#mako mori one of our brightest

[unnonexistence]

idk if there's anything in stories i get more petty about than poorly-written "main character shows up to a new place and meets everyone" character introduction scenes

[driftwithme]

Right now I'm kinda sick which means I have no brainpower to talk about this properly or at least how I want to.

Subject at hand: Mako, Chuck and Raleigh all had an specific item in the movie that kinda explains or contains them as characters.

Mako and her relationship with swords is the obvious example. If you'll permit me to call it her motif, then let that be it. For the sake of storytelling, Mako is given an object that is the summary of her struggles and dreams, of her traumas and her hope. Swords are part of her heritage, given that his dad dedicated his life to making them. An item capable of both great damage and impossible beauty, the movie even adapts it to be more like the girl itself: chainswords that stay hidden and silently away for their turn to strike, capable of flexibility and quick adaptation, they are almost unbreakable, used to support others in need, cut straight through the heart of the enemy and provide a sure win even under great underwater pressure or up in the sky.

Mako is the girl welding the sword and she's the one crafting the sword from scratch designing it and she's the sword itself, okay?

Mako's a weapon in the context of she being a soldier. She's deadly, trained to kill, efficient with a perfect score in combat simulations, one of the brightest in the Jaeger Program. But she is also a craft in the sense of being someone intricate, because her story is way more complex than people imagine. She is beautiful as a woman, delicate in her ways of treating others, elegant in her movements...

In this case, the objectification serves a more artistic purpose. Whenever you think of the chainsword, you think of Mako and the other way around. Her scene killing Otachi in the name of her family is her breakthrough in the movie, where she achieves her dream/goal, when all she has gone through pays off. Then the scene where she uses the chainsword to oin Slattern to G. Danger is the culmination of her arc to say so: now she will kill the Kaiju that killed her adoptive father and will finally put an end of the apocalypse.

Without having to make it explicit in the film, you know that Mako gave those chainswords to G. Danger during the restoration program hoping that it'd be somehow her jaeger, that she'd finally become a ranger piloting it, etc.

Now, I said something similar can be found looking at the depiction of both Chuck and Raleigh in the movie. That's because, to me at least, the narrative does something similar in Chuck-Max and Raleigh-his photographs.

Raleigh is our narrator, our protagonist, we see the world through his eyes. I guess the thesis hear is that Raleigh is the man behind the camera, guiding our perception of this fictional world. Photographs can be intimate, int he way they reveal the interest of the one taking them. In sharing with us the concept of Raleigh having photography as his hobby, the story reveals us a man oriented to details and sensitive to the art of framing an instant, telling a story in one snap.

It also tells just how sentimental he is, how much he loved his home, his brother, 'cause he was surviving with rations at the end of the world but wherever he traveled, he took his pictures with him, put them on the walls of his residency. He's then a man who likes to take a look at the past. He said it himself: he spent 5 years on the past, never thinking of how the future would be. Nostalgic or even melancholic, but ultimately willing to make new good and bad memories and capture them for posterity. Loyal, down to earth in the sense that he knows where he came and what made him the way he is, sensible and patient, likes walking around cities or touring maybe, which is interesting really. For all the cocky American dream of a man the movie suggests he was, he didn't have posters of action movies or pics of him in fights or any of that. He had pics of architecture, nice tiny shots that suggest calmness, a steady hand and a more passive spirit. It really matches Mako Mori in that sense.

I could dive more into the subjects of how his photographs characterize Raleigh Becket, but I'm not lying when I say I'm feeling sick and my brain is kinda foggy.

I'll close this post talking about Chuck and his relationship with Max instead.

One of the first things I noticed on my last rewatch is just how many times Chuck and Max are practically switching roles in the film

As in Chuck gets treated like a dog and Max gets treated like a son. As in they are one and the same sometimes, given that Max is the vehicle of Chuck's repressed emotions, since he refuses to let them out openly. As in Max is the representation of the intricate rituals the Hansens use to communicate the things they cannot say but want to.

I'll try explain it quickly using two scenes from the movie, okay?

First one: when Pentecost and Mako were showing Raleigh the jaeger bay on the Hong Kong Shatterdome and the Hansens arrived just in time to greet the newcomer, Herc tells someone to stay but he is not talking to Max.

His clipped tone given as a short command surprised me because it sounded like the one you'd give your dog when you see someone or some other dog approaching. Now, if you know your dog is a troublemaker and if you have trained, you could give the command to tell him to stay away from the trouble.

But Max runs freely to Mako and Herc only jokes about how Max is always slobbering over pretty girls, a comment you'd expect from a dad about his teenage son. He doesn't tell Max to stop. He doesn't even look at the dog as he's talking with Raleigh.

The one who stayed behind, grounded, was Chuck. This alone tells us so much about the Hansens and their stiff relationship. Chuck is the dog who might bite, the one you need to pull the leash to avoid him attacking. Herc is not a perfect man but here it's obvious he did fuck up as a dad. He gives orders like he's a commander and Chuck a subordinate. Stay.

(I can't remember exactly the dialogue, so you might forgive any discrepancy. What I know is that Herc told Chuck to stay behind while he greeted Raleigh, meaning that Herc knew Chuck might cause a scene. What did he know about Chuck and Raleigh and why did he tell Chuck to stay behind?).

The second scene: on the farewell moment before Operation Pitfall, Chuck kneels to pet Max one last time and tells him to take care of Herc (or was it the other way around?).

I choose this moment to defend my point because here? Here Chuck is assigning Max as his replacement. Not in the mean way, of course, but he acknowledges that his dad might lose his only son and trying to soften the blow, he gives Herc one last mission: to take care of Max and also let Max take care of him. Max is an extension of Chuck, so it's a way of saying that their bond stays there and they will ALWAYS take care of each other, it doesn't matter if Chuck dies during Pitfall.

It's also telling that Chuck kneeling to pet Max is a metaphor for Chuck asking Herc for forgiveness. All his intentions go to Max in that sense. Now Chuck has become Max and Max will always be Chuck. Now, man and dog are one, because the dog has taken Chuck's place as Herc's son and Chuck is the dog that gets send to die at the bottom of the ocean, some fucked up version of Laika up in space.

That's why we see almost every pilot eating at least once in the movie, but not Chuck. He was feeding Max and once it was over, they both walked away like the food was not on Max's belly but Chuck's. That's why Max and Chuck almost never interact with someone at the same time.

Chuck is the kid who got instructed but not raised by his dad. He's the war dog with an impressive killing count that doesn't get to brag because he barks too much and he's not nice to strangers. He is, to any means, just an scared animal behaving like he was taught to. He is confused and jealous when Herc gives his attention (and affection in Chuck's eyes) to someone else. Chuck is desperate to be told he's a good boy, he's enough, he's loved and appreciated. He lashes out when he feels threatened or cornered and he gives puppy eyes meaning "sorry" when he knows he has fucked up, etc etc etc.

An if it feels abhorrent to reduce Chuck to the role of a dog, it speaks volumes about the way he got treated in the movie. In the end, the only thing he really wins during the movie is to be called his father's son. You can argue "but Shan, doesn't he also wins the respect of most characters?" and I'd tell you that it's a sad sad thing that the only way you can get others to acknowledge you as a good man is by exploding yourself at the bottom of the ocean.

I'm not talking about Mako or Raleigh here, because through Max, we know that Mako and Chuck could be friends but in the movie all we get is a tense relationship summarized in maybe one exchange of words (that got Chuck beaten up by the way). And when it comes to Raleigh, all the resolution we got was a silent apology and the equally silent acceptance of such after the Double Event, if we don't count that Chuck was on Raleigh's left side during Stacker's motivational speech

But you know those metaphors of pets being like children? From that angle, Pentecost and Herc are always treating Chuck as an spoiled brat. Which he is, but c'mon. It's not like Herc can talk much being that he failed Chuck big time and it's not like Pentecost wasn't there to witness how the youngest ranger ever to be graduated survived 5 years of actual hell and achieved the best killing count. You don't get there for being a kid. You don't go so far without maturing hard and fast. Chuck is not some annoying puppy picking fights because he's bored. He let's Max sleep and eat and okay to his liking because that's the side that Chuck himself can't be: carefree, soft, selfish in the sense of being self-indulgent.

Mako had to shape herself into a sword to avenge her family and make justice and even survive in a world that tried to kill her when she was still just s little child. Raleigh had to freeze his memories in photographs because he's by now used to tragedy and not having enough time, things ending fast, his happy days going away, losing his home and family. Chuck gave his dog the comfortable life he wishes he could have, he devoted himself to the task of giving Max all that he felt Herc failed to give him, and finally gave Max his place as Herc's son.

Which yeah, pretty much is what I tried to say in many clumsy words ejdjdkjfkfkdn:

Mako, Chuck and Raleigh all had an specific item in the movie that explains or contains them as characters.

[mathewmurdocks]

Mr. Becket, this is Mako Mori. One of our brightest.

[itslaurenmae]

Spurred by some recent posts, I am now inclined to ask your thoughts on Pacific Rim. Is it also something you've found yourself revisiting lately?

To put it shortly, yesss. A mutual reblogged a gifset a few weeks ago and I decided I needed to give it a rewatch. I did so with my best friend (socially distant style) and I think it totally holds up still.

Yes, it’s a monster movie. Yes, it has some cheesy sci-fi tropes. But at the heart of that movie is the concept of drift compatibility, and I will never be over how much I love that.

The success of piloting a Jaeger doesn’t just ride on one person, and it doesn’t need you or your co-pilot to be the best or the brightest. You have to be able to connect with someone - to trust them and let them in to your very mind if you are going to be a solid team. That’s beautiful, and it’s not a concept I’ve seen in other films in the genre.

There’s also some really touching displays of familial love & some nuanced exploration of toxic masculinity that I still think is resonant. Raleigh Beckett loves his brother and tells him. The loss of his brother deeply effects him, makes him scared to try to drift with someone else again - super compelling reason to be reticent to jump back in a Jaeger with just anyone. The Wei triplets who pilot Crimson Typhoon are playful and affectionate with each other. Herc and Chuck Hanson have a stereotypically gruff, arms-distance father/son bond, but find the words to express their deep care about the other before the final showdown. Stacker Pentecost affirms Mako Mori so beautifully when he tells her he’s proud he got to watch her grow - beats the pants off of any overprotective dad story arc I’ve ever seen.

Mako and Raleigh connect profoundly in their first drift - the cinematography and direction of the scenes in Mako’s childhood memory are SO FREAKING GOOD; it’s quite possibly my favorite sequence of the whole movie. We see what she sees, and we see Raleigh in the scene in his Jaeger suit walking through her memory and it’s just... *chef’s kiss.* 

I could write paragraphs about Beckett’s body language with child Mako. And adult Mako. With how their scenes are blocked. They’re often side by side, - right next to each other, or she’s standing a bit above him. I am trash for this kind of detail.

Mako and Raleigh don’t have a traditional romantic arc in this movie, and I found that really refreshing the first time I watched this movie, back in 2013 sometime. I usually get grouchy when our leads have an obvious connection but don’t share a kiss, but I make an exception with this movie (and with Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor from Rogue One, but that’s maybe another post for anohter time). After Mako and Raleigh (and Gipsy Danger) have saved the world, they have this very tender forehead touch at the very end of the movie, and I actually love that, more than I think I would a kiss. This is specifically because it’s Mako and Raleigh’s minds that have saved them - themselves - each other - the world around them. By sharing the rawest, deepest, scared-est parts of their minds, by holding that kind of space for the other person, they succeeded. The literal and figurative putting of their heads together is what saves them and everyone else. They’re so relieved the other makes it out alive, and they put their heads together again - forehead to forehead, eye-to-eye - this time quietly, reverently, seeing the other and holding space for the other, and I am just... wow. Blown away. I will never be over it and I do not want to be.  

(And there’s also Newt and Hermann, who are totally Science Husbands. The “You’d do that for me?” exchange is such an endearing point of character development for both of them. I haven’t seen the second movie - and from what I’ve read, it doesn’t sound like I’m missing out on much, but they’re in it, so I can imagine that part of it is good, even if the rest of the movie is a misfire.)

TL;DR - Pacific Rim totally stands up on rewatching and is worth a revisit. You can always find me in the drift. 💛

[redbullmocktails]

Stacker Pentecost: Mr. Becket, this is Mako Mori. One of our brightest. Also in charge of the Mark 3 restoration program. She personally handpicked your co-pilot candidates. Mako Mori: [speaks Japanese to Pentecost] I imagined him differently. Scene Study Series: Pacific Rim 2/?

[equallyreal]

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

I don’t know how I managed to draw myself out of the Star Wars induced haze I’ve been in for the past few days to write this, but here it is! Part Two of my series on the characters of Pacific Rim.

A common complaint about the film 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.

In this part, we’ll be talking about the real main character of the story in an essay I like to call Mako Mori: Queen of the Universe.

There was a lot of really nonsense criticism about Mako Mori in the wake of Pacific Rim. I avoided a lot of it because again, nonsense, but what I did see was enough to make me roll my eyes so hard that they almost fell out of my skull. “She’s a weak female character! She’s just a love interest! Why isn’t she the main character!” I never directly engaged any of this at the time because, as much as I love dropping hot takes, I also try to avoid getting in fights with random strangers on the internet. It rarely ends well. But today, I’m going to be taking those years of pent up rage and addressing the criticisms of Mako head-on. Let’s start with the most important point:

Mako Mori is the main character. She’s the main character because she is the one with an actual, on-screen character arc, one that Raleigh helps her complete. Moreover, her character type is closer to that of the Protagonist Hero than Raleigh’s is—save for one notable exception, which we’ll discuss at the end of our essay.

I already went over the ways in which Raleigh is instrumental to Mako’s character arc in my Raleigh essay (and if you haven’t read that, you should, as what I go over is important to this essay). But the reverse is barely true. Sure, saving Mako is part of the resolution of Raleigh’s off-screen arc, but she never actively does anything to further his healing. But he does everything to further her. This is the reason Mako is the real main character between the two of them. Her entire arc is contained within the film. We just see it through Raleigh’s perspective and framing, which is why a lot of people get things mixed up.

Mako’s arc ties into the other reason she’s the clear main character of the film: she fits into the Hero Protagonist arc much better than Raleigh ever does. It’s a more subtle fit, sure, but a fit nonetheless. To start, Mako is repeatedly lifted up as being some of the program’s best and brightest. That’s literally how Stacker introduces her: “Mako Mori, one of our brightest.” She’s fairly young, but already head of Jaeger restoration for the Mark III’s. She speaks openly of having a perfect simulator score (“51 drops, 51 kills”) and Raleigh is visibly impressed by her every time she opens her mouth. Where Raleigh is defined by being very ordinary, Mako is extraordinary. It’s an integral part of her character from the get.

The next detail that makes this character type clear is her motivation. When she speaks to Stacker about her reasons for wanting to be on the candidate list, she says the one line that defines her entire arc: “For my family.” We later learn, by way of a bad Drift, that Mako’s family was killed in a Kaiju attack on Tokyo. She’s in this for revenge. This is a plot that is often seen in the Hero Protagonist type—as noted, it’s the plot that Raleigh would’ve had in any other film. But Mako has it here, which is extraordinary for one big reason: Women don’t get to have this plot arc too often, much less Asian women (who are rarely in Western movies to begin with, and so rarely as the main character). Sure, it happens on occasion, but more often than not, women don’t get to avenge their dead families. In fact, they’re usually the dead families. If they’re not that, they’re made into villains for wanting revenge (see: Helena Bertinelli from Arrow) or the death of the Big Bad gets passed off to the (male) protagonist (because they’re most often the leads, and the lead is the one who gets to kill the bad guy). But not only is Mako allowed to have this plot arc, she’s allowed to complete it. The line is mirrored later in the film when she and Raleigh fight Best Kaiju Ever, Otachi. For my family, she says, as she cuts the thing in half. Moreover, she is instrumental to the closing of the Breach. Raleigh might’ve set off the bomb, but he was only able to get there with Mako’s help.

The fact that Mako wants revenge is never an issue. Despite the line “Vengeance is like an open wound,” what Stacker is really talking about is the trauma related to it—trauma that she hasn’t fully moved on from, unlike Raleigh. This isn’t a hit on Mako as a character; it’s a perfectly realistic reaction to violently losing your parents at a young age, and moreover another part of the Heroic Protagonist type. Even Raleigh has a brief one during his first drift with her. What’s important is that she is not rebuked for this moment; Stacker is more concerned about her mental state and what it will do to the Drift than he is upset that she’s not over it, and Raleigh immediately responds with understanding. It’s a nice change from plots where women are either solid immovable badasses despite all the pain they’ve been through or are solely defined by their emotions. Mako is allowed to feel, but she is also allowed to heal and grow stronger from her loss.

The subject of Mako being an alleged doormat is one of the most baffling character complaints about her that I can think of. This is one I only heard of in whispers, and I’m not surprised per say that it was an argument being made. Mako is, in a lot of ways, more reserved than the usual Heroic Protagonist (but we’ll get to that later). But that does not mean she takes anything going on. This shows most in her interactions with Raleigh. While she is always polite to him, and they ultimately form a close bond, she is also not here to play when it comes to his nonsense. Her initial response to Raleigh isn’t fawning adoration or immediate Customer Service smiles—she’s visibly skeptical and talks about him in what she thinks is a behind his back way. She’s brutally honest in her opinions about him, indicating his flaws when asked and doing so to his face. She openly sasses him in the Kwoon (“Better watch it!”) and refuses to back down when she’s expressing her opinions to him. The best example of this is when he tries to make her confront Stacker about why he won’t let her be considered as a pilot. All Raleigh’s repeated pushing earns him is a quiet, but firm shut down and a closed door. I know I noted that it’s notable that Raleigh later respects her wishes, but it’s equally notable that she gets to treat him this way at all. It’s not uncommon for female characters to be treated badly by the narrative for back-talking the male protagonist (or even male side characters), but this never happens.

“But Melanie,” I’m sure you’re asking, “what about her and Stacker? I’m sure her interactions with him are what people who called her a doormat are talking about.” Well, those people are wrong on that count too for two big reasons. We’ll be getting to one of those moments soon, but I want to first address that Mako doesn’t actually take Stacker’s attempts at holding her back lying down. She argues with him about it on two separate occasions, both times in public. The first time actually implies that they’ve had this argument several times. She’s respectful, sure, but she doesn’t take it lying down, either.

So, we have a character who is a young prodigy with a vengeance-based motive who knows what she wants, is willing to push to get it, and ultimately achieves it with some aid from an older mentor—the very standard of a Hero Protagonist. Why, then, do some people not see her as much? Where do the accusations of “doormat” come from? As we’ve already covered, while Mako is willing to stand her ground with Raleigh and even Stacker, she’s less forceful than what we’re used to in this character type. This can be traced back to a line that, I think, is completely underrated in terms of greatest lines in cinema. When Raleigh points out that they don’t have to just obey Stacker, Mako shuts him down in two sentences: “It’s not obedience, Mr. Becket. It’s respect.”

Respect, then, is what marks Mako as different from the usual Hero Protagonist. There can be respectful Hero Protagonists, sure, but more often than not, they’re more like Raleigh—forceful, argumentative, sometimes full-on disobedient. This is especially true of female protagonists. The standard with women shifted from always has to listen to/be subservient to men to never listens to men because screw men I’m a strong independent woman over time; while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with the latter character type, if it makes sense, it’s also been used to make a new box for women. If a woman listens to a man—even if it makes sense in the setting, even if it’s out of a sense of respect and love and not subservience—then she’s viewed as weak. It’s the same kind of mentality that has Sansa Stark derided as “weak” just because she learned to play the game subtly in order to survive instead of solving all her problems with swords and murder. Women must be this thing, otherwise they’re not strong.

I think it goes without saying that this is a dumb and reductive line of thinking, especially when you consider that there’s no reason for Mako to be aggressively hostile towards the men in her life. Raleigh, while he has his flaws, is polite and kind to her—she sees this (you notice a lot of reaction shots of her as he is polite and encouraging, enthusiastic about his Jaeger, nice to Tendo, etc.) and gives it the respect it deserves, rather than just immediately throwing him under the bus based on past mistakes and bad perceptions. Moreover, her respect for Stacker and her desire not to force matters makes sense. One, he’s her commanding officer, and regardless of what the movies might make you think, you don’t go around sassing your commanding officer. Second, and more importantly, he’s her father. Not biologically, obviously, but the film reveals that he’s the one who rescued her from the Kaiju in Tokyo and raised her afterwards. She might not ever call her dad, but their relationship bears all the hallmarks of a respectful, loving father-daughter relationship—the way they argue without it getting nasty, the fact that she can be so relaxed around him, the way she lights up at his approval post-Hong Kong battle and is visibly devastated when she thinks she let him down. The moment when he tells her that she’s brave and that it’s time to protect him now emotionally devastates me every time I watch, and really cements how strong their bond is. Stacker worries about her, but ultimately trusts her. And Mako, in return, respects him and his authority. Sure, Stacker has been overprotective, but he’s never given her reason not to respect her, and unlike other female characters in other works (Ant Man, I’m talking about Ant Man) actually gives her a chance before the run time is up.

So, yes, Mako isn’t a complete disobedient ass to Stacker or Raleigh. This does not make her weak. If anything it makes her a more interesting, nuanced, and realistic character with strong bonds to the people in her life. (There’s probably something else to be said for familial respect and how it relates to her cultural heritage as a Japanese woman, but I don’t know enough about that to comment. If anyone reading this does, by all means, add on that information to this post. I’d love to know more.)

On a final note, let’s address the love interest thing. She’s just a love interest is an accusation that I’ve seen thrown at other female characters before just because they have a romantic subplot, and I think the criticism has become over-used and misapplied. To be, just a love interest is valid when a female character’s entire plot, motivation, and reason for existing revolves around her romantic relationship with a man. We’ve already established that none of these things happen with Mako and Raleigh—in fact, one could make the argument that he is her love interest, seeing how much unprovoked and unabashed devotion he throws her way. Not to mention, their relationship is never explicitly made romantic—hell, they don’t even kiss. They’re just two people who share a healthy bond of trust. I think we could use a lot more of that in cinema.

In conclusion, Mako Mori is so much more than a secondary protagonist. She has all the marks of a Hero Protagonist, meaning that she, a young Asian woman, takes that spot away from white male Raleigh. Not only that, she adds the right amount of nuance to the character by being respectful and disciplined versus insubordinate and temperamental. She’s a great character, and we could use a lot more like her in media. Also, Guillmero Del Toro has said she’s the heart of the film, so check and mate, doubters.

And that’s all for my Mako essay! Tune in on January 10th as I discuss her adoptive father and the best leader in cinematic history, Stacker Pentecost. If you like what you read and want to help me write more four-page single-spaced essays about the characters of Pacific Rim (seriously, four full pages again), consider leaving a donation on ko-fi or becoming a patron (links in the blog bio). And thanks for reading!

[starfleetbisexual]

@reywallker asked pacific rim + most attractive

mako mori, one of our brightest.

[polytropic-liar]

Today I was thinking about Mako Mori--as you do, and if you don’t maybe start I promise it will greatly improve the quality of your life--and thinking about how, though fanart eventually sold me on the idea of Mako/Raleigh as a sexual and romantic relationship, I still love best the world in my head where they don’t have sex. I was thinking about why, and what about that distinction is important to me for this particular work, and eventually I came to understand that it starts with two things: one, the fact that Mako is so incredible and that Raleigh as a character acts out the audiences’ own joy and respect and awe about her everything; and two, the deep, deep conviction that Raleigh Beckett is asexual.

Those are the building blocks of it, for me. Because he loves her so much, he is so besotted and in awe of her everything forever. And what’s more, the way he looks at her doesn’t seem the slightest bit artificial, because wouldn’t we all if she was in our lives? This is not one of those times where Love Between Two Names And Color Schemes Occurs Because The Plot Says So, this is basically the opposite, where two people who we understand as people react to each other by realizing they’re pretty damn incredible individuals and fucking transformative together. 

And thanks to the wonder of the Drift, Mako would never doubt that. Not for a second. So the minute they connected there, she knew exactly how he felt about her. Which, with ace!Raleigh in mind, means she experiences both the stunning magnitude of what he does feel and the quiet clarity of what he doesn’t. And I think that’s probably a pretty amazing gift, really, because how could she possibly react badly or be hurt by it when she’s inside the experience herself? Whatever she might have thought if this guy who was sighing on her every breath had said to her verbally that he wasn’t attracted to her physically, she isn’t going to think that because she can feel how it feels instead. How the depth of his feeling for her isn’t diminished by the dimension that it happens not to have. How “not attracted” is nothing like a rejection, not of any part of her including her beauty.

And I think maybe after feeling that, Mako wouldn’t really have trouble fitting herself into that understanding of what they are to each other? I don’t know if it would be true for anyone, but I think it would be true for her because she’s such a protector, is so ready to identify and uplift what is precious about someone and keep it safe, especially if it is threatened or fragile. And I think she would do that wholeheartedly for Raleigh’s feelings, she would see them for what they are, precious and valuable and worth her dedication. Especially for the woman who grew up with Stacker Pentecost showing her how respect for the totality of your own and others’ worth is a vital part of love. So though I don’t think she would ever come to identify as ace herself, I think she would come pretty quickly to identifying as a person who is happy and fulfilled in an asexual relationship.

The way they connect is just so immediately and obviously with their minds and hearts and basic selves, who the fuck even cares if their genitals aren’t heavily involved? Like, they move in sync. They respect and care for each other so much after two days’ acquaintance that they are going to beat the face in of anyone who looks at them funny. They are so excited to be around each other and inside each others’ heads that they beam helpless sunshine smiles during the apocalypse. That joy, that connection, that intimacy, is more valuable to me when sex doesn’t factor in. 

And I just see them growing old together and beating each other with sticks and building robots and being in love and literally never feeling like something is missing.