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Arya's mental illness


Rondo

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On 9/26/2021 at 5:16 PM, Rondo said:

Arya Stark is on track to murder a lot of people who opposed her family.  She composed a list of her future knife targets.  She joins a cult of murderers in order to learn their work.  Part of the initiation into this gang involved the murder of an old, insurance vendor.  Which she carried out in cold blood.  She killed a Nightswatch bard named Dareon with her rapier.  Arya is on track to become insane, if she isn't already.  She suffers from a serious mental disorder and kills with little to no guilt.  

Arya and Lyanna are compared by Ned as having the same wolf's blood.  This temperament, being hypersensitive and having quick tempers made them biologically vulnerable to mental illness.  The trauma endured is the catalyst that drove Arya to her mental illness.  The teachings of a cult of people who worshiped the god of death and who delivers death without passion is as unhealthy an education as a person can get.  

Mr. Martin is crafting entertainment.  I have to admit, it would not interest me to read about a ten year old happy child playing with Lego blocks.  We already have that in Tommen.  Arya Stark is his extreme version of a crazed little girl who is suffering from mental illness and insanity.  Ofcourse she is not going to count the hairs on a mule's ass kind of insane.  No way.  That's comedy and not extreme enough.  I do not root for Arya Stark.  I am not a fan of Arya Stark.  But I will admit that I find her chapters a little more interesting now because of her madness.  You don't even get to watch a 10 year old this mentally ill on the television.  

I do not expect a change of character direction for Arya Stark.  She had a chance to pick a different way of living before killing the old insurance vendor.  She instead chose revenge.  Jon's last thoughts before dying was sending her a telepathic message to "stick em with the pointy end." He is telling her to murder Bowen Marsh and the leaders of the Nightswatch.  That can't be good.  She will murder a lot of people when she hears Jon's message and finds him dead.  Karma will come back and put an end to Arya but not until she has killed many.

Some of her future victims do deserve punishment.  Ramsay is without good and deserve punishment.  But there are those who were forced to play the game of power who do not deserve her wrath.  They were just on the opposite side of the playing field.  The ghost of HH saw a bloody future for Arya.  It's clear to me that there will be collateral damage and many innocents will die while Arya goes through with her murderous plan.  

How and who will stop Arya?  Somebody will.  

 

Arya Stark is indeed crazy.  Hers is a story of tragedy.  Her last murders were not done out of necessity.  They were revenge. 

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19 hours ago, SeanF said:

We see them doing things like sticking malefactors in crow cages.

Westerosi luxury penthouses. 

1 hour ago, Here's Looking At You, Kid said:

Arya Stark is indeed crazy.  Hers is a story of tragedy.  Her last murders were not done out of necessity.  They were revenge. 

Threads like this seem to be like magnets for Stark haters. I'm not a Stark stan, but I'm also not irrational in my pursuit of disliking the Starks (The show is a different matter entirely, but this ain't a show thread). 

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For those who would like to see the author break expectations, there is Arya Stark.  Most people expect innocent kids who are good inside.  Arya Stark breaks those expectations.  Arya is as evil and as crazy as a child can get.  He wants to see how disgusting a child can become and gave us Arya Stark. 

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On 10/10/2021 at 12:30 PM, Jaenara Belarys said:

What about Cersei? With how she's going, I'm fairly certain she's likely to bring a few pots of wildfire. 

Slaver's Bay? Where'd you get that? 

Cersei is just mean. The Lannister woman is not insane. She’s just a bad person. Do  you remember Melara?
 

Arya has killed more and did it with more brutality. Yes, so Arya’s insanity compromises her judgment. 

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10 minutes ago, Dr. Eldon Tyrell said:

Cersei is just mean. The Lannister woman is not insane. She’s just a bad person. Do  you remember Melara?
 

Arya has killed more and did it with more brutality. Yes, so Arya’s insanity compromises her judgment. 

Cersei is not just mean. she is also becoming more and more nuts as days go by...

example: when she was watching Blue Bard being tortured, she actually blamed Margery for being such a bitch that now holy Cersei had to see such a vile act in order to get the truth out!!

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On 10/15/2021 at 5:02 PM, Dr. Eldon Tyrell said:

Cersei is just mean. The Lannister woman is not insane. She’s just a bad person. Do  you remember Melara?

*faints from the absurdity of this comment. Cersei is just mean?! ARE YOU MAD?! This is the woman who wanted to chop Arya's hand off! Who Jaime compared to the Mad King (and he's probably one of the foremost experts on Aerys), and hundred other things she's done, and you say she's just mean! Gimme a break. And yes, I remember Melara. Didn't Cersei push her into a well?  

 

Edit: Oh, and she literally listened to Melara drowning in the fookin well. 

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On 10/15/2021 at 7:28 AM, Skahaz mo Kandaq said:

For those who would like to see the author break expectations, there is Arya Stark.  Most people expect innocent kids who are good inside.  Arya Stark breaks those expectations.  Arya is as evil and as crazy as a child can get.  He wants to see how disgusting a child can become and gave us Arya Stark. 

This or testing the Arya fans to see how far they will continue to support her as she continues her progression to increasingly homicidal behavior and insanity.  

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On 9/26/2021 at 5:16 PM, Rondo said:

How and who will stop Arya?  Somebody will.  

 

Gendry will be sickened by what Arya has become and put her out of her misery.  Arya is no more than a sick killing machine.  Gendry cared about Arya and he will kill her out of love.  She will be raised by the Others and join corpse brother Jon at the wall to be his corpse queen. 

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I find it interesting that so many people in this thread think Arya is 'mad' or 'sick'. Or that she is in 'misery'.

I haven't seen any sign of that in the text. The has suffered terrible loss multiple times in the story and reacted to it in a very rational and healthy way. She looked for and found a path to justice when no one else would provide it. Very human, very natural. Nothing sick about it.

What else should she have done?

The justice system of Westeros doesn't work. Especially not for the Starks with the Lannisters, Boltons and Freys in power. There is no hope there. So Arya drew the logical consequence: if she want justice she has to provide it herself. Perfectly rational and even admirable.

Now you could argue that she is too young to act as adult as she does. I hear you. But that is GRRM skipping the 5-year gap and not aging her up. It makes the whole story unbelievable. But her behavior in itself is rational and healthy.

She does not kill at random. She does not seem to have lost her empathy at all. She does not kill innocents or even wish to. All her killings are of persons that more than deserved it and should have been dead already. It was just a shame that the persons survived for so long.

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On 10/15/2021 at 8:14 PM, EggBlue said:

Cersei is not just mean. she is also becoming more and more nuts as days go by...

example: when she was watching Blue Bard being tortured, she actually blamed Margery for being such a bitch that now holy Cersei had to see such a vile act in order to get the truth out!!

Her time in prison isn't going to help.  But she is an adult and less shapeable than a savage little wolf girl.  It may be different if Cersei also happened to have a warg bond with a lion.  That will bring out the primitive parts and drown out the reasoning bit.  Cersei is a psychopath.  Arya is just somebody who snapped from ptsd.  Her fiery temperament as well as other personality traits opened her to becoming insane.  I know there is debate whether psychopaths are born or made.  Arya was also born this way and the grief over what happened to her parents brought it out.  

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On 10/18/2021 at 6:30 AM, Bowen 747 said:

Arya's madness is such that the only outlet to her anger is murder.  Arya is crazy.  The evidence for her mental illness are her actions.  We all argued over this before.  I even provided a link to an interview with the author. 

May I have the link you are talking about ?

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Arya is not sick or mentally disturbed. She's a child. Her understanding of life and death is entirely selfish as is any child's. Killing has served her well and she's seen it serve others well and she's made logical practical decisions on that basis. Sure, it could be argued that Dareon was a murder, but it could also be argued that she had a duty to give the deserter the justice that he deserved - and let's not forget that the first thing that we learned about Westeros from Arya's own father was that the lives of NW deserters are forfeit.

Arya has been shaped by her experiences and honestly it's difficult to think of how anyone could have come through what she's come through and made different decisions and not wound up dead or a hostage.

I think Arya's story is best compared to Bran's who's going through a lot of the same issues basically learning right and wrong for himself with only self interested 'mentors' as a guide. Both characters will likely face a realization that the taboos they've transgressed exit for a reason and they will have their own crises of identity when they realize that they've been transformed into the terrors they were trying to escape, but to discount either as a psychopath or sociopath or mentally ill before they've even grown hair under their arms is preposterously hasty.

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20 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

I just think she is very depressed.

A big manifestation for depression (most commonly found in men) is angry and violent behavior.

Sure but that’s not the cause of her homicidal spree. Arya has lost her marbles. The depression is just a symptom of the damage to her. Insanity is another of those damage. Her soul is corrupted. 

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On 10/17/2021 at 11:30 PM, Bowen 747 said:

Arya's madness is such that the only outlet to her anger is murder.  Arya is crazy.  The evidence for her mental illness are her actions.  We all argued over this before.  I even provided a link to an interview with the author. 

 

On 10/19/2021 at 10:42 AM, Willam Stark said:

May I have the link you are talking about ?

Yes, can you please post this link again here?  I'd like to see if Martin actually says Arya is insane/crazy or if that may be the interpretation some have of what he actually said concerning Arya in the particular interview you reference.

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Just now, Prince of the North said:

Yes, can you please post this link again here?  I'd like to see if Martin actually says Arya is insane/crazy or if that may be the interpretation some have of what he actually said concerning Arya in the particular interview you reference.

We're into corrupted souls now. You can ask for rational support of that sort of notion, but I'm reasonably sure you'll be disappointed. 

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On 10/7/2021 at 3:27 PM, Lord Lannister said:

I mean, yes Arya has issues. Yes she's made some questionable choices, yes she's potentially on a very dark path. But come on. I think some people are trying way too hard to paint Arya as a villain. 

She is a villain except to the cult who devotes itself to killing people.  Jaquen saw a psycho and decided she would make a fine recruit for his cult.  

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