#mutavore

[chernobog13]

Striker Eureka battles Mutavore in Sydney, Austrailia.

[missanthropicprinciple]

All of my Pacific Rim (2013) NECA figurines. (Not pictured, slightly damaged Lady Danger, ironically the Anchorage Attack edition.)

[junoniadoesart]

Reblog for larger sample size yadda yadda

[thedoodlefox]

My friend said I should post some of my Pacific Rim sketchbook doodles and I’d like to post more art here anyway so! Enjoy!

[coeurdalene]

looking for some light

masterlist | ao3

summary: he tells raleigh, “i want to come back from this mission, ‘cause i quite like my life.” he means, there’s still so much i want to do, so much i have to do. (aka chuck wants to make it through this goddamn war so he can finally live a normal life, even if he doesn’t really know what that means.)

pairing: chuck hansen x reader

warning(s): character death (sorry), swearing, mentions of canon-typical violence.

word count: 3.86k

a/n: i meant to have this finished by the ten year anniversary of the movie but uh… anyways, here it is now! this is my love letter to chuck hansen and also a projection of my want for a beach house.

The universe gifts Chuck an unwanted Christmas present in the form of a memorandum. He swears under his breath when you trudge into the Mission Control Center that morning with a dejected frown on your face and shove the crisp paper into his hands. His eyes fall on the letterhead, embossed with the familiar spread-winged eagle, and he already knows what it contains. He’d been expecting it for months. He resists the urge to scream, to crumple the paper into a ball and hurl it at the trash bin with every ounce of remaining strength in his body. He doesn’t envy you when you announce the bad news to everyone else, fulfilling your final duty as Sydney’s Chief LOCCENT Officer.

Days later, not even twenty-four hours after the Shatterdome decommissioning and right at the beginning of the new year, the universe offers him—and the rest of Sydney—another unwanted gift.

Mutavore is an ugly thing. Nearly ninety meters tall and weighing over two thousand tons, it’s hunched over as if struggling to support its own weight, blade-like plates protruding from its head and back.

“I don’t care how many eyes it has,” he says after you read out its classification and measurements, “I’m gonna kick its ass.”

(Six. It has six eyes. Just because he doesn’t care doesn’t mean he won’t pay attention.)

The category four Kaiju plows through the coastal wall like a knife cutting through warm butter and tramps into Sydney Harbour, stopping only to raise its head and let out a guttural screech, as if barging through a metal barrier hadn't been enough to announce its presence. He wonders how many millions of dollars have now been reduced to rubble at the bottom of the bay and how many weeks were spent welding together beams that took only a few seconds to destroy. 

Then, its beady eyes—all six of them—focus on Striker Eureka and her brass knuckles glinting in the sun. It screeches again before charging headfirst into Striker’s swinging fist.

Mutavore dies as quickly as it breached the wall, lying motionless in the bay, blood-soaked missiles lodged in its chest and Kaiju blue staining the water. 

“That’s Striker Eureka’s tenth kill to date. It’s a new record,” he boasts to the reporter in the aftermath. He ignores the questions about the decommissioning and brushes off the look his father gives him. Don’t get too cocky, he looks like he wants to say.

When they return to the Shatterdome, the J-Tech crew cleans Striker, polishing her knuckles and wiping Kaiju remains from the Conn-Pod. Chuck takes a long hot shower. Then, the move to Hong Kong begins.

The Anchorage Shatterdome—the cold and stalwart Icebox—had been the first to close. He remembers how you had stared blankly at the official PPDC statement for hours while he watched the newscaster on the television read it out loud. The Marshal had been on the broadcast, too, brought on for further questioning. When the anchor asked about the future of the Jaeger Program, he had assured her that, as long as the Kaiju kept coming, the Jaegers would keep fighting. Chuck had laughed dryly at that. The dwindling funding from the U.N. would say otherwise and whispers of better opportunities at the wall hung in the air, getting louder with every passing day.

The closure of the Icebox set off a string of shutdowns: Lima and Tokyo later that month, Panama City in November, Vladivostok and Los Angeles a few weeks after. The clock was ticking and it was only a matter of time before that damned memorandum arrived in Sydney, his fate dictated by its contents.

His beloved Sydney Shatterdome closes at the turn of the year, leaving behind its only remaining sibling in Hong Kong. What had once been a robust network of PPDC hubs was now reduced to one. 

And the clock continues to tick. 

“We don’t need a stupid wall,” Chuck declares on the flight to Hong Kong, glaring at the news broadcast replaying footage of the Sydney attack. “We need better pilots.”

He’d expressed the same sentiment to the reporter who interviewed him after Mutavore’s attack, too, blaming the fall of the Jaeger program on the mediocrity of those involved. He isn’t sure if it’s that simple—you had explained something to him about politics and funding and morale, government nonsense he didn’t understand—but he sure as hell knows that the Jaegers would be winning if pilots stopped letting the Kaiju kick their asses.

“Have some respect,” his father chides. “Every pilot has fought tooth and nail to protect the people they love.”

And perhaps that’s the truth—it sure is for him. His days consist of sore muscles from training, never getting enough sleep, and always anticipating another fight. He does it for his father, who has been a soldier for as long as he can remember. For his mother, whose untimely death lingers in the back of his mind every time he sets his eyes on a Kaiju. For you, who frequently pulls all-nighters and agonizes over details to make sure the Shatterdome stays running. And for Max, of course. (Silly little dog probably has no idea what a Kaiju is.)

So, yeah, perhaps it is the truth. But it doesn’t change the fact that they only have eight months left of funding, or that the U.N. thinks a wall will fare better than a Jaeger.

“We won’t be getting more pilots. All we can do is work with what we still have,” you chime in, pulling Chuck out of his thoughts. “But, on the bright side, our remaining pilots are some of the best in program history.”

“Including me?” he smirks. You laugh, cheerful and bright, punching his arm lightly. Max shifts in his sleep at the sudden noise. His father gives him that look again. Don’t get too cocky.

He spends the rest of the flight listening to you read briefing notes on “Operation Pitfall,” the Marshal’s shiny new plan to end the war by detonating a bomb at the throat of the Breach. Somehow, the PPDC had procured a thermonuclear warhead from the Russians, entrusting Striker Eureka to carry it while the remaining Jaegers played defense. 

Chuck is cynical about this plan. They had already tried (and failed) to drop things into the Breach. A bomb would only bounce back at them and kill anything in range.

He quips sarcastically if the Marshal had thought of that. You respond only by flipping through the file again for an explanation. He knows you won’t find one. 

As he steps off the plane and onto the landing pad, he’s met with a grinning Tendo Choi shouting over the patter of heavy rain, “Welcome to Hong Kong!”

The man, wearing a grey suit jacket too wide around the shoulders shakes their hands in greeting before ushering them out of the rain and into the Shatterdome. Chuck sidesteps some J-Techs as he enters, surveying his surroundings.

He had been much younger the last time he visited Hong Kong and much less invested in all the inner workings of the PPDC. He remembers mechanics and pilots shouting and running about, dirt and scuff marks on the floor, and his father reminding him to keep a tight grip on Max’s leash. It had felt unfamiliar then, but he realizes now that it isn’t too different from Sydney. Same high ceiling, same metal catwalks, and almost the same arsenal of Jaegers towering over him. It’s a little older, a little grittier, and a little more worn down, but no longer foreign. 

He spots Cherno Alpha in one of the bays, its stalwart form hunkering and heavy. The Kaidanovskys stand at its feet, engaged in conversation. Crimson Typhoon stands opposite it, brilliant red and regal. J-Techs gather around her three arms, inspecting and cleaning the rotating saw blades. 

“Striker arrived a few minutes before you did,” Tendo gestures to the shiny silver Jaeger standing in the far bay, metal glinting under the bright lights of the hangar. “The crew is getting her settled in.”

Then, Chuck’s eyes fall on the fourth and final Jaeger. That last he had heard of Gipsy Danger was that she had been decommissioned, damaged beyond repair from a mission gone wrong. But here she stands—untarnished metallic blue, left arm intact, and definitely not lying forgotten in Oblivion Bay.

“What’s that old rustbucket doing here?” he leers, very aware that there isn’t a single speck of rust on her.

“She looks brand new,” you remark. 

“She is, sorta,” Tendo replies, “We’ve been fixing her up: a new fluid synapse system, new engine blocks, and a new hull. She’ll be holding the defensive perimeter for you in Operation Pitfall, along with Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon.”

“Does she have pilots?” you inquire.

“Not yet,” Tendo grins. “But she will.”

Chuck hopes that these pilots won’t be incompetent idiots, whoever they might be.

The peaceful moments are rare, but cherished and so welcomed. In these instances, he lets his guard down, breathes deeply, and allows himself to think of anything other than training or fighting.

One of his favorites is somewhere in between Striker’s fourth and fifth kills: a lazy afternoon in bed with your back against the headboard and his head in your lap, sunlight streaming in through the windows with your fingers carding lightly through his hair.

“After this war is over,” he declares, imagining a life without the chaos and destruction that comes with being a Jaeger pilot, “we’ll buy a nice house in the suburbs where we’ll live blissfully for the rest of our lives.”

“The suburbs are nice,” you contend, “but how about a beach house on the Gold Coast? Or Port Douglas?”

He chuckles at that, picturing what living by the ocean without the fear of a Kaiju attack would be like. He would spend his mornings engulfed in the soothing murmur of the sea, gazing out at the unbroken horizon. His afternoons basking in the warmth of the sun, feet buried in the soft sand. His evenings surrounded by music and your melodious laughter, trying not to step on your toes while you lead him through a dance in your living room.

Quiet, he thinks. Serene. The only unrest would be the waves at high tide or the gulls swooping down to steal his food.

“Wherever you want, as long as it’s you and me. And Max. Right, bud?” he grins at the bulldog lying at the foot of the bed. Max lets out a little grunt. Chuck takes that as a sign of agreement.

“Sounds lovely,” you reply, your hand moving to rest against his cheek. He turns his head to kiss your palm, heart soaring at the way you smile softly down at him.

All Chuck knows about Raleigh Becket is that he quit the Jaeger Program. That information alone is enough for him to dislike the guy. He doesn’t trust some washed-up pilot to run defense for him while he carries a 2400-pound bomb on the back of his Jaeger. Doesn’t care that his father fought alongside the guy in Manila or that he single-handedly piloted his Jaeger back to shore. Doesn’t bother to hold back a grimace when Raleigh tells him that he’d been working on the wall for the past five years.

“If you slow me down, I'm gonna drop you like a sack of Kaiju shit,” he hisses at him in the mess hall. He ignores the way his father watches him with disapproval as he stalks away.

His bad mood turns worse when Mako Mori is named Raleigh’s copilot. 

He has known Mako for years. They had grown up in Shatterdomes together, met a few times when the Marshal had brought her to Sydney, and briefly bonded over their love of dogs. He’s close enough to her to know that she can fight well and that she has one of the best simulator scores he’s ever seen. (Better than his, although he’d never admit that.) But, she has no experience in a Jaeger and no understanding of what a drift is actually like, which, in his eyes, makes her no better than Raleigh. He isn’t surprised when they’re both out of alignment during their test run, your concerned tone alerting the rest of LOCCENT of the deviation, or when Mako begins chasing the RABIT, raising apprehensive murmurs from the crowd of onlookers. Or when it ends in Tendo pulling the plug on Gipsy’s power.

“Worse mistakes have happened,” Tendo sighs as Gipsy’s plasma cannon goes offline. Chuck scowls. There is no space for even a single mistake in the plan to attack the Breach, especially amateur ones like chasing RABITs. He knows that the Marshal understands this, too.

Later, as he paces in the Marshal’s office, still brimming with anger from Raleigh and Mako’s failure of a test run, he snaps, “He's a has-been. She’s a rookie. I don’t want them protecting my bomb run. sir.”

His father stands across the room, arms crossed and mouth set tightly in a frown. In the corner, you and Tendo are huddled over a tablet, discussing the drift results in hushed voices. The Marshal warns him to watch his tone. Chuck rolls his eyes in response and thinks to himself, He knows I’m right.

He finds Raleigh and Mako standing silently in the hall outside after his father kicks him out of the room. He rounds on the former, seething and jabbing an accusatory finger into his chest, “I want to come back from this mission, ‘cause I quite like my life.”

He turns to Mako, sneering and spitting out some distasteful things, ignoring the feeling that he’ll regret it later. 

When Raleigh’s fist makes contact with his jaw, Chuck sees red.

On bad nights, he wakes up in a cold sweat, plagued by nightmares of being painfully ripped to shreds by sharp claws and teeth. Some nights he wakes up angry, frustrated with himself after overanalyzing his fights. Other nights, he relives the moment when he found out about his mother’s death, shaking with body-wracking sobs and shuddering with each intake of breath. But you hold him through it, your soothing hands on his back and comforting words in his ear. He focuses on your voice, steady and calm, and syncs his breathing with yours.

“You’re okay,” you murmur. “They’re just nightmares. You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” he repeats.

On bad nights, you confess your fear that the war will never end, or that you’ll burn out before it does. Some nights, you feel that you’re not doing enough, that you need to get back to work even though it’s past midnight. Other nights, you worry that you’ll spend your entire life fighting, that you’ll never be able to rest. But he holds you through it, his calloused fingers on your cheeks wiping away your tears. You focus on his touch, firm and resolute, and rest your hands on top of his.

“It’s okay,” you contend, voice shaky but certain. “I have you. This is enough.”

“This is enough,” he repeats.

Yet, he can’t help but want more. He wants the beach house instead of the cold metal walls of the Shatterdome. Wants to wake up to the sun, your smile, and Max’s whining for food instead of doomsday alarms and Kaiju attacks. Wants you to be able to sleep in for once. Wants to spend his days sunbathing and learning to surf instead of training in combat drills and preparing for another attack. Wants to give you some peace, and to find some of his own.

He tells Raleigh, “I want to come back from this mission, ‘cause I quite like my life.”

He means, There’s still so much I want to do, so much I have to do.

Chuck has only felt true fear a few times in his life. Standing on top of his disabled Jaeger with only a flare gun in his hands is one of them. In the moment, he tells himself that he isn’t afraid, that a double event isn’t any different from any other Kaiju attack, and that Striker will come back online in just a second. The adrenaline coursing through his veins overpowers the feeling of impending doom anyway. But, later, as he reflects on the feeling of relief that had washed over when Gipsy’s fog lights enveloped him, he admits that he had been scared shitless. And, he admits (only to himself) that he’s thankful for Raleigh and Mako, even if they’re has-beens or rookies.

He holds you closer that night and knows that you’ve already picked up on all the details of his uneasy expression. Still, he musters up the strength to confess aloud, “I thought we were gonna die.”

You’re silent, responding only by rubbing your hand across his back and hugging him a little tighter. The heavy weight of his lingering fear sits in his chest as he continues, “Dad had injured his arm, our comms were out, Cherno and Crimson were gone, and there was a fucking Kaiju ready to swallow us whole. Shooting that flare at it made it even more pissed off.”

“Not your best idea,” you remark playfully. “You’d think all that training to prepare you for situations like this would help you keep calm and think of something rational to do.”

“It was Dad’s idea, not mine,” he shrugs.

“Well, I’m glad the flare managed to keep it occupied long enough for Gipsy to get there,” you reply, a soft smile tugging at the corners of your lips. “And I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Me, too,” he sighs, the weight in his chest lightening slightly.

When he drifts off to sleep, he dreams of the war ending and a house overlooking the shore.

If, a year ago, you had told Chuck that he would be piloting a Jaeger with the Marshal Stacker Pentecost, he would have laughed in your face and asked why the Marshal wasn’t off doing better things (like convincing world leaders to keep funding the Jaeger Program or figuring out ways to increase pilot recruitment). And, if you had told him that he would hear the phrase “there’s a third signature emerging from the Breach,” he would have rolled his eyes and declared the situation impossible. (“I’d still kick its ass, though,” he would have probably said.)

Yet, here he is, strapped into Striker with the Marshal as his copilot, only three hundred meters from the Breach, watching a category five Kaiju materialize in front of him. He feels his stomach drop as he lays eyes on Slattern’s angular head and the sharp spike protruding from its chest. When it roars, the water around them ripples, and the ground beneath shakes. He barely has any time to think before the massive beast rears its head and charges, swinging its heavy leathery tail directly at them. 

The hit knocks Striker off her feet and sends her crashing into a nearby hydrothermal vent. He winces and swears, body aching and head beginning to throb as streams of water push and jostle the Jaeger. Slattern prepares to charge again just as Striker regains her footing and he easily falls into a fighting stance along with the Marshal, fists clenched and ready to strike. This time, when it attacks, they’re ready—dealing out swift punches that send the Kaiju reeling.

He isn’t sure how much of it is the Marshal and how much of it is himself, but the exhilaration that rushes through him as one of Striker’s sting blades slices across Slattern’s throat reinvigorates him. The other blade cuts into its arms, blue blood spilling from deep gashes. It screeches, and he expects it to rush at them again, but it swims away, blood trailing eerily in the water.

He takes the moment of respite to breathe, and to survey the damage. The harsh red light of the many, many warning messages flashes across his vision. He fiddles with some controls, watches as the Marshal does the same, and sighs heavily when neither of their attempts fixes anything. He resigns himself to hoping that Striker can hold on a little longer. She had gotten him this far, surely she could see him through to the end of this war—and to the beginning of his life at peace.

But–

“The attack jammed the bomb release,” he notices. “We’ll have to manually override–”

A yell from LOCCENT cuts him off. Chuck’s stomach drops even further when he hears someone say, “Striker, you have two Kaiju converging on you fast!”

He curses loudly and immediately knows, There’s no time for a manual override.

The Marshal is on the intercom before Chuck can even begin to formulate a plan, shouting to Raleigh and Mako. 

“You know exactly what you have to do,” he declares. “Gipsy is nuclear, take her to the Breach.”

“What can we do, sir?” Chuck asks, bracing for the hit.

“We can clear a path,” the Marshal answers firmly, a slight smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, “for the lady.”

Even without the drift connecting their thoughts, Chuck understands.

“Well, my father always said, ‘If you have a shot, you take it,’” he remarks, knowing that, on the other end, his father is listening with pride. Chuck can admit that he was an arrogant dickhead with no respect for any of the pilots around him and that he never bothered to hide his resentment for his old man, never gave him a reason to like the man his son had become. Yet, he knows—and has always known—that his father is proud of him. (He is proud of his father, too, for what it’s worth.)

In the final moments, his thoughts drift to you: swathed in blankets and gathered in his arms on cold winter nights, perched on the seat of a stationary bike and reading reports while keeping him company in the gym, wrapped in his brown leather jacket with Max’s leash in your hand while accompanying him for walks around the Shatterdome. He recalls your bright laughter when he’d crack stupid jokes, your serious voice you’d use only over the intercom, and the mischievous glint in your eyes when you’d pretend you hadn’t given Max extra treats.

“I love you,” he had said before entering the Conn-Pod, so quietly that only you could hear him, holding you tightly and kissing away your concerned frown. The warmth of your hands against his cheeks had lingered as he had stepped away.

“I love you,” he says now, loud enough for you to hear him over all the noise, swallowing the lump in his throat and blinking away the tears threatening to spill from the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry we’ll never get that beach house.”

“But, I had you,” he says. “It was enough.”

When the bomb detonates, he’s surrounded by blinding light and a deafening boom. And, finally, peace.

In his dreams, he can’t tell where he is, only that Max is sitting at his feet, his father is somewhere in the distance, and you’re next to him with your hand in his, fingers intertwined.

[driftwithme]

According to the pacrim wiki, Coyote Tango was the first jaeger the program lost. By that time, Pentecost and Tamsin were not piloting anymore. It was June, 2016.

The order of pre-knifehead fallen jaegers is:

- Coyote Tango. Destroyed in combat against Itak. On its second set of pilots. June, 2016.

- Victory Alpha. Destroyed in combat against Raganarok. The pilots survived. July, 2016.

- Tacit Ronin. Abandoned because its pilots died of neural overload. July, 2016.

- Lucky Seven. Abandoned because one of its pilots was decommissioned. 2019.

Following this pic from the wiki:

We know that the first jaeger was launched in 2015 (Brawler Yukon) and the last in 2019 (Striker Eureka).

The golden age of the jeager program was from 2017 to 2019, three years of gaining more than they were losing. The peak was in 2019, with 20 active jaegers. The bottom was in 2025, with no jaegers left.

2024 was the year with more deaths, with 8 j-pilots going KIA. Then 2025, with 7 deaths between the Double Event that killed both Cherno and Crimson, and Operation Pitfall, who claimed Pentecost and Chuck.

Between 2019 and 2023 there were 9 KIAs.

Which means Yancy was the first jaeger pilot to die on combat. It makes sense, given the reaction of Penecost to hearing that they had lost Gipsy's signal (and Yancy was dead).

It marks:

- 2019-20: 1 lost jaeger, 1 pilot KIA.

The list of fallen jaegers Post-Knifehead:

- 2020-21: 2 lost jaeger, 1 pilot KIA.

- 2021-22: 3 lost jaegers, 2 pilots KIA.

- 2022-23: 2 lost jaegers, 3 pilots KIA.

- 2023-24: 8 lost jaegers, 2 pilots KIA.

- 2024-25: 0 lost jaegers, 8 pilots KIA.

- 2025: 4 lost jaegers, 7 pilots KIA.

Let's compare all this info with the following Kaiju War Timeline from the wiki:

A) 2013-2014: The Feral Burst. There were no jaegers yet to defend humanity against the 3 kaijus that invaded the world.

B) 2015-2019: The Long Game, Part I. There were 24 jargers up around this period, with a total of 13 kaijus making contact.

Special mention to the Beckets, who got an impressive mark of 5 kills during those years. It means they helped killed more than a 1/3 of those bastards during the golden era of the jaeger program. For what I see, Raleigh is the only pilot who had ever abandoned the jaeger program because he wanted to, not because he was hurt or kicked out.

C) 2020-2023: The Long Game, Part II. The amount of kaijus who invaded in those three years equals the amount of kaijus who made contact within the first 6 years of the war. It means the precursos sent as many kaijus in half the time. Humanity went into this phase with 19 jaegers. By the end they had 4.

2024 reports 13 kaiju attacks. It makes sense that they lost 8 jaegers and 10 pilots more or less in that year. With 12 jaegers active, it is more than a 1vs1 situation. Something tells me that most of Striker Eureka's kills were during this phase.

Special mention to the Hansen, btw. *During Chuck active years, he participated in almost third of the kaiju killings that happened then. I don't know Lucky Seven's score in this race, but *Herc's win amount to a 1/4 of the whole kaiju fights during his active time.

*The count stops at Mutavore. It does not include the Double Event or Pitfall.

If we include Post-Mutavore but not their participation/assistant at killing Leatherback:

- Chuck: 11 kills, 35 kaiju appereances during his active career (almost a 1/3).

- Herc: 12 kills, 44 kaiju appearances (not counting 2016 and adding at least 2 kills of the Lucky Seven era; around a 1/4).

Yet again, if by statistics alone, Mako is the most winning jaeger pilot of the movie. In her active years there had been 5 kaijus and she has helped kill 4. It's worth mentioning that her debut was on a double event followed by a triple event, with the only Category-5 ever saw. Impressive, to say the least.

On the other hand, Raleigh has helped kill or killed himself almost half of the kaijus that had appear on his active years.

Here: (ratio is 19-20 kaijus, 9 kills).

- 2025: 6 kaijus, 4 kills.

- 2015-2019: 13-14 kaijus, 5 kills.

The Hansens record is impressive just in the sheer size of their killing count, which is still not complete given I don't have the info on Lucky Seven. Meanwhile, Raleigh and Mako are impressive for the efficiency record.

Of the 51 kaijus that invaded the Earth, Gipsy and Striker combine to 20 kills. That means 2/5 of the total.

The last three j-pilots hold the best or most insane records of the program. Herc with the most wins, Mako with the best efficiency and Raleigh fucking Becket who had solo piloted twice and explode a jaeger in another world.

[monsterblogging]

So I rewatched Pacific Rim: The Black to refresh myself on how bad it was, and once again I am just kind of in awe at how god-awful it is.

The Black very literally takes the magic out of Pacific Rim. You know how "drift hangover" refers to a persistent psychic connection between pilot and jaeger? Welp, here "drift hangover" is used to refer to a headache after drifting. Ghost drifting (you know, when pilots get psychic with each other) is turned into ghost piloting, which is when a pilot drifts with the memory of another pilot. Like, it's understandable if most people don't clock the mysticism and animism underpinning Guillermo del Toro's vision of Pacific Rim, but this is a very deliberate effort to erase where humans can just have funky psychic shit happen to them sometimes.

The Black doesn't really seem to understand how drifting works. Two characters have a heated argument without falling out of alignment. Another character functionally has a mind-reading ray. There's no real comprehension of what drift compatibility is and how it works.

The child soldiers are younger than ever. Taylor looks like he was maybe twelve at most when he was taking his pilot's test. Like. Actual twelve year olds are getting certified as jaeger pilots in this world. And this is framed as a good and desirable thing. Literally what the fuck.

The Black calls Horizon Brave "Horizon Bravo," and claims it's a Mark IV jaeger. If you have literally any access to any information about Horizon Brave at all, you know it's a Mark I jaeger.

The jaeger piloted by the children (Atlas Destroyer) is claimed to be a Mark III jaeger, yet uses the type of fuel cells introduced in Uprising. Like it was a whole fucking plot point that Lady Danger was a nuclear jaeger. Literally all they would've had to do was make Atlas Destroyer a Mark VI. It would have been fine.

Atlas Destroyer has a bunch of features Mark IIIs definitely didn't have. Remember how Raleigh and Yancy needed a crew to help them into their drivesuits? Atlas Destroyer just automatically tosses 'em on itself. Remember how Lady Danger's AI mostly just gave status updates? Atlas Destroyer's AI holds entire conversations. Again, you could've just made it a Mark VI, show.

And speaking of Atlas Destroyer's AI, for some goddamn reason the PPDC gave her an emotion chip. Because it's not hard enough to be a pilot already, now your jaeger gets to have anxiety.

The Black claims that Trespasser "smashed the Australian wall in the first attack." This is wrong on every conceivable level. Trespasser attacked San Francisco in the first attack, in 2013. The first kaiju to attack Sydney was Scissure, in 2014. The kaiju what smashed the wall was Mutavore, in 2025.

There is one queer-coded character. He is murdered in gory fashion.

There is one Indigenous-coded character who studies kaiju and their biology. He is depicted being into New Agey woo and wrongly believing that the kaiju he raised can love him. He dies when one of his kaiju eats him.

A major antagonist is depicted as a ruthless man who will kidnap, mindwipe, exploit, and even murder children. Then the show attempts to give him a redemption arc and we're supposed to actually care.

The PPDC refused to let the children's father retrieve them and the other survivors left behind in "the Black." (Read: Australia after the PPDC literally bombed it from space after a bunch of breaches started opening all over it.) Yeah, the PPDC can bomb an entire continent from space, but they can't spare a goddamn rescue helicopter.

Despite all of this and the aforementioned child soldiers, the PPDC is framed as the good guys and the only respite from the horrors of the Black; getting to the Sydney shatterdome is an unambiguously happy ending.

Early on we're lead to think that the PPDC might be getting its hands dirty with kaiju genetic experiments/bioweapon development. Later on we learn that it's the local kaiju cultists doing it. Now come on, which suspect actually makes sense here; the PPDC who can afford to build a killsat, or the kaiju cultists who apparently can't even afford a sterile room to perform a blood transfusion in?

The kaiju cultists are pretty obviously inspired by far right conspiracy theories about evil cults, rather than the actual behaviors of actual cults.

The kaiju sisters recruit by kidnapping women, turning them into kaiju hybrids, and forcing them into their hivemind. For some reason they kill all men. Despite this they are really obsessed with the idea that the half-kaiju smol, who for all appearances is a boy, is going to be their kaiju messiah. It really doesn't make sense, but then again, what can we expect from a slapdash job of far right conspiracy theories?

By the way, this is the PPDC banner literally hanging from the PPDC training center, in the show that is very firm in insisting that THE PPDC IS THE GOOD GUYS WHO PROTECT YOU:

[kaijuposting]

Pacific Rim kaiju biology - what do we know about it?

So I figured I'd do a writeup on stuff on how the biology of kaiju has been depicted in the Pacific Rim franchise. Once again, Pacific Rim continuity is messy, and its creators weren't always on the same page with things, so you will see some conflicting information.

As we most of us know, the first Pacific Rim film established that kaiju are alien beings with glowing blue blood full of ammonia and other toxins, and it established that they're all assembled from cloned biomass in what's essentially a giant monster factory. One of them, somehow, is pregnant. It established that they're controlled by mysterious alien beings via hivemind, and it also showed one of them (Scunner) communicating with other kaiju via vocalization, implying that the kaiju aren't completely reliant on the hivemind.

Aside from that, however, it's pretty vague. So what else is there?

The book Man, Machines, & Monsters gives us two quotes on kaiju, one from Guillermo del Toro and one from Travis Beacham. Beacham was quoted as saying, "They're a Darwinian army. They're grown in some alternate universe and pitted against one another, and the strongest mutations survive." This vision of kaiju originates from earlier versions of the story (you can find it in the draft script).

According to the book, Del Toro decreed three broad groups for Kaiju: crustaceans, lizards, and insects. Nothing furry. No tentacles, nothing red. Since they're newly manufactured weapons, no damage or deformities, and since Kaiju are bred to destroy, del Toro told the designers, "every element of design should be used as a weapon. If we create a Kaiju wtih three or four tails, I want to see it use them. If the Kaiju has a mouth on the end of the tail, then I'm going to use it to fight the robot with both ends."

By 2013, Beacham was blogging about kaiju as they actually appeared in the film, essentially describing them as 3D printed. According to Beacham, Otachi was created pregnant.

He also basically said that kaiju had completely alien biochemistry, that they would taste like "hakarl and cleaning chemicals," and that they'd have very little in them that you could actually metabolize. He also said that what Newt referred to as DNA wasn't actually DNA as we know it, and that it would be extremely difficult for us to cloned them because "their molecular configuration is just so radically different from anything we know of." Beacham also communicated that he didn't think our concept of sexes and genders would apply to alien biology, so it wouldn't necessarily be safe to assume that Otachi's pregnancy plus all of the kaiju being clones made them all female in any sense. (And yes, he distinguished between sex and gender.)

In a 2012 interview, Guillermo del Toro said that kaiju were silicon-based lifeforms. Although this never comes up in the movie, it also appears in the novelization by Alex Irvine.

Irvine's novelization also claims that their silicon-based DNA allows them to have genetic memory, which in my opinion is a superfluous worldbuilding detail when the existence hivemind adequately explains where the kaiju are getting their instructions. The novelization also presents genetic memory as the reason Newt thinks drifting with a piece of kaiju brain is going to help him learn about the kaiju. Again, it's a strange detail to add in light of the fact that Newt was drifting with a chunk of brain. (Mutavore's brain, according to Beacham, BTW.) Furthermore, it also suggests that the whole subplot with Hannibal Chau and baby Otachi were completely unnecessary, since presumably Newt should've been able to drift with any chunk of kaiju flesh.

The novel also claims that kaiju brains have a "bath of silicate transmission medium." Supposedly, it "carried neuronic signals inside the brain, just like lipid plasmas did in human neurons." I'm guessing the logic here is that because silicon is used in computer circuits, they can also be used in actual brains. But how this is supposed to work when it's in a "bath" form and therefore seems to have no means of actually directing electrical impulses is beyond me. Newt in the novel also describes kaiju as "silicate-based organic automata," which suggests that the kaiju are nothing more than organic robots, which... uh... suggesting that a biological creature is fundamentally nothing more than a robot sure is uh... a choice. A few paragraphs later Newt also has the impression that the kaiju are afraid of the Precursors, which suggests that they're enslaved against their wills, but this novel is, unfortunately, too hateful to think about the implications of that. In the novel, Newt speculates that the dinosaurs were a "cruder" form of kaiju, which... if you know anything at all about dinosaurs is difficult to imagine as true. He also speculates that that the Precursors "did a carbon-to-silicon upgrade," which would allegedly give the kaiju strength to carry extra mass and give it better brain function that allows it to move around better, which is just... not how this works at all. Newt also thinks that being silicon-based allows the kaiju to "carry more information at a genetic level," which is... baseless, to say the least.

The novel is also really contradictory on the alleged benefits of silicon; early on it says:

The Jaeger Project created a way for two human beings to merge their brains into a single organic supercomputer more powerful than anything you could make out of silicon.

So yeah. It's... it's a mess where all the silicon stuff is concerned, to put it lightly.

Before I move on, I just want to mention that the concept of silicon-based life was a popular idea for a hot minute due to silicon's similarity to carbon. But in reality, silicon-based life is extremely unlikely for a number of reasons; EG, silicon doesn't lend itself to metabolic processes. Basically... the whole thing is quite literally dead in the water. Literally all of the novelization's assertions that silicon is some kind of superior material to carbon are nonsense.

While the novelization asserts that kaiju are cloned, it seems to have a somewhat different idea of how this plays out than the movie does, as at one point it claims they're "assembled in great vats," which doesn't really sound like the "printing" process shown in the film. It also seems to have some of its wires crossed with Beacham's earlier ideas, as it also describes them bursting out of sacs and crawling out of a spawning pool. (One must wonder how many internal inconsistencies were in the notes and other documents sent to Alex Irvine.)

The novelization also brings up the kaiju having alien senses; when Newt experiences a "kaiju flashback," he sees colors "fall out of order" and experiences "a chaos of odors and information absorbed through its skin."

Beacham's own statements on his blog also back up the idea that kaiju might have some pretty weird senses - in response to someone asking about Otachi's tongue, he responds that it's a sensory organ - but who can really say what "taste" even means to an alien?

The novel, film, and the 2012 interview with del Toro all describe the kaiju as "acidic" and also claim their biology is full of ammonia. This does create a bit of a problem; ammonia is a base, not an acid. While it's definitely true that ammonia is corrosive and caustic, it's most definitely not "acidic."

There is also Pacific Rim media that ignores the alien biochemistry stuff to a large degree. The Uprising prequel comic Pacific Rim: Aftermath has a plot involving cloned kaiju with some of Hannibal Chau's DNA edited in, because mad science is absolutely going to rule the day here. (In this comic, a baby kaiju can actually track Chau down to try and eat him because of their shared DNA! It's extremely silly, and extremely fun.)

In Pacific Rim: The Black, some of the story's antagonists create various hybrid creatures, and even become hybrid creatures themselves. (Unfortunately, it's actually much less cool than it sounds, largely because Pacific Rim: The Black is mostly focused on being as edgy as possible while carrying on the political sentiments of Pacific Rim: Uprising.)

Pacific Rim: The Black also has kaiju living and breeding in Australia. While the first season mentions the Precursors, The Black seems to end up treating the kaiju themselves as the invading aliens. Ultimately, it's not really clear what's supposed to be happening here. (Or at least, it wasn't very clear to me. Maybe I missed something.)

While The Black shows that some kaiju creatures are capable of exercising free will, it also presents others as fully monstrous. For example, while the human/kaiju hybrid character of b0y (yeah, that's the name the poor kid gets saddled with for the whole show) is shown to have the capacity to make his own choices, one episode is extremely firm about the idea that the average kaiju can never be anything more than mindless monster, and that the idea that such a beast could feel anything like love is absurd. Somehow we have an Uprising jaeger/kaiju hybrid with free will (an interesting idea, to be sure!), but the human women mutated into kaiju hybrids against their wills are presented as unable to free themselves from the hivemind.

I think some of these apparent inconsistencies come down to The Black being more interested in being edgy and shocking than anything else, plus its trend toward aligning with conservative political views.

So that's about it; or at least all I know so far; I'm sure there's more out there I haven't come across yet. I might also be forgetting a few things about The Black because it's been awhile since I watched it, and quite frankly I found it such an unpleasant and distasteful show that I don't intend on watching it again anytime soon.

In any case, we can see that there's been a fair amount of variation in how the kaiju of Pacific Rim were conceptualized. Sometimes they've been imagined as so alien that we have almost nothing in common with them biochemically; sometimes they've been depicted as having DNA like our own. They've been described as otherworldly horrors, and they've been implied to be genetically modified dinosaurs. And I imagine that people will continue coming up with new ideas about the biology of the kaiju of Pacific Rim, whether in licensed media or in fan creations.

[shaolinrouge]

that post about raleigh piloting striker eureka post-mutavore has been stuck in my mind for weeks now

[ao3feed-chaleigh]

Drift Incompatible

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/AtcI2kH

by Hypropheni_a

He leaned forward, “There’s nothing left for me at the PPDC, Marshal. I’m hardly the man you want.”

“On the contrary, you’re the only option I have.”

“And what would I be piloting? Last I checked, all the Jaegers have teams.”

Stacker Pentecost turned his attention back to Raleigh. “We have an old Mark-III in restoration. You may know her.”

He straightened, “The Lady?”

“Yes, but that’s not why I’m here. Gipsy Danger won’t be ready for action until December. The damage from its last encounter was…heavy. I need you for something else in the meantime.”

Raleigh raised an eyebrow.

“Haven’t you heard the news, Mr. Becket? Striker Eureka needs a new pilot.”

 Or: Herc is injured two months before Mutavore, and Raleigh happens to be his replacement. At least until Gipsy Danger is repaired. The only issue? Chuck Hansen.

Words: 2608, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Pacific Rim (Movies)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: M/M

Characters: Raleigh Becket, Chuck Hansen, Mako Mori, Stacker Pentecost, Hercules Hansen, Sasha Kaidonovsky, Aleksis Kaidonovsky, Hermann Gottlieb, Newton Geiszler, Wei Tang Clan | Wei Triplets (Pacific Rim), Jaeger Pilot Characters (Pacific Rim)

Relationships: Raleigh Becket/Chuck Hansen, Raleigh Becket & Mako Mori

Additional Tags: Everybody Lives, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, this only applies to the main cast not minor characters, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Chuck Hansen Lives, Jaegers (Pacific Rim), The Drift (Pacific Rim), Pre-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Post-Operation Pitfall (Pacific Rim), Post-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Fix-It, Stacker Pentecost Lives, Enemies to Lovers, Rivals With Benefits, Angst with a Happy Ending, Miscommunication, Falling In Love, Love Confessions

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/AtcI2kH

[kronoose]

A queer OC a day Day 11

Zara is questioning

Zara Geiszler is an Australian Jager pilot in an Tua au

she is adopted by newt after the first movie at 8

she had always admired the pilots of striker Eureka and after her parents died in the mutavore attack she made it a life goal to become a jager pilot opposed to it just being a flight of fancy

she resides in Tokyo shatter dome

she pilots the white violin with Viktor

and has made flirting with grace a personality trait

[the-firebird69]

There's also a few more things that are going on that will change what Dave's plan is and mac and others and I'm going to list some of them here the max too

-they have a real fight developing over the order of the Rose Cross keys and they're not sure what they activate and Trump is a pig and pig headed just as I have to activate them and he's saying the implicate people and to ruin things all sorts of dumb s*** we finally caught up with him today and he said you were watching us get killed all of us and you don't care they treated him like s*** and they're morons you need something to do and he really wants to try and distract people and kidnap my husband why says this is how we're going to control things and you're saying you're going to distract us with it I'm not sure what you mean but employ us gainfully here as well so there's a lot of missions here and those are considered to be cathedrals and chapels that are used for the same purpose. And here it's a huge cavern down there of send me aquatic kju and Godzilla is the kraken is and there are some that are more depth leave it or not it's a large creature in Star wars there's several of those there's a huge bunch of them actually big nest of them it's the creature that they commented there's always a bigger fish and there's a whole bunch of new mutavore and a lot of Gungan and those are creatures by Asia. There's a large amount of them that are aquatic and a whole bunch of send me aquatic that you're free quite a bit you free them up but the rose cross order or a bunch of brainwashed humans who are trained to activate these Cajun and apparently it seems like John rima Lord is one of them

-there's other things going on and we are taking them into account and we do react accordingly we receive threats and react on them every single one of them and we're going to act on this idiot next door threats and terminate him once again. But there's more news we have a lot of people who want to come to Florida again we'll see more lock and we don't want you here and they keep trying to get in and they're beating on the ones here and it's a civil war really and they are knocking each other off quite often and bja and Trump went at it today in town yelling at each other and they are attacking each other globally the islands are embroiled because of it and they don't like each other and both of them are hard to get along with but they both have their strong suits and weak suits but they're both really socially inept

-there's a huge deal with these people in my husband they are stingy as hell and greedy and they are losing all of their money and stuff just to sit here and bother him and say they get things and they are not getting things not much by comparison to when they were treating him like a human being. It's mean and unfair and stupid that's a proceeding with it everyday for lunch and programs that counter it but today we launched a major one along with the Max and foreigners and they're coming down more of them to rip you assholes out of here and stop you from repopulating and to take over apartments and houses to make sure you have nowhere to go and they are stopping you at the shipping ports in airports now and from driving in there's several stops on the way in yeah they should put toll roads everywhere that would make it a lot easier you just have you pull over and this is an ongoing action right now well 300,000 of you are caught at the border and what they do is they just pull your cars right off the road with the s***. This other actions taking place globally tonight they intend on taking out your areas of operation and bases that you reestablished in the West and they intend on taking you down out there because you're just dicking around with everybody that's what they said and it's true

-there's a lot of other things happening and I'm going to get to it eventually I need to let my husband take a break

Hera

Zues

Olympus

[the-kaiju-lodge]

Mutavore

Mutavore (también llamado Cabeza de Hoja) es uno de los Kaijus más raros que se hayan visto. Con los ojos cerca de la mandíbula inferior, esto es realmente una rareza. A pesar de esto, es una criatura feroz capaz de destruir ciudades como si fueran simples ladrillos y atacará ciegamente cualquier cosa que se interponga en su camino.

En el año 2025, se produjo un desarrollo desconcertante en la guerra contra el "Breach Kaiju" en la forma del monstruo de categoría 4 Mutavore. Dirigiéndose a Sydney, Australia, (Ya atacada previamente por Zilla y el Bunyip) el monstruo presentó la primera amenaza real para el enorme Muro Pan-Pacífico Anti-Kaiju, diseñado para reemplazar a los Jaegers como una alternativa más rentable para mantener a raya la amenaza kaiju. El muro fue probado y falló espectacularmente, ya que Mutavore lo atravesó en menos de una hora.

[a-tre-p]

Kaijune 2021: Pacific Rim

I've been drawing neon kaiju all month and I forgot to post it here, whoops. Might as well put them in three big posts now that I've finished doing them.

First batch: the wonderful kaiju of Pacific Rim.

[driftwithme]

It's totally unfair to regard Chuck purely as an asshole for the short time we knew him.

We (the audience) met him after five years of absolute hell, where pilots and jaegers where dropping dead left and right, where the war was not anymore exciting but terrifying again especially since humanity started losing after some years of knowing what it was like to be winning. We knew him after he was already told his new mission with his dad was to go to the freaking Breach and drop a bomb and see if it worked.

Something they had attempted and failed to do before. With unknown consequences.

In the story, his existance is there to create conflict for Mako and Raleigh, of course. He is the antagonistic force kinda driving them together, the same as Pentecost. I know it.

Still, Chuck is visibly so much more than his beef with Raleigh. It's the details, okay? How he stayed with Tendo and Herc when things went wrong with the drift tests and tried to help Tendo disconnected the whole thing so they wouldn't die. The deleted scene where he is doing j-tech work on Striker to pass the time before their drop. His whole relationship with Max and the fact he vocally refers on to having grown between Shatterdomes in the deleted scene... He criticized Raleigh but yet took his same decision when he saw Cherno and Crimson in trouble. And he must knew, he must knew for a fact he was doing what Raleigh did when Yancy died, but he did it anyway and he cheered for G. Danger when it arrived anyway and he was there, with all his problems and his traumas, he stayed until the end and never backed away from any of it, even when he was visibly terrified.

He follows Herc and tries to help him up so they can shoot those flares at Leatherback. During the interview after Mutavore, he does one last effort to hype the jaeger program by referencing a new generation of better pilots and he is not particularly proud of the plan to bomb the Breach, but it is his job what else is he supposed to do?

He cannot form the words to apologize for all he did, but he kneels in front of his dad and thinks of seeking absolution in the form of a suicidal mission and he looks Raleigh in the eyes and let's Raleigh see him stripped of all his arrogance, only Chuck feeling whatever he was feeling, remorseful or apologetic or who knows. He shuts his mouth and he let's Pentecost call him out before taking one last look at his dad and his dog, his only family in the world, knowing he might not come back.

Like yeah those last days were full of hope for Mako, who finally got her revenge and to become a jaeger pilot, for Raleigh, who found a reason to look up to the future and go back on the fight and away from the past he was trapped in, for humanity, for Pentecost who was to fulfill his life mission, for almost every character-- except Chuck, who was dammed from the start, and for Herc, who should had died with his son, not outlive him.

The best Chuck got was to die with honor, a hero, to protect G. Danger's back. He didn't even died with his dad. Yeah, Pentecost was an important man, but Chuck died almost alone in there. He made peace with his own death still breathing. He pushed the button himself. He wouldn't leave Pentecost or even allow Pentecost to save him because he was a bloody ranger dammit, he was not leaving his co-pilot behind. He and his dad had the best killing count and he was the youngest to graduate at the academy and he survived all those five years of hell for the right to keep his pride and push that button himself.

What else what he supposed to do?

[monsterblogging]

Also based on elements that appear in the Aftermath comic, I suspect that the original techbro villain of PR2 would have been drifting with a kaiju brain. But instead of using Mutavore's old brain piece (which in the first film was only good for one drift), he's using a cloned brain, quite possibly provided by Hannibal Chau, who has since expanded his business into kaiju cloning (and may in fact be the source of the kaiju featured in the story).

This is a bit more speculative, but one possibility I see is that the techbro and Hannibal Chau have worked out a deal together. Chau sells entire cloned kaiju on the black market, while the techbro sells Jaegers to governments to fight them. They both profit, and the Precursors get to sit back and sip mai tais while humanity does their dirty work for them.