Giant Robots and the People Inside Them

Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to watch much TV.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t, just that I wasn’t allowed to.

When I got home from school and my mother wasn’t home, I would stand in just the right spot in front of their bedroom TV so I could see out the window. Then I would turn the TV on and remember which channel it was left on, as well as the channel that would come up when you hit “last channel” on the remote (remember that?). If my mom drove up, I would hit the numbers for the last two channels and run to my room, leaving no evidence of my watching. Then I would change the channel to Cartoon Network so I could catch Toonami. Dragonball Z was on a lot, but sometimes I’d be able to watch enough, at the right time, to catch other shows. Shows like Evangelion, Robotech, Voltron, and Gundam Wing.

Shows about giant robots.

Dazzling animated fights, energy beams, colossal blades… I was enthralled. The early exposure to these was likely an integral part of my writing foundation, just as much as my father reading Lord of the Rings to me was. I can’t help but think about those fights when I’m writing action in my own work.

Then I moved away to boarding school. On a coed campus environment, Toonami afternoons were replaced by hooking up and movies like Fight Club, Mallrats, and Se7en. I navigated my way through adolescence and entered adulthood, and my interests shifted, of course. Action and explosions no longer held the same appeal. Instead, I gravitated toward the exploration of the human. It became about personal struggles, complex emotions. Character-driven narratives replaced power beams and energy blades.

But it didn’t have to be that way. Often the pendulum swings too far. Now I’m older, I can have my cake and eat it, too, because looking back, those shows weren’t about giant robots, not really. They were about the characters inside those robots. Within the confines of their mechanical exoskeletons, those characters grappled with inner demons and faced the consequences of their choices. It was those internal battles that made the shows compelling (though I still think the energy swords helped).

In 2022, Neon Hemlock had an open submissions call for queer mech stories, and the memories of all those shows came flooding back. I hadn’t even considered writing mech stories until that moment but jumped at the opportunity. And right away, I knew I wanted to write about the people inside the mechs. The story I wrote, “If Black Was Green and Fluorescent,” is about two old war veterans—retired lovers, who are called back into war. There’s no giant battle. The adversary is the strain in their relationship.

But there is an energy sword.

The anthology is coming out in July 2023 (available for preorder here). I hope you’ll check it out.