A long post and you have got well past where I have read to in the books, so I wont comment directly upon that aspect of you post, well not until I have read the books further.

However my experiences of children in challenging situations (for me it was kids growing up in townships in South Africa), is that they don’t become wholey broken they actually become randomly broken and kinda incomplete.

Contradictions who move between adult decision making and childishness at a blink, who are capable of extreme generosity and inhuman cruelty in the same instance, and have no concept of the juxtapose between the two.

However they retain an ability to come through the horrendous apparently relatively unscathed, and heal emotionally at a rate that adults would find mind boggling. There was a girl who we fostered for 3 months who was wild and uncontrollable when she first came to us, who after 3 months of just living with a normal but very much imperfect family, had returned to normal child like patterns of behaviour.

i’m not sure if that answered your point at all, but its what you post provoked in me.

Where Arya is mentally and emotionally by the end of book 4 is functionally sociopathic and perhaps even functionally psychopathic. She’s the child version of the character Dexter from the Showtime series. One of the things that makes these books so compelling is the very real picture they paint of the effects of violence, war, deprivation, and abrupt societal change on children. Based on where the books are going, I think that Jon is being set up as the mythic hero, whereas Sansa is being set up as the mythic heroic politician (my belief is that Sansa is the primary student of “The Game of Thrones,” and her character arc is going to end with her assuming the Winterfell crown as its wisest and most benevolent–yet savvy and politically brilliant–ruler. Jon will have the morality to rule, but Sansa will have the actual ability to rule.) Arya, meanwhile, paints the opposite story–what happens when an intelligent, resourceful, and opinionated child is given no hope, no security, no affection, and no safety net to test out her morality. She becomes controlled chaos, and quite frightening. I think this is an excellent cautionary tale, and makes me say “no wonder” when I hear the horror stories of child mercenaries and the things they do in Western Africa, for example. They didn’t seem to have much of a choice. Arya was give one choice: die or become what she did. She chose to live, but the cost was, frankly, her soul. What do you think?

However I probably didn’t articulate myself correctly in the article, the suspension of disbelief does not depend on whether teenagers can deal with the issues at hand or not, it is whether the viewer, believes that it is plausible that teenagers can deal with the issues at hand.

You obviously have no issue with believing it plausible that teenagers could survive even thrive in those situations, however I have some reservations on whether a mainstream TV audience would agree with you.

I have picked up that some of the character ages have been increased which I think will help the issue significantly, and make another couple of issues which I may post about later easier to deal with.

I want to quote you and reply to this.
Probably the mistake you’re making is to think of these kids like “todays” kids. When they’re not. The Middle Ages times where different, but i can easely translate this matter to my father. He was just 6 during the World War II, living almost alone in a farm with one brother and 5 sisters, (my granpa on the enemy lines and my grandma at work far away from home) he’s gone through some major pain with Fascists and Nazis in this area, what the stark kids gone through the series is nothing compared to what my dad and my aunties gone through that time.
Kids will always find a way to survive, even when you, an adult think they’re not going to make it. Probably today kids won’t survive two days in a forest, scared like they are of GERMS. *LOL*

P.S. Sorry for my bad english, i was just trying to explain myself
Btw the site looks great! Love it