George R. R. Martin tells fans, who protest at the horrific scene which didn't happen in the books, that the showrunners 'are trying to make the best television series that they can.'
- May 19, 2015
AceShowbiz - "Game of Thrones" caused Twitter uproar with the latest twist in the recent episode which saw [SPOILER ALERT!] Sansa marrying Ramsay and being forced to consummate their marriage while Theon/Reek watched. The horrific storyline didn't exist in the books. In the novels, the sadistic Ramsay wed Jeyne Poole, a girl posing as Sansa's sister Arya, instead.
Fans then emailed the books author George R. R. Martin and commented on his website to express their displeasure about the disturbing rape twist. On his official LiveJournal, Martin responded to the criticisms and defended the show.
"The show is the show, the books are the books; two different tellings of the same story," he wrote. He then explained, "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....Prose and television have different strengths, different weaknesses, different requirements."
He continued defending shorwunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss and co-producer Bryan Cogman, "David and Dan and Bryan and HBO are trying to make the best television series that they can. And over here I am trying to write the best novels that I can." He added, "And yes, more and more, they differ. Two roads diverging in the dark of the woods, I suppose... but all of us are still intending that at the end we will arrive at the same place."
For those who feared that Sansa would suffer from further humiliation like Ramsay's bride did in the books, in which Theon was forced to sexually interact with his bride, Cogman promised it wouldn't happen. "No! Lord no. No-no-no-no-no. No. It's still a shared form of abuse that they have to endure, Sansa and Theon. But it's not the extreme torture and humiliation that scene in the book is," he told EW.
