#tagging it anyway because apparently some people think I'm criticising arya???

[dontbipanicjonsa]

I’ve been reading Sansa fanfic and honestly I am so fucking tired. What is up with people making her out to be some selfish, mean, vindictive, I-don’t-even-fucking-know-what-else little kid????? Where the fuck does this come from???? What books are you reading?? 

How is it that in a book where characters are committing murder, rape, and even fucking baby exchanges, it is SANSA who needs to repent for her ‘crimes’?

Tell me again how Sansa is a shit person because of one mean thing she said to Arya in a fight but Jon, canonically called a ‘bully’ was the fucking paragon of good behavior as a child. Who’s gonna write the edgy Jon-was-a-pre-canon-bully fanfic huh?? That’s right. Fucking no one. Because we know Jon’s poor behavior at the Wall was driven as much out of his lack of awareness and appreciation of his privilege as it was by his struggle to reconcile the Wall of his dreams with reality. His behavior was an anomaly for him. 

Tell me again how Arya’s seeming class blindness in AGOT is so much better than Sansa’s raging classism. Who’s gonna say it was Arya’s fault Mycah got killed, because she didn’t recognize or appreciate her own privilege? Fucking no one. Because she’s nine, a child, and we’re not monsters.  

Sansa was selfish for expecting things that were already promised to her, but Arya wasn’t? Sansa is selfish for wanting to go to a tourney that’s being held in her father’s name. Sansa is selfish for expecting to be...married to her betrothed? Sansa is selfish for romanticizing/building up the life she is already expected to live? Sansa is selfish because she says Arya will ‘ruin everything’? Lemme tell you I have an older brother and I sure as fuck have ruined plenty of things for him as a kid stuff his friends lent him, that one time he went to watch some Hunger Game movie with his school friends and thought I would be mature enough to tag along and I really really wasn’t. That’s kind of what siblings do???? If Arya comes across as less ‘selfish’ than Sansa, then that’s because she’s hardly ever denied, and even when she is she’s made to understand why. Arya wants to learn to fight? Arya wants to flout expectations? Arya wants to take Syrio along on the ship? She gets it all. Is she selfish? NO. She’s a child. THEY ARE BOTH CHILDREN.

Sansa is mean, for having sibling fights with Arya? Never mind that she’s grieving the death of a part of her, Lady. Jon lashing out at the Wall may be an anomaly, but Sansa lashing out isn’t? WHY. Sansa is vindictive? Sansa who cried when fucking Joffrey dies? Sansa who is repeatedly described as sweet? Innocent? Courteous? 

When exactly is Sansa vindictive? When she doesn’t trust her father- who has been a pretty shit parent to her and fully deserves her distrust- to make the best decisions for her (as he hasn’t in the past) and decides to break one (1) rule in her life to...go to another adult to explain her problem? When she lashes out at Arya in her very valid grief because no one seems to give a flying fuck about helping her deal with it? When she utterly and absolutely ices out Tyrion, the fully grown Lannister man she has been forced to marry? Fuck you.

Ok no. I know. She’s power hungry. Just dying to be queen. I quake in my boots when I read her POV, honestly. Never mind that she is not the one who makes or even influences the decision to betroth her to the prince. (Alright she does in the show. But hey, Arya of the show is a misogynist, Jon is an absolute moron and Tyrion is the good guy so I won’t put a whole lot of stock in show characterization.) Never mind that Sansa’s desire to marry a ‘prince’ is driven more by her romanticizing  and wanting to have a life like the songs, and less to do with power. But nooo. Sansa wants to marry a lord even as late as ASOS. She’s willing to marry Willas because he’s a lord. 

Right. Because it is so much more terrible for a girl to want to marry a rich, powerful, upper class guy to get her out of her current shitty situation where she is utterly powerless, than it is for a slave owning girl to order the massacre of 13-years-old, upper class children. People forget that their fave wouldn’t be the character she is now if she hadn’t been married off to a powerful man all the way back in the first book, who unwittingly gave her a position of power of her own for the first time in her life. Or there wouldn’t be any dragons, there wouldn’t be any khaleesi. Isn’t that how patriarchy works??? Fuck Sansa for daring to want what Dany got- control over her own life via marriage. 

I’m just so tired. The point of Sansa’s character is that she’s empathetic. She’s soft. She’s polite and courteous. She’s nice to Sandor when he doesn’t deserve it. She calls Jon half-brother because that’s the politest term she can use. She stands up for others (Dontos, the people right before the riot, Tommen, fuck she even warns the Tyrells about Joffrey) even when she’s at her most powerless. She cries and feels bad and prays for her abusers. She’s unwilling to play ‘the game’. She chooses to continue to believe in and place value in the songs and stories as ideals that deserve to be lived up to in the midst of a harsh reality that has driven lesser people to nihilism and bitterness. This is who she is. To dismiss these things for the sake of making her out to be some mean and petty little girl is to misunderstand her entirely. 

But who would deign to lower themselves to the perspective of a pre teen girly girl anyway, right?