MV equivalent of @pattern from Ace

[djDarkX]

So, someone asked this earlier, but the answer was not exactly satisfactory.  In Ace, if you needed to do one step in an animation, you would just do a script call in a move route and type in @pattern = 0/1/2/etc. to be able to get the exact step animation you'd want.  Now, I tried @pattern in MV and it gave me the finger.  I tried doing Game_CharacterBase._pattern and Game_Character.pattern and it didn't error out, but it just didn't work.  No animation.  So, for those that have delved deeper into the code base than I can (at this time), any thoughts on this and what the potential solution would be?