Hey all, I’ve been really quiet on LJ for a while now. This is largely due to an excessively crazy summer (I still owe you all a post about Italy, which was FAB), and being busy with art for ACBB, school starting up, and me falling head over heels for a new show called Outlander. I’ve been reblogging all the things over on Tumblr with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jelazakazone, and squeeing with her and anyone else who will listen. I’ve got it so bad that when she posed a question over there it got me thinking and I’m actually writing up a little post about those thoughts.
OK, so I don’t usually write up meta things. I do love to read them, but I never write them (so this is a new thing for me. Be gentle). And a lifetime of reading various grades of sci-fi/fantasy means that I’m the type of reader/watcher who has made a habit of hanging up my disbelief on the coat hook by the entrance to any form of fiction, be it book, TV, film, or theater.
But what draws me and keeps me is characters. I love a complicated character. And they don’t get a whole lot more complicated than James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. Well, OK, they probably do, but he’s complicated enough.
For those not in the know (which was me until about a month ago), Outlander was originally a series of books written by Diana Gabaldon that, for reasons I’ve still not quite figured out, got filed in the “romance” section of the bookstore, which is the only reason that I hadn’t heard of it before this summer. There are 8 of them now, and I’m making fantastic headway in devouring them. If you want to know more, I’m sure wikipedia would be a help, or you could visit the author’s webpage here. The thing that got me into the books was the TV series that’s airing on Starz. Well, actually it was Jela that got me into watching it, lol. Jela, and the kilts. But I digress.
From here on out, I’ll assume that anyone still reading knows what I’m talking about.
So. The thing that I’ve been musing about. There’s a fantastic meta on Tumblr about Jamie’s character in terms of homophobia, anachronistic behavior, feminism, how Jamie’s character turns feminine roles in romance on theirs heads by being a man in that role, and other wonderful things. You should go read it. I’ll wait here until you’re done.
Back? OK, I’m going to send you away again briefly, because then there’s this post, which has an incredibly sexy set of photos, a few quotes, and a very good question from Jela. And the reason it got me thinking is that I had exactly, EXACTLY, the same thought when I read that part of the book.
And you know, I think it has to do with kinks. There are things that we wouldn’t necessarily entertain doing in real life that we can explore through the lens of fiction; this extreme possessiveness to the point of sexual violence is one of them for me. I will admit that dub/non-con is something that I do enjoy to read, if it’s well written, but I have a very solid grasp of the fact that in real life it’s rape. I’m not going to explore rape in real life; it has real life consequences and is a Bad Thing.
Now, the sexual relations between Jamie and Claire veer back and forth across that line, but I interpret them as being mainly consensual. It’s complicated, but I just do. There are times when they’re incandescently angry with each other, and angry sex happens. And sometimes it’s very close to hate sex, because to say that Jamie and Claire have strong tempers is the understatement of the century. They’re just passionate, in a way that we don’t generally allow ourselves to be in RL. You could go so far as to say it’s one of several defining traits in each of them. By and large, though, Jamie is a considerate lover, and so is Claire. And even this early in their forced marriage you can see that.
Whereas, what Black Jack Randall does to Jamie is outright Rape. Captial R. But that’s a whole ‘nother meta that I’m really not up to right now.
Back to the possessiveness though. The interesting part of this particular scene is that they are actually staking a claim on each other, it’s not just him. I think that this particular bit of dialogue, and the actions that go with it, is about the fact that Jamie wants to possess Claire utterly because she already owns him, heart and soul. She doesn’t know it yet, but she does. And he feels the need to leave his mark on her, in her; he wants to provoke her into admitting that she wants to possess him as well. I think it cut him deeply that she’d consider letting him sleep with Laoghire; here he is, head over heels for her, and she’s saying he can sleep with someone he has no strong feelings for. I don’t know that Jamie understood how much Claire hated saying that he could. So maybe another element to this is that we know that Claire is subconsciously relieved to have him be so possessive of her? And here he is, upset that she’s not jealous of him. LOL. How complicated can you get?
So, possessiveness kink. I know at least one person who had a spouse who was pathologically possessive. And that’s not sexy at all. And I’m still not sure why it’s so appealing in a fic, except that perhaps this is very honest, straightforward possessiveness. This isn’t behind the back, spying on her every move, keeping her trapped. This is establishing that he’s got a right to her, and she to him. He says that it’s because they’re married, which would go along with the morals and standards of the 18th century. We know it’s more than that; maybe he’s not willing to say it out loud, new to each other as they are. But I mean, really, the best part of this relationship is the depth of the connection between these two; it literally crosses time and space. They both own each other’s souls, and this is, I think, our first real glimpse of that terrifying depth. So yeah, we lap it up, because it’s our chance to explore those depths without drowning ourselves.
jelazakazone, and squeeing with her and anyone else who will listen. I’ve got it so bad that when she posed a question over there it got me thinking and I’m actually writing up a little post about those thoughts. OK, so I don’t usually write up meta things. I do love to read them, but I never write them (so this is a new thing for me. Be gentle). And a lifetime of reading various grades of sci-fi/fantasy means that I’m the type of reader/watcher who has made a habit of hanging up my disbelief on the coat hook by the entrance to any form of fiction, be it book, TV, film, or theater.
But what draws me and keeps me is characters. I love a complicated character. And they don’t get a whole lot more complicated than James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. Well, OK, they probably do, but he’s complicated enough.
For those not in the know (which was me until about a month ago), Outlander was originally a series of books written by Diana Gabaldon that, for reasons I’ve still not quite figured out, got filed in the “romance” section of the bookstore, which is the only reason that I hadn’t heard of it before this summer. There are 8 of them now, and I’m making fantastic headway in devouring them. If you want to know more, I’m sure wikipedia would be a help, or you could visit the author’s webpage here. The thing that got me into the books was the TV series that’s airing on Starz. Well, actually it was Jela that got me into watching it, lol. Jela, and the kilts. But I digress.
From here on out, I’ll assume that anyone still reading knows what I’m talking about.
So. The thing that I’ve been musing about. There’s a fantastic meta on Tumblr about Jamie’s character in terms of homophobia, anachronistic behavior, feminism, how Jamie’s character turns feminine roles in romance on theirs heads by being a man in that role, and other wonderful things. You should go read it. I’ll wait here until you’re done.
Back? OK, I’m going to send you away again briefly, because then there’s this post, which has an incredibly sexy set of photos, a few quotes, and a very good question from Jela. And the reason it got me thinking is that I had exactly, EXACTLY, the same thought when I read that part of the book.
And you know, I think it has to do with kinks. There are things that we wouldn’t necessarily entertain doing in real life that we can explore through the lens of fiction; this extreme possessiveness to the point of sexual violence is one of them for me. I will admit that dub/non-con is something that I do enjoy to read, if it’s well written, but I have a very solid grasp of the fact that in real life it’s rape. I’m not going to explore rape in real life; it has real life consequences and is a Bad Thing.
Now, the sexual relations between Jamie and Claire veer back and forth across that line, but I interpret them as being mainly consensual. It’s complicated, but I just do. There are times when they’re incandescently angry with each other, and angry sex happens. And sometimes it’s very close to hate sex, because to say that Jamie and Claire have strong tempers is the understatement of the century. They’re just passionate, in a way that we don’t generally allow ourselves to be in RL. You could go so far as to say it’s one of several defining traits in each of them. By and large, though, Jamie is a considerate lover, and so is Claire. And even this early in their forced marriage you can see that.
Whereas, what Black Jack Randall does to Jamie is outright Rape. Captial R. But that’s a whole ‘nother meta that I’m really not up to right now.
Back to the possessiveness though. The interesting part of this particular scene is that they are actually staking a claim on each other, it’s not just him. I think that this particular bit of dialogue, and the actions that go with it, is about the fact that Jamie wants to possess Claire utterly because she already owns him, heart and soul. She doesn’t know it yet, but she does. And he feels the need to leave his mark on her, in her; he wants to provoke her into admitting that she wants to possess him as well. I think it cut him deeply that she’d consider letting him sleep with Laoghire; here he is, head over heels for her, and she’s saying he can sleep with someone he has no strong feelings for. I don’t know that Jamie understood how much Claire hated saying that he could. So maybe another element to this is that we know that Claire is subconsciously relieved to have him be so possessive of her? And here he is, upset that she’s not jealous of him. LOL. How complicated can you get?
So, possessiveness kink. I know at least one person who had a spouse who was pathologically possessive. And that’s not sexy at all. And I’m still not sure why it’s so appealing in a fic, except that perhaps this is very honest, straightforward possessiveness. This isn’t behind the back, spying on her every move, keeping her trapped. This is establishing that he’s got a right to her, and she to him. He says that it’s because they’re married, which would go along with the morals and standards of the 18th century. We know it’s more than that; maybe he’s not willing to say it out loud, new to each other as they are. But I mean, really, the best part of this relationship is the depth of the connection between these two; it literally crosses time and space. They both own each other’s souls, and this is, I think, our first real glimpse of that terrifying depth. So yeah, we lap it up, because it’s our chance to explore those depths without drowning ourselves.
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Date: 2014-10-09 04:57 am (UTC)From:As for the books, I've managed to get to the last half of Drums of Autumn in 2 weeks, so I'm making good time. At this rate I'll be done before Halloween, lol.