Outlander, Jamie Fraser, and the TV Show I Refuse to Watch

So I have a dilemma. Or maybe it's not a dilemma, since I've pretty much made up my mind that I'm not going to watch the Outlander TV series. And even though including a photo of the actor who plays Jamie Fraser would probably be most welcome here, I am not going to do it. In fact, when I went to the STARZ site to copy the series link, I squinted so that I wouldn't be able to make him out.

I've been told by a number of people that the show is lush, well-done, and true to the books, and that I would love it, but I can't do it. Already the few images of the actor playing Jamie have begun to superimpose themselves over the version of Jamie I have in my head, and that just won't do.

I have loved Jamie Fraser, the hero of Outlander, since 1994, when I wandered into a bookstore and picked the mass market paperback edition off the shelve.

My beloved original copy.

I hadn't heard a single word about the series at that point, though the second and third books were out by then. Was I too out of it to know about the cult following (soon to be a full-on following) it was generating? Perhaps. I had just graduated from college and was feeling a bit lost as I hung around my college town with no idea what I would do with my life and only a part-time job to fill my days.

I'd graduated with a degree in Social Thought and Political Economy, a cool interdisciplinary major that led me to great classes, but I wasn't prepared for anything. I wanted to write, but that was still a vague notion. I certainly wasn't making plans to do it for a living. I didn't know what I would do for a living.

College students these days are way more forward-thinking than I was then. Times have changed and you need to have a plan if you're going to make it in the working world. But it would take me a few years to get it together. Until then, I made it up as I went along.

Outlander was just what I needed at that time, though really, it would have been just what I needed no matter when I found it. It's the perfect escapist book and I completely lost myself in the story of Jamie and Claire's love. Nothing could touch me while I was reading it.

Maybe the show would expand my love for the story and give me another way to experience the characters. But I can't go there yet. I'm not ready to give up the Jamie I've loved so long for the guy who plays him on TV, no matter how pretty he is.