Stick Them With The Pointy End (Provided You Have A Pointy End)

So, whilst browsing TvTropes in the wake of finishing off A Dance with Dragons, I noticed an odd trend in Arya tropes: a lot of them suggest that she's going mad. Odd, I thought. I don't recall her really exhibiting any obvious signs. What did I miss?

Apparently, as a little more reading proved, I missed the fact that she's a girl. Okay, fandom, let's talk.


And, I do want to be clear on this, this is a problem I have with fandom, not GRRM. Nothing on the trope pages seemed to suggest that the author is going around describing Arya as someone who's on the slippery sanity slope (or at least, no more than anyone else in this crapsack world). No, this seems to be largely fannish conjecture.

And this might not have even been a problem for me. Yeah, it's not healthy that she's all of ten years old and prepared to murder people over relatively trivial matters (thinking specifically of when she sells a woman a horse and gets severely ripped off on the (correct) assumption that she stole the horse). Yeah, it might be indicative of some mental issues. Yet at the same time, you have her brother, Bran, who's been body-snatching a mentally disabled man for the past two-ish books. Not only that, but the experience is described as basically being mind rape. Oh, and did I forget to mention? Bran's totally aware of how miserable his target is when he overrides.

So, does fandom describe Bran as a fellow sociopath? Nah, they make excuses right alongside him. It's fine that he's taking over Hodor in times of peace, since all he's doing is walking in his legs. He doesn't know that he's doing wrong because he doesn't have a professor in wargology to explain warging ethics to him. It's not his fault, guys! Sure, he might be doing evil things, but he's oblivious to it and that makes it okay! He's still a potential hero, you guys! But Arya, well, she has options that wouldn't entail killing everyone, so she's grey at best.

I put to you that if it was Arry Stark learning to be a child assassin, fandom would be all over that shit calling him a badass. But she's a girl, and even though we're better than saying that girls can't do certain things, if a girl does certain things, she's going to be judged really harshly. I saw one person justify describing her as on the road to crazy because, while her first kill was a horrifying experience, she later is able to kill people without immediately having a BSoD about it. Which makes her different from all the male characters... how, exactly? Because Jon's first killing experience isn't a fun time for him, but he gets over it and becomes a hardened warrior. So do all the other men, but Arya gets singled out as a madwoman for going through this desensitization process.

So, if you're going to call Arya crazy, please be prepared to call out Jaqen H'ghar, Jon Snow, Bronn, Sandor Clegane, Tyrion Lannister, and basically every textual badass. It has to be all or nothing, fandom, otherwise you look hella sexist.

I know, I should write a Top Ten commentary. Next post. Promise.