#instead of just... you know... NOT SHOEHORNING IN MORE RAPE THAT DIDN'T EXIST IN THE BOOKS like GoT did!! 😒)

[outlawssweetheart]

Bitches will see a character murder (often times, brutally murder) innocent people and ignore it or excuse it or even support it (fine, I do that too, they aren’t real). Meanwhile, that same character will do something else that is almost as bad, bad but not even nearly as bad as murdering innocents, or something that isn’t even bad at all, and they will FLIP THEIR SHIT! And suddenly, that character is a demon for that, but not for the homicide, and anyone who likes them is “Excusing this kind of behavior!!”

Like, honey, you just saw them mutilate an innocent bystander. 😒

Unless a character is on some fucking Freddy Kr*ger shit, I have to say the murders are at least slightly worse.

[omgellendean]

I don’t get why the plot was necessary at all. They clearly had no issue cutting certain plots. Why not just choose to not have a teenage girl be tortured and sexually abused? Theon could have escaped on his own or Sansa &/or Jon could take back the north because Ramsey shouldn’t have it and has already done awful things. Why was the r*pe plot more important than Stoneheart or Aegon? If they didn’t like whatever was happening with Sansa in the Vale, they could have just given small glimpses or gave her a plot of marrying Harry if he existed or sweetrobin, but not consummating. Then, she’d have an army. Or they could just do anything other than the dumb r*pe plot. Jeyne deserves better in the books and isn’t even given a point of view and I don’t understand why that’s a story they needed to translate at all.

Gosh, this answer got ridiculously long. Guess I needed to talk about that dumb show, lol. And I probably need to preface all of this with a warning: I don't hate this storyline. For the most part, I’m annoyed about the way fandom leaves GRRM’s part in it and angry at how showrunners left actors to face the backlash from the viewers. I see problems in this story arc, of course, but Winterfell plot in both show and the book resonates with me strongly. I also don't think rape is an unacceptable element of the story or character motivation — it all depends on how it's written. Finally, English isn't my native language, and while I tried to be careful, there may be poorly worded passages or tone issues, and I'm sorry about that. 

I can think of several reasons for keeping this plot.

First of all, they didn't want to waste a perfectly good (in their eyes) storyline by replacing it completely with their own. It seems to me that the show writers were more or less aware of their limitations as authors, and that's why they used the book material as much as possible even when changing the plot or making it up on the go. For example, in the show, Arya is Tywin's cupbearer, which never happened in the books, but their dialogues are almost all lifted from the book text — mostly from Theon's chapters. When writers skipped or changed a storyline, they didn't just throw away stuff from it but reused it whenever they could, sometimes shoehorning characters into each other's arcs. That didn't always work perfectly, of course: say, with so many elements of different storylines given to Arya, her writing at times felt shallow and inconsistent. Or, remember how they rewrote Alys Karstark's replies for Sansa, and it started the "Sansa WaS MeAn to Jon" discourse? But in the end, it is easier to adapt a text you actually have and invent something based on it, rather than make something completely new, especially when you have a strict time limit.

Another obvious reason could be the fact that the show was coming to the end of its second act, and writers needed to start tying off their storylines and get rid of the characters they didn't need anymore, not add new ones. Writers also knew that Sansa isn't in the Vale for long — a fact they referenced several times, IIRC, — and I guess they knew she will come to Jon for help and join him in retaking Winterfell. 

The Vale never played a big role in the show, for better or worse. It was sidelined for two seasons, with literally no one caring about it. In season 4, this storyline had, like, four characters (one of them a kid with almost no lines) + two or three extras. To give Sansa a proper arc there, showrunners would have to basically make up the new location with a bunch of new characters completely from the scratch. All that just for one season, because then Sansa has to get to the Wall, and the Vale can fuck off again. I guess writers didn't see much sense in it, and tbh I can't blame them. They already had Dorne for this, anyway, and we all know how it went. 

Instead, they saw an opportunity to drastically cut off the excess storylines, while also giving Sansa a season arc, getting her and Theon to the next point in their stories and dealing with the Boltons.

At the same time, again, I never hated season 5. It is obviously just my opinion, but this storyline, leaning heavily on Martin's writing, felt stronger than some others, for which the book material was already running out. Despite its glaring (and constant for the show) problem with the handling of sexual abuse, Winterfell arc has pretty strong characterisations, high stakes for everyone involved, and some great scenes between characters. I will go into my grave saying that Sansa & Theon's scenes were underappreciated, but also, Roose and Ramsay? Ramsay and Theon? Hell, Ramsay and Sansa? That's some good battle of wills there, even though it was painful to watch. 

And the last reason I can see is that writers just never thought it would be a problem. They always were terribly tone-deaf and at best heavyhanded when dealing with difficult themes. Especially rape and sexual abuse. With Martin being not much better at this, GoT was full of gratuitous sexual violence so much that it became its trademark. One of season 4 episodes opens with women being brutally raped. Season 2 has several scenes of violence against sex-workers. Hell, the very first episode of the show has the rape of the teen girl in it!

And honestly, that's the main problem of season 5 — the thoughtlessness and lack of care. People quote GRRM's words, "Oddly, I never got pushback for that in the book because nobody cared about Jeyne Poole that much," as the call-out for the fandom, and maybe it is. But to me, it seems like a genuine surprise — and the reason why we got the story we got. They just never saw a problem with this and didn't expect the backlash.

And yes, the reasoning for all of it happening was really lame, and I agree with most of the critique. However, I must say that skipping the propper consistent buildup of the story and character motivations for the sake of !plot twists! has been a problem in this show since the start. It's not something that appeared only in season 5. GoT strongest suit was always its great multilayered characters and their clashes with each other. Logic, consistency and (quite ironically) realism always came second to this.

Maybe writers could've chosen the way you suggest, keeping Sansa's scenes minimal and just getting her to the Wall somehow behind the scenes, but honestly, is that really a better option than what she got? Not in Watsonian sense, as if she were a real teenager, but for Sansa as the character? Stoneheart and Aegon were secondary characters (and tbh I never liked Stoneheart and wish GRRM would just let Cat die), and that's why they were cut off, but Sansa is one of the main. Keeping her out of the story would make her a huge disservice, the same way it did Bran.

Taking away that storyline would also hurt Theon's characterisation. This post is already too long, so let's just say I disagree that it would be ok to just make him escape Ramsay. Aside from the fact that we would lose an amazing bond between Theon and Sansa, it would contradict his character journey and take away from the main themes of his story.

And maybe I am alone in this, but honestly, there are things that I really appreciate about this whole storyline. I just wish it were handled with greater care, both by GRRM and the showrunners.