Stay

This fell out of me just a bit ago. It has nothing to do with anything; only a short snippet of a story. Claire comes home after her mother’s died, reconnecting with an old childhood friend: Jamie. Enjoy?!? 

——————-

She was surprised to see photos of the two of them, lined up along his mantel among antique candlesticks and drawings his sister had done. One photo showed the two of them in a paddling pool in a garden - they were both sopping wet in their clothes, grinning at one another instead of the camera. Another had them standing together on a rugby pitch, he wearing his kit, she in the school uniform. And one more, right before she’d left town for good: a dinner table at Christmas, some distance between them this time, both looking at someone else not in frame. 

Claire remembered how unhappy he’d been that night, though he did his best to hide it. She knew, though. Knew that he’d have begged her on his hands and knees to stay if pride had allowed it. She’d said her goodbyes, however, and left the following morning. A flight to New York held her future; and she hadn’t looked back. 

Not until now, not until the unthinkable had brought her back home. Her mother was dead, and though they hadn’t been terribly close, she was grief-stricken, unable to do much but stay inside the house she’d grown up in, going through things, making sense of her mother’s will. It was just her, now. Her dad had passed when she was young, and with no other siblings she was left to pick up the pieces. Sadly, her first thought wasn’t Jamie Fraser and his family. She had no idea if he’d speak to her again, or if he even want to.

As it was, they met in a pub - one they both went to regularly when she was home. Before all that happened. He’d surprised her as she sipped her whisky, hoping she’d be left alone. 

“Hey, you,” he’d said, just loudly enough for her to hear over the music. 

She’d whirled around, surprised but pleased to see a familiar face, a person who wasn’t only looking on with pity.  She smiled at him, taking him in. He wasn’t quite as thin as she remembered, and his hair had grown longer; but he was the same. The same old Jamie she remembered. He looked tired, and perhaps in need of a shower, but she threw her arms around his neck just the same.

They both held on tightly, neither of them willing to let go; finally, though, Claire sat back on her stool, gesturing for him to join her. He was nervous, slightly jumpy, and unsure about his words. They talked though; about what they’d done since they last saw one another, about their past together, and about the possibilities of the future.

Jamie was still living at his family home, alone - his sister having moved away long ago, and both parents now passed away. Claire was shocked to hear it, apologizing profusely for not having come home to see him. 

So, it seemed they were both alone in life, left behind by those they knew and loved. 

Claire followed him back to his home, a large estate that had fallen into some state of disrepair. He lived simply, he explained, off the land mostly. It didn’t surprise Claire in the least - Jamie had always been one for roughing it, for dragging her out into the wilderness to spend a night beneath the stars, to get drunk, talk, and fight the urge to touch one another. 

That same urge simmered just under her skin as she walked inside - an innate need to grasp Jamie’s arm, to feel his skin against hers. Not in a deeply intimate way, but in a familiar, comforting way. She’d realized in her time in New York, devoid of any real personal connections, that Jamie was her home. He was more home to her than her own parents, her own home, her own things that were now boxed up in storage. She remembered spending more time here growing up than anywhere else. It still smelled the same. 

Jamie asked her to sit on the sofa, the same one that had been here the last time Claire had been invited inside. A floral print long outdated, covered in a threadbare blanket. It was welcoming, cozy, and as Jamie held out a beer for her, she didn’t hesitate to sink into the cushions. 

“Was sorry to hear about your mam,” he said simply, talking around the bottle resting on his lips. He took a drink, then set it on the table. 

Their hands were inches apart, though neither moved. 

“Thanks,” Claire replied, so exhausted from hearing it from everyone she saw. The eyes that would stare through her like she wasn’t there, their mouths all carrying those empty words. 

Jamie, though - he meant it. Claire could tell. It nearly made her cry. She hadn’t done that yet. Instead she lifted her hand, placing it atop his. She took a drink, clutching the bottle hard in her fingers, feeling the condensation dripping down her fingers. 

She felt his fingers move, so light and slow, but he gripped her hand in comfort. 

“Can I stay tonight?” 

The words were barely audible, and when Jamie didn’t answer, Claire wondered if he’d heard her. She turned her head to look at him - he was watching her carefully. 

“Can I?” she asked again, the words now being swallowed up by the growing lump in her throat that was too big to ignore.  “We can drink, build a fire, maybe a pillow fort? I just…” 

She sniffed, afraid to continue. Jamie did instead.

“I’ve wanted to see you for so long, Claire. I’ve dreamed of having you here, just like this.” 

Claire only nodded, eyes shut against the tears now falling. 

“I heard you had someone…someone over there,” he mumbled. 

“I don’t care. I’m not going back, Jamie. I can’t, not now.” 

Claire grasped his hand tightly now, pulling it into her lap. 

“You can stay, Sassenach. As long as you like. Forever, I hope.” 

She gave in, then. Caved to the insurmountable pressure to feel her grief, to feel her sorrow. But he was here, holding her together as he’d always done. Burying her face in his neck, the space between them closed, the years apart falling away to nothing.

She would stay, she knew. There was nothing for her anywhere else. Nothing like Jamie.

One More Try

Chapter 10 - Trouble In Paradise

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** A wee bit of NSFW content in this one **

So I’m throwing my hands up and posting this in the hopes that you’ll enjoy it, and that this won’t be the chapter that you all abandon me over (that’s my fear every time I post, let’s be honest!)  

Thanks for reading, and commenting, and kudos, likes and reblogs. I appreciate any and all of them. 

More to come, of course. I don’t think there will be but two or three chapters left after this one. 

Enjoy!

—-

Love Stained, Chapter 7

A/N  Thank you to everyone for all your wonderful comments, likes, reblogs and the like.  It’s made a pretty rough spring a lot more bearable.  With only three chapters left in this story, it’s time to start pulling all the pieces together.  In this chapter, we learn quite a bit about what sent Jamie down the path to surrogacy.  It’s also pretty explicit (by my standards, at least).   Trigger warning for references to past sexual assault.

All previously posted chapters can be found on my AO3 page.

Keep reading

I saw this on Twitter (still hate that app) and thought it could be fun here.

What is your Outlander opinion you will get canceled for sharing?

I have so many but I'll start with this one: Claire and Jamie are kinda toxic, actually.

Ready, go.

I. Hate. Roger. MacKenzie.

ONE MORE TRY 

Chapter 9 - Dreams

Now up to read at Ao3! 

–

Welp. I know it’s been so long, and when I first began posting this story, I thought I could knock the whole thing out in a few weeks. I was so wrong. Over Christmas, my mental health became an absolute dumpster fire and I just couldn’t write a word, let alone a whole sentence. Anyway, thanks for coming back to read this new, if slightly rusty and meh new chapter. I will refrain from promising another update on any particular day, but my hopes are high that I can have another one out in the next few days….but…we will see how that goes. Please don’t be mad if I totally fail!

Hope you enjoy this, and if you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments. These sorts of chapters are not my favorite to write, so I never really feel I handle these well. I’d rather write major action, or some ~event~…which we’ll get to next chapter, thank goodness.

Special thanks goes to @zeya-zg for being an ever present source of support and encouragement. Couldn’t do this without you, friend! 

Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this wee update!

A Call to Action for the Outlander Fandom

You and I both know we have a massive problem with trolling, bigotry, and homophobia in our fandom. I've seen people complain that we're not actually issuing a clear call to action. So here it is.

First, look at this:

Second, go look at the #We can do better OL tag on my blog. I even linked it for you.

These are SOME of the numerous anonymous messages I have received over the course of about two months. I am not the only one getting this, and I'm speaking up for them as much as for myself. I keep to myself, I write my stories, I do my thing, and I'm content with my little group of friends. I want to go back to this.

And when we bring the harassment and hate speech up, we get more gaslighting and more harassment. So here's the call to action, because I know for a fact the vast majority of this fandom is not like this.

Until someone else starts speaking up in opposition, those people who call me a faggot and tell me to kill myself, who threaten my friends' children, THEY are speaking for you. Your silence is aligning yourself with these people.

The heart of the Outlander universe is love. THIS? All of this? Has no place in our fandom.

We can do better.

Just wanted to reblog this for the visibility and to add my two cents.

I wouldn’t really consider myself part of any ‘fandom’. I don’t understand the nuances of how people interact with each other, I have a very base level of knowledge when it comes to ships and canon and all that kind of stuff. I’m not on discord, I’m not on twitter. I just know that I love Outlander and through watching the show and reading the book, I found myself inspired to write my silly little stories and share them online. I’ve spoken to a few other writers here and there but I wouldn’t consider myself as someone who really gets involved in the fandom.

That being said, I was genuinely so surprised when I started to see the homophobia and general shit-baggery that was coming from the OL community. My first reaction was shock because for my entire experience with reading and watching Outlander, I had always considered it as gay as shit.

You try and tell me that Geillis isn’t hitting on Claire the first time they meet.

Something that queer people are acutely attuned to is spotting the gays in any given situation. And because we live queer lives, we are more likely to pick up on the nuances of behaviour between characters, of the things being discussed beneath the dialogue. Outlander is full of it and not just in the characters who are out.

Jamie Alexander Malcolm McKenzie Fraser displays some of the most obvious bi-panic behaviour I’ve ever come across.

I have only ever posted Jamie/Claire stories. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t written Jamie/John and Jamie/Claire/John and Claire/Geillis. I’ve only ever had one comment on a chapter of Lights where someone commented that there was “so much gay Jamie fic being written” and that got my back up. But now to see writers getting the abuse that Mistress Pandora is receiving is fucking vile. Hate speech is a criminal offence.

So here I am, queer as all hell, supporting the LGBTQIA+ voices in the Outlander fandom. Whether you’re part of the queer community or an ally, this shit needs to be called out when it’s witnessed. And we need to be LOUD about it.

Last night, during the Outlander season premiere, there was a scene when the Jacobite prisoners sang a war song to rouse the British and Tom Christie’s men. This song was, Johnny Cope, which is one of my favorite Scottish folk- and Jacobite- rebel songs. Did I scream when it happened? Yes. Did I sing along at the top of my lungs? Also yes. It felt like a full circle moment of sorts because Outlander is what got me into Scottish folk music. I really appreciated it.

(Live footage of me when anyone mentions folk music.)

Anyways, if you’re like me and obsessed with old Scottish songs, or you want to get into the vast and beautiful genre that is Scottish folk music, allow me to recommend some playlists and artists and albums!

(I’m not an expert- I can’t even play an instrument or read music, and I’m not Scottish, but I am just very enthusiastic, and that scene was probably the highlight of the season for me, so here we are!)

These three are my playlists, and each has a different purpose- the first one is for one of my original stories that takes place in the 45’ Rebellion, which is the rebellion shown on Outlander. The second one is Scottish war songs- they have quite a few, like Johnny Cope, which is about the defeat of British General John Cope at the Battle of Prestonpans. The last is a work in progress, which is my favorites Scottish folk songs- the vibes are all over the place, but I wanted it that way because Scotland is a country that can’t be described in a single word.

These playlists are not mine, and are compilations of the Child Ballads, which are some of the most popular and oldest folk songs from England and Scotland. A lot of these songs were brought over to America, specifically to the Appalachia region- like where Fraser’s Ridge is!

And some albums I would recommend are

Border Lands is a great place to start because it’s got 70 songs, all by different artists! This is one of my favorite songs on the album.

This album is all Jacobite Rebellion songs- the Scots may not have won the war, but they used songs as well as swords.

Lastly, some artists I’d recommend are The Corries, Julie Fowlis, Ewan MacColl, Malinky, Jean Redpath, and Alastair McDonald. And if you want more of what’s featured on Outlander, both Griogair Labhruidh and Gillebrìde MacMillan have albums that you can listen to.

And if anyone has any other recommendations, feel free to share them with me and this posts!! I love discovering new artists and songs.

This is a polite request to open a conversation about the way that Lowland Scots is used within fanfic in the Outlander fandom. I don’t know how to explain this in a way that will make sense to anyone outside of Scotland, but one of the common mistakes I see fanfic writers make when it comes to the way they write Scottish characters is that they try and use their own made up phonetic versions of Scots words.

Scots isn’t just an accent, and it isn’t a subjective decision about what an individual thinks is correct - no matter what was published in apopular book series once upon a time.

First, Lowland Scots is an actual language - or leid - in its own right with distinctive sounds, grammar and spellings that are increasingly standardised.

Second, most people who grow up in Scotland speak or at least understand Scots to some degree.

Third, the way we speak English is influenced by the Scots language, and specificially the differences in sounds. For example, Scots is a heavily rhotive language although the way the ‘R’ is pronounced can change - for example there are some accents around Moray and the North East where the ‘R’ is pronounced more like a French R rather than the rolled ‘R’ with the tongue that a lot of central belt Lowland Scots uses.

Scots has its own history and a parallel development to English. It is not a variant of English, it is a language that developed separately from similar roots.

Scots did not go through the great vowel shift.

There’s more but lets start with that. Unfortunately after the Act of Union in 1707 and from the 18th century to the late 20th century, for political reasons Scots was looked down on. Myths were created that Lowland Scots did not exist, that Lowland Scots was not a language, or that Lowland Scots was just bad English.

The way a Scottish character uses Scots shouldn’t just be influenced by what an American author wrote 20 or 30 years ago thinking it sounded the way a Scottish person would talk.

This contributes to the idea that Scots as a language is not real, but simply the subjective experience of the non-Scots listener. Scotland has its own education system. However, due to internal policies where English was promoted as superior and Scots was put down as made up, fake, and bad English, what happened was Scots wasn’t taught.

I am one of many Scots who for generations spoke Scots, but was told Scots didn’t exist and was taught to write only in ‘proper’ English. There are a few consequences to this.

First of all, I very much struggle with reading and writing Scots. I can do it, but rather than my post-grad level of English comprehension, my Scots reading and writing comprehension is that of a primary school child and what comprehension I do have is largely self-taught. I see a lot of people writing modern AU’s where they try to use Scots words. But instead of looking up words using resources like the Dictionary of the Scots Language, they make up their own phonetic sounding spellings based on their knowledge of spoken English, which has a completely different sound to it than Scots because of the Great Vowel Shift. (Scots did not go through the Great Vowel Shift. Scots also makes heavy use of the glottel stop, and dropped letters).

Imagine if i came to your neighbourhood and made up my own phonetic spellings of what i thought you sounded like based on the way i talked, and then tried to tell you that that was your language written down. Imagine. The sheer audacity. You would probably - quite rightly - feel incredibly insulted and angry at the arrogance. And then imagine the gaslighting, if I then told you that you weren’t allowed to be angry at me doing that, because I read something in a book written 30 years ago by someone who had never spoken or learned your language. There’s a point to all of this.

Scots is a minority language and we need to start treating it like that instead of treating it like a cute linguistic quirk of English. Slowly the situation is changing as regards the recognition and teaching of Scots, but there is a quandary here in terms of the experience of people who would be adults in a modern AU set now. The consequence of history is that if you are writing a modern AU adult Scottish character, chances are they won’t write in Scots. They may speak Scots, but chances are they only ever learned to write English. This means that the way we talk and the way we write are completely disconnected. We do not write English phonetically because we had it drilled in to us to only write ‘correct’ English which was completely different in its sound to the way we spoke.

Bear in mind also that some of the phonetic spellings people are coming up with are based on the attempted Scots accents of actors who are not themselves Scottish.

The result is made up spellings of words from a book written by someone who doesn’t speak Scots, written in phonetic ENGLISH based on the fake accent of someone who isn’t even Scottish.

For me, this is a problem.

This is a real language that real people speak. Can we please perhaps give just a little bit of thought to how treating someone’s language in that way actually looks?

Yes, the fact that most Scots literally speak in one language and write in another creates a quandary about how to deal with this. But it makes no sense - at least in my mind - for fanfic writers to try and come up with made up phonetic spellings of Scottish things in an effort to sound ‘Scots’.

For Scots like myself, of my generation, if we do write in Scots, chances are I would use the increasingly standardised spellings. Or change it to the dialect of Scots I speak. For example, ‘-ae’ is a much more common word ending where I am from that ‘-a’ which is how it sounds to a non-native listener who, often, doesn’t understand the speed and subtlety of the language.

Another point is that when spoken naturally, Scots is often spoken at an incredibly fast pace. Such that when Scots is spoken for non-Scots, it tends to be vastly slowed down and the words separated rather than flowing together. Think of a music track being played super slow and it sounds all weird. That’s what you are basing your phonetic Scots spellings on.

Thankfully Scots as a language is making a bit of a comeback and there is now much more in the way of teaching, teaching resources, childrens books and popular support for the language.

Its great that people want to use Scots. That’s brilliant. I fully support that. But as language resources become increasingly accessible, I don’t think it is inappropriate to ask people in general and writers in particular to pay just a little bit of thought to how the way they use my language might actually look to a native speaker.

Let me give you an example.

If someone from Edinburgh who grew up speaking the local dialect of Scots confirmed where they were from they would write something like this:

‘Yes, I am from Edinburgh.’ If they were to say it it would sound to a Scots speaker something like this:

‘Aye, Ah’m fae Edinburruh’

And it would sound to a non-native speaker something like this:

‘Aye, am fa Edinbra.’

You see the problem?

The Scots Leid also distinguishes between where you are from (born/raised) and where you stay/bide. 

So if someone was from somewhere else but living in Edinburgh they might use the word ‘bide’ which means to stay somewhere, but you’re not from there originally.

Or they might reply by telling you where they lived as a child, or where they were raised, if thats a different place to where they live now.

The pace and subtlety of the speech and the nuanced differences to English - which is a separate language - means that often the subtleties of the specifics of Scots are not picked up. The first person singular ‘I am’ pronounced with a flat ‘Ah’ sound is often mistaken for being a part of the verb ‘to be’ with the ‘I’ missing or dropped and that’s not grammatically what is happening. Reflected vowels or vowels that are squished in, or glottel stops in place of ‘tt’s often completely bypass the listener who is not acquainted with the subtleties of spoken Scots.

But it gets worse. Sometimes when those of us who do speak Scots - or have taken the trouble to learn Scots - sometimes when we use it in writing we then get attacked by non-native speakers who are only familiar with the inaccurate and made up book and fandom versions of our language. The correct language we actually speak, write and use is attacked for being inconsistent with the made up ‘Scots language’ of the fandom canon or of the original source material.

So my plea is this: please don’t make shit up just to try and sound Scottish. And please stop attacking actual Scots speakers - some of whom are Scottish and some of whom are not - for actually writing and using our own language correctly. Scots is a language that can be learned just like any other language. Maya Angelou loved the poetry of Robert Burns and made the effort to learn how to pronounce the sounds correctly. You can hear this for example in the way she pronounces the letter ‘r’ when reciting Burns, which is different from her own natural accent.

Scots is an actual language, with actual standardised spellings that reflect the sounds made when that language is spoken. There are resources out there. If you care enough to use the language in your work, please consider going that small extra step and either reaching out to someone who is has the Scots Leid or looking online for language resources and the Dictionary of the Scots Language.

https://dsl.ac.uk - Dictionary of the Scots Leid, an online dictionary of the Scots language.

https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk - an online archive of Scotland cultural heritage in Gaelic, Scots and English based on the Canna Collection, the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh and the BBC Radio nan Gàidheal archive. (There are recordings in Scots on here although bear in mind that some of them will be historic and may no longer reflect current speech patterns.)

Eloquently and passionately put and echoing my own feelings about the use of our language.

When I started writing Outlander fanfiction, I really struggled with writing dialogue between the Scottish characters. I would lapse into my own dialect even though the characters weren’t from my neck of the woods. As said above, a huge majority of people had the Scots trained out of them when they went to school, often being corrected to ‘speak properly’. I remember being told by my primary three teacher that I shouldn’t say ‘kye’. When I corrected myself and thought to replace it with ‘beasts’, he remarked that I should simply call them cows or cattle. Although I went to school in a suburb of the city, I grew up in the shire and was often made fun of for using ‘teuchter words’ and it brought a lot of shame.

There has been an effort to walk back some of the damage that caused Scots to be pushed down. My niece is almost 4 and has the English, Scots and Doric translations of the Grufallo. She can now practically recite all three of them and it’s amazing to watch her brain make the connection between the English word ‘very’ and the Doric word ‘gey’.

She’s being raised in a way that we hope she doesn’t even contemplate the insidious Scottish Cringe. But so many of us are still unlearning it and figuring out how we connect to our culture through language, spoken and written.

When I’m reading or writing dialogue of Scottish characters, I can hear the way they speak in my head even though the writing may be in English. Below is an example of how I try to put that across in my writing (this is taken from chapter 7 of Lights)

He found himself instantly more comfortable the minute that she rolled her green eyes at him, “My name is Geillis Duncan. Not exactly fae Spain, am I?” A small smile played across his lips at the sound of her last two words devolving into ‘ahm uh’ despite her best efforts.

Even there, my use of the word ‘devolving’ brings on connotations that speaking in a highly accented way is somehow lesser, despite trying her best to stop that from happening should she be seen as less professional. It shouldn’t be that way.

So please treat our language with respect. Do a tiny bit of research before you type something phonetically, listen to actual Scottish voices and notice the difference in their word choice when speaking to strangers as compared to other Scots and please, for the love of god, don’t correct us. It doesn’t feel good.

It’s a beautiful language full of humour and feeling and tradition. And we need to protect it.

I see the Outlander fandom is back on the ‘homophobic bullshit’ train.

It has been too long.

*sharpens swords*

This shit honestly makes me want to write the most queer positive fic possible.

Triquetra was the first fic that I read that was anything other than Jamie/Claire. And as a queer person, it was so bloody affirming.

Fic is for everyone, including the LGBTQIA+ community.

We’re here, we’re queer and we will always write fics where big auld brute Jamie Fraser allows the soft aristocratic Englishman John Gray to bloody annihilate him in the most sensual way.