In post 622, halfpint wrote:I feel like I am one of the few that hasn't been converted yet to the "Sansa is awesome" team.
In post 617, quadz08 wrote:The sansa chapters were good (IMHO) because of the future-Sansa I can see coming. That and the Sansa-Littlefinger interactions are supremely interesting.
I dunno, I just feel like she's an actual person now, rather than "I AM THE TEENAGERIEST TEENAGER THAT EVER TEENAGERED"
Maybe it's this... I'm still not sold on the future-Sansa. Plus Littlefinger is super-freakin' creepy. That said, I do enjoy reading her chapters, unlike, say, Bran "I'm a tree" Stark.
I think I may be the only person in the world who has ALWAYS liked Sansa.
Yes, she was shallow in the beginning. But there has always been more to her than that. Always.
Arya was obviously more likeable-as-a-PERSON at that point, but as a character, I found Sansa very interesting. Her scene with the Hound where she tells only the truth and he calls her a pretty little bird may be my favorite in the whole series.
I don't think there really ever was more to her at the beginning than vapid foil or possibly, "maybe something interesting will happen to her in the future"
It was always clear to me that she would develop in an interesting way, and wasn't quite as vapid as she first appeared.
I think she provided a great contrast to the plot and a real sense of reality to the story. She was a child who was just ... a child, doing childish things. She'd had a very easy life before that and didn't understand the harsh realities.
Arya is a childish as well in her own way, but in a way more immediately likeable and identifiable to readers. She is the precocious child. Not all children are precocious that way, but if you judged it by the amount of precocious children in fiction, you'd sure think most children are precocious. That's because writing children is fucking HARD, and Martin honestly does it better than anyone else I can think of.
While I love Arya because she's satisfying for the reader, venting some of the frustrations (s)he might be feeling at the time, I think Sansa is one of the most realistically handled characters in the whole series. That's why I like her.
Although, I guess I am unlike most people (maybe, idk) in the sense that I do not really rate characters by how much I'd like them as people. I read as a writer, and it kind of shows in how I enjoy stories, I guess.
EDIT: I've also been looking forward to her inevitably bloody awakening since her introduction.
i has them. this is nothing new... I always like the weird ones no one else likes.
edit: because i'm tired i feel compelled to explain more.
I like Sansa more than Arya because Arya was more interesting right off-the-bat. Her unfolding was more predictable, in a way, and not until the Faceless Men was I truly surprised, and that's only from my first impression of her, not by that point in the story when it wasn't actually surprising anymore.
Arya is the character who is feisty and enjoyable, but she starts off that way. I didn't have to work for it. Consequently, it's much easier to see where her plotline is going and I actually think she has less depth than Sansa by a mile at this point in the story.
Sansa, on the other hand, starts off simple but set just far enough out of the lime light to tell me she is going to be important -- and fairly soon. Something is going to happen there, but what?
I had a harder time immediately and accurately predicting Sansa's overall characterization, and that has been maintained as she's increasingly gained depth. Even now, I have a pretty good idea what Littlefinger will want of her, but I don't know what Sansa will do with that. In this case, that's not a mark of poor writing, but of a character halfway in bloom. I find that very interesting.
To put it more simply, what is more interesting: reading about a person who is wise, or watching a person become wise?
Arya isn't what I'd classify as wise, but it's the easiest analogy I could think of.
Even though I love Arya, I think she's more of an indulgence than a well-crafted character. When she abandoned Needle, I was upset because I wanted her to be the Arya I loved, and not give up herself. But I have the feeling that she definitely won't ever do that because the writer has that same feeling, so ... less interesting.
Last edited by Amrun on Tue Oct 29, 2013 7:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
None of those things make you interested in Sansa-as-character, though. (Except the realism bit, which I can appreciate and understand.) She provided contrast to the plot as an object that the plot revolved around much more than anything else, IMO.
I just added an edit in which I tried to explain a little more.
But on a base level, I was just more interested in Sansa than many other characters. I keyed into her early on. Maybe I identified with something in her. It wasn't really solidified as a permanent this-character-is-awesome until the chapter after the Tournament, with her scene with the Hound. That scene is fucking gold, man.
I too found Sansa interesting and compelling from the beginning . . . partly, yeah, because Arya was written to appeal, and with appealing tropes; you could sort of float through a lot of her stuff and still get what her character was about and enjoy it. I felt like there was plenty of stuff that, because of the tropes associated with Sana, you wouldn't get unless you paid attention. I didn't find her vapid. Both she and Arya were immature and self-absorbed in a fairly realistic way, but it was clear from the outset that Sansa was quite intelligent, and in some ways she had the more interesting storyline than Arya did in the first book. They both had interests their father/other social protectors helped them engage in through other people. Arya got a badass swordsman willing to sacrifice himself for her. Cool, but that wasn't a challenge to her, or to the reader from a narrative perspective. Sansa got a manipulative, abusive psychopath betrothed. Part of the interest was waiting for her illusions to fall to pieces, but the fact that she was dealing with a situation she wasn't equipped for when she thought it was a different situation was compelling and challenging.
Storyline and character are different things though. Just because a POV has interesting parts in it doesn't make her character itself particularly compelling. Joffrey was interesting, the Hound interesting, Cersei interesting. All of those built interesting POV chapters for Sansa. But her actual character? In other words, the person she was? She became an interesting character outside of her interactions with others when her naivety was shattered once, twice, etc.
zoraster, are you saying that she became an interesting character AFTER she shattered her naivete? If so, then I simply disagree. She was always interesting, a shattering in the making. Shattering naivete has no meaning without establishing it.
I think what you're hearing, Amrun, is "she shouldn't have been so naive." What I'm saying, however, is that it's fine that she was, but she was bloody boring and irritating. That doesn't mean that the chapters should have been written differently or something. It means that I don't like her character, don't find it interesting, until it actually is interesting. And sure, you can say that there needs to be set up for that, but that doesn't make the boring parts that set it up unboring.
I 100% think that Sansa's character would not work if she wasn't so fucking obnoxious for the first couple of books. She's interesting because she's not "I want to be the queeeeeeeeeeen" anymore; if she had
never
been "I want to be the queeeeeeeeeen" then she wouldn't be a good character now.
The way she was written was important to her development, but it doesn't mean she was entertaining or good when taking the first couple of books by themselves.
Yeah, that's all well and good, zoraster. I'm just saying that just because Sansa's initial character was only boring/irritating for YOU (and for lots of people, understandably) doesn't mean that it was boring for me. That's all! I see why/how she wouldn't appeal to others.
In post 634, zoraster wrote:Storyline and character are different things though. Just because a POV has interesting parts in it doesn't make her character itself particularly compelling. Joffrey was interesting, the Hound interesting, Cersei interesting. All of those built interesting POV chapters for Sansa. But her actual character? In other words, the person she was? She became an interesting character outside of her interactions with others when her naivety was shattered once, twice, etc.
dany's like the posterchild for this in book 1 imo (and possibly all the time)
are you thinking of me when you're with somebody else?
In post 629, Amrun wrote:Although, I guess I am unlike most people (maybe, idk) in the sense that I do not really rate characters by how much I'd like them as people. I read as a writer, and it kind of shows in how I enjoy stories, I guess.
i don't think that's unique to you, i'd not want to go for drinks with a murdering viking like victarion, or littlefinger, or roose bolton. but I think they're all good reads and add to the story as characters!
i mean tbh for me there was never really a pov i saw that went OH GOD NOT THIS, I know a lot of people felt like this with bran but I found most of his chapters fine? even sansa who I wasn't particularly enthralled with had enough stuff going on that her chapters were fine.
are you thinking of me when you're with somebody else?
Ironically, I also find Dany at her most interesting in Book 1 -- still less interesting than many other characters, but that was when I was most invested in her as a character. I still usually enjoy her chapters but not necessarily because of her as a person. She's a bit daft -- though I do like that about her character from an overarching standpoint. I don't find her compelling enough otherwise to overcome the irritation caused by it. In Book 1, she did a lot of developing and growing and I quite enjoyed it. I think a bit into book 2 as well. But at some point, her growth didn't exactly stop, but it ceased to be interesting in and of itself. External growth like "she learned to ride a dragon" doesn't really get me going even if I thought that bit was cool otherwise.
Actually, in Book 1, I used to look forward to the Dany chapters and I'd peak at the table of contents to see when the next one was in anticipation. I loved her beginning arc. Such a shame to see myself lose interest in it. I can't think of anything else I'm less interested in than the whole Targaryan new boy / billions of people trying to marry Dany. A close second is anything happening on the Iron Islands, I guess.
i admit i basically skim bran chapters, especially when i reread the books.
I only think Danny was a bad character when she got bogged down... somewhere between qarth and pre-end of book 5. In some ways, I think George RR Martin just paced her story poorly. like she got really far into it and then had to tread water for a book or two.
I don't dislike Bran, but I can't confess to looking forward to his chapters upon re-reads. The funny thing is that I think he's going to be a huge cornerstone of the plot in the future.
I loved her beginning arc. Such a shame to see myself lose interest in it. I can't think of anything else I'm less interested in than the whole Targaryan new boy / billions of people trying to marry Dany. A close second is anything happening on the Iron Islands, I guess.
