#amras writes

On top of everything else, death and family matters and money and etc, me and my partner just learned that our landlord is throwing us out in the summer, when the renting market is at its worst. Landlord wants to renovate so he can up the rent, sigh. I've lost my home before and I hate it. I moved wayyy too many times as a kid. I wistfully thought we would save up for an apartment and move straight into it from here. I love this part of the city. I wish we could stay.

I've also been hit hard by the winter vomiting bug and am struggling to recover because of my other health issues. This one has plagued me for weeks. Stress makes it worse but idk how to stress less. Without weight training or darker writing I'm going insane with the need to exorcise angry impulses. I wasn't aware of how strong my anger is, and have a newfound respect for my old coping methods, they do work lol. I hate being skinny, weak and sour. I want to be muscled, strong and content.

Looking back, I am having a bit of a neutral crisis regarding my writing. I say neutral because I have a writing crisis once every three years. It always boils down to how I wish I was better at it. I have written almost nothing since autumn. In itself, writing is less like a hobby and more of a reason for living for me, and Christ, it's painful that I can work so hard on something for several years without getting better at it. Like, I'm doing ok, but I'm nowhere near where I wish to be as an author.

Uh. At least quitting nicotine is going well! I cracked in January and smoked two cigs but none in February. And partner is great as always, having taken so good care of me as my illness continues. Idk with all the political shit going on, my issues are not that large.

Honestly I think it's time for me to try writing an original novel. I failed at it a few years ago, working my ass off with no real result. But I'm older now and hopefully a little wiser. I also think it's dreadful to sit back and watch the world burn without doing anything to help, though I do try to donate to charity when I'm able to. I feel like writing something actually good - and political - would help me on a deeper level than just coping.

In the letter, Amos rejects Micah and tells him to stay far away or he'll kill him. "I have daughters, as you know". Micah must know his brother's address as this letter is a reply, but how does Micah know about his nieces? Did he visit? Did he stake out Amos' ranch, before he was spotted? (That must've been an intense moment). The letter can be found randomly as if thrown away, so it must've upset him, who is usually secretive. He is also swears he remember threats.

Is 1800s Micah capable of killing his own brother? Idk. But in the 1900s, I think he's unhinged enough to do it, especially if his O'Driscoll-like gang members join in. Amos is a failed Bell and a loose end, and he witnessed a weakness on Micah's part, in the letter.

For Micah hope is weakness, a belief that was softened and then solidified when he was in the Van der Linde Gang. I think he joined unconsciously wanting a family, consciously wanting money (the Blackwater score, Dutch's bounty, the gang funds…). Maybe Dutch let him join as as a pet project, testing his mentoring skills on a man rougher than a street kid (and if Micah can soften or settle down, so can Dutch?). Between chapter 1-4 of RDR Micah gets a sliver of hope and reaches out to Amos. But the reconciliation with the old family, the new family, and the money all go to hell. He likely ratted after Guarma, but I'm unsure if he were going to give the Pinkertons, Dutch. As a young man, Micah chose his father over Amos, like he chooses Dutch over Arthur or any other gang / family members. When Dutch rejects him, he screams in frustration. The money is seemingly not enough. I think he changes after this, going from bad to worse. And at his worst, he's probably capable of spilling his own blood. Maybe he feels like he's killing Amos on his father's behalf, like he killed "traitors" on Dutch's. (Daddy issues deluxe edition).

Micah and Amos can be read as a dark mirror to Arthur and John. Both Amos and John abandon their lawless lifestyle – and their brothers – to become lawful sheep ranchers. But where John lives on thanks to Arthur's involvement, it makes narratively sense to me that Micah's involvement does the opposite, ending his remaining family. In canon, John is also killed in the end, after a few years of lawful living. Amos might've been equally unable to escape. Especially with a brother like Micah.

Tailing Micah was harder than Arthur had originally thought, despite the bright light of early morning and the buzzing city life. If Dutch's paranoia was a mango, then Micah's was a goddamn mango tree. The guy changed vehicles three times. Three. All in different locations of Liberty City; a fancy mansion garage, a seedy rent-a-car shop, and an abandoned car park. Arthur wondered if he knew he was being tailed.

But no, soon enough Micah headed out of the city, into the large roads and empty deserts. His Harley motorcycle was an old classic, and he was anonymous enough, greasy hair sticking out from under his helmet. He was even riding at a somewhat legal speed! Imagine that.

Arthur was similarly anonymous. A brown oldmobile cutlass, a dark brown leather jacket, pilot sunglasses and a cigarette in his mouth. He'd quit, then started again as the gang war with the O'Driscolls began, and taken several after he'd first started having his suspicions about this.

Where the hell was Micah going? There was nothing out here but hours of wasteland. A few gas stations, old houses, and cheap motels.

Until a pink neon sigh that read Oasis Senior Living Community, and a road right next to it, which Micah made a crass turn towards.

Arthur drove past it, careful not to slow down. Only when a few minutes had passed, did he survey the road for cops, find none, and make a U-turn. Wheels screeched, horns honked, and Arthur's smirk grew predatory around his sixth cigarette. He hadn't chosen this lawless lifestyle for nothing. Then his smirk faltered, thinking of all those he had lost to it, and all the people lost to these roads due to reckless driving.

He drove towards the Oasis more carefully than Micah had.

It was a fancy place. All pinks and whites and creams. Kind of like a little paper town in the middle of tall dunes, with a large hospital section, little houses all around, patches of fake grass and vast amounts of palm trees, swimming pools, a restaurant, endless rows of mini golf, old people milling about. Pretty damn good for a front, all innocent-like. Still, there were plenty of cars and tour buses, but only one motorcycle.

Arthur pulled his sunglasses up to use his binoculars, but caught sight of Micah last second. The man was standing in front of the hospital, in the shadow of a palm tree, with his helmet underneath his arm and a throwaway cellphone by his ear. His sunglasses were large, almost comically so, the sort celebrities wore after a night of heavy partying.

And then Micah's doppelganger came out of the hospital, pushing the wheelchair of another, far older doppelganger, gnarly and white-haired.

It took Arthur an embarrassingly long moment to connect the dots. The familial dots. How this had to be Micah's brother, Amos, wearing a neat black dress despite his long, blonde beard. And how this had to be their father, crooked and shrunk, jaw twisted like he was without false teeth, expression somehow both murderously angry and entirely vacant.

Micah himself did not move until Amos drove the wheelchair closer to his tree, following a step behind. The brothers did not look at one another, even as their mouths moved, Micah reacting with more animation than Amos. The father did not acknowledge them either. Silence soon reigned, and a slow walk - and roll - began.

Arthur considered turning back. This was private. He had no right to intrude on them. Except he... kind of had. During a war, all the members of the gang had to list their close ones, because the likelihood of the O'Driscolls kidnapping - and torturing - them was high. Nobody knew Micah had family close by, not even Dutch. And from Micah's boasting, Arthur knew they were all criminals, or had been once upon a time. They could be talking to the wrong people. The law, and the lawless.

The Bell family looked like they were going to a funeral.

And in a way, they were.

The sun was being kind of bitchy today. Not a cloud in sight. No wind shaking up the sand and giving Arthur a hazy cover, as he walked around the same desert hill that the Bell family had gone behind. He made sure to stick close to it as if he were a hobbyist geologist.

It turned out Oasis Senior Living Community really had it all, including a graveyard and a chapel. A resting place for those who had no family grave, no home to return to. Travelers. Loners. Criminals.

Amos pushed their father carefully, stopping only to adjust his blanket. If the man needed a blanket in this heat was uncertain, but maybe he had a sadistic streak like his brother, or he did it out of a sense of duty.

Micah trailed behind him, slinking around like a creepy street cat, and his back nearly shot up when Amos turned to him and said something. Micah's mouth moved rapidly, looking similarly angry as to when Arthur criticized him in front of Dutch, though he barely looked at their father (whereas his eyes sought Dutch's frequently, or at least they had done so before the war). Amos started rolling their father off before Micah had finished spluttering. Arthur felt inspired watching the exchange.

He felt less inspired watching them gather around a grave.

Amos took one side of their father in the wheelchair, and Micah, the other. They stood there in silence for a few seconds, looking down.

Micah took a few lights steps back, and turned around with a laser-like awareness and scanned the area. He spotted Arthur so fast it was uncanny. His brows heightened, then narrowed.

Arthur considered looking caught out, but opted for a shrug.

Micah slid a finger across his own throat, blue eyes ablaze with a promise of vengeance that Arthur could hear inside his own skull.

His own sneer curled because he had already asked Micah to name a time and place, my friend, and it seemed the chosen time was now.

Canon and semi-canon details from his backstory

So we don't know a whole lot, hints only given by select dialogue and a newspaper clip. Micah is the third in line in a family of outlaws, and ran together with his father and brother Amos for a while. His father was wanted for murder all over the place, and seems like a man with dark charm ("Ain't life grand?") and a temper (nearly killing Amos). Amos, who ran away from the family tradition, wanting nothing to do with it. You can read about them on various online encyclopedias, but know that some of those are written by uh, creative fans, and AI, so there is often errors. It's irritating, but it is what it is.

An interesting bit is the interview with Micah's actor Peter Blomquist (I have tried to google but am having trouble finding it; please send link if you have it!) is the mention that Micah's father was bad, but his grandfather was worse. Tbh I think this is a bit from a backstory that was among the things that were scrapped from the final game.

So, of his grandfather we know almost nothing, except that he was wild. And that he was maybe worse than Micah III's father. But that also means that the Second was also better than the First somehow.

My take

Part 1: The way of the grandfather / the legacy of Micah Bell the First

I think the grandfather was the head of the family as long as he lived. I also think he imposed a terrible burden upon Micah Bell II (and III).

It's interesting if the Second tries to be better than the First in that when he got a woman pregnant, he tried to hide her and their two children, because he didn't want to force the Bell training upon them. But it slipped out one evening due to drink. The older forced the younger to reveal the locations of the woman and the two sons.

And so the training of the two new Bells begins, harsh and unrelenting. Shooting, robbing, killing. And more 18+ than I feel is necessary in this post, but yeah, disturbing stuff.

Micah being the one to inherit the name most likely means that he is older than Amos. But the thing is that Micah gives off serious little brother vibes to me. I dunno exactly why. Vibes, man.

So, I thought an interesting twist would be: what if the name of Micah Bell was something that had to be earned? What if they'd been given different names originally, Amos and something unknown, before the latter was the better outlaw and became the Micah Bell III we know. He is one of the fastest shots in the game, and a competition like that, begun from early age, could've given him initiative to train harder, desperate to earn the name.

I am a cruel writer. How can I make this crueler? I got it:

Their grandfather identifies quickly that one brother is weaker and easier to manipulate than the other. Not in physical strength, but in terms of familial bonds. Maybe he is less charming than Amos, and makes fewer friends, because idk he is busy eating bugs (he seems like the kind of kid who would eat bugs). Or maybe their mother, before the arrival of the men, makes the boys attend a local church school, and Amos finds love in the religion while his brother stares out the window. Not because he's evil but because he's easily bored.

So the grandfather only tells one brother of the competition about earning the name, and it's not Amos. He also says the one who loses the right to the name has to be killed by the winner because there can only be one Micah Bell for each generation, that's how it has always been done. Maybe he speaks the truth, maybe he lies, but no matter what he is efficiently cutting the bond between the two brothers.

Part 2: Early years / Competitive survival

So, that is how Micah Bell III becomes Micah Bell III, as a boy and as a youth. I'll just go back to calling him Micah to make it easier, also because calling him anything else would kind of feel like waving a death sentence in the face of a child after I wrote The Devils. Because even people who commit atrocities have been a child once.

Growing up, Micah's survival depends upon winning over his brother. This is where his idea of winning and losing comes from. It doesn't help that his father yaps on and on about a similar philosophy, but where he's all words, Micah is all acts.

Micah never finds out that Amos doesn't know about the competition. He resents him from not trying harder. For making Micah look bad, training so hard so he can kill his fool brother, lying awake at night and mentally preparing for it. But if friendships are rope, then familial bonds are chains; almost impossible to cut.

He lies awake at night and stares at Amos on the other side of the fire, missing when they curled up together back when it did not feel like sleeping next to an enemy. It eats the child up, all that training. Not much left of who he was or could be. Hey, at least he doesn't have time to eat bugs.

But maybe, if their grandfather falls ill, Micah is the one to kill him. Unable to cope with the idea of killing his brother, he shoots him in the face. And then he turns to Amos, grinning, because they're free.

Amos does not see himself as freed. He sees murder. He thinks it is only because Micah saw their grandfather as weak, when he secretly had been the strongest force in their life. Micah walks towards him, covered in their grandfather's blood (I do like a dramatic scene), and Amos turns away, throws up and tells him to stay away. Micah feels shock, then loss, then rage. Micah Bell II would probably react with pure rage, but Micah is so used to surviving things at this point, he survives that too. None of their relationships are all that salvageable from this moment, especially not after Amos runs away.

This makes me think of another HC of mine, namely that Micah is the one to kill Amos, which has its own post and arguments here. But if you add in the theory present in this post, it makes even more sense to why he'd killed Amos, finishing what he had been trained to do since he was a kid.

Part 3: Young adulthood / O'Driscoll Boy!Micah

Did you know Micah's outfits have a bunch of half-hidden, green accents them? I've seen it on his scarf, his gloves, his horse saddle ...

This is basically copy pasting a bit from a Twitter thread I made, but I just really like the idea of Micah being an ex-O'Driscoll Boy mainly due to his green scarf. It's more of a teal, but maybe it's a faded O'Driscoll green. Colm would've valued a gun like him. His ruthlessness and boot-licking, too. Especially if he was younger, lonelier and easier to sway. After his brother leaves and his father dies, he'll have no one.

And while he is a bit of a lone wolf hermit, Colm could've reminded him of his father, like Dutch probably does, but I really like the thought of Colm reminding Micah of his grandfather. He wouldn't be too unfamiliar with the gang dynamic, and find more homeliness in that than in a normal family. There's a well-known tendency among abused kids to unconsciously seek out relationships that mirror their broken families. Paradoxically, the lack of safety feels safe.

Of course, the Bell heritage is too alive within him to render him into another nameless O'Driscoll Boy, so he and Colm eventually fall out. He goes back to being a lone wolf, but maybe he's made some connections, which make gathering a troop easier, especially for bank robberies (Skinny, Cleet, Joe...). But he mostly stays alone.

During RDR2, when Colm was hanged, maybe Micah felt the green scarf catch strangely, while in camp or while out riding (or even watching the hanging happen from a dark back alley in Saint Denis). Micah reached behind to the nape of his neck, feeling as though someone had held him there, squeezed, and then let go.

Part 4: Later Adulthood / Evil bounty hunter!Micah

So I'm a total sucker for the theory of Micah being a form of a hitman that's like an evil bounty hunter. The main reason for this is the fact that Dutch's bounty poster can be found at Micah's camp outside Strawberry. But also because my first thought when we first met him in the game was "Omg, Loco from The Great Silence, my favorite evil bounty hunter villain!" They have some of the same color scheme in the winter outfit, and I think it's a reference.

Loco has the same life philosophy as Micah, as seen in this quote: "You're on the side of the law. We, we're on the side of the law of survival… survival of the fittest!" and kind of in this one (ok I'm putting it here because it's so cool, he's just burst into the hideout of his own evil bounty hunter gang) "Since when are wolves afraid of wolves?"

I like the idea of Micah is sick to death of gang life but knows enough of it from his time as an O'Driscoll to infiltrate hideouts and gangs easy, to reap bounties from the lawful people he's been robbing up to now and occasionally still do. Maybe the Van der Lindes weren't the first gang he brought down. That's fun to think about.

Also, I love it when asshole villains do the "right" thing. Partly why I love Micah's character; as an antagonist, he brings down Arthur and John, directly and indirectly.

(Ooh this is beside the point, but that's actually one of my issues with the narratives of the RDR and GTA games. They have this core of nihilism that actively hinders their stories from becoming as great as their characters, but also makes the games sell easier. Maybe another post, or maybe fandom isn't the place for critiques.)

Anyway, Micah just didn't think anyone could ever get to him, but then again he'd never met anyone like Dutch. Hell, the man even had the same dark charm like his father, enjoying similar exclamations. I think he hoped to recreate something of his old family dynamic with Dutch, who was kinder than his grandfather, father and Colm. We all know how that went. His last words was still a compliment to Dutch though. As if it was still a competition, or a game, in the end.

*walks a few steps away, twirls, shrugs, falls face first into the snow*

Here's another pic of Loco (along with the GIF in the beginning):

The end

Yeah I have not much more to say here lol. Feel free to use and expand upon this theory, or make your own by taking out of some of the foundations, could be cool to see. I'd love a shoutout, but it seems shoutouts are going out of fashion, which is sad. Put the community back into fandom! Stop it with the competition! Make friends! Lmao "be less like Micah", but yeah, I guess it stands. I see so many people worship canon like a deity. Please have more fun!!!

"Put your ass up for me, would you? Wanna see what I'm working with."

"Creep," Arthur said affectionally, but he did push his ass up.

Micah got back up on the bed, holding a small white bottle in his hand, sticky near the top. The choice of lubricant looked neutral enough. Good. They weren't the sort to have sex that smelled of flowers.

"Such a pretty little hole. Oh, is it winking at me? Likes being praised, does it? Just like you."

"Shut up."

"So pretty. And all for me, hm? Hungry, too. So hungry for my fingers, and for my cock. You haven't fed it right. I'll feed it properly, boy. I know juuust what you need."

Micah's dirty talk was atrocious, and yet Arthur couldn't swallow all the spit that welled up underneath his tongue. His touches were a purer and more familiar kind of good. Long strokes across Arthur's ass, his hole, his balls, down to the back of his thighs, the crease between them and his knees, even the creased-up backs of his feet through the worn materials of his socks. There was the sound of the bottle of lubricant being shook. It probably didn't need that, but the sound made what was going to happen more imminent. So did Micah's intense gaze.

"Bishop," she said. "Sorry if this is silly but… is it true that animals can sense if a person is good or bad?"

"I'm forbidden from answering philosophical questions, but since we do have a cat onboard, that makes it more practical, I suppose," Bishop said, smiling sadly. "No, Anya, Jones cannot sense ethics, that's superstition. He is an animal. The kindest thing to do to an animal is to acknowledge it as such. No more and no less."

"Do you have a soul, Bishop?" Jimmy asked, and Curly winced, because he didn't have to make it so obvious that they'd been listening in. "Is the kindest thing to do to a robot to treat it like a tin can?"

"They don't have a soul, that's for certain," Ash said. "Can we please focus on the mission?"