Everything From Absinthe to Zygotes!

[seethingheathen]

For those of you who are not members of HiH, and are therefore missing the lulz, I'm going to give you some delicious copypasta. This is old news to many of you, but I want to preserve it for posterity. It would be a great injustice if this shit were ever bahleeted.

This is severely TL;DR, so I have bolded the parts I think are the most hilarious. Feel free to read the original post here, if you prefer.

It's kind of musty under here, please sort me quickly!
NOTE: If you think these answers are just for the sorting, go ahead, check out my journal. You'll need to be friended to look at most of the memes and personal posts, but I'm happy to do that, and even if you don't bother with that, the general feel of me is pretty hard to miss.


What sort of profession in the wizarding world would you choose and why?
Auror. I've tried several times to join the Muggle military, but keep being denied for medical reasons that aren't under my control. I've fought with three different paramilitias, though, and I've got a 14" scar on my chest taken in a pub fight when I was 16 (yes, I know I shouldn't have been IN the pub) because I got in the face of a very large gentleman whose feminine companion did not appear interested in departing the premesis in his company. That sword on the wall? Decorative my ass...or rather, it wound up decorating my chest.

If you could teach one class at Hogwarts, what would it be and why?
History of Magic. Binns needs to go. Dedicated, sure, but there's no excuse for taking the most vital subject in Hogwarts and turning it into a nap period. If the students don't learn from the mistakes of the past, they're doomed to repeat it, and there's no reason that the stories of the greatest witches and wizards of all time should ever be boring!

This year, The TriWizard Tournament is being held once again and you're of age. Do you put your name in the Goblet? Why or why not?
Of course I do. There are so few things in life that really push my limits, and I hunger for those that do. The combination of mental and physical challenge of the Triwizard would be too intoxicating to possibly resist. The reward? Meh. If I needed it, sure, but otherwise, I'd just give it to whoever DID...for me, it would be all about the Tournament itself, and I wouldn't just want to win it, I'd want to be the winner that all future winners were judged by.

If you could choose your animagus form, what would it be and why?
An Arab. Small and pretty, but tough as hell, with more endurance than any other, a bit of a prima donna, maybe, but a war horse at heart.

What HP character do you identify with most and why?
My canon or JKR's? (lol, sorry about that, I've gotten to be a bit infamous in certain corners of fandom for having created my own rather massive 'verse).
My canon: Seamus Finnigan. Brash, Irish, heart on his sleeve, tongue too quick for his own good, has flirted more than in passing with the darkest parts of mankind, done things he's ashamed of, but never looks back and can only truly be broken by a cage.
JKRs: Sirius Black. Outcast from his family, troublemaker, seen by some as a bit of a bully, hates being held back more than anything, willing to do anything for his friends, loves to take risks for the hell of it, but a good person at heart.

What would you see if you looked into the Mirror of Erised?
That when I die, I will be remembered as a hero to those who met me, if not (though if it were truly my heart's desire, then yes) the world in general.

If you won a million dollars, how would you spend it?
Pay off my credit cards, then invest the rest and place the funds available through an internationally accessible numbered bank account so that money would never hold me back from what needed to be done. It would be beyond amazing if when I met a girl who was crying because her boyfriend hit her, I could call her a cab, hotel, and lawyer instead of giving her a coffee and a shoulder and the address of a shelter.

What was your ideal job as a kid? Has that changed? What is your ideal job now?
I've never thought about an ideal job outside of the military. Other than that, I'm really sort of a professional drifter, though I've held dozens of different jobs. I'd like to make money from my books, but it's not a big deal in the grand scope of things. Mostly my dream job is to be a worthwhile member of the human race.

If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it, and what would you call it?
It's already there, and its use is obvious. "Protego."

If you were to face a boggart, what would it turn into? And what does it turn into when you throw the counter-spell, Riddikulus?
Me, dying uselessly. Me, dying doing something magnificently stupid but memorable.

What do you look for in a friend?
Honesty; the willingness to always tell me what they really think, no matter what. A willingness to grab life by the horns and follow me into whatever mad adventure the world has to offer.

What trait most annoys you about other people?
Meaningless, unfounded timidity or prejudice.

What do you think are your top five abilities or qualities?
Passion, eloquence, leadership, courage, intelligence.

What do you think are your top five weaknesses or worst qualities?
Temper, recklessness, impatience, over-extending myself, setting my standards too high.


Define in your own words the following key traits:


Courage: The willingness to do what is right regardless of personal cost.

Loyalty: Refusal to abandon one's beliefs and friends in the face of difficulty or opposition, while still being willing to accept if one is truly proven wrong in those friends or beliefs.

Intelligence: The ability to correlate and combine facts to create knowledge, explore innovation, and eventually pursue wisdom.

Ambition: The desire to surpass the limits placed on oneself by circumstance and to elevate oneself to the highest echelons of one's chosen field or method of measurement.


Name: Andrew Blake (a.k.a. thanfiction )

Age: 25

Where did you find out about us? supergreak

Do you plan on being active in the communities once you are sorted? Sure!


So I've been told by everyone and their cousin to re-sub with greater detail and more explanation, as well as a fair bit of concern that I'm "pushing" to be told I belong in a particular house. Well, I sat down and looked at the applicaion for a good long time, but the thing is, I answered each one completely honestly and completely honest TO ME, which includes that I'm rather blunt and straightforward and not at all given to circuitous bush-beating. If I were to draw out the answers, I would just be padding them with BS, which is counterproductive to giving "the real me." Yes, I could also make them seem less house-biased, but that would be deliberately deceptive in my word choices and phrasing to make things neutral that are not.


So, you want to know about me? I'll tell you, and I'll be far more open than I ever could be in answering which HP character I feel I have the most in common with. Is this cocky, is this borderline obnoxious, is this against the rules and Not How It's Done? Yeah, but so am I. I'm NOT here to be told what house I belong in. I'm here because sorting is mandatory if you want to participate in the extremely cool-looking communities that are affiliated here, which is what I actually want to do. I don't need to be told what I am, and frankly, you could sort me into Dickens' Bleak House and it wouldn't change a damned thing. I'm a Gryffindor, down to the center of my soul, and more blatantly so than any of the Gryffindors shown in canon, for that matter.

That's not because I like red or gold (prefer blue), lions (lazy, overrated animals, really) or have an affinity for Harry (wangsty little twat, too often). It's because I am brave to the point of stupidity, because I place the core values of Chivalry as my ethos in literally greater standing than the word of God, because the thought of dying forgotten gives me cold chills when I bolt upright from a nightmare, because I fling myself into things with nothing but passion, because I don't know how to do life halfway, because I never, ever settle, because I have earned the right to call myself a hero IRL, and because whatever it is, hell yes, I dare.

These are not empty statements. I have lived, in my 25 years, an extraordinary life, and I can back up everything I just said.

Brave? A lot of people say I'm brave just because I don't let it slow me down or bother me that I have a heart condition that gives me less than ten years to live. Frankly, I don't even CARE. I consider it the Achillean Choice made for me: I get short, it's up to me to make it glorious. Is it brave to never consider the risks in what you do, only if it would be right, if it would be helpful to others, and if it would be a worthwhile experience? Then I'm certainly brave. To the point of stupidity...oh, just ask VegaBlack and Ceirdwenfc, who have spent most of what I consider the safest, most pedestrian year of my life trying to get me to play things safe.

Or do you mean more conventional bravery? How about standing up to a man twice my size and refusing to back down until the girl he was trying to leave with against her will got away? AFTER he had opened my chest to bone with a Claymore? How about darting into traffic on Interstate 95 to grab a toddler who had wiggled out of her carseat during the sorting-out of a fender-bender? Or maybe going out into a typhoon because I was sure I heard a woman screaming for help? Traveling to a dozen countries with nothing more than a sachel and the clothes on my back? Being under fire more than once and never looking back on my conduct there with shame? Looking the leader of a Belfast paramilitia in the eye and telling him that I'd be fighting BOTH with him AND his enemy for two weeks each to decide for myself who was in the right? That's why I call myself brave, not because I'd like to be an Auror if I were in the Potterverse.

Chivalrous? Ask any woman on my flist how I regard the fairer sex. Women are creatures of true and astonishing magic, the essence of creation itself wrapped in power and fragility so perfectly united as to drop a man to his knees in awe at the mere contemplation. Every man who has ever been owes his life to a woman, and it is a debt we can never repay. Even after coming nearer than I ever have to being destroyed by a woman I loved for almost seven long years, even after she took my son from me without so much as a goodbye and left me destitute for someone she'd been seeing behind my back, I still hold no grudge against womankind.

If anything, it makes me more determined to not allow that part of me to change. Maybe if someone proves that Chivalry is not dead - just badly injured - in this world, fewer women will become so hopeless, so cynical, feel like there is something so eternally missing, and maybe there will be other men spared the pain I felt when she had to run from what was "too good to be true."

Passion? Commitment? Daring? My first venture into writing - AT ALL, not 'just fanfic', 'just fiction', etc. - was a 250K+ word novel that spanned the entirety of DH from Neville's POV, created almost 30 original characters, and grew the remainder of the cast of more than 100 from those who were nothing but names, background, tertiary, or at best secondary characters. I wrote it in less than 6 weeks. 7 months later, I have written another over 200K sequel novel that is even more ambitious in theme and scope, and 29 additional one-shots in the same 'verse, plus 16 fics beyond that, for a total of almost 700K words. In the same time, I also did more than 200 pieces of fan art and was extremely active on LJ. The first book was written in one-hour snatches at the library because I was homeless at that time, and everything since August has been done while holding down a full-time job plus volunteer work.

Doubt that I'm not just posturing for this community? This is an excerpt from a meme I posted before I ever applied here that asked you to state facts about yourself. Link to the full entry is here.

3. I want to pay off my two remaining credit cards, then in 09, take a leave of absence from work and grab a month-long bus pass to just GO again.

4. I have the DA tattoo on my left calf now. I did it myself, not as a crazy fan thing, but because this 'verse has awakened a side of me that I would otherwise never have known.

5. I feel happiest, most alive, most worthwhile when things are on the edge of utterly falling apart...danger is my aphrodesiac and my addiction, chaos my lifeblood, and I feel like I'm flying when I'm in free-fall, the most miraculous moment being that I always somehow find wits enough to land on my feet. That's not like this summer, when things are mundane stuck-in-small-town-no-job shitty, but when they're on-the-streets-of-a-foreign-city-without-a-dime-to-my-name-bleeding-for-the-sake-of-a-woman-I-don't-know BAD.

6. I often believe that I know the reason I was put on this earth when someone looks at me with that wide-eyed wonder in themselves and says "I'd never have thought I could do that."

7. I have approached women who looked sad and lonely and used that line from Gone With The Wind without introducing myself. "You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how." And I've never been slapped, even though I've followed through every time. Maybe because I don't do it to get laid, because I really mean it - I believe it's true of all women - and because I walk away afterwards.

8. I never feel satisfied with enough when I know I'm capable of going above and beyond.

9. I always believe I'm capable of going above and beyond, because enough is always a bar set for people who are afraid to fail.

10. I want to be famous at least once and for at least one thing that is astonishing before I die.

11. I am not afraid of death.

12. I don't ever want to have more money than I need.

14. I believe that the worst thing a person can do to themselves is knowingly fall short of their own potential. To do so is to spit in the face of God, and is a far greater waste than anything material ever could have been. Each human life is a staggeringly brief and precious thing that flickers a single sparking word into the story of mankind. To leave yours unwritten, or to make it less powerful than it is meant to be is to shortchange not only yourself, but every heart that makes up your paragraph, your chapter, your book in the saga, and that is something you have no right to do.

15. I believe that it is the innate duty of anyone who can to do for anyone who can't, for anyone who will to do for anyone who won't, for the strong to protect the weak, the brave to protect the timid, and those who can stand to lift those who are afraid to raise their heads from the common muck to taste the heaven that is there for us all if we're willing to look up and not be afraid of how infinitely large the sky is above us.


But what about the other houses? Can't there be crossover qualities? Well, I suppose I am exceedingly loyal, willing to die for people I've just met or don't even know, but I am never a follower, and I don't do modesty. I'm extraordinary, and I know it, and I'd be a two-faced bastard if I pretended otherwise. I'm intelligent, no question, with a bloody genius IQ and an astonishing breadth of completely self-aquired knowledge (I've never been to school a day in my life) that includes 4.5 languages and trivia on everything from absinthe to zygotes. But I don't learn for the sake of learning, and have no love of knowledge itself: the thrill and drive there is the determination that no matter how obscure the information needed to save the day, I'll probably have it. Ambitious? Without question, but I would never step on anyone else to achieve my ends, and my goal is to gain glory through my deeds on behalf of others, even in my writing, where I strive to bring to heroic light those who would otherwise be forgotten in the shadow of their flashier peers.

No, I am a Gryffindor. Officially sort me there if you wish, ban me for my audacity in standing up at the front of the Great Hall and telling the Hat who I am if you must, but I remain what I am, and I need no man or woman to tell me my own heart. Perhaps it is bravest of all, for certainly rare enough, but I've never feared to look at it myself, as the only thing I would ever have need to be ashamed of finding there would be failure to try my utmost. And a little beyond.