#arya stark packs

[ladystoneboobs]

the younger starklings about robb (robb the strong and brave big brother, the perfect heir, the fierce and unbeatable young wolf):

arya

bran

sansa

meanwhile, actual robb (robb the lord and then robb the kitn):

before arya ever promised to be strong by using robb as her benchmark, the definition of stark strength, ned had to remind robb to be strong as the ruling stark in winterfell. (strong for bran and rickon, the brothers he thought he failed by sending their would-be killer away, leading to his great moment of weakness in jeyne westerling's bed.) as his siblings' faith in his ultimate triumph held strong, even after the loss of the north, robb himself was struggling with despair.

as grenn once told sam, maybe everyone is just pretending to be brave, maybe that's how people become brave. robb was faking it to make it too, imitating his father's lordly attitude as bran later tried to imitate robb's. as his younger siblings remembered him as their shining example, robb was trying to live up to his father's example. not the ned who'd been in his circumstances, a teenager unexpectedly turned into a lord and fighting a war to save his family. no, ofc, he never knew that young ned. the ned he knew as his father, the standard to measure himself against, was an adult man in his mid-30s who'd ruled the north for ~15 years. but was that standard for a 15/16yo any more fair and valid an expectation than 8/9yo bran believing he was almost a man grown and holding himself to the standard of 15/16yo robb as robb's heir?

and the only person left close enough to see robb as the boy he still was died with him.

[emprcaesar]

i love how ugly grrm gets. he isn’t afraid to have ugly characters that wouldn’t be physically desirable. so many books describe the main character as this other worldly beauty that is perfect in every way. it has always pissed me off and made it feel so unauthentic. but in asoiaf we have these objectively ugly people or these people who are objectively beautiful that become deformed or maimed in some way AND THEY DONT LOSE ANY OF THEIR WORTH BECAUSE OF IT.

like jaime for example his one purpose in life is to fight and when he loses his hand he loses his purpose but it sends him on a different path of self discovery. his fighting was a big part of him but there is so much more to him that was overlooked because of his fighting.

brienne is ugly and so what she is quite literally hands down one of the greatest people in the entire story. she is strong and honorable and will do what she has to do no matter how hard but she is still kind. despite all the shit that has been thrown at her that would make anyone bitter and cruel she still has an unrelenting compassion for everyone she meets. and that’s not a weakness of hers it’s one of her greatest strengths.

jeyne and theon who feel less than human who have been humiliated and defiled still get a redemption arc because they are worthy of one no matter what. they are physically and mentally destroyed but they’re gonna make it through.

their “ugliness” is what makes them such amazing authentic characters.

i saw a post about this that i can no longer find but it was something along the lines of how jon went to save arya at winterfell no matter how much she had changed. he knew she had been through hell and was definitely not the same little girl he knew but he doesn’t care because no matter how “ruined” society would brand her she was still his little sister arya.

edit:

this goes perfectly with what i said above

[fromtheseventhhell]

George did not write Arya naming babies in Winterfell and taking care of a child in the middle of a WARZONE just for y'all to say she's not going to end up with kids/family because she's "not that type of character" 😒

[rockpaperimpala]

Arya and Nymeria

[aryastarkthelittleshewolf11]

Pack: Ned’s Men (Jory & Harwin)

Arya’s description of them at Winterfell -

Jory had always smiled at her, when he wasn’t telling her to get from underfoot. - Arya III, ASOS

“Harwin?” Arya whispered. It was! Under the beard and the tangled hair was the face of Hullen’s son, who used to lead her pony around the yard, ride at quintain with Jon and Robb, and drink too much on feast days. - Arya II, ASOS

Relationship & Caring for Arya -

Arya stood in the centre of the room, alone but for Jory Cassel - Eddard III,GOT

Ned could see Arya tense in Jory’s arms. Jory spoke up quickly. “We found no trace of the direwolf, Your Grace.” - Eddard GOT

“We all lie,” her father said. “Or did you truly think I’d believe that Nymeria ran off?” Arya blushed guiltily. “Jory kept his word,” her father said with a smile. - Arya II, GOT

“[…]There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard them howling, and Jory said the woods were full of game, so she’d have deer to hunt.[…]” - Arya II, GOT

His eyes went wide. “Gods be good,” he said in a choked voice. “Arya Underfoot? Lem, let go of her.” […] “The Hand’s daughter.” Harwin went to one knee before her. “Arya Stark, of Winterfell.” - Arya II, ASOS

She missed him (Hot Pie) more than she thought she would, but Harwin made up for it some. […] , but she left out the stableboy she’d stabbed with Needle, and the guard whose throat she’d cut to get out of Harrenhal. Telling Harwin would be almost like telling her father, and there were some things that she could not bear having her father know. - Arya III, ASOS

“[…] For every man we lost, two showed up to take his place. A few were knights or squires, of gentle birth, but most were common men - field hands and fiddlers and innkeeps, servents and shoemakers, even two septons. Men of all sorts , and women too, children, dogs…” “Dogs?” said Arya. “Aye,” Harwin grinned. “One of our lads keeps the meanest dogs you’d ever want to see.” “I wish I had a good mean dog,” said Arya wistfully. - Arya III ASOS

Warm and dry in a corner between Gendry and Harwin, Arya listened to the singing for a time, then closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. - Arya III, ASOS

“We have sore need of horses, milady. Armor as well. Swords, shields, spears. All things coin can buy. Aye, and seed for planting, Winter is coming, remember?” He touched her under the chin. - Arya IV, ASOS

Gendry took one look and laughed so hard that wine came out his nose, until Harwin gave him a thwack alongside his ear. - Arya IV, ASOS

“You get away from them, boy — “ “She’s a girl,” said Harwin. “Leave her be.” […] The bars were too narrow to pass a cup through, but Harwin and Gendry offered her a leg up. - Arya V, ASOS

Betrayal of Trust -

They’d been her friends, she’d felt safe around them, but now she knew that was a lie. They’d let the queen kill Lady, that was horrible enough, but the Hound found Mycah. […] And no one raised a voice or drawn a blade or anything, not Harwin who always talked so bold […] , or Jory who was captain of the guard. - Arya II, GOT

The look she gave him was full of hurt. “I thought you were my father’s man.” “Lord Eddard’s dead, milady. I belong to the lightning lord now, and to my brothers.” - Arya III, ASOS

“End” -

Arya screwed up her face in a scowl. “Jaime Lannister murdered Jory, and Heward and Wyl, and the Hound murdered Mycah. Somebody should have behead them.” - Sansa III , GOT

Whirling, she broke for the door, and when Harwin tried to grab her arm she spun away from him quick as a snake. […] Someone was shouting her name, Harwin probably, or Gendry, but the thunder drowned the out […] - Arya VIII

[acewithapencil]

A haunting WIP I’ve finished just in time for Halloween 👻

[allovesthings]

We talk a lot about Bolton figuring out her identity after Arya escaped (which is so funny to me, we love to see Arya being able to deceive and ridicule that man 🤣) but do we think Lady Smallwood figured it out ?

She knew Arya was Highborn and in hiding, she knew she was important (she says this directly in the chapter) and she was sent out from the room when Cat was mentioned and she, and the rest of the world, know that Arya Stark is MIA (either locked in by Cersei or dead).

[bookgendrya]

“[…] the crying girl’s no use either.”“You leave Weasel alone, she’s just scared and hunger is all.” Arya glanced back, but the girl was not following for once.

“Then just leave him, Arry,” Lommy pleaded. “They don’t know about the rest of us. If we hide, they’ll go away, you know they will. It’s not our fault Gendry’s captured.” “You’re stupid, Lommy,” Arya said angrily. “You’ll die if we don’t get Gendry out. Who’s going to carry you?” “You and Hot Pie” “All the time, with no one else to help? We’ll never do it, Gendry was the strong one. Anyhow, I don’t care what you say, I’m going back for him.”

She make much better time on her own, Arya knew, but she could not leave them. They were her pack, her friends, the only living friends that remained to her, and if not for they would still be safe in Harrenhal, Gendry sweating at his forge and Hot Pie in the kitchens.

There was no use trying to convince the Bull of anything. Still, he was her only true friend she had, now that Hot Pie had left them.

Hot Pie and Gendry had left her just as soon as they could, and Lord Beric and the outlaws only wanted to ransom her, just like the Hound. None of them wanted her around. They were never my pack, not even Hot Pie and Gendry. I was stupid to think so, just a stupid little girl, and no wolf at all.

[aelyxmagnus]

Aight you guys voted for this passage so I shall analyze it.

“Gendry was having almost as bad a time of it as Hot Pie, though he was too stubborn to complain. He sat awkwardly in the saddle, a determined look on his face beneath his shaggy black hair, but Arya could tell he was no horseman. I should have remembered, she thought to herself. She had been riding as long as she could remember, ponies when she was little and later horses, but Gendry and Hot Pie were city-born, and in the city smallfolk walked. Yoren had given them mounts when he took them from King's Landing, but sitting on a donkey and plodding up the kingsroad behind a wagon was one thing. Guiding a hunting horse through wild woods and burned fields was something else.

She would make much better time on her own, Arya knew, but she could not leave them. They were her pack, her friends, the only living friends that remained to her, and if not for her they would still be safe at Harrenhal, Gendry sweating at his forge and Hot Pie in the kitchens. If the Mummers catch us, I'll tell them that I'm Ned Stark's daughter and sister to the King in the North. I'll command them to take me to my brother, and to do no harm to Hot Pie and Gendry. They might not believe her, though, and even if they did . . . Lord Bolton was her brother's bannerman, but he frightened her all the same. I won't let them take us, she vowed silently, reaching back over her shoulder to touch the hilt of the sword that Gendry had stolen for her. I won't.”

First of all, we see Arya immediately realizing that Gendry is just as unused to horses as Hot Pie, just tougher. And here thanks to the class consciousness she has gained ever since LF’s coup against Ned to her having to run to realize that smallfolk, not being able to afford horses, are likely to be much worse horse riders than her.

After realizing this, she thinks about how abandoning them would be much better for her escape, but then immediately rejects the thought, they are her pack, but notice how she does not put the word ‘new’ in front of it. To her, this pack of Gendry and Hotpie is simply a part of her pack, which includes everyone she ever knew from Winterfell, from Old nan to Gage and Mikken and even Sansa. I doubt Hot Pie or Gendry either would find any reason to think of themselves as a part of this pack, composed of so many people they don’t know. This also shows how she does not understand the idea of changing one’s pack, a concept she still has problems with. This inability to understand that people can change their packs leads to a lot of anger at Harwin for switching to the BwB. Due to Ned’s upbringing of his children to think well of the NW, she considers them also as a sort of extension to the pack, and therefore Dareon is a traitor to the pack and must be killed. Even in Mercy, where she kills Raff for his murder of Lommy, a large part of her wanting revenge for Lommy but less so for other random smallfolk who got killed by Lannister guards on her long march to Harrenhal is because Lommy was part of her pack, no matter for how short a time. This shows that even after losing her eyesight and her face, she is still at heart of her old pack.

[asoiafreadthru]

A Game of Thrones, Arya II

“Arya, sit down. I need to try and explain some things to you.”

She perched anxiously on the edge of her bed.

“You are too young to be burdened with all my cares,” he told her.

“But you are also a Stark of Winterfell. You know our words.”

“Winter is coming,” Arya whispered.

“The hard cruel times,” her father said.

“We tasted them on the Trident, and when Bran fell.

“You were born in the long summer, sweet one, you’ve never known anything else, but now the winter is truly coming.

“Remember the sigil of our House, Arya.”

“The direwolf,” she said, thinking of Nymeria. She hugged her knees against her chest, suddenly afraid.

“Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.

“Summer is the time for squabbles.

“In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths.”

[ladystoneboobs]

[Cat, to Brienne:]"And Arya, well . . . Ned's visitors would oft mistake her for a stableboy if they rode into the yard unannounced. [...]" -Catelyn VII, aCoK

ok, this is another thing that makes me feel like i'm taking crazy pills bc i never see it talked about with all the implications behind it. so if anyone is more versed in androgynous medievalish clothing, feel free to correct me here, but my thinking is if unannounced visitors mistook arya for a stableboy, would that not mean she was wearing boyish riding garb, trousers and all? bc if she was running around with messy hair and a dirty gown, wouldn't she more likely be seen as a female servant? if my reading is not wildly offbase that does not jibe with the idea of arya being terrorized all day by both septa mordane and her mother to be more ladylike. rather, this limited freedom to be mistaken for a servant could suggest that pragmatic catelyn was picking her battles with arya too, not forcing her to always appear prim and proper on days when they were not expecting any guests to see her. catelyn "despaired of ever making a lady of" arya, though neither she nor ned could abandon the goal, which could mean a more measured approach, not exhausting herself by going after arya for every unladylike move she made, especially when she was still a prepubescent child. the quote above starts a paragraph which ends with catelyn feeling "as though a giant hand were squeezing her chest" after saying she thought arya was dead like bran and rickon, after no word of her since ned's arrest. in that context of grief, i think all her words about arya should be read as coming with bittersweet fondness, just being honest about their problems, not sugarcoating any of it.

but let's compare catelyn's trials with arya, including her often running around looking like a stableboy, to arya's interactions with lady smallwood, somehow seen as an even better mother-figure than her own mother, whom arya found easier to comply with bc of her kinder manner. first of all, lady smallwood's efforts to make arya ladylike included two baths and two dresses in one day after arya and gendry ruined the first dress, before finally giving her boy's riding clothes to leave in. i would argue a full second bath was unneeded when they could have just washed the dirt off her face and hands, and, furthermore, that both the dresses were an impractical waste when she knew arya would be riding back out with the outlaws and could not look a highborn lady when doing so. idt pragmatic catelyn would have gone to all that trouble just to make arya look ladylike for a few hours when there were no other ladies around. as for the claim that arya found it easier to comply with her? no, that's just flat-out demonstrably false. the text says she was "forced" into a tub and "they insisted" she wear girl's clothes. what room did she have to refuse as a hostage in a stranger's castle? she certainly felt no compunction about fighting gendry in the acorn dress she'd been forced into, and only felt bad about it afterward when lady smallwood talked about her dead son.

now, let's move on to the only canon quotes we have from cat to/about arya in arya's pov.

"Sansa's work is as pretty as she is," Septa Mordane told their lady mother once. "She has such fine, delicate hands." When Lady Catelyn had asked about Arya, the septa had sniffed. "Arya has the hands of a blacksmith." -Arya I, aGoT Her father had hunted boar in the wolfswood with Robb and Jon. Once he even took Bran, but never Arya, even though she was older. Septa Mordane said boar hunting was not for ladies, and Mother only promised that when she was older she might have her own hawk. -Arya V, aCoK Her mother used to say she could be pretty if she would just wash and brush her hair and take more care with her dress, the way her sister did. -The Blind Girl(/Arya I), aDwD

in the first quote we don't know catelyn's reaction to septa mordane's rude disapproval of arya, certainly not if she agreed with it. what we do know is she was not interested in only hearing endless praise of sansa and wanted to hear if arya had made any progress. although admittedly that was a vain hope, which ignored arya's true strengths and the possibility that she could never master and enjoy needlework the way catelyn did.

the second quote better shows the difference between arya's mother and her septa. catelyn does not criticize arya for wanting to hunt boar nor dismiss her interest. instead she tries to mollify arya and accomodate her desire with the promise of a future hunting hawk. that this was a promise, not just an idle thought, suggests this would have happened in due time and could have been a bonding activity for them if the plot hadn't intervened.

the third quote is definitely a backhanded compliment and doubly unhelpful in comparison to sansa, but at least it shows catelyn did not think one of her own daughters was ugly. she thought both were pretty even tho sansa was the more admired as traditionally beautiful, and she thought arya's looks were held back by her messy hair and clothes. (useful to remember for those fans who like to keep track of how many characters called arya pretty vs. how many call her ugly.)

yes, it is a bad sign that arya genuinely wondered if her mother would want her back, dirtier than ever in her disguise as a peasant boy. their relationship definitely had faults which the adult parent must bear responsibility for. but we must remember that arya also worried if robb would pay a ransom for her, and was most ashamed about the people she'd killed, and couldn't bear the thought of ned knowing all she'd done. and we must keep in mind that even ned never openly gainsaid septa mordane on-page either, and that arya desperately wanted to renunite with her mother and felt confident gendry could stay with her if she vouched for him with her mother. that confidence would seem completely unwarranted if their mother/daughter relationship was as utterly bad as some fans make out.

[thelustybraavosimaid]

The key five are incredibly misunderstood by D&D, so very misunderstood. Think about it.

They turned:

- Bran into some weird mindless, one-note zombie,

- Tyrion became witless and made foolish choices that he never would have,

- Daenerys somehow became mad (even though her whole thing is *not* ending up like her father), in which she killed thousands of innocents for no fucking reason (even though she's all about PROTECTING THE INNOCENT, so, uh ????????)

- Jon went all I dUn wAn iT (even though his book version is incredibly ambitious to the point where he *dreamt of being a conqueror like his hero, The Young Dragon*) but the most understood seems to be Arya.

They had no fucking idea of what to do with her, and it showed. It showed so fucking much.

[fromtheseventhhell]

She wished the Rush would rise and wash the whole city away, Flea Bottom and the Red Keep and the Great Sept and everything, and everyone too, especially Prince Joffrey and his mother. But she knew it wouldn't, and anyhow Sansa was still in the city and would wash away too. When she remembered that, Arya decided to wish for Winterfell instead. (ACOK I, Arya)

Isn't it funny that in the very first book Arya thinks about something bad happening to the people she hates, realizes that someone she cares about could get hurt in the process, and instead decides to focus on wishing for home? I just think that's a neat character moment for her 😁

[thaliajoy-blog]

Arya Stark as The Moon of the tarot deck ! It's been a very long time since I last drew her. She's the Moon to Sansa's Sun, part of a whole and an underestimated player. Arya is also in some way similar to Artemis, who is the goddess of the moon, as well as the queen of the wild and its animals ; she is a fearsome hunter and a protector of women.

[neithergodsnormen]

@lordcrcw hit the like and gets Arya and the coin chose a reunion

It had been so very long since she had been in Westeros, let alone the North. Years had passed and she was a woman grown. Jon was the last of her siblings that she had heard of by the time she had left Braavos, and as she was unaware of where her sister had vanished after the death of Joffery it was only logical that she seek out the last of her brothers. Jon had always been her favorite, the only other one who had the Stark look of their father, the only other one who had never truly belonged in Winterfell all those years ago. No one seemed to recognize her, or to question her presence, which certainly left her wondering.

She did not look like a boy as there was no real reason to disguise herself as one, not like she had all those years ago when traveling the Riverlands. Stark grey eyes glanced at all the women and men that were around, and she found herself curious about the women who were obviously warriors. Once she found Jon she would certainly have to ask him. People parted before her, likely due to Nymeria who was at her heels, for she had found her wolf before she made her way back North.

At long last, Arya lays eyes on him. She broke into a run, grateful for the better mobility of trousers as she made her way across the snow. Her arms wrapped around him, as she slammed her whole being into his side. Home, she was home, for nothing was home without her dear big brother. "JON!!"

[scorpius6689]

The Night Wolf