scapegrace74-blog

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Thanks as always for your support, @metaborderlines. Some excellent recommendations in there!

THX, fanfic writers [repeating myself, end of year]

Inspired by the post from @saygoodnightlove about fan fic recommendations, I want to know as @juli-81 asked, “Whatfics made you fall in love with Outlander in a new way this year?” My first answer was “Power Jam” by @isthisclever and I’ll stick with it, because of the way this writer uses detail to make things new, especially the love story that never gets old, Jamie meets Claire, this time at a roller rink in Edinburgh. The other nine, in no particular order, sprinkled I see with many WIPs: 

#2, “Wee Herbs” by @jesuisprest. OK, I have a problem with feisty Jenny, always barging in to “protect” Jamie. In “Wee Herbs,” Jenny is none too pleased to find that her brother has married the proprietor of a weed shop [it’s medical marijuana,Jenny] in California, and that California Claire has a child (Fergus, age 6, blooming nicely in West Coast soil). Claire fights fire with fire, beats Jenny at the primal battle of “family first.” WIP. 

 #3 “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” by @sassenachthroughtime. Is there a more romantic scene in fan fic than the one in this story when Claire, unwilling trophy wife to Fronk in oppressively staid South Carolina society, helps new next-door neighbor Jamie with clean-up after his housewarming party and he whispers, Scottish burr on fire, “Dance wi’me?” WIP.

            #4 “Game Changer” by @the2ofusnow. Jamie’s the rookie of the year with the NY Mets; Claire is the team doctor, written with emotional intelligence. WIP. 

            #5 “Atonement” by @smashing-teacups, for its quiet scenes in the hospital when horribly-injured Jamie and compassionate-nurse Claire get to know one another. The writer gets the most out of dialogue, small moments like the one when Claire washes Jamie’s hair.

            #6 “Market Price” by @desperationandgin. Both Jamie and Claire are witty and strong, despite (of course) having weathered some life-challenges, and they’re funny and sweet, unable to keep their hands off one another. 

            #7 “Saorsa” by @scapegrace-74. Jamie escapes Black Jack by touching the stones, lands in the midst of WW II at Lallybroch whose chatelaine is a pregnant widow, Claire, the legatee of the Randall estate. The way the two come together, inevitably, is told with grace and verve—a description that fits “anything by” @scapegrace-74, especially the stories in the “Metric Universe.” Thanks also to @scapegrace-74 for pointing to a perfect novella, “The Stars Will Sing for Us” by @fallofrain. No drama, just strong characterization when Dr. Claire moves to Broch Morda and falls in love with, guess, the sweetest, hottest guy in town; he’s good with horses too. No bland inevitability: the writer allows the reader to discover the characters as they discover one another. 

            #8 “Loving Jamie” by @JillianK, an 18thcentury story in which Jamie has lost inheritance when he’s rendered mute from an axe blow (Dougal?) The MacKenzie brothers arrange a marriage to Claire. The story has a fairytale quality leavened with humor, e.g ch 7 when Jamie wonders if his new wife loves him and Clarence nudges him not to get maudlin. “Christ. Now he was taking life lessons from a mule.”

            #9 “Something to Believe In” by @caitrinwrites.  Claire is a chef in Santa Fe and when a Scottish distiller turns up to purvey his wares at her resto, he very much resembles her daughter Brianna, age 5. WIP. This story of introducing Jamie to his lost child shows signs of rising to meet the top of the class in the genre, “Downhill” by @wickedgoodbooks (who can forget five-year-old Willie on “The Puffin Trip” with his reunited parents, Claire and Jamie?) and “Flood My Mornings” by @bonnie_wee_swordsman (Jamie’s observations about the mores of America in the 1950, all the tut-tutting about working mothers, and his comment about how the Pope can just get out of women’s way when it comes to reproductive choice). And “Written in the Stones” by @lenny9987, one of the best father-and-child reunion stories in which Jamie arrives at Craig na dun and reclaims Claire and ten-year-old Brianna, in part when she teaches him to bake chocolate chip cookies at Mrs. Graham’s house during a thunderstorm. 

More than a top ten, I can’t omit “One Summer” by @missclairebelle, the glorious variant on Jamie and Claire as a bantering couple who would give Hepburn and Tracy a run for their money in their heyday. And “Jimjeran” by @betweensceneswriter, which manages to convey new love in the most heated yet nuanced fashion. Jamie and Claire are Peace Corps volunteers on a Pacific island, which shows among other things that this story is truly universal. And then there’s “In My Daughter’s Eyes” by @preciouslittleingenue, Jamie as a riding therapist to autistic Faith, four-year-old child of Claire and Fronk, who rejected his “imperfect” child. And You’ll Be in Mo Chridhe by @CrossingInStyle. Claire goes to Africa with Uncle Lamb and meets Tarzan, who is, guess … Another good one by this prolific writer, “First Time Here?” Jamie is a bartender in Inverness who asks the question of Claire on her sequential bad dates. Nice past-present cross-stich. And “Back to You” by @balfeheughlywed. Claire is Leery’s roommate at Edinburgh U…but the writing is good. Jenny is the Worst. And “Queen’s Gambit”by @AbbeDebeaupre. Lord John is private eye, Jamie trains polo ponies… And the “Basia Mille” series by @JRC10…

 This list is threatening to exceed top 20, so many good stories. Thank you, writers!

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Back from an amazing 10 day trip to stunningly beautiful Scotland.

October 18 - 28, 2024

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I had another of those amusing bilingual moments this week when my MIL used the French word sous-entendu, meaning something inferred or implied, but not explicitly stated. It’s an amalgam of the word sous, meaning under, and entendu, the past participle of the verb to hear, but also having the meaning of having understood something, not just heard it.

So in French, an unspoken inference or implication is literally under-understood, which I’d like to petition be added to the English language as well.

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If you’re feeling stressed out, watching this on loop will likely help.

Bonus: listening to the below at the same time.

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Every fall, I try to make a point of spending one or two nights in Mont Tremblant National Park. I donate a few pints of blood to the mosquito gods, a few litres of sweat to the hiking gods, and I leave feeling lighter for completely different reasons. This year was no exception.

September 2 - 3, 2024

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this is for an argument w my friend

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Only a couple more of these First Day of School photos to go, then I suppose I’m make a montage and cry like a baby. 🥹

August 27, 2024

Do Not Reblog Please.

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Belated photo round up of our summer trip back to my homeland.

Vancouver Island, British Columbia

July 10 to 20, 2024

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daMoment

Olimpic Games 2024

Gab Medina

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Had a small visitor by the pool.

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My morning commute lately.

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Today in Quebecers are f’ing insane.

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England & Wales place-names rendered into High German (morphologically reconstructed with attention to ultimate etymology and sound evolution processes)

to try to reconstruct a ‘plausible’-sounding german version of names, it was hard to decide whether to go right back to a shared proto-indo european root (as with Hagen- in Cardiff etc.), or to simply conjecture what may have become of a celtic name in german (as with Carlisle).

in order to try and keep it realistic the gazetteer of german place names was open in front of me, so that i could find actual attestation (in germany & austria) for most of the (parts of the) names on this map, even with shared etymologies.

Gottverdammt! stupid mistakes found: Yorch(scheier) should of course be **J****orch, Nordfolk should be Nord****v****olk, Marken should be Gemarken

by topherette

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I love when singers think maybe their song requires a little prerequisite information so they just cover it real fast so everyone’s on the same page. I love that TLC opens No Scrubs quickly reviewing exactly what a scrub is and when ABBA was like “just in case you didn’t know, famed 19th century militant ruler Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated in the battle of Waterloo. We though perhaps not everyone would know that. Alright, so moving on to my love life, which is similar to that actually,”

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Happy birthday, Canada. Your popcorn is done.

It’s been a few years since I’ve been in town for the birthday bash. When did everyone decide to bankrupt themselves with fireworks? It sounds like Appomattox in our house right now with at least 5 competing displays. And these aren’t even the official ones, which start at 10!