Will Sansa’s Unkiss amount to nothing more than the active over imagination of a young girl concerning the guy that protected her?

[zandru]

12 minutes ago, Houseofthedirewolves said:

Sansa's good at repressing.  

but after Sansa had wept her eyes dry, she told herself that it had not been Joffrey’s doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one to hate, her and Arya

Indeed. Yet Sansa still runs to the Queen to spill her father's secret travel plans. She can repress quite a bit before figuring things out...

[LongRider]

When it comes to the Unkiss I think there are two things about that have meaning; one that it exists in Sansa's faantaies, and two who it is about. Is it about 'kind and respectful' Tyrion?  No.  Is it about Joff and his worm lips?  No.  Ser Dontos and his slobbery wine soaked smooches?  No.  Littlefinger  and his lechery?  No.   She fantasized about the Hound, kissing her and dreaming of him coming into a marriage bed, their marriage bed.  

[Meera of Tarth]

12 minutes ago, Houseofthedirewolves said:

Her mind cannot explode because as soon as she wakes her nightmare is one more thing replaced with her altered memory. If ugly doubts creep up they will instantly get repressed. Sansa's good at repressing.  

but after Sansa had wept her eyes dry, she told herself that it had not been Joffrey’s doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one to hate, her and Arya

But she s aware of what she dreamed. I am a bleiever that the dream is actually positive but if I had to follow your premise about it being about him wanting to rape her or whatever she must be aware of that. in fact, you said that when she wakes up she is so afraid that wants Lady back, etc to defend your point.

Nothing in the text suggests that she is not aware of her dream or that the dismisses them

It's like having a paranoia. You state that her invented unkisses and thoughts are dominating her mind even up to the point that they are so powerful to dismiss the so-called "rape dream" but when someone is having an state of mind such as that, that makes him/her believe in things that are not real (like you suggest) like in a paranoia.....some things can and willl destroy this.

When the minds sees contradictions the person gradually recovers the lucidity because the whole mechanism can't cope with reality and imagination at the same time (reality forces the person to stop believing in her inventions).

[Houseofthedirewolves]

Just now, zandru said:

Indeed. Yet Sansa still runs to the Queen to spill her father's secret travel plans. She can repress quite a bit before figuring things out...

Sansa in this situation represses in order to maintain the pretty song that Joffrey symbolizes and keep this "dream life" she wants. Her father's plans threatened that dream. Repressing her father's plans wouldn't have prevented them, only telling the Queen could save the dream that she envisioned with Joffrey.

[Meera of Tarth]

4 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

When it comes to the Unkiss I think there are two things about that have meaning; one that it exists in Sansa's faantaies, and two who it is about. Is it about 'kind and respectful' Tyrion?  No.  Is it about Joff and his worm lips?  No.  Ser Dontos and his slobbery wine soaked smooches?  No.  Littlefinger  and his lechery?  No.   She fantasized about the Hound, kissing her and dreaming of him coming into a marriage bed, their marriage bed.  

It's an active daydream, that she chooses to fantasize with

[Le Cygne]

18 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

<snip>

Yeah, that all sounds good. Sorry, I quoted the wrong thing, I knew what you meant. I was just skimming the thread.

It's cool that he describes the scene as a wedding night, with all the romantic and sexual symbolism, the promise to protect, the kiss, the dagger pushing into her, the wetness that was not blood, the caress, the tear, the blood, she gets under his cloak (him), the bells ringing through hills and hollows... It's symbolic of what was beneath the surface, that is now fully emerged, in such a beautiful way. It's a love story, and he a really nice job telling it, I think.

[Le Cygne]

6 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

When it comes to the Unkiss I think there are two things about that have meaning; one that it exists in Sansa's faantaies, and two who it is about. Is it about 'kind and respectful' Tyrion?  No.  Is it about Joff and his worm lips?  No.  Ser Dontos and his slobbery wine soaked smooches?  No.  Littlefinger  and his lechery?  No.   She fantasized about the Hound, kissing her and dreaming of him coming into a marriage bed, their marriage bed.  

Amen, sister!

[Meera of Tarth]

6 minutes ago, zandru said:

Indeed. Yet Sansa still runs to the Queen to spill her father's secret travel plans. She can repress quite a bit before figuring things out...

I don't think she was "repressing". She just didn't want the whole situation to happen in such a way  and couldn't process everything clearly.

[Meera of Tarth]

2 minutes ago, Le Cygne said:

Yeah, that all sounds good. Sorry, I quoted the wrong thing, I knew what you meant. I was just skimming the thread.

It's cool that he describes the scene as a wedding night, with all the romantic and sexual symbolism, the promise to protect, the kiss, the dagger pushing into her, the wetness that was not blood, the caress, the tear, the blood, she gets under his cloak (him), the bells ringing through hills and hollows... It's symbolic of what was beneath the surface, that is now fully emerged, in such a beautiful way. It's a love story, and he a really nice job telling it, I think.

Exactly. Many things were symbolic at the beginning, and that also meant that she was not prepared to fully understand them, but they were there. Now she has diggested the whole thing, has a wider perspective, she is away from him and in her own room, while still being a hostage but "safer" in the sense that there is not an imminent danger threat on the road (not that being with LF is safe, but in her last chapters she has a lot of time to think of herself) and  she can daydream about what she wants.

Also, it's intersting that she understands that she is a hostage but she is in control of what she wants in contrast to what she has. She has her cousin who has a crush on her, but she prefers the Hound.......she spends a lot of time with other people in the Vale but she remembers Sandor fondly.....

[LongRider]

13 minutes ago, zandru said:

Wait a minute! Let's not start on poor Tyrion. As I recall, he agreed reluctantly to marriage with Sansa knowing his father would find some more awful Lannister to pair her off with.

Awww poor, poor Tyrion.  Except this is what happened;  

Quote

"You shall never have Casterly Rock, I promise you. But wed Sansa Stark, and it is just possible that you might win Winterfell."

Tyrion Lannister, Lord Protector of Winterfell. The prospect gave him a queer chill. "

Winterfell was more attractive to poor, poor Tyrion than even Sansa's young nubile body.  

[Houseofthedirewolves]

21 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

When it comes to the Unkiss I think there are two things about that have meaning; one that it exists in Sansa's faantaies, and two who it is about. Is it about 'kind and respectful' Tyrion?  No.  Is it about Joff and his worm lips?  No.  Ser Dontos and his slobbery wine soaked smooches?  No.  Littlefinger  and his lechery?  No.   She fantasized about the Hound, kissing her and dreaming of him coming into a marriage bed, their marriage bed.  

•Tyrion doesn't represent anything to her. He was kind but that's it. He's still a Lannister. She doesn't have any reason to alter memories about him. She doesn't need him.

•She was infatuated with Joffrey and had her own fantasies about him until he killed her father and ended her infatuation.

•Ser Dontos is her friend and helps her but he does not symbolize a protector. He's a silly drunk knight (yes she calls him Florian) but he ends up murdered.

•Littlefinger is currently molesting her. Her coping of that is evident in the way that she separates him into two different people in her mind. One that she trusts. And one that she does not trust. Also she also has a major case of Stockholm syndrome with him.

 

In this prolonged period of intense trauma for Sansa, (the Hound) was also a fierce warrior (literally) feared by other men, and in him she found the brute strength that she craved for herself, but lacked. He frightened her, but he had the ability to protect her when Sansa was unable to protect herself.

 

No one could beat or hurt the Hound like they hurt her. They couldn't strip him and humiliate him like they did to her. So she substituted the Hound in place of her fantasy gallant knights that she was now disillusioned about

 

NONE OF THE OTHER GUYS REPRESENT THIS TO HER.

The Hound is a protector that she still needs. Her mind turns her trauma into the Unkiss so that she can maintain her pleasant view of him as her protector.

 

• She didn't dream about the marriage bed in a romantic way. It was nightmare triggered by her attempted rape. It's completely normal that her attempted rape will trigger nightmares about other traumatic sexually influenced moments in her life and cause them to merge into one. The trauma with Tyrion merged into the trauma with the Hound.

[Meera of Tarth]

5 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Awww poor, poor Tyrion.  Except this is what happened;  

Winterfell was more attractive to poor, poor Tyrion than even Sansa's young nubile body.  

They were both forced to marry. They don't like each other. Their marriage is a no, never again!

[zandru]

15 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Winterfell was more attractive to poor, poor Tyrion than even Sansa's young nubile body.  

Than Sansa's child's body. She was only 12. And, well, yes. Remember Tyrion doesn't feel compelled to rape a 12 year old, while there are plenty of other marriageable Lannisters who would.

[Blue-Eyed Wolf]

3 hours ago, Seams said:

Sansa's first encounter with Sandor occurs when she is trying to flee the gaze of Ser Ilyn Payne, who is described as the "third stranger" in the same encounter. (The first two strangers are Renly and Barristan.) She turns around and bumps into The Hound, and is caught between the two of them, with Lady growling. Initially, I thought Sandor and Ser Ilyn were both Stranger figures, but a recent close reading of Sansa II in AGoT tells me that he is the guy who defeats the Stranger. Taken together with The Hound's unique ability to handle the extremely mean horse called Stranger, the author seems to be giving us a man with the unique ability to keep death at arm's length. Notice that Joffrey dies shortly after The Hound leaves King's Landing.

That's really interesting.  In that first meeting with the Hound:

Quote

"The king is gone hunting, but I know he will be pleased to see you when he returns," the queen was saying to the two knights who knelt before her, but Sansa could not take her eyes off the third man. He seemed to feel the weight of her gaze. Slowly he turned his head. Lady growled. A terror as overwhelming as anything Sansa Stark had ever felt filled her suddenly. She stepped backward and bumped into someone.
Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders, and for a moment Sansa thought it was her father, but when she turned, it was the burned face of Sandor Clegane looking down at her, his mouth twisted in a terrible mockery of a smile. "You are shaking, girl," he said, his voice rasping. "Do I frighten you so much?"
He did, and had since she had first laid eyes on the ruin that fire had made of his face, though it seemed to her now that he was not half so terrifying as the other. Still, Sansa wrenched away from him, and the Hound laughed, and Lady moved between them, rumbling a warning. Sansa dropped to her knees to wrap her arms around the wolf. They were all gathered around gaping, she could feel their eyes on her, and here and there she heard muttered comments and titters of laughter.

---

"Leave her alone," Joffrey said. He stood over her, beautiful in blue wool and black leather, his golden curls shining in the sun like a crown. He gave her his hand, drew her to her feet. "What is it, sweet lady? Why are you afraid? No one will hurt you. Put away your swords, all of you. The wolf is her little pet, that's all." He looked at Sandor Clegane. "And you, dog, away with you, you're scaring my betrothed."
The Hound, ever faithful, bowed and slid away quietly through the press. Sansa struggled to steady herself. She felt like such a fool. She was a Stark of Winterfell, a noble lady, and someday she would be a queen. "It was not him, my sweet prince," she tried to explain. "It was the other one."

And we can see from that scene it's Ilyn Payne that fills her with the "overwhelming terror."  He's definitely the specter of death looming and a foreshadowing of his role in Ned's death.  Lady growls and she steps backward into someone she mistook for her father's "strong hands." Sandor looks frightening, but she admits it's Ilyn Payne that really terrifies her.  Joffrey intercedes and commands Sandor to leave for scaring her, but she tells Joffrey "it was not him."  Right after this scene, Sansa and Joffrey go off unsupervised (no setpa, no wolf, and no sworn shield) and that encounter has a "date rape" vibe.  Joffrey plies Sansa with alcohol that she isn't used to.  Dismissing Sandor in that was likely a pretense to get Sansa alone.  Sansa may not have been aware of the signs, but there's no way Sandor would have allowed Joffrey to assault the new Hand's daughter and cause a political scandal.  Hell, if he were there at the Trident, he might have stopped the fight between Arya and Joffrey before it escalated.  So right from the jump, we see that not having Sandor around leads to death and disaster.      

After Barristan Selmy's dismissal, the KG is considered to be brought low by adding the likes of the Hound to it's ranks.  Well, as we can see from the Purple Wedding, the other KG failed in their basic duty.  And we see a black dog in the scene that sniffs Joffrey's corpse.  That's a hint that the loyal dog might have been able to "smell the lie" that would have saved Joffrey.  

He also knocked Arya over the head to keep her from running into Walder Frey's Hall and got her out of the Twins.  

3 hours ago, Seams said:

It's possible that Sansa imagining a kiss bestowed by Sandor is her way of imagining herself (and therefore becoming) powerful. She imagines that she has taken on the powers of this force that keeps The Stranger (= death) at bay. Maybe Petyr stealing a kiss from her is his way of trying to steal some of that power for himself.

Makes Cersei's statement ironic then:

Quote

The queen bristled. "I most certainly have not forgotten that little she-wolf." She refused to say the girl's name. "I ought to have shown her to the black cells as the daughter of a traitor, but instead I made her part of mine own household. She shared my hearth and hall, played with my own children. I fed her, dressed her, tried to make her a little less ignorant about the world, and how did she repay me for my kindness? She helped murder my son. When we find the Imp, we will find the Lady Sansa too. She is not dead . . . but before I am done with her, I promise you, she will be singing to the Stranger, begging for his kiss."

So if you want to compare Beric and Sandor, they are both symbolic of the greenman archetype.  Both pass through life, death, and are reborn.  Both associated with fire.  Sandor is literally a burned man or wickerman variety of greenman.  Both have then a fiery kiss that keeps death at bay.  So the Stranger need not be interpreted as something separate from that archetype.  He's the death aspect but there's also the rebirth that goes hand-in-hand, making Sandor and Beric psychopomps.    

3 hours ago, Seams said:

I do agree that the scene with The Hound in Sansa's bedchamber is a symbolic rape. The only reason she might idealize it is that she has just come from the Queen's Ballroom, where Ser Ilyn stood watching with the intention of killing everyone in the room if King's Landing should fall to Stannis.

George has given us extensive literary set up by explaining the Free Folk concept of wife-stealing.  Ygritte explains most of it to Jon and how he unwittingly "stole" Ygritte and she accepted his "suit" because he demonstrated how quick and clever he was.  Very attactive qualities to her.  Jon continues to deny he wanted Ygritte, which Tormund can't understand why he would steal her if he didn't want her.  We learn from Tormund that the woman has final say over the suitor, whether or not he was up to snuff.  His daughter Munda beat the hell out of Longspeak Ryk and so did her little brothers but Munda was never harmed.  The woman is never supposed to be harmed.  Basically we're talking about a wildling marriage propsal.  In the end, Munda accepts Longspear Ryk.  While to outsiders, it looks like a barbaric custom of rape, it isn't.  Jon gets it.  He even says if he wanted Val he would need to go into the tower and steal her.  

Sandor is so much like a displaced First Man.  He's got the look and his non-knight values.  He values honesty and bluntness.  The Blackwater was, literarily speaking, a failed symbolic wife-stealing, not a symbolic rape.  He was not quick and clever and brave.  He was drunk, frightened himself, and barely holding on mentally.  Sansa refused him as the woman has the final say.  George is really driving this concept home with the tale of Bael the Bard which involved stealing a Stark daughter, Petyr Bael-ish the false Bael, and with the song about the Gulltown girl (where Alayne is supposed to hail from):

Quote

The song came drifting up the river from somewhere beyond the little rise to the east. "Off to Gulltown to see the fair maid, heigh-ho, heigh-ho . . ."

"I'll steal a sweet kiss with the point of my blade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho." 

We're obviously getting a repetition of an important concept George is trying to communicate.  This is my issue with solely reading the interactions between Sandor and Sansa as trauma or assault literally (not saying you did).  That interpretation totally disregards all the extensive symbolic groundwork George has laid out.  These are not things in Sansa's mind.  They are included in various plot lines all around the series.  None of that means anything at all if it's only about repressing a traumatic event.  

       

[LongRider]

12 minutes ago, Meera of Tarth said:

They were both forced to marry. They don't like each other. Their marriage is a no, never again!

I disagree, Tyrion could have refused to marry Sansa, but he didn't.  If he chose to marry her the payoff was WF.  There was no payoff for Sansa.  None.  If she produced an male heir, that would be the end of her.  She was forcibly married into the family that destroyed hers.  

Sandor on the other hand, was protective, and at times gentle with her when at no time did he have to be.  If Tyrion treated Sansa without cruelty it was out of respect to Winterfell, not Sansa.

[Houseofthedirewolves]

3 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

I disagree, Tyrion could have refused to marry Sansa, but he didn't.  If he chose to marry her the payoff was WF.  There was no payoff for Sansa.  None.  If she produced an male heir, that would be the end of her.  She was forcibly married into the family that destroyed hers.  

Sandor on the other hand, was protective, and at times gentle with her when at no time did he have to be.  If Tyrion treated Sansa without cruelty it was out of respect to Winterfell, not Sansa.

"If Tyrion treated Sansa without cruelty it was out of respect to Winterfell, not Sansa"

Is that why he was kind to Bran and Jon Snow? He had no reason to help either.

[zandru]

2 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

If Tyrion treated Sansa without cruelty it was out of respect to Winterfell, not Sansa.

I'm not seeing this. You might as well say that Tyrion intervened to stop the beating and humiliation of Sansa because he telepathically touched his father's mind and saw "Winterfell!" there. (Sorry about that; I've been trying to avoid those threads...)

No, actually - you could quite justifiably say that Tyrion saw his big brother Jaime being put to death when word of Sansa's treatment got out. But I still maintain that Tyrion viewed Sansa as a beautiful, frightened child requiring his protection, not just a real estate deal. That's my read, although everyone is free to their own opinions!

[Son of Man]

That moment was a window into Sansa's character and why she is an unreliable narrator.  It was inspired by "Beauty and the Beast" except Sansa is not in love with Gregor.  It was just a fleeting thought and one should be ashamed to admit.  Is it a clue to some future event between Sandor and Sansa?  I don't think so.  Sansa is not a princess and Sandor is not a prince disguised as a frog.

[LongRider]

12 minutes ago, Blue-Eyed Wolf said:

Sandor is so much like a displaced First Man.  He's got the look and his non-knight values.  He values honesty and bluntness.  The Blackwater was, literarily speaking, a failed symbolic wife-stealing, not a symbolic rape.  He was not quick and clever and brave.  He was drunk, frightened himself, and barely holding on mentally.  Sansa refused him as the woman has the final say.  George is really driving this concept home with the tale of Bael the Bard which involved stealing a Stark daughter, Petyr Bael-ish the false Bael, and with the song about the Gulltown girl (where Alayne is supposed to hail from):

Quote

The song came drifting up the river from somewhere beyond the little rise to the east. "Off to Gulltown to see the fair maid, heigh-ho, heigh-ho . . ."

"I'll steal a sweet kiss with the point of my blade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho." 

Yes, that's it!  He was wife stealing like a Wilding!  This makes a lot of sense, more than the rape paradigm, and folds neatly with the B&B motif as well.  

[LongRider]

3 minutes ago, Houseofthedirewolves said:

"If Tyrion treated Sansa without cruelty it was out of respect to Winterfell, not Sansa"

Is that why he was kind to Bran and Jon Snow? He had no reason to help either.

Red herring, Tyrion wasn't married off to Bran or Jon Snow as an avenue to get WF.