#and the insult to everyone's intelligence by making dex more than he really is

[burned-lariat]

I...I really don't know where to begin. Like...oh my God.

Okay, so everyone who has even so much as glanced at my blog knows my...contentious relationship with the character of Dex Heller. When he first showed up, he had a lot of potential, and he was a character I quite liked. Even when they condemned him to purgatory as a Joss prop, he still had some redeemable qualities like his compassion and spine.

2022!Dex and 2023!Dex are two different entities, and seeing what this character has become has made me angry.

I'm angry at how useless and worthless he is, how he can't do a single thing right except sex. I'm angry at the situations they put him into where they make him more than he is and overinflate his abilities because actually writing for him is too much of a chore. I'm angry that he is a contract character who, like many others, sucks up time and screen presence while doing absolutely nothing of value.

But I'm not just angry. I'm also depressed.

I'm depressed at the wasted potential, at all the storylines and ideas this character could've had but were thrown away. I'm not just talking about Destina, I'm talking about the mob, the connections, the retcon that actually could've worked out in his favor (even though we don't need any more of those). I'm depressed at how the show has put the actor into situations where no matter what happens, he is going to get derided for it (re: his height/weight). They put him in a place where he just cannot win, and I give him a lot of credit for just rolling with it (hopefully he doesn't prove me wrong).

Ultimately, when I think about Dex and everything he's said and done since his introduction in May 2022, I can't help but come to resent him and his existence and everything he represents. I went to bat for him however many times I did, doing my best to see the bright side and giving him chance after chance after chance, and all I've gotten from it is...nothing. No payoff, no three-dimensional existence, nothing.

He may not be my least favorite character, that honor still belongs to his girlfriend, but I hate him for what he has become under her and what we have to put up with every time he does anything. Just...fuck, man. Fuck me.

[lassieposting]

Some more on this:

- larrikin teaches skug to cheat at whist and poker, the entire regiment spends the rest of the war wishing he hadn't

- anton teaches the others a series of handy bible verses that can be creatively reinterpreted to excuse whatever rule they broke last

- saracen buys everyone tickets to a shakespeare play while they're on leave in london, erskine bribes the actors at the globe, larrikin gets pulled up for audience participation for like three minutes and proceeds to act like he's a broadway star for the next 30-odd years

- saracen confesses to dexter he has no idea how doing one's laundry works. the servants take away his dirty clothes and when they bring them back, they are clean. Dex is so fucking appalled he loses the ability to speak for twelve solid hours and then bullies him into learning how to wash his own clothes. This is not a life skill saracen really wanted to learn

- everyone has tried to teach saracen to cook at some point, with varying degrees of success

- literally everyone makes fun of erskine's accent for like, the first six months of being in the same unit, including fucking skulduggery, which. Erskine thinks this is shockingly unfair since skug is technically more of a pampered rich boy than he is, but skug has been slumming it with ghastly for decades and is very much one of the lads by then

- ghastly teaching gangly bambi-legged baby skug to box because he Cannot stop insulting everyone he meets. Skug teaching ghastly to read and write in exchange

- the three aristos grew up speaking like, french and greek and latin as well as gaeilge and English. Anton, ghastly and hopeless speak only gaeilge and english. Dexter and larrikin have very little English at all. Erskine is the best language teacher because he gets the how of it, the theory, so he's mostly the one helping them pick up the lingo in new countries

- erskine did not realise that it was possible to be uneducated but intelligent for the longest time. Anton can do insane mental math. Erskine was forced to concede he was wrong

- "operation teach skulduggery to make good choices" is a group effort, ongoing for like 375 years and counting

things i think about a lot: the education gap in the early days of the dead men

like on one hand you got skug (old money aristocrat), erskine (new money aristocrat) and saracen (old money aristocrat), raised by an army of tutors, able to attend fancy French universities, etc

and then you got dexter (street kid), larrikin (travelling player/thief/incorrigible card shark), anton (limited religious education) and ghastly (mostly vocational skills passed on by his father) plus hopeless (who the fuck knows)

and just?

the ones who can't read or don't read very well crowding around skulduggery and getting him to read their mail from friends in other regiments

saracen transcribing responses for them and then very lightly writing their names in charcoal at the bottom so they can trace over it in ink and sign their letters themselves

teenage skug realising ghastly likes poetry and history and happily raiding his family's library for books to give him so he can learn stuff his dad wasn't able to teach him

just give me the dead men sharing skills and teaching each other things because little moments of joy mean everything in the middle of a massive-ass war

[anyathefandom]

I feel you 100% because I feel like they undercut his character all the time and yet expect the audience to still believe that he should still be on canvas. Like no ma'am no sir this isn't how you sell a character at all. No will root for him if y'all give us nothing to root for. It's just become high key disappointing that it's clear at this point that they have no plans to flesh out his character or show us why sonny corinthos would still have any faith in Dex whatsoever. As of right now this man really is just a pretty face and occasionally charming when they let Evan be himself because nothing else is working.🥴

I...I really don't know where to begin. Like...oh my God.

Okay, so everyone who has even so much as glanced at my blog knows my...contentious relationship with the character of Dex Heller. When he first showed up, he had a lot of potential, and he was a character I quite liked. Even when they condemned him to purgatory as a Joss prop, he still had some redeemable qualities like his compassion and spine.

2022!Dex and 2023!Dex are two different entities, and seeing what this character has become has made me angry.

I'm angry at how useless and worthless he is, how he can't do a single thing right except sex. I'm angry at the situations they put him into where they make him more than he is and overinflate his abilities because actually writing for him is too much of a chore. I'm angry that he is a contract character who, like many others, sucks up time and screen presence while doing absolutely nothing of value.

But I'm not just angry. I'm also depressed.

I'm depressed at the wasted potential, at all the storylines and ideas this character could've had but were thrown away. I'm not just talking about Destina, I'm talking about the mob, the connections, the retcon that actually could've worked out in his favor (even though we don't need any more of those). I'm depressed at how the show has put the actor into situations where no matter what happens, he is going to get derided for it (re: his height/weight). They put him in a place where he just cannot win, and I give him a lot of credit for just rolling with it (hopefully he doesn't prove me wrong).

Ultimately, when I think about Dex and everything he's said and done since his introduction in May 2022, I can't help but come to resent him and his existence and everything he represents. I went to bat for him however many times I did, doing my best to see the bright side and giving him chance after chance after chance, and all I've gotten from it is...nothing. No payoff, no three-dimensional existence, nothing.

He may not be my least favorite character, that honor still belongs to his girlfriend, but I hate him for what he has become under her and what we have to put up with every time he does anything. Just...fuck, man. Fuck me.