queen—of—thorns submitted to asoiafuniversity :

We’ve all heard it before. Or at least, I have.

“Sansa has too much Tully in her!! She’s just like her mom!!!!!! She’s not a wolf!!! blahfuckingblahfhfhfh”

But what if I were to flip the script? What if I were to say that no, Sansa isn’t just like her mother? What if I were to say, however, that Arya is strikingly similar to Catelyn and that no, that’s not a bad thing at all?

I know, I know. Just hear me out.

See, I think a lot of people do this as a way to discredit both Sansa and Catelyn or to simply lump the two traditionally feminine women together. But even if this wasn’t the case, I’d still disagree with it. Why? Because I see a lot more of the idealistic, naive, internal Ned in Sansa than in Arya. And I see a lot of the pragmatic, fierce, fiery, assertive, unforgiving Cat in Arya, not in Sansa. Does this mean I think either Sansa or Arya is better than the other because one is more like Cat and one is more like Ned? Absolutely not. And nor would I ever argue that either is just a copy of one of their parents - they’re clearly their own people with a mix of inherited traits on the side. But I’m kind of digressing. Let’s begin.

Which parent do you think Arya was taking after when she acted wary and mistrustful? Which parent do you think Arya was taking after when she chafed against societal constraints? Which parent do you think Arya was taking after when she (almost paradoxically) flipped and went into a rage? Not Ned. Yes, it can be said that Arya takes after Lyanna, but 1) we don’t know a lot about her and 2) can it not also be said that it’s quite likely she’s taking after her mother, too?

I mean, when people say Arya and Cat have nothing in common, I have to wonder what books they’re reading. Feeling like an outsider in the situations they’ve been placed in? Check. Fierce natures being stifled by gender constraints? Check. Assertive and active personalities? Check. Sansa is more apt to sit and watch, to wait and see - not so, with Cat and Arya. They can be rash, and while both are highly intelligent (ah, another similarity!), their natures sometimes get the better of them (Arya much more than Cat, but then, she is a child). Inherently mistrustful, keen outlooks? Check. Pragmatism? Check. Less likely to be swayed by empathy/sympathy than Ned and Sansa? Check, check, check.

Remember when Cat released Jaime Lannister in order to get her girls back? No, she’s not like Arya in that she enjoys physical fighting, but she will use any means necessary to protect her family. Remind you of anyone? Arya’s passionate loyalty to her family is what fuels her for a significant portion of the series. And what keeps Cat going? Not to mention: what gives her a purpose as Lady Stoneheart? Family. And as Stoneheart, she’s avenging the ones she loved. Speaking of vengeance, again, does Stoneheart’s revenge-fueled bloodbath ring any bells? Who has a list of people she wants to kill? (I’d go so far as to say that Stoneheart is not a complete departure from the living Cat, but that’s an unpopular opinion and I don’t want to bog down this post with it.)

Remember when Cat stuck up for her daughters?

“I might have been able to trade the Kingslayer for Father, but…”

“…but not for the girls?” Her voice was icy quiet. “Girls are not important enough, are they?”

I love that quote, and it reminds me of something Arya would say.

And do you also recall Catelyn’s remark about Cersei?

“Give me Cersei Lannister, Lord Karstark, and you would see how gentle a woman can be,” Catelyn replied.

Here is yet another time she reminds me much more of Arya than of Sansa. Not to mention that a lot of Arya’s and Cat’s thought processes and inner dialogues are remarkably similar in ways. I admit I didn’t pick up on this until more perceptive readers pointed it out, but it’s undoubtedly there. There is a brilliant, almost startlingly vivid, violent quality to some of Cat’s thoughts, along with Arya’s, that is notably missing in Sansa. There is also a strong desire for justice - both of them are driven by it.

And jfc don’t get me started on all the significance of water and the formidable amount of water symbolism in Arya’s storyline, which is yet another connection to her mother. Don’t bring up how it’s Arya who is traveling the Riverlands. And please, please don’t remind me how it’s Nymeria who pulls Catelyn’s body from the river, because that just breaks my heart. (As an aside, does anyone else find Arya’s connection with cats funny? Because, I mean, cats .)

So what do I have to say about Arya and Catelyn? Both are incredibly strong, resilient people. They’re both excessively active characters, not content to sit back and watch. Nor are they content to be the meek, voiceless women that society demands them to be. They’re assertive. They’re essentially pragmatic. They’re flawed - they can be rash, they can lose their cool, they can be single-minded, they can be cold and dismissive and unforgiving. They’re shrewd. They will do anything - anything - for their families. And I think they have a much greater connection than some corners of the fandom give them credit for.

headtrip-honey:

That’s one of my favorite lines from Sansa, and I’m sad that we lost it. Granted, it was an internal monologue in the books, but I can’t help but think it, or something like it, could have made it into the show dialogue.

More than being upset over Sansa kneeling, I’m upset by the way the show has continually stripped Sansa of her agency and her actual storyline.

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abigailxhobbs:

I’m gonna need you all to take a few seconds to consider something really important.

Back in book two when Sansa got her first period she described it as her body betraying her and she described the blood as looking like a Lannister banner. You know why? Because getting her period means the Lannisters own her. And scrap of agency she was allowed is gone because she reached the age of maturity.

Marrying a Lannister, any Lannister, means that Sansa’s own body is being used to betray her family and she can’t stop it. It means that the Lannisters are using her body to make sure the Starks never rule Winterfell.

If your body was being used to take away everything your family worked for you would be less than enthusiastic too.

eta: It should also be noted that being married to Tyrion offers her zero protection from Joffrey

secretlyatargaryen:

onlyalittlelion:

“When Sansa turned, the little man was gazing up at her, his mouth tight, his face as red as her cloak.  Suddenly she was ashamed of her stubbornness.  She smoothed her skirts and knelt in front of him, so their heads were on the same level.”

No, she doesn’t kneel right away; yes, it’s important that she doesn’t, and it’s highly problematic that the show changed it.  But stop screaming that “Sansa Stark doesn’t kneel for anyone,” guys.  She doesn’t kneel for House Lannister; she does kneel for Tyrion, if only out of pity.   

The whole kneeling thing is about the oppression that both of them face, although in different ways. Remember what Sansa thinks when she refuses to kneel? “Why should I care about his feelings, when no one cares about mine?” And then everyone is laughing at Tyrion. Because haha the dwarf can’t reach his bride’s shoulders, in this wedding that he didn’t choose, that neither of them chose. And then Sansa realizes that no one thought to bring Tyrion a stool. Because even the Lannisters don’t care about Tyrion. Because this wedding isn’t about Tyrion, it’s about politics. No one cares about Sansa’s humiliation, or about Tyrion’s. In fact they’re more than willing to laugh at them. That’s why she kneels in the book, and it doesn’t make her initial refusal less powerful, but it does say something about Sansa’s ability to have compassion for someone even though she has it worse. She doesn’t kneel because she owes Tyrion anything. She kneels because this isn’t right for either of them.

(via nobodysuspectsthebutterfly)

(via fatpinkcast)

thewaroffivequeens:

what cracks me up about people ripping on dany for her scenes in 3x07 is that she literally just walked up to yunkai and said, “if you free your slaves i’ll walk on by, but if you don’t i’ll kill you”

she didn’t roll on in and declare herself ruler of yunkai

she doesn’t give a shit about yunkai

it’s a dot on a map to her

what matters are the 200,000 dots with slave collars inside the city

dany would be perfectly content to leave the city be if the people there were all free

#if you’re going to criticize dany at least do it correctly #criticize her for having a naive and privileged attitude towards the underclass she’s ‘freeing’ #criticize her for her white savior complex #criticize her for trying to make social change without stopping to consider the social upheaval #but don’t accuse her of being a child tyrant bully on the playground because her name is not joffrey baratheon

(via khaleesiboadicea)

In chapter 60 of A Clash of Kings, Cersei notes that when she was little Jaime used to dress up in her clothes and pass as her, and she him. At least as a child, Jaime experienced what it was like to be treated like a woman.

We know explicitly how the impact of this experience and other misogynistic experiences has affected Cersei, but not so much how it has affected Jaime. Did this experience give him a deeper understanding of how Cersei was treated for being a girl? Has it subconsciously helped him relate to Brienne in any way?

And then I find myself circling back to my dead horse, about how the show depicted Jaime as so repulsed at the idea of being called a woman. There has been a lot of conversation about how Brienne from the books (or the show!) would never say that and less focus on how Jaime would never respond to that.

I don’t think Jaime would/should have responded to that.

And I find it fascinating that this one throwaway line actually tells us a lot about Cersei and Jaime’s childhood experiences with gender expectations.

-M

(via fatpinkcast)

In the books, the war of the boy king is Catelyn’s story, subverting tropes of the dashing young hero who beats the odds and triumphs over all. She adds an emotional level to the story, as the mother who worries for her children, but she’s also a strategist and deeply pragmatic. She’s one of the few figures who realizes that they’re not merely playing at war, and understand what that must mean. In the show, however, Catelyn is merely the mother of the king, and no one wants to see what the mother is thinking or doing when the true hero is elsewhere.

(Source: fuckyeahwinterfell)

stormdicks:

What inspired this post was me wondering, basically, who the hell is Renly? Is he what he appears to be—entitled, superficial, cruel to a brother who claims to love him? What motivates him? Is it nothing but desire for power and glory? Then I was inspired by unapologeticallybaratheon’s meta post about the origins of the animosity between the Baratheon brothers and I knew I had to write all of this down. It’s an edit of an earlier post I made, but there were some things I really wanted to add.

Here are my ideas about what might have been going on in Renly’s mind.

During the Siege of Storm’s End, a nearly year-long battle where Stannis held an increasingly weary garrison against the Tyrell and Redwyne fleets, a six-or-seven year old Renly was held inside the garrison to keep him from being taken hostage. Unapologeticallybaratheon reminds us that Renly also faced “starving to death for a year because [his] brother started a war that [he didn’t] understand and [he] could lose [his] life over.” And I can imagine him resenting Stannis just as much as Robert for what happened. Here’s an eight year old kid who’s probably not old enough to understand things like duty or honor or the reasons people go to war, or that people are trying to keep him safe by having him inside the castle. He just likes to run around outside and charm people and play make-believe games. And all of a sudden he’s trapped in the keep, there are enemies literally at his door, everyone around him is preoccupied and scared, and on top of that he’s eating rats and nearly starving.

And then there are people who think Stannis should surrender. At least one of them, Gawen Wylde, actually tries it and is executed by Stannis. So there may have been whispers around Renly, whispers that Renly heard. Accusations. Resentment. Why doesn’t Stannis just surrender so we can eat? So Renly may well have put two and two together and begun to blame his brother for that year that he was scared and starving. DISCLAIMER: I FUCKING LOVE STANNIS and I’m not trying to blame him for any of this stuff; he was doing his duty as a lord and a soldier and obeying his older brother, which is what he was supposed to do (and on top of that he was just nineteen himself). I’m just trying to see it from the point of view of a little kid who is just wondering what the hell is going on and, as people do, trying to pin responsibility on someone for it. He likely can’t blame the Tyrells, at least not anymore, since he now has a close relationship with the family and he certainly can’t resent his beloved Loras for any of it. So Stannis is a convenient enemy. I can see Renly looking back on it and thinking, the Tyrells were everything I wanted to be, cultured and powerful and beautiful; they were my escape from Stannis and people like him. How can I blame them for anything? Obviously Stannis was the one getting in the way. I should have been on their side of the blockade.

Plus Stannis is Stannis, so likely he wasn’t especially comforting or emotionally available if Renly needed him. Again, we don’t know, and maybe Stannis was a super affectionate brother, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to express emotion even if he felt it strongly—especially if he felt guilty for putting Renly in that situation; I’m thinking he’d try to avoid any reminders so he could keep himself strong. Remember how he can’t bring himself to say Edric Storm’s name? And then Renly sees that people get executed for leaving, and quite possibly he becomes scared of Stannis—is this what happens to people who just want to eat? Add this to what looks like a fundamental incompatibility in temperament and communicative style and you’ve got the beginnings of a very dangerous schism.

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stannisisthefury:

The king was a great disappointment to Jon. His father had talked of him often: the peerless Robert Baratheon, demon of the Trident, the fiercest warrior in the realm, a giant among princes. Jon saw only a fat man, red-faced under his beard, sweating through his silks. He walked like a man half in his cups(…)

Ser Jaime Lannister was twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden, with flashing green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife(…) Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like.

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