amanuensis1 | Who needs filters? I have my magazine!

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Who needs filters? I have my magazine!

So I'm reading my friendslist and my own personal spoiler shield is this: I have a magazine in one hand and I'm holding it over the left side of the page as I scroll, allowing the username and pic on each post to be visible on the right. And if I trust the user (and think they're likely to have something interesting to say), then I pull back the magazine and look at the entry. My high-tech is pastede on yay.

Now I'm starting to see things about spoiler spamming to communities. Users like

ixchelmala have given us a method to filter out all communities by adding "/?show=p" at the end of your friendslist url (It looks like this: " www.livejournal.com/username/friends/?show=p " ), but I think I'll just call a halt on running my friendslist for now. I'll catch up all the way back on Saturday night or Sunday morning, but I already have 87 open browser windows on which I could catch up and should--eight parts of

cluegirl's Umbra Nihil,

fabularasa's SG:A ficlet,

glockgal's gorgeous interest meme art. Gawd, I haven't even looked at anything on Big Bang, Baby. I'm really behind. (As usual.) So, if anyone wants my attention to something, email or leave a comment.

Oh! I haven't even thought about what I'm going to wear to the release. Probably nothing special. Hmm. Well, I could re-think that. If you see a female at your bookstore dressed in a long blue gown and blue-and-bronze striped socks, masquerading as Rowena Ravenclaw, that might be me. ^_^

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So -- because me and someone else were debating it -- you see yourself as a Ravenclaw then?

I do. I think of myself as book- and knowledge- oriented rather than people-oriented, and a bit of a loner for that, and more interested in gaining knowledge and experience for the sake of having gained it, rather than putting it to use--and to me that's Ravenclaw.

This is not what the sorting people at

hogwarts_elite decided for me, however! ^_^

You know, you never did tell me how that worked out. Last I knew, you were sweating it a bit because you hadn't heard anything on your application.

Or... shouldn't I ask?

And, by the way, I totally mis-sorted you.
I suck.

Oh, that's right, I WAS wibbling about that one to you! No you can ask--they said I was Hufflepuff liek whoa. I mean, everybody. I think there were 80 votes and all but two said, "Totally Hufflepuff." Which pleased me just fine! Many in that community say that the quintessential Hufflepuffs are the ones who have no idea where they'll be sorted and are surprised that everyone votes them into Hufflepuff.

And who says you mis-sorted me? Maybe you're the one who's right! *is deathly curious*

Well.

You're friendly and openly gracious, even to stroppy, needy strangers who contact you out of the blue. You're humble to a fault. You are helpful and generous, willing to direct people to where their needs can be answered if you ever can't answer them yourself. So I featured you for a Hufflepuff.

But not in a bad way!
I mean look at what you pulled off when you signed up for 14 bloody stories in the first Pornish Pixies fantasy fest! Only someone with a death-grip on their will power and self-discipline could have managed that. Slytherins are too lazy, Ravenclaws too strung up in perfectionism, and Gryffindors too tempermental and easily distracted.

Look at how methodical you're being in your avoidance of spoilers, not leaving it up to anyone else to get it right, but taking responsibility for that on yourself.

Look at you providing that comm for people so they can squee, chapter by chapter, about the book as they read. A Slytherin would have told a friend they ought to make that comm. A Ravenclaw wouldn't be squeeing to anyone, because they'd be too busy taking notes for their first big post-reading meta. A Gryffindor would have jumped up and shouted "that's a great idea! OOh, and y'know what else, let's all dress up and go to the London release party together, cause that'd be teh KEWL!"

I don't think you're reckless enough to be a Gryffindor. I don't think you're selfish enough to be a Slytherin. And I don't think you're analytically cold enough to be a Ravenclaw. Sooo...

But the question I was asked, was what house YOU saw yourself in. So, all my equivocations aside, I called that one wrong.

*reads with overload of self-satisfied delight* Oh, my. Without them knowing me quite so well but having my application to go on, I think that's a lot of what

hogwarts_elite saw.

Now, what house did you think I'd put myself into? Am I the star of my own show as a Gryffindor would be? Do I do that at the expense of others' well-being, as a Slytherin would? Or did you think I was content to avoid attention as a Hufflepuff? Those are the questions that I ask myself when trying to sort myself. Perhaps not the questions you ask yourself, but I'm still deathly curious to know what you thought and why.

See, that's the thing: I felt that you simply had to be aware of your helpful, generous nature, and that such genuine humility as yours just couldn't have escaped your notice (and yes, typing that out, I do see exactly what an idiotic thing it is to say, because the nature of humility is NOT to notice itself)

So I told her that you probably supposed yourself a Hufflepuff.
*Hangs head in shame.*

If it's any consolation though, I think you make a brilliant Hufflepuff...
And it's not like Ravenclaws have the market cornered on smarts, anyway -- look at Hermione and Cedric!

Seriously, I think it's splendid to have others say, "Hufflepuff," even if my gut response is, "But I'm really kinda selfish and lazy!" Besides, don't they say we become what others say of us? I'd rather be thought of as "kind" than almost anything else.

I would be a bit, "Damn, my darker side is all too obvious, isn't it" if others said Slytherin about me.

But overall I think the scope of the houses is too limited. "Brave/Smart/Sly/Doesn't Fit a Stereotype" should generate a boatload more Hufflepuffs than it does, and I think most geek fangirls, which constitutes, what, 99% of lj Potterfans, would be Ravenclaw. So to my way of thinking everyone who desires sorting is likely to be a book-reading geek, which means everyone who desires sorting ends up Ravenclaw. Makes no sense.

Now, the next obvious question for me, is, what house do YOU see yourself in? And just so you know, I really haven't tried to guess the answer!

I sort myself into Slytherin.

The only thing keeping my ambition in check is my laziness, really. And while I'm smart, it's NOT because I am all that willing to study -- I am, in fact, a terribly poor student. I test well, but I hardly ever do the homework or bother with extra credit unless I'm really desperate not to fail. I have a pointed self-interest which curbs my generousity as well as my loyalty, and while I have a very flexible and adaptable code of ethics, the core framework is built on principles which are more solid than the earth. And nobody understands the rules I live by except myself. If I help someone, it's because I want to make them feel good -- note that phrasing; not I want them to feel good, but I want to MAKE them feel good. Even if I do something nice anonymously, I always watch for the squee, so I can feel smug to myself.

And the funniest part of all that is that my brother and my husband both are Gryffindor Poster Children.

Go figure.

See, I think I have a ton of those same qualities--well, maybe not a ton. But I feel like my ambition has only been curbed because I'm now where I want to be in life; I think all selflessness is altruism, I think selfishness is normal and damn healthy, and yet I'm not proud of these things. I wish it weren't so. I think if someone sorted me into Slytherin I'd think, "Oh, damn, they found me out."

Since I'm the one she was discussing it with (unless there was more than one discussion, which is completely and totally possible, of course), my thoughts as we came away from it was that we both thought of you as being like us. Us in the individual sense, there - she thought of you as being like her and I thought of you as being like me. So when I saw Hufflepuff on your userinfo, I was a trifle confused.

My giggles at the recent "What House would my flist sort me into" Meme/poll aside, I do find it rather interesting how we are perceived and how that differs from our own perception. I see myself as Raven-puff, Ivory tower academic with teamwork strengths. I also see myself as a coward and can pull up all of my failings at a moments notice. So when someone mentions they see me as Gryffindor or Slytherin, it takes me a moment to come up with any possible reason how that could possibly be true. And yet, I have stepped toward fire, waded into fistfights to pull someone out, etc. I have been fiercely competative at times and will disregard others in order to further my own priorities. So yeah, it's all there.

So I can totally see how you would think of yourself as Ravenclaw while others percieve you as Hufflepuff.

But my real reason for commenting is ... where did you find blue and bronze striped socks. I'm on the hunt, you see...

Aha! But I notice you haven't pinned down what you think the "us" of you is. Do you and Clue both see yourself sorted the same way, then?

And I got my socks from an SF convention dealer! They're soooooo high. They're like, thigh-highs. She had them in all house colors; I bought green-and-silver ones too because they were two-for-one or something.

Hee, there we go with the perception again. Everyone knows what House we are, right? I think of myself as Ravenclaw with Hufflepuff undertones. I'm as guilty of getting lost in the theory with disregard to the practical as the worst academician, but I'm Hufflepuff enough that I can turn that off and come up with a "good enough" solution, while resolutely chanting "The good is the enemy of the Best" to appease my Ravenclaw instincts.

She's Slytherin, and she sees in your writing a willingness to face the other side of the mirror, the anti-hero, the ulterior motive. As she does. Looking away from the shiny-kid side, as it were.

But she also mentioned (as she said above) that while your writing showed a Slytherin mindset, she thought that you, yourself, away from LJ and fandom, were probably more Hufflepuff, given your encouragement of new writers (me included!) your sense of the benefits of working toward co-operative success versus simple BNF solo fame, your pattern of promoting others and supporting the group.

So that's what we were thinking -- I thought Ravenpuff; she thought Slytherpuff.

See, I don't feel proud of my Slytherin qualities; ambition and self-interest and "if they don't see my laziness then it doesn't exist"--euuch. Which doesn't mean they aren't there. I would resist being labeled Slytherin but I know I've got some of their traits.

*is ded of icon love, sorry*

Heh. I think that might have been inspired by something

bethbethbeth said. Her or someone. And I had to icon it.

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