Soulmates, Loneliness, and Giant Robots

Picture this: Earth is being invaded by aliens.

Plot twist 1: The aliens aren’t from space, instead they’re emerging from a giant rift in the Pacific Ocean.

 Plot twist 2, the aliens are also giant kaiju monsters. And I really mean, GIANT. As tall as a skyscraper, teeth sharp enough to crunch tree trunks like brittle bones, skin covered in scabs and scales, blood so acidic it burns through anything it touches.

Plot twist 3: Humanity decides to fight back. We build giant robots, armed with sharp swords, electric guns, fuelled by hearts made of nuclear reactor cores.

Plot twist 4: The robots are powered by love.

Goosebumps every. single. time.

Such is the absolutely insane opening minutes of one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time: Pacific Rim. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, whom you may know from his other hits ‘The Shape of Water’ and the Pinocchio movie that won an Oscar last year; do not take me lightly when I say this is one of, if not THE GREATEST movies of all time. 

But here’s the thing: beneath the high-octane battles and skyscraper-sized monsters, Pacific Rim offered something much deeper to me: It was the movie that made me believe in soulmates.

Plot twist 4 is an essential ingredient of what makes this movie stand out from the crowd of other mediocre sci-fi movies – the Jaegers need two pilots to be powered. The pilots are connected to each other by a neural link, the Drift, in order for them to synchronize their movements and have enough power to get a Jaeger to function. ‘Drift compatibility’ has long been heralded as a synonym for ‘soulmates’, be it platonic, familial, or romantic.

To be drift compatible with someone is to trust them to know the most vulnerable parts of yourself, as memories and emotions are shared in the Drift.

To be Drift Compatible is to be in sync with each other, able to predict and support the other’s moves.

To be Drift Compatible is to be willing to risk reliving your worst memories and knowing the person you love will be watching them right along with you.

Soulmates.

Pretty cool, right?

So, it’s very unfortunate, that during a recent rewatch, I kind of realized… I might not believe in soulmates anymore?

It’s… complicated.

I too would like to pilot a mecha, punch kaiju, save the world and impress my crush all at the same time

Soulmates as a whole are a solid 50/50 concept for most people – On one hand, the image of a predestined love that will stick with you forever, that will find you no matter what, is something that can be comforting to imagine in lonely times. On the other hand, does that mean I lack the free will to choose who I love? Does that mean everything I do in life is predetermined, and I can never change the outcome? Questioning the existence of soulmates has made me, to be frank, extremely existential. So why not use that as fuel for another long-winded blog post!

I think the whole soulmate concept kept bothering me because the media I’m recently into also takes a lot from that. Across the Spiderverse, a movie I can’t talk about without collapsing in agony (SONY! RELEASE BEYOND THE SPIDERVERSE, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!)  gave us the love story of Gwen and Miles, and in a sense, they seem to be “doomed soulmates”. Gwen Stacy dies in every other universe as she’s Spiderman’s love interest. To add another layer, Gwen and Miles are from different dimensions. On top of that, there’s Gwen’s betrayal of Miles that also conveniently ended on a cliffhanger just so it could drive a knife into my bleeding heart.

Their dynamic is intriguing and adds another layer of depth to the core conflict of the movie, which is Miles’s choice to believe in a universe that has predestined only misery for him or choose to stand up and carve his own path, no matter the consequences. Yes, I have an entire playlist dedicated to these two. Yes, I cried in the cinema when he let go of her hand. Yes, I did obsessively read fanfiction for them for a whole month.

Another recent soulmate-related fandom thing was the release of “Would You Fall in Love with Me Again” from Epic The Musical, and the animatics that followed. The lyrics go: I will fall in love with you, Over and over again, I don’t care how, where, or when, No matter how long it’s been, You’re mine” combined with imagery of my favourite couples from fandoms big and small...  The beauty of finding the same person, in every universe, in every lifetime, that no matter what stands between us, I will find you, and you will find me – that’s the kind of beauty I’ve always believed soulmates have.

But that’s all quite recent. If we really want to go back in time, I can trace the beginnings of my soulmate daydreams all the way back to kindergarten, watching Disney movies and hearing the words “One True Love” from the speakers. Or even when I read a short story about the Red String of Fate from Chinese mythos, an invisible red cord that would wrap itself around the little fingers of two people who were destined to meet. At the time, I didn’t stop to think of the existential qualities that come with having a soulmate, I just internalized the belief that every person had their own Red String – that everybody had somebody who would love them.

Romantic love is a horrible, horrible thing for me. My crushes have all been nothing short of disastrous; ask any of my friends from middle school about my love life and they’ll all cringe at the very memory. I maintain that the worst emotions I’ve ever felt were when I had a crush on someone. Foolishly, I believed I was falling in love – now with the power of a very good video essay, I’ve learnt that what I felt was limerence instead, which is a fancy way of saying that I became infatuated with an idealized projection of this person instead of their actual self.

Yes, limerence is involuntary, but that didn’t stop me from feeling horrible about it every time I realized I had these feelings for someone. I feel guilty, guilty for projecting an image of perfection onto someone who is just supposed to be my friend, guilty for harbouring feelings that will make the sides of their mouths turn down in disgust or worse, turn up in disbelief. I don’t like having crushes – I hate it with a passion. But they are difficult to be rid of, please believe me; if I knew how to get rid of a crush, I’d not be writing this blog post.

I have a lot of shame associated with liking someone as well. The first time I had a crush, a friend of mine told everyone in the school, including that person. The endless teasing and name calling that followed still sits in the back of my mind – I live in fear of someone finding out I draw hearts in the corners of my notebooks, lest they believe I’m drawing them for someone in particular. For a very long time, it was shameful for me to even admit to liking relationships (or, ships) in movies and TV shows.

In my head, the colour yellow represents love – the colour of morning light, the colour of sunflowers. But yellow is also the colour of sickness, the colour of cowardice. Maybe that’s why love confused me so much – the very word carried so much alongside it.  

Strangely, when I think of love, I think of anger as well – repressing all those emotions as a kid gives one anger issues later in life, who knew? Anger is orange, like a tiger banging on the walls of her cage.

Love and Anger – I swing between the two like a pendulum, I am trapped because escaping one is running into the arms of the other. When I want love, I get angry, and when I am angry, I want love. At times I wonder, which came first, the longing or the hatred? Who’s to say which emotion arose in me first as a child, who didn’t understand that the hole burning through her chest when the boy she liked walked into the room was that idea of love she’d always assumed existed.

There’s this quote from Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. This speech by Jo March, which made me sob the first time she said it because she understood exactly what this felt like. There’s this loneliness that comes with growing up, I think, the fact that friendships formed in adulthood can never quite compare with the simplicity and innocence of friendships formed in classrooms and playgrounds. People move on, people move to other places and go on to do other things – and sometimes you feel like you’ve been left behind. And it’s a horrible thing to admit to, loneliness. When Jo chokes it out at the end of her speech it almost looks like she regrets even mentioning it, but you can see the weight of those words as her shoulders sag when she lets them go. I spent so much of my life ashamed of love that sometimes I wonder if it’s too late for me to find it now.

Maybe that’s it.

I only believed in soulmates because I was lonely.

Because the funny thing about love is that, in order to receive it, you need to ask for it. As the Tumblr quote goes, “If we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” Believing in soulmates was me believing that I wouldn’t have to ask for love – that it would come to me all by itself…

But that’s not how it works in real life.

So, back to Pacific Rim. 

My umbrella (sanity) protecting me from the rain (existential crisis) as I gaze into the distance (try not to cry)

When I first watched this movie, I immediately assumed, like most, that Jaeger pilots were soulmates. Being drift compatible was shorthand for finding your soulmate right? But despite the allegory to soulmates, Jaeger pilots are not fixed in place. The main character Raleigh first pilots with his brother, then with Mako Mori. Marshal Pentecost certainly wasn’t initially partnered with Chuck but in the final battle when Chuck’s father was injured, he stepped up to the challenge. 

The point I’m trying to make is, this whole “only one person in the entire universe exists specifically for you” notion is a complete falsehood. Love is built, brick by brick.

That was the true core message of Pacific Rim. Not about soulmates, but about love. About how even if Raleigh and Mako have all this chemistry, it’s because they both chose to be vulnerable with one another that they were Drift Compatible. It’s because of Pentecost’s love for Mako, raising her as his own daughter when she was the orphan of a war she didn’t even begin, that Mako was able to avenge her family’s death and find peace. And it’s because all these pilots loved their world, loved their families, loved their friends, that they even had the courage to fight back in the first place.

So maybe Pacific Rim isn’t a story about soulmates, about fate or destiny. Maybe it’s about choosing to be vulnerable, choosing to be kind, choosing to fight for what you believe in even when you’re scared.  

Maybe it’s about how love is the hardest choice you have to make.

And maybe it’s a story about the power of that kind of love. A love that is always patient, always kind. A love that does not boast, nor is it proud.

A love that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

A love that never fails.

 

THE MOST PERFECT ENDING OF ALL TIME. 

Okay!! This blog post is finally over. Sorry if things got a little too heavy. Anyways, Pacific Rim is still my favourite movie regardless of my views on soulmates now. I recently watched The Gorge, and I really liked the cute love story paired with nightmare fuel zombie designs! If you have any good sci-fi movies with an emotional core, do let me know 😊 (Yeah I watched Transformers One guys, loved that to bits)

A good friend of mine recently suggested moving over to Substack, which is like this app for writers to publish their newsletters. One, it would be so cool to earn money for these silly litte blog posts, and two, I’d really like to try and reach a larger audience of more than just close friends and family. However it being an entirely new format to what I’m used to does put me off a bit. But who knows! If I ever have free time, I’ll look into it.

 Alternatively, the simpler thing to do would be to make an Instagram page for this blog. But, again, I’m scared of technology and have no idea what I’m doing.

I've added a subscribe button! So please sign up and hopefully this thing works LMAO.

I’ll leave you with my favourite quote from the movie:

Stacker Pentecost: Today. Today... At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today there is not a man nor woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today. Today we face the monsters that are at our door and bring the fight to them! Today, we are *canceling* the apocalypse!

Me on my way to stop people from watching the sequel because they killed off my favourite character

Talk to you later, world.

Joy (≧∇≦)ﾉ