GOT - Jonsa

Also Team!Arya

[winterisfinallyhere]

Sansa Stark drawing!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jen | Drawing Stuff (@jennifersart) on Jul 15, 2020 at 10:09am PDT

[winterisfinallyhere]

What If Game of Thrones Ended Like This Instead...

What if instead of having Dany “suddenly go mad” and burn down King's Landing, she just sort of burns down the Red Keep?

And the 8x05 ends with her landing her dragon looking all cool an evil (like how 8x06 starts) and making her speech about taking over the rest of the kingdom, and it’s this moment (that is fully in character) that makes us (well, the general audience) really worry she might not be the good guy. Along with her unceremonious execution of Tyrion right on the spot when he throws his hand of the Queen pin away. Just behead him right there, in the same spot Joffrey beheads Ned Stark at the end of season 1.

We'll all remember the fact that Ned was killed for suggesting Joffrey was illegitimate, and not the true heir! This is pretty much exactly the position Dany finds herself in now as Vary (and Tyrion) are conspiring to put Jon on the Iron Throne instead of her.

Jon looks on horrified as Tyrion’s head rolls away, Arya in the crowd just like when Ned was killed, and we get a last parting shot at Dany looking pleased out over her subjects.

Cut to black.

And that’s how the show ends.

(Or they could make like 3 more seasons of Dany, Jon & Sansa and some cool new characters trying to rule and dealing with everything.)

[winterisfinallyhere]

I'm Still Upset About Season 8

So I just realized I’m still upset about season 8. I mean, it’s been like 7 months and pretty much as soon as it was over I went “well okay, that sucked, now let’s just repress the last 2 season” and haven’t really reflected on it that much. Other than to just tell anyone that asked: “I hated it.”

As it is Christmas and the New Year will soon be upon us I’ve been thinking a lot about 2019 and the ups and downs. This brought me to ponder GoT again after all this time, and what went wrong.

I think I just kind of realized why pretty much anyone who is more than a casual fan of the show hated the end.

It’s not because it gave no one what they wanted. I mean this is, of course, part of it. (Seriously, mention one person who was rooting for Bran on the throne at the end! Who wanted Jon to kill Dany after promising her he was on her side? Bronn as the Master of Coin?)

My theory is simple: We all hate it because not only do we not get what we wanted (be that Jonsa, Dany on the throne, Braimie or Theon alive) but what we did get wasn’t anything.

Simply, we hate it, because nothing mattered.

Maybe that’s not so revolutionary to the rest of you. Maybe you all figured out why you felt so empty, why all fans, no matter who they were rooting for or hoping to die, did.

Nothing mattered.

And I wish it would have. Me, as a Jonsa and anti-Targ-restoration, would rather have had Dany on the throne married to Jon with boat-baby on the way if there could have been some sort of “the wheel can never be broken” everything just keeps on going and nothing really ever changes as the “message”.

And I think even the most hardcore Dany-stans would have preferred well-executed (political) Jonsa to the mess we got with Dany going Mad-Queen in two minutes, with maybe the message ending up being “the pack survives” or “Ned really did play the long game, huh” or something.

I would even have preferred Cerise as the End Boss Queen, somehow beating Dany, to what actually happened. Imagined that! Instead of Dany burning the city down, her dragons get shot down, the Golden Company kills the Unsullied and the episode ends with Dany being executed by the Mountain on Cercies orders.

Last episode is Tyrion, Sansa, Jon and the reaming folks rallying folks to once more to fight Cersei and maybe the show ends with the start of “the last battle” with Cercsie which we don’t get to see the outcome of, once more giving us the message of “nothing ever changes, the wars just keep going.”

Everyone dying at Winterfell as the Night King comes would be something too. Or everyone retreating to King’s Landing and then everyone dying there. Maybe killed by the NK, maybe killed by each other. That would have been an interesting ending.

I mean what we got was just a mess. A mess without meaning. A meaningless mess we all spent so many hours on.

And I’m not sure who to be angry with about it. DxD is an obvious one. GRMM too, because if he hadn’t told them “the ending” then DxD would have had to wrap it up in a way that fit the TV show. And as terrible as DxD are, that would have been better than two seasons trying to get everything to fit into GRMM ending. An ending to a very different and longer story than the show.

But the person, I’ve been the maddest at though, I’ve realized is probably myself.

Because I invested too much. I dedicated so many hours, read so many fan-theories, had my own, woke up at ungodly early hours to watch the episodes before work. I geeked out like I hadn’t in a decade during the year leading up to and during season 8. I went into the season with such high hopes, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, waiting for a brilliant conclusion to a brilliant show. And by the last episode, I had no feelings at all.

But as part of my new year's resolution I’ve decided I’m going to stop blaming myself for things that aren’t my fault. And it’s not my fault season 8 was a disappointment. It’s not my fault I decided to care about something, even if it was a TV, and it disappointed me.

It wasn’t my fault Game of Thrones’ ending sucked. And no matter how much I want to, I can’t change it. So like a bad relationship I’m now going to attempt to let go, heal and move on from the bad parts and remember the good parts.

Because one of my favorite things about Game of Thrones has actually been the community, the fandom. The messy often fractioned (and sometimes right out hostile) people that loved and invested in this show for years and years, just like me. We were all disappointed, betrayed in a sense, but we were still part of this thing. And we were part of it together. So you know...

I for one, can’t quite make myself fully regret getting into GoT. I wish at times I hadn’t but for all the bad, there has been a lot of good. I found a new OTS that never got a chance to show how great it could be (but those longing looks and the subtext will be forever in my heart), read so many smart metas on so many different things from movie lighting, to beauty and beast tropes, to power and story structure, found amazing fan art and talked and argued with people with so different opinions on so many different topics.

I also realized that it’s okay that my best friend and so many people love Dany because “the dragons are cool” and don’t like the Starks because they’re “boring” and that not everyone will invest as much into a TV show as I did. And that doesn't make me a wacky nerd (or maybe it does, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing). It just means we have different interests and one of mine is caring about theories about fictional worlds and characters that (inevitably) end up disappointing me. And that’s good. The world is full of people who love, hate, do, different things and that’s pretty neat.

So that’s what I’ve decided to take away from Game of Thrones. Maybe the show’s end was meaningless. But the community, the fans (and the amazing actors and crew that worked on the show) were, are, not meaningless.

We might, in fact, be the actual meaning of Game of Thrones.

Thinking about it like that makes things a little easier for me. It gives me hope and makes me feel like I didn’t waste time but rather invested it wisely, into something. That I contributed to something important. And I hope that all of you out there that have maybe despaired and felt something similar to me, will try to look at it this way too. Because the more we do that, the more meaning we will give it, and after all, isn’t that what we all want most? For it to have meant something?

(Also, If you felt this resonated with you, please reblog, to maybe help a disparaging GoT fan start the New Year off right).

[esther-dot]

I was thinking about the finale script again (a dangerous pastime), and it really bugs me that they note Sansa loves Jon, and he knows it. They link it with Jon not forgiving Sansa, but what struck me is that it is yet another way that Aemon’s quote covers so much of what happened in the finale. In the script they present Jon’s choice as killing one love for the other love because they forgot that the embedded dilemma is love v duty and that’s what they reintroduced in the same episode, but the line from Aemon is: “What is honor compared to a woman’s love?” And in light of the fact that it matters that Sansa loves Jon, I realized, this line is about being the object of affection. What is duty compared to being loved by a woman.

The script has the decision come down to Jon weighing his loves, but, if Jon is sucked down so deep into bad writing, cowardice, pandering to a certain fanbase his love for Dany, it reminds me of s6 when Jon refused to fight for Winterfell, and then they learn that Ramsay has Rickon, Sansa reaches across the table and takes Jon’s hand, rescuing him from his emotional spiral and pulling him back to all the ideals he has always had, reminding him of who he is, the obligations that come with it. So, instead of just looking at how Jon weighs his loves one against the other, a better way to look at it is: how do those loves weigh on him?

We don’t need to compare the tangibles of who did what for Jon. The fact that Sansa’s victory in the BotB is what led to Jon being crowned king vs Dany murdering half the population of KL in order to usurp him, or that Sansa spent all of s7 protecting Jon’s kingship while Dany spent the same season demanding Jon’s crown. When Dany learned of Jon’s parentage, no matter what Jon said about not wanting the throne, she could only see him as a threat to her, and yet, Jon not only accepted becoming KitN, but then he knelt to a Targaryen, and Sansa still assured him that he was a Stark, she still insisted he was her king, even after it all. I’m not talking about those, but the knowing and loving and trusting Jon as a person.  

Immediately before Jon killed Dany, he received an offer from her, a vision of their future, a version of love, but it was conditional, requiring him to ignore the unpardonable. She offered a form of love, but for how hard they tried to sell the J8neryrs romance in interviews, there were no personally meaningful exchanges akin to Arya and Sansa’s unconditional acceptance and faith in Jon even though they barely had screen time together in s8 which is captured in two of their lines: “You’re my brother” and “you know I do.”

Sansa’s inexplicable (if we take the scripts seriously) trust in Jon didn’t stop her from finding her own way of achieving her goals in s6 or in s8 because she knew better than to mindlessly follow someone else’s lead, but, she also knew Jon, and just as her dedication to her people was rewarded so was her faith in him. And while the script would have us believe that it’s a tragedy Jon had to choose between the Starks and a mass murderer, I think their love saved him as much as his saved them. 

Accepting Dany would have come at the price of every value Jon held, and he was finally able to reject her not just because he loved the Starks loving them didn’t stop him from kneeling or lying or dragging their men South to another war or very nearly accepting the burning of KL, but because he was beloved. I’m pretty sure this is a profoundly unfeminist take, we’re supposed to reject the trope of female love saves man, but sometimes, love is our lifeline, and just like in s6, in the end, it is his family that keeps Jon from being lost. 

[flibbertigiblet]

Yes, Jonsa really is That Ship.

So out of curiosity and boredom, I decided to tabulate the number of Jonsa fics on AO3. The numbers were more encouraging than you’d think!

I guess you could call this a health check on the state of the ship post-GoT, and I’m happy to report that even given how terrible disappointing the season and the finale were, our fic writers are still going strong. As of December 22, there are 6,308 fics tagged Jon Snow/Sansa Stark on AO3, and it remains the top-ranked ship on both the Game of Thrones and ASOIAF fandoms.

Interestingly, you can see the growth trajectory for Jonsa fic was slow but steady even before the characters reunited on the show in Season 6, and has remained equally consistent after that, despite a lack of new Jonsa content during the hiatus between S7 and 8, and some authors choosing to untag/delete their fic for reasons of their own.

Here’s a fun fact: it took only two months after the show ended in May 2019 for the fic numbers to jump from 5500 to 6000, as authors pooled their considerable talents to come up with fix-it fics, variations of scenes or even rewrites of the entire season, or to give us AUs to indulge in as a means of getting over, well…all of that.

And even if there has been a noticeable dip in the tumblr activity for the Jonsa tag (yes, I’ve noticed, and ngl, I’ve been v. sad about it) there hasn’t been the mass exodus in the fandom that I was afraid might happen especially given how the show ended. In fact, we’ve seen quite a number of new blogs, authors and meta writers join the community since the show in the past couple of months! (Welcome, guys!)

I’d like to give big thank you to our lovely Jonsa fic writers and content creators, and here’s hoping we carry over this energy to the next year!

[jonsa-creatives]

[aconsortbattleship]

I needed to do some GoT fluff bec. the show is breaking my heart. ;n;

Sansa/Arya sisterly bonding time. They read/sing Florian & Jonquil (and all the happy fun stuff) before they go to sleep!

[winterisfinallyhere]

So good!

[winterisfinallyhere]

They Both Failed Geography

'They Both Failed Geography' T-Shirt by Joppa20

They Both Failed Geography • Millions of unique designs by independent artists. Find your thing.

I did a thing...

[gwidhiel]

With friends like these ...

Regardless of the sidebar commentary in the S8 scripts (which I think were often tongue-in-cheek, but that’s just me), I never saw any signs that Jon was in love with Daenerys. And something just occurred to me that only increases my doubt about whether or not Jon could possibly have loved Daenerys: his conversation with Varys on the beach at Dragonstone didn’t go the way it would have gone if Jon cared at all about Daenerys. Here are a few things Jon didn’t do:

He didn’t ask Varys how he knew that Jon was a Targaryen.

He didn’t ask Varys what his plans were.

He didn’t ask Varys who else knew.

He didn’t disagree with Varys’s assessment of how fit Daenerys was to rule.

And here’s something else Jon didn’t do: he didn’t tell Daenerys - or her Hand - that he’d just been approached by someone who wants to put him on the Iron Throne instead of her.

If Jon were actually in love with Daenerys, wouldn’t he be keen to find out just what Varys was planning, and who was plotting with him? Wouldn’t he want Daenerys to know that one of her senior advisors was plotting against her? Even if Jon worried that Sansa might be behind Varys’s recruitment effort (I’ll say more about that below), wouldn’t he want to know that’s what was going on, so that he could take appropriate steps to protect Daenerys from harm, while doing what he could to shield his pesky sister-cousin from retribution?

You know who did, apparently, fancy himself to be in love with Daenerys at that point? Yep, Tyrion, who could tell from watching that exchange on the beach that Varys had not successfully recruited Jon to his cause. Tyrion, who was the one to share the secret of Jon’s parentage with Varys, and then allowed Varys to take the lead in trying to promote Jon’s claim. Tyrion, who saw that Jon wouldn’t take the bait, and then decided that Daenerys needed to know that Varys had turned against her. Had Tyrion been hoping to trap both Varys and Jon, and thus become Daenerys’s only advisor? Or did he tell Daenerys only because he was afraid that Jon would tell her, and then Varys might implicate him as the one who set it all in motion? Yes kids, Tyrion Lannister was really, really awful, in case you hadn’t noticed. But that’s not what this post is about.

The bottom line is: if Jon were in love with Daenerys, in fact if he really cared about her at all, he’d have been the one to warn Daenerys about the traitor in her midst. He’d have done more in his conversation with Varys than say, “I don’t want it” and “She is my queen.” Jon choked Littlefinger for daring to say that he was in love with Sansa, and threatened to kill him if he so much as touched her. That was Jon’s reaction to a man expressing unwelcome romantic interest, not intent to harm, for someone Jon cared deeply about. Jon didn’t lay a finger on Varys or make any threats when Varys revealed he was plotting to remove Daenerys from power (which would almost certainly involve killing her). He took no action against Varys and did nothing to warn Daenerys. Not what you’d expect from someone in love with her.

(On Jon protecting Sansa: I’ve read all kinds of speculation about the tiny head jerk and ghost of a smile that Jon indulged in as he realized that Varys was saying that he knew Jon was a Targaryen - with the interpretation being that Jon knew that Sansa must be behind it. That’s certainly not the only possible interpretation of what that signalled; in fact, as far as Jon knew at that point, Daenerys herself might have told Varys about Jon being a Targaryen, she might have told Varys that she didn’t fully trust Jon’s intentions. After all, Jon and Varys had barely interacted hitherto - so why was Varys, of all people, approaching Jon about getting rid of Daenerys and putting Jon on the throne instead? Jon had seen Daenerys berate Tyrion multiple times, he’d watched her question Tyrion’s loyalties, but he wasn’t a witness to the single confrontation she’d had with Varys about his loyalties. So as far as Jon knew, Varys and Daenerys were tight. So was that conversation on the beach a test of Jon’s loyalties? Jon certainly seemed to treat it like one: the only thing he messaged was that he was loyal to Daenerys. Sansa’s name never came up.)

[fedonciadale]

I like the idea that Jon thought Varys was testing him. Makes sense.

[winterisfinallyhere]

I wish this had been true and had been revealed during the show. *Sad sigh*

[diablocodys]

Sansa of House Stark. First of her name. The Red Wolf. Protector of the North and the First Men. Lady of Winterfell. Queen in the North. Long may she reign.

[pavarios]

I’m one of those who believe Sansa is more like Ned and Arya is more like Catelyn, but I don’t say that because I want to “weaken Arya’s connection to the North” or because I believe Arya is “more Tully than Stark.” 

Honestly, I don’t even understand why people argue over which of them is more Stark and which is more Tully? Like, this isn’t Harry Potter where the characters are sorted into houses based on personality traits. Sansa and Arya both have the same amount of Stark and Tully genes, so neither of them is “more” one house than the other as far as I’m concerned. And saying they’re more like one parent than the other isn’t the same thing – Ned and Cat aren’t the sole representatives of their houses.

[kyloren]

Jon & Sansa, adventures in geography

[winterisfinallyhere]

This

[americanairliines-deactivated20]

Just a simple PSA

Cannon = thing that goes boom

Canon = an event that occurs within a published story

[adachifag]

they both destroy ships tho

[parenyzia]

Did you just

[winterisfinallyhere]

[jonsansa8999]

Sansa, playing two truths one lie: I had a wolf named Lady, my eyes are green, I killed my ex-husband.

Tormund: That’s easy-

Jon: Her eyes are blue.

Tormund: 

Tormund: whAT

[runawaymarbles]

The funniest shit that ever happened in GoT was in, I think the third book, the wildlings referred to Winterfell as being in the South and Jon Snow got so offended like… “we are the NORTH”… and the wildlings just “well you’re south of us, buddy” and Jon’s whole worldview was shaken

[this-is-krikkit]

i mean he did fail geography

[kyloren]

Jon & Sansa, adventures in geography

[lucife56]

“I take this man”

[winterisfinallyhere]

pretty