westerosorting | Win or Die (Reply)

Name: Tarah
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!): It has popped in posts of people that I follow on tumblr, but I can't remember the names, sorry.
Age: Will be 25 soon.
Location: Canada
Occupation: Grad student, working a side job as a librarian.

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!.

I don't want to be crammed into an industrial area, so I would like my home to be a little bit isolated from others. At the same time, it should be in a vicinity of a great city, so that if I ever felt like mingling with society, I could go do so. As for the house itself, I would like it to be nice and cozy, and a little bit untidy. It should have a lot of rooms. It should have a great big bookshelf. There should be lots of space around for me to stretch my legs in.

As to the weather, I very much love extreme temperatures, verging on the colder side.. Extreme rain and storm, snowstorms, that sort of thing. I've always loved rain. I love standing in it. I love running through it. I love dancing in it. When I was a child, when the rain fell it would never fail to make me happy and make me laugh. The harder the storm the happier I was. I just have so many happy memories of rain and I couldn't bear to live in a place without it. I get the same feeling about snow. Especially a real snowstorm where everything is dark and snow is swirling around like crazy and you can taste the snow on your tongue and it's cold as hell. There's just something uninhibited and free about storms, that calls to every part of me and awakens my spirit. I'm never as happy as in the middle of a storm. A nice rainy, snowy, stormy climate would be just perfect for me.

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!

I would wish for the ability of teleportation, so that I could travel everywhere and see everything that I've ever wanted to see.

Being a selfish bastard, I would wish for a million dollars debited on my bank account, without the government getting suspicious of it.

I don't know what to wish for the third one. Maybe I'll monitor the genie for a while, and if it seems to be of a well-meaning type, I'll wish it free.

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. ;)

I'll illustrate this with a story. There I was in my first year of high school, being an A+ student but with no extracurricular activities or sports activities at all. I had volunteered for the graduation ceremony for the graduating class, mainly because all my friends had volunteered and I wanted to spend time with them. And then I saw a boy I looked up to, go up and get an award for inspirational leadership from a member of parliament. And from then, this fire was struck in my mind, to get that award for myself, when the time for my graduation came. The next two years of my high school life, I immersed myself in tons of extracurricular activities: from the environmental club to the anti-bullying club to the school soccer team and cross-country running team. Every break was taken up with some meeting or other. I even had to miss some classes due to meetings with club advisers and so on. There was literally no free time, sometimes I didn't even have to time to eat lunch or breakfast, because I had to walk home to get lunch, rather than buy it in the cafeteria.

But it was so worth it. I graduated with a 90+ average, go accepted into one of the most elitist schools in the country, and ended up getting the inspirational leadership award I had so hoped to get, along with a bunch of others. And I enjoyed every damn second of it. That's what I consider to be my greatest achievement.

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.
Most important is hard, because all these things really do go hand in hand. If I were honest, perhaps Friendship would be the most important to me, but that's only because I've never known true love, only some relationships that meant nothing at all. And while I consider Friendship more important, if it ever came to a stand off between friends and family, I would pick Family every single time with no regrets, because blood is thicker than water and your family are the ones most likely to stand by in you in times of need.

Least important is Pleasure: I am one of those intensely annoying people who take their pleasure from just about everything in life, even small things that other people might find mundane. Therefore pleasure would be the least important to me, because I have always taken it for granted, and never had to seek it out.

5. What's one quote (or passage, song lyric, etc.) that effectively describes you and your values? Explain.
Can I pick two? Oh please, oh please!

"I'm not telling you it's going to be easy - I'm telling you it's going to be worth it.' - Art Williams

^ One of my close friends posted this quote up on Facebook the other week, and I was blown away by how much this quote describes my approach to life. I have not had anything in life handed to me on a silver platter. Every accomplishment I'm proud of, I've worked hard for it. Even when I failed, just the pleasure of working for it was sweet enough. When I'm working hard for something, that's the only time I truly feel like I'm worth something. No matter how hard something is to accomplish, if it matters enough to me, then it's worth it. It's definitely worth it.

"If you don't stand up for something, then you'll fall for anything." This is another quote I like. I try my best to stand up for things, even though they don't always turn out well.

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.

Money is not very important to me, but I consider financial security an unavoidable and crucial necessity of life. I am reasonably good at managing my money. I put no real effort into it, but I am by nature a person of inexpensive tastes, so it is not too hard, really. I do splurge when I'm out with friends, because what's the point of money if you can't spend it on good food and wine, in good company? Overall, I don't have problems managing my money.

7. Name (and elaborate on) some of your hobbies. What are your favorite things to do outside of school/the office?
Fandom is one of my greatest hobbies. I like to read books, of mystery, sci-fi, fantasy and a bit of Teen Lit. I also like to play soccer very much, although there have been multiple complaints (from guys mostly, as I play in co-ed games) about me playing too rough for a girl and it being unsightly. If you can't take the heat, then get off the field, I say.

8. Name three things you are afraid of. Explain.
Disappointing people - I'm afraid of disappointing people who believe in me or are counting on me. I always do things to the utmost possible perfection and am very nitpicky because I'm afraid of people being disappointed if I do a less-than-stellar job. It is my greatest fear in life to let someone down.

Failure - I'm afraid that when I leave grad school I won't find a good enough job and won't be able to make enough money. The financial responsibility of taking care for my family, plus the considerable mortgage for the family house, shifts to me almost immediately upon my graduation. So it's basically that I have to find a job or else I fail and I disappoint my parents. This keeps me up every night, like a cold fear that never goes away, but just subsides in the nighttime.

Not being able to do what I want - Being the designated "responsible" child of the family means that I have a lot of expectations on me. Not only to support my family financially, but to be the perfect daughter that acts as a liaison to relatives and outside. And in the end, as the daughter that marries the perfect guy and has the perfect kids and the perfect house and becomes the perfect mother. I want to be married to the perfect guy and have kids and have the perfect family too, but not in the way my parents want. I want to do it my way. Much to my parents annoyance, I never give in to them on anything I don't want to do. But my fear is that this is one point I will give in to them on in the end, because it's the one thing they want most. I really hope I won't, but I'm scared that the future me will.

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:
I DO WHAT I WANT. I don't know what this quality is named, but I have it. I'm independent, no one can tell me what to do, and I would like to keep it way. (Hence my fear above of not being able to do what I want.) It is something that everyone who knows me has commented on more than once. I have made a lot of enemies out of it, but I have also made a lot of friends. I don't find this to be a bad quality, because you need some spine in you or else people are going to walk all over you.

Perfectionism. I am a perfectionist about my work. I don't go in for wishy washy stuff. If something is worth doing, then it is worth doing well.

Honesty. I am honest, not so much because I want to be, as that I find it hard to be dishonest. I have a hard time telling lies (there's an itchy feeling whenever I try), and I am terrible at lying anyways. I find that as long as I can train myself to be silent when a particularly hurtful truth is on my lips, and I don't go out of my way to hurt people with the truth, then it's okay for me to be an honest person.

Worst:
Anger. I can be quite vicious and hurtful when I get angry. I my defense, I'm a very mild person and it takes a great deal to make me angry. The last time I got angry was, let me see, six months ago.

Egotism. I am egotistic. I am trying very hard to change this and get over myself, because I realize there's nothing attractive about an arrogant fool.

Laziness. I can get very lazy about anything other than what I care about.

A Song of Ice and Fire Related

1.How many books from the series have you completed? I have completed up to Feast for Crows, and the Dunk & Egg novellas. I have skimread ADWD, but I have yet to thoroughly read it.

2.Who are your favorite three characters in the series? Why?

Baelor Breakspear: I liked him from the start. But I loved him from that part where Dunk is all like "IS THERE NO TRUE KNIGHT AMONG YOU?" And everyone is like "STFU!" and then Baelor is like "HERE I AM!" and then he's like "Oops, now I dead from massive head wound X.X" and then Dunk is all like "WHY AM I ALWAYS FUCKING THINGS UP???" But in all seriousness, Baelor Breakspear is an amazing character and it made me sad because that's the truth in Westeros, isn't it: that he was way too good to stick around. And also, he was like a breath of fresh air. You see, I was getting both disenchanted with the canon Targaryens in ASoIaF and that only intensified with reading the Dunk and Egg series. So I was glad to find a (half) Targaryen that I could like, and that despite there being a lot of crazy and unimpressive ones, there were some good and admirable Targaryens.

Sansa Stark: Another character whom I liked from the start. Maybe because I read the books too fast to get a chance to dislike her, or because Arya never struck me as particularly interesting character so I never sympathised with her negative view of Sansa. Whatever the reason, Sansa's narrative was the most interesting to me from Day 1 and I am still rooting for her. I like how she turns from a superficial but kind girl to a jaded woman who still retains her basic kindness. I hope she turns out to be a strong player in the game. I am also very interested in seeing where her alliance with Petyr will lead. I also like that she has inherited from Catelyn both intelligence and the ability to overcome her naivete, unlike the rest of the Starks. (sorry Starks, I love you to death, but you really are too naive for your own good!)

Olenna "Queen of Thorns" Tyrell - She is catty, plotting, and I love her so for it. I think she is hilarious and she was part of what made Storm of Swords great. In her first appearance, we get: "My son's a fish, my daughter-in-law is an idiot, my whole family is a bunch of jumped-up traitors, Rains of Castamere is SO overrated, my husband was bad in bed, and would someone bring me some fucking cheese already?". How is it possible to not love this Head Bitch In Charge?

Honorable mentions to Catelyn, Lyonel Baratheon and Oberyn Martell.

3.Who are your least favorite three characters in the series? Why?

I am going to assume this means besides the usual suspects.

Rhaegar Targaryen: A pretty fellow, but rather useless nevertheless. Whenever I hear yet another character in the series mention what a great king he would have been, what an amazing man he was, I roll my eyes. From what I can read between the lines, he seemed not a bad man, but a thoughtless one. I don't see anything in his actions that tells me he would have made a great king. And he quite stupidly plunged the realm into a war, as a result of his actions. Was he so arrogant as to believe that his actions would just be accepted by his soon-to-be subjects? Was he too stupid/only booksmart to realize that the rule of his father wasn't supported by dragons anymore, and thus the land was ripe for rebellion? I see absolutely no leadership capabilities in him, unless it was the quite-unsurpassed ability to lead the kingdom into war and near-ruin, and then run away and hole up in a tower until the end.

Ned Stark - The truth is that I very much love Ned, but at the same time he made me tear my head out with frustration in my reread of the first book last summer (in preparation for the TV show). He is such a wonderful father but at the same time, one cannot forget that he's the reason that the Starks are all separated and scattered now. If he hadn't been so proud of his own values, so set in his ways, so blind. So many people try to open his eyes, sometimes out of pity, sometimes out of hatred, and sometimes out of a twisted kindness. But he just remains stubbornly blind and he blunders about and then he gets his chopped off. A prime example that a good man is not always a good leader, and that too much kindness is not always a good thing.

Daenerys Targaryen - Mostly I forget she exists, but then I remember. At first I was sympathetic to her, but she began to wear on my nerves. What annoys me about Dany is pretty much her entitlement, and her intent of "I'M GOING TO BE KIND TO YOU, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT." and "HOW DARE YOU BE UNGRATEFUL, WHEN I HAVE BEEN SO KIND? BUUUUUUUURNNNNNN!" And that entitled bullcrap about her being the rightful heiress to the Iron Thrones is getting very old, very fast. In addition to that, Daenerys knows nothing about Westeros. She hasn't even lived there for the longest time. It doesn't inspire confidence in a leader when she doesn't know much about the land she's trying to rule, and it is also doubtful how she is going to go up against the treachearous nature of King's Landing. Oh well, I suppose she could just kill them all with fire, as seems to be her modus operandi just about everywhere else. Yawn.

4.#1 Favorite moment in all of ASOIAF so far? Why?

The Purple Wedding was very nice, if I may say so. I definitely let out a "YEEEESSSSS!" at the point.

"IS THERE NO TRUE KNIGHT AMONG YOU?" as I mentioned earlier, is another one.

Honorable mention also goes to Ellaria Sand's speech about revenge being a double-edged sword. True say, Mama Sand. True say.

5. In your dream-world, how would you like to see the series end, and why?

A democracy wouldn't be too much to ask for, would it? *sigh*

Well, I would like Daenerys to please stay in Essos and try to become a competent ruler of the cities that she has so thoughtlessly conquered. It would be interesting to see what kind of a queen she would make there. I hope she will grow into a good one. I also hope she stays far away from Westeros.

I really do not know who I want to take the Iron Throne. All nine noble houses have, in one way or another, shown themselves to be either unfit to rule, or unwilling to rule, or just plain incompetent at ruling. But *sigh* if I have to pick, I would pick one of the newer generations of Lannisters or Tyrells to rule. Perhaps an optimal mix of both.

I would like the Starks, Martells and Tullys to find some remnant of happiness, after all the loss that has come to their houses.