hauntology 101 as taught by lyanna stark

hey it's june so i'm back with a ✨ poll ✨

interpret 'queer' as flexibly as you wish (gay lesbian bi trans ace etc). 'canonical' means explicitly shown in the text when winds of winter comes out (#trust). explain your choice in the notes if you'd like. you can only choose ONE. have fun!

("why didn't you choose lannisters" [looks at you dead in the eyes and sends you a 300 page essay about cersei's gender])

might make a more effortful post later with actual quotes to support this reading but I'm increasingly thinking that Arya's arc post-AGOT, especially in Braavos, deliberately subverts her initial desire for 'adventures' and 'travel' and general curiosity. instead it gives us a horrific travelogue where she's tired and hungry and in rags and fearing for her life and watching people she cares for die and trying to turn her anger and desire for justice into a prayer for vengeance and trying to bury her grief and loss by stripping herself of her identity and throwing herself into a death cult even as she is miserable and completely alone. These are not fun experiences that Arya gleefully embraces because she's secretly a sadistic little girl (she is not), but lonely and difficult ones which give her a vantage point into different walks of life - in a way that demands an obliteration of herself. In some ways it's the opposite of a typical adventure story arc which is all about coming-of-age in a journey of literal discovery as well as self-discovery, where the protagonist has a former sense of self at the end of it. In Arya's case, that sense of self is something she is battling with - circumstances are demanding she sacrifice it, but she can't quite give up the last vestiges of Arya Stark. She keeps needle and she dreams of being the 'night wolf' - reminders of her home, the people who loved her, the magic that's specific to being a Stark, the sense of pack and community and belonging Nymeria has. I think a key thing to pick up on here is the presence of people and pack - Arya's curiosity is less about places and more about different types of people! Usually, travelling (over months or years) means letting go of stronger, more rooted social connections to meet people new, but Arya isn't even getting the latter and is deeply isolated in Braavos.

In any case, I think this gives us some hints about her eventual direction. If her arc is a cursed travelogue where she is apart from her pack, then her rejection of the faceless men and her reclamation of 'Arya Stark' will involve finding her pack. if there's any lessons she will take from the faceless men, it won't be becoming an emotionally dead cut-throat killer, but rather the empathy she develops through literally walking through the world wearing different faces, experiencing the limitations of what it means to be poor, blind, so ugly one is loathed, etc. and once she has returned to herself and her people - perhaps 'inheriting' the Brotherhood from her mother and helping them find a more focused purpose outside of the vengeance she once craved, that they once pursued with Lady Stoneheart - I can't really see her wanting to leave any time soon. Any endgame scenario where Arya gets off on a ship and goes in adventures misses that she's already done that! She's had adventures! (Too many adventures). Westeros might currently have restrictive roles for women but the calamity of the long night, the need for women to take arms (GRRM is a boomer who grew up in the shadow of WWII, remember), & her and others' efforts to actively challenge social roles might mean they're not so restrictive that she has to escape (and where would she escape to? Is it that better in Essos?). More likely she would decide to stay with her pack, with her roots, and try and rebuild her home.

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another sansa and arya 'different as the sun and moon'-ism I've been thinking about is how they would both seriously be into theatre but from very different directions.

arya, canonically, is involved in the braavosi theatre from that sample mercy chapter, but beyond that I think she really enjoys the collaborative nature of it, the fact that it is live, the amount of wizardry involved in transforming the stage and creating costumes and transporting people to another world - the whole concept of putting on a mask, becoming someone else, to be more than what you were born, deeply appeals to her given her discomfort with her assigned gender roles. I think she likes the sorts of oddballs who work in theatre too, and enjoys picking their brains and finding something new - it really appeals to the Arya Underfoot, who is always making friends and speaking to new people. I also think she particularly enjoys your classic elizabethan revenge tragedy, with blood and guts spilling over the stage, but i think her appreciation runs deeper than just violence - more than that, i think it's a realm where she can let herself be a bit vulnerable and really let herself feel something deep in her bones. i think she'd watch hamlet and there'd be at least one line where she'd cry. i also think in the wake of ned's death, plays about death, murder, vengeance, forgiveness, all of that, if done well, would reach something deep inside her.

if arya is interested in theatre from the perspective of the ground - from someone working on- or off-stage - then sansa is interested in theatre from the perspective of the box. she loves stories, and theatre is all about big and beautiful stories. she enjoys the lavish spectacle as a spectator and thinks to understand the inner workings as arya likes to would disrupt the magic and marvel of it all. i think she avidly follows famous actors - particularly the beautiful ones - but also gains appreciation for those who have moved her to tears, and i think her appreciation of the skill/craft of acting is one of the ways where she begins to look for beauty that goes beneath the surface. similarly, she adores a good costume, and has attempted to embroider / make similar things. i think she'd loooove musical theatre in particular, not only because she adores good songs and appreciates skilled singers, but i think she'd be taken by the silly camp of it all, and i imagine it's something she often watches with jeyne (who likes to ogle and point out the pretty men). if arya is all about elizabethan tragedy, then sansa is about comedy - plays about love, light, humour, that involve great spectacle, especially ones that play with fairytale and fantasy.

of course this means ned and catelyn have a nightmare trying to decide which is going to be their summer shakespearean outing, since arya and sansa have markedly different views on whether a midsummer night's dream is overplayed and overrated or not.

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Starklings ranked (ascending) based on how much they like trains 🚂:

Robb: Will trains relieve him of the burden of being crowned king so young, the wounds of his father's death so fresh? Will trains bring him the swift victory that will be his salvation and survival? Will they save him from Theon's betrayal? Or that of his own lords? Or even the machinations of his own desperate mother? The answer is 'no, but...', but in the fiendish puzzle of treachery Robb is trapped in, any complicating factor is not one he has the time or patience to grasp. Perhaps trains can help him. Perhaps wishing to the moon can help him. He cannot rely on 'perhaps'. 3/10

Sansa: Has no particular passionate affinity for the humble locomotive. They get you from A -> B, and little more. Now, you could attempt to sell Sansa on the romance of a train journey. How two lovers, perhaps, are able to first meet each other in the bustle of a train station, never to see each other except through stolen glances in a carriage. How hearts divided across the country can find each other through the lines on a map linking far-flung cities. How well a simple train serves a star-crossed romance. But this is not something she would intuitively grasp from a grubby loud engine, a roaring beast of the future, which contrasts so sharply to more obviously romantic landscapes - rolling hills and gentle pastures and courteous knights of a storied past. Sansa's romanticism is grounded in stories and nostalgia and such a narrative hasn't been built around rail travel in Westeros. Give her a copy of Anna Karenina when she is 19 and perhaps she will change her mind. 5/10

Bran: Is much more interested in how a locomotive engine could be used to develop a technology that is of direct use to him rather than considering the benefits the humble train brings more widely. This is very understandable for a recently disabled 9 year old who is a lord's son that has rarely been told 'no' or 'stop'. So instead of simply admiring a beautiful train engine for what it is, Bran jumps (or rather, flies) twelve steps ahead to think about how these engines could allow him to walk again, ride a horse, train to be a knight, be a normal boy etc. The train is appreciated merely as a passage to Bran's desires, and the idea of savouring the journey, the beautiful views it offers from its windows, that is something others will need to teach him. 7/10.

Jon: Now, Jon does not particularly get the whole 'train thing' that Samwell seems excited about -- until he is thrust in the position of Lord commander. At which point, Stannis Baratheon strongly recommends building a rail supply line, deciding to go as far as giving him a lecture on the necessity of a good logistics and supply lines when running an army - the importance of which seems patently obvious to him, because Eddard Stark actually raised him to be his heir's second-in-command, not that Jon is actually that self-aware of that fact due to a lifetime of being called a bastard by everyone else in hearing range. In any case, Jon considers, on balance this a sensible suggestion, and begrudgingly looks into it. He is then very rapidly is convinced of the utility, practicality, and necessity of expanding rail lines across the entirety of the Wall, even the North - for the sake of the preservation of perishable supplies, of course, but also, consider the possibilities. He recruits a number of key enthusiasts to help him build these rail lines and import key locomotive parts from Braavos and White Harbour, and in fact the obsessive planner in him gets almost carried away until his map of the north is covered in coloured pieces of string as train lines. At which point he has to admit. He likes trains. 8/10.

Arya: Here's the thing. Arya has been raised in a castle, to be a proper lady, something she has never quite felt at home being, and has spent every minute of her time trying to escape under it -- to run underfoot with the kitchen boys, to talk and speak to every walk of life outside of the embroidery chamber, to see, to know, to learn. The romance of travel is a language that Arya does intuitively understand. To travel somewhere else, to speak to people who are completely different to you and yours, to embrace a whole world of adventure out there (a whole world that is perhaps not as constricting as home) - that's exciting! That's a possibility train travel does offer. The public nature of it, as well, the fact that it would be so easy for a (not-so) noble girl to slip down to second or third class carriages and sit amongst the common boys and girls as if she belongs - that appeals. But more than anything else, a train offers a quick route out and a quick route home. And given that Arya, more than anyone else on this list, spends most of the books on the most nightmarish journey home, where she has to sleep in ditches and dirt and fear for her life on multiple occasions, I think she would value the convenience and speed of a well-planned rail transport network. 9/10

Rickon: Rickon is three. He LOVES trains. 10/10.

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arya, 100%. arya's the character who had a whole character arc journey in the riverlands during ACOK/ASOS and saw the extent to which the war was ruining the lives of the smallfolk regardless of side. she's the character who has met the brotherhood and has bonds with characters like edric, genry, and thoros. arya's the character who dragged catelyn out of the river through waring through nymeria, and saw her mother's corpse, and in some respects, helped pave the way to LSH's whole situation because nymeria recovered cat's body. arya's the character who has had to consider the cost of vengeance and how much a life is worth, arya's the character who has thought about taking lives (as LSH does), arya's the character who has the most connections, both just in terms of her character having made bonds and thematically, it makes sense.

but also i just don't think other characters are positioned for it. bran's stuck north of the wall. rickon is probably unlikely to leave the north and is potentially marked for death or madness depending on how badly his shaggydog tale on skagos has gone. jon is a little more likely, but it depends on the timing of jon's resurrection and how long it takes him to deal with the battle of the bastards, the campaign in the north, etc. sansa could arguably deal with her entrapment in the vale in time for her to see her mother in the riverlands - but i also just think that given arya has all those existing ties, it also deprives arya of an interesting arc to give that to sansa? besides, it is arya who is both positioned both logistically (not far from braavos - one sea journey, arya's already beginning to question the house of black/white, nymeria's in the riverlands) and thematically. sansa's relationship with her mother is relatively uncomplicated, one of admiration and seeking approval (sansa's more interesting parental relationship is with ned imho), whereas i think arya's trickier relationship with cat has something that ought to be resolved.

previously, arya has previously questioned her relationship with catelyn, wondering if she's a bastard as a small child, wondering if her mother would accept her if she's dirty - a child's insecurities but ones that speak to how fraught things appear - and yet taken on the mantle of 'cat of the canals' in her honour. it would honestly be deeply fitting, given arya's investment for the smallfolk, and as a refutation of the idea that she's not cat's child (when she's fearless like cat and has a temper like cat and takes initiative like cat and knows how to observe and assess like cat - she IS cat's child) for arya to inherit the brotherhood from lady stoneheart and direct them to a truer purpose - in this case, that would just be arya getting them to commit to fighting against the long night. it also allows arya to put her previous idea of vengeance and murmured list of people she wants dead away. it works really well thematically for arya as well as a good response to the idea of tyranny through violence.

for all these reasons i think arya is going to be the character who will put lady stoneheart out of her misery. she will kill her just as she fished her body out of the river. i also think it's quite possible she will take robb's crown, the nailed crown of bronze and iron, from LSH, and then crown the next king in the north (imo that's jon but that's the subject of another post)