Monday, October 3, 2016

Pottermore Patronus Perplexity

Golly, thanks, Reddit!
No wonder I didn't get any of the options that appear to have been specifically selected for me, the Saluki-owning sighthound nut (Borzoi, Ibizan hound, Deerhound, Greyhound, Irish wolfhound. I'd gladly take a mix of them.) Pretty randomly assigned strings of five or six words lead you to random species/breeds. Time to register a new Pottermore account.

What's really got me weirded out is how in the world these animals were chosen. Particularly the dog & cat breeds. Those few popular/common/well-known ones I could understand (though I still can't decide how and why they alone were picked), but the random rare or uncommon ones? Did they simply attempt to cover a variety of bases? If so, why include five sighthounds?! That is so odd (and noticeable to someone like me because it feels so personally tailored.) I mean, why Borzoi over Afghan or Saluki? Why Ibizan over Pharaoh? Why Greyhound but not Whippet? And why the other specific breeds chosen?! I'm just curious.

And then the quiz goes and gives me wildcat. Which is definitely cool--especially if there weren't dogs. At first I thought, "Oh, so I get to choose my wild cat? Cool; I pick cheetah!" (I mean, duh! ;) Then I realized that it means the actual wildcat-wildcat, Felis silvestris.

But anyway. The "Very Rare" Patroni make sense; they're frickin' magical fantasy creatures. But the "Unusual" ones...wtf?? There is no way to contend that a tiger, stag, doe, seal, shark, owl, rhino, raven, bear, orca, lion, leopard, elephant, cheetah, buffalo, vulture, peacock, or bat should be less "usual" than...the rare/uncommon dogs & cats. Or various others. The whole thing is. So. Weird. But whatever. I'm gonna game Pottermore and try to force it to give me accurate results (Ravenclaw, would accept Slytherin...Horned Serpent again...and...preferably the Borzoi. Will gladly accept Ibizan, Deerhound, Grey. Aaaand, probably the same or a similar wand to what I was first assigned, because unyielding vine+phoenix feather sounds fairly fitting. I like the sound of dragon heartstring & certain other woods, but y'know, they all have different associations/meanings, so...it's less of a you-can-choose/know-your-own-ahead-of-time thing? Yeah.)

There are a lot of really cool choices that I like very much (here's my long comment on Pottermore about it.)

...*re-registers* Okay. That's it. True accuracy is impossible with these Pottermore quizzes. They're overly simple, with too many choices that could equally apply, and give you a different result almost every time. (Except for the wand one.) I'm a Ravenslythergryffinpuff in that order, and a Horned Thunderwampuswudgie in THAT order. I know this. But even taking into consideration my well-roundedness and the fact that most/many of us are a little bit of two or three or all four houses in each school--the inconsistency of this site is remarkable. ;p

BUT, on the super-plus side, I got my Borzoi Patronus. 8D x3 And the lovely animation is probably used for all five sighthounds (or at least four; I think the wolfhound is a little different), because it looked like a staghound--almost certainly wasn't based purely on the Borzoi. I'm gonna venture a guess that THAT'S why they picked five sighthounds nearly at random to include: an artist designed a pretty sighthound Patronus animation, and they decided to use it (or a slight variation) multiple times. I'll bet that happened with other related animals as well. And I'd better be right, because I don't want there to be other animations for Deerhound, Ibizan, and/or Greyhound that I haven't seen. (Google can only find pics of the wolfhound one.)
Anyhoozer, I hope Merida's is a Deerhound...or a Clydesdale like Angus, I suppose. ^^

...Yikes, just saw somebody dismayed by getting a salmon and snake...they'd rather have a moose, bear, stag, etc., like everyone else...pas moi, I'd gladly be the snake or the salmon! I wish I were a salmon in Native American astrology. Fish are the second-coolest animals after dogs. ;D And snakes are gorge. I'd love to have a little hissy, forked-tongue-flicking necklace buddy. 

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