In relation to the recent 'Arya is naturally violent' nonsense is anyone else tired of browsing the Arya tags and coming across the umpteenth version of an incorrect quote jokes with Arya wanting to run around killing people and wise ol' Sansa holding her back? I thought it would fade off after some time, but no, it's back again. It's not even funny. It's tired and repetitive.
And the worst part is that it's not even book accurate. Book canon has been twisted so far to the other extreme that nonsense like this shows up on the tags unchallenged.
On fandom hypocrisy and double standards...
Arya hunts for her own food, cooks food, mends her own cloths, is literally a slave forced to scrub pots and pans until there's bleeding blisters on her hands, sweeps the floor and cleans, is a cupbearer to Roose Bolton taking him his food, letters, maintaining his room. Is a blind beggar on the streets, a street urchin and fish peddler. Holds her tongue, controls herself and plays the meek servant even when she is being beaten, is a mouse in Harrenhal, is learning subservience at the HOBAW.
Sansa in book 3
"Varys has informers everywhere. If Sansa Stark should be seen in the Vale, the eunuch will know within a moon's turn, and that would create unfortunate . . . complications. It is not safe to be a Stark just now. So we shall tell Lysa's people that you are my natural daughter."
"Natural?" Sansa was aghast. "You mean, a bastard?"
"Well, you can scarcely be my trueborn daughter. I've never taken a wife, that's well known. What should you be called?"
"I . . . I could call myself after my mother . . . "
"Catelyn? A bit too obvious . . . but after my mother, that would serve. Alayne. Do you like it?"
"Alayne is pretty." Sansa hoped she would remember. "But couldn't I be the trueborn daughter of some knight in your service? Perhaps he died gallantly in the battle, and . . . "
"I have no gallant knights in my service, Alayne. Such a tale would draw unwanted questions as a corpse draws crows. It is rude to pry into the origins of a man's natural children, however." He cocked his head. "So, who are you?"
"Alayne . . . Stone, would it be?" When he nodded, she said, "But who is my mother?"
"Kella?"
"Please no," she said, mortified. - Sansa, ASoS
What a difference in emotional maturity here between the two sisters. Arya's run the gamut in experiences from being the daughter of the warden of the north to being an actual blind beggar on the streets. Meanwhile Sansa is horrified at having to play a pretend bastard - just the mere thought of being labelled a bastard is appalling to her. And Arya is two years younger. No wonder GRRM says that Arya is like some forty year old.
Jon in ADwD has reached a stage where he casually shrugs off the insults of his birth. He ignores the Kingsmen/Queensmen who insult him and it's only when Val or Satin or Wun Wun are disparaged that he questions their bigoted viewpoints.
Cregan Karstark “I see what you are, Snow. Half a wolf and half a wildling, baseborn get of a traitor and a whore. You would deliver a highborn maid to the bed of some stinking savage. Did you sample her yourself first? If you mean to kill me, do it and be damned for a kinslayer. Stark and Karstark are one blood.”
Jon Snow “My name is Snow.”
Cregan Karstark “Bastard.”
Jon Snow “Guilty. Of that, at least.” - Jon, ADwD
Meanwhile in book 6, TWoW sample chapter
Ser Harrold looked down at her coldly. “Why should it please me to be escorted anywhere by Littlefinger’s bastard?”
A lady’s armor is her courtesy. Alayne could feel the blood rushing to her face. No tears, she prayed. Please, please, I must not cry. She showed the Waynwoods a stone face as they blurted out awkward apologies for their companion. When they were done she turned and fled. Near the keep, she ran headlong into Ser Lothor Brune and almost knocked him off his feet. “Harry the Heir? Harry the Arse, I say. He’s just some upjumped squire.”
Sansa is near tears when Harry calls her a bastard. And after running to LF to complain about Harry:
“Come,” Petyr said, “walk with me.” He took her by the arm and led her deeper into the vaults, past an empty dungeon. “And how was your first meeting with Harry the Heir?”
“He’s horrible.”
“The world is full of horrors, sweet. By now you ought to know that. You’ve seen enough of them.”
“Yes,” she said, “but why must he be so cruel? He called me your bastard. Right in the yard, in front of everyone.”
This is all in the books. That's why it's ridiculous that fandom treats Sansa as some 18-20 year old wise, emotionally mature person who has to hold back murder baby Arya from killing people and teach Jon politics 101, diplomacy and how to talk to people.
This assessment that Sansa - who in book 6 is still aghast at having to play a bastard - is somehow going to change the system from within the system while characters like Arya and Jon who interact with and live among the smallfolk and Freefolk and learn from them will fade away into the background contributing nothing to the endgame.
I had to read from an 'expert' on how Jon Snow was this privileged rich kid in Winterfell who would know nothing about food stores. And yet Jon's teachers in Winterfell would have been Ned Stark, Maester Luwin and Rodrik Cassel among others. He would have got the same education as Robb Stark. For some reason though, Sansa Stark whose primary mentor was Septa Mordane has the better skillsets for leadership.
When I mentioned that Jon Snow was Jeor Mormont's steward and as steward in training he would have learned on the job about food stores, I was informed that there was no textual evidence of that. And yet despite Sansa doing absolutely nothing in terms of leadership, we are told to take it as fact that she learned from Cersei and Littlfinger and the Tyrells and everyone she spend two seconds with in her chapters.
This is the absolute hypocrisy and double standards with how other characters are treated vs Sansa that I find obnoxious. And I am not even talking about Jonsa shippers. I am talking about folks claiming to like all the characters the same, being above fandom wank, we are here only for the textual and non-biased analysis folks.
By the time we reach book 6, 13 year old Sansa Stark is where Jon Snow was emotionally at the start of AGoT. She's also younger than Jon was in AGoT. Just the idea of Sansa giving orders to 17/18 year old Lord Commander Jon Snow, teaching him politics and diplomacy etc. is laughably ridiculous. I can't even conjure up an image of this, it's so ridiculous. But that's apparently what fandom thinks is going to happen which, how? What in the text of the books gives any kind of indication that Sansa has the skillsets to rule the patriarchal North or that the other Starks should learn from her?
It was laughably ridiculous when the show had Sansa scolding Jon for not asking her advice on planning battle and compared him to Joffrey and the show writers defended her undermining him in front of everyone because he did not consult with smart Sansa and the so called book expert Bryan Cogman said shit like this:
Interviewer: Sansa undermines Jon a couple of different times.
Cogman: So? He’s only been king like a week. Why shouldn’t she? He didn’t bother to consult her.
Yeah, the KITN did not bow down to Sansa’s apparently huge brain, so she has every right to undermine a new, elected king who has to decisively prove his credentials to the lords. And Cogman was supposedly the Asoiaf expert on the show. Just trash writing. ASoIaF reddit dudebros worship this guy but I think that Cogman was actually far worse than Benioff and Weiss.
And yet with the Karstarks and Umbers showing up to fight the White Walkers while the Glovers sat it out in season 8, the show itself implies that Jon Snow was right in his decision to pardon them and that Sansa was wrong. So she's not that smart after all. So why should Jon consult her again? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I would like to read one essay, just one essay detailing Sansa's skillsets with book quotes and in what way those skillsets would contribute to her leadership arc in the North. I have done one for Arya. We have got detailed analyses, nitpicking every aspect of Jon and Dany's leadership from these experts on their flaws, failures and mistakes. I would like them to do the same for Sansa, since they are so insistent she's going to be the hope and change for future Westeros and best leader yet.
But they would probably consider even asking for this as Sansa hate. Sansa's credentials are not to be questioned. It just is.
208 notes
·
View notes