TV Arya disappointment! Deliberate weakening of another female character? Potential spoilers

[Nerevanin]

I don't really mind that she, Jon, and possibly also Robb and Rickon doesn't have any warging abilities in the show. I think that there are two main reasons for this:

1) their warging abilities are important enough for the story - judging from the books it might be true even there, apart from some of us thinking that it could save Jon.

2) to make things simpler.

3) to make Bran look more unique. If I am not mistaken in the show there was only 1 warg but Bran and that was Orell. So it can be seen as a very rare gift and only few chosen ones have.

By the way, the fact that Arya beat the waif without the cats make her in fact stronger than the Arya in the books, who more or less cheated, because she didn't master her sense enough to beat the kind man, she used the cats' eyes to do it.

[Xcorpyo001]

58 minutes ago, Nerevanin said:

I....

By the way, the fact that Arya beat the waif without the cats make her in fact stronger than the Arya in the books, who more or less cheated, because she didn't master her sense enough to beat the kind man, she used the cats' eyes to do it.

 

That’s just it. I don’t buy it, not even for a second. It’s not realistic. I know that this is a fantasy, but if in this fantasy world someone doesn’t have magic, he/she should be treated as a normal person. But they don’t do that.

We are to believe that in a matter of weeks Arya managed to hone her senses to such a degree that she managed to win a duel while blind, without any superpowers, against another enemy with superior skills, who might know how to trick her other senses as well, because he/she went through the same training? It took Daredevil over a decade to became as awesome as TV show Arya is now, and he had superpowers.

Show Arya beating the Waif makes no sense. Don’t forget that the Waif is also a FM, and more advanced than she is. It is impossible for a normal person(even an agile one) to become so proficient in such a short amount of time without some sort of magical assistance.

Book Arya can bypass this part of her training because she uses her warg abilities. Show Arya does it because a scene in the show tells us she does. I have a blind relative. He might have a better hearing than me, as in he can hear a phone on the other side of his house, but if I punch him in the face, he’ll fall like a brick(haven't tried it yet, but I'm pretty sure that's the way it will play out).

The only believable thing show Arya can develop from that particular ‘training’ is brain damage. Don’t know how many times she was hit in the head in those 3 scenes, lost count after ten. I should also point out the fact that the amount of padding on that staff is laughable, so Arya should be groggy or even KO after the second or third blow, if she managed to remain standing after the first one.

[ShadowKitteh]

1 hour ago, Nerevanin said:

I don't really mind that she, Jon, and possibly also Robb and Rickon doesn't have any warging abilities in the show. I think that there are two main reasons for this:

1) their warging abilities are important enough for the story - judging from the books it might be true even there, apart from some of us thinking that it could save Jon.

2) to make things simpler.

3) to make Bran look more unique. If I am not mistaken in the show there was only 1 warg but Bran and that was Orell. So it can be seen as a very rare gift and only few chosen ones have.

By the way, the fact that Arya beat the waif without the cats make her in fact stronger than the Arya in the books, who more or less cheated, because she didn't master her sense enough to beat the kind man, she used the cats' eyes to do it.

There are three in the show. Bran, Orell, and that Thenn with the owl (I think it was an owl.) 

While I miss Arya's warging in the show, (I especially wanted the scene where's she finds her mother's corpse...) I agree I think it makes Arya stronger without it.

I don't get how anyone can think GRRM or D&D&B make females weak, or weaken book characters for the show. If anything, they're stronger on the show. Sansa anyone?

[Xcorpyo001]

13 minutes ago, ShadowKitteh said:

I don't get how anyone can think GRRM or D&D&B make females weak, or weaken book characters for the show. If anything, they're stronger on the show. Sansa anyone?

 

Just so we are sure we understand eachother, is this line just you trolling, or you really believe what you are saying?

[Forlong the Fat]

12 hours ago, Xcorpyo001 said:

 

Dareon is a NW deserter. You know, the guys the Starks are duty bound to execute if the catch them. Since she was the only Stark in Braavos…Shame is was cut from the show, They could have had an Arya executes deserter/Jon executes mutineers parallel. And also prove that she still had some connection to her old self and her Stark roots, the same way her warging did in later chapters.  

 

And they clearly showed in this very episode that she didn’t kill him(the Hound) because she was conflicted about her feelings about him. She started hating him, but by the end she was seeing him as her protector/teacher. And once he will be shown alive, it will be obvious she made the right choice by letting him live.

 

And cold blooded killer and psychopathic rage are not one and the same. This is one of the things they are trying to beat out of her. They want to turn her into an emotionless killer, not a loose cannon.

 

I understand you can see this from another perspective and I’m ok with it. From my point of view, they glossed over some aspects from her chapters that are important to her character development. But this not a case of only ‘female weakening’, D&D do this to both male and female characters.

 

 

Obviously I recognize that psychopathy and cold blooded-ness are not the same thing. My entire post was arguing with the stated concern about "psychopathic rage" in the show. There is no suggestion, however, that Arya had a responsibility, or even a right, to kill a night's watch deserter. She is not the lord of Winterfell and would not be permitted to make such a decision even in Winterfell. Of course, her motivation to kill Dareon was him being a deserter, and that does show she is not quite "no one." But at the same time, she had no personal motive with respect to Dareon. 

In any case, my point was that she did commit this murder, which was unauthorized, not required, and not a person in her list, in the book and not the show. I agree that this does not demonstrate psychopathy. She hasn't done anything psychopathic in the books or shows (eg, she has not killed for sport, or killed a truly "innocent" person). But it does show her more ready to kill people than anything in the shows. 

As for the Hound, I agree that it is ambiguous whether she was motivated in any way by fondness for the Hound. But that's equally true in the books and show. Arguing against the interpretation, in either media, is that she did nothing to help him. Rather, she robbed him and left him to what seemed to be certain, and torturous, death. It may be she did that because she didn't have the stomach to kill him, because she had feelings for him, but that's unclear at best. 

Ultimately, I have a hard time seeing how she's any more blood thirsty, cold, or whatever word you want to use, in the show than in the books. 

[ShadowKitteh]

3 hours ago, Xcorpyo001 said:

 

Just so we are sure we understand eachother, is this line just you trolling, or you really believe what you are saying?

 

Yes I believe that. Why do you have a problem? Just because I don't agree with you, I actually love both book and SHOW, and don't want to trash the show runners, doesn't make me a troll. 

 

[Forlong the Fat]

1 hour ago, ShadowKitteh said:

Yes I believe that. Why do you have a problem? Just because I don't agree with you, I actually love both book and SHOW, and don't want to trash the show runners, doesn't make me a troll. 

 

It's a little hard to understand how making Sansa a sexual slave empowers her as compared with the books, much less that it so obviously empowers her that one would say "Sansa anyone?"  Aside from making her a sexual slave, I can't think of any dramatic differences with her between the books and show. 

[Vastet]

Sansa wasn't made into a slave. She was made strong enough to do something by herself that even Theon never had the balls to do: escape. It so happens she would have failed without his help, but it didn't take his help to try. Theon was so broken he refused to try, even with his sister right there.

[Xcorpyo001]

7 hours ago, ShadowKitteh said:

Yes I believe that. Why do you have a problem? Just because I don't agree with you, I actually love both book and SHOW, and don't want to trash the show runners, doesn't make me a troll. 

 

 

No problem, you can see it however you want to see it. I guess. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

[Forlong the Fat]

9 hours ago, Vastet said:

Sansa wasn't made into a slave. She was made strong enough to do something by herself that even Theon never had the balls to do: escape. It so happens she would have failed without his help, but it didn't take his help to try. Theon was so broken he refused to try, even with his sister right there.

And the way she was made strong was by being made a sexual slave. Which of the male characters needed to be made strong by means of rape?

[Vastet]

How do you rape a guy and make us feel pity for him? I mean it has happened in our society, but we have drugs to help it along. Plus women are significantly more equal. Even so, it is much less common than men raping women. The simple fact is that most people won't sympathise with a man getting raped, unless it's by another man. But there's no character available who could be used that way.

Some may call this comment sexist, but I think Theon losing his man bits was worse than being raped. It would only be comparable if Sansa were similarly mutilated. And I think the uproar from such an event would be huge. They won't do that.

[Forlong the Fat]

9 hours ago, Vastet said:

How do you rape a guy and make us feel pity for him? I mean it has happened in our society, but we have drugs to help it along. Plus women are significantly more equal. Even so, it is much less common than men raping women. The simple fact is that most people won't sympathise with a man getting raped, unless it's by another man. But there's no character available who could be used that way.

Some may call this comment sexist, but I think Theon losing his man bits was worse than being raped. It would only be comparable if Sansa were similarly mutilated. And I think the uproar from such an event would be huge. They won't do that.

The truth is the Brave Companions could have raped Jamie instead of cutting his hand off.  It would have had a profound effect on him to be sure.  But GRRM and the show figured out something else to do to him.  Likewise, whatever else they did to Ramsey, they didn't rape him.  They sure could have (why didn't they?).  Maybe you could treat women the same way?  In other words, come up with something other than rape to foster their character development.

[Vastet]

I assume you mean Theon, not Ramsey.

As it happens, he was nearly raped. And I still contend that being mutilated in such a way is worse than rape.

Why ignore rape? That's part of the problem with attitudes these days. You don't ignore disgusting actions, you confront them head on. Pretending rape doesn't happen does no service to anything. According to statistics, a large percentage of women are raped or otherwise sexually abused at some point in their lives (yet only two women have been raped in the show). It is a horrible thing to do, and it is perfectly valid to show it as a horrible thing to do. I'd only get pissed off at a rape scene if it was glossed over or romanticised. Game Of Thrones doesn't do that. They show it for what it is.

[Forlong the Fat]

4 hours ago, Vastet said:

I assume you mean Theon, not Ramsey.

As it happens, he was nearly raped. And I still contend that being mutilated in such a way is worse than rape.

Why ignore rape? That's part of the problem with attitudes these days. You don't ignore disgusting actions, you confront them head on. Pretending rape doesn't happen does no service to anything. According to statistics, a large percentage of women are raped or otherwise sexually abused at some point in their lives (yet only two women have been raped in the show). It is a horrible thing to do, and it is perfectly valid to show it as a horrible thing to do. I'd only get pissed off at a rape scene if it was glossed over or romanticised. Game Of Thrones doesn't do that. They show it for what it is.

Who said ignore rape?  They can show rape. And it's very true that lots of people are raped.  But those people generally didn't need to be raped to become whole, strong people.  And there are many ways that women can self-actualize without first being treated as sexual objects.

Furthermore, the discussion here is in response to a comment that the show, by raping Sansa into personal growth, made her a more empowered character in comparison to the books, where she has managed growth without the benefit of rape. Even if it is OK to include this plot element for her character, taking away her sexual power doesn't make her more empowered.

[Vastet]

Who's to say that Sansa being raped is what made her strong? You? She's been getting stronger with every episode since the 9th in season 1. I don't see any magical change happen in her after she got raped. Just one more log on the fire.

[Forlong the Fat]

47 minutes ago, Vastet said:

Who's to say that Sansa being raped is what made her strong? You? She's been getting stronger with every episode since the 9th in season 1. I don't see any magical change happen in her after she got raped. Just one more log on the fire.

I don't know everyone who's to say Sansa being raped made her strong.  I only know that you said exactly that just a few posts above: " Sansa wasn't made into a slave. She was made strong enough to do something by herself that even Theon never had the balls to do: escape."

[Vastet]

And it's true. She refused to be a slave, so she left. Ergo she wasn't a slave.

[Forlong the Fat]

10 hours ago, Vastet said:

And it's true. She refused to be a slave, so she left. Ergo she wasn't a slave.

It's like taking to the damn caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. 

[Vastet]

Right back at you.

[oursisthefury69]

On 5/9/2016 at 11:37 AM, Jon Snow Bengal said:

Book Arya is so awesome at warging, even better than Bran. In the scene where she finally beats the waif fighting, book Arya uses the eyes of the cat whilst still being able to move her own body - Bran cannot do this as whenever he wargs to Hodor or Summer he lies lifeless on the ground. Also Arya's warging abilities are far reaching as she is able to warg Nymeria across continents!

 

There's so much wrong with this its hard to know where to begin..

1. She plainly isn't better at skinchanging than Bran, not that its some competition lol.

2. How is Arya "beating" the waif while being legitimately blind in the show vs using the eyes of the cat to see in the books make her weaker?  The fact that she couldn't even see while defending herself in the show makes her weaker? 

3. Your whole title is a mystery in and of itself.. Weakening of another female character really?  Brienne is the superhero of this show she killed the hound in single combat, kills miscellaneous henchmen on a regular basis, executed Stannis and brags about it...  Oberyn's widow in the books who's mournful and peace-seeking in the show is some sort of skilled assassin and political manipulator.. If anything theres been an overt strengthening of female characters ( and in the wrong places/with the wrong characters ftr) so your premise is mute before these reverse points are even made by yourself in the quoted paragraph.

4A.  Bran laying lifeless on the ground might have something to do with him being a paraplegic..

4B. In the same breath your saying how show Bran lies lifeless while warging; as it can only be refering to show Bran as theres no context for claiming he's inactive compared to his normal immobile state based on book excerpts during which he's skinchanging, your clearly eluding to the whole show gimmick where their eyes roll to the back of their head and they remain still, which again is wholly irrelevant in Brans case because there's no means of knowing if the cripple is more so bodily stuck during the skinchanging process given his already present lack of mobility