#daniel wayward

posting my illustration(s) of daniel as the still images so you can appreciate it a little better and look at the details 🫶🏻

he is truly my laura palmer 🙂‍↕️

his death is of course awful, the way he's disregarded like he is nothing, seen as less than human, just because he has behavioural issues, because no matter what mental illness or trauma or whatever you have you don't deserve to die, people don't get to just kill people because they don't like them or because that person is a pain, he had a right to life and for gods sake he was just a teenager.

what kills me too is how he ran to his death thinking he had a way out, he never intended to hurt anyone, he never even thought they would do this to him because why would someone go this far? the last time we see him he is smiling because he thinks stacey will just leave cowardly, even though she was the worst before the leap he notices that they really messed with her head and i don't even think he blames her for her actions, his last act as she stabs him is to hug her for comfort, because he has no one, because everyone has abandoned him and lied to themselves and others about what he did because they couldn't be bothered to ask him, listen to him, try to understand him, because the only person he can reach for is the girl who literally murders him. it breaks my heart so, so much.

and it gets worse, in my opinion. because even after he's gone, after he helped abbie and rory and was kind to them, abbie - and i know she isn't really in her right mind, she's been awful and selfish in this episode, not just towards daniel - but her saying that daniel is a psycho that probably got off watching them sleep, that stings so bad. daniel isn't a psychopath he is just a traumatized boy who didn't always make the best choices, who struggled with his emotions, things that can especially come up at that age and it shouldn't define him as a person. because he was a full, flawed, but full human person who didn't deserve to die. and the fact that they brush off his disappearance, saying he's gone because he "went off program" and that no one questions it. i can't express how heartbreaking this is, i don't have the words.

whether he is or isn't - i'll hold onto my delusions of him surviving thank you very much - they left him for dead in the woods. and we should have seen this coming, but it is still so evil and unimaginable that it's so hard to believe. but he himself foretold his own demise when he alluded to the girl he saw die that was simply covered with a tarp and left there in the woods, and what kills me is that he didn't know the same thing would happen to him just moments later after he tells that story.