( application )( theoregontrail )
PLAYER
NAME/NICKNAME: tussah.
AGE: 18+
PERSONAL LJ: bombyx
TIMEZONE: EST
EMAIL ADDRESS: thebiographgirl. at gmail.
IM SCREENNAME AND SERVICE: AIM available upon private request | plurk @ practiced
CHARACTER
NAME: Sansa Stark
AGE: In book canon, Sansa is 12/13 at the end of A Clash of Kings but (a projected) 14/15 in the television series. For the sake of some flexibility in playing her, I would like to take Sansa's age from television canon, so: 14, on the cusp of 15.
FANDOM/MEDIUM: George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.
CANON PULL-POINT: Immediately post-A Clash of Kings.
ABILITIES: Sansa has no superhuman powers or special abilities. Talent-wise, she is well-versed and well-trained in the arts of court and courtesy, the most notable of which are singing and needlepoint. She is also proven able to commit large amounts of family history (names/faces/genealogies) to memory, which she uses to then to identify various members of court.
CHARACTER BACKGROUND: For an overview of A Song of Ice and Fire as a series, read the following. There are also more specific breakdowns available as to the events of the individual books, though given Sansa's pull-point only A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings are relevant.
CHARACTER PERSONALITY:
Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black velvet doublet and a shiny cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced a sentence. Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off his head. But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. “Life is not a song, sweetling,” he’d told her. “You may learn that one day to your sorrow.” In life, the monsters win, she told herself, and now it was the Hound’s voice she heard, a cold rasp, metal on stone. “Save yourself some pain, girl, and give him what he wants.”
Of all the characters in A Song of Ice and Fire, Sansa Stark arguably undergoes one of the greatest, most difficult and most unexpected transformations: from a young girl with a head full of songs and a heart full of fairy-tale longing to the cleverly concealed protegé of one of the game of thrones' greatest players, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish. Although Sansa from A Clash of Kings is still miles away (both literally and figuratively) from the Sansa of A Feast for Crows (the last book in which she appeared), there is a definite and clear evolution of her character through A Game of Thrones to her pullpoint at the end of ACoK.
Sansa Stark is a girl raised on stories of courtliness and romance who, at the end of the day, places more trust in them than she does in the realities of the world around her. Raised in the 'backwater' North (the Starks' ways are the old ways, and their existence is harder and more bare-boned than in other kingdoms of Westeros), Sansa dreams of a life in the more metropolitan south, married to a stately lord worthy of her high-birth. These fantasies eventually find a foothold in Joffrey Baratheon and his mother, the queen, Cersei Lannister; willfully, she projects all of her deepest-held desires onto them: a beautiful and strong young man to marry her, a stately and gracious queen to aspire to. Even when faced with the ugliness of Joffrey's true personality, Sansa goes to long and painful lengths to justify his actions, finding excuses and blaming others like her sister so that his veneer of princeliness can last for a little while longer. It is with an almost desperate delusionment that she chooses to trust the Lannisters throughout Game of Thrones, going so far as to entreat the queen when her father plans to return her and Arya to Winterfell (an act that ultimately facilitates his imprisonment). Unwilling to face the possibility that her dreams will not one day come true and that acts of heroism and knightly deeds no longer happen, Sansa clings to whatever spare hopes and falsities are offered to her and, as a result, becomes a pawn for other players to move mercilessly across the table.
It is not until Joffrey issues his pronouncement and her father looses his head that Sansa realizes just how blind she has been and how foolish it was to trust the Lannisters, who now reveal themselves to her to be cruel and faithless lairs. Disillusioned and distrustful, Sansa now finds herself held captive by a court that executed her father as a traitor and, unwilling to meet a similar fate and convinced that is only a matter of time before her brother Robb rescues her, she has no choice but to learn how to maneuver herself in order to avoid a similar fate. This manifests mostly by lying, both through words and in action. Realizing that her betrothal to Joffrey is one of the few things keeping her from Ser Ilyn's sword, she swallows down her anger and bitterness to adopt the role of courtly fiancee, reciting the lines her septa taught her of lady-like politesse, quick to decry her brother as a traitor (while secretly praying for the day that Robb serves her Joffrey's head).
However, given how unpracticed Sansa is in the art of lying beyond the parrotting of lines here or there, many around her are quick to see through her ungraceful deceptions. Some, such as Queen Cersei and her brother Tyrion Lannister and Joffrey's guard, the Hound, go as so far as to chastise her for them, though none of them find Sansa threatening enough to punish her beyond that. True punishment comes at the hands of Joffrey, who takes every opportunity to humiliate and abuse her, going so far as to one order his Kingsguard to strip her naked in front of court. This both hardens and embitters Sansa and feeds what she refers to as 'the madness' inside of her - fits of hot-bloodedness and anger that sieze her from time to time and inspire her to do impulsive things (the most notable of which occurs when Sansa is tempted to push Joffrey off a castle wall to avenge the death of her father). This is what Ned himself calls the Wolf's Blood - a temperament specific to the Starks that he claims both his older brother Brandon and his sister Lyanna had. It is a personality trait readily applied to Sansa's younger sister Arya and that is almost never attributed to Sansa, though flashes of her inner rage and almost maddening desire for revenge indicate otherwise. Unlike Arya, however, all of Sansa's training to be a high-born lady ultimately overrides her willingness to act on those wrathful tendencies. She is, in a way, emotionally compartmentalized to control her impulses and, as a result, secretly harbors rash and unlady-like thoughts that never see the light of day.
All in all, Sansa Stark is and remains a lady. Although her hands are soft and her voice is quiet and she knows when to avert her eyes and laugh and curtsey, she has weathered unfathomable storms for a girl her age, having been forced to live amongst people who unjustly murdered her father, having been branded a traitor and humiliated and abused over and over again, having been made to walk a very careful line at the mercy of an impulsive sadist who wore the crown of king. She wears her courtesy as armor, and although she places stock in things such as 'please' and 'thank you' and 'Your Grace', she is not weak. She is a girl who has had her eyes opened to a world more imperfect and cruel than she could ever dare imagined, but despite that, has still managed to survive in it.
WORLD: The world of A Song of Ice and Fire relies heavily on the usual tropes and constructions of the high fantasy genre. Modeled after medieval societies pulled from our own histories, it is a world that still relies heavily on the delineations between high and low birth as well as the absolute rule of the king. Things like oaths, guest right, and sworn fealties still carry considerable weight and those who break such oaths are likely to wear that breech of trust indefinitely as a badge of shame (both on themselves and their name; for example, when Ned Stark is branded a traitor and beheaded, his traitorism was then believed to be in Sansa's blood as well, making her untrustworthy). Gender roles are very strictly enforced and things such as titles, property and inheritance pass through the male bloodline rather than the female.
Added to these historical references of a world much like our own, there is also a healthy injection of magic and the fantastical: the Targaryens and their dragons, the tales of giants and White Walkers living beyond the Wall, the power of Melisandre's sorcery of light and shadow, Bran's ability to both warg (enter the body of an animal and control it with his mind) as well as greensee (control nature and foresee the future). These elements are not so ubiquitous as in other high fantasy novels and worlds, and more often than not they are considered exotic, dangerous and 'Other' - things that should be feared (or in some cases revered).
OCCUPATION: TAILOR.
SAMPLES
THIRD PERSON:
"Be mindful of favors, sweetling." Littlefinger told Sansa one afternoon in the garden as he slipped a book of promised poetry from his library into the hollow of her open hand. "Some may prove far less generous in the ways and means of payment, given how flush they'll find the purse of your beauty."
Littlefinger smiled as he spoke, in a pointed way that sharpened all of the lines of his face with a brief and unmistakable mirth. It gave Sansa the impression that he was laughing at her, though there was something in his eyes that resembled a sort of pity. She had promised him a song in exchange for the book; a harmless exchange, really, or so Sansa thought. But now, in seeing the look on Littlefinger's face, in feeling his fingers brush against hers as he curled her hand around the book's spine, Sansa was not so certain and she felt afraid.
Songs were once carefree, lovely things that Sansa would bestow upon all who would listen and she thought worthy. In Winterfell there were few who did not seek the singing of Lord Stark's daughter, for although the winter was not yet upon them, the walls of stone were loathe to hold much heat and nothing burned brighter or felt warmer than one of Sansa's warbling refrains. Now, like all things -- a golden locket from a prince, a rook sent to the North bearing Sansa's hand -- those once gay and merry tunes held their treacheries. Nothing was sacred; no truly, nothing was good. The world had ways to rid itself of such goodness and, all at once, Sansa was filled with both a bracing terror for the fate of Robb's advance and trembling hope for his ultimate success. If there was a heart left in the Seven Kingdoms that beat with the fervor of an honorable knight, it would be her eldest brother, riding atop the wave of his glittering army, looking to purge the Lannisters and their merciless king from the Iron Throne.
That's righteous, isn't it? Her eyes seemed to ask Littlefinger this question when she finally found it in herself to meet his gaze again. To learn the things you teach, to wish their heads upon the wall. I am still good, aren't i?
Carefully, she exhaled; cautious, perhaps, of these thoughts finding a voice if she was not mindful of them. "I do not think I have misplaced what offers I have already given."
It was not so big a falsehood as to be a lie. For to lie without reason was to abandon courtesy and Sansa - although desperate and lonely in her gilded cage - had yet to grow as desperate and lonely and as lying as that.
Soon, perhaps. The thought was terrible. Yes, perhaps soon.
FIRST PERSON:
[ The video begins with only sound - a loud rustling that overwhelms the microphone, like cloth or wind only too close. Then a picture blooms out of darkness, overexposing then righting itself to reveal a young girl - thirteen maybe, fifteen on the outside - with bright red hair and large blue eyes the color of the sky on a summer day. There is a touch of something else in those eyes, beyond blueness. An uncertainty or anxiety that finds her touching her hair, smoothing it carefully, before clearing her throat just the once.
The whole picture jostles slightly and those who are observant or familiar will probably realize that she's just given a curtsey, albeit perfunctory. ]
It is my understanding that those of us who have been chosen to travel this long and daunting 'Trail' have each been tasked with responsibilities. As befitting their trade or their skills from home. This is only right - at least, I believe so - though as the daughter of a lord I am afraid that my lessons are far less useful than those learned by the rest of you.
[ She pauses, her lips pressing together and the line of her throat bobbing with a swallow. Still, her chin remains lifted with a certain poise and her smile continues to be passably cheerful. ] I will deny no one a song, of course, if anyone were to ask. The names and places will prove unfamiliar to many, but one should not underestimate the rousing call of a hero's victory. [ A nod, then, followed by more of her smile. ] I have not the means yet - no needle nor thread nor much-needed thimble - but I did take greatly to my needlepoint and my septa never once found cause to berate my stitches. I would gladly sew or mend anything that has need of such attentions.
All you need do is ask for Sansa Stark - or my guardian, Lord Petyr Baelish. He is a man of modest stature with sharp little beard and silver threaded through his hair. [ The camera jostles again. Another curtsey. ] I do look forward to making acquaintances, and providing what large or what little I can.
NOTES: N/A.