"We didn't need that scene, but for some reasons the show runners thought it was necessary."

Venturing into the rest of the thread, I see that you're right. Plenty of anti-PC and censorship stuff. Sorry!

Well, I don't agree.

"We wanted this to happen so creatively, we made it happen"

As opposed to a teenager stabbing herself in the neck to show how "real" things are to the protagonist? Jessica Jones relied plenty on shock tactics. Basically every scene with Killgrave did.

I don't recall any incidents of male rape in the books or show.

"It also carries the suggestion that rape is some historical oddity."

Where is this crowd you speak of? Anyway, I can think of very few portrayals of rape in tv shows that wasn't heavily criticised. Buffy, Mad Men, Battlestar, Outlander. Jessica Jones and the aforementioned scenes are exceptions, and I still recall significant criticisms. People criticised Jessica Jones for making…

I'm willing to bet that if Game of Thrones had done that same scene, it would have been poorly received. Especially if they'd played an ironically cheery pop song after, like OitNB did.

"In this approach it doesn't treat rape victims as people because they are just pawns for the horror of the world, used to make the watcher recoil at how terrible and shocking this world is, rather than understood and treated as living people who have been affected by the actions of another."

There's plenty of non-POV characters that aren't utterly devoid of character or agency.

I don't see that it does treat it as inevitable, merely as being very common. Neither do I how see how it doesn't treat the victims as people, or show that it's an act perpetrated against a person.

Thing is, it didn't advance Reek's character arc. He doesn't save her when she gives him the chance too. He only finally snaps when Sansa is about to be killed.

Pretty much. Jeyne Poole is given no character, focus or agency. At least they had Sansa attempt to pass messages along and so on.

That's a very good point about the reconfiguring audience perspectives, I'll have to mull that one over.

The Cersei scene is strange situation. The director and the actors thought it was consensual, but the show runners say that Jaime "forces himself upon" Cersei in an interview. I'd love to find out really what the hell happened behind the scenes on that one.

"but if anything it totally derailed her arc that season of actually learning to manoeuvre in that world. "
I don't see how it did. Delayed it maybe. But she's still alive, and now she'll never put her faith in Littlefinger.

I agree. The flack she caught was absurd. But I really wasn't a fan either, especially of her Leftovers reviews.

We haven't seen the full ramifications for Sansa's story arc I feel.

If anything, that was just planting the seeds for when she eventually does come a player. The frustrating things about Season 5 is it entirely stalled that storyline for her, though I'm sure it's coming eventually.