Clip On Knives

“They don’t listen to me no more…” “I know Dutch…” “They’re all turnin’ against me, no trust, no one’s stickin’ together.” “I know Dutch…” “I do my best and all people do is criticize n’ shout but no one helps me,”

Arthur remained silent, his arms still bound tight around Dutch. He let his thoughts drift with the calm winds before the next storm hit. Dutch could barely let out a squeak when he opened his lips once more.”

“You help me, Arthur.” “Always, Dutch.” “…Hosea used to help me, too. But I ain’t never listened.”

I read all your replies and decided to compile this little list! Not one, but all three of our fine young men, (if a nearly 100-year-old witcher counts as being young as well,) are up and ready to go for this challenge, and so am I. They’re my three favorite men to draw lately, so here they are!

At 5 reblogs, there will be an open shirt Arthur Morgan drawing!

At 10 reblogs, you’ll get to have a shirtless Geralt of Rivia!

At 15 reblogs, you get to see Dutch without his pants on!

At 25 reblogs, Geralt will only be in his undies!

At 35 Reblogs, Dutch will be completely naked, albeit with a censor.

And at a whopping 45 reblogs…

Geralt, Dutch Van Der Linde, and Arthur Morgan will all be completely naked in all their glory, as nude as the day they were born.

So, what are you waiting for? Reblog and tell all your buddies for the incoming shipment of nude cowboys and a witcher! All at the small fee of a few reblogs!

(Disclaimer: These drawings won’t be immediate! I have to still complete one more gift drawing as well as a commission, so be patient. However, none of these can get started without your support! Disclaimer 2: This may be the very first time I ever draw male genitalia. I’ll be posting this as NSFW on my twitter account, if I figure out how to use this damn thing. https://twitter.com/hacker_axe)

“Why don’t you put that thing back in your trousers”

Greedy Brainwashing Snake or Tragic Villain? (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS)

One of the biggest discussions about Red Dead Redemption 2 is the truth of Dutch. In the end of the game, was he just revealing his true colors, or did he fall from grace under the pressures and grief? Let’s dive into this highly complex character and his many layers and see what we can figure out!

Let’s talk about his honorable acts first. The good side he shows. After a botched robbery in Blackwater, he manages to round up most of his gang members, injured/dying and otherwise, to get away from the law and save them. In the first chapter, he openly states his worry about getting them fed and warm. He saves Sadie and brings her back to their camp. He makes sure they go back and bury her husband! He makes sure Charles stays behind to rest his injured hand. He shows worry for John, and will not allow him to go on the train heist from his injuries (as if he would be able to in the first place lol).

The gang talks about the earlier years where they actually helped people. Their first bank robbery they went around handing the money out to the poor. But over time, they had to start looking out for themselves as they become more wanted. Dutch took in unwanted misfits, saved many of them, sheltered them, fed them, educated them. He taught them how to write and read (Arthur, John, and Tilly to name a few).

In the second chapter, he visibly shows concern for Arthur after his fight with Tommy while Trelawny is talking. He looks Arthur over and when Arthur sits down Dutch also bends down to check on him. When Trelawny mentions that he knows where Sean is, Dutch jumps on the ball to get him back, despite Arthur’s concerns of the risks. Dutch says “We have to try” and sends Charles and Arthur to check it out. He also risks his life to not leave Strauss behind after he is shot in the shootout in Valentine with Cornwall’s men. As much as I hate it, he also gets Arthur to break Micah out of jail, even after he screwed up.

In chapter three, we get a good inside look at Dutch, Hosea, and Arthur’s relationship from the past up to the point of the game through several interactions and the fishing trip they take together. If Arthur accepts the horse race with Dutch, he shows love and respect for Arthur, clapping him on the shoulder and saying “I had fun with you today. I was going to say you’re like a son to me, but you’re more than that.” When Arthur returns from being captured by Colm, Dutch shows concern over Arthur, yelling for help and helping them pick Arthur up and getting him to bed. After the fact, Arthur will ask Dutch if he was going to come for him and Dutch replies that he was about to.

He will hunt Arthur down in camp if the player doesn’t hurry to Rhodes and trigger “A Short Walk in a Pretty Town” mission. He will apologize and seem really upset and guilty over what happened and say he was wrong. This, to me, says alot, because I don’t take Dutch as the kind of man to admit he was wrong so willingly. I really wish we could’ve got more insight from other camp members (most notably Hosea) on what was happening in camp while Arthur was captured. Was Dutch freaking out and planning to save Arthur? We don’t know, and I’m sure this is left open purposefully for the player to start wondering about Dutch’s intentions. I’m sure Hosea would not have allowed Dutch to not do anything however.

The assault on the Braithwaite Manor after Jack’s kidnapping is a major insight here. He wastes no time in gathering up his gang to risk their lives to go save Jack, visibly angry and willing to do whatever it takes to get him back. Later, he stays behind with Bronte alone at the risk of his own life (it could’ve been a trap) while Arthur and John did what Bronte wanted, to secure Jack’s freedom. While in Guarma, he risks going back to save Javier, something that could have easily had them captured or killed.

Later, when the gang’s loyalties are shifting, and Dutch is paranoid, he still saves Arthur from the river after the jump and sends Charles to check into saving Eagle Flies. Despite Molly’s drunken admittance of telling him she told the Pinkertons everything, Dutch, though enraged, stalls at killing her, and maybe Arthur could have talked him down, until Grimshaw shot her instead. He interrupts Micah and Arthur’s fight, and does step off the gun, despite him abandoning them both in the end (more on this in a minute). In the Epilogue, he shoots Micah.

Throughout the game, within several random interactions, Dutch shows love/concern for Arthur, John, and the gang. He calls Arthur and John “son” or “brother” a lot, values Hosea’s input and speaks highly of him and many others within the gang. He scolds Bill over his opinions of Native Americans, saying “what he saw was people who lost everything to savagery”. And also says to Arthur “don’t you ever leave love aside, it’s all we got”. There are three distinct ways he will bust Arthur out of jail if he is captured, risking his own hide to do so. When Hosea is killed, he is visibly shaken and shocked, before becoming enraged. He shows regret/sadness when he abandons Arthur in the end and is left speechless. For a man who has a silver tongue and can talk his way into and out of anything, this speechlessness is a defining moment for Dutch, brought on by shock and guilt no doubt. In the Epilogue, when John asks why he is here, Dutch replies “Same as you, I suppose” indicating he may have been there to kill Micah, and that he “doesn’t have much to say no more”, which again reflects a major change to what he used to be.

Now, let’s move on to his dishonorable acts. Despite preaching that revenge is folly, or a luxury they cannot afford, he goes out of his way in several instances to exact revenge. Although each of these acts of vengeance do have a logical reason behind them, I will get to that in a moment. He risks the gang’s lives wreaking revenge on the Braithwaites in a violent, ruthless manner (although he does give them a chance to peacefully hand over the boy). It may have been mostly about Jack, but this was also about Dutch getting played and he wanted revenge for that. The same thing happened with Bronte. He ruthlessly drowns Bronte and feeds him to an alligator out of anger, major overboard huh? Even though telling Arthur it wasn’t about revenge against Cornwall, Dutch walked into Annesburg with the sole purpose to kill him, partially because he wanted to. And then there is Colm, which isn’t really one that needs explaining.

How does Dutch justify these acts of revenge? The Braithwaites are self explanatory. They deserved it for kidnapping and potentially harming a young boy. It was violent, but Dutch wanted to get his point across, especially to Catherine. Bronte was the very beast that Dutch fought against, the very symbol of corrupt civilization he despised. Bronte set them up, took Jack, and ran the city of Saint Denis with corrupt power. Leaving him alive was a loose end to the gang, and Dutch knew that. Cornwall, yet another evil that Dutch fought against in his beliefs, funded the Pinkertons to destroy Dutch and the gang. Killing him would leave the Pinkertons without the money or means to pursue them with the amount of men, resources, etc that they did within the game, potentially allowing the gang to escape. And Colm? It’s all about Annabelle.

Despite Cornwall funding the Pinkertons, Dutch just wanted to kill him for the hell of it as well. By this time, Dutch was on the brink of insanity. But he saw this as an opportunity to destroy one evil he often preached about. He despised what Cornwall represented, and that is why he enjoyed it. He took it as overcoming a demon he fought in his own philosophy.

Dutch leaves John behind twice. He abandons Arthur in the oil factory to his death, and he is only saved by Eagle Flies. He killed the old, blind lady in Guarma when he didn’t necessarily have to. He abandons Abigail when she is captured, and he doesn’t do anything about Micah killing Miss Grimshaw. He abandons Arthur in the end, leaving him to die alone. He hid a bunch of money from the gang in the end.

He used wronged Native Americans to cause a war with the U.S Army to create a distraction for the gang to escape, knowing this could kill so many innocents. This is a good insight into how and why Dutch was using Native Americans in the first game as well.

He thought Molly was a rat, even though she wasn’t, but knew there was someone else. It’s easy to assume he started thinking it was Arthur or John because of their doubts/questioning him all the time. Arthur went against him in several instances (for good reason of course, but Dutch didn’t see it that way). So it’s easy to say that this played a part in why he ditched them in their time of need. When Arthur insists that Dutch let John and his family go, this was direct betrayal to Dutch (in his mind) as he was already uncertain where the two of them stood with him. He could’ve thought that John was the spy because he was captured rather than killed at the Saint Denis bank job, and probably further drilled into his head by Micah. Arthur opposing Dutch to help the others would make Dutch think he was the traitor, a spy, and he already knew that Agent Milton offered Arthur a deal before.

I genuinely believe that Dutch didn’t try to save John in the midst of the Saint Denis bank job because he just watched his best friend and partner of 20+ years get killed right in front of him. This would put anyone in shock, would affect their decision making and rational thought. The old, blind lady didn’t have to be killed, could’ve been knocked out, but Dutch is on survivor mode here, people. “I’m just trying to make sure some of us survive, Arthur.” He wouldn’t be thinking straight after what they went through in Guarma already, especially when she pulled a knife on him. Now was she going to betray them? I highly doubt it, this was just Dutch’s reasoning to quell Arthur. Then again, if not paid more, she could have alerted Fussar’s forces, we will never quite know for sure.

Heidi McCourt, the the innocent woman he shot on the ferry in Blackwater is an unfortunate circumstance. We know the Blackwater job was Micah’s idea, that Arthur and Hosea felt it was a bad idea, but Dutch was disillusioned by Micah’s scheme. Not much is known about this situation, things escalated quickly, Dutch was probably cornered and egged by Micah to pull the trigger to give them time to escape, similar how he does this to another innocent woman in RDR1, when he is a shadow of his former self and a completely different man. It’s stated in game by John that Heidi’s killing was encouraged by Micah. He pushed Dutch to shoot her. I am in no way condoning Dutch’s actions here, but again this was a life or death situation for which he had to choose to get out with his life. Humans will do very selfish things when they are cornered and their life is in imminent danger.

Now after Hosea dies, things go to shit in a hand-basket quite hastily. Micah quickly jumps at this chance to get in Dutch’s ear. You know what he is trying to do. He wants Dutch to turn on Arthur and John, he wants him to “trim the fat” off the gang, which means ditching the weak. Arthur going against Dutch (for good reason, I cannot express this enough), on top of Micah persuading Dutch into rash and violent decisions plays a big part here. He made Dutch distrust Arthur and John. And Arthur getting weaker and weaker from TB only enabled Micah to get that much more influence over Dutch. I think this is why Dutch hid the money. He was paranoid, didn’t know who to trust, or where he could go next with it.

Let’s talk about Hosea. He was Dutch’s right hand man and brother/best friend for over 20 years. Can you imagine the guilt, shock, and sorrow you would feel watching him die in front of you, and it was your fault? Not only that, Hosea was the wise one, he was Dutch’s moral compass. He was the one who kept Dutch grounded, and talked him out of stupid or risky heists/ideas. He was the only one besides maybe Arthur who could talk him down or change his mind. He was the angel on his shoulder, if you would. The glue that kept his mind stable.

He openly speaks and shows how much he misses Hosea in the game. He knew what Hosea was to him.

This, on top of the severe head injury he gets from the trolley crash makes the last chapters of the game make quite a bit of sense in what he does and how he acts. Not much was known about head injuries back then. Dutch said he was “seeing three of everything” and spoke about not feeling well. Head injuries like this untreated can and will lead to poor decision making, paranoia, sleeplessness, mood swings and mood changes, impulsiveness, aggression/depression, denial, distrust, disinhibition, loss in reasoning, lack of empathy, and confusion. Hearing noise. All of which are symptoms that Dutch show following the crash to the end.

His compulsive need to cause noise (distractions away from their gang to escape) and destruction in the later chapters stem from the head injury that affected any kind of ability to rationalize or think things through.

Mix this with the stress of having to feed/shelter 20 people and relocating them to safety several times, the stress of decision making to ensure the survival of the gang, the stress of losing loved ones, the stress of constant pressures and dangers, the stress of feeling there is no hope/escape, and you have yourself a monster, ladies and gentlemen.

In the end, Dutch only cared about who was against him, not loyal to him. There is a difference, and causes his downfall.

I think Dutch does put on a charade to an extent. He shows signs of brainwashing his followers into believing what he wants. His speeches, his pretty words, his charming nature, all betray an inner cult leader. But I do think he really cares about the people he has pulled in, at least most of them. I don’t think he meant it when he said he would put himself in the place of Davey/Jenny/Mac if he could, but was just trying to reassure the gang. I do think he would’ve risked his life for Arthur and Hosea and even John at one time though.

He does not like any threat to his leadership or decisions. This is a pride/ego problem, and doesn’t make him a villain but a flawed man. It can certainly help drive him to his downfall, however. He believes in blind loyalty and faith to his ideals, and expects this from the gang. He says he doesn’t keep anyone there, that they can leave the gang whenever they want (so long as they don’t betray the gang). Hosea spoke of leaving for awhile and then returning, and Arthur tried as well. So Dutch did let them go, and they returned to him on their own. But I also suspect that Dutch uses his charm/skills to talk anyone out of leaving, or make them feel bad enough that they don’t, that it is their fault if they do, or whatever he thinks would keep them around.

I think he wholeheartedly believes in his philosophy and ideas/beliefs, and realizes the time is coming that it is impossible to make it happen. I think he has always shown violent tendencies and is greedy/selfish to a certain point, but it was Hosea and Arthur that kept him in check. After Hosea’s death, his head injury, Arthur’s furthering sickness, his own insecurities and fears and Micah getting in his ear influenced him and pushed him over the edge. The Dutch from the beginning wouldn’t have left Arthur behind. He would’ve planned right away to try and get John back.

People don’t give Micah enough credit, thinking he was too stupid to be able to play someone as intelligent as Dutch. No, the man was a snake, and he knew exactly what he was doing, seeing every single opportunity to manipulate Dutch, taking advantage of the gang’s plights, Arthur’s sickness, and Dutch’s own inner chaos and fears and guilt.

Using the Native Americans is Dutch’s most dishonorable and manipulative action he does in game besides leaving Arthur and John. But by this point, he is a completely different man than he was before. This was the height of his madness, and he is blinded by self-preservation. Chapters before this he sympathized with them and scolded anyone who talked down about them (i.e Bill in Revenge is a Dish Best Eaten). The Native Americans were oppressed and uprooted by the very thing that Dutch despised. He understood them. And while he was eager to sympathize and defend them earlier in the game, it morphed into a way to use them once he fell from grace. Thus, enlightening us on why he uses them in RDR1. Who else could hate the U.S government more than Dutch himself?

In the end, when Arthur was dying and he said “I gave you all I had”, you could see the absolute guilt/hurt on Dutch’s face. He realized right then and there what he had done, that Arthur was right. He couldn’t speak! Dutch was speechless for the first time in the game, and this is a big deal. He was in so much shock, he could only walk away. He didn’t go with Micah. He was so ashamed he left Arthur’s side. In the Epilogue, you can tell he is a broken man and a shadow of his former self, and this only explains why he becomes the way he is in RDR1.

Some people aren’t sure if Dutch knew about the money in the Epilogue, that he walked away from John knowing nothing about it. Some think he left it behind for John. I don’t think it was either. I think Dutch knew about the money. You know Micah wouldn’t keep his mouth shut and would boast about getting the money from Blackwater to try and woo Dutch into working with him again. But I don’t think he “left it for John”. I think at that moment in time, after he shot Micah, it was all for Arthur. The money was no longer important to him. He didn’t want it anymore. In RDR1 he isn’t out for money, only fighting back the system, fighting what he has always believed to be evil. He shot Micah and left because he was there “same as John” for Arthur.

The man we see in RDR1 is a broken man, unhinged, pushed over the edge and cornered. He doesn’t care about money anymore, just about destroying what he considers evil, and does whatever it takes to accomplish this. He has nothing to lose. He has already lost it all, and he knows it is his fault. He realizes what he has done and regrets it but cannot stop fighting.

In conclusion, I do think Dutch was at one time a flawed man who did bad things, who truly believed in his philosophy and that he was doing something good/right. He actually preaches some hardcore truths. I believe he is a bad man, but not an evil one. I do believe that he was manipulative and greedy to a degree. I think he always had a tendency for violence, and it just got worse because of the adrenaline rush and other factors within the game. I do think he cared about his gang, especially Hosea, Arthur, and John. Dutch “going crazy” was a surprise to most of the gang members. If he had been “showing his true colors” I think that would have happened far sooner than it did in the game.

Sadie comments that she thinks Dutch was a good man turned bad, that by the end of the game he wasn’t the same man that saved her and put a blanket over her. Sadie has pretty good perception into other characters, so I’m willing to believe her judgment. But I will not disregard John’s feelings either. With the right people around him (particularly Hosea), Dutch could be good. But the wrong people around him (Micah), could bring out a darker person.

There are a lot of pressures being a leader like this, taking care of that many people while being hunted by the law. Dutch couldn’t handle it, especially when he felt he lost his most trusted allies. I don’t think he showed his “true colors” in the end, I think these are just flaws he has within his complex character. I think the pressures and consequences of their lifestyle, bad decisions, and encroaching law and civilization took its toll on Dutch. I think losing people he held dear, Micah manipulating him, and his head injury just made him completely lose it. In the final moments of his life, Dutch realized and regretted all that he had done. He realized he wasn’t an all powerful force that would change the world, but just a man, but couldn’t fight his own nature. And in the end, he was also right. The government found “another monster” to “justify their wages”. And they would continue on doing so…

“Fordsy insisted on making a new journal that covers flatlanders as a species, so he’s been incessantly going about it. Let me show my favorite page so far.”