You Will Not Rob Me Of My Birthright

Arianne Martell: The female heir to Dorne who demands recognition and acknowledgement and refuses to be passed over.

“You will not rob me of my birthright!”

Wylla Manderly: Grandaughter of Wyman Manderly, insults the Freys in front of a hall full of people and refuses to be married off. And she has green hair which is pretty sick.

“He was our king! He was brave and good, and the Freys murdered him. If Lord Stannis will avenge him, we should join Lord Stannis”

Val: Sister of mance Rayder’s wife Dalla (who has also been cut) said to be extremely beautiful yet is fiercely independent and strong.

“I am no southron lady but a woman of the free folk. I know the forest better than all your black cloaked rangers. It holds no ghosts for me.”

Mya Stone: One of Robert Baratheon’s bastards, lives in the vale and is in charge of helping people up to the Eyrie.

“Men come and go. They lie, or die, or leave you. A mountain is not a man, though, and stone is a mountain’s daughter. I trust my father, and I trust my mules. I won’t fall.”

Lady Stoneheart: *spoiler alert or not really because she won’t be in the show* Catelyn Stark resurrected seeking revenge on the Frey’s and leading the Brotherhood without banners (there’s your revenge plot D&D)

“She don’t speak. You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.”

Asha Greyjoy: not to be confused with whoever “Yara” Greyjoy is, Asha does not believe in flippantly calling people “cunts” and is not scared of dogs.

“My mother raised me to be bold”

Alysane Mormont: Fights with Stannis’ army and guards Asha when she is captured (oops not really spoilers again) and don’t tell me that they don’t become best friends because they do.

“Mormont women are skinchangers. We turn into bears and find mates in the woods.”

Barbrey Dustin: The widow of Lord Dustin, hates the Starks because she blames Ned for the death of her husband. She is cunning, intelligent and one of Roose Bolton’s biggest supporters in Winterfell (but you know in the show no northern lords are in Winterfell because logic)

”The bride weeps … Dressing her in grey and white serves no good if the girl is left to sob. The Freys might not care, but the northmen … they fear the Dreadfort, but they love the Starks.“

I also would like to defend my exclusion of Jeyne Poole on this list. While her story is one that is very interesting an nunanced, it is one that is characterisized by sexual violence and torment. As I understand the show must get rid of certain plot lines, I think that this one (Ramsay raping either Sansa or jeyne) should have been first on the chopping block. While I think GRRM does an admirable job of depicting Jeyne (and also Theon’s) trauma in the book, I think this particular storyline is not one that would translate well to screen (and did not as we saw). I just don’t think simply swapping Sansa for Jeyne in the show would have been any better as we have seen D&D are incapable of handling sexual violence in any nuanced way.

Arianne Martell: The female heir to Dorne who demands recognition and acknowledgement and refuses to be passed over.

“You will not rob me of my birthright!”

Wylla Manderly: Grandaughter of Wyman Manderly, insults the Freys in front of a hall full of people and refuses to be married off. And she has green hair which is pretty sick.

“He was our king! He was brave and good, and the Freys murdered him. If Lord Stannis will avenge him, we should join Lord Stannis”

Val: Sister of mance Rayder’s wife Dalla (who has also been cut) said to be extremely beautiful yet is fiercely independent and strong.

“I am no southron lady but a woman of the free folk. I know the forest better than all your black cloaked rangers. It holds no ghosts for me.”

Mya Stone: One of Robert Baratheon’s bastards, lives in the vale and is in charge of helping people up to the Eyrie.

“Men come and go. They lie, or die, or leave you. A mountain is not a man, though, and stone is a mountain’s daughter. I trust my father, and I trust my mules. I won’t fall.”

Lady Stoneheart: *spoiler alert or not really because she won’t be in the show* Catelyn Stark resurrected seeking revenge on the Frey’s and leading the Brotherhood without banners (there’s your revenge plot D&D)

“She don’t speak. You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.”

Asha Greyjoy: not to be confused with whoever “Yara” Greyjoy is, Asha does not believe in flippantly calling people “cunts” and is not scared of dogs.

“My mother raised me to be bold”

Alysane Mormont: Fights with Stannis’ army and guards Asha when she is captured (oops not really spoilers again) and don’t tell me that they don’t become best friends because they do.

“Mormont women are skinchangers. We turn into bears and find mates in the woods.”

Barbrey Dustin: The widow of Lord Dustin, hates the Starks because she blames Ned for the death of her husband. She is cunning, intelligent and one of Roose Bolton’s biggest supporters in Winterfell (but you know in the show no northern lords are in Winterfell because logic)

”The bride weeps … Dressing her in grey and white serves no good if the girl is left to sob. The Freys might not care, but the northmen … they fear the Dreadfort, but they love the Starks.“

Myranda Royce: Sexually liberated AND a big girl, because yes both those things can exist at the same time, Dave and Dan.

Genna Lannister: Married to a Frey but wears the pants in the relationship; takes no shit; also overweight but still fierce af.

Chataya & Alayaya: body & sex positive independent business owners and oh yeah WOMEN OF COLOR.

Alys Karstark: 16-year-old girl who flees her home in the middle of a freaking blizzard just to escape an arranged marriage; marries instead the fierce wildling Magnar of Thenn and ROCKS HIS DAMN WORLD.

Sansa Stark: no to be confused with that imposter on the show using her name; an idealistic and romantic young girl who got an impossibly harsh lesson in the realities of the world through a series of tragedies and abuses and instead of becoming hard and cynical she instead became stronger by PRESERVING HER COMPASSION AND IDEALISM.

It’s bad enough that D&D blatantly ignored and omitted these characters, but even the ones they decided to keep they still managed to strip of their most unique and compelling qualities and whittle them all down to a basic template based on their own glaring concept of a woman’s worth.

 Don’t have them die of old age after a long, fulfilling life. Many people don’t even think of this as sad (note that this can still work if you have enough of the other factors).

 Leave one of their major goals unfinished. The more enthusiastic they are about completing the goal, the sadder.

 Give them strong relationships with other characters.

 Make them fight against whatever is causing their death. Their ultimate loss is sadder if they struggle.

 Kill them in the middle of their character arc.

10. have their loved one, broken hearted, tell the team to stop fighting because “its over.” 

11. have their pet come looking for them. 

12. have their loved one perform a popular song at their funeral so it makes the fans cry whenever it’s played.

13. family witnessing the death and/or blaming themselves.

14. kill the character in the middle of making a joke, smiling, or expressing/experiencing joy/happiness.

15. make the character’s death slow and painful, but make them unable to call out for help even though they can literally see the other characters nearby.

16. after killing the character, have others think the character had betrayed them so they’d always hate them and remember them as traitors and never say nice things about them… Give your readers no chance to have group-therapy with other characters by making them the only ones who know the truth.

17. right before their death, show a side of them nobody has seen. (someone who is always tough and brave being genuinely scared of dying alone; someone who is always laughing being in tears before dying, etc.)

18. make them the only person who knows a big important secret that would help other characters in the story.

19. have them being lied to before dying. (thinking they’ve been betrayed; thinking they weren’t loved; thinking they’ve lost their loved ones, etc)

20. make the character very enthusiastic/passionate about a certain goal, constantly put stress on their goal, have them die unexpectedly before they can reach their goal. 

and the best one…

21. have another beloved character kill them–better be a close friend to your character, one that absolutely nobody suspects, one that everyone can’t help but love, one who is always enthusiastic about things and encourages your character. THEN

reveal the truth only later when it’s too late and the a-hole character has already escaped.

have a cowardly character know the truth and never tell anyone else

have another character find out the truth and have them die before revealing it to others. 

have the said character ^ not actually die, but go through something so they’d forget the friend of the deceased character is actually an asshole. 

This way only your readers will know the truth, thus the frustration would be… most enjoyable for you.

Leave the physical shell walking and talking, but strip out everything that made that person who they were.  Make them forget all about their loved ones, themselves, their experiences and past, their skills, and have them have to start over completely from scratch.  Physical and mental disabilities bonus points.

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Hamda Al Fahim