gary barkovitch

visual Slim and wiry. Full of energy. Walks with a spring in his step and has a hard time keeping still. Twitchy and tends to fidget, likes to hold onto something to keep his hands busy.

vocal Loud and obnoxious. He seems to have an endless string of insults ready to go at any given time. When he's nervous or flustered he stumbles over his words and repeats himself a lot.

vibes He generally has a bad attitude and makes a poor first impression. While he wishes he had some friends, he resorts to aggression and antagonizing others as soon as he feels threatened or picked on, leaving him in the awkward position of having to grovel for forgiveness later. Most of his behavior is a result of his own insecurity and self-loathing, and he slaps and hits himself when he's particularly stressed out.

Gary Barkovitch is a troubled teenage boy from an alternate universe 1960s America that lost WWII and never recovered economically from the Great Depression. Although he's got a rebellious streak and openly shows some disdain for authority, he knows there are certain lines he can't cross and has grown up being fed a lot of state propaganda. He thinks that a competition where the losers are killed is perfectly normal and voluntarily signed up for it, for example. While his experience on the Walk has made him more resentful of the state, he's not used to having a ton of freedom and would still be surprised to learn that anyone found his circumstances abnormal.

shipping Ships with characters 17+, open to any gender based on chemistry. Open to anything cross-canon, I also ship him with pretty much all of the other Long Walk boys so throw 'em at me if you got 'em.

smut Yes, same prefs as shipping, I can play it out or fade to black.

AUs/crossovers I love both AUs and crossovers and I'm happy to work something out with you, whether it's AUing Gary into a different canon or AUing your character into The Long Walk.

I play Barkovitch primarily from the 2025 movie adaptation, but I am very familiar with the book and use it to fill out certain details. Happy to play with both movie and bookverse characters.