I’m not a follower of Game of Thrones. Yes, I said it. I think I watched part of the first episode and I have all the episodes available for me to watch. Midway through the first season I told myself I would wait before watching the series. One thing or another happened and years later, I still haven’t seen it. I’ve heard bits about the sex and violence on the show, but I don’t know the characters or situations. What I have found fascinating about the show, as an outsider, is the outrage people get on events in the series. Characters die and people get outraged. A violent wedding and people get outraged. A brutal scene and people get outraged.

The newest outrage from the show really caught my interest. A character got married and was forcibly raped by her new husband. From the articles I have read, the scene was so disturbing that people have publically declared they are through with the show. I think a lot of the drama surrounding the public exodus grew when Senator Claire McCaskill posted on twitter she is finished with the show.

Over the years I would have assumed people who have gone through the blood, carnage and assaults wouldn’t be surprised by the rape. This wasn’t even the first rape on the show. The show isn’t about corporate Washington or the New York police force. This isn’t about modern warfare. This is a brutal fantasy story and if you didn’t pick that up in the first season, I’m not sure what could be said about the perception of the show. Honestly, I think there’s something else playing into the outrage over the rape of the character.

If you look at a lot of the affirmations people post on social media, you would believe a good number of people think of life as a greeting card. So many folks post messages that are supposed to be uplifting. They talk about God’s plan, or the plan of the universe, and how adversity can be a blessing. The messages are so up yet time and time again, at least in the messages I have seen from people I follow or who follow me, folks will post positive while dealing with negative things in their lives. There’s a commercial on television where people are asked about past events and future goals. What came out of the little experiment is that the past always has ups and downs yet the future is always positive. It doesn’t occur to us that the future can have a down side, which would make sense since our past has positive and negative events.

An issue I’ve always had with television shows, especially popular shows, is that characters aren’t allowed to change much. A few weeks ago there was a big build up on NCIS that a character was going to die. It was built up as a huge thing, but when all was said and done, the character killed was someone I didn’t recognize. I’m not a big fan of the show, not by a longshot, but I have seen the opening credits and I’ve seen a couple of episodes. Around the same time, the season finale of Criminal Minds happened and a character left the show. It was supposed to be an emotional moment after a rather emotional episode involving the character. The thing is, by the time the show returns next season, that character’s impact on the rest of the characters will more than likely be forgotten. Everything will fall back into the killer of the week and the old character will me mentioned in passing.

Television shows have a way of dismissing the impact of adversity in characters. How many cops shows have a character go through something traumatic and an episode or two later things are back to normal? How many characters on TV are shot, maimed or mentally abused yet have no long term effect on them or the people around them. In a classic example, also from Criminal Minds, the character Prentiss was injured badly, was announced she was dead, then a year or two later she came back to the team as if nothing happened. It took maybe three episodes for the impact of that revelation to get processed and resolved happily by team members.

Unfortunately, that’s how we like our shows. OK, maybe I’ll say that executives of networks and show executives think the public wants that in their shows, but a vocal part of the public supports the notion. People are complicated, life is complicated and events can change us. Change is what makes life interesting, frustrating and invigorating. In my opinion, characters in shows, if they are to be authentic, should have the same permeant and life changing adversities we have in real life. To go through an event and not be changed somehow doesn’t make them unique or special.

You can go incredibly deep into the think of people who have watched the show for a couple of seasons and wonder why rape scenes cause outrage while violent scenes are barely questioned. I will leave that argument to the countless articles and comments I have seen flooding the internet. On a general level, I think we want our heroes flawed but ultimately we want them to be able to overcome adversity. It’s not that we don’t want heroes to fail, or no pain, but we want them to be better than us and survive at the end. When it’s a character we don’t like, we don’t mind losing them. When a character we like goes through difficulties (and I’m using a nice word here) we look at them overcoming in the future, even though reality would say people are going to fail as much as they achieve success. In our make believe world of mass media, we can’t accept a major or likeable character failing.

A Game of Thrones character is raped and some people think it was wrong for it to happen. Well, bad things happen to good people. That is life and that can make for good drama. The most obvious answer to give to people who are angry about the rape is to point out the show isn’t over. Hell, the season isn’t over. Isn’t it possible, as messed up as it may sound, that this could make the character stronger in future episodes? I would have to say if you stuck around with the show so many years, through so many other rapes, maybe you should see how the story progresses before making a snap judgement on this one event.