marstons-angel

[marstons-angel]

i love it when a piece of media is like: is there anything more painful than knowing your sibling? is there anything more tragic than knowing they are the only person who will ever share the same experience as you? they were the only constant in your life. they were there since birth and now, no matter how they betray you, you will still love them. you will always feel the need to protect them even if you can no longer bring yourself to talk to them. will anyone else be able to understand? will anybody be able to love you and hate you and fear you the same way a sibling loves you and hates you and fears you? no, probably not

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ITS SO FIRE IN HEREEE

THANK YOUUUU MY GOAT 🫂

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this theme eatssss zero

persie my most beloved.......... thank you very much 🙂‍↕️

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MCR LYRIC!!!!!!!!!!!! HANG EM HIGH!! PEAK!!!!!!!!!!!!

YEAHHHHHHH BABEYYYYY

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★★★ THAT GIRLS NOT RIGHT IN THE BRAIN !! ★★★

★ ari / fang / zero. video game writing blog + selfship. 20s. he/she. ★

★ profiction/anti-censorship/proship. 18+ ★

this is not my main blog

blog rules | masterlist | about me | tags

★ john marstons angel. wyll ravengards rogue. shadowhearts brat-tamer. molly o'sheas guard dog.

USED TO BE RAVENGARDS-ROGUE.

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ravengards-rogue -> marstons angel

theme under construction. temporary pinned.

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fuck. guess im doing it

im too attached to this url and theme but man am i entertaining changing to be more rdr2 themed

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John mustard

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john marston redraw of some doodle i made a year ago

old art below cut

i made him greasier lol

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Where wolf’s ears are, wolf’s teeth are near

(Insert smart quote about wolves)

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@nanamimizz

Something possessed me

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im too attached to this url and theme but man am i entertaining changing to be more rdr2 themed

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john marston furry. because my friend wanted to see me draw a furry. (i never have before).

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White devil.

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dont take any of this too seriously. just spewing my thoughts. some rdr2 / johnigail stuff. mostly talking 2 myself. a lot of spoilers lmao

i really. i really like the relationship that john and abigail share both in rdr2 and later in rdr1. and what i like about it is that it, explicitly, is not a story of true love.

don't misunderstand, i think john and abigail love each other to death and ever after. they share such a deep and solid relationship and both make mutual connections to each other over the course of the game. but what makes them compelling to me is the deep realism rooted in their romance and the way that love is depicted as choice rather than fate.

rdr2 poses this more than once through out the story, with the most obvious example being mary-linton and arthur. when presented the choice to leave the gang or go with mary, arthur chooses the gang due to various internal and external factors. but the implication remains that things might've been different had arthur learned how to choose other things. himself. his future. etc. there's examples of this with hosea and bessie (said by hosea himself "she knew what i was"), with dutch and his varying models of young women. the van der linde gang chooses the outlaw life chronically, habitually, instinctively.

abigail joins the gang as a working girl. she sleeps with most of the camp, and then with john. they're sweet on each other. and she has a boy that she believes to be johns. john is hesitant to believe that (and maybe some of that is warranted) but most of it is him being a complete jackass. the kid is born. john is presented the option of fatherhood. he, like the rest of the gang, comes to a point where he feels he must choose what is going to take priority in his life.

(and this is important - because in my mind, so much of this pressure is so self-imposed. it's inherited in the way most sons inherit from their father or like most younger brothers inherit for their older ones. it's possible no one told john to choose explicitly. not then at least.

but well, john has seen this all play out before. and loyal men choose the gang, almost always. the gang is family, was family before jack and abigail. and if john owes anyone loyalty, it's dutch who raised him as a golden boy)

john, for better or worse, chooses neither. he leaves the gang entirely, for a year which is a huge point of contention. he leaves both things behind. he doesn't choose. he doesn't want to choose. but he comes back, and presumably makes the choice made many times before him. he chooses the gang and completely shafts responsibility of fatherhood and husbandry. but there is obvious uncertainty there.

the choice john makes to leave is interesting when you consider it thematically, and you consider arthurs specific advice to john before his death - that you can't be two men at once. something that is reiterated to john in the epilogue and that he acts on in rdr1. it's also interesting when keeping in mind some hidden dialogue hosea has with john, in which john says he knows that jack is his.

to me, john understands very well whats going on around him. and that his actions are informed explicitly by that choice.

and this to me is what makes his relationship to abigail so interesting. john is no doubt a loser, a deadbeat, and a bum (he is my favorite character) - but all of this information together makes me interpret his actions (coldness towards her and jack) not as genuine resentment but an externalized projection and defensive mechanism.

johns uncertainty is not towards jack being his or even towards abigail, but a baseline questioning of the violence he's been steeped in his entire life. what was once a simple, intuitive choice to be an outlaw is called into question by the legitimate possibility of something else.

arthur has a line to john, where he says that if you don't think jack is yours - why does it bother you so much? and it's a good question indeed, why does any of it bother him so much? why does abigails nagging bother him so much? why is it that john chooses to be actively antagonistic towards her when he could choose to simply be apathetic or choose to reject or stonewall her?

a lot of it is projection. its hypocrisy on johns behalf. he unloads his questioning and beliefs about the gang unto abigail who serves as a semi-constant reminder of his own problems. abigail during the main story game doesn't ask john to choose, but john knows that he has too. that's what that whole thing leads to.

when the gang starts to fall apart and when jack gets kidnapped, john immediately changes his tune. he's in clear disarray. the seeds of doubt planted in his head about dutch during blackwater only get increasingly extreme and as the game goes on into guarma and johns prison arc. he starts more clearly distinguishing where his loyalty will lie as the game closes, john is finally encouraged to make the cemented choice of jack and abi and not gang life (not all at once and something he will continue to struggle with) but he makes it all the same.

and then all of that intersects with abigail. and this to me is where the basis their relationship stems from because it's largely abigails influence, personality, and persistence that allows john not to make the same mistakes. abigail doesn't ask john for love, but she refuses to yield to him when it comes to jack. i know so many people see abigails nagging as nagging, or clinginess - but in my mind, it's simply her not letting john get away with being wishy-washy. abigail makes herself known and doesn't relent even when john continuously acts like a massive dick. she's not a pushover about it though either.

abigail loves john and probably understands him better than people give her credit for. especially with her calling him silly so often (a WHOLE different meta post) it's out of genuine love for john and in many cases, a genuine concern for john as a person that she acts the way she does. she gets on his case because she doesn't really want to give up on him, even though she probably very well could.

and she'd definitely be more at peace if she did lmao.

at a human level, abigails constancy and her both 1. not taking johns shit when he acts like a dick and 2. still wanting more and whats best for him is probably one of the base reasons john has full strength to make it out. and john knows that. abigail chooses john. she wants to choose john. she believes in him and so much of that contributes to the fact john doesn't end up somewhere much worse when the main story ends.

but again its not easy. for either of them. and it's not something that works until john gets his shit together. their relationship doesn't mend overnight, either. in the epilogue of the game, you see them face the same struggles they did through the main story. but like i said, abigail is no pushover. when john keeps choosing outlaw life, abigail leaves because she feels there's no helping him and john has to prove himself to her once more. he has to choose them.

(a lot of people critique abigail for being unfair to john and i understand that - but i think its mostly fear. john was in that life for years, and to abigails there's no telling if that siren song will take over and uproot her life again or not. i do think many times john took up the gun in the epilogue were completely fair, but i dont think abigails reaction is unwarranted.)

but again. again. the core of their love story is about choice. both john and abigail make the choice to choose their family and their love is founded on learning to choose each other. abigail straightens john out, and his character in rdr1 is so much more mellow than he is in rdr2. his loyalty to abigail is fierce and consistent, and john knows he owes a lot to her and never loses sight of that in the years they spend peacefully together.

he likes that abigail gives him shit and a hard time because he knows he deserves it and that it was one of the only things stabilizing him during some of the most tumultuous and difficult times of their life together.

they have such deep and genuine love for each other, built entirely in trying to believe and trust in one another and hold onto love in an era where everything was constantly at stake. it's not fairytale romance, but tried and true connection and choice. i love you because i chose you and i'd keep choosing you. they are so awkward with each other for so long because of the nature of their relationship to each other and that truly endears them to me all the more.

they just. they are so in love. but its not a fairy tale. and its not a case of john getting the girl because he's the hero or whatever. john loves her so much and she loves him and it all took a while and none of it was perfect. but it was real. so so so real between them. ack.

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TW: Kidnapping and violence. This is so heartbreaking. I say this every time I post something about Tilly. I’ve written Metas about it. Tilly is so underrated. She is a survivor.  Yet she’s so ignored. She is one the strongest and bravest women and it’s even more admirable that she maintained her kindness and her coolness. And the fact that Arthur and the gang loves her so much makes me tear up. We needed more of this. I’m so happy that she had a happy ending. She MORE than earned it. This conversation also shows how complex Dutch can be.  “We all loved you - even those with the cold hearts” - paraphrasing Arthur. Literally one of the best conversations I’ve posted. It makes me emotional, just like the other two I posted in the past few days. Sorry for the essay. Transcript: Tilly: I think I saw one of ‘em Foreman brothers again. Karen: Them boys you used to run with? Tilly: They ran with me. They kidnapped me when I was 12 years old right from my Mama.  Karen: Is that so? Tilly: Malcom Foreman…well he treated me real bad. He was bad. Know how I slit his throat and ran away?  I never felt bad about killin’ him. I ran back to where my Mama was workin’ , but she had died. I was fallin�� into trouble.  Dutch he found me. Saved me. Raised me. Treated me right. Taught me to read. He ain’t perfect. But he’s the closest I’ve met in this world. Ain’t it so, Arthur?  Arthur: We all loved you, Miss Tilly. Even them with us with cold hearts. You was the sweetest little thing we ever saw. And the saddest.  

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