Harry Potter and the Region-Specific Person Of Intellect's Stone turns 20 today, and that--combined with Facebook's little festivities regarding the series--means everyone is talking about [possessive pronoun of choice] favorite house.

Just to get it out of the way--Gryffindor. Moving on.

But damn near everyone I know is gushing about Slytherin. Slytherin. Let's count all of the truly good people from Slytherin:

Oh, right. There aren't any. Rowling impressed me probably most in her ability to escape traps she wrote herself into (getting anyone to deeply care about the events of a school called "Hogwarts" is Nobel-worthy in and of itself), but it's pretty clear she never really could escape the Slytherin = awful person equation that's established as soon as Harry meets Draco.

Let's put aside virtually every British dark wizard of renown who emerged from Slytherin (i.e. all of them) and focus on the best Slytherin has to offer.

We have Draco Malfoy, who manages to emblify perhaps every negative stereotype associated with wealth, and whose sole allegedly redeeming quality consists of the fact that he is not completely solid with regard to his alliance with a wizard whose goal has openly been genocide and subjugation.

We have Severus Snape, a racist-equivalent for whom we are supposed to feel sorry on the grounds that he called the woman he allegedly loved a slur and then subjected her child to years of absurd hatred because he looked like her (not that Harry wasn't a completely obnoxious little shit for most of the series, but Snape's hatred for him starts at first sight).

And we have Horace Slughorn, who is possibly the only Slytherin of import to meet, much less exceed the "minimum standards of decent human being" qualification. Yes, he's terrified of Voldemort, and yes, he's a bit self-centered, and yes, he really only cares about people who are famous so that he can expand his circle of influence, and yes, he treats people as a means to an end...

...and he's still far and away the least terrible Slytherin figure we have.

So with all that in mind, why are people so fond of advertising their fondness for Slytherin? There are better ways to let people know you're a sociopath who will stop at nothing to advance yourself, no matter who you have to cast aside to get there. My money is on either a contrarian attempt at looking interesting and different or an attempt at hanging the lampshade on serious character flaws.

Rant over. Feel free to discuss how you're wrong in disagreeing with me that Gryffindor is the best.