Miles

I AM THE CITY.

BE VIGILANT.

Dutch isn’t a groomer.

​it also really rubs me wrong when people talk about how dutch is greedy and is motivated by money, too. like... he very clearly is not? obviously he is concerned about money, as is everyone in the WHOLE GAME, but that's not what his entire life revolves around. he donates money to the camp and talks about how much he cares about the gang and wants them to be stable. his motivation for money is to make sure the people he cares about are well taken care of and safe.

i'm gonna link a great video about dutch's mental health, i encourage y'all to watch it.

Hello tumblr rdr space! I do not go here, but I post on tiktok sometimes and have a dear buddy of mine who ive been talking to about some posts on here!

I will post a proper introduction at a later date, but for now I would like to put my own two cents in on some stuff ive been seeing recently, about Dutch.

Dutch is an incredibly COMPLEX character, and I feel that some people really horrifically miss that point sometimes. whether it be "Oh, he bonked his head!" or "Oh, this man is a monster!" both points are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but I believe they greatly miss the overarching theme of his character and who he is, and was, as a person. To merely dismiss all of his actions by saying "oh, hes just a monster, abuser, groomer, thats why hes the way that he is" shows nothing above a surface level understanding of his character, nor the characters of the people around him and those who choose to work with him. These characters were designed to have depth, to be studied, and understood on a deeper level. Why take such a basic explanation? I am not here to say Dutch is not without flaws (because he has alot of those), but I AM here to say that calling dutch a "groomer" or some sort of "cult leader, master manipulator" is just, factually incorrect.

Firstly, with the grooming point. This is an incredibly stigmatized word nowadays, so its crazy to use in general here, but by no means were people "groomed" into being outlaws. These people had flaws of their own, took bad paths, and ended up crossing paths with Dutch. Why did they cross paths with him? Well, I went through every "how they joined the gang" story I could find, and its about a 50/50 split between they tried to rob or kill dutch, Or that they were on the run and dutch gave them a safe place to stay, with some exceptions. The odds of these people bumping into someone far worse, in all cases, are exceptional. Most of the gang were in bad places when dutch found them, and they were getting desperate. Its incredibly possible they wouldve bumped into someone who wouldve killed them instead. John was saved from being hanged. Had Dutch and Hosea not been there, he wouldve died. Arthur outright says "dutch saved me, saved most of us." and although things did not turn out right at the end of the day, to believe that dutch was nothing more than a power-hungry manipulator is shown to be incorrect in the media itself. Colm exists. Hes literally right there. An antagonist who; doesnt know the names of the men in his gang, is shown to hit Kieran, who cares more for numbers than connection. Their feud goes back YEARS, and it all seems to stem from a fatal disagreement about how things were being run. When they split paths, Dutch keeps a tight knit gang of people who he considers family, Colm continues to grow his gang in numbers. At the very start of the game, dutch makes it clear that hed prefer the gang doesnt split up, that they stick together so *he can be sure everyone is okay.* He shows sympathy for Sadies situation, and takes her in to help her. Not once is it stated shes obligated to be there, in fact, its stated that she can stay as long as she needs to, to get back on her feet. She has the final say on whether she stays in the gang or not. The reason so many people stayed in the gang until it was actively collapsing, is not because dutch was forcing them to stay. They saw him as family just as he saw them.

Its why his character arc is so interesting. Its why watching his downfall is impactful. he ISNT a bad man, he does bad things out of desperation towards the end of the game, just as other gang members did in the very beginning. Dutch had bad tendencies, but he had people there to help him stay on the right track. His beliefs were good, its why he had people who stuck with him. They believed in what he taught. He had incredibly intelligent people in his gang, I'll use Lenny and Hosea as my examples for now. Lenny was taught by his father to judge peoples character, and even if his time with the gang was short he absolutely wouldve picked up on dutchs behavior if he was hiding behind some sort of mask. and HOSEA, has been with the dude for 20 YEARS. You cannot fake something for that long, and hosea is far from stupid aswell. He is a conman by nature. If dutch was trying to con everyone, surely he wouldve noticed. Arthur still regards dutch incredibly highly for a good majority of the game. He sees the man as a mentor and is clearly deeply affected watching dutch spiral and do bad things as the game goes on. At the beginning, when told Dutch had shot a girl on the blackwater job, his first response is to say that it "doesnt sound like him". Dutch is shown to have remorse for his actions, although he chooses to rarely talk about blackwater, and avoids the subject when its brought up, he explains to hosea, with shame, that he "really messed up" in blackwater. Micah had egged dutch on (as stated by John in a camp interaction) and dutch is shown to be regretful, that job really put everything in motion, but I truly believe micahs manipulation is what changed dutch.

Micah fed into his impulsive side, and tried to reassure him when things went wrong. When Arthur was kidnapped by Colm, Micah explained that Arthur was the type to wander, and surely, theyd see him back at camp. Dutch, ONCE AGAIN, shows regret. He shouldnt have put Arthur in such a position, and knows it. Dutch has impulsive tendencies, he has paranoid thoughts. This is shown in multiple camp interactions and even stated in one of the games first journal entries about the land they were going to settle on before the ferry job. To simply blow off all the depth of his character by saying "oh, hes bad" is so,, lame? Why focus on dutch specifically to say he did all of these bad things on his own accord when micah is, right there. Dutch literally goes crawling back to him in the epilogue. Partly for revenge, since seeing arthur on the cliffside was able to briefly break him out of the funk hed been in for the last few months (albeit far too late), but also partly because I dont think he knows how to be alone. I dont think he can handle it. Hosea and Arthur had been by his side the longest, and he had to watch both of them die. Late game conversations between dutch and arthur have always been fascinating to me, and even in Guarma dutch is still set on going back to keep the gang together. Thats his family, and he cannot lose them too. He outright states he'll do whatever it takes to make sure they survive. Arthur is startled by this, as dutch has been shown to be deadly and irrational, he isnt processing things well, and cannot handle the pressure on his shoulders, and it certainly doesnt help that Micah is in his ear telling him that Arthur and John are betraying him. He clearly doesnt want to believe it, but he cannot wrap his head around hoseas death, and assumes that the only way it couldve happened was if someone ratted, completely overlooking micah.

Dutch is not a smart man, and truthfully, he should have never been in a position of power, but he is not evil. He was desperate, and he was trying to keep his family together. Although I do not agree with the "Trolley Theory" for reasons stated above, I highly doubt him bashing his head like that helped with his mental state either. Dutch is desperate. Dutch does bad things, but he is far from a bad man. He helped the people in his gang, and although the found family turned sour in the end, they mattered to him, and it mattered to the gang. Dutch, CANONICALLY, was not always "bad" either. Arthur, Dutch, and Hosea robbed a bank, took what they needed, and gave the rest to the local orphanage. Dutch scolded Arthur for robbing someone who was "too poor" and said that doing that made them just as bad as the system they were fighting against, Dutch helped Hosea get on the right track and stopped him from stealing just about anything he could get his hands on. Dutch is a man who had good ideologies, and wanted to help people in his own way, but the pressures kept adding up and it broke him. Dutch, in RDR1, is a more objectively "bad" character, But look at how they fleshed him out in rdr2. Was the cliff scene nearly as impactful before the release of rdr2? absolutely not! Playing as john, we were thrown in with a baseline knowledge of their history, and now knowing the full story makes the cliff scene quite the harrowing experience if youre able to grasp the intricacies of dutchs character, to look at him as more than "just a villain".

Something I disagree with: (1) in epilogue, it is obviously implied that Dutch just showed up not long before John. Micah said ‘all manners of folks paying social call these days’, implying Dutch only be there for days, if not hours. He was there to kill Micah and nothing else. I can imagine being alone after the gang collapsed surely was uncomfortable for Dutch, but there’s nothing in canon showing that he cannot be alone. After all he was there on his own from 1899-1907, and to 1911 before he formed the gang in rdr1.

And (2) in rdr1 Dutch is one of the few ‘villains’ that already has lots of depth. He did not show up on the screen much, but ppl talked about him a lot. In a conversation between John, Ross and his assistant, his assistant said something like ‘I know it’s easy to sympathize with Dutch. The guy makes sense.’ And proceed to discuss an analogy of a beautiful flower of something (sorry I forgot). But the point is even at this point, Dutch’s utopia dream still has hell lot of appeal. One of the rdr writers when explaining why they decided to spend lots of time on Dutch in rdr2 said, ‘in rdr1, Dutch’s shadow looms over everyone’s head, and we decided it’s a good idea to explore more in the second game’. In comparison, Bill and Javier in rdr1 are … well, basically plot devices, which is a shame.

Besides from those two I agree with most of other stuff said in the post. Something I wanna add is, some ppl accuse Dutch of ‘having the money to make a safe escape all the time but refuse to bc he wanted to be an outlaw for life, and thus cause lots of unnecessary death’. And this assumption is incorrect in two ways: (1) they don’t have money for a safe escape all the time. Player’s money is not gang’s money (rdr2 has a real fuck-up economic system) and all the gang money is recorded in the first page of Arthur’s journal. Before the final train robbery in chapter 6 when the gang has already split beyond repair, there is around 19k, and even Arthur said this is not enough in the trolley station robbery in chapter 4. And (2) Dutch being an outlaw after rdr2 while having all the money in the world (black water money 150k) doesn’t mean he has planned to do this in the very beginning. I’m sure he indeed considered settled down cuz there’s an entry in Arthur’s journal “Dutch seems to struggle between his dream escape and to prove something, as for what Idk, not sure he does”. BUT the theme of the game is that there’s no utopia. Tahiti or the virgin land in the west, they’re all gonna be conquered by ‘civilization’. It’s not Dutch doesn’t want to escape. It’s that there’s nowhere to go.

Bonus: in a conversation between Sean and Arthur on their way to rob a homestead, Sean said ‘ppl should stop giving Dutch shit about the ferry job. The man ain’t a fortune teller.’ And Arthur replied, “Well ppl always want to find someone to blame when things go wrong.” It bizarrely echoes what happened in real life, in rdr2 fandom: when things go wrong, ppl simply want to find someone to blame. Even when the game tells you EXPLICITLY, ‘our time is passed’. Said TWICE in both games, once by Arthur and once by Dutch.