Tag: HERMANN

nokaijuentrailsplz:

avelera:

Ok but random thought I had while writing the Kidnapping AU – but what if one of the reasons Hermann doesn’t figure out that something is wrong with Newt sooner is because he can’t let himself connect the dots?

Hermann is a theoretical mathematician of sorts, right? Someone in academia can probably give me a more nuanced title. I’m not as familiar with the subcategories of that field, I do know some cryptographers personally, and at the highest levels of math things get a little bit insane and the risk of seeing connections where there aren’t any like Nash in “A Beautiful Mind” is a legit real thing that happens. Worse, Hermann’s focus was on making predictions, connecting disparate data points. 

Hermann could very well have sensed something was wrong. He’s planning for Jaeger deployment, but to what end? Clearly he’s planning for a return of the Precursors and the Kaiju, maybe because he can sense something is out there. Except it’s a threat he can’t see. But what if his biggest fear as a mathematician is beginning to see patterns where there are none?

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I thought you were maybe going a different direction with this idea that Hermann can’t connect the dots, so hear me out.  Mine sounds dumb/reaching when I try to word it, but this was what I thought your point was going to be and it kind of ties into your actual much better point.

What if Hermann can’t connect the dots because (on some level other than just nightmares) The Precursors have taken a small root in his brain and They won’t let him.  Just as we know from the supplementary material that Newt was not aware of the Precursors’ motives and actions through him, that he wasn’t aware of all the issues until suddenly he WAS aware but could no longer control things, maybe the hint of Precursors in Hermann’s brain keep putting Their spin on the patterns Hermann does pick up and convince him where he’s connecting the dots to is lunacy. Keep throwing him off Their scent, so to speak. They’re undermining his sense of certainty, undermining his faith in his own ability to understand things, to understand Newt and Newt’s actions (that he gained further insight on through the Drift).

It is a great way for Them to weaken Hermann if They can’t have him as their own.  While the Precursors work on building up and inflating Newt’s sense of self/ego, They create self-distrust in Hermann’s foundation of his own mathematical reliance on patterns and prediction.  And if he did start raving around the Precursor’s return without being adequately able to back it up?  Better for Them. Anything to make him less likely to be in a mental and physical position to thwart the Kaiju when they return.

(I mean, obviously the Shatterdome staff DOES see Hermann as kind of a crazy kook…)

Ok but random thought I had while writing the Kidnapping AU – but what if one of the reasons Hermann doesn’t figure out that something is wrong with Newt sooner is because he can’t let himself connect the dots?

Hermann is a theoretical mathematician of sorts, right? Someone in academia can probably give me a more nuanced title. I’m not as familiar with the subcategories of that field, I do know some cryptographers personally, and at the highest levels of math things get a little bit insane and the risk of seeing connections where there aren’t any like Nash in “A Beautiful Mind” is a legit real thing that happens. Worse, Hermann’s focus was on making predictions, connecting disparate data points. 

Hermann could very well have sensed something was wrong. He’s planning for Jaeger deployment, but to what end? Clearly he’s planning for a return of the Precursors and the Kaiju, maybe because he can sense something is out there. Except it’s a threat he can’t see. But what if his biggest fear as a mathematician is beginning to see patterns where there are none?

And the thing is, the truth is legitimately batshit insane. The Precursors took over Newt and made him take private sector, military industrial job to he can sabotage the next generation of Jaegers and use them to destroy the world? Hermann already can’t tell anyone else that he still has nightmares from Drifting with the Kaiju brain, for some reason he felt he needed to tell this in confidence to Newt because it wasn’t safe. That means the guy probably isn’t getting help after the war, at least help he can be completely honest with. He could very well fear for his own equilibrium, and fear getting committed if he tells the truth. 

What theory could he possibly put together that would be close to the truth that doesn’t sound insane? What if he could see the data points cropping up that pointed to a return of the Precursors, to them using Newt as their vessel, to the possibility his nightmares might not be PTSD but actually real? How could he have not feared that it was just his very advanced, theoretical, prediction-making intellect putting together patterns where there were none? Maybe he even began to creep onto the realization sooner but had to suppress it because the closer he got to the truth the more insane his answer became. He probably couldn’t even bring that up for fear of being laughed out of a room as a has-been who misses the glory days and wants to believe the Kaiju are coming back and it’s somehow tied up in Newt. 

I’m just saying in addition to him not putting it together until the threat becomes very real and present, with rogue Jaegers and Kaiju brains right before his eyes and Newt literally telling him he’s destroying the world, Hermann might not have been able to honestly put it together before then because he didn’t have enough proof to trust his own instincts, and if he was wrong with those instincts it could be a very real indication to himself and others that he was losing his mind. 

Maybe he literally couldn’t contemplate what would later turn out to be the truth, and maybe that’s why he spins off these less accurate but very plausible theories of Shao being the real mastermind and the threat being an entirely Earth-based power grab instead of anything to do with the creatures he still has nightmares of to this day, and the man who abandoned him.