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[dirtyredneck]

OUT OF CHARACTER:
Name/Handle: Autumn
Contact: PM this journal
Reference: Teru
Other characters: N/A

IN-CHARACTER:
Character name: Daryl Dixon
Character journal: dirtyredneck
Series name: The Walking Dead
Canon notes: canon point from episode 7x04 "Service"; just after visiting Maggie's Grave

Species: Human

History: Wiki Article

Personality: Daryl is one of the seemingly rare people who became a better person after the world went to shit. While everything about him seemed to point at him being a 'mini-Merle' - an angry, racist, volatile copy of his older brother when things first went down - Daryl has, instead, grown into his own person. He's become the man he wants to be rather than the stereotype he thought he was supposed to be.

Daryl is a generally emotionally strong man that has learned to hide his perceived weaknesses behind anger and intimidation. A lifetime of having to 'be a man' and trying to gain his abusive father's respect, as well as live up to the expectations of his older brother, have made it so Daryl is very closed off socially. He's had to put on a strong front, be tough, for as long as he can remember. And he does it well. There are many things that take a toll on him, but he has proven himself quite adaptable and able to roll with the punches, as it were. Daryl does, of course, have some heavy self-esteem issues. He knows the others rely on him, but he doesn't see his life as holding as much value as theirs. He blames himself when there's a loss to the group because he wasn't good enough, or fast enough, or strong enough to save the people he's cared about. He is the one the most likely to offer to throw his life away to save another.

While he is strong, Daryl has moments where he just shuts down for a while. He'll go through the motions and follow others, do what he needs to, but shutting down is a coping mechanism for dealing with loss and pain. Something to keep him from crying in front of his father after the belt was out. It allowed him to disassociate and not tie the pain and anger and fear he felt directly to him. While he's like that, working out the emotional toll of whatever triggers the state, he becomes very subdued and generally unresponsive. This sometimes ends up with him being outright hostile to anyone that tries to approach him or confront him while he's like that. He also rarely cries and tries to hide it when he does. Fake that he's not or force himself to stop if it starts because that's a weakness to him: drilled into his head by his father and his brother since before he could remember and reinforced for the majority of his life.

For all that he has some obvious anger issues, particularly in how easily he can get growly and grumbly with others, Daryl is one of the most level headed in his group. And he's only grown more so in the last two years. His hot-blooded, quick to anger attitude tempering out as he became a trusted leader and adviser within the group he's been running with. He puts the needs of the group first, and his own second. His explosive anger comes out the most when he cares about someone and is worried about them, while his cold and quiet fury comes when he's genuinely angry. He's not good at expressing his emotions properly and is still learning how to do so in a what's considered a 'healthy' manner.

His own life experiences means he's hesitant to trust. But once he does, he trusts completely. It's a bit childlike, and that's largely because his socialization was heavily stunted due to the abuse he suffered and has yet to really work through. Heck, it's only within the last year that he's been able to deal with people physically reaching for him while he feels vulnerable without flinching and expecting to be hit. He's open minded and optimistic in a way that comes across as unexpected because he's also very realistic. His caution with others belies a very open and bleeding heart. He actually believes there's still plenty of good in the world. Despite all that the group's been through and how it's stripped away the hope of many of those he cares about (Rick, Carol, Sasha), Daryl believes they still need to reach out and grow and trust others they come across if they can.

Not all of his caution comes from the abuse his father etched into his back - though certainly a great deal of it is from remaining in an actively abusive household into his early 40s. A decent portion, however, comes unknowingly from his brother, Merle, and the many times Daryl perceives himself as having been abandoned by him. Merle left home as soon as he could legally get away with it so he could get out from under their father's belt before it got to the point Merle would turn around and kill him. Before he left, Merle was the only one of the two getting physically abused. After Merle left, however, Daryl became the new focus for his father's anger. When Merle did come back into town, he stayed for short stints, no more than a few months at a time. He'd take Daryl out with him on rides with his biker gang, but he'd eventually bring Daryl back to their father's house and then leave again. He left a lot and the message Daryl kept getting was that deserved what he got under Will Dixon's roof.

Due to that abuse, Daryl has a hard time letting people get close. Even those he thinks of as family and would die for, he keeps at a distance and doesn't share much of his past with. Not the parts that he thinks are shameful or would come across as 'weak'. One of the obvious signs of his past 'weakness' are the scars that cover his back from when his father would take a belt to him. Because of them, Daryl doesn't take his shirt off where anyone can see them if it can be helped. The closest he comes of his own volition is wearing a button up he's cut the sleeves off of, or a thick undershirt if he absolutely must. He also doesn't like to admit in any real way that he's struggling with his abuse and recovery. As such, he deflects all lines of discussion away from the topic if it ever focuses on him.

At his current canon point, Daryl is Not In A Good Place. One of his closest friends has just been brutally killed via beating with a barbed wire baseball bat and he blames himself for causing it by acting out and giving the killer an excuse. He's been mentally tortured for the last week, beaten, fed literal dogfood, and has just visited his home in the role of a slave to the man currently controlling his life and the lives of his family only to learn that another very close friend has apparently died in the interim. He's not quite to the point of totally acquiescing to whatever Negan wants of him, but he's a lot closer than he'd like to believe.

Abilities: Daryl has no canon super powers, but he is one of many 'badass normals' within his canon. Daryl has become something of a weapons expert, above and beyond the familiarity he had prior to the apocalypse, and displays an accuracy with even improvised weapons that borders on being 'uncanny'. He's also an experienced hunter and tracker in the literal sense, as well as being incredibly observant and able to process context clues others often miss. Daryl is an experienced brawler, more on the dirty scrapper end than any kind of martial artist. His most common tactics involve tackling people and/or punching them into submission. In addition to this, he's a skilled enough mechanical engineer to build his own motorcycle out of spare, very mismatched parts in under a week.

Augment Skillset: Communications Augment
Sample: Text fight in Riverview (others in that log, too, if you want a bigger range)