#crazy stuff.

he plays the innocent victim act as his get out of jail free card, not cause he like… genuinely doesn’t like being a bully. If the guys had laughed at Rank he would not gone “omg I didn’t mean itttt” (this isn’t to say he *intentionally* got Rank killed or is proud of that, but the isolation and rejection definitely caused him to play up the defense victim act)

i say this with love as a Barko fan. He just has a lot of layers and nuances, he’s a terrible person and your essay on his performance of masculinity and punching down on others is like. The best meta about him. To rob him of those agencies sucks because there’s really good social commentary there!!!

No you're right he'd hate it he'd literally hate it so much it's honestly kinda funny lol

Like SO MUCH of Barko's behavior and baggage comes from like, his relationship to masculinity and all the places he where he "fails" to match up to the patriarchal standards of the fascist regime he lives under, seeing his behavior being broken down as essentially entirely excusable because of his mental and social struggles robs him of like...what little power and agency he does actually have in his life! Disconnects him from the masculine ideal EVEN FURTHER, makes him even more powerless than he already actually is!

Like...Barkovitch has Bad Impulse Control and he doesn't fully consider the consequences of his actions/choices, but he does still very much like...Make choices. He doesn't lash out at literally everyone- we never see him fucking with Stebbins for example- he picks his targets and he picks em for a reason, to make himself feel more secure about his place in The Hierarchy by externalizing his pain and taking it out on someone he considers "less" than him, someone even lower on the ladder! Like if you tried to be like "Hey it's okay I know you only said All That to Pete and mocked Ewing's seizure because you were just soooo sad and lonely, you didn't mean it you couldn't even help it actually :(" Barkovitch would be like no, fuck you, I called McVries a fucking queer cuz he is one and Ewing shaking and shit was funny. Like obviously his emotional state does influence him lashing out, but he is still very purposely picking "The Right Targets" to lash out at. Like even the hill scene...He doesn't go after Ray until Ray has his Gay Lil Pause and gets a Gay Lil Warning during his conversation with Pete, then he targets Ray in a way he hasn't in the whole movie up to this point (and he opens it up with direct homophobia), because NOW he feels like Ray's a valid target in a way that he wasn't before! Also a lot to say about Rank here and why Gary targets him- a pretty quiet kid, def one of the younger boys, with a build not too dissimilar from Gary's own, who spends his time throughout the Walk... Doing Paper Crafts. Definitely not a hobby associated with Masculine Behavior. Daymon Wrightly, Rank's actor, has mentioned on tiktok that Rank is a mama's boy who struggled to connect with the men in his family, and Gary smells that shit like blood in the water. Like I'm not of the belief that Barko was intentionally looking to get Rank killed- I Do Not Think Barkovitch Thought That Far Ahead or Considered The Likely Consequences of His Bullshit, again he has Bad Impulse Control- but he did still choose to go out of his way to bully a kid on the Death Walk, and he picked that kid because he thought Rank was another target that counted as "below" him, a skinny boy doing queer-ass crafts trying to fold up a paper heart.