yeah it’s a mess

she/her/it | a wholeass adult, by law

[tired-w]

A gripe I have about a lot of fanfiction that features Arya or Brienne is the fact they often have these two women have negative views on women and feminity when that is not the case. They both have a negative view of the place women are made to settle in the social practices of Westeros.

Arya dislikes how women are viewed and she refuses to "be a lady". She rejects it the same way a tomboy would reject the color pink even if they don't actually hate the color. Its like coming from a family where women are homemaker and saying "I'm going to be an engineer!". People aren't taking her seriously because thats just not what is done, its a male dominated field, and they don't have the faith in her. Its like late 90's early 2000's tomboy character archetype. Hates the social standards not the girl.

As for Brienne, she doesn't reject feminity in the same way but thats because she was never allowed to have access to it. She has always been masculinized and deemed ugly and not a woman. It's like how female sports stars often have their feminity stripped away and questioned, even if their body serves an important job. Any comment you can read by red-pilled men under an Illona Maher video is absolutely something that can or has been said to Brienne.

The character who does hate feminity, women, and everything about being a girl is Cersei. She is one of those boy moms whose husbands married then cause they were pretty but checked out so now they are dating their own son because they don't know how to exist outside male validation. Other women are not allies but threats, young, old, ugly, beautiful, doesn't matter, if you have a vagina you're a threat. Brienne and Arya can be friends with women, Cersei cannot.

[longing-lotus]

storytime with papa

{commission done by @ellemnopie}

[guaguataibushizhuada]

Arya, don't look back.

[uter0s]

“Well,” Arya said, “my hair’s messy and my nails are dirty and my feet are all hard.” Robb wouldn’t care about that, probably, but her mother would.

[gaya-the-k]

Ned lives. Catelyn gets her worst nightmare.

[postarcadian]

the thing I love most about how tumblr users use tags is that it’s like what if a social media website had a footnotes system

[thelaughingtree]

might make a more effortful post later with actual quotes to support this reading but I'm increasingly thinking that Arya's arc post-AGOT, especially in Braavos, deliberately subverts her initial desire for 'adventures' and 'travel' and general curiosity. instead it gives us a horrific travelogue where she's tired and hungry and in rags and fearing for her life and watching people she cares for die and trying to turn her anger and desire for justice into a prayer for vengeance and trying to bury her grief and loss by stripping herself of her identity and throwing herself into a death cult even as she is miserable and completely alone. These are not fun experiences that Arya gleefully embraces because she's secretly a sadistic little girl (she is not), but lonely and difficult ones which give her a vantage point into different walks of life - in a way that demands an obliteration of herself. In some ways it's the opposite of a typical adventure story arc which is all about coming-of-age in a journey of literal discovery as well as self-discovery, where the protagonist has a former sense of self at the end of it. In Arya's case, that sense of self is something she is battling with - circumstances are demanding she sacrifice it, but she can't quite give up the last vestiges of Arya Stark. She keeps needle and she dreams of being the 'night wolf' - reminders of her home, the people who loved her, the magic that's specific to being a Stark, the sense of pack and community and belonging Nymeria has. I think a key thing to pick up on here is the presence of people and pack - Arya's curiosity is less about places and more about different types of people! Usually, travelling (over months or years) means letting go of stronger, more rooted social connections to meet people new, but Arya isn't even getting the latter and is deeply isolated in Braavos.

In any case, I think this gives us some hints about her eventual direction. If her arc is a cursed travelogue where she is apart from her pack, then her rejection of the faceless men and her reclamation of 'Arya Stark' will involve finding her pack. if there's any lessons she will take from the faceless men, it won't be becoming an emotionally dead cut-throat killer, but rather the empathy she develops through literally walking through the world wearing different faces, experiencing the limitations of what it means to be poor, blind, so ugly one is loathed, etc. and once she has returned to herself and her people - perhaps 'inheriting' the Brotherhood from her mother and helping them find a more focused purpose outside of the vengeance she once craved, that they once pursued with Lady Stoneheart - I can't really see her wanting to leave any time soon. Any endgame scenario where Arya gets off on a ship and goes in adventures misses that she's already done that! She's had adventures! (Too many adventures). Westeros might currently have restrictive roles for women but the calamity of the long night, the need for women to take arms (GRRM is a boomer who grew up in the shadow of WWII, remember), & her and others' efforts to actively challenge social roles might mean they're not so restrictive that she has to escape (and where would she escape to? Is it that better in Essos?). More likely she would decide to stay with her pack, with her roots, and try and rebuild her home.

[limbel]

we have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who write gen fics. we have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who write character studies and stories with no focus on romance or sex. we have to get on our knees and thank the brave soldiers in fandom who write about minor characters and friendship and family with no focus on romance or sex. i know it’s hard to care about characters in a world that seems to only revolve around ships but i see you. and i love you

[movementnudge]

Movement nudge, for hands and wrists!

X

[hylialeia]

easy to forget but book jon snow is great actually. he gets so drunk he cries in his first chapter. he's 16 years old and laser focused on loan negotiation. he keeps getting promoted against his will. he's the chosen fantasy protagonist with the worst genre awareness ever. he implements pro immigration social reforms. he has a giant albino pet wolf. he cuts a guy's head off. he thinks he invented cunnilingus. he's been dead for 15 years.

[status-quo-hater]

I think one of the funniest abortion stances I've heard was from my parents neighbor. He's a like, hard-core libertarian viking larper guy who is very tall and very fat and very bald.

He believes a fetus is human with a soul, but also its "basically attacking the woman's body" so if she wants to get rid of it, that's "basically self-defense". He compared it to shooting a home invader. So he supports abortion not as healthcare, but as killing a baby in self-defense

[status-quo-hater]

Y'know I'm so glad someone reminded me of this. Because this was also discussed.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

He brought up people consensually hurting each other, didn't go for one of the obvious answers like boxing or body mods or something, no he went STRAIGHT TO BDSM and he DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER THE ACRONYM

[goth-queen]

[theecarcrash]

my wolves of surpassing loveliness

[ellemnopie]

[daughterofthenorths]

ACoK, ARYA II - AGoT, ARYA I - ASoS, ARYA II

[salmonhere]

Wolf girl

[keydekyie]

"It would have been easier if you'd just said yes."

original