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That brought a bitter twist to Ned's mouth. "Brandon. Yes. Brandon would know what to do. He always did. It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell, everything. He was born to be a King's Hand and a father to queens. I never asked for this cup to pass to me." (Catelyn, AGOT) Sansa had the grace to blush. She blushed prettily. She did everything prettily, Arya thought with dull resentment. [...] It wasn't fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older; maybe by the time Arya had been born, there had been nothing left. (Arya, AGOT)

arya and ned with their younger sibling insecurity. even over a decade after brandon's death ned still feels bitterness about it. not unlike arya's own resentment. they both have one older sibling of the same gender who better embodies the expectation of a man and girl, respectively, in westeros. brandon was taller, more handsome and a better swordsmen than ned. in ned's own words he "always" knew what to do. sansa is beautiful and ladylike. she excels at the creative arts and courtesy that arya struggles to perform.

they were both set up for greatness. brandon as heir to winterfell. sansa as the prince's betrothed and future queen.

until brandon was killed and ned inherited it all. he was forced to step up despite being the second son who never asked for it to pass to him. arya is the second daughter and i think she will have to do the same and assume a similar role just like her father in the end. she might not feel entirely prepared for it either because she spent so long negatively comparing herself to another, but she will have to all the same.

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“Arya’s proxy to power in the North is an abuse victim!”

Don’t let Sansa stans know that Sansa’s proxy to any power is the murder of an eight year old and the plans and resources of Littlefinger. The man who forced Jeyne to work in his brothel and sold her off to the Boltons in the first place

Any victory or queenship Sansa has in the North using the Vale’s money, power, and resources are co-signed by Baelish. But I’m willing to bet these losers wouldn’t consider that dismissive of Jeyne’s experiences

And if we want to go one step further, we could ask WHY Littlefinger sold Jeyne to the Boltons in the first place when everyone involved knows she’s actually a steward’s daughter, if his grand plan is to make Sansa Queen in the North? But that would be an inconvenient truth for the lemoncakes and their delusions about Sansa’s 100% morally righteous pathway to becoming Qween 😁

All of this...the goalpost is forever being moved by them. The fake activism they invent kills me and it's so obvious they only bring it up to police our discussions; they can't stand to see people acknowledge Arya's importance to the Northern plot, so they came up with the "trying to make Jeyne's pain about Arya" accusation. If they actually cared about Jeyne they wouldn't be using her as a prop against stans/discussions they don't like.

What's funny is that they invent these moral guidelines when all it does is make them look worse. Cause if it's wrong to point out that Jeyne is posing as Arya, the entire point of her marrying Ramsay, how is it okay to write meta about Sansa benefiting from the poisoning of a disabled child (one orphaned by LF's plotting no less)🤔? They never want to touch those moral implications though...at best they're sticking their heads in the sand and pretending Sansa has no idea, at worst they're writing meta about SW being an abuser :/. It's just hilarious that they swear we can't see how hypocritical they're being. That's why their metas make no sense, they don't have any cohesive logic 😭

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when Arya returns to the North after having destroyed the Lannisters relationship with the Iron Bank of Braavos, walking around with a giant ass direwolf and said direwolf’s giant ass wolf pack on her heels, astral projecting into animals and practicing blood magic, all with Robb’s crown in her hands with her undead mother’s full blessing 

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another round of "arya is ugly" discourse and fanart in the tags where sansa has milky white skin but arya is several shades darker in the same day

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Notice how the "looks don't matter" crowd never say anything about Stansas who compile every moment she's called beautiful and salivate over it, even though a lot of said moments are coming from predators? Notice how they never talk about Arya being bullied for her looks or characters making judgments based on looks as a negative? Notice how they never talk about people in fandom thinking of characters as less important for being ugly? No, they only ever come out when it's time to misinterpret Arya and claim her stans are obsessed with looks for pointing out what's in the books

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#that it's earned and not handed to her for being a stark but for her active interest and care for the lives of the ppl in her community <3 (tags via @insomniarama)

arya underfoot is my fave sobriquet in asoiaf. i love love love it. arya is “dubbed” underfoot by her father’s men. its a sign of affection between the men who served the starks and arya who took in interest in them. she had a close relationship with all of the people in winterfell and this name is an enduring part of that.

arya says fat tom came up with the name. its one of the last things hullen says with his dying breath. when his son harwin recognizes arya its what he calls her while holding back tears. even in adwd jon and theon both think of her as arya underfoot.

its a name arya likes which is why its frequently used in contrast with horseface - a name that made her feel like an outsider. arya underfoot, though, is a gesture of arya being embraced by her community. it really feels like the truest essence of her character.

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The king stopped, turned back, frowned. "I'd forgotten about the damned wolf." Ned could see Arya tense in Jory's arms. Jory spoke up quickly. "We found no trace of the direwolf, Your Grace." "We all lie," her father said. "Or did you truly think I'd believe that Nymeria ran off?" Arya blushed guiltily. "Jory promised not to tell." "Jory kept his word," her father said with a smile. "There are some things I do not need to be told. Even a blind man could see that wolf would never have left you willingly." (AGOT)

lets hear it for jory cassel who lied to both his king and his lord to protect arya's wolf. he kept his word to arya underfoot <3

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#notice how these takes never come with actual evidence from the books to make direct comparisons from the text?#/ned is a gentle quiet poitican/ and he physically attacks someone + constantly shows his frustration and voicing his opinions#our first introduction to him is him executing a man and we know he's done so several times that year#he says that his toddler son needs to grow up and stop being afraid of a giant wolf cause /winter is coming/ and Northern life is hard 😭#/Cat is a feral wild woman/ and her chapters are full of her holding her tongue and trying to mediate situations#people literally switch their characterizations cause the second a woman shows emotion she's /feral/#and a man can be the most wild unhinged character ever and still be /kind/ and /gentle/#like yeah fanon sansa is fanon ned 2.0 and fanon arya is fanon cat 2.0 but their actual characters are more complex then that#the only valid /2.0/ comparison is between Lyanna and Arya but somehow she gets split between Arya and Sansa 🥴#my hourly frustration at this fandom not caring about the story and only being here for /the vibes~/#like Ned hates Tourneys and protests one as a waste of resources while Sansa is planning a Tourney and using resources while winter#is arriving and smallfolk are going hungry...but she's Ned 2.0? Where? How? Huh?#And yeah Ned deals with politics in KL but that's relatively a small aspect of his character#and even him constantly speaking his mind and challenging Robert directly is the exact opposite of Sansa's approach 😭#/courtesy is a Lady's armor/ vs. /I'm gonna tell Robert he's an idiot right to his face/ oh yeah totes the same#Arya is the character following his advice and guidance for a reason just saying#like if Sansa was doing the same I could see it but she..isn't? Her approach is much closer to Catelyn's than Ned's#I don't understand why people have all of the sudden decided that the Sansa/Cat parallels are shallow when they're#very similar characters and Sansa's current plot actually revolves around that fact#obviously they're not exactly alike but no two characters are or even meant to be...their comparisons are still very valid#tired of being expected to accept an idea just because enough people repeat it

"Sansa = Ned 2.0 and Arya = Catelyn 2.0" is one of those takes where you can just tell people are more attached to the aesthetic than anything. "The Stark girls are most like the parent they look least like" sounds good on paper and people run with the idea, regardless of how it actually fits into the story. A majority of the justification relies on misinterpreting all of their characters + a healthy dose of fanon. What gets me is that this is the same fandom that insists that Lyanna, only compared to Arya in the text, is equal parts Arya and Sansa but Ned and Catelyn, two fully fleshed-out and complex characters, have to be more like one girl or the other? There's just nothing in the story to justify being so adamant about these comparisons. Arya and Sansa have parallels with both of their parents but at the end of the day, they are unique characters with their own stories. I'll never understand why people want to flatten these complex characters down to their most basic tropes and fit them into restrictive boxes just for a "poetical~" comparison.

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The “Can I be a king’s councillor and build castles” to “Lady of Winterfell and helping to rebuild the North after the Long Night” pipeline is real

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sorry but this is something ive always been confused on are the faceless men funding the iron bank or is it just a theory ?

with the faceless men everything is in theory, but its becoming increasingly clear that they're connected to the iron bank which would likely include finances. the faceless men demand hefty sums for their services, but where the money goes is unknown. interestingly, arya searches for "treasure chambers" in the hob&w but never finds one. she's seen the secret lower sanctum which means if they were storing the goods there i think we'd know about it. so, where is all that coin (and euron's dragon egg) ? it must be in the bank. its also strongly implied that when the iron bank does not receive their payments that the faceless men go after the defaulters. grrm starts building it up second half of adwd and its a main factor in two of the sample chaps from twow

when tycho nestoris from the iron bank arrives on the wall he lends jon ships for the hardhome rescue mission. in the very next chapter we see arya report to the faceless men that the lyseni intend to return to hardhome to enslave more people. coincidence? i don't think so. the jon chapter proceeds the arya one but arya is behind jon timeline wise so its likely the bank was already aware of the situation and, knowing that the refugees were still at risk of becoming slaves, were inclined to lend aid. braavos is committed to fighting slavery.

mercy and theon i are two chapters that feel so strongly tethered to me bc of the jeyne/arya factor, bran calling out to both of them and bc of the braavos connection. the iron bank (again via tycho) signs an agreement with stannis as they are officially backing him in the fight for the iron throne. the faceless men are working in support of the bank via their acolyte arya by assassinating and framing a guard in service the current master of coin to the iron throne. now the bank will have justified cause to deny any and all appeals made by harys swyft. they are funding stannis and undermining tommen. the iron bank will have its due! and cersei was warned lol

at this point i would say they're almost definitely working together. i might even go as far as to say they're two halves of the same whole.

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Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies . . .(Dany, ACOK)

She raised her eyes to his. Brown eyes, not grey. Are all of them so blind? For a long moment she did not speak, but those eyes were begging. This is your chance, he thought. Tell them. Tell them now. Shout out your name before them all, tell them that you are not Arya Stark, let all the north hear how you were made to play this part. (Theon, ADWD)

theres a lot to compare/contrast between arya and jeyne as "arya" and dany and "aegon" as aegon. neither fully realizes it, yet, but both arya and dany have pretenders they are going to have to deal with. jeyne has claimed arya's identity after her presumed death. aegon has claimed the identity of dany's nephew who was murdered as an infant. both of these are going to interfere with arya and dany's own identities and their objectives.

"It does make for a splendid story, and the singers will make much of your escape once you take the Iron Throne … assuming that our fair Daenerys takes you for her consort." "She will. She must." (Tyrion, ADWD) The bride raised her eyes. Brown eyes, shining in the candlelight. "I will be a good wife to him, and t-true. I … I will please him and give him sons. I will be a better wife than the real Arya could have been, he'll see." (Theon, ADWD)

jeyne knows she is not who she is pretending to be. she's been forced thru violence to pretend so that the boltons could marry "arya", the heir to winterfell, in an attempt to secure their hold on the north. which hasn't really worked because the boltons are despised. many northerners are in open rebellion to save "the ned's girl" and more are plotting in secret. jeyne escaped winterfell and is now en route to the wall and then braavos. arya and jeyne crossing paths there is a safe bet. this will likely serve as a catalyst for arya reclaiming her identity as arya stark.

aegon truly believes he is the son of rhaegar and elia, but he's not. he has been lied to his entire life. in the targaryen tradition he intends to marry dany so the two of them can rule the seven kingdoms together. aegon decided to invade without dany, though, and it seems he will sit the throne before her. the vision in the house of the undying suggests he will gain some popularity. when she arrives in westeros dany will have to confront this man who claims to be a targaryen like her and with a stronger claim to the iron throne.

"A mummer's dragon, you said. What is a mummer's dragon, pray?" "A cloth dragon on poles," Dany explained. "Mummers use them in their follies, to give the heroes something to fight." (Dany, ACOK) It was the girl who held them here, Lord Eddard's blood, but the girl was just a mummer's ploy, a lamb in a direwolf's skin. (Theon, ADWD)

both jeyne and aegon are puppets being used to symbolize houses stark and targaryen in the game of thrones, but these are false narratives. arya and dany are the real thing. dany is poised to reclaim her identity as a true targaryen and refocus her goals after losing her sense of self in meereen. arya will do the same in braavos soon.

"Remember who you are, Daenerys," the stars whispered in a woman's voice. "The dragons know. Do you?" (Dany, ADWD) She took a breath to quiet the howling in her heart, trying to remember more of what she'd dreamt, but most of it had gone already. There had been blood in it, though, and a full moon overhead, and a tree that watched her as she ran. (Arya, TWOW)

these two pairings are going to collide at some point. then arya and dany are going to slay the lies that are being wielded by their enemies. but thats probably going to look very different in each plot. jeyne has been traumatized by being arya and she will probably relinquish the name with relief. aegon is not going to do that. i doubt he will ever accept that he is anyone other than who he's been led to believe. which is going to create conflict between him and dany.

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this is honestly pretty funny because skipping Arya and Bran’s chapters is legitimately how like 96% of “House Stark stans” analyze the series. I guess it’s a bit refreshing that they’re being honest about it now lmao

"I've been skipping two of the most important character POVs since the first book, am I missing anything?"

Honestly though, this is taking me out because I just know this is how a lot of people actually "read" the books. At this point the books have been discussed so much people just assume they know enough to skip through certain parts and that's exactly why we have so much misinterpretation in this fandom. People are getting their information through second-hand sources instead of the books themselves 😭

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I feel like the fairly recent tendency of fanartists giving Arya and Jon (and by extension, Ned) darker colored skin is to make the continent of Westeros seem more diverse? It also ties in with the decent amount of takes I've seen where people insist that the Starks are “indigenous-coded”, which considering how their ancestors committed genocide against the Children of the Forest makes these takes interesting...ly awkward. Then there’s the segment of people who just straight up pretend like the Starks/Northerners were never really white at all, and are Central Asian or something and George didn’t realize this as he was writing lol

And I don’t think racebending as a form of transformative fandom is a bad thing, but in the case of Arya vs her siblings it does get uncomfortable once you dig even one millimeter deeper into it because part of the reason Arya feels so alienated by the women in her household is because she’s told she’s ugly and not acting like a proper girl by their standards. 

So a brown, supposedly “indigenous-coded” Arya who shares the typical looks and interests that are more accepted by an “indigenous-coded” North is considered ugly and unruly by her white, Southron mother. The same mother will then sing endless praise about the beauty of her docile, light-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed, “delicately featured” daughter Sansa....and this fandom can’t connect the two dots together to figure out why this is not good. 

It’s already a bad reflection of Catelyn in canon where they’re all white, and it’s ten times worse when you try to slap on a “the Starks and the First Men were actually brown” angle. It might be interesting if this fandom ever tried to properly analyze the racial aspect of having the “Stark look” be brown, including things like colorism within a mixed Northern/Southron family and the inherent vilification of darker people but they don’t. They just dip white characters in brown paint, pretend like the character dynamics and their implications would be the exact same, then pat themselves on the back for their efforts in diversity. It’s tiring to say the least.

Can somebody give me the page and exact quote where it is referenced that Arya has dark olive skin and her siblings have rosey white milky skin? I want the receipts now please

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sansa stans when arya is kissing sansa’s ass:

sansa stans when arya has one independent thought:

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I now know why the idea that courtesy is the answer to every conflict is so prevalent in the fandom. You have a handful of tumblr intellectuals who would rather discuss if Arya should have been feeling guilty about killing the Bolton guard or the degree of it ( he is just a guy standing around, we don't know anything about him, hey maybe he doesn't get paid enough to stop 3 prisoners from leaving!), rather than acknowledge that Arya had gone through hell to survive and she more than any other Stark kid knows the cost of war. Arya's list is called fucked up ( they add the "understandable" adjective immediately after but reiterate that it's fucked up). And the prevalent idea then, in use of all these words is equating Arya to violence. Which is why all those incorrect quote posts of 'Arya's every solution being violence' get so many notes.

Arya's list isn't the measure of her violence. It instead is the proof of her trauma. And she tries again and again to leave the nightmares behind: the countless times she tries to reach Jon, her feeling what good does Joffrey's death do if her mother and brothers are dead, her wanting to stay on with the crew of Titan's daughter.

They would talk about how fucked up her list is hence insinuate the tremendous capacity of violence and draw up theories after theories about Faceless Men but won't ever be conscious enough to recognize that Arya never truly wanted anything to do with the FM ( even after reaching Braavos she tries to stay on the ship).

So imagine knowing all these. To have read all these chapters and to get stuck on the ethics of murdering the Bolton guard. Mind you this is brought up because it has been admitted that previously Arya has had to kill in self defense and for others. There has been a reiteration that there these kills are pardonable since there had been an active threat on her. But the murder of the Bolton guard is a matter of ethics!

And you know what I am not even arguing about that. It is a grey area. But it's the extra scrutiny placed on the female character that gets to me. A clood blooded premeditated murder committed!! As if this murder exists in vacuum. As if this girl who the world around knows to be a commoner would have been allowed to leave Harrenhal by that guard just standing around. As if prisoners and slaves have a say on what is to be their fate. As if each day and every day Arya isn't surrounded by the violence wrought in Harrenhal. As if this violence wasn't necessary for her to make a safe escape.

They would argue it wasn't and here I realize that the issue goes deeper than that. Here is an excerpt of their dialogue:

They maintain that only Gendry and Hot Pie had been in danger here. That Arya was actually safe as she could have just revealed her identity anytime and apparently there were ways of proving it without one recognizing her face ( I doubt that).

Somehow this makes me realize that this sort of thinking is what dismisses Arya's entire arc. This is what had been going wrong in the tv show which reduced all of Arya's trauma to ✨adventure✨because they think all the suffering Arya went through was intentional and could have been stopped anytime! All she had to do was reveal her identity.

I honestly do not know what Arya could have done to prove she was a Stark. When they sent guards to hunt her down and Arya realized that maybe in convincing her two friends to run away with her, she has in turn condemned them- Arya makes a decision to reveal who she is and let herself taken hostage. But here's the thing and no matter how many so called intellectuals throw up shit that her identity could have easily been proven-there would always, always the matter of chance. They could believe or they won't. And what would happen if they won't? Arya would be killed.

Now let's see what would have happened if Roose had ahold of the real Arya? Wouldn't she be in the place of Jeyne Poole. Jeyne has had to suffer under a monster, under a sadist. And those cries that echo around Winterfell now, would have been Arya's. This is what the fandom wants. I mean to say this is what the fandom wants from its female characters. Be the passive recipient of all that is to happen. There is no admiration in taking yourself promptly out of a situation that can be dangerous by actively interfering in the storyline. Act only when an action has been committed against you. There would have been more sympathy for Arya if she bled the way they wanted her to. If her cries echoed through halls. If she wasn't an active participant in her own storyline.

The other thing is the matter of could have. There is always the matter of could have when it comes to Arya. Arya could have tried to be more courteous. Arya could have just let Joffrey cut Mycah's face. And now Arya could have hatched a plan keeping in mind the safety of not only her party but of everyone else ( the Bolton guard) and snuck past. Every decisive control Arya takes is countered with a could have. That Arya chose to simply eliminate the risk in a situation that begged a safe escape isn't taken well. There is always a could have even when the text itself provides us with no definitive answer to this alternative could have.

I never understood how people could judge Dany when she actively brings down an empire of slavery. But now I think I can. There is no passivity. There is unapologetic action against the slave masters. They too perhaps are just some guys standing around to many in this fandom. And every decisive move against them, every violence against them also brings about the compulsion of the could have.

These female characters refuse to be a part of the could have. Of passivity. Their grey actions are to take back control of their storyline. Hence are they vilified. And hence should there be guilt and remorse on their part.

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I think one of the reasons why the theory that Arya will go away at the end of the story because she’s too far gone to assimilate back into society is so unconvincing is because she literally spends the latest two books (AFFC and ADWD) doing that very thing! Like her training hasn’t been about her being a reclusive murderous hermit. She literally spends the two books talking to people, making friends, integrating into new cultures. She’s around people all the damn time! And even if we bring up her ACOK and ASOS arcs which were rather dark in nature, she’s still around people interacting with them, still being a part of society (even if she’s quite low on the totem pole in those books).

Arya is a character who feels so strongly and whose arc is often dictated by how she interacts with the people around her. So to take that away from her is not only a bad understanding of her character arc (not to be condescending or anything), but it’s also not very satisfying as far as character/narrative progression goes. Because if the narrative has proven so far that even in her darkest moments, Arya can laugh and love and be such a passionate member of society, how then does it make sense for her to go away and be on her own?? How does that make sense when AFFC and ADWD prove that she still loves being around people?

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crazy how jon ignoring janos’ pleas for mercy, having him dragged, pushed to the ground, restrained and chopping off his head for insubordination, essentially, is seen as being not only entirely justified but badass/heroic by the fanboys and girls alike. while arya ignoring raff’s pleas for mercy and cutting his throat bc (in part) she watched him murder and rape his way to harrenhal with her own two eyes is used as an example of her being too far gone, insanely violent, irredeemable, unlovable, destined only for exile or death, ect ect

and when i say crazy i mean misogynistic lol