{"id":25922,"date":"2013-07-22T05:34:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T05:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2013\/07\/22\/soyonscruels-okay-so-i-havent-really-talked-in\/"},"modified":"2013-07-22T05:34:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T05:34:12","slug":"soyonscruels-okay-so-i-havent-really-talked-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2013\/07\/22\/soyonscruels-okay-so-i-havent-really-talked-in\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

soyonscruels<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

okay so i haven\u2019t really talked in detail yet about how what i\u2019m most glad about with newt and hermann is what they entail w\/r\/t disability<\/p>\n

hermann is very obviously disabled in the film, the first shot we see of him (it\u2019s not actually the fight in the lift!! you can see him and newt arguing over a crate outside as the camera pans past them) he\u2019s using his cane, and he maintains doing so throughout the film\u2014 when bad things happen, newt has to slow down a couple of times to let hermann catch up (which, btw, truly made me love him, because do you know how often people do that in real life to me, NOT MANY) like he is un-fucking-mistakeably disabled, and you know what? it matters, yeah, because when the world\u2019s fucking ending he can\u2019t run that fast, but it also doesn\u2019t, because his worth in the shatterdome is predicated on the fact that he, like newt, is basically a weapon all by himself<\/p>\n

and then novel canon cements newt as neuroatypical \u2014 \u2018borderline manic personality\u2019, so probably bipolar \u2014 so like, we\u2019re talking about someone who would probably never be allowed to be a jaeger pilot, because speaking as someone who shares a brain with bipolar disorder, i would not want to mind-meld with someone and then operate heavy machinery. newt, like hermann, would not have worth in most action movies of this type. like, yeah, maybe they\u2019d get to be comic relief and get to contribute some minor ~~~science thing~~~ of importance, but they wouldn\u2019t be the focus. they wouldn\u2019t be the motherfuckin\u2019 heroes<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

BUT IN THIS FILM, THEY ARE. of course, they\u2019re not the heroes alone<\/em>, but they get to do this terrifying amazing glorious thing, this thing they\u2019re not even trained<\/em> for, and the information they gather at great personal and mental and emotional and physical cost SAVES THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE FROM EXTINCTION<\/p>\n

also, they\u2019re not punished for anything, and the moment where they come together to form a literal left brain\/right brain organism is a lovely one. lots of films like this would take the TEACH THE NON-HEROES A LESSON!!! ARROGANCE IS BAD!!! but nooooope. actual scientist rockstars who mind-meld an alien and predict a double event with a chalkboard. they\u2019re scared and physically small and \u2018weak\u2019 and they\u2019re allowed to be all of these things, frightened and vulnerable and bleeding, and we aren\u2019t supposed to respect them any less for having such human reactions, for having the reactions of the untrained in a war zone.<\/p>\n

in this movie, a guy who walks with a cane and may well have done so since birth and a guy who clearly spends at least some of his time talking to himself at 3am while obsessively eating cereal and spinning through the emotional gamut like he\u2019s a catherine wheel got to save the world, and you know what, other summer blockbusters try<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

soyonscruels: okay so i haven\u2019t really talked in detail yet about how what i\u2019m most glad about with newt and hermann is what they entail w\/r\/t disability hermann is very obviously disabled in the film, the first shot we see of him (it\u2019s not actually the fight in the lift!! you can see him and … Continue reading <\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,1758,3153],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25922"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}