#the griffithlets

[squidproquoclarice]

Whenever Mattie is mentioned in Sunrise, my heart is just so full of love. I know we haven't seen that much of him yet, but he always seems so cute and gentle and sweet. Yes, baby, I will get you a pony, of course I will :'( Even two. All the ponies for you, my boy!

I love writing both Bea and Mattie.  A lot of stories tend to skip from the proposal or wedding or pregnancy discovery to the HEA epilogue with the kids, but it feels important to me to write Arthur and Sadie actually being parents and growing and changing from that, given that the longing for a peaceful life with a home, a partner, and children is at the heart of both of their stories and their development.  and that means letting the kids be individuals in their own right rather than story props.  I wasn’t sure who they’d be when I started writing, and given Mattie was only one and Bea was two in Chapter 11 (Minnewakan) it’s really here in 1907 I’m getting to discover their personalities far more too.Mattie, like Sadie observes, feels a lot like the gentlest, sweetest parts of Arthur, a sort of purer, undamaged version of him.  If Beatrice was still alive, I suspect she’d confirm that a four-year-old Arthur was very much like that.  If things had turned out differently, and Arthur had grown up with a far less traumatic and abusive childhood, he would likely have been able to show that kind, empathetic, generous side far more easily than he did for many years.  I’ll guess that both he and Sadie will fight hard for Mattie to be able to be that kind of man and not let the world force him into a more toxic mold of masculinity.Could change by the end, but as it stands, I HC that Mattie will likely end up helping Felipe in New Caledonia as he grows older, and eventually becoming a doctor.  Much like his daddy, he likes helping people and it makes him happy.  ;) 

[squidproquoclarice]

Do you have something for Arthur for Father's Day?

Well, I did start Chapter XI in timely fashion for that.  I don’t have a specific prompt, but have a little bit of ch 34 and some father/son time here. 

(For those not reading Sunrise, this is April 1904, up at the new Wapiti home of Minnewakan, in the Canadian province of New Caledonia.  Robert Matthew “Mattie” is a little over a year old.)

~~~~~~~~~~

Up and at it early, he quickly scented out that Mattie needed some attention, left sighing at the mess.  Leaving Bea and Sadie sleeping, he tended to it, digging through their things to find a clean diaper and washrags, given they’d been too tired to fully unpack last night.

 “I do love you, boy,” he told his son, “but you are impressively full of shit.”  Bea hadn’t been nearly so creative in wriggling out of her diaper either.  “Where the hell you making all of it from, I ask you?  Ain’t like your diet’s changed.”  

Mattie gave him an almost apologetic smile as Arthur fastened the pins in the clean diaper, looking up at him with those hazel eyes so like Sadie’s, and saying “Da?”

“You’re real lucky you’re cute,” he said dryly, but couldn’t resist picking him up, holding him tight, breathing in the–now blessedly shit-free–soap-and-baby scent of him.  Not putting a clean gown on him just yet, walking out onto the porch, letting both of them get some morning sunlight and fresh air.  Peaceful still, barely just dawn, a few people out and about, moving with that languid, sleepy air of folks working their way to wakefulness.  

He sat there on one of the chairs on the porch, letting Mattie drowse against his chest, giving him a gentle pat on the back, talking lowly to him.  Intending to get him to sleep and then go put him back to bed for it, but wanting to enjoy the spring morning up here for a few minutes.  “Got some squirrels in them trees there.  And you hear that? Got a bluejay calling.  Looks like some mint growing there too.  Your Grandpa Hosea taught me a lot about the wilds, and your momma and your Uncle Charles too.  You just met him last night, sure, but he’s a good man.  One of the finest I know.  You’re pretty little for all of it yet, but maybe your sister and me should go for a walk later.  No point either of you two getting to be as old and dumb as I was about all of it.”

Dozing off himself a bit, he snapped awake at the sound of a footfall, a creak of the wood as someone stepped up onto that porch, reaching instinctively for a gun that wasn’t there, because both his and Sadie’s gunbelts were hung up on a hook far too high for Bea to reach.  Mattie jostled awake too, and he automatically started shushing and comforting the boy, anticipating the alarm at Arthur’s startled lurch.  But he settled quickly, and Arthur glanced up from him at the man who’d come to call.    

Given he was there on the porch of this cabin in bare feet, suspenders down around his hips, wearing an untucked and water-splashed shirt only mostly buttoned, hair still a sleep tousled mess, and clutching a baby in nothing but his cloth diaper, he wasn’t exactly what he’d call fit for receiving company.  But then, the man himself had once joked dryly about lacking the grandeur of a conventional king.

“Hello, sir,” he said to Rains Fall.   

[squidproquoclarice]

Can I ask for a spoiler? Bea and Mattie are adorable but do you plan for Sadie and Arthur to have any more kids after them?

So yeah, the ones thus far are: Beatrice May (1902, born in Chuparosa, Nuevo Paraiso), and Robert Matthew (1903, born in Chuparosa, Nuevo Paraiso).

Sadie and Arthur would love more kids, but given the way things are right now in 1904 with money and security being tough, they’ve put that off for now.  Plus already having two kids under the age of 3 at once is hard, even if their lives were more secure.There definitely will be at least one more Griffithlet.  Susan Rose, Susie, will come along in 1908.  (They’ll have discussed “Elizabeth” for Bessie but given not wanting to bring up memories of Eliza too, they figured Bessie would understand.)  I’m not saying location just yet because that’s a spoiler for that particular Chapter.  ;)Beyond Susie, that’s still undecided.  They certainly wouldn’t mind, but given Sadie will be 40 and Arthur nearly 45 by the time Susie comes along, they might be more hesitant just in the interest of “If we have kids once we get much older, we might not be here all that long in their lives.” He’ll already be near 70 when Susie’s 25ish and actually grown, as opposed to just legally being an adult.  If it happened, it’d likely be like Bea and Mattie with a quick double-up on childbearing.  I don’t really see Arthur being willing to father a child past about 1909 or 1910 and risk not being there for them, given how sensitive he is to that idea after Isaac.

[squidproquoclarice]

Hi Squid! I've been re-reading some chapters of Sunrise today and thought about Arthur and his little horse-crazy girl. Are we going to see Arthur teaching the Bean how to ride a horse? (don't know how to handle that cuteness, though!)

(waves)  You know with as much of a giddy horse girl as Arthur Morgan Griffith is, at least one of his kiddos would get that trait passed on.  ;)  As for learning to ride, Bea’s a little young for it yet in Chapter 11, since she’s only two, but maaaaybe in 1907 when she’s five!

[squidproquoclarice]

TWO Griffifthlets!

Yuuuuup! ;)  Now that it’s not a spoiler, the Griffithlets we meet in 1904 are:Beatrice May/”Bea” Griffith (named for Arthur’s mom/Calderon’s birth name, and Sadie’s mom), born January 24th, 1902Robert Matthew/”Mattie” Griffith (named for Sadie’s dad and Hosea’s surname), born February 18th, 1903Bonus round, Griffithlet “cousin” Daniel Alan/”Danny” Jones (just two names Karen likes because her opinion is “I ain’t naming my boy for dead folk, we got too many of those”), born March 7th, 1902

[squidproquoclarice]

Will Bea and Mattie meet Mary’s kids if they go to the circus?

They likely would, but as is, I'm not planning to write that directly. There are a lot of things in Sunrise that I'm not writing in the main story. I'm looking at a lot of that content (things like hinting about the Wendigo, more with Charles and Karen's romance, the Griffith and Bennett kids meeting, developing minor chars more) as being like all the optional content from RDR2. They're the challenges, the Strangers, the weird and interesting shit you just run across by exploring. They're the "white icon" missions, if you will. They're amazing, and they add more color and fun to the story, but they're optional diversions from the main plotline.What I'm doing is writing the "gold icon" missions--the main plotline. And that plotline is Arthur, Sadie, and their growth as individuals and as a couple through the years. That's already a huge story. So while I probably won't write things like that in the main narrative except in hints, they might eventually show up in Trail (my prompts collection), especially if people request them.

[squidproquoclarice]

For the Asks requesting a ficlet about a Griffithlet birth and/or Danny, yep, I’m putting that on my list.  I did want to hit the timeskip so we move forward and where we left it at the end of ch 32 felt like a good jump-off point rather than hanging around another 4-6 months solely for a birth scene(s)--it felt like it’d throw the pacing off in the bigger picture.  But I’m happy to write it as additional content/a deleted scene because sometimes we do need just pure fluff.  :) I’m just keeping those Asks rather than answering them with this, so that I actually answer one of them with that prompt.

[squidproquoclarice]

I look forward to a new chapter of Sunrise every week! It’s my favorite RDR2 fic and probably my fav fic of all time. I have a question that sort of relates to a previous ask about the final showdown on the mountain. Sadithur would have very young kids at this point, will Abigail (and Uncle haha) be the ones watching the Griffithlets while Arthur and Sadie are on that mountain confronting Micah and Dutch?

Aw, thank you! On the weekly thing, I haven't started ch 25, admittedly. I've jotted some notes, but the weekend and the week so far have been pretty brutal. I'm hoping to maybe get a start on it tomorrow. I'm as interested to see Sadie and Arthur now as all of you as delightfully happy dorks. ;)OK, so Mount Hagen. Take anything I'm saying about beyond, like, the next two chapters as very loose speculation rather than gospel as a general rule of thumb, given I firmly give the characters the reins. But Mount Hagen's a big enough deal as a tentpole plot piece that I think you can probably 95% count on a showdown with Micah and Dutch there in 1907 unless there's a very unexpected left turn along the way.Sadithur would have young kiddos, yes. It's April of 1901, so the earliest they'd have a child now is sometime in 1902. (That would have been true now even if they literally went home from Ojo del Diablo, slept together, and conceived a child that same day, and clearly, that didn't happen, plus as I've remarked, once they're getting intimate, they're probably doing a few months of contraception anyway to just enjoy time with each other first.) So the oldest any Griffithlet could be at that point in 1907 is only 5. If there's more than one--probably gonna happen--they'd be even younger.It's an interesting reversal of 1899 given that in 1907 it's Arthur and Sadie, not John and Abigail, with the very young child(ren) who need their parents, and who could most easily choose to bow out of the mission because of it. But there's also the compelling need to go take care of Micah as a debt of honor, and honestly because clearly the law is not having much success taking him down. So yeah, they'll go, and the kiddos will likely stay at Beecher's Hope with Abigail (and Uncle, dear God).It's probably going to mean a lot to Abigail that Sadie would trust the kids to her, given she knows what that means: if they don't come back, Sadie's effectively asking her to be their mom in her stead. It means a lot to her too that Arthur would trust her with that and ask, given how he stepped in as a surrogate father to Jack when John was unready to do it. The Marstons and Morgan-Griffiths might not have seen each other for a few years, but those ties between them are still extremely tight all the same.And let's hope Uncle doesn't corrupt them too much. ;)