Something That I Think Gets Overlooked About Arya As A Result Of Fandom Flanderization Is That She Didnt

Something that I think gets overlooked about Arya as a result of fandom flanderization is that she didn’t set out with the desire to become an assassin. She loves swordplay, yes, and she has her list. But when she escaped king’s landing, she just wanted to get to family. She wanted to get to safety. She wanted to get to Jon. When she left for Essos, her intention had been to go to the wall, to find Jon. She only went to Braavos because she didn’t know what else to do. Arya has a strong sense of justice, yes. But her primary motivation hasn’t been revenge. She’s not the only character who, imo, is on a specific path because they don’t know what else to do. But that’ll have to wait for another post

@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!!

Honestly I think the reason more people talk about it is because Tywin and Gregor are obviously unambiguously villains. The two of them are evil almost to a cartoonish degree without any redeeming qualities (both, especially Tywin, are interesting characters, just unredeemable people). Complaining about the bad things they did is just like… yep okay the ice is cold and the fire is hot and the water is wet. The villains did atrocious things. Whereas Rhaegar is not a villain. Given the high rate of male infidelity in Westeros, I don’t think we should be too terribly critical of his actions, especially given that his marriage to Elia was political.

Although my favorite theory is that Rhaegar is NOT Jon’s father and his “kidnapping” of Lyanna was a matter of him taking her into his protection to keep her safe from Robert. I’m sure R+L=J will be canon but given that Lyanna was highly critical of Robert’s unfaithfulness, it’d be a bit hypocritical of her to elope with a married man, even if it was a political marriage. I like the theory because it’d be an interesting subversion. The war over Lyanna not being about two men who loved her, but about the lust and rage of one man. Plus it’d be kind of ironic for Jon to spend all this time wondering who his mother is only for that mystery to be solved but with the revelation that his FATHER was just some guy.

Anyway yeah obviously Rhaegar cheating on his political wife is nowhere near as bad as the actions of Tywin and Gregor but the reason people talk about it is that Rhaegar is one of the heroes and it’s more interesting to talk about the pitfalls of the heroes who aren’t just evil across the board

Over here thinking about how to some people the idea of "a man cheating on his good, devoted wife" is worst than anything that could ever happen.

I've seen way more people complain about Rheagar "cheating" on Elia than people complaining about Tywin or Gregor Clegane for literally murdering her. It baffles me.

@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

I really kind of hate shipping culture honestly like in most given fandoms you’ll have people who aren’t even really fans of the media itself, they’re fans of a ship. I cannot understand it. Technically I have seen this with asoiaf but that’s not even the example I’m thinking of. It’s frustrating to be a big fan of a character that is in one of these ships because it can become so hard to find any content of the character that isn’t ship content. There’s nothing wrong with being super into ships like this and I’m not trying to throw shade at shippers it’s just super frustrating and confusing to me personally

Congratulations on being one of the only asoiaf artists who knows what auburn hair looks like lol everyone makes Sansa a ginger 😭 I have auburn hair just like how you draw Sansa’s and it always irks me that everyone thinks auburn is ginger!! Auburn hair is the color where some people definitively call you a brunette and others definitively call you a redhead—but never a ginger

Thank you!! That means a lot 🥲 and I feel that, Sansa my love, ur hair is gorge but tricky, tbh sometimes it’s hard to find her right tone, lights and shades are big part of the result as well. Anyway, auburn hair is beautifuuuuul. 💖💖💖💖