application.

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PERSONAL
NAME: Qing
PERSONAL JOURNAL: qing / but i prefer to use plurk.
EMAIL: whomovedmyfish@gmail.com
AIM: jadedincarnate
CURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a


CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Mori Mako
SERIES: Pacific Rim
CANON POINT: Post-movie canon. Breach gets sealed, Raleigh isn't really dead, and they both proceed to ignore LOCCENT while Raleigh gets his Disney Princess™ moment on.
LOSS: The red shoe Stacker Pentecost gives her. Stacker Pentecost, in a nutshell, is the most important person in her life. He was her saviour, her mentor, her father figure, the one constant in her existence, save for her anger and her desire for vengeance. And this shoe? It's a symbol of her past, and it's the last thing he ever gave to her before he allowed her to pilot. The red shoe was the only thing left of what she had from Stacker, and it would practically kill her to lose it.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER: Mori Mako is, in a word: driven. There are many other adjectives, terms, metaphors that can be used to describe her, but this single word is the entire foundation of who she is. She is a force of nature when she chooses to be, a character with many different layers, subtleties and nuances.

As a character, she is respectful, quiet and polite, although there are the occasional lapses, like when she converses casually with Stacker in Japanese (imeji to chigau instead of imeji to chigaimasu, the former a much more informal and friendly comment) while addressing him formally in English. She's also initially presented as a little rude, speaking to Stacker about Raleigh in Japanese about how she thought he wasn't like she thought he would be, while Raleigh was still there.

She's very perceptive, intelligent and competent, unafraid of doing and saying what she thinks is right. Mako has high standards of herself, and as a result has equally high expectations of others, most especially the ones she's come to respect. She's also a quick study and more than capable of reading Raleigh's movements. The kwoon is the best example of that; she fact that she hand-picked candidates for him speaks volumes of just how advanced she is, the fact that she sits down and watches and absorbs and makes judgements and predictions on just how Raleigh and/or the candidates move speak volumes of her understanding of him. Even when they are going at each other, she first tests him out, drawing the fight out into a conversation that is so much less about words than it is about their moves before she ends the fight by pinning him down. She doesn't even hesitate in showing her stark displeasure when she knows he could do better re: the other candidates. He's better, and they both know it.

But even in this, she is no cocky gunslinger, no cocky, typical Hollywood Action Girl. She has her own share of drawbacks, her own traumas that she's fighting to come to terms with, her fears and her weaknesses. Make no mistake, however, she is as fierce as they come. She’s brilliant, bright and determined, and is pretty much as un-feminine as one can get. She's loyal, and she's really got no time for ridiculous bullshit fights like the one Chuck is looking to pick with Raleigh. In fact, she stands up for Raleigh, deliberately getting between him and Chuck without hesitation (not that it helped, considering the brawl that happened right after).

Mako chooses to be verbally economical, subscribing to the philosophy that there is wisdom in keeping silent. And as a result, when she does speak up, she's more likely to be taken seriously. She's damn good at what she does, and she knows it, she might be quiet, but she's no wilting flower, and she has no time for bullshit -- she communicates less in words and more in body language, nothing she says and does is by accident, and there is meaning in every move that she makes.

Mako's personality is not built on the fact that she's female; it's mainly built solely on what she can do, and the results she can obtain. Most of her motivations stem from that fateful day in her childhood when she'd lost her parents, and had almost been killed by a kaiju. From the aftermath of that came an orphaned little girl who had to grow up far too quickly, latching onto vengeance and anger to become a sharpened blade. Sharp and no-nonsense, Mako views herself a weapon against the kaiju. Stacker once mentioned that she was the best and the brightest, and he was right.

It's obvious in the way she was the lead in the Mark III Jaeger reconstruction. Excelling both in academics and martial arts, Mako is practically your stereotypical overachiever; very clear with what she wants to do, forever buried in work with no hint of a social life (although in her defense, the world is going to shit and making friends is pretty low on her ladder).

She is extremely goal-oriented, and is very attached to the theories and strategies that she's learned in the academy. She possesses the ability to view things objectively (sometimes too objectively), and speaks her mind about many matters, honest and blunt to a fault -- cutting through the crap and getting straight to the point, even if it hurts the other person. One shining example of this is what she says, point-blank, to Raleigh.

"“I think you’re unpredictable. You have a habit of deviating from standard combat techniques, you take risks that injure yourself and your crew. I don’t think you’re the right man for this mission.”

She has her share of quirks, too, like her habit of slipping back into Japanese when she's agitated, showing that she's most comfortable with her mother tongue, and not English. She likes cute animals like dogs (e.g. her reaction to Max, cuddles, anyone?), and has pictures of cats on her wall that hints at a softer side that she doesn't reveal often. Mako is not as composed as she'd like to be, too, and for all of her objective observations, she can certainly be emotional at times, and the most important thing is that she is not ashamed of it.

She has an incredible passion and talent for jaegers and jaeger-tech, for engineering and robotics, and has an intimate knowledge of the machines, as well as her own ideas on how to make improvements on it. She prefers her own company, and she likes making things with her hands and tinkering with gadgets. On her desk, one can find pieces of scrap metal and robots, things she'd been working with -- as well as the occasional pictures of cats and Japan, etc. Mako is a Japanese girl at heart, schooled in subtlety and more than capable of differentiating between obedience and respect -- but it doesn't mean that she's shy or demure. She is brave, capable of holding her own against anyone who looking to pick a fight with her.

Mako, too, is tenacious, going after Stacker repeatedly when it came to piloting jaegers. It's in her blood, and getting to pilot a jaeger is one of the things she'd always wanted. She is a woman who knows exactly what she wants, and how to get it, to the point of demanding her right to be a pilot from Stacker.

Mako might have been a little girl when the kaiju killed her parents, but ever since then she'd been raised to think like a soldier, to be one, and she could never be happy standing by the sidelines while other pilots risked their lives. More importantly, she would never stand by the sidelines when there is an entire race of kaiju to exterminate.

Her traumatic experience with Onibaba shaped her, shaped the person that she is today and what Stacker Pentecost has come to mean to her. Her world changed the day he stepped out of Coyote Tango and into her line of vision -- in that moment, Stacker embodied hope, and he became the most important person in her life. She became a soldier and he became her mentor, and to honour him and all that he had done for her, she respects him, and it's obvious in the way she obeys, not out of meekness but the conscious desire to protect his appearance and reputation. She behaves (and doesn't actually whomp on Chuck's ass outside of Stacker's office like she obviously wants to) because, in her mind, she would dishonour him as his student if she doesn't.

But Mako is not infallible. She is young, inexperienced and she has her vulnerable moments. She makes mistakes. For all her gifts, she has plenty of flaws; she is complex, and she is human; she was overwhelmed by her memories of Onibaba, and had almost destroyed the Hong Kong Shatterdome as a result. Mako is by nature intense and aggressive, and often runs the risk of losing control when pushed, requiring reminders to rein herself in. She's a person who grasps anger too tightly and too completely, and has a frightening tendency to hold on to a grudge, to let it fester to dangerous levels, so much so that there is a very real possibility that it could compromise her judgement.

It doesn't, in the end; she'd found a way to channel it into strength, to propel her forward instead of holding her back. Once again, driven comes to mind. Mako is ambitious, single-minded and stubborn, but not stubborn enough to be oblivious to her own weaknesses or to go against Stacker's directives, no matter how much she might fight him on it. To her, the idea of it is dishonorable. Stacker saved her life, and no matter her frustrations with him she will do as he orders, and make him proud.


"This is worth fighting for. We don't have to just obey him."
"This is not obedience, Mr. Becket. It's respect."



Mako is a bundle of strengths and weaknesses and quirks and motivations; she's not an easy person to get along with, and is relatively antisocial as far as being friendly goes, but Mako is not an abrasively vicious person, not by far. She's a product of her circumstances, and living proof that there are many ways to fight for what you want, and to overcome your fears. She doesn't allow her past to define her, she doesn't allow herself to be mired hopelessly in it; Mako uses it to her advantage.

ABILITIES: [ If applicable, provide a summary of your character's supernatural, magical or technological abilities, or anything that might make them otherwise exceptional compared to your average human being. Links are welcome if the character has too many abilities to expand on here.]

THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:

[ No one teaches you how to deal with the day after, to live through the aftermath and to come to terms with grief and loss. There's no manual for the days that come after apocalypses are cancelled, the surreality of achievement and the clamour for attention. Mako understands, at length, the need for the rest of humanity to celebrate that they're still alive, that the sun rises for them another day -- she understands it in an uncomplicated, detached way, because after losing so much for so long, having something still in your possession is still a luxury.

But the hurt is still there, the grief that is lodged in her ribs, undetached, right where her heart would be: she's lost too much to properly celebrate. She and Raleigh, they've lost everything but each other, and the pain of loss is a slow burn, the ache of knowing a loved one is no longer there scorches under her skin.

Outside, they cheer and congratulate each other and themselves, the subsequent victory parades and the memorials held in honor of all that had fallen. All around them, everyone is celebrating, and Mako is one of the few who grieves; for sensei, for Chuck, for the Kaidonovskys, for the Wei Tang brothers. Theirs was a pyrrhic victory, but it reminds Mako to honour their sacrifices, always. It makes Mako sick, and she doesn't leave Raleigh's side because he's the only one who can understand, and she's the only one who can reach him.
Raleigh understands it better than she does; he'd lived with his own pain for far longer.

She comes to miss him when he's separated from her for too long; there is a cruelty in keeping two co-pilots apart while they're on a drift-hangover, when they're still together in their minds, each a crucial part of the other, and the other, too far away to be reached. Raleigh's ache is her own, too, when she instinctively picks up on his thoughts, the gentle unfamiliarity that warms her heart in the moments between interviews, when she faces excited girls and women all wanting to know about Raleigh Becket, about what he's like, whether they're -- would he date -- is he a boxers or -- does she know if he kisses well -- and suddenly all she wants to talk about are Jaegers, about the components of their core, what it means to be one of the few female pilots, what it means for them, the ones with ambition, the ones who can go toe to toe with men and be better. She wants to talk about Stacker Pentecost, about all the men and women who had fought the dragons and lost their lives, but not their legacies. Never their legacies, not when Mako keeps them close to her, the name of every jaeger and every pilot carried in her memory.

But all they want to know is what the younger half of the Becket brothers is like.

Mako guards Raleigh fiercely, politely, because his secrets are hers to protect, and he becomes as much a part of her when she keeps him safe and away from public consumption. While Raleigh charms with puppy-eyed, flirtatious radiance, Mako inspires a conflicting breadth of reactions, and with every interview that goes on, the hypocrisy of the world gets further under her skin.

This was the world that turned its back on her father, on the work he'd given his life to defend. Raleigh and Mako stand on the shoulders of giants, the heroes who had gone before them -- and yet all they can do is ask the asinine questions.

When one is in the Drift too long, words are clumsy constructs, plucked from the mind and given an inelegant voice; words are what she doesn't need with Raleigh, and Raleigh is who she thinks of when the final interview ends and she leaves the studio more exhausted than when she's entered. Tokyo's Daughter, they used to call her, the men and women behind cameras and pens and words who painted too many stories of her when she had been young, displayed her grief for the entire world to see. Some threads were embellished, some weren't nearly coloured in enough, and Mako's long extricated herself from it. She became her own woman, and became more than the name that the world had given to her.

Now, she is Mori Mako, jaeger pilot, daughter of the man who saved the world when the world turned its back on him.

They want to know too much; and when she politely concludes the debriefing session that comes after, her co-pilot's jacket is the first thing she takes, from his room in the Shatterdome. She anticipates without conscious contemplation, where Raleigh's thought process is as familiar to her as her own and she knows what he needs. She comes into the room where she knows he will be (he waits for her often and she doesn't ask why), and she exhales quietly when she sees him. They've spent far too much time with the press and far too little for themselves, to heal, to move on, and to bury their dead.

She drapes the jacket over his shoulders, and takes the seat beside him quietly, waiting for him to wake. ]


FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: Linking this.

INTENT: Curiosity, mostly, I want to see how far I can take her, and I'm very keen to develop her further, because she's a work in progress, and not a closed chapter.