hi!! iām moony, he/bee, disaster of an adultā and my madness clearly knows no bounds.
you might know me from my main blog, where i frequently yap about my special interests. this is my jack-marston-specific side blog, which is just for him, because i finally played red dead redemption several years late, and it promptly took over my brain.
do i know what to actually do with a side blog? no. is this a wise decision? also no. but the hyperfixation has gotten to the point where if i donāt devote a significant amount of my time and effort to it, i will explode. thus, This Fucking Thing was born.
(i blame other jack marston enthusiasts for enabling and encouraging my insanity. you could have stopped this. my yapping is about to get astronomical and itās all your fault.)
so, in summary: i canāt wait to be even more utterly insane about my favorite character in the red dead series. consider this utter madness a tribute to jack marston my beloved. put your seatbelt on and have fun.
i canāt think about jack marston without nearly crying over just how sorry i feel for him. like, iām sorry you were only four years old when the admittedly unstable support system you had fell apart. iām sorry you didnāt have a real, permanent home until you were twelve, and iām sorry you only got four years before that too was ripped away from you. iām sorry you felt that you had to prove yourself otherwise your father would leave again like heās done multiple times before. iām sorry you felt so inferior you were unable to believe that your parents loved you so much and would have done anything for you. iām sorry you had to pick up a gun and shoot at people at sixteen and kill a man for the first time at nineteen. iām sorry you watched uncle die then watched your mother lose herself to grief over your fatherās corpse, riddled with bullets in front of your home. iām sorry you had to bury your mother only three years later. iām sorry you lost your family and yourself and willingly threw your life away so young in the name of revenge no one wanted you to seek. iām sorry you ended up all alone and grew up to be exactly the man your family did everything to save you from becoming. iām so sorry jack marston.
The way they handled Jack's character is soo interesting to me because while he's mostly a side-character in both RDRs we still get to see him grow up and develop in 4 stages of his life. As a 4 year old, then 12, then 16, and finally as a 19 year old. He's as much of a main character as does John and Arthur (I mean we even get to play as him in the epilogue of RDR1). He's the sole survivor of everything that happened through these two games and it's so fucking tragic when we give it a deep thought.
i think a lot about jack and stranger missions (iāve written about it too, and iāll do it again) but i was dicking around in my 94% save and had a thought. if encountering algernon wasp (the āDuchesses and Other Animalsā guyā also the guy arthur can save from choking at the party during āThe Gilded Cageā) in the epilogue, john introduces himself as ājim milton,ā for obvious reasons. the next time they meet, algernon will greet him as ājamesāā likely because heās very formal, and ājimā is a nickname/diminutive form of ājamesā. still with me? see where this is going?
anyway, could you imagine the crashout if jack met algernon and was promptly called ājohnā?
where you the person who had the idea of john being the one to die instead of arthur, and later when jack is all grown, he meets arthur in a bar, where arthur is in denial about knowing john ??
i am desperately trying to find the person who had the original post,
@lone-cowboy
sorry, no, and i donāt think iāve heard of that post either? but hopefully this helps u narrow it down :)
hi, iām alive! in the process of a huge amount of projects and life things at once, which is why i havenāt been gracing your dash with pain recently, but i have this as a substitute. i think i linked it somewhere in my ao3 notes a while back, but never here, so. woe, marstonings be upon ye.
I ACCIDENTALLY UNF9LLOWED YOU FOR A MIN IM SORGY CUZ I DIDNT KNOW I WAS FOLLOWING YOU AND SO I WENT TO FOLLOW YOU AND I CLICKED BEFORE I COULD NOTICE I ALREADY WASS š waah
oh, absolutely, and he genetically inherits it from john. iām projecting because iām autistic, and i see a lot of traits in both of them, but even if they werenāt written with asd in mind their behaviors are still pretty clear if you know where to look. specifically iād like to note that jack has moments of going semi-verbal or non-verbal when heās upset, and both him and john have problems with emotional dysregulation. i also happen to think quite a lot of the vdl gang could meet the qualifications for c-ptsd, but thatās another rant entirely.
nooo. perish the thought! these allegations! i actually canāt stand that guy. thatās why i think about him all the time and am brought to tears by the mere mention of him. and by the way since you brought him up iām obligated by my special interest to yap at you in an increasingly insane fashion about him. because i donāt like him so much.
thereās a bunch of campfire songs you can stumble upon at beecherās hope after the sunset. most of the time itāll be uncle leading the chorus, either with his banjo or without, and abigail and jack singing along. other times itās abigail singing by herself, but jack will accompany her by playing the harmonica as a backing track.
as far as the ones iāve seen, iām fairly certain that none of these are songs you can also see at the various campsites during chapters 2-4. but as they have remained stuck in my head, i like to think jack remembers some of them too. he can still be found playing harmonica in 1911, and i like to think he still would in 1914, if less often. it probably makes him sad to do it, without his momma singing along to her favorite songs that he learned to play for her, but sometimes a tune he heard years ago will pop in his head, and he has to play it to start remembering the whole thing.
a couple times in mexico itās a handful of words that triggers it. he doesnāt remember all of them, or the order they go in, and lord knows he isnāt good enough at spanish to try and execute it, but it dredges up a very fuzzy, distant memory. one of his uncles playing guitar and singing confidently, while the rest of his family shouted along to the chorus and fumbled their way through the parts they didnāt know.
some dirty joke uncle told him pops in his head, and he laughs at how it would surely disgust both of his parents to hearā and just for a couple seconds, the strings of a banjo. a group of his uncles by the fire, loudly hollering out the words to a song jack was not allowed to hear, as his momma was very quick to put her hands over his ears and yell at them, which only made them laugh harder.
just once, when heās twelve, heās reading in the family room at just the right time to hear momma playing something on the piano. it starts off as nothing he recognizes, when she presses the keys experimentally, but soon starts taking shape into something that, for some reason, makes him feel a little nostalgic and a little sad. he hums along unconsciously, just barely loud enough to vibrate in his ears but low enough to not be heard beneath the sounds of the piano.
but he hums a little louder for the chorus, the notes falling into almost the right order in his head as she plays them, and momma stops so abruptly that a noisy wrong note makes him wince. she turns around to look at him. jack tenses, book in hand, afraid heās done something wrong when mommaās eyes look a little shiny, but she doesnāt look mad.
instead, she smiles. and when she sniffles a little, and when jack asks āare you feelinā alright, momma?ā she just shakes her head, half turned to face him.
āmhm. i just love you so much, you silly boy.ā she tells him, and a little embarrassed, jack nods silently and buries his head back in his book.
but after a few seconds, the piano starts up again, and this time mommaās voice accompanies it. halting and hesitating every few lines, like she isnāt certain she remembers all the lyrics, but in the back of jackās mind he hears a bunch of other familiar voices singing along with her. ājack oā diamonds, jack oā diamonds, i know you of old, you rob my poor pockets of silver and gold...ā
I just realized I donāt think Jack ever had friends š¦ except for Rufus
i made a joke via uncle referencing this in a fic once. yeah, it wasnāt enough that he lost his entire family and everything he knew, the poor kid was also lonely as hell. petition to give jack marston one singular friend actually. it doesnāt count if theyāre 20 years older than him minimum and also family.
but no if weāre counting animals, he had cain too, but we know how that ended. some idiot who should absolutely not be within 30 feet of children or animals, like, killed him. we donāt get told what happened to rufus, but i assume he died at some point. he seems pretty young in 1907, but weāre probably just meant to assume he dies offscreen somehow. another snake attack gone wrong, maybe. sidenote, which isnāt relevant, but this is my blog and i do what i want, sucking the venom out will technically work in a pinch, if itās your only option available at the time, but like. still go to a doctor.
anyway. in 1914, you can still hear rufus barking around beecherās hope very clearly, but never actually find him, like the ghost of one of the only friends jack marston has ever had (a dog) is haunting him along with like every other horror heās had to endure. kind of fucked up, now i think about it. no wonder heās messed up when, on top of everything else, he spent his entire childhood not having one friend his own age.
Just wanted to say that I read a fic on AO3 where Jack was dying and John's soul came to comfort him, Jack then survived and woke up to a deer. Awesome fic, though I forgot the title.
Really wanted to see your take on the prompt!!
alright, so i saw this just as i was about to go to bed and thought āokay ow, what the hell.ā i donāt necessarily feel comfortable writing about or expanding a prompt of someone elseās, or something that iām aware someone else has already writtenā but i have written about a similar concept near the end of my own fic, god help you if you ever need a friend. if youāve read it, you might remember what iām talking about.
i think the idea of jackās death is, of course, extremely depressing. mostly because, as iāve mentioned in a previous post, i personally donāt believe heād live especially long after killing edgar ross for a lot of reasons. thereās his own suicidal behavior regardless of honor level, the general message of the rdr games, and the fact that he ends up an outlaw thatās almost constantly moving and on the run. iāll always think the theories (and they are theories! btw! iāve never actually found a source that Canonically Confirms jack living to like the 80s or something) that he got to see the moon landing on tv or other historical events are cute, but iāve never thought theyāre very plausible.
all of that being said; itād be hard not to think about your family while dying, i think. in jackās case, itās not in the context of people heās leaving behind, but rather people he might be able to see again. as much as he misses his family, i donāt know that heād want them to see him the way he is now, exactly what they always told him not to be. heād probably be afraid of their disappointment. he always felt inferior to john in his childhood, trying desperately to please him, but what about abigail? his mother, that wanted him to be a lawyer and always wished he could be better than them?
for jack, who very much loves and misses his parents despite his complex relationships with them both, and who very clearly hates himself, the idea of disappointing his parents must haunt him. he made his choices, expecting to pay the price for them. what he doesnāt seem to comprehend, as evidenced by some of his lines to john in rdr1, is that his parents love him more than anything, and would continue to love him regardless. both john and abigail make plenty of mistakes, and neither are perfect, but that much is obvious.
Yep, I was the anon that has been pestering you for the past something amount of days :))
If I'm going to suffer with my thoughts, why not take you down with me? LOLL
Anyways I was just going to as you if you'll be writing a fic of the previous ask I did, the one where the VDL gang meets adult Jack. I've read all your fics on AO3 and never stopped rereading them.
Would really love to see you turn it into a fic tho!! Only if you want to ofc. I'm not gonna force ya into it. :)
i may have outed myself by having so many thoughts about it just ready to yap about lmao. yeah, i do have a concept in mind about that! not quite what youād expect, probably, but i do intend to write itā preferably, after i finish my latest wips, because i have too many going on and starting another might drive me insane. short answer, yes, i will be writing a fic with this concept, just with a slightly different execution :)
Ily too haha!! <- replying to the tag from your previous post
Anyways, how do you think the gang members would react to adult Jack? They will be given context that they'll be meeting little Jackie from the future. I think they would go like "Oh wow we're gonna meet a lawyer!" or smth but then get jumpscared by a duplicate of John Marston. Would they feel disappointed? I think Abigail's heart would break at the sight.
ily! and if youāre the same anon thatās been sending me asks like this which keep me awake at night staring at the ceiling in quiet horror, congratulations! now iām thinking about this and unbelievably sad. once again, you brought this upon yourself.
because yeah, of course thatās heartbreaking. it was heartbreaking for me, playing the games in canonical chronological order. one minute i was watching arthur teach the sweetest little four-year-old in the world how to fish, and the next that same little boy is killing a man in cold blood and i know i canāt do anything to stop it. now if i wept substantially at that, can you even fucking imagine how badly that would affect his parents?
you donāt have to. i can. again, a hearty āyou asked for thisā to you <3
i suppose it depends just a little on where exactly weāre at in the game, given johnās idiocy for, like, the first three chapters. from ~1895 to ~1907, if weāre being honest, but iām specifically talking about in relation to how he treats jack. so, for the sake of me not having to delve into something Too complex right this minute, letās say theyāre in ambiguous chapter 4. not too long after john starts getting off his ass and working to be an okay husband and father, but a little before literally everything starts going to hell.
with that out of the way, emotional hurt incoming.
for people that donāt know, thereās a random camp event encountered in chapter 2 (horseshoe overlook), where hosea is teaching jack to readā or attempting to. this interaction prompts the famous back-and-forth between abigail and jack: ābut i wanna be a gunslinger when i grow up.ā āover my dead body! and you will be a lawyer - you do the hanging, not the swinging, you hear?ā
i think for freshly orphaned 1914 jack, this scenario might be some form of hell. while he did hunt down and kill edgar ross, he only did so after abigail was already goneā ie. when his mother wouldnāt have to watch him throw his life away and repeat his fatherās mistakes. he still cares deeply for his family, enough that he wonāt seek revenge while abigail can still see what heās becoming.
and abigail, in 1914, probably saw it coming. she was grieving, and likely not very well if she followed john into the grave after just a few years, but jack is still her son. she knows him. abigail in 1899 is another story. her son is four years old, a sweet little boy that picked flowers just to make her a necklace and wants to bond with his pa even though the man hardly pays attention to him. nineteen-year-old jack is a sharp contrast and, in comparison, almost unrecognizable.
almost. heās still got her freckles. he has the manners she made sure to drill into him young, not wanting him to take after all the degenerate outlaws he grew up surrounded by. heās as tall as his father, the manās spitting image to an unsettling degreeā which would give john, perhaps still uncertain on the topic of jackās parentage, a rather rude awakening. when he cries, as he is almost certain to do upon seeing his parents again at a moment in his life where he would never, ever want them to see him, he looks just like his momma.
but thereās more than just his uncanny appearance that ties him to his parents. for example, heās angry. so, so angryā at the government, at himself, and sometimes at his parents. itās hard not to blame them for how he ended up, or how everything in his life went to shit, but itās also hard not to blame himself for thinking that way. he loves them, misses them more than anything, but itās complicated. thereās a whole lot thatās too complicated to explain about jack marston, it seems.
his momma is confronted with the fact that her son grew up in pain, consumed by hatred and grief, and went down the path of picking up a gun to cope that she desperately wanted him to escape. his pa sees himself reflected in the young manās eyes, his anger and dozens upon dozens of stupid mistakes. his aunts and uncles see a killer made out of the little boy they tried so hard to protect from the worst of this life, doomed from the beginning.
and maybe the worst part is that theyāre witnessing the aftermath. tragedy upon tragedy has been heaped upon his shoulders over fifteen years, losses that he canāt even begin to explain, as he doesnāt know where to start. there are so many parts of it he doesnāt even remember, blurred out by a young mind that wanted to protect him from the worst of it. what do they have to do to prevent this? is there even a way to do so? the harder question: do they have the right to do so, or to change the person heās become?
because thereās little worse, i think, for john and abigail to see their son at his lowest. an orphan, a killer, an outlaw on the run. no better than either of them, or anyone else in the gang. all sharp edges and gnashing teeth, a finger on the trigger. worse than that? their son, so much older than that little boy theyāre working to protect but far too young for so much pain and loss, truly has nothing more to live for. heās all but given up, and he might have if it werenāt for spite keeping him going.
maybe they almost donāt want to accept it, to recognize him. to do so would be a heartbreak they might not recover from.
oh hell yeah. iāve got a whole section in my ao3 bookmarks dedicated to this. be warned, most of them are sad because i am a wretched little angst appreciator <3 here u go, have my personal favorites under the cut so i donāt flood your entire screen:
Tearful Reunions by agoldengalaxy
Summary ā āNow that he's on his own, Jack stumbles across people from his parents' past and gets a little comfort along the way.ā
(exactly what it says on the tin. post-canon family reunion time, with all the expected grief and pain that comes with post-canon jack)
Where the Wild Things Were by pipdepop
Summary ā āJack isnāt a baby anymore. He notices things. Notices how worried Momma always looks. Notices how tired Pa is at the end of the day. Notices how they take turns in not having dinner, saying things like āIāll eat later with your paā or āI had a big lunchā or āI had dinner with the fellas at workā. Notices how thin theyāre getting.
He decides to do something about it.
(Or: years after the events at Beaver Hollow, Jack wanders into the woods, and meets someone oddly familiar.)ā
(if you like supernatural elements, in-between canon stuff, and something a little more bittersweet than just repeated psychological torment, you might like this one :3)
The Gift of Giving by fleet_of_red
Summary ā āJack Marston is an inquisitive four-year old who observes more than his parents and all the aunts and uncles around him give him credit for. He notices how his Uncle Arthur tries to raise morale around the camp and decides to return the favor.
Inspired by the camp companion item requests and told from Jack's viewpoint.ā
(rdr2 jack centric! also exactly as it says on the tin. itās cute, made me more than a little sniffly, though i suppose that applies to a lot of the recs on this list.)
Echoes of Vengeance by dearnostalgia
Summary ā āJack Marston, just nineteen and newly orphaned, has lost everything in the span of a year. When he finally decides to end it all, fate intervenesāoffering him one last chance.
Or: Time Travel Fix It AU, where Jack chaotically tries to safe everyone from their fateā
(this one ACHES. time travel fix-its often do, but this oneās my personal favorite. in progress as of posting this, but i promise itās worth it. it made me go āoh nooooā in agony several times.)
ever welcome with me by TheTenthSunrise
Summary ā āPerhaps it is some ill-begotten and twisted loyalty to his old man. Remembrance for a man who they all remember fondly but have not seen in so long. Penance for mistakes made years ago, forgiveness for how it all ended. Or maybe just some love for the little boy they all knew.
Mary-Beth Gaskill finds Jack Marston in a cell in Rhodes. The last remnants of The Van der Linde gang converge.ā
(oh yeah. more post-canon reunion shenaniganery that made me weep an ocean. if you wanna get technical, this focuses more on the other former members of the vdl gang for about half the fic, as jack is unconscious for a bunch of it, but yāknow. heās still a big part of it, and like all of the hurt and family stuff is centered right on him. one of my favorite jack fics by far!!)
and thereās more, of course, but these are the ones that have been rattling around in my head lately. plus, i didnāt want to shamelessly self-promo too blatantly. you can find my jack fics on my ao3 if you wish. iāve got four atm, three of which are jack-centric, and the fourth which is more arthur-centric, though jack does play a large role in it. more to come as well since he keeps plaguing my mind (as evidenced by my entire blog dedicated to him). i hope these fics emotionally curbstomp you as much as they did me :)
What do you think Jack would do when he somehow meets his child self from 1899?
if weāre talking 1914 jack? honestly, with how little he seems to remember of his childhood, i think heād find it hard to believe that the four-year-old boy he was in 1899 is the same person that he is now. maybe they arenāt, in a way. jack has been through a lot of hell, to the point where even his sixteen-year-old self is hard to reconcile with the little boy from the prequel.
on one hand, thereās him: jack marston, orphan, outlaw. the man who buried his mother, then put the man who killed his father and uncle in the ground when she wouldnāt be around to see it. regardless of what way he lands on the honor scale, heās lost every reason, every person he had left to live for.
on the other, still jack marston: four years old, surrounded by family that love him and would do anything to keep him safe and shield him from the worst of their crimes, even though jack himself is smart enough to draw his own conclusions. blissfully unaware of the fact that almost everyone he knows will be gone in just a handful of months.
he might feel jealous of that boy, to be able to live in that kind of innocent ignorance. or he could pity him. maybe heās even angry at his younger self, for not spending more time healing his relationship with his pa before he lost him, even though he knows why he was reticent to do so. i think, regardless, heād have a bit of a difficult time believing he used to be the kind of kid that made flower necklaces for his momma and play-fought with his pa like characters from his favorite books. the idea that heās changed so much from who he was as a child that even jack himself can scarcely draw a connection between them is depressing, but not unlikely.
doing my duty of obsessing over tiny details again: idk how many of you have played undead nightmare, but if you havenāt you should, since iām about to spoil it a little.
when jack is younger in rdr2 (aka the ages we see him at, 4 and 12 for the main story and the epilogue respectively) he tends to call abigail āmommaā. he also has a couple lines around beecherās hope where he can call her āmaāam,ā similarly to him calling john āsir,ā but thatās a different rant altogether. in rdr1, at 16, heāll almost exclusively call her āmaā. iām assuming itās supposed to show that heās grown up, and isnāt really using the slightly more childish term of address for her anymore. for a couple lines at the very start of undead nightmare, jack calls her āmother,ā in a teasingly chiding tone as well after she stabs herself with a needle and curses.
but a little bit later, (though still in the opening cutscenes of undead nightmare) after uncle attacks the family and abigail gets bitten and subsequently turned, jack runs to check on her. heās understandably distressed by, you know, the sight of his mother bleeding out on the ground. he panics and calls her āmomma,ā like he hasnāt done since he was much younger, probably because heās scared and confusedā and hurt, since he does the same thing after she bites him a couple seconds later. itās just the first time iāve heard angry 16-year-old jack sound like a little boy, or anything like the boy he was before all the effects of the trauma heās endured really started making themselves clear, and it kind of breaks my heart.
on top of that, undead nightmare isnāt even canon. now iām just sad over something i know didnāt actually happen, except the existence of it is giving me ideas. maybe, when abigail died in 1914, a 19-year-old jack called her momma for the last time, because he was scared of being alone. maybe he didnāt even get to, because she was gone before she heard it. maybe i should stop making the sad game even sadder, but we all know thatās not gonna happen.
Do you ever think of Jack just out there and he sees a wolf who somehow feels close yet distant and he gets startled at himself for thinking "Hi, pa"
Because I do :')
oh!!! why did you say that to me.
ok. fine. you asked for this. retaliatory devastation incoming.
thereās a random event at beecherās hope where you can find charles talking to jack, where he implies heās been teaching him to track animals, and remind him you can tell if a set of bones belonged to a bird because theyāre hollow. itās kind of cute and a little silly, since charles pulls a piece of wolf dung out of his pocket (?) to show jack, and the kid asks if he can keep itā if john is nearby, jack will ask if he can take him hunting sometime.
so maybe, years later, he finds tracks around the beecherās hope land leading back to tall trees, and recognizes them as wolf tracks. he never finds any traces too close to the house, and itās just the one wolf as far as he can tell. odd, as wolves usually travel in packs.
and heād know it doesnāt make sense, and his ma would tell him heās being silly, but it makes him feel almost at ease. thereās a dangerous predator prowling about, and it could hurt the livestock or rufus if he isnāt cautious, but something about it feels familiar. safe, even.
he doesnāt tell his ma, so as not to cause her any more worry than she already has to deal with, and he doesnāt engage with the wolf either. it doesnāt come any closer, but he can tell itās still there. there are tracks left just outside the fences. scraps of fur, sometimes dung. rabbits, beavers, and deer carcasses found further into the trees.
one day, nearly two years since paās been gone, he sees it. heās hunting for dinner that night, since ma has been too lethargic lately to go into town, when a lone howl alerts him to its presence. itās standing in the snow, at the foot of nekoti rock, staring at him. it doesnāt move to come closer. jack lifts his rifle, but the wolf gives no indication that it plans to attack, or even to give him the time of day. instead, it turns away and stalks off leisurely into the trees, searching for its next prey elsewhere.
if this were any ordinary wolf, jack might track it and put it down now, just to prevent any future incidentsā but it doesnāt seem like one. there was something in its eyes, something in the way it held itself. something he hesitates to give a name to.
but he could swear, the presence of the wolfā even at the times he canāt see itā makes him feel the most at ease heās felt since beecherās hope was attacked. itās not enough to fill the hole left there in the aftermath, and it never will be, but itās enough. for now.
in my heart jack stims by cracking his knuckles except he has the unholy combo of resting bitch face (scary) and being the spitting image of his father (scarier) so doing this accidentally scares the shit out of people and/or gets him into several fights slash duels that could have otherwise been avoided
