There were a lot of questionably sadistic choices made by the producers in Game of Thrones, but when the >!orphans!< were strung up burned to death I said to my parter ‘ok that’s last warning. The show isn’t good enough to endure this crap’.

Then the red wedding happened next season and it was full of sadism - unsuspecting soldiers gruesomely and gleefully murdered by their comrades, >!foetus stabbed in the womb!<.

And that was the last Game of Thrones episode I watched. I don’t have any desire to revisit it.

A fantastic production in every other sense, ruined by extreme sadism at every corner.

To be fair, both of these things happened in the books. Except the Red Wedding with regards to Talisa/Jeyne, but everything else happened. They were following it.

Oh I’m not implying they didn’t happen in the books. But there’s a significant experiential difference between the written word and having it dramatically filmed, expertly recreated with special effects, centre-framed and shots lingered upon.

The showrunners revelled in the sadism and sexual sadism way too much for my tastes.

How would you depict a world as low and as violent as ASOIAF without doing that for specific plot moments like that though?

Just one example?

The baby being slaughtered by the queens guards (illegitimate offspring of the king) in the first season is a perfect example.

Harsh. Immoral. Brutal. Gets everything it needs to explain across to the viewer and does it all off camera.

Shots can also be partial or glimpses instead of lingering and detailed. Like the young prince’s sexual-sadistic murder of the kind-hearted brothel girl.

Whole series is a sadists wet dream.