Courtesy of Warner Bros. Television Distribution

Game of Thrones Made the Internet Mad

05:30 May 20, 2015
By: Ashley Larsen

Some of you may have seen the most recent Game of Thrones episode "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" or one of the many posts outraged fans have made in its wake.

[SPOILER] In the episode, Sansa Stark marries Ramsey. And on their wedding night he rapes her and forces his slave and her childhood friend (Theon/Geek) to watch.

But the episode is hard for anyone to watch, especially since it doesn't even happen in the books. In order to give Sansa more face time and to streamline the show, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, merged Stansa's storyline with the novels' Jeyne Pool, a Winterfell resident masquerading as Arya Stark.

In the novel, Jeyne marries Ramsey and she is the one who is raped.

Many fans are outraged that Sansa's character had to endure this sexual violence.

Jennifer Gasbarro on Twitter

Jamie Tarabay en Twitter

Zahra Noorbakhsh on Twitter

The blog, The Mary Sue, has announced that they will no longer be promoting Game of Thrones because they felt that the showrunners used rape merely as an unneccesary plot device. Stating that Sansa's character already had to overcome violence and harsh treatment proving herself as a strong character while Ramsey has already proven himself as a bad character making Sansa's rape meaningless.

Following the episode, George R. R. Martin, writer of the novels, has come out in defense of the episode on his blog (livejournal), stating: "How many children did Scarlett O'Hara have? Three, in the novel. One, in the movie. None, in real life: she was a fictional character, she never existed. The show is the show, the books are the books; two different tellings of the same story.There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one. And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes. HBO is more than forty hours into the impossible and demanding task of adapting my lengthy (extremely) and complex (exceedingly) novels, with their layers of plots and subplots, their twists and contradictions and unreliable narrators, viewpoint shifts and ambiguities, and a cast of characters in the hundreds."

Sophie Turner, the actress who portrays Sansa, has also spoken out about the scene. Telling EW that she "secretly loved it" because of its acting challenge.

What do you think? Are you outraged or do you think it was within the writers' creative rights?

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