#thats interesting for me to consider separately but i tend to just. enjoy parallels as parallels

[metanarrates]

its interesting to me that the common sentiment appears to be that han sooyoung intended for jang hayoung to be trans. I think there's room for multiple interpretations, but I view being trans in orv as being inherently tied to the themes of self-actualization, as well as the idea that a narrative is unable to be fully defined by either author or reader. put more simply, jang hayoung is trans regardless of either kim dokja OR han sooyoung's intentions in creating her, or in how they each interpreted her. maybe the version of her in the novel was meant to be something else, but in the reality of this world, she is a trans girl. han sooyoung's intentions kind of don't matter there because the text has moved beyond its author

[alienor-woods]

fwiw (and I'm purposefully not tagging this, so if people wank about it, it's because they came looking for it), since I see a lot of word-twisting and misunderstandings 'round this blue void since I took my fics down, lemme just go on the record and say that I've always loved the idea of Jon x Sansa ending up together in the books. Even after all this nonsense, I would STILL squee and clap my hands if Jon and Sansa end up together in Winterfell. I think it would be very Henry Tudor x Elizabeth of York. I think their narratives have really interesting parallels and track each other in an intriguing way. Sansa goes from being a lady to a bastard; Jon goes from being a bastard to Lord Commander. They both have a ton of death, rebirth, and found-family themes that repeat through their arcs.

What I hated and ultimately led to my waning interest in wider ship interactions was the atrocious demonization of Daenerys and the shrieking and pearl-clutching about Jonerys among my "fellow shippers." I mean, when you get down to it, shipping is about being personally drawn to different relationship paradigms, not about what's actually going to happen in canon. I don't ship SanSan, but that's just because I've never been into the Beauty and the Beast trope. It's my least favorite Disney film, even. The people who love that sort of story love SanSan, and that's cool--I'm genuinely glad they have a vigorous fandom going to explore and engage with that dynamic. I don't ship Petyr x Sansa, just because I personally don't like darkfic or the "descent into the underworld" sort of trope that that Petyr x Sansa tends to implicate. I don't think those people are wrong, and tbh I'm all about people still shipping Petyr x Sansa even tho he's dead! Like, y'all do you. Get deep into some character motivations, you know? I've been known to write bitter, cunning Sansas in my time. It's cathartic, it gets me out of my comfort zone and into the margins of my usual tastes. Same with Jon x Dany. I fuck with it a little bit because it smacks of enemies to lovers,and can also have that epicly tragic star-crossed angsty feel at times, and yeah, SOMETIMES I LIKE LEANING INTO THAT. See also: Kara x Lee on BSG, which was a pairing that I GOT, like, I UNDERSTAND WHAT IT'S DOING, but ultimately Kara x Sam was a ship I was more personally drawn to because it ticked my own particular subjective boxes. It doesn't mean the show's writing was bad. It didn't mean that people who lose their shit over Kara x Lee are ~wrong and ~can't see the beauty of Kara x Sam. It just means that, wow, we're different people with different tastes and -- also -- different takes on characters formed by our own subjective experiences and the stories we all personally enjoy being told.

So, like -- saying "oh this would be a cool ending dynamic for Jon and Sansa and I think it would hit themes A, B, and C of the show" is very different from what the #discourse is in the tag lately, which is, "THIS EVIDENCE **PROVES** THAT MY SHIP IS RIGHT AND THATS ALL THAT MATTERS BECAUSE THIS IS A ZERO-SUM GAME IN A WAR OF RIGHTNESS." THAT I don't fuck with, because it's not the fucking point of shipping and it invites SO MUCH wank from the other ships because it's doing the equivalent of a drive-by mooning, and then being ~shocked when you get a retaliatory drive-by mooning.

So yeah. It's not that I never thought there was any canon basis at all for Jon x Sansa. It's not that I think people are WRONG to point out what they notice. I just hate how canonical information has been fucking weaponized and made un-chill in a ship war which I honestly find hilarious, because there is way more going on in this story than where Jon Snow gets his dick wet. And ultimately?? The stress and anxiety of watching all of it unfurl is what I was shedding and detaching from by taking my fics down. I still consider myself a Jon x Sansa shipper. I just don't consider myself to be IN the ship anymore, and I couldn't achieve that feeling of full separation until I pulled my fics. IF IT AINT SERVING MY HIGHEST AND GREATEST GOOD, IT'S GOTTA GET GONE FROM MY LIFE.