voregeoisie

For him to sell it, that means Merle would have had to have known Daryl was O negative somehow beforehand.

They don’t just test your blood type for just any reason. What he said would mean that he was likely injured or sick enough at one point as a kid that a type and screen/type and cross was done in case of a transfusion being needed. Sometimes they do it for surgeries but not always.

Donating plasma or blood can only be done at 16 or 17 with parental consent. He said he was a kid. I doubt he meant that age, but he could have.

There may be other reasons, but these are the ones I know. And given his background, it seems more likely that Daryl was hospitalized for something.

I’m just thinking about how, growing up, Daryl must have lived in constant fear of his brother never coming back.

How living with a drug addict—someone constantly involved with gangs and all that—is scary as hell.

Like, Merle disappears from time to time, without telling him anything—not where, not why.

And Daryl waits. He waits for about a week before he starts looking for him. He checks bars, Merle’s favorite hunting spots, crackhouses. And when Merle isn’t in any of the usual places, that’s when Daryl’s anxiety really kicks in.

There’s only so many times you can report someone missing before the police stop taking you seriously.

“Fuck off, Dixon. If your brother doesn’t show up this time, it’ll probably be for the best.”

He answers the phone anxiously every time it rings—sometimes it’s the police calling him to the morgue, to see if he can identify an unclaimed body. He’s gotten really good at memorizing Merle’s features—he has to. Most of the time, they call him in to look at someone unrecognizable, deformed by drugs, by gunshots, or just by time.

“Do you know him?” they ask, like they’re not showing him a corpse.

And Daryl holds his breath while his heart pounds. He inspects the body, searching for Merle’s tattoos, scars, the shape of his nose—just a little too round, just like his.

“No,” he murmurs, without feeling any better. His heart still racing, lungs still tight. He has to keep looking. He can’t let his brother die like that—of an overdose in a dark alley, beaten to death and dumped like a dog in the trash.

Alone.

Maybe that’s what haunts Daryl the most—thinking about all the awful ways Merle could die, and all the things he tries to do to stop it, believing—hoping—that he can somehow change his brother’s fate.

And after all the anxiety, all the insomnia he goes through, Merle just shows up in the kitchen one random Tuesday. No explanation. No apology. Acting like he hasn’t been gone for months.

“Where’s my bow?”

“Where the fuck have you been?”

“I was with a friend, man. Can you just tell me where the hell you moved my bow?”

So yeah… I get why Daryl is so frustrated when he finally sees Merle dead. Because Merle did, in the end, die alone—victim of his own decisions. Just like Daryl always feared he would.

You know me, I’m not one to stick to canon. I even joke about it. Key word: joke.

But it’s a little strange how people write that everyone is down to murder someone at the drop of a hat. No provocation

Like how people bring up how Dick killed the Joker, but leave out how he was having a mental breakdown bc of it, which is why Bruce brought the Joker back. Not because of his selfish wants or an inflated sense of self, and thinking he was morally superior to his son, as people portray it. They act like Dick was just itching to kill the Joker, and it wasn’t out of extreme emotional distress to multiple things going on (correct me if I’m wrong)

Even if Bruce didn’t personally revive the Joker, he would come back to life anyway because DC loves him being ‘the bad guy’.

And not a lot of people talk about how Bruce didn’t want to kill the Joker, but he was the ambassador of Iran (probably racist writing), and Superman stopped him from causing an international issue. But people don’t like writing about that (which I'm wondering why more people don't ever discuss it. Thinking it's because they hate Bruce bc they only bring up B reviving the Joker when they bash him and make everyone else hate him)

Or how Tim feels no remorse for the people he killed, setting off that bomb, and stuff

Or how Cass still wants to kill because she was an assassin (most likely rooted in racism)

They’ll use that same excuse for Damian, too (most likely rooted in racism)

There is immense grief in these two characters, who were forced to take the lives of people without truly having any other choice. They had no agency. I think they would have the strongest reasons to follow their own no-kill rule rather than anything else. They want to atone for the crimes they committed. May-haps it’s a lack of desire to get to know these two characters

Or how Alfred is going behind Bruce’s back and murdering people left and right with his shotgun, cause it’s ‘badass’

Then they’ll say Bruce is in the wrong for not wanting to kill people, and it’d be better if he did. Baby, he’s a volunteer. They’re all volunteers at the end of the day, and they should be allowed to not want to kill people. Yes, they fight crime, but they're literally just people.

The reason they became vigilantes in the first place is that they understand the sanctity of life and want to protect people. Why would they be murdering people as if it’s easy for them to take a human’s life?

Not to say that they haven’t taken lives, maybe, but people make it seem like they’re unaffected by doing something like that or even enjoy it. Like, it's the first thing they think of when things aren't going their way or when they meet a heinous bad guy.

I think people do badly want to separate the characters from Bruce and his morals that they mischaracterize them badly which is a shame.

merle making “mistakes”, hurting daryl, putting him in dangerous situations, repeating cycles, following their fathers footsteps- abusing him, and then being “sorry”, because he knows daryl will forgive him. because he’s all that daryl’s got.