“Ronan Began To Laugh,”

‘Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.’

Suck on that.

Mr. Sandman by The Chordettes playing from another room

The fandom who are still crying over it

We might have misunderstood Hogwarts Houses for years

I have a theory that the valued quality of each of the four Houses isn’t really about the personality of its students.

The valued quality of each of the four Houses has to do with how they perceive magic.

Stick with me a second: Hogwarts is a school to study magic. Magic as Hogwarts teaches it can be seen as many things: a natural talent, a gift, a weapon, etc.

So how you believe magic should be used will both reflect your personality and change how you handle that power.

“Their daring, nerve, and chivalry set Gryffindors apart,” Gryffindors perceive magic as a weapon. Gryffindors tend to excel in aggressive forms of magic, like offensive and defensive spells, and they are good at dueling. But a true Gryffindor knows that the power is a responsibility, and so they must always use their powers to stand up for what’s right. They are the sword of the righteous, which makes them as good at Defense Against the Dark Arts as they are at combat magic.

Hufflepuffs believe that magic is a gift and that the best gifts are to be given away. Hufflepuffs, “loyal and just,” would naturally abhor the idea of jealously guarding magic or using it to hurt someone else. So Hufflepuffs share their magic to benefit of Muggles, like the Fat Friar, to protect the overlooked, like Newt Scamander with his creatures, or to oppose those who would use magic to torment and bully, like the Hufflepuffs who stood with the DA and the battle of Hogwarts.

Slytherins are the opposite: they believe their magic is a treasure that they have been entrusted to protect. The Slytherin fascination with purity, with advantage, with cunning and secrecy–all of which were perverted by the Death Eaters–comes from the idea that people with magic in their veins have been given something special that it is their duty to protect at all costs. And perhaps they aren’t entirely wrong: power in the wrong hands can be dangerous. And power interfering at will with Muggle affairs is a gross presumption that could turn the course of history. Though the series shows some of the worst that Slytherin can be, “evil,” is not a natural Slytherin tendency. “Cautious,” is.

Ravenclaws believe that magic is an art form, one that is beautiful and should be appreciated and studied for its own sake. If “wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure,” then asking what magic is for is useless. It’s more important to immerse oneself in magic for its own sake. Ravenclaws push the boundaries of magic to see if they can, hence Hermione’s spell experiment on the DA coins being dubbed a Ravenclaw quality, but like Luna Lovegood in the pursuit of extraordinary creatures: they can also be content to plumb the depths of what already exists.

So while you can see where personalities will overlap over Houses, perhaps in Sorting we should be asking ourselves less what we think we are and more what we think we believe. 

DIY Animated Cards from Instructables’ User goldlego. First seen at MAKE. GIFs cropped and sized to fit Tumblr’s 1.75MB maximum size using my favorite GIF resizing program: lunapic.com.

DIY Retro Valentine’s Day Animated Card by goldlego at Instructables.

DIY Windows Retro 95 Animated Loading Birthday Card by goldlego at Instructables. You can edit the message in this card.

Inktober day 18, Pumpkin

the signs as obscure stockphotos

aries: angry woman with financial instability on her back

taurus: dashing black man holding dangerously large dorito

gemini: disgusted businessman looks at crusty corn dog 

cancer: crying man is sheltering under an outdated laptop

leo: glamorous woman in bathing suit laughing at a parrot

virgo: cyber woman with corn

libra: aluminum woman fondling a computer mouse with an alluring gaze

scorpio: old punk woman with a skateboard

sagittarius: handsome man drinking coffee or tea with strong eye contact

capricorn: old rabbit man with lettuce

aquarius: woman attempting to reason with an extraterrestrial being

pisces: sleeping old man with biscuits