That only addresses the end result to Arya and Sansa's characterization.
Arya was stabbed by a magical assassin that has thoroughly kicked her ass every time they fought yet was doing parkour just days later and got the better of her. Jaqen says she's no one even though it's clearly far from the truth. The logistics of her killing Walder Frey's sons and cooking their fingers into a pie whle going unnoticed rang hollow as well since it was shown that she never truly mastered her faceless training. At least not on screen.
As for Sansa, the showrunners and writers framed her choosing to marry Ramsay as a good idea. It was not framed as her being strong-armed into it by LF because they said it was her choice. They make it seem like a brilliant idea for her to make the choice to reward her family's killers with her hand. Apparently, Sansa was doing it to "avenge them" and get some power in the north. I think there's a strong implication that the only thing wrong with this plan was Ramsay's personality and not the dozens of other reasons for why this makes no sense whatsoever. This is worst than anything that's happened in Grimm.
It's amazing that Sansa's initial four and a half seasons were not adequate enough and they went with the rape-as-empowerment trope. Littlefinger and Ramsay did her a favor by turning her into a sex slave. Ramsay told Theon to watch her become a woman and that's essentially what ended up happening. Was that her initiation into "the game"? I suppose having her direwolf killed, watching her father be beheaded in front of her while people cheered by her fiancé, being held hostage, being at the mercy of that psychopath and his mother, being beaten in public by knights, being branded as a traitor's daughter in enemy territory, nearly getting gang raped in a riot, being forced to marry Tyrion and expected to consummate, getting framed for regicide, being told she would marry her bratty cousin, and almost getting murdered by her Aunt wasn't enough. It just had to be rape that showed her character growth.
I could spend the whole day talking about the idiocy of the Sansa plotline without even addressing all the other issues I have with seasons 5 and 6. Anything that came out of that plotline is worthless because she never should have been there in the first place. It invalidates anything that came after and it's not like what came after was all that great. I don't view her feeding Ramsay to his dogs as a satisfying payoff. I could make a separate post about Ramsay and how the writers' obsession with him ruined the northern plotline. "20 good men" alone is enough to show how awful the plots have been in the last two seasons.
I do agree with your predictions. I think Arya and Sansa will be a force to be reckoned with. I can see Sansa's growing political acumen will make her the best candidate to run WF even though she already should be. Sansa can identify threats and Arya can "solve" those problems. The fact that they chose a bastard over her handwaves a lot of the problems something like that would cause. That KITN scene was another dumb one.
Arya was stabbed by a magical assassin that has thoroughly kicked her ass every time they fought yet was doing parkour just days later and got the better of her. Jaqen says she's no one even though it's clearly far from the truth. The logistics of her killing Walder Frey's sons and cooking their fingers into a pie whle going unnoticed rang hollow as well since it was shown that she never truly mastered her faceless training. At least not on screen.
As for Sansa, the showrunners and writers framed her choosing to marry Ramsay as a good idea. It was not framed as her being strong-armed into it by LF because they said it was her choice. They make it seem like a brilliant idea for her to make the choice to reward her family's killers with her hand. Apparently, Sansa was doing it to "avenge them" and get some power in the north. I think there's a strong implication that the only thing wrong with this plan was Ramsay's personality and not the dozens of other reasons for why this makes no sense whatsoever. This is worst than anything that's happened in Grimm.
It's amazing that Sansa's initial four and a half seasons were not adequate enough and they went with the rape-as-empowerment trope. Littlefinger and Ramsay did her a favor by turning her into a sex slave. Ramsay told Theon to watch her become a woman and that's essentially what ended up happening. Was that her initiation into "the game"? I suppose having her direwolf killed, watching her father be beheaded in front of her while people cheered by her fiancé, being held hostage, being at the mercy of that psychopath and his mother, being beaten in public by knights, being branded as a traitor's daughter in enemy territory, nearly getting gang raped in a riot, being forced to marry Tyrion and expected to consummate, getting framed for regicide, being told she would marry her bratty cousin, and almost getting murdered by her Aunt wasn't enough. It just had to be rape that showed her character growth.
I could spend the whole day talking about the idiocy of the Sansa plotline without even addressing all the other issues I have with seasons 5 and 6. Anything that came out of that plotline is worthless because she never should have been there in the first place. It invalidates anything that came after and it's not like what came after was all that great. I don't view her feeding Ramsay to his dogs as a satisfying payoff. I could make a separate post about Ramsay and how the writers' obsession with him ruined the northern plotline. "20 good men" alone is enough to show how awful the plots have been in the last two seasons.
I do agree with your predictions. I think Arya and Sansa will be a force to be reckoned with. I can see Sansa's growing political acumen will make her the best candidate to run WF even though she already should be. Sansa can identify threats and Arya can "solve" those problems. The fact that they chose a bastard over her handwaves a lot of the problems something like that would cause. That KITN scene was another dumb one.