Edd Fetch Me a Block

lol

I watch the show. I've read all the books. I will continue to watch the show til the bitter end (even though it's more and more of a slog this season). I watch it for entertainment - the swords, sex, and political machinations. It's not high art or supposed to be held to any sort of moral imperative. But, I suppose the difference between me and the "most viewers" you cite is that I'm not entertained by rape as a terribly overused, catchall mode of character development. It's lazy writing and makes for sub-quality, boring, and offensive television.

Unsurprising. A lot of people were turned off by the Sansa rape. Also, everything is just really sloppy this season. Even some of the acting seems phoned in.

TRIPLE post. Sigh. Apologies.

Pardon me, double post. I'm new!

Gilly was sexually assaulted when the two NW guys were pawing her and one telling the other "Throw her down there", etc. I mean, how much assault is sexual assault in your mind? If your GF/wife/mom had that happen to her while walking home from work and somebody showed up to rescue her just in time, would you be arguing the semantics of whether or not she was sexually assaulted? Just because there wasn't actual penetrative sex doesn't mean she wasn't sexually assaulted. They meant to rape her. That was obvious. Now to your second point, that this scene was a way to show Sam's character development. You have inadvertently and quite succinctly put your finger on the heart of the problem. The problem that I (and many, many, a growing number of show watchers) have is that rape is used as a character development device (often for OTHER PEOPLE than the victim of the rape) over and over again on this show. The reason so many people reacted so vociferously to Sansa's rape last episode, in addition to how of course it was horrible to watch and it didn't advance her OWN character development (as evidenced by this week where she is essentially back where she started in Season 1), was how we were focused on Theon's pain and suffering for most of it. This is an extremely common trope in films/tv/comics where a woman is put in peril to show a man's pain and to begin the man' journey of revenge/empowerment/whatever. And now again, the very next episode, we have an attempted rape where the woman is not only ready for sex immediately afterwards (and even Shae said in Season 2, "you should have known." Meaning Tyrion's fake wife. "A woman who's just escaped rape will not be interested in being in a man's bed an hour later.") but the whole scene was about SOMEONE ELSE'S character development. It's insulting, belittling to the trauma of rape and rape survivors, and probably the biggest crime of all for a fictional tv show, is lazy, LAZY writing.

First post! I gave it a 6 - it was probably the best episode of the season, but that's not saying much, unfortunately. I've watched every episode since the beginning and read all the books, and I will keep going until the bitter end, but it is really starting to feel like more of a slog. I'm glad D&D have been told by GRRM where they're going (or else I'd start to be worried about a Lost/X-Files style complete loss of direction and coherence) but I really don't like the way they're getting there. There are decisions they've made in adapting the books for the small screen that I approved of on paper, but the way they've played out has been disappointing. Examples: Sansa going to Winterfell, Jaime going to Dorne, Davos staying with Stannis, etc. The only thing I am truly excited about is Dany/Tyrion. First, because of course that meeting has STILL not happened in the books (seriously, GRRM, edit yourself some!), and second because Dany's storyline on the show hasn't been interesting to me since literally Season 1, and Tyrion is my favourite character (along with Jon) so he is sure to liven up proceedings in Essos. Anyway, a 6 because the KL, Wall, and Essos stuff is good, and no more than that because Dorne remains a hot mess and Sansa/Winterfell is just upsetting and, so far, pointless for her character development (we'll see what happens with Chekhov's corkscrew). Stannis storyline is neutral at the moment, but if they burn Shireen I am going to be really pissed off.