Arya Stark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aryaunderfoot) wrote2012-01-30 07:52 pm
aryaunderfoot) wrote2012-01-30 07:52 pm
OOC | Information
APP IN PROGRESS, NOTHING TO SEE HERE :D;;
Name: Arya Stark
Canon: A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones
Gender: Female
Age:11 12
Wing Color: Grey and white, like snow on stone
Canon Point: A Feast for Crows, right after she kills Dareon, before returning to the House of Black and White.
Canon Point Explanation: This allows for as much character development for Arya as possible before she starts pushing herself aside for the House of Black and White. After this point, "Arya" is just another of the names/faces she has worn and she is actively trying to make herself someone else -- or, more accurately, is trying to make herself into no one per Faceless Man training. TL;DR, this allows Arya to be Arya without her backpedaling into Just A Girl.
History: Informative as a Wiki
Personality:
Fear cuts deeper than swords.
Arya is a fierce little thing, even before the events of the series begin to make her into an even fiercer little thing. She's the quintessential tomboy, preferring to fight with swords than to practice her needlework with her sister and the other girls. She's closer to her father and brothers than she is to her mother and sister. She's hard to ruffle, especially with disgusting or scary things -- in fact, she even tries to eat a worm out of a cadaverous face that the kindly man puts on in the House of Black and White to try to intimidate her. Dead things don't scare or disgust her. She faces them like anything else, even before she is charged with cleaning and undressing the bodies in her time at the House of Black and White.
In spite of her young age, Arya has killed before, and not just once. She's killed a stable boy who threatened her, some soldiers who would have blocked her escape from Harrenhal, and one of the men on her list. The list is more of a nightly prayer than anything; each night, Arya recites the names of those she means to kill for the crimes they've committed against her and hers. The list has gotten significantly shorter than it once was, but she still recites the list of names every night before she sleeps. She knows that sometimes, murder is the only option if you're trying to stay alive yourself. The kindly man points out that she's a little too quick to pass judgment, though, and tells her that she relies too heavily on "kill it" as the solution to her problems. That said, Arya does worry that she's becoming something she never meant to become, wondering at one point if her mother would ever forgive her for all the terrible things she's done.
Arya's temper is truly a thing to behold, though. Gendry suffers the flares of her frustration throughout the third book, along with Lem Lemoncloak (who suffers a fantastically broken nose) and several others. To be fair, Gendry provokes her by calling her "m'lady." Which drives her crazy. Did we mention that she hates being called a lady? Because she really does hate that. (And also being called a child. Children don't kill.)
Firmly of the opinion that Sansa is the one who's supposed to be girly, Arya doesn't see the point in love or marriage and thinks it's all stupid. She does, however, believe firmly in being there for her "pack", after her father impresses on her the importance of banding together to survive both literal and metaphorical winter. She tries to reconstruct her pack after her father's death, turning to Hot Pie and Gendry as her new pack members, but after both of them leave her for their own agendas, she's both heartbroken and angry and decides (bitterly) that she'll find her own way through. Because they were stupid anyway and who needs them.
Resourceful, quick-witted, and naturally suspicious of everything ever since the world flipped up onto its head with her father's death, Arya has gotten very good at surviving against all odds. She's been through a lot for her age and is of the opinion that she isn't a child anymore after all she's gone through. She's cautious, often refusing to give out her real name because she knows full well that she's being hunted by Queen Cersei. She's not above stealing to survive, killing when she must, or doing the low and basest tasks if she has to - including catching and selling pidgeons to survive in Flea Bottom. She's so familiar with being ridden with fleas and ticks that they're something like pets at one point, and she almost feels bad washing them off. She's irritated and grumpy when scrubbed hard and forced into a dress while traveling with the Brotherhood. She gets into wrestling matches with Nymeria and Gendry and really just about anyone.
Arya does have her soft side, though. She loves her family - or what's left of it - with all her heart. She's tempted more than once to try to get to the Wall just to be beside her bastard brother Jon Snow, and she's too sentimental to get rid of her sword Needle when the kindly man asks her to. She makes friends easily (when she puts her mind to it) and is naturally curious, earning her the nickname in Winterfell of "Arya Underfoot", because she was always underfoot. She's brave, loyal, and fierce, just like her family's sigil of the direwolf. And she's also terribly proud of that bloodline and all it stands for. Just like her wolf, she's a natural leader, taking lead of her "pack" of Night's Watch rejects in spite of being the youngest (aside from Weasel).
Also, she tries to build herself around the tenets of her Braavosi swordsmanship teacher, Syrio Forel. Syrio's sayings like "swift as a deer", "calm as still water", "quiet as a shadow", and "fear cuts deeper than swords" - especially "fear cuts deeper than swords" - constantly run through Arya's head as she tries to talk herself up and bolster herself for anything difficult. They've become as much a part of her as anything else.
Strengths
Physical:
Arya may not be very big, or even terribly strong, but she is very fast, very agile, resilient, has great balance, and is hard to put down completely. She suffers a bash to the back of the head with an axe from Sandor Clegane, better known as the Hound, and bounces back from it fairly quickly. She holds her own, even blind, against the leader of the House of Black and White. She holds her own against Gendry, who is not only about five years older than her and a boy, but also is a blacksmith's apprentice and heavily muscled. She's a fast climber (although not as good a climber as Bran once was), and has gotten very good at traveling in near-silence after her teachings from Syrio Forel. She's also very resistant to cold, which she'd have to be, as a child of the North and Winterfell. She may have been born in the long summer, but it still snows in the summer in the north. Also, she's small, which is very much an advantage the way she works. It lets her slip out of people's reach and grasp.
Another bonus: Arya is a skinchanger, which means that she can slip into the bodies of animals she shares a close bond with. Primarily, this means slipping into Nymeria when she's asleep and dreaming, but she manages this even when waking with the cats in Braavos. This means that she gains all the physical strengths of the animals she slips into... and when it's a direwolf she's slipping into, she's terrifyingly strong.
Mental:
Arya is a very quick thinker, which is a very good thing when you are constantly getting into trouble the way she does. She's learned quickly to be suspicious of others and careful of what she says, and she's learned that sometimes, not being yourself is the best defense you can have. She's not the most brilliant child ever, but she's learned her street smarts very quickly and she learns her lessons well. She didn't learn from Syrio Forel for very long, after all, but she made very good use of what lessons she did receive. Also, she has a very good memory, able to recall the path down to the room with the dragon skulls in King's Landing even though she only found it by accident the first time.
Emotional:
With all the girl has been through, Arya's strength to keep going is remarkable. Her determination to keep moving forward and never give up in spite of thinking absolutely all of her family is dead or lost to her (save Jon, who is at the Wall, where she can't go to stay as a girl) shows that Arya is remarkably strong emotionally. She's willing to accept that her sister is the one who fulfills all the girly expectations and that she herself is horrible at pretty much all of them. She's willing to be the leader in seemingly hopeless situations, taking up the lead when she escapes with her ragtag band from Yoren's band of Night's Watch recruits. She stays however strong she needs to be for those around her when leading her "pack" and doesn't give up hope even when her mother and brother are slaughtered at the Red Wedding; after a short time of letting her depression get the better of her, she gets back to her feet, escapes the Hound, and makes her way to Braavos to find her way again.
Weaknesses
Physical:
Arya is just a little girl... a very little girl. She's only eleven, and is scrawny on top of that. It's also remarkably easy to mistake her for a boy, even before her hair is cut short. She's not all that pretty most of the time, much to her sister's dismay, and she's prone to flea infestations because of the conditions she tends to live in. She's not very strong in terms of upper body strength, at least when compared against others in canon, and has a long way to go in learning how to sword fight. And like many in her world, she's very susceptible to infection and fever, although that's primarily a problem caused by poor sanitation and health care.
Mental:
Arya definitely has her problems with understanding others and the ways their minds work. She doesn't always think things through and has a nasty habit of charging into things without carefully considering them... case and point, when she murders Dareon for deserting the Night's Watch. She kills him because that is what is done to deserters from the Watch, but she doesn't stop to consider if this is the wisest course of action. She never paid much attention to Maester Luwin's lessons if they were in subjects she wasn't interested in, and this has left her at something of a disadvantage in most areas aside from math. She even admits that she didn't pay much attention when learning house sigils, as she tries to figure out what the banners stand for and can only remember a scant few out of many.
Emotional:
For all Arya's strength in being able to keep on trucking despite her pain, she's also not too terribly mature. She constantly calls Hot Pie and Gendry "stupid" while traveling with them... among others. "Stupid" is one of her favorite insults. She lashes out at Gendry any time he has the audacity to point out the obvious - that she's a highborn lady. She likes to think she's beyond sentiment now that she has gone to the House of Black and White, but she's unable to give up everything about herself and stashes Needle away for safekeeping because of all it means to her. Her temper flares up more than she'd care to admit and it gets her into trouble; anything from attacking Joffrey and having to chase off Nymeria to storming away from the Brotherhood and right into the hands of the Hound to killing Dareon and ending up blinded by the kindly man. ...In a way, this ties back into mental weakness.
Anything else?: Arya's direwolf Nymeria will be arriving very early on, so she definitely applies here. Nymeria is a huge female wolf, grey with golden eyes. She's been wild for years now after being chased off by Arya near the Trident (to avoid having Nymeria killed for attacking Joffrey). That said, Nymeria has since become the alpha female of a massive pack of wolves known far and wide for terrorizing the entire area around the God's Eye. She's more than a little wild, but she still shares a strong link with Arya even so. She's something like an extension of Arya, so unless Arya has some kind of inclination to attack someone in Luceti, Nymeria doesn't pose much of a risk to the human inhabitants. Anything that looks like prey, though? That's fair game.
Also, Nymeria is roughly the size of a small pony. Between her size and the slightly supernatural characteristics of direwolves, just her mere presence is enough to set other animals crazy. Dogs bark wildly, horses panic, birds take wing. None of this matters though because she can and will catch whatever she means to. >:]
Nymeria will be a little wild and rough around the edges for a while at first, but due to her bond with Arya and her high intelligence, she'll be tame enough again within a fairly short amount of time (once Arya knows Nymeria is here). She'll only ever be as tame as her master, though, so... she'll still be a little rough and tumble even when tamed again.
Name: Arya Stark
Canon: A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones
Gender: Female
Age:
Wing Color: Grey and white, like snow on stone
Canon Point: A Feast for Crows, right after she kills Dareon, before returning to the House of Black and White.
Canon Point Explanation: This allows for as much character development for Arya as possible before she starts pushing herself aside for the House of Black and White. After this point, "Arya" is just another of the names/faces she has worn and she is actively trying to make herself someone else -- or, more accurately, is trying to make herself into no one per Faceless Man training. TL;DR, this allows Arya to be Arya without her backpedaling into Just A Girl.
History: Informative as a Wiki
Personality:
Fear cuts deeper than swords.
Arya is a fierce little thing, even before the events of the series begin to make her into an even fiercer little thing. She's the quintessential tomboy, preferring to fight with swords than to practice her needlework with her sister and the other girls. She's closer to her father and brothers than she is to her mother and sister. She's hard to ruffle, especially with disgusting or scary things -- in fact, she even tries to eat a worm out of a cadaverous face that the kindly man puts on in the House of Black and White to try to intimidate her. Dead things don't scare or disgust her. She faces them like anything else, even before she is charged with cleaning and undressing the bodies in her time at the House of Black and White.
In spite of her young age, Arya has killed before, and not just once. She's killed a stable boy who threatened her, some soldiers who would have blocked her escape from Harrenhal, and one of the men on her list. The list is more of a nightly prayer than anything; each night, Arya recites the names of those she means to kill for the crimes they've committed against her and hers. The list has gotten significantly shorter than it once was, but she still recites the list of names every night before she sleeps. She knows that sometimes, murder is the only option if you're trying to stay alive yourself. The kindly man points out that she's a little too quick to pass judgment, though, and tells her that she relies too heavily on "kill it" as the solution to her problems. That said, Arya does worry that she's becoming something she never meant to become, wondering at one point if her mother would ever forgive her for all the terrible things she's done.
Arya's temper is truly a thing to behold, though. Gendry suffers the flares of her frustration throughout the third book, along with Lem Lemoncloak (who suffers a fantastically broken nose) and several others. To be fair, Gendry provokes her by calling her "m'lady." Which drives her crazy. Did we mention that she hates being called a lady? Because she really does hate that. (And also being called a child. Children don't kill.)
Firmly of the opinion that Sansa is the one who's supposed to be girly, Arya doesn't see the point in love or marriage and thinks it's all stupid. She does, however, believe firmly in being there for her "pack", after her father impresses on her the importance of banding together to survive both literal and metaphorical winter. She tries to reconstruct her pack after her father's death, turning to Hot Pie and Gendry as her new pack members, but after both of them leave her for their own agendas, she's both heartbroken and angry and decides (bitterly) that she'll find her own way through. Because they were stupid anyway and who needs them.
Resourceful, quick-witted, and naturally suspicious of everything ever since the world flipped up onto its head with her father's death, Arya has gotten very good at surviving against all odds. She's been through a lot for her age and is of the opinion that she isn't a child anymore after all she's gone through. She's cautious, often refusing to give out her real name because she knows full well that she's being hunted by Queen Cersei. She's not above stealing to survive, killing when she must, or doing the low and basest tasks if she has to - including catching and selling pidgeons to survive in Flea Bottom. She's so familiar with being ridden with fleas and ticks that they're something like pets at one point, and she almost feels bad washing them off. She's irritated and grumpy when scrubbed hard and forced into a dress while traveling with the Brotherhood. She gets into wrestling matches with Nymeria and Gendry and really just about anyone.
Arya does have her soft side, though. She loves her family - or what's left of it - with all her heart. She's tempted more than once to try to get to the Wall just to be beside her bastard brother Jon Snow, and she's too sentimental to get rid of her sword Needle when the kindly man asks her to. She makes friends easily (when she puts her mind to it) and is naturally curious, earning her the nickname in Winterfell of "Arya Underfoot", because she was always underfoot. She's brave, loyal, and fierce, just like her family's sigil of the direwolf. And she's also terribly proud of that bloodline and all it stands for. Just like her wolf, she's a natural leader, taking lead of her "pack" of Night's Watch rejects in spite of being the youngest (aside from Weasel).
Also, she tries to build herself around the tenets of her Braavosi swordsmanship teacher, Syrio Forel. Syrio's sayings like "swift as a deer", "calm as still water", "quiet as a shadow", and "fear cuts deeper than swords" - especially "fear cuts deeper than swords" - constantly run through Arya's head as she tries to talk herself up and bolster herself for anything difficult. They've become as much a part of her as anything else.
Strengths
Arya may not be very big, or even terribly strong, but she is very fast, very agile, resilient, has great balance, and is hard to put down completely. She suffers a bash to the back of the head with an axe from Sandor Clegane, better known as the Hound, and bounces back from it fairly quickly. She holds her own, even blind, against the leader of the House of Black and White. She holds her own against Gendry, who is not only about five years older than her and a boy, but also is a blacksmith's apprentice and heavily muscled. She's a fast climber (although not as good a climber as Bran once was), and has gotten very good at traveling in near-silence after her teachings from Syrio Forel. She's also very resistant to cold, which she'd have to be, as a child of the North and Winterfell. She may have been born in the long summer, but it still snows in the summer in the north. Also, she's small, which is very much an advantage the way she works. It lets her slip out of people's reach and grasp.
Another bonus: Arya is a skinchanger, which means that she can slip into the bodies of animals she shares a close bond with. Primarily, this means slipping into Nymeria when she's asleep and dreaming, but she manages this even when waking with the cats in Braavos. This means that she gains all the physical strengths of the animals she slips into... and when it's a direwolf she's slipping into, she's terrifyingly strong.
Mental:
Arya is a very quick thinker, which is a very good thing when you are constantly getting into trouble the way she does. She's learned quickly to be suspicious of others and careful of what she says, and she's learned that sometimes, not being yourself is the best defense you can have. She's not the most brilliant child ever, but she's learned her street smarts very quickly and she learns her lessons well. She didn't learn from Syrio Forel for very long, after all, but she made very good use of what lessons she did receive. Also, she has a very good memory, able to recall the path down to the room with the dragon skulls in King's Landing even though she only found it by accident the first time.
Emotional:
With all the girl has been through, Arya's strength to keep going is remarkable. Her determination to keep moving forward and never give up in spite of thinking absolutely all of her family is dead or lost to her (save Jon, who is at the Wall, where she can't go to stay as a girl) shows that Arya is remarkably strong emotionally. She's willing to accept that her sister is the one who fulfills all the girly expectations and that she herself is horrible at pretty much all of them. She's willing to be the leader in seemingly hopeless situations, taking up the lead when she escapes with her ragtag band from Yoren's band of Night's Watch recruits. She stays however strong she needs to be for those around her when leading her "pack" and doesn't give up hope even when her mother and brother are slaughtered at the Red Wedding; after a short time of letting her depression get the better of her, she gets back to her feet, escapes the Hound, and makes her way to Braavos to find her way again.
Weaknesses
Arya is just a little girl... a very little girl. She's only eleven, and is scrawny on top of that. It's also remarkably easy to mistake her for a boy, even before her hair is cut short. She's not all that pretty most of the time, much to her sister's dismay, and she's prone to flea infestations because of the conditions she tends to live in. She's not very strong in terms of upper body strength, at least when compared against others in canon, and has a long way to go in learning how to sword fight. And like many in her world, she's very susceptible to infection and fever, although that's primarily a problem caused by poor sanitation and health care.
Mental:
Arya definitely has her problems with understanding others and the ways their minds work. She doesn't always think things through and has a nasty habit of charging into things without carefully considering them... case and point, when she murders Dareon for deserting the Night's Watch. She kills him because that is what is done to deserters from the Watch, but she doesn't stop to consider if this is the wisest course of action. She never paid much attention to Maester Luwin's lessons if they were in subjects she wasn't interested in, and this has left her at something of a disadvantage in most areas aside from math. She even admits that she didn't pay much attention when learning house sigils, as she tries to figure out what the banners stand for and can only remember a scant few out of many.
Emotional:
For all Arya's strength in being able to keep on trucking despite her pain, she's also not too terribly mature. She constantly calls Hot Pie and Gendry "stupid" while traveling with them... among others. "Stupid" is one of her favorite insults. She lashes out at Gendry any time he has the audacity to point out the obvious - that she's a highborn lady. She likes to think she's beyond sentiment now that she has gone to the House of Black and White, but she's unable to give up everything about herself and stashes Needle away for safekeeping because of all it means to her. Her temper flares up more than she'd care to admit and it gets her into trouble; anything from attacking Joffrey and having to chase off Nymeria to storming away from the Brotherhood and right into the hands of the Hound to killing Dareon and ending up blinded by the kindly man. ...In a way, this ties back into mental weakness.
Anything else?: Arya's direwolf Nymeria will be arriving very early on, so she definitely applies here. Nymeria is a huge female wolf, grey with golden eyes. She's been wild for years now after being chased off by Arya near the Trident (to avoid having Nymeria killed for attacking Joffrey). That said, Nymeria has since become the alpha female of a massive pack of wolves known far and wide for terrorizing the entire area around the God's Eye. She's more than a little wild, but she still shares a strong link with Arya even so. She's something like an extension of Arya, so unless Arya has some kind of inclination to attack someone in Luceti, Nymeria doesn't pose much of a risk to the human inhabitants. Anything that looks like prey, though? That's fair game.
Also, Nymeria is roughly the size of a small pony. Between her size and the slightly supernatural characteristics of direwolves, just her mere presence is enough to set other animals crazy. Dogs bark wildly, horses panic, birds take wing. None of this matters though because she can and will catch whatever she means to. >:]
Nymeria will be a little wild and rough around the edges for a while at first, but due to her bond with Arya and her high intelligence, she'll be tame enough again within a fairly short amount of time (once Arya knows Nymeria is here). She'll only ever be as tame as her master, though, so... she'll still be a little rough and tumble even when tamed again.