"By making Arya Stark the savior of humanity in 8.3, the show has made it impossible to ignore how awfully her storyline has been handled.
We’ve known for years that the show has horribly mishandled Arya. Her adventures in Braavos descended into laughable cartoon antics that made it utterly unbelievable. She was essentially murdered by the Waif (to the point that fans were speculating that it couldn’t have been Arya in that scene or that getting stabbed was part of some clever plan of hers), she somehow survived to do a ridiculous chase scene implying that she somehow gained superpowers, and her story trajectory was borderline incoherent (she clings to her identity, and she gets told that this means she’s actually “no one”...and no mention is made of this again).
Worse, the show has been totally uninterested in exploring any complexity in her character. One way to tell her story is that of a person who loses her humanity in the pursuit of revenge: it certainly seemed like that’s where her story was headed. But the show is uninterested in exploring this. When she returns to Westeros, her actions are those of an inhuman psychopath: she murders Walder Frey’s children and bakes them into pies and forces him to eat them. She also murders innocent people to get to him.
This should have been a fascinating and pivotal moment. This is the part where we should be left wondering how much Arya’s thirst for revenge has cost her, wondering whether she’s actually any better than monsters like Frey or Tywin.
But we’re not left wondering that. The show doesn’t want to plague us with pesky concerns like moral ambiguity or the severe consequences of vengeance. Instead, it wants us to go, “Fuck yeah, Arya!” and then forget it ever happened. Certainly the show’s forgotten it’s happened. Arya shows no signs of psychological damage or trauma that someone would surely have if they had, say, ground human bodies into meat.
All of which is to say: Arya’s story feels completely unbelievable not only from a story point of view but from an emotional point of view. None of it rings true in the slightest.
As a result, I don’t buy that she’s a great warrior. Oh, the show tells me that she is. It shows me her kicking ass like a goddamn superhero. But it made none of the moves to make any of it feel believable. It does not at all feel like a logical culmination of events that also registers on an emotional level to make her feel like a real person.
But it used to be possible to overlook all of this. You could watch the show and just sort of roll your eyes at this and say, “Eh, this is pretty silly, but it’s a side story.” Dorne was pretty silly too, but it didn’t affect a thing, so it’s no big deal. It might as well not have happened. In a similar way, a viewer used to be able to dismiss the Arya stuff.
Until 8.3, that is. The conclusion of this episode makes Arya’s story central to Game of Thrones. It’s now impossible to ignore or dismiss the ridiculous Braavos scenes. In fact, those scenes are now rendered even more ridiculous because the only purpose they serve is to explain how Arya gains the magical powers necessary to defeat the Night King. They don’t tell us much about her as a character; they don’t develop her in any meaningful way; they don’t even present a logical or coherent explanation of her powers and how she gained them. They just exist to assert that she’s now a magical warrior...without at all working to earn it or make us feel it.
Arya gained these powers seemingly without any cost to her as a person. Her journey wasn’t about discovering herself or learning about the nature of revenge or trying to balance her humanity with her inhuman need to make others suffer as much as she did.
No. Her journey was about the audience being told she’s now a powerful warrior so that she could stab an ice demon and completely end the series’ major threat.
It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen on television, and the fact that there are people out there who have said that 8.3 is the payoff of years of Arya’s “character development” is maddening."
Dzień dobry #warszawa #wilanow poszedłem na #rower i obok Bricoman znalazłem całkiem sprawnego koteła, przekazałem do ecopatrol. Na szczęście tym razem pracowali :D Będzie do odbioru w schronisku na Paluchu. Niestety nie miał żadnej adresatki, ani chipa.
Skopiowane z reddita.
"By making Arya Stark the savior of humanity in 8.3, the show has made it impossible to ignore how awfully her storyline has been handled.
We’ve known for years that the show has horribly mishandled Arya. Her adventures in Braavos descended into laughable cartoon antics that made it utterly unbelievable. She was essentially murdered by the Waif (to the point that fans were speculating that it couldn’t have been Arya in that scene or that getting stabbed was part of some clever plan of hers), she somehow survived to do a ridiculous chase scene implying that she somehow gained superpowers, and her story trajectory was borderline incoherent (she clings to her identity, and she gets told that this means she’s actually “no one”...and no mention is made of this again).
Worse, the show has been totally uninterested in exploring any complexity in her character. One way to tell her story is that of a person who loses her humanity in the pursuit of revenge: it certainly seemed like that’s where her story was headed. But the show is uninterested in exploring this. When she returns to Westeros, her actions are those of an inhuman psychopath: she murders Walder Frey’s children and bakes them into pies and forces him to eat them. She also murders innocent people to get to him.
This should have been a fascinating and pivotal moment. This is the part where we should be left wondering how much Arya’s thirst for revenge has cost her, wondering whether she’s actually any better than monsters like Frey or Tywin.
But we’re not left wondering that. The show doesn’t want to plague us with pesky concerns like moral ambiguity or the severe consequences of vengeance. Instead, it wants us to go, “Fuck yeah, Arya!” and then forget it ever happened. Certainly the show’s forgotten it’s happened. Arya shows no signs of psychological damage or trauma that someone would surely have if they had, say, ground human bodies into meat.
All of which is to say: Arya’s story feels completely unbelievable not only from a story point of view but from an emotional point of view. None of it rings true in the slightest.
As a result, I don’t buy that she’s a great warrior. Oh, the show tells me that she is. It shows me her kicking ass like a goddamn superhero. But it made none of the moves to make any of it feel believable. It does not at all feel like a logical culmination of events that also registers on an emotional level to make her feel like a real person.
But it used to be possible to overlook all of this. You could watch the show and just sort of roll your eyes at this and say, “Eh, this is pretty silly, but it’s a side story.” Dorne was pretty silly too, but it didn’t affect a thing, so it’s no big deal. It might as well not have happened. In a similar way, a viewer used to be able to dismiss the Arya stuff.
Until 8.3, that is. The conclusion of this episode makes Arya’s story central to Game of Thrones. It’s now impossible to ignore or dismiss the ridiculous Braavos scenes. In fact, those scenes are now rendered even more ridiculous because the only purpose they serve is to explain how Arya gains the magical powers necessary to defeat the Night King. They don’t tell us much about her as a character; they don’t develop her in any meaningful way; they don’t even present a logical or coherent explanation of her powers and how she gained them. They just exist to assert that she’s now a magical warrior...without at all working to earn it or make us feel it.
Arya gained these powers seemingly without any cost to her as a person. Her journey wasn’t about discovering herself or learning about the nature of revenge or trying to balance her humanity with her inhuman need to make others suffer as much as she did.
No. Her journey was about the audience being told she’s now a powerful warrior so that she could stab an ice demon and completely end the series’ major threat.
It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen on television, and the fact that there are people out there who have said that 8.3 is the payoff of years of Arya’s “character development” is maddening."