So do we
>really need rape to make her even steelier? Gross, right?
>Redundant victimization and development. Don't need it.

I don't think it's redundant at all.

I also find assholish marriage consummation with the savvy older Sansa far less gross than, say, the murder of the father in front of naive younger Sansa and the subsequent forcing her to stare at his rotting head on a pike, but all of the thinkpieces tell me that *this* is the worst thing the show has ever done to anyone, so maybe I'm the weird one for feeling like the loss of physical innocence maybe won't impact her the way the loss of actual innocence will.

>Ramsey has also already been shown to be hopelessly evil, with
>so many heinous acts under his belt. We would be able to
>assume how this scene would play out.

You know who else had an idea that this scene would probably be unpleasant? Sansa, when she agreed to go to Winterfell to marry one of the fucked-up murderous Boltons. But she did it anyway, because she's intentionally trying to get close. (She probably didn't know it would play out like *that,* obviously. But, again, this isn't naive Sansa. Not anymore. She knew she was going to end up fucking an unpleasant man.)

Goes back to the idea of
>rape as a shortcut to let you know that this guy is REALLY
>evil, discussed re: The Walking Dead. So yeah, this makes him
>superlatively evil, but we already knew.

Nah, on The Walking Dead it serves that purpose, but the three big rapes on this show as I see them-- Khal/Dany, Jamie/Cersei, and this-- are all waaaaaay more complicated in terms of how the rapes serve the story. It's never just "this guy is evil! this girl is powerless!" like on many shows/movies. That's a discredit to the writers of this show, who are far from lazy. These are actions with complicated origins and complicated consequences.

>And again with Theon, we've seen him broken down completely.
>This guy's been messed up and loaded with aforementioned guilt
>concerning the Starks. Did he really need to watch this scene
>go down to finally turn against his keeper? He's screwed up,
>we get it.

This is a guy who had his dick chopped off and is living in literal shit. He hasn't snapped back to reality due to those things... so he needed something *reeeeeeeally* bad to happen to wake his ass up. Again, the thinkpieces may call this "lazy," but if Theon's character arc this season is to wake the fuck up, and the ongoing torture that is his life isn't enough, then you *do* need something extreme. It makes complete sense for his story and for Sansa's. (And also for Ramsey's, because, while I have no idea where this story goes, it continues to show just how untouchable he feels, which ultimately will serve as his downfall, even if it's not at the hands of Theon or Sansa. Dude is way smarter than Joffrey, which will make him way harder to manipulate... but his lust for control and power will have consequences, probably sooner rather than later.)

>So with all that it's the writers who just wanted to make this
>rape happen. It was avoidable and didn't do anything new for
>the characters. Gratuitous.

It wasn't, really. Sansa required the marriage to happen. Marriages require consummation. Theon required a reason to wake the fuck up.

*Maybe* you could've had Theon wake up before he starts actually raping her and kill Ramsey on the spot... but there's an actual war coming in the next episode or two, and Ramsey has a large role to play in that conflict, so ditching Ramsey before the fight for Winterfell doesn't make a ton of sense dramatically.

I just think people are exhausted by seeing rape at this point, which I *totally get,* and they watched Sansa grow up, so it's upsetting, which I *totally get.* I found it to be immensely disturbing. But, again, maybe I just read Sansa's moves post-Vail as smarter, more cunning than others do. I think she took Littlefinger's speech to heart and she's legitimately acting with agency, with an end goal.

Maybe if you think she's still just an innocent victim who isn't bright enough to avoid being manipulated by evil men, you'd think this is the worst thing that's ever happened on the show and a completely unnecessary step. I see it instead as a compellingly complicated turn of events. What if Ramsey had (weird turn of phrase approaching) *just* had unpleasant sex with her? Would that have kept Theon at bay, would it have kept her revenge timeline on "slow cook"? There were plenty of ways that Ramsey could have approached this wedding in general that would've been *hugely* beneficial to him, but he keeps taking that extra step to revel in sadism. Bolton's speech in that first scene in Winterfell after he skinned those people about learning how to behave to become a leader-- that concept *still* eludes him. He doesn't know how to play the game. And despite Sansa being the victim in this scene... she *does* know how to play, and Ramsey may just have unknowingly put a major wild card in Theon directly into her hands.

Anyway. I'm just rambling about the complications I enjoy on this show at this point. I just don't find it nearly as simplistic as you do (though, to be fair, there are many many thinkpieces being put out right now that agree with you 100%, so perhaps I'm in the minority here.)