bright blasting boom stars

hello! i'm megan, and i'm eighteen. here you will find massive amounts of doctor who, harry potter, hannibal, sherlock, disney, pushing daisies, lost, firefly, once upon a time, et cetera.

[girl-non-grata]

Husband animates joke about tortilla chips told by his drunk wife.

Pretty much the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

[cleapow-deactivated20180718]

This is the cutest fucking thing I have ever seen in my whole ever.

[newblogisjacindaelena]

 Alex Kwong

[nevver]

A show of hands

[pocketpadfoot]

One time when Sirius was helping out with Mrs. Potter’s baking she asked him to stir the batter and he replied with a “sure, Mom” and almost dropped the bowl as he realised what he said. But then James sneaked up behind him to try and stick his finger in the batter and Mrs. Potter slapped at his hand and complained about her messy sons, and Sirius just beamed

[far-flunghopes-blog]

Me in every possible life situation: I don't know

[childishsgambino]

Why do you shut the world out? What are you so afraid of?

[softwaring]

Different Seasons, Dariusz W

[petrichour]

There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.

Khalil Gibran (via makemeavessel)

[newblogisjacindaelena]

 conago

[ejbeachy]

Fun Fact: Quiet people are aware that they are quiet. They don’t need you to point it out to them. They know. Please stop. 

[esinofsardis]

Another theory—

There are five areas to be considered when you are sorted:

Personality

Loyalty

Values

Desires

Company

You do not have to meet all of these for the same House—in fact, this is uncommon, but you belong to the House that is most prevalent or best fits the areas that are most important to you.

Personality

These are the basic traits that are part of you. It’s the basis of most simplistic sorting methods. Each House has its signature traits—they’re the ones identified in the Sorting Hat’s song and therefore the best known way of sorting.

These are both good and bad traits—the strengths and weaknesses of each House. The are adjectives, things used to describe who a person is innately.

Gryffindor: brave, daring, bold, loyal, confident, reckless, arrogant, noble, proud

Ravenclaw: intelligent, witty, creative, clever, eccentric, curious, snobbish, condescending, open-minded

Hufflepuff: loyal, kind, trustworthy, helpful, patient, tolerant, fair, stubborn, down-to-earth, warm-hearted

Slytherin: cunning, charismatic, determined, talented, manipulative, ambitious, elitist

Not all of these traits are required to fit a House. It’s what you have the most in common with.

Loyalty

Each House has its primary loyalty to a different sort of thing. I’ve written at greater length about it, but I believe it generally describes the motivations behind a person’s actions. If personality is who you are, this describes why you might do things.

Now, it doesn’t encompass every single decision—in fact you might have many motivations. But these loyalties describe the first inclination you have in a moment of stress. More than one of these might apply, but what is most important will win out in the end.

Gryffindors are loyal to broad ideas/principles

Ravenclaws are loyal to specific ideas/principles

Hufflepuffs are loyal to groups of people

Slytherins are loyal to specific people

It’s all about what you would sacrifice. If your ideas come before or after people. If you’d protect the individual you love (Slytherin) or the group as a whole (Hufflepuff). If you see principles as black and white issues (Gryffindor) or if you reexamine every situation separately (Ravenclaw.)

Values

Now that we have who you are and why you do things, let’s talk about what you value—it’s easiest to see this looking at other people.

Each House considers different traits important. Now, these aren’t personality traits as much as they are morals and decisions. They describe a person’s actions. They’re also acquired traits—things that have to be conscious choices and worked upon rather than innate parts of you. (Nouns, not adjectives.)

Gryffindor: chivalry, strength, loyalty, courage, honor

Ravenclaw: creativity, individuality, learning, wisdom, knowledge

Hufflepuff: honesty, hard work, fairness, tolerance, community

Slytherin: ambition, triumph, tradition, cunning, power

It’s easiest to look for what you like to see in someone else. Are you more impressed with their power or their wisdom? Their goodness or their strength? What set of traits are most appealing to you? Which do you find yourself working to have?

Desires

This one is concerned with who you want to be. Because we’re all human, we’re not finished products. You’re probably not who you’d like to be completely. Especially not at age eleven when Hogwarts students are sorted. Think about Neville—no one understood why he was a Gryffindor until the end. The sorting looks at your potential for the future—the sort of person you could be and the sort of person you’d like to be.

These are pretty much the values of each house as adjectives, but there’s some variation—they’re goals, not traits. I’ve also included the ideal sort of death for each House because everyone has to go sometime, and each House would prefer to be someone different in the end.

Gryffindor: brave, chivalrous, loyal, honorable—die heroically, having fought for what is right

Ravenclaw: wise, excellent, uniquely individual, accomplished—die having mastered an area of expertise

Hufflepuff: good, loved, dependable, just—die happy, having served and loved

Slytherin: great, powerful, successful, elite—die old, having achieved goals

Company

It’s this area that decides last. If there isn’t a clear winner so far, you should look here for guidance. If you think about the type of people and the atmosphere of each House, which would you be happiest in? For instance, Hermione matches Ravenclaw in a lot of ways, but she wouldn’t have been happy in the competitive academic environment. You might match Hufflepuff and Gryffindor and then choose Gryffindor because you like having the influence of bravery and nobility around you.

The sorting doesn’t just tell you about who you are. It places you in a community. Which means you also have to consider what sort of community is best for you. What influence do you want? What side-effects are there of having these people grouped together?

Are you too individual for community based Hufflepuff and should thus be a Ravenclaw? Are you too sneaky for noble Gryffindor and should be a Slytherin? Do you have traits that would be scorned in a House? If yes, then you wouldn’t be happy there.

Where would you be happy and accepted?

[fradine]

Mine bolded and italicized.

Based on personal experiences, definitely Slytherin. I’d be miserable in a Hufflepuff community.

Wow, this is the most comprehensive sorting method I’ve seen. Seems like I’m Slytherin with very strong Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tendencies.

[pottermoreanalysis]

Running this as a Sorting quiz is an interesting concept (borrowed from Fradine - I un-bolded hers and re-bolded mine.) 

For me, I think that this quiz would place me Ravenclaw > Hufflepuff > Slytherin > Gryffindor for values, Ravenclaw/Slytherin for loyalties, Ravenclaw > Hufflepuff > Gryffindor > Slytherin for values, and Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw/Slytherin for goals (because my goals would be to die loved and having accomplished the creation of something I loved.)

It’s interesting, because Gryffindor tends to come up second-most-often of my Houses on Pottermore and in stamping communities (the exception being the Personality Lab quiz, which tends to place Hufflepuff in second for me), so I’m not sure if perhaps there’s an aspect here that’s missing despite the comprehensiveness of the quiz? (I do think the lack of “determined, resourceful” under Gryffindor and the de-emphasis of the individuality axis where Gryff/Claw are Houses of individualism and Slyth/Puff are Houses of community probably tips this away from Gryff for me - also, chivalry probably deserves a discussion of what that actually means, because in terms of standing up for people who both want and need help, that’s something I can support, versus the more feudal definitions of the term.) And I do think that there are aspects that are important - that fifth area is important, since I think the group/communal aspect of Hufflepuff could definitely get too stifling/while I like Hufflepuff tolerance, hard work, etc., Hufflepuff patience and the emphasis on groups versus the individual are both things that I’m emphatically not.

In broader terms, I am going to talk a little about some things I didn’t notice until I went through this in-depth.

For Gryffindor, I’d disagree with placing loyalty under the Gryffindor category at all - I know that loyalty-as-Gryffindor is something argued by a large part of the fandom, but it’s not something I agree with. Loyalty should be Hufflepuff; Slytherins and Gryffindors and Ravenclaws can all be loyal, but Hufflepuff is the House to specifically value loyalty and select its students based on their possession of that quality. 

For Ravenclaw, I’d disagree with placing snobbishness/condescending under Ravenclaw (canon is hugely mixed here - Luna points to this not being a Claw trait, while I think the only canonical thing I can think of is the Ravenclaw Welcome Letter’s “Hufflepuffs are nice people”/Slytherin remark about them being swots, but…I could see Ravenclaws being more know-it-all or some Claws having a sort of elitism that cares primarily about book-smarts. Or, in looking at the creative side of Ravenclaw, I could see the tendency to have one’s head in the clouds/absent-mindedness or the tendency to be over-involved in books/one’s own interests versus real life to be a negative trait - it’s harder to come up with a snappy one-word definition of any of those things, outside of absent-minded or perhaps unrealistic, but I’d think those fit the negative side of Ravenclaw more than snobbish.*

For Hufflepuff, Hufflepuffs are very often described as “kind” or “the nice ones” by fandom, but the books don’t have any such description - Puffs are good, but good is not necessarily nice. (FWIW, I do think that JKR’s conception of the House would have them as kind, but I also think that some of JKR’s conceptions necessarily have to be discarded for any fandom construction of the Houses, since they set Gryffindor on a pedestal and also tend to place the Houses on a morality scale - the recent graphicset showing the Founders as Lawful Good, Chaotic Good, True Neutral, and Neutral Evil is about right in terms of what we get from JKR’s interviews, but the Houses and their traits should be morally neutral, on an equal level with one another.) In addition, “nice” or “kind” is too often used to dismiss the House - see how Ravenclaw’s Welcome Letter’s “well, no one can say they’re not nice people” is taken as condescension.) To say someone’s nice is often to damn with faint praise, and a lot of the time that gets used as a way to dismiss Hufflepuff. (Not that I think it was the intent here - but I do think that casual fandom often takes it this way, the “well, they’re nice,” “the leftovers,” etc. Part of that is because Hufflepuff is supposed to be the morally best House in canon but Gryffindor ends up the House of heroes, leaving Hufflepuff to be cannon fodder/background/”well, they’re nice” via unfortunate implications.) Hufflepuff is the House of fundamental human decency - of hard work, equality, fair play, justice, and a simple life where being loved is the highest goal - but idk that I’d say being personally nice is an attribute I’d put on there on the same level as fairness, trustworthiness, or the rest. 

For Slytherin, I should note that determined (and resourceful, which doesn’t make an appearance on the list but possibly should?) are overlap traits between Gryffindor and Slytherin, as pointed out by Dumbledore in CoS - if you’re going to repeat traits between any two Houses, it should probably be those, not the loyalty that you’ve split Gryff/Puff. 

*(If you were going to ascribe snobbishness to any House, I think there’s more canonical evidence for Slytherin - but that would be based largely off of blood-purity attitudes/Draco’s sentiments, which I would think that any fanon Sorting would want to disregard in the attempt to construct a Slytherin House for fandom, where the blood purity aspects don’t factor in and the House itself is morally neutral, as opposed to the canonical/authorial-intent Slytherin. For Slytherin, elitist might fit better, if you were looking for a negative descriptor - the idea that Slytherins are those chosen for greatness and everyone else is not would be something I could accept.) 

I do very much like that this analysis separates the traits you have and the traits you value/admire - those are both important and need to be taken separately, so it’s nice to see a Sorting meta that splits them up. 

[esinofsardis]

This is actually an amazing addition to this meta.

My intention of writing it though was not to give a comprehensive list of of traits, but rather example to illustrate the five areas. So while the examples might not be comprehensive, I believe that the five facets of sorting are.

I also like the idea of using this as a sorting test, and would be definitely interested in help coming up with a better list of traits to help decide each area. Perhaps posting without completely thinking those through wasn’t the best idea.

The idea is that if you only look at some or one of these areas, you can’t fully sort someone because you’ve missed part of them.

Actually going on that idea, you could even go as far to say that these are the five areas that make up a person. (But that might be a topic for further discussion elsewhere.)

[adssdfsxd-deactivated20131223]

Chico River, Luzon, Philippines by Gateway Landscape Photography

[bastafunk]

[pluuie]

Visit Original Link

[thedumbestdeer]

important things to remember

imaging people as complex, nuanced individuals instead of one-dimensional heroes/villains is the best way to understand them.

interrogating a story and examining it from multiple perspectives also allows you to see the situation/people involved more complexly.

people can do terrible things with good intentions, just as people can do good things with terrible intentions. intentions don’t change actions, but they change people.

mercy is not dead.

[floralls]

Italy (by ►CubaGallery)

[bradleyy]

SHOUTOUT TO THAT ONE PERSON THAT HEARS YOU WHEN YOU’RE TALKING IN A GROUP AND SMILES OR REPLIES SO YOU DONT FEEL LIKE A TWAT