I know it's not possible but i would be so happy if Jon just died and stayed dead. Two entire books of just brutally boring Wall stuff that seems to be every other chapter. Gonna be so pissed when the magic boy with the magic sword and magic wolf is inevitably magically brought back to life.

I've been working my way through some of those vids, they are pretty well done (accept when he does voices), and an entertaining way to hear some of the more far-reaching theories/conspiracies. It's been mentioned a couple times, but even if 90% of the theories are wrong and the solutions are more straightforward, it's really just awesome how GRRM set the world up to allow for such complext theories to be cultivated.

This isn't really spoiler, but in case people don't want to speculate:

I can't even remember, is daddy Greyjoy still alive in the show? Those are some slow acting leeches if so.

I like your theory better

Here is a list of awards from one GoT-actor's wiki:

2004 Lola for Best Actress in Gegen die Wand
2004 Bambi for Best "Shooting Star" in Gegen die Wand
2006 Golden Orange Prize for Best Actress in Eve Dönüş
2010 Lola for Best Actress in Die Fremde
2010 Tribeca Prize for Best Actress in Die Fremde

Show runners can't remember that either

I'm getting super tilted by Sansa complainers who think the scene with Ramsay somehow robbed her of her badassery. what's she supposed to do, say no and get her tits flayed? she's doing what she has to even when it sucks, which makes her even more badass.

as for whether or not what happened was rape - by a modern definition of course it was. in GoT world, probably not.

IMO the treatment of women in Mad Men is harder to watch than in GoT because that world is so much more tangible.

It didn't rob her of her badassery (since she has none at this point), but it was a missed opportunity to give her some. If she totally embraced it and just put it on Ramsey then no one would be complaining, and it would empower Sansa and actually give her an arc that makes sense instead of just playing the victim once again.

Also, that is rape by any definition, but in GoT world rape is just not a big deal.

In GoT world "rapers" are supposed to get punished / sent to the wall etc but it would never happen for a marital rape

How would Mel know about Reek? And how would she know that Ramsay's bride escaped but Mance and the washerwomen were caught? I guess she could have a perfectly clear vision in the fire but her visions are usually ambiguous and symbolic.

Ramsay has all the info. He knows about the spearwives because they got killed trying to break "Arya" out. LDO he went and captured the guy who brought the washerwomen after that happened. A little flaying and he finds out it's Mance. He would know about Lightbringer because he took the sword off of Stannis's dead body (if he smashed and killed Stannis). There's no conflict there with the letter being true and being sent by Ramsay.

It shows what Sansa is willing to do to get the power needed to avenge her family.

That's why I can't be sure, but she has access to plenty of info others don't have.
Only if that guy knows. So far as we know, only Mance and the dead spearwives know Abel is really Mance. Unless I am missing a detail from the book. Do we know whether Ramsay took any of Mance's party alive? So far as I remember, their fate is unrevealed, and there is a direct conflict between other characters' POVs and the Pink Letter.
TWOW "spoiler":

Well, that's what i'm saying. As soon as the escape goes bad and the spearwives get killed, Abel gets caught. Ramsay will find out who he is quickly. A naked man holds few secrets but a flayed man holds none.

No character has said anything about it but during the "War of the 5 Kings" reenactment at Joffrey's wedding, the dwarf representing him did scream "I'm drowning, I'm drowning". This episode was written by GRRM so I don't know if the show runners have killed him off yet since they've gotten rid of the Greyjoy storyline all together (for now at least). It's up in the air I guess whether he is dead or not.

Rosencrantz and Greyjoy are dead

By any definition?

How about the legal definition, which varies by geography and chronology? The term "rape" is inherently a legal term. Nearly half the women alive in the world today live in countries where what happened to Sansa is not a crime.

Until the twentieth century, almost nowhere in the world would it have been a crime. It wasn't until after 1970 that English-speaking countries started to amend laws to make non-consensual sexual penetration by a spouse included in the criminal definition of rape.

I didn't say it was a crime. I said it was rape. I can certainly seperate the two so I don't see it as being inherently legal. Did the Dothraki not technically rape anyone because it wasn't illegal to them?

Obv Ramsy can't be prosecuted for it (as discussed), but that doesn't change the fact that any non-consensual sex is a form of rape, criminal or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs7x...ldplayOfficial

Well no, not exactly. What you actually said was: The bolded part is clearly not true.

Your statement was made in reply to: so your literal argument seems to be that the complete set of definitions of "rape" covers what happened to Sansa.

I just disproved that argument by supplying one definition of rape that doesn't cover what happened to Sansa. There are others. The original use of the word covered seizure but did not necessarily include forced sexual intercourse. So to kidnap a woman was to rape her. And the object of seizure didn't have to be a person, nor did the purpose of the seizure have to be sexual for an act to be rape.

I suspect that the point you are trying to make isn't what you actually articulated. It's hard to be sure, given the imprecision of your argument, but perhaps what you really meant was something along the lines of: "Even if it was legal and even if it would be condoned by the contextual society, it was still an inherently bad act." We may agree on that point, but that doesn't contradict what nuggetz87 wrote.

That depends upon what definition of "rape" one is using. By a common current definition, they did. But by at least some definitions they didn't.

Except that is not a fact. Your statement presupposes a particular definition of rape - one that is not universally accepted, nor the only one in use.

To some people, or in some contexts, the word "rape"specifically implies a distinction between legal and illegal acts of non-consensual sex. For centuries, it was held to be impossible for a husband to rape his wife because the wife had already provided a blanket irrevocable consent by agreeing to the marriage. So when a husband forced his wife to have sex without her willing consent to that particular instance, it wasn't rape, it was just an instance of forced sex. In other cases it requires a lack of a particular form of consent, not consent in general. The consent must be willing, supplied for the particular instance, and given by somebody who has reached an arbitrary age threshold.

So perhaps your argument deals with willing participation. I presume you can distinguish between unwilling participation and participation without enthusiasm or enjoyment. Lots of people dislike going to the dentist and find some types of dental work unpleasant. Does that mean they are not willingly consenting to the dental procedure? At what points in the alleged rape process was Sansa's participation unwilling? Was she unwilling when she bent over? Was she unwilling when she began to unlace her sleeves? Was she unwilling a few minutes earlier when she made her vows before the Old Gods and men? Was she unwilling when she agreed to Littlefinger's suggestion she proceed to Winterfell and the marriage, for purposes of revenge?

The longer version of Dinklage's song is pretty good, Coster-Waldau's and Clarke's not so much.

Ok trying not to AIDS up this thread too more than we already have, but yeah, if there is a definition of rape that refers only to seizure and is not related to sex at all, then ya got me. Never heard that one. Don't think anyone was referring to that, but I rescind my use of the word "any" and replace it with "any reasonable"...better?

Apologies for the imprecision, but I'll try to respond to a few points to try to clear things up. My contention with your belief that your criminal definition shut me down is based on my contention that just because someone can't be convicted of something, doesn't mean they didn't do that thing. Hopefully that is easy enough to understand, even if you think I'm flat out wrong. As for your husband/wife example, sure that is rape, just allowable rape...I think this disconnect between rape having to constitute being a criminal act is the main issue we're having.

Also in response to your last section about unwilling participation, I think the unwilling participation of Sansa is quite clear given that Ramsy has to threaten physical harm to her before she begins doing anything sexual. Hopefully at least that part of this response is satisfactory?

Sorry thread!

The usage is very uncommon today, though is sometimes applied in environmental or economic contexts. Alexander Pope's mock-epic 18th century poem "The Rape of the Lock" is about a dispute over the theft of a lock of hair. "The Rape of the Sabine Women" was a mythical event in early Roman history, in which Rome's male founders, being denied the opportunity to court the daughters of a neighbouring tribe by the women's fathers, abducted the women for the opportunity to make their offers of marriage directly to the women. No sexual assault took place. The myth is the subject of several famous art pieces, including two by Poussin and a series by Picasso.

I don't think anybody ITT was referring to the use of the term outside the context of sexual intercourse, no. That certainly wasn't what I referred to my in first reply.

Is "any reasonable definition" better? Not really. You are suggesting that the only reasonable definition of "rape" is any form of imposition of involuntary sexual intercourse. That might be fine in a context, as in much of current western society, in which all forms of the imposition of involuntary sexual intercourse were illegal. But in the context where some forms of imposition of involuntary sexual intercourse are not illegal, the term rape can and often is defined to apply only the illegal subset of such acts.

That's another matter entirely. It is not a matter what can and cannot be proved. It is a matter of whether the facts fit the definition of the crime.

It seems easy enough to understand. You contend that the only reasonable definition of "rape" is any non-consensual sex. What is hard to understand about the proposition that one of several reasonable definitions of the word "rape" is that it applies only to that subset of sexual assaults that are actually criminal?

Well, according to your definition of rape, that is correct. But according to a common usage of the word when the law made it not criminal, it wasn't rape. The point is that the actual meanings of terms change over time and according to other aspects of context. A second point is that terms can have two or more different definitions. You seem to insist that there is only one valid definition of the term "rape". I'm suggesting to you that that is not the case.

Not quite. I think we both agree that by the laws of Westeros the scene did not depict a rape. I think we disagree on two points. The first of these is the one I have focused on most so far: is it correct to disagree with nuggetz87's statement that while what was depicted might well be rape by a (not "the") modern definition, in a GoT world it wasn't. Nuggetz87 seems to be aware that terms and concepts differ with context. You seem to argue that meanings are singular and immutable.

The second point is what I raised in the questions in the final paragraph of my previous post, which you address here:
I actually went back and watched that uncomfortable scene again before I posted my previous reply. Perhaps you should too. Does Ramsay actually communicate to Sansa a threat of physical harm if she doesn't perform sexually? By what words or action does he convey this threat?

I think the scene is cleverly constructed. The audience perceives a threat because we know how Ramsay has behaved in other circumstances. Sansa doesn't have our extent of knowledge of Ramsay's character and capabilities. At the same time Sansa repeatedly expresses reluctance, but reluctant participation is not the same thing as unwilling participation. That's why I asked you about when Sansa became an unwilling participant, rather then merely asking whether she was an unwilling participant. And I opened the possibilty that rather than being an unwilling participant, Sansa was, rather, an unenthusiastic, apprehensive participant who suffered from the treatment she received. In short, you should review the scene and examine the possibility that even by the definition you proposed, that wasn't rape.

Given GRRM's recurring themes of moral ambiguity, unreliable narration, uncertain motivation and outcomes at odds with perceived character, I think the question of whether it was rape, even by your definition, is germane to a discussion of the show. And a snap response of "Yes, it was rape, ainec" seems to miss the subtleties of the scene, and the show, entirely.

I think it's likely Sansas meek behaviour around the Boltons is intentional so that they won't perceive her as a threat. Makes a lot of sense. If she tried being more assertive and more of a equal in their marriage she would likely be viewed more as a potential threat and the Boltons would make more of a effort to keep a close eye on her. Although they haven't really given us any hint this is the case so who knows.

Ok, now I'm convinced that you are just being purposefully obtuse. I know, I know, welcome to the internet You keep harping on the legality of rape defining it, while I believe that clearly is not the case...just because it is not a crime, does not mean it is not rape.

Just came across a GoT related example in my reread of Affc. When Brienne encounters Randall Tarley she remembers him talking about not punishing anyone in Renley's camp who rapes her because she is bringing it on herself by being woman and being around soldiers. Does that mean that it wouldn't be rape if someone forced themselves on her? Of course not, even Tarley says it would be rape, even if it isn't criminal to him.

Also you are correct that I believe that scene to be anything but subtle. Not sure why that inherently leads to me missing all the subtleties of the show entirely, but I guess I just suck at TV watching