Hi kaz! I was reading your first post right now and I was stumbling over your last paragraph. What exactly do you think is the double badger reputation? Do you agree with it? Do you accept it for yourself? Because I am still struggling with the double snake reputation, wanting to be like that and also not. How is it for you?
Haha, we probably have the exact opposite problem with reputation XD
I think of the double Badger reputation as sort of... staid, boring, the secondary character who's only there to emotionally support the hero (or, in certain stories, be fridged). Both Badger primary and secondary have a good reputation culturally but they're not seen as flashy, not interesting, not protagonist or villain material. This... does bug me a bit because I'm more than, like, a cake-bringing mom friend? But to some extent I'm OK with it; Badger secondary especially does involve a certain amount of fading into the background and just Being There and trying to become quietly indispensible without people realising, and Badger primary means your primary isn't generally pushing you to make waves either. So I'm fine with being relatively unobtrusive, it's just sad when my character type always shows up as incredibly flat in fiction, if that makes sense.
Thinking about it, the reputation that actually bugs me more is the "Double Badger superpower!" one. One of the things I really like about the SHC system is that the Secondary is about what you prefer, what comes most naturally to you, the tool that feels best in your hand, and not what you're best at. So, y'know, you can be a Lion with social anxiety who struggles to open their mouth or a scatter-brained Bird who can't manage to collect much or a Snake who's socially awkward and prone to freezing up and never going to be a silver-tongued charmer... or a Badger with executive dysfunction. But people sometimes describe Double Badgers as, like, amazingly hard-working and on top of everything and capable of incredible feats through their sheer perseverance, and although I'd love to say that's me it's... really not! I get that it's meant as a compliment, but it was one of the reasons I dismissed Badger secondary as a possibility for quite some time, because I couldn't see myself in those descriptions.
