It’s amazing what fans will and won’t accept as necessary when it comes to various TV shows and movies. Some of the material that people might think that fans would rail against goes largely unnoticed, while other matters that one might not think would be given as much attention are enough to spark the anger of the fans in a very meaningful way. Game of Thrones was never shy about the content it would show since just about everything appeared to be fair game. From the brutal beheadings to the simulated rape the fans had plenty to say about a FICTIONAL show when it came to what they would and wouldn’t accept. But it would appear that there’s one scene that fans would have never filmed had they been in control. Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief that fans don’t get to control what happens in a show or a movie since the utter chaos that would ensue would be a living nightmare. But there were several scenes that people had a problem with, with a few of them having to do with assaulting women throughout the course of the show.
But the surprise here is that the top spot belongs to a scene that happened in the first season of the show, a scene that involved the giant knight known as The Mountain. Try to recall how Gregor Clegane went against the Knight of Flowers, Loras Tyrell, and ended up being unseated during a joust. Obviously, The Mountain was incensed by his loss to the much smaller knight, but in a fit of pique he demanded his sword and in one massive swing he nearly decapitated his horse before going after Loras. In fact, the only reason that Loras didn’t become the next fatality was due to the intervention of Sandor Clegane, The Hound, and Gregor’s brother. Only when King Robert told them to essentially knock it off did The Mountain storm off, leaving the mutilated corpse of his horse and everyone else behind.
But it’s something to think about. All the horrible things that happened during the course of the show, the murders, the rapes, the depraved acts that took part against human beings, and the decapitation of a horse is what people rail the hardest against. Fans are amusing, truly. The act was indeed quite brutal and probably not fully necessary, but it also wasn’t the absolute worst thing to happen during the show’s run. Sansa being raped, the Red Wedding, Sansa’s dire wolf being killed simply because a dire wolf had to die (where was the outrage there?), pretty much every episode had a terrible happening that didn’t need to happen. And what about Hodor? That was an emotional loss for a lot of people if anyone cares to remember. Did people suddenly forget that the white walkers also killed children and recruited them to their ranks? The death of the horse was brutal, there’s no doubt about it, but one has to guess that the horse died quicker than a lot of those who came later on in the show, which is why it’s easy to mock the fans for their outrage.
What’s funny about fans, and especially superfans, is that everything is all well and good when things are going the way they expect them to, when the show is following a course that they think is necessary. But when something unexpected happens, people freak out. Its kind of like the Joker said in The Dark Knight, “It’s all part of a plan”. Even if the plan is horrifying, no one flips out, because it’s expected to happen. But hoo boy, when the plan goes awry or fails, or something else other than the plan happens, then the stuff has really hit the fan, and it’s time to flip out. From the murders in the first few minutes of the show, then the deaths and atrocities that happen throughout the rest of the show, animals and humans alike, people had a lot of moments to pick from as the worst in the series. And they picked the beheading of a horse. It sounds like the poor people of King’s Landing didn’t even rate a single mention.
As I said, fans have a weird sense of what’s the worst that could happen and what they would take out of a story, but to each their own I guess. One thing that any fan should realize is that they should be grateful that GoT only showed so much of the horror that could have gone on. A real story knows no bounds, and if writers were to reveal what’s in their heads at least half of the time a lot of people might never read another book in their lives. But seeing a horse getting decapitated, that’s the worst. Okay.
