I am continually impressed with the production standards of this show also. Finding out that they actually created 600 faces for the Hall of Faces was icing on the cake!
I think a LOT of people are completely clueless as to what gratuitous actually means. That would mean it's just there for no reason. It happened for a reason; to show that Ramsey has absolutely no redeeming qualities. I was shocked that he didn't even put on a face of being nice to his new wife.
BTW, what's the deal with the Hall of Faces? They really should have had Arya ask "WTH man?!"
I think a LOT of people are completely clueless as to what gratuitous actually means. That would mean it's just there for no reason. It happened for a reason; to show that Ramsey has absolutely no redeeming qualities. I was shocked that he didn't even put on a face of being nice to his new wife.
Was there really any question about him having redeeming qualities prior to this? All the stuff he put Theon through plus hunting the girls he sleeps with for sport isn't enough to prove what a monster he is? It gave us no new information about Ramsey, which makes it gratuitous.
And did everyone forget that Danaerys got to play Antenna ball to Khal Drogo? I Mean Sansa is at least decent size, but Danaerys was like a Bunny with an elephant. And this is nothing compared to what's happening in this messed up world.
After reading this article, I want to go to India and hand out Unsolicited vasectomies. http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1600-5-ugly-realities-being-woman-visiting-india.html
Yeah noticed that bronn got sliced with that dagger. 1st thing that came to my mind was it being poisoned. Good game Bronn.,good game
There is no way Jamie should have been in that fight for more than a minute. He could barely beat a soldier with dumb luck. Yet he is able to keep pace with a skilled assassin?
There is no way Jamie should have been in that fight for more than a minute. He could barely beat a soldier with dumb luck. Yet he is able to keep pace with a skilled assassin?
Isn't it obvious why? It's because he was fighting a girl and obviously a girl, assassin or not, is no match for a man, even a one handed man fighting with his left handed when he used to be right handed. Anyhow, I don't that Jaime was doing all that well, I think that he was barely managing to hold his own against the Sand Snake that he was fighting and I think that they were more interested in grabbing Myrcella than getting involved in a drawn out fight, which happened anyway.
But, ultimately, yeah, the world is rough. The rape side of it is one part, but it's already been made clear just how rough the world is in terms of violence. Ramsey Bolton is one of the absolute worst characters in the series. Worse than Joffrey, if that can be believed. I mean, he brutally tortured Theon, including turning him into a eunuch.
Oh noes, poor Sansa. So are people just offended that they had to see it or that it happened to someone privileged? At least it wasn't her dad doing it, everyone remembers Gilly, right?
Was there really any question about him having redeeming qualities prior to this? All the stuff he put Theon through plus hunting the girls he sleeps with for sport isn't enough to prove what a monster he is? It gave us no new information about Ramsey, which makes it gratuitous.
Have you forgotten how decently he had been treating Sansa up until this point and not to mention he's been almost decent to Reek as well so I think that some viewers might think that Ramsay really isn't all that bad or that being engaged to Sansa has changed him. This scene tells us that he's the same ol' sick ******* that he's always been and that he's only been playing nice to Sansa. The other thing to consider is that as bad as he was in raping Sansa, technically speaking he was within his rights being that it was his wedding night and all and he never once touched Sansa inappropriately until he was properly married to her. Does that make it right? To a modern audience with modern morals, no, but this isn't meant to be in modern times and the show (and the books) are clearly written from the standpoint of a Medieval sort of world where modern morals don't exist and taking your wife on your wedding night was not only accepted but expected.
I've seen several criticisms of the scene that I found to be...hmm...misplaced. But I've also seen some criticisms that seem pretty valid to me.
As has been noted, Sansa in this scene takes the place of Jeyne Poole (a.k.a. "Fake Arya") in the narrative. But a lot of book readers are pissed because the Jeyne narrative uses her as a mere plot point to prod Theon to action and to act as a war prize for Stannis and the Boltons (and whomever else) to fight over. She's not really a character; she's just a macguffin.
Yet the show (and the books, to a lesser degree) have taken some lengths to show Littlefinger trying to educate Sansa in becoming a master politician the way he is, as well as keeping her safe. So, this raises several issues.
First, there's the notion that perhaps Littlefinger didn't know Ramsey was quite the psycho he actually is. But this means Littlefinger's amazing political and strategic understanding ain't what they've been cracked up to be. Alternatively, it means that he's sacrificed Sansa as yet another piece on the game board, but that doesn't track to his devotion to Cat and -- by extension -- Sansa. Plus there's the whole "I wanna marry you myself" thing.
Second, there's the issue that Sansa's storyline as a budding strategic badass could well end up being cut short. Things get a little spoilery here, so I'll use tags just to be safe.
The theory is that they'll do the Theon redemption story and have Sansa again be the macguffin that Jeyne is in the books, rather than an active agent in her own destiny. Also, she won't end up being a badass if she's being rescued by this or that player in the story.
I think these are valid criticisms, but I can still see ways out of these traps.
With respect to the "What's Littlefinger up to?" issue, I think it's possible that Littlefinger knows SOME of Ramsey's background, but that his cruelty has largely been kept under wraps. Alternatively, Littlefinger may have miscalculated and thought Sansa would be safe because the Boltons wouldn't jeopardize their hold on the north by brutalizing the object of a marriage which grants them "legitimacy" among the Northern lords. In other words, Ramsey went way farther than anyone expected. Lastly, it's possible that Littlefinger knew of the risks, but figured Sansa could handle it, and if she ultimately does, it'll prove that he correctly read the situation all along (unless Sansa then betrays him). Personally, I think Littlefinger's plan is still to marry Sansa himself and take the North with her, then use that and the Vale to topple the ruling Lannisters and seize the throne for himself.
With respect to the whole "This could play out like the books and that would suck" aspect, it could also take aspects from the book stories but change them. For example...
Consider a scenario where Sansa ultimately breaks out on her own and actively convinces Theon to help her, perhaps even harming Ramsey in the process (knocking him out, killing him, something like that). I would expect knocking him out or otherwise injuring him, myself, but you never know.
Regardless, merely because this or that aspect from the book has been adapted, that doesn't mean that all subsequent events will follow.
All that said, I get the issue with the show and how it's handled rape thus far. Last season's sequence with Jaime and Cersei was handled extremely poorly, in my opinion. I was waiting for it to bear fruit...and it just never did. That's a big problem, in my opinion. Hopefully it won't be repeated, but the writers don't have a great track record here.
What would Faceless men do with a hall full of faces?
It's how they carry out so many successful assassinations without being seen.
I was hoping for something of the "Ghost of Winterfell" or hints of it, as well as Seeing Lord Wyman Manderly show up before the wedding. I guess he could have been there as his son was at the Red Wedding, unnamed but wearing a Merman brooch there so it had to be him. Hoping for more plots of "the North Remembers" before it all just doesn't happen or happens with little else going on before it just happens.
Have you forgotten how decently he had been treating Sansa up until this point and not to mention he's been almost decent to Reek as well so I think that some viewers might think that Ramsay really isn't all that bad or that being engaged to Sansa has changed him. This scene tells us that he's the same ol' sick ******* that he's always been and that he's only been playing nice to Sansa. The other thing to consider is that as bad as he was in raping Sansa, technically speaking he was within his rights being that it was his wedding night and all and he never once touched Sansa inappropriately until he was properly married to her. Does that make it right? To a modern audience with modern morals, no, but this isn't meant to be in modern times and the show (and the books) are clearly written from the standpoint of a Medieval sort of world where modern morals don't exist and taking your wife on your wedding night was not only accepted but expected.
They really have a low opinion of their viewers' intelligence if that's the case, and Ramsey's facade was already showing cracks in the previous episode.
Yes, moral relativism means that it legally wasn't rape in the setting, just like it wasn't illegal to own a person 200 years ago. That doesn't mean it was okay then just because it was legal, and it certainly doesn't make it okay now because "times were different."
Maybe it'll play out in a way that doesn't undo a lot of Sansa's character development and she's not back to just being a victim as well as a MacGuffin. I'm not holding my breath.
That's ultimately what I'm hoping for: that she'll be a more active participant rather than just a victim in whatever comes next. But, as has been mentioned, their track record isn't really spotless in this regard.
While I think the outcry over Dany's rape at Khal Drogo's hands was misdirected (blame Martin for that one -- that's all straight from Book 1), the Jaime/Cersei scene last season was pretty awful and varied from what was in the books in terms of how it actually played out. This season, the Sansa thing is from the book (sorta), but the way it's playing out on the show, given how the storyline has changed, is confusing. Hopefully it will resolve satisfactorily, or else the past season and Sansa's buildup will seem like a lost plot thread, and the veering back towards the book material will be a problem. I'm hoping they'll take a different tack from what happens in the book with Jeyne Poole.
I'd have to go back and either watch or read the relevant chapters from Dany/Drogo but I don't remember it coming off as rapey as Ramsey and Sansa (even though it's totally statutory rape since Dany was 13 in the book). Maybe at least some of the issue is that up until that point readers/viewers weren't really invested in Dany because things had just started out and though we got that creepy scene from her brother touching her when she's naked we didn't fully appreciate all the terrible things she's been through. For viewers we've had four years of Sansa go through the ringer between family getting killed (in front of her no less) to more than one narrowly averted sexual assault. Four years of her being the universe's punching bag for just about every horrible thing that can be thrown at her the audience sympathizes for her and doesn't want to see bad things happen to her any more. There's going to be a difference in audience reaction between a lead they don't know getting raped in the second episode (or whichever one it was) and a lead they do know getting raped 4.5 years later.
And yes, speaking of audience reactions you'd think they'd have learned after the Cersei/Jaime scene coming off way more rapey than they intended that maybe they should be mindful of how this one played out. If they didn't think for a moment that there'd be reactions on par with last year's they were either deluded or lying to themselves.
I'd have to go back and either watch or read the relevant chapters from Dany/Drogo but I don't remember it coming off as rapey as Ramsey and Sansa (even though it's totally statutory rape since Dany was 13 in the book). Maybe at least some of the issue is that up until that point readers/viewers weren't really invested in Dany because things had just started out and though we got that creepy scene from her brother touching her when she's naked we didn't fully appreciate all the terrible things she's been through. For viewers we've had four years of Sansa go through the ringer between family getting killed (in front of her no less) to more than one narrowly averted sexual assault. Four years of her being the universe's punching bag for just about every horrible thing that can be thrown at her the audience sympathizes for her and doesn't want to see bad things happen to her any more. There's going to be a difference in audience reaction between a lead they don't know getting raped in the second episode (or whichever one it was) and a lead they do know getting raped 4.5 years later.
And yes, speaking of audience reactions you'd think they'd have learned after the Cersei/Jaime scene coming off way more rapey than they intended that maybe they should be mindful of how this one played out. If they didn't think for a moment that there'd be reactions on par with last year's they were either deluded or lying to themselves.
The Dany thing in the book is immediately after her wedding to Drogo. Basically, she's terrified and doesn't really want to have sex with Drogo, but he just sort of roughly takes her anyway. It's more about her emotional state and the absence of consent (including her clearly being despondent that her brother has basically sold her to the Dothraki) than the physically violent way that Ramsay proceeds with Sansa, but it's still rape, really.
The way it played on the show was nowhere near as violent as what you see in the Ramsay/Sansa scene, but it's abundantly clear how unhappy Dany is, which basically allows the audience to recognize this as essentially rape (even if she didn't object to the marriage vocally). It's only later that she decides to take charge, and ultimately ends up falling in love with Drogo. But, again, that's ALL Martin.
The Sansa scene is actually a more tame version of what happens to Jeyne in the book. Jeyne's book wedding night is one of the Theon/Reek perspective chapters, so it's filtered through his view, but it's all pretty awful regardless. That's not to say that the Sansa scene was a walk in the park, of course, but there's more awfulness that I won't get into here in the Jeyne scene.
I think the objection isn't just that Sansa's already been the universe's punching bag, but also that the narrative thrust of her story seems confused. Is she going to become the next Margaery or Littlefinger? Or is she the little terrified bird from Seasons 1, 2, and 3? The book readers, I think, suspect that she'll be the victim/terrified bird if the show writers give her all of Jeyne's storyline and don't do anything else with her. And certain other pieces on he board are moving into place in such a way as to make you think that she may well end up just being a passive victim. But at the same time, the narrative has already deviated a ton for her story (as well as others), so it's really unclear if that's how things will play out. A big part of the uproar from book readers, though, is (I think) the fact that they ONLY see the similarities to the book, and therefore assume that that's ALL we'll be getting.
Personally, I think we'll see some deviation there, and especially including Sansa gaining more agency. The events will ultimately synch up between show and book (mostly, I think), but how we get there will probably be different, and where we go after we run out of book material (which could easily happen this season) is anyone's guess.
To clarify with spoilers:
Basically, in the books, Theon breaks Jeyne out with the help of a wildling commando team including Mance Rayder. The wildlings are caught, but Theon and Jeyne escape and are found by Stannis' forces. Jon then gets a notice from Winterfell (a.k.a. "the Pink Letter") which claims that everyone's been caught, Stannis is defeated, and the Boltons are coming to kill Jon for sending the wildling commandos southward. It's Jon's decision to ride to Winterfell with a wildling attack force and the Nightswatch that leads him to be stabbed in the back by his men (literally), and the book ends with us not knowing if he lives, dies, or what.
Jeyne's pretty much a passive victim in all this, beyond pleading to Theon to save her. The fear seems to be that, if they give some of Jeyne's events to Sansa, they'll end up giving her all of the passivity and victimhood to her as well, and it'll be Theon and/or Pod and Brienne who bust her out, rather than Sansa helping to bust herself out or otherwise finally rising to the challenge of fighting back.
Personally, I think you can still have Sansa learning how to manipulate things the way Littlefinger does, while Theon breaks her free with Brienne and Pod, takes her to Stannis. Beyond that, I can see numerous outcomes. You could have the Boltons defeated by Stannis, and the "Pink Letter" being about how Jon picked Stannis' side and therefore is an enemy. You could have Sansa returned to Littlefinger who arranges an "accident" for the Boltons or whathaveyou. You could have Sansa helping break herself free WITH Theon and the rest, rather than being passive, possibly wounding or knocking Ramsay out cold in the process. There's a lot of different ways this could play out.
Overall, I think this rape will prove to be more "incidental" except insofar as it's a crack in Theon's timidity that goads him to action. That's not to say, however, that Sansa won't still become more of an agent in her own destiny or a master manipulator. I just don't think it will be singularly due to her rape at Ramsay's hand.
That's kind of become the problem with rape in fiction in many cases. I think audiences have a really complicated relationship to it as a dramatic event. For so long, it's been treated as this defining moment, either goading male characters to revenge, or goading women to some kind of position of strength (either physical or through psychological manipulation). Now, whenever people see it, they look to the event to have some kind of greater meaning, but they want it to be used for more than the typical stuff. So far, the show has treated rape as almost incidental. Like, yeah, it happens, but it doesn't seem to have the kind of dramatic turning-point effect that it does in other fiction. I think this bothers the audience, but I can't help but question what else they would want from the writers on the show if they're to depict rape at all. Like, folks want there to be a greater meaning, but not to turn the event into a "call to action" for a man, nor to a "and then she became a badass" for a woman or whathaveyou, and they can't really articulate what else they want rape to actually be in fiction. It seems like the answer is really "We don't want to see rape. At all. Ever. Violence is ok, but not rape."
With this show, we're dealing with stuff where people get molten gold poured over them, have their heads physically crushed right after their eyes are gouged out, are tortured and castrated, are burned alive, etc., etc. The world of this show is barbaric and awful, and that appears to include rape, too. When it comes to this "a wedding and then a bedding," I give the show a pass for showing marital rape because that's part of the world the show depicts. With the Jaime/Cersei thing, I think they just completely mis-wrote and mis-shot the scene and should have stuck to the book where Cersei's "no" is more of a "Are you insane?! Not here, not now! Well....ok..." But that has also eroded a lot of the audience's trust that these kinds of scenes will tie into larger storylines.
I think a LOT of people are completely clueless as to what gratuitous actually means. That would mean it's just there for no reason. It happened for a reason; to show that Ramsey has absolutely no redeeming qualities.
The show already established that Ramsey has no redeeming qualities seasons ago, as well as showing us moments where he tortures Theon both physically and mentally. What's the point?
What would Faceless men do with a hall full of faces?
It's how they carry out so many successful assassinations without being seen.
That's what I assumed that they somehow can change faces because they have a catalog of references. I haven't read the books, so I thought they might spell it out a little more. Do they wear the faces or do they somehow use some kind of magic (which is what it looked like that guy was doing) to change?
The show already established that Ramsey has no redeeming qualities seasons ago, as well as showing us moments where he tortures Theon both physically and mentally. What's the point?
They established that he did bad things, but he hasn't done anything to a family member yet. It's like on Sopranos where you know Tony does bad things, but to his family he's a good guy. This showed that he had absolutely no redeeming qualities once and for all. If you read the books you may already know that. To people just watching the show you may think he'd treat his wife a little better. Now everyone knows.
What would Faceless men do with a hall full of faces?
It's how they carry out so many successful assassinations without being seen.
That's what I assumed that they somehow can change faces because they have a catalog of references. I haven't read the books, so I thought they might spell it out a little more. Do they wear the faces or do they somehow use some kind of magic (which is what it looked like that guy was doing) to change?
They established that he did bad things, but he hasn't done anything to a family member yet. It's like on Sopranos where you know Tony does bad things, but to his family he's a good guy. This showed that he had absolutely no redeeming qualities once and for all. If you read the books you may already know that. To people just watching the show you may think he'd treat his wife a little better. Now everyone knows.
Essentially yes. They collect them from the dead that are offered up to the faceless god by coming to the House like you saw in the episode and other ways. The bodies are cleaned by the lower initiates and then taken to have the face removed by next level ones(as we saw in the episode). They then wear them to pass themselves off as other people when on their missions. The wearer when they don the "mask" also gets a glimpse into the life of the of the face they wear.
Anyhow, I don't that Jaime was doing all that well, I think that he was barely managing to hold his own against the Sand Snake that he was fighting and I think that they were more interested in grabbing Myrcella than getting involved in a drawn out fight, which happened anyway.
