Non-Rec: Shipposting, the Braime Edition

[isabellerecs]

When I was first starting to read fanfiction, I read het fic. I wasn’t fully aware of the other options because heteronormativity is a thing. Once I became acquainted with the alternatives I read het fic less and less over the years and now in my adulthood, it is rare indeed. I also rarely get interested in new het pairings, but boy howdy, Braime is one of the major exceptions. Their dynamic is a delicious inversion of the “Beauty and the Beast” trope, but more than that their interactions are so wonderful and full of emotion and growth, and genuine regard that does not have to be romantic to be interesting (but it’s even more fun when it is :)). One of the best things about this pairing is that you can take them and put them in any world, at any time and the tension, the uncertainty and the conflict to them being together translates. The “ugly” girl and the “handsome” man will always fly in the face of the conventional while their chemistry makes them undeniable which I suppose that is why I love it so much.

And because I can't help myself, Icons! :D

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Comments

[lunabee34]

#6 is slaying me. I love it. My husband died laughing.

These are awesome.

[isabellerecs]

LOL. Ah that one, I cackled with unholy glee as I made it so I am very pleased you found it funny too. :DDD

Thank you so much.

Brienne of Tarth

[oldtoadwoman]

Brienne is awesome! (Gwendoline Christie is also awesome!)

Re: Brienne of Tarth

[isabellerecs]

Yes, and yes! Brienne is a paragon and Gwendoline is a goddess! :D

[stellar_dust]

Ahhhhh, those two are my FAVORITE.

[isabellerecs]

<3 Squee! They are so great! <3

[sylvaine]

Why would you *want* to help yourself? Icons ftw! :D

[isabellerecs]

That's fair, I don't really want to help myself. ;D (I want to make icons while cackling to myself about the jokes I'm trying to make. ;))

[sylvaine]

If you're not making jokes for yourself you're doing it wrong ;D

[isabellerecs]

True, so true. :D

[jainas]

I love them also, and more than the Beauty and the Beast thematic, what I love about them is how Brienne teaches Jaime not only that beauty has nothing to do with worth, but also that he can be a better man, that oath have value, that he put his loyalty and strenght in the wrong place but that he can change. (Or at least I really hope that's where the canon is going... At least the show is on it's way to that.) ^^
That why AUs only working the beauty and the beast angle don't quite work for me, I keep expecting more of them. ^^

[isabellerecs]

Indeed, Brienne, I think, is Jaime's ideal knight nevermind she's ugly, nevermind she's a woman she is a storybook knight the kind he had come to think could not exist but she does simply by being herself. And when she believes he can be better, he believes it as well. With Brienne, I think he helps her be fully confident in who she is banishing the specter of her failure at "womanhood". She was always "being herself" by being a knight but now I think she inhabits that more fully, with confidence and authority. He helped her finish growing up. And you're right, I think this is probably skewed more to the show rather than the books. (I love that the actors and I think to a certain extent the showrunners are invested in their relationship. I've high hopes for the next season {even if more of them will probably die *deep sigh*})

You are so right about the AUs that only work that one angle because that is very much the surface tension of their relationship the part that the rest of the world sees but the good stuff is the layers of their relationship below that were they are both broken people that make each other better by knowing one another. The AUs that mine down into those layers are magic, but the ones that just play that one note just fall flat. "I keep expecting more of them." ~As you should. :)

[jainas]

You are very right in calling Brienne an ideal knight in Jaime's eyes I think, and even more so Because she is a woman, and ugly, and struggle with it. It's not easy, and yet she does it, in contrast with Jaime who has everything of the ideal knight on paper (beautiful and strong, well born, fearless)... But is also an oath breaker in many ways, and a man who would kill a child in cold blood to protect his owns. He doesn't actually believe that people can strive to do the right thing or should hold to their honor, as he chose to break his vow to kill the Mad king....
Actually there is something of a reverse path for them in the book I think: learning what happened with the Mad King made Brienne see there could be honor in breaking an oath and she tried to convince Jaime of that; and I think she will have to learn it for herself, by chosing between her vow to Lady Stoneheart and his life...
Before meeting Jaime I don't think she could have survived such a choice, because in many ways she is the kind of person that would break rather than bent.

It's an other point people forget too often when writing Jaime: he can be very ruthless and he did terrible things, and though he can seek redemption, he will never be clean of them... And it is Brienne who inspired to start seeking, and showed him that maybe he could be better than he thought he was.

As you can see I have many feelings, some of them a bit muddled as their storylines are messy rather than clean cut... But of course nothing is clean cut with Martin after all. (Except maybe Eddard Stark's head and Jaime's hand. :D :D).


(Also, your icons are very cool... Like a brother indeed! :D :D)

[isabellerecs]

They do bring all of the feelings. :)

All of the muddling that having the show's story so far outstrip the books makes it even harder to pin down characterization too. It's at the point where I think I'm going to have to think of them as distinctly separate from one another.

You are right about Jaime being ruthless, though I would posit that he is calculatingly cruel but thoughtlessly good. He catches Bran by instinct but then makes the decision to push him out of the window when he could have let him fall in the first place.

Jaime has always wanted to be good (doing the right thing) and honorable (appearing to be good), but the loss of his "honor" has led him to believe he can no longer be good. Brienne, as a woman, has never had the luxury of "honor" in this highly patriarchal system (only a woman's honor = maidenhood) so when she finds out that he did the right thing, she understands that he had upheld the root of honor and she believes that he can do that again. So I think that when she says "fuck loyalty" (and Jaime hysterically looks like she's slapped him with a fish) she's saying that the appearance of honor and loyalty mean nothing if you aren't going to "do the right thing". (I feel like this was coherent but hopefully, it was too bad.)

(Why thank you very much. I cracked up so hard making that one. ;D :D

[jainas]

"the appearance of honor and loyalty mean nothing if you aren't going to "do the right thing"." Absolutly right, that's a very succinct way of phrasing it.

It's hard to keep them appart, and I hope that the book end going the "right" way too!