Sansa-Ramsay Scene: Your Thoughts?

I have seen people on other websites be outraged at the fact it was rape alone and how they shouldn't do rape to drive the story forward, etc.

Some of the reactions are very silly. Like for the fact that no one cares about GRRM making horrible rape scenes that are 10x worse than the show ones. The main problem here is, that D&D have raped main characters that aren't raped in the books. Drogo didn't rape Dany in the books, Sansa isn't raped (YET, it's still a possibility in TWOW), Cersei's scene with Jaime in the books is a little hazy. Having Sansa to join the "club" isn't a nice job. Not everyone gets raped in Westeros.

I was thinking about the fact that how many lords would refuse to "consummate" (in many cases it's rape) their marriage because their partner didn't want it? Tyrion was probably the only one here. Ramsay wasn't so monstrous as he was in the books, but in this scene he acted like an average lord "just doing his duty". Planetos and Earth's middle ages were fucked up.

I'm mostly angry because D&D have failed in Sansa's character arch and she didn't even have to be at WF. One moment she's a total boss telling people off and showing great potential in the "game of thrones" and then she suddenly loses this all in a matter of minutes and becomes a victim... again. The thing is, there is a possibility that Sansa is going to be raped by Harry the Heir. We don't know if it will happen or not.

EDIT: .. and no, D&D might make stupid mistakes sometimes, but they do not hate women.

Dany was raped in the books, in fact I appreciate the show changing Dany's wedding night, because first of all, Dany wasn't actually in position to say no, she was a 13 year-old girl, sold by her brother to a man twice her age, a man who didn't stop touching her after she said no the first few times. A man who later raped her every night while she cried and tried not to scream, she even thought suicide was better than the life she had with Drogo at the beginning

* The less they change the better. They wouldn't come up with something better for the story than just including GRRM's material. They've shown this time and time again.

** If it wasn't at the end of the episode it would undermine the horror of the situation for Sansa, like, hey, we can just have this like it isn't any big deal, and then go right to Margaery getting arrested. The show would be getting even more complaints.

*** GRRM doesn't use it without having consequences. Drogo/Dany was without consequence, so was Cersei/Jaime. Theon... after he was castrated was cut to with a fucking scene of Ramsay swinging a sausage in the air, shaking it, and making the audience laugh. GRRM is far better with using sexual violence to show it's effects in a realistic context. Most of the time the show just doesn't know what it's doing or doesn't care.

I think the reason D&D get hate and not Martin is because Martin had the opportunity to give so much detail and nuance about other female characters - look at Cat, Cersei, Daenerys, all of them really - they are so much better developed than in the show. Most of them are so complex. The show obviously doesn't have the time to do that but D&D choose to include some things and exclude others. Catelyn was basically silenced for the sake of Talisa's ass. I won't ever feel sorry for these two.\

And if the scene between Cersei/Jaime came off as rape only because in the books it was POV, then why did they include that scene anyways if it had no psychological consequences on either of them or any plot consequences?

Agreed about the female characters being more developed in the books, but I think that has more to do with the time limitations the show has, and because the books give us more information thanks to the POV structure. And yes, Cat deserved so much better than what she got in the show. Not saying that D&D are saints, they aren't, I have some problems with several of their choices, I think most of the time I end up defending their choices not because I agree but because I see people arguing they are changing things when they are actually being faithful to the source material. Sometimes the problem I have is that they could have chosen to do things differently, but decided to follow what Martin did even if is not exactly the same.

Regarding the Jaime/Cersei scene, I don't know why they included it, IMO they fucked it up but not with that scene, they fucked it up when they added the scene in which Cersei goes to Jaime and has sex with him on a table. In the books the sept was the last time they ever had sex, from that point forward both Jaime and Cersei become more distant, on Jaime's part is because Tyrion tells him their sister sleeps with other men besides him (Jaime has a terrible case of "whore/madonna" complex), but why is Cersei so cold with him in AFFC? why does she asks him at one moment when she is naked in front of him if he is missing what he's lost? in fact Cersei doesn't even want Jaime near her, that is why she tells him to go to the Riverlands, which in turn makes Jaime even more distant. Cersei only thinks about Jaime in a positive way after she is arrested and needs someone to fight for her.

The show ruined that by making Jaime arrive earlier, they should have kept Jaime and Cersei's relationship as it was before the war, have the sept scene, and then make Cersei more distant, or keep it like in the books. I agree that the show made a huge mistake when the showed Cersei was already drifting apart from Jaime before the sept scene because, as you said, it made that scene have no consequences.

Regarding why Cersei may not refer to it in her chapters, I think is part of personality. Cersei considers herself to be better than other human being and despises anything she considers weakness, she probably refuses to think she can be a victim too, because that would make her a regular human being.

When I say that the scene is faithful to the book I just mean that it happened like in the books and I don't agree with the people who say it was consensual, otherwise I agree the show didn't make it justice.

Has anybody been keeping track of the bedrooms in Winterfell? I assumed that Sansa was given her old bedroom at Winterfell, though I don't remember us getting a good look at it in season 1. Is Ramsay's bedroom identifiably Brans? It didn't seem like Ramsay and Sansa were in the same room that Ramsay and Myranda had been in, but probably that was just the lighting and angles?

I don't think so. The only scene in Arya's bedroom was when she was given Needle, and it didn't look like Sansa also stayed in the same room. I think it's safe to assume that the room she was staying in before the wedding was her old room. And I don't think Ramsay's room was Bran's. It looked more like Ned and Catelyn's, just with the bed moved.

Excellent read!