Hello! I would like to know your jonsa journey, plz and thx. Also, how are those 21 metas coming along? 😈
Alright, alright, I'm telling you... This is a cautionary tale, by the way. [Also I'm going to sleep after this, it's four am right now.] Anons, please don't kill me.
It is 2015. Season 5 is happening. Sansa marries the worst character in the series. I see a video of the wedding scene through a YouTube recommendation. The comments make me almost puke.
Between this and 2016, my interactions with ASOIAF end up with one post here about how Sansa, even though she doesn't look it, really is a Stark even physically. (It involves weirwoods.) All I know is that I don't mind her. The second time I see something about ASOIAF, it's a DT stan post about how really she's the racist one, while DT has POC allies and a husband and how TargARYAN is nonsense. I decide to stay away from everything.
It is 2016. GoT is blowing up. I get thoroughly annoyed because I don't even know back then that it's the same thing as ASOIAF - in a fashion - just on TV. There are fights and anti anti anti debates everywhere. I block the tag.
2017, I block literally everything. Jonerice is everywhere. I am also neck deep in the Marvel Fandom now. I couldn't care less.
2019. The show ends. Everyone is frustrated. I also very briefly had interactions with stan twitter for aforementioned Marvel phase (killed by Endgame) and get exposed to all the discourse and tweets about Sansa being the only sane person left. I decide I like her. But also, of all things... DT/Sansa shipping. Regret asking yet? Too bad, you're getting it in full detail now.
One thing's for sure, they don't have half bad artists. Or fanfic authors, some were actually a pretty good read even for those who are Sansa fans first and foremost. I was always in it for her, she intrigued me the most. I must also say, between my very first fandom being super ship warring and truly as toxic and misogynistic as DT stans and Jonerice shippers claim we are [and regretting every thing I did or said or even thought back then. I was eleven! But it is still vivid in my mind.], and the nightmare that was Post-Civil War MCU fandom even if I wasn't there yet for the movie, I really wanted to take the third option. Avoid discourse and just peacefully water my crops and watch the grass grow.
They're also very convincing. Later on, it reads as supremely entitled and bitchy. When you don't know anything... Oh, and they made a point about the lack of incest. The huge waves of anti/proshipping discourse back then were also a major turnoff, so that seemed a nice, peaceful ship.
Eventually, it occurs to me after a few weeks, that multishippers must truly have the answer. No fights ever. I look up fic, and if you see D/J/S fic, you cannot escape The Northern Conqueror. I still haven't seen the show then, because I don't have access to HBO. Nor read the books, since I still barely know the difference or connection.
If you haven't read it, the first third is basically Jon and Sansa reclaiming Winterfell and falling in love, bypassing the Vale and Ramsay entirely. They suck me in right away. I love them. So much. Then DT shows up and she's? Boring? 0 chemistry with Jon? Everything feels like I've been cheated given the knowledge that they're show canon, that it was written between S7&8 and apparently predicted by the fan base for decades. Oh, and Sansa and her are only very narrowly hinted at for five seconds in the epilogue, I feel double cheated.
It is October by then. This has all taken place over a matter of weeks, mind. For the first time, I look for Jonsa fics. Deliberately. Of course, back then, some were still DT friendly. Until at last I encountered the fic. I don't remember the name. I can't find it in my AO3 history. But DT was depicted negatively in a way I had previously only encountered in that one article about how hindsight allowed us to see that her endgame was actually foreshadowed even in the show. I see points about what had previously been framed as plus points in the side of fandom I had been in. I end up back on tumblr, and look at meta by Jonsas/Dark DT truthers. I still don't believe in the endgame. I just ship it, now, with only a little shame.
The Ashford Tourney. The Snowflake kisses. I had never seen anyone else talk about this before. (Except the rare S@nsan about the former, and I encountered them once and ran like hell.) Then that one meta firmly against DT happens.
The fucking "Slave" line. I had never cared that much about DT in the first place, was bored by her even, and then I see... that. I lose my faith in the fandom, in BNFs. I lose my faith in the education system worldwide, that apparently failed so many people that they see this line, and somehow not only don't realize this person is evil, but even still cult-like worship a person who does this and deny that they would burn down a city. It's like a bucket of ice water. I swing like a pendulum, and I never swing back. Fuck her.
Jonsa, I still don't think will really happen. Now I think of Jon as an idiot who will have to pay for aiding and abetting her by killing her and being sent to the Wall. Until Jonnel Stark and Sansa Stark... Stark.
That post made everything seem different. Suddenly, this was in reach. I engage. I read more fanfic. I get my hands on the books at last. First via library (translation only), later I find a full boxset of the main series, original. I conclude that everyone except Jonsas or Dark DT fans has been brainwashed by BNFs. The Hound disgusts me. Tyri0n is an asshole of epic proportions. Arya and Bran are cool with me. Ned (and Robb too) is like watching a train wreck and unable to stop it. Cat is great but also complex. I like Jon fine, except when he's entitled at the start. DT is a little sympathetic, at first, but also a little strange in the bad way. Then Lhazareen happens and she makes me vomit mentally.
Previous fans have almost had me think that this was a non-black and white situation, that maybe DT and MMD could both have been victims somehow in that situation. Not any longer. Not when she openly blames Jorah, but kills her. Not when she pours oil down on her head. Not when all of this happened for her throne, and she didn't even care until it was so much she couldn't watch any longer.
I eventually take a break around a year after my conversion to Jonsa, because greener fandoms are a-calling.
I return because the pandemic sucks big time, so I go for comfort stuff, and I miss them, your honor. The 'Bell Meta' happens, because I remember the 'Dr0go's bells in his hair' and 'the King is dead' from DT and Sansa's chapters. And then find the ASOIAF search engine with more examples. It gains traction, including in the Jonsa circle I follow but am too intimidated to interact with because everyone is so smart, educated, cool and honestly quite a bit older, more mature, more experienced and far longer in the fandom than me. I switch to a side blog, because I want to talk about Jonsa without crazy stans hounding my main and at least one person from real life follows me there, and I would like to avoid this conversation. [Ultimately I don't, because the topic comes up at some point and I have to discourage my sister from stanning DT even from afar. This is my duty as the eldest sibling. Thankfully, she's smart. Jonnel was the last bomb needed for her to wordlessly accept they were going canon. You just need to be open-minded. I think I've told this story before on a Jonnel/Sansa post.]
And here we are, at now almost five in the morning, discussing how I went from a Da*nsa to a Jonsa. What a ride, and it was only what? Two years? Half of which spent in a different fandom? I dare you to find a crazier story than this one. The moral here clearly being: Don't get into a fandom through the fandom. You can end with violently different opinions.
As for the metas:
Honestly, I have been swamped with real life stuff, and then your re-read was more interesting than anything else, this was old-but-new. The direwolf name meta still has the most progress. I briefly had inspo for a "Who's the Perfumed Seneschal?" one, but hit a brick wall midway through and discarded it. The one about the ways romance affects the series is haunting me, honestly. I see mental drafts of it everywhere I look, but I have never written a word. Then I got my hands on the Dunk novellas, and I decided that reading operation would take priority. Life is hell. Jonsa is hell. I am dancing with the devil anyway.
