PLEASE NOTE: I WILL WARN YOU WHEN THE SPOILERS BEGIN
It’s June 2014 people! MOBY is coming out NEXT week, which means I will be taking my own sweet time to savor the intricate plot twists and expertly crafted period details of this new tome over the course of many months,wringing every ounce of pleasure from its 848 pages.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Who am I kidding? That sucker is going to be on my Kindle on Monday morning, at which point I am going to throw my work, family and personal hygiene to the wind and go on a major reading bender! I will be stopping only to DM my fellow twitter gluttons and sporadically empty my she-wee . (Thanks for the tip, Beth!)
It seems like this should be a time of great celebration – the wait is over – but I am subject to a wide range of intense and often conflicting emotions: joy, anxiety, anticipation, dread, sadness, fear, ecstasy, and possibly a little horny (?). Or maybe dyspeptic? I really can’t tell. I’m honestly so confused! I need to put some of these feelings out there for group processing.
But before we begin, a legal disclaimer:
WARNING! This post is chock full of SPOILERS! Seriously, there is not one sentence that does not contain SPOILERS. Do not read if you have not read through the end of Echo because it is a virtual SPOILER HOOTENANNY.
As a consolation to those who will not be continuing, please enjoy this amusing gif of someone falling on her face before you GTFO. We’ll catch you guys later!
HAHAHAHA! I could watch this all day.
SPOILER SPACE
TURN BACK LEST YOUR EYEBALLS BE SULLIED
Seriously, GO AWAY!!!!
IF YOU SEE ANY SPOILERS AT THIS POINT IT IS YOUR OWN FAULT AND YOU WILL NOT HAVE A LEG TO STAND ON IN YOUR LEGAL PROCEEDINGS AGAINST ME
Okay, I think we’re safe now.
I’d like to kick off this feels-fest with a few confessions:
Confession 1: As excited as I am about the show – and I am crazy-excited about the show – I am actually more excited about the book because: CLIFFIES!!!!!!! The show is going to be mind-blowingly fantastic and all, but I already know what happened in Outlander. What I don’t know is how that shit storm that was the end of Echo is going to play out! And I can.not.wait.
Confession the second: I only started reading Outlander about 18 months ago, so I this is my first experience dealing with the pain of waiting for a new installment. (I know, I know. All of you who have been reading OL since you were rocking Hammer-pants and suffering cyclical JAMMF droughts that are biblical in scale want to drive a stake through my heart right now. I get it. I forgive you for your very uncharitable and extremely Claire-like impulses)
Long story short, I am FREAKING OUT because I am unaccustomed to having to deal with all the feels that have accumulated over the wait, and what’s worse, now that the book is about to come out I am FREAKING OUT because I am afraid I’m not gonna like what happens! I need some help being talked down off my ledge, so let me hit you with this shizz so you can chime in.
The Dramz
Echo left us with enough drama to fill a years worth of talk show episodes. If this were Maury Povich the chairs would be flying and the characters would be physically removed from the studio by stocky bodyguards. Let’s begin the recap with the biggest, drunkest, sweatiest mother of all drama:
Claire’s husband’s back, & there’s gonna be trouble! Claire and John had sex because Jamie was dead. Jamie became alive again. John then told Jamie about aforementioned sex with Jamie’s wife. .
IKR?
And now a JAMMFs gotta do what a JAMMFs got to do. Which can only mean one thing: punch stuff. He is, after all, the King of Men, so a total LJG smack down is exactly what we would expect and crave as retribution for lord-handling his woman! Yes! Fight! Fight! Fi – but wait – I like Lord John. I don’t want him to get hurt. I don’t want to see his pretty face smashed up before he can find the boy of his dreams! NOW WHAT? How am I supposed to feel? How is DG going to get me out of this place where I need Jamie to go caveman level 5 for Claire, but I want John (and their friendship) to remain intact? She will have to be a magician to pull this off!
Also, I am VERY afraid we are going to have to get a blow by blow of how that business all went down. I do not want to know about that. (fingers in ears) LALALALALALALA!
Who’s your daddy? The jig is up! William, the 9th earl of Ellesmere has just discovered he is actually the 9th Earl of a white sow, a burned down house and a mule named Clarence. And he is PISSED! At Jamie. At John. At the chandelier. (especially the chandelier. Motherf*cking chandelier!)
Die, chandelier! Die!
Again, I am totally torn on how I need this to play out. On the one hand, I know the backstory, and know that Jamie is a totally bad-ass, honorable rockstar of a dad. On the other hand, I know the backstory, and am still fuming a bit over the whole Geneva thing. Maybe I would like to see Jamie squirm a bit and have to be on the receiving end of some Fraser wrath for a change! I do know that I don’t want this to turn into some kind of Hallmark moment where William, Jamie and John find common ground, learn to love again, and ultimately get their own sitcom:
Yeah, this would suck
Fortunately, I know that Dr. Gabaldon is way too devious for that, so imma sit back and watch the fireworks fly!
The hookups
I will always love you (?) Okay, JAMMF is going to plenty mad about the LJG sex, but he can’t stay mad at Claire, right? Which means it’s only a matter of time before the rocking make-up sex occurs! And just to sweeten the pot, I don’t know know if y’all have noticed, but Himself has been ‘expanding his repertoire’ (wink) into ‘uncharted territories’ (wink) over the past 2 books in particular. (ahem) So I look forward to additional ‘personal growth’ in this area!
A Quaker, an illegitimate Earl and a Scottish Indian Scout walk into a bar. . . Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Seriously though, the Ian, Rachel, William triangle is going to get much uglier before it gets hotter. And I am very much looking forward to it getting WAY hotter for 2 of those involved. (wink)
Yes, I’m talking about William and Ian. JK! You know I mean Ian and Rachel. Or as I refer to them: Rachan. (Shutit. It’s better than Renesmee)
But first, let me express my completely irrational fear about Rachel that is consuming me: SHE IS IS GONNA GET SKIN CANCER! Every time Ian waxes poetic about his ‘nut brown maiden’ I’m like: “PUT A MOTHER-LOVING HAT ON GIRLFRIEND!!!! U R GETTING TOO CRISPY!” This is seriously stressing me out. I cannot have Wee Ian finally find the girl of his dreams, only to have her end up like this:
NOOOOOOOOO!
Now that’s been exorcised, I can move on: Wee Ian and Rachel best get the Quaker business sorted, or we are all collectively going to explode! I mean, c’mon: “I think ye’d best not touch me, lass . . . Because if ye do, I’ll take ye, here and now.”? “But thee is my wolf, and best thee know that”? “Mohawk came next, deep and visceral. I need you.” ?!! I cannot take much more of this tension between the worldly, violent Scottish rogue and the pure Quaker girl before I snap! Some consummation best be in the making – and I’m talking Witness-level hotness consummation:
Yes. That.
The Ghosts
The approximately 8000 pages that comprise this series have left a lot of ghosts milling around Outlander world. These are the ones I am most excited/terrified about:
Frank to the future! I know, everything in present-day Lollybroch is going completely to hell – Jem’s stuck in a tunnel, Roger and William went through the stones to God-knows-when, and Rob Cameron is a violent tool. All these things cause feelings in me, but pale in comparison to this: Brianna found a letter from Frank that hints that he found her in the past!!!!!
OMG! My feelings for Frank have been well documented via this post, and I’m crazy psyched to find out more about what he knew about the past and Claire/Jamie/Brianna. I also think he is going to be vindicated for wanting to take Brianna away from Claire because he was afraid of something he found. ILY Frank!!! I believe in you! (Even though you can be a total dick.)
I also suspect we are about to discover a little something about Frank’s girdle fetish:
Hmmm.
BJR’s last moments. Every book gives us a glimpse of a few more pieces to BJR’s last day from Jamie’s memory. I crave finding out more about what happened, so I can find out who had the satisfaction of offing the SOB! But I also don’t want to know any more, because it means that some bad shit is dredging up the memories for Jamie, and I just want him to be happy! I don’t know which wants to want – but I want to want them!!
I also have a wonderful/terrible feeling that Dennis Randall is going to be popping up soon – and you know all of those Randall men bear a strong resemblance! BUM! BUM! BUMMMM! If this Jack-Randall-looking bastard shows up it will be such a sad/awesome/horrible/hot mess! Who will he run into? How badly are Jamie and Claire going to lose their sh*t? Is he going to be like Jack, or like Alex, or like Frank? I am giddy with delight and shaking with terror AT THE SAME TIME!!!!
Time keeps moving on
Weirdly enough, as time passes in these books, everyone keeps getting older. WTF DG? Don’t you know that means people are going to keep dying? So here’s the plan: don’t turn any pages, and nobody’s gonna age! Brilliant!
Problem solved
Please don’t hurt the doggie! Oh Crap! Rollo is like 215 years old in dog years by this point – and he is going to die soon! I cannot handle that! And what will happen to Wee Ian? I mean, he’ll be sad and all when Rachel dies of skin cancer (put a hat on!), but he will be DEVASTATED when Rollo dies! Which means I will be crying a big ugly river of tears that only an industrial sized chamois and a shop-vac will be able to keep up with. I really never want to see Geillis again, but am half hoping she’ll pop in to work some ‘Pet Semetary’ voodoo so Ian and I do not have to have these feels.
Sexy old Jamie in the house! This aging thing is definitely not all bad. Yes, Sheugs is adorable! And we can’t get enough pics of him as young, hot JAMMF (except for the bangs, which must die), but I am craving some sexy chiseled older Jamie right about now. Age-wise I sit somewhere between the Outlander JAMMF and the Echo JAMMF. Both are hot, but I’m starting to feel a little lecherous drooling over a 23 year old, and would like to focus my lust in a more age-appropriate direction. Laughlines, silver streaks – yum! Plus, there’s something about describing himself as “scabbit-looking” that does things to my lady parts. (Hearthfire in TFC anyone? Gahhhhhh.)
Pardon me, sir, your scabbit is showing! Rawr!
Jenny w/o Ian. I am thrilled that Jenny decided to hitch a ride with Jamie to the land that will someday be known as “Home of the Whopper.” I kind of hope she totally rocks a new star-spangled life full of elegant parties and silver foxes. But my 1 of my only 2 ugly cries in the entire series happened when Ian died. I cried a big sloppy river of tears and snot. I just loved him so much. So, again, I’m super confused by my feelings: part of me just wants her to putter around mourning the loss of her tru luv while wearing a mu-mu and bedazzled flip-flops. The other part of me wants to see her get busy with a sexy French general or – in the world’s most fantabulous media crossover – watch her go cougar all over Ichabod Crane from Sleepy Hollow when they cross paths in Philadelphia!
I’ll do whatever it takes to get Tom Mison into a post
All this talk of dying brings me to my scariest feeling:
Jamie and Claire are going to die y’all! This is probably too stressful a discussion for some, so I invite you to revisit the hilarious gif at the beginning of the post in order to dissipate the anxiety you feel at the mere mention of this event.
Okay, as I was saying, they are going to die! I know it won’t be in this book, but Diana has admitted to being Black Jack Randall on a variety of occasions, so you know that she is devious enough to off them at some point! And that is how it has to happen from a closure standpoint, but just the thought of it makes me a little unstable.
I’ve discussed the ramifications of this event with my husband, and feel the need to respond to some of his claims on this matter:
Claim: Fictional characters are not alive to begin with, ergo they are technically already dead.
Fact: As long as they are alive in the books, they are alive in real life. Also, drop the Latin – you sound like an ass.
Claim: No matter what happens in the books, you can pretend like they are still alive, because, as previously mentioned, they are fictional characters.
Fact: No! It doesn’t work that way. If they die in the books, I’ll know that it didn’t last forever, and I will never be able to go back to my happy place!
Claim: Everyone dies. It’s just a book. Full of fictional characters. Deal.
Fact: Shut up.
I really think DG needs to undertake an effort to fund and open a network of inpatient treatment facilities to deal with the aftermath of this happening. I’m thinking the United Nations is best suited to the international scope of this upcoming catastrophe.
And, finally, the last feeling: How am I going to survive the wait for the 9th book when I finish MOBY next Tuesday?
AAAAAAAAH! I am going to need some serious help with this. So get ready tweeps – it’s gonna be about 5 years of ugly til the next one comes out!!
Who else is planning to binge read this next week? What kind of feelings are you having? What do you absolutely need to happen? What can you absolutely not bear to have happen? When do you anticipate showering again? Can’t dogs live for, like, 40 years? Can’t they? Please tell me they can.
