(For the record, I LOVE that meta about Raleigh and Mako that you’re referencing!)

This is a really interesting question, Anon! A lot of my headcanons kinda come about either because of fanfic I read that feels “right” or expediency for something I need in a story where I need an explanation that feels “right”. My headcanon about their first meeting is definitely a combination of those two. I think the @hermannhaslovedthestars webcomic does an EXCELLENT job and really solidified for me a sense of what happened, and a vague reference to that sort of set up (which I’ll describe below) even played into some dialogue I wrote for the latest Prisoners’ Dilemma chapter (hopefully forthcoming this week).

I’ll go into detail below, putting it below a cut so I can ramble ;P

So I think their first meeting was a huge disappointment for both of them, like soul-crushing. They had been writing canonically “passionate” letters to one another for years, the idea they were crushing hard on one another remotely is so ubiquitous in fanon it’s practically canon at this point. My thoughts on this draw from other PR meta I’ve enjoyed but they include:

– The letters helped filter out some of Newt’s more rambling and hyperactive interactions and leveled him out enough that he came across as, y’know, a normal human. It also let his genius shine in a way Hermann found appealing. 

– Likewise for Hermann–I was going to say that the letters helped Hermann come out of his shell but I just realized that’s fanon and not canon. Canonically, Hermann has no trouble butting into conversations he’s not a part of and saying rather embarrassing personal things like the “Handwriting of God” speech. At least when it comes to his field (which is the extent of how we see him really in the films) he’s not shy at all. So let’s let that fanon die for a second. 

– Really what the letters probably did for Hermann was make him less of a stern, judgmental jerk hung up on his work. He’s a bit of a forbidding person even (if not especially) with his social awkwardness. So I imagine it’s more that the letters allowed him the perceived privacy (see his rule about “public displays of affection”) to open up a bit and maybe even make flirtatious overtures and give compliments to Newt. So letters helped him come across as a normal human as well, one who can give displays of affection. 

– So then you’ve got this situation where both of them in person are so much more abrasive than they are over letters. Newt is too loud and chaotic and any playful jabs he makes probably don’t land right and end up stinging Hermann’s pride instead. Hermann is too stern and serious, a total killjoy, and his waspishness is on full display. He won’t do anything affectionate in public, where they probably met, so none of his softer side can come through. Newt is bouncing off the walls and not checking himself at all or slowing down to clarify his point or pad it with anything less than his unfiltered internal monologue.

– I see both of their worst social habits going into absolute overdrive as the first meeting progresses. They were both already super nervous, and then as things don’t click they get even more nervous, so they both fall back on their worst behavior instincts, insulting one another and trying to shore up their pride (which both have in spades, to the point of arrogance). This just makes matters worse and before you know it, they’re both in too deep to calm down and check in with one another and see if there’s been some kind of misunderstanding along the way. 

– All their worst fears about the other, and about this meeting, are realized. This is in part because I’m sure both had a best case scenario and a worst case scenario in their head, with nothing in between (even though reality is always in between), and it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy when everything isn’t amazing and it’s not this incredible meeting of souls where finally all the social isolation they’ve felt elsewhere just melts away because they’re with each other.

– Because here’s the thing, our social habits don’t just go away when we’re with someone we care for. No one can read our minds. And it takes a bit of acclimation before even the most attentive soulmate can read what’s really happening in our heads. I think from the letters they thought they knew one another very well and, sure, they knew one another’s minds very well, but not their social cues like, “I insult people when I’m nervous,” for Newt or “I snap at people when I feel like I’ve lost control of a situation,” for Hermann. 

– By the way, Hermann canonically shows he cares by snapping at Newt, for example about his safety for the Drift experiment, disguised as criticism of the experiment itself, which Newt was unable to see for what it was. Meanwhile, Newt is like an immature kid on the playground: he pulls Hermann’s proverbial pigtails because he wants his attention, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative attention. But look at how he puffs up around Hannibal Chau as well and tries to impress him! Newt pokes the bear with people whose positive attention he craves, which are people he respects. If he didn’t respect Hermann, he wouldn’t care about getting his attention at all, but Hermann can’t read that about him.

– Most tragically though, I think both of them needed that meeting to be everything for them. They needed to see fireworks and hear the choirs of angels singing. At even the first sign of awkwardness, which could have even been just due to mistranslation or confusion, I think the first chink in the armor appeared, and then everything fell apart like dominoes after that as the anxiety level skyrocketed when things didn’t go as well as they had dreamed (and of course they didn’t, because they couldn’t). And that built the resentment as the other “betrayed” what Newt/Hermann needed from him, emotionally, to the point where it became a wall that was impossible to climb over without one of them, at least one of these two prideful, socially inept geniuses to back down. Someone needed to bend and say, “Hey, did I miss something?” but I also think, for the record, that both of them were bullied growing up and when you’re bullied you often learn 1) how to be a bully yourself and 2) how to not show weakness. So they locked themselves in a game of chicken where neither could back down from being a jerk because to admit weakness was to lose. The pen-pal becomes the enemy and neither knew how to stop it from spiraling further after that.

– I do think they both secretly know they “like” each other, or at least that they see themselves as “in the trenches” together and that they do have positive interactions (largely despite themselves) over the year, but in order to end the fighting, it really does take Hermann conceding that he cares whether or not Newt lives or dies with the “I’ll go with you,” line about the Drift. He’s conceding that Newt’s idea will work (which he resisted before) and helping Newt. Newt immediately construes it as a romantic overture because, well, it kind of is for them in a way that I consider borderline canonical given that the actors played them as in love in Uprising. Hermann ducks a little bit there and pleads “the end of the world” as a reason for his change of heart, but Newt basically disregards that (as he does many things Hermann says, lol) and makes it a friendship thing anyway which Hermann responds to as well, giving lie to his claim that it was pure business.

So to go back to that first meeting… I think it was a date. Maybe they met at a bar or a coffee shop. Maybe it was more romantic than that. Maybe one of them set it up to be a date and the other thought they’d meet before trying to date, and the wires got all crossed. But I absolutely believe that both built up this first meeting in their mind to such heights that there’s no way on earth that they wouldn’t walk away disappointed in some way, and that’s exactly what happened.

Edit: Actually, I wanted to add how I think that would play visually. 

I bet in their memories there is a visual change in the Drift from what “really” happened.

I bet both of them are larger than life in that memory. I bet in the memory of the first time they laid eyes on each other they both look amazing, like the hottest fanartist take on the other that you can imagine. Newt looks like a rockstar. Hermann looks like, well, Burn Gorman in a suit when he’s not trying to look “like Hermann” (which has a whole physicality around it to downplay how fucking hot that man really is). 

I bet it morphs. I bet they both start to take on aspects of a childhood bully the other had. Newt becomes sneering, Hermann becomes disdainful. They start to “look” like someone who is out to get them but maybe, just maybe, the attractiveness level doesn’t drop. Hey, if you’ve been bullied, if you’ve been socially awkward, then chance are you’ve been rejected by someone you perceived as attractive, to the point where attractiveness itself becomes forbidding. 

It could play into them making the other out to be some sort of obnoxious little goblin that’s out to get them: downplay the threat, make it ridiculous and mock it so it isn’t as scary. Hermann is constantly pointing out to others and himself how hopeless Newt is, Newt points out how Hermann’s (probably staggering) intelligence is pointless and basically just self-important noise. 

But to go back, I think visually in the Drift they’d see one another as “sneering” for most of their memories, but it would be like scars overlaying this borderline angelic or heroic first image of them informed by that love and hope that things would work between them, before they opened their goddamn stupid mouths and ruined it.