#alexander randall

[malicious-compliance-esq]

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.

[supersonicart]

Alexander Randall.

Breathtaking works of brilliant color and rich texture that are created with concrete, exploring themes of transience and presence by British artist Alexander Randall.

THE SUPERSONIC ART SHOP | FOLLOW ON INSTAGRAM

[wardrobeoftime]

Please do gif sets of Alex’s outfits in outlander season 2

I assume you mean Alexander Randall, right? Because I don't remember any other character the name Alex could fit in season 02 at the moment.

[i-am-not-like-you-ups]

Jonathan: I've only had Alex for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.

[alicent-targaryen]

CLAIRE & JAMIE ▸ Outlander, 2.6

[caecaesclubhouse]

I like to think I'm funny: Monsters Inc/University edition

(Pls don't criticize me this is all just a joke)

[voxmortuus]

Hi! It’s me the anon requesting for the dark fic about Alexander.. and honestly, write whatever makes you inspired about haha it’s up to you. He played a character in the stand as Randall Flagg so maybe something with that character?! Thank you 😍

⇘ PAIRING:⇙ Randall Flagg x F!Reader ⇘ UNIVERSE:⇙ The Stand ⇘ WORD COUNT:⇙ 4.5k ⇘ SUMMARY:⇙ All your life you've been seeing this man with a smiley faced pin in your dreams, well the end has come, and you're left with a choice. Tired, hungry, thirsty, and alone, you decide to take the kindness of one Randall Flagg under the impression that it's what you wanted. Agreeing to stay things quickly take a turn for the worst and you are forced to become his incubator. ⇘ TRIGGER WARNINGS:⇙ None of these trigger warnings are in order, so just read them and remember then as you read this. DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT | Talk of Murder | Manipulation | Persuading for reader to keep drinking | Sexual coercion and Rape | Slapping both reader and reader slapping him | Spitting | Fighting Reader | Unprotected PiV | Choking Reader | Slamming Reader against glass window & floor | Hinted that reader has a violent past | Reader's face gets held down by boot | Abuse to Reader | Threatening Reader's life | Threatening Reader w/knife | Stabbing Reader | Blood & Blood Play | Captive Reader | Reader gets chained to bed | Reader is forced into breeding | Forced Impregnation | Forced groping | Forced inebriation | Forced Threesome | Unknowing drugging of reader | PLEASE TELL ME IF I FORGOT ANYTHING!!! I want to make sure readers are fully aware of what they are getting themselves into when they read this… ⇘ NOTES:⇙ I hope this brings you some joy. Also I'm sorry if this is just horribly written. ⇘ DIVIDER CREDIT:⇙ @nyxvuxoa ⇘ IN STORY DIVIDER:⇙ @voxmortuus ⇘ IMAGE CREDIT:⇙ @punksimulationn ⇘ TAGGING:⇙ @lenareallylovestoread ⇘ My Master Masterlist ⇙

It was a long walk from Winthrop, WA. Not to mention utterly trying, at this point, you were no stranger to death, let alone having to protect yourself. This outbreak made people go bananas. From people wanting to kill you, rape you, likely wanting to eat you, to those trying to tell you to seek out Mother Abigail, and those telling you to seek out Randall, you couldn't tell what was up who was down, and where was up. This outbreak has sent people into this pit of what? Craziness. Destruction. There were times when it wasn't so bad. Peaceful even. No cars speeding, no one screaming, no violence, just you, and nature.

After walking for almost three weeks, you're exhausted, damn near the point of tears, you're hungry and thirsty, and your body aches in places you didn't know could ache. There's this part of you that just wants to quit. But then you remember the dreams, that yellow smiley face pin, the blonde man that wanted to give you a bed to sleep in, a tall glass of ice water. He was kind to you, all he wanted you to do was to find him. Something about you being special. But why were you special? You were just some girl living in Winthrop, Washington... what made you so special that this mysterious man has been watching you. But the more you sit there, the more you think, the more you realize he's been watching you for a long time. Since you were a little girl. You remember the pin. His denim outfit, and the sound of his boots.

Wiping your face from the tears you look around, seeing more signs telling you who to follow and how far to go. Sniffling a moment you try to contain yourself, telling yourself once you find this man, you'll get your tall glass of water, you'll get your bed, and a shower. You just need to find him. You'll know it's him because you'll know that pin, you'll know that smile, that voice. And if he touches you, you'll know that too. Just have to go a little farther. Looking around you choose to take the well-traveled path. At least at this moment, you know it's bound to lead you somewhere. Especially out in the desert.

After a lot of self-motivation to not give up and to keep walking, you find yourself standing there on the border of walking into this ivory building so to speak, or to turn around and find yourself someplace else, was this where you needed to be? Probably not, but you know what, maybe it was too late to turn back, after all, you came all this way. Looking down at your feet, you were tired, worn out, thirsty, and hungry, and you just wanted a place to rest your feet, even for the night. Maybe this will be all right, right? Letting out a heavy breath, you cross into the location; it was like night and day. Looking around you felt like maybe you had made a major mistake being here.

Letting out a heavy breath you close your eyes for a brief moment and then a voice jolted you.

"What are you doing here?" They asked.

Looking over, you lick your lips. "I umm... I'm just passing through." You state, but the look they were giving you, that answer wasn't good enough.

"Leave her alone." a voice, a familiar voice, boomed out of nowhere, you know this voice, you've heard this voice, you've seen who this voice belongs to.

The person slowly backs away and you watch this man approaching you, dressed in denim with a bright yellow smiley-faced pin attached to his jacket you look him over, rubbing your eyes a moment you shake your head, he couldn't be the same one, it couldn't be, it really couldn't be. He was handsome, but his aura didn't read so handsome, not this time. Your heart pounded in your chest. Licking your lips, you were so thirsty. You look over him as he approaches you.

"You've come to the right place, I've been expecting you. Come with me, I can only imagine how thirsty you are." He states as he escorts you a little further.

"Oh, oh no, I don't want to Impose." You state stopping in your tracks and looking over everything, and look back at him, "You've been waiting for me?"

"Darlin' you've come this far, this must be where you want to be." He smiles a charming smile. "You can't tell me that you don't want a nice cold glass of water?" He asked. Looking over you, he licks his lips. "Don't you remember?"

Water did sound appealing but you don't quite answer. "I'd remember that pin anywhere." You stated looking at it. It gave you a small sense of happiness, maybe even a little bit of hope. You reach out to touch it.

"Or maybe something to eat, here, you'll never go without. Doesn't that sound good? A bed to sleep in? Food to eat, all you can drink, a place to rest your feet, a place where you matter?" He stops and looks down as you reach out and touch the pin. "You like that, don't you?" He asked with a small smile.

That did sound good, then you look over him and tilt your head. "I do... I really do." You say softly with a small smile before you scoff at yourself, shake your head, and drop your finger from touching the pin.

"You can't tell me that doesn't sound good. This is right where you want to be, you ain't gonna find that anyplace else." He stated with that charming grin. He holds out his hand. "Join me." He smiles again.

Chewing on the corner of your lip you look him over. With some hesitation, you reach forward and place your hand in his.

"Thatta girl." He mused as he takes your hand and kisses it before he takes you toward the large building.

As you walk a little further into the building, you see the debauchery, the craziness of it all, people doing as they pleased, no consequences, at least not that you saw. You were curious admittingly so, but you were still slightly unsure. He was going to have to win you, though, so far he was doing a good job, you were taken by his charm, his calm aura, and the smoothness of his voice. He knew what to say to rope you in, and it wasn't going to be the last time.

As he brings you toward the elevator you look out and down on everyone, your eyes go wide.

"How many were just passing through and chose to stay? Do you know each one of them?" you asked as your gaze keeps on the people below.

He chuckles. "Not all are as lucky as you. I have no idea, probably some more than others, but they are all here for a reason. Just like you." He stated.

He knew things others didn't know, things you've kept secret, he knew of those bad things you've done, and he knew you weren't just passing through. You were no better than the others below, but he has plans for you, plans that are not quite what you're expecting them to be.

Once the elevator reaches the top floor he guides you into his suite. Your jaw clenches as you take in a deep breath. Your body trembled a moment but you felt this soft relaxed feeling wash over you. He lets out a soft chuckle as he looks back at you as you stop and look around a moment before you are beckoned. You just want to take it all in but that was cut somewhat short. As he starts walking down the hall, others stop and stare, muttering to each other. Your brow furrowed a bit, and look down as you start walking closer to a set of double doors. As the doors open you follow him in and you look over your shoulder as you watch the others standing there staring at you and vanish upon the door closing.

You didn't understand why people were staring at you, watching you, even muttering and speaking about you. Why were they so in awe by the fact that the man in your dreams was talking to you and bringing you up to his living space? You had no idea. Biting your lip you let out a soft breath and look down at your feet as you trail behind the tall man dressed in denim. Left, right, left, right, it's like you had to mentally tell yourself to walk forward. Your jaw clenches at yourself, frustrated you had to think about such a mundane task as walking.

"Why were the people staring at me back there? It's like they've never seen you with another person before." You ask, likely chuckling, trying to find it amusing, but truthfully you're too tired to really even care.

"Because you're special, and they don't get to see special all that often."

"Why am I special?" you ask.

"Because you're with me." He smirked.

Getting to someplace for you to sit you look around before taking a seat, you look up at him and your brow furrowed trying to understand what made him so damn special and why was he in your dreams? Maybe it was the fact that you had those prosthetic dreams people talk about. That bit of internal hope of that being it is what fueled you into thinking that maybe you are here for a reason. You sit there and look up over this man for a moment and you try to observe his actions, when he sits, he sits with this calming aura.

Licking your lips you look down at your hands for a moment and think. "Thank you, for giving me a place, even for the night." You state.

"You'll want to stay, trust me." He smirked with a small wink.

"We'll see... I told you, I'm just passing through." You state softly.

He tilts his head and looks over you, he can see with you, it was going to take a little more effort than offering you the world. But that's okay, he wasn't in too much of a rush. Licking his lips he chuckled.

"Of course. Well, at least for tonight, you should rest up, eat something, and maybe think about staying. I could always use a good right hand." He smirked again.

Thinking about him your jaw twitches a moment before you let out a slow breath and nod. "Yeah, I'll think about it." You state looking down a moment as someone came up and offered you a glass of ice-cold water, thanking them and look back toward Randall and search his face.

"What is your name?" You ask.

"Randall." He stated.

"Randall..." you say softly. "You didn't ask me mine."

"I don't need to ask you yours. I know your name. But you're exhausted, have your water, something to eat, and you can find your room right down the hall with your name on a piece of paper hanging on the door." He stated.

Watching him he gets up and makes his way over to the large windows. You could tell he was thinking, or at least that's what you're going to tell yourself. You don't actually know if he is or isn't. But you'd like to assume so.

Smelling the food your head darts in the direction and you smile. It's exactly what you were craving. A delicious hot sandwich with curly fries and a cheese dip sauce. You take a bite and groan in pure satisfaction. Truthfully, as well-mannered as you wanted to be, you scarfed that sandwich down and you kind of hid behind a curtain of dust-filled hair and you let out a soft breath.

You went to speak, to thank him, but he was gone, your brow furrows, and you head to the room you were told was yours, taking the paper from the door you look around, people still staring at you you furrow your brow and walk into the room. Upon walking in you look around, wasting no time, you strip down and take a nice cool shower. Much needed to say the least.

It had been a few days, you had agreed to stay, to give it a chance, and Randall was thrilled to hear it, today was a day you got to spend with Randall, got to see the masses below doing god knows what. Today wasn't just any ordinary day, today you got to oversee a trial, a trial that had damned a man to death. A traitor. You were still trying to understand why he wanted you to see this. But it's because this man knew that you were no stranger to death.

"So, did they kill him?" He asked.

"Yes, they did. Was quite brutal." You stated.

"You're no stranger to that now, are you?" He asked again, looking over your face.

Your brow furrowed and you licked your lips remembering all those years ago. You clear your throat and look up. "I think I'll see myself out now." You state.

"Oh come on, do you really want to do that? You were enjoying your time here. You have everything you ever wanted handed to you. You don't need to want for anything, do you? I can give you so much more." He stated as he walked to you and pulled you close to him.

Your heart started to pound. "I really should go." You state softly.

Tilting your head up he looks into your eyes and shakes his head. "No, you really don't, and you know you don't. You chose to come here. You chose to stay here. This is where you want to be." He stated.

Was he right? He must be. You did choose to stay for the past few days. You did come here on your own accord. He really didn't force you to stay, that was a choice you made. Licking your lips you let out a soft breath and look over him a moment before moving away from him to look out the window. After letting you have a moment, it gave him time to make you a drink.

"Here, drink this, it'll calm your nerves." He stated as he handed you a glass, little did you know that the glass was actually a harsh liquor with some roofie mixed in.

"Thanks." You state as you take the drink and take a sip from it before coughing a moment and looking at him. "What is this?" You ask.

"Just drink it, I promise you'll feel better after." He smiled.

This man hadn't done you wrong yet so may as well right? You sigh a soft sigh and agree to drink the liquor. What he said made sense, and truthfully. Little did you quite realize the subtle manipulation, making it seem it was all your thoughts, that you were the one with the thoughts. Licking your lips you take a sip from the harsh drink and let out a soft breath as it was rough going down. After another sip, you look over at Randall and lick your lips a moment.

"Do you think you could add maybe some sort of fruit flavor to this? It's a bit harsh." You state, not wanting to sound ungrateful.

Though he didn't think of you as ungrateful, he simply chuckled and took the drink, and handed it back to you. "Here, Darlin'. Make sure you drink all of it. No drop left behind." He chuckled.

"Thanks." You state letting out another soft breath you lick at your lips and take a sip.

This fixed drink was much better. So drinking it was like drinking liquid candy. He didn't even ask you instead he started to refill your glass. He hands you the refreshed glass and your brow furrows a moment and you look over at him.

"Drink up, you enjoy that." He smiled.

He wasn't wrong, you brought the glass to your lips and you look over his face before looking down at all the people below. After the first drink, this one was sweeter than the last, maybe it was because he used less liquor, it was good, so it went down easier, and quicker, only for him to bring you a refilled glass. You look over his face and you tilt your head.

"Another?" you ask.

"You didn't finish your other one, take a drink."

You look at him. You could have sworn you finished your last drink. You make a small face and you look at him. "I finished my last one. I know I did."

"No, no you didn't. Here. You had two sips off the last one, take this, finish it, then I'll get you something to eat." He stated.

Taking the drink from him you clench your jaw and thank him again, and you start to slowly drink it before you realize that you're starting to feel a little dizzy. You move to take a seat but he keeps you standing up. He stands behind you and places his hands on either side of your hips. You try to move away from him, you didn't want the touch. You start to feel uncomfortable. You turn and hand him your drink.

"I should go." You state.

"No, finish your drink." He states as he doesn't move from you.

"No, I should go back to my room." You state honestly.

"I insist... finish your drink." He states.

Feeling dizzy you look at him and rub your face. You clench your jaw and shake your head. You set your drink on a nearby table and try to walk away but he grabs you and pulls you back.

"You're not going anywhere." He states firmly.

"Ye-yesIam." You state with a stumble.

He was starting to get irritated with you, he firmly grabs your arm and yanks you back. You growl and spit at him. "Let me the fuck go."

"You're not fucking going anywhere." He states wiping the spit from his face.

You begin to shove him but he shoves you against the glass window, instead of letting you fall he grips your arm and looks over your face before he snarls.

"You're staying right here." He growls.

Letting out a slight whimper you bring your hand to your head and attempt to slap at him to shove, stomp on his foot anything you can do to get away. He grabs you and he drags you to the bed and tosses you on it. You start to panic, but you are having a hard time pulling yourself together. You start to kick as you feel him climbing toward you. You have no idea what happened between the drink and now for him to do this. What did you say? What did you do? You are hitting pure panic mode.

"FUCK YOU!" You scream as you get off the bed and are beginning to crawl away.

Licking his lips he looks down at you, rolling up his sleeves of his denim shirt after tossing his jacket to the side he walks to you and pulls your leg toward him, and flips you over. You attempt to escape again but he takes his boot and presses it against the side of your face forcing your face against the side of the floor. You attempt to fight and call for help, but there wasn't anyone coming to get you, they all knew better than to walk into this room without his direction.

"LET ME GO!" You fight but it was getting more and more difficult to keep yourself awake.

"I'm not letting you go." He stated as he kept his foot against your head.

"Why are you doing this? What did I do?" You ask.

"You're chosen... you can handle this. Stop fighting." He notes your breathing as it started to slow.

Waking up you feel groggy, sore, and chained to a fucking bed?! You move your hands over yourself and find yourself completely nude, feeling between your legs you feel where he's used you. You snarl and you go to stand up and move but you are quickly brought back to the bed. Reaching up you find that you're collared and chained to the bed like some sort of animal.

"What the fuck?!" You yell.

He walks around the corner and smirks. "Oh, you're awake. Good."

"What the fuck!" You snap. "Did you..." You reach between your legs. "Was this you?!" You snap.

He chuckles. "Oh yeah, and you screamed and moaned like you were absolutely enjoying it more than the last time you were fucked." He chuckled again.

"How dare you?! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!" You slap him across the face.

With a snarl, your face meets the back of his hand. "I fucking own you that's who the fuck I think I am. You enjoyed it. You were begging for more, and I gave you more. You should thank me." He stated.

"Why am I here? Who are you?! Why were you in my dreams?!" You snap.

"You're here because you wanted to be here, you came here on your own, just like how you climbed into my bed on your own. I have it all on video." He states as he pulls out a remote and turns on the TV and rewinds to last night.

Sitting there you watch as you climb into the bed, and start taking off all your clothing, groping yourself, and playing with yourself. You watch him strip down, and begin to have his way with you. You watch as he calls for someone else. You then watch yourself begin to fight. It's clear you're begging, but you're begging for him to stop as the other man comes in and strips down, and both of them are having their way with you. You watch as you fight but they are both restraining you, taking turns filling you.

You're angry, feeling like you're going to be sick. You look at him. "What the actual fuck? Do you think I was begging you to do that? It looked like I was begging you to stop." You state with a small growl.

"Begging is begging." He stated. "And baby, you were begging." He stated with a chuckle and an emphasis on the begging aspect.

Disgusted, you tremble in utter disgust. Clenching your jaw you walk over and throw your fist against his face with all your might before you start slapping him and kicking him. You were angry, furious, feeling used and abused and violated. Rightfully so. You were quickly brought to a halt when he grips your throat, slams you into the floor, and kneels down on top of you straddling your body. You go to try and punch again.

"Hit me again, and I will fucking kill you." He snarled and grabbed his knife from under the bed.

"Then fuckin kill me. I'm far better off dead at this point." You hiss after spitting in his face again.

Taking the blade he stabs it into your side, missing all vital organs and arteries, his goal wasn't to kill you, but to scare you. He snarls. You snarl back and for what? What were you going to do? You couldn't do anything but you start to scream feeling the rush going away, and a foreign object stabbing into you, your eyes go wide and let out another scream before he rips it from you. With your hand, you reach to your wound and feel the blood pouring out of it. You slap it across his face, snarling he jerks you and slams you into the floor again, feeling light-headed from being slammed into the floor you try and find your bearings.

He takes his own hand and brings it to the blood and smears it on your body, the bright red against the contrast of your skin was something he enjoyed very much, it excited him, moving to settle himself between your legs you begin to try and fight him, still woozy, he takes the blood from your side and slides it up your legs, coating your inner things in it before he strips down and looks down at you. Licking his lips he wastes no time shoving his already-stiffened cock into you. You let out a scream and begin to kick and thrash yourself to get away from him but it's not working.

You begin to cry, screaming, pleading for him to stop.

"I don't think so. Take it, enjoy it. You're going to carry my child. The last bitch killed my child, but you'll make a fine incubation chamber for my spawn." He snarled.

You didn't want that, you didn't need that.

"NO! NO! NO! STOP!" You begin to sob. "Please stop."

It's like you lost all your strength, it's like it was drained from you as he thrusts into your wet center with no cares.

Thrust after thrust, the sound of his skin slapping against yours echoed into the room, the stickiness of the blood keeping your legs against him. You just lay there, whimpers of crying, whimpers of being thrust into, but not whimpers of enjoyment, not whimpers of love or desire, but whimpers nonetheless. Your eyes cast to the side as your head turns to face the bottom of the window. You tried to find your happy place as he uses your body you can't find the fight in you anymore, you feel like all you've done is fight. You feel this anger bubbling inside you as you hear him growl and snarl.

He grips you and lifts your hips a bit to get a deeper penetration to deposit his seed... again. Your jaw clenches. Incubator. It's the only word that echoes in your mind.

Standing in the bathroom, bruised, stitched up, poorly mind you. You look over yourself in the mirror, your eyes red and swollen from crying. Your lips cracked and bloodied. You break down in tears, feeling every ounce of pain in your body from the past two days. You had been used, fighting him off, running your hand over your tummy you shake your head.

It all seemed to happen so fast, and you have so much regret in you, you hate all you've done, you hate everything you've done to yourself and those you've hurt. You suddenly feel like you need a priest and a confessional. You sob harder in the bathroom, the only time you have alone and to yourself. You shake your head and looked down at yourself.

"He's not going to be allowed to keep you..." You clench your jaw.

Suddenly there became a bang at the door.

"Do you like living?" He asks.

"Not with you I don't." You snap.

"You should be so lucky I chose you. Women would kill to be in your shoes." He stated.

[fizzyrockzz]

HELP IM CAKCLING

[fiji920]

the ROR's fear(year)book pictures close-up

yes theres two randalls and idk why some of them are smaller than the other thats the just file's fault

[rhythmantics]

what the FUCK do you mean you wrote two of the best prototype fics AND drew some of the best art. illegal

seriously though i am in love with your characterisation, especially of all three mercer siblings. frankly your version of dr mercer is the best ive seen in the entire fandom lmao

Thank you! I'm really glad you're enjoying that terrible bastard of a man. Dr. Mercer enjoyers unite. We love this evil skinny twink

Thoughts about Mercer sibling characterization + themes of the game (under a cut because it's VERY LONG):

The thing I try to stress when writing Doc Mercer (hereto referred to as "Xander") is that yes, he is a narcissistic, vain, arrogant bastard of a man, generally irredeemable, with extremely loose and/or nonexistent morals and a terrible personality.

However, [PROTOTYPE] is a game where most of the characters are some level of fucking awful and monstrous, but their motivations are still explored, and sometimes even still justified. I mean, Alex eats people. Randall was on his way to nuke Manhattan. Blackwatch regularly laughs at being able to murder innocent civilians. A powerful moment in some of the WOI's is Blackwatch gleefully discussing killing people, while the visuals show a camp on a rooftop where the survivors have written a big "NOT INFECTED" in a bid to not be murdered by Blackwatch.

Still, there's nuance there. Alex may grow a conscience and save New York, but he's still, you know, a walking viral apocalypse that both eats people and enjoys it/thinks it feels "right." Blackwatch murders all the people they want, but at the end of the day, they ARE the line that stands between humanity and viral apocalypse. And Randall might even be justified in nuking Manhattan if it means taking Alex out, because - you know - walking viral apocalypse (and for all Randall knows, ZEUS only killed Elizabeth to establish his dominance as hive queen supreme). I don't see why Doc Mercer should be exempt from that nuance, but he so very often is.

So that as my starting point, what do we know about Doc Mercer? Well, mostly from the PRIMA guide, we have his backstory. This backstory is so hilariously awful that I legitimately don't think I'd believe you if you told me he wasn't supposed to be sympathetic.

Xander's mom is thrown in jail right after he's born, no other family is willing/able to take him in, so he's thrust into the foster care system (no father is EVER mentioned, ever)

To make matters worse, Dana's bio mentions that she moved "to New York" to follow her brother, implying that they aren't NY-born, which further implies that they're from NEW FUCKING JERSEY LOL (it's only like, an hour's bus away from Columbia U, where Xander went to college)

Xander is kicked around foster care system like a hot potato until mom is released from jail. Seems like she either got pregnant right at the end of her stint, or right as she got out; he's 10 when she regains custody of him, but 9 when Dana is born.

Dana's bio says "[Xander] was the only parent figure Dana ever knew." It also said their mother had "drinking problems." Xander raised Dana to the degree that she literally doesn't even see her mom as a parent.

"For [Xander], foster care was better." Yikes. That's definitely an implication of abuse (if the parentification weren't enough). What kind of abuse? Well, they're often bundled together, but we can make a Strong Case for extreme violence at minimum, given the following:

What was mom in jail for? A 9-year sentence implies a second-degree crime, which, uh... take your pick: aggravated assault, aggravated arson, theft of an item more than 75k$, armed burglary or burglary that results in injury or threats of injury, unlawful possession of a firearm, sexual assault. Yikes

Bio outright describes it as living in "abject poverty," so with the fact that he was LITERALLY the only parent Dana knew (a role he was forced into starting at the age of TEN), as soon as he was legally able, he probably had to take on a job in addition to school and childrearing.

Given the "abject poverty" angle, I find it doubtful that he was able to leave home until he graduated, especially given that a commute from Jersey to Columbia U could be as short as an hour. Since he graduated from his PhD at the age of 24, that means he was Dana's parent until she was fifteen. 3/4 of her life by the time of the game.

Needs to be stressed: this man changed her diapers, warmed up her formula, cooked meals for her, helped her with homework, taught her sex-ed and what puberty was, helped her get her first job, taught her how to apply for college. He is, for all intents and purposes, Dana's father. (Put a pin in that!)

Like... holy shit! This is a sympathetic character! I don't know how anyone would be able to read that in isolation and not feel bad for this guy. I mean, this is a person who has literally ALL the trauma. Like, he's in the 99th percentile of worst childhoods in America. This boy has collected PTSDs like they are pokemon.

The PRIMA guide literally says that, at the end of all that, he "trusted no one, had no friends, cared less and less what others thought of him," and was an "impatient, dark, tortured person" with a history of burning bridges. "Forever paranoid," "morally ambiguous," and "teetering on the border of sociopathy" are also used to describe him, and - yeah, of course! I mean, did you SEE his backstory? Holy shit.

And what really fascinates me about this is that, even under those circumstances? He was probably the best parent he could have been to Dana. She literally sees him as one, stuck around NYC for five years because he was just that important to her, and trusts and cares for him so deeply that she's willing to risk her life for him/willing to forgive Alex ranting about how eating people "feels right."

Some people argue that he was using Dana as a pawn, or manipulating her, etc. etc., and I really dislike this take (though, of course, everyone's entitled to their own HCs etc., especially because a lot of the PRIMA stuff was clearly rewritten by the time of the game's release). First, I think that a working college girl with a fiery personality like Dana would not have stuck around for FIVE YEARS if she didn't feel like Xander deserved it - and given that he was also ghosting her for those five years, any manipulation he had her under would have worn off. Like, it's REALLY HARD to gatekeep gaslight girlboss someone if you're no-contact with them. Also, are you trying to tell me that an eleven-year-old boy was looking at a literal 2 year old going "yes... I will raise her to trust me absolutely... as a tool for me to use in the future... and then completely ignore her calls for 5 years!" C'mon.

But the second, and more important, reason I don't agree with that take is that I feel like it strips Dana of agency and reduces her to this almost damsel-like role. Nah, man, even if Xander was not her brother/dad, she would have risked her life to help him out. Why? Because she's a fucking anarcho-socialist journalism student, that's why!

Her PRIMA bio is really interesting in that regard; I feel like the game didn't show off well enough just how awesome Dana actually is. She's studying journalism at NYU. You may have heard that her job is "writing tabloids," but that's such a simplification/misunderstanding of the text! We actually have the titles of the publications she writes for, and they are: "Everything You Know Is Wrong", "Bathsheba", and "The Military/Industrial Complex Report." Even just from that small glimpse (and the fact that she calls Blackwatch "goose-stepping motherfuckers"), I think it's evident that she's got some deeply anti-government, anti-military, anti-fascist beliefs.

Furthermore, Dana is like... kind of a terrible person. Here's a great excerpt from her bio that I feel like isn't talked about enough (emphasis mine):

"She owes money all over town, and somehow manages to sweet talk friends into lending her more. She's a hustler, good at manipulating people. Like her brother, she's narcissistic and evasive. When she doesn't like someone she'll go out of her way to make sure they know it - particularly if they push the point. She's disrespectful, foul-mouthed, and not afraid of a fight. This all serves her well when she's neck-deep in a story, but in real life, her kind of behavior only makes her one thing: enemies. In short, she's her brother's sister."

Guys, I am not normal about that last sentence. It's phrased the same way as "she's her mother's daughter" or "she's her father's son." Like. Oh my god, Xander is basically her dad.

But back on topic: Dana is characterized as a BADASS BITCH who doesn't take shit from ANYBODY and is ALREADY anti-government. She literally calls the Blackwatch shit "the story of the century." She would have taken that case on even if it weren't her brother presenting it to her, no manipulation necessary.

AND she knew the risks. I've seen it argued that Xander's to blame for "tricking" her into investigating something that put her life in danger, but I think that's unfair to him. First, I think Blackwatch would've investigated and/or disappeared Dana either way, given how trigger-happy they are. Second, she knew the risks - that's why she was using her friend's penthouse apartment as a safehouse. She was prepared to risk her life for this story; BW just moved faster than she anticipated and ambushed her at her apartment.

(And, also, like, just as an aside, we don't know if she had permission to be in her friend's place, and given her PRIMA bio, she probably didn't, like she just full-on broke into her friend's really nice apartment LOL probably even chose the friend with the nicest digs LOL)

This also serves as such an interesting glimpse into not only her and her brother's relationship, but her brother's characterization. We already know that Xander possesses good social skills to some degree, given that he has a girlfriend who was willing to risk her life for him (she went back to the lab to get something for him, which is how she got caught - let's ignore for now the ethics of dating his subordinate); he also climbed the ranks at his job, rising to Associate Director (McMullen's direct subordinate) sometime within only five years.

Dana's bio, however, confirms it. Every description of her personality becomes associated with Xander with the phrase "she's her brother's sister." Xander is a hustler; he's manipulative and gets people to do what he wants. Xander is evasive, disrespectful, and lets people feel it when he doesn't like them. Xander makes enemies. BUT.

Even in the midst of all that - his paranoia, the fact that he's having a freak-out because his coworkers are being "silenced," and that he ghosted Dana for five years in an effort to leave the past behind him... who does he trust to have his back? Dana. I need you guys to understand. He doesn't go to Dana because she's an easy tool for him to manipulate. He goes to Dana because he's scared for his life and she is the only person he trusts. I think there's a reason Alex latches onto her when he learns she exists, and part of it is definitely because the scaffold he's built on, the original Dr. Mercer, viewed Dana as unconditionally trustworthy. The feeling is mutual.

And just in case you needed some sort of in-game proof? He has at LEAST two photos of Dana on his foyer wall. Legit. Go back and rewatch that cutscene when Alex walks into Xander's apartment. He has 2-3 photos of Karen... and 2-3 photos of Dana. He's been ghosting Dana, but he keeps photos of her on his wall, where he sees them every day, right next to where he works. One of the Dana photos is also the only photo that Xander is not in. I just... he loves his sister. He's just too mentally ill to be normal about it and keep in contact.

So, we have here pretty much Xander's ONLY redeeming quality: cares about his sister! That's it. That's all he's got. Let's talk about some other irredeemable stuff.

So far, I've talked a lot about the PRIMA guide, but now I'm going to talk about what's in the actual game, because it's quite interesting, and I don't think all of it made it into the fandom zeitgeist. It's too bad, because this one major fact really adds a shitton of nuance to this character:

Xander was out of the loop.

Xander did not know anything about Hope, Idaho. Xander did not know that Blackwatch existed. Xander didn't even fucking know that his human test subjects were deliberately infected. Within day one, Alex knows more about the conspiracy surrounding Blacklight than Xander ever did. And we know exactly how much he knew about the virus because he mailed Dana a laptop containing everything he was able to find, and it pretty much got as far as "MOTHER is named Elizabeth Greene" and "Hope, Idaho existed...?" We have a WOI where Randall expresses concern over even giving Xander access to MOTHER, and a WOI where Xander is pissed the hell off when he finds out that their human subjects were not naturally infected. He didn't know!

That suddenly casts his role in Blacklight's production in a much less nefarious light. Look at this job from Xander's point of view: You're a 24 year old who completed an 8-year college run (undergrad and PhD) in six years, WHILE raising a teenage girl and probably while working, too. At graduation, you get offered this insanely cushy job, with a threat that you'll be blacklisted from the industry if you refuse (this literally happened to Dr. Ragland, according to his PRIMA bio). It's a top-secret government job. The government's not great, but you have loose morals, and it can't possibly be worse than Albert Einstein building the atom bomb. So. Whatever.

(On top of that, they're already lying to you abour what the project's purpose is. Xander states he "didn't know" what he was working on until he "figured it out," and there's a WOI where one employee raves that the virus could be used to cure every disease on earth. It seems there was a general vibe that they were probably working bio-weapons, but no one knew FOR SURE, and a contributor to Xander's meltdown is the fact that his research results just... vanish. He doesn't know what they're being used for.)

Plus, holy shit, the pay. Xander is making, like, seven figures by the time he's 29. He lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side (where Gossip Girl takes place lol). The average price for a one-bedroom there is, like, 4000$ a month. This man spent 24 years in brutal poverty; the money matters to him.

On top of that, the stuff they're doing at GENTEK? Of course, it's stomach-turning, but it wouldn't clock as inherently unethical. Xander's fury at learning that MOTHER was a test subject, and not naturally infected (as he's been led to believe), implies that they were NOT infecting people at GENTEK. The bodies we see in WOI, their test subjects, were already infected by the time they got there, supplied to GENTEK with a cover story, that the virus was one they'd found naturally, and that these people - whose brains were fried by the virus - were just unlucky victims of random happenstance. Furthermore, making viruses more dangerous is legitimate virology. It's called "gain-of-function" experimentation, and while it is controversial (for obvious reasons), it's still something you would potentially be doing at an above-board lab.

That means that, prior to Penn Station, the worst Xander can be accused of is being a bootlicker, class traitor, who knowingly worked on WMDs for the US government. And yeah, that is monstrously evil, and Albert Einstein is a monster by that metric, but it's a level of evil that's matched or surpassed by almost every other character in the game. Dana and Ragland are the two exceptions, maybe Karen too, depending on whether you think her low hierarchical position absolves her of any sin. McMullen and everyone at Blackwatch are all more culpable than Xander. They're the ones giving him orders - he's the low man on the totem pole!

And his reaction upon realizing how deep the rabbit hole goes? It's not asking to join up with the evil side. It's not going out to do a terrorism (even if that's how it ends up). It's blowing the whistle. His first instinct is to go to his sister, the anti-government, anti-military journalism student. And as he spirals into panic and anxiety, it's to escape the city, while warning someone - probably Dana - to "get out of there". Even McMullen says, when Alex confronts him, "you were always so smart. You were ready to give up all our secrets. [...] We were trying to figure it out -- you just wanted to bring it all down." The class traitor was about to redeem himself. His motivations might still be selfish - to punish the people who lied to him, to save his own ass - but he's not a cartoon villain.

It's only after he's cornered, staring down guns, realizing that all his efforts were futile, possibly even realizing that Dana is next, that he smashes the vial. AND EVEN THEN... I think we're supposed to understand why he did it. Not sympathize, necessarily, but... look at his life. Abandonment, abuse, parentification. Skipping meals to make sure Dana can eat. Running on a sleep deficit because homework has to be done after helping Dana with hers after coming home from work after going to school. His wealth and girlfriend are hollow victories when he can't trust people enough to make friends. He loves his sister, enough to keep her photos on his foyer wall, but can't bear engaging with her as an adult on equal footing. He thought he'd finally caught a break, only for it to turn out to be a death trap from the start. Yes, choosing to smash the vial was an irredeemable action, a selfish, vindictive, and evil choice; however, I don't think he could have chosen differently. Dr. Mercer was not necessarily intended to be a sympathetic character (although he was), but he was certainly, bare-minimum, intended to be a tragic one.

It seems like the game went through several rewrites, and those rewrites confuse a pretty major plot beat: does the virus Xander releases at Penn Station burn itself out, or does it go on to become the main virus on the streets of Manhattan? This question, and where you personally fall on it, is really important. And that's because... if the virus burns itself out in Penn Station (which apparently the writer confirmed on Twitter, but there's evidence in the game to suggest the opposite), then that means Xander has one of the lowest body counts in the game.

Yeah, you heard me. Let's say the virus burns itself out in Penn Station. How many people would that even be? A few thousand? In 2009, Penn Station served about 300,000 people per day. That is really busy, but obviously, not all of those people - or even a majority of those people - are going to be in the station at any given time. It's probably a number around four digits. Um, how many people does Alex kill over the course of the game, again? Obviously, the in-game kill counts can't exactly be trusted, because you can rack up millions depending on how much you fuck around, but it's generally agreed that he's in the tens of thousands, between all the military bases he destroys, civilians he eats, and soldiers he cuts through. Randall has been confirmed to have ordered the glassing of both Hope, Idaho, AND Two Bluff, Arizona, with an attempt on Manhattan. (Cross also mentions a Kentucky in one of the cut lines, implying there's more cities and casualties than we even know about.) There are 1.6 million people living in Manhattan in 2009, so Randall was about to kill, like, a thousand times more people than Xander.

It also means he never put Dana in danger. If it's a virus that burns out on its own, he - the person whose work was "years ahead of his nearest competitor" - would know that it wouldn't reach her. And it would make sense if it burns out, too, because it's a bio-weapon. Not a great bio-weapon if it causes a a whole-ass apocalypse! And I also don't think it's fair to blame Xander for Alex letting Elizabeth Greene out of her cage, because by that point, 1) Xander is dead, 2) Dana sent Alex there, 3) Alex is a fully sapient and independent being who is not under Xander's orders because Xander is dead. I mention this because I've literally run into people who believe that the virus burned itself out at Penn Station, BUT ALSO that Xander releasing the vial directly put Dana in danger of infection AND that Elly's rampage is somehow his fault. You can't have it both ways!

That's actually why I don't believe that the virus burned itself out. Narratively and thematically, it's much better if Xander did release his virus knowing that it might cause a full-on apocalypse. That does make it so that he risked his sister's life (although you can argue that he figured she was as good as dead, anyways, given that they'd tracked him down - I don't, since I think he was too busy panicking and being sleep-deprived to be thinking about that), and it DOES make the entire ensuing tragedy his fault. And the reason that this is important is because of Xander's role as a "father" to Alex.

Here's something else that's important to note, which I often see overlooked: Alex places the blame on the shoulders of Randall, not Xander. "You bastard," he says after he's eaten Randall. "You could have stopped all this - you let it happen." Meanwhile, here's what he actually says about Xander: "what Mercer did is beyond forgiveness," and at the end of the game, "Alex Mercer. This city suffered for his mistakes, for what he did at Penn Station. And whoever he was - that's a part of me." We aren't supposed to think he's unilaterally evil without nuance. Pretty much everyone, Alex included, has done things "beyond forgiveness" in this game. We're instead supposed to ponder what it means to be derived from his stock.

What is Alex's characterization? To be frank, Alex is a dumbass baby. I know that this is not necessarily popular, but I genuinely believe that it's intentional. There are literally cut lines from the very first mission that REALLY drive home that this poor guy has NO IDEA what's going on. Begging people to stop shooting at him, thinking to himself "where's a place with a lot of people?" (honey, you're in NYC), and generally going "what was that? how did this happen? what's going on? what? huh? what?"

There's also needing Ragland to suggest to him the novel idea of breaking both spines on the leader hunters, and following Phone Voice into a death trap, and then still listening to Phone Voice a second time, not to mention how awkwardly he shrugs his way out of Karen Parker's hug, or how he's constantly pushing himself all the way into Dana's personal space/startling her/disappearing while no one's watching. There's a point where his brilliant plan for getting McMullen to land is to disable some infection detectors... while standing ankle-deep in biomass... looking up at McMullen. He's just, ah, ehm... not the sharpest tool in the shed. If you replay the game with that in mind, it... yeah. I mean. His first instinct upon being attacked by helicopters is to go up onto the roof of a building, where he is surprised by... more helicopters. Who left this child unattended? Where are your guardians.

I know I'm exaggerating - Alex does show remarkable flexibility and adaptability and on-the-fly problem-solving sometimes - but when the PRIMA bios and McMullen repeatedly stress that Xander is clever, manipulative, a schemer, a hustler, "so smart," it really highlights how... straightforward Alex is in comparison. You cannot tell me that Alex, as he's presented in-game, is "a lateral thinker - plans within plans."

And the interesting thing is, this actually seems like a fairly late-stage change! The original PRIMA guide blurb for "The Prototype" seems to suggest that he is actually an amnesiatic Dr. Mercer, not a wholly separate entity. It goes on and on about how "The Prototype" is cool, calm, dry and witty, always in control of his body, etc. etc., but that really doesn't match the in-game characterization at all (he's consistently characterized as awkward, unsure of himself), meaning that I think this is more proof that a characterization as "fucking idiot dumbass baby" was intentional.

Sampling of cut voice lines:

"Ghost Twelve, Ghost Twelve... oh, shit, that's my callsign..."

"Aw, I hate D-Codes..."

"They think I'm dead. Perfect. I can't wait to see the look on McMullen's face."

"I need to get somewhere with a lot of people... somewhere where they can't just keep firing at me."

"Where is there a lot of fucking people? Where?" (girliepop you live in NEW YORK)

"Just remember! This was your idea!"

like. cmon, man.

That being said, Alex is not innocent. He starts the game without a conscience, easily and effortlessly killing people, instinctively eating them, too. He's quite literally built upon two existing minds - the people-eating virus, and the sociopathic misanthrope. I think this is why he defaults to shoving people and has no option to put them down gently - he's filled with Xander's rage, his hatred, and his casual cruelty. One of his earliest lines is this: "revenge was the only clear thought in my head. The only one I could call mine." LITTLE DOES HE KNOW. He continues. "I wanted to find out what happened to me. The reason. Someone to blame. Someone I could punish."

And now we get into a major theme of the game, my thesis: [PROTOTYPE] is about family. It's about nature vs. nurture, it's about the cycle of abuse, and it's about how the people who raise us, shape us. Xander is the "father" of this story; he's consistently placed in that role relative to Dana, and Alex directly inherits his genetics, his appearance, his name, and even his initial personality from him. And as for the mother... there is literally a character in the game named MOTHER.

Alex is, in a very literal way, the child of Xander and Elizabeth Green. He was born out of a fusion of their DNA - the virus infecting Xander's body. Elizabeth also literally says "I am your MOTHER" in their first meeting. And as if that weren't enough, Elizabeth's relationship to Alex directly mirrors Xander's relationship with his own mother: the first thing Elizabeth does is abandon Alex, and when she returns, it's only to threaten Dana's safety and torment him. Xander himself becomes a mirror to his own absent father, disappearing before he ever got to know his son. This is the cycle of abuse, the tragedy that occurs when someone who was abused becomes trapped by it, and has no ability to operate outside its confines, perpetuating the pain that was inflicted upon them.

However... something's different. Alex is not left alone to suffer like Xander does. He has Dana - a parental figure who loves him unconditionally, whom he loves unconditionally in turn. And she is the impetus for his ability to change, the one who most directly molds his burgeoning consciousness. His interactions with Dana are brief, but even in those brief interaction, she teaches him empathy ("my god, [Elizabeth]'s just a girl. What kind of fucking monsters are these people?"), kindness/mercy ("whoa, whoa, whoa. [Ragland]'s a good guy"), and trust ("look, no matter what, you're still my brother"). Let's go back to our pin. Xander is Dana's "father" also... and he was the best one she could have had, given the circumstances. Dana represents breaking the cycle. Dana represents Xander's single redeeming quality.

In other words... the key difference between Alex and Xander is that Alex has an adult figure in Dana that he can trust and rely upon, something Xander never had... because Xander was that for Dana. Xander broke the cycle. That's the one good thing he managed to do.

Now, we know that lots of rewrites happened, that final boss stuff got shifted around, and things got moved into a sequel hook, like Dana's fate or PARIAH's whole deal. However, I think we can almost piece together what it might have been if we follow this thematic line of thinking. Because here's something quite interesting: PARIAH... is in foster care. A child who kills everything he touches, abandoned and trapped, a monster, whose only use is as an agent of evolution, a direct parallel for Xander at his worst - this tortured man who "found solace only in his work", for whom foster care was better, who teetered on sociopathy and didn't care. Randall represents the government, the system, that put him there - the first ones to ever screw Xander over. So if we assume that the final boss was originally PARIAH, and Alex still needs to eat his way through Elizabeth and Randall to get to him, then an incredibly interesting thing happens when we view that sequence of events from this thematic perspective.

Alex would triumph over MOTHER, the government, and Xander's worst. The crystallization of the fleeting love within Xander's heart - the one redeeming facet of Xander's personality - would overcome his abusive mother, the cold-hearted system that forsook him, and even his own worst traits, the monster he was molded into. Quite literally, love would win. And I think this would have even tied in to curing Dana - that this would become a major facet of Alex's motivation - that he'd need PARIAH in order to cure her, or something like that. Dana - kindness, empathy, and love, breaking the cycle of abuse - becomes the impetus for Alex to change, to become a better person, to grow a conscience, to trust others. I think that's the central theme of this game.

Xander's shadow looms large over the entirety of [PROTOTYPE]'s story. There are more themes than just family, but it's the one I wanted to highlight, because I think it's the one most central, most core to the game's emotional experience. At every turn, you can feel the ghost of Xander - not just because Alex is literally wearing his corpse.

I'll restate here the relevant parts of Alex's closing monologue:

"I looked for the truth. Found it. Didn't like it. Wish to hell I could forget it. Alex Mercer. This city suffered for his mistakes, for what he did at Penn Station. And whoever he was - that's part of me."

Xander is Alex's father - the person from whom he inherited his base nature. But Alex is able to grow beyond that - to trust others, to love others.

"What have I become? Something less than human. But also something more."

Xander was so tormented by his past, by his abandonment, neglect, and abuse, that he was unable to face his sister. Terrified of the pain of abandonment, he chose to abandon her rather than risk being rejected when she became an adult. And yet, he loved his sister. That's the nuance of this character, the legacy he leaves. One of cruelty, but also one of kindness. Both are inherited by Alex - it's fair to say that everything Alex is has been shaped by Xander, his father. The bad... but also the good. And it is because of that miniscule, faltering, fleeting "good" that Xander was able to procure, that Alex is able to rise above what Xander became.

TL;DR: It would be appropriate, both narratively and thematically, to call Xander "daddy".

[deltaqueen184]

i'm not gonna lie and say i'm doing a bad job not keeping up with monsters at work but this is interesting and kinda funny out of context like the funny part is Randall look happy and maybe tell them that he finally back but others ether look confused or disappointed like "oh Randall i thought you fell off the face of the earth of something" idk just kinda funny to me but interesting to me is mostly the lighting and the door behind Tylor because maybe that where Randall back out of also just small thing i wish Randall has some sort of scars on him like him could have some on his back and we can't see due do to this being the only pic of he idk and another thing and it could the lighting but is Randall underbody like lighter than the top

like compare to the renders of him they don't look that different in color i guess so yeah here all my thought on one screenshot of Randall i guess

[saltybenchday]

[ill-skillsgard]

What’s your favorite movie/show from a each of the Skarsgards?

Ouuu, well some of these might be obvious, but I'll try not to write a novel about how much I love the Skarsgards in almost everything! Let us start with the king. Our beautiful, perfect, hilarious and talented Bill... AKA the man of my dreams. AKA Horror Daddy. AKA the most gorgeous man who has or ever will exist. This is such a hard choice, but I have to credit his role as Pennywise as what introduced him to me, or rather, what got me HOOKED. Bill cemented himself in the horror genre as a God with this role. Not only that, but both chapters of the film are some of the best horror that has ever been done, period. I wouldn't even be here if it weren't for IT. Honorable mentions goes to Villains because Mickey was sooo devastatingly charming and Bill was made for the role. I'd say Castle Rock too but then I might as well list everything he has ever done both big and small because I just love him in everything, always.

Now, onto my sweet baby Valter. Historically, I have rejected anyone's negative opinions about my BEAUTIFUL BOY and will continue to do so until the day I die. Okay, he's a bit of a brat, he's not as well-known as his father or brothers, but he is my 2nd favourite Skarsgard (sometimes in my brain he is number 1.) Valter Odd Skarsgard has this voice that narrates my fantasies, and lips I dream of often. So tall, mmph. So gorgeous! That smile, oh my GOD. My underrated man.

Valter dropped a nuke on me with his role as Faust in Lords of Chaos. This movie means more to me than the fact that Valter is in it. The story itself and the period of metal music in Scandinavia has always been on my radar, and then Valter shows up as my ACTUAL type and ruins me. Do I think Faust is a good guy? No. Do I think that Valter with long black hair, a leather jacket and a bullet belt is the most attractive thing on the face of the earth? Yes. Great film, directed by the legendary Jonas Akerlund... What could be better?

Now, when it comes to Gustaf Skarsgard, I feel like I cannot choose between Merlin and Floki. Both have such chaotic energy. Both were so well-played. Then there's the short film he did with his father, directed by Bill and Landon Liboiron. HE IS A SHAPESHIFTER. So talented. So handsome. Ugh, just ridiculously gifted in the art of acting. But I have to give it to Merlin because I have never wanted to be on an alcoholic wizard before. Would I rewatch Cursed over Vikings? I don't know. Would I watch a standalone series of Merlin? YES. Would I watch a standalone series about Floki? ALSO YEAH. Tough decisions here. Ahhh, give me that silly wizard man. I want him! Cursed was great and they were wrong to cancel it!

Then of course, there's Alexander. A Golden God. As talented as he is attractive. This one is very hard because he's been in a lot of really good shows and films that I love. I wanted to pick his role in Zoolander because I think it's one of the best comedy bits I have ever seen (ORANGE MOCHA FRAPPUCINOS) but I can't do him like that. I think I would have to go with Randall Flagg in The Stand, not only because it's another Stephen King adaptation with another Skarsgard, but because he annhilated that role and looked so damn good doing it. And also BEARD (idc if it's fake, he looks great.)

Now, Papa Skars is a TOUGH one to pick, but I have to go with Dune. Idk if it's because of Stellan that his boys can play evil pricks so well, but the Baron is like next level shit. He is so talented. I went over half my life not even realizing he's been in so many movies I've watched. But in recent times, since the Skarsgards have been on my radar, Dune knocked it outtttt and Stellan was a huge part of that. Thank you Papa Skars, for helping create your beautiful sons and unleashing them upon the world.

This could have been a lot shorter but oh well. My mens deserve all the shout outs. Thanks for asking! ❤️

[giffergworl]

Randall Flagg, The Stand

[cryptidvoidwritings]

hello can i have some kitties to feel better

But of course! I have just the ones!

[alicent-targaryen]

CLAIRE & JAMIE ▸ Outlander, 2.5