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kaijuposting · 4 months

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Jaeger Piloting 101: How Rangers Get Into The Thing & Other Basic Stuff

Hello Pacific Rim fans, today I am doing a post on the topic of how rangers get into the conn-pod, and take control of the Jaeger, plus do a quick look at conn-pod interiors in general! I'll be using pictures sourced from movie-screencaps.com to illustrate the process.

Before I proceed, I'd like to remind folks that Lady Danger's canonical name contains a racial slur. It will be depicted here in screenshots, but I encourage fans to use the name "Lady Danger" in casual conversation, fanfiction etc. It doesn't matter if the name was referencing an old engine, it doesn't matter if no harm was intended by it; a slur's a slur.

Before the rangers enter the conn-pod, they must first suit up. This isn't something they can do on their own - they have a dedicated team of assistant techs to help them into their drivesuits. As we can see here, Raleigh and Yancy Becket's team have the name of their jaeger printed on the backs of their jumpsuits:

If you read my earlier post on jaegers, you know that drivesuits come in two layers. Here's Raleigh and Yancy already wearing the first layer, while one of their technicians assists:

Next, the technicians help them into the drivesuit's second, armored layer. On the right side of the first image is the area where the drivesuits are kept when not in use:

And then we have this thing that's pulled out of a special storage box and put over the spinal area, connecting the back of the armor together:

We also see Yancy and Raleigh pull on their helmets, and this strange liquid drains out. (It makes me think of the orange juice Raleigh was drinking earlier.) It's not clear how common this feature is, but we know it's not universal - the refurbished Lady Danger doesn't have this, and Cherno Alpha's helmets don't look it would even be possible.

Next up, the pilots enter the conn-pod. Note those two light gray things on the floor in the first picture; that's part of the Pilot Motion Rig. Also note the dark gray things hanging from the ceiling in the second picture; that's also part of it.

Once the pilots step into the bottom part of Pilot Motion Rig, metal clamps lock their feet into place. On the right, Raleigh is already locked in; on the left, Yancy is not yet locked in:

Meanwhile, more technicians help pilots get into the upper part of the Pilot Motion Rig.

At this point, something magical and wonderful absolutely terrifying else happens: the floor pulls away, leaving the pilots standing like:

If you look down once the floor's pulled back, it's uh. Quite the view.

In the case of Lady Danger, a nuclear-powered Mark-3, this is where technicians drop the head to connect it to the body. (The head is stored separately to reduce radiation exposure that might damage the delicate circuits.)

At this point, the Beckets are looking at this in front of them:

As the head connects, the pilot-to-pilot protocol is engaged, the computer system fires up, and the Beckets see a LOADING screen:

In the Anchorage Shatterdome, Lady Danger was wheeled out through a door on a rolling platform. At this point, the neural handshake was activated with a countdown of fifteen seconds.

The neural link is established, and you got two people in control of a Jaeger!

From here, stuff often depends on the specific jaeger, as control systems can be pretty different. For example, we see Raleigh and Yancy holding these round things in the arms they're controlling at the beginning of the film, but the refurbished Lady Danger doesn't seem to use them, and neither do the other jaegers.

I'd also like to contrast Cherno Alpha's drivesuits with Lady Danger's drivesuits for a moment, just to emphasize how different designs can be. As you can see, each pilot's drivesuit has cables connected to the arm they're controlling:

Also as I was looking at pictures of jaeger interiors, I noticed something curious about Lady Danger vs. Striker Eureka.

The original Lady Danger has a high console like this:

The refurbished Lady Danger has one positioned lower:

Striker Eureka has both a high and low console:

So make of that what you will, lol.

And that's the basics of boarding and controlling a jaeger! If you haven't seen it already I also recommend checking out my other post on jaeger lore, where I compiled everything I could find out about them from various Pacific Rim medias. And you might also read Drifting, as conceptualized by Travis Beacham if you're interested in knowing more about the drifting aspect, and maybe Drift Hangover Lore if the possibility of sentient jaegers appeals to you.

Happy monster punching, or whatever it is you people do out there. *Slinks back into the bog*

#pacific rim #pacific rim 2013 #jaegers #jaeger #image heavy #pictures #screencaps #pacific rim lore #g slur warning

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kaijuposting · 4 months

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Jaegers of Pacific Rim: What do we know about them?

There's actually a fair amount of lore about Pacific Rim's jaegers, though most of it isn't actually in the movie itself. A lot of it has been scattered in places like Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters, Tales From Year Zero, Travis Beacham's blog, and the Pacific Rim novelization.

Note that I will not be including information from either Pacific Rim: Uprising or Pacific Rim: The Black. Uprising didn't really add anything, and The Black's take on jaegers can easily be summed up as "simplified the concept to make a cartoon for children."

So what is there to know about jaegers, besides the fact that they're piloted by two people with their brains connected via computer?

Here's a fun fact: underneath the hull (which may or may not be pure iron), jaegers have "muscle strands" and liquid data transfer technology. Tendo Choi refers to them in the film when describing Lady Danger's repairs and upgrades:

Solid iron hull, no alloys. Forty engine blocks per muscle strand. Hyper-torque driver for every limb and a new fluid synapse system.

The novelization by Alex Irvine makes frequent references to this liquid data transfer tech. For example:

The Jaeger’s joints squealed and began to freeze up from loss of lubricant through the holes Knifehead had torn in it. Its liquid-circuit neural architecture was misfiring like crazy. (Page 29.)

He had enough fiber-optic and fluid-core cabling to get the bandwidth he needed. (Page 94.)

Newt soldered together a series of leads using the copper contact pins and short fluid-core cables. (Page 96.)

Unfortunately I haven't found anything more about the "muscle strands" and what they might be made of, but I do find it interesting that jaegers apparently have some sort of artificial muscle system going on, especially considering Newt's personnel dossier in the novel mentioned him pioneering research in artificial tissue replication at MIT.

The novelization also mentions that the pilots' drivesuits have a kind of recording device for their experiences while drifting:

This armored outer layer included a Drift recorder that automatically preserved sensory impressions. (Page 16.)

It was connected through a silver half-torus that looked like a travel pillow but was in fact a four-dimensional quantum recorder that would provide a full record of the Drift. (Page 96.)

This is certainly... quite the concept. Perhaps the PPDC has legitimate reasons for looking through the memories and feelings of their pilots, but let's not pretend this doesn't enable horrific levels of privacy invasion.

I must note, though, I haven't seen mention of a recording system anywhere outside of the novel. Travis Beacham doesn't mention it on his blog, and it never comes up in either Tales From Year Zero or Tales From The Drift, both written by him. Whether there just wasn't any occasion to mention it or whether this piece of worldbuilding fell by the wayside in Beacham's mind is currently impossible to determine.

Speaking of the drivesuits, let's talk about those more. The novelization includes a few paragraphs outlining how the pilots' drivesuits work. It's a two-layer deal:

The first layer, the circuity suit, was like a wetsuit threaded with a mesh of synaptic processors. The pattern of processor relays looked like circuitry on the outside of the suit, gleaming gold against its smooth black polymer material. These artificial synapses transmitted commands to the Jaeger’s motor systems as fast as the pilot’s brain could generate them, with lag times close to zero. The synaptic processor array also transmitted pain signals to the pilots when their Jaeger was damaged.

...

The second layer was a sealed polycarbonate shell with full life support and magnetic interfaces at spine, feet, and all major limb joints. It relayed neural signals both incoming and outgoing. This armored outer layer included a Drift recorder that automatically preserved sensory impressions.

...

The outer armored layer of the drivesuit also kept pilots locked into the Conn-Pod’s Pilot Motion Rig, a command platform with geared locks for the Rangers’ boots, cabled extensors that attached to each suit gauntlet, and a full-spectrum neural transference plate, called the feedback cradle, that locked from the Motion Rig to the spine of each Ranger’s suit. At the front of the motion rig stood a command console, but most of a Ranger’s commands were issued either by voice or through interaction with the holographic heads-up display projected into the space in front of the pilots’ faces. (Page 16.)

Now let's talk about the pons system. According to the novelization:

The basics of the Pons were simple. You needed an interface on each end, so neuro signals from the two brains could reach the central bridge. You needed a processor capable of organizing and merging the two sets of signals. You needed an output so the data generated by the Drift could be recorded, monitored, and analyzed. That was it. (Page 96.)

This is pretty consistent with other depictions of the drift, recording device aside. (Again, the 4D quantum recorder never comes up anywhere outside of the novel.)

The development of the pons system as we know it is depicted in Tales From Year Zero, which goes into further detail on what happened after Trespasser's attack on San Francisco. In this comic, a jaeger can be difficult to move if improbably calibrated. Stacker Pentecost testing out a single arm describes the experience as feeling like his hand is stuck in wet concrete; Doctor Caitlin Lightcap explains that it's resistance from the datastream because the interface isn't calibrated to Pentecost's neural profile. (I'm guessing that this is the kind of calibration the film refers to when Tendo Choi calls out Lady Danger's left and right hemispheres being calibrated.)

According to Travis Beacham's blog, solo piloting a jaeger for a short time is possible, though highly risky. While it won't cause lasting damage if the pilot survives the encounter, the neural overload that accumulates the longer a pilot goes on can be deadly. In this post he says:

It won't kill you right away. May take five minutes. May take twenty. No telling. But it gets more difficult the longer you try. And at some point it catches up with you. You won't last a whole fight start-to-finish. Stacker and Raleigh managed to get it done and unplug before hitting that wall.

In this post he says:

It starts off fine, but it's a steep curve from fine to dead. Most people can last five minutes. Far fewer can last thirty. Nobody can last a whole fight.

Next, let's talk about the size and weight of jaegers. Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters lists off the sizes and weights of various jaegers. The heights of the jaegers it lists (which, to be clear, are not all of them) range from 224 feet to 280 feet. Their weights range from 1850 tons to 7890 tons. Worth noting, the heaviest jaegers (Romeo Blue and Horizon Brave) were among the Mark-1s, and it seems that these heavy builds didn't last long given that another Mark-1, Coyote Tango, weighed 2312 tons.

And on the topic of jaeger specs, each jaeger in Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters is listed with a (fictional) power core and operating system. For example, Crimson Typhoon is powered by the Midnight Orb 9 power core, and runs on the Tri-Sun Plasma Gate OS.

Where the novelization's combat asset dossiers covers the same jaegers, this information lines up - with the exception of Lady Danger. PR:MMM says that Lady Danger's OS is Blue Spark 4.1; the novelization's dossier says it's BLPK 4.1.

PR:MMM also seems to have an incomplete list of the jaegers' armaments; for example, it lists the I-22 Plasmacaster under Weaponry, and "jet kick" under Power Moves. Meanwhile, the novelization presents its armaments thus:

I-22 Plasmacaster Twin Fist gripping claws, left arm only Enhanced balance systems and leg-integral Thrust Kickers Enhanced combat-strike armature on all limbs

The novel's dossiers list between 2-4 features in the jaegers' armaments sections.

Now let's move on to jaeger power cores. As many of you probably already know, Mark-1-3 jaegers were outfitted with nuclear power cores. However, this posed a risk of cancer for pilots, especially during the early days. To combat this, pilots were given the (fictional) anti-radiation drug, Metharocin. (We see Stacker Pentecost take Metharocin in the film.)

The Mark-4s and beyond were fitted with alternative fuel sources, although their exact nature isn't always clear. Striker Eureka's XIG supercell chamber implies some sort of giant cell batteries, but it's a little harder to guess what Crimson Typhoon's Midnight Orb 9 might be, aside from round.

Back on the topic of nuclear cores, though, the novelization contains a little paragraph about the inventor of Lady Danger's power core, which I found entertaining:

The old nuclear vortex turbine lifted away from the reactor housing. The reactor itself was a proprietary design, brainchild of an engineer who left Westinghouse when they wouldn’t let him use his lab to explore portable nuclear miniaturization tech. He’d landed with one of the contractors the PPDC brought in at its founding, and his small reactors powered many of the first three generations of Jaegers. (Page 182.)

Like... I have literally just met this character, and I love him. I want him to meet Newt Geiszler, you know? >:3

Apparently, escape pods were a new feature to Mark-3 jaegers. Text in the novelization says, "New to the Mark III is an automated escape-pod system capable of ejecting each Ranger individually." (Page 240.)

Finally, jaegers were always meant to be more than just machines. Their designs and movements were meant to convey personality and character. Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters says:

Del Toro insisted the Jaegers be characters in and of themselves, not simply giant versions of their pilots. Del Toro told his designers, "It should be as painful for you to see a Jaeger get injured as it is for you to see the pilot [get hurt.]" (Page 56.)

Their weathered skins are inspired by combat-worn vehicles from the Iraq War and World War II battleships and bombers. They look believable and their design echoes human anatomy, but only to a point. "At the end of the day, what you want is for them to look cool," says Francisco Ruiz Velasco. "It's a summer movie, so you want to see some eye candy." Del Toro replies, "I, however, believe in 'eye protein,' which is high-end design with a high narrative content." (Page 57.)

THE JAEGER FROM DOWN UNDER is the only Mark 5, the most modern and best all-around athlete of the Jaegers. He's also the most brutal of the Jaeger force. Del Toro calls him "sort of brawler, like a bar fighter." (Page 64.)

And that is about all the info I could scrounge up and summarize in a post. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff here - like, I feel that the liquid circuit and muscle tissue stuff gives jaegers an eerily organic quality that could be played for some pretty interesting angles. And I also find it interesting that jaegers were meant to embody their own sort of character and personality, rather than just being simple combat machines or extensions of their pilots - it's a great example of a piece of media choosing thematic correctness over technical correctness, which when you get right down to it, is sort of what Pacific Rim is really all about.

#pacific rim #pacific rim 2013 #jaegers #jaeger #pacific rim lore

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kaijuposting · 5 months

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Monica Schwartz: death by drowning?

So I was reading through the Pacific Rim novelization again when I noticed that Newt's RABITs included thoughts about his mother. The relevant parts of the text are:

He and his parents were on holiday, at one of the lower-Alpine resorts that aspired to be Lake Como. His mother had a concert that night.

...

The lake in the summer, the skies growing dark and the water surging, getting heavier and thicker

...

Mother never left the lake she fell in love there and And died

From this, it appears that Newt's parents were involved with each other in his childhood, but his mother met a tragic end.

Or did she? Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters lists a Sylvia Schwartz as Newt's next of kin, and according to Travis Beacham, Sylvia is Monica Schwartz's middle name.

Either way, I think it's some pretty interesting lore about Newt's family; we can infer at the very least that Monica Schwartz was involved in his childhood somehow.

#pacific rim #newt geiszler #newton geiszler #monica schwartz #this is my other blog

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kaijuposting · 5 months

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Ya sure

Polling the kaiju fandoms!

I've noticed that the kaiju fandoms seem to have a really high amount of neurodivergency (like even more than most fandoms), so I wanted to make a poll of it!

I'm aware that making this a Tumblr poll will skew the results, but I literally can't do this anywhere else.

This poll counts for all kaiju fans in all kaiju fandoms- Godzilla, Gamera, Pacific Rim, the Ultra Series, Cloverfield, or any others.

Please reblog for a larger sample size!

Thanks!

#poll #neurodivergence

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kaijuposting · 7 months

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Hey folks, reminder that I'm mostly over on @monsterblogging now!

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kaijuposting · 7 months

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Hey folks, reminder that I'm mostly over on @monsterblogging now!

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kaijuposting · 7 months

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'stockholm syndrome' being invented by a police negotiator to explain away why a hostage said police actions were making her and the other hostages feel unsafe is like. yeah

#stockholm syndrome

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kaijuposting · 8 months

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Know Your Enemy

I can't possibly summarize all this and I really can't stress enough how much you NEED to watch this if you consider yourself: queer, a queer ally, liberal, generally a decent person, or a fan of having rights.

Also if you want to know what a fascist & white supremacist power grab looks like when it's been done "legally"

Note: There is not a single Republican in office who was not approved by this foundation before being elected.

Some goals they have:

Ending all discrimination protections

Ending abortion

Limiting/ending support for diabilities

It's #1 promise is to restore the traditional family

Making sure candidates they appoint are elected (no migrants, gays, brown ppl, etc)

Sound familiar? Like maybe it sounds like right fucking now? Like maybe they're Already doing this VERY successfully?

The extremism is clear from the paragraph in the video but to emphasize: they want people who make porn in prison, queer people to not be seen/acknowledged except as criminal sexual deviants, they even want librarians registered as sex offenders if libraries contain "porn" (LGBT books).

WHICH IS VERY IMPORTANT

BECAUSE FLORIDA JUST MADE THAT A CRIME PUNISHABLE BY DEATH.

Made what a crime?

Let me explain. Beginning of this year the death penalty was Only for crimes that ended in death. Meaning only murderers get the death penalty. Desantis challenged that. Now you can get the death penalty for non-violent crimes. He also lowered the amount of jurors needed for a death sentence.

At the same he slipped in a bill saying that sex crimes against children were punishable by death. Yeah remember when everyone called me paranoid and crazy when I said Desantis is trying to make being LGBT punishable by death?

Remember when I said the bills he was passing included removing kids from queer parents? And that it criminalizes even straight parents who help their kid get HRT. That if they labeled "LGBT" as a sex crime that all this would amount to preparation....

Remember when everyone said "well as long as you don't molest kids you have nothing to worry about"

This is why you were all fucking WRONG.

This is the start of a genocide. I said it before Desantis passed those bills and I'm fucking saying it again.

THEY ARE TRYING TO ERADICATE QUEER PEOPLE.

We have REAL fucking problems, do y'all fucking get that?

STOP FIGHTING OVER NEOPRONOUNS AND BI LESBIANS. They didn't say ONLY trans people either ,you idiot gay TERFs and radfems. YOU are at risk too. Good job. You helped them build the gun they wanna kill us ALL with. Being a helpful lesbian didn't fucking save you, turns out. You get the wall just like the trans people you tried to hurt.

The time to wake up and get over the bullshit propaganda the right wing fed you about trans people is now. Trans women, men, and nonbinaries are not our enemy and never have been.

It's been homophobia and transphobia. Bigots.

The time to stand up and organize is NOW. The time to start being shamelessly queer and proud and loud is NOW.

Share this post. Literally everyone needs to know.

They tried using race to divide everyone in 2020 and now they're using the LGBTs.

They're targeting people that the mainstream media won't care about.

Show them that mainstream cares. If you are an ally, now is the time to stop being shy about it.

Put rainbow stickers every where, scribble Trans Rights in sharpie on a telephone pole, plan a protest, hang your flag in your yard.

They need to see us and our support. WE need to see the support.

#psa #current events #don't look away

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