ISTP 9w8 Characters
Dominant Introverted Thinking – striving to understand how things work to hack existing systems: Astrid has lived with her mother all her life, and still does not believe in the existence of ghosts, because that’s an irrational conclusion to reach and there’s no evidence to support it. She has never seen one, so she does not believe in them and thinks her mother is delusional. When she has a small amount of hope that she might be able to communicate with her father after his death, and Lydia says she hasn’t been able to contact him, Astrid takes that as further evidence that her mother is a “fraud.” She is also frank in assessing situations and putting others in their place with logical conclusions, but rational in her own; after she breaks someone’s fence by crashing her bike through it, she offers to have her mom pay for it. Once in the Netherworld, Astrid is able to change her mind about ghosts and find ways to hack the system and get them both out of trouble (using the sand snake to save their lives in the church and prevent a marriage her mother does not want). One of her logical remarks is to say that someone being dead will be good for their wealth, since you earn more money when you’re dead.
Auxiliary Extroverted Sensing – acting on what exists by living in the moment and hands-on learning: Astrid states that she believes in what she can see, and doesn’t think anything exists outside of it, in sharp contrast to her mother’s whimsical Ne. So, she thinks her mother’s show and wu-wu stuff is all a giant farce and a fraud, and that her boyfriend is a poser loser. Because she doesn’t believe in ghosts, she can’t see them until her accident. When she’s upset, she storms off and gets on her bike and goes for a ride, greatly enjoying her coast through town and seeing all the people and color around her. Once she enters the Netherworld, she eagerly adapts to it and becomes more in sync with what’s going on around her. Astrid doesn’t seem particularly horrified by seeing all the undead people and their plight, including her own father with piranhas still stuck to his face. She saves them at the wedding with a split second decision based on what she knows is available through the book of the undead.
Tertiary Introverted Intuition – specific insights and premonitions, and a singular state of mind: Astrid has a blunt assessment of the people who bully her at school; she’ll have the last laugh when they’re all miserable and middle-aged and having affairs to fill the void in their life. She never doubts that ghosts don’t exist except when her emotions get involved (Fe); the rest of the time, she is firm in her wrongful belief that her mother is lying about seeing ghosts, that Beetlejuice never existed and it’s stupid to be paranoid about saying his name. But Astrid also wants a sense of closure and to understand what happened to her dad and to know that he’s “okay” in the afterlife; without this bigger picture, she can’t seem to move on. She also “knows” that her mom’s boyfriend is a loser, even if she can’t quite pinpoint just what he’s up to (and when he turns out to be a jerk, she “knew it”).
Inferior Extroverted Feeling – an awkwardness around emotions and little desire to meet others’ expectations: Astrid becomes emotional under stress and blows up a couple of times when she doesn’t feel that her mother is giving her dad’s death the emotional weight it deserves; she accuses Lydia of changing the subject rather than wanting to talk about him being missing and presumed dead. She has to learn how to become more mindful of others’ feelings and it takes her a long time to open up to her mother, accumulating in their scene together in the church and their renewed friendship as the story ends. Astrid doesn’t know what’s appropriate on an emotional level, so she is easily manipulated by someone who picks up on her desire to be reunited with her dad and uses it for his own ends.
Enneagram: 9w8
Enneagram 9 – desires freedom from others’ influences, by going along with them and being tolerant, until it matters not to: Astrid does not like her mother’s boyfriend but doesn’t cause any trouble about it or directly confront him; when he offends her by proposing to Lydia at her grandfather’s wake, rather than cause a scene, she gets on her bike and leaves to find some peace. She also avoids her problems rather than face them; because she’s mad at her mom, she does not answer her cell and gives her the silent treatment until her grandmother screams in the parking lot that Grandpa is dead, so get down here and talk to your mother! Astrid is emotionally even-keeled and doesn’t get upset easily, but she is also trusting of others and their motivations. Jeremy inspires hope in her that she can get back her father, and she naively assumes he is telling the truth and reads from the book of the dead without wondering what his ulterior motives might be. She has a lot of repressed anger toward her mother that leaks out once in a while, when she’s in an emotional state.
8 wing brings in a tendency to assert oneself with strong but infrequent bouts of anger: Astrid keeps her temper in check most of the time, but then lets it out in brief, intense bursts, where she yells about her mother changing the subject whenever she wants to talk about her dad. She has a lot of savage comebacks for the kids who bully her at school, but doesn’t use violence against them so much as knock their future (a power play). She isn’t afraid to turn on those who try to manipulate her, and enjoys seeing them taken down a peg or even eaten by the sand worm (when her mom’s fiancé departs from this life in a rather savage fashion, she smiles happily).
