6:48pm August 2, 2015

things about Hufflepuffs #468

thingsabouthufflepuffs:

Hufflepuffs with animal allergies are quite likely to have a “pet” plant. 

This Hufflepuff with a severe cat allergy (as determined any time in my life I’ve ever been tested, as well as by the amount of Benadryl I go through)… still has a cat.  And I suspect that may actually be a weirdly Hufflepuff thing as well. 

Although I found out that actually unless your allergy is so severe as to be life-threatening, it can be more beneficial to keep the cat around and treat the aI still couldn’t breathe through my nose for the first several months of living around dogs.  And I lived around cats all my life, but not indoor cats until I grew up.  We found out I was allergic because when we brought the cats indoors, I’d fall asleep, so my mom had me tested.  I was furious at the doctor because I loved cats so much and because I was a kid and didn’t know that the doctor not telling me wouldn’t have made it go away. 

I had actual reason to be furious at an allergist as an adult who pretty much refused to treat me unless I “got rid of” my pets – and it turned out that the symptoms I had gone to see him for, weren’t even the result of allergies to begin with, but of a really bad lung infection that was mistaken for an asthma exacerbation that was being blamed on my allergies because what else was there to blame?  But at any rate, I did some research and the allergist’s recommendation to “get rid of” the cat apparently is not even considered best practice for people with allergies, even severe allergies, as long as they’re not life-threateningly severe allergies. 

Which mine aren’t and never have been – both skin and blood tests have consistently shown an allergic response to cat saliva that’s technically well into the severe range, but my actual physiological response to that isn’t to keel over and die or stop breathing, so I’m not in the category of people where “getting rid of” a cat would even make sense.  My allergies have actually been improved somewhat by living with a cat, which is one reason it’s not considered good to just avoid the animal you’re allergic to (unless it’s some kind of obscure animal you’re never going to see) – it just means your response will be more severe when you do come into contact with that animal.

So that (and the fact that I love Fey and would probably not mind living with her even if it somehow did shorten my lifespan somewhat, which there’s no evidence that it does at all even a little, mind you) is why I’m a Hufflepuff with a severe cat allergy who lives with a cat.  And even sits here typing this with this 16-year-old cat sitting on my chest with her fur right in my face, blocking the fan, on a hot day.  She’s lived with me ever since I moved out on my own for the first time, and she’s going to go on living with me until one or both of us dies.  She’s one of the closest friends I have in the entire world, and she knows things about me that nobody else knows.  I sometimes have a sneaking suspicion, however, that she thinks of me as sort of like a big, none-too-bright kitten who’s never had the decency to move out in her old age, and doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain and therefore has to be looked after all the time.  People always act like the cat is the “baby” in the relationship but I’m pretty sure the reverse is how Fey actually sees it (and I’m not arguing too hard, I call her Grandma Fey a lot of the time).

But I love the idea of pet plants.  Although I have plant allergies too, so that’s not necessarily going to work out any better.  I guess it depends on the plant – or the animal – and the person.

139 notes

10:42pm April 5, 2015

prokopetz:

Random Headcanon: The reason the Wizarding World in Harry Potter uses such arse-backwards technology isn’t cultural elitism. (Well, not entirely.) Rather, it’s because if you enchant anything more complicated than a screwdriver, it tends to become sentient over time. Devices that use electricity are particularly bad for this, and almost always “wake up” eventually. Arthur Weasley’s car going rogue and running off to live in a forest is actually a fairly favourable outcome; the students still tell horror stories about what happened to the guy who smuggled in (and subsequently enchanted) a digital wristwatch.

I always figured it was just because you didn’t need all the extra tech when your own technology is magic. Like who needs airplanes when you have broomsticks and magic carpets? Not the best example but you know what I mean. So the adoption of Muggle technology is naturally slower and on an as needed basis. This can lead to snobbery but the snobbery isn’t the origin of this issue, just one possible result of it.  

59,603 notes

7:14am February 4, 2015

Yay hypnagogia!

Wow that one was actually cool.

I closed my eyes, and had been thinking of a book I’d read, fictional, by Jane Meyerding, who I’m writing a post about right now. The book was a murder mystery and her way of dealing with all the weird social scene she saw in the seventies lesbian-feminist world.  (Which she partly entered seeking answers to why she was genderless – the answers they gave her, however, didn’t sit well with her and she left that community eventually, more confused than ever.

But anyway, I’d read her book, Everywhere House, before.  In my headcanon, the main character is autistic.  Jane says the main character is very much not like her – in fact she finds people like the main character annoying – but that she did base her off of some people she knew in real life, one of whom she’s pretty sure is on the spectrum.  So if you can stomach a story about the seventies lesbian-feminist scene and all its weirdness, with an autistic main character muddling through it while trying to solve a murder and learning distressing (but not illegal) information about the prime suspect, which she has to keep a secret in order to avoid destroying the community’s confidence in the suspect (which they’re kind of losing anyway, because… prime murder suspect).

Anyway, so I had my eyes closed, and in my head, Harriet (from Harriet the Spy, who is often headcanoned as a baby dyke) started walking down the streets that i envisioned as a map of the setting of the book.  She walked down the graffitied corridor shown on the front cover, she walke through the campus, she walks down the street towards Everywhere House, the feminist collective the main character lives in.

And aside from the fact that the backgrounds were full color and almost photorealistic, and Harriet looked like a cartoonish cardboard cutout in black and white except for her hair, it worked beautifully.  In fact, it worked beautifully because of that.  Maybe one day I’ll find a way of photoshopping elements of the two together, because I certainly can’t draw or paint realistically enough to do it justice.

I don’t normally get hypnogogic realistic images.  Mostly I get voices combined with the way a room maps itself out when you have a vision problem, plus lots of instant backstory on the characters involved.  So this was unusual, and entertaining, and app 

8 notes

11:21am August 31, 2014

ducktrainer:

saemiligr:

dear-monday:

So we know it’s JK’s headcanon that Dudley has a magical child, right? Imagine his kid starting to show signs of magic and Dudley remembering all the odd things that used to happen around Harry. Imagine his kid coming home from Hogwarts and being all, “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME UNCLE HARRY WAS FAMOUS?” Imagine Dudley reading up on Harry and finding out about all the stuff he did and all the things that happened to him and struggling to grasp how his scrawny, speccy cousin saved the wizarding world. Imagine Dudley, white-faced with terror at his first big family get-together with Harry, Hermione and all the remaining Weasleys. Imagine Mrs Weasley being decidedly cool towards him until he eats fifth helpings of everything she cooks and telling her that she’s the best cook he’s ever met. Imagine Dudley meeting Fleur. Imagine the others embarrassing Harry by telling Dudley stories about him. Imagine Dudley and Harry going down the pub together for beers. Imagine Harry still calling him Big D. Imagine Dudley cheerfully never dieting ever again and being fat and happy forever THE END.

This makes me absurdly happy

did they just made me happy about DUDLEY

125,715 notes

8:45pm July 12, 2014

Some old rambling about Hogwarts houses, found on my hard drive.

I was talking with Anne today.  As usual, when we aren’t the same, we’re weirdly complementary:

Anne is a Ravenpuff with some Gryffindor tendencies.

I’m a Gryfflepuff with some Ravenclaw tendencies.

Both of us can appreciate the better parts of Slytherin, but simply aren’t very Slytherin at all.

I see myself as…

I’m Hufflepuff at the core.  There are times in my life when that would have shamed me to the bone, but I’ve learned to be proud of it.  I used to think it made me weak.  I used to think that caring about people, caring about fairness, made me pathetic and weak and stupid.  I used to think that it held me back in situations where my peers could do things I couldn’t, or where I’d do the same things and end up all night crying.  I used to hate when my mom would call me tender-hearted.   I tried to be tough, but I’m not.  No, I am tough, but I’m not tough in that way.  I’m tough in a way that comes from the heart because from the heart is the only way I can operate honestly.  And that’s why I’m a Hufflepuff, deep down, always.

My friends call me Neville.  As in, several friends who don’t even know each other have independently called me Neville.  He’s a fellow Gryfflepuff who learned courage late.  I’ve learned an immense amount of courage by going through absolute hell.  I’ve learned more Gryffindor traits, like sticking myself out there as the target that anyone can shoot at.  Taking one for the team, as Anne put it, is one of my Gryffindor tendencies.  I’ll put myself out there knowing that people can try to hurt me, but doing it because it seems the right thing to do at the time.

My primary motivations in life are all Hufflepuff, though.  Embarrassingly so, sometimes.  And I have all the weaknesses that come with being a Hufflepuff too.

I have never trusted loyalty.  My friends try to convince me that loyalty isn’t always a bad thing.  But I have come to realize that I have the kind of loyalty that can be a bad thing.  The kind that makes you stick up for a friend even when you know in your heart of hearts that your friend has done wrong.  This tendency in myself has always ashamed me, and I spend a lot of time fighting it.  This may be the dark side of Hufflepuff.   We are loyal to our friends, even to a fault.  I used to spend so much time dissing this kind of loyalty that I didn’t realize the reason it bothered me so much was because I saw it so strongly within myself.

My Gryffindor traits are clearly secondary.

By which I mean…

I have a friend who’s 100% Gryffindor, like she’s the prototype of Gryffindor.  If there’s a battle, she will be out in the front, wand waving wildly, taking curses so that other people don’t have to.  She thrives on that kind of thing.  She doesn’t have to gear herself up, that’s just who she is and what she does.  And she’s amazing at both strategy and tactics when it comes to battle.

Me… I may sometimes find myself in the same place, doing the same thing.  But it’s reluctant, and motivated differently.  Battle doesn’t excite me the way it excites her.  I don’t enjoy it.  I see it as a means to an end.  Sometimes a necessary one.  Sometimes you have to stick your neck out.  But I always have to prepare myself, I always have to put myself in the mindset of not being afraid.  Because my first response is always flight or freeze, never fight.

I’m a hard worker.  I have always been a hard worker.  If I had my druthers, I would do hard work in the background.  The way my life has propelled me has not allowed that to be my role, most of the time.  I’ve felt like I’ve been forced into the limelight whether I want it or not, and I’ve had to deal with the consequences.  (As such, I identified a lot with Harry Potter sometimes.  I’m nowhere near as famous as he was, but the issues are the same, just on a smaller scale.  My ex refers to my stalkers as ‘Rita Skeeter types’.)  

But then Cedric ended up in the limelight too, and he was a Hufflepuff.  There’s nothing about being a Hufflepuff that says you always have to be in the background doing unacknowledged hard work.  It’s just something that Hufflepuffs are known for being good at.

My dream, when I first moved out on my own, was to be a gardener or something.  To have a tiny house on someone’s land, with an Internet connection and not much stuff.  And to unobtrusively take care of their grounds while they did whatever the hell they wanted and didn’t interact with me much.  That sort of thing was my dream job:  Stay in the background, do basic physical work, get paid just enough to get what you need, don’t interact with anyone much, live my life.  It was an unrealistic dream, but I loved it just the same.  I was kind of doing something like it – living in a tiny apartment off of my neighbor’s house, working in her garden when she couldn’t and I wished I could make it a career, but my body was falling apart and I couldn’t.

Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs tend to share a strong sense of justice and fair play.  And that is something I have always had.  Something that, when a childhood neighbor was asked to describe my personality, she wrote that I had an intense sense of justice and could not understand anyone who didn’t.  

I think there’s a different flavor it takes in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff though, just like Hufflepuff and Slytherin loyalty have both commonalities and differences.

My sense of justice is based on my tender-heartedness.  It’s based on my squishy weak parts that care about people too much.  Not that Gryffindors don’t care about people, but they’ll more often get wrapped up in causes for their own sake, too.  These are of course just generalizations.

And as far as generalizations go.

J. K. Rowling has made it clear that every House has people in it who would seem to fit in another house.  Percy Weasley seems like a Slytherin, Neville Longbottom seems like a Hufflepuff, Hermione Granger seems like a Ravenclaw, but they are all in Gryffindor for specific reasons of their own, and those specific reasons have less to do with their talents and innate abilities, and more to do with their core values, or with life lessons that they need to learn, or choices they have made.  So there is no House that doesn’t have people with strong traits from every single other House, in that House.  No matter how much the other House may seem at first to be an opposite.

(For some reason, people have trouble imagining Slytherpuffs.  But there’s plenty out there.)

I think as a child I would have wanted badly to be Gryffndor or Ravenclaw, but would have been sorted into Hufflepuff because that’s where I most needed to be.  Hufflepuff not only reflects my strongest values about the world, but it would have made me stop being ashamed of who I was, and helped build me into who I was, rather than who I wasn’t.  

Having to learn to be who I was, and stop trying to be what I wasn’t, was a major theme of the time period in my life when I would’ve been being sorted.  In particular, I was losing my academic skills and growing into a whole other set of skills that nobody talked about because nobody really measures those skills.  And I think that trying to end up in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw would’ve resulted in the Hat gently but firmly putting me into Hufflepuff, just as my life was tending to go at that point in time.

I was in a situation where I was “sorted into Ravenclaw” so to speak against my will, by means of gifted programs.  Gifted programs assume that everyone there is a Ravenclaw just because they tested well at some point on a standardized test.  I was expected to fit in because I had high test scores.  But I did not fit in.  In fact, I was bullied worse there than I was anywhere else.  And when Ravenclaws turn bully, they are scary because they use that amazing mind of theirs to invent horrible ways of hurting you.   Unfortunately, the programs encouraged a kind of amorality that only made it easier for the bullies to take hold and frighten off all the decent people.  And there were plenty of decent people who had the Ravenclaw love of learning and truly belonged in Ravenclaw, and some of them were targeted by bullies as well.  But those of us most likely to be targeted were those with disabilities and those who weren’t really Ravenclaws at heart.

When I say I’m not a Ravenclaw at heart, I don’t mean that I’m not a nerd.  I’m a nerd.  I enjoy learning.  And I’m a quick learner in some areas, even still.  But learning is not one of my higher values in life.  It doesn’t sustain me.  If I lost all my nerdiness and lost all my intellectual skills (and I’ve already lost more of them than people might guess, and only regained some, yay brain damage) I feel like I would still be myself.  These aren’t things that define the core of who I am.  They are attributes I can take or leave.

I think in order to be a Ravenclaw, I would have to have more than Ravenclaw-esque talents.  I would have to really put certain kinds of learning first in my life.  I would have to value them strongly in a way that I don’t.  Plus I think I’d be stuck outside the Common Room door all day long, I’m terrible, generally, with that kind of question.  

I also know that I would not fit in, in Ravenclaw.  I don’t fit in, in groups of people where wit, learning, and intellect are considered the best things.  I know people who do fit in, in those places, and that’s great.  For them.  I’m not one of them.  I can’t fit in.  In fact, trying to fit in, in those settings, has always turned into an embarrassing disaster.  There’s a big disconnect between me and them, everyone senses it, and things get awkward.  It’s not that I can’t have Ravenclaw friends and get along with them, but when I’m in an all-Ravenclaw environment, even when people are trying to be friendly, it just doesn’t work out.  I don’t even know exactly why.  It just doesn’t.

I still have analytical, intellectual skills that would make Ravenclaw maybe want to take me.  But I wouldn’t be taken there, because the Hat is smarter than an standardized testing machine.  The Hat would see wherever I belonged, and put me there, instead.

I have not much in the way of Slytherin traits.  I can be mildly ambitious, but so can anyone.  I love their common room, I think it’s second only to the Hufflepuff common room.  But I’m not very ambitious, and I don’t have many of the other traits officially or unofficially given to Slytherins.

I actually sometimes think it’s cool when I run into a Slytherin woman.  Women aren’t supposed to be ambitious in this society.  I know a woman I’m 99% sure is Slytherin.  She’s ambitious, not exactly a people person, she looks out for herself, she’s got a touch of arrogance.  But somehow, those things work for her.  She’s going into a field where she’s going to need all the ambition and arrogance she can get, just to survive the training.  And I think she can do it.  And I think it’s really cool that she’s like this as a woman, when women get so much shit for being ambitious or arrogant.  Not that all Slytherins are ambitious and arrogant, but she is, and she makes it work for her.  I like her.

Just as I have strong traits from both Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, Anne has strong traits of both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.  I think on balance she might be a Ravenclaw with strong Hufflepuff tendencies.  She’s a classic nerd in a very beautiful way, she seems capable of creating practically anything with her hands as soon as she learns how to do it, she’s got a voracious appetite for information, and she’s an engineer.  And while I share many of those traits, for her they seem more central to her personality and values than they are to mine. I can’t explain the difference, but it’s there, even though the two of us are nearly identical in so many ways.

She also has Hufflepuff traits and values, of course, but they’re wrapped around the Ravenclaw values from the outside, the same way my Gryffindor values are wrapped around my Hufflepuff values.  She cares a lot about people, about fairness, about hard work done well in the background.  She would make a good Hufflepuff if she didn’t make a slightly better Ravenclaw.  In fact, I could see her going either way at different points in her life.

And she has Gryffindor traits, but like my Ravenclaw traits, they’re not as strong as her main two Houses.  I can really see a difference between the degree to which I’m willing to put myself out in the way of harm for a cause, and the degree to which she is willing to do so.  I’m not judging her for this, mind you — we need all types in this world.  But I do see a difference.  I’ve been in situations where she’s told me she’d never have done something risky that I’d done without even thinking of the consequences.

But she’s no coward.  In fact, she hates the idea of cowardice so much that she’s allowed herself to be goaded into things by the threat of being considered a coward.  There are ways in which she’s braver than I am, even though I put myself out there more than she does.  

And like me, she’s just… not very Slytherin, although I would suspect she likes the common room and the visual aesthetic as much as I do.  

So I’m Hufflepuff at the core, with Gryffindor wrapped closely around it, and a fair number of Ravenclaw traits, with not much Slytherin.  And Anne is probably Ravenclaw at the core, with Hufflepuff wrapped closely around it, and a fair number of Gryffindor traits, with not much Slytherin.  And combined together, as we often are, we make a really cool team.

Oh I forgot to mention that Anne has the most kick-ass Slytherin cat I’ve ever heard of.  Her name is Nikki, and she’s a purebred Siamese.  She embodies something I’ve seen in a lot of Slytherins, which is that she is good but she is not nice.  She would choose voluntarily to be in Slytherin, because she would see it as being to her advantage.  She guards the house from foes both visible and invisible, and takes her guard duty deadly seriously.  Woe to anyone who thinks it’s cute or funny.

Interestingly, she is extremely similar to my cat, Fey.  The only difference?  Fey is Gryffindor.  One of my friends says that Gryffindors and Slytherins are far more similar than either one is likely to admit.  But Fey and Nikki have such similar body language it’s a shock sometimes to watch Nikki interacting with people, and seeing Fey’s body language on such a different-looking cat.  

Anne’s Hufflepuff cat is named Brodie.  He’s amazing.  All her cats are amazing. But Brodie has better social skills than any cat I’ve ever seen.  He was the first to be able to make friends with Nikki, which he accomplished by unfailing politeness and observance of any and all boundaries that Nikki was willing to set.  And he’s kind of the glue that binds their whole cat family together.  He is quiet and shy in a lot of ways, and he has the most expressive ears of any cat I’ve ever seen.  He’ll be sitting there seemingly not saying anything, but his ears will be twitching out all these patterns that clearly have meaning to him and the cats around him.  He’s incredibly polite.  And oh so very subtle, so subtle that you could overlook him if you weren’t careful.

Coraline is Anne’s Ravenclaw cat.  She’s the one who figures out puzzles the fastest, and is always looking for new ways to learn and new ways to physically manipulate her environment.  She’s curious about everything and has to explore and find things out.  

And Shadow is Gryffindor.  He’s pure fire.  Sometimes he looks like a glowing piece of amber.  Sometimes he looks like liquified sunlight.  Sometimes he looks like molten lava.  But always fire.  He’s not the kind of misdirected, squashed up fire that leads to angry outbursts.  He’s the kind of wide-open, well-connected fire that leads to intensity and passion and beauty and creativity and warmth and goodness.  The kind of fire I’ve only recently been able to discover in myself.  Cats often have an affinity for sunlight, and Shadow has more of one than I’ve ever seen.  Sometimes I swear he is sunlight in liquid form, that just happens to be shaped like a big black cat.

I find it interesting that with four cats, Anne managed to end up with one for each House, and it’s not even slightly ambiguous in which House each cat belongs. 

I also find it interesting that with all our similarities, Anne and I have different Houses.  And yet the way our different Houses fit together is almost like an interlocking set of patterns.  Two strong ones wrapped around each other, both sharing a Hufflepuff in that part, and then one weaker one, one practically nonexistent.  We seem to complement each other very well: Gryfflepuff with some Ravenclaw tendencies and Ravenpuff with some Gryffindor tendencies.  Although I say “Gryfflepuff” and “Ravenpuff”, though, when really each of us does have one central House, I think, not two.  It’s just that we each also seem to have a very near runner-up in a second house, and that has to be acknowledged.

24 notes

2:02am July 12, 2014

stardustandzombiebites:

Harry Potter Headcanon:
When the Death Eaters took over Hogwarts, a lot of the things done in defiance of them were able to happen through the people involved acting out of character for their houses. For example, the Carrows, assuming the Ravenclaws to be the brains behind the operations, do random dorm checks in hope of catching them, when in fact it is the Gryffindors doing all the planning. Them assuming that it is the Gryffindoors doing all the legwork and setting up watches outside their dorms and controlling where the Gryffindor students can be during the day, while the Hufflepuffs, who everyone assumes to be pacifists, are the ones sneaking through the school. The Carrows thinking that the Hufflepuffs are having things smuggled in through the kitchens, when in fact it is the Ravenclaws smuggling things in through the Room of Requirement.

33 notes

2:01am July 12, 2014

renoku:

I like to think that some Ravenclaw students have private workshops set up all across the Hogwarts castle.  Like, not just in the Room of Requirement; I think like one student commandeers the attic, and another took over an empty dungeon, while another just has an underground cave beneath the Black Lake.  Probably developing new spells and potions and everything like little Hermione Grangers and Luna Lovegoods.

28 notes

1:51am July 12, 2014

onelazyfeminist:

headcanon that everything in ravenclaw tower is a bookcase

walls? bookcases

lamp? bookcase in the stand

end table? just a small bookcase

door? bookcase with sticking charms on the shelves

beds? bookcases underneath

drapes? sleeves in them for holding books

chair? bookshelves under the arms

window? bookcase charmed to let light through

shower? waterproof books in shelves below the faucets

mirror? bookcase behind it

fireplace? lined with fireproof books

bookcase? reversible, more bookcase on the other side

313 notes

1:40am July 12, 2014

floatintoestuary:

slytherins dealing with house hate and discrimination and other students are still very prejudiced against them 

slytherins trying to break their stereotypes of being dark wizards by spending long nights in the common room developing new defensive spells which they teach to the other houses

slytherins using their new spells on purist slytherins and encouraging them to stop spreading blood status shame

7th year slytherins slaving away trying to develop a shield spell strong enough to stop avada kedavera, finding ways to diminish the spell’s lethality, not entirelybut enough to stop it being a one hit kill

slytherins writing to ministry to approve their spells for use in magical law enforcement

slytherins becoming aurors (✿◠▽◠)

slytherins collaborating with the other houses and starting house equality clubs in order to work towards a more accepting school environment,

slytherins winning the house cup and receiving a round of applause because the whole school knows they deserve it (♥~▽~)

slytherins being treated like complex individuals rather than stereotyped bullies and dark wizards (✿◠‿◠)

slytherins (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

10,977 notes

1:19am July 12, 2014

ivorytowermind:

dominique-inique-inique:

everybody seems to think ravenclaw is a quiet place to read but i quite disagree

i mean maybe the fact that it’s so light and airy is because they need to be able to open the windows when jack blows something up while experimenting with charms in the corner

and the prefects always have their hands full because fights regularly break out over the fact that ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc is not a legitimate argument, diana!’ and ‘i can’t believe you think dorabella’s star maps are more accurate than mine! what kind of friend are you?’

and then of course there’s the divide between the ravenclaws that revere the old schools of learning and the brash new-world-new-rules ravenclaws that say ‘fuck you!’ to all magical conventions. and man, those prank wars are dangerous (especially when professor flitwick not only fails to stop them, but decides to join in on the fun)

i mean come on it’s a house of knowledge seekers that probably love to argue and theorize and experiment and have a certain amount of pride in their intelligence. things never go smoothly when you’ve got approximately 80 people all trying to be the smartest person in the room

#that’s not to say they don’t admire and respect each other #or enjoy working together because all ravenclaws are different #and some really really love being right #and some delight in being proved wrong because changing your worldview is ever so EXCITING #there is a certain amount of ego involved in considering yourself a genius #and there’s a certain amount of disdain for genius that exists in those that ‘humbly’ #proclaim themselves truthseekers #and then there are those that proclaim that there IS NO TRUTH #i mean come on ravenclaw is a mess let’s all face it

#and then there are the Ravenclaws that go through existential crises every other week because of things they’re reading#WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE HAVE POTIONS HOMEWORK#I’M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHETHER OTHER MEANS OF TORTURE ARE ACTUALLY MORE ETHICAL THAN THE CRUCIATUS#AND IF NOT THEN WHY ARE THEY LEGAL#or#I AM CALLING OFF QUIDDITCH PRACTICE TODAY BECAUSE I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHY QUIDDITCH IS DIVIDED BY HOUSES#or I CAN’T GO TO RUNES BECAUSE I AM TOO UPSET ABOUT WITCH HUNTS IN THE MIDDLE AGES#IMAGINE WHAT THAT WOULD BE LIKE JUST IMAGINE IT#or BUT WHY IS OUR CURRENCY SO ILLOGICAL CAN’T WE FIX IT#or HOW DOES MAGIC GET PASSED DOWN BUT THEN ALSO APPEAR AT RANDOM NOBODY CAN EXPLAIN IT#IS IT IN OUR BODIES OR IN OUR MINDS OR WHAT#(just calm down and come to transfiguration okay)#I WILL NOT CALM DOWN AND I WILL NOT COME TO TRANSFIGURATION#IF YOU VANISH A THING AND CONJURE IT AGAIN IS IT THE SAME MATTER#IS IT THE SAME ESSENCE#(it’s okay. just vanish the pincushion)#IT’S NOT OKAY

22,636 notes

5:18pm July 1, 2014

madeofpatterns:

chordatesrock replied to your post “chordatesrock replied to your post:Politics need Slytherin. Why?…”

The… essence/values, not necessarily people dominated by them?

I think we need people who are Slytherin in their approach to politics.

I’m not one. My approach to things is Hufflepuff-oriented.

But that’s not because I think we can get by on Hufflepuff alone. We need all the things.

Yep.

We need Slytherins badly.

I know a Slytherin in real life, at least I see her as a Slytherin.  She’s ambitious, even a little arrogant, very intelligent, and she wants to be a doctor.  I honestly think that her arrogance and ambition will both serve her well on the way to becoming a doctor, and that hopefully life experience will temper the arrogance once she becomes one.  But I told her to hang onto the arrogance through med school because she’ll need it to carry her through.  Arrogance can be a strength in a situation where you’re being ground down and need that extra confidence.  I think she finds it funny that I openly talk about her arrogance and call it a good thing.  I also think people see her ambition differently than a man’s ambition because she’s a woman, but I see her ambition as a really good thing.  She has big plans for herself and that’s good.

We also need Gryffindors and Ravenclaws.  We need everyone.  And we need all the people who are mixes.

I’m a Hufflepuff at the core with strong Gryffindor tendencies around the edges.  I think madeofpatterns is the same way.  I can’t help being like this, it’s just who I am.

I used to be ashamed of being a Hufflepuff – before Harry Potter even existed, I was ashamed of my Hufflepuff traits.  Harry Potter allowed me to take pride in my Hufflepuff traits, to see that they could get me places, to see that they had a good side, to see that they could help me do things in a way that Gryffindors and Slytherins and Ravenclaws can’t.

And everyone in every house has that – they can do things in a way that people in the other Houses can’t.  And that’s an amazing and good thing.

My friend Anne and I feel like we’re kind of complementary in certain ways.

She is a Ravenpuff with some Gryffindor tendencies, I’m a Gryfflepuff with some Ravenclaw tendencies.  

I don’t know if she’d be in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff at the core it’s a close call.  I think maybe she’d be Ravenclaw, but she’d potentially do well in Hufflepuff too.  I’m definitely Hufflepuff, not Gryffindor, but my Gryffindor tendencies are quite pronounced.  My Ravenclaw tendencies, like Anne’s Gryffindor tendencies, are not as pronounced, but they do exist.  And for some reason Anne and I are both very lacking on the Slytherin front, but we have great respect for Slytherins nonetheless.  (How could we not, Anne has the most amazing Slytherin cat in the whole world?)

At any rate, we need all of it, we need all of the types of people, for the world to work how it should.  Every House has ways that it is amazing and useful and has everything to contribute.  Every House has a dark side that’s horrible and can go completely awry and wreck everything.

Learning about the Houses has actually made me more aware of both my strengths and my weaknesses as a person, and has made me more able to consciously think about these things rather than go around oblivious to them.

For instance, loyalty.  Most people think it’s a good thing.  I’ve never trusted loyalty exactly.  It always felt like… loyalty may be good in some circumstances, but it can also mean sticking up for someone who actually has done something very wrong, just because you’re their friend.  And that’s the sort of thing I do, even though I hate to admit it.  And that’s a potential failing of Hufflepuffs.  Also Slytherins.

Knowing about my Gryffindor side, and the fact that it is not my innate temperament exactly… that’s useful too.  Like knowing that this is a secondary set of traits for me.  Knowing that I can do Gryffindor things but it’s always going to take more effort for me because it’s not what I do naturally.

Like I don’t naturally put myself out there as a target.  But I do it all the time.  I have a friend who is 100% pure Gryffindor and she doesn’t just do that, she thrives on doing it.  And for me, it’s like a necessary evil that serves my Hufflepuff values in a Gryffindor-shaped way.  I don’t enjoy it but I will absolutely do it, over and over, as many times as it takes.

And yes we need Slytherins in so many different ways, they have a lot of skills that are versatile and amazing.  They are good at getting things done regardless of what it takes to get that thing done.  They are good at breaking the rules when necessary, and not giving a fuck.  They’re good at not giving a fuck when fucks don’t need to be given.  They are good at self-preservation.  They’re good at a lot of things and they get a bad rap.

13 notes

3:14am June 29, 2014

things about Hufflepuffs #364

madeofpatterns:

thingsabouthufflepuffs:

Hufflepuffs tend to help their Slytherin friends be more comfortable with physical affection. They especially like to hug their Slythie friends for slightly longer than the snake would like. The Slytherins get used to it, but seeing them just a tad bit uncomfortable at first often makes the badgers smile.

This isn’t actually a good thing, at all. 

But it seems like the kind of mistake a lot of Hufflepuffs probably make.

Holy crap yeah it’s a little creepy, honestly.  But yes, it’s a very Hufflepuff mistake.  Especially that they’d think this was “helping”. Eurrgh.

On a side note…

For some reason… when the “things about Hufflepuffs” thing first came out, most of the submissions were things that even if they weren’t exactly me, I could relate to them.  And then somewhere along the way, they all became things about being a rampant extrovert who loves parties and hugs and doing things together all the time, and I stopped identifying with much about them at all.  I don’t know what’s changed exactly, other than that maybe everyone submitting stuff is following each other’s lead.

I miss stuff I could identify with, though.

I’m a highly introverted Hufflepuff.  And I’m still as Hufflepuff as it’s possible to get.  I still have all the same values and traits as any Hufflepuff out there (even the ones that can be bad, like excessive loyalty), I just really like my space and prefer to be alone a lot of the time.  I love people, I absolutely love people, but I don’t love socializing in large groups, and sometimes I don’t want to socialize at all.

I’m the sort of Hufflepuff who would go around the castle making clue hunts for other people to follow, and leaving little presents for random people to find in strange locations.  But who would hide in my dorm room if there was a party in the common room, which everyone lately seems to be saying would be happening all the time, which would be seriously unpleasant for me because I like our common room and would love to spend time there without lots of parties going on constantly.

I’d love to see more introverted Hufflepuff headcanons, autistic Hufflepuff headcanons, etc.

399 notes

8:05am June 18, 2014

theepicotaku:

I saw a post about Slytherins being friends with Hufflepuffs and i had to do a sketch :3

(My friend named the Slytherin Meredith and the Hufflepuff Lizzy) 

64 notes

8:16am June 16, 2014

There’s a movie called The Specials that basically takes that idea and runs with it.  It’s got a few characters that I read as autistic, too.  (And they have to endure constant jokes about “What do you have to do to become a Special?  Go to special school.” and the like.)  It meant a lot to me when I first got it because the ones I read as autistic (Alien Orphan, U. S. Bill, and possibly Mr. Smart) were just part of the team (and Alien Orphan even had a really obnoxious woman “taking care of him” who epitomized everything horrible about super-chirpy condescending staff people… and she seemed oblivious to her effect on him even when he started throwing things at her, all of which is quite realistic).

73,599 notes