[ SECRET POST #2291 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2291 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.


__________________________________________________



12.


__________________________________________________



13.


__________________________________________________



14.


__________________________________________________



15.


__________________________________________________



16.


__________________________________________________


















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #327.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[miarrow]

It's pretty gross how people will bend over backwards to talk about the other characters in the series and how dynamic they are, but the female characters like Cersei only get slurs thrown at them. I don't think there are a lot of true "villains" in the series (though there are a TON of not so nice people I wouldn't want to hang out with) and the ones that are I wouldn't lump Cersei in with (I'd say more like Gregor Clegane and Ramsay Bolton).

But judging by these threads, everyone loves to hate her and god forbid you read an interesting and full (and very flawed) character out of her and enjoy it.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh please. The closest male equivalent to Cersei -- Tywin -- most people acknowledge as being a shitty person. Cersei's not even on the same level of Theon who regrets the fucked up stuff he did.

[miarrow]

Please, tell me more.

[(Anonymous)]

Tell you more what?

There are no male equivalents to Cersei that people defend to the extent that Cersei's stans do. Granted Tywin might have one or two supporters but most recognize him as being a shitty person.

Characters like Theon and Jaime are characters who at the very least have changed. I don't know if I'd say they are "redeemed" but we've gotten to the point at least where Jaime is a much more decent person after meeting Brienne and Theon earnestly regrets what he's done and wishes that he died defending Robb.

I was actually looking forward to a similar arc with Cersei when I found out she was getting her own POV but it really just cemented further what a horrible person she was even if it did make her more complex.

[miarrow]

There are plenty of shittier characters than Cersei in the books. The Mountain, Ramsay Bolton, most of the Greyjoys (Theon, no matter his redemptive arc killed two small boys for nothing), Dany's bro who I suddenly can't remember the name of and like I could go on. It's a gross series of books with some pretty terrible characters and I think we got a lot from Cersei's POV. She pretty much plays the game exactly like the men do, but gets much, MUCH more hate from fandom because she's female.

[(Anonymous)]

(Theon, no matter his redemptive arc killed two small boys for nothing)

As opposed to the babies Cersei had massacred?

And yeah the characters you mentioned (except for Theon as I already explained) are pretty much recognized as being shitty people. No one stans for Gregor and most of the Ramsay fans are trolling. You don't have much to stand on here.

[miarrow]

I am not saying Cersei is a good person or hasn't done terrible things, I'm just saying a lot of the arguments against her are by the same people propping other characters up who've done the same or worse and getting blamed for other things.

I happen to like both Theon and Cersei as characters, but they're both pretty messed up.

I have plenty to stand on, but I'm not going to spout examples at you all day, because I don't have the energy so, yay you won, whatever.

[(Anonymous)]

other characters up who've done the same or worse and getting blamed for other things.

WHO exactly? Because I'm having a hard time thinking of characters on Cersei's level who people are defending or looking the other way to the extent that they are for her. Now yes there probably are some people out there stanning for Tywin but they're not the majority of people.

[(Anonymous)]

" (Theon, no matter his redemptive arc killed two small boys for nothing)"

lmfao! This is what you choose as an example of someone "worse" than Cersei?
Have you even read the books? Seconding the example of all the children she orders murdered. Also, her BFF Qyburn and what she has done to Talyse.

[makoro]

Theon earnestly regrets what he's done and wishes that he died defending Robb.

Eh... I feel like it's more than this. Theon has had a pretty shitty life after his failure... If everything had gone his way, he probably wouldn't be as bothered.

Instead, he got Bolton.

[(Anonymous)]

Except it was pretty clear he was already experiencing guilt right after that whole debacle happened. Him having constant nightmares about them afterwards at least shows he was troubled on a subconscious level.

[(Anonymous)]

And not to excuse Theon but it was Bolton who convinced him to kill the two kids.

[(Anonymous)]

I particularly enjoyed the fallout from last week's episode where everyone was angry at Cat for simply ignoring Jon Snow, who she had no obligation to have any motherly feelings toward whatsoever, yet you have that scene with Tywin piling insults and practically disinheriting HIS OWN SON and robbing him of his birthright and yet people still love the guy.

[(Anonymous)]

Most people don't love Tywin.

[(Anonymous)]

From what little I've seen of the show fandom, a lot of people like Tywin.
From what little I've seen of the book fandom, most don't give a fuck about him but still don't bash him the way they do Cat or Cersei.

[(Anonymous)]

Well that's because the show pretty much woobified him with his Arya conversations.

Catelyn and Cersei are also more prominent characters in the books.

[(Anonymous)]

That's her husband's son. Fuck stepchildren, I guess?

Merging into a family with someone means merging into a family with them. You don't get to pick and choose which of their kids you'll love. For a grown woman to hold a grudge against a baby out of her own wounded pride is pretty fucking sad.

[(Anonymous)]

But Catelyn had and doesn't have any obligation to love Jon Snow. And she's of noble legitimate birth in a different world with a different society, it's not like how the situation would be viewed today. Jon was fed, clothed, sheltered, allowed to take lessons and play with the other Stark kids, and Cat kept her distance. Should she have held a grudge against Ned instead of Jon? yeah, probably. But emotions don't work in a nice logical way all the time, so I think that's very human for Cat. I like Jon and Cat and think they both had it hard, really.

[(Anonymous)]

Cersei is much more central to the important plots of the series and much more dynamic as a character than Gregor Clegane or Ramsay Bolton. She is much more influential than them and she is, pretty much, by any standard, a terrible human being - significantly more terrible than most of the major POV characters, I would argue. No, she's not a villain on the level of pure psychopathic monsters like Gregor or Ramsay, but she's still a villain.

I also don't see anything approaching the level of systemic sexism that you're indicating here - people seem to be pretty willing (as far as I've seen at least) to be pretty cool with most of the other female characters in the series. The only one that I've seen get a pronounced negative reaction in the way Cersei does is Catelyn - and while I would argue that is not good and in a lot of ways even more troubling than the reaction to Cersei, since Catelyn is a much more morally ambiguous character than Cersei, two examples don't really prove a theorem. (It used to be the case that Sansa got that sort of reaction, but I think that's changed, and I think fandom's changed).

ofc people shouldn't use slurs and that's always wrong, and I agree with you that Cersei is an interesting character, and I agree that ASOIAF fandom has its issues with sexism and misogyny. but just in terms of people liking or disliking her, it doesn't surprise me that people dislike someone who is so active and so fucked-up, and i don't think that dislike is a proof of or something necessarily caused by sexism. a lot of the times people don't like characters who are shitty people, sorry i guess.

just my 2c

[miarrow]

Yeah, but most of the characters hated on are female. It's great that you've found places in the fandom that don't react like that (and I would agree that while Cersei has some definite issues that I would totally understand people not liking her as a character, the amount of hate Cat gets for stuff that isn't even on par with Cersei is ridiculous), but I'm still seeing all the time gendered insults thrown at almost all of the female characters, while uplifting the males.

Take one stroll into Westeros.org and you'll see what I mean (although seriously don't if you've found a safe place in fandom, it's not worth it).

I just think 90% of the characters are likeable to me, because I can understand their motivations and they're fully realized characters... doesn't mean they're likeable as people or anything, but especially since Cersei's position has a lot to do with the way she is fighting against the misogynistic backdrop in the books (like her ideas getting co-opted by Tyrion and her paranoia being justified... because she was right) and a lot of the arguments I do see aren't about the bad things she does, but the bad things that people feel she does as a woman or a mother, which is where the problem is for me.

[(Anonymous)]

westeros.org shouldn't even be mentioned in mainstream convos, the same way 4chan or reddit isn't. they don't deserve to count.

[(Anonymous)]

From what I have experienced via the show fandom:

Cersei, Catelyn, Sansa, Ros, Shae, Talisa -- all get a fuck-ton of hatred directed their way and the last three are minor characters.

The first three have a lot of stans who give them a fuck-ton of love but most of that is in response to the hatred all three got from book fans coming into the show with a lot of hatred toward those characters in the books.

So while it is certainly possible people dislike Cersei simply because she isn't a good person, other people dislike her because she isn't a dude/doesn't live up to their definition of what a female character should be. (Arya, for instance, seems to be pretty loved by the show fandom, as does Brienne.)

[(Anonymous)]

Nope. That's not the fandom/rationale at all.

Ros isn't even in the books, nor is Talisa~ as such. That's why they get "hate" (I would balk at calling most of the criticism towards Talisa "hate" if you actually read it). Albeit, I do not ever read westeros.org or imdb. I see no hate toward Shae in the TV fandom at all. Everyone seems to love her now they completely changed her character and made her all sweet and wonderful and BFFs with Sansa.

Cersei gets more sympathy from show!only fans than those who have also read the books, true. Catelyn gets disproportionate and ridiculous levels of hate whether the fans are from the books or TV show first. Same as Sansa. There are shit tonnes of Sansa and Cat haters that have developed solely thanks to the show (same as Theon) -- mostly by people who have never read the books and have no idea what's to come (or the depth of character that these characters had in the books versus the butchering the adaption has done at times).

The Sansa and Cat love-fest is not merely a reaction~ to hate. Fans liked these characters before on their own merit, but they are very vocal now to counteract the disgusting spew that comes from TV and book fans alike -- mostly show fans. I don't think it's a fair assessment to say that all Sansa/Cat/Cersei stans are only that way (or have grown in such numbers) as a backlash to book-based!hate. It may appear that way because they're so vocal and dedicated to defending a character but that is not the REASON they like the character.

There is an overwhelming misunderstanding of female characters by show fans -- and I blame the show's writing itself for that. It perpetuates it. I don't really think they've done proper justice to a single main female character, especially POVs and thrown a heck of a lot of minor female characters under the bus as well. (I'm maybe holding my breath for Margaery. They may pull that off... but it's too soon to tell.) As a result of poor depictions of these characters, the fans develop giant gaps in their understanding -- and so the book fans (mostly) have stepped up to fill in those gaps and attempt to defend the characters. That doesn't mean they didn't like the characters until they felt the need to defend them. Why would you care enough to get that involved in defending them if you didn't already love them?

But I will say the majority of bile I see directed to Cersei has little to do with her actual villainous actions. It is primarily her having a vagina - therefore she is a whore, slut, bitch, cunt, etc. All the slurs. Usually with no attempt to even qualify why these slurs are even remotely justified. (Not that slurs can be justified, but there is very little reasoning for using them at all. Just a slur, that's it.)