Daughter of the North

To Arya stans who use Jeyne Poole calling Arya "Horseface" as justification for her horrific treatment at the hands of Ramsay Bolton---Arya would hate you

Who does this?

People are truly so afraid of liking stupid characters. you see it all the time with Sansa specifically, but also Starks who all have to be The Brightest. Sansa is definitely the most egregious example though. Like, so many of her fans feel compelled to find whatever evidence they can (or can make up) that Actually she's extremely clever or will be extremely clever or clever by the north standards or clever by our real world standards or whatever, and I truly think that they just can't conceive of liking a character who's not only dumb, or worse, braindead. Some of it is equating intelligence with goodness (which is wild, especially when it comes to the fact that they themselves don’t possess any) and some of it is just... they can't like a character who's stupid. I don't know if it's a self insert thing, a patriarchal thing, a misogyny / internalized misogyny thing or what. So when you say Sansa is not smart, or 'worse', stupid, they take it as an insult to her worth in-story and to her worth as a character, as if not being rational means she's not written well

Disney fairytale mindset fr

Why do you need her to be though? Why does it matter if she is? It doesn't make her any less of a good character. It doesn't diminish her worth in-story or as a written character. What would improve if she was intelligent? If this fictional 11 year old is actually, and please forgive my language, a complete idiot, what does it matter? Why are we debating the theoretical intelligence of this child, when this isn't at all the point of this post?

A recap and a lesson for fandom newbies -

Another day of disregarding evidence in favor of self serving headcanons brought to you by the piss poor reading website :(

People are truly so afraid of liking ugly characters. you see it all the time with Arya specifically, but also targs who all have to be The Prettiest. Rhaenyra femininity discourse comes to mind (and of course there's a lot to say there about equating beauty with femininity / gender conforming but that's a whole other thing). Arya is definitely the most egregious example though. Like, so many of her fans feel compelled to find whatever evidence they can (or can make up) that Actually she's extremely pretty or will be extremely pretty or pretty by the north standards or pretty by our real world standards or whatever, and I truly think that they just can't conceive of liking a character who's not pretty, or worse, ugly. Some of it is equating beauty with goodness (which is wild, especially when it comes to asoiaf as and its themes as a series) and some of it is just... they can't like a character who's ugly. I don't know if it's a self insert thing, a patriarchal thing, a misogyny / internalized misogyny thing or what. So when you say Arya is not pretty, or 'worse', ugly, they take it as an insult to her worth in-story and to her worth as a character, as if not being pretty means she's not written well

Disney fairytale mindset fr

Much comes from cultural conditioning in how storytelling in fairytales and folklore have been presented. In old stories, especially those that feature morality and ethics, so often the "good" characters are beautiful, while the "evil" ones are ugly. Some scholars theorize that it was because beauty was considered a marker of good health and therefore virtue, whereas scarring, deformities, etc. would be indicators of depraved behaviors or habits. Humans unfortunately have had a long history of unconsciously assuming positive traits (intelligence, kindness, generosity, talent) of people with high levels of personal attractiveness (PA), while also assuming negative traits (low intelligence, laziness, aggression, cruelty) to those with lower PA, without any evidence of the individual's personality, traits, thoughts, beliefs, habits. Literally just assuming things based on how they look without any interaction. A number of sociological and psychological studies have been conducted on this subject. Plenty of academic books and journals have been written about the topic. This unfortunately goes back way further than Disney, though they, and literally all other media sources (TV, movies, even the music industry) have perpetuated this idea. (Seriously, compare actors in TV shows from the 70's and early 80's to today. Even bands from the 60's - 80's. Video really did kill the radio star.) Old folk and fairy tales, even myths have very similar themes: the hero is always attractive - this detail signals to the audience that they are also in possession of other heroic traits (strength, virtue, goodness, they make an excellent sourdough). Villains, in contrast, at least in the standard stories up until about 15-20 or so years ago, were generally ugly, signaling their negative traits. The "attractive villain" was usually used as a twist to throw off the audience's suspicions, but has become more common now.

Villains nowadays are...mixed. Sometimes they're gorgeous, especially when the plot twist is to convert/redeem them later, have a seductive betrayal subplot, or to establish them as a sympathetic villain. However, usually when the story is going to establish them as a villain that needs to be straight up eliminated and not otherwise befriended, they are cast or described as unattractive, plain, fat, or weak-looking, reaffirming the cultural beliefs that virtue is linked to PA. (Though tbh, you're seeing more attractive villains largely because it's currently marketable.)

How does this relate to OP's assertion? It supports it. Martin's choice to write both Arya and Brienne as physically plain at best was a deliberate choice. Their positive personality traits in written text elevate the characters in your expected heroic light. They are plain, but they are not evil, or weak. Instead they possess the same traits one expects of a hero, but without the culturally expected markers of beauty that we are so used to seeing. This creates a disconnect because we are so conditioned to expect our protags to be attractive on top of everything else, that it's difficult to mentally picture them as anything but.

It's an internalized prejudice for sure, but one that has been reinforced so many times through most every story, book, movie, TV, anime, etc. that we consume that it's difficult to shift the mental paradigm. It's not an excuse, but it's an explanation.

Oh look, an entire 'analysis' based on false and racist, sexist fanon interpolated from characters who bully Arya as ugly because she looks different to them that will now get reblogged by the casual fans with the wrong canon that Arya is 'ugly'. This is how fanon gets formed and widespread.

This is especially funny because this is a fandom where a canonically selfish, classist, patriarchal, pro-status quo bully like Sansa is seen as 'good', the champion of the poor, the most compassionate character with the most empathy, the 'embodiment of hope for the future' because she is classically beautiful, fits into Eurocentric beauty standards and represents white female fragility and the canonically white Arya is headcanoned as poc because they see her as ugly, violent, impulsive, stupid, tribal, barbaric, savage, uncouth, unicivilized and unfit to have a family and love.

What you are writing here is the exact opposite of what is happening. Where, it is not the author, but the fandom that is headcanoning a canonically pretty, white girl as ugly and poc because they see her as violent and uncouth.

Where a nine year old, skinny little girl is masculinized, her femininity stripped and she is always headcanoned as bigger and being an executioner and body guard for her older, bigger sister in popular fanart. Notice also that both characters are white, but Arya is always drawn in darker shades. Again, this goes back to that concept of white female fragility which is rooted in white supremacy where a woc cannot be envisioned as vulnerable or worth protecting.

And the most mind boggling fact is that Arya is white!! But because the racist/sexist fandom want to project all their white femininity onto Sansa, this means for them, Arya has to be masculine, ugly, violent and poc.

Just looking through OP's tags for example, this is some art of how they envision Sansa in their mind:

This is one of the Arya fanart they reblogged:

Notice the difference between the so called beautiful and ugly characters for the OP? I did look back a bit of on tags could not find any art of dark skinned Sansa by herself like the Arya art above.

Like this is stuff one sees in the fandom:

Another blogger who thinks Arya is ugly and Sansa is beautiful reblogs art like this of both characters - remember both characters are canonically white in the books...

Notice the difference?

The way this applies exactly to the racism and sexism of this fandom and how they treat the characters of Sansa and Arya is amazing and and that's what's funny about your entire post. Like, this gets to the heart of all this and yet it's the complete opposite of what you are implying.

This is why despite Arya being more intelligent that Sansa, more political then Sansa, more compassionate than Sansa, having more empathy than Sansa, being the victim of bullying from her sister Sansa, despite standing up for the powerless, despite all this, the character of Arya is constantly put down as a sociopath, violent, impulsive and stupid, while Sansa is seen as the compassionate Mother Theresa, the smart politician, the only girl who can be 'Lady of Winterfell' because she's the right kind of woman.

And this is why Arya is contantly headcanoned as ugly - despite the text making it clear that she is not!! There are several characters who call Arya pretty. Are they wrong? Are the bullies right?

You mention Brienne. This is a canonically 'ugly' character who is the embodiment of GOOD. She is exactly what you are talking about. The author goes into great detail about how ugly she is. NOTE: HE DOES NOT DO THIS WITH ARYA BECAUSE ARYA IS NOT CANONICALLY UGLY. The author even has a romance arc with Brienne who is ugly on the outside and beautiful on the inside and Jaime who is beautiful on the outside and ugly on the inside, his take on beauty and the beast. This is his inversion of the traditional fairy tale tropes.

But why is Arya being grouped into this, when she has an entirely different exploration - The Ugly Duckling - of looking different, about being non-conforming, of not fitting in amongst the Tully looking Starks as opposed to the Stark looking Starks.

This is right there in the text!! Again, why is this being ignored in favor of what two bullies are mocking a little girl for? Are bullies right?

Except this nine year old is not old enough or taken care of her appearance enough for us to know whether she is plain or not. We know this of the 17 year old Brienne - and the themes you mentioned are explicitly explored with her in terms of good and evil being connected to a character's looks.

And Tyriongirl should know as a Tyrion girl that if Martin wants the readers to know a character is ugly he will make that damn clear by mentioning every other page how ugly the character is which he does with Tyrion. Never with Arya.

EXACTLY! Conditioning on top of the racism and sexism, means that white tradfems who see Sansa as the embodiment of white femininity expect Arya to be ugly, brown, primitive and violent.

And this is what is happening and this is why there is a backlash everytime there are posts like this primarily from Sansa fans about how Arya is ugly and how that should be accepted for ugly representation when Arya is canonically not ugly and there is already an amazing, great character in Brienne for ugly representation.

But the the 'ugly' discourse has never been about representation or even Arya as a character. It's always Sansa fans digging this up because they need Sansa to be special and unique and feminine and blue eyed and beautiful and romantic and lady like and they don't want Arya to encroach on all that ever.

Here's a question. Why is Jon never at the center of ugly discourse given he is older, supposedly plain looking and has the Stark look just like Arya. He and Arya look so much alike. Sansa who thinks Arya is ugly also calls out Jon Snow for his looks and her classism is on display when she thinks they are both ugly because they are bastards.

Where are all the 'Why is Jon drawn so handsome when he is ugly in the books' arguments and discourse? Why are you not writing your 'fairy tale' analysis for Jon Snow and good and bad and beautiful and ugly?

I will give you a clue - because it's never about ugly representation and instead a desire by Sansa fans who need Arya to be ugly because the bully should always be right.

It's definitely an internalized prejudice for sure, one full of misogyny and racism. And posts like this that disingenuously interpret what is actually happening does not help at all in challenging these age old stereotypes of beauty, race and sex.

What's interesting about Dany is that she is overtly good and heroic. The inner conflict she goes through is not due to gray morality on her part, but due to the fact that the world doesn't allow for easy choices that are overtly good and heroic. She initially tries to solve the problem of slavery in Slaver's Bay by killing the slave owners (which is inherently right) and establishing a government made up of the former slaves. Only that government is overturned because too many people are selfish and greedy. She also tries helping slaves to leave their oppressive situations with payment from their former owners, but then those slavers just continue being slavers since they were left alive. Then she tries to stay in the most recently liberated city, putting aside her own goals in the process, to reestablish a government that works for everyone, but selfish people continue to be selfish and try to reestablish the oppressive status quo in various ways.

Daenerys is an overtly good person and heroine in a situation that doesn't allow for easy, righteous choices.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms 2026 Calendar Illustrated by Tom Kidd

Daenerys Targaryen + Patience

Daenerys and Queenship In ASOIAF

The world of ASOIAF explores the subject of leadership in a wide range of official and unofficial capacities. Daenerys Targaryen specifically is a character used to explore the unique types of queenship, alongside her narrative foil Cersei Lannister. Dany fits the role of multiple kinds of queens. The roles of these different types of queens are so different that they really shouldn’t have the same word describing them. As such, they impact Dany in very different ways.

Me: Arya is absolutely my favorite character in asoiaf.

Also me, when an Arya show is announced/rumored:

I love how people are only ever interested in defending Arya's right to be weird-looking. It's never defending her intelligence from people who claim she's incapable of thinking for herself, highlighting her importance to the plot and refusing to see her as just a prop, acknowledging how much of her story gets stolen and given to other characters, talking about her trauma or how often it gets erased and overlooked, seeing her as more than just an attack dog/bodyguard, etc. Nope. It's just a "why can't people let Arya be ugly/unconventional looking? :(" post every other week because people are, for whatever reason, obsessed with how Arya is visually perceived. One of the most misinterpreted characters yet the issue is only ever with her being portrayed as "too pretty" or the wrong "type" of pretty. This fandom will entirely rewrite a character's motivations, values, and role in the story to the point that they consider references to canon "hate" but! The true injustice to canon is we acknowledge that she is described as pretty several times. Arya simply existing as her pretty, important, and non-conforming self is too complex and confusing for people to comprehend 😔.

Just thinking out loud after coming across the nth iteration of Sansa brushing Arya's hair fanart. For those who love the Stark sisters and draw art of them I always wonder why there is not more art from Arya's perspective.

Arya being masculinized, adultified, and having her trauma ignored because people think she's "too strong" to be a victim is such a core experience for young girls of color

Tags from @fromtheseventhhell

i brought this up to an old friend of mine & they actually turned it around on me & implied that i was racist for having a problem with jon & arya being darker than sansa / bran / rickon / robb, as if my problem was with them being mixed rather than the blatant obvious reasons they're drawn that way. especially when we have sansa's pov stating

like the bastardphobia is already bad enough, but if you couple it with the desire to overly masculinize characters who they deem are poc then it definitely reeks :3

This is exactly it. As @queenaryastark has pointed out here and here:

When GRRM uses the word 'coloring' or 'fair and dark' for the white characters he is referring to the hair color of the white characters that populate his world.

When Sansa/Stark fan artists twist this to represent the Stark looking Starks as poc because they are 'tribe like' and 'primitive' (actual words used) or 'ugly' (as per Sansa), then according to this Catelyn and Sansa are racist as well as classist. It's right there in the quote you have where Sansa specifically thinks of Arya as less than her because of her facial features and coloring - this is white supremacist ideology if Arya was a poc!

Sansa is already incredibly classist in the books - one of the most classist POV characters in the books and certainly amongst the Starks. But her fans racist headcanons and depictions of the Stark looking Starks would also make Sansa incredibly racist.

That's why these poc headcanons are just instinctive racism - oh, they are 'ugly', 'primitive' and first men descendants? They must be poc as opposed to the most beautiful, blue eyed, whitest white with the fairest skin of all Tully looking Starks i.e mainly Sansa.

They don't stop to think - 'Wait, doesn't this make my favorite character a white supremacist racist?' Or they do think that and don't care. After all these are the same folks who think that Sansa's classism is simply adorable and not a big deal (just like her bullying of Arya) and Jon was just hurt because he couldn't get a kiss from Sansa like Robb did....

There's not even the slightest bit of critical thinking or even superficial low level thinking here at all. All the Starks are clearly white in the books - why are the Stark looking Starks being fanoned as poc? Why are all the Freefolk drawn as white if first men are supposed to be poc? Why is Jon Snow drawn as poc in art with red haired, white Ygritte when they are both first men descendants? Why is Lyanna, who looks the same as Arya, and considered canonically beautiful drawn as white when she also has the Stark look? Etc. Etc.

Not to mention, as the OP points out, the racism and sexism involved when she is headcanoned as poc while also being headcanoned as masculine and a physically strong fighter when she is a skinny little girl picking flowers and playing with babies in the books. As we see in the real world where women of colour in sports are often accused of being men and masculine when they win or are better than their white peers.

To be clear I am not talking about poc artists who want to see themselves represented in their favorite characters, or artists who clearly love canon Arya and Jon and acknowledge the canon versions while experimenting with fanon poc Jon and Arya. Art where ALL the Starks are poc.

I am talking about white artists who - even when it is explained to them by poc for why it's problematic - use skin colour to differentiate between the so called good looking Starks and the 'ugly' ones and then pretend that it's about representation and freedom of art and expression.

Your old friend is either being disingenuous in not understanding why this is problematic or they are white and doesn't care about how this kind of racism is insidious and instrumental in continuing to spread outdated racist stereotypes about poc.

At this point I just block any artist who uses skin colour and skin tone to distinguish between the Stark and Tully looking Starks - it's very, very clear what their intention is and why they were drawn this way when ALL the Starks are white in the books.