☆Iris☆

He wrote that he missed writing and drawing, more than he thought he would.

The journal is a wonderful tool that allows us see through Arthur's eyes and how he deals with things, it's one of his healthiest coping mechanisms, so it makes me wonder what those journal-less months were really like for Arthur.

Whatever and wherever the fire was, the time spent up north in the Grizzlies and travelling down from it, Dutch nearly buying some land but getting spooked by the law, new people joining them, and then the gang spending months in the wilderness before moving to Blackwater - it all sounded like a hectic time. But he never wrote about how he felt, he just wrote about what had happened.

Yet, he said he missed writing and drawing. He missed it. He had the itch to write and draw for ages, but he couldn't.

Maybe he struggled with the chaos of those few months without a journal to empty his frustrations and thoughts into, maybe he saw so many things he wanted to draw and it aggravated him that he couldn't, maybe he was slightly more irritable than usual with everything that had pent up and having no means to release it, and so on.

I just think about it a lot.

Especially if you took the journal out of the main game, you'd be taking out a huge portion of the story and the insights we have into who Arthur is as a person too. It's impossible for Arthur to not write in the journal, even if you never open it. It's a vital tool that helps define him and show us how he moves through the world, how he copes with the world.

Like what do you mean Arthur loves to write but thinks he writes like a fool?

What do you mean Arthur loves to draw and is really talented but he doesn't see it that way?

What do you mean Arthur loves the smaller things in life but doesn't feel like he's deserving of good things?

What do you mean there was a whole different side to Arthur that the people he cared about rarely got to see?

What do you mean he lived and died with parts of his life tucked away tight in the pages of the journal that only one other person has ever been able to read?