#i'm classifying this form of composition the Rant-Essay

[andrasta14]

(So I originally ended up getting carried away (again lol) writing this absurdly long reply in response to another post, but I thought I may as well just post it separately, too, since Book 9 seems to have fully decimated my usual code of silence regarding all things Outlander. 😂) 

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I honestly can’t say I particularly like the person that John has become by the end of Book 9 - which makes me extremely sad to say because John’s been my favourite Outlander character for years (other than Percy himself). Apparently that thing about people mellowing with age definitely doesn’t apply to him because he’s just managed to become a bigger prick with age, increasingly narrow-minded and self-righteous, untempered by his usual kindness and empathy. His coldness just leaves me feeling cold.

(Hell, almost he may as well be just be Percy’s father, minus the zealot-like faith in God. Just what is it with Percy and his tendency to fancy men with “brutal” personalities anyway? That’s a whole other psychological kettle of fish, but if I had to point to its root, that father of his is a no-brainer, and no doubt only further compounded by the sorts of men he’s been involved with in his life, whether by choice or out of necessity.)

I mean, John showed a hell of a lot more concern for bloody Neil the C*nt Stapleton’s well-being than that of his own stepbrother and former lover whom he’d once loved! Did Percy ASK to be abducted and tortured because of the Grey family’s dramatic bullshit? In fact, did he not go out his way to warn John about Richardson’s schemes TWO YEARS prior to all this rigmarole? What was John doing all that time??? Sitting on his hands and minding Amaranthus’s baby?

When Percy told John Michael Weber had blackmailed him John was all, “oh why didn’t you just tell me about it, I would’ve made sure Weber was no threat to you”, like a condescending twat. *scoff* Well, Percy gave him him two bloody years warning that he was in danger but I didn’t see Mr Big Man doing bugger all to neutralize the threat of Richardson. Maybe if he’d trusted Percy more he’d have taken his heads-up more seriously. Because when has Percy, when acting in deliberation, ever not acted to protect John - even at the risk of his own life?

When John got his ass beaten up - again - this time by a crazed mob of people because he made the impulsive and utterly mad decision to assist a convicted sodomite (of no friend or relation to him whatsoever to boot) to a quicker death in full view of god knows how many people and army officers. I mean, I hugely appreciate both the bravery and compassion that this act was born out of but -- IS HE STUPID OR SOMETHING?? o.O John knows how they love to gossip in the army - the utter foolishness of this act would’ve been second only to actually getting caught in flagrante delicto. And then when it finally came back to bite him in the ass (I was like UH-HUH, I knew it! xd) I wasn’t even surprised. It was likely the very first clue to tip off Richardson and send him looking for more proof that John was gay! (But I seem to have hugely digressed so back to my original point...lol...)

When John got his ass beaten up again and wasn’t in any fit state to uphold his promise to escort Captain Bates’s mistress back to Ireland, who volunteered to do it in his stead? Percy, of course, despite all the dangers inherent of such a long journey in the 18th century - highwaymen, bandits, footpads of all sorts. Percy, who’d never even held a sword until he was 26 years old and couldn’t even fight! HOW DARE JOHN DISMISS HIM AS A COWARD?!?! Percy Wainwright has never been a coward - if anything, his being an entirely average citizen and not some scion of a military family who’d been handed a “sword in the cradle” and trained to fight since earliest boyhood makes Percy all the more courageous. It isn’t the absence of fear that makes someone brave, it’s bloody well knowing all the dangers out there, being sensibly wary of said dangers, but then steeling yourself and going out and facing the danger anyway. Because something is more important to you than your own safety. Because John’s well being was more important to Percy than his own safety, greater than his own fear.

And then when Percy was in gaol, in the most dire circumstances he could possibly be in, basically waiting to be put to death, and recognizes Arthur Longstreet’s voice and the danger he poses to John’s life, what does he do? Why, write to warn him and then persuade a guard to find out what he could and then to deliver his letter in exchange for “a consideration” [insert sexual favour here, because what other currency does Percy have to barter with other than his own body], even though his confession has an extremely high chance of provoking the ONE man who might still care enough to save his life to want to wash his hands of him entirely and leave him to his fate. ‘I will leave you to imagine, if you will, what the writing of this letter costs me,’ he writes, ‘for that ultimate cost is up to you....to speak may mean my life; not to speak may mean yours. If you are reading these words, you will know which I have chosen.’

And then the pièce de résistance of this whole tragic mess is that Percy’s final act was again just him trying to get help to save John’s life, even at the looming threat of the loss of his own. I mean, he could’ve done NOTHING. He could’ve just continued keep his head down and hope that his show of submission would show Richardson he had no reason to kill him. Hell, he could have just taken his life and run, just gotten his ass on a ship and away from North America post-haste, since Richardson apparently regarded him as so insignificant a threat as to let him wander about on shore by himself for periods of time. That would’ve been the most sensible thing to do in terms of self-preservation - but no, instead he risked going to John’s house because John asked him to, in the name of Percy’s love for him no less.

(Even after John again just sat there and said nothing when Percy confessed he still loved him - AGAIN - and my god, the way that last conversation echoes the one when John visited Percy in gaol just kills me. It’s almost the same situation, except John is the one imprisoned and waiting to die this time. And that John can’t even at least have the decency to look Percy in the eye and give him an honest response at such a time, frigging TWICE now, when he bloody well knows this may be the last time they ever see each other...! But nope, John’s stubborn ass just evades the matter altogether and starts talking about f*cking seagulls or something - honestly, who’s the real coward here? Percy has always been bravest in the places where John is weakest: his fear of love and all the emotional vulnerability that comes with it.)

And that Percy went and did the very thing that John dismissed Percy as being too much of a coward to even consider and so didn’t even bother to ask for Percy’s help in the end...! Could his lack of faith, the impassively pitying contempt that John holds him in, BE any colder? If I even end up reading any of Book 10 in some mad fit of masochistic desire to know if this tragedy can get anymore tragic, it will primarily be to know if John has enough feeling remaining in that two-sizes-too-small muscle he calls a heart to feel any sorrow for Percy’s fate or enough tenderness of conscience to feel any shame for the part he played in his end. And for the instrument of his demise to have been labelled f*cking “Blood of Martyrs”...how appallingly appropriate. ~

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(And on a another related matter - since apparently I’m on a ranting roll here lol - Hal F*cking Grey!! Who the HELL just leaves a poisoned bottle of brandy lying around in the open in his brother’s house without even frigging warning anyone, “Oh hey, by the way, make sure no one drinks that while I’m away, it’s poison...because I wouldn’t want to accidentally MURDER someone. Like, I want to do that shit on PURPOSE”?!?!?!!! I mean, poor George Stanley - his first two wives died on him and now one of his stepsons has killed the other...! Brilliant!!

And since I’m calling people out - Claire Fraser! What the bloody hell were you doing telling anyone, much less someone like that high-handed nutbar Hal frigging Grey, what to use to poison someone? What, did you leave all of your medical ethics back in the 20th century?? smfh)

Long story short, Book 9 makes me wish I could go back in time and tell Percy Wainwright to take his life and run rather than get involved with Lord John Grey and his family.