#please dont come factcheck my feelings lol

[hell-heron]

This is a post or rather a list of disconnected thoughts about Sansa discourse. As such, it's probably unpleasant and annoying, dead dove not don't eat. As such it mentions a lot of people's opinions which I don't know when and who I heard from, it's meant to be about trend in the fandoms and not about vaguing anyone specific. It's really a vent and I'm open to discussion but please not to attacks, I'm also deliberately not tagging this and making this unrebloggable

It seems that a "discourse" that had a recent revival is whether Ned did anything amiss regarding Sansa in AGOT, whether that possibly has anything to do with her choice to go to Cersei with his plan, whether it's intellectually honest to make such a connection at all, or rather a reach for cheap justification of one's fave. It seems to pop up periodically, bring up more or less the same few talking points both in favor and against, and certainly it isn't the most offensive and virulent of discourses on either side, yet it makes me very sad.

I think it's because searching for more psychological nuance in character's motivation is such a joyous, common activity and arguably all that transformative fandom is really about, and would be so in any other fandom or even part of the fandom (to make an example, as a Theon fan I've never seen any backlash to the idea him kicking Gared's head is tied to his fear of having to witness executions as a possible future victim, even though that also can be construed as justification for a misdeed and woobification, and it could potentially be construed as criticism of Ned too, even though I've never meant it as one personally).

But it's not so here, not because the critics arbitrarily decided to be mean but because indeed everywhere in the subfandom such "theories" or "metas" are indeed used in this futile exercise of tallying up everything your fave did wrong with the wrong that was done against them and with what other characters they are pitted against did wrong and with what they did right. It's very much a process that its happening and it makes sense that people want to criticize the metas and theories to defend against it. I'm not under the delusion the Sansa fandom is practicing joyous analysis and speculation while the cruel outside world only thinking in terms of us against them and black and white morality criticizes them baselessly. But it's still very sad to me that there's no place for that speculation.

Part of what is causing the backlash is imho that people are making it about favoritism with Arya way, way more than it should be. I think maybe a smidge of jealousy might be present on Sansa's part, the very bratty and unjustified well why do I even behave if other kids don't and don't really get consequences :(( kind of jealousy, but I don't think it's even in the top 10 of Sansa's emotional issues in AGOT. Also Ned is not being a better father to Arya than to Sansa, that's very obvious to me even as someone who absolutely is not lovingly rereading in detail Arya's chapters. Their interactions are sooo frustrating, he so doesn't have any more time for her than for Sansa and doesn't take her more seriously than he does Sansa. It's all very deconstructive of typical child heroine narratives - we see the Adults Are Useless trope play in the story of the bratty teen daughter and the plucky kid daughter and at the same time we read the father's pov and we know and understand why he feels he has to keep them at a distance, to impose certain arbitrary rules on them, to keep them from the amount of involvement they desire, but it doesn't make it less infuriating. Or at least that's how I think people would perceive it.

But overall I think the most significant point is that Sansa's problems wouldn't really change if she was in King's Landing alone, or with a ladylike little sister, or with Bran. The problem is ultimately that Ned is forced to bring her somewhere where she must approach her adult role but he still heroically refuses to make her into an adult before her time by letting her have information on what she's going into. The problem is Ned is forced to hatch a plan that relies on Sansa's betrothal to Joffrey, which in turn relies on Sansa's little irrational 12-year-old feelings to keep him from feeling like a monster, bc no way Ned would continue this if Sansa was unhappy with her lot - so how can he expect those little irrational 12-year-old feelings to stop being relevant when they suddenly run counter to his plans? How can he expect to revert everything to before he gave Sansa a bethrothal and a glimpse of court and her first taste of heartbreak without consequences? How can we expect the conflation of the personal and the political in feudal society won't fuck with him in every possible way lol. None of that is tied to Arya, and arguably none of that is something he necessarily could have done better.

But besides all this, honestly, AGOT Sansa if we take her completely at face value is such a meh, thinly written character that it's obvious we're not meant to take everything at face value, even if what I see there is not precisely what we're meant to be reading. But if it's not so, and she really is meh and thinly written... It's such a fandom tradition to look at the text and be like yea i can fix that. I can enrich that -which Is still, after all, a fantasy novel and not like, a Crime and Punishment to be taken in with acedemic rigor - with my transformative understanding. It's so perverse that we're in a situation where doing so will instead rouse the legitimate suspicion that you're claiming for your fave a place in the morality hyerarchy and protagonist hyerarchy that they haven't ~earned~.

It's a common criticism of fandom that loving speculation and headcanoning and analysis will be lavished on mediocre/secondary male characters in a way it isn't in female ones, and that people will then turn around and say they don't focus on female characters because they're not as well written. We've all seen that meme. Well, Sansa has always traditionally been a break in that pattern, ever since ~2014 when I started going on aso/iaf Tumblr it was so, both for the books and the show - people were always going beyond the text, were so fixated on her potential and her subtext and the way small details, small lines could be spun in meaningful ways. It is true that sometimes the Sansa you read metas about seems to be a wildly different one than the one on page, or at least a version of her taken to the next level in a way that she hadn't in the books yet. I remember reading a lot of meta that listed every small offhand deduction and correct reasoning she made in attempts to prove she had some growth or potential for intelligence and feeling happy and validated in my like for her, but also kinda wondering 'wow, think what would turn up if someone tried this kind of obsessive close reading with a character who actually does things'.

I think part of it was that the time was just ripe for the character people wanted Sansa to be at the time, that there was a desire for conversation on a bit more complex relationship with gender roles and social conformance than we were getting - I often wondered what the fandom would have been like if Margaery had been the POV and Sansa the intriguing supporting character, if people would have been repulsed by having a more active and openly grey character or if rather that would have been a beloved, effective exploration of courtly female power that didn't leave the fandom to do so much wank to fill the gaps. But part of it is also that there's a hole in asoiaf and in mainstream media in general for the female Theons and Sandors and Jaimes (and Tyrions, if people did that with Tyrion, which they don't more bc ableism/show baggage than because he doesn't Land himself to that), for characters that are completely gray and changeable and full of subtext and potential which invites you to analyse it and overthink it and make explanations if not excuses, offering a opportunity for an excercise of seeing things from the opposite point of view, characters that physically can't be analysed in a framework of who-is-more-virtuous-and-competent-than-whom. Sansa is obviously a pretty shitty substitute for that kind of antihero category, but she's the one most obviously offering herself to fill that gap - Arianne came too late and Asha started out well but didn't retain that quality in her actual POVs and Melisandre only has one chapter. Idk, I'm not sure this last part makes sense. Just the main thought that this trend of discourse always gives to me is "I wish I could enjoy Sansa the way I enjoy Theon instead of like this".

[fairuzfan]

in your opinion, should ppl be confronting zionists at this stage? at almost 3 months into this genocide, i feel like anyone whose opinion was gonna change has already changed. but i know there are ppl out there who think we should be trying to bridge this gap between sides. it's obviously not the priority rn, the ceasefire and then the ultimate liberation of palestinians should be first and foremost, but when ppl talk about healing communities after the fact, what's your response to that?? as i am not palestinian or jewish myself, i feel like i dont have the right to be dictating that kind of course of action.

You know, I can't speak for everyone and I wouldn't try to pass this off as the prevailing Palestinian opinion, but honestly I'm a little tired of appealing to any type of zionist. In fact, I'm pretty sure my logical thinking has suffered these past few months, and I feel like I'm not making effective enough arguments. Things like constantly pleading for people to recognize your humanity is exhausting and for 3 months of it.... I don't know how people do it.

I've been invited to participate in talks and stuff at my university, and I have more coming up, about the history of Palestine and Zionism and colonialism but I can't help but think "what's the point of all this. people are dying in horrific ways. shouldn't that be enough to convince you?"

This is why I'm making more of a push to make art and encourage making art. Culture is a way for us to plan the revolution, as Fargo said in their essay (click), and provides for us a tool to imagine different, better, futures. We need to be aware of the sorrow, but we need to be able to do something with that sorrow.

I try to avoid arguments and analysis a bit (unless something really annoys me/is important to me) these days for that reason. I'm sure there are still some people in people's lives that they want to convince and I don't fault them one bit. I think if individuals genuinely see that people can change and want to take that initiative, I would never discourage them.

If you're talking about ME personally, I don't focus that much on it anymore. But I have either cut people out of my life or I've not had many zionist friends in the beginning lol. I make a point of introducing myself as a Palestinian who works in Palestinian cultural heritage for that reason.

EDIT: (addition) also wanted to say as a result of.... constant coverage and discussion, my factchecking is not as great as at the beginning so I try to avoid providing sources not directly from Gaza, Aljazeera, Middle East Eye, and a couple others. So if you do see me making more mistakes about sources and information, please do let me know. I cannot emphasize enough how bad I feel about things that are incorrect/not properly sourced so I would love to fix it if possible.