Im Abouuuut 15%? Through A Feast For Crows And I Truly Cannot Comprehend How Anyone Thinks Of Arya As

I’m abouuuut 15%? Through A Feast for Crows and I truly cannot comprehend how anyone thinks of Arya as this cold-blooded killer who is “too far gone.” I guess I still have most of this book and ADwD to read and she’s a POV character in both, and I’m trying not to let bias influence my interpretation, but man, this is a sweet and compassionate girl. She’s scared and trying her very best to be brave. She’s gone to a distant land simply because she doesn’t know what else to do. And she arrives at her destination and the first thing she does when she gets to the house of black and white is to notice a stranger seems thirsty and bring him a cup of water. Selfless kindness. He didn’t ask. They didn’t even exchange words. She just noticed he seemed thirsty so she brought him water. Arya hates showing vulnerability and deliberately does not want to appear scared to others, but she has a very tender heart and instinctively looks out for loved ones and strangers alike.

@the-king-andthe-lionheart sorry can’t respond in replies bc this is a side blog but yeah I really hope her role changes too. Because the thing is that she could be a pretty compelling protagonist because of how she contrasts with the key 5. Someone else, I can’t remember who, said she was an interesting protagonist compared to the key 5 because she isn’t “special” in some way or a lifelong outcast or a nonconformist. She’s said to be exceptionally beautiful, but I don’t count that because so are multiple other POV characters. She lost her wolf and thus cannot warg (yet) and she does not possess talents or qualities that are not typical of a highborn lady.

I watched the show before reading the books (long story short I thought that the elements of the show I hated would be worse in the books and I was wrong) and in the break between seasons 7 and 8, I had really high hopes for interactions between Dany and S*nsa. Her role in the show had a lot more significance because of her marriage to Ramsey and the fact that she got proportionally much more focus than in the books because of how much of the Dorne content from AFfC was cut. They could have some interest parallels: both forced into marriage as political pawns as children, both forced into exile with a mentor figure who was also a spy and made unwanted advances upon them, both made to answer for the crimes of their fathers (in S*nsa’s case, “crimes”), both spend a good amount of the story believing themselves to be the last surviving members of their family (or at least last trueborn), both are romantics who like to hear stories, both can be identified by distinctive hair colors, both go through (or at least are expected to go through) a form of disillusionment (S*nsa is learning the world is not like the songs and Daenerys is learning of her family from Barristan and will likely have to go through the realization that not everyone will accept her as queen in Westeros), winged creature association (although that’s also true of Arya+swan and Bran+crow), Lannisters killed my father in King’s Landing (also true of the other Starks), older brother was killed as the result of a love affair (again also true of the other Starks), something about lemon tree/lemon cakes… there could be something there.

In the books I’m more interested now in Dany’s potential interactions with Arya, but I still think there’s really fertile ground to draw parallels between her and S*nsa and make it interesting. I’m fine if they have conflict as long as it’s not the stupid catty Jon-centric bullshit D&D gave us. She likely will have a greater roll in all of this (otherwise why not make LF a POV character instead?) and I just hope it’s something better than what we got in the show.

Ok gonna censor her name so it doesn’t show up in her tag and I’m gonna use the anti tag even though it isn’t really an “anti” post; I just don’t want to piss off any stans.

Ultimately, at least where I’m at just over halfway through ASoS, it seems like S*nsa as a character exists to tell us what’s happening in KL when Tyrion is absent and give us insight into the Tyrells. And moving forward, I imagine she’s just going to be the device to tell us what LF is doing and what’s happening in the Vale.

Sure GRRM gives her some things to do and minor plot threads but she ultimately goes where the plot requires a POV character. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that she leaves KL and in AFfC we get Cersei, also in KL, as a POV character. S*nsa shows us important aspects of the plot but doesn’t drive it. She was created so there could be a Stark who didn’t get along with Arya. She doesn’t really drive the narrative like Dany, Jon, Arya, Tyrion, and Bran. This probably confuses people just because of the inherent fact that she’s a POV character and one of the Stark siblings, so they assume there MUST be some greater importance to her story and that’s how we get people coming up with these far-fetched theories about S*nsa’s supposedly potent magical abilities and how she’s destined to rule or whatever and how Jon is totally definitely in love with her and will betray Daenerys to give the north to S*nsa. It’s okay to like her, but she’s just not one of the primary characters.

Based on her large presence in the fandom, I kind of expected a lot… MORE from her chapters when I started reading the series. She wasn’t one of my favorites in the show either, but I wanted to read with an open mind to try to see what S*nsa fans were seeing and I just didn’t see it

If there’s one thing I’ve learned looking at ASOIAF fanart, it’s that people don’t really know what color auburn hair is supposed to be

Yeah that’s what I’ve been saying!! Both are romantics who love stories and songs, both were forced to marry as a young age for political reasons, both have this dark “mentor” figure who is actually a spy who makes unwanted advances on them because each girl physically reminds the man of a lost love (Cat for Sansa and Lynesse for Dany). Both have distinctive hair that speaks to their bloodline that gets altered in some way—dyed for Sansa, burned away for Dany. I anticipate that Dany will face disillusionment in the same way Sansa has, realizing that the people of Westeros may not want her to rule any more than they would’ve wanted Viserys. There’s so much to analyze here that I’m always surprised more people don’t discuss any of it. I read a lot of Dany metas and see tons drawing parallels with Jon and Arya and antiparallels with Cersei, but the Dany-Sansa is comparison seldom shows up!!

I’d never considered the way they reframe and romanticize traumatic experiences, great observation!

@cleverelaena88 hi I was the anon in the post this is from. I wanted to start a new thread instead of clogging the notes of someone else’s post. I wrote up an essay explaining it under the cut if you’re interested but it boils down to this:

1. I started thinking for myself about her place in the narrative.

2. I let go of petty feelings coming from my wounded inner child.

3. I realized I could continue to think for myself and that liking this characters doesn’t mean I’m aligning myself with objectionable things other fans of the character have said.

The way I feel about Sansa changed for a lot of reasons. I walked back on my stance that she isn’t important because I realized I wasn’t really thinking for myself and was just going along with the things often said by other fans of my favorite characters. If I remember correctly, she has as many POV chapters as Bran. The Vale plot is important to the story and it’s clearly not just relevant to Littlefinger or else… why would Sansa be involved? She didn’t need to be a POV character for the story to work but she is because she’s important. If Sansa was just supposed to be a “camera” to show the viewer what’s happening in KL and later the Vale, why did start off as a POV character in places where other POV characters were as well? She’s the only POV character in the Vale in AFfC, but if that was her only importance, why was she a POV character prior to going to the Vale?

Currently, she does feel pretty “cut off” from the main plot threads—the IT, the Others, and the dragons. At least where I’m at, halfway through AFfC. And I think that’s what makes some people think she isn’t important. But I kind of thing that’s evidence that she IS. She’s away from all of these major plot elements and is not in close proximity to other POV characters who are involved in these three elements, unlike characters like Arya, who are technically disconnected from those three elements, but are in close proximity to other POV characters (i.e., Arya encounters Sam in Braavos). Given that, why on earth would George continue to feature her POV if her story specifically was not important?

As for why she’s become one of my favorites, that’s a bit different. This is a bit personal, so forgive me for it, but I think it’s interesting insight. I had to get past this wounded inner child aspect of myself, for one. I was an ugly duckling. I grew up being mocked for being a chubby, socially awkward kid with a snaggle tooth and a lisp. I internalized the idea very early that in order to be loved and socially accepted, I must be beautiful. I have auburn hair and amber eyes. I also received this message that to be beautiful, I should be blonde and more importantly have blue/green eyes. Seeing how just about every example of beautiful women in media were blonde with light eyes, and how the vast majority of female protagonists were beautiful, I developed quite the complex about this. It started sending a message to me that these stories were not for me. The romance, the fantasy, everything these characters got was not and never would be for me because I wasn’t beautiful like them. I resented any female protagonist for which their beauty was a huge focal point because of a deep envy. I wished more than anything to be beautiful. Every birthday, every star, every dandelion. What I really wanted was love and social acceptance, but I was too young to understand that.

Then something weird happened as I grew up. I became beautiful. I don’t want to sound vain or self-congratulatory, but it’s relevant here. The vast majority of people now consider me to be extremely good-looking. This started around age 16. I got what I wished for. People started treating me differently. I got what I wished for. And it sucked. I’ll get back to that. But I did and still do feel like that little ugly duckling. I’m slowly healing, but it’s hard. I still felt this deep resentment and envy. It is starting to go away but comes up now and again. And as petty as it sounds, yes, part of me resented this character for being beautiful. Of course, I think every single female POV character is called pretty or beautiful aside from Brienne. Daenerys and Cersei are also considered to be extremely beautiful, but it’s not as relevant to Dany because the whole dragon thing takes more precedence and Cersei’s envy and vindictiveness are more prominent me (plus she’s an overt antagonist, and I don’t mind so much when the character is one of the bad guys, for some reason). But for Sansa, her beauty and grace seem to be major focal points in how other characters see her.

I said before that becoming beautiful sucked. I resented everyone around me for treating me differently because I was beautiful. And I realized that it does NOT offer me the guaranteed acceptance and love and safety that I believed it would as a child. Men will behave in different evil ways to both ugly and beautiful women. Being beautiful started to feel like this curse. It became a performance that I have to maintain because deep down I fear that beauty is all I have and/or that it’s the only reason anyone really values me. I developed an eating disorder about it. I got exactly what I wished for but not what I wanted.

Here’s how that’s relevant. I started drawing parallels and antiparallels between Sansa and Dany. I think it’s very interesting to compare the two but I seldom see that discussed unless it’s to pit them against one another. As I started to make these parallels I realized that many of the reasons I connect with Dany also apply to Sansa and started doing some self-analysis about why I didn’t connect with Sansa in the same way. I started to sort out the whole wounded inner child thing and realized it had been preventing me from acknowledging and appreciating any depth in Sansa’s character and really feeling for her. I realized that she too wished for something so very badly when she was a naive kid. Something she thought she wanted desperately. And she got it, and it was horrible. I found that I can now really emotionally connect with this character. Perhaps she too fears that her beauty and grace are the only reasons people like her. And I can definitely relate to the feeling of being sexualized and objectified by adults and peers alike. I know how it feels to have to smile and nod and lie to appease poisonous men. I really can connect with her emotionally in ways I couldn’t before because of my own personal hangups.

Finally, I just stopped caring about what other fans think. I have seen Sansa fans saying things I find objectionable, like proclaiming that Daenerys and Arya’s arcs are patriarchal or excusing the way Sansa treated Arya (although I don’t think their relationship is as cut and dry as “they simply don’t love eachother”). Plus there’s just a lot of infighting between Sansa fans and Dany and Arya fans and it made me keep my distance. I also am not a Jonsa fan and it seems many Sansa fans are in fact Jonsa fans. I used to hate the ship but was just being immature honestly. I’m neutral now and I think it’s interesting to read Jonsa metas because they present an entirely different way to interpret the story. It is fun for me to see what other people take away from the text. I was also holding myself back because I’ve seen Jonsas misconstrue the text and omit parts of passages and important context in ways that seem intentionally misleading, which really bothers me. But I realized I’m biased. We all have our own confirmation biases when reading the series and I’m sure other fans do the exact same thing. I was just noticing it more with Jonsa because it’s not a theory I subscribe to. But enjoying Sansa’s character does not mean I need to align myself with every single other Sansa fan, which seems obvious when said so plainly, but we often subconsciously develop this sense of group microidentities that we fear betraying.

This is all very specific to me as an individual of course but I had fun with all the introspection and think it’s an interesting case study about why a person may resent a specific character and why they might change their minds. Thanks for reading!

this is my daughter Abortion

@riahchan @cleverelaena88 thank you so much!! I’m healing all the time, more and more each year. It’s fun how analysis of fiction can help us deepen our understanding of ourselves and identify growth points. Honestly I kind of think that examining why we have hangups against certain characters when we can’t really explain why (obviously doesn’t apply to any time we hate characters, like if it’s because they’re poorly written or have done certain terrible things that make us unable to enjoy them even as a villain). Thanks again!!