A.M.

werewolf of the marsh. 19. he/she. interested in things that would make a grown man squeam.

[olitheworm]

Facing It Head On

Redraw of a BUNCH of other redraws! Was in a slump when I decided to redraw this guy, but very glad I did. I wanted to really show off what I can do now rather than just sticking to a bust. I think that's what 12 year old me would have wanted. I also wanted to lean more into the dark colors I started with. The bright colors are fun but I love dark and moody stuff. PS: I haven't posted in 5 months. Work. Yeah. I am busy. But I have been making stuff sometimes. A lot less than I would like, but still. Hope everyone is doing alright and hanging in there.

[hummelimhimmel]

Oh no here we go again

[cvtapilrr-mp4]

hl2vrai is peak

[poolboyatthewerewolfmansion]

she has a powerful stride, a mean side eye and a smile that could charm the world. I am utterly enchanted by this woman

[jeansagain]

this is where it ends.

happy 10th anniversary, Undertale! love love love you forever.

[featherspiral]

🎉✨️happy 10th anniversary to PEAK 🎉🎊

+ closer on the two halves bc its a pretty long canvas. I wasn't originally going to make a piece and then decided last minute because I mean. come on I gotta!!! Not only is the game itself 10 years old but this also marks 10 years I've been a fan of it :) shoutout to asriel dreemurr for being my absolute goat when I was in middle school

[paintedhen]

fun new au idea totally not a reference to something /s: what if there was a transdimensional benrey dedicated to destroying hlvrai aus to clean up the multiverse but ALSO a benrey that inspires artists to create new hlvrai aus d fs  dsfjk sd a

[kylespekter]

Dirt Girl Jumpscare

[dinosaurgiantpenny]

These silicon valley dorks never figured out that Snow Crash is a parody and not like, a cool exciting future to live in.

[dinosaurgiantpenny]

I first read this book twenty plus years ago, don't remember anything about the plot or characters, but this paragraph always stuck with me:

[decapod-appreciator]

been reading Snow Crash and i really like it. charmed by the dynamic of Hiro being Theoretically the Coolest Person You’ll Ever Meet (ninja super hacker, caries swords around, roommates with a rock star) and YT being Much Cooler Than Him (15 year old skater girl)

[poolboyatthewerewolfmansion]

allow me to speak to nobody for a moment. I finished clive barker's imajica today. what an absolutely gorgeous novel. it's such a testament to something. spoilers for the ending. solid 8-9 out of 10 read for me.

it's so human there's so much feeling it surpasses the boundaries of being queer and is just Human. the characters aren’t gay or trans or intersex or non conforming they just... are, themselves completely, in a manner which is so beautiful. I wouldn't even like to use queer to describe this text as it goes beyond that. it's so so beautiful.

I am so invested in pie and gentle I can't lie they are such a beautiful couple their romance is gorgeous. I hung on for dear life for that reunion. and god did it pay off I felt actually warm when it happened I was getting scared it wouldn't as it got down to five pages left then four then three. I was literally hanging onto every word. i've never been to attached to a romantic couple in a book before. what a wonderful journey.

clem and taylor are gorgeous too. judith is gorgeous. I love judith I love the goddesses I love the power of women in this book.

I did take a lot of liberties when it came to imagining this novel and all of its many sights and character designs...... I feel like that speaks for itself though. it's so vast it's an immediate death of the author. I try putting myself in his shoes and wondering what barker was picturing for all of these environments and cities and aliens and characters but I think what comes to mind for me is equally beautiful.

I imagined yzordderrex as a more orange, clay sort of ... middle eastern architecture. it was really beautiful in my mind especially during those final scenes with the water and the bloom. I almost laughed when monday said it was green, and gentle replied that it used to be black and grey, because it was never that to me-- it was always yellow, gold and orange. I think that sort of interpretation of what is 'a beautiful god-city, the most awe inspiring place you can see' is what enriches literature. that it's so entirely up to whoever's reading it.

anyways yeah. not sure what else I have to say except that it's so hopeful, so insane, so gorgeous and utterly human. it feels like spring. a new bloom. I just love everything about it. definitely one of my favourite reads ever, though I struggle to say that because I read it over a long stint of a year and a half with many gaps inbetween... I fear a lot of it was lost on me. i'll reread it someday. just got to work on my backlog.

I also discredit the fact that judith has a new husband / father to her child at the end. I already didnt like the pregnancy plot line but it worked out in the end. in my mind she is a single mother in this temple and it's a 'it takes a village' sort of deal with everyone around there in yzordderrex helping to bring up huzzah. sorry but after everything her plot was about she doesn’t need some fuckin dude there to survive ... who she would've met about six weeks ago give or take. like no. that's .... oh- that's not- yknow. she don't need that. baby I can treat you better come back to the fifth. jk. but jeez.

anyways yup that's imajica god. gos I miss her

[glitteryfishbowl]

Absolutely insane mix but how we feel about this twd community

[legobatmanmovie]

Gordon and benrey enjoying cigarettes over some brunch

[poolboyatthewerewolfmansion]

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

[positively-peachy-143]

OH MY GOD LITERALLY MARRY ME RIGHT NOW.

No because this is genuinely EVERYTHING I've been saying and I feel so crazy in this fandom because I've never found another soul who agrees with me.

The only thing you didnt mention (i unserstand why) and that I feel strongly about is I think BEFORE any of this crazy nonsense (Leah + the fuckass spin-off) i genuinely think Daryl should have died.

And not in the spiteful "I HATE DARYL KILL HIM" way but I genuinely really think it would've helped to preserve his character!!!

For example; I dont see a lot of Jesus mischaracterization. Why is that? In my mind its bc he died before the writers of the show could run him into the absolute ground.

I think Negan should have died too for this reason, by Maggie's hand. Fuck their spinoff too. THATS RIGHT dead city isnt even safe here bc WTF is that show oh my god.

[poolboyatthewerewolfmansion]

I knew the minute I got to season 9 of the walking dead that I was never going to touch dead city with a ten foot fucking pole. holy shit. I can't imagine anything more mind numbing to watch than MAGGIE AND NEGAN as a duo traipsing around wherever the hell with some snotty kid (presuming he's snotty, because all the clips i've ever seen of who I assume is a slightly older hershel, is him being vaguely pissed off at maggie) and a bunch of side characters who I truly will never even remember the name of much less care about.

for the purpose of any reunion show / season which ever happens between the core original twd cast, i'll just assume they went somewhere and had an awesome adventure and came back safe and sound, hooray! at least the ones who live felt worth watching, it was vindicating and was already promised by the ending of the original series. the other spin offs are just directionless, over the top and pointless to any character arc.

not sure how I feel about your 'daryl should've died' opinion-- I don't entirely disagree. I just think that, if the only way for your character to not be gutted and used as a horse to beat, is to fucking kill them, then maybe the issue isn’t what to do with the character.

I think for the original cast of survivors he makes the most sense. but I think he should've stayed background and not been relevant. a juggernaut when conflict arises and someone who can get the job done, but he was never a leader or a confident character... putting him in those positions doesn’t suit him at all. half of post-timeskip daryl feels out of character in the first place because for some reason he's now a columbo-esque, plot-armour clad super soldier who can do pretty much anything single-handedly and everything drops out of the sky into his hands. it's freaky as fuck.

anyways, great to know you don't meet many people who share this opinion. very comforting...... and not at all surprising, if you scroll the tags for any longer than sixty seconds. that's just how it goes in these spaces sometimes.

thanks for reading and replying :)

[positively-peachy-143]

I have not seen the ones who live, but it really feels like that reunion should have been in the main show! The show left so many loose ends!! I watched it and I didnt feel like it was the end of my favorite show, it felt like a season finale with the remaining seasons having turned into lost media 😭

I do agree with you, after the timeskip that was not my man daryl 🙏 by the end of the show he just feels like the long-dead corpse of people's favorite character, dragged to the finish line to keep people invested. Which is why I say he should have died, it felt like watching a ghost that isnt allowed to move on . I feel like he should have died during the Alpha fight, defending Lydia, a former abuse victim, and giving his life to end the circle of violence in hers. Either THAT, or he shouldve been the one to go in the Negan lineup instead of Glenn, who shouldve ACTUALLY died behind that dumpster, and then we wouldnt be DOUBLE MAD at them for killing Glenn twice 😭

Its been really nice seeing someone who has similar opinions! I've been lowkey yearning for someone to talk to about this who didnt want to lynch me when I was finished speaking LMAO

[poolboyatthewerewolfmansion]

you’re more than welcome to dm me if you wanna talk more about it! I don't use tumblr much to be honest I only redownloaded it to specifically talk about this because the daryl dixon show is pissing me off so badly LMAO. i'm gonna finish season 3 later today so yeah if you wanna keep talking im sure ill have a lot more to say :P

[poolboyatthewerewolfmansion]

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

[positively-peachy-143]

OH MY GOD LITERALLY MARRY ME RIGHT NOW.

No because this is genuinely EVERYTHING I've been saying and I feel so crazy in this fandom because I've never found another soul who agrees with me.

The only thing you didnt mention (i unserstand why) and that I feel strongly about is I think BEFORE any of this crazy nonsense (Leah + the fuckass spin-off) i genuinely think Daryl should have died.

And not in the spiteful "I HATE DARYL KILL HIM" way but I genuinely really think it would've helped to preserve his character!!!

For example; I dont see a lot of Jesus mischaracterization. Why is that? In my mind its bc he died before the writers of the show could run him into the absolute ground.

I think Negan should have died too for this reason, by Maggie's hand. Fuck their spinoff too. THATS RIGHT dead city isnt even safe here bc WTF is that show oh my god.

[poolboyatthewerewolfmansion]

I knew the minute I got to season 9 of the walking dead that I was never going to touch dead city with a ten foot fucking pole. holy shit. I can't imagine anything more mind numbing to watch than MAGGIE AND NEGAN as a duo traipsing around wherever the hell with some snotty kid (presuming he's snotty, because all the clips i've ever seen of who I assume is a slightly older hershel, is him being vaguely pissed off at maggie) and a bunch of side characters who I truly will never even remember the name of much less care about.

for the purpose of any reunion show / season which ever happens between the core original twd cast, i'll just assume they went somewhere and had an awesome adventure and came back safe and sound, hooray! at least the ones who live felt worth watching, it was vindicating and was already promised by the ending of the original series. the other spin offs are just directionless, over the top and pointless to any character arc.

not sure how I feel about your 'daryl should've died' opinion-- I don't entirely disagree. I just think that, if the only way for your character to not be gutted and used as a horse to beat, is to fucking kill them, then maybe the issue isn’t what to do with the character.

I think for the original cast of survivors he makes the most sense. but I think he should've stayed background and not been relevant. a juggernaut when conflict arises and someone who can get the job done, but he was never a leader or a confident character... putting him in those positions doesn’t suit him at all. half of post-timeskip daryl feels out of character in the first place because for some reason he's now a columbo-esque, plot-armour clad super soldier who can do pretty much anything single-handedly and everything drops out of the sky into his hands. it's freaky as fuck.

anyways, great to know you don't meet many people who share this opinion. very comforting...... and not at all surprising, if you scroll the tags for any longer than sixty seconds. that's just how it goes in these spaces sometimes.

thanks for reading and replying :)

[poolboyatthewerewolfmansion]

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