[ADWD SPOILERS] The Ugly Little Girl

[Wjaykusuma]

What does the target do with the coins the captain brings to them?

He bites each and every one, to make sure they aren't false.

The only way to poison him.

Now I understand, :D

thanks for explaining, at first I confused of how did she kill a man with that :P

[FacelessDude]

I'm kinda torn about this now. I do love Arya, don't remotely think she's a psychopath/sociopath, but I'm having a bit of trouble with the plausability of this storyline. It seems to me that GRRM is trying to have it both ways with Arya. On the one hand, she's embracing pretty much every task the kindly man/plague face give her and in so doing is apparently progressing with her training. But on the other hand, she still is for all intents and purposes Arya (and always will be as long as she has Needle, IMO), and as the conversation with plague face made clear, hasn't made any where near the required psychological change that faceless men need.

So for me, without that change not only does it kill any tension that might arise were she asked to do something that Arya doesn't want to do (like kill Jon), but on a more basic plot level I don't know why the kindly man/plague face think she's making progress when they even tell her to her face that they know that she isn't. I suppose you could argue that there's further transition to come, but shit, isn't that what these past two books have been for? Maybe Arya's story is one that would have worked a lot better with the 5 year gap, I dunno.

Arya is not the little girl she was at Winterfell. She is obviously suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. You should read Beyond the Wall. It explains a lot of things some people don't understand and it analyzes eveything in ASOIAF.

[Roboginger]

Um, I think this is just really stupid of me, but I don't understand how Arya kills the man by putting the coin in his purse. Sorry if this is really obvious but it's just gone right over my head.

Same thing here. right over my head.

[Maester Kym]

Always enjoy reading Arya's chapters and this one was no different.. The face scene made me feel a bit suffocated though! I always imagined that the FM having different faces was some kind of glamour so was a bit shocked that it was a literal 'putting on a mask' kind of thing.

[Gobiel]

This chapter made me wonder: Is the second face Jaqen took his real face ?

It seems like it is not possible to change your face without having a mask ready before.

As well, might the night she dreamt about the men she killed foreshadow the fact that you can change your face into someone else's either by killing him or by having his 'mask' after having killed him? If so, how has Melosandre done her 'trick' ?

Confused...

[Arya Nymeria Stark]

Um, I think this is just really stupid of me, but I don't understand how Arya kills the man by putting the coin in his purse. Sorry if this is really obvious but it's just gone right over my head.

The man whose purse she puts the coin into isn't her target. He gives the coin to the old man who bites down on every coin to see if it's real. HE is the real target.

[duffmid]

This was a great chapter IMO. I didn't figure out what she was going to do until she started cutting the captain's purse, (I had thought she was going to snick one of the agent's arteries with her finger knife which would've been a much lamer and messier way to do it).

I don't think the face "masks" are the only way the FM change their faces. Didn't the KM say something about it can be done with mummery or glamors, but those can be seen through. I got the impression they were using the "mask" for Arya because it was her first hit so they needed something more reliable. It wouldn't make sense for the masks to be their only method, or else how could JH change his face right in front of Arya's eyes?

There are a lot of good points on here about FM not really losing their identity, at least not entirely. It seems to be more about, giving up that identity as opposed to losing it. her own identity would still exist but she must be able to slip out of it and into a new one completely and at will.

But as awesome as all this hitman stuff is, I have to imagine that Arya won't finish her training for some reason or other because GRRM has to bring her back into one of the main story lines at some stage. Otherwise everyone will demand to know what was the point of following her all this time only to have her disappear or die without any real effect?

[Lord Liam DarkStark]

This chapter made me wonder: Is the second face Jaqen took his real face ?

It seems like it is not possible to change your face without having a mask ready before.

As well, might the night she dreamt about the men she killed foreshadow the fact that you can change your face into someone else's either by killing him or by having his 'mask' after having killed him? If so, how has Melisandre done her 'trick' ?

Confused...

I think he started out with his real face and hair. Then glamoured to trick pate. Then he killed pate and took up his face. But wether it was from killing him. Or stealing his face idk. Maybe its another glamour but I doubt that. He probably took his face otherwise the body of pate would of been found and identified. Strange. Maybe jaqen fed pate to the ravens hahaha. Pate did say the ravens looked like they wanted to eat him xD

[The Singer]

She's definitely making progress even though she hasn't let go of Arya, perhaps faceless men never truly forget who they really are, perhaps that's the importance of being able to lie and when she can convince the kindly man that she's no longer Arya (even though she is) then her training will be over.

[Bad Hound!]

When I read this chapter, I was thinking - if you're a FM and you "want" a new face for a hit, which face can you have? Can you only have one of the faces that are on the walls, i.e. the faces of the people who have died in the House of Black and White?

So let's say you want to kill Cersei, you can't just say "OK, I'll have the face of Jamie Lannister". You have to select one of the faces that are on the wall in the House of Black and White. So it makes the FM task not that easy.

Also GRRM is very insistent in this chapter of all the stuff made of weirwood mixed with ebony. What is the significance of this? Are ebony and weirdwood 2 sides of something magical/Godlike? We know weirdwood is connected to the Old Gods and the greenseers network, what is ebony supposed to represent?

As for identity, I agree with Loahu earlier who said that the FM don't quite lose their identity (they retain it, and we know it since they cannot kill someone they know). But they learn how to hide it when on a mission. So Arya is learning to be "no one", but I don't think the KM expects her to be no one at all times. I think they know she is not really "no one" (the plague-face man even says that she is Arya of House Stark, so they know exactly who she is, and presumably what she' been through, and the feelings that rage inside her heart. But what is important for them is that she can be trained to become "no one" for the length of a mission, at least.

[kephv]

Actually, on the mission she's supposed to be whoever's face she's wearing. Picture it like an actor becoming the part they play and giving a really good performance -- that's all it is really, a performance. Though there might also be some magical aspect to it, most notably the memories of the person whose face they wear (see Arya remembering the Ugly Girl's father attacking her).

[idler]

Just for the record:

"Arya would have given anything for a cup of milk and a lemon cake, but the brown wasn't so bad"

I never noticed Arya has the same taste as Sansa. Time for a re-read... :read:

[Novice_Singer]

I'm not very good at this, but I have a theory regarding Casso. (The seal - "King of Seals") Arya notices that regardless of the face she wears, the seal knows her. She concedes that it could just be the smell of the fish but I truly believe her initial instinct in that the animal see's through the disguise. Animals can see, smell, and feel things that we can't. It is known. I think that once she or any other warg slips into the skin of an animal that they will then be able to recognize a FM in a heartbeat. GRRM could take this any number of directions, but at the very least it makes her a very difficult target should the FM not just want to let her go if they renege on their offer to simply say the words. It also makes her a great assassin should one of the FM be deemed worthy of the gift.