#text: bert

[lorelaigrimhilde]

text 🏒 hunthilde

Lorelai: I know we had plans to lowkey ruin prom but what about this morp thing, dude? Dressing up all covered in blood sounds more fun than squeezing into a dress or tie.

[todrawthedevil]

OK im actually fascinated by all my drac plots rn like

oh god okay

when you think of the hiearchy of the city, i imagine it something like

reform(ed killjoy)s < neutrals < reform(d dracs/citizen)s < lower class citizens < middle class cizitens < dracs < scarecrows < upperclass citizens < exterminators < the elite <chief extermintor < the director/the board

so while dracs have... a LOT of power over more than half of the entire city, they have the least amount of power and control and sway amongst the most powerful members of the city

so i find it fascinating watching certain characters kind of, like... i mean... it’s years since they’ve joined the system, they’ve figured it out, they’ve settled, and suddenly they’ve all been challenged in such a way that it’s making them reevaulate their place within the system and it’s so fascinating

like bert has just always been in the bottom of the barrel. it’s been.... almost a decade since he’d been a killjoy but he still looks like a freshly reformed killjoy. he still has that stigma even though he’s long since passed the identity crises he went through from being assimilated so quickly into city culture (oh how i miss that character arc...) ... and i think it’s just really easy to use the violence and illusion of power as a drac to let out some frustration which is why, for a while, he was pretty competent at his job. but then it just started to crush him, and all the stuff with detainment and his reeducation happened and he’s just been getting smothered and put in his place and knocked down into the ground by all these authority figures using dracs like him to do it and it’s kind of just??? pushing him back into this place of feeling othered, like... he’s starting to realize that maybe it’s never going to work for him in the city, because he just never seems to be allowed to ever get comfortable to the point of ever feeling safe or at home there, because the second he feels okay, something bad happens to him. it’s just really interesting considering how low level of a drac he is

ESPECIALLY considering he’s still technically a better drac than jackie, but jackie is just rapidly developing into someone who has suddenly understood something. the system is corrupt. they’re not meant to ever be comfortable. he suddenly understands... maybe not that he’s been abused, not quite in those terms, but that violence is... something that people can enact on each other. something that HE can be capable of enacting on other people. maybe even that that’s something that’s expected of him, and his inability to understand that before is why he couldn’t fit in so much. i mean, it’s kind of sad, because this isn’t a direction i ever thought he’d go on. jackie going from someone who was content to being hurt to being like ‘oh maybe i don’t like this... oh, maybe i should like this? maybe i’ll like it if i was the one doing the hurting...’... but honestly, what shocks me more is that he just. gets. and understands the corruption. he’s starting to put together the ideas of networking, the ideas that draculoids can be above the law if they know how not to get caught, how easy not getting caught is. just... watching him just slowly destroy a set of morals that i’m slowly starting to realize he never really truly had a good grip on has just bee... whaaat...

NOW, TYLER... tyler has...or is... on the cusp of being promoted... so i suppose this is more of the end of his storyline as a drac. tyler was, first and foremost... a soldier. he wasn’t forced into becoming a drac like bert and jackie was, it’s all he’s ever wanted. he’s been training for it since he was a kid. and it’s weird (knowing where he started as a character) that there’s really no triumph in it anymore. there’s no pride, there’s no happiness, there’s no... really, any emotion behind his promotion. it’s his duty at this point, and that’s all it is. because he got a taste of what bert and jackie are learning right now, because he’s been abused so thoroughly by the system too, and for him it was such a struggle to fit that into the ideals he already had. because tyler has always been a character who has believed so genuienly and SO thoroughly in the ideas of the company. he wants to defend it... so bad. so he’s been jumping and jumping through hoops, trying not to blame the company for what... one person did to him... or even... trying to make that one person.. who IS the face of the company, in his eyes... trying to justify it so that it was right. so that it was... meant to happen???and doing so is really hard for him, harder than he wants to admit, so he’s just been shutting himself off and cutting pieces of himself away until he can fit the mold, and i just think that’s interesting when it comes to what being a drac means versus what being a scarecrow means. dracs are about being canon fodder... scarecrows and exterminators get to have a little more of an identity, themselves as one sole figure get to mean more and i think tyler takes this as like... he can’t... be a mistake, he can’t fuck up, he can’t let himself be the immature person he was a drac, because he won’t get that luxury anymore. what he does matters now, it affects other people, he’s gonna be responsible for other people..

it’s also just interesting watching it happen because i feel like... if emotions are a hallmark of something flawed and disgusting and sinful, then it would be believed that the higher up the hiearchy you go, the less emotional you really have to be to sustain the position. that’s why we get all these cold, distinguished personas among the higher classes... so having a character who is IN the process of making themselves cold, rather than a character who is trying to retain that cold emotionless and failing (because they’re a human being) HOO it’s interesting

[todrawthedevil]

... now i’m not saying that in bert’s desperation to trigger himself into breaking his reeducation is going to force his brain to start forcing flashbacks without his control or literally any cues at all but..

... but that’s exactly what i’m saying yeah heh

[todrawthedevil]

see what KILLS ME every time bert falls for someone like really falls for someone like he’s convinced he’s in love with them and that they’re the only one that matters in the world ever at that moment and nothing in his past present or future will ever compare to his current feelings for that one person is like

it’s ALWAYS someone he’s just projecting himself on, he waits until he sees something in himself in them and then just fucking imprints on him instantly

and THEN he spends all his time obsessing over saving that person and sacrificing his own wellbeing for them as if that’ll really prove something

and it all feels like this really misplaced need to like? love himself? because he hates himself. and take care of himself? because he’s neglectful of his own needs. it feels like an excuse to self-destruct half the time, or to throw away what self-preservation he does have in favor of martyring himself for another person

and i don’t think he realizes this at all but literally all of his ‘romantic’ relationships have been the exact same thing, just with different people filling in that SPOT reserved for someone who he thinks can rival him in misery

[todrawthedevil]

cries from bert’s incessant need to reenact past relationships in his life before his wipe to even start to feel like he’s living his life again,,,,

cries harder about bert using his sexuality to reclaim his agency despite how much trauma he has on the subject,,,

[todrawthedevil]

okay no see, bert is a paranoid mess at this point because he got like.. an INKLING of an idea that something is seriously wrong with him but literally everyone around him is (required by law to keep) denying it, he knows the company’s involved and knows that if he so much as hints too much on the fact that he’s catching on that they’ll break into his head and do whatever they did to him last time or worse, he’s convinced that keeping ‘clean’ is the only way to keep lucid but he gets so destroyed by the withdrawal symptoms of bli drugs he’s addicted to that he’s got to constantly take hard drugs to distract himself from it and he’s trying to figure everything out but has literally no way to and it’s FUCKING HIM UP

[todrawthedevil]

[11:17:43 PM] -//RED: i wonder if i can force bert to get back on heroin.... [11:17:52 PM] -//RED: go back to using needle drugs, it was cute.. [11:17:57 PM] -//RED: be my perf junkie boyfriend, bert... [11:18:07 PM] maeve: omHDG [11:18:18 PM] maeve: for some reason this is making me laugh.... [11:18:30 PM] -//RED: honestly he probably will cuz he cant not be on drugs but he doesnt want bli drugs anymore.... [11:18:35 PM] -//RED: ;-; omg [11:18:42 PM] -//RED: and he doesnt want coke... [11:18:47 PM] maeve: 'wonder if I can force my oc back onto this highly addictive life-ruining substance....' [11:18:54 PM] -//RED: yes...

[todrawthedevil]

GROSS THING BERT DOES:... i've actually mentioned it before but not exactly in this context. 

bert romanticizes the past.... sooo much, we all know this. he found where he was happiest and picks these certain points that he finds some sort of mystical importance or significance in and pedestalizes it to the point where he absolutely refuses to move on from it. this is all shit we're familiar with

but i think that there's something about the future and the uncertainty of it and the anticipation of some sort of perceived pain he's bound to have in the future is what's actually keeping him from moving on and instead fixating on the past where it's safe. i think a lot of that comes from how emotive he is, and how easily he's overwhelmed with negative feelings. the past is safer in that, even if that past is painful (see: weapon, luca) he's already lived through it so he sees it as something he can survive, just as long as things go the exact same way they went

so i think bert is actually so wrapped up in his head and in his problems that the only way he can look at the future and strive towards it is if he can find a way to recreate the past. i think he does his best to avoid new experiences because he doesn't know how to handle them, and i think he does this with this mindset in mind where he's not allowed certain things, he doesn't deserve them, he HAS to either be miserable like he is now (where he's safe) or be happy the way he used to be (where he was 'protected' in a way). otherwise, he panics and does what he can to reject anything else because he's so terrified of things he can't 'brace' himself for