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Clint Eastwood

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page of arthurs I did a while back.

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another page of arthurs with one unit of micah I did the other day.

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i still have no words to describe my experience with sabata apart from unhinged

Guess which movie(s) I watched recently.

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r-star knew what they were doing when they gave him such a narrow waist and wide shoulders

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“i always was a good thief.”

art by Liam W. (@V762cas on twitter & @V762art on tiktok)

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Despite everything people say, I'd love the possible (and by some sources, alleged) RDR3 to picture younger Dutch, completing his portrait. I kinda feel like Dutch is the main character of Red Dead, similarly as Dorian Gray is the main character in his book despite the story being told from the perspective of a different man. Arthur and John both had their own valuable stories to tell, but ultimately, it's Dutch who ties the whole franchise together and whose portrait had not yet been completed here. He's such a deep and complex character we hadn't yet had the chance to explore in entirety, and who thus is, quite inevitably, judged even though an important (if not the most important) part of his story had not yet been told. So many people wrote him off as a bad, flawed, and egocentric maniac, and I kinda get that, there hasn't been much evidence of the opposite presented (even most of the above is only verbally mentioned in the game and lacking further context).

But this, all of this, all the good Dutch must have done at some point of his life, for reasons we cannot rightly comprehend and interpret from our limited perspective, makes me feel like an important piece to the puzzle of his complexity is missing, and has yet to be told.

List of Good things Dutch did

Found this post on Reddit - and I believe it worths sharing somehow

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Guess I gotta watch The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in my native language now

Blondie gets called a kurva in 4K

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all of these western movie cowboys have slutty little waists. like. come here baby girl lemme hold you.

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Temporal orientation is a thing

This might be one of the most unusual and hopefully also most interesting pieces of fandom meta you‘ll ever read!

I wanna talk about the perception of time by Manco, Mortimer, and Indio in For a Few Dollars More because I earnestly believe that understanding somebody‘s time perception is fundamental for understanding their modus operandi.

Here are two short paragraphs of theory, which you can freely skip if you want to.

Let’s imagine that there are four dimension of time perception: namely, past, present, future, and eternity (categories above time that can’t be influenced by it). And there are four possible positions of prioritization for each of them in a person’s psyche.

The first position is their strongest element, it’s the time that they live in and for. Their goal, their main element, the very dimension that they unconsciously filter everything else through. The second position is their consciously used instrument – they employ it to be successful in the time dimension from the first category. They’re fully in control of acting in and through it. The third position is the position of lacking control, of susceptibility, uncertainty, concerns, and fears. It’s there, but you can’t do anything about it, but you’re still desperately trying to – either to suppress it or do something impulsively. Whenever something or somebody influences you there, you’re hurt, lost, or troubled. The fourth position is the position of negligence. Whatever is there just doesn’t interest them. It’s unreal, uninteresting, and irrelevant.

With that being said: Manco’s profile is: 1Present 2Eternity 3Future 4Past

Mortimer’s profile is: 1Past 2Future 3Present 4Eternity

And finally Indio’s: 1Eternity 2Future 3Past 4Present

Now, what do I meant by it all, and why and how it can be relevant for understanding these people.

 Let’s start with Manco and with the most obvious thing about his profile. He is absolutely uninterested in the Past. He never explains anything through his previous experiences, except for when he is unsatisfied with him and Mortimer not having read Indio’s intentions correctly when he robbed El Paso’s bank. And even then it’s irrelevant, the past is dead, he doesn’t care why they did what they did anymore. The same with Ferdinand – he could’ve punished him for how he didn’t inform him about the two other strangers in town, but the moment is gone, the Past doesn’t matter, and the only thing he needs is being informed right now. When Manco is reminded of his past actions he shrugs it off because why care about what happened? And he himself isn’t exactly somebody who can be defined through his past – he is the man with no name, after all.

He draws all his conclusions from the Present. He is a tactician who gets all his clues from the circumstances he or others find themselves in. Be it his assessment of how crazy his informant is, the fact that his wanted hotel room is temporarily occupied not by him but by Mr. Ramirez, or his observation of the actions of a smart rival provoking his targets. Somebody whose perception isn’t totally dominated by the Present wouldn’t start a card game with their targets just to find out whether they’re lucky today!

And even when Manco rushes to Indio without thinking after he and Mortimer fail to predict his plans correctly, he’s only thinking about the Present: how they’re wrong, how their plan isn’t working, how he must fix everything! He isn’t thinking strategically, only tactically.

Then, Manco’s Future. He has some vague intentions, plans, he feels that this dimension of time is there, but he also feels that it’s uncovered, and so he tries to distract himself from it while simultaneously trying to be kinda ready for it in advance. He wants the reward money but what for? To buy a farm? Does he, though, is he really the type who retires young? He realizes that he needs and wants the money in the moment, but he hasn’t everything planned out. When he is in El Paso he is simply gathering information, he has no clear-cut plan as to how apprehend Indio and his gang. And he can’t really produce any good idea on the spot when Mortimer tells him he should join the band (he simply makes a joke to Mortimer about bringing Indio a bunch of roses, not seriously considering any realistic variants), and his mental habits of a tactician provide a strong contrast to the fact that Mortimer, on the other hand, has a highly positioned, in fact, instrumental Future, but I’ll go back to it in a minute.

Manco is so bad at living in the Future that he, again, makes a really bad decision of stating his intention to collect the reward for Indio and his gang in the future – while talking to Indio himself, and Manco’s only luck then is that Indio doesn’t want to out him to everybody right then and there. What he does operate through in this scene is his Eternity. He states who he is, and who the gang are, disregarding any time constraints. The same thing he does when talking to the bought sheriff at the beginning of the film. He he makes a point that the sheriff is bad while describing his concept of sheriff to him before taking away his star.

The same with Mortimer: when he approaches the Prophet, he wants to have an idea of who Mortimer is, not what he has done or the like. When he listens to Mortimer and assesses him from all sides, he asks him, semi-jokingly but genuinely intrigued: “Tell me, colonel, were you ever young?” Which isn’t really a statement about any concrete Past, obviously he knows that sometime in the Past Mortimer was a young pup. But the question is meant to ask: “Have you always been this focused, this driven, this disciplined?” In other words, is this who you are?

 Then, Mortimer.

I love him very deeply, he is one of my all-time favorites, but I can’t deny that he is tactically crippled. He is a brilliant strategist (as his Future is in the second, instrumental position), but, girl, is in he in big trouble whenever he has to face the Present. Both his awkward encounters with Wild, the hunchback, demonstrate it.

Motivated by his loss, he uses all the information he has carefully collected over the years to come up with a plan (the dominant Past), he thinks every major strategic decision through (second Future), but whenever he has to improvise, well. He can only continue the course that somebody else sets for him in the here and now.

When Wild recognizes him in the tavern, Mortimer is lost. Should he try to leave? But he hasn’t finished his soup? Is it already too late? He didn’t think of how they would face each other again when the Future he planned would become the Present for him. And so, he waits for whoever is quicker than him to make the next step for him. It’s literally so when Manco decides to test him outside – he simply returns every impulse.

Mortimer doesn’t know how to treat him then, he is simply planning for the Future (they’ll work together) after having consulted the Past (he actually goes into an archive to try to reconstruct who Manco is). But having gathered all that information he can only follow Manco’s lead when the other provokes him. Because he is tactically short-sighted and basically helpless like a newborn kitten.

A quick contrast – when Manco is caught off guard by Indio and his gang waiting for him to descend that roof, he instantly acts in the Present, assessing the situation: he puts away the bag with all the money. And Mortimer? As soon as he feels somebody’s shoulder below his foot, he is simply panicking.

Even when Indio invites him to try to shoot him after having shot his gun out of his hand, he simply obeys, accepting that there is no choice in the Present, until Manco introduces another choice into the situation and fixes everything so that the fight is fair (second Eternity).

And for Mortimer, Eternity is a blind zone. He is a practical man and seems to have no access to it. Everybody is what they’ve done (Past), and what they could be done with (Future), that’s it. But he has no idea what to do in the goalless Present because he has no guiding Eternity.

 Finally, Indio.

He has no relationship with the Present whatsoever. He is so detached from it that he actually catapults himself from it by smoking weed to not be overwhelmed by it. (He also does it to block his weak Past from nagging at him, which only makes sense given his more than unpleasant biography). 

And he actively disregards what others might think of him in the Present, e.g. his public inspections of Manco or how he doesn’t bother to explain his thought processes to Nino before sending him to kill off one of others from his gang. It’s Chuchillio who acts in the Present for him instead when he shoots off the tip of Manco’s cigar; and from what we’ve seen of others, e.g. of Wild, they all compensate for Indio’s detachment from the Present, it’s their primary function. And Indio, well, he, like Mortimer, makes plans using his second Future (he always foresees things), but he bases them on his Eternity.

First time he sees Manco, he knows he’s a bounty hunter, and assessing him from this standpoint of Eternity, he integrates him in their robbery. If you listen to his speeches closely, e.g. the speech in the church, he always leads everything to what things are but also what they should be. He rhetorically asks his gang whether they think a carpenter can’t make good money, and also how safes work; he talks about how the people of Agua Caliente are unfriendly to strangers. 

I would even argue that he keeps the pocket watch of Mortimer‘s sister not because of any sentimental value attached to it (that’s the perspective of the Past, which is adopted by Mortimer), but because it has significantly influenced his understanding of Eternity, and is now a part of his self-image and a reminder about certain hurtful truths.

 That’s my take on it. I would love to hear your thoughts! Also, if somebody is interested in my opinion about the whole thing in the GBU, Justified, or something else, let me know. Cheers!

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i drew this weeks ago while reading an amazing crossover fic of FAFDM and rdr2(?) i love their interactions so much (you should read it)

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Chapter 2

*Dutch rambling about the future and casually doubting Arthur's loyalty*

Arthur: Guess I plan on leavin' with a hole shot in me.

Hosea, standing nearby, audibly concerned: Are you okay, Arthur?

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I deeply apologize to everyone for bringing that idea up...

... but as a huge musical theatre fan, I must nontheless suggest...

Cats the Musical: Red Dead Redemption edition

pussy cat redemption

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You got sad eyes, mister. Like you seen sad things.

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I wanna put Jonathan Corbett in a bottle and shake him

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This also might be a part of Arthur being a self-fulfilling prophecy. We know he has tragically low self esteem, and that he genuinely thinks he's a bad man. But this is not a discussion of how much of a good/bad person Arthur actually is from our perspective. Each one of us has a different opinion on that based on their playthrough. It's beside the point.

The point his, he's so convinced he is a bad person, underseeving of anything good, that he sometimes deliberately makes bad decisions and says things just to prove that he's right. Everytimes he does something good, he downplays it so it seems he did the good thing for not all that good of a reason. For instance, in the beginning of Chapter 2 when he, Uncle and the girls head to Valentine, he helps this guy to catch his horse but when the guy thanks him, he claims he only did it to impress the women (meaning for selfish reasons), and later tells the girls he would've robbed the man if they weren't there. He's intentionally makes himself seem worse than he is, disregarding anything good he does to fulfill his idea of being a bad person. Not because he wants to, but because he genuinely believes that's who he is.

The "Antagonize" button is, in my opinion, a part of that. Yep, sometimes it's just Arthur trying to rile people up, like John or some other members of the gang. He canonically is a sassy piece of shit, he likes provoking people he cares about.

But sometimes, he's genuinely being nasty. And I think in those scenarios, with random NPCs, innocent people who deserve none of it, it's just Arthur remaining true to his distrorted idea of himself.

So far I have seen two major approaches about the things Arthur Morgan say when you use the “Antagonize” button.

This is what Arthur actually thinks about the Gang members/women in general.

These lines are only in there to make 13 year old boys happy.

I think both those takes are shit. Its called antagonize not “make Arthur say the truth” and saying it just got put in there to make immature players (regardless of age) laugh is a rather cheap excuse because it claims Arthur would never say such things.

The function is literally called antagonize, which means provoke someone, so I think yeah Arthur simply knows what would rile everyone up in an instant. Its not about what he believes, what the actually thinks about the Gang members how he actually talks to strangers its just what he would say if he wants to rile them up, make them mad at him. You guys never said something you know was wrong just to get the other person even more mad in a fight?

Tl,dr: Claiming Arthur would never say something like this is wrong, but its also not what he really thinks of people. Whatever Arthur says when you hit “antagonize” is just what would make the other person mad at him as fast as possible.