INDIE DARYL DIXON
4.12 | 5.10
TONES. okay, guys you know i love my boy Daryl but I’m not one of those stans that dismisses anything Daryl does as “bad writing” or “oopsie daisies it wasn’t his fault”! Because my home dog Daryl has done some gross things:
Daryl! When will you learn? WHEN WILL YOU LEARN THAT YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. Memes aside, I love Daryl. He’s flawed. I am in no way an anti ( fucking obviously lmao ) but I do not excuse his actions!
- That episode when he got drunk on moonshine with Beth and yelled at her and manhandled her around like a damn ragdoll? Then called her out for cutting herself? That was so hard to watch. I wanted to bitch slap that boy for that. It was abusive as fuck and I think it was his dad shining through, so in a way, we got a glimpse of how nasty his dad was… Yikes. Still, Beth didn’t deserve that, and abuse is no excuse. However, as a victim of childhood abuse, I can sometimes catch myself repeating things my mother did to me. It’s hard to break the cycle, and I think Daryl has moderately good self-control… Just not when he’s drunk / emotionally compromised. And Daryl, baby… You burn yourself with cigarettes. You got no right yelling at her for cutting her wrist. Fundamentally, there is a difference between someone who is reckless, impulsive, and immature and someone who is an abuser. It was never Daryl’s intent to cause harm to Beth and he never gained or benefitted from harming others. It was never a ‘power trip’ for him. He was reckless, careless, and not thinking at all about the consequences of his actions. That’s why he’s not his father.
- He was racist in the beginning of the show, but I blame that on how Merle imprinted on him. Daryl has the habit of absorbing other people’s personality. I feel like Daryl didn’t think he had an identity other than Merle. Like he had to do everything Merle did to actually function. But when Merle is removed, Daryl slowly becomes an entirely different person. He isn’t racist anymore, and you can see it when he corrects Merle when he calls Glenn a “Chinese kid”. Daryl’s not racist. It would’ve been an issue and would have been brought up… I would not write a racist character because um?? Gross. THe creators set out to make Daryl Dixon a racist druggie (
basically a mini Merle) but Norman Reedus stepped in and was like N O P E.- AND THE NEGAN AND LUCILLE AND GLENN THING AHhaa… Daryl fucked up. If he hadn’t punched Negan Glenn would probably still be alive, and Daryl knows that. He knows he got a member of his family killed and he fucking suffers. He breaks down and cries because he knows what he did. He’s reckless and has bad self-control. He lunged at Negan because he was taunting Rosita, not even thinking of the consequences. You can call it bravery, I guess, but I just think it was reckless and stupid.
* ･ﾟ / DARYL + CUTTING ( episode 4.12 centered )
Rember that scene where Daryl gets drunk and goes off on a tangent?Where after playing that drinking game ‘never have I ever’ ( which Daryl obviously hated ) he started yelling about the things he’s never gotten to do? Like, not getting a gift from Santa. Going out of Georgia. Splitting his wrists looking for attention.
He wasn’t talking about Beth there. He was talking about himself. He’s surrounded by an environment that is dangerously close to the one he had growing up; hell, he just talked about how much it was like his childhood home. He’s angry at himself and he’s terrified he’s lost everyone at the prison. Basically, you’ve got a cesspool of self-hatred and PTSD going on.
Daryl’s shown self-harming habits before ( burning himself with a cigarette ) and he’s cut his wrists multiple times- no one gets to see the scars there because they can’t get close enough and he’s a master at hiding them. One day his old man saw them and berated him for wanting attention and being an emotional teenage girl. From that day onward he quit cutting his wrists because it made him feel pathetic.
He began to do other things to his body, like cigarette burning, tattoos, and getting in fights just to have bruises. The pain was the only thing that made him feel alive and, well, made him feel.
Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse may be the most striking and overt causes of low self-esteem. Being forced into a physical and emotional position against your will can make it very hard to like the world, trust yourself or trust others, which profoundly impacts self-esteem. It may even feel like your fault when it couldn’t be less your fault. It can make you feel like nothingness. x
