either treat abigail, molly, mary, with respect or die looking down the barrel of my gun
i'm being one hundred percent serious when i say i'm tired of people disregarding and disrespecting them to uplift their queer ships. it's bad and it needs to stop.
like i just read a jovier post where they have john cheat on abigail?what the fuck man.
his love for her is unwavering and he is incredibly committed to abigail, he's so devoted to her, working so hard to create a life for the three of them. john is willing to lay down his life to protect his family, and he does so, rescuing them is his whole motive for seeking redemption in the first game. he would never disrespect abigail like that, he's learned and grown, he's no longer the shithead deadbeat dad when jack was young, he loves her.
arthur still so clearly loves mary, his love remaining steadfast and unwavering even years after their broken engagement, it's so obvious on his face when he looks at her. his heart still yearns for her that when she calls, he comes, even if he's a little miffed at the start, he still goes. honestly, i believe if arthur didn't have other commitments in the gang, he would have run away with her when she asked him.
and while molly and dutch's relationship is tumultuous and dutch absolutely does not deserve her, molly is so important to dutch's character and the story as a whole. molly's loyalty to dutch highlights dutch's charisma and the ways dutch inspires loyalty throughout the gang. her existence also depicts the internal conflicts dutch has and the moral uncertainty of dutch's actions. her presence within the gang and relationship with dutch represents the internal strife and conflicts within the gang, highlighting the human cost of their choices and the sacrifices that are made in pursuit of a false freedom in the old west.
and let's not even mention the treatment eliza, annabelle, bessie and even susan receive, which is hardly any mention at all.
eliza, annabelle and bessie each play small but significant parts to not just their respective partners, but to the story as a whole.
eliza shapes arthu’rs past and motivations. her tragic death, along with their son, isaac, has a large impact on arthur and his present relationships, such as abigail and jack. their memory serves as a driving force of arthurs path to redemption.
annabelles fate fuels dutch's vendetta against colm and the o'driscolls, and adds personal stakes to the gang as a reminder of the consequences of their life as an outlaw.
and bessie, oh bessie, not only does she add depth to hosea and represents hosea's wishes for a more peaceful life, but hosea loves her so much that when coming to terms with his inevitable death, whether by gunshot or sickness, the mere chance of reuniting with bessie brings him so much comfort, despite the fact that he fears that bessie lives above, while hosea will be traveling down below.
susan is a very controversial character due to her treatment of the women in the gang and her murdering molly, who did not betray the gang, both of which i do not condone, but it is impossible to deny her importance to the story. not only was, from what we know, dutch's first woman, coming before annabelle and molly, she also served an important role in the gang, acting as an authority figure, maintaining order and discipline within the gang where tensions often rise. she serves as an emotional anchor, which is incredibly important when death is constantly looming over you and adds so much depth and complexity to the story of rdr2.
when you ignore and disregard these characters you are undermining the depth and the richness of the story, each of these characters are important to the story. if you wish to truly appreciate the storytelling of rdr2, it is important to recognize and respect each of these characters.
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Jazz's little. Her parents are super cool. They're ghost hunters! It sounds like something from a movie about future and scientists and supernatural beings and cool-looking tech. They have cool-looking tech at home. It's even cooler than tech in the movies.
Jazz also has a little brother. He's stupid but he's hers, and she will protect him from anything. Her brother is very small, he needs someone to protect him and teach him about the world.
She knows about the world. She understands their parents much better than him, and she can tell her brother when they shouldn't be distracted. She knows when they're upset and irritable, and she knows when they're too excited and being near them is dangerous because of all the inventions.
Jazz does a very good job keeping her little brother safe.
---
Jazz goes to school. Her teachers say that she's very smart, the best student in class, and very mature. Her parents are proud of her - when she manages to distract them from ghosts. Her brother is still kinda stupid and doesn't know how to properly fight food, but she's always there to protect him, because that's what older sisters do.
Her classmates seem to think that she's weird though. Some of them say mean things and call her a teacher's pet and a show-off. Jazz isn't sure why they think so because she's always trying to be friendly but maybe she's doing something wrong. She goes to the school library and finds a book about people and their communication.
It's a very interesting book.
---
Jazz is almost a teen. She's gotten better at communicating with people. The school library ran out of psychology books, and Jazz now has to go to the city library but that's fine. Human brain fascinates her.
She's been feeling like something is wrong about her though. She even thought that she was going crazy for a little bit. That probably wasn't true because she didn't match any symptoms but she was still worried.
Someone told her that being so good at lying and faking face expressions is not okay. That's probably not true, Jazz is pretty sure almost everyone can do that. Or maybe she's just being a prodigy again. It's a very good thing to be able to do after all. She can hide her emotions from her family when she's feeling sad. She wouldn't want to worry them, would she?
She'll have to research it.
---
Jazz is a teen. She now knows that her parents aren't actually that good. It's something that was really hard to accept but it did explain everything. Her parents are kinda bad at being parents, and they also don't really listen when she tries to explain it to them.
It's okay. She's almost an adult and Danny has her. She can take care of herself and her brother.
She learns everything she can about being a parent and a therapist and tries to use her knowledge. It's hard, but she's a Fenton, which means that she's very smart and determined. She pushes through, and trains on her classmates and herself.
In the evening she writes about her feelings in a journal. It's very important to be aware of her feelings because that's the first step to dealing with them.
She's experiencing sadness. And anger, actually, even though she doesn't like to admit that.
She writes "this family is a fucking mess" in her journal and then covers the paper with ink until the sentence is absolutely unreadable.
---
Jazz is sixteen, and her stupid parents opened the stupid portal, which means that they're even worse than usual. It's pretty much okay when they're just stuck in their stupid lab, making some stupid weapons. It's not that okay when they're out of the stupid lab, because they get their stupid inventions all over the stupid house, and stupid food comes to life, and she has to protect Danny from both their stupid weapons and stupid hotdogs, and oh god everything is so stupid.
She's experiencing anger.
She's also acting perfectly calm and almost cheerfully.
Jazz hates how perfect her fake smile is in the mirror.
---
Jazz is seventeen. She wants to put her headphones on and listen to some loud music. Jazz can't do that, because she gets anxious if she can't hear what's happening around her. She needs to be fully aware of her surroundings because she needs to be able to protect herself and her brother if weapons against ghosts become weapons against children again.
She thinks that it's not okay.
The house smells of ectoplasm, so she'll be extra careful when opening the fridge.
She thinks that she shouldn't know how ectoplasm smells.
Jazz should probably also warn Danny: her little brother's gotten better at fighting food but doesn't notice the smell of ectoplasm. Funny, considering his ghost sense.
Funny, considering that her brother is a half-ghost.
That her brother died.
That she failed at protecting him after all.
Jazz stops breathing to prevent herself from crying, and doesn't need oxygen for a few minutes too long.
Maybe she failed at protecting herself too.
---
Jazz is turning eighteen next month. Her parents are all of a sudden more attentive and caring, as if that can change their almost-absence during her whole life. She doesn't like their attention because she doesn't know how to deal with it. She doesn't even really think of them as parents anymore.
She thinks of them as a threat.
Once she's eighteen, she's gonna try to move out, and she's going to take Danny with her because it's not safe to leave him here. Maybe after she gets a good job and saves some money, she'll even get into therapy.
Jazz thinks that she needs therapy.
She's been having Bad Thoughts lately, and she doesn't write them down in her journal. Jazz stopped writing anything in there ever since she found out that Danny is a ghost. She just couldn't risk anyone finding that journal.
Jazz isn't sure if she should call those Bad Thoughts intrusive. They scare her, and they're Bad, but it could be just her normal thought process.
It's still definitely not normal.
---
Jazz is eighteen. Her parents are very excited, whispering to each other about how they found a perfect present for her, some surprise that she's gonna love.
She doesn't care.
Her little brother is late from school, and it's weird, because he was also super excited about giving her his present.
She's worried.
Her parents brush off her concern, say that Danny probably just got distracted talking with his friends. They don't listen when she says that Danny wouldn't get distracted like that on her birthday because he's not them, he actually cares about her, he doesn't forget her birthdays, and something has to be wrong for him to be that late.
They don't listen to her at all.
She's angry.
Her parents are excited and talk loudly about how they wanted to find a perfect gift for their favourite daughter, and how they managed to do it because they love her so much. She hates when they're excited. It only leads to problems.
They bring her to the lab because of course they do, why would they make a gift that is normal and isn't kept in the lab, right? They usher her in, so obviously proud of themselves.
She hates them.
And she hates them much, much more the next second, because the gift is her little brother in his ghost form, strapped to a table, unconscious and injured, and the smell of ectoplasm is strong in the lab because of his green blood dripping on the floor.
There's a cold part of her that analyses her feelings and tells her what emotions she's experiencing, and that part is very aware of thick black smoke of wrath twirling and twisting under her skin. It's suffocating, and she stops breathing as it invisibly fills her lungs, scared of letting it out.
There's a perfectly fake part of her that keeps the smile on her face as her parents gush about how hard it was to catch the ecto-scum, and what they can do to it - together with Jazz because they wanted to share this with their amazing daughter.
Jazz is black smoke of rage under perfect glass of calmness when she grabs Fenton anti-creep stick. The smile she learned to fake under any circumstances doesn't falter when Jazz brings the baseball bat down on her father's head. It grows a little bit wider when she hits her mother, because Jazz learned to smile brighter when she's hurt or sad or scared or angry - experiencing any "bad" emotion actually.
Jazz is angry when she grabs her weapon.
Jazz is furious when she kills her parents.
Jazz is worried when she checks her brother's wounds.
Jazz feels nothing when she rigs the portal to blow, walks out of the house and presses the button.
She is her parents' genius daughter after all, and she did listen when they were telling her about their inventions. Maybe it would have taken longer to do, but she had Bad Thoughts, and they probably weren't just intrusive after all, because she did what they told her and made it very easy to make a bomb out of a portal. Just in case. Her parents were a threat, and Jazz was smart enough to prepare to dealing with threats, and she was smart enough to make it look like the threats dealt with themselves.
She really hoped she wouldn't have to use that button though.
---
Jazz is nineteen. Her sort-of-friends at uni offer to go to a restaurant, and she tells them that she doesn't celebrate her birthdays. There's a noise of all of them saying that maybe she should try, noise that she really should have expected, because humans are always so excited about any holidays, it's hard for them to understand that someone might not like them. It's not hard to stop that noise though. They shut up very quickly when Jazz says that she had "a very traumatic event" on her birthday.
Good. She doesn't like loud people.
Jazz goes home to her little brother. He's sad because his parents died in an awful explosion a year ago. He's still trying to smile because it's also her birthday, and Jazz is very happy that he's bad at faking a smile.
It means that he won't end up like her.
Jazz hugs her little brother, and he gives her a little present that she adores, and then they sit in silence and eat some takeout. It's very nice.
She never tells Danny that their parents died before the explosion, and that the explosion wasn't an accident, and that their ghosts did form after that because of all the ecto-contamination they had, but she made sure this wouldn't become a problem. She never tells him what she's done, because that would hurt her little brother, and she would never let anything hurt him.
Jazz will protect her little brother from anything.
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