imfourandwhatisthis:
semisweet-rubix:
#i’m pretty sure a good chunk of the people who hate her #just find it unappealing to see a portrait of a woman who’s nakedly ambitious #which is to say: fuck you #because you’re regurgitating an archaic trope #that women should be demure and meek and only gain power when it falls into their lap #well not cersei lannister #because she’s going to crawl over you and claw back the power she feels entitled to #and why shouldn’t she? #why wouldn’t she want to win when fools like her husband can be king? #if she makes you that uncomfortable #then maybe you should re-examine your own prejudice
Maybe we hate her because she is fucking evil…
Oh, and, she fucks her brother, has her husband killed, ignores his last request, imprisons the one person who has the kingdom’s good in mind (rather than their own lust for power), and rules the kingdom with absolute cruelty (not only allowing her son to act in such a psychotic and evil manner, but encouraging it)
The fact that she believes the only way to achieve power is through having others fear her is ludicrous.
I hate her as a person, not as a woman.
okay, the only reason that i’m responding to this is because it’s late, i’m sleep-deprived, and this is something like the fifth fucking post that you’ve reblogged from me lately with vitriolic commentary. WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME? you clearly dislike everything that i like, as you’ve gone to great lengths to broadcast, sometimes with personal attacks.
as for this specific subject: no one is saying that you can’t dislike cersei. go ahead. she’s definitely flawed. but don’t back up your dislike with sexism or double standards. i don’t think that she’s a good person but she is a good character. she’s compelling, understandable, complex, and honestly, if you’re able to brush her off as “evil” without considering her layers/motivations/context, that really says far more about you than it does about her or lena headey’s flawless portrayal.
since you are obviously a wonderfully objective person who can judge people’s strengths and weaknesses without any socially constructed biases, what are your opinions on the other people that you mentioned in your evaluation of cersei?
cersei doesn’t fuck jaime, they fuck each other - how does his sexuality play into your opinion of him vs. how cersei’s sexuality plays into your opinion of her? if it’s different, take a look at that, son. do you think that tyrion is good? look at your life, look at your choices.
she has her husband killed - the same husband who was an irresponsible, brutish king who repeatedly raped and abused her for over a decade?
ned stark, is he blameless? she does what she does to protect her own, just as everyone else in this series does. as for ned having the good of the kingdom in mind, i’d argue that ned really doesn’t do what’s right in terms of what will be the most practical and beneficial but what’s right from an outdated, counterproductive, contradictory idea of “honor” (though the individuals and institutions to which he pledges his honor are not honorable at all so…). and the starks aren’t the pure protagonists. if you’re still stuck seeing them as the noble heroes in a good-and-evil world, congratulations, you’ve managed to ignore how asoiaf subverts every courtly trope and stereotype, which grrm has explicitly said is the core point of the series. anyway, the starks certainly have their baggage and their stained family history and their dark sides.
did you miss the part where she tried to stop some of joffrey’s actions and he threatened to kill her? did you miss the fear washing over her? did you miss the part where she’s still fucking powerless because she’s a woman? did you miss how her exertion of power over littlefinger was clearly her grasping at the last vestige of control she has in this deeply misogynistic society? and HMM, I WONDER FUCKING WHY she thinks that fear = power. WHERE could she have possibly learned that?
also, JOFFREY DOES NOT EXIST IN A VACUUM. he is influenced by the people around him (including his father(s), his uncle, his advisers, his enablers, his courtiers, etc.), not just cersei, and if you genuinely don’t see that he learned his patterns of abuse from robert, you are missing the whole damn point. and stop blaming cersei for “her son” because A) terrible logic and B) you know that women don’t just shit out kids, right? robert and jaime are just as accountable for their children, if you want to go the route of blaming the parents. if you don’t allocate responsibility equally in this situation, then YES, your arguments ARE rooted in sexism.
if you vilify cersei but love jaime/tyrion/everyone else who makes choices that are just as wretched as hers can be, you need to examine your reasoning.
other people have said it MUCH better than i have (i’m very sleep-deprived right now) so if you’re actually as balanced as you say that you are, go seek out some of their posts and try to educate yourself. in the meantime, stop reblogging things from me shitting all over the taggers or the gifmakers! you’ve done this often enough in the past few months for me to remember you and i don’t even know you so that must be saying something.
