Jess Mariano MBTI Personality Type
Personality
What personality type is Jess Mariano? Jess Mariano is an ISTP personality type in MBTI, 4w5 - sx/sp - 458 in Enneagram, RLUEI in Big 5, ESI in Socionics.
[1/3] I know Jess is alternative and clearly Going Through Some Stuff, but teen angst doth not an Fi dom make. As your friendly neighborhood ISTP Jess truther, I wanted to state my case for why I think it’s a much better fit for him. Jess is a difficult character to type because the writing leaves a lot of room for interpretation when it comes to his motivations. I think that’s the point. His ambiguous motives are part of his characterization; he’s introduced as the mysterious new boy, ooh la la, and it’s enticing until it isn’t. Narratively, this is smart, but it’s also where typing gets tricky. He almost never explains his reasoning for anything, leaving the rest of the cast and therefore the audience to fill in the blanks—this is also why people tend to either love or hate him. My general philosophy when it comes to other characters’ opinions on the one I’m trying to type is press X to doubt, but especially so with Gilmore Girls because there are many, many instances of what’s said about a character not matching up with what they actually say and do. Jess is no exception to this, but again, I think that was intentional on the writers’ part. That being said, he does have canonical motivations, and I think typing him ultimately comes down to pinpointing what those are. I won’t go into detail why I think he’s an ISTP > INTP because character limits, and others have already explained it well if you dig through the ISFP/INFP discourse from 2020. However, many of the arguments for IxFP hinge on his “obvious” Fi without providing examples of specific instances in which Jess used Fi. I can see where some people are getting an ISFP vibe, but it doesn’t seem to go much deeper than that. Dominant Fi isn't about having emotions or judging everyone or being one minor inconvenience away from a monologue about phonies. Sure, Jess does all of those things, but is he really seeking consistency with his subjective, emotionally-based values above all else? Lane is a better example of an Fi dom in action: she actively tries to cultivate her own identity separate from her mother’s expectations and wants everything she does to be in harmony with her personal values. Her first reaction in any situation is to evaluate where she’s at emotionally and her personal feelings are a significant influence on her life. Where do we see anything similar to this in Jess? Where does he show a focus on forming and following his own value system, and using that as his primary method of making decisions? Jess trusts his own judgment and rationale (more on that later); his own feelings, not so much. He doesn’t rely on them as a point of reference the way a high Fi user would. Almost every time something goes wrong in his life, he tries to avoid his emotions through Se (and occasionally Fe), often until the situation is way worse than it ever had to be; you can see this pattern in 2x05, 2x10, 2x19, early season three, the 3x19–3x22 debacle, 4x12, 4x13, and 4x20. Fi doms don’t usually have this issue because they implicitly trust their subjective feelings, as we see with Lane or even Lorelai (Fi aux). This doesn’t seem to be the case for Jess. Whenever he’s in a new or unexpected situation (2x05, 2x10, 2x16, 2x21, 3x02, 3x09, 3x14, 3x15, 3x21), his first line of defense is to attempt to logically analyze it; for example, when Rory invites Paris to stay for dinner in 2x16, the first thing he does is ask Rory why she thinks they need a chaperone. Another example is his conversation with Paris in the same episode. She’s much quicker to make value judgements on the Beats than he is because Te-Fi tends to be comfortable with absolutes. Jess challenges every absolute statement she makes in that scene. Granted, it’s not a very insightful literary debate because that would make for boring television, but I do think it’s a good example of Te vs Ti. He processes new information mainly through how it fits with what he already knows rather than how it fits with his values, of which he doesn’t actually seem to have a whole lot of. Throughout the series, the main things he gets upset about aren’t related to his own convictions about what’s right (Fi), but objective standards that he doesn’t see the logic in (Ti). Also, “right” for him tends to start and end with whatever sits well with his majorly unbalanced Ti-Fe. Unhealthy dominant Fi is normal Fi dialled up to eleven, which results in a person being unable to see past their own feelings and values. Yes, Jess’s reasoning is often overly subjective, but I don’t think he shows even a baseline level of Fi in his decisions. It’s just that on a surface level, his Ti comes off as Fi sometimes because his personal logic is so flawed. Most of his issues can actually be attributed to unhealthy Ti, and his arc makes a lot more sense in that context because it’s practically a case study in inferior Fe development. (Continued in replies.)
Biography
Luke's nephew who gets sent to live with him after getting into trouble one too many times back home.
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