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bitchfromtheseventhhell · 7 years ago

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oh boy ok oh boy

a year late with starbucks, here i am with book-and-show sansa #discourse. because i finally watched her stuff in s6 and while i don’t think i have anything #new to all y’all who watched her stuff in s6 as it was airing, i needed to process my thoughts about the entire seasons 5-6 conundrum so here they are.

some structural elements before i dive in:

i recently rewatched the entire series with my roommate who loves the show. she keeps me honest about my thoughts regarding the show because she demands an internal cohesion of me that i tend to be more fluid with online. in that spirit, i’m going to be looking at the characters equally. book!sansa is book!sansa; show!sansa is show!sansa; neither will be written below as sansa. the only instances where there won’t be a show!- or a book!- before any characters name is when that character does not exist in one of the two canons and thus i expect you to know which canon i’m talking about.

i will be discussing--specifically--the information that would cover affc-twow and beyond in book!verse, and the second half of s4-s6 in show!verse. the emphasis will be predominantly on the show, though, with supplementary information from the books where it makes sense for what i’m talking about. while there are still differences between both sansas in earlier books/seasons, i am considering that out of the scope of my thoughts for the sake of keeping my thoughts from going all over the fucking place which--you guessed it--they already are.

my reasons for this are also linked with narrative structure. if you are assuming a structure for both media where you have an a-b-c structure, where a is the first chunk (agot-asos; s1-s4); b is the intermediary getting from a to c, and c is the #final countdown, you must look at b as a complete entity. for a song of ice and fire--and specifically sansa’s case--it’s easy: she doesn’t appear in half of the b section (affc-adwd; though when twow comes out we may have to adjust this assumption of the b section, i think it’s a fair assumption to make now) since she does not have a pov chapter in adwd. for game of thrones, it requires looking at s5 & s6 in tandem. i honestly do not think it’s fair (in either direction) to judge s5 without looking at s6, and i do not think it’s fair to judge s6 without looking at s5. they comprise the same narrative chunk.

i wear my biases on my sleeve: i think that s5 was a revelation in terms of the showrunners really being complete fools when it comes to confronting major adaptational challenges that they were facing. while i do not--and honestly have never--expected perfection from them in terms of a perfect page-to-screen adaptation, this season to me was a sign to me that they were not equal to the task facing them. this is not to say that martin is: the jury will be out until we have twow and possibly ados in hand.

to me (and this does not mean you have to share this opinion), a good adaptation is not whether or not characters’ lines are reflective of the book, it’s whether the grander theme of the adaptation matches the original’s. it’s a metric i use for all book-to-film adaptations, be it the lord of the rings, the handmaid’s tale, harry potter, american gods, the various pride and prejudice adaptations, and whatever else the film industry throws at us next. this is an unfortunate metric for game of thrones, however, because the showrunners hamstrung themselves fast on that front, and it’s something that they even admitted to when saying “Themes are for eighth-grade book reports.” [source]

thinking something is a (not-)well-done adaptation and thinking something is a (not-)well-done show are two completely different things in my mind. i don’t necessarily think that the harry potter movies are good adaptations; i think they’re decent movies--and the later ones are even full-on good. in the case of show!sansa and the storyline constructed for her, and looking at them not as an adaptation but as a creation, here is what i will be considering

does the character make internally consistent choices?

are the choices the character makes substantiated by their experience?

how does the character fit in with the larger story?

lastly, this is a critique of seasons 4-5-6 of game of thrones. i understand completely that there are folks out there who prefer game of thrones to a song of ice and fire; i know there are folks who prefer a song of ice and fire to game of thrones (i am one of this latter crew). this is not meant to be a value-judgement on what you find enjoyable. you do you. i’ll continue to do me, and i do have major criticisms of various narrative arcs and setups in the books, though, due to the differences between the two media, they tend to be of a different variety. if you don’t feel like reading through a long critique of this arc (because god knows there have been enough of them at this point since i’m a year late with starbucks) by all means skip this one. i am processing for my own sake, and wanted to share what i think in case it’s constructive for others who haven’t had it already with the books-vs-show discourse on this particular arc.

a point that doesn’t easily go anywhere: a major difficulty when encountering books-vs-show, with really any of the characters but in this specific case definitely so: age. book!sansa is 13 going on 14. show!sansa is at least 18 if not older. the difference between how a 13 year old would behave and process and how an 18+ year old does behave is vitally important and rarely discussed. for all my frustrations with benioff & weiss’ adaptation with the series, i wonder to what extent (and i mean i literally wonder--i can see it going many ways) a lot of the deviations from between book!- and show!sansa comes from their respective ages.

show!sansa & rape

show!sansa was raped.

she was raped on her wedding night to show!ramsay, and was raped repeatedly and psychologically and physically abused afterwards. at the time that the episode aired, there were many comments flying around, but especially you have the following comment from brian cogman, one of the lead writers on the show:

“This isn’t a timid little girl walking into a wedding night with Joffrey. This is a hardened woman making a choice and she sees this as the way to get back her homeland. Sansa has a wedding night in the sense she never thought she would with one of the monsters of the show. It’s pretty intense and awful and the character will have to deal with it.” [source]

there are two things i want to unpack from this quote; i’ll get to the second of them in a different section. the first part i will fixate on is one that frequently gets fixated in on in discussions of season five--specifically that show!sansa’s wedding night is one of “a hardened woman making a choice.”

the problem we have here is that we don’t see her “making a choice.” there are many discussions to be had about the nature of agency within westeros--both in the books and in the show, and involving characters beyond either book!- or show!sansa--but it is fairly certain from the beginning that show!sansa does not have a choice in the matter. from the moment that show!petyr brings her away from the vale (not even telling her where she is going) and then surprises her with the view of the north at moat cailin, it is clear that he is not interested in her “choice.” the “choice” that show!sansa has to make is what to do with her newfound situation--which she had no hand in choosing.

one of the seminal issues with season 5 is the way that benioff and weiss ended season 4 for show!sansa--specifically they had her looking at show!petyr and saying “I know what you want,” and then had her descending the staircase in the vale in a dress of her own making, hair freshly dyed, and seemingly liberated after three seasons of captivity in king’s landing. this makes the transition into season 5, where you have a show!sansa who is distraught in episode 3 at the concept of going north to the boltons, who is blindsided that show!petyr would have masterminded this for her--inconsistent with the end writing of season 4, and with the commentary on the show from the episode where show!sansa did say “I know what you want,”

“Up to now, Sansa has been a piece that other people have moved about the board to achieve their own goals, using her, discarding her, using her for a different purpose, you know, ‘You’re gonna marry Joffrey.’ ‘No, you’re gonna marry Loras.’ ‘You’re gonna marry Tyrion.’ She is beginning to at least try to understand how she can play the game of thrones and be, not a piece, but a player with her own goals and moving other pieces around. And she’s not a warrior like Robb, Jon Snow. She’s not even a wild child like Arya. She can’t fight with swords, axes. She can’t raise armies. But she has her wits, the same as Littlefinger has.” [source]

perhaps, instead, it was arrogance; alternatively, it is hubris that she assumed she knew what show!petyr wanted; or perhaps she is not in fact a player (to use terminology that is based in book!sansa’s arc), but still a piece, and a piece whose player has misread the board--show!petyr telling her “Better to gamble on the man you know than the strangers you don’t. And you think you know me?” could well be mocking of both her and her strategy for he himself is about to gamble on strangers he doesn’t know--and drastically so. that’s a valid interpretation of the beginning of season 5 in my view, but it stands at odds with her trajectory in the second half of season 4, while being consistent with her trajectory in season 6--where you can argue that show!sansa does begin to emancipate from piece-dom to player-dom. this is something even sophie turner made note of while discussing season 5:

When I got the script, I was shocked to my core. Because I was just like, is this really going to happen for her again? It’s really quite devastating. It is “Game of Thrones,” but when you had the moment at the end of Season 4 you think, “Oh her life is going to get better. She’s going to take matters into her own hands and she’s gonna be this powerful woman and liberate people and manipulate people.” And then it was just kind of like, “Oh.” [source]

regardless--this makes the setup to this entire arc a rocky one because even the actor involved feels as though it’s a major step back for the character. it makes the characterization inconsistent since it doesn’t seem to follow naturally from the end of season 4 and thus how the viewer comes to see show!sansa in the a section of the narrative. it makes the justifications for the need to have her fill the role of show!ramsay’s wife and rape victim seem all the more nonsensical.

benioff’s commentary is revelatory on the matter:

“Sansa started as such a naive innocent...She’s been traumatized by what she’s seen and she spent almost a couple years in shell shock. At a certain point she’s either going to die or survive and become stronger. She’s chosen the latter option and she’s learned from an incredibly devious teacher in Littlefinger. The interesting thing about Littlefinger is he seems to have no almost no weaknesses aside from his affection for Sansa. He’s been obsessed with her since that early episode at the joust.” [source]

the tricky thing about this comment is that it has two theses: the first is that show!sansa’s only options are “to die or survive and become stronger.” this comment in and of itself is not one that is necessarily untrue: book!sansa, after all, definitely spends the course of several books trying to figure out how to survive the situations she has found herself in, noting even that “one slip and [she is] dead,” even after she has left king’s landing. it is certainly true of show!sansa, who during her time in king’s landing definitely was playing a game of survival and one the likes of which she in season 1 would not have imagined.

what is frustrating is that the idea that this version of “survive and become stronger” was not something that they had already set up at the end of season 4, that show!sansa has thrown herself in with show!petyr and is prepared to outflank everyone for show!petyr has “almost no weaknesses aside from his affection for Sansa.” she exited season 4 with that “survive and become stronger” mentality, only to have it torn to shreds in season 5. the idea, then, that show!petyr’s affection for show!sansa would blind him into sending her to this specific marriage reflects that he does--in fact--have a weakness (his own hubris) and that, furthermore, show!sansa’s strength (which, quite apart from “shell shock,” was what carried her through seasons 2 and 3) came not from her trying to take advantage of her situation as she was at the end of season 4, but rather from her being raped instead. independently about what that means for the character, it says rather a lot of misogynistic things about the showrunners.

i stand firmly believing that the showrunners mishandled show!sansa’s rape. i do not particularly think they handled the episodes immediately following her rape in a consciencous way, though i think they do manage to capture show!sansa’s nihilistic desperation at her situation which leads her to insult show!ramsay to his face and to leap off the walls of winterfell with show!theon, both actions that display a brash bravery that she is rarely credited with (either because insulting show!ramsay to his face is deemed “stupid” and “dangerous” because he will abuse her further, or because it stands at odds with the idea of show!sansa as one who waits, and thinks, and uses her wits before acting--a trait that is frequently talked about in commentary of the show). to stand up for oneself against a rapist, abuser, and--beyond her relationship with him--torturing murderer and to declare that this is an unacceptable situation to exist in is an act of profound backbone.

the simple fact of show!sansa unflinchingly and unapologetically overseeing the death of her rapist and the man who murdered her brother is the only way to have ended that subplot. it was a good ending to a storyline that was shoddily structured in both its preparation and in its early execution.

show!sansa & the north

i mentioned above that i would have a second thought about that quote. here it is. the point of show!sansa going north to marry show!ramsay was to get her north. her “choice” was to try and reclaim her homeland, however she could, after having been separated from it and her family for so long while held in captivity, and after having mourned and longed for it during that brief period in the vale of arryn.

both sansas are characters who want to go home, who long for paths to bring them home, who miss their family. book!sansa assumes that the vast majority of her family is dead (it is a shock for book!sansa to remember that book!jon is alive--the sole family member from her nuclear family still remaining to her; she has an uncle and a great uncle in the riverlands, but those don’t cross her mind particularly, possibly because they are tullys and not starks) and is completely unaware of what the reader knows is going on in winterfell (which book!petyr is involved with by virtue of jeyne poole’s presence there). meanwhile, show!sansa knows that arya lives, learns from show!theon that her younger brothers are alive as well before physically reuniting with show!jon early on in season 6.

i completely understand the need to change the way that martin has been writing his story in order to fit the constraints of television, and the story that the showrunners have been working on since the first season. i understand, furthermore, that while martin has the luxury of being able to miss every deadline set before him for whatever reason he sees fit--that’s not something that benioff and weiss are able to do in order to write a season of game of thrones.

if it were simply a matter of show!sansa working to reclaim the north, i would have many fewer quibbles with the execution of this storyline. the problem is that that the emphasis of season 5 (and thus something that they had to fix in season 6) was not the north; it was the rape.

The showrunners first thought about putting Sansa and Ramsay together back when they were writing season 2. “We really wanted Sansa to play a major part this season,” Benioff said. “If we were going to stay absolutely faithful to the book, it was going to be very hard to do that. There was as subplot we loved from the books, but it used a character that’s not in the show.”

Writer-producer Bryan Cogman had some insight, as well. “The seeds were planted early on in our minds,” Cogman said. [source]

there are many elements to the subplot that they chose to adapt that were not present in season 5. the major elements of the subplot that were present involved the marriage of show!/book!ramsay and the horrificly abusive marriage that that becomes, the psychological grapplings of show!/book!theon, and show!/book!stannis’ march from the wall to winterfell (though there are major differences in the adaptation of this march; i won’t be discussing them here). the problem is that while all of those are vitally important to the book plot, the reason that they are all there in the books to begin with is the power vaccuum of the north following book!robb’s death--and none of them would be present without the political pressure of what is going to happen in the north, and that is the vital backdrop of everything. it is startlingly absent in season 5 and has major ramifications in the writing of season 6, especially for show!sansa, though also for show!jon.

in the book iteration, you have the northern lords who have gathered in winterfell for the marriage of book!ramsay with jeyne poole. the marriage is a way to legitimize bolton rule, since one of the “stark daughters” will be married to book!ramsay before all of the north, making it that much more difficult for them to rally against the boltons and say that their rule is illegitimate. one of the many points of the subplot (and certainly one of the most important) is that it happens where everyone can see it, and yet book!theon is the only one who knows all the details.

the northern lords--for the most part--are disgusted with the entire situation. they are livid with book!theon for having (supposedly) murdered book!bran and book!rickon, they hate the boltons for being turncloaks who participated in the red wedding, where many of their brethren were slaughtered (not to mention the starks who died there), but they are also fully aware that many of them still have living family members who are held hostage beneath the twins and so they must make nice with their new lords, lest something bad happen to their family members. it is in this subplot that we have some insight into seeds laid in book!davos’ storyline--that wyman manderly is working to undermine the boltons and the freys, that there is someone in winterfell who is murdering turncloaks (though that person is unknown), and that “the north remembers” what happened to the starks, to their own families, and that they hate the boltons for it. furthermore, they are flatly disgusted with book!ramsay’s treatment of jeyne, whom they believe to be book!arya.

“Not me,” the Lady of Barrowton confessed, “but the rest, yes. Old Whoresbane is only here because the Freys hold the Greatjon captive. And do you imagine the Hornwood men have forgotten the Bastard's last marriage, and how his lady wife was left to starve, chewing her own fingers? What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned's precious little girl.” [source]

the show’s adaptation of this scenario does not include the northern lords. it mentions--briefly--ramsay terrorizing the old lord cerwyn and replacing him with a new one in the first episode of season 5, but after that we have literally nothing for an entire season. the only sign that “the north remembers” comes from a little old man and a little old woman who ally themselves with show!brienne and show!sansa. indeed, this brave woman ends up being murdered and flayed by show!ramsay after he discovers her plans to help show!sansa escape and that, it seems, is that. “the north remember[ing]” seems to be a flimsy, hopeless thing, and not enough to help show!sansa at all in her current situation, for it cannot connect her with show!brienne (present and earnestly hoping to help show!sansa, if unaware of the explicit details of her situation).

stepping away from the issues that arise from adaptation here and looking at game of thrones without a song of ice and fire to compare it to--in order to be sure that show!sansa was isolated enough for show!ramsay not to worry about having to rein himself in, the showrunners left several major worldbuilding plotholes and really shot themselves in the foot for the next season and the character development they could have had for show!sansa. for all they say that the “choice” that motivated show!sansa’s actions was an attempt to reclaim her homeland, their focus in this arc for an entire season was her abuse, and then her desperate need to escape from it, not her political aims. rather than giving show!sansa scenes where she was interacting with lords and ladies she would have to convince in season 6 to join her cause, scenes where northern lords might see how show!ramsay truly was treating their beloved show!ned’s daughter, or where they might be appalled that show!sansa would agree to marry him, or whatever could be written to add in conflict later, they gave show!ramsay pointless scenes with his girlfriend, a poorly contrived plot involving being able to see a candle in a tower window, and an isolation that made no political sense given that the whole reason that show!sansa married show!ramsay from the bolton perspective was to legitimize bolton power in the north. they did not care to focus even a little bit on the rest of the north and showed literally no perspective on the match from any northern characters. it was only show!sansa and the boltons.

the trouble is--the rest of the north does exist, and show!sansa (and show!ramsay) has to confront that in season 6, since it was not done in season 5.

the first thing to bring up before diving into that, though, is the red wedding. the red wedding--in both books and show--was an event orchestrated by the rooses bolton, the walders frey, and the tywins lannister. in both cases, you have an event where the robbs and catelyns stark were slaughtered--but also where members of other northern houses were slaughtered and/or taken captive. this is vital to the frustration of the northern lords in the book as described above. they blame the boltons far more than book!robb for the red wedding, not least because many of them still have family members held hostage at the twins, pending their allegiance to house bolton’s regime in the north. they recognize book!roose as a traitor, and that book!ramsay is his son and heir and thus as vile a kingslayer and traitor as they could find, on top of being the fiend who married lady hornwood and then left her to starve to death and eat her fingers so that he could claim her lands through marriage as his own. it is not simply a matter of being frustrated with book!robb’s choice to marry jeyne westerling (though there is definitely frustration there)--they know that the destruction of--not just their king but their autonomy rests on bolton shoulders.

the northern lords in the show, far from blaming the boltons, seem to blame the starks for it. they blame show!robb’s marrying talisa and shirking his commitment to marry one of show!walder frey’s daughters. and while i think, given what happened at the red wedding, it is justifiable from their end to see their king as having not taken his oath seriously, the leap from “show!robb did a bad thing” to “the kinslayer of the kingslayer of show!robb now sits in winterfell and should sit in winterfell” makes legitimately no sense as a baseline for why northerners would side with show!ramsay and it is the baseline.

there are, of course, logical explanations to why many of the northern lords chose to absent themselves from season 5, and to help substantiate the decision season 6 in aligning with the boltons (even the ones who want to “stay out of it” have chosen house bolton over house stark). the problem remains that none of those explanations happen in the show canon until season 6, making it impossible to deny that season 5 wasn’t about the north it was about rape. there is no dialogue to explain it, and there aren’t any of benioff & weiss’ much beloved monologues to explain it and, given how frequently they use monologue to provide political backstory/understanding to their viewers, the lack of it in this plotline which is supposed to be about show!sansa “see[ing] this as a way to get back her homeland” is really noticeable. there are explanations for the choices, but those explanations must come from the viewers, not from the show itself, which makes it no more or less canon than the questions demanding to know why the north did or did not remember in this way.

it means that the northern plotline has to play catch-up with itself in season 6 and that show!sansa shows an understanding of the north and its politics that were denied her by the showrunners not sending any northern lords to winterfell in season 5 in the first place. her understanding of the north was that brave woman’s assertion that “the north remembers,” and it gets flung in her face repeatedly when she brings it up. and while it would make sense for her to have some instinct for politics after her time in king’s landing and her time with show!petyr, and for her to understand show!ramsay better than show!jon and show!davos in anticipation of the battle of the bastards, it doesn’t make sense that she would have a better sense for northern politics as a genre than show!jon, who has been much closer at hand to the north than she has since the beginning of the show by never having left it and who has had to deal with a northern political backdrop given his stance about the wildlings since season 2.

the first instances of northern lords being present in winterfell are a karstark and an umber. the karstark’s justification for supporting ramsay makes sense, even if it’s belated: there’s a great deal of bitterness for show!robb’s beheading of show!rickard karstark in season 3. it’s a clunky scene but it follows from what came before. this is not even a little bit the case with the umber who brings show!osha and show!rickon into show!ramsay’s hands. the scene in which this umber is showing that he supports show!ramsay follows literally no logic. the reason for support is that show!ramsay slew his “cunt” of a father. what made show!roose a “cunt” is hard to say--it’s never explained. perhaps, it’s that he slew his king in cold blood; if that’s the case, one wonders why a man who kills his king is worse, somehow, than a man who kills his father in plain view of his vassals. but that is speculation. there is no mention of the red wedding (where presumably show!greatjon was...but who knows because he hasn’t appeared since season 1), of the betrayal of the starks and the umbers’ fellow northern lords by the boltons, and no real understanding of why show!rickon and show!osha, who presumably have been in last hearth since the end of s3 when they said that was where they were headed, would go from being people who deserved protection to prisoners of the house who slew show!robb and show!catelyn.

the only conclusion that can be drawn, given the lack of setup for it, is that benioff and weiss were ramroding their plot into place, just as they did by sending show!sansa north to begin with, and are trying to convince the viewer to “just go with it” in order for the rest of the season to make sense and to have the military setup they so desire for the battle of the bastards in episode 9. in focusing only on show!sansa’s rape the season before and none of the northern politics, we then are left questioning why the everloving fuck the karstarks and umbers think the manderlys would throw in with show!ramsay when benioff and weiss were so proud of having a manderly at the red wedding (presumably to die or be captured) to when season 3 aired. it does not follow logically or politically--it only follows if you stop assuming that this house, and other northern houses, has any memory, agency, goals, familial relationships, and has miraculously lost the sense of honor that led its members to crown show!robb following show!ned’s beheading and that they only exist as a function of show!ramsay’s power in the north...and the whole point of show!ramsay’s marrying show!sansa was that the power he held in the north was unstable to begin with.

ironically, the lord glover that show!sansa and show!jon have to try and convince to join their side gives a better justification for it than either of these two more powerful houses--in pointing out that show!ramsay helped retake his keep from the ironborn, and that show!ramsay helped him rebuild his home (which....he didn’t need to marry show!sansa for, and which is a very different tune from show!roose’s warning to show!ramsay in season 5 that “We can't hold the north with terror alone”). his refusal to help show!jon given that it is an army of wildlings show!jon’s asking him to join also makes sense, but it is so belated and following so contrived a setup that it feels like an afterthought for the baseline above, rather than the primary motivation of mistrusting show!jon’s choices. but at the same time, this lord glover does address the fact that it was the boltons who perpetrated the red wedding which destroyed the lives of so many including his brother, pinning the blame on show!robb and his choices instead. it perpetuates--rather than the boltons being hated for turning their cloaks--the idea that they might, in fact, be liked for it which is so mindboggling when you also have this mentality that “the north remembers.” treason and kingslaying are suddenly oddly forgivable in a region that prides itself on having an ancient honor.

the viewer has been given the sense since the very first scenes of the show that the northerners care intensely about the old way, about righteousness and justice. but what we see from the northern lords--or rather, from the lack of the northern lords in season 5--stands at odds with the starks and the northern “old way” of making justice with their own hand. show!sansa and show!jon alone seem to remember it, seem to care about the boltons and justice for the red wedding. the rest are unwilling to help, and the reasons that they give do not align with what the viewer has been led to believe about the north in the a section of game of thrones. if it does remember, it remembers the wrong things and is better to think that, in fact, it might not.

and--to make the whole mess even more frustrating--in the scene in which show!jon is crowned the king in the north, the northern lords speak of how he avenged the red wedding, which they had seemed to forget or not care about in joining the boltons or rejecting show!jon’s and show!sansa’s call for aid. little show!lyanna mormont declares that “the north remembers” to murmured assent and that’s true: she did. the others--they made it quite clear that they didn’t remember the red wedding or the horrors that show!ramsay was capable of throughout the entire season.

show!sansa & herself

now is where i’m going to shed commentary from the showrunners for a section. the reason being that in order to look at show!sansa as her own character--no matter what my frustrations are with the crafting of her arc--it is a waste of energy to compare what the showrunners intended for her versus what was actually depicted on the screen. it means that book!sansa in the vale, grappling with the web of lies she’s found herself in, must cease to exist for a time, and that benioff, weiss, cogman, and martin do not get to say a word. only show!sansa does.

show!sansa begins calmly confident in her choices, since the end of season 4 ended with “i know what you want,” the dyeing of hair, and a confident stroll that implies that show!sansa is ready to take control of the situation. that calm confidence slips away very quickly when she finds that she has been sold into marriage as she was by show!petyr and finding herself in the wolf’s den with those who slaughter wolves.

it results in an understandable, natural irascibility. show!sansa in her newfound freedom is infuriated by the presence of the boltons in her home. she speaks and acts boldly. she seems to have forgotten everything she learned in king’s landing, that the viewer spent several seasons watching her navigate with enough capacity for her to have made it out alive--with show!petyr’s help. show!sansa knows the boltons to be terrible for they murdered her mother and brother; show!sansa knows that they have the capacity for craftiness, for their betrayal was not discovered before it was too late. and show!sansa behaves almost as show!ned did in season 1: speaking her mind and damn the consequences. perhaps she is trusting in the fact that show!petyr, her ally, made the match for her; perhaps she is trusting in her name and status as a legitimization of show!ramsay’s position to serve as a protector for her. perhaps, still, she is determined that in this place, in her home, in winterfell, she will not be the sansa stark who had to hide everything about herself in order to escape abuse at show!joffrey’s hand. she is determined to retain a part of herself no matter what. as she tells show!theon in the last episode of season 5 “If I’m going to die, let it happen while there’s some of me left.” she is not there yet, of course, but i think this line is vital to understanding her earlier behavior in the season, especially when considering her history in the a section of the narrative as an abuse victim who was never allowed to be herself and who routinely had to denounce her father, brother, and mother as traitors, and tell everyone who would listen that she had the traitor’s blood also.

show!sansa is allowing herself to be “herself” as best she can, which is jarring for a character who has existed to be different versions of herself depending on those around her and what they need from her. this version of herself is an impulsive one ( “You can’t!”) and one who digs into her abuser where she can (“Or maybe he’ll give me yours”). the viewer knows more than show!sansa does: we know what show!ramsay did to show!theon, we know that show!ramsay has literally hunted like game a woman who no longer pleased him and set his dogs loose on her to kill her, we know that he is a different breed of cruel from show!joffrey. but show!sansa does not yet. she will learn all this--she will see hints of it when she finds show!theon in the kennels--thinking that he deserves his state, given that he supposedly murdered her little brothers--but she will not learn for true until after she is married.

she marries show!ramsay, is repeatedly raped and beaten and abused psychologically by him, and she tries twice to convey to show!brienne that she needs her help, that she needs to get out. both are failures that result in the death of others: in one case, the old woman who told her that “the north remembers,” the second in show!myranda, whom show!theon kills before he and show!sansa leap to their freedom and potential death from the walls of winterfell. the progression of season five, for me, is a smash repeat of seasons 1-2 for show!sansa, only this time for an older woman with an older abuser. she thinks things will be fine, they are not fine, she is sexually and psychologically abused. there is even the hope that show!stannis will kill her captor for her which happens on neither count. the difference is capacity for agency: show!sansa in seasons 1-2 was thirteen-fourteen years old and is being watched very closely at all times in a place she doesn’t know very well. in season 5, she is a stark of winterfell in winterfell and is able to slip out of the room in which she is being held and sneak her way to try and transmit her plea for help. and, when she is unsuccessful, she chooses to leap from the walls with show!theon, rather than choosing to stay in a space of abuse. in king’s landing, there remains some hope for her--that show!robb will live and come to find her--in season 5, whether or not there is hope for her safekeeping doesn’t matter to her. she’d sooner try all she can to get free.

there are inklings of show!sansa’s pride throughout season 5. i should note: pride here is not intended as a value judgement for show!sansa, though frequently it is used against her. i think she is entitled by her experience to have her pride. people have tried to strip it from her throughout the seasons. her holding onto it, even when it causes conflict, i think is a sign of her tenacity in light of abuse. she is proud when she arrives in winterfell, head held high to face show!robb’s and show!catelyn’s murderer and his son, she is proud before the wedding while dining with the boltons, refusing to be brought low, she is proud in interactions with show!theon before she is married, and she is proud enough to say that she’d rather die while there is still some of her left than to return to her chamber and face whatever show!ramsay has in store for her. that pride takes on a different shade in season 6 when she finds show!jon at castle black.

there, her pride becomes more mixed. it flares at random moments. sometimes she is proud in a way that includes show!jon--making him a cloak like their father’s, for example--and other times she is proud in a way that doesn’t include him. show!sansa’s pride, to me, helps explains why she doesn’t tell show!jon about her contact with show!petyr when he first comes to molestown to see her, and then returns to the knights of the vale at moat cailin. she doesn’t want to admit to any contact with him, because it is both painful and humiliating to acknowledge that show!petyr has anything valuable to convey to her after what he was responsible for in season 5. it is pride as well that means she doesn’t tell show!jon that she is sending for the knights of the vale after house after house after house has closed their doors to the starks’ plea. show!sansa has been told that “the north remembers” by the brave old woman. there were no other northern lords in winterfell to prove otherwise while she was there as well. she clung to it as hope in her most nihilistic moments and now that hope has been turned on its head and it is something she refuses to accept because she’d rather die than go back to ramsay--so she calls upon show!petyr. it can only be pride that keeps her from telling show!jon, fear that he will call the move stupid, that he will call her stupid for trusting show!petyr in an hour of need.

and, of course, it is pride that leads her to reconnect with show!petyr wordlessly when show!jon is crowned: if show!jon gave her credit privately, no one gave her credit for helping to retake winterfell during that meeting--not even her half-brother--no one except show!petyr and her pride is wounded and he is planning to prey upon it once again.

show!sansa & the larger story

while drafting this, i reread the post that i wrote in the immediate aftermath of unbowed, unbent, unbroken. it, like this, was a processing post, though of a very different variety, and it, more than this, was expecting a tighter adaptation to the books. one of the major points that i was making was that, in sending show!sansa north to fill the role in this subplot, there was a major ripple effect in the larger story--beyond just what happened in the north. this ripple effect struck out as far as dorne, for that was where show!jaime found himself in season 5, rather than in the riverlands where his book counterpart was. book!jaime would be lured away by book!brienne on lady stoneheart’s orders while book!brienne is still on her thus-far fruitless quest to find book!sansa. because of the adaptation of show!sansa’s storyline, you can’t send show!jaime to the riverlands just yet (this will happen in season 6) so instead he goes to dorne, which changes the dynamic of his and show!cersei’s relationship, which changes the moves that show!cersei makes, which changes the moves the faith makes. you also have show!petyr who inexplicably tells show!cersei precisely where show!sansa is and why and somehow doesn’t end up dead but instead gets show!cersei to agree to name him warden of the north at the end of everything (an additional interesting layer to his shared glance with show!sansa at the end of season 6).

the trouble i find here is simple--and to me much shorter than any of the points i’ve made above--the decision to send show!sansa north in season 5 is directly connected in my view to the dorne subplot was poorly conceived on every possible count (“i’m going to honor my dead lover by....killing his entire family....” + badly shot fight sequences). and while i think that the king’s landing plotline in seasons 5 and 6 was better upon a rewatch than i was anticipating it being, i also think that there are major gaps in it and in how the north is being treated by a show!cersei who is doing what she can to consolidate her power, especially a show!cersei who has just lost the second of her three children and who believes that one of those responsible for the first’s death is in the north.

i think that more broadly, the writing and worldbuilding in season 5 went downhill; i can’t parse out if i think that’s because of the northern plot, or if it’s simply a correlation. it’s hard to know since it’s the first season where they depart so thoroughly from the books, which makes it hard to know until the winds of winter has been released and until game of thrones is finished as a television series. in terms of the show independently from the books, however, i think it’s undeniable that season 5 is a weak point and that the victories of season 6 are still built on a bad foundation which makes them harder to see as full-on victories. you can’t leave out season 5 (unless you’re talking about show!bran since he--mercifully?--wasn’t in season 5) in terms of talking about narrative because it’s the linchpin and it’s a bad linchpin. it’s how you get from a strong start to a--hopefully--relatively strong finish.

final thoughts

looking at show!sansa in a vacuum (ie pretending for a second that book!sansa does not exist), i feel just plain bad for what the writing of her was. it was hamfisted, unsubtle, poorly conceived, and poorly executed. it frustrates me that a narrative arc with all of those traits has a ripple effect on the narratives in the rest of the series, but that’s how it goes i suppose.

i’m proud of some of her choices: i will never not be thrilled by the way she #ended show!ramsay, and i’m curious about what show!bran’s return to winterfell will mean for her. i’m frustrated with some of her characterization, but lbr here are there major characters on game of thrones whose characterizations i adore? because for the most part the characters i am at my happiest watching are the minor ones these days because most of the major ones are inconsistent in a way that personally is very frustrating.

i don’t really know what else i think.

i also don’t think i have to. i don’t know if i will until the show is over. and i imagine that my thoughts will continue to grow and change as time goes on because that’s what thoughts do. i literally could not have foreseen writing some of what i’ve written in here two years ago when season 5 was airing.

but i suppose all this is where i am right now.

#books vs show #show sansa #sansa #the show #a year late with starbucks #this was cathartic #honestly writing this was so similar to writing the dany meta i wrote a little while ago #talking about show!sansa is hard #largely because there are major systemic issues with her writing and narrative #which like...she as a character is not to blame for #she's the first victim of those systemic issues #on a number of counts #but it makes it really hard to unpack when trying to talk about her #because where are her flaws and where are her *writing's* flaws #and how do you dilineate #and different people will handle it differently #which only makes it harder

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