#16~~

Some days she wonders what her life would have been like if Mal had survived. 

She would have stayed with him, of course—there never was any question of that. But would they have been like the pieces of the dish she had Irina repair, melded into something beautiful and new? Or would they have been like the shards of that broken blue cup—unintentionally cutting each other with jagged edges that no longer fit together?

She’ll never know. 

(That’s the hardest part, the not-knowing. The aching, empty permanence of it.)

—I’ll tell you how the sun rose (a ribbon at a time)

“You have to promise to cut in if I get stuck partnering the countess,” Nikolai says solemnly, his mouth caught somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “The last time I danced with her, I couldn’t sit comfortably for a week; that woman pinches hard.”

“The perils of being so damnably handsome,” Alina agrees straight-faced. She’s been dreading tonight, but Nikolai has lifted her spirits yet again; it’s really quite irritating, that ability of his. Then she smirks. “And just think: last time you were only a prince.”

Bad news: Moving is the worst. Also, I’d forgotten how much the process of learning my new manager’s and coworkers’ moods and expectations wears me out. And when we enter winter, I’ll be lucky if I ever see the sun thanks to my work hours. Yay?

No worries! I always enjoy talking to people, so don't hesitate to shoot me a message in the future, @7thkarma. You're not bothering me!

To answer your questions in order:

Yes, I've read ASOIAF.

Yes, I think Jon/Sansa could be canon. However, I'm not convinced that it absolutely already is or is going to become canon, either; as much as I enjoy theorizing, I tend to be a skeptic about these things. Either way, I don't think it's likely that GRRM will finish the ASOIAF series, so even if he had planned for Jon/Sansa to be canon, I don't think we're ever going to see it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But hey, that’s what fanfiction is for!

Yes, I've read some ASOIAF metas, both gen and ship-related! In fact, blindspot's (now well-known) meta, "A Time for Wolves", was one of my first introductions to Jon/Sansa as a ship back in 2013 or so, alongside justadram's A Winter's Tale. (I periodically lurked in the ASOIAF and GOT fandoms for several years before I started to engage with either. That said, I didn’t read metas on a very wide range of subjects until early 2019ish, so I was a weird blend of hyper-aware of some topics/theories/attitudes in fandom and completely oblivious to others.)

Yeah, that's one of my many concerns. Show!Jon was always different from book!Jon, but GOT's (somewhat flat) characterization of him became worse than a flanderization of itself by the time we reached the final seasons. And while I don't have an issue with Kit Harrington or the other creative powers-that-be having a different vision of the characters, it doesn't make me eager to see what they create, either. More than anything, I dread The Discourse™ that will inevitably come with the show, particularly surrounding Sansa. Because you know haters will jump on the smallest of statements to vigorously bash her all over again. *sighs*

Eh, I might watch the Jon Snow sequel/spin-off; not sure at the moment. If I do watch it, though, I'll do what I always have: mentally put the show in its own little separate box in my head. Just as GOT and ASOIAF are two largely separate entities to me, Snow (or whatever it ends up being called!) will be its own entity. I know some fans use "fanfiction" in a pejorative sense when discussing GOT and its spin-offs, but I try to see the whole thing in a "two cakes" way. If nothing else, we'll get some more visuals fan artists can use for their manips!

Having said all of this, just because a show is in development doesn't necessarily mean it will make it to our screens. Bloodmoon is a perfect example of that. ;-)

I'm still going back and forth re: watching HotD. On one hand, it looks like it's going to be a delicious visual spectacle. On the other hand, I don't especially like any of the major characters of the Dance—at least, not as they've been depicted in GRRM's written works. Which to be fair, is kind of the point, but if I'm going to get into a story, I usually prefer to like at least one of the main characters. But you never know, I might end up stanning a HotD main character in the way Cersei fans often stan her; in a 'this character is the worst, isn't that great, they should definitely win over all the other terrible characters' way lol. It's also possible that HotD will manage to infuse some of the characters with a bit more humanity and nuance than we get in GRRM's novelettes/novellas and fake histories. So we'll see!

Re: the latest influx of fantasy adaptations, the genre has been on the rise for a while now, so it doesn't surprise me that we have so many of them. These things sort of ebb and flow in pop culture consciousness. I’ll be curious to see what happens next when we eventually reach the saturation point.

I haven't seen The Rings of Power series (I don’t think it’s even out yet?) or the newest version of Dune. While I love LOTR, I'll freely admit that I never got especially into the indices or The Silmarillion, and the trailers I’ve seen for TROP haven’t done much for me. Likewise, though I've read the first few Dune books and watched the 1984 TV movie adaptation, I never got majorly into the series, so I didn't feel an urge to see the latest remake.

I did watch the S1 adaptation of Shadow and Bone, and I enjoyed it for what it was; there are some elements that I think it handled well, and some that I think it handled not-so-well. Either way, I'll probably give S2 a try whenever it comes out.