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this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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Yeah but if you hate her with a fury and dont hate certain men in the show its still disproportional. Hating Cersei and loving Robert is very common in the fandom. Or hating Cersei but considering Littlefinger love to hate.
Also, again, a lot of the depths of her evil do not manifest until later on. Yes she argues for killing Bran but the level of spitting vitriol she got in early seasons compared to male charachters other than Joffrey was simply not proportional to her actual actions.
I never argued that youre not supposed to hate her. Its not the same as Skyler.
It just was, I'm sorry. Cersei is supposed to be hated. You can argue that there's a misogynist tinge to the fact that the evil characters who we are meant to hate are disproportionately women, and that they rarely get the credit of being "cool" the same way male villains do. But Cersei was always hateable, from her first moment on the pages to her last moment on screen she spends most of her time either actively engaging in evil or being just kind of an unlikable dick.
The difference between Robert and Cersei is that Robert is a friend of the "main character" when introduced, outwardly charming, cracks jokes, and is a total dipshit who didn't set out to be king, who sucks at it, and who hurts people unintentionally (His only genuine bile is spared for Targaryans.) , while Cersei WANTS to be queen and does all her actions intentionally. It is totally a good faith reading to find Robert personable and charming and to find Cersei vile. You're SUPPOSED to find Cersei vile. The abuse she suffered at the hands of Robert, her father's neglect of her, and her struggles with the role of women is meant to add layers to her decisions, her embrace of Robert's worst traits, and her misogyny (Also one of Robert's traits, but Cersei is one of the most misogynist character in a book series that also includes a theocrat who doesn't consider women capable of true thought) not excuse it or make it sympathetic. Your problem here is with the story of ASOIAF.
Edit:
CW: SA
Like even if we can both agree that Robert isn't a moral character. The difference in tone between the two is just not very conducive to your argument here. Robert mean spirited jokes involved sending a squire out for a nonexistent doohickey, Cersei's mean spirited jokes is gleefully taunting a child with how they're about to be raped.Robert is an abuser and no amount of affability should obscure that to anyone who's paying attention. I get why he's liked, and you analysis of that is good (besides the idea that he only hurts people accidentally, disagree with that.). And i think you make a good point that the problem is mostly in ASOIAF/GOT rather than the fanbase for simply following cues. But it does still bother me that fans dont seem to get that Robert is an abuser.
This is my main problem i think. The Littlefinger example is probably better than the Robert one in that sense. But i have seen a lot of feminist analysis pointing out Cersei being hated for the same traits men are liked for, and Robert is often an example. Another one i didnt bring up though is Tywin.
Also i think the real example of fanbase mysoginy is the treatment of early season Sansa, as she was despised for acting like a normal teenage girl. Always been a source of bitterness for me that she was my fave starting around Blackwater, and other people getting on board when she "got cool".
But she didnt fit the "older blonde woman who is hated by the fandom unreasonably" point i was trying to make lol.
Not trying to argue against most of your points, but if you re-read book 1, you realize that people hate Sansa because (at the beginning of the story) she's a little brat who brazenly ignores what her father tells her to do and, in so doing, gets him killed and her entire families' lives (her own included) utterly destroyed (remember that while Ned idiotically warns Cersei that he's going to rat her out, it's Sansa who shows up and provides Cersei with all of the details of Ned's plans, in the process of whining about having to leave the city).
Obviously she grows a great deal as a character over the course of the series, but it's very easy to start hating her early on, and that kind of impression can be hard to let go of.
I never cared much for the Sansa story, because the whole thing leans way too much into GRRMs weird thing for subverting character archetypes by subjecting a 12 year old to torture that's quite frankly really creepy.
Tbf, in the books Sansa has a pretty consistent growth arc so far. Its only in the show where they go backwards and put her back into torture situations with Ramsay. Since Ramsay marries and tortures another charachter in the books, we know thats not happening there.
I also dont think Sansa's much of an "archetype subversion". Innocent naive girl who goes through abuse, but then learns to be shrewd and "play the game" is her arc. I never saw her story in the books as unnecessary torture porn. I dont even think most of it is on page or described in the books? Putting her through it on screen is more of a show thing, again.