I was not all that shocked by the rape. Wives were property and men could do what they wanted with them. I don't think rape was all that uncommon. In the mini-series Merlin, Uther (as Cornwall) practically does the same thing to Lady Ingraine.
The reason I asked about Sansa possibly being pregnant is I wondered if that was going to be thrown in on top of everything else. Sansa, in my opinion is probably the worst characterization of the entire series. She's the designated victim and worse yet, she's a boring designated victim.
(10-26-2017, 05:36 PM)irukandji Wrote: [ -> ]I was not all that shocked by the rape. Wives were property and men could do what they wanted with them. I don't think rape was all that uncommon. In the mini-series Merlin, Uther (as Cornwall) practically does the same thing to Lady Ingraine.
The reason I asked about Sansa possibly being pregnant is I wondered if that was going to be thrown in on top of everything else. Sansa, in my opinion is probably the worst characterization of the entire series. She's the designated victim and worse yet, she's a boring designated victim.
I wrote how the marriage to Ramsay came about for a reason. The rape was the result of characters acting completely out of character along with a storyline that didn't make any sense. Of course, Sansa is going to get raped if she married a rapist. The problem was changing her storyline and making her and Littlefinger act in a way completely contradictory to their characters in order for it to happen.
First of all, Sansa's marriage to Tyrion needed to be annulled officially. Her marriage being tossed aside just because LF says she didn't sleep with Tyrion and having no septon annul it is absurd even within the universe of the show. Lysa told Sansa "They'll execute that dwarf and you'll be free to marry Robin. You'll be the Lady of the Vale." She's clearly saying Tyrion needs to die first otherwise she could've had Sansa marry Robin any time she wanted to if Sansa not consummating her marriage with Tyrion is all it took. It doesn't surprise me though since these are the same writers who find it conceivable that Rhaegar can have his marriage with Elia annulled even though they had two children.
This isn't about wives being property because I never tried to dispute that and I feel like you really didn't address my actual complaint. My issues with Sansa's storyline isn't about rape itself and never was or will be. It's about the storyline itself which would've been horrible even without the rapes, remember she was being raped every night after her marriage, because it never made any sense. Why would she ever agree to marry a Bolton and why would LF ever propose it and leave her alone with them since he has such a huge investment in her personally and politically? It would've been better for both of them to keep her in the Vale and then take the Knights of the Vale to reclaim WF in her name. Unnecessary risks don't make either of them smart. And how could Sansa possibly get any character development from it since we already saw her at the mercy of a psychopath who was from the family that murdered her own? They didn't realize they were destroying her character by sending her to WF. They made her more naive than season 1 Sansa because even she would've never made that choice. Do you think she would've offered herself to Joffrey after he had Ned's head cutoff?
There have been other rapes in the series but you don't hear me complain about them as long as their narratively justified. I don't have a problem with Mirri Maz Duur being raped in season 1 but I do with Cersei being raped by Jamie in season 4 because the former made sense while the latter doesn't. Jamie is not a rapist. In fact, he saved Brienne from it in season 3 and it led to the loss of his hand.
In all honestly, the show needed to bring in writers who could handle this subject because they're horrible at it. They claim they didn't even realize a rape was being filmed between Jamie and Cersei. Anyone who does that has no business writing about it no matter what the setting.
Hell Rell, I get that you're unhappy with the series, believe me. However being honest here, I'm not really sure what you want me to say. You're going all over the place with rants, you know? Do you want to discuss Game of Thrones or just rant about it? Either one is fine with me. All I'm asking is that if you want to discuss it, give a break here, pick a scene you want to talk about and we'll go from there. I'm positive you're not the only one who has issues with the series. A good start might bring other posters into the discussion.
As I didn't really know what you wanted, I brought up the rape from my perspective, not because of anything you said. I admit I wasn't really clear on it, but I was just pointing out that I didn't find it as shocking as apparently a lot of other fans did. I recall a huge outcry on the internet the next day following the episode. In fact, there was an article on MSN and about a thousand comments following it.
So, I'll leave it up to you. I'd love to read your comments and discuss it, but I can't do that until I know what you really want here, to discuss or to rant.
(10-26-2017, 06:27 PM)Hell Rell Wrote: [ -> ]about wives being property?
Boy, do I miss the "Good Old Days".
(10-26-2017, 09:24 PM)irukandji Wrote: [ -> ]Hell Rell, I get that you're unhappy with the series, believe me. However being honest here, I'm not really sure what you want me to say. You're going all over the place with rants, you know? Do you want to discuss Game of Thrones or just rant about it? Either one is fine with me. All I'm asking is that if you want to discuss it, give a break here, pick a scene you want to talk about and we'll go from there. I'm positive you're not the only one who has issues with the series. A good start might bring other posters into the discussion.
As I didn't really know what you wanted, I brought up the rape from my perspective, not because of anything you said. I admit I wasn't really clear on it, but I was just pointing out that I didn't find it as shocking as apparently a lot of other fans did. I recall a huge outcry on the internet the next day following the episode. In fact, there was an article on MSN and about a thousand comments following it.
So, I'll leave it up to you. I'd love to read your comments and discuss it, but I can't do that until I know what you really want here, to discuss or to rant.
There was already an outcry before Sansa marrying Ramsay was announced but viewers still had hope that the writers wouldn't be that stupid. In fact, I can remember a particular forum on the morning before that episode aired where there were posters who were telling people about the shitstorm that was about to occur. There wasn't going to be a riot before it happened but warned there would be if what they thought was going to happen actually happened. It would then be clear why they tossed Sansa's storyline aside and the backlash would be more furious since the show had dropped the ball with nonsensical rapes before such as Jamie raping Cersei. I even remember an article written on USAtoday three weeks before that episode aired and it was full of commenters who talked about how this story isn't empowering like the writers themselves claimed and how she was more of a victim than ever before which makes no sense based on how the previous season ended and the way her character was progressing.
I was trying to say that you're looking at it from a surface level where the problems I and other people had with it run deeper. It wasn't just some rape is bad and doesn't belong on TV argument. Otherwise, I would never had watched GoT or several other shows including Grimm.
You did ask me about what I thought about her character evolution previously and I didn't really answer you properly so I apologize for that. I'll use another response from a different forum that I think may answer your question. I wrote this during the middle of season 6 as a reply to another poster who was discussing how Sansa has evolved:
Quote:It's not really an arc. Her development and her ability to take down Littlefinger will come out of nowhere. She has observed the major players in King's Landing but she was barely an entry-level player. I didn't see her get trained sufficiently in the art of politics on the show. She was dropped off with Ramsay before that could happen properly. She was locked in a room and raped nightly until she was saved by Theon and went on the run. There hasn't been any time for development.
Sansa needed to have a training arc last season like Arya and Bran(albeit off-screen) to lead into this season. I've seen people say(not saying you're one of them) that she wasn't ready and in over her head last season. What's changed between now and then to prepare her to enter the game? It makes even less sense now than it did before last season. There was no timeskip so how is she more ready now?
Sansa was essentially rebooted last year and most of her prior development became irrelevant. It's now being raped by Ramsay that's going to catapult her character progression(instantly I might add). The writers made her a complete idiot to let LF drag her up Westeros without demanding to know where they were going and marrying Ramsay for "revenge". She made herself a hostage for family killers after she had just escaped that exact situation. They said things like "a hardened woman making a choice" and "she sees the logic in what he's saying" to defend it. That's more naive than season one Sansa who wanted to marry Joffrey before he had Ned killed.
Now, they're going to turn her into a clever schemer at the drop of a dime. It's not believable. She's been turned into a "rape-as-empowerment" walking cliche. They had Ramsay tell Theon "now watch her become a woman" and it seems like his treatment of her is responsible for her development and not the years spent in KL and her time in the Vale.
I think I've stuck to Sansa's storyline on this one so I hope we can discuss it further. I'll be happy to discuss Tyrion, Arya, Jon, Ramsay or whomever you would like separately.
Thanks, Hell Rell. I need to explain something here because I'm getting the impression that you believe I am familiar with discussions on Sansa as well as the outcry regarding her marriage to Ramsay. I'm not. I've never frequented any of the Game of Thrones forums so I had no idea there were deep discussions going on about the character.
I tune into the MSN website daily and there happened to be an episode about Sansa's rape. There were tons of outraged comments about it. I hadn't even seen the episode yet so I had no clue.
Now if I'm wrong about this assumption, I apologize, but I thought it important that I give you a little background on where I'm coming from on this.
Quote:It's not really an arc. Her development and her ability to take down Littlefinger will come out of nowhere. She has observed the major players in King's Landing but she was barely an entry-level player. I didn't see her get trained sufficiently in the art of politics on the show. She was dropped off with Ramsay before that could happen properly. She was locked in a room and raped nightly until she was saved by Theon and went on the run. There hasn't been any time for development.
Sansa needed to have a training arc last season like Arya and Bran(albeit off-screen) to lead into this season. I've seen people say(not saying you're one of them) that she wasn't ready and in over her head last season. What's changed between now and then to prepare her to enter the game? It makes even less sense now than it did before last season. There was no timeskip so how is she more ready now?
Sansa was essentially rebooted last year and most of her prior development became irrelevant. It's now being raped by Ramsay that's going to catapult her character progression(instantly I might add). The writers made her a complete idiot to let LF drag her up Westeros without demanding to know where they were going and marrying Ramsay for "revenge". She made herself a hostage for family killers after she had just escaped that exact situation. They said things like "a hardened woman making a choice" and "she sees the logic in what he's saying" to defend it. That's more naive than season one Sansa who wanted to marry Joffrey before he had Ned killed.
Now, they're going to turn her into a clever schemer at the drop of a dime. It's not believable. She's been turned into a "rape-as-empowerment" walking cliche. They had Ramsay tell Theon "now watch her become a woman" and it seems like his treatment of her is responsible for her development and not the years spent in KL and her time in the Vale.
This. I have to admit, because I didn't see the rape as a big deal, I never gave it (or subsequent nightly rapes) any credit for Sansa's sudden ability to project herself as an intuitive and critical thinking adult. However, her sudden intelligence and adult bearing caught my attention and I was wondering just where that came from. In my opinion, she didn't seem any different to me even after the subsequent rapes. Sansa has always been a rather simple, childlike character to me. As I said before, I found her character to be treated the worst of any because it seems to me the childlike demeanor was deliberately glued to her character to make it easy to see her as the designated victim in GOT. I will go further if I'm on the right track here because I wanted to talk about her during her time at King's Landing that I feel should have contributed to growth in the character, but instead were deliberately ignored.
I think the writers, all men by the way, have a serious problem writing about femininity. They also write a bunch about toxic masculinity but that's another story.
As I was saying, Sansa is probably the most traditionally feminine character on the show besides perhaps Margaery. Margaery was a seductress so they liked her but Sansa got treated like a constant rag doll because they view as weakness. That's why we hear Arya and Lyanna Mormont mock knitting because who needs silly girls who do that when winter has come? They're can't possibly be any use for it, right?
We're in complete agreement that her time in KL was completely ignored in terms of developing her character. They usually only showed interest in Sansa during her time in KL when she was being abused, mocked, or pitied. They failed to show how she was becoming less naive, more observant, and more clever in her own ways. I don't think they appreciated how she saved Ser Dontos's life and how she kept kept the women calm and acted more queenly than Cersei during the Battle of the Blackwater. I often feel like they see her the same way someone like Cersei does. Sansa's not actual supposed to be as stupid as people in the story thinks she is but they sure write her that way most of time.
I got into a debate a while ago about how she was essentially rebooted during season 5 in order to support the Ramsay storyline. I feel the same way you do about her in KL being ignored in favor of using her as a prop in the WF storyline. I think she comes off as the ultimate victim because the writers see her as such and nothing more. I just started reading the books and she has a lot more going on for her there. Sansa was active in her escape from KL by meeting with Dontos in the Godswood regularly which nobody, not even Varys or Tyrion, picked up on and she armed herself with a knife the first time around. She even refused Tyrion's offer to let her stay in the Tower of the Hand, which I believe was further away from Joffrey, because it would prevent her from meeting Dontos. She has these little acts of resistance and I really like reading her thoughts because she's still a bit naive and idealistic but she's growing. The show didn't really include them so it hurts her character greatly. They really didn't show any significant growth for her in the show until she lied for LF but immediately reverted her progress in season 5 then tried to put her back on track in seasons 6 and 7 but failed miserably because that's not how character evolution works and they still had her being influenced by LF even after he pimped her out.
(10-28-2017, 02:47 AM)Henry of green Wrote: [ -> ]The biggest problem I have had with the later seasons is they've turned Tyrion into a moron who can't get any thing right. I mean in the past 2 seasons you can count the number of intelligent decisions he's made in half of one hand. They've turned one of my favorite characters into an incompetent fool who makes blunder after blunder. Yet the other characters still seem to listen to him like they did by following his dumbest idea yet kidnapping a wight. In the early season besides Tywin he's was the smartest character on the show.
I think turning turning Tyrion into a purely good character has hurt him just as much. They shyed away from his greyness and avoided the vindictive path he was on. The outburst at the trial was telling us what his real character arc should've been but they're scared of him doing anything truly unlikable.
Tyrion turned into a moron in order to aid Cersei so she could challenge Dany because there was no way she could reasonably last past two episodes against her plus they're still using him as the voice of reason even though he's a moron.
It really isn't all that surprising since they have had no idea what to do with Tyrion, Varys, or Littlefinger. They're all morons that nobody should listen to but they're supposed to be the most intelligent characters so they have them spit out some nonsense that's supposed to be viewed as brilliant by the audience. Just look at that line to Sansa from LF where he tells her to fight every battle in every time zone in every dimension and she stands there speechless. It was a last ditch effort to make LF seem like this otherworldly mastermind before he got taken down. They've all been useless characters for years now. The writers aren't capable of writing anyone intelligent and instead aim for something that will make a good meme although unbeknownst to them in a mocking way.
I know the final season isn't really worth discussing but I'm surprised nobody has brought it up here. I'll write more later but I gotta say I'm not surprised at all about the lack of quality. I thought this show has been a pile of garbage since season 5. It wasn't any worse than I thought it would be but it's a shame they couldn't exceed my expectations. Bran having "the best story" tells me all I needed to know about this show.