westerosorting | Win or die

Name: Thali
How did you find out about the community? If it's through an LJ user, please tell us who it is: I've seen it on a few friends's posts, particularly

arasan,

my_arrows_aim, and

niyalind. Scrolling around, I recognize quite a few usernames from other places!
Age: 27
Location: Ohio, USA
Occupation: graduate student (seeking MAs in School Counseling and Clinical Counseling) and substitute teacher

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 want a two-story brick farmhouse in the country, surrounded by quiet farm land and away from other people. It needs to be far enough out in the country so I can see the stars at night without light pollution. I want a library for my books, a media room, lots of office space, and plenty of guest rooms to entertain my closest friends and family. I want a chef-quality kitchen. Cool, calm blues and greens would dominate the color palate. I want places to display the antiques I've gathered from my grandparents. I'd have a flower garden and a kitchen garden for growing fresh vegetables and herbs in the summer.

I intend to build my house on property that belonged to my paternal grandparents. When I was about 14, my grandparents died and their property-- farm land, a small forested area, and their house-- was split up and sold. The forested part and the farmland were snapped up and are productive these days. The house is not. The man who bought the house gutted the inside, packed the barn full of junk, and then left the house to sit empty. It's still empty and basically unlivable in (and unsellable) now.

My plan is to buy that property back. It belonged to my family for several generations, and since the current owner clearly doesn't care for it, I want to bring it back into my family. Because it can't be sold for much in its current condition, I intend to use that to my advantage and buy it cheaply. I know a property lawyer that I can consult, and I've done some research into demolition companies--unfortunately, demolition's the only feasible option for the house now. Currently I'm biding my time, waiting to start working at an income level that will prove helpful, but once the property is mine and the existing house has been demolished, I'm going to build that dream house of my own there. I'll have my dream house, and I'll keep the barn and other outbuildings to connect it to the past generations that lived there.

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

Spiders. Something about the way they move creeps me out. It's that sort of jerking motion of their legs. I keep big shoes around to squash them if they get too close to me. If they leave me alone I'll leave them alone, but they give me cold shivers, regardless.

Failure. Big jump, right, from spiders to failure? In any case, I need to be productive. I need the fulfillment of knowing I'm doing a good job. And I fear the point in time that I let others down and don't live up to my potential, because I can't stand the guilt of knowing I could have done better, but for whatever reason I didn't.

Alzheimer's/Dementia. I've worked really hard all my life to be smart and know things. I'm full of random information, and I like to learn new things. The thought that I'd forget all those things and lose all those wonderful and amazing things I've learned and seen would be heartbreaking and horrible for me. I pride myself on my intelligence-- if I don't have it, I don't think I'll have much of anything!

3. Imagine you’re given the classic opportunity: a genie granting you three wishes. What would you wish for? Wishing for more wishes is not permitted!

I'm going to be entirely selfish, so while I could (theoretically) wish for world peace and love, I imagine some other horrible scourge would come to take its place and everyone would want their wars and hate back. So...

First wish: The property I want in #1. Failing that, a new car. I've never owned a new car--they've all been used and fairly old. I'd love to drive something new for once. Maybe a new hybrid vehicle, just so that I'm not spending all that money on gasoline.

Second wish: Grad school without the tuition bills. I'd love to have to just pay for books, and not have to write $6,000 checks to the university anymore. I'm pursuing two degrees, so it's a lot of expense over a long period of time.

Third wish: Endless season tickets to NHL and CCHA hockey games. I'm a Detroit Red Wings supporter and only live a couple hours away from Detroit. I love going to games at my undergraduate alma mater, even if the team is really bad. Tickets can be expensive after awhile. Unlimited season tickets for the rest of my life? Yes please!

4. In your life so far, what accomplishment are you the most proud of? You can list more than one if you have trouble deciding. ;)

Getting into graduate school was a big accomplishment. I spent several years trying to find a teaching job to no avail. It was like running headlong into a wall repeatedly. I passed my GRE above the requirement on the first try, got into my first choice school on my first try, and pulled a 4.0 GPA my first semester (I'm in my second one now), and I'm a full time student on top of working as much as possible.

I'm good at being a substitute teacher, and I'm intensely proud of it. Teachers fight over me to see who's going to have me teach their classes. I get tougher assignments because I can handle it. I don't let students push me around and I'm a tough disciplinarian who controls her classes with relatively few problems. I command student respect and don't let them play around and cause trouble. I get the last minute assignments when the teacher hasn't left lesson plans and gives me a vague idea what to cover because I get the job done. I've worked really hard to achieve that level of trust and respect, and I consider it a big accomplishment.

5. Which of the following is most important to you: Love, Money, Knowledge, Family, Friendship, Adventure, or Pleasure? Which is the least important to you?

Let's start with what is least important: pleasure. Life is not all roses and sunshine. Never has been, never will be, and to expect it to be is pointless. I don't see the point in indulging myself when the rest of the world struggles-- there's no meaning in that for me. I work hard to achieve, and I earn a return on my investment.

Knowledge is the most important. I think, with just a little more knowledge, I could do so much more than what I can do right now. It's why I'm in graduate school--I intend to use my acquired knowledge to help others deal with the stressful times in their lives. I study counseling and I plan on using that knowledge to fix the problems I see in my little corner of the world. If I don't learn how to help, then any overtures I make about trying to be useful are empty ones.

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

"We had no choice." Always, "we had no choice." Those are our magic words. We repeat them to ourselves again and again. But you know... the magic never worked! The only thing we're left with is regret. No. I don't want this anymore. I don't want friends to die or fade away. I don't want battles where we have to lose in order to win.
--Yuna, Final Fantasy X-2

This probably needs a little explanation. Regardless of situation, having to sacrifice someone or something in order to win is not the way I choose to operate. I win or I lose, but what I care about doesn't get left behind so I can win. I'd rather lose and keep what's important to me rather than win but have to give up something important in the process.

7. How do you manage your money? On that note, how important is money/financial security to you?
I have a set amount of money I set aside for my book purchases every month. Other than that, I occasionally splurge for clothes or evenings out with my friends, but the majority of my paychecks go to paying for necessities like gas for my car and school books. School gets paid for with loans. Everything else gets saved. I don't tend to spend a lot of money on myself at any one time, but if there's something I want I'll save up for it, set a target date for the purchase, and buy it when it goes on sale. I do my best to live within my means, and I always pay my bills off in full. I hate owing money to someone else.

As for its importance? It's useful, and it's important in its own way, but it's not the single determining factor in my life. I see being happy and fulfilled by any number of activities more important than the number of zeros in my checkbook.

8. Name (and elaborate on) some of your hobbies. What are your favorite things to do outside of school/the office?

Reading: I'm constantly reading whatever comes to hand. Bookstores are my favorite haunts and I have to limit myself when I go to the library, otherwise I'd have half the contents of the library leaving with me.

Gaming: I'm almost primarily a console RPG player, which at best is like reading books while playing a game. I'm playing for story and nuance, not for how many things I can kill. First person shooters are a definite turn off.

Researching: by this, I mean discovering new information. I may hear or see something I don't feel like I know enough about, so I'll independently go out researching for more information. For instance, my newer research topic is Asian history, because I don't know enough about it. With the internet, I don't see there being any reason for ignorance!

Cooking: I like making interesting and new recipes. I like creating my own. I'm a one-person bakery at the holidays because I enjoy filling all the traditional treat requirements. It's a little therapeutic to take a big meat mallet to a steak after a tough day, you know?

Hockey: like I said previously, I love the sport. I could care less about any other one, but I love to watch the game, see the play develop, and see the way the team interacts on the ice. I'd probably be an ideal enforcer-type defensive player if only I could skate!

9.Name (and elaborate on) your top three BEST and top three WORST qualities (personality-related, not physical).

Best:
Tenacity: I'm stubborn and I'm proud of it. I keep on working, no matter what, and giving up is absolutely never an option for me. If any given situation was important enough to me for me to value it, I'm going to do it well and I'm going to do whatever I can to succeed at it.

Ability to read people: I understand people-- or at least, I try to. What people say isn't nearly as important as what they don't say or their body language. It's a little like close reading, to borrow a phrase from English, except applied to people. I can tell what people are thinking just by watching. It's a skill that comes in handy for counseling, because I pick up on the things people don't say as much as the things they do.

Adaptability: I think on my feet and try to anticipate problems before they arise. Strange situations and last-minute changes don't make make me blink, even if I'm not happy about them. I just figure out a way to make it work and go from there. I try to make the best of a situation, and try to make it work so that I'm able to successfully finish a task.

Worst:
Reliance on academic skills : I need a stack of evidence or proof in order to feel like I can speak knowledgeably on a topic. If I'm feeling uncomfortable in a situation, expect the $50 dollar words (as my English teachers used to call them) and "academicese" to creep into my speech patterns. If I'm having a stressful day, expect me to be alphabetizing my CD collection for the fourteenth time. I'm sure it's off-putting, and it constructs a nice, big wall between me and whatever is making me uncomfortable.

Paradoxical in interactions: But not in the way one might think. I don't like dealing with my own emotions or feelings. Mine are icky and not helpful. I have a rigid set of ethics and standards of behavior. At the same time, I'm comfortable around other people, their emotions, and everything else and I encourage others to express how they feel. I am comfortable with other people acting as they see best and not how I think they should act. I don't give the same permissions to myself.

Perfectionist: Yeah, this is kind of self-explanatory, right? In any case, I'm a perfectionist. I get bogged down in minutiae more often that I probably should and it causes me to lock up, in a sense, because I won't know the best place to start to solve a problem. It's an unrealistic expectation that the whole world will fall apart if I'm not 100% perfect all of the time.

A Song of Ice and Fire Related

1.Who are your favorite three characters in the series?

Brienne of Tarth: I admit, I was ambivalent at first. She just seemed so stubborn and intractable and she just plain frustrated me with that crush on Renly Baratheon. But her interactions with Jamie humanized his character (as well as hers) for me and that was quite an impressive feat. I empathized with her experiences and ended up really looking forward to her chapters. She's become one of my most very favorite characters, and I do hope she's still alive. Girls with swords are hard to find, you know!

Jon Snow: He's everything Eddard Stark was, but seems much better at navigating the intrigues than Eddard was. I'm probably just set up to like him--he's an underdog in every way possible, after all, and I like underdogs--but his parentage intrigues me. Why does nobody ever talk about it? His ability to survive (and even thrive) on The Wall impresses me. It couldn't have been easy living in the Stark household when he's having nastiness shot his way all the time by Catelyn Stark, and The Wall can't be any easier. There's much more to him than what's already been given, and I can't wait to find out what else is in store for him.

Olenna Redwyne Tyrell: I could say many for the final one (Sam Tarly or Tyrion Lannister, for example) but she is by far one of the more interesting ladies in the books in terms of her cunning, wit, and acerbic attitude. I get a mental image of her as a sort of an Estelle Getty-type person, and uses a perception of grandmotherliness to disguise a forthright nature and uses seriously cunning means to get right down to the heart of a matter. I definitely looked forward to when she'd appear in Sansa's chapters, since she broke up some of the more insipid Sansa-related parts. Sansa gets better, of course, it's just a drag to read Sansa chapters without Lady Olenna in them.

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

Cersei Lannister: Jamie might have actually thrown Bran Stark out of the window but Cersei instigated it in my view. She might be willful, prideful, and ambitious, but she's also obnoxious, paranoid, and frankly, not cunning enough to be a Lannister. She is a horrible queen regent, and between putting the kingdom into debt for her own gain and filling the council with her yes men, reforming the militant order of the Seven, and so on, it's only impressive that she managed to carry on for as long as she did. If she's so ambitious and cunning surely she should have seen that she'd made plenty of enemies and anticipate that one of them would try to take her down from power. Her lack of foresight just makes her grossly stupid. I spent most of my time wanting to slap her upside the head to knock some sense into her!

Robert Baratheon: Really, it's a criticism of the whole Baratheon line in general, who seem rather undeveloped and two-dimensional at best. However, of the three, the reader knows most about Robert. Even when he was rebelling against the Targaryens, he really didn't seem like all that great a leader-- rather, he was the de facto guy since he started it all over Lyanna Stark. It was as if he didn't think about anything past getting her back, and that kept on into his actual reign as king. He was not the kind of king a country needs right after a revolution-- there was a lot of damage done by Aerys that Robert could have fixed. Instead, he spent his time (and the kingdom's money) whoring, feasting, and having parties. His outward appearance at the beginning of the book is fairly descriptive of his reign in general--and in a certain sense, the Seven Kingdoms as a whole, if you consider the country a bloated, overfed mess full of problems that nobody seems to be paying attention to (read: The Wall).

Joffery: He who does not deserve the appellation of "king" anywhere near him. Cruel, sadistic, and quite evil, the only good thing about him was his death. He's a nasty little piece of work. If mental death threats could kill, he'd have been dead somewhere in the first ten chapters or so of the first book. Aside from my knee-jerk reaction, he is pretty much set up to be a paper tiger of nastiness. I do think that's because there's nothing else but his nastiness, but still-- I like my bad characters with a little more characterization than what he got.

3.#1 Favorite moment in all of ASOIAF so far?

Cersei being owned by her own machinations and the Tyrells in A Feast for Crows is, bar none, the best part of the story so far. I honestly had waited for four books to see her get what was coming to her. Her campaign to get rid of Margery Tyrell was the worst-planned thing I've ever seen anyone try to accomplish, and it was all based on a paranoid fear of Tyrion and a prophecy that any rational person probably would have laughed off as just nonsense. It was deliciously satisfying to see the ultimate mastermind of so much death and ultimate instigator of the War of the Five Kings hoisted upon her own petard.

Brienne's "death," and I use the quotation marks because I think I will throw things if GRRM really did kill her off. I had to put the book down and just stare in complete horror when I read that part for the first time, then had to go out for a walk to get rid of my stunned agitation. I spent much of that walk trying to convince myself that GRRM couldn't kill her off. He just couldn't!

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

Above all, I'd like that magic thing explained, because all we've gotten is some vague things and dragons and I expect more than that, darn it. I've got many more theories, but I'll limit myself to top three:

First: Daenerys comes across the sea and beats the everliving snot out of the Seven Kingdoms, melts down that stupid Iron Throne with a dragon, deals with the Others on the other side of the wall--coincidentally with dragonfire -- and sets up a kingdom far better off than it had been under Mad Aerys, Robert Baratheon, Joffery, Tommen, or anyone else. Getting together with Jon, also, would be part of that, because I think not only would they make an interesting pair, but they'd also be very good leaders as a set.

No, really! I actually think it's going to happen. First, Dany will return, going to Dorne first, maybe with Sam Tarly and his group in tow. Doran Martell seem to have something in the works, and I think it has to do with getting an emissary into Dany's party across the sea, convincing her to come back and making Dorne her base of operations as revenge against the Usurpers for killing Elia and her children.

Second: I read an interesting article about Jon Snow's parentage, and rather than try to explain it all, here is the article, and I'd like to see the parentage thing work out as Jon being Lyanna and Rhaegar's son. Paired up with Dany as king, it could be an extremely good thing for the whole of the kingdom. The joining of Stark ice and Targaryen fire, anyone? Failing that, since there was such emphasis on Jon looking like a Stark, I say that he returns to Winterfell on his own terms to rebuild it, finds Arya, Sansa, Bran, and Rickon, and brings them all back home.

Third: Tyrion Lannister becomes lord of Casterly Rock, and has a definite position of authority in a Targaryen-ruled kingdom. He is unable to save Jamie, though, and that causes him much grief. He is, however, quite happy to see Cersei rot in a cell for her many indiscretions. Either that, or he laughs all the way to a very backwoods convent and forces her to be a septa, or maybe even a Silent Sister.

Unfortunately, I think Jamie Lannister's days are numbered, especially if Daenerys comes back, and even then I think he'd probably not be as Lord Lannister of Casterly Rock. Chief among those reasons is that he somehow manages to save Brienne again and they go off to live in Tarth, but I'm a little nuts about that. Really, though, if Daenerys does return then Jamie the Kingslayer's probably going to pay for killing off Aerys with his life. Unless Tyrion appeals to Jon who gets Dany to back off in turn, but that's only assuming my first point actually comes true.