Micah bell’s childhood headcanons? I notice you seem to write for him well👁️👁️
Ah, well thank you! I’m glad you think so!! This is something I’ve actually thought about before but never talked about much
Firstly, Micah and Amos’ childhoods were awful. Their father was likely abusive as hinted in some of the things Micah says about him and the things he “taught”. They’re both traumatized, but only Amos seemed to realize that and escape. As for actual headcanons…
I think Micah was a normal little boy. It’s essential to realize that he wasn’t born the way we see him. All of his behaviors and opinions he learned and internalized from his father. If anything, I think he was maybe even a little shy and nervous as a child. Amos seemed to be older and more likely to question authority. Micah wasn’t, which is why he stuck to his father’s ideals so heavily.
Micah looked up to both his father and his brother at first. But as Amos got older and began to realize he didn’t have to tolerate the treatment of his father and the kind of life he was leading them down, him and Micah drifted apart. And that’s when Micah learned to resent his brother.
I do think he liked animals. But I also think his father was the kind of man to force him to kill and get rid of any animal he had an attachment to because it was “weak”. He treated Micah that way for anything that could be even slightly considered weak or feminine. He’d get belittled or punished for it, until eventually, he learned to be as cruel and callous towards soft things as he could because he was treated that way. He’s very much a “if I suffered, I’m going to make everyone else suffer too” kind of person.
That nervous, shy, and sensitive part of him never left. He’s just put up the nastiest and most repellent front possible to protect himself. He likely harbors a lot of shame about it. He’s insecure. He’s lonely. His feelings can be easily hurt. He’s shy around women he likes and is desperate to prove that he isn’t a “monster” to them. He’s all bark but with the bite of a prey animal.
In all, I think if someone actually cared and loved him as a child, he would’ve turned out to be a much different man. No one is born that way, nor are they destined to be that way.
I think those are the most canon headcanons I’ve seen of Micah hahaha, his life story is so sad to be honest, and the way he flinched from that dog in that one mini scene in the game, makes you wonder if he was abused as a kid from a dog? Maybe his father scared him with a dog or something. Who actually knows. If only rockstar could tell us more about his childhood. Or who his mother was? Was she some prostitute? Who raised him? Who changed his clothes and fed him to keep him alive? I wanna know so bad.
He sees himself as a monster, he knows he’s a bad guy, a bad man, yet he’s desperate to prove to someone he likes that he isn’t. He seeks approval badly. But he became that true “monster” soon enough when he murdered a child in the epilogue, as cleet said.
So this is a new kind of post to me, a big-ass fan theory of sorts, but I've always enjoyed the more out-there takes in fandom. Also I've been sitting on this for months so it's nice to get it out.
In short, I made up a full backstory for Micah from the few scraps of information that are given in game. I'll go through some of those details first, then go through my own take in four sections:
Part 1: The way of the grandfather/the legacy of Micah Bell the First
Part 2: Early years/Competitive survival
Part 3: Young Adulthood/O'Driscoll Boy!Micah
Part 4: Later Adulthood/Evil Bounty Hunter!Micah
(Note that the 1st and 2nd part will spoil my fanfic series The Devils, but it can still be read, as it's full of juicier details.)
Canon and semi-canon details from his backstory
So we don't know a whole lot, hints only given by select dialogue and a newspaper clip. Micah is the third in line in a family of outlaws, and ran together with his father and brother Amos for a while. His father was wanted for murder all over the place, and seems like a man with dark charm ("Ain't life grand?") and a temper (nearly killing Amos). Amos, who ran away from the family tradition, wanting nothing to do with it. You can read about them on various online encyclopedias, but know that some of those are written by uh, creative fans, and AI, so there is often errors. It's irritating, but it is what it is.
An interesting bit is the interview with Micah's actor Peter Blomquist (I have tried to google but am having trouble finding it; please send link if you have it!) is the mention that Micah's father was bad, but his grandfather was worse. Tbh I think this is a bit from a backstory that was among the things that were scrapped from the final game.
So, of his grandfather we know almost nothing, except that he was wild. And that he was maybe worse than Micah III's father. But that also means that the Second was also better than the First somehow.
My take
Part 1: The way of the grandfather / the legacy of Micah Bell the First
I think the grandfather was the head of the family as long as he lived. I also think he imposed a terrible burden upon Micah Bell II (and III).
It's interesting if the Second tries to be better than the First in that when he got a woman pregnant, he tried to hide her and their two children, because he didn't want to force the Bell training upon them. But it slipped out one evening due to drink. The older forced the younger to reveal the locations of the woman and the two sons.
And so the training of the two new Bells begins, harsh and unrelenting. Shooting, robbing, killing. And more 18+ than I feel is necessary in this post, but yeah, disturbing stuff.
Micah being the one to inherit the name most likely means that he is older than Amos. But the thing is that Micah gives off serious little brother vibes to me. I dunno exactly why. Vibes, man.
So, I thought an interesting twist would be: what if the name of Micah Bell was something that had to be earned? What if they'd been given different names originally, Amos and something unknown, before the latter was the better outlaw and became the Micah Bell III we know. He is one of the fastest shots in the game, and a competition like that, begun from early age, could've given him initiative to train harder, desperate to earn the name.
I am a cruel writer. How can I make this crueler? I got it:
Their grandfather identifies quickly that one brother is weaker and easier to manipulate than the other. Not in physical strength, but in terms of familial bonds. Maybe he is less charming than Amos, and makes fewer friends, because idk he is busy eating bugs (he seems like the kind of kid who would eat bugs). Or maybe their mother, before the arrival of the men, makes the boys attend a local church school, and Amos finds love in the religion while his brother stares out the window. Not because he's evil but because he's easily bored.
So the grandfather only tells one brother of the competition about earning the name, and it's not Amos. He also says the one who loses the right to the name has to be killed by the winner because there can only be one Micah Bell for each generation, that's how it has always been done. Maybe he speaks the truth, maybe he lies, but no matter what he is efficiently cutting the bond between the two brothers.
Part 2: Early years / Competitive survival
So, that is how Micah Bell III becomes Micah Bell III, as a boy and as a youth. I'll just go back to calling him Micah to make it easier, also because calling him anything else would kind of feel like waving a death sentence in the face of a child after I wrote The Devils. Because even people who commit atrocities have been a child once.
Growing up, Micah's survival depends upon winning over his brother. This is where his idea of winning and losing comes from. It doesn't help that his father yaps on and on about a similar philosophy, but where he's all words, Micah is all acts.
Micah never finds out that Amos doesn't know about the competition. He resents him from not trying harder. For making Micah look bad, training so hard so he can kill his fool brother, lying awake at night and mentally preparing for it. But if friendships are rope, then familial bonds are chains; almost impossible to cut.
He lies awake at night and stares at Amos on the other side of the fire, missing when they curled up together back when it did not feel like sleeping next to an enemy. It eats the child up, all that training. Not much left of who he was or could be. Hey, at least he doesn't have time to eat bugs.
But maybe, if their grandfather falls ill, Micah is the one to kill him. Unable to cope with the idea of killing his brother, he shoots him in the face. And then he turns to Amos, grinning, because they're free.
Amos does not see himself as freed. He sees murder. He thinks it is only because Micah saw their grandfather as weak, when he secretly had been the strongest force in their life. Micah walks towards him, covered in their grandfather's blood (I do like a dramatic scene), and Amos turns away, throws up and tells him to stay away. Micah feels shock, then loss, then rage. Micah Bell II would probably react with pure rage, but Micah is so used to surviving things at this point, he survives that too. None of their relationships are all that salvageable from this moment, especially not after Amos runs away.
This makes me think of another HC of mine, namely that Micah is the one to kill Amos, which has its own post and arguments here. But if you add in the theory present in this post, it makes even more sense to why he'd killed Amos, finishing what he had been trained to do since he was a kid.
Part 3: Young adulthood / O'Driscoll Boy!Micah
Did you know Micah's outfits have a bunch of half-hidden, green accents them? I've seen it on his scarf, his gloves, his horse saddle ...
This is basically copy pasting a bit from a Twitter thread I made, but I just really like the idea of Micah being an ex-O'Driscoll Boy mainly due to his green scarf. It's more of a teal, but maybe it's a faded O'Driscoll green. Colm would've valued a gun like him. His ruthlessness and boot-licking, too. Especially if he was younger, lonelier and easier to sway. After his brother leaves and his father dies, he'll have no one.
And while he is a bit of a lone wolf hermit, Colm could've reminded him of his father, like Dutch probably does, but I really like the thought of Colm reminding Micah of his grandfather. He wouldn't be too unfamiliar with the gang dynamic, and find more homeliness in that than in a normal family. There's a well-known tendency among abused kids to unconsciously seek out relationships that mirror their broken families. Paradoxically, the lack of safety feels safe.
Of course, the Bell heritage is too alive within him to render him into another nameless O'Driscoll Boy, so he and Colm eventually fall out. He goes back to being a lone wolf, but maybe he's made some connections, which make gathering a troop easier, especially for bank robberies (Skinny, Cleet, Joe...). But he mostly stays alone.
During RDR2, when Colm was hanged, maybe Micah felt the green scarf catch strangely, while in camp or while out riding (or even watching the hanging happen from a dark back alley in Saint Denis). Micah reached behind to the nape of his neck, feeling as though someone had held him there, squeezed, and then let go.
Part 4: Later Adulthood / Evil bounty hunter!Micah
So I'm a total sucker for the theory of Micah being a form of a hitman that's like an evil bounty hunter. The main reason for this is the fact that Dutch's bounty poster can be found at Micah's camp outside Strawberry. But also because my first thought when we first met him in the game was "Omg, Loco from The Great Silence, my favorite evil bounty hunter villain!" They have some of the same color scheme in the winter outfit, and I think it's a reference.
Loco has the same life philosophy as Micah, as seen in this quote: "You're on the side of the law. We, we're on the side of the law of survival… survival of the fittest!" and kind of in this one (ok I'm putting it here because it's so cool, he's just burst into the hideout of his own evil bounty hunter gang) "Since when are wolves afraid of wolves?"
I like the idea of Micah is sick to death of gang life but knows enough of it from his time as an O'Driscoll to infiltrate hideouts and gangs easy, to reap bounties from the lawful people he's been robbing up to now and occasionally still do. Maybe the Van der Lindes weren't the first gang he brought down. That's fun to think about.
Also, I love it when asshole villains do the "right" thing. Partly why I love Micah's character; as an antagonist, he brings down Arthur and John, directly and indirectly.
(Ooh this is beside the point, but that's actually one of my issues with the narratives of the RDR and GTA games. They have this core of nihilism that actively hinders their stories from becoming as great as their characters, but also makes the games sell easier. Maybe another post, or maybe fandom isn't the place for critiques.)
Anyway, Micah just didn't think anyone could ever get to him, but then again he'd never met anyone like Dutch. Hell, the man even had the same dark charm like his father, enjoying similar exclamations. I think he hoped to recreate something of his old family dynamic with Dutch, who was kinder than his grandfather, father and Colm. We all know how that went. His last words was still a compliment to Dutch though. As if it was still a competition, or a game, in the end.
*walks a few steps away, twirls, shrugs, falls face first into the snow*
Here's another pic of Loco (along with the GIF in the beginning):
The end
Yeah I have not much more to say here lol. Feel free to use and expand upon this theory, or make your own by taking out of some of the foundations, could be cool to see. I'd love a shoutout, but it seems shoutouts are going out of fashion, which is sad. Put the community back into fandom! Stop it with the competition! Make friends! Lmao "be less like Micah", but yeah, I guess it stands. I see so many people worship canon like a deity. Please have more fun!!!
Hiii! I love your red dead analyses sm, you're so big brained. What do you think the dynamics were like within Micah's gang? I saw people say Joe was his right hand man but I don't recall seeing it stated anywhere? How did he go from "wanting a tight crew of 5-6 good guns" (paraphrasing here) to such a huge gang of desperadoes? Do you think Cleet was telling the truth about being disgusted by their actions? Thanks!
I have talked about some of this actually! I will link those posts at the end of this answer, but also thank you!!
What do I think the dynamic within Micah's gang was? I think that it was very professional. Unlike with the Van Der Linde gang, Micah's gang was not a family, it was very strictly a formal and professional thing, and I think that a lot of it is based on respect and fear for Micah.
Many of the newspapers report about Micah being very well know, very feared but also very sucessful, which to a regular person sounds extremely bad, but for a carrerr criminal you couldn't find someone better. Already by being part of Micah' gang you have asserted yourself in a position of power over civillians, law and other minor criminals.
That said, I don't think Micah cared a lot about his gang members, I think this rise of fresh meat is new, it is recent, that is what one of the posts is about, but basically the newspapers report that Micah is feeling desperate and I think that desperation is what leads Micah to accept more people into his gang because despite his dream, numbers is power. Micah's desperation is what leads him to break away from his ideal in order to try to protect himself. He doesn't care about all these people, about their lives, about what havic they make in his name, about anything. Likely he just kind of floated above them liek a symbol they could use.
About Joe being is right hand man, I don't particually remember anything directly stating it, but I do think it is correct due to the relation between Micah, Joe and Cleet.
Micah is the leader of these three, and while both Joe and Cleet do what Micah says, Joe is way more into it. If Micah says jump Joe will jump down on someone's head to bring that extra gore into the game, I don't think he is doing it to please Micah, I just think he does it for fun. Cleet however is just kinda following along, he does the crimes needed, he does what is told but he doesn't really make it anything big and fancy, which also brings me to, do I think Cleet was disgusted with Micah?
Yes, I do think he was digusted, I think he has morals, I think he has bounteries and I think in the end Micah crossed them.
In chapter four we have the oppotunity to go stage coach robbing with Micah where he will reveal what he thinks is "the best gang," that is
When it comes to Cleet, I personally do not see him as that bad of a person as I have seen others frame him to be. Several people have compa
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