synchronised | shared headcanon

MAKO MORI

» has extensive knowledge in the traditional art of japanese blade making. despite the protests of his family (who insisted only a male child could continue the mori swordmaking legacy), her father took the time to pass some of the tradition to his only child. one of her favorite ways to pass the time had been to sit with her father in his workshop and watch him at the forge. because this was a potentially dangerous place for a small child to be, mako was instructed not to make a sound and never to move from the spot where her father told her to sit. this ultimately contributed to mako's ability to remain quiet and still for long periods of time as well as her general comfort with drawn-out silence.

» despite this knowledge, gipsy danger's chain swords are the only blades mako has contributed to the creation of. although it was her job to oversee all aspects of the mark 3 restoration project, mako personally helmed the design, development and sourcing of materials for gipsy's twin blades.

» mako's memory is predominantly tactile (followed by visual, followed aural). the only exception to this is the onibaba incident which remains an extremely aural memory in her mind.

» the biggest fears she had to overcome immediately following the incident all involved sound. chiefly: extreme silence and loud, sudden noises.

» has very little aptitude for natural sciences beyond what she has studied through her exposure to the k-science division. this didn't stop newt from attempting to steer mako towards cryptozoology when it became clear that she would not be readily granted piloting status. his attempt failed, however good naturedly.

» instead, mako has a considerable knack for the physical sciences. her mind has an easy time perceiving and understanding spatial relationships (though interestingly enough this is more solidly grounded in mako's sense of touch rather than her visual perception). this made jaeger engineering an obvious fit for her when her piloting career was effectively stonewalled. this didn't stop dr. leibgott from attempting to steer mako towards rift study and analysis. his attempt failed, however good naturedly.

» mako knows the two last men standing of the k science division and has for almost as long as she's been stacker pentecost's adoptive daughter. they, like the hansens and certain ppdc members like tendo choi, are among the few constant fixtures in mako's life since the onibaba incident.

» mako speaks a little german thanks to dr. gottlieb. she also knows how to play a few rolling stones songs on the guitar thanks to newt. mako has never heard the originals and doesn't actually know any of the song's titles.

» due to her fairly remote upbringing on the island of tanegashima, mako has an extremely limited and very low pop culture iq. by the time she was in a place that allowed her access to these sorts of things, her attention had moved to more important matters. as a result most references are lost on her and need to be explained.

» CHUCK HANSEN
» mako grew up alongside chuck hansen as the two shatterdome children to hero pilot fathers. this relationship started in a place of shared understanding, the both of them forced to deal with a huge amount of unresolved emotional trauma as the result of onibaba's and scissure's attacks. while their fathers' responsibilities kept them apart for long periods they were generally inseparable whenever housed under the same roof. their early relationship, into adolescence, was characterized by a sibling-like quality (rivalry mixed with a profound understanding and extreme, but never talked about after-the-fact, emotional vulnerability).

» before meeting raleigh, chuck was the only romantic outlet mako had ever had (wanted and ~~kind of~~ pursued) in her life. any other encounters she has had have been brief, superficial and on the whole have never been revisited after-the-fact. in addition to being the closest thing mako has ever had to a relationship (emotional or physical), chuck is the only sexual partner she has ever had.

» yeah that's right they were big fat virgins together until they weren't big fat virgins (only let's be real, they were still big fat virgins cause neither of them knew what they were doing).

» please note, use of words like "relationship" and "sexual" and "partner" are highly qualified considering chuck's own internal hurdles (which managed to only grow up around them more and more as they grew older).

» that said there was a period during adolescence, when their rivalry was strongest, when mako was convinced that she was in love with chuck. whether or not this was actually the case or if it was her emotional inexperience simply assigning incorrect labels to intense emotional investment is anyone's guess.

» chuck is the only person capable of making mako completely lose her reserve. their last huge blow-up (years past) resulted in a formal and extremely harsh reprimand from the marshal. mako also broke chuck's nose. they haven't exchanged more than a few sentences with one another in a single sitting since.

» though mako's emotions with regards chuck hansen are layered, complicated and occasionally contradictory, as an adult she continues to view him both as one of the best pilots the academy has ever produced as well as her only sibling. a sibling she has been sharply and irrevocably estranged from, but a sibling nevertheless. the strongest emotions associated with chuck in the drift are disappointment and loss. the strongest memories associated with chuck are their memories as children curled up in one of their bunks with the sheets pulled over their heads as chuck has one of his fits.

» although mako does not actively keep any of her memories or herself from raleigh in the drift, any memories of chuck as a child come with the understanding that he will never use these things against chuck (even if she thinks sometimes he deserves it).

» RALEIGH BECKET
» given the fact that the last person mako thought she was in love with was chuck hansen (and he proceeded to burn the entirety of their relationship to the ground in order to become a better pilot), mako is reluctant to label her emotional connection with raleigh as "being in love" (especially since the feelings evoked by both individuals seem so extremely different from one another). while she has no doubt that she loves raleigh, romantic interest seems ultimately small compared to the enormity of her investment in him. if anything it transcends any traditional labels and therefore cannot be properly expressed through the usual declarations of love, longing and attraction. as a result mako doesn't quite understand how to progress their relationship, if only because there doesn't seem to be anything next to progress it to.

» unless given an express reason not to, mako will always stand directly beside raleigh. she will almost always be found standing to his left.

» raleigh is one of the few people that mako can actively and enjoyably engage in small talk with. this is mostly because any small talk they engage in has a strong undercurrent to what is left unsaid. though mako remains a generally quiet individual who doesn't speak unless having to, she will never not indulge raleigh's desire to hear her speak.

» if presented with a social situation, mako will default to allowing raleigh do most the talking for them. if presented with a military/intel situation, the narrative is often split between the two of them down the middle.

» mako has developed a sweet tooth since drifting with raleigh. she has also grown more tolerant of the cold.

» despite being a tactile person, mako would rather come up extremely close to raleigh during quiet moments rather than actually touch him. this mostly has to do with her own inexperience with dealing with unresolved tension. (thanks, chuck.) mako's main outlet for expressing her attraction to raleigh is through sparring. once the match is over, however, she would just as readily break apart as linger nearby.

» although she and raleigh have been reunited in-game, mako still occasionally experiences the momentary grief and loss she'd felt when she still thought raleigh was dead. these are the only moments wherein mako feels actually distant from him.

RALEIGH BECKET

» natural aptitude for linguistics — can pick up spoken languages with relative ease

» knows basic formal grammar for most, if not all, spoken languages in the PPDC Shatterdomes (includes: Spanish, Russian, Hangeul, Mandarin (+Cantonese, +Hokkien), Japanese, Filipino, German)

» inversely, he has trouble with written syntax

» actively attempts to forget how to say goodbye all the time

» raleigh's the talkative one out of the becket boys; he could go on and on for hours talking about the same thing, or talking about a million things at the same time. his gregariousness is partly borne out of his family situation from before k-day - from his mom's cancer, to his dad's walking out, to yancy becoming the de facto parent in the household, raleigh talks a lot around family and friends because silence weighs heavily to him.

» he doesn't like silence. silence reminds him of loss; the quiet of the house when mom confirmed stage three lung cancer, the quiet after dad packed up and walked out, the quiet when mom died, when jaz left - he hates it. spending five years and four months in utter silence in dead alaska is essentially raleigh grieving to his total limit of toleration.

» his accent careens all over the globe when he tries to talk in any language that isn't american english. when speaking english, he sounds totally all-american.

» on good days, he's chatty. on bad days, he hits people on the mouth.

Edited 2013-09-10 19:08 (UTC)

» raleigh is super physical. he uses his entire body to talk, and is very expressive.

» after yancy died and had his memories hardcoded into raleigh's psyche, raleigh grew into yancy's physical and linguistic restraint; it's only after he gets to drift again that raleigh manages to separate between raleigh and yancy more clearly, mako's neural "voice" anchoring raleigh.

» given the chance, raleigh will pepper his loved ones with physical gestures of affection: playful slaps, big embraces, kisses on the cheek and other body parts, etc. he enjoys physical contact and the emotional fulfillment attached to the gestures.

» speaking of physical: he lost his virginity to an older girl the night he graduated from high school. yancy handed him condoms when he came home, which was pretty much the most mortifying experience of raleigh's life bar none.

» part two of the above: raleigh is... easy, in that it doesn't take a lot to get him to like someone, but when he doesn't like someone he'll take a really long time to come around and change that opinion. raleigh values emotional attachment over physical attraction, though, so while he's not a hard one to get to date or get romantic, anything physical has to be already couched on a very strong attachment.

» he's really just a high-schooler in an olympic-grade althetic body, with bonus death trauma.

» he's not shy about his scars, but he doesn't like to talk about them with anyone outside of a small handful of people, most of who are already dead.

» working out is a hobby. physical training was his favorite part of the academy programs.

» sometimes he hates that his body refuses to deteriorate or be less healthy, thinking that if only he'd been less physically formidable he wouldn't have been so damn cocky in the first place.

» he misses yancy every day. he doesn't believe he'll ever stop.

MAKO MORI: all that relates to love
» contrary to popular opinion, he didn't fall head over heels for mako at first sight; he fell head over heels when she said she wanted to be a pilot.

» he never meant to embarrass her for their first meeting, and he wishes sometimes that he'd done that first conversation a little differently.

» raleigh has felt a lot of things for a lot of people, and in varying degrees of intensity. mako is the only woman he's ever felt with certainty that he wants to grow old with. (but not the first person, because that person would be yancy. and then the asshole went and died.)

» he genuinely does not understand what mako could like about him, as he sees himself as nothing else but normal; he thinks she deserves better than what she's been given, but doesn't think of himself as the "better" part, per se.

» there is nothing else in the world that will make him as content as the thought of having made a loved one happy, even for just a moment. he wants mako to have all the happiness she could ever want in life.

» he loves her, and knows he loves her, and he's satisfied in knowing that she knows this too.

Edited 2013-09-10 19:38 (UTC)

YANCY BECKET: all that relates to loss
» you're an asshole who died and left when you promised you wouldn't leave after mom and dad and jaz and everyone else and you lied to me because you said we'd do this together and now i'm here and you're not and i wish you'd taken me with you but i know the truth and that truth is that you'd break your promise as many times as you feel like because you never wanted me to go with you if you had a choice and you made that choice for me and i hate that i can't hate that you did that because i love you and you're all i had for a long time and that was enough but now you're gone and

» i miss you. every day.

H E R C U L E S H A N S E N

» is keenly aware of his age and his state of fitness. in fact, it's a muted obsession of his. herc is the guy that buys a canister of protein to make shakes out of between his work outs. this only increased exponentially when he paired up with his son, because they were constantly under the eye of the bigwigs. they are frequently chocolate. he avoids strawberry.

» his workout routine is intense, even for the PPDC. he feels the need to constantly push above and beyond, especially since his partner (chuck) had been trained since his teen years in techniques herc only picked up after joining the PPDC. half the reason Striker is such a dirty boxer is because of herc's background and fighting style.

» herc is rotten with foreign languages, but can speak butchered a version of Japanese and Cantonese. he can speak enough Filipino to find a bathroom but that's about it. everything else consists of bits and pieces he's picked up from friends (like tendo or stacker).

CHUCK HANSEN

Edited 2013-09-10 04:57 (UTC)

✗chuck knows how to cook, and relatively well at that. he made quiche with his mother every weekend and had a particular fondness for blueberry/banana muffins. very, very occasionally and if left alone, he hums under his breath. (this too is a habit gleaned from his mother)

✗why he eats as much shitty fried food as possible is anyone's guess. he never got out of the habit of feeding his vegetables to the dog.

✗he isn't much for sweets. as a kid, he'd been known to take entire cartons of timtams out of the cupboard and eat them in one sitting. he hasn't touched them since sydney.

Edited (i can't html tonight guys sorry not sorry) 2013-09-10 05:16 (UTC)

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shared headcanon

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