win or die: the observer's paradox (the cat probably cares more than you)

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Name: claire.
How did you find out about the community? If it's through an LJ user, please tell us who it is (individual user if possible, not just a community name!): google search ahaha; was poking around a bit for asoiaf related thingsandsuch, and came across this place. C’8
Age: eighteen.
Location: chicago, illinois.
Occupation: student.




All About You

1. Describe your ideal house/home. Please go into as much detail as possible, and be sure to include your ideal geographical location in the description!.
Fun times in the colder areas, definitely. I like seasonal variation; the snow is allowed to melt for a few of the middling months, just a bit. Summers are mild, neither humid nor dry, a comfortable temperature unlikely to cause the secretion of bodily substances without outside stimulation (e.g. running). The weather factor can describe a number of places, and really, is relevant because I rely far too heavily on a comfortable environment. When it gets too hot, I whine. Copiously.

Likely I’ll situate myself in the close but not too close to the center of an urban environment. Enough that I won’t be too far from where things happen, but also distanced enough to not be especially bothered by annoying problems, so that a train ride out of town will be neither uncomfortable nor time consuming. The city will have to be a heavily populated one, a cultural center. Combined with my environmental prerequisites, I’ll likely end up in either New York or still at Chicago. But! Switzerland is just one really big jump over the pond and I can honestly say that I wouldn’t mind Paris at all. Nope.

The apartment itself is really up for grabs; my aesthetic tastes are as varied as they’re inconsistent. I’m on a purple and silver kick right now, so I suspect things will turn out modern with just a hint of modern art. Sleek black tiling and chrome kitchenware, stylish wallpaper, glass tabletops and cabinets. Definitely a penthouse; I like being on top of things, perhaps a bit too literally. Not just arrogance, but surely a bit of that too. Mostly, though, I like the view and being able to see far far away, and also to be up up up high. So, lots of big windows. Since this apartment will already be paid for out of my butt, by the sounds of things, I might as well splurge on designer furniture, a game center with A+ quality sound and blu-ray, that crazy bathroom that is kind of like a spa inside a pool, and an enormous bed. I like things that match, and a consistent style that progresses and expands from room to room.

2. Imagine you’re given the classic opportunity: a genie granting you three wishes. What would you wish for? Please be as elaborate as you can. Wishing for more wishes is not permitted!
Woah loaded question. The following things are organized in order that I thought of them, not by desire or priority or anything like that. To that end, I don’t think there’s any one of the listed below that I want more than the other; just a single wish would make me plenty happy k thanks.

To choose to be happy. This doesn’t imply that I’m unhappy, or that I am limited in my happiness; but to note there are times that I am unhappy and that kind of just really sucks. If I could just choose to be happy, and be happy whenever I goddamn want to be happy, life would be much simpler. And happier, I should think. I guess this could be extended and extrapolated for the desire to have concise control over my emotional system, to be able to sift through my feelings and only feel the ones I feel like feeling. But that, in its own way, rather defeats the purpose of even having emotions; if you chose how you felt about everything, how could you ever know what you were truly feeling? Which means, I guess, that even if I were able to control my emotions with pinpoint precision, I would deliberately choose not to; in the end, I’d rather acknowledge the feelings that I do have first, and then smack the happy button around because being sad is no fun at all.

An unlimited supply of gourmet food that never ends even when I am poor and have no home or money. Of course the other necessary clause to this wish is also choice; I want to be able to pick which filling I want in my profiterole this time please and no I do not want Moulard duck, never ever. A delivery service staffed by cute guys couldn’t hurt, but in this instance, I’ll take what I can get. Which is forever free food that also tastes good mmm yes.

A limited number of “free” days (maybe 200? That seems like enough for a lifetime hmm; will likely have to haggle with genie for these) during which I can do whatever the fuck I want with no fear of any repercussions. Because who doesn’t want to be able to do whatever they want aw yiss. Except, I don’t want to become a complete and utter graceless asshat, hence the time limit; in the end, I suspect my free days will be more of a reprieve than anything else, a break from having to live under the endless of expectations of Real Life, and, even worse, Adult Life. Horrible things, those. The most likely outcome is, probably, that I will save them all up because I am stingy, and then decide to use all of them at once and be a crazy, inhibitionless old woman running rampant through Canada slaying moose with tape dispensers for however so many days, and at the end of it do something suitably dramatic like suicide. Or, there’s always the option of purchasing an island off the coast of Canada (an action of questionable legality, no doubt), and living the rest of my years in a life of rugged isolationism. To promote such a discourse, I will need to rob a few banks during my free days but such bridges may be crossed when I am actually old.

But if the genie is a crap genie and my wishes are too intense for him, I’m always content to settle with (1) the ability to see music and hear colors, (2) having a self cleansing butt, and (3) money yay. I want these things because of reasons and also priorities.

3. In your life so far, what accomplishment are you the most proud of? Why? You can list more than one if you have trouble deciding. ;)
The standard answer would be “oh, getting into college,” or maybe “oh, moving out of home,” but honestly those things don’t hold that much appeal to me in terms of accomplishments, because they’re things that would have been forced onto me whether I chose to accomplish them or not. And, even more frankness here, I don’t think I’ve done anything yet that I ought to be especially proud of. Other than that one time I threw a chair across a room and actually hit my target (yay), or that time I accidentally on purpose punched a few people and hit their faces for reals no dodging or fake punching none. A lot of the things I’ve done that I should be proud of are more of a relief: I drove through a blizzard without dying, I climbed a mountain without dying, I fixed my car without dying, I walked through the very shady ghetto two blocks down without dying, I bitched out a horrid bitch without dying. And since I haven’t yet done anything that truly warrants pride, I find that I’m much closer to the range of wanting to do something with my life and with my future that I can be proud of. And that is the end of my vague non answer oops.

4. Which of the following is most important to you: Love, Money, Knowledge, Family, Friendship, Adventure, or Pleasure? Which is the least important to you? Please explain why for each choice.

Adventure, probably, is the most important, mostly because any good adventure really ought to bring my cycling through the other six options, right. A tough question, certainly, because up until this point most everything I’ve done has been in pursuit of knowledge, and everything else has been to derive some form of pleasure. But knowledge is in its own way an adventure, and I like adventures and new things and strange things and unknown things. And, in retrospect, the thing about every great adventure is that it needs to end, at some point or another. For one adventure to begin, another must, end, and I guess I just like the sort of cyclic nature to it all; a sort of rhetoric if not literal rebirth of self and self definition as one may attain it.

The least important is likely to be love, mostly because I haven’t experienced it. And it all seems so dull; the descriptions I read and hear of such an emotional state hold little to no appeal to me; I am free and I do what I want. Bros before hos; friendship ties bind much stronger than those forged by love. Friendship is a safety net and a support system in a way love cannot be. I dunno, I just don’t put much stock in love; maybe because it lacks hard data and solid evidence and those things and my sciency mind is inherently rejecting it or whatever.

5. What's one quote (or passage, song lyric, etc.) that effectively describes you and your values? Explain.
Uh. All of the Nietzsche quotes are my favorites and no one needs me to explain those there are graduate theses out there and some guys worked hard on them so go read on of those if you want to know.

But something that has stuck to me a bit like glue and a bit more like a lemming, is the quote, “when there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire” – dodododo, song intro here. The quote comes from a song by the Canadian band Stars: Your Ex-Lover is Dead. The song is great, catchy, I like it, but the quote is what really gets me. I never thought on it much, beyond the fact that it impacted me profoundly enough to stick for years. Only a few months ago did I do a bit of googling to find the source and inspiration for the quote; results were inconclusive because I was distracted by a friend who wanted help with her physics homework again. I think it can be interpreted all sorts of ways, depending, such as a bit of nihilism or a bit or rebirth ideology or a bit of pyromania, but mostly its kind of just one of those things that I will totes do at the end of the world, promises.

6. How do you manage your money? On that note, how important is money/financial security to you? Go into as much detail as you can.
Throw it in the bank or invest it a bit. Depends really on how much money and how I earned it (who gave it to me). Gift money form family and friends is saved, self earned money is liable to be invested or spent. I’m stingy; I don’t like spending or using things that are mine. I’m far more prone to bartering favors for food, shopping trips, and bus fares. Hey man I’ll teach you how to physics if you buy me dinner for the rest of the week yeah cool let’s do it. Although, to note, I often act without thinking and if that cake looks super tasty or that shirt is all of the kawaii, I will purchase with zero regrets. So financial security is important to me; I like having those numbers behind me whether I actively use them or not. A back up plan is a good plan to have. I’m willing to forego comfort and maybe even a bit of pride (not true, in actuality I just have no shame and will be proud regardless of what I do) in order to get what I want without using my own material resources.

7. Name (and elaborate on) some of your hobbies. What are your favorite things to do outside of school/the office?
Draw, make music, listen to music, harass people, eat, sleep, (read?).

I’ve taken over ten years of art classes, so I may as well make use of them. I do a bit of Chinese watercoloring and a bit of le casual doodling, none of which is serious business, and almost all of which is just for funsies. Every now and then I finger-vomit out something nice looking and frame it and maybe gift it or hide it somewhere.

I’ve also taken more than 12 years of piano lessons, although I can hardly play anything other than the Entertainer, Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, and Twinkle Twinkle (party songs yaya) due to lack of practice. I also have maybe 8 years of clarinet experience under my belt, and am part of an extraordinarily casual quartet where we mostly just make fun of how much we all suck.

Harassing people comes in many shapes and forms, from stealing food off their plates to sitting on their laps to rummaging though their things when they are fool enough to leaves doors unlocked (they had it coming okay). I think I just like testing people’s reactions and their responses, and don’t gain much out of harassment beyond amusement and a way to pass the time. People are interesting; so to tack onto this hobby is also people watching, but I’ve been told that that’s a bit creepy but whatever. In France the café chairs deliberately face outwards to facilitate people watching take that.

Eating + sleeping are self explanatory, I like reading things because it’s cool bro. Words are fun, prose is fun, rhetoric is fun. Mindfucks are also fun but are to be avoided unless one wishes to be mindfucked.

8. Name three things you are afraid of. Explain.
Being lonely. I don’t mind being alone, but the feeling of being lonely and the inherent mental isolation that is therein implied terrifies me quite a bit. Even if I were to live out the rest of my days in rugged isolationism, I’d avoid being truly lonely by either demanding the presence of a companion or becoming disturbingly emotionally invested in my farm animals.

Pain. I don’t like physical pain or exertion; I’m a wimp. I won’t purposely weasel my way out of pain, mostly because oftentimes pain kind of jumps you like “oh hey remember me yeah I know I suck but you know what else I don’t care suck it up and deal,” and by then it’s all too late. I’ll still whine the fuck out of everything, though.

Falling behind. I think that this is a very subjective and personal fear; it varies with the situation and the people that are involved. I’m always a bit worried about falling behind my peers intellectually, but don’t mind that much being left behind in realms I don’t care for, like biology. I’m afraid that people will leave me behind socially, but the amount of fear still depends on the person; if my sister were to get married and move out of my parents home and become independent I’d be more like good riddance than “crap she’s ahead now.”

9. Name (and elaborate on) your top three BEST and top three WORST qualities (personality-related, not physical). Please answer as fully as you can, as this is an important question.
Best
Meticulous - I get things done when they need to be done, and I do a damn good job, too. I’m all for perfection and precision where it is possible, and like having high quality work. I dunno, this helps me with class, and in those areas that I bother to apply myself I only do the best. Also I am good at sewing.

Curious - This is pretty much what drives me a lot of the time. At some point success became irrelevant because at this rate I’ll likely find some form of success (at least financially) no matter where I decide to apply myself. Curiosity is what moves me forward and towards what I want to be and to accomplish. Curiosity is also the reason I know so much random crap, and is also probably in part the root of some of my more obsessive tendencies.

Witty - Though that is a matter of opinion and you can think what you want. But I laugh at my own jokes and my own wit and that’s good enough for me; your opinions do not count.

Worst
Lazy - Ahaha, but aren’t we all? I guess I’m almost lethargic in my laziness, though. And I’m a bit of a dick, too, in that I will only work hard when I choose to work hard, and when I decide to slack I am going to slack like the best (worst?) of them. I only do what I want, and am highly unmotivated in many areas of life.

Inconsiderate - I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit of an ass at times. I’m impatient, rude, and don’t often consider the feelings of others before acting. A lot of the times, what other people think, feel, and want doesn’t even come to mind at all in face of the larger dilemma that I am trying to solve. Here is what I am going to do to make things work and if you are going to be butthurt about it, that’s hardly my problem. Except for when it is, oops. Plus my brain to mouth filter could use some repairing.

Bad tempered - I am a person with a lot of feels and anger is one of them okay. I have a short temper and am easily annoyed at things that I find irritating, including incompetence, hesitance, and general moronic behavior. I don’t have many levels of rage, operating on a singular all or nothing principal, once upset I unleash all of the feels. Sometimes I’m verbally abusive, but a lot of the time I’m passive in my anger, and will use veiled and subtle barbs as well as talking behind the back and such shenanigans. I forgive easily when it is convenient, but rarely forget.





A Song of Ice and Fire Related

1.How many books from the series have you completed?
All of the main series, although it’s been a while since I’ve touched some of them, and A Dance with Dragons falls into the category of things I did last summer but don’t remember much about. I’ve had a bout of free time recently, though, and am rereading, hence all the renewed interest. Will tear my way through HBO once that’s over. C’8

2.Who are your favorite three characters in the series? Why?
Jaime Lannister – I’m just inordinately fond of him; have been since I first started the series and realized what an unmitigated asshole he could be. His character just became increasingly more appealing as he grew out of his dickwad child-hating characterization into a man with honor and morals. I like his drive, his devotion, and maybe a bit his creepiness. Also now that he’s lost a hand he has gained +5 points in quirkiness.

Jon Snow – idk, guys, I just have a lot of feels for Jon. He was my favorite in a Game of Thrones, and he has yet to do anything that disgusts me so thoroughly that I would consider disowning him. A lot of his personality resonates with my insecurities: not fitting in, being alone, having social leprosy. And Ghost is albino, which is special, and I am always drawn to the special ones. But watching him grow up has been refreshing almost, especially when he makes mistakes (no ew ygritte just no), and his progression to power is admirable.

Loras Tyrell – actually I have a lot of other favorite characters and I love all of them except for when they die. After they die I have no feels left and ignore them even when I reread haha, which is making a lot of these Eddard chapters in aGoT very tedious right now. Loras just gets bumped up above and beyond the list of everyone else that I like because he is gay and das cool.

3.Who are your least favorite three characters in the series? Why?
Catelyn Tully-Stark – this woman jesus Christ. I know she’s just doing her best for her family and blahblahblah but something about her just rubs me the wrong way. And then as the books progress she becomes even more of a bitch (ew Stoneheart go away), and I don’t know, I can understand her motivations but I don’t approve at all of her methods and dislike her personality on top of that. Because I am truly an awful person, I am waiting for her to be killed in some battle/political intrigue or another but so far I have been left disappointed. Weh weh.

Tywin Lannister – ew go away I hate you. He’s pretty much all of the things that I can come to dislike in a character: a hypocrite, a dick, a dick (towards Tyrion), okay he’s just really a bit of a dick. I do not like this man and was satisfied when he died.

Cersei Lannister? – I mean everyone hates Cersei, haha. She’s an awful woman and had a lot of the horrid things that happened to her coming. She treats other people poorly, and ugh I feel like she just ruins the people around her. They either die or become bitches to (e.g. Joffrey). I don’t particularly like Joffrey, either, but if Cersei weren’t there things would have been a lot better for everyone. She uses people for her own ends and because of that hardly forges any true, lasting relationships; and those that she makes are toxic on both ends (see Jaime).

4.#1 Favorite moment in all of ASOIAF so far? Why?
Lsdjfkldjg. I have a lot of favorite parts and mostly they’re all equally favorite-y in my mind.

Probably one of the Dany scenes, with her dragons, because I love Dany and I love her dragons too. Dany chapters are always so exciting and I’m inordinately fond of them. Random selection based on what I remember the most clearly: when Dany kills off the people she doesn’t like in the Siege of Meereen, via suicide mission. It was a fairly badass decision and got her her endgoal: the city itself.

5. In your dream-world, how would you like to see the series end, and why?
Everyone I don’t like dies and everyone I like lives and is happy ahaha. I rarely speculate seriously on the endings of ongoing series; while I may have delusional daydreams and half-baked theories, I’m always aware that that’s likely not what’s going to happen and never put much serious thought into them.

But I guess at the very least I’d like to see Catelyn go byebye, Dany not dying, and Jon to find his parentage because that has been eating me for ages. I’m an avid supporter of the Lyanna/Rhaegar theory, though I suspect an imminent plot twist in that area. I think I’ll mostly be okay with whatever happens, and am vaguely hoping for an immense bloodbath and something, and definitely want to see some children of the forest action.

Comments

Lannister

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Greyjoy.