[BOOK SPOILERS] Discussing Sansa X: Cold never bothered her anyway...

[joachim]

And the show has used jewelry, not so much in a portending the character's future sort of way, but to tell us things about the characters the way their clothes do: the Lannisters love big, flashy rings because it's a show of wealth and power, Dany wears a little collar type necklace to show solidarity with the slaves (from some or other featurette), and so on. That's why Sansa's ring was so great: it was so obviously a Lannister ring, and whether a wedding ring or not, clearly marked her as their property..which makes the fact that she's still wearing it all the more mystifying.

It could've just as easily been a gift from Tyrion, and she wears it because she likes nice things.

[TeamLemonCakeBraavos]

I think she has to learn how to use this info. Whom to tell, when, why, etc. I agree she's got a lot of credit in the Iron Bank of Blackmail at the moment.

Also, sorry for double-posting

"Iron Bank of Blackmail". :lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

Well, that also applies to the Hound, to a large degree. Granted, I don't see them in a lasting relationship, but some people do.

Good question. In the books is clear that she trusts none else and she can really make use of the information (yet). In the show, I think LF got her measure a lot better than in the books and he's tempting her with everything a young Westerosi orphan girl can desire.

Which is to say, murder.

Which is a more believable 'carrot' if you ask me (the possibility of revenge/murder). It always confused me why (Book)Sansa didn't harbor an outright bloodthirst for revenge. I kind of figured that that sort of desire simply wasn't in her 'character'...but then, that's not realistic (at least not to me). I think the show, however, is going the revenge route and it pleases me.

And I bet she will!

HBO Sansa may realize what I have always hoped for: she may have the cleverness and determination to play Sherlock and investigate a little, she may file through letters, listen behind doors, innocently question the right people... something like that. Book Sansa is still ages away from that cunning but HBO Sansa might sparkle here, doing what will take far longer for little book Sansa.

And if she indeed finds some equivalent to proof she has not only power over LF, she may really influence the plot further south since she has power over Tyrion as well in a positive sense: she can get him acquitted from having murdered Joffrey. And she equally has the power to save the relationship of Jaime and Tyrion.

And in the show...she knows even less than she did in the book. I mean, at least in the book she heard about Lysa and Petyr poisoning Jon Arryn and sending the fake letter to Cat and Ned. She doesn't even have THAT in the show. So, either the kid's about to turn into a regular Sherlock Holmes, or none of that information ultimately matters to her storyline.

Part of me wishes that Sansa becomes LF apprentice, they have an affair, she gains his trust only to outwit him and cause his downfall in the end. I'm not really a big Sansa fan , but I'm interested in her story and want her to become a real player of the game.

My discomfort level would reach stratospheric heights under that scenario, but it would indeed make for some epic TV viewing. ;)

Count me as among the 10% who do not.

:lmao: .....In the middle of all that sex talk...this post appears. So random, yet, totally on topic. :bowdown:

Sansa - Sophie Turner

http://www.justjared.com/2014/05/22/sophie-turner-takes-the-jj-spotlight-series-throne/

She said she'd let any celebrity lick her face. :rofl: Face licking is the fooking best! :cheers:

[juanml82]

It's a feminist wish fulfillment arc for a young girl to actually NOT be raped by the murderer holding her powerless?

Well, since you followed the conversation, you know that the discussion includes and also goes beyond sleeping with Littlefinger so why did you write that?

[Alayne's Shadow.]

So, back to Sansa, the one in books and TV show, not the fanfic seductress who enjoys rape and carries some strange banner of empowerment.

It's a hard reality for some, to see Sansa/Alayne and not the manipulative, unreal Sansa that apparently manipulates men with her sexuality.

Did GRRM ever claimed he was writing Sansa as a feminist wish fulfillment arc?

Since when is not being raped a feminist wish fulfillment?

[juanml82]

Since when is not being raped a feminist wish fulfillment?

Well, since you followed the conversation, you know that the discussion includes and also goes beyond sleeping with Littlefinger. So, why did you write that?

[Newstar]

How lovely to see that this thread returned to good old "Sansa enjoying pseudo-incestuous rape"... Wonderful...

GRRM's written "POV female character enjoying rape" before, a character who was once very much like Sansa, in fact, so blame him for writing it. GRRM does not care one whit about his readers' potentially delicate sensibilities; if he did, he wouldn't have "treated" us to this Littlefinger/Sansa grossness to begin with. And yet Littlefinger/Sansa grossness is part of her arc and has been since way back in AGOT, when Littlefinger undressed an 11-year-old Sansa with his eyes and stroked her hair, and now GRRM has contrived it so that a pedophile intent on grooming Sansa is the most significant figure currently in her life, so here we are.

This series is often full of nasty, stomach-churning, offputting material and GRRM goes out of his way to shock and offend. Moreover, as ASOIAF readers grow increasingly jaded and are gradually desensitized to ASOIAF gore and rape, GRRM seems to keep trying to come up with new and exciting ways to top himself in the horror department, with each book being progressively more disturbing and disgusting: in ADWD, we were "treated" to a dying Quentyn's eyeballs liquefying, Tyrion raping a dead-eyed slave, Jeyne tortured and alluding to bestiality, and other such "delights." AGOT seems positively tame in comparison. GRRM seems to be stepping this up in TWOW as well, and the Starks are by no means exempt, as Arya has "graduated" from being merely propositioned by pedophiles to being molested by them and to weaponizing her sexuality, despite being all of 11 years old. As I said: GRRM doesn't care if his readers are disturbed. The books are calculated to disturb. Whatever else we may say about GRRM, he gives good horror.

I think this tendency of GRRM's to go for the gritty and extreme--heightened in later books (that AFFC sequence where some Ironborn is raping Humfrey Hewett's daughter in front of him after the daughter, whose age is not specified, was forced to serve Ironborn thugs naked was way more disturbing than anything in the first three books)--is something we should all bear in mind when speculating about Sansa. If GRRM is more likely to go for something calculated to make his readers recoil, given the choice, and if the books are getting progressively nastier in terms of content--more gore, more creatively horrifying injuries, more abuse, more rape, more mutilation, more disfigurement, more cannibalism, more physical or sexual torture, more psychological torture (the walk of shame, Reek), etc. etc.--which the Mercy TWOW chapter would certainly seem to support, then I very much doubt that Sansa will be exempt from that.

So if some bit of speculation about Sansa makes a reader fetch his or her smelling salts, well, given the way the books are going, that suggests it's that much more likely to happen and therefore worthy of discussion, no matter how uncomfortable it might make some. Littlefinger or some other character attempting to rape Sansa would be pretty small potatoes in the shock department: rape attempts are old hat for Sansa. Even Littlefinger forcibly raping Sansa would be relatively tame (especially by the standard GRRM set in ADWD in terms of ramping up the disturbing material). Littlefinger successfully "seducing" Sansa or Sansa "seducing" Littlefinger, on the other hand...now that would fuck readers up, much like Arya being molested and using the promise of sex to lure her victim did when the Mercy chapter was released.

The other thing to bear in mind is that Arya and Sansa's training arcs are very closely linked in that they seem to be learning much the same skills, even if Sansa's training is ostensibly political and Arya's training is assassin training. The FM drill Arya in the art of observing others and picking up important bits of information, and Littlefinger does the same when quizzing Sansa about Lyn Corbray (although his "training" is a lot more half-assed than the FM's methodical instruction). Arya learns the lying game to discern and tell lies, Sansa is forced to up her own lying game. Arya learns how to adopt different personas and even starts thinking about the different personalities of those identities (Mercy smiles and eats fruit and is easy to get along with, e.g.), while Sansa refines and gives serious thought to her Alayne persona, almost as if Alayne is a real person (Alayne is "bastard brave" unlike the "frightened" Sansa, Sansa's not sure if Alayne likes dancing as Sansa did, etc.). And so on.

So, with all that about the similarities between Arya and Sansa's skill sets, and parallels in their training...now that Arya has started using her sexuality as a weapon (albeit outside her training), what does that say about the chances that Sansa will do the same thing? And if GRRM is subjecting prepubescent Arya to that kind of treatment, what would the equivalent of that kind of treatment be for a 13-year-old Sansa?

So, the only thing she might enjoy is rape or attempt of rape. How very progressive, empowering and feminist of her would that be.

Because Dany coming to enjoy her rapes and eventually falling in love with her rapist was so progressive, empowering and feminist. Oh, wait, it wasn't. And yet, GRRM wrote it that way and apparently seems to have viewed it that way.

The fans' convictions that GRRM would never write X thing because they don't consider it sufficiently progressive/empowering/feminist for the character are irrelevant, since they're not the ones writing this thing and their opinions as to what's sufficiently "feminist" to go in the books are therefore irrelevant. What matters is what GRRM considers progressive/empowering/feminist, and he has...interesting ideas about such things, if his treatment of female characters in ASOIAF is any indication, a treatment many feminist posters on these and other boards can and have found problematic at best and offensive or sexist at worst.

Also, after GRRM 1) portrayed one of the few female rulers as a spiteful, insanely jealous, murderous shrew and a figure worthy of scorn and ridicule, 2) dedicated the better part of an entire book to showing how ridiculously incompetent one of the most powerful women in his series was, and 3) proceeded to showcase the other most powerful woman in the series mooning over a boy instead of attending to governance and making mistake after mistake after mistake in the next volume, I find the idea that GRRM writes with no other object than feminist ideals in mind touchingly naive.

Then we have this Sansa using sex as weapon. People, have you actually read her chapters? Like, really read? We are speaking about girl whose every encounter with sexuality has been more than tragic. And suddenly, she will transform into seductress a la Cersei, using her body as leverage.

Well, since you've read the books, you must remember Dany's chapter, where she goes from terrified, sexually abused, traumatized 13-year-old child "whose every encounter with sexuality [had] been more than tragic" on the verge of suicide to someone who coolly and calmly makes a calculated decision to learn sexual techniques and to seduce Drogo for her own purposes within the very same chapter. If you accept as accurate the speculation that Sansa's entire ASOIAF arc is essentially a long-form version of Dany's in that bit of AGOT where she goes from meek, traumatized, scared shitless abuse victim to badass, sexually confident, seductress khaleesi within the space of a single chapter, then yes, she will "suddenly transform into [a] seductress a la [Dany]," just as Dany did in AGOT.

And then, people speak about this being empowerment and feminism

Eh, it's a mixed bag in the books in terms of the depiction of players using their sexuality: Arianne using Arys is painted as sketchy, Cersei seducing Osney as rewards for favours is presented as another one of Cersei's spectacularly ill-advised decisions, Littlefinger prostituting himself to Lysa is treated as both sinister and as humorous (Sansa listening to Lysa's howls of ecstasy), Bronn selling himself to the Stokeworths is treated as a jolly affair, Alys is none too thrilled about being shuffled into a marriage to Sigorn and bitches about wildlings in her bedchamber but nonetheless drags him out to the dance floor in the end, etc. Sometimes, however, characters using their sexuality as a tool is occasionally sold as an "empowering" act by GRRM--Dany seducing Drogo, her rapist and captor, supposedly marking her transformation into a powerful woman, Alys making the best of Jon prostituting her with her confident "Let [sigorn] be afraid of me," Arya trading on her sexuality to murder Raff (assuming we're supposed to see that as awesome and badass)--which is worthy of note when we're speculating.about what GRRM might have in mind for Sansa.

[Raksha 2014]

Bronn selling himself to the Stokeworths may be treated as a jolly affair for Bronn in the books. I always wondered how poor Lollys, after surviving gang-rape and the pregnancy that resulted, would feel about the marriage bed; and just hoped (as much as one can hope when thinking of a fictional character) that Bronn was kind to her and didn't rush her into doing her marital duty.

I don't necessarily view Dany's seducing Drogo, her rapist and captor, as the mark of her transformation into a powerful woman. She was married to him, by the will of her only family, who was also her older brother and liege-lord; and did not have a way out of the marriage. I think of Dany's seduction of Drogo as a sign of her determination to make a frightening and rather miserable situation more bearable. It was Dany's determination, and not necessarily her use of it to seduce her husband; that eventually made her become more powerful. She sought to improve her life within the bounds of her marriage, regardless of the unfairness, and learn as much as she could about her husband, his life and his culture, not just make their sexual encounters easier.

But Sansa is not in the same position. Littlefinger is not her husband; there is no social/cultural/familial pretext for her to submit to his advances when she clearly (at least in the book) does not appreciate them, or at least not to submit fully and sexually. There's a huge difference in manipulating a nervous child prone to dangerous fits into compliance by allowing him to kiss her on the cheek and allowing Littlefinger, or any man Sansa does not want, to take sexual liberties with her. And it is to be hoped that if Sansa ever marries, she will come to the marriage bed of her own free will with a kind and understanding husband. Just because terrible things happen to many female characters in ASoIaF does mean we should have to see all the female characters degraded.

I don't think all women have to advance themselves only by having sex with people they would otherwise not want. It really would depend on the situation. I don't see why we have to expect Sansa to have an either/or situation of either continuing to be a passive innocent manipulated by players or Sansa seducing her way to power by having sex with Littlefinger and other men or women she does not want. There are ways between the extremes. Sansa is a beautiful and intelligent and extremely observant girl. Flirting could take her a long way, as can learning how the lords and ladies of the Vale interact and what secrets they keep (which she is already doing).

It's GRRM's party, he can certainly write what he wants to write. But Sansa is one of my favorite characters; and I still hope that she will not have to resort to having unwanted sex to fulfill her potential.

[Zorn Gottes]

.........making Arya a killer...... who indeed uses sex as weapon......?

Arya has alway been much less receptive to their education, it was very clear since the beginning she was a savage girl and she was to find her own path. Sansa has always been an obedient girl who embraces her parent's values.

[Zorn Gottes]

And in the show...she knows even less than she did in the book. I mean, at least in the book she heard about Lysa and Petyr poisoning Jon Arryn and sending the fake letter to Cat and Ned. She doesn't even have THAT in the show. So, either the kid's about to turn into a regular Sherlock Holmes, or none of that information ultimately matters to her storyline.

in the show she knows that Baelish with her escape plus the necklace made her the main suspect for Joffrey's assassination, which means that if she flees she's DEAD. She's not a guest, she's a captive... again.