win or die.

[laurasue.livejournal.com]

Name: LS
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!): My buddy, Jackie/everchangeling. I've done sortings before (waaaaay back in the day), but never here. I took a looong break from LJ, but I'm trying to get more active with it again.
Age: 28
Location: Saginaw, MI
Occupation: Medical supplies/lab/emergencies driver. I do night-time runs for a variety of Michigan doctors and hospitals. Everything from hauling blood/urine/tissue/etc labs to airports to transporting surgical supplies, and that one time I delivered a couple of kidneys for transplant. I named them Lefty and Righty, and we had delightful conversations along the way.




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'll cover the easiest thing first, I suppose. I can't imagine every living somewhere without all four seasons. I don't do very well in the heat, and fall and winter are my favorite seasons. I'm one of those strange sorts that genuinely loves the cold. Summer is fun, too, but I could never last somewhere with extreme heat for very long. When I was a teenager we vacationed in New Orleans for a while in the spring and... oh God. It brought out my heat!wuss colors so fast. Heat makes me lazy. All I want to do is stay inside in the air conditioning, and that's so not me. I would love to be surrounded by nature. Forests, gardens, lakes, rivers... whole nine yards. When I was a really young child, we had lilac bushes and a pear tree not far away from my bedroom window, and my bed was right next to the window so that in the spring, summer and fall I could fall asleep and wake up to those scents. I would love to duplicate that. The kicker is I don't really want to live in a rural area. I've done country living, and I get frustrated being so far away from, I don't know, modern comforts? Having to drive an hour to the nearest grocery store is absolutely not for me. So I guess ideally I'd like a little getaway in nature just on the outskirts of a decent-sized city.

I really dislike modern furniture and architecture. It always strikes me as cold and lifeless. But with that said, my ideal house would have a ton of windows - BIG WINDOWS - and a lot of natural light during the day. I'm not really one for neutral colors, either. I have a branch of synesthesia where, among other things, everything in my mind is associated with a certain color. So if someone were to give me an unlimited budget, I'd go crazy with bold colors. My bedroom should be in shades of blue, purple, or perhaps red. I'd like a study/office with lots of green. I want a massive bathroom with a big tub (I take LOTS of baths), with a color scheme different from my bedroom and candles everywhere. I've always liked the idea of having an entire wall in my bedroom or office that's dedicated to books. I am a book nerd. I also need a massive kitchen, because I love to cook and bake. As for general architecture of the house... I have absolutely no idea. I think my ideal home is a hobbit hole, no lie. Or an elven tree-house. I'm a Tolkien geek and a big kid at heart, I can't help it.

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: I want my mother to be cured. She's had MS for nearly 35 years. Her doctors told her back in the day she'd never have children, but she had me anyway. I've watched her fight the disease tooth and nail every day of her life, and I would love to see all those struggles just... go away. I don't feel I need to explain this one any more than that. I don't know anyone who deserves it more, and if I had it in my power to give to her, I would.

II: Unlimited Creative Ability/Potential. I've always been a creative person. I've always written stories, I've always played instruments, etc. Well, I want to amplify that to infity. I want to be able to pick up any instrument and be a master. I want nothing standing in my way from being able to immediately transfer the things I hear in my head to the real world. I want a perfect singing voice. I want to be able to paint, and draw, and sculpt, and whatever else strikes my fancy. Yes, this wish is entirely selfish. No, I do not particularly care.

III: I'd like to be able to change my appearance at will. I can't really justify this one properly, I just wish I could. I wish I was Tonks. I'd like to be able to wake up in the morning and go 'hmm, I think I'll have pink hair today.' Or test drive tattoos! Or... I don't know, it's weird, vain, and selfish, but they're my wishes. :-P I've read a lot of books, every time you wish for world peace it goes terribly wrong, so I'll go ahead and keep my silly wish.

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'm a survivor. I've been through some terrible things in my life, and when I was younger people would call me a survivor and I hated it. The way I saw it, it wasn't like I had any choice in the matter. I went on because I never considered suicide an option. It wasn't easy, sometimes I didn't like it, but I kept pushing because I didn't know any other way to be. I think I have the wisdom to see what an amazing quality that is in a person now, even if I feel a little self-centered saying it.

On my 17th birthday, I was in the backseat of our car, my dad was driving, and somehow the car went off an overpass. I was asleep, and I don't really know what happened. My dad doesn't either. The car hit the highway below and rolled twice. I was dragged under on the first roll. After the second, it skid into an 8-foot ditch. When paramedics arrived on scene, they woke me up, and I stood up and ran to the car to check on my dad. I kept insisting I was okay, but about an hour later as we got to the hospital I finally collapsed. My dad and I were both pretty badly hurt, and there were psychological scars as well as physical ones. I won't go into all of it, but a few months later my dad had an absolute mental breakdown. There was a weekend where he just went crazy. There was no other word for it. He couldn't stop crying, he couldn't be left alone. He slept in my bed and I sat on the floor playing video games for hours on end because my mom and I just couldn't figure out how to help him. He kept refusing to go to the hospital, though my mom finally talked him into it. Then he disappeared from the hospital, and my mom and I didn't hear from him again for almost a year. In the time that he was gone, he drained the bank account he shared with my mom, and diverted all his mail to a new residence. We tried filing a missing persons report, and the police told us he wasn't missing. They knew where he was, he just didn't want to see us. End of story. He sent a note through a family friend that we didn't have to worry about him, he didn't want us to look for him, and that he was continuing to pay the bills so 'don't worry about it and leave me alone.' He didn't. The bank repossessed the house and the car, and my mom (who is disabled) and I were homeless. We didn't have a single family member that would take us in.

I quit school immediately and got a full-time job at a hotel. The hotel where I worked ended up giving us a dirt-cheap deal on a room for the first week, so we stayed there while we tried to figure out what we were going to do. Two days later, my dad received and cashed my mom's disability check. From there, my mom and I took steps to get me registered as her payee. Meaning, I was in charge of her finances, and her future disability checks would come in my name so my dad couldn't touch them. We ended up finding a junk car that barely ran, bought it for my first check, and when we couldn't stay in the hotel anymore we lived in that car. It was absolute hell, and I'd be lying if I didn't say there were nights when all I could do was pray to God for a semi to hit us and take us both out on the spot. We kept going. Me, because I felt my mom needed me to be strong. My mom, because she felt I needed her to be strong. That was all there was to it. We were all each other had and we refused to quit for the other's sake.

It was REALLY hard to get back on our feet, even after I turned 18. I mean, it took years. My mom's credit was absolutely RUINED by the things my dad did in her name, and I had no credit whatsoever. And out of desperation, I was doing things that were already ruining it. One of the hardest blows in that period was losing my best friend. We'd been friends almost my whole life, and he eventually told me that he was at a really 'selfish point' in his life, and having me for a friend was too depressing. He said college years were the time you were supposed to go crazy, and worrying about me was holding him back from that. And that was it. It hurt so badly that not long after, I ended up getting into an abusive relationship because I was desperate for any sort of affection and approval I could get. Yes, I eventually got out of it, but for a long time there my life was a bad Lifetime movie. -_- We were in a hellbit, and we had to crawl back out of it bit by bit. Even once we had a home again and stability and all that, it took another few years before I realized I was no longer terrified every time the phone rang or there was a knock at the door. We rebuilt our lives. I even rebuilt a relationship with my dad, after he went through a lot of therapy and apologized for what he put us through.

Oh God, longwinded answer is longwinded. I'm just proud of still being here. And not as a broken shell of a person, either. I'm LIVING again. Five years ago I wouldn't have believed you if you told me that.

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.
It's really close between love and knowledge, but I am going to go with love. I don't mean romantic love, either. Any kind of love. I believe that as long as a person has someone in their lives that loves them and will fight for them, whether it be a parent or spouse or best friend, then they have a shot.

Least important would be money. Hey, you can't miss what you never had. :-P Sure, I would LIKE a boatload of it to piss away however I please, but I've lived on a tight budget my entire adult life and it doesn't mean I'm unhappy.

5. What's one quote (or passage, song lyric, etc.) that effectively describes you and your values? Explain.

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
-e e cummings

I adopted this quote as my personal mantra/motto at the beginning of the Dark Years (lol) and it has served me well. When my life turned to crap, I had a lot of choices. There were a lot of ways I could have gone. I was so desperate to get on my feet, I considered some, well, let's just say bad things. So I would keep saying this over and over again. If my life was going to be this living, waking Lifetime movie from hell, I wasn't going to let it change me. I was determined not to let circumstances turn me into someone I wouldn't be able to look in the mirror. I was going to keep fighting for my life and my integrity until I had nothing left in me to give. Still applies. :-P

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.
Every single penny I make is budgeted. -_- Yes, I hate it, and yes, it is quite a drag, but a necessary one. It doesn't mean I never have fun. I have a very small entertainment budget, and that allows me to maybe to go a movie once in a while, or I can save up for big stuff (in the summer I tend to save up a long time and blow all my money at Renfest lol). Financial security is important to me in a way where... I stayed with a job I hated for a LOT longer than I should have because I refused to quit until I had a new job lined up. I won't date a guy without a job. I won't say 'oh screw it, I'll worry about it tomorrow' and go buy that new video game like I really want to do. I will be responsible, dammit.

7. Name (and elaborate on) some of your hobbies. What are your favorite things to do outside of school/the office?
Reading and writing are the main thing. I roleplay a lot, and I'm working on a novel. I read CONSTANTLY, and go through about a book a week. I even take audiobooks with me to work (but, seeing as I drive for a living... this works REALLY WELL). I watch a lot of TV and movies on Netflix, and I play a lot of video games. I knit a lot. I have three extremely spoiled cats who are my babies. I watch as much hockey as I possibly can (GO RED WINGS). I'm a big history geek, and will spend hours/days/weeks reading history books for fun, and researching whatever bit of history has currently caught my fancy. If I had gone to college, I would have wanted to be an archaeologist.

8. Name three things you are afraid of. Explain.

I: Spiders. When I was a little kid, I wasn't a very girly kid. My friends were all boys, and I was that little girl always playing outside and getting as dirty as possible. One day when I was 5, I was at a friend's house. He said he had something he wanted to show me in his room. This something turned out to be a jar of spider corpses he said he'd been saving for a long time. (He was a weird kid, okay. I don't even know.) We looked at it for a minute, and I eventually said something to the gist of 'you're weird' and walked out of the room. Just as I reached the door, he screams 'HEY LAURA' (LS is short for LauraSue). I turn around, and he HURLS THE JAR at me. Lid comes off midair and... they go everywhere. They were in my clothes, they were in my hair... I swallowed some. And it traumatized the everliving bejesus out of me.

II: God, can I repeat the spiders one again? Just having to type that up made me feel like I'm being crawled on and asghsaoghasgoaihsg do not want. I can't? Okay. Shit. Well. Intimacy/Dying Alone. It's not something I like to talk about, and I guess a leftover scar of the abusive relationship I was in when I was younger. There are some parts of being in a relationship that still scare me. I'm scared that I could somehow let it happen again. I'm scared that I could come to rely on some person and have them decide they don't want me. And at the same time, I'm really scared that I'm never going to find that guy that's as patient with me as I probably need him to be.

III: Something happening to my mom. We're SO CLOSE, especially with all we went through in the Dark Years, and... I just can't stand to see her suffer. Her health isn't great, and I get nervous a lot about something happening to her.

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: My humor. I mean, maybe it's not on display here, but I cling to it like a liferaft. I love making other people laugh almost above all things, and I love laughing too. Maybe it's because there's been so much unhappiness in my life, but where I'm at now? I'm always trying to drag laughs out of whoever is around me. I will be that annoying chick who cracks jokes with people in line next to her at the grocery store.

II: Loyalty. If you are my friend and you need something from me, I will go without if I have it in my power to give it to you.

III: My. Uh. Bladder control? Crap, I don't know. I'm gonna go with my creativity. Maybe it's egotistical, but I think I have good ideas. There. Done.

WORST:

I: I have issues with problems I can't solve. Seriously. There is nothing WORSE than seeing a problem and knowing there is nothing I can do about it. I want to fix EVERYTHING. And when I see stuff like that... I just don't know when to quit. If one of my friends is going through a rough time, I will hurl possible solutions at them way past the point most people realize they need to shut up and talk about something else. A lot of times that person will actually have to tell me 'hey, LS, that's nice and all but I don't really want your help right now so will you please STFU.'

II: Too honest? I don't know man, my gut wants to say 'THAT'S NOT A THING,' but rationally I know it is. There are some things that shouldn't be said, but rest assured I will probably be the one to say them. -_- I am working on this, and I have learned that there is a time and place for everything and sometimes the world will benefit from me keeping my opinions to myself. But... you should never ask me for an honest opinion unless you're sure you want it. I can be brutally honest, and I won't realize I've taken it a step too far until after I've hurt someone. And I hate hurting people. I'll feel really terrible after and apologize and all that, but there are some things you can't take back. Once they're said, they're out there.

III: Insufferable know-it-all? Yeah. I'm one of those. Again, I'm working on it, but it's still there. I'm a bit of a bossy-pants, too. I'm a perfectionist. I want things done my way, and I want things done the RIGHT WAY. I have learned to step back and let other people take the reigns, but I still have the tendency to, you know. Want to fix everything?





A Song of Ice and Fire Related

1.How many books from the series have you completed?
All of them. I've been reading since 1997. Yes, I was only 12/13 when I started. Yes, I was a weird kid. A really weird kid. I started reading adult literature probably when I was 10 or 11. My parents ultimately decided they were okay with it, as long as I understood books were books and if anything confused me or weirded me out or disturbed me or whatever it was I would A) put down the book and B) talk to them about it.

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

Brienne of Tarth. Of all the characters I can relate to her the most - especially since I started reading the books when I was so young. I hit 6'0" when I was 12 and could never relate to other kids my age, so by the time she came along I was like OH MY GOD IT'S ME. As an adult, she just touches me, man. She really does. I love a strong female, a fighter, and I so desperately want her to have a happy ending - all the while acknowledging that she's probably going to suffer a terrible fate. Brienne is my selfish choice, because I see the most of myself in her.

Arya. Another fighter girl after my own heart! Again, she reminds me a lot of myself as a kid - especially in the first book, and not as much in the others. I really find her fascinating and compelling. She has such a strong sense of self at such a young age. She knows who she is and who she wants to be, and is determined not to let anyone deter that. She breaks my heart on a regular basis, but I love her. I want her to succeed at whatever it is she does.

Tyrion. I think he is one of the most relatable characters in the series. You've got a guy who has always known he can't compete with his siblings, and is never going to be a knight or a hero or whatever it is, and he doesn't let that destroy him. He works all the harder at developing the only weapon he has available to him - his mind.

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

Daenerys. I've gotten a lot of hate for it in the past, but I really just can't stand her. Yes, I know she's only a teenager, and teenagers are going to make stupid decisions. My issue with her is that she's always fighting to be taken as an adult, as a queen, and then turns around and acts like an idiot teenager anyway. In the long run, I don't really think her motives are any better than her brother's. She wants to return to Westeros and take the iron throne because it's her birthright, even though when her brother was around, she had enough intelligence to realize that the people don't want them. The people aren't really sitting back and quietly praying for her return. I generally find her to be rather wishy-washy, and her chapters tend to bore me. She seems to so often be consumed by her hormones, which yes, is very like a teenager, but if she's fighting so hard to play with the big kids then she needs to learn to pull up her big girl pants really damn soon. Her treatment of the dragons in the last book really got under my skin, too. At the end of the day, I think if someone were to sit her down and ask 'what do you want', she'd probably say to reclaim the throne, and that's fine. But I think if someone asked her 'why,' she'd probably spend the next year or so trying to figure out the answer. And not having all the answers is totally fine, but maybe wait to try and prove yourself until you sort your shit out. Just saying.

Catelyn. I can see that she has a good heart and she means well. Absolutely. But I also feel like every time she tries to intervene and make things better, things turn out more screwed up than they were before. In the early books every time we got a Catelyn chapter I'd internally go 'oh hell, what is she going to do now.' And then she died. And then GRRM brought her back, because he is a troll and could not allow me to have the one thing he ever did that made me truly happy. I'm mostly being sarcastic there. Mostly.

It's REALLY hard to pick my third, but I think I'm going to say Cersei. In the beginning I was really hoping for her to be some kind of evil genius, and then we got chapters in her point of view and... I was just pretty horrified. Oh it's EXCELLENT writing, but I generally find her to be a terrible person without any redeeming qualities. She shaped Joffrey into the monster he was because she was living vicariously through him. She loved him above her other children because she saw the most of herself in him, and she's a pretty terrible mother to Tommen in my opinion. There's no grey area to her motives; she is out for herself, and I dislike that.

4.#1 Favorite moment in all of ASOIAF so far? Why?
I have SUCH a hard time picking just one. Seriously. I would probably have a hard time narrowing it down to a top TEN. After thinking about this a while, I'm going to say Jaime jumping in with the bear and Brienne. Before we got chapters in point of view, I never would have believed anyone if they said 'you're going to care about this character.' I would have said he's an absolute villain, no redeeming qualities, and he deserved a terrible fate for what he did to Bran. And then we got his chapters and I LOVED the unrepentant bastard. I tried to cling to denial for a long time, and then he jumped in with that damn bear. That was the big game changer for me. That was when I realized absolutely all bets were off, and I love that GRRM was able to put me through that.

5. In your dream-world, how would you like to see the series end, and why?
I'm pretty sure there aren't going to be many happy endings. I keep telling myself that everyone I know and love in the series is going to suffer terribly and die. Maybe to make it easier when that actually happens. I would be happy if Tyrion and the remaining Stark children got happy endings. I would also be happy if Rickon grows up to be a bitter serial killer, kills everyone, feeds the bodies to Shaggydown, and claims the throne for himself. "YEAH, NEGLECT ME NOW YOU BASTARDS."

Comments

Re: [MARTELL]

[laurasue.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for voting!

Oh, I have absolutely no disagreement at all that Robert was a terrible father to his supposed children. I find it interesting to sit back and try to figure out whether or not Robert could have salvaged the little bugger though. Would one good parent be enough? Would Cersei have allowed Robert to influence her children at all? It's easy to imagine that Robert didn't know the depths of Joff's cruelty - and perhaps easier still to imagine that if he had the slightest hint, he just didn't care. Robert's negligence is just as appalling as Cersei's parenting style, but king or not, I really have to wonder if she would have allowed any 'meddling' from him. I think, had Robert actually tried to be a decent father, she would have quietly encouraged Joff away from being like him. Not that that excuses Robert in any way. It's just a lot easier for me to dislike Cersei more since, yanno, Robert's dead. XD

Re: [MARTELL]

[l-vestrit.livejournal.com]

It was a pleasure! ♥ Welcome to the community!

I find it interesting to sit back and try to figure out whether or not Robert could have salvaged the little bugger though.
Hmm, I think he couldn't have salvaged him, because he was a bugger himself. :D I don't know, I think he was weak and corrupted as a person, and even if Cersei allowed him to interact with his son, I'm not sure that it would've helped Joffrey to become a better person.

Would Cersei have allowed Robert to influence her children at all?
It is exactly the point! Robert was so weak and pathetic that his wife could forbid him such an important thing! Joffrey was a little prince, he should've been with his father practically all the time, or so I think... Cersei has no such right to forbid anything like that! I think if Robert actually cared, he would've done something.

Robert's negligence is just as appalling as Cersei's parenting style
Yeah, they both were terrible as parents. Yet Tommen and Myrcella are completely different, they are nice and kind and overall wonderful kids, which is amazing to me. :D