Tag Archives: Books, Writing, Publishing

Hating Sansa Stark (and Not for Her Femininity)

Sansa Stark fan art by EnjoyTheBlood with the overlaid text "In the [stet] real life, the monsters win"
Sansa Stark by EnjoyTheBlood
SPOILERS WARNING: This post assumes you’ve seen the first season of Game of Thrones or read the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire. There are spoilers for the latest episode, S05E03, “High Sparrow” but they are clearly marked in the post.

I Can Be a Feminist…and Still Dislike Sansa Stark

My beloved Bitch magazine is the latest in a series of articles claiming that the widespread dislike of Game of Thrones’ Sansa Stark is due to misogyny. The argument goes like this:

 Make no mistake, Sansa Stark is one tough cookie. Sansa isn’t, however, a typical “strong female character” like her sister Arya. Her strength and power lie in her mind and in her ability to assess, adapt to, and manipulate situations by means other than brute force—something that’s rare on Game of Thrones. In show’s assortment of extremely powerful women, Sansa may fade to the background. But that’s actually part of her goal as a character, because she thrives by sticking to the shadows rather than attracting attention to herself.

The actress playing Stark claims Stark has figured out how to “weaponize femininity, how to turn what looks to casual viewers like a disadvantage into an asset.” Another article asserts:

It annoys me that people only like the feminine characters when they act like male characters. And they always go on about feminism. Like, you’re rooting for the people who look like boys, who act like boys, who fight like boys. Root for the girls who wear dresses and are intellectually very strong.

I too want traditionally feminine characters who manipulate their situation without brute force. But the problem is that Sansa Stark is not meant to be a powerful, feminine woman. She is written to be weak. On purpose. She is forthright when she should be withholding, emotional when she should be strategic. Always reacting rather than planning, always the victim, being batted from one danger to the next.

Sansa Stark by Sari Sariola
Sansa Stark by Sari Sariola

In fact, the entire clusterfuck of terrible events that happens in season one could all have been prevented if Sansa Stark hadn’t been so foolish to trust the queen mother with things she shouldn’t have said (I’m being vague here for the sake of spoilers). This intel gives the queen the chance to betray Sansa’s father, an event which sets in motion all the terrible things that befall Sansa and her family. Moreover, it’s not as though Sansa took a calculated risk that went awry. She naively thought the queen was her friend. Naivety, not inner strength, seems to be her primary character trait.

I feel like these feminists want to believe that George R.R. Martin has set Stark up as a “strong woman of intelligence” because they want to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he intended to have such a character. They want to believe that Martin means well. But they aren’t giving him enough credit. If Martin wanted to write a character who is “quietly wearing pretty dresses and pushing teacakes around on her plate as she maintains a façade, refusing to break character and betray herself” (as the Bitch article so nicely puts it) he would, and there would be no bickering about who she is and what she stands for. It would be clear. I know that, because he already wrote a character to fill that role, and it isn’t Sansa Stark.

(And no, it isn’t the mother of dragons either, though I think one could make a convincing argument that Daenerys Targaryen’s strength comes not from her army but from her strategy.)

The Strong, Clever, Feminine Heroine of Game of Thrones

Margaery and Sansa by MiliaTimmain
Margaery and Sansa by MiliaTimmain

If you want proof, then you need look no further than Margaery Tyrell. Margaery is easily a foil for Sansa, in that both of them have been engaged to the king, and both are living in the same lion’s den. But they handle this situation very differently.

Let’s compare. Sansa Stark had a schoolgirl crush on on the prince, Margaery recognized right away that he was a dangerous psychopath. Sansa Stark’s reaction to figuring this out was to plot her escape (an act that she was too timid to plan herself) while Margaery played on the prince’s sadism to get closer to his shiny, coveted crown. Sansa wants to be a Disney princess; she thinks nothing of politics beyond her own survival. Margaery went out among the people and heard their grievances, and was so bold as to challenge the queen about representing their interests. Sansa fails to recognize her natural ally in the imp, and is way too trusting of Little Finger. If their roles were reversed, there is little doubt that Margaery would have found countless way to exploit a marriage to Tyrion Lannister.

Margaery as a queen playing card
Margaery as a queen playing card
Sansa Stark illustrated as a playing card by Simona Bonafini
credit: Simona Bonafini

 

 

 

 

 

Sure, Sansa lies about her allegiance  to stay alive, but this doesn’t make her clever. It’s always tentative and tinged with fear. In contrast, Margaery lies to get what she wants. There are grey areas here: it’s partly due to Sansa’s disclosure that Margaery knew of prince Joffrey’s depravity. But the actions of Margaery show clearly how Sansa is meant to be perceived. Margaery is intended to be the feminine beguiler these other feminists long for while Sansa is intended to be read as weak and naive. Martin demonstrates this not only in their actions, but in the consequences to their actions.

For example, in the latest episode Sansa is again forced to lie **SPOILERS S05E03** when she is offered as a marriage candidate to the psychopaths who brutally murdered her people. Sophie Turner plays this perfectly, showing Sansa’s lies to be believable, while all the time you know she’s doing all she can not to scream bloody murder. Meanwhile, Margaery lies in this episode too. She speaks to the young king about his mother with words of flattery, her intended message buried so far down that when the king questions his mother, he doesn’t even recognize it as her idea. Then when the queen confronts Margaery, her false worship of the queen is laid on so thick the queen is left with no rational way to suggest Margaery may be at fault. Margaery is a gifted deceiver, she does it naturally and well and in the end it gets her what she wants, all the way to the crown. **END SPOILERS**

When Margaery’s ploys succeed, the author is showing us how clever and sly she is. All of her scheming is disguised as someone else’s idea. She plays the innocent, but is constantly advancing her position. She is smart enough to recognize that the queen is her biggest adversary, and daring enough to to look for opportunities to push the queen aside.

In contrast, Sansa Stark is where she is because she has little sense of who she can and should trust. The current scheme she is thrust into was not her idea at all, but Little Finger’s. Imagine if Margaery had the chance Sansa has, SAME SPOILERS AGAIN to regain her castle and avenge her people? I have no doubt not only would she be eager to wed the psychotic Ramsey Bolton but, critically, it would have been her idea. But because this is Sansa, and Ramsey Bolton is just about the worst character in a world of deplorable characters, we get the sense that the Little Bird is again being led into a terrible trap.  END SPOILERS Sansa is still too naive to have schemes of her own.

Hating Sansa Stark, Just Like I’m Supposed To

detailed fan art of Sansa Stark by Bubug
Bubug has more beautiful illustrations of Sansa and the Hound

While  I don’t like Sansa Stark, I’m not with the unsophisticated reader who would have her shunted from the books, dying suddenly so we can get back to the other characters. I don’t see Sansa’s weakness as a failing of the author. Sure, in a world where most of the other characters are marked by their brilliance, honor, or strength, it’s easy to hate Sansa Stark, who is none of these things.

But we must remember that Sansa is barely more than a girl, and a royal at that, who has lived a sheltered life. Martin needs at least one character like that in the series to show us: this is what happens to naive girls (or boys) in a brutal world. If he killed her off, we’d not get to see how the slings and arrows of fate will turn Sansa into more than a survivor, but a leader.

Much of the world of Game of Thrones centers on this process. We watch young Arya turn from a little girl into a trained killer. We watch Daenerys Targaeryan learn to rule nations. These are plots that have developed not over chapters but over thousands of pages.

Those who would argue that Sansa is strong overlook that her weakness is a deliberate decision the author has made to show us that she is not ready to lead. That’s good writing. That’s character development. In the end, she won’t be another Margaery. Margaery has always been conniving. Her family raised her to be shrewd and careful. Every scene shows that is who she is; that is where she comes form. It makes her wicked, but likeable.

But Sansa is a Stark. She was raised to be honorable. Truth and justice were the values of her parents. She was taught that survival means looking out for your people (after all, winter is coming!) and there will be suffering in any case (did you hear about winter?). She was not taught to be shrewd, and this has led to the ample poor decisions that make her unlikeable. The choices she has made to stay alive go against all that the Starks hold dear.  How will she become a worthy daughter to the unimpeachable values of her parents, while navigating a world where such honor will get you killed?

In the game of thrones, “you win or you die” so Sansa must sharpen up, or meet her father’s fate. Watching her story is like watching a pawn advance across a chess board. Martin has written her as a pawn, and rightly so, as her weakness makes the brutality of the knights and queens clashing around her more fearsome to behold. That little pawn keeps moving forward, and it is excruciating to watch unfold. But everyone knows what happens to a pawn that makes it across the board. That is what Sansa’s character is about: not who she is, but the powerful lady Stark she will become.

The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

Yesterday You Said Tomorrow room
This anti-resistance headboard via Style Bizarre’s post on procrastination

If you know the name Steven Pressfield, it’s likely because he wrote the book behind the hit movie The Legend of Bagger Vance. I’ve never even seen that movie, much less read the book, but have been eager to read Pressfield’s much-celebrated The War of Art.

The War of Art isn’t a book on how to write.

It is a book on why to write, and a kick in the pants to get you writing now.

The War of Art is not only a book for writers. It is not even only for artists. It is for anyone who has a calling. Whatever it is that you feel in your gut like you were born to do, this book is to help you do that thing. I don’t mean the laundry or the grocery list. I mean that state where you find flow, that thing you do with effortless grace. In its action, you forget who you are, but in its completion you define who you are.

quote from steven pressfield war of art

One of my favorite posts that I’ve ever written is “Overcoming Writers Block: Tickling the Muse II,” wherein, inspired by  Elizabeth Gilbert’s fantastic TED talk, I personify my relationship with the muse. I was surprised to find that The War of Art is pretty much a book-length version of the same thing.

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

If you are the protagonist of The War of Art and the muse is your coveted lover, then the villain is Resistance. Resistance is Pressfield’s name for our tendency to fight doing the very thing we love. Resistance will tie your muse to the railroad tracks. It is your job to stop him.

The problem is, once you are good at something, it becomes easy for your ego to get in the way. You’re only as good as your last work, so your ego reminds you it would be better to never work again. That way you can’t risk creating something awful. And before we find flow, before we really get cooking, our deepest terror is that it won’t meet our expectations.

The better our last work is, the bigger our ego is. The bigger our ego is, the harder it is for us to create something new.  From Axel Rose to JD Salinger, this is why celebrated artists  stall. All you Game of Thrones fans are not helping George RR Martin finish the series with all that fan mail. To conquer resistance, he must conquer his own ego.

[ctt tweet=”The War of Art by @SPressfield: Because the biggest thing holding me back is me. http://ctt.ec/G26B9+” coverup=”G26B9″]

The War of Art is an easy read. The topic is one that many writers, and anyone who is obsessed with their own productivity, will be familiar with. He covers the battle against resistance in detail, which results in a short book. Which is fine. Read it slowly. At every moment you feel inspired, stop reading and go do the work (the fitting name of the sequel to The War of Art).

I’ll leave you with another quote. Let it sink in. Then get to work.

You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture. Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.

“How Do I Get Published?” Tip #2

As a publishing industry professional, I’m often asked, “How do I get published?” Here’s my second post on what you can do now to help your chances of getting out of the slush pile and into the bookstores. This is focused on how to be published with traditional publishers, but these tips will help you with self-publishing too.

“How Do I Get Published?” See Your Name in Print #2:

Prove That Your Book Has Sales Potential

So You Want to Get Published...in a REAL book.

One way to convince a publisher to publish your book right now is to have solid data showing that there is an interest in buying it. The way most writers approach this is through tip #1, Establish Yourself As An Expert, but it’s not the only way. The way we’re looking at today is showing how similar books sold well.

Smart publishers will look at how well comps (industry term for competing titles in the same category) have done. A perfect pitch would mention one or two books on the same subject that have sold well. If the publisher can’t find comps that cover the same topic, they try to bring up several books that cover similar themes. In addition to comps with poor sales, a red flag is if there are fifty comps (too much competition) or if the big sellers have some exciting extra characteristic, like they’re written by a celebrity.

Continue reading “How Do I Get Published?” Tip #2

Nicholas Carr on E-Books

Media_httpsiwsjnetpub_abdop

Nicholas Carr has an article in The Wall Street Journal about the malleability of e-books. Because a digital edition can be perpetually edited, it is never officially finished. He muses on how intrusive school boards and dictators will tinker in otherwise “published” e-books.

The section that interested me most (as I’ve pondered the article’s subject before) was this:

What may be more insidious is the pressure to fiddle with books for commercial reasons. Because e-readers gather enormously detailed information on the way people read, publishers may soon be awash in market research. They’ll know how quickly readers progress through different chapters, when they skip pages, and when they abandon a book.

I can absolutely see publishers doing this. It could create a world where books are tailored to fit a majority, in the same way market testing has resulted in a bevy of cookie-cutter movies. On the other hand, one could argue that this isn’t so different from the modern writers’ workshop.

One issue the article doesn’t delve into is how editable e-books can encourage more collaborative reading. One could imagine people trading versions of the Bible annotated by Christopher Hitchens or popular novels with erotic fan-fic written in, or copies of The Da Vinci Code with embedded photos of the art mentioned in the story. You’d end up with a variety of specially named editions floating around.

This would all serve to add to the notion of the physical book as a collectors item. With e-books as ephemeral, the printed book may continue to exist as the authority on what the final, official draft is. In the future when print runs decrease dramatically, having a personal copy of the rare, unchanging, printed book will give its owner a certain authority on the text and having a personal library will again become a status symbol.

Posted via email from Future is Fiction

Some Predictions About Books By Way of Some Predictions About Music

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the “future of publishing.” After all, books have never had as much cash to spare as the recording industry, and look at the mess they’re in. Already it is not so difficult for a self-published manuscript to sell itself on Amazon.com. What will happen when everything goes digital? The suggestion is that there will be an opening of the gates, and the latest best-seller will stand on the same virtual shelf with thirty self-published manuscripts. The optimists claim that this is where the great unpublished books will be discovered and pessimists point to the unleashed masses of poorly thought-out, half-written tomes filled with spelling errors. But it doesn’t matter if fantastic self-published books are available if they’re drowned out by countless other books vying for the consumer’s attention.
I’m thinking of this issue again because Chuck Wendig just wrote a post on this very subject. I must requote a quote that he included in his piece from a Salon.com article (“When Anyone Can Be A Published Author“)

Furthermore, as observers like Chris Anderson (in “The Long Tail”) and social scientists like Sheena Iyengar (in her new book “The Art of Choosing”) have pointed out, when confronted with an overwhelming array of choices, most people do not graze more widely. Instead, if they aren’t utterly paralyzed by the prospect, their decisions become even more conservative, zeroing in on what everyone else is buying and grabbing for recognizable brands because making a fully informed decision is just too difficult and time-consuming. As a result, introducing massive amounts of consumer choice leads to situations in which the 10 most popular items command the vast majority of the market share, while thousands of lesser alternatives must divide the leftovers into many tiny portions.

Chuck says in response, ” that doesn’t sound like what will happen when the FUTURE OF PUBLISHING is made manifest. It sounds like what happens right bloody now.”
As it is, there are about 100,000 brand new titles published and printed every year, and it is fair to say that even the most devoted readers may touch 1/100th of that. If you include self-published books, the number of books published is 600,000 to a million. That doesn’t take into account the thousands of reprints of absolute classics that exist. I am pretty sure that if I devoted my entire life to reading I would not get through every book on my imaginary wish list before I breathe my last breath. Now imagine compounding this with an onslaught of unpublished manuscripts, from gorgeous to garbage, that would land on the market place if the result of this revolution were a totally leveled playing field. What would happen?
Continue reading Some Predictions About Books By Way of Some Predictions About Music