We know Jaime and Brienne are connected to Sansa, but what kind of relationship will they have with Arya? They swore to protect both sisters, and since they believe Arya is dead, they are searching for Sansa, but they’re bound to cross paths with Arya eventually, right? Do you think they might end up forming a relationship with her as well?
I don't think it's impossible they cross paths.... like I do consistently think Arya will be the one to give LSH the gift of mercy when she returns to westeros, and if jb, LSH and Arya are all in the riverlands for this then sure, maybe they meet up that way.... it would actually be an interesting twist, because we're all expected Bri to find Sansa and yet Sansa could easily end up rescuing herself idk. however. Sansa's story thematically aligns much more heavily w jb's so idk, I guess I'd be surprised if they did end up more oriented around Arya's. I wouldn't hate it though, she and Jaime could have some interesting conversations lmao.....
This is super interesting, because if you think on it, even when Brienne is concentraiting mainly on finding Sansa, she keeps walking across Arya's path.
The major exemples are of course Harrenhal, the Crossroad's inn and the Bwb. Yet they keep missing each other.
fr I have never seriously considered this possibility before but they do cross paths near constantly, and it's interesting that when Brienne gets her first genuine update on the whereabouts of a Stark sister, it's Arya and not Sansa. plus they're all three likely to orbit the Riverlands and LSH specifically in the next book or so so it really doesn't seem unlikely at all...
want to zero in on this:
Sansa's story thematically aligns much more heavily w jb's so idk
because I think it's sometimes widely misunderstood how much Sansa and Arya go through a very similar arcs with similar core beats?
Both get their romantic illusions (in love and in justice) shattered, both go through hellish versions of their romantic desires (a relationship, an adventure), both have to wear masks to hide and diminish themselves, both question who they fundamentally are, while they're made into tools of abusive people or organisations, and both finish AFFC/ADWD on the precipice of abandoning their true identities as Starks or rejecting the cages they're in to reclaim their Stark identities.
But also more than that, I think Arya as a character is someone who is very concerned with justice - with the right and wrong ways to use violence, to enact fairness or unfairness - in a way resonates with Brienne and Jaime's journeys with knighthood respectively. Arya is descending into disillusionment and loss of self in the robes of an institution just as Jaime is trying to end his cynicism and pull himself out of a fifteen year long identity crisis that also began with an institution and a uniform - the Kingsguard. Arya and Brienne in particular are both perspectives concerned with the difference between murder and justice, and to what extent is justice in ASOIAF simply legitimised murder by the aristocracy bestowed to those who are knights. Consider both of these encounters with Thoros:
-- Arya VI, ASOS
-- Brienne VIII, AFFC
Both characters adhere stubbornly to principles that are socially and politically inconvenient - Arya defends the life of Mycah, a peasant boy the aristocratic class considers worthless collateral, and Brienne adheres to her oath to Catelyn to find her daughters, regardless of how the tides of the war shift. Both wield swords as reminder of the principles they tried to server, to remember what is true to themselves - and interestingly, both Needle and Oathkeeper were gifts from men who loved them and valued them for who they were (you could insert a whole post on Jaime & Jon mirroring here if you wanted), and both swords serve as physical and psychological lifelines.
-- Arya II, AFFC
-- Brienne VIII, AFFC
But I also think, surprisingly, Arya and Brienne have been under-contrasted in how they each approach gender. Their attitudes are far from identical but both fundamentally see their inability to meet standards of femininity as a failure and a root of insecurity. In any case, I actually feel this is where the interesting subversion takes place. Brienne imagines herself rescuing a princess from the tales, but instead finds that princess is in fact a girl in disguise as a boy, with dirty knees and a sharp tongue and a skinny little sword, who is as ill fitting to be a lady as she imagines herself to be, and wouldn't that be interesting and transformative?
What I don't understand and is completely flabbergasted about the D&D claim (we planned to make Daenerys a tragic tyrant since the start) is why Emilia wasn't aware of it? Why didn't they explain that back then? In 2015-2017. Explained why they were demanding her to play this cold power-hungry person, gradually more and more unhinged.
it shouldn't have become such a shock for the cast.
I couldn’t say tbh but from my perspective as someone who obviously doesn’t know any of these people, it seems like emilia was pretty thrown off when she read the s8 script, she talked about questioning everything she thought she knew about playing dany and even called up her family to ask if they thought dany was a bad person :( I know I wouldn’t appreciate that kind of surprise from people who I’d worked with for years but idk. d&d probably just didn’t want their ending to be known or potentially leaked by anyone, but it seems a bit disrespectful to an actress who put almost a decade of her life into a character (especially since she worked while recovering from two life-threatening brain aneurysms ?? like what).
Do you think Ned Stark would have become a winter wolf if he grew old and Robb had children of his own?
probably not, I assume that the northmen who leave their families as a sacrifice when winter comes are probably common people rather than highborns? like I can’t imagine that it’s common for a lord (much less the warden of the north) to prematurely give up his seat and go off to die, especially since the starks will never have to ration food or truly be at risk of starving lmao (the exception to this is of course roderick dustin but he only did this to make use of these men during wartime and to die an “honorable” death). but in a world where the starks were common people and did face a scarcity, yes I think ned that would do anything to keep his family alive.
what makes theon so so fun to me as a character is that because he is so deeply unpleasant and unpalatable in his actions, he immediately takes on this "character it's okay to torture" role in the narrative. no action taken against him is morally wrong because he deserves it. and yet the tension in his narrative is that everything done to him is still wrong even if he sucks. he didn't deserve to be taken as a hostage from his mother as a ten year old, he didn't deserve to live with a noose around his neck carrying his would-be-executioner's sword, he didn't deserve to be treated like a freak by his family for being a hostage for nine years. the weird tension of victim-perpetrator in the esgred scene (which nosafeanchorage discusses more cogently than i can here) and obviously the theon adwd reek-ness of it all play heavily into this too. he did so many awful things. and yet the reasons he's punished have almost nothing to do with his actual crimes. there's no justice here. and that's fun.
my top three theon fake facts
fandom ‘knowledges’ that you’d think are canon the way people talk about them but are in fact not so when u search for them in the books :
1 theon is never described as tall. he even thinks of himself as “smaller than most knights”. he is also never described as handsome by any pov character thinking about him. (only jeyne tells him he “used to be handsome”). the things he is described as most often are: a) smiles a lot b) dark c) lean.
2 theon is never shown insulting jon, bothering jon, belittling jon, bickering with jon, nor does jon or anyone else remember such a thing. (jon complains that theon usually ignored him).
3 it was asha started flirting with theon directly upon engaging him (“that’s a pretty smile!”), and when he eagerly reciprocated and escalated, it is also asha who first touched him sexually (she grabbed his cock).
ALLLlll of these i find psychologically(?) fandom sociologically(?) extremely interesting in how come people end up so convinced of all this, but nr 3 is maybe the most interesting. something about gender that fandom rescripts this scene for asha to have been more passive! also for this moment to be something that should be embarrassing to theon but a win for asha. it’s not! (not really).
obviously, wtf george, wtf, to get the obvious out of the way, but this scene is not (just) meaningless weird kink, theon’s subsequent upset and nausea (he feels violated) serves to establish his mistrust of asha, which will matter later when she will come to winterfell to offer him an out and he can only think of the ways she might be fucking him over. it also tells us something about greyjoy fam, something we will learn more about later, with aeron and euron: asha for some reason thought it would be fun and also expedient to handle this situation like this.
it’s also, after aeron & balon (arguably) the first instance of the theon punishment theme, the he-had-it-coming theme. he’s been a shit to the captain’s daughter and he is indeed unpleasantly overeager with his quest of bedding random women, so it serves him right that something like that would happen to him. right? right? the way we’re introduced into, invited to, even, this line of thinking, with theon, and it builds up, and eventually leads up to adwd, where it’s, oh, shit
"I am no lady," the widow replied, "just Vogarro's whore. You want to be gone from here before the tigers come. Should you reach your queen, give her a message from the slaves of Old Volantis." She touched the faded scar upon her wrinkled cheek, where her tears had been cut away. "Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon." - Tyrion VII ADWD
(ACOK, Daenerys II)
(ASOS, Sansa VII)
jorah treating dany like a child (+ repeatedly referring to her as one despite her telling him not to) while still actively preying on her, leading dany to think of herself as “his cub” because she looks to him as a father figure vs littlefinger comparing sansa to a “little bear cub” after forcibly kissing her while she’s disguised as his bastard daughter and proceeding to tell her that she might have been his daughter instead of ned’s. neither of these men are fooling themselves into thinking that dany and sansa are grown women, they’re very much aware that these girls are children and they treat them accordingly. and yet that doesn’t stop them from grooming them. because they’re demons.
(asos, sansa vii)
it’s so gross that littlefinger is the one describing sansa like this because this would be such an adorable description of her otherwise…like how is he going to compare her to a baby animal right after forcibly kissing her and trying to justify it. and more importantly when is he going to die.
When and how did D&D mention they had planned Dany's ending in the if S3? I mean, they couldn't base it on the books then yet, since there was a hope that GRRM will end it?
they definitely weren’t basing it on the books since they’re claimed that grrm only told them three things about the ending (stannis burning shireen, hodor’s backstory, and king bran). but I’ll link the sources below, keep in mind that this could just be them trying to make themselves look better and as if they planned it all along after dany’s ending was so poorly received and so badly foreshadowed. but according to them it’s been in the works since s3, which is troubling.
I think the final scene between Jon and Daenerys is something we came up with sometime in the midst of the third season of the show. The broad strokes of it anyway. But there was a tremendous amount of pressure to get it right 'cause we know that this is not a scene that's giving people what they want.
As Benioff explained in GoT's "Inside the Episode" featurette, we saw this side of Dany all the way back in season one.
“Even when you look back to season one, when Kahl Drogo gives the golden crown to Viserys and her reaction to watching her brother's head melted off, he was a terrible brother -- so I don't think anyone out there was crying when Viserys died -- but there is something chilling about the way Dany has responded to the death of her enemies,” he reasoned.
We didn’t know the details until after the third season, but Dany’s trajectory was implicit in the first season. You’re so rooting for her because she’s in this horrible position. But there are a million different ways Emilia could have played watching her brother die, and she played it with a stone-cold-killer-like lack of affect. She has dark currents running through her. Which makes sense when Viserys, the only person she knew growing up, was a sociopath.
Apparently, producers and directors sometimes, according to Hibberd, "gave Clarke notes about how to play a moment, nudging the character toward her tyrannical destiny." Clarke, for her part, remembers those directions... and remembers fighting back.
theon is the character of all time because the idea of your father’s failed rebellions hanging over your head the entire time you’re a prisoner of war and being so motivated by your desperate need to find belonging with him and your people, that you attempt your own rebellion that leads to you becoming a prisoner once again is probably the most gut wrenching outcome possible. forced to hear of your surrogate ‘family’ dying, feeling the immense guilt for it, forced to think that maybe you didn’t have it so bad because while ned stark was your gaoler from the age of 10 at least he didn’t have you emaciated, eating rats and getting sexually abused. forced to reckon with the suffering from your adolescence that became second nature with every disregarding word, every indifferent action, from the people who held you hostage but were also your friends. man.
The fact Theon was taken from the very worst birth family ever into what was probably the best possible family available is interesting, because it very clearly showcases how much this hostage scenario would have been abusive, alienating and unbearable no matter the people involved. But instead people use it as a gotcha to prove how much he should have shut up and been grateful.
We’re incredibly happy to announce that from September 14th to September 20th, we will be hosting ARYA STARK APPRECIATION WEEK! We’ll accept edits, metas, art, any other fan work or simply your favorite moments about Arya Stark in her book version to celebrate her character together 💚
Please, remember to use the tag #aryaweek2026 so we can find and reblog your posts. If you missed a day we’ll still accept your submission afterwards!
Here are the prompts:
Day 1: The Night Wolf - Prophecies, Magic and Visions Day 2: The one that leads them is a she-wolf - Leadership, Politics and Ruler Foreshadowing Day 3: You could be my forest lass - Whimsy, Motifs and Symbolism Day 4: You are Arya of Winterfell, Daughter of the North - The North and House Stark Day 5: Arya would make friends with anybody - Pack, Friendship and Kindness Day 6: The woman is important, too! - Gender, Feminism and Combatting Oppression Day 7: Can I be a king's councillor, and build castles, and become the high septon? - AU, Canon Divergence, TWOW and Endgame Speculation
As you can see there are multiple prompts for each day. Please feel free to choose one to do, or a combination for each day! We look forward your creations!
And don't forget to join our CANON ARYA CHALLENGE which is always ongoing!
jon trying to feed arya her vegetables
done by Cj_KhalifP
