mickmercury:

but for real I spent weeks between Story and Song episodes thinking I was gonna get a triumphant and joyful victory smackdown against a villain who had come to represent, to me, despair and depression and all the times in my life I wanted to just Give Up. I was depressed and grieving and I’d just listened to the first 67 episodes in a week and a half and I was so ready for Merle to fight John, the idea of that fight meant so much to me

and then instead Griffin Andrew fucking McElroy decided to make that villain fight back and see hope for the future even when he himself had no chance to survive, and I am never going to stop thinking about that. how instead of just a story about how your joy is more powerful than any darkness around you, they told a story about how persistent joy and kindness and willingness to reach out to someone else can change someone, can help them; about how the anger and despair and apathy inside you can overtake and consume you, and the whole world with you, and even then it’s never too late to turn around and see it for the lie it is and fight against it, and fight for hope and joy and friendship and peace and the right to be yourself again instead of the emptiness you’ve been for so long. and that means so, so much more