#just an entire story centered around the main character slowly starving to death all alone in a house

[shouts-into-the-void]

I don't think stories about vampires do enough with the horror potential of them needing to be invited into someone's home.

Like, a vampire fooling the protagonist or one of their friends into inviting them in, only to reveal that they're evil and now have full access to their home.

A vampire who waits outside the protagonist's home, meaning they're functionally imprisoned in their own house with dwindling resources, unable to even order things to the house because the vampire could just kill anyone approaching.

Just...there's so much you could do with that

[fortunatelylori]

When Jon and Sansa think about each other

Book dabbles

 I debated a lot before writing this because to be honest I’m no book expert and also the topic of Jon and Sansa thinking about each other in the A Song of Ice and Fire series has been covered so extensively in our corner of the fandom and by some truly fantastic meta writers.

But some thoughts did occur to me and I thought I might as well share them … :)

The main thing that has always struck me about Jon and Sansa’s thoughts on each other is not only just how rarely they occur. In Jon’s case, in particular, it’s quite strange to say the least because he doesn’t think about her even in moments where it’s practically impossible for him not to even spare her a thought.

However, sparse as they are, what I find truly moving about their thoughts about one another is that they concern two important aspects.

In Jon’s case, his thoughts on Sansa are centered around her romanticism, her wonderment at beauty and her love of songs.

He thought of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself

This is a particularly idyllic memory he’s picked there. Almost intimate I dare say. This is speculation, of course, but it does conjure up that image of watching someone you admire from afar, so to speak.

Sansa would call this an enchantment, and tears would fill her eyes at the wonder of it

This is one of my favorite quotes from the books because it feels so true to Sansa’s character and her desire to see the best in the world, to be filled with wonder at it and be moved to tears by beauty. The fact that, for some reason, Jon knows this about her always manages to surprise me.

There’s also a pretty stark contrast between his imaginings on Sansa’s reactions and Arya’s reactions.

“Sansa’s eyes filled with tears at the wonder of it” is very much an image he will be struck by later on when he meets Ygritte whom he starts falling for partly because she would cry when she talked about giants or sang songs.

Of Arya, he says this:

but Arya would run out laughing and shouting, wanting to touch it all

Clearly this is not the kind of reaction Jon is having at the moment. He’s pensive and blown away by the view (“there was magic beyond the wall after all”). His reaction is much closer to his imagined Sansa than his imagined Arya who, here, is placed in the role of the noisy, cheerful child, who is running around happily while the two “adults” look on.

But what is the most interesting thing about these quotes is that Jon, out of all the Stark children, is the only one to think of those characteristics of Sansa in a positive way. Bran also makes mention of Sansa’s love for songs but he calls the songs she likes “stupid”. Arya thinks most of what Sansa does and says is stupid. And we never get access to Robb’s thoughts but he doesn’t appear to spare Sansa much thought at all. Jon alone seems to be the one to value these aspects of Sansa that are so integral to her character.

Also noteworthy that while in the beginning Jon’s thoughts on Arya and Sansa are conflagrated:

He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him anything but “my half brother” since she was old enough to understand what bastard meant.

The girls do not even have that much, he thought. Their wolves might have kept them safe, but Lady is dead and Nymeria’s lost, they’re all alone.

As the story progresses, his thoughts on the two split more and more and are often given in contrast to one another, as Jon begins to reflect on the two as individuals instead of “the girls”. This is far more important for Sansa than it is for Arya since Jon and Arya’s relationship is much more prominent in Jon’s thoughts so far, in the story.

The other important aspect here is that just as Jon begins to reveal his appreciation of Sansa’s romanticism, her qualities as a lady and her love for songs, Sansa is slowly beginning to lose those things. First she loses Lady, a loss Jon comprehends on a level that even Ned ignores. She also begins to say things like:

I thought my song was beginning that day. But it was almost done.

There were no heroes. In real life, monsters always win.

There is even a contrasting image of what Jon conjured up on the Wall, when Sansa enters the gardens of the Eeryie. But while she is struck by the beauty of it all just like Jon imagined, she also thinks this:

A pure world. I do not belong here.

This is often taken as Sansa saying that her place was in Winterfell but I also think this is Sansa internalizing her abuse to such a degree that she no longer feels worthy or “pure”. *cue me ugly crying here*

In order for her to regain those aspects of herself that abuse and isolation have stripped away from her, she’s going to need someone who knew just how important those characteristics were as well as have a true appreciation for them. Need I say more …

In Sansa’s case, the most moving aspect of her thoughts on Jon is that she considers things that others don’t, for whatever reason. All the Stark children think fondly on Jon when they think of him but Sansa finds herself wondering about his actual, current situation. 

This quote here in particular is immensely interesting:

If this was what the Night's Watch was truly like, she felt sorry for her bastard half brother, Jon.

Faced with the reality of what the Night’s Watch actually is, instead of the brave and heroic Black Knights she was lead to believe protected the realm from unknown “invaders”, Sansa feels sorry for Jon. The reason why this is so moving to me is because it encapsulates Jon’s entire Night’s Watch drama. He goes to the wall thinking he’s going to join this illustrious and respectable Brotherhood of honorable Knights only to be faced with the reality of a group of thieves and rapists or simple, poor boys forced to go to a place where they’ll likely starve, freeze to death or be murdered because they had no other choice. Talk about a rude awakening! And Sansa of all people is the one that acknowledges this and empathizes with Jon’s plight.

And then there’s the famous:

She had not thought of Jon in ages. He was only her half brother, but still . . . with Robb and Bran and Rickon dead, Jon Snow was the only brother that remained to her. I am a bastard too now, just like him. Oh, it would be so sweet, to see him once again.

This is quite the leap Sansa made from this:

It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring. And Jon's mother had been common, or so people whispered.

Every anti-Sansa commentary circles back to her derision of Jon as a bastard. And you can clearly see in the second quote just how low an opinion she had of the position to begin with. She even thinks Jon’s mother must have been common, because how else would he have ended up a bastard? Also Arya’s attitude disturbs her to such a degree that she thinks it would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard as well.

But easier how? I think the answer is that if Arya had been a bastard, Sansa would have been able to find a more suitable place for her in her world view. She’s been trained to think that bastards by nature are lacking in some way, are less suitable for respectable society than legally born children and because Arya’s behavior is so out of the spectrum of what she’s been led to believe is “normal”, bastardhood would have offered an explanation.

And so I must ask, is it a coincidence that Sansa finds herself in the position of becoming a bastard herself? Of suffering people’s suspicions of her nature, their insults and humiliations? Is it GRRM punishing her for the thoughts that her society put in her head since she was old enough to speak? Or is it perhaps a way for her to understand Jon’s situation and his frustrations in a way that she could never do before? Is it likely she’ll think the same of him, after her own experiences? And after conveniently spending part of her Eeryie arc around two other bastards?

There’s already a marked difference between the Alayne quote and the Night’s Watch quote in terms of how she refers to him. In the Night’s watch quote she calls him “her bastard half brother” which feels like overkill, like she has to clearly state his exact position to keep it straight in her head, lest she slip and think of him in a more affectionate way. In the Alayne quote she abandons the “bastard” before “half brother” all together and then brings it up as a way for her to breach the divide she most assuredly knows is there.

It would be easy to imagine Sansa saying to Jon: “I was a bastard just like you. I understand now.” in order to try and forge a relationship with him, once they’re reunited.

On love:

These quotes are obviously not Jon and Sansa thinking about each other but I do think there’s something interesting about how they connect.

When Sansa is dealing with the Tyrells and thinking about a possible marriage to Willas Tyrell, this is the image that she comes up with of her married life:

She pictured the two of them sitting together in a garden with puppies in their laps, or listening to a singer strum upon a lute while they floated down the Mander on a pleasure barge.

On the other hand, Jon has started a relationship with Ygritte, he just had sex for the first time and is a very young man. This is the time he should probably work on perfecting his first imagined porno flick. However, this is what he thinks about:

If I could show her Winterfell…give her a flower from the glass gardens, feast her in the Great Hall, and show her the stone kings on their thrones. We could bathe in the hot pools, and love beneath the heart tree while the old gods watched over us.  

Both of these quotes have very little to do with their respective partners. Sansa has never met Willas. He might be allergic to puppies for all she knows. On the other hand, Jon knows that him doing any of the things he wants to do with Ygritte would be impossible because she’s not the type of woman to be gifted flowers, be dined in the Great Hall or appreciate the stone kings that are probably responsible for keeping her people beyond the wall for centuries.

However, looking at both those quotes, what stands out is just how similar they are. Both Jon and Sansa conjure images of domestic bliss, filled with romance and tranquility. Also, for some strange reason, both Jon and Sansa think of being with their respective partners in water … Granted, Sansa also wants puppies and she doesn’t think about making love beneath the stars but she’s a sheltered and very young girl who thinks kissing is about the most risqué thing you can do.

You can kind of see just how easily both their fantasies could fit together in a way that wouldn’t rob one or the other of what they want.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this:

If I could show her Winterfell…give her a flower from the glass gardens …

One of the main reasons why Sansa became romantically interested in Loras Tyrell was because he gifted her a rose at the joust. Jon wants to woo his lady love with flowers from the glass gardens. I say they should just skip the middle man. Also, Jon should get a hold of some puppies to seal the deal … And maybe some kittens too … It’s important to be original, after all.

*gifs do not belong to me!