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schrijverr · 3 years

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What’s up with that Sims guy?

After the Apocalypse Jon becomes an uni teacher, three students take in interest in what’s up with this weird new professor.

On AO3.

Ships: JonMartin

Warnings: none, but tell me if I missed anything or if you want me to tag something!

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Time and space moves differently around the Fears, something that could be confusing and strange, but also pretty handy as Jon and Martin had discovered during the Apocalypse. It meant that when they’d turned the world back to normal, banishing the Fears far away, no one had even noticed it had happened.

With Elias, uhm Jonah, gone their ties to the Institute had lessened. However, Jon was still depended on statements, but Martin had decided that being away from it all would be better for him, so Jon was now working part time, while Martin kept an eye on the place.

Which is how Jon had ended up as a professor at a university. He was filling in, because the current professor had gotten pregnant and they hadn’t been able to find someone more suitable than Jon to replace her temporarily.

Jon knew he didn’t have the credentials necessary, but he Knew everything with the help of the Beholding, so he hoped that would be enough to get him through the year.

So here he was, standing in front of a big hall that was slowly filling up with students, who were eyeing him with a mix of curiosity, confusion and uneasiness.

Once everyone had settled down he took a deep breath and started: “Hello everyone, I’m Jonathan Sims and I’m replacing your previous professor until she returns from her maternity leave. I have an oversight of what you all need to know and do this semester, so lets get started with that right away.”

Jane looked down at their new professor and shifted in her seat uneasily. He was strange, or at least had a strange aura surrounding him. Jane wasn’t once for judging on appearances, but it was hard not to wonder what the Hell had let a man such at him to this.

He was short, sure, but he wasn’t small and he had a big presence to make up for it. His black hair was streaked with gray, but he had a youthful face that didn’t quite match up, although the tiredness that hung around him seemed old.

Beside that he was also littered with scars. It was hard not to notice the white circles that contrasted with his dark skin, it could be acne scars if they hadn’t been on his exposed forearms as well and so perfectly round. And those weren’t even his only scars, the entire palm on his right had was covered with a burn mark and the open buttons on the top of his shirt exposed a white thin scar across his throat.

So, yeah, strange.

He started to introduce himself and his voice was posh and low, but overall pleasant to listen to, she supposed. This didn’t stop her from exchanging a small look with Jesse, her best friend. Jesse raised her brows at her and the message was received, they were so going to talk about this later.

Later came as soon as they were out the door. Jesse leaned over and said: “Tell me I wasn’t the only one who got a weird vibe from that guy.”

Jane laughed and shook her head and answered: “You weren’t, I mean, this who building is filled with stuffy academics and suddenly this random dude walks in with the scars of a thug? That’s weird.”

Jesse nodded and asked: “What do you think happened to him?”

“I don’t know.” Jane shrugged, “But it seems pretty rude to just ask.”

Jesse sighed, then perked up with a realization: “We could plant a seed in Sams head.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Jane said, mischief bubbling up inside her eyes. They had known Sam since their first year and were pretty close with the guy. Sam was also known for not being the most delicate or observant and unafraid to ask personal questions. If he was curious, he would ask.

“I would.” Jesse grinned back, she tugged her along through the crowd with an: “Come on!”

They found Sam easy enough and Jesse plopped down next to him and started: “Hey, Sam. What did you think of our new professor?”

Sam shrugged and scratched his forehead as he said: “Dressed like every other pretentious asshole in here, posh accent. But seemed to know his stuff. Normal teacher if you ask me. Why?”

Jesse inflated: “Come on. Don’t tell me you haven’t even noticed!”

“Noticed what?” Sam asked with a frown.

“The scars.” Jane said.

“Oh, were they scars.” Sam said, “I thought he had weird freckles.”

“Weird fr-” Jesse began before cutting herself off and asking: “Aren’t you curious why they’re there? I’ve never seen scars like that.”

“And the burnt hand and the scar on his neck.” Jane continued, “Those don’t appear randomly.”

Both looked at her now, heads to the side in confusion. Jane said: “Oh, didn’t see those?”

Jesse and Sam shook their heads. “Well,” Jane explained, “He has this burn on his hand like he gripped a hot burning coal or something and this line here,” she drew on her neck with her finger to signal where it was, “like someone tried to slit his throat. Makes me wonder what he did before this job.”

The three of them fell silent. Lost in thought to what could’ve happened to their new mysterious professor before all of this.

The next lesson didn’t clear anything up in the slightest. While they were discussing the 17th century literature circles Sam had raised his hand signaling he had a question. Jane and Jesse, who had decided to sit behind him tensed up. He got called on and asked: “Dr. Sims, what did you do before this?”

Dr. Sims frowned and pushed up his glasses, before saying: “You don’t have to call me doctor, it wouldn’t be deserved. Just Sims is fine, or Mr. Sims if that feels better. And I’m the A- an archivist.”

“Am?” Sam blurted out.

Sims laughed humorlessly and said: “Yeah, part time now.”

Then he went back to the lesson and didn’t acknowledge any more questions about his life. Jane didn’t know how he did it, but he seemed to just know which people had questions about the lesson and which about him.

She walked out the hall with Sam and Jesse, who said: “That wasn’t insightful at all.”

Jane agreed: “Yeah, in what danger would an archivist be that leaves that kind of scarring?”

Sam shrugged and pulled out his phone as he said: “I can Google it.” the he muttered more to himself: “What kind of danger experiences an archivist, cool yeah.”

Jesse strained her neck to look on his screen and asked: ‘Well, what does it say?”

“Nothing much actually. Just a bunch of online archives and stuff.” Sam said.

Jane had a bit of a light bulb moment and suggested: “What if you type in Jonathan Sims?”

“Jonathan?” Jesse asked.

Jane shrugged and said: “It’s how he introduced himself during the first lecture.”

Sam typed in the name and his eyebrows crept further up to his hairline as he read the results of his search. Jesse couldn’t take it anymore and ripped the phone out of his hand, quickly scanning the page and gasping. Jane was now also curious and asked: “Well, tell me.”

She showed her the screen and Jane read the headlines. ‘Explosion at the Wax Museum, two survivors.’ The small excerpt reads: Last night there was an explosion at the wax museum, cause is still unknown, but suspected attack. Two survivors were found on the scene. Basira Hussain and Jonathan Sims, the latter of which is in a coma…

Underneath that is another headline. ‘Attack at the Magnus Institute unearths body of former archivist Gertrude Robinson’ with a picture of a big fire brigade, some police and an ambulance under it, she can vaguely make out Sims getting loaded into the back of one of them.

And lastly a small report into the murder of Gertrude Robinson, listing Jonathan Sims as one of the suspects along with one about an older guy, who was apparently found dead in Sims office.

Jane leaned back and whispered: “What the actual fuck.”

After that the rumors spread over the campus and by the time the next lecture rolled around the whole room was buzzing with nervous energy. Sims took one look around the room and sighed: “You are probably not going to let this go in favor of learning something that will actually be useful. Correct?”

A murmur went through the crowd, they had realized that the rumors had most likely reached Sims, but they hadn’t realized he’d be so straightforward about it.

“Okay.” Sims said, “I am willing to sacrifice ten minutes of my lecture for inquiries, but I will not promise to answer.”

Then he waited. Sam was the first to raise his hand and when called upon he asked: “How did you get the scars?”

Sims thought about it, the class thought he was thinking about how to bring it delicately and thoughtful, but inside Jons mind he heard Martin laugh at him and tell him he was an idiot after Jon had told someone the round scars had come from tripping. In hindsight it hadn’t been a good excuse, so Jon decided that vague was probably the safest way to go and said: “A workplace incident.”

Without raising his hand this time Sam asked: “Did it happen during the attack on your workplace? Why would anyone even attack archives?”

“The Archives are a small place in a big organization.” Jon began to explain, ignoring the fact that the Archives had been the target, “And in the end it turned out to be an aggressive infestation, just an accident.”

“Why your institute then?” Sam asked.

“Depends on if you believe in the paranormal, but you have to excuse me, Mr. Jacobs. It seems you are not the only one with questions.” Sims replied, then he turned to the other side and said: “Yes, Ms. Hendrickson?”

“Did you murder anyone?” she asked, clapping her hand over her mouth afterwards in shame of the question that she had blurted out.

Sims didn’t react to the harsh and accusatory question, just said: “If I murdered anyone, I wouldn’t be here, but in prison, don’t you agree?” then he smiled, but somehow Jane didn’t feel comforted by it.

Jesse spoke up, causing Jane to duck into herself in the hope that she wouldn’t be noticed in her seat next to Jesse. She asked: “Then who murdered them?”

Sims huffed a breath, blowing a strand of hair out of his face in the process and answered: “That would’ve been my former boss, I have to say I’m happy to see him gone and his replacement is more than capable.” he looked at the clock and clapped his hands, making more than a few people flinch. Then he stated: “That’s enough questions, time’s up. Lets get back to the symbolism in poetry during the Renaissance.”

And so life continued with Sims as their professor. There was still something uneasy about him, like he was just a sliver off in a way you couldn’t pinpoint, but felt in your bones.

But he was actually quite nice. Which was weird in itself, since he could be pretty prickly and snappy if he found your reasoning or answer particularly stupid or ignorant and he was generally grumpy, but that changed completely if you actually had a problem and needed help. He would listen and then explain with the things you could understand, it was as if he could look at you and know what you needed to understand. That was also strange, but it was nice to have someone explain so correctly.

He was also a walking encyclopedia. He had fun fact about everything and when they said everything they meant everything. When he noticed Mary had died her hair he said: “I like your hair, did you know hair dye contains over 5.000 chemicals.”

Then when Jamie asked what kind of tea he was drinking he answered: “Lady Grey, it was created by Twinings in the early 1990s to appeal to the Nordic market, which found Earl Grey too strong.”

While discussing Oscar Wilde he commented: “Funny how important this guy is, since he has only published one novel in his life.”

When Kyra stumbled in late telling him the taxi had broken, he replied with: “Well cars have about 30.000 parts, so it isn’t far fetched that something broke.”

The funniest part about it was that it just happened to slip out it seemed. He was also just as surprised as them when something like that tumbled out of his mouth and he always covered it up with a small cough, before ignoring it had happened and moving on with his lesson.

It had become a bit of a game among students to make him say a fun fact. Sims had caught on to it, but he didn’t seem to mind all that much, his lips only tightening the littlest amount and his eyes tiring slightly.

So all in all, after two moths of lessons they felt like they knew the guy. He was nice in a grumpy way, could tear you apart verbally if he wanted to, had a lot of facts and worked part time as an archivist, which was apparently a pretty dangerous job.

Jane, Jesse and Sam had become pretty close to him, often staying after class to ask a few questions about the subject, help clean up, try to pry into his private life. The last thing never seemed to work, but it was fun to try and Sims had never let on that he minded it. He even seemed to enjoy their little chats.

Then one time after class, he suddenly looked up, frowned and stalked out of the hall. Quickly sharing glances the three followed after him, curious what had gotten his attention so suddenly.

They walked through a bunch of the main halls, then through a few quiet corridors until they were much further than hearing range, making them slightly uncomfortable. There was a kid, first year probably, barely an adult still very much baby faced, crying on the floor, knees drawn tight to his chest.

Cautiously Sims approached him and gently lowered himself to the ground. The kid looked up at him with a startled face, but Sims shushed him and gently asked: “What’s wrong?”

There was something off about the words, something compelling. The kid starts to speak, he had a slightly northern accent: “It’s all so different here with the big buildings and large crowds with loads of people everywhere, still I’m all by myself. No one want to talk to the dumbass from north, who has trouble with the tubes, you know.” he sniffled a sad chuckle, “And everything is just so overwhelming and I have no one to guide me or to talk to and I hate it. Then I saw everyone just talking about a party and I know it’s dumb, but I heard them say they were going to invite everyone and someone asked even me, but then they laughed and said of course not and I just couldn’t anymore, so I went here and I cried.”

It seemed he was finished and went back to small sniffles and silent tears. Sims gently put a hand on the kids knee and said: “Did that help?”

“Yeah,” the kid looked at him, “bit cathartic, honestly. Sorry for the trouble.”

“Oh, it’s no problem, Edward.” Sims said.

The kid didn’t seem to realize it, but the three silent watchers noticed the kid had never mentioned his name.

Sims went on: “If you like, you can come over to my lecture hall. There are a few older years there, nice people, who I’m sure will want to help you. And a cup of tea.”

Edward rubbed his eyes and said: “They wouldn’t want to talk to me, I’m a loser and I don’t want the to think I’m even more one by telling them what happened.”

“I’m sure you won’t have. They’ve been where you are.” Sims responded, there was a bit of an edge to his voice and they realized he knew they were there and he was right. Jesse had been too brash, Jane too shy and Sam too blunt, it’s what had made them flock together. It was much better now, but they all remembered those awful first weeks. Without saying a word they hurried back to Sims hall.

When he came back they were making tea and lounging around. Jesse greeted him: “Hey, Sims. Where were you suddenly off to?”

Jane pushed her slightly and said: “Don’t pry.” then she turned back, “Want a cuppa, we just put on the kettle?”

Sims smiled and said: “I’d like that, could you make one for my friend, Edward here, as well. I had forgotten I was going to meet him, he’s curious about the Minor course and I thought maybe you could tell him a bit about it. If it isn’t any trouble, of course.”

“Of course not.” Jane smiled, then gestured to a chair: “Here, come sit with us.”

Edward did and later left feeling much better with a few new friends.

Friends, who were beginning to be suspicious about their teacher. They had a lengthy discussion about his knowing stuff and his spooky vibe. But no certain conclusion could be made and they decided that the mission for this year was finding out at least one personal fact about their teacher to prove he was at least somewhat normal.

They didn’t have to wait long. Their classes had been thrown around due to an unfortunate miscommunication. So two classes were switched, causing Sims to teach on Wednesday instead of Thursday for just one week. He looked a bit pale that day, but nothing out of the ordinary. It was the season, so no one spared it a second thought. Until a larger man came through the door after a gentle knock.

He was tall, about 6ft2, and chubby with a crème sweater and jeans. His face was freckled and he wore a gentle smile like it was second nature. His hair was curly and looked very soft, he in his entirety looked soft, you know, like the kind of person you know gives good hugs the moment you see them.

Sims was the only one who didn’t seem startled by his knock, just looked at the man and frowned as he said: “Martin, what are you doing here?”

“Sorry, sorry, Jon.” the man, Martin, said apologetically, “I know you said not to come and such, but I saw you had forgotten your statement and I know how you can get without them, so I thought I’d bring them to you.”

“I was going to read it tomorrow.” Sims said, “It can wait for one day. It’s not like it used to be.”

“Yeah, I know that as well, but we agreed that a rhythm would be good for you and your body to get used to.” Martin replied, holding out a folder.

Sims grabbed the folder and sighed: “You’re probably right, annoying as that may be, but couldn’t it wait till after I was done?”

“No, I’m meeting Daisy to discuss the proper storage of a Hunt artifact and you know how Daisy can be.” he answered.

“Yeah, I know.” Sims chuckled, absentmindedly touching the scar on his neck.

“Besides, I wanted to see you.” Martin said, then he brushed a lock of hair, that had freed itself from Sims’ messy bun, behind Sims ear and pecked him on the cheek. Turning to leave immediately after calling out over his shoulder: “Read it, Jon! And don’t forget to pick up milk on the way back if you want any good tea.”

Martin opened the door and Sims smiled, like a real and soft and dopey smile, as he touched his cheek and yelled back: “I will, say hi to Daisy from me.”

Then Martin was gone and the silence that had fallen over the hall with Martins entrance was broken. Multiple people called out questions and it was a bit of a chaos. It took a few minutes to get everyone settled down again and Sims returned to his lecture as if nothing happened. Sam called out from the second row: “Really, Sims? Nothing?”

Sims shoulders sagged, he had clearly hoped he could get away with it and was sad that it hadn’t worked. He said: “Mr. Jacobs, although I appreciate your interest in my personal life, I hope that I don’t have to explain how normal it is for my husband to come bring me something I forgot at home.”

The hall exploded again, but Sims ignored it all again telling them there were more important things to talk about, for example the lecture, which will be on the exam.

For Jane, Jesse and Sam it was enough. Their teacher was weird and off, but he was nice enough and if someone as soft looking as the Martin figure was willing to marry him, then he was good enough in their opinion and not worth the detective work.

#RR writing #the magnus archives #the magnus pod #jonathan sims #jonathan sims x martin blackwood #martin blackwood #jonmartin #martin x jon #ocs #tma #tma season 5

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equallyreal · 6 years

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Unsolicited Opinion: The Characters of Pacific Rim (Part V)

Quick sidebar before we start the main essay, but who else is ready to fight Burn Gorman over his cryptic comments about how Newt and Hermann’s relationship has changed in Pacific Rim: Uprising? Burn, buddy, I love you, but you can’t tease me with these details when I have to wait another month. I can’t do it, man.

Anyways, on to the actual essay.

A common complaint about the film Pacific Rim is that the characters are kind of archetypal and flat and therefore boring. This is an assessment I soundly disagree with, for two reasons. One, being derived from archetype isn’t a bad thing as long as you do it well. Two, the characters of Pacific Rim, in my opinion, subvert or play with the archetype they’re derived from in interesting ways. This essay series will cover the ways the narrative achieves this. As a quick housekeeping note, I will only be using the film to make my points. At most, I may talk about a deleted scene, but the paracanon (novels, art of book, comics, etc.) will not be included in the discussion.

Today will be part two of the German Scientist duo in an essay I like to call, Dr. Hermann Gottlieb is Your Asshole Cat. As with my Newt essay, I’ll be keeping discussion of the two of them as a unit to a minimum, though there will be more talk of it here because a lot of Hermann’s plot and characterization hinges on how he relates to Newt.

To re-state a few points made in my Newt essay, the archetype that is shared between these two characters are the Scientist/Nerd. The general traits of this archetype are that they a) provide a lot of exposition, b) are generally ignored at least once by the main characters (and sometimes without any repercussions at all), c) have wildly eccentric personalities that lend themselves to comic relief, and d) don’t really do much beyond the abovementioned traits. Again, while the last archetype doesn’t always apply, it does usually apply to side characters like Hermann. Hermann, again, does provide a lot of exposition, and he does have an eccentric personality. His personality leads him to fall into two different subtypes of Scientist/Nerds. He also happens to be a subversion of both in ways that are fascinatingly interconnected.

Before we get to that, though, let’s cover the fact that Hermann, like Newt, actually is respected in his field and actually does get things done. Hermann has less action than Newt, to be sure, but his predictive model is used and respected by Stacker during the mission. It ends up being instrumental to the plot, and moreover they never would’ve figured out that the Breach reads genetic material without Hermann’s help. He’s not just sitting behind a desk wringing his hands—he’s actually doing things, and pretty dangerous things, too. Not as dangerous as being nearly eaten by two (2) different Kaiju in the space of a few hours, sure, but drifting with an alien hivemind and a dude whom you might not actually be Drift Compatible with is nothing to sneeze at.

Now, on to the subtypes of Nerd that are Hermann Gottlieb. The first of the subtypes is The Professor. You see these from time to time—usually British, usually wear a bow tie, very proper, probably don’t have any friends outside of their department. They’re stuffy, they’re out of touch, they probably don’t know what a cell phone is, or if they have one it’s a flip phone. Hermann does have a lot of these traits—sort of British (the character is German according to paracanon details, but seeing how they kept Burn Gorman’s accent and he says “by Jove” we’ll put him down as Basically British). He wears a blazer and a button-up. He walks with a cane (quick side note: while Hermann being visibly disabled isn’t a defiance of any archetype, it is nice to see a visibly disabled important character in a science fiction work, so jot that down). He’s stuffy about his rank, and definitely set up to be a deliberate visual and personality contrast to Newt. Newt is a punk rocker with no respect for authority. Hermann salutes military officers when he doesn’t have to and dresses like he’s been teaching math at Oxford for fifty years.

There’s one big thing that defies the archetype, though. If you didn’t catch it in the title, that trait is that Hermann Gottlieb is a catty bitch.

This is not a bad thing. In fact, I love every second of it. But before we talk about what the fact that Hermann is awful, let’s talk about the ways in which he’s less awful, but still different than what you’d expect from his character type. I’ve established in this series that most Pacific Rim characters have a line that really underlines their character. This is Hermann’s:

“Numbers do not lie. Politics and poetry, promises, these are lies. Numbers are as close as we get to the handwriting of God.”

There’s a lot to pick apart here about what this line says about Hermann’s worldview and such. The important detail we’ll be focusing on, however, is that Hermann says poetry is a lie…while being as dramatic and poetic as possible. Hermann is not a stiff-upper-lip type professor. He gestures, he prepares little holographic power points, he uses the phrase handwriting of God even as he tries to distance himself from that exact kind of language. Not only that, but he’s visibly emotional at several points in the film, showing concern, fear, and joy in a way that says he either doesn’t care who notices, or he’s completely incapable of controlling his face (either option is good). Characters of his subtype tend to be either robotic and very “emotions are dumb”, or very flowery and enthusiastic. Finding a character who tries to be one while actually being the other is interesting, gives Hermann a chance to work outside the usual boundaries of his character, and is kind of adorable to boot. Seriously, I won’t lie: I love this line to death.

And now, let’s return to the subject of how Hermann is terrible.

Keep in mind that his treatment of Newt is 100% warranted. Newt is terrible to Hermann for most of the run time. That kind of peer-bullying isn’t an uncommon dynamic, but Hermann isn’t purely Newt’s victim. He dishes it out just as much as he takes it. Even when he’s being nice, he’s mean. For instance, him saying, “Please excuse him, he’s a Kaiju grrroupie, he loves them” after Newt shoves his foot in his mouth is definitely a way of defusing a potentially volatile situation. But it also involves insulting Newt to his face, taking away any potential malice by saying, “No, he’s not being cruel, he’s just an idiot.” Really, Hermann will take any excuse he can get to insult Newt, including interrupting Newt’s exposition to call his plan crazy, in front of the two highest ranking people in the Shatterdome, no less. He barely waits until Stacker and Herc are out of the room before he starts gloating that Stacker liked his plan better. Again, Newt is awful to him, and I definitely understand why Hermann responds the way he does. I don’t point this out to say that Hermann is a bad person or anything. Newt deserves being told not to embarrass himself. It’s just not something you usually see in stuffy British professor sorts. That level of vitriol is unusual, and hysterical. I’d consider it a selling point for Hermann’s character.

It also slots him neatly into a character subtype that’s fairly easy to recognize, because it’s gained a lot of traction in recent years. I’m going to call this subtype the Asshole Academic. If you want an example, just turn on CBS and wait for a rerun of Big Bang Theory to come on. Sheldon Cooper is pretty much the Trope Codifier for this subtype. In the video “The Adorkable Misogyny of the Big Bang Theory”, Pop Culture Detective refers to this behavior as being “too smart to understand or care to understand what’s socially acceptable and what’s not”, and what that basically translates to is being an asshole to everyone. Hermann has shades of this in his treatment of Newt. It’s especially interesting to note in his dismissive attitude towards Newt’s branch of science and trains of thought. Newt exhibits the same line of thinking with regards to Hermann’s science, sure, but Newt never demands respect for his scientific accomplishments. Hermann does. He wants to be called Doctor, he refers to his “ten years of decorated experience in the field.” But Newt doesn’t get the same respect that Hermann wants, because in his mind Newt is a Kaiju-smelling idiot who by all rights probably should’ve died from his antics years ago.

(He never says this directly, but let’s be real, you can read it in between the lines.)

There are two things that jar him from this archetype, however. First of all, Newt is the only person he treats like this. Granted, this is hard to gauge when Hermann talks to a total of three characters, but he’s hyper-respectful to Stacker every time they’re onscreen, and cordial to Herc even when Herc snaps at him for griping about Newt in the middle of a briefing. Hermann seems to be the kind of guy who’s respectful by default, until you’re an asshole to him. As we’ve established, Newt is terrible to Hermann. They’re mutually terrible to each other—except for when they’re not.

That moment of when they’re not is what fully jars Hermann out of this subtype. There is a definitive moment when Hermann stops being terrible to Newt, and that’s when Newt almost dies. Hermann might be perpetually frustrated with Newt, and he might question Newt’s information one last time before being told to shut up, but he also gets Newt a glass of water and immediately gets him help. We never hear him say I told you this would kill you or hold it over Newt’s head that he almost died. While there is apparently some deleted footage of the two of them post him finding Newt, what is said between them is lost to time (also, Dark Del Toro release the forbidden Pacific Rim footage), and thus we can only assume that his response to finding Newt half-dead on the floor was to help him up, then go get Stacker without being a dick about it. That’s huge coming from the guy who could barely pass up an opportunity to indirectly call Newt a troglodyte. There’s also subtle glimpses of the dynamic shift during their conversation pre-Kaiju Drift, when Hermann is perplexed as to why there’s only two Kaiju and not three like he predicted. Newt is lowkey kind of an asshole about the whole thing, but Hermann isn’t really an asshole back. He says “I’m not wrong”, but never “No, you’re wrong, I’m right.” He says, “There’s something we don’t understand”, a comment that puts some of the blame for the situation on his own shoulders—Newt doesn’t have all the answers, but neither does Hermann, and he’s going to admit it. It’s a small detail, but a definite shift from his earlier “I’m definitely right and you’re definitely wrong” mentality.

Then there’s the Kaiju Drift. Everyone who knows about this film and loves this character has talked about this scene to death, so you’ve definitely read analysis of it if you’re a fan. One detail I want to focus on is the fact that it’s Hermann who holds out his hand to Newt, offering help. Again, coming from a guy who’s been predominantly harsh and dismissive, it’s a big deal. Sure, Hermann tries to mask it by pointing out that the alternative is the world ending, but he’s way too enthusiastic about the whole thing for it to be just duty. There’s no resignation, no hesitation about the fact that a guy he’s had multiple screaming matches with is about to poke around in his brain, no superiority. He’s nervous, absolutely, but he also attempts a fist bump/handshake, smiles, and says “own this thing” like a total nerd. Not to mention, there’s the fact that he also soft-initiates the bro hug they share in their final screen, shooting closer with a smile on his face that’s far removed from the grumpy scowl we saw him wearing a few hours earlier. Hermann might be an asshole to Newt, but he ultimately cares, and is more than willing to put aside his vitriol when Newt—and the world—needs it. That’s a hugely magnanimous gesture that you don’t usually see from the Asshole Academic.

In conclusion, Hermann, like Newt, is a bundle of contradictions—a very ordinary man who is both terrible and great, an asshole and a good friend, a man of logic and numbers who does the most illogical thing possible in the name of saving the planet. He moves beyond his archetype through his strong emotions and strong heart. Here’s hoping the sequel film is kind to him; I have high hopes that they’ll at least get his character right, but I wouldn’t say no to a character arc that’s a bit more standalone than the one in this film. Also, seriously, Burn, what do you mean Newt and Hermann’s relationship is more emotional? What does that mean, Burn Gorman?!

That’s all for this essay. Tune in next time for an essay I’m actually surprised I’m writing, in which we take a look at Chuck Hansen, the fakest Aussie in the world. If you like what you read and want to help me write more four-page single-spaced essays about the characters of Pacific Rim (not quite four full pages, but I was close!), consider leaving a donation on ko-fi or becoming a patron (links in the blog bio). Also, you should consider checking out my original fiction while you’re at it. I’m currently posting a fantasy story where half the party has anxiety and there are dragons (also linked in the blog bio). And thanks for reading!

#pacific rim #hermann gottlieb #unsolicited opinion

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