#aryaarianne complains

[aryaarianne]

I remember reading ADwD and thinking am I reading it right, Jon is so passionate about Arya it's like his dormant Targaryen was unleashed. And then the Jonrya letter leaked and I had to reread the books because I had been reading it right.

Sorry, anon - I intended to write about how much I love Jon and his ADWD arc, but I ended up spiraling into a rant about George’s writing and fandom response instead! Hopefully you don’t mind me stepping on the soapbox.

TL;DR: You get me, and all of us who picked up on it have to stick together. :) Mentioned rant is under the cut!

I fully agree - I think the scope and scale of the series overall really allows some people to distance themselves from how, like, unsubtle some of the hints George has dropped in ADWD really are. Because there’s so much text to sift through, people are less inclined to take certain details or patterns as seriously as they deserve. 

Has George’s original storyline mutated over the years? 100% it has. Has it changed so much that Jon and Arya’s dynamic is no longer romantic? I find it difficult to say one way or the other - there’s a lot of factors to consider, end of the day, including marketability. Jonrya just isn’t that popular.

But has the storyline changed so much that Jon and Arya’s dynamic is no longer crucial to the plot and key factors in the arcs of both characters? Absolutely not. They may not be the most important factors in each other’s arcs anymore, maybe, but theirs is certainly the most relevant relationship to their arcs. It’s more or less spelled out for us in their POVs.

George is an incredibly efficient writer. He has no intention to waste the reader’s time, and no patience for mind games. He’s extremely deliberate - his text isn’t simple or straight-forward by any means, but it is constructed with a consciously considered purpose. Honestly, people like to moan about how long George takes to finish his work, but just as many people, and often the same, will discount exactly how meaningful each line of text that he includes is. He spends that long editing and drafting and deliberating each word, and so it seems only fair to assume everything he includes has a specific purpose.

The thing with George is that when he writes POV chapters, the text is neither generally omniscient nor a comprehensive catalogue of the perspective character’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations. Unlike some authors, George doesn’t dissect a character’s unconscious near-explicitly in the text - he gives the readers room to breathe and settle and consider for themselves. He asks more of his readers, and the simple fact is that mainstream audiences, and that includes fandom, read the series just for leisure - not judging, that’s a totally fine way to engage with the text.

And further, the nuances in Jon’s character in particular have suffered from how mainstream audiences have engaged with him. He is easily the most frequently simplified character, and the reduction is one of the most extreme in degrees, as well, especially if you factor in what a big fucking deal he is. What I mean is - take Arianne. While I love the Martells, and Arianne in particular, there is a lot less text dedicated to them and to her than there is to Jon, or even most POV characters. It naturally follows that readers would generalize or simplify her character as easily as they do. (I don’t like it, but it tracks logically.)

In comparison, Jon, with so many POVs and being easily the most important character, perspective or otherwise, to do with the entire Ice half of A Song of Ice and Fire, has had his arc and his themes diluted down to the point they’re near meaningless to the gen fandom, and it is fucking wild to witness! It's hard to really get a grip on as a fan of his, but a big part of it goes back to the fact that George’s writing style is a) relatively dense and b) relatively demanding.

I’m a pretty critical person, but I should say there’s a lot of things I do like about the ASOIAF fandom, and a lot of the time I don’t mind the community around book-accurate Jon, Arya, and their dynamic being smaller, because I think it gives opportunities to more people to voice their thoughts and be heard, and also we’ve got some of the most talented artists, editors, writers, and meta-writers in the fandom, easily. 

But it can be frustrating to have a legitimate view of the text, so much so it’s clearly explicitly supported by textual and meta textual evidence, and yet be dismissed so easily by the wider fandom. But luckily the community has some really great members and allies, and blocking is easy enough - I do it at the drop of a hat, lol!

Agh, I should wrap this up. Thanks for the ask, and it makes me happy that you came to me with the sentiment - I feel you, anon, you get me

[aryaarianne]

Hate how reading fic that prominently includes Arianne gets me so excited but will 9 times out of 10 leave me incredibly disappointed, esp w/ series completion fics... Why do fic authors feel the need to force Arianne to relearn lessons she has already learned when their favs haven't even begun to learn their lesson in canon? We know why

[aryaarianne]

roast arys oakheart!

oh my god where to even start — if you removed all of the redeeming features of the himbo meme... the most boring perspective in affc... really is pointless not even touching his creepy ass fixation on arianne... his shitty limp dick thing about hitting sansa "lighter" than the others... only ok thing he ever did was how he die, n it didnt even help anyone!

[aryaarianne]

The Starklings as Spice Girls

As analyzed and reported by someone who knows nothing about the Spice Girls, because this isn't a Spice Girls blog.

Baby Stark: Rickon

This is the most obvious choice. Rickon is like, two, or something, and oft forgotten and dismissed by both the fandom and the remaining key players of Westeros - although in fairness, they do think he's dead. Still, underestimating Baby energy, which is feral in disguise as cute, is a mistake that is easy to make, but also easily your undoing. Baby can also have double meanings, for inappropriate implications about adult relationships, but Rickon is like, two, so that means nothing here. What more can you want from me? He's a literal Baby.

Scary Stark: Jon

I can hear everyone arguing now, but I'm here to say that I will not stand for it. Jon is going to possess his albino wolf named Ghost, turn into a literal zombie, and kill his own evil foil - not to mention being a part Dragon and part Wolf himself. He was also raised a bastard, and has a mighty unhealthy fixation on his sister and his blood - hello gothic backstory! I know what you're thinking - OP, he's dead. How Scary can he be? The answer is we don't know, and that's Scariest of all. Jon is terrifying, but that's a large part of why he's hot - truly Scary in spirit.

Sporty Stark: Arya

There's nothing that bothers me more than when people reduce Arya to swords and fighting - she is so much more than that. She is also hot. Running from the police is a work out, kids, and Arya is getting in killer shape. But to dig in seriously to the dynamics of being Sporty, she has had far more coaches and coach figures than anyone else - Syrio, Jaqen, Sandor kind of, The Kindly Man, a good amount of whores, like half the sailors in Braavos, and the entire pantheon of the Old Gods, not to mention her mastery of that classic athletic move - letting your crippling insecurity push you into joining a team you no longer want to be on solely because you won't know what to do with yourself if you quit.

Ginger Stark: Sansa

Admittedly, this is the one I'm expecting the most flak on, but I'll cover that below. The most obvious way to tackle this is to go for the throat - the Ginger hair. Sansa has auburn hair, like her baby brothers, and it's pretty damn important! Auburn coloring is reminiscent of Tully heritage, and key to her mom specifically, a character she shares many parallels with. On the subject of Ginger itself, it is also a delicious spicy flavoring, and we can expect Sansa to be adding plenty of delicious spicy flavoring to the books with her scrumptious Vale plot that you can pry from my cold dead fucking hands.

Posh Stark: Bran

Ah, the most controversial of my choices. I stand by it. Don't let your impression of Ms. Beckham fool you - being Posh is not about marrying abs. It's about being Posh. And what is more Posh than repeated allusions unscoring your place as the Lord of Winterfell? What could possibly be more Posh than first running a castle when most contemporary children your age are watching Finding Nemo? And you know what, even if being Posh was about marrying abs, no one comes into my house and claims that Meera fucking Reed doesn't qualify. Meera is the David to Bran's Victoria. Anyways, he's also Martin's fave, and a damn good kid, so accept him as your Posh and saviour and rejoice.

[aryaarianne]

tbqh i don’t care what jon or arya look like in edits/fancasts/etc so long as they resemble each other. thats what really bothers me about some fancasts (and the show). 

its sort of like how casting went in the hp movies. like, ok, harry couldn’t have green eyes. that’d be fine if they gave his mom blue eyes too, but then lily had brown eyes, and the thing about him having his mother’s eyes no longer makes sense (cause hell the actress - not her fault - didn’t resemble him at all). 

its like that - the looks aren’t so important as the relationship it represents, but if the looks are out of sync, then we lose that whole effect, which is a pretty crucial element of both characters’ arcs and personalities

[aryaarianne]

ugh i need to cut my stupid dany x arya fic down so its not obnoxiously long beneath the edit but i poured my heart and soul into it..... maybe i’ll just post an excerpt with a link under the edit and i’ll finally use my dumb ao3 account to post the full version... but its not quite long enough to feel warranted damn lol

[aryaarianne]

This isn't about Sansa stans BTW. This is about like, everyone. The real difference I would guess is in people who put too much time into show rather than book canon.

People will consistently cast 9 year olds as Arya, and 24 year olds as Sansa as if the age difference between them isn't 3 years. They'll draw them that way too. Like, the trend of infantilizing Arya and sexualizing Sansa is honestly concerning. And they get so defensive about it...

[aryaarianne]

@thestarksknownochillbutthecold

that's so weird, I did too oh my god 😂 keanu!ned is not a bad idea either lol, because as much as I love sean bean he does... not look very stark? imo.

keanu reeves has the stark look

[aryaarianne]

Yes, thank you! I don't think people realize that in portraying the characters this way, they miss the entire point of how GRRM designed them. In real life, yes, physical appearances don't necessarily mean something more (though that doesn't mean they have no deeper impact). But in the realm of fiction, the way an author designs their characters is often a shorthand for their character, their growth and progression, and their relationships. (And no, not in terms of beauty = moral good... at least not in this case.) Jon and Arya being the only Stark children to have gray eyes is the physical manifestation of the outsider qualities which both alienate them from the rest of their family while simultaneously make them suitable for rule in the North. It's their Starkness (read: wildness, magic, being treated as less valuable due to being gnc/a bastard, yearning for more than their status and station should allow, later it's their being willing to acknowledge their privilege and use it to help those without) which ostracized them from their more southron-palatable Tully relations. This Starkness is also what makes them such apt leaders to the smallfolk. It's also the foundation for their bond.

And as for the other Starklings: not having this Stark quality, and the Stark gray eyes that go along with it, is not a character flaw! It's not bad for Sansa to be less wild and more gender-conforming - that's part of her arc. It's not bad that Bran doesn't experience the same consequences of breaking the mold that his sister or cousin do. It's not bad! Their journeys and appearances are unique to them, which is why it bugs me so much when people feel the need to rearrange the way the characters look to say, give Bran the Stark looks, as though that's something he needs to be worthy of being the Lord of Winterfell, or changing things so Sansa's the only one with full, true Tully coloring, as if she needs to be the one who stands out rather than her sister.

I guess it's just a pet peeve of mine, because really, when you change the way the Starklings look, the implication is that you change the whole dynamic between them, and the existing dynamic is already so misunderstood despite being one of the best bits of characterization in the series.

The moment anyone describes Arya as having a ‘round face’ it takes me right out, like I am blessed to forget the show exists sometimes, I’m reading like 🙈 who? Arya Horseface? Arya known for her Stark genes, notably including the long face typical of House Stark? It’s a small detail but it smacks me over the head every time. Even when the show isn’t listed as the fandom it happens sometimes! Just part of fanfic.

[aryaarianne]

I know, her performance was spectacular but I just imagined such softer features for the Tullys.... they've got the classic beauty features of romantic epics/fantasy, you know, long red hair, big blue eyes, high cheekbones, i always pictured them with such a delicate look. ms fairley is lovely but I always pictured catelyn a bit more like this?

With a bit more auburn in her hair maybe, but you know... delicate, soft. These models are a bit young, but the look is what I mean. Again, ms fairley gave an incredible performance, but in terms of looks, it was not very accurate haha. I think part of it, too, is that she was 48 when she started, to the book character's 35? It's the same for Ned, with his 36 to Sean Bean's 52. The ages were changed so much for the kids, but I think it affects the adults as well. Because they're parents, they're aged up and cast to look more like parents than just, the characters? If that makes sense lol

keanu reeves has the stark look