#jaime lan's characterization

[horizon-verizon]

At least, Cersei is the one to refuse to go public with their incestous relationship and isn’t out there proposing to marry Myrcella to Tommen, unlike Saint Jaime who call his sister ‘queen of whores’, treat her as his property, and victim-blame her (I tell you, he [Robert] loves me not/And whose fault is that, sweet sister ?), and never spare a thought for Tysha (or Bran for that matter), but thats normal, its because he’s a feminist and teenage girl-coded. No wonder he has some sympathy for Criston Cole, lmao. Do people genuinely believes Jaime is a victim of patriarchy and that his gender doesn’t favor him over Cersei ?? Insane. Can’t wait for him to die. It’s 2023, Jaime isn’t Adam and Cersei isn’t Eve, dude is a misogynistic, racist and hyperprivileged white man and his father’s golden boy. Funny how you all talk like Green/Criston’s stans when it comes to Cersei and Jaime.

*EDITED POST* (9/21/23)

Probably from this recent post that itself has 3 links to other posts where I talk about Cersei as a character.

Um...when did I ever either imply or directly say that Jaime was "a victim of patriarchy and that his gender doesn’t favor him over Cersei"? Or express that he was better than his sister, morally? Or express that Cersei deserved to die more than he did?

Perhaps you have that impression because I never talked about Jaime exclusively once, or you're just going off of what you recently read and horribly misinterpreted the purpose and argument of that post. If the latter, I advise you to reread. If the first, I don't write about Jaime much simply because he doesn't interest me as much as Cersei or Tyrion, no one asked me my thoughts about him, and I'm not thinking of him apart from his relationship with Cersei or Tyrion. His knighthood and masculinity are...not "easy", but direct enough for me to not dwell as much as his other siblings' issues. (look to this post by blankwhiteshield about Jaime) I generally care more about women, children, and other marginalized people in fiction, even when I do sympathize with some white cis straight men some of the time.

I mean pre-Brienne Jaime. That's just how GRRm wrote his arc.

For me, blankwhiteshield's posts about Jaime HERE and HERE both suffice to give me a picture of who Jaime is bc they fill in some blanks I had in my pre-existing assessment of Jaime. Which actually wasn't favorable, anon. I find Jaime to actually be very annoying, and no, I do not think that he is Cersei's victim. He is deluded in some ways as much as her and is not a good person because of the abuse and emotional neglect they all get from Tywin/Westerosi society. I actually should have, since again, there were blanks. You can take a look at those links as well.

Look, Cersei is evil & abusive AS WELL AS a victim of domestic abuse woman & of misogyny since childhood. These are not mutually exclusive nor does it NOT mean that her domestic abuse only and directly caused her power-hungriness and need to control if not every, most aspect of her life and those she sees will help her get or maintain control and a good image of herself. Neither the abuse nor misogyny against her erases the fact that she develops hatred towards women, going so far as to violently and sexually objectify them like w/Taena. (Her using what she's observed men do to affirm power and copying it). Or that she pinched her baby brother's penis at a very young age, showing her classist and blase willingness to target children/one of the most vulnerable groups for her own sense of control over her husband, family, etc., and political power. She is also very willing to sacrifice/risk the entire city for her own control of power, similar to Aerys II. Cersei is complicated and there is nuance to her character, but she is unmistakably evil simultaneously. What I like about her or what I find compelling about her (if you haven't read the post about it) is that I can understand her motivations, and relate in some ways, and from practically babyhood she's been trying to be essentially "good enough" and perfect through external, social values of competency BUT also as someone has said: her need for perfection and power and total love comes across as pure in its own sort of twisted way. Her emotions are so intense and uncontrolled and she remains totally unaware of her loneliness that she comes across as childlike.

I also find it very funny how you're criticizing show!Rhaenyra for wanting to marry Jace to Helaena (I presume, you don't specify but that is the closest betrothal to the one you make b/t Myrcella and Tommen) when you say: "At least, Cersei is the one to refuse to go public with their incestous relationship and isn’t out there proposing to marry Myrcella to Tommen". Because while this would have done nothing to assuage Alicent--which was what Rhaenyra was trying to do--it was also not that bad of a deal for Helaena or Jace themselves. I personally dislike it bc, again, we're erasing Rhaenyra's relationship w/Laena and how she ever made it so that Jace married Laena's daughter...but I digress. OR you probably were referring to Jaime expressing the desire to go public with their relationship, that conversation? Again, what does this have to do with my argument in the post I recently posted and that I assume you're responding to?

[horizon-verizon]

jaime had been playing the role of mediator since he was a child between all three of his only loved ones, who we know he has a deep rooted fear of being abandoned to isolation by, while having to balance what he believed was entirely conditional love

...

tywin never once viewed him as someone with real autonomy either. as heir, he was shaped by and fed tywin’s messaging the most directly....and he was always just a vessel for tywin to project his ideal legacy onto.

...

jaime had experienced tywin’s favor hence he has a drastically different relationship to desiring it in any shape or form than his siblings, who are put aside or outright despised, do.

“The perfect son that has the weight of having to embody an impossible ideal on his shoulders.” Where does he have this conflict? We have no proof of him being affected by Tywin. All he cared about was Cersei so he gave it all up for Cersei.

My father. Jaime wondered whether Lord Tywin had received the goat’s demand for ransom, with or without his rotted hand. What is a swordsman worth without his sword hand? Half the gold in Casterly Rock? Three hundred dragons? Or nothing? His father had never been unduly swayed by sentiment.

Those who were there at court during this time have recounted that Aerys's behavior was erratic. He was untrusting of any save his Kingsguard-and then only imperfectly, for he kept Ser Jaime Lannister close at all hours to serve as a hostage against his father.

“but my father’s forces reached the city first. Pycelle convinced the king that his Warden of the West had come to defend him, so he opened the gates. The one time he should have heeded Varys, and he ignored him. My father had held back from the war, brooding on all the wrongs Aerys had done him and determined that House Lannister should be on the winning side. The Trident decided him.”

“You cannot eat love, nor buy a horse with it, nor warm your halls on a cold night,” she heard him tell Jaime once, when her brother had been no older than Tommen.

Naked and alone he stood, surrounded by enemies, with stone walls all around him pressing close. The Rock, he knew. He could feel the immense weight of it above his head. He was home.

“What place is this?” “Your place.” The voice echoed; it was a hundred voices, a thousand, the voices of all the Lannisters since Lann the Clever, who’d lived at the dawn of days. But most of all it was his father’s voice, and beside Lord Tywin stood his sister, pale and beautiful, a torch burning in her hand. Joffrey was there as well, the son they’d made together, and behind them a dozen more dark shapes with golden hair.”

“Sister, why has Father brought us here?”

“Us? This is your place, Brother. This is your darkness.” Her torch was the only light in the cavern. Her torch was the only light in the world. She turned to go.

“Stay with me,” Jaime pleaded. “Don’t leave me here alone.” But they were leaving. “Don’t leave me in the dark!”

But Tywin Lannister endured, eternal as Casterly Rock. And now you have a cripple for a son as well as a dwarf, my lord. How you will hate that…

“Jaime,” Lord Tywin said, as if they’d last seen each other at breakfast. “Lord Bolton led me to expect you earlier. I had hoped you’d be here for the wedding.”

“I was delayed.” Jaime closed the door softly.

“Lord Tywin pushed himself out of his chair, breath hissing between his teeth. “Who did this? If Lady Catelyn thinks—” […] Lord Tywin looked away, disgusted.

“They have taken off his hands and feet, but Clegane seems amused by the way the Qohorik slobbers.”

Jaime’s smile curdled. “What about his Brave Companions?”

“The few who stayed at Harrenhal are dead. The others scattered. They’ll make for ports, I’ll warrant, or try and lose themselves in the woods.” His eyes went back to Jaime’s stump, and his mouth grew taut with fury. “We’ll have their heads. Every one. Can you use a sword with your left hand?”

“The king’s justice will be done.”

The king’s justice. “You would execute your own son?”

“You do.” Lord Tywin rose as well. “A duty to House Lannister. You are the heir to Casterly Rock. That is where you should be.”

“NO!” Jaime had heard all that he could stand. No, more than he could stand. He was sick of it, sick of lords and lies, sick of his father, his sister, sick of the whole bloody business. “No. No. No. No. No. How many times must I say no before you’ll hear it?”

Firelight gleamed golden in the stiff whiskers that framed Lord Tywin’s face. A vein pulsed in his neck, but he did not speak. And did not speak. And did not speak. The strained silence went on until it was more than Jaime could endure. “Father…” he began.

“You are not my son.” Lord Tywin turned his face away.

“No man can stand a vigil for seven days and seven nights,” Ser Balon said. “When did you last sleep, my lord?”

“When my lord father was alive,” said Jaime.

“Allow me to stand tonight in your stead,” Ser Loras offered.

“He was not your father.” You did not kill him. I did.

Father, give her strength. Almost a prayer . . . but was it the god he was invoking, the Father Above whose towering gilded likeness glimmered in the candlelight across the sept? Or was he praying to the corpse that lay before him? Does it matter? They never listened, either one.

“Father,” he told the corpse, “it was you who told me that tears were a mark of weakness in a man, so you cannot expect that I should cry for you.

Jaime looked to make certain Lord Tywin was not rising from his bier in wrath, but his father lay still and cold, rotting.

“We all dream of things we cannot have. Tywin dreamed that his son would be a great knight, that his daughter would be a queen. He dreamed they would be so strong and brave and beautiful that no one would ever laugh at them.”

“I am a knight,” he told her, “and Cersei is a queen.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. The woman raised her hood again and turned her back on him. Jaime called after her, but already she was moving away, her skirt whispering lullabies as it brushed across the floor. Don’t leave me, he wanted to call, but of course she’d left them long ago. He woke in darkness, shivering. The room had grown cold as ice.

this is so silly. being the favorite child of an abusive parent is also not a good thing to be. jaime had been playing the role of mediator since he was a child between all three of his only loved ones, who we know he has a deep rooted fear of being abandoned to isolation by, while having to balance what he believed was entirely conditional love. tywin never once viewed him as someone with real autonomy either. as heir, he was shaped by and fed tywin’s messaging the most directly. there is a reason the “love speech” was just overheard by and not directed at cersei. and he was always just a vessel for tywin to project his ideal legacy onto. he is primarily a tool for tywin. he is pissed when jaime is maimed not out of concern but because his perfect vessel was made imperfect. jaime is an extension of tywin. his extreme punitive justice, that sours jaime, is rooted in that too. it is more about appearances than about love. he was meant to embody a standard from birth that is not even real lol. jaime had experienced tywin’s favor hence he has a drastically different relationship to desiring it in any shape or form than his siblings, who are put aside or outright despised, do. this is why his emulation is rooted in some very different things. george wrote how these different children were affected and shaped in different ways — while also highlighting their differences, personal agency, and accountability — by an abusive patriarch, that embodies most of this series’s anti-themes, because it makes them unique characters. he can explore different things with them instead of having the same exact narrative three times. the parallels and juxtaposition enriches the other dynamics rather than diminishing them.

[swordmaid]

🔥 Unpopular/underused fanfic tropes you like, popular ones you don't?

gonna be talking abt these in terms of jb SOOOO

* unpopular/underused fanfic tropes: fairy tale aus !!! i love fairy tales and i personally think they work well with jb--i know there’s a handful in the tag but i want more lol

+ also KIND OF unpopular but jam having a more assertive personality. i know soft boy jam lan is pretty popular right now but i really love a competent assertive jam lannister who has the Daddy(tm) energy LOL

* popular ones: threesome jb is rlly not for me! i've read a few, but most clashes with my own characterization for them so i tend to avoid them lol

+ also brienne with somebody else than jaime. again, personal characterizations but i really DONT see it for her LOL

[naivelocus]

Genome-wide characterization of mammalian promoters with distal enhancer functions

Nature Genetics 49, 1073 (2017). doi:10.1038/ng.3884

Authors: Lan T M Dao, Ariel O Galindo-Albarrán, Jaime A Castro-Mondragon, Charlotte Andrieu-Soler, Alejandra Medina-Rivera, Charbel Souaid, Guillaume Charbonnier, Aurélien Griffon, Laurent Vanhille, Tharshana Stephen, Jaafar Alomairi, David Martin, Magali Torres, Nicolas Fernandez, Eric Soler, Jacques van Helden, Denis Puthier & Salvatore Spicuglia

— Nature Genetics - Issue - nature...

[swordmaid]

☕ things that make you nope outta fics

send me a ☕️ and a topic and I’ll talk about how I feel about it

honestly i think i’ve been pretty vocal about the stuff that i dislike in fics. obviously this isn’t an attack to the authors that writes these kind of things. its simply not my cup of tea and the fic isn’t written for me so whenever i come across it i just simple leave LOL. im gonna be talking abt JB fics here bc thats what ive been reading for the past months, anyway !!!!!!! 

* i don’t like when JB happens while jc is still happening or jaime still has feelings for cersei. i get that he still has them to SOME degree, but when he’s constantly comparing brienne to her it’s kind of annoying to read. i also see jaime as a monogamous dude so i don’t think he’ll want to two time between two women whether it’s bc of the plot or what. and honestly even if she does have feelings for him, i don’t think brienne will voluntarily sign up to be a side hoe if she knows that he has something going on for someone else. 

* i don’t like JB with another person. addam is the popular choice and so far i don’t really know if there’s any fics i like with them three ( i read a few to see what its all abt !! ) i DO like jaime/brienne/hyle trio but i like it at the point where hyle is only used as someone who makes jaime jealous and JB is end game whilst hyle is alone somewhere with his hand. i talked abt this before i think but i see JB’s bond with each other as something that’s VERY deep and i don’t think another person will be able to connect with them the way they do with each other. also, i just don’t like it LOL skssksksksk i just want to read about loving each other without someone else involved ok!!!! god!!!! 

* when angst happens for angst’s sake. it gets really tiring to read for me especially if there’s no breaks in between or the angst just appears out of the blue. in the same vein, i don’t really like when im reading something that’s enemies to lovers, but they kind of cleared off the ‘enemies’ part (they reached an understanding) and theres no reason for them to be hostile to each other anymore but they kind of are for the sake of the trope. it makes the relationship feel inorganic and i rather prefer the story to progress in it’s own pace rather than throwing in these unnecessary plot points that are uncalled for and appears out of nowhere 

* when the word ‘yah’ is used instead of ‘yeah’ it throws me out of the loop smmmmmmm 

* i also don’t like brienne with somebody else than jaime ):

* when noncon happens and it ISN’T TAGGED !!! or there’s no warnings for it !!!!! like PLEASE tag it oh my god i actually read one before and it wasn’t tagged and i closed the tab SO FAST. like if u want to write that kind of content go ahead but please put warnings and tag it !! it’s not a fun surprise !!

[horizon-verizon]

Direct Quotes:

cynicism that leads to his specific moral decay and “the flame going out” is primarily rooted in his specific experience with an institution and a tyrant whose power is sustained and actions are enabled by everyone around him —including the “moral paragons” of westeros and the heroes he sought to become — that in effect leads to an extreme and concentrated disillusionment with moral and ethical constructs that define the order of his society

a gruelling dismantling of previously idealized abstract concepts and aspirations that he revolved much of his identity around as a “very idealistic young boy” (such as heroism, honor, and knighthood)

intense guilt due to a failure to grapple with and triumph over these contradictions

and an unaddressed identity crisis and trauma during his teens that leads to destructive coping mechanisms

a reliance on compartmentalisation and self-delusion, isolation, selfish and cowardly stagnation, and spiteful moral nihilism in adulthood.

over time, it leads to the intensification of his worst qualities, and the obstruction of his best ones.

I think the idea that jaime’s evil is because of cersei and his relationship to cersei just breaks apart most of his character and his development

YES. the world if this fandom actually accepted that jaime’s corruption is not because he was “being manipulated/groomed into it by cersei”, nor is it just pride and bitterness over society’s hypocritical reaction to his finest act and his vilification through the “kingslayer” label which leads to the development of a persona that he plays into and eventually becomes one with, and while it is all affected and set up to be worsened by parental abuse, unhealthy family dynamics, and tywin’s rearing during formative years, that is also notably not the main cause. cynicism that leads to his specific moral decay and “the flame going out” is primarily rooted in his specific experience with an institution and a tyrant whose power is sustained and actions are enabled by everyone around him —including the “moral paragons” of westeros and the heroes he sought to become — that in effect leads to an extreme and concentrated disillusionment with moral and ethical constructs that define the order of his society, a gruelling dismantling of previously idealized abstract concepts and aspirations that he revolved much of his identity around as a “very idealistic young boy” (such as heroism, honor, and knighthood), intense guilt due to a failure to grapple with and triumph over these contradictions, and an unaddressed identity crisis and trauma during his teens that leads to destructive coping mechanisms, a reliance on compartmentalisation and self-delusion, isolation, selfish and cowardly stagnation, and spiteful moral nihilism in adulthood. over time, it leads to the intensification of his worst qualities, and the obstruction of his best ones. and the possibility of triumph in his story, and by extension the possibility of atonement, redemption, and forgiveness (“real world questions” the author explicitly said he is dealing with using this character but does not intend to provide a resounding and unequivocal answer for) is rooted in overcoming this specifically, which is internal, and relates to his experiences and character. i doubt it is intended to juxtapose him with his siblings and their respective stories either. and the parallax in asos/his backstory is also not done with the intention to absolve or victimize him, but to contextualize him, explain his behaviour and how he views the world at this point, and set up his arc.