#also this is the first time i remembered to draw gerry's tattoos (and u can barely see his hands akukugfh)

[burninginthegymplplinko]

MAG 102 - Nesting Instinct

doodle 102/200; days left 4/110 22/128

POV: Gertrude Robinson doesn't approve of ur new wife.

[gerrydelano]

he isn’t cited with them in 2009, but has them in 2011, so just sometime in between then! i usually put it in 2010 thereabouts just to be Even.

i have a LOT to say about his tattoos (and his affiliation with the beholding in general) so the rest of this is under the cut! my asks are still broken and this got long. tumblr is a functioning website

[ID under the cut]

ASK: I probably missed something but where in the timeline do you think that gerry got his tattoos? And do u think theres reasons beyond the ones listed in canon? (That I also uh cant really remember lmao)

(warning: it’s 2:30 am and this is VERY sloppy but! you activated my gerry card)

i think the reason for them can definitely vary; i’ve seen a lot of really badass and thoughtful headcanons about it! 

silly/simple angles first:

he basically sees them as a protective sigil (they literally did protect him from the lightless flame, in places)

his joints are shitty (EDS king) so he put those sigils over them like hey fortify my bones

he honestly just thinks they’re sick as hell and did it purely for the aesthetic

I HAVE A THEORY ABOUT HIS BEHOLDING POWERS OVERALL THAT’S CONNECTED TO HOW HE PUT THEM OVER HIS JOINTS

okay so take mag 12 and how he knew the code to that room, and how his exposition to jon was all about the color map of the entities all bleeding into each other and are only distinguished by arbitrary means sometimes like. i think his natural inclination is towards making connections and mapping out what connects one thing to another, inherently problem solving, everything is linked.

putting the eye tattoos over the connective points in his body that hold him together is very, very symbolic.

(also he’s an EDS king but that’s just me being correct and super cool)

but MORE importantly i really like the interpretation that he’s sort of banging pots and pans at the beholding all the damn time like “hello! pick me pick me!” take that painting of his, and the prayer under it. he’s Begging to be Seen.

he just has a very clear and DELIBERATE tie to the beholding, and in terms of the tattoos i just think it’s another way that he he really leaned into it on purpose. this meta by parker @cuttlefishkitch​ is great and touches on it as being something he did to take some control in his life!

something i probably won’t use in pbr word for word but will in sentiment is this:

“i wanted her to feel watched. by something bigger than me, but that she couldn’t get rid of as long as she kept me around. i wanted her to feel like she’d get hers someday, even if i couldn’t do a damn thing myself. because i couldn’t. i had to fight back differently.”

mary surely Doesn’t Want That In Her House/doesn’t want him to align himself with any singular entity anyway. so he may have literally even picked the one that’d piss her off the most/inconvenience her as a caveat to keeping him trapped. and what better way to remind her of his chosen affiliation - his refusal to do what she wants - than to put it All over him where she can’t Possibly NOT see it every time she looks at him.

now here’s the part where i just infodump about gerry because i feel like it and i have thoughts i want to Say jdhkjfghdfhj sorry this is such a tangent from what you were asking, you don’t gotta keep reading.

angel @ofdreamsanddoodles said to me once, he’s less of a monster hunter and more of a baby monster himself and that’s honestly what i run with when i write him. he goes for the artifacts, he saves people, but he doesn’t seem to draw the line between “good/evil” at whether you’re Technically Human or otherwise. both m*ry and gertrude were technically human and they were two of the most monstrous things he ever encountered.

gertrude admonishes his natural curiosity in the recent episode and tells him the perks of being aligned don��t outweigh the shackles of the institute and whatnot, which kind of implies that he? actually was kind of pursuing that, and i think it’s really interesting to play around with because it’s definitely not for Power Hungry reasons y’know? it’s a lot different. a lot more rooted in reclamation, in To Know Is To Be Safer, in I Want To Be Seen. 

i write him very strongly as him believing that knowing the details of your circumstance is the best way to be safe and get out of it, or cope with it better, and he believes very heavily in Honesty and being Upfront about your intentions and what you know. he doesn’t get cagey he doesn’t keep secrets he tells people to their face that they’re in danger even if they don’t understand because he isn’t about to just... leave them to it. honest. revealing Everything.

dude is COVERED in EYES. he wants other people to see things, too. that could be another reason; just signifying one of his strongest beliefs. OPEN your EYES.

also i think a lot about the way he talks to the nurse in mag 12. “yes. for you, better the beholding than the lightless flame.” like he’s actively out here Talking Up His Preferred Entity fksdjfhksdj

and that isn’t to say he thinks it’s Good or something. but i think he thinks it’s Better than some others, and at least something he can make into a tool to help people. using it to See danger, and then REJECTING its nature by DOING something about it instead of just Watching, is very. ugh. i love him.

cuz the beholding is tied to your suffering being witnessed but nothing being done about it; i think for himself, he wanted someone to actually see that he was going through something because it seems that no one’s ever acknowledged it. but the deviation from it is that his actual personality and motivations lead him to Do Something About problems when he comes across them, much like jon does! two of a kind.

either way, his affiliation with it is simultaneously a rejection and rebellion, just like his whole Everything with m*ry. aggressively passive aggressive icon.

OKAY I NEED TO STOP basically i just:

reclaiming agency by aligning VISIBLY and UNAVOIDABLY with a singular entity that his mum didn’t want in her vicinity, which is very beholdingcore in concept and practice

the Connective Link theory & his joints

he probably really did just think they looked sick as hell (correct)