Westeros Sorting

Name: Gwen
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!):
I'm not sure, actually. Someone mentioned 'westerosorting' on Tumblr, then I found you through a Google search.
Age: 19
Location: Southern California, USA.
Occupation: Full-time student, studying TV/Film.




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've actually gone back and forth about this a lot recently. I've always liked the look of a big city, but I think I finally decided on an expensive, modern home - technically speaking, aesthetically I think it'd be somewhat cabinish - on a lake, surrounded by dense trees, with windows everywhere. I don't mind having to drive miles out to the nearest town, so long as I don't have to go every day. But I've always loved the idea of being in the middle of a forest, on a lake, in a good-quality house. (Too bad the whole thing would be devilishly expensive.) I don't know about location, specifically, but I've always been partial to northwest America. Moving too far east has never been one of my goals, unless of course you're talking about moving to another country altogether. As far as weather goes, I’d love to live in a place where the seasons are at their most vivid. With colorful springs, beautiful autumns, white winters, etc. I mean, I don’t need the whole nine yards in the winter, with the lake freezing over or three feet of snow or anything, but a nice white coat would make everything gorgeous, don’t you think?

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!
Hmm... For the first wish, I'd ask for financial stability for the rest of my life. Not riches, necessarily, but at least an ability to come up with the rent every month and not be worried. Riches are in my long-term plan for life, but if I do eventually get them I'd want to have earned them on my own.
My second wish is less realistic: the ability to turn invisible. It’s probably a pretty common one, but it would come quite in handy, especially since I love being dramatic. People would ask, “where did you come from?” or “how did you know that?” and I’d just shrug mysteriously.
And for my third wish? I've always been in love with the concept of a loyal animal, like the Starks' direwolves or Dany's dragons. I want a nonhuman companion like that, an animal who'll be with me my whole life and protect me.

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. ;)
At the risk of sounding irritatingly modest, I actually can't think of anything in particular. I haven't done anything terribly noteworthy yet.
How about this: it's not exactly an 'accomplishment', but I've always been proud of my writing. I've loved writing ever since I had the ability, and while I know I'm not exactly the best writer of my generation, I'm proud of it anyway. It's pretty much one of the only skills I have.

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.
I can only pick one? This is really tough...
I think... I'll have to go with 'Adventure' being the most important. I love friends, and I haven't been in love yet but that doesn't mean I don't care about it, but I've always had this assumption that my life would someday lead me to far-off places and interesting things. As soon as I let someone convince me that I could have any kind of life I wanted, I've been planning on that. I don't know if I'd be able to cope in a 9 to 5 life.
Least important, too? Everything on that list is important. The typical 'good-guy' answer I guess would be money, but I've always had 'get rich' on my bucket list and I quite like it there. I definitely want to fall in love, like most girls I dream of carrying a child, I never want to be caught in ignorance, friends are what makes a person, and it can be argued that the pursuit of happiness is the meaning of life itself.
But then again, 'pleasure' isn't exactly the same thing as happiness. If I had everything else on the list and still wasn't happy, there'd probably be something wrong with me. So I guess that's my answer: the least important of them all is pleasure. (It's still really important. Just not as important as the rest.)

5. What's one quote (or passage, song lyric, etc.) that effectively describes you and your values? Explain.
I can't think of anything general, nothing that encompasses all my philosophies, but when you say 'one quote', I try to think of a specific 'quote' that spoke to me when I heard it, and in that case only one thing comes to mind. I apologize in advance for its length.
"There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it."
--Stephen Fry
I want to frame this quote and hang it over my bed. It reminds me that too many people look at the tiny details in life, when there's many and more things to focus on. It reminds me that there are grand stories to write and that squabbling over petty things only leads to unnecessary discontent, that there are plenty of things to enjoy in the world.

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.
I covered this a little earlier, but I might be coming at it a bit naively. I'm only 19, after all, and my parents are still supporting me. I don't have any experience at all managing money and I probably won't be good at it. I'll probably figure it out when I need to (hopefully, anyway) and survive long enough to get a good, steady job in a field I like, maybe as some crewman on some set somewhere. I don't know that those jobs are 'steady' per se, and the entertainment industry isn't known for being monetarily sound, but I'm going to try for it anyway.

7. Name (and elaborate on) some of your hobbies. What are your favorite things to do outside of school/the office?
Writing, as you may have guessed. That's pretty much all I do besides waste time on the internet and read. I draw occasionally, but not well enough to be particularly proud of it, and play piano, though not well at all. I want to go into archery, since I should do more physically active things and I've always wanted to. But writing is pretty much the first and last thing I do when I get home, even if none of it goes anywhere and it's not even good enough to keep.

8. Name three things you are afraid of. Explain.
I used to be afraid of heights - a physical kind of fear, one of those ones you're born with, where I literally couldn't walk too close to the edge of a tall building or I'd get vertigo and feel like I'm about to fall off. I've been getting over that fear, and though I still have it more or less I don't know that I can still say I have it.... if that makes any sense at all.
I'm afraid of the future, too. You know that 'adventurous' lifestyle I mentioned earlier? I'm afraid that I'll fall into some sort of slump during school and never really have it. I'm afraid of rolling into a regular job and losing sight of my dreams, because I know there's a real possibility of that happening.
And, of course, I'm also afraid of actually going for my dreams and falling flat on my face. I'm afraid of my writing never being good enough, and of never developing any kind of a fanbase, which is one of my dreams, petty though it may be. But even though I'm afraid of this kind of failure, I think it would be better than the previous one.

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.
Top three? That's quite a lot. Hope you don't mind me blathering on, though I suppose that's what you're asking for.
Top best:
I'm not very emotional, at all. Yes, I do have emotions, but rarely do they surface. I almost never get genuinely angry and can't hold a grudge for too long. I've never hated anyone - disliked, yes, but not hated. Of course, this can come out in bad ways, such as looking dispassionate when someone dies, but 'looking' cold and 'feeling' it are two different things altogether. All in all, I call it a good quality.
I'm quick to look for the good in people, and always give them the benefit of the doubt. This may make me too trusting, but it's worked out for me so far. I have friends that are always quick to find the least endearing qualities in the people they meet, and I've seen it make them unhappy in many areas of life. People can tick me off, but it takes a while.
I'm also optimistic. I'm not one of those people going on about how everything will get better; rather, I have a kind of calm optimism, a confidence that everything will work out in the end, one way or another, but I'm not really 'bubbly'. I guess this could have come from living a more or less sheltered life, where everything did work out more or less in the end (in the ways that mattered, anyway). I learned, during a rather eventful trip to Paris, that this quality of mine does help monstrously in a crisis. I got lost on the Parisian subway in middle school, and by simply assuming it was going to work out, I kept my head and didn't do anything stupid, and everything did work out like a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. That kind of determined optimism could be dangerous, but I'd rather have that than panic.

Top Worst:
Sometimes, I simply don't care. If someone's droning on and on about something, there's a good chance that I legitimately don't care, but I put up with it anyway because they're my friend. It should probably alarm me that this happens quite a lot, but I guess I'm just a woman of few words - ironic, really - and it irritates me whenever someone holds a long-winded conversation with me. I think I'm kind of mannish in that sense: I seem to find myself in an awful lot of conversations where they're quite enthusiastic and I feel the need to occasionally interject an "mm" or "yeah".
I have a horrible work ethic - another irony, considering my dreams are kind of highly placed, and I'll have to do a lot of work to get there. My hope is that it'll be work I like, but I doubt that'll change things too much. I'm not dumb, but I barely graduated from high school because I never did the homework. I'm only just now trying to get my grades up, and only because I found out the college I want to transfer to won't accept anyone below a 3.7 GPA.
And finally, I'm 100% terrible at keeping in touch with people. I rarely text, I frequently lose my phone and I never check Facebook; I only even have one because my family would ask why if I didn't. I'm a solitary creature by nature, so I rarely have conversations with anyone unless I'm physically forced to see them often enough, such as during school or work. This doesn't mean I don't care about them, but I wouldn't be surprised if they saw it that way.





A Song of Ice and Fire Related

1.How many books from the series have you completed?
Just the required ones, I'm afraid. I just finished Feast for Crows today, and I'll be starting Dance with Dragons tomorrow. I know there will probably be spoilers here and I'm prepared for that, though I'll still be reading as often as possible.

2.Who are your favorite three characters in the series? Why?
Arya is most definitely my favorite. I've loved her the most ever since I started the series; she's just such an awesome person, and she's going awesome places. I love the way she keeps turning into different animals, and how despite everything she's been through, she remains one of the most badass characters in the whole book.
After her, though... I think Sam the Slayer is up there, the craven-turned-Other-killer who just wanted to be a maester. Life has most definitely flipped him about, but he keeps his principles anyway and is intent on being a decent person and saving the world. He was pretty much forced into everything that happened, but he didn't go utterly crazy, which is more than could be said for most.
Sam is followed by... does the kindly man count? No? Then it's probably Jamie after that. Strange, isn't it, that a character you legitimately hated in the first two books could become one of your favorites. Tyrion used to be up there instead - he might be again, once I start reading his story in Dance with Dragons, but until then I just don't like the way he acted when Jamie released him. Jamie, on the other hand (get it?! oh, that was horrible, but I love bad puns) has been nothing but the best he can possibly be ever since that whole Vargo Hoat incident, and burdened by the way others view him. Of course, that scene at the end where he chucked Cersei's pleas for help in the fire doesn't hurt.
I used to have Dany in one of the top three slots, as well, and she's cool, but eventually I realized the thing I liked most about her was her dragons; I'm a sucker for dragons. Well, them, and later Ser Barristan. He's awesome.

3.Who are your least favorite three characters in the series? Why?
The Crow's Eye. I do NOT like that fancy Valyrian horn of his. I want it to die. I also really don't like the way he's plundering the Mander around Oldtown, which is an awesome place. Asha should have won the Queensmoot, in my opinion.
I don't like Melisandre too much, either. I guess I'll find out more about her in Dance with Dragons, but so far I don't like the way she wants to burn down all the septs and godswoods and how she's corrupted Stannis. I mean, I have nothing against the Lord of Light, I'm sure he's great, but this Red Priestess is bad news.
And I don't like Cersei. Let's just say I'm really happy about the way Feast for Crows turned out for her. Underhand, manipulative moves I don't mind, as a rule (I mean, I'm rooting for Littlefinger and Sansa after all), but Cersei would lead the entire realm to ruin if she's allowed to continue much longer.

4.#1 Favorite moment in all of ASOIAF so far? Why?
Favorite moment? No top three this time? Joffrey's wedding was nice for a bit, as was Cersei's imprisonment. But I think one of the most amazing moments in the series was when Daenerys said "Dracarys", in that first city when she was buying the Unsullied. It was just too epic. There's no way she's going to give up those dragons, and no reason she should (which is part of what scares me so much with that horn of Euron's.

5. In your dream-world, how would you like to see the series end, and why?
End of the series... well, from the beginning I'd dreamed of Arya being one of the heads of the three-headed dragon, though that's probably just because I love dragons and I love Arya. I think - and forgive me if this is a bit blunt, you did ask for my opinion - Cersei and Qyburn should die (I used to like that guy!) along with pretty much all the Freys, Castamere-style.
Sansa and Littlefinger should win back Winterfell, at which point Sansa should kill Littlefinger because he's a sneaky little bastard. Either that, or make absolutely sure he has no reason to not be on her side, ever. He likes her (in a really creepy way might I add) so he probably would be on her side, but you never know.
I would say I want Daenarys to win the Game of Thrones, but I'm a bit worried that Jamie will die if she does. I know I eventually want Catelyn, Sansa, Bran, Arya and Jon to be reunited, but I don't think that's going to happen.
I don't know how I want it to end; it feels like the kind of story that never can end.