Application, wheee!
The Basics:
Name: Ceej
Age: 29
Location: Florida
Occupation: Freelance Adventurer (because it sounds cooler than Currently Unemployed)
How did you find out about this community? (Specify usernames if you remember them.) I got pinged by chacusha over LJ through another community. (also, I'm reusuing a few answers from that, in case you noticed)
Personality Questions:
1) List and expand upon your three best traits / strengths. (These should be personality-related, not physical.)
1) I always seem to land on my feet. Plop me down in a city I've never been in, and I'll have an apartment and a group of friends and a favorite coffeeshop within a week. (Job maybe not so much, but those are hard right now anyway) I love to travel, love to move and love to meet new people. I'm adaptable to new situations and places and trying new things.
2) Belief/Spirituality/Faith - You'll almost never hear me harp on about religion, but I have a firm set of religious beliefs that guide me. I like to believe in things-- people, ideas, movements, hope, love. I thought about saying that I was a very hopeful person, or optimistic, but I think it's broader than that.
3) I don't like to soapbox much and have little personal patience for those who do, but I'll be the first person to quietly point out to someone who just genuinely doesn't know any better or has never thought about it that something they just said is sexist/racist/classist/sizeist/homophobic. I don't have the intestinal fortitude to make a big stand and I think pointing the finger at EVERYONE FOR EVERYTHING OMG OMG OMG defeats your credibility. But I will quietly point out injustice and inequality where and when it matters.
2) List and expand upon your three worst traits / weaknesses.
1) This is situational. Around someone I feel connected to, or share interests with, you'd have trouble shutting me up, and I'm great at making new friends and socializing with people in my general interest group. But put me in a social situation with "normal" people and I feel very awkward and like I don't really understand what to say and do. I have trouble having casual talk with people-- I'd rather know all their why's and how's instead of the weather. Social interaction with someone I share nothing in common with is stilted, awkward and usually results in me sweating and uncomfortable.
2) Sometimes, I just don't care what people think about me. I think this is sometimes a good trait, because I don't think we should care what absolutely everyone thinks about us. And I try to be a nice person, regardless. But I don't sugarcoat things and I have the opinions that I have, and if you don't like it, you can hate me all you want and I just. don't. care. I form lasting, emotional connections with a lot people-- but the downside to that is that I know that I can just form another emotional connection with someone else if you don't work out. There are very few people in my life that I consider irreplaceable. And I've always wished there were more.
3) I'm too blunt, sometimes. I spent a lot of my childhood learning the art of non-confrontation from my parents and tiptoe-ing around. I never really got the hang of being super rebellious as a teenager, but I definitely took the idea of never standing up for yourself for the greater good and tossed it out the window. Now, I wish sometimes that I could STOP speaking my mind all the time, but I've discovered that now that the door is open, I have trouble holding back.
3) Rate yourself on the following traits by putting an 'X' in the box you think fits best. (E.g. if you are slightly more introverted than extroverted, put an 'X' in the second box.) Explain your choice as well.
Introverted [ ] [ X] [ ] [ ] [ ] Extroverted
Explain:
I'm extremely outgoing and love to meet new people, but I'm technically an introvert-- I need time to myself, in my lair, to think about the day, rest, read a book and prepare for the next day. If I don't have that, I get really twitchy. I'm also not a whole lot of good in intensely social situations where you're expected to be fake.
Cheerful [X ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Gloomy
Explain:
EVERY cloud has a silver lining, every bad thing is there to teach you something . I have bouts of melancholy and depression, sometimes quite intense, but my overall outlook is that we only get to live this life once, and it is too short to spend it upset all the time.
Reserved [ ] [ ] [ X] [ ] [ ] Impulsive
Explain:
I had a hard time with this, because I usually consider myself very fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants. But I also spend a lot of time thinking about some situations, particularly disagreements with friends, before acting. I'm also definitely more reserved around people I don't know. You'd never call me the life of the party, just the person you wished you'd talked longer to at it.
Energetic [ ] [ ] [X ] [ ] [ ] Calm
Explain:
I think my reasoning for this one is pretty much the same as the one before-- I see these questions as two sides to the same coin in a lot of ways.
Logical/Thinking [ ] [ ] [ ] [ X] [ ] Emotional/Feeling
Explain:
On Myers-Briggs tests, I test so hard NF that it almost hurts, but the questions don't really ask HOW you follow your feelings. I follow my feelings and my heart, but I usually will also think pretty hard about why I feel the way I do and what that means before doing so, so I felt like I needed to get that bit of still logical in there.
Grudge-holding [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [X ] Forgiving
Explain:
Holding grudges only causes you more pain. I do still have a few that I can't let go of, and sometimes pain has to work it's way through your system. But I don't like having grudges and actively try to get rid of them as soon as I can. They don't always respond right away, but see my answer on life being too short to be miserable.
4) Describe how you typically work in teams. Is it generally a good experience, or do you prefer working by yourself? Do you like to lead and make decisions or do you prefer to let others make decisions so that you can do the legwork? You may find it helpful to give an example of a team you worked on recently and how that went.
I hate working in teams and would rather just do all the work myself. I tend to find myself as the smartest person on a given team and I hate playing with team dynamics. (Groups and communities are different than teams, in my mind, by the way) I can lead a group of people who want to follow, or I can follow a good leader equally well, the part I hate (and that most teams are) is the wishy-washy bullshit where everyone wants to be the leader and everyone sucks at it and nothing gets done.
5) Spider-Man Decision: If you had to choose between saving two dozen innocent children and saving your best friend/significant other/person closest to you, which would you pick and why?
Two dozen innocent children. Mostly because I think my best friend/significant other would want me to do that, and would be really, really upset if I saved them instead.
Of course, the real answer is that I would try to not do the kinds of things that would lead to having to make that decision in the first place.
6) Your friend has had their feelings hurt and comes to you for consolation. What do you do? Let's say, two days later they come to you again still upset over the same issue. What would you do in that case?
Console them, obviously. And of course I'd still do it two days later-- some issues take time to work through and I'd be happy that they'd chosen me to confide in. Taking a long time to get over something particularly traumatic (by their standards, not my own) isn't anything to be ashamed of. The only thing that irritates me is when people seem to constantly be just miserable over lots of DIFFERENT things-- see previous philosophy about life being too short.
7) What interests/hobbies do you have? How do you like to spend your free time?
TOO MANY. Let's see... I knit and cook and bake and play video games and sew costumes and make jewelry (new interest, it all sucks right now) and play too much WoW and too much Minecraft and like to write letters and and and...
I was only half joking when I said once that I could move my entire life (minus big furniture, obviously) in a two seater car, if weren't for my hobbies.
8) Describe one to three careers you would find ideal, with a little explanation of why it appeals to you.
I'd love to work on customer service for video games, particularly for an MMO. I had an opportunity to do that once and it was fabulous, but life happened and I've always regretted it a bit. I'd love to go back and eventually be a trainer/lead for that.
I'd also love to run my own handmade crafts business and work for myself. I have some really creative ideas and I think I'm a pretty good craftsperson and think it would be awesome to make money and know that people were wearing things I'd created at the same time.
I'd also like to teach, but I don't really want to teach as a career, unless it's attached to something else-- like training for a company, or getting to teach English in Japan.
FF Questions:
9) List one to three favorite Final Fantasy games and why you like them. Sequels/spin-offs/non-numbered/KH/Dissidia games are okay.
Final Fantasy 3/6 - is by far my favorite. This was the game that got me into FF games, into RPGs and has influenced a lot of my writing since then. The game's not without it's flaws, but for me it's even stood the test of time in terms of story, emotional connection and even graphics.
Final Fantasy X/X2 (I know it's two games, shush, SPOILER ALERT for end of X2, though, really, you should have played it by now) - I've never understood why people didn't like this game (other than Wakka. Do not like Wakka.) I loved that black magic wasn't so expensive that you either had to save up your spells for the final boss or spend all your money on mana potions. I loved that you could flip out characters mid-battle. I loved how summons worked. I loved how leveling worked. And I just loved Yuna to death. Her strength is, in a lot of ways, downplayed, but I felt like she was a very human character, and proof that you can be a strong woman in a quiet, calm way.
... or, you know, blow things up with guns. I love the crap out of X-2 as well. Actual battle system left a bit to be desired and I feel like the game couldn't figure out if it was marketing to girls or to young, sexually frustrated men... but I loved it. I just loved it. It was girly and pop-princessy and you got all of these amazing costumes and the music was awesome. And the "bad" ending was the best ending to a video game ever. Yuna on the bow of the ship with her whole life ahead of her, saying "This is MY story"? It gives me shivers just thinking about it. I actually like this game WAY more without the ending where she actually finds love-- not because I don't think she and Tidus weren't great or anything, but because the other ending is so bittersweet and hopeful-- it's the beginning of a story, not an end.
Final Fantasy Tactics - Politics and interesting women and the friendship between Ramza and Delita and just the DEPTH of this game never ceases to amaze me. It's another one that I feel has stood the graphic test of time-- though the addition of the animated cut scenes in the re-release was epic.
10) List one to three of your favorite Final Fantasy characters and why:
(Not putting Yuna again, because I've already talked about her, but she'd be on this list)
Locke Cole - His love for Rachael! His transference issues! His relationship with Celes! He's the Han Solo of Final Fantasy, only he's actually all smooshy inside. He's got all this courage and sadness and he's moving on with his life after a tragedy, but it's totally against his will that he's moving on, only it isn't. I love that he's a bit of a scoundrel and a bit of a romantic and both totally capable and a little hopeless all at once.
Sephiroth - (haven't played prequels to FF7, have seen Advent Children) Probably cliche as hell, but I don't care. I love that he gets all this backstory that paints him in, in some ways, a really sympathetic light, but for all that, he's still this wretched horrible badass villain. There's not really much redeemable about him, and he's not interested in being redeemed and I LOVE that. It's so hard to find a proper villain, sometimes, because the tendency is to make them interesting by making them at least somewhat relatable. Not really so with Sephiroth (though fandom has tried, myself included) Also, he's hot and he wears leather. Just saying.
11) One to three characters you relate to (you may reuse answers from #8 if applicable) and why:
Tifa - I don't know if I really actually even LIKED Tifa, honestly, but I definitely relate to her. She's the girl-next-door who doesn't seem to get noticed by any of the guys because she's ONE OF the guys, and the one guy who does have a crush on her is too shy to say anything. (And Rude having a thing for Tifa is one of my favorite mini-reveals ever) She constantly loses out to the pretty, mysterious, ethereal girl, but in the end, it's her love and her down to earth-ness that saves the hero, not the other way around. I don't have the physical strength that she has, but I'm always one of "the guys", even though I like a lot of girly things, and I feel like, romantically, I tend to get looked over for the pretty flowers, or end up with guys too shy to talk to me. I'd like to have someone to be the prince to my princess, but until that happens, I'm perfectly happy being the one to rush in and save the day.
Seifer - kind of a weird answer, but I always found it really hard to hate him, even though he's obviously not a good guy, and I thought he was cruel in a way that made sense to me. I can be really competitive and I want to be able to protect the people I care about, and seeing how that can be twisted into something bad and misguided was always really interesting to me.
12) The FF game you liked playing least:
Final Fantasy 9. There was so much to recommend that game and I was prepared to love it-- and it WAS beautiful. I loved the story and the art and even typing this, I WANT TO LIKE IT SO BAD. But playing it was a CHORE.
13) One to three FF characters you dislike and why:
There's honestly not a lot of characters I really dislike. Most of the time, I dislike a character if the game doesn't give me ANYTHING to go on, but that's not really true dislike, it's just that I don't know them. I don't really like Wakka, though. He just feels like a really boring character to fill a character type slot (ranged physical attack) in a game of really awesome, well defined characters. I also didn't like his outfit.
14) Favorite weapon in a Final Fantasy game (either the name if you liked the name, or a picture if you liked the look of it, or a description if it had awesome stats/abilities):
Squall's gunblade. Hands down the coolest weapon in any game ever. Beautiful, deadly and TOTALLY IMPRACTICAL ON ALL LEVELS. I love it.
15) Your favorite Final Fantasy summon (e.g. Ifrit, Carbuncle, Bahamut, etc.):
Hmm... probably Shiva. Historical accuracy aside, she's one of the only girls in the early summons and she's always beautiful. Also I feel like saying Maduin is probably cheating. Phoenix or Valefor would be a close second-- I mostly just love big bird things.
16) Your favorite spell/ability/technique that can be learned in a Final Fantasy game (e.g. Esuna, Steal, special finishes/overdrives such as Tifa's Final Heaven limit break, etc.):
I feel like there's a specific move from a specific game that I'm forgetting and will hit myself for later. But I'm going to say it's a tie between Ultima and ... whatever it is that they're calling Reraise these days. Or is that what it's called, now? I love the raw destructive power of Ultima and even though they've toned it down since FF6, I'll always remember it there-- like a big blue dome of fuck-your-shit-up. Also I love the strategy of Reraise-- a spell that does absolutely nothing unless you screw up. Something neat about that.
My favorite *Squaresoft* ability, incidentally, is hands down Liberate from Parasite Eve-- but that doesn't really answer the question.
17) A Final Fantasy mini-game/sidequest you invested entirely too much time into:
Oh god, Chocobo Racing/Breeding. I loved the crap out of it, so it wasn't a big deal but oh so many hours of my life.
18) Your favorite Cid:
Final Fantasy 7. Though I really like to IMAGINE that FF6 Cid is actually FF7 Cid and it was more like "Catch me some $&%@ fish!"
19) Optional: Up to one class you think does not fit you, with reasoning why.
I didn't read the classes, because I honestly don't know if I could have stopped myself from pushing for one if I knew.