#btw that's one of the things i think literature excels in for some reason in general... there's a lot of writers who are uncannily good and

[catricks]

in my nothing era(again)..

[hanbindans]

zerobaseone as IB students (headcanons)

some fun headcanons for my fellow students. please take these with a grain of salt, obviously I don't know them personally and these are just meant to be fun :) word count: 1.1 k (ca 140 for each) a/n: this is for a very niche target audience but it makes sense in MY head. also I have exams in less than 2 weeks so this is kind of representative of where my mind is at rn. and PSA if you're also an IB student please don't actually skip TOK <3

jiwoong

what's that?? "he's a 24 year old man, it's been years since he completed high school??" sorry I can't hear you too well I'll just go ahead and write this headcanon anyway <3

he's such a drama kid and he would take it even in IB, so theatre and korean lit would be his HLs

I feel like he would take bio and psych sl purely out of curiosity and then immediately regret it when he realizes how much content there is (but would be really good at psych)

aa sl!!! no particular reason tbh I just think he's kind of smart

doesn't understand tok. like...... at ALL. is saved by the fact that his psychology EE is pretty good because he pretty much flunks tok miserably

CAS defender because "guys it builds character I think it's great that we all do volunteer work :))" bless his heart

hanbin

7 subjects :)

is good at tok probably

genuinely puts SO much time and effort into his cas and regrets it in the end but it looks cool on his resumé

psychology and korean lit HL, probably takes VA too but maybe as sl. he gives such lit vibes I feel like he would totally be a literature kid

chinese ab!!!! and maybe ESS because he can and doesn't like science <3

AI SL just because he's so social science but he gets 6s and 7s because it's too easy for him <3

basically he's all the social science subjects but because they're FUN not because they're easy :)

shares notes and study resources in the class group chat because he's cool like that

zhang hao

science kid

HL math AA, geography, and maybe chem or bio. maybe takes physics SL too.

definitely chinese lang/lit and korean ab (he could definitely do korean B but he can't be bothered)

you won't catch him anywhere without a comically large energy drink

completely numbed on the inside but also puts more effort in than everyone else and gets straight 7's

skips tok though because he can't be asked

does his EE on a very niche obsession of his and it gets a really good grade but he puts way too much effort into it

everyone wants to learn his ways but he doesn't do study groups because he gets too annoyed lmao. WILL tell juniors chatting in the library to stfu

he will complain about anything and everything any chance he gets but also catch him getting that 45 at the end of the day.

taerae

also science kid but a lot less intense

HL bio, chem, music, SL AA, korean lang/lit and japanese ab

he would complain SO MUCH about group 2 btw he's one of those science kids who really doesn't want to do 2 languages lol

really only cares about music to be honest but does the sciencey subjects because he thinks they're cool and gets pretty good grades

the type to do a hyper specific science IA and spend way too much time on it just for shits and giggles because he likes pouring things into beakers and swirling them

unintentionally does the most for his CAS, like "oh a service??? yeah I've been tutoring guitar for like 6 months does that count" and genuinely fails to see how other people struggle with it

also excells at tok, like genuinely writes an amazing philosophical TOK essay and gets full marks

ironically cares so little about IB but somehow does so well because he genuinely likes his subjects (and has an iq of like 150)

matthew

7 subjects :)

wants to do more languages than he's allowed because he's just built like that, he likes flexing his multilingualism

HL english lang/lit, french B, history. SL AA, bio, chem, psych

is annoyingly good at all his subjects like HOW are you doing all that and remembering everything?? secretly kind of a genius

does the mostest for his IAs for absolutely no reason other than he's just interested in his subjects and wants to do fun projects :)

also genuinely likes CAS for the same reason (play sports feed stray cats, what's not to like?)

super ambitious classmate who is somehow the only one still sane and always happy

encourages everyone before tests and exams like "come on guys we can do it!! :)"

ricky

this is more likely than you think like do you know how many rich international kids do IB??? in an alternate reality he's M23

visual art HL <33

probably business management HL too, but I could see him doing psych as well!! I think he'd enjoy the human relationships option

chinese lang/lit and english B because why do a bilingual diploma and struggle when you could just breeze through english B?????

AI and ESS sl because he cba, he just wants to pass fr.

to be honest he only really cares about visual art (does his EE in it and regrets it every day) and his social science a liiittle bit, other than that he's just doing exactly as much as he needs to pass

super chill classmate though like all IB kids need a Ricky in their class to humble our god complexes

gyubin

IB but because he's an exchange student :') like he didn't even know what IB was when he started it

cramming the night before tests because he can't be asked to dedicate his whole life to studying

actually the nicest classmate though

eng b HL and breezes through it

ESS and AI sl together with ricky (they sit in the back of the class and snack together <3)

also like business management/psychology or something equivalent but he's REALLY good at it and gets easy 7's?? like he will be that 1 kid who has that 1 subject that he's an absolute god at

cries every tok lesson but it's alright

favourite part is ironically CAS because he has an excuse to volunteer at dog shelters and play basketball with his friends :)

gunwook

peak IB child I bet he would take this programme for real

4 hls (economics, psychology, korean lang lit, chemistry)

I have no justification for these subjects btw I just spat out 4 that I think he would take. he definitely would do 4 HLs though because that's how he rolls

ALSO takes cas very seriously for absolutely no reason

also takes tok SUPER seriously- he will lead class discussions and get into heated debates about stupid shit like if newspeak would work in real life

AA sl and japanese ab because that's just his vibes

kind of overworked but is always helpful and shares notes with his classmates :)

does his EE in economics and ends up getting way too invested in it and becomes obsessed with economic development policies or something niche like that (nerd but affectionately <3)

very stressed and overworked but he WILL get those grades at the end of the day <33

[bridgetotheskyyy]

I've seen you have written a Renji fic so i wanted to ask...any headcanon about him? Thanks!

Omg Renji ~

I've actually talked about Renji and have shared some of my thoughts for him here, but I can go in a bit deeper in a few hcs. Also sorry this took so long asdfghgfdsa -

Renji’s very traditionally romantic ― dinner dates with candles, flowers, come to their door to meet your dad type of man. Renji a man who throws 100% into whatever he does, so he somehow manages to make the cliche riveting effortlessly. I think anything having to do with romance he would take very seriously. Renji’s a romantic at heart and very earnest. Totally the type to confess his love all dramatically to them (even though you’re already in a relationship lol). He’s very meticulous, a mind like a steel trap, and remembers the tiniest things about his partner, so surprises are always very nuanced and especially sweet.

Definitely not the one to make the first move or anything; Renji’s shy with someone he’s interested in, so he tries to woo them in other, more discreet ways, like impressing them with his bankai or combat skills, or his proficiency as a lieutenant and leader. These are things he excels at, so he tries to be THIS Renji whenever they’re around. He’s also the one to run around and do lots of favors and tasks for them if they ask. If they need something for work, it won’t be a surprise when that thing magically appears. He’s the guy to listen in to what they need and then one day just say, “Oh, btw, got you this.” Like, try to be all unbothered, cool guy about it, when he knows damn well he’s been scouring the universe for the ONE thing they need.

Supremely jealous partner. Not even in the cute bf way. Renji doesn’t have the most self-esteem, having to compete with his rival/captain, Kuchiki. There’s also the issue of his upbringing on the streets of Rukongai, so doubts are sure to plague him of not being good enough for his crush, of not being able to offer much. Deep down he fears he’s not good enough for his partner, that he won’t be able to give them the world and this haunts his every action. So this is definitely something he and his partner are gonna have to address.

Prefers a partner that can rival him intellectually, and maybe in ways he wouldn’t expect, like introducing him to a new hobby or subject in life, like philosophy or literature. It’s part of the reason he admires the astute Byakuya Kuchiki so much. Renji really can’t stand dumb people lol. He’s made a name for himself being something of a bruiser but he’s really the whole package: brains and brawns.

He doesn’t really like his hair all that much, thats why he ties it up and keeps it out of the way. And the only reason he keeps it long is 1) because he’s used to it the way it is and 2) because he loves the feel of his partner’s hands through it. His partner is really the only one outside of himself who can touch his hair and if they play with it for too long he will playfully slap their hands away. Like, “ok, stop.” lol 

― NSFW

Definitely a virgin. There probably won’t be sex until the relationship is firmly established (or even marriage, I wouldn’t put it past him to be that conservative lol!) The first time with his partner is really just him feeling around, too proud to admit he doesn’t really know what he’s doing but eager to learn how to satisfy his partner. And, thankfully, Renji is a quick learner. He’s very attuned to what his partner likes and what they don’t. This appreciation for his partner’s body quickly evolves into body worship, which he’s fond of; he can take his time with one particular part of their body and appreciate that one part for what will feel like hours. 

Has a bit of a size kink, but a reverse size kink? He’s fascinated with having a smaller partner (if his partner is smaller). The difference in sizes of hands, the way they feel so fragile in his embrace. And then, he’s doubly fascinated with the way they can take him so easily, not nearly as fragile as they look. 

Speaking of which, there’s a bit of a praise kink in there as well. Nothing sends Renji over the edge like knowing he’s making his partner feel so good they can’t contain themselves. 

Has a weakness for legs and smiles. His favorite positions are the one where his partner can have their legs wrapped around him. A partner with a cute smile can get him to do pretty much anything. He’s also fond of neck kisses, giving and receiving, and sensual neck kisses and hickies is usually how he initiates sex. 

[merakiui]

cant get the self aware genshin au out my head now

and now this is keeping me up at night but im not complaning

so ill just,,,, leave this shir

(you can add more btw bfhdhdh)

-i legit started playing genshin when a friend of mine showed me an image of kaeyas,, chest window, wonder how he would react

-i usually play genshin now more to destress,, and i cry a lot more frequently recently,, how would some characters (like venti, scara, chongyun, childe,,, or any chara) to player having a mental breakdown while shakily logging in genshin, just to see their fav/comfort characs to make the pain less unbearable

- imagine if player is doing homework but having difficulty doing so and playing genshin, but to see that some characters greets them with lesson guides to tutor (who are knowlegeable in certain areas helping them)

i.e. albedo or sucrose helping with science and alchemy/chemistry

Xingqiu with english/literature and helps doing your essays

or lisa with history,,, any business associated characters like ningguang/yanfei/diluc/ayaka/hu tao etc. teaching you useful finance advice

-how would fatui characters like childe, scara or signora react to player eanting to jointhe fatui bc they think theyre rlly cool (and can relate somehow)

-this is a more recent one but how would chongyun react to player getting flustered and screaming with his drummer attire (original source and context: https://youtu.be/uryVPEEFYY4 )

ok this is getting long so ill pause there but yes,,, aaaaa theres food for thought

(new here btw ghfhgf)

anyways sorry if this is too overwhelming,, hope u enjoy it tho GSGFSG

-🌹anon

Oooh, lots of thoughts!!! :D

I think Kaeya would be very smug knowing he was the one who got you to play Genshin (or more specifically, it was his chest window that enticed you into playing). He’ll always find little ways to bring it up so that you won’t forget. Always reminding you and feels pride knowing that he was the first character you saw and appreciated. You have good taste!

I know all of the self-aware Genshin characters would want to comfort you the moment they realized you weren’t doing well! As soon as you log in your favorite characters are there for you, doing whatever they can to make things a little less hard for you. They’ll make sure your commissions are near the teleport waypoints, they’ll make sure you get the best artifacts, and if you’re pulling on a banner they’ll try to make it so that you get either constellations for them or the featured character. They want to brighten your day and mood, even if it’s just for a little bit. A little goes a long way and they hope that the next time they see you you’ll have a smile on your face. If not then they’re very willing to help you through whatever’s bothering you to the best of their abilities!

Homework help!!! They are so ready to help you with your studies, especially if it’s a subject they excel in. Lisa would giggle about how she’s become your little helper as she helps you study history. Albedo and Sucrose are working together to help you through a lab report and Xingqiu is especially eager to assist you when it comes to literature or anything that has to do with reading or writing. Zhongli is very knowledgeable, but be careful when you get his help. Once he starts talking, he won’t stop unless you tell him to do that so you can catch up. He’ll definitely slow his pace if you ask and won’t be offended. Overall, they just want you to get the best possible marks on your assignments, so they’re very serious about helping you.

I think the Fatui Harbingers would like it if you joined. Of course Childe would warn you and tell you that as neat as it sounds to you it’s still a job that deals with all sorts of dark and terrible things. It’s seen as a villainous organization for a reason. He wouldn’t exactly mind if you joined, but he wouldn’t recommend it. Let him do all of the dirty work for the Fatui. As long as you’re willing to cheer him on in his next fight, that’s all he needs! But Signora would enjoy it. She’d appreciate the company, as would Scaramouche and Dottore (though they won’t admit to it).

SWEET, PRECIOUS CHONGYUN!!! >_< He’s so surprised that the reception was so warm and positive. He’s already getting flustered when he hears about it and listens to all of the compliments you give him. He’s got two popsicles in either hand so that he doesn’t lose control completely. It’s a little embarrassing to be in the spotlight like this, but he’s happy that you like his outfit. And as long as you’re happy then he’s happy! He secretly replays the things you said to him in his head before he sleeps because they make him feel loved and appreciated. :D

[the2020romanceproject]

Review: Red, White, and Royal Blue

You guys. This book. This book is FREAKING AMAZING. This is basically everything I wanted from a romance novel. I am probably ruined for other romance novels now because this one is SO GREAT.

Not going to do a full summary of this one, because 1) lots of stuff happens (which is part of why it’s so great), and 2) I want everyone to read it and don’t want to completely spoil it. But the basic premise is that Alex is the son of the sitting U.S. president and Henry is a prince of England, and—according to Alex, anyway—they start out hating each other. Then they inadvertently cause an international incident and have to pretend to be friends for P.R. reasons, and feelings happen and so do lots and lots of other things and it is ADORABLE and ANGSTY and PLOTTY and all the characters are amazing and I can marry this book, yes? Thank you.

I was worried when I started reading romance novels. I was worried that the strength of the romance-focused plots found in fanfiction would be diluted by the need to include other aspects of plot. Then I read a couple of romance novels and was worried that the strength of the romance-focused plot would be diluted by romance-genre customs like having the characters sleep together halfway through even if that destroys all the tension. This book is proof that neither of those things has to be a problem. It had an excellent romance plot that was only enhanced by the very robust political and interpersonal subplots that happened around it. I am SO impressed.

Okay, the romance plot first. Here are some of the things I liked about it (spoilers, caution):

Alex didn’t realize he was attracted! He didn’t even realize he was bi!*

But he obviously was attracted to Henry

Henry was obviously into him (obvious to everyone except Alex, that is)

We were only in Alex’s POV and not Henry’s and so we got to enjoy the dramatic irony of the above

Alex is very stupid about his own sexual past and how normal best friends act together

Everyone else knew basically all of this before Alex did

Even after they got together, Alex lied to himself about how he was falling in love even those it was clear that he was

Henry had real reasons for backing off from the relationship and being scared

The characters had SO MUCH DEPTH omg

Their banter! It was so good

I really liked both of them and believed that they were better together

(*It’s super legit to write characters who do know they’re queer. I just personally love it when they don’t know, because it speaks to my didn’t-realize-she-was-bi-until-age-25 soul.)

These plot elements are not specific to fanfiction. There’s plenty of fanfiction that doesn’t do all or even any these things. But they’re also all very common in fic, and when you put them all together it felt very much like the kind of romance plot I might have come across on AO3. I hope these plot elements aren’t unusual in the romance genre, either, because I find them SO effective and satisfying.

Take Alex not realizing at first that he was attracted. This is something I was surprised by in the other romance novels I’ve read so far: that those characters saw each other and were immediately like, “Yup, that’s my type of person, super into that body!” And...that’s fine, I guess? A little alien to me, since I don’t tend to experience attraction that way, but I guess there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a bit of a missed opportunity, though, because it jumps right over the potential tension of us watching and waiting for the character to realize they’re attracted.

Granted, it can be hard in a book with original characters to signal to the reader right away that yes, these two people are going to be into each other. I can see why many romance novels include that initial recognition of attraction. But this book is proof that you don’t need to do it that way. It’s completely clear to the reader that Alex is going to be into Henry—that he already is, and isn’t recognizing that attraction for what it is—and we still get to watch him go on the delightful journey from, “Ew, this guy is the worst” to “Oh crap I’m actually super into him.”

I think this is getting at a fundamental type of tension that was missing from the first two romance novels I read. I talked about the difference between sexual and romantic tension, and that stands, but each of those comes in a couple varieties: there’s the tension between what the characters want and what they have, and then there’s the tension between what the characters want and what they THINK they want. In The Soldier’s Scoundrel, those two things are pretty much the same: the two characters know they’re attracted to each other, and then, as they go through each step of falling in love, they acknowledge it openly in the narration. That’s fine but kind of boring, and it means that instead of waiting for the characters to catch up to their own feelings, we’re waiting for those feelings to form. It is just plain not as interesting to wait for a character to develop a feeling as it is to wait for them to acknowledge a feeling they’re hiding from themselves. Plus, people are bad at recognizing their own desires! It’s a thing! Especially when those desires are inconvenient or unexpected or would leave them vulnerable. There are plenty of good ways to introduce this tension without it feeling forced, and it can add so much.

(This is probably part of why I like characters who don’t recognize that they’re queer, actually—it adds another layer to the knowledge gap. But, again, that’s largely a personal preference, and I recognize the value of a variety of queer experiences in literature.)

The other thing this book did that I think strengthened the romantic plot in a major way was to stick to one point of view. I honestly don’t think I would have said a month ago that I felt so strongly about this. Most of the fic I’ve read is in one point of view, and I’ve never really thought about the alternative. But I’m starting to realize that switching points of view can take a reader out of the characters’ heads in really unfortunate ways. The human experience just never involves knowing absolutely what someone else is thinking. So if you’re living through a character’s eyes, experiencing the world as them...you shouldn’t know what a different character is thinking. Not every story has to immerse us in a character’s head to this degree—but romance should, I think. That’s the fun of it. And it just doesn’t work as well with two points of view. Plus, you lose the question of what exactly the other person is thinking, and even if you can pretty much guess—well, again, you’re going to be more fully in the main character’s head if you have to guess instead of knowing.

And the tension. Oh man. There isn’t one thing this book did to ensure continual tension in its romantic plot; it just did a fantastic job of transitioning between one kind of tension and the next. (Major spoilers ahead.) First Alex doesn’t think he’s into Henry, even though the reader can tell he has a crush. Then Henry kisses him and Alex realizes he’s attracted, but we get sexual tension because Henry’s not talking to him and then because it’s hard for them to end up in the same place at the same time (situational tension). Then we start to get romantic tension where Alex is in love but doesn’t recognize it, and then later when Alex knows he’s in love but isn’t saying it yet. Then more romantic tension when Alex finally confesses and Henry walks away (which, btw, major props to this book for succeeding at having someone walk away from a love confession and not having me think any less of their potential relationship). Then they finally get together for real but there’s the situational tension of them maybe doing serious damage their respective governments. Every single time one kind of tension gets resolved, there’s another kind waiting in the wings, ready to take over. It’s just...what a masterpiece.

So, yes, excellent romance plot, top marks. Everything surrounding the romance was fantastic, too, which just...that is SO HARD TO DO. One of my questions at the start of this year of reading was whether romance novels would feel more like novels than fanfiction does, and this one certainly does. There’s a phenomenon in fanfiction, and I noticed it in previous romance novels, too, where the outside world just sort of...dips into view where convenient, and then recedes from view without having real consequences or significant continuity. And that’s fine. It works better in fanfiction than in original works, I think, because fanfiction can draw on an independent canon or fanon. But in both places, it results (or can result) in a very strong romance where nothing else in the world matters much to the story, and that’s okay.

But this book. There was so much plot! So much world, and I cared about all of it! ALL the characters are extremely well-drawn, and I cared about their mini-arcs. The political situation interacted with and enhanced the romance plot but also mattered in its own right and had its own complexities. And none of it made the romance feel any less present or central or powerful. It was so well done.

Okay. I’m done gushing now. I’m moving on to what I hope will be a recurring new feature: fanfiction I’m going to recommend based on this book. These are all stories that I thought about while reading Red, White, and Royal Blue, and if you liked the book, you might want to explore these. (It’s worth noting that I regularly read fanfiction without knowing anything about the canon. I know that weirds some people out, but if you’re on the fence, I would encourage you to give it a try!)

Let Toretto Be Toretto (The Fast and the Furious political AU, by astolat)—oh man, astolat. Truly the best of us all. This one is much shorter and doesn’t have the prince aspect, but it’s a fanastic journey through gay pining and the presidency.

The Student Prince (Arthur/Merlin college AU, by fayjay)—this felt like the most obvious comparison story for me. Fanfiction boasts a plethora of modern-day prince AUs across many fandoms, but this is one I read recently and really enjoyed. The non-romance plot is less robust than in Red, White, and Royal Blue, but there are a lot of strong similarities.

Not Easily Conquered (Steve/Bucky, by dropdeaddreams and WhatAreFears)—Henry and Alex’s emails reminded me so strongly of this one. All-around gorgeous.

And now, on to the next romance novel that I will almost inevitably be disappointed in after this phenomenon. Someone tell me when Casey McQuiston publishes something else.

[janiedean]

I really, really love your metas! In "Why a Jaime/Brienne Endgame in the Books Makes More Sense Than One Might Think, Based on Previous Works of GRRM's" you wrote, that you have endless reasons to assume that both, J and B, will survive the whole series - can you please name some? Aside from this mentioned meta I've only read an explantion of the weirwood dream, which can be interpreted in both ways. Or can you link a good meta that explains other reasons? Thank you very much!

hey!

first of all thank you so much, glad that you appreciate my rants. ;) that said, sure I can go in-depth. in order (btw @ginmo has written also some excellent meta about this, just check on her blog), and also counting the weirwood dream which I’ve ranted on at length in that specific meta:

now, the first thing is how grrm strategically placed these two in the narrative, in the sense that:

brienne has spent her life being passed for a joke and she desperately wants for someone to see her worth as a person and she’d about kill herself for the people who manage to get as far as to gain her trust/love, jaime has spent his life loving people without getting much in return and with that trust being used/abused/thrown away and everyone taking it for granted... and we’re assuming they’re not set up to be together when as stated grrm has written them as romantic from the first moment?

(also, jaime’s entire first chapter in asos is basically ‘I find brienne attractive but since I never considered that I could be attracted to anyone but cersei I can’t understand I’m attracted to her so I’ll stare at her and think she’s ugly all along even if I really am attracted to her. brienne’s issues are also rooted in the fact that no one sees her as attractive. jaime does. hmmm?)

both of them start from a miserable situation from which they’re finding their own way up, not down - jaime is more obvious but brienne is too because she starts at the point where she’s so starved for recognition she would die for someone who just was nice to her but didn’t really gaf about her and now she’s... well, becoming a knight because sure af that is happening, I’m sticking with the theory that the knighting is book canon too -, and if they both end up miserable or one of them does it doesn’t work;

both of their chapters have heavy foreshadowing concerning possible marriage/having children/finding love - jaime wants to father his kids and at some point resents that other men are husbands and fathers but not him because he was always the warrior and he doesn’t say it happily, brienne is half-glad her first betrothed died because she thinks she’s not suited to typical feminine things/to fit into a woman’s role in society but she’s also sad at thinking she will never have children, these two are going to get together very soon, and I’m supposed to think they’re set up for failure? k but I can respectfully disagree;

also, this goes back to that meta I wrote in which I said that grrm does not do grim for grim’s sake and he’s actually way less cruel than it seems, likes a good love story and has more than once finished his other books with satisfying resolutions to that kind of storyline, but adding to that: in comparison to whatever calvinist crap message hbo wanted to send, I have to inform y’all that grrm is a currently agnostic lapsed catholic and it’s exceedingly clear in the way he explores/deals with redemptive themes.

now, let me break the jb narrative for a moment to inform you of a few things that as an atheist born and raised in a 99% catholic country whose literature’s funding works are heavily based on catholic themes/on stories rooted in catholicism:

the ‘you need to die to be redeemed’ narrative is 100% bullshit according to catholic morals and on top of that it’s opened to anyone at any time;

like, the basic distinction between catholic and calvinist approaches to the topic (and I can’t believe I’m defending catholicism but nvm that) is that calvinism preys on a narrative where your negative qualities define you and you cannot escape them (which is because calvinism accepts predestination ie the idea that seeing your lot in life you can deduce if you’ll go to heaven or hell, so if you’re poor/unsuccessful/you committed mistakes/a crime and so on you’re not redeemable and it’s proof you’re damned) and that meant that in societies with calvinist background the death = redemption narrative is extremely popular because it’s seen as ‘hey this person is wretched and they suck so they couldn’t have lived anyway and they did something good with it for once and it’s the best they could hope for’. catholicism, at the contrary, works on the basis that as we all have free will we can change for the better and if you repent for your sins/past wrongdoings/mistakes then that’s enough to be redeemed and if you do it on your deathbed.... you can still go to heaven, you’ll just have to atone for your wrongdoings (that’s the entire point of purgatory’s existence ie making people who repented near death or too late to gain heaven atone for their sins before they can enter heaven). and the moment you repent then you’re free to start your new life and do better and gain your place in heaven, which you’ll obtain in virtue of having turned a new leaf;

(again: not to be that person, but in luke’s gospel one of the two thieves crucified with him is like ‘can you save us since you’re the son of god’, the other thief is like ‘please he has done nothing and we have sinned we don’t deserve to be saved just please remember us when you go back to your father’ and jesus tells the second thief I won’t need to remember you because you’ll sit at my right. also, in dante’s divine comedy there’s a guy who had been excommunicated in the middle ages waiting to get into purgatory for having repented on his deathbed and in manzoni’s the betrothed ie italy’s funding novel the character who’s objectively better written is a dude so heinous for his crimes that he’s called THE UNNAMED and the moment this guy gets doubts and wonders if there’s any hope for him left the local arcibishop leaves everything saying that the moment someone like that is in need then they’re more important than his own parish, goes to receive unnamed guy, tells him that just wanting to be better is enough as far as god is concerned and he’s saved as far as he cares. like, as much as catholicism sucks for the entire rest of it and for how much the catholic church is the worst ideologically the fact that everyone can be redeemed is the basic staple of the entire thing.)

now, given the ^^^, this is where I tell you that most lapsed catholics/people who left catholicism for whichever reasons usually grew up catholic and if you grow up catholic you spend your first twelve years in church at least and if your parents/people around you are also catholic you will absorb it, good and bad, so if grrm grew up catholic, he grew up with that background. (I could again rant for hours about how atheist writers who grew up catholic differ from atheist writers who grew up protestant/calvinist because if you compare grrm and idk kurt vonnegut it’s glaring but this isn’t the place for it so nvm let’s go on)

now that I’ve told you this, I’ll get back to jaime and brienne’s canon survival chances. I needed to tell you that because...

all of the stories with redemptive themes in asoiaf (jaime, theon, sandor, whoever) are not by nature calvinist. whatever d&d think or hbo thought, none of them are written in a way where death is their best option/their only way to achieve redemption/to finish their story with dignity. theon has gone through hell and back and left and regained his sense of identity, he’s not built to die now, sandor has freaking gone to rehab and I’m 100% sure he survives the series and gets closure, while jaime is exactly a poster child for the above stuff I described. like, jaime is someone who’s fundamentally good who had the misfortune to spend his entire life jumping in different kinds of abusive situation one to the other (tywin’s parentage in general, his relationship with cersei throughout at least from the moment they were *experimenting* and like hell I’m going back on that sorry not sorry, guarding aerys, being with cersei at *her* terms and being forced to relieve his trauma all over and not having his needs met etc., tywin potentially ruining his only healthy relationship [with tyrion] and so on) who in turn has done exceedingly bad things/taken bad decision/committed heinous deeds that he regrets having done out of his bad reaction to all of that, not treating his ptsd and basically deciding to stop giving a fuck and embrace being the horrid person everyone thinks he is... until he meets brienne, remembers who he wanted to be because she’s posing an example of it and decides on his own to try and be better, which is... exactly... the entire fucking point. the moment he decides to try and be better and reclaims his dreams/the person he wanted to be/tries to do good he has automatically achieved a narrative status where he chose to be better and therefore the narrative is giving him a chance to be that, and usually those stories are meant to.... have the message that you can be better than the bad things you did and you can turn back the page at any point. like. jaime is written to show you that it’s not too late to get your shit together and not letting others/your surroundings define who you are;

on the other side, brienne is presented as extremely sympathetic from the beginning. also, grrm is very good at describing how shitty is your life if you grow up a woman who is not standard attractive, that everyone laughs at and who has endless insecurities for it.... and she’s the paragon of knighthood/everything good about chivalry in the goddamned series. brienne is legit one of the best people in these books and it’s not because I stan her - she’s kind, she’s just, she’s brave she’s everything a knight should be, she’s willing to change her mind when she misjudged people, she’s forgiving and life threw her crap all along and she’s still persevering from it. brienne is written in a frankly painfully objective way to eventually succeed at what she wants. if in affc she’s crying because she feels like she’s too much of a freak to be her father’s heir and she’s not woman or man enough for anything, the entire narrative point is that she has to succeed at both being a knight and a lady otherwise grrm can’t plant hints and believe me he can;

this means that jaime is headed on a redemptive path which in that kind of story when written by catholics or former catholics never ends up badly (also, aside: redemption is good for everyone and it can’t be just ONE character having it, you don’t buy it at the supermarket, so saying that if jaime has it then tyrion or theon or sandor or whoever can’t have it is just poor reading, people change all the time irl and in narrative you aren’t obligated to redeem one and kill everyone else) or in death, brienne has been written to succeed in her endeavors after she suffers a shitton and I think stoneheart has to be the worst and the end of it (in the sense that after that situation is resolved the way for her is down, not up). which if I do the math and we have stated they’re headed for romance, means the both of them should have a chance at a future together;

also, I can go and tell you that their asos road trip ending with harrenhal is bursting with symbolism that includes death and rebirth - not going into the weirwood dream and sticking to the basics... guys, jaime starts as a prisoner, then ends up losing a part of herself he thinks define him but in truth only defines what he thinks he is (and he’s not ie cersei’s double, the kingslayer, the person who has to drive himself crazy to protect everyone else), then ends up almost dying and sitting in the middle of his own filth for the entirety of the trip (and even then he does good things ie saving brienne from being raped *cough*) and then ends up in a scalding hot bath where he confesses his most well-kept secret and source of 50% of his trauma to someone he trusts regardless of how much he likes it or not, faints and then wakes up again when everyone thinks he might be dead. symbolically, I think it speaks for itself. thing is, during the entire thing *brienne* is there alongside him and while she’s also getting her own share of trauma/ptsd (I mean brienne has totally bloody mummers related ptsd and I’ll die on that hill) she physically is the reason he survives it - she cleans him up, she gives him enough pep talks to convince him to live, she hears his confession, she changes her mind about him for it (but imvho she had after he saved her from being raped because that’s where she calls him ser for the first time) and she catches him in the bath when he faints which is.... fairly symbolic in itself, and she is the one who puts him back on his feet after. like, while jaime’s choices after are all his own, his symbolic journey through his own physical/mental filth he has to go through during asos succeeds because she helped him even if she didn’t know she was doing it, and like... guys, there’s a reason why in the weirwood dream the brienne in jaime’s head which he has conjured and who is basically what jaime sees brienne as in that moment, not necessarily the real one..... keeps on telling him all the time she’ll keep him safe/protect him and she basically tells that to anyone he feels threatened by (or his subconscious feels threatened by), and as stated before, jaime lannister has never, until that point, assumed that *he* would be in the position where someone else gives a shit about him to the point where they will defend him rather than in the position where *he* is the person that has to protect everyone else regardless of how much appreciation he gets in return. like, excuse me but if I was writing my own book I wouldn’t put this much work and care and this symbolism in these two’s history if I meant to kill one of them off or to not have them be happy in the end.

like, the point is: grrm is an extremely meticulous writer with an astonishing attention to detail and who put in book two shit that made extra sense when reading book FIVE, see theon saying he wouldn’t go to his death wearing dirty clothing in acok which makes you go like ‘....... why’ the moment you read his adwd chapters. no one, unless they have a penchant for sadism, would put that much work with those themes in that specific kind of story if then it doesn’t deliver. or, in different words, using a character I love as well so no one can accuse me of being impartial: when grrm put the same kind of work in catelyn’s chapters from got to asos and then you read them knowing about lady stoneheart and the red wedding, it’s obvious that he built her up for being an extremely tragic character and that she was destined to die regardless of all her efforts to save her family (same for robb but we’re talking pov characters). but catelyn’s storyline doesn’t have redemptive themes. it’s about regret, loss, loving your children but being imperfect/not being able to be there for them, and so on. catelyn’s storyline never promises you a happy ending from the moment ned dies and probably even before then. catelyn’s storyline promises you endless suffering and that’s fine because that’s her point in the narrative.

on the contrary, brienne’s tells you ‘hey there’s this girl who has had it like shit all her life without deserving it and whose worth no one sees because she’s ugly and who at the same time is actually a genuinely good person who’s trying her best and okay, she’s gonna suffer but she’ll come out on top while getting what she wants which is recognition as both a lady and a knight’ and given that brienne is also an extremely rare rep (say what you want, cishet unattractive women with her issues and her backstory are basically only less rare than unicorns in media) that I’m 100% sure grrm knows speaks to a lot of people (because he writes her too well to not know), if brienne doesn’t get that after all that shit, the narrative would not deliver on a fairly huge promise.

even worse, jaime’s tells you ‘hey there’s this guy who has been an abuse victim to at least three different people who doesn’t even realize it and whose life is so fucked up you’d need fifteen psychology textbooks to even start grasping it and that everyone sees as the worst person ever and who has ended up believing he is out of not managing his trauma well and hey look at him going through an insane amount of extra suffering but coming out of it wanting to be better and sort of succeeding and hey he has setbacks but he’s starting to see himself as his own person and he’s out of his #1 worst abusive relationship and he can decide what to do with his life now and you should root for him’, which means that if he dies or worst of all dies like in the show (but that’s not happening) the narrative doesn’t deliver on a huge promise and gives you the message that you can’t escape your mistakes and the abuse you received...... which is not the message grrm likes/wants to pass. like, I’ll die on that damned hill.

and to finish it, that was for them as single characters, but going back to the beginning: love is a fundamental part of both their storylines. as I said in the beginning, brienne suffered because she wasn’t loved enough and would die for anyone she loves herself without even expecting anything in return because she thinks no one will love her like that, jaime suffered because he loved too much without getting anything in return (or better, getting cersei’s abusive crap for his entire life) and he turned it into something toxic that’s not what he thinks it should be (he sees his and c’s relationship as the best thing ever where they’re soulmates because she sold him that narrative, but that’s not the kind of rship where you *turn your partner’s blows into kisses* which is actual text). at this point, the narrative is telling you ‘oh hey here’s two damaged people who actually would be very good together because their personalities match in that sense [as in, brienne would thrive with someone who loves her that much openly and finds her attractive and respects her for all that she is and jaime would thrive with someone who would appreciate that tenfold and who’d love him back just as much and who’d die for him - canon! -, and it wouldn’t be the kind of rship where anyone’s blows turn into kisses unless they were friendly sparring before] and oh hey look at that they’re in a storyline where they both influence each other greatly and oh wait he’s attracted to her and she thinks he looks like half a god and she’d die for him and he was willing to get mauled by a bear for her and they’re obviously meant to hook up’, which automatically promises a resolution where they both get what they want or you basically spent all your time rooting for it.... for nothing. which would not give anyone reading it satisfaction unless you hate jb that much, but I’m 100% sure that most people reading asoiaf casually would not hate it that much and grrm likes that trope that much to not deliver on it.

so, tldr: if one of them dies or if they aren’t endgame with a reasonable happy-ish ending for the both of them, the entire narrative fails to deliver on the promises of their individual storylines and their shared one, and there’s nothing in grrm’s writing that suggests that he would not deliver on it. I mean, if it was stephen king I’d hold my breath because I love steve but imvho his endings suck 85% of the time and he manages to do 180° turnarounds that have no sense whatsoever, but it’s grrm, not stephen king, and everything of his I’ve read that actually had an ending ended in a way that was coherent with the overall storyline and maintained its promises, so here, the above is pretty much the summary. hopefully I haven’t exhausted you. ;)

[skepticaloccultist]

The St Cyprian Scholar

An interview with José Leitão.

José Leitão is an author and scholar as well as a Portuguese Saint Cyprian devotee. Besides a PhD in experimental physics from the University of Delft, the Netherlands, his current research focuses on using ethnographic and folkloric methodologies to map the concepts of folk magic, sorcery, and witchcraft as described in the records of the Portuguese Inquisition.

The translator of "The Book of St Cyprian: The Sorcerer's Treasure", and the Bibliotheca Valenciana", both on Hadean Press as well as his collection of Portuguese folk tales related to the Cyprian Book "The Immaterial Book of St Cyprian" on Revelore Press and numerous articles he is developing a considerable body of Portuguese language works translated for the first time into English.

In my travels to Portugal for field research I cross paths with José in the university town of Coimbra, where he is currently conducting research. Over a handful of coffees I managed to get him to give me an interview about his work and research. He is almost as much of a recluse as I am!

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For a man with a background in physics you are making a considerable mark on the history of occult literature in the early 21st century. Is there some long term plan or are you more of the wandering academic/perpetual scholar type?

Let’s not start making history before it happens… you’re not the only skeptic around here. From what I’ve observed occult literature shifts its focus often and in unpredictable ways. I may yet be a one hit wonder.

That being said, I suppose it might be a bit of both, or perhaps neither… at least in regards to my written material. To be honest I had no plan behind my first book, it was something that just kind of happened due to a number of circumstances in my life and at the time I really didn’t think I would be writing anything else besides that.

It’s hard for me to describe this in detail at this point, because it’s difficult to tell what where my genuine feelings then or what are later rationalizations. The fact that I have a physics PhD is largely circumstantial, it barely has anything to do with anything I’m doing right now and I’ve turned my back on that world probably permanently. There’s likely no real point in going into details here, but after a very long time in that world I simply came to the realization that that life was not conducive to my happiness; a reflection which was very much aided by my work and translation of The Book of St. Cyprian. Once I figured that out I started doing everything I could to walk away from where I was, and that’s what I’m still doing. So, it’s not so much about being a wandering or perpetual academic, it’s really about the path of least emotional resistance and unpleasantness at this point.

But, of course, I could have chosen to go down the purely ‘practitioner’ way, but I chose academia instead. I’ve also come to realize that I can’t function properly outside of a university or a university-like environment, so I fully identify as an academic at this point, and indeed there is a lot of wandering involved in that.

When we talk about the myths and folklore of the people of the Iberian peninsula very little of the primary sources have made their way into English translation. Why now, what do you think is driving the growing interest in Iberian folk magic?

I think there are a number of issues at play simultaneously, and I don’t ascribe a necessarily ‘supernatural’ origin to any of them. It reads a lot like regular human geography and white people taking their heads out of their asses (btw, Iberians aren’t white; we simply think we are because we’ve always had somebody darker to compare ourselves to).

I read this as the reality that the major trendsetting countries (USA mostly) have had an increasing immigrant population from Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries for years now, but what makes this moment different is that the white people living there, due to contemporary political reasons, have started to pay them attention (and not always in the good way). This means that, right now, a lot of new concepts are being brought into cultural visibility which were exclusive to Iberian and South and Central America until very recent, not because they were hidden, but rather because no one gave a fuck.

You need to also remember that besides the long standing white disdain for anybody south of the American border, in Europe we still suffer the stigma of the Black Legend. The narratives of accepted modernity have always been historically presented, firstly, by Protestantism and, secondly, by the Enlightenment, both of which were (and are) ultimately profoundly hostile to Catholic Iberia, so the situation wasn’t (or isn’t) much better here. We have a European stigma associated with emigration and typical association with menial labor in central and north Europe. Iberians are still exotic and given to stereotyping as under educated simpletons (think Manuel from Fawlty Towers); a nice place to visit during the summer and be entertained by our quaint non-Europeaness.

So, a reappreciation of both these cultural spaces is happening right now, but I see this as happening mostly for mundane reasons. But also… regarding the Iberian aspect in itself in America… I’m going out on a limb here, so feel free to call bullshit on what follows, but I also think that there might still be some extra racism involved in this. ‘Iberian’ sounds old and ennobled; you get images ancientness, castles, knights errant, good food and wine and beautiful dancing gitana girls. For a white American, it removes the source of the practice from your immediate (brown) neighbors and places it in an old (assumed white) Iberian no one really knows anything about.

Lusitanian culture specifically is of particular interest to me personally. Remnants of pre Roman cultural ideas seem to be scattered within the larger dynamic of Portuguese culture. Do you think that forms of folk magic practice found in say the 2nd or 3rd century have continued down through the ages?

Interesting you mention the Lusitanian. One of the major (unintentional) overarching themes of my next book is actually Portuguese cultural identity, and I offer some criticism on the Lusitanian problem from a contemporary practitioner perspective.

This is really the sum of it: the identification of the Lusitanian as the par excellence pre-historical Portuguese (the Portuguese before there was Portugal) is a politically motivated construction of the Estado Novo for identity and cultural control. The Lusitanian continuity thesis was one of Vasconcelo’s babies, but this was far from being universally accepted and during its time it received very heavy criticisms, mainly from Alexandre Herculano, one of the greatest and most cursed Portuguese historians. However, due to this and other difficult issues regarding the, at times, overly romantic Portuguese historiographic tradition, Herculano was for a long time largely ignored, and Vasconcelos pretty much became the regime’s scholar of choice.

I’m not disparaging Vasconcelos, he was good at what he did, but scholars need to be given the right to be wrong. His work has, in the past, been used for sinister purposes and that shouldn’t be ignored anymore. You see, if you are a heavy paternalistic right wing clerical regime and you do a hard streamline to the Lusitanian, a people we still don’t really know that much about, as the ‘archaic’ Portuguese, you are able downplay every other major population influx into Portugal and fashion our ‘archaic’ identity in whatever way you see fit. This means that you get to downplay Neolithic dolmens and standing stones, Phoenician, Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Jewish and Muslim/North African influences, and construct an idealized and racially pure Christian Portugal. The Lusitanian, as an identity, are essentially nothing.

But obviously I can’t say that there aren’t Lusitanian influences in what Portugal is or that this doesn’t exist in Portuguese folk magic. That would be another form of insanity, mainly because we simply don’t know what the Lusitanian did. But to isolate the Lusitanian like that is historically problematic. So… no, I don’t think 2nd or 3rd century practices are particularly visible, at least not more than Roman, Jewish or Muslim ones.

The idea of "Lusitanian" culture being used as a kind of nationalist symbol in which to rally people in support of a regime is fascinating. Years ago I studied kaballah with Lionel Ziprin in NYC and he had a whole theory about the "publicly accepted kaballah" that was presented by Gershom Scholem. How the texts that get translated and the things that are accepted as truths were part of a broader narrative meant to occlude certain aspects of historic kaballah. How involved do you think the church was in the utilization of this "Lusitanian" national identity?

That’s hard to say… one thing that also needs to be understood is that, even if the regime guided itself by Catholic morals and ideals, and the Church did draw immense social advantage from this, the Catholic hierarchy actually had very little power to influence the political decision making. Ultimately, by the accurate manipulation of words and an irreducible concordat, Salazar could instrumentalize the Church for political gain and identity and behavior control, and it ended up becoming as much a prisoner of the state as anybody else, leading to Catholic dissension in the 50s. So, probably the Church didn’t really have an active role in the utilization of the Lusitanian, it was simply another tool the regime could manipulate and fit together to selectively construct a useful identity and narrative of itself. Although I’m sure many within the religion didn’t really mind this.

In reading your "The Book of St. Cyprian: The Sorcerer's Treasure" on Hadean one concept that really interested me was this idea of the "mar Coalhado" or Curdled Sea. It struck me as both an afterlife in the model of the Norse Hel, but also some kind of purgatory or abyss. Though I have been unable to find much in English! Is this concept still common in Portuguese culture?

That’s also one of my favorite concepts, interestingly. This is something which is pretty much still in the air for me.

Ultimately, on a general or ‘global’ scale, I don’t think I can give you any actual answer to what this concept might be… or any such concept to be frank. If we’re going back in time to look for such ideas we must remember that we’re going into circumstances when the circulation of information had its limits. Most researchers tend to bypass this problem by implicitly assuming that such folk concepts are ‘ancient’ or ‘archaic’, which meant that they should have had time to spread homogeneously across large geographical areas. I tend to avoid this approach because it removes active agency and imagination from the non-contemporary, non-educated, or non-white individual practitioner. That being said, a few other scholars have noted the occurrence of mentions to the ‘Mar Coalhado’ or something of apparent equivalence in a few procedures. Most often nobody ever offers anything on it except its occurrence, but I recently ran across a particular book by a fellow Coimbra researcher called António Vitor Ribeiro, O Auto do Místicos, which seemed to shed some light on the matter. It’s a cool text, exploring ideas, descriptions and practices of mysticism in Portugal from the clerical and literary circles down to the folk and rural levels. It’s a very ambitious work, but he tend to do really clumsy simplifications and linearization via some sneaky moves using Ginzburg or Eliade, and he uses words of complex meaning and implicit significance very frivolously… I like my methodologies to be more hygienic. Anyway, in one of the many interesting Inquisition documents he finds there is a mentioning of something referred to as the ‘Aguas Salgadas’, or ‘Salty/Salted Waters’. It’s not a perfect fit, but it does seem like somewhat similar to what we’re discussing. But what’s more interesting is that this isn’t in an actual Inquisition processes and this wasn’t mentioned as part of a particular folk magic procedure.

You see, there is a secondary collection of Inquisition documentation in Portugal called the ‘Cadernos do Promotor’, or the Prosecutor’s Notebooks, collections of denunciations, confessions or observations taken by Inquisition prosecutors that never made it into actual processes. There are several reasons for this, most often no crime was actually identified for a prosecution to be mounted, and other times it was because the reports and accusations are so outlandishly bizarre that the Inquisitors couldn’t make any theological sense of them in order to determine if what was being described actually constitutes heresy.

In this case, what was being reported were apparent visions, visitations and possessions by Mouras. Thus, a woman called Maria Leamara would fall into possession ‘rolling on the ground making it quake and making great arches with her feet’, saying while in this state ‘Let us go, let us go, let us go, let us go to the burrow of the moura, let us go, let us go, let us go, let us go across the salty waters, let us go, let us go, let us go, let us go to the Boulder of the See’. Then, when questioned about what any of this meant, she would only say that ‘they’ wanted her to deny Christ, and that the ‘salty waters’ meant outside of Christianity.

This whole thing then seems very akin to an anti-world, or ante-world, particularly evident by this apparent connection with Mouras, who apparently live across the Salty Waters and potentially the Curdled Sea. If Mouras are described and interpreted as these strange being of extremely remote existence, echoes and inhabitants of a bygone time, the banishing of something to this space would be akin to banishing it to somewhere outside of creation; this cosmic-now, or Christianity as that which created and defines the cosmic order we currently inhabit.

But in truth you have a number of varieties of this type of concept all across Europe. Very common formulas for the banishing of illnesses, bad weather or evil spirits into this type of space usually go along the lines of ‘go to where no baby cries, no roster sings or no dog barks’, for example, and I do see these as being somewhat equivalent concepts, as they both seem to describe a place removed from a humanly conceived cosmos, but these punctual examples of Moura crossovers do give it a particular local flavor.

If you think about it this is actually an extremely violent form of banishing. You’re basically casting something out of creation itself (as an anthropocentric concept). I think Jonathan Roper (one of my favorite folk magic scholars) has some material on this if you’d like to look him up.

But if you want to talk about actual application… even if some people might still use this concept (and it is quite common), I don’t think that what it actually signifies really is of much concern, even if it might be understood as significant. When you’re talking about magical formulas you always need to admit that there might be an aspect of simple habit or ‘tradition’ in the use of certain words and expressions. The impulse to break down an idea like that into tangible and rational concepts is pretty much a ‘learned’ and contemporary preoccupation. In all truth, a much more common occurrence in inquisition processes and documentation is that when an accused is questioned about a particular procedure he was witnessed as using, and which apparently calls upon a variety of spirits and characters, if asked who these characters are he will most likely answer that he simply don’t know. My reading of this is that it’s not their job or preoccupation to know; the words don’t have to have a rational meaning, which is something also supported by the observation that these types of traditional magical formulas frequently use nonsensical expressions, onomatopoeias or forced alliterations. The complete understanding of every single words and expression used beyond the cultural meaning of the procedure itself as a whole is a preoccupation which is mostly non-existent in the environment where these procedures occur. Both contemporary scholars and contemporary occultists are descendants from this overly analytical mentality, and it seems to me that the first step in actually understanding these is to admit that we are ultimately alien to this form of thinking.

You brought up the ‘Cadernos do Promotor’, or the Prosecutor’s Notebooks, which seem like a massive untapped resource in the folkloric study of witchcraft belief. Do you know if these types of records are only found in Portugal? How extensive are these documents?

To be honest, I’m still pretty new to that particular database and I’m not that familiar with the bureaucratic functioning of other Inquisitions in order to answer that question. However, in terms of how extensive… I’ve counted 352 volumes, some of which are 14 centimeters thick.

These are it. The thousands of processes everybody likes to talk and fetishisize about are just the tip of the iceberg; this is the real deal. Pure, uncut, unadulterated, untortured, uninterrogated words. No leading the witness, no feeding the answers to the accused, no theological projection, no nothing; just people voluntarily and spontaneously saying the crazy shit they saw, crazy shit they did and the crazy shit that was done to them.

The amount of work needed to work this source is soul crushing, but the potential is just breathtaking. Even beyond just the information in them… I’ve only scratched the surface on these, I’ve so far mostly been reading what other people have written about the reports in the Notebooks, but the things in there are dangerous on a cognitive level.

This goes back to the whole issue of the contemporary analytic mind, you need to remember that this is a window into a whole cosmology, worldview, understanding and interaction with the universe we simply don’t understand and are irreducibly alien to. Reading a few snippets has been enough for me to start to question reality… the ease and apparent normality which some things are described is just disturbing. And it gets Lovecraftian at the drop of a nickel… like ‘I was making a sandwich when all the sudden a door opened on the dark corner of my room. A Mouro with a red hat and shiny shoes walked out and lead me into a palace where the other Mouros were dancing and I met the Virgin Mary, who had the face of a monkey, her sister Saint Quiteria and King Sebastian and his five children. This has been happening every night and my husband complains that he wakes up when the Mouro takes me away during the night’… it’s stuff at this level and worst (or better).

With your recent complete translation of Jerónimo Cortez's "Bibliotheca Valenciana" you break into a realm of seeing and understanding the cosmological context in which much of the Cyprian magical traditions are rooted. A point before hard science, where the role of magician/scholar/alchemist merge and formed a kind of proto-scientist. What in Cortez's opus do you see as the most valuable content for those trying to understand the context of Cyprianic magic and early modern Iberian cultural beliefs in general?

Well… there’s a point in your question I can’t let slide. There is no such thing as a ‘proto-scientist’. The only way you can say that is if you root yourself in the contemporary time, take the definition of ‘scientist’ as it exists currently and project back in time to where it didn’t exist nor did it make sense (that’s the way most scientists think and why you can’t trust them to write their own history). So, the Cortez books don’t describe proto-science, they describe the science of their time, which is just as valid in its time as ours is in our time.

But regarding your question, there are a few points I wanted to make with the Bibliotheca Valenciana. The first of these is pretty straightforward: the Cortez books are not only one of the major sources for some of the later forms of the Cyprian Books, but they are themselves one of the major resources for your average Portuguese (and Brazilian) folk practitioner. While the reference to Cortez is actually fleeting in The Book of St. Cyprian I translated, as you move along the literary tradition of Cyprian Books, the repacking of material from the Physiognomy and the Lunario becomes ever increasing, particularly in Brazil. This by itself, in my own conception of what the work I’m supposed to be doing is meant to be, not only justifies the writing of that book but actually demands it.

The second point is probably more on the line of what you are alluding to. Besides the immediate relevance these books would have for someone interested in St. Cyprian related practices, they very efficiently describe what would be the early modern Catholic cosmology in purely functional terms and straight across social classes, even if this might at times not be completely explicit in the text. Note that there isn’t a distinction here between science and religion. Those are western academic categories and a person placing herself in the environment from where those books come from would not make this distinction in any way.

So, the point was not to simply offer context for St. Cyprian practices, but really to try to open up early-modern Catholicism as a still functional magical worldview and to offer the chance to approach the spiritual structures of the Church with an eye for (a rogue) practicality. If, as you say, Iberian folk magic is in fashion, if you try to reframe many of these practices into a Protestant cultural background (which is where Anglo-American occultism is based at), and if you’re serious about what you’re doing, you’ll run into more than a few bumps on the road. So the point was to offer a cosmology for when (or if) a cosmology is necessary.

And my final point with that book was part of a personal issue I’ve been working around regarding the nature of grimoires. I’m sure there are some purists out there who will vehemently disagree with me, and they might have a point; but I’ve come to think that that title cannot be solely given to a book by its author. If you analyze the way, historically, certain books are reacted to by the environments they enter you start to realize how arrogant it is to claim that one book is a grimoire in exclusion of another. ‘Grimoire’ should at times be a behavior description. It shouldn’t be about ‘this book is a grimoire’, but rather ‘I act towards this book as if a grimoire’. Once again, I believe that the denial of this is a ‘learned’ issue, a thing of high society and a claim of authoritarian elitism. So, to me, the Cortez books looked like Catholic grimoires in form and function, and they were certainly treated as such by people over here for hundreds of years, and logically they overlap with The Book of St. Cyprian. This is a line of work I intend to keep on exploring, and I’m actually right now planning on putting together something else further articulating this; some 18th century Catholic books I’ve recently fallen in love with.

When you talk about the Cortez books being used like grimoires, were his books perceived in Iberian society as "dangerous" or otherwise taboo in the way that Cyprian's Book was? Or do you mean more from a practical standpoint that the material in the book was used in much the same way one uses material in a grimoire?

I mean it from a practical standpoint mostly. This is something I’m still trying to figure out completely, but the construction of fear around the Book of St. Cyprian seems to be quite more recent than the Cortez books.

Overall I haven’t found that many references to Cyprian in the 17th-century, so it’s hard to say for certain what the image of The Book was for people familiar with it back then. But anyway, the emotional reactions to the two were probably very different. Although Cortez was a pioneer in the general prognostication literary genre, books of that sort weren’t particularly new or persecuted. They could at times be frowned upon (which lead to many being given false publication cities), and used as circumstantial evidence to prosecute someone accused of illicit practices, but they were never a particularly fearful thing in anyone’s eyes.

Witchcraft in Portugal is very under researched. It's my understanding that the history of witchcraft and its persecution is very different in Portugal than in neighboring Spain due to lack of an Inquisition in Portugal. What facets have shaped what we would call witchcraft practices that separate Portuguese and Spanish traditions?

First of all, a correction: Portugal did have an Inquisition. It started off slightly later than in many other countries, in 1536, but it lasted into 1821, so we had plenty of it over here. Now, what usually distinguishes it from many other such similar institutions was the absence of witch-hunting. While the practices perceived as witchcraft were still very much against the law, and if found these would be persecuted, there was no major active effort by any institution to actively search and persecute ‘witches’.

The only period where we do have anything close to a witch-hunt is actually in the 18th century, when you have a marked rise in related accusations. This instance had, for a long time, been somewhat of a mystery, but Timothy Walker in his Doctors, Folk Medicine and the Inquisition has very efficiently related this to an active effort by Coimbra trained doctors to eliminate folk healers and New Christian competitors from the market by becoming Inquisitional snitches. But overall, the number of witchcraft cases (and we can throw ‘superstition’, ‘magic’ and ‘sorcery’ in there) on the Portuguese side of things are actually quite reduced, seeing as the Inquisition was much more preoccupied with the persecution of hidden Jews (real or imaginary).

One other side of this is that the narratives of diabolical witchcraft popularized in other European countries didn’t find a very strong foothold here, leaving many of the descriptions of practices and ‘folk magical’ procedures free from learned projections, interpretations and prosecution. And finally, one other important particularity here was that witchcraft accusations didn’t seem to have a very pronounced female persecution aspect to them, with the divide being 40% male and 60% female… which really throws a wrenched into essentialist feminist witchcraft narratives.

What must be remembered is that witchcraft image construction is always culturally located, and to weave a Pan-European narrative is to fall into historical fallacies and anachronisms. Over here the typical targets of persecution were individuals who had no clear connection to any ‘public’ or ecclesiastic institution and had an uncertain source of income. In this category you then have widows, beggars, vagrants, Jews or day to day swindlers and small fry businessmen… and there are no significant Sabbat descriptions.

Comparing the case with Spain (of which I’m not an expert in by the way), it should also be noted that the usual portrait of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, in regards to witchcraft persecution, are inaccurate… that is another echo of the Black Legend. In Spain there were actually three parallel tribunals with authority to persecute witchcraft and related practices: the Secular, the Episcopalian and the Inquisitorial (mostly active in urban centers), and out of all of these the Inquisitorial was actually the most lenient. This has to do with the very Inquisitorial process, which tended to be extremely bureaucratic (leaving an immense paper trail which can be followed today, contrarily to the other tribunals which didn’t keep much of a record and consequently become less historically visible) and it was actually quite complex in terms of finding anyone guilty of such ‘immaterial’ crimes… again, against popular opinion and whatever savage nonsense was happening in Protestant Inquisitions. In order to condemn anybody to death for witchcraft, there needed to be proof of an explicit satanic pact, which was nearly impossible to achieve. Consequently, what we see with the Spanish Inquisition is that people accused of witchcraft or magical practices in rural areas would frequently flee to a city in order to be judged by an Inquisitional court because, even if they could end up condemned of something, the chance that they would be sentenced to death was much smaller. Maria Tausiet has a nice book on this actually, Urban Magic in Early Modern Spain, although she makes some horrible mistakes in her dealing with magic and folklore in general, going as far as quoting the Libro Magno de San Cipriano (from the 19th century) to explain spirit summoning in the early modern period…

The same thing is true of Portugal. Magic and witchcraft cases very rarely ended in death. It was much more common to give the accused a tap on the hand, give him or her a fine, have them make a public abjuration and them ship them off to one of the colonies or some forsaken place in the country. But you do start to find more common death sentences in relapse trials, but this once again wasn’t related to witchcraft itself, but rather because this implied that your original confession and abjuration had been a lie, which constituted sacrilege and was a considerably worst offense.

Ultimately, what in my opinion would distinguish both countries in terms of witchcraft narratives is something that goes beyond this straight duality of Portugal and Spain. True, we have had our borders nicely established for many hundreds of years and there are indeed certain distinctions that can be made between one side of the line and the other, but the error that this carries is that it is often assumed that whatever exists on either side of the border is itself homogeneous. There are some clear overarching motives and witchcraft narratives both in Portugal and Spain, but given the particular persecution circumstances, there are probably much stronger regional distinctions than national distinctions. There’s a very interesting book by Gunnar Knutsen, Servants of Satan and Masters of Demons, which very clearly demonstrate how ethnical and cultural differences between Northern and Southern Spain actually give rise to different forms of witchcraft narratives. I believe this should also be detectable in Portugal, and you could expect clear narrative distinctions between the North and the more Muslim influenced South.

Witchcraft image construction and narrative distinction is a very subtle field of work, and why I usually avoid talking about these issues with self described witchcraft practitioners. Contemporary witchcraft narratives tend to be monolithic and essentialist, and these are all pseudo-historical construction. I don’t mean this as an offense in any way; contemporary witchcraft has its own real history, and this is not in any way less ‘noble’ or worthy, but it’s most often not the history it tells of itself.

Contemporary feminist witchcraft, for example, while having a concrete and positive purpose in today’s society needs to be understood as being constructed over a particular narrative which is entirely local and politically motivated. The general tendency to want to apply this particular narrative, constructed by characters such as Margaret Murray and Gerald Gardener based on flawed and biased reading of historical documents, is a violent form of colonialism (curiously, a Patriarchic mode of behavior), frequently using anti-intellectualism claims in order to deny concrete historically observed practices and traditions that don’t fit a particular worldview.

Established religious traditions, be them Christian or Pagan, tend to have the same responses to what they perceive as attacks on their theological legitimacy and power monopoly. It’s the same mentality with a different opinion.

That was a bit of a tangent to your question I suppose… but as far as a distinction goes, that’s my position. I think a clear blind spot in Iberian Inquisition and witchcraft studies (and not just Iberian) is the common disregard for folklore and local culture to help frame and contextualize the several different practices being placed under the same category of ‘witchcraft’. This is once again a reflection of the ‘learned’ position of academic culture which is still a direct descendent of the actual Inquisitors who created this category in the first place (Wouter Hanegraaff has some nice material on this… although he doesn’t explicitly deal with the Inquisition and certainly not Southern Europe).

What projects do you have coming up?

I have a few things in the air right now. First and foremost, I spent most of last year traveling and researching for a new Cyprian book, and I’m hoping to have that published before the end of this year. This is one I’m very proud of and I think it’s safe to say that I found documentation that probably nobody had ever looked at (people have surely seen it, but not really looked).

It’s going to be something quite big I think, in the literal sense… it’s about 400k words long.

Other than this I have a few things on the drawing board. Like I already mentioned I’m playing around with a few 18th-century Catholic books from which I can make a very cool compilation of very pragmatically practical procedures involving Saints, exorcism and blessings. I think a thing like that would work very well with the Bibliotheca Valenciana, since the Bibliotheca is all about describing a Cosmology and this other one is all about practicality.

I have also a good list of papers and essays I’m working on, both as part of my current academic studies and my general writing. Most of these are based on particular selections of Inquisition processes of interest. There isn’t much of a study of magic and esotericism in Portugal, so this is the type of work that needs to be done in order to bring attention to understudied intellectual and religious currents over here. And, logically, in about four year I hope to have a thesis on folk magic and religion written.

  José has organized a spectacular one day conference, "Colóquio Peculiar: Transdisciplinaridades improváveis", on occult and esoteric subjects to take place 8 June, 2018 at the University of Coimbra.

[hope-for-olicity]

This is an old bone, but I’m going to chew on it some more because the public perception of romance novels is a perpetual source of irritation in my life. As a general rule, I try not to spend all my time defending the genre from the fifty-million polemics written about romance novels each year (which seem to spring up faster than dandelions in the spring). If we waste our energy shooting down shallow, unsubstantiated arguments, then we have no time left to devote to real consideration of the genre (its flaws, its value, its sociocritical commentary, etc.). Which, of course, is what they want.

Today, however, I’m going to make an exception.

Because back in June there was an article in the National Post that really hit the wrong note with me—so much so that, rather than fire off the rage-fueled response I wrote that same day, I have been sitting on this post for two months. I’ve been hesitating for two reasons: one, rage is not a good look for my writing style, and two, the issue I have with the article itself is a point of massive frustration for me both personally and professionally. I wanted to be sure that when I finally wrote this post, I was able to clearly articulate why.

But right off the bat, let’s get one thing clear:

Dear Romance Detractors of the World,

THE ROMANCE GENRE IS NOT YOUR JUNK FOOD.

Sincerely, We’re all really tired of this argument.

Sadaf Ahsan’s article, “In Defense of the Trashy Summer Read,” ran in the National Post on June 27, 2018. After months of fairly decent media coverage for the genre—this year has been an amazing one for positive representation of the romance novel in the media—I was hopeful that, despite the use of “trashy” in the title, Ahsan’s piece would, in fact, be a defense of the romance.

But Ahsan quickly disabused me of that notion. She begins the article by asking us to “redefine how we think of trash”—not to redefine what we think of as trash, but what we think of trash. Not an auspicious start, since she is clearly still associating romance with “trash.” But, thankfully, the word trash, through annoying, has been used so often with regards to the romance genre that it’s really lost most of its power. So, though annoying, Ahasan’s ability to distinguish between trash and quality wasn’t enough to set me off. No, it was when she compared romance novels to junk food that I really lost my temper.

So I have decided that it’s time for a Romance Novels 101 refresher course.

LESSON 1: ROMANCE NOVELS ARE NOT TRASH

To explain why Ahsan comparing romance novels to junk food set me off, I have to back up a few years.

In 2015 the Smithsonian ran an article by Emma Pearse on their magazine website, “Why Can’t the Romance Genre Get Any Love,”about the academic study of the romance genre. In the article, Pearse makes the argument that romance novels have as much literary merit, and are as worthy of academic study, as any other piece of fiction, from Tolkien to Tolstoy. She draws particular attention to the fact that most other forms of genre fiction, in particular fantasy and science fiction, have been studied in universities and taught in classes for years. But romance has not been afforded the same degree of attention, time, or effort.

We all know why romance novels are so commonly dismissed as trash, of course. Critics will defend their stance by claiming that romance novels are:

Badly written. (I draw your attention to this excellent piece by fellow Rioter Danika Ellis on why you should stop using the phrase “badly written” to critique books you just didn’t like.)

Sexist. (Which is funny coming from people who are frequently sexist in their attacks on romance novels.)

Causing women to confuse fantasy and reality. (You can tell from the the pulsing vein on my forehead that this is my favorite.)

But at the end of the day, the main reason that romance novels are dismissed as fluff and nonsense is because they’re (mostly) written by women, and when has something created by women for women (and about women or centered on women) not been automatically been dismissed out of hand?

But the more you try to explain to them that romance novels have value—literary value, cultural value, critical value—the discussion becomes a Magic Eight Ball of Ignorance (-5 to Intelligence). Every time you make a rational argument and shake the ball, the words “mindless brain candy” keep floating to the surface.

via GIPHY

LESSON 2: ROMANCE NOVELS ARE NOT JUNK FOOD (OR FAST FOOD)

If you want an example of a typical response from the Magic Eight Ball of Ignorance, check out this early comment on Pearse’s article:

This guy pissed me off in 2015 when he claimed that romance novels were of no more consideration to thinking people than fast food was to food critics. And when I saw Ahsan making the same argument in her article earlier this year, I had to resist the urge to set fire to my laptop. Because of all the arguments against the romance genre, this is the one that I hate the most.

Below is the third paragraph of Ahsan’s article, in which she introduces her “junk food” metaphor. Which she then carries through the entirety of her article, as though she’d discovered the most fucking clever rhetoric trick known to man. (Reader, she had not.)

“Because the thing is, trash – mostly as it pertains to pop culture – is a lovely thing. And the very best, the most vacuous and lighthearted, is deliciously digestible. Like devouring a brightly coloured cupcake or the jelly donut you know isn’t going to offer you anything more than needless calories and a sugar migraine, devouring a trashy novel is the utmost not-giving-a-damn-that-literature is able to offer.”

This paragraph exemplifies everything I hate about the faulty comparison of romance = fast food/junk food. There are dozens of things in Ahsan’s article that I could tear into that are wrong, ugly, idiotically stereotypical, and just plain ignorant—if only I had the time. But this right here is the worst of it. When she follows this paragraph up with remarks like:

“Who cares about extra calories? Who cares about a jelly stain? Who cares if you’ve named your cat Fabio after an iconic romance novel cover star?”

or

“they go down easy, but fast, one after the other, like beers you’ve been tossing back all afternoon, or that bowl of guac you may or may not have finished all on your own. What’s one more drink; one more chip; one more prurient paragraph?”

Ahsan illustrates exactly why this sort of argument makes me so angry. For one thing, it is much too easy for someone to spin it in a way that sounds positive even while the undertone is derisive. Like I said, going into Ahsan’s piece I had hopes that it would be pro-romance, given the title. And on the surface it seems to be. Read romances, Ahsan says! Don’t let anyone shame you for reading romances! These are arguments real romance readers make everyday to encourage each other and to embolden new readers.

The difference is that when actual romance readers say these things we mean “read romances” and “don’t let people shame you for reading romances” because. The “because” being that romances are amazing, creative, ever diversifying, feminist, and (naysayers and literary gatekeepers be damned) possess amazing literary value. When Ahsan says “read romances,” etc., it’s not “because,” it’s “but.” Read romances, but never forget that they’re bad for you and to supplement your romance reading with real books.

Fun fact: the definition of prurient is “marked by or arousing an immoderate or unwholesome interest or desire; especially: marked by, arousing, or appealing to sexual desire.”

Excessive. As in, you should be ashamed of the degree of interest. This word has a explicitly negative connotation, and you will never convince me Ahsan didn’t know that.

LESSON 3: ROMANCE NOVELS ARE NOT WARPING ANYONE’S MIND

And that’s the ugliness of the “junk food” metaphor. It encourages you to “indulge,” but it never wants you to forget that it considers what you’re consuming to be bad for you, and ultimately it looks down on you for your choices. This sort of thinking is tied into a long history of people dismissing the romance genre as useless, valueless, ineffectual literature, even as they oppose that same argument by claiming romance novels are harmful to women. (See above re: the vein in my forehead and the idiotic idea that romance novels blind women to reality.)

That’s right, women are so stupid and unaware that we can be tricked by a piece of fiction. Did you know that? I didn’t. Must be because I’ve been reading too many books to pay attention. We’re so incapable that we have to be told what we can’t read, what we can read, and how much of one thing we can read before it warps our simple little minds. Now smile, pretty girl, and say thank you! But, then, pretty might be the wrong word to use, because based on the awful romance reader stereotypes that Ahsan evokes in her article (apparently we’re all sloppy, lazy, lonely, cat-owning, sex-obsessed spinsters, btw), I doubt the average asshole romance hater would consider us all that attractive.

Okay.

Apparently even two months later I haven’t gotten all the rage out.

So, before I go find something to bring my blood pressure back down out of the stratosphere, one last time for the people in the back:

ROMANCE NOVELS ARE NOT YOUR JUNK FOOD.

[thelegendofclarke]

I'm sick of people saying Sansa isn't "Stark enough" Also tired of seeing how headcanoning Sansa (just in my mind/art) as Queen is criminal. My intention isnt to erase other characters. I personally don't care if she is QitN in canon. I'll just be glad if GRRM gives her a decent ending. But only imagining Sansa as Queen surely cant be a crime. Sansa has given me a lot of hope irl; helped me deal w/ depression so wanting her success,happiness rulership even it's cathartic

Hi! QitN Sansa anon here. I just wanted to rectify that the word I wanted to use instead of cathartic was therapeutic. I think they both mean same but I’m not sure. Sorry. English is not my native language and I struggle w/ it. Thanks for understanding.

Hello Anonny!

First of all, please don’t apologize for your English, it is seriously EXCELLENT! It’s probably better than mine tbqh. Secondly, I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK ME SO LONG TO ANSWER! I have no excuse, I am The Worst. 

Getting to the down and dirty of your ask… My dear Anonny, I totally hear you; and if it makes you feel any better, you definitely aren’t alone! Your frustration is honestly one of my main ~grievances~ with fandom and why I honestly having a really hard time engaging with like 85% of the ~meta side~ of fandom. I am in some fandoms, GoT/ASoIaF included, that have some incredibly smart and talented meta writers who are so passionate and hardworking and insightful. The things that they come up with sometimes completely blow me away! It can be easy to fall down the meta rabbit hole and get caught up, especially when people are seeing all these interesting things and coming up with all these amazing and intriguing theories that you NEVER would have thought of. But on the flip side, it can be really frustrating when the meta you are reading just doesn’t resonate with you at all. I mean don’t get me wrong, I am Here for meta as a concept and I usually really love seeing what people come up with. My issue is often in the execution. Sometimes it feels like meta crosses that ~fine line~ between showing you one way to think vs. telling you how to think. 

I definitely see the value in discussing different interpretations of stories and characters, and I even enjoy reading most of them. But too often I feel like people forget that meta is still just an interpretation, it’s as though there has become this ~thing~ where calling something meta automatically makes it infallible. But it’s really important to remember that with meta in regards to literature, while it’s generally meant to be an academic and unbiased approach generally, is still just one person’s interpretation of the facts as they see them. Meta has somehow become this competition about Who Is Right and Being the Rightest, and it just completely disregards how inherently subjective and personal fandom is. I will always and forever maintain that is absolutely impossible to be completely objective in fandom; your opinions, your biases, your Faves, are always going to affect your interpretations and and resulting opinions, that’s just human nature. I don’t get this whole demand for objectivity thing; if people were truly objective about fandom, I don’t think we would even be having this discussion, because no one would be discussing much of anything. Yeah, its important to maintain some level of objectivity, especially when you are having discussions with other people about fandom, but tbh being ~completely objective~ all the time sounds pretty boring. Honestly, I feel like most of the time people who claim they are being “totally objective” when they talk about things like character arcs, possible end games, ect. are even less trust worthy than those people who are up front about their favoritism; imo it usually means they are either totally unaware of their own biases, or that they refuse to acknowledge them.  

I also feel you on the whole thing of “headcanoning Sansa as QitN is erasing other characters,” it’s frustrating to me as well. Because you’re right, wanting Sansa to be in a leadership role does not automatically mean you are disregarding other characters. Positions like Q/KitN or Lord/Lady of Winterfell are exclusive positions by nature, there are always going to be unequal power dynamics based on that alone. It’s also like you were saying, seeing Sansa in a position of power and leadership role can definitely be cathartic and therapeutic (I think both words work btw!). As a character who has essentially been completely robbed of her agency and self determination and has been at the mercy of others for almost the entire series, it would be extremely satisfying to not only see her regain some of her autonomy, but also be in a position where she could control her own fate. It would also be really satisfying to see a character like Sansa who has had to rely so much on her more feminine, intellectual “soft power” to be in a position where she is clearly powerful in a more traditional, tangible sense. Does she have to be QitN for these things to happen? No, obviously not. But then it also stands to reason that none of the other Stark siblings HAVE to be in that power position to be important either, the same basic logic applies. To say that Sansa fans are “sidelining” or “disregarding” or “erasing” other characters by theorizing or headcanoning that Sansa could be QitN or Lady of Winterfell then means that fans of ANY OTHER CHARACTER who headcanon or theorize about that character holding a position of power in the North are therefore intrinsically sidelining/disregarding/erasing Sansa based on their own argument. Honestly, debating like that sounds tedious and counterproductive and more than a little annoying. Because honestly, it could go on FOREVER, we could be here for the rest of our gd natural born LIVES arguing about this. People are always going to disagree with you, that’s just life. And they are free to do so, just as you are free to disagree with them. But there is a notable difference between disagreement and downright derision; one is totally fine and can be done respectfully, and the other is kind of a dick move. 

And also, like I was talking about earlier, our faves are our faves. In fandom, you are allowed to concentrate on YOUR FAVE and their significance and where you see their story going. That is totally and completely 100% legit! Characters like Sansa are very easy to connect to and care about, especially for people who see themselves and their own struggles in her story. And I think the same goes for Arya… They are these two young characters who experience similar trauma and abuse and honestly just horrendous things that no child should ever have to experience, and they deal with it in such vastly different narrative ways. Arya takes action and lashes out and lets herself be sad and angry. Sansa rationalizes and compartmentalizes lies to herself and everyone around her in order to get through the day. Sansa is pretty much a poster child for traditional femininity, while Arya’s character has so much focus on defying gender roles (or disregarding gender completely in the case of the faceless men). Both have their moments of weakness and strength, both have their aptitudes and their flaws. Relating to and connecting with either on a personal level, as is common with fictional characters, is completely possible and understandable. That’s one of the most beautiful things about the Stark Sisters imo, together and separately they appeal to such a wide array of readers. 

There is no “wrong way” to fandom, there are no “wrong reasons” to love certain characters or story lines, there is NOTHING wrong with Sansa Stark being your favorite character and caring about what happens to her. And also, probably an ~unpopular opinion~ (but idgaf tbh), there is nothing wrong with caring about Sansa (or any of your faves) more than you care about other characters! It’s natural, you are not doing anything wrong, and your interpretations and opinions are no less valid than anyone else’s. That’s the great thing about fiction, it is literally impossible to have a “wrong” interpretation of a fictional work. You don’t even have to agree with the author to be ~right~ about a work of fiction because according to “death of the author” an author’s intentions and biographical facts should hold no weight in regards to an interpretation of their writing; a writer’s interpretation of his own work is no more or less valid than the interpretations of any given reader. Debate is fine, discussion is cool, dialogue about differences of opinions and interpretation can honestly be awesome. What’s not awesome though, is when people think that their interpretation is not only and absolutely correct one, but the sole correct one. That seems, like, wildly narrow minded and more than a little bit cocky tbh. Fandom isn’t a dictatorship; no one’s interpretations are law that can be enforced, no one’s preferences are superior, no one’s faves are automatically more important, and no one is The Great Supreme Rightest (or whatever a fandom dictator’s title would be idek). 

So the point is Anonny, YOU. ARE. VALID. Fandom is all about connecting with a story and it’s characters because they make you feel things. Something or someone in that story made your sweet little anonny (or in my case, cold dead salty) heart fall in love. So just keep fandoming and loving Sansa exactly how you want in a way that makes you happy!

(And on a totally mature, adult end note: fuck people who say Sansa isn’t Stark enough, what ever the hell that even means!? They are just jealous they don’t look that Boss 👏  Ass 👏  Bitch 👏  decked out in furs like a badass Northern Lady Pimp! QUEEN SANSA OF THE HOUSE SNARK, FIRST OF HER NAME!!!)