#← VERY lightly. like it's not even spoilers. but it's from the most recent ep so I'm tagging it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

norelationtoatticus · 5 years

Text

So...........anyone want to read my long, hyper-excited essay on why Sansa and Tyrion belong together, using character wound theory as evidence?

No?

Too bad. Here it is anyway. I have high-key shipped these two for years, alone in the darkness, because everyone thought I was crazy. Well, I don't look so crazy after that hand kiss, now do I?! (To all of you fellow long-time Sanrion shippers out there: I salute you.) Some people are just starting to ship them after that last episode. Some don’t see it at all and think that the idea of them together is off the wall and out of nowhere. I am here as a longtime weird-o cheerleader for these two to offer some perspective. Ship them or don’t, live your life! But they are definitely not coming out of nowhere. And here are 1500 words explaining why!!!

(lololol...I have a problem, guys.)

Anyway, here's the essay. I’m putting this under a cut because the last couple of paragraphs do contain spoilers for the most recent episode, Season 8 Ep. 3.

First, an intro to character wounds, in case you are not a writer type or have not studied this concept.

When creating a character and setting them on their inner journey, one aspect writers tend to develop is the character's wound. A wound is a dark, sucking abyss in a character's psyche that influences all of their actions and choices. Typically, it comes from some sort of trauma in their past. This wound is all-encompassing. It affects their relationships, their decisions, their journey, as they seek (usually unconsciously) to fill or heal the wound. It's like a black hole around which the character's personality and motives swirl.

The reason why I think Sansa and Tyrion are completely perfect for each other? They have complementary wounds.

Let me explain.

Tyrion's wound is that no one has ever wanted him. I mean that on a multitude of levels. His father and sister detested him, made it quite clear that they did not want him in their family. They spent years telling him that his mother had died rather than have to raise him, which is awful and not true, but of course he has internalized their abuse. Even Jaime, who loves him, sides with Cersei and Tywin when it matters most. He loves Tyrion, but Tyrion is never his first choice. Even though Tyrion is obviously the most clever person in King's Landing, no one wants his advice or council. He's made Hand of the King, but immediately gets demoted as soon as his father comes back. Sexually and romantically, no one has ever wanted him. (In the show, anyway. Remember, he does not know the truth about Tysha in the show.) Even though he is one of the more sexually active characters early on, both he and the narrative make it a point to really hammer home that all of his experience is with prostitutes. He has never had a romantic or sexual relationship with a woman he didn't have to pay. All of this motivates him. This is what ties him to Daenerys, what keeps him loyal to her even when he really doesn't like some of her choices; he stays with her because she chose him. She threatens him, questions him, doesn't listen to him, accuses him of treason, and does a lot of things that Tyrion is not comfortable with. But he stays. Because she chose him. This is his wound. No one has ever wanted him. He has never been anyone's first choice.

Sansa's wound is that she has spent so much of her life as a prisoner, unable to make her own choices. That has been her entire journey. She went from being a prisoner in King's Landing, to a prisoner--albeit one with a bit more agency--with Littlefinger, to being a prisoner in Winterfell. She has been caged, trapped, forced into two marriages, used as a political tool by people like the Lannisters, the Tyrells, and Littlefinger who only see her as a pawn. She has had her bodily autonomy violated in the worst ways. She has been beaten and raped. Everyone took away her right to choose. Every step of the way, Sansa clawed and scraped to be able to make just a few choices of her own, to grab just a bit of her agency back. But for a long time, she was making whatever small, survival-based choices she could within the confines of various cages. Even now, she is bound to serve the choices of people who are more powerful than her--people like Daenerys, but also Jon. She is much freer now, and we have seen her taking up space and making choices for the past two seasons, at least. But she has more to do if she's really going to come into her own and take charge of her role. This is Sansa's wound: her imprisonment, the stripping of her agency, her lack of free will.

See? They're complementary. They're a matched set. And they offer each other a path to healing:

Sansa needs to make her own choices. And Tyrion needs to be chosen.

What a lovely symmetry. It's like something deep in each of them has been calling out for the other.

There's more, too.

On their awful, painful wedding night all those years ago, Tyrion was handed all of Sansa's agency. Now, let's be very clear: not raping someone should not be a high bar standard we're celebrating. That's awful. But in the world of GoT, where rape is so common place and lightly-used, I genuinely don't think many men would have done what Tyrion did. And then he did something even better. Sansa had been trapped, imprisoned, for a while by that point. She had no freedom, no choice. Tyrion had all of her free will held tightly in his grasp. He could have done anything to her, and no one would have blinked. But not only did her refuse to do anything against her will, he took it a step further. He handed some of her freedom of choice back to her. He didn't just refuse to abuse her. He actually literally said, "I will not share your bed until you want me to." Until you want me to. He handed a little bit of power back to her in that moment, and he never once tried to take it away again, even when Sansa said, "What if I never want you to?" To be clear, I do not ship them in this time period. Not even close. This marriage was awful, even though they found some kindness in it. Sansa never could have learned to love Tyrion back then. She was a child. They had both been forced into the marriage. And she was so ruthlessly trapped and imprisoned in King's Landing, there was no way she could ever feel anything but fear and hate while she was there. But now? With some years of distance? With some growth for both of them? When they're both free to choose it? I suspect real feelings could grow between them.

Until you want me to... ...What if I never want you to?

You know, she never actually said no, never. Maybe she just need a lot of years and a lot of change...

There's also just the fact that they really complement each other, in terms of personality and what I think they would each want in a partner. Their minds and the way they think are a matched set. They're both very intelligent, ruthless when they need to be, and yet kind and good at their cores. Sansa is one of very few people in the world who can stand up beside Tyrion, match him wit for wit, cover his blind spots, act as a real partner to him. And Tyrion is literally everything Sansa has ever wanted, exactly the kind of man she admired in all the romantic songs: a brave, noble, handsome, heroic lord with a heart of gold. She just had to do some growing before she could see all of that in him, because he’s not exactly conventional.

Anyway, long story short, Sansa and Tyrion are legit perfect for each other. This is why I ship them. This is why you should be shipping them. (Please, good lord, more people ship them. There is not a whole lot of Sansa/Tyrion fic, and I really don't have the time to write it all by myself, guys.)

Do I think they're actually going to get together in the show? Maybe! Maybe not! Who knows! I won't be upset if they're not actually canon. I still love the pair. This show doesn’t do romance super well, and romance is not often a priority, so I am definitely not holding my breath. But I do have a few thoughts.

As to whether or not they're actually going to get together on the show, a few thoughts from the last episode:

1) The damn world was ending, they were all about to die, this was not an opportune time to be flirting with each other! But did that stop them? No, it did not.

2) The moment that they shared in the crypts, backs to the wall, side by side, and sure they were about to die, was one of the most intimate moments this show has ever given us. These were two people who deeply understood one another, acknowledging without words that there was a whole world of things left unsaid between them. That hand kiss? So tender. So loving. And yes, of course you could take that scene as platonic. Maybe it was. Quite possible. But, in my defense, I know and follow a whole lot of romance authors. Most of the romance authors I know saw that moment as deeply, wildly romantic, even if they had never shipped this pair before. So there's that, from a bunch of people who write romance for a living.

3) Sansa told Tyrion they would never work because of his loyalty to Daenerys. This felt...um...first of all...like a hell of a conversation to be having while you think the world is ending. I would not be surprised if Sansa was laying some ground work, trying to get ahead of the curve in grabbing Tyrion to her side in case they actually survived. It made me think Sansa has Plans ™ . But also, this one feels obvious, tbh. The show has been building up a conflict and a tension between Tyrion and Daenerys for two seasons now. He has made a lot of bad calls that have her questioning his judgement and loyalty. She has made plenty of her own bad calls that have him questioning whether she is fit to rule.They are ready for a blow out. And if Sansa presents another option? If Sansa is there as someone who wants him, wants to choose him, wants to love him? I suspect Tyrion’s loyalty won't be split for long.

#sanrion #sansa/tyrion #sansa x tyrion #game of thrones #sansa stark #tyrion lannister #game of thrones spoilers #mine

306 notes · View notes

raiyakun · 7 years

Text

Questions about the Blue Lion

Okay, so after two seasons, I’m still a little fuzzy on how the Blue Lion’s qualities are known in canon. (The info on the website does not qualify: we’ve learned many things about the other lions in canon, and I do not believe the writers are willing to just spoonfeed info like that to us, not when they’ve left many questions unanswered beyond Blue.) So, I decided to do a quick rewatch and ended up with a list of the questions about Blue that have been haunting me, one of which leads me to what’s probably a veryyyyyyy far-reaching theory of who (or at least what alien race) could her previous paladin have been and the possibility that one of the other paladins could be descended from this race. Some of you may have answers to some of them, or some of you might want to figure some of them out on your own, but I’m basically just throwing all these out there hoping someone helps me understand.

1) How was Blue able to project images into all of the paladins’ heads?

(Edit: This meta has previously raised and explored this same question, although I’m putting some additional and partly different theories in relation to Blue’s one-time connection with all the paladins.)

Remember when the paladins all found her? When Lance knocks against her barrier, Blue awakens and the camera zooms into Lance, and then we get this entire montage of Voltron and the other lions. Afterwards, we find out that all five had the same vision, which could only mean that Blue had mentally communicated to all of them at the same time. Now, this feels important, because so far we have only seen the other lions communicate exclusively with their respective paladins. But here Blue connected for a few moments with all of them. Was this due to her paladin, Lance, being present and being the anchor to her connecting with everyone? Or is Blue capable to some extent of connecting with all the paladins?

Going on that second point, I have to wonder now if Keith feeling that energy early on is Blue making a very shallow link to him: Here was a paladin candidate, the one who has managed to get physically close to her, and like the way she dove into all their minds to show them Voltron, she grasps at what little she could reach from him.

And I’ve seen a theory before (which I cannot find at the moment) about the paladin assignments having been done through Blue and Lance’s knowledge of the others. If we’re going off the idea that Blue is capable of communicating with people other than her own paladin, could she have fed the information to Allura then? (If you consider, at this point, all the other lions are still “asleep” and could not have really spoken to Allura, if they could in the first place, about which person in this group was the one they chose as their paladin.)

2) Why was Blue able to create a wormhole?

This has been bugging me for the longest time, especially after S2 expounded on the pseudo-science of teludavs and wormholes. In S1, we get Blue presumably creating a wormhole to Arus to go to the Castle of Lions. We have not seen any other lion do this, nor do we see Blue able to do it again. If we are to go on a theory that the each of the lions have some sort of emergency wormhole capacity, then think back to the beginning of S2 and Pidge trying to contact the castleship—that should have been the chance for Green to activate that emergency ability, if it existed.

And we learn later on too that Allura among the main team is the only one capable of creating the wormholes due to her energy. After the S2 reveal (spoilers?) we can chalk up Zarkon’s wormholing (?) capability probably to Haggar too (which begs the question: is operating teludavs/wormholes an Altean capability, or strictly a royal Altean capability? And what does that leave us with Haggar if its the second?)

In S1 though, we get the concept that wormholes can still be created on Allura’s residual energy. Did Blue, then, create that wormhole on residual Altean energy? If so, how does she have it in the first place? (Take note because this would lead to question 4, but for now…)

3) How was she able to activate the castle?

Is the capacity of activating the 10,000-year dormant castle something that all the lions can do? At this point, we’ve seen a huge amount of independence from Blue—Lance says it’s like she’s on autopilot when he first pilots her, presumably most of the wild running and flying around the first time her way of being happy to be able to move again. Again, to go back to q2, is the “castle activation” something built into all of the lions, or just Blue in particular? We see her activate the castle two times: first from afar, where her eyes glow and the four “legs” of the castle glow as well, and second when she growls at the gate to open it. If Alfor was keeping the castle housing his daughter and the Black Lion from Zarkon, then I’m betting he’s put heavy security for them. But again: was this purposely programmed by Alfor, or is the Blue Lion possessing something in particular that allowed it to open the castle?

4) Could the Blue Lion’s previous paladin have been Altean? And could one of the current paladins have been their descendant?

Okay, disclaimer: I believe Alfor was the previous yellow paladin. There’s too much yellow on his armor to see otherwise. But who’s saying another previous paladin could not have been Altean?

Remember when everyone first entered the castle? Identity scan. Like I said above, if Alfor’s plan hinged on hiding his daughter and the Black Lion away from Zarkon and it’s worked for 10,000 years, then it should definitely have been due to very stringent security. Now, the hypothesis could be that “identity scan” meant “quintessence scan” and Alfor programmed the castle to react to the five paladins by quintessence, but remember that “lion’s quintessence matches its paladin,” and Zarkon was the Black Paladin. So if it’d been programmed that way, I’m assuming Alfor would have a safeguard against someone (Shiro) having similar quintessence to Zarkon. But of course we know that Zarkon and Shiro are different, but nevertheless Black accepted both of them at different times as her paladin.

So just what type of identity imprint did this scan pick up that it literally led these five to Allura and Coran (even to the point of revealing their pods and releasing them as if this imprint meant they were in safe/trustworthy hands)? Could this identity scan have been rigged to read someone’s DNA? If so, whose?

My assumption is the identity being searched for here is likely Altean (if not Alfor’s specifically, but I don’t have enough proof on that—although I have heard Lauren Montgomery in a recent podcast offhandedly mentioning something about siblings). It probably could not be, but if we connect it to the previous speculation about the Blue Lion’s ability to create a wormhole/activate the castle stemming from the fact that it bears residual (potentially royal) Altean energy, then it’s not too far to speculate that the scan picked up Altean DNA from the group (one of whom could be the descendant of an Altean who piloted Blue to earth and thus bears Altean DNA), and that’s why it dared to lead them directly to Allura and Coran.

Note also that this control panel even activates in their presence and deactivates once Allura is out.

Only to be activated again specifically by Allura.

(Edit: Note how the “w”-shaped symbol does not appear again even after Allura activates the panel.)

Now the Galra Keith reveal and how it’s been hinted heavily with Keith putting his hand on that Galra panel in the Balmera has made me not think lightly of how panels are activated in VLD. I’m quite sure this could only mean that the panel could be activated or programmed by Alteans. It might be too much of a reach to assume the presence of one of the paladins activated it remotely, but I could at least speculate the last one to use it had been Alfor, after putting Allura and Coran to sleep. This would tie up again to Alfor purposefully programming the castle’s activation and particularly Allura’s and Coran’s release from their pods, and I bet he wouldn’t let the castle lead just anyone to where his sleeping (presumed dead by Zarkon at this point) daughter lies.

I think I moved too far, so let me bring us back on track again: the speculation here is that whoever piloted the Blue Lion to earth could have been a (royal) Altean, who left residues of their energy with Blue that allowed her to form a wormhole to Arus and, possibly, activate the castle. This Altean potentially has a descendant among the five paladins, if we go by the hypothesis that the castle picked up their DNA/energy or traces of their identity through a scan of the five and automatically activated itself as if it was assured that the beings that entered it were trustworthy/allies. (If we take it a step further, imagine if Alfor had programmed the castle to react only to a specific person’s energy/DNA as a fail safe.)

This could mean nothing or me misreading, but I am also a little curious about Haggar’s wording here: “The Blue Lion has returned, and now I feel a resurgence of Altean energy.” Before this, the Galran commander who fought the team in Blue directly contacted Zarkon, so to have Haggar be the one to announce that Blue “returned” seems redundant, unless this was to imply that she sensed Blue the way she sensed the “resurgence of Altean energy.” (It was Zarkon who speculated it was Allura, but Haggar did not specify.) I might be able to expound on this part later, but for now I’m including this here just in case.

5) How was Blue able to get back online so quickly in The Depths?

But Raiya, someone hisses at me, it’s because she’s in her element, DUH! I know. My question here is: How did Blue draw energy from the water, and is she the only one capable of this?

For the first 2 eps of s2, the other paladins had to wait for their lions to go back online on their own, which took a considerable amount of time. Blue is the only lion who managed to jump back barely minutes after getting thrown out of the corrupted wormhole and with all systems blaring red. If this is indeed due to Blue somehow drawing energy/quintessence from the water, how is she able to do this? And is she the only lion who can do it independently? (Would, for example, the Green Lion have been able to revive itself with quintessence from the surrounding trees?)

By independently, I mean without needing anybody actively feeding them quintessence or energy and the lions drawing the quintessence of their own accord. In Greening the Cube, for example, we see the Green Lion being revived by the Olkari presumably with quintessence. But this is still the Olkari supplying the quintessence, as opposed to the Blue Lion reviving on its own potentially from getting the quintenssence/energy it needed from the water. In a sense, then, even after going offline/”unconscious,” Blue still had some measure of capability to restock her own energy in a short amount of time from the water surrounding her.

And I think there’s something important to note in relation to Defenders of the Universe here. In DotU, the Blue Lion was outright stated to be the fusion energy source of Voltron (see eps 31–32). Haggar even instructed Lotor to focus a robeast’s fire on the Blue Lion to take it down, and afterward, he was confident enough to have damaged the Blue Lion beyond repair and that it meant Voltron wasn’t going to be formed again.

I’m not sure how far VLD takes from DotU, but if they were to retain this, I’d assume the Blue Lion’s capability to draw its own energy from the water so quickly could be to ensure that Voltron’s power source has as much energy as possible. (And also, I greatly fear for Lance, because in DotU, showing the Blue Lion’s importance as the power source by damaging it also meant its pilot—Allura—was quite heavily injured.)

This got pretty long, and I’ll probably have more questions later (?), but I’m getting dizzy from so much info so I’m gonna stop here. Please feel free to point things out or expound on something as I really would appreciate exploring all these things about the Blue Lion and why it’s being kept quite mysterious in the show.

#vld meta #blue lion #lance mcclain #lance (vld)#voltron #vld #raiyakun!! rambles #geez this got long #i put it in the lance tags because there might be things that could greatly concern him #Raiyakun!! Meta

103 notes · View notes

outlanderclan · 7 years

Link

Where Claire and Jamie's Heads Are At in Season 3

At the end of Season 2, Claire had thrown herself back into the twentieth century as Jamie grimly faced the Battle of Culloden. When Season 3 resumes, the two will have lived decades without each other. As we know from Season 2 flash-forwards, Claire returns to Frank (Tobias Menzies) in this time to raise her and Jamie's daughter.

"Claire believes Jamie has died, so there aren’t really any options," Balfe says. "I think she does what any mother would do. She tries to survive." She later added: "You see how these two people had to live without each other, and I think that’s a really important part of who they’ve become."

As for Jamie, Heughan said, "If people have read the book, they know that it picks up where [Season 2] left off, so we do get to see Jamie’s journey without Claire. Basically, Jamie’s not himself. He’s being anyone but Jamie Fraser, so it’s about his journey back to Jamie Fraser."

Who Balfe and Heughan Have Geeked Out Over Meeting

Most fans in the Main Stage at ECCC were definitely geeking out over the two Starz leads, so it was interesting to see who Balfe and Heughan had obsessed over meeting themselves.

For Balfe, it was film star Faye Dunaway, who was wrapped up in the Oscars' enormous gaffe earlier this week. "I was just like, 'Oh my God, can I take my picture with you?' and she let me!" Balfe exclaimed.

Heughan told the crowd that he's planning to wear his Stranger Things t-shirt to the con the next day, and would love to meet Millie Bobby Brown. He also cited an embarrassing run-in with Jeremy Renner recently.

"We were at the bar at this Oscars party, and he came in between us to get his drink," Heughan says. Then Heughan reviewed his internal dialogue, which went something like: Do I say something? Do I not say something? Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, before eventually blurting out, "You’re really good in Arrival!” Apparently Renner replied with a simple, "Thank you, brother" and scrambled away from Heughan. "I hope I don’t bump into him now, or he doesn’t recognize me," he joked of the star, who is also at ECCC this weekend.

Supernatural Encounters and Heughan's Musical Skills

Stars are people too, so why should ghosts be choosy about who they haunt? One fan question drew in surprising results as both Balfe and Heughan had supernatural mysteries to recount.

Balfe's occurred while she was living in Japan, and we swear it sounds like an early 2000s horror film. "I had a ghost in my room," she says. "I was like 19, and I could feel there was something in my room," she said, while explaining that the lights and television would turn on and off without reason. "One day, I felt something like this [lightly brushes the top of Kramer's head repeatedly] and it scared the bejesus out of me, so I moved out the next day." Probably the best idea!

Heughan's was even more mysterious. "I used to play the trombone, and someone bought me a wind-up metronome," he explains. "One night, after they had passed away, I was thinking about that person and the door was closed and the windows were closed and it started ticking, when it hadn’t moved in years."

Our biggest takeaway from here is definitely the baffling image of Heughan playing the trombone, not that both of the Outlander leads attract apparitions.

The Scene Balfe Wished They Had Filmed

Although Season 1 very closely resembles Diana Gabaldon's first book, there are of course a few exceptions. While it's understandable that they couldn't film the moment where Claire finds herself face-to-face with the Loch Ness Monster, Balfe was still hoping to take on a wolf in front of Wentworth Prison. In the book, Claire ferociously snaps the wolf's neck. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to fly on EP Ronald D. Moore's set.

"First of all, we nearly killed an actor with some dogs," Balfe says. "We tried to do the scene where Father Bain [Tim McInnerny] gets attacked by the dogs, but he actually got attacked by dogs, so we kind of nixed the wolf scene." Yikes!

The Print Shop Scene's Accuracy

Spoilers for fans who haven't read the books: Gabaldon's third book Voyager (off of which Season 3 is based) features a reunion scene between Jamie and Claire in a print shop. This decades-in-the-waiting reunion between the two is probably the most anticipated moment in the upcoming season for fans. Heughan even sent a stream of tweets teasing the scene while filming late last year.

While Balfe and Heughan wouldn't actually say a word about this, one fan cleverly asked if they could give their best facial expressions in regards to the question, "How closely does the print shop scene resemble the book version?"

Both Balfe and Heughan did a squinty-eyed half-shrug, with a strong head bob. You'll just have to figure out what that means on your own.

#outlander #sam heughan #caitriona balfe #eccc #season 3

156 notes · View notes