pretty bad magic, pretty tragic

i’ve been thinking a lot lately of why sansa’s pov comes less naturally to me as a writer, and conversely, why it seems so easy to explore sandor’s brain instead. i think the answer is relatively obvious: most adults forget what it’s like to be young. it’s why parents have a hard time understanding their children. why so many authors suck at writing YA. once our turbulent adolescent years have passed, we pack them away, never to be revisited. being young is hard, full of irrational fears and illogical trains of thought. it’s not necessarily something we want to repeat! so how does that apply to SanSan and sexuality? 

well, i’m an adult woman. i know what it’s like to be horny and sandor is nothing if not horny. brazenly so. it’s easier to imagine a mindset where sex isn’t frightening, instead, sex is everything. in a lot of ways, that’s a more pleasant place to be. imagining sex as unequivocally satisfying, a field void of insecurity, is largely fantasy. in sandor’s brain, i’m living in a dream world of zeroes and ones, where sex is a one, a good thing, that inspires no negative feelings. 

it’s an easier place to be. a purely escapist fantasy. 

because what is sex really like? i’ll say it: complicated. grey. messy. 

that’s where sansa comes into play. assuming the goal is to explore the mind of a maiden, someone who hasn’t had sex and is otherwise sexually naive, i can’t write her as a total horndog. i can’t write her character thinking of sex as a ~binary one~. to write sansa authentically, i have to climb into an uncomfortable place in my adolescence. the place where i am experiencing arousal on my own, in private, but then my real world sexual encounters do not match my romantic notions. this is dreams meeting reality. the beauty of an orgasm privately achieved contrasted with being laid before someone else, a force bigger and stronger, whose appetite is bound to overpower yours. (by no means do i claim any of this as a universal experience - these are all my own personal musings). 

my point here is this: for me to write sansa authentically, she has to be frigid to a certain degree. because, quite frankly, that was my experience as a girl coming of age. sex was fascinating, masturbation a real hoot, but get a boy (or girl) involved, and things take a turn. 

that’s what my stories are about. that’s why i think (in part) that unicorn hunt saw such success, and even hard times. i think i was finally able to capture the inside of a maiden’s mind. i got a lot of comments asking something along the lines of “why doesn’t sansa just put out!” and my mental response was “girl, haven’t you ever been frightened by sex! look at sandor! hot as he may be, he’s terrifying! his sexual appetite is downright oppressive!” my stories are not about self-actualized sansa who’s ready to spread her legs. they are about a naive girl, genuinely interested in sex, but seeking to discover it on her own terms. because look - that’s how i once felt. unicorn and hard times would be Massively Boring if sansa was ready to shag on day one. her character development arc is straight up her sexual exploration. it’s the story of her first sexual encounters with sandor, a man who of course is waaaay ahead of her. 

that’s why i love SanSan though. the contrast between them is so spicy hot - a gruff old dog and an innocent little bird. that’s why i keep writing them, and why it stays fresh for me. that’s why i’ll write a million more SanSan stories, because mature sexual appetite vs budding sexuality is the theme that i find endlessly fascinating. it’s a tale as old as time, and look, i’ll get scholarly here. here’s the angela carter quote that says everything: 

there you go. my SanSan thesis, more eloquently put by someone who is not me, not even a SanSan writer, because this story (beauty and the beast) and this theme within it are both undying. what happens when an unstoppable force (masculine prowess) meets an immovable object (feminine naivete)? well, that’s what i’m exploring in all my stories: sansa, accepting her status as prey, then championing that status. learning to overcome frigidity and wield her sexuality on her own terms. it’s beauty taming the beast. and yeah, i’m sorry that sounds so cheesy. 

he will gobble you up. 

nursery fears made flesh and sinew; earliest and most archaic of fears, fear of devourment. The beast and his carnivorous bed of bone and I, white, shaking, raw, approaching him as if offering, in myself, the key to a peaceable kingdom in which his appetite need not be my extinction. 

he went still as stone. he was far more frightened of me than i was of him. 

it’s cheesy because it feels like fantasy. the same way it’s fantasy to think of sex as an exclusively positive thing, it’s fantasy to think that fragile maidens can experience sex exclusively on their own terms. what’s the most likely scenario in unicorn hunt and hard times? to put it bluntly: rape. so why don’t i write it that way? because it’s not canon. sandor had his chance the night of the blackwater. if he wanted to take sansa’s maidenhead, he would have. but sansa, with her spell of the Mother’s Hymn, was able to (cheesy again) pacify sandor’s cruelty. sansa’s feminine delicacy won. 

so that’s where we end up. that’s why i feel like i’ve reached an understanding when writing sansa’s POV. that’s what my stories are about, and pretty much always will be. they’re a feminine power fantasy instead of a masculine power fantasy. they’re about adolescent sexuality: a young girl’s journey to understanding sex, including it’s complications, disappointments, frustrations. they’re about a girl both being frightened and fascinated by sex. they’re about a girl who somehow, despite her seemingly weaker state, is able to overpower a man much stronger, and much much hungrier. is it easy to tap into this mindset? not really. but i find it is much more interesting and satisfying to write than a supposed maiden who is magically sexually self-actualized upon pubescence. i’m here for the gritty stuff, the uncomfy stuff, the messy stuff. more than anything, i am trying to give an accurate account of a maiden’s mind. i would wager that’s what my readers want as well.