Cersei, this time with spoilers

[novin_ha]

My second installment in the Women are Love fest.

Q&A type meta about Cersei. Spoilers up to ADWD.

Comments

[novin_ha]

It doesn't follow the books to the letter, it's already done some changes that I was less or more happy about. I think the TV writers are slightly more sensitive about the gender stuff than Martin is.

I don't think the books are impossible to enjoy. I mean, I've enjoyed them tremendously - but if you read with a certain level of cultural / critical awareness (as I didn't at first and do now) and if you need to have some basic decency levels met before you enjoy a text, then it can be problematic.

I creatively re-interpret. And this is far from a complete picture, of course.

[shiv5468]

And this is why I can't read the books. I really don't see any of the characters as being fully realised / 3D, or it being that edgy / pushing the boundaries of fantasy.

And it's shit to women. You can argue it's better shit to women than Tolkien because the women get to do something rather than be absent, but it's still awful. And if it's based on the War of the Roses, women were active in that time period, and had rather more ooomph about them. It's written by a man whose grasp of history and women's place in history is not as good as he thinks it is.

I can't work out whether Cersei is supposed to be Elizabeth Woodville or Margaret of Anjou. Either way, it's not going to end well for her. Which is a shame.

[novin_ha]

If I were to start reading now, I'd probably throw the book across the room and never get into it. As I read them before these things were apparent to me, I am involved in the story whether I want to or not, and I've developed strategies of dealing with things I cannot but hate about these books.

One of which is calling the writer an asshole in my head as I read. A lot.

I think it tried for edgy with the surprise protagonist death in book one, and then it settled for porn-as-edgy. As though boobs somehow made it artistic. Worked for all those classical painters, amirite?

[ellestra]

I generally think the past was an awful place, especially for women. I don't really mind showing the misogyny of the time period. Deep inside I'm kind of glad when books do that as I think there way too much people glorifying it. I remember that reading the first book that what happens to both Cercei and Dany was hard to read but it also made me think "This is why it was no fun to be a princess

[novin_ha]

I agree that there's a point in showing the past non-nostalgically, but I think it doesn't really need to be either nostalgia or likeable rapists. Overall, I think the books do have two (main) disturbing tendencies, and those are the rape apology and the women being revealed as very ineffectual, incapable rulers. Daenerys is a good leader, but can't rule her way out of a sack, and Cersei is unbelievably erratic. And while Stannis, for instance, can also make very bad decisions, his are motivated by his sense of fairness; even his pettiness about being the least liked of his siblings (which could be compared with Cersei feeling left over compared to her brothers) is given a more pleasant twist

[inti_chan]

I'm pretty much of your opinion here. If I remember correctly didn't Jaime more or less rape her once? Not sure about it though.
As for her using sex... there are people saying it is okay to use sex to get better jobs in the present so why not use it when it might be the only way?
Disturbingly enough I don't know whether I wouldn't do nearly the same stuff Cersei did if I were in that situation.

[novin_ha]

I don't think I even want to go into that scene - it's Jaime's POV and Cersei clearly says 'no' - and then she says yes, a lot. I don't think it was intended to read as rape, but it sure was not okay.

Then again, that happens in the series a lot, doesn't it.

[pellamerethiel]

I love the method you chose to create this meta, it's really refreshing. ;) And I liked it very much, especially the last part, about overlooking her faults because if people do that with Tyrion, then why not?

Cersei \o/ Cersei/Jaime \o/