A blog dedicated to the fierce she-wolf and water dancer Arya Stark from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. We are tracking gotaryastark and aryastarkedit.
I made a video analyzing how Arya Stark’s storyline with Jaqen H’ghar and the Faceless Men is structured like a fairy tale, but one George R. R. Martin deliberately twists and deconstructs.
The video explores:
Arya’s “three deaths” bargain as a Three Wishes story
How she traps Jaqen using his own oath
The role of names and magical rules in Braavos
The House of Black and White as a system built on identity and exchange
Why Arya repeatedly unsettles the supernatural figures around her
Needle as memory, identity, and resistance
One thing I found especially interesting is that Arya survives less through physical strength and more through understanding systems faster than the people around her expect her to.
Even when dealing with magical bargains, assassins, and face-changing cults, the pattern stays the same:
Arya adapts.
And unlike a traditional fairy tale, outsmarting the supernatural doesn’t fix the world. It just keeps her alive long enough to keep moving through it.
“I was told Your Grace had need of me,” Ser Justin said, from one knee. “You will escort the Braavosi banker back to the Wall. Choose six good men and take twelve horses. Oh, and take the Stark girl with you, as well as Alysane Mormont. Lady Arya should have a female companion. Deliver her to Lord Commander Snow on your way to Eastwatch." Stannis tapped the parchment that lay before him.
“A true king pays his debts.”
- Theon I, Twow
"Speak the word, and we will send you to the Black Pearl or the Daughter of the Dusk."
"I sold three cockles to a courtesan." "Which one was this, now? The Queen o' Cockles, was it?" "The Black Pearl. She said 'I'll take three cockles,' and 'Do you have some hot sauce, little one?" "And what did you say?" "I said, 'No, my lady,' and, 'Don't call me little one. My name is Cat.'
"Look, the Sealord's box. That must be the Westerosi envoy. Have you ever seen such clothes on an old man? And look, he's brought the Black Pearl!" She was so lovely that the lamps seemed to burn brighter when she passed.
- Arya, Affc, Adwd, Twow
He is a man of the Night's Watch, she thought, as he sang about some stupid lady throwing herself off some stupid tower because her stupid prince was dead. The lady should go kill the ones who killed her prince.
Theory: In the Winds of Winter, Arya will encounter Jeyne Poole in the course of an apprenticeship with the Black Pearl, who moves in Braavos' high society. The meeting will drive Arya to reclaim her identity.
He was feeling better now. He was not going to let himself be sad. "I better go. I'll spend my first year on the Wall emptying chamber pots if I keep Uncle Ben waiting any longer."
Arya ran to him for a last hug. "Put down the sword first," Jon warned her, laughing. She set it aside almost shyly and showered him with kisses.
"... best you have a new face as well.” He cupped her chin, turned her head this way and that, nodded. “A pretty one this time, I think. As pretty as your own." - Arya, ADwD
A recap and a lesson for fandom newbies -
We have this CANON ACCURATE fanart of Arya Stark from the incredibly talented Tonyloom with the long face, brown hair and grey eyes dressed for feast time at Winterfell as the daughter of the Warden of the North.
A Sansa fan gets triggered by this Arya fanart because it's different from ones that Sansa stans usually like for their 'Stark sisters' fanart - where Arya is drawn dark skinned to highlight Sansa's fair complexion because Sansa is beautiful and Arya is ugly, where Arya is missing teeth, always a sword in hand, messy hair being braided by Sansa to conform to what Sansa likes etc. - and goes on an insane rant about how Arya fans don't want Arya to be ugly because of equating goodness to beauty....
So Arya fans respond to this attack on the fan artist and point to the book text where several characters call Arya pretty and beautiful and ask why they should consider the character ugly when she is not in the text of the books.
A BNF then jumps into the discourse and reblogs the 'Arya is ugly and Arya fans have internalized misogyny' post and pretends that Arya fans are the ones starting this whole discourse on Arya's looks.
BNF tags it as 'This is weird discourse, who cares if Arya is pretty'. Who cares if Arya is pretty? The weird, racist Sansa stan that you reblogged the post from, who got triggered by some Arya fan art and had to go on an entire rant, that's who. Who cares? Well you cared enough to reblog an 'Arya is ugly' post and point fingers at Arya fans, that's who.
And now the BNFs reblog spreads like wildfire amongst the casual fans and we have many who actually think that canon Arya is ugly and Arya fans just have internalized misogyny. This, children, is how the many wrong but popular fanon gets created.
Remember, this BNF had nothing to say about racist Arya fanart. Nothing to say about sexist posts where Arya is masculinized and her femininty stripped from her. Nothing to say about the many posts from Sansa stans/Jonsa shippers about how Jon is repulsed by Arya's ugliness and loves Sansa because she is so beautiful.
But they had to step in and make sure everyone knew that Arya is ugly and it's Arya fans who are the problem.
This is actually nothing new. The reason there is so much wrong misinformation about Arya and Daenerys, and the way this fandom has opinions about these two female characters, is because it's been crafted over decades of fandom BNF's spreading posts and meta like this through BNF blogs like Asoiafuniversity. Explained so well in this post here:
Yes, this is more fandom drama because I need to vent. Ignore it or unfollow me if you’re tired.
Gosh, I wasn’t going to write this, but two
Villainizing Arya fans as 'bad fans' has long been a thing in fandom. Asoiafuniversity, which was the goto place for all things asoiaf in those days, had actual posts equating Arya fans to Walter White fans from Breaking bad who hated on his wife Skylar.
Keep in mind, this is an actual quote from a post on the most popular asoiaf blog when the fandom was very active:
The interesting thing about Arya is that unlike most of the male Bad Fan icons, she doesn’t have a wife to embody her Bad Fans’ frustrations and serve as an outlet for their ire – no Betty Draper, no Skyler White, no Carmela Soprano. Instead, she has a sister, Sansa, who winds up serving the same function. Much of Bad Fandom is a gendered phenomenon, pulling for he-man figures against shrewish wives who just don’t understand them. It’s fascinating to see how the phenomenon can alter itself to accommodate a female-female pairing while still targeting characteristics we typically gender female. The Bad Fan is nothing if not durable.
So much toxic sexism masquerading as feminism, where they equate Arya fans to the chuds who hate female characters and whose unfair target is Sansa because she is 'female'. And Arya is a 'he-man' figure....The mind boggles.
But this was the typical vile sexist garbage Bnfs were spewing about both Arya and Daenerys in the days when fandom was most active and this is where a majority of the sexist opinions about Arya and Dany comes from.
This is why these canonically wrong aspects of these characters are so widespread and entrenched in fandom thought that it doesn't matter if we use actual book quotes to show that it's the exact opposite.
"I sold three cockles to a courtesan," Cat told the sailors. "She called to me as she was stepping off her barge." Brusco had made it plain to her that she was never to speak to a courtesan unless she was spoken to first, but the woman had smiled at her and paid her in silver, ten times what the cockles had been worth.
"What did she say to you, Cat?"
"She said 'I'll take three cockles,' and 'Do you have some hot sauce, little one?'" the girl had answered.
"And what did you say?"
"I said, 'No, my lady,' and, 'Don't call me little one. My name is Cat.'
AFFC, Cat of the Canals
