five vicodin chased with a (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} xshotofclarityx) wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} sorting_elite,@ 2009-10-02 22:53:00 |
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| Entry tags: | term 18; sorting application |
Pensieve? I hardly know him?
01. Name: Cynthia
02. How did you find out about Hogwarts Elite? In chat, a couple years ago when the job search was still slow and I had way too much free time
03. What made you start reading the Harry Potter series? I was a bit too impatient waiting for the fifth film to come out, so I began to plunge into the book series and as soon as I did I couldn’t stop
||MIRROR OF ERISED||
04. What do you wish to accomplish in life?
Oh well that’s rather personal, isn’t it? I wish to have an impact on the world in some significant way. I think film does that. I’ve been reassured of this ever since rewatching South Park: Bigger Longer Uncut, and hearing the line, “Movies teach us what our parents don’t have time to say.” Shutup. Pulled me out of a rough time. That's why it's on my journal. Because that’s exactly the kind of impact I want to have. If parent’s are dumb enough to let the media raise their kids, then I might as well teach them the things that are worth knowing. Good values and ethical standards that can only come from the mafia or dirty cops. What? There are very good values in my writing. Layered within the other stuff that is merely entertaining. Kids that are raised right will be able to see that, the kids that aren’t – I don’t know, but am I the only person that thinks that maybe the parents should be heavily fined? Or jailed? Or PUNK’D? Yeah. PUNK irresponsible parents! Who’s with me? *hands?*
Or if not the world, at least my town. Or state. Oh this state needs a lot of changes. I don’t think I’ll be doing it alone. I’ve already impacted college plenty enough. That chapter of my life is closed :(. I’m glad to be out. I suppose this is the part where I mention that I’m a filmmaker. And something of a writer. Though I don’t mind doing other people’s work too, but the fact that I can write, and have been writing a lot longer than I have been a filmmaker makes getting the copyright a lot easier.
UPDATE; I hope to travel and figure out what the hell I’m going to do about this new relationship I’ve gotten myself into.
05. Describe exactly what you would see in the Mirror of Erised. (This is not the same question as #04.)
Okay, so ideally, I’d be working on a film set with the current boy and few other friends whose careers will improve and would be listening to me and maybe things go smoothly. Or if I do make some people angry and frustrated we at least get the shots needed and it looks awesome in post and I won’t be crucified after.
Yeah, that’s all I want. Material things don’t matter to me and I can’t rely on family or personal contacts enough to see a future in them. So I put my heart into this intangible medium.
06. What makes a person deserving of your respect?
People who speak the truth, even if it’s not necessarily what others want to hear. People who are willing to compromise a little in order to go about actually changing anything. Or at least made people think they’ve compromised. People who can convince others of all sorts of things will win some small amount of respect from me – depending on what they convinced them to do. People who are able to laugh at all the world’s absurdities including themselves.
07. Do you consider yourself a leader or a follower? Please provide examples if applicable.
Type B personality, natural born leader, but just as comfortable being led or part of a group. I don’t blindly follow anyone, save initially, as I’m trying to learn about them and it makes learning a lot easier and usually quicker. Course I don’t mind having to work a little for the information either. Though my ambitions and opinions often set me apart at times, I’m really not enough of a control-freak to be a true leader. I don’t like making demands of people or expecting things from anyone beyond their job, and if they’re in their job for a reason and I’m not, I generally assume they know more about what they’re doing than I ever will and don’t try to tell them otherwise. Even if I may actually know a better way, unless their way is proven incompetent, I just let them be. And even if their way doesn’t work, I still give them the benefit of the doubt until someone in a higher position of authority says something. Though I might stand to the side and point out to the authority what they did wrong. I don’t take on a lot of leadership positions. Despite so many times being lumped into that role by others for whatever reason. Most opinionated? Smartest? Coolest? Prettiest? Friendliest? Subjective, but sometimes true where the standards are exceptionally low.
I’m not very good at making plans. I’m more so impulsive. I’m better at acting on other people’s plans and improvising. Plans, in general, don’t work in my opinion. You can have an “idea”, but one should be open to change, and I can be quite impatient with those who make plans but never act on them. But it has to be a pretty consistent behavior. I could be a great motivational speaker, but again, I’m terrible at consistency myself, and insisting upon anything for anybody but myself. I don’t care enough about “leading” for leading’s sake, but I do care enough about film and the act of creating a collaborative medium enough to step up in this capacity. When I need to. And that’s “art for art’s sake”, though I’d be lying if that didn’t also mean, something as simple as “Yay! People are paying attention to me!” (shameless, yes…sorry) or pretentious as, “something that matters in people’s lives. Changes the way people see.” Because I know it’s not really about me. After years of being told you won’t amount to anything, recognition and being able to prove them wrong is just kind of nice. Even if they never actually know it.
08. What would you do if you had a time turner?
TBH, I’d probably lose it, so I can’t imagine why one would even be given to me. Lol, but to answer the question, I have a bad habit of speaking when I should probably not. And gauging first impressions aren’t always easy. Trouble with first impressions, you can only make one. I mean, I make up for it with charm and a generally relaxed attitude, but sometimes it’d be best to not have to do that. Course, if I used it for those purposes, I could see it getting pretty Groundhog Day ridiculous, so I’d probably just limit it to those moments that have to be redone. When the results of my or somebody else’s actions effect more than just me. A chance to help somebody…or multiple people.
09. What do you think are your top five positive characteristics?
01. Creative – ly inclined, art, writing, film, creative in humor; not so much in deception, as I think creative lies are more difficult to believe; unless my brother is telling them – he has a brilliant poker face, unless you know him. Seriously, he will make you believe our mom makes the best blueberry and chicken pie.
02. Intuitive – I’m great at reading people, figuring out what they both want and need, weighing that with what I’m capable of, and what I’m not, and choosing to allow, give, or completely ignore these wishes. Downside is I don’t always listen if I think I’m right, I prefer to figure it out on my own, and intuition only knows as much as it has managed to learn. But it’s a strength, because I put a lot of emphasis on my iNtuition and feeling, and ability, as well as desire, to relate to others, because it’s one of the major things that separates me from my father.
03. Honest – Unless I’m joking, then, well, it’s a joke, it doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be funny. Or I need to get myself or someone else out of trouble, and punishment would serve nothing, though I don’t always have to lie then, or I just manipulate the truth, which is perfectly legitimate – this is the part where I mention I come from a long line of lawyers. I do not believe that truth is always subjective, though, I’ll admit, it isn’t necessarily universal either. Philosophize later. I generally tell things as they are, not how I, or anyone else, wishes them to be. Though I generally have learned how to make it sound more “gentle” when that’s necessary, but other times, nothing is more effective than bluntness.
04. Easy going, everyone has their contradictions, I take life and people as they come, depending on what I need them for, if I don’t “need” them, I see no reason to completely reject them. People are interesting and fun to be around. Generally.
05. Not materialistic. Physical wealth doesn’t appeal to me save as a means to an end. I would be happy doing what I love in a rundown apartment or hostel. Privacy isn’t too big a deal either, as long as the flow of information can be controlled to some degree and then that’s mostly just a matter of not participating in gossip. I’ve always believed that someone who talks shit about everyone else is eventually going to talk shit about you. Something else I might’ve learned from watching my dad.
10. What do you think are your top five negative characteristics?
01. I can be terribly fatalistic about tragedies or when things don’t go my way. I resign to apathy and let my mind wander on other things…like stamping applications.
02. I tend to be kind of insensitive to the afflictions of others. I don’t always voice them, anymore, because I’ve learned that’s not conducive to social-living at all, but unless it’s an actual problem and you don’t go on and on about it and reject every solution offered, I don’t tend to give a lot of sympathy. I generally just ignore it. The way most people ignore the screaming child in the store.
03.
- Honest – You know that filter people usually have that separates their brain from their mouth? I was born without that. Within the first few moments of meeting anyone I’m pretty good at figuring out the “line”, and will allow my intuition to decide whether I should speak or not. Sometimes I just won’t say anything if I’m not sure. I’m not afraid to ask questions and if I feel something needs to be said, all gloves are off.
04. -Stubborn – I believe I’ve demonstrated this in practically every answer in this entire application, and it’s also a strength, but I could only list five. But to state it again, I don’t give up. I don’t let go. Easily. I don’t compromise. Much. Especially if it relates back to me. I set high standards for myself because I literally feel suffocated by anything less. Not even “material” wise, honestly, more so just the overall “energy” of the atmosphere and people sharing it. Maybe I think too much. And it is a very rare act of bravery I will ever actually apologize for anything. I get too wrapped up in doing things my own way. Independent to a fault, might be another way of saying it.
05. God I’m shifty. Yeah, there’s no point denying it really. I’m pretty sketch in most things. Easy-going *And* stubborn? I know right? I’m like a loyal rat. I fit in EVERYWHERE because I don’t fit in anywhere, or I don’t feel it all the time. I don’t know symptom of Reactive Attachment Disorder due to moving so much. See my profile to see how many schools I transferred to. Furthermore I am pretty content with this and only change enough to where it doesn’t hinder my ambition. Do I seek to please everyone? No. This was apparently good enough for Albus Dumbledore, but as for my mother, this is like the eighth deadliest sin, so I place it here with the negative traits.
||IN ESSENCE UNITED||
11. Who is your favorite character in the Harry Potter series?
Regulus Black, probably. I have to admit, I admire Sirius and Barty’s bravado in rebelling against their parents, but Regulus to me is a bit more realistic, and does so in such a more awesome and subtle way. Of course at first he does simply seem to have been following the prejudices of his parents, as most kids do, and may have been more thoroughly emboldened to join the Death Eaters when his brother Sirius finally ran away from home, and then later when he was imprisoned. Someone had to take responsibility for the family and the wizarding world (pretentious, naïve, perhaps, children and teenagers can be pretty sure of lots of things that aren’t necessarily correct, some have such a drive as Regulus as to go about to carry it out). Sirius seemed so determined to drag the Black family name into the gutter – though apparently slaughtering house elves is a perfectly acceptable practice in wizarding society. I have no opinion either way since House Elves are governed by different laws, but I would think heads on a wall would start to stink.
Regulus Black appeared to follow dutifully, rebelling in secret only when he was certain that he could get away with it. Upon closer reading, I can see Draco this way too – unfortunately Draco still seems like the obnoxious brat who refused to grow up and fully accept responsibility for his actions – but we are seeing him through Harry’s Gryffindor-biased-eyes. Whether hiding behind his parents, the dark mark or his “duty.” Regulus on the other hand sees Voldemort for what he really is and – in a scene that I felt needed a little more elaboration on how exactly he found a place that Dumbledore himself hadn’t for over 50 years, but then Dumbledore is characterized as a procrastinator, so – attempts to take part of that from him. Of course, in typical Black fashion, it doesn’t quite work out past the initial plan, but his heart was in the right place.
12. Who is your least favorite character in the series?
Peter Pettigrew, maybe, I don’t know, I feel like him a lot of the time, and I wanted really badly to feel sorry for him. And I did up until he started blaming everyone else for his problems and choices. Albus Dumbledore was a manipulative rat too but he accepted and came to terms with and by all appearances made the best of it. Pettigrew hid for 12 years in his animagus form as a pet to a family that were also members of the Order that he betrayed. Letting an innocent man rot in jail. Now, if the Weasley’s had hid him on purpose, that would be another story, but in Pettigrew’s case it’s just pure cowardice and lack of imagination. Because, honestly, Snape was willing to attempt to join his enemy when the woman he loved was about to be murdered by a psychopath. And surely Pettigrew didn’t think – though he feared Voldemort would win – that this would be a fortunate outcome? Of course, I could concede that he’s really just that thick and thought “We will be gods” in gardens and harps playing. And…there’s really no excuse to be that stupid. If this were America I could say, “Another child left behind…” but, yeah. He’s just not someone I would want to be around for very long. There’s very few people I’d say that about. I’d get along with Umbridge better. She could at least be polite.
13. If you could spend a day as one of the Harry Potter characters, who would you choose?
ALASTOR MAD-EYE MOODY! Okay, it’s mostly for the eye, true, and the endless supply of alcohol. I think it’d be really cool to be an Auror – sorry for the painfully typical answer, but it wouldn’t be so popular if JKR didn’t make it seem so exciting, during non-peacetime – and a member of The Order. Like wizarding world super-heroes or whatever Rowling called them, because I believe that people with power are obligated to use it for good. I also love a good mystery and being able to “put a stake in a bad guy’s heart” (just an expression, really). Moody of them all because, obviously, there’s an advantage to being able to see as much as he does when tracking down death eaters or other dangers. And I really hope that story about being able to see “even into their very soul” is true, simply because – oh man, can you imagine the levity you could have on someone during interrogation? I mean, you wouldn’t reveal too much, you’d make them tell it to you, but the ability it could assist in coercion…this is another reason why Legimens looks so attractive to me.
That and because trusting people that I probably shouldn’t is a repeated problem with me. My inner opportunist – I take people at their word. I don’t necessarily think they’re all “good”, but unless I know them or recognize something they say as absolute BS, because it’s never true I’ll believe them. And people lie. I know that. I don’t know why. It’s usually a completely useless enterprise, but I wish I could see through it more.
14. What is something you would change about the series?
Besides “bulk up” the epilogue a little more? But everyone says that. I think even non-fans are starting to say it. And, Idk, I’m pretty content with it. Some of the “reveals” about what happened to Luna and Hannah, as well as a sentence or two about what the Trio did for a living might’ve been satisfying. But it served its purpose. Tied up the “Slytherin-Gryffindor” conflict nicely. So I’ll go with one of my biggest pet peeves with the series:
When Snape returns to Dumbledore with the news of what his “Lord” was planning, why did he stop there? Why did he rely on Dumbledore – a man who has neither proven the most reliable in all situations, and one of Snape’s sworn enemies of recent – to alert James and Lily? What was preventing him from saving the family himself? He had more knowledge of the Dark Lord than any of them, so he could better predict his moves. He might have been killed on sight and then we wouldn’t have Snape-the-jerky-potions-professor, but it would at least JUSTIFY this so-called “love” he had for Lily. Which I felt “The Prince’s Tale” was trying to do. It did convince me, yes, there’s more to Snape than the harsh exterior – but it didn’t really confirm anything new. Snape’s real “moment of redemption” was when he tried to use Sectum Sempra on one of his fellow Death Eaters. And working as a double-agent. That’s certainly bold of him. And I admit, braver than Pettigrew, but that’s not hard. I still don’t see how he’s so brave because he seemed to care 100% about self-preservation. Still that “bravest man I ever knew” line did have me in tears. Hyperbolic as it is.
15. Relate each house to a different fictional or historical figure, not from Harry Potter, and explain how they exemplify the traits of that house.
• Gryffindor: Walter J. Kovacs or Rorschach from Watchmen fame. Not to say all Gryffindors are this hardcore. Or at least I certainly hope not. But he’s not ambitious, he doesn’t mind how he lives and just wishes people would leave him alone – sounds sort of like the Gryffindor protagonist. He however shares Gryffindors’ virtues of not being able to stand aside and look the other way while allowing crime to be carried out. And some of their vices of not always being particularly altruistic in their methods. But, honestly, as soon as I got to the panel where he left the criminal for the police with the note “Never” stabbed into him, I started to take him a little more seriously as the black-and-white worldview of a Sirius Black kind of Gryffindor. Just seemed like such a Sirius sort of response. I can’t help but send him to the lions – right after he goes to the shower, of course. I think even Hogwarts might have limits.
• Slytherin: Emmett Honeycutt from Showtime’s Queer as Folk. Slytherpuff, certainly, but to me he’s just as ambitious as Brian, but more savvy in that he knows “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Brian has a superficial charm but he polarizes his emotions too much to have any more of an effect. Emmett has also shown quite a bit of cunning as well as the ability to be quite assertive when his own rights and values are threatened. Sure, he’s not someone to rely on in a fist fight like “Rage-boy” over there, but he’s a true friend when it matters and willing to stand up to them when they make or are about to make poor decisions.
• Ravenclaw: Neil Gaiman. True he is ambitious and image conscious. This is illustrated by Terry Pratchett’s own observations. But his stories all feature bugs and gross things, and the same predictable plot of “Misfit discovers they are special person in a world just beside their own” so I tend to think he lived a lot in his head growing up and thus might’ve had high expectations regarding relationships – ala Cho. He is a Slytherclaw, but I think a Slytherin would have been able to be brought down to earth sooner – aside from Tom Riddle, they seemed like pretty fast learners. Neil seems pretty content to wander. Or he’s just incapable of forming strong attachments. As the house associated with the element “Air” this doesn’t preclude Ravenclaw.
• Hufflepuff: Jimminy Cricket from Disney’s Pinocchio, because when I was trying to come up with a Hufflepuff character, all I could think of was the “When You Wish Upon A Star” song. Lol. Humble, loyal, not afraid to go the extra mile for a friend, but not exactly eager to go against the rules either. He keeps Pinocchio honest…or at least tries to.
16. Describe the canon house qualities that you feel accurately reflect you. Please try to include traits from each of the four houses.
• Gryffindor: I’ll stand up for my friends or people who I don’t think deserve to be treated a certain way if I don’t particularly have any prior loyalties to the people being unfair. I can be an absolute Remus Lupin-like coward when some of my friends are teasing some poor boy that I dated and not say or do anything. Simply because they’re aggressive and “cool” or whatever. Course that might be worse than Lupin. As far as I know he and Snape never dated. Unless Rowling would like to out anymore characters? I’ll pull my friends, family and even enemies out of the street just because they’re idiots enough to stand in the middle of traffic or jaywalk. And I guess I’m brave for the impracticality of the career I’ve chosen. But it’s not too impractical since it’s what I got my degree in and allows me to play to my strengths the most. It is however impractical in the current economic situation, I have to admit. And I hate admitting that because it sounds like such a cop-out. But I can’t ignore facts. It’s the McGonagall in me. The McGonagall in me that also hates cop-outs.
• Slytherin: I’m ambitious and I like the idea of revolution but generally I prefer to work within the confines of the law to change them. My reputation matters a lot to me. I won’t even mention how much here, because of what it reveals. I like finishing projects on time, but mostly I just like to finish them. If I have to come back later, I will. I do fear the unknown – much like Voldemort or Draco when he didn’t know where his life was headed, but I generally accept death the same way I accept change as inevitable. And I prefer to do so with the necessary credentials. When I want something, I do pretty much whatever it takes to get it. If I have to actually do work to achieve my desired ambition, I will. But I work smart, not hard. I don’t like asking for help, I prefer to look up the information on my own, but if I have to, I’m going to ask for it from somebody who knows more about the subject than I do, not just someone who is going to tell me “Study harder.” Otherwise, I’m pretty flexible and the antithesis of “selective” when it comes to my own ambition. As long as it “happens”, honestly, is what I care about. There’s a part of me that would like to have “the best possible outcome” but there are so many ways in my opinion “the best” can be interpreted. I’m excellent at improvisation enough that I can “fly on the seat of my pants” once something is in motion, because I plan for hours days or weeks ahead of time.
• Ravenclaw: Once more, looking at my old app, hmm, no I actually do fear the unknown. Sometimes, yes my curiosity does get the better of me, but I always have a back-up plan. I just have trouble relating this to “Ravenclaw curiosity and intelligence” because I always feel extremely stupid. I have the grades to prove it. I did graduate, and not too late either – only 5 years. Sort of standard nowadays. And that password deal-y? Ugh, once in a blue moon I might remember something, but generally I look at riddles and just go WTF and move on. I don’t go in for abstract thinking, unless I’m thinking of a “more efficient” way to get what I want when I want it – which is usually ASAP. I’m just “weird” by the standards of the extremely sheltered and naïve. I am me. I like me. I might be a new me tomorrow, but I don’t change myself just to suit your vision. I change because…uh, the seasons did. I HATE TEDIUM. But because I fear the unknown, in a rather Ravenclaw sort of way, yes I do feel the need to tackle it and MAKE EVERYTHING KNOWN. Of course, not necessarily everything. And certainly not to everyone. Maybe anyone clever or willful enough to actually go search for it, but I prefer to layer things and be a little bit dodgy with the information I give out.
• Hufflepuff: I’m not patient, but I can fake it forever, so it seems about the same. I don’t expect fidelity no matter how often it’s promised, but I will keep a relationship “hanging” long after it has gone sour. I hate burning bridges. Especially if those bridges have some sort of a future. Physical attraction comes and goes. It might just be the anti-depressants I’m on. I’m pretty close to my family. Except my dad, but he was an asshole. I only tolerated and abided by him for the time up until I realized he wouldn’t be able to deliver on those promises. Does that make me a bad daughter? I don’t know. Probably. But he was never much of a father, so…
My career maybe impractical, but I don’t know, it’s a lot more practical than the path I could have gone down if I was just a little bit less honest, less ambitious and more bold. I was once in a position where I could have married some janitor and go to poetry gigs and smoke weed the rest of my life. And for awhile because I thought I was going to die anyway, I was kind of cool with that. Even though he was never very honest and complained constantly about his wife but failed to see his own manipulative behavior as being part or a great deal of the problem. Plus I have this suspicion he only “loved” me because I had made myself out to be “well-off”, and while it is true I came from a fairly privileged background and the house he saw I was living in was very nice – we couldn’t afford it. We moved out a year later when the bank foreclosed on it.
But, yeah, eventually I realized there was something more worth living for, and ultimately that was my ambitions, my true ambitions that hadn’t changed, but were kind of on a temporary hiatus – you get told you’re going to die. See how you handle it. And my brother. I felt I had to start setting some kind of better example to him because I was starting to see him do some of the same stupid things.
17. Which house do you feel the least affinity towards?
I don’t know. I’m as lost on that as I am on what I feel most.
||HOGWARTS EXPRESS||
18. Age: 25
19. What was the date of your first application? 2008-05-01
20. Link us to your original application: http://community.livejournal.com/sortin
