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My Pinterest Board; SlenderMansion core :3 (Part 1)

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I'm going to actually poke the bear today by saying how I really feel about Sansa and Arya's relationship. That is to say, I think it's a bad relationship, and I think that the main issue is how Sansa treats Arya. Sansa's behavior absolutely crosses a line, and she 100% should be apologizing for it.

For reference, I have an older sister, we are very close now, but we weren't always. One time, she choked me out for wearing her socks outside, and I still think that Sansa's behavior is over the line. The reason that my sister and I are able to have a genuinely close relationship is because the choking out wasn't a pattern of behavior on her part. This was not something she'd done before, not something she did again, and it happened under abnormal circumstances. We had a period of a few years where we generally didn't get a long and fought a lot, but even then, we would still willingly spend time together, playing games or watching movies, sometimes because we didn't actually completely dislike each other.

This is patently untrue for Sansa and Arya. Sansa does not like Arya the way she is and actively wants her to change. She looks down on the activities Arya enjoys, like horse riding, and makes no attempt to connect with Arya on that level. We have plenty of evidence that Arya feels insecure as a result of things Sansa has said or allowed her friends to say. AGOT has quotes like "Jeyne used to call her Arya Horseface and neigh whenever she came near. It hurt that the one thing Arya could do better than her sister was ride a horse," and "She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened. Sansa said so, and Jeyne, too," and "'Lyanna was beautiful,' Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya," and somehow people are unwilling to see how deeply Sansa's actions affected her. This is not how someone would act if their sibling called them ugly once or twice. These are the thoughts of someone is has been thoroughly berated by their sibling their entire life to the point of genuinely believing the horrible things said about them.

I feel the need to cover some potential counterarguments before they get brought up, so here we go. First, I know Sansa is only 11 years old when the books start. Contrary to what some of you believe, being 11 doesn't magically absolve of any wrong you've ever done. Believe it or not, teaching children when they've messed up and having them apologize when they've hurt someone is how they learn to be good, kind adults who take responsibility for their actions. 11 is absolutely old enough to know when you're being mean and what is an acceptable way to treat someone. The only characters who can use the "they're a child" excuse are toddlers and babies, who actually might not know better. If you use this excuse, you are severely underestimating the intelligence of children. This also completely ignores that there are several other children in ASOIAF who do not treat other people the way Sansa treats Arya, some of whom are younger than Sansa.

Second, I know there's going to be some people insisting that both of them have done bad things to the other, but I'm going to be honest, Arya mostly seems to be reacting to the way Sansa treats her. The most common example I see brought up is Arya throwing an orange at Sansa, so I'm going to quote the scene with the additional context here:

“Arya screwed up her face in a scowl. 'Jaime Lannister murdered Jory and Heward and Wyl, and the Hound murdered Mycah. Somebody should have beheaded them.' 'It’s not the same,' Sansa said. 'The Hound is Joffrey’s sworn shield. Your butcher’s boy attacked the prince.' 'Liar,' Arya said. Her hand clenched the blood orange so hard that red juice oozed between her fingers. 'Go ahead, call me all the names you want,' Sansa said airily. 'You won’t dare when I’m married to Joffrey. You’ll have to bow to me and call me Your Grace.' She shrieked as Arya flung the orange across the table. It caught her in the middle of the forehead with a wet squish and plopped down into her lap. 'You have juice on your face, Your Grace,' Arya said. It was running down her nose and stinging her eyes. Sansa wiped it away with a napkin. When she saw what the fruit in her lap had done to her beautiful ivory silk dress, she shrieked again. 'You’re horrible,” she screamed at her sister. 'They should have killed you instead of Lady!' Septa Mordane came lurching to her feet. 'Your lord father will hear of this! Go to your chambers, at once. At once!' 'Me too?' Tears welled in Sansa’s eyes. 'That’s not fair.'" (A Game of Thrones)

Now, without context, the middle bit where Sansa is lording over Arya and then Arya throws the orange at her could maybe be construed as "normal" sibling behavior. However, we have more context, and this conversation frankly doesn't do Sansa any favors. Arya only gets upset because Sansa is extremely dismissive of the death of her friend, presumably because he was a commoner and therefore not very important in Sansa's eyes. Keep in mind that this Mycah didn't just die; he was brutally murdered with his body so destroyed that his father didn't even know what it was at first. Considering that the Joffrey-Arya-Micah confrontation scene is told from Sansa's perspective, we can assume that Sansa knows full well that Mycah didn't attack Joffrey. Arya is right that she's lying. Sansa response to getting hit with an orange is to tell her sister that she wishes she had been executed instead of Lady, which is an insanely cruel thing to say. I feel like some of you don't realize that there's a difference between wishing someone didn't exist or wishing that you didn't have a sibling and straight up wishing for them to have capitol punishment enacted on them. Bear in mind, saying "I wish you'd never been born," or "I wish I didn't have a sister" are also mean things to say. I also don't think you should be saying that to your sibling on a regular basis, but saying something like that in the heat of the moment and realizing you were wrong later happens. The thing is, Sansa isn't sorry and doesn't seem to realize she's done anything wrong. She insists it's not fair when Septa Mordane sends both of them away and later in the chapter, immediately blames everything on Arya when they're brought to their father. Arya even apologizes without prompting from Ned, but it doesn't occur to Sansa at all despite, again, wishing death upon her sister.

I'm sorry, but if my sister straight up told me it was fine that no one was being punished for the blatant murder of my friend because he was poor and "attacked" some important, well-to-do person, I would do way more than throw an orange at her. Now, my sister would never do that because she's not classist, and she actually likes me. And even when our relationship was at its worst and even if it was unprovoked, I cannot imagine my sister ever telling me she wished that I would be killed because I threw food at her and stained her outfit. Also, as a note about the Lady incident, I don't know how anyone in Sansa's position could come out of that and eventually decide that the primary, and perhaps only, person responsible was their sibling unless they already genuinely disliked their sibling.

Sansa fundamentally does not like Arya and does not respect the things that Arya enjoys which is a huge reason why I don't think that they have a regular sibling dynamic. Never mind that Sansa's disdain is reinforced by both societal norms and people like Septa Mordane and her mother. Sansa would have an immensely difficult time re-evaluating her perspective because no one has ever challenged it. Catelyn and the septa are constantly saying that Arya should be more like Sansa, so Sansa continues to believe this. The only authority figure who seems to push back even a little is Ned, and Sansa just gets irritated with him for letting Arya "get away" with stuff.

I think a lot of people are missing that context. My sister and I said and did a lot of mean things to each other, but at the end of the day, we still had the ability to get along. We would pretend our Barbies were superheroes, or make parody films with stuffed animals, or pretend to be spies for George Washington. We still respected each other even when we acted like we hated each other. I could brush off a lot of what she said because I knew she'd still be happy to play with me later. We understood when we had gone too far and apologized because for the most part, we didn't actually want to hurt each other. Sansa does not feel this way about Arya. At some point in AGOT, she won't even speak to Arya without being forced. She would never willingly choose to spend time with Arya because she can't even begin to consider that what Arya does might be enjoyable to someone. Sansa has no respect for Arya and thinks that she deserves to be treated poorly.

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Sacred fruit

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Lyanna and Arya stark 💙

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jon snow: im a bastard. everyone hates me. i want to die. and im 14

tyrion for some fucking reason:

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Another day of disregarding evidence in favor of self serving headcanons brought to you by the piss poor reading website :(

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repeat after me you can defend sansa without being mean to arya REPEAT AFTER ME

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ARYA STARK

Arya Underfoot, he almost said. Arya Horseface. Robb's younger sister, brown-haired, long-faced, skinny as a stick. Always dirty.

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⋆⋅•⋅⊰∙∘⋆ ❆ ⋆∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋆

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Just saw some pics of the cast from GoT S7 and it got me thinking. It's funny how in the books Alys Karstark is described looking like Arya so much, that for a moment even Jon Snow thinks it's actually Arya. And then D&D decided make show!Alys red haired and blue eyed - so similar looking to that one character they tried so hard to prop up

D&D's method for writing was keyword searching Arya's name and then replacing her with Sansa, so that's not surprising. They weren't even trying to hide it either. I feel like that was more their attempt at making Sansa look less out of place though, considering she was the only one with red hair. They were trying for the whole "Sansa IS Winterfell" thing and her hair, visually, made her an outsider among the rest of the Northerners. It sucks that they didn't consider Alys important enough to adapt her story but they were willing to use her as a prop. I'm surprised they didn't portray Lyanna with red hair and blue eyes at that point. I've always thought that Arya and Jon being the only ones with the Stark look was significant though. I'm not saying that's the most important factor, but Sansa is southern in more than just looks.

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ARYA STARK

Arya Underfoot, he almost said. Arya Horseface. Robb's younger sister, brown-haired, long-faced, skinny as a stick. Always dirty.

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■ Asoiaf Art moodboard: Arya Stark

“The woman is important too”

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Show Sansa <<< The 4 complex female characters who’s titles/plotlines were stolen and watered down to give to Sansa