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Yes, I’m going there.
The recent fandom drama concerning Arya fans and Sansa fans and whether you can criticize them (or their fans) made me think a lot about those two and their respective journeys. So since I have a paper and a thesis to procrastinate from, I thought I’ll get my feet wet and just write down a few thoughts.
As probably everyone who first read the books, when I started with Game of Thrones I immediately liked Arya and disliked Sansa. Arya is the cool adventurous girl who wants to be a hero and Sansa is naive, stuck up and worst of all likes Joeffrey! So yeah, it is rather obvious who the reader is supposed to like here. But than something interesting happens (well a lot of interesting things happen, but let’s stay on topic).
Arya does not become the “strong female hero” I expected her to. And on the context of what happens to her that makes perfect sense. She is an eight year old girl that experiences horrible trauma and that doesn’t make her a better person, it makes her colder and ready to kill. I’m not saying that she is as bad as the monsters in human from we have encountered in the series until now (that she is not speaks a lot to her strength of character), but I’m very worried that this is were she is going. I’m not sure that the love and compassion that guided her actions at the beginning of the books will protect her much longer from that. Let’s not forget she not only killed to survive, she not only has her personal revenge list, she has already murdered in cold blood. All this is very troubling and right now I don’t see how she would get off this path she is currently on. So my prediction for the coming books is, that if she comes back to Westeros she will not only be a cold blooded killer, but a danger to what is left of her family and will probably have to die. That is of course completely horrible and not fair at all and it breaks my heart, but considering the books we are reading, that is probably what is going to happen. I hope it won’t. I really really hope I’m wrong on this.
Sansa’s journey on the other hand is similar and very different at the same time. She started extremely unlikable, but through the books became increasingly relatable. The horrible things she had to experience did not make her colder and more cruel, but smarter about the way of the world and how to interact with the people around her. She learns, that much of what she believed about knights being honorable and so on is completely false. Learning from a master of the Game Littlefinger himself probably doesn’t hurt either. So my guess (and that is something a lot of other people have said already) is that Sansa might be the only hope for the Stark family not to go completely extinct. She is the only one in a position to do so right now and she is also the only one of the Stark kids with the necessary political insight.
I find comparing these two characters so interesting, because in the end both of their journeys are about loss of innocence, but what this does to the characters is very different. After being so negative about Arya’s future I should probably add, that those differences don’t necessary make Sansa better (whatever definition of better one might use) than Arya or vice versa. Others have already said and I agree, that Sansa probably could not have survived what Arya went through, nor could Arya have survived at court.
Yes, I’m going there.
The recent fandom drama concerning Arya fans and Sansa fans and whether you can criticize them (or their fans) made me think a lot about those two and their respective journeys. So since I have a paper and a thesis to procrastinate from, I thought I’ll get my feet wet and just write down a few thoughts.
As probably everyone who first read the books, when I started with Game of Thrones I immediately liked Arya and disliked Sansa. Arya is the cool adventurous girl who wants to be a hero and Sansa is naive, stuck up and worst of all likes Joeffrey! So yeah, it is rather obvious who the reader is supposed to like here. But than something interesting happens (well a lot of interesting things happen, but let’s stay on topic).
Arya does not become the “strong female hero” I expected her to. And on the context of what happens to her that makes perfect sense. She is an eight year old girl that experiences horrible trauma and that doesn’t make her a better person, it makes her colder and ready to kill. I’m not saying that she is as bad as the monsters in human from we have encountered in the series until now (that she is not speaks a lot to her strength of character), but I’m very worried that this is were she is going. I’m not sure that the love and compassion that guided her actions at the beginning of the books will protect her much longer from that. Let’s not forget she not only killed to survive, she not only has her personal revenge list, she has already murdered in cold blood. All this is very troubling and right now I don’t see how she would get off this path she is currently on. So my prediction for the coming books is, that if she comes back to Westeros she will not only be a cold blooded killer, but a danger to what is left of her family and will probably have to die. That is of course completely horrible and not fair at all and it breaks my heart, but considering the books we are reading, that is probably what is going to happen. I hope it won’t. I really really hope I’m wrong on this.
Sansa’s journey on the other hand is similar and very different at the same time. She started extremely unlikable, but through the books became increasingly relatable. The horrible things she had to experience did not make her colder and more cruel, but smarter about the way of the world and how to interact with the people around her. She learns, that much of what she believed about knights being honorable and so on is completely false. Learning from a master of the Game Littlefinger himself probably doesn’t hurt either. So my guess (and that is something a lot of other people have said already) is that Sansa might be the only hope for the Stark family not to go completely extinct. She is the only one in a position to do so right now and she is also the only one of the Stark kids with the necessary political insight.
I find comparing these two characters so interesting, because in the end both of their journeys are about loss of innocence, but what this does to the characters is very different. After being so negative about Arya’s future I should probably add, that those differences don’t necessary make Sansa better (whatever definition of better one might use) than Arya or vice versa. Others have already said and I agree, that Sansa probably could not have survived what Arya went through, nor could Arya have survived at court.
