#also to go back to them not being the great gnc rep ppl think they are…. the transmisogynistic ash joke was literally kicked off by them

[vaugarde]

yeah fully agreed on how they have their bad moments even during the series where theyre at their best but the tumblr users that love team rocket despite not watching the show since they were kids would crucify me for saying they were bad during the earlier series too LMAO

HDHDHDHDHDHDHFHDFFUDJDUDD NO UR RIGHT…. i think its easier to forgive those earlier moments bc tbf, they fix my indigo league criticism by johto bc i think they instantly get put on stand duty. (also there were several reasons that league was total ass for the most part and most of it comes down to “its the first one”) i think their behavior during the kanto league was too much even for their most diehard fans at the time. but boy does it get harder and harder and harder to like them the more that happens bc that overall issue of TR hogging really took a while to die. even after they stopped being a requirement for each episode it was a straight up plague in XY

[janiedean]

@seethemflying I think Sansa is in the next bracket down of important characters (with Jaime). In the outline, they weren't named as one of the big five, but in the process of writing have grown more important. No way is Sansa's ending going to be anything like Show Sansa's, though (and same with Jaime tbh).

agreed but lemme take a second from cramming to rant about this because I honestly have An Issue

in the sense: I 100% agree that both jaime and sansa are next bracket/secondary main (speaking as someone whose top five is made by ppl who are either secondary main or tertiary main if they have a pov like.... I'm not gonna argue that theon is a main fiver bc he's in my top three) but like what I can't deal with is the following as in that the main five are the main five bc they have in between them all the main themes george wants to tackle + the main plot stuff except for the 'romance is my #1 sense of existing in the plot', as in:

jon is azor ahai + has the chosen one deconstruction trope going on + most likely has the 'I never wanted to be Important™/have a throne but I'll have to for duty' ending + identity arc ie if he's not jon snow first of his name i'm eating my hat

dany has the dragons + the targ ancestry deal + 'I thought I wanted to rule but actually I don't I just want to help ppl' storyline (which is the hill i'm dying on)

bran has the oH WAIT fisher king deconstruction going on + the magic™ storyline + he's most likely kitn + he's tied to uh the literal rebirth of the continent so + how to deal with disability storyline

arya has the I NEED TO REALIZE WHO I AM storyline + the learning to be yourself as a gnc woman storyline + revenge is shit storyline + I'll become a skilled assassin and choose not to act on it unless absolutely necessary storyline + trauma/ptsd storyline tied to losing your own identity

tyrion has the shakesperean hero thing going on as in I have to make peace with the fact that I killed my father/did mistakes + overcoming the societal issues/problems/the prejudice most ppl have for him that’s caused by his disability storyline + he's the only one of these five who doesn't have any magical stuff in his background/only has his brain to rely on + overcoming his family's legacy and making it better storyline

now: a bunch of other minor/secondary characters have all of this (I mean idk theon and jaime have identity + learning to deal with/overcoming societal scorn given by them being disabled/having become disabled in various ways + ptsd, brienne has the gnc woman thing etc) but like each single one of these characters only lacks the OH I HAVE A BIGASS GREAT ROMANCE WITH MY BACKGROUND (I mean gendry exists to be arya's LI but idt it's gonna be important in her future storyline the way it'll be in brienne's to say one).. which oh wait SANSA JAIME AND BRIENNE HAVE, because guess what that's the next secondary bracket where those three characters have it as a main part of the story which is exempt from the politics angle (bc none of them is tied to the iron trap by the plot no none of them jaime doesn't want it, brienne isn't a contender and sansa was supposed to be queen in the beginning so she's obviously not going to be that later no not even qitn that's gonna be bran) and here falls the entire shebang because what half of this fandom doesn't seem to get is that *drumroll* george's favorite angle to tackle when it comes to romance is... THAT EXTERNAL BEAUTY IS NOT WHAT YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING AT IN PEOPLE AT THE END OF IT AND GUESS WHAT THAT'S THE MAIN POINT OF ALL OF THEM PLUS THE KNIGHTHOOD DECONSTRUCTION THING and with that I mean:

not counting that sansa's reaction to trauma is written to be specular and opposite to arya's as in arya tends to lose sight of herself/becomes someone else/resorts to violence to survive sansa never loses track of herself/her innate kindness which... is smth I wish dnd remembered, the thing is: sansa is presented in the beginning as 'i'm a twelve year old with all the issues with shallowness a 12yo brought up like me can have and everything I want from life is a good love story', which... guess what she's 100% going to get except

characters need to have an evolution, if sansa wants a handsome pretty guy who'll make her queen in the beginning and she has to realize joffrey was The Worst, do we really think her endgame is being queen of a handsome nice king when her entire schtick is liking songs about knights and wanting true love and someone gentle and brave blah blah? no, and that's exceedingly obvious when the text throws at you in the face that her only two actually viable choices for LI - sandor and tyrion - are.. guys who are either disfigured or disabled or traumatized or all three of them but are actually good people and she has to learn to see beyond looks, and no one else fits that bill period - sansa isn't getting with a pretty guy who'll make her queen, sansa will find love with a guy who's nowhere near pretty or handsome but will love her for who she is and that she will see the good behind the not-handsomeness dot and she'll prob go back north with him and be happy advising bran bc she learned stuff in court at most and I'm dying on that hill, bc again the entire point of her sl is having the nice good love story where she sees beyond external beauty which has been clear from page five of her first pov imvho

never mind that again she wants to be a queen in the beginning and then she realizes it's shit so why would she be one in the end? like not to be that asshole but george isn't exactly pro monarchy and it's obvious he's not going to paint it as an inherently positive thing

this attaches back to the fact that there's a whole knighthood deconstruction happening for which sansa has to realize that the gallant/true knights are not the ones who seem that/look like it/flaunt it around

which brings us to the fact that oh wait sandor and jaime in themselves are true knights in spite of the fact that sandor refuses to even consider himself one and jaime thinks he fucked it up and no one sees them as such

and that the truest knight in westeros who will get recognized as such is brienne

who doesn't look standard hot either

and has the love story with jaime right on page

and jaime also has the love story right on page where he has to realize he's into people that aren't c. especially brienne and so on which is what's happening right now like jb recognizing themselves as true knights™ is part of their whole thing like... it's... important

(this counting that san/san is beauty and the beast played straight with sansa as the beauty while jb is the same trope except reversed on itself five times because both j and b are both of them)

and this would also like make utter sense if oh, wait, jb weren't in the riverlands where sandor also is and if oh wait who has sworn a vow to find sansa like again I'm dying on the hill that brienne kills stoneheart, they go on the quiet isle to recover, sandor is like AH YOU'RE LOOKING FOR SANSA and sansa gets rescued in the vale by the only three true knights in these series including the one that's her actual love interest at least the way I see it and where do you think that's going to end yeah exactly

as in: she'll have the umpteenth proof that all the true knights in these books don't look like the songs and she'll get the one she wanted

(also brienne is way more like sansa than arya in personality so like... parallelism of two girls into romantic stuff getting with the guys they like? except that for b. it's relevant bc she's ugly and she gets with hot guy who's into her and for s. it's relevant bc she's hot and she goes with guy-everyone-considers-a-lost-cause showing that they're not exactly a lost cause)

like sansa is there to a) have half of the main love story plot b) as the resident song expert witness what knighthood actually means, jaime is the resident person doing things for love and finding ways to do it that aren't toxic/finds someone who'll actually love him and not what he represents, brienne is the resident 'I never thought anyone would be into me and I'm pursuing my dreams without a shred of hope they'll go well' and she gets all of that and sandor is there to be sansa's LI and to tell ppl that you can go to rehab and have a decent life even if you were used and abused to hell and back (jaime too tbh) and like none of that has to do with the iron trap, the magic, the zombies and whatnot but it's okay because it's their point in the plot and is2g I just wish people would take characters for what they represent instead of shoehorning them into others's themes/stories just because it's what they want for them, the end

(I could rant about the third bracket of characters ie theon & co & getting over trauma/ptsd without the Love Story™ but I have to get back to study if I wanna fill some prompts later so it's not gonna happen for now but... sorry for the rant I'm just really tired of the whole sansastark will get the iron trap and the north and be the ymbq and get with a guy that looks good for her depending on what we ship not considering the overall reaching plot or her book plot and everyone else will have zero relevance in the story because we said so especially when it means giving all of that to a character who is uh not belonging to any of the categories represented by the main five which are actually kiiindaaaa relevant rep but I'mma just gonna shut up here)