#hello haters

I wasn’t surprised at the beginning to see a lot of Jaime hate in the comments. Show!Jaime didn’t just break show!Brienne’s heart, he broke most of our hearts as well. We were all angry and sad. I was right there in the thick of it with everyone.

Something about my fic has reignited a lot of people’s rage over show!Jaime. Which is fine, I wanted to explore his choices. I wanted Brienne’s feelings and pain to receive the narrative weight I felt they deserved.

What I didn’t want, and have been increasingly dismayed to see, is for my fic to become a locus for virulent show!Jaime hatred. We can get into the efficacy of my narrative which, believe me, I have been bending myself in knots over as I read my comments. I know I may not be telling my story well. That is very much a me problem, not a reader problem. However, I feel some of the response to the Jaime in my fic, to what I have written, is utterly divorced from what I feel I put on the page. I feel marginally reinforced in this belief by the fact that many of my readers do seem to be responding to what I feel like I’ve actually written.

I do think some of the technical aspects of this fic, like my use of limited third person pov and the biases/limited knowledge of each viewpoint character that entails, may play a role in the response. I will readily admit that my characterization is weak. And, as I have openly acknowledged, I am even less resolved than I usually am about where this story is going to end.

We can also get into the death of the author, in which case my intention is largely irrelevant when it comes to how people receive the fic—a point-of-view to which I actually subscribe (and a big part of why I never imagined myself making a post like this). So, it’s completely fair for a reader to ingest and react to the fic as they wish—once the words are in your hands, it’s yours.

However, the thing is also mine. And my feelings are as valid as anyone’s. So I’m going to express them now.

I don’t hate show!Jaime. My fic does not hate show!Jaime. I have made every effort to write him with love and compassion. I, and please hear this, feel he deserves that? He is, to me, a self-destructive mess. *I* am a self-destructive mess. A lot of people are self-destructive messes. I believe in consequences for actions, and that is what I’m painstakingly exploring in my fic, but I also (hold my agnostic hand) believe in redemption.

In no universe do I feel someone deserves to die or be tortured (emotionally or otherwise) for dumping their girlfriend. 

In no universe do I want to explore elaborate revenge fantasies for the failure of romantic relationships. 

I do not, and will never, understand deliberately rubbing new romantic relationships in the faces of past lovers. I don’t in real life, and I don’t in fiction. That’s not, to me, the way healthy people respond to heartbreak or find closure. I know people are messy, I’m messy, we’re not always healthy, we don’t always do the right thing, and while I like to explore f*ck-ups when I write, I don’t like to celebrate them.

I love Brienne, and I love Jaime—even their dumb, barely recognizable show selves. While it’s sort of the duty of an author to inflict some pain on their characters, I would not, ever, inflict emotional or physical pain on my beloved characters for my own personal revenge.

I see the beginnings of a mob in my comment section. People who want a revenge fantasy fic. And I see them egging each other on to stay in a frame-of-mind where redemption or forgiveness for Jaime does not exist. I see an effort to cultivate in other readers an absolute resistance to considering Jaime’s perspective on anything because they want him to (and I quote many people) “suffer.” I can’t control how people react or what they say or do. Everyone has a right to feel what they feel.

I can, however, say I personally think they’re wrong and that such a worldview is not one I espouse. Nor does my fic, by any intention of mine, espouse that view.

So for everyone reading, please understand that I believe my fic is tagged correctly. From top to f*cking bottom. If there is any aspect of those tags, from the first to the last, that you don’t like, please don’t read it—for both our sakes.

I said it isn’t fix-it fic because I didn’t undo the worst things the show did to Jaime and Brienne’s relationship. I didn’t fix them; I didn’t retcon them; I’m taking them at face value. It’s messy, it’s angsty.

But this fic is not torture porn.