Kiss My Wonder Woman

All the photos today are pictures I took of my hometown when I was back a few years ago for Christmas. FYI.

This is going to be a teensy bit entirely personal today, so if you're just here for the pop culture commentary bits, then feel free to skip this and check back later. For the rest of you, buckle your seatbelts because feelings are happening here. DUN DUN DUNNNN.

I've felt pretty out of it lately, and I think it's been coming through on this blog. My heart hasn't been in this, guys, and that totally sucks. It's hard for me to get pumped to write when it's like that, and it's not fair for you to be presented with material I'm just cranking out without thinking about it. Not that every article has been horrible, but that I don't think I've been reaching the level of depth I want to in the past few months. I've not been sharing my heart like I should. I haven't been real with all of you, because I've been keeping some pretty big stuff back. So, here's what's going on:

About a year ago on the blog, I shared a really weird conversation that I had with God. It was about remembering that the best thing to do doesn't always look like it and that a lot of times, doing the right thing is virtually indistinguishable from "losing". God told me all this in the context of, of course, my life and how at some point in the near future he was going to ask me to "give up my life."

At the time, being an incredibly melodramatic person inside - seriously, I am the melodramaticest - I interpreted this as "die". Like as in, God was going to ask me to die in some tragic and notable way. Because, well, that fits with my ideas of what self-sacrifice means and that fits really easily into our culture's understanding of sacrifice. Sacrifice is losing your life, right? Well, sort of.

As it happens, I was asked recently to "give up my life", but it didn't end up looking anything like what I was expecting. Six months ago or so, my mother started to feel a bit strange. She said that she felt like her legs were unstable and they were worried she might have a neurological problem. All spring she went to doctor after doctor, getting tests after test and progressively worse. Soon it turned into a full blown motor control problem and the doctors still had no clue what was going on. So if you've wondered at all over the past six months why my mood seemed a little...unstable, now you know.

The upshot of all of this is that in June I offered to move home and help out. In August, a few weeks ago, my parents accepted. And in just under two weeks, I'm going to be flying out to Massachusetts to live in my childhood home and hang out with my parents full time for the next year. It's no terrible thing that I'm being asked to do. I mean, I'm mostly going to be spending time with my mother (who I love). Not exactly what I would have called a massive self-sacrifice.

And yet, it kind of is? What I'm going off to do is good and actually pretty fun, but it still means giving up the life I've made for myself in Washington. It means saying goodbye, at least for now, to the people I love here and losing out on a lot of things I expected I'd get to experience this year. It means no more GeekGirlCon, no more living with the hilarious and wonderful Kyla Furey and her fantastic husband, no more late night anime marathons, and no more living within driving distance of my sister.

It means quitting a job that I adore taking care of kids that I've gotten super attached to. It means looking into a less than sure financial future. It means putting plans on hold and trying really hard not to think about the future. It means packing all of my earthly possessions in boxes and mailing them across the country, selling my beloved terrible car, and shutting the door on this season of my life.

It's a lot.

But it's also good. I know that I'm going off to do the right thing. I know that the life that's waiting for me in Massachusetts is a good one and I know that I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't do this. So this is me sacrificing myself. This is me doing the stupid thing. Because, let's be real, by the world's standards this is the stupid thing to do.

I'm not exactly going to Massachusetts to build connections or to further my career. I will keep doing the blog, don't worry, but I'm going to have other things to do as well. I'm giving up my life and I'm not going to be doing anything that the world would judge as worthwhile, but I think I'm okay with that. It's just...this is me. Doing the stupid thing.

There you go. Now you're all caught up on my life.

The thing is, I didn't share this with you as I was going along because it didn't feel momentous or interesting enough to bring up. It felt like I would have been unnecessarily involving you in my personal life, and since this isn't a personal blog, by and large, that would have been weird. Right?

Only what I've actually found is that by keeping this huge part of my life away from all of you. The nights I didn't write an article because I was busy praying and crying. The nights recently when I've said "screw it" because I wanted to spend a few last nights hanging out with the amazing people I have here. The important moments of my life - I haven't been honest about any of it, and that actually sucks.

I think a huge part of it was that I didn't feel like my life was sticking to the script. I'm a story person, I understand myself in terms of stories, and this didn't feel like the kind of movie I would watch. It's very Lifetime Movie, and I'm not a big Lifetime person, if you know what I mean.

In the past few weeks, then, I've had to seriously reconsider how I think about self-sacrifice and what makes a good story in someone's life. And the truth is, just because it's been gradual doesn't mean it's been any less important. Just because it's a small story doesn't mean it's not radically important. I always say that I want to change the world, to make it a kinder and more inclusive place. Well now I have to put my money where my mouth is in this very specific, very personal way.

Three years ago, when this blog was still new-er and I was just coming to Washington to stay for good, I don't think I would have been able to make the choice I just made. Or it wouldn't have meant as much if I did. I'm a deeper person now than I was then, partly because three years of life is apt to change you no matter what, but largely because I've spent three years in an amazing community realizing how deep my heart actually goes. I'm very happy now to be the kind of person who can give up the life I have here, joyfully and well, without devaluing it or denying its importance to me.

I want to finish out well. Not finish out the blog, since I have every intention of keeping that going for a good long time, but finishing out well in this phase of my life in Washington. It's been an amazing three years (and change), and I'm so grateful I got to have it. And all of you were a big part of that. You, my online community, have been amazing and have taught me so much. I'm really grateful to you.

So. I'm coming home and I'm giving up. But I'm not sad about it because it's absolutely the best thing to do.Thank you all for helping me become the kind of person who can do this, and I hope you stick with me for the messy stuff, the heart hard stuff, and the general realness of life. I promise, from here on out, to be honest with you about what's going on in me, and I hope you'll promise the same.

Deal? Deal.

I find it very appropriate that I'm coming back to you all just as school is really kicking back in to high gear. It feels right. You know? I'd take credit for the intentionality, but, honestly I had nothing to do with it.

Nope. I'm just back now because after a few hectic weeks of closing out my life in Seattle and moving cross country and then settling into my life here in Boston, I'm finally at a point where I can think coherent thoughts again. At least, coherent thoughts that aren't just "I wonder if I have enough packing tape" and "Why doesn't the US Postal Service let you ship comic books via Media Mail?" and "How the frickety frack do you park at Mass General?!"

I'm back and it's time to start thinking deep and meaningful thoughts about culture again. So, before we actually do any of that, I thought it made sense to talk through the basic structure of this blog going forward.

Fun, right?

First off, let's talk about the weekly schedule. Up until now, due to the overwhelming busyness of my life in Seattle, I didn't feel like I could commit to more than a vague hand-wave of a schedule each week.* Now at least my commitments are more intermittent and I get to schedule them myself, so I'm taking this opportunity to start some cool stuff I've been wanting to do for ages, such as...

Masculinity Mondays: We talk a hell of a lot about femininity and female characters here at Kiss My Wonder Woman, but we've never been quite as good at talking about issues of masculinity and the representation of male characters. Well, all that is going to change. A little. Probably not a lot. But at any rate, now guys are going to get their own special column each week where we talk about issues of masculinity, both healthy and toxic portrayals, and how the media can be better about giving men and boys positive representations to look up to.

Since I am not male, my perspective is a little bit untrustworthy here. That means that this column is going to be very open to guest writers and columnists, both men and women, who want to talk about masculinity and male characters in the media. If you want to pitch and article, email me here!

Think of the Children! Tuesdays: Admittedly the big announcement here is just that TOTC Tuesdays is going to keep going. At times I've felt like I was running out of steam with the subject matter, but really there's so much left to cover. I mean, we've barely touched on Magical Girl Animes, the sheer terror of Watership Down and its imitators, and the joyful glee of shows like Adventure Time and Gravity Falls. So, more of this. Ideally more diverse, complex, and interesting this. I'll also be making more of an effort to vary my subject matter and talk about more than just animated kids' movies. Though we will still talk about those too.

Strong Female Character Fridays: These are always popular and don't worry, I have no intention of doing away with this column. I do, however, want to start talking about female characters who aren't just on television. I have a natural bias for SFCs on TV because I happen to really really like that media form, but I've been feeling for a while that I ought to really diversify the women we cover.

So expect more talk on awesome badass ladies from all sorts of media formats, from webcomics to books to independent films to youtube (to also those other conventional media forms we also still enjoy)!

Recaps: First off, I do intend to finish recapping Outlander and Kyla Furey has every intention of finishing off her excellent Hannibal recaps. It got away from me a little bit what with the move and the ridiculousness of my personal life these past few months, but that's still in the works. After that, though, I plan to finish recapping Strange Empire and I'm considering a recap series on Fargo. But other than that, I'm up for suggestions. Reasonable suggestions, that is. I love you all, but I'm not recapping all seven seasons of The West Wing, okay?

There is also some possibility, but it's more of a slight possibility at this point, that I might add in quick little comic book recaps. You know, for those of you who want more recapping and analysis in their comic book lives! I figure it will work well for those of us on a budget who can't afford all the rad comics we want, and the analysis is just always a fun thing to do. So possibly that. But I'm still mulling it over.

Okay, now that we've talked about the columns, here's what's up with the weekly schedule: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays have their regulars columns. Wednesdays and Thursdays will be the days devoted to more complex and analytical thought pieces on just whatever I happen to feel like talking about. And recaps and reviews will be sprinkled throughout the week. Good? Good.

Second matter of business is mostly a heads up. Hey! Heads up! We're going to be doing The Undies again this spring (though slightly earlier in the year). It was a ton of fun this past year and I think it's worth repeating. For those of you who missed it, The Undies is an incredibly subjective kind of silly way of honoring the best underappreciated films of the previous year.

Last year we saw awesome movies like Mockingjay Part 1 and Top Five and Snowpiercer and Under the Skin going head to head in a voting contest to see which one was the best underappreciated film of the year. "Best" and "underappreciated" being incredibly subjective terms, of course.

Obviously it's too early in the year to talk about voting or ballots, but I'm letting you all know this is happening because I want you to keep your eyes open for potential nominees. We're going to have a comment party at the end of the year to decide who should be on the ballot. So, heads up!

Third, third? I lost track. Anyway, I would like to announce that I will not be doing Pilot Season this year (you know, that thing where I watch all the new television pilots). Because I don't want to. End of speech.

And, finally, our last order of business is heart stuff. I just want to thank all of you for your support and patience this past month. I have been blown away by the kind messages I've received and I'm so happy to know that all of you lovely people are out there and are thinking of us. Thank you. We really really really appreciate it.

Okay, that's it! Break's over and it's time to get back to work.

*I was working thirty hours as a nanny, teaching Creative Writing, doing the occasional freelance editing, volunteering with my church's youth group, and also pretending to have friends sometimes? Also doing this blog. Which is kind of full time in and of itself. I was tired a lot.

Aww yiss! It's our first official Masculinity Monday! And to start this series off, I thought it only appropriate to talk about Netflix's Daredevil. While there are lots of amazing things to examine about this show - like how the show profits from the oversaturation of superheroes in the media right now to the large ethical dilemmas presented in the plot to the amazing awesomeness of Claire Temple and Karen Page - I think the show really functions best as an analysis of masculinity.

And I don't even mean that in a snarky passive-aggressive commentary on how few female characters there are in the series. As I pointed out above, the women of this show are pretty freaking rad. From Doris Urich, a decorated soldier who helped blow the whistle on the mistreatment of veterans, to Marci Stahl, a shark in a really nice suit whose every line is hilarious but who also has this level of depth and pathos you just adore, the women of this show are amazing. Daredevil isn't an exploration of masculinity because of some lack in feminine representation. It's about masculinity because it uses its three main characters to look at three very different ways to be a (white) man in current American society.

Which is something I find interesting, so we're going to talk about it.

Obviously there are more than three male characters on Daredevil, but the characters we follow most and in whom we become most invested are definitely Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), and good old Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). The three of them cover a range of presentations of masculinity and ideas of what it means to be a man, and that range goes from the supremely unhealthy to the perhaps romantic but equally damaging to the genuinely healthy and appropriate.

But even beyond these three dudes, masculinity is a constant theme in Daredevil. All that talk of fathers and sons, all of Matt's conversations with Father Lantom about how a man ought to behave in certain situations, all of the background characters bleeding through with their ideas and ideals of what it means to be a man. It's always on our minds, what masculinity is and who exactly gets to define it.

One of the great virtues of the show, I would argue, is actually this wealth of meditation on the subject of masculinity. Because there is so incredibly much of it, it feels like we get a better handle on the subject than we might otherwise. So. Let's get going!

Definitely the first thing that comes to mind when we start talking about Daredevil and masculinity is obviously Matthew Michael Murdock and his ridiculous abs. Or maybe that's just me. But I think that for a lot of people it feels like Daredevil offers a very simple dichotomy. On the one hand you have Wilson Fisk and his toxic masculinity and on the other you have Matt Murdock and his healthy, heroic masculinity. Right?

Actually, no. I think what the show is doing is more complex than that. Mainly because I don't really see Matt Murdock as being a particularly good example of healthy masculinity. At least, not when the series starts.

Think about it. When we enter the story of the show, Matt is in a tricky situation. He has all of these superpowers and desire to save the world, but he's only just started doing it. He's a little unhinged, isn't he? He fights brutal and bloody and yeah he saves people, but he does it by incurring their problems into himself.

His is an ascetic and selfless masculinity, but not what I would consider a good one. And no wonder! When we look at Matt's two main father figures, Jack Murdock and Stick, we can see how he got this idea.

Basically, Matt's concept of what it means to be a man is entirely rooted in violence. And that's not okay for him or for anyone else. Inspired by his father who he revered despite his flaws, Matt's got it in his head that the only real way to help people is to fight for them. That fighting is the answer. Claire points it out to him a couple of times too. It's not that Matt is a sadist, but rather that he doesn't know any other option. Whether it's in a courtroom or in a back alley, Matt's understanding of how men deal with life is to fight.

That's a very appealing and persuasive way to look at life. When you view it all as a battle to be won no matter the cost, life feels much simpler and easier to handle. Matt can solidify all of his problems into two categories: things he can fight and things he has to live with. His life is basically barren except for that. And he's always on the lookout for another battle to enter. He's constantly going around inserting himself in situations that could turn violent or prosecutorial because he knows of no other way to be a "good man". A good man fights for those who cannot fight for themselves. And sure, that's true, but it's not the whole truth. I don't think Matt knows that.

What's most interesting here is how our culture reacts to this. By American cultural standards, this view of the world is what we would consider healthy masculinity. I mean, he's clearly a good person. He goes to church and he talks to a priest all the time and he really thinks about the ethical questions around him. Matt is strong, both physically and emotionally, and he really does fight for what he believes in. So is he not what we should consider a good example of masculinity?

Not in my book.

The problem is that Matt's version of masculinity eats him up inside. It's caustic, wearing away at his humanity. It forces him to lie to his friends "for their own good" and causes him to condescend to them. Not consciously, of course, but he thinks of them as weaker than him. They "don't need to know" because the truth "could hurt them".

In a weird twisted way, Matt isn't strong enough to handle the idea that his friends don't need his protection. He needs to believe he's needed. And that doesn't seem healthy at all. A masculinity that cannot handle the world as it is probably isn't one worth emulating. Arguably Matt's greatest weakness is his desire to show no weakness. He doesn't even allow his best friend close enough to help him.

Then again, Wilson Fisk's violent and toxic masculinity isn't really a safe bet either. Fisk is the villain of our piece, and while he is absolutely definitely a complex and compelling character in his own right, he also fits very neatly into our ideas of what "bad" masculinity looks like. He's a big man and he is physically violent. It sometimes seems like these bursts of rage consume him and take away his control, like when he flips a table in his own apartment or when he smushes Anatoly's head in that car door. Fisk's temper is unpredictable and terrifying.

In his case as well we can easily trace this to his father. What makes Fisk and Matt different, though, is that Fisk doesn't revere his father. He hated his father. He is trying with all his might to be a man his father never could be, a controlled and calm and powerful man who doesn't actually have to use violence to get people to do what he wants. It's just that he's not always successful.

No matter how hard Fisk tries to get away from his father's legacy, it seems to keep running after him. But in a strange way, I would actually argue that Fisk's masculinity is closer to being healthy than Matt's is for one simple reason: it's self-aware. Fisk knows that he has problems. He knows that his violent tendencies and desire to rely on his strength and power are not actually good or beneficial traits.

For the majority of the series he's wrestling with this and it makes for very compelling drama. I mean, there's a reason why the scenes we most relate to Fisk in are the ones where he is emotionally vulnerable and connecting with another human being. When you really think about it, Fisk has more scenes like that than Matt does. Matt's vulnerability comes much later in the show.

In other words, Fisk is a more healthy (though not actually healthy) image of masculinity because he is aware of all of the ways in which he falls short of being "a good man". Matt sees no real problem with his way of life for the majority of the series, and so his masculinity is the worse for being non-self-reflective. Does that make sense?

Doesn't matter. We're moving on.

All of that was just prelude because now I want to talk about the real masculine hero of Daredevil. That's right, out of everyone on the show, from Wesley to Nobu to Ben Urich to Stick, the character who I think best embodies a genuinely healthy and good masculinity is Foggy freaking Nelson. And i have good reasons for this.

First off, Foggy is very self-aware. I listed that above as being one of Fisk's better traits and one of Matt's definite deficiencies. Foggy knows exactly who he is, even when most people would let their pride or vanity gloss over the truth. He considers himself not bad looking but pretty decidedly average (though the actor is definitely the male version of "Hollywood Homely"). He knows he's not a great fighter but he's willing to pick up a baseball bat and try to help someone. He's a moral man but he's also capable of being swayed by the promise of a steady paycheck and free bagels.

Foggy knows exactly who he is. He's a man trying his best to be good and sometimes he makes it and other times he doesn't. He knows this and that makes him a much healthier character than pretty much everyone else on the show. Definitely more healthy than Matt and Fisk

But the real reason I think Foggy is the character who best embodies a good and healthy masculine ideal is because of his heart. Because he's kind. Foggy Nelson is the kind of guy who shows up at his elderly client's apartment to repair her wall. He wasn't able to get her landlord to fix it and he's made no real legal process. He also doesn't know crap about construction. But he shows up anyway and he tries to help because Foggy Nelson is a good man. He knows he isn't the most qualified or best or strongest and he helps anyway. He's not proud, he's just good.

And here's another reason: he cries. Foggy's heart is open and breakable and quite frankly I think that makes him the best male character on the show. When he discovers that his best friend has been lying to him for years and actually has superpowers, Foggy's immediate reaction is to make sure said friend doesn't die, but as soon as he knows Matt will be all right, Foggy is open and honest about his emotions. He cries. Weeps, even. Foggy makes it clear that his heart hurts and he does not apologize for that. While Matt looks like he resents every tear he sheds because he's supposed to be some kind of stone-cut vigilante, Foggy just cries. Openly and without shame.

He knows his limits. He's kind. And his heart is soft enough to be bruised. Foggy Nelson is the ideal man to come out of Daredevil because he's the only one who knows his own heart and he's the only one to have what I would call "a heart of flesh".

I feel like it's not a hard concept, but I'll elaborate. Matt and Fisk do everything they can throughout the run of the show to make their hearts into stone. Matt does this because he believes the toxic ideal that connections and relationships are a weakness. Fisk does it because he thinks that ruthlessness is the only way to have power. But Foggy takes a very different path. His heart is all flesh all the way through. There is no stone there. When his feelings are hurt they show. When he's happy he practically glows. His heart is flesh and that's his superpower.

And, ultimately, it works out for him, doesn't it? I mean, Foggy's heart of flesh is what makes him able to repair his relationship with Matt. Because he cries and is honest about his feelings he forces Matt to confront his issues as well. With Matt actually doing some real self-examination he's able to step back from the ledge of mutually assured destruction and do something constructive to get rid of Fisk.

Foggy's fleshy heart and belief that anyone can be a good person is what gets Marci to hand over the files that get Fisk arrested. It's not Matt's punching ability or Fisk's evilness that change her, it's the idea that Foggy Nelson thinks she can be a good person. His heart.

He gets the cops on their side by being nice to them and remembering birthdays and getting presents for mothers. He takes a night out of his life to make sure that Karen feels safe in Hell's Kitchen again and in so doing wins her loyalty and friendship. Foggy's a great guy and he's one of the key parts in saving their city. Foggy and his big heart.

Isn't this the masculinity we actually want to value? I mean I'm all for the entertainment value of watching Daredevil punch people, but at the end of the day, I don't want more Matt Murdocks in the world. I want more Foggy Nelsons. If I could show this series to any impressionable boys, I wouldn't want them to come away with the idea that heroism is throwing yourself off a three story building and doing parkour in a red suit. I'd want them to see how influential and life-changing it is to be kind and openhearted and listen. I'd want them to understand that so much of morality and courage is about little choices every day.

Matt and Fisk are operatic figures, larger than life. But Foggy isn't. He's human and little and finite like us. The world needs more men like Foggy Nelson. Men who know they are weak and don't let that get in the way of their attempts to do something good. Men who care and are not ashamed of that. Men who try to make the world a better place not in grandiose gestures but by getting someone a cup of coffee or asking how their day was.

A "good man" isn't a man always out looking for a fight. He's a man with heart of flesh looking for the right thing to do in his every day life. I'm not saying that we don't need grand heroic figures. I'm just saying that what we need more and what the media seems less ready to provide is a supply of men who cry and men who heal.

More of this, please. Thanks.

About a year ago it came to my attention that while I am actually pretty darn well educated in anime that deconstructs the tropes of "magical girl" stories, I'd not actually seen any magical girl anime. That's how I ended up mainlining episodes of Sailor Moon with my endlessly patient and lovely best friend Kyla Furey, and we all know how that turned out. But Sailor Moon was not enough. After a few months of watching other stuff and going outside and doing things occasionally, Kyla and I figured that it was time for me to watch the second most important magical girl anime: Cardcaptor Sakura.

Admittedly, this took us a while.

At first we just kept getting distracted by my desire to watch reality shows about people who renovate houses*, but once it became clear that our time was limited and I would be leaving our gentle and wonderful apartment home within the month, we decided to haul butt and try to finish the whole show.

Which we did. Go us. So now, having seen all seventy episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura, I feel not only more educated about magical girl anime, but also more enlightened as a human being. I guess. Mostly I feel kind of sad that it's over because it turns out that Cardcaptor Sakura is exactly my speed.

What I mean when I say that is that this show, for all its silliness and wacky hijinks - and for all that it was intended for an audience of ten year olds - is very much philosophically in line with what I want from a good TV show. It's a show about a magical little girl saving the world, sure, but it's also a show about this little girl growing up and coming to terms with her emotions.

In fact, more of the show is about Sakura's emotional development than is about her magic. The series finale occurs after all of the magical plotlines have finished up and is actually just about Sakura dealing with her feelings. And I love that.

So, to back up a bit, Cardcaptor Sakura is a Japanese animated show that aired between 1998 and 2000. It's also a manga but I haven't read it, so we're just talking about the show here. Like a lot of anime of the late 1990s, it was optioned and brought over for an American audience. But because American creative executives are kind of awful sometimes, the show was very heavily edited and renamed Cardcaptors, making one of the more minor characters, Li Syaoran, the other main character because the producers were worried about bringing over a show that was too "girly." You know, because who watches cartoons about girls?

Me. I do.

Anyway, the version that Kyla and I watched was the original Japanese version (with subtitles), and I have to say that it was really good. The story starts when Kinomoto Sakura, a cute nine year old girl, finds a mysterious book in her father's office. The book is covered in symbols and English words. When Sakura shakily reads out one of the words - WINDY - the book flies open and all of the cards inside fly up into the air. It's then that Sakura realizes that the book is actually magic. Fortunately for her (probably), the cards' guardian, Kero, shows up in that moment to tell her what has happened.

The cards are magic. They're like magic spells distilled into cards. When Sakura opened the book and scattered them, because she has latent magical power, they all woke up and now they're wreaking havoc on her town. It's up to Sakura to find the cards and defeat them so that they will stop making mischief. In order to do that she gets a magic wand and a bunch of coaching from Kero.

The first half of the show then follows Sakura as she tracks down each card. It falls into a cute little formula where the stakes vary wildly. In one episode, Sakura discovers that the JUMP card is hiding out at a cute little toy shop and causing problems for the owner. Said owner thinks she's being haunted by an evil spirit. In another episode, Sakura and her entire class nearly die of hypothermia when the ICEY card attacks them at a skating rink. And then there's the episode where Sakura has to defeat the card SWEET because it's making all the cakes they bake in home-ec class too sweet.

In other words, the show is kind of all over the place in terms of stakes. But Sakura tackles all of her problems with an open and cheerful attitude. Even when another student (Li Syaoran) transfers from Hong Kong to go after the cards as well - and prove that he's a more powerful magician than Sakura is - she keeps her upbeat, happy heart. Sakura's story isn't defined by antagonists she has to defeat, but rather by her emotional development in and of herself. The cards she fights quickly become her friends. Syaoran spends a few episodes resenting Sakura, then becomes her friend, and eventually develops feelings for her. Heck, she basically has a coterie of people following her around throughout the show making sure nothing bad happens to her.

What makes this show worth discussing (and watching, for that matter) is how it manages to create a main character who is fully good and kind and friendly and wonderful, and then show how this does not make her a less powerful person at all. It's a polemic about the importance of virtue in people with power, and it deals with complex and frightening issues without ever losing the light, joyful tone of the show. In other words, it's freaking magic.

But it's also important to see how these interpersonal relationships are never seen as secondary to the magic plot. Halfway through the series, when Sakura has finally collected all of the cards, she has to go into a magical showdown and prove she is worthy to be the cards'"master". The problem? This magical showdown involves Sakura having to fight someone she cares very deeply for. And she refuses. She won't hurt her friend. She could. She has enough raw magic to win pretty easily. But she refuses and the show validates her decision.

Not only that, but when it gives her a vision of the future where she doesn't become the master of the cards, the consequences aren't so much apocalyptic as they are personal. The horrific world ending future Sakura has been warned about is really just one where everyone has lost the spark of love for the person they care most about in the world.

In other words, the magic on the show is really just a means to an end, and that end is the exploration of Sakura's rich and complex emotional life. All of the magical stuff that happens in the show plays second fiddle to the development of relationships and characters and the complicated reality of growing up.

This is a show that by and large doesn't have any actual bad guys. Even the guys you think are bad guys turn out to have their own slightly weird but generally understandable logics for what they do. You never really worry while watching the show whether or not Sakura will be all right. Of course she'll be all right! She's always all right. The question then becomes not if she'll be okay but how she will deal with her own emotions and the emotions of those around her. And that becomes a much more interesting show.

I really mean that. What Cardcaptor Sakura lacks in depth with the magical plots it more than makes up for in the interpersonal relationships. Sakura is the younger child of Kinomoto Fujitaka and Nadeshiko. Nadeshiko, Sakura's mother, died when Sakura was just a baby. As a result, Sakura has mostly been raised by Fujitaka, her absent-minded but very loving archaeologist father, and Toya, her significantly older brother (Toya is about sixteen when the series starts). Sakura loves her family, but sometimes feels weird about not being able to remember her mother.

In addition to all of this, we slowly learn that Sakura's parents had a very unconventional relationship. Meeting when Fujitaka was a student teacher at Nadeshiko's high school, they married very quickly and had Toya within the year. Nadeshiko's whole family hates Fujitaka to the point of having cut him and his children out of their lives entirely. It's not until well into the series that we discover Nadeshiko's family is still around and even then the story never gets fully resolved.

Then there's Sakura's relationship with her best friend Tomoyo. Tomoyo is the first person to figure out that Sakura has magic powers and decides that the most reasonable reaction to this is to demand the right to videotape all of Sakura's escapades. Tomoyo is a wonderful, sweet girl, but also clearly obsessed with Sakura. This only becomes more intense when we discover that Tomoyo and Sakura are actually second cousins - Tomoyo's mother, Sonomi, was Nadeshiko's cousin.

As the series progresses, it becomes clear that Tomoyo has feelings for Sakura, feelings that she never tells Sakura about because she knows that Sakura will not reciprocate. Again, this emotional complexity is much more at the forefront of the show than any of the magical stuff.

I've already mentioned how Syaoran goes from being Sakura's rival to her love interest, but even his story is more complicated than that. He himself is arranged to be married to his distant cousin Meiling, a relationship that seems based more on proximity and their weird family than anything else. Meiling finds Sakura to be a huge threat to their relationship, but eventually decides that she can't hate Sakura. Sakura is just too nice. So instead of some typical love triangle where one character is obviously bad and mean and the weak link, we end up with this complex tangle of lines and feelings where no one is bad and there is no easy answer.

I'm not even going to get into the deal with Toya and his best friend Yuki - because that's a whole article right there - but I will say that Sakura spends most of the series with an abiding crush on Yuki, only to discover at the very end of the series that he views her as a little sister and actually has feelings for her brother. Again, this emotional development is the focus of several episodes and is never treated like it's trivial or meaningless. Because it's not.

That's the point I'm trying to get at here. The real value of Cardcaptor Sakura as a show is that it treats all of these emotions and relationships as being the important part of the story. Because they are. Sakura's story isn't about her magical powers, it's about her maturing and growing up. It's a coming of age story and how she begins to have the kind of complex emotional life that we all get to enjoy in adulthood.

The emotions aren't a distraction from the story in Cardcaptor Sakura, they are the story. And that's great.

I think that this is a show that really and truly matters. It takes a character who is at an age we all kind of tend to ignore - just on the cusp of puberty and adolescence - and deeply examines her emotional life. That's not nothing. In examining Sakura's feelings and her relationships with the people around her, the show validates those feelings. No one tells Sakura that she's too young to have a crush on Yuki or that she's too little to be feeling so conflicted about her family. Because she's not. Sakura's feelings are always treated as valid by the show, and I can only imagine how encouraging that must be for all the young kids watching.

"You're not too young," the show seems to be saying to its audience. "You're capable and you have a rich emotional life. That's okay. Feelings aren't just something that happen when you grow up." What's even more fantastic about this is how it presents Sakura always thinking through her emotions and trying to do what's best for herself and for those around her. It really emphasizes the idea that just because we feel things deeply doesn't mean we can't also be responsible with what we feel.

I really think that Cardcaptor Sakura sets a remarkable example for little kids, showing them how to grow up and come of age with grace and dignity, and how to deal with your feelings in a positive and healthy way. There really can't be too many portrayals of that in the media. Pretty sure it's impossible.

So whether you're nine or fifty-nine, I highly recommend spending some time with Sakura and her gigantic heart. For one thing the show is going to make you feel all warm and squishy inside. But for another, you'll get to see a portrayal of a kid who is definitely still a kid but also one of the most complex and realistically drawn characters I've seen in a long time.

Even if she is a magical girl who occasionally grows wings.

Obligatory bouncing Kero.

*No joke, this is one of my favorite genres of television. I adore Rehab Addict and Fixer Upper. I especially like it when they refinish hardwood floors. Mmmmm.

At long last we return to our amazing, fantastic, outstanding Outlander recaps! Okay, that's definitely hyperbole. They're all right.

So, when we last left Claire and Jamie, our heroes, they had finally made up after the confusing and conflicting episode all about whether or not it's okay to hit your wife. Which it isn't, and Jamie knows that now. Back on good terms, their one real question became how to protect themselves from, well, everyone else. Because no one in that dang castle actually likes either of them and they're pretty much always in dire danger.

Dire danger that might come from any corner. On the one hand we have Laoghaire (pronounced "Leery"), a sweet young girl with a crush on Jamie and a serious hate-on for Claire. Laoghaire has already tried her hand at seducing Jamie since they got back, failed, and retaliated by putting a witch's curse in their bed.

On the other hand, we have Jamie's uncles, Colum and Dougal MacKenzie, who are having their own problems with each other. Jamie finds himself trapped in the middle as Dougal and Colum argue over the worthiness of the Jacobite cause. As in, they argue over whether or not to support a blatant insurrection against England and attempt to put a Scottish king back on the throne of Scotland.

In order to make up his mind on the matter, Colum has decided to bring the Duke of Sandringham, a relatively well-known English nobleman to the castle for a visit. While there he'll sound Sandringham out on the idea of a Jacobite rebellion. Good plan, right?

This episode starts, then, with some interesting news. Well, technically speaking it starts with Jamie and Claire having enthusiastic (and cheeringly Claire-centric) sex in the morning, happy to have reconnected and gotten rid of their lingering bad feelings. But that spell is broken when Murtagh walks in and demands that they think about "real problems" and "stop having sex all the time you guys, gosh".

Murtagh is there to tell Jamie, and by extension Claire, about Sandringham's visit. Murtagh figures that since Sandringham is well liked in England, he might be able to speak on Jamie's behalf and secure a pardon. You know, because Jamie is accused of killing an Englishman and there's a price on his head and he has to live in hiding for the rest of his life or be executed. That whole thing.

Jamie and Murtagh are super excited about this. But Claire has her hesitations, and with good reason. Back in 1945, when she was hanging out with her first husband/husband who hasn't been born yet by about two hundred years, Claire heard all about how the Duke of Sandringham was almost definitely a close ally to Black Jack Randall. Black Jack Randall being, of course, this terrible Englishman who accused Jamie of murder in the first place and really really hates him.

So that's a problem.

Claire tells Jamie and Murtagh this, though she refuses to explain how she knows. But Jamie doesn't see any real problem here because he is adorable and a little dim sometimes. He agrees to go off to talk to their lawyer, Ned, before doing anything stupid, but Jamie is completely blown away by the idea of actually getting to go home to Lallybroch and taking his new bride to see his old home.

Also I think he figures that since the Duke of Sandringham is gay and had a thing for him a few years ago when he last visited, he'll probably be able to pull it off no matter what. Oh Jamie.

Ned unfortunately has to explain that it's not as easy as Jamie seems to think it'll be, but the plan is doable. Ish. Jamie has to convince Sandringham that being friends with Randall is a bad idea and then write a letter accounting Jamie's grievance against Randall to the higher ups in the British army. Said letter should get Randall reassigned outside of Scotland, since he's being a jerkface to all the Scots and clearly hates them, and would give Ned the opportunity to sue on Jamie's behalf and maybe get a general pardon. There you go. Now you know all about eighteenth century English law.

Meanwhile, Claire is on the warpath. She knows that Laoghaire is the one who put the "ill wish" in her bed and she's not taking that lying down. She confronts Laoghaire over it, and because Claire is an idiot sometimes, she does it in front of Mrs. Fitz, one of her only supporters in the house and also Laoghaire's grandmother. Oh Claire.

Still, Claire's pissed. Laoghaire is a silly child trying to mess with her marriage, and said marriage has enough problems as it is. But Laoghaire has more tricks up her sleeves. She didn't get the ill wish just anywhere. She bought it from Geilis Duncan in town. Again, this is a problem because Geilis is like Claire's only actual friend. So Claire slaps the hell out of Laoghaire, engages in some yelling and general tug-of-warring over Jamie, and does not come out of this situation looking like the actual adult woman she is.

In town, Claire doesn't find Geilis but she does find an incredibly sick and disgusting Master Duncan yelling for his wife. He's really, really, really not doing well. And Geilis isn't there. Apparently she's off in the woods, dancing for the full moon. Because, as it turns out, Geilis really is a witch. Huh.

Her dance is mesmerizing and strange, even more so than the druids' dance at the beginning of the season. Claire again watches from the bushes, because that's basically Claire's thing at this point, and she is fascinated by the similarities. Also she is fascinated by the fact that Geilis is really clearly pregnant. I mean, it makes sense that she could hide it. Eighteenth century fashion involves enough layers and padding and coats and stuff that a woman could literally be six months pregnant without showing. Which is good, because Geilis is totally six months pregnant.

Geilis and Claire talk. First they talk about how Geilis' husband is definitely not her baby daddy. Hells no. You think Geilis has sex with her husband? No, she is a trophy wife, and she is damn good at it. Second they talk about who her lover is. And to all of our surprise, Geilis just comes out and says who it is: it's Dougal MacKenzie. As in, the brother to the laird and one of the most powerful men in the region. And he's married. Which is a complication.

Third they talk about what exactly Geilis was doing dancing around naked in the dark. She was summoning "Mother Nature" to help her and Dougal be free of their respective spouses. Which is sweet? I guess?

Anyway, Claire promises to keep Geilis secrets, Geilis apologizes for selling Laoghaire the ill wish, and all is well. Until Claire and Geilis come upon a baby in the woods. Claire is immediately freaked the hell out because there is a baby unattended in the freaking woods, people! But Geilis urges her to leave it alone. It's a changeling, left out there so that the child will be returned to the fairy realm or die. Claire can't even fathom the backward thinking and terrible idea that is. So she stays.

That's where Jamie finds her a little while later, tending to the sick baby. She can't save him. Jamie has to take the baby from her arms. Claire just doesn't understand how the baby's parents could do that, but Jamie actually explains it in a way that makes sense. See, the baby was probably very sickly all along. It wasn't apt to make it. They're not stupid, they can tell. So it brought the parents comfort to believe that their healthy child was replaced by a changeling. It meant they could let the sick child die and comfort themselves with the idea that their healthy baby would live eternal in the land of the fairies.

I feel like this is where Outlander shows its real strength: when they use this historical context and the functional culture clash between Jamie and Claire to examine how we need to check our own Western privileges before declaring other cultures barbaric or backwards. Sure, there's some not great stuff that happens because of cultural norms in other parts of the world, but there are also myths and superstitions which exist really for the sole purpose of comfort. Respecting people's myths and folklore (up to a certain point) is important. And, to be fair, there is nothing Claire could have done to save that child. It's 1743. The medicine just doesn't exist yet.

So with that super cheerful scene behind us, we transition right into Jamie and Claire discussing how Jamie absolutely must try to reason with Sandringham. And Claire agrees. Totally. Sure. She even signs her name to his petition.

...And then she goes off on her own to confront the Duke without telling Jamie because Claire is actually a genuinely terrifying person inside. I love her so much.

It's all coded talk and subtlety, but basically the scene consists of Claire delicately revealing to the scenery chewing Duke that she knows he is Black Jack Randall's patron and blackmailing the hell out of him. It's positively delicious. The Duke is all pomposity and denial but she just keeps pressing at him until he agrees to take Jamie's petition. How can he not? Claire basically has him up against a wall on with his personal reputation at stake. But what's most hilarious is how she demands he not tell Jamie. After all, Claire doesn't want her husband knowing exactly how brutal she is. Not just yet.*

"Has anyone ever told you, you have the most wonderful neck. It holds your head so prettily. I'd hate to see them part it..." That's what the Duke says to Claire when she finally plays all her cards. Quote of the episode, that's for sure.

Back at the castle, Claire is immediately beset by Angus and Rupert. She's needed by the Laird. It seems that Dougal's wife has died suddenly in the past day - interesting coincidence that - and he's now mad with grief and absolutely stinking drunk. Colum wants Claire to knock him out with one of those sedatives she uses. You know, the ones she has used in the past to drug both Angus and Rupert so that she could try to run away. Those sedatives.

Dougal's really drunk. He does not appear to be faking his sorrow. He's really genuinely upset that his wife is dead. Unfortunately he's also causing a lot of property damage and threatening everyone with his sword. So the boys grab a dram of wine, pour Claire's knockout drug in it, and then convince Dougal to drink the whole thing. The part where he collapses on the ground and then it takes pretty much every man there to carry his insensible body out of the hall is kind of perversely hilarious.

Poor guy.

Geilis, of course, is thrilled about it. Claire clings tenaciously to her rationality and firm belief that Geilis' summoning had nothing to do with it. But, come on. Geilis is creepy. She obviously did something.

The time has finally come for Jamie and Murtagh to present their petition of complaint to the Duke of Sandringham. As he agreed with Claire, he will honor the petition. But...he needs Jamie to do something for him first. He just needs Jamie to be super helpful and act as his second in a duel. With the head of the MacDonald clan.

The MacDonald clan being, of course, the pretty much sworn enemies of the MacKenzie clan. And Jamie being, stay with me here, the nephew of the head of the MacKenzie clan. Oh jeez.

Jamie is a sweet naive idiot and totally agrees. Then, later, at the dinner that Colum throws for the Duke back at the castle, everyone has to pretend to have no idea what everyone else is scheming. Claire and Sandringham pretend to be meeting for the first time while they all try to hide Jamie's duel from Colum (who would undoubtedly disapprove), and Colum is mostly grinding his teeth over what Dougal did earlier... There have been happier dinners, let's leave it there.

The dinner only gets less happy when partway through the salad course (just kidding - this is Scotland so there's no salad) Geilis' husband drops dead. Really dramatically, I feel the need to add. Claire tries desperately to save him because, affair or no affair, he is her best friend's husband. But there's nothing to be done. Arthur Duncan is dead and he appears to have been poisoned.

No points for guessing who did it.

The duel happens the next day regardless and it all goes mostly according to plan. The grievance was over a very small debt incurred playing cards, so mostly Sandringham and the MacDonald Laird miss each other purposely, apologize, and it's good. What's not so good is how afterwards the MacDonald men can't leave well enough alone and start yelling about how the MacKenzies are "mollies" (gay men) and lapdogs of the English. Oh boy.

Jamie being Jamie and the MacDonalds being themselves, it doesn't take long for a full on brawl to break out. Jamie is mostly unhurt and the Duke ends up okay, but overall it is not a good day for diplomacy. And Jamie might have killed a few guys from a rival clan. Whoops. At least the Duke is definitely going to send that petition of complaint on to London now. That's nice.

Claire is pissed as hell at him when he gets home and she has to add more needlework to the terrifying mass of scars that is Jamie's torso. But if Claire is angry then Colum is incandescent. Jamie managed to get them embroiled in a clan feud while going behind his back to consort with English nobles. Jamie is definitely in trouble.

And Colum's solution is both elegant and super not okay for Claire and Jamie. Since Dougal and Jamie both need to be someplace that is else right now, they're being sent off together. They'll head out for Dougal's estate until Colum decides he can stand to see either of them again. Dougal of course is being banished for his terrible behavior, Jacobite shenanigans, and for his super obvious affair with Geilis Duncan. And Jamie is being banished for pretty much starting a war. So yeah, this makes sense.

But it does leave Claire trapped on her own in increasingly hostile territory. Even worse, her one friend is probably a murderer. Great.

So she mopes. Wouldn't you? Mrs. Fitz tries to cheer her up by explaining that Jamie will be back before she knows it and these things just happen sometimes, but Claire is having trouble believing her. Then a letter comes from the village and Claire hares off to see Geilis, convinced her friend is in some great trouble.

She isn't. Actually, she's fine. Well, she's super duper drunk, but otherwise fine. Geilis is taking to widowhood surprisingly well, though she's not thrilled about Dougal's banishment. She's not really sure why Claire came all the way down here...

Which is when Claire figures it out. The letter was fake but the danger is real. Geilis is about to be accused of murder. Only she really has nowhere to go. She can't flee. She won't flee. Also she is hella drunk and does not feel like listening to reason.

That's bad all around because the wardens are there. They're ready to arrest Geilis for murder and, as it turns out, for witchcraft. Geilis is sure that nothing will happen to her because Dougal will come for her. But that's going to be a problem when he's actually really far away.

Then the magistrates turn right around and arrest Claire too. Well crap.

As the warden's wagon pulls away, both Geilis and Claire in chains in the back, Claire looks out to see a smirking Laoghaire standing beside Geilis' house. Oh hell, Claire. You really do know how to pick them.

So that's it for the episode. Overall I have to say that this is my least favorite kind of episode. I'm not one for historical dramas, so an hour of people working through the legal system of historic England is so totally not my jam. But I do love when Claire gets her moments of badassery. I don't know. I guess it's just that when we have episodes like this, episodes rooted in the day to day life and mundane realities of the past, I spend the whole time thinking how blissfully grateful I am to live in a time with indoor plumbing and the right to vote.

I tend to have trouble romanticizing the past. And even when this is not a particularly romantic view of it, there's just not enough here that I care about. Jamie's freedom? Eh, not such a big deal to me. I know he'll probably never get it lifted if for no other reason than because that's bad drama. So I don't care how all this turns out. But maybe that's just me. Perhaps I'm just being a spoilsport. It's honestly pretty hard to say.

On the plus side, though, next episode is a witch trial! So I'm going to do lots of historical reading to prepare. Because I am a nerd and I own an alarmingly large number of books on witch hunts. Go me.

*I mean, you'd think he'd have figured it out after she drew a knife on him during sex literally last episode, but apparently Jamie has a slow learning curve on stuff like this.

Has anyone else noticed that when it comes to historical fiction set in America, there are a few tropes that seem to be stuck in our heads? I mean, it feels like every author writing historical fic of the Americas has about three ideas that must be held to upon all costs.

First, the main character must casually run into/know already/work for one of the Founding Fathers or a similarly important American President or hero. See this at work in such wonderful works of fiction as Sleepy Hollow, where British nobody Ichabod Crane ends up hobnobbing with George Washington, Betsy Ross, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and pretty much any other Revolutionary hero you can think of enough to name.

Second, if there are any black people whatsoever in your story, then they are completely and utterly consumed with the issue of slavery. If your story occurs before 1865, then any black character you have is either a slave or an ardent abolitionist. If it's after 1865, your character is either an impoverished sharecropper, an impoverished city dweller, or a civil rights activist. This goes doubly so if the story happens to take place in the 1960s or 70s.

Third, under no circumstances are you to make the plot feel too "modern". Your story must not include the ideas that people before 1960 had sex outside of marriage or knew what homosexuality was. No one before 1980 knows how to swear. Everyone is polite and self-contained or else they are a "bad influence" and shunned by all good society. No one is jaded and bored about the world, all the new stuff that's just been invented is shocking and revolutionary and no one ever looks at the invention and goes "well, yeah, that makes sense."

If you just repeat these three easy steps then you too can manage to write a period piece that says nothing new about America's past and falls into all the same traps and pitfalls that our writers have been leaping into en masse for the past hundred years or so. Go us.

Okay, I'm not actually in as bad a mood as I probably sound right now, but I am fed up with all of this mishigas because it feels like it's ruining stories I really want to love. Case in point, I just recently finished reading Sons of Liberty, a graphic novel by Alexander and Joseph Lagos with art by Steve Walker (Illustrator) and Oren Kramek (Colorist). As far as I can tell there are two volumes and I only read the first one. But I'm probably not going to pick up the second. Allow me to tell you why.

So the story of Sons of Liberty unfortunately hits just about every trope on this list. It follows a pair of slaves in just pre-revolution America and the plot is sort of a superhero/escaped slave narrative fusion. Our heroes are Graham and Brody, two young boys enslaved on a particularly brutal plantation. When they accidentally hurt the master's son, the boys run away into the woods, attempting to find their way to Benjamin Lay's hideout. Benjamin Lay is a well-known abolitionist in those parts and the boys know that if they can just reach him they'll be safe.

Unfortunately for them, they're hunted by a particularly brutal slavehunter and their former master is a horrible human being who prefers his former slaves dead to escaped. The boys barely get away, only to find themselves running into Ben Franklin's servant. Said servant/slave agrees to help the boys but too much happens and he can't quite get to Franklin before Franklin's son, William, finds them. William Franklin does some horrible terrifying experiments on the boys and somehow gives them superpowers.

Now endowed with the power to fight back against the slaveowners, these two very young boys (well, probably in their very early teens - it's hard to say) have no idea how to handle what has happened to them. Ben Franklin tries to help, but eventually he brings them to Benjamin Lay after all. And it's good he did, because unbeknownst to anyone and just by coincidence, Lay is a master of an obscure form of African martial arts that he learned from a group of Haitian slaves and quickly became a master of.

You know, like you do.

The plot gets a bit muddy from here out, but basically William Franklin ends up making a name for himself as a military commander in the French-Indian War while the boys learn to channel their gifts. Their former slaveowner eventually has Lay killed, which drives the boys into a frenzy, and causes them to seek revenge on their former masters. But it turns out that they don't need to because the good people of the town turn on the plantation, shamed into finally doing the right thing and not consorting with slaveowners. The very moderate "literally this is the least you could do" thing.

I guess the boys eventually become superheroes fighting for American independence, and they do find their way to Philadelphia where they work at a print shop, but that's less clear. I assume that's more what happens in the second book. Mostly I'm focused on the bulk of the plot which centers on two former slaves learning African traditions from an old white man in the woods and hanging out with Benjamin Franklin. Doesn't that just tick all of your historical fiction pet peeve boxes? Or is that just me.

It's hard to say exactly what I object to here. I mean, I really don't have anything against historical fiction dealing with slavery. I think that if a story takes place in the time period of slavery it should probably deal with it in some way shape or form. I get really uncomfortable when stories like this gloss over the issue like it's not a thing. Slavery was a massive part of American history, is a massive part of American history, and frankly a lot of the time I'm pissed the hell off that we don't spend more time thinking about it.

So what gives? Why am I advocating for more stories that deal less with slavery? Am I that internally inconsistent?

Well, no and sort of. While I greatly believe we need more good stories about slavery, that does not mean that the only characters we should see black people appear as in those stories are slaves. In other words, in your story you can both deal complexly with slavery and also have multiple black characters who are not slaves. Hell, you could even have a black character who does not care about slavery and doesn't get why this affects them. That would be very interesting.

By implying that all black characters should be slaves, and that's basically what historical fiction tends to do as a whole, it actually removes a lot of development and agency from those characters. If black characters can only be slaves or abolitionists, then that means that the black experience is much narrower than truth and reality seems to suggest it is. The real problem I have with Brody and Graham in Sons of Liberty being slaves is not that I'm against complex portrayals of slavery, it's that this isn't a particularly complex portrayal of slavery.

The slaveowners are simplistically evil, harsh, and horrible human beings. All the good white people obviously oppose slavery and are horrified by the idea that they might not. The slaves are all inherently good people who are shackled in bondage, all noble and sad and tragic. The boys are both light and innocent but also cruelly aware of the tragedy of our world...

Basically everyone's character development and entire personality can be described as their role in the story. The slaveowners' personalities and motivations are "being a slaveowner" and "owning slaves." The slaves' personalities are "being a slave" and "wishing they weren't slaves". No one seems to have any real development outside of these factors, which is so frustrating because this story has a really interesting concept and I wish I could see it done better.

Brody and Graham get a tad more development because they're the main characters, but even then I would be hard pressed to tell you more than one fact about them. And, even worse, I have trouble remembering which one the facts belong to. One of them is younger and kind of happy go lucky and the other one is older and wants to go back to Africa. That's...that's about it.

It's frustrating. Narratives like these ultimately do nothing to advance the understanding and education of current generations about slavery because they reduce it down to this very simplistic, easily swallowed pablum. "No good people owned slaves and all good people thought slavery was bad and evil. All slaves were noble and good and just cruelly mistreated. Any slave who escaped could think of nothing but helping others escape or returning to Africa. Eventually the good people convinced the bad people to stop owning slaves and then everything was fine!"

Or not. We know from historical evidence (and lots of it) that many people we would call "good" owned slaves or at least were complicit in the slave trade. Hell, George Washington owned slaves and he might have released them upon his death but that doesn't mean he didn't own slaves. Because he did. He owned other human beings as livestock. That is a historical fact.

A lot of people we historically revere had complicated issues with racism and slavery. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony notoriously refused to support the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments (the ones that gave black men the right to vote and also citizenship) because they felt cheated at women not being included. Their remarks on the subject are, frankly, straight up racist.

And to insist that all slaves were good and noble and tragic is to deny that slaves were human beings just like any other. Statistically speaking, I'm sure some of them were jerks. That doesn't mean they deserved to be slaves, it just means that we need to separate out the idea that being a slave somehow makes one noble and tragic. No. It's horrific but it doesn't make you a better person. That's not how any of this works.

Give me complicated stories about black people in American history. Please! Yes, I'd love a biopic on Frederick Douglass (seriously, how has that not happened yet?), but I also want a movie about Madam C. J. Walker aka Sarah Breedlove, the first female self-made millionaire in the United States. Yes, please, make a movie or television show or comic book about Ida B. Wells, the noted suffragist and civil rights advocate, but let's also have one about Justin Holland, a classical guitarist and noted composer who became Cleveland's first black professional classical musician and music teacher.

I could keep going, but I hope you get the picture. We need more stories in general about who black people have been and what they have accomplished throughout history. Yes, talk about slavery, but also talk about business and art and politics and the whole wealth of human experience. Sons of Liberty isn't bad so much as it is overly simplified, but it burns me that the story could have been so much better.

I mean, for starters, what if they'd replaced Benjamin Lay with an actual black character? That would make it less weird that he's teaching the kids African martial arts. But it would also widen the realm of representation of black people in this story. We need more and better stories, not the same old thing regurgitated again and again.

Historical fiction isn't just about white people, but when we frame the story in such a way that we reduce black people to just characters reacting to slavery, we pretend it is. So, you know, stop that.

This is from J.G. Jones and Mark Waid's amazing Strange Fruit. Read this instead.

Time for a throwback to the classic days of strong female characters, my dear sweet chickadees, because today we're taking a timewarp back to the late 1990s and early 2000s to talk about Cordelia Chase (played by Charisma Carpenter) one of the most hilarious and, eventually, complex characters to ever come out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Strap in, buckle up, and get ready for the Queen's biting wit - it's probably going to be a bumpy ride.

Okay, that's all hyperbole. But I really do think that Cordelia is one of the most interesting characters to have inhabited the Whedon-verse, particularly the 'verse as it was expressed in the collective world of Buffy and Angel. Starting out as the clear antagonist and "mean cheerleader" stereotype, Cordelia transformed from a procedural villain to a complicated leading lady.

She went through some of the most abrupt and life-changing traumas of the entire series (her father went to jail for tax evasion, her family lost everything, the love of her life died tragically, she got magic visions of the future, she became part demon, her body was overtaken by a parasitic life form and she never recovered), but they didn't make her more of a bitch. Instead, Cordelia Chase mellowed over the years, maturing from being "hell in high heels" to being, well, still that, but also the kind of person you can count to be at your back in a fight against the forces of evil.

In other words, she grew up. And in a pair of series that are all about coming of age and finding your place in the world, it's hard to think of a character who had a rougher go of it, and who made a better life with the little she had, than Cordelia motherfreaking Chase.

In case it's not obvious, Cordelia has always been one of my favorite characters. When I first watched the show I desperately wanted her to be more a part of the Scooby Gang, so hopeful that eventually her devastating one-liners and fantastic ability to see through people's bullshit would be put to good use. I think a huge part of why I liked her, why I still like her, is because she was and is such a fantasy of a character. I mean, yeah, there's the part about her being an Amazonian supermodel of a high school cheerleader, but I actually was referring to her personality.

Cordelia Chase is a bitch. There's really no denying that. Hell, she doesn't deny it, she embraces it. She's a bitch, but she's also generally right. Like, Cordelia Chase is a bitch throughout the whole show but what makes her a genuinely interesting character is that she doesn't seem to be a bitch because being a bitch makes her happy. It's more that she's a bitch because no one else can handle how she refuses to bow to societal conceptions of how teenage girls are supposed to behave.

Yes, she absolutely takes it too far. The first two seasons or so see her relentlessly bullying Buffy and Willow and Xander, ruthlessly ignoring their feelings and even going so far as to refuse to publicly acknowledge that she was dating Xander. She's cruel and mean and harsh.

But, again, what's interesting is that sprinkled in there somewhere is a girl who just wants to tell the truth. As Cordy says later on when asked if she's never heard of tact, "Tact is just saying not true stuff. Pass."

I don't want to read too much into this (that's a lie, I totally do), but I feel like there's something really interesting going on with Cordelia's character, or at least with how Charisma Carpenter plays her. We know that Cordelia's homelife is not ideal. Her parents ignore her and very literally buy her off. Sure, she's a spoiled brat, but she's a spoiled brat with no actual emotional resources to draw on. All of her friends are fake, all of her relationships are predicated on people sucking up to her, and it's really not surprising at all that her main love interests consist of people who require nothing of her. Cordelia doesn't want to be needed, she wants to be wanted for exactly who she is.

I think this is what's behind her insistence on telling the truth even when (especially when) it gets her labeled a bitch. She's sick and tired of no one else telling the truth so she's just going to do it for them. Then again, she really does go too far sometimes, and that's a huge part of why I like her too.

She's not a great person. Not when we meet her in high school, at least. She's kind of awful. You love her because she's so funny and clever and mean, but you also really hate her because she's just a bad human being. The brilliance here is that they don't retcon that out of existence and say "Oh, she was never mean, that was all just a misunderstanding," but instead take the harder path of having Cordelia actually mature and grow as a person.

While she starts off the series lusting after Angel because he's the tall, dark, and handsome mystery man she doesn't know anything about, she ends up dating Xander, the cute nerdy guy who takes all the abuse she can dish and hurls it right back. Already we can see her maturing into a person who gets what's important in a relationship: common interests. Granted, their common interests are snarking at other people and making out, but whatever. It works for them.

That relationship doesn't end because Cordelia gets fed up and bitchy. Well, it does end like that once but they get back together. In the end what decimates their relationship is Xander cheating on her. Cordelia has changed enough even by this point in the third season to be a genuinely good girlfriend. Still occasionally a petty and bad person, but she's changed. She's different. She doesn't let her breakup mean she's going to stop saving the world, either. She keeps doing that too.

Heck, there's a whole scene in season three where Cordelia makes a vampire back off and run away in terror just by talking to him. Respect. She also convinces a bunch of hunters that she's a vampire slayer too, despite having no superpowers, and is just kind of the coolest person ever. But I digress.

The third season is where things fall apart for Cordelia in general. We find out that her father is going away for tax fraud, all of her family's worldly goods have been confiscated, and that the college acceptances she worked incredibly hard for mean jack when you can't pay for your degree. Especially when it's way too late to qualify for financial aid.

Yes, Cordelia whines through this and it would be easy to see it as some kind of cosmic retribution. But it's also not that funny because Cordelia doesn't let this get to her. She keeps her head up high, stays the queen bitch of Sunnydale High School, and even if she has to work her butt off in a dress shop to buy her prom dress, she stays Cordelia Chase.

The real culminating moment for Cordelia on Buffy has to be the season three finale when she has to make a choice to stay and fight or to run away when the gang discovers that their high school graduation is going to be a fight like none other.* Cordelia doesn't run. She stays and she fights and in the end, she survives. Buffy is the show where Cordelia grows up. The Cordelia who leaves graduation is very different from the girl we met in the first episode. So it makes sense that we keep an eye on Cordelia as she moves into adulthood.

Angel provides a much more open framework for Cordelia's "finding herself" phase. A show that took the urban fantasy of Buffy and applied it to a more gritty framework of private detectives in LA, Cordelia finally got the space to really explore herself as a person, all while continuing to fight evil, dispense witty bon mots, and generally torment Angel.

The first season of Angel sees Cordelia living in Los Angeles and trying to make it as an actress. The only problem there is that she doesn't seem to have any natural talent for that, and the show isn't about to pretend breaking into the acting industry is easy. She lives in a terrible roach-infested apartment, spends her time schmoozing with creeps, and generally has a rough go of things. Until, that is, she runs into Angel and ends up rocking it out as his side-kick/receptionist when he decides to go into saving the world as a private detective.

Cordelia is, it should be noted, an awful receptionist/secretary/employee of any kind, but she is great with people. Not really with people, but she's great at reading people. As their practice grows - helping people struggling with supernatural problems and investigating anything that stinks of magic - Cordelia finds her niche as Angels' girl Friday.

Her love interest for the very beginning of the series really shows how much she's changed. Doyle, an adorable half-demon with prophetic visions, a drinking problem, and a complete lack of a way with words, worships the ground that Cordelia walks on. But not because he wants anything from her. He just thinks she's amazing. And Cordelia responds in kind. Slowly but surely she comes to love Doyle back, appreciating him for who he is. Which makes it horrible when he dies sacrificing himself to save the good magical community of LA.

But this is also a huge turning point for Cordy. Doyle's death is when she gets her own visions and becomes Angel's appointed guide and connection to the power's that be. It's also when she has to decide if this is what she's going to dedicate her life to. Is she really going to be an actress? Or is Cordelia Chase going to live her life in the shadows, climbing through sewers and saving a humanity that barely knows she exists? It turns out she picks the latter. That's character development for you.

I can keep going about Cordelia's amazing character development over the years - her relationship with Angel alone, when it comes, is such a far cry from the first interactions of those characters - but I think you get my point. Cordelia is perfect proof that a character doesn't have to start out good and heroic and wonderful to wind up there, and that showing a person in transformation, a messy ugly bitchy horrible human being, is more meaningful than giving us an example of someone who's already all there.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn't a perfect show and there's definitely work to be done examining and unpacking it, just as there's tons more to be said about Angel. But none of that can take away from Cordelia Chase. She's the supreme example of how when you put a character through hell their internal strength is revealed. Cordelia goes through hell and comes out the other side a softer, gentler person. Still a bitch in all the best meanings of that word, but a bitch with heart.

We should all be so lucky to grow up like that.

*Side note, but Graduation I and II are two of my all time favorite Buffy episodes and I highly recommend them to anyone considering the series. Admittedly they might be hard to grasp because they rely on three seasons of character development for their emotional impact, but I love them. So there.

I'm guessing that by now you guys have caught on to the fact that I really really really like Mad Max: Fury Road. Maybe you were tipped off by that article I wrote about it where I basically drooled over how good it is. Or perhaps you caught on when I kept reblogging fanart of Furiosa on tumblr for the last four months. Maybe you just heard my subsonic screeching every time I went back into the theater to watch it again. Any way you dice it, I figure it's no secret now that I adore this movie. It's amazing. It's right up there with Pacific Rim and Captain America: The Winter Soldier in movies that I honestly can't get enough of.

So, obviously we're going to talk about it some more. That's how this works.

As luck would have it, I noticed last week that my local cinema here in Massachusetts was actually still showing the movie. Thrilled and a little giddy, I persuaded my mother that this is a movie she absolutely must see on the big screen and so we actually went to go see it last week (this was my fifth time watching it in theaters because I am obsessives sometimes).

Afterwards we went out for dinner, and over the meal, as we were talking through the film it occurred to me that Mad Max: Fury Road isn't just a really amazing examination of feminist rage and rape culture and the fight for female bodily autonomy, it's also a really important movie about men. So that's what we're going to talk about today.

Now, there's no real effort involved in explaining how Mad Max: Fury Road works as a representation of negative male role models. The Immortan Joe, the War Boys, the whole flawed system at Citadel and the Bullet Farm and Gas Town is its own screed on the dangers of toxic masculinity. Immortan Joe keeps his followers in line by feeding them a bastardization of hero worship and pseudo-religiosity, these cultish ideas that war is fun and the best way to die is fighting the enemy...

It's not difficult at all to see how harmful this is. I mean, the War Boys are literally dying to get the attention of this old white guy who barely knows they exist and uses them as battle fodder.

Everything about life in the Citadel is toxic. From the way that Joe controls resources to create a false dependence and a hierarchical society with himself at the top, contriving a water shortage so that everyone will obey him, to the dehumanization of anyone whose body can be used to produce something. War Boys are good for being human shields, Milking Mothers produce breast milk which is food and nutrition, the Breeders/Wives produce healthy human babies, and ferals like Max produce healthy human blood. They're not people, they're things in this society. Livestock.

Like I said, it's not hard to see why this is bad.

The really interesting thing that Mad Max: Fury Road does, then, is not telling us why Immortan Joe and his society is bad for men, it's showing us how men can partner with strong women to create a new and different society that doesn't have any of these problems. The best part of Mad Max: Fury Road's exploration of masculinity is Max himself. His journey from committed loner to valued and respected member of the group is an examination of how men can help create safe spaces. And it's basically a picture of what a strong man, a real strong man looks like.

Granted, Max starts off the movie being completely and totally crazy. So we'll just skip forward to the middle of the film or so when Max is now invested in helping the women escape and has become a part of the team. How does Max display an incredibly healthy version of masculinity?

First, he listens. Max doesn't tell these women who they are or what they've experienced. At first he doesn't really care, but as the film goes on, one of the most powerful things he does is just listen to them. He asks Furiosa questions and when she answers them, he believes her. Max spends a huge part of the movie just listening to everyone else. Soaking it all in. Because Tom Hardy is such an amazing actor we can really see Max processing all of this, but it's not external. Max neither demands that Furiosa explain herself nor disrespects her when she shares her experiences. He just listens.

Second, Max defers to others' expertise. When Furiosa proves herself to know more about getting away from Joe than he does, he lets her be in charge. When Nux turns up and they realize that he's good at engine repairs, Max immediately lets him take that over. It's not that Max is insecure or uncomfortable in his own abilities or anything. Quite the opposite. Max knows exactly what he can do, and so he feels no shame in letting other people do the things they're good at freely.

Probably the best example of this - and one of my all time favorite scenes - is when they're out on the mud flats at night and they've only got three shots to get rid of the Bullet Farmer's searchlight as he comes after them. Max wastes two shots and misses with both of them before Furiosa comes up and wordlessly stands behind him. With just a moment of hesitation, and not a word spoken on either side, Max hands her the gun and even lets her use his shoulder as a rifle stand so that she can aim and shoot. This is a guy who not an hour before in the movie was literally biting people. He trusts her so much that she can shoot a gun an inch away from his ear and he'll sit there to let her do it. Why?

Because Max trusts her. And because Max knows that she's the better shot. His pride isn't getting in the way. He knows she can do it so he helps her do it. That is healthy masculinity. Seriously.

There's no posturing or angling for position. When the group goes from Max and six women to Max and Nux and five women, Max doesn't feel any need to show his dominance over Nux. He does nothing of the sort. He doesn't force Nux to prove himself, he doesn't posture, he doesn't argue, but he doesn't ignore Nux either. He just looks at Nux, looks at Furiosa, figures the kid is there to help, and lets him do it.

Before you go on, I just want us all to stop for a second and appreciate this character development for the rare beautiful flower it actually is. I watch a lot of movies for you guys. A ridiculous, obscene number of movies. And I can count on one hand the number of action films I've seen where the male hero was so secure in himself that he never felt the need take charge of a situation or talk over someone or grab for control or jockey for position. That's just completely not present in Max's storyline.

Even at the beginning, when Max is still in his feral state, still thinking of himself as less than human, he doesn't do anything out of pride. He has no pride. He's dehumanized and miserable, but he's not fighting Furiosa or stealing the War Rig or shooting people because they've wounded his ego in some way. He's a hurt wolf lashing out. When he realizes these people are friends, he stops. It's never about his pride. That's a huge deal.

Going back to our list, the third really interesting way that Max exhibits a healthy masculinity is in how he fights. I talked last week about the idea that our culture tends to revere a fighting instinct. We think of good men as "always fighting the good fight". A good man is one who is always ready to fight for his beliefs. And there's an extent to which this is true, but there's also a level on which we as a culture have gotten too used to the idea that masculinity means violence.

Which is where our Max is so different. Yeah, he fights, but he always fights in response to something else. Max never goes out looking for a fight. Fights always seem to find him, but he doesn't fight first. Even when they're in the middle of these car chases and there are War Boys all around and tons of danger, if you watch closely you'll see that he doesn't initiate. Max responds to violence, but he doesn't create it.

It's a very different conception of the male action hero. While he's not afraid of or even particularly averse to getting his hands dirty, Max as a character is not a man who particularly craves a good fight. He seems actually more like he would prefer spending a night in with a cup of tea if "nights in" and "cups of tea" were at all available in this hellscape wasteland.

So Max isn't a particularly violent man. When he fights, he does it because it's necessary and he does it with no real relish for the occasion. Max doesn't fight with artistry or grace, he just shoots or hits people until they stop trying to shoot or hit him.

The only time in the entire film (that I can think of) where Max goes off looking for a fight is when he leaves the rig to track down the Bullet Farmer and get the War Rig to safety. And what's notable here is that the camera doesn't go with him. We actually have no idea what ends up happening. Max just sort of reappears a few moments later with a bunch of bullets and a steering wheel.

The fourth way he's a really good example of healthy masculinity is in how he treats everyone around him with respect. This one goes hand in hand with the first example, about how he listens, and it's arguably the most important one. Max respects people. He doesn't tell Cheedo that she needs to stop crying and whining and begging to go back to Immortan Joe. He doesn't tell Angharad that her faith in the green place is stupid. He might think both of those things, but he doesn't say so. He treats the women with respect, and in turn they treat him with it too.

Again, probably the best example of this is at the end of act two when he comes back to the convoy to convince Furiosa that they should go back and take the Citadel. Max clearly has a solid plan worked out and as he explains it everyone around them gets really fired up. It's a scene where obviously if he wanted to he could just rally them all together and make them leave Furiosa in the dust. He doesn't need her permission. But he waits for it anyway.

Max doesn't need Furiosa to agree to the plan, but because he waits for it he shows how much he respects her as a person and a leader. "I won't do this if you don't agree," his actions say, and so we trust him that much more as a character.

And then, at the very end of the film, when Max and the Wives ride into the Citadel in Immortan Joe's car, Furiosa has been horribly wounded. She's barely alive. The men at the gate demand that whoever is driving the car come out, and Max comes out. In that moment, in most any other movie, he would be hailed as the conquering hero. But this isn't any other movie. Instead of standing there and taking the acclaim, Max immediately turns right back around and grabs Furiosa's arm. He's not standing out there to take credit, he's literally just there to hold Furiosa up so that everyone can see who really saved them.

Finally, the fifth reason is that Max is a great freaking role model inside the movie as well as out.

This all really boils down to Nux. See, Max might be crazy when the film begins, but he's also his own person. He's lived a long and full life before he ever came to Citadel. So his journey is more about him recovering himself, coming back to the man he used to be, than anything else.

Nux is young. It's pretty clear from his mannerisms and general character that he knows no life outside of Citadel and the cult of Immortan Joe. He knows no other world than one in which people are reduced to things and a sick old man has the power of life and death. That's normal to him. He can barely even think to question it.

When Nux finds his lot thrown in with the very women he was supposed to be capturing and the "bloodbag" who crashed his car and then escaped, it wouldn't be hard to imagine him being kind of a jerk about things. But he isn't.

I think, in large part, that's because of Max. Max is older and gruff and tough and clearly good at taking care of himself. He's made it this far, after all, as a loner in a world that eats the weak. If you watch the film closely, you can see that Nux goes through a lot of the movie taking his cues from Max. He watches how Max relates to the women and then he relates that way. It's a complete turnaround from where he was earlier. When Max defers to Furiosa, Nux defers. Max is helpful, so Nux is helpful. Max is a good role model, so Nux is a good man.

Sociology has shown this to be true, actually. Men respond better to positive social pressure than we tend to think. So if a man is talking down about women and a woman tells him to stop, he might stop or he might not. If another man tells him to stop, he is actually very likely to do so. Men listen to other men. We can be frustrated about how men need to listen to women more, but we can also pay attention to the great value there is in having men set good examples for other men.

I kind of doubt that this is what George Miller had in mind when he created Mad Max: Fury Road, but I can't say that I mind it. He's given us both an examination of how toxic masculinity and a patriarchal society damages everyone as well as a look at what a good, true, and healthy masculinity looks like. Max is a good man. If we learn nothing else from the movie we know that is true. He's a beautiful picture of what it can mean to be a man.

He's not proud, but that doesn't mean he devalues himself either. He listens when other people talk and he always treats them with respect. He protects those he cares about but he also trusts them to protect themselves. He doesn't start fights, but he can finish them. He's a good role model. And he makes sure to value the people around him as human beings and not means to an end.

He's a good man. It's no small thing.

So, I'm going to come right out and say it: unless you are an extremely laidback parent, you probably aren't going to want your kids to read the webcomic I'm covering today. I mean, it's one of those things where I highly recommend this to all adults, but parental interpretations of what is and is not appropriate for children can be intense and a little terrifying, so I'd rather get it right out there that this very well may not be appropriate for your child. That's okay.

Then again, that does beg the question of why we're talking about this at all. Why discuss a probably-too-mature-for-your-kids story in my column specifically about kids' media? Well, because I am of the opinion, and I totally understand if you disagree, that sometimes it's good and healthy and important to let your kids read stuff that isn't appropriate for them.

Hear me out.

The Last Halloween is a webcomic by artist Abby Howard who you might know as the brilliant mind behind Junior Scientist Power Hour or her appearance on the indie reality show Strip Search (which was a Penny Arcade sponsored reality show about finding the next great webcomic artist). The Last Halloween is her first real foray into a longer, scripted narrative, and it's really really good. I feel the need to emphasize that. It's fantastic.

The story follows ordinary child Mona, who's nine I think, on Halloween. Her father leaves for a party and Mona is left all alone at home. Not a huge deal in general, but this particular Halloween it's sort of a problem. Mona is alone in the house when all of a sudden monsters appear everywhere and start killing people all over the place. Mona freaks out - like anybody would - and runs for her life.

In her running and trying to find her dad, she eventually runs into a motley gang of monsters and otherwise strange "people". The group, which consists of a preteen vampire (Nosferatu-type, I think), an animated porcelain doll, and a zombie. And by run-into, I mean that she comes upon them doing some light graverobbing as she's in the process of running to the police station for help.

At first Mona, who possesses a healthy skepticism and a lot more logic than most protagonists, has no desire to go anywhere with this group of "child-like creatures". But when Robert, the doll, points out that she can either go with them and maybe get murdered or stay where she is and almost definitely get murdered, Mona agrees to tag along. And it's a good thing too (for our story - not so much for Mona). This is how our story starts.

The monsters, it turns out, have all risen because their controller, the Phagocyte, is dead. The new Phagocyte is missing and therefore can't take control and keep the monsters in the shadow realm where the belong. So, instead, all the monsters are out on the surface, walking the earth and killing people. If the monsters kill "their" human - the human with whom they are inextricably linked - then they can live forever. If they don't, then they will die when their human dies. There's a lot of death going on, all of it very artistically and gruesomely represented in the art.

Mona and her "friends" end up on a quest to find the new Phagocyte and help him escape from whoever is keeping him from assuming his duties. And as the sole human on the quest, Mona gets her own special weapon and a whole thing about being the chosen one and having a destiny. Ultimately, though, what we really learn is that Mona was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She's not the most qualified or best suited to save humanity. She's a little girl. But she's going to try anyway.

The story isn't actually over yet as of this writing. Howard hasn't stated how far we are into the plot, but it feels like we're somewhere in the middle. Act two, if you will. There are six chapters already written, and all of them are excellent. Terrifying, hilarious, and frequently disgusting, and excellent.

The reason I bring up The Last Halloween in terms of kids' media is because it's a story that walks the fine line of being appropriate for kids or not. I mean, technically speaking there's nothing in it that's not appropriate for kids. Mona's relationship with her dad might put some people off - he dresses up in her dead mother's clothes sometimes because he "hates for them to go to waste" and they seem to have communication problems - and there is absolutely no getting past how much Howard really likes writing the gross stuff. But none of it is actually something you would have a hard time explaining to your child.

It's just scary. That's the main reason it's inappropriate for kids and also the main reason why I think it might be worth it to let some kids read it anyway.

See, The Last Halloween is very very scary but in a way that I think kids can easily process. It's scary because there are monsters and the monsters do terrible things. It's scary because Mona is a child and the only one who seems to know what's happening, and so it's frightening when no one will listen to her or believe what she tells them. It's scary to see all these images of gross horror, but it's scary in a straight-forward, simple kind of way. There's a monster in your house that wants to eat you? Simple and frightening and weirdly wholesome.

The value of this is that reading a scary story with such easily externalized monsters helps kids to learn to process fear in a healthy way. Some psychologists have even theorized that this is why kids crave ghost stories, teenagers are the most likely to watch horror films, and the older you get the less you want to have the pants scared off you. As young people we are instinctively searching for the way to process fear and in order to learn that we need to experience it.

Only because we're people, we don't want to actively put ourselves in dangerous situations that would evoke a natural fear response (well, most of us don't anyway). So the most natural solution is simulated fear. Using our empathy and imagination to develop scary situations and then figure out how to deal with fear emotionally.

It's cool, right? And it makes a lot of sense. As we get older our fears become more rational and actually a lot harder to deal with. When I was very small I remember that I was terrified of the dark. Simple fear, easy to process. When I got a little older, I was scared of natural disasters. I was completely convinced that one day a Nor'Easter would come and rip my room right off the house and crush me or fling me into the ocean where I would drown or have my scull cracked on some rocks. I was afraid of heights at one point. I have fostered a healthy and reasonable and not at all extreme fear of spiders...

But now that I'm an adult, my fears are much less obvious and tangible. I fear that I have hurt someone so badly that I left irreparable wounds on their heart. I fear that my loved ones will die before their time. I fear that my life will go to waste and I'll never use the gifts I've been given to the right purpose or to their fullest potential. I fear that my car will break down on the highway and I'll die in a carwreck, sure, but that fear is much smaller compared to the fear that I will get in a small accident and cause a lot of trouble and hassle for a lot of people, cause some grief, and make life very difficult for a number of good people.

Maybe that's just me and I'm incredibly odd. But I don't think so. As we get older, the things we fear switch from external circumstances and become internalized. Fear of failure, fear of public speaking, fear of not leaving a mark on this world... Those are all incredibly common adult fears and they're all ultimately about us. They're sort of post-graduate fears in a way. In order to deal with them properly, you need some training in dealing with your average baseline fears. And that's where stories like The Last Halloween come in.

I think we need to learn how to be afraid. And I think that in a lot of ways, our job as guardians and stewards of the next generation is teach them how to be afraid in a healthy and meaningful way. Because these kids are going to be afraid. There is absolutely no way around that. No human lives a life completely devoid of fear. It's part of who we are. By letting kids see a scary story or a horror movie or go on a haunted hayride or something, we're giving them the opportunity to know themselves better. To get a handle on their fear.

Obviously each kid is going to differ in their ability to handle scary stuff. I personally was totally fine with ghosts and monsters and anything obviously inhuman as a kid, but freaked out over any form of body horror (like, say, bloody teeth - they still make my stomach squiggle). Lots of people are very different. It's a matter of taste and personality in most cases. And it's a very individual thing as well, deciding when a child is old and mature enough to start learning how to process fear. That's another part of it.

But I think it is something that we should pay attention to. Just like all their other emotions, fear is a healthy and reasonable response the world sometimes. It's necessary, not an accident. Learning how to fear healthily is a big part of our lives.

As for The Last Halloween, it might not be your cup of tea. That's totally cool. But for my money it's a great gateway drug to fear. The heroine, Mona, is someone that kids can look at and identify with. She's a girl who is very scared and very upset and who cries sometimes, but who then wipes away her tears and goes off to do the brave thing anyway. She's afraid and she acknowledges her fear, and she handles it. That's a good example. That's worth appreciating.

...Even if it's not, strictly speaking, "appropriate".

Buck up, Mona. Story's not over yet. Much worse things are yet to happen to you...

In a kind of hilariously apt turn of events, today's article is a little late because I was out last night (when I traditionally write my articles) trying to make some new friends. Since I haven't lived in Massachusetts in a decade or so, I don't have a lot of friends still around in this area, or at least not people I've kept in very close touch with. So last night was my chance to go to a church event and meet some nice people who I might possibly be able to make friends with.

I mention this as being "hilariously apt" because my socializing last night is the reason I couldn't come home and write an article for you on a book series that very deeply examines friendship. Because I was out making friends. Get it?!

The Raven Cycle is a series of four books (three of which are already out) by Maggie Stiefvater that consider deeply the friendships we make throughout our lives. Also it's about a bunch of kids trying to find a Welsh king who may or may not have been buried somewhere in Virginia and who might be supernaturally just sleeping and not actually dead. It's about a lot of things. But mostly friendship.

See, while the story is all about the quest to wake this Welsh king, it's also about a group of high schoolers navigating their relationships. And for all that the plot is fantastical and supernatural and weird, the relationships are very human. Gansey has a crush on Blue. Blue is afraid of her feelings for Gansey so she dates Adam instead. Adam has no idea how he actually feels about Blue and is so stressed out he feels like he might be dying. Ronan has a crush on Adam. And in the background Noah is falling apart.

It's all about the relationships, and about how relationships and friendships are tangled up together in a way that is both completely understandable and unavoidable, and also frustrating and bad. This is a series that reminds us of the complexity of a single human being and then marvels at who we can be when put in a group. The grand achievements we can aspire to, and the petty arguments that pull us apart. The Raven Cycle is about friendship way before it's about anything else, and I love that.

Still, before we go any deeper, we should probably talk plot.

The first book of the series, The Raven Boys, explains how small town girl Blue Sargent finds herself caught up with a group of boys from the local boys only prestigious boarding school. Blue is a townie in Henrietta, Virginia. But far from the stereotype of the sweet nice girl, or the "too cool" girl, who populate young adult fiction these days, Blue is just plain weird. Weird by anyone's standards.

Blue is the daughter of her town's local psychic. Or rather, Blue is the youngest child in a whole family, a matriarchy, of psychics. Her mother, Maura, is really the best known, but Blue lives in a house positively overflowing with psychic women. There's her cousin Orla, who runs a psychic telephone hotline, her mother's friend Calla, who can get psychic readings off of objects she touches, various vague female relations scattered throughout the house and yard, all of them incredibly powerful psychics. Except for Blue. Blue's only gift is that she can make psychics stronger - she has no powers of her own.

Blue, then, is our main character, and a fascinating one she is. She's simultaneously self-assured and also unsure of what to do with her life. As the only non-psychic in a lineage of powerful witch-women, she's sort of at odds with her life. Sure, she could stay in the house at 300 Fox Way, making special teas to sell the people who come in for tarot readings, amplifying everyone's powers, making her way with the women of her family, or... Or she could not do that? Blue wants adventure and newness and life, but she isn't totally sure what to do about it.

Until, that is, she accompanies her mother to a yearly event at a local church. There, one night a year, those blessed with "sight" can see a procession of all the people who will die in the next year. Her mother always goes and makes a list of these people and it's known in some circles that if you want to know if you'll die that year, you can ask Maura and then get your affairs in order. It's helpful. Blue's just there to write names down and help amp up Maura's power, but she gets the shock her life when one of the spirits is actually visible to her. It's a boy, about her age, wearing the sweater of a private school boy. When she asks for his name he says "Gansey."

Obviously Blue is freaked the hell out. She isn't supposed to be able to see spirits. She doesn't have that power. In addition to all of that, Blue has a prophecy dangling over her head: if she ever kisses her true love, he'll die. So there's that.

And because this is a novel, Blue doesn't have to wait too long before "Gansey" appears in her life. He shows up at the pizza parlor where she works, accompanied by all of his friends, and she decides immediately that she hates him. He's rich and smarmy and smiles too easily and with too many shiny white teeth.

But she ends up involved anyway. Gansey, you see, is a private school boy with a mission. He's a weird kid. He's trying to track the ley lines of Virginia because he has a personal quest to discover the resting place of the Welsh king Glendower. And he thinks that Glendower is somewhere nearby. If he discovers him, wakes him from his sleep, then Gansey will get a "boon" - some kind of magical gift or blessing or pardon. And this has been Gansey's obsession and life's mission since he was a kid.

His friends are all committed to the mission as well, but each for their individual reasons. As Blue becomes more and more caught up for the search for Glendower and the lives of her "Raven boys", she discovers what those reasons are. Ronan, for example, helps Gansey out of an unflinching loyalty. Gansey stood by him through the most difficult times of his life so he helps Gansey with his quest. Adam, however, is different. He's a scholarship student at the school and helps Gansey partly out of friendship and also partly because he really wants that "boon", whatever it might end up being. And Noah, well, Noah has his own reasons for helping Gansey, which become clear at the end of the first book.

As the story progresses, all of these relationships get deeper. All of the characters become more invested in their quest, sure, but they also become more invested in each other. Through the trials that come in each book - The Raven Boys has a murderous former student tracking the boys down, while Dream Thieves involves someone sending a hit man after Ronan, and Blue Lily, Lily Blue features a pair of sociopathic rich people trying to find Glendower first and also kill everyone - these characters only become more entangled and more interested in each other. It's almost like constantly fearing for their lives and having a greater calling binds them together.

Funny thing.

And that's what I actually want to talk about. What I love about these books is the plot, sure, but it's more the way that they portray friendship. I think The Raven Cycle is one of the most coherent examinations of that topic I've seen in a long time. It looks at the way that real, life-changing friendships form, but it also looks at the cracks and tears that can come in friendships. The drifting apart and the fights and the arguments. It looks at all of the aspects of what it means to be a friend, and it doesn't flinch back from any hard truths.

The main thing the book emphasizes is that friendships are deepened and solidified when you have a common purpose. Not a common enemy, not really, but a common goal. You get close to people who you share a mission with. And it's not hard to see why. I mean, if you share a mission, then these are people you have to work closely with. They're people who are chasing after the same things you are. They're people who share your beliefs and experiences. Look at the trio in Harry Potter or Leslie Knope and her "workplace proximity associates" in Parks and Rec - their friendships thrive because they're all chasing after the same things.

Just from personal experience alone I know this to be true. The deepest friendships I have are with people who I did ministry with. They're with people who share my life experiences, yes, but also people who bled and cried and sweated with me in trying to do something we all thought was incredibly important. Even after we're done doing the thing, those friendships remain incredibly strong because their foundation is an understanding of mutual goal and respect.

But, as The Raven Cycle points out, just because you have a deep friendship founded on a common goal doesn't mean you won't also get in fights and arguments. The books show instances where each of the characters is tested and put at odds with the rest of the group. There's Adam's descent into madness as he tries to handle the power of having a magical forest in his head.* There's Ronan's decision to take himself and his bad life choices - drugs, street racing, questionable friendships - far away from the group and ignore all of them so they don't try to make him feel responsible. Blue gets fed up and goes away for a while. Noah has flashes of sudden rage and irreconcilable grief. Gansey can be, well, an asshole.

No human being is perfect and so no friendship is perfect. We all have moments when we love our friends deeply and also want to murder them so hard. It's normal and natural and the books point out that learning to deal with this is just another aspect of being a good friend.

The books actually look at this inter-generationally too, by giving us an example of a friend group who went through something similar a long time ago - a common purpose binding them together and giving them a mission - and how they've now matured into their friendship. With Maura, Blue's mom, and her best friends Calla and Persephone, we get representations of how this is true of friendships no matter the age. The people who go on mission with you are the people you cherish for the rest of your life. No one knows you better than the people who have worked beside you on a cause you care about deeply, right?

I mean, just on a purely surface level, I love Maura, Calla, and Persephone because they're presented as being fun and funny and still very good friends after all these years. It's rare to see representations of middle-aged women being friends like this, and even rarer to see it in the context of these women being pseudo-parents to a child and being the ones entrusted with raising this kid. Calla and Persephone aren't exactly mothers to Blue, but they're something. They're constants in her life, and a clear sign that the friends we make affect everyone else around us as well.

I guess the point I'm getting at here is that friendship is something you do, not an intrinsic part of who you are. Being a friend means actually doing things with your friends. There's the emotional component of caring about them as a human being and asking about their life and telling them how much they matter to you, but there's also a more practical aspect of the things you do together. Your friendships are something that you do, that you invest in, and your friends are the people you do them with.

The last book of the Raven Cycle isn't out yet, but I have every confidence that it's going to hold this up. And yeah, there are lots of reasons why you should read these books (lots of powerful psychic ladies, a rad female main character, cool plot, The Grey Man, and more), but this is the one that sprung first to my mind. Friends. Mission. Doing things together because you think it matters.

What more do you need?

*One of the more interesting plotlines of the books, to be sure.

Well, as we could tell from the end of last week's episode, this particular installment of "Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser vs. the eighteenth century" was no picnic. Yet, despite all of the horribleness on display this episode, I have to say it's my favorite so far. I mean, it certainly has the most concise plot of any of them thus far, following exactly one storyline.

And for all that it's a whole episode about Claire and Geilis being tried as witches because the local people see Claire's healing abilities not as evidence of scientific progress but as proof she has consort with demons, it's also an episode about women reclaiming the spaces they are forced into. It has some of the most powerful moments of agency in the series so far, and if nothing else it really convinces you that Claire could have done a lot worse when she married Jamie Fraser.

So, with no further ado, what happened in this episode?

As I hinted above, we start off only moments after we stopped last week. Claire and Geilis have been thrown in the thieves hold to await their trial. Claire is incensed that this has happened to her. After all, she's a servant of the Laird MacKenzie! Surely he will send for her and make all of this stop. Or maybe the townsfolk will see reason. Geilis might be a murderer - is a murderer as far as Claire can tell - but Claire's innocent. She's not a witch. They've got to see that!

To no one's surprise but Claire's, no one sees that. To their eyes she is absolutely definitely a witch. Claire takes some of her frustration out on Geilis, pointing out that if it hadn't been such common knowledge that Geilis made potions and danced naked under the full moon, they wouldn't be there right now. Which is true. But Geilis fires back with the fact that she didn't make Claire come see her that night. She did nothing of the sort. Geilis has a very realistic view of the outcome of their situation.

Well, she has a more realistic view of it all once Claire disabuses her of the notion that Dougal MacKenzie is going to ride in and save them. Claire explains that Colum banished Dougal, taking Jamie along with him, so no one is coming to help them. If Colum closes his doors then they officially have no friends and are screwed.

Geilis figures the solution here is to spend her little time left on earth being friendly with Claire, then, because that makes sense. Claire is less enthused on this topic, and even goes so far as to shiver all night in the hold rather than go to Geilis for literal warmth. Stubborn woman.

The first day of their trial is about as to be expected, honestly. The testimonies heard range from ridiculous to painfully accurate. On the plus side, Ned Gowan, Colum's lawyer, manages to talk his way in and get himself appointed as their lawyer. On the down side, not even Ned's fancy talking can get them out of this. He does a good job talking around and twisting the story to get Claire for being blamed for the death of the changeling child - you know, the baby she found in the woods last episode and tried to save - but even Ned can't work against Laoghaire's big eyes and little sobs about how Claire bewitched Jamie and stole the love of her life.

It's funny. In most other shows I would loathe how Laoghaire has been written. I mean, here we have a character who is a teenage girl portrayed as all the worst stereotypes about teenage girls. She's mean, vindictive, and painfully immature. She's catty. She decided that Jamie was hers and does horrible things to get rid of his wife. She uses her tears and her pretty face to get people on her side. She's underhanded and just generally the worst.

In most shows I would get frustrated about this because it's bad writing. It's writing a stereotype. But it works here in Outlander because, well, Laoghaire isn't representative of anyone or thing besides Laoghaire. There is such a wealth of complex and interesting female characters that it's okay, and even realistic, to have one who is just a total bitch. I can actually really appreciate that, strange as it may seem.

Anyway.

The first day of the trial concludes basically with the understanding that things are better than they were in the morning, but that Claire and Geilis are both probably going to hang tomorrow. Cheerful. So Ned sends them off with a flask of whiskey for the night and they sit in the cell drinking and talking. Claire can't stay mad at her friend, not considering what's happening in their lives, so they really do talk.

Geilis confesses that she genuinely loves and cares for Dougal. He has a mind to match hers and he cares so deeply about Scottish independence. Claire is actually kind of surprised by how political it turns out that Geilis really is, but Geilis reveals that she's been politically motivated all along. That's why she murdered her poor dead husband - he was rich and she could fund the Jacobite cause through him. That's why she settled here in the first place. Geilis will play a role in the rising and no one can stop her, not even death.

The next day brings, as expected, no good news. The townspeople want a witch to burn. Even when the priest comes forward and admits that Claire was able to heal a boy when he was not and he wishes God to forgive him for doubting her, the people still bray for blood.* Ned can't save them. Nothing can.

So, in a moment of terrifying calculation, Ned pulls both his clients into a side room and tells it to them straight: one of them will burn today. There's too much "evidence", and, frankly, the people are too worked up for it to go otherwise. One of them will burn. But it only has to be one.

Ned tells Claire to claim that Geilis bewitched her. Geilis really has no reputation to speak of with these people, so there's probably no saving her. But Claire can save herself if she condemns Geilis to die. Claire's not into this idea, and obviously neither is Geilis. So when Ned gives them a moment alone to talk, Geilis has something very important to ask Claire: Why are you here?

Geilis has known that Claire was lying about her intentions and appearance in Scotland all along, and she's made that clear, but now she demands to know, once and for all, why Claire is here. Claire, sadly, has no good answer to give her. Even the truth, that it was an accident, is no help. That's not what Geilis wanted to hear. She wanted to hear that Claire is here to help the rebellion. She wanted to hear that there was a purpose or a plan. She's basically begging Claire to reassure her that her death won't be in vain, and Claire can't.

Which is how we get Geilis, furious, storming back into the courtroom and what she knows will be a guilty verdict, spitting out the words, "Looks like I'm going to a fucking barbecue."

If you're thinking that this is a strange thing for a woman in the eighteenth century to say off the top of her head, well thought. It's kind of an odd moment.

But there's a lot going on. The women go back out and find that, yeah, they're facing a guilty verdict. Ned sets the stage for Claire to get herself off by blaming Geilis, but when the time comes Claire just can't do it. She refuses to deny her friend, even while Geilis is calling her an idiot.

That's not to say that Claire is going quietly, though. As they pull her off the dock and towards the stake where she'll be burnt, Claire yells and swears so much that they decide to punish her. The men rip her dress down the back and flog her while Claire screams out and Geilis is forced to watch. It looks like everything is over until...

A familiar head of red hair shoves his way through the crowd and kicks the attackers off his wife. Jamie freaking Fraser, back from who knows where and who knows how, has his sword out to defend his wife because, you know, he swore before God that he was going to do that. And, to be fair, it's not like the court can argue with that statement. Much as they clearly want to.

Still, Jamie is in contempt. It looks like they're going to meet a messy end together when Geilis yells for everyone to stop. With a final look at Claire, Geilis does the thing it didn't seem possible to do: she both gives in to the crowd and also takes back her agency. She starts confessing. She tells everyone that she is a witch and Claire did nothing. Claire was bewitched. She raves about serving Satan and being a servant of evil. She pulls down her sleeve and shows "the devil's mark".

It's only then that Claire puts together what I think a lot of us suspected by then. See, Geilis' devil's mark is a very familiar size and shape. Because it's not a birthmark or a normal scar. It's the scar from a smallpox vaccine.

Geilis knew Claire was from the future all along. She just didn't know why. Geilis herself was from 1968, the number she whispered to Claire when they were in the dock. She must have come back to try to change the past, to make it so that the Scottish rising succeeded after all. It's why Geilis was always so suspicious, why she felt so otherworldly and out of touch. It's why she perked up when Claire quoted Nathan Hale's words from 1776: "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country." Geilis recognized that because she must have learned it in history class.

The courtroom obviously goes nuts while Claire is staggering under this revelation and Jamie is basically dragging her away. In the chaos, Jamie and Claire flee. Geilis goes so far as to tear open her dress, revealing the pregnancy, and declare that she has had consort with the devil and is bearing his child. She is pulled away by the crowd, screaming and naked, sobbing but also laughing? Because if Geilis Duncan is going to die as a witch, condemned for being a powerful woman who no one understood and much liked, she's going to die on her own damn terms.

Respect.

It's not until Jamie and Claire are out in the woods that they stop long enough for Jamie to see to the welts on Claire's back. They're not bad, just shallow, but he is so sad that she had to receive them. He's also in need of answers. Mostly to the most obvious question: Is Claire actually a witch?

Well, no, she's not. And Jamie believes her when she says it, but he has to point out that if Geilis had the "devil's mark" then so does Claire. It's true - Claire has a smallpox vaccine scar. It's then that Claire decides to tell her husband the truth once and for all. All of it. She tells him she's from the future. She tells him that she can walk through a room of the dying and the dead and not get sick because of medicine so advanced it might as well be magic. She tells him she traveled to the past via the stones. She tells him actually and honestly everything. And you know what Jamie says at the end?

"I believe you."

Hell freaking yes, Jamie Fraser is a good husband and a good man. Yes, he has his moments of lunkheaded macho man posturing, but this is his response when his wife basically tells him she's a magical timetraveler from the future and that she's not a witch, no, but something even worse and more complicated. He believes her. He even makes a joke. "It would have been a good deal easier if you'd only been a witch."

With all that Claire has told him, it's clear that Jamie has much to think on. But he does take a moment to apologize to her for his actions when she ran away and he beat her for bringing such trouble on them. He gets now that she was trying to get back to the standing stones and go home, and he is distraught to think that he beat her for wanting that. It's such a good thing to want!

The truth having finally come out, Claire finds herself much happier and more content, even with the circumstances, but nothing is actually resolved. Now both of them are outcasts from their communities. They can't go back to Castle Leoch, and Jamie still has a price on his head. So, what now?

Well, Jamie thinks they should go to Lallybroch, his family home. And Claire is amenable if not thrilled. But before they get there, Jamie has a surprise. In the morning, after some very sweet and tender sex the night before, Jamie takes Claire up and over a hill and shows her...the stones. The very stones she came through and that she's been trying to reach since the first episode. They're finally within reach and he even walks her right over to them.

It just makes sense, is what he tells her, although we the audience can see how much Jamie clearly doesn't want Claire to go. She's not of this time and she has the opportunity to go back home, to her first husband and her life and world. She can be safe and happy and not constantly living in fear in an uncertain world full of danger. Claire should go.

Seriously, Jamie Fraser is really cementing himself as the posterboy for ideal love interest here. He lets Claire decide if she'll stay or go, but makes it abundantly clear that she shouldn't stay just for him. She should go where her heart feels it belongs.

Which leaves us with Claire, in shock, staring up at the stones and contemplating her two wedding rings. It's a beautiful, basically silent scene, as we think through with her the possible futures she could have. Apparently decided, Claire gets up, walks to the stone and then -

We cut to Jamie crying gently by the fire where they camped the night before. And with Jamie we start and smile to hear Claire demand that he get up. She didn't go after all! She came back for him! There's nothing really to be said, as Claire's decision is abundantly obvious. All she says is that it's time for them to go to Lallybroch.

So take a wild guess what next episode will be about...

Like I said above, this might be my favorite episode of the show so far. For all that it's about a horrible historical thing - witch trials - and how women suffered and were punished for stepping outside of society's very narrow prescription of who they could be, this is also an episode with a lot of important feminist moments. Geilis choosing how she will go to her death is a very powerful scene. She knows she'll die, so she decides she wants to die on her terms because of something she actually did. She's amazing.

And the scenes where Jamie is faced with a story that is ridiculous and absurd and hard to swallow, and simply turns to his wife and says, "I believe you"? They're like a balm to the soul for any woman who has been told that her story is too outrageous and too ridiculous, for anyone who has had a loved one refuse to understand. There's a power in just being listened to, and Jamie Fraser gets it the hell right.

Through it all, we have Claire, dependable and solidly pragmatic Claire. She's so strong. She refuses to sell out a friend even when it means she'll die. She tells her husband the truth even though he might call her a witch and abandon her. She chooses to go back to him even though she knows their lives will be hard and probably short. She chooses at every venture the hardest option. Because it's the right one.

A good episode all around.

*This was one of the more confusing plots of the episode. Because, he seems sincere, but then he sits down and there's this nasty look he shoots her. The people then respond to his testimony by saying that it's super obvious she bewitched him, and from the look on his face he is pleased with this result. So, I guess he was hoping to get Claire burned at the stake but he wanted to do it with a clean conscience? That's messed the hell up.

You know, for a show that really just felt like an updated version of the X Files, and for a creator as insistently deaf to any frustrations people might have with how he portrays female characters (see: JJ Abrams and anything written about Star Trek: Into Darkness), Fringe is a shockingly complex and interesting show.

It's complex on a number of levels - most of the plot serves as a dissection of normal science fiction tropes while also appreciating those same tropes and incorporating them into a larger mythos - but the aspect I find most interesting is how the show deals with gender. For starters, it has a female protagonist, Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), a woman who seems like she ought to hit every button of a badly written "strong female character", but who's actually just really cool and badass.

Olivia, who is an FBI agent, becomes embroiled in an investigation of the weird science crimes that plague our world when her FBI partner/secret boyfriend is killed while they investigate a horrific act of bioterrorism. Only what turns out to be true is that said partner/boyfriend isn't exactly dead and wasn't exactly who she thought he was, and said bioterrorism attack was actually part of a series of strange science fiction events that the FBI calls "The Pattern."

So Olivia recruits the best possible people she can think of to help her solve the case: renowned mad scientist Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble in what I consider his best role) and Dr. Bishop's son, Peter (Joshua Jackson). I mean, she doesn't actually want Peter to come along, but she needs him because only a relative can check Dr. Bishop out of the mental institution he's been staying in for the last seventeen years.

I wasn't kidding when I called him a mad scientist.

This is the plot of the first season or so. Olivia, Peter, and Walter fight crime with the help of Junior Agent Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) and Agent Broyles (Lance Reddick) and mysterious executive at a science corporation Nina Sharp (Blair Brown). The crimes they fight are weird science fiction type crimes and they do it all from their hidden lab in the basement of Harvard University. Sound kind of like an episode of Scooby Doo crossed with the X Files? Good. I'm pretty sure that's what they were going for.

Still, it becomes clear pretty early on that the show has more up its sleeves than just moderately entertaining "case of the week" storytelling. And this is also where it gets more complex in its examinations of gender. I'll talk more about how Olivia is kind of my favorite person ever in another article - suffice to say that she might fit stereotypes about "strong female characters", but she's also one of the single most fully drawn characters I've ever seen on TV full stop - today we're going to talk about what this show has to say about masculinity.

See, masculinity in this show is actually really wrapped up in fatherhood. What does it mean to be a father, and even more, what does it mean to be a good father? And that question, in turn, becomes the backbone of the entire series. So, sorry to say that in order to discuss this with you, I'm kind of going to have to spoil the whole series. Whoops.

SPOILERS

For the majority of the first season, Peter and Walter have a very contentious relationship. Though not a lot of details are given, we know that Peter does not like his father. He doesn't even deign to call him "father". Upon being informed that his father needs to be released from a mental institution in the very first episode, Peter is unwilling to so much as sign a piece of paper having to do with his dear old dad. Olivia has to blackmail him into helping. As the season wears on, Peter begrudgingly puts up with Walter's antics, but it's clear he kind of hates his dad.

His father, after all, was a workaholic mad scientist who made his mother miserable and killed someone when he was a child. Peter grew up with a father who was cold and callous and genuinely cruel at times, a genius, sure, but not the kind of person you want around your kid. The fact that Walter is different now, that seventeen years in a mental institution has changed him irrevocably, makes little impression on Peter at first. He's abrupt and angry and rude and dismissive of Walter, and it's not hard to see why.

Eventually, though, even the hardest hearts can thaw, and so Peter becomes a bit gentler to his father. He learns to distinguish between Walter then and Walter now. That makes it all the more heartbreaking when, towards the end of the first season, we discover that there's something deeply wrong in that relationship, something Walter hasn't told his son: Peter is dead. Peter has been dead for a very long time.

Or, at least, that's what it looks like. While on a quest to stop the Pattern by repairing the hole in time and space that he himself tore twenty-five years ago, Walter and a strange "Observer" stop at a grave in Upstate New York. The grave is that of Peter Bishop, who died when he was a little boy. But that of course doesn't make sense. Peter is alive and well and in Boston. So what gives?

The answer comes to us over the course of the next season and it is absolutely devastating. Peter did die when he was a little boy. Peter Bishop was always a very sickly child and when he was nine or so he just didn't get better. Walter dedicated himself to finding a cure, but couldn't find anything. His son died. But.

Prior to this point, Walter had invented a window that would let him look into a parallel universe. In that universe he also found a Peter who was sick and a Walter trying to save him. But this Walter was close to succeeding, if only he hadn't been distracted at the last minute by the appearance of an Observer in his lab.* Our Walter is devastated by this realization, that the cure has been found and then immediately lost again, so he decides to do something about it. He couldn't save his Peter, but he can save this other Peter.

Which is how we come to Walter, on a frozen lake bed, tearing a whole in the fabric of two universes to save one little boy. Except everything goes wrong. The medicine is smashed in his journey through, so Walter has to take Peter with him to save him. Then the machine falls through the ice of the lake and Walter and Peter almost drown - it's only the Observer coming and fishing them out that saves them. Then Walter's wife stumbles across her husband saving an alternate version of their child, and she just can't bring herself to let him go again.

All of that is to say that in the story of Walter and Peter's relationship, Peter might be missing a few key details. Especially seeing as he's repressed the hell out of all of this.

As I'm sure you've gathered from this, the relationship between Walter and Peter is what comes to form the backbone of the series. Peter, upon discovering his true heritage and realizing that his father basically ended the world in order to save him, has some processing to do. The Pattern, after all, is nothing more than a spiral of cracks in their universe, all spreading outward through time and space from where Walter brought him through.

And the malicious attacks they've experienced are actually war cries from people on the other universe who think they are fighting for their very existences as they try to repair what was broken when Walter came through and ended their world. Later on, Peter determines that the only way to solve this, the only way to fix what was broken on his behalf, is to sacrifice himself by stepping into a machine that can bridge between the two universes, but in so doing he finds himself written out of existence.

Seriously, I'm not making this up. The whole framework of the show is actually about Walter and Peter Bishop trying to get their crap together and figure out how they feel about each other. Sure, there's a mess of episodes about Peter and Olivia as well, but their relationship is always much more secure (even when Olivia gets trapped in an alternate universe and Peter accidentally dates her double). It's the ties between Walter and Peter that are frayed and insecure and always in danger of snapping.

Season four sees Walter haunted by visions of a man he doesn't recognize, and since this Walter was unsuccessful in saving either version of his son, he's hesitant to believe Peter even when he does appear. By the time he finally comes to agree that Peter is his son, it's almost too late. Peter is nearly killed or lost or broken. Season five sees them together once more, but it's in the face of a greater threat. It's with the understanding that both Peter and Walter are in danger of losing themselves in a fight against overwhelming odds, and that their love for each other might not be enough.

Fathers and sons. Or, really, fathers and children. For all that the show spends four seasons examining what it means for fathers to love their sons, digging deep into Walter and Peter's relationship but also showing us glimpses of other relationships like Broyles and his son Christopher, the fifth season shows us who Peter is as a father. In season five we meet Etta (Georgina Haig), Peter and Olivia's daughter. While Peter and Olivia and Walter (and Astrid) were trapped in amber, stuck in stasis and neither aging nor dying, Etta grew up. We meet her fully formed as an adult and a Fringe Agent, but also as a little girl delighted to have her parents with her again.

It's clear from the get-go that Peter and Etta are very close. They get each other. We also find out that losing Etta - she went missing when she was four, just before all of them went into amber - drove Peter mad with grief. It tore him and Olivia apart. When she dies again, this time as an adult, it rends Peter's world apart. He has no idea how to function in a world that would give him his child only to take her away again.

Throughout all of this, Walter himself is contemplating his feelings for Peter. Peter is his son, after all, but Walter knows better than anyone else the destructive power of grief. Walter knows that one cannot privilege the life of one child, even one's own child, over those of everyone else in the entire universe.

The show even uses two new characters, Donald and his son Michael, to examine this parent-child bone. Or, really, the bond of the father and his child. Donald knows that his son Michael must be sacrificed in order to save the human race. He only asks that he be allowed to sacrifice himself along with him so that they can be together and so that Michael won't be scared.

I think that for all of its flaws and failures and occasional inconsistencies in the writing or tone, Fringe had a lot to say about what it means to be a father and what it ultimately means to be a son. And I respect what they did say.

First, the show made it clear that while it is good to love your children and mourn them if/when they die, it is not good to make your child an idol. Walter and Peter both have their moments of elevating their dead children above every other human who has ever lived, and that's really not okay. I mean, it's an exaggerated example, obviously, but it also gets at something very true in all of us.

There's this idea that what it means to be a good father is to hold onto your child as the most precious thing. That no one should be able to blame a man for the things he does to protect his kids. No, this show says. That's not true. Even more, it argues that the child might not appreciate having such atrocities thrown at their feet.

Second, the series looks at what a "good father" actually is. Is Peter any less of a good father because he's openly emotional and fulfills more of a nurturing role while Olivia is the protector and the disciplinarian and the clear leader of their household? Hell no! Peter is a great dad, lapses in sanity aside. Gender roles don't matter so much as loving your child and appreciating them for who they really are. Peter is a good dad because he never demands that his daughter change to suit his needs, he just shows her that he believes she can be more than she might think.

Third, it goes into the idea that there is no single view of what fatherhood looks like. In Walter and Peter's case, it looks like a relationship that blooms very late in life. I mean, they aren't restored, not really, until Peter is well in his thirties and Walter is in his sixties. Their relationship is slow to grow, but eventually it comes together.

Then there's Peter and Etta. They bond, but in spurts and pieces. He doesn't even see her for twenty-one years, but when they reunite they learn how to be father and child again. Or what about Donald and Michael? Donald cannot understand Michael fully, but he loves him all the same. Broyles is willing to sacrifice anything, even his self-respect, for Christopher. And so on and so on and so on.

Finally, I think the most profound thing that Fringe ultimately has to say about fatherhood is that it changes you. Simply put, it changes you a lot. Walter in particular becomes a completely different person because he needs to be someone who his son can admire. He feels a need to win his son's respect and deserve his love, and so he comes back from the brink and becomes a man worthy of that love. If nothing else, fatherhood has the potential to make you a better man. It might not. It might also transform you into the destroyer of worlds, or a man your child fears and hates, but the potential is there to become something better and more than you were before.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: fatherhood is rarely considered as inextricably linked to masculinity as motherhood is to femininity, but that doesn't mean it's not important. It really really is. By examining the different permutations of fatherhood and how being a father affects what it means to be a man, Fringe adds new layers to our understanding of masculinity.

The relationship between Peter and Walter, which underwrites the whole show, is one of deep feeling, hard-won emotions, and a lot of crying. And all of that is okay. Better than okay, it's great!

The tenderness. The gentleness. The way they refuse to be ashamed of the depth of their feelings for each other. At their better moments (which are, sadly, few and far between in the early seasons), Peter and Walter have a love story that rivals any romantic saga. These are two men who really really love each other and have fought to keep that love alive when their past actions and the constant threat of death tried to keep them at odds.

Saying that Peter and Walter love each other is no knock on either of them and no detriment to their relationships with other people. In large part Olivia falls in love with Peter because of how he changes in attitude towards his father. Their love for each other enhances their other relationships, rather than detracting from them.

These are men in touch with their emotions. Yes, they live in a world very different than ours and absolutely yes their lives are strange and hard to relate to, but the example they set, of working for love and of finding the balance of a healthy relationship with one's children, is worth paying attention to.

*The Observers are another thing altogether and are interesting enough that the fifth season deals with them pretty exclusively. Suffice to say that Obvservers are like super powerful time-traveling aliens/future humans who come back in time to witness important events in science. The reasons why they do that become clear later on in the show and aren't super relevant to our topic today.

Quick reminder that Kyla Furey of Feedback Force did Hannibal recaps for us because she is awesome.

I’m sorry everyone. I know I’ve owed you these last two recaps for a while. To be honest, I think I’ve just been bummed out that the show ended. I went through something similar at the end of the second season, and this time it’s so much worse because there’s no season 4 to look forward to (at least, not as it currently stands).

There has never been anything else on television like this show. It’s pretty much a miracle that it lasted as long as it did, given the current state of network television. And while there is a vague hope still for a movie some day or something along those lines, the fact of the matter is that my very favorite show has ended, and the world of fictional narratives is a less interesting place for it.

If you’re reading these recaps to get a general idea of what NBC’s version of Hannibal is like, I encourage you to go back and watch from the beginning. The first two seasons are on DVD already and (I believe) Amazon Prime, and it’s worth your time to check it out. The show is haunting, beautiful, bizarre, and a reminder of what true creativity and talent look like when they come together.

In the end, I’m not going to pretend that season 3 was the show’s finest hour, that it ended at its peak - I think it was about on par with the first season, but not as good as the second. It suffered a lot from pacing issues, such as when they didn’t have the budget to do the European segment as long as they wanted, or when they tried to cram the entire Red Dragon story arc into the back half of a single season. And I think the Red Dragon arc in particular could have benefited from sticking less closely to the book.

But even at its worst, I would still pick this show above pretty much anything else. Even at its most awkwardly-paced, its most cheesy effects, this show was still unlike any other. Even its mistakes were generally better than other people’s mistakes, and often better than other people’s best efforts. (Can you tell I’ve gotten pretty cynical about the state of modern television?)

But enough gushing. You’re here for a recap, so let’s recap. The final two episodes of NBC’s Hannibal, here we go:

We begin with Will in therapy, trying to cope with his upturned life after Hannibal set the Red Dragon on Will’s family. He discusses the events with Bedelia. His old life is tainted with death now, as Hannibal taints everything. They discuss their respective relationships with Hannibal, and the unspoken truth finally becomes spoken:

“Is Hannibal in love with me?” Will asks.

Yes, Bedelia assures him. But the true question remains: is Will in love with Hannibal? He doesn’t answer.

A plan comes into focus in this episode, albeit a terrible one - use Chilton and Freddie Lounds to bait the Red Dragon into the open. They’ll write an article badmouthing the Dragon in an attempt to get him to strike. Chilton agrees because he’s a self-obsessed idiot*, and pays the price for it.

So they write an article. Chilton holds forth in a Chilton-esque manner, and Will embellishes as only someone whose superpower is getting under the skin of others could. Freddie takes a picture of the two of them together, and Chilton’s fate is sealed. You don’t antagonize a dragon without expecting to get burned.

The plan, theoretically, was for the Dragon to go after Will, but of course he attacks Chilton instead, killing Chilton’s protection detail and kidnapping the man himself. Dolarhyde is, well, basically in the state they wanted him to be - incredibly pissed off. He intimidates the hell out of Chilton, ranting and carrying on, but they’re interrupted in the middle of said intimidation by the arrival of Reba McClane.

The scene is interesting and incredibly tense (since Chilton is in the room with Reba but has been scared into silence, and she can’t see him because she’s blind), and it indicates to the audience that Dolarhyde has not yet completed excised that part of his life.

Unfortunately for Chilton, however, the respite is brief. Dolarhyde continues as soon as Reba leaves. He glues Chilton to a wheelchair, rants at him, forces him to record a video recanting what he said, bites off the man’s lips, and then sets him on fire.**

Yup, literally sets him on fire. And then sends off his wheelchair to crash into a fountain, so he doesn’t burn to death, exactly, but he’s in pretty atrocious shape when Jack and Will interview him in the hospital later. He doesn’t exactly have much skin left, for instance.

Dolarhyde mails Hannibal Chilton’s ripped-off lips in prison. Hannibal eats one of them immediately upon opening the package, resulting in him being restrained, but he still looks inordinately pleased with himself about it regardless, positively giddy really.***

Will watches the video that Chilton was forced to record, where the Dragon threatens Will very specifically via Chilton as a mouthpiece before performing the aforementioned lip-biting-off. Will takes it quite poorly, obviously more inside the moment of Chilton’s disfigurement than he wants to be. Once again his angst brings him to discuss his pain with Bedelia, and she forces him to admit what he already knows; that he knew what would happen to Chilton (or at least what might), that he was curious and did it anyway. That he is as at least as much Hannibal’s agent in the world as Dolarhyde is.

Chilton’s burned near-corpse is fortunately still aware enough to share information about Reba with Jack and Will, pointing them towards the Dragon’s true identity. But it’s too late - Dolarhyde has already kidnapped her. He reveals his true nature to her, and on that terrifying note episode 12 ends.

Episode 13 picks up where 12 left off, with Reba in the Dragon’s lair. She’s terrified, and he’s crazy, and at first it plays out basically like you would expect it to. He gives her a test to see if she can be trusted, she fails by trying to escape, and he sets the house on fire. Then he shoots himself in the face with a shotgun, killing himself rather than watch her burn, which is very much not the way I had expected the episode to begin.

Of course it turns out later that he actually faked the whole thing to make her think he was dead. But it was still pretty damn startling at the time. She survives the ordeal, making it out of the burning house, and the next (and last) we see of her she’s in a hospital bed, talking to Will Graham. They commiserate over what it’s like to be in relationships with psychopaths.

Overall, I’m pretty disappointed with how Reba’s story ended, to be honest. I would have liked for her to have a little more agency, a little bit more to do. She was still an interesting character, but I think woefully underused. Unfortunately there wasn’t time in the rushed pace of the Red Dragon arc to do anything more with her.

Will and Hannibal meet again to say goodbye, but it seems somewhat bittersweet. Hannibal was hoping there’d be more death involved. He knows that Will can’t really go home again, much as he’ll try, that this experience has permanently stained his relationship with his wife, and says as much. In a frankly pissy retort, Will drops a bombshell as he’s leaving - he knew that by rejecting Hannibal, Hannibal would turn himself in. It’s hard to tell what Hannibal’s exact reaction to this news is, but I imagine he must be proud of Will for his skillful manipulation.

The Dragon, of course, is not as dead as one might have hoped, and attacks Will in his hotel room that night. He doesn’t kill him though - just knocks him out and threatens him. Will, however, utilizes his great experience in speaking with psychopaths to quote Hannibal and relate himself to the Dragon. Eventually he talks Dolarhyde around into going after Hannibal. Because Will’s persuasive like that.

Once again, the FBI hatches an incredibly stupid plan. They’ll use Hannibal this time to draw out the Dragon, pretending he’s escaped. Because Dolarhyde wants Hannibal, and they want Dolarhyde, so...****

We get a final scene with Will and Bedelia. She is aware that Will wants to bring Hannibal back out, and is furious. It’s not perfectly clear what Will’s intent here is. “I don’t intend Hannibal to be caught a second time,” he says to Bedelia. His plan with the FBI is to use Hannibal to draw out Dolarhyde and capture them both. His plan with Jack and Alana is to kill first the Dragon and then Hannibal. But his real plan, his plan for himself? What exactly is Will’s endgame?

Alana comes to speak with Hannibal about this faked escape. He has always intended to kill her, and they both know it. He makes sure she knows it - threatening Margot and their son along with Alana. In the end though, Hannibal agrees to the plan, but only if Will comes to ask him in person. Will agrees, and the two of them dance around each other in the same dance they’ve always done, Will’s motives as questionable now as they’ve been since the beginning of the season. The plan is set in motion. Which one, exactly, remains to be seen.

They escort Hannibal away in a cage in the back of a police van, along with Will, and a number of police escort vehicles, but of course they don’t get very far. Dolarhyde ambushes the convoy, kills all the police, and tips the van. Hannibal and Will stumble out, alive and surprisingly alone; Dolarhyde is gone. And Hannibal is, it seems, freer than was intended.

Hannibal nonchalantly dumps some corpses out of one of the police cars and offers Will a ride. Will gets into the car, and they’re off. We cut briefly to Alana and Margot, grabbing their son and getting the hell outta dodge - the last we see of them. At least as far as this incarnation of the series goes, they made it out alive. Good for them.

Will and Hannibal end up in what is apparently one of Hannibal’s hideouts; a beautiful glass house on the edge of a steep cliff overlooking the ocean. The place where he brought Miriam Lass, and Abigail. As soon as it comes into view, that bluff becomes Chekhov’s cliff. Someone, at some point, is going over the edge of it. There’s no chance of any other outcome.

The two men open a bottle of wine that evening and discuss their past, their future, and what to do about Dolarhyde, who is watching them at that very moment. Before they can even drink, Dolarhyde shoots Hannibal in the side, climbing in through the now-broken window in front of the cliff. For a moment it seems Will is just going to watch Hannibal die. But then Will goes for a gun, and Dolarhyde stabs him in the face, into his cheek.

Thus begins an epic battle, blow after blow, Hannibal and Will versus the Red Dragon. Will is stabbed in the shoulder at one point, Hannibal and Will slice open Dolarhyde’s legs with an axe and the knife respectively, and finally it ends when Hannibal rips out Dolarhyde’s throat with his teeth while Will guts him, leaving the Dragon dead on the stone patio, bleeding out wings of crimson.*****

The scene that follows is poignant and heart-wrenching in its own way. The fight is the consummation of everything Hannibal and Will have been dancing around for three seasons. Everything Hannibal wanted Will to become, and everything Will was afraid to accept from Hannibal. Everything he was afraid Hannibal saw in him. It’s like we’ve been watching a will-they, won’t-they romance for years and finally the main couple gets together.

And so they embrace, on the edge of the cliff. “This is all I ever wanted for you, Will” Hannibal says. “For both of us.”

“It’s beautiful,” Will replies, resting his bloody face against Hannibal’s chest. And then he tumbles them both over the edge of the cliff and into the ocean.

The end. No really, that’s where the credits roll. There’s a brief post-credits scene of Bedelia sitting at the dinner table in front of the lavishly-prepared main course of her own leg and two empty chairs. Which leaves open the implication that the two men not only might have survived, but may be hunting together. It would have made for an amazing fourth season, if we were to get one.

Regardless, this is where the show left us, and where I must leave you. I’ll continue to maintain that this has been one of the best shows on TV, including HBO and other premium channels. This was a work of passion, driven by artists who clearly cared deeply about what they were making.

I can only hope it inspires others to be as bold, as daring, and to take such creative risks. If this show could make it three seasons on network TV, then what else can we do? What other heights can we achieve, if someone is only willing to undertake the climb?

So I return you to the rest of your lives. Goodbye, my friends, and bon appetite.

* Also he’s in the throes of anger and jealousy towards Hannibal, more or less because Hannibal is just better than him. He’s trying to goad Hannibal by taking the spotlight off of him and focusing it elsewhere. Because Chilton is, as previously mentioned, a self-obsessed idiot.

** Kudos to Raul Esparza’s performance in this scene. He’s believably terrified out of his mind.

*** Possibly my favorite part of the episode. It’s so disturbing and ridiculous at the same time. Mads Mikkelsen can be really hilarious when he wants to be.

**** It’s unclear here if Will mentioned that he was attacked or not. He could easily be keeping it secret from the FBI, but I don’t think it actually makes a difference to the plot one way or another.

***** The end of this fight and the aftermath are underlaid by a custom-written pop song, which honestly felt rather out of place to me. I didn’t mind the song itself, and I get what they were going for with it, but it suddenly made the show feel much closer to what I’m used to on TV, which was somewhat disappointing. Pop music in the background is not this show’s style, and I’m a bit miffed they chose to end on that note.

Our favorite power couple gets away safe! Yay!

Kyla Furey is an independent game designer and writer. She is also one of the hosts of the game-analysis podcast, Feedback Force, and hosts a weekly Saturday night game livestream on Twitch TV. She enjoys the surreal and the moody in her media, hence her great love of NBC’s Hannibal. You can follow her on Twitter @Kyla_Go.

To be completely honest, I actually forgot that this book even existed until, last week, I was packing up a load of my childhood books to go into storage while we renovate the house. I rifled through books I remembered and books I'd cherished for years: my endless copies of Lord of the Rings*, my battered Redwall paperbacks, the complete Anne of Green Gables box set... And nestled in with those books were some others that I had loved and reread and then somehow forgotten. Like The Midwife's Apprentice. Or A Walk in Wolf Wood, which we'll get to some other time. Fire in the Hills. Surviving the Applewhites. Troubling a Star.

So, like any good book nut, I scavenged these books out of the boxes and squirreled them away in my own current collection, figuring that at the very least I'll get a bit of blog mileage out of my nostalgia. Which brings us to now. I just reread The Midwife's Apprentice, and you know what?

I cannot believe I forgot about this book.

The Midwife's Apprentice, by Karen Cushman, came out in 1996, right when I was at the height of my "I must read everything that is vaguely interesting and written in English or a similar enough language" phase.** I don't remember how I picked it up or stumbled across it, all I know is that now, reading it again, I can see exactly why it appealed to little third-grade me and how it so quickly became the kind of book that shapes your identity and radically changes how you view yourself.

I'm really not kidding. Reading this book again was like getting a window into my own brain. I had never realized how much of my philosophy on life was taken from this one incredibly short little book about a scraggly girl in medieval England who falls into being a midwife. And it's funny because now I have to wonder at what other things have shaped me that I barely remember. What else is in my brain somewhere, lurking and affecting who I am? And what's in yours? I find that concept fascinating.

But enough about me. What about the book?

Well, like I said, The Midwife's Apprentice is very aptly titled. The main character of the story is a girl of about age thirteen named Brat, then Beetle, then Alyce. The girl is an orphan (probably), and has no memory of mother or father. At the start of the book she's barely alive, content to crawl into a dung heap to keep warm enough to live through the night. It's there in the heap that Jane the Midwife finds her. Jane the Midwife, or Jane Sharp as the girl comes to think of her, isn't exactly a nice person, and not even really that good, but she sees something in the girl in the dung heap, and so she takes the girl in.

Not for free, mind you. The girl, who Jane calls "Beetle" as in "Dung Beetle", has to work very hard for her pittance of a reward. She gets some scraps of bread and onion and cheese and a dry place to sleep, in exchange for which she sweeps Jane's floor, washes her linens, gathers herbs, and generally does all the sorts of things that no one wants to do for themselves.

It's while she does all of this that Beetle begins to come to some awareness of herself. Once her belly is mostly full, or at least full enough that her number one priority isn't finding some food to fend off starvation, she can think about other things. She thinks about how the boys in the village tease her. She doesn't like it. She thinks about how she hasn't got a name. She thinks - because she now has the freedom and time to do so - and she starts to wonder about her place in the world.

To be entirely honest with you, not that much happens in the book. It takes place over the course of about two years, and those years are, by most people's standards, uneventful. When Jane the Midwife breaks her ankle just before the fair, Beetle goes in her place, and it's at the fair that Beetle is given two very precious things: a comb for her hair and a compliment to go with it. For the first time, Beetle is called "a pretty young girl", but more importantly, for the first time, Beetle is acknowledged as a person and not just a walking piece of guttertrash.

It's also at the fair that Beetle is mistaken for a woman named Alyce, a woman who can read and write and who people look for in a crowd, and Beetle is so taken with the idea of being Alyce that she chooses the name for herself. In the village she demands that everyone call her Alyce, and even when they refuse and tease her, she keeps at it. She has a sense of herself now, and she refuses to back down from it.

The whole book, really, is an exploration of a young woman coming into herself as a person. At the start of it all, Brat (which is the only name she had before Jane the Midwife found her), is barely alive and barely a person. She is so focused on survival that anything past that is completely outside her understanding. But as she comes in from the cold and finds more and more of her physical needs met, she discovers that she is a person who wants to be loved and appreciated and to have a place in the world. That's really all the book is about, and it's definitely enough.

It's funny, because the book isn't very long and not a lot happens in it, but at the same time there's too much to describe here. Alyce's mutating relationships with the people in the village are one of the more interesting parts of the story. From her friendship with Will Russett the cowhand, a boy who used to torment her but who she saved from drowning, to her antagonism with the village baker, Alyce's life in the village is very fully realized. At one point Alyce rescues another miserable orphan without a name and sends him off to work at the manor, and it's a poignant moment when she realizes that she now has enough to be able to help others who are where she used to be.

Her relationship with Jane the Midwife is also appreciably complex. Jane doesn't want her apprentice stealing her customers and her work, but she also needs Alyce to learn enough of the trade to bring in more clients. Alyce, for her part, desperately wants to learn and grow and become a midwife, because then she could have a role and status and a place in the world.

This, then, forms the actual background of the story. As Alyce becomes a more accomplished apprentice, her relationship with Jane stiffens and strains. The final straw comes when Alyce, not Jane, is requested at a birth because Alyce, not Jane, was the one to deliver the mother's niece. Jane is furious at this betrayal, and Alyce is overjoyed, until she realizes that she can't do it. The baby is stuck and the mother will die and Alyce doesn't know what to do. She gives up and calls Jane, who saves the day, but Alyce is ruined. She's a failure and she can't bear having lost her one chance at a place in the world. So she runs away.

In running away, though, Alyce eventually finds more than she anticipated. She becomes a worker at the local inn and there she befriends a traveling scholar who teaches her to read. After living there for months, she even is forced one day to help a woman give birth, and when she manages it safely, Alyce realizes she wasn't a failure at all.

So, she goes back. That's the real sticking point of the book. Alyce goes back to Jane and knocks on her door and tells her flat out that she knows what she did wrong: she gave up. She won't give up now and she's ready to learn, and so Alyce becomes an apprentice again. And that's really where the book leaves it.

I guess you might be wondering why, with an ending that abrupt and a plotline that loose, this is a book I find so fundamental to my sense of self. And the answer basically comes down to...everything. I thought I'd have a pithy answer there, but the truth is that there isn't much in this book that I don't find really important.

Let's start with the basics: the plot is about a young girl who is cruelly mistreated by the world coming to find her identity and her place in the world through perseverance, tenacity, and humility. More than that, even, the book shows clearly how Alyce can't think about the higher questions of what she wants and who she is until she solves the lower necessities of eating and having a place to sleep and feeling safe. The book addresses larger existential questions, but it never lets you forget the importance of class in this - that without the economic ability to feed herself and sleep safely, Alyce would never think about this stuff or be Alyce at all. So there's that.

But there's also more complex and interesting stuff. Like I love how Alyce might need to get over some hurdles before she's ready to name herself and demand a place in the world, but she does get there. She can be very assertive and strong. She's willing to fight for what she wants.

Or how about the awesome message she sends at the end of the book when she begs Jane for her apprenticeship back. First off, Alyce is very humble about going back there, and you might not think that it's all that special for a guttergirl to be humble, but it would be easy for Alyce to cling to her pride and insist it's all she has left. Instead, Alyce just admits that she doesn't know everything but she knows she won't give up this time. That's a fantastic attitude.

And then there's how the story looks at the role of women in medieval society, or how class interacts with healthcare even in a feudal system, or the idea that kindness costs nothing and gains everything... Look, I'm just saying that you can open this book to just about any page and I could find something there that has radically shaped how I view the world. And, by and large, it's shaped it for the better.

I also want to give this book credit, though it's not something I remember noticing as a child, for having a very vague description of the main character. It's easy to miss because, well, there's so much else going on, but we really don't know much about Alyce's appearance at all. And that means that it's possible for this book to be read a lot of different ways. The only things we really know about Alyce are that her hair is black and curly, her eyes are big, and her skin is "white". But the skin thing is actually the least clear of all of them, as it's mentioned when Alyce washes with soap for the first time. So presumably it's more a comparison to the literal years of dirt that were on her before that.

What I'm saying is that this is the rare book where it's possible to read Alyce as a variety of different races. And that's not even historically inaccurate to do. We know now that there was an incredible level of diversity present in medieval Europe, including England, so it would be entirely possible for Alyce to be of African or Asian or Middle-Eastern descent. And while knowing that doesn't change the story in any substantial way, I know it does give the opportunity for anyone to identify with Alyce and find themselves in her. And that's awesome.

I, personally, always kind of pictured Alyce as Jewish. It wasn't until this most recent readthrough that I realized that, but I do. It took this reading for me to see that there's nothing in the text to support that conclusion (black curly/frizzy hair is basically the most common hair type on the planet, from what I can see), but I think it's kind of sweet that child me chose to read that into the text.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. My point is this: The Midwife's Apprentice is a really good book. And it has a really good point. Not every book has to have a clear plot structure and defined storylines and a solid presentation. Sometimes it's okay for a book to meander through some character development. That's okay too. But mostly, I wish I hadn't forgotten how much I love this book. It's fantastic and it's a huge part of why I am the person I am today.

And that is far from nothing.

*Not an exaggeration. I counted at one point that I alone owned five different editions of the books, while my family owned a ridiculous ten versions. For four people.

**Also not an exaggeration. I used to hoard German and Dutch books on the basic premise that I would probably be able to read them eventually if I just tried hard enough. As it turns out, I now speak a fair amount of German, so that wasn't a terrible plan. I mean, not great, but not terrible.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart because I feel like I never quite manage to say what I'm trying to when I explain it to people. Simply put, I dislike the idea of there being a list of "classics" in any media or genre. I don't like that there are some books you "simply must" read and that there are some movies that are "essential viewing" and that some television shows are "must see TV". Or rather, it's not that I hate these classifications, it's that I'm inherently suspicious of them.

Who decided this? Who chose these books or those movies or this television show? Who determined that The Killing Joke was required reading for anyone who wanted to get into comics and that Watchmen was the highest point a comic could aspire to, while leaving works like Persepolis or Squirrel Girl to be funny little diversions. Not classics, of course not, just interesting footnotes.

Who decided that?

I suppose part of the reason this is at the forefront of my attention is because, yet again, my proposal to write a book on the "alternate canon" of women in television has been denied. It bothers me because I keep submitting this book proposal - stupidly banging my head against the door - to an editor who sends email after email begging for book ideas about the golden age of television and all these great new shows coming out. He wants books about Breaking Bad and The Sopranos and Mad Men and the other TV shows that changed the game.

But he doesn't seem to want a book about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess and Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls and Scandal and all those shows that changed the game for me. Because those shows aren't classics. They're not the new canon of television we all agree completely revolutionized the form. They're not essential to the narrative.

It bothers me. Obviously it bothers me because it dings my pride, that's not hard to figure out, but it also bothers me because it excludes my opinion as a critic and as a fan. It takes away the voice I have. If this is some conference that was set up where all the people who love television were invited and voted on what was the best expression of storytelling in televisual form, did my invitation get lost in the mail?

I also have been thinking about this topic because my mother happened to mention the other day that she and my father couldn't get through watching Pulp Fiction. They tried, because they believe in being culturally literate and they've heard it was a classic, but they got halfway in and hated every minute, so they turned it off and have since not finished watching it. My parents are the kind of people who care a lot about being culturally savvy, and I appreciate that about them,* but I could have told them right off the bat that they weren't going to like Pulp Fiction. There is basically no universe in which that would be a film my parents enjoy.

Who picked Pulp Fiction as a movie that you have to see in order to be considered cultured? And, for the record, I'm not against the idea of people having broad cultural backgrounds, either. I am actually in favor of people being culturally literate to their best potential. I endorse the idea of wanting to see the best films from the best directors and the best actors, of reading the best books. I think that there's a lot of value in trying to pin down art that is done exceptionally well and consuming it.

And I do think there's value in having a sort of collectively agreed upon understanding of what those best art works are. It creates a sort of cultural shorthand. For instance, if I were to tell you that something was like Jurassic Park meets Casablanca, one, you would immediately have two pictures in your head - regardless of whether or not you have seen either of those movies - and two, you would start thinking of the plot for that amazing movie that someone needs to make please.

It's shorthand and it's very helpful. Because we have these stories we all sort of agree to be aware of, we can skip past a lot of work in trying to talk about difficult concepts. It's a shared vocabulary of sorts. Saying that someone was acting like a total Ebenezer Scrooge today means something we all agree to understand. That's incredibly useful.

On the other hand, I didn't get any say in the pieces of media that have become our canon of classics, and I'm frankly not all that jazzed about them. I've mentioned before that I don't particularly care for Charles Dickens (except for the film adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby starring Charlie Hunnam and of course The Muppet Christmas Carol), but it's bigger than my beef with any one person or story.

My problem with the classics is that they send the idea that great art, the art we should all aspire to, is almost exclusively done by rich white men who are dead now. Sometimes art is done by poor white men or middle class white men, but if we look at the canon, it seems clear that art as we understand it, great art that is to be consumed and marveled at and should shape our culture, is done by a tiny fraction of humanity and no one else counts.

For example, why the hell isn't Do the Right Thing higher on everyone's lists of great American movies? It's an incredible film and personally I found it a lot more compelling than Citizen Kane. If we're talking about films that shifted the paradigm and meant something culturally, then what's the deal?

Or how about including the incredibly popular novels of the nineteenth century in lists of great American literature? It seems to me that the only real reason they're excluded is because the most popular novels then are what we would call chick-lit today. And, again, this is still a problem. Popular fiction, which is mostly written by and for women, is considered not worth counting when we consider the great works of literature being written in this country.

Who decides what stories are the ones we choose to revere and venerate and remember? Who picks the plots that will shape how we view ourselves and our culture?

Because here's the thing: this is not an academic argument. Well, it's not just an academic argument. This has real world consequences. The overwhelming whiteness (and secondarily maleness) of the classics is a genuine problem because it sends the message to young artists of color that they will never be counted as one of the greats. That there is no representation available for them at the top. And it also sends the message that all great art up until now has been done by white men. That diversity is new and no black people or Asian-Americans or Latinx or Native peoples or anyone else ever contributed something worthwhile to our culture.

That's a very dangerous message to send.

It breaks my heart when my students haven't heard of Phyllis Wheatley, don't know that Helen Keller was a lot more than a punchline to insensitive jokes about disability, don't realize that the first novel was written by a Japanese woman. These people aren't in the classics, aren't considered worth assigning in school or adding to our cultural canon. They're invisible.

Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler are relegated to the "special interests" shelves and Lucille Ball is considered first as an actress and second as a half of a tumultuous marriage, but almost never as the incredibly successful studio head and producer she actually was.

So, again I ask, who picked these classics anyway? Whose choice was it to privilege "prestige dramas" about middle aged white men having extra-martital affairs and sketchy relationships with the law over network dramas where black women triumph over adversity and hold high powered jobs and reach their own levels of emotional complexity? Who decided that James Fenimore Cooper's books were high art, while the books by Frances Hodgson Burnett (which include ones you might have actually read) were sentimental craptrap?

Who voted for this stuff? I sure didn't. My picks would be a lot different. So if anyone does get an invitation to that giant convention where they decide these things, can you bring me along? I have some things to say.

Namely, that Persepolis is a classic and should be treated as such.

*At least, they care about that now. When I was growing up that was the furthest thing from a priority. Hence why I have a gaping hole in my understanding of pop culture between 1972 and 2001, but I can identify classical music by composer and artistic movement and know more about ballet than is really essential for any one person's life.**

**Just kidding. I love ballet. It is very essential.

Well, chickadees, it's that time of the week again - time to recap an episode of Outlander! Yay!

Last week we found Jamie and Claire having to hightail it away from Castle Leoch in the wake of Claire's witch trial. I have a sneaking suspicion that they're not going to find safe harbor back there any time soon. It was after the trial, when Jamie proved that he was willing to fight for Claire, witch or not, that Claire decided to tell him the truth: she's an accidental time-traveler from two hundred years in the future. Jamie took it surprisingly well.

So well, in fact, that he decided to help Claire return to her own time. Knowing the ache and sting of being forever parted from the place (or time) you call home, Jamie brought Claire to the standing stones where she first fell through and gave her a chance to go back to her own world. The thing is, Claire didn't want it.

I mean, she did, but ultimately she decided that she would rather stay in hellish 1743, because that's where Jamie is. Good on her. The only question then is, where can a man with a price on his head and a woman wanted for witchcraft hideout from their many many many enemies?

At home!

Yup, this episode starts off with Jamie and Claire making the trek back to Jamie's family home of Lallybroch. Now, to most of us this seems like a terrible idea. I mean, Lallybroch is basically the first place anyone would go to look for Jamie. But then again, he hasn't been there in four years, their neighbors and renters are notoriously loyal, and Jamie will hopefully be pardoned soon. So maybe this isn't such a terrible idea after all.

Unfortunately, coming home brings back bad memories for Jamie. As you may recall (and he certainly does), the last time Jamie was at Lallybroch he was being flogged by Jack Randall and watching his sister be carted away to be raped. So clearly not happy feelings associated with the place right now. And it's even more emotionally complex when Jamie reveals that he heard Jenny (his sister) had a baby after that. That Black Jack Randall, the tormenter of Jamie's life, is the father to Jamie's nephew.

So obviously in the name of really good timing, this is exactly when Claire spots a four year old boy and goes to make friends and Jamie sees his very pregnant sister in the courtyard. Jenny, who doesn't look much like Jamie except for the incredibly stubborn sets of their jaws, is thrilled to see her brother...for about thirty seconds. Then Jamie starts making accusations about Jenny being a whore for Randall and having his child, and then implies that Jenny's coming baby doesn't have a legitimate father either. It's not good.

And unfortunately, the appearance of Jenny's husband, Ian, who is apparently a lovely man, does nothing to soothe tempers. Claire gets called a "trollop", Jamie and Jenny glare at each other, and Ian just sort of stands in the corner and awkwardly asks if anyone wants some dinner.

Inside we get more of the full story of what happened to Jenny during the fateful day when Jack Randall came to Lallybroch. According to her, he didn't rape her. Probably. He tried, yeah, but he couldn't get it up and Jenny was so delirious with fear and the absurdity of the situation that she started laughing hysterically, which enraged Randall and made him beat her until she passed out. She's reasonably sure he didn't rape her.

Jamie is obviously very relieved to hear that, but he doesn't let it make him any more likely to apologize for calling his own sister a whore. Not even when Claire gently encourages reconciliation. Actually, that makes him bring her out and give her an impromptu explanation of eighteenth century marriage norms. See, as his wife, Claire really shouldn't badmouth Jamie or tell him what to do in public. Claire is dubious about this. But Jamie insists that it's a sign they're not united as a couple. So Claire agrees, with the promise that if he doesn't listen to her in private, she's not above throwing crockery and she has a very good arm.

Anyway, with Jamie back that makes him the Laird of Lallybroch. Certainly not as high and mighty a position as Colum's Laird-ship, but not half bad. He and Claire move into the big room in the manor - much to Claire's incredible awkwardness and murmurings about not putting anyone out - and he sets himself up as the chief man around there. Ian is incredibly good-natured about it, because Ian is a lovely lovely man, but Jenny is slightly less pleased.

Then we go immediately into Quarter-Day. Like when Jamie and Claire helped Dougal collect rents for the MacKenzies, the Frasers also live off of rents, just a lot fewer of them and much more humble. Quarter-Day is when, once a quarter, their tenants come to the house and bring their rent, along with being a celebration and sort of a fair. There's lots of food and gathering and people chatting up a storm.

A few notable things happen at Quarter-Day. The first is obviously that Jamie, deciding unilaterally to be more lenient about the rents because the harvests have been bad for a few years (and because he has no idea what he's doing but he's trying to be like his father), does not actually collect any rent. This is a problem because it basically means that Lallybroch is going to have to go into debt to get through the winter.

The second thing that happens is that Claire, slightly better at mingling with the locals than she was last time around, interferes in a domestic matter. When she sees one of the men beating his son for daring to take a bannock (like a scone) off the table, Claire steps in and takes the child inside to get him cleaned up and fed. Jenny helps her, and it becomes clear that Jenny knows what is going on. And Claire doesn't know what to do with that information. Because if Jenny knows, why hasn't she done something?

Then Jamie gets involved and manages to get stinking drunk and have a fight with the boy's father that night. Said boy, Rabbie, gets kicked out of his house and ends up living at the manor, which means they have no money and one more mouth to feed. Good job guys.

Oh, and the third thing is just that Claire might be better socially this time, but it's still super awkward explaining to people that, yes, she is Jamie's English wife, and no, this does not mean she's a redcoat supporter. Jenny's not much help there either, content to let Claire do some talking.

There's a quite funny scene that night where Jamie, drunk as hell, comes to bed in the middle of the night and wakes up Claire. She's less than impressed with him, but they have an adorable drunken conversation about how Claire has seen and ridden an elephant and Jamie thinks that's neat. We're reminded that even if Jamie is stubborn as hell and kind of acting like a weird overbearing jerk right now, he's a nice guy. It'll be okay.

Probably.

Somewhere in there we also find out what happened to Jamie and Jenny's father. Their mother died a long while ago, but their father died while Jamie was in prison. Actually, he died at the prison. It seems that when Jamie was incarcerated, after the first flogging but before the second, his father came to see him and beg for his release. Randall, obviously, wouldn't bite. But he did think it was interesting, so he made Jamie an offer: if Jamie let Randall "have" him, then Randall wouldn't go through with the second flogging and would set Jamie free.

This adds an interesting layer to what we know of Jack Randall, but I don't think said layer is that Randall is actually gay. Or at least that's not clear. What is clear is that Randall is a sadist and literally can't get off without his sexual partner being hurt or miserable or non-consenting. Which is super gross.

At any rate, Jamie tells Claire that he very seriously considered it, because the flogging was horrible and he figured whatever Randall would do to him in private couldn't be that much worse. But he knew his father would be disappointed in him. Not for the "buggery" as Jamie puts it, but for giving in to Randall and taking the easy path. So Jamie said no, was brutally beaten and flogged, and passed out before he could see his father die of a heart attack in the courtyard.

His father died thinking that Jamie had been beaten to death, and apparently Jenny was laboring under that assumption as well until a trunk of clothes appeared at their doorstep a day or so before Jamie and Claire. Mrs. Fitz, ever resourceful, figured that Lallybroch would be the safest place to keep Jamie and Claire's things after they went on the run. Good woman.

Anyway, things between Jamie and Jenny continue to be antagonistic for a good while yet. Jamie is unhappy that Jenny keeps questioning him, Jenny feels like Claire and Jamie are trampling all over the way things ought to be done and taking on airs, and everyone is cranky. Except lovely Ian, of course.

Claire is mostly awkward, like when you go over to a friend's house and they get in a fight with a family member while you're there. It's the worst.

There are some good moments, though. Upon discovering that the mill is broken and so no one can grind flour, Jamie takes it upon himself to fix the wheel. Unfortunately, that requires him to swim under the millwheel and figure out what's wrong. While Claire watches him (and we all ogle his really well-formed bare butt), Jenny runs up. The redcoats are coming, and Jamie is still a wanted man.

It's a hell of a scene. Claire and Jenny sit down on Jamie's clothes to hide them, and Claire has to keep her mouth shut so no one realizes she's English, while Jamie hides underwater in the actual mill structure. Even more problematic, it seems that the redcoats who turned up are actually decent human beings and want to help fix the mill. Worse yet, they know how!

It's only a bit of quick thinking that has Jamie getting the mill moving again before the redcoat commander can step into the water to fix it himself and discover Jamie in the process. The redcoats ride away pretty quickly, but Jamie is left sputtering in the freezing cold water, buck naked, with his wife and sister staring at him.

Naturally he takes more issue with the latter.

In his attempts to cover himself up, though, so that Jenny can't see his bits, Jamie inadvertently shows her something else: his scars. And Jenny is shocked. She's never seen them before and they are clearly more horrible than she imagined. She runs, leaving Jamie and Claire kind of confused on the riverbank.

That night, Claire and Ian commiserate about being married to crazy stubborn Frasers. Apparently Ian wasn't even the one to propose. Jenny walked out into a field one day and announced that they'd get married in a month and he was still trying to figure out how to explain to her that she might want to wait when he ended up in front of a priest. There's no getting between Frasers when their dander is up, Ian tells Claire.

So what do we do? That's what Claire really wants to know. I don't think she much fancies the idea of being trapped with two stubborn squabbling siblings for the rest of her life.

Well, as Ian explains, the only way to get through is like getting through to a mule: kick them. And if that doesn't work, kick harder next time. Naturally, this is exactly what Claire does.

After literally dumping Jamie out of bed while he's sleeping to get his attention, Claire gives him the rundown. He's acting like a jerk and he needs to knock it the hell off. Jenny and Ian were doing just fine before Jamie came back, and he needs to swallow his pride and take some tips from them about what it means to be Laird of Lallybroch. He might have the name and the birthright, but he's being a jackass about it. If his father were there, he'd give him a right beating for how he's been acting.

The thing is, Claire is right. So the next morning we find both Jamie and Jenny at their father's grave, tentatively making peace. Jamie apologizes for being a dick and even gives her the rents. He's collected them after all. Jenny, for her part, apologizes for being so hard on him. For a long time she blamed him for their father's death, and then she blamed herself. But neither one is correct. Really it's Randall to be blamed, or no one. The siblings finally finally hug it out, and we all breathe a sigh of relief.

For like a minute. The next morning we see Claire wake up slowly and happily only to come out of her bedroom and see Jamie being held at gunpoint in the downstairs hall. So that's not good.

And that's where the episode ends.

This week's episode was really fun for me. I mean, all the family drama stuff wasn't great, but I liked seeing Jamie put out of his element. For once it's both Jamie and Claire who are strangers. And it was funny seeing Jamie revert to being a snotty eighteen year old for once. I'm so used to him being a sweet and gentle romantic hero, it was kind of refreshing to watch him being a jerk.

Even more, I loved the introduction of Jenny and Ian. Ian is, of course, just a wonderful human being and one of the only actually mellow people on the whole show. But Jenny has a special place in my heart because she's so clearly an interpretation of how one really can be a strong woman in a time and place like 1740s Scotland. She takes no shit, but she has the capacity to be really gentle. She's firey and stubborn and kind of a bitch, but she's also an amazing mother with a big heart and a fierce love for her family. In other words, she's complicated and well written and I really like her.

I also like that we have the opportunity for Claire to make a real female friend again. That would be nice. And it's super fun imagining what Jamie and Jenny must have been like growing up together. In a word? Terrifying.

So that's it for this week and next week it looks like we've got more Lallybroch and the resolution of what those guys with guns want. Awesome.

Guys. Guys. It has come to my attention that Doreen Green, aka Squirrel Girl, has never been the subject of a Strong Female Character Friday.* What's up with that? She's totally amazing and awesome and worth talking about! So we're going to fix that right now.

If the names "Doreen Green" and "Squirrel Girl" conjure up nothing for you but a general sense that maybe something has gone horribly wrong down at animal control, I have news for you. Not only is Squirrel Girl one of Marvel's best-selling and best-reviewed comics of the past year, the title character will also be getting a massive promotion this fall to being a full-fledged Avenger. That's right, the Avengers is about to have a pint-sized squirrel dynamo on their team. And there are very few things that make me happier.

You would, however, be forgiven for not really getting why this is so wonderful. Up until the past year or so, Squirrel Girl was considered a D-level superhero at best. Making her first appearance in The Marvel Superheroes Winter Special in 1992, Doreen Green is a mutant who happens to have the proportional speed and strength of a squirrel, as well as a big bushy squirrel tail.

It seems she was created mostly as an in-joke in the Marvel universe, but she eventually came to be a member of a superhero group called "The Great Lakes Avengers" and later moved to New York to be a nanny to Jessica Jones' and Luke Cage's daughter.

The funny bit about Squirrel Girl, the part that's always made her sort of a footnote and kind of always a punchline, is that she's secretly one of the most powerful superheroes in the world. Between her heightened strength and speed and her ability to communicate with squirrels and rally them into a giant squirrel army, Squirrel Girl has actually taken down more big-league bad guys than pretty much anyone else. She has also beaten up all of the Avengers multiple times.

And this is a storyline that continues into her current incarnation. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl saw Doreen fighting such heavies as Whiplash and Kraven the Hunter and Galactus, all with an impeccable success rate. As in she defeated all of them. She defeated Galactus. Tell me again how Squirrel Girl isn't one of the most powerful superheroes in the world.

But what makes Doreen such a cool character is actually that while she can physically defeat most of these guys on her own or with the help of her squirrel army, she doesn't actually want to. Most of the time Squirrel Girl prefers to defeat her enemies with, well, logic.

Like she explains to one of the low-level bad guys robbing a bank in New York that he could actually get a lot farther finding a way to harness his superpowers with a regular job. She even gives him a referral to get work with a construction crew downtown. Or how she defeats Kraven the Hunter by giving him something scarier (and more evil) to hunt than just her or Spiderman.

I mean, she takes down Galactus by figuring out that he's actually just really hungry and that what he needs is a lot of protein. So Squirrel Girl and her sidekick, the squirrel Tippy-Toe, take Galactus to a recently discovered planet of nuts, where they all gorge on delicious nuts and then take a nap.

Obviously the Squirrel Girl stories are a lot more lighthearted than your usual superhero stories. Even the plots where Doreen has to go up against her friends, like when they've been brainwashed by an evil Asguardian chaos squirrel (not kidding, actual plot), she does it with good cheer and an unfailing sense of humor. She's not afraid to tell people when they're being jerks, but she also doesn't let it get to her.

There's something so commendable about Doreen's whole attitude in life. Like, she has a giant bushy tail that she has to hide so she can go to college, right? So she stuffs it in her pants and realizes that it makes her look like she has a giant butt. Awesome! Or she realizes that the angle she's posing in makes her thighs look huge. Right on! Someone says that she's really weird for talking to squirrels. They don't know what they're missing, squirrels are amazing!

Doreen is so sure of who she is, so comfortable in her own skin, that it's honestly inspiring. She's not chipper to the point of being obnoxious, or maybe she is, but she's genuinely good-natured and warm-hearted because she loves herself and is therefore capable of really loving other people.

She collects friends and allies like other people collect bad reputations, and the general consensus in the Marvel world is that Doreen Green might be over-enthusiastic and kind of crazy, but she's an amazing person to have on your side.

That doesn't mean she's perfect, though. Doreen's still kind of a dork with a lot of strange habits and foibles. She's terrible at remembering to ask for permission and she can't pick up a hint to save her life. The start of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl finds her living in the attic of Avengers Tower, leading to the interesting realization that Avengers Tower apparently has an attic, but also that there's a random teenage girl squatting there. She didn't ask for permission to stay, she just kind of made sure she never got caught and then didn't leave.

Later in the series she actually breaks back into Avengers Tower and steals some of Tony's Iron Man suits so she can fly to the moon - it's not a horrible heinous crime and she does give them back, but it shows that Doreen can be kind of single-minded when she's trying to save the world. She assumes that everyone is as dedicated and energetic and happy as she is, and so you can see how she might rub some people the wrong way.

But not me. I love her.

I love her because here is this woman who is so unapologetically herself, who is so comfortable in who she is, that she very literally changes the world. People have commented that it really feels like Squirrel Girl, more than any other Marvel comic, feels like it exists in its own little pocket universe. Like the events of the stories there, the sun-soaked streets of New York, the way everyone deserves a second chance and most villains can be reasoned with, doesn't fit with the rest of comics. It must be another world entirely.

The thing is, it's not. We know that from Marvel on high, but also because that way of thinking, the assumption that any universe where Squirrel Girl is one of the most powerful people in the world must be a very strange place, is kind of insulting. The more accurate interpretation, I feel, is that Doreen's positivity and belief in the inherent goodness of people actually changes the world around her.

I also really adore how she is able to help villains because she comes in with the assumption that they don't want to be evil, they just aren't sure how to get what they actually want or need. Now, even in her own comic this doesn't always end up being true, but it's such an attitude shift from the way that even really great heroes like Thor and Captain America view their villains that it's worth commenting on.

In a lot of ways Squirrel Girl reminds me of the Flash in the 1990s Justice League cartoon. His villains were always kind of good-natured about being caught because they respected and liked Flash, and Flash in turn was always gentle and good to them and tried to figure out how to help them as people.

I like this approach because it makes clear the understanding that crime isn't something that happens in a vacuum. For most people, criminal action is the last resort. It's something you do when you have no other option. Doreen Green gets that. She believes that most people want to make the right choices, so when she fights crime it's with the idea of making it easier for people to do the right thing. I think we could all use a little more Doreen in our lives, don't you?

The title of her series, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, refers to a lot more than just Doreen's fighting prowess and habit of taking down ridiculously powerful supervillains. I think it's more about her attitude. Like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Squirrel Girl is defined by her attitude. You cannot beat Doreen. You cannot beat her down or make her feel bad about herself or make her give up on her friends. You cannot beat her.

And it's just so wonderful to see a character like that who is also just a young woman going about her regular life. She's a college student, studying database management in computer studies. She has friends and a crush on a cute boy she met at the student fair and she likes looking pretty and having fun. But she's also a superhero who wants to save the world and more importantly can. Those things are not mutually exclusive.

Squirrel Girl's attitude and life send the message that it is possible to live a life completely in harmony with itself. Not every superhero has to be tortured and traumatized inside. Not everyone needs a dark and gritty backstory. Sometimes there are just good people. Sometimes those good people are a little kooky and wear acorns for earrings and talk to squirrels out on the quad, but you know what? Good for them.

Squirrel Girl is one of those comics I really want any future children I have to grow up reading. Both for her confidence and for her belief that everyone deserves another chance, I want my kids (if I have any) to be like her. Doreen Green is a wonderful human being. She's strong inside and out, but more importantly she's kind. I can't think of any superhero I'd rather have save me.

I love you. Never change.

*As the main writer of this website, I'm aware that I should probably actually know these things off the top of my head and not need other people to tell me, but in my defense, there are over 800 articles on here and it's been running for four years. I lose track, okay?

As I'm sure all of you television watch-y people are aware, the epic drama How to Get Away with Murder has kind of a lot to say. We've even discussed some of that here - last year I wrote an article talking about how the show works as one big indictment of the patriarchy. We've talked about the inherent badassness of Laurel Castillo, one of the main characters, and we will definitely get around to in depth discussions of Michaela, Annaliese, and Bonnie too. Have no fears.

But for today I want to take a closer look to the character who might as well be our protagonist for the first season - though Annaliese takes that role more strongly in the second. Let's talk about Wes Gibbins.

Specifically, in light of our recent series on masculinity in the media, let's talk about how Wes Gibbins, an African-American man attending law school on scholarship and as a waitlisted student, who comes from a lower class background and had a mentally ill mother, is or is not a good man.

On the surface this can look like a loaded question. If, for example, I decide that Wes isn't a good man, then am I saying that black men with poor backgrounds are inherently untrustworthy or bad? And, alternately, if I say that he is good, am I just deciding that he might as well be good because the difficulty of his circumstances makes him unaccountable for any bad things he might have done?

Well, as it turns out neither of those is true. Wes isn't a good man, nor does he appear to be a particularly bad one. Or, to be more precise, we just don't know what kind of man Wes really is. And that is what makes him such a fascinating character. It's also what makes his appearance on How to Get Away with Murder a good moment for the exploration of masculinity, black masculinity in particular.

But more on that later. First, the background!

So Wes Gibbins (Alfred Enoch) is our eyes in to the show. He walks in on the first day of law school to attend Professor Annaliese Keating's infamous class on how to be a defense attorney called "How to Get Away with Murder". He's late. He hasn't done the reading. It turns out that he only found out he was going to the school a few weeks ago because he was waitlisted. In other words, Wes is a complete outsider in this world of privilege and cut-throat ambition. He gets made a fool of that first day and it looks like a lot of the show is going to be us cringing as Wes the puppy is turned into bloodsport.

That, however, is not what happens. Instead we see over the course of the first season a curious thing. It's not so much that Wes really changes that much - though the events of the season do definitely change him - but more that we see more of who he is and we are given a much more complex idea of his personhood.

Like, for example, the fact that Wes is very compassionate. A "bleeding heart" as his classmates put it. Early in the first season, Wes becomes invested in the life of his neighbor, Rebecca (Katie Findlay). When she is arrested for the murder of a student at Wes' university, Wes sides immediately with Rebecca despite really not knowing her at all. He even persuades his boss, the aforementioned Professor Annaliese Keating to take the case. So, yeah, definitely a compassionate guy.

But, as it turns out, a suspicious one too. When Wes realizes that Rebecca might have left out some key details when explaining how she didn't kill her friend and was totally innocent, he gets suspicious and stays there. He doesn't just fawn over Rebecca and assume she's innocent and good. He looks into things. He tracks things down. He uncovers Rebecca's admittedly very shady actions and calls into question the very relationship that he originally pursued.

Yet through all of this, we're never told explicitly whether or not Wes is right to do these things. Is he right to try to defend Rebecca, or is he right when he decides to investigate her? Neither? Both?

And it's all complicated by the slow revelation over the course of the season that Wes might actually turn out to be a murderer - he is, at the very least, quite comfortable and collected when disposing of a body. Yeah, with the flash-forwards to the titular murder, we get a fuller and fuller story of what actually happened. And what happened really doesn't answer the question of whether or not Wes is a good person.

See, Wes is definitely the one who struck the killing blow, but he did it to defend Rebecca. On the other hand, did it have to be a killing blow? After the murder he's much more collected than anyone else. He even is the one to go back to the scene of the crime and get the murder weapon. In other words, Wes Gibbins is a lot more complex than he looks.

He has moments of being a really genuine and good person, or so it seems, but then he has moments where all of that turns on a dime. Because we never hear Wes' side of the story, we only see how he behaves, we don't actually know that much about him. He's not a bragger. He's not particularly public. He's just a quiet guy who might be capable of murder but might also be a giant puppy dog inside.

I find that very compelling.

I find it all very appealing because in a lot of ways, Wes as a character is an antidote to the way black men are so frequently treated on television. Because he is neither a clear sinner nor a clear saint, he becomes something else entirely: a person.

Wes doesn't fit into the normal archetypes for African-American men in fiction. He's not overly sexualized, but he does have a healthy sexuality. It's made clear that Wes enjoys sex and has had it, and there's a lingering interesting possibility that he and Annaliese might eventually have an affair, but he's also not defined by his sexual allure or magnetism. He's not considered bestial like too many African-American men are, and he's not defined by his looks or his history or any of that. Wes is a sexual subject, not object. We see his sexual decisions from his perspective, and so we are not allowed to dehumanize him.

He's also not characterized as a thug. While Wes is from a lower-income background, he's not defined by his relationship to the criminal world. It's never implied or stated that Wes was a drug dealer or went to jail or any of the tropes about the "inherently criminal" black man. Even his background as the child of a single-parent household where his mother eventually committed suicide is brought up not to show how he's a "thug who only knows the ghetto", it's to actually make it clear how little anyone knows about Wes. He's not a gangster, he's a mystery.

I mean, obviously he's invested in his education, right? He's going to one of the top law schools in the country, working extremely hard to get ahead in a class and in a firm that does not provide any easy way to success, and he's doing it all on scholarship while living in a tiny crappy apartment and riding his bicycle around. He's dedicated. But we're never told why.

He doesn't say anything like, "I want to be a lawyer because when I was a kid I saw how the lawyers never had to live in poverty like my mother and I so I swore to myself that one day I would have my law degree and make a better life for all those people who need a chance." Nope. No grand speeches. Wes' reasons are his own, so there's no room for trite or easy storytelling.

Alternately, he's also not characterized as a "magic Negro" or some kind of sainted black man. You know, the token character who's really just there to make everyone feel bad about how they treat some marginalized group or whatever but who has no actual personality beyond being noble and tragic? That. He's not that.

Wes doesn't give long and meaningful speeches about what it means to be a black man in America in 2015. It's even worth noting that when the students realize they're about to pin a crime on an innocent black man - Nate Lahey - Wes is not the one who protests and brings up the over-incarceration of black men in the US. That role goes to Michaela. Wes stays silent through the whole thing, and we're left wondering if he cares at all.

What I'm getting at here is that Alfred Enoch and Shonda Rhimes have done what seemed impossible. With Wes Gibbins and How to Get Away with Murder they have given us a picture of what it means to have a black male character who is just a person. He's a complex and interesting and kind of terrifying person, but he's never made to be a symbol of his race; he's never forced to stand in for every black man ever. He's just Wes Gibbins, and that's plenty.

So to answer my own question from the title, I honestly don't know if Wes is a good man or not. He does some things that are good, and others that really definitely are not. He has his moments of being a wonderful human being, a great boyfriend, and a big-hearted lawyer, but by the end of the first season we're left wondering if Wes is a murderer twice over. And it's not like he's a compelling character in spite of this.

Wes is a great character precisely because he's so hard to pin down. I can name a dozen white male characters with this level of complexity and moral ambiguity from shows this good, but when it comes to men of color, we're dealing with a much scarcer situation. Men like Wes, men of color who defy all attempts to fit them into stereotypes, are tragically underrepresented on television. And that sucks.

Still, if we can learn nothing else from how Wes is written, at least there's this: writing stereotypes and racial generalizations is nowhere near as interesting as writing a character with full complexity and agency and personhood. There's just no comparison.

The thing that surprises me about Chicken Run, and it somehow manages to surprise me every time I watch it, is the way that the narrative so thoroughly rejects individual heroics in favor of rewarding collective action. In other words, Chicken Run is a movie where no chicken is truly alone and while no chicken can fly on her own, together they can soar. That’s pretty fantastic, right?

It’s a movie where the grand heroics involve everyone working together, and it’s a film that validates the traditional feminine pastimes of its heroines by showing that they can be just as useful in orchestrating an escape as any amount of bravado or “sheer guts”. Actually, more.

And it’s also a movie that is incredibly brilliantly blatantly British. I don’t just mean in the sense that it was made by a British film company (the makers of Wallace and Gromit, naturally) and released in Britain, but in the sense that the ethos of this film, the structure, and even the movies that it’s mimicking so hilariously, are all British. It’s just a really really British film, and it exemplifies the best of that mindset. I mean, there’s lots of stuff about British post-War politics and rhetoric that is worth objecting to, but there’s also quite a bit that’s not. This is that latter part.

The film is a parody/homage to the great British escape movies and war films, sure, but it also exemplifies what was so noteworthy in the actions of the British people during the war. The way that people pitched together to do the work that needed doing. The pragmatic, keep your chin up, carry on fighting spirit that was quiet but still very true. All of that, the humble and not-showy belief that all of us pulling together can make it through, that’s worth celebrating, and that’s a huge part of this film. So, you know, good.

If you’re not familiar with it, allow me to give you a quick primer. Chicken Run, which came out in 2000, is a feature-length claymation film that is ostensibly for children but kind of in practice for everyone. The plot is deceptively simple. Our main characters are chickens who live in a chicken farm on the British countryside. It’s an egg farm and there’s a looming threat of death hanging over everyone – produce too few eggs and you get the chop.

Ginger (Julia Sawalha), the hero of the film, is a chicken with a dream. She dreams that one day she and all of the other chickens will live free in the country, feeling grass beneath their feet and eating when they feel like it, no longer prisoners of the farmer and the farm. The other chickens love this idea, but are also more hesitant to buy in. After all, being chickens on a chicken farm is all they’ve ever known. A life without fences? Sounds nice, but how the hell do you propose we get there?

So Ginger keeps trying to help the other chickens escape, and her attempts keep failing. They do, however, catch the attention of the farmer, Mr. Tweedy (Tony Haygarth), who punishes her by putting her in “solitary confinement” in one of the empty feed pens. Yet every time Ginger gets out, she’s come up with one more plan to try to get them out. This is the status quo.

If Ginger were thinking only of herself, she’d be well out by now. As the mastermind of all of these plans, Ginger is well able and practiced at getting out of their coop. But she’s trying to get every single other chicken out at the same time as herself, so it never works. Ginger wants to save these other chickens, so she keeps putting herself in danger.

While she’s contemplating yet another new plan to escape, Ginger is offered a simple and easy solution to her problems. Falling from the sky – flying – she sees a rooster, Rocky (Mel Gibson). And here he is: living proof that they can escape by flying over the wall. Awesome! Rocky injures his wing in the fall, but Ginger figures that’s no big problem. Even with a wounded wing, Rocky can help them learn how to fly and by the time of the escape he’ll be all better. Win-win.

At first Rocky’s not enthusiastic about the plan. He’s a “lone free ranger” who doesn't want to be tied down by a bunch of chickens and their mildly insane plans to escape their fate. He, frankly, does not care. But Rocky has his own problems. He's on the run from the circus where he was a side-act rooster. The exact nature of his act is something he carefully keeps hidden from Ginger and the chickens, but it's quite clear he does not want to go back. So that's the deal Ginger strikes: if Rocky helps them learn to fly, they'll hide him from the circus so he doesn't have to go back.

And that's what brings us into the second act. Rocky commences teaching the chickens how to fly while Ginger works on perfecting the plan. There are the usual silly personality clashes. Ginger is selfless and kind and determined to help the others - she finds Rocky's egotism and womanizing ways to be kind of offensive and unnecessary. Meanwhile, Rocky is a playrooster who loves the attention he gets from all the hens - he thinks Ginger is stuck up and stiff-necked. Obviously they're going to fall in love.

That's definitely the weakest part of the film, its insistence on writing in a romance between Ginger and Rocky. The movie really does not need it. For our actual tension throughout the second act, we have the escalation of the danger the chickens are in. Frustrated by the meager profits afforded by her husband's chicken farm, the terrifying Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) has decided to transform their business. They will now be a farm that sells chicken pies, not eggs. To aid them in this, she has bought a gigantic, frightening chicken pie machine which turns nice live chickens into pies. Yikes.

So clearly this is not a film for the faint-hearted child. Our heroes are the chickens and there's an entire frightening sequence when Ginger and Rocky are forced to escape from the giant machine. They sabotage it in the process, and buy themselves some time, but it's clear the stakes are pretty high.

By the end of act two, we know a couple of things. First, we know that chickens cannot fly (and the chickens themselves are starting to figure that out). Second, we know that Ginger's plan to escape will not and cannot work. And third we know that the truth about Rocky - that he can't actually fly - will come out sooner rather than later.

Naturally all of this comes to a head at the same time.

On the morning that Rocky is supposed to finally finally give the chickens a flying demonstration, Ginger wakes to find his bunk empty and a piece of paper in his place. It's the bottom half of a poster she saw earlier that featured Rocky flying. The bottom part of the paper shows that he wasn't flying, he was being shot from a cannon. Ginger is devastated. Their plans are over. This causes the hens to fall into a despairing chicken-fight, but before the moment can linger too long, Ginger has another idea.

They can still fly, they'll just have to fly together. See, throughout the film we've been hearing bits and snatches of stories from Fowler (Benjamin Whitrow) about his old RAF days. As the chickens slowly realize, RAF stands for Royal Air Force, and that means that Fowler really did fly once upon a time. Just, you know, in a plane instead of with his wings. So Ginger and Mac (Lynn Ferguson) come up with a new and better plan where they all work together to transform their chicken coops (the "huts") into a mechanical airplane powered by chickens peddling little stationary bikes.

Yes, it's kind of silly and ridiculous. But it's also lovely. The chickens use their already established skills to sew and knit and manufacture this plane. They make it themselves and when it's time to get away, they escape because they all work together to fly it.

And that's what I want to get at in this film. That's what I consider so wonderful about this movie. Yeah, it has a typical Hollywood ending where Rocky comes back and helps them escape and he and Ginger reconcile and the Tweedys are defeated, but it also has a resolution that seems resolutely contrary to the usual fare. The chickens succeed because they work together. The plan doesn't end up being something that Ginger develops on her own, she doesn't "save" everyone. They save each other.

Plus, instead of forcing the chickens to be something they're not, the plan that ends up saving them is one where they each use their skills to help each other. Mac is a brilliant mathematician and engineer, so she makes the plans for the plane. Ginger organizes everyone because she's a born leader.

Bunty (Imelda Staunton) is a great egg-layer so she lays eggs they can use to pay the rats who get them spare parts they need for the plane. Even Babs (Jane Horrocks), a notoriously ditzy chicken who is a punchline throughout the film, gets her moment when she heads up the team doing construction of the wings. Everyone has something to contribute, the movie says, and you don't have to be anyone you're not in order to help.

It's a validation both of traditional feminine work as well as a spirit of cooperation that is generally not common to Hollywood films, especially films for children. And as for the story being a little too dark for kids, well, you all know by now that I'm not a big proponent of things being "too dark" or "too scary". I tend to think that a little dark and scary is good for kids.

There's just...it makes me really happy. It makes me happy to watch a movie that is about female characters orchestrating their own salvation from oppressive forces. The danger is real and present and their victory over it is their own in the end. It's fantastic.

Because the message that this movie sends is that there is no one right way to contribute to your community. And it also makes it clear that the greater virtue is not escaping on your own, it's escaping in such a way that you can help everyone, even the ones who told you not to bother. It's a very practical application of kindness, and I'm generally of the opinion that films could use more of that.

I mean, it's a film that validates ideals of sacrifice and selflessness and courage in the face of very real danger. It shows that sometimes the world is big and scary and sometimes the forces set against us are much bigger than we are, stronger and with more power. But if we work together, we have a chance. And, in a very true sense, the heart of the movie is when Ginger asks the other chickens how they want to die: because they gave up or because they tried to be free?

It's a movie with a female hero and a female antagonist, a movie about chickens that somehow manages to have more heart than most kids' movies about humans. And all the while it manages to be hilarious no matter how old you are watching it. What more do you want in a movie?

There's also some very literal gallows humor and it's great.

And we are once more into the breach of Outlander recapping. This week's episode follows the pattern of the latter half of the season, where one nail-biting episode is followed by a more chill exploration of the characters and their relationships. Last week was our chill week (following the hell that was Claire's witch-trial), so this week is full on tension city. And, for the most part, it really works as an episode of television. There were some slow parts where I just wanted the plot to move the hell along, but overall it worked.

The thing to remember with this story is that we all kind of know where it's going to head up. At least, as long as Outlander doesn't break any major rules of storytelling or go completely off the rails with avant-garde plots and post-modern deconstructions of the form, we can all basically guess what has to happen for this season to be completed. Claire is going to be tested in her faithfulness to Jamie. Not sexually, since we've already really tested that when she had the chance to go back to Frank, but in just sheer loyalty.

But more than that, the whole season has been about the undercurrent of the Frasers and their unresolved conflict with Captain Jack Randall. In order to finish the season in an at all satisfying fashion, that's going to have to come to a head. And that means that when we see Jamie and Claire and Jenny and Ian all happy and getting along on the farm, we can be damn sure that won't last long.

Okay, so last week we left off with the realization that, no, it isn't lasting very long at all. Claire woke up to an empty bed, and came out of their bedroom to find Jamie standing in the center of the hall, a gang of men surrounding him with guns pointing at his head. Not a great wakeup call.

This week we pick up precisely there, with the shocking revelation that these aren't men pointing their guns at Jamie because they know who he is, they're people pointing their guns at him because they don't. See, this is the Watch, that legendary group of Scottish semi-outlaws who function like a mafia.

They take payments from lairds and tenants who want protection and then rob and pillage the rest. It seems that Jenny and Ian have been hosting the watch for the past few years - largely out of self-preservation - and the Watch assumed that this strange man (Jamie) strolling around their house was a thief.

Yeah. Who'd have thought?

Fortunately for all of us, Jenny and Ian are on hand to save the day. Jenny reassures the men that this is no thief, it's her cousin, "Jamie MacTavish", who served with Ian when he was fighting with the French overseas.* The Watch, for the most part, buys it. Jamie and his lovely English wife are just visiting for a while, maybe staying, who knows! And in the meantime Jenny and Ian would be totally happy to put up the Watch for a few days while they wait for their other men to arrive. No problem at all.

Jamie is, of course, not thrilled about the revelation that Jenny and Ian have been forced to work with men he views as traitors to the cause - the Watch has been known to work with the redcoats when it suits them - and reminds everyone that these men definitely will not hesitate to turn him in if they realize there's a price on his head. Not that anyone needs reminding.

But Jenny has a plan. Nothing in this visit is particularly out of the ordinary and there's no reason that the Watch should be suspicious of sweet young Jamie MacTavish. So Jamie just has to keep his head down and not start any fights and they'll be fine.

Or not. As we all know by now, "keeping his head down" and "not starting any fights" are two things that our Jamie sucks at beyond belief. Whether he's picking fights about the state of a horse's hoof or the way the Watch has pillaged Ian's tobacco store, Jamie's out to make trouble. At one point he even gets in a fight with five of the men at once, struggling to fight them while saving Lallybroch's hay stores from burning to the ground. But all of this is a moot point when the man the Watch was waiting for arrives, and he turns out to be none other than Horrocks.

You remember Horrocks, right? Way back in episode eight, Horrocks was the man that Jamie went to go meet because Horrocks was an actual eye witness whose testimony could prove that he didn't actually kill that man. But the testimony Horrocks gave wasn't all that helpful. Jamie didn't kill the man he's accused of murdering, but Captain Randall did. So it was back to the drawing board. And then Claire ran away and it all became moot anyway.

So that guy's back.

This is a problem for a couple of reasons. First, it's a problem because Horrocks knows who Jamie really is and that there's a price on his head. But also second, because Horrocks is pretty awful at keeping his mouth shut and has no actual incentive to do so. Naturally this ends with Horrocks blackmailing Jamie.

While all of this is happening, Claire has her own crisis to deal with. It seems that Jenny's baby has decided it's time to make an appearance. Which would be good, if it weren't for the fact that Claire has no experience delivering babies. Even worse, the midwife is out of town and the baby is coming out breach. Which, if you don't know, means that the baby is basically backwards, trying to come feet first. This is bad because it means the child might get caught at the shoulders, which could cause a tear, and could kill both mother and child.

Is this a bad time to mention that Jamie and Jenny's mother died in childbirth? Yeah? Oh well, Jenny's going to bring it up anyway.

These are the two storylines that cut through the episode, and they work very well in tandem with each other. While Claire fears for Jenny's safety and the new life coming into the world, Jamie worries about the future he might have here in Lallybroch and wonders how far he ought to go to protect that possible future. Even though, as Claire revealed this episode in a moment of brutal honesty, the future might not include children of their own. Claire fears she's barren, as she and Frank were never able to have a child.

She's worried it will upset Jamie, but it actually seems to comfort him a little. Yeah, Jamie would really love to have kids, but he also loves Claire and wants her to live. He watched childbirth kill his mother. He doesn't want to see her go out like that too, screaming and in pain. Like we needed another reminder that Jenny is upstairs possibly dying.

Eventually Jamie does give in to the blackmail, but it's not enough. Horrocks is greedy and a jerk, and he's quite happy to keep Jamie dangling on a string while he threatens everything and one that Jamie holds dear. Jamie's about ready to shoot the man and be done with it when from nowhere Ian steals the job, running Horrocks through and saving them all.

It's a surprisingly sweet scene, actually. Ian is very shaken up by having had to kill someone, but it's clear he loves Jamie enough not to regret it, and some backstory from Jenny revealed earlier in the episode that Jamie and Ian have been like brothers since they were kids. Ian doesn't regret killing Horrocks at all, but he's not well suited to murder. Together they hide the body and think of the matter as finished. Naturally it's not.

The man who runs the Watch isn't stupid. He understands how these things work. He saw Jamie and Horrocks recognize each other, then he finds that a day later Horrocks' horse is still tied up outside but the man is nowhere to be found. So he asks point blank if Jamie killed him. And Jamie, in a fit of abiding honesty, freely admits it. He even tells the man why he did it (though he leaves Ian out of the story entirely).

To Jamie's surprise (and mine) it seems the commander of the Watch is totally okay with this. He respects Jamie's honesty and he never liked Horrocks much anyway. Jamie's wanted by the English? All right then, so is he! It seems that the Watch is not very friendly with the redcoats right now, so even though there's a bonny reward on Jamie's head, the Watch would rather recruit him than turn him in. And that's exactly what they do.

With Jamie's rash actions costing them a man in the raid, the commander decides that Jamie will have to come along instead. And since Ian doesn't trust these men one bit, he's coming too. Claire tries to beg Ian to stay - because she's terrified Jenny is going to die in childbirth and Ian won't be there to say goodbye - but Jenny will hear none of it. She fully supports sending her husband to go care for her brother.

So Jamie and Ian go off, and we see their journey intercut with Claire and Jenny and the really difficult childbirth. It's actually refreshing to see Jenny's childbirth done like this, filmed in such a way that you really feel the pain and frustration of the moment. I mean, your usual Hollywood childbirth, even the horrible ones where the mother dies, is shown in snapshots.

We see the mother have a contraction, and then we cut to the father holding a baby and being told his wife is dead. Maybe we see a little bit of a sweaty brow and a woman all covered up in sheets and blankets clutching someone's hand, but a really pregnant woman swearing and screaming while she crouches, squats, leans against a wall, kneels, gets on all fours, stands up again, leans on a dresser, and generally looks like she cannot get comfortable to save her life? Not common.

Happily, though, the birth ends well. Claire is able to guide the baby out, and both Jenny and the baby are fine. Not so for Ian and Jamie. While Jamie has a lovely conversation with the commander of the Watch before the battle, when they arrive to the designated place, Jamie quickly realizes that this isn't a place where they will wait to ambush someone else. This is an ambush placed for them. Horrocks sold all of them out before he died and the redcoats are there to take the Watch. Bonus! Now they get Jamie too.

It does seem a bit like no matter what Jamie does he's screwed. And there's a good reason for that: he is. Jamie has to be captured in order for the story to reach the conclusion we've been hurtling towards all season. So, byebye Jamie.

Back home, Jenny is surprised to wake up and find that she had a girl, not a boy, because she was sure it was a boy, but not upset over it. She's alive and well and so is the baby. In fact, just three days later Jenny is walking around just fine and even sitting on some cold stone steps with Claire. Ow. She and Claire have a bonding moment while they wait for the men to come back. Jenny is sure they will, but Claire is worried. Even the brief joy of Jenny giving her a pair of boar's tusk bangles can't distract her.

Though I'm sure we all can tell those bangles are going to be plot relevant sooner rather than later. I mean, they're a weird diversion unless they come up in the plot. They belonged to Jenny and Jamie's mother and were a present from an admirer she refused to name. So, intrigue.

Anyway, on the third day there's a sound and Jenny and Claire both run out to find on of the men from the Watch half-carrying Ian home. He lost his prosthetic leg and his horse in the fight, but he's otherwise fine. Jamie, however, is not. He and the commander were both taken by the redcoats and are by now, as I'm sure you can guess, on their way to prison. Dun dun DUN.

So, like I said above, this was a tight episode to make up for last episode being all about feelings and relationships. We're definitely in the home stretch of the season now, and it's just a matter of time before we end up with Jamie, Claire, and Jack Randall in a room together. Fun times.

What will Claire do? She will burn this entire country to the ground. Haven't you been paying attention?

*This relates to an interesting historical footnote that will be familiar to those of you who watch Reign: for much of the past thousand years, Scotland and France have been pretty close allies. Their alliance was based on a few things, but mainly centered around one thing: both France and Scotland haaaaaaate England. So they spent a lot of time trading soldiers and weapons and generally trying to work together to wipe England off the map. Unsuccessfully, as I think you can guess.**

**See also that time in the American Revolution when France came to our aid because, again, they really hate England. We did not return the favor in the French revolution, presumably because in that case the French were fighting other French people and not the English.***

***This is not an accurate interpretation of history. Probably.

Doing the Stupid Thing - On Moving, Big Choices, and Sacrifice

I'm Back! - A General Announcement of Bloggity Blogness

Masculinity Monday: 'Daredevil', Foggy, and the Heart of Flesh

Think of the Children! Tuesday: 'Cardcaptor Sakura' Has Feelings

RECAP: Outlander 1x10 - Choose Your Friends More Wisely, Guys

'Sons of Liberty' and Representations of Race in Historical Fiction

Strong Female Character Friday: Cordelia Chase (BTVS and Angel)

Masculinity Monday: How To Be A Man with 'Mad Max: Fury Road'

Think of the Children! Tuesday: 'The Last Halloween' and Fear

On Friendships That Last, Being On Mission, and 'The Raven Cycle'

RECAP: Outlander 1x11 - I Only Regret That I Have But One Life

Masculinity Monday: 'Fringe' and the Complexities of Fatherhood

RECAP: Hannibal 3x12 and 3x13 - This Is How I Go

Think of the Children! Tuesday: 'The Midwife's Apprentice'

Who The Hell Picked These Classics, Anyway?

RECAP: Outlander 1x12 - Yeesh, Jamie, Tone It Down a Notch

Strong Female Character Friday: Doreen Green (Squirrel Girl)

Masculinity Monday: Is 'HTGAWM's Wes Gibbins a Good Man?

Think of the Children! Tuesday: 'Chicken Run' Validates Cooperation

RECAP: Outlander 1x13 - Babies and Bandits and Blackmail, Oh My