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something similar to the books, giving them a sense of belonging and positioning themselves in relation to the fictional world Rowling has created. The Sorting Hat experience and the wearing of merchandise therefore “facilitate immersion, transforming everyday environments by bringing story world items into them, blurring the threshold between worlds. Liminal play is a self-reflective process in which fans draw upon story worlds for self-expression,” enabling fans to explore their own identities and desires to interact with Rowling’s fictional world through affirmational fandom practices (Godwin, par. 1). Affirmational fandom practices are when fans show their appreciation for a text by collecting merchandise, and by displaying or advertising their connection to that fandom by visibly showing their interest in it (e.g. wearing clothing associated with the text). These activities “celebrate the vision of the creator” as it appears on the page, rather than transforming that vision into a new text (Scott, 441). Affirmational fans of Harry Potter are thus able to purchase merchandise associated with their adopted houses through websites such as Etsy, Amazon, and Ebay, or even through physical stores in places such as the U.K. Leavesden Studio Tour or the area in King’s Cross Station in London where the fictitious Platform 9 3/4 would be. These items then act as a kind of interface between the fan and the Harry Potter fandom. For some fans who want to bring elements of Rowling’s story into their own worlds, this is akin to purchasing items with real school or university crests on them, something alumni frequently do to show their connection to their education. YA has followed this trend of sorting and houses, both in fantasy, and in other genres. Prior to the release of Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone, two dystopian novels had followed the trend of sorting and houses made popular by Rowling, albeit in a different guise. Suzanne Collins’ phenomenally successful The Hunger Games (2008) follows Katniss Everdeen, a girl who hunts illegally to feed her family, before she is catapulted into a competition where children from different areas of the country compete against each other in a televised competition to the death. The twelve Districts of Panem, with their various cultures and infrastructures, vaguely serve as ways to divide citizens into categories based on geography and industry. The inclusion of the Hunger Games tournament, where two children are selected at random from each District and forced to compete in a violent survival of the fittest type challenge, forces the people of Panem to cheer for the children of their District and hope that one of those children is the sole survivor of the competition. In some ways, cheering for the children of a District is similar to cheering for a particular house. The key difference is that there is no merchandise based around the different Districts in The Hunger Games. Instead, Scholastic and Lionsgate focused much of the merchandise run on the Mockingjay pin Katniss wears during the tournament, a symbol of the rebellion and the desire to end the violence of the Games. Similarly, the successor to The Hunger Games, Veronica Roth’s Divergent (2009) is based around a fictional society that is influenced by the sorting in Harry Potter.3 In Roth’s world, children coming of age decide which faction they wish to join. Each faction has a different trait they admire, with employment and other aspects of culture based around these traits—bravery, kindness, intelligence, selflessness, and honesty. The release of Divergent, in particular, seems inevitable—a book based on the popularity of personality quizzes like the one for sorting was always likely to be a success. Yet, Divergent attempts to break away from the sense that there is safety in being sorted, and stresses the importance of agency. Roth’s novel, Basu contends, “appears to be positioned as a warning against the seductive pleasures of being categorized and classified: the truly admirable people in the story are ‘Divergent’ and possess multiple virtues” making it near impossible to place them into a single faction (20). While it is true that Divergent can be read as a warning against the pleasures of sorting, it should be noted that the concept of the series is still heavily influenced by online personality quizzes and the Sorting Ceremony in particular. Additionally, while Roth’s novel attempts to stress the value of choice, it is worth noting that the majority of fan-made and official merchandise for the movie adaptation is based around the different factions, implying that fans should be able to choose a faction, but that they still consider themselves part of that