Arya Stark

[Illiterati]

1 minute ago, Pandean said:

Am I the only one who doesn't really like the theories/predictions of Arya using so-and-so and blank-and-blank's faces and the like? Like, I'm not sure why I don't really like the faces thing. Arya exacting vengeance while wearing other people's faces seems just...weird to me? The more the faces are involved the more i seem to dislike when they're used for plot purposes.

 

Not saying I dislike Arya or Arya's vengeance against the people who wronged her....I just can't seem to like the faces part. For some reason.

I think that's why she peeled the face off after doing Frey's men.....to make sure you stay connected to this is Arya doing it.

[Pandean]

1 minute ago, Illiterati said:

I think that's why she peeled the face off after doing Frey's men.....to make sure you stay connected to this is Arya doing it.

It's not that I'm not connected to her doing it...I just find the plot device....gimmicky isn't the right word. It reminds me of when I watched Mission Impossible with their masks that kept coming off and on and off and on and sat thinking "wtf is this really"

I think I think along the lines of it does a disservice to Arya and her abilities as an assassin to be able to waltz in and wear anyone's face, thus gaining trust and killing people easily.

I'm not making sense, welp.

[Lord Okra]

4 minutes ago, Pandean said:

Am I the only one who doesn't really like the theories/predictions of Arya using so-and-so and blank-and-blank's faces and the like? Like, I'm not sure why I don't really like the faces thing. Arya exacting vengeance while wearing other people's faces seems just...weird to me? The more the faces are involved the more i seem to dislike when they're used for plot purposes.

 

Not saying I dislike Arya or Arya's vengeance against the people who wronged her....I just can't seem to like the faces part. For some reason.

Arya's character has nose dived since she gave that captain from Bravos a coin.  That was her last truly great scene that I can remember.

I was so excited for her.....and about seeing the house of black and white.....and Bravos.....it was going to be awesome.

Except, it wasn't.  House of white and black was boring stuff.  Arya became an oathbreaker.......it just wasn't good stuff like the Arya from before.

There were parts here and there that entertained (the play scene was good) but the Waif stuff with Arya was just not that great.

I'm with you on the wearing other faces stuff.  I don't need a lot more of that.  Honestly, I'd be happy if Jon/Gendry turn Arya away from carrying around faces and being obsessed with killing people.

[Monster_Under_the_Bed]

3 hours ago, Bran the Shipper said:

It would help explain her change in behavior, plus her newfound abilities that we hadn't seen any indication she learned (being able to use the magic to change her face without assistance). 

This is part of what bothers me about Arya's character now. She's been played up so much with all the skills that she has, it basically makes her Batman, Gandalf, and McGyver all in one package. Genius fighter, genius mind, genius thief, genius magician.., ughhh 

[Pandean]

25 minutes ago, Monster_Under_the_Bed said:

This is part of what bothers me about Arya's character now. She's been played up so much with all the skills that she has, it basically makes her Batman, Gandalf, and McGyver all in one package. Genius fighter, genius mind, genius thief, genius magician.., ughhh 

Basically mini omnipotent assassin god

It just really ruins her character....she doesn't feel either plausible, real, or relateable anymore, at least to me.

 

30 minutes ago, Lord Okra said:

Arya's character has nose dived since she gave that captain from Bravos a coin.  That was her last truly great scene that I can remember.

I was so excited for her.....and about seeing the house of black and white.....and Bravos.....it was going to be awesome.

Except, it wasn't.  House of white and black was boring stuff.  Arya became an oathbreaker.......it just wasn't good stuff like the Arya from before.

There were parts here and there that entertained (the play scene was good) but the Waif stuff with Arya was just not that great.

I'm with you on the wearing other faces stuff.  I don't need a lot more of that.  Honestly, I'd be happy if Jon/Gendry turn Arya away from carrying around faces and being obsessed with killing people.

Yeah. It's just, you could show a million different interesting ways how Arya does stuff---but nope, someone dies, Arya pulls of a face, ha!

I really did use to love her character (despite what some people may say/think) but I just find her so unreal, unable to relate with, and it reminds me of when you're 12 and you're roleplaying or playing D&D and everyone decides to God Mod. 

[Darksnider05]

1 hour ago, Pandean said:

Basically mini omnipotent assassin god

It just really ruins her character....she doesn't feel either plausible, real, or relateable anymore, at least to me.

 

Yeah. It's just, you could show a million different interesting ways how Arya does stuff---but nope, someone dies, Arya pulls of a face, ha!

I really did use to love her character (despite what some people may say/think) but I just find her so unreal, unable to relate with, and it reminds me of when you're 12 and you're roleplaying or playing D&D and everyone decides to God Mod. 

Yeah what did you love about Arya, I'm curious?

[Pandean]

1 minute ago, Darksnider05 said:

Yeah what did you love about Arya, I'm curious?

Her sense of independence and how she feels her emotions strongly and is guided by them, the fierce loyalty she has to those she deems her 'pack' whether it's blood related or not. I love the almost naive way she looks at right and wrong because I think it's unique, I like her resilience and refusal to quit and how she can be knocked down over and over and still keep going both physically and mentally, I like her drive and determination. While I'm not the biggest fan of her fight with the Waif for logical reasons (mainly the whole gut wound, dirty water, actress sews her up, more fighting and acrobatics thing), I love the fact she keeps going until she physically cannot. I like the fact that she is so in tune with who she is, what she wants, and her identity that she couldn't be a Faceless Man because she couldn't let go of who she is.

That and more.

 

So seeing her this season seeming (to me) completely OOC with the way she acts really disappointed me and made my kind of angry because she had all these complex things going for her until this season where it seemed to be ditched for "Grr, Sansa is awful and I'm angry and grrr people should die because I'm a faceless assassin who wears faces aren't I badass."

I think it's almost like they're trying *too hard* to play up the FM assassin angle and it's butchering all the other bits of her character.

I only started posting on this forum for true this season, so I obviously haven't had much of a time to gush over what I loved about Arya.

[Illiterati]

She seems out of character because she IS out of character, literally.  Wait for it, she'll be back.

[Tianzi]

On ‎21‎.‎08‎.‎2017 at 8:48 AM, Gaz0680 said:

1. The writers are taking Arya down an even darker path towards full blown psychopath and the change in delivery of the character is to illustrate that descent. They will then either find a way to bring her back from the edge or will kill her off in S8.

2. Arya is dead and the Waif is wearing her face. I would absolutely loathe for this to be true but I am genuinely fearful the show may go that way.

3. Arya truly did become No One at end of season 6 and is just playing the part of the old Arya Stark, therefore the true emotion of the real Arya isnt there.

3. No.

2. No.

1. I just hope so. I hope this psychopath vibe she's producing right now is intentional and is leading somewhere, but I would bet just as much money on someone in the team being deluded that this behaviour makes her character 'cool'.

[Illiterati]

It is leading somewhere.  Elimination of a threat to the pack.

[Pandean]

3 minutes ago, Illiterati said:

She seems out of character because she IS out of character, literally.  Wait for it, she'll be back.

Eh?

[Illiterati]

4 minutes ago, Pandean said:

Eh?

This isn't anything new from me.  She is acting out this angst against Sansa to draw Littlefinger into a trap.  

There must certainly be a grain of truth to the feelings she is displaying about Sansa, but not enough to lead to the explosive tirades she's had.  Those are all for LF's consumption, not Sansa's.  

You will see in the end that everything Arya has said has been to protect Sansa, not hurt her.  Protect her from Littlefinger.

[Gaz0680]

5 minutes ago, Pandean said:

Quote

 I love the almost naive way she looks at right and wrong because I think it's unique,

 

I find this comment interesting how you call Arya perspective on right and wrong 'almost naive'.

While you could certainly say Arya's moral compass is somewhat off at the moment, previously before her time in Braavos Arya's perspective on right and wrong was probably the most honest, practical and realistic of anyone in the ASOIAF universe.

Certainly Arya's egalitarian perspective of treating everyone equally regardless of station in life is a much more advanced and modern value than any of the others possess. She judges people based on their actions, not on how they were born or how much money they have. The books constantly illustrate (and the show does too, albeit to a lesser extent) that Arya is someone who can talk to anyone, make friends with just about anyone and even earn the respect of people she hates.

Whereas the perspective on right and wrong for most other characters falls into either:

A. Serving self (and to varying extents family) and going after what you want is right regardless (Tywin, Cersei, Joffrey, Ramsay, Roose Bolton, Littlefinger, etc), to the point there is no wrong. 

B. Adhering to a supposedly moral code of honour and duty (Ned, Cat, Ser Barristan, Jon, Robb, Sansa, Blackfish). To these people doing dishonourable actions or failing to do their duty was 'wrong'.

I would say Arya's views on right and wrong are not naive at all, but quite intelligent, particularly for the time. Her perspective on right and wrong has similarities with more practical people like Varys and Tyrion, though is less self serving, except when it comes to vengeance, where Arya is just as self serving as Varys (remember the Sorceror?).

[falcotron]

18 minutes ago, Gaz0680 said:

Certainly Arya's egalitarian perspective of treating everyone equally regardless of station in life is a much more advanced and modern value than any of the others possess.

But you could argue that ignoring the social realities around her is naive—she lives in feudal Westeros, not in 21st century England.

If she continually got away with it, you could say that's the whole point, and that she's actually found exactly the kind of awareness that her world needs.

But she doesn't. She only got away with it very early on, and then only at the expense of her family—most obviously when Sansa's direwolf ended up getting killed instead of hers because she'd failed to realize that the important difference between a bratty king and a nice kid is the king part rather than the bratty part. Since then, she's had a terrible life, and the closest she came to escaping it is joining an assassin cult who take egalitarianism to the extreme logical endpoint of nihilism.

What makes her different from the practical characters like show!Tyrion is that they've found a way to acknowledge the world without accepting it, to live in the realities they don't like until they can change them, instead of just pretending they don't exist and then fighting to try to make that work.

[Stormourne]

7 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

What is clever about the Stark sisters hating each other and threatening each other?

Why are people assuming that the only plausible scenario is one where Arya and Sansa become BFF and walk hand-in-hand, giggling at random shit? There is a reason why Arya is threatening Sansa, and why Sansa is afraid in return. This will be resolved in the next episode, and I guess people will go "oh, that's why she was behaving like that," etc. So chill.

Arya Stark and Jon Snow are my favorite characters in the books and show, and this did not feel out of character for me. Not when you've read the Mercy chapter from Winds of Winter, and understand how her trauma has caused her to become emotionless, or able to control her emotions in great detail. So I don't understand how people are freaking out about this. I do believe the writers used her characterisation from that Winds of Winter chapter to inform them on how to write her character this season.

Arya still remembers the Sansa from her childhood, the bitchy want-it-all, and that she still lingers around Littlefinger is suspect enough for Arya to suspect her in return. Remember that Arya saw Littlefinger with Tywin when she was a cupbearer, so she's suspicious. And she can read faces, so I'm assuming she was correct in knowing that Sansa has aspirations for power, even if Sansa does not want to feel that hunger for power.

So Arya is conflicted about the situation, defensive of Jon Snow, and aggressive towards Sansa to keep her in check so that she does not act on the feelings she's kept buried deep. 

[Gaz0680]

18 minutes ago, falcotron said:

But you could argue that ignoring the social realities around her is naive—she lives in feudal Westeros, not in 21st century England.

If she continually got away with it, you could say that's the whole point, and that she's actually found exactly the kind of awareness that her world needs.

But she doesn't. She only got away with it very early on, and then only at the expense of her family—most obviously when Sansa's direwolf ended up getting killed instead of hers because she'd failed to realize that the important difference between a bratty king and a nice kid is the king part rather than the bratty part. Since then, she's had a terrible life, and the closest she came to escaping it is joining an assassin cult who take egalitarianism to the extreme logical endpoint of nihilism.

Are you seriously blaming Arya for Lady being killed? And no, the important part isnt the bratty part or the king part. The important part was Joffrey was using his station to bully someone of a different station and Arya was defending the person being bullied (who also happened to be her friend, giving her extra incentive). Are you saying she should have stood by and done nothing just because Joffrey was prince??

Whether Joffrey was a king or a peasant is and should be considered irrelevant in Arya's (or anyone's) response to the situation. I dont care if the Joffrey in this situation was another peasant or just he was a peasant and Mycah was the noble. 

Morality is not and should not be solely determined by the society we live in.

 

[Gaz0680]

30 minutes ago, falcotron said:

What makes her different from the practical characters like show!Tyrion is that they've found a way to acknowledge the world without accepting it, to live in the realities they don't like until they can change them, instead of just pretending they don't exist and then fighting to try to make that work.

I disagree that Arya is pretending the realities dont exist. On the contrary, she fully recognises the realities of her situation and this is pretty clear in the books.

Arya doesnt accept many of those realities and nor should she have to. Arya is different than Tyrion in that she has a more narrow viewpoint - ie she just reacts to situations as they present themselves and isn't after the 'long con' or to effect more global change like Tyrion is trying to in his time with Daenerys for example.

I think had Tyrion been there in Arya's place when Joff attacked Mycah, he would have responded pretty much exactly the same way Arya did.

[Pandean]

1 hour ago, Gaz0680 said:

I find this comment interesting how you call Arya perspective on right and wrong 'almost naive'.

While you could certainly say Arya's moral compass is somewhat off at the moment, previously before her time in Braavos Arya's perspective on right and wrong was probably the most honest, practical and realistic of anyone in the ASOIAF universe.

Certainly Arya's egalitarian perspective of treating everyone equally regardless of station in life is a much more advanced and modern value than any of the others possess. She judges people based on their actions, not on how they were born or how much money they have. The books constantly illustrate (and the show does too, albeit to a lesser extent) that Arya is someone who can talk to anyone, make friends with just about anyone and even earn the respect of people she hates.

Whereas the perspective on right and wrong for most other characters falls into either:

A. Serving self (and to varying extents family) and going after what you want is right regardless (Tywin, Cersei, Joffrey, Ramsay, Roose Bolton, Littlefinger, etc), to the point there is no wrong. 

B. Adhering to a supposedly moral code of honour and duty (Ned, Cat, Ser Barristan, Jon, Robb, Sansa, Blackfish). To these people doing dishonourable actions or failing to do their duty was 'wrong'.

I would say Arya's views on right and wrong are not naive at all, but quite intelligent, particularly for the time. Her perspective on right and wrong has similarities with more practical people like Varys and Tyrion, though is less self serving, except when it comes to vengeance, where Arya is just as self serving as Varys (remember the Sorceror?).

That was probably poor wording on my part.

What I meant was Arya has a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong regardless of station and rank and protocol. Hence, despite it being dangerous for her, she calls Joffrey out on the Mycah thing. Her views of what justice is and does doesn't factor in rank, station, and the like. Which, for her time is revolutionary but also hard and not always applicable due to the privilege/power certain stations have.

Such as, insulting the King/Prince/etc. and accusing them of lying/etc. could be ground for treason, even if it's true.

A better way is that she has an egalitarian view of justice that doesn't co-exist with her time as much as it would in the modern world.

[falcotron]

19 minutes ago, Gaz0680 said:

Are you seriously blaming Arya for Lady being killed?

No, that's not even remotely what I said.

Arya lives in a crapsack world where terrible things happen to her that aren't her fault, because people don't live by modern morality. The only time she wasn't punished for doing nothing morally wrong, her family was punished for her doing nothing morally wrong, which is just as bad.

Her life has been hell, and acting as if the world doesn't work that way is naive.

19 minutes ago, Gaz0680 said:

Morality is not and should not be solely determined by the society we live in.

Naivete is not immorality, and it's not morality either, it's an almost completely orthogonal issue.

And morality is not the only thing that should drive your actions. You need to be practical as well. When you live in an immoral world, the challenge is to find a way to balance things—to be able to live in that world without being immoral yourself. That's part of what show!Tyrion's story is about, and it's part of what everyone has to learn to become an adult (because even our society isn't exactly wholly moral either, even if it's not nearly as bad as Westeros).

[Pandean]

7 minutes ago, falcotron said:

No, that's not even remotely what I said.

Arya lives in a crapsack world where terrible things happen to her that aren't her fault, because people don't live by modern morality. The only time she wasn't punished for doing nothing morally wrong, her family was punished for her doing nothing morally wrong, which is just as bad.

Her life has been hell, and acting as if the world doesn't work that way is naive.

Naivete is not immorality, and it's not morality either, it's an almost completely orthogonal issue.

And morality is not the only thing that should drive your actions. You need to be practical as well. When you live in an immoral world, the challenge is to find a way to balance things—to be able to live in that world without being immoral yourself. That's part of what show!Tyrion's story is about, and it's part of what everyone has to learn to become an adult (because even our society isn't exactly wholly moral either, even if it's not nearly as bad as Westeros).

You're saying what I think a lot better than I am!