Oh my gosh, this message was EXACTLY what I needed today!  Sometimes I worry that I’m not doing enough for Sansa in the fandom - and I know I’ve been called out on that before - so to know that I’ve changed someone’s opinion of her for the better, that I’ve helped to mend the rift between Sansa and Tyrion fans even a little… just wow.  That’s kind of overwhelming.  <3

I’m pretty sure that what’s going on in the Sansa tag is the same thing that’s going on in the Tyrion tag.  Like, the drama’s just kind of bleeding through from one to the other and is spilling over everywhere making a giant mess of grossness.

WOW THIS IS GOING TO BE A FUN SEASON YAY

Sorry it took me so long to get around to answering this - I just started beauty school today and I’m still trying to figure out what my new schedule is going to be, so if anyone seems to be waiting an inordinately long time for replies, I apologize!  <3

Anyway, I’m so glad my blog is what you were looking for because guh yes navigating the ASoIaF fandom as a fan of both Sansa and Tyrion can be really treacherous.  (Which is especially unfortunate because I don’t imagine either Sansa or Tyrion wishes anything bad on the other.)  Part of me is already flinching in anticipation of the way those new to the story will handle Sansa and Tyrion’s marriage in the upcoming season.  I hate to be pessimistic, but I’m just really worrying there’s going to be a lot of hate thrown both ways.

Oh well, I guess we’ll have to be our own sanctuary, huh?

Ummm I read fics pretty much everywhere?  Livejournal, tumblr, fanfiction.net, ao3.  The ones listed in those links just happen to be my favorites.  <3

Are there some in either of those archives that you think I’m missing?

Uh well, back in the day - she was literally like in middle school at the time - she read AGoT, but she never made it past that book.  Now she watches GoT though, and she really loves it!  (Mostly because I don’t give her a choice.)

I’m so glad you’re enjoying this blog - thank you!

I’m afraid I don’t know of any fics that deal explicitly with Sansa and Sandor’s relationship.  I know I never have personally, though now that I think about it, I don’t really know why.  There’s really no denying that there was some sort of attraction between the two of them - however you want to define it.  And I really don’t think that’s a threat to the future possibility of Sansa/Tyrion at all, because well, any relationship Sansa and Tyrion build isn’t going to be based on some overwhelming sexual chemistry anyway.  For me, Sansa/Tyrion is more about comfort and familiarity, and in that way, it’s just very different from the way I think of SanSan, so I mean, the two can definitely co-exist!  (And I always think it’s weird when fics make one potential love interest out to be a monster in order to justify a different pairing.  I mean, it doesn’t speak very well of any pairing if the only chance of them getting together comes from the complete grossness of all other possibilities.  But lol fandom doesn’t seem to get that.)

I do highly recommend all the fics on my Sansa/Tyrion reclist though - and I can promise none of them engage in any Sandor (or SanSan) bashing.  Because that shit’s just not cool.

I do!  I have one younger sister - her name is Emily and she’s my very best friend!  I actually live with her and her husband and son.

Here’s a picture of us making stupid faces before a Gavin DeGraw concert a couple of weeks ago:

Isn’t she precious?!?!?

Oh man, I think by the end of the series it had actually moved from homoerotic subtext to homoerotic text, amirite? 

I mean, it’s actually kind of difficult to narrow it down to a few specific examples when the entire series kind of reads as a classic love story to me (if love stories traditionally included step-cest, that is).  Two people forced to work - or in this case, live - together who at first seem to have everything working against their ever getting along.  But who, through their mutual teasing and bickering, eventually - and to their great surprise - find themselves unable to function without one another. 

If you’re looking for cited examples, though, well I suppose I could name the four separate times Josh kisses Drake: twice on the cheek (in the episodes “Smart Girl” and “We’re Married”), once on the side of the head (in “Dance Contest”) and once smack dab on the mouth (in “Josh Runs Over Oprah”).

See here:

Or I could also point to how very touchy-feely their arguments tend to get, almost as if the very point of their arguing is to end up in a pile of limbs on the floor/couch (which they always do):

If I remember correctly, during one such argument, spanking actually occurs, but I don’t have the cap on hand.  Just believe me.  I could also cite how their hugs seem to linger on longer and longer as the seasons progress (usually with Josh picking Drake up off the floor at least a little):

And then there’s that time Drake and Josh actually spoon while sleeping during “Drake and Josh Go Hollywood.”  Or the way Josh looks at him at the end of the same movie, after Drake’s finished performing.  Like he’s physically unable to look away from his step-brother, for even a second.  Like he wouldn’t want to anyway.  Actually, just that whole movie is kind of just a testament to how sickeningly in love Josh is with Drake, tbh.

And that’s to say nothing of episodes like “Drew and Jerry,” which is devoted entirely to Drake and Josh being jealous of the other having relationships possibly more important than theirs.  Or the topper on this big gay wedding cake: “Josh is Done,” which is pretty much a break up episode (no really, it’s actually listed as one on TV Tropes) that ends with Drake begging Josh for forgiveness because he doesn’t know how to live his life without him anymore.

lol so basically I’d just like to say that Drake and Josh make each other happy and that everything in seasons one through four is a good example of how undeniably romantic their relationship is.  I mean, seriously, how many people regularly look this stupidly happy together:

Well, tbh, I’m not the sort of person who religiously keeps track of the various ways the show varies from the books.  I guess I sort of think of the HBO series as just one possible interpretation of the countless interpretations GRRM’s series might have inspired?  The books themselves are one canon to me at this point, and the show another. 

I mean, in a lot of ways, the show is quite faithful to the books - especially throughout the first season, when entire bits of dialogue were lifted directly from the the first novel.  (Of course that still happens in season two, but less so, I think. )  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some deeper differences between the two mediums - ones that speak to the fact that television is never going to be able to reproduce the limited PoV structure of the books.

It almost seems that the show has realized that it isn’t the books at this point - and while it’s still telling the same overarching story, pieces of that story can be rearranged to fit a viewing rather than a reading audience.  And that makes sense!  Watching GoT varies greatly from reading ASoIaF - largely because of the various third person limited PoVs in the novels.

Whether or not the effort to tailor GoT to the visual medium always works, though… well, that’s up for debate.  What’s disappointing to me is when the writers go out of the way to make the characters easier - easier to like, easier to hate, whatever.  Because that loses so many of the complexities of the characters that made them so real in the first place.  I guess I’m thinking here of HBO’s portrayal of Catelyn Stark, which tbh, I wasn’t entirely happy with.  I’m all for condensing character moments - after all, there are a rather ridiculous number of characters in ASoIaF who all try and share the stage at some point - as long as the core of those moments stays the same.  As long as what that moment is telling us about the character in question is honest and true to character. 

But the Catelyn Stark of GoT… well, she isn’t much like the Catelyn Stark I was familiar with at all.  It’s not that I don’t like HBO’s Catelyn - I do!  She’s very likeable, in fact!  But she’s not GRRM’s Catelyn, who happens to rank in my three favorite characters from the series.  Idk but the GoT writers seem to have missed some crucial parts of Catelyn in the name of making her easier for a viewing audience - namely those qualities that would lead her to assert that Ned has no choice but to go to King’s Landing and fulfill his duty rather than beg that he stay with her at Winterfell.  That’s not condensing a character moment - it’s changing an essential part of her character.  (The reasons for this can be debated, but I think it has a lot to do with what we expect mother characters to want and do.  What we think makes a good mother.)

And to me, those types of changes are importantly different from the writers’ decision to give us a more well-rounded picture of Jaime and Cersei throughout seasons one and two.  The reason we initially had such black and white portraits of the Lannister twins is the structure of the novels themselves, after all.  It’s only logical that a medium with a more objective viewpoint (like television) would allow us to see these characters more as they actually are and less as other characters would have us see them.  And that kind of complexity is something I’m never going to complain about.

I’m not sure if I’ve actually answered your question at all and I’m sorry about that.  I guess, for me, the main difference between the novels and the HBO series is the loss of the PoV structure - which of course affects the way pretty much every character is portrayed.  Sometimes though, the writers seem to assume a certain lack of intelligence of the viewing audience, and that’s frustrating, you know?  Does this help at all?

I approve of this method of selecting a potential life-mate.