Sarah's Writing Blog

Jeyne Westerling and Robb Stark are a modern day fairytale, a celebrity “IT” couple, a glamorous fantasy for the everyday, working-class Westerosi to aspire to!

Well, at least, until Jeyne goes missing that is. Then the fairy tale turns into a horror story, where Jeyne is presumed dead and lost in the somewhere in the expansive Stark Nature Preserve, and her handsome young fiance is rumored to be the cause of her dissappearance.

Brienne Tarth is an outsider looking in on the nightmare, and as a park ranger at the Stark Preserve, she’ll do whatever she can to clear Robb’s name, including working with the arrogant, dickish, and infamous Jaime Lannister, a former cop turned private investigator.

Brienne and Jaime hate each other, and blend like oil and water, but they’re united on one shared goal.

Find Jeyne, dead or alive, and find out what happened to her.

Read Chapter 1 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62897734/chapters/161057680

Read the most recent chapter here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62897734/chapters/204691301

Okay, into the meat of the chapter!!

This chapter, like the ones that are going to follow it, is a slower, more emotional chapter. I like to keep some pacing in mind when writing these stories. Fanfiction is a very forgiving genre when it comes to pacing, but I still like to keep both plots relevant in each chapter.

Action is going to speed up once we hit the early to mid twenties in the chapter count, and I need the romance to be further established if I want certain moments to have full emotional pay off, so now that I have established a mutual emotional care for each other….I need to instigate some romance!

In my drafts I always picutred the romantic confrontation to happen the night of Qhorin’s Christmas-but-I-can’t-call-it-Christmas party, because it would be the perfect opportunity. Satin would be there, someone Brienne has had a crush on in the past and on-going friendship with and of course, some others (which I won’t name for the sake of preserving the drama) which would bring up some feelings of jealousy and protectiveness in Jaime, which would then lead to him confronting some other feelings.

But, I didn’t always plan for the kiss to happen BEFORE the party, and I’m not sure how I feel about the decision, but it’ll be a nice challenge to write. I’m thinking both canon Brienne and Jaime are deeply emotional people who have romantic ideas of love, but are also kind of detached from their feelings and afraid of their feelings. Jaime can’t seem to relate his interest in Brienne’s, Hildy’s, and Pia’s bodies to sexual interest, like he thinks sexual desire is something that he can only feel when Cersei is involved. Brienne is in love with Jaime by the time AFFC ends, but tells herself to think of Renly instead when she rememberrs Jaime in the bath, and her subconcious replaces Renly with Jaime in the dreams.

So, I’m going to translate this into my story by having some miscommunication about the kiss and their feelings, only for a true confession to come out later :).

But that’s for later!

Some more notes on this chapter:

Sansa’s clothing is inspired by the regalia of the indigenous peoples of Canada and Northern America, in canon there is a lot of parallels drawn between the First Men and indigenous people, so I decided I would add an element of that into this chapter. If you are wondering if Sansa will take a more active role in this story, I will tell you I don’t actually know, she may or may not! We’ll see where the wind takes us.

Also, I’m imagining, that since Brienne is from a more isolated, rural island, that she has a stronger sense of hospitality and properity than Jaime does, kind of this world’s version of country manners. And the dessert glasses are Satin’s, in case anyone was curious.

Anyways, I don’t plan these chapter retrospectives and write off the top of my head, so I don’t have a closing paragraph to leave you with! If you have any questions about this chapter, or Spiderling in general, feel free to comment here or on Ao3. Thanks for reading!