jacobclifton.com · Criticism
Twenty-five years of paying close attention.
I spent fourteen years at Television Without Pity writing about television in a way that was never really about television. It was about grief, transformation, the cost of paying attention, what it means to love something that will eventually disappoint you. The criticism is still happening — here, on Patreon, and in the WATCHING series.
The WATCHING series
The recaps, grown up.
Each volume takes a body of work — a show, a season, an era — and finds the thing running underneath it. Not a reprint. A remix. These are what the recaps were always actually trying to be.
WATCHING
Gossip Girl
WATCHING
Battlestar Galactica
WATCHING
Pretty Little Liars
WATCHING
True Blood
23+ volumes. New releases ongoing. All at Stag + Birch →
Recent criticism
From the archive:
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Sailorboy — Extended Portrait
Captain of the living ship Actæon, bound to the sea in ways that make land a kind of agony. The most sincere person in any room he enters — which on the Chain is dangerous to be.
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Chapter Four: The Test
Unaffiliated novitiates crowded off the train car behind the group: a clutch of Daughters of the Flame. They swirled around them, coalescing back into young women out of bright red clouds on the other side. Must be one of the first spells they learn, she thought. Very flashy.
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The Bard Thomas — Extended Portrait
A fire mage with a song for every occasion, exiled from the only home he ever loved, mechanically inclined toward selfishness — and beginning, reluctantly, to suspect it isn’t working.
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Chapter Three: The Dragon
“This test. It’s not really a test to see if we’re worthy — it’s a test to see what we can take. They want something huge, I can tell. Something only we can do, maybe. Watch them carefully. Let’s get Benjamin to these Burning Springs.”
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Becoming a Writer Twice
I had to become a writer twice. The first time was by instinct. The second time was deliberate — and it’s the one I can teach.