Links to Pacific Rim creator Travis Beacham's own posts on drift compatibility and drifting
Drift compatibility is psychological, not genetic
The better you know someone, the more likely you are to be drift compatible
Drift compatibility is potential, not fate
Drift compatibility can be a choice
Friendship is the foundation of drift compatibility
The drift requires trust
Trust is fundamental; also drift compatibility can be determined with anything that tests how well you can anticipate each others' moves
That even includes multiplayer video games
Many cadets wash out during Pons training when secrets come out in the drift and shatter their relationships
A lot of pilots get messed up by flinching over sexual thoughts
Trying to avoid thoughts just makes them worse
Not everything you see in the drift is always real; also the way to deal with thoughts is just let them flow by
Pilots communicate through "headspace"
Illustration of a conversation in headspace
First drifts can be very confusing, because partners don't understand each others' minds very well yet
The drift exposes pilots to each others' raw, unfiltered thoughts
Raleigh knew what Yancy was going to say
The drift doesn't let you read your partner's mind like a database, and you may not necessarily understand what you see. Also when Pentecost says he carries nothing into the drift he means he's calm and stable.
Pentecost gained this calmness through meditation
Trying to block your partner from your mind will make you lose control of the Jaeger
Pilots who fall below 90% sync will be in trouble
General information plus info on RABITs
You can chase your partner's RABIT
Another post confirming you can chase your partner's RABIT
More RABIT info
More general information
Travis Beacham defines ghost drifting
Partners' personalities can rub off on each other
Neural overload doesn't hit you all at once; it accumulates
The time a pilot can go solo varies, and it's a steep curve from fine to dead
More info on solo piloting
Being high in the drift probably makes it harder to avoid chasing the RABIT
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A writer’s guide to the historical method: how historians work with sources
In this post, I provide a brief overview of how historians engage with different types of sources, with a focus on the mindset of a historian. This insight could be valuable for anyone crafting a character whose profession revolves around history research. It may also prove useful for authors conducting research for their book.
Concept of historical source
The concept of historical source evolves over time.
Initially, the focus was mainly on written sources due to their obvious availability. However, as time has progressed, historians now consider a wide range of sources beyond just written records. These include material artifacts, intangible cultural elements, and even virtual data.
While "armchair historians" may rely on existing studies and secondary sources, true professional historians distinguish themselves by delving directly into primary sources. They engage in a nuanced examination of various sources, weaving together diverse perspectives. It's crucial to recognize the distinction between personal recollection or memory and the rigorous discipline of historical inquiry. A historical source provides information, but the truth must be carefully discerned through critical analysis and corroboration.
Here's a concise list of the types of sources historians utilize:
Notarial source
Epistolary source
Accountancy source
Epigraphic source
Chronicle source
Oratory and oral source
Iconographic source
Diary source
Electronic source
Example: a notarial source
These are documents drafted by a notary, a public official entrusted with providing legal certainty to facts and legal transactions. These documents can take various forms, such as deeds, lawsuits, wills, contracts, powers of attorney, inventories, and many others.
Here we are specifically discussing a lawsuit document from 1211 in Italy.
A medieval lawsuit document is highly valuable for understanding various aspects of daily life because in a dispute, one must argue a position. From lawsuits, we also understand how institutions truly operated.
Furthermore, in the Middle Ages, lawsuits mostly relied on witnesses as evidence, so we can access a direct and popular source of certain specific social situations.
Some insight into the methodology of analysis:
Formal examination: historians scrutinize the document's form, verifying its authenticity and integrity. Elements such as structure, writing style, language, signatures, and seals are analyzed. Indeed, a professional historian will rarely conduct research on a source published in a volume but will instead go directly to the archive to study its origin, to avoid transcription errors.
Content analysis: historians proceed to analyze the document's content, extracting useful information for their research. This may include data on individuals, places, events, economic activities, social relations, and much more. It's crucial to compile a list of witnesses in a case and identify them to understand why they speak or why they speak in a certain manner.
Cross-referencing with other sources: information derived from the notarial source is compared with that of other historical sources to obtain a more comprehensive and accurate view of the period under examination.
Documents of the episcopal archive of Ivrea
Let's take the example of a specific legal case, stemming from the documents of the episcopal archive of Ivrea. It's a case from 1211 in Italy involving the bishop of Ivrea in dispute with Bongiovanni d'Albiano over feudal obligations.
This case is significant because it allows us to understand how feudal society operated and how social status was determined.
The bishop's representative argues that Bongiovanni should provide a horse as a feudal service. Bongiovanni denies it, claiming to be a noble, not a serf. Both parties present witnesses and documents supporting their arguments.
Witnesses are asked whether the serf obligations had been endured for a long time. This helps us understand that in a society where "law" was based on customs, it was important to ascertain if an obligation had been endured for a long time because at that point it would no longer be contestable (it would have become customary).
The responses are confused and inconsistent, so witnesses are directly asked whether they consider Bongiovanni a serf or a noble. This is because (and it allows us to understand that) the division into "social classes" wasn't definable within concrete boundaries; it was more about the appearance of one's way of life. If a serf refused to fulfill his serf duties, he would easily be considered a noble by bystanders because he lived like one.
Ultimately, the analysis of the case leads us to determine that medieval justice wasn't conceived with the logic of our modern system, but was measured in oaths and witnesses as evidentiary means. And emerging from it with honor was much more important than fairly distributing blame and reason.
Other sources
Accounting source: it is very useful for measuring consumption and its variety in a particular historical period. To reconstruct past consumption, inventories post mortem are often used, which are lists of goods found in households, described and valued by notaries to facilitate distribution among heirs.
Alternatively, the recording of daily expenses, which in modern times were often very detailed, can lead to insights into complex family histories and their internal inequalities - for example, more money might be spent on one child than another corresponding to their planned future role in society.
Oral source: in relation to the political sphere, it is useful for representing that part of politics composed of direct sources, that is, where politics speaks of itself and how it presents itself to the public, such as a politician's public speech.
However, working with this type of source, a historian cannot avoid hermeneutic work, as through the speech, the politician aims to present himself to a certain audience, justify, persuade, construct his own image, and achieve results. This is the hidden agenda that also exists in the most obvious part of politics.
Iconographic source: it concerns art or other forms of "artistic" expression, such as in the case of an advertising poster. They become historical sources when it is the historian who, through analysis, confers upon them the status of a historical source. Essentially, the historian uses the source to understand aspects of the past otherwise inaccessible.
The first step in this direction is to recontextualize the source, returning it to its original context. Examining the history of the source represents the fundamental first step for historical analysis.
Diary source: diaries are a "subjective" source, a representation of one's self, often influenced by the thoughts of "others," who can be close or distant readers, interested or distracted, visible or invisible, whom every diary author can imagine and hope to see, sooner or later, reflected on the pages of their writing.
Furthermore, they are often subject to subsequent manipulations, and therefore should be treated by historians only in their critical edition; all other versions, whether old or new, foreign or not, are useful only as evidence of the changes and manipulations undergone over time by the original manuscripts.
Electronic source: historians use Wikipedia even if they often don't admit it out loud.
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