win or die

[1916returning.livejournal.com]

Name: Caitlin
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!):
Months ago, I saw someone post about it on tumblr. At the time, I’d only read the first book, so I’ve had the site bookmarked since. Sadly, I can’t remember who posted it. I’m not on livejournal very often, but it used to be my main hangout, so I decided to come back.
Age: 17
Location: Right now, USA, but in two months I’ll be in England for college
Occupation: Student. I also used to help teach dance classes, but now I’m off to learn how to get a proper job as an archaeologist.




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!.
One condition I have for a home is that it would have to be old. Modern architecture makes me upset—I love the useless frills and decorations that tend to come with buildings more than a century old. Besides, there’s stories and history that go with older things, and I’d love to be able to say that I lived in a place with a rich history. I wouldn’t want a small house, but neither would I want it to be too large. Well, for the interior, anyway—the more gardens and trees nearby, the better. Also, an extraneous detail, but I love fountains. I’ve always wanted one in my house, but it would look stupid where I live now.
In terms of climate, I absolutely can’t stand extremes of any sort—except for maybe rain, because I love the way it smells (and the way things look when the sun comes out after a shower). I can never decide if I hate dreadfully hot summers more than I hate freezing cold winters, but both of them render me utterly incapacitated and miserable.
I guess all that lends itself to a place somewhat in the countryside, but I don’t like to be too far removed from other people. I love cities, so I’d want to be a short distance away from a reasonably large town. London, perhaps, or maybe York.

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!
1. A time machine! I could go back and talk to my favourite historical figures or witness important events, and I could spend some time living in some of the time periods that interest me. Also, I can’t help but think that this would be something of an advantage for an archaeologist—I could go back and verify everything that I theorize.
2. A cure for writer’s block. This is the bane of my existence. I hate having the urge to write but no creativity, or having a thousand ideas that I want to put on paper but no inspiration for words themselves.
3. As much as I’d like to deny it, I know I’d end up wishing for money. I like being able to fund my lifestyle. I like extravagant things, I can’t help it; a reasonable sum of money would at least help me to do the things I want to do.

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. ;)
Strangely enough, I find this question difficult. I’m proud of a lot of things that I’ve done; I’ve achieved a lot. However, I’m certain that these things aren’t going to be the greatest things I’ll ever achieve in my life. I plan on doing more.
That said, there’s two things that I’m very proud of. The first is getting accepted at a highly acclaimed university in England; I always knew I’d get into a good school, but working to apply to (and then get an acceptance from) an international school took a lot of extra time and effort, and it’s something most people wouldn’t have bothered to attempt.
Second, I used to dance with a group that’s produced a lot of very talented dancers, but they ignored me and told me I’d never amount to anything competitively. I left their school, joined another one, and reached the highest level of competition there is to compete in. I was never “naturally” talented, but I worked hard, and so I managed to earn a place at regional and national competitions. I’m happy that I got to prove people wrong, but on a less spiteful note, I’m happy that I was able to reach a goal that I’d set for myself. I don’t often set very specific goals, but here I did, and it worked out quite nicely in the end.

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 for me has to be Adventure. I hate routines; if I’m doing the same thing day after day, I get restless (and sometimes depressed) so I need to keep finding new things to keep my mind occupied. I count Knowledge as a kind of a sub-category of Adventure—learning something new can be as much of an adventure as, say, getting lost in a forest or something. I don’t know. They’re related in my mind and both are quite important.
Right now, the least important to me is Love (since I’m assuming this refers to the romantic kind). I’m still young; I don’t need romance right now, nor do I particularly want it. Family and Friendship are enough for now, and while I might consider Love more important later, it’s not a concern of mine at the moment.

5. What's one quote (or passage, song lyric, etc.) that effectively describes you and your values? Explain.
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” – Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde is pretty much my spirit animal. Anyway, I love how essentially conflict-free this is as a philosophy. I hate fights and arguments, because 9 times out of 10 they’re about the most useless, unimportant things (and that’s energy best spent doing something else). Also, avoiding expectations is always fun, in my experience. It confuses people and then they don’t bother you.

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.
Generally, I don’t manage my money. At all. I acquire it, I spend it. Actually, what I tend to do quite often is borrow money from other people, spend it, and never pay it back. I don’t know why, but no one seems to have caught on that when I say “I’ll pay you back later” it’s an empty promise. It’s horrible, I know, but it seems that I do this to the kind of people that are too nice to pester me about it. I guess if they want to take some moral high ground and “do the right thing” by paying from the gentleness of their hearts, that’s fine.

7. Name (and elaborate on) some of your hobbies. What are your favorite things to do outside of school/the office?
I always thought that I was solely an “indoor” kind of person, and that I would always rather read a book or write something than go outside. I still love both of these things, of course, but in the last two years I’ve started to spend more time with sports. I started playing rugby two years ago, which has been entertaining because I love being the pretentious one at football games who insists that rugby is much more dignified, but I do get annoyed by the people that think it’s all about beating bitches. I like it because it makes me feel like an honourable type from the early 20th century. I guess that same reasoning was what led me to take up rowing, too—that’s helped entertain quite a few fantasies while our boat heads down the river early in the morning.

8. Name three things you are afraid of. Explain.
1. Not achieving. I want to do something important and be remembered for it. I have high standards for myself, and sadly that means that I’ll be very unhappy if by the end of my life I’m just another person who never really amounted to very much. I like to think I’m better than that, so if I have the potential to do more, then I should.
2. Disfigurement/Disability. This might be vanity speaking, but I can’t imagine having to live with any kind of major injury—losing a limb or something like an ear or an eye. Most of the things I enjoy doing require the use of arms and legs and senses, like playing sports and music, and suddenly not being able to do them isn’t something I want to face. Besides, the pain that would inevitably be the cause! No thank you.
3. Death. About a month ago I really understood that being dead is the end, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I think this more or less translates into a general fear of the Unknown; I can rationalize my other fears with research, reading up on ways to avoid bad things happening, but I will die someday, and whether that means everything just ends or there’s some kind of afterlife, it does mean that I’ll cease to exist as who I am now. Maybe that’s also vanity, since I adore who I am as a person and I don’t fancy that changing by means I can’t control.

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:
1. Hard working: If there’s something that I want done, I do whatever I can do to make sure that it happens. I’m persistent, too; I don’t give up after one little setback.
2. Accepting: I let other people do what they want. I’m not too thrilled by drug-users or binge drinkers, but I know people that do that kind of thing, and I’m not going to force my morals on them and tell them they can’t. Live and let live. That applies to bigger things too, I guess, like religion and sexual orientation and political affiliation. As long as you’re not hurting anyone but yourself, then you should be free to do whatever you want.
3. Well-informed: I hate coming into situations not knowing about them. I like to read up on places that I visit and sports that I join, so that I feel like I’m going in with a good understanding to start with. Basically, I like knowing things and researching them, and I think it’s helped me in a lot of different ways, simply because I took the time to learn more about a topic.
Worst:
1. Arrogant: I’m smart, talented, and good-looking, and I happen to be aware of it. That tends to annoy people. Personally, I don’t see it as a problem, but I know for a fact that it annoys the hell out of people with low self-esteem. It’s like they take it as a personal insult to themselves. I think the real issue is that I end up with a terrible sense of entitlement and that’s not exactly fair.
2. Stubborn: I like doing things my way, and while I don’t mind if people want to give me advice, I can’t stand when people go about it the wrong way and attempt to force me to do something—even if it’s nothing bad, I don’t like being told what to do.
3. Lazy: I’m not lazy about doing Big Important Things That Must Be Done. I actually have a pretty good work ethic when it comes to that kind of thing, like I said. The little things, however, like answering emails or writing thank-you notes or cleaning out my schoolbag at the end of the year, I postpone indefinitely and never really get done.




A Song of Ice and Fire Related

1.How many books from the series have you completed?
I’m working my way through A Dance With Dragons now; I’m about halfway through, but I think the rest should go pretty quickly. These books tend to reach a certain point where I can’t put them down and then it’s only a day or two before I finish.

2.Who are your favorite three characters in the series? Why?
1. Cersei Lannister: I originally put this lady as a least favourite character, but I just couldn’t leave her there. I loathe her, and the more I loathe her, the more I end up loving her. She’s strong and she gets what she wants and she won’t let herself be second best to anyone, and while she does make some tremendously terrible choices because of it, it’s hard not to respect her at least a bit.
2. Sansa Stark: I’m still not sure when I went from being casually ambivalent about Sansa to adoring her—it must have been sometime after the third book. I like that she does what she needs to do in order to stay alive, but at the same time, she hasn’t really ever given up what made her who she was. Yes, she’s obviously lost her naivety and more or less been forced to grow up, but she’s still a decent human being and you can tell that she still cares for people despite all the terrible things she’s been put through. It’s quite refreshing.
3. Rhaegar Targaryen: Okay, I had to put him here because I couldn’t decide between Bran, Jaime, Tyrion, or Dany for this last spot, so I picked someone else entirely that I thought deserved a mention. I love how poetic Rhaegar is—I just picture him crying over harp music with his flowing locks, being a tortured soul as part of a more-or-less deranged family. It’s all so melancholy and delicious.

3.Who are your least favorite three characters in the series? Why?
This is excluding the obvious choices, like Joffrey and Ramsay Bolton, because anyone with emotions could list those as their least favourite.
1. Jon Snow: Whiney and ungrateful. At first I thought I liked Jon, because I sympathized with some of the situations he was in, but then I realized it was only the situation that I recognised, and not what he was doing. See, what bothers me about Jon is that he has to complain about everything, good and bad. True, some of it is bad, and he’s justified in complaining, but he also does a lot of angsting about his own choices, which irritates me to no end. If you make a decision, then you ought to at least stick to it and not bitch about how it’s everyone else’s fault. You agreed to command the Night’s Watch, Jon, so shut up and do your job rather than sighing about how your life is over. No one made you join the Watch in the first place, either. Ugh.
2. Theon Greyjoy: I find his whole turncloak episode to be somewhat unrealistic. There was absolutely no reason to try and prove himself to his family, since they made it so clear that they didn’t value him anyway. At least he had some respect from the Starks, even if he didn’t “fit in.” And then there’s just the fact that he’s enough of an ass to murder innocent children to prove his point. Yeah, I’m not feeling too sorry for him in ADWD.
3. Robb Stark: I was as angry as the next person when the Red Wedding happened, but honestly, Robb was such a boring king. Here, I think a POV chapter or two would’ve helped, but I found it really difficult to care about his war. Part of the problem was that he was trying to be like Ned, who was so much of a do-gooder that it made it difficult to read his chapters. Basically, there's so many more interesting characters in the series, so I find it hard to care about the duller ones.  

4.#1 Favorite moment in all of ASOIAF so far? Why?
I have two moments that I can’t quite choose between. The first is Dany going on her badass slave-freeing run; sure, it ends up being a horrible mess, but before we know that, it’s such a great moment when all the people are calling her “mother.” I like that the role of a mother becomes such a powerful image, because that’s not a common association. The other part I love is when Bran reaches the greenseers and first looks at the world from the tree’s perspective. I love trees and writers who explore life from the perspective of trees win my eternal love (I’m mostly referring to Tolkien and his ents here, but hey).

5. In your dream-world, how would you like to see the series end, and why?
To be honest, I haven’t thought much about the end of the series—I feel like there’s still plenty of twists coming that will end up changing my opinion about it. I guess I just want the Starks to stay clear away from the Iron Throne, because they’re the ones that made Westeros such a big mess in the first place. Except maybe Sansa. She can joint rule with Dany or something. Actually, if I’m honest, I want all the queens just to party it up together and rule as a team of woman power, but since that’s never going to happen, I won’t elaborate.

Comments

[MARTELL]

[astraeas-world.livejournal.com]

I'm feeling a lot of Lannister, although I do see where the Tyrell and Martell votes are coming from.