#anti SanSan

[catofoldstones]

Sansa Stark whenever the psycho bitch who killed her father or the next top contenders for Westeros’ most traumatised unaware pedophiles try to info dump & project their secrets/plans/opinions on her

[atopvisenyashill]

Who are Sansa’s potential contenders in your opinion?

i’ve talked about this before but i’d love to talk about it again lmao. i think the potential romantic endgame contenders are (in order of most to least likely) jon, brienne, theon, and podrick (there’s a wide gap between theon and podrick) and i use the term romantic like……i mean a little loosely. i’m gonna explain my criteria a bit.

sansa’s suitors must be

within a decade of her age

someone who has, when they meet her, a claim to a seat powerful enough to at least be in the same ballpark as the Starks

someone who would be willing to relocate to winterfell or near winterfell

someone who won't feel threatened by her title

shares her romantic sensibilities

someone whose identity subverts the typical Westerosi idea of what a True Knight and a Proper Husband is

someone who is actively trying and at least partially succeeding at being a good person, but specifically someone who has themes associated with what she desires - a True Knight and Hero From A Song

so let’s explain.

firstly, when we’re talking “potential contenders” i think everyone is picturing something slightly different. i’m talking about like. the relationship that will be one of the focal points of her story going forward, the relationship that will mean the most to her bc it fulfills her dreams while matching her growth and maturity, the relationship her story is building towards her meeting. i think there’s a lot of,,,idk confrontations on the horizon. theon hearing bran in the trees. dany’s nightmare about (probably) euron. everyone and their mother hearing wolves howling in the distance. half these characters are like on a boat, on a dragon, on a walk in the woods, literally on the way to meet someone when we leave them in feastdance and sansa is no exception to this - the Themes Are Coming For Her.

i think there’s been a build up over sansa’s story that she is going to meet The Hero Of Her Dreams, but they will not fit the typical mold of a hero. They will help empower her, protecting her physically while she protects them politically. There will be genuine love, and dedication. A bond to rival Naerys & Aemon, Florian & Jonquil, a person who will love her until the end of her days…a person who is also going to be helpful when it comes to her new role as The Stark In Winterfell. this means a) the line of succession will be dealt with in a practical manner and not swept under the rug and b) someone who likely has some sort of background in either politics or battle.

Maybe it’s a contradiction to say this relationship can be romantic and satisfying to read while also saying there's a chance it will be “subtext” but…I just think, looking at his inspirations being soooo focused on things like courtly love, chivalry, that a spin that involves Sansa feeling a deep affection for a Knight protecting her, with no men around (but again, crucially, having discussed how the hell she’s going to have kids, with a partner who will not shy away from a frank discussion like that) is still a satisfying "romantic" arc. Yes i am saying this is how I have my cake and eat it too, where Braime fucks and then Jaime dies, then Brienne stays in the North with a conveniently (publicly) single Sansa who leans on her for comfort. This is my meta and we're never getting the winds of winter to disprove it, but also I'm thinking specifically of the focus on rumors surrounding the sexualities of a lot of characters in F&B - Alyn and Addam Velaryon, Rhaenyra Targaryen, Laenor and Laena Velaryon, Rhaena the Black Bride, to name just a few very obvious ones - as well as the repeated princess and knight dynamic that follows both Sansa (with Dontos and Sandor) as well as is present in F&B (Rhaenyra & Harwin, Rhaenyra & Criston, Alysanne & Jonquil Darke, Aegon & Visenya imo also fits this) that this dynamic can be romantic but also not explicitly stated to be a sexual or romantic relationship. MOVING ON.

I think it’s actually most likely that Briensa and Jeynsa that are winning the “so which one is actually gonna go canon” war bc they’ll be single, in the same place, and clearly devoted to each other while like, Jon/Theon/Aegon/Sandor/Tyrion/Basically Every Man Shipped With Sansa are miserable and cold or dead elsewhere. (littlefucker isn’t included bc he’s definitely dead 😁). I just need everyone to understand my definition of “goes canon” is so so loose. ANYWAYS. EXPLANATIONS-

within a decade of her age

i am once again saying that every relationship with a huge age gap that starts with one of them below the age of 17 ends badly and the reason is bc george is not a pervy moron, he is actually writing about the ways in which the hypersexualization and forced child marriages in westeros are damaging to these girls. “but he said dany & drogo were in love!!” he’s very clearly the sort who likes to find the romantic and erotic in the grotesque and horrific, and looking at this from the character’s point of view. i think his comments line up just fine with the justifications these girls make to themselves about the marriages they are forced into. also he’s just an old man and he phrases things in ways that make you cringe sometimes, pls be serious 😭 the only exceptions to this rule are really Rhaenys/Corlys and arguably Rhaenyra's various romantic ties but a) none of Rhaenyra's romantic relationships end well and in fact help speed her right along to her gruesome death and b) Rhaenys and Corlys' relationship is fraught with political problems and also, he has an affair with a teenager so again, george is Saying Something about the reasons why certain types of men prefer women much younger than them. "but what about roose and fat walda?" they are both gonna die horribly, next question.

SO. it’s not gonna be tyrion. it’s not gonna be sandor. it’s not gonna be littlefucker. they’re too goddamn old and sansa spending the rest of her life rationalizing these guys perving on her when she’s barely even middle school aged is not (imo) the ending she is going to get.

this leaves us with the rest of her more popular ships - jeyne, margaery, harry, sweetrobin, aegon vi, jon, theon (admittedly pushing it here! i can be logical about this!), podrick, and brienne (technically bran and arya are here too ig, i mean if we want to be really fair to all ships). onto the next criteria-

someone who has a claim to something in the same general social circle as winterfell

technically i do think there’s a chance george goes for something radical at the ending like abolishing the monarchy and if he does that i will kiss him on the mouth (with consent from him & parris). BUT. i think the most likely ending is more of a loosening of the feudal system - showing us the next few hopeful steps away from absolute monarchies. what i’m saying is The System still exists and will still exist throughout twow and ados, so I think it’s logical to assume that Sansa is not going to marry “beneath” her. if anyone does, it's arya.

anyways that’s a double pass on sandor & littlefucker. this is also why i admit pod is a stretch - the paynes aren’t nobodies but pod himself is from a cadet branch, so fairly low in the pecking order . i mostly include him bc i think he’ll make a name for himself alongside brienne, potentially enough to overcome that gap and he fits the rest of the criteria too well imo to completely disregard him. “why can’t sandor or littlefucker do that” bc sandor doesn’t have enough time before the end of the series to make up for all the shit he did as the hound In The Eyes Of The Public Or, Crucially, Sansa’s Family and littlefucker is going to die 😁

you could argue this also crosses out jon and jeyne. COUNTERPOINT - jeyne is a girl it literally doesn’t matter so long as she’s high enough to be one of sansa’s ladies and she is, so she passes; jon is one of three targaryens left alive (and even if aegon's a blackfyre, he doesn't know that so still counts!!) and all the secrecy around jon's legitimacy + robb’s will means clearly something is cooking here. also he has an impressive resume on paper.

someone who would actually live in Winterfell

I don’t feel it’s necessary to argue that Sansa is going to be IN WINTERFELL and END UP IN WINTERFELL bc she lichrally builds Winterfell after Arya, the sibling she interacts with the most, hears a prophecy about a girl slaying a giant IN A CASTLE MADE OF SNOW. This does not feel subtle nor like a stretch. Whether she’s a regent for Rickon/Bran, a ruling lady, or a queen, she is GOING HOME the same as the rest of the Starklings and she will be important in helping rebuild it. Therefore, the person she’s with has to not only be cool with being at Winterfell often, they have to not induce immediate fury and rage in her siblings.

sandor? triple dead. tyrion? we’ll call him 1.5 dead to be polite. aegon vi? doomed and dead. harry hardyng? does Not seem likely to relocate. littlefucker probably would relocate but good luck getting two steps into the north or riverlands without every living starks’ “it’s time to beat that annoying fuck up” alarms blaring in their heads ready to run him through.

theon is a hard maybe but since he actually feels bad & also grew up with them, i think he has plenty of time in the next 2k pages of story to make up some ground with jon, arya, and bran. margaery feels like a hard maybe as well - it’s looking bleak for the tyrells & i don’t think margaery’s family is going to let her move to the north without a good reason. but i also feel like. there’s too many unknowns to technically count her out.

brienne & pod Will be living in the North and they Will be on the guard and That Is That. jeyne & jon don’t seem to have any plans on leaving the North any time soon either.

someone who won't feel threatened by her title

this is a near constant through line in her story - that whoever marries her will want her for her claim first and foremost. it's going to factor into her relationships, specifically about how she's going to have a child. whether she has a secret marriage, longstanding affair, or a public husband, it's going to be someone who is not constantly trying to usurp her power literally or metaphorically.

that means no aegon vi, no sweetrobin, no harry, no littlefucker, no tyrion. tyrion's claim to the westerlands is a competing one with her, and tyrion himself is interested in her title way more than sansa as a person (it's why he doesn't see her escape coming and why he's so bitter over it - the whole time he thought she was a silly girl and had no idea she was plotting to escape and nearly did escape at several points. he thought she was helpless! you can bet your ass he is going to feel threatened by the idea that she does not need his ass). sandor, imo, will also feel threatened by her having such a lofty title, and i cannot see him being capable of any sort of secret marriage. "well they could just marry publicly" she's not publicly marrying a man known to be a child killer. to be completely honest, i think margaery would feel threatened by her title as well.

jon, podrick, brienne, jeyne are all people who would not only not feel threatened, they would be proud, celebrate it, actively fight to keep her in a state of power. theon is imo a maybe - the theon we meet in the beginning would objectively feel threatened by Sansa having a title loftier than his. a theon who has lived through everything he has by the end of the dance is imo much more likely to be happier out of the spotlight. all of them as well would be willing to be frank about how she's going to have a child, and would not mind Sansa saying something like "my children were fathered by a wolf."

someone who shares her romantic sensibilities

listen. she's gonna like, get along with her suitor. someone who won't laugh at her for wanting to be swept off her feet, someone who also craves a more romantic life.

this eliminates, imo, harry, sweetrobin, littlefucker, and sandor, probably aegon vi as well.

brienne, jon, theon, jeyne, and podrick are all romantic types - jon imagines having children named after ned and robb just llike sansa, theon had dreamed as a hostage of marrying sansa and calling ned father, brienne dreams of lofty knightly ideals of protecting the weak, and podrick and jeyne both have stories very much tied to subverting the ideas of a true knight and a damsel in distress.

someone who is an Atypical True Knight

💙✨this is a post about briensa✨💙

true knight/hero from a song themes + marginalized in some way in Westeros = brienne, jon, theon, tyrion. sandor feels relevant here in that he is not a true knight but he clearly wants to be after his encounters with the stark girls and also he doesn't look like one either.

aegon vi could arguably count due to being dornish, so i guess i'll give him a .5 in this category. harry is as typical as they come, and neither margaery nor jeyne have anything that links them narratively to the concept of a true knight or hero from a story (except, i suppose, for jeyne's link to theon). podrick is also fairly typical but again, kinda lowish for a noble so i guess .5, and he also has several scenes where he's expressly linked with being an Atypical True Knight (mainly, the scene where he saves Tyrion during the Battle on the Blackwater).

a True Knight

i simply do not think the lesson sansa is going to “learn” here is that no one will ever love her for who she is and her marriage will be about her claim and nothing more because there are no True Knights left. every time someone is like “she won’t have a romance bc her story is about not needing love” i find it mind boggling because in what world is asoiaf about not needing love, first of all, and second of all, her arc wrt her desires for marriage and love has so clearly been tied to this concept of a True Knight and the idea that a True Knight does not always ~look good~ and that someone who is not a knight may be capable of good and that you can always just Choose To Do Good at any point but you have to Make That Choice, and that is all very different from “not needing love.” Sansa is naive yes but!! Sansa is Dunk sitting there surrounded by strong handsome men in expensive, gorgeous armor and asking if there are any true knights among them-

EXCEPT SOMEONE WILL STEP UP TO THE PLATE.

“a dream of spring” means there will be just a little hope. so help Will Come and they will be a True Knight they just won’t take a form she expects. this is a large part of the reason why i’m on the briensa train. Brienne is The Truest Of True Knights! She serves a King she's in love with who doesn't love her back faithfully, she swears a vow to Sansa's mother after comparing Catelyn's courage to that of a knight's and laments the fate of women who die unremembered in a birthing bed, she's on a noble quest to find Sansa with an assist from The Most Infamous Knight In Westerosi History, she’s the secret descendant of The Other Truest Of True Knights, and I feel it’s very clear from geography, theme, and foreshadowing standpoints that Brienne and Sansa are going to be linking up soon.

I have always felt that the Ashford Tourney Theory is linking Sansa to both Jon and Brienne narratively - Jon for being the dark haired Targaryen Prince defender and Brienne for being the Dunk descendant and True Knight that interrupts the tourney. Not only that, but Jon has that "she wished for a hero to strike him down" "ed, fetch me a block" parallel that I think is really important.

BUT. They're not the only ones with links like this. Theon has the similar link of how life is not a song and is actively grasping for redemption when we last left him. Podrick, like Brienne, is on a True Knight's quest to save Sansas and is discounted as a hero despite having several heroic moments for himself - including actively seeking Brienne out to help with her quest. Tyrion frequently struggles with concepts of morality but is on an absolute downward trajectory.

Who is not tied to these last two concepts nor acts at all like a True Knight? Aegon VI (arguable I suppose), Harry Hardyng, and once again, Littlefucker.

IN SUMMATION

Who doesn't fit any of the critera? Littlefucker, and that's why his ass is grass.

Who fits very little of the criteria? Tyrion (too old, not likely to live in Winterfell, cares too much about her title, on a downward spiral), Sandor (too old, too low born, not a True Knight and not becoming one any time soon, plus Arya will kill him if he tries something), Aegon VI (would not relocate, is not tied to the concept of a True Knight, plus he's doomed), Harry Hardyng (would not relocate, cares too much about titles, is not a true knight nor atypical in way, doesn't seem given to romantic sensibilities).

Who fits most of the criteria? Jeyne Poole and Margaery Tyrell. However there are pretty big plot reasons Margaery won't have any sort of romantic, subtext or otherwise, long lasting relationship with Sansa so even though on paper she fits, I think she's highly unlikely to impossible.

Who fits all of that criteria, ie, close to her age, has an important name (or has a reason why it doesn't matter), and is an Atypical True Knight with a romantic outlook on life with narrative links to Sansa? Brienne of Tarth and Jon Snow, and arguably Theon Greyjoy and Podrick Payne.

Anyways I think Sansa should start a bisexual polycule in the North. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[lavenderfroggy]

Thinking about how it used to be generally agreed that Sansa’s future was redeeming herself by marrying the h0und😟

[esther-dot]

i'm a sansa stan first and foremost, and i tried to ship s@nsan so hard lmaooo but when they start saying shit like "sansa has wet dreams about the hound" and "sansa actually likes older men", argh, i just can't. do. that. i know george said something about playing with it in the books, but i also think that he wanted to raise a few questions with the relationship, one of them being "who protects sansa from her protector?". like, there's TRAUMA in there. it's funny that they accuse jonsas of using sansa as a self-insert bc i don't know if you ever read a s@nsan fic or saw the fanarts, but they REALLY wanna bang that man 😭

(about this ask)

Nothing in the fandom horrifies me as much as Sansan. I’ve had nice Sansans come into my inbox, so I do distinguish between my feelings about the ship and the shippers, but I hate the reinterpretation of the Hound because it minimizes what he did/tried to do to Sansa. Instead of the later scenes where Sansa thinks of him being about her processing the trauma of his assault, suddenly, they become a gross villain whitewashing, victim-blamey, “actually, she wanted it.”

I once even highlighted that whole "who will protect us from the guards" idea you mention because I think it was meant to emphasize what a travesty the Hound’s assault was:

(link)

This isn’t a romance, this is a pattern. The Hound saves her than tries to rape her, Tyrion is kind to her then agrees to marry her, a child, a prisoner of his family, and LF rescues her but then starts to sexually molest her. All the same, in each of these instances, Sansa is grateful, she thinks kindly of them, and I think that says a lot about Sansa that you completely miss if you romanticize it and pretend that the Hound is someone, something to her, that he isn’t. I also talk about the whole cloak thing in that post too because I think the more contextualized reading is the one we’re meant to adopt.

When I did take a look at the meta, I was so creeped out by the nature of it and the art. Although, I want to give credit where it’s due. Apparently they were some of the first people to start taking Sansa seriously and created the reading of Sansa becoming a political factor, so they did change the fandom’s perception of Sansa in a good way. But imo their love of the Hound causes an imbalance in how they read their scenes. The point isn't that the Hound wouldn't have hurt Sansa, the point was that he very well might have but Sansa's actions stopped him which ties into a much bigger idea and important aspect of Sansa's story:

Even after the Hound assaults Sansa, later, she thinks of how terrifying the fire was, as in, even then, she is able to empathize with him, the man who held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her. It’s laughable to suggest a man who mocked her relentlessly for who she was is capable of the same consideration. In fact, it is in a state of terror that the Hound attempts to rape Sansa and his fans use that to excuse his actions, and yet, while he is assaulting her, Sansa sings of mercy, gently touches his cheek. It’s almost like the very obvious interpretation, that the way to create a better world is Sansa’s method— not his— is what Martin expected people to understand, and his surprise people have turned it into something else altogether is genuine. (link)

As for Martin admitting he "played" with it, here's a clip. It's very short, and he's expressing surprise that his female readers like villains of which the Hound is one, and I think you can tell by his facial expression that the idea of the Hound and Sansa as a couple, is absolutely not where he ever intended to take things, not what he meant when he said he played with it. There are countless old monster movies with the monster being fascinated with a young girl or beautiful woman which humanizes him/shows a soft side. That's similar to Beauty and the Beast, the girl is what allows the monster to become human again, but in these variations, it isn't a romance. You can play with/reference tropes and ideas without it actually being a direct reiteration of the original story.

Anyway, filter and block and curate your fandom experience! 😅

[agentrouka-blog]

Hello. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but the idea that GRRM shut down Sansa/Sandor isn't accurate.

When you watch the interview, what GRRM did was express surprise that the ship, and the character of Sandor Clegane, had become so enormously popular. He made the comment during a time, many years ago, when it was the biggest ship in the ASOIAF fandom and most Sansa fans shipped it. If you weren't in the fandom at that time, it's probably hard to imagine how ubiquitous the ship was, but it WAS ubiquitous, and popular, to the point where GRRM expressed surprise over it. But he did not at any point shut it down.

In fact, he rather did the opposite. This next part of his answer is always ignored by haters of the ship, but after expressing his surprise, he went on to acknowledge that the show did "play with it a bit" and that "I did too, in the books." These quotes, in all their fullness and context, are easily found in online videos of the interview.

I'm not a fan of the ship. There are many reasons to hate it. I'm not arguing that it will be Sansa's endgame, either.

But I do believe in being honest and genuine and not putting words in GRRM's mouth to make him say what we want him to say. He has never, to this day, dismissed or shut down Sansa/Sandor.

There's indeed a video where he addresses it, and the very fact that he so openly addresses it... shuts it down as a genuine avenue of speculation, honestly.

He says he "played with it", but when you look at the page, what he has shown is the Hound sexually harrassing and later assaulting Sansa, and Sansa inventing a trauma-induced less terrifying reinterpretation of this event, turning his "song" rape-metaphor and the blade at her throat into "he took a song and a kiss".

That's not romantic. That's an adult creeping on a child. That IS a form of "playing with" a sexualized dynamic between these two characters. But. It's a one-sided "attraction" of an adult to a child, and he cannot stop emphasizing his surprise at how women are eating this up as "romantic", like none of that is contradictory in any way.

Like, no, he didn't say "They are definitely not getting together in the books", but it seems to me that many take the same view as the female interviewer who, in fact, contradicts GRRM himself by repeating how she thinks it's "fascinating" or "it has crossed her mind". The male interviewer interjects that the show played with that imagery, and GRRM agrees that so did he, but that doesn't mean he supports the intended reading as actually romantic. Like, the support there is not coming from the author but from the sansan-shipping female interviewer.

[g0lightly]

me @ jorah, jaime, and sandor projecting their idealized selves onto the teenage girls in their midsts

(fwiw i actually enjoy the shit out of both jaime and sandor from a literary perspective however the fanon spin on them from people who ship these grown men with teenage girls makes me feel insane!!!!)

[muiltifandomnerd]

I rather Sansa be a lesbian instead of marrying grown men

[maid-with-sunset-in-her-hair]

I've seen a lot of shippers argue that Sansa should end with the Hound because she's a privileged pretty princess and needs to fuck an ugly lowborn pedophile to unlearn classism 🙄 Ignoring the fact they're treating wokeness like a STD, I find it pretty interesting that I never saw them use this argument to justify why Sansa should end with Podrick, who is around her age, is as lowborn as Sandor and never tried to rape her at knifepoint 🙄

[aegor-bamfsteel]

"All?" he mocked. "Tell me, little bird, what kind of god makes a monster like the Imp, or a halfwit like Lady Tanda's daughter? If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with."- Sansa(ACOK IV). How on earth Hound considered a hero?

If I remember correctly, that’s not one of the quotes people use when talking about how heroic the Hound is (although tbh he doesn’t say many positive things). Sansa a few chapters later shows him (politely, fearfully) where he can shove his nihilistic strongman philosophy:

She had forgotten the other verses. When her voice trailed off, she feared he might kill her, but after a moment the Hound took the blade from her throat, never speaking.

Some instinct made her lift her hand and cup his cheek with her fingers. The room was too dark for her to see him, but she could feel the stickiness of the blood, and a wetness that was not blood. "Little bird," he said once more, hisvoice raw and harsh as steel on stone. Then he rose from the bed. Sansa heard cloth ripping, followed by the softer sound of retreating footsteps.When she crawled out of bed, long moments later, she was alone. She found his cloak on the floor, twisted up tight, the white wool stained by blood and fire. —ACOK Sansa VII

So let’s get this straight: strong bitter Hound who says the weak are there to serve the strong holds a knife to a girl’s throat for a song…and she sings for mercy, holds his face, and he’s so shamed by what he was going to do he leaves her alone to never see her again. Hound has been mocking Sansa’s “soft” “bird” songs since she met him, and she, afraid for her life, proves to him and everyone reading that yes, those “weak” qualities are stronger than hatred and brute force. This is actually one of the best pieces of evidence that GRRM isn’t grimdark…not that a grown man broke into a girl’s bedroom and threatened her with a knife to sing (that’s sadly expected), but that girl, in a “voice that sounded small and tremulous to her own ears”, sang about mercy and peace…and she wins, he doesn’t hurt her anymore. It’s not so much Beauty and the Beast as it is Snow White and the Huntsman, in which Snow’s innocence means the Huntsman can’t bring himself to kill her; except Sansa singing and putting a hand on his face takes a more active role. She asked the Mother earlier to ease the rage inside him, and she (or She?) did.

No, the Hound isn’t a hero, but more importantly, his entire mindset in that quote is wrong. And Sansa—one of the series’ main heroes—shows us in the same book why. I can’t imagine reading Sansa’s Blackwater chapters and how she represents a core theme of the novels—that compassion, peace, and mercy are actually stronger than hatred, war, and revenge—and not understand she’s going to be one of Westeros’ future leaders by the end.

[alaynasansa]

Thinking back about how Marillion's attempt to rape her triggered Sansa's repressed trauma and she had nightmares about Tirion and Sendor assaulting her and she waked up with the dog and wished for Lady instead

And yet some fans still think this is positive foreshadowing for their toxic ships

[catofoldstones]

Sansa doesn’t accept Sweetrobin as her suitor but she accepts Tyrion? Did you read the books? This is another nail in the ashford theory’s coffin besides the obvious fact that lady Ashford didn’t marry her suitors and valarr married another lady and soon died

you’re right, you’re right. instead sansa is going to marry sandor because dunk disturbed the tourney or whatever copium is it that you lot snort

[atopvisenyashill]

sansa will end up with sandor 😋

if sansa ends with the 29 year old man who nearly raped her when she was 12, you're not gonna have to worry about me throwing tomatoes at george because arya and jon will simply run him through babeeeee

[esther-dot]

Fans were squeaked out by Arya(11) getting molested by Raff and cheered her when she killed him. They were angry when Jorah misbehaved with Dany(14-15) and were applauding her when she slapped him. But these fans will suddenly become blind to Sansa(11-12) abuse by grown up men and romanticised the relationship. Infact they get angry why Sansa didn't love pedos and give them what they wanted. Some fans even notice that book Dany-Drogo is not healthy yet they ship Sansan.

Your observation makes it sound like fans believe condemning sexual assault is conditional on the girl being assaulted.

Far be it from me to say anything nice about Jorah, but I have to say, in comparison to how the Hound interacts with Sansa, he’s written as far less threatening. Not that he isn’t a creep, but if we're talking abusive POS here, I have no idea why he's more easily identifiable than the Hound? The man who constantly intidimates, insults, and threatens Sansa? We specifically mention the assault when talking about the Hound, but from the get go, he talks about how he kills women and children, and he places his sword to Sansa's neck...he's abhorrent all the way through.

I know his fans believe he wouldn't act on any of it, I've seen them talk about him as a dog that's all bark no bite, but in their last interaction, he did. He intended to rape her, so I think there's an underlying disregard for Sansa's position, the terror of her experience in KL, that even those who help her threaten her, that the fans keep minimizing. We are meant to worry for her, not defend her abusers. We're meant to be outraged that the people who should protect her, fail her. Horrifying that the fandom simply won’t do it.

[agentrouka-blog]

Ngl I don’t know what to make of Sandor clegane saying “one day I'll have a song from you, whether you will it or no” — and Sansa saying “I’ll sing it for you gladly”. Like….singing is so clearly associated with s3x, and in her chapters specifically.

It pretty well foreshadows the scene during the Battle of the Blackwater.

Sandor is clearly using the song as a sexually charged, threatening metaphor here - and does it again in his attempted sexual assault with a knife at her throat.

Sansa doesn't catch this implication. She is twelve and grew up sheltered, she promises a song. And she represses his vicious implied meaning again when he uses it the second time. She twists his darkly cynical, cruel demand for a "song" into a spiritual self-defense. An actual song. Gentle Mother, font of mercy. It defeats him. It saves her. He cries with shameful despair and leaves, further atrocity avoided.

Sansa rewrites the traumatic experience of narrowly averted rape, the "kiss" of the blade, into a fictional kiss. It's less horrific, easier to bear. A lie to cover the true extend of the horror. He asked for a "song", he "kissed" her.

This isn't foreshadowing for some romantic entanglement at a later point. This is foreshadowing a scene that has already played out for us.

Whoever Sansa will end up freely singing for (or sharing a metaphorical "song" with) in the future, it's not this guy.

[g0lightly]

tinfoil-encrusted brienne/sansa "foreshadowing" that makes me feral

so i love the blog @jonsaforeshadowing bc i think it's such a fun look at shipper goggles in this fandom regardless of your thoughts on that particular ship. while i do not ship j*nsa i think it's healthy to remember how absurd shipping in asoiaf is even if (especially if?) you are a shipper! largely bc like... what do we even think of as endgame in this series? being married? we know not everyone who marries in a feudal system even likes the person they're married to. also... pretty much anyone could die! and so many characters are thematically linked in significant ways that aren't necessarily romantic! so i think there's a ceiling on how sure anyone can be of any ship being endgame. especially since we may never get another main series book lmfao! so just want to be clear that i'm not coming at this from an angle of knowing better than people who prefer other ships, we are all equally right and wrong unless/until the series is completed IMO.

in that spirit i wanted to post my own niche shipper theories in wildly varying degrees of seriousness about brienne/sansa because i believe in gay ships' right to be as delusional as straight ships. mostly for fun but i'd being lying if i said i don't hope you read this and think "oh i never thought of them together but this eats! i should start shipping the one true pairing briensa and also read tumblr user g0lightly's post-canon fanfic mostly about them on AO3 🤔" while they’re my otp, I want to be clear that I only ship them as adults.

starting strong with the dumbest one: brienne's ancestor dunk has a romance with rohanne webber, a redheaded woman who has had several husbands/betrotheds die on her and eventually marries a lannister like sansa. i know ppl say this is about jaime bc rohanne is his great-grandmother but in the spirit of getting silly with "foreshadowing" jaime is now a sansa stand-in for the purposes of this post 🙂‍↕️

in AGOT sansa i, sansa says that joffrey is "so gallant, she thought. The way he had rescued her from Ser Ilyn and the Hound, why, it was almost like the songs, like the time Serwyn of the Mirror Shield saved the Princess Daeryssa from the giants..." as ned later points out, joffrey is nothing like the knights of the songs sansa dreams of. littlefinger's sigil is a giant. serwyn is one letter off from selwyn, brienne's father's name. perhaps brienne will help sansa get away from littlefinger.

mirroring (ha) the above point, in AFFC brienne vii, randyll tarly gives a whole speech to brienne about how he thinks her father would rather have a living daughter than a "shattered shield." while i think the shattered shield imagery in this text (also in F&B when jaehaerys has saera's lover executed and in ACOK sansa vi when cersei talks about highborn ladies' "golden shield" against SA) represents a "ruined" woman, i think the imagery is also evocative of a mirror shield.

in AGOT sansa vi, sansa reads about aemon the dragonknight, florian and jonquil, lady shella and her rainbow knight. sansa is related to lady shella whent and in ACOK brienne becomes a rainbow knight for renly's kingsguard. i can see brienne mirroring aemon the dragonknight in the sense that she and sansa would have a forbidden love like aemon and naerys but for different reasons.

in ACOK sansa ii, sansa prays for a true knight and a friend to champion her. of course, she gets dontos as her "florian" instead and learns that life is not a song. later in catelyn ii, catelyn meets brienne who later swears herself to bringing sansa to safety. catelyn notes her similarities to sansa. brienne is also connected to jonquil through her maidenpool chapters; does this mean sansa will end up with a jonquil rather than a florian? perhaps a jonquil darke type? idk but i want to believe!

also in ACOK, both brienne and sansa hang onto bloody kingsguard cloaks that were technicaly supposed to belong to barristan selmy. i have written about this in far greater detail here and here.

jaime is a sansa stand-in because they are both maiden-coded and called kingslayers (this is a deeply unserious point btw)

speaking of jaime, his attraction to brienne mirrors sansa's possible attraction to mya. both sansa and jaime are conventionally attractive characters used to being praised for conforming to their gender roles reckoning with the beauty of a gender-nonconforming woman when they have come to understand their own beauty through a conventional framework. i have also written about this in greater detail.

both sansa and brienne are paired up with a lannister twin who holds the gendered societal role they aspire to (queen and knight of the kingsguard, respectively). their respective lannister twins show them the dark reality of those roles while brienne and sansa fight to remain hopeful.

famous lesbian rhaena targaryen was too gay with larissa velaryon so larissa got shipped off to marry the second son of tarth. she also had a favorite from the vale named alayne royce. she also had a red-haired, mail-wearing favorite named melony piper - kind of like an inverse of brienne and sansa visually. her true love, elissa farman, was from fair isle which is kind of like the west coast version of tarth; they also had the same age difference as brienne and sansa. rhaena was the eldest sister, like sansa, and dealt with a lot of loss in her life due in no small part to the strength of her claim making her a sought-after bride. i am aware this proves nothing but i do seriously think rhaena is the in-universe historic figure sansa is most like. gay sansa confirmed!!!!!!!! (jk... unless...)

and finally, i present what is either my most tinfoil hat theory or my oh-shit-i-cracked-the-code theory: brienne is foreshadowed to be the next bearer of the hound's helm so when GRRM said there's "something there" with sansa and the hound, he was actually talking about brienne and sansa :) if you enjoy the idea of sansa finding love and beauty in a brave, gentle, strong protector figure with low self-esteem whose face is covered in scars but you also (very reasonably!) hate the idea of her ending up with a man who held her at knifepoint and tried to SA her when she was a child, may i suggest hound!brienne x sansa? again, on an age appropriate timeline!

and if you're curious what i mean by hound!brienne foreshadowing and shattered shield references, i've included my running list of quotes, an analysis of those quotes, and a conclusion below the cut bc this post is long! TW for canon-typical references to sexual violence.

i think the references to brienne being "the hound with teats" and later references to the hound cutting off women's teats may connect to pretty meris, a sellsword with the windblown who is theorized to represent what GRRM had planned for brienne after the five year skip. quentyn notes that it's said that men cut meris' breasts off. if this hardened sellsword is some version of GRRM's original five year gap plan for brienne, who's to say that she won't be the hound instead of a sellsword in the forthcoming books? but that's assuming we'll get more books lmao.

the threat of SA is uncomfortably present in brienne's AFFC chapters. whether or not brienne experiences the types of gendered violence mentioned above, i think that the hound's helm would provide brienne with safety from that threat of SA on the road. for male characters, on the other hand, it may just draw more attention from people who wish to kill the hound for (mostly) rorge's crimes. there is a lot of talk across the books and across POVs about the hound being dead. you get tyrion describing him as dead after the blackwater when we know that's not true, septon meribald (which kinda sounds like meris now that i think of it 🤔) tells brienne that he is dead, jaime talks a lot with the freys and lannisters about killing the hound. there's also a lot of talk about the hound killing other people, namely brienne and sansa.

since it's all but confirmed that sandor clegane is now the gravedigger on the quiet isle rather than the hound, i think that "death" in the context of the hound is about letting your old self die so that the new you may be born. brienne needs to let her rigid ideals about what it means to be a knight die and sansa needs to let her rigid ideals about what it means to be a lady die. i think that lady's death at least partly symbolizes the fact that sansa can be a perfect lady and still face dire consequences through no fault of her own. and for brienne, she will most likely learn through lady stoneheart that not all oaths can be kept.

some people take the below quote as romantic foreshadowing for sansa and sandor. i take it to mean that to sansa, sandor and his cloak represent the opportunity she had to escape the life of a dutiful lady in a castle. perhaps brienne will wear the hound's helm when she rescues sansa, and sansa will give her the hound's cloak -- brienne's very own kingsguard cloak -- to complete the "uniform" of the hound.

i also want to offer my debunk to the idea that sansa keeping sandor's cloak is marriage imagery. sandor does not give his cloak to sansa, he does not put it over her shoulders as is done in a wedding ceremony. he leaves it on the ground because he does not want to be a member of the kingsguard anymore. sansa chooses to wrap herself in the kingsguard cloak. to me, this signifies her growing disillusionment in the systems set up to keep her safe and the autonomy she has to leave that system. perhaps she will be brave enough to ask brienne to take her away from the eyrie (or wherever she ends up) when they meet (again, assuming we get more books lmao).

i think it's relevant that sandor's place in the kingsguard - and by extension, the cloak as a symbol - had originally belonged to barristan selmy. i did a thread on this in relation to true knighthood and brienne if you're interested in reading more. sansa has a heroic deed in common with barristan selmy that also involves the hound in ACOK: like barristan, she saved dontos hollard from execution by a cruel king that she was sworn to. sansa was sworn to joffrey as his betrothed and barristan was sworn to aerys as a member of his kingsguard. i'm not even anti-sandor, i just don't think that his redemption arc needs to or should include the girl he held at knifepoint falling in romantic love with him.

to conclude with my point about characters having deep ties within the text not necessarily equaling romantic foreshadowing, i want to acknowledge that i don't think brienne and sansa need to have a romantic relationship for these textual connections to be meaningful. one way another i think these two are meant to be important to one another's stories. however i think that putting these two together romantically would be a beautiful way to tie together some key themes (gender, true knighthood, romanticism, idealism) and set up some really interesting character development.

however the romantic in me loves the idea of the aemon the dragonknight figure in sansa's life being a woman, specifically brienne who has sworn to defend her without even knowing her. they're both women, so there's nothing for brienne to gain from sansa's claim and nothing for sansa to gain from brienne's claim. brienne is the gentle, brave, and strong person ned wanted for sansa and catelyn sent her in sansa's direction and i think that's beautiful okay :')

[elegantwoes]

Here is your daily reminder that when a canine shipper begged George RR Martin to cast someone young for Cujo so that his scenes with Sansa stayed “romantic” instead of creepy, he responded by casting a middle aged man for him. Meaning GRRM was more than happy with the general audience perceiving this so called “endgame ship” as creepy.