Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 235 — AFFC Cersei VII featuring Rohanne

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

"Ten thousand of your children perished in my palm, Your Grace, she thought, slipping a third finger into Myr. Whilst you snored, I would lick your sons off my face and fingers one by one, all those pale sticky princes. You claimed your rights, my lord, but in the darkness I would eat your heirs." Professor of Cerseiology at the University of Lesbos, Rohanne, joins us to do a deep dive about Cersei, queerness, and the importance of complex narratives. Where to find Rohanne: https://x.com/cyrilwoodcock and https://bsky.app/profile/cyrilwoodcock.bsky.social Essays and resources mentioned in the episode: A Most Uncommon Woman: Cersei Lannister’s Gender Trouble by Rohanne and Lo the Lynx https://lothelynx.wordpress.com/2021/10/17/a-most-uncommon-woman-cersei-lannisters-gender-trouble/  Rohanne’s psychoanalytic analysis of Jaime and Cersei’s relationship: https://www.youtube.com/live/vLi47CKhFPA?si=tJL7BpchfyqTXY4Q  Rohanne on Melisandre and PTSD on NotACast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0VPklta6R9p7JLxVfoRQj1?si=2f98e700206745b6  Scholarly works mentioned in this episode-  The Traffic in Women by Gayle Rubin https://summermeetings2013.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/rubin-traffic.pdf  This Sex Which Is Not One by Luce Irigaray https://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/feminism/Irigaray.pdf  Tori Amos being Cersei- https://youtu.be/a9zAE3qL-sU?si=rtxQExndYDxKZDBu and https://youtu.be/tQ9mpu-t-7Y?si=mz83A5W2kXfMA4E6  Rohanne's Cersei playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Vqe6prPlLf54kdP0iYX2W Music credits: "Spring Thaw" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ---- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: liesandarborgold.com Intro by Anton Langhage

Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Cannon Reads of Song of Ice and Fire, episode 235. Circe Seven featuring our friend, Rowan. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana. And yes, thank you, everyone, for joining us today in our lecture hall in this classroom, where we have- Oh my god. We've brought a guest lecturer today,

the professor of Circeology. Yes, she is. I mean, it's a mix of lecturing and adventuring because, you know, last time you were saying we need religious history here, we need a religious historian, Colin Matty. This time you're like, swamp, we need fucking Steve Irwin. Get her in. Yes. Rowan, we couldn't do it without you.

You are a twin. I mean, you wrote the book, Being a Twin. How could we do this episode without you here? Yeah, my twin sister isn't my type could have at least gotten the hotter one I don't know that Jamie really is her type beyond looking like her. You know, anyway, that's a whole discussion but hold the story I'm so glad you're here. I really do feel even jokes aside I feel like the Cersei POV is going to be the POV that's like the college course on Cersei, like understanding every single aspect of the story beyond fan interpretation, our interpretation, your interpretation, and some of these amazing guests that we have coming on.

So thank you for joining us. One thing I think is important to say as I introduce myself as the head of Circeology at the University of Lesbos, found it in 2014, 10 year anniversary right here, I think it's important to think about positionality. So I want to frame who I am and where I come from in this analysis, which is as a white, chronically ill, mostly lesbian woman living in New York City. I have extensive experience working with teens with severe personality disorders. And currently for who knows how much longer because we are filming this right after the 2024 election. So that's where I come from

when I'm analyzing. Having a social worker is all about your positionality and positioning yourself in the context of dare I, all which came before. Oh my God. Oh my God. But yes, kind of study. Yeah. Because everything about how we as people analyze a text is so, and a poor person or whatever comes from us.

And so it's important to center where we're coming from. Absolutely. And life and hardcore CSF and yeah. And I mean, like, you know, when people do come in to be the guest professor, they come in with a CV So thank you for Leading into this I know a lot about like about therapy

Personality disorders and gay and trans stuff. So this is the chapter as part of the university. This is the dark academia Oh my god, honestly, I'm hoping. Dark? Dark sister? I think two hours with Rowan could fix me. You know what I mean? It could fix me. So a little housekeeping up top before we jump into this course that you're taking for free with Rowan.

Audit. So hell yeah. I mean, I can drop the Venmo if you want to pay. Yeah. This month over at patreon.com slash girls gone canon that's C-A-N-O-N, we will be releasing a Patreon episode for patrons in the stranger tier and above. That episode for November 2024

is going to be our second Gossip Girls Gone Canon episode. Episode two, The First Thanksgiving, covering season one, episode nine nine Blair Waldorf must pie Very excited about this. This is a huge development that has happened recently that we're doing this get ready We are going to give thanks the real American way with mmm whatcha say Yes, I cannot believe that is the canonical title of that episode, but very excited to embark on this new series In our picture that we've decided to start is it gonna come back annually? Yes, I think so. I think we're gonna do every season Thanksgiving. I don't care. I think it's perfect

Yeah, and not just that but there's also a joke in that title for those of you that are gossip girl fans It's a joke off also John Tucker Must Die because Penn Badgley was in John Tucker Must Die. I'm pretty sure that's part of the joke, right? Because Dan, Dan in the show is Penn Badgley. So come join for more fun facts like that. We're going to talk about food because you know we fucking love food. We're going to talk about all sorts of good stuff, especially the drama.

We love the drama. We love the Serena and the Blair of it. Are you the Serena or am I the Serena? I don't know. Who's the Blair? Who's the Serena? I don't know. I really don't know.

There were times that I was like, I thought I was Serena and I was like, I want to do that. That seemed really silly. I don't have that kind of confidence. So I don't know. I think I have a Dan. Let's keep going. Let's keep going.

All right. Glossing over going. Alright, glossing over that. Actually, yeah. Um, we'll wait. Oh my god, are we Blair and Dan? Like, how it should be, the OTP? Anyways, Gossip Girl, Gossip Girl, Gossip Girl, it's amazing. You should have watched it. You should have watched the new one, and now it's over, and life's horrible. Yeah.

But there is going to be a great opportunity for another fun thing, if you're not into Gossip Girl, and that's for the Thunder Tier patrons and on December 28th we will be having Brappy Hour Probably. 2PM. ET. We're pretty sure that's the date. It could change, you know, holidays. Holidays are kind of loosey-goosey around here, right? You never know what's gonna happen. The Christmas Goose, yes. The Christmas Christmas goose, you're gonna pull it, feather it, tar it, whatever. I don't know, I think I made that up.

But anyways, anyways, yes, that's happening then, but also if you're in the Thunder Tier and above, you get access to other things on the Discord, like, I don't know, more food channels. Yes, yes, so refined with the food hauls and Maddie with the food hauls. You gotta join for that alone. Rowan and the food halls and Maddie with the food halls. You got to join for that alone Rowan in the music channel and movies channel. We've got everyone we've got the respectful thirsting channel and it's poppin respectfully poppin You know sometimes disrespect there's a little disrespect, but we try to overlook it. We overlook the yeah, but speaking of Lucy goosey schedules 1122 week before Thanksgiving. 11-22, week before Thanksgiving.

That's right, week before Thanksgiving. We won't be here. Why is that? Well, mama needs a break. Which mama? You don't know. Maybe both of us. We'll be gone, but we'll be back for Black Friday.

That's right, as you're cruising around, getting all those capitalistic deals in America for those of you listening in America, let us give you the sweet, sweet sound of our voices with Circe 8. And not just that, but it sounds like the last episode for A Song of Ice and Fire of the year is going to probably be Circe 10 in A Feast for Crows. We're gonna wrap up A Feast for Crows. Oh my god. For the last time. Is that like all? Oh no. No, that's what I said. Sorry, I just realized we're done. No, no.

There's no more Feasts. Sorry, I have no reaction other than just now. Oh my fucking god. Now you're in starve. Okay, that was fucked up. Oh my god, we are gonna starve. Anyways, we're going to finish A Feast for Crows for the last time until George puts out another book, and we will return in 2025 with a dance with dragon Cersei and after that

I'll must choose it will be the last two POVs and we actually asked our patrons what they thought the next POV would be and I thought these results were incredible. Eliana will you read these results? Yeah so here's how people voted. This is the better, I guess, voting poll from this week. Oh god, kill me, kill me. Stab me in the head. And that is just, like, not as serious. I mean, like, ha ha ha. Anyways, so here's how people voted and what they think the next POV will be. 16% voted for Daenerys as potentially being the next POV, 54% voted for Tyrion as potentially being the next POV, and 30% voted for Sansa being

potentially the next POV. And this is not like determining who will be the next POV, it's just determining what they think it will be. Third party throwing away their votes? What the fuck is that? It's like betting, I guess. Not Sansa being the Jill Stein of the election. Not Sansa being Jill Stein.

If we did Sansa again, we would not be done with Feast. Interesting thoughts, interesting thoughts. Though I could do Aerion again as well. Maybe that was a sign. I would be down to redo Aerion and Barristan and Sansa and Theon. Yeah, I don't know. Just not Quentin for some reason. Well, it would be a short stint.

We could do it. I mean, we'd probably redo them maybe one day, but like Well, it would be a short stint. We could do it. I mean, we'd probably redo them maybe one day, but like, briefly? Who knows? I don't know. Just strap my roommate to a chair and make him do them for us. If George doesn't know his plans, I don't gotta fucking know my plans, alright? So, weigh in at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon. You can find this poll and let us know what you think, if it will be Daenerys, Tyrion, or Sansa all over again. I look forward to seeing your thoughts for certain.

Well we don't have a Rohan Report this week because Rohan Report is IRL here. It's exciting. It's kind of very cool that we don't have that. So no email speets of note. We're going to jump into the lightning round with what you missed between Cersei VI in A Feast for Crows and Cersei VII, beginning with the Reaver. Victarion is given a task by his older brother. The valonqar. Jaime IV.

Lancel and Jaime catch up at Harrenhal. Brienne VI. The elder brother tells Brienne that Xand elder brother, what's with that theme again, tells Brienne that Sandor Clegane is at rest. And that leads us right into Cersei 7, where everything is coming up and for Cersei Lannister. Yes, I do just want to give a content warning as we go into this episode for listeners. Firstly, welcome to the longest UGC episode. Yes, let's go!

B, this episode, if you've read the chapter, you know that there's a lot of sexual violence and trauma and discussion of that, so just be aware as you listen. Also, for god knows what else, because I have no filter and no shame about anything. So take care of yourself as you're listening to this chapter if you need to. Hope people do that with every episode of ours that they listen to. And here we go, here we go. We're gonna launch it. We got a thousand ships descending on the Shield Island, so everyone is skeptical about

that many ships existing. And Margaery demands that this be answered fiercely. And I just think it's really interesting in the context of the other Ironborn chapters and also especially like the Forsaken. Spoilers! The winds of winter! Sorry y'all, we're gonna talk about the Forsaken for a second and how things go in the Arbor. I love this line where Aaron is talking about Euron's victories being hollow and that he can't hold the shields. Euron's like, why should I want to hold them?

His brother smiling, I glittered in the blah blah blah. The shields have served my purpose, I took them with one hand and gave them away with the other. A great king is open-handed, brother, it is up to the new lords to hold them now. The glory of winning those rocks will be mine forever. When they are lost, the defeat will belong to the four fools who so eagerly accepted my gifts." And I love that, especially in the context of this chapter. Cersei says almost the exact same thing in regards to Loras and his victory and slash or failure at Dragonstone. So interesting parallels. But also the whole thousand ships thing, right? I love the usage of the phrase thousand ships. I think that there's kind of this thing hard-coded in... soft-coded?

I don't fucking know. Our culture, when you think about Western literature and in the context of the classical literature and the reference to the thousand ships makes me think of a few things in the context of Circe's story and the Iliad, like the idea of someone being so beautiful, someone would launch a war of a thousand ships in that person's name and the theme or the constant like recurrence of Circe thinking about appearance. But also on another level, I think this is very tied to her late husband's legacy. A lot of this chapter is in the way that Robert's Rebellion is in a way framed as this kind of Trojan War, but it wasn't launched for Circe, it was kind of launched

for, you know, Lyanna, or that's what they say, you know, Robert's Rebellion built on a lie to bring it back to references from last chapter. And, seriously, you know, she's fighting against feeling like a consolation prize for pretty much her entire married life. Yes, as Marina and the Diamond said, it almost feels like a joke to play out a part when you are not the starring role in someone else's heart. You know, I'd rather walk alone with my twin brother than play a supporting role if I can't get the starring role. Like that's literally her role that she's consigned to is being this supporting figure. And this is a woman who wants to come first for everybody on the planet. So having to not come first in her own marriage is nuts. That's why I actually think she would not have really enjoyed being married to Rhaegar. Because he wouldn't have been particularly interested in anything

relating to her. He'd just be like, I have my harp and my prophecies. STACEY Yup. STACEY Absolutely. I mean, she didn't know him, right? Like, she can project him onto anything, and I think there's something to talk about in that at some point. But like, I mean, anyone, she wants to come first for literally anyone, and who doesn't want that? And, you know, there's a question of like, who would fight a war for her? And there's people, her father fought a war for fucking Tyrion, right? The only person fighting a war for Cersei is Cersei, and in this chapter, and all these...

And me. And me on Twitter.com every single day since... Every day. For every single day. Like that Jaime line when he says, why does Cersei need the warrior? She has me. Jaime, no, that's me. That's me. Why does Cersei need the warrior she has me? Jamie no, that's me. That's me. Why does Cersei have the warrior? She is a robot. You're the figurehead on the ship. Oh my god.

Honestly. In armor. That's you. That's you. It also kind of reminds me of Nymeria in a twisted version. Like you have the idea of her burning all the ships so no one can have them. Like Cersei is somewhat doing in a more metaphorical way, right, of, you know, this is how I win and you can't have it, and also like isolation and protecting, like just the way that Nymeria saved everybody by making it so no one

can ever leave, and that's kind of some of Cersei's psyche in this story too, right, like of keeping things so close to her out of fear of losing them that they are lost. Yeah. Interesting. I don't know. There's something coherent in there, but it's not here yet. Maybe next week. You never know. There's a line from the chapter. Cersei could not but feel the shadows were closing around her too. My enemies are everywhere, and my friends are useless. She had only to glance at her counselors to know that. Only Lord Qyburn and Aurane Waters

seemed awake. Qyburn notes the ironborn's boldness under the new king, the crow's eye. Pysel assumes, well, they'll just retreat after reaving and looting, but Margaery counters... this isn't just a raid. Lord Hewitt, Lord Chester, Lord Ceri's son and heir are slain, and the Iron King has replaced them with his own men. Cersei thinks Mason Willis are to blame for leaving the Reach vulnerable and asks, how could such a large fleet have gone unnoticed? Yeah, speaking of ships, we gotta give a shout out to the sweet Cersei, one of my favorite

Cersei gender trouble moments in the whole series. So it's said that King Robert Tamar is the mightiest warship in all Westeros, and then Aurene Waters says she was. Sweet Cersei will be her equal, once complete, and Lord Tywin will be twice the size of either. So yeah, I'm obsessed with the Sweet Cersei ship, for those of you who don't remember from last episode. The Sweet Cersei is essentially, it has a figurehead of her in male with a sword, like basically this weaponized, masculinized version of her as the figurehead. And here she's usurping Robert, this masculinized version of her. And part of the thing I love about this, I mean I love everything

about it, but one thing I really love is wondering about whether she calls it the Sweet Cersei as a way to offset this weaponized masculine version of her to say, you know, oh, I don't, you know, don't worry. It's still I'm still the Sweet Cersei. Or if it's actually a mockery and saying you call me sweet, this is who I really am. And I that fascinates me. Yeah, I'll give you sweet. Yeah. It makes me think of a couple of things. First of all, because I'm going through Chloe's Semi on this path, where I rewatched my first

four seasons of It's Always Sunny. So it makes me think of sweet D for some fucking reason, and I'm calling for that all the time. But it makes me think of long, long, long, long, long ago. I read this great analysis of the usage of the word sweet as a scent in Sweet in general in A Song of Ice and Fire, and how it has connotations of death. They describe the scent of death as being sweet, or even the sweetness, like a sweet rotting smell or something even being attributed to Tywin's body. And so I think that's interesting in the context of what does it mean here for her being called Sweet Cersei,

Jaime calling her Sweet and also in a warship. Yeah, I mean, this is actually jumping ahead to something I was going to mention later when in the chapter she, George writes that she said something with poisonous sweetness. I think personally, I feel like the words poisonous sweetness are the essence of her character, truly. He writes that actually multiple times in the book, I did the control F, where he describes her speed, the way she talks is poisonous sweetness. And so that, yeah, it's like, like I'm going to quote some 2020 12 Tumblr Tumblr girl lyrics again. It's like in ultraviolence when Lana del Rey says this line, this line always I mean a lot of Lana songs make me think of Cersei, but this line always where she says, because I was filled with poison and blessed with beauty and rage. It's that is the

poisonous sweetness that is the like, this sweetness has this undercurrent of death of evil, what George is depicting about what's beautiful on the outside is rotting from within. Yes. That's Cersei. I love that. That's not my Cersei playlist, actually. Oh, really?

Mine is 200 songs. Let's go. It's fun. I have that and I have, I think I have Money, Power, Glory and something else from around there. I can't remember what. We'll swap later. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. But yeah, I love the- Well chosen. Not only- yeah, the poisonous sweet this thing I think is like a key to her character. Especially because of how often it comes up. Yeah. Because that's the only way to fucking get shit done for her. Sweetie, sorry. Like, you have to perform- you know, she's busy, she has to perform this fucking femininity every day of her life,

but she doesn't get to have any fucking feelings about the jabs that she faces every day. Of course it's gonna seep through. The poison always seeps through. And or is it the reverse? Is it the poison of, you know, nature nurture? I do think she's naturally a quite bad, unkind person. Is it her nature? So I'm her biggest offender, and I'll say it. Is the nature seeping through everything else? Mm, poisoning it around her. It's like what comes first, the poison or the sweetness, yeah. Oh, damn.

Damn. God, she really is that character, isn't she? She is. Incredible. Incredible. I have so many feelings about this chapter rereading it of just like, how overlooked this arc is. It's really actually well done.

It's well done what we have going on here. It's a punchy chapter. It's shorter than I thought. Yeah, I'm already kind of sad. Yeah, it's a full comparison of some of your chapters. Like, it's already over in my head. I'm like broken-hearted. I don't want to talk about it. I'll miss you, Cersei.

Cersei speculates that Stannis might be involved, suggesting Balin Greyjoy offered Tywin an alliance once before, and now his son might be offering one to Stannis, hoping to gain gold and foothold while distracting from Dragonstone and Storm's End. I totally forgot about this, and this is actually really interesting, right? He had this idea Balin would have ravaged the North, sold it back to Tywin, not unlike what the Lannisters did making a deal with the phrase, right? Ravage the Riverlands, sell it back cheaper.

Balin, you madman. And curious that, of course, Tywin was like, I'm not touching that right now with a pull. Like I have enough on my hands. Especially in the context of the rebellion and what happened with the Greyjoys. He had his own little plans. He was he had his own frenemy situation. Forty chess. Forty chess or wait hold on. Are Tywin and Ares, Serena and Blair? Something to think about and come back to at some point. The girls are fighting. Something to come back to.

Yeah, I find this entire breakdown of how she thinks about Robert and Tywin's political strategies and comparing them, because she's thinking about Robert's flaws and his failure to eradicate the Ironborn versus what she feels Tywin would have done. And I do think that she is mostly right in what Tywin would have done. I don't think Tywin would have eradicated all of the ironborn, that's a fucking lot, but I do think he would have probably gotten rid of the Greyjoys and maybe some of the other noble houses, potentially the Harlaws, who knows. And I mean, the Greyjoy Rebellion did lead to the death of most of the Greyjoy family anyway, and not most, but like, I don't know, 50% of its heirs, whatever. And-

Euron was the other 50%. Oh, I mean like you have Asha and Theon and then turns out, you know, yeah, somehow Euron Greyjoy came back, but- Jesus. Robert's abilities show mercy to other men. Jesus. VB- Robert's abilities show mercy to other men. You know, I think that's really interesting how she looks down on it, how he could do that for other men, but never for her. And it comes back to something that we had discussed in Joe Magician's episode with

you know, the little Maester monthly reunion about dying of the light and how men reserve all of their love for other men. And the nature between men's relationships being very homoerotic, but they're heterosexual only in that they fuck women. And he never had any mercy for her. And then how she looks down on what she perceives as his weakness and not killing the ironborn. And the sort of duality that she sees of what political power is and how it happens in her story. There's seduction and there's violence, and to an extent these are almost equated in her life

as we'll see in this chapter. And she also looks down on Willis being the one ruling High Garden and for his failures here with the ironborn, and she sees him as for being a cripple and he can't, because he can't fulfill those martial roles that men are supposed to have and enact individual violence because he was injured and perceiving him as a failure is an error because of his physical imperfections and disability, which is I think very tie-win thinking considering the way that he treated Tyrion, like literally what happened in their family. And then she does also critique Willis' defense or what she perceives of his lack of defense and lack of naval foresight, though I do think it's interesting because a great historian

there, Cersei Lannister, but actually not really schooled in naval education. And so she doesn't really integrate the new information of like, dude, the Ironborn went out to sea and fucking came back. They can navigate with the stars. Oh, that's interesting because if she had actually stayed in Casterly Rock, she might have gotten more naval. Oh, that's interesting. Right?

Because that's very much like trade ports are dependent on out there. Trade is big in Ladisport. Uh, interesting. And then more seeing like how wrapped up this is in her like, love and hatred for Jamie, her detestion, her like, he is everything that she should have gotten to be. Yeah. Her place in life, her slot in life of the things he does and how she would have done them in comparison, just like she hates Willis for those opportunities. She sees in him everything Jamie kind of has, right, including being crippled now. She hates him for it.

Once again, jumping ahead to something I was gonna say later, we all are psychic here. To me, and there's a later line that's gonna come where it's even more relevant, but the way that she talks about men's weaknesses or men's flaws, you know, Mace Tyrell, she says Mace Tyrell left the defense of the Reach in the hands of a hapless weakling. She only calls him the cripple, does not refer to his name. She later says, at an important point, Sir Loris lusts for glory as real men, lust for women. So to me, I think her attitude towards masculinity and this fixation we see her have on men's

flaws seems to me to come partially from jealousy and what we in the LGBTQ call gender envy. She's always viewing men with this sneering contempt when they don't embody masculinity in the way that she feels she would or the way a way that she sees a subpar like you know loris is not a real man because i mean it might she might not know he's gay but the that line to me feels so pointed so she doesn't see him as a real man because of his sexuality she sees jami as sub masculine after his maiming which in psychoanalytic framing is always symbolic castration. Like any form of limb or like limb removal is symbolic castration. So I'm not saying this with this following statement

that Cersei is trans, although I'm also not not saying it, wink wink. Like, so my job is I meet with teens who are interested in transition and we go through like their histories and stories. And I thought of her recently when I met with a kid who told me that his first inkling of being trans came as a child and he said to me, I saw other boys and felt competitive like I could be a better boy than them.

Wow. Okay, Cersei Lannister? Like, yeah, like, cuz what happens with Cersei is when she sees a man failing manhood, she feels this resentment and lashes out internally mostly because she herself so deeply longs to be have been given the opportunity she sees them as a result how her exclusion from patriarchal and phallic power systems shows how broken they are, so let's destroy them. Instead she internalizes and upholds them. Yeah. I love the word that you use that she sees it as them wasting the opportunity. Yep. Totally.

Even for something that isn't their fault. It's not that- Yeah. None of these things- I felt it. You felt it. Eliade's felt it. We've all felt this, right? Like, this is a normal feeling, I feel like, as someone who was born female. Like, I feel this. I understand that. I feel it all the time as also, like, a woman of color. I see someone, and I'm like, you wasted that fucking- I mean, not that privilege in that way should exist, but you know what I'm saying.

But that's an important point, I mean not that privilege in that way should exist, but you know what I'm saying. But that's an important point, I think. Like, Cersei is such an interesting case study in gender oppression because she has every other possible privilege. There is absolutely nothing standing in the way in terms of where she can get societally. She has class privilege, etc, etc. Like, nothing stands, she's literally the most powerful woman in the planet, planet host. And so that's- so she can let us actually do an isolated gender analysis, whereas for other characters, we'd be looking more at intersections between, say, ability and gender, or class and gender, or race and gender. She's a white, rich, beautiful woman.

Like, what's in her way? STACEY And somehow she has nothing. Somehow deep in the core of her heart, she feels she has absolutely nothing. That's fascinating. Well, I love what you called out of her regarding that class privilege because that's true and that's something that ironically she shares with Tyrion, right? I think Cersei to an extent recognizes her place and that I built that thing regarding class because she thinks constantly of how she is of a different stock than you know people of lower classes but Tyrion does not and I think that that's an interesting

distinction between them and even like Jon Snow I was like I gotta clarify which Jon we're talking about when we're talking about Cersei's story. Well what's interesting with that too is that I think that's part of where her cruelty comes from, is she over-exercises her power to oppress others in order to compensate for the one privilege she doesn't have, in the one way that she is oppressed. I see it that way at least. Like especially the way she treats other women, especially sex workers. That's a great way of putting it. Yeah, I mean speaking of all that, I think that's really interesting in the context of like, you know, I'm thinking about Cersei feeling that Stannis might have potentially allied with the Ironborn and I'm like, I don't know how she came up with this conclusion in this theory, but like I think that a lot about theories about Aswaf, so like she's just like us and the rest of the community for real, for real. But um, it-

STACEY TURNBULL Tint foil. STACEY Right, this is a tin foil. She thinks that, oh, it was Balin's son who probably offered Stanis the Alliance. And speaking of all of that, I would love to see Cersei's reaction to learning that Balin Greyjoy, of all the fucking people in the world, was the one who sought to make his daughter the heir over his son. That Asha would have been the one who would have actually had the power to make alliances if Baelin Greyjoy got his way. Yeah, and especially because my little pet theory is that if Cersei was raised by a father who saw her for who she is and raised her well, kind of in a Nedvane or what's his name, Selwyn Tarth, I think she'd actually be a lot more like Asha, even though Asha is a better person at her core.

But I like her, yeah. Like she would be very Asha-esque in my opinion. Yeah. It's yeah. Bailin' Greyjoy, great father to only one child. I know, right? Only one child. Viserys Targaryen and Bailin' Greyjoy, shaking hands. My only child.

Shaking hands. My God. Shaking hands. Huh. There's this great line and I have to say new Chloe unironic phrase has just unlocked. Uh, Orton is like, your grace is clever to have seen through his ploy, which like glossing over, he's gassing her up and being, you know, himself there.

But I have to use that. Yeah, exactly. They're a team. They're a team. Honestly, like iconic marriage. They, I don't really see what goes off. Yeah, we don't see what happens behind the scenes, but they seem very well matched and like they're in it to win it, allies together.

I would actually really like a spinoff. I want the Creekville when they meet. Yeah, I would love a spinoff about them, quite frankly. Or in Exile meeting her, I would love to read that. I know. They must have really, I bet they actually were attracted to each other, which is great. I love that. Good for them.

That doesn't always happen in this story. Or in real life. Pycelle thinks all of this is very silly. Stannis is befriending the Northmen, and Cersei's like, how could you be so stupid? Northmen won't have Stannis. They're rallying behind Lord Bolton, who's allied with us. And then there's this line of where else can Stannis turn but to the Ironmen and the wildlings, the enemies of the North." Of course Asha and Theon at the end of feast dance are in Stannis's camp. John has somewhat joined on. Yeah, they're prisoners, but I mean they're joined

alright. They have no other choice. Well that's what Stannis is into. He loves having prisoners. The free folk, yeah, I'm like, hmm, forced. The fact that no one suspects the free folk is also great, right, based'm like, hmm, forced. The fact that no one suspects the free folk is also great, right, based on that xenophobia, that they're disregarded as a people in totality, that they're viewed as savages in the eyes of the normal Westerosi person, but they of course swell those numbers as well. LS- Absolutely, and yeah, I don't know, it's interesting that they think that the Northmen would rally behind Bolton and not Stannis because listen,

my first introduction to the North was uh, well one of them was Ned Stark because he's in the first book and he's a big fucking part of it and his first inclination was to turn to Stannis, that's all. Ned! Um, he, you might know him, is he? Eddard? Yeah. You shouldn't have abandoned us by dying, god.

I'm gonna be like Cersei and blame men for things they didn't choose. That's my favorite thing to do. I actually do like doing that. Cersei tells Margaery that Highgarden must deal with the Ironborn, not the Crown. Margaery argues that her father is focused on sieging Storm's End in the east. As always, as always, Anne insists a message must be sent to end the siege, which frustrates Cersei. She dismisses the S.H.I.E.L.D. Islands as rocks, angering Margaery who defends their importance in protecting the Reach. I love that she fucking repeats calling them rocks later too.

STACEY Oh, it's iconic. It's iconic, as is this line when, I don't remember who's saying this, I didn't write that my note, whatever, someone says, and when the long ships of the ironborn descend upon our ragtag fleet as it is making its way across this little stretch of water, what would your grace have us do then? Drown, thought Cersei. Go off, legend. You know what? I'm gonna quote Lady Gaga when she said a very important line to the field of Cerseiology, which is, I don't support the glorification of murder. I do support the empowerment of women. Yes. Women's wrongs and rights. I was like, that's women's rights, but women's wrongs.

Loras points out, without ships, they can't defend nor retake the islands, but Cersei suggests we use the coastal vassals and Highgarden's gold to hire sellswords. Which there's a little bit of a problem there, right? What sellswords? They're all kind of hired up right now. Anyways, glossing over that, Loris reiterates any urge of Cersei to send word to Lord Redwine at Dragonstone, but Cersei is like, no, I'm prioritizing Storm's End and the threat Dragonstone poses to my son.

Redwine will be released when the castle falls. Yeah, so I don't know, I think it's funny Auryn being like, I don't know, if the ships aren't by Storm's End and Dragonstone, then how can we defend those places? I'm like, are you actually saying, well, if the ships are on the other side of the kingdom, then how can I bring them into my pirate fleet that's over on this side of the kingdom? That's all. But also I think Circe is right about Storm's End and the optics of it regarding Tommen's parentage, considering all the doubt that's being cast on it and how the optics of it were pretty fucking bad for Robb Stark. Like, she's not wrong. And whatever, I

mean the Golden Company's gonna take it soon anyway. Lul." Cersei orders the meeting closed, about to consult with Pycelle, but Loras interrupts and proposes that he take Dragonstone himself, claiming it would take only a fortnight to capture instead of Lord Paxter's siege plan. Cersei is impressed by the offer, recalling no one had given her such a gift since Sansa Stark had revealed Eddard Stark's plans. So I love this as a callback, considering how Loras offering to lead this is very reminiscent of Ned Stark giving away the honor of leading the force to go after Gregor Clegane. He doesn't offer it to Loras, who does want it, and those people that he sends out there eventually become the Brotherhood Without Banners.

And Littlefinger actually says to Sansa that he thinks it would have been smarter to send Loras out there to essentially die against the Lannister forces, and therefore pit the Tyrells and the Lannisters against each other in all of this. This happens in a Sansa chapter because 30% of people voted for us to do the Sansa chapters again, and as she's watching her father play the Game of Thrones. But honestly, I mean, both of the plans had married. I think Ned's plan had married too. And look, isn't this fun? Now we have undead shit. It's cool." Loras for his courage. Cersei kisses Loras and Margaery on the cheeks, complimenting Margaery for having such a gallant brother. She then leaves the throne room with Osmund leading the way with a torch. Qyburn strolls beside her, and poor Pycelle is struggling to keep up. He warns her, sending Loras on this dangerous mission is fraught with peril,

as young men are often over-bold. Cersei thinks, exactly, duh, that's the whole fucking point, Pycelle. If Loras succeeds, he's a hero. If he fails or dies, then she wins, either way. She laughs aloud and Pycelle, confused, is like, why are you laughing? And she's like, I'm bursting with love for Sir Loras and his valor. Incredible. Yeah, that's where the line comes where she says, thanks to herself, Sir Loras, lust for glory as real men, lust for women. It's interesting how much she hates Loras for liking men, too,

in some aspects, because she hates men, too, which is correct. And seeing that opportunity, like we said, of wasting it. And then also, I mean, coming back to what she said last episode or no, maybe the episode before of, you know, thinking that Loris was a grooming victim of Renly. Right? And that so she's obviously, you know, wasn't in a relationship with Renly, but also she's just throwing darts at a board sometimes, as we know. Love that about her where she's like, also at the same time, I bet he fucks his sister.

Yeah, right. I mean, Jamie is bisexual and fucks his sister. It can be true. That's true. It can be two things, yeah. But I think, yeah, and it's interesting. It's like, he could like women without shame, but he squandered that by being a homosexual. And I mean, she doesn't realize that she she she doesn't realize she's attracted to women, although she is, clearly, as we'll talk

about. But it's like he can like women without shame the way she can't, and he doesn't even bother with that. He dismisses what she would yearn for, once again, as so many men do. Although for reasons that are often outside their control. Yeah, honestly, honestly, my, I don't know, controversial say, I'm still not convinced that like, Circe actually knows about Loris's sexual orientation. Like, a lot of people knew about Renly, you know, she knew about her brother-in-law, but I don't think they actually knew who his lovers were, and she never really, in my opinion, I don't think she actually makes explicit mention of his sexual orientation or thinks much of it. Like it's known in the show but not in the books I think. I think that one's kept more secret. You know I think it's

interesting that she sees Loras's intentions as being about Valor and to an extent they are, but as we all know we can never truly know what's in someone's heart and she doesn't really know or pay attention to him. Going back to, again, the moment where Ned decides to send Varrick, etc. to chase after Gregor Clegane, we have a line where Ned looked down on him from on high Loras Tyrell seemed almost as young as Rob, which is not untrue. They are a very similar age. But anyways, no one doubts your valor, Sir Loris, but we are about justice here, and

what you seek is vengeance. And that is what Loris wanted in regards to the tourney, and part of me wonders if Loris actually volunteered for the strike against Stannis' forces, right? Dragonstone, as an enemy of Renly's, and also assuming that he now believes Brienne and all of those events, especially with what we see of him in Jaime's chapters in the Storm of Swords, Jaime Nine, which I think could be really interesting because there's this kind of perception of Loras, not just amongst people at court, but also amongst readers that he's in many ways this paragon of Chevalric Valor. He lives up to this one ideal of masculinity

in many ways, this perfect knight, and that he might mirror actually this burning rage of Cersei's. It's not actually a lust for glory on his part, but a desire for vengeance in regards to a lust and love that he could never have in the open. In other words, gay people have no chill. Between him and Cersei, no chill. Honestly, Loris doesn't have chill. I don't think I've ever seen him be chill. No, no. I mean, that's why we have to be dramatic.

We have to live up to the stereotype. But yeah, I do. I see what you're saying. The way she refers to him as not a real man, not just here, but multiple times when she talks to Tommen as well, it feels so pointed that that's why I think that's what she's referring to when she does know. Yeah, that's interesting. I also think there's something about knighthood in total that we're going to talk about as

we go through this episode and the idea of chivalry and gallantry and stupidity, stupidity in knights and what they see as doing the right thing and how it's fucking stupid as fuck. And there's something interesting in masculinity and something that I've been talking about with some friends this week especially in result of the impending hellish doom world we live in but like there's this thing about masculinity and that men might say one thing in a public space. Yeah, they might do this is gonna be about anyone and then in a locker room space the scariest thing that could happen is that you don't go along with the stronger men in the room and they call you gay. And that's a literal thought that men have in this country they literally would rather like get hazed in any physical way

than be called gay. It is something that makes them lesser in the eyes of this communal bit of masculinity and how it operates and so many men are afraid of that and it comes to like it pushes them over the line of the things they'll say when in this company versus the things they'll do and in this company versus the things they'll do and slowly blurs that line. That line becomes blurred to who knows what's true. And I think with Cersei's kind of conservative traditional values when it comes to what knights do, what they do in their free time, what they do in their business time, etc.

This is so fascinating, right? Like how she views Loris as a lesser man, how she views Jamie as a lesser man, who did let her down in some aspects. Again, we'll talk about that later. But I find it really fascinating in that mindset of like, there are two versions of you and sometimes they start to blend after a while when you continue down that path. Real locker room talk. Yeah, and that you start to integrate the performance into yourself. Yes, yes, thank you. Yes, that.

Love that. And I mean so much of what Circe does in parts of her chapters, it is performance. She leaves Pysel behind on the serpentine steps, reflecting on his uselessness, and remembering, I don't know why, I feel bad for him, and I mean, I know why, but anyways, remembering how he had argued with her about her dealings with the High Septon babbling on about history. Qyburn, her only truly useful attendant, suggests that if Loras dies, they will need a new Kingsguard. Cersei agrees, saying it should be someone young, strong, and gallant. Literally, we have young, strong, and gallant at home, but anyways.

Qyburn, however, offers someone who is even stronger, a man who will protect her son, kill her enemies, keep her secrets, and wear very heavy armor. Cersei gives Qyburn a cold look. Ooh, the cold look. Warning him that if he tries to deceive her, he'll die screaming. Qyburn agrees, and they say no more, aware that the walls have ears. Circe recalls the strange noises she's occasionally heard in her apartments at night, though she tells herself, it's just mice. I also want to take this opportunity to say that Qyburn is the dad who stepped up.

He is. We talked a few episodes about what could he have been like as a dad to Joffrey. I think he would have, you know, gone Joffrey that Fulbright grant for his scientific experiments on cats, etc. But like, he, the show really plays us up in a way. Qyburn is like, is the father figure that Cersei didn't have. Oh, interesting. And yeah, I'm just saying he's the dad who stepped up.

I love campy twink grandpa. He's my favorite. Love him. Torture grandpa, yeah. Or dad. He's just trying to further the sciences, and if a few human lives are ruined along the way, that's progress. That's how it works. Yeah. At least there's not animal testing. and if a few human lives are ruined along the way, that's progress.

That's what it works. At least there's not animal testing. Oh my god, Joffrey. Joffrey was just, he had the pure scientist heart just like that. He just wanted to do cat dissections and see the miracle of life. And death. Cat dissections and see the miracle of life. And death. Man, Qyburn should have been around for that.

Returning to her cold, dark apartment, Cersei finds the fire's gone out and slips into bed with Tyena, who asks what time it is. The hour of the owl. Eliana reference, right there. Yeah, no, literally, you saw me- Julepien's mentioned? Julepien's mentioned? You saw me, like, when I read that again, I was like, interesting, the hour of the Yeah, no, literally, you saw me- Philippine's mentioned? You saw me, like, when I read that again, I was like, interesting, that hour of the owl, when the fuck is it?

She's mapping it out. When the fuck is it? George. Pepe Silvia, you've got the map, you're like trying to figure out these time blocks. Cersei often sleeps alone but dislikes it and remembers sharing a bed with Jaime before they were ripped apart as children back when no one could tell them apart. And then later she was given vapid bedmaids who never lasted very long and always tried to wedge themselves between her and Jamie.

She reflects bitterly on Robert, her late husband, wishing him no peace. She thinks of how he was a dim, drunken brute and hopes he's weeping in hell. Rip, piss in hell, Robert. Taina warms the bed well and never forces herself on Cersei, so we really prefer Taina. I wonder if, because we've talked about, or you guys have talked about, how she's attracted Taina for her ambition, but something I'm thinking about as well is she also attracted to Taina for her softness towards Cersei and also for, well not really softness, but like the way in which later they talk about like, Saein is like, I only want to please you. This is the first person in her life

who's not explicitly wanting, I mean she is, Cersei doesn't know it, who is not presenting herself as wanting a transactional relationship and presenting herself as someone who is just there because she cares for her and Is Cersei, does Cersei fall for her because this is the first person who's shown genuine care That's so sad. Well not genuine care, but you know And conflating that in the way Qyburn treats her too, right? Like Qyburn absolutely yes All jokes aside like he is an interesting character to her But obviously has his own agenda and is playing her in some regards, right? But to her, she feels that these are the two people that actually care about her.

Right. Yeah. That's so sad. Yeah, and I don't know, and that they validate her, they tell her she's doing a good job, she's like, she's never really felt seen. And Taina really does see her in the next chapter, you'll get to a part where Taina says, would you like to change sexes and be a man for a night? Like Taina clocked her! She clocked that non-binary T. Like, Taina sees her. I agree that Taina sees her, and I- for better or for worse, right, in regards to Cersei's

fate, but absolutely. Taina expresses concern when she wakes up and finds Cersei gone, but Cersei tells her about the impromptu discussions that she had in the throne room. She feels very confident in her scheming for the day, but she does express a very tender moment of worry about Margaery's power at court and the threat from Storm's end. Taina warns her Margaery has powerful allies and swords at court, but Cersei brushes off the threat of suitors. She's more concerned about Storm's End and the danger that lies to her son. It's interesting because this is such a vulnerable

moment where Taina does start to warn her, hey, Margaery is more powerful maybe than you're giving her credit for. That's a very vulnerable thing to tell her when you're kind of a double agent right now going between and does show how much Tyena kind of has care for Cersei. But Cersei brushes this off and especially starts to then say she doesn't really trust Tyena. She kind of says to her, you know, what are you getting at? What's your angle here? Why are you saying this to me? Where Tyena is just being honest, right? But Cersei is asking, why are you doing this? Tyena reassures her and says that she's not like Senel. She would never betray Cersei. If she does disappoint her, Cersei could even give her to Qyburn. Okay, maybe don't

volunteer that. Wow. Cersei asks Tyena what reward she expects for her loyalty, and Tyena answers that she simply seeks only to please Cersei, with no reward needed. Sexy, sexy, sexy, sexy. And when has Cersei ever heard those words in her life? That nothing is expected of her in return? Never.

Never. Yeah. I could get used to that life. Holy shit. Sounds good. Well, it leads to a passage, so they've been hanging out in bed. Then Taina rolled onto her side, her olive skin shining in the candlelight. Her breasts were larger than the queen's and tipped with huge nipples, black as horn.

She is younger than I am. Her breasts have not begun to sag. Cersei wondered what it would feel like to kiss another woman, not lightly on the cheek, as was common courtesy amongst ladies of high birth, but full upon the lips. Tyena's lips were very full. She wondered what it would feel like to suckle on those breasts, to lay the mirrored woman on her back and push her legs apart and use her as a man would use her, the way Robert would use her when the drink was in him and she was unable to bring him off with hand or mouth. There we go.

Yeah. Let's get this out of the way. These are not thoughts that a heterosexual. Promoted. I'm already the head of the department, OK? So these are not. Tenure. These are not.

I'm tenured, privilege. Let's just, as I said, get out of the way. These are not thoughts that a heterosexual woman has. It drives me insane, insane, when I'm getting heated. Drives me insane, like wildfire, when people are, she just wants power, she just wants to be a man. None of y'all have had attraction for a woman, and it's showing, as a woman that is. So like, every queer woman I've spoken to about A Feast for Crows recognizes that this is desire. When the way George writes the way that she views Taina, not just in this scene but throughout, she smells like sin, fixating on body parts, is very specific

to ways that he writes about men looking at women, with the sole exception of Ned saying that Robert looked like a muscled maiden's fantasy. But every woman I've talked to, queer woman that is, recognizes Cersei having that type, that do I want her, do I want to be her conundrum? We were just saying before, she has this marriage with Orden that seems to be an actual partnership based on respect, something Cersei cannot imagine. There's so many things about Tyena and who she is that Cersei would love for herself. And so I think that's where we get into the,

do I want to be her or do I want to be with her? And so we'll talk more about the power pieces, the sexist power pieces when we get to the actual sex. But the thing is that, like, yes, both multiple things can be true, is that yes, she can have penis envy, yes, she can be using her for power. And she can also still have desire for Taina. There are, there's so much evidence throughout this book that this is genuine desire that to fully dismiss it is, I find offensive to queer, like to the depiction of queerness.

And what I think is so fascinating is that I don't think George at all meant to write a queer character with Cersei. I think when he accidentally stumbles into writing queerness is when he does the most accurate job at it. Because I'm going to speak for myself and say that honestly, Cersei's thought processes throughout this book is the most I have related basically to any depiction of queerness. This idea of being completely unaware that what you're thinking is not how straight women think because you don't have any framework for same-sex desire between women. Like for me it's giving my like, you know, 2003 Brittany and Madonna kiss at the VMAs and me being like, oh my god that'd be really fun to reenact with my friends! That's a normal thing to think, right? Right? Or like I'm drawing Eva

Green's breasted bioclass because that's what straight people do, right? Like there's no framework that we were given with growing up for women desiring women. And so you rationalize it away. And there's a very specific form of rationalization she engages in that I want to talk about. But first, I want to give you guys space to respond. No, I love what you're saying here. And you're right, like rereading this, it absolutely does feel exactly like what you're saying and well and we've talked a lot about this kind of with Alicent and Raniera in House of the Dragon and what they've been doing in the show about the context of what these deep feminine relationships

look like no matter the type whether you're sucking on her cunt or whether you are you know actually just friends quote-unquote or roommates and also how a betrayal of this kind of relationship would feel because it's the type of relationship where you're so vulnerable and to connect, you have to put a little piece of yourself out into this space and there's an equal chance that someone will pick it up, that she will pick it up, or that she will reject it. And you don't get that piece back often, right? When you put that piece out there always,

like when you put it out there, it means you're giving that piece of yourself up for greater for worse here. It makes that betrayal of that trust or that trust equal parts of what makes that relationship so sensitive. And it makes me think a little bit of Daenerys and Eerie as well, which are contrasted to this upcoming great moment here with Tyena, because there's definitely affection for both of these women, well, woman and child,

and young lady, young girl, Tyena and Eerie in a bonded way by a way they haven't ever really had before. Like obviously Cersei has had Melara, she's had these betrayals, she's had these vapid little bedmaids that she thought just wanted to fuck Jamie and ruin her life, and Dani is lonely. She's lived her life on the run with Viserys as her guardian, right? No female friendships there. Let's be real, not a very good strong background of female friendships. And Rohan, what you were saying about the transactional quality of most of Cersei's life. Everything she does is cause and effect, it's transactional. She puts a barb out there, she expects a barb back, or vice versa. This is the first time she's ever gotten

to live out of that confine and explore that moment. Both of them are bittersweet affairs. Cersei is almost stunted at Daenerys's age in a way when you think about it because that's when her life was basically stolen from her. And Daenerys, who had to grow up and never have a connection to family beyond Viserys' age in a way when you think about it because that's when her life was basically stolen from her. And Daenerys, who had to grow up and never have a connection to family beyond Viserys, finding these relationships that they need, they crave, this desire to fill the loneliness within them, allowing themselves to trust someone or explore to someone that they've been kind of previously closed off to. It's opposite in some tones, right?

You have the moment for Cersei and Tyena later where she thinks there was no pleasure in it, not for her, for Tyena, yes. And then you have with Eerie and Daenerys, still the relief she wanted seemed to recede before her until her dragons stirred and one screamed out across the cabin and Eerie woke and saw what she was doing. And it's fitting for this book full of rotting blood oranges, right? A forbidden fruit, forbidden sweetness that you can take but might not get to last. Might not be something that you get to savor forever, the pulp and the fruit. Something that you're never allowed to have, allowing yourself to have it, but fleeting with how she ends in a dance with dragons and

not unlike how Daenerys is perceived, right? A queen undone, broken, covered in her own puking feces and dehydration, disheveled in the middle of the grass sea. These great arcs that are kind of playing off of one another in rulership, right? To rule loneliness and impossible situations, right? Slaver's Bay and the faith. It's interesting that goes back to the poisonous sweetness when you talked about the fruit and the sweetness,

that there's always poisoned. But yeah, I think too that as much as I really appreciate and love the way George writes Cersei's sublimated defensive completely clueless sex like sexuality and attraction to women because it's the most realistic depiction of that I've seen. To me, he is George Small Balls Martin for not being able to write a sex scene between two women that doesn't somehow try to center men because with Erie and Daenerys, it's she's picturing Dario and this we'll talk about. And then here, yes. So I think that, you know, George does not seem he like comes so close, but

as ultimately small balls ultimately small balls. Small balls. Agreed. And also, I don't know, something that y'all were saying, first of all, I wasn't sure if the blood orange isn't forbidden fruit, like are we making like references to like Ruby Fruit Jungle or something here? Jokes, jokes. You can call it that.

It's a lesbian coming in reach book. I read it, but I like don't remember. I was really young when I read that book. But also so I think that there's something kind of fun there whether or not that was an intentional play on words. What you were saying also about this like the transactional nature between her and Teina and also her not really realizing like she had been surrounded by other people like Malara, etc. And Teina, I think something that's cool about Circe experiencing this right now speaks to how the journey of one's sexuality and gender, etc. is life is long, life is a fucking journey. For her to be coming to this at 34, I love that that idea is open to her here, right?

You can find that out about yourself at any point in your life, and that's still part of you that's still open to you. And Tana, maybe she only can realize it because of what you were saying, people only come to her through this transaction. The women that were around her, the girls that were around her wanted to be around her because of her proximity to these other powerful men. She couldn't regard them as women that she could see and desire and as people because for her to desire because they weren't perceiving her as her own person or desirable in and

of herself and not as a proxy for the men around her. Totally. That's why I think that she can only realistically experience attraction to another woman if it was a woman who is her equal in some sense or even more powerful. Interesting. Yeah, and that's, and someone I know has been a lot of fanfiction about that, but you know, because I think Melisandre would be a great person for that because these are both women who have to wear these masks for the world, but are raging storms beneath those masks. And I think the ability to unmask together would be very healing, but that's another

universe. I do really, really like something I think is so important about this passage is the use of the word use. That she says that she wants to use her as a man would use her, the way Robert would use her when the drink was in him. Because there are other words you could have used. She could have said to fuck her as a man would fuck her or to take her as a man would take her. But use speaks to a lot of feminist theory that I'll go get quoting. So there's one really seminal article. It's called The Traffic in Women by Gail Rubin.

And in this, she talks a lot about the sex economy. And I'll put a link in the show notes so you can read that there, because she speaks a lot more intelligently about this than I ever could. But that's about the idea of the political economy of sex. And then one other writer who's really formative for the way i see the world is a french feminist named luce irgaray and specifically a chapter in a book she wrote that's called this sex which is not one so in that she writes for

woman is traditionally a use value for man and exchange value among men in other words a commodity women are marked fallacly by their fathers, husbands, procurers, and this branding determines their value in sexual commerce. To reverse the relation, especially in the economy of sexuality does not seem a desirable objective. And then she also goes on to talk a lot about like the act of penetration itself. She says how the opposition between masculine clitoral activity and feminine vaginal passivity is like the crux of female sex is like

a dilemma that women are forced to encounter. She writes in the development of a sexually normal woman, it seems to rather to required by the practice of male sexuality. The vagina is valued for the lodging it offers the male sex organ when the forbidden hand has to find a replacement for pleasure giving. And so I think this connects for me at least really beautifully to this Cersei's use of the word use because in the way that in within the political economy of sex women are used for the pleasure they could give men you know this is also the political economy of sex, women are used for the pleasure they could give men. You know, this is also the political economy that Cersei has been raised within,

and as we've talked about, so deeply internalized. And I don't, you know, I don't really see any other way that things could go for Cersei in terms of her desiring another woman. I don't think she's going to have some like soft cottage core yearning because she's somebody who has been raised to see all relationships as transactional, she's been raised to see relationships is

about conquest and sex is about conquest and power. And so she's going to not just think, oh, Taina is so beautiful, I want to kiss her, she's going to think I want to use her the way that women within the political economy of sex are used for this is very psychoanalytic, but like being she's for the phallus. Okay, interesting. I love that usage. I love that usage, Roman. Not this usage, but that usage. Yeah, I mean, I think that the way that she's been trained to see women as passive receptors of men's lust informs how she experiences and expresses desire for Taina as we move through the chapter.

I mean, even with Felice, right, as we come to, she sees Felice as also, you know, a way to use her to get rid of her. She sees other women in her vicinity as not necessarily competition, but as something that she can use as coin. Yeah, and she further dehumanizes Hyena and sees her as a commodity in referring to her as the Mearish woman once her thoughts actually turn sexual and later refers to her as Mear itself. So she's, I mean, George is, I think this is equally a George problem as a Cersei problem.

Like George, please write about a woman, a brown-skinned woman in a non-fetishizing and exotic side as ways challenge, please. But like, I think that because she's always exoticizing and fetishizing Taina as a commodity, you know, she, it's her own way of also distancing herself from the own, from the desire that she is feeling when she's in the heat of that desire. Yeah, because queens can't have friends, they only have subjects and enemies. I've heard this from another queen, Stannis Baratheon. Two queens stand before me.

I would queen out with Stannis Baratheon, yeah. Only one can take the Iron Throne this week. This is not a fully formed thought, but you know, I didn't really catch what you were saying until you pointed it out of how she starts calling Taina, you know, just like the mirror-ish woman and all that discussion of mirror. And again, not a fully formed thought, but something about mirror and a mirror-er to Circe. Ah! Ah! Wait! I have not expanded on it, but I think there's something there. That's it. That's it. But did you know there's a Patreon episode called Mirror Mirror on the wall? Oh yeah! Wait, we actually- maybe that's why that's in my fucking head.

Yes! That's why it's there. Probably. We have a passage. Those had been the worst nights, lying helpless underneath him as he took his pleasure, stinking of wine, grunting like a boar. Usually he rolled off and went to sleep as soon as it was done, snoring before his seed could dry upon her thighs.

She was always sore afterwards, raw between the legs, her breasts painful from the mauling he would give them. The only time he'd ever made her wet was on their wedding night. Robert had been handsome enough when they first married. Tall. Strong. Powerful. But his hair was black and heavy. Thick on his chest, coarse around his sex. The wrong man came back from the trident. The Queen would sometimes think as he was plowing her. In the first few years, when he mounted her more often, she would close her eyes and pretend he was Rhaegar. She could not pretend he was Jaime. He was too different, too unfamiliar, even the smell of him

was wrong. For Robert, those nights never happened. Come morning he remembered nothing, or so he would have had her believe. The languishers likened very much to Rhaella and Aerys, right from feast Jaime too that we just passed a little bit ago. Whenever Ares gave a man to the flames, Queen Rhaella would have a visitor in the night. You're hurting me. They had heard Rhaella cry through the oaken door. You're hurting me. And of course, Jaime had finally been driven to say, we are sworn to protect her as well. We are, Daria Loud, but not from him. And then, of course, he remembers her leaving Kang's Landing to go to Dragonstone, where her maids whispered, after she was gone, that the Queen looked as if some beast had savaged

her, clawing at her thighs, chewing on her breasts, a crowned beast Jaime knew. There's a lot in this Jaime, you know, not killing Robert, though he had threatened before, but also failing to protect her. Jaime was her protector. Him in the king's guard role, ironically, is that Loras and Margaery role very early in King's Landing, and he didn't save her. He couldn't kill him again, right? Because he was supposed to protect her too, but not from him, and he's already kingslayed

once and that weighing on his conscience is probably a big part of what let him fail her in that aspect. And Jaime is also just so consumed with envy of Robert and seeing Robert as a competitor for Cersei that he doesn't even bother to think of Robert as someone to protect Cersei from. He's too consumed with thinking of Robert as his own enemy for Cersei that he fails to see him as Cersei's enemy too. Right, and it's the traumas, right? Tywin. Tywin too, right? Like, of living up to Tywin, living up to Cersei. That's a lot. Yeah, I also, the language of plowing,

mounting, mauling is so visceral here, and Marden does such a great job of depicting that marital rape and also what we were talking about earlier, that in Westeros to be married to a woman is to use a woman, that she is a commodity. You know, these are all things that you do with non-human things, to plow, to mount. Absolutely, absolutely. And I love what you pointed out there about how Jaime is blinded to what Cersei experiences and also what you were doing, Chloe, of likening it. It gives us the first-hand view of what Jaime was on the outside for with Aerys and Rhaella, but as you said, Rohan, like blinded to with Cersei.

And we are told that explicitly from Jaime in, like, I think it's his first storm chapter where he says, he threw Bran out the window, not because he wanted to cover up Bran having sighted them, but he was mad that Bran had interrupted him having sex with Cersei when he had to listen to Robert take Cersei constantly on the ride to the north. Yep, and also my favorite Jamie moment, sarcasm, which is when he says that he was jealous of Joffrey for getting to- because breastfeeding Cersei took away his time with Cersei's breast. He's so blinded by jealousy, like I mean the whole put this in the fire thing, like Jamie's jealousy always comes first for him. Cersei has treated him like shit throughout all of Feast for Crows. She is ablest and horrible to him, but he doesn't even mind that so much.

What sets him over the end is the idea that she slept with other men while he's presumed dead. That to me is just wild. Someone else had ownership of her body, and it should have been him. Doesn't matter that she was actually horrible to him. He would have been fine with that. But I'm going to end it. He has no empathy or knowledge for the fact that she had like within this world her body is her currency and that she has to rely on her body for power in ways that so did he. And now that he has and he has lost that now, you would think that might

make him even more attuned to it. But he's a man. So they both feel this like ownership over each other's bodies and are disgruntled when the other does not act in as an extension of themselves in the way that they expect and situation ships man. Yeah, I mean that's all goes back to I'll put a link in the I did put a link in the chat, but I did a talk with our friend Yogi on a psychoanalytic perspective on Jamie and Cersei's relationship a few years ago and it all comes back to some ideas from a psychologist named Heinz Kohut who talks about relational psychology and the ideas of mirroring, twinship, and idealization the Jamie-Cersei relationship. I can't even, I won't even start to go into it here but I'll say

check out that link because that explains like really what's happening in their relationship and why they're in their breakup era now because they can no longer be an affirming mirror for one another or provide for the other what they need to feel whole as a person. Hmm. Something there about Plato probably. She- The philosopher or the or the Doe?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, the philosopher. But the dough is an interesting idea. I do like- Because it like should taste better. It should taste better. You know, the dough.

It's so salty. They intentionally made it salty because it was too tasty. And they wanted kids to stop fucking eating Play-Doh. This is canon. Well, don't make it smell that good then. That's fucked up. So they added salt. I also feel like this is the second time we've talked about this on the podcast.

Is it? I don't know. I don't even remember my Patreon episodes. Um, so… Who are you? So, Cersei remembers once in the first year of Robert and her marriage that she complained that he had hurt her, and he looked ashamed, blamed it on the wine instead, and as he lifted his horn of ale to wash it away, she smashed her own horn on his face

so hard that she chips one of his teeth. Years later, she heard him tell a serving woman how he cracked the tooth in a melee and we have this line, well our marriage was a melee she reflected, so he did not lie. The rest had all been lies though. Yeah, love it. Love it. I mean this whole part is so important because for many reasons. Firstly, and this is not something I have a fully formed thought about, but a friend of mine who's a fan said something like, Cersei as bad rape victim is so important to me. And I was like, I'm going to be recording an episode on this. Please tell me more of your thoughts. And she didn't get back to me on time. But so that but that seed of an

idea has been planted, and I do think that, you know, we look to the- when somebody has been raped, we're looking for very specific reactions, we're looking for an inhabitation of a specific type of victimhood, and she is none of those things, and that I think is- I'm not saying it's empowering because being- I don't think who she is is an empower, like she's, oppresses other people and is cruel and horrible. And that being said, I think that the way that she reacts to her trauma through internalizing the things that were done to her and doing them to others, I think it's actually important

to see that be portrayed. So that's one point. I agree. I love what you're saying here about the importance of having bad victims. And I think that is so much of what George is showing through this book series, through Cersei, through multiple other characters, like through Theon, right? Like, Theon is imperfect. And he does bad things. Literally, kids fucking die. Cersei, literally kids fucking die. But, literally kids fucking die.

But that does not justify necessarily, or that is the question that is posed to the audience. Do you actually think that this justifies the violence and the sexual violence that is enacted upon them and their bodies? And I think that that is core to the series, and I mean that's real life, right? If you can't have someone be a victim and be imperfect, like I think constantly of the... I mean in so many cases, when I say cases I mean literally like court cases, so much

is done to defame victims as though they deserve what has happened to them. When it has nothing to do with the injustice that has been done to them. You can be a bad person and still be a victim. Am I gonna go there and talk about this? Yes, I am. I think a lot of how people responded to the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp case, because she was not the perfect victim. You know, it's so about that. And also too, it's not the same, but something that it relates to for me is this idea of like,

in terms of the way that she expresses desire towards Taina being so messy and problematic, Also too, it's not the same, but something that it relates to for me is this idea of in terms of the way that she expresses desire towards Taina being so messy and problematic and assaultive towards the end, I think it's important to have a depiction of, I don't think she's a lesbian, but a bad queerness, if that makes sense, messy queerness. We're always looking for just positive representation and just yearning and pure. And I think having a diversity of representation is what's important. Like if she needs to be a little Lydia Tarr with it, like, I'm okay with that.

You know, like I think Tarr is actually a lot of people reacted to the movie Tarr by saying like, oh, it's just makes lesbians look bad to have her be a sexual abuser. I think it's important to see how how what we internalize in the world around us and how we act towards others as a result. And I think Tar is a masterpiece and I think Cersei would enjoy it a lot. But yeah, but I think that like having like bad her she's like a bad victim. She's a bad dyke, she's like not, she's failing at like meeting our criteria of what you have to be good, of being good enough for us to have sympathy for you in any of these positions of marginalization. And that's really, I think, complex and fascinating and important to me.

Absolutely. Hallelujah, sister. I like that we've been breaking that back lately. It feels right. It's the highest compliment one can get, honestly. It means that was the very soul and brevity of what it's about. Good job. I mean, it is.

Poor Cersei. I would do so much of her bidding for her. Well, deep down. I don't know, I was like, our I was like, I've been in the trenches. Y'all didn't know what it was like to be a Game of Thrones fan in 2014 going on first dates. And that's what people made small talk about because it was very popular. Everyone's like, who are your favorite characters? I'm like Melisandre and Cersei and they're like, oh, you're crazy. I thought people liked Cersei back then. That's so interesting. Nope, it's revisionist history, but anyways.

I was dating a misogynist at that time who hated pretty much all of the female Game of Thrones characters, which should have been the first red flag, but shoulda, shoulda, coulda, woulda, you know, if we had time machines, ladies, if we had time machines. Well, deep down, Robert was a coward who only pretended to forget. It was easier than facing his shame. In the first year, he took her at least once a fortnight, which is two weeks, everyone. 14 days. I'm trying to bring back the term fortnight, sorry. But by the end it was maybe once a year, and sooner or later

he would always come too drunk wanting to claim his rights. And we have this line of, which shamed him in the light of day gave him pleasure in the darkness. I love this line thematically against the entire series and Feast Dance especially in that enclosing darkness. A shadow's coming of, well, men, right? Like Euron and Falia, the others, Stannis and Melisandre, what shamed him in the light of day gave him pleasure in the darkness.

Yeah, and it connects with the upcoming line of in the darkness I would eat your heirs. You know, what you do in the- it's like when you're under the cover of darkness, you can do what you want. And you can, you know, whether that's self-abortion or rape or, you know, but your true self comes through when nobody is watching. M- I love it because, I mean, also it shows her, not that she's hungry for this, but like, there is a hunger in her chapters in general, and there's something so visceral about the

language there. And I think there's also something really fucking sad about, you know, her talking about the frequency of the marital rape in those first few years of marriage, and then how it dwindles, but it still always comes. Eventually, it always comes, you don't know when. And I think of like, I don't know. This is not a fully formed thought, like animals who are subjected to like torture or whatever and like they get it, even when it's gone, like the randomness of it, they still remember

it and how it changes them, but seriously- Why would you say that? What the fuck? I don't know, some some Kybert shit, okay? You're hurting me. I'm in pain. Look, Kybert only experiments on humans at least. No animals are harmed in making up these chapters.

This is sad because it's RABs. You get me, thanks for a lot. Anyways, yeah, like Circe's in this unending prison, right? Until she finally has Robert killed by a boar because the nights don't stop coming, even if it's only once a year, and it makes me think of this line, which is not pandering to Rohan, but it's not not pandering to Rohan. I was gonna say, it's not not pandering of the night is dark and full of terrors and how that's not just about supernatural shit.

And Melisandre is acutely aware of this more than anybody else as somebody who was tortured, who was a child slave, who unquestionably I'm sure experienced a lot of sexual abuse as a slave. I mean, yeah, I feel very strongly about Melisandre as a really important depiction of PTSD and trauma survivorship. And she's like, the night is dark and full of terrors. And her terror of the dark is not just about religion, it's about her past coming back to her, and what she has experienced in the dark and what others have always been able to do to her. Absolutely.

Taina interrupts Cersei's dissociation, and she's kind of worried. Cersei comes back to Earth and tells her, You're a good friend. I haven't had a good friend in quite some time. But they're interrupted again by a guard, who announces Lady Felice Stokeworth at the door below, and that she did not seem in a good way. Ugh. So cute, the friend thing. And my controversial opinion that I'm gonna get canceled for,

fuck it, is that Felice got what was coming to her because she strap locked. We were on the cusp. They were, Cersei and Tayina were saying, you're a good friend, you're a good friend. We could have gotten a cute, I mean, I was said, mine may have said earlier that a non-rapey sex scene for Cersei is probably not possible. I take it back. We were on the cusp of a cute little lesbian love affair thing and then Felice had to barge in say no strap for you and then ruin everything.

So strap blocking is a federal offense punishable by the death penalty. Good. You know what? She got it. She had it come in. That's okay. Your own girl's gone canceled. Well, Cersei comes to meet Felice, and Felice's lower lip is broken, her clothing is soiled and torn, and all Felice can say is, he killed him, and reveals that Ser Balman engaged Bronn

in single combat and Brawn drove a lance through Balmain's heart. Cersei's thoughts throughout all this, by the way, are so real and cunty and they're so funny. And she's basically like, how am I the only smart person in this entire fucking country? It's so real. She's like that meme. She's like, oh my God, I'm so embarrassed. I can't believe I'm the only one serving cunt here. Oh my God. At all times. At all times. At all times.

It's literally her inner monologue, yes. We once more have this great reference to chivalry and gallantry and how fucking dumb it is. And Bron was no true knight, Felice says. So we have that look of dichotomy of what a knight is, of Sir Balmond's absolute foolishness, being honorable, if you can call it that. And knights being foolish to a fault in these stories. Very real things, right?

Like Lucamore the Lusty with his abajillion kids, or is that Terrance Toyne? Whichever. Whichever motherfucker had all the kids, right? That was stupid. Like one kid, two kids, okay. Jaime having three kids, like let's be for real, that's hella foolish. You're all being foolish all of the time. But yeah, men being stupid thematically, especially knights, especially these knights in positions of gallantry, like, Balmain? Balmain engaged him? Like, no, Cersei was

telling you very quietly and discreetly, can you murder him? Right? Get rid of him? Yeah. It's kind of insane because, like, why would he choose this path of all the paths? Because honestly, I thought it was pretty, it was pretty fucking obvious. Do it quietly. Like, what she said for him to do, very obvious. Do it, do it quiet, do it on the down low. Yeah, don't go murdering public- like he like engaged him, declared loudly, very much like theil, right? And the trial of combat with Tyrion. It was a big ol' trial of combat. And I don't know why he would think that it's gonna be fine if we do it with the lances. He doesn't know if I can use a lance. I'm like, this isn't... Do you just think he doesn't know how to use the full range of weapons?

I guess I can kind of see why he might think that, to use the full range of weapons. I guess I can see why he might think that, but at the same time, I don't know, Cersei points out the faulty rationale on that, but I just think it's so funny. I do feel strongly, it was obvious that she's like, do it quietly, I don't know, maybe he has a fall or something, maybe. He dies of a bellyache. No one knows why Jon Aaron fucking died. That was do something like that I mean, she still thinks he died of a bellyache literally everyone thinks he died of a bellyache So for like three people easy to fake a bellyache Yeah, yeah, like do that. God. It's funny to me how she's like

You're supposed to arrange to get him killed in a hunting accident Like it's not easy to set up range to get him killed in a hunting accident. Like, it's not always that easy to set up. But it's not. Like, sure she just got lucky with the hunting accident because, like, Robert got drunk, you know. What if that boar hadn't been in the right place at the right time? So it's just funny how she's like, it worked for me. You could have done it. Yeah, especially because Bronn is a different person in total. Like, he's sharper, he's smarter, he's not a cedic. Obviously, he's smarter and sharper because now he's the lord of this castle, and he came from fucking nothing but being a sellsword.

He's clever. Yeah, honestly, I do think the boar thing was a good idea. Not a good idea. It was bound to work eventually, you know? And who knows? Maybe she tried it multiple times. It was bound to work fucking eventually. He had it coming.

He had it coming. I rewatched Chicago last night. I'm ready. Amazing. But yeah, like, that fucking bellyaches quote unquote, tears of ease, you know. Easy. There were so many options for you. We have a back and forth passage, Eliana.

Bronn put a dagger in his eye and told me I had best be gone from Stokeworth before the sun went down or I'd get the same. He said he'd pass me around to the Gagarestison and if any of them would have me, would I order Bronson to seize one of his knights at the insolence to say that I should do as those Stokeworths said. He called him Lord Stokeworth. Lady Felice clutched at the Queen's hand. Your Grace must give me knights, a hundred knights and crossbowmen to take my castle

back. Stokeworth is mine! They would not even permit me to gather up my cause! Bronn said they were his wives' clothes now, all my silks and velvets! What will happen to my poor m-m-mother? I imagine she will die? What do you think? Lady Tanda might well be dead already.

Bronn did not seem the sort of man who would expend much effort nursing an old woman with a broken hip. Oh, let's not be ageist on top of all the other isms. Sersi loves the isms. She's all about the fucking isms, dude. As I said earlier, she's like, I am a victim of sexism. I'm going to impose every other ism on you. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Get it, Cersei. You go, girl. No one likes to see a girl boss winning. You know what I mean? No one likes to see that. Cersei recommends, well, you could go to the Silent Sisters. You could try Sears, basically. Oh my god.

She's like, by the way, the Silent Sisters don't talk, especially not about scheming with the Queen Regent. And Felice is like, by the way, the Silent Sisters don't talk, especially not about scheming with the Queen Regent. And Felice is like, oh we did. We didn't serve as to you. Proud to be faithful. Which like, in my head I'm like, well that was kind of your fault. Like you probably should not have schemed with the Queen Regent because I've heard things

about her. But I don't know, they could be rumors. So IDK. IDK. She should have just been faithful better. Faithful quieter and better. Exactly. Have you considered? And without, you know how she could be faithful by letting Cersei and Tyena fuck?

Yeah, that was fucked up. Cock blocking, totally cock blocking. Strap blocking. Yeah, strap blocking. And Dark Sister blocking, and she- Exactly. Strap blocking and dark sister blocking and she exactly I will say so taking a moment outside of Maybe what could be called a pro-serse leaning podcast Taking us out of that narrative just for a quick moment

Psychologically we come back to the line from last week that a king protects his people or he is no king at all. And that does apply to Felice, by the way. Even if Felice and Balmain were fucking stupid and stupidly plotted and didn't really do this very well, there's no clause saying that idiots don't count in the king that protects his people or he's no king at all. Like, stupid people aren't involved in that, right? Like, you have to at least hand it to them too. There's still people. It does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty, as Cher Horowitz has said. And I do think that this is going to come back to bite her.

Like the Raniro parallel we brought up a couple episodes ago that she, I mean, with the Rosby situation coming up more and more, she might need Rosby to flee to it because it's so close if she's roosted from King's Landing and she no longer has a friend there. That's for sure. And let's also note, not to give her a pass, but she's been drinking a lot this whole encounter, so she's also not making the best decisions. And also this whole book. Yeah. She can't be held responsible. She's just a teenage drunk girl. Oh my god. I do think it's interesting that she is so drunk and drinking throughout, but that's what you get when you hit someone up in the middle of the night, you know? Mm. Yeah. Once again, Felice brought it on herself.

Yeah. It's not business hours. But it is when you presume to rule an entire country, it's always business hours. That's true. And there is like, you know, I don't think it's like anti-Sersi to be like, you know, to be pointing out the flaws in like, her strategy, like the- S- I'm still allowed to be pro-Sersi. K- She bemoans later on, like that, you know, had it been Robert, John Aaron would have

been the one to deal with this. And I think of the fact that if you pick a competent hand, you could. They could be able to handle something like this when you are indisposed. Like, you know, share the load. Share the load, dear Frodo. FG It is being pro-Sercie to point out her flaws. I don't think anybody was truly appreciating a character by pretending that they're some flawless- I just see there's so much stay on discourse, you know, of like, my fave is perfect, my fave is- and your fave is the worst. And it really- to truly love a character is to truly embrace them in all of their flaws and nuances.

Mm-hmm. Agreed. Something that's kind of funny about the Stokewood situation is it actually reminds me of another and you know regarding kings protecting their people or rulers protecting their people whatever, is it makes me think of a clash of kings. Once more with Bran and the Lady Hornwood situation and the difficulties with holding that land and the Hornwoods needing protection to take back slash hold those lands to an extent that the Hornwoods couldn't hold it on their own, right? Slash and Bronn kind of taking it by force. No, he didn't really take it by force. Stupidity was a play, like, kind of like Ramsay, but also literally not like Ramsay at all because

it is kind of a variation of it in that Bronn is like, now he's just decking out his wife with cool clothes. He's like, your clothes are my wife's clothes now, and he doesn't cut off Lawless's fingers. I mean the bar is apparently very low for men in this series. But um, it- Just the series? Yeah, regardless- True. Valid. But I am thinking like, I don't know, this horn, this Stokewood situation, there's something about it that makes me think of the Hornwoods.

That's all. That's a great point. And everyone vying to, like, get with the person that lives there in order to take their land also. Yeah. Cersei says she could stay here with the crown until they win her castle back. She gives her some wine to help her relax and calls her maids. Dorcas is sent to find Qyburn. And then she sends Jocelyn for bread, cheese, a meat pie, apples,

and wine. You know, a beautiful last supper. Qyburn arrived before the food. Which is a five word horror story, by the way. Qyburn arrived before the food. Chills. Well, better than after! I mean- Because then you'll just throw up what you ate. Yeah, that's your last meal, so... Felice has basically finished four cups of wine, and she's finally stopped sobbing repeatedly, and she's kind of hiccuping, kind of getting to that slower, calmer sobbing, you know, where you're just hiccuping and crying a little bit here and there.

And Cersei tells Qyburn separately of Balmans folly and asks if he's looking for a new test subject. He tells her the puppeteers are quite used up, bringing back that used phrasing this chapter that Rohan brought up, as she tells him to take her below and do not bring her back. She returns to Felice with a smile and says, Maester Qyburn will help you rest. With use, too, it reminds me of a recent episode where you talked about how Cersei is one of the agents in the traffic of women, including Felice. I forgot that it was Jane Poole who'd given her that she was involved in that. But yeah, like to me, like those are not forgivable actions. But I will say that, you know, Cersei Qyburn experiments father-daughter. It just reminds me of the tweet where it's like, girl does some sociopathic shit. Her gays, honestly, work. Which is just a summary of like, basically, so that's a summary of like, it's literally

Qyburn and Cersei, he's kind of her gays being honestly work, but also me and Cersei Nation. Like, yes, she is evil, as it before, we have to truly embrace her flaws to really love and know who she is, but honestly, work. Yeah, absolutely. This is one of her more evil doings, to be fair. I'm like, Malara wasn't that bad, personally, but... Malara probably wouldn't have had a very happy life anyway. I'm not gonna comment, but... We don't have that in Westeros.

Work. Honestly, work. I really want to know exactly what he does to these people. What? I don't. I really want to know exactly what he does to these people. I don't. I don't know. I think it could be interesting, especially if, what, do we get undead police? That'd be really funny. He's making the first Westerosi sex robot.

Move over, Elon. I don't know, because we were talking about that, right? And obviously there's hints towards that with him talking earlier this chapter of what if I brought you a new soldier? He's like, no, a living man will be able to stand him. All this stuff. And I mean, we see that pan out in dance. But I assume, I don't know, there's something about Qyburn that like, this is gonna sound

really bad, but it makes me think of the experiments done on people. I'm surrounded by enemies and imbeciles," she said. She could not even trust her own blood and kin, nor Jaime, who had once been her other half. She thinks Bronn was only an annoyance, and she didn't think he had the imp. Ever. It was just something she was saying, obviously. Tyrion was too clever to let Lollus name her child after him, knowing it was sure to draw the Queen's wrath down on her. Lady Merriweather had pointed that out, and she was right.

Interesting. And also interesting that Tyrion is like this reason for fake justice in every book, right? The Vale, Joffrey here. Love that for him. And Tyena is kind of his Sansa again, right? Like, she's kind of the Sansa for Cersei here, of being there and telling her, oh, you're so clever to have seen it. He's a fool, your grace. Don't fucking kill him. I think there's a little bit of that going on with Tyena for Cersei.

Eryn- Oh my god, Tyena's like, I can fix her. VB- Exactly. Eryn- Relatable. VB- Yeah. VB- She imagines Bronn in his castle and thinks, Grinn, all you wish, Ser Bronn. You'll be screaming soon enough. Enjoy your lacquit lady and your stolen castle whilst you can. When the time comes, I shall swat you as if you were a fly." She thinks that Loras could do the swatting,

and maybe they'd kill each other like Aric and Aeric? Oh, dance callbacks. Wow. It's strong. The Rhaenyra is strong in this chapter. TBH. VB – Yeah. Stokeworth – is there a pun going on in this name? Stoking fires? I don't know. Something to think about one day when we get wind.

Anyways, makes her sick to think about. She returns to the chamber, her head spinning, and thinks it's just too much wine and too little sleep, which is probably true. I've been there before. And being awakened twice to work. She thinks that Robert would have been too drunk to answer. She's already a better king than Robert. This is the time that she thinks John Aaron would have been the one to take care of this.

The world outside begins to turn light, and Circe watches Tana sleep, her breasts wondering if she dreams of Mere, or maybe her lover, with a scar. She cups Tana's breasts softly at first, squeezing, and Teina wakes up. Circe asks if it feels good, and then she twists it hard. Teina gasps, saying she's not into titty twisters and that it's hurting her, and Circe tells her it's just the line. She begins to tug at the other nipple and says that she is the queen and she means to claim her rights.

Again, she is the queen, she means to claim her rights. Again, she is the queen, she means to claim her rights. There's transactional, there's the political, Gail Rubin's political economy of sex, the way that Cersei has been groomed to only view attraction through the mindset of conquest. So yeah, we'll talk more about this later in something I'm going to call the raspberry swirled model of oblivious lesbian denial. But it's very strong here. That's an official phrase of Circeology, by the way. It is. It's one of the choruses. But basically, there's a song by my beloved Tori Amis called Raspberry Swirl. The lyrics are the chorus goes, things are

getting desperate when the boys can't be men. Everybody knows I'm her friend. Everybody knows I'm her man." So about Connollingus, we know this. So basically, Tori has said about this song, when she's been asked, she gets really fucking gay. So what she talks about is... so here's a quote from Tori. And I'm linking a video to this in the show notes because her delivery of this is the most hysterical gay panic you've ever seen. The women in my life have come up to me at different times and said, why can't you have a John Thomas?

Why can't you just be a guy? And you know, I wonder that sometimes too, because I think I'd be a good guy. But I'd want to be a guy, you know, knowing what I know, because I know what a woman thinks. And if I were a guy, you guys would have so much competition. I'd be stealing all your babes, and they'd know it. And this is really a major thread throughout her career. So there are, I've collected clips of many. She, like, from 92 onwards has so many numerous clips

where she starts talking out of nowhere about how if she was a man, she would have sex with women, but not eat their pussy, because she doesn't like to eat pussy. So she basically, so that's what I call the raspberry swirl model of sublimation and oblivious gay desire, which is something that I have experienced that I think a lot of queer women have experienced, which is that we do not have a framework for desiring other women and we don't understand it. So we find anything else to attribute it to and rationalize away.

So like for Tori, who I think is bisexual calling her out, like she's just like, well, it's just that I love my friends and I wish I was a man so I could love them. And we see Cersei saying, oh, this feeling towards Taina, it's just me trying to feel what Robert feels. I'm just trying to claim my rights, as a way to fully deny that there is desire present, because there's no framework for what that looks like,

and there's no conception of that actually being a real possibility for her. And so that's the end. Different women do it in different ways. Jane Fonda is another notorious raspberry swirler. She talks very homosexual about women in many interviews. Like there's one where she's talking about Marilyn Monroe and she goes, well, I'm not gay,

but I'd like to burr those breasts. And she starts making these weird noises. It's just like the extent that women go to and men to to rationalize a way their desire to other women is wild. It's like the mental gymnastics. And I think Cersei does such a similar version to what Tori Amis does in Raspberry Swirl in her interviews in terms of saying, well, it's just me wanting to be a man. It's just me wanting that power and that control with that.

But like, as we said earlier, both things are true. She wants more power, she wants control, and she desires Tayina. Yes, yes, I love that. So anyways, go bump it. Raspberry Swirl is also like a dance banger. Yeah, absolutely butter bumping that. That is on my Cersei and my Daenerys playlist. I think it could be on both. It could be both, you know, I think it's important. It's in the canon, you know, it's in the canon. As we said, multiple things can be true.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I think so much of what the interpretation of the scene we're about to talk about is, is people not being able to hold multiple truths at once and wanting to only see one possibility at a time and narrow mindedness, especially people who are not women who have been attracted to women or cis and cisgender heterosexual people because most queer people I know See this scene for what it is, even though it is assaultive. It is gross and it also is fueled by desire Yeah, and I think that's part of why sometimes

You know as a in the past few years, we've taken to I think reminding people like they're not real, right? Because the interested the part of the power of stories is the ability to explore different ideas through multiple lenses, all those lenses can hold true at once. It's just which one you choose to look through at any given moment in time. And that's why as you said, all of these things can be true in this one moment. And stories give us the ability to wade through complicated things in a space where we have a little more control over it and to, I don't know, again, have that sort of complexity.

And I just don't want us to take that away from fiction. Right. And I think especially as we enter now into, I mean, in this weekend in November 2024, an era in which LGBTQ people, there's going to, we're going to see a big clamping down on what we're allowed to say publicly, how we're allowed to talk about ourselves, how we're

allowed to express ourselves. You know, there are states currently where you cannot express the existence of LGBTQ people without being criminalized for this or being called a sexual predator, including in schools, medical settings, etc. So I think, you know, for us to, it's just fiction, and it's important to keep that in mind. And also that to, you know, I will not lie that I was coming into this being like, well, what does analysis mean at this point anyway? We're all gonna fucking die. Like, but,

but then I realized that, you know, it's, I think it's so important to provide queer and feminist analysis in a world that's going to increasingly discourage us from doing so. In my case, as someone who's a trans healthcare provider, criminalize it. So that is to say, RIP Cersei would have loved testosterone. Which to say is another thing too, where multiple truths can be held. She can be wanting to be a man, she can say she wants to be a man in order to access the power that man have, and she can also experience these forms of gender dysphoria. All these things can be true.

I won't go much more into her gender stuff, because I wrote an essay on that, and everything I have to say is on that, so you all can read that. But today is more about her sexuality, but they are intertwined. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we didn't even talk, we didn't even read the scene yet. And I already got on my fucking soapbox. There's such a subset of people I talk to about this scene, who see it and get it. And then I see other analysis that makes me want to bash heads against wall. Because to just like, like, I'm sorry, but like, most also, unfortunately, many, many women are raped and sexually abused. The majority of them do not. Unfortunately, there's not many of us dykes out there, there should be more. If there if every woman who was raped reacted to their trauma, but through wanting to have sex with another woman,

that's just not how the world works, you know? And so to reduce Cersei's sexual attraction to Tyena as a desire to restage her trauma where she is the one who owns the power, there's elements of that here that's certainly a part of what's going on, and it's not the only thing that's going on. And I think when people speak that way, it's genuinely insulting to survivors of sexual violence and to queer women because there's been so much discourse of, oh, people are only lesbian because they've been raped. And now currently there's a lot of, oh, people are only trans because they were molested. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Got heavy. Got heavy. It is heavy. We're still

gonna get even heavier. I mean, yeah, let's do it. Let's play out this scene and dive even deeper. Stop saying enter and dive, you two. The last like ten minutes you both have said enter, you've said dive, you keep talking about it and I'm four years old and I'm just like, hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe hehehe hehehe hehehe hehehe hehehe hehehe hehehe he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he This is so funny, you really think she's gonna take them out? I'm not gonna keep it, sorry. Well some of these are all- No, I mean we have to keep- Alright. Yeah, we have to keep- we need to focus, you know? Alright.

We have some diving- we have some deep diving to do. Oh! Guys! Okay. Tyena's hair was as black as Robert's, even down between her legs, and when Cersei touched her there, she found her hair all sopping wet where Robert's had been coarse and dry. Please, the Mirrish woman said. Go on, my queen, do as you will with me.

I'm yours. But it was no good. She could not feel it, whatever Robert felt on the nights he took her. There was no pleasure in it, not for her. For Chyena, yes. Her nipples were two black diamonds, her sex slick and steamy. Robert would have loved you for an hour. The Queen slid a finger into that mirrored swamp, then another, moving them in and out. But once he spent himself inside you, he would have been hard pressed to recall your name. She wanted to see if it would be as easy with a woman

as it has always been with Robert. 10,000 of your children perished in my palm, your grace, she thought, slipping a third finger into mere. While you snored, I would lick your sons off my face and fingers one by one, all those pale, sticky princes. You claimed your rights, my lord, but in the darkness, I would eat your heirs." Tyena gave a shudder. She gasped some words in a foreign tongue, then shuddered again and arched her back and screamed.

She sounds as if she is being gored, the Queen thought. For a moment she let herself imagine that her fingers were a boar's tusk, ripping the Mirrish woman apart from groin to throat. It was still no good. It had never been any good with anyone but Jaime. When she tried to take her hand away, Tyena caught it and kissed her fingers. Sweet Queen, how shall I pleasure you? She slid her hand down Cersei's side and touched her fingers. Sweet Queen, how shall I pleasure you? She slid her hand down Cersei's side and touched her sex.

Tell me what you would have of me, my love. Leave me. Cersei rolled away and pulled up the bedclothes to cover herself, shivering. Dawn was breaking. It would be morning soon, and all of this would be forgotten. It had never happened. R-r-r-r-raspberry swirl.

Rowan has already given us a taste of where this is gonna go. I am not sorry. It was a touch on taste. I am not sorry. I can't help it. Where we're gonna go here, but I do want to get a few quick things out of the way before we get into it regarding George's construction of this chapter and some of the language and motifs that run throughout the whole book series and themes, etc. regarding specifically like day and night, which again, it's not pandering, but it's not not pandering. And the things hidden by night. We have the terrors of the night very much equated with Melisandre and her kind of fearful

womb tomb shits. But also the equation of the feminine with- I didn't mean those kinds of shits. But also the equation of the feminine with night time, such as language like moon of my life, being attributed to denarius, and again that association with Melisandre. But I think, and even though I think this one's kind of stupid, but it comes up a lot, so I'm gonna just bring it up, like other conceptions of binary energies like yin and yang, etc. and the association with feminine energies, which technically I guess yin and

yang is not about that because it's how each exists within the other, but regardless, regardless. There's I think something interesting in this entire chapter where it challenges the notion that nighttime and the horrors that women experience is so mysterious and unknowable. Women are constantly characterized as like, you know, we just can't know them! Too mysterious, too dark, too difficult. And I think there's something here that shows us like, if we choose to foreground that story, if we choose to actually make this the focal point, it is in fact knowable. It's as clear as day if you will only look. And I think that that could come into play when it comes to the themes

of what happens with the Long Night, which I don't actually know how that's gonna specifically go, but you know you have things like, I don't know, the Night Queen, right? Like, or etc. at the wall that one time, or the Night, I don't know, like what it would mean in regards to the War of the Five Queens, but whatever. Also earlier, Circe saying that she would imagine Robert as Rhaegar because she couldn't imagine him as Jaime, and I think there's something here where she thinks of Teyna like and even thinks of Robert in that position slightly in which she's kind of projecting Robert onto her, not entirely, but especially with the language describing her fingers as those boar tusks, and in regards

to trauma, like Cersei's inability to be present in the moment with the person who is here with her, and like that sort of being a manifestation of that. I don't know, I'm just spitballing ideas. But it's important to spitball, and I like what you said about the Bionaries because in this scene, it's such a great example of how Cersei, while trying to uphold Bionaries of prey and predator, man and woman, you know, she actually blurs so many. She's, I'm not saying a non-binary character in a gender way, although I'm not not saying it, but she really does complicate so many binaries between, you know, man, woman, queen, mother and monarch, predator and prey, and

we have to hold all these contradicting parts of her together. And that's what makes her to me the most fascinating and complex character in literary history. But yes. Thank you for bringing those thoughts together, Furby. That was great. Yeah. We love you, Cersei. And we love you, Rebecca De Winter. And we love you, Mrs. Danvers.

And we love you, Melisandre. And we love you, Gabrielle De Leon. We're the top literary characters of all time. Anyways. Anyways. But yeah, no, I think, and also too, so like, okay, this passage, there's an overwhelming amount to unpack. So I think it helps to break it up into two things. The first being sticky princes, and the second being the actual sex scene.

Yes, yes. Horn emojis everywhere because it's just the best fucking line in the whole world. Y'all. It really is. It's like the best, like, it's an act of defiance, right? It's the only act of defiance she could have as someone that was raised to be bred, someone that was raised to fit within the confines of this binary like you and Eliana were just saying. And it's the act of defiance that she once had and now is another act of defiance. Now is her chance to also understand it. Totally.

Like he may try to claim the darkness as his time to possess her, but she reclaims it from him. She owns the night. This is the closest she can get to waging war on Robert. Not just this, and also the result, which is raising pure Lannister children who get to claim the glory of being his heirs while carrying only her blood. That treason is her act of political, sexual, and emotional warfare on him. She emasculates him by making his heirs her children with Jamie.

She's using the few tools she has in this situation and with the sticky princess passage to avenge herself. And yes, it's in the darkness, I would eat your air is my favorite line in the series. I want to quote a friend of ours, Alex, who gave me permission to quote this because I think it's such a great Encapsulation of what makes this passage iconic our friend Alex said the context of living under domestic abuse The political implications of ensuring Robert has no trueborn children and also the sheer levels of cunt Thirsty just like leaning so fucking hard into her animal symbolism and the rawness of her emotions and again the astronomical levels of cunt. Those nights of defiance and victory over her abuser. This is Cersei at her happiest being the person she wants to be. In the light you're the king and I'm the queen,

but in the dark I'm the destruction of your royal prerogative and mandate." Like he, Robert has he has a lot of bastards but he has no true born air and through Cersei's little reproductive rights exercise, wish it wasn't relevant, like I mean look RIP Cersei would have loved being an abortionist. I think first career choice is like historian because she loves some history. She could write some like trashy books on the history of like royal sex scandals but like part time abortionist you know. Let's drive people over the state line Cersei, let's go for it. But yeah it's also this passage is so remarkable because of what it means for body autonomy. Speaking of that, there's, to quote another Tory song, and this is funny because Cersei would hate

Tory. She'd be like, ah, she's an emotional babbler. Cersei is pure PJ Harvey first two albums. Like, Rid of Me? That is Cersei's inner world That whole album. Yeah, but anyways my second favorite Tori song, which is called blood roses Tori wrote it about the what she described is like what it means to over identify with the role of a victim after her own sexual assault and There's a line in it where she says I've shaved every place that you've been boy and in that and is with in the darkness I would eat your heirs These women are reclaiming their bodies from the men who violated them and those are just such powerful declarations of

bodily autonomy and even though that song is written about like too much about over identifying with the role of victim She still is able to in also throughout the whole album It's on boys for Pele to explore what it means to be a woman in the world defined by men and To use the tools that you have like for women to Think about the act of shaving as a grooming practice that is often used to uphold patriarchal beauty standards But she's re weaponizing it as a way to erase this man who violated her. And similarly, Cersei is using this act where she is violated, she is transforming it in the end into an act of empowerment.

I love that because I also think of like, I think that there's a framing of, how do I phrase this? There's no way to phrase it without like, there's a way that the consumption of semen is framed as being something that is part of the objectification of women, right? It is a sexualized act that people are like, oh yeah, swallow and whatever, but she reframes that as something where she is taking away, as you said, and as Alex said, the royal prerogative had mandated the destruction of Robert's heirs. It doesn't read as... it does, as you said, read as defiance, not as however the fuck people see swallowing seeming as. Yeah, and it's interesting with that swallowing, which is normally seen as a submissive act, the shaving.

That's the word, yes. Being seen as a way to capitulate, yeah, being used as a way to capitulate to patriarchy, being reclaimed as ways to subvert the patriarchal violence inflicted upon these women. Yeah. Yes, exactly. I'm so glad you're here to actually articulate the thing that I'm trying to say. I'm glad I'm here too. And put that word, because yes, the submission is exactly, exactly what is being overturned

in this moment. Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, is this scene assaultive and should people ask for consent before things they do? Yes. And as I mentioned earlier, not only Cersei, but sex as it exists is about power. It's not all the time, and it'd be great to exist in a utopia where it wasn't, but we're not in that utopia. How is she supposed to have a healthy approach to sexuality, especially towards a woman, when she's only ever seen unhealthy models of it modeled around her? The way that she approaches desire for a woman is about so much more than empowering herself or reenacting trauma through taking the predatory role that she was prey to. It's also about how her framework for desiring women relates to conquest and ownership, because she has no framework for desiring women outside of that. Cersei was a bargaining chip,

and so was her daughter. Even the most powerful women in her society have been pawned to be captured, and other women, like the sex workers that she contributes the abuse of, are pawn. So yes, this scene is gross, but realistically, how would it go another way? Like, it's a question of do we not want a messy, problematic scene, or do we not want this representation at all? I mean, as I mentioned, George Small Balls Martin does not know how to properly depict women having sex with each other, and if he grew a pair or hired me, then maybe he could. But I think this scene is so real for who Cersei is, for the not good person that she is.

As her number one fan, I'm gonna say it. I think also because we threw out the series, see her using sex to gain something, you know, with the kettle blacks to gain their favor, she kind of flirts with Ned to gain his silence. Because she's always seen as using sex to gain something It's hard for a lot of readers to see her as not doing that in this circumstance And it makes it hard for readers to see her as being motivated by desire and reading her desire as authentic

Like because she's never seen as being genuine and authentic Readers really who haven't lived this type of attraction really struggle to see her as having genuine desire and not just being motivated by power. In my experience of hearing people talk about this scene. Yeah. I'd like to quote Luce Irabera again, who in The Sex Witch is Not One, she talks about with women's consignment to passivity she is to be the beautiful object of contemplation, not knowing what she wants, ready for anything, even asking for more, so long as he will take her as his object when he seeks his own pleasure." So in this scene, Cersei was refusing passivity, and she can't identify what she wants, but she does want Taina.

She can't recognize that she subconsciously knows what she wants out of the pre-existing sexual economy and reinforces that sexual economy through the way that she treats Taina. As Irigaray says, to reverse the relation of sex, especially in the economy of sexuality, does not seem a desirable objective, which is what makes this scene as uncomfortable at best, but also makes it important. And it's like something Maddie and I talk a lot about is I also don't think it's fair for people to assume, like I don't want to jump to like, it's really hard to talk about this scene without people calling you like a rape apologist when you're not just saying oh it's bad everything is bad. The thing is like we don't Maddie in the

last episode talked about how we don't see enough of Taina as a human and George treats her in a very stereotyped way. We don't know that Taina doesn't have desire you know so like I think just like sex is way more I think something that a lot of readers, like young people I see online just seem to think is everything is very all or nothing. And sex is messy and sex is complicated. And I've been in situations both on both ends of it, where like, you know, I'm sorry,

but like most of my sexual experiences have been at like a party where it's dark and we're all drunk and like what are the ethics you know like sex is not a neat cut and dry thing and asking for consent the way consent works the economy of consent is just not always neat and dry and perfect. And we have to have depictions of times where they're not and not just label it as bad and instead think about who are the people involved and what are their thoughts here. It's okay what I'm saying is okay to go into a dive bar bathroom and fuck when you're both. It's okay. Yeah, I agree. I've had many sexual experiences like that and I like that you are saying that there is an aspect about it that is intertwined with power for many people. Like for example, like I think of some of my sexual experiences as part of the interest for me was the conquest. It was the power. It was

the ability to know that I could do that. And not in a rape-apologist kind of way. I wasn't assaulting people. But there's a thing, experience and you come to see things. You come to see yourself and your own, the way you navigate the world as a person and the way other people navigate the world and like, the world is messy. There are so many different kinds of experiences that exist out there and also there was something that you were saying of, you were talking about how so many people see Cersei as only using sex also for a means for her own ends and to gain power, and I think that that has to do with as you- a lot of the examples that you pointed to were from earlier in the series and from the perspectives of the POV's chapters of other

men. Even Jaime, when he thinks back to him having sex with Cersei, he thinks about her telling him, I want, I want, I want, and that was in the context of Arya and the wolf. And yet, and yet, when you're talking about Cersei and Desire, it's not until we get to her POV that we see like, there are other moments in which she does have sex that are for her own pleasure, that are for her own desire. But we just don't see it because that's not what happens in the POVs of those male characters, right, of those men characters. Whereas for Circe, you can see she has all these memories that float throughout her narration and interiority where she thinks of like, I had a really great time having sex that

one time, or like, I loved having sex with Jamie in this instance, etc, etc. And it is for her own enjoyment and pleasure. Yeah, that's a big part of why I hate most readings of the Storm of Swords sex scene. As someone who finds that scene hot, the total discounting of any thought that she might be enjoying it at all just doesn't really feel fair, I think to her as a character. But yeah, I think I'm so glad you brought up that I want because there's an Eregar I Passage where she talks about how women are, how men see women as unknowable.

And Jamie so fundamentally sees Cersei. Yeah, Jamie so fundamentally sees Cersei as unknowable. So like, you know, there's one key line where he says, I thought that Cersei was the maiden, but all the time she's the stranger hiding her face. When was that girl ever the maiden? And you played a role in making sure. Yeah, true. So that and then also like the I want passage is so evocative. It's something I've never been able to fully form thoughts on. But I think it's one of the most like, I don't even know how to put in words, but it's the embodiment of that idea of how, you know, like, also another feminist text, here we go again, Laugh of the Medusa by Elin Cissiou. I love my French

feminist ladies. It is about the unintelligibility of women linguistically to man. And I also want to add to I know a lot of these French feminists that I'm citing sound a little like essentialist and turfy. Luce Irgaray has actively said that trans people are a part of her feminism and has been actually trans inclusive, so I just want to like highlight that because unfortunately it's a lot of opposite in our heroes. Like with the unintelligibility, Cersei is also unintelligible to herself because she has internalized the hetero-patriarchal mindset. And she is not able to understand her desire for Tyena as desire because of what she's internalized with the world around her, which is unable to make sense of that or have a

frame for that. Like even with men, you know, you kind of, you can go to the wall and be gay. I think a lot of people go to the Citadel and be gay. If I were a dude, I'd be at the Citadel, because I'm a nerd. I'd be like studying, reading, gay fucking. But like, besides Silent Sisters, there's not a space for women to go be gay, you know? I think there's something interesting in the way, especially coming back to that commodification that you brought up earlier, right?

And like that transactional nature, that commodification in the way of selling sex and the way, especially going back to that commodification that you brought up earlier, right? And like that transactional nature, that commodification in the way of selling sex and the way that this wasn't that for once, right? Like this was the one time that Cersei wanted to try something for herself, whether or not it was for her or not at the time. However you want to take that reading and read it. And almost like, not pure, obviously. It was not a very pure experience. There's some taintedness to it. The drink, the Robert, all of the memories flooding back in as it happens. But in her current situation, it's as pure as it gets, right? In comparison to Jamie, in comparison to Robert, in comparison to everything that it had brought. So I think it's an interesting exploration.

I mean, realistically, shouldn't we, as you were saying, we need to have these experiences, we need to have those explorations, like, sex isn't just like, you did it, you fucked, great, next chapter, next page. It is an experience that many humans go through in life. It's a bonding experience, it's a vulnerable experience, it's an intimate experience, so, I don't know, I find it fascinating that this is like the most intimate we see and like coming back to your points about the I want, I want, I want. Cat has a very, very similar delivering of that in her passages when she has had so much taken from her, right?

She thinks her children are dead and she's trying to keep going with Rob on this path and her father has died and she exasperated thinks I want I want I want and it's more than just desire for sex it's desire for rest intimacy a break from all of this fucking hell and it's more of an ascension right it's an out of body I want it's a want that can't just be itched it's more of an ascension, right? It's an out-of-body I want. It's a want that can't just be itched. It's a scratch and itch that'll never get done. It's, I don't know, it's an out-of-body experience. It's validation of existence on this planet or that planet, whatever planet they live on. And Eirion. Eirion has her I wants. Yes, yes. I only wanted.

Yet the women in this series are not taught to understand what they want or how to pursue what they want. And they often are cannot pursue what they want because they're stymied. Like Kat is such a perfect example of somebody who's extremely smart, extremely competent, and is doomed because of men's failures around her and men do not listen to her. You know, like Cersei isn't able to understand or know what she wants and she's, I love you baby, not a diss, but you are not as sub martin competent as Catelyn. You know, Catelyn was raised to be the head of a household. She has every skill that you can have as a lady, and yet she still can't complete that sentence of I want, because women can't want in a society where they're condemned to death by the recklessness of the men around them. Yep. You know, you can't even think, you can't even try to want because you're going to get disappointed. Speaking of like, not knowing how to want and the I want being open ended. Another reason I think this scene is valuable and not just, oh, it's gross, it's only sexual assault, is, you know, women, and I'm speaking from a first hand dyke experience, like women are not trained to think of themselves as agents of desire, and rather a subject of

desire. So we're not taught effectively how to effectively basically hit on other women and approach, but there is a trained passivity that we're taught to do. We're not trained to go after what we want. We're not trained to directly state our needs. And those of us women who do are labeled as like some sort of like weird freaks. Like the way Samantha on episode one of Sex and the City, they say Samantha has sex like a man. Or like something I really connect to is lesbian vampires in fiction.

How is Cersei supposed to know how to approach another woman with desire in a respectful, consensual way, when women, period, are not taught to do that. Like, we are taught to see the point of the song Blood Roses. We're taught to see ourselves as victim and to, like, revel in that. And, like, women's desire, when it's expressed in an agentic way, is seen as masculine. It's seen as freakish. It's seen as aggressive. And I'm on this,. I am somebody who has been labeled all of those things. So I understand it. And I think that's why it's important to not just jump to that with Cersei's. Yeah.

But it's true though. I mean, we're told, you know, you can't say what you want that's aggressive. Men's wants are number one in the world. I mean, it's not even just sexuality, just period. Yes. Agreed. If I'm feeling something, I say it. Not in a no-filter way. In terms of if I'm mad at someone, I will say,

hey, this thing that happened, this goes not just to expressing desire, but expressing boundaries. Women are not taught to set boundaries. And so I feel very comfortable in expressing my desires in terms of what I want and what I don't want. And it's not something I see a lot around me. It makes me think a little bit of 1984. And when you remove the ability to articulate, there is power in being able to articulate anything, whether it's like, the things that you want, the things that you feel, etc. That's why I think, you know, what I've seen when some people describe their experiences in therapy, they talk about

going through this with their therapist of being able to even put to words to identify the thing that they are feeling because we are not taught to identify and actually know what we are feeling and you cannot articulate the thing that you want. You are not given the language to do so and therefore how can you attain a thing that you cannot express? And part of subjugation in general is the control of language in any society. And like with Cersei's scene here, she says it was no good, it never felt good. It's really interesting to think about that because my personal headcanon is like, it only feels good with Jaime because of my little idea that when they have sex she pictures herself

as him. And I think that gets her off, but that's just me. That's what I think. So I think also people use the, well it didn't feel good and she didn't enjoy it as a way to discredit this being rooted in desire, which I find really frustrating. Because there's- Yeah, the triangulation of desire, the desire of the self through the other, etc. Yeah, which is- I talk about a lot in that psychoanalytic baby Cersei thing I did, but like, yeah, I think just like right now, especially there's this epidemic of like, queer women culture about yearning

and softness, like, and like things not seeming like raunchy. And it feels to me reactionary. And Maddie and I were talking about this and Maddie said she feels like it de de de legitimatizes women's sexuality, cut from both angles. It makes them think that their desires for women aren't real and are acting out some sort of gendered power fantasy, while also declaring love between women to be softer, purer, and implicitly desexualized. And it's just so much of the reaction I see in this chapter is like, I think, connected to this, in my opinion. And so as a wise person once said, we as a society have evolved past the need for milquetoast cottagecore lesbianism. From now on, all lesbians should be evil and unhinged. Goddamn right. Get it. Which like, okay, this is the this this cottagecore

bullshit is a reaction to the predatory lesbian stereotype. Like, lesbians have been demonized always. And like the lesbian vampire trope that I love so much is actually a part of that. However, I feel like there's so much swinging of one extreme to another of like, oh, it's just that softness and yearning. Like I remember this ex that I had in 2022 when I sent her some of the Tori Amos quotes

where she's going on about how she wants to go like become a Viking and capture a woman and steal her for himself. My I said I was like, lol, she's so gay. And my ex was like, my ex was somebody who was very invested in like, she was 38, but never been in any relationship before. So she basically had just like only knew the idea of being a lesbian as opposed to the practice of it If that makes sense. Yeah, and so like She was like, ew, but that's so male gazey of her to say that Um, like she's just internalizing the male gaze and i'm like, it's funny. Just laugh. It's funny

Like it's a funny quote. Some of the things she says are so funny She's like I have a third leg and I want to go like capture jennifer annison with it Okay, it's funny laugh with me things she says are so funny. She's like, I have a third leg and I want to go like capture Jennifer Aniston with it. Okay, Cersei. It's funny. Laugh with me. And though she's so Cersei coded. And but there's so much like the reaction that like when I remember my ex had that reaction, I was so taken aback of like, wow, this actually does speak to me to a schism in like queer womanhood between like, you know, how those of us who are like actively desiring are seen as like, being

like men, and there's something wrong with you. I think especially it's like same-sex desire is inherently messy because it's so repressed and so the ways it comes up it becomes so messy that like it's important to have that represented and not just the narrative of yeah I woke up I was born this way and I knew from the time I was born. Like what you said, Eliana, earlier, of like, she's 34 and she's still figuring it out. Like, representation for our queer elders. Exactly. Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for giving us this beautiful lesson in Circeology. Rowan, can you tell everyone where to find you and anything that we will link below as well on where to find you? But go ahead and tell everyone. If you dare, I just use social media for brain vomit, but on both Twitter and Blue Sky, it's Cyril Woodcock. As I was, even though I was just talking at being sexually aggressive, not a sex joke,

it's an amazing character from Phantom Threat. No, damn right, PT. Yeah, I will say this is not a typical part of our ending social media shoutout, but yeah. Oh, that is her name, isn't it? Wow. When I was ordering Santa's drink, I was like, I took down notes just to tell Chloe my thoughts about, okay, sorry.

I'm so sick of you, Ariana. The HBIC. Lesbian coded, by the way. That being said, as I said, social media is just like brain vomit. I actively, if you are listening to this right now, we are in an era of mutual aid and we need to do what we can to support each other. So if you're listening to this and you know somebody 18 or younger who needs gender affirming medical care and access to hormones, get in my DMs.

I will do everything I can to hook whoever you have in your life up with that. It's every person for themselves right now, so don't hesitate to reach out. I'm here for that. Wonderful. We will be linking your social media as well as some of the essays you've done, like the great piece of work that you made with Low the Links on Cersei Lannister's Gender Trouble, A Most Uncommon Woman, and of course, your video with Yogi and some other works and including the citations that you left us for some of these great feminist literature

and queer literature pieces to check into. Thank you so much. And some jams. And jams, yeah. Some Doraemon's jams, and feel free to throw in other jams. Well, technically. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, should I throw in my Cersei playlist?

You may as well. Maybe just, if you wanna link your playlist, we link our playlist. Yeah. Sometimes. Fuck it, I'll throw in other jams. Yeah. Yeah. I'll make sure I throw in my Cersei playlist. Maybe just, if you want to link your playlist, we link our playlists. Yeah. Sometimes. I'll do it. I haven't done the reveal yet. It's a good one. Someday it'll be linked, mine will, but yours has to come first.

Wait. It's a good one. Ha! Nice. You're in the spirit now, Chloe. You're here. You're here. Yes.

And of course, if you have thoughts for us, you can always find us on social media on Twitter.com slash girls gone canon That's cano n until I don't know we might get shut down one day that could fucking happen to us or you can send us an After this episode. Well, I know well after all of our fucking episodes to be honest. Girls gone cancelled. Girls gone fucking like ejected from Elon's shit, but anyways, you can also send us an email at girlgonganon at gmail.com. Also Phantom Thread, I literally told Chloe this is about supporting women, not supporting

women's rights but women's wrongs. So perfect, perfect way to go with this episode. Yes. Other, other things. Except for Cyril who has done nothing wrong and hopefully we're done. Ever. Not even once. And you can find us online and subscribe to us on many platforms, our patrons, where they

support us at patreon.com slash girls gone canon, where you can get an RSS feed of our episodes at any tier, even the free tier, to listen to on your phone. And our patrons, who support us and keep our podcast independently created and produced, will be telling you where else to find us. You can catch Girls Gone Cannon on any of the following streamers. On Podbean, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Acast, Spotify, Overcast, Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio, Audible, and Amazon podcasts. You can also join us on Patreon, where if you join the thunder tier above, you have

access to a Discord, and monthly happy hours, and things like that. And by joining the Discord, you get access to a bunch of great channels, including but not limited to memes and shitposting channel fashion hour. There are multiple channels for historic materials, a song of ice and fire. There's a pet channel, which I think is probably the most important channel of all. respectful thirsting, because there's a channel for that. Come by, join the community, it's a lot of fun, and you won't regret it. As always, I have been one of your hosts, Chloe.

And I have been another one of your hosts, Eliana. Thank you, thank you for our guest professor who has traveled here from her other department, school, whatever, to come give this. I- University of Lesbos. Yeah, from the University of Lesbos to come here and give us this talk today. The seminar course to- for free! For free auditing! For free.

But- We'll be back and, uh, oh my gosh, how do we follow this episode? Guess you'll find out next time. You'll find out next episode. With another amazing chapter! That's true. We have a- the gap is after this one, right? Yeah, it is. So we need a week off to recover from this climax. Oh! Princess Diana wave. Adios. Support messy gay people. Bye. Goodbye!