Stacia Stark

Yeah, the choice is going to be basically, like, I mean, this is the man that was there until he wasn't, right?

But then we've got another man who's, in book one, the definition of, like, sociopath, essentially.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is, yeah.

And I think one of my favourite scenes was definitely one of the arena scenes near the end, right after Arbel has gone into the arena with Maeve, when he kind of comes in.

And I had an idea of what would happen in that scene, but that was one of those times where, like,

I just hit flow and it all just kind of, you know, things changed and it remains like one of my favorite.

And I think a lot of fans really like that scene as well.

So it actually came from a TikTok.

I was scrolling one day and saw this woman talking about how she had lost her best friend.

and ended up bawling, right?

Because you're like, how does anyone get past that, right?

Like, how do you get up in the morning?

And so that's kind of how Arbel came into play.

I wanted someone who had been through that and kind of needed to keep going.

So, you know, her brothers are really the only thing keeping her going because she lost everything.

And I also really wanted to focus on, like, the parentification of eldest daughters, which is a pretty strong theme throughout the book as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, and so Arvel is kind of... We see a little bit of how she's trying to grow, and that's one of the things I really like about Maeve, because she's a sunshiny character, but at the same time, she wants to be Arvel's friend, but when she tells her, like, I'm not going to be your friend, you don't want me to be your friend, that was, like...