jeanne44world-blog

[jeanne44world-blog]

Do you think that the "Key 5" characters from original draft still hold valid? From all reports GRRM seems to include Sansa every time he talks about the main characters or the heart of the story or every time he mentions the (prev) "key 5". And almost all facets of story has changed from the rough 3ology draft. Do you think Sansa is one of the key characters?

Yes, Sansa is very much one of the key characters in the series, without a doubt. I also think that the “key 5″ or “key 6″ or however someone wants to measure it isn’t all that useful. For starters, like you say, GRRM always brings up Sansa when talking about major characters. It’s also an incredibly reductive way of talking about a series of books this complex with such a long cast of characters.

I’m going to try and not make this a rant but we will see. Where to start?

Afficher davantage

[jeanne44world-blog]

I don't know the books, so can you please explain why you think Sansa is written wrong?

this answer requires entire dissertations so i’ll keep it bullet points

in the books sansa is:

- kind, generous and forgiving (up to a certain point). no, she doesn’t lose any of these qualities along the way, but then again she doesn’t suffer pointless rape because D&D really wanted to do the jeyne poole plot (which, btw, is theon’s plot in the fifth book, jeyne is more symbolic than anything). this is not to say sansa is a goody-two-shoes, her good will gets blunted and worn, but it’s still there, no matter what. 

- she’s not the “empowered” survivor that shits on femininity and her “stupid girl” self; she survives by preserving her true Stark identity, by keeping an open heart

- at the same time, she reflects on her doubleness; she has to take on the name of alayne stone and become a bastard (petyr baelish’s daughter). she begins to understand class difference better (commiserating with jon snow), she begins to discover certain morally ambiguous drives within her; like her mean-spiritedness, or her attraction to petyr’s philosophy and all that he represents

- she explores her sexuality in very interesting ways (she imagines sandor clegane kissed her during blackwater battle, and she compares that imaginary kiss with other such experiences, wondering what it would be like to be touched)

- she builds strong friendships and allies along the way

- she’s highly intelligent and has a good mind for riddles (petyr loves to test her in that regard)

- she makes mistakes, she blunders, but she always pulls herself up by resorting to her manners. i can’t stress this enough, courtesy is a lady’s armor.

- at one point in the fourth book, she fuckin crosses a super dangerous icy passage and carries sweetrobin with her

- she learns about politics in a relatively safe environment & she hones in her skills by interacting with other players

- she listens. a lot. 

- finally, she’s written consistently. sansa does change throughout the books, of course. in the second book, she already reflects on her past mistakes and her naivety, but she doesn’t resolve to become “hardened”, she just tries to navigate king’s landing as well as she can. (in the show, she’s sassy one minute, demure the next, but there’s no internal logic for these mood swings. it’s just plot convenience.)

- she brings a frickin blade to meet ser dontos in the second book 

- she’s incredibly perceptive to people’s moods and tries her very best to anticipate them

- at the same time, she can be very moody herself

- u know why? because she’s a young teenage girl, and she’s allowed to be one. she’s allowed not to hate herself, she’s allowed not to apologize to jon for some made-up insults, she’s allowed not to feel bad for her childish fantasies

- in fact, she triumphs because of her “childish” fantasies

- sansa believes in a better world. and that takes a lot of courage. 

[jeanne44world-blog]

What do you hope to see from Sansa & Petyr in the books?

mainly an ambiguous mixture of admiration and cunning, coming from both parties. i want them to be in awe of each other’s duplicity. i want them to be fond of each other (which they already are) while at the same time constantly dancing on the edge of betrayal. 

i want to see power plays and power shifts as sansa comes to know him and his weaknesses better. i also want some form of intellectual intimacy between them and by this i mean that i want them to gossip together and share worldviews and compare their experiences of the world. 

i also hope that she eventually sees his scar and instead of pitying him, tells him that the mark has given him an advantage, because it’s what petyr needs to hear; that his childhood fancy made him stronger, rather than weaker. just as sansa’s idealized world of courtly love and human kindness has made her braver instead of just a “stupid little girl”.  i want them to see that they’re both cynical romantics who might have thrived under different circumstances. but i also want sansa to tell him that she is his better, fulfilled self. because even if petyr had not been shamed as a child, he might still have had a taste for brewing chaos. so, in order for her to grow and survive, sansa must kill the self that cannot survive, which is him - petyr. (in the world after the Long Night, there will be no place for someone like him)

basically i want his death to have poetry, and i only want it to be at her hand because she is the only one he will allow to kill him. because even though she will almost hate him for what he’s done to start the war of the five kings, she’s the only one who will understand why he did it, why he truly did it. and it will be enough for him to be seen, not by catelyn stark or catelyn’s double in her daughter, but by another human being, who sees him as an equal. 

[jeanne44world-blog]

Okay let‘s talk about this for a second.

Let’s talk about how he’s going at it with Lysa. How hard he kissses her, how he devours her, how he just completely shuts her up and takes her breath away, how he just takes her right then and there, almost mercilessly, how he shows her that he is the one who makes the rules, he is the one who demands, and all she has to do is bend her will to his, give herself to him, completely, absolutely, and it’s so sweet…

And then let’s talk about how he’s kissing Sansa, so carefully, gently, respectfully. He doesn’t demand, he doesn’t take, he asks, he offers, showing her that she can make the rules, she can set the pace, and he will follow her willingly. Because he is feeling things for Sansa he doesn’t feel for Lysa, and it’s not just lust and passion and, maybe, the memory of Cat.

What he’s feeling for her is respect. He doesn’t want to frighten her or confuse her, he doesn’t want to overwhelm her, but he can’t not kiss her at that moment. He can’t resist the beautiful snow maid. So he kisses her gently, and when she turns away, he respects her and immediately lets her go.

This kiss, maybe more than her flowering, more than her marriage to Tyrion, showed Sansa that she is a woman now. And Petyr sees her as that. He sees her as a grown woman, not some frightened child who doesn’t know any better and who he can take advantage of. Sansa is strong, she is a force to be reckoned with, at least she will be under Petyr’s counsil. And with that kiss, he has shown her all that. He hasn’t just offered her his body, he has offered her his mind. He has shown her that he sees her as a woman who might as well become his equal one day.

Petyr’s marriage to Lysa was short, fast, ruthless. He took what he could and when she was of no more use, discarded Lysa.

Petyr’s relationship to Sansa is different. It’s slow, careful, deep. He’s in it for the long haul. He doesn’t want to take, he wants to give. And he showed her all that with a single kiss.

Just a reminder that I am clearly talking about book!Petyr because there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for what show!Petyr did in season 5.

[jeanne44world-blog]

“It’s the phoenix from the ashes,” Turner says. “This season, she’s a leader.” And once Sansa starts playing the game, watch out. “She’s had the best mentors: Cersei, Margaery Tyrell, Littlefinger,” Turner says. “She manipulates and gets what she wants through plotting.” What does Sansa want? “Revenge on anyone who’s done harm to her or her family,” Turner reveals. And, of course, she wants the Starks to dominate the North once again. Sophie Turner for TVGuide

[jeanne44world-blog]

Petyr and Sansa still aren’t creepy.

“I have only loved one woman, only one, my entire life. Your sister.”

Of all the super evil morally ambiguous things Petyr Baelish has said and done, his obsession with his childhood friend Catelyn Tully-Stark was by far the creepiest. And when he turned his attention to her young daughter, the creeping continued… Or did it?

“I loved your mother more than you could ever know. … In a better world, one where love could overcome strength and duty, you might have been my child. But we don’t live in that world … You’re more beautiful than she ever was.”

And then he kissed her… Wow, what a creep!

But since that fateful kiss in the snow, two seasons of Game of Thrones have aired, so it is time to revisit the question: Are Petyr x Sansa creepy?

Afficher davantage

[jeanne44world-blog]

He looked at her with Littlefinger’s eyes. “I’d sooner break my fast with a kiss.” A true daughter would not refuse her sire a kiss so Alayne went to him and kissed him, a quick dry peck upon the cheek, and just as quickly stepped away. “How… dutiful.” Littlefinger  smiled with his mouth, but not his eyes. Alayne I AFFC

That exchange says so much. In the split second Sansa has before she has to act she assesses whether his request is a reasonable one, and even then she doesn’t comply willingly. She’s learnt that getting physically close to LF likely means him somehow kissing or touching her, and she’s realised that accepting his kisses is the price she has to pay to stay safe(ish) in the Vale as Alayne.

Even so she doesn’t just give him the kind of kiss she knows he wants from her, and by that choice she makes it explicit that he has to make her kiss him the way he likes it, ie he must by his actions acknowledge that he does something to her that she doesn’t want. She won’t give him that. Sansa fights back with the means she sees that she (in many ways still a captive) still has at her disposal.

Did anyone say Sansa was a passive character, and meekly accepts whatever happens to her?

[jeanne44world-blog]

I was doing some searches for one of my fics and stumbled upon this passage:

This was the first court session of Joffrey’s reign, so Sansa looked about nervously. A line of Lannister house guards stood beneath the western windows, a line of gold-cloaked City Watchmen beneath the east. Of smallfolk and commoners, she saw no sign, but under the gallery a cluster of lords great and small milled restlessly. There were no more than twenty, where a hundred had been accustomed to wait upon King Robert.Sansa slipped in among them, murmuring greetings as she worked her way toward the front. She recognized black-skinned Jalabhar Xho, gloomy Ser Aron Santagar, the Redwyne twins Horror and Slobber … only none of them seemed to recognize her. Or if they did, they shied away as if she had the grey plague. Sickly Lord Gyles covered his face at her approach and feigned a fit of coughing, and when funny drunken Ser Dontos started to hail her, Ser Balon Swann whispered in his ear and he turned away.And so many others were missing. Where had the rest of them gone? Sansa wondered. Vainly, she searched for friendly faces. Not one of them would meet her eyes. It was as if she had become a ghost, dead before her time. O

- Sansa V, Game of Thrones (bold emphasis mine)

One of the complaints I’ve seen leveled against Sansa Stark over the years is her failure to make allies or seek out friends while a hostage in the Red Keep. 

Well, if anyone wants to know why she didn’t— this is why. It’s pretty much impossible to do when you are in a court of people who are turning away, pretending not to see you, or behaving as if you had the grey plague. 

Or, you know, acting as if you were a ghost. 

Then, if it isn’t clear just how much friendship Sansa would find in the court we get this in the next book:

He was armed with a “morningstar” whose head was a melon. My Florian. She could have kissed him, blotchy skin and broken veins and all. He trotted his broomstick around her, shouting “Traitor, traitor” and whacking her over the head with the melon. Sansa covered herself with her hands, staggering every time the fruit pounded her, her hair sticky by the second blow. People were laughing.

- Sansa III, Clash of Kings (bold emphasis mine)

Yeah, if only Sansa had been less passive and tried to make allies then she wouldn’t have been a victim of domestic abuse and forced to marry Tyrion. I dunno…should she have started with the people who refused to acknowledge her existence or the ones that laughed while she was being pelted with fruit? 

[jeanne44world-blog]

If Sansa ever pulled the shit Arya just did, she would be eaten alive. The hate would be overwhelming. She’d be crucified & it would never be forgotten.

Arya accused her in most awful & cruelest manner of actually killing Ned when she saw her screaming for his life while she was being restrained. Dismissed all her suffering & pain without even bothering to consider her plight when she has gone through more than almost anyone on the whole show. Threatened to fucking skin her (like Ramsay loved doing) & wear her face like the deranged psychopath she is. Threatened her life in the one place she was supposed to be safe in after finally fleeing all her many abusers.

Had the audacity to rip into her for not killing the Lannisters when her spiteful, hypocritical ass SERVED Tywin Lannister and never did a damn thing! No, she just prioritized her own safety even though she had way more opportunity than Sansa- the fucking prisoner of war that was beaten, humiliated, tortured- had. Had the nerve to say Sansa didn’t do enough to save Ned- she got down on her fucking knees in the throne room & begged Joffery for mercy, then did the same at his execution. Pray tell, what the fuck did Arya do- apart from close her damn eyes & then do a runner?

Why didn’t she go up there & save her father, then strike down Joffrey, Cersei, Illyn Payne, one by one? Oh, it’s one set of rules for her ass & another for Sansa? Sounds familiar!

I don’t care if Sansa forgives & forgets like nothing even happened. This is some of the worst writing in the show’s history & has ruined both Arya’s character & her relationship with Sansa.

[jeanne44world-blog]

w h y does this fandom insist that sansa is gonna turn into a ramsay-like psychopath???????

this past season has done. everything to prove that she won’t????

she worries about her people being fed for the coming winter, she literally still has basic empathy.

the only time she has shown enjoyment at someone else receiving pain is when she smiles at ramsay’s death. which tbh is?? fucking justified after what he did to her.

she almost fucking cries when she watches littlefinger die??? she is horrified when joffrey dies???? she still recognizes that other people dying is something she should generally stop from happening???

she’s. very specifically. a foil to arya. who has learned to enjoy killing. 

just in general, can yall stop assuming that a sexual assault victim is gonna turn evil / just be a product of her assault????? god yall are disgusting.

[jeanne44world-blog]

In case there was any confusion about where I stand on Tyrion: I have zero sympathy for Tyrion with regards to Sansa and Shae.

I don’t feel bad for him that his child bride doesn’t foresee ever wanting his dick. I don’t feel bad for him that the hostage his family tormented and abused refused to kneel for him at their wedding.  I feel bad for her, that her family, her life, and now her future are being taken away from her. The fact that her family has been murdered, and that she’s now being forced to marry into the family of her tormenters, is 1000% more important than Tyrion’s delicate feelings. If the only she has to retaliate against her abusers is to refuse to kneel for them, then good on her for standing tall.

I don’t feel bad for him that Shae testified against him, or that she slept with Tywin. What was she supposed to do? She had been found out, and refusing to testify would likely have resulted in her torture and death. Was she supposed to turn down Tywin Lannister? Do we really think he wouldn’t have taken her anyways? I feel bad for Shae, that she was murdered by Tyrion for trying to survive the dangers he himself exposed her to.

Sure, I feel bad that Tyrion’s being forced into a marriage that was destined from the start to be an unhappy one. I feel bad for Tyrion that he was sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit. That sucks and would suck for anyone. But don’t you fucking dare blame Sansa for not being more considerate of him. Don’t you fucking dare defend what he did to Shae. Sansa and Shae are not the cause of Tyrion’s misery, and they have enough shit of their own to deal with.

[jeanne44world-blog]

There is this popular idea that has being perpetuated by both D&D and the ASOIAF fandom that Sansa has been awful to Jon while they were growing up which is completely untrue, at least in the books. There’s not one scene or situation which showcase any sort of actual dislike from one to the other. They were never that close as kids, but that doesn’t change the fact that they love each other and they see each other in a positive light. Sansa never had disdain for Jon, not in any regards. She never insulted him and she never treated him badly. When she found out that “bastard” was an offensive term, she stopped using it the way she once did. Now, a lot of people could state that Sansa saying “Poor Jon, he gets jealous because he’s a bastard.” showcases that she does insult him, but that’s not actually true. Sansa was not insulting Jon in that quotation. Sansa did not mean that as an insult. “Poor Jon” wasn’t a sarcastic comment, it was her actually sympathizing with him. He sometimes feel negatively about other people because they have what he can’t because he is a bastard. He’s been jealous of his trueborn brothers his whole life. I mean, at that point of the story, Jon didn’t even know anything concrete about Joffrey besides the way he looks and his social status and he’s out there insulting him. People get jealous and grow resentful of others with privilege all the time. Plus, when Jon saw Joffrey for the first time, he was indeed jealous of him. Point being, it isn’t far off from Sansa’s perspective to make this sort of assumption, which does somewhat comes from a place of an understanding of his social situation. So, does it display any kind of resentment or disdain, no it doesn’t. She does not think of him as lesser and Jon is their half-brother so Sansa pointing that out “politely” isn’t her “discrediting” and “insulting” him.

There are numerous scenes in the series that makes it obvious that she does love and care about him. For starters, she taught him how to talk to girls. That either means that Jon went to her and asked her to help him or Sansa saw Jon struggling in a situation and wanted to help him. Neither case displays a dynamic where they don’t like each other. In fact, the first would mean that he trusts her, and the second that she cares for him. Not to forget that Sansa feels empathetic for Jon when she sees that the Night’s Watch isn’t as nice as it is in the songs and that she includes him in her prayers at the Sept. That means that she does care about him and his future. It doesn’t even stop there. She models her Alayne Stone character after Jon. Alayne’s 14, doesn’t like to dance and bastard-brave. Would she unconsciously model the way she acts for someone she apparently has “nothing but disdain for”? In fact. this would mean that she sees Jon as someone ‘‘brave’’ ‘When Myranda Royce talks about Jon to her, she thinks in her head that she wishes nothing but to see him again. And her wishing to see him again was not something she thought because she was assuming the role of a bastard. Even if she was still playing the role of a trueborn, I do not doubt that she’ll feel the exact same way about wanting to see him again. Her pointing out that they were both bastards now was just her highlighting the irony of it all, and not a sign that her becoming a bastard is what made her want to see Jon again. She not only thinks it would be so sweet to see him again but she hears his death all the way for the Vale (’’The wind was howling fiercely. It sounds like a wolf, a ghost wolf, big as mountains.’’). This goes to show that there is a definitive relation between them just as there are with any of the other Starks. 

Jon’s feelings towards Sansa also aren’t negative and none of his thoughts regarding her displays any kind of resentfulness that would cement this idea of her being mean to him. While he does use ‘’even Sansa’’ once when recalling his siblings, it doesn’t signify a lack of fondness between them because if that was the case, than his remembering Sansa in a positive way in other sections of the book wouldn’t exist. You could even add the fact that he never thought of Sansa and Catelyn at the same time. If Catelyn had indeed molded Sansa into being mean to Jon, you would think that there would be some mention from it coming from Jon. Just because you aren’t as close to someone as you are with other people does not mean that there is no fondness there. The “even Sansa” existed because he doesn’t know her as much as he does the others, not because he doesn’t like her. So it can be concluded that he doesn’t miss Catelyn or Theon at all, as both have treated him badly, but he misses Sansa, as she has not. His life and hers barely intersect because they don’t have something in common. Most of the time, the boys are pushed into Ned’s care and the girls into Catelyn’s and Mordane’s. When it comes to many of the other female-male pairs, there’s always some link that explains their relationships. Arya & Jon are outcasts, Bran & Sansa like stories, Arya & Bran like running around and Sansa & Robb are the oldest trueborn children. However, Jon & Sansa don’t have that link, which explains why they just haven’t intersected with each other as much. That being said, Jon has always mentioned Sansa positively. He describes Sansa as being ‘’radiant’’ the day the king came to Winterfell. He has stated missing Sansa as well as his other siblings. He was worried of what would happen to both Arya AND Sansa after Ned died. Jon recalls a memory of Sansa telling him how to talk to girls, he thinks about how she would be enchanted upon seeing the scenery he was looking at, he stays loyal and reinforces the idea that Sansa is the heir to Winterfell and he thinks about her alongside the rest of his siblings in his final moments.

Therefore, if Sansa thinks of Jon in a positive way, and Jon thinks of Sansa in a positive way, the idea that she was ‘’awful’’ to him doesn’t make sense

[jeanne44world-blog]

Romanticizing the Patriarchy

Through AGoT, Sansa seems to be a particularly naïve young girl; instead of disliking the Lannisters the way the rest of her family does, she “falls in love” with Joffrey. Yet it’s clear that Sansa is a very intelligent person - she picks up on things many adults miss – so why does she have this tremendous blind spot? A lot has been written on how internalized sexism affects the women of Westeros (this post on “patriarchy brain” is probably my favorite), and in Sansa’s case it’s clear that she dealt with sexism by romanticizing it. While most readers are content with just saying “well she was a stupid girl”, I think it’s worth it to consider how internalized sexism may have shaped Sansa’s expectations more than stupidity and/or naivety.

In Westeros, wives are functionally the property of their husbands; men essentially have free reign to act as they please, and women just have to live with it. Aegon IV’s treatment of Queen Naerys’ is an extreme, but telling, example of this. So when Sansa is promised to Joffrey, for sanity’s sake she has to believe he is a good person. She’s essentially being forced to trust Joffrey with her happiness and well-being for the rest of her life; if you’re putting that much responsibility on someone, you have to believe they can handle it.

In addition to that, Westeros teaches women that it is their job to please their husbands. The effects of this can be seen as early as Sansa’s first chapter:

“I hate riding,” Sansa said fervently. “All it does is get you soiled and dusty and sore.”

…

Joffrey reflected a moment. “We could go riding.”

“Oh, I love riding,” Sansa said.

While these passages make Sansa seem quite shallow, it also displays how much she feels it is her responsibility to make Joffrey happy.  And that’s not the thought of a naïve girl, that’s what society demands of her; she has to be Joffrey’s ideal wife, because he certainly won’t try to be her ideal husband. If this wasn’t made clear in the first book, Sansa’s sample chapter from tWoW makes that abundantly clear (here’s a great post discussing the topic). The above passage isn’t even the only time in Sansa’s first chapter that she goes out of her way to manage Joffrey:

Joffrey stiffened beside her. “Have a care how you address my betrothed.”

“I can answer,” Sansa said quickly, to quell her prince’s anger

Of course, it was much easier to idealize Joffrey before he attacked Mycah on the Trident. But what often gets ignored, is that Sansa in no way thought Joffrey’s actions were justified (a lot of people try and act like she was okay with the abuse of Mycah, but she definitely wasn’t); she actively has to change the memory to maintain her idealized image of Joffrey:

At first she thought she hated him for what they’d done to Lady, but after Sansa had wept her eyes dry, she told herself that it had not been Joffrey’s doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one to hate, her and Arya.

To be clear, I’m not trying to say Sansa’s actions were right (blaming Arya was extremely uncalled for), I’m just saying I understand how she makes these choices. It’s hard to put yourself in the mindset of a young girl growing up in Westeros, but if you do it is easy to see how little agency Sansa has, and how she would be tempted to make the best of a very bad situation. While she will be stuck with Joffrey the rest of her life, in a few years Arya will marry and Sansa will only see her on special occasions. Which one would you pick to view poorly?

Yet even though she forced herself to continue viewing Joffrey positively, it’s still apparent that she is afraid of him:

When Prince Joffrey seated himself to her right, she felt her throat tighten

…

Sansa looked at him and trembled, afraid that he might ignore her or, worse, turn hateful again and send her weeping from the table.

- AGoT Sansa II

If Sansa fully acknowledged Joffrey’s cruelty, she would live in a tremendous amount of fear. And while Joffrey’s behavior at the Trident was unexpected and atypical, think of how the adults in the situation reacted: Cersei condones his behavior by demanding Arya be punished, Robert condones his behavior by ordering Lady’s death, and even Ned condones his behavior by killing Lady himself (obviously this wasn’t Ned’s intent, but that is how his actions came across). (Sidenote: Sansa testifying honestly would not have changed anything. A lowborn butcher’s boy was hitting a highborn Lady, and the Crown Prince interfered. Arya’s consent wasn’t important because of Westeros’ classist politics). So now, Sansa has seen Joffrey act cruelly and completely get away with it, while she herself was punished (this really does function as a great metaphor of Westerosi gender dynamics). That just reinforces her preconceived notion that it is her who has to change to fit in as Joffrey’s wife.

So while Sansa seems naïve, upon further review it seems she was perfectly prepared. The dutiful wife is the rule she was raised from birth to play; and in most circumstances, she would have been amazing at it (I could get into just how unusual the circumstances of her betrothal to Joffrey ended up being, but I’ll save that for another time). Instead of acknowledging the horrors facing her, she (like many an 11yo child would) decided to make it like a story from a song instead.

[jeanne44world-blog]

“There’s nothing but fear reflected in your sword. When you dodge, you think ‘I’m afraid of getting cut.’ When you attack, you think ‘I’m afraid of cutting someone.’ Even when you try to protect someone, you think 'I’m afraid of letting them die.’ What’s necessary in a fight isn’t fear. Nothing can be born from that. If you dodge, think 'I won’t let them cut me.’ If you protect someone, think 'I won’t let them die.’ If you attack, think 'I’ll cut them.’”

—

Urahara Kisuke (To Kurosaki Ichigo)

~ Bleach

[jeanne44world-blog]

Petyr being touch starved would include :

(Woooo more prompts! Woooo Petyr 😏 Hope it is as requested and you all like it :3 Gif not mine/found it on google/credit to the original owners.)

-Him subconsciously eagerly grabbing for your hand to hold whenever you’re reaching out to comfort him, surprising you with how much he’d actually grip you and want to keep you despite going through all sorts of schemes in his mind

-Him somehow always pulling you or directing you to end up sitting on his lap whenever you are both left alone, feeling comforted to have you so close and hold you

-Him being quite insistent that you hold onto his arm or hand whenever you’d walk together or show up at a feast, using the excuse that since you’re his it’s only natural but truly just not wanting to be too far apart from you

-Him being quick to put his hand on yours during dinners or events, wanting to feel you but using the excuse that people are questioning your relationship

-Him calming down and breathing easier the moment you’d pull him in for a hug and rub his back, only to slowly let his guards down and hold you as well

-Him practically melting and losing his train of thought whenever you’d pull him to lay on your lap and carefully stroke his hair or his cheeks, feeling like he can finally be at peace with you

-Him always having a habit of slowing down when you’d both kiss each other, wanting to feel your lips and tongue and growing possessive over you

-Him often encouraging you to mark him as yours, being more than proud to have your hickeys and scars from your nails

-Him growing quite annoyed to see you tending to anyone else and being quick to pull you to him instead, reminding you that your touches are for him and him only

-Him promising you that everything he’s doing is for you, wanting to somehow return the favor and give you the life you deserve to have

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[jeanne44world-blog]

Sansa Stark

I honestly can’t control my rage when people slag Sansa off. That girl is the most real out of them all. She has been abused and manipulated, she doesn’t think anyone will love her for who she is. And she overcomes all of that, holds her head up high. And she does it without magic, with nothing but her own god damn strength of will. If people don’t see that Sansa is probably the most relatable and realistically identifiable female character in the series then they are lucky enough to have never suffered or known anyone to suffer from abuse, rape, depression and thoughts of self-loathing and low self-worth. Sansa is my favourite female character because she is someone who overcomes all of the horrible things life can throw at a woman, both in medieval times and even now (I mean, an eleven year old girl just brushing off the idea of throwing herself from a tower. Wtf? How can anyone hate somebody that has reached that point of despair?! Suicidal thoughts and depression are as real as ever these days!) Sansa is a character who shows us that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that you can overcome these horrible things. And you can do it without dragons or having every man who stares at you for more than five seconds suddenly fawning over you and she does it without a sword. Sansa is the most realistic and identifiable character and when I see the hate directed towards her I think of how little we seem to have come in terms of identifying, accepting and dealing with mental health issues.  And you know what else is amazing? After everything she has been through, she is STILL compassionate, kind and just wants to protect everyone. Like, I can’t even deal with how much I want to hug her. And she deserves to be married for love and have true happiness. Which is why I am Jonsa trash because I honestly can’t see any other man in GoT world that even comes close to giving her all that she deserves. I think that is why I am so upset with S7 because while I can picture Jon with majority of women characters, I cannot see Sansa with anyone but Jon and the thought of her not getting all the happiness and love she deserves makes me so desperately sad. My baby girl has to have some happiness and love god dammit!

[jeanne44world-blog]

1- D&D/the writers really exemplify the WORST of all white all male misogyny of Hollywood. The worst example is the portrayal of Show!Sansa. Her journey is abt the veil of fantasies being lifted from her eyes to see the world as it truely is. They removed all agency & comprehension of her circumstances (she does realise a LOT) & protects herself through the perfect smiling facade of a lady, while hoping & planning for home & her future.

2- Even when she’s living & breathing the knowledge that “life is not a song” she still subliminally channels fantasy to keep herself going or colour her past in a better light so it can’t hold her back. In the show even her trauma is not truely her own. When they shoot a scene that’s supposed to bring the GA an understanding/sympathy for her or who she is, it is literally only there to emphasise the characteristics/emotions of another character (Tyrion, Cersei, Joffrey, even Theon).

3- People think she’s worthless to the story bc that’s what D&D made her. In true dude bro fashion, they had no understanding of her so they just decided to make her a sad girl with next to no layering & use her as a dime piece for all the other characters to move around. The fandom was already toxic towards her beforehand, their misogyny already disgusting. It’s actually very telling of the GA in regards to their hate for her (what has actually dont to deserve it? Nothing), its very disturbing

4- She could have been portrayed better but they literally fell into their own prejudice, and failed. Sorry for the long rant. I hate the show and really dislike the majority of the (hypocritical fandom). Whenever I talk abt Sansa it’s very rare that I find someone with something positive or even CANON to say. It’s happened a couple times with some people, actually men! More interested in the politics of the story!

Amen.

I think that’s the biggest flaw with the show, when we lose the POV chapters, we lose the characters’ insights and their thought process. It gets lost in translation from the books to the screen. We don’t get to see Daenerys power through with her “If I look back, I am lost,” mantra that sums up her character and her inability and unwillingness to contemplate her actions. As a result, what we see is a two dimensional character without any hint of the mental struggle within.

Similarly, with Sansa, where scenes are meant to be her own, we’re locked out of her head, making it seem as if she’s just a bystander when in truth we should be seeing things through her eyes. We don’t see her second guess her actions because so much of that is done by herself, and so to the GA it appears as if she’s drifting from one place to another without so much as a thought. As you said, they completely stripped her of her agency.

It’s true for her S5 Ramsay plot too. Yes, they had the decency to include a scene where Petyr tells her to fight for her claim once more and yet demeaning her and making her a victim to rape was infuriating because of how little agency she had. All of this could have been avoided had they stuck with her Vale plot, and shown the GA that she’s learning and maneuvering herself. I feel because of the Ramsay plot, the GA fails to acknowledge that she’s come into her own and has started to be a player as opposed to remaining a pawn on the chessboard. 

As GRRM put it here:

Additionally, because other characters such as Arya and Jon, and even Bran, are more pro-active in the sense that they physically move towards a goal(Arya with her training, Jon commanding, and Bran seeking out the Three Eyed Raven), the GA fails to see her passive resistance as anything extraordinary when that literally is how she survives Kingslanding. If she were to actively voice out her dismay, she would have been discarded long ago and yet she is smart enough to hold her tongue and play along.

The GA marks her off as useless because most of them were already conditioned to see Daenerys as the sure champion of the story - she’s got all the dragons, she birthed them as if to mean that her presence would guarantee a seat on the throne at the end of the series because she did that. But these are the same viewers that fail to prepare for the eventuality of Daenerys not taking the throne. Should Daenerys fall, or turn mad, or lose interest and decide to venture elsewhere, the GA has no clue who would assume a ruling position. They’ll be quick to name Jon and yet Jon, as the show has unnecessarily highlighted(dumbing down his character in the process), is more of a “military man”. And so, Sansa is and always has been the hidden piece of the game people refuse to acknowledge, when in fact she has the 4th most screen time at this point, and has way more actual established connections to characters than Daenerys has. She’s advantaged too, because she witnessed different people playing the game up-close in Kingslanding, and as for the North, she will always be the Blood of Winterfell, people will rally to her side for her Stark name.

More importantly, she never asked to play. She has no ambition, she’s not ruthless or cunning, she does things to survive. Daenerys cannot say the same no matter how many people from the GA claim otherwise, Daenerys acknowledges herself in the first book that she was in a comfortable position that any girl would be happy with and yet it wasn’t enough for her, for the blood of the dragon, and that’s her ambition speaking. Now that we are at this point of it being down to Cersei or Daenerys, of course people are rooting for the latter because Cersei is a cruel person so fans are quick to jump at that and say “would you rather have Cersei on the throne?” And yet, Daenerys’ ultimate goal had always been to restore the Targaryen restoration, all this talk of breaking the wheel and making the world a better place is just perfume to mask the fact that all she cares about really is putting herself in that position. 

Daenerys is a questionable ruler, more so because she is easily influenced by people over her own counsel. She’s quick to assume betrayal, and her paranoia is often present. She is an entitled child who believes herself just, with the power to kill at her leave, in that sense she’s no better than Joffrey. We rooted for her in the beginning because she showed promise and yet trial after trial, she has only shown her true colours more and more. How convenient is it then that as more people start to see her for what she is, another alternative character with as much means to rule begins to emerge as a player and a more serious contender of the endgame queen? Besides, the role of the Younger, more Beautiful Queen has yet to be taken, and Daenerys had no part in claiming Joffrey, Myrcella, Tommen, and Tywin from Cersei.

Let them say what they have to say about Sansa Stark, as insufferable as it is, all the better for when she survives. She has the most reason to because she hasn’t used her abilities post-character development yet(her ruling as Lady of Winterfell was just a preview), and otherwise her arc would have served no greater purpose and her POV could be eliminated. GRRM’s not done with her yet, and my bet is that she has a role to play in the aftermath of the war. Not to mention she’s an eligible bachelorette with a claim to the North, my Jonsa fam can fill in the blanks to that.