#pacific rim draft script

[driftwithme]

Seeing the script draft is so weird but cool.

I love seeing the little parts and recognizing how they morphed into the final movie. Like how the therapy session when Raleigh said he wantes to bury the past and be at peace (I am not a driver anymore) became Raleigh on the Kaiju Wall. Or how at first the scene he watched on the tv around the lobby was one of a destroyed jaeger. Mako (who is 22 years old and Raleigh is 23 years old), is already a full j-pilot walking out, since she just lost her co-pilot in the attack. That scene changed into the Striker Eureka victory and Chuck's interview!

[satanindisguise]

Finally read the Pacific Rim novelization. It was, somehow, worse than people had led me to believe.

My main points:

The writing was...well. The shortest way to put this would be that either nobody ever taught Alex Irvine to show, not tell, or he just didn't care for the advice. It was a bit of a slog to get through.

Every time Tendo was named, it was his full name. Other characters were referred to by their first names for the most part after initial introductions, but Tendo remained "Tendo Choi" every time. Killed me.

Same as the above, but for the Jaegers.

Mechanical components were often frequently written out in full, as though the reader wouldn't have caught them the first six times.

The entire deal with Mako and Raleigh's relationship. I did not appreciate the way that was written at all, and I'm not even against them as a ship.

Characterizations. I don't know who these people are, but I absolutely don't know them. These aren't my guys.

(I did like the Kaidanovskys and the Wei Tang triplets actually getting lines though. Wish we'd seen more of them in the movie itself)

CONSISTENCY. I recognize, of course, that novelizations are written based on draft scripts. I was willing to forgive that. I can't forgive it for contradicting things it had already said, sometimes within lines of each other!

(Best example of the above: Raleigh states there were no Mark-5 Jaegers around during his initial service, then remarks that he'd dropped with Striker Eureka once, no more than five lines later. Pick a story, man.)

A personal pet peeve:

This one comes from the actual creators, I'm sure, but I'm a firm hater of the "dinosaurs were prototype kaiju" idea. Leave them alone!!!

There is also a part to this in which Newt contemplates how life on Earth seems to have stemmed from the Precursors sending the dinosaurs. Starts to feel like this is less 'colonization' and more 'we're living in our parents' place'.

All of this is, of course, just how I viewed things as I read through. Quite frankly I didn't consider the novelization in any way canon before I read it and actually going through the entire thing hasn't changed that.

In short, this has given me a dangerous fantasy about rewriting the damn thing myself.

[katrani]

2025 Books: Phantom Menace

I do love movie novelizations. Mostly. Sometimes they're made before a final draft, and give a cool look at some alternate version! Sometimes they're cheap, basically ghost-written, just the script with some prose tacked around it. But other times you get stuff like Pacific Rim, where the book was as much a work of love as the film itself.

This one is....... somewhere in the middle, but definitely closer to the cheap end, it feels like.

I didn't even have a strong want to read this one specifically, but I have heard actual praise for the novelization of RotS, and my brain won't let me just jump to that one, I have to read the other two first, even though I know how the movies go. Just in case the authors somehow all agreed on a trend or something I guess?

Anyways. This one is serviceable, I got some good lines out of it for Anakin's mental state, there's some extra stuff that makes it clear even in 1999 they had a strong idea of how the entirety of Anakin's story would play out- some actual foreshadows and some prophetic dreams already that match up with AotC and RotS scenes.

But there's not nearly enough description, if someone wouldn't be able to watch the movie for some reason so would turn to this. Like I really have no idea what the ships or creatures or outfits would look like, based on the descriptions here, without drawing on the visuals that I know exist. The PoV switches are messy- sure, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and even Jar Jar would think of Padmé as a "young girl", but why are Anakin's sections also using that? She's 14 to his 9, she would seem like a cool young woman to him, probably.

I could have done with less hammering on the budding romance at this point. Next time I watch the movie I won't complain as much about how the Gungans talk, because reading it is so much more arduous. The choreography was hard to follow- again, I shouldn't need to lean on what I know of the movie's visuals, if this was a successful book on its own merits, but I find it hard to believe someone would completely understand how the fights played out based on they're written.

It's fine, overall, but definitely not one I'll keep around.

[monsterblogging]

*Eye glow* Hello! You have found my special interest!

I spent a few years collecting literally all of the lore there was to collect on Pacific Rim, reading every available book and comic, reading creator interviews, finding promotional material, and even going through the creators' social medias.

Now, our boy Travis Beacham (the original creator of Pacific Rim) was definitely in a freaky little headspace when he came up with the Drift, and oh boy did he love to talk about the Drift on his blog.

First, he did confirm that people can pick up characteristics from each other:

In short, yes you can "catch" certain personality traits from each other in the drift. You are always yourself, but there's definitely an influence of some sort at work. If an introvert consistently drifts with an extrovert, maybe the introvert gets a little more vocal and the extrovert gets a little more chill. (Source)

But - he also stated that the drift doesn't let you access a person's entire brain. You're only exposed to what they are currently thinking about right now:

The thing to understand about the drift is that it’s not a database. You don’t know everything your partner knows all at once. You perceive your co-pilot’s thoughts and feelings as they happen. (Source)

So essentially, you pick up your partner's traits and characteristics from active exposure. Think of it like an old married couple who's been around each other for so long they've picked up a lot of each others' traits.

During Newt and Hermann's drift with Mutavore's brain piece, it doesn't appear that they were thinking of anything kinky, so it doesn't seem likely they'd pick up each others' kinks here. While one might argue that Newt just finds kaiju hot in general, I don't think what Newt actually experienced in the hivemind would really do it for him. The Precursors are just awful, and he's seeing them assembling living, feeling creatures to use as weapons of genocide. It's horrible in every direction.

But does this mean there is no way for the pair of them to pick up each others' kinks? Mmmm, no. Travis Beacham, in his infinite erotic wisdom, left us with something: ghost drifting.

Ghost drifting didn't appear in the movie itself - at least, not in any obvious way. But we know it's a thing he had on his mind for awhile, because the earliest textual appearance we have for it is the draft script.

Here's how Beacham described ghost drifting on his blog:

A rare, unanticipated consequence of the neural handshake is that a crew will sometimes find that their link remains somewhat active (though muted) even after they’ve disconnected from the hardware. This will invariably manifest as shared dreaming. The condition is known to the pilots as ghost-drifting. It is not common, but the first reported case came reliably from Doctor Caitlin Lightcap herself, the inventor of the Pons system. Even so, Doctor Lightcap and the PPDC’s other experts remain at a loss to explain the mechanisms behind this phenomenon. (Source)

Now let's go to page 49 of the draft script, where Raleigh and Mako experience ghost drifting:

They look deep into each other's eyes as they draw closer. Tight on their faces as their bodies touch. Each draws a gasp of surprise, without looking down. They don't have to.

We see why -- their clothes are suddenly gone. Skin to skin.

Their intimacy hidden, pressed between them. Goosebumps prickle their bare torsos.

Getting a little steamy in here, or is it just me?

Beacham would bring ghost drifting into the tie-in comic, Tales From The Drift. In this story, the PPDC pairs together the most unlikely drift partners - despite the excellent drift compatibility they showed while working together in an emergency, they actually hate each other as people. Yet despite this, their repeated drift exercises lead to them ghost drifting, and they eventually sort out their shit and become the pilots of Tacit Ronin. (Beacham really loves the Enemies to Co-Pilots trope.)

So I would say that it's not likely that Newt and Hermann would pick up much from each other from their first drift, ghost drifting would provide a mechanism for quite a lot to happen afterward... at least, assuming the Hivemind isn't also in there to interrupt them.

But I would also argue that they might have picked up on a lot from each other already. They've known each other for eleven and a half years. Furthermore, Hermann and his father were both involved in the production of the Mark-1 Jaegers, with Hermann programming at least some of the code. It seems unlikely that they wouldn't have met Dr. Caitlin Lightcap personally and learned quite a bit about drifting and ghost drifting (she experienced it with her partner and later husband, Lieutenant Sergio D'Onofrio) and how it all works.

When we see Hermann actually drift with Newt, it's clear he doesn't see any particular reason they would have problems. He just assumes this is going to work out okay. He's also not particularly worried about what Newt might see in his brain, despite it being well-known that initiating the drift tends to dredge up extremely personal and sensitive memories. He's not really concerned with what he might experience from Newt, either, even though Newt isn't really subtle about his weird interests.

And like, these are both characters partially developed by Guillermo del Toro, in a film he also directed. And if there's one thing I've noticed from watching del Toro films, it's that that being into some kind of weird shit (usually involving monsters in some way) is just kind of a default setting.

do u think the freaky ass scientists in pacific rim gained each other's kinks after drifting in the alien brain. or are u not blessed with Sight like i am.

[kaijuposting]

The Pacific Rim Draft Script: Who The Heck Is Newt Gotlieb?

Some of you may have heard (or even read it on Travis Beacham's blog) that Newt Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb were originally one character. And indeed, in the Pacific Rim draft script, we can find a guy named Newt Gotlieb.

But if we read through the script, we can see that this an oversimplified statement. Newt Gotlieb has a different vibe from the both of them, and it's very obvious that Newt Geiszler was strongly influenced by another character.

Newt Gotlieb is a particle physicist who works for the Calixto Particle Observatory near Lima, Peru. At some point before the story, he began e-mailing Felicity "Flick" Kincaid, reporter and former girlfriend of Yancy Antrobus, who wants to uncover the mysteries of the kaiju and maybe even find a way to stop them. But it seems he got cold feet, because whenever Flick tried to e-mail him for more information, his replies were "vague and infrequent."

Finally, Flick tracked him down to his workplace. Here's his introduction and first scene:

INT. MAIN CORRIDOR -- CONTINUOUS Flick enters the dim hallway, relieved to be in from the cold. No sound save for the BUZZ of fluorescent lights and the ghostly CROONING of the wind outside. She spots a man come out into the hallway and linger, engrossed by his clipboard. He wears headphones, listening to music. He hasn't noticed her.

He's NEWT GOTLIEB (33) -- a lanky, unkempt academic with scruffy brown hair and an impish grin. Geekishly cute in his own peculiar way. Flick attempts to get his attention.

FLICK Excuse me… (he doesn't hear) Excuse me! Finally he looks up and takes off the headphones.

FLICK (CONT’D) I got an e-mail from someone here in reference to an article I'm --

NEWT You're Felicity Kincaid.

FLICK You can call me Flick… And you must be gotlieb @ calixto.org?

NEWT No. No, I'm not.

She glances at nametag on his lanyard: "Gotlieb." He relents.

NEWT (CONT’D) What are you doing here?

FLICK You e-mailed me. “I have info relevant to your investigation.” That’s what you said.

NEWT I figured you probably got stuff like that all the time.

FLICK I don’t. How substantial is it?

NEWT I don’t know. But I know COSDEC’s got it too, and I know they don’t talk about it.

FLICK All the more reason to have this conversation in person, right?

He turns to go.

(A quick note - "COSDEC" stands for "Combined Special Defense Corp." It's essentially an older version of the PPDC.)

Newt Gotlieb also works with a "stout, bespectacled scientist" named Myron Toynbee. Toynbee is glad that Newt e-mailed Flick, because there's some hot scientific data they're sitting on that Toynbee would rather the world know about. Eleven years ago, Gotlieb and Toynbee worked for a Doctor Ivo Czerny, who discovered that the kaiju were coming from a portal leading to a parallel universe. Soon Czerny got a call from COSDEC and went to work for their sci-division... until one day, they exiled him to the Australian outback.

Flick decides to talk to Doctor Czerny, and Newt follows after.

Across the lobby, Newt enters off the street, looking lost. He cranes his to scan the casual crowd of GUESTS. He searches and finally spots Flick at the front desk. He beams.

NEWT Hey! I caught you.

Finished with both her transactions, Flick hangs up and turns, a bit surprised to see Newt.

FLICK What are you doing here?

NEWT Well, I was thinking -- You're going to need some help.

FLICK You're bold all of a sudden.

NEWT I got you into this. I feel like I need to own up to that.

Before they can leave for Australia, a kaiju attacks and the pair of them have to avoid getting squished. After escaping, Newt cleans Flick's wounds; Flick abruptly insists that they'll never have a relationship, and Newt plays ignorant.

They reach Doctor Czerny, who reveals that the Interstice is a portal to an older, dying universe. He believes that the Precursors used a particle accelerator to create a new universe - our universe. When Czerny refuses to give Newt and Flick more answers, the pair of them poke around his place.

Flick picks her way into a quonset hut, but she's caught by Czerny, who reveals how he learned this information: he drifted with a kaiju brain. He lets Flick drift with the kaiju brain he has.

While this is going on, Newt discovers Czerny's data on the Interstice, and discovers what appears to be a weak point. Czerny, who has made up his mind that there's simply no stopping the Precursors, attempts to blow the whole place up with a nuke to try and stop Newt from bringing false hope to the world. He attacks Newt, but Newt escapes and rescues Flick before the bomb can go off. (It's quite obvious that this inspired the scene of Hermann rescuing Newt in the film.)

Flick reveals that she learned through her drift with a kaiju brain that the Interstice is stabilizing, which means that the weak point Newt discovered can be targeted. The pair of them take their discovery to COSDEC. The scene where Newt explains the Interstice's weakness is very similar to the scene where Hermann explains how he believes that detonating a nuke in the breach will close it.

Mako and Raleigh close the Interstice, and Newt holds onto Flick as they wait to find out whether they survived.

I'm sure you've noticed that Flick has quite a lot in common with Newt Geiszler, and that her interactions with Newt Gotlieb strongly mirror interactions between Newt Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb. So while I would say that this statement that Newt and Hermann used to be one character isn't exactly wrong, I would also propose that it's just as accurate (if not more accurate) to say that Newt used to be a gal - until Guillermo del Toro transed his gender.

[newtliker]

the original draft of the pacific rim script is so strange and offputting

[avelera]

Just skimming the Old Guard comic and it really does highlight the strength of having the writer on the script team for the film as well as taking a second look at the story. The movie as a result really feels like a third draft and adds a lot of polish. The bones are there in the comic, but I’d argue almost every scene gets improved in the film.

- Having the movie open with the team dying so we can circle back to them coming back to life. It bypasses the need for verbal exposition on the fact they’re immortal in favor of raising a question for the audience to sink their teeth into, then showing how they come back to life. Meanwhile, the comic opens with Andy sleeping with multiple partners as a sign of her world weariness. Besides feeling very male-gazey, it doesn’t actually add anything to the themes of the story. A woman having multiple partners hasn’t been shocking since the 60s, nothing new is told with this about the story or about Andy. Her sex life is largely irrelevant to the story from that point forward.

- Nile’s introduction is reinforced by having her be active in resisting her own effective kidnapping in the film. She frees herself from the car, she stabs Andy (in the comic, Andy shoots herself to prove she’s immortal too), whereas in the comic there’s no fight on the plane. These new additions do a LOT of work in introducing us to Nile as a person and as a strong, effective protagonist, an equal to other members of the team from the outset.

- The safe house in the comic is basically a crack house. But that idea really is not that edgy anymore, imo, hasn’t been since it first became a cliche in the 90s. Nowadays it’s just kinda dated, tawdry, sad, and frankly classist. Whereas the abandoned church plays well to the movie themes of faith and timelessness, it reinforces the idea of our heroes being historic relics from time just like their home and serves as a beautiful backdrop for various scenes. It makes their safe house feel homey, which turns the Old Guard from kind of sketchy people Nile would be justified in escaping ASAP, into people we the audience also want to spend time with by having their home be a place we want to go, that has a sense of magic to it. This serves to strengthen the story’s overall appeal.

- Merrick is kind of just a violent rich punk in the comic. He’s got tattoos, a bad attitude, and acts like the tired stereotype of a gang member. A cleaned up pharma wunderkind is much more threatening in this day and age in terms of sheer body count, and it’s more shocking when he has that moment of violence where he seems to enjoy stabbing Joe, whereas in the comic the violent punk seeming to enjoy randomly stabbing his prisoner just doesn’t land as all that shocking a turn. The comic also has Dr Kozak as a kinda stereotypical male scientist with chunky glasses, reminiscent of Newt Geiszler from Pacific Rim (which kinda made me hate it when they killed him in the comic). Having the doctor be a woman breaks the sexism cliche and having the scientist live breaks a lot of tired, anti-intellectual action movie cliches around evil doctors being killed as an act of vengeance by the protagonists (now, we may see later whether or not that was a good move, but at least it made sense that some bad guys would get away in the chaos by FLEEING FOR THEIR LIVES IMMEDIATELY). 

[scarlet--wiccan]

re the pacrim anon - iirc the main jaeger was supposed to be named after some kind of world war engine that was really powerful, but honestly even if you knew that, the name is still offensive to use, no matter the intention. they had the chance to rename it in the sequel but not doing so spoke volumes to me (esp when a lot of people had spoken up about the name well before it)

whooo girl, I was not expecting the PacRim discourse to get this hot! 

In the mid-1900s, de Havilland produced a series of engines with names such as “Gipsy Moth,” or “Gipsy King.” So, the robot may have been named after a historical aircraft engine. I can understand why Beacham, the screenwriter, would look at such references when naming the Jaeger mechas, but he could have chosen... literally anything else. Anybody-- an editor, a producer, even del Toro himself-- could have made note, at any point during pre-production, that this name was inappropriate and suggested a change. Maybe somebody did, and they got shot down!

Beacham claims to have been totally ignorant to this issue when making the film, but early drafts of the film’s script reveal that he was drawing on specific details of both racial stereotypes and real Roma language. This actually reminds me of how Elizabeth Olsen feigns ignorance about her Avengers character being whitewashed, when we know that she, Whedon, and the Wanda/Vision showrunners have drawn on specific stereotypes, and made references to specific source material, which prove otherwise.

According to the PacRim wiki:

In the original screenplay for Pacific Rim, Gipsy Danger's key signifier and namesake was the image of a pinup decal featuring a "buxom Gipsy riding a bomb". Respectively, its pilots, "Raleigh Antrobus" and Mako Mori, were referred to as "Roma 1" or "Roma 2", "Roma" being the colloquial term for the Romani people of Europe, the Americas and Asia.

When Beacham was contacted on the matter of part of the name's definition on his twitter account, he claimed that he named Gipsy Danger after the pre-World War II aircraft engine, de Havilland Gipsy, designed by Frank Halford. He apologized, saying that his knowledge of the term's definition was "context-specific" and that he was unfamiliar with the pejorative use and promised to "be more careful" in future.

[inquisitoradaar]

i found a pdf of the first draft of the pacific rim script and my god. i am so fucking thankful gdt got involved

[driftwithme]

Reading the script draft by Travis Beacham is is painful :( still I like how in both this script draft and the final movie, Pacifim Rim starts with Raleight and he's feelings.

Well, in the script draft first thing you hear is Yancy's voice celebrating the Kaiju they just "killed" and Raleigh worrying because maybe it can come back??? And it did.

[monsterblogging]

How Pacific Rim gives the finger to the Catholic Church

Another interesting thing that many people miss about Pacific Rim is that it has some... things to say about religion, especially the Catholic Church. It can be easy to miss because it's not all spelled out for you, but once you see it, you'll never unsee it.

First, let's take a look at Raleigh's speech from the beginning of the film:

There are things you can't fight, acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you have to get out of the way. But when you're in a Jaeger, suddenly, you can fight the hurricane. You can win.

This speech here establishes that when you fight kaiju, you aren't just fighting monsters. You're defying God himself.

"You're reading too much into it!" some of you might say. "'Act of God' is just a legal term for massive disasters."

Ah, but I'm not reading too much into it. Because this line was originally found in the draft script, which was way more explicit in linking the Precursors with the divine.

In the draft script, the Precursors aren't just some random alien invaders. They're actually the creators of our universe, and we're just a pesky little accident that happened on the planet they want to live on.

The character of Ivo Czerny, who had drifted with a kaiju brain, was given this dialog:

I looked into the abyss. I’d been infected with the truth -- that this is the end of us. We are the vermin of the gods. There’s no point in putting up a fight…

A different character, Commander Kaz Takada, says:

We call the enemy the Precursors… I may as well tell the world the gods want us dead.

The character of Newt Gotlieb is given this dialog:

I don't care if they are the creators of the universe. I like the universe.

And I'm not a creationist.

So, Raleigh's line wasn't just a careless reference to a legal term. It was introducing the story's thesis.

In the final version of the film, we don't have all of this explicit dialog. And yet, the sentiment is still there. How do we know this? For one thing, the Precursors are modeled on Catholic clergy. Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, & Monsters, quotes Guillermo del Toro as saying:

We gave the Precursors elements of ecclesiastical royalty, dividing them into cardinals and bishops.

Fun fact: If we go to the old Art of Pacific Rim page on The Internet Archive and check the filenames, we can see that this Precursor - the one who stares up at Lady Danger as it goes 'splodey - is a Precursor Bishop.

(Screencaps from quiteunlikely.net)

Further establishing the link between the Precursors and the Catholic Church are the costumes of the BuenaKai nuns:

(Screencap from movie-screencaps.com)

A better picture of the costume can be found on PropstoreAuction. If you want to see the whole thing, go there; because I'm going to crop it because the whole thing's pretty big. Anyway, you can see that their costumes include cornettes and stoles.

(By the way, there are also kaiju monks. This isn't a girls-only club like the Netflix cartoon would have you think.)

Now, forget everything you know about Uprising or The Black, and consider all of this in the context of the anti-authority themes in Guillermo del Toro's other work. This casts the nature of the Precursors and the hivemind in a somewhat different light than many of us are used to. These aren't just scary aliens. This is a civilization built on ideals of rigid hierarchy and total dominion. And they're also essentially theocrats.

What's also really interesting is that when you take all of this together, it means that the kaiju spiritualists aren't actually wrong in regarding the kaiju as divine beings sent by the gods. They're just assholes for aligning themselves with a malefic divine.

[maevesdarling]

Secrets from the Drift

This is an AU based on my all time favorite movie, Pacific Rim, in which Javier and Steve are jaeger pilots. Their jaeger's name is Black María, after the one from GDT's original idea for the second movie. Black María was supposed to be piloted by a latin couple but was written out of the script when GDT dropped out of the movie, but I really liked it, so I decided to give it a second life in this short snippet. Maybe, if I find the time, there'll be another installment, because Pacific Rim AUs are one of my favorites and I can't get enough of this pairing. This was written back in March or April this year but I forgot I had it in my drafts. Sorry!!!

Pairing: Steve Murphy/Javier Peña

Rating: Mature

~~~

He's exhausted when the jaeger makes it back to the Shatterdome, sweat clinging to his skin and a tired burn behind his eyes. From what he can tell through their shared connection, Javi isn't feeling any better.

"Hey buddy, you alright?" He asks, forcing himself to take another step and another, their jaeger, Black María, slowly hobbling back towards it's place in the dome, where a bunch of mechanics where waiting to repair her. 

Javier grunted his response, too fixated on keeping his body in motion. It was only their third successful mission, but this time was different. This was their first solo mission, the battle had taken over six hours. Now, the remains of the category three kaiju where drifting towards the coast of Panama, where a clean up team was already waiting to salvage what they could. Black María had taken a few bad hits, damaging the right leg and some of the weapon systems which caused the jeager to limp through the shallow water, not one but two alarms constantly going off in the cockpit, still, they were alive and that was all that mattered.

The moment they came to a halt, a sudden rush of emotions crashed over Steve, threatening to overwhelm him. He could feel that these feelings weren't his, but Javier's, projected onto him through their shared bond. Images started flashing in front of his eyes, Javi and him on the day they first met, a late night sparring session, the first time Javi saw him in full armor, he had never realized how open Javi had oogled him when he appeared in the jaeger cockpit, all wide eyed and still wet behind the ears, but now it was like somebody had forced him to open his eyes to the inevitable.

Javi was in love with him.

"J- Javi-" He gasped, it felt emotionally overwhelming, to be bombarded with all these emotions, tears threatened to spill from his eyes. He threw a glance at the dark haired man, Javier looked like he was about to be sick, he had never seen him that pale, not even after their first battle. "Javi, calm down… It's okay. It's okay, I understand…"

The love he had felt just seconds before was making way for panic. "Steve, I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry! I didn't meant to-"

"Shhh…" He unhooked himself from the cables he'd been latched onto and crossed the distance between them, pulling his helmet off as he went.

"Javi look at me. Fucking look at me!" He grabbed his co-pilots face in his hands and forced him to look him in his eyes.

"I love you too, you stupid bastard! Okay? I love you! I've loved you since the day I got here and you volunteered to show me around! I love you even though you're side of the room looks like a bomb has gone off, I love you even though you eat the food I store in the fridge for myself, I love you even though you always use up all the hot water when you shower! I love you!" 

He pulled the other man's helmet off and pressed a quick kiss to Javi's lips. The dark haired man sobbed loudly, pulling him closer.

"I didn't wanted you to see me like this… God, it's pathetic. I'm so… pathetic. I shouldn't feel like this. You- you have Connie…"

"Connie loves you too, Javi. We both do. There's more than enough space in my heart for both of you."

They smiled, resting their foreheads against each other. 

"You smell." Javi teased after a while.

"Yeah? You too. Let's get out of these suits and take a shower… Together."

"I like the sound of that."

They exited the jaeger together, not bothering about the stares. Half of the j-tech department probably heard their love declaration, and those who hadn't would soon be informed by their colleagues. Everyone loved gossip, even during the apocalypse.

They were stopped on their way by Colonel Carrillo and his new drift partner, Trujillo. 

"Well… Congratulations." He clasped both of them on their armored shoulders. "I've always knew there was more to you two than friendship. Good to see you figured yourselves out."

"Yeah." Javi said, almost possessively pulling Steve closer by his waist.

"Talk to Gaviria when you can. I'm sure he'd like to be informed…" The colombian gave them both a knowing smile. "He won't mind."

"Sure. If you'll excuse us."

Giggling like school boys, they practically ran the rest of the way back to their room. "Did you see Carrillo's face? 'I've always knew there was more between you two' fucking bullshit, I tell you he was just as surprised as the rest of them." Javier mocked.

"So? I heard some of the ladies at J-tech started crying because you're officially off the market, Peña."

"Yeah? Well I heard-" Before he could go on, Steve was kissing him again, more passionately this time. They blindly fumbled with the door, somehow managing to open and close it behind them without even looking.

"I want you out of this suit and in the shower in five. Go." Javier rasped, pulling apart to catch his breath.

And fuck, if that wasn't the hottest thing Steve had heard in a while. He rushed to get out of his armored suit, throwing most of it onto the floor as he went, before he rushed into the bathroom, turning on the hot water. The small room was instantly starting to fill up with thick dunst. 

He waisted no time to get into the shower, washing his body with some lotion he found. 

"Did you start without me?" A very much naked Peña teased as he entered the bathroom, sending shivers down Steve's spine.

"Maybe…"

"Fuck- do you know how long I've been planning on doing this? You're driving me insane, Murphy." The dark haired man said as he stepped into the spray of water.

"Back at ya." Steve retorted, backing up until his his back was pressed against the wet tiles.

"I want you." Peña said in a low voice, cornering the blonde man. His hands were resting on either side of the wall.

"Then come and get me. I'm all yours." Steve answered, tilting his head so that their mouths were angling perfectly against each other.

This time, it wasn't just Javi that used up all the hot water, needles to say they didn't make it out of the shower for some time and when they did they were both boneless and practically dead on their feet, stumbling towards Steve's bed like zombies.

"Can I-"

"Are you really asking me if you can cuddle with me after you just fucked my brains out, Javi?"

The dark haired man blushed slightly. "I actually wanted to ask if you could be the one cuddling me? I- I like to be the little spoon. Makes you feel safe." 

"I know. I- I saw you. In a memory." 

Warmth flooded his body. Affection, Love, Tranquility. They had always liked to spend time with each other but never like this, with their naked bodies tangled together in the sheets, water droplets running down their bodies, disappearing into dips and seeping into the bedspreads.

Tomorrow, they'd have to give their report to Gaviria, oversee all the repairs to their jeager and probably give an interview or two about their triumphant win, but tonight, they'd be sleeping soundly in each other's arms.

"I love you, Javi." Steve mumbled tiredly, on the verge of falling asleep.

"Love ya too, Murphy." Javi mumbled after some time. It was the last thing either of them said for some time as they slept peacefully together, holding each other close.

[festiveferret]

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works? 6. What element of writing do you find comes easily? 12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about. 35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want! (Maybe what’s the oddest thing you’ve ever researched for writing? Or even, how do you usually do your research?)

I did 3 for the last one, so I’ll do the others!

6. What element of writing do you find comes easily? 

Dialogue! I love dialogue. I write it in my head all the time. I love writing scripts. Sometimes I have to remember to slow down and add action and description instead of just forever writing dialogue 😅

12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about. 

Ooo. Lately, I’ve been mostly excited about a collab project, but I generally keep those secret, not knowing how the other feels so... Hmm. I’m excited about a plan I have for a Pacific Rim AU.  I have it all planned out. But I’m intimidated by getting the world-stuff right so it’s been slow going. I may end up needing some help with that one, haha. But I really hope it happens!

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want! (Maybe what’s the oddest thing you’ve ever researched for writing? Or even, how do you usually do your research?)

My usual approach to research is to leave [] in my story when I need to look something up, finish the whole draft, do a ctrl+F on my [] and then cry when there are 18 of them. Then google until I’m frustrated (four point three seconds), beg discord for help, and then usually make something up that doesn’t quite fit. I don’t like research!

Thank you!!

[luimnigh]

One thing I love about Pacific Rim is that Raleigh is the main character by virtue of story focus, his story isn't the usual main hero one. He's actually the mentor figure.

It's Mako who gets the typical main character storyline, right up until the end where Raleigh detonates Gypsy solo.

I absolutely believe that in the original drafts of the script, Mako was probably the main character while Raleigh was the deuteragonist. And they probably were pressured by the studio to make Raleigh the protagonist.

And they did that by simply changing the story focus, giving us Mako's heroic arc while satiating the demands of the studio.

[kaijuposting]

In the Pacific Rim draft script, the Precursors actually started sending people nightmares to try and demoralize them. This doesn't appear to be a thing in the final version, but it sort of makes me wonder if the beings on the other side psychically reached out to people and that's one reason we have kaiju cultists.

[sunriseverse]

Who are Steven and Travis and what’s the beef

steven: directed pacific rim: uprising. this speaks for itself i think.

travis: wrote the pacific rim (first movie) script. also the initial copy of the script had gems such as, oh, raleigh lowkey saying he didn’t save yancy because yancy was engaged to raleigh’s ex gf

(from the wiki on the draft script)

(if you want to hurt your brain, here’s the link the copy of the draft script)