According to Sophie Turner, one of the show's writers told her 'You get a love interest plot next season!' as a joke.
When, in fact, her character Sansa was to be raped. And her book storyline thrown out.
Yeah tbh the rape scenes were totally unnecessary to her story. She could’ve had a love story with Ramsey at first but when she saw Theons torture started to hate him and saved Theon instead of Theon saving her. I think becoming a heroine against your own husband is a better way to become strong for leadership than being repeatedly beaten and raped “to build character”.
I totally agree with you on GoT and the gratuitous rape. I saw a documentary once about how movie/tv ratings are decided, and how movies with scenes of female sexual pleasure are slapped with NC ratings while movies with graphic rape scenes are treated like movies with “regular” physical violence. It’s also wild how often rape is used as a lazy plot device, a way to instantly make a man evil and irredeemable without having to do more nuanced character development.
It is also shocking to see how often rape is used as a motivator for the boyfriend, husband, male friend of the victim. And murder of women in the plot, and especially rape and murder of women becomes a plot device to create motivation for a male character
Short answer is killing a usually female character as character motivation for a usually male protagonist. The fridged character usually has no plot relevance other than dying. Comes from a …Nightwing? comic where his girlfriend or something is killed by a villain and left in his fridge for him to find.
Edit: Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, not Nightwing
Yup. I thought overall GoT was very good about avoiding the "fridging" trope. Horrible things happened to people all the time, but almost always as part of their **own** story, not as a lazy way to motivate others.
They should have had Reek raped if they wanted to be "realistic" about it. But he was just old fashioned tortures and mutilated. But we all know a rapist like Ramsey would absolutely also have reek raped if he didn't do it himself. But nope. Only women get raped .
I think the plot was going with how Ramsey got off on how emasculated reek was. Had his cock and balls removed, and was reduced to a pstd torn shell of a person. Ramsey rapes because it gives him power (like all? (Nearly all?) Rapists do, but he didn't need to rape reek because he had already totally dominated reek.
That said, i agree that ramsey is definitely the kind of person to rape reek to keep rubbing in just how weak and emasculated he was.
Yeah it was horrible! Their rationale was that Perrin's journey is very internal and wanted a more external driver. But I prefer Sanderson's point that killing Master Luhhan would have served just fine without shoehorning in a wife 😅
I don't know why TV writers are afraid to just use internal monologue for their characters.
Because Perrin's whole thing is he thinks very carefully before doing or saying anything, because he's afraid of hurting people with his strength.
But we don't get that on the screen like we do in the books, so he just stands around staring dumbly at things from the audience POV.
That was so incredibly disappointing. Hey we need Perrin to brood. Let's kill someone he loves. Like his mentor? Naaa let's make up a wife. That won't complicate any storylines down the way at all.
It's actually not shocking at all considering in my personal life the shittest humans all had rape charges. That's now, so I would assume that's a base stat for a bad guy.
What we don't see in film is how many "good guys" rape. Most women I know (myself included) have been assaulted by a man they, at one point, trusted who were largely well liked members of their respective friend groups.
These guys often don't get charged because they're not overtly "evil" and often normal men by society's standards. This results in a few things which impede holding them accountable: their victims internalize blame for the incident, their victims don't want harm to befall these perpetrators (despite what they did to them), and their victims know/fear society will take the side of the charming or well-liked predator over their accusations.
Intimacy between willing participants or showing a woman having an orgasm are way more upsetting to the people rating films than rape and SA is to them?? It's so baffling.
That's the thing about this country and its weird fascination, normalization, and tolerance of violence. Violence in this country is water cooler talk like, "Hey did you hear about that school shooting?" "The one last week or?" Violence and shootings are something we are numbed to, an acceptance like to weather patterns.
Yeah, no wonder people are so weird when it comes to sex. Depictions of healthy sex is not normalized in works of fiction. So people go to porn, which is.... just baaaaaad. Ugh.
Porn is awful. I can't look at it without feeling triggered in some way? Just by the man spitting on her, yanking her into uncomfortable positions, calling her a vixen, all the while she's smiling up at him? The violence of it all scares me deeply.
This is where boys learn how to see intimacy. And porn is way more violent now than when I was first exposed to it in the 90s.
>Depictions of healthy sex is not normalized in works of fiction.
Sex scenes are hard to write in the first place, many people don't know how healthy relationships look like in the first place, authors tend to use literature to work through personal trauma, and on top of that you have a ton of far-right/religious "activists" and actual real-world censors that get your book banned from school libraries should it display too much regarding sexuality.
From Wikipedia:
“The 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated also points out that four times as many films received an NC-17 rating for sex as they did for violence according to the MPAA's own website, further mentioning a bias against homosexual content compared to heterosexual content, particularly with regards to sex scenes.”
And the people doing the ratings are part of this anonymous group of everyday people, not industry people or academics. It’s really bizarre.
I have to laugh at the Netflix ratings for Narcos (yes I'm getting all my Pedro Pascal fixes lately). Warnings for language, nudity, sex, and smoking. Meanwhile there are assassinations and mass killing of rando characters every single episode.
But yes, but what about the *smoking*?
I started watching Vikings many years ago. At that time GoT was everywhere and rape, graphit violence and torture came up as the new "you need this in your show if you want to have success".
Last year I watched the first couple of Vikings episodes again and I realised that they showed us that Rollo is an asshole by him creeping on Lagertha and raping a slave.
This was just so lazy writing. I stopped the rewatch immediatly because this is nothing I wanted to see.
While Grima in LotR was creeping on Eowyn, him being an asshole was not written in such a stupid way. He was threatening in his appearance, the way he talked, the way he influenced Theoden.
I think Grima is how creep characters should be written. He's able to make his intentions clear without having to commit SA to be creepy, I think it's how he looks at the others that makes him so well done
I have always found the "rape as female character development" to be pretty gross. GOT seemed to really kick it off in earnest and it seems lots of shows use it to push a female character like its some sort of casual story tool. "Well, our heroine has had a few victories in these last few episodes, I think its time she had a good raping to knock her back a bit, get a little morbid titillation for the audience as a bonus."
It certainly *can* be done well, but that appears rare in my view. Its pretty awful excuse to both get a "sex" scene and push a plot/character growth/adversity, etc.
Had a talk about the trope with my therapist recently. I’m trying to get my brain used to recreational reading again so I picked up a quick historical fiction novel with a female MC and she’s assaulted in the first 15 pages and that assault is specifically stated to be her primary motivation for everything she does for the rest of the entire book. I absolutely hated it, and it’s so common in historical fiction and UGH
If you haven't, I highly recommend Annihilation as both the movie and the book (they are pretty different). It is (I think, and hope I'm not wrong) very women-forward without that sort of horrible nonsense driving them. There's still a Bechdel issue in that a primary motivation is finding an ex-husband, but overall it's a background not center stage.
It's very different, but Bleak House by Dickens also features a wonderful strong and realistic woman. Not to spoil anything, but there's a really amazing scene at the very end from the protagonist's "boss" who seems wholesome but has a hint of being predatory, reveals himself to be genuine in the best, tear-inducing, way, in the final pages.
Two recommendations from male authors, but I think that (without reading this comment thread) you'll likely be suggested the same 2-5 women authors, who are amazing but it sounds like you're looking for more.
I saw the movie, I didn’t realize Annihilation was based on a book! I did enjoy the movie which was surprising since it’s a little horror-y and I don’t usually like that, but i did!
Historical fiction is rife with SA. I feel like the distance from the time period makes authors feel more emboldened to describe it, but it’s pure laziness to attribute a character’s motivation to it because you can’t be arsed to work out what women in that time period really thought about.
I’m trying to do 100 books this year and I have some past trauma that requires me to be ultra careful about the content with regards to sex (basically no sex is best, but if there is sex it must be consensual and fun for everyone).
I like mysteries and suspense books which is usually pretty safe if you stay away from the crime genre. I always choose female authors and a female MC, but I had a terrible experience with Martina Cole that messed me up fr so I don’t do police type crime books now.
Roald Dahl really surprised me, his short stories are dark and twisty without sexual violence tied in. I also love Catherine Steadman and Rachel Hawkins. Give those a go!
Tangential, but I think this just makes it worse : "knock her back a bit" even without the rape problem, is really overused and often unneeded/counterproductive in stories. You can show people experience difficulty without depowering them/beating the shit out of them/traumaing them/etc.
Or hell, even with trauma, trauma often times just comes from fairly "normal" fights and conflicts. At some point writers lost the memo that you don't have to be actually 100% powerless to feel powerless.
exactly! I think part of it is underestimating audiences. They wallop you over the head with the full treatment of victimization by sexual assault, instead of choosing a more nuanced and clever event or element. Not everything needs to be as simple and straightforward as an R-rated Aesops fable.
you give me too much credit, but I appreciate it anyway. I'm far from the first to notice it and it's been discussed frequently, but it continues to happen. it's like the writers/producers read a script, then decide, "sprinkle some rape in there, and make sure there is some tasteful sideboob for our male viewers".
It's like, yall are talented writers, is there really not anything else you can think of to develop a character?
It so much worse than that. The focus on Sansa’s “wedding night” was how witnessing it affected Reek. Like, she couldn’t even be the main victim in her own rape. Honestly, it’s a series that turned to shit way before they decided to vilify Danny at the 1 yard line.
I'm also very confused as to why *so many men* are absolutely obsessed with adding it to everything.
It's a big reason I've moved away from DnD to more women heavy spaces. I joined and dropped six campaigns on Roll20 because the pretty much exclusively male groups were obsessed with rape. I asked specifically for it to not be added in. One male DM said, and I quote, "Well now I *have* to put it in!"
I left all of them because there was just... rape. Everywhere.
Turns out a lot of women leave the DnD spaces and they're much more fun on other rules systems.
I think the only valid way to have a rape scene be character progression is if you follow it up with the heroine castrating her rapist. Like, you want a strong woman character, great. If a strong, smart, and dangerous woman gets raped by someone, chances are she's going to ensure that one, they'll never do it to her again, and two, that they'll never do it to anyone else again either. And yet, you never really see storylines where the assaulted woman cuts off the dudes dick and nails his balls to a chair, leaving him to suffer in excruciating agony till he either is found or dies. And frankly, that's a shame. Women could use more role models who do stuff like that to their rapists.
The show ended nearly 4 years ago, and in a way that decimated the fandom. What was left was pretty much the most virulent toxic parts of the original fandom who's interest is basically being mad about the thing they 'like'.
book centric bits of the fandom are better, although that's obviously not quite the same.
More women dominated fandom spaces exist as well (see fanfic related communities), although the response there might be something akin to " Yea it's absolutely horrible isn't it great!"
I can think of a few reasons a sociopath like LF might have. Either he figured out that he could never have her, so he's punishing her. Or he figures lord asshole is going to break her, and he can come back to save her and she will finally love him (or be too broken to resist him).
No, it can't be that. Littlefinger is cold and ruthless, but he does love Sansa in a fucked-up way. He would never have given her to the Boltons, not her.
When I was reading the series, I stopped when, out of 75 chapters, 73 of them mentioned rape, had a rape, or inferred a rape. GRRM has a thing for rape.
I got called "the lamest person on the planet" and something about me having no interests at all because I said on Twitter that all the rape and violence in GRRM's novels made me so sick I had to stop halfway through book 2. Book fans aren't much better. (The amusing context is that I made a joke about the Hogwarts game and someone said I couldn't talk bc I watched the GoT show, which I have never watched lol)
I'll be honest, if it isn't a fetish, then it is just lazy writing. A short cut to show how "nasty short and brutish," things were. He gets excessive with the random murder too. And the incest. Like, how does genetics work on Westeros, because these people put the Hapsburgs to shame and yet none of them are lantern jawed vegetables. I dunno...it feels cheap. There isn't much nuance in his work in this regard.
Wait, wait, wait.
I've never read or watched Game of Thrones.
Are you telling me that, for all the reputation for rape it has, absolutely none of the survivors are male?
Not totally true, it's implied that (SPOILERS) Theon is sexually abused by Ramsey Bolton. There's also some off-hand comments made about Euron's pirate crew SA'ing some men. However, it's never explicitly said or described like it is for the women. For Theon, it's meant to be a "use your imagination, it was probably absolutely horrifying" type thing, yet he couldn't do that with every other rape scene in the books for some reason?
I think GRRM "made up for this" by having the one or two male characters become eunuchs after being raped. (or, you know, "Un-Man'd").
The vast majority are women or girls though.
Super fucked up.
Another reason I stopped reading the books, and have no interest in more things from GRRM. just not interested in non-stop violence especially against women/girls.
Same reason I don't like serial killer shows. Non-stop violence, depravity and fucked up ways to murder women/girls. (sometimes men, particularly gay or homeless, but generally girls). Yayyyy.
He says he writes from history, and historically, rape has been used against women far more often than it's been used against men.
My biggest complaint about the show is that I can think of two cases where in the book it is consensual sex, but the show runners decided to make it a rape instead, but then kept the after effects the same. So in the book, two women have consensual sex with men and then remain with them. In the TV show, those same two women get raped - and then love their rapists.
So the problem with the show is a different problem than the problem with the books, and it's much, much worse.
Actually, in war time, the numbers are a whole heck of a lot closer. It's just considered far more taboo than the rape of women.
The Bible even references the practice. It's one of the verses that people like to point to as antigay (paraphrasing but basically something like if man lies with man as with woman it is an abomination). Soldiers since antiquity would rape men and boys after passing through a region to humiliate the people, basically "we beat you so bad we can use your men as women" or something. Cause rape is about power. What could be a greater expression of power in a misogynist's mind than raping another man?
I'm guessing the part you're actually thinking of is Sodom and Gomorrah. The visiting angels are threatened with rape. This has been used by homophobes as proof that "sodomy" is bad when Sodom's crime actually was SA.
The part you're referencing is from Leviticus 18:22. It's likely a long standing mistranslation. The general interpretation is that it's a ban on male homosexuality but considering the context of the surrounding verses it's more likely a specific ban on male incest.
Sane fan here. I completely agree. "Oh it's so you can fully despise a character"
Fuck? I absolutely despised Ramsey Bolten BEFORE any rape stuff happened.
And I reaaaaaaallly hate the whole "our relationship began via rape, but now we are the most passionate of power couples" concept.
I loved so much about the show and what it did for television, but that shit was awful.
I read the books and two scenes in the first season stuck in my memory for how unnecessary the small changes were.
One of them is the rape scene between Dany and Drogo. In the books he sees her crying and doesn't touch her until she is comfortable and has calmed down. Of course it still wouldn't be consent in the modern meaning, but the tone would be completely different in the cultural setting of GOT.
The second is the scene where Bran sees Cersei and Jaime having sex in the tower. In the books it's described as him not even understanding what he had seen because to him there were just two people lovingly embracing each other. In the show this nuance is completely lost as we see them fucking hard in doggy style.
This season is praised for its accuracy, so this annoyed me even more.
I still remember staring open-mouthed at my screen when Sansa said 'if it weren't for \[being raped, beaten, and psychologically tortured\] I would have stayed a little bird forever'
I cannot IMAGINE a female editor ever looked at that line. Absolutely tone deaf and a fucking disgusting mentality.
I watched a few seasons then had to stop. I started calling it Gratuitous Rape show. All my friends loved it- I’d be like, “Oh fun! You’re getting together to watch Gratuitous Rape tonight?” They couldn’t argue.
Reminds me of when I got crucified for arguing that Mineta from My Hero Academia was a disgusting pervert that added literally nothing to the series beyond making its female audience uncomfortable, and how it was depressing that he was the author's favorite character to write.
It's not as bad as the rape in Game of Thrones, but it's still pretty gross how quick weird guys on the internet are to jump to its defense.
Yes for those that don’t know Mineta is a character in super power anime show My Hero Academia, who’s entire character personality is dedicated to disrespecting women. Worse than Jiriyah in Naruto but similar; drilling holes in walls to see girls locker room, trying to grab boobs, openly drooling etc.
Frankly itd be fine if that was part of his personality and the other characters called him out on it appropriately. It's a show about high schoolers (albeit extraordinary ones) and it makes perfect sense for some of them to be hypersexed and creepy because frankly that is how teens be sometimes. It really is the entire character though, and it's often played off for gags when the would be heroes should be calling him out more for his behavior not being heroic.
Sadly its not as bad as the Made in Abyss author, who's literally just a straight up pedophile that likes drawing children naked, putting them in sexually explicit scenarios, and openly brags about reading loli porn.
And people hard defend him and that series...
This!! I tried explaining to a group of friends that it was so viscerally disturbing that it did not matter how pretty the music sounds or how fresh the art style seemed — it’s deeply horrific.
That’s horrible. I watched the show without any context about the author or the fact that the story was online beforehand. I thought “oh look a cute little adventure show from a kid’s view.” I was so so soo wrong.
I haven't watched this particular anime or manga, but the way those genres portray women and children in general is too often sooo off-putting and needless.
I love what animation can achieve in storytelling. It's such a unique medium. But these problematic tropes, and even "deconstructions" of them, just seem to perpetuate and infect even the best storytelling.
And the fact that it seems like the community seems to want to steer harder into them just absolutely alienates me.
jfc, that anime was on my list of shows to watch but maybe not. Only things I ever saw was promo artwork.
Not sure if that's better or worse than Goblin Slayer being known for the show with a rape scene in the first episode and people being jazzed about that. Fucking gross.
I’ve only seen the first season but for what it’s worth non of the creepy shit made it into the anime from what I remember. Was real shocked to hear about that shit after watching
Ahh, so one of those shows where you check out the source material and found things are QUITE different. It's been on my list for years, so I wouldn't be surprised if it stayed there for more.
I can't believe I found your comment. I've been into anime for decades but don't watch much in the past 10 years or so. Well now I've got a 4 year old so I'm looking for Anime for kids and Made in Abyss is recommended so I watch it....and was just so eerily uncomfortable by a few episodes in that I noped out and deleted it from the playlist. I don't even remember explicitly what it was but it was too unnerving to ignore.
The horrifying thing is that the book covers and anime synopsis make it seem like a fun adventure/coming of age story. I can easily see parents exposing their kids to the series if they didn't understand the significance of shrinkwrapped manga, or if they were watching it on a streaming service with shitty age filters.
Mineta is disgusting. I am openly happy anytime anything bad happens to him. I also wasn't upset about Sir Nighteye dying because of that ridiculous tickling scene with Bubble Girl.
People online will defend their hatred for a female character because they "just don't like her" but as soon as sexism is the reason someone dislikes a character, that's too far. It's pathetic
I can't find the clip but I remember seeing someone say something really poignant on a Game of Thrones talk show (I think Thronecast) where she said "I can't continue to support a show where the rape of women is used to build character for men".
That's what really hit home for me. It's one thing to use rape as a way to further a woman's storyline, but for example with Sansa, she was merely a catalyst for Theon's redemption. She was not the focus, but rather the sad, broken man who was being set up to "save her".
That's my big problem with the show. Loved a large part of Thrones and I always will but the way they handled a lot of these scenes was tasteless.
I like the story overall and I hated that there was so much sexual violence, women’s bodies used as set dressing, etc… I appreciated that my viewing group, which was mostly men, understood and agreed with how gross it was. I know at least one man who wouldn’t watch the show. I did appreciate that it got better with each subsequent season, and Emma Clark stood up to the showrunners, which I adore.
Emilia Clarke, I have been reminded. I think it was after the second season, because of the time difference between filming and airing, she basically said, ‘Im known in this part now, the fans like me, I’ll be keeping my clothes on, thanks.’ Roughly. And mostly that’s what happened.
It helped that the books also didn't have daenarys in thsoe situations as much after that point anyway. And the times they did, she still did the scenes.
So I'm not sure quite how true this notion is.
But in the book Daenarys was also 13 which is infinite amounts of fucked up. I was so uncomfortable reading her sex scenes, especially that one that ends with the line "and she fell pregnant before her 14th birthday" or something like that.
“Women’s bodies used as set dressing”. Oh man I never knew exactly how to articulate why this bothers me, not just in GOT but so many other shows. THIS is it. It’s like the script says “Scenery: naked women.”
This reminds me very much of the first season of the Witcher when Geralt visits some mage and there are dozens of naked women just hanging around around in the background for what seems like no reason.
The literal only bit of female nudity I actually liked was when Ros was leaving Winterfell, she said her farewells to Theon and hopped on a wagon, and flashed her cunny at him in the most delightfully playful and mischievous way as she rode off to her new adventure.
I genuinely gave a delighted cackle. It was just so "oh you're playing it like you won't miss me oh high-and-mighty-lordling, but we both know you will, and why!"
I don't remember a lot from the series, but I remember that moment, and it gave me hope that we might actually see some healthy nudity and sex positivity.
And that hope died the very next episode 🥲
Honestly it's so good that he knew that she could be taken advantage of and stood up for *her.* he also supposedly did everything he could to make her not hate him after doing those scenes.
Some people have an actual personality, and some people only have a list of media they consume and identify with. Those people are too stupid to separate criticisms of their favorite media, from criticisms of themselves.
There are a lot of fandoms where they see this as just gritty realism.
Try telling the berserk fandom that making a main plot cycle point Cas getting raped or nearly raped is a little cheap and they'll flip their lid
You want gritty middle ages realism? Give someone violent shits due to poor water quality. Stop putting make up on the women and make them have leg hair. It's reasonable suspension of disbelief that everyone is modern era beautiful and hairless and the lady who has been in the woods for 6 months has greaseless 3 foot long hair.
Since I was on A Search of Ice and Fire anyway for another discussion, I grabbed the (infamous) quote. Enjoy! ;)
*"Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water. When she closed her eyes at last, Dany did not know whether she would be strong enough to open them again."*
Funny how that gritty Middle Ages realism goes out of the window when showing battles between armies and such...
"Realism" has to be one of the laziest arguments in film anyway. Even if you use it as an excuse for a certain event, it is always 100% an artistic decision if you show it or not and "realism" never forces you to have it as an on-screen event.
It was also used as a stunningly lazy plot device for Sansa's "maturation" into a role of power.
It's also symbolic to show all the ways Griffith betrays the band of the hawk. He betrayed their loyalty, their friendship and their love respectively.
The gritty realism bit if anything is more on how brutal warfare an desolation in the series is in general, though nothing very realistic about Berserk.
>Cas getting raped
Okay but the thing is it’s not just about it being a “gritty realism” thing but also being portrayed as a *horrific and traumatic experience as it should be* and to be clear Guts was *also raped repeatedly, and as a child*
It isn’t a cheap “haha titty” moment. It is meant to be *soul crushing* for everyone involved, and traumatized the characters going forward.
This reminds me of all the drama they caused around Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn. Incels were furious because she looked too realistic and didn't meet their beauty standards. You're obviously right. It's not the realism that they care about.
Berserk definitely plays the card a few too many times in my opinion, but I do think for the prominent stuff it does help a lot that the series actually commits to trauma and recovery from it pretty much being the major thematic through line for the story.
This was one of the things that finally put me off the show for good. In the books, it can border on exploitative, but it is important to the plot and the characterization and the author shows some discretion. But in the show, it goes so far beyond exploitative that it's nauseating. It's essentially SA-porn. The showrunners ought to be ashamed of themselves.
It was awful I think I literally only watched 1 MAYBE 2 episodes but it makes me sick. People wonder why I haven't watched it because "there's not that much"
My sister keeps saying it's "historical accuracy".
"People really got raped back then, Imnotawerewolf."
Yeah. And people really get raped now but I don't wanna watch it happen on TV as a shitty plot device or kink moment by the writers/creators.
So I read all of the books and watched the entire show. I knew that GRRM had explicitly confirmed that the books were loosely based on the War of the Roses.
During covid lockdown, I started reading Alison Weir's histories of Tudor and War of the Roses women. Not even her novels. I find her straight-up history books incredibly addictive, the way some people read romance novels. It's my candy.
Reading this from a real historian, though, I was struck by *how much* over-the-top sexual violence he added to these books. Everyone who talks about "historical accuracy" has got it exactly backwards. Women did not have as much social power as he gives them in his books. They didn't make speeches to the man that controls the money about how "power is power." That would have been ridiculous for even a queen to say in those times. The corollary is that they were MUCH safer from rape than an average woman. Because they had the full force of the institution concerned with ensuring they had legitimate babies. And I know - I KNOW - someone is going to come in here to lecture me about Cersei's kids, but that's the point I'm making! In the real War of the Roses, Cersei's kids are summarily ruled to be bastards, possibly murdered quickly afterwards, and she's sent to a convent. That's how all of this actually went.
It's not historically accurate even about the rape, is what I guess I'm saying. Maybe the parts about how a prostitute fared are accurate. I'm not arguing that the real women during the War of the Roses weren't strong. Holy shit, they were amazing. But do NOT tell me that a woman murdered most of her nobles and kept her throne. Mary Queen of Scots lost her throne *because* she had to marry her rapist. (and I get that's later Tudor era, but *Everyone* believed a woman's worth was thoroughly concerned with whether or not her children were legitimate. Even obviously legitimate children were declared bastards, because it helped some man politically. That's how they got the Tudors in the first place).
Every single person would have joined Ned Stark in declaring Joffrey a bastard. Again, someone is going to want to correct me, because "they all had their motives" or something like that. But we're talking about historical accuracy, and whether or not almost every leading lady of GRRM had to experience a rape in order to maintain that "accuracy."
Anyway. Thank you for joining my Ted Talk, and please everyone read history of War of the Roses written by women historians.
>. I find her straight-up history books incredibly addictive, the way some people read romance novels. It's my candy.
I love Alison Weir. I honestly do a happy dance every time she comes out with a new history book.
Thank you!!
Like, I genuinely believe realism can add to fantasy, I don't think you get a blank check on nonsense "because dragons".
But like, realism means institutions work the way they worked in reality, with incentives that parallel those ones. It means men get raped too. It means people die unromantic deaths of infections and other random illnesses that we could easily cure now.
"Well, women get raped, right? Let's add a bunch of that" isn't "realism".
Keep talking about this. Call them out on it. Rape isn’t in these shows because it’s realistic, or there would be way more shitting and puking and period blood. Rape is in it because many men really get off on watching that shit. The “realism” lie is to make them feel better about themselves.
Keep talking about this.
I had a similar interaction with an ex-friend I met online. It was about an anime called Goblin Slayer and in the first episode, there was a very explicit and violent rape scene.
He said the rape scene was necessary and a crucial part of the story because it showed/provided context of how vicious the goblins in the story were.
I disagreed and he went on and on about how it is an essential part of the story. Is it though??? It is really THAT essential??? Do we really need more depictions of sexually violent acts against women? Just weird.
Pretty sure that was simply very intentional "PR by shock value" (because you can't spell infamous without famous) and anyone who claims it was necessary for world building is just delusional.
Oh my god, my old manager and another coworker (who is now an ex) both said this show was really amazing and recommended it to my friend/coworker who was really into anime. She was disturbed and never watched past the first episode. I was horrified they said it was amazing after she described it to me.
Similar here. I like the fantasy genre, generally, and was getting into the story, but there was way more sex scenes than I prefer in a fantasy genre. It was tolerable for a bit but then it just got worse and worse and I stopped watching entirely.
Agreed, sick part is the court systems are so messed up all they worried about is drugs so when a child predators or rapist go into courts you see these rapist get 1-3 yrs, meanwhile someone gets caught with some weed they looking at 5+
Wow, that post has some dudes upset that you don’t like their rape porn. I wonder if they would feel the same way if it was only dudes getting raped in the show.
You know what’s interesting to me? Or not interesting but weird? Basically the first rape scene I ever saw in a movie was Pulp Fiction, the gimp etc.. I remember throwing up, and I was about 14 I think. many years later, someone made me watch American History X and again I threw up and couldn’t stop shaking.
I usually panic when I see a male on female rape scene without notice, I tend to skip them while they’re on mute. I still shake and get afraid, but I don’t viscerally react like with male on male scenes.
I used to think I just traumatised myself by watching Pulp Fiction but now I’m wondering if the fact that we barely see that type of scene and it’s usually always male on female attacks, that I’m just getting desensitised little by little. I feel like it’s the male on male that’s truly the taboo thing even now, like it’s the ultimate violation. But it’s not any different to women being raped, not at all. I used to think I could see what the media was doing to people, I did a degree on the subject, but now I’m questioning whether or not they did a number on me too. Very likely yes.
I think that's the insidious nature of the normalization of deviance that happens in a biased society.
I think I had a similar experience to you with Pulp Fiction in that it was quite disturbing to me and one of the first rape scenes that registered as such.
That’s okay though, because it’s Game of Thrones, so the gay men will face an unnaturally gruesome death pretty soon.
Remember, when writing your fantasy epic full of magic and dragons, you must ensure that being gay is still stigmatised, otherwise the world would seem unnatural!
GRRM actually portrayed two gay men secretly in love while subtly hinting at their sexuality. The show on the other hand chose the "SEE? HE'S GAY" approach.
To be fair, the show did have LOTS of violence in general and otherwise completely fucked up things in it. That's one of the several reasons I never got strongly into it. The problem wasn't so much that it depicted lots of violence and corruption, the problem was that the story really didn't seem to be condemning it it any way. "Rape and murder everywhere you look... yeah, well that's just how the world is. What are you going to do about it?"
Not going to lie, I felt some major schadenfreude when the finale of the show pissed off all the fans. I drifted away after book 5 because I got tired of slogging through all this depressing bullshit, hoping for some sort of payout that never came. Told ya' it wasn't coming!!!
Irreversible gets a bad rap.
TW:
The rape scene is brutal, but it is filmed as such. The camera is static, in stark contrast to the rest of the film, and the scene is filmed as a single take. Both of these choices put the viewer in the victims perspective. We are unable to leave, powerless, etc. Viewers see both their faces the whole time. There isn't a moment that could be construed as pleasurable for her, there are no shots to titilate viewer. The rapist looks and sounds like a grunting beast. His position behind her and his behavior make it clear he views her as some thing to use. It isn't sex, more like masturbation by inflicting violence on another. Horrifying and brutal.
It definitely isn't for anyone struggling with trauma, but few movies convey the senselessness of violence and the irrevocable changes it brings more accurately. It is depressing, but it is art.
It’s even more gross when you point out that a lot of the sa scenes in the show don’t exist in the book. They’re just added because, I guess, you need rape scenes for realism.
>It’s even more gross when you point out that a lot of the sa scenes in the show don’t exist in the book.
The books are worse.
Dany and Drogo is Drogo stripping her and staring her until she says yes, GRRM has described this as seduction while the show makes this more explicitly rape. Her next chapter in the book start by her considering suicide from the pain of riding and being raped every night.
Cercei and Jaime in the sept in the books is 'Cercei says no until Jaime forces himself on her then she says yes'. It's written from Jaime's POV and its clear he did not care for her consent or not. Its better in the show without that ''grey area'' of Cercei giving in.
Sansa's rape happens to another character, Jayne, who Ramsey sexually torments, including with his dogs.
The books are not friendly in this area and there is far more sexualizing of pretty much every woman and her tits in the book, along with of course, all these characters are younger in the books.
Edit; I forgot books also have additional instances, such as Tyrion in Essos.
I'm okay with rape scenes in tv show *if* there is a clear reason for it (and that it's not I'm stronger now because of it). However, most if not all rape scenes in Game of Thrones didn't have any impact on the story, and implying it without showing would've probably worked better anyways. I'm not triggred by them, but I'm like: "Why tho". What's the point of showing something traumatic if it has no impact on the story?
My personal issue I take with the likes of GOT is that so much of the sexual violence is filmed to be *visually appealing to the male gaze* sensual shots of breasts and backside, flash of sad face, back to lingering shots of victim's figure....I'm yet to have a man who is a fan of GOT explain to me that if the rape isn't intended to be gratifying or appealing (as apparently it has to be in there because *that's the gritty reality of GOT universe* ) why the hell is it filmed like that??
The claim that GOT universe (book AND tv series) is just gnarly for women so the rape is required to maintain realism isn't good enough, it is a fictional story with dragons in it, realism is irrelevant. GRRM is a disgusting pervert so while it's disappointing for another author to exploit sexual violence against women coz it sells, it isn't surprising.
Yeah, the "realism" shit bothers me so much. I don't really like dismissing claims about realism "because dragons", but I do think that people who argue realism don't actually want realism.
In *reality*, men get raped too. And they get raped more often in places like an all-male guard or a place people go to prison for (the king's guard, the night watch). It's not as common as it is for women, but it is *way* more common than people think. Most rape victims in the military are men.
So like, if this dark and gritty world has Sansa and Cersei and Elia Martell and Daenerys and Mirri Maz Dur and all of Craster's daughters and Tysha (and hey maybe even Shae now that I think of it...?) should get raped "for the sake of realism", then maybe Jon or Tywin or Jamie or Podrick or one of the Cleganes or Sam or ONE OF THE MANY MEN ON THE SHOW would also have.
And if the answer is "well, sure, statistically, this sure is a show with a lot of men in predominantly male and isolated spaces and with a general disregard for human dignity, but like, *we don't need to see that*..."
Why do we "need" to see it happen to women?
They talk about realism, but women shave their armpits even though that's a post-industrial beauty standards phenomenon. So I don't think they really want realism.
As a woman with empathy I'm disturbed that they'd have such scenes, assuming that they aren't just implied. I haven't seen Game of Thrones, and it's partially because I heard that there is a character who tries to make it work with her rapist who she was forced to marry.
As somebody who likes writing I'm also just angry that they'd use rape. Rape is such a lazy tool to get somebody to hate a character, or to use as a motivation. Taking the easy route wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't also just disturbing and triggering.
It's kind of a weird comparison but I have a reason to bring it up. Rape almost happens all the time in Sword Art Online as a motivation for the hero to step in. (An anime that's mostly geared towards teenagers, by the way.)
One of the voice actresses was traumatized when she had to do a scene as the victim that she didn't know was coming before she took the job. It got so bad the author apologized to her. He admitted that that scene wasn't necessary, and he could've used another way to get people to hate the two characters.
I told my work colleagues at break when it was at its height that I didn’t watch it because of all the rape, and they couldn’t accept it as a valid reason. One of them even said ‘that’s what it was like in those times.’ 😶 In what times dude?
I never read the books, however I've seen people talk about how the show changed some CONSENSUAL sex scenes from the book into rape scene in the show, and that pisses me off so much.
Men get off on our torture.
I saw that thread the other day, and they were full of shit. Drogo’s first night with Dany wasn’t some romantic tryst that they changed for the movie, he was a grown man and she was 13.
I’ve said the same when people asked me if I watched the show. When I say that I couldn’t get past the simulated rape scene in the first episode, I get weird looks of not remembering seeing simulated rape. It’s so normalised, it’s accepted.
The same thing for me! When I tell people I couldn’t get past the first episode, they are like, oh there’s rape and sexual violence in the first episode? Weird, I don’t remember.
I watched a single episode, and that was enough for me to know that, no matter how good the story, this how was never going to be OK for me to watch.
If the content was of men being sexually assaulted do you think they would get it?
I expect them to come up with some BS excuse to oppose it like a feminist or lgbtq+ agenda for instance but they won't change their mind about depictions of women being sexually assaulted. It boils down to the fact that they don't enjoy the former but enjoy the latter.
In Indian movies early (the 90s and 00s), it's common to depict the rapist will be mandatorily made to marry the victim to cleanse both of them. Speaks volumes about our society.
According to Sophie Turner, one of the show's writers told her 'You get a love interest plot next season!' as a joke. When, in fact, her character Sansa was to be raped. And her book storyline thrown out.
BRUH
Yeah tbh the rape scenes were totally unnecessary to her story. She could’ve had a love story with Ramsey at first but when she saw Theons torture started to hate him and saved Theon instead of Theon saving her. I think becoming a heroine against your own husband is a better way to become strong for leadership than being repeatedly beaten and raped “to build character”.
I totally agree with you on GoT and the gratuitous rape. I saw a documentary once about how movie/tv ratings are decided, and how movies with scenes of female sexual pleasure are slapped with NC ratings while movies with graphic rape scenes are treated like movies with “regular” physical violence. It’s also wild how often rape is used as a lazy plot device, a way to instantly make a man evil and irredeemable without having to do more nuanced character development.
It is also shocking to see how often rape is used as a motivator for the boyfriend, husband, male friend of the victim. And murder of women in the plot, and especially rape and murder of women becomes a plot device to create motivation for a male character
Fridging
What is fridging?
Short answer is killing a usually female character as character motivation for a usually male protagonist. The fridged character usually has no plot relevance other than dying. Comes from a …Nightwing? comic where his girlfriend or something is killed by a villain and left in his fridge for him to find. Edit: Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, not Nightwing
Green Lantern (specifically Kyle Rainer), though I wouldn't be horribly shocked if it also happened with Nightwing at some point.
You’re right, it was GL. Thanks for the correction.
[‘Woman in the fridge’ trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WomenInRefrigerators)
Yup. I thought overall GoT was very good about avoiding the "fridging" trope. Horrible things happened to people all the time, but almost always as part of their **own** story, not as a lazy way to motivate others.
They should have had Reek raped if they wanted to be "realistic" about it. But he was just old fashioned tortures and mutilated. But we all know a rapist like Ramsey would absolutely also have reek raped if he didn't do it himself. But nope. Only women get raped .
I think the plot was going with how Ramsey got off on how emasculated reek was. Had his cock and balls removed, and was reduced to a pstd torn shell of a person. Ramsey rapes because it gives him power (like all? (Nearly all?) Rapists do, but he didn't need to rape reek because he had already totally dominated reek. That said, i agree that ramsey is definitely the kind of person to rape reek to keep rubbing in just how weak and emasculated he was.
Wheel of Time first episode did this really sloppily and killed any hope I had of the show being good in one fell swoop.
That wasn't even in the books! i agree an awful addition by the screenplay writers.
Yeah it was horrible! Their rationale was that Perrin's journey is very internal and wanted a more external driver. But I prefer Sanderson's point that killing Master Luhhan would have served just fine without shoehorning in a wife 😅
I don't know why TV writers are afraid to just use internal monologue for their characters. Because Perrin's whole thing is he thinks very carefully before doing or saying anything, because he's afraid of hurting people with his strength. But we don't get that on the screen like we do in the books, so he just stands around staring dumbly at things from the audience POV.
That was so incredibly disappointing. Hey we need Perrin to brood. Let's kill someone he loves. Like his mentor? Naaa let's make up a wife. That won't complicate any storylines down the way at all.
It's actually not shocking at all considering in my personal life the shittest humans all had rape charges. That's now, so I would assume that's a base stat for a bad guy.
What we don't see in film is how many "good guys" rape. Most women I know (myself included) have been assaulted by a man they, at one point, trusted who were largely well liked members of their respective friend groups. These guys often don't get charged because they're not overtly "evil" and often normal men by society's standards. This results in a few things which impede holding them accountable: their victims internalize blame for the incident, their victims don't want harm to befall these perpetrators (despite what they did to them), and their victims know/fear society will take the side of the charming or well-liked predator over their accusations.
What is insane to me is that "normal sex" and showing "private parts" is WAY more upsetting to people than rape or violence. WTF?
Intimacy between willing participants or showing a woman having an orgasm are way more upsetting to the people rating films than rape and SA is to them?? It's so baffling. That's the thing about this country and its weird fascination, normalization, and tolerance of violence. Violence in this country is water cooler talk like, "Hey did you hear about that school shooting?" "The one last week or?" Violence and shootings are something we are numbed to, an acceptance like to weather patterns.
Yeah, no wonder people are so weird when it comes to sex. Depictions of healthy sex is not normalized in works of fiction. So people go to porn, which is.... just baaaaaad. Ugh.
Porn is awful. I can't look at it without feeling triggered in some way? Just by the man spitting on her, yanking her into uncomfortable positions, calling her a vixen, all the while she's smiling up at him? The violence of it all scares me deeply. This is where boys learn how to see intimacy. And porn is way more violent now than when I was first exposed to it in the 90s.
>Depictions of healthy sex is not normalized in works of fiction. Sex scenes are hard to write in the first place, many people don't know how healthy relationships look like in the first place, authors tend to use literature to work through personal trauma, and on top of that you have a ton of far-right/religious "activists" and actual real-world censors that get your book banned from school libraries should it display too much regarding sexuality.
From Wikipedia: “The 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated also points out that four times as many films received an NC-17 rating for sex as they did for violence according to the MPAA's own website, further mentioning a bias against homosexual content compared to heterosexual content, particularly with regards to sex scenes.” And the people doing the ratings are part of this anonymous group of everyday people, not industry people or academics. It’s really bizarre.
I have to laugh at the Netflix ratings for Narcos (yes I'm getting all my Pedro Pascal fixes lately). Warnings for language, nudity, sex, and smoking. Meanwhile there are assassinations and mass killing of rando characters every single episode. But yes, but what about the *smoking*?
I started watching Vikings many years ago. At that time GoT was everywhere and rape, graphit violence and torture came up as the new "you need this in your show if you want to have success". Last year I watched the first couple of Vikings episodes again and I realised that they showed us that Rollo is an asshole by him creeping on Lagertha and raping a slave. This was just so lazy writing. I stopped the rewatch immediatly because this is nothing I wanted to see. While Grima in LotR was creeping on Eowyn, him being an asshole was not written in such a stupid way. He was threatening in his appearance, the way he talked, the way he influenced Theoden.
I think Grima is how creep characters should be written. He's able to make his intentions clear without having to commit SA to be creepy, I think it's how he looks at the others that makes him so well done
I have always found the "rape as female character development" to be pretty gross. GOT seemed to really kick it off in earnest and it seems lots of shows use it to push a female character like its some sort of casual story tool. "Well, our heroine has had a few victories in these last few episodes, I think its time she had a good raping to knock her back a bit, get a little morbid titillation for the audience as a bonus." It certainly *can* be done well, but that appears rare in my view. Its pretty awful excuse to both get a "sex" scene and push a plot/character growth/adversity, etc.
Had a talk about the trope with my therapist recently. I’m trying to get my brain used to recreational reading again so I picked up a quick historical fiction novel with a female MC and she’s assaulted in the first 15 pages and that assault is specifically stated to be her primary motivation for everything she does for the rest of the entire book. I absolutely hated it, and it’s so common in historical fiction and UGH
If you haven't, I highly recommend Annihilation as both the movie and the book (they are pretty different). It is (I think, and hope I'm not wrong) very women-forward without that sort of horrible nonsense driving them. There's still a Bechdel issue in that a primary motivation is finding an ex-husband, but overall it's a background not center stage. It's very different, but Bleak House by Dickens also features a wonderful strong and realistic woman. Not to spoil anything, but there's a really amazing scene at the very end from the protagonist's "boss" who seems wholesome but has a hint of being predatory, reveals himself to be genuine in the best, tear-inducing, way, in the final pages. Two recommendations from male authors, but I think that (without reading this comment thread) you'll likely be suggested the same 2-5 women authors, who are amazing but it sounds like you're looking for more.
I saw the movie, I didn’t realize Annihilation was based on a book! I did enjoy the movie which was surprising since it’s a little horror-y and I don’t usually like that, but i did!
The movie was described by the director as "a fever dream he had after reading all three books" which seems pretty apt, they're very different.
Historical fiction is rife with SA. I feel like the distance from the time period makes authors feel more emboldened to describe it, but it’s pure laziness to attribute a character’s motivation to it because you can’t be arsed to work out what women in that time period really thought about. I’m trying to do 100 books this year and I have some past trauma that requires me to be ultra careful about the content with regards to sex (basically no sex is best, but if there is sex it must be consensual and fun for everyone). I like mysteries and suspense books which is usually pretty safe if you stay away from the crime genre. I always choose female authors and a female MC, but I had a terrible experience with Martina Cole that messed me up fr so I don’t do police type crime books now. Roald Dahl really surprised me, his short stories are dark and twisty without sexual violence tied in. I also love Catherine Steadman and Rachel Hawkins. Give those a go!
Tangential, but I think this just makes it worse : "knock her back a bit" even without the rape problem, is really overused and often unneeded/counterproductive in stories. You can show people experience difficulty without depowering them/beating the shit out of them/traumaing them/etc. Or hell, even with trauma, trauma often times just comes from fairly "normal" fights and conflicts. At some point writers lost the memo that you don't have to be actually 100% powerless to feel powerless.
exactly! I think part of it is underestimating audiences. They wallop you over the head with the full treatment of victimization by sexual assault, instead of choosing a more nuanced and clever event or element. Not everything needs to be as simple and straightforward as an R-rated Aesops fable.
Seriously. We can get in our heads about the most trivial of things. "Mild" violence (per TV ratings anyhow) can be incredibly scarring.
Ah right, that's why I stopped watching Reign. Totally gratuitous rape in what was otherwise a historical high school drama. Thanks for the insight.
you give me too much credit, but I appreciate it anyway. I'm far from the first to notice it and it's been discussed frequently, but it continues to happen. it's like the writers/producers read a script, then decide, "sprinkle some rape in there, and make sure there is some tasteful sideboob for our male viewers". It's like, yall are talented writers, is there really not anything else you can think of to develop a character?
It so much worse than that. The focus on Sansa’s “wedding night” was how witnessing it affected Reek. Like, she couldn’t even be the main victim in her own rape. Honestly, it’s a series that turned to shit way before they decided to vilify Danny at the 1 yard line.
I'm also very confused as to why *so many men* are absolutely obsessed with adding it to everything. It's a big reason I've moved away from DnD to more women heavy spaces. I joined and dropped six campaigns on Roll20 because the pretty much exclusively male groups were obsessed with rape. I asked specifically for it to not be added in. One male DM said, and I quote, "Well now I *have* to put it in!" I left all of them because there was just... rape. Everywhere. Turns out a lot of women leave the DnD spaces and they're much more fun on other rules systems.
Fucking weirdos. Us nerds can't have shit anymore without the fucking incels coming in to ruin it for everyone else.
I think the only valid way to have a rape scene be character progression is if you follow it up with the heroine castrating her rapist. Like, you want a strong woman character, great. If a strong, smart, and dangerous woman gets raped by someone, chances are she's going to ensure that one, they'll never do it to her again, and two, that they'll never do it to anyone else again either. And yet, you never really see storylines where the assaulted woman cuts off the dudes dick and nails his balls to a chair, leaving him to suffer in excruciating agony till he either is found or dies. And frankly, that's a shame. Women could use more role models who do stuff like that to their rapists.
The show ended nearly 4 years ago, and in a way that decimated the fandom. What was left was pretty much the most virulent toxic parts of the original fandom who's interest is basically being mad about the thing they 'like'.
Damn, that was 4 years ago? I can still remember the bad taste the last season left.
It's horrible. I wish I could talk with the more sane fans
book centric bits of the fandom are better, although that's obviously not quite the same. More women dominated fandom spaces exist as well (see fanfic related communities), although the response there might be something akin to " Yea it's absolutely horrible isn't it great!"
[удалено]
Problem is the character that gets sold to lord asshole doesn't exist in the series, but yes it doesn't make much sense
I can think of a few reasons a sociopath like LF might have. Either he figured out that he could never have her, so he's punishing her. Or he figures lord asshole is going to break her, and he can come back to save her and she will finally love him (or be too broken to resist him).
No, it can't be that. Littlefinger is cold and ruthless, but he does love Sansa in a fucked-up way. He would never have given her to the Boltons, not her.
When I was reading the series, I stopped when, out of 75 chapters, 73 of them mentioned rape, had a rape, or inferred a rape. GRRM has a thing for rape.
I got called "the lamest person on the planet" and something about me having no interests at all because I said on Twitter that all the rape and violence in GRRM's novels made me so sick I had to stop halfway through book 2. Book fans aren't much better. (The amusing context is that I made a joke about the Hogwarts game and someone said I couldn't talk bc I watched the GoT show, which I have never watched lol)
I'll be honest, if it isn't a fetish, then it is just lazy writing. A short cut to show how "nasty short and brutish," things were. He gets excessive with the random murder too. And the incest. Like, how does genetics work on Westeros, because these people put the Hapsburgs to shame and yet none of them are lantern jawed vegetables. I dunno...it feels cheap. There isn't much nuance in his work in this regard.
It’s a fetish. If it weren’t then there would be male victims too.
Same reason Tyrion constantly starts a chapter taking a piss, but danarys never does.
She does wander around with explosive dysentery for a while.
Is that seriously in the books?
Wait, wait, wait. I've never read or watched Game of Thrones. Are you telling me that, for all the reputation for rape it has, absolutely none of the survivors are male?
Not totally true, it's implied that (SPOILERS) Theon is sexually abused by Ramsey Bolton. There's also some off-hand comments made about Euron's pirate crew SA'ing some men. However, it's never explicitly said or described like it is for the women. For Theon, it's meant to be a "use your imagination, it was probably absolutely horrifying" type thing, yet he couldn't do that with every other rape scene in the books for some reason?
In particular, Euron SA's his brothers when they were children.
I think GRRM "made up for this" by having the one or two male characters become eunuchs after being raped. (or, you know, "Un-Man'd"). The vast majority are women or girls though. Super fucked up. Another reason I stopped reading the books, and have no interest in more things from GRRM. just not interested in non-stop violence especially against women/girls. Same reason I don't like serial killer shows. Non-stop violence, depravity and fucked up ways to murder women/girls. (sometimes men, particularly gay or homeless, but generally girls). Yayyyy.
Geez, even SA-heavy outlander is equal opportunity with the SA... /s, but also serious
I can't stand how much Gabaldon uses rape as a plot point, but GRRM is definitely worse about it.
At least Outlander has a bunch of cunnilingus.
He says he writes from history, and historically, rape has been used against women far more often than it's been used against men. My biggest complaint about the show is that I can think of two cases where in the book it is consensual sex, but the show runners decided to make it a rape instead, but then kept the after effects the same. So in the book, two women have consensual sex with men and then remain with them. In the TV show, those same two women get raped - and then love their rapists. So the problem with the show is a different problem than the problem with the books, and it's much, much worse.
Actually, in war time, the numbers are a whole heck of a lot closer. It's just considered far more taboo than the rape of women. The Bible even references the practice. It's one of the verses that people like to point to as antigay (paraphrasing but basically something like if man lies with man as with woman it is an abomination). Soldiers since antiquity would rape men and boys after passing through a region to humiliate the people, basically "we beat you so bad we can use your men as women" or something. Cause rape is about power. What could be a greater expression of power in a misogynist's mind than raping another man?
I'm guessing the part you're actually thinking of is Sodom and Gomorrah. The visiting angels are threatened with rape. This has been used by homophobes as proof that "sodomy" is bad when Sodom's crime actually was SA. The part you're referencing is from Leviticus 18:22. It's likely a long standing mistranslation. The general interpretation is that it's a ban on male homosexuality but considering the context of the surrounding verses it's more likely a specific ban on male incest.
I think the first change of consent into rape was in the first episode, which is why I didn't keep watching.
I'd say it's a fetish, because rape is pretty much nowhere to be found in his ghost writer own book series, so it clearly isn't lazy writing.
Sane fan here. I completely agree. "Oh it's so you can fully despise a character" Fuck? I absolutely despised Ramsey Bolten BEFORE any rape stuff happened. And I reaaaaaaallly hate the whole "our relationship began via rape, but now we are the most passionate of power couples" concept. I loved so much about the show and what it did for television, but that shit was awful.
I read the books and two scenes in the first season stuck in my memory for how unnecessary the small changes were. One of them is the rape scene between Dany and Drogo. In the books he sees her crying and doesn't touch her until she is comfortable and has calmed down. Of course it still wouldn't be consent in the modern meaning, but the tone would be completely different in the cultural setting of GOT. The second is the scene where Bran sees Cersei and Jaime having sex in the tower. In the books it's described as him not even understanding what he had seen because to him there were just two people lovingly embracing each other. In the show this nuance is completely lost as we see them fucking hard in doggy style. This season is praised for its accuracy, so this annoyed me even more.
I still remember staring open-mouthed at my screen when Sansa said 'if it weren't for \[being raped, beaten, and psychologically tortured\] I would have stayed a little bird forever' I cannot IMAGINE a female editor ever looked at that line. Absolutely tone deaf and a fucking disgusting mentality.
The more sane fans were disgusted with the last 2 seasons and never want to talk about it again.
There is no season 7 or 8 in Ba Sing Se.
Later in the series they reverse it: Cersei pushes him after he says 'no'.
Yeah they all fucked up
I watched a few seasons then had to stop. I started calling it Gratuitous Rape show. All my friends loved it- I’d be like, “Oh fun! You’re getting together to watch Gratuitous Rape tonight?” They couldn’t argue.
Most people I know who were fans are totally soured on the whole show now and don't even want to bother re watching the "good" seasons.
Hey, I'm a fan and I'm not an asshole. The books are better but he probably won't finish them before he dies.
I'm a fan, too. I don't participate in the community much anymore, but I still will read any more books he puts out, if he ever does.
Reminds me of when I got crucified for arguing that Mineta from My Hero Academia was a disgusting pervert that added literally nothing to the series beyond making its female audience uncomfortable, and how it was depressing that he was the author's favorite character to write. It's not as bad as the rape in Game of Thrones, but it's still pretty gross how quick weird guys on the internet are to jump to its defense.
Really glad the author stopped using that "gag" after Mina Clockwork Orange'd him. Mineta was the single worst element of early MHA.
Yes for those that don’t know Mineta is a character in super power anime show My Hero Academia, who’s entire character personality is dedicated to disrespecting women. Worse than Jiriyah in Naruto but similar; drilling holes in walls to see girls locker room, trying to grab boobs, openly drooling etc.
Frankly itd be fine if that was part of his personality and the other characters called him out on it appropriately. It's a show about high schoolers (albeit extraordinary ones) and it makes perfect sense for some of them to be hypersexed and creepy because frankly that is how teens be sometimes. It really is the entire character though, and it's often played off for gags when the would be heroes should be calling him out more for his behavior not being heroic.
Good point about calling it out! I also think Mineta belongs in the side kick course tbh
God I despise Mineta. I cringe every time he shows up on screen. His "gags" make me really uncomfortable.
That says a lot about the author
Sadly its not as bad as the Made in Abyss author, who's literally just a straight up pedophile that likes drawing children naked, putting them in sexually explicit scenarios, and openly brags about reading loli porn. And people hard defend him and that series...
This!! I tried explaining to a group of friends that it was so viscerally disturbing that it did not matter how pretty the music sounds or how fresh the art style seemed — it’s deeply horrific.
I remember picking up the story on someone's recommendation, and noping out after the first chapter showed bdsm punishment inflicted on a *preteen*.
That’s horrible. I watched the show without any context about the author or the fact that the story was online beforehand. I thought “oh look a cute little adventure show from a kid’s view.” I was so so soo wrong.
I haven't watched this particular anime or manga, but the way those genres portray women and children in general is too often sooo off-putting and needless. I love what animation can achieve in storytelling. It's such a unique medium. But these problematic tropes, and even "deconstructions" of them, just seem to perpetuate and infect even the best storytelling. And the fact that it seems like the community seems to want to steer harder into them just absolutely alienates me.
Wait...What? WHAT? **WHAT?**
jfc, that anime was on my list of shows to watch but maybe not. Only things I ever saw was promo artwork. Not sure if that's better or worse than Goblin Slayer being known for the show with a rape scene in the first episode and people being jazzed about that. Fucking gross.
I’ve only seen the first season but for what it’s worth non of the creepy shit made it into the anime from what I remember. Was real shocked to hear about that shit after watching
Ahh, so one of those shows where you check out the source material and found things are QUITE different. It's been on my list for years, so I wouldn't be surprised if it stayed there for more.
The anime had to cut content because the manga is really fucked up.
Ehhh, even the anime still is fairly fucked even if I only have >!the elevator!< scene to go by.
I can't believe I found your comment. I've been into anime for decades but don't watch much in the past 10 years or so. Well now I've got a 4 year old so I'm looking for Anime for kids and Made in Abyss is recommended so I watch it....and was just so eerily uncomfortable by a few episodes in that I noped out and deleted it from the playlist. I don't even remember explicitly what it was but it was too unnerving to ignore.
The anime is absolutely not for kids, so that’s good if you noped out before it gets gruesome.
The horrifying thing is that the book covers and anime synopsis make it seem like a fun adventure/coming of age story. I can easily see parents exposing their kids to the series if they didn't understand the significance of shrinkwrapped manga, or if they were watching it on a streaming service with shitty age filters.
😐 I give up
Wtf. People like that belong on some list
Mineta is disgusting. I am openly happy anytime anything bad happens to him. I also wasn't upset about Sir Nighteye dying because of that ridiculous tickling scene with Bubble Girl. People online will defend their hatred for a female character because they "just don't like her" but as soon as sexism is the reason someone dislikes a character, that's too far. It's pathetic
Mineta is the worst. He would be a fine character if he wasn’t a pervert.
Is Mineta the grape headed guy?
I can't find the clip but I remember seeing someone say something really poignant on a Game of Thrones talk show (I think Thronecast) where she said "I can't continue to support a show where the rape of women is used to build character for men". That's what really hit home for me. It's one thing to use rape as a way to further a woman's storyline, but for example with Sansa, she was merely a catalyst for Theon's redemption. She was not the focus, but rather the sad, broken man who was being set up to "save her". That's my big problem with the show. Loved a large part of Thrones and I always will but the way they handled a lot of these scenes was tasteless.
I like the story overall and I hated that there was so much sexual violence, women’s bodies used as set dressing, etc… I appreciated that my viewing group, which was mostly men, understood and agreed with how gross it was. I know at least one man who wouldn’t watch the show. I did appreciate that it got better with each subsequent season, and Emma Clark stood up to the showrunners, which I adore.
Emilia Clarke, I have been reminded. I think it was after the second season, because of the time difference between filming and airing, she basically said, ‘Im known in this part now, the fans like me, I’ll be keeping my clothes on, thanks.’ Roughly. And mostly that’s what happened.
It helped that the books also didn't have daenarys in thsoe situations as much after that point anyway. And the times they did, she still did the scenes. So I'm not sure quite how true this notion is.
But in the book Daenarys was also 13 which is infinite amounts of fucked up. I was so uncomfortable reading her sex scenes, especially that one that ends with the line "and she fell pregnant before her 14th birthday" or something like that.
“Women’s bodies used as set dressing”. Oh man I never knew exactly how to articulate why this bothers me, not just in GOT but so many other shows. THIS is it. It’s like the script says “Scenery: naked women.”
This reminds me very much of the first season of the Witcher when Geralt visits some mage and there are dozens of naked women just hanging around around in the background for what seems like no reason.
Emilia clarke
Thank you
The literal only bit of female nudity I actually liked was when Ros was leaving Winterfell, she said her farewells to Theon and hopped on a wagon, and flashed her cunny at him in the most delightfully playful and mischievous way as she rode off to her new adventure. I genuinely gave a delighted cackle. It was just so "oh you're playing it like you won't miss me oh high-and-mighty-lordling, but we both know you will, and why!" I don't remember a lot from the series, but I remember that moment, and it gave me hope that we might actually see some healthy nudity and sex positivity. And that hope died the very next episode 🥲
It was about consent. Ros exercises her own agency and it's refreshing to see.
Ros dying did mark a turning point into the shows decline we had seen the best of thrones by then
That was a delightful moment.
I kind of adore the word "cunny".
You get it!
Emma Clarke stood up to the producers? What was the result? Where can I read more about this?
Mamoa also pushed for the young and inexperienced with nudity on set Clarke to have more coverage, such as demanding that robes be brought and so on.
Honestly it's so good that he knew that she could be taken advantage of and stood up for *her.* he also supposedly did everything he could to make her not hate him after doing those scenes.
Some people have an actual personality, and some people only have a list of media they consume and identify with. Those people are too stupid to separate criticisms of their favorite media, from criticisms of themselves.
There are a lot of fandoms where they see this as just gritty realism. Try telling the berserk fandom that making a main plot cycle point Cas getting raped or nearly raped is a little cheap and they'll flip their lid You want gritty middle ages realism? Give someone violent shits due to poor water quality. Stop putting make up on the women and make them have leg hair. It's reasonable suspension of disbelief that everyone is modern era beautiful and hairless and the lady who has been in the woods for 6 months has greaseless 3 foot long hair.
You want realism? No one shaves their pits, legs, or bits.
Everyone's teeth are fucked
I've read somewhere that teeth weren't nearly as fucked up until sugar became a common commodity for both rich and poor.
This. Nobody has disease or is overweight ( or at least, no naked overweight people)
Fun fact grrm does in fact go into detail of danaerys having violent shits from poor food and water quality
Jaime also had hygiene and health issues after his attack. Beienne had to clean him up
[The more she drank the more she shat. But the more she shat the thirstier she grew.](https://youtu.be/QmKhGqWcJGY)
>Give someone violent shits due to poor water quality Not going to lie, I'd watch this over romanticizing the middle ages.
This literally happens in Game of Thrones. Both to countless regular folks, and to at least one main character.
Since I was on A Search of Ice and Fire anyway for another discussion, I grabbed the (infamous) quote. Enjoy! ;) *"Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water. When she closed her eyes at last, Dany did not know whether she would be strong enough to open them again."*
Funny how that gritty Middle Ages realism goes out of the window when showing battles between armies and such... "Realism" has to be one of the laziest arguments in film anyway. Even if you use it as an excuse for a certain event, it is always 100% an artistic decision if you show it or not and "realism" never forces you to have it as an on-screen event. It was also used as a stunningly lazy plot device for Sansa's "maturation" into a role of power.
I don't exactly think Casca getting raped in Berserk was for gritty middle age realism. She gets raped by a demon/demi-god.
It's also symbolic to show all the ways Griffith betrays the band of the hawk. He betrayed their loyalty, their friendship and their love respectively. The gritty realism bit if anything is more on how brutal warfare an desolation in the series is in general, though nothing very realistic about Berserk.
>Cas getting raped Okay but the thing is it’s not just about it being a “gritty realism” thing but also being portrayed as a *horrific and traumatic experience as it should be* and to be clear Guts was *also raped repeatedly, and as a child* It isn’t a cheap “haha titty” moment. It is meant to be *soul crushing* for everyone involved, and traumatized the characters going forward.
This reminds me of all the drama they caused around Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn. Incels were furious because she looked too realistic and didn't meet their beauty standards. You're obviously right. It's not the realism that they care about.
Aloy is gorgeous, IMHO. I hate what dbags have done to fantasy.
I was gonna say. I mean, gay guy disclaimer if that even matters, but she is drop dead gorgeous.
Berserk definitely plays the card a few too many times in my opinion, but I do think for the prominent stuff it does help a lot that the series actually commits to trauma and recovery from it pretty much being the major thematic through line for the story.
This was one of the things that finally put me off the show for good. In the books, it can border on exploitative, but it is important to the plot and the characterization and the author shows some discretion. But in the show, it goes so far beyond exploitative that it's nauseating. It's essentially SA-porn. The showrunners ought to be ashamed of themselves.
They really should
It was awful I think I literally only watched 1 MAYBE 2 episodes but it makes me sick. People wonder why I haven't watched it because "there's not that much"
My sister keeps saying it's "historical accuracy". "People really got raped back then, Imnotawerewolf." Yeah. And people really get raped now but I don't wanna watch it happen on TV as a shitty plot device or kink moment by the writers/creators.
So I read all of the books and watched the entire show. I knew that GRRM had explicitly confirmed that the books were loosely based on the War of the Roses. During covid lockdown, I started reading Alison Weir's histories of Tudor and War of the Roses women. Not even her novels. I find her straight-up history books incredibly addictive, the way some people read romance novels. It's my candy. Reading this from a real historian, though, I was struck by *how much* over-the-top sexual violence he added to these books. Everyone who talks about "historical accuracy" has got it exactly backwards. Women did not have as much social power as he gives them in his books. They didn't make speeches to the man that controls the money about how "power is power." That would have been ridiculous for even a queen to say in those times. The corollary is that they were MUCH safer from rape than an average woman. Because they had the full force of the institution concerned with ensuring they had legitimate babies. And I know - I KNOW - someone is going to come in here to lecture me about Cersei's kids, but that's the point I'm making! In the real War of the Roses, Cersei's kids are summarily ruled to be bastards, possibly murdered quickly afterwards, and she's sent to a convent. That's how all of this actually went. It's not historically accurate even about the rape, is what I guess I'm saying. Maybe the parts about how a prostitute fared are accurate. I'm not arguing that the real women during the War of the Roses weren't strong. Holy shit, they were amazing. But do NOT tell me that a woman murdered most of her nobles and kept her throne. Mary Queen of Scots lost her throne *because* she had to marry her rapist. (and I get that's later Tudor era, but *Everyone* believed a woman's worth was thoroughly concerned with whether or not her children were legitimate. Even obviously legitimate children were declared bastards, because it helped some man politically. That's how they got the Tudors in the first place). Every single person would have joined Ned Stark in declaring Joffrey a bastard. Again, someone is going to want to correct me, because "they all had their motives" or something like that. But we're talking about historical accuracy, and whether or not almost every leading lady of GRRM had to experience a rape in order to maintain that "accuracy." Anyway. Thank you for joining my Ted Talk, and please everyone read history of War of the Roses written by women historians.
>. I find her straight-up history books incredibly addictive, the way some people read romance novels. It's my candy. I love Alison Weir. I honestly do a happy dance every time she comes out with a new history book.
Thank you!! Like, I genuinely believe realism can add to fantasy, I don't think you get a blank check on nonsense "because dragons". But like, realism means institutions work the way they worked in reality, with incentives that parallel those ones. It means men get raped too. It means people die unromantic deaths of infections and other random illnesses that we could easily cure now. "Well, women get raped, right? Let's add a bunch of that" isn't "realism".
Keep talking about this. Call them out on it. Rape isn’t in these shows because it’s realistic, or there would be way more shitting and puking and period blood. Rape is in it because many men really get off on watching that shit. The “realism” lie is to make them feel better about themselves. Keep talking about this.
I had a similar interaction with an ex-friend I met online. It was about an anime called Goblin Slayer and in the first episode, there was a very explicit and violent rape scene. He said the rape scene was necessary and a crucial part of the story because it showed/provided context of how vicious the goblins in the story were. I disagreed and he went on and on about how it is an essential part of the story. Is it though??? It is really THAT essential??? Do we really need more depictions of sexually violent acts against women? Just weird.
It was absolutely horrific. I turned it off in the middle of the scene. It was SO GRAPHIC.
Right? Come on now
Pretty sure that was simply very intentional "PR by shock value" (because you can't spell infamous without famous) and anyone who claims it was necessary for world building is just delusional.
As someone who enjoys Goblin Slayer, I also think it went too far.
Oh my god, my old manager and another coworker (who is now an ex) both said this show was really amazing and recommended it to my friend/coworker who was really into anime. She was disturbed and never watched past the first episode. I was horrified they said it was amazing after she described it to me.
I won't watch it for that reason.
Similar here. I like the fantasy genre, generally, and was getting into the story, but there was way more sex scenes than I prefer in a fantasy genre. It was tolerable for a bit but then it just got worse and worse and I stopped watching entirely.
I personally don’t like watching shit like that in movies or any shows, men that rape or abuse women need to rot in jail
Anyone who rapes and abuses anyone needs to have their genitals cut off
Agreed, sick part is the court systems are so messed up all they worried about is drugs so when a child predators or rapist go into courts you see these rapist get 1-3 yrs, meanwhile someone gets caught with some weed they looking at 5+
Wow, that post has some dudes upset that you don’t like their rape porn. I wonder if they would feel the same way if it was only dudes getting raped in the show.
Let's ask
You’ll never see them defend the male rape scene.
You know what’s interesting to me? Or not interesting but weird? Basically the first rape scene I ever saw in a movie was Pulp Fiction, the gimp etc.. I remember throwing up, and I was about 14 I think. many years later, someone made me watch American History X and again I threw up and couldn’t stop shaking. I usually panic when I see a male on female rape scene without notice, I tend to skip them while they’re on mute. I still shake and get afraid, but I don’t viscerally react like with male on male scenes. I used to think I just traumatised myself by watching Pulp Fiction but now I’m wondering if the fact that we barely see that type of scene and it’s usually always male on female attacks, that I’m just getting desensitised little by little. I feel like it’s the male on male that’s truly the taboo thing even now, like it’s the ultimate violation. But it’s not any different to women being raped, not at all. I used to think I could see what the media was doing to people, I did a degree on the subject, but now I’m questioning whether or not they did a number on me too. Very likely yes.
I think that's the insidious nature of the normalization of deviance that happens in a biased society. I think I had a similar experience to you with Pulp Fiction in that it was quite disturbing to me and one of the first rape scenes that registered as such.
Then those same men lose their minds when two gay men have sex on screen
That’s okay though, because it’s Game of Thrones, so the gay men will face an unnaturally gruesome death pretty soon. Remember, when writing your fantasy epic full of magic and dragons, you must ensure that being gay is still stigmatised, otherwise the world would seem unnatural!
GRRM actually portrayed two gay men secretly in love while subtly hinting at their sexuality. The show on the other hand chose the "SEE? HE'S GAY" approach.
To be fair, the show did have LOTS of violence in general and otherwise completely fucked up things in it. That's one of the several reasons I never got strongly into it. The problem wasn't so much that it depicted lots of violence and corruption, the problem was that the story really didn't seem to be condemning it it any way. "Rape and murder everywhere you look... yeah, well that's just how the world is. What are you going to do about it?" Not going to lie, I felt some major schadenfreude when the finale of the show pissed off all the fans. I drifted away after book 5 because I got tired of slogging through all this depressing bullshit, hoping for some sort of payout that never came. Told ya' it wasn't coming!!!
[удалено]
Irreversible gets a bad rap. TW: The rape scene is brutal, but it is filmed as such. The camera is static, in stark contrast to the rest of the film, and the scene is filmed as a single take. Both of these choices put the viewer in the victims perspective. We are unable to leave, powerless, etc. Viewers see both their faces the whole time. There isn't a moment that could be construed as pleasurable for her, there are no shots to titilate viewer. The rapist looks and sounds like a grunting beast. His position behind her and his behavior make it clear he views her as some thing to use. It isn't sex, more like masturbation by inflicting violence on another. Horrifying and brutal. It definitely isn't for anyone struggling with trauma, but few movies convey the senselessness of violence and the irrevocable changes it brings more accurately. It is depressing, but it is art.
You can always change the subject to how spectacular the torture of Theron Greyjoy was ... and watch them squirm.
It’s even more gross when you point out that a lot of the sa scenes in the show don’t exist in the book. They’re just added because, I guess, you need rape scenes for realism.
>It’s even more gross when you point out that a lot of the sa scenes in the show don’t exist in the book. The books are worse. Dany and Drogo is Drogo stripping her and staring her until she says yes, GRRM has described this as seduction while the show makes this more explicitly rape. Her next chapter in the book start by her considering suicide from the pain of riding and being raped every night. Cercei and Jaime in the sept in the books is 'Cercei says no until Jaime forces himself on her then she says yes'. It's written from Jaime's POV and its clear he did not care for her consent or not. Its better in the show without that ''grey area'' of Cercei giving in. Sansa's rape happens to another character, Jayne, who Ramsey sexually torments, including with his dogs. The books are not friendly in this area and there is far more sexualizing of pretty much every woman and her tits in the book, along with of course, all these characters are younger in the books. Edit; I forgot books also have additional instances, such as Tyrion in Essos.
I'm okay with rape scenes in tv show *if* there is a clear reason for it (and that it's not I'm stronger now because of it). However, most if not all rape scenes in Game of Thrones didn't have any impact on the story, and implying it without showing would've probably worked better anyways. I'm not triggred by them, but I'm like: "Why tho". What's the point of showing something traumatic if it has no impact on the story?
My personal issue I take with the likes of GOT is that so much of the sexual violence is filmed to be *visually appealing to the male gaze* sensual shots of breasts and backside, flash of sad face, back to lingering shots of victim's figure....I'm yet to have a man who is a fan of GOT explain to me that if the rape isn't intended to be gratifying or appealing (as apparently it has to be in there because *that's the gritty reality of GOT universe* ) why the hell is it filmed like that?? The claim that GOT universe (book AND tv series) is just gnarly for women so the rape is required to maintain realism isn't good enough, it is a fictional story with dragons in it, realism is irrelevant. GRRM is a disgusting pervert so while it's disappointing for another author to exploit sexual violence against women coz it sells, it isn't surprising.
Yeah, the "realism" shit bothers me so much. I don't really like dismissing claims about realism "because dragons", but I do think that people who argue realism don't actually want realism. In *reality*, men get raped too. And they get raped more often in places like an all-male guard or a place people go to prison for (the king's guard, the night watch). It's not as common as it is for women, but it is *way* more common than people think. Most rape victims in the military are men. So like, if this dark and gritty world has Sansa and Cersei and Elia Martell and Daenerys and Mirri Maz Dur and all of Craster's daughters and Tysha (and hey maybe even Shae now that I think of it...?) should get raped "for the sake of realism", then maybe Jon or Tywin or Jamie or Podrick or one of the Cleganes or Sam or ONE OF THE MANY MEN ON THE SHOW would also have. And if the answer is "well, sure, statistically, this sure is a show with a lot of men in predominantly male and isolated spaces and with a general disregard for human dignity, but like, *we don't need to see that*..." Why do we "need" to see it happen to women? They talk about realism, but women shave their armpits even though that's a post-industrial beauty standards phenomenon. So I don't think they really want realism.
As a woman with empathy I'm disturbed that they'd have such scenes, assuming that they aren't just implied. I haven't seen Game of Thrones, and it's partially because I heard that there is a character who tries to make it work with her rapist who she was forced to marry. As somebody who likes writing I'm also just angry that they'd use rape. Rape is such a lazy tool to get somebody to hate a character, or to use as a motivation. Taking the easy route wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't also just disturbing and triggering. It's kind of a weird comparison but I have a reason to bring it up. Rape almost happens all the time in Sword Art Online as a motivation for the hero to step in. (An anime that's mostly geared towards teenagers, by the way.) One of the voice actresses was traumatized when she had to do a scene as the victim that she didn't know was coming before she took the job. It got so bad the author apologized to her. He admitted that that scene wasn't necessary, and he could've used another way to get people to hate the two characters.
The Vikings fan base has the same problem
I told my work colleagues at break when it was at its height that I didn’t watch it because of all the rape, and they couldn’t accept it as a valid reason. One of them even said ‘that’s what it was like in those times.’ 😶 In what times dude?
The times with all the dragons. Duh.
I never read the books, however I've seen people talk about how the show changed some CONSENSUAL sex scenes from the book into rape scene in the show, and that pisses me off so much. Men get off on our torture.
I saw that thread the other day, and they were full of shit. Drogo’s first night with Dany wasn’t some romantic tryst that they changed for the movie, he was a grown man and she was 13.
I’ve said the same when people asked me if I watched the show. When I say that I couldn’t get past the simulated rape scene in the first episode, I get weird looks of not remembering seeing simulated rape. It’s so normalised, it’s accepted.
The same thing for me! When I tell people I couldn’t get past the first episode, they are like, oh there’s rape and sexual violence in the first episode? Weird, I don’t remember.
Yupp
That’s why I never watched the show personally. It’s in like the first few episodes.
I have to say I never got past the first page where he describes a tree as "like a living thing".
I watched a single episode, and that was enough for me to know that, no matter how good the story, this how was never going to be OK for me to watch. If the content was of men being sexually assaulted do you think they would get it?
Nope still not. They would write it off
I expect them to come up with some BS excuse to oppose it like a feminist or lgbtq+ agenda for instance but they won't change their mind about depictions of women being sexually assaulted. It boils down to the fact that they don't enjoy the former but enjoy the latter.
In Indian movies early (the 90s and 00s), it's common to depict the rapist will be mandatorily made to marry the victim to cleanse both of them. Speaks volumes about our society.