Thank you for your response. You make excellent points about gender and how it influences the way Cersei's fans talk about her, and that many of their posts are reactionary. It makes a lot of sense. I would like to disagree with you about one thing, however, and that is your statement that Cersei fans know she's a villain and treat her as such. I know that many of her fans do, but I have witnessed just as many who do not. Oh, they'll say the words "I know Cersei is a villain," or "Yes, Cersei has done evil things," as a formality and a disclaimer, but then all of their other words about her show that deep down, they don't really see her as a villain, not really. All of her actions are seen by them as being justified. Examples: It's okay that she had her husband murdered because he was abusive, it's okay that she raped Lancel (statutory) because he was willing, it's okay that she abused Tyrion when he was a baby because she was sad about her mother, it's okay that she's abusive and toxic with Jaime because he's abusive and toxic with her too, it's really Tywin's fault that she has internalized misogyny because he taught her that, it's okay that she wished rape on the septas and tortured them because they were mean to her when she was imprisoned, it's not in any way her fault that she made stupid, selfish, and destructive decisions as queen because her father failed her by not teaching her better, she wasn't a bad parent to Joffrey because it was really all Robert's fault and not hers that Joff was the way he was, it doesn't matter that Cersei did X evil thing because she's still not as bad as Y character (they're usually referring to Daenerys here) so that makes her a better person. Good intentions are often assigned to Cersei when it's entirely unearned and undeserved, and even when there is clear evidence to the contrary, the most obvious example being the popular belief that she secretly cared about Sansa and tried to help and teach her. And the list goes on and on. I have seen all of these things stated in meta about Cersei, frequently, with no hint of irony at all. Yes, many fans may say 'We know Cersei is a villain," but all of their other words on the subject reveal that they don't really believe it. Not truly.
As I told you in my other answer : we are not a hivemind nor am I responsible for the opinions of others.
I personally haven't seen the metas you talk about but I think that is actually the whole point of talking about things that make a villain relatable and how exactly do you want them to acknowledge Cersei as a villain?
Is it not enough when they say so?
The whole point about posts that turns the usual perception on its head is to tell why someone who clearly is a villain comes from a background that made them as they are. That is the line of the argument. There is no need to prove that Cersei is a villain, there is need to explain where she comes from.
So I would say that making a list with things that make her relatable is not the same as refuting her as a villain. In most cases it is not even the same as saying she 'deserves' a redemption. Have you ever seen that? I think that plain out claiming she should be redeemed would deny her villainy not explaining why she did what she did. And let's be honest here: for years and years nobody has done that for Cersei.
So, I would take their words that they know Cersei is a villain at face value. And I think you should do the same.
The thing what bugs most readers is that GRRM did not write Cersei as a relatable villain and yet nowadays women find things to relate to. And there is a reason for that.
Nowadays we are more keenly aware that the possibilities of women, their agency is restricted in some ways that the agency of men is not, especially under patriarchy.
Let's take the 'poison is a woman's' method trope: a woman in an abusive relationship with a physical much stronger man may not have much options. She may fear to leave the man because there is a very real possibility that she'll be the victim of a femicid. That the man will simply kill her for daring to leave him. It happens far too often.
The law sided with the men for a long time : a man killing his ex was defined as crime of passion, a woman killing her abusive husband with poison was considered cold blooded murder (caused by base instincts). A woman could not plead self-defence for the simple reason that the poisoning had to be planned. And no matter how often the man hit her, raped her etc. she would only have been justified if she killed him while physically defending herself - fat chance for that....
For this very reason, the law in my country was reformed and crime of passion was cancelled as a definition as well as cold blooded murder. Nowadays both cases are just murder and the woman can plead mitigating circumstances.
So until very recently the imbalance of physical power was never taken into consideration.
Take Cersei and Robert. There can be no question that he is abusive. He hits her and he rapes her, he treats her with disdain. Now can Cersei do anything about that? She has a certain protection when Jaime is near but he is not always there. There is no divorce, no possibility to flee and Tywin would never take Cersei's side. She is the Queen and has all the privilege that comes with it but she is powerles against her husband. She cannot even hit him on the head with something in self defence because that would be regicide.
See, what I do here? I explain where Cersei comes from. I know she is a villain BTW.
In AGOT things finally come to a crisis. Ned threatens to expose Cersei, Robert is on a hunt and Cersei acts by instigating Lancel to make the king drunk and hope that boars do what boars usually do which is being extremely dangerous. And her gamble works.
Now, of course she could have opted to flee - but that would have been unlikely to make her and her children safe. Remember that the small Council talked about hiring assassins to kill a teenage girl in a far away country. Cersei would never have felt safe. She knew Robert and she could not count on her father to protect her.
When AGOT first came out, it was still the early nineties. Nowadays the audience and the readers see some things differently.
It is a credit to GRRM's writing that his characters still work when the perception has changed so much. The only thing that does not work any longer is manipulating the audience into detesting a character who has reasons for being as they are. And I think that is your real beef with metas like that. That people do not dislike Cersei enough, that they do not take GRRM's side in this.
GRRM wrote these characters and they are out in the world and we can interpret them and go beyond what GRRM shows us on the surface.
It's not about refuting Cersei as a villain, it's about refuting that she is a villain who has zero reasons for being as she is, someone we should not have empathy for - when Tyrion and the Hound were showered with love for ages.