Today marks the fifth birthday of r/jaimebrienne, set up by our most benevolent of overlords, u/chickarn, First of Her Name, Defender of the Ship, etc.

On this auspicious occasion, I would like to set out the current state of the sub, so to speak, with some comments from both my fellow mods and from the hosts of the Close the Door and Come Here podcast, who have all been in the fandom a long time. Birthdays are a good excuse to look backwards as well as forwards, and it's always good to know a little bit of fandom history too.

First, some statistics. As of 12pm GMT, the sub has 1497 subscribers. Since the creation of the sub, the numbers ticked upwards very slowly over a four year period until April 2019, when the number of subscribers increased dramatically from 400-ish to over 1000 between April and June. The number of subscribers has been increasing ever since. Although we are still a very small sub (reddit has us ranked as no. 21824), that is an astonishing increase in numbers.

I think this has a lot to do with The Show Of Which We Do Not Speak and how it treated Jaime and Brienne as characters, and the way that it destroyed their relationship before it ever really started onscreen. This is reflected in the fact that the highest number of comments and posts per day on the sub was during May, as the show ended, with the most of all time on 8th May at 572 comments and 88 posts.

The sub is small, however, and so is the space we take up within the larger fandom, but it's our space, and one we like to protect, given how other subreddits tend to view us. People who ship Jaime and Brienne romantically seem to be the target of ire and harassment on social media, get mocked by other shippers and fandom BNF's, and generally don't have a great experience when trying to defend Jaime, in particular, in other places where ASOIAF is discussed.

The undertone of this kind of reaction seems to be that 'shippers', who must be girls, are less focused on the more important aspects of the story, like Stannis's battle tactics, or the political games being played by Varys/Illyrio/Doran etc, and therefore their opinion is worth less than people who are focused on those things. These people are the ones who deem any romance between Jaime and Brienne as invalid, or as platonic, or as Jaime's way of trying to improve himself in relation to Cersei, or a hundred other reasons that stand in total opposition to the actual canon of the books as written by GRRM.

I asked Chicky about the creation of the sub, and her response was that it came out of a desire to be able to discuss this ship that we all love without curbing people's opinions or stifling debate. There was a popular message board at the time that became increasingly pro-show and would not allow any difference of opinions on most topics, but especially regarding 'Game of Thrones'. Chicky wanted people to be able to express their opinion with the understanding that somebody else could counter it with theirs, and neither of those people would get banned for it.

(Chicky's actual words: "the sub's history is full of spite")

Chicky also pointed out that 2015/2016 was not a great time for JB shippers anyway. In the whole of season 5 of GoT, the only content we got was Jaime staring at Tarth for a few seconds on his way to the plotline that made no sense, and that wasn't a lot to be grateful for. It was depressing, week after week, to realise afresh that Jaime's storyline from Feast would not be making its way onscreen, and neither would Brienne's. It wasn't a great time for book readers either, as GRRM had announced that there would be no TWOW, and it was at this point that everyone realised the show would outpace the books.

The podcast, Close the Door and Come Here, which started in April 2014 discussing season 4, had its own (correct) opinions on the show and the terrible way Jaime and Brienne were written. Over time it has become one of the few fandom outlets which didn't give in to the swell of opinion that the books would end like the show, an idea popularised in entertainment media and doubled-down on by BNF blog posts and podcast episodes after the end of season 8.

I asked the hosts of the podcast - u/guileandsubterfuge, u/oxfordsplice, LoT, and Devan - about this corner of the fandom and also about the fandom at large. All of them agreed that the show ending at last was a good thing.

Comma ( u/oxfordsplice) expressed appreciation that the ASOIAF fandom seems to have calmed down since the end of season 8, with people moving on to other things as happened with shows like 'Lost', especially since a lot of toxicity seemed to accompany the huge volume of opinions on the show. Comma also told me that she was happy to stay away from the general ASOIAF community because people do get treated badly in those spaces.

Guile ( u/guileandsubterfuge), who mods the sub and runs the podcast's twitter account, stated that the end of the show was the best thing that could have happened to the fandom because it was so divisive, and there was so much pressure on fans to hold the same opinion as everyone else. A positive that came out of the show ending as it did is that so many people seem to have abandoned the show's version of the characters and all the conversation and discussion now centres around the book versions.

Guile also noted that, these days, JB shippers will participate more in discussions in the larger subreddits, and that female fans of these two characters are more willing to make inroads into what is still such a male-dominated fandom. She attributes this change to the depth of discussion on our sub, which has given people the confidence to go and stand their ground in other places.

LoT (Lady of Tarth) told me that the discussion on, and existence of, the podcast is something special for her in terms of fandom, as she never engaged with the larger community but was more focused on Jaime and Brienne. As her life obligations have grown, her time spent writing and making art has decreased, but the fandom keeps going, and LoT knows she'll be back.

Devan agrees that the fandom feels different these days than it had in the last few years, and people are focusing on the books more. He told me that discussions which turned into arguments had become loathsome, and that was why the times when the show wasn't airing were better, particularly in this little corner, because it was focused on the two characters we love. Some fandom spaces changed around season 6 in a way that became disheartening and not true to who they were, because the level of honesty in those opinions had disappeared - the authors of that content didn't want to be seen to dislike the show in case that alienated listeners. Devan decided that wasn't for him any more.

However, on the positive side, he notes that male fans of JB don't do what other male fans of ASOIAF always do, which is to give their opinion as though it were fact, a problem that is prevalent in the wider fandom. Devan also stated that he appreciates how female voices have increased in the last few years, which is a refreshing change in such a male-dominated fandom and gives a different perspective to many different topics.

As for the next five years, Guile expressed the hope that this corner of the fandom will continue to recognise themselves as the experts on these two characters because we know who they are, but she also appreciates that we are branching out into appreciating other characters too. Guile would also like to read more Hyle discourse, so if anybody wants to start that in the comments, have at it.

Comma expects that if Winds ever comes out, there will be an increase in interest in the fandom, and Devan hopes that the next five years for the fandom will be better than the last five, especially if we do get to read TWOW and be able to bond over how wonderful that is.

So, there you have it. Five years of ups and downs have brought us to today. TWOW still isn't finished, and the show sank without trace after its ending, but we're all still shipping JB, reading and creating and discussing these two characters we love. Here's to five more years of doing that.