True, @ladytp. I’ve said in the past that the unkiss is actually a pretty genius move on GRRM’s part to develop the romantic and erotic parts of the relationship by keeping the whole thing in the mind of the young protagonist. It’s totally under her control, it comes from within her, and it moves are her own comfortable pace. While the Blackwater was indeed violent and Sandor was totally in the wrong, it still falls under that “generic problematic” category. He didn’t do the thing some people want to believe he did. And GRRM wrote the unkiss at a time when they were physically separated by some distance.
This does function to avoid a huge chunk of sexual underage problematic content from direct interaction, which could be very helpful if your intent is to sell the general audience positively on future romance. The soil you plant those seeds in can’t be overtly poisoned or people just won’t buy “the HEA,” if that’s what he’s aiming for. I should have said that George isn’t totally blind or uncaring as to the effects of certain kids of problematic content can have on the audience. It all depends on his end goals, how he feels about the relationship, and how he wants the reader to feel by the way he presents it.
I don’t think the general audience would clutch their pearls over a Sansan endgame. That seems to be more of a concern of the tumblr and twitter antis and people who give their media the fine-tooth comb treatment for any possibility of power imbalance in a relationship (real or theoretical) as irretrievably harmful and broken. Most readers and fans are not consuming the story that way at all. Most are totally fine with the problematic stuff, or at least it hasn’t bothered them enough to stop reading. Of course, the majority of Sansan fans (which is such a massive juggernaut of asoiaf ships) would be super stoked, and probably a good portion of the fandom would be won over in the end if its sold in a relatively believable and positive way. As for the rest, Sansan may not be their thing, but they would probably be at worst just “meh, whatever” or “ew, moving on” about it. This is where I think GRRM is placing his bets. He’s not writing to please the tumblr and twitter sector of the fandom, which is comparatively tiny to the whole.
I just have to laugh a little bit, though, at the idea that dropping the five-year gap means George just wouldn’t go forward on a romantic endgame because the underage aspect would be too problematic for him. I mean, despite what he may claim about marriage norms in Westeros, he definitely goes there with the age gaps and teen brides quite a bit. He goes there every day of the week and twice on Sunday if you add them all up. So this is the weakest argument against the possibility of a Sansan endgame without the five year gap. Then there is the other reason that scrapping all the groundwork he meticulously laid out in previous books (for any storyline) and being faced with a whole mess of changes and plot consequences just to be a little less problematic seems like a really dumb and poor trade-off. He just doesn’t strike me as the kind of writer who will care if some people get really bent out of shape about him writing (in their opinion) something that should not have been. Most of the time he’s questioned about problematic creative choices, for better or worse, his usual response is either curt or to hand-wave it away.