#mako mori lives

[lemonlinelights]

Ten Years to THE pairings <3

Drift Compatible💕

[are-they-queerplatonic]

Do you see them as a QPR?

Reason to see them as a QPR:

"Their relationship in the movie despite being close (they are drift compatible!) never become openly romantic"

[foxglovecove]

for the pacrim requests: how about anything with mako and raleigh! platonic or romantic, dealer’s choice!

bonus: could even be a happier world where yancy is still around and is Peak Older Brother 🥰

love that the pacific rim brainrot is still around!

Yes! The brainrot is very much still around, it got its hooks in me deep XD

In which Yancy survived but had to leave piloting behind due to injuries from the fight (scars, lost an eye, etc.) He’s visiting the Hong Kong Shatterdome after his baby bro and badass Mako helped save the world

Thanks for sending in a request!

[taintedmind6669]

[driftwithme]

The thing I love about the kwoon scene is that it is not a competition at all. Raleigh says it at the beginning: it is a dialogue.

Raleigh was not trying to swept the floor or show off. He even gets irritated by how Mako judges his performance in silence, maybe in behalf of the recruits she picked herself but now she seemed to disapprove, maybe cause Raleigh felt more than he saw that the whole judgment to his own performance was more like Mako projecting her frustration of no one being good enough to challenge Raleigh.

She knew how good she was and she was a bit bored of having to witness row after row of people failing. That is a ranger pride right there, not excessively overconfident, but the pride of a girl who had 51 simulations and the same number of virtual kills, okay?

Mako is a storm of her own. She's intelligent and analytical and she's not afraid to call out freaking legend Raleigh Becket. She would have fought Chuck herself if Raleigh hadn't srop her. She went into her jaeger debut with all the anger and preparation of a life seeking craving revenge and terminated two kaijus then, no mercy, the first double event ever. Mako's a woman who knows what she wants and goes for it and only askes Pentecost for permission out of respect. Sincere and direct and skilled, she is a handful disguised as a quiet well behaved young woman and that is what makes her match Raleigh.

The first time we saw Mako go all out, it was with Raleigh in the kwoon. He pressed all the right buttons in Pentecost and Mako to get her there! He knew! Raleigh is far from stupid and right from the start, he made Mako talk to him, evaluate her, all measure and plans so he could act accordingly when the moment came. And in the kwoon, during their silent dialogue, Mako win was as much hers as it was Raleighs. It was not a fight to prove who was stronger--- it was a fight to prove they, together, were a total show, precise, deadly, unstoppable.

In that moment, Raleigh was deciding if he could ever let anyone in again. All his trauma and hurt after Yancy, all his uncertainty and the destiny of the world, he allowed it to flow in there. If he won, it meant he was right and he couldn't let them in. It meant Yancy was the one and only, that there was no second chances, that he was beyond all of that to that point.

But Mako won.

She won her part of Raleigh's heart. Mako won the right to be his co-pilot by proving they were equals, by showing Raleigh she saw and knew him, that she was evaluating him too, that whatever Raleigh had with him that made him such a hell of a pilot, that one magic was in her too. Raleigh wanted to lose that game. He was betting on her. He was not alone. He was proud of her winning. It was all that he wanted. He claimed her his co-pilot because, after that, he has the right to do so and he wanted everyone to know it was her win and he wouldn't accept a no now. 'Cause she was his co-pilot now and there is nothing and I mean nothing Raleigh wouldn't do for his co-pilots.

It is not romance or friendship or family or any other typical tag one would apply to it. What Raleigh and Mako had back there, I can say it was human connection at its purest or maybe just the core of what it means to exist perfectly with another being. Total synchrony meaning I see you I know you I feel you I am you and you are me like nothing else.

If the depth of the bond means how good the pair fights, isn't it obvious that no one embodies the term drift compatible more than Mako and Raleigh?

The are the perfect match. Always.

[mantisgodsdomain]

Apparently there's a fic reading challenge thing this year, but after doing a quick skim of the goals... we don't think we'll be touching it with a ten-foot stick. Some of these goals put a VERY bad taste in our mouth. The idea of a "diversity checklist" isn't supposed to be... literal, we don't think? No? We're remembering that one quote about "listening to people of color being like eating your vegetables for white activists" and we're feeling like it may actually have been understating whatever the hell is going on here.

[straightbaittournament]

may the best bait win! propaganda under the cut

hardwon and moonshine:

They’re DnD characters so they’re bi disasters canonically. Just not for each other The best way to describe Hardshine is this: “They’re soulmates” “Platonically or romantically?” “Yes” Literally they care so much about each other. Moonshine cured Hardwon’s vampirism by reincarnating him into a half elf and he told her “I’ve been half elf ever since I met you”. Moonshine is a high level elf druid which means she’ll basically live forever and literally the most emotional scene where she asks her mom “How long do half-elves live?”. Hardwon was always a fish out of water who never really fit in until he found Moonshine and the Crick. Are they dating? Queerplatonic partners? Siblings? Idk man they’re just in love it doesn’t matter how.

raleigh and mako:

Literally everything about the writing of Pacific Rim make it seem like they're setting up for a romance between these two and then they just. Don't. Despite this, "drift compatable" was one of the most popular AUs for couples after the film came out for a hot minute because of how romantic they (mako and raleigh) made the concept seem.

[hooty09]

One-Winged Angel Analysis

Okay so Sephiroth’s theme..! I was looking at the English translations and found some interesting stuff. The first set of lyrics, which are usually “Estuans Interius, Ira Vehementi,” translate to “Burning inside, with violent anger.” This translates to Sephiroth’s true feelings towards humanity itself, despite many people’s mischaracterization of him being a teasing and “hopeless romantic” for Cloud. Really, the way he behaves towards Cloud comes from a spot of hatred and anger in his heart for just how easily Cloud was able to sneak up on him and impale his torso with the buster sword. Depending on the version of FF7, Sephiroth was either thrown into the life stream below the Mt. Nibel reactor, or he jump in himself. Sephiroth’s consciousness was only able to survive in the life stream without being absorbed because of the Jenova cells flowing inside him, and his status as an “unnatural life form” due to the super human abilities of the mako (mixed with Jenova cells. Normal SOLDIERS, who are also infused with Mako, are able to be absorbed by the life stream). The many times you actually see Sephiroth in game are actually just clones of him using parts of Jenova’s body, while his true body is in the North Crater. This all ties to the “Ne me mori facias” lyric, which translates to “do not let me die.” Sephiroth cheated death and was able to rise to the strength of a god, and his desperate hold on immortality is shown in this lyric. The next new words, “Gloriosa” and “Generosa” mean Glorious and Noble. This ties to Sephiroth’s belief that his actions are “good,” due to what humanity did to Jenova. Tying everything together is his main goal in FF7, which is to summon meteor and make a rift in the life stream, where the essence will clot up. Sephiroth will be in the center of the wound, absorbing the lifestream essence and becoming a god. With this, Sephiroth would be the last (known) living being in existence, which is the empty fate he refers to. All in all, while Sephiroth’s true theme would actually be “Those Chosen by the Planet,” his battle theme “One-Winged Angel” puts so much more depth into his character to study. One-Winged Angel focuses on Sephiroth’s fall from grace, and his idea of fate. In the new FF7 remake trilogy, fate is emphasized as the main idea of the games, and this ties in with Sephiroth’s character (as well as other characters) so much more. I made the gif below myself btw. THE END!!!

[olderthannetfic]

I know about the origins of the Bechdel Test, but I do think it's inaccurate to say it's not meant as a criticism of movies that don't do that. I think that when people stop thinking in binary terms of "is this feminist?" or "is this anti-feminist?" and instead look at things more holistically, that you can recognize both that a character like Mako Mori is great, a step in the right direction for female characters in action movies and especially WOC, go forth and stan her and write all the fanfic you want.... but yeah, it is also a valid criticism of the movie (and many others like it) that she doesn't talk to or have relationships with any other woman in the film.

I think one thing to help people realize just HOW much of women's lives are being left out of media representation when we never talk to other named women about something other than a man in movies, is to just think about your own life. I talk to my mom every day, and if we are not talking about my stepdad or my brother-in-law (and I don't think we've ever had a conversation that wasn't at least IN PART not about them or another man), then it passes the test. I'm a professor and when I talk to a female student about her homework or project (which is, again, something that happens pretty much every day I teach), that's passing the test. If I order food from a female cashier and she has a name tag, that's passing the Bechdel Test! It's literally just constant for the vast majority of women on the planet, and that's what's being left out of our stories.

Like, I like the takes I've seen about how part of the joke in Dykes to Watch Out For is that this is *particularly* alienating to lesbians - as a lesbian myself I agree - but I also think it should be frustrating to straight and bi and ace women as well, because like unless you are like exclusively interacting with your husband or male relatives every single day + you work in a workplace where you are literally the only woman, you are almost certainly passing the test constantly. That's a pretty big part of women's lives that Hollywood is leaving out!

But I think it's important to view it as just one piece of the discussion about feminism and women's representation in film, not the final judge on if a film is feminist or not. Which it wasn't intended to be - as you said, it was mostly a joke on the extreme maleness of 80s action movies. Honestly, I do not miss those days on Tumblr where people were obsessed with declaring certain movies/TV shows/other fandoms they liked as "feminist" or "anti-feminist" and the really bizarre granular discussions people would have between two works that BOTH had a long way to go in terms of representing women. I remember people in the Fullmetal Alchemist fandom would use this to argue about if the original anime or Brotherhood/the manga was better - when both have some fantastic female supporting characters, but are ultimately male-centered stories where even a lot of those women's lives and stories are centered around their male love interests and family members. It's better than a lot of shounen, but if that's your bar for feminism - either version - you have a long way to go (and need to watch WAY more anime because there's sooooo much of it that is female-centric). I also remember people coming up with other tests that were blatantly silly: like I thought the Mako Mori test about "if a woman has a motivation/story that isn't centered on a man" was fair because it did point out a legitimate criticism, but there was that ridiculous "Tauriel Test" where it was "a woman who is good at her job." And it was entirely about someone just disliking that movie critics and feminist commentators alike were down on the Hobbit movie trilogy, which a) were bad movies, sorry you have bad taste, b) are absolutely not where you should focus your attention if you're so concerned about women's representation in film, Tolkein has always been a sausage fest! And her big thing was being mad that people thought Judi Dench's M in Skyfall was a better female character, and so she arbitrarily decided she was "bad at her job" and Tauriel was "good at her job" even though that's completely subjective and can be challenged in both cases.... but also, once again, why are you looking to the fucking JAMES BOND franchise for movie feminism! There's nothing like comparing the relative "feminism levels" of JAMES BOND and LOTR to make it obvious that this is 100% about validating your subjective taste preferences by giving it a "progressive" excuse, not actually about feminism and not actually caring about women's representation beyond how it makes you look good. And yet SO many people took that transparently stupid post seriously. I'd see professional articles mention the Tauriel Test as "one of the new tests" like there was anything serious about it.

And then on the flip side, over-reliance on the Bechdel Test alone led to some clueless conclusions especially in anime fandom, given that anime has an abundance of shows that exclusively feature female characters in school clubs being cute, where those characters are nonetheless two-dimensional archetypes designed for the male gaze. Someone like fandomsandfeminism did a presentation at an anime con that called one of those types of shows "feminist" and some Japanese user eviscerated it, but that just led to the equally shallow fandom analysis of "everything a Japanese person says about anime is automatically more valid" and "any Westerner who wants to criticize anime on feminist/progressive grounds is culturally appropriating and ultimately coming from a place of ignorance, even if they literally have a degree in Asian studies."

Wow, this turned into a rant about the history of bad "feminist media criticism" on this website. Sorry about that, I think I had a point in here somewhere. I guess that the Bechdel Test is indeed a joke and those origins should be understood, but also, I don't think it's wrong to say that it identifies a real problem and one that people could probably take MORE seriously than they do - but as just one part of the conversation, not the Feminism Litmus Test, and certainly not as a dick-measuring contest about whose fandom gets them more progressive brownie points.

--

I think as long as we grasp that the joke is "The bar is so far under the ground that we might as well go home and eat popcorn there", it's fine.

The real issue with the test is that people started thinking a pass was meaningful.

If you say something like "X% of 2020s movies can't even manage this weaksauce level of women existing", that's a meaningful statistic. Even if you got a couple of data points wrong, you're not factually wrong enough for it to matter because X is going to be some massive, massive percentage, and the overall trend is so clear.

But a pass is nothing to celebrate, and that's where we went wrong.

Like you say, litigating which of two big franchises that barely do anything with women wins on tumblr points is idiocy.

I think people are so unaware of what media that genuinely centers women even looks like that it's hard for them to even begin having a discussion.

I personally have been a massive fujoshi type from adolescence, and media that centers female characters isn't actually what I typically want. (Though media that is by and for women and that doesn't give a fuck what men think of this is.) I am also not much of a fan of slice of life in general...

But when I was coming out and figuring my shit out, being able to go buy collections of Dykes to Watch Out For was incredibly valuable to me.

Ditto the other lesbian comic books that were just sitting there in the bookstore. I'm sure if I went back and reread them all now, I could find things to nitpick or ways they were more for lesbians and less for me as a bi girl, but the really distinctive thing they did was let me exist in a world where media isn't all 80s sausagefest action movies where women are not people.

In fact, they were a world where men don't matter terribly much—not because they're dramatically rejecting men in some facile and reactionary way but because... who cares? They just had other priorities... and this was normal.

It feels like people who've never taken a vacation from really mainstream media just have no concept of what it would feel like to exist in some other space.

And I think that's a pity even if, like me, they later choose to go read mostly BL later instead of focusing on female characters or they genuinely love trash 80s action movies despite everything wrong with them. It's not just sexist media that's the issue: it's that feeling like the fish can't see the water it's swimming in.

[monsterblogging]

So when Guillermo del Toro was a teenager, he owned an encyclopedia set titled Man Myth and Magic - An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, and having tracked most of it down, I can say it's about as fine an introduction to the occult as any lad could've asked for in the 1970s.

It contains quite a bit of information on astrology - and if you've been paying attention, you know that astrology is real in some capacity in Pacific Rim.

The section on astrology contains very brief summaries of the planets and zodiac signs:

The Planets Sun: the living being, the physical body, psychic energy, the male principle. Moon: the soul or psyche; fantasy and feeling, change and fluctuation (tides and months). Mercury: Intelligence, reason, movement, communication. (Mercury as the messenger of the Gods.) Venus: love, art, energy, physical attraction, sentiment, sentimentality, sex. Mars: action, energy, impulsion, aggressive function, libido (Mars, the god of war). Jupiter: expansion, richness (material or metaphysical), health, humor, developing function. Saturn: limitation, contraction, concentration, inhibition, separation, maturity, loss, parting (and death), saturnine temperament, restrictive function. Uranus: suddenness, revolution, violence, transmutation (magic, alchemy, the occult arts), creative function. Neptune: susceptibility, fantasy, romanticism, mysticism, deception and self-deception, psychic powers. Pluto: power, demagoguery, dictators, the masses.

The Signs of the Zodiac Aries: courage, impetuosity, energy Taurus: patience, persistence, obstinacy Gemini: progressiveness, cleverness, instability Cancer: inspiration, sensitivity, evasiveness. Leo: dignity, breadth of mind, power, pretentiousness. Virgo: reason, logic, exactitude, pedantry. Libra: harmony, evaluation, trivialities. Scorpio: profundity, insistence, roughness. Sagittarius: justice, propriety, sophistry. Capricorn: independence, abstraction, stubbornness. Aquarius: spirituality, conviction, illusion. Pisces: compassion, tolerance, indolence.

Once you start looking at the signs and ruling planets del Toro gave the characters, we can see they line up to these descriptions pretty well; EG, Mako Mori is a Taurus ruled by Saturn-Venus, and Raleigh Becket is a Sagittarius ruled by Mars:

And then of course, there's Newt's bio. (Note that this version of his bio is slightly outdated; it gives his birth year as 1980 and gives his age as 45. Other material lists his birth year as 1990, which puts Newt closer to Charlie Day's actual age.)

Let us recall the description of Uranus from earlier: suddenness, revolution, violence, transmutation (magic, alchemy, the occult arts), creative function.

Newt is a musician who does a lot of things on impulse, so this does describe him pretty well.

But also there's all that stuff about magic, alchemy, and the occult arts. Which makes wonder if Hermann ever asked Newt how the hell the machine he built to drift with a kaiju brain actually works, if Newt's response might be something along the lines of:

(I also wouldn't be surprised if Newt just built the thing on pure caffeine-driven instinct and really can't explain how it works, lol.)

[eternal-gromnommer]

In celebration of this year's Kaijune, I decided to re-watch Pacific Rim: Uprising to check if it really was as bad as everyone was claiming it was and I remember it being.

It...kinda was.

Heaps of wasted opportunities, character arcs that went nowhere, random pointless death of Mako Mori (boo!) and a whole new cast of teens who have little appeal and just rehash the story beats of the first film.

Which is a shame, because it did have a lot of cool ideas that could have been better-executed. Like the hybrid-drones, or Obsidian Fury, the kaiju-brain controlled Jaeger.

But by far the biggest wasted opportunity was the rather bland and underwhelming Mega Kaiju, which just looked like a bigger Kaiju with the component parts barely evident. So for Kaijune I whipped up a redesign of how I'd try to make it look more distinct and have the component parts accounted for.

Raijin, Hakuja and Shrikethorn remain mostly unchanged, just with more distinct palettes to highlight the patchwork nature of the fusion and with a reduced number of digits to make the fused limbs less cluttered.

The centerpiece of the Mega Kaiju head is Raijin's inner head, with Shrikethorn's inverted upper jaw now forming the lower jaw and Raijin and Shrikethorn's original lower jaws forming a "collar" around the neck. Hakuja's head is split entirely in half to form "horns" and the tusked lower jaw similarly bisected to form "mandibles". Raijin's four head-plates are all present, with the bottom two on the chest and the top two forming a crest atop the fused head. Ten eyes from Shrikethorn, six from Hakuja and sixteen from Raijin add up to a total of 32: way more than canon!Mega Kaiju's ten.

The redesigned Mega Kaiju also has eight limbs instead of six. The two main forearms are a fusion of Shrikethorn and Raijin's arms, while a smaller pair on the chest are Hakuja's intact frontmost limbs. The two pairs of hind legs are Hakuja's four back legs, with the middle pair fused to Raijin's legs and the back pair fused to Shrikethorn's legs. Hakuja's dorsal armor plates now stand up like spikes on the Mega Kaiju's back, and the tails are partly Raijin and partly Shrikethorn, with Hakuja armor plates forming spear-like tips.

And finally, as a stitched-together Frankensteined kaiju, the seams are still clearly visible, made from the ripper drones that tore apart the three components and sewed them up into one. The seams and stitches occasionally leak blue kaiju blood now and then: furthering the Mega Kaiju design as a mutilated, tortured monstrosity, clearly not designed to survive very long and merely live long enough to wreck its immediate foes, reach Mount Fuji, and jump inside to its death to fulfill the Precursors' master plan to trigger a massive eruption and cause a mass extinction event.

[arainaizevran]

10 characters | 10 fandoms | 10 a negotiable number of tags

tagged by @mathlann yay thank you!!

there may be a recurring theme with some of the characters but let's not unpack all of that. also after the 5th placement, they're all tied in my heart okay?

franziska von karma - ace attorney. THEEEE favourite character of all time ever since the first word she says: "revenge." i could write 10 paragraphs of everything i love about her but i'll save you all from that. but perhaps the best thing about her is that she breaks the cycle without even knowing it, and proves herself a better person than her father without compromising her identity. <3

childe - genshin impact. also loved this guy upon his very first appearance. a character who got into a traumatic situation when he was young and gained eldritch powers because of it? and nevertheless remained an optimistic person? but also wants to gain strength and power at all costs? say less!

wyll ravengard - baldur's gate 3. ummm need i say more? fine, fine. he's so charming and handsome and dork supreme and king of whimsy, but most importantly, he's kind, despite everything he's been through. it takes an enormous amount of strength to remain hopeful and kind, and a lot of people (unfortunately) overlook that. also his character trope--paladin-coded warlock--is so so interesting and--[gets dragged off the stage]

shiv roy - succession. she's so sucks!!!! i love you selfish and arrogant babygirl who not only has daddy issues, but has mommy issues too. i love you shiv who would do anything for power and is the most like her father and gets trapped in the cycle anyways!!!

azula - avatar the last airbender. azula did nothing wrong.

severa - fire emblem: awakening. i love you insecure babygirl who overcompensates for everything by being abrasive. who feels like she's living in the shadow of her perfect mother. who ends up just like her mother in a darker timeline, protecting the exalt in an (un)requited love (lucisev truther btw)

jinx - arcane. i like her in the game but i love her in this series. i was really astounded with her character, what happened to her as powder and her parallels with her sister vi, and how she became the jinx we all know and love

mako mori - pacific rim. i love her dynamics with stacker and with raleigh ;___; also her sparring scene was soooo gooooood. the entire movie is just great, favourite of all time

claire - fleabag. i love claire's entire character and her juxtaposition with her sister fleabag, who's a mess. eldest daughter energy. learns to be selfish and pursue what she truly loves instead of maintaining her reputation at the expense of her well-being. also i just really love ambitious over-achieving characters

eve polastri - killing eve. i'm ignoring season 4 but god, i love the way her character changes throughout the series. she's so enthralled with villanelle and she hides it under the guise of pursuing an assassin but really she's so fascinated by her and it leads to her ruin as she keeps pursuing her with no regard for anything or anyone else in her life.

tagging, if you like - @bladeofavernus @droodle-bug @landlordevil @katagawajr @courierseis @targaryeirene and whoever else wants to do this :3c

[grigori77]

Celebrating International Women's Day this year, once again I'm giving a shout-out to some of the amazing ladies, both real and fictional, that I really admire, both new on the scene and since my formative years. They all live rent free in my head and I think they're awesome!

COURTNEY LaPLANTE, the incredible frontwoman from up-and-coming new metalcore band Spiritbox, who are ALL pretty amazing, but she is in a whole different league. The way she can switch from beautifully husky, gently angelic clean vocals to bloody terrifying feral demon dirty vocals AND BACK at the drop of a hat is truly astounding ...

VIOLA DAVIS, one of my favourite actresses working in Hollywood today, an undeniable queen and now a bonafide BADASS too thanks to her recent starring role as Naniska, the General of the Agojie, the legendary Dahomie Amazons, in The Woman King. These days she's PROBABLY best known as THE BADDEST BITCH in all of the DCEU, ARGUS director Amanda Waller, but these are just two of a whole CAREER of incredible performances for which she's rightly become a true A-lister ...

ELLEN RIPLEY, as played by the equally awesome Sigourney Weaver in the Alien movies. Quite simply THE GREATEST cinematic female lead protagonist OF ALL TIME, Ripley is about as definitive as strong female lead protgnonists get, the scourge of terrifying hostile aliens throughout the galaxy ...

POWER, from the acclaimed new anime series Chainsaw Man. I know, I know, she could SO EASILY have just been another classic teenage boy's wet dream anime girl, but half-demon fiend Power, like many of the show's female characters, is definitely a significant step away from the cliched norms, a total, undeniable force of (super)nature, unapologetic deluded self-promoter and thoroughly adorable chaos gremlin, who's quickly becoming one of my very favourite anime characters.

RINKO KIKUCHI, probably my VERY FAVOURITE Japanese actress EVER, thanks in no small part to her DEFINITIVE turn as Jaeger pilot Mako Mori in Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim, although I first discovered her as gloriously idiosyncratic demolitions expert Bang Bang in Rian Johnson's criminally overlooked The Brothers Bloom. Also rightly known for her acclaimed turn in Babel, we most recently saw her in typically fine form in Michael Mann's agreeably edgy new true crime series Tokyo Vice ...

KRISTEN STEWART. Yeah, I know, some folk are STILL likely to be rolling their eyes at this choice, but ever since Panic Room I've ALWAYS thought she was something special, EVEN when she was doing Twilight. Okay, so it's taken her A LONG TIME to shake the godawful spectre of Bella Swan, but she's DEFINITELY pulled it off by now, playing some truly AMAZING characters in a bunch of really great movies, most notably Underwater (see above), the criminally maligned and unjustly ignored Charlie's Angels reboot and her incredible recent turn as the late Diana, Princes of Wales, in Spencer.

DELENN, as played by Mira Furlan (Lost), the ambassador of the alien race, the Minbari, in one of my very favourite TV shows of all time, Babylon 5. From humble (albeit also EXTREMELY mysterious) beginnings, Delenn went on to (rightly) become THE main female lead in the show, carrying the weight of one hell of a sprawling, epic sci-fi saga plot on her more-than-able shoulders.

KATY O'BRIAN. Basicallythe core inspiration (at least in a roundabout way) for the lead character in my ongoing online fantasy novel series Never Split the Party, Kesla Shoon, Katy is 100% what I love in a genuine physically powerful woman - tough as nails, sexy as hell and, paradoxically, an absolute sweetheart. I first stumbled across her as George, the very best character in Syfy's guilty pleasure TV series Z Nation, but she's finally REALLY getting the attention she's long deserved, already earning fast fan-favourite status as Jentorra in Ant Man & the Wasp: Quantumania.

ZOE SALDANA. Ever since she started to come up in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, she's been steadily growing herself one hell of a reputation playing a succession of strong, frequently badass women in cinema, most notably in The Losers, James Cameron's Avatar movies and OF COURSE as Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy.

SOFIA BOUTELLA. Ever since I first saw her busting some truly incredible moves in those glorious "Keep Up" Nike ads from the mid 00s, I have always been SUCH a big fan of this incredible dancer-turned-actress. She first REALLY captured our attention in the first Kingsman movie, but she's shone ever brighter since in the likes of Star Trek Beyond, Atomic Blonde, Climax and Hotel Artemis. Personally I CANNOT WAIT to see what she does with THE LEAD ROLE in Zack Snyder's incoming new sci-fi epic Rebel Moon ...

ALISON MOYET. One of my favourite female vocalists when I was growing up, I recently rediscovered her music when I started one of my music fan deep-dives through her entire back catalogue, and I'm absolutely LOVING IT. Starting out in the frustratingly short-lived early 80s electro pop group Yazoo with Erasure's Vince Clarke, she truly came to fame with her dynamite solo debut album Alf, as well as a killer cover of That Ole Devil Called love, but she's been going strong ever since thanks to one of the greatest voices around.

ANNIE LENNOX, formerly of The Tourists and The Eurythmics. Another one of the 80s all-time great frontwomen, Annie is a statuesque Scottish goddess who is rightly best known for her SECOND tour of duty with multi-talented musician Dave Stewart, but went on to have an equally astounding career as a solo singer-songwriter with a string of masterful records from the 90s right up to the present. Add to that her undeniable ICON status in the LGBTQIA+ community and you've got a bonafide androgynous goddess on your hands ...

GRACE JONES. Ever since she played Zula in Conan the Destroyer, Mayday in A View to a Kill and one seriously STRANGE vampire in Vamp, I've been a fan of this Jamaican model/actress/singer and undeniable fashion ICON. She continues to be a wonderfully weird and truly unique individual with her own unapologetically challenging style to this very day, and I love her for it.

DEBORAH CHOW. A fantastic up-and-coming Canadian filmmaker, who made a modest splash with her feature film The High Cost of Living before cutting her teeth on a series of impressive TV directing gigs on the likes of Copper, Reign and Mr Robot before truly coming into her own on The Mandalorian, which directly led to her helming THE ENTIRETY of 2022's rightly acclaimed Obi Wan Kenobi series. I'm really looking forward to whatever she does next.

CHARLIZE THERON. If there's one actress I've become a fan of mainly through her playing GENUINELY UNSTOPPABLE kickass women, it's Ms. Theron. The South African-born actress looks ABSOLUTELY AMAZING when she's stalking down a catwalk in her Dior ads, but as far as I'm concerned she looks HER VERY BEST when she's taking roomfuls of men apart with her bare hands in Atomic Blonde or a big fucking axe in The Old Guard, which will soon get a sequel I for one CANNOT WAIT FOR ...

MARISHA RAY, ASHLEY JOHNSON & LAURA BAILEY, the Ladies of Critical Role. Sure, there have been other women who've come and gone in a variety of excellent guest slot roles through the years the live-play TTRPG webcast series has been going (from Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Ashly Burch, Sumalee Montano, Mica Burton and Aimee Carrero to, of course, the legendary Aabria Iyengar), but these three have always been the core, the heart and the undeniable BACKBONE of this amazing ongoing D&D adventure, and long may they all continue to reign ...

[astriiformes]

Someone reblogged the Lilith playlist with a tag saying it had 2014 8tracks vibes (as a compliment, to be clear) and I'm having a bit of a moment about it

Because not only is that exactly the era I cut my teeth as a little baby fanmixer back in the day, but also, two of the very first playlists I ever posted on there were aro/ace Mako Mori and Newt Geiszler ones for Ace Week in October 2014 (one specifically on a day for making aro fanworks, because this was before the ace and aro awareness events had totally diverged). Long enough ago that one of them has the old black-and-grey-and-yellow-and-green aro flag on it, which at this point is even more of a relic than 8tracks itself.

And now I'm just thinking about like.... obviously I haven't stoppped making ace and aro fanworks based off headcanons, but back then, it was because I didn't have anything other than headcanons and couldn't have made one for a canon character if I'd wanted to (and I really, really wanted to).

I vividly remember reading the same two or three aro Pacific Rim headcanon fics over and over again around that same time, and one in particular that centered on my favorite character being in a queerplatonic relationship. I was just a little baby aro/ace back then, too, and had only just started identifying as both the year before. And of course being in high school there were a lot of things I couldn't envision about the future, but I knew I was still looking for some version of it in those stories, even though there weren't very many of them. To the point that I started saving them for the nights I was feeling the loneliest and saddest about my future, because I didn't want them to lose their impact. Except even with their help, it was still hard to picture ever finding someone who wanted the same sort of thing as me.

So now I'm sitting here feeling some kind of way about being 26 instead of 17, and the community history stretching between then and now and those playlists and this one (the new/current flag design, ASAW being a thing at all), and sitting on the couch last year listening to the TOH charity stream and shouting across the room at Scribe when they played the reading of Lilith's letter, and the handful of other aro/ace characters I get to hold onto these days, and also about living with Scribe at all -- years and years after I met her because she got excited about another playlist I posted to 8tracks.

[kaijuposting]

Information about Newt Geiszler in the novelization that (probably) comes from the bio by Guillermo del Toro.

Newt's characterization in the Pacific Rim Novelization sure is... something. He "admires" the "public-private partnership" between Stacker Pentecost and Hannibal Chau, and he sees the impoverished citizens making their way through the Bone Slums as a writhing biomass. His views on religion are about on par with those guys in the New Atheist movement, and he's effectively described as being like a younger sibling to Hermann. He doesn't call Hercules Hansen a fascist and shove him out of the way; instead, he "skids to a halt" when Hansen holds his hands up.

But despite all of this wild... shall we say, interpretation, there's some text that seems pretty consistent with Guillermo del Toro's creative habits (or even the bio fragments from the DVD), and lines up with Travis Beacham's description of Newt.

Born Berlin January 19, 1990. Only child. Parents musicians. Strongly influenced by uncle, musical engineer, who taught Geiszler the basics of electronics; also avid consumer of manga and monster movies. Combination of these influences and genius-level intellect led Geiszler to voracious interest in all sciences. Second youngest student admitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Received six doctorates by 2015, taught MIT 2010-2016, pioneered research in artificial tissue replication. Joined PPDC 2016. Psychological profile indicates profound ambivalence toward kaiju resulting from conflict between childhood adoration of monsters and contemporary observation of kaiju attacks. Borderline manic personality, poor social skills. Has performed critical research leading to upgraded Jaeger armaments. (p. 92)

Note: The bios of Raleigh Becket, Mako Mori, and Stacker Pentecost provided by Guillermo del Toro on Twitter mostly all lined up with the information in their personnel dossiers in the novelization - albeit trimmed down.

There is a noteworthy difference between the dossier and the DVD bio, however - the DVD bio specifies that Newt's father was a piano tuner, and his mother was a coloratura opera singer. So the rest of the information here probably isn't too off-base, but it's certainly been simplified somewhat.

ROCK STAR, THOUGHT NEWT GEISZLER. ONCE he’d wanted to be one for real. Now he would settle for the figurative sense… at least until they won the Kaiju War and he could get back to the business of putting a band together. He hadn’t been onstage since the Gymnasium back in Berlin, where he and the Black Velvet Rabbits had bent the heads of geeks at every all-ages club he could haul his gear to. (p. 94)

Note: The pieces of Newt's bio on the DVD don't mention the Black Velvet Rabbits, but they do confirm that Newt wants to "live the life of a rock star" and Newt performing at "all-ages clubs" in Berlin would make sense given his young age when attending MIT (he was their second-youngest student).

Now it was time to tinker, like he was building instruments for Black Velvet Rabbit. (p. 94)

Newt and his Uncle Gunter had struck the same sparks when Newt was a kid, tinkering in the basement of Gunter’s studio, where fringey techno musicians stood around making sounds and waiting for Gunter to come up with the next innovation that they would turn into the club tracks that pounded out of speakers all over Europe. (p. 95)

Note: According to the DVD bio, Newt's uncle was an "eccentric electronics engineer." Additionally, parents and parental-type figures who smoke heavily is a thing Guillermo del Toro does a lot.

Also worth mentioning is that the bio fragments in the DVD give his uncle's name as "Illia," which suggests that the bio was revised at some point. Given that the DVD bio lists Newt's age as 45, rather than 35, I think it's safe to say that the DVD bio is the out-of-date version, and "Gunter" is the newer name.

Newt preferred the term “squid cap,” because the one he had wasn’t sealed into a full polypropylene head covering. It was a naked web of receptors and feed amplifiers. If you mashed it out flat it looked like a spiderweb with big red plastic nodules at the end of the radiating strands. If you dangled it over your head, it looked like a squid with several extra tentacles… and big red plastic nodules at the end of each one. Therefore, squid cap. It would be the interface with his brain. (p. 96)

Note: In Guillermo del Toro's written works such as The Shape of Water novel, inanimate objects are frequently described or compared to animals. "Squid cap" is easily the kind of thing he'd some up with.

The jar of kaiju brain put him in mind of an old movie with Erich von Stroheim. (p. 115)

Note: Erich von Stroheim is the kind of guy an anti-war film buff like Guillermo del Toro would know something about. Furthermore, this also suggests that Newt doesn't only like monster movies - he's quite possibly a film buff in general.

Gunter’s laugh, from his belly, roughened along the way by cigarettes. Uncle Gunter who gave people things before they could steal from him. The gear in his studio. A new sound, one that nobody had ever made before. Lines on a monitor danced out the data, expressing it. Ecstasy of sound and idea, endlessly dividing inside Newt’s mind. (p. 117)

Note: This is exactly the kind of character Guillermo del Toro would create.

“You know, some believe the kaiju are sent from heaven,” Chau said. “They think the gods are displeased with our behavior.” That’s because people are superstitious monkeys until they’re taught better, Newt thought. He remembered seeing some kind of documentary on kaiju worshippers, the Church of the Breach and others. Some of the names— Disciples of the Overlords of the Lands Below was one he remembered. There were prayers to the kaiju, people claiming that they were entitled to religious holidays during kaiju attacks, all that kind of bullshit. (p. 186-187)

Note: This particular piece of writing is a hell of a thing, because it displays a hostility toward religion that neither Guillermo del Toro nor Travis Beacham seem to share. With that said, the character of Newt Gotlieb in the draft script was established to be an atheist, and Travis Beacham essentially said on his blog that Newt didn't go for the whole kaiju worship stuff because "he's a total man of science, through and through." So I'm pretty confident that Newt in the film was conceptualized as an atheist - albeit not this much of an asshole about it.

He was a terrible dancer, fully aware of and undaunted by his terribleness. (p. 214)

Note: Again, the kind of stuff Guillermo del Toro comes up with.

So yeah, that's the novelization material that I am pretty confident came from Guillermo del Toro's biography for Newt, because it matches his general creative style or is corroborated outright elsewhere.

[foster-the-moths]

oooo dont know anything abt pacific rim but hell yeah 👀

its just "humans use big robots to fight big monsters" basically LMAO but i realized it had some parallels to tmc so. i got a bit silly lol. putting it under a readmore bc its Long

brief pacific rim summary for those unaquainted: bascially monsters start appearing from the ocean and fucking shit up so humans make these big robots to fight them BUT its really dangerous and requires 2 people who are 'drift compatible' to pilot them (basically its the ability to control a big robot with ur mind while also being in sync). thats all u really need to know for this au i think

pacific rim au: this is based purely off of my memories of the first movie (which. i watched when it first came out in uhhh 2013!!!??!?! THIS MOVIE CAME OUT IN 2013??? 10YEAR AGO A DECADE??? WHAT THE FUCKanyways. um. i'm probably missing some stuff but whatever<3 -kaijus become a thing in like. idk 1980 or so. -by the time mark and cesar are 18 the big robots exist. what are they called. JAEGERS thats it. -mark and cesar get sort of. drafted into testing it out and find out they are drift compatible!! -i think in this au they are besties but. they could be worsties. maybe. perhaps toxic if thats what canon says. but in the origin draft of the au they are besties so im going with that -anyways they fight kaijus for a bit and they are pretty good at it!! until a kaiju attacks their hometown (or something. idk how an ocean beast would get to wisconsin. WAIT lake superior AND lake michgan flank wisconsin i can use this) -okay so. a kaiju comes out of the great lakes and the government is like"???? THEY CAN DO THAT??? fuck." and send mark and cesar to deal with it since they. live there -everything goes to shit when a kaiju (altcesar) attacks mandela, their hometown, and ALSO where sarah is!!! and shes like. 5 or smth -so mark is SUPER stressed out, his sister might be dead already, and to top it off?? the kaiju can like. idk hijack their drift link or whatever idk still working on that. im trying to incorporate alternate bs into how kaijus work -anyways mark is the one the kaiju targets and it uses cesar's voice/image to fuck him up and both cesar and mark die. and sarah watches it happen. oops. -sidenote: altcesar kaiju is based off of the crab one. bc sarah is loosely based off of the main protag girl in the movie whats her name. MAKO MORI. apparently. she watches her brother die + entire county get destroyed -another sidenote: since secar apparently DOESN'T die in canon. maybe he survives in this au?? mark is dead as hell tho :(( -anyways sarah is so so traumatized by that. however she is also VERY FUCKING ANGRY because uh. turns out mark and cesar were not the only ones patrolling winconsin!! thatcher and ruth were meant to be back up but uh. they. did NOT get there in time. and sarah thinks maybe if they had gotten there in time mark wouldn't have died. -speaking of those two. ANOTHER kaiju attacks mandela not too long after altcesar does and um. thatcher and ruth DO go out to deal with it but. ruth gets knocked unconscious during the fight. and thatcher can't wake her up. so half of their jaeger is just powered down and stationary while the kaiju rips its arms off and tears into the cockpit. eventually thatcher realizes he has to evacuate to save himself. he tries to bring ruth with him but he can't. -needless to say. thatcher is DEVASTATED. he feels like a coward, even if he DID follow protocol, and he never really forgives himself for leaving ruth behind. dave supports him through it, but. he never really recovers after that.

-…and fast foward 17 years, to the actual events of the au!! -bps is founded by sarah to um. idk actually i have NO fucking clue what they are doing in this au but it IS just. VERY ILLEGAL. and they get caught -however, the government can find literally nobody to pilot the giant murder death trap robots due to A) how rare a drift link (or. whatever its called im 99% sure its called that) is and B) nobody wants to fucking do that. so they just decided to say "hey. you guys are criminals. BUT if you go in the giant death trap robot AND you can pilot it then we'll forgive your criminal charges!! :)" because of course they would do that -anyways. bps agrees to this. and it turns out jonah and adam are drift compatible!! hooray!! they get to pilot a jaeger together -…which leaves sarah. due to testing her against adam and jonah, the government knows she CAN connect to a jaeger, and pilot one. she just needs a partner. -which is were thatcher comes in. he takes the place of the guy whos brother dies in the movie. -sarah is NOT FUCKING HAPPY about this. the moment she recognizes him she freaks OUT. immediately starts chewing him out. -however, she does have a deal to uphold, and she has to at least TRY to pilot the jaeger with thatcher. so they do a testrun and. it turns out they ARE compatible. -so with that the government goes "okay cool we're sending all of you to the faciltiy (or whatever idk)" and. sarah fights this tooth and nail until she realizes they. really don't give a shit LMAO -so she's stuck with thatcher. and her two idiot coworkers but thatcher is the real issue. -so they get shipped over to the training facility and. start training. -dave and evelin take the place of those two gay scientists. dave has so many kaiju tattoos n shit and evelin is just Normal. just kidding shes weird too shes just better at hiding it lol. evelin is officially his 'assistant' and mentor but dave treats her as an equal. they are silly scientist coworkers -dave and thatcher are also still friends. not sure if its strained or not but i dont think it is they can be silly. besties even. -i also think dave is sarahs estranged but still on good terms uncle. hes is ESTATIC to see sarah!! she hates that hes friends with thatcher but she is literall incapable of being mad at dave so she just takes it out on thatcher instead LMAO -also dave sits thatcher down and is like "y'know i think this is good for you actually. being a mentor figure really helped me w moving on i think you could really bond with my cool awesome neice :D!" "dave she tries to kill me every ten seconds" -anyways the au centers around sarah and her relationship with thatcher from one-sided enemies to eventual found family :)

other things: -adam glows in the dark and is just sort of fucked up. surely this means nothing (he is not entirely human) -oh yeah jude and lynn are killed by the same alternate that kills ruth. i think. or it was six but when thatcher and ruth are sent out altthatcher double teams them and thats why they failed. -vol 2 sort of happens (the girls are fighting) but jonah does NOT die. -dave gets hooked up to a kaiju brain like the guy in the movie and like. his brain implodes a little bit and his eyes bleed but hes (mostly) fine^^ -all of the alternates are kaijus i get to be soooooo silly with designs :3 -dave and sarah lost contact when sarah started bps so they are very happy to reunite -i am just making shit up about a movie i saw a literal decade ago so. um. im probably missing a lot of important stuff but oh well lol. -i also have a barebones alt version of this au where everyone lives and nothing bad happens and they just fight monsters. bc i got sad.