Pottermore at Last

Important notes before I get to anything else:
1.  It was my birthday on Friday.  If you're in a giving mood, tossing a few spare points at the donation widget on my front page would be appreciated, since it was, you know, my birthday...  
2.  Commissions are open.  Links to the journal are in various places on my front page, including the donation widget.

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Yesterday morning, I finally got my Pottermore email after a full month of waiting.  Being the busy student I am, I didn't get the chance to actually use it until a few hours ago, at which point I went up through my Sorting before the website went down, and I called it quits for the evening.  So here's how things've been playing out for me over there and a brief vague review of what to expect when you get there:

My Pottermore-self so far:
Username: RiverNimbus167
House: Ravenclaw (Thankfully.)
Pet: A Siamese cat (You buy a pet at the Magical Menagerie, and its picture becomes your icon on the site.)
Wand: Sycamore and phoenix feather, 10 and three-quarter inches, hard

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What to expect:
Pottermore functions as an interactive walkthrough of the Harry Potter books.  You can collect artifacts as you go through, interact with different elements of the story (get sorted, shop in Diagon Alley, get a wand, etc.), read through little blurbs on characters, with some much larger character information dumps straight from Jo herself.  More than once, I found myself making bizarre noises and flailing at just how amazing some of these bits are.  There's a lot of backstory on under-developed characters, like the Dursleys and McGonagall, for example, that's absolutely fantastic and that I'm enjoying quite a lot.  

One warning: it WILL start out VERY slowly.  Don't get discouraged.  Once you get out of the Muggle-world part of Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone, and into the Wizarding world, things get so much better.  

On wand-selection and Sorting, both processes involve a series of questions.  There's a slew of different wands available, so the answers to the questions are in no way predictable.  Just answer truthfully, and you'll get a wand.  XD  There's also more detailed descriptions of the wand-making process, as well as a short list of the properties of certain wandwoods, direct from Rowling.  Regarding Sorting, I found a few of the questions had predictable leads to certain Houses, while others definitely didn't, so if you want to go for a specific one, be sure to at least answer the predictable questions according to your preference.  Both the wand and Sorting question series are one-time only.  Once you get a result there's no going back.  

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Anyway, I managed to make it to the first reveal of new information on Professor Quirrell before my game cut out.  I'm hoping there'll be more, since what I got at that point is pitifully small, but it was enough to reduce me to very very happy tears.  I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I've been getting randomly choked up and actually crying quite a bit this evening.  

Long story short, there's a lot of it that I called.  The people on the HPWiki were adamant about Quirrell being in Slytherin due to a few bogus facts, but I called Ravenclaw without any proof at all back when I was working on the Project, and lo and behold, Rowling confirms it:  he's a Ravenclaw.  I also called Q being a half-blood, which was confirmed; I'm not sure of the canon breakdown, but I had his mother as a witch and his father as a Muggle.  

I also nearly called his wand.  Canon is alder and unicorn hair, 9 inches, bendy.  I called the unicorn hair and used flexible to describe the wand, which is close enough to bendy.  I had it about 2.5 inches too long and used birch as the wood...which unfortunately leads to another issue...  

Jo also gave him a firm birthdate of September 26 but no year.  I had him down as Friday, January 13th, 1967.  Admittedly, this really really screws up the timeline I had for Project Orpheus.  I means I have to shift everything for him up a year which messes up all kinds of things that I had perfectly synchronized.  It's annoying but unavoidable, since September birthdays have to wait a year before going to Hogwarts, instead of starting in the September of the year they turn 11.  I don't know what I'm going to make of this.  I think I'll put up a poll about it...

But other than that, I'm in a VERY pleased-with-myself mode right now, and it's at once terrifying and humbling.  I'm a little overly-pleased at having called as much of Q's story as I did. I'm geeking out very hard over the similarities between Jo's take on him and mine, because she's been someone I've looked up to for a good chunk of my life, and the fact that I'm thinking even CLOSE to like her is something I'm geeking out hard-core over.

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In terms of other creative endeavours (I actually typed it with the British spelling without thinking...what kind of mid-Western American am I?), I've got three poems done for my poetry writing class that I'm probably going to start revising and submitting either tonight or at some point in the future.  The class is going ok, and I've been turning out entirely new writing which is fantastic, since I haven't, you know, done that lately.  XD

I've got one commission so far for another troll walksprite, but it's really slow-going because I've been busy with other things like schoolwork and birthday stuff...  Hoping to get to that soon...   

I've also been doing some major work on the trolls that go with Liance and Ikaeru.  It's going to be a full 12-troll set and I've been having an absolute ball with them.  XD  I can't wait to introduce you all to hemeralopicHeliophobe, nihilisticNecromancer, and the descendant of Coiffeur Manecomb, among others.  XD  

Anyway, Imma go bathroom now, then fiddle with Sims and maybe trolls then bed.  Late-start tomorrow, so I can sleep in!  WEWT!  XD