Hermann Appreciation Post

thehobblefootalchemist:

I’m a 25-year old cane-user and I’m gonna yell praises about Hermann Gottlieb for a while

I’ve had nonstop pain in my left leg since I was 12 that’s gotten so bad that I’ve been on a cane for over 10 years, and in all that time of searching for someone like me in media I have never, ever come across someone like Hermann. The way he’s written and acted both just destroy every single upsetting trope I usually find in a physically disabled character (if I can even find a physically disabled character at all):

No character ever mentions Hermann’s disability in dialogue

• All too often if you see someone with a cane in media, there is at least one blatant conversational reference to it (which is often delivered as insult or teasing) and Pac Rim ain’t having none of that
• Everyone is there to be a professional and use their various talents to fight monsters, and everyone is professional and respects everyone else’s various talents that they use to fight the monsters
• And the man’s been around the PPDC for a decade; the cane isn’t a new thing so of bloody course there’d be nobody pointing it out because it’s as much a daily sight for everyone else as it is a daily use object for Hermann
• Even his lab partner, whom Hermann trades arguments with like Pokemon cards, never stoops so low as to make any kind of cheap reference to it
• Said lab partner in fact (albeit in a deleted scene) is conscious of Hermann’s needs to the point that he actively helps keep Hermann upright in a situation that strained him physically

There’s not a character arc around it

• He never has to “come to terms” with the cane, as is very appropriate for the time, setting, and place in his life in which the story happens
• He’s had this thing for a -solid- amount of time, of course he doesn’t need to be thinking about it
• It is the middle of a war
• It is a non-issue in story terms, and the story lets it be that way
• Which is why it’s MORE poignant to see as a viewer in media res with their own chronic pain
• (And yeezus can I emphasize how grateful I am that he’s not addicted to painkillers, that is a flaw thrown onto physically disabled people in fiction with depressing commonality)

His disability isn’t for “plot reasons”

• Related to one of the points above, do you know, do you KNOW how uncommon it is to see a disabled character not just being disabled for the sole point that it will have some bearing on the story later on
• In Hermann’s case we don’t have to swallow any exposition about how whatever’s causing him the pain happened
• Because again, it refreshingly has nothing to do with what’s going on
• It is not a main motivating factor in fighting against the kaiju, for instance, which would be an all-too-easy lazy-writing-fest that would make his character one-note
• And there’s not any “tension-raising” b.s. about him having to “overcome” anything to do with his leg during the climax in order to accomplish a task

His age

• This is self-explanatory
• Because  w h e n  do you see “young” characters with canes
• (hint: you really don’t. I’ve looked.)
• *scrawls  “canes are not just for the elderly”  x10,000*
• Pain and disease do not discriminate and it is just so refreshing to see that remembered

HE USES IT IN THE CORRECT HAND

• Seriously you have no idea how often I see this flagrant idiocy in both fiction and real life
• You use it in the hand OPPOSITE YOUR INJURY, people
• You will hurt yourself long-term using the cane on the injured side because you are not balancing your weight correctly
• That is not effective use of your mobility aid

His physicality is spot-on

• I could go on FOREVER about Burn Gorman’s performance
• Literally everything the man does is something a long-time cane user would do
• There are so many subtleties that he absolutely nailed I don’t even think I can list them all
• His posture, the way he shifts his weight, his gait–they’re all such seemingly little things, things that non-disabled people wouldn’t even know to look for, but IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT GET YOU, MAN, and he’s the only one I’ve ever seen to get them perfectly, and, and,,,,,
• Also he uses his cane for things other than walking, which makes me !!!!!!! inside!
• Spinning it in his hands, emphatically pointing with it at things, hooking it onto stuff–you really do start acting out with a cane in that manner if you’ve got one in your life every day!
• It is possible to make a cane useful for things other than walking, almost in a fun way, and to watch him doing some of the same quirky things that I do is just a delight

There’s no “miracle cure”

• The notion that a disabled character can be useful -and- badass?? And STAY disabled??? In a futuristic sci-fi film where it would be all too easy to write him some kind of “fix”?????
• WHAT KIND OF ICONIC, I MEAN
• Dude has a cane, and that works for him, and the narrative lets him keep it by god, and now look at me tearing up just thinking about it because how many other stories let that just be the end-all-be-all of it, how many
• Not. A. Lot.
• Like I can’t even think of any

So yeah, just…bless this boy and bless these movies for putting someone like me at the forefront who I can cheer and cry for and just be generally giddy about being able to relate to