win or die!

[awibs.livejournal.com]

It DID say longer is better.

I took you seriously.

Name: TC Hashioka (or in full, Tahereh Christine Safavi Hashioka. The two that I dropped were the maternal “Hriensaitong” and “Oatfield”, when one of my friends threatened to start calling me “Mrs. Shho”)
How did you find out about the community? If it's through an LJ user, please tell us who it is: PM from deeplyunhip, presumably because I have grrm friended.
Age: 25
Location: Chicago
Occupation: I am a bellydancer (“a snakecharmer”), an urban hippie, and an upscale front waitress, a seamstress, and a writer. I am listing these things as occupations because I currently make money doing them. I also keep myself “occupied” in a number of other ways.




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!.

This section has been edited for clarity for non-Americans.

It’s in Chicago, on Logan Boulevard between California and Kedzie, or Kedzie between Logan and Fullerton. For those who are not familiar with Chicago, all streets are on a very organized coordinate grid, and we only have streets and avenues. The boulevard system is a string of triple-wide roads broken up with serious parks and trees running along them.

The boulevards are beautiful but this is also a very functional location. It’s at a sort of crossroads in the city. It’s right off the 24/7 blue line train (our metropolitan light rail / subway, except it's the "el", because most of the tracks are elevated), and also off the expressway. Logan Square is a very nice little neighborhood too – not too trendier than thou, centrally located but not obnoxiously loud, eg, you can easily get downtown or to nightlife hubs, but you don’t have to deal with hipsters puking on your lawn all the time. And there’s so many hippie things! Lula Café is all sustainable and organic in a designed, upscale way. They’re opening the Logan Square Kitchen (a sustainable community based food project) right there, and there are two dropoff points for CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture. Local, organic, sustainably farmed produce and meat, delivered in unspecified batches of whatever's in season.) There's a fantastic little wine and cheese shop, rows of amazing thrift stores, and the Farmer’s Market and all the street festivals, the theaters and the 24hr gym and the bike-friendly streets. Logan Square keeps turning out to be centrally located to everything. Every show my dance troupe gets booked for seems to turn out to be within walking distance of my house. I love living at the crossroads of everything, and yet it’s not as loud as the hubs to which people are headed.

As for why Chicago – yes, I do like the darn weather. I know everyone else doesn’t. But really, grey and overcast and 50 degrees is like my perfect weather for warm days. And I don’t really mind snow and cold weather – you can always put more clothes on. California would freak my shit out. 74 and fair is miserably hot and bright for me. I really don’t complain about winter as much as summer. I remember when the White Sox (south side baseball team) won the series playing in a freezing rain, and sportscasters were commenting on the “typical Chicago machismo.” They just put a turtleneck under their jerseys, chomp their tobacco and shrug it off. Meh. We’re made of tougher shit than that.

Everything is here, theater, music, dance, art, culture. I don’t care if we’re the Second City. I don’t need to be New York’s pretentious bitchy ass, where the streets smell like piss and dead bodies, and if you get run over by a car people leave you to bleed. People here give a damn. Strangers stop to help you if you trip and fall in the street. Someone will swipe their pass to let you on the train when you’re broke. Not saying there is no crime, but good people care enough to do what good they can. People are laid back – the bad driving is all lackadaisical, drifting through stop signs. None of this crazy Boston aggressive cabbie cutting people off business. The people move at a nice medium speed – not the absurd slowness of the deep south, not the misanthropic neurosis of Manhattan. Shrug it off and brave the worst weather, get your stuff done and stop for a glass of wine. Whatever. It’s just living. And it’s a good balance.

That’s where.

My perfect house is a graystone. Greystones are an idiosyncratic architecture style common in Chicago, especially along the boulevards.



That’s a greystone restored to good condition. We get acid rain a lot, if you don’t keep up with it they can be much more weathered than that. (and people didn't believe me when i said the sky is usually both overcast and brightly sunny, an evenly diffused bright white. see?)

I’d put gargoyles on the balcony :> I’d keep all the original Victorian finishes inside, restore the woodwork, a nice deep walnut or cherry finish. The walls are white between the extensive dark woodwork, the drapes dark red-to-burgundy and thick. Keep the original dark hardwood floors, too. Working woodburning fireplaces on every floor. It's sort of my castle. I like the "stronghold" feel. My house is also very designed around having lots of people living and staying there, everyone eating and being warm and merry. I'd make a giant open kitchen-dining combo, huge long table for many people at dinner (My immediate family, siblings, nieces and nephews, sibling-in-laws etc – 16 people. Not even talking about hosting the whole family up to first cousins only. That’s about 70.) I'd have a brick, wood-burning bread and pizza oven. I bake all my bread from scratch already. A built-in chopping block in my counters (granite) and a six-burner stove with a REAL industrial hood that actually vents outside, not those stupid little blow-back-into-the-room fakies rental places have. Deep freezer for long term storage too, maybe a spit or grill for roasting whole animals. Gleaming copper-bottomed pots hanging from the ceiling, strings of garlic and hot peppers. Glass tubs with the brushed metal lids for the rice and flour and beans and other such dry-storage items. Fresh flowers and candelabras and windows to keep the warm in when everyone is there for dinner.

Many bedrooms. Many many bedrooms. I could never live alone. I always wanted it to be like my grandmother’s house, the center of the universe – another apartment or rooms to rent above and below, for the whole extended family and adopted friends. Keep my people safe and close in my castle, ya know? I think there'd be guard dogs (who are actually very sweet) and shotguns involved too, as well as long term-food storage. Mama TC's fortress, you know? I picture us being a stronghold that survives the urban guerrilla warfare of WWIII) But also inside all that, a place to really live. I picture it a lot like David Edding's city of Riva. His description of Rivans as being really warm inside of a grim, defensive exterior really reminds me of Iranians, all the light and music and dance and art and family inside the bleak, Muslim exterior of the government and the quiet society without alcohol or clubs or things people associate with wild fun. It's all based around huge family parties in the home. Iranians really do know how to have a good time. My perfect home definitely shows a lot of that old-world Iranian model. The basement could have a pool table and the wine cellar, and practice dance/martial arts studios, and a sort of hot-tub whirlpool sauna bath-related stuff complex. The upstairs would have many bedrooms. And on the third floor I’d build a super-high-ceiling single open room that doesn’t cover quite the whole footprint, so there’s a huge balcony out front, and it would be like the library from Beauty and the Beast. Sweeping floor to ceiling windows through which you can watch the snow falling, 15+ feet lined with books. Roaring fireplaces. Grand piano. Parquet floors. This doubles as the ballroom. I'll stop before I bore you sick.

2. Name three things you are afraid of. Explain.
Mushrooms. One, I’m allergic to them, and two, I’m always afraid that they’ll grow teeth and evil glowey red eyes and kill me, American McGee’s Alice style. “What are they going to do, grow at you?” someone once asked. YES. Under the right conditions, mushrooms ACTUALLY GROW THAT FAST. I could never live anywhere tropical. I have heard of GIANT mushrooms sprouting in through a crack in the ceiling overnight, and people waking up with this like 5-foot mushroom suddenly like 6 inches from their face. God. That’s possibly my worst nightmare.

Losing Alex to an untimely death. It’s rather like the old couple in greek mythology. I only wish that we may die at the same moment, so neither shall live to lay the other in their grave.

Getting to be some fat nasty pig who dies of heart disease caused by his own disgusting obesity. Given the way I live/eat, this is actually fairly unlikely, but I’m living in America, so I can’t help but see it EVERYWHERE and be repulsed by it. Every time I eat anything gross or don’t exercise as much as planned, I have a morbid fantasy of weighing 500 lbs. I’m neither anorexic nor obese, btw. I’m mildly overweight and quite athletic; some people like to call it “thick” I believe? You know, size 9-10 jeans, a little loose in the belly.

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!

1: See above: the classic old pious couple from greek Mythology – that Alex and I may die at the same moment, so that neither shall live to lay the other in their grave.
2: Since I’m only 25, how about a long, happy, healthy, life with him before then? If I get a whole second wish here.
3: That all other sentient beings might have a slightly increased empathetic understanding and appreciation for each other. Just a slight one. Don’t wanna bend their minds too much.


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. ;)

I have been told I can make people understand unconditional love.

I stick to my very few basic convictions with an absoluteness that is statistically very uncommon, to the point where it alarms some people. You know that golden rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” Well, I have always thought that before I should ever be so audacious as to hope that someone might love me unconditionally, I had damn well start by doing likewise unto others. Understatement of the decade: it’s not easy. It is probably the hardest thing I do, have ever done, will ever do. People do an awful lot of unlovable things. I’m no Siddharta, Gandhi or Mother Teresa, I don’t unconditionally love *everyone* yet, though I should certainly aspire to get closer to that general direction. I pick people, one at a time, and do everything I can to understand them, forgive them, and love them. It’s occupied a disturbing majority of my life. All those nasty dramatic fights everyone’s ever had with a lover? It’s like that, while trying your damndest to reach out, make peace, understand, overcome. And then, as soon as one fight is over, seek out another until you have resolved all inconsistencies and achieved a perfect harmony between your two souls. Now quick, onto the next soul. We’re trying to reach an enlightened unity of unconditional love with ALL of them. We only have about seven billion on this planet.

Got my work cut out for me, huh?

I once said:

“This is a letter to my perfect lover, some of whom I've already known, some of whom I have yet to meet. This also applies to some of my particularly close friends, but for ease I will use the masculine pronoun.

Letter
by TC


Hello, Handsome.

This is for all the things I may have forgotten to tell you. I may or may not have happened to say "I love you," but that doesn't matter. Love is a four-letter word; it is slippery, indefinable, effectively useless for communication. It is not enough, it is not the highest virtue, it does not conquer all. I don't want to deal in such vague concepts; I detest euphemism because of the dishonesty for which it can be used. "Love," whatever that means, is not the sort of thing I'm here to offer. Loyalty, integrity, that's more up my alley. I struggle to think of other words but I'm not sure if there are any I like. Trust? Bah. That's your mistake, should you choose to make it. I've told you before that you're better off without me. Honesty? I can't even be sure I'm always completely honest with myself.

But here is another swing in the right direction. It might miss the mark but at least we'll be closer to balance. Truth changes because the moment changes, I change, you change; Time, not even fully one-dimensional, still affects us because we let it do so. We are as yet unenlightened and cannot conceptualize truth, so I'll just go for "stuff you might like to know," to the best I can tell it, so help me Goddess.

I'm in this game for you. That's the only reason I can think of to play this game: other people. Sure, there's no such thing as a truly selfless act, but what's in it for me is that I get off on you. In every sense. I love making you happy. I love making you happy. I have a stellum in my sixth house of service, maybe that has something to do with it. And still I fuck up. You're not always happy; I don't always make you happy. This is because I'm me, no more, and no less, and there's nothing else I can be. As I say so often, I do what I do. And damned when that's not enough, damned but I tried.

More often than not I have been the one left, but sometimes I do the leaving. This is cuz I know, I *know* I am failing. I am not who you want me to be, and it wont solve the problem to stay and keep not measuring up. It only prevents you from finding a better-suited piece of the puzzle, prevents me from throwing my energy somewhere it may come to good use. I am not a miracle, I am sorry when I am not enough for you. But I'll always keep giving what you will take, and sometimes what you will not. Loyalty binds me. Sometimes I have to avoid you for the uselessness of contact - just angry words and wasted tears. But still I'll keep sending what tokens I can; what dotted-dash codes and smoke signal signs. I'm raising a lighter, one smile in requiem. 'Cause no one is ever completely evil, and some parts of "I love you" never become lies...

I do what I do the best that I can; I seek out contradictions and make them align. I'll try my damndest to never make a promise I can't keep, and never ask what I can't offer in return. Far worse than being held to false expectations, far worse than the bitter disappointment of not being able to metamorphasize into that which you wish me to be... far worse is to be the careless dreamer, the unintentional sadist, the one who falsely expects of you. I'll never trap you and then I may know beyond a shadow of a doubt - you are here of your own will. It may not be right but at least it's consistent, it may be lonely but it's brutally free. Integrity to what I wish is integrity in what I give; the discipline required is staggering but I suppose it's somewhere to be found.

I'm sorry if I fail but here I am, still giving. This is as true as it gets, coming from me. I'm in it for you, and if only you knew, how very, very hard I tried....”

I stuck to it. Come hell or high water, I stuck to it. It broke my heart more than a few times. But I am proud of it. It’s such a part of my life, I changed my journal title a few years ago to “the Journey of Eurydice.” I elaborated on my reasons once in a post, and I think it answers this question very well:

“On "The Journey of Eurydice"
(and other one liners you see me toss around a lot)
by TC

I recently changed the title of my journal to "The Journey of Eurydice: You're turning around NOW?!" I've been asked what this signifies, and if I'm having an emo day. The answer to the second part is no, and the answer to the first part is much longer.

I'm going to go into this assuming you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. I've always been a little weird in that I don't... have second thoughts much. I have this absurd ability (retardation?) where once I've made a decision (in serious cases, usually after much neurotic over-analysis and emotional distress), I completely put the consideration out of my mind. At some point in my youth I came to the conclusion that second guessing oneself just weakens one's attack. Blame the theatrical training to "Just commit to it and say it wrong with confidence!" if you will. Or the fighter's notion that "Once you're engaged, you don't have time to hesitate - that's when he'll get you." It's not that I don't look before I leap, but that once I leap, I don't look back.

Thus, I have great difficulty understanding people who can't or won't stick to decisions, especially ones that were (supposedly) carefully thought out, or upon which someone else is counting. I'm not saying I blindly stick to arbitrary decisions when I later have cause to consider, nor do I admire such in others. Keeping one's word on serious choices, however, or when someone is relying on you to hold up your end of the bargain, is one of those basic inviolable principles in my mind, on the par with other deep-seated ethics learned as small children. Consider some things that would commonly be considered obscene, appalling, and utterly beyond excusability in this society. Raping and torturing children. Taking a kitten and slowly beating it's head against a wall until it dies. Locking a family in a house and burning it down, eating the charred remains. To hear someone did such a thing would be greeted with utter incredulity. The average person would be hardly able to believe someone could DO such a thing.

That's how I feel about people who break their promises and break the trust of others. You probably think I'm exaggerating; no, I'm just really that weird. It's an absurdly old-fashioned concept of loyalty, integrity and honor. I've been told I would make a great jarhead. I think in some ways that integrity defines the basic human worth of an individual. Everyone is born with some natural talents and without some others. Some people are smart. Some people are pretty. Some people are socially gifted, etc. Life rewards us enough for the things that we were handed by chance, but the thing that universally takes effort is attempting to be an integritous person. Telling the truth isn't something you have to be born specially talented to do. "Being there and meaning it" is not beyond anyone's reach or ability, yet so many people don't do it. "Say what you mean and do what you say," is so simple and yet so hard. Yet I think it is the least you can do to be a redeemable person. You don't have to be smart, or pretty, or funny, or even nice. But the least you can do is not be a goddamn liar. My oldest friends, like Brian and Brendan? Not the coolest kids on the block, by far. But they are who they are and they mean it whether the world likes it or not, they both love me and mean it whether it's a good idea or not, and I can absolutely count on that never to change. And that's simple fact gives them both a hundred thousand times the basic human value of a world full of smart, pretty, funny bullshitters and backstabbers. Brendan says EXACTLY what he means even (especially) when it pisses everyone off. I hardly ever talk to him because we have nothing to talk about and we annoy the living piss out of each other when we do. But I'd be there for him in times of dire need, no matter how crazy the situation, even if it's halfway across the world. Because that caustic, obnoxious shithead is a genuine human being and a real friend, which is more than I can say for most of this species.

These are the standards to which I hold myself and, altogether unfortunately, everyone else. I know I'm the odd man out on this one, but that's how I feel, and I'd be a lewd hypocrite not to go with it.

I've been told (several times) before that I can make people understand unconditional love. It's my blessing and my curse, to be able to easily, freely, completely love someone and never take it back. I've instigated more than one major emotional crisis with this accursed talent, seen grown men cry when they finally came to understand that I would love them no matter what he did, shaken the foundations of men married ten years who had never felt what it was like to be there and mean it so strongly.

he: then why do you want to stick with me?
me: because i've seen you for who you are since day one, and i thats what i accepted when i decided to love you.
he: you saw that I was a spinelss liar without integrity?
me: yep. but that doesnt negate everything else I saw. i see the whole package. good and bad.
he: you shouldnt love me. i am antithetical to all you hold dear. I am antithetical to all I hold dear.
me: too bad. fucking deal with it.
i love you whether i should or not.
i love you even when you're honest with me.
i love you even when you're wrong.
he: if you believe all that you have said here, then you are a fool not to reject me.
me: "then i am more than thou are now, for i am a fool, and thou art nothing..."
and even though i know
that everything might go
go downhill from here, i'm not afraid...

I've renewed people's faith and shattered people's sanity with this same unstoppable sincerity of being. A dangerous manifestation occurs when you cross this wholeheartedness with the fact that I deeply believe in the Golden Rule of "treating others as you'd like to be treated." (Obeying stop signs and curing diseases?) To elaborate on that, I believe that one should not ask, or even dare hope, for something one would not give oneself. How can you expect someone to do something you wouldn't? I also believe that it's a far less obnoxious approach to lead by example rather than go around demanding. If my dearest hope is to someday find someone who unconditionally loves me, forever and absolutely (as far as such words can go)... then I should get right on the job of giving that to others. I still don't feel I deserve to ask for such an exorbitant desire, but at least by giving as prodigiously as I can I feel less despicably unworthy of hope.

This is WAY too fucking intense for most people.

One heartbreaking night near the very end, Adam said to me, in that ironically apt way we had with each other, "I will always love you in my own little way, but I don't think it will ever be the way you need to be loved."

It's devastating what completely different things we can discover we meant by all those, "I love yous." And in recent years I've discovered that the vast majority of people don't mean it with the absurd, naive totality that I do. Perhaps the Sirens were never malicious, but merely lonely and wishing to be rescued from their island exile. Is it their fault that they were marooned on such rocks as dashed all ships to pieces? I've learned now how dangerous it is to sing, especially when I really do mean it. I'm sorry, Adam, and to everyone else who for expediency will go unnamed. It hurts to love that intensely, it hurts bad and can leave a bitter man among the debris. I've wrecked you, I've wrecked many things by meaning it way too much for commonality. I will always love you, but I don't think it will ever be the way you need to be loved. "She taught me how to trust, and to believe in us, and she taught me how to cuss - THAT BITCH! It's over. You know I used to be such a nice boy..."

I am that mythical archetype of the devoted woman. It's a really dangerous, disturbing thing when manifested in real life. With friends and lovers I live the journey of Eurydice over and over again. I used to dread risking my own heartbreak, used to avoid close relationships with great fear for years at a time. But I've found there's no such thing as doing it carefully... falling in love is always jumping off an emotional cliff. I've also found that it gets easier to just clench your teeth and leap every time, like bracing yourself for a plunge into cold water. So with each new love I do my damndest to shut out the memories behind every scar, and trust them as if I'd never written this story before. "Anywhere you may lead, Orpheus." Each time it feels like we take it so far, we learn so much and grow so much, and come so close to happily ever after. "What?" I'm left screaming, "You're turning around NOW?!"

I will never understand you, Orpheus, any of you.

But each time I feel I get a little farther than before. It gives me hope that not everyone is poor, beloved, thoughtless Orpheus to the same degree... make me believe that maybe there's more than one insanely real person like me out there. One day I will find at least one other person who doesn't look back. I believe this. This is why I keep faith no matter what hell may come. This is why I scream my defiance to the unlistening sky: "And even though I know that everything might go downhill from here, I'm not afraid." I want to find that which seems impossible to find; unconditional love. The trick is you see, if I can do it, then I've proven it exists, and that it's not impossible...

Through hell, Orpheus...

atmen tief suche nach Freiden”


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?

Gah! “Loyalty” isn’t one of these?! Richard III had it right: “Loyaultie me lie.” I think I have to put “love” first, not in the romantic sense, but in the sense of all-encompassing devotion. It includes family and friends when taken in that sense. I don’t need to seek adventure because if you take “unconditional love” as seriously as I do, the adventure will come. So will knowledge (or perhaps more accurately, wisdom) and pleasure. Money by necessity takes the backburner. I only do what I have to get by enough to further my real purposes. Eat to live, not live to eat.

6. What's one quote (or passage, song lyric, etc.) that effectively describes you and your values? Hah, as if I haven’t given you enough of these already. Well, here’s a succinct one I compiled a few years ago. I’m so obnoxious, I quote myself!

In response to a "warning label generator" meme that has been going around, and Jac pointing out that I repeat myself a lot, I have created my own personal warning label from a string of quotes I use frequently. If anyone is considering loving me, you do so at your own risk. This is the fine print under the biohazard on one generic humanoid carbon unit, serial number TC11031983.

"You're better off without me. What makes me sexy is that I am not afraid to love. I may be wrong, but I'm never boring. I'll give you stars and the moon and the open highway and a river beneath your feet... days of adventure and nights full of passion, no strings, just warm summer rain. It may be lonely but it's brutally free. I will give my everything to become your worst addiction. I will be eleven on your scale of one to ten. I'll be the waterwings that save you if you start drowning in an open tab when you're judegment's on the brink... I'll be your winter coat that's buttoned straight up to the throat, with the collar up, so you wont catch cold. I am willing to march into hell for a heavanly cause. The world hates losers, but maybe this time, I'll win. Girliness is a guilty addiction, a sin, a secret need, like nicotene, or chocolate. Of course I care if you like me, too. Not because sex changes things but because caring is a prereq to the sex. I am me, no more, no less, all I ever was, and all I ever will be. I've stopped apologizing. It's got to be good enough, because it's all I'm going to get. You have reasons not to like me and I have reasons not to like you. With that kind of elitism, we'll all spend forever alone. I've seen the good and the bad since day one, and accepted it all. I love you even when you tell me the truth. I remember that (s)he has sent us nothing but angels. That is unconditional. That is love. God is unconditional love. Thou art god. That is what I mean when I say, "Share water, darlings!" Even though I know that everything might go downhill from here, I'm not afraid. I am more than thou art now, for I am a fool, and thou art nothing. No man is ever completely evil, and some parts of "I love you" never becomes lies... Before you regret me forever, I just want you to know I tried."

7. How do you manage your money? On that note, how important is money/financial security to you?

I think I manage it pretty damn well. I don’t have much of it. So I had better manage what there is. The purpose of money as I see it is material survival. Material survival is necessary to not be distracted from what I am really here to do. So I have found a way to procure money that balances the minimal amount of work-hours (both hourly and years of prerequisite education) with the maximum income with my personal standards (which means I’m not a prostitute or an assassin. I actually would strip if I had the body for it, but the amount of effort to maintain such a body puts that job over in the minimal work hours catergory) and do it only as much as necessary to be moderately wise about future planning. I plan just enough and set goals just high enough to avoid crisis, as being haphazard / working too little now could mean crisis and having ot work all the time in the future. I put in the minimum effort to ensure I will continue having to put in a minimum of effort in the future, in the hopes that the sum total of time spent earning money and financial planning/maneuvering in my life will be as small as possible. I have more important things to do, like charity work, dancing, and learning to love everyone.

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

What constitutes a hobby? Things that are not necessary? Things that do not earn money? Things that are not important? Most of the things I do are. I bellydance full-time. It is my thing. I am nearly professional. I perform and teach regularly – I wonder when I will start feeling like a “professional.” I like food and wine, but since I make money as a waitress, going out and drinking actually constitutes career education. It should be noted that I tend to go out to wine bars / upscale places / and or spend 2 hours in the liquor store cross referencing books and the internet and picking employees brains about the details. When I refer to going out drinking, I’m always talking about a seriously study-oriented tasting session that many people would find boring and expensive. It’s a really fun hobby. And actually beneficial to my job. So unforuntately that’s not a hobby either. Hmm. I write. That’s mostly a hobby. Except that I periodically get paid for it. It’s not frequent though, so it counts. I also cook and exercise and recently, shop for houses, but they’re all necessary. Sewing and other crafty things I usually get paid for. Hm. I like RPGs and reading?

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

Hah. Ha ha. I think I just went through this in paragraph form. Three times. Let’s recap:

1.) absolute devotion
2.) reckless honesty
3.) unstoppable sincerity of being.

Those are both my best and worst qualities.




A Song of Ice and Fire Related

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

Edited for multiple requests to elaborate. Suggestion: This question should say "Who are your favourite three characters in the series, and why? I think it would clear up the repeated misunderstanding of "I wish people would elaborate on this question."

Maester Aemon Targaryan - I respect the man a great deal, even though I don't identify with him at all. In fact, he's a lot unlike me, wise, immaterial, selfless, humble, gentle. He reminds me of some of the Buddhist abbots I knew as a child. I think I see in him a lot of things I would aspire to be with age. It is very hard to grow wise without also growing jaded, and he clearly is not.
Jon Snow - I identify with (and am attacted to) the "odd man out" sort, especialy when he handles it well. Many odd men out react very negatively, become violent, vengeful, bitter. I respect his stand-along strength, I identify with his struggles about what is the right thing to do, when you want to keep your vows but your vows contradict each other and with the potential most important thing you could do right. I also identify with his reluctant leadership, because I have been in the same place, wrapped up in my personal struggle to do the honorable/important/personal goal thing, and because I'm the only one not clamoring to be in charge for power or selfish reasons, suddenly find I've got the additonal responsability unanimously dropped on me. He reminds me of Alex a bit too. Totally the lone wolf one I'd be attracted to.
Brynden “Blackfish” Tully - Very similar reasons to Jon Snow. Odd man out, upstanding, loyal and loving even while being misunderstood.

I considered for a long time putting both Arya Stark and Catelyn Stark (nee Tully) in this category, because Ayra reminds me a lot of myself as a child, and Catelyn reminds me of who I hope/fear I may become. The problem is I also really want to put them in the hate catergory, because Arya reminds me humiliatingly of all the mistakes I made with my pigheadedness, and Catelyn is a frightening reminder of the haunted wraith a character of utter devotion risks to become should she lose all she has worked for. One's image of oneself is always a love/hate thing, though.

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

Lysa Baelish (nee Arryn nee Tully) - seriously, this woman needs a good slap upside the head. Whiney, bitchey, entitled without doing anything about it herself. Do I really need to explain more than that?
Joffery Lannister - See above.
Visreys Targaryen - - He's so stupid. If you;re going to be that much of an evil schemer, do it right, for goddsakes. Geez. How do you suck so much?


12.#1 Favorite moment in all of ASOIAF so far?

1.) Ygritte dying, telling Jon that he knew nothing.
2.) Tyrion shooting his father.
3.) Although this was probably my most un-favorite moment, I have to give credit for good writing where credit is due: I was TOTALLY NOT expecting Robb Stark to die. The beheading of Eddard Stark practically obliges his eldest son to ride to an underdog victory – go GRRM and not following the predictable story arc!

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

In my stereotypical-writing-tropes world, all the Stark kids need some justice, and all the people who helped them some passing repayment. Handless and noseless, the Lannister boys, get redemption. Brienne either gets happily ever after or a tragic death, both equally likely. Stannis dies either extremely miserably or extremely at peace, but either way, dies, and Melissandre goes to hell as the god of Light is exposed as either false or a mere equal of the other gods. The hundred faces theory is most likely right. The old gods, and heart trees, do in fact have their magic power. General redemption and happiness among Tullys, justice and remorse among Freys. Catyln’s ghost finally gets a peaceful rest. Danaerys rules rightfully as Targaryen Queen, and nobody is actually that unhappy about this, as nobody besides Stannis and Cersei are actually competing for the slot. Cersei also goes appropriately to hell. Bran returns, Winterfell is restored, and all the direwolves who are not dead find their way back to their people. Who the hell knows, we might even somehow get Lady explained back into reincarnated existence. Crazy bitch whatsername holds the Iron Islands and Theon goes to his spot in hell right on schedule. Crazy dornish Amazonian hobag character reforms or dies, old crippled Dornish Lord who’s name I can’t remember has his wishes played out, although he probably doesn’t live to see them. The children splash in the pool. Etc etc, general justice to the underdogs and villains.

Except, as he showed me with the darn Red Wedding, that is NOT AT ALL what he is going to do, I suspect.

Comments

Tully

[umihebizanomiko.livejournal.com]

I didn't think I'd sway this way, but you strike me as a Stark-ish Targaryen.