Mr. Down-Low: Rick Grimes

[pirate_anon]

Mr. Down-Low: Rick Grimes

Rick Grimes is the main protagonist of the comic book/TV
series The Walking Dead. A former sheriff, he wakes up in a
hospital bed to the zombie apocalypse in progress, tries to find his
wife and son, and ends up running a town of survivors under
martial law.

I first see Draven’s interest in the Walking Dead on January
12, 2017, but the first concrete dates I have of Rick’s existence
don’t appear until summer, when Draven notes that he’s using
country music to front (2017 June 11a). In that post, Rick is called
“Mr. Down-Low,” but later the playlist will be renamed “Rick’s
Ultimate Uber” and the system will grow more open about his
existence. (“Uber” is a Draven term for feeling intensely like their
fandom self, often while bi-locating.)

Asides from a couple remarks that he exists like the one
above, all I have of Rick are a few photos. One from July shows
Draven dressed up in Rick’s sheriff outfit; "you look totally
authentic!" one commenter says, and another says, "I thought this
was a screencap/outtake before I noticed" (source available upon
request). It’s the exact same “eerie resemblance” that Kurt
claimed in 1999, recycled yet again.

Another photo shows a holstered gun (June 9), which if
it’s real, neither Draven nor Trinity would be allowed to own,
being convicted felons. Turns out it is used as a prop for bi-
location. Draven writes, “Let’s say X and Y were survivors of the
zombie apocalypse.” Clearly they mean Rick and whoever Trinity
channels for him. “The people running the bodies go to a remote
campsite with no one else around, and then, with a bit of focused
effort, proceed to ‘see’ the area around them as the post-
apocalypse landscape they’re familiar with. [...] They wear their
weapons even though (they) know that they’re not physically in
actual danger from roaming zombies” (2018 May 8).

But they don’t just wear the weapons; they become active
props in the psychodrama. “Maybe she pulls out her gun — and
although none of the weapons carried around in these
circumstances are active, and the body people are obviously
aware on some level that they’re not going to be killed on the
spot, the reactions are real because it’s understood that pulling
the trigger/throwing the weapon/whatever will actively result in
someone’s death.” So the weapons aren’t real, but they are, and
they carry them, even though they know they don’t need them,
and on and on, the usual Draven word pretzel.

Draven describes this whole thing as a healing experience,
allowing Trinity to “finally […] let go of her hate,” “move past
their previous dramas and for new things to occur, all a necessary
part of existing here” (ibid) but it’s disturbing to read, and clearly
untrue. After all, Trinity has been with Draven for fourteen years
now, but clearly they reenact these dramas over and over.
Draven may have few followers left, but the cult behavior
remains.

Rick appears again in photos from a protest, wearing an
anti-fascist baseball cap with “Grimes SZA” written on the side
(2017 October 28). SZA stands for “Safe Zone Alexandria,” the
community Rick rules during the course of the Walking Dead. It
seems ironic that a system with a history of authoritarian cult
groups and that Rick, who leads Safe Zone Alexandria with
executions and martial law, would identify as an anti-fascist,
especially considering Tony’s military work.

But then again, Draven have always paid great lip service
to the ideals of free will, self-determination, and freedom,
because it is what they want for themselves, if not for their
followers. They are totally fine with using the aesthetics of fascist
propaganda (which inspired the outfits of the Star Wars empire,
and thus the clothing that Anakin blew the rent money on), the
violent rhetoric, the sublimating of dozens of people’s wills to
their own cause. They just want to be on the top of that power
pyramid, not the bottom.

Draven attempts to become a Let’s Player, but it never
goes anywhere. They aren’t willing to put in the effort to make
their Let’s Plays good or impressive, and give up when they don’t
get immediate success. Oddly, though, the Let’s Plays are both
zombie survival games: Resident Evil 7 (2017 February 17) and Last
Day On Earth (2017 December 17), the latter of which is most
definitely played by Rick.

The Walking Dead is a wretched setting where humans are
constantly killing each other, devolving to their most brutal
sadism, and many a system member who comes from such
miserable places are happy to leave them behind. Rick, however,
seems to want nothing more than to return to that world, to be
the hero he is in fiction. And perhaps that is why none of Draven
succeed in reality: what they want is a fictional plot arc, and
those do not exist for real people.