marstonsboy

[marstonsboy]

hi, i’m alive! in the process of a huge amount of projects and life things at once, which is why i haven’t been gracing your dash with pain recently, but i have this as a substitute. i think i linked it somewhere in my ao3 notes a while back, but never here, so. woe, marstonings be upon ye.

[marstonsboy]

I ACCIDENTALLY UNF9LLOWED YOU FOR A MIN IM SORGY CUZ I DIDNT KNOW I WAS FOLLOWING YOU AND SO I WENT TO FOLLOW YOU AND I CLICKED BEFORE I COULD NOTICE I ALREADY WASS 💔 waah

LMAO. no need i do that all the time 🩷🩷

[marstonsboy]

do u think jack has asd

oh, absolutely, and he genetically inherits it from john. i’m projecting because i’m autistic, and i see a lot of traits in both of them, but even if they weren’t written with asd in mind their behaviors are still pretty clear if you know where to look. specifically i’d like to note that jack has moments of going semi-verbal or non-verbal when he’s upset, and both him and john have problems with emotional dysregulation. i also happen to think quite a lot of the vdl gang could meet the qualifications for c-ptsd, but that’s another rant entirely.

[marstonsboy]

i think u like jack marston but idk

nooo. perish the thought! these allegations! i actually can’t stand that guy. that’s why i think about him all the time and am brought to tears by the mere mention of him. and by the way since you brought him up i’m obligated by my special interest to yap at you in an increasingly insane fashion about him. because i don’t like him so much.

there’s a bunch of campfire songs you can stumble upon at beecher’s hope after the sunset. most of the time it’ll be uncle leading the chorus, either with his banjo or without, and abigail and jack singing along. other times it’s abigail singing by herself, but jack will accompany her by playing the harmonica as a backing track.

as far as the ones i’ve seen, i’m fairly certain that none of these are songs you can also see at the various campsites during chapters 2-4. but as they have remained stuck in my head, i like to think jack remembers some of them too. he can still be found playing harmonica in 1911, and i like to think he still would in 1914, if less often. it probably makes him sad to do it, without his momma singing along to her favorite songs that he learned to play for her, but sometimes a tune he heard years ago will pop in his head, and he has to play it to start remembering the whole thing.

a couple times in mexico it’s a handful of words that triggers it. he doesn’t remember all of them, or the order they go in, and lord knows he isn’t good enough at spanish to try and execute it, but it dredges up a very fuzzy, distant memory. one of his uncles playing guitar and singing confidently, while the rest of his family shouted along to the chorus and fumbled their way through the parts they didn’t know.

some dirty joke uncle told him pops in his head, and he laughs at how it would surely disgust both of his parents to hear— and just for a couple seconds, the strings of a banjo. a group of his uncles by the fire, loudly hollering out the words to a song jack was not allowed to hear, as his momma was very quick to put her hands over his ears and yell at them, which only made them laugh harder.

just once, when he’s twelve, he’s reading in the family room at just the right time to hear momma playing something on the piano. it starts off as nothing he recognizes, when she presses the keys experimentally, but soon starts taking shape into something that, for some reason, makes him feel a little nostalgic and a little sad. he hums along unconsciously, just barely loud enough to vibrate in his ears but low enough to not be heard beneath the sounds of the piano.

but he hums a little louder for the chorus, the notes falling into almost the right order in his head as she plays them, and momma stops so abruptly that a noisy wrong note makes him wince. she turns around to look at him. jack tenses, book in hand, afraid he’s done something wrong when momma’s eyes look a little shiny, but she doesn’t look mad.

instead, she smiles. and when she sniffles a little, and when jack asks “are you feelin’ alright, momma?” she just shakes her head, half turned to face him.

“mhm. i just love you so much, you silly boy.” she tells him, and a little embarrassed, jack nods silently and buries his head back in his book.

but after a few seconds, the piano starts up again, and this time momma’s voice accompanies it. halting and hesitating every few lines, like she isn’t certain she remembers all the lyrics, but in the back of jack’s mind he hears a bunch of other familiar voices singing along with her. “jack o’ diamonds, jack o’ diamonds, i know you of old, you rob my poor pockets of silver and gold...”

[marstonsboy]

I just realized I don’t think Jack ever had friends 😦 except for Rufus

i made a joke via uncle referencing this in a fic once. yeah, it wasn’t enough that he lost his entire family and everything he knew, the poor kid was also lonely as hell. petition to give jack marston one singular friend actually. it doesn’t count if they’re 20 years older than him minimum and also family.

but no if we’re counting animals, he had cain too, but we know how that ended. some idiot who should absolutely not be within 30 feet of children or animals, like, killed him. we don’t get told what happened to rufus, but i assume he died at some point. he seems pretty young in 1907, but we’re probably just meant to assume he dies offscreen somehow. another snake attack gone wrong, maybe. sidenote, which isn’t relevant, but this is my blog and i do what i want, sucking the venom out will technically work in a pinch, if it’s your only option available at the time, but like. still go to a doctor.

anyway. in 1914, you can still hear rufus barking around beecher’s hope very clearly, but never actually find him, like the ghost of one of the only friends jack marston has ever had (a dog) is haunting him along with like every other horror he’s had to endure. kind of fucked up, now i think about it. no wonder he’s messed up when, on top of everything else, he spent his entire childhood not having one friend his own age.

[marstonsboy]

Hii it's me the same anon again.

Just wanted to say that I read a fic on AO3 where Jack was dying and John's soul came to comfort him, Jack then survived and woke up to a deer. Awesome fic, though I forgot the title.

Really wanted to see your take on the prompt!!

alright, so i saw this just as i was about to go to bed and thought “okay ow, what the hell.” i don’t necessarily feel comfortable writing about or expanding a prompt of someone else’s, or something that i’m aware someone else has already written— but i have written about a similar concept near the end of my own fic, god help you if you ever need a friend. if you’ve read it, you might remember what i’m talking about.

i think the idea of jack’s death is, of course, extremely depressing. mostly because, as i’ve mentioned in a previous post, i personally don’t believe he’d live especially long after killing edgar ross for a lot of reasons. there’s his own suicidal behavior regardless of honor level, the general message of the rdr games, and the fact that he ends up an outlaw that’s almost constantly moving and on the run. i’ll always think the theories (and they are theories! btw! i’ve never actually found a source that Canonically Confirms jack living to like the 80s or something) that he got to see the moon landing on tv or other historical events are cute, but i’ve never thought they’re very plausible.

all of that being said; it’d be hard not to think about your family while dying, i think. in jack’s case, it’s not in the context of people he’s leaving behind, but rather people he might be able to see again. as much as he misses his family, i don’t know that he’d want them to see him the way he is now, exactly what they always told him not to be. he’d probably be afraid of their disappointment. he always felt inferior to john in his childhood, trying desperately to please him, but what about abigail? his mother, that wanted him to be a lawyer and always wished he could be better than them?

for jack, who very much loves and misses his parents despite his complex relationships with them both, and who very clearly hates himself, the idea of disappointing his parents must haunt him. he made his choices, expecting to pay the price for them. what he doesn’t seem to comprehend, as evidenced by some of his lines to john in rdr1, is that his parents love him more than anything, and would continue to love him regardless. both john and abigail make plenty of mistakes, and neither are perfect, but that much is obvious.

[marstonsboy]

Yep, I was the anon that has been pestering you for the past something amount of days :))

If I'm going to suffer with my thoughts, why not take you down with me? LOLL

Anyways I was just going to as you if you'll be writing a fic of the previous ask I did, the one where the VDL gang meets adult Jack. I've read all your fics on AO3 and never stopped rereading them.

Would really love to see you turn it into a fic tho!! Only if you want to ofc. I'm not gonna force ya into it. :)

i may have outed myself by having so many thoughts about it just ready to yap about lmao. yeah, i do have a concept in mind about that! not quite what you’d expect, probably, but i do intend to write it— preferably, after i finish my latest wips, because i have too many going on and starting another might drive me insane. short answer, yes, i will be writing a fic with this concept, just with a slightly different execution :)

[marstonsboy]

Ily too haha!! <- replying to the tag from your previous post

Anyways, how do you think the gang members would react to adult Jack? They will be given context that they'll be meeting little Jackie from the future. I think they would go like "Oh wow we're gonna meet a lawyer!" or smth but then get jumpscared by a duplicate of John Marston. Would they feel disappointed? I think Abigail's heart would break at the sight.

ily! and if you’re the same anon that’s been sending me asks like this which keep me awake at night staring at the ceiling in quiet horror, congratulations! now i’m thinking about this and unbelievably sad. once again, you brought this upon yourself.

because yeah, of course that’s heartbreaking. it was heartbreaking for me, playing the games in canonical chronological order. one minute i was watching arthur teach the sweetest little four-year-old in the world how to fish, and the next that same little boy is killing a man in cold blood and i know i can’t do anything to stop it. now if i wept substantially at that, can you even fucking imagine how badly that would affect his parents?

you don’t have to. i can. again, a hearty “you asked for this” to you <3

i suppose it depends just a little on where exactly we’re at in the game, given john’s idiocy for, like, the first three chapters. from ~1895 to ~1907, if we’re being honest, but i’m specifically talking about in relation to how he treats jack. so, for the sake of me not having to delve into something Too complex right this minute, let’s say they’re in ambiguous chapter 4. not too long after john starts getting off his ass and working to be an okay husband and father, but a little before literally everything starts going to hell.

with that out of the way, emotional hurt incoming.

for people that don’t know, there’s a random camp event encountered in chapter 2 (horseshoe overlook), where hosea is teaching jack to read— or attempting to. this interaction prompts the famous back-and-forth between abigail and jack: “but i wanna be a gunslinger when i grow up.” “over my dead body! and you will be a lawyer - you do the hanging, not the swinging, you hear?”

i think for freshly orphaned 1914 jack, this scenario might be some form of hell. while he did hunt down and kill edgar ross, he only did so after abigail was already gone— ie. when his mother wouldn’t have to watch him throw his life away and repeat his father’s mistakes. he still cares deeply for his family, enough that he won’t seek revenge while abigail can still see what he’s becoming.

and abigail, in 1914, probably saw it coming. she was grieving, and likely not very well if she followed john into the grave after just a few years, but jack is still her son. she knows him. abigail in 1899 is another story. her son is four years old, a sweet little boy that picked flowers just to make her a necklace and wants to bond with his pa even though the man hardly pays attention to him. nineteen-year-old jack is a sharp contrast and, in comparison, almost unrecognizable.

almost. he’s still got her freckles. he has the manners she made sure to drill into him young, not wanting him to take after all the degenerate outlaws he grew up surrounded by. he’s as tall as his father, the man’s spitting image to an unsettling degree— which would give john, perhaps still uncertain on the topic of jack’s parentage, a rather rude awakening. when he cries, as he is almost certain to do upon seeing his parents again at a moment in his life where he would never, ever want them to see him, he looks just like his momma.

but there’s more than just his uncanny appearance that ties him to his parents. for example, he’s angry. so, so angry— at the government, at himself, and sometimes at his parents. it’s hard not to blame them for how he ended up, or how everything in his life went to shit, but it’s also hard not to blame himself for thinking that way. he loves them, misses them more than anything, but it’s complicated. there’s a whole lot that’s too complicated to explain about jack marston, it seems.

his momma is confronted with the fact that her son grew up in pain, consumed by hatred and grief, and went down the path of picking up a gun to cope that she desperately wanted him to escape. his pa sees himself reflected in the young man’s eyes, his anger and dozens upon dozens of stupid mistakes. his aunts and uncles see a killer made out of the little boy they tried so hard to protect from the worst of this life, doomed from the beginning.

and maybe the worst part is that they’re witnessing the aftermath. tragedy upon tragedy has been heaped upon his shoulders over fifteen years, losses that he can’t even begin to explain, as he doesn’t know where to start. there are so many parts of it he doesn’t even remember, blurred out by a young mind that wanted to protect him from the worst of it. what do they have to do to prevent this? is there even a way to do so? the harder question: do they have the right to do so, or to change the person he’s become?

because there’s little worse, i think, for john and abigail to see their son at his lowest. an orphan, a killer, an outlaw on the run. no better than either of them, or anyone else in the gang. all sharp edges and gnashing teeth, a finger on the trigger. worse than that? their son, so much older than that little boy they’re working to protect but far too young for so much pain and loss, truly has nothing more to live for. he’s all but given up, and he might have if it weren’t for spite keeping him going.

maybe they almost don’t want to accept it, to recognize him. to do so would be a heartbreak they might not recover from.

[marstonsboy]

Psst, got Jack-centric fic recs?

oh hell yeah. i’ve got a whole section in my ao3 bookmarks dedicated to this. be warned, most of them are sad because i am a wretched little angst appreciator <3 here u go, have my personal favorites under the cut so i don’t flood your entire screen:

Tearful Reunions by agoldengalaxy

Summary — “Now that he's on his own, Jack stumbles across people from his parents' past and gets a little comfort along the way.”

(exactly what it says on the tin. post-canon family reunion time, with all the expected grief and pain that comes with post-canon jack)

Where the Wild Things Were by pipdepop

Summary — “Jack isn’t a baby anymore. He notices things. Notices how worried Momma always looks. Notices how tired Pa is at the end of the day. Notices how they take turns in not having dinner, saying things like ‘I’ll eat later with your pa’ or ‘I had a big lunch’ or ‘I had dinner with the fellas at work’. Notices how thin they’re getting.

He decides to do something about it.

(Or: years after the events at Beaver Hollow, Jack wanders into the woods, and meets someone oddly familiar.)”

(if you like supernatural elements, in-between canon stuff, and something a little more bittersweet than just repeated psychological torment, you might like this one :3)

The Gift of Giving by fleet_of_red

Summary — “Jack Marston is an inquisitive four-year old who observes more than his parents and all the aunts and uncles around him give him credit for. He notices how his Uncle Arthur tries to raise morale around the camp and decides to return the favor.

Inspired by the camp companion item requests and told from Jack's viewpoint.”

(rdr2 jack centric! also exactly as it says on the tin. it’s cute, made me more than a little sniffly, though i suppose that applies to a lot of the recs on this list.)

Echoes of Vengeance by dearnostalgia

Summary — “Jack Marston, just nineteen and newly orphaned, has lost everything in the span of a year. When he finally decides to end it all, fate intervenes—offering him one last chance.

Or: Time Travel Fix It AU, where Jack chaotically tries to safe everyone from their fate”

(this one ACHES. time travel fix-its often do, but this one’s my personal favorite. in progress as of posting this, but i promise it’s worth it. it made me go “oh noooo” in agony several times.)

ever welcome with me by TheTenthSunrise

Summary — “Perhaps it is some ill-begotten and twisted loyalty to his old man. Remembrance for a man who they all remember fondly but have not seen in so long. Penance for mistakes made years ago, forgiveness for how it all ended. Or maybe just some love for the little boy they all knew.

Mary-Beth Gaskill finds Jack Marston in a cell in Rhodes. The last remnants of The Van der Linde gang converge.”

(oh yeah. more post-canon reunion shenaniganery that made me weep an ocean. if you wanna get technical, this focuses more on the other former members of the vdl gang for about half the fic, as jack is unconscious for a bunch of it, but y’know. he’s still a big part of it, and like all of the hurt and family stuff is centered right on him. one of my favorite jack fics by far!!)

and there’s more, of course, but these are the ones that have been rattling around in my head lately. plus, i didn’t want to shamelessly self-promo too blatantly. you can find my jack fics on my ao3 if you wish. i’ve got four atm, three of which are jack-centric, and the fourth which is more arthur-centric, though jack does play a large role in it. more to come as well since he keeps plaguing my mind (as evidenced by my entire blog dedicated to him). i hope these fics emotionally curbstomp you as much as they did me :)

[marstonsboy]

What do you think Jack would do when he somehow meets his child self from 1899?

if we’re talking 1914 jack? honestly, with how little he seems to remember of his childhood, i think he’d find it hard to believe that the four-year-old boy he was in 1899 is the same person that he is now. maybe they aren’t, in a way. jack has been through a lot of hell, to the point where even his sixteen-year-old self is hard to reconcile with the little boy from the prequel.

on one hand, there’s him: jack marston, orphan, outlaw. the man who buried his mother, then put the man who killed his father and uncle in the ground when she wouldn’t be around to see it. regardless of what way he lands on the honor scale, he’s lost every reason, every person he had left to live for.

on the other, still jack marston: four years old, surrounded by family that love him and would do anything to keep him safe and shield him from the worst of their crimes, even though jack himself is smart enough to draw his own conclusions. blissfully unaware of the fact that almost everyone he knows will be gone in just a handful of months.

he might feel jealous of that boy, to be able to live in that kind of innocent ignorance. or he could pity him. maybe he’s even angry at his younger self, for not spending more time healing his relationship with his pa before he lost him, even though he knows why he was reticent to do so. i think, regardless, he’d have a bit of a difficult time believing he used to be the kind of kid that made flower necklaces for his momma and play-fought with his pa like characters from his favorite books. the idea that he’s changed so much from who he was as a child that even jack himself can scarcely draw a connection between them is depressing, but not unlikely.

[marstonsboy]

doing my duty of obsessing over tiny details again: idk how many of you have played undead nightmare, but if you haven’t you should, since i’m about to spoil it a little.

when jack is younger in rdr2 (aka the ages we see him at, 4 and 12 for the main story and the epilogue respectively) he tends to call abigail “momma”. he also has a couple lines around beecher’s hope where he can call her “ma’am,” similarly to him calling john “sir,” but that’s a different rant altogether. in rdr1, at 16, he’ll almost exclusively call her “ma”. i’m assuming it’s supposed to show that he’s grown up, and isn’t really using the slightly more childish term of address for her anymore. for a couple lines at the very start of undead nightmare, jack calls her “mother,” in a teasingly chiding tone as well after she stabs herself with a needle and curses.

but a little bit later, (though still in the opening cutscenes of undead nightmare) after uncle attacks the family and abigail gets bitten and subsequently turned, jack runs to check on her. he’s understandably distressed by, you know, the sight of his mother bleeding out on the ground. he panics and calls her “momma,” like he hasn’t done since he was much younger, probably because he’s scared and confused— and hurt, since he does the same thing after she bites him a couple seconds later. it’s just the first time i’ve heard angry 16-year-old jack sound like a little boy, or anything like the boy he was before all the effects of the trauma he’s endured really started making themselves clear, and it kind of breaks my heart.

on top of that, undead nightmare isn’t even canon. now i’m just sad over something i know didn’t actually happen, except the existence of it is giving me ideas. maybe, when abigail died in 1914, a 19-year-old jack called her momma for the last time, because he was scared of being alone. maybe he didn’t even get to, because she was gone before she heard it. maybe i should stop making the sad game even sadder, but we all know that’s not gonna happen.

[marstonsboy]

Do you ever think of Jack just out there and he sees a wolf who somehow feels close yet distant and he gets startled at himself for thinking "Hi, pa" Because I do :')

oh!!! why did you say that to me.

ok. fine. you asked for this. retaliatory devastation incoming.

there’s a random event at beecher’s hope where you can find charles talking to jack, where he implies he’s been teaching him to track animals, and remind him you can tell if a set of bones belonged to a bird because they’re hollow. it’s kind of cute and a little silly, since charles pulls a piece of wolf dung out of his pocket (?) to show jack, and the kid asks if he can keep it— if john is nearby, jack will ask if he can take him hunting sometime.

so maybe, years later, he finds tracks around the beecher’s hope land leading back to tall trees, and recognizes them as wolf tracks. he never finds any traces too close to the house, and it’s just the one wolf as far as he can tell. odd, as wolves usually travel in packs.

and he’d know it doesn’t make sense, and his ma would tell him he’s being silly, but it makes him feel almost at ease. there’s a dangerous predator prowling about, and it could hurt the livestock or rufus if he isn’t cautious, but something about it feels familiar. safe, even.

he doesn’t tell his ma, so as not to cause her any more worry than she already has to deal with, and he doesn’t engage with the wolf either. it doesn’t come any closer, but he can tell it’s still there. there are tracks left just outside the fences. scraps of fur, sometimes dung. rabbits, beavers, and deer carcasses found further into the trees.

one day, nearly two years since pa’s been gone, he sees it. he’s hunting for dinner that night, since ma has been too lethargic lately to go into town, when a lone howl alerts him to its presence. it’s standing in the snow, at the foot of nekoti rock, staring at him. it doesn’t move to come closer. jack lifts his rifle, but the wolf gives no indication that it plans to attack, or even to give him the time of day. instead, it turns away and stalks off leisurely into the trees, searching for its next prey elsewhere.

if this were any ordinary wolf, jack might track it and put it down now, just to prevent any future incidents— but it doesn’t seem like one. there was something in its eyes, something in the way it held itself. something he hesitates to give a name to.

but he could swear, the presence of the wolf— even at the times he can’t see it— makes him feel the most at ease he’s felt since beecher’s hope was attacked. it’s not enough to fill the hole left there in the aftermath, and it never will be, but it’s enough. for now.

[marstonsboy]

in my heart jack stims by cracking his knuckles except he has the unholy combo of resting bitch face (scary) and being the spitting image of his father (scarier) so doing this accidentally scares the shit out of people and/or gets him into several fights slash duels that could have otherwise been avoided

[marstonsboy]

May I ask what you think Jack’s spirit animal is? I’ve heard some people say raccoon or wolf pup and that is so friggin cute 😖💕

hi!!! i’ve yapped about this a little on my main blog, but thanks for the excuse to talk about it here :3

so the animal symbolism in red dead redemption is fantastic, with two distinctive animals used to signify high and low honor in arthur— a buck for high honor (prey animal, usually symbolically associated w the cycles of nature and rebirth, as deer shed and regrow their antlers as seasons go on), and a coyote for low honor (predatory animal often associated with cunning and trickery, but also curiosity).

with jack, i like to think his high honor animal is a maned wolf. further explanation under the cut :)

so, for clarification, despite the name, maned wolves aren’t wolves! they’re named after wolves, and are often described as “foxes on stilts” due to their physical resemblance to foxes, but they’re genetically distinguishable from both. they happen to be the only species in the “golden dog”/chrysocyon genus. they’re omnivorous, solitary predators, and the dark mane on their necks raises when they sense danger.

i know picking a predatory animal to represent high honor is a little strange, but allow me to explain. the maned wolf is notoriously solitary— aka not a pack animal, like the wolf they’re named after. (sound familiar?) it’s also compared a lot to foxes, due to physical resemblance, but afaik they aren’t genetically related to foxes - and they’re canines, not vulpines. they’re skittish, shy, and only attack humans if they feel threatened, and can make a loud roar/bark noise to communicate over long distances.

jack happens to be the only person left of the marston family, as well as one of the few surviving associates/“members” (i guess, but he was like. four. so i hesitate to give him that status) of the van der linde gang. he’s named after his father, and is repeatedly confused with him/told how much he resembles him as an adult. he deals with the aftermath and repercussions of his father’s actions, and perpetuates the cycle of violence despite knowing it’s exactly what everyone who loved him died to prevent. i think it fits that, even with high honor, jack’s associated animal is predatory. he’ll live the rest of his life running from his own choices, just like his father, and he’ll never be able to escape his legacy.

in terms of his low honor animal, i usually default to a wolf. why? similar answer: repetition of the cycle, living his life dwarfed by his father’s shadow. becoming the monster you were told to be better than and grow beyond. my slightly more unhinged take would be a bear— in part because of that time he got mauled half to death by one, and i think i’m funny— but also because bears happen to be largely solitary predators, and, well. y’know. both wolves and bears are also considered highly dangerous apex predators, so do with that what you will.

i lean more towards wolf, though, if i’m being honest. one of jack’s defining character traits is the way he feels inferior to john, or how he feels he needs to prove himself in order to earn his affection and approval. so much so, that he’ll do things that he knows damn well his parents wouldn’t want him to do, like go hunt down a full grown grizzly bear by himself, or kill a man in cold blood and doom himself to becoming an outlaw when he’s only nineteen years old. he’s my favorite character, and thus i must emotionally torment him in the most psychologically devastating ways possible.

thank you so much for the ask, i love to yap forever and ever about him !!<3

[marstonsboy]

To me, the song Self Esteem by AJJ shows what low-honor Jack Marston’s mindset is, what’s going on in his head, pretty well. The self-loathing, hurting people without reason, feeling remorse for it but not stopping, references to a place taking a lot out of you, it’s sooo him. Thought you might like it!!

i’ve heard it!!! and i think you’re right. compared to his high honor behavior (depressed, openly lacking purpose and reason to live), low honor jack is much more sadistic and cruel. he’ll often taunt enemies, people he’s dueling, or lawmen with lines that i personally would expect to hear from john rather than him (ie: “Yeah, I killed your father. He was crying like a girl if I remember correctly.” / “You got me one of them annoying faces... Now move before it annoys me more.” / “Why don’t you shove that badge up your ass? See if it makes you smile!”), or make those infamous gross comments towards working girls in the street.

still, despite this, as you pointed out, jack does feel some kind of remorse even with low honor. he expresses disgust and loathing with himself and his behavior multiple times, but won’t actually rectify this behavior unless the player character decides to get his honor back up. he still apologizes when looting bodies, (“I’m so sorry, miss,” when looting a woman and “Sorry, mister,” when looting a man) or says things like “It’s no wonder I’ve got problems.” which, fair enough.

regardless of honor level, he’ll often mention his family’s legacy in combat, including one (fairly rare iirc) line where he yells out “I’m John Marston - Jr.” he clearly has the presence of mind to understand that he’s repeated the cycle and grown up to be just like his father in exactly the ways his parents didn’t want him to, but while high honor jack will retain the values his parents taught him (ie: turning down working girls by citing that his mother would “turn in her grave”), low honor jack reacts to all the trauma he’s endured by externalizing his anger, hurting people just for the hell of it, and he hates himself even more for it.

(ps: if i may drop my own song rec, which i apply to both high and low honor, might i suggest cavetown’s “boys will be bugs” :3)

[marstonsboy]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Jack Marston & Arthur Morgan, John Marston & Arthur Morgan Characters: Arthur Morgan, Jack Marston, John Marston Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements, High Honor Arthur Morgan, Jack Marston Needs a Hug, Adult Jack Marston, Posthumous Characters, Dead Arthur Morgan, Canonical Character Death, Post-Canon Fix-It, Sort Of, whether or not this fixes anything is up to interpretation :), Not Canon Compliant, Mentioned Charles Smith (Red Dead Redemption), Mentioned Eliza and Isaac Morgan, technically they make an appearance but not enough to tag really, References to Canon, Good Uncle Arthur Morgan, Mentioned Abigail Roberts Marston, charthur is sort of there if u squint but i didnt want it to be a focal point, Time Travel Fix-It, Mistaken Identity, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Afterlife Summary:

But Arthur, wish as he might, was never cut out to be a father. And even if he were, he wouldn’t be the one this poor boy needs.

All he can do is look at the man he never saw Jack Marston become, suddenly as tall as his father and nearly identical to boot. He can’t imagine what could have happened between the gang’s collapse and the hurt, angry, hardened adult he sees chewing at the inside of his cheek.

He doesn’t know what else he can say, beyond: “Oh, Jack.” Dark eyes, in color and in spirit, carefully lift to meet his. “I’m so sorry.”

(Or: Arthur Morgan closes his eyes on a mountain in 1899, only to open them on another in 1914— and he’s in for one of the rudest awakenings of his life.)

[marstonsboy]

i can’t think about jack marston without nearly crying over just how sorry i feel for him. like, i’m sorry you were only four years old when the admittedly unstable support system you had fell apart. i’m sorry you didn’t have a real, permanent home until you were twelve, and i’m sorry you only got four years before that too was ripped away from you. i’m sorry you felt that you had to prove yourself otherwise your father would leave again like he’s done multiple times before. i’m sorry you felt so inferior you were unable to believe that your parents loved you so much and would have done anything for you. i’m sorry you had to pick up a gun and shoot at people at sixteen and kill a man for the first time at nineteen. i’m sorry you watched uncle die then watched your mother lose herself to grief over your father’s corpse, riddled with bullets in front of your home. i’m sorry you had to bury your mother only three years later. i’m sorry you lost your family and yourself and willingly threw your life away so young in the name of revenge no one wanted you to seek. i’m sorry you ended up all alone and grew up to be exactly the man your family did everything to save you from becoming. i’m so sorry jack marston.