emi

so i fucking hate bero. he's a selfish, conniving, misogynistic shithead who has never seen a single person outside of himself as a real human deserving of respect and care, and while i wouldn't say he exactly escapes the consequences of his actions he absolutely does not get caught at the worst of his bullshit.

but i love, love love, the fucking narrative genius of bero. he is nothing. he spends the entire series trying to make something out of the nothing in his soul, but it was always a useless act because he lacks even the basic fundamentals of a self. bero has no ambitions. bero has no family. bero has no name. bero has no loyalties, not even to himself. he feels entitled to power and influence and women and love and attention, sure, but he makes no real effort to achieve these things on his own behalf; he expects them to fall into his lap after enough pawing at the lever in the skinner box of whatever he's currently obsessed with. he chases jade like a dog chasing a car because it will give him that elusive, poorly defined notion of "power," but he has absolutely no aims for what he'll do when he actually gets that power other than to continue his somnolent hedonism. there are no people or ideals or even physical objects or places he's looking to protect with jade. there is nothing specific he's trying to win with jade. the only thing he can be said to desperately want is the same thing he can never, ever have: significance.

and it's because of who bero is as a person. he lives in a culture defined by loyalty. the entire series loyalties are bought and sold and won and lost and twisted and defied and broken and restored and surrendered at last and never, never surrendered, not even once. but bero lacks any capability for loyalty, and the opportunities fall at him like fucking rain; he is shunted to and fro between opposing factions of endlessly complex loyalties where every single fragmented side lives and dies by their ideals or their connections or their beliefs. every interaction he has with the kauls is absolutely wild because they always assume he is like them. lan looks at him and sees someone who needs another chance to find his place. hilo repays him for his assistance with the understanding that bero may act on gratitude or expectation of reward later. even niko first meets him for an exchange (in which bero is not the only target of the investigation or the only person with this information), and even if any of them openly or privately accuse him of not having any real allegiances, they have absolutely no concept of the black hole of empty desire that lurks behind that crooked face.

and it is because of this that bero lacks all significance. he isn't loyal to mudt, who has an ambition to avenge a fallen loyalty; instead, mudt dies the horrific death of lan's killer and experiences all the significance that will ever have. he isn't loyal to the cause of the clanless resistance; instead, hilo gets a warning that ultimately saves his life and the actually dedicated ygutanian insurrectionist is questioned (torturously) and credited (anonymously). hell, he doesn't even pursue the clan war after ru by pointing the finger at the kobens (which was a big surprise to me), and his testimony is just an add-on to the story from the person who had a real connection to ru. at no point does bero ever sit down and say "these people are my people" or even "this is the thing i want to do with my life." at no point does he earn a specific consequence as reward or retribution for an action that can be attributed to him alone.

and bero IS all the things he claims he is! he is the poisoned dart aimed at the kaul family that takes out lan and ru (ultimately accidents both), that saves hilo and woon, that bolsters and undercuts no peak's fight with the mountain at equal and opposite turns. but he never commits. so when he finally faces down niko, the person who has the right to hate him the most in the world, he can't even have the satisfaction of niko's hatred or the glory of a vengeful death at the hands of people in whose lives he was ever even once, truly, significant.

he doesn't have strange luck. his problem isn't that his fate shifts up and down. it's that he doesn't believe in anything, not even himself, so he never ends up doing anything that matters to anyone else.