Application for Chance Matthews Silvey (Threshold and Low Red Moon)

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Application for Chance Matthews Silvey (Threshold and Low Red Moon by Caitlin R. Kiernan. Low Red Moon came out in 2003, so I reckon the statute of limitations on spoilers is well past. There are no spoilers here for the latest novel, Daughter of Hounds, which only just came out. Nor are there any for Alabaster.)



1. What is your favorite cheese? Why is it your favorite?

That's ... an interesting question. I've had so much cheese at boring wine-and-cheese receptions that I'd just as soon pass on it, thanks.

This can't be real. There is no afterlife. And if there were one, they sure as hell wouldn't be asking me about cheese.

2. Who would you kill first, Barney or Carrottop?

I wouldn't kill either one of them, if they're really Barney and really Carrottop. Sometimes things aren't what they look like. If it were a thing pretending to be Barney or Carrottop, I'd shoot it. Whichever one was within range would be first.

3. What time is it where you are?

It's Halloween night. Well, wait. To answer that question I need to know where I am. And I don't. So, I can't tell you what time it is where I am.

4. If you were Albus Dumbledore returned from the dead, which member of the Order of the Phoenix would you sexually harass? How would you harass them? If you are Albus Dumbledore, please answer as if you were Sirius Black.

What the hell kind of sick question is that? Sexual harassment isn't funny. Anyway, I'm a married woman. I wouldn't harass anyone. Or I was a married woman. I'm not sure what verb tense I should be using.

... What do you mean, 'returned from the dead?'

5. If you are pushing to be in:

A. Slytherin - please state the clever, witty name of the bar in which you bartend, in the dark.

I don't know what Slytherin is. I'd just as soon not have anything to do with bars, thanks. Deacon doesn't need any more help than he's probably already getting. If I did tend a bar, you can bet your ass I wouldn't be tending it in the dark. All the lights would be blazing. Consider it a new kind of atmosphere, ambience, whatever.

B. Gryffindor – Debate whether Harry should ultimately end up married to Fred or George. Use examples from a variety of world mythologies to bolster your argument.

Marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be, bucko. Deacon once accused me of marrying him so I wouldn't have to live alone. God, I can't believe I'm telling you this.

C. Ravenclaw – You guys are supposed to be smart. Explain why my desk is inundated with paperwork at all times, even though I’m constantly disposing of it.

You can't get enough funding to hire a graduate assistant who'll take care of it for you, maybe. Join the club.

D. Hufflepuff – Prove you are not useless.

I'm a professor of geology, a paleontologist by training. Or I was. That verb tense problem again ... Anyway. Credentials -- well, I've discovered and named a new species of prehistoric amphibian, Megalopseudosuchus alabamaensis, and wrote it up in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. That might count for something. Also, I'm a decent lecturer, I'd like to think. And I can tell off a creationist heckler if need be.

6. Offer a bribe to the members of this community so that they will not squib you. Items used in bribery do not necessarily have to belong to the person offering the bribe. Do not threaten us rather than offering a bribe. A threat indicates you either don't really want to be here, or don't have enough sense to answer the question properly. The hat will automatically squib you, regardless of other votes, if you do.

I ... I don't seem to have anything with me. A coin for the ferryman? Tell me what you want and I'll try to think if I know a way to get it, somehow.


I have read the hogwarts_hocus faq, and understand it is a crazy, cracktastic sorting community and RPG. CMS
I have read the hogwarts_hocus rules and agree to abide by each and every one of them. CMS.
I agree to be a good sport and not get my knickers in a bunch. CMS.
One day, marmalade will rule the world. CMS

Comments

[wh0-kill3d-m3.livejournal.com]

Hi, Professor Silvey. I'm Laura. I'm with you on things and people sometimes not being what they look like.

First things first. You're at a school in Scotland called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Secondly, yeah, it really is a magic school. And yeah, people come back from the dead here fairly often. Either they were ghosts, or they get transported here from the moment of their deaths, or - well, it works lots of ways, really, and nobody really understands how it happens. I'm one that was a ghost of sorts for a long time before I came here, if that helps.

You're a paleontologist? Do you know my friend Alan Grant? He's our Care of Magical Creatures professor here, I'm sure he'll be by to talk to you.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance looks askance at the pretty blonde girl. "That's ... I hope you'll forgive me for saying I reserve judgement on that. Wherever I am, it could be in a place the inhabitants aren't inclined to tell the truth. But ... thank you." She shakes her head with a rueful little laugh. "You'd figure I had enough of school in life not to go imagining one in the moments before braindeath kicks in." She clearly hasn't settled on what she believes this place is, only that whatever it is, she finds it highly suspect.

[igotahamster.livejournal.com]

If there was one thing Simon couldn't resist, it was people as flustered as he. "Sorry about the application," he offers, with a small little smile. "It's just the sort of thing you have to get used to around here. If it helps, it gets easier to ignore."

He tucked his hands in his pockets. "Palentology? Some talk on the subject'd be a bribe for me. Or your worst wine-and-cheese party story. I'd bet I can top it."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"The sort of thing you have to get used to around here," echoes Chance. "People stay here long?" Decidedly doubtful. "When in Rome ... Well. When I published the paper on Megalopseudosuchus, the geology department decided to throw me a party. There wasn't just cheese at that one, someone made a cake, or had a cake made, a big green thing, godawful lime-flavored frosting on it. It was supposed to look like Megalopseudosuchus. Deke stuck to Coke, mercifully, and he sat there in the corner fuming the whole time. And there's usually not even Coke at these things, it's obvious it was just there because people Know. And everybody awkward. The worst jokes, no one knows what the hell to say to one another at these things. And I was supposed to be happy, you know? It was a party for me. My accomplishment." She fidgets a little. "Not that I ever enjoy those things anyway, never been much for schmoozing, but I had to pretend to like that one. Couldn't duck out."

She halts, just like that, the story dead in its tracks with nowhere else to go. Her left foot is angled inward and she's leaning on its edge. "So that's the worst wine-and-cheese party. I don't believe in Hell, you know? But if this is Hell, then having to tell the bad stories over and over --" And halts again. "At least it's not Sartre's Hell." A thin laugh. "Silver lining."

[sofergetit.livejournal.com]

"Returned from the dead is more common than you'd think," he notes, helpfully. "And there are plenty of ways to do it. I'd just relax and pick one at random to answer the question. It doesn't seem to matter too much."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Pick one of what? For the harassment question?" Chance shrugs. "Okay, I'll bite. What are my options? Who do I get to pick from?"

[onceacop.livejournal.com]

"About marriage," Murphy offers, arms crossed, "I hear you. It's not easy at the beginning or the end, and the middle's even worse."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance's mouth twists into a bitter half-smile. "Well put. Guess I'll never know whether I was at the end or still in the middle."

[ian-ma1co1m.livejournal.com]

Hello, Professor. Dr. Ian Malcolm. Let me preface my question by assuring you that I am not crazy.

That being said - when you say you discovered a new species of amphibian, do you mean you discovered a new extinct species of amphibian, or a new new species of amphibian?

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly, this question elicits a visible shiver from Chance.

"Normally I'd have shrugged that off and said, extinct, without a doubt. After Dicranurus monstrosus, though ..."

[cute-suit.livejournal.com]

Ianto smiled and gave a small, polite bow to the newcomer, and held out a hand. "You are at Hogwarts, Southern Scotland, and the time is 3:14pm, Miss." he said pleasantly.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Such polite matter-of-factness, a sharp contrast to all the strange commentary to which Chance has thus far been party in this new place, and she's taken aback. "Thank you," she stammers, and practically by reflex takes the offered hand, shakes it less firmly than she'd like.

[ugly-imp.livejournal.com]

"I can sympathize with you about the cheese," Tyrion murmured dryly. "My sister insisted on having a whole fountain of it at a New Year's party. I wanted to throw her in it, but... well..." He shrugged.

"In any event, what's paleontology? I don't think that's something the maesters study back home."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"From the Greek," says Chance. Giving a noseless dwarf an impromptu lecture on etymology seems par for the course, in Hell or Purgatory or whatever improbable place this is. (Chance still doesn't believe in God or an afterlife, though she would appear to be in an afterlife. She's taking refuge in flippant literary allusions at this point, and thinking time must seem to expand in those few seconds before braindeath). "Palaios: 'ancient'. Ontos: 'being'. The -ology bit is a suffix from the Greek too, I think it's probably from logos or something. It means 'study of'. So there you have it: the study of old things. Specifically, paleontology is the study of the history and development of life on Earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology). One of my students looked it up once in the dictionary. I liked the way they put it: 'the scientific study of life in the geologic past'. The geologic past -- deep time. Millions and millions of years."

Only after she's delivered this speech extempore does what he'd said before sink in, and she wheezes a laugh. "A fountain of cheese?"

[whitethomas.livejournal.com]

Thomas smiled at the woman. Getting jerked here out of wherever you had been was bizarre enough without adding in not knowing whether to use the present or past tense. "You seem to be present enough to me. Genuinely past-tense people don't usually have the muscle control for writing." This included most zombies.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"How many, ah, past-tense people have you met?" Chance is genuinely curious.

[carri3-whit3.livejournal.com]

What's a creationist? I mean, I'm not makin' a bad joke, I really don't know. Somethin' religious, I'd guess, but I've never heard it put like that before.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"A creationist is someone who believes in the literal creation of the earth as described in the Bible," says Chance. This is all very strange. First the dwarf asking her to define paleontology, now this girl asking her to define creationism. She has a faint hysterical notion that she's been reincarnated as a dictionary.

"They're entitled to their beliefs as long as they don't try to sabotage my geology lectures with them."

[dinosaurman.livejournal.com]

Tell me more about Megalopseudosuchus alabamaensis.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Well, as you'll have guessed from the name, I found it in Alabama. Birmingham, where I live. It got uncovered by some bulldozers clearing land for a Wal-Mart of all things. It's twelve feet eight inches long, except the bulldozers destroyed the very tip of its tail. Would have looked like a short-nosed alligator when it was alive, I think."

[internetgoddess.livejournal.com]

"Don't let the past, present, future tense bother you to much, I'm still working on the past-present tense myself."

A young Japanese girl smiles at her.

"Hello, I'm Iwakura Lain. It's nice to meet you"

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Hello, Iwakura Lain. I'm Chance Silvey."

[fw-darcy.livejournal.com]

*bows stiffly* Good day, madam.

May I ask what it is you consider, or considered, marriage was, ahh, "cracked up to be"?

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Having just spoken to Thomas Raith about the population of this Limbo, Chance looks curiously at the man who has just bowed to her.

"You're one of the ones from a different historical period."

[fine-eyes-lizzy.livejournal.com]

*curtsies, with a smile* Miss Elizabeth Bennet, at your service.

I see that you are an unexpected arrival. Though it appears that everyone else has gotten here before me and to have answered your questions, may I help at all?

*after a pause* Er, also, forgive me for prying, but- but what caused you to form such a low opinion of matrimony?

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Experience," says Chance.

[hot-german.livejournal.com]

Dieter, fresh from the sauna, was wearing little more than sweatpants as he entered the Sorting Room. (It was January, after all. He had to keep warm.) He dabbed at his wet hair with a towel.

"I'm sorry, it's not Halloween anymore," he said. "But you should have been here! It was one hell of a party."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance eyes the shirtless hunk of Teutonic beefcake. Well, it's not like I was getting any before I died, all things considered. Thanks, brain, for the hallucinatory eyecandy. Is he here to pump me up, hmm? "Hi," she says.

[big-broomstick.livejournal.com]

"You don't look like the type who would ride a broom," Oliver said, sounding a little sad. "You're one of those practical Muggle types, aren't you?"

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Damned with faint praise," says Chance. "I wouldn't call myself a witch, no. No broom-riding here. You can consider me more the featherduster type."

[dinos-eat-man.livejournal.com]

"Oh God, I hear you about the grad student thing. I found that writing a book was much easier than actually doing research, but I always felt that it was the easy way out. There's so much emphasis on getting results that there's never enough money for research for knowledge's sake, is there?"

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"I actually haven't written anything book-length," admits Chance.

[laconic-once.livejournal.com]

Wash doesn't love any woman but his dear wife, but an attractive woman who talks dirty dinosaurs is distinctly intruiging.

"Prehistoric amphibian? You mean, Earth-Tha...er, dinosaurs, right? You study them? As a profession? Bones, fossils, other fascinating finds of that nature? What's it like? I mean, how big were they, really?"

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Bones, fossils, all that good stuff," Chance nods. "The size varies depending on the species, of course. The Megalopseudosuchus alabamaensis I found, specifically, is twelve feet eight inches long. The tip of its tail's missing, though."

[ugly-old-hat.livejournal.com]

What's a heckler? Is it some kind of chicken?

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance gives a quiet snort. "Oh, no, they think they're pretty brave."

[ugly-old-hat.livejournal.com]

In with all the other doctors and dinosaur geeks you go!

Your bribe has been accepted.

Welcome to Ravenclaw!