#otp: needlework for northerners

[ourmrsreynolds]

you ever think about how when Arya was slumming it in Flea Bottom all her worldly possessions were stolen from her EXCEPT NEEDLE so she is stripped of every facet of her identity (this is the beginning of her transformation from "Arya Stark” into various assumed aliases) except this one object that signifies home and North and Jon, and how her predicament here foreshadows her resolution, 3 books later, that “the Many-Faced God can have the rest, but He can’t have [Needle]”????

[ourmrsreynolds]

Jon is territorial and jealous and Arya also like that with Gendry. In ASoS Arya V Gendry is approached by his half-sister Bella and she gets so jealous that she remembers it in Arya VIII and tells Gendry to go to Stoney Sept and ring that girl's bells. In Arya V she gets hit on by an old creeper so Gendry pretends he's her brother, and they have a fight over it because she's sibling-zoned and he thinks she thinks he's not worthy to be her brother because he's lowborn. So much incesty melodrama.

Wooooord anon i know we all tend to go on and on about “I want my bride back” but here are my Top 5 Arya being territorial about Jon moments:

5. Edric Dayne: Jon Snow is my milk brother       

Arya: first of all you’re from DORNE second of all who the hell do you think you are claiming Jon as your brother

4. Sansa: Poor Jon he gets jealous because he’s a bastard

Arya: hdu talk about him like that in front of God, the Septa and Princess Myrcella

3. Ned: Where did you get this sword?

Arya:

Arya: it’s actually Godric Gryffindor’s sword

2. Lommy: You probably stole that sword

Arya: Did you just call Jon a thief I WILL FIGHT YOU

1. Lommy: i bet Gendry is that traitor Hand’s bastard

Arya: exCUSE ME my father only had one bastard and his name is Jon Snow and there is no one else like him so you shut your mouth before i shut it for you

[ourmrsreynolds]

when Melisandre said the way to Jon’s heart is through Arya

“We must win the Lord Commander’s trust, and the only way to do that is to save her.”

Jon’s entire adwd arc is about playing his cards too close to his chest, “I have no friends but Ghost,” won’t even sit down to eat with his men, but you know who he will trust? whoever brings his little sister home

[ourmrsreynolds]

Hi there, a fellow jonrya stan here :) I just read through your jonrya meta (it's so good) and I'm curious about your thoughts on GRRM possibly going dark!Jon in the books? I'd love it, a resurrected Jon would not be the same Jon after all. Just think about the endless opportunities of jealous!Jon coming to fuck Ramsay up in Arya's name. Would be totally in character if you asked me.

hiii thanks for dropping by! im always happy to scream about jonrya. i … feel underqualified to answer this ask? i feel like we were cheated out of dark!Jon by the show, a feeling i’m sure 90% of the fandom shares. Jon going full feral to GET HIS BRIDE BACK is a thing i desperately need in my life.

I can’t help but notice that most of my own shitposting/emotional vomiting on this topic has tended to center on Jon and Arya being outsiders growing up, and their unbreakable bond–also that the most popular jonrya fics are for the most part about them hooking up in Winterfell pre-GOT. To be clear I have read and reread all these stories and love them dearly, I’m just pointing out that dark!Jon is an under-theorized topic.

To state the obvious: Arya is really the natural person to help Jon wrestle with the R+L=J revelation, which is going to be a big part of dark!Jon’s demons.

Esther Perel, a Belgian psychotherapist, has this to say about the inherently contradictory demands that our modern ideal of romantic love, ie. your One True Soulmate, places on our partner:

So what sustains desire, and why is it so difficult? And at the heart of sustaining desire in a committed relationship is the reconciliation of two fundamental human needs. On the one hand, our need for security, for predictability, for safety, for dependability, for reliability, for permanence. All these anchoring, grounding experiences of our lives that we call “home”. But we also have an equally strong need—men and women—for adventure, for novelty, for mystery, for risk, for danger, for the unknown, for the unexpected, for surprise, for journey, for travel. […] So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide. Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise.

I mean, that’s ridiculous to expect one person to give you all of that. You should obviously cultivate a lot of quality friendships if you wanna improve your quality of life. That being said, GRRM told us himself that Jon Snow is Arya Stark’s home. If either of them wants safety & permanence they are the first person they’d look to. The significance of dark!Jon is, I think, that he (like Cat, like Beric) is resurrected as a different person, and that supplies the danger/surprise element that’s integral to any relationship. They have to relearn each other (”What would she look like now? Would he even know her?”). I’m always struck by how ADWD!Jon has this totally wrongheaded idea about Arya as a little girl who needs his protection. On one hand I’m here for protective!Jon. Otoh the idea of sending her to Eastwatch so he can pack her off to the Free Cities when she’s literally trying to find her way back to him from the Free Cities!!! I can’t wait for them to reunite and catch up and not spend 90% of it talking about Sansa.

[ourmrsreynolds]

Thanks for your reply! The Children of Hurin was inspired by a Finnish epic called Kalevala and there were two siblings who meet as strangers and it ends tragically. But GRRM is a fan of Lord Byron who loved his half-sister so much that he wrote a poem wishing they were cousins and there's a rumour that he fathered one of her children. GRRM has called Jon a Byronic hero and Arya who he loves so much that he dies for her turns out to be his cousin. So I'll just hope GRRM will let Jonrya be happy.

i googled “jon snow byronic hero” and turned up a tumblr ask “It’s weird that GRRM would call Jon a Byronic hero, when the one woman who truly understood Lord Byron, could penetrate his moodiness and see the more practical side of things, was his half-sister and rumored lover, Augusta Leigh.“ and this was hailed as proof that Jon’s in love with his other sister and i was like ?!!??

meanwhile grrm: Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had … but SHE COULD ALWAYS MAKE JON SMILE. anon you’re right and you should say it.

so the interesting thing about this analysis, other than the long grrm quote that i’m too lazy to source, is that Theon is explicitly held up as Jon’s foil. Jon (and the reader) looks at Theon and thinks “Another outsider in Winterfell – there but for the grace of god go I.” And why, I ask, does Jon end up way more well-adjusted than Theon?? Because he had what Theon never did, someone who loved him unconditionally.

[ourmrsreynolds]

I'm not that anon but I saw your reply and it's so good. I'd like to read more about your Jonrya thoughts but can't think of anything to ask. We know GRRM intended for them to end up together so what do you think people like Jaqen or Gendry meant for Arya?

omg you know i was actually thinking about grrm’s Original Outline/The Waterstones Letter in connection with that quote re: the paradox of romantic love in the previous ask, and I just want to point out that incest is both (1) the literal definition of familiar/safe/known and (2) impossibly taboo/forbidden/dangerous. Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy ~George RR Martin, the og jonrya shipper. I also want to point out that this doesn’t apply to Targaryens who get a collective pass from the rest of Westeros for their incestuous marriages, but this—this specific brand of emotional turmoil that accompanies incest— would apply to Jon and Arya (and not, say, Jon and Dany).

As far as Jaqen goes, there is chemistry there. After all nobody is seriously shipping her with Syrio or Sandor, her other mentor figures! (I mean i’m sure someone is, they’re just aware it’s a crackship). if I think anything about Arya x Jaqen, it’s that there’s too much of the “danger” element and not enough of the “familiarity” element that makes relationships work. Arya is all about “pack”; how does Jaqen fit into hers?

As far as Gendry goes, there is chemistry and camaraderie and they’re a great team. I consider Gendrya and Jonrya to be kindred ships. Her childhood closeness with Jon inflected a lot of her views on class differences. She would not i think have been Arya Underfoot in an AU where Jon was not raised at Winterfell. Jon is obviously not as hardcore “fuck the police” as Gendry is, but he shares a commitment to justice and protecting the weak. Bc Jon is in a leadership position and Gendry is not, he has to make a lot of compromises that the latter doesn’t, but I think about the lengths he went to to save Mance’s son from Melisandre’s flames, and yes it means Gilly’s son will be raised an orphan but tbh there was no other way. Nobody held a gun to Jon’s head and forced him to befriend bully-magnet Sam! Nobody made Gendry take on Biter, or go back to that Inn to protect those orphans! It’s pretty clear to me why Arya Stark loves BOTH her bastards. if we’re going by book canon Gendry finishes her sentences with her, just like Jon used to. he sees her & and understands her, and he doesn’t try to change her (take that, Mom + Septa Mordane!). If it’s show canon he CUSTOM FORGED HER A WEAPON that went on to be super important to her survival??? (i’m in the middle of a reread rn and the number of times the plot of an Arya chapter is propelled by Needle is honestly astounding). i don’t think it’s a controversial statement to say that Jon has always come first in Arya’s heart, and in the event she ends up with Gendry, Jon’s place will be diminished but he’ll still be hella important to her. Arya’s “I can be your family” overture is so telling because she’s inviting Gendry to be part of her pack. That’s the way she sees romantic relationships, as a subset of pack-formation. Jon’s already part of her pack, and the significance of Gendry, from my admittedly biased perspective, is how well he fits into her existing pack. I’ve told this story before but I was once reading a modern au on ffn where because of ffn’s wonky tagging system i couldn’t figure out if the fic was Jonrya or Gendrya lmao and IT DIDNT MATTER and i think that tells you everything you need to know about Gendrya and Jonrya. (fyi i’ve linked to the ao3 version and yes it’s gendrya but it’s by MannixMind who is an A+ Jonrya author and the fic is 19k and unfinished)

[ourmrsreynolds]

Amazing meta as always! GRRM might make Jonrya meet as strangers. How? Braavos has a 10 day unmaskening ceremony and Jonathan Roberts (a mapmaker) got Arya's chapters in 2012 and drew 10 detailed buildings sketched by GRRM in Braavos so there'll be a lot. Arya, or another PoV like Jon who can join Justin Massey (sent to Braavos by Stannis). In Varamyr Sixskins' chapter we learn that wargs can sense each other. So if Jon gets a ruby by Melisandre he'll be disguised, and Arya wearing another face?

If my ask was confusing, in Theon’s TWoW preview chapter Stannis sends Justin Massey to Castle Black (bringing Asha and fake Arya with him) and also tells him to go to Braavos with Tycho Nestoris. So there will be a ship sailing to Braavos from the Wall and Jon can join them. Jon sent Sam there, and made a deal with the Iron Bank and thought of sending fake Arya there so he has thought of Braavos a lot. Melisandre’s rubies have disguised people like Mance and Rattleshirt so she can give Jon one.    

Awww anon tysm for the compliment!

Ok this is fascinating but I am less interested in the plot machinations that would result in Jon and Arya meeting in Braavos and more interested in the possibilities of them meeting as STRANGERS??? can you IMAGINE. Jon and Arya fit pretty comfortably into the childhood sweethearts trope, and idk about you but i spend a lot of time crying about The Princess Bride and how Westley had to go away and become a PIRATE and come back a MASKED STRANGER for her to FINALLY see the adoration he always had for her??? i think when you are comfortable with each other the way Jon&Arya are, there has to be an inciting incident that forces you to see the other person as an object of sexual desire and a potential partner instead of just the guy/gal you grew up with. IMAGINE a Regency AU where they run into each other at a masquerade ball!!! i feel like this trope is at its most powerful when one party knows the other’s identity but not vice versa, you get me??

one of my favorite books is a middle grade fantasy called The Seer and the Sword where you get pretty much the exact scenario from The Princess Bride, childhood sweethearts separated for many years, the villain wants the princess dead and Our Hero, who has returned from exile a Master Assassin/Swordsman/Potions Master, has to kidnap/rescue her and the whole time she has NO IDEA it’s him. i feel like this is in line with a lot of fanon where Arya Faceless shows up in Westeros and at first Jon doesn’t know it’s her

There is also a more tragic archetype here. It’s been years since I read JRR Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin so i had to look at wikipedia’s plot summary but it’s just as tragic as i remember. Túrin Turambar accidentally marries his amnesiac sister and knocks her up because Prophecy and also their whole House is Cursed. It doesn’t end well. :(

[ourmrsreynolds]

You mentioned popular jonrya fics in your last ask and I was wondering if you had any more popular jonrya fic recs because I'm out of stuff to read (and I've already been through @jonryatrash's starter pack) :(

i know the feeling of having gone through all the fic and wanting more, so i feel you! you can check out here where i reblogged @jonryatrash‘s excellent starter pack and added a few of my favorites, with commentary. Since i’m sure you’re as capable of using AO3′s search function as I am, the value* in fic recs is not so much “here is a list of fics” as “here is why i, a specific person with specific tastes, liked these particular fics.” for instance, i’m super partial to Outsider POVs so have some outsider povs:

[*if it’s a big ship that’s a different situation, there’s probably a lot of content you’d miss without recourse to reclists, but we are not a big ship lol]

as bastards do by @circe1fanatic (11k, complete) wherein Cat dresses for Arya’s wedding as for a funeral. In the back of Catelyn’s mind has always lurked the lowkey possibility that somehow Ned’s bastard will take Winterfell away from her trueborn children, and you can’t blame her for freaking out when all her worst fears come to fruition. She sees Jon as perverting Arya’s devotion to him and seducing her into this marriage; she explicitly contrasts Sansa & Jon’s relationship (not that close) to Arya & Jon (nothing held back). The delicious irony of it is Cat is half the reason Arya and Jon are close in the first place lmao. I mean, I think obviously Cat is trying to give her daughter the tools to survive in a feudal patriarchy where performing femininity is really really important; not every highborn girl who bucks gender standards can expect her brother to love her just the way she is (or to turn out to be her cousin and to marry her). I am on the whole highly sympathetic to Cat. But watching her get everything SO wrong in this fic (she walks in on Arya half-naked in Jon’s bed) i was literally ohohohOHO shoving popcorn in my mouth.

Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things by @laboratorioautoral (3k, oneshot) aka the one where Tyrion comes North on Queen Dany’s orders with a list of unreasonable concessions for King Jon to sign his name to. Tyrion is married to Sansa but he falls for Arya over cyvasse (!!!) yes this is the Love Triangle That Was Promised by GRRM. Tyrion’s no fool, he see show it is between Arya and Jon, and what I like about this story is that it’s ambiguous whether (1) Arya and Jon are banging on the DL or (2) Arya and Jon are not banging but really want to (there is a v suggestive forehead kiss). Remember how Jaime said “The Targaryens married brother to sister” and Cersei blew him off with “But we are not Targaryens”? Jon and Arya have had to make the same sort of compromises here; in order to rule the North together, they can’t be together openly and it’s GOOD SHIT. If you like this kind of ambiguous outsider pov do yourself a favor and read this Maxicest fic where Clint and Laura try to figure out what the deal with Pietro and Wanda is [prompt: “Someone (another canon character or an OC) tries to figure out if all the touchy-feeliness is actually weird and inappropriate, or if they’re the one being weird and inappropriate by looking at sibling affection and reading incest into it.”]

Chasing the Winter Sun by starbursts_and_kisses (3k, oneshot) aka the Jon/Sansa arranged marriage in which Sansa is shattered by the revelation that Jon’s in love with someone else, and always will be. Sansa’s got low standards partnerwise (see: Joffrey, Tyrion, Sandor, Petyr – not to say she wasn’t attracted to any of them, but she experienced mistreatment at their hands) and if there’s one thing Jon won’t do it’s mistreat her. It strikes me that Jon and Sansa are both introverts. They muddle along until Arya comes home. The Jonrya reunion is epic, and Jon’s smiles actually touch his eyes. Arya, as well all know, is not an introvert. Arya and Jon spend all their time together. They go riding a lot, and they spar in the training yard and laugh at secret jokes. Sansa finds herself sidelined in her own household. When she finally summons the courage to confront Jon about it, it’s because she sees him MUSSING ARYA’S HAIR. i love it bc it’s (1) the iconic Jonrya interaction and (2) completely innocuous, there’s nothing inherently sexual about touching your sister’s hair and Jon must have done it thousands of times when they were growing up but the second Sansa sees it she just knows. akdjfdkfjdkfd

Thanks for the ask, this was so much fun! I think if everyone’s ok with it (i kinda feel bad about clogging up our tag, it’s a pretty slow moving tag) i’ll just keep posting fic recs/squee on a semi-regular basis

[ourmrsreynolds]

Something that isn't talked enough about is the fact that ADwD should've been right after ASoS but was split in two, AFfC and ADwD, so a lot of PoVs weren't in AFfC including Jon who was moved to ADwD. This means Jon's thoughts and doubts of Arya being his sister would've been followed by Jon's thoughts of Arya as a bride. And Arya herself thinks about a change in how Jon should call her in ASoS, when she's not so little anymore. We know Jon's thoughts and it's "his bride, his bride, his bride".

Yooooooo i’m doing a FeastDance reread based on boiledleather’s combined reading order and i’m only 1/3 of the way in so i have very few thoughts, mostly of the “look at my bbs they are so lonely!!!” variety

sometimes i think about all the braime shippers and how they write barrels full of AFFC meta based on jaime and brienne who do not cross paths the entire book but whose thoughts unfailingly bend toward each other and i am—

[ourmrsreynolds]

concept: four times arya came home to jon and one time she didn’t

i. yoren

ii. sandor

iii. nymeria

iv. samwell

v. i cry

[ourmrsreynolds]

i was thinking about how on point this post is because Arya “Extrovert” Stark needs friends like she needs air:

what good had friends done her? I don’t need any friends, so long as I have Needle ~Arya I, AFFC

Incomplete list of friends she misses in this chapter:

“Jaqen hadn’t truly been her friend”

“the way Syrio had”

“she was back in Harrenhal with Gendry, maybe”

“or with the Hound in the woods along the Trident”

but this passage isn’t JUST about how she’s in denial about her pro-sociality (which she is! this is the chapter where she begins to think of herself as “the lone wolf” - Arya Stark, for whom pack is paramount). it’s about how even when she’s deadass convinced her friends have all left her, and she’s vulnerable and alone, at least she still has this artifact that her favorite person in the world had forged specifically for her. She may have nothing else but at least she still has Needle; at least there is one person alive whose love and acceptance she never has cause to doubt. Jon will want me, even if no one else does.

[ourmrsreynolds]

The best solution he could see would mean dispatching her to Eastwatch and asking Cotter Pyke to put her on a ship to someplace across the sea, beyond the reach of all these quarrelsome kings. It would need to wait until the ships returned from Hardhome, to be sure. She could return to Braavos with Tycho Nestoris. Perhaps the Iron Bank could help find some noble family to foster her. Braavos was the nearest of the Free Cities [...] All of this planning, if only Jon knew Arya was already there :(

This quote is EVERYTHING, is anyone else getting Simon/River vibes from it? Simon Tam’s mission in life, not unlike Jon Snow’s, is to protect his sister. He gives up a brilliant career in order to break into a CIA black site to rescue said sister, knowing that this means he will never be on the right side of the law again. The Firefly line that still kills me dead three rewatches later is: “You gave up everything you had to find me. You found me broken.” “Mei-mei. Everything I have is right here.” Asfkdjfdkfjdkfd and the clincher is Mei-Mei means ... little sister.

So the specific reason the ADWD quote above is giving me Simon/River vibes--I mean in general Jon/Arya always give me Simon/River vibes bc Simon adores River and she worships him-- is the iconic scene in Serenity (2005) where she flips the script and goes full Kill Bill on the reavers who are trying to murder her brother & everyone else she loves. And I know--I know guys I know Arya is more than an assassin, more than a sword, but damn if it’s not a powerful moment because Simon’s role has always been River’s protector you know? She’s broken, she’s vulnerable, she needs him. And for her to subvert his expectations and the audience’s and be the one to save him!!! Jon’s still thinking of Arya here as a little girl in need of his protection. Any whiff of danger to Arya immediately kicks his overprotective big brother instincts into overdrive, and yet we know that when he and Arya are reunited it’s far more likely she’ll rescue him than the other way around, and I call that poetic.

[ourmrsreynolds]

Hi, I’m wondering if you could answer my query. In the chapter Theon II of ACoK, he meets Asha after a decade, enough for her physical appearance to have changed & within a few minutes is attracted to her. Asha is somewhat similar to Arya IMO. We know that Theon’s a foil for Jon, based on this can it be reasonably predicted that Jon will be attracted to Arya almost immediately after they reunite even though he would know it is her?

I think Theon is indeed a foil for Jon, but I think we need to look at why he gets a hard-on for Asha in ACOK. It boils down to Asha doing an impressively believable rendition of a Cool Girl. This is the definition of the Cool Girl, courtesy of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl:

Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Here you have Asha who plies him with compliments and isn’t at all clingy, in stark contrast to the captain’s daughter (the one who was sucking him off in the previous Theon chapter) who actually has the temerity to beg him to take her for a salt wife in full view of the whole harbor!!! She’s weepy and needy and no fun at all. Asha otoh gently draws him out on his plans for the Iron Islands once he inherits the Seastone Chair, being sure to stop and praise his boldness and his vision every step of the way. So the point of the barely averted incest between Theon and Asha isn’t that you can be attracted to your sister after a lengthy separation, it’s that Theon doesn’t know Asha and never did. Asha of course is an attractive woman, and Arya will be too, and they both defy their society’s expectation for their gender, so I’m not saying there aren’t similarities them; just that Jon’s attraction to Arya would have an entirely different basis from Theon’s attraction to Asha, which was based on her stoking his ego. (Side note it breaks my heart that Asha asks him to return to Deepwood Motte “for the sake of the mother who bore us both,” and then when she gets back to Harlaw the first words out of her mom’s mouth are “Did you bring my baby boy” and Asha’s like “Theon couldn’t come” bc she’s trying to spare her mom the  the truth, and there’s so much guilt laced with her relationship with Theon you know? She feels guilty for not saving him from his own foolishness. She feels guilty for letting her mom down.)

ANYWAY what I actually want to talk about is what Theon being a foil for Jon means for Jon/Arya. Theon and Jon were both outsiders in Winterfell at the outset of AGOT; by the time ADWD rolls around Theon’s plot revolves around a bastard, a ghost, and a girl who is not Arya. “Roose is not pleased. Tell your bastard that,” Lady Dustin says, and putting aside why we are playing telephone (could Roose not have spoken to his own son himself?? they’re snowed in & they literally can’t leave the castle!) the way she says it implies Ramsay belongs to Theon and Theon to Ramsay. This is the chapter where Theon’s internal monologue repeats There are ghosts in Winterfell and I am one of them not once but twice. In the selfSAME chapter (Theon V “The Turncloak”). YOU KNOW WHO ELSE HAS A WOLF NAMED GHOST??? Also in this chapter: Theon corrects someone that “Lady Arya is not my sister.” Man, Barbrey Dustin is the the gift that just keeps on giving lol.

In conclusion: Theon’s identity is bound up with a bastard’s; Theon’s identity is implied to be a  GHOST or revenant; Theon is insistent f!Arya is not his sister. Then the coup de grace: Theon finds himself wandering in the godswood. Why? He’s not sure: “These are not my gods.” But you know who also rode two hours to a godswood so some recruits could say the words in front of a weirwood tree two chapters ago? Jon motherfucking Snow, that’s who. I mean, the parallels are astounding. Theon is thematically a stand-in for Jon in this chapter, and you will not convince me any different. And what is the overarching purpose of this chapter? Again, this is Theon V ADWD “The Turncloak.” Shoutout to my main bitch Barbrey Dustin who comes right out and says it: The North is rising for “valiant Ned’s precious little girl.” TELL ME AGAIN how Jon and Arya are not the most important people in each other’s lives

[ourmrsreynolds]

It’s 2019 and I’m still thinking about how Arya literally could not shut up about Jon when she found out Yoren was a black brother??? She’s all “has he made ranger yet” and doesn’t even give Yoren a chance to respond:

”Do you know my brothers?" she asked excitedly. "Robb and Bran are at Winterfell, and Jon's on the Wall. Jon Snow, he's in the Night's Watch too, you must know him, he has a direwolf, a white one with red eyes. Is Jon a ranger yet? I'm Arya Stark." The old man in his smelly black clothes was looking at her oddly, but Arya could not seem to stop talking. "When you ride back to the Wall, would you bring Jon a letter if I wrote one?" She wished Jon were here right now. He'd believe her about the dungeons and the fat man with the forked beard and the wizard in the steel cap.

she doesn’t even draw breath to introduce herself until after she’s given Yoren a detailed rundown of Jon, his wolf, and his desire to be a ranger

so many unsent letters Arya has composed to Jon in her head. i cry a lot about the one where she found out about Wylla.

her certainty that Jon would believe her just underscores the fact that nobody else does -- not about Illyrio and Varys plotting in the dungeon, not in general. her isolation and loneliness in KL is ghastly to behold. “Her bedchamber was the only place that Arya liked in all of King’s Landing, and the thing she liked best about it was the door.” What. On. Earth. This is Arya Underfoot, Arya “Extrovert” Stark, Arya who makes friends with everybody. She’s lonely and homesick and I just wanna give her a big hug.

the foolproof subject that can always get her going is JON

[ourmrsreynolds]

Jon, Arya and the Childhood BFF to Lovers Trope: Or, why everyone ships J0nsa

I had an argument with my sister which was precipitated by her quipping “nobody likes childhood BFFs” and “hot new guy is always endgame.” I almost flipped a table. I sat there and I seethed for 30 seconds and then I texted her back PIRATES OF THE MOTHERFUCKING CARIBBEAN and I gotta say I was p pleased with myself because yes, Elizabeth and Will end up together even though Jack Sparrow exists and is indisputably hot.

My sister and I are reading Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. This is a story that sets out to deconstruct the trope of “It was always gonna be you and me,” and while my sister can crow all day about how Hot New Guy Gets the Girl, I want to examine why it makes thematic and structural sense for that to be endgame. I think it comes down to the protagonist, who seldom ventures out of her comfort zone and has trouble letting herself want things. The combination of extremely deep feeling and almost pathological constraint is what makes her story so compelling—because in the course of the novel she learns to unabashedly want things, to reach out and take them: and what she wants is the sardonic lacrosse-playing jock, not the Boy Next Door she’s had a crush on since forever. One of the running gags in the background is her nine-year-old little sister inventing increasingly far-fetched reasons she should be allowed to have a puppy, because the kid “knows what she wants and will do anything it takes to get it.” The contrast with hyper-repressed Main Character could not be more pronounced. I ask you, who does Main Character remind you of? Not Arya, for a surety. This is one thousand percent Sansa.

After the finale aired Jenny Han and some other YA authors were dragged on twitter for openly shipping J0nsa, which, I mean (a) it was more “ugh fan fiction” and “ew incest” and “think of the children!!1!” than anything specific to J0nsa (b) of course she ships J0nsa. Of fucking COURSE. J0nsa is not a childhood BFFs ship, because the whole point is that Sansa’s character development leads her to see Jon in a new light. It’s above all about Sansa’s arc and the scales falling from Sansa’s eyes and there isn’t room for someone who has always seen the value in Jon, who has always loved him best. Because that would not be sufficiently Pride & Prejudice-y. Allow me to remind everyone that Pride & Prejudice is (1) the ur-Romance novel and (2) about people changing their minds and revising their initial judgments. Ffs it was originally titled “First Impressions.” This is the dominant narrative wrt romantic love, then—that one must fall in love, that it must be accompanied by major character development and reevaluation of preconceptions. This is the appeal of Enemies-to-Lovers.

Listen, I don’t ship a pairing because I think it’s endgame; I ship it because I think it’s interesting. What I’m trying to do here is formulate a theory as to why so many people find Jon & Sansa’s dynamic interesting, as compared to the small handful of us who find Jon & Arya’s dynamic interesting. I’m not engaging with the people who are anti-incest on principle (if you’re not into incest this is maybe not the fandom for you). I think it has a lot to do with the sort of romantic stories we elevate and validate. Gendrya is a wildly popular ship, and it falls very much in the Childhood BFFs mold, but I think we can all agree that Gendry & Arya are not a finished product—they have a lot of stuff to work on, and what shippers are interested in is the process of them hammering it out. Jon and Arya though? They’re already president of each other’s fan clubs, where’s the tension or drama in that? The obstacles to their relationship are external and plot-driven rather than internal and character-driven. And I say unto you: This is Arya’s creation myth: Before there was anything, there was Jon. That’s it that’s my kink that’s the kind of all-encompassing bond I’m about. The absolute trust they repose in each other gives me LIFE. I’ve seen some J0nsas parry the “she’s not even his favorite sister” argument with “because she’s his wife not his sister” and like ... ok valid ig but the whole reason I’m interested in Jon/Arya is because they set no boundaries on their love?? They are each other’s e v e r y t h i n g. I mean if you want to read about two strangers fumbling their way towards feelings that’s fine but do not pretend to me that J0nsa is some kind of underdog ship. It’s the most basic of ships -- it’s a Pride & Prejudice ship. (Gendrya otoh is Persuasion, which is the best Austen novel don’t @ me.) For in-universe reasons why J0nsa undercuts Jon and Arya’s unconditional love this is a great post, but I’m going to stick to the meta reasons people ship what they ship.

Here is the thing I will die mad about: Everybody takes childhood BFFs for this hegemonic trope and wouldn’t it be so eDgY to subvert it by making her fall for a HANDSOME STRANGER instead. Jfc have you seen the biggest young adult franchises of the past decade? They are: Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Mortal Instruments. Spoiler alert none of the heroines end up with their childhood bffs. I know the love triangle is hardly the point of The Hunger Games but facts are facts. It’s been 150 years and the Little Women fandom is still generating twice as much Jo/Laurie fic as Jo/Bhaer fic because Louisa May Alcott did Jo March dirty by not letting her marry the man she clearly belonged with. I just think the idea of there being someone you belong with, always have and always will, is ultimate #goals and this is the hill i will die on.

I look at Sansa and Arya’s starting points, when it comes to Jon, and however their arcs resolve in the end I cannot imagine how you could retcon J0nsa into some kind of lifelong attachment?? Here is Sansa in the wake of Lysa’s death, mulling her options:

there was nowhere for her to go. Winterfell was burned and desolate, Bran and Rickon dead and cold. Robb had been betrayed and murdered at the Twins, along with their lady mother. Tyrion had been put to death for killing Joffrey, and if she ever returned to King’s Landing the queen would have her head as well. The aunt she’d hoped would keep her safe had tried to murder her instead. Her uncle Edmure was a captive of the Freys, while her great-uncle the Blackfish was under siege at Riverrun. I have no place but here, Sansa thought miserably.

She lists Tyrion among her potential refuges, without once mentioning Jon! TYRION. Unreal. Even Brienne weighs the possibility of Sansa going North to Jon, and Brienne has literally never even met Sansa:

though all her siblings had been slain, Brienne knew that Sansa still had an uncle and a bastard half brother on the Wall

In case anyone requires reminding, Arya takes every possible opportunity to suggest “hey we could go to the Wall instead of wherever we’re going!”:

"I know where we could go," Arya said. She still had one brother left. Jon will want me, even if no one else does.

Maybe I should go to the Wall instead of Riverrun. Jon wouldn't care who I killed or whether I brushed my hair

One of these girls has been trying to get back to Jon for going on four books now. The other one thinks about Jon Arryn more times in her POVs than she thinks about Jon Snow (18 Arryns out of 27 total hits for “Jon” in all Sansa chapters). I’m not saying Sansa hasn’t grown and changed, or that her reunion with Jon might not evolve into something interesting; it’s just not a dynamic I personally care about. I’m definitely not saying that authors deserve to be publicly shamed for shipping fictional characters, but I think an author’s shipping preferences are revealing and shed light on their choices as far as which stories they choose to tell. I’m saying I ship Jon/Arya and I accept it’s not the ship dynamic that appeals to most people but here I am.

[ourmrsreynolds]

jonrya fic recs: modern aus 1/∞

if anyone is not already following @jonryafics for fic recs you should be, hasn’t been updated in awhile but it’s a great resource. also, here is the jonrya masterlist on livejournal, a little out of date but i know @hermiione is planning to go through and update when she gets a chance.

ain’t nothing better than a modern au. except ice cream for breakfast. what i like about modern aus is they offer the opportunity for an extended absence (Jon goes to university, or joins the army) followed by a heartwarming reunion. sometimes they’re siblings sometimes they’re cousins (Catelyn’s treatment of Jon makes a lot less sense without feudalism), sometimes they’re besties or Jon is Robb’s bff, but the point is, they are each other’s emotional beacon and anchor.

Forever and a Day by Sapphire_Blue (2k, incomplete) | When Robb and Jon arrive home for the holidays, Arya flies to Jon like an arrow. Robb is like I’M RIGHT HERE but he’s not really mad about it, even if he can’t resist ribbing them: “As he hugs Sansa, he smiles smugly at Jon and Arya, "At least Sansa loves her big brother." This story navigates that weird transition between “ok this is not news i’ve always loved her best” and the dizzying realization “i also desire her above anyone else.” | He remembers a time when they could stay up all night talking and laughing and he wonders when everything got so bloody complicated.

Feels Like Home by ariannenymerosmartell (2k, oneshot) | "We shouldn’t ever be apart. My vocal chords can’t handle it …I missed you more than anyone," he says solemnly, and she feels her heart stutter. It’s worse than when Gendry looks at her and tells her she’s beautiful. It’s worse than when Jaqen calls her lovely. It’s a sharp, acute ache, and it’s worse, so much worse than anything she’s ever felt before. | exactly!!! it isn’t like she’s a monk or doesn’t have feelings for other people; it’s just that Jon comes first in her heart, always has always will. in this story they’re about to have sex but Jon makes her sleep on it until she’s sure, and if that isn’t the most on-brand thing that Jon “What do you know of my sister? What do you know of my heart” Snow has ever done in his entire life lmao.

shuffle, play, repeat by nefertiti (10k, drabble collection) | “When you’re at school and you won’t see me every day and pretty girls start batting their camel lashes at you, you won’t forget me will you?” and then he reassures her on this head nope don’t worry you’ll ALWAYS BE MY FAVORITE GIRL and i am here for it. other things i’m here for:

Arya wearing Jon’s clothes

Something is Wrong. the first possibility to occur to Jon: “if she was pregnant or running off to join the army or becoming a trapeze artist”

Arya and Gendry break up on account of she can’t give him all of her heart, she already gave it away without realizing it whoops