never laugh at live dragons

Listening to a custom playlist on Spotify while playing Pottermore and I realized most of the stuff on this playlist is stuff I was listening to on the radio when I was reading Harry Potter years ago.

Whoops. Ended up on Pottermore. I wonder if they’ll give me a patronus.

Sorting hat questions for uozumi

pottermoreanalysis:

I’ll insert a read more so when it’s answered it won’t be big all over people’s dashes.

Read More

I find it fascinating that I kept picking answers most do not. If we ignore weightings and averages, I would have…

R - xxxxx x 6/27 - 22.2%
S - xxxxx xxx 8/27 - 29.6%
H - xxxxx xxxx 9/27 - 33.3%
G - xxxxx xxxxx x 11/27 - 40.7%

I think that the weighted/averaged scores under the read more and these unweighted/averaged scores show that it’s all dependent on the set of questions you’re asked. Then again, as pointed out, most people are probably not this balanced, hence the rare answers conundrum.

If you’re curious why the percentages don’t add up to 100% some answers were a tie. Like for example, left vs. right gave you two houses depending on your answer.

Please be aware that this contains spoilers and cheats for the Pottermore sorting hat, so read at your own risk. This was interesting and informative.

The Pottermore Sorting Hat isnt the be-all…end-all - if they let everyone retake it,…

All I want, to be honest, is just some sort of confirmation it’s the right house. It threw me off because it’s the first time I’ve gotten a house other than Gryffindor and all the questions had a theme to them, which I found quite strange. If it had a more wide-spread approach to the randomization, I would feel more confident in its analysis. Or, if they’d give me a break down of something like 25% R 25% G 25% H 25% S so I could see why it’s Ravenclaw, I’d have more confidence in it.

Reblogged this in a short format to spare everyone’s dash.

So, I was thinking about how the Pottermore sorting hat sorted me into Ravenclaw even though every other sorting hat ever sorted me into Gryffindor, and I think I understand it now.

It’s like how I have degrees in Creative Writing and History even though my best friends have been engineers and I’ve gotten As and Bs in Science. Math trips me up. Even though I’m in the 99th percentile in Math comprehension, I can’t manage to get my shit together in Geometry and beyond to get the right answers on tests. I got Ds and Cs in Geometry and Algebra II despite the As and Bs in Math leading up to Geometry. So I couldn’t go into Architecture or Genetics or Oncology like I wanted to, I had to settle on getting my undergrad in my other strengths. It also meant that I was placed in a major with people who I didn’t relate to as strongly as the kids in other majors around me.

When I took my sorting hat quiz, all the questions were about studying and learning. My good grades in Science and History aren’t accidents. I enjoy learning. However, if they’d asked me about what it’s like to live with chronic disease or how I would move heaven and earth to protect my family and friends or how I stick my foot in my mouth whenever I open it or how I’ve dealt with excessive bullying, Pottermore would have sorted me into Gryffindor.

Ironically, however, they gave me Hermione’s wand only a little longer. So I suppose I’m the Hermione who got sorted into Ravenclaw instead. Which I can live with and it’s just another thing where things went in a certain way and out came the second-best result.

I CAN NOW EXPLORE HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

I am reading Pottermore

“Now to work on Potions. I should be drawing, but blah. ”

Check-in to Pottermore on GetGlue.com

I am reading Pottermore

“And here I go practicing the full body bind, because seriously the other spells even if you did them perfectly won’t get you enough points to win a duel anyway. Another flaw in Pottermore they need to…”

Check-in to Pottermore on GetGlue.com

I am reading Pottermore

“I feel like there should be more to do than potions and dueling. Maybe I’ve missed something? It seems like I’ve found all the hidden collectibles. ”

Check-in to Pottermore on GetGlue.com

I am reading Pottermore

“Just poking about looking for house points. Trying to get more of a hang of things so when we get to book 2 I have more understanding. ”

Check-in to Pottermore on GetGlue.com

laurarw replied to your post: So I’ve been playing on Pottermore for a few days now and these are my quibbles:

I agree with you on all of these.

I know it’s going to be so fun once they get their act together, but it’s just not together. It’ll at least be fun to go through the books and learn about JKR’s writing process, but I would like to think there will be more to the site than that.

So I’ve been playing on Pottermore for a few days now and these are my quibbles:

1. The Sorting Hat should ask you which House you prefer (doesn’t mean it will sort you there, but the real Sorting Hat does ask). They also might want to tweak their random question algorithm a bit too because I noticed most of the concrete questions I received were in relation to how important knowledge is to me instead of something more balanced between the values of the houses.
2. There are two major games so far (not counting the hide and seek elements in the chapter sections), which are essentially very similar in type of game. First you have Charms where you have to hit letters with a certain amount of accuracy and speed to be successful. Then there is Potions, which again, you have to be quick and accurate to complete. I know that most sites that have games try to vary the skills necessary to complete each game. Perhaps the next major gaming feature could be something like Magical Creatures or Defense Against the Dark Arts, which could have aspects of strategy and puzzle solving instead of speed and accuracy. Then again, perhaps the repetition of game skill type is to keep traffic down because people who aren’t successful at speed/accuracy games will just stop coming.
3. Navigation could be a bit more straight forward. Maybe it was a color vision problem and/or sizing problem, but it took way too long for me to realize I had arrows that I could navigate between chapters and sections. I kept going back to the section of the site with the chapter progression bar to access things for the longest time.
4. The name generator. I understand its purpose, but I think that it’s a bit awkward that two people have friended me on Pottermore and I’m not sure who they are. I know I know them given their locations and houses, but there’s about five people on my Facebook who they could be and that seems a bit off in terms of safety.I would like to know what to nickname though, so perhaps what we need is a way for you to give yourself your own nickname that only people you request friendships from can see? That way we can have a means to double check each other on who is who for those who might post a Pottermore name to FB where it could be private and safe security-wise but people might forget to clue you into which username goes with who. You know what I mean? There’s got to be a way to do this to keep kids safe, but not be confusing at the same time.

Other than that, I can see where the site is trying to go for now and it seems promising. I’m hoping some of the things I talked about get worked out as the site progresses. I just want a game I can be successful at and to know which friend is what really.

I am reading Pottermore

“Trying to get the hang of potions. Trust Harry Potter to give me two game options and both are about time and coordination to a degree. ”

12 others are also reading Pottermore on GetGlue.com

It is just me or are the house points on Pottermore going up and down by tens of millions of house points?

flighty-prick:

uozumi:

flighty-prick:

uozumi:

I logged on and it was 22 million some points. Look up later and it’s down to 19 million back up to 20 million down to 18 million, now we’re back up to 20 - no wait, we’re back to 18 million.

I’m not sure what’s going on or if it’s on some kind of cycle.

These are Ravenclaw numbers by the way.

I’m sure it has something to do with the 266k kiddos in our house messing up potions or something.

I was wondering about that. Since my own personal HP doesn’t go down when I screw up, I wasn’t sure if it would make the actual house points go down. That makes sense. I don’t think it’d make sense to lose points for a lost duel since that’s not how it was done in the books, but who knows what the algorithm is.

I think that total is just all the points you’ve gathered, but I’m probably wrong (<- joined yesterday). But then again, I mess up potions all the time and other Ravenclaws said it only takes house points away if your cauldron explodes- mine has never exploded so it makes me wonder how hard it is to do that and just really how many times we as a house have done that…

I’ve never had mine explode either. Usually when I mess up I flipped a step in my head or forgot something or grabbed the wrong object. It just caught my attention because man we sure recoup what we lose so fast and then bam back down again. It just seemed all very strange.

It is just me or are the house points on Pottermore going up and down by tens of millions of house points?

flighty-prick:

uozumi:

I logged on and it was 22 million some points. Look up later and it’s down to 19 million back up to 20 million down to 18 million, now we’re back up to 20 - no wait, we’re back to 18 million.

I’m not sure what’s going on or if it’s on some kind of cycle.

These are Ravenclaw numbers by the way.

I’m sure it has something to do with the 266k kiddos in our house messing up potions or something.

I was wondering about that. Since my own personal HP doesn’t go down when I screw up, I wasn’t sure if it would make the actual house points go down. That makes sense. I don’t think it’d make sense to lose points for a lost duel since that’s not how it was done in the books, but who knows what the algorithm is.