dynamicsymmetry:

rckyfrk:

So so very important.

Okay, let’s take a moment and analyze this.

Look at Daryl’s face in second top right. Seen that before? Three places that I can think of, but I know there have been more. The one that immediately sprang to my mind was in s3 when Rick told him they were going to hand Michonne over to the Governor. Daryl was disturbed, probably a lot more than he was showing. He hated it. “It just ain’t us, man.” (not the last time he tries to defend the group’s humanity). But that was the extent of it. And what did he end up doing? Head down and face away, eyes lowered. It’s body language that screams almost canine submission.

(one reason why I’m very carefully using it that way in Howl even though I despise the alpha/beta/omega thing; it’s deeply IC)

Other two places: when Rick gets him to agree to come back from Woodbury after he’s discovered that his brother is alive, and in the outtake from Coda when Rick says they’re going to kill everyone if it all goes south. Clearly unhappy, face down, eyes down, tiny bob-nod.

You do get that here. It’s in that panel.

But then Rick asks him if he feels differently and he stops, turns back, looks Rick right in the fucking eye and says “Yeah, I do.”

If we’re going with the vaguely canine/animal power dynamic thing, that’s a direct challenge. That’s a signal that the other party considers their power to be equal, that there is no imbalance here.

It’s really not aggressive. But I think it’s more in that direction than when he rejects the guns (and he was only rejecting them as far as he personally was concerned). Only other instance of it I can think of is when he pushes back against Rick’s “we are the walking dead” speech (THAT WAS SO FUCKING HUGE FOR SO MANY REASONS AND AMONG THEM IS THE DIVERGENCE FROM THE COMICS) and that’s different because there Rick is just talking in largely philosophical terms about their nature and he’s being very slightly hyperbolic and I think everyone knows it including him. It’s incredibly important, but it’s not this.

This is Rick saying “We’re going to do X”, and while Daryl isn’t going as far (yet) as saying “no we are fucking not”, he is looking Rick in the eye and saying “You’re wrong on this, this is a bad call.”

And then later he comes by and - casually - as good as does it again.

Rick, it’s a slow process for sure, but Daryl is getting pretty tired of your shit.