fruit bread

Artie (they/them) | xxii | lesbian | ND ♾️

[petaltexturedskies]

There's something frightening about her, some huge emptiness in the pit of her being. It's like waiting for a lift to arrive and when the doors open nothing is there, just the terrible dark emptiness of the elevator shaft, on and on forever. She's missing some primal instinct, self-defence or self-preservation, which makes other human beings comprehensible. You lean in expecting resistance, and everything just falls away in front of you.

Sally Rooney, Normal People

[dagnylilytable]

More on the visual and other languages of Outlander S8. This Jamie and Claire love scene was all history: her recent history with John, but also their broader history. He unties her skirts—straight out of “The Wedding.” They both undress while discussing his jealousy, which is straight out of their conversation about Tom Christie in 7.04. And of course they’re discussing forgiveness and what it means, which is a direct callback to S1’s “The Reckoning.”

This fight is, as is often the case, about marriage and what’s in or out of bounds. When Claire’s angry with Jamie she’s still willing to let him undress her. It’s “I give you my body” as a prelude to the makeup sex she’s probably already decided they’re going to have. She tells him that if you love someone you forgive them, and he admits that he’s as afraid as much as he’s furious, which allows them to reconcile very differently than they do in “Carnal Knowledge.”

Notably, the 7.04 jealousy scene fades out, and this one doesn’t. Because we’re back to evoking past scenes AND contrasting this scene with last week’s. Jamie admits exactly why he’s rattled: he’s afraid he’ll picture John while making love to Claire the way he once pictured Black Jack. She tells him to leave it to her: a much more forceful declaration than “find me, find us” in Season 2. And he does.

Most important, though, is that Claire doesn’t let Jamie close his eyes during the sex: she bites him and grabs his face. It’s dominance, but it’s also “remember who we are.” So we’re back to their characteristic eye contact, with Claire straddling Jamie, and he lets her take charge. This time she knows she’s anchoring him and he’s looking at her. This is also a change from Season 1: in The Reckoning, they’re fighting for who is on top and on the floor at Leoch, and she grabs his face as part of threatening to kill him if he ever tries to punish her again. Jamie makes a point of John “swiving” Claire on the floor so she takes him to their shared bed. And she grabs his face to remind him they are married, of all the many promises made and kept.

After, Claire asks if they’ve “gotten it out of their system.” John is *their* problem, Jamie’s PTSD flare is *their* problem. Because she still knows “bad things happen when we’re apart,” whether the separation is literal or not.

Just like in “The Reckoning” Claire asks if she hurt him. Young Jamie makes a joke about getting bitten if you bed a vixen. This Jamie says, “you [break the skin] every time you touch me.” He’s recapitulating “I am your master and you’re mine,” but not as a young man new to sex or marriage. This time it’s as a vulnerable husband who’s still having a crisis about his mortality. Since S1, Claire is both where Jamie seeks shelter and also the way to hurt him, which is why Frank and Black Jack being played by the same actor is so effective at this stage in the game. John, as other folks pointed out to me on Bluesky, is also part of Jamie’s angst about death: Claire sleeping with him only happens because Jamie is presumed lost at sea.

And it wouldn’t be me if we didn’t talk about houses and rings. Jamie often makes a point of kissing both Claire’s hands. Much as it drives *me* up a wall she wears Frank’s ring, it doesn’t bother him on the show. And the book version of him tells her “I would take you from him, but I wouldna take him from you” to tell her it’s okay to put Frank’s ring back on.

I’m about not actually sure that at the end of 8.02 the ring we see as Claire holds Jamie is Frank’s, but if it’s Jamie’s, the thistles are hard to make out. And the book is in the shot, at first. Frank is on Jamie’s mind, and the visual language reflects that to some degree.

In 8.03, Jamie’s ring is the main one visible in the love scene. Claire uses that hand to grip his face and make him look at her. I haven’t found Frank’s in the episode for nearly as long—just a brief flash when she’s grabbing the back of Jamie’s neck.

When Jamie finds Claire with the book, she’s on the porch of their rebuilt house, not in the dark of their bedroom. The book’s not haunting Claire like it is Jamie, even if she’s unsettled. Jamie teases her about all her husbands, and she tells him she’s only in love with her second, smiling.

If the sex scene in 8.03 is Claire subtextually telling Jamie “when we were first married you told me I’m your home now and I still am,” by the next morning they can both say so, standing outside their shared house. Later on in the porch scene he tells her Frank could hate him for “taking your heart fully, forever.” Jamie knows where Claire’s heart is—that he is its true home, as he said in 8.01.

That doesn’t mean everything is settled, though, as one would expect with many episodes left. Jamie’s still not telling her how often he hears Frank’s voice in his head. Jamie can’t see Claire’s growing powers—just like he can’t hear the stones—but he’s also not telling her he hears voices besides hers telling him what to look at, or for. Visually, a lot of things are different, or better, but there are probably other difficult conversations ahead.

[autisticstede]

please tell me this has been explained elsewhere because i feel like im going insane. why is faith's death date 1744 when Jamie and Claire dont arrive in france until 1745?

is it another deed of sasine situation? but there's no reason for faith's date of death to be a year earlier, unlike the dead of sasine.

I know outlander have mixed up dates before but to make a whole ass headstone with the wrong date on it feels like an insane mistake - how come no one checked and made sure it was the right date?

Is there any way it could be deliberate?

[helpagirlout-lander]

Full Eps: 5x01, 5x02, 5x03, 5x04, 5x05, 5x06, 5x08, 5x09, 5x11, 5x12

ScreenCaps: 5x01, 5x02, 5x03, 5x04, 5x05, 5x06, 5x08, 5x09, 5x11, 5x12 

Inside the Ep: 5x01, 5x04, 5x09, 5x11, 5x12

In Production / BTS of the Wedding /Bloopers

5x02 Deleted Scene

Opening Credits / Home Teaser / Saying Goodbye to Murtagh / World Outlander Day

[maidenvault]

I can’t even be that mad that Jamie’s still mad at John. The more I think about it, the more it’s clear it’s not just about what happened with him and Claire or the deliberately indelicate way John said it was all about him. Some big upheaval between them has always felt inevitable because of their differences, and they need to start over on better terms tbh. Their connection’s always had kind of an uneven power dynamic going both ways - John is a lord and Jamie was his prisoner, but Jamie’s a big weakness for him, someone he’ll compromise his principles for and love no matter what. So seeing John actually shout at Jamie, Jamie demanding to know all the details while beating the shit out of him and John saying “No,” John understanding his anger but nonetheless refusing to apologize for loving and grieving for him…After fearing John might end up under-served in the long run and never get a real arc, this is beyond my wildest dreams lol. It feels like John’s starting to grow more of a spine while Jamie’s finally fed up for now with that redcoat asshole and it’s kind of beautiful to see.

And I’m never disappointed to get a reminder that at the end of the day, Jamie’s still a man of his time. As a rule he’s not a judgmental person. He’s always respected and cared for John deeply, knowing the feelings he has for him. But some things he still doesn’t have the framework to properly understand.

This and his trauma over Randall don’t excuse the traces of homophobia this brings out of him, but they make it believable. Obviously he’s not naive about these things and knows Claire isn’t, but in this world she’s still a “respectable” if unconventional woman. From a 1700s perspective, knowing that John let her into that world of his he usually keeps entirely private in such a way makes it seem that John basically used her like a whore. He says as much in his uglier comments about it to Claire. Even from a modern perspective, John and Claire of all people sleeping together is very strange and speaks to how desperate they were for any kind of momentary comfort. To him it sounds depraved.

And without a doubt it must be vaguely triggering, too. It’s meaningful that the morning after their hellish long dark night of the soul, John tells Claire that accepting Jamie’s offer of himself all those years ago would have ruined everything between them so he doesn’t regret it. To Jamie it has to feel like John finally crossed a boundary with him he thought he was too honorable to cross, which in a way was the foundation of them having such a strong friendship.

And truly John did. Going up to Claire’s room that night to let them console each other as if his pain compared to hers was crossing a boundary. But Jamie will never know the horrible wailing screams John heard coming from her room because he was gone, how losing him was so hard for John because it came with the impossible task of having to be there for Claire, who he also cares for. The truth is in every other moment he was forced to put his own grief aside because Claire’s loss was so much greater and she was literally suicidal, but as Claire says actually sharing the grief was the only thing that saved them.

So yeah, of course he’s not sorry. After Jamie comes back and acts like everything’s fine now, John’s feelings that he couldn’t keep private in his grief can’t just neatly be put right back into the same compartment as always. When he’s just had the added stress of William learning the truth and he unloads on Jamie for asking “Why?” it’s like he just can’t keep suffering in silence for everyone else’s comfort, not after fucking everything he’s now done for this man and his family.

And it rankles a lot that Jamie can seemingly forget all that now, and he’s being kind of a huge fucking baby about marking his territory for a man in his fifties who knows perfectly well this will hurt his marriage 0%. But then John can’t be normal about this and about Jamie either. He knows he fucked this up, he betrayed the person who’s everything to him even if he didn’t mean to, and he expects nothing less than Jamie’s violent reaction. To him he “had a right to touch him” and almost permanently damage his eye. :/

And because John’s character, as I understand, has been softened a lot in his show portrayal, it’s easy to forget their friendship has always been kind of unhealthy on both ends. John is immensely privileged and wasn’t sensitive to the power imbalance in their early relationship, which has always partly remained a factor until now. He kept and cherished the sapphire Jamie “gave” him as his prisoner; Jamie obviously doesn’t remember that time so fondly even if John was sometimes a great comfort to him. Jamie relied on maintaining a friendship with him to have any connection to William, and now that the truth’s out it doesn’t matter. Jamie’s anger at him is explosive because he’s never felt free to show it before. When he later calls him “that bloody Englishman” it shows his sense of betrayal but also some long-pent-up frustration.

Now Jamie is part of the occupying force in Philadelphia, on the winning side of a war this time, and John ends up his prisoner. Jamie seems mostly annoyed to be in this position and doesn’t treat him with cruelty or contempt. Their short exchange about being in chains says everything. As much as he adores John, Jamie’s never forgotten what that felt like. But he also remembers what it meant that John treated him kindly when he had power over him. It’s fucking complicated.

Jamie’s never one to let go of his anger easily, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t still love and respect John. He calls William “our son” when he doesn’t have to, and he looks so conflicted hearing Claire say John saved her life, but he can’t see these two people who mean so much to him together without thinking about what happened and all the ways their friendship has been a little fucked up for both of them all along. They can’t go back to the way things were and that’s a good thing.

[hesbianspock]

“The (Dublin Castle Scandal of 1884) took on overtones of English immorality versus Irish morality. … Hyde argues that the scandal, and belief that homosexuality was rampant in official circles in Ireland, did much to discredit the British government of the day. Irish Nationalists, especially conservative Catholics, would have been left with the image of British officials, regarded as imperialist occupiers of their island, as immoral and dissolute perverts, sexually preying on young men in Dublin” (Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality).

so, upon reading this, my first thought was obviously fucking outlander.

outlander simultaneously utilizes the traditional homophobic trope of the homosexually-inclined predator and the politically useful historical impression of homosexuality as a symptom of the immoral and dissolute presence of colonizing english perverts while also plainly taking pleasure from this homosexual imperialism, from the opportunity to be voyeur to this predation and physical abuse of Virtuous Celtic Boys while denying them the chance to explore their own sexuality in the wake of such trauma at the price of an englishwoman’s temporary sexual dissatisfaction — an opportunity well-afforded to englishmen enduring the sort of homoerotic abuse and discipline rampant in the english army that undoubtedly contributed to randall’s unseen development into the character known to us.

the audience is intended not only to take voyeuristic sexual pleasure from jamie’s repeated sexual harassment and assault — gabaldon has said as much herself — but also to believe that such sexually charged punishment as jamie takes throughout his life (and metes out, once, to claire) is necessary and justifiable. jamie’s descriptions of his repeated childhood beatings at the hands of his older male relatives are not criticized nor are they even questioned by claire, who laughs at her husband’s humorous descriptions of the abuse that, when meted upon her own english body, she threatens to kill him over. randall reaches orgasmic pleasure at the lash ripping jamie’s primitive and colonized skin, claire laughs at stories of a switch bruising his virtuous body, and the audience is to thrill at the thought of both.

upon learning that randall propositioned jamie prior to these floggings, claire’s expressed horror is not at the fact that randall is a sadistic rapist — in fairness to her, she has been made well aware of that fact already — but that randall is engages in homosexual behavior. she gives no comment on jamie’s apparently relaxed attitude to homosexuality in general (“i considered it” “my father wouldn’t have given the sodomy a care”), but this can hardly be described as the result of an enlightened attitude. she describes frank — a character immediately queered by his profession as historian/antiquarian, a field traditionally viewed as the realm of the homosexual — as having “hands white and hairless as a girl’s,” an unfavorable and gay-coded comparison with jamie’s undeniable traditional masculinity. her reaction to jamie’s repeated torture and rape is one of selfishness — she is concerned for him, but her concern primarily expresses itself in relation to his resulting inability or unwillingness to re-engage her in their marriage bed. out of this desire to have him retake this traditional heterosexual role, to bend to her will as his english wife, claire deliberately triggers him with details of his rape he had confided to her. his role as the virtuous scottish youth preyed upon by the deviant english homosexual is to provide for claire, the englishwoman’s, voyeuristic and maternal pleasure — when his lasting trauma from being the subject of imperial violence interferes with her sexual desires, she chooses to revictimize him in pursuit of her own pleasure. both she and randall utilize the colony of scotland as a frontier within which to enact sexual desires considered deviant and forbidden in england on the bodies of a subjugated populace.

in conclusion outlander is not self aware about any of this and is just breathtakingly imperialist, anti-scottish, AND homophobic all at once.

[girlrustcohle]

fuuuuck i just realized that the future idealized version of myself cant exist without current me being the catalyst for change and doing hard things. has anybody heard about this

[andtosaturn]

i am NOT having a good time. but at least there's lava lamp :)

[honeyfolklore]

I'm the albatross. My wallpapers are here to destroy you. 🪶🩶 x

Please reblog! It's helps me reach more people

[samuelroukin]

"You see, this is where you went wrong with the whole 'Gentleman Pirate' thing" ERROLL SHAND as Ricky Barnes & RHYS DARBY as Stede Bonnet in OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH (2022— ) Episode 2.01 Impossible Birds

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

You know what I'm gonna post it publicly.

I always get so annoyed when I see people shoehorning Ed and Stede into "autism boyfriend and ADHD boyfriend" partially because I think it's silly considering there's a 60% comorbidity rate, partially because y'all are fucking terrible at neurodivergent headcannons, but mostly it annoys me because of this:

If I was going to shoehorn Ed and Stede into that mold (one of them only having Autism and one of them only having ADHD) I would give the ADHD to the character who makes impulsive decisions more or less constantly (Stede) and the autism to the character who is basically savant coded (i.e. fits the unstable genius trope and spent his whole life getting very very good at one thing, piracy) and who literally has a meltdown on screen (Ed)

Like I'm not saying that impulsive decisions are exclusive to ADHD or that being really smart and having meltdowns is exclusive to autism, but I am saying that Ed exhibits WAYYYYY more autistic traits than he does ADHD ones and that Stede tricked you into thinking he was autistic because his actor Rhys Darby is autistic and I'm fine with the autism translating over onto the character but personally I prefer my schizophrenia headcannon.

[ilikepotatooes-deactivated20250]

Reblog to have the most homoerotic year of your life 2024

[usersiren]

he's my silly little guy ✨

[squidbroom]

it’s thanksgiving aka a GREAT day to donate to the wampanoag/wôpanâak language reclamation project. for those of you that don’t know, the wampanoag were living in the plymouth-area long before the pilgrims arrived and still live in massachusetts today. however, the number of native speakers in their language is very low and they need more supplies to teach new generations.

fun fact: the words for moose and massachusetts come from wampanoag

[reasonsforhope]

Looks like the above link isn’t working anymore (makes sense, it’s been a few years), so here’s the current one!

[thecorvidforest]

in light of a four day ceasefire in Gaza being agreed upon, i am once again asking you all not to lose sight of the big picture. Biden and the Israeli Government are trying to frame this as a major democratic victory and as a favor respectively. they have no intention of a total ceasefire. they have no intention of stopping their genocide. remember - a ceasefire is the very first step. it’s not even the bare minimum.

the absolute bare minimum in this situation is 1) a complete ceasefire and immediate humanitarian aid in Gaza, 2) complete halt of all military foreign aid to the Israeli government, 3) the Israeli government being prosecuted for its war crimes in the International Criminal Court, and 4) land back and reparations for the Palestinian people. free Palestine means free Palestine, not just temporarily stop carpet bombing Palestine.

a temporary ceasefire is something, but it’s not even close to the end goal. we cannot let up pressure when things seem to be looking up. keep protesting, boycotting, spreading awareness, contacting politicians, etcetera. keep your eyes on Gaza. free Palestine.

[jodiefosterwallace]

"let people be wrong about you" is such good advice that i am unfortunately physically incapable of following. if i am incorrectly perceived by anyone i will simply start ripping things with my teeth

[hileggyblonde]

The hair, the eyes, the neck, that expression... just *gentle kiss*