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drunk-on-dk · 7 months

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OVERSET | JEON WONWOO (M)

Pairing: ai!wonwoo x R&D!reader Genre: fluff, angst, smut Rating: 18+ (minors do NOT interact) w/c: ~9.4k

Synopsis: Increasingly becoming cognizant of the worlds surrounding him, W0NW00, an AI so carefully wired and generated with the purest intentions even has the potential to become jaded. How can such a consumeristic world be so cruel when all he once knew was the joys of 53V3NT33N? This new understanding makes him unfamiliar to fans; his creator sending him to you, a trusted developer of LEVEL 1 robots, in hopes that you can reverse the sudden changes in W0NW00’s conscious. Are you part of the system W0NW00 is learning to become adverse to? Or will your presence help remind him of the world he once only had knowledge of?

This is part of the Seventeen Sci-Fi Collab organized by the amazing @idyllic-ghost! Big thank you to Bee for being the genius behind this collab, all the world-building and work you've put into this is amazing. The sci-fi genre was something I had yet to attempt, and I found this enjoyable to write (thank you as well for being extremely patient as it took me awhile to feel comfortable enough with my edits to post this).

You can read all the fics here!!

18+ warnings under the cut!

warnings: reader & Wonwoo can be quite pessimistic; commentary on consumerism (?); reader is a bit systematic and lacks personality initially, they take their job very seriously; smut, unprotected sex (practice safe sex habits pls), was supposed to be suggestive but became a bit explicit.

a/n: I love the sci-fi genre, but writing my own sci-fi fic was a bit of a challenge for me. I had not meant to delay so much, but had been in a bit of an editing rut. I really hope you all enjoy this fic, as I am quite excited to expand more into sci-fi. Also major shoutout to @wonuwoe as I appreciate all the brainstorming and getting to meet you through this collab!!

★+ Prologue +★

"100 years ago it was thought that the Earth, as we know it, would disintegrate. That the sun would implode and leave everything in darkness. Miraculously, it didn't. Due to some external force, human scientists still haven't agreed upon what it exactly was, none of the planets in our former solar system were ever destroyed. The Earth, along with the other planets, were pushed away from each other, and ended up in different parts of the universe. Earth just happened to come to a solar system with alien life. At first, we were cautious, and people were prepared to fight. However, the aliens were welcoming of our planet. Those of us who didn't die from 'The Great Journey' or from trying to fight the aliens, were welcomed into the new solar system. Soon enough, we had integrated completely, and we received materials and assistance from our sister-planets in exchange for human labor. What humans knew of technology was very limited, but with the resources of the aliens we created artificial life forms. We named these robots Automaton, and they served as workers when humans couldn't. Eventually, there was no need for human labor at all. To pay back for the help the aliens gave us, we used Automatons. With the extensive development of these robots, we eventually managed to create artificial sentient life. These Automatons were human-like in looks and had human consciousness, but they could not bleed and were stronger than we ever could be. At the present time, there are even different levels of Automatons. Level 3 robots are the workers, level 2 robots are the caretakers, and level 1 robots are the celebrities. The Automaton music group 53V3NT33N (SEVENTEEN) is made up of 13 members, all very talented, and all representing two human states of mind."

★+ Under Diagnosis +★

W0NW00's previous developer had quit on him - more so had fled from the company, which was quite the gossip for many - unable to solve the sudden changes in consciousness that he was facing. Not even his lead cognitive researcher could understand this change in W0NW00. It all had become too much, the company put too much pressure on his previous developer, and him as well. Though he was a robot, he became increasingly aware of the demanding schedules and consumerism of it all.

What had made W0NW00 act this way? Why did his dominantly kind demeanor turn sour all of a sudden? Suddenly, his malicious side was portrayed more to fans, his unwavering kindness cracking beneath the spotlight. There was no explanation and it was not like any form of brute force could reset the drastic changes in his attitude.

At least to say, management really did not like this change in the automata. Even though there had been some oddities in other members of 53V3NT33N, W0NW00's recent behavior was starting to become quite troublesome in the eyes of the company, requiring his managers to pay extra close attention to what made the seemingly perfect idol tick. After all, his emotions were kindness and maliciousness. Fans of the group liked this duality, loved it even, as it made him an intense member.

However, W0NW00's cognitive system had been faring a little too much on the malicious side as of recently. His self-portrayal was turning bitter due to his sudden stand-offish nature. No one would understand why, it was hurting his relationship with the fans, and management feared it would harm his relationship with group members.

These changes have put W0NW00 in an increasingly tricky situation. Nights were no longer spent with other members, rather W0NW00 had been stationed in the research and development laboratory in the company building. Continuous tests were run on him, trying to understand his quickly developing violent thoughts.

The first red flag was aggression towards other members, not physical aggression, but words of malice spoken to other members after schedules that went well. W0NW00 would always find a way to call out something he noticed wrong. Not that he meant to necessarily harm the members, but he couldn't help but nitpick at each and every flaw.

5C0UP5 noticed it in the form of non-compliance and lack of care for the group's reputation. The leader couldn't wrap his head around this changing behavior either. W0NW00 had never been one to do anything unbeknownst to the group, but W0NW00 began to put the group at risk as he began to break the rules. He'd sneak out quickly after schedules in order to get extra charging hours, which would ultimately end up ruining rest and charging hours for the rest of the group. W0NW00's lack of care would peeve the rest of the automas off.

Fans noticed it too, as W0NW00 wasn't responding as positively during events, which is when the company started becoming increasingly worried about the robot. Fans started questioning what had changed as well.

Through this all, W0NW00 felt lost. He knew he was a robot, he knew what he was made for after all, but W0NW00 felt human, his conscience was human-like after all. Was this all that he was made for? Is he just a commodity? Then why does he feel this way about being consumed by others? Why can't he make any mistakes? Why can't he be his own entity? What would he be without 53V3NT33N? These are all things that began to drive W0NW00 deeper into his negative state.

Management deemed it was time to take action, thus landing W0NW00 in the lab for further troubleshooting and ending up with you.

★+ The First Encounter +★

W0NW00 remembers his first encounter with you all too well. You strolled into the office, glancing briefly at him with inquisitive eyes, and paying no further attention to where he was sitting at the examination table. After your brief fixation on him, your eyes remained focused on the clipboard grasped tightly in your right hand. You sat down with a sigh, clipboard clattering in the quiet room and making W0NW00 fully shift his attention towards you. His eyes which had once shimmered with kindness now had a dullness to them, a feature that his previous developer could not determine what had caused this change along with his negative state.

You shimmied the mouse gently to awaken the bright LED screen. The clicking sound resounded across the room as you opened the software, humming in acknowledgment as the information regarding the robot illuminated before you.

His previous developer's notes left you inquisitive as you skimmed them. This was a peculiar case. Typically it was easy for companies with R&D centers this powerful to reverse such effects on the cognitive state of the robots.

"Good afternoon," You spoke gently, sounding polite yet W0NW00 could sense some firmness in your tone. "My name is Y/N, I am pleased to be assigned as your new developer. Can you please confirm your name for me?" You had a plethora of historical data and information that you could read on the screen in front of you, but it was protocol to ask.

If one thing was to be known, it was that you always followed the expected protocols.

That's why W0NW00's company hired you after all.

"W0NW00," he spoke flatly, eyes focusing on the white, sterile walls ahead of him. It was the sort of room that would make anyone feel a bit unwelcome and cold. "Sixth member of 53V3NT33N."

The fluorescent lighting made his vision go a bit blurry, he had always been a bit sensitive in this sense, and it's always been an uncertainty as to why his vision was affected more than other members. This was reflected in the data that was fed to your computer. W0NW00 watched curiously as you stood up, adjusting the brightness of the lighting in the room to be more accommodating per his negative reaction.

W0NW00 almost registered this as pure-hearted kindness, until he remembered that every thought, feeling, and reaction of his was collected as data through the damn diagnostic band that is wrapped around his arm each session. Regardless, this eased W0NW00 a bit, and he appreciated it nonetheless.

You noted the improvement as he visibly relaxed, jotting something down on your clipboard before turning to face him. Your heart beat faster upon facing him straight on.

It was hard to avoid the fact that the robot before you was essentially perfect, trying to not let your cold exterior soften as W0NW00's eyes shifted from the wall towards yours. He looked so kind even with his sharp, cat-like features.

You approach him, wrapping the diagnostic band around his arm. This band is intended to connect to a small port on his arm, feeding all the information you need to your computer. He's cold, unnerved as you smooth the band over his arm, and confirm that it is connected.

As noted, something seemed extremely off about the robot. The dullness in his soft eyes pulled on your heartstrings a bit too much for comfort.

Personally, as a developer, you always tried your best to remain systematic in your actions. Everything had to be performed exactly per the defined process. You continually reminded yourself that your patients were robots, not humans. It was your only way to detach yourself from them, or else you knew you'd grow too fond of the autos you helped develop. It is too easy to do nowadays.

Regardless of the tremor you felt within you, you proceeded with the diagnostic tests and questions.

"Alright, W0NW00, now I'm going to run some tests. Please note I am not going to implement any changes in your system until these tests come back absolutely positive."

"Noted," W0NW00 repeats blandly. "Can you please refer to me as just Wonwoo during these tests?"

You pause almost as if you're in thought, but you already know the answer. "I'm sorry, W0NW00, but that would be inappropriate of me. I have to refer to you by your designated name during these tests or else I can compromise the diagnostics."

W0NW00 rolls his eyes in dissatisfaction, this doesn't go undetected by you. That was a new one. You'd never seen this much sass from a robot in a while, especially not a level 1 who was supposed to be perfectly charming.

Turning back to your computer, you proceed with coding the tests for this session within the diagnostic system.

"Our first test will be a data collection of your recent thoughts and actions, dating back to your most recent schedule. Can you recall anything that you'd like to share with me before I run this first test, W0NW00?"

"Hm," W0NW00 humors you, copying your trick from earlier as if to convince you he's thinking. You know better, especially since you can see this displayed directly in front of you on the screen. W0NW00 knows that too, but he's not going to make this easy for you. "Not necessarily."

"Alright," you sigh, clicking the button to proceed with the first run of data. A copious amount of statistics are spat out on a separate sheet. This will be something for you to unpack later. You save this information, filing it away in W0NW00's collection for you to study after the remaining tests.

"The next test will be to see if you have any reoccurring thoughts or actions. Are you willing to share any of those?" You pause, W0NW00 shakes his head to indicate he isn't willing to share any, so you continue with another data pull.

You finish the session off with a couple of additional tests to further understand his cognitive state, tests that his previous developer hadn't been able to code and pull the statistics on.

W0NW00 was relieved when you finally deemed the session complete. He felt drained, more than he ever had before - more than he ever felt after a long day of schedules. He couldn't wait to return to the dorm to charge.

He watched as you downloaded the data from today's session to your electronic pad, the information transferring speedily and you ensured it was all there before putting the pad to sleep.

W0NW00 noticed your systematic elegance as you took each step to save the data, file it away in an organized matter, and shut the computer down properly. Others had been a bit more careless, so W0NW00 almost appreciated your thoroughness.

However, you were practically everything W0NW00 was growing distaste for. You were the system. You abided by it, you lived by it, and you would never understand him. He knew that damn well. You were about to know his thoughts about you as well. Part of him grew interested in the next session, just to see if it made you tick in any way.

W0NW00 was stunned when you announced the diagnostic session was over, confirming the date of your next session, and leaving the room without another word.

★+ New Day, Same Analysis +★

"Good Morning, W0NW00," you drone, still polite and as systematic as ever. W0NW00 didn't even bother to respond, sighing in resentment as you performed the same routine upon entry. He could predict your movements at this point after enduring multiple research sessions with you.

You stayed static, you portrayed no emotions during sessions, and it seemed as if you never would. It was beginning to drive W0NW00 a bit mad. W0NW00 was convinced he may be a bit more human than you, even if you were the one with a nervous system and heart pumping warm blood through your limbs. You might as well have the neural network of a robot at this point.

It was a typical session. You'd enter in, bid W0NW00 "good morning" or "good afternoon" depending on the time of day, dim the lights, and turn on the LED computer screen. Your clipboard made the same jarring, clattering sound each time you set it down.

You'd run the same damn tests.

Ask the same damn questions.

Collect the information on the same damn electronic pad.

And you'd end the session with the same damn confirmation of the next.

You seemed pleased with each session so far, but W0NW00 couldn't quite imagine you were able to gain much from these diagnostics. Maybe this session could be different if you'd just loosen up a bit.

"Please," he sighs defeatedly, trying to soften your firm demeanor. "Please just refer to me as Wonwoo."

"I'm sorry, W0NW00," you'd start, but he'd cut you off before you could say another word.

"But," he repeated the same words from each session when he'd ask this question. His words were bitter as he spoke. "But that would be inappropriate of me. I have to refer to you by your designated name during these tests or else I can compromise the diagnostics. Same old, same old, Y/N. You're so predictable."

This stunned you a bit. You could see the switch before your eyes for once. He had asked for you to call him Wonwoo in such a kind, polite tone, yet when he realized you didn't bite the bait, he switched quickly on you.

W0NW00 almost cried out, thinking he had cracked you for once, but this was reversed when you smiled, speedily writing something down on your clipboard as if this had satisfied you.

Which it did, you were excited to see the switch from his positive state to a negative state before you. This was exciting progress. You just needed a few more diagnostic tests to ensure there weren't any remaining outliers in the data that you could eliminate.

W0NW00 could basically sense you bouncing in your seat, making his mood go sour for the remainder of the session.

However, you threw W0NW00 off a bit this session, you had one new question. One that you declared you were able to establish from the other questions.

"W0NW00," you hum, reading the question from your electronic pad, "what makes you so resistant to entertainment? I must question this, you're made to entertain after all?"

"What?" W0NW00 snarls, pulling the most visceral reaction from him yet. "I'm not resistant to entertainment. I'm not sure what you pulled from your data to get that understanding."

"Well, can you enlighten me? Or should I just run the test?"

"Sure, I can enlighten you. Have you ever considered I feel the same way that you do? That I can have my own thoughts as you do?"

"Of course I do -"

"No," W0NW00 cuts you off. "I don't think you do, that is the thing. You run these tests on me like any other developer. Actually, you're a bit colder than most developers. But it's not just here. I can feel it everywhere else. I'm treated like a product. The whole group is treated like products. I know that's my duty, but I can't help but feel like there is more than being consumed. There is more to living, even if I am just an automation."

You're aggressively typing this all into the computer, making sure you don't miss a single word as W0NW00 rambles on. This is the most W0NW00 has confided in you. Sure the tests pull valuable information regarding W0NW00's feelings, but this is more than the computer could ever tell you. Hearing W0NW00's organic stream of consciousness is extremely valuable to running your diagnostics.

W0NW00 is quick to stop once he realizes he's pleasing you, ending his thoughts and returning his attention to the sterile wall ahead of him. "That is all."

You try to hide your smile. He's being spiteful, you know he's realized that he has fed a bit too much information to you today, and he's stopping himself while he is at it. Regardless, you're pleased with today's session.

You wrap up as usual. You collect all the data onto your electronic pad, file away the data, and turn off the computer. You're about to leave and confirm you're next session before W0NW00 stops you yet again.

"Save it," W0NW00 sighs. "I'm aware of when our next session is. You don't have to announce it each time. You're just like a broken record."

★+ OVERSET +★

"You don't understand it do you?" W0NW00 growls. Frustrated as another day passes with you as his developer. The same old routine is being performed over and over. You still don't understand his frustrations, at this point, anyone with a functioning brain should. He wasn't understanding why it wasn't clicking for you, you were clearly intelligent, but god damn, you were brainwashed by the system just like this company.

"What do you mean?" You question, intrigued by W0NW00's sudden outburst. He's more displeased than usual during your sessions. Whilst you've been able to collect a good amount of data from the previous sessions, you have slowly been seeing W0NW00 speak more and more. Today was clearly a day he was ready to speak.

"That these sessions don't help."

You spin in your chair, turning to face the clearly perturbed robot. You raise an eyebrow, crossing your arms and settling further into your seat. You raise a hand, a motion to indicate that he should continue, get whatever it is off his chest while he's at it. "What makes you say that?"

"Seriously?" He says incredulously, "You're part of the system. The system that I have grown to hate. I cannot live without having each and every emotion of mine prodded. I cannot live without worrying about how I impact others. I cannot have my own thoughts ever, and here you are trying to change and poke and prod at me."

You're computer is running data at a rapid speed, W0NW00's emotions translating through the screen as his system and neural networks work at an incredible pace. Your eyes flick between him and the screen, wanting to pay more attention as W0NW00's words intrigue you.

Each session you've grown to understand him more and more. You've become increasingly aware of how he feels, and you feel a bit guilty. He's right, robots have become so advanced, but it isn't right to treat them as just a commodity.

Your change in procedural work hasn't gone unnoticed by management. You continue to follow protocols, but you've been a bit messier. You've become more curious about W0NW00. You're avoiding the development of codes that will reset his defined emotions. You're avoiding the final steps that are required to lessen W0NW00's malicious side, and management is demanding results.

Management claims it is an inevitable malware that's coded into his system. That it's taken him over. He's closer and closer to self-destruction, closer to sabotaging the group, and closer to losing his fanbase.

You no longer have the desire to please the company. You're too curious about W0NW00 at this point, but you can't do anything too drastic. Not until you have a proper game plan. You've heard of recent escapes from Earth, and at the rate W0NW00 is sharing information, you don't doubt that some members of his group will be escaping soon.

It's easy to understand how he's frustrated. The more you listened to him, filtered through his data, and studied the group, it became clear that he wasn't fulfilled. He desires more, it's only natural for anyone who has a conscience.

W0NW00 doesn't see it since you've been trying to remain under the radar, but you understand him. You can see it in his performances. You can see it in the results of these sessions, and you can definitely see it as W0NW00 continues to rant.

"I feel stuck, Y/N. Is this what it is like for you? Do you feel stuck in your job as a developer? Do you get satisfaction from this just like everyone else around me does? If I could just leave, I wo-"

"Wonwoo," you're voice drops low, fearful of what he will say. Every single word and thought of his is documented. If he speaks of any intention to escape, you know it will draw a red flag for the company and his management. You know you'll have to destroy the data from today's session. You'll determine how to do this later, but your concern right now is to stop W0NW00 before he says anything stupid. "You need to

Of course, W0NW00 pauses upon hearing you refer to him as Wonwoo, as he has requested many times. He's angered quickly again when you don't speak, annoyed by the way you seem off-character and squeamish in your chair, infuriated by the way you frantically click at your mouse, trying to terminate the program.

"Now you're referring to me as Wonwoo? Is this just a trick to see how I'll react?" He continues to rant, hands tightly gripping the table and eyebrows threaded together as he works himself up. You pay little to no attention to him, trying to ease the situation at hand ahead of you on the LED screen.

The computer is suddenly crashing, the code that you were previously running is now indicating an infinite loop, and the program is faulting as your computer continues to malfunction. In a panic, you're doing everything you can to execute the code, scared that management will recognize this oddity.

This session has overset W0NW00, and you're uncertain about what to do, as you've never seen a code turn malicious. You're eyes go wide, staring at W0NW00, you can't believe it.

All you can do is jump out of your seat and run over to W0NW00 to remove the electronic diagnostic band from his arm. You have to stop the data recording and terminate the code by eliminating the connection to the computer.

W0NW00 is aghast as you tear the band off his arm, your hands feeling warm on his cold body as you make sure there are no remaining connections to the system.

"Wonwoo," you whisper, sternly as you stare into his eyes. He seems to soften for once, sensing the urgency in your shaky words as you quell his anger. "You need to calm down. I understand you. I really do. But I need you to know you need to watch what you say."

"You understand?" Wonwoo exhales, feeling hopeful as you wrap up the diagnostic band tightly, nodding as you begin to fiddle with the band, acting as if you are troubleshooting problems with it in case management questions the removal of it.

"I do," you speak lowly, butterflies fluttering in your stomach as you lock eyes with Wonwoo. "But you need to realize you're stepping into dangerous territory. I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm trying to protect you."

For once, he is looking at you with relief. His eyes are full of stars as he actually feels like he's being heard for once.

For once, you are looking at him like he is human.

It makes him feel something he's never felt before.

Your breathing is shallow as you connect with Wonwoo for the first time, your heart pounding so hard in your chest that you can practically hear it in your ears. Wonwoo observes how flushed your cheeks are, registering how emotional you are actually feeling, and realizing just how serious you are.

"I'm going to put this band back on, but you need to proceed with the session just like any other. We cannot return to the same topic. Do not indicate any desire to escape." You emphasize this prior to wrapping the diagnostic band around his arm, a nod of his head confirming he's heard your words and has taken them seriously.

Returning to your desk, you begin to reload the software. However, before you finalize the restart, you softly speak again, "I will have to refer to you as W0NW00 again. I apologize, but please understand."

"I understand," Wonwoo's voice is hushed, a soft smile gracing his features as you breathe out in relief.

"W0NW00," you start, voice returning to a professional tone. You eye him closely, your mannerisms indicating that you have successfully started the program up, and are once again recording data. "I apologize for that. It seems as if the system crashed. Shall we proceed with the session?"

"Yes," Wonwoo indicates, trying his hardest to not overthink the current events.

Wonwoo understands it now. Understands that you aren't all systematic, that his words have an impact on you, and that you are receptive after all. He has more faith in you now, knowing that you're here to protect him.

You continue and complete the session as usual. However, this time there is an understanding between you and Wonwoo. One that you'll do everything to erase the data on. You'll do anything to help Wonwoo.

★+ Comfort in Your Thoughts, Voice, and Touch +★

Things have since changed between you and Wonwoo. You now start the sessions differently, you take the time to set up your computer, and you allow Wonwoo to remove his band prior to the program.

You told him you'd argue with the company that it's to save his charge. However, you now look forward to your talks with Wonwoo prior to your sessions, talking freely knowing that the computer is no longer able to collect each and every bit of information.

Wonwoo loves that you call him by his preferred name during these undocumented talks with you. He loves the melodic sound of your laugh when he cracks a witty joke. He feels an uncontrollable obsession developing within him that he can't quite understand.

Wonwoo feels better and feels more understood around you, he can see changes in your behavior. You're not as systematic, more relaxed around him, only returning to your default systematic behavior once he is connected to the diagnostic band.

Your touch haunts him, the feeling of your nimble fingers on his arm when you wrap and unwrap the band around his bicep has him overanalyzing his thoughts.

He feels lighter, he doesn't feel as burdened after being heard by you, understood by you, and connected to you by your fleeting touches. Wonwoo can't help but look forward to these sessions with you.

Who would have thought that'd been the case days ago?

Oddly enough, these sessions have been improving Wonwoo's negative state of mind, reversing the trend of his daily emotions and leading them in more of a positive state. Management has taken note of this, unsure if these changes are taking place when you haven't implemented any developmental changes in him.

For now, they don't question it.

Regardless, Wonwoo yearns to hear your voice, yearns for your occasional touch, and yearns to spend time with you. Even if it's him locked in this sterile room, he's glad it's with you.

Wonwoo has grown too comfortable for once. Inevitably, as he once believed, the system tends to disrupt everything that was once good.

★+ The Escape +★

You've begun hearing of members of 53V3NT33N escaping Earth and traveling to other planets. Wonwoo isn't aware of it, he's been stuck with you in R&D for days now after management has cracked down on his diagnosis.

However, today was a different day. Management knows you are erasing data. You were confronted with it before today's session. They've noticed peculiarities in Wonwoo's behavior, in the data reports you've returned, and in the results you've been providing. They've also noticed the increase in "blank" spots, and the increase in system errors, unlike the software systems that have been developed to perfection.

Albeit, you weren't providing any updates of substance, which wasn't per your reputation as a developer, and your lack of urgency during the time of other member's escapes was especially concerning to management.

Wonwoo can't help but notice the aggressive rate at your leg shakes. It's been like this since the beginning of today's session.

"Everything alright?" He questions, genuinely worried about your anxious state. You're never like this, even as you two have been sneaking more time together prior to sessions.

Wonwoo's words are drowned out, the tapping of your pen against the desk resounding through your head as you consider your options. You know it's time to make a move.

You have access to a ship. There is one in the development center that you could hijack, it was simple; you'd just have to make sure you tear away the tracking core to ensure the company can't locate you and Wonwoo.

You're haunted by anxious thoughts. Was it even possible to get Wonwoo out of this room without management noticing? Where would you even go? When was the last time you traveled to another planet? How will Wonwoo react to news of other members escaping?

Would Wonwoo even want to go with you? Does he even trust you enough?

You stand up from your seat, shutting down the computer in front of you just as quickly as you had booted it up. Striding over to Wonwoo, you make sure his band isn't wrapped around his arm yet.

"Wonwoo," you speak eerily calmly, "Your members are escaping."

"What?" He's confused, not quite understanding the weight of your words.

"It isn't just you who has implied leaving Earth, others are too. They've just held you here for a bit too long for you to know."

He's clearly processing, not quite sure where you're headed with this, but he leans towards you in anticipation, hanging on to your next words.

"Management is onto me as well," you breathe, voice quivering as you realize how serious this may be. "They know we aren't progressing with our sessions as I should be. They know I am terminating data. They are onto me, and I'm not sure how much longer they will keep me here."

The weight of your words settles on him. "What can we do? Where are the members going?"

"I can locate a ship. There are multiple in the terminal right off the plant here. If we are strategic enough," you pause, gauging his reaction. He doesn't seem appalled by the implication of your word so you can continue. "We can escape too, we can be freed from the shackles of this system like you've been talking about."

There's a minute's pause between you two as you both consider the situation.

"How can we trick management?" He ponders, hinting that he isn't against your suggestion, but he does realize this requires a bit more thought than just running.

"I just -" you stutter, uncertain of any plan. "I can't think of any way to fake that we are in our session. The band reports everything. Management will know if we leave our session if you never put the band on."

"I mean," Wonwoo thinks some more, peering down at the port on his arm where the band connects. "Is there a way," he slowly speaks, eyes implying what you're horrified he may reference as he peers at his port, "is there a way that we can tear this port out? Leave it with the band?"

"I'm not so sure about that, Wonwoo. I mean, it could have negative effects on your system, and I'm not sure how successful that would be. It would be too risky to the health of your network."

"It's worth trying," he pleads, already toying with the port on his arm, already seeming as if it were possible to remove the said part.

"You can't, I said it would be too risky-" you argue, but Wonwoo stuns you, pulling the port out of his arm. It's immediately recognizable that the port has disrupted something, and you can verify from initial inspection that it will definitely have an effect on the efficiency of his charging.

"See," he chides, but he can sense the effect on his system too. Nonetheless, he connects the port to the band, and the diagnostic band accepts the port. "It works, go check on your computer."

You rush to the computer, reboot it, and load the same software. You're jaw drops, almost unbelieving that the program recognizes the port without being directly connected to Wonwoo. It isn't feeding any valuable information, but it's recognizing that it's him regardless.

"It's working," you chime in disbelief, eyes wide as you turn to him, realizing this is the time to make the run for it.

"Lead the way," Wonwoo declares, encouraging you both to move forward with the escape.

There is no hesitation between you two as you lead him through the bright hallways of the R&D wing. There is a shortcut that leads to the terminal where the ships are, if you can get through there undetected, you are bound to make it to the ships.

If anyone were to spot Wonwoo, they would be suspicious. Of course, he's recognizable, and with everyone in the company being high-strung regarding escapes, it would be an immediate red flag.

Thankfully, you two make it unscathed to the terminal, and you work quickly to prep the ship.

"Wonwoo," you gain his attention from beneath the ship as he helps the best he can, mostly just on the lookout as you prepare. "I don't have the strength, can you attempt to pull the core out from beneath the ship? There is a tracking device, and we'll need to pull this before we leave."

"Of course," Wonwoo is quick to trade places with you. He works swiftly, but your eyes dart around the terminal. It's dreary, industrial, and clean. Everything you've started to resent over the past few days. It encourages your escape even more, a wash of relief falling over your shoulders as you determine this is the right situation.

Wonwoo appears from under the ship, the core of the craft held in his hands before he smashes it against the ground, shattering the material at both your feet.

"Let's go," you smile, climbing into the ship with Wonwoo and booting up the vessel. Your adrenaline has never run so high, you feel it through your veins as the vibration of the ship resonates through you.

It's been a while since you've started up one of these, thankful you were able to successfully start the craft up without issues. Wonwoo is impressed too, of course never navigating one himself.

It's a blur how you two escape, taking off at light speed as you accelerate up into space, leaving the stratosphere of Earth at a record speed, and focusing until you've fully left the exosphere.

You have no clear where to go from here, but, holy shit, you've successfully left. And you have Wonwoo here with you.

★+ The Long Path Home +★

It's a long path for you and Wonwoo. It's uncertain where you'll end up. You've heard of a planet called Lumen before, but you have no clue how to even get there. You're just thankful Wonwoo can even assist in navigating the ship between planets.

Your first stop is Opifex. After the escape from Earth, Wonwoo suffered significant damage during the boarding of the ship. His arm was damaged in the process of tearing out his main port, the tear in his arm reflecting in the functionality of his charging system. This concerned you more than Wonwoo could understand. You weren't sure if you could make this travel alone without him.

You rarely visited Opifex, but you had connections as you'd offer occasional assistance in developing robots that were created on this planet.

Your main connection was a level 3 robot named Changkyun. He had previously assisted in the creation of another idol robot, which you were the head developer of. You hadn't spoken to him since, yet you knew he'd be able to help Wonwoo. Discreetly at that.

You knew you weren't safe yet. Even if the tracking was removed from the ship and you had escaped from Earth, anyone could identify Wonwoo and the logo on your ship.

There was a constant state of fear during your travel to Opifex that you'd be caught. Tracked down. That Wonwoo would completely lose his charge.

"What is wrong, Y/N?" Wonwoo's concerned for you. He knows exactly why you're anxious, he is too. But he's hoping he can quell your anxiety somehow.

"I'm just tired, Wonwoo," you sigh, checking the ship's charge levels, anxiety only growing upon realizing you really do have to stop in Opifex soon. "Also concerned about getting to Lumen safely. We really need to stop at Opifex to make sure you're repaired before we even consider locating Lumen."

Wonwoo's free hand runs through your hair, the comforting motion alien to you, but you gladly accept it, leaning your head into his hand as he soothes you.

"How much longer until we reach Opifex?" You can tell Wonwoo is drained too. He needs Changkyun's help as soon as possible.

"I believe only a day more of travel," you confirm per the navigation. You know how to get there, and where to land. You decide against pinging Changkyun, in order to eliminate as much of a footprint as possible.

"Why don't you get some rest?" Wonwoo prods when he realizes your eyes start to roll back, head bobbing to the side after a while.

"Do you mind?"

"Of course not," he smiles gently, making your stomach flip.

You oblige, not having the will to fight after the past events. You lay back in the cot behind the main seating area. Observing Wonwoo as he takes his place in the captain's seat, he adjusts the controls to his liking as he navigates Opifex.

Your heart pounds as you observe him, Wonwoo made you feel free, he made you feel safe even in times like this. You've never felt this way about anyone. It's hard to fall asleep, these thoughts consuming your mind.

Wonwoo turns back to check on you, the same soft smile making you flush as you lay on the bed admiring him. You can't help but feel a connection with him, emotionally, and desire even more.

Eventually, sleep took you after much contemplation of your thoughts.

When you awoke, it only felt like you had slept a blink of an eye's time. The ship rattled, alarming you and jostling you awake. Only to realize that Wonwoo had landed the ship. You immediately recognized the planet, he had safely landed the ship at Opifex.

Wonwoo's smile relaxed you even further, dusting off his pants as he stood up and headed towards you. As per usual, Wonwoo's hand ran through your hair, instantaneously soothing you.

"We've arrived," he coos softly, trying his best not to overstimulate you more in your drowsy state. "Just lead the way once you're ready."

It's easy to see he is drained as well, in desperate need of a charge, and you're relieved that you've made it to Opifex.

The both of you quickly tidy yourselves up, you do your best to cover Wonwoo's damaged arm, not wanting to draw any unnecessary attention to the automation as you make your way to Changkyun's workshop.

There was an odd sense of security here, but you knew you had to lay low. You didn't want word of your appearance here. You knew his company would be looking for him, as that's all they were doing prior to the escape for the other members who had left before Wonwoo.

It was easy to find Changkyun, his shop was located where you had previously remembered it. It felt almost nostalgic coming across his shop, he had an eclectic style, yet the place was tidy enough to store and easily find all his supplies.

"Y/N?" Changkyun questioned in delightful surprise as you knocked at his door. "What are you doing here? It's been quite some time."

"Hello, Changkyun," you smile brightly. Something that Wonwoo can only pin as jealous pings inside him at your reaction.

How odd, he thinks to himself.

"Do you mind if we come in? I do have a favor to ask, which is why we are here," you speak quickly, emphasizing that you didn't just show up for no reason.

Changkyun holds the door open for you both, allowing you and Wonwoo to shuffle into the shop. Wonwoo takes note of the large magnifying lens contraption strapped to Changkyun's head, quickly noting that he is a Level 3 robot, and shows his own wear and tear after working all these years.

Wonwoo immediately deems him as trustworthy.

"What is this favor you are requesting," Changkyun prods, curiously eyeing Wonwoo as if he could understand where this was going.

"I can't share too many details," you speak hurriedly, beginning to unwrap the material around Wonwoo's damaged arm to provide Changkyun with a visualization of the problem at hand. "We've escaped Earth. However, in the process of avoiding getting caught, Wonwoo had ripped his port out. I think it's affecting his charging system. I just don't think we can go on for much longer until we have some sort of fix."

Changkyun hums in understanding, immediately resorting to his tools and materials. "I'm not sure if I'll have the materials for a level 1 robot, I haven't created one in quite some time, but let me see what I have."

You and Wonwoo let Changkyun search, shuffling around the shop quietly as you try your best to quell your anxiety. You hope and pray that Changkyun can help, there is no one else you feel comfortable resorting to. There is an unspoken trust that you have with the Level 3 robot, after spending years learning from his skills and further understanding the creation of robots.

Wonwoo's free hand is grasped in yours, you aren't quite sure when this happened, but it eases you slightly. You've grown to become attached to Wonwoo, amazed by how quickly things changed between each session and landing you in this scenario.

Thankfully, after a while of searching, Changkyun determines he has parts that will suffice, and will be enough to repair Wonwoo's system in order to allow him to charge properly.

Changkyun bids you off, encouraging you to get some rest as he makes the proper repairs to Wonwoo. You're continuously flooded with thoughts, but part of you feels better knowing you now have Changkyun's help. You hope Wonwoo can charge up before you continue your journey.

It takes a few hours, Changkyun claims the connections are not as direct as he thought they'd be, but by the time he is done, Wonwoo seems way too worn down.

Changkyun encourages you both to get your rest before continuing with your journey. He offers you a place to stay, it isn't much, but it's a spare bedroom in the back of his shop, offering it as a safe place to rest before continuing.

"Thank you," you hum sincerely, expressing your gratitude one last time before Changkyun wraps up for the day to head to his normal engagements. "Thank you so much for your help."

"Anytime, Y/N," he smiles, bidding you both good-bye and good luck on the rest of your journey.

That night you and Wonwoo share the crickety bed in the back of Changkyun's shop. Wonwoo had been timid originally, but you claimed it was alright, that it would provide you some more comfort if anything.

Wonwoo was relieved at that because he couldn't think of anything better. He was finally able to get closer to you.

Laying next to him, you adjusted the glasses and sat on the bridge of his nose, they'd always fall down a bit when he wasn't paying attention, a feature about him that you found so endearing.

Wonwoo was seeming better already, charging much faster than you anticipated. His hands found their way to your arm, nimble fingers running up and down your skin.

He could recognize the way your skin bubbled with chills, uncertain of what he was doing that made you react this way. His skin didn't react like this to touch, but the way yours reacts reminds him just how sensitive humans are.

"What are you doing?" You hum in content, enjoying the softness of Wonwoo's skin on yours. His skin was different, not nearly as warm as a human touch, but the synthetic skin was so smooth, feeling comfortable as it dragged across yours.

"What are these bumps on your arm?" He asks out of genuine curiosity.

"You're kidding," you laugh, eyes opening humorously to gauge if Wonwoo is serious. He is absolutely dead serious. "It's this phenomenon, we tend to call them goosebumps. It's a bodily alert that humans feel, a reaction to touch."

Wonwoo hums in acknowledgment, "Is it good?"

"In this case," you smile, enjoying his innocent curiosity, "it is very good. It feels nice what you're doing. Very soothing."

"What else causes goosebumps?"

You can't tell if he's twisting your arm at this point, looking for a reaction, because there is an insinuation in his tone as his hand drags upwards towards your neck, looking for more of a reaction from your skin. Which he earns, as goosebumps run all up and down your body at his barely-there touch.

His fingers travel to the crook of your neck, his hand wrapping around the back of your head and finding a home in your hair. He pulls you closer, testing the waters as he yearns to feel more of your body against his. Curious to see if he can pull more of a reaction out of you. It's all so new for him and he's hungry for more.

"Wonwoo," you whimper, allowing him to pull you into his body, your lips falling impossibly close to his perfectly molded ones. "Are you trying to send me into shock?"

You try to joke, but your words come out whiney as Wonwoo's lips brush yours.

"I don't know," he teases, his plush buds continuing to skim yours. "Is this good?"

"It's very good," you confirm yet again, your breath being knocked out of your lungs when Wonwoo's lips finally attach to yours. Kissing him is different, it's almost as if he's immediately on the same wavelength as you.

Your lips fall into the same rhythm, and you're just realizing this is something you've been craving for a while now. It becomes heated quickly, and Wonwoo's hands stay wrapped in your hair, ensuring you can't break away from the kiss.

He understands what it is like to be addicted to something now. He recognizes this feeling as lust, knowing of its effects and understanding why humans love it so much. He needs more of you and he needs more now.

Wonwoo pulls you on top of him, the motion feeling incredibly natural as he continues to kiss you, swallowing your little noises as you moan in delight.

You can sense him react to you in a similar manner as a human. You forget how advanced Level 1 robots are sometimes. You had been a bit worried that he wouldn't react similarly, but you can feel his cock swells beneath you.

"Wonwoo," you whine, finally breaking the kiss after what felt like light years of delight. However, you need more. "Please, need you to touch me. Need you to fuck me."

"I need it too, Y/N," he groans, the sound that comes from him is deep, uncharacteristic of his usual voice, but it sends shivers down your spine. Wonwoo is encouraged by the goosebumps that reappear on your skin, very apparent to him as you remove your shirt.

Wonwoo's lips instinctually wrap around your pebbled nipple, loving the way the bud peaks along with the bumps on your skin. He's even more encouraged by the sound that falls from your lips, a breathy moan that has his cock growing even harder.

"Please," you croon. "Can't wait much longer."

He's quick to pull his pants down, helping you stumble out of your shorts and underwear as well. He's amazed by how wet your nether regions are, and you're amazed by just how perfectly sculpted his cock is.

"You're perfect," you moan, running your folds over his length and pulling another groan of pleasure from him. "God, whoever created you did an amazing job."

You raise yourself slightly, teasing yourself with the head of his cock, the skin soft against your folds as you wet his length. You sink down slowly, your walls contracting in delight as your pussy greedily accepts his thick manhood.

Wonwoo recognizes the slight pain in your features as you accept him, but he can also sense the relief you feel as he bottoms out, feeling the contraction of your walls around him throughout his entire system.

"Let me ride you," you moan when you sense that Wonwoo is hesitant. "Let me take care of you."

He doesn't argue, overwhelmed by the unrecognizable pleasure he feels as you begin to bob up and down on his cock. Your nails dig into his skin, a sensation he's never felt before as they clamp into his shoulders, leaving divots in his synthetic skin and claiming your mark on him.

The pathetic noises that tumble out of you encourage him to move, his hips rolling upwards into yours and pulling even more deranged sounds from you, ones that encourage him to groan in enjoyment.

Wonwoo watches as a bead of sweat falls down your neck, loving the effect and glow that graces your skin. His hands wrap into your hair, pulling it up off your neck as you continue to ride his cock with more fervor.

He pulls on your hair tightly, enough for you to feel a tinge of pain, but it only increases the pleasure you feel in the deepest pits of your stomach. Your clit burns and throbs at the pleasure, your core heating and winding up tightly as you roll your hips against his, meeting each thrust of his.

"Wonwoo," you're screaming at this point, eyes blown out as you watch him, his jaw hanging slack as he becomes overwhelmed with the feeling of you wrapped so tightly around him. The friction of your pussy around his cock has him feeling engulfed in all ways by you.

The pleasure that builds inside him begins to feel impossible to fight off, he's unsure if he can hold this feeling back much longer, especially not when your walls throb around him with each thrust.

It's brutal at this point, the sound of your skin slapping against his, the visual of your breasts bouncing in front of him, and how you feel all too perfect like this.

"Y/N," he breathes out in desperation, "can't hold it for much longer. You feel too good."

"Good," you cry out, no longer able to hold your own pleasure back. "Finish with me, Wonwoo, release."

Wonwoo can feel the fluttering of your walls, the intense pleasure exploding inside you as you spasm around his cock, your body falling limp in his arms as you reach your high. Wonwoo is pleasured too, but you're not filled with cum, only watching as he reaches his own form of pure pleasure. He continues to thrust into you, driving you into overstimulation.

Wonwoo doesn't realize you're spent, especially since he can't necessarily be spent himself, he has the stamina of a Level 1 automation overall. However, he recognizes it after he pulls one more orgasm from you, holding up your form as your limbs can no longer hold your body up.

That night you sleep incredibly well in his arms, connecting with him on a level you would have never anticipated. This was something you would have never imagined as a developer, something you always condemned previously, as you feared growing a connection like this.

But now that you have it, you'd do everything to not lose it.

The next morning, you are awoken by a frantic Wonwoo. Changkyun had come early, informing you that there are correspondent Level 3 robots searching for you and Wonwoo.

Word has spread, and you're no longer safe here at Opifex.

Changkyun informs you that your ship has been reclaimed by the company. However, he offers you an older ship he has in the far back of his shop. It isn't the most modern craft, but it will get you to Lumen.

After providing you with the proper navigation and instructions on the ship, Changkyun bids you both goodbye yet again.

Thankfully because of Changkyun, you and Wonwoo are able to escape yet again, continuing your journey to Lumen. You continue to spend this time with Wonwoo, feeling more at piece in an unidentifiable craft, and knowing that his damage has been repaired.

It's comfortable with Wonwoo, you two work well as partners you've determined. You take shifts navigating the ship, Wonwoo has become quite the captain as you spend the next few days searching for Lumen.

Thankfully, your trip has come to an end, even though you've enjoyed the time with Wonwoo, the travel has been tough. You can see Lumen in the distance. A planet similar to Earth, yet seemingly a bit more thriving as you approach the safe haven planet.

★+ Lumen +★

Lumen. Wonwoo and you had finally landed safely on the planet. It felt safe. It felt like home. You felt as if you could be anything and everything you wanted to be with Wonwoo.

Lumen is similar to Earth, yet the land is lush and the population is diverse. Travelers from multiple planets have made their way here seeking safety. Here you felt accepted. You didn't have to consider the previous system of Earth. You weren't tied to anything.

Both you and Wonwoo could start fresh, and you both could sense this feeling. Wonwoo held your hand tightly, breathing in the fresh air and peering down at you. You looked peaceful, eyes shut as you did the same, head lulling back as the crisp air filled your senses.

This made Wonwoo's eyes flood with adoration seeing you look this free. He remembered what you once were like on the first day you met him. He felt lucky knowing he could be here with you, like this, now. He knows of others who weren't that lucky to have their partners with them after escaping their planets.

Here you'd settle with Wonwoo, in a quaint house where you two could be your true selves, and not worry about others' expectations of you two. Wonwoo holds you tightly at night, knowing that he always has you, the first person who has ever understood and listened to him. The unexpected developer that he can live freely with.

#seventeen smut #wonwoo smut #wonwoo fic #SCI-FI seventeen collab #svthub #seventeen x reader #wonwoo x reader #seventeen fics

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rosesbxrry · 1 year

Text

Links for Sunghoon 🔞

Warnings: this contains nsfw links and explicit commentary imagines on my end. Afab! Reader. Minors do not interact. Of course, this is all fictional and none of the materials represents them.

a/n: this a new format of writing I’ve been indulging. It’s a lot of fun to write, and a lot quicker to complete while writing my other wips. Anyways, I hope you enjoy it and definitely helps that I was working on this while they drop the concept photos for the full version 😮‍💨😮‍💨

Main masterlist

He fucks you doggy style when you wear those cute thigh high socks

Sunghoon was quivering on his knees at the sight of you in a skimpy lingerie, a baby pink color that matches the sheer thigh-high socks. His dark eyes linger at the small bows adorn at the sides, and the carnal urge to fuck you in it takes over like a wrecking ball. He’ll squeeze the flesh at the top of your socks, leaving deep crescent indents on the skin from his fingernails. “You drive me so insane, you don’t even know it.” He groans against your neck, biting and sucking hickeys on your collarbone. “You act all innocent and look so sweet, but I know what a dirty mind you really have.” Your moan loudly, clawing at his back desperately when you feel him press his huge bulge against your stomach. He hooks a finger on the top of your sock, pulling at the elastic hem before releasing it to smack on the flesh of your thighs. “You dress up like my pretty little angel just to get fucked like a whore, didn’t you?” You whimpered at how delicious the impact felt, squeezing your thighs together at the pool of wetness drenching your pussy. With a devilish smirk on his face— Sunghoon felt the insatiable hunger at how your body trembles in his arms. “Ass up and head down, doll. I’m gonna make you regret wearing something cute to make me fuck the shit out of you.”

Bending you over any surface so he can fuck you full of his cum like a toy

Your upper body is not completely rested on the table’s surface, enabling him access to your tits— pulling and pinching on your nipples as he pounds you from behind. He’ll reach out to grope your boobs, loving how it threatens to spill from his grip at how much it bounces when he thrusts his hips hard and fast. His hands will move to your love handles, hitting that spot where you scream the loudest over and over again until your head is buried deep into the table’s surface, drooling at how good his big cock was stretching your pussy. Fuck, Sunghoon can’t get enough of this view of you— making him delirious and high on pleasure, and the wet smacking that echoes heightens the tension in the room even more. “Yeah, you like that? Like how I fuck your pussy like a toy?” He’ll taunt, watching your back tense up at his words. “Oh, fuck yes—“ You drawled out, eyes rolling and back arching as you felt his fingers playing with your swollen clit. He was not gentle with the ball of nerve, swirling it back and forth with the pace of his deep thrust. “So close, I’m gonna come…..” Another reason why he loves fucking you in this position? Once he pulls out after cumming inside, he will watch with hooded eyes at how you’ll spread your legs wide for him to see his thick milky seed dripping out of your spent pussy with a proud smile.

Sunghoon likes pinning you against the wall because he wants you close to him

He likes to show off how much he can pin you to the wall with just one hand, caging you with his built body until you feel his weight envelop your whole figure. He'll kiss you sloppily on the lips, swiftly hooking one of your legs around his waist. "I wanna fuck you so bad," He pushed his hard cock into you without warning, not letting you adjust to his size as he began thrusting. "I love you so much that all I want to do is fuck this tight pussy until you can't walk." The initial pain started to wear off, allowing you to clench your walls around him every time he pulled out. “I-I love you, Sunghoon…please fuck me harder….” You gasped out. He didn't waste his time, capturing your lips again in a deep, hungry kiss that took your breath away. You wrap your hands around his neck, deepening the taste of his tongue in your mouth. He did the same, sucking on your bottom lip desperately as he secured your leg closer to his hips. Passionate tension grew immensely ravenous, a suffocating notion that only this position could grant him. Sunghoon would do anything to make love to you at such proximity— ensuring that each other's attention was pledged to this moment's shared pinnacle of pleasure.

When he notices the twitch of your expression and the way your hot walls spasm around his length, it signals him that you are close and he softly murmurs close to your ear like a lullaby. "That's it, my love. Come for me."

When his guilty pleasure is to have passionate shower sex because you feel like heaven under the water

You know, the moment he uttered those words— still standing in front of your shared apartment, a slight nod in understanding from you was aimed his way. “Join me in the shower?” Something like this was nothing unexpected from him. Sunghoon would often feel burned out from his hectic schedule, and his way of reviving his dire condition at the end of busy work day was to have each other’s naked body together— letting the hot water shed the tense muscles under his skin. “Tell me if it’s too hot,” He said from behind, wet hair sticking to his forehead. You were perched on your back against his chest, holding you firm with his hands groping to feel your ample breast. You chuckled at his doting words, especially when he was buried deep inside of you the moment you were under the water.

“I want it to be hotter, can you do that?” You push your hips back, feeling the tip of his cock kissing the deepest end of your womb. Sunghoon let out a deep moan, kissing the expanses of your neck so that his lips were melting you to the bone. “Anything for my princess.” He starts to rock his hips back and forth, the movement causing your tits to rub against the foggy glass door of the wall. Somehow, the water softened the action, yet the intensity never faltered— a slow and soft rhythm that insinuated how raw and intimate his thrust was.

He wouldn’t pull out even after finishing, basking in the after-sex glow while cock warming you until the heat becomes pleasurably unbearable.

Touching himself when he misses you a lot after being away from each other

Sunghoon is a patient man; he can wait a little while to come home and indulge himself with the help of your presence.

However, his preservation was slowly crumbling in both body and mind. Evidently, he was becoming too horny, so he took matters into his own hands while pulling out his hoodie— the one you’ll always wear around the house with nothing but a lacy underwear.

Your faint smell was still there, enticing his body that sends blood straight to his cock. Sunghoon strips down naked, laying on top of the clothing as he teasingly ruts his hips to the thought of you underneath him.

He’ll let out a sharp inhale, squeezing his eyes at the friction of the hoodie against his hard dick. He imagines you’ll warp your legs around his hips, thrusting up to meet him halfway, moaning close to his ears to go faster and harder. Your erect tits will graze on his chest, causing him to buck into the hoodie deeper, rougher.

“S-Sunnghoon! Shit, right there— hmmm!”

He was so high at the thought of you that he could envision your voice moaning his name.

Sunghoon reached up to roll a nipple between his fingertips, the sensation causing him to leak out more precum with gritted teeth. His movement starts to pick up, ecstasy overwhelming his body from the tip of his cock to his heavy balls.

He needed one more push, taking his wet cock in a fist and jerking the length while thumbing the red slit— the way you always like to play with him. Sunghoon choked on a sob, arching his back while repeating your name like a prayer, ropes of hot cum shooting up to bathe his abs with white.

With a hand over his eyes, his chest was panting with exhaustion, reminding him to borrow maybe a pair of panties from you the next time he’s away.

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kairiscorner · 10 months

Note

Hey! Got a lil request!

I feel like Hobie would love to watch horror/scary movies so I would like a fic of Hobie watching a scary movie with reader that doesn't like scary movies cause they hate hyper realistic gore. You can imagine how he'd react to them being squeamish.

Thank you for reading this (⁠ ⁠◜⁠‿⁠◝⁠ ⁠)⁠♡

HI @k4tsu3 POOKIEEEE OFC I WILL MAKE IT >:DDD HOPE YOU LIKE IT BOO 🫶🫶🫶

(reblogs are greatly appreciated, it helps get my content out there! if you guys like what you see, please reblog it too <:D)

no need to worry, i'm right here. — hobie brown x reader

summary: as much as you want to enjoy movie night with your boyfriend, you could never bring yourself to find peace and enjoyment at the prospect of hyper realistic gore and nightmare fuel for days on end. luckily, hobie understands that you don't enjoy this as much as he does, and even luckier, he's willing to hold you all night and change the movie if you want. word count: 586

you tried to put on a brave face, though it was nothing like the look of enjoyment on hobie's face as he awaited to watch the movie you two scrounged up on some shady website. he laughed every time a pop-up appeared and poked fun at it as he exited the tab, though you awaited those pop-ups like the sunrise to a long, restless evening, because it was your excuse not to see the barrage of dark atmosphere and frightening elements of the movie you two were watching.

you listened as hobie made live commentary in murmurs on how good the cinematography was, how realistic the makeup on the actors were when they were using gorey elements for the shots. you smiled uncomfortably at the sound of hobie's amazement towards the execution of the movie and tried your hardest to look away from the compellingly loud sounds from the film. you shivered and whimpered a little as you curled up next to hobie, who was initially confused as to why you were suddenly clinging on to him, but he didn't mind--in fact, he loved that you were clinging on to him. though something told him you were clinging on to him for reasons other than you wanting to hold him intimately.

hobie went over and paused the movie and looked at you with a confused yet concerned look. "y'alright, love?" he asked you with a head tilt as you nodded and tried to smile sweetly up at him. "of course! of course, hobes... 'course i'm okay..." you stammered as hobie smirked, not buying your faux declaration of being 'okay'. "is it the movie?" he asked you as he wrapped his arm around your waist and held you a little closer. shivers ran up your spine as you lightly nodded and leaned back on his chest in embarrassment. "...yeah. it's just, i don't wanna ruin movie night for you, hobes... we watch every movie i like, and, i wanted to watch something you like, in return. i'm sorry..." you muttered as hobie kissed the top of your head and brushed away stray hairs on your forehead and smiled.

"love, there's nothing wrong with being scared of a movie, let alone not wanting to watch it because of it. i'm glad you told me, and to be honest, i could go for watching a different, less violent, film right about now. you know me, i love me a good double feature." he said as he clicked off the tab you two were watching on and searched up a movie you were raving to hobie about, one you loved that he hasn't seen before. hobie grinned at you as he wrapped his arm around your shoulders again. "you alright with rewatching this masterpiece you told me about, dear?" he asked you with a wink, to which you chuckled lightly as you placed your hand on top of his and smiled at him. "i am if you're eager to see it, i could watch this a million times and still be blown away, especially now that you're watching it with me..." you whispered as you pecked a kiss on hobie's cheek. "thank you for understanding, hobes..." you told him as he kissed your cheek back. "don't worry, love. your comfort's always my priority. besides, this actually looks really promising, can't wait to see it." he said as he clicked play and you two laughed as the button redirected you two to an ad for hot single moms in your area.

a/n: (((y'all watched the barbie movie /hj)))

tags !! @k4tsu3 @fiannee @luvstarrstruck @toneystank-3000 @ii01vq @maxoloqy @arachnoia @pixqlsin @solecitoszn

#hobie brown #hobie brown x reader #hobie brown x you #hobie brown x y/n #hobie brown fluff #atsv #atsv imagines #atsv fluff #atsv x reader #atsv x you #atsv x y/n #spiderman across the spiderverse #spiderman across the spiderverse x reader #spiderman across the spiderverse fluff

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itsclydebitches · 1 year

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I really want to take a moment to appreciate the conversation between Roy and Trent in 3x02, as a part of Ted Lasso's larger commentary on toxic masculinity.

Because these two are classic nerd/jock archetypes, yeah? (At least on the surface. The fact that they're far more complex than that is kinda the whole point.) Roy Kent is the handsome, talented, scariest motherfucker around, able to treat people like shit and still earn the devotion of the fans because he possesses the coveted Sports Skills. Trent, in contrast, is the queer kid who was never able to participate in sports himself, instead needing to turn to writing about them to find that in. As he tells Ted, for him sport is the metaphor and his words, delivered with an "edgy" style that pulls no punches, defend Trent in a way he's never been able to defend himself physically; they gain respect in a field where he'd otherwise be considered a joke. ("Is this a fucking joke?") Plus, given the implied backgrounds and present day characterization, I don't think it's much of a reach to believe that scathing articles like the one Trent wrote contain a certain amount of bitter satisfaction: Roy is "over-hyped," "mediocre," "disappointing," and driven by "rage." If that doesn't sound like a bullied kid finally getting back at all the jocks Roy represents, I don't know what does.

Notably, they repeat a version of this history during Trent's first week at Richmond. He's easily the most anxious we've ever seen him, jumping at loud noises, hands twitching in his pockets, very self-consciously trying to form a connection with the players and failing miserably. Trent is without his armor now - that of a high-profile journalist, safe behind his cutting words - and he's unable to rebuild any given that he's being denied the chance to write his stories. Why is that the case? Because top dog Roy Kent has decreed that no one talk to him. Now, we know based on Roy's characterization and what's revealed later in the episode that this is done out of a desire to protect his players from the abusive press, but outside of that context this looks a lot like the popular kid playing the part of a bully. Trent is the new kid entering class, being clocked as the outsider, briefly welcomed by someone with no prior bias (Dani)... and then that's shut down real fast from Roy. Funny as Ted Lasso is (and I was legitimately cracking up throughout the episode) there's also something extremely disquieting - in a very familiar way - at watching someone go from, "Hi! :D" to "FUCK YOU!" all on the say-so of someone with a lot of authority and social power. This dynamic continues throughout the whole week, with Trent growing more and more on edge until, finally, he just gives in. When Roy starts popping balloons he doesn't stand up for himself and demand that he share their office respectfully, Trent just tries desperately to ignore the bullying - and it is bullying, given that Roy stops popping the moment Trent leaves - and then quietly runs away, acting apologetic as he goes. When the players refuse to discuss strategy with Trent he tries to leave again, defeated, which is a far cry from the doggedly confident reporter who would wait for Jamie after practice. Woven among the humor, Trent is at his most vulnerable here, looking more and more like the victim in a hostile, traditionally masculine space.

Of course, given that this is Ted Lasso, the situation is far more complex than just, "Bullies exist and that's #bad." The locker room scene is initially set up to look that way, in large part because it takes place in a locker room/bathroom. AKA, two spaces where bullying tends to occur unimpeded - and we've already seen that in Ted Lasso back when Nate was the underdog, cowering before the rest of the Richmond team. Roy's control over the group is so complete that no one dares challenge his order to ignore Trent (except, of course, Ted himself. The guy who sparked Roy's growth from the get-go) even though the group is clearly very relieved when the ban is lifted. Roy screams at Trent, making him jump, and orders him into the semi-privacy of the showers. It speaks volumes to me that Ted feels the need to give a reassuring nod and that Trent clearly needed it because, again, outside of the fact that they're both obviously adults now and that on a surface level this moment is meant to make us laugh, this is all very reminiscent of the bully pulling the nerdy kid somewhere where he can hurt him without consequence, all while everyone sits there and watches, not really wanting it to happen, but not willing to stop it either. Everything from the setting, to Trent's defensive body language, to Roy pushing the wallet against his chest in a move reminiscent of the classic shove to start off a beating, all of it heavily implies that kind of bully/victim dynamic.

But, as said, it's not that simple. Because Roy isn't the bully here and Trent, crucially, isn't just the victim. The scene goes on to reveal that Trent is the one who has caused Roy harm, by printing a unnecessarily cruel article when he was just seventeen years old. (A revelation that pairs very nicely with his introduction this season - "Love that" - reminding us that just because Trent approves of others standing up to bullies doesn't mean he's never been one.) That was a decision that "wrecked" a young Roy, to the extent that he kept that quote in his wallet for years, only now reaching a point where he can admit how much that hurt him. Trent's explanation is understandable given his heavily implied backstory. Not that he was trying to build his career, but that he would do so by "seeing the worst in people" and hurting them first before they could hurt him. Roy was right all the way back in Season One, Trent is a colossal prick... but that's likely because others were colossal pricks to him first. Here then, we see that cycle of abuse once more, the same one Nate is currently trapped in. The difference, however, is that when Ted says, 'Your ego is hurting us, Roy' Roy listens and when Roy says, 'You really hurt me, Trent' Trent listens, and the three of them together put a stop to the cycle then and there. Trent apologizes. Roy forgives him. Roy lifts the ban and by the end of the episode they've reached a place where they can speak honestly with one another. Not just about Roy's feelings - which is a HUGE thing for him to make Trent privy to - but about the complexities of Trent's career too. We've already seen that balancing the truth with compassion is fine line for him to walk - as evidenced by him texting Ted, but still publishing his article about the panic attacks; leaving his job, but still sniffing out the Richmond story - but here we get the reversal of that. Trent has already said, 'I'm working on emphasizing the ethics of my profession' and now Roy comes in with 'I'm working to admit that a cruel article isn't necessarily an inaccurate one.' He did play like shit at Chelsea and though Trent didn't need to break the spirit of a seventeen year old, the players do need to come to terms with the fact that they're in a high profile career where everyone is judging their performance (something Ted himself is all too aware of). This is the kind of nuanced understanding that's only possible post-apology/forgiveness, wherein the story has reminded us, 'Victims are capable of becoming bullies themselves and they need to own up to their actions just as much as they deserve an apology themselves.'

All of which is REALLY important for the framing of Nate's arc because he is in Trent's position, poised somewhere between victim and bully. It's obvious the ways in which Nate was a victim of the Richmond team, of his father, and even of the public, but it's significant that he's still a victim even as he now consciously hurts others too. Rebecca had a long speech this episode about how charming Rupert is, how he'll pursue you and in the process make you feel like you're the most important person in the world, someone chosen... and though she was talking about Zava, all I could think about was Nate. He's still being charmed and wooed by Rupert, what with the compliments and the new car, but all of it comes with reminders that he's worthless without that approval (surely a cleaning lady must have parked there...). Rupert is the top dog at the moment, his oh so benevolent popularity extending to Nate, encouraging him to model that behavior in order to keep his interest... but inevitably Rupert will toss him aside, just like he did with Rebecca. He'll become bored and Nate will have to grapple with the fact that, in his effort to avoid being a victim, he became the bully instead, just like Trent had. Rebecca is waiting to help Nate understand the ways in which Rupert can demolish your sense of self-worth. Trent is waiting to help Nate understand how to own up to your mistakes. And of course, there's Ted Lasso in the wings, the American outsider who can offer a much needed, compassionate perspective on the whole of it - as well as some personal insight into panic attacks during interviews. The entirety of the Richmond community, thematically, is being built into a reflection of Nate's struggle; a collection of experiences and wisdom and kind-hearted insight that can help him if (when!) he chooses to accept it.

#Ted Lasso #Ted Lasso spoilers #Trent Crimm #Nate Shelley #mymetas

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pyjamacryptid · 3 months

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I don’t think they liked it…

Turns out Teleparty had just kicked Kit out (with impeccable timing) but Mac and I didn’t know this for a good five minutes lol

BBC Merlin + live commentary by @macaritaville @1kitwonder and I from our Merlin watch party

first | prev | next | masterpost

Click on Keep reading for an afterword!

Afterword TL; DR: Thank you for joining us three on our live commentary journey! And this isn't the end: I have sooo many outtakes and plan to start posting some! :D

WE FINALLY MADE IT!!!!

You know, I had to go check when I posted the first of our live commentary and gawked when it said January 2022. Two years! Incredible. Couldn't believe it for a hot second lol.

I loved being able to rewatch one of my most beloved shows with two of my beloved friends. One of which was experiencing it for the first time! That makes it more exciting, honestly. Watching a show, in general, with friends makes it a whole lot more fun. And I had so much fun!

I'm also so glad I got over my initial shyness and posted that first post. The reception we've received, since the beginning, has been amazing. Genuinely, it makes our day to see so many people enjoy our silly little commentary.

However, this isn't the end! I have A LOT of outtakes and I plan to start posting them at some point, so please stay tuned!

Whether you've laughed at just one post or you've made it this far, thank you!!! 💕

Ren, Mac & Kit

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tyrramint · 4 months

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Happy Lockwood & Co. Big Bang!!! :D I had the absolute pleasure of collaborating with @The_Dreamer_Half_Alive (on Ao3 :) on her fic for the @lockwoodandcobigbang2023 event; set post TEG, it’s truly so lovely and heartwarming, and I had so much fun doing a piece for it! We very much hope you enjoy :)

Link to the fic!!!! (the horror of the night melt away) under the warm glow of survival of the day

(Closeups below the cut :D) (because I ended up making it too wide to be easily seen in full lol) (plus ~artistic commentary~)

(SPOILERS FOR FIC CONTENT)

Okay, so I tried to put a bunch of little easter eggs from the fic and just in general in here, so if you’re interested:

Alright, to start off, I was generally very inspired by them getting a record player; I thought it was very sweet, and I loved the idea of them finally getting to relax and hang out in the library (the lack of chairs, I know; I couldn’t figure out how to put them in without blocking people lol) and locklyle dancing, with the record player on in the background, so that’s what I took as the basis of the scene!!

We had discussed that the characters were kind of a combo of both show and book versions, so I tried to add a smattering and hints of both when doing their designs!

The record is, of course, an Ella Fitzgerald record as mentioned in the fic (the record drawn is her Souvenir Album)

Holly is wearing her engagement ring, and wearing shades of pink and cream because that’s what she wears at her wedding (although shifted in hue to better match the color scheme of the piece lol)

Everyone (minus Flo) of course has their white strands of hair (which is *always* one of my favorite details to draw)

Lucy and George bake in the fic, but I think I had just read the Christmas mini story when I was doing my thumbnail for this, so Kipps ended up being the one bringing in baked goods; however, the baking mitts are orange and monogrammed with George's initials because I couldn't let that slip by, could I?

I wasn't quite sure what to put Flo in, because in the books she never takes off her boots or puffer jacket, but I wanted to throw in some sign that she was living at 35 Portland Row and becoming closer to all of them, (and her close relationship with George,) so I let her keep the boots, but traded the puffer jacket in for one of George's plaid shirts :)

The chess game also made it in because of the Christmas short story, lol

Lucy's blue star jacket!! When I read the fic, I was planning from the start to have her wearing the jacket, so of course it made it in :) I wasn't really sure what style it should be, though, so I ended up with kind of an odd mishmash of designs, but I think it turned out working alright!

The sapphire necklace, because, of course

I adore that Lockwood wears his pink socks throughout the entire show (well, most of the time they're the pink ones ;) so I wanted to include them (and then gave Lucy blue ones to match :)

The chipped blue mugs that Lockwood brings to Lucy for her tea after she wakes up from nightmares are on the bookshelf, and I couldn't find a way to directly include the Earl Grey tea they have, but I made the tea bag tags grey in honor of it

The green glow is the ghost lamp outside because if I can find a way to incorporate cool glows in my art, I will (and also on a more narrative-driven note, symbolizing the past danger they've been through and how some of it is definitely still present, but they have each other to heal with and finally be able to have some simple fun with, and are now curled up in the safety and comfort of 35 Portland Row :)

And finally, a big theme of the fic is them healing and building a happy life together, so I just wanted them to all be happy for once, and hence I put in my best efforts to draw them as such :)

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longnighthour · 4 months

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im really liking initial d because i can feel takumis pure unfettered rage through the screen right now and all he's doing is driving in a slightly aggravated manner

#initial d commentary

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wen-kexing-apologist · 11 months

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On the Subject of Pat 2.0

Hello! It’s your resident 25 year old working their first job out of grad school with no family in the area and a friend group that is comprised mostly of people older than them here to talk about "Pat" Phakphum Tangwatthana another resident 25 year old working his first job out of grad school with no family in the area and a friend group that is comprised mostly of people older than him.

I have seen some confusion or distaste around Pat and Pat’s storyline in the most recent episode, and I understand the criticism around the editing needing to be tighter, but I do just want to talk about my own perceptions of Pat and why I didn’t need any more explicit explanations for his behavior than we already got.

It’s essay time :D

Pat and his emotions in Episode 9:

We start the episode on Pat’s point of view, cutting back to the previous evening and establishing Pat’s level of inebriation

Gif from @pharawee

Everything is ghosting and blurry and it is very clear that Pat was out of his head if not out of his body when he was having fun with Jeng on the dance floor. This is evidence enough as far as I am concerned that Pat had absolutely zero knowledge of Jeng’s dance floor confession. But what he does remember is learning Jeng is queer. Which as we are all aware, rocks his fucking world.

Now, I wrote in my previous timeline that narratively, Pat has never had the time to contemplate the sexuality of his boss. At the very beginning, he spills glass jelly on Jeng’s shoe and meets a kind and very attractive man, and then he just simps over this very Lorge Man for awhile while Jeng is actively trying to manage a crush on an employee because he understands would be a huge HR Violation if he were to try to pursue that thread. But Pat has been flirting hard, in ways that are obvious if you are queer and able to identify them, but less so if you are straight and don’t automatically look at the level of familiarity as flirting. However, we have to look at when, where, and how Pat and Jeng break their professionalism and where they maintain it.

Pat only initiates the break in professionalism when he is drunk and/or out of the office. His criticisms of Jeng he gives in the review? Drunk. His commentary about how when he first met Jeng he was nice and he is having a hard time reconciling that Jeng with micromanaging boss Jeng? Drunk. Hanging all over him and tugging at his shirt? Drunk. Hanging all over him and tugging at his shirt round 2? Drunk.

The rest Jeng initiates. He engineers the dinner in his office, he asks Pat to come over on Sunday to work, he suggests Pat get ready at his apartment, he suggests he and Pat share a hotel room, he asks Pat to accompany him to the furniture store, he calls the video of drunk!Pat cute, he asks Pat to go on the restaurant tour with him.

So, from this we know that Pat is aware enough of the office gossip and when in control of his mental faculties, is able to temper his feelings towards Jeng while at work. And that Jeng has been simping hard from the beginning, and Pat has been reciprocating the energy whenever Jeng starts the interaction.

But we also know that Pat has a difficult time handling his other emotions, especially while at work. Partially because he is young, partially because he is exploited, partially because he is almost certainly spending a lot of his time focusing on a) not having a meltdown and b) not hitting on his boss in front of his coworkers.

Anyway, the timeline of Pat’s immediate emotions around Jeng’s sexuality confession I have previously outlined so just keep that in mind while I continue to ramble about Pat in this episode.

Pat learns Jeng is gay, freaks out about it because Jeng is fully aware of everything Pat has been doing, and Pat is fully aware that Jeng has been intentionally flirting with him this whole time. Spirals about it in his dreams the whole night and wakes up hungover and having an existential crisis about what the fuck comes next for him.

He takes the day off, tries to give himself some space to think, process, reassess, and figure out his next steps. But instead…his Mom is in town, and in his kitchen, cooking him breakfast.

What is she doing here? He doesn’t know, it’s a surprise, and a good surprise because we know he has a good relationship to his parents, and you can tell that from the way he interacts with his mother. But a mother is going to mother, so she’s going to comment on his eating habits, and he’s going to lie about how often he eats instant noodles, and she’s going to check in on his health, having seen him absolutely plastered the previous evening, and she is going to ask about the very kind and handsome man that helped Pat home and made sure he was safe.

And she’s going to say a passing comment about Pat being a burden to his friend.

Which, looking at Pat’s face here, was not really what he wants to be hearing at this particular moment. Not when he is trying to get Jeng out of his head, not when he is trying to create space to figure out what he is feeling about that entire situation, the reality that he could have what he wants, the understanding that Jeng has been wise to Pat’s attraction to him this whole time. Not when he got in to that whole situation with Jeng last night because he was trying to distract himself from being sad about breaking up with Put. His parents live in another country, they have no idea what is going on in his life, his mother sees her son was out with a nice man and so has no reason to suspect something would have been wrong. So she stumbles right in to one of Pat’s sore spots.

“Where did you meet him?” she asks and Pat’s goes:

If anyone needs a live action shocked pikachu face, look no further. He knows he cannot tell her. He knows what it would sound like, what it would seem like, how inappropriate it would appear for him to say “I met him at work” and even more so if he has to say “that is my boss.”

He’s had the realization that Jeng is gay, and therefore that a relationship between Jeng and Pat is possible, and he is now having the realization of just how bad it would appear to literally anyone on the outside. Even now, even before they are dating, when they are just coworkers and friends, his mother knowing that he was out, late at night, that drunk around his boss??? Absolutely not. Pat recognizes that and quickly shifts the focus of the conversation away from Jeng, asking his mother about a doctor’s appointment she is supposed to be getting to.

Another outfit, and another day has passed. Pat is staring at the stuffed tiger that he got on his furniture -date- shopping trip with Jeng. A stuffed animal that he has been using as a replacement for the shark stuffed animal that he had when he was with Put and that Put has used to manipulate Pat into talking to him and into considering re-entering into a relationship with him. This tiger here is serving as both a reminder of Put, the fact that Pat was unable to love Put because of his feelings for Jeng, and as a reminder of Jeng, whose sexuality, level of availability, and messy HR potentiality are all front and center in Pat’s mind. So he hides the tiger away in a drawer where he doesn’t have to look at it, so that he isn’t faced with a constant reminder of the personal crises in his life, because he is young, and his parents are here, and he’s never experienced this particular combination of emotions before, and to talk to his parents about his dilemma he would have to explain this situation to his parents and I don’t think Pat believes he can talk to anyone about it. Because all of his friends besides Ae are friends from work, Jaab is Jeng’s brother, Jen and Jaab are going through it and Jen is quitting, Kanon was on the production team and Kanon is married to Ae so whatever Pat says to Ae may get back to Kanon pretty quickly. Chot is fully incorporated into the office life and is fully aware of what is going on (and in fact may think Pat and Jeng are much further ahead in their relationship than they are) but Pat thinks he’s being sly about his feelings for Jeng, and Chot being directly in the office rather than on an outside production team is not going to be a draw to talking about his feelings for his boss.

Meanwhile, Jeng is approaching the other queer in the office to ask if Chot has seen Pat cause he hasn’t been in the office in a few days and realizes that Pat is taking days off without even

notifying him. Readers, I do not need to show you Chot’s face throughout all of this. Chot is 150% convinced that Jeng and Pat are in the middle of a lover’s quarrel. I need a Chot live reaction to finding out that Pat and Jeng haven’t fucked yet, and a gravestone for Chot when he learns that Pat thought Jeng was straight.

Alright, so, Jeng is in his sad boy hours clearly pining after Pat in the office in front of Chot, but pushes that all back down in order to perform his necessary duties as a boss. Jeng too, is trying to keep control of his emotions, but will end up losing his grip of them and having an utter break down.

But this is not about Jeng, this is about Pat

Pat’s Mom is here, but she’s settled in, and Pat’s off work, so maybe now he has time to try to process some of his emotions?

Nope! Dad appears!

And what? Another surprise! Another parent coming to stay at his house without warning, and for what reason?

…

Oh.

Oh shit.

Pat has completely lost track of the passage of time. Which hey, works for Ae going from 0 to 30 weeks out of nowhere. Why does his Dad come to Thailand around this time every year?

It’s almost Pat’s birthday, and Pat has completely forgotten. This man has been juggling all of his work, a ton of his coworkers assignments, MLM schemes (the only mlm Pat is interested in is…nevermind), the Forge project, The Forge commercial shoot, leading the commercial shoot, his relationship with Put, his breakup with Put, navigating remaining professional in a workspace with his recent ex when emotions are still raw, and his mounting feelings for actually gay actually single hot boss man. On top of that, Pat is living alone, surviving off of ramen noodles, and (iirc) waiting to see if he makes it past the probationary period and is actually going to be allowed to stay on as an employee when that window is over. Jen is an adult, and not one Pat knows very well, Chot has his shit together and is engaged, Ae and Kanon are adults, married, and soon-to-be-parents, and Jaab is his age but is just as much if not more of a hot mess than Pat is. Pat gets convinced to go on that restaurant tour by Ae and their other friend, but those two are straight and therefore will not get what Pat is spiraling about after finding out Jeng is gay. So where can Pat go? Who can he turn to for advice? Who is going to have the time and the understanding and the patience to help him navigate all of these rising pressures?

Well, we get a good indication, of where that is heading because Pat’s dad takes one look at Pat’s utter shock at realizing that he has forgotten his own birthday and states:

Life must be pretty hard lately. His father is in the know, he’s gettin’ wise, gettin’ with it. It’s a great dynamic of Pat pretending to be fine for the sake of his mother, and then having no ability to hide from his father because the initial shock of the realization meant he wasn’t able to mask his emotional state.

He burns his ramen noodles, his father cooks for him. Gives him vegetables. Calls it like it is in Pat’s life even though he doesn’t have the full context.

Pat returns to work, and Chot starts doing his gay fairy godmother deal, vague-posting about what he thinks Pat’s problem is through the lens of his own issues. He knows Pat is young, and Pat is coming out of a relationship, and that Pat does not have a lot of guidance on the whole Being Gay in Thailand thing, despite being pretty comfortable in his sexuality and navigating his relationship with Put pretty maturely, if we’re honest. Chot is reaching out, Chot is extending the hand, Chot is trying to turn the tide of their relationship from just work friends to friends who can rely on one another in their personal life.

Now, Pat has been dissociating for the entire conversation thus far, because realizing he has forgotten his birthday because he’s been so caught up in everything has started his death spiral. When Jeng came out he tripped into it and was gripping at the edge of his remaining sanity by trying to give himself time and space to work through his emotions, but the arrival of his father and the understanding that he has not been thinking about himself for however long is what starts this final (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt at managing his emotional state.

But Chot’s admission that being gay is hard for Krit, snaps Pat out of it a little bit, and we get Pat’s “At least he’s straightforward with showing you that he loves you” and now…Pat has not been paying a whole lot of attention to what Chot was saying, so this is either Pat being very good at processing information while dissociating, and/or Pat picking up on the part of the story that is most relevant to him and attaching his own frustrations with his current situation to it.

“At least he is straightforward with showing you that he loves you”

Okay, so let’s explore who this is about. That’s right. It’s about literally every possible romantic pursuit of his in the last few weeks/months. Put, MLM guy, and Jeng.

On the Put end of things, Put left Pat two years prior, valuing his job over his relationship with Pat while simultaneously struggling with his own queerness. When Pat and Put get back together, Pat pours his whole heart and soul into trying to make the relationship work. Because he needs it to work. Because he’s in love with his boss and he can’t be in love with his boss because that way madness (and job loss) lies. We do see moments of them being lovey-dovey, we see moments of flirtation, but the show is extremely intentional about showing that Pat and Put’s relationship is not a happy one. Put ignores Pat over dinner, that dinner scene where Put is mostly focused on his cellphone is dimly and cooly lit, with the tiniest smidge of warmth behind Pat and nothing anywhere close to Put.

They make out in a hotel and Pat asks if Put likes him, and Put does not give him an answer, he just flips the question back around on Pat. Pat doesn’t answer either, not at first, he just kisses Put, and then realizes that it doesn’t feel the way it used to, and whatever feelings he may have had for Put before are no longer there. Because he is in love with his boss. So he leaves Put and goes to the party to seek out the person he wants to be around/with. When Pat breaks up with Put he calls him out on his attempts to manipulate him. So Pat is sad about the break up, sure, and he is allowed to be. But he is also reconciling here with the fact that Put never showed interest in him, unless and until Pat was threatening to leave.

Then we get MLM guy, who is very forward in his interest with Pat. Pat is picking up what MLM guy is putting down (he thinks), and gets all excited about the prospect of having another Hot Tall Boi to channel his energy into so that he isn’t left to think about Jeng or Put’s return to Thailand. Pat is excited for the “date” and is devastated when it turns out this man wasn’t interested in him at all, he just wants him to join a multilevel marketing scheme. After which Pat is harassed at work and hounded by this man until he is literally threatened. So now Pat has to grapple also with the knowledge that the one person who seemed to be obviously, openly interested in him, was just using those emotions to get something out of him. Yet another manipulation. On the Jeng end of things, Jeng is forced to be subtle about his love for Pat by nature of the power imbalance inherent in a boss and employee relationship. Jeng has been intentionally engineering his romantic advances to have as much plausible deniability as possible. Which means, Pat, thinking that Jeng is straight, has not picked up on them. Or rather has convinced himself that Jeng wasn’t being intentional about making moves. If Jeng had been more obvious, had pursued him the way that Pat is used to being pursued, that is, more explicitly, if Jeng had even been more obviously queer, then Pat would have known immediately. But Pat has a luxury that Jeng and even Put do not, which is that him being clockable will not ruin his whole life the way that Put and Jeng as famous, prominent people would run the gauntlet if that information were to get out. Put says it himself in Episode 8: “A famous person like you might not be able to come out a lot, right?”

Jeng isn’t clockable as queer to the average person, and as Pat has been actively trying not to read into things, and has been trying to rein in his own horniness for Jeng, Jeng isn’t clockable to him either. SO…all of this to say that Pat feels that Put was not straightforward with their love, and that Jeng has been disguising all of his attempts at wooing Pat under a safety blanket of work. So Pat is feeling primarily hurt, lied to, and betrayed.

So, what we end up getting with Jeng is…manipulation. He has manipulated every situation to get Pat and him alone together, while at the same time not clueing Pat in to the fact that is what he was doing. While additionally not clueing Pat in to the fact he is gay. While also not clueing Pat into the fact that he’s Jaab’s brother until Pat literally walks into the middle of an interaction between Jaab and Jeng. While also not initially clueing Pat in to the fact he is Pat’s boss even after Jeng realized.

The past two people that Pat has been interested in have manipulated him over and over again.

His coworkers have manipulated him over and over again.

How else is Pat supposed to see Jeng not being explicit about his feelings? He’s being manipulated once again by Jeng not saying anything.

Chot lets Pat know that he can talk to him about anything, and Pat says “it’s ok, it’ll pass”.

Why is that relevant? CAUSE OF PARALLELS THAT COME LATER.

Anyway, Pat is giving an explicit invitation to talk about his feelings, and he brushes it off. Because Chot is an office friend in his office where his boss who he is having feelings about works, and Pat is very much oblivious to the fact that any gay within a 20 mile radius can see what is going on between Pat and Jeng. So he thinks he can’t be honest. Because that puts him and Jeng both in a sticky situation.

So he puts on a brave face, because he thinks that he can, because Jeng isn’t supposed to be in the office today. Because Chot told Pat that Jeng was out and Chot was covering. (Yet another reason why Pat may not want to talk to Chot about Jeng, Chot is literally acting as his boss right now). Because the thoughts Pat is having, the feelings that he is having, they are manageable so long as Pat does not have to face Jeng…

Except Jeng appears. On a day that he is most definitely not supposed to be here. They are at working, they are at work. Jeng does exactly what Pat has just indirectly told Chot he wishes someone would do.

He pulls a “boyfriend” and gives his jacket to his freezing love interest.

Now, is this something Jeng would do in the office? I fucking hope not. But currently, Jeng and Pat are sitting in the back of a dark room, with literally all the other queer people in the office. This is a safe space, this is a shelter. It’s why and how Jeng and Pat’s closeness has progressed in the most recent episodes. Because they have been away from the physical office space, around the straight and sometimes homophobic coworkers, and instead, on set with literally every gay boy known to Man. Jeng knows Chot knows, Jeng knows Jaab knows, having realized that Pat had no idea that he was gay, Jeng has decided he has been approaching things wrong, and gets bolder.

But, Pat has a) still not processed everything, b) is still oblivious to the fact that everyone around him knows exactly what is happening, c) is in the office, and d) is in the office with JENG who Pat was explicitly told would not be there. So you can imagine the stress he is under, and you can imagine with his track-record of manipulative men, that he is thinking very much that Jeng is playing with his emotions.

Because Jeng is playing with his emotions. Not intentionally. But Pat himself has never experienced this particular set of challenges before and Jeng is always on the brain. Pat’s emotional state is out of whack and it is at least 50% Jeng’s fault. Pat, again very maturely, hands that token of affection off to Chot, so that it will seem like nothing. So that it will read as nothing to anyone around him. Because Pat doesn’t know that they know.

Pat, who has still not had the opportunity to get the time and space that he needs from Jeng, because his parents are in town on an extended stay, because he had to go back to work eventually, because Jeng is now right there, once again does the mature thing, and walks away from the situation. He makes space.

Jeng follows after him, which again, makes it extremely obvious that Jeng is acting inappropriately close to Pat. But Jeng knows everyone in the room knows, which is why he can get away with it. But Pat just wants to be alone and Jeng is not letting him.

They retreat to an isolated corner. Where they have one of the juiciest conversations to date:

Jeng: “Did I make you uncomfortable in any way?’

Pat: “No, I’m just tired,”

Jeng: “Is it my fault?”

Pat: “No,”

Jeng: “I’m sorry”

Pat: “Why are you saying sorry to me, when I said it wasn’t your fault?”

Jeng: “You didn’t answer my text, ever since that day”

Pat: “Mr. Jeng, could you stop texting me? If it’s not work related. Don’t invite me to go eat. Don’t drop me off at home.”

And Pat says all of this without making eye contact with Jeng. When he finally does look up? He can see how devastated Jeng looks.

It confuses him in fact, to see this strong of an emotional reaction to Pat drawing these boundaries. Because, while Pat has not explicitly stated this yet, he thinks Jeng is fucking with him. This reaction is running very counter to what Pat is anticipating from this conversation.

So he has to say something else to fill the silence, and to soften the blow:

“Uh…I want to thank you. Thank you for everything. But please don’t do it again. Especially in front of everyone.”

“I can’t say no.”

And I take this two ways coming from Pat. First that Jeng being his boss puts Pat in the terrible situation of potentially not feeling comfortable saying no to Jeng. Because Jeng has power over Pat, even though we all know (or I at least hope based on this entire show so far) that Jeng is not the type of person that would take a personal vendetta out on Pat for rejecting his advances in the office”

Which is why I want to take a secondary lens to this conversation, and read that “I can’t say no” line as a double entendre. Jeng has let Pat know he is gay, Pat has placed all of their interactions into the context of that new information, Pat has realized that Jeng has been pursuing him this whole time. Pat realizes there may be reciprocated feelings involved. Pat tells Chot indirectly that he wants someone to be straightforward in their love. Jeng gives him the jacket. Pat has now been offered a much more clear admission from Jeng about his interest. Pat has feelings for Jeng. Pat has very strong feelings for Jeng. Pat hangs off of Jeng at every given opportunity the second he is out of his head. If Jeng pursues him, if Jeng is genuinely interested in him, if these feelings he has are reciprocated, and Jeng does not give Pat space. Pat will give in to his feelings and they will start an incredibly inappropriate workplace relationship.

Pat can’t say no because Jeng is his boss, and Pat can’t say no because he’s been DTF from the moment he laid his eyes on Jeng.

And again, I argue that Pat has actually been navigating this entire situation incredibly maturely. He removes himself from situations where he may be seen engaging in inappropriate workplace relations, and sets firm boundaries around what type of contact he and Jeng can have.

Pat tries to leave, Jeng pulls him back, wraps him in a hug, and does the thing Pat wishes people would do and is straightforward in his love for Pat:

Gif from @bellepark

Now here is where shit gets fun (read: terrible) for Pat emotionally. Because, ya know, he hasn’t already been dealing with enough shit. Pat sees Jeng: handsome, rich, successful, talented and cannot possibly fathom a reality where Jeng is actually in to him, a 25 year old in his first job, no wealth, no successful business ventures, who is feeling very much like the is untalented because of Chris’ mom on the commercial set. Jeng is everything, Jeng has everything, what could Pat possibly offer?

Gif from @bellepark

It legitimately does not compute. It is far, far simpler for Pat to assume that Jeng is fucking with him, toying with his emotions, possibly even trying to get Pat to admit to feelings so he can turn around and have him fired.

And If it is true that Jeng likes him, then how much has Jeng’s crush impacted his ability to accurately critique Pat? Was Pat only told that he was doing a good job by Jeng because Jeng had a crush? Was Pat given the commercial spot because Jeng had a crush? Is Pat even good at anything or does Jeng just want to fuck him and is therefore elevating his positions in order to leverage Pat’s growing importance to get Pat to do what he wants?

Pat has spent too much time lately being manipulated and being bullied and that is where he is coming from in his interaction with Jeng here. He is young, he does not understand what Jeng could possibly, legitimately want in a relationship with him, and if he lets himself believe that it makes sense for them to be together, then he will not be able to stop himself from getting in to a very dicey HR situation.

Jeng goes home, has a #hotgirlmeltdown and this is where I bring up the parallel that Pat told Chot “It’ll pass” and unfortunately for me Gaga has made it so that when I screenshot I get a black screen so I can’t capture the translation there. But I will just write it down:

“I can handle it…I think I can…I’m fine,”

It reminds me of Pat saying “it’s okay, it’ll pass”

Both of them are lying, but Pat was detached from his feelings when he lied whereas Jeng is consumed by his.

But this is not about Jeng, this is about Pat so we are gonna cut to Jen’s going away party.

Pat is wearing the same outfit as when Jeng confessed and Pat rejected Jeng so we know that Pat is coming in to this party riding a massive emotional wave, and trying to temper that storm. Because he doesn’t have time to process that right now, because this is Jen’s party, and because Ae sees Jen sulking and hands Pat the responsibility of talking with him:

Pat is gonna have to compartmentalize whatever feelings he is having to go handle Jen’s emotional state.

The significant beats I picked up on in this conversation with Jen are the following:

Pat saying he wished he had a home in another province to go back to

Jen saying it is a safe zone for him

Pat having the reality of being able to run away from his problems immediately crushed by Jen saying that he cannot pursue his dreams back home because everything is in Bangkok

Pat having the reality of being able to run away from his problems crushed again when Jen says “Well, everything is here and look at how bad it is”

Jen brushes off his own feelings and asks Pat how he is doing, and here is the crucial part. Huge shout out to @lurkingshan for pointing this out in a conversation we had last night. Jen is quitting. Jen is no longer a coworker to Pat. Pat has someone who is gay, who is no longer going to be involved in company business, and who is moving home to another province and therefore Pat can feel comfortable being honest because Jen is about to become very detached from his world.

“I don’t know, I’m very confused,” Pat says. And this is the first time he has voiced an emotion since he told Jeng he was sad about his break up with Put.

“Is it Mr. Jeng?”

Pat has his shit rocked by Jen asking him about Jeng so casually, like it is no big deal, like he is In The Know. Pat has really been operating under the assumption that no one could tell he had a crush on Jeng.

“These two brothers are the same” Jen gets it. Jen is telling Pat he gets it, and he’s telling Pat that neither Jeng nor Pat have been slick.

“I don’t know, it’s like he’s playing with my feelings,”

And I know this line may be a point of confusion for some people, because we know that Jeng is being sincere. We know, as an audience, how much of a fucking simp Jeng is for Pat. Jeng would crawl on his hands and knees for Pat. Jeng would almost certainly renounce his family and his title and his wealth for Pat. And if we didn’t get that from the last eight episodes, we are explicitly told how much Jeng likes Pat immediately before this scene. Pat consumed every waking thought in Jeng’s head. WE know this. Pat does not.

Pat thinks Jeng is playing with his feelings because of what I outline earlier re: all the manipulation Pat has been through recently with MLM guy, with Put, and with the situations Jeng has manipulated to get them alone together.

Pat believes Jeng is too good to be true, because he’s moved past the stage in the office job where he was so burnt out, stressed out, and exploited that every piece of constructive criticism felt like a personal attack. Pat isn’t angry at his workplace anymore, and therefore isn’t channeling his rage at Jeng anymore, and therefore isn’t focusing on Jeng’s flaws anymore, and as a result thinks Jeng reciprocating Pat’s feelings is too good to be true. Also because Pat doesn’t trust himself. Pat doesn’t see the parts of himself that Jeng sees. Pat doesn’t know why Jeng would like hin because Pat doesn’t understand the ways in which Pat brings life and joy and play in to Jeng’s otherwise extremely serious, almost entirely work-related life.

But Jen will not let Pat have that. Jen is older, Jen is wiser, Jen is an outside, relatively neutral third party where Pat and Jeng are concerned (Jaab is a whole ‘nother story). Jen can understand where and how Jeng and Pat are good for each other, and as a result he is quick to tell Pat not to sell himself short.

And he gives one of the most important pieces of advice that he can give to Pat is that if Jeng truly likes him, he’d find a way to tell Pat.

This singular piece of advice is going to save their relationship I tell you.

Whatever hope, whatever resolve that Pat has to navigate this storm. To figure out if Jeng actually likes him, if Jeng will do something that convinces Pat that he’s serious is crushed the instant Chot tells Pat that Jeng resigned.

Now, those of us in the workforce should be screaming “FUCK YEAH!” because Jeng is taking the responsible adult route by stepping away from his role as boss. Which, if Pat and Jeng were to get together would eliminate any conflict of interest, and if Pat and Jeng weren’t to get together would eliminate any fears Pat would have about Jeng a) harassing him b) firing him or c) retaliating for Pat’s previous rejection.

But…to Pat?! Well, he’s just ruined Jeng’s life. Jeng quit his job, from the company that he built. Pat understands that between Jeng’s position and Pat’s position, Pat is by far the more replaceable of the two. This is Jeng’s family’s company. Pat has realized that he fucked up. Pat is realizing that Jeng is not overstepping boundaries because he is trying to harass Pat, but because he has genuine feelings because the second Pat said to keep it work-only Jeng up and fucking left so that Pat wouldn’t have to worry about seeing him around.

Pat is thinking, Pat is contemplating, Pat is dissociating, and as he goes to wander like a zombie back to his house at the end of the day, SURPRISE Happy Birthday, Pat! Mr. Jeng baked you a cake!

AND THIS IS A LOT TO PROCESS CONSIDERING THAT PAT FORGOT HIS OWN BIRTHDAY! But Jeng remembered, and Jeng made something for him. I would love to go on and on and on and on about the lighting in this scene, but this write up is, as usual, far far longer than I anticipated, and a lot of the lighting details were covered in this phenomenal post by @istanchan

So we are just gonna go with the major take away from this scene. The flame is ignited between Pat and Jeng, Jeng is out of focus, and when Pat blows out the candles, extinguishing the flame, Jeng comes in to focus. Pat is now forced to face his feelings about Jeng, in a way he has been desperately trying to suppress for however long of a time frame this episode covers.

Pat goes home, yet again dissociating because the second that he reattaches his consciousness to his body he knows its fucking over.

And at this point, Pat has exhausted all avenues. He tried to get over his initial crush on Jeng by dating Put, and realized that he was not actually interested in that relationship. He tried to give himself distance and time to process his emotions immediately following the coming out incident, and was interrupted by his mother, he tried to brush off his feelings in the hope that they would pass, he returned to work and tried to get back into the groove of things under the safe assumption that Jeng would not be there, only to have Jeng show up. He asked Jeng to keep their interactions work related only to have Jeng hug him and tell him he really likes him, he started to have a conversation about his feelings with the only person who would understand, who is about to leave the province, and he maybe is feeling a bit better, and certainly more resolved. We can tell that also in the way that Pat approaches Jeng’s office after his talk with Jen, only to have the rug pulled out from under him with the update that Jeng has resigned.

He has tried and tried and tried to get over Jeng. He has tried and tried and tried to convince himself that Jeng can’t actually possibly like him back. This man has tried. And he can’t take it anymore. He sits down, his parents sing him happy birthday, they immediately pick up on the fact that Pat isn’t doing well, and they ask the fateful question:

And this is the first time Pat has really had to sit and process everything. This is the point where he settles down, both exhausted and having exhausted all other options…and everything hits at once.

“This is the year I forgot my own birthday” my life has been so busy and chaotic I have fully lost track of time (starting a new job, being exploited at new job, getting new boss, getting micromanaged by new boss, being hate crimed at work by my coworkers, best friend gets pregnant, working to get Forge client secured, trying to do 90% of the labor in a one sided relationship with Put, filming Forge commercial and trying to convince the Forge people that he is competent)

“I even forgot that you’d come back to see me every year,” I am a bad child for forgetting my parents would come to visit.

“It’s like I focused on everything except myself,” I have been avoiding my own feelings and focusing on others (i have been suppressing my feelings for Jeng, I have been trying to put those feelings elsewhere, I poured all my energy in to work and in to the MLM guy and in to Put)

“But I don’t know how to deal with this feeling,” I have tried fucking everything I know to manage my emotional state, which I know is already a weak spot of mine and something I am actively working on and nothing I have tried has brought me even remotely close to working through these emotions.

His parents immediately jump in to help, but the problem is Pat without context is not making a ton of sense, and the only thing they really have to latch on to is “I don’t know how to deal with this feeling” and his parents give him a hard truth.

“You can’t escape anywhere.”

It was something that Pat started to realize in his conversation with Jen, when he told Jen he wished he had a house to escape to, and Jen reminded him that he could have no dreams there. But Jen is heartbroken and fleeing from the bad things in his life, so it hits a little different when Pat’s parents, who he loves, who seem to generally have their lives together, who are divorced but still clearly get along, who love and care for one another despite no longer being married, and who are emotionally very mature, and shining examples to Pat of how to navigate emotional turmoil look right at him and say “you can’t escape this feeling,”

And Pat has a breakdown.

Which, in my opinion, makes complete and total sense and is incredibly justified considering everything that he has been through in recent months. Everything that he has been trying to navigate and manage while he is alone in another country, away from his family, with no friends to talk to because of the ways they are connected to him.

And doesn’t it just suck that you finally have the people who have supported you all your life look right at you and be unable to do anything but hold you through your tears. Physically he has support, but there is no way out of these emotions but through them.

This is the release, and he still has a lot of shit to sort out, but he’s had a good cry and he’s ready to press on. He goes shopping with Ae, and while he does still seem distracted, he is doing better, he is participating in conversation rather than fully dissociating, he is teasing her (“can i have that cake?”) so he is moving more towards a point of equilibrium. Ae has her baby, makes him an uncle, and that is enough to shake Pat out of the depression spiral he has been in because look at the amazing miracle of life he has just witnessed.

He returns home from another chaotic and exhausting evening (helping his bestie deliver her baby on the back of a bus #casual) and finds a package waiting for him.

An incredibly well utilized in-universe ad, of a snack Pat mentioned he liked once, in passing, months ago to Jeng. Jeng has always paid attention to Pat, and I don’t know how much attention Pat has allowed himself to pay to Jeng that would get him to realize that. It’s the aspect of this whole thing that Pat has not been ready or willing to acknowledge. Because the second he realizes that Jeng is gay, the depth of Jeng’s engagement and focus on Pat becomes a lot more clear.

Pat find the happy birthday note from Jeng and collapses on to the bed surrounded by the snacks to think about things.

To think, in particular, about what Jen said about Jeng finding ways to show he cares if he is serious.

It cuts to Jeng, who is being driven to the brink of madness, who has been trying to maintain distance, but needs more than life itself to let Pat know that he is serious. It has been days, days at least since he has last spoken to Pat, and he cannot stop thinking about the final thing Pat said to him “Why do you like me, it doesn’t make sense,”

Jeng sends this message

And the episode ends before we see Pat get that text. I am very excited to see his reaction when he reads that, surrounded by wasabi peas.

Now, maybe I am way way overanalyzing all of this because I will always come to Pat’s defense, maybe I am trying to convince people that if you just follow the lines and the lights and the body language everything you need to understand Pat is right there because there are so many parts of Pat that live in me, (though many that don’t), maybe I am blind to where the gaps in this episode rest when it comes to how they wrote Pat’s story, but I didn’t need more explicitly stated moments for Pat leading up to this breakdown because, well…

It makes sense to me.

(thank you to anyone who made it to the end, I recognize this is a long post even for me, haha oopsie. I would be unsurprised if I hit 10 hours total of work on this post between screen-shotting, double checking scenes, and writing it)

#step by step #step by step the series #step by step analysis post #step by step meta #step by step discussion #jengpat #manben #ben bunyapol #man trisanu #dee hup house #jeng x pat #gonna have to start getting an editor on my posts or something to tone them down #damn #at least y'all are well trained in reading lots of text a la fanfiction style #maybe i can fool you in to reading this whole thing

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malicious-compliance-esq · 29 days

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Why the World Needs Black Jack Randall: Queer Representation at Its Worst and Best

On March 29 my amazing mutual and fellow Evil Redcoat Pipeline traveler @meerawrites tagged me in a reblog of this video essay from @rowanellis about media literacy and queer villains that mentions both Lestat de Lioncourt from Interview with the Vampire and Black Jack Randall from Outlander. Double bisexual representation from an openly ace creator? Be still my heart!

I’d seen a few of Rowan’s other videos on YouTube—not ever having looked for her on Tumblr before Meera sent me that video—and often enjoyed both the content and the nuance. Certainly true for many aspects of this one as well. I want to make it very clear before going into detail here that I ardently support Rowan as a creator and appreciate that advocacy for diverse queer representation tremendously. I’m tagging her blog here primarily to promote her work and to encourage folks to explore for themselves. Her video essays are excellent in general and this one certainly has its fair share of wonderful content just the same.

I love the analysis here of why queer villains often get embraced as folk heroes by the LGBTQIA+ community, and many of the specific commentaries on beloved characters from iconic films and shows I grew up on like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Lion King. Of course, I’m no expert on any of those canons despite many viewings. I don’t consider myself an expert on Interview with the Vampire by any means either, but I’ve read all the books and seen the film and the available season of the new television adaptation. I found a lot of the commentary here insightful and resonant as a more casual consumer of media in that universe. I fully expect that folks who truly do have that depth of expertise would have much to say about the specifics of Rowan’s analysis of Lestat.

If y’all are on my blog, you know why I’m here and you know where my expertise lies. I am here to sustain the collective derangement of the few and the proud who take a deeper interest in Black Jack. Who see him for the complex and complicated person he is rather than writing him off as a Complete Monster or hand waving the things he does that truly are monstrous. And oftentimes who take that deeper look at him from the informed perspective of lived experience with sexual abuse. Many of the folks I’ve met who find Black Jack uniquely resonant and compelling do so from the firsthand perspective of submissiveness and masochism—of finding him alluring because of what he could do for them.

Well then. You could fix him. You could make him worse. I could rail him.

I’m going to out myself in no uncertain terms here because I need to make my authorial standpoint painstakingly clear. Hi, my name is Malicious Compliance. In addition to being quite openly bisexual in every possible area of my life, I am Dominant and sadistic. Are those the only things I enjoy sexually? Not at all. Although I’m not switchy in the slightest when it comes to D/s and S&M activities, I absolutely enjoy sex that does not involve BDSM elements as well. I’ve also had intensely kinky sexual relationships that involved no physical practice of sadism whatsoever. This will come back later—just like Black Jack does at Versailles in S2E05 “Untimely Resurrection” after supposedly being dead from a cattle stampede at Wentworth Prison. Awesome, right? Like me, our favorite randy Redcoat is tough to kill.

Given all this and my general level of immersion in all forms of Outlander canon, once I finally could make the time to give Rowan’s video essay my full attention (more on that below) I found myself going from pumping my fist to shaking my head. I knew I’d have to say something in response. That I would need to address the Republic and set the record accurate if certainly not straight.

Initially I thought about doing a brief reblog commentary noting that although the analysis in the video gets several things quite twisted about Randall, these are understandable omissions considering Rowan does not position herself as having intensive expertise on Outlander canon. But then I started thinking about Rowan’s stated purpose in making the video. The sorts of deeper analysis and nuances that, as Rowan herself points out in her own ways, often get missed with intent in considering the actions of queer villains who are specifically bisexual and sadistic.

And as a bisexual sadist who has frequently encountered the framing of my own sexuality as an automatic threat even by other queer people who otherwise support kink practice I knew it could enhance the positive impact of the original video essay to provide some detailed commentary. Broader systemic issues that Rowan references herself can make it altogether too easy to reproduce the same harms one looks to dismantle. Black Jack Randall is a fictional guy in a fictional world. Yet how the non-fictional world views people like Black Jack—and especially people brought to those dark places in their own minds and actions by their familiar cycles of abuse—matters tremendously to me. Not because I’ve gone down his path myself, but because I understand the stakes of not going down his path.

One thing about me is I would rather pull out what remains of my natural dentition with pliers than take no action when I know I can do something uniquely impactful in addressing that passive reproduction of harm to our community, which very much is our community as both bisexual and asexual creators. In the interest of directly unpacking harmful stereotypes about bisexual sadists, building on the video essay’s overall spotlighting of queer villains and some of the specific ways biphobia factors into those characterizations and storylines, I’m taking this deepest of dives. Doing more. Because it’s my brand, certainly. But moreover because it’s my duty.

As blazingly gay Will Tavington so eloquently stated in The Patriot amid some premium sinister flirting with his enemy Ben Martin: It’s an ugly business doing one’s duty. But sometimes, it’s a real pleasure.

So here, point by point from my own manual transcription of Rowan’s comments—using both the audio and captions for the video to ensure full accuracy, y’all know both my style and my propensity for em dashes—I give you a detailed analysis of the analysis. If you’re envisioning me gesturing wildly at a tangled yarn map like the Pepe Silvia conspiracy theory one from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia then you’ve got the measure of things entirely. Much more this energy here than the XKCD angle of Someone is wrong on the Internet. Indeed, I’d say Rowan is very right on the Internet to open this dialogue and provide folks who’ve made this depth of engagement with various characters referenced in this video the opportunity to build on her own insights.

But “duty calls” nonetheless! Happy Culloden Day to all ye Randallites near and far. Have fun and try not to get disemboweled too much.

Across the seven seasons of Outlander, a drama about a World War II nurse who travels back to 1740s Scotland—I know, don’t question it—perhaps the most loathed character amongst the show’s many villains is Captain Jonathan Randall.

The phrasing here made me reflect with sorrow on how that same premise of time travel elements automatically making something not worthwhile for reasons of implausibility—and thus perceived frivolity—has often made others pass on exploring Outlander at all. It also made me wonder, as many other things in the video essay continue to do, if perhaps the commentary draws on familiarity with only the first season of the show despite Black Jack’s storyline extending into the third season in live action and beyond that in impact. That would seem a lost opportunity considering the depth of analysis of other canons like Interview with the Vampire and Hazbin Hotel here. Both of which I highly recommend for folks who’ve not yet had the pleasure!

I also noted how the video essay makes no mention whatsoever of Randall’s canonical nickname of “Black Jack” anywhere, which seems strange given what a major plot point this becomes right from the start in S1E01 “Sassenach”. I see this as a missed opportunity to get into some of the basic nuances here about his sadism, which itself only gets mentioned minimally despite the surrounding context. The video essay sets Randall up as a sadist with the framing of this segment but then doesn’t really connect those dots. I’ve done that for y’all before with my “Red Black and Shades of Gray” meta comparing sadism themes in Outlander and The Patriot canons, which contrasts the former’s frequent depiction of sexual interest in actions causing intentional pain in Black Jack Randall’s actions with the latter’s depiction of strategic interest in actions producing incidental pain in Will Tavington’s.

Speaking of the Outlander and The Patriot contrast between the canons’ respective evil Redcoat characters, I had some notes jotted down in the background of my various in-progress BJR fics that explores canonical nicknames for Randall and Tavington and what these monikers lampshade about their respective characterizations. I also had another meta in much more primal stages of development exploring rape themes in both canons and the nuances of how sexual violence gets invoked in storylines featuring Randall and Tavington. That phrasing is very deliberate for good reason; Will Tavington doesn’t rape anyone. And Randall’s own sexual violence doesn’t play out remotely the way one might think from watching this video. Apropos of this, I had another meta envisioned about homosociality in Outlander and how Randall’s bisexuality makes him an outcast among straight and queer characters alike—inspired of course by a dear mutual exploring similar themes with Tavington in The Patriot canon.

In the first of what became many drafts of this Very Long Essay, I said “it will probably be quite some time until I get any of these finished” and then spent a few days turning that over in my head. Indeed, the process of drafting this piece to encourage readers to peek behind the curtain of Black Jack Randall’s life has necessarily involved some deeper reflection on things behind the curtain of my own life. Including how I still—at 40 unlikely years old and counting—often do things out of feelings of obligation rather than genuine desire.

Did I mention I’m a rape survivor? And that I couldn’t possibly count how many times I’ve let someone take dozens of “no” signals as a “yes” because of what it would cost me to refuse? It’s okay to enjoy certain aspects of fandom casually. Even if one isn’t already doing tons of other activity that’s anything but casual. Let yourself enjoy things. This world robs us of so much joy even when we try with all our might to protect it, to hold onto it. I am begging all of you to let yourself enjoy things before it’s too late. To do what Randall didn’t in canon—to live, and to stop willfully breaking his own heart.

If you read my blog, you know that this year has been an absolute hellscape on many fronts and that I am constantly slammed with even more of a professional overload than usual while dealing with A Lot in both the mental and physical health domains. And I generally publish at least one novella-length transformative work for Outlander each month on top of that. As a good friend put it: If I had a full-time job and had the energy to volunteer on top of that, I don’t think I’d ever write. I do what I do not because it is good for me, but because I am certifiably insane. This is not hyperbole or satire. I easily qualify for the designation per the DSM. Which has faults in spades and I’m not endorsing in the slightest, mind. My point is that I write not because I have the time or the energy to spare, but rather because if I do not write I will feel as if I cannot breathe. Why? Asked and answered.

So, a note for the good of the order: I can wait a long, long time before I write another fandom essay. This is a Sisters of Mercy reference, because of course it is. I’m writing this response to the video essay instead of finishing development on the fic I otherwise could probably have released for the Battle of Culloden anniversary on April 16. Ideally I would have done both, wouldn’t I? In addition to already releasing the prior installment of that continuity on April 13 no less! Perhaps if I’d just tried harder I could’ve given you two different lengthy writings in honor of the specific day. Or at least released something else on AO3 for April without waiting until the last minute like a slacker.

That’s the kind of thinking that made me stop sleeping entirely and wind up having a complete breakdown both mentally and physically. For those who are new around here, this is an even worse idea for me than it is for most humans because of a progressive genetic disease that kills people on the regular even when they do sleep and eat adequately and generally show compassion for themselves.

Accordingly, that sort of thinking about my own self-worth as anything other than an ATM for other people’s consumption of output is also what made me complete a PhD in literally two years while working full-time and being actively in the process of dying from my disease. I got on a medication that saved my lungs and my life just over a year after defending my dissertation. It’s taken another decade to learn the lesson I should have learned back then. How did Annie Lennox put it? Dying is easy; it's living that scares me. Paging Black Jack Randall—because if that isn’t the absolute biggest Culloden energy I don’t know what is.

It is amazing and terrible what sadism can do when turned inward on a person. The original video essay I’m responding to here never quite got around to how masterfully Randall’s character spotlights this pattern in several ways. Because the video is much broader by design than it is deep, and thus does not allow for more thorough engagement of the source material in commenting on Black Jack’s character, a lot of the same tropes the video essay aims to unpack could get repackaged with new hats instead without these additional details. So in the interest of not sending people who aren’t bisexual sadists to do bisexual sadists’ jobs, I’m giving y’all the goods.

As a British captain in an occupied Scotland, Randall radiates pure villainy.

Does he? I’m not so sure at all. First, see here for details focused closely on Outlander itself. Second, see here for use of Black Jack’s storylines in Outlander as examples of a larger trope. Search both of those pages for “Even Evil Has Loved Ones” using your browser’s Find function and you’ll get some telling material. Catch that reference to the Duke of Sandringham and Mary Hawkins in the second link, did you? We’ll get to those in time. Oh, how we will get to those.

The complete lack of mention of Season 2 and especially the iconic BJR episode near the end makes this oversight unsurprising. I think touching on that content just briefly would have supported Rowan’s overall purpose in making the initial video. At the same time, I’m guessing that stimulating nuanced and enduring dialogue about queer villains is the most important aim of the original essay! Indeed, S2E12 “The Hail Mary” represents the absolute pinnacle of my plunge into permanent derangement about Randall for reasons likely obvious considering everything I’ve already shared about my own backstory in the process of waxing loquacious to fill in additional canonical details that didn’t feature in the referenced video essay here.

I promised that the notes about my own sexual proclivities would come back, did I not? As BJR is canonically known for doing, I always keep my word. Not hyperbole in the slightest for either of us. On Black Jack’s end this gets referenced explicitly by Claire in Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber when she is helping Randall care for his dying brother Alex. It also gets demonstrated consistently by other characters and Randall himself throughout his storylines in both Season 1 and Season 2 of the show.

So indeed, oneof the things I find most resonant about Black Jack is that he leans into whatever the other person in an encounter is giving him and bases his own behavior on that. This is made quite clear on the show in numerous ways—and arguably even clearer in the source novels by Diana Gabaldon, wherein we learn from Book 1 / Outlander that Black Jack frequently has trysts with domestic employees in the Scottish countryside.

Many people find Black Jack charming and handsome, to the point that he has a drawer full of perfume-scented love letters in his office at Fort William. Hilarious comic relief because he’d clearly have no reason for keeping those around other than masturbation fodder. Those of you who’ve circulated that meme about jerking off face down on the bed with the #black jack randall tag applied are entirely understanding the assignment.

For all the times he’s sexually assaulted someone—which seems to be countable on one hand for any person who isn’t Jamie himself, and near zero for anyone who isn’t associated with Jamie Fraser in some way—Randall has clearly had plenty of consensual sex with people who are not only willing but also entirely enthusiastic to get in his breeches. In the books we also learn about some rumors surrounding another prisoner named Alex MacGregor. These are never confirmed and it’s unclear even from the rumors themselves what the exact nature of Black Jack’s relationship with MacGregor was.

Why is this so important to highlight in analysis of queer villains? Here I go again quoting Carmen Maria Machado as I have before in both fic and commentary and surely will again: The world is full of hurt people who hurt people. Even if the dominant culture considers you an anomaly, that doesn’t mean you can’t be common, common as fucking dirt. This, friends, is the thesis of Black Jack Randall.

He shows little to no redeeming qualities, offers no sympathetic backstory to why he acts the way he does, and appears purely to have been driven by rage and violent pleasure.

Oh my. I’m going to leave S2E05 “Untimely Resurrection” and S2E12 “The Hail Mary” alone for the moment. But even in S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” and S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” we start to get some light shed on what Randall is really doing in Scotland. We learn by degrees later just how much his reasons for being there belie what we see on the surface. This gets expanded on in the books where the reveal on Randall’s benefactor the Duke of Sandringham being a secret Jacobite is much more detailed. But even on the show, we learn by S2E11 “Vengeance Is Mine” that Sandringham got outed as a suspected traitor to the Crown.

Goodness knows he's been outed as gay from the start to everyone but Claire, who didn’t learn this until much later after making the initial blunder of falling for Black Jack’s gambit about Sandringham having a wife. Not that this would have stopped him from being gay, of course. So-called “lavender marriage” was indeed relatively commonplace—and remains so now in some communities—both generally and in Outlander specifically. I’ll cover that in detail when we get to the points about Lord John Grey below. Notably for now, Sandringham rather than Randall himself is much more centered in a villain role in Season 2. And apropos of other content here, he absolutely doesn’t qualify for tropes about redeeming qualities. The extent of his monstrosity gets revealed in that same episode near the end of Season 2 when it comes to light that he ordered his valet Albert Danton to attack and rape his own goddaughter Mary Hawkins in an alleyway in Paris.

Even early in the series it thus seems difficult to consider Black Jack the most loathsome villain in Outlander. We’ll get to Mary in earnest—and the extreme tenderness with which Black Jack always treats her from their first meeting until his death at Culloden Moore—as we go along. For now, remember what Claire learned about Black Jack’s fate all the way back in S1E01 “Sassenach” where she and her husband Frank Randall were looking into his family genealogy in the Reverend Reginald Wakefield’s office at Inverness during their long-belated honeymoon. Some details missing there certainly, which only get revealed by degrees in Season 2. Black Jack really is Frank’s 5x great-grandfather though; he’s just not his only 5x great-grandfather.

I should probably mention here that I’m donor conceived and that I wasn’t told the truth… No, that’s putting it too kindly. I did note that I’ve always been quite dedicated to seeing the good in people who do bad deeds, and to working tirelessly to bring it out. But enough is enough. My parents lied to my face for 18 years about my ancestry. I asked them point-blank about it several times and they still told me lies. I finally got the truth out of my mother on a balcony overlooking an olive grove halfway around the world. The bus ride to get back to the nearest city and the airport were the longest four hours of my life. I never traveled with them again. And the hole inside of me never fully closed, and never will.

This too will resurface when I get to the content about Mary Hawkins and her marriage to Black Jack. I’m getting there, I promise. As my spouse once put it: I knew you were going to land the plane.

Getting back to early portions of Outlander canon and what we learn about Black Jack in Season 1 though, there’s also the iconic S1E08 “Both Sides Now” extended scene in which Black Jack gives Claire his own perspective on what he’s doing in Scotland in the first place and how distasteful he finds his work. How badly he wishes he could just go home and be warm and take a bath. How little he cares about the outcome of the conflict and how futile he feels it all is. We already know from a couple episodes prior that he loathes both the British aristocracy and his own superiors in the Army, who treat him like he’s lower than the dirt he then passive-aggressively shakes out all over their wardroom at Brockton. Including and especially his commanding officer Lord Thomas, a general who’s about as flamingly gay-coded as Will Tavington in The Patriot.

Oh, and speaking of being driven only by violent pleasure that is entirely incorrect—S2E02 “Not in Scotland Anymore” alone makes this perfectly clear. I’ve previously covered the finer details about Black Jack bottoming enthusiastically, and also enjoying gentler sexual experiences as well as rougher ones.

Black Jack’s interactions with Jenny in her flashbacks from S1E12 “Lallybroch” also shed light on this; once she goes inside the house with him, he only touches her with gentle curiosity until she bashes him over the head with a heavy object. Even then, he responds by…tossing her onto to the bed and getting partially undressed. When she starts laughing at him because he can’t get an erection (a telling piece of evidence of how Black Jack ultimately loses interest in sex if the other person doesn’t want it to at least some degree, or feel strong emotions about it that they’re willing to show) he panics and conks her head against the bedpost so he can flee without it being obvious that she chased him off.

Then there’s also the prior content from Book 1 / Outlander about the scented letters and the maids, some of which also comes back in Book 8 / Written in My Own Heart’s Blood when Roger Wakefield goes looking for Black Jack at Fort William after time traveling to 1739 a couple of weeks after Randall’s installation as commander there. I’ll come back to that a bit later given how much that scene reveals about Randall’s character and his reasons for being in Scotland.

And most of all, his villainy is compounded by the fact that he will rape, torture, and murder men and women alike—an equal opportunity monster.

Correct in essentials on the first two items as I cover elsewhere. Not so much on the third, though! In fact, the TV adaptation clarifies this beyond the information we get in the books. Whereas Book 1 / Outlander features murky rumors about Randall possibly killing one of his own soldiers at Fort William so he can pin the murder on Jamie, show canon makes little of this and indeed offers several opportunities to see Black Jack deliberately not killing people who attack him.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the final episode where he appears, S3E01 “The Battle Joined”. In that Culloden-centric episode, we watch Randall get fully pulled from his horse by a group of Scots warriors who then proceed to attack him. Up to that point Black Jack has just been shooing people away from his horse by swinging his cavalry saber in the air. Once on the ground, he basically just elbows his way out of the cluster of Jacobite soldiers and makes a beeline for Jamie instead.

Then of course there’s also Black Jack’s aggrieved, hesitant behavior at Wentworth Prison in S1E16 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” right before the cows show up to give him the business. Although Randall is well known for keeping his word, even by people who despise him absolutely, he looks defeated and anxious when Jamie reminds him that he owes him the debt of taking his life ahead of the gallows in exchange for finally “[making] free of [his] body” (see S2E02 “Castle Leoch”) in the night. Jack takes out a dagger and sort of swings it around idly—with a look on his face that can only be described as “Really?” Any playfulness remaining there seems to come from Black Jack eyeing Jamie’s nude body and thinking about what else he might do with the blade besides killing him.

Randall has a zero kill count onscreen in the television show. I’d be remiss not to note here how this places him behind even his own eventual wife Mary Hawkins, often heralded quite accurately as one of the characters in Outlander who comes closest to embodying pure goodness. But of course, the trauma of sexual violence can twist a person’s mind horribly. I might know just a little about this myself. And it only takes one experience, more so given the horrifying context outlined in S2E11 “Vengeance Is Mine”. Like anyone else, Mary has the capacity for brutal violence herself if pushed sufficiently far. I consider it something of a miracle I never went that route myself considering my own experiences can scarcely even be counted in any meaningful way. I can only think in terms of years. Seven of them whose shadows will never fully retract. When I say Black Jack and Mary were a perfectly arranged marriage, it isn’t for nothing.

We’ll get to her in earnest, I promise! Of course, I’ve already covered that ground in fiction before.

Randall makes his monstrous mark on Season 1 by sexually assaulting both of the show’s protagonists, Claire and Jamie.

Correct in essentials, but potentially a false equivalence. I’m not sure how much the video essay was intended to set the assaults on Jamie and Claire up as direct mirrors of one another. There is however a common thread here worth pulling out: How in Season 1 Black Jack only goes through with assaulting people who show at least some sexual interest in him.

Randall assaults three people in Season 1 overall: Claire in S1E01 “Sassenach” and S1E08 “Both Sides Now”; Jenny in flashbacks from S1E02 “Castle Leoch” and S1E12 “Lallybroch”; and Jamie in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” and S1E16 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul”. He also propositions Claire and Jamie together in S1E09 “The Reckoning” in an echo of propositioning Jamie individually in the S1E02 “Castle Leoch” flashback. But of the three people he assaults, only two respond with any sustained evidence of interest amid their anger and indignation.

The hateful attraction Jamie feels for Black Jack has been flogged—to borrow Frank’s phrasing about press coverage of Claire’s mysterious disappearance and return from S2E01 “Through a Glass, Darkly”—almost as badly as the man’s own back by this point. So I won’t belabor that here except to say it’s entirely nonrandom that Jamie keeps enticing Black Jack into further conflict after recovering from the brutal assaults at Wentworth and discovering Randall alive in Paris. He’s still having horny nightmares over two decades later about everything from weird group therapy scenarios with shamans on misty mountains (not hyperbole, see Book 6 / A Breath of Snow and Ashes for the goods) to fighting a totally naked Black Jack at Culloden and winding up covered in his “hot, hot blood” while they lie on the ground in a clinch (see Book 9 / Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone for that especially choice sequence) and exhausting Claire’s patience so badly in rehashing these that he eventually resorts to rambling about the dreams to Jenny instead.

What doesn’t tend to come out as much in analysis of the TV series is the key plot point from Book 1 / Outlander that Claire feels attracted to Black Jack because of his resemblance to Frank. Not just in appearance, but also in certain mannerisms and pleasures—see the shaving scene from S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” and Claire’s flashbacks to shaving Frank thusly with the very same razor, for example. Little surprise then how in Book 1 / Outlander she specifically mentions feeling “compelled to open [her] legs for him” when he ties her hands behind her back at Fort William in the equivalent sequence to later portions of S1E08 “Both Sides Now”.

By her own admission this latent attraction-by-association does not wane entirely until after she and her friends rescue Jamie from Wentworth Prison at the end of Season 1. After that point, things go the other way. Although Claire spends Season 2 in an odd state of détente with Black Jack himself, even after the events of S2E07 “Faith” for which neither she nor Jamie explicitly blame Jack, she initially feels afraid of Frank when she reconnects with him back in the 20th Century as seen in S2E01 “Through a Glass, Darkly”. Why mention this here? That fear only subsides when Claire sees how much Frank treasures being a father to Brianna, the child she conceived with Jamie before going back through the stones to her own time. Indeed, later installments of the book series also show Claire deliberately striving for accuracy in her remembrances of both Frank and Black Jack as complicated men who were capable of deep love.

Scuffling is also arousing for Black Jack. Although the shaving scene demonstrates that this isn’t the only sort of physical pleasure he enjoys, he certainly gets a kick out of it regardless. So Claire’s willingness to scrap with him—including when she literally gives him a kick to the testicles with her knee in S1E01 “Sassenach” after he pins her to the ground in the forest—heightens the arousal and feels like play to him. Contrast this with Jenny’s incredulous laughter and complete unwillingness to take the fight further after hitting him over the head with a blunt object to get him to back off.

Does this take any of Randall’s actions out of the territory of assault? Nope. But it does provide a context to his motivations. Although his means of seeking affection are entirely warped, at the end of the day Black Jack really is after human connection. I’m entirely in agreement with other Outlander fans who’ve mentioned wanting a companion series about the Randall family. I have my own ideas about that history that I’ve referenced in transformative works. I would also love to see Gabaldon’s own perspective on what damaged Black Jack’s psyche so badly.

Finally, Randall’s treatment of women often differs from his treatment of men just in general. By his own admission in S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” he is “not a casual person with women” usually. He says this while expressing regret for how he treated Claire in the woods outside Craigh Na Dun. Which is very genuine per his actor’s own comments about playing the character; Tobias Menzies has mentioned in interviews that Black Jack always believes whatever he’s saying fully in the moment.

Something to note about Black Jack in general is that he will express regret and then claim he doesn’t feel it. This is probably quite accurate considering Jack shows a lot of signs of dissociation and may not feel much of anything most of the time. We see an example of this simultaneous expression and negation of regret in S2E12 “The Hail Mary” during the sequence at the tavern. And although the meaning of Randall’s comment about not being casual initially seems ambiguous, we get the reveal on it entirely in that same episode via the dynamic between Black Jack and Mary Hawkins. He takes her well-being and her safety so seriously that he’d rather die than risk any chance of hurting her.

Of course, his brandy-soaked mind isn’t realizing that she’ll get hurt far worse if he does die. We see enough in both book and show canon to understand how Black Jack treated Mary in life. Even that single moment where he enters the room at the boarding house says a lot; his entire face lights in a genuine smile that reaches his eyes as soon as she looks at him. The interactions between the two of them are some of the most delicate and tender moments of the entire season.

These sequences also provide some context for the different handling of the moments after Alex’s death. In the Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber version of this sequence Black Jack is crying and so drunk he can barely stand, whereas in episode S2E12 “The Hail Mary” he’s more lucid and vacillates between catatonic silence and a harrowing moment of punching his brother’s cadaver. Calls back to Claire’s comment in S1E02 “Castle Leoch” about how “there’s no joy in flogging a dead man” because of course this wasn’t about joy. Black Jack is entirely devastated, both for himself and for Mary. And although Mary herself looks pained at seeing this unfold, and clings to Claire in response, she looks more heartbroken than afraid. Her depth of emotion in that moment contrasts clearly with her apathy at gazing upon Danton’s dead body and Sandringham’s decapitated corpse back at his Bellhurst Manor estate (or Belmont House depending on which version of canon one consults) in the previous episode.

Finally and perhaps relatedly, I should spotlight Black Jack’s “I choose the whore” comment from S1E01 “Sassenach” about his own taste in women. Although part of an ironic commentary on the juxtaposition of Claire’s accent and vocabulary with her ample use of profanity, this also tells us a fair amount about Randall’s overall attitudes toward class. We learn in other portions of canon such as S2E06 “Best Laid Schemes” and various sequences in the first two books that Randall visits sex workers and that there aren’t lurid rumors swirling around about his treatment of feminine prostitutes. Black Jack’s sexual antagonism toward other men is more intense by design.

Randall’s queerness is a weapon that he wields indiscriminately.

Not really. That would be his dick. Randall generally doesn’t go through with assaulting people who don’t show any sexual interest during the initial scuffle. In fact, he can’t even get aroused physically when the other person isn’t fighting him in a horny way. Even when the person is somewhat horny it still doesn’t work for Randall unless their level of arousal is high. We see this with the assault on Claire during S1E08 “Both Sides Now” and especially in the equivalent scene from Book 1 / Outlander.

The only exception to this is an assault that happens during Season 2—which definitely seems like a missed opportunity to mention in direct parallel to the reference to preying on children in Rowan’s analysis of Lestat from Interview with the Vampire. During the S2E06 “Best Laid Schemes” chronology later revealed in full during S2E07 “Faith” Randall assaults Claudel, a boy who either pickpockets or works (depending on whether one goes with the show or book version of the canon backstory) at the Maison Élise brothel in Paris.

On the show it’s clear that he does this specifically to get Jamie to fight him; he knows Jamie is on the premises collecting debts and that Claudel has been walking around with him. Sure enough, upon hearing Claudel scream Jamie comes bursting into the room, hauls Black Jack into the hallway, and proceeds to beat the daylights out of him. The look of delight on Randall’s face at seeing him appear and subsequently getting pummeled by him leaves little doubt as to his objective in assaulting Claudel.

In Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber the timing and particulars of this storyline differ substantially. But as in the show, Randall is canonically an alcoholic and gets progressively deeper into his cups throughout the Paris storyline and his brother’s subsequent health decline. At the brothel he’s so drunk he doesn’t know where he is, what is going on around him, or even seem to remember who he is. Given the greater development of intrigue in the books surrounding whether Randall had a sexual relationship with his younger brother Alex, it seems likely that the angle here is Black Jack somehow seeking Alex in a person who reminds him of his brother during his early adolescent years.

No one is safe.

Aren’t they? Here we go, then. Time for some detailed Mary Hawkins content at long last.

The basics: We learn all the way back in S1E01 “Sassenach” and equivalent sequences from Book 1 / Outlander that before dying at the Battle of Culloden, Black Jack Randall married someone named Mary Hawkins and that she later gave birth to a son named Denys. Claire encounters Mary Hawkins for the first time in France in S2E02 “Not in Scotland Anymore” and grows closer to her while having the vague sense that she knows that name from somewhere. It isn’t until learning in S2E03 “Useful Occupations and Deceptions” that Black Jack himself is still alive that Claire realizes where she’s seen Mary’s name before: Frank’s family bible during a meeting with the Reverend Wakefield.

At first glance, Mary is everything one wouldn’t expect in someone who’d eventually marry Black Jack—or at least Claire thinks so. She feels completely befuddled by how someone who seems so meek and timid could possibly end up with someone like Black Jack. This becomes all the more confusing for Claire in S2E04 “La Dame Blanche” when Mary is getting involved with Jack’s younger brother Alex, a curate who has accompanied his employer the Duke of Sandringham to Paris. After Claire and Mary are attacked in an alleyway at Sandringham’s behest, resulting in Mary getting raped by a mysterious assailant later revealed to be the Duke’s own valet Albert Danton, Alex cares for her—and then gets locked in the Bastille for his trouble. Claire wrestles with her conscience about whether to get Alex freed given her own knowledge of how Black Jack and Mary are supposed to wind up together if Frank is ever to be born at all.

Leave it having half the information resulting in getting things half right, as often happens in Outlander and in life alike.

Mary has been leveling up her confidence throughout Season 2 and corresponding portions of Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber while growing closer to both Claire and Alex. We don’t see onscreen how her social relationship with Black Jack himself evolves once he arrives in Paris—but in the TV series the two clearly know one another well already when Jack shows up at the boarding house in S2E12 “The Hail Mary”. In book canon the different pacing of events puts Black Jack’s wedding to Mary and Alex’s death earlier in the year, leaving a couple months until the Battle of Culloden. On the show Black Jack and Mary are only married for three days but have substantially more history with one another prior to their wedding. Blending the canons offers a portrait of two people uniquely poised to understand each other, united through their shared love of Alex but also oddly well matched on several other fronts.

Have I freeze-framed those sequences of S2E12 “The Hail Mary” that feature Mary and Black Jack interacting? Yes. Several times. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to plummet into that sort of derangement.

For the rest of you fine folk, the cocktail napkin summary here is that Mary represents both the shining gentleness that Black Jack so prizes in his younger brother—and I’d encourage anyone who still thinks of him as a Complete Monster to consider how Alex turned out so well in the first place given Jack is documented as the only member of their family who’s taken responsibility for his well-being—and the capacity for ruthless violence that Black Jack repeatedly points out in himself.

Here I should mention though that Black Jack remains as dedicated to veracity in this as in anything else. When he says “I dwell in darkness, madam—and darkness is where I belong” to Claire at Brockton in S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” he’s saying this as much to convince himself as to convince her. Ditto his comments to her at the tavern, most of all the haunting question: “Do you really want Mary in my bed?” Where exactly would she be safer than with someone who has consistently treated her like gold, who looks at her as if the sun shines directly from her face, and who would move mountains to honor his beloved brother’s wishes? And wouldn’t Captain Zero Kill Count also understand well from Mary’s own history what would happen to him if he were to lay so much as an unwanted finger on her? She killed a practical stranger in all but cold blood with a triumphant hiss of satisfaction!

Badass, by the way. Judging by his responses to Claire throughout the series—see his comments in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” describing Claire as “no coward” and “a fit match for [her] husband” for example—I suspect Black Jack agreed. He even said explicitly in the same episode that he “cannot give [Claire] a better compliment than that” regarding her bravery and nerve mirroring Jamie’s own. I imagine quite a bit is happening behind those hazel eyes (described by Claire oftentimes as cold but noted distinctly by Roger in Book 8 / Written in My Own Heart’s Blood as being warm) whenever Black Jack looks at Mary.

Especially because Mary herself got Randall’s own abuser offed via Murtagh Fraser keeping a promise of his own in S2E11 “Vengeance Is Mine” by following up Mary’s own dagger-assisted disposal of Danton with an axe swing to Sandringham’s neck. Consider one of the only things Black Jack tells us verbatim about his life offscreen: In S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” a visibly shaken Randall tells Claire about finding Private McGreevey beheaded a couple weeks prior. By contrast, Mary regards her own godfather’s headless corpse with a shrug and says “I think we’d better go” in a matter-of-fact tone. Mary, all of 16 years old at the time, has no combat experience whatsoever and keeps her cool about this absolutely. Quite an evolution even from earlier in the same episode when she questions her ability to assist Claire in communicating with Hugh Munro just outside to help Murtagh and Jamie sneak into the Duke’s house.

Our girl comes through in the end—right before we watch the steel in her spine break through in earnest as she picks up a dagger from a table full of food and ends her rapist’s life after the reveal of this being the same man who attacked her in Paris. And she doesn’t lose her nerve after the immediate danger has passed, either. When we next encounter her at Inverness in S2E12 “The Hail Mary” she’s bullying a pharmacist into giving her more laudanum to ease Alex’s coughing and pain as his illness progresses. Then when Claire recognizes her and says hello, Mary immediately lights into her for conspiring to keep her and Alex apart.

I’ll note that as a person with progressive lung disease myself, I really appreciated Mary’s ire here. However strategic and born of understandable fears that Frank would never get to live, Claire’s invocation earlier in Season 2 of the tired old idea that chronically ill people make undesirable partners—that we can only take from the world and never give—rings both hollow and sour. After all, I’ve been there before. And in many ways I’m still scrambling frantically to escape the shadow of those ideas. To quote my spouse again: You never stop running until long after the demons finally stop chasing you.

I admire Mary Hawkins because she knew when to run—and moreover, because she knew when to stop running and bring the man who chased her in the first place down in sniveling puddle with a knife through his kidney. “It’s messy,” Black Jack said back in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” of killing people with daggers. But the visceral impact there—exact words and no mistake—never fails to feel any less relatable for me, considering my own experiences.

Here’s the other thing: People came to save Mary Hawkins. When she needed help, people showed up. She killed her own rapist but she had an audience and she had backup. Murtagh demonstrated how seriously he took the promise to avenge Mary if he ever found out who was responsible for the attacks on her and Claire. Black Jack took showing up in Paris to help Alex earlier in Season 2 with similar gravity. In Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber Claire specifically reflects on how “Jack Randall was a gentleman” with all his promises, and has never given anyone reason to doubt his word despite being awful in many other ways. The fact that Black Jack chose to keep his vows to Mary by caving to the self-loathing fear of being able to love her better by dying and leaving her and Denys his pension than by living and showing her the same fierce devotion he showed Alex doesn’t negate the seriousness of those promises in his mind.

Again exact words there regarding love as action. I’m certain from her own subsequent sharing about Black Jack to their son that Mary would have appreciated both the devotion and the ferocity. And likewise, that Jack himself already appreciated Mary’s own variety of darkness and the specifics of how it manifested after first taking root.

In that spirit I highly recommend visiting the Outlander Wiki page about Mary for additional specifics on her background and character arc. Don’t sleep on the pictures if you do venture over there, especially the ones featuring her looking deep in thought while wearing an elaborate silk gown. That’s not the face of an innocent little lamb with no capacity for brutality of her own. And even prior to her rape, Mary often manipulates people to get what she wants by pouting and playing coy. Which of course tracks—Siri, play “Rich Girl” by Hall and Oates! See also my reblog commentary on a dear mutual’s wonderful art envisioning Black Jack and Mary in a happier timeline.

TL;DR: Mary has a lot of steel in her spine. But it doesn’t save her from additional tribulations. Indeed, those further struggles wind up serving as evidence of Black Jack’s own character and how he treated her himself during their brief marriage prior to his death.

I don’t tend to cry over media. But I absolutely teared up reading Denys Randall’s words about Black Jack in Book 9 / Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone. Denys is Black Jack’s son who—true to the expanded version in Book 1 / Outlander of the prophecy Claire whispers into Randall’s ear in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison”—never got to meet him because he died in battle. I won’t go into this in detail just here, but that book resoundingly refutes the idea that Black Jack ever treated his family like anything other than gold.

Even in Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber he speaks with grace and understanding about his older brother Edward, the family heir who is stingy and neglectful and married to a person who clearly and openly hates Black Jack for being queer. In that later book though, we learn how Black Jack actually treated Mary and how carefully he made sure that Denys would always be taken care of financially even if something happened to Mary later on and the income from her widow’s pension was lost. He specifically set aside money for Denys to buy a commission in the Army—or to get an education if he had been considered female, so that he wouldn’t wind up trapped in a loveless marriage for the sake of survival.

The contrast Denys then draws with how Mary’s second husband Robert Isaacs—who was very materially wealthy and very kind to Denys but not a loving spouse—gave me chills. Yeah, Mary Hawkins did get abused by one of her husbands. Just not Black Jack Randall. The clarity with which Book 9 / Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone shows how much better off Mary would have been socially and emotionally if Black Jack had survived to raise Denys with her wrecked me and still does.

I was and am lucky to have an amazing dad. The lies he and my mother told are wholly understandable stains on the records of two people who have always done their best in an absolutely garbage world that thinks very little of fathers who do not sire their children. And I know some of the members of the sperm donor’s family as well, though not my biological father himself. They’re pretty cool people too. One of my great-cousins on that side said he’d be proud to have been my biological father if he too had chosen to donate to that research study. I did cry then. I’ll never forget opening that letter with my hands shaking while I sat on the stoop of my old house. I can’t impress enough on those of you who are direct genetic descendants of both your parents what that meant to me. I can’t tell you how it feels to look in the mirror and always see a huge question mark. To miss a person you’ve never met, to feel them there like the phantom sensation from an amputated body part.

Denys Randall understands that entirely. And as much as Alex clearly loved his son in life and death alike, we come away from that storyline knowing just how thoroughly Black Jack was a real father to Denys. We also learn how Mary keeps his memory alive and still carries a torch for him as she also continues to mourn Alex. Knowing how much she withdrew into herself haunts me. I keep fixing it in my fics. There will never be a story of mine where Mary isn’t loved and cherished—no matter how much trauma she goes through.

Which also seems to have been Black Jack’s philosophy about both her and Denys. Tragically if quite understandably, he deluded himself into thinking he could love them better in death than in life. The reveal in Book 9 / Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone on just how tragic a choice this wound up being still crushes me. Because it’s such a hopeless lesson, isn’t it? The idea that cycles of abuse and violence can only be broken by meeting a gruesome end oneself. That humanity has no hope for redemption. That rapists can only ever be rapists, nothing else. Even if they were clearly many other things all along.

This is, incidentally, why as much as I enjoy exploring continuities in which the specific canonical unfolding of events from Wentworth Prison gets averted to at least some degree, I have more active continuities in which this does not happen. I even retconned one of my older stories somewhat because I realized that for the rest of the continuity to play out as I envisioned it, and fully develop the ideas I wanted to develop, straying more than a hair from the exact canonical take in the initial arc didn’t make sense. The results from that deeper thinking are what I just dropped this past Saturday in observance of Alex Randall’s death anniversary. Among my published stories, I presently have three continuities that feature some aversion of the canonical Wentworth sexual assaults and three others that feature no aversion whatsoever.

Someone once asked me if I thought Black Jack and Jamie could ever have a healthy relationship after what happened at the prison in canon. It certainly seems unlikely. But fiction isn’t exclusively about showing healthy relationships. To me, it’s about showing relationships that make sense for the story being told. And in that regard, I do explore the strange intimacy that sometimes grows between trauma bonded people. After all, it’s a tale I’ve come to know well. One I’ve written in my own life. One I’m arguably still writing.

I cannot bring myself to swallow whatever poisonous purity philosophy would lead me to believe that people who have sexually assaulted others in the past cannot have consensual sexual relationships as well. I also can’t ignore the considerable data I’ve amassed on this from direct personal experience.

If people cannot change, what are any of us even doing here? Why not just give up the ghost of life on a burning planet—leave the indignities and hurts of corporeality behind forever? That sort of thinking seems more bleak than anything Black Jack Randall could possibly say or do. Indeed, him winding up looking at his own choices that way in the end broke two hearts irrevocably. And that’s a charitable estimate. Jamie’s own haunting memories, vivid dreams, and enduring obsessions about Black Jack throughout Book 4 / Drums of Autumn and beyond make clear that killing Randall didn’t solve anything, or diminish the formidable pull Jamie feels toward him. Even in show canon, when Claire reveals in S2E03 “Useful Occupations and Deceptions” that Jack is still alive Jamie breathes a sigh of relief and expresses joy at having his will to live restored.

Sure, he frames this around a specific interest in getting revenge against Randall. What’s that saying about digging two graves? There’s no exact source for this in any documented Confucius writings, but the idea certainly holds up. Jamie almost heads to his own grave for the sake of tangling with Randall one last time. For his trouble he winds up nearly dying on the battlefield, then doing the same from a severe infection secondary to his wounds, then goes on the lam for several years and lives in a cave, and then winds up incarcerated under especially deplorable conditions before getting paroled to indentured servitude and winding up coerced into sex again. All while still having relentless horny dreams about Black Jack—which only get hornier after Claire returns to him nearly two decades later. Amazing.

It perfectly correlates that he’s not just a sadistic person, but also holds a powerful position as a member of a colonizing military force.

This came so close to full accuracy. Like frostbitten Edward Little gasping his last with chains in his face levels of close.

Sadistic person? Yes. Powerful position? Kind of. We’ll get to that in a minute. Colonizing military force? Yes. However, is Black Jack himself a colonizer? Only if one discounts what gets revealed in Season 2 and the equivalent portions of Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber about the Duke of Sandringham having Jacobite sympathies and pulling the strings of Randall’s posting to Fort William.

The Reverend Wakefield and Black Jack’s fifth great-grandson Frank Randall unpack this to some extent in S1E01 “Sassenach” when discussing what Jack was doing in Scotland in the first place and the kind of reputation he built. We don’t get the full goods until close to the end of Season 2 with those scenes in S2E11 “Vengeance Is Mine” where the British Army has Sandringham’s estate surrounded with a massive encampment.

To lay things out quite clearly for those less familiar with Outlander canon: Sandringham was deliberately and strategically trying to incite the Jacobite rebellion. He got Black Jack posted to Fort William specifically because he knew Randall could stir up sentiment against the Crown if given the proper conditions. What’s a better weapon of mass agitation than a terrible guy already maligned by his superiors for being bisexual and kinky and having “unnatural tastes” as Randall himself puts it in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” while rambling to Claire? If he didn’t give direct orders for Black Jack to lean into his worst impulses when presented with worthy adversaries, the Duke certainly gamed the system as much as possible by marooning Randall in a cold and isolated place where most of the civilians thought he was weird and most of the soldiers thought he was creepy.

Jack doesn’t connect all these dots directly during the scenes at the prison. But in S1E08 “Both Sides Now” during the Fort William sequences—in the broadcast version but even more so in this extended cut—we get Black Jack’s own perspectives on his posting in Scotland and how thoroughly he isn’t invested in the conflict there. All he wants is to go back home and be warm again. Which of course he can’t do, because it would spell serious harm for his younger brother per everything we learn throughout Season 2 and Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber.

Is Randall powerful in the Army? More so than the soldiers under his command, certainly. But as a Captain—per both what we see in the Brockton sequences of S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” and historical information on British Army ranks—he’s subordinate to many others. Who very much enjoy putting him in his place, at that. So in terms of power relative to other English soldiers, he’s somewhere in the middle of the structure. To those now busily envisioning Office Space type corporate middle management AUs: I salute you! And I’m gonna need you to come in on Saturday.

So what about with respect to other people and contexts? Black Jack definitely isn’t powerful relative to the Duke of Sandringham, per other content here. Indeed, he spends at least the last decade or so of his adult life quite firmly under Sandringham’s thumb. Probably other body parts too—see Randall’s hedging comments in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” about the Duke liking to talk “especially when he drinks” for example. Book 1 / Outlander and Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber provide additional context about Black Jack’s positionality relative to others in his world—especially via the Duke telling Claire how much Randall craves punishment.

Finally, let’s talk about Black Jack’s status relative to his self-made enemy Jamie Fraser. By which I mean not at all that Jamie is self-made, because of course he isn’t. As a Laird in charge of his own family estate on which tenant farmers pay taxes, Jamie comes from a more powerful family in the Scottish Highlands than Black Jack’s own back in southern England. We learn more from meeting characters like Mary Hawkins later in canon about how “not all baronetcies are created equal” as I once phrased it. Randall’s own father Sir Denys being a baronet didn’t mean much, as evidenced by Black Jack’s own comments to Claire during S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” and equivalent portions of Book 1 / Outlander about his parents paying for tutors to help their son disguise any hint of a Sussex accent.

Ironically the most power Black Jack could’ve had over Jamie in any structural sense would have come from serving as his commander when the younger man fought in the British Army himself. Which would absolutely make for a splendid fic premise, but never happened in canon. Jamie and Black Jack don’t meet until the former is already back from France and settling in anew on his family’s Lallybroch estate in October of 1740.

We certainly meet other people connected to Jamie’s own family who would qualify as colonizers though. Given I already discuss Lord John Grey elsewhere, here I’ll mention Jamie’s aunt Jocasta Cameron as a prime example. Storylines set at her River Run plantation—yikes—beginning in Season 4 of the TV series and corresponding portions of the novels reveal her as not merely a colonizer but an enslaver. One who has the means—and indeed the implements ready at hand—to liberate her slaves but declines to do so. Even after pressure from people close to her. Double yikes.

I don’t want to set Jocasta up as somehow being more villainous than Black Jack; the two characters show us different aspects of the human capacity for knowing harm. However, I do find it telling that a bisexual person whose worst behavior focuses almost entirely on one guy—and otherwise gets directed at people somehow in his orbit—often gets held up as this shining paragon of evil by viewers outside the queer community, a point Rowan makes herself in the original video essay. What I’m specifically unpacking here is the colonialism angle. The bleak side of humanity shows up in many forms in Outlander with respect to colonialism as well as other forms of violence.

The queer figure is not just a danger to the individual, the men or women who might be their victims, but also a danger to society at large—because their existence contradicts oppose truths about what is natural and right.

This tracks. Randall would say so himself—and indeed he does, in almost those same exact words. “I may have what are called unnatural tastes,” he muses to Claire in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” while letting her hair down around her shoulders and then giving her a big old sniff and shivering with delight, “but I do have some aesthetic principles.” You know, just in case anyone was still wondering if Black Jack’s interest in women was genuine. Whether in the show or the books, we get plenty of evidence that Randall is in the mood for cunt as often as not, to borrow his own phrasing.

Incidentally, I need to point out how “me myself, I’m not in the mood for cunt today” is probably the most bisexual line ever uttered on television. Today. Mercy.

And so here we see this twisting of a homophobic rhetoric of queer danger to create a monstrous rapist colonial figurehead.

First, a clarification: The relevant phobia here is biphobia rather than homophobia. Rowan’s video essay covers this overall topic and the distinction between the two phenomena with substantial detail and insight. What doesn’t come through clearly in the video is how gay people are treated with much more respect in the story world of Outlander than their bisexual peers. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than with Lord John Grey, another queer Redcoat whose path intertwines with Jamie’s in numerous ways over the years.

After first encountering Grey as a scared teenager whose life Jamie spares in S2E09 “Je Suis Prest” we encounter him anew years later starting in S3E03 “All Debts Paid” as the incoming warden of Ardsmuir Prison where Jamie is incarcerated. Swiftly mortified by conditions at the prison, Lord John enlists Jamie’s help in working with prisoners and eventually forges a tenuous friendship with him. Much chess is also played. However, a wedge also gets driven between the two men when Lord John places his hand over Jamie’s one evening during a chess game, unaware of his history with Black Jack or how it would make him react to any expression of affection by another man.

But over time, Lord John secures Jamie’s parole to the Helwater estate where each of them respectively wind up entangled with one of the Dunsany sisters. The younger Geneva, a feisty and cantankerous person who develops quite a fondness for Jamie, coerces the Highlander into sleeping with her when she reveals that she knows his true identity and could get him in a lot of trouble. To get Jamie employment and ensure that he could stay out of prison, Lord John had to pass him off as a run-of-the-mill parolee instead of the fabled “Red Jamie” who helped to lead the Jacobite rebellion. Rather ironic considering Jamie killed one of the actual leaders of the rebellion and could likely have gotten significantly better treatment from the Crown based on that—but that’s beyond the scope of this analysis.

Throughout his storylines, whether serving as warden at Ardsmuir or Governor of Jamaica or any of the other roles he occupies over the years, Lord John is shown to be empathetic and kind. Not without fault certainly. Amongst other things there’s an intriguing storyline later in canon involving him and Claire that serves as a reminder of how sexuality is often not black and white. But he does get set up consistently as a foil to Randall, perhaps most effectively in his choice to marry Geneva’s older sister Isobel and care for the child she conceived with Jamie prior to dying while giving birth. Lord John presents a different take on fatherhood, choosing to give of his presence to William Ransom rather than feeling he can love him best in absentia.

The books offer some fascinating scenes in which Lord John’s son William and Black Jack’s son Denys encounter each other while both serving in the British Army in the American Colonies. That’s how we learn some of the information referenced elsewhere about what Mary Hawkins has passed on to her son about his father, and how she feels herself. I resonated a lot with both men’s sense of having a hole inside them. At this point William has lost two mothers and two fathers—Jamie having had quite a hand in the boy’s upbringing until age six. By 1778 when he encounters Denys again, he has learned the truth about who sired him.

I could write a whole other essay about that considering how relatable the entire storyline surrounding William’s parentage is. Folks who read my work likely know by this point that I got into Outlander because the interconnected storylines surrounding the Randall and Fraser families resonate with my own trauma in a way nothing else ever has. For purposes of this essay though, I’ll point out that even after lying to his kid for many years and dealing him a psychic wound that will never heal as a result, Lord John gets hailed as a good dad and a good person.

John Grey absolutely isn’t a rapist. In fact, in S3E04 “Of Lost Things” he reacts with horror at the idea of Jamie giving him sexual favors in exchange for raising his son. It turns out that Grey is already marrying Geneva’s older sister Isobel—another fascinating subject for deeper analysis that I’m planning to incorporate into my “Dispatches from Fort Laggan” continuity.

Brief sidebar apropos of general queer representation themes: The relationship between Lord John and Isobel offers an undersung illustration in Outlander canon of the diverse dynamics in queer marriages. I think there’s ample ground for reading the union between Lord John and Isobel as either a “lavender marriage” between a homosexual and homoromantic man with a heteroromantic or biromantic woman who’s asexual or a purely romantic marriage that doesn’t involve any sexual activity because one person isn’t interested at all and the other person is only interested with members of their own sex.

What’s more relevant here is how Lord John and Isobel clearly share a deep affection for one another that engages their shared love for other family members—quite similar to the dynamic between Black Jack and Mary. In serving as a foil for Black Jack on some fronts, Grey serves as a mirror in others. Unsurprising then how by the time he encounters William again, Denys Randall has dropped “Isaacs” from his surname entirely after the death of his stepfather Robert.

On the colonialism front, it would be difficult to frame Black Jack as being somehow the worse offender. Although not a Jacobite himself because he doesn’t care about the outcome of the English-Scottish conflict one way or another, he serves as an agent for the Jacobite cause de facto by agitating unrest at Sandringham’s behest. Ironically an example of punch-clock villainy in that regard. Although I wouldn’t ordinarily associate that trope with Black Jack for his zeal in antagonistic behavior towards Jamie and anyone in his orbit, it certainly seems to reflect how he approaches his career. Randall has no less antipathy for his fellow English people than he does for Scottish Highlanders, and indeed awkwardly hopes for acceptance by the local people while new at Fort William per his exchange with Roger in Book 8 / Written in My Own Heart’s Blood.

Meanwhile, Lord John’s storyline sees him become Governor of Jamaica. Governor of Jamaica. If that isn’t the epitome of white settler colonialism I don’t know what is.

Here’s a monster against which are two culturally opposed heroes; English Claire and Scottish Jamie can feel equally threatened.

I think I covered most of the relevant contrasts here in my musings on the sexual assaults against Jamie and Claire during Season 1. Here I’ll add that indeed a major plot point for Claire is how she often does not feel threatened by Randall—and how readily he comes to consider her an ally deserving of his deepest respect. This seems especially interesting in the context of Claire’s own ambiguous sexuality, which I touch on directly in some brief discussion of Geillis Duncan. And from their encounter in the gardens at Versailles from S2E05 onward, Claire by her own admission doesn’t consider Black Jack any sort of threat. She wants Jamie to leave him alone and let him help his brother out without the two of them getting into trouble for having horny fights. Dueling was illegal in Paris at the time, and indeed Jamie gets arrested for fighting Black Jack at the Bois de Boulogne a couple episodes later.

Prior to that though, Claire frantically ruins Jamie’s original plans for dueling Black Jack by getting Randall locked in the Bastille overnight on suspicion of raping Mary Hawkins. The irony to end all ironies, surely! Randall himself doesn’t even seem that aggravated about it given Claire did this in an effort to spare his life. He does however feel aggravated about Jamie apparently deciding he’s not worth the trouble to fight, not knowing all the history surrounding Frank Randall or why exactly Claire seems certain that he’ll die in April of 1746.

Both Black Jack and Claire wind up badly injured following the duel—her with a complicated stillbirth that leaves the placenta inside her body and nearly causes death from sepsis, and him from a significant stab wound to the groin. In show canon per S2E07 “Faith” this appears to be mainly a soft tissue injury to the pubic mound and possibly a cut to the side of the base of the penis; in the novel version it’s more extensive and involves some maiming of the penis and one testicle. I mention this now because in Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber Claire reflects specifically on Randall being even less of a threat because of his injuries. He’s also very ill in the novel version, likely from a recent bout of cholera, whereas in the show his physical impairments are caused by the cattle stampede from the rescue sequence at the beginning of S1E16 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul”.

So it seems unsurprising that when Black Jack reconnects with Claire at Inverness (Edinburgh in book canon) and begs her to use her skills in healing to save his brother Alex’s life, the two characters find themselves on remarkably even footing. Claire lampshades this herself in repeating Randall’s “I am not the man I once was” line from S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” back to him. Randall also acknowledges this amid strong praise for her medical acumen. He has long since gotten direct perspective on those competencies himself considering the aid she rendered to a badly injured British soldier at Brockton in the same episode, along with her clear success in rehabilitating Jamie’s hand following the extensive injuries Black Jack inflicted to it in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison”.

In both the show and book versions of canon, Claire shows Randall as much compassion as she can, and also expresses respect in her narrations for how he has shouldered the financial and instrumental costs of caring for his brother largely alone. When she urges him to wed Mary in their interactions at the tavern in S2E12 “The Hail Mary” she echoes many of Alex’s own sentiments about Black Jack’s capacity for tenderness and how seriously he takes caring for his family.

Given she already knows how Randall will die, and continues caring for him as best she can even after it gets revealed that Frank’s family line descends genetically from Alex rather than Black Jack himself, her “I’ll help you bleed him myself” comment to Jamie in S2E05 “Untimely Resurrection” seems more for his benefit than her own. Indeed, in book canon Claire feels threatened by Jamie’s lingering obsession with Randall and his repeated rambling about the strange erotic dreams he has about Black Jack. She wants him to have closure on that part of his life, thinking that Randall dying will put a stop to that fixation. Unfortunately for Claire it’s not that simple.

Even Jamie himself doesn’t consider Randall much of a threat in the end. In the book version of canon, he even attends Black Jack’s wedding and serves as a witness for him, whereas Murtagh does this on the show. Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber details how Jamie escorts a drunk and crying Black Jack back to his own quarters, holding him up because he can’t walk on his own. We never find out what exactly happened between the two of them in that room, though goodness knows a couple of enterprising fan authors have done heroic work in envisioning potentialities.

Show canon does deliver entirely on the erotic tenor of the final encounter between the two men just as Book 3 / Voyager does, with much of S3E01 “The Battle Joined” getting devoted to Black Jack and Jamie grappling with each other while moaning against each other’s ears and looking as if they’re about to have orgasms. Makes sense considering the showrunners reportedly instructed Tobias Menzies and Sam Heughan to go for a combination of the final battle sequence from The Patriot and the sex scene from Cold Mountain in their choreography. They definitely nailed it on the filming. Very much the same energy in the books from all of Jamie’s flashbacks to those moments and the time he spent lying under Black Jack’s body.

An irony that seems worth mentioning itself for how Randall’s last act was to protect Jamie from getting finished off himself during the British Army’s death sweeps of Culloden Moore. In light of this and all the other history between the two of them, it seems less surprising that Jamie left his wedding present—which Claire had returned to him for safekeeping before going back through the stones to her own time—of a dragonfly preserved in amber on the battlefield with Black Jack’s body.

And it’s by standing up to his reign of terror that the two come together, eventually falling in love.

Reign of terror? Not so much, for reasons I’ve already gone into elsewhere. What precisely is Randall “reigning” over in the first place? He’s an exiled soldier who got given a remote fort on a bunch of barren rocks surrounded by water in a freezing cold place that he hates. He has no power over anyone except his own soldiers.

In terms of more overt antagonism, Black Jack focuses the vast majority of his awful behavior on someone who even while chained to a dungeon floor could still kill him with his bare hands. Jamie does kill Black Jack’s much larger and stronger bodyguard Marley in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” while restrained thusly. If Randall is keeping the Highlands in any kind of iron grip, it’s so weak that he can’t even keep his own bodyguard alive with a chained-up prisoner. Who isn’t even there by his own doing, mind—Jamie gets picked up by a random Redcoat patrol after getting coerced in S1E13 “The Watch” into joining the Watch with Taran MacQuarrie, a suspected Jacobite accused of treason. More details on this get revealed in S1E14 “The Search” as Claire, Jenny, and Murtagh all strive to locate Jamie.

Much of that falls beyond the scope of this analysis. Directly within that scope though is how whether or not anyone likes it, Jamie survives his incarceration at Wentworth Prison because Black Jack raced down there just in time to get him brought down from the gallows. Given canonical knowledge of how Randall does nothing without sincerity—however twisted that sincerity may be—this paints a complicated picture of his impact.

Indeed, one of the things that makes the dynamic between Black Jack and Jamie so interesting and satisfying is how in many ways they’re equals. I covered that extensively in my Ask response about foil dynamics in Outlander canon, so I won’t rehash it in this analysis. But TL;DR: Black Jack assaulting Jamie, and Jamie assaulting Black Jack in kind, was never an exercise in one person punching up and the other punching down. Rather, it is very much an exercise in two people punching sideways. Which a dear mutual illustrated masterfully in their “Killer” sketch previously shared here on Tumblr.

Claire and Jamie do fall in love though. That process is fairly telling on its own—as Rowan points out herself with the very next insight in the video essay. But a few additional details can further unpack sexuality in the context of that relationship, especially in the context of both characters’ interactions with Black Jack.

By opposing Randall’s villainy, they are essentially fighting to maintain the political and social beliefs of the 1740s Scotland, while also solidifying their own relationship and sexual identities—which are heterosexual and monogamous even across time and space.

Okay, folks. I’m flicking on my megaphone here to remind everyone reading this that Jamie is bisexual and that the omission of this key canonical detail could inadvertently reproduce some of the stigmas against bisexuality the video aims to dismantle. I absolutely do not think Rowan did this intentionally. It may stem from limited engagement with the source material in general. I wouldn’t expect a video essay covering a wide scope of media to go into 16K+ words of detail about a single character! That’s what I’m here for. In that spirit, I highly recommend folks interested in going deeper with Outlander canon revisit Jamie’s own narration of his experiences in S1E16 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” and the many things he says and does in later episodes regarding Black Jack. The books go into even more detail about how much Jamie still lusts after Randall even after the assault at Wentworth, I’ll note.

The more important point here though is how erasure of Jamie’s bisexuality via inattention to his own words can inadvertently reflect Claire’s own behavior at the abbey in that episode: refusing to listen to Jamie unless he tells her what she wants to hear, and specifically shutting him down every time he tries to make her understand that Black Jack made him face things he already wanted beneath the surface.

Even regarding Claire, nuances abound that seem especially important to explore given the above. Specifically concerning the ambiguity of Claire’s own sexuality—how although she never narrates herself clearly in bisexual context, she certainly gets into some telling situations with Geillis Duncan. Claire may not be explicitly bisexual per her own words as Jamie reveals himself to be from S1E16 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” and equivalent portions of Book 1 / Outlander onward. But we can certainly spot multiple bi-coded elements of her character before even getting to the whole Malva Christie business in Season 6 and Book 6 / A Breath of Snow and Ashes.

Geillis herself is another bi-coded villain who could put Randall to shame for the extent of her agenda and advance planning. Indeed, Geillis’s deeper intent and systemic aims qualify her much more classically for the villain designation than Randall himself, who behaves much more opportunistically. Let’s not forget that he leaves Jamie entirely alone for three years until the Highlander turns up in his office window at Fort William with an empty pistol! Likewise, Black Jack’s own service as an instigator of Jacobite rebellion only comes in exchange for the Duke of Sandringham protecting his beloved brother Alex—including not raping him, which gets further lampshaded by Jamie’s comments about how the Duke has treated him over the years.

It also seems worth noting how Claire offers a good example of how people who might be capable of polyamory through their capacity to love two different men at once don’t necessarily want polyamory. That’s why I abandoned a storyline in one of my early fic series development efforts—my first actually, which never saw the light of day in its original form because it morphed into “Dispatches from Fort Laggan” with a much greater depth of attention to the relationship between Black Jack and Jamie in parallel to his evolving relationship with Mary. Which winds up catapulting Jamie headlong into a raging attraction to Geneva Dunsany, someone much better equipped to meet his needs as a bisexual and kinky guy who’s perfectly capable of sustaining unspeakable horniness about an absurdly complicated man while also being a loving and devoted life partner to a woman.

But by making Lestat the only bi vampire in the show, his moral depravity can be seen as in some way linked to an assumed sexual depravity too—specifically of voracious appetite that separates his bisexual nature from either straight or gay counterparts.

This would be pretty accurate for Randall too. Kind of a missed opportunity to get things close to spot-on. With Randall though there’s even some Zig-Zagging of this aspect, which is part of what makes his character great. Although Black Jack has a voracious sexual appetite and is pretty much always DTF, he is also very much a Regular Guy with Regular Dick Function. He can’t just constantly get it up over and over. Between his alcoholism and his constant pursuit of sexual pleasure, he sometimes can’t get hard at all. He even has concerns about this with Jamie at Wentworth, gloating in delight when he does get an erection. The “can you feel that” scene in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” wherein Black Jack pulls Jamie’s hand against his crotch and expresses jubilation at having a boner is one of the funniest moments in the entire series to those of us who enjoy Randall’s character.

This is perhaps a good time to note that one thing queer villain representation often does beautifully is imbuing characters with hilarious and often bizarre senses of humor. When I’ve seen other writers frame Randall as humorless or “harrowingly joyless” I’ve wondered again if we watched the same show. The Brockton sequences from S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” alone ought to debunk this, from Randall’s passive aggressive dust party right down to his impish little wink at Claire while he dumps out the prized claret the senior officers were drinking before getting called out on some kind of wild goose chase.

Then there’s also his sardonic monologuing in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” about possible methods of killing Jamie in the morning, which is entirely tongue-in-cheek and intended solely to make Jamie get annoyed enough to tussle with him. I also consider the weirdly earnest threesome proposition from S1E09 “The Reckoning” when Jamie appears in the window of his office holding an empty pistol. It’s quite clear here that regardless of whether Jamie takes him up on it or just gets irritated enough to fight him fisticuffs and thus give him some nice opportunities to rub up against him, Randall is delighting in the offering.

Finally, we can’t forget his overjoyed little smiles whenever he sees either Jamie or Mary Hawkins. I covered much of this previously via in-depth discussion of Mary’s storylines. So here I’ll note that for all his own efforts to convince Claire that he’d be terrible for Mary, she doesn’t believe Black Jack in the slightest—because she’s already seen how he behaves with her, and likewise both seen and heard directly from Alex how kind and tender Randall has always been with his younger brother. Whom he basically raised, which is a whole other yarn.

Here’s the thing though: One doesn’t need to watch Outlander in any great depth to see that for Black Jack, much of the point of sadism lies in the aftercare. I haven’t belabored that point here overmuch because I don’t want to suggest that caretaking afterwards in any way negates harm done beforehand. However, Randall does consistently show genuine pleasure in taking care of another person. We see this in some ways with Jamie at Wentworth Prison in S1E16 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” but then get a whole different context on it in Season 2, especially with S2E12 “The Hail Mary” when the curtain finally pulls back fully on Black Jack’s family life. The only moments where he seems to relax at all is when he’s helping someone feel better after a horrible privation—either by his own hand or from the ravages of illness. And in those moments, we see plenty of vulnerability. Which brings us to…

Unlike Randall, there is a vulnerability in and understanding of Lestat’s backstory that contextualizes his behavior.

I’m not so sure about this. Even midway through Season 1 starting with S1E06 “The Garrison Commander” this understanding of Randall’s character begins to fray at the edges. More details on that below. Likewise, we learn a good bit in Season 2 about Randall’s family and what has been going on behind the curtain of his own life as a result. But even beforehand, the scene in S1E15 “Wentworth Prison” where Black Jack forlornly talks to Jamie in the dungeon cell while seated and looking at him with sad eyes says quite a bit. He finds Jamie’s rejection in the face of a clear attraction painful; this is no less important for his own vicious response to that pain after Jamie taunts him about having no self-control. Subsequently we see in S1E16 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” the lengths Black Jack will go to for the sake of affectionate treatment.

Not all love is constructive or good, but Randall leaves little doubt in his own behavior that his actions are very much in pursuit of love. This gets lampshaded a final time in Book 6 / A Breath of Snow and Ashes with the reveal of what Randall mouthed to Jamie in that one sequence of S3E01 “The Battle Joined” just before collapsing on top of him and dying from his wounds. During the abbey sequences in Book 1 / Outlander Jamie also recalls Black Jack lying beside him on the dungeon floor, crying profusely and begging him to speak words of love. Adding in the murky context missing from the show—about Jack having some sort of sexual history with either the deceased prisoner Alex MacGregor and/or his own younger brother Alex Randall—paints a telling portrait of a man desperate for affection and connection.

Though he doesn’t excuse it, we see his traumatic past, and feel how much he yearns for family and love.

Very true about Lestat, certainly. But I’d say this could also have easily been written about Black Jack.

In other portions of this essay I cover Randall’s behavior at Wentworth Prison in Season 1 and the Inverness storyline at the end of Season 2. To rehash here in brief, the only things that matter to Black Jack are (A) someone loving him back in a way he understands and (B) doing whatever he can to take care of his family. Black Jack doesn’t say as much directly to this effect, but he certainly shows us through action that yearning for family and love motivate a lot of his behavior. The fact that his pursuit of these things often happens through twisted means scarcely means he doesn’t want them. Quite the opposite.

As for the traumatic past, Black Jack and other characters alike (especially the Duke of Sandringham) drop hints throughout the Season 1 and Season 2 storylines—and even more so in corresponding portions of Book 1 / Outlander and Book 2 / Dragonfly in Amber—that Randall grew up in an abusive home and imprinted on that. It’s also clear from his interactions with Alex that he’s been protecting his brother from a lot over the years. The Duke himself certainly, but also other things. And in the corresponding sequences from the novels Jack goes into some detail about how little support he and Alex have ever gotten from their family back in Sussex, including from their older brother Edward even now that Alex is dying.

Then of course Black Jack himself talks aloud to Claire at Brockton about his traumatic present and how the armed conflict in Scotland has further warped his mind. He’s clearly shaken about finding one of his own men brutally beheaded and speaks in more general terms about being “not the man [he] once was” as a result of his military service. No surprise either that he looks like a fish out of water the one time we see him in non-military dress during S2E12 “The Hail Mary”. Black Jack may not like what serving in the Army has done to further damage his psyche, but at this point it’s all he understands and the only place he feels he belongs at all. On that front…

It’s not difficult to see the parallels between his existence as a vampire, and the isolation and threat many members of the queer community feel.

Here I should also include my response to the aforementioned excellent meta on homosociality in The Patriot canon. As noted previously I’m hoping to release a similarly focused reflection of my own in time addressing Outlander canon directly. For now I’ll applaud Rowan’s general attention in the video to how bisexual people often become isolated within the queer community as well as in the world at large.

Double marginalization is a lonely experience in the utmost—and one that can breed tremendous resentment. That anger has to go somewhere more often than not. Even without the added burden of silent rage from sexual violence and the constant “insult to injury” experience of having our own trauma collide with that of others walking a similar path, things are tough. And the data on experiences of rape and abuse in the bisexual community remain incredibly damning.

So again, I think Lestat and Black Jack would find plenty of common ground in one another’s histories. Although Lestat himself doesn’t really meet the criteria for sexual sadism, he certainly enjoys bloodplay and the general aesthetic of violence as part of intimate congress. This isn’t surprising in the slightest considering how the capacity to enjoy such pleasures often grows and sharpens in response to abuse of any form, including rape and domestic violence.

My own life has certainly been an exercise in this. If that seems confusing, consider: For people who are well accustomed to people bleeding on us when we didn’t cut them, it can feel immensely satisfying to have someone bleed on us because we did cut them.

Whereas the initial seasons of Outlander have no sympathetic or heroic queer heroes at all, Interview with the Vampire does give us another lead who fulfills this protagonist role in Louis.

I’m glad this was the last content in the video that mentioned Outlander directly. I think there’s enough context from the rest of this segment for viewers to understand the intended contrast here. Prior to Season 3 we don’t encounter characters in Outlander who are fully immersed in their queerness other than Black Jack, whereas Interview with the Vampire centers characters who show more of that immersion from the beginning on both the protagonist and antagonist sides.

Given the centrality of Jamie’s character arc to Randall’s though, the omission of his own bisexuality from this video essay seems quite the lost opportunity. To reiterate, in both versions of canon beginning with S1E16 “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” and equivalent sequences from the novels we get verbatim documentation directly from the source that Jamie is bisexual himself. This is in addition to his earlier comments about considering the prospect of sleeping with Randall at Fort William and only turning him down because he thought his dad would be disappointed in him. Not for having same-sex relations, but rather for capitulating to another man. That’s a lot to unpack, folks.

Indeed, Jamie’s storylines throughout the TV and book series alike are often demonstrations of how the ideation of heterosexuality and the pressure to live a heterosexual life do deep harm to bisexual men. This gets lampshaded further by the anvilicious contrasts constantly drawn between Black Jack and the decidedly gay Lord John Grey. The latter is set up as a perennial foil for Randall, getting into similar scenarios with Jamie—starting with his time as warden at Ardsmuir Prison in Season 3 and Book 3 / Voyager—but taking them in entirely different directions. Which I appreciate in essentials for the spinning of a superb narrative about complex post-traumatic stress. More so for living with that particular set of issues myself.

Once again for the good of the Republic: If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.

Apropos of this, I want to express particular appreciation for the video’s exploration of the “puriteens” phenomenon—and incorporate a caution for those slightly elder members of fandom. It can be very easy for people to fall into the trap of assuming that bisexual people are always hypersexual. And even easier to assume that those bisexual folk who truly are hypersexual are automatically threats because of this. More so if said individuals also happen to be kinky, and especially if they are specifically sadistic.

I mention this now because as queer people marginalized from within the queer community as well as without, bisexual and asexual folk stand on common ground. I have seen the transformative power in allyship between bi and ace people in fighting our shared oppressions. Sadly I have also seen many successful efforts to tear that natural solidarity asunder by making ace people fear us as predators. And the first against the wall, same as always, are the hypersexual and kinky among us.

So I’m happy beyond words to see openly ace creators like Rowan Ellis standing up for bisexual people. Making sure that our struggles and our humanity alike are always seen and valued. In kind, I strongly encourage everyone reading this to take this analysis of Rowan’s commentary on Outlander in the spirit in which I intend it. To say that I strongly support both the general content and overall standpoint of this video would understate the case.

Indeed, I offer this detailed analysis now because I know the depth of Rowan’s commitment to diverse queer representation. I want to build on the dialogue sparked by the video and to bring that depth on Randall’s character to the impressive breadth of focus in Rowan’s overview of queer villains. The fact that doing so amplifies the labor, effort, and insight of an asexual creator made me even more inclined to give this my full effort. I hope Rowan will keep putting her voice and perspective into the world for many years to come.

For now, I’m grateful for this opportunity to once again bring Black Jack Randall to my little corner of the Internet in dizzying detail. And moreover, to do so in amplifying the work of a fellow creator explicitly naming the harm done by respectability politics surrounding queerness.

Randall may not be the bisexual representation everyone wants, but he’s absolutely the bisexual representation the world needs. Because if he isn’t a resounding comeback to respectability politics that attempt to deny “problematic” bisexual people their basic human rights—and indeed an effective illustration of the deep harms those kinds of approaches to queerness not only do directly but also reproduce in cyclical patterns—I don’t know what character possibly could be.

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