HERMANN – Page 6

One thing I find fascinating as I continue to read and write Pacific Rim fic is how Hermann Gottlieb is the the shadow protagonist of so many of the spin-off stories, including Uprising.

In Pacific Rim 1, Newt is what I would call the “shadow”, or parallel, protagonist of the film to the Raleigh’s (/Mako’s) A Plot. He is basically the focus of the B Plot and in general he gets a lot of fic attention too because he’s flashy and out there and admittedly a fascinating character. This persists into Pacific Rim 2 where, granted, he is the “villain” and it is still the B Plot, but even the director admits those were the parts of the film he found most enjoyable and fascinating to work with, I think in part because many nerds (who make up a large chunk of the Pacific Rim audience) find Newt a more relatable character than the larger-than-life Jaeger pilots who are technically the main characters.

But Hermann is the one with hidden depths. I’ve seen so many fics begin with a focus on Newt (saving him, giving him a new story, making him a hero, etc.) then sloooowly begin to bring Hermann into focus, and the man’s POV is fascinating. Even with my own work in TOWOID I began from a place of wanting to write a story about Newt, but the more of Hermann I wrote the more I realized how incredibly layered and nuanced of a character he could be when given some focus. In Uprising, he is literally the only PPDC member left of the original team that closed the Breach, all the others are retired, possessed, or dead. But he’s still there, fighting the good fight, often being mocked, often finding solace in his work more than with people, but he clearly feels deeply and is driven by an obsessive inner heroic fire to do the right thing.

He’s an incredibly atypical hero in so many ways: fussy, disabled, odd, prickly, unconventionally attractive (though it takes some serious work to hide how hot Burn is under that costume and those mannerisms), almost too smart to talk to, someone who doesn’t really relate to people and doesn’t seem to care to, etc etc. and he is admittedly, a side character.

But in both films the good guys simply would not have won without his help and dedication. And I think that’s one thing I’ve seen in so many fics writers realize the longer they write him, at least that was my experience, because you can’t help but see how truly special of a character Hermann is once you spend some time with him and in his head, even with all the flashier, more traditional heroes he’s surrounded with, there’s something magnetic and real and human about this atypical, reserved, odd man who continues to do the work that needs to be done, even while all the other heroes fall around him.