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.
that they rarely get the credit of being "cool" the same way male villains do
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.
Sansa is a child who screws over her sister in a childish way in pursuit of a fairytale romance, and suffers rape, humiliation, violence, trauma and hourly threats for it.
She is an idealist who believes all t he conflict is a misunderstanding that could easily be fixed because she's like 12, and sees her family die for it.
Sansa is absolutely overhated as a character in a way that's obviously rooted in part by misogyny.
Yeah, I agree, and I don't think I even disagreed with anything you've said here when this conversation started anyway, but even moreso now after reconsidering the source material more carefully. When I wrote this I was offering the reasons why people might come to hate her early on, based on my own feelings during my first re-read ("dammit Sansa why would you go to Cersei, of all people? AAAAAA you're literally getting your father killed right now!"), and also then probably affording people too much benefit of the doubt for not recognizing her character's growth as the series continues.
I still view early Sansa as a very flawed character (terms like entitled and self-centered spring to mind), but I think my own issues led me to hold her more accountable than was fair (see elsewhere in the thread).
Edit: Actually, I think I do have to point out one flaw here:
CW:SA
In the book series, at least, I don't believe Sansa is ever raped; the girl who suffers at Bolton's hands is actually Jeyne Poole.
She is not raped by Joffrey. She's groomed by Petyr, and possibly assaulted by The Hound. She is also stripped naked in public which I would count as sexual assault.
Tyrion also leaves her alone, despite constant pressure from literally everyone around him to do otherwise. And then she's just in a series of unrealized bethrothals.
Anyway, this doesn't detract from your overall point: she suffers horribly for whatever relatively minor sins she's really guilty of, and yet people hate her far more than is justified, and well past the point at which she's genuinely not the same person she was at the start of the series.
Holding child charachters to adult standards will never sit well with me. The girl hadnt had her period yet.
Nah feminists have written in depth how the hatred for Sansa early on is completely unfair and mysoginist. People hate teen girls who act like teen girls. Not backing down on that one.
I literally work with children professionally lmao. This is just basic developmental science. Sansa had poor judgement there, thats all. Her judgement was clouded by a crush, something kids her age often do.
Completely agree with this take. Children can't be held to the same standard as adults. That's actually what makes her character interesting and realistic. She is taken in and manipulated in ways she's not capable of understanding. In fact she's so easily manipulated because she has in fact been indoctrinated to believe in handsome princes and beautiful queens being good, and that her only goal in life should be ro fall in love and marry the most highly socially ranking nobleman possible.
I've heard people complain about how she acts while she's trapped and being abused by the Lannisters too. Like, she's 11. She does lack agency, because she's a literal child being abused.
As someone who used to be bullied constantly as a kid, I see this very differently than you, it seems. I have zero sympathy for supporters of bullies.
I went and reviewed the passage myself, and I admit I hadn't remembered Sansa's part in it quite right. She mostly seems to be caught in a tide not of her own making during the scene itself. But she is given two very clear indicators that Joffrey is human garbage in that scene: he threatens (and indeed, assaults--he cuts the boy's face) an unarmed servant boy with a sword, knowing full well that any defense the boy offers will earn execution. And then when she goes to soothe him after everyone has left, he's awful to her ("his eyes snapped open...and there was nothing but loathing there, nothing but the vilest contempt. 'Then go,' he spit at her.") and storms off.
I will grant that she didn't have a good option when Ned wanted her to tell him what happened, in front of both Joffrey and Arya, and the king and queen to boot, but she later defends Joffrey to Arya when she brings up Mycah's death ("Your butcher's boy attacked the prince," Sansa says, knowing that isn't true, to justify Mycah's murder, in a private conversation with only her father, her sister, and a Septa; this is not just some lighthearted shit here, and politics isn't an excuse in this case either).
I happen to believe that children do deserve to be treated as moral creatures, and judged for their failures to maintain proper ethics. The difference between them and adults is the likelihood of growth, not the existence of moral faculties.
I was bullied too? Did you think someone with Autism in their name avoided bullying? I forgive my bullies though because they were children.
As for Sansa, look at what BurgerPunk said. Thats what was going on with her and how she viewed Joffrey.
I happen to believe that children do deserve to be treated as moral creatures, and judged for their failures to maintain proper ethics.
Their brains arent fully developed yet. They dont have a fully developed sense of morality. If by judged for their failures you mean adults teaching them proper ethics after they fail then agreed. If you mean hating children for their failures to meet adult standards, disagree.
Look, I wouldn't say I hate early Sansa, but she is an incredibly frustrating character. She gets better, but she's a little shit at the beginning. I don't think it's somehow wrong to view a kid as a little shit, knowing that they will likely become a better person as they mature. As an educator(?) I suppose it's more important to try to reserve judgment on kids, but I think that may have led you to have something of an overdeveloped view of what is and isn't acceptable vis a vis forming opinions about children as people. The key is to recognize that a child's personality and morality aren't set in stone, not to afford them total moral latitude.
The key is to recognize that a child's personality and morality aren't set in stone, not to afford them total moral latitude.
Right no obviously i agree with this as an educator. Activly intervening and leading kids in the right moral direction is one of the most important things a person can do. But im not Sansa's teacher, so i cant intervene and help her grow better. So all i have left is the sympathy for her bad situation and unfair upbringing.
I get that, and I think this conversation helped me appreciate at least one of the ways educators have to adjust their mode of thinking to do their jobs effectively. But I also don't think it's entirely wrong to have opinions about children as good or bad, and I think you implicitly acknowledged that when you didn't take issue with my characterization of Joffrey (also a child, after all) as "human garbage." (Sansa, ironically, isn't a stark enough example.)
True, but he crosses more serious lines and, I think, has more agency in his choices.
I actually do have some sympathy for Joff though, Robert's reaction to seeing early sociopathic tendencies was to beat him, and being Cersei's kid is not an easy life lol. Joff is written as a bad seed who was always going to be bad though, which i think is a flaw in Martin's writing. I chose to kill the author there and interpert him as more of a 50/50 nature vs nurture situation, where better parents and a lack of power corrupting he could have turned out better. I realize, of course, that Tommen and Myrcella turned out decent kids under similar circumstances. But hey that happens irl too. Kids react to abuse differently. Me and my sister definitely did.
Another charachter thats similar to Joff for me in that he's a child who's awful and has agency, and who's written as a bad seed, but who I have some sympathy for because of life circumstances and being a child, is Viserys.
I do get your pov on judging kid charachters more now that youve explained it though. I appreciate that.
That's actually a very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing that!
(I admit I did also have to soften my own perspective on Sansa when I went back to the source material--Martin is careful to ensure that Sansa is written as just a kid who gets caught up in forces she doesn't understand and can't control, and is crushing on the worst possible dude. She really doesn't have all that much agency, and if I'm honest I think it was my inner child being unwilling to sympathize with someone who backed up a bully that kinda drove my perspective originally.)
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.
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.
CW:SA
Sansa is a child who screws over her sister in a childish way in pursuit of a fairytale romance, and suffers rape, humiliation, violence, trauma and hourly threats for it. She is an idealist who believes all t he conflict is a misunderstanding that could easily be fixed because she's like 12, and sees her family die for it. Sansa is absolutely overhated as a character in a way that's obviously rooted in part by misogyny.
Yeah, I agree, and I don't think I even disagreed with anything you've said here when this conversation started anyway, but even moreso now after reconsidering the source material more carefully. When I wrote this I was offering the reasons why people might come to hate her early on, based on my own feelings during my first re-read ("dammit Sansa why would you go to Cersei, of all people? AAAAAA you're literally getting your father killed right now!"), and also then probably affording people too much benefit of the doubt for not recognizing her character's growth as the series continues.
I still view early Sansa as a very flawed character (terms like entitled and self-centered spring to mind), but I think my own issues led me to hold her more accountable than was fair (see elsewhere in the thread).
Edit: Actually, I think I do have to point out one flaw here:
CW:SA
In the book series, at least, I don't believe Sansa is ever raped; the girl who suffers at Bolton's hands is actually Jeyne Poole.
Also, please add a CW for the SA reference.
spoiler
She is not raped by Joffrey. She's groomed by Petyr, and possibly assaulted by The Hound. She is also stripped naked in public which I would count as sexual assault.
.
Tyrion also leaves her alone, despite constant pressure from literally everyone around him to do otherwise. And then she's just in a series of unrealized bethrothals.
Anyway, this doesn't detract from your overall point: she suffers horribly for whatever relatively minor sins she's really guilty of, and yet people hate her far more than is justified, and well past the point at which she's genuinely not the same person she was at the start of the series.
Holding child charachters to adult standards will never sit well with me. The girl hadnt had her period yet.
Nah feminists have written in depth how the hatred for Sansa early on is completely unfair and mysoginist. People hate teen girls who act like teen girls. Not backing down on that one.
I would point you to the interaction between Sansa, Arya, Joffrey, and the butcher's boy. She is not just a teen girl, she's a shitty person.Not going to convince me to apply the term "shitty person" to a prepubescent child. Reassess how you analyze child characters.
Book 1 Sansa consistently made bad choices, but she was also caught in awful situations. Kids make bad choices. Their brains arent developed.
If you think backing up a violent bully isn't a choice worthy of moral judgment, then I think you should reassess how you see children.I literally work with children professionally lmao. This is just basic developmental science. Sansa had poor judgement there, thats all. Her judgement was clouded by a crush, something kids her age often do.
Completely agree with this take. Children can't be held to the same standard as adults. That's actually what makes her character interesting and realistic. She is taken in and manipulated in ways she's not capable of understanding. In fact she's so easily manipulated because she has in fact been indoctrinated to believe in handsome princes and beautiful queens being good, and that her only goal in life should be ro fall in love and marry the most highly socially ranking nobleman possible.
Exactly thank you.
I've heard people complain about how she acts while she's trapped and being abused by the Lannisters too. Like, she's 11. She does lack agency, because she's a literal child being abused.
As someone who used to be bullied constantly as a kid, I see this very differently than you, it seems. I have zero sympathy for supporters of bullies.
I went and reviewed the passage myself, and I admit I hadn't remembered Sansa's part in it quite right. She mostly seems to be caught in a tide not of her own making during the scene itself. But she is given two very clear indicators that Joffrey is human garbage in that scene: he threatens (and indeed, assaults--he cuts the boy's face) an unarmed servant boy with a sword, knowing full well that any defense the boy offers will earn execution. And then when she goes to soothe him after everyone has left, he's awful to her ("his eyes snapped open...and there was nothing but loathing there, nothing but the vilest contempt. 'Then go,' he spit at her.") and storms off.
I will grant that she didn't have a good option when Ned wanted her to tell him what happened, in front of both Joffrey and Arya, and the king and queen to boot, but she later defends Joffrey to Arya when she brings up Mycah's death ("Your butcher's boy attacked the prince," Sansa says, knowing that isn't true, to justify Mycah's murder, in a private conversation with only her father, her sister, and a Septa; this is not just some lighthearted shit here, and politics isn't an excuse in this case either).
I happen to believe that children do deserve to be treated as moral creatures, and judged for their failures to maintain proper ethics. The difference between them and adults is the likelihood of growth, not the existence of moral faculties.
I was bullied too? Did you think someone with Autism in their name avoided bullying? I forgive my bullies though because they were children.
As for Sansa, look at what BurgerPunk said. Thats what was going on with her and how she viewed Joffrey.
Their brains arent fully developed yet. They dont have a fully developed sense of morality. If by judged for their failures you mean adults teaching them proper ethics after they fail then agreed. If you mean hating children for their failures to meet adult standards, disagree.
Look, I wouldn't say I hate early Sansa, but she is an incredibly frustrating character. She gets better, but she's a little shit at the beginning. I don't think it's somehow wrong to view a kid as a little shit, knowing that they will likely become a better person as they mature. As an educator(?) I suppose it's more important to try to reserve judgment on kids, but I think that may have led you to have something of an overdeveloped view of what is and isn't acceptable vis a vis forming opinions about children as people. The key is to recognize that a child's personality and morality aren't set in stone, not to afford them total moral latitude.
Frusterating is fine. I even somewhat agree.
Right no obviously i agree with this as an educator. Activly intervening and leading kids in the right moral direction is one of the most important things a person can do. But im not Sansa's teacher, so i cant intervene and help her grow better. So all i have left is the sympathy for her bad situation and unfair upbringing.
I get that, and I think this conversation helped me appreciate at least one of the ways educators have to adjust their mode of thinking to do their jobs effectively. But I also don't think it's entirely wrong to have opinions about children as good or bad, and I think you implicitly acknowledged that when you didn't take issue with my characterization of Joffrey (also a child, after all) as "human garbage." (Sansa, ironically, isn't a stark enough example.)
True, but he crosses more serious lines and, I think, has more agency in his choices.
I actually do have some sympathy for Joff though, Robert's reaction to seeing early sociopathic tendencies was to beat him, and being Cersei's kid is not an easy life lol. Joff is written as a bad seed who was always going to be bad though, which i think is a flaw in Martin's writing. I chose to kill the author there and interpert him as more of a 50/50 nature vs nurture situation, where better parents and a lack of power corrupting he could have turned out better. I realize, of course, that Tommen and Myrcella turned out decent kids under similar circumstances. But hey that happens irl too. Kids react to abuse differently. Me and my sister definitely did.
Another charachter thats similar to Joff for me in that he's a child who's awful and has agency, and who's written as a bad seed, but who I have some sympathy for because of life circumstances and being a child, is Viserys.
I do get your pov on judging kid charachters more now that youve explained it though. I appreciate that.
That's actually a very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing that!
(I admit I did also have to soften my own perspective on Sansa when I went back to the source material--Martin is careful to ensure that Sansa is written as just a kid who gets caught up in forces she doesn't understand and can't control, and is crushing on the worst possible dude. She really doesn't have all that much agency, and if I'm honest I think it was my inner child being unwilling to sympathize with someone who backed up a bully that kinda drove my perspective originally.)
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.