#nobody invaded my boundaries to enforce this

[star-ocean-peahen]

I was watching one of those reddit reading videos (i'm pretty picky about the channels i watch for those because it's really easy to tip into misinformation and shock entertainment as opposed to the Tea and some reality checks) and I'm crying right now because I just read one about a kid whose family destroyed all their unicorn memorabilia because they thought it was "satanic", and when the mom came to her senses and tried getting the kid some unicorn trinkets along with an apology the kid just. stared apathetically and said they didn't want it anymore. and fuck, fake story or not, that's fucking real. the guilt and self-loathing and self-denial that comes with being told you're in danger of becoming evil if you love the wrong things or you love something too much is traumatizing. it's so hard to let yourself care about things after that, when you're supposed to weaponize your own joy against you.

for me that seeped into every decision i made. sometimes it just made me uncomfortable, other times i would punish myself for wanting food when i was hungry.

i watched the movie Big Hero Six once with some youth group friends, and after the movie i asked one of my friends what she thought of the movie. the first thing she said was "Um, I thought it was kind of heretical." she was referring to the credits song, which is titled "Immortals". the song is about feeling invincible when with a person you love. but it had the word immortals in it, so it would lure me away from God and ruin my life if I listened to it. (she did like the movie btw she wasn't being a jerk thats just how we were raised)

I loved that song. And I hated myself for loving it. Every time I watched the movie or heard it somewhere, I would fight a painful internal battle of the part of me that enjoyed the song and the part of me that was afraid of doom and annihilation.

I thought by not rejecting the "worldly" joys, i was rejecting God and the infinity of good things he represented, because I was just that stupid that I would pick a momentary joy over eternity. I believed I was choosing my own death by loving non-Christian things.

I don't really have a good end to this. I guess my point is that this kind of thing doesn't automatically seem so destructive, but it really can be.

[turtle-paced]

Revisiting Chapters: Sansa VII, ASoS

This is one of my absolute favourite chapters in all of ASoIaF and I’m so glad someone asked for it this soon.

The story so far…

After being held captive in King’s Landing, after a detour to the Fingers, Sansa has escaped the Lannisters and is living in relative safety and freedom in the Eyrie. Key word: relative.

Sansa Stark, of Winterfell

Now that Sansa’s away from the Lannisters and living with her aunt, even though she’s disguised as Alayne Stone, she has a bit more freedom. We can see that mostly inside her head. The chapter opens with Sansa waking from a dream of Winterfell, believing for a second that she’s home and it’s Arya she can hear nearby. Indeed, the first half of the chapter is as firm and explicit a rebuttal as you could ask for to the idea that Sansa’s “not really a Stark” (wtf, seriously), and should probably induce more than a little reader doubt as to just how vanished Sansa Stark is from Alayne Stone in AFFC.

After two books of captivity and repeating again and again that her family were traitors, Sansa can at last freely think on and grieve for everything and everyone she’s lost. 

She had last seen snow the day she’d left Winterfell. That was a lighter fall than this, she remembered. Robb had melting flakes in his hair when he hugged me, and the snowball Arya tried to make kept coming apart in her hands. It hurt to remember how happy she had been that morning. 

She could feel the snow on her lashes, taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of innocence. The taste of dreams. 

She can even go so far as to express some of her feelings via snowcastle building. It’s so cathartic for Sansa that it carries over to the reader.

Soon her gloves and her boots were crusty white, her hands were tingling, and her feet were soaked and cold, but she did not care. The castle was all that mattered. Some things were hard to remember, but most came back to her easily, as if she had been there only yesterday. 

All Sansa’s love for her home and her family is coming out in this intense burst of artistic expression. Out of the emptiness and loneliness of the Eyrie, out of the purity Sansa no longer feels she belongs in, she’s recalling her family together in a warmer, kinder place and building it anew. This is what she loves. This is what the readers loved, back in AGoT, and this is what readers are sticking around to see again.

The snow fell and the castle rose. 

And if Sansa’s metaphorical rebuilding of Winterfell wasn’t clear enough about how she thinks of her family and their home:

She wondered where this courage had come from, to speak to [Littlefinger] so frankly. From Winterfell, she thought. I am stronger within the walls of Winterfell. 

Later in the chapter, while trying to muster the courage to tell Lysa to take a hike, she thinks of herself as the heir to Winterfell. When dealing with Marillion, she longs to tell him to back off via telling him that she’s a Stark of Winterfell. Sansa uses thoughts of Winterfell and her place in it (tragic as that place may be) to bring her strength.

Another aspect where we can see Sansa’s relative safety is in her ability to express and attempt to enforce her own boundaries. With Littlefinger:

Feebly, she tried to squirm, but only succeeded in pressing herself more tightly against him. His mouth was on hers, swallowing her words. He tasted of mint. For half a heartbeat she yielded to his kiss... before she turned her face away and wrenched free. 

[…]

“You’re supposed to kiss her.” Sansa glanced up at Lysa’s balcony, but it was empty now. “Your lady wife.” 

[…]

“I wish you could see yourself, my lady. You are so beautiful. You’re crusted over with snow like some little bear cub, but your face is flushed and you can scarcely breathe. How long have you been out here? You must be very cold. Let me warm you, Sansa. Take off those gloves, give me your hands.” 

“I won’t.” He sounded almost like Marillion, the night he’d gotten so drunk at the wedding. Only this time Lothor Brune would not appear to save her; Ser Lothor was Petyr’s man. “You shouldn’t kiss me. I might have been your own daughter...” 

She still can’t yell for help. She’s still in someone else’s power and subject to someone trying to invade her personal space in a most unwelcome way. But she is at least safe enough here to wrench free, refuse to take her gloves off for further physical intimacy, and to tell Littlefinger in so many words that he shouldn’t be kissing her. That would have got her a beating if she’d tried that with Joffrey, for sure.

With Sweetrobin, too:

It was more than Sansa could stand. “Robert, stop that.” Instead he swung the doll again, and a foot of wall exploded. She grabbed for his hand but she caught the doll instead. 

Again we see that she’s in a position to physically resist. Unlike her show counterpart she doesn’t slap Sweetrobin (huzzah), and simply moves to prevent him destroying the castle she just poured her heart into.

A mad rage seized hold of her. She picked up a broken branch and smashed the torn doll’s head down on top of it, then pushed it down atop the shattered gatehouse of her snow castle. 

This also serves as a nice red herring for the prophecy of a maid slaying a savage giant in a castle made of snow. But she’s still in a place where she can at least give some outward indication of what she feels, rather than bottle it all up.

Sansa is under no illusions that defying Sweetrobin won’t have consequences. She knows that her aunt isn’t going to let it pass. Even with Lysa though, despite her doubts, she again asserts herself and flatly contradicts her aunt. Several times.

Sansa took a step backward. “That’s not true.” 

“I was building a snow castle,” Sansa said. “Lord Petyr was helping me, and then he kissed me. That’s what you saw.” 

“No.” My mother is dead, she wanted to shriek. She was your own sister, and she’s dead. “She didn’t. She wouldn’t.” 

“He kissed me,” Sansa insisted again. “I never wanted-” 

It’s nice to see Sansa sticking to her guns and able to stand up for herself without getting hit for it. It doesn’t last, of course, as she realises that her aunt’s not just mean, but actually dangerous to her. Then she falls back on her King’s Landing defence mechanisms, telling Lysa what she thinks Lysa wants to hear. She does this all the way up to the Moon Door.

“Open the door,” Lysa commanded. “Open it, I say. You will do it, or I’ll send for my guards.” She shoved Sansa forward. “Your mother was brave, at least. Lift off the bars.” 

If I do as she says, she will let me go. Sansa grabbed one of the bronze bars, yanked it loose, and tossed it down. 

And then Lysa starts slowly edging Sansa out the door while Marillion sings a song called “The False and the Fair.” It’s pretty bloody scary. No words here can save Sansa from the past-reasonable Lysa. It’s just Sansa, Lysa, and a long drop outside. The scene-setting throughout this chapter is excellent, and during this confrontation GRRM doesn’t let you forget that this is all taking place framed by a doorway leading out to nothing but snow and a six-hundred-foot fall - snow blows through the door, Lysa and Sansa’s skirts keep snapping in the wind.

So Littlefinger’s intervention is one hell of a relief. Having come very close to death, Sansa sits the rest of the chapter out. She takes the first opportunity to get clear of the door and grab a pillar while Lysa and Littlefinger do some serious exposition.

But, critically, she’s still there for all of it.

The Sad Story of Lysa Tully Arryn

This chapter makes it crystal clear how terrible a person Lysa is - and the extent to which she’s been a victim herself. Even as she’s threatening to shove her teenage niece off a cliff, even as the danger she poses is apparent, so too is the fact that this woman is pitiable.

One of Sansa’s very first observations about her aunt this chapter is that Lysa is lonely. She’s finally married Littlefinger, and Littlefinger’s never around. Her household is small and the Vale lords have opinions of her running the gamut from resentment to strong dislike. She banishes anyone who displeases her, and it doesn’t take much to displease her. Even the singer she likes so much switched his focus of attention to Sansa. Truly, Lysa has nobody but her son. The fact that in many ways she has nobody but herself to blame only makes it sadder.

When Lysa summons Sansa, how pathetic and insecure she is at heart is apparent in the lengths she goes to in order to intimidate Sansa. She’s still dangerous because of the authority she holds, but seriously. She puts on a blinged-out gown, does her face up, sits in the highest seat she can in the most formal room in the Eyrie, has guardsmen bar the door with spears, and at last physically threatens Sansa. The intended impressive effect is undermined by the fact she’s a grown woman pulling out all the stops to scare an unwilling thirteen-year-old off her husband. It’s frightening, but not for the reasons Lysa apparently wanted it to be. While the Arryn colours and location show her political authority, she doesn’t come off as a self-possessed ruler confident in her own sexuality and relationship with her husband (the purpose of changing dresses and putting on all her makeup), but a dangerously unstable individual who can’t judge a threat.

Lysa’s nostrils flared. “And why would he do that? He has a wife who loves him. A woman grown, not a little girl. He has no need for the likes of you. Confess, child. You threw yourself at him. That was the way of it.” 

Who’s the woman grown here, again?

Lysa is not willing to listen to reason here. Sansa’s explanations make no dent in Lysa’s determination to browbeat Sansa. Instead, she gets more and more worked up, until she’s telling Sansa about the relationships/lack thereof between her, Littlefinger, and Catelyn back in Riverrun.

“Did you come with Lord Bracken and Lord Blackwood, the time they visited to lay their feud before my father? Lord Bracken’s singer played for us, and Catelyn danced six dances with Petyr that night, six, I counted. When the lords began to argue my father took them up to his audience chamber, so there was no one to stop us drinking. Edmure got drunk, young as he was... and Petyr tried to kiss your mother, only she pushed him away. She laughed at him. He looked so wounded I thought my heart would burst, and afterward he drank until he passed out at the table. Uncle Brynden carried him up to bed before my father could find him like that. 

[…]

“You enticed him, just as your mother did that night in Riverrun, with her smiles and her dancing. You think I could forget? That was the night I stole up to his bed to give him comfort. I bled, but it was the sweetest hurt. He told me he loved me then, but he called me Cat, just before he fell back to sleep.”

This is just - so awful, on so many levels. We see that Lysa’s a misogynist in the Nice Guy vein, believing that Catelyn owed Littlefinger sex after dancing with him and just generally being his friend. We see that Lysa raped Littlefinger - she knew he was passing-out drunk when she went to his room. (The other time she had sex with him as a teenager, he was severely wounded and hopped up on milk of the poppy. Combined with what we know of Lysa’s courage, i.e. that she doesn’t have much of it, this looks like a pattern. She wasn’t brave enough to proposition Littlefinger when he was sober and might reject her.) And we see the envy that’s poisoned Lysa’s life. She counted how many times that Catelyn and Littlefinger danced. She remembers it almost twenty years later.

Then it gets even worse.

“How would you like to spend your life on that bleak shore, surrounded by slatterns and sheep pellets? That was what my father meant for Petyr. Everyone thought it was because of that stupid duel with Brandon Stark, but that wasn’t so. Father said I ought to thank the gods that so great a lord as Jon Arryn was willing to take me soiled, but I knew it was only for the swords. I had to marry Jon, or my father would have turned me out as he did his brother, but it was Petyr I was meant for. I am telling you all this so you will understand how much we love each other, how long we have suffered and dreamed of one another. We made a baby together, a precious little baby.” Lysa put her hands flat against her belly, as if the child was still there. “When they stole him from me, I made a promise to myself that I would never let it happen again.”

From the imagined to the very real. Lysa might be deluding herself about Littlefinger’s affections for her, and her jealousy’s warped her memories of Catelyn, but this… Lysa got pregnant off a sexual encounter with Littlefinger and her dad found out. He arranged a marriage for her with a man more than thrice her age, and Lysa believed that if she didn’t go through with it her father would throw her out of the house to fend for herself (as she’d seen happen not just with Littlefinger himself, but with her own uncle). Her father also deceived her into taking an abortifacient. While Catelyn worked out earlier that Lysa had slept with someone, got pregnant, and was thus forced into an abortion and an unsuitable match with Jon Arryn, Lysa’s account shows how it has affected her mental state. Especially as she links the forced abortion to more recent events.

“Jon wished to send my sweet Robert to Dragonstone, and that sot of a king would have given him to Cersei Lannister, but I never let them...”

This has been a minor mystery since early in AGoT. As Ned and Catelyn investigated, they found differing accounts as to where Jon Arryn intended to send his son to foster. Now we find out that both accounts were true, and that Lysa considered either to be “stealing” her son.

Once Littlefinger shows up to defend Sansa and the immediate threat to our PoV character has passed, Lysa gets even more emotional. We see that she’s actually well aware that it’s Littlefinger who pursued Sansa.

“NO!” Lysa gave Sansa’s head another wrench. Snow eddied around them, making their skirts snap noisily. “You can’t want her. You can’t. She’s a stupid empty-headed little girl. She doesn’t love you the way I have. I’ve always loved you. I’ve proved it, haven’t I?” Tears ran down her aunt’s puffy red face. 

She keeps going, giving us more history. I’ll get to the new content of what she tells us in a second, but she keeps bouncing between some heavy reveals and railing against Catelyn and Sansa and her father, desperately and correctly afraid that Littlefinger doesn’t love her.

“I won’t! I saw you kissing in the snow. She’s just like her mother. Catelyn kissed you in the godswood, but she never meant it, she never wanted you. Why did you love her best? It was me, it was always meeee!” 

“Why did you kiss her? Why? We’re together now, we’re together after so long, so very long, why would you want to kiss herrrrrr?” 

Yet despite what she knows to be true, she’s only too willing to take Littlefinger’s word that he loves her, more than anyone. Littlefinger told her what she wanted to hear, and Lysa dropped her guard. Then Littlefinger kills her, making his total rejection and lack of love for her crystal clear.

Lysa built her entire life around a man who didn’t love her. She suffered at the hands of others for the sake of a man who didn’t love her. She did horrible, horrible things for a man who didn’t love her. She’s only ever been a pawn, and her need to love and be loved was the means of manipulating her.

Like I said. Pitiable.

Holy Shit, Littlefinger

Littlefinger shows up halfway through Sansa’s snowcastle-building and promptly lays the foundation for Sansa’s later observation of his dual behaviour towards her. On the one hand he wants her to be his daughter. He’s warm as any father in helping her build her snow Winterfell, coming up with inventive solutions to structural problems, positively contributing to her vision.

And on the other hand, he wants Sansa to be his lover. He’s grooming her, and he sexually assaults her. As quoted above, he kisses Sansa against her will and over both her physical and verbal protests.

Now, Littlefinger’s own very rough backstory comes through in Lysa’s own, giving us the full picture. From his perspective, he was rejected at a dance, then the girl who rejected him snuck up to his room and had sex with him. Over that, he challenged her fiance, only to see Catelyn give Brandon her favour, and was gravely wounded. Lysa raped him again in that vulnerable state, and for that Hoster Tully kicked him out of Riverrun before he could so much as walk, sending him back to the Fingers in a closed litter.

The chapter also gives us a few major reveals about what Littlefinger did after being sent back to the Fingers.

Lady Lysa ignored that. “Cat never gave you anything. It was me who got you your first post, who made Jon bring you to court so we could be close to one another. You promised me you would never forget that.” 

It looks like Littlefinger leaned on Lysa to get him a good post from which to start his career. Fairly innocuous, if not for what we know about Littlefinger’s accounting practices. Other chapters with other details of Littlefinger’s rise to Master of Coin would indicate that he was perfecting his methods in Gulltown. Combined with the other information in this chapter, it looks like he’s been planning this revenge for a while.

Then we have the real bombshell.

“Tears, tears, tears,” she sobbed hysterically. “No need for tears... but that’s not what you said in King’s Landing. You told me to put the tears in Jon’s wine, and I did. For Robert, and for us! And I wrote Catelyn and told her the Lannisters had killed my lord husband, just as you said.”

How about that, then? Littlefinger instructed Lysa to poison Jon Arryn, and then to write Catelyn and blame the Lannisters. Without this, maybe Ned would have told Robert that there was pressing business up North (in the form of Mance) and rejected the Handship. The sequence of events that led to Ned’s execution and the King in the North business almost certainly would not have taken place, nor the Red Wedding in a recognisable form. Someone who might have an interest in finding out who started the War of Five Kings could go a long way on that info.

One of the reasons this is such a good reveal is because it makes sense. This is not just a shocking swerve. It has greater explanatory power than “Cersei did it.” That’s a good theory, on a basic means/motive/opportunity test, and there’s a reason most people in-universe believe it. However, the theory that Cersei did it doesn’t account anywhere near as well as the truth does for Cersei’s own incompetence at assassination, the lack of communication amongst the Lannisters over the issue, Lysa’s motivations and actions all throughout the War of Five Kings, Littlefinger’s actions…a whole bunch of things make better sense with this knowledge, once you go back and look.

Finally, as terrifying as Lysa nearly shoving Sansa out the Moon Door is, it’s got nothing on how terrifying Littlefinger is here.

“Lysa! What’s the meaning of this?” The shout cut through the sobs and heavy breathing. Footsteps echoed down the High Hall. “Get back from there! Lysa, what are you doing?” The guards were still beating at the door; Littlefinger had come in the back way, through the lords’ entrance behind the dais. 

As Lysa turned, her grip loosened enough for Sansa to rip free. She stumbled to her knees, where Petyr Baelish saw her. He stopped suddenly. “Alayne. What is the trouble here?” 

You get the feeling that his decision to kill Lysa was made here. If not there, then a few lines later.

“She’s a child, Lysa. Cat’s daughter. What did you think you were doing?”

“I was going to marry her to Robert! She has no gratitude. No... no decency. You are not hers to kiss. Not hers! I was teaching her a lesson, that was all.”

“I see.” He stroked his chin. “I think she understands now. Isn’t that so, Alayne?”

He refers to Sansa as Catelyn’s daughter, while Marillion is still in the room. Shortly afterwards he promises to send Sansa back to King’s Landing, utterly impossible. After the lines quoted above, he’s saying whatever he needs to in order to get Lysa to let go of Sansa. Not so very different to what Sansa herself was doing, which is not a coincidence. The art in saying what other people want to hear so they’ll do as you want them to do is something he undertakes to teach Sansa.

Once Sansa’s clear, however, we see Littlefinger’s cruelty shine through. It’s more and worse than the dickishness and juvenile jokes we’ve already seen plenty of.

“Lysa,” Petyr sighed, “after all the storms we’ve suffered, you should trust me better. I swear, I shall never leave your side again, for as long as we both shall live.” 

Littlefinger let Lysa sob against his chest for a moment, then put his hands on her arms and kissed her lightly. “My sweet silly jealous wife,” he said, chuckling. “I’ve only loved one woman, I promise you.” 

Lysa Arryn smiled tremulously. “Only one? Oh, Petyr, do you swear it? Only one?” 

“Only Cat.” He gave her a short, sharp shove.

Was that necessary? No. He was taunting Lysa at first, and then killed her so that she’d know. The only gain he got from those words was Lysa’s pain. The sheer cold-bloodedness of his actions is also a thing to behold. He faked that emotional moment, in front of witnesses, and has a convincing explanation ready to go in seconds.

Lord Petyr pulled Sansa to her feet. “You’re not hurt?” When she shook her head, he said, “Run let my guards in, then. Quick now, there’s no time to lose. This singer’s killed my lady wife.” 

The final lines of this chapter, and the book proper, also emphasise how the balance of power in the Vale changed with that shove. This is the only point in the chapter where Sansa’s internal narration calls him Lord Petyr. They’re his guards now. And Sansa’s being enlisted as his accomplice again.

Chapter Function

Aside from that literal killer reveal?

While the readership recovers from their blown minds, it’s important to remember that this is also an internal reveal. The information didn’t come from Littlefinger and Lysa directly to us the readers, it came to us via Sansa. Sansa was there and she heard every word. This comes after a passage that reminds us in the strongest possible terms that Sansa loves her family and her home.

On top of this, the chapter sets up Sansa’s AFFC material very well. The Lords Declarant and the mountain clans are namechecked right at the start. Plus we see that Littlefinger is genuinely invested in Sansa - not real comforting, given his creeping on her, his assaults, and the part where he makes her an accomplice to murder. He’s not going to let her get killed, but we still have reason to fear for Sansa’s wellbeing in other ways.

Miscellany

We can see the weather’s changing in the south, as Sansa realises that the snow falling on the Eyrie now is heavier than the summer snow she departed Winterfell in.

GRRM lays his godswood symbolism on thick this chapter.

Dawn, she thought. Another day. Another new day. It was the old days she hungered for. Prayed for. But who could she pray to? The garden had been meant for a godswood once, she knew, but the soil was too thin and stony for a weirwood to take root. A godswood without gods, as empty as me. 

The Eyrie is spiritually barren. Sansa, whose religious convictions include a strong impulse to the Old Gods notwithstanding her attachment to the Seven, can never be satisfied here. Nor can she grow in a moral and spiritual sense here.

Unlike show!Sansa, book!Sansa knows at least a few swear words. She uses one when her snow bridges fall apart. Her internal monologue is impeccably courteous even when Sansa is not, simply saying that she “cursed aloud.”

Clothing Porn

Sansa wears silken smallclothes, a linen shift, a blue lambswool dress, two pairs of hose, knee-length leather boots, leather gloves, and a hooded cloak of white fox fur. It’s more to show how much she needs to layer to stay warm than to show off the clothes themselves. 

Lysa wears a blue velvet robe trimmed with fox fur in the first part of the chapter, and changes into a gown of cream velvet with a necklace of sapphires and moonstones for her appointment with the Moon Door.

Food Porn

None.

Next Three Chapters

Catelyn III, ACoK - The Drowned Man, AFFC - Jon IV, ADWD

If there’s a particular chapter you want me to look at, send me an ask and I’ll add it to the list! Anyone got any AGoT or ACoK faves? Other than Cat III next week, I’ve got the ACoK Prologue scheduled six weeks after that, and from there it’s going to be ASoS onwards territory for months.