question: why does grrm making one of the few ACTUAL parallels in the entire series, namely arya and lyanna, make some people so mad? they are literally shaking with anger whenever someone points out quotes or moments in which arya is said to be similar to lyanna which is again what grrm himself actively pushes and considers important enough to remind us over and over again throughout the whole series. thoughts?
because for Lyanna it proves she’s more important than their non-existent dornish poc princess, and for Arya it indicates femininity and importance and a romantic storyline and we can’t have that now can we 🙄 it’s hypocritical too. they want those parallels for themselves, they do it with sansa and lyanna (parallels that don’t exist) all the time they just can’t stand it’s a character they don’t like, especially as it indicates she’s more important than their fave (even tho arya is one of the key five so you’d think that importance was already undeniable but alas)
exactly! they're jealous af that arya is a more important character and has different plots, not only both magic and political importance w leadership foreshadowing, but also a romantic one. while they're stealing aspects of her arcs for themselves, they need to "prove" why she can't have those. that's where forcing arya into "tomboy" tiny box comes from. "arya is a tomboy", "she doesn't have to be feminine", "she doesn't have to be pretty", "why are you sexualizing her", "calling her pretty gives p*do vibes", etc, etc.
one of their bullshit made up narratives was that arya's plot from og outline was cut in two and the romantic aspect of it grrm gave to sansa, thus jonsa instead of jonrya. they tried to make the same about lyanna: actually both sisters are paralleled w her, and arya has horse riding/sword playing i guess, while sansa got the songs and romantic part. (i lost like. years of life just typing this nonsense 💀)
but oops, arya stans debunked this shit absolutely and since then they started to use misogynistic arguments against lyanna as well. "if we can't have this, no one can" it seems 🤷🏽♀️ "parallels w lyanna aren't a good thing actually", "northerners would hate lyanna for starting a war", "manwannabe", 1536372 wild bullshit claims from the cultists, "rhaegar and lyanna ain't a love story" - and this one has different roots tbh. it's both anti targ sentiments all over again AND an implication that girls like arya and lyanna can't have princes falling in love w them, especially not over "lady-like embodiments of femininity". they can't accept the fact that grrm gives romantic plotlines to girls who don't conform into society's restrictions for women intentionally. because deep down they ARE misogynistic and want their obedient good girly girls have all the goodies while "bad disobedient" ones have nothing and are even punished for not fitting in.
parallels w lyanna just show once again what a beautifully written, complex and multidimensional female character arya in fact is. it's smth they don't want ppl to acknowledge bc they both feel threatened on behalf of their own self insert fave and bc, like i've just said, they're misogynists who can't accept the fact that women not bowing down to patriarchal society's demands are worthy of the same things that the rest of women are, that they are allowed to have this and that they DO have all of this.
while all of these points are valid, it is also important to differentiate and acknowledge both perpetrators of these takes; jonsas and so called fandom neutrals. jonsas despise the arya/lyanna parallels because despite hating the r/l ship, they secretly covet those sorts of tropes for sansa, ignoring that sansa is a deconstruction of the kind princess trope. whether sansa is kind or not (and she is, just not as much as her fans, which encompass both neutrals and jonsas duh, claim she is, and especially not more than dany or arya or jon. the text is right there), the case remains that the weak parallels jonsas (and neutrals!) make between sansa and lyanna such as "defending the weak" and "trapped in a tower" are both based on either headcanons or straight up textual misinterpretation to fit a certain agenda. the more needling takes often come from these 'neutrals' who pretend that they have enlightened knowledge of the text that arya stans cannot possibly have because they "self-insert" or because they "want arya to have sansa's beauty" or because "arya and sansa are actually equally well plotted and written characters who represent two sides of the same coin and thus must not be 'pitted against each other'". using high literary language in shitposts (which are passed around as deeply insightful metas) doesn't distract from the fact that these 'metas' of theirs have zero substance and no actual commentary on characters. they use their posts to reference the fandom at large, targeting different subfandoms (while funnily enough ignoring the larger insiduous jonsa and martell subfandoms who have worked tirelessly to pollute this fandom with their metas, which surpass bnfs' cherry-picking. i guess these neutrals feel intimidated by jonsas. they don't have the guts to stand up to or confront jonsas and their regular word vomit in the tags.)
tl;dr. there is no point in these posts that are made on the regular. 'neutrals' and jonsas are bored and want to start fights in the fandom, while shrugging off all responsibility when things get dirtier.