October was rife with art, since it was Inktober and all. November is supposed to be NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and I told myself… I’m going to double down this November and I’m really going to work on some of my writing! I had the best intentions, of course.

And then Red Dead Redemption 2 dropped.

Of course, for those of you who plan on playing it or aren’t very far into it, I’m going to attempt to not spoil any of it for you. But, much like Red Dead Redemption, I ended up getting sucked into this massively huge open world wild west game, flooded with details and activities to make even the most neurotypical of minds go ADHD.

Picking up the game and going through the slow, grueling stages of the beginning (titled quite affectionately as “The snow level” by South Park) I didn’t think I could bring myself to care about another character beyond John Marston and his tear-jerker end in the first game, and I thought to myself: bah, who is this Arthur guy and why should I care about him? After playing him for… Oh, I don’t know, some bajillion hours, I really got attached to the guy. Everything about Arthur’s character is just so damned likable. He seems like such a good, genuine, caring soul who was swept up into this whole wild west gang thing, when really all he wanted to do was pet dogs and horses and draw in his journal.

Anyway, one of the running themes in the game is where Arthur narrates these brief cinematic moments where we’re seeing glowing golden sunbathed landscape, often dotted by animals, most notably a buck. There’s plenty of symbolism in it, but I won’t speculate and potentially ruin things for other game players. Still, I thought a piece of fanart for Red Dead Redemption 2 was needed. It came together pretty quickly too:

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