hey there mister!

john:

https://forms.gle/tHKYmD4DjACWMHin6

Oh I’m firmly in Camp Molly O'Shea Deserved So Much Better.

She’s obviously from a decently well-to-do family. It’s derisively remarked upon by several people. She also seems to have the demeanor of a woman used to having expectations of ready domestic service, which would be a hallmark of a middle-to-upper-class family. She spends a great deal of time looking after her appearance early in the game, which also fits having the leisure time to devote to primping as opposed to the constant labor of keeping house in a pre-electric-appliances era.

She emigrated from Ireland, which was likely overwhelming enough an experience even before everything she got caught up in. My guess is she perhaps went to visit relatives in the US–if she’d been obliged to emigrate due to family misfortune, I don’t think she’d have ended up acting as she did. She’d likely have been more cautious.

Well-to-do girl, possibly stuck on a prosperous farm in the middle of nowhere (as the VDLs seemingly typically avoid cities), meets a smooth-talking older man who seduces her, as he’s charmed many others under his sway. In a rush of romance, she runs away with him to live this wild and free life he’s talking about, pinning all her hopes and dreams on her love for this man.

Fast forward to where we are. She’s in a miserable situation. She’s living in the wilds, on the run. She’s likely frightened, and completely out of her depth. She’s of a different social class than the other women and has clearly alienated them with her attitude, which probably drew on the assumed superiority of her social class (and possibly covering for her domestic incompetence from lack of experience) by refusing to do camp chores. She also likely claimed privileged status as “Dutch’s woman” to avoid getting her hands dirty. Maybe Dutch liked her hands soft, a lady’s hands, and she was desperate to keep them that way. Maybe he encouraged her to keep only to him, to worry only about her love and loyalty for him, and that isolation is one of the hallmarks of abuse. It’s biting her in the ass, because she hasn’t integrated into camp and gang life.

This isn’t the life she expected. The rest of these people aren’t at all like Dutch. They’re coarse, dirty, bawdy, and (mostly) uneducated. She doesn’t know how to relate to them, has none of the skills they prize, and in her shock and instinctive social hauteur, she missed her chance to befriend and integrate. She came there only for Dutch, out of love, and now she only matters to Dutch. Her sole value, in the gang’s eyes, is in keeping Dutch sexually and romantically pleased, and they so they dismiss her as a inconsequential piece of arm candy compared to the women who are earners and hearthkeepers who contribute to the well-being of the entire gang. Friendless and dependent on the continued interest of a man who proves to be extremely fickle–that’s a very dangerous place to be in.

And things get more dangerous. And she’s getting older, probably past her mid-twenties, which puts her in spinster status for that age. She loses Dutch’s interest, sees his eyes straying to Mary-Beth, who’s probably 21 at most. Sees what’s happening, rages against it, but is powerless to stop it.

Unlike almost all of them who were orphans and outcasts who had nowhere to go and nobody, she hurts deeply because she gave up her entire life to be with Dutch. Gave up respectability, a place and a life she knew and understood, because she was desperately in love with who she thought this man was. She can’t become part of the gang as a cook and laundress and humiliate herself like that, and endure the pain of daily watching Dutch laughing with another (younger) woman, flirting with her, see her going to Dutch’s bed, probably overhearing them. The thought hurts too much. But she can’t go back home now. She burned those bridges by running away. She thinks, “Who would have me now, an outlaw’s discarded whore?” She’s realizing again how powerless a woman really is in 1899.

She has nobody to turn to. Dutch doesn’t want her, and increasingly rejects and belittles her. Even the camp’s friendliest people don’t seem to know what to do with her. So she fades, bit by bit. Withdraws more and more from everyone. Neglects her appearance that she took such pride in–it’s not as though it matters, Dutch doesn’t want her anymore. Starts to drink, in the end. Then eventually she’s dragged back to Dutch, to the author of her misery. And seeing him one last time, she risks everything to hurt him in return, to feel some small sliver of power again. Claims she’s sold them out and was glad of it. It doesn’t hurt him. Instead it earns her a cold, merciless execution.

Molly isn’t the most lovable, no, but we’re seeing her at her most frightened and vulnerable and isolated. She was a woman who had a likely decent life, and risked everything for the love of a heartless bastard who callously discarded her. She lost everything in doing so. Her love, her home, her respectability, her self-respect, her future, and in the end, her life. She doesn’t even have a grave to call her own, given her body was likely burned as a further mark of contempt for a supposed traitor.

She had her flaws, but Molly genuinely loved Dutch. She noticed the decline in his mental health and well being and tried to talk to him about it. In 1899. She tries and all she got was gas-lighting and vitriol. When she responds with anger and/or sadness, Dutch achieves his goal of making her look hysterical and deranged. Which allows him to gas-light her further and creates a public display of it. Whether intentional or not, that’s what we see.

I will keep an eye on him. Upon receiving his daily sugar cube he decided to bring it home for the camp. It's a long trip for someone with such tiny legs but he is determined.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I get the feeling you didn't play the game naturally or see any random encounters, because none of what you said is true. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's start with the "all the women are prostitutes" comment.

First of all, none of the women are prostitutes, a fact that deeply irritates Micah. During a coach robbery where he rides with Arthur and Bill, he even says, “Why the hell do we need a gaggle of girls who won’t even fuck you if you put a gun to their head? Is it too much to ask considering they get a piece of every damn dollar I bring in?” Poor baby. He even tries to proposition all of the women (Grimshaw included), but they all insult him and send him running with his tail between his legs. It’s hilarious and I love it. Arthur also responds to Micah with, “Everyone does their share. I don’t see you lifting a finger around camp.”

Now a bit about the girls:

Mary-Beth was a skilled pickpocket, but she ended up being caught by a group of her victims. She mentions this during a conversation with Arthur, where she points out how hard it was for women who came from nothing, and the inequality of it all. RDR2 actually regularly highlights how difficult frontier/outlaw life was for women back then, often pulling zero punches. While fleeing her pursuers, Mary-Beth luckily ran into Hosea, who helped her escape and welcomed her to the gang. You can see Dutch lusting after her a few times, because he's an old pervert, but she always shuns his advances. She was never a prostitute and she was actually underage when she joined.

Tilly was a child outlaw and a member of the Forman gang from the age of twelve. She ended up killing the leader's cousin because he [as is heavily implied] tried to rape her. She was around sixteen at the time and tried to return to her mother after the ordeal, but she unfortunately passed away while Tilly was running with the Formans. Out of options, she eventually joined the van der Linde gang after Dutch saved her from some unspecified trouble. You can find most of this out during one of my favourite side missions, where she gets kidnapped by Anthony Foreman in retaliation for killing his cousin. With Grimshaw’s help, you can rescue Tilly and put an end to it once and for all. She was never a prostitute and was also underage when taken in.

Susan Grimshaw was one of the original members of the gang and one of Dutch's first lovers. They parted amicably and both fell in love with other people (Dutch with Annabelle, and Susan with a doctor who sadly ended up dying), but she stayed with the gang because of their mutual respect for each other. She later became the arbiter of the camp and a kind of surrogate mother to Arthur, John, and the other girls. She was never a prostitute, but rather a rough-and-tumble outlaw.

Karen is a little more complicated. Overall, she was a scam artist (Hosea even called her an “actress”) who sometimes lured men into brothels, then stole from them or picked their brains for leads. That doesn't necessarily mean she was a prostitute; however, it just means she used sex as a manipulation tactic. Out of all the women in the group, she was the freest and most unconventional. She also stood on guard duty and participated in heists. The only man she ever slept with in game was Sean, and his death absolutely devastated her. If you talk to her or observe her interactions, you also discover she’s a raging alcoholic suffering from some very deep-seated issues. She likely did have to do things she wasn’t proud of in order to survive, but in my opinion that makes her one of the most realistic members of the group. She was never described as a prostitute.

Molly was an aristocrat who left her family to be with Dutch. His abusive treatment eventually led her to suffer an identity crisis, where she ended up hysterical and heartbroken. Her story is sad, but she was never a prostitute. If anything, Molly is the best example we have that Dutch views people as items, not human beings.

Abigail is the only prostitute in the game, but by the events of RDR2 she's an ex-prostitute. To say she's nothing more than "a mother who's always mad", I feel, does her character a great disservice. First of all, she left that profession behind to raise her son, to give him a decent chance in life. Unlike John, she stepped up immediately to become a responsible adult. I don't think people realise how impressive that is because, one, she could've easily abandoned Jack at the roadside (which was common back then), two, she could've induced an abortion, and three, she was quite young when she had him; around nineteen years old.

You say the women are "poorly represented", but they're stronger, smarter, and more mature than most of the men. A few of them even become self-sufficient in the turn of the century, something dear old Dutch couldn't even do/accept. Abigail in particular helps Sadie mourn her husband and the two grow very close. Their interactions are both grounded and heartwarming, with Abigail telling Sadie she’ll suffer the loss of her husband, but that it’ll get better if she keeps on living. She takes care of her, and Sadie later returns that kindness. These women are so full of quirks and humour and personality, I don’t know how you missed it.

As for Sadie ... where do I even begin? Badly written? Femme fatale? Flawless killer? Sadie is one of the best written characters. She's not flawless, she's exceptionally flawed, temperamental, and traumatised. It's never expressly stated, but it's implied at several points throughout the game that she was repeatedly assaulted while the O'Driscolls kept her captive. At first, she's petrified and miserable, to the point that all she does is cry and express suicidal ideation. Then, she gets angry. Very angry. Having nothing left to live for, her home and husband torn from her grasp, she throws herself headfirst into danger, which almost gets her killed on a number of occasions.

She's not a "flawless killer", she's a messy killer. She's not an expert death-dealer, and that's made evident from the start -- but she was a hunter who shared the workload with her husband, so it's not as if her skills just magically appeared. You do see how much it weighs on her, however, near the end of chapter six. If you help her kill the rest of the O'Driscolls, she laments what she's become because she thinks her husband would be horrified. She’s extremely complex and struggles between mourning and moving on.

I also can't help but laugh at the "femme fatale" accusation, because Sadie actually defeminises herself, which is understandable considering the hell she’s suffered. She even wears men's clothing, which wasn't illegal [anymore] back then, but it was openly frowned upon. Femme fatales use their beauty and sexuality to their advantage, ensnaring men with their feminine wiles. Sadie never does that and fights side-by-side with the boys. Interestingly enough, that's partially why Calamity Jane, an actual historical figure, garnered so much attention, because of how she behaved/dressed. It’s pretty clear to me that Rockstar might’ve used her as inspiration for Sadie. This was a real woman who lived from 1852 to 1903.

In addition, Sadie plays one of the most important roles, yet she does so without falling into the category of a Mary-Sue. She saves the gang and moves them to a new location when the Pinkertons attack Shady Belle. She hatches the plan that frees John from prison. She helps Arthur rescue Abigail after she gets kidnapped. She tracks down Micah and puts an end to his reign of terror. But most of what she does she accomplishes with a partner--Arthur or John--both of whom she respects immensely. No one, not even Arthur, does everything alone, and when they do there’s usually negative consequences. It's the camaraderie and shared experiences that make these characters successful, and aside from Charles and Hosea, I’d even argue that the women are more well-rounded and fleshed out than the men.

Here we go cowboys!