A Song of Ice and Fire [2]

Like.. I knew it was going to be bad, but for anyone else not invested in this show.. just don't watch this episode.. that's the simplest advice I can give.

Game of Thrones Absolutely Did Not Need to Go There with Sansa Stark

George RR Martin wrote:I have sometimes allowed other writers to play with my children. (…) In the case of Wild Cards, it’s controlled by me. I decide who gets to borrow my creations, and I review their stories, and approve or disapproval what is done with them. “No, Popinjay would say it this way,” I say, or “Sorry, the Turtle would never do that,” or, more importantly (…), “No, absolutely not, your character may not rape my character, I don’t give a fuck how powerful you think it would be."

http://grrm.livejournal.com/151914.html?thread=9918058

We Will No Longer Be Promoting HBO’s Game of Thrones

I don't even know where to begin.  This episode is going to be completely overshadowed by discussion of the final scene, and rightfully so.  It was garbage on every level.

Edit: just like last season with the Cersei/Jaime rape scene, attempts to justify the changes from the book only make it worse.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/17/game-thrones-sansa-ramsay-interview

I honestly don't want to write anything further on the Winterfell plotline.  But the King's Landing one is just as nonsensical in its own way. Dorne was laughable.  Even setting aside the obvious issues with the final scene, the storytelling just plain sucks.

The thing is they put themselves through all these twists and turns, altered storylines, completely dropped Sanas book storyline, made characters act completely illogically, and all for this. All for the shock. I think they must have thought they could have gotten a rw like reaction from the audience. The thing is, for all of the rw being horrible (George says it was the hardes thing he ever wrote, I still struggle to see and read it.) it was earned and seeded as part of the narratibve from very early on. And it happening made logical sense as part of the story. Here they took a main character with ther full on own storyline, through some completely illogical storywriting, dropping her own plot completely, all to put a character that the viewers were invested in in this position.    

They even admitted this was all there was too it;

“You have this storyline with Ramsay. Do you have one of your leading ladies—who is an incredibly talented actor who we’ve followed for five years and viewers love and adore—do it? Or do you bring in a new character to do it? To me, the question answers itself: You use the character the audience is invested in.”

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/26/game-thrones-sansa-ramsay-interview

There's just so many problems to it, I don't know where to start. None of which has anything to do with how horrible that scene was in itself. Horrible things happen in real life, horrible things happen in fiction. That's not the problem.

But, yeah, I'm not sure trying to make sense of it will do much good. It is what it is.

And it doesn't help that Dorne was, as you say, laughable. Although I guess it could be kind of enjoyable if one turned ones brain off and tried to watch it in a goofy action comedy/DoS sort of way.

Kings Landing and the birthmark. Not only does it prove nothing but the fact that Loras has a birthmark, which Ollyvar could have very plausibly seen while dressing Loras when he was his squire. It certainly doesn't prove that Margery saw them in bed together. So, there goes the claim of false testimony.

And Tyrion and Jorah and the slavers. Of course you'll get the highest prise for your slave in the city where the Breaker of Chains rule, and slavery is abolished.

I actually quite liked the Arya scenes, and Tyrion and Jorah talking about their fathers.

I didn't mind the Sansa scenes and I don't know what all the fuss is really. They didn't actually show anything and it was all focused on the reaction of Theon so nobody could say it was brutal scene because the brutality actually seen onscreen was pscycological rather than physical. As the audience we were put in his place not hers. To try to make sense of it I think it demonstrates a turning point in Sansas life, being raped in her own home the very night that she regains her Tully redhair back, would either make her a victim for the rest of her life or she will fight for her birthright as head of Winterfell. Both sisters seem to be at a major turning point in their lives, and both a kind of trial by fire, either they survive by being strong or they will be destroyed, its down to them. I did think for a second that Arya would take on the 'face' of her mother and seek revenge.

http://gotgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/119290178087/hi-i-just-want-to-ask-a-question-about-sansa-it

Interesting to get your perspective though. This is a scenario where having read the books properly gets in the way. And reflects rather badly on the showrunners as people.

Someone put these different critic reactions together.

The show has creators. They make the choices.They chose to use rape as a plot device. Again. - Jill Pantozzi, The Mary Sue

It is possible to write fantasy without falling back on the harmful cliché that an old-timey setting offers a free pass to show women getting raped all the time. -Everdeen Mason, Refinery29

The issue with the show returning to rape as a trope is not simply because there have been thinkpieces speaking out against it, and is not solely driven by the rational concerns lying at the heart of those thinkpieces. It’s also that the show has lost my faith as a viewer that the writers know how to articulate the aftermath of this rape effectively… -Myles McNutt, AV Club

We already knew that Ramsay Bolton was a sadist and an abuser of women, we already knew that Theon Greyjoy was his tormented puppet. Showing Sansa’s dress ripped, showing her face shoved down into the bed, hearing her screams did nothing to reveal character, or advance the plot, or critique anything about Westerosi society or about our own conceptions of medieval society that hasn’t already been critiqued. - Steven Attewell, Salon

In general, I’m not a big fan of people getting raped in entertainment as a manipulative way of heightening the stakes, but I’m even less of a fan of people getting raped in entertainment when it accomplishes absolutely nothing. - Laura Hudson, Wired

What character development could be wrung from this tragedy that could not have been created without a violent rape? Why does Game of Thrones — and so much popular entertainment — revert to this horrific crime when they want their female characters to “grow”? - Michal Schick, Hypable

Was it really important to make that scene about Theon’s pain? If Game of Thrones was going to go there, shouldn’t they at least have had the courage to keep the camera on Turner’s face?…But the last thing we needed was to have a powerful young woman brought low in order for a male character to find redemption. No thank you. - Joanna Robinson, Vanity Fair

To show Sansa being raped as the kicker to an episode — and then to cut to Theon, as if it’s his view, his reaction, his internalizing of the moment that matters — just felt like more of the same old same old we’ve been getting since Ros died, since Tansy was hunted, since Cersei was raped. - Nina Shen Rastogi, Vulture

There are thousands of ways to make a character and a series compelling without having to humiliate and dehumanize her with sexual force. Come on, Game of Thrones, you should know better than that. - Rachel Semigran, Bustle

Now with Sansa and Ramsay, Game of Thrones is seemingly confirming that it has no idea how to use rape as a storytelling device — crass as it may sound, fictional sexual violence can be extremely powerful if managed carefully (see: The Americans) — and rape is just about the worst storytelling device to deploy clumsily. - Jen Trolio, Vox

Welcome to cable drama, where a woman’s rape is an opportunity for a man’s character development….what really makes the wedding night rape of Sansa Stark notable is the fact that as brutal and honestly unnecessary as the moment is, the show doesn’t even have the courtesy of letting Sansa’s emotions about the event serve as the center of the moment…. This was a choice and the choice was to marry off a teenage girl, rape her, and not even have the dignity to care primarily about her feelings about her fate. - Libby Hill, Salon

The show pretty much added a new, and in my opinion, entirely unnecessary victimization to her story. More concerningly, after Jaime’s rape of Cersei last season, it’s yet another rape Benioff and Weiss decided to add to the show that was not in the text and at this point, we don’t need anymore. - Lauren Morgan, New York Daily News

There have been numerous plot points and characters from Martin’s novels that have been omitted from the series; I’d love to hear what the showrunners’ arguments are for not only keeping the brutal assault of a young woman, but changing the storyline so that it happened to a beloved character. I’ll be waiting for an explanation, but like Jaime Lannister’s guilt [over raping Cersei], I’m not expecting it to actually arrive. - Casey Cipriani, Indiewire

There were so many ways around this very horrible and very predictable outcome and D&D decided to use what would shock viewers the most. Maybe I’m naive and hope too much for the good things, but I’m also a fan of good writing and creative characters who grow. Sansa’s “wedding” involved neither.- Jen Stayrock, Workprint

Bad enough that the assault upon the Stark princess by ghastly Ramsay Bolton was explicitly presented as an exercise in voyeurism, with Theon Greyjoy forced to watch as Sansa was violently assailed. What made the scene worse, and perhaps unforgivable, was that the rape was in the context of Sansa displaying increased maturity and independence. - Ed Powers, Independent.ie

Personally, I’d really like Game of Thrones to be a good 30-40 per cent less weird about women (and having Warrior Princess fighting girls in Dorne isn’t quite what I’m after, chaps). - Chris Bennion, Independent.co.uk

http://fatpinkcast.com/post/119338703079/critics-reactions-to-the-sansa-rape-scene-in

I think this criticism is a bit rich. GOT has from the first day it was aired shown brutality and sex. what has changed, nothing? it does what it says on the tin. that's why people watch the show, because it shows the short brutal lives of people in a medieval setting, thats what the show has always done and that's whats made it famous. suddenly people are disgusted by this, what did they expect? we got the Red Wedding and the Purple, we get blood and mud. That's why I like it personally speaking. They could have gone full-on voyeurism, but they didn't, and instead showed some restraint probably due to her age. yes rape is bad, but showing its terrible effects isn't. showing it for what it is, about power, is pretty brave of them.

edit. I also have to wonder what the reactions would have been if the scene had been in the book? or if D&D had been on top form. I think this is more about it not being in the book and a perceived arrogance of the producers rather than it being a violent rape, because there must be hundreds of those in the books.

Anyone who is really bothered by the mere depiction of sexual violence stopped watching GOT a long time ago. No one I've seen has criticized this episode just because there was a rape in it, although this seems to be a very popular strawman in rebuttals. As I mentioned in the other thread, what happened to Jeyne Poole in the book was way worse than this, but no one who made it that far into the fifth volume of the series was offended by the existence of rape scenes in art/media.  Aside from the standard purist complaints, the main issue is the illogical context, narrative pointlessness, and inconsistent characterization that led to the rape scene. Furthermore, D&D and the writers and directors have shown a worrying tone-deafness about their depictions of sexual violence. The non-aftermath of the Jaime/Cersei scene in S4 alone should remove any benefit of the doubt, but let's not forget the rape as set decoration from Craster's or the divergent ways they treat statutory rape based on the genders involved (Dany/Drogo vs Marg/Tommen).  I don't see any examination of the effects of rape, either as a social allegory or a genre deconstruction.*

I'd like to be clear that I don't think that D&D or anyone else involved in making the show is a frothing misogynist or anything.  I'm sure they're all fine people.  But I think the careless attitude evident in their handling of both sex and violence is also reflected in their apparently very shallow understanding of the story. Forget comparing them to GRRM for a minute; that's too easy, and I don't want to give the impression that I'm only upset over changes from the book. D&D don't even seem to understand their own changes and insertions. The comment that Needle is "a tool for revenge" is just one recent example (one not even supported by the finished scene and it's musical cues). What happened to Cersei and Robert's dead baby from season one, whose existence disproves the prophecy that began the current season? Why did Varys try to kill Dany in S1? Why do sympathetic characters routinely give anachronistic speeches in favor of gender equality, gay rights, and democracy when the show still goes out of its way to remind us that it takes place in a crapsack medieval world whenever it's time for some "shocking" violence? Why is the worldbuilding so uniformly poor?

I know changes to the source material are necessary in adaptations, but if your new material is shit, don't be surprised if people point to the most obvious example of how it could have been done better.  I feel like I've been through this before.  Actually, I'm reading to declare D&D to be the second coming of PJ. Or David Yates, if you prefer.**

PS I haven't been looking for excuses to bash the show. I watched the premiere of S1, fell behind a few episodes in due to RL circumstances and my mixed feelings about the show, then rediscovered it and caught up last year. The show and the books have different strengths and I was optimistic just a couple months ago that the show might surpass the books given the weaknesses in volumes 4 and 5. But the show's existing problems, increasingly evident in S4, have reached a tipping point. I'm sure I'll keep watching in a House of Cards-esque "this is really dumb but I can't look away now" way, but I can't honestly call myself a fan of the show. I can only hope that book six will be an improvement, but more likely both parts of this franchise will end having fallen off in quality mid-way through, just for different reasons.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but, well...



And yes, before someone posts it, I don't like thing.

---

*Which stands in stark contrast to GRRM's handling of sexual violence in the book, but I'll refer to this essay that Blue has posted before because its author's thoughts are much more eloquent than mine, even if I don't 100% agree with her conclusions.

**I should reiterate from previous posts that I think D&D, PJ, and Yates have all given us some genuinely great moments in between all the other stuff.  And both PJ and D&D were best when they were starting off and stuck closer to the books for whatever reason, and the ripple effects of their alterations had yet to really be felt.

Also, the acting and music in GOT remain really good.

Spoiler:

I am only pissed off at any comparison with YATES!!! YATES really did ruin HP!!

I cant get too worked up about GOT though, its entertaining and I still really enjoy it. the intro music does it every time.

Mrs Figg wrote:Its not narrative pointlessness (yet) because we don't know why they decided to include the rape scene, it could have repercussions further down the line, its too early to tell. and its certainly not inconsistent characterisation, Ramsey was always a shit, and Sansa more or less always a rabbit in the headlamps. The context is within a forced marriage, whether this is annoying because its not in the book is another matter.

I'll admit that I'm not giving D&D the benefit of the doubt anymore. If they turn around and have Sansa be the one to kill Ramsay or rescue herself I will eat my words. But I really don't see this plot playing out that way. I've been criticizing this season's Winterfell story since it started, and the rape scene is just one part of that. As for characterization, the inconsistency I was referring to was with Sansa, who is acting more like her S2 self than the supposedly more empowered Sansa who was beginning to assert herself at the end of S4.

The first time we see Cercei and Jaime at it, it seems they go in for rough sex. they are brother and sister its not going to be romantic.

I was referring to this scene (NSFW) where Cersei repeatedly begs Jaime to stop and he responds with "no" and starts ripping her clothes off. There was some controversy over whether this met the definition of rape (the director of the episode and, surprisingly to me, my mother didn't think so), but I found it pretty straight-up rapey.

that's just it, until this season I think a lot of people were willing to overlook a lot, but the lowing of the standard this season has left it open to a lot of criticism

That's very true. There has been a decline on a number of fronts. For all the attention the rape scene is deservedly getting, I think the Water Gardens fight and the Faith's hearing against Loras were pretty bad too for other reasons.

Funny, I just read an article that said Sansa knew what she was getting into, and likely has a plan hatching in her head that let her go through with it. Since the article offered no real evidence I won't bother to post it, but some people out there think the scene was to set her up as becoming a tough critter.

Mrs Figg wrote:I am only pissed off at any comparison with YATES!!! YATES really did ruin HP!!

I threw his name in there just for you.

I cant get too worked up about GOT though, its entertaining and I still really enjoy it. the intro music does it every time.

I dunno, the episode before last was pretty good, just slow. It's the kind of episode I'd probably have given a unreserved thumbs up were I in the middle of marathoning the whole season. Having a week to mull each episode over definitely doesn't do the show any favors. But I do feel like it's taken a major dip in quality. While I'm gonna keep watching, being a completist and invested in the source material, I'm finding it harder to take the show seriously as its own story. More just a curious aside to the books. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to a newcomer anymore. I feel disappointed by that, but I can't make myself like something.

I'm sure there will be some genuinely good (maybe even great) moments in the rest of this season. I'll try to focus on those in order to make the most out of the situation. And of course, I love getting to talk about the show with you guys every week. That's a big part of what makes it enjoyable. I just wish Petty was watching so he could join us.

halfwise wrote:Funny, I just read an article that said Sansa knew what she was getting into, and likely has a plan hatching in her head that let her go through with it.  Since the article offered no real evidence I won't bother to post it, but some people out there think the scene was to set her up as becoming a tough critter.

That's probably what the writers were going for, but they've been unable to recognize rape in their own writing before.

I dunno how anyone can watch the scene and not see it as rapey. It was a long cry from Sansa gritting her teeth in order to get through something unpleasant.  And while Sansa agreed to Littlefinger's marriage plot, we need to remember that (1) it's hard to say no when you have no one else to turn to, (2) she was left in Winterfell with no friends except an old lady she knows nothing about, and (3) she didn't know anything about Ramsay's true nature so it's literally impossible for her to have signed up for that.

Edit: once again I'll have to eat my words if the season ends with Sansa personally taking revenge on Ramsay, but the next episode preview doesn't seem to be heading that way. And if they keep following the Jeyne Poole story it's going to be Theon who takes action, which would be consistent with the camera focusing on him during the rape scene.

Every week I feel like D&D are doing a Gladiator and asking me whether or not I am entertained. Mostly I am entertained and sad when the episode finishes, like its way too short, so they must be doing something right.

Speaking of Gladiator, if the pit fighting scenes are half as good as that movie, I'll be willing to give a good few points back to S5.  Although now ... Iain Glen or Russell Crowe?  Goddammit.

I started writing out a response about the whole Sansa thing, but I found mself basically just repeating the points of Eldo's rant above. That pretty much says it all. I thought I'd try to write out my view of the whole thing in a very shorthanded bulletpointish form though, as much to try to organize my thoughts as anything else.

As a basic assumption though; No, I do not think there in principle is anything wrong about portraying rape in fiction. As I said on the last page horrible things happen in real life, horrible thngs happen in fiction. (All the while I like to be very clear that it's a heavy handed narrative grip, a traumatic one, one that shouldn't and can't be brushed over as far as narrative consequenses are concerned, and one one should be careful of using, because it very easily becomes gratuitous.)  That's not the issue I have with this at all.

When considering the scene I think one first has to look at it's context in the internal narrative of the show. One should look at all the illogical decisions, changes in characterization, all the hoops and knots they tied themselves in to get to a situation where the rape of Sansa was, yes, a logical consequense of the narrative. (Does Ramsay raping his bride on their wedding night make logical sense? Yes.  Does Sansa marrying Ramsay? The way they got to that wedding night? No.)

Having faced that fact, one should look at what the showrunners/writers themselves have said about this moment and why they bent over backwards to include it featring Sansa. Here from Brian Cogman;

“You have this storyline with Ramsay. Do you have one of your leading ladies—who is an incredibly talented actor who we’ve followed for five years and viewers love and adore—do it? Or do you bring in a new character to do it? To me, the question answers itself: You use the character the audience is invested in.”

They also stated they loved this storyline, and couldn't wait to get it to screen. So what does that tell us?

It tells us that their reason for doing this, the reason they wanted to do this scene in the show was for the shock it would create. The reason they substituted the tertitary character with Sansa, basically dropping her from her own storyline, dropping her own storyline and dialling back her (empowered ) character development to get there, was that it would make the moment even more shocking and impactful to have a character people were invested in go through it.  

This can be further illustrated by a point that will make sense to book readers. When this scene happened in the books, in even horrifyingly more explicit detail, it happened in a context. It happened with Roose Bolton penned up in Winterfell with half a dousin other northern lords, because, amazingly, when the heir to House Bolton and the Warden of the North married the last surviving Stark it was kind of a big deal, they shockingly invited more important people than the Kennel Masters daughter, half of which were ready to stab him in the back at the first opportunity. Outside Winterfell minor northern lords flocked to Stannis to save "Ned's little girl". Ramsays treatment of his false Stark bride drove a wedge between Roose and his so called allies. As Lady Dustin states, "Lady Arya's sobs do us more harm than all of Lord Stannis's swords and spears". I'm not saying this is the reason the rape is included in the story, it very much has an impact in itself, on Theon, on the Northern Lords, on everything, but reflect on how the showrunners from this storyline they apparently love, cut everything, I repeat everything but the horrifying rape. They cut the entier context.

Put shortly they wanted the shocking moment of the rape, and they wanted to make it even more shocking and hurtful by dragging Sansa into it, dropping her entier original storyline form the books, through completely illogical storytelling and characterization.  

That is what's wrong with this.

In that context I find their decision to go there completely indefensible. And as Eldo stated above, and one of the critics also pointed out, going by their record I don't trust them to handle the fallout of this. I don't have much more to say about it than that.

More critical fall out..

The Mary Sue -

The show has creators. They make the choices. They chose to use rape as a plot device. Again.

In this particular instance, rape is not necessary to Sansa's character development (she's already overcome abusive violence at the hands of men); it is not necessary to establish Ramsay as a bad guy (we already know he is); it is not necessary to prove how bad things were for women (Game of Thrones exists in a fictional universe, and we already know its exceptionally patriarchal). Rape here, like in all instances, is not a necessary story-driving device.

http://www.themarysu...ame-of-thrones/

Vanity Fair-

But did it really have to be rape that brought her low? Is that really the only horror Game of Thrones can imagine visiting on its female characters?... Even worse than the idea of Sansa needing this to motivate her into vengeance is the notion that the Theon character needed to watch her rape in order to snap out of whatever zombie/Reek fugue state he's been walking around in.

I'm afraid that is the show's interpretation, based on where the camera lingered. But the last thing we needed was to have a powerful young woman brought low in order for a male character to find redemption. No thank you... I think most audiences would have been happy with Sansa as avenging angel without subjecting her to a rape. After all, these are the people who killed her family.

http://www.vanityfai...ape-sansa-stark

Wired -

There have been a lot of complaints over the years about the way Game of Thrones deals with rape, and it's earned them. It has a tendency to use rape sensationally and frequently, not to mention the troubling incident last season where a director filmed a rape scene and didn't even realize it...

Forcing her back into the role of victim and sexually humiliating her at the hands of yet another sadistic fiance adds nothing that we haven't seen before, and indeed, feels regressive. All the forward momentum of her character development is undercut by this assault, transforming her back into the same little girl she was at Kings Landing, weeping as her dress was torn off. Shoehorning additional abuse and rape into her story at this point isn't just upsetting; it's boring and counterproductive. Poorly done, show. Poorly done.

http://www.wired.com...s-recap-s05e06/

Salon -

To exist as a woman on a cable drama is to understand that at some point you're probably going to be raped by someone you know or in the presence of someone you know or as a punishment to someone you know, but it's okay because in the end, it just gives you something to overcome and everyone knows that having something to overcome is the only way to prove that you are a strong woman...

This was a choice and the choice was to marry off a teenage girl, rape her, and not even have the dignity to care primarily about her feelings about her fate... The character who had shown the most growth and potential for becoming her own woman.. is broken down in a matter of minutes, then not even given enough agency to suffer her own assault.

http://www.salon.com...brutal_wedding/

Salon (another) -

So with this last scene, I think the showrunners have betrayed the trust of their audience, by depicting a scene of brutality against Sansa Stark for no purpose. We already knew that Ramsay Bolton was a sadist and an abuser of women, we already knew that Theon Greyjoy was his tormented puppet. Showing Sansa's dress ripped, showing her face shoved down into the bed, hearing her screams did nothing to reveal character, or advance the plot, or critique anything about Westerosi society or about our own conceptions of medieval society that hasn't already been critiqued.

http://www.salon.com...e_double_cross/

Hypable -

But this begs the question; why should Sansa have to deal with such a thing at all? What character development could be wrung from this tragedy that could not have been created without a violent rape? Why does Game of Thrones - and so much popular entertainment - revert to this horrific crime when they want their female characters to grow?... There are better ways to sculpt characters than sexual exploitation. There are more productive ways to cause pain than rape. And Game of Thrones has lost the luxury of further indulging in this social blight; it is way past time they do better. The Sansa Starks of the world are waiting.

http://www.hypable.c...nsa-stark-rape/

USA Today -

The scene of course sparked all kinds of outcry for the disastrous way the show has treated Sansa (who in the books, is rape-free and nowhere near Winterfell or Ramsay at this point). Was giving Sansa this storyline really necessary? Was this a sign of the show's completely misogynistic way of treating its female characters? For many viewers though, it wasn't about loyalty to the books so much as loyalty to the character and integrity of Sansa Stark, who seems like she was handed a rape storyline to make her more sympathetic or give Theon the push he needs to lash out against Ramsay.

http://entertainthis...ark-rape-scene/

Washington Post -

The use of sexual violence as plot device is not new to Game of Thrones and it's not unique just to this show, either. But while on each occasion in the past it's been plenty disturbing, tonight's closing scene with Ramsay Bolton and Sansa was just flat-out disgusting.

Even if you've never read the books (myself included and that shouldn't limit anyone's enjoyment of the show) it's hard not to know that what happens to Sansa in this episode doesn't happen to Sansa in the books. The show's creators are free to take liberty with certain storylines and characters, but by putting Sansa into this situation, by taking a character that viewers are fully invested in, and subjecting her to the horrors of Ramsay Bolton, it's hard to interpret this as anything but using her rape as an emotionally manipulative plot device.

http://www.washingto...d-disappointed/

Flavorwire -

The audience doesn't really see the event that ends Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken, just two close-ups: the first on a terrified Sansa, the second on a man who identified himself as Theon Greyjoy just hours before. The second closeup lasts far longer, the emotion on its subject's face rawer. That's because, to make an already disgusting situation even more so, what happens to Sansa isn't even about Sansa; it's about teaching Theon he's still Reek...

Which brings us to the question of just why Sansa's rape had to happen. Ramsay's assault is the third example of a phenomenon critic Sonia Saraiya pointed out last year: Game of Thrones, the show, adding instances of sexual assault that do not appear in Game of Thrones, the books. (In the original storyline, Sansa remains in the Vale and does not return to Winterfell at all, let alone marry Ramsay Bolton.) Unlike the Red Wedding, in other words, there's no reason David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had to bring one of the shows most interesting character evolutions right back to square one...

But my immediate feeling after Theon's face cut to black and the credits started rolling was that, sometime in the last two seasons, Game of Thrones crossed the line between showing what a cold, hard world its women live in and abusing them past the point of being useful to the narrative, or even interesting.

http://flavorwire.co...unbent-unbroken

Buddy TV -

This is not the first time a major female character has been raped in the course of the series. There was Daenerys on her wedding night to Khal Drogo all the way back in the first episode. Then, just last season Jaime raped Cersei in the Sept of Baelor. (If you want to be the type of person who puts an asterisk on the Jaime and Cersei scene, fine be that person. The director didn't intend for that scene to come off as a rape. The intention becomes irrelevant because that's how it appeared for the majority of the audience). In both cases, there was no ramifications for either act. Neither woman acted like they just had been raped or violated in any way. Dany even grew to love Khal Drogo...

Even if this silence from these women is an accurate depiction of the "time", it doesn't excuse Game of Thrones' depiction of its universe. There are plenty of ways to show that women aren't seen as powerful in this world without sexual violence. Game of Thrones has even done it in different areas of Cersei's storyline. Margaery is constantly trying to maneuver herself to a position of power and has to take unconventional avenues because of her gender. There is a difference between a horrifying act that says something disturbing about the world and just cheap shock factor. The end of "Unbowed, Unbent and Unbroken" was just that cheap and unabashed shock factor.

http://www.buddytv.c...-far-56568.aspx

io9 -

Guys, I think I reached the breaking point with the show today. This is by far the most frustrating, unsatisfying, and mean-spirited show ever. However strong the theme was, no matter what kind of framework it builds for a bombastic finale, this episode makes me want to quit the show. And all of it is encapsulated in that final scene. Boy, that final scene...

I also hope they're not using rape just as a cheap plot device. I guess we won't really know until the end of the season, but it's not hard to imagine that the writers are using it to say "Look how evil Ramsay is, making Theon watch Sansa getting raped! and Poor Sansa and Theon! Fans will cheer extra hard when Ramsay dies!" I really hope that's not the case, but the show had been utterly tone deaf regarding rape before.

http://observationde...7-15-1705174564

The Atlantic -

I've rarely, if ever, felt less enthusiastic about the show than I did tonight, when the screen faded to black to the sound of Sansa's groans...

Sansa is a girl whose body has been traded to further someone else's ambitions. She doesn't have a choice; she's never had a choice. Sansa has always been good at summoning her haughtiest attitude to protect herself, but it isn't working this time. She's all alone, and she's petrified. The North may remember, but the Stark loyalists aren't much good when she's being raped on her wedding night. In Kings Landing, Sansa at least had the Hound looking out for her at the beginning; having turned away Brienne, she has no personal protection...

Gratuitous sexual violence is bad enough, but gratuitous sexual violence in a ridiculous storyline that not only doesn't advance our understanding of key characters but rather makes us more confused - that may be the greatest sin of all.

http://www.theatlant...nbroken/393503/

Radio Times -

This week's episode ended with a particularly grim scene for Sansa Stark. It's bound to be controversial in a show that's been criticised for the prevalence of sexual violence against women, and especially for adding rape scenes where there were none in the source material...

But it's also hard not to feel the rape was a little gratuitous and emblematic of the show's troubling tendency to show sexual violence quite casually as a mere plot point (such as the sex scene between Jaime and Cersei in the book that became a rape scene in the show for no apparent reason). It did happen to Ramsay's unfortunate wife in the book but offstage, so to speak.

http://www.radiotime...g-in-winterfell

The Vine -

This scene never happened in the books, and never had to, except as a consequence of D.B. Weiss and David Benioff taking such unnecessary detours from the source material... The show, however, seems to take disturbing pleasure in putting the brutalisation of these women front and center. So you have to ask: if D.B. Weiss and David Benioff insist on deviating from the books, why are they doing it in a way that these female characters are repeatedly tortured and victimised? Westeros is a cruel and unforgiving place for women, true, but there are better ways of depicting that than revelling in these assaults.

http://www.thevine.c...0150518-300952/

Digital Spy -

What the sequence is, is gratuitous in its use of Sansa as a character. It's perhaps the biggest instance of a change from the source material becoming seriously problematic. In the books, Sansa never marries Ramsay: it's someone else, a character the audience is far less familiar with. Switching things up so that it's Sansa makes sense from a streamlining perspective, but it also places what feels like an unnecessary further burden on the character. It begins to lend Sophie Turner's corner of the show an unpleasant whiff of misery porn.

The big question is what has that sequence achieved, other than some great performances from the cast? Sansa hated the Boltons already. They killed her family; of course she hates them. And she's suffered emotional and physical abuse before, and emerged from it a stronger person. Did we really need rape added to the pile?

http://www.digitalsp...isery-porn.html

TV Overmind -

Beginning with Arya and ending with Sansa, Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken is an episode that explores that quest for inner truth; unfortunately, it does so by leaving the audience with another troublesome and particularly unnecessary depiction of sexual violence, throwing a wrench into any assumed progress the show's made in that department this season. And in that scene, that potential moment of strength for the character, Unbowed undoes it with a series of unpleasant shots and sounds, literally ending on the screams of Sansa as Ramsay forcibly rapes her, while making Reek watch from the doorway.

The moment Ramsay asks Reek to stay, Unbowed felt like it was going to that place again, forcing this story of sexual assault onto Sansa for nothing beyond shock factor. There's no reason Sansa needs to be subjected to this to depict her toughness, or Ramsays inherent ugliness; if the wedding bed scene is just existing to reinforce the assumed order of things in Winterfell, without offering any character development with it, why is it there? This is a rape scene for the sake of having a shocking rape scene, and it drags down the entire episode behind it.

http://www.tvovermin...nbent-unbroken/

Zap2It -

For five seasons, "Game of Thrones" has inflicted Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) with some of the most horrifying storylines of the series. Halfway through Season 5, though, she got served the most disturbing yet when she was raped by her new husband, Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon). Unsurprisingly, this is a turn that repulsed viewers, with some going as far as to say they're done watching the show... Why have her survive Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) if she was going to go through very similar -- and eventually worse -- treatment at the hands of a new tormentor? ...

The look in her eyes when she realizes what Ramsay means to do to her shows that she's learned better than to do anything but accept this. Still, being raped isn't something she can just bounce back from, no matter how she steeled herself for it. It's worth noting that this storyline is a deviation for Sansa. In George R.R. Martin's novels, a woman named Jeyne Poole marries Ramsay... In the show, no matter what comes next, Sansa will always be a victim of sexual abuse. No matter what strength she continues to have after this encounter, she will always have lost her virginity at the hands of a monster.

http://www.zap2it.co...a_stark-2015-05

New York Daily News -

What happened to Sansa was everything I was afraid would happen when it was made clear she had to marry Ramsey Bolton a few episodes ago. Though what happened to Jeyne Pool in the book was actually more disturbing, watching Sansa be raped onscreen was positively sickening. In the book, Sansa was learning to wield and manipulate power in the Vale after a long period of victimization but the show pretty much added a new, and in my opinion, entirely unnecessary victimization to her story. More concerningly, after Jaime's rape of Cersei last season, it's yet another rape Benioff and Weiss decided to add to the show that was not in the text and at this point, we don't need anymore.

http://www.nydailyne...entry-1.2226147

Decider -

Sansa's rape, then, seems like a another example of a strange trend that the show's showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have employed into their series. When last season's rape scene stirred much controversy, AV Club's Sonia Saraiya pointed out the show and the books major tonal differences. These are questions many of us ask in the wake of Sansa's rape. Why? Why did this sexual assault, which did not take place in the book, need to happen on the show? Why did this character need to be broken down even more than she already has been? Why did we see it framed as a traumatic event for the man who witnessed it?

When do we draw the line between using sexual violence as a plot device to strengthen a woman's character (and to give her motivation for her later actions) and to display the inhumanity and evil nature of a man who perpetrates it - and as what it seems to truly be: a near-sadistic move on the showrunners to destroy these beloved characters? Game of Thrones has not dealt with sexual violence well in the past, considering that the rapes of both Daenerys and Cersei seemed to go forgotten - even by the victims themselves. Why, then, would the show push yet another envelope when its audience has suffered alongside its many female characters already?

http://decider.com/2...-too-much-rape/

This lifted my spirit a bit though. Love this chapter.

http://theculturalvacuum.tumblr.com/post/119485155635/the-princess-refused-to-be-cowed

Prince Doran smiled wanly. “Leave us, captain.”

Hotah stamped the butt of his longaxe on the floor, turned on his heel, and took his leave.

I told them to place a cyvasse table in your chambers,” her father said when the two of them were alone.

“Who was I supposed to play with?” Why is he talking about a game? Has the gout robbed him of his wits?

“Yourself. Sometimes it is best to study a game before you attempt to play it. How well do you know the game, Arianne?”

“Well enough to play.”

“But not to win. My brother loved the fight for its own sake, but I only play such games as I can win. Cyvasse is not for me.“

And i think it's a good point that Dorne in the books was character driven, not plot driven like in the show.