ISTP 8w9 Characters

ISTP men are “men of thought, action, and not many words,” which is true of Riddick. He thinks his way through situations as they are unfolding by reacting to them in real time and figuring out what action he can take to make them go his way. And being emotionally present is not one of his skills—like many inferior Fe users, he remains detached from bad situations, doesn’t get emotionally entangled in them, and is unaware much of the time of how his actions impact other people. It doesn’t occur to him through the course of the first film that the girl, Jack, has formed an attachment to him, so it surprises him to learn that she felt betrayed by his “abandonment… when she needed him the most” in the second film. He never saw her as an extension of himself. Nor does he feel much of a need to join a cause just because it needs him; he needs to get caught up in it first, and be hunted, to consider it worth his time. Riddick improvises physically using his environment, and embraces the moment – he becomes one with the darkness, he snips off a piece of Rye’s hair to prove how close he came to killing her, he attacks Lord Marshal’s army and wins, then defeats him in battle, he risks going into the darkness to lead them to safety, etc. He also sees through people’s disguises to who they are—knowing that “Jack” is not a boy, but a girl who has shaved her head to survive. Riddick may be emotionally repressed, but he does have a sense of morality that the other villains lack—he won’t kill Jack and drag their body behind them through the dark just to save himself, unlike how Johns wants to escape.

Enneagram: 8w9

A tough-talking man of few words, Riddick makes it plan that he looks out only for himself when he first meets anyone, and then calmly handles situations through force, aggression, and asserting himself as an alpha male – including taming one creature in prison merely by staring it down, challenging it, and making it his pet, because it recognizes his superiority. He reacts instantly to bad scenarios, and it doesn’t occur to him, initially, that he is responsible for other people and their needs, although he does feel bad about abandoning Jack in pursuit of his own agenda, and sets out to find and protect her in the prison. When they meet up again, she confronts him about being a liar and he manhandles her to prove a point. Even though anger drives him, it’s often subdued and reduced to a power dynamic, which 8s use to give them strength, but his 9 wing ignores whatever it doesn’t want to address.