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Arya the Explorer


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2 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

And there's no explanation whatsoever why she never intends to return north anymore.

She expects to be off discovering new lands. I did not understand that as avoiding the North, but as looking the facts into the eye that she will travel and might nor return.

2 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

It's some white rabbit they pulled out of their hat except for that one line to Lady Crane.

We know from S1 on that she did not want to be married off, not wanted to be Lady. And the line to Lady Crane was a good foreshadowing. VERY many people expected this ending so claiming a white rabbit is really not justifiable.

There are some plot holes in season 8 but Arya's arc is what I have the least problems with.

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1 hour ago, wvchemteach said:

The problem with Arya the entire Season 8 is that once they decided to 

  1. Have her steal Jon's story arc and kill the Night King
  2. Give up on her story arc and finish off Cersei.

They had no idea what to do with her... I would have found her ending more believable if she would have bonded with someone who actually knew how to sail a ship.

Personally, I had saw her, becoming sort of a traveling hedge knight type much like Set Duncan the Tall from Dunk and Egg

 

 

And this is why I can't stand when crap is just done for shock value.

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On 5/20/2019 at 10:13 PM, Hodor's Dragon said:
  • NO experience in command.
  • NO experience with ships.
  • NO experience with cartography.
  • NO experience with naturalism.
  • NO experience with provisioning a force.

But hey, if they discover something that needs killin', well there you go.

Let me add one more. 

NO desire ever expressed before this to explore.

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1 hour ago, Kajjo said:

We know from S1 on that she did not want to be married off, not wanted to be Lady. And the line to Lady Crane was a good foreshadowing. VERY many people expected this ending so claiming a white rabbit is really not justifiable.

We know that a ten year old girl did not want to be married off or be a lady, a rather significant point to make in this context. If Ned had been smarter and this whole war of the five kings had been avoided, who genuinely thinks she would have run off rather than get married at the age of sixteen?.

The killing is now over so the question is what does she do now they are at peace?. Sailing off into the west is a betrayal of duty. The nobility, particularly those like the Starks, thought in terms of their responsibilities as well as their power. Being a noble wasn't a licence to do whatever you wanted in your personal life.   

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Jon, Bran, and Sansa didn't ask her to stay so she's not abandoning them. 

 

They're all off doing their own things. They could have had Jon stay in the North with Sansa since the Unsullied didn't stay so how would they know where Jon is. But I suspect Jon is mad at Sansa since he didn't tell her she could visit and didn't say he forgave her. Book Jon probably chooses to isolate himself.

 

Jon only asked Arya to visit him not live with him. 

 

Bran is more interested in Tyrion, which helps explain why he kept weirdly staring at him earlier on in the seasons. If going West leads to certain death based on past tries surely Bran would know but he said nothing. He could have said Arya has a more important role in Westeros but he said nothing.

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On 5/21/2019 at 5:13 AM, Hodor's Dragon said:
  • NO experience in command.
  • NO experience with ships.
  • NO experience with cartography.
  • NO experience with naturalism.
  • NO experience with provisioning a force.

But hey, if they discover something that needs killin', well there you go.

She was stabbed multiple times, swam through a dirty canal, ran across the free city of Braavos, jumped off a balcony, had a pretty bad fall down stairs, and after all this defeated an assassin who's light years ahead of her in experience. And lived, went back to Westeros completely fine!

I don't think it's for us to question the horrible character that is Maisie Stark

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1 hour ago, Kajjo said:

We know from S1 on that she did not want to be married off, not wanted to be Lady. And the line to Lady Crane was a good foreshadowing. VERY many people expected this ending so claiming a white rabbit is really not justifiable.

There are some plot holes in season 8 but Arya's arc is what I have the least problems with.

Read my post you originally quoted... Because to all this here, I can just say: I did not say I expect her to be married off; I did not expect her to be a lady; I mentioned the line of Lady Crane and that I played around with the idea of book Arya's outcome sailing off or not SINCE then; And that's all in the post you picked a few sentences from ignoring everything else.

 

It's still a white rabbit with the many jums of character they did with Arya on the show. I have had issues with Arya's characterization since s5. It's actually what set me off ranting.

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2 hours ago, fairwarging said:

Also she named her direwife after Nymeria, a queen who sailed West settled a new land, and confirmed in a conversation with Tywin she was one of her heroes. 

To save her people: she sailed with all of her people, as migration. And then she got to be queen and rule.

 

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20 minutes ago, JagLover said:

who genuinely thinks she would have run off rather than get married at the age of sixteen?

I would. She broke with the rules early on and Ned SUPPORTED it by allowing her to practice bow and arrow, by even PAYING for Syrio Forel to train her. He accepted that she did not want to by "Lady of Something". I loved his sweet tomboy daughter. 

21 minutes ago, JagLover said:

We know that a ten year old girl did not want to be married off or be a lady,

She was 11. Girls married there at approx. 14. She was for this setting old enough to have an opinion about it. In other families that wouldn't have counted for anything, but Ned is not that unsupportive. 

22 minutes ago, JagLover said:

Sailing off into the west is a betrayal of duty.

What duty? Her sister is Queen in the North, her brother is King of the Six Kingdoms. Not even marrying for power makes any sense anymore. Not that'd she wanted to.

I really don't get the point why people try to find all kinds of moaning in a overall great show. My goodness.

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2 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

<snip>I really don't get the point why people try to find all kinds of moaning in a overall great show. My goodness.

I've seen you give variations of this line quite a few times by now. Perhaps you're the one who needs to come to grip with the fact that a large number of people have a large number of concrete problems with season 8, and they can't just be instructed to get on board and love it. For God's sake, look at the reviews the last few episodes have gotten on this board, and this is a FAN board.

Or you could look at the internet in general:

https://www.google.com/search?q=game+of+thrones+season+8+bad+reviews&rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS822US822&oq=game+of+thrones+season+8+bad+reviews&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.7071j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

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9 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

I would. She broke with the rules early on and Ned SUPPORTED it by allowing her to practice bow and arrow, by even PAYING for Syrio Forel to train her. He accepted that she did not want to by "Lady of Something". I loved his sweet tomboy daughter. 

 

He allowed her to train to fight, that does not mean at all that she would be exempted from the responsibilities of her rank. Westeros, as written by GRRM, is the real world not some fairy tale. She would have grown up, passed puberty, and got married. The chances of anything else happening, without civil war intervening are infinitesimal.

Hence all the parallels with Lyanna Stark who also liked practicing sword fighting, and sticking up for people, but was crowned the queen of love and beauty. 

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5 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Agreed. Arya may do something she finds inspiring, but just doing Elissa Farman is absurd. Why would George give her something in the end that was done by someone he wrote in F&B. I have played around with the sailing away idea since S6, for Arya, and saw it as a possibility, until Fire & Blood was published., It read like "Ok, so, George wrote out one of the potential things Arya could do, to get it out of his system. He's not going to copy that anymore". So, scratch the Farman exploration.

If Arya does sail west, it won't be as Farman copycat, let alone just for herself. If she does it, it will be for migratory purposes imo. I also agree with others that she won't be Lady of a high status castle through marriage. She likes to have meaningful interactions with those around her. She likes to have people stay around her. And she likes to boss people around, but without the restrictions of protocol. She's a leader figure, but not a power figure, and high power status means loneliness.

Unlike the show, Arya also has an emotional warg bond with her direwolf Nymeria, and thuogh she does not comprehend that bond yet, she is bound to become aware of it, especially since she started to skinchange cats. She will inevitably be pulled towards the Riverlands again. And she felt a calling towards the isle of the Gods Eye.

While people seek for the sailor links mentioned, there are far more references for her as a "Child of the Forest".

  • she's called a squirrel several times
  • she visits the tree village of the Lady of the Leaves., which is how the CotF used to live and we have a CotF called "leaf". Arya is fascinated about it.
  • she climbs trees as often as she can, even practices her water dancing in a tree
  • she tries to save Weasel, who runs off into the forest and disappears. Later she calls herself Weasel. Weasel was a "child" and by running into the forest, Weasel is a "child of the forest" (though of course that girl is likely dead). But it mostly serves as a metaphor to tell us Arya's nature.
  • she skinchanges cats, and as the blind girl, sees through cat's eyes. The eyes of the CotF are catlike-eyes.
  • Her song with Gendry, identifies her as a forest lass
  • Her wolf is in a forest
  • A bossy Arya lookalike is called Willow and takes care of her people
  • she imagines living like the white fawn
  • one of the signs that she won't stay in Braavos is because there are no trees there. The sole thing that vaguely can look like a forest are harbors full of ships with masts. That's why she loves hanging around at the harbor. She'd be miserable on just one ship on an open ocean, unless it's a whole armada sailing.
  • then there are all the swan references. You won't find swans on an ocean, but at lakes and rivers.

All this makes me think her final destination is far more likely to be the forest in the Riverlands. There's wild forest. There are rivers and lakes. There are lots of smallfolk to help and boss around. The show just didn't want to have Jon disappear into the haunted forest AND have Arya disappear into the forests of the riverlands, so they decided on copycat Farman instead. And it showed, because they didn't even make an effort to give her much motivation whatsoever on this. 

 

 

Wenda was an outlaw so she was a criminal who made trouble for the crown. Bran is king now and he needs money. His sister being an outlaw would create political problems for him. He already looks like he favors nepotism by letting Sansa alone be independent.

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40 minutes ago, ARYa_Nym said:

 

 

Wenda was an outlaw so she was a criminal who made trouble for the crown. Bran is king now and he needs money. His sister being an outlaw would create political problems for him. He already looks like he favors nepotism by letting Sansa alone be independent.

That is too literal a take from what I obviously meant.

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3 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

That is too literal a take from what I obviously meant.

Living in the forest your source of revenue is going to be limited. I don't see how that's more loyal to the Starks. Arya goes West successfully she could find ways to help Bran get more money by making contact with eastern countries. 

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Just now, ARYa_Nym said:

Living in the forest your source of revenue is going to be limited. I don't see how that's more loyal to the Starks. Arya goes West successfully she could find ways to help Bran get more money by making contact with eastern countries. 

A child of the forest doesn't need revenue in the forest. It's going back to a way of life where you take care of the forests, the weriwoods and life, as well as hunt. If you see Bran as King(also often referenced as climbing and being a squirrel) as going back to the days of a greenseer-god who was consulted for justice, then Arya would be the gardener of the wild grove. Arya going West is not going back to the beginning.

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3 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

A child of the forest doesn't need revenue in the forest. It's going back to a way of life where you take care of the forests, the weriwoods and life, as well as hunt. If you see Bran as King(also often referenced as climbing and being a squirrel) as going back to the days of a greenseer-god who was consulted for justice, then Arya would be the gardener of the wild grove. Arya going West is not going back to the beginning.

 

The ending made it seem like Tyrion is really the one who rules so I don't know about that. Bran was disinterested as usual and didn't even attend his own council meeting. 

 

Hunting is a problem considering that Nymeria has been killing cattle and farmers not just soldiers. It would be much easier to hold Arya responsible. 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, ARYa_Nym said:

The ending made it seem like Tyrion is really the one who rules so I don't know about that. Bran was disinterested as usual and didn't even attend his own council meeting.

Hunting is a problem considering that Nymeria has been killing cattle and farmers not just soldiers. It would be much easier to hold Arya responsible.

Nymeria did this in wintertime. In spring, she can hunt game.

Tyrion does the pragmatic stuff. Bran will still be consulted by petitioners for justice and "my neighbour did this or that" sort of stuff. Bran will be the one to deliver a King's justice. As a greenseer he can actually see the truth of accusations. And that's what "worshiping and sacrificing before a heart tree" in olden days meant: consulting and petitioning to the god-king greenseer and executing the actual culprits of a crime.

But the greenseer source needs to be guarded, not just by a kingsguard, but the forest itself.

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Just now, sweetsunray said:

Nymeria did this in wintertime. In spring, she can hunt game.

Tyrion does the pragmatic stuff. Bran will still be consulted by petitioners for justice and "my neighbour did this or that" sort of stuff. Bran will be the one to deliver a King's justice. As a greenseer he can actually see the truth of accusations. And that's what "worshiping and sacrificing before a heart tree" in olden days meant: consulting and petitioning to the god-king greenseer and executing the actual culprits of a crime.

Winter comes late in the books and she was seen as a danger by lords in the Riverlands from the second book.

Bran has barely made any decisions lately except to carefully reveal Jon's parentage which is later used to drive Jon and Dany apart and knocks those two off the chess board. The whole time he seems to sit back and wait. I can see him doing the usual what do you think Tyrion or it's your choice. He's very indiffierent now.

 

I honestly see his kingdom going into rebellion within 6 months since Sansa declared independence and took what would have been his army with her. He has no army should Dorne and the Iron Lands rebel for freedom unless he's looking for Drogon so he can use him as a weapon. 

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