Arya Losin' It

[sweetsunray]

59 minutes ago, lakin1013 said:

Being a pragmatist, I had no issues with this scene.  Of course, she picked Gendry. There are not that many available guys in her age group.  She asked about his sex history because if she was going to have sex, she wanted to do it with somebody who knew how, had some experience.  Her insomnia is probably due to going to war and next day, or very soon.  It all made sense to me. And I simply do not understand people calling her a psycho killer, serial murderer, or robotic, or worrying if she had access to moon tea.  We are down to 4 eps.  I do not think a pregnancy is on the menu.

I don't trust d&d when it comes to the last. In the forge scene, right after she eyed him like a cat who just licked the milk (and he knows it), she said she wanted him to make her weapon stronger, and he says "It's strong enough". IMO that was a tell with S1 "the seed is strong" The whole context of the scene is that while she turns him on with her spearhead throwing, she walks off without flirting... making clear he won't get any further special attention from her unless he makes her that weapon first. So, there was sexual subtext in the forge scene, and then the "it's strong enough" line has an extra meaning.

[longest night]

At this point, I think D&D could do anything. They had Arya cook a Frey pie. The writers entire plot basis of the Gendry-Arya sex scene was that she wanted to try out sex before she died.

[ForgottenKnight]

Finally the shippers got a win!  Lol I thought this scene was done very well.  Aria and Gendry were eyeing each other hard when they meet up again in Winterfell.  

[LadyOlenna]

As I said in another thread, I was expecting Arya and Gendry getting together, I think it was foreshadowed by Robert Baratheon in the first episode pf season one. And I have no problem with the fact that Arya choose to spend her last night having sex: she had always liked Gendry, and even if sex has never been a priority for her, that doesn't mean she is asexual. She can be a badass tomboy, at the same time having physical needs. What I did not like was the lack of foreplay. Even if a girl doesn't want it to be romantic, she still needs at least a little time to get in the mood. But this is an issue I see in most movies: the couple starts kissing, and three seconds later they're tearing their clothes away and initiating intercourse. In real life, at least in my experience, that doesn't happen. I know they couldn't make a very long scene due to time restraints, but maybe a minute more would have made a difference there.

[longest night]

20 minutes ago, LadyOlenna said:

As I said in another thread, I was expecting Arya and Gendry getting together, I think it was foreshadowed by Robert Baratheon in the first episode pf season one. And I have no problem with the fact that Arya choose to spend her last night having sex: she had always liked Gendry, and even if sex has never been a priority for her, that doesn't mean she is asexual. She can be a badass tomboy, at the same time having physical needs. What I did not like was the lack of foreplay. Even if a girl doesn't want it to be romantic, she still needs at least a little time to get in the mood. But this is an issue I see in most movies: the couple starts kissing, and three seconds later they're tearing their clothes away and initiating intercourse. In real life, at least in my experience, that doesn't happen. I know they couldn't make a very long scene due to time restraints, but maybe a minute more would have made a difference there.

That wasn't a foreshadow, that was a plot device for the entire novel series to get Ned to King's Landing. The Arya+Gendry pairing is a show contrivance because people were shipping them. They brought Gendry back because of all the rowing memes, and even made the joke themselves in their own show. The show writers have demonstrated they like taking show fan opinions and theories into account for crap like this. That's why Lyanna Mormont is featured so much, they openly admitted that one. It's also why the Hound is back. It's why Benjen is Coldhands. The list goes on and on. They ran out of book material and now resort to fanfiction as their source material.

They made Arya cook a Frey pie. If there was ever a shark jump of the entire series, that's it.

[LadyOlenna]

1 minute ago, longest night said:

That wasn't a foreshadow, that was a plot device for the entire novel series to get Ned to King's Landing. The Arya+Gendry pairing is a show contrivance because people were shipping them. They brought Gendry back because of all the rowing memes, and even made the joke themselves in their own show. The show writers have demonstrated they like taking show fan opinions and theories into account for crap like this. That's why Lyanna Mormont is featured so much, they openly admitted that one. It's also why the Hound is back. It's why Benjen is Coldhands. The list goes on and on. They ran out of book material and now resort to fanfiction as their source material.

You're completely right about the show runners doing fan service, that's without a doubt... but in this case, I think it was also foreshadowing. Arya in the books is attracted to Gendry, or at least I had this feeling while reading them, so I can see them getting married in the books. After all, he is - albeit a bastard - the last Baratheon to survive. He could be legitimised at some point. I know that many people think that since Arya never wanted to be a proper lady she wouldn't want to get married, but I see it differently. If she falls in love she could well decide to marry Gendry, that doesn't mean she needs to transform into a Sansa-like lady. Of course I may be wrong there, but I don't think that's impossible.

[longest night]

4 minutes ago, LadyOlenna said:

You're completely right about the show runners doing fan service, that's without a doubt... but in this case, I think it was also foreshadowing. Arya in the books is attracted to Gendry, or at least I had this feeling while reading them, so I can see them getting married in the books. After all, he is - albeit a bastard - the last Baratheon to survive. He could be legitimised at some point. I know that many people think that since Arya never wanted to be a proper lady she wouldn't want to get married, but I see it differently. If she falls in love she could well decide to marry Gendry, that doesn't mean she needs to transform into a Sansa-like lady. Of course I may be wrong there, but I don't think that's impossible.

GRRM already said Gendry and Arya have separate futures. 

Gendry is an unacknowledged bastard, no one knows he's even a Baratheon bastard. He can't be legitimized. The acknowledged bastard is Edric Storm whom the show writers looted his story from for Gendry. Gendry is currently living at an inn with Willow who he probably really will marry if they survive this whole ordeal.

[MinscS2]

2 minutes ago, longest night said:

GRRM already said Gendry and Arya have separate futures. 

Maybe Gendry and Arya will split after their one-night-stand? Maybe D&D forgot what GRRM told them about Gendry's and Arya's endgame?

Gendry is an unacknowledged bastard, no one knows he's even a Baratheon bastard. He can't be legitimized. The acknowledged bastard is Edric Storm whom the show writers looted his story from for Gendry. Gendry is currently living at an inn with Willow who he probably really will marry if they survive this whole ordeal.

You're bringing book-stuff into the show-universe again.
As a show-watcher, I'd ask you who Edric Storm is, but the answer would be irrelevant, because this isn't the books.

In the show, plenty of important people know that Gendry is a Roberts bastard, and he can eventually be legitimized. 

[LadyOlenna]

3 minutes ago, longest night said:

GRRM already said Gendry and Arya have separate futures.

Oh, I didn't know about that, I guess then that's settled. But just for the sake of discussion,

5 minutes ago, longest night said:

Gendry is an unacknowledged bastard, no one knows he's even a Baratheon bastard. He can't be legitimized. The acknowledged bastard is Edric Storm whom the show writers looted his story from for Gendry. Gendry is currently living at an inn with Willow who he probably really will marry if they survive this whole ordeal.

In the show he could be legitimized, Bran could reveal Gendry's parentage.

[sweetsunray]

15 minutes ago, longest night said:

GRRM already said Gendry and Arya have separate futures.

GRRM has not ALWAYS said that. He's been coy. He supposedly said it to a friend of a fan ONCE but the moment, etc... something was weird about it, as generally GRRM would not answer in such a straightforward way and the source came to a tweet of a fan (with gendrya fanfic writing), whose friend who never read the books had asked George about it for her. Later questions about it, GRRM has admitted he will revisit them and also admitted that Arya will have her moonblood soon intWoW. So, "keep reading".

[longest night]

2 minutes ago, LadyOlenna said:

Oh, I didn't know about that, I guess then that's settled. But just for the sake of discussion,

In the show he could be legitimized, Bran could reveal Gendry's parentage.

Yes, in the show he could possibly, maybe. It wouldn't be the smartest thing to do since he's the son of an usurper king and his descendants could be nothing but trouble for your own descendants.

[Gendelsdottir]

In this fictional universe, girls can be betrothed at birth, wed before their first flowering, and impregnated immediately after. Their putative maidenhood is a valuable commodity which can be exchanged for ransom - one of several reasons why Arya remains "unspoiled" for so long during her wanderings. This applies only to the castle-born, naturally enough. Girls born to the smallfolk are fair game for any knight, minstrel, and sworn brother who gets the urge.

So teenagers, dating, crushes, and so forth are null concepts. Except that the books' worldbuilding has been set aside, in the show, in favor of fanservice and relatability.

Am I just imagining that every sex scene in the show is super super well-lit, but for everything else you need night-vision goggles?

[longest night]

4 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

GRRM has not ALWAYS said that. He's been coy. He supposedly said it to a friend of a fan. But the source was weird. Later questions about it, GRRM has admitted he will revisit them and also admitted that Arya will have her moonblood soon intWoW. So, "keep reading".

The source was an Arya+Gendry fan fiction writer who had his friend specifically ask about it because he couldn't go to the book signing. He wanted GRRM to say yes, so his actual testimony is much more heavily weighted when GRRM actually says no. Literally every single posted quote is reported by someone at a book signing or convention relaying the answer, this is no different.

[MinscS2]

1 minute ago, Gendelsdottir said:

Am I just imagining that every sex scene in the show is super super well-lit, but for everything else you need night-vision goggles?

Kinda pointless to film and show a sex-scene shot in the dark though.

Suspension of disbelief. 

[sweetsunray]

3 minutes ago, longest night said:

The source was an Arya+Gendry fan fiction writer who had his friend specifically ask about it because he couldn't go to the book signing. He wanted GRRM to say yes, so his actual testimony is worth more. Literally every single posted quote is reported by someone at a book signing or convention relaying the answer, this is no different.

Yes. I know the story. But we don't know how the friend asked it, nor literal wording.

But there are other reports of a few years later by a Jonarya fan who had hoped to get "Gendrya ain't happening" confirmation from him, and well the answer she got was not the one she had hoped for. In this case I have the exact questions asked, for this topic and others... and they are in the SSM archive.

[longest night]

12 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Yes. I know the story.

But there are other reports of a few years later by a Jonarya fan who had hoped to get "Gendrya ain't happening" confirmation from him, and well the answer she got was not the one she had hoped for.

I have no idea what "not one she had hoped for" even means. It could mean he simply decided not to openly confirm it.

[sweetsunray]

17 minutes ago, longest night said:

I have no idea what "not one she had hoped for" even means? It could mean he simply decided not to openly confirm it.

The answer is mentioned in the SSM archive of a whole day of conversations with GRRM during Balticon by 2 people who went together. And one of them also reported the actual conversation: ("me" is one of the two people going there)

Quote

 

Me: So Arya and Gendry, I felt like there were many romantic undertones between them in the books. Are you building towards something between them? Are you planning on developing a future relationship?..

GRRM: *smiling* I'm going to visit them again, but I'm not spoiling everything for you. They are still very young.

Me: But you wrote the Mercy chapter...

GRRM: Yes, I did write Mercy. Arya is growing up fast, but not as fast as her actress Maisie. *has a little chuckle*..

Me: Will Arya be flowering in TWOW?..

GRRM: *nods his head and smiles again* Soon..

 

Later during a coffeeklatch with George she asked about Jon and Arya and weren't their hints of Jon being attracted to  his sister via how he thinks of Ygritte (comparing her to his little sister), which he then explained as (paraphrasing) as people using features of siblings they like non-romantically as a template to look for in other people they meet as potential partner. She then brought up the outline, and that's when he explained very angry over the leak of the outline and basically said the outline is some on-the-spot-invention written to get a contract that he forgot about almost as soon as he wrote it.

The person was so disheartened by his rather positive response about Gendry and Arya and his negative response about Jon and Arya in a romantic context that she contacted several of us to help make her hope that Jon-Arya was still a possibility.

There is just no way that George will openly say that "Gendry and Arya have a different future" as he is tightlipped about end-outcomes about characters, even though it says nothing about the road to that ending, when he has written characters as a slow burn romance. They may indeed not end up together, or one of them dies, or break up, or whatever, but he has very much laid the groundwork for romantic feelings between them in the same way he has done for Jaime and Brienne.

[MinscS2]

Me: Will Arya be flowering in TWOW?..

Someone actually asked GRRM if "Arya will be flowering"?

Jesus...
Cringe-level overload...

[sweetsunray]

3 minutes ago, MinscS2 said:

 

Someone actually asked GRRM if "Arya will be flowering"?

Jesus...
Cringe-level overload...

He dropped the 5-year-time-jump in the books, which was the motivation behind that question.

[longest night]

13 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

The answer is mentioned in the SSM archive of a whole day of conversations with GRRM during Balticon by 2 people who went together. And one of them also reported the actual conversation: ("me" is one of the two people going there)

Later during a coffeeklatch with George she asked about Jon and Arya and weren't their hints of Jon being attracted to  his sister via how he thinks of Ygritte (comparing her to his little sister), which he then explained as (paraphrasing) as people using features of siblings they like non-romantically as a template to look for in other people they meet as potential partner. She then brought up the outline, and that's when he explained very angry over the leak of the outline and basically said the outline is some on-the-spot-invention written to get a contract that he forgot about almost as soon as he wrote it.

The person was so disheartened by his rather positive response about Gendry and Arya and his negative response about Jon and Arya in a romantic context that she contacted several of us to help make her hope that Jon-Arya was still a possibility.

I am aware of that answer. Outside of the weird fan shipping coloring like point out he's smiling, which GRRM does a lot when talking to his fans, it basically says you will have to wait and see, which he answers a lot to questions he doesn't want to answer then. It also doesn't negate the previous report at all. He's asked so much over the course of the many years, it's not as if he hasn't failed to answer a question one time and answered it another time. He's not a robot.

As for the Jon+Arya shipper, my advice to anyone is it's best not to mention the leaked outline to GRRM. If it did reveal major plot threads, he would never confirm it. He's said a number of times that the character arcs and endings for his major characters, Arya specifically mentioned here, hasn't changed from 1991. The outline is from 1993 and included like 11? chapters of A Game of Thrones with it. I would find it strange that somehow the outline from 1993 would radically differ from his original plans he's had since 1991.