spoilers for twd season 9ish onwards
GO UNSCRIPTED AROACE DARYL DIXON THINKPIECE
daryl dixon's writing after becoming a main character and/or becoming the main character of his own show is genuinely detrimental. the entire point of his character is forgotten near instantly and he is literally a shell.
he was not made to be a main character or have tons of dialogue. he worked best as a background character with implicit backstory and development. and don't get me started on his love interests because ohhh does it make me mad oh does it make me so so mad. he was unintentionally BEAUTIFUL aroace rep until that random fucking episode at the end of season 10 SEASON TEN OUT OF ELEVEN where they decide to RETCON A LOVE INTEREST FOR HIM IN A FLASHBACK OHHH MY DAYS WHO WROTE THIS WHO ACTUALLY WROTE THIS
omg omg leah fucking sucks. as a character herself she's fine I guess but like the romance with daryl omg shut uuuuppppp. in fact I feel bad for her it's kinda fuckin misogynist to invent a character to exist solely as a love interest because your horny ass audience couldn't handle seeing their number one sexyman not fuck anything in an eleven season tv run. then trying to make it Not objectifying/sexist by making her a Badass woman!!! Shes from the military guys she is independent and badass and strong!!! it doesn’t fucking count when she was still only put there to be a love interest/one of her main conflicts being a romance.
"but he deserves to be happy too🥺" you can be happy WITHOUT being in a relationship he can be happy on his own it is stated CONSTANTLY that he enjoys being in his own he leaves the wider cast multiple times to be on his own why does he NEED to have a hollow romance to be 'happy'. everyone finds him so pitiful or lonely or traumatised because of his childhood and that he just needs to be in a relationship and be "fixed" by somebody to be happy and it sucks.
see what I also find sucky about daryl's love interests is that half of them don't exist outside of men if that makes sense. mostly looking at leah and issy here. someone's gotta check if either of those girls pass the bechdel test. leah's only point of existence is to be a love interest to daryl and to serve her male counterparts within the reapers. issy's only point of existence was to be a love interest to daryl, mother/protector figure to a male "chosen one" child, and partially to be objectified by an ex love interest in season 1. (however she did get a bit more time to exist on her own i'll admit). it's not good and it's no surprise all of those romances felt kinda hollow and nothingburger. for the unfamiliar both of those girls were killed in some way. serving men then dying. and we're supposed to care about these relationships at all ?....
connie and carol are his other 2 'love interests' and I will die on the hill that they're just extremely good friends.
i'm more negotiable with caryl cuz like what the hell sure but. for the most part it's just platonic to me. they're very extremely good friends. they're traumabonded but they're very similar people outside of that. they have great chemistry they get eachother they're soulmates. i'd argue they're not really romantic because it seems like from early on they have this personal telepathic agreement that they're not romantic like when carol jokingly flirts with him and he tells her to stop. they're joking the way friends do when they know their relationship is secure.
also the other point that she's a lot older than him ... which I won't say with my chest because I know ages are murky with this show and I feel like a lot of people go off the ages of the actors to determine the ages of the characters. however i'm not so confident that's true. in the daryl dixon spinoff they have a sort exchange where daryl mentions being very young and not really experiencing the world before the apocalypse started ... which, going from norman's age, wouldn't really be true, cuz he was late 30s early 40s off the top of my head. that's not necessarily young-- it's not old, but it's old enough to have experienced the world somewhat. in my mind daryl's character at the start of the walking dead was supposed to be mid to late 20s. I would say carol is supposed to be early 40s. it's not necessarily grooming or a bad age gap or anything as they're both consenting adults but I do believe daryl is aromantic and asexual, therefore not interested in anyone of any age, and I don't believe carol would date someone that much younger than her. (I also headcanon personally she's aromantic if it counts for anything). to me daryl and carol are a secret third thing which isn’t platonic isn’t romantic but is deep rooted into both of their souls they'd die without eachother sort of bestfriendship.
connie is an interesting character. she's one of the best of the new cast despite the shitty writing. and part of the shitty writing is the fact that she disappears for most of season 10 and/or 11 (I can't quite remember exactly what order things happened in seasons 9-11 despite only watching it a month or two ago) so.... yknow. I suppose you can't fuck up a characters writing if she's not there for you to write. but I do really enjoy her relationship with daryl-- they immediately have really good chemistry, like they'd been friends forever. they felt like childhood friends to me.
and to me that's all they are, I can't quite picture them being romantic. connie is quite a bit younger than daryl at this point. and in my mind she's a lesbian because i'm ngl for the first half of season 9 I didnt realise kelly was her sister and I thought they were a gay couple. obviously I don't ship them or anything they just both really have the vibe LMAO so to me she's a lesbian (NOT with her sister ) . now we could start talking about transfem daryl but that's neither here nor there that would be a whole nother post this ones long enough.
anyways connie's good her chemistry with daryl is good I just really really really don't think it reads as romantic I genuinely can't imagine it. just cuz he decided to learn sign language for her and was a dedicated good friend to her ?... ok. i'd do that for any of my friends personally if they went deaf. sorry if that's too romantic of me.
I think it all just loops back around to what I was saying earlier about people thinking daryl NEEDS to be in a relationship to be happy. in a way they're not far from the truth -- he needs relationships to make him happy. and the relationships he DOES have DO make him happy! his friendships, the people close to him, enrich his life and make him happy. carol makes him happy, connie makes him happy, michonne maggie rick judith they all make him happy.
you don't need to force him into some heterosexual mould of having a love interest and a kid forced upon him to make him "find his place". I think it's why his spin off falls flat entirely because it's so... tone deaf? it goes against his whole character. he worked well as a big sibling/paternal figure to carl and judith because he was unconventional. he wasn't really their dad or uncle or anything, he was a guy that happened to be around, who happened to care so deeply that he ended up helping them grow a lot as people.
it's why it was totally unbelievable that he would want to stay in france with laurent and issy in the spin off. he's done this a hundred times, why is this different? why are these shallow relationships worth abandoning everybody from the first eleven seasons of the show for? what do you mean you wonder if they still think about you? he's been gone for, like, a year. maybe two. he searched for rick for seven years. of course they're still thinking about you and looking for you. carol would be at the very least. you know that!!! you guys have been separated as a group for longer periods of time than this!!! it's contradictory writing!!!! he logically should not GAF about anyone in the spin off. it just feels so... plasticky. the writing sucks. his arc can already be complete but you want him to have a big european backpacking adventure to discover that he's actually heterosexual and is ready to be a dad. what are you guys talking about tbh. not to mention the fact that all 3 seasons are boring as shit but i'll make a separate post about that
tldr; daryl dixon does not need a romantic relationship to be happy or fulfilled- he is already fulfilled by his deep platonic relationships- and that's why all of his love interests fall flat + his writing sucks after he becomes a main character cuz he's not supposed to be and they forget all of his character arcs for the sake of conflict.
feel free to disagree or argue with me in the replies I want to hear other peoples takes on this
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