I Wish They Ended Up Together Tournament - ROUND 2 MATCHUP 22
Ryan Erzahler & Dylan Lenivy vs Arthur Morgan & John Marston
Ryan Erzahler & Dylan Lenivy (The Quarry)
Arthur Morgan & John Marston (Red Dead Redemption)
Remaining time: 1 day 14 hours
Propaganda:
Ryan & Dylan
Okay, so there is a canon romantic element here - they flirt, Dylan asks for his number, and Ryan can choose to kiss Dylan at the truth or dare game. HOWEVER. After the entire game building up their relationship, at the last hour they send Ryan off to go to the lodge with Laura AND HAVE THEM FLIRT? To the point Kaitlyn and Dylan have a conversation about how Ryan's real "type" is clearly Laura rather than either of them, and when Laura asks Ryan if he's interested in Dylan/Kaitlyn he says "maybe neither"?!?!?! Huh?!??! When Laura's entire motivation the entire game has been to rescue her BOYFRIEND SHE ALREADY HAS? Absolutely not Supermassive. It was so out of left field and bizarre and I've never met a single player who's actually liked this swerve or relationship dynamic.
Dylan brings Ryan out of his shell without acting like Ryan has to become a completely different person. He teases him, worries about him, follows him to the radio hut, and keeps trying to make him laugh even while everything is going horribly wrong. Ryan’s whole thing is that he’s guarded, awkward, and hard to read, so the fact Dylan keeps trying anyway gives their dynamic a really cute push-pull. Ryan, in turn, takes Dylan seriously when it matters. Their radio hut section has actual partnership energy - Dylan making jokes because he’s scared, Ryan staying focused but still listening to him, and then the whole chainsaw/amputation choice making their bond feel like one of the most intense counselor dynamics in the game.
They absolutely should have committed to Ryan/Dylan as an actual couple and at the very least given some kind of hint that they would stay in contact and explore things post-game
Arthur & John
I will go insane if one more person says this ship is incest. They are not siblings. They are not adoptive brothers. They were in the Van der Linde gang from teenagehood together, but that's more akin to childhood friends and partners in crime than literal brothers. Everyone in the gang refers to one another with familial terms - father, uncle, brother, sister, kid - and multiple of them still have canon romantic and sexual relationships. At one point Dutch calls Hosea brother and people love shipping those two, and Arthur also calls Dutch brother yet everyone sees them as more like father-son. "Brother" is literally just an affectionate term to call someone, it does not mean "I can never develop feelings for this person because we are now Literally Siblings and it would Be Incest now that I've said that". So many ships have used brother language towards each other and no one's cared, like for example Destiel with "You're like a brother to me", one of Tumblr's most beloved ships. SEEING them as having a brotherly bond is fine, but whenever anyone ships them they get hit with "Errmmm akshually that's incest" and it drives me crazy. We have lost the plot. Okay just had to get that out of my system. ANYWAY. Their arc is already one of the emotional cores of Red Dead Redemption 2. They have years of history, resentment, loyalty, jealousy, disappointment, and finally this brutal kind of care that only comes out when everything else has fallen apart. Arthur spends so much of the game angry at John for leaving the gang (and him- who said that.). He thinks John ran from responsibility. He thinks he wasted the second chance Arthur never really got. Then by the end, Arthur is the one pushing him toward that second chance. He saves him from prison, keeps telling him to leave when the time is right, and in the final mission gives him his hat and satchel. That kills me. Arthur’s last useful act is making sure John lives. John carries that for the rest of his life. He keeps his hat. He uses Arthur’s ring to propose to Abigail. He keeps Arthur’s memory even when talking about him hurts. I just think there’s so much there if you read the bitterness and devotion as something romantic too - two men who grew up together, hurt each other, understood each other too late, and loved each other enough that one of them died making sure the other got out.
