nounsandbooks:

SPOILERS BELOW FOR EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME

So here’s the thing about Arya: it’s easy to root for her. She’s funny and badass and feminist in an easily identifiable way, she travels, she rebels and yells and stabs people and is becoming an assassin child! Bad. Ass. For real. No argument here — I love Arya as much as the next person.

Sansa is different. Fans seem to hate Sansa, like, hate her. And I have yet to hear a reason, a real reason, that isn’t rooted in 1) misogyny 2) her personality in the very first book, before shit gets real, when she is a child. A child raised on stories and songs, a child who wants life to be easy and beautiful. Oh, yes, let’s all hate her for that. No one who likes Sansa absolves her from not being prepared for the shit that happens, but then, no one is.

People seem to loathe Sansa for relying on others to rescue her, but look at her again. Unlike Arya, she’s got no sword, no weapons training, no ability to pass as a boy and escape. She is trapped, and there is no way out for her. When rescue is offered, she takes it, because she is not an idiot. When safe haven is offered, she takes it, because she is not an idiot. Yes, hate Sansa for using her head to keep herself alive.

ETA: I was just reminded that Sansa refuses Sandor’s offer to take her away from King’s Landing. I originally wrote something about him in this and took it out, because I have unpopular opinions about Sandor Clegane. But that is one example of Sansa not taking help offered. Help offered, mind you, by a drunk man holding a knife on her, a drunk man who had assisted in her torture and imprisonment in King’s Landing. So.

And look at where we are now. Arya is an assassin in training leaving behind everything she used to be, and Sansa is a deeply, deeply fucked-up kid who is fighting in every way she knows to survive by…oh, yeah. Forgetting who she is, and also remembering. Burying herself in her assumed identity, hoping against hope something changes so she can leave. 

Because the thing is that Sansa’s not stupid, okay. She knows Baelish is bad news bears. She knows exactly what’s going on. But her choices are: Baelish, the Lannisters, or the open country. Open country = marauders, murderers, rape and torture and death. Lannisters = death, probably with added rape and torture. Baelish = well, not rape and torture and death, not yet. 

And that’s what we say to the god of death, is it not? We say, “Not yet.” 

People seem to hate Sansa for being naive, but they also seem to hate her for being smart, for choosing her battles. Sansa believed, deep down, that people who promised to help her would do so. She believed, deep down, that life was good and that she was loved, and that things would work out. She is learning that these things are not true. She is growing up. She is becoming someone different.

Sansa is not weak or stupid or worthless. She is not a villain, or lazy, or a bad character. She is tougher than anyone I know, smarter than the people around her, and is doing everything she can to survive. Remember that Sansa has no idea which if any of her family members are still alive. She has no idea what is going on in other parts of Westeros. She doesn’t know. She is trying to stay alive until she does.

And that’s where I see Arya and Sansa as two sides of the same coin. Both are doing whatever they have to in order to survive. Both are working without knowledge of what exactly is left of their family, their home, their world. Both are saying to the god of death, “Not yet.”

Valar morghulis: all men must die.

Valar dohaeris: all men must serve.

Arya and Sansa are the same, and their stories are the same beneath the haze of adventure vs. damselhood. 

#ooc

Agreed 99% with this. Sandor did not assist in the torture- he was one of the ones that Joff DIDN’T have hurt Sansa. In fact, he tried to help her. No, I’m not talking about “the scene” at Blackwater. I’m talking about the time he stopped the beatings, the time he gave her his cloak to cover up after she was half-stripped, the times he TOLD her what to do (albeit harshly) to help herself.

Is he the metaphorical “knight in shining armour?” Of course not. As Sandor himself will tell you, those don’t exist.