#nthspecialll

[nthspecialll]

John's missing culture

If there is one thing that is wildly know about 1800-1900 America it is that they were good at erasing cultures and normally we as fans are good at talking about it, talking about Sean in reform school, Eagle Flies fighting for his right as a native American, so on and so forth, but I have never seen anyone talk about John's missing culture.

When presenting himself, John often says he is a man from no where, a no one, an orphan kid, he says once in rdr2 "my dad came over from scotland" but that is it, it is first in rdr1 that we get to hear a bit more about that.

"My father was an illiterate Scot, born on the boat into New York. He never saw his homeland, but to hear him talk about it, you would imagine he only ever ate haggis and wore a kilt. And he hated the English for what they had done to his great-grandparents he'd never met."

Clearly John's father was a proud Scot, but John isn't. He grew up constantly hearing about scotland and scottish culture from the one piece of family that he had left, and I wonder if John ever was interested in it or if he was too pragmatic for it. If he wanted to know about where he came from but then realised it didn't matter when he got to the orphanage and became just another boy, just another no one.

He never had anyone later (that we know of) who could tell him about this culture. No one in the gang is Scottish, no one to teach him, no one to help him, it was just gone.

He doesn’t seem to miss it, but it is still interesting.

A little off track, but Sean tells one of the Grays, who is scottish, "well we are basically brother then, ain't we?" And I am just imagining Sean, new to the gang, newly alone after escaping reform school, trying to find some form of familiarity, hearing that not only is John scottish but he also had his father die at around the same age and was sent to a facility, getting his hopes up about a friend, only for John to say "no, my father was scottish, but I am nothing."

[gremlin-boah]

Dutch, I give thee, a mango... A regular mango... Totally nothing off about it... (Gremlin-boah, come closer, imma tell ya something, it is a rock painted as a mango)

Trolley incident? No. Mango incident

He's fiiinneee... Right @nthspecialll?

[dreamingatnights]

MAKE THE COMIC ABOUT HOW JAVIER GOT HIS SCAR!! PLEASEEEE AND IF YOU DO, PLEASE KEEP ME UPDATED

Dkfhfkfj I WANT TO BUT MORIVATION IS HAAARD

If you're curious you can always reach my dms though because i like... Already have most of my ideas down already and i could send you the script or smt 👀

[pinkisposting]

As per request of @nthspecialll here's the screen recording I took of Rob's tiktok live where he explains why Javier's last name is pronounced the way it is!!

[werewolfarthurmorganenjoyer]

I love the Jobigail, Sadigail and Jovier polycule because this means Jack is stuck in an endless loop of "ask your dad/mom" until Uncle Arthur comes to the rescue and takes the boy to the bookstore

(@nthspecialll because we talked about this a while ago lol)

[ghost-qwq]

part 2 to this I suppose

( @nthspecialll here ^^)

[outlawruben]

I love you guys, all of my rdr2 tumblr mooties are SO SWEET. Yall have no clue. Love yall. 💗

This is directed at:

@roamingtigress @eggsaladsweetie @the-van-der-linde-gang @nthspecialll @omgwhatchloe @slicedmayonnaise and @ everyone else I love you guys 💗💗💗

[nthspecialll]

John's need to fit in

When thinking about John, Arthur, Hosea and Dutch I always think John as a bit of an extra, and at first I thought "Oh it is just because he wasn't there for as long, he isn't part of the curious couple and their unruly son" but watching an interview with Rob I realised there was something else and what it was.

When John is young, 1899, he isn't not mature, he is not very sensible and he is somewhat impulsive, cocky and angry. He doesn't really understand the world around him and who can blame him, he is 26, he is young, and most importantly he is inexperienced.

Rob talked about the fact that John is very fustrated about not being able to do all the things Arthur, Hosea and Dutch can do, he wants to be "cool" like them, he wants to fit in, and he realises he doesn't, but he is too cocky to realise why. And that is because he doesn't have th experience, he hasn't had the time to learn, and he gets annoyed about that.

It was the inexperience that i had noticed, that stood out to me.

[nthspecialll]

Hiii! I love all your character analysis posts and theories so much, and was wondering if you have done any theories about where the gang was before Blackwater, by chance? I think I saw a post recently mentioning Montana but I can't for the life of me remember if it was you who posted it or not! 😅

But I've wondered about their locations before RDR2 a lot and would love to hear your thoughts about it. I remember reading a very early page in Arthur's journal about how they were in the Northen Grizzlies? But apart from that I can't remember anything else about locations, if there were any mentioned. And I'm sorry if you have done a post like this already, it's just a little piece of the backstory I'd like to hear theories about 😊

I have not talked about it but I definetely can! Also thank you for liking my stuff!!

Well, firstly, some places that exist in real life does not exist in red dead and those are the places on the map. Texas is New Austin, New Orleans is Saint Denis and Luisiana is Lemoyne, meanwhile Californa and New York does exist in game, meaning we can't completely be sure what places exist unless they are directly mentioned.

Firstly, we know they have been in Chicago, that is where Dutch and Hosea met! Then in 1877 the pair went to Kettering, Ohio, where they scammed 300$ out of the residents, later that year we know that they met Arthur in the Northern states somewhere, which could also be Montana! We do not know more than it was someplace in the North.

We also know some time before they met Arthur, they went to Blackwater once but exactly when we do not know.

In 1885 we know they were in Illinois, saving and picking up John Marston and two years later they robbed their first bank Lee and Hoyt, which we do not know where is.

But between then and 1898, they robbed 36 banks across the frontier as stated by Ross in rdr1, which is where we get the famous "We were told there was a price when we reached 50." The wiki page of the VDL gang does say they came to Montana in 1898 but they won't give me source to confirm it, which is a little annoying, but just mentioning it.

We know at some point between 1893 and 1898, after Bill joining the gang, they went to Canada, him, Arthur and Uncle robbing a bank together.

We also know that for a while they would return to the same places for Arthur's romances. Both with Eliza, where he could pop by every few months and for Mary, whom they at least returned to after 1894 when Abigail joined, and before the deaths of Annabelle and Bessie.

Either way, now we come to the fun parts, around winter 1898, the gang was up in what is called the Northern Grizzles, we only have access to the western (Around Mount Hagen) and Eastern (O'Creagh's Run), so I would assume that the Northen are outside the map, probably up above the Wapiti Reservation somewhere.

They traveled down the "Western Foothill of the mountians", not sure what road they took as it could be one off map, which I would honestly guess, probably traveling around the cold of Colter and coming in from left side of the map. Either way, they most likely ended up somewhere down by and Big Valley, which can match up with the fact that Arthur mentions that life was good and food was easy to find. That area does have a lot of easy food access and so forth.

Now I have seen a few people say Dutch met Micah in Strawberry, which is honestly very fair assumption, it matches up with a lot, but a simple fact is forgotten, Strawberry does not have a bar, which is where they met.

I would say that Micah most likely had been in Strawb and done, whatever business he had with Slim and Martha (I believe their names were), and traveled up and out of map where he met Dutch and then decided to join them back down.

Afterwards they traveled down to Blackwater where they "hid in plain sight" right outside town as Arthur says he does not like being so close to the town, and considering how close they were to Valentine, I would guess they camped at the ledges where Charles and Javier hides when going to find Sean, either there or the other side of the town.

Blackwater Camp:

But even though they were camped so close to down, Arthur funnily enough still stayed in town from time to time. It does however not seem that they were settled there or in Big Valley for very long, as Arthur also says that they have been running more than normally those weeks.

Now we get to a bit that confuses me because suddenly the group goes from the southern part of the map down in Blackwater, to suddenly appearing up by Spider Grove by Colter, and Arthur mentions that they headed "east over the Grizzlies" so they went west from Blackwater, out of the map, and then up North only to go east again. Not to mention that it seems they did it in a fairly short time, they haven't had proper time to talk about what happened, they were still shook, Davey was not yet dead from a gut wound and Jenny was burried not far from where we first see the gang?

See that is a little confusing, but I hope that answers your question! I had a lot of fun answering it at least, rereading Arthur's journal and all.

[nthspecialll]

Sister Calderón and Mother Superior Calderón

Fun fact to those who have not played rdr1, you can find Sister Calderón in the game! She can be found outside of Las Hermanas, which was where she was headed when we meet her in rdr2. John is sent there by the Strange Man, either to rob the sister or give her money as she is collecting to the poor.

[nthspecialll]

You are literally the best rdr account ever fr, your rants are not biased at all and i love it. Because some ppl rly should drop their ranting bcs it's obvious that they are more talking about their imagination about that character than actual facts.

I am so glad you think so because I sometimes noticed that too. From time to time it feels like people have an idea of a character and try to make the game fit around that rather than actually make the game sculp the character. That sounded very messy so: They make the evidence try to fit the result they want rather than letting the evidence form the result. And to be honest I think that is a little... Well offensive to the developers?

I am a writer, I write books and if someone tried to discard part of a character I spent years making because they felt like it, I think I would get annoyed, I even get annoyed reading it. Like it is fine if it is just jokes ya know? Like "Kieran is just a baby" as a joke but also being able to see that there is so much more to him, that is fine, but if you just refuse to acknowledge that there is more... No.

Another thing is glorification, I do not like people glorifying characters, again not as a joke, I think it is like ignoring a whole part of the character, the "mean" part of the character. Take Javier, I love Javier, he has so many nice and sweet sides, but I also know he is an asshole in chapter 6, that said I know people are not assholes for no reason, I know Javier had a reason to act the way he did. Do I think him acting like an asshole is a-okay? No, but I also know that there is nuance to it.

I have also seen it the other way around, where people make a character worse than they are? Like especially the women of the game, but also Javier and Bill. Again, dismissing part of a character that someone has put sweat, tears and blood into is not okay.

Media literacy is also a massive thing in this game because it is a historically accurate game in so many ways, and again, people who intentionally dismissive it because "Oh I wouldn't do that" are blind to history, because of course you wouldn't, you grew up in modern days with modern ideals and you got internet to educate yourself outside of whatever ideals and things were put into your head by those immediately around you.

I always strive to get as much information about characters as I can, to show both sides and to find out why do characters do what they do even if I don't agree with it. I remember when I learned that Javier did in fact point his gun at John and I at first got annoyed but then I caught myself and was like "that is fucking stupid ignoring it, face it and find out why."

To clarify, I am not shitting on people making jokes about characters, I do it too, nor am I shitting on people who does not have all information (I am not telling them to go research everything and "oh they must know every small detail to even speak about this character"), I am not shitting on people who have different opinions on characters, I am shitting on the people who chose to ignore parts of characters because that fits their narritive.

These characters are wildly deep and complex, allow them to be, and I know some people are going to say "oh that is so dramatic" and maybe, but that is my opion and if you don't agree just scroll, I am not forcing you to be here.

If you read all that, thank you! Here is a pic of Javier because I love him:

[nthspecialll]

Imagine if Arthur actually died in all the stupid ways we as players have died, like I cannot take this scenario seriously.

Hosea: "Dutch... Arthur died... he was greeting a stranger and accidently rode over the edge of a cliff" or "Dutch... Arthur died, he somehow managed to find a lion and got his throat slashed."

[nthspecialll]

I won't lie to you, it doesn’t look half bad, some meat, potatoes, carrots and mushrooms boiled in a broth. I would eat it. Well done Pearson.

[nthspecialll]

Yall think he took inspiration?

[nthspecialll]

I think more people need to talk about the fact Charles put Susan's necklace around her grave.

[nthspecialll]

I sometimes think about this interaction between Dutch and Arthur, how Arthur brushes off Dutch's hand because he is so annoyed with him and his idiotic plans that he cannot stand him trying to sweet talk him. It is a small gesture, yet I think it says a lot.

scp: cinematiccowpoke on yt