#honestly not sure if i should even tag this with jonsa lol

[cellsshapedlikestars]

I don’t ship Jon&Sansa much but I definitely read most of your fics cause they are absolutely charming <3

Your writing is compelling and the plots are interesting! Though I do wish to see them getting their own wedding fic- with maybe different characters POV on the matter like Cat or Robb perhaps?

I like Sansa a lot as a character and I think you do justice with her characterization!

(Jon as well but I’m bias cause he’s my favorite… I always like him haha-)

first of all, I'm so happy you like my stories!

Now, I've kept this message as a little prompt, because when I saw it, I immediately thought of my prior fic, sketches of what was there before. It was a Cat & Jon fic, and there was a comment left on the final chapter about Cat at Jon & Sansa's wedding, and... well, I merged the two ideas.

This may not have been what you wanted (it isn't super focused on the jonsa aspect), but I hope you still like it! Maybe some day I'll write an actual jonsa wedding fic lmao

[jackoshadows]

I'm sorry, but do you hate the sansa of books too?

Sorry for the late reply, but I get asked this so many times lol. I am pretty sure I have already answered this as well and it’s somewhere on my blog.

But honest question, are there any blogs out there who actually like the Sansa of the books? I haven’t seen any. The people who claim to love book Sansa stan for a hyped up, sanitized, white washed version whose only flaw, as per their interpretation, is that she’s just a little naive. But also she’s super intelligent and smartest character in the series. And all this without any text to back up this strange dichotomy - naive and super intelligent at the same time!

Any discussion of actual book Sansa is labelled as ‘Sansa hate’ and hordes descend on such posts demanding that it be tagged ‘anti-Sansa’. So people who like Sansa think that the Sansa of the books is anti-Sansa!

Others bloggers have done a better job than me of explaining fandom’s perception of Sansa versus the actual book version. This post for example:

https://aiyassalt.tumblr.com/post/188322664000/honestly-i-greatly-dislike-sansa-both-her-book

https://aiyassalt.tumblr.com/post/188450445310/star-crossedvoyager-aiyassalt-honestly-i

One only has to look at number one Sansa stans David Benioff and Dan Weiss to understand how for most of her fans, they can only genuinely like the character and enjoy her when she is given the character traits and plots of other characters. Weiss and Benioff constantly claim Sansa is their favorite character and yet they are busy stripping Jon, Arya, Bran, Dany and other characters of their book characterization for Show Sansa.

Shit like this:

"She's like the warrior of Winterfell" - Sophie Turner on Sansa wearing armour for the first time in Game of Thrones season 8

Arya has needle? Well, Sansa will also get one!

Clapton’s view on creating Sansa’s new style is that it’s centered  around using found materials since Sansa sews her own dresses. Sansa’s  spiked necklace is a reference to Arya’s Needle- this is Sansa’s Needle,  the designer has explained.

Teaching grizzled warrior Yohn Royce about the importance of castles as a first line of defence -  She’s the warrior of Winterfell! She knows more about how much rest the soldiers required than Daenerys Targaryen who commanded armies for like 7 seasons!

And when she was walking around saying that they need food so ask everyone to bring grain to Winterfell and the two blokes walking behind her just look at each other like she said the most cleverest thing ever and omg they should have made her queen instead of Jon! Meanwhile book Jon Snow is breaking his head over how to get food for like 5 chapters and has still not solved the issue in the last book.  

And a lot of book Sansa fans don’t have an issue with all this - they think the smartest character in the whole of Westeros will just be better written in the books - meanwhile book Jon is stupid, Arya is just a revenge obsessed killer and Dany is headed for a dark ending because she’s ignorant and impulsive. Their version of book Sansa is more diplomatic and intelligent than Jon and Dany - characters who are actually written going through grueling leadership arcs.

I was indifferent to book Sansa. She bored me. She was a spoiled, selfish brat in book one and a political pawn and prisoner in later books. I did sympathize with her situation and appreciated that at least now she was slowly starting to realize that appearances are only skin deep and trying to help whenever she could.  I used to skip her chapters on re-reads because Tyrion’s POV was more informative and kept me entertained about the KL plots. But there were all these ‘Pawn to Player’ threads and Sansa BNFs on Westeros.org discussing book Sansa  becoming so smart, that I would go back and read her chapters. And nothing.

And her fans overhyping the character and inserting her into other plots is what is making me dislike even her book version now. Jon’s story is wholly unconnected to her in the books, and yet the Jon Snow tag is full of Sansa. That incorrect-Stark or whatever blog is going to be my supervillain origin story.

One of the reasons for why I am desperate for the next book, is so that we can go back to discussing Jon Snow on the Jon Snow tag instead of it getting clogged by Sansa stans with pro-Sansa and anti-Dany stuff. The Jon Snow tag is not for ship wars and for Sansa stans to hate on Dany.  Please George write the damn book.  🙏. We are desperate here.  

I don’t want to talk or write about Sansa. It’s the last thing I want to do. But the show inserting Sansa into Jon’s plot because Benioff and Weiss was bored of book Sansa’s actual plot and wanted their favorite character to be more important and become a warrior and defense expert and Queen and all that means that Jon Snow fans are now stuck with the character’s toxic stans.

I can empathize with Arya fans now. For a long time they had to deal with Sansa stans because in the books, its Arya and Sansa who have a contentious relationship and Sansa stans were always taking away from Arya and blaming Arya and Sansa BNFs were writing negatively about Arya.

But the show has changed that and the only reason I even started writing about Sansa was because of season 6 when Jonsa stans invaded the Jon Snow tag like cockroaches that can never be got rid off.

So yeah, that’s my rant over. I just want The Winds of Winter. I want to read about what happens to Jon at the wall, the Night’s watch and the Wildlings, Theon and Jeyne Poole, Stannis and the battle of Ice, The Boltons, a bad-ass direwolves vs Ramsay’s hounds battle, Rickon and Davos, Northern houses plotting and conspiracy and playing the game, is Mance alive? what’s the deal with the Pink letter,  Melisandre and Ghost and Jon and Arya somehow reuniting. I want to stop freaking talking about Sansa - a character I really don’t give a damn about.

When TWoW comes out, hopefully Sansa fans go back to discussing lemon cakes and feasts and tourneys and the most realistic (though strangely flawless) and best character in asoiaf.  I, on the other hand, am just a simple fantasy fan here for the swords and magic, direwolves and dragons, ice zombies and 3ERs - and hopefully TWoW will be written one day and will be chock full of material to keep me happy!

Hope that answers your question? 😁

[missfaber]

author interview

I was tagged by @orangeflavoryawp, thank you so much! 

I already know I’m going to enjoy this way too much, writing is such a lonely endeavor and I just love talking about it, sooo... I apologize in advance for rambling. 

name: Madeline/Maddie 

fandoms: this is complicated because there’s fandoms I very much consider myself a part of because they’re just a huge part of my life, even though I don’t contribute content to them, and then there’s fandoms I do create content for. So idk where the line is drawn! 

fandoms I contribute/ have contributed to: Avatar the Last Airbender, Game of Thrones, Merlin BBC, Once Upon a Time, Legend of Korra

fandoms I haven’t contributed to but are so dear to me: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings (my two favorite things ironically lol), and lots more 

where you post: AO3, used to be ff.net and livejournal too

most popular one shot: by kudos, it’s as if death itself was undone (zutara, atla: katara wakes up to azula in their house and wants to find out a) why she is welcome b) why zuko is acting so weird) 

most popular multichapter: by kudos, it’s soldier, go bravely on (jonsa + gendrya, got, complete, rewrite of the last episode of got with sweetness and angst and action, and may i say some common sense?)

favorite story you wrote: fuck omg this is difficult lol! because I both criticize and love all my stories in equal measure, I honestly don’t write anything that i don’t love, that doesn’t give me butterflies / actual chest pain (from angst). I feel like I’m being asked to choose a favorite child lol. so I’ll try to justify these picks somehow... 

closest to my heart: soldier, go bravely on (also mentioned above). this is the fic that brought me back to writing fic, and to tumblr even! I was on hiatus (that I didn’t know was a hiatus because I had no intention of coming back) for six years before writing this fic. I wrote it so quickly after the got finale, it was such a passionate and fevered few days and it just sucked me back in to everything I used to love as a teenager. It was also a nice stretch out of my comfort zone, because of the dialogue (which was so tightly planned it’s ridiculous, I wrote the whole fic as a screenplay type thing first to make sure there wasn’t a single dialogue word not needed) and tv-episode style. It’s also such a wish-fulfillment fic that I can’t read certain parts without getting a bit teary. for all those reasons and more, this fic will always be so special to me. 

most proud of: wolf, circle north (jonsa, got, alternate season 7 & 8). this is the longest fic I’ve ever attempted and the number I’ve hours I’ve sunk into it is astounding and i should be ashamed.  It’s going to be obscenely long (my outline is 70+ chapters) and when I pull it off, best believe it’s going into a bound book so I can look at how thicc it is and be like, “I did that!” lol. The range of POVs is one of the most challenging but most rewarding part of this fic, and why I’m so proud of it. This is another wish-fulfillment fic for me, not just because it’s another fix-it fic but because I have been writing bits and pieces of this fic for about three years. I kept thinking of jonsa scenarios and little scenes I would have loved to see after season 6 and writing them in a little secret doc, just for me, as I never thought I’d write fic again. After writing “soldier” i had already broken my hiatus and I realized this fic was an actual possibility, so I put it out into the world. I couldn’t be more happy that I did that. Not only did it give me the chance to be in such an excellent, lovely fandom, but the feedback I get is so validating after having this be my secret little project for so long.  

most formative: Coffee & Cigarettes, (merthur, merlin bbc) I’m ashamed to list this and the merthurs reading this 100% want to kill me for having the audacity because it’s incomplete and hasn’t been updated since 2013 when there’s only one chapter left so what’s my excuse?  I call this the most formative for me because until I published this I didn’t really have a fic that people followed and liked, eagerly awaited updates for, and commented regularly on. I was writing a lot of one-shots and atla stuff on tumblr (I used to RP lmao I was like 15 ok?) This was the first time I experienced so many fic-life things, like being excited to get AO3 emails, etc. This was the first time I started to really focus on character which is so important to me now, my writing is completely character driven. Not to mention Merlin and Arthur’s dumbassery and sheer attraction and denial is just... *chef’s kiss* 

guiltiest pleasure: my recent foray into nedsei, who am I??? one more word and you won’t survive, just international hate sex

story you were most nervous to post: ummm idk I’m usually excited not nervous, since for me fic writing is just fun, I write things I’d enjoy reading and that I’m proud of. I read my own fics more than anyone else does, I guarantee it. am I a narcissist? who knows I guess I’ll say “soldier” again because I hadn’t posted fic in six years.

how you choose your titles: wow the hardest part of fic writing for me!!!!! thanks!!!!! lol. Okay so for my work titles, which are always terrible and I literally regret them immediately after posting, it’s usually just some words I play around with and string together that are somewhat thematic and related to the work... they’re always terrible lmao, I hate making titles. I mean, look at “soldier, go bravely on” and “wolf, circle north” for god’s sake, I hate them lmao. But I have to pick a title to post, so!!! For chapter titles and one-shots I’ll usually go with a song lyric, and especially for my chapter titles I spend so long seeking out the perfect one that reflects some thematic or emotional content of the chapter somehow. I’m very proud of my chapter titles for wolf, circle north. I have a doc on my scrivener just for chapter titles that I created in the very early stages of writing it, where I just dumped HUNDREDS of song lyrics that I thought I might use. Then by them I wrote some scenarios where they could work. here’s a screenshot:

It’s so helpful now. Sometimes posting an update will take an hour more than necessary because of me going through that doc, finding the perfect lyric. 

do you outline: OH, DO I OUTLINE... Hell Yeah, I outline. I couldn’t live without outlining. I love outlining. My outlines have outlines. I’m a planner centric, calendar centric, bullet-journal bitch so of course I love outlining. In all seriousness though: I write out of chronological order. I feel my writing is best when I write the scene I’m in the mood to write- unfortunately this scene could be ten chapters down the line from the chapter I’m gonna post next. This is the biggest reason outlining is necessary for me. If I didn’t have an outline, my story would be a non-post-able mess. 

I wasn’t kidding when I said my outlines have outlines. For wolf, circle north I have, um, a few. Character/location centric outlines where I bullet every scene that needs to happen for that plot to happen cohesively (these were all more or less completed before I even started writing the fic), then a “loose” outline that I copy everything from the other outlines into for some semblance of chronological order, then a Polished Final Outline that I write from. I know that sounds psychotic. It’s how my brain works. Some photo evidence/explanation:

And here’s a screengrab of my Final Outline, this is pretty much how it is all the way down- The POV character is italicized in the front, I talk to myself a lot in there, let myself get carried away, will sometimes write out whole segments of the scene if they come to me while outlining. Spoilers for chapters 1-3 of w,cn I guess!!!

Then, because scrivener is awesome, I get to see this outline in the corkboard view (I input every scene as a card) and so I get to see every part of my outline as a Synopsis on the right hand side of the doc where I’m writing the scene:

The POV and status tags (which are completely customizable) on the lower right are helpful too. This post is just a scrivener ad. 

complete: 9 works 

in progress: 4 works

coming soon / not yet started: I have so many fics in the works, I’m an indulgent person so if an idea comes to me I usually go with it for a time. I’ve had a very not-serious Jonsa PLL AU I’ve been writing on and off since summer. I have three different fairytale AUs (also jonsas) I’ve been working on and one time travel AU for @sunbeamsandmoonrays. I can’t say when or if any of these will see the light of day, because my priority is my WIPs and my original writing. But the most prevalent are my Halloween fics (one jonsa, one gendrya, one merthur) which I really want to be able to put out this month, but only if I meet some other goals. I’m trying to rein in my indulgent ass, ya’ll. 

do you accept prompts: no. sorry! but I do workshop ideas with friends, for example the nedsei fic happened that way by talking with @flibbertigiblet. But I don’t take writing prompts in my inbox. 

upcoming story you are most excited to write: my halloween merthur fic. it’s witchy, sassy, and I’m so excited to get back into the heads of these characters.

Tagging! @uchihabat @anniebibananie @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth @sailorshadzter @vivilove-jonsa and any other lovely writer soul who wants to do this!

[hyperbolicpurple]

Tagging ships for maximum peace & happiness

Hey Jonsa fam.

If like me you’ve noticed multiple kerfluffles over what constitutes appropriate ship tagging on AO3, maybe you will find this a useful post.

A quick disclaimer first: I’m not saying everyone should do this, or that maximum peace = never receiving criticism ever, but this is what has seemed to work for me, both as a writer and a reader.

Most people in most fandoms find and read fic by tracking Relationship tags on AO3, as far as I can tell. That means that when they click on “Jon Snow/Sansa Stark” on their front page, they are hoping to find stories about that ship in particular. However, some ship tags are plagued with content that is not about that ship at all but where the tagged pairing is mentioned in a few lines, or where one half of the ship is gone/dead and the tagged relationship is in the past, or where that tagged ship appears but one-half is the villain and the other character ends up with someone else.

It doesn’t happen a lot to Jon/Sansa, actually. That is, there are just NOT a lot of fics that are tagged J/S but turn out to be really about some other ship. It happens, but it’s pretty minimal, IME. And I think that may be facilitating the confusion, misunderstanding, and different expectations surrounding this issue.

But personally I have been part of ships that have a very difficult time finding actual content for their ships through the AO3 tags. Just try finding Pepper/Tony or Jane/Thor content in the MCU fandom, anything at all that actually contains anything meaningful about those relationships ... good luck.

And those are ships that are tagged thousands of times. Smaller ships arguably have it much worse. You see there’s a new fic this week, or this month ... you get your hopes up ... and then - BAM! Crushed.

I think people who have not experienced this particular problem at a large scale can underestimate how intensely frustrating it can be to be in that position, so I have a lot of sympathy for people who are in those tags looking for content about that ship and politely ask others to re-tag their fic.

These tagging critics are correct in suggesting that tagging on AO3 is predominantly for the purpose of helping users find content of interest to them, not just labeling for the sake of complete description. The fact is that many fics in some ship tags do not have content of interest to those shippers, even if the content is there. (Obviously not everyone agrees about what counts as “of interest” ... more on that below.)

On the other hand, if you include a background ship or reflection on a past relationship, it’s possible, even likely, that someone will complain about not having been warned in advance that their NOTP has appeared.

So what is a content creator to do?

A simple “middle ground” solution is to use the freeform/additional tag space to notify readers about the background ships instead of the relationship tag. This has two benefits:

1) when it’s a freeform tag, it doesn’t “syn” to, or connect with, the relationship tag, so it won’t show up in that relationship tag’s feed, thus not disappointing those shippers who were hoping for substantial content for their ship

2) it simultaneously warns potential readers at first glance of unpleasant content they may prefer to avoid

This is an example of how I did this on one of my fics:

Forgive my third-grade-looking computer mouse handwriting. But the only relationship tag is “Jon Snow/Sansa Stark” (which is the focus of the story, which is only of interest to people using the Jon/Sansa tag), then you have the character tags “Jon Snow” and “Sansa Stark,” and then everything from “past Daenerys/Jon” on is a freeform tag.

Again, this isn’t something everyone has to do, but it is what I do, and so far (knock on wood) I have escaped tagging complaints unscathed. I think it’s the most polite and inoffensive solution.

How do you know what counts as “of interest” to people searching for a particular tag?

There is a really messy gray area here, and honestly, nothing is going to satisfy 100% of people 100% of the time. We just have to use our best judgment.

So here’s what I do. My personal rule of thumb for answering “should I tag this relationship as a relationship in this fic?” is: Does it have an arc of its own? That is, does something about the relationship itself change from beginning to end?

If it’s just appearing in the background here and there, and the relationship itself is static, it doesn’t have an arc. If the relationship is broken up or one of them is dead and the fic is about a character moving on to some other ship, that would also suggest it doesn’t have an arc of its own. In these cases, I would suggest using a freeform tag in place of a relationship tag.

The arc test isn’t perfect by any means.

For example, a relationship doesn’t need to take up much space in order to have an arc. Take The Last Love Song of Anthony E. Stark by jibrailis. It’s the most-kudosed fic in the Loki/Sif tag. It’s 42,000 words long and almost entirely about Steve/Tony. Generously, maybe 500 words total are dedicated to the background Loki/Sif aspect. But it does have an arc. And for me, trawling through the ship tag, it did scratch an itch ... even if it also left me itching for more. LOL. On the other hand, I’m sure a lot of Loki/Sif shippers are unhappy that that fic is the first thing that comes up when you search by kudos. Like I said, everyone isn’t going to agree. But the “arc test” offers authors a reasonable defense to criticism, at least.

If you’re juggling multiple relationships in one story, there are also ways to indicate the relative importance of each ship so no one gets confused or disappointed.

In lieu of AO3 ever adding a primary/secondary relationship tag distinction, you can add modifiers to the relationship tags in parentheses. So say you’re writing a fic that has three different ships in it, all with arcs of their own. Instead of just tagging Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, and Brienne of Tarth/Jaime Lannister, you might tag with:

Arya Stark/Gendry Waters (primary) Jon Snow/Sansa Stark (secondary) Brienne of Tarth/Jaime Lannister (secondary)

These tags ARE synned to the basic tags and they WILL show up in all their respective relationship tag feeds, and they also immediately alert the reader to how important each is in the story. Handy!

Other solutions, like tagging in a certain order to indicate importance, might be more subject to misunderstanding because not everyone tags that way or interprets tags that way. Although many authors do this, it isn’t immediately visible or obvious, and plenty of authors also tag differently. For example, I know one great fic that tags ships in chronological order of appearance: first the focus is on X/Y, then the focus shifts to Y/Z. They’re “equal” in screentime and importance, so that seemed like a reasonable way to do things by the author. I agree with them. Similarly, some tag the “final” or “endgame” ship last (also understandable). And that’s to say nothing of authors who just tag in order of whatever comes into their head first, or alphabetically, or whatever other idiosyncratic system they have.

Again, not something every single person is going to be happy with. But, I think, a pretty decent solution that will satisfy a large number of readers.

[cellsshapedlikestars]

HONESTLY? thank you so much for only writing book jonsa 💘💘 besides the fact that it's not easy to find those fics i'm not really a fan of show!jonsa (sorry jonsa fam, i guess season 6 jonsa is kinda nice but it's still a no to me). so you're really a blessing soul to me! by the way i really love your fics and the last one you posted??? INSANEEEEEE

I'm glad you like my fics, anon!

I always feel a bit bad talking about how much I don't like show canon stuff here, when I know there's people on my timeline who are pretty dedicated to it, so I'm going to put it below a cut. I'm warning you now not to read it if you're gonna get offended by the fact that I might have a different opinion than you.

(**I guess I should say here that if you love show canon and show jonsa, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's just not my preference.)

Show!jonsa doesn't do it for me either as much. They had chemistry for sure, and I LOVE some scenes (them eating by the fire together!) but the characters D&D turned them into in the later seasons don't do it for me.

Let's see how many followers I lose after saying this: I'm not a big fan of "being violently assaulted turned me into the Ice Queen, Cersei 2.0 I am today" Sansa and the "so honorable I'm basically Ned 2.0 but now with added passivity" Jon. Like what did he do in the latter seasons? Scream in the general direction of a zombie dragon?

My biggest gripe with show Sansa is that there was all this leadup to her being quietly powerful & good at reading people & good at politics, and then Dany comes along and she openly, actively antagonizes her?? A woman with dragons who keeps threatening to burn down your home??

Don't get me wrong, they still remained two of my favorite characters in the show and the ones I was rooting for the most, but they aren't the book versions I fell in love with.

I honestly didn't even actively ship them while the show was airing, besides a casual, 'huh, that doesn't seem like a sibling relationship' and 'well it would make political sense for them to...' and 'wow they seem like the only two characters who even vaguely like each other'. I will say, the only time Sansa was soft in the latter seasons was with Jon, which was nice.

In general, I don't talk about my GOT opinions on here because I don't enjoy discourse with internet strangers (my IRL friends, however, hear ALL of it), and I've even seen some people in the Sansa fandom jump on other Sansa fans who have a dissenting opinion (not recently, though, but I saw it happen more than once when I first joined the fandom on tumblr. I remember seeing some posts about 'fake sansa fans' just because they didn't adore her characterization in the show, or preferred her book characterization. maybe I just haven't seen it recently because of all the discourse tags I have blocked lol).

But honestly, the asoiaf fandom as a whole has made it pretty toxic to have opinions at all, which is why I keep them to myself, or below cuts (I will make this post unrebloggable).

[cellsshapedlikestars]

When and why did you start shipping Jonsa?

I literally do not know.

Time for a long dissertation of my watching experience: I was obsessed with the show but never participated in online fandom while it was airing. I did, however, sometimes google theories and read reddit posts with my bff while on break at work, and I listened to A LOT of podcasts about it (at the time, my job was very monotonous and podcasts helped me survive). The podcasts went over the show, but there were some that also had entire episodes dedicate to the books & theories.

I swear I must have heard the Jon/Sansa theory on one of these podcasts, because I don't remember coming up with it on my own? But I do remember posing the question to my friends at, I think, my s6 finale party: do you think it would make sense if they married, considering GRRM originally outlined Jon/Arya? Their reactions were of mostly of disgust because they all still thought they were siblings. I had read the books & a bunch of theories and was very sure they were cousins, so it never squicked me out like it probably should have (for those not aware, I can handle cousin marriage in period pieces, but that's it lol).

Anyway, I clearly was semi-shipping it while watching, but honestly I do not tend to ship too much in general, so I wasn't out here reading fic of it or seeking out any content. I just thought they both uplifted & made each other better, and that's what I tend to look for in ships.

Anyway, cut to 6 months after the GOT finale. I was taking new birth control and it was FUCKING UP my brain chemistry and I fell into a really bad depression and tried everything to get out of it. One day, I went "you know what I used to love? Fanfic. Let me try that." I genuinely cannot remember how I stumbled onto GOT fanfic. Probably because I still wasn't over the horrid finale, and even though I cannot read show-canon fics, I started reading through the Jonsa tag. Again, I cannot remember *actively* shipping them during the show, but I guess I felt the safest in the jonsa tag, and haven't left since.

Fanfic is where my active shipping of them really took off, so thank you to all the authors who wrote thousands of fics. You helped with my depression and gave me a new hobby, because I started writing less than a year later :)