Who Let the Snitch Loose In My Room?!
The Introduction
1. What is your name, and what do you prefer to be called?
Aldiarde, and that's fine, but I also answer to Al, Di-De (pronounced DEE-Dye), anything but Aldi, that's a grocery market.
2. How old are you?
I turned 21 last Saturday!
3. How did you come across our community? (If you were referred by a member, please mention them so we can give them credit!)
I wasn't pointed here by anyone specifically. I just heard about y'all through some members who also hogwartsishome members where I've already been sorted into a house.
The Canon
4. Choose a character not from Harry Potter (ie: from Lord of the Rings, House, etc) and explain what house (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin) you think they would have been in and why.
I wrote this answer last because I couldn't decide whom to analyze. Finally, I decided just to fall back on my favourite fictional character, Howard Roark from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. To begin with, he's one of the few characters that I've ever really liked and identified with, and secondly, he's an easy sort. He is, without a doubt, a SlytherClaw. He lives to work, and his work is flawless. He remains true to his work and the work of like-minded people despite literally the entire professional world telling him he's crazy and never going to work. He competes with everyone, and everything and takes both loss and reward in due time, amount, and stride. He's brilliant and won't hide that, though he rarely flaunts it, and doesn't care that when he does flaunt it, it further labels him as rebellious, eccentric, arrogant, and a lunatic.
5. What character do you most relate to?
I know that this is a little cliché but, up until the seventh book (can I discuss DH characterization?), I related most Hermione. I've always been near to, if not the top, of my class. I colour-code notes, and draw up study schedules from day one, and have to restrain myself from reading textbooks as soon as I buy them. However, I'm quiet in class. I prefer to be allowed to simply take my notes, ask a question if I've one and move on from there. I nearly never volunteer an answer or beg to be called upon. (This has never prevented my teachers and professors from calling on me whenever they please though - particularly if it appears that no one else knows the answer they're looking for). I always wondered about the rest of Hermione though. What I mean to say is that while I can completely identify with all the studiousness and obsession with academics, there's more to me that I don't see in Hermione; that I didn't see in any of the characters, until DH. So, I don't know if this is necessary but beware: here there is DH characterization discussion! I said that I related most to Hermione until DH, at which point we went our separate ways. I understand the whole going on a quest to prevent the end of the world thing, but I'm not weepy, and probably would have thrown Ron out of the tent rather than cried over his leaving. I was delighted to finally, really meet Luna though. I am creative in the same way that Luna is. It sounds crazy but I've painted the walls in strange murals too, and am eccentric in my appearance. Additionally, there's an aspect of Luna that I 100% adore: she looks for knowledge everywhere, not just Dumbledore like Harry or the library like Hermione, everywhere. I'm convinced she'd have seen the connections to the Deathly Hallows long before the Golden Trio did.
6. Choose one aspect of the story as told by Rowling that you dislike, and tell us how you would change it. (Please avoid the subjects of romance and shipping.)
My main pet peeve about Rowling's Wizarding World is that it stagnated at the point of romanticized magic. I understand that it's more fun to discuss robes, quills, and parchment, and that owls and castles are more entertaining than email and the latest architecture, but I can't help thinking that the Wizarding World ought to be a little farther along into this millennium. Seriously, what 'Claw doesn't want a computer that can spit out an essay six feet long in half the time it takes to write it out on the parchment? I also find it a little hard to believe that while newspapers, and radios made it into the Wizarding World, telephones and televisions didn't. That said, I would not have made them common place, these Muggle technological advances, but something said about how they used to use phones now and then, when owls couldn't fly through the snow, or when contacting Muggle relatives, or even that the Ministry used television to keep an eye to the Muggle Ministry would have satisfied me, and, of course, with the rise of the Dark Lord many of these things could have fallen into disuse, and the lack of technology explained away. Not to stereotype here (but the Asian continent out-strips the rest of us by far here), so, are you really telling me that the Asian witches and wizards didn't have the coolest technological-and-magically-enhanced gadgets available?
The Person
7. If you could put a memory in a pensieve for the specific purpose of viewing it later, what would it be and why?
This is going to be a strange answer, so stick with me, please.
When I was six or seven, my younger brother was admitted to the hospital for the third or fourth consecutive autumn. My parents were inside his room crying because this time he had been put in an oxygen tent. I was outside the room crying because....
"Why am I crying?"
"Because Jacob's sick."
"But that's a reason for him to cry. I feel fine."
"But he's hurting."
"So is the kid in the bed next to his and that isn't making me cry."
"So, I'm crying because I can about Jake, and that makes me feel sad."
"So, if I can stop caring then I'll stop feeling sad, and stop crying."
I kid you not, that was my train of thought. Here's why I want to view this memory: I can't figure out why I learned detachment and dissociation in this moment instead of compassion. Was it just that I've always been more logical than emotional? Would it have been different if he hadn't had a roommate that day? Much of the way I still think and cope came from this experience and related ones, and yet, I can't help wondering if all of that would have been different if one of the factors changed.
8. What are three traits that define you? How has each trait had positive impact and negative impact on your life?
1. Analytic: My impulse is analysis rather than sympathy. I can take apart a situation and see more shades of grey in a black and white discussion than anyone else in the room. On one hand, it makes problem solving, troubleshooting, and school quite easy. I was that kid that could get into any locked room, finish homework on the bus ride home, and talk her way out of (or into) anything. On the other hand, it makes relating to more emotional people insanely difficult. I can read people. I know what's making you cry, but I can't relate and be sympathetic. In fact, I'm probably going to tell you to suck it up and move on, there's nothing to be gained by crying but catharsis, and that's an illusion anyway. This, as you may well imagine, doesn't usually go over well with my overly emotional housemates.
This trait is also the basis for my biggest pet peeve in life, but you'll read about that later, so I won't go into it here.
2. Creative: I do all things art, not equally well of course, but all things art nonetheless. Here it's harder to distinguish positive impact from negative as it is often contingent on the context. For example, I tend to take notes half in words, and half in (quickly hand-drawn)images. In fact, when studying the theology of worship, I developed a pictorial study guide for the final exam. Eventually, I was drawing it on everything. It wouldn't go away. It grew and changed and became more complex...and now it is the 5 by 7 inch tattoo across my back. Usually, this is fine. I can study from my crazy notes; I know what all the colours and different types of drawings and lettering styles convey about whatever it is I'm learning. Then comes a comprehensive project. Everyone else can sit down, write a paper or an exam and call it good. I, on the other hand, feel that a paper or an exam fails to do the interconnection of ideas and concepts justice and what something that unfolds a concept instead of outlines it. This usually results in one of two things, a) a paper that the professor is pleased with but I am never satisfied with and have probably re-written at least a dozen times, or b) something like a blog, with links to definitions or other parts of the blog that relate to a topic but wouldn't fit at that point in an outline, or in some kind of multimedia art piece that has an artist statement/explanation as long as any of my classmates' final papers. Of course, all that assumes that I can talk a professor into letting me do something that kooky rather than write a final paper.
3. Seeker: Not a quidditch seeker, obviously, but a seeker in everything else. I'm an experience junkie, an information addict, and a spiritual person on just about every level a person can be any of those things. I learn all sorts of things, and have some crazy stories, and plan to gain more, and am certainly not afraid of trying anything new, but I do get wrapped up in research all the time, often to the detriment of whatever it was I was initially supposed to be researching or doing (like eating, sleeping, cleaning, paying bills). I'll get distracted by some little thing and suddenly I know all there is to know about recipes for red ink in the ancient world, when what I was supposed to be studying was ancient pottery. The problem is that I don't know how a person can be detail-oriented to the expense of the big picture, or a big picture person to the expense of the details. The details make up the big picture, and make no sense standing alone without it as context! So how do you separate them?! This is why i end up lost in tangents. On the other hand, once I become convinced of something, chances are I'm correct since I researched every related tangent and have a well-informed opinion. Sadly though, here is another downside to this trait: competitiveness. Because I work so hard to accumulate knowledge or whatever it is I'm focusing on, I'm usually pretty determined to win, or be the top of the class, or whatever the equivalent is for a given situation.
9. What is one specific thing that you have never done but strongly wish to do sometime in your life?
I would love to live on the road. Not be homeless per se, but work for a travelling circus, or even drive long haul trucks or something, just for the sake for living transience. I think there's something about living in travel that forces you into living in the moment. It drops things into context in a way that living in a routine can accomplish, but takes much more effort to accomplish. (For anyone that understands tarot, living travel = hanging upside down from the tree). It allows you to see the extraordinary in the mundane.
The World
10. What is your biggest pet peeve and why?
My biggest pet peeve is people in general. I'm no fan of the masses, or democracy for that matter. Why should the apathetic and uneducated get a vote? (Any minute now Homeland Security will come drag me away for that statement). The crux of it is this: people what everything for nothing. They assume that the government will take care of them if they don't work, they assume that professors are cruel and unfair if they, the students, sleep through class and are then failed. The one I hate the most is the one my cousin pulls most often: "I'll respect people only if they respect me!" What is there to respect? He was arrested three times before graduating from high school, has a minimum wage job, and has only recently stopped using drugs on a regular basis, yet until the world treats him "with the respect [he] deserves" he's not going to give anyone else any respect. He's just my example this sense of entitlement with no effort is everywhere, and it drives me crazy.
This pet peeve is followed closely by poor language skills: poor grammar, incorrect spellings and punctuation, etc. Presentation is everything, and if you're working in your first language you should do it well.
11. Describe the people you admire most. What do they have in common with each other? How are they different?
I tend, as I've said, to dislike people, so admiration is rare. However, I can explain a type of person that I admire. I'm a fan of the renaissance man, meaning, men like Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin, that studied everything, and worked to master everything they studied so that they could live as well (competently, and efficiently) as they possibly could. I should mention that this is not admiration for men/people that build themselves lives from nothing. I think most people are capable of overcoming great hardships but are simply to lazy to bother trying, after all whining is so much easier.
12. How do you think people see you? Does the person you show to the public differ from the person you are on the inside? Explain. This one differs for real life and internet perception. In real life, I don't talk much unless truly irate or completely comfortable. So I'm often judged as arrogant, 'too-smart' (whatever that means), and harsh (all of which are, to some degree, true). However, people who know me well will tell you that I'm no hypocrite, I try to live up to the kind of person I wish everyone else was. I don't whine about what's not given to me, I'm diligent in my work, faithful to my church, and loyal to the friends I make. So, even though I align myself with few institutions and people, once I do so, it's nearly set in stone, and though I'm competitive I'm only cutthroat about it once and a while.
Now, on the internet, particularly in a setting like this, I'm a little more relaxed. People, noise, and drama stress me out. However, on the web, interaction is written rather than shouted over a noisy college campus, and the internet population in communities like these tends to intelligent enough that they don't judge me as too obscure to be understood, so in this kind of community I'm still a little snarky 'cause that's just the way that I am, but I'm much more friendly and playful than I am in person.
The Community
13. Which hybrid house do you believe you are the most like? Make a case for and a case against your placement there.
SlytherClaw seems the obvious choice to me. I'm all about learning, but there's a touch of arrogance in my "Either learn or leave" attitude and my obvious academic snobbery and ambition that implies I've combined the Slytherin ambition, and pride with Ravenclaw studiousness, and thirst for knowledge. There's also nothing I love more than a witty and slightly sarcastic word game or riddle, and it seems that this too belongs in the Slytherclaw house. I want to be where there are people of the same calibre, and I'm open about that. If that makes me a snob, so be it. I believe people should be judged on their merit not their effort, and if there's anyone like-minded to that I imagine it's the Slytherclaws.
On the flipside of that coin, I'm intensely loyal to people once they've become a friend and perhaps a hardcore Slytherclaw would sooner be more self-centred. I'm also a little "dreamy". I get lost in my own thoughts in a way that seems to be unfocused on any particular goal and though I am goal-oriented sometimes it's difficult to discern that about me and I imagine that the Slytherclaws are a more goal-oriented group than that.
14. Which hybrid house do you believe you are the least like? Make a case for and a case against your placement there.
I am probably least of all a Gryffinpuff. I'm not a nihilistic nay-sayer, but I'm no optimist either, and while I'm difficult to frighten, I'm equally difficult to motivate and move to action, particularly if I've no personal inclination toward whatever it is you're trying to convince me of. I'm also not particularly chivalrous or noble. I'll help those that honestly can't defend themselves or are being trying unfairly, but most often people can and should learn to fend for themselves.
The flipside of this coin, is my loyalty yet again. Once you're in, you're in pretty much for life. (There are very few ways to get cut out of my good graces once you're in, but they're there). I'm also willing to go to great lengths for these people, and unwilling to let them be slandered. The same goes for things like my church. Now, that I've finally become part of a specific church, I'll defend it. It's flawed as they all are, and I'll acknowledge it, but I'll pounce on slanderous generalizations, and that seems a little Gryffindor if anything does.