#five year gap

[agentrouka-blog]

George has said that Arya will get her period in Winds. She is also only two years younger than Sansa. You talk as if there is 10 year gap between the sisters.

(Post referenced)

I fail to see what a difference it would make with regard to the utter implausibility of any kind of jonrya speculation, though. It doesn't change Arya's actual age.

She's also a bit more than two years younger than Sansa.

A few months after Sansa turns 13, which is before the Red Wedding, we get this:

She was a scrawny thing, no proper meal for a giant, and almost eleven, practically a woman grown. (AFFC, Arya II)

She is "eleven by now" well into ADWD when Jon learns of Jeyne Poole's wedding under Arya's identity.

She is still eleven by her TWOW sample chapter, physically prepubescent, emphasized to be so to hammer home the perverse evil of Raff the Sweetling and the horrific way Arya is willing to exploit herself in the name of achieving justice for Lommy.

Even if she got her period the very next day, it would not change that we are talking about a child physically and mentally, even in their screwed-up universe.

Sansa's age is also a problem, don't get me wrong. GRRM dropped the five-year-gap and is obviously scrambling to create the illusion of maturity through her physical description or by writing in sudden precedents of 14-year-old characters freely choosing sexual relationships. In order to justify upcoming plot points he has been consistently setting up throughout her arc from book one, no doubt. And it still remains A Problem!

Those 2+ years of age difference aren't much, granted, but in this extremely problematic context, they are actually crucial.

You can make a more credible argument that Sansa's age will prevent certain plotpoints from playing out (to do with sexuality and childbirth) than you can for the idea that Arya's first period makes these plotpoints in anyway probable for her. She is a pre-teen for more than another year into the upcoming plots! It's not happening!

Pretty sure that Arya's upcoming first period (should it feature in a significant way) might be referenced around the time she reunites with her mother, actually. It would create an interesting mirror to Sansa's flowering talk with Cersei and to Dany's ambiguious "moon blood" in the grasslands during a time of inner turmoil.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

GRRM should have aged up the kids, like in GoT, from the start instead of planning for a 5 year age gap. But then he would've had to age up Ned, and clearly he wanted to hide 'Ned isn't the hero' twist very much.

I agree that the 5 year gap wouldn’t have been a good idea for even the young characters like Arya and Bran. Kids change a lot at that age, and maturing them to ages 15/16 from when we last saw them at ages 10/11 would’ve been missing a critical part of their development. He would’ve had to age up Ned (no thank you to a 15 year old groom/military leader, he isn’t a latter day Targ) but considering he was only 35 when he died, him being 40 wouldn’t have been too big of a change. If I remember correctly, 40 years old was considered the prime of life for a medieval noble (Dante at least called it “the middle of our lives”), so it wouldn’t have revealed Ned wasn’t the hero.

[pepperonyfic]

Daddy's Little Girl

Author:  BrownCat13 Rating: gen Word Count:<2k Genre(s): fluff Film-specific: mid endgame Tropes: bruce banner, morgan stark, five year gap, domesticity, dad!tony

Summary:  Inspired by a piece of fan art (artist unknown) that is being shared around on Twitter recently. Just some Pepperony / Tony Stark as a father fluff to cure your Infinity War broken hearts.

READ HERE: AO3

[thinking-about-hotd-a-lot]

It's wild to me that GRRM says he will finish the series in two books. Disregarding peoples doubts on resolving so many new introduced plot lines, think about what the original plan was. After he finished A Storm of Swords, he planned for an in-story 5-year gap, and after that a second trilogy; A Dance with Dragons, The Winds of Winter, and what was then called A Time for Wolves. But he found it difficult and wrote what would be an intermediary book, A Feast for Crows. Then that became too long so he split it into two books, one of which with the A Dance with Dragons title.

Now, some of the chapters in ADWD do set the stage and include material for what was to begin after the 5-year gap. However, for the most part, it was mostly stuff to fill this now scrapped gap. So, technically, GRRM STILL have three books to write, ADWD, TWOW, and ADOS, but he's insistent on two books now. idk how he's going to do that...

[fedonciadale]

Do you think, if Jonsa happens in the books, it will be sort of an unequal relationship? Like, Jon is three years older, sexually experienced, a tragic relationship under his belt, possibly same with Dany, while Sansa has had lots of trauma but no real relationship experience of her own, being only 13 last time we saw her. I want to ship it but it also makes me uncomfortable on that level.

Hi there!

I’ve said it time and again. GRRM’s children are unrealistic... Bran has an understanding at eight that equals an early teenager of thirteen perhaps? I mean there are very smart children, but all of the Starks do not act really their age. One of the smartest things the show did, was to age the Stark kids up.... I just assume that years are a little longer in Planetos than on Earth and that therefore the children are in fact a bit older. In my head, I always go with the show age, which is maybe 20 for Sansa (because Arya is 18 in season 8) and 23 for Jon.

I do think, that it would not be a problem, if GRRM would have stuck to his five year gap. Then Jon would be 20, Sansa 17 going on 18, and it wouldn’t be so strange.

Apart from that, I don’t think that one girlfriend makes Jon sexually experienced. And if the show is anything to go by, the relationship to Dany will be weird. So, I don’t really think that the trope “experienced man” and “inexperienced virgin” really adheres to Jon and Sansa - and I must admit that I hate that trope as well. Although I still think that it is possible that GRRM will play with the trope of the innocent girl who manages to go through hardship without really losing her innocence.

So, I get why it makes you uncomfortable, but I don’t think that you should feel obliged not to ship it because of “unequal relationship”. There are many fields where Sansa is already more experienced than Jon, and sex does not just equal sex. I mean for every couple it is different, and even if one of the couple knows the “mechanics” so to say, that doesn’t make anything a foregone conclusion.

Anyway, I think that Jonsa makes just to much sense for the story not to happen, and to me shipping Jonsa was always about how I want the story to go (with Stark revival) and not only about the fact, that I think they make an interesting story. I do think Jonsa as canon would have some of the best possibilities of story telling. If GRRM does not take the chance, he missed a great opportunity....

In this sense I still ship Jonsa as canon and I won’t stop shipping them as canon.

And last, there is always the possibility to ship Jonsa in a non-canon way: You can picture them older, in a Modern AU, Wildling AU, Alayne AU, whatever.... And in that setting you can imagine their age at something you are comfortable with. For my favourite non-canon ships I do that all the time. I put them in a setting, where I like to ship them.

Hope, that answers your question! Thanks for the ask!

And to all other anons: Sorry, it took me so long, I have been rather busy the last weeks!

[lilboppaloola]

It's been a little while since I've held your hands, oh my arms won't stretch to your distant lands. Give me every person in the whole wide world and I'll pick you out in a second, girl. I am ready, I am ready, for you to be here...

"For You To Be Here"; Tom Rosenthal

[agentrouka-blog]

Did Grrm was planning Gendrya only to abandoned it because of 5 years gap?

Not as a serious endgame romance, I don't think. Arya's path was always going to lead toward freedom primarily.

But that doesn't mean GRRM might not have built in romantic options for her, even a little touch of a triangle with Edric Dayne maybe, to give a very different spin on the constellation between Lyanna, Robert and Rhaegar. Something more light-hearted than Jonsa, to mirror Asha Greyjoy's triangle with Qarl and Tristifer and to end on Asha's iconic line:

"I don't want to have a dozen sons," she had told him, appalled. "I want to have adventures." (AFFC, The Kraken's Daughter)

Hmm.

It made her think of the sea. Maybe that was the way out. Old Nan used to tell stories of boys who stowed away on trading galleys and sailed off into all kinds of adventures. Maybe Arya could do that too. (AGOT, Arya V)

Basically, my thoughts from this post still stand. And it's mostly a moot point now. Sadly.

[agentrouka-blog]

There has always been too much emphasis on Sansa's body and beauty since like the beginning for my taste. But I guess it makes sense where he is going with this. I really wish he had found some way to work around the 5 year gap, because two plot points suffer from its lack: jonsa (if it happens) and king bran

I agree.

The 5-year-gap was only meant to be a fix for the "natural" passage of time that GRRM had originally anticipated to be much faster, so I understand why he couldn't find a way to accomodate it within his plotting. But the reason why he tried to find a way for it is clear: he has adult plans for child characters.

But if he thought it was impossible to achieve his goals for the story without it, he would have found a way to keep it, so I'll remain optimistic.

🤷🏻‍♀️