Arthur’s tuberculosis will always make me sad 'cause I cant help putting myself in his shoes and imagining what it would be like to feel your body giving up on you and knowing that you're going to die soon.
Especially when you consider that Arthur was one of the strongman of the Van Der Linde's gang. Just imagining that after being seen as an intimidating force, people look at you with sorrow or cruel amusement. People aren't afraid of you anymore, see you as a weak and feeble guy (like the miners in the mission Don't seek absolution). Knowing that you aren't as strong, one of your biggest asset, anymore and that people treat you accordingly (like Sadie in the last mission) by trying to keep you away from work and fight.
It just breaks my heart to imagine how Arthur must have felt during his last few weeks, knowing he's withering away into a ghost of his former self.
My favorite Hosea ambient line is: “I used to play a lot of poker, then Dutch got two royal flushes in one night, I figured Dominoes was more my speed.”
It makes me laugh so hard because I can just imagine Hosea slamming down his cards and dagger glaring Dutch, meanwhile Dutch is giving him that twinkley-eyed look.
Hosea: “YOURE CHEATING, I KNOW IT, AND AGAINST YOUR OWN KIN, UNBELIEVABLE.”
Dutch: *laughing* “I ain’t cheating, and it isn’t my fault that you’re slowing down old man.”
Hosea: *muttering to himself and stomping away from the poker table* “two god damn royal flushes..”
Idk about you guys but I am an absolute sucker for stoic, strong, providing/protective, "macho-macho" male characters absolutely just breaking down when the going gets a bit too tough. Willing to shoulder any burden or battle scars if it means granting their loved ones' safety, but cracking when it gets too much, getting disheveled when things go wrong, when things are out of their control, when they've lost so much that they cannot hold it in anymore. They cannot continue being strong, at least just for now when they just need to decompress.
With that said, Arthur Morgan absolutely deserved to have a good cry. I'm upset he hasn't in the game, at least from what we have seen. Despite how strong and hardened this 36-year-old seasoned outlaw is, he is still a man - a good man at heart (at least in my canon as a High Honour truther).
There is no way he couldn’t have cried on the ship after watching his own father and mentee/lowkey-son-figure die right before his eyes. There is no way he couldn’t have cried when he failed his chance of running away with the love of his life whilst he still had the chance, and having to come to terms with the fact that the last memory she will hold of him will be him making another promise he couldn't keep + that the last piece of her he has left is her essentially writing him out of his life with no time or opportunity to explain. There is no way he couldn’t have cried when the fear of death/the fate that awaited him and his loved ones got too overwhelming for him. There is no way he couldn’t have cried when he started seeing both life and death differently after Sister Calderón's inspiring words in that train station.
He deserved to have a good cry. Arthur, a man living in the American 1890s where there was a certain expectation for men (outlaw or otherwise) to surpress any 'weak' emotion, finally admitting "I'm afraid" was one of the 'manliest' and most human moments we ever see him have, and it was so simple yet so beautiful. The man has been through so much pain as much as he has inflicted it - he deserves a hearty moment of release. To cry, to sob, to wail, whatever. He just needed that after everything.
i keep thinking about blind john marston or more specifically him being blind/partially blind in his left eye and god i wish i have the energy to write fics about it bc there is non but alas i do not
theres just something about it, like him recovering from the wolves thinking "ah it'll come back" and it doesnt or it gets worse and he just doesnt tell anyone about it, he just copes with the fact that hes blind now. some of them can tell, mainly abigail but no one addresses it. no one knows how.