#i fluctuate between mild interest; indifference; and the negative side of neutral

[battlestar-royco]

im not a GOT blog, but i follow a lot of got blogs that are D(any)-oriented, because she's admittedly my favorite character since s1 (cant speak for the books). and i love her because she has problems, not despite them, and i love the weaknesses and strengths shes had thru her arc. i think we have to remember that the D fandom is a LARGE group of people, with vocal bad seeds and good seeds. I've seen San/sa stans be entirely nasty. I've seen D stans be open and critical and mindful. (1/2)

one group in the fanbase doesnt reflect them all. maybe ive had a better experience, since I’ve been following kind and analytical/critical dany fans for a while now. but through it I’ve also seen how often D fans get lumped together. Very few people think D is perfect, and its because of her triumphs and downfalls that she is appreciated. The Sa/nsa and D rivalry was fueled by the show, and I think avid stans from either side are the root of the rivalry. But outside of that, Sa/nsa is loved too

There are definitely bad eggs in every fandom, which is why I don’t follow any Sansa blogs or go through her tags much either. (I mostly just rb what’s on my feed or answer asks about her.) I find the entire Sansa vs Danielle discourse counterproductive and boring tbh, but many book and show fans (and certainly the show writers) have hated Sansa since before the Sansa/Danielle rivalry was even a thing, in a fierce way I have never seen targeted at Danielle. The average ASOIAF/GOT fan is often either enamored of or indifferent toward Danielle, while the average fan is either indifferent or hateful toward Sansa. The only place I’ve seen where Sansa really has a strong fanbase is Tumblr, but Danielle is one of the top three favorites in all the fandom (the other two being Jon and T/yrion). Everywhere else–Reddit, Youtube, etc–that basic empathy for Sansa is simply nonexistent. I often find the reason for that dislike is because she didn’t report on Joffrey when Nymeria bit him, she wrote a letter to Cat and Robb while she was an 11 y/o political hostage under duress, she wasn’t affectionate to Tyrion as a child bride, she doesn’t fight like Arya etc. The reasons people dislike Danielle is because she exercised military force to take over cultures that were not her own, and (on the show) abandons those cultures in political turmoil, and she burns people who disagree with her. Does she get unreasonable misogynistic hate because she is a woman? Absolutely. Do I think anyone’s entitled to like Danielle in spite of all her flaws? Absolutely. But I also think the Sansa hate is unfair.

Also, part of my relationship with Danielle and Sansa is and has always been independent of the fandom. Of course every character in ASOIAF/GOT has done sketchy things, but imperialism and white saviorism, especially to the degree they appear in her storyline, are things that I will never be comfortable with, and I’ve encountered several Danielle stans who say she’s not an imperialist or that the racism in her storyline doesn’t matter because she’s a feminist hero. That’s the problem I have with her story: that she’s portrayed in such a way that people can and will excuse the way she treats POC. (This is also why I can’t get behind T/yrion. People love to brush over the way he treats women and especially Sansa.) The stereotypical writing for Essosi cultures and settings also turns me off even further from her storyline as a whole. I do find some parts of her character empathetic (like how she is an abuse survivor), but I’m a lot more like Sansa than I am Danielle. For all these reasons I am much more inclined to like and defend Sansa. Danielle does get a lot of hate, but the show’s narrative doesn’t completely belittle and betray her at every single opportunity like it has done to Sansa since season 1. In fact, they’ve been simplifying Danielle’s storyline to make her succeed more and dumbing down, erasing, and enacting violence upon Sansa. In my fandom experience, Sansa needs someone in her court more than Danielle does, so that’s where I stand. I understand of course that there are toxic stans of both Danielle and Sansa, but the whole situation is nuanced, and a lot of contention has been created between the fandoms due to the show’s terrible writing.