YEAH TELL US YOU ABE RANT :3
Abraham Portman was a cruel man.
Firstly, he left Emma pining for literal decades while he led her on with promises that he would send for her after he had a home for them. I can forgive him for feeling that he had to go fight in the war for his parents, Victor, other peculiars, and whatever other reasons. However, the way he led Emma on was cruel and unnecessary. He could have cut things off so much earlier. He could have made it easier for her to heal from the heartbreak rather than allowing the wound to fester, rather than slowly away and starting a family while leaving the poor girl loop-trapped and pining. It's bad enough to lead somebody on for a few months, but for literal decades? That's another level of messed up.
Next is the fact that the family he created while leading Emma on barely saw him. He felt that he had a duty to help the peculiar children of America. Fine, I understand that, but to not even try to know your own children when you are home, to break promises you made to them, to needlessly traumatized one of them and then ask for said trauma to not be fully removed? That is majorly fucked up. That man is lucky he even got to meet his grandson, let alone have the bond he did with him.
That brings us to the many ways he screwed over Jacob. Let's start with the danger that he put him in by not telling him who he was while he was living in the fucked-up world that is peculiar America. Yes, Florida and the rest of the South are a semi-lawless zone with no central power (please correct me if I'm not remembering this correctly). But did he really think that Jacob would never leave Florida? This child that he fostered a love of adventure in, staying in Florida for the rest of his life? There is no plausible way that Abe believed that. Yes, he didn't plan on dying that soon, however; he knew that there was a risk. He knew that there was a risk of hollows and weights coming after him because of him being one of the hollow hunters. There was also the risk of the Five Boroughs clan coming after him because he pissed off Leo Burnham. He was intimately familiar with how the clans functioned and knew how serious they were about revenge, and yet he left Jacob unprepared and ignorant to the threats he could be facing. He may have left all those little clues scattered, but you don't exactly have time to pick apart a puzzle when your life is in danger. Then there's the ridiculously vague clues that led Jacob to Cairnholm in the first place. Are you really telling me that Abe couldn't have written his own letter and put it in the book with Miss Peregrine's letter? Just a basic overview of what Jacob might want to know to get to the loop in the first place and not feel like he's losing his mind?
Circling back to Emma, his reaction to her calling him was appalling. While I do not condone Emma's actions and her treatment of Jacob, Abe didn't know about that. She called from the 1960s (I think). That man didn't even know he had a grandson, and he definitely didn't know that Emma was messing with said grandson. Also, I may be wrong, or Ransom Riggs may have given us wrong numbers again, but I do believe that Abe was still leading her on at this point. I don't feel like getting the book to directly quote, but I remember her saying something along the lines of, "I waited so long that if I had gone with him I would have been forty." I do believe that puts us within the time frame for letters being sent. So this man leads her on, doesn't even question how he's calling since I doubt the Priest Hole had their one phone at this point, and is upset at her for calling because she interrupted dinner? He literally put them in this situation by not cutting things off once he realized that he wasn't going back to the loop OR when he realized he didn't actually want her to come build a life with him.
In conclusion, Abe was the true villain of the story, not Caul. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk inspired by a desire to procrastinate on the work that I still have not done. Let me know if I missed anything.
izzy806
kianamaiart
2087
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
