#there's usual the self inserting people in Sansa or Catelyn or such

[swordsandarms]

There's nothing more self-inserting in this fandom than the people who actually hate Rhaegar Targaryen (and sometimes by extension Lyanna and Daenerys and other Targaryens).

But with Rhaegar it's very peculiar. With either Rhaegar positive or neutral fans, you can discuss things like connections he has with characters in actual canon, by actually canon references, that give him some depth whatsoever in turn. Love RxL shippers with all the actually newer clues highlighted compared to your typical "Jon's parentage" checklists because it gives more character interiority. Love the Jon and Dany fans who've given more attention to the connections clearly drawn on purpose by the author that are also doing that.

But people who outright hate this tertiary character? The emotionally driven rants as if this man was their own boyfriend or father and wronged them specifically and that's all the focus of it? Only ever writing in "depth" about him in scenarios that are clearly made up and can only be explained as projection from some baggage none of us trying to read some book are interested in? Very odd behaviour.

#asoiaf #lyanna stark #rhaegar targaryen #jon snow #it's also how you know #people like me come and go onto the topic #write something when there's something to add to whatever actually useful discussion there is in that sense #but those people #they just keep re-popping up to screech a variation of the same enraged broken record statement #and just keep doing that over the years #never getting over it #like idk #you've clearly got something to unpack #but it's definitely not about this small fantasy character #and as I said also with Dany or Jon or Arya or Lyanna etc #there's usual the self inserting people in Sansa or Catelyn or such #with veeeeeery weird opinions about things in general (aka women or children) and an opinion about the character they self insert in #that have nothing to do with their canon depiction most of time #or only being interested in that side of it they self insert in if that makes sense #so like Sansa is somehow a representative of girl next door suddenly cause she's not relevant to magic in a magic book #or Catelyn is some ever suffering wife who needs to feel validated in taking out her frustrations as some stressed out #21st century local mother with a shitty husband and stressed by taking care of children on her own #like hm #I see you and what you're doing but also #I don't care #I'm here for a book not for your personal shit

[blackcat419]

Your post about Alicent, Sansa, and Elia - I would add Catelyn to this as well - and their fandom perception, etc. was very on point. I've noticed with the ASOIAF fandom, in general, is that there is a significant subset of fans (almost always women themselves) that will always stan/cape for the NLOG Power Fantasy Self-Insert and will put down the 'meek, submissive dutiful wife' types which they perceive are in opposition to their faves. There is a very misogynistic undercurrent in the fandom in regard to women that are deemed as 'only' being wives and mothers and nothing else. They are deemed boring, irrelevant, and not worthy/or exciting enough by the fandom. They are offered no empathy, or grace, and their victimization is often ignored or downplayed because they didn't 'fight back.'

There is also another element to this in how insanely male-centered these fangirls are. The reason why some of these self insert power fantasy characters, like Rhaenyra, Dany, Lyanna, etc. (the GRRM Girl Boss) are so revered is because they have been 'picked' by important men in the series. These fans will elevate a female character and deem her worthy as soon as an important male character is said to be in love with her. This is why they cannot stand Daemon very obviously cheating on Rhaenyra with Nettles because it implies Rhaenyra wasn't 'enough', same with Baela and Jace/Sara Snow, and why they look down on women like Elia, Alicent, etc. because they didn't 'satisfy' the targ men in their lives. Saying Elia is barely a character, but stanning Lyanna who is also essentially an NPC is laughable, but since Lyanna was called willful a few times, played with a sword, and Rhaegar risked it all for her she's considered stan-material. I'm unmoved and unimpressed, but fine whatever. Shiera Seastar, has two character traits, being hot and having two targ men in love with her. Yet the stanning her is not weird at all but being interested in the DLC is? I need these people to be serious.

Then there's someone like Rhaella, who should be revered in this fandom because she literally died giving birth to the last hope of the targ dynasty, but she is either ignored or clustered in with the characters the Girl Boss stans cannot understand people liking. You just know targ stans don't like Rhaella because she didn't girl boss her way out of her abusive marriage and instead was a 'passive victim' who 'did her duty.' Importantly, she was also not loved by or sexually satisfied her targ husband. And, canonically, Aerys lusted after other women, like Joanna Lannister, which degrades Rhaella even more in the eyes of these types of fans because once again she was 'beaten' by other women in terms of being desired by the men in her life.

You also see this mentality when Arya fans use Arya being Jon's favorite sister over Sansa as some like, own, against Sansa or whatever. Am I supposed to give a single fuck who Jon Snow, of all fucking characters, prefers or likes? Because I don't and Arya isn't 'better' for having more attention from an 'important' male POV character. It's so male-centered and pick me-ish, it's insane lmao.

Bottomline, a lot of these fans are profoundly misogynistic, hypocritical, male-centered, and honestly cannot consume media without projecting and self inserting into a power fantasy character. And they need other women to be downgraded by both the narrative and in the fandom to add 'spice' to stanning the self-inserts that they have deemed worthy.

Anon you hit the nail right on the head with this! These fans only like female characters that they see as desired by male character around them, usually Targs because we need that nazi eugenics metaphor.

A lot of these fans like to delude themselves by saying they like characters that are active and actually do stuff but they always fail to notice or care about what characters like Sansa, Elia, Catelyn, and Alicent do!

Fans hate on Catelyn because she’s active but in the wrong way to them. She gets shit done! Girl literally crossed the continent to warm her husband and find out who tried to kill her son! She caught off an assassin for her baby! But it’s not active in the way these fans want because she’s not bending over backwards to accommodate and baby Jon Snow.

Same with Sansa and Alicent, these two are very active in their own ways, they’re plotting, guiding, and influencing those around them but the second Alicent gets violent or Sansa has thoughts of regicide, they’re instantly bad characters who are being active the wrong way.

And Lyanna and Elia are both very passive characters. The most active thing Lyanna does is being the mystery knight and the most active thing Elia does is taking the lead role in caring for her babies by not letting wet nurses nurse them. After this they’re both background characters who suffer at the hands of the men around them.

Basically these people like to lie and say they want active characters but when the characters are active, it’s not in the right way. I saw someone say that they like active characters who succeed but no character is succeeding 100% of the time, they’re all failing!!

#house of the dragon #hotd #anon ask #sexism in hotd #sexism in asoiaf #fans only liking female characters when a targ man picks them

[grrmartin]

Why do you think antis are so hard on Sansa being disfigured? Jon, brienne, hound(young), myrcella etc are disfigured by others. Does that mean they needed lessons to learn? Also grrm wrote darkstar parody which implies no woman can redeem so called bad boys.

Well, this one is a bit obvious if you’ve spent any time in the ole Jonrya gc. They literally explained the whole thing. It has to do with ASOIAF being a morality tale that awards good people (Arya) and punishes bad people (Sansa). It’s basically seeing everything from a Fairy Tale perspective where Sansa is the evil witch and needs to be marked with the sign of the devil, showing everyone she comes into contact with that she’s evil. They believe the only thing Sansa has to offer is her beauty, so if that’s taken away from her, everyone would rightly hate her.

It also intersects closely with the idea that Arya has swan symbolism in her chapters, apparently pointing to both swan lake (since that’s a ballet, it shows the feminine side of Arya being a water dancer?) and also the ugly duckling story. I’ve even seen posts about how Arya is a Stark Swan amoungst Tully Ducks. Basically saying all of the other Stark children who have red hair and blue eyes (Bran, Robb, Sansa, Rickon) are basic ducks while Arya will eventually blossom into the most beautiful of birds. Doesn’t really make a lot of sense as Catelyn is considered hotter than Lyanna, and all the Stark kids except Arya look like Cat. FFS, logically BRAN and SANSA are the younger more beautiful Queen according to the show, not Arya.

It also plays into Arya stans’ belief that beauty is very important and necessary. To them, Arya must reform and become a lady, and do it better than Sansa. Essentially she must beat Sansa at Sansa’s games using Sansa’s rules. A lot of it has to do with not enjoying Arya’s actual storyline. Truly, they’ve chosen the wrong character to self-insert into. There are Arya stans out there who actually like Arya, and they don’t feel the need to disfigure Sansa. But this belief of Sansa’s disfigurement is usually held by those who think Sansa should be tried for treason, if not killed in the Vale, and at the very least, stay in the Vale as Alayne forever. Sansa is a threat to Arya’s ‘rightful’ arc and must be dealt with. Sansa was also bratty to Arya in season one/AGOT, so must pay for it.

Your question about the other character’s disfigurements really don’t factor into Arya stan’s worldview, because they’re very focused on hating Sansa and loving Arya, and outside logic doesn’t play into this. And lastly, I know this is not a popular opinion, but I actually like Darkstar. He’s super funny and over the top.

#asks #sansa stark #anti arya stans

[fatui-harbingers]

I always think it's funny when the j*nsas act like jonerys shippers are equally toxic (though now it sorta is bc of jon stans) bc I always think about one of my first experiences with them only a few months after I joined the fandom.

I had NO IDEA how bad the ship war was and how bad these people really were, though I had heard about it. I joined post s7 so it was bad when I got here.

I made a text post (part of it was my fault bc I cross tagged but I didn't know much about this stuff when I did) saying I was a Daenerys fan and jonerys shipper but I didn't understand why we couldn't all just stop hating on dany or sansa over ships bc I loved sansa a lot at the time and it seemed crazy! It still does tbh.

I woke up to TONS of hate from the j*nsas. Not “bro take this out of the tag” but full on attacks just for liking Dany! They didn’t even seem to care it was in the tag, just that I loved Dany and Jonerys! I would have understood being upset that I used their tag, bc that is really annoying! But I was getting attacked and hearing all the usual anti Dany bs. Dany stans and Jonerys shipper on the other hand were like “babe you should take this out of the tag so they don’t attack you”. Not all of the j*nsas were rude, some agreed that the ship war was crazy and didn’t get it but most were just horrible.

Even after that I still didn’t seem to get how bad it was, until I started posting some of my own stuff about Dany. They would, like they do, jump onto a post not even meant for them and add their own anti Dany rant. I’ve seen mutuals get harassed by them, I’ve heard of people getting death threats and being told to kill themselves by this group. I hardly EVER see any Dany stans or Jonerys shippers act the way they do so it’s clearly not the same at all. We don’t stalk sansa blogs, we don’t go through the sansa tag to add hate even though lots of us have come to dislike her either bc of her “stans” or bc of the show, and we definitely don’t post anti sansa rants in her tag then act surprised when asked to take it out of the tag bc it’s not cool. I’ve seen and heard about jon stans acting similarly but that’s about it tbh.

I want to add that idc if you ship j*nsa or stan sansa, that’s cool. I don’t hate the ship though I don’t personally understand it. When I and most Dany stans and/or Jonerys shippers talk about j*nsas like this we’re taking about the anti Dany crowd that can’t seem to shut up about her and use sansa as a self insert rather than liking her for who she is. I am mutuals with some lovely sansa stans and j*nsas (some are multi shippers and some aren’t) but these people aren’t obsessing over someone they supposedly hate more than anything. Most actually like Dany and other women too. Some of the coolest people I know on this site love lots of them! Daenerys, Arya, Sansa, Catelyn, Margaery, Asha/Yara, Elaria and the Sand Snakes (though a disaster on the show, but so was just about everything lol).

And I just wanna say, I miss the real sansa, not whatever d&d turned her into.

#personalish #anti dany bs #anti jonsa #anti show!sansa #just being safe lol

[stardyng]

(About Jonsa) “the Ned and Cat 2.0 parallels also don’t match, because why would Jon want to marry a woman similar to the one who emotionally neglected and abused him?” Thoughts? I think it’s bull tbh.

I can’t believe someone actually said that. It’s obviously wrong for multiple reasons. I don’t know when people are going to understand that Catelyn did not abuse Jon. She did actively ignore him, and she made no effort to be his mother, and you know what, that’s perfectly fair because she’s not his mother and she never pretended that she was. Ned just brought him to Winterfell, pretended that he was his bastard, gave no substantial explanation to anybody about how this even came to be and expected Catelyn to just come to accept it and possibly raise the boy. I mean, let’s look at the facts shall we? They lived in a society where bastards were actively being discriminated. Catelyn was far more lax about Jon than many women in the westorosi society. She didn’t physically or verbally mistreat him, nor did she forcibly ostracize him from everyone else. She just personally chose to not interact with him, and seeing as she never consented to these circumstances in the first place, I think that’s fair. Also, I’ll also like to add that her problems weren’t centered around the fact that he was a bastard, but it was about how Ned kept him so close, which left a possibility that he, his children, or even his grandchildren could overthrow or usurp her children and the ones that are going to come after them. Her fears ended up being completely valid because that’s essentially what happened when he got named King In The North.

Let’s we move on to the idea that Sansa and Catelyn are similar to each other. Take in mind that I’m comparing Catelyn to Sansa in the later seasons of the show. With that out of the way, the show does try to present Sansa as being like her mother and the show has inserted scenes that would push the viewers to compare her to her mother, but I don’t think they’re that similar to each other. Saying this kinda leaves a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth, because the usual intentions that go along with saying this is essentially an effort to distance Sansa from the ‘’weak and stupid’’ Tully, and to claim that she’s actually a ‘’special snowflake’’ Stark. That’s not what I want to do at all. They’re both strong and intelligent, but I think they are in different ways. Catelyn was strong because she suffered from a perpetual sadness, yet put on a brave face and did her duty. Sansa is strong because she never let her abuse make her dispassionate, unkind, or/and overtly pessimist. Her worldview obviously shifted, and she definitely matured, but she’s still fundamentally a good person even when she was constantly told not to be. Catelyn’s main motivation is her family, while Sansa’s main motivation is her home. Catelyn tended to be more consistently resolute, devoted, prideful and impulsive. Not to say that Sansa doesn’t display any of these qualities, because she has but these qualities don’t define her nearly as much as they do Catelyn. Instead, I think Sansa has grown to be rather courageous, prickly, analytical and a rather self-preservationist individual. That being said, they’re both still fierce, adaptive and politically-aware individuals who put a special importance on their families, their origins and their homes. There’s similarities between the two characters, but I don’t think that Sansa is a Cat 2.0. 

In conclusion, not only did Catelyn not abuse or neglect (because she had absolutely no responsibility over him) Jon, but Sansa and Catelyn are both incredible but distinct personality-wise.

#sansa stark #sansa #catelyn stark #catelyn #catelyn tully #jonsa #...i guess #game of thrones #got #hopefully my assessment on the characters isn't completely off the mark #asks