Posts tagged: analysis
Consider the the rival powers in Westeros. The Starks are fatalistic, duty-bound, honorable but kind of unsophisticated. The Lannisters are appetite-driven plutocrats. The Baratheons were markedly varied, but the surviving one is driven and joyless, having perhaps inherited the Stark “hat” now that there’s not a Stark head left to wear it. The Martells are given to plotting and sexual license. We know less about the Tyrells, but they seem to value chivalry and court culture: consider Loras’ prowess, consider the splendor of Margaery’s entourage and weddings, consider how much more talented the Tyrell fool Butterbumps is than any of the other fools we’ve met.
Now, consider the rival powers among the Dothraki. Was it Khal Jommo’s khalasar that valued chivalry? Were Khal Ogo’s people the least trustworthy? Did Khal Drogo’s have a unique worldview shaped from their long tradition of cultural exchange with the Free Cities? Or are all the khalasars exactly freaking the same, because that’s how it works when you’re an oriental other in speculative fiction?
Gamzee Essay number one.
A lot of people are in a lot of disagreement about what the fuck Gamzee is actually saying and what we’re supposed to take away from it. I’m here to help shed some light on the issue. My credentials to do so? Well, I’ve been a juggalo for thirty years.
Not really, but I’ve been doing a lot of research and I’m an Amurrcan that grew up around the sort of low-income troublekids that ICP markets itself too, I had a friend show me some of their music when I was a kid! And of course nowadays I’ve done my extensive journeying through juggalo lore to learn more about everybody’s least favorite sodaclown.
So basically you’re just gonna have to take my word for this one, right? Or not!! I am not your earth human mother.
GAMZEE: MOTHER FUCK WHO’S ALL THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY? IT’S A MOTHER FUCKIN NINJALICIOUS HO-TITTY MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS BITCH ASS MOTHER FU—
Okay just look at this, just look at it, for one! It’s fucking ridiculous. It doesn’t actually sound much like anything gamzee’s ever said before? It’s hyperbolic to the extreme, I’m sure it’s meant to be “look at how funny he talks” more than anything. Narratively this is a hugely awkward place to be putting in weird jokes about how hot aranea is or whatever.
Most people are hung up on “Ninjalicious Ho-Titty” but with this sentence structure he’s not even calling her “ninjalicious ho-titty.” Let’s break this shit down.
MOTHER FUCK WHO’S ALL THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY?
Pretty basic. “MOTHER FUCK” (expletive) WHO (subject) ‘S ALL (auxiliary verb) THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA (person, this is just, another way to say person, i promise you it means nothing? Not that hussie is going to be anywhere near using urban/rap lingo as anything other than a big joke but yeah “fresh pimp ryda” is basically just a way to say person.) I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY (saw)
Translation
WHO ARE YOU?
Not wow who’s this hot lady!!! no. A “pimp ryda” is not a term for a hot lady. A fresh pimp ryda is not actually a phrase anyone really recognizes at all. Hussie is just slamming a bunch of perceived lower-class words together to make gamzee look kind of stupid and incoherent and well??? Checking the fandom response, it’s working?? blugh.
IT’S A MOTHER FUCKIN NINJALICIOUS HO-TITTY MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS BITCH ASS MOTHER FU—
Here’s where the contestion is. What’s he saying??
The subject here is not Aranea. The subject is “It,” and gamzee messes up his grammatical references, sure, but he’s never referred to a person as “it” before. What’s he talking about? Literally, “It!” What’s going on, what’s happening, the situation, man, which is all up and being “A MOTHER FUCKIN (expletive) NINJALICIOUS (Very ninja, ninja being ‘homie’ or relevant to the posse but I don’t actually think. It’s intended to really be hinting at anything) HO-TITTY (same tone as “wicked bitchtits) MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS (here in this) BITCH ASS MOTHERFUCKER (where I am currently)”
What he’s saying is
WHAT’S HAPPENING??? THIS IS STRANGE AND I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. ALSO I AM A JUGGALO, IN CASE YOU FORGOT?
Like I’m not hugely surprised people are having a hard time pulling what he says apart or are making fun of him or are immediately interpreting everything he says as objectifying/misogynist because it’s hip hop lingo and what has anyone ever ELSE done about black music and its propagations and its vernacular am I fucking right??? haha
But the point here is that Gamzee doesn’t talk like everyone else, he’s very confused, he’s very upset, he spills a bunch of jargon, it sounds funny, Aranea talks about how disgusting he is and then mind controlls him. Gamzee always had difficulty communicating and this was undoubtedly related to his upbringing. he’s always spoke sort of wrong, his dialect being a mashup between highblood scripture and lowblood vocabulary. Linguistically, he walks a line a lot of real people do on earth when they grow up in low-income/urban places and then to have a bunch of middle-class people call them “uneducated” sooo. Come on, people, don’t miss that you’re doing that here, and don’t miss that hussie is playing off this lower-class social phenomenon and speech patterns to make a big joke out of them.
Either way? This is the wrong time to be vilifying Gamzee for how he speaks because it’s exactly the justification Aranea is using to remove his speaking privledges, which is an absolutely concerning thing for her to be doing. Do not repeat the whole Tavris debacle, fandom, I’m begging you.
And that’s Clown Essay part 1.This is a good analysis. I honestly assumed that body language alone was enough to convey that Gamzee was upset and freaking out over being mind controlled, but apparently that’s not something people pick up on? I don’t know, sometimes Homestuck fans confuse me a little.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a joke about low class language alone necessarily, even. We know that quirks get more pronounced and text gets less readable the more upset people are. The more upset Karkat is, the more lurid his metaphors become, the more upset Vriska is the more letters turn into 8s, and so on. Gamzee is just following that pattern here, and as usual the comic is setting up a funny situation with a darker undercurrent to it—that long string of incoherent text and Aranea’s reaction is funny, but also disturbing the more you think about it. The comic is extremely good at setting up those uncomfortable laughter moments, really.
Total unpopular opinion but:
Way to support your man, Pepper. Walk out on him when he’s in the middle of a ptsd attack. ……Yeah, that’ll show him how much you love him.
**
The above statement is exactly what I thought. Really it started in the lab though when he was pouring his heart out to her and she was clearly not caring. To watch him suffer a bout then snark @ him and leave him alone was painful to watch. WTF. I’m still not over it. At least Rhodey showed he cared about how Tony was doing.
Yes, because when she walked over to Tony and practically held him in her arms she was really uncaring wow so heartless.
and god forbid a woman choose her physical safety over taking care of her man’s emotional state, which you know, just put her physical safety at risk there
(and I’m sure accidentally hurting Pepper with the suit would do wonders for Tony’s ptsd attacks) >_>
I hate to butt in but I was really pleased with this scene because this is PTSD done right and reactions by someone who doesn’t have PTSD done right.
I have high-level PTSD and have had to deal with it for about eight and a half months now. I have night terrors worse than Tony’s. I thrash in my sleep, kick, fight, and scream. In the time that this has been going on, I’ve had two friends who have spent the night with me in an attempt to see if someone calming and strong sleeping next to me would ease the night terrors. Out of three collective nights that they stayed with me, it was successful only once. The final night, my second friend had to leave the bed and sleep on the couch because I was thrashing so much in my sleep. He’s 6’2” and a military officer who can definitely kick my ass in a fight if I were awake. I was hurting him so much in my sleep and scaring the daylights out of him that he had to leave. When someone with PTSD is in the grips of a really violent night terror, they fight tooth and nail more violently than if they were awake. Yes, it hurt me that he did that but I get why he did it. He was scared for his safety because I was fighting so hard in my sleep. My other friend that stayed with me watched me suffer through a night terror like Pepper did with Tony and tried to wake me up after a few minutes of me whimpering and kicking in my sleep. I nearly decked him coming out of it because I was still swamped in the dream and had idea what was going on.
Both men reacted similar to Pepper. They were scared, they were hurt, they were terrified for me, about what I was doing and going through, and had no idea how to handle it, save walking away to breathe. When you don’t have PTSD, but your partner does, it is incredibly difficult to understand what they are going through and how their mind operates, especially when asleep when the PTSD manifests in nightmares and night terrors.
So don’t you say that Pepper wasn’t supporting Tony by walking out. She was putting her physical safety first, which is a perfectly legitimate action to do in that situation. It hurts Tony obviously, but she still supports him and loves him and helps him through the PTSD in the morning. She listens to him when he rambles and tries to articulate what it’s like inside his head since New York as he’s trying to express why he’s acting the way he is. Listening and still loving them at the end of the day is the best thing you can do for someone with PTSD.
I was incredibly pleased with how they handled the rather touchy subject of PTSD in this film because I’ve had to live through that hell for eight and a half months now and know what it’s like day in and day out to struggle with your own brain, especially against nightmares, night terrors, and panic/anxiety attacks.
So to all the people hating on Pepper for her reaction in this scene: shut up. You have no room to talk. Had you been in her position, you would have left the room too. Don’t try to speak authoritatively about something you know nothing about. Thank you.
The (not) in the title of this post indicates an order of operations, as in mathematics. Pretty much, it’s to call attention to the way in which Mako Mori is not your “strong feminist heroine,“ according to some, and why this is a problem with the way we think and speak about “strong feminist heroines.”
Several of the feminist critiques of Mako Mori have expressed the opinion that Mako is somehow less of a character due to the fat that she has fewer lines compared to her male co-stars. The argument appears to run that, despite being front and center for the entirety of the movie, in order for Mako to be considered a “strong feminist heroine,“ she needed to be talking as much as Stacker, Raleigh, Chuck, and Herc in addition to the way in which she is established as a character in her own right.
This strikes me as odd: Mako Mori, who ostensibly embodies a kind of warrior archetype that is less common in western media; who demonstrates martial and technical skill exceeding, or on par with, her male counterparts; who helps provide the emotional ground for the whole narrative; and who demonstrates a strength that, in my opinion, is exceeded only by Stacker Pentecost, is not a “strong feminist heroine” because she doesn’t have many lines? I am not sure that this is a critique that we can carry to it’s logical conclusion.
One of the primary problems that I see with this critique is that it assumes a certain kind of strength is necessary for the presentation of a “strong feminist heroine,“ and the expression of that strength is not only through the actions that the character takes within the narrative, but how vocal the character is within the narrative. To this end, these critiques seem to make the argument that the actions Mako takes during the narrative of Pacific Rim (piloting a Jaeger, accepting the loss of her family, accepting the loss of stacker) are somehow diminished because she didn’t contribute to the dialogue.
Against this, I offer that Mako’s very silence is what defines her strength. Too often we assume that strength is assertive, it is something that pushes out into the world. In the case of the “strong feminist heroine” articulated by critiques of Mako, she lacked the strength (some might even say agency) to project her voice out into a narrative dominated by men. However, this ignores the possibility of an internal, non-assertive strength, the kind possessed by Mako and made manifest in several scenes throughout Pacific Rim.
As I, and others, have pointed out, her statement to Raleigh, “It’s not obedience, it’s respect,“ indicates a kind of inner strength to set aside ones desires for the sake of the group. Students of Japanese culture will note, generally, that this is the kind of internal fortitude that makes up some of the best Japanese characters, and I would count Mako Mori among them. As an example from Japanese literature, I would point to Tomoe Goezen (one of the more notable onna-bugeisha) in the Heikei Monogatari. At the defeat of her commander’s army, she was willing to lay down her life so that she could die honorably with her commander. In turn, her commander orders her to depart the field against her wishes. Granted, in the context of the Heike Monogatari, the order was given because the commander did not wish to be responsible for her death, however, the implication was that her life (as a warrior) was too valuable to waste in seppuku at that battle.
Out of respect, and against her wishes, Goezen flees the battle. This is the kind of strength that Mako Mori possesses, and it is a characteristic of all good Samurai and all good deshi to their Sensei. We can see this kind of strength emerge again when Stacker is preparing for his final ride, just before declaring that they are “cancelling the apocalypse.” When Stacker asserts that he will be piloting the mission, despite it leading to his death, Mako accepts his decision without question, and further assents to defend him (to the death is implied) while he completes the mission. To knowingly allow your commander, your Sensei, and your father to walk to his own death and simply accept his decision requires a kind of strength that cannot be articulated in mere dialogue, it must be demonstrated through action.
This strength through respect is further demonstrated by the way in which she accepts, rather than protests, Stacker’s decision to ground her following the near disaster in the synchronization test with Gipsy Danger. We, as American viewers, are used to our “hero" characters fighting for their chance to prove their value, to prove that they are right. Raleigh embodies this kind of mentality when he argues for Mako (actually, we might read Raleigh’s staunch defense of Mako as recognizing that she possesses the kind of strength needed to do what is necessary) to be his co-pilot, throwing everything he has against Stacker. We’re used to seeing this assertive strength as “true strength" as opposed to Mako’s more internal, composed strength.
To belabor the point, Mako further possesses enough mental strength to suck Raleigh into her own memory. There are some who might deride an “in universe" plot exposition point as a example of a female character’s strength, with something like, “oh, we needed that scene to explain Stacker’s relationship with Mako.“ However, the dialogue in the sequence clearly indicates that Mako’s connection to Gipsy was too strong for them to disconnect. Let me put it another way, Raleigh is the more experienced pilot, and has “flown” Gipsy before so it would be logical to assume that his connection would be stronger than Mako’s. In fact, it appears the reverse is the case: Mako, on her first connection with Gipsy, manages to overpower Raleigh’s own connection and draw him into the memory.
Now, again, since Raleigh fell out of synch with Gipsy and Mako first, it would be logical to assume that Mako (as the inexperienced pilot) would be pulled into Raleigh’s memories. Instead, Mako’s falling out of synch pulls Raleigh into her own memories, despite the fact that he had regained his connection with Gipsy Danger and was aware of what was going on. I may be overly charitable to the film, but all in universe evidence points to Mako being a stronger and more capable pilot than Raleigh himself: “51 drops, 51 kills" in the simulator. I’m willing to hazard that Mako’s lack of dialogue as a factor which denies her the status of “strong feminist heorine,“ is on shaky legs.
The deathblow to this critique of Mako Mori does not come from within the narrative, but is aimed at our presuppositions about strength. Again, in our Western framework, we assume strength must always equate to assertion, a kind of aggressive devil may care attitude that is embodied by characters like Raleigh and Chuck Hanson. In contrast, Mako Mori provides us with a kind of inner cultivated strength that stands out in stark relief to our cowboy hero archetype. For me, this points to the insufficiency of the characterization of strength always pushing outwards against the world, seeking to enforce its will upon the world. Strength, of character, of will, can be internal: a control over oneself and one’s emotions despite the turmoil that one finds themselves embroiled in.
This is the kind of strength that we see in Mako. Even at her most “emotional” during the compatibility dialogue, a point that Stacker notes, she is still in control over her body, her feelings, and the fight itself. We might further see this internal strength resulting in the focusing of her desire for revenge, her emotional trauma, into the deathblow that takes down otachi: when Raleigh seems all but willing to give up as Gipsy is dragged into the air, it is Mako who finds the way, and Mako who delivers the deathblow as the articulation of her emotions into a single focused strike: “watashi no kazoku no tame ni,“ indeed.
I make a point of the single strike for a good reason: typically, when one exacts revenge for the death of one’s family, we see it as “the beatdown.” The character in question vents their trauma in a rain of blows that often continues after the object of their vengeance is dead. We see this in movies all the time: the hero empties an entire magazine into a fallen foe or continues to pummel the enemy long after they are unconscious. For Mako, it is a single, focused strike that ends the battle: she has the strength of character not to waste energy venting her rage on Otachi, she gets the job done, and has her satisfaction.
For all of the above reasons Mako Mori is (not) your “strong feminist heroine,“ and it is not out of any deficiency in her characterization, but an inability of the concept of “strength” to recognize the kind of strength that Mako embodies. In short, Mako Mori demonstrates the degree to which our notion of a “strong feminist heroine" is insufficient and needs to be adjusted.
“There are things you can’t fight - acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you get out of the way. But when you’re in a Jaeger, you can finally fight the hurricane. You can win.“
Beyond connecting with the mind of another pilot, one of the most interesting aspects of piloting a Jaege, for me, was the way in which the pilots become embodied in the Jaeger as distinct consciousnesses connected in an interdependent bridge. As depicted in the film and the source material (see the quote from the novel above), the neural bridge acts to connect the two pilots together so that they function as a single individual within the Jaeger. So, to me, when Raleigh says “when you’re in a Jaeger,” I believes he literally means “in,“ as in inhabiting the Jaeger as if it was his own body. So, this is the thing that I want to explore: the two Jaeger pilots as embodied in the Jaeger itself.
So, what is embodiment? In philosophy, embodiment is the idea that the way in which we inhabit our bodies has an effect on the development of our consciousness. The differences in our bodies (the “body” in “embodiment") make a massive difference in the way in which we experience and interact with the world, hence, even Identical twins do not form identical personalities because their modes of embodiment are different. To this end, the concept of embodiment, or “cognitive embodiment,“ treats the mind and the body as interdependent upon one another: if an individual had a different body, their experience and consciousness would be accordingly different.
So, before taking the brief sketch of embodiment and applying it to the Jaeger itself, we need to talk about the neural drift. The quote above gives a first person look at what it is to be in the drift with someone else: there are two individual connected as an organic whole, distinct yet connected. When Raleigh makes a motion, Mako completes it; where he ends, she begins. To this end, Raleigh and Mako think of themselves as both subject and object: Raleigh can see the end of his connection and the beginning of hers, and Mako can see the end of her connection and the beginning of his, yet neither moves without the other. That is to say, any action taken while in the neural bridge by one pilot, is an action taken by the other pilot as well, as if there was no distinction between the two.
Now, taking the bridged individuals as the “mind,” we can look at the Jaeger itself as the body. The supplemental material discussing piloting a Jaeger describes the experience as the bridged pilots moving the Jaeger as it it were their own body. We can see a bit of this happening in the gifs above: when Raleigh and Mako take a fighting stance, Gipsy Danger mirrors the motion, as if it were their own body. Sharing the neural load, the two pilots inhabit Gipsy, not like a pilot flying an aircraft, or even a motorcyclist riding his bike, but as a mind within a body, with all of the pitfalls that apply.
Here is where the discussion gets interesting: embodied consciousness typically assumes that the consciousness grows with the body. Again, in the brief sketch offered above, our minds would not be the same minds were we embodied in a different body. For Jaegers, the connection is close, but not as individualized: the movie makes a point that the Jaegers must be calibrated for their pilots before the synchronization can take place. That is, the Jaegers must become the bodies for their pilots, they must be made individual for each of their pilots through a process of calibration so that the mind can inhabit the body as if it were born with it. On this point, I don’t see a problem for thinking about the pilots as becoming embodied within the Jaeger, but it does introduce the notion that the embodiment will be different for different pilots.
The clearest visual evidence for this is with Gipsy Danger, as presented in the gifs above. When Gipsy is calibrated for Raleigh and Yancy, the body language is almost totally different: Gipsy moves with an arrogant, aggressive swagger, she fights more like a prize fighter, and there is more “power" in her strikes. We can view this as the blending of Yancy and Raleigh’s minds (including their fighting styles) being embodied within Gipsy: one of the more interesting things is the way that Gipsy’s swagger is mirrored in the Beckett boys when the audience is introduced to them.
On the other hand, when Mako and Raleigh are embodied in Gipsy, there exists an edge of aggression in her movements, however, this appears to be tempered by Mako’s precision. Her strikes have little in the way of wasted motion, and each has a determined goal beyond smashing into the particular Kaiju.Gipsy’s walk, while it possesses a little bit of Raleigh’s swagger, it is more of a purposive, determined stride than it is a challenge issued through body language.
Further, the distinction in their embodiment (the way they inhabit their body) comes out in the stances they adopt: In the above gif, Mako/Raleigh embodied in Gipsy adopts a combat stance that is more in line with what we see out of MMA fighters: gone are the double handed overhead strikes, replaced with a more conservative defensive stance that allows for grappling and close-in fighting. On the other hand, Yancy/Raleigh seemed to prefer a more aggressive stance favored by boxers, keeping Gipsy’s hands closer to the body and utilizing more “power" shots.
We may chalk the distinction in the stances to a different composition of the bridged “mind" that inhabits the Jaeger: the Beckett brothers were more rash, more aggressive in their combat styles, as evidenced by their actions in Alaska. Against this, Raleigh and Mako exhibit an aggression tempered by Mako’s precision: they waste little time with their combat, employing quick, precise strikes designed to take down the Kaiju as quickly as possible.
To this end, no Jaeger will be the same when it embodies different pilots: as the bridged pilots literally become the Jaeger they operate, and the bridge joins the individuals, a change in any of the individuals would result in a change in the Jaeger itself. Further, it seems to be the case that one pair of pilots is attached to a single Jaeger at a time, and that Jaeger is calibrated for those pilots. To this end, the Jaeger itself will be different depending upon who is embodied within the Jaeger. Thus, I think “piloting" is a bad way to talk about what happens to individuals connected to a Jaeger: “becoming" or “embodying" the Jaeger is a more apt description.
Also, credit goes to whomever captured the gifs and the text from the novelization.
Before his final ride in Striker Eureka, Chuck Hanson asks Stacker Pentecost how the two of them, who do not share an emotional bond will be able to drift. Stacker replies, “I bring nothing to the drift, no rank, no ego,“ as though this will explain how Stacker is able to initiate a neural handshake with someone that he has not gone through compatibility training with. From the perspective of Zen Buddhist philosophy of mind, this makes perfect sense: a person who can literally leave behind their self, their ego, their rank, and and all of the nonsense that leads to harmful attachment will be more able to drift with anyone, regardless of their prior compatibility.
Normally, when we speak of no-mind, we talk about the concept of non-attachment: the stilling of the mind in such a way that thoughts arise without the mind clinging to them. For the Japanese Buddhists, clinging to attachments (thoughts included) is the source of delusion: when we hold onto our thoughts, we attempt to make them permanent. This is contrary to the nature of a world predicated upon impermanence, and ultimately leads to suffering. The state of “abiding without mind,” or “mushin" is taken to be one of the necessary conditions for perceiving the conditioned nature of the phenomenal world and thus releasing one’s attachment to it.
One way of achieving this “no-mind" state is through shikantaza, the “just sitting" meditation conceived by Dogen Kigen. In shikantaza, the goal is to meditate without attaching a particular goal to that mediation: to impart a goal would be to become attached to the goal and sort-circuit the attempt to release one’s attachments. Further, one of the goalless goals of shikantaza is to become aware of the way in which our attachment to things that condition our “selves" provides the source of delusion. Once this realization is made manifest, then shinjindatsuraku (body/mind dropping away) occurs where the individual realizes their conditioned nature, their “non-self.“
Dogen Kigen, in his Shobogenzo, presented a conception of shikantaza that included all activities if these activities are performed to bring an awareness of the interdependent nature of the world. Earlier I made the observation that the physical compatibility testing was intended to generate an awareness of the bodies of two pilots and prefigure the degree to which their minds could interface by demonstrating how quickly they could adapt to one another. In this mode, the martial arts can serve the purpose of shikantaza by cultivating an awareness of an entire individual as a collection of interdependent relations within an overall network of relations: getting stuck on a single arising moment leads to death in the martial arts.
Takuan Soho fully explains this concept in his text on Zen Buddhism and martial arts, The Unfettered Mind. In it, he paints a picture of the nest martial artist as one whose mind does not abide in his opponent, or his sword, or his technique, or his understanding of himself as “the best.” Rather, the mind does not abide anywhere: it moves through the fight allowing the martial artist (a swordsman, in this case) to respond appropriately. No-mind, or non-attachment, becomes fundamental to the cultivation of the supremely skilled warrior, particularly in his ability to read and respond to an opponent without becoming “stuck.“
To this end, the martial arts training that the Jaeger pilots engage in serves a double purpose: it allows them to read their partners, AND it cultivates in them a mind that does not attach itself. That is, the martial arts training that the Jaeger pilots engage in introduces them to the state of no-mind, of non-abiding, that is necessary for the initiation of the neural handshake. Put another way, in order to engage in the neural handshake, one must be willing and able to release one’s attachment to an egoistic self.
Now, why is releasing our attachments to things, like rank and ego, which constitute the illusion of the “self,” important for the Drift? Well, if we think about this in terms of the neural handshake, clinging onto one’s ego and one’s rank while attempting to initiate a mental connection prefigures an unwillingness to enter into a cooperative, interdependent relationship with another mind. In short, the mind that clings to ego would be “stuck" on their own ego and would resist the union necessary to pilot the Jaeger. To this end, the extremely egotistical person would be unable to initiate the drift because they would be too attached to their subjective self.
Further, it is not merely rank and ego that would deny one the ability to enter into the neural handshake: extreme emotion would also damage the ability to join minds. Here, we can look at Stacker’s statement to Mako Mori, “You cannot carry that level of emotion into the drift.“ An easy assumption would be to presume that Mako’s emotion introduces an instability that prevents two minds from blending as it keeps one pilot from being calm. I, however, disagree: I believe that what Stacker is pointing to is the fact that Mako’s mind still abides at the moment when the Kaiju killed her parents.
To this end, Mako’s emotion is a result of her attachment to the loss of her parents: she has accepted their loss and Stacker as her father/sensei/commander, however, she is still attached to the fact that the Kaiju took her parents, and the life she could have had, from her. This attachment conditions the arising of the extreme emotion that Stacker cautions her against and, further, intensifies the RABIT (the memory) that caused her to destabilize her link with Raleigh and Gipsy Danger. In contrast, shikantaza and, more specifically shinjindatsuraku are places where we are aware of the conditions that cause the arising of ego and emotion, the attachments that cause suffering, and we allow them to pass.
Even Raleigh has an understanding of the concept of releasing one’s attachment so that emotions cannot arise and color the drift. When he gives advice to Mako during their neural compatibility test, he says “the drift is Silence.” Silence is a good metaphor for the mental state of no-mind, but stillness is actually the terminology used by Dogen Kigen and other schools of Japanese Buddhism that forefront meditation. Silence/Stillness does not imply that there are no thoughts within the mind, merely that the mind does not attach to them: the arising thoughts are tuned into background noise by not attaching to them, thus allowing the mind to become still or silent.
Returning to Stacker, because he brings nothing to the drift, i.e. he has released his attachment to his rank and his ego (probably due to an implicit understanding of the impermanence of these things and his impending end), he can engage in a neural handshake with anyone. For Stacker, there is nothing in the drift, no place for his mind to abide in: his drift is literally silence. More specifically, I would hazard that Stacker’s mind fully abides in the interdependent relation of the drift: more than any other of the Jaeger pilots, Stacker likely allows his “self" to completely fall away when he engages in the neural handshake.
A surprising number of commentators seem to think Pacific Rim is a dumb movie. Tonight, I explain why it’s not dumb at all. It just uses a different type of intelligence than we’re used to analyzing: a visual intelligence.
I want to talk about Pacific Rim, and why it is not, as I’ve seen a frustrating number of commentators claim, a “dumb” movie, or a movie that “knows that it’s dumb,” or anything like that, but first I want to talk about my girlfriend, and you’re going to let me because you’ve already clicked through and given me the pageview, so you may as well stick around. Besides, I think it will help provide a reference point for some of the ideas I’m talking about.
Alright?
Let’s talk about my girlfriend.
My girlfriend Sara (who has given me the okay to talk about her case, in the name of supporting this movie that she’s fallen head over heels in love with) has a learning disability. I’m honestly not sure what the clinical name for it is (if it has one), but one of the things she has trouble with is processing language on a non-literal level. In other words, metaphors, figures of speech, and some humor that depends on incongruities, sort of doesn’t interface quite right with her brain.
However, there’s no “metaphor” sector of the brain. There’s nothing that interprets figurative information across media. There’s brainmatter that deals with language… and brainmatter that deals with visuals.
So, while my girlfriend struggles with linguistic metaphor, she takes to visual metaphor like a fish takes to water. I have to admit, sometimes she gets comics or movies, for example, in ways that I don’t, despite my training in media. She can look at a weird background motif in a Manga panel and immediately list off for me its significance, or pick out recurring color schemes used to signify something about a particular character, or decipher wordless sequences that I find confusing or disorienting and (embarrassingly) explain them back to me like it’s no big thing and I’m kinda silly for not getting it.
This is obviously fascinating to me as a student of media and how it interfaces with the human mind. We have very different ways of reacting to media, sometimes, because I tend to struggle when it comes to remembering faces, whereas she struggles with following complex, fast-paced dialogue (or, to put it another way, I excel at analyzing spoken/written language and she excels at analyzing visual language). To some extent, then, it’s tempting to look at this as a cool quirk and study it in the abstract as two equally viable ways of exploring media.
a couple days ago i saw someone raise the question of why Pacific Rim only seems to be resonating with millennials, and i didn’t know the answer, but i’ve been thinking about it a lot and suddenly i understand
it’s because it’s a movie about young people who are smart and capable but nonetheless handed a broken and nightmarish dying world, which is hurting everybody but especially them because they’re the ones who have to live their whole lives in it
and maybe it’s somebody’s fault but maybe it’s nobody’s fault, it doesn’t matter, but
there is a solution—which is literally to allow those young people to connect with and lean on each other and to give them the resources to take care of it themselves—but those in power refuse to take that solution seriously, so all the money and resources and power that should be going to fixing the problem are going into useless holes that aren’t going to save anybody
and everyone knows there’s no chance that things will get better. they know that everything is going to be terrible for the rest of time
and these young people take that world and the pathetic bottom of the barrel that’s been left for them and they spit and rebel in the faces of all of that, screaming that they won’t let it take them down after all
it’s a story about young people, together, exercising hope and power when they are afforded none and the stakes are so high
and it’s your story, too, if you make it be
H O L Y S H I T. Why does this not have a million notes?? I can’t comment on the part about Pacific Rim only resonating with Millennials, but as for the rest … I have seen a lot of AMAZING meta on Pacific Rim already, but—and I’m about to get stupidly fucking sappy over a goddamn movie about giant fucking robots fighting giant fucking sea monsters, because this is probably the realest fucking metaon this movie that I have seen—
We are Mako Mori.
We are Raleigh, Aleksis, Sasha, Cheung, Hu, Jin, Chuck, Newt, Hermann, and Tendo.
We are the PPDC and we have to figure out how to solve this shit and we have no money and no resources, but we have each other.
And that’s why stories matter and that’s why proper representation matters, because we’re all in this together, and that’s amazing.
In the almost-a-decade I’ve been in the English-speaking Loveless fandom, I’ve noticed a wide range of reactions to the characters and relationships in the series. I’ve had amazing conversations about characterization and motives with some really wonderful people… and on the flip side, I’ve seen a large segment of the fandom who would rather coo over how cute Soubi/Ritsuka is as a pairing than examine the ways it isn’t cute.
I’ll admit that all those years ago, it was the cuteness aspect that got me into Loveless. But I stayed interested because of Kouga Yun’s talent for writing incredibly screwed-up characters realistically, while acknowledging that they’re unhealthy and that their actions have consequences. As an abuse survivor myself, it means a great deal to me to be able to see realistically portrayed survivors in a series I love - and it bothers me that people are so quick to overlook what I feel is one of Loveless’ main draws.
Under the cut, I look at the main abusers in the Loveless universe, and how their actions affect the other characters and the plot.
Amen to all that! (Except to some finer points of your take on Soubi’s psychology, but that’s beside the point right now.) Really, when people start going on about how cute Soubi and Ritsuka’s kisses are and how we need to see more of them in canon, I always wonder if they deliberately ignore the fact that every time that Soubi kisses Ritsuka, he physically restraints him, either by forcefully holding his face still or by trapping Ritsuka’s wrists to prevent him from getting away. Every. Single. One.
And that’s not kawaii.
Especially because Soubi is well aware that Ritsuka is emotionally fragile and ready to go to any length to be loved, as witnessed by his comments during their ride to Goura with Kio or after seeing Ritsuka standing up for his mother after she hurt him during one of her episodes. I totally admit being a big sucker for shared hugs between them because Ritsuka actually wants to be hugged and to be honest, he *really* needs to be hugged (okay, scratch that, given all that is going on in his life right now, *I* need badly someone to hug him and to tell him that everything is going to be okay), but anything else is really pushing the envelope, and was even pictured this way in the story; even the male Zero called out Soubi on his “friendly" kisses.
But then, Soubi was never pictured as a perfectly nice character to begin with. Someone who is hurting, yes, but also someone who can’t stop himself from hurting others, precisely because he’s hurting.
(Also, ten years in the fandom!? Wow, that’s some staying power!)
The abuse is even more wide spread than this post makes it sound. Nagisa is abusive to both sets of zeroes she creates. She creates human beings, and beyond biological manipulation, she believes she has the right to treat them however she wants. It is more than a mentor-ship relationship, as she plays favorites and tells her “children” to discard their pairs and in general do horrible things to others.
Ritsuka’s doctor treats that relationship inappropriately.
Even in the lighter school chapters, there is rampant abuse. Yuiko is bullied in school and neglected at home - forced to eat convenient store food and entertain herself. It might be less graphic than some of the other abuse, but neglect and bullying have clearly left her with a giant lack of self esteem.
Kio seems to come from an abusive family as well, through the effects of a tradition that sees him excluded from his family. It’s nicely mirroring the abuse in the academy structure of sending young children to fight and maim each other in the name of tradition and sacred bonds.
But what I think the series shows best about abuse is the idea of the cycle of violence. Soubi learns his abusive tendencies from his abusers, and their ruination of his own sense of agency has left him right on the path to becoming an abuser himself. A lot of the pairs we meet seem to have abusive tendencies, either to each other or others they encounter, and we know that the system of preparing them to be a bonded pair is abusive and rewards violence.
Misaki is another example of how abuse in Loveless (realistically) creates further situations for abuse. Misaki was manipulated by Seimei, and more or less neglected by her husband. In the newer chapters, it seems that her memories have been manipulated, either through spells or psychological abuse.
I think Ritsuka’s strength in the series comes from the fact that so far, he has resisted propagating that system of abuse - to the point where he sometimes overextends his compassion. Despite his facade of coldness, he goes out of his way to help people - to defend Yuiko against bullies, even before they become friends, forgive both pairs of Zeroes, and call of battles before inflicted too much harm. He is so concerned with the feelings of others that he denies them to himself. He’s willingness to engage with Soubi despite his own discomfort - to stand up for his mother, despite her abuse towards him. At first, I read this as a victim coming to blame themselves and accept their abuse as “deserved” and I think, at the beginning of the manga, that is a lot of what is going on. But I think as he matures and becomes more sure of himself, rather than let himself become overrun by the world of abuse around him, Ritsuka seeks to understand the pain and mend it where he can. He goes out of his way to avoid causing pain.
I have my own theory as to what the name Loveless means in the context of his manga. “Love” is tied in so heavily with abuse and harm in this series and even more so when it associated with fighter/sacrifice pairs. The rhetoric behind the dynamic is full of emotional and psychological abuse - talk of destiny and ownership, wrapped together in a dangerous package. The only pairs we see have a remotely healthy love for each other (as opposed to abusive love, annomosity, or more of a friendship) are either very new to the dynamic or have actively dissociated themselves from the world of Seven Moons (like the Zeroes.)
Thus, “Love” in the context of names, is linked with abuse and manipulation and power. Look no further than the name “Beloved” whose barer truly loves no one, but manipulates everyone.
His opposite is Ritsuka’s blunt honest and desire to find good in other people. Ritsuka avoids the manipulation and grasps at power that seems to encapsulate the word “love” in much of the Loveless world. By avoiding this kind of poisonous “love” he is Loveless.