El Escritora

Fandom focus: Xena, Star Trek, Deadloch, Gentleman Jack, Outlander, Madam Secretary, The Devil Wears Prada, The Mummy, and Killing Eve. Side efforts: veganism, history, queer culture, neurodivergence, feminism, disability, politics, nerdery, and pretty things.

[jeniferprince]

Xena & Gabrielle

they were so important to me as a baby lesbian :')

patreon // buy prints here

[jemscorner]

Outlander | And the World Was All Around Us | 8x10

YOU KNOW THAT SOMETHING is coming. Something—a specific, dire, and awful something—will happen. You envision it, you push it away. It rolls slowly, inexorably, back into your mind. You make what preparation you can. Or you think you do, though your bones know the truth—there isn’t any way to sidestep, accommodate, lessen the impact. It will come, and you will be helpless before it. — You know these things. —

[gotham-ruaidh]

two fathers

In 8x09, Claire makes a point to tell William that the fact he has two fathers isn't that unusual in their family.

And she's right:

Claire herself had 2 fathers: Henry Beauchamp, and then Uncle Lamb

Young Ian - Ian Murray was his father, but Jamie Fraser was a strong father figure

Brianna had two fathers - Jamie and Frank

Roger, too - Jerry MacKenzie, and Reverend Wakefield

Marsali as well - her father Hugh MacKimmie, and of course Jamie

Fergus, too - the Comte Saint Germain (probably) and Jamie

Add Buck to that list, too - Dougal MacKenzie, and the man who raised him

But what Claire doesn't mention, is how Jamie himself also had two fathers.

Brian Fraser, of course.

And, Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser.

[areawest]

kind of on the same note as that covid post but I feel like no one in australia really talks about the experience of the 2017 marriage plebiscite and how utterly traumatic it was to be queer during that

[eloiscbridgerton]

HACKS 5.06 – Quik Scribbl

[leoleofitz]

As finales go... They absolutely clinched it. However I willll be suing for emotional damage

[uniqueninjallama]

❤️‍🔥

❤️

🌺❤️‍🔥

[sdreamersc82]

Tha gradh agam ort, mo chridhe.

Tha gradh agam ort.

8x10 | Outlander

[kyalia]

[clairesbeauchamp]

I would feel it. I would know.

[dagnylilytable]

Visual languages, literary allusions, and the Outlander finale. Or, Frank was wrong and Jamie and Claire were right. As always.

This episode is very callback rich, to put it mildly. When they’re in bed together on their last morning at the house, Jamie more or less asks Claire if she regrets not buying the vase. She tells him, unequivocally, that she doesn’t. And they talk about bees sleeping together who just need rest, but seem dead. Jamie quotes the Yeats poem, which in book canon is part of a conversation with Bree. Frank and Bree thought Claire wanted to live in the woods alone. Jamie and Bree now know differently. Because Bree knows who she is. And Jamie has always understood Claire.

Frank was wrong is the episode theme in so many ways. Frank looks at Bree and claims to love her, but also knows she is a constant reminder of Jamie, part of why Claire can’t forget him. Jamie looks at Bree and sees Claire: their love for each other, Claire’s own capacity for love and sacrifice and care. He is still grateful to Frank, and most of all still able to look at Bree and see only good. His daughter is a person in her own right but also another way to see the love of his life. And to see the light of the moon, too, of course. (My headcanon is that Claire’s name was also inspired by Debussy’s Claire de Lune).

Where is Jamie when he asks if Claire can forgive him for bringing her here? Near water, like in The Reckoning, and Alamance. He is restless, tapping his fingers, until she takes his hand. Which she does when he admits he’s terrified of not seeing their oldest grandson again. He asks her to remember him, and we transition to one of the most joyful love scenes we’ve seen. Jamie smiles repeatedly. Whatever is ahead, the delight of being with Claire overpowers it. After, the camera lingers on their strewn clothes: their passion is the same as always.

We’ve seen a lot of Claire and Jamie’s battlefield farewells. This one is about contrasts. Jamie doesn’t promise it won’t be today. He tells Claire he loves her in Gaelic, and she says it back in the same language, the language of his heart, her heart’s home. She doesn’t need an interpreter anymore, is not an Outlander in the same way. He bows like before Prestonpans; the weight of history, their history, is still the weight of love.

Notably, Claire doesn’t bow her head in the prayer before battle. For her, faith without works is dead, which lucky for Claire is not Saint Paul, it’s from the book of James: she will go where Jamie goes and do her job. Roger is a historian, but he’s not like Frank: he follows Claire’s lead. He also understands her allusion to Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, a woman who can see the world only in a mirror. Probably also an allusion to Claire’s least fave, St. Paul, who wrote about seeing “through a glass, darkly.”

Roger tells her to hope the curse doesn’t break, because when it does the mirror cracks and the lady dies. It’s an Arthurian story. Lancelot’s also in it. Claire and Jamie are always mythical, whether they are invoking Orpheus and Eurydice (Wentworth) or The Odyssey and its separated married couple. Incidentally, the Mirror Crack’d, a line from that Tennyson poem, is also an Agatha Christie novel, which I will come back to in a minute.

Jamie tells Claire he’s only afraid of not seeing his home again. She assures him they’ll see the Ridge, and he just nods. Because he doesn’t mean a place. He means *her.* Roger suggests taking Jamie’s body home and Claire says “he is home.” Her eyes shut, her breath gusts out. She glows blue. And then we are in 1945 Inverness and see the ghost. Because the bees are only sleeping, and so are Jamie and Claire.

I watched part of “Sassenach” yesterday and what struck me most was Claire and Frank admitting they struggled to remember each other. Jamie goes to Claire because he remembers everything. And, as he’s admitted, because there are people he would enjoy haunting.

Frank was and is wrong: he’s not seeing Claire’s wartime past in the stranger outside the window. He is seeing her future and her forever. One he can’t write about accurately because he underestimates her at every turn and doesn’t give her choices. Like Tom Christie (whose name is clearly an Agatha callback) Frank claims to love Claire and writes about her, only to be incorrect. Frank, like Tom, doesn’t understand her. He silences her story. Jamie lets her tell it. And Jamie only goes to the stones because he already knows Claire would do it all again. Because he asked her what she wanted. He always does. And he lets himself haunt Frank, even if it’s not the main point. Because it’s fun. And he keeps his promise not to scare Claire.

Jamie goes back to 1945 Inverness for more than a prank. He touches the stones. He calls Claire back to him; he can’t travel to her but he can trust her. She has the spyglass again in this episode. He can trust her vision and her heart.—she will see the flowers and find him. And then the flashbacks begin, which I am convinced Jamie and Claire both see. Because neither of them has forgotten a thing.

Claire told Richardson she didn’t know what it was that brought her to the past the first time, just that she is meant to be part of history. We know now what brought her. It was love. And memory. And because she told Jamie what she wanted, and he always gives it to her. Their love is not in Frank’s book, is only captured in Claire’s journal, what she calls “our history.” Claire makes such a tender and anguished face when Jamie tells her he hasn’t had everything he wants, only to relax when he admits it’s just that he hasn’t slept in a flower holding her feet. She makes it up to him in the end.

Wherever they go next—they’re alive, it’s not an afterlife, Claire’s too practical for that—history doesn’t capture it. They’re finally free of official records. It’s all a love story from here on out. Because the world is all around them. It’s just the two of them now.

[sdreamersc82]

Outlander | 8x10

[drkineildwicks]

Outlander Finale

*deep inhale* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

*inhale again* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

So for like the first half of the episode it didn't feel like a series finale, tbf

Jamie telling Claire to talk it out so she's in the right mood and then giving her a look the whole time like by the way, the right mood is sex, I'd really like some

Jamie writing out his will and to my son William I leave three casks of my whiskey

Me: "Really?"

Mom: "Didn't he hide the gold in those?"

William going why whiskey until John goes well let's crack open a cold one to his memory and gets a glass full of gold

John: "So that's how he got it so rich" *bricked*

Everybody back at the Ridge joining hands and thinking about Jamie and Claire like good vibes are coming your way, you cannot stop them

Jamie's group meeting up with Tub O Lard's group

Me: merging traffic

Jamie handing Roger the cross and going "this'll help keep ye from gettin' shot in the front"

Me: Bill Cosby's "Medic"--MEDIC!

Also I love the vibe of Buck going from hang Roger as soon as see him to oh yeah we're totally bros

Also Buck during that whole battle: I came out to attack people and I'm having SUCH a good time right now!

Jamie to Roger: anything happens to Claire and I come back from the dead to kill ye

Claire: alright I'm heading out *heads for the shooting*

Roger: what made that man think I could stop her?

On the positive side of fighting on a hill you just roll back down to the medic tents *bricked*

Mom and I discussing everything and how this is the same time period that Sleepy Hollow and Sons of Liberty are set in

We agreed that having Jamie Fraser, Ichabod Crane, and Ben Barnes all on the TV at the same time would make the device combust

Jamie just SHATTERING that sword!

And getting real cocky because he survived the battle proper

Oh that's low

And everyone made sure Ferguson was dead

Roger trying to keep Claire from fretting herself into the grave alongside him

Skye Boat Song

Me: "...did she just die?"

Flashback to the very first episode where Jamie freaks Frank out by eyeballing his wive and then vanishing

Me and Mom: "Does he get to go through the stones now?"

Jamie making sure the flowers grow by the right stone

His whole life/show flashing before his eyes

Jamie: oh wait play that bit again I liked that bit

Mom on him fainting upon seeing Claire: "That's still funny"

Also me and Mom having the exact opposite reaction to that ending

Me: "They're both alive!"

Mom: "They're both dead!"

Boy I wish it had gone another five minutes I wanted to see everyone's reaction when they come down off the mountain

"You're supposed to be dead!"

Jamie: "Oh that was weeks ago, things change."

Roger: "It's been two days"

Maybe that's why they ended it there, to keep it ambiguous

Although here I am insisting that Claire's gonna blue light special Jamie back to life and is her hair not all white at the end there

And then the very very end with Gabaldon and her book signing and hmm, isn't that Claire's book?

So...that's it until the fall with Blood of My Blood, I guess

Mom: "Now what are we gonna watch on Fridays?"

Me: "I guess Friday night at the movies?"

Make season nine you cowards

[toboddly]

star trek beta that i WISH had made it into the show: janeway being a cardassian prisoner of war. a decent proportion of her crew is maquis! her first officer and chief of engineering are maquis! she is someone who has an intimate understanding of how cruel the cardassians can be, and you can't tell me that after that happened to her, she didn't follow cardassian politics closely. what's more, it's the reason she even switched to the command track in the first place. that incident was massively formative for her, and i just wish we could have seen more of how that clearly would have impacted her relationship with at least chakotay and b'elanna if not the rest of the maquis crewmembers.

[enfys-galaeth]

The original biography for Janeway may have had it's flaws, but it was a shame the whole thing was kinda thrown out. I do think it informed some of the wiring while Jeri Taylor was still working on the show. I think Janeway was more willing to integrate the crews because of her experience with the Cardassians, she knew that they weren't all in it for glory, but were fighting against a cruel occupation.

Yet I also think a lot of this was subconscious, as it wasn't until the modern day events in Mosaic did the full memories come back of losing Justin and her father, I think a lot got surpressed and jumbled up. Trauma will do that to you, and even in the Star Trek history good therapy still seems hard to find!

I did have a scene floating around in my head back when I wrote fic. It was between Tuvok and B'Elanna, it was when she was angry and had a rant that he and Janeway were 'Starfleet elite' how could they possibly know what it was like for the Maquis.

For then Tuvok, while not breaking Kathryn's confidence, to just note what is in her personel file - captured on this date and rescued on this date. He would state that Janeway did in fact have first hand experience with the Cardassians 'hospitality' and that she choose command as her means of fighting back rather than stay a science officer focused on exploring. This brief exchange helps B'Elanna see Janeway in a different light and helps her become more appreciative of her, but of course wouldn't explain this change of heart to fellow Maquis as that would betray a confidence.

A lot more thoughts I have about this under the cut...

As I imagined that those in the Maquis that were captured and then escaped to return would not talk about their experiences, not for years, in much the same way my grandparents didn't talk about their PoW experiences from WW2, and it was only found out in journals decades later.

There were also so many missed opportunities for there to be more discussion between Tom and Chakotay, considering Tom's father's past with the Cardassians, both the Janeway and the Paris parents were hard on their children as they saw first hand what the Cardassians were capable of. They were in the experimental side of Starfleet having to content with a society that was mirroring the worst parts of Earth's own history. Can you imagine Janeway Sr and Pars Sr trying to understand their enemy and reading up on Earth's history to help frame the scattered reports, the rumors about Bajor they had. Their careers were supposed to be about science and technological advancement for peace and instead found themselves with children and the knowledge that the peace was not a given and they had to change the paths of their lives to build things to do things they thought would help maintain that peace? We got a lot more of this in DS9 to be fair, and it was a missed opportunity in Voyager a lot.

But it could also show why Paris is resentful towards Chakotay, he grew up under the shadow of a man that was changed by the very people that Chakotay was fighting against, but did it outside of the very system they were fighting to protect. I think this was touched on in Pathways the now beta cannon for the rest of the Voyager main cast back stories (apart from Seven).

I think this is also why Voyager has resonated with me for 30 decades now, the backstories for the characters were thought out, they felt much more real. It didn't always transfer on the show, because of 90s network television. But there were enough hints, and the really enjoyable fanfic was from people who had picked up on those hints, read Mosaic and Pathways.

Probably spoken about it before, but the essence of what Voyager is in my head is a LOT more than what was on the screen, it may not have been consistent or always good but the Pocket Books, the Marvel and Dark Horse comics and the brilliant fic writers I came across that filled in the gaps seen on the show. I have imagined dialogue and scenes from all of that which I have to remind myself aren't on the DVD!

[captainjanewayandtheunicorndog]

The Ultimate Star Trek Voyager Tournament

Round 6 - Match 1

Relativity (S5E23) vs Year of Hell (S4E8+9)

Seven of Nine’s in a uniform! And she’s at… Utopia Planetia? What’s going on? How did she get there? Seven has been recruited by future federation time cops to disable a temporal weapon that’s been planted on Voyager in the past by someone in the future? Are you starting to get a headache yet? Janeway certainly gets one when she’s also recruited to their mission, and she seems to have a bit of a reputation amongst these time cops…

Temporal weapons change the balance of power in the space that Voyager’s travelling through, and suddenly they are trespassing in the mighty Krenim empire. Voyager is being attacked by weapons, and goes through a year of hell trying to survive. At last, the crew has to abandon ship but Captain Janeway will go down with Voyager. Perhaps she can take down the temporal weapons with her, and erase the year too. Time’s up!

Which episode is your favourite?

Relativity

Year of Hell

Voting ended onMay 14

To see an overview of the tournament, click here.

[movementnudge]

Movement nudge!

X

[avasillva]

“My wife's been dead two years, Will. And when I think about her, those are the things I think about most. Little idiosyncrasies that only I knew about. Those made her my wife. And she had the goods on me, too. Little things I do out of habit. People call this imperfections, Will. It's just who we are."

ROBIN WILLIAMS as DR. SEAN MAGUIRE Good Will Hunting (1997)