[TWoW SPOILERS] March chapter mercy part ii

[Angalin]

Carry on.

[Cas Stark]

That was a good question about the weirwood tree, I can't remember, are there weirwoods in the RL? If not that would mean either Nymeria has moved north or Bran has learned how to see out of all the trees.

[Veltigar]

I'll just repeat that it's a great chapter.

[The Abominable SnowOther]

That was a good question about the weirwood tree, I can't remember, are their weirwoods in the RL? If not that would mean either Nymeria has moved north or Bran has learned how to see out of all the trees.

i might just be making this up but i think i remember somebody dreaming of Nymeria and her wolf pack in the snow

[FittleLinger]

Ok, where can we put Nymeria's pack according to the new info? Raventree? Somewhere in the North? Or was it just a random unaccounted for weirwood in the riverlands?

was my question from the previous thread.

Well, Cas, to be honest I think it was an actual weirwood. Otherwise Nymeria wouldn't have seen a face on it. Raventree maybe (unlikely) and the Isle of Faces (probably impossible). But it's a food for thought.

[NedFlanderStark]

Do we know who any of the other Lannister guards with Raff might have been?

[Rooseman]

How can she "think like them" unless she has some access to the past personality? There was definitely a very different tone here than when she was the ugly girl..that was clearly all Arya except for the very first time she puts the face on, when she gets the flood of memories.

In this chapter, there is a curious flatness to her thoughts combined with the outside and also somewhat internal manifestation of a different, non Arya personality and almost all the POV is tagged as Mercy.

Think of it as a method actor who has the magical ability to absorb (part of) a person's memories to prepare for a role. He knows how the person feels and thinks and can put himself into their position. But it's not as if they're taking up their personality traits for real. It's still acting.

In he play, Mercy is playing Shae, not Sansa.

"Mercy" says at the start of the chapter that she will be raped and murdered. Sansa was not murdered; Shae was, and Shae also testified that Tyrion was cruel to her. Also, Mercy's role is a bit part in a play that showcase Tyrion's evil, and the general consensus / rumor in the world is that his wife Sansa abetted his deeds and escape.

Exactly, I don't understand why most people seem to assume it's Sansa. Only because it would make for a nice irony? Well, cool, but Sansa doesn't fit because she was neither raped nor murdered... granted that they're taking artistic liberties, but why not settle for the girl who claimed to have been sexually violated and was actually murdered by Tyrion? Beats me.

[protar]

@John Reynolds

One of the ways a man and woman can couple is sodomy. If a writer is going to write that male character X had sex with female character Y and "had her every way a man can have a woman" you're really reaching to exclude sodomy. In fact, my take is that GRRM was intentionally conveying sodomy to the reader with that line. Ohhh, Dany is under his spell, young girl with the hots for a bad boy, those blue forks in his beard, the way he twirls his thumbs over those breasty pommels. . .so so hot. Yes, we get it.

As for another poster's inability to read, when Arya slides her tongue on Raff's, she's reciprocating the kiss. This isn't complicated folks, and it's behavior wildly out of character for Arya unless there are intervening chapters (GRRM's teaser samples are usually among the first for a POV) we haven't seen yet. So the only explanations are the skin mask memories or House training. Either way, thanks for the pedo material. Like Bigwigstandshisground wrote, this is creepy stuff.

Love Lyana's "read something else" knee-jerk reaction though. I've probably been reading the series before 95% of the board's members, have all the books signed in person, blah blah, but the minute you criticize a sample chapter a fanboy like that has to take that route.

Why exactly is this chapter going too far when the very first book included a 13 year old (about the age Arya is now) having sex within the first hundred pages?

[TheCrannogDweller]

@John Reynolds

Why exactly is this chapter going too far when the very first book included a 13 year old (about the age Arya is now) having sex within the first hundred pages?

Because it ain't sodomy if you put a ring on it.

I'm just guessing, of course.

[Ser Wun Wun]

As to whether or not Arya absorbed some of Mercy's personality, the Kindly Man told her this when she donned the face of the Ugly Little Girl:

“You may have bad dreams for a time,” warned the kindly man. “Her father beat her so often and so brutally that she was never truly free of pain or fear until she came to us.”

So that flood of memories doesn't just occur when you first don a face. It stays with you for a while.

[FittleLinger]

Oh, another thing, am I the only one who thinks the blade was indeed Needle?

A real blade, not belonging to her like her other treasures... It was thin, and she pierced his neck with it. I think Arya got it from under the stairs when she left for Izembaro.

[Dr. Pepper]

One of the ways a man and woman can couple is sodomy. If a writer is going to write that male character X had sex with female character Y and "had her every way a man can have a woman" you're really reaching to exclude sodomy. In fact, my take is that GRRM was intentionally conveying sodomy to the reader with that line. Ohhh, Dany is under his spell, young girl with the hots for a bad boy, those blue forks in his beard, the way he twirls his thumbs over those breasty pommels. . .so so hot. Yes, we get it.

As for another poster's inability to read, when Arya slides her tongue on Raff's, she's reciprocating the kiss. This isn't complicated folks, and it's behavior wildly out of character for Arya unless there are intervening chapters (GRRM's teaser samples are usually among the first for a POV) we haven't seen yet. So the only explanations are the skin mask memories or House training. Either way, thanks for the pedo material. Like Bigwigstandshisground wrote, this is creepy stuff.

Love Lyana's "read something else" knee-jerk reaction though. I've probably been reading the series before 95% of the board's members, have all the books signed in person, blah blah, but the minute you criticize a sample chapter a fanboy like that has to take that route.

It seems like your grievance or more that you oppose the idea that sexuality is a large part of the human experience and important in development and identity. Every sexual scene in the book isn't meant to be gratuitous porn and it's not meant to be some random world building realism the author throws in. The things the characters do with their bodies tells us just as much, if not more, as what the character is thinks or says. Often, they tell us stuff the character is incapable of articulating. There's about a 10,000 word essay on the nature power packed into a 500 word paragraph of Cersei and Taena having sex, for example. There's a critique of personal freedom and agency in Dany's relationship with Daario.

When you look beyond the sexualized scenes, we can go through the same exercises on eating or fighting or bathing. Manderly's eating habits are telling a certain story, not just there to make us hungry. Tyrion's fighting style gives us an understanding about him that he doesn't admit to, not just there to make us feel bloodthirsty.

My point is that the sex isn't there to encourage a one-handed read. I think a reader misses out when the reaction is a knee-jerk "omg pedo perverts and buttsex perverts gross!"

[Muggle]

That was a good question about the weirwood tree, I can't remember, are there weirwoods in the RL? If not that would mean either Nymeria has moved north or Bran has learned how to see out of all the trees.

To me it seems pretty close to the experience jon had with bran. When he was having a ghost dream. I like to believe it was Bran watching Nym. Maybe he was trying to communicate with Arya. Like he did with Jon but for some reason cant.

[Cas Stark]

There is an overwhelming amount of sexual energy targeted to very, very young girls in this story, and it is out of the ordinary, it would have been out of the ordinary in a middle ages society even, since girls didn't routinely get married at 12 and 13 even then. They did, and they surely married in their late teens and sometimes married that early...but we have in this series a lot of sexual material that is related to very young women. And, while I am not 'upset' about it, it IS gratuitious that we have Arya, a 12 year old, having her nipples groped twice in one chapter. That isn't really necessary.

[Tyrion1991]

Hated this chapter.

Its completely out of nowhere for Arya (who is 11 BTW) to become a seductress and be 100% comfortable with this. If GRRM had done a five year gap then I would understand; but this is a total out the blue character change.

Also, GRRM having Arya touch his cock and other actions is just disgusting considering the age of the character. She is 11, the character has not even hit puberty by Aryas own words. The fact that the author insists on writing these scenes with pedophilic undertones is just sick. Why are guys who consider young girls asexual considered unusual in ASOIAF? Having Arya be the initiator of such scenes doesn't give the character agency or power; its just creepy and just shows that GRRM is ignoring the characters age and treating her like shes 15/16

More useless filler material that does nothing to advance the plot.Get her back to Westeros where the real story is.

Her whole character act in the trope of mummers with the fake cock was a dumb, stupid, obnoxious and unfunny waste. Who the hell thinks to themselves "Mercy, mercy, I need to worry about the dwarfs floppy cock". Its like a very bad Little Britain sketch rather than a serious story or drama.

I have always been of the opinion that GRRM started his books the same way Feist did with the characters being very young children and then intending to age them all up to the standard age of most heroic fantasy characters where he could actually properly explore their coming of age and sexuality. For one reasons and another, he failed to do that but clearly still wants to tell this aspect of their characters. Resulting in every character being underage and so much pedophile content. Honestly, I hate this change in Arya to make out as if an 11 year old girl can be this seductress type or black widow who kills the many men who swoon over her.

[-Ghost-]

Oh, another thing, am I the only one who thinks the blade was indeed Needle?

A real blade, not belonging to her like her other treasures... It was thin, and she pierced his neck with it. I think Arya got it from under the stairs when she left for Izembaro.

I was just thinking that. Was she wearing her mummers coat when she killed Raff? Could Needle fit hidden in it?

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

i might just be making this up but i think i remember somebody dreaming of Nymeria and her wolf pack in the snow

That's aDwD, the blind girl. Arya dreams her wolf dream, and it snows in the riverlands. That places her chapter around the time of the Jaime chapter where it first starts to snow in the riverlands, I think.

[Ran]

I suspect that prolonged wearing of a face is going to lead to more of an absorption, of sorts. It makes sense, really: it makes them even better at playing the part, at becoming those people. And as others say, things like the internal thought, "Fuss and feathers!" are just big flashing beacons letting us know that all the thoughts we see aren't pure, unadulterated Arya Stark. Therefore, the dissonance of her being not Arya, but largely Mercy with the occasional intrusion from Arya (until right near the end), is understandable -- and I think it's what makes the chapter, and its setting, so ironic. She's become a role far more than any of the other characters who ended up with "role" names as their chapter headings, and there's layers of irony in the way that what she's acting is an actress who is going to act out the role of Sansa or something like it (yet more layers of removal from her "real" self, and yet at the same time closer to her real self because at least she lived through some of what the play recounts), and yet it all ends with an elaborate return to an incontestable bit of Arya's modus operandi and drives.

It's quite inspired, really, and I'm only sorry that the deliberate dissonances Martin laid into it have put some off.

[Arya2ndFace]

fantastic chapter, but like so many others, leaves me clamoring for the actual completion of WoW.

one thing I noticed in this chapter, that to me is very indicative of what is happening to Arya, is this statement:

"It would be just like Mercy to sleep through her own rape."

Granted, Mercy is not Arya, and the rape is only a scene in the play, but is this statement not a good indication of exactly how Arya is growing mentally? meaning she is showing more and more tendency to be UNFEELING, UNCARING, EMOTIONLESS. Losing grip with her own inner-self.

and this chapter does bring to mind the "old crones" prophecy of Arya sewing throughout the winter (Arya sews with her own NEEDLE in her own way meaning killing) but the old crone also said she would not survive the winter and be found with needle in her frozen fingers.

I must say, to me Arya will complete her list and will complete it before Spring arrives again. but she will not see that Spring herself.

[Dr. Pepper]

Exactly, I don't understand why most people seem to assume it's Sansa. Only because it would make for a nice irony? Well, cool, but Sansa doesn't fit because she was neither raped nor murdered... granted that they're taking artistic liberties, but why not settle for the girl who claimed to have been sexually violated and was actually murdered by Tyrion? Beats me.

I think it's easier to assume it's Sansa simply because of the nature of the play. It's a play about Tyrion the villian, the evil imp who sold his soul to the devil. The entire premise of the play is a massive taking of artistic liberties. Each glimpse we get of the play has Tyrion in the position of pursuing atrocious acts. Coupled with Izembaro's "give them something they haven't seen before" mantra, the rape of a noble maiden would seem to fit more. The genre is more horror than political satire.