Whether you’re reading the Outlander series for the first time or re-reading with the new TV show, we invite you to play along with us as we journey through the books’ best tropes and cliches. Grab a book (any of them, though especially the first three) and a drink — perhaps some whiskey the color of Claire’s eyes or just some restorative willowbark tea — and play along. There will be a bonus round for viewers of the Starz show.
Take a drink every time…
- Claire gets a new dress because the one she’s wearing is ruined. Bonus drink if it’s borrowed and her breasts BARELY fit into it.
- Claire insists she really did love Frank even though, yeah, OK.
- Frank acts like a monster.
- Author finds a nice vocabulary word and repeats it conspicuously within 50 pages.
- Nipples.
- Multi-page internal monologue.
- Claire and Jamie separated seemingly forever.
- Minor character reappears improbably as major player.
- Claire practices indefensibly modern medicine.
- Claire practices herbology.
- Man drinks breast milk as foreplay. (Double drink because: nipples.)
- Color of Claire’s eyes is compared to any alcoholic beverage.
- Claire’s curly hair is mentioned.
- A murder mystery!
- Vague improbable descriptions — variations on “a cold shiver ran up her spine and it wasn’t because of the cold” or “she might have seen a glimmer of a smile/frown/etc. on his lips/eye but it might have been the light.”
- Claire and Jamie FEEL each other walk into the room.
- Prose is pretty at first but makes no sense on a second reading.
- Violence that is WORSE than Game of Thrones happens to characters you are supposed to love. But they survive! And then you have to read about them surviving.
- Description of Jamie’s skull, its hardness and shape.
- Romanticization of white men. (Stick to sips for this one lest you die of alcohol poisoning.)
- Mention of the different shades of red in Jamie’s/Brianna’s hair.
- A “shadow” falls across someone’s face.
- Anytime Claire gets worried someone’s cut will get infected.
- Baby born to Murray family.
- Human pregnancy referred to in animal terms, i.e. “breeding,” “sire,” “foal.”
- Author gestures toward grand theory of time travel are best left unscrutinized.
- Claire picks something out of Jamie’s hair.
- Jamie’s two fingers flutter against his leg.
- Two characters look almost exactly alike.
- A ball of ice in the pit of Claire’s stomach is warmed by whiskey or brandy.
- A sex scene gets super abstract and DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. But is still hot.
- A sex scene that makes you ask, “Wait, is this rape?” But the author is like, “Don’t worry about it.”
- Cameo by historical figure.
- Jamie stands straight as an arrow with his shining hair a head above all the other man he is standing near.
- Hint that Scots freeball under their kilts.
- A couple, usually Jamie and Claire, has an entire conversation in one look without speaking.
- “It had been a long time since breakfast.”
- “More than was strictly necessary.”
- Claire finding Jaime easily in a crowd because of his height and red hair.
- Jamie is unable to wink, blinks idiotically.
BONUS ROUND!
- Graphic violence/gore beyond book descriptions because that’s how prestige dramas do.
- You miss something important Frank said about local history because SO BORING.
- Evidence that Tobias Menzies (Frank) agreed to less nudity than Caitriona Balfe (Claire)
- Band of Scottish kinsmen reminiscent of hobbits.
- Romantic lead clearly identifiable as the clean one.
- Casting of Graham McTavish as Dougal makes you wish Claire would get a little action on the side with him.
- Fill-in in Gaelic dialogue that could mean absolutely nothing. H/T to the Gaelic tutor:
- You would be unsurprised to learn Sam Heughan (Jamie) had a starring role in 2011’s A Princess for Christmas.
- Dramatic irony over long-resolved historical events.
- Claire visits site in 18th century and flashback (flash forward?) shows her visiting in 20th Century with Frank.
- Horsemanship! Swordplay!
- Claire makes 20th century wisecrack that no one else gets.
- Claire has no choice but to become emotionally and physically close to Jamie. She’s just tryina survive, guys.
- ADDED FRANK SCENE! Please try to conjure some sympathy.
- Timeline shuffled to get to the sex sooner.
Rose Cole and Anna Halverson contributed to this piece.
Tags: books, kara moore, outlander, television
#18 is why I gave up on this series, despite my enduring love for historical time-travel/romance. I just didn’t need to know all the ways flesh could be flayed and people’s fingers could be broken, you guys.
Yeah, I’m kiiind of interested in checking out the show/books, but I figure there’s got to be less upsetting ways of ogling hot Scottish guys….
I think the first book is really bad at this, but I’m on book 3 and I feel like the flayings have toned down. . .there’s still some violence but it’s not as bad!
What number is “a woman reacts to her brother calling her a whore for (as he thinks) being raped by their mortal enemy by literally grasping him by the balls and twisting until he says sorry”? because I just read the book last week, completely unrelated to the television show which I do not understand the point of making one unless it is a very high-production-values pornographic extravaganza and then only if the fellow pictured here is not the main fellow in the book, and I was mildly surprised by that scene.
other things I did not know to expect: it starts out like a really good pastiche of one of those Mary Stewart thrillers where a brisk Englishwoman, toughened by the war years but still dewy and fresh and attractive but not, you know, in an obvious way, like a foreigner, goes off to have adventures in a sexy place. It is such a good approximation of that kind of prose that you could forget it isn’t what it is pretending to be except for all the cocks.
Or that Claire kills a wolf with her hands! I felt bad for the wolf though, it was only hungry.
It’s surprisingly good if you like the kind of garbage that it is, and I find that I do. I did not think I would but I do. If you want to find an uneasy middle ground between Dorothy Dunnett and amateur sexy torture erotica but do not want to admit it and/or do not know that there are such things, well: there are. this is it. yeah I know everybody else already knows because they weren’t too good to read it fifteen years ago like me.
p.s. what’s wrong with Frank?? Besides being named “Frank” of course. He is a sexy academic with delicate refined hands who takes showers and knows about birth control, what’s not to like? Does something come up in the sequels or am I just a careless reader who likes effete intellectuals?
Unfortunately in the sequels Frank is revealed to be pretty awful to Claire when she returns to that time. Just cheats on her a lot, tries to take Brianna with him to England with one of his mistresses, and is completely unsupportive of Claire’s desire to become a doctor. Oh, and he’s hella racist. Oh, and he knows the entire time that Jamie never died at Culloden. I mean, it’s not like he’s a 2D villain, there are some little almost-redeeming moments (and you can kind of understand him not telling Claire about Jamie having survived) but compared to the first books it’s a pretty dramatic shift. In the first books he’s portrayed as being very understanding and sexy and smart and kind, yeah. I personally liked that angle more – that he was actually a wonderful man, but just not *hers*. I think that would have been more interesting to get into in terms of her homecoming, rather than painting him as this gross kind of piggish guy.
Ugh. Now I have really no interest in reading the rest of the series.
Despite all that . . . .
[SPOILER!]
He’s not actually in the books all that long.
Now I feel a bit guilty in how I’ve made Frank sound. I mean, he seems truly dreadful in some ways, but I think, if I’m to analyse it, that it’s possibly Gabaldon trying to be true to how a man from the 40s would act. He probably WOULD stay with his pregnant wife and try to “do the right thing”, and put up a good front in public. A ‘good man’ wouldn’t/couldn’t really do otherwise. Keeping that in mind, and also remembering that she like really doesn’t love him that way anymore or really want to be married to him aside from wanting to stay married to provide a stable family life for Brianna, I can kind of understand the affairs. He’s trapped, in a way that is hard to understand from our perspective in 2014. Same with the fact that he doesn’t respect Claire’s desire to become a doctor – women in that time were not doctors, and mothers were meant to stay home and take care of the kid. (That part did seem the most un-Frank, because I would have thought Frank would have known Claire better than that and been a bit more of a free thinker when it came to gender roles, but I will give him credit: he does end up supporting Claire’s studies and buys her a nice medical bag, he just never understands why on earth she’s doing it. He thinks of it as basically a ‘quirk’.) Same with the racism as its portrayed in the books – I think it’s kind of believable, for the times. He goes with Claire to Abernathy’s house for social parties, and it seems doesn’t really say anything to her about her friendship with him or Brianna’s friendship with his son – he’s just quietly uncomfortable, as probably a lot of men in the 40s-60s would be, and then there’s a huge fight where it all comes out.
I mean, I don’t know. The scene in which Frank tells Claire that he’s going to England and taking Brianna and she can go get effed feels 100% like Gabaldon is just like “Frank’s a douche now and I’m just going to need you all to get on board and sign up for the I Hate Frank 4Eva Club”, but a lot of the other stuff at least can be contextualised.
i also just finished reading the first book and….. that sounds really OOC?? granted, we only got to see frank for like 100 pgs in the first book but, ugh. DAMMIT. i was looking forward to some nuanced back-and-forth!
HAHAHA IT JUST DAWNED ON ME I AM READING THE WRONG SERIES NEVER MIND I GUESS FRANK SUCKS NOW
It does seem OOC, but I think a big part of that is that we DO only see him briefly. We only really see the good, kind, smart, worried, sexy bits, and not, like…what actually being married to him would be like. From memory, even though they’re together at the start, they’ve been separated most of their marriage. But yeah…DEFINITELY could be more nuanced.
I don’t remember him being racist – did he say something about Claire’s doctor friend or something?
Yeah, there’s a fight where he expresses severe discomfort about “those people” and the way they dress, and basically freaks out on Claire about people thinking she’s fooling around with Dr Abernathy. He yells something horrid about not wanting Brianna to marry her son. It’s the big big fight right before he storms off and dies, from memory. It’s all pretty terrible.
Other than the racism, I feel like Frank’s behaviour is pretty understandable.
I’m imagining a situation where my husband disappears for 3 years, comes back with a baby, and is basically like: “Yeah, so I fell in love with someone else and am still in love with her, but she’s dead, this baby needs a mother, and we’re still technically married so… pick up where we left off?” I feel like there would be a lot of resentment that would probably be impossible to get past (especially if he spent the next 20 years obviously pining…). And I think Frank felt like he had to stay with Claire not just because he wanted to do the “right thing”, but because joint custody wasn’t really a thing in the 1950s and he didn’t want to lose his daugher.
In the first book Claire mentions adopting Roger and Frank is all “ew, no, orphans are gross.” But my real beef is that his character is so undeveloped in the books. that it’s impossible to root for him.
Casting of Graham McTavish as Dougal makes you wish Claire would get a little action on the side with him.
i’ve summed up the dougal/graham mctavish situation as “morally disappointing arousal.” YOU DO THINGS, DOUGAL. YOU DO THINGS AND I CAN’T- BUT I MUST???? BUT I CAN’T. but your beard?? and your glaring???? SOMETIMES YOU WEAR THAT LITTLE JAUNTY CAP?? everyone kiss now
i hate myself
I think the whole situation is entirely fitting with the series’ “this is kinda wrong but mostly it’s hot, shh don’t worry about it just enjoy” motif.
Here for this so hard.
#26.5: Characters accept existence of time travel with surprisingly little processing or curiosity.
#15.5 – infinity: Jamie’s personality vacillates between super-smart and total Sex Idiot.
To say something nice, because I am truly having fun with both books and show right now: Sam Heughan’s gratuitous shirtlessness. Also, the second book has so far included one of the more realistic depictions of pregnancy I’ve ever read or seen. (As a bitter woman in her 9th week of morning sickness, I have a lot of rage for TV pregnancies where the heroine throws up once to cue everyone into her delicate state and then is never sick again.)
Did Nicole ever do a ‘Classic Trash’ article on these books? If so I will award two points to anyone who can send me the link.
I did not!
Damn! Oh well. No points for anyone. Thanks for the quick reply!
Please do one?
The bonus round made me laugh because I watched the first episode last night and wow would I have been drunk if I was playing along!
Should I read the books (I have not read the books, because I was afraid of an interesting idea devolving into basically that entire list)?
Drink every time someone calls Claire “sassenach.”
You’ll get drunk faster.
You might die, but yeah.
Excellent list. I just started the fourth book this morning (for the first time) and even though I’m only on page 27, at least three-quarters of these things have already happened. No one has had time to get horribly injured yet, but a minor character did get hanged, and then somehow he managed to turn into a major character from beyond the grave. <3 you Diana Gabaldon.
Oh and everyone is wearing borrowed clothes (cuz theirs were destroyed, natch) that are too tight to contain their bosoms/giant manhoods. Plus Jamie has some literal jewels stuffed into his breeches next to the metaphorical ones.
I <3 these books x a million million, and nobody will ever convince me that they aren’t wonderful.
This x 1,000. Absolutely! I adore these books.
Outlander! Outlander! I have never read the books and see no reason to but I am loving the show. I’ve started using this other show called Monarch of the Glen (it’s on Netflix) as a sort of Scotland tide over until a new Outlander episode and it’s pretty good too, in the sense that its main character has that strangely appealing, thin-lipped Scottish mouth, a la David Tennant.
I loved Monarch! It’s charming and goofy and sad and oh, the scenery.
Also Julian Fellowes is in it, who is the creator of Downton Abbey.
Oh my god that’s him! He’s so unappealing!
I am now about 70% through the first book and I’m vaguely dreading finishing it? Like, I enjoyed the first half, but then it just seemed to get really silly to me for some reason (so many chases for their life! the villain that is completely evil AND ALSO can’t resist the hero just like everyone else in the world AND ALSO looks just like her husband even though there has been several generations! the kind and noble-savage peasantry who adore their true lord! but you know, beating children is OK as long as you do it for the right reasons!) but now I have to finish it. Not sure I’ll continue onto the series though.
I felt bad for Frank though, I liked him in the brief moment he was around. But I’m an effete intellectual too. And I’d probably enjoy exploring all the boring local history. I gather he gets vaguely-cartoonishly evil?
He never gets vaguely evil, IMO. He’s just always a little more detached than ever seemed right for Claire. But I always had a hard time believing Claire really pined for Frank and was conflicted because we get shown much more of her passionate connection to Jamie than we ever see of Frank.
SO MANY FLOGGINGS. So many fond reminiscences of childhood floggings interspersed with descriptions of Jamie’s hair (this was basically the entire Lallybroch section of the first book).
I’m almost through the second book having gotten the entire 7 book anthology as an e-book from the library and may have to stop or take a break after this one. They’ re not bad for what they are – solid beach or airplane reading – but it might better in spaced out doses.
I have heard that some of the later books get into some weird racial territory (avoided in the early books by having no POC whatsoever). Can anyone advise?
Yes, they wind up in the Caribbean in book three and slaves and slavery begin to play a role in the story. Claire of course tries to help the slaves in her typical white-lady-from-the-1940s-living-in-the-1770s way. It is definitely harsh at times and problematic at others and sometimes both.
there’s an introduction of a Chinese character in book 3 that after 2-3 re-reads I can’t decide if it’s problematically written or if the characters are racist. (Both?). I generally found the Indian and black characters to be written as people and not as stereotypes, your mileage may vary.
Both. His fetish is an awful addition that is racism straight from the author. But some of the racist stuff read as an attempt at reproducing the attitudes of the time.
Yes, you hit the nail on the head.
Thanks. Sounds like a proceed with caution situation.
And with THE flogging you get the scarred aftermath first, then the flashback as told by I think three different observers with different points of interest, then the flashback from the victim himself, then I think you get some reminiscing by the perpetrator, then MORE FLOGGING now that you know in every detail what it is like. This is a particular Gabaldon tic I guess, the super intense bit of violence where you lead right up to it and then fade out and flash forward and you think, oh, is this discretion? NOPE it is a deliberate device for being able to show it to you three times from different angles with leisurely contemplation, instead of just the one time clouded as it might be by the adrenaline and fear of the narrator. it is amazing.
Whenever anyone a) chills despite the heat or b) flushes despite the cold. Pretty much whenever anything happens despite the current weather situation.
Also, any mention of stays.
“Frank acts like a monster”. I’ve got a lot of Frank theories, people. Lots of Frank theories.
Is one of them that he is literally a monster? Like the Loch Ness Monster?
That would be cool. I would like Frank better if he was the Loch Ness Monster.
In the first book in the part I actually read they see the Loch Ness Monster at some point, that was pretty funny.
The best part is the subsequent theory Claire comes up with that she shares with Roger Wakefield (I think), about how there’s a stone circle of sorts under the Loch and so Nessie is actually a dinosaur who slips in and out of the lake and her own prehistoric dinosaur age at a whim.
Yessss time travel dinosaur how can anyone hate these books?
Share theories!
Frank KNOWS WHATS UP. Series SPOILERS ahead, friends.
In Dragonfly (book 2), Claire has a vision of him holding the portrait that was made of her. Then Bree (Claire’s daughter) grows up being taught how the horseback ride, shoot RIFLES, camp, and do general 18th Century stuff because of Daddy Frank. He then writes her a note in a book saying either “you are in danger/you are A danger” (unclear).
In Voyager, a few years before Claire decides to go back, Frank has that very weird scene where he goes all creepy racist and says he’s taking Bree to England. And then he goes out and gets in a car accident. Whoops. My thought is that he figured out that Bree was going back to the 18th Century and wanted to save her from doing that. (Because he’s a good dad).
On TOP of that, we discover FRANK created the stone memorial to Jamie and Claire in the kirkyard. Meaning, as good old Roger says, he believed Claire’s story. We also know that he was familiar with the concept of disappearing because he sent Roger’s dad off in a Spitfire that evaporated over a standing circle. Frank ain’t no slouch.
If you go back and re-read Brianna’s bits in say, Fiery Cross or Drums of Autumn, her father left her a ton of books that she “can’t bear to open” but hey, they probably contain clues and maybe a letter that says “Hey don’t go back in time, it ends sooooo badly”, but she doesn’t so there.
THANK YOU, I have been trying to get all this right in my head and have even gone so far as to ask Google “what does Frank know” because lazy. But Frank obvi had to know a lot. One of my biggest gripes in the whole series to me is that Claire lived in the 20th century for 20 years and didn’t make any effort to find out what happened to Jamie, father of her child, until after Frank died. And Frank was a historian. An historian?
Well, I can see Claire’s point of view: She assumes Jamie died at Culloden, since so many people did die there, and the historical record probably wouldn’t list someone like Jamie as dead (because he wasn’t technically a landowner/lord/Important Dude). She’s also busy raising Bree and going to med school. It reminds me of my grandfather who was orphaned as a child in the 1930’s, and didn’t really make an effort to find his siblings until his early 50’s, when he had time to devote to the search? It doesn’t mean he didn’t love them any less. Also, I have a feeling that if Claire was like “Hey Frank look up this Jamie dude, you know, who looks exactly like “our” child” that would not have gone well for their marriage and they both wanted to stay together for Bree.
LOVE IT
I just re-read up until Fiery Cross, and didn’t come across the part where Frank teaches her how to ride horses etc (came across the gun bit) but do remember it from previous readings, and my memory of that is that what you’ve just said is assumed canon, in that the same theory – that Frank knew Brianna might go to the past – occurs to Claire too. My memory of how that’s read is that he knows Claire will tell Brianna once he dies (being that there’s an agreement between them not to tell Brianna while Frank is alive) and assumes there’s a very real possibility Brianna would want to go back, if Claire does.
But you know, I’ve honestly never really thought much about whether Frank actually FINDS something saying one way or the other that Brianna went back, and that’s an interesting thing to consider and I hope it plays out that way. I wonder whether he ever found the newspaper article about the fire. But….I can’t help thinking he didn’t. If Frank knew about the fire, he would have said or done or written….something….to someone…surely.
This is what I’ve never understood, though (can’t remember if it’s explained in later books) – but why is Jamie’s grave a ‘half-grave’ that is meant to be matched with Claire’s, but there’s not one for Claire? I know the headstone was put there by Frank and isn’t a real grave, but why would he make it a half grave or lovers grave or whatever if he knew it would never be completed with the other?
And also, since Jamie’s headstone doesn’t have dates on it, how does she know that it means he didn’t die? Jack Randall *did* die at Culloden, and his headstone (albeit put there by Frank) is in the same graveyard, so how does the existence of Jamie’s prove that he didn’t?
Well, if the “danger” could be that as the last living Fraser she could become the ruler of Scotland, according to the prophecy in Voyager. I don’t remember the agreement not to tell Bree, but that sounds right.
Maybe Frank didn’t know about the fire… but maybe he saw an entry of marriage? Or Brianna’s signature on the paintings that she completes at River Run, or a land deed to James Fraser…. She and Roger would be on those passenger lists on the ships, too.
As to the gravestone: If I remember correctly for awhile it makes Claire believe that at some point, Jamie dies in Scotland. Even after she goes back in Voyager, because she believes it to be his real grave. It’s not until Roger is like “oh yeah, Frank did that” that she realizes that no one really knows when Jamie dies or where he dies. As for the lover’s stone… dunno! Maybe Frank knows something we don’t about Claire. (Maybe she comes back to the present?) I think the gravestone was a mark that Frank needed to show respect?
They figure out that Jamie didn’t die not from the gravestone but because they see the British letter that says a single man escapes being executed in the farmhouse, a few days after Culloden and that he’s a “Fraser of Lovat’s regiment”. (Maybe I’m remembering wrong too though).
You’re right in that they find the documented proof about him escaping the farmhouse, but I’m pretty sure that’s after Claire sees the gravestone and freaks out, assuming somehow that it means Jamie didn’t die at Culloden. I mean, I guess in some ways it makes sense – he probably wouldn’t have had his own gravestone if he’d died at Culloden, more likely been buried in a mass grave – but it still doesn’t really prove anything.
Anyway, when Claire sees it in the graveyard she freaks out and that’s the catalyst for telling Brianna and Roger about Jamie Fraser, and Roger begins to look him up in earnest, and then they find the real proof. That’s my memory of it. And in the books it’s described in a letter from Frank to the Reverend as a gesture so that once Claire finds it, she’ll realise he didn’t die at Culloden and can research from there. (Considering that Frank had kept that knowledge from her – its his way of hoping she finds out after he’s gone, so he can feel less bad.) It’s also a gesture of respect as you say, but its main purpose is as a clue. I just would have thought that putting one up for Claire would have been a pretty big clue, because it would imply that whenever he died, Claire was around. Whether or not he thought Claire would go back, he’d know that if it LOOKED as though she did go back, it would mean that Jamie hadn’t died yet. Maybe that’s foolish of me and needlessly complicated though.
You’re also right that there should be plenty of ways to come across the fact that Brianna went to the past, if Frank was looking…and I hope that’s what ends up happening. I’m making a silly assumption that he doesn’t know that she married Roger though – because we never hear of Frank going to visit Roger or anything like that. Frank is TOTALLY the kind of Dad where if he learned his daughter was going to marry someone and he wasn’t going to be around for it, he would suss out the potential husband big time. “Oh hey Roger, I’m just in town to chat to your dad….oh, he’s not home? Well, why don’t you put on a cup of tea and you and I will have a little chat. No reason.”
Unless he never figured out that Roger Mac is Roger Wakefield, considering he’s only Roger Wakefield under one ship entry at the start of his time travel journey, from memory.
Tell me your Frank theories, I am ready!
see my reply to SianCampbell: Frank is not a monster!!!1!
I have never read these books because I was working in a bookstore when they were first published, and the fans were extremely annoying. Also I do not regard the past as a place any woman would really enjoy living in, no matter how hot the dudes. I enjoyed Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book for exactly that reason. No real romance, lots of interesting facts, the past was both beautiful and terrible, and time-travel had high stakes.
When it starts out, there’s a lot of effort put into justifying why she’d like it (because she just got through being a WWII nurse and is used to violence on a massive scale plus lots of man’s inhumanity to both man and woman.) it would never have worked with a 1990s character I don’t think. and more crucially, she has all her vaccinations and is magically and conveniently barren, so two big historical worries neatly disposed of. and also she makes her sexy younger husband swear on his dagger never to hit her after the first time he does or she’ll cut out his heart.
it was inexplicable and enraging that her magic barrenness was magically cured by a magical sex cavern at the end though, AND that she was happy about it. if that were me I’d have run back to the present faster than you can say puerperal fever.
I think I was unfairly prejudiced against the books and the author for years and years because to me they had a sort of reputation as middle aged woman porn, if you will, and due to unexamined young-woman sexism I failed to really appreciate just how filthy and bizarre a connotation that classification ought to have.
I wonder if the Clan of the Cave Bear series belongs in the “middle age women porn” category. It doesn’t involve time travel, just making the best of your Paleolithic life by having as much sex as possible and also inventing all the things. I liked it as a teen, but am afraid to go back and try it again. My eyes might actually roll out of my head.
I think Clan of the Cave Bear and, to a lesser extent, The Valley of Horses, hold up. The rest of them, meh, then yuck.
Oh, totally. I think Outlander is much better written, though, and that’s even considering I read it as an adult. although maybe it is just I prefer sadistic 18th century floggings to whatever weird sex things were going on with Ayla. Jamie Fraser is a virgin sex god and all but his masculine parts are the normal size you would expect of a human man. so, a little realism to balance out the time travel.
I would say that CotCB is “adolescent girl porn,” as that’s when the vast majority of us seem to have read it, thereby dooming ourselves to a life of Jondalar expectations re: Pleasures.
I rather thought Frank was the one unable to have children, not Claire….
I thought Claire was never actually infertile, she just thought she might be because she’d never been pregnant, but it was actually Frank who was infertile.
oh then she is out of her mind to go along so blithely with the required consummation of the forced marriage plot device. I mean here is Jamie all ignorant and innocent and looking to her for instruction, just invent some complicated secret handshake to teach him, give him a kiss and tell him he’s not a virgin anymore. he’s already convinced that all the dirty stories the other men told him were made up, how hard would it be. that’s what I would do and I’m not even a doctor.
I’m pretty sure this game is designed to kill you via your liver. And quickly.
See my Outlander drinking game (for the show) would just be “drink every time you’re sad Jamie is in a scene with a shirt on”.
Oh, and Tobias Menzies was VERY naked in Rome at one point, so I dunno what’s going with that.
Perhaps he got all shy reading all of the various comments online about Brutus being a show-er?
Drink every time:
-Claire is ~feisty~
-Geillis Duncan is mysterious
-somebody says “dinna” or “cannae” because otherwise we would forget that this is Scotland and everyone is an unintelligible Scot (related: have a drink every time you must rewind the show because you didn’t understand somebody)
that reminds me! in the books Geillis Duncan is GREAT and don’t tell me if I am wrong about this, I have only read the first one, but I am trusting and praying she is not really dead. why is Claire such a prig about her killing her husband, I didn’t understand that at all.
I will just say that all will be revealed. I think in the first book, Claire likes Geillis but is scared of her, because Claire understands through a lot of little things that Geillis says that Geillis is concerned with Geillis and any friendship/relationship is just kind of conditional on that friend or lover not being in her way. She’s the kind of person that could kill a husband to get ahead, or because he was done serving his purpose, or whatever, which Claire realises. It doesn’t stop her feeling interested in Geillis and feeling a kind of kinship there, it just means she knows better than to trust her. She’s really sad when Geillis dies, from memory – they were friends, whatever that meant to Geillis, and she knows that Geillis saved her life and didn’t have to.
Yeah, I feel that any time prior to, let’s say the Married Women’s Property Act, killing a husband for any reason up to and including whim and convenience is so wholly justified for any woman that it doesn’t really call for any soul-searching or discussion. I can see why various 18th century Scotsmen would disagree but I really think Claire should know better.
any time-traveling gentlemen from the past who are reading this and taking my comment as a mission statement of what kind of historical time-traveling wife I would be are right to do so. marry me if you like, but keep one eye open.
I think it’s more, like, who Geillis is and the way she talks about killing her husband that gets Claire’s hairs up. The fact that he’s her husband is almost irrelevant, it’s that the carefree way she killed and talked about that killing, as well as lots of other things in the books, reveals that she’s power-thirsty and ruthless and that Claire can’t trust her. It’s pretty easy to get the sense that something is totally off with Geillis, and I think it’s 100% reasonable of Claire to be freaked out by her. She would kill basically anyone to get what she wants, including (as I’m pretty sure is said in the book) her baby. Like, she would slit her baby’s throat and not even feel a twinge of, well, anything.
Tobias Menzies is so good at playing guys you want to like but you can’t because they’re just so embarrassing. Which really is my favorite ever take on Brutus.
100% concur. That is the perfect description. Though on Game of Thrones, I didn’t bother to want to like him.
You guys I am really busy at work today but plan on devoting my full lunch break to Outlander on Toast, which is my dream.
But real quick:
Breast feeding sex uggghhh Frank.
Roxane Gay also mad no sex yet and just glad we’re all on the same page here GET TO IT ALREADY. (ok it happens in the sixth episode, I know, ugggh). http://www.vulture.com/2014/08/outlander-recap-se…
My favorite part of the books: when there’s long and rambling dialogue or descriptions and it’s so long even the characters start going “Ok just get to the point already thanks.”
I liked Frank way better in the pilot than I did for the entire books so, there’s that. Good job Tobias Menzies! Also when I say his name I just think “menses” so there’s that too, feminist good will and such.
I can’t watch right now because I don’t have Starz and tv links is failing me and I am miserable. Someone please help.
you didn’t hear this from me but try tvmuse.com — find the page for the episode you want and then people post links in the comments.
UNPOPULAR OPINION: I feel like I’m pretty happy with there not really being any sex yet? Because…like, there isn’t any sex, in the book, for ages. It’s Frank at the start, and then from memory she doesn’t marry Jamie until almost halfway through the first book. HEAPS happens before they get to that, so I feel like I’m pretty happy for them to just respect the books and take their time getting there. I mean, let’s be real. Once Claire and Jamie START jumping each other, they kind of don’t really stop. So all the no-sex now will kind of balance out when the show becomes a straight up porno, right?
Drink every time you deeply regret going past the first book to satisfy your curiosity
This one will be my downfall.
ETA: I heard Diana Gabaldon talking about how “it’s not a romance” because in a romance the story is over after the courtship and Claire and Jamie’s story goes on forEVER. Sorry Gabaldon — just because you wrote more doesn’t mean you were able to sustain the sexytensions.
The first book is basically a bunch of sexual fantasies interspersed with random plot elements.
I’ve never had any interest in slash fiction, but after the second book I googled “Jamie/Lord John slash fiction” and there was NOTHING. What the hell, internet? Pages and pages of results for Shaggy and Fred from Scooby Doo getting it on, but not this.
Try the AO3, it probably has some, although it might be locked to account-holders only.
Never read the books, started watching the show. Have come to terms w the fact that yes, Jamie is nice and they will one true sexlove forever but in the meantime I am all about Claire’s herbalist time with the witchy herb lady and would read heaps of femmeslash about witchy herb time.
I will now run away on my cloud of improbability, bye
verrah lol
Oh, just thought of another one for the drinking game: Drink every time someone “bent to their work” during a sex scene. (Which, for those who haven’t read the series, usually means “continues to go down on someone, with great intent”)
Oh definitely, I get that once she was an adult they'd probably separate. But that's different to Frank being like, "Well, I'm moving to another CONTINENT with another woman, and since you have a job you love here it's not like you can come, and also I'm taking your beloved daughter with me, who by the way hasn't even GRADUATED YET, so you'll never see her, and I absolutely 100% don't give a shit what you think about this or what she thinks about this and whether you're heartbroken about it because I can do as I like, sorry not sorry." Which is exactly how that whole fight scene read to me. He was awful to her.
Also: at that time, he knew he was dying, remember? Because of his heart? Why on EARTH would he move his daughter to another continent with him if he knew he was going to die soon-ish? Surely it'd be a much better idea, if he planned on moving to England, to leave her with Claire to continue her education and to not be uprooted all over again when he died.
She's a nurse, so she's had countless hours of anatomy classes, studying bones and muscles. So I think I've always chalked it up to that. I'm a nursing student as well, so I notice and admire those kind of references.