stannisisthefury:

onionjulius:

scrambledmeggs:

fantastiquecollective:

In the ASoIaF fandom I find so much Cersei hate, when other, usually male, characters do the same as her or worse, and still are loved. Cersei needs a little extra love. Am I the only one who feels this way?

OK, there is so much wrong with this I don’t even know where to start.  Let’s take these comparisons one at a time, shall we?

1. I’ve yet to meet someone who calls Littlefinger a “mastermind” unless they’re calling him an “evil mastermind”.  Cersei tries to scheme to get power, and is certainly evil, but her plans are always emotionally driven, impetuous, and fatally flawed, so THAT’S why you don’t hear her called a “mastermind.”  It’s not because she’s a female, it’s because her plans suck and Littlefinger’s are usually much more nuanced and thought-through (although usually equally bitchy).
2. Since when did people NOT think Robert was a cad?  Yeah, he didn’t deserve to get all boar-murdered, but that’s because no one does.  Robert is never portrayed as ANYTHING other than a man-slut, and if you’re reading excuses into it, that’s you projecting.  Also, Robert never FUCKED HIS SIBLING AND IMAGINED HIS SPOUSE WAS ACTUALLY HIS SIBLING DURING SEX. 
3. This is a straw-man; “offers enemy exile as a consolation prize” is one of the tiniest details of these two people’s storylines, and yet you set it up to look like the sole reason one is considered a “hero” and the other is considered a “villain.”  If you lined up 500 people who read ASOIF and asked them, “What makes you think of Cersei as a villain?” - you’d get, “she had her brother attempt to murder a little kid so he wouldn’t tell anyone they were in an incestuous relationship” or any of 50 other examples of her being a bad guy.  They’d probably also take a really long time to get to “he offers his enemies exile” as an answer to “What makes Ned a hero?”.

What’s my point?  My point is that Cersei is a bitch.  She is a slut.  She is a villain.  But Littlefinger isn’t a real nice guy, Robert isn’t a poor cuckold, and “he doesn’t always murder everyone ever” isn’t the only reason people like Ned.  Stop crying SEXISM because people don’t like this woman.  People don’t like this woman because she is EVIL.  If I hear one more “feminist” argue that it’s OK that she has basically everyone murdered if they’re not a sycophant because “she’s just fiercely protective of her children!” I will flip out.  She IS fiercely protective of her children.  She is ALSO a slutty, villainous bitch.  STFU.

I actually don’t think that the LF vs Cersei and Ned vs Cersei comparisons are very good.  Although, yes, LF does get called a mastermind a whole lot, and wins some admiration for it.  But it is true that Martin sets LF up to be more successful than Cersei when it comes to the game of thrones, he plants the seeds of the image of Cersei having no more than “low cunning”.  Also, yes I agree that people do not see Ned as a hero merely for letting Cersei go into exile, and nor do most people actually hate Cersei for sending Ned to the wall (at least in my experience).

But slutty … I do take issue with that.  Cersei is cruel and does unjustifiable things (and people can certainly dislike her for it, while others like her for it in a different way), but slutty?  There’s nothing in that moniker that doesn’t constitute slut-shaming, and no, fandom’s treatment of Robert’s sexcapades isn’t the same.  “Slut” connotes far more shame than “cad”, which can even have a loveable slant to it.  Cersei sleeps with men other than Jaime because she lives in a world where it’s one of her few weapons.  She is not loose or easy, she’s sexually utilitarian.  Other than that … well if her incest bugs you, okay, but “incestuous” and “slutty” aren’t synonymous.  Robert didn’t think of fucking his sibling while fucking Cersei, but he did think of Lyanna, I’m sure.  I don’t see how the incest part ties in at all to “slut”, unless you’re just using it as a catch-all term for sexually condemnable woman.

I really don’t think there’s any excuse for anyone calling Cersei a slut.  Villainous?  Yes she is villainous.  Cruel?  Yes she is cruel.  But slut, no, sorry.

Jaime didn’t give Bran the window on Cersei’s orders. In fact, she was pissed about it.

I think people wronguflly judge Cersei’s actions sometimes because she’s so unlikable. I personally really hate her, but I wouldn’t be quick to judge her relationship with Jaime, or the fact that she cheated on Robert, or that she wanted her son to be a King.

She was obviously in love with Jaime, and whether or not you have a problem with incest that’s something really hard to deny. Cersei loved her children and Jaime above herself, so that already disclassifies her as a total monster in my eyes.

She was forced into marriage because that’s how society worked for her and women like her. In many instances Cersei mentions how she wishes she’d been born a man, and I think that’s something that frustrates her greatly - that as a woman, her position forces her to marry a man she doesn’t love, and never rule where she thought she had a place to.

I’m not making any excuses for the wrongs she did. I think she was cruel and petty, and not someone you could trust. But to take everything she did and organize into a neat pile of ‘evil’ would not be very accurate.

I also have to agree with onionjulius about slut-shaming thing. Not only is ‘slut’ a bad word that discriminates against women’s sexuality, it’s also downright absurd when used against Cersei.