anything with a type that is as unsure about being a part of society as you are about them.

But to use Snape as an example, his general attitude wasn’t doing him any favors either and reflecting real behavior displayed by many INTJs that make it that much more difficult for the ones that want to progress in relationships.

This entry was posted on 06/23/2016 at 12:30 pm and is filed under MBTI Rationals, MBTI Stuff with tags Harry Potter, intj, mbti in fiction, Severus Snape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.