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Posts tagged: pacific rim

quigonejinn:

verysharpteeth:

Do y’all know how striking this scene in an action movie was to me? Main lead, who is young and gorgeous and the whitest of whites, oversteps his bounds. He touches a commanding officer. In any other action movie the dressing down would not be this severe (Elba’s adlibbing on this is terrifying…forget kaijus, Raleigh looks more scared by him than anything that crawls out of the breach and half the audience squirmed in chastened sympathy because WOW). And the thing is, Raleigh is right. His initial argument that Stacker is holding back Mako is for all intents and purposes, the correct assessment. He’s RIGHT. But he isn’t in a position to tell that to a commanding officer, especially the way he does. So Stacker puts him back in his place. Raleigh KNOWS he went out of line the minute he touched Stacker and rather than argue or shout “you know I’m right” or storm off or IGNORE a commanding officer like any other action movie would have the hero do, Raleigh backs down. Stacker doesn’t even let him get away with just the nod and choked back frustration, he makes him VERBALLY back down as well. There is no question who is in charge here. Raleigh is obviously angry and frustrated and still riding the testosterone high of kicking Chuck’s face, but he FREAKIN’ BACKS DOWN LIKE ANYONE WITH SENSE IN THE MILITARY WOULD. It’s always baffled me that main rodeo cowboy hero of every movie can just walk all over rank and command and not pay for it because he’s “special”. Raleigh only sort of does this once (and remember, his argument is valid) and he’s immediately reminded that’s not what he’s there for. And he KNOWS because he never complains about it, never goes off and stews about how unfair Stacker is, never holds it against Stacker later. He knows he crossed a line and he belly crawls back across it because it’s all about respect and he overstepped.This is something 9 out of 10 action movies wouldn’t address.

This is carried through in really fucking interesting ways throughout the movie, actually.  You remember the scene where we get introduced to Stacker?  The Becket boys are joking with Tendo about his disaster of a love life, and it’s cute and fun and casual and dude shenanigans — and then it gets announced that the Marshal is on deck.  The camera happens to be on Tendo, and you see him — you see on-fucking-screen how his shoulders straighten and he sits up and his tone of voice changes and goes professional.  And you see it again, too, in the post-double event scene where people are in a joyous, packed crowd around Mako and Raleigh — and then Stacks shows up at the door, and a path fucking parts for him like he is smoking-hot Moses in a double-breasted suit.    

That’s presence, folks.  That’s charisma, and even more than that, it’s people respecting a natural fucking leader who has earned respect.  

It’s been pointed out that people disobey Stacker in PacRim all the fucking time.  You’ll note that it’s not something undertaken for shits and giggles, though.  Instead, it’s because they’ve made an evaluation in the field and disagree because they think it’ll cost lives — each time, it’s presented in a sympathetic light, and each time, the movie shows that their disobedience Does Not Get What The Disobedient Ones Want. Remember that Yancy and Raleigh disobey Stacker’s order to stay back, and Yancy gets dead (and it’s not clear that they actually manage to save the dudes on the ship).  Chuck and Herc disobey the order to stay back because they’re trying to save the other Jaeger pilots, which they not only fail to do, but they get hit with an EMP pulse from the kaiju.  If Mako and Raleigh don’t arrive when they do, both it would’ve been a long, long fall into water for two Aussie pilots, and the world would have been well and truly fucked.  

The movie underscores this with what I consider to be the goddamn climax of the whole thing.  I mean, what’s the biggest command that Stacker gives?  Like, the single biggest one?  

To me, it’s gotta be when he tells Mako (Mako! Specifically!) during Pitfall that she can do this. She can finish it.  And Mako does it, even though it clearly fucking costs her not to try and go to Striker’s aid, even though it isn’t phrased as an order.  Stacker knows he doesn’t have to phrase it that way, because he knows that he has been Mako’s fixed point since she was ten years old.  He knows that she knows what should happen.  And he knows that he is right.  And that Mako agrees, too, because again: fixed point for how many years now?  The command doesn’t need to be verbalized as such.  It doesn’t even need to be entirely articulated, because the Drift that Mako and Stacker share isn’t a physical one inside a Jaeger with a Pons mechanism.  Instead, it exists because Stacker and Mako found each other in the wreckage of Tokyo.  Stacker raised Mako, and they share the same value system and the same way of looking at the world and the same fierce pride and devotion and willingness to lay down personal attachments to other lives if it means saving the motherfucking world.  

That’s their Drift.  

So Stacker tells Mako that she can make this sacrifice — his life, for the world.  It’s a parallel to the situation that Yancy and Raleigh have to make in Alaska, with the fishermen versus the city of two million, and the one that Herc and Chuck have in Hong Kong, with the lives of their fellow Rangers versus one of the few great coastal cities left.  Yancy and Raleigh and Herc and Chuck choose to disobey, and each time, not only does it not get them what they want, but it’s got shitty consequences.

This time, instead of laying it down as an order, Stacker tells Mako that she can finish it.  She’ll always be able to find in him in their particular version of the Drift.  

And Mako obeys because she agrees with him.  

And they save the world.  

Let me emphasize that: the world gets saved without further loss of life because Mako and Raleigh follow Stacker’s directive to Mako

Stacker fucking Pentecost, everyone.  This fucking movie, everyone. 

Mako Mori is (not) your “strong feminist heroine.”

ninjaruski:

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.

ninjaruski:

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.

No-Mind and The Drift.

ninjaruski:

image

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.

peardita:

starseedjenny:

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.