The more boring and mundane Michael Shelley is portrayed as the more psychological damage I take from the idea of Michael and Gerry’s ship.
Because the thought of Gerry, someone who was forced into a world of horrors at a young age, finding solace with the most normal guy alive who just wants to have an average life is so bittersweet in a way that lives nonstop in my head.
(And so angsty too if you think the idea of Gerry finally getting a normal life with his normal boyfriend for a little while, only to have his “normal” boyfriend turn up as a monster and pull him back into the world he only had a brief escape from.)
Gerry comes home with a cake and Michael asks him what the occasion is and Gerry doesn’t know how to answer “It’s Jurgen Leitner pipe murder day.”
When we see Gerard Keay interact with statement givers he comes across as pretty socially awkward. For example: In TMA 38, he stares at women until she’s uncomfortable and then he goes up to her and insinuates that she’s ruining his vacation before saying that she’s “marked” by something. Then he doesn’t elaborate on what she could be marked by. In another example, when interacting with the nurse in TMA 12, after bottles of saline start to bubble, he says “Yes. For you, better beholding than the lightless flame,“ which, again, is confusing and the nurse explicitly says that she doesn’t know what that means.
And I think that’s an interesting note on how being raised in a world where the fears were so normalized affected him as a person.
Because the social mistakes he makes when interacting with the statement givers is talking about the fears as they’re these casual things, which does nothing other than confuse and scare people who are already disoriented by what they’re going through…but the thing is, you can’t really blame him for making these mistakes.
After all, the fears ARE normal to him. They’re all he’s ever known, and from that perspective, it has to be hard to interact with people who have had such a different existence. There’s a good chance he doesn’t even register how confusing some of the things he says are, because in his world you don’t need to explain what a mark is or why it’s better to serve The Eye than the Lightless Flame. That’s just a fact of life.
And I think this idea that Gerard just isn’t good with interacting with normal people is backed up by the way he seems when we hear him interact with Gertrude and Jon. When he’s interacting with people inside his world, he comes across as very witty and charismatic, not off-putting in the way statement givers tend to describe. And I don’t think that’s because the statement givers are painting a false picture of who he is. Rather, he just has an easier time with people who "get it” and (mostly) need as little context as he does.
Anyway, it has been exactly five minutes since I’ve had too many thoughts about Gerard Keay. But my main one is this: Gertrude should have gotten the chance to fist-fight Mary at least once because who raises a child like that?