Blame GRRM

Here's the passage for reference:

When he turned he saw Ygritte. She stood beneath the scorched stones of the Lord Commander's Tower, cloaked in darkness and in memory. The light of the moon was in her hair, her red hair kissed by fire. When he saw that, Jon's heart leapt into his mouth. "Ygritte," he said. "Lord Snow." The voice was Melisandre's. Surprise made him recoil from her. "Lady Melisandre." He took a step backwards. "I mistook you for someone else." At night all robes are grey. Yet suddenly hers were red. He did not understand how he could have taken her for Ygritte. She was taller, thinner, older, though the moonlight washed years from her face. Mist rose from her nostrils, and from pale hands naked to the night. "You will freeze your fingers off," Jon warned. Jon VI, ADWD

Honestly, I go back and forth on this. There's a perfectly adequate mundane explanation - it's dark, Jon's preoccupied, red hair isn't common. Between the three, Jon sees red hair, his brain goes ping!, then when he takes a closer look he realises nope. That all makes sense.

I'd also note that Mel's never seen Ygritte and in a world without photography can't be sure what she looked like. If Melisandre's using illusions here, it's using Jon's knowledge, which is extra creepy.

On the other hand...

She was stronger at the Wall, stronger even than in Asshai. Her every word and gesture was more potent, and she could do things that she had never done before. Such shadows as I bring forth here will be terrible, and no creature of the dark will stand before them. With such sorceries at her command, she should soon have no more need of the feeble tricks of alchemists and pyromancers. Melisandre, ADWD

How does Melisandre know this? She been doing some road testing of magic on the side, has she? I would absolutely not put using illusions to put Jon off balance past Melisandre. Trolling is the point.

much like Bran, who's physical form is crippled after Jaime pushed him from a window after He saw Too Much, Sansa's spiritual form is crippled after Cersei asked for Lady's head after She had seen Too Much (Joffrey's outburst and humiliation, Nymeria maiming and biting him after he attacks Arya, etc.) while Bran can no longer walk or climb, which he used to Love to do, Sansa never wargs on page. the other Starklings like Jon, Bran and Arya all possess their direwolves at one point or another in their POVs, and even Robb and Rickon can be read As being wargs despite us never seeing it ourselves, but Sansa's connection to the same magic the rest of her family can do was violently severed. it was a deliberate act of cruelty that not only killed Sansa's pet, but also inherently made her Different, unable to perform the same actions as her siblings learn to, which is also an all too common experience for disabilities uncovered later in life, specifically chronic pains and illnesses, which are otherwise invisible to the plain eye, but are Very much felt by the person themselves.

but im not tryna derail at all from op because @bastardofharrenhal is spitting straight fire AGAIN. but I would like to hop this train and add to the discussion because disability as a whole when it comes to analysis of this series is severely lacking and the ableism within this community is astronomical. (mine included bc i deadass forgor to mention tyrion in my discussion of physical disability in the series yikes dawg)

Sansa Stark’s loss of Lady, and with that, her ability to warg, operates as a thinly veiled metaphor for the experience of the onset of an invisible disability in a world that puts your physical capabilities at the top of the list of your valuation as a human. A sudden, violent, and isolating disconnection from an integral sense of embodiment, autonomy and belonging that people who possess it naturally take for granted because it's never been challenged.

There's something to be said about how the only visibly-identified-as-disabled starkling is Bran and the violent and visual (we literally watch it happen repeatedly in aching detail) onset of his loss of mobility and autonomy is essentially what awakened his conscious ability to warg (that, and Jojen + Meera as guidance who are also part of the visible disability narrative but this is about sansa ok)

I've talked alot about how Sansa is the only starkling who was physically severed from her culture and her identity and -- for the most part -- barred in the narrative from ever getting in touch with it again. Being disabled is part of her culture, part of her identity, and she can't even look that fact in the face. To me, sansa reads on page as suuuuuuuuch a neurodivergent queer disabled theatre kid that it's so difficult to see her as anything else. The justice complex? The obsession with doing things right? The insistence on clarification? Fixations on routines and predictability? The almost sterile repetition of courtesies and social reciprocity? Baby girl is neurospicy, removed from any support system, abused and beaten and sexually assaulted, othered in a foreign land with different customs and cultures, and she has no say in it.

When someone becomes disabled, specifically through an invisible condition like chronic pain conditions, sensory loss, or a neurological difference, they often experience a fracture in their sense of embodiment. The body (or mind) ceases to respond in the way it once did. The world continues to move around them as if nothing has changed, while inside everything has.

Sansa’s separation from Lady reflects this feeling of isolation. Her siblings still feel their wolves with those instinctive connections and heightened senses, while Sansa moves through life missing something she cannot name but gravely still feels.

This is a sort of mental texture of invisible disability: a constant estrangement from what everyone else around you seems to experience effortlessly. It’s not inherently visible, so others rarely acknowledge it even when we force them to look directly at it, but it shapes our every interaction with the world.

i mean think of the social aftermath of Lady’s death. She’s marked by absence of so much, even among her own family. Others view her as lesser, softer, more naive, when really!!! she’s simply trying to survive without the naturally occurring anchor everyone else still has. It's overwhelmingly alienating, and that's without adding the contributing factors of her physical loss of family and the abuse she endures at the hands of the lannisters.

how sansa exists in this world after the loss of Lady shows how invisible disabilities are often perceived socially as a failure of will, or a personal flaw, or a burden on others who can just get over it or always willing to offer a "Well, have you tried [xyz]?" treatments, rather than an integral or existential loss of a necessary portion of the human existence. If you can't be exceptional in your disability, then you're useless in the eyes of a society that focuses inherently on what your body can offer in profit, not what you can contribute to community. ("Even Helen Keller could fly a plane! Why do you need preferred seating?" - actual quote from someone i used to work for when I reminded them that I am deaf)

Sansa is expected to perform normalcy in a world that has violently stripped away all of her core supports.

There’s also a vicious irony here: Lady’s death is imposed upon her as punishment-- just like Yeva said above! It wasn't fate. What killed Lady was a corruption of power, and cersei's sick obsession with her lack of a penis and therefore power in an overwhelmingly male-centric society (Freud has entered the chat but I have already banned him and his sock puppets don't worry about it) It’s a patriarchal act of enforced docility. That too sheds some light on the experience of disability in a society where your autonomy is often curtailed by systems or people who claim to “know best.” (In this sense, an argument can be made that sansa could also act as an analog for the intersex experience, I would love to see that write-up and I am grossly inexperienced and uneducated on the intersex-lens, so if anyone does that tag me!!!)

What makes Sansa’s arc within the narrative so remarkable 2 me as a disabled person is that she learns to live through her loss, not by regaining what was taken-- Not by any means!!! She doesn't replace her loss of a limb so to speak, but transforms herself around it. She becomes delicately attuned to the subtleties of human behavior through her abuse, reading tone, power dynamics, and social complications with preternatural precision. Where her siblings rely on instinct, she cultivates social intelligence as survival.

This adaptation 2 me reflects how many people with invisible disabilities can develop heightened sensitivities [sic], awareness, and creative adaptation strategies to cope and navigate a world not built for them-- and most the time vehemently against them. (For example, being deaf has made me more visually aware of my surroundings. I cannot rely on my lack of a sense for survival, so I have adapted to the best of my ability through experience and practice to rely in the same way on another, easier-to-access-for-me sense!) Her warging is not gone in the literal sense (but I agree with Yeva that if we ever see her warg into another animal sansa's arc would feel cheapened to some degree) it’s transmuted. She learns to “warg” into her environment instead of an animal.

To live politically, socially, and emotionally with a sharpened inner sight.

If bran’s story is about transcendence through connection, Sansa’s is about transcendence through disconnection. Now, i use the term transcendence loosely here because we shouldn't be putting pressure on disabled people to be exceptional. You can be disabled and just...a dude. a guy, if you will.

like I mentioned in the OG post, when it comes down to it, Sansa's loss of Lady is functionally the same as the severance of a nerve. it is invisible to the eye, but both lead to a feeling of numbness in an area you can no longer control. the limb is there, mind you, you aren't visibly disfigured, but its more of a meat puppet than a tool you can use. and its still as traumatic as losing your actual limb! people simply value it differently because they cannot see the pain and discomfort you are going through.

that is partly why Sansa's reaction to Lady's death feels very natural and obvious to me, and why the broader fandom viewing it as an overreaction isn't surprising, but disappointing. in a single cruel swoop, Sansa lost use of the metaphorical limb that was Lady. visually Sansa is fine, all her arms and legs are intact and she herself wasn't hurt, but a crucial part of her Was taken away, one she could not use at the moment, mind you, but was still connected to her like your thumb is connected to your hand. it wasn't just a child losing a beloved pet, which is cruel by itself, but a child losing a Function, which they do not know of, but can Feel.

the fact is, that her lashing out after Lady's death is the Least she could've done. she blamed Cersei and she blamed Joffrey, but because they were to be her new family once she married, she had to force herself to redirect said anger somewhere, and Arya was Right There, and it wasn't Arya that was maimed, it was Sansa. Lady (and Sansa) did nothing wrong (neither did Arya mind you), but were punished anyhow in a needless display of power from Cersei after her demands for further retribution are dismissed by Robert. there's a reason Ned likens Sansa's pleading to Lyanna's in the moment, when she was at the literal death's door, and Sansa was about to lose a part of herself even if Ned didn't know it.

in Lady's execution, Sansa was crippled and forced into the role of the Little Bird even further, the perfect, demure, weak little lady who could not defend herself, not like Robb with Greywind or Jon with Ghost. it was not an act unlike to the European fairytales of chopping off a princess's feet to keep her in a tower.

As an unconventional/masc, hetero woman in a "rough" man's profession, Brienne moreso hits a spot inside me I didn't realise was hurting. I especially felt the pain of being a romantic and knowing that you're just not a common man's "type". Even when someone makes a comment on my appearance positively these days, I tiredly wait for a punchline or true insult or the reveal it was a dare. I don't get flattered, I get frightened. Even her being compared to a bear struck a personal chord of "oh, me too".

And that's why the genderswapped Beauty and the Beast means a lot to me. Reckoning with the fact you'll never get "your prince" isn't a fate I'd wish on any little girl. You're right that Brienne *is* a miracle character and there's at least one woman who is so glad she was written.

right I do think that so much of the female experience is missed by just telling stories about beautiful women. how many ppl are generational beauties, and even counting them, who tf feels beautiful all the time, all of their lives. beautiful ppl overrepresented in media to insane extents. and I will note that even GRRM is guilty of this because Brienne is not just his only ugly female POV, but the only one who isn’t actively described as pretty.

but I really don’t think I’m going too far to say that Brienne as a depiction of female ugliness is kind of revolutionary. I can’t think of another character that even compares. my relationship w femininity has been a bit more like Arya’s I think, but I don’t think one’s experiences even have to match Brienne’s for that representation of ugliness to mean something. I’m p sure all women, to varying degrees, have felt ugly at some point in their lives, and seeing Brienne as such positive representation of a woman who meets no beauty standard and yet is such a powerful character and indeed a romantic heroine is like. it truly hits. the video I mentioned in that Brienne post points out how loathe we all are to actually acknowledge and talk about and not just accept but celebrate ugliness, and Brienne has been and continues to be an incredible vessel for making that conversation happen, and in a productive way and with empathy.

@mummersknight no way you’re hiding this gem in the tags ?? arya underfoot could be any one of those children ?? how am I supposed to be normal about this ??

(ACOK, Catelyn V)