#pacific rim meta

[prongsmydeer]

Things I Kept Thinking About While Watching Pacific Rim (2013):

It's crazy that there are only two female pilots when the entire premise of Jaeger Pilots is a capacity for intellectual and emotional vulnerability with each other. I feel like you are way more likely to come across women who are skilled in doing that than men

I thought at some point they might return to why the Jaeger pilots were being defunded, considering it was by far their most efficient way of dealing with the Kaiju. I understand that if the film is taken as an allegory for climate change, that move represents a form of environmental nihilism, but the metaphor kind of falls short when the same nations they're representing are also deeply militaristic. The more likely outcome than rerouting resources away from a military operation, would probably be the alliance itself falling apart? I think if the film had used that premise, it would more strongly contrast with why the Jaeger rebellion, which persistently believes in the power of cooperation, empathy, and collective action, is the best solution

I did appreciate the detail that most people defaulted to their first language in times of trouble (Mako speaking in Japanese during her fight, Sasha and Alexis speaking in Russian during theirs, etc.) or when they wanted to communicate privately (like Mako commenting on Raleigh when she thought he wouldn't understand) and I think that helped the movie to expand beyond an American War Movie

On that note, I feel like what the movie lacked in strength of dialogue (often feeling very American War Movie), it more than made up for in interesting world-building and character dynamics. The idea that Stacker knew Mako should be a pilot, but was reluctant to put her and Raleigh in the same Jaeger, due to their mutual Kaiju trauma, was so interesting. The concept of drift compatibility, very cool. The concept of the rapid technological evolution of Jaegers from analog (nuclear) to digital, with both of them having clear drawbacks, very cool. Even just the concept of Raleigh being one of the only established pilots to be completely and utterly willing to let any stranger in his head. I feel like I could think about this movie for hours

Truly, they breezed past the dinosaur thing. Nobody even questioned it!!! What do you mean, the dinosaurs were a trial run? They really needed a paleontologist on their research team

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

I don't know if this was asked before, but could kaijus realistically exist in the Twilight world? Or would Aro have considered them too much of a threat and wiped them out alongside other threats to humanity?

Man, I remember seeing this, but for the life of me I can't find it on the blog either so I may have just let it rot in the inbox. Oh well, we can do this now.

Can Kaiju Realistically Exist

Yes. Absolutely

The thing about the whole backdrop of Kaijus (I'm assuming from Pacific Rim) is that they're extradimensional creatures designed for warfare. They're not the true enemy but also they're not from here. The aliens showed up during the Triassic Age, looked around, went "ah shit, we can't actually survive here" and then waited for millions of years until we'd polluted the planet and made it habitable for them.

Namely, they showed up before human history, and the kaijus only appeared extremely recently in history (2013) with no way of the Volturi having been able to predict their appearance or close the interdimensional portal deep at the bottom of the ocean where they purposefully put it to avoid discovery/closure.

Aro would certainly have considered them a massive threat, especially since we find out their M.O. is actually to wipe out the dominant sapient creatures (humans) in order to colonize the planet and that these creatures are actually just designed weapons. The entire point of Kaijus is to exterminate mankind. That's a big no for the Volturi.

Would Pacific Rim Happen?

I imagine Aro's funneling all the money he can into the R&D efforts to stop these fucking things and would very well be trying to figure out where they're coming from, what are they, and how the hell do we get rid of them?

The Volturi may or may not find out about the rift as humanity does and they may be able to survive getting much closer to it without equipment than humans can.

Pacific Rim ends the Kaiju attacks initially when they nuke the portal, so the Volturi may be able to send someone to the other side before this point and kill everyone over there but given that the environment is likely markedly different (as the whole point is earth had to be polluted to a certain to degree to be remotely livable) I don't know if even vampires could do well over there.

But I imagine there's a lot of looking for "close the fucking portal" gifted vampire on Aro's end or "blow up giant lizards" gifted vampires. Both of which, sadly, Aro does not have in his arsenal (I doubt Jane and Alec would be effective as Kaiju brains != Human/Vampire brains at all)

[avelera]

I think the term, “flaws” as a necessity for writing well-rounded fictional characters is often misunderstood. It can lead to new writers thinking these flaws should be in a laundry list alongside their OCs hobbies, eye color, and favorite food.

All of the above traits shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. They all need to serve the story in some way, usually by illustrating plot, character, or themes in a way that enhances the story.

Saying a character’s flaw is that they’re “clumsy” isn’t really a flaw unless this trait stands between them and what they want in a meaningful way. Being clumsy is an obstacle for a dancer, or for a teenager who will be socially judged and derided in a meaningful way to the story. Even still, it’s a somewhat shallow and overused flaw.

What got me thinking about this is the fanfic characters I tend to enjoy writing are flawed people. The more flawed, the better.

I struggled to write Nicky and Joe in The Old Guard because they don’t really have any flaws. They’re never stupid, or selfish, or awkward, or mean. I couldn’t really write them until I wrote a story where the plot is that one of them gets returned by amnesia to his pre-character development Crusader self, back when he was prejudiced, quick to anger, and provincial in his world view. Then I had somewhere to go with them.

By contrast, Newt and Hermann from Pacific Rim are riddled with flaws, and it made them not only popular characters, but a blast to write. They’re rude, loud, snarky, selfish, self-involved, self-important, arrogant, and mean. They’re also both sincerely trying to save the world and willing to sacrifice themselves to do it if necessary. It makes them a wonderful mass of contradictions and it makes them feel like real people.

And recently I wrote about my desire to write Dream and Hob from Sandman as more like their comic selves, with all the rough edges and taciturn misanthropy and selfishness and rudeness that implies. I don’t want to write perfect people.

I saw a post that imagined Hob as passionate about returning artifacts stolen by the English to their country of origin. It was a very sweet post and fun, don’t get me wrong. But as a perverse creature, my first thought was, “Ok, but what if he wasn’t? What if he, as a former bandit and soldier for the Crown, wasn’t in favor of the artifacts being returned? What if he was the opposite?”

Now to be clear, I think it’s more in character for the brief glimpse of the Teacher Hob we see for him to be more worldly, more in favor of repatriation. I genuinely think that take is probably more accurate to the character.

That’s not the point.

The point is that I think one way to avoid creating these sort of perfect shiny soft characters with all the rough edges sawed off is to ask, “Ok but what if they didn’t do the right thing here?”

What if they don’t have perfect, up to date progressive political views on all possible topics? What if they weren’t always altruistic? What if they don’t always say just the right thing to their lover when that person is feeling down? What if they have moments where they’re stupid, selfish, insensitive, prejudiced, rude, awkward, or off-putting?

Personally, I think that’s how you get more interesting characters, who are more like real people and, more importantly, have room to grow or sometimes not grow in a way that better serves your story.

[riafunnel]

Oh my god I just realized that aside from giant robots beating up Kaiju another reason I fucking love Pacific Rim is that Mako & Raleigh in the drift is pretty much similar to what Van & Hitomi have!!!!!

They're so in sync that they can sense each other's thoughts/emotions!!!!

[monsterblogging]

Narratively, I think becoming a Jaeger pilot should be treated the same way Star Trek: Deep Space 9 treats becoming a Starfleet officer.

Like, there's nothing necessarily wrong with it, but it's not inherently good, either. Starfleet isn't some immensely evil oppressive force or anything, but it's not infallible, and it's not some ultimate force of goodness. And it's perfectly fine to want to do something else with your life.

[chibi-chaos]

I’d like to take this my dear @eadrey-the-iptscray​ and raise you.

Pacific Rim uses bridges as their thesis. It is the core concept that they expand on, which you give several good example of.

Bridges, let’s go specifically involve the drift, is about connecting two people who may be very different (ie. how we have Raleigh the seasoned American veteran with trauma, Mako his opposite in several ways, nationality, time in a Jaeger, much more academically smarter than him.) 

We can point out how many other Jaeger pilot pairing so vividly different and one other example I want to say is Kaori and Duc Jessop where literally Kaori doesn’t know English and Duc doesn’t understand Japanese but after the drift Kaori starts speaking in English - a first step into bridging the gap the two have.

But what is a thesis without it’s antithesis?

In this case I want to argue the antithesis is walls.

Where bridges connect two places, two people and so on. Walls do the opposite. They block.

In Pacific Rim there are a few walls I want to raise.

1. Anti-Kaiju Wall (alternatively the Wall, Coastal Wall or the Wall of Life) - how many times in history has the apparently solution for some been “we’ll build a wall”.  The wall literally splits Sydney in half, and as we see in the movie living conditions on the wall and likely around it are bleak. There is no hope in walls like there is in bridges.

2. Societal walls (barriers) following on from the failure of the Anti-Kaiju wall we have another form of a wall we can find in a news report (I love how this move puts so much lore like this). One politician claims the UN are moving millions of people to safe zones following the walls failure with Mutavore - but what is noted by the reporter is only the rich and powerful are being moved. Once more another divide of society thanks to a wall.

3. Mental walls - I don’t remember if this is one that could be explicitly pointed to, but I am going to say that it is hinted to more than once. What is a threat to a successful drift (or relationship) is walls, mental walls from trauma and hurt. We see several characters who have built walls to ignore the pain (some more literally than others in the case of Raleigh I’d argue)

The movie shows that bridges are needed, some purposely seeking to destroy them, they connect humanity but literally and figuratively. While walls divide or block of things that will inevitably breakthrough, which only delays that one needs to focus on as to be able to move on.

It’s a simple message perhaps. But it’s one that I feel is needed.

going absolutely FERAL thinking about all the circular storytelling in Pacific Rim.

like........

bridges

Trespasser destroys the Golden Gate Bridge on K-Day

Caitlin Lightcap invents the Pons system (pons is Latin for "bridge"!) to help fight kaiju

Newt uses the Pons system to drift with a kaiju and becomes a bridge between humanity and the Precursors (also narratively bridging the gap between Pacific Rim and the sequel but I digress)

Newt and Hermann also use the Pons system to drift with the baby kaiju and learn how to destroy the Breach that way

aaaaaand G. Danger jumps through the Breach (a bridge between Earth and the Anteverse!) to kill the Precursors & kaiju and everything comes full circle with the destruction of ANOTHER bridge

[mollyencrypted]

Thesis: Alien Vs Predator (2004) is good because it asks 'what if the horror movie monster decided not to kill you and instead helps you save the world and maybe crushes on you a little?' and Pacific Rim (2013) is good because it asks 'what if the mortifying ordeal of being known gave you the ability to inflict science-fiction violence upon representations of modern dangers?', and Venom (2018) is good because it makes each of these questions the answer to the other.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

ok so i was actually kinda surprised to find that looking at the ao3 stats and adjusting for how long ofmd’s existed (a year and a half) vs how long the stucky fandom’s been around (coming up on a decade), not only is gentlebeard on par with stucky but it actually beats stucky for amount of fics written. but i’m making a prediction now just based on how i’ve observed fandoms to work: i do think the gentlebeard popularity will peter out faster than stucky did

i’m not saying bc i think gentlebeard is worse or the ofmd fandom is weak or anything, i’m saying this bc in fandom it seems like the white masc queerbait ships* have like, an absurd amount of longevity that goes way beyond the general fandom surrounding whatever media said white masc queerbait ship hails from. im thinking abt the protagonist/rival ship from the TERF wizard series that nobody decent talks about in public anymore. before we all cut jkr out of our lives, people were still churning out fics abt the main character and that racist blond kid pretty regularly. and another example, we have those scientists from pacific rim that are more popular than any of the main characters from that movie. it’s been years and the newt/hermann fandom is still going strong.

and i say “newt/hermann fandom” intentionally, bc that’s the thing that i think actually gives these ships their longevity: when there are fans who are primarily invested in a piece of media because of a noncanonical masc4masc queerbait ship, they’re not really fans of the media itself. i mean, some of them might be, but if they are then that’s in addition to being fans of this alternate queer interpretation of the media in question. they’re a fan of the fandom mass hallucination that the fans collectively and collaboratively invented of a romantic/sexual/homoerotic relationship between two guys who on-screen might hug like once or twice (or sometimes even never)

and i’m pretty sure the reason this sort of fandom phenomenon tends to have so much longevity is bc the fans have already created this whole extensive romantic storyline using what is often some pretty minimal canonical material to work with. so when the movie franchise or the tv show ends and the shippers no longer have any new canonical material to work with, they can keep going for years because really, they were already making shit up from the start.

so compared to that, gentlebeard is way different bc everything the fans might have invented on our own the show pretty much already did for us, and anything the show didn’t do yet is probably coming for us this season (or in s3, fingers crossed). i’ve mentioned before how a lot of fanfiction seems to fall on a spectrum between “fix” and “expand,” and by the end of ofmd i doubt there’s gonna be a whole lot that gentlebeard fans feel like they need to “fix.” versus stucky, where there’s so much that needs to be fixed that you might as well just throw the whole canon out.

i don't really mean any of this as a criticism or an attack on fans of queerbait ships like this, im just pointing out fandom trends that i've noticed. i myself have been deeply invested in stucky, newmann, and the gay wizard boys at different points in my life. like there is something very fun abt putting on slash goggles and making queer content out of nothing. personally though, now that we're in an age where we're getting canon queer content, im not so engaged in a lot of the ships i used to care so much about, but i don't think it's inherently wrong** for people to still enjoy some classic fandom queerbait ships. it's just a very different thing from enjoying canonical queer ships like gentlebeard

*im using “queerbait ships” loosely to include popular gay ships in media that was never in a million years going to make these characters gay.

**a clarifying point: i don't think it's inherently wrong, however there are a lot of problematic elements to this kind of fandom activity, namely the way a lot of these queerbait ships will dominate a fandom while other characters who are important in canon get completely sidelined (and yes, the sidelined characters are often women/poc). also, less importantly, when people's primary media consumption revolves around strip mining canon for shipping content, this absolutely destroys their media literacy and critical thinking. again, im not saying this to attack ppl who engage in fandom primarily through fic/art of noncanonical gay ships, i myself have done the same thing. but i think ppl who do should also make a conscious effort to also engage with fan content that centers women/poc, or at the very least need to be aware of the issues around this kind of fandom activity.

[sailorsol]

Thinking about Pacific Rim on the way to work this morning, as one does, and how there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how nuclear reactors generate power. They would be terrible power sources for mechas, not just because of radiation concerns, but because of how much stuff they require. Like, inherently, you need the reactor but you also need a cooling system that generates steam to power a steam turbine to generate power in an electrical motor. Even a small reactor system like in a nuclear powered submarine is significantly larger than most people think.

Like, a Los Angeles class fast-attack submarine is 350 ft long. Almost half of that space is taken up by the power plant system. That's 175 ft, or over 50 m. That's roughly equivalent to a 14 story building. Gypsy Danger is 260 ft tall. If 1/3 of its height is the torso, that's ~80 ft. Not enough room for a small nuclear power plant. And that's with what we were capable of building in the early 2010s. That space also doesn't take into account all of the coolant needed, whether it's a water-cooled reactor or a sodium-cooled reactor. And that's not even considering the weight of all of that stuff. Plus the fact that, while a sodium-cooled reactor may be more efficient, it is also highly flammable. There's a reason Jimmy Carter refused to allow sodium-cooled reactors on US nuclear submarines, and he was basically considered the father of the nuclear navy.

On top of all of that, nuclear reactors are fussy. They don't like getting knocked around. There's a lot of delicate instrumentation, and the entire system is running at high temperatures and high pressures. We're talking 250 to 300 °C (482 to 572 °F) and >2000 PSI (136 atm, or 136 times normal outside pressure). You need a very robust system of pipes and pumps to handle that sort of thing, and if any of it breaks, at best you're getting irradiated water and at worst you could be looking at a hydrogen or sodium explosion depending on the type of cooling system.

All of these concerns regarding weight and size are basically why nuclear-powered jet engines never took off (hah). Yes, they were actually being designed, by both Pratt & Whitney and General Electric, the two major jet engine manufacturers in the US. While the GE design was "relatively" small, it was a direct air cycle, which means that the air powering the turbine was heated up directly by the nuclear reactor, meaning that the exhaust from the engines were irradiated. So using it meant spewing radiation behind it.

That's not even taking into account that the first nuclear-powered jaeger was built in ~2014, a time when nuclear power was especially contentious. If it had been pre-Fukushima, when the "nuclear renaissance" was still holding strong, I could believe that they may have tried for a nuclear-powered jaeger. But post-Fukushima? Not so much.

So yes, it's highly unlikely that we would have developed nuclear-powered mecha. What's more likely is that we would have seen huge advances in rechargeable batteries, fuel cells, and electric motors. We are just now seeing in the early 2020s an electric motor that can generate power on the same scale as a combustion jet engine, but the amount of power to run that motor is still beyond the capacity of what we have for battery storage. And the problem we see, of course, with the rechargeable batteries being used in electric cars is that they tend to catch on fire.

All that being said, yes, I recognize that it is a sci-fi movie and the science aspect is more or less just ignored. But this is what happens when you have a bored writer who has also been in the power generation industry for nearly 17 years.

Tl;dr. We wouldn't have used nuclear-powered mecha, we probably would have advanced electric motors and batteries by leaps and bounds.

[foursaints]

genuine question.. what media, literature, etc are you consuming engaging with? because i read your asks and its like your brain is operating on a fundamentally different level than everyone else. im literally reading "barty crouch jr fucks like a starving persistence predator on the savanna who sunk his teeth into a wounded antelope" nodding my head agreeing EXACTLY but... how do you think of these things fr

anon you’re too nice to me i don’t know how to answer this. i’m an english lit major & all i consume is like. books nobody cares about and jstor scholarship on my highly specific stupid interests . for class

[unkindcorvid]

Ten movies I think Dean would've watched (and liked) that weren't referenced on the show. What movies do you think he'd like?

[irisbleufic]

So, I spent the last 5 days of sitting around with this serious arm injury rereading the very first epic fic series I ever wrote. Although the posting dates on the below chapters are all 18 November 2013, the reality is that these were originally posted as individual stories on LiveJournal throughout the entirety of 2004 and into the spring of 2005. Those were my junior and senior years of college. This series was the last thing I relocated from LJ to AO3, and I was too exhausted to do a proper comb-through for typos and minor formatting issues.

Well, that state of things is no more. I cleaned up all of the editorial issues during this week’s rewatch-the-film-and-reread-my-fic binge. I also changed the names of a few of the chapters (they’re really stories strung together), although not drastically. The chapter called “Clippings” used to be called “Business,” “Spiral” used to be called “You Must Listen to Me Now,” and “Closer to Fine” used to be called “The Middle of Things.”

I had an ask a few days ago along the lines of: What the hell is Toy Soldiers, anyway? On the surface, it’s a 1991 action movie/teen drama. It stars a young Sean Astin and Wil Wheaton as Billy Tepper and Joey Trotta, the central protagonists among the cast of younger characters. At the time I saw it in early 2004, I had only ever seen Sean Astin in The Lord of the Rings. And, incredibly, I didn’t even know who Wil Wheaton was.

That might be one reason I was able to take this film to heart so earnestly (i.e. I completely lacked knowledge of Wesley Crusher, Wheaton’s Star Trek character from around that time who it was traditional to mock, although I still don’t get why). However, the primary reason this film wrecked the back end of my 2004 spring break was that I had watched The Celluloid Closet for the first time only days before watching Toy Soldiers.

I challenge any queer person to watch this documentary (about the Hays Code and the horrible fate met by queer-coded and queer characters in cinema) and this under-appreciated action film back to back and come out of it without feeling devastated and furious about what happens to Billy and Joey. Especially to Joey. And now, in an era of rampant school shootings and hostage situations, Toy Soldiers hits with even more gravity than it did in the 1990s and early 2000s.

These boys are where it started for me. Every every horrific canon media ending that has ever made me furious, every hundreds-of-thousands-of-words long fix-it series I’ve written in the past 19 years, can be traced back to this moment. This string of stories was what I wrote before I ever wrote the likes of Crown of Thorns (Good Omens), Anthology (Pacific Rim), and Delicate, Dangerous, Obsessed (Gotham). Hell, one of my instrumental original characters in CoT appeared for the first time at the end of Book of Hours before I ever thought to use her in a Good Omens context.

This story has meant the world to me even though the fandom around it at the time of writing, and even now, was never more than about 20 people. Most of those people are still with me, the dearest friends I could ever hope to have 💙

*

Chapter Index for The Series / Book of Hours by irisbleufic

1. Stereotypical (2013-11-18)

2. Persuasion (2013-11-18)

3. Taste Testing (2013-11-18)

4. Leaving a Mark (2013-11-18)

5. Trick or Treat (2013-11-18)

6. Omerta (2013-11-18)

7. Translation (2013-11-18)

8. Sketches (2013-11-18)

9. Falling (2013-11-18)

10. Caught (2013-11-18)

11. What It Takes (2013-11-18)

12. Noteworthy (2013-11-18)

13. These Shadows Have Offended (2013-11-18)

14. Love Never Did Run Smooth (2013-11-18)

15. Within Reason (2013-11-18)

16. Composure (2013-11-18)

17. Clippings (2013-11-18)

18. Without End (2013-11-18)

19. Prologue: Every Hour (2013-11-18)

20. Book of Hours: Part 1 (2013-11-18)

21. Book of Hours: Part 2 (2013-11-18)

22. Flashback: Spiral (2013-11-18)

23. Flashback: Silver (2013-11-18)

24. The Orchids (2013-11-18)

25. Closer to Fine (2013-11-18)

[measuringbliss]

Pacific Rim Masterpost

Because I really needed to organize myself better.

Video essay about lesbian car ads and those gay scientists

Meta:

Hermann's outfits in PRU

Looks and Confrontation ~ PR1 Mako & Raleigh's fanservice + PRU Newt and the Mega-Kaiju

Ramblings:

PRU: Newt Geiszler needs love

The hug

They had to remove Charlie Day's tears in *that* scene

The reason PacRim hits so hard

PRU: Fixation on the gay scientists makes sense and shouldn't be blamed

PRU: These two scientists are not cishet

PR1: Herc, Newt, Stacker and Raleigh

Miscellaneous:

PR3 as a musical

PRU novelization readthrough

Neat PRU Newt & Liwen concept art

PRU Slug Meme

Newt "Straight Straight Heterosexual Straight" Meme

(Writing) Charlie Kelly meeting Newt Geiszler

Bisexual lighting in the PRU artbook

PRU artbook: mentions of script writing

Newmann gay af (see: Chaos Walking)

I doodled Newt

Pacific Rim 3: DeKnight's plans for Newmann

About Newt Geiszler and Wanda Maximoff...

I was NAWT invited for the 10th anniversary zine

[originhl]

TAG DROP 5/6 ( tags for Stick II, Melanoë, Edie Ida )

[avelera]

(Writing Meta) Syncing Opposites: The Stuff of Popular Ships

I've been thinking about some of the fandom-darling most popular ships in my orbit and noticing patterns.

For example, many popular ships tend to pair together two opposites, the Red Oni x Blue Oni, or the traditional Odd Couple pairing (often a comedy duo). Indeed, pretty much ever buddy act in media inevitably gets shipped, even if it wasn't intended, from Mulder and Scully, Kirk and Spock, to pretty much literally any cop duo.

But it's not quite as simple as setting up two people to be opposites, especially if you're a writer trying to make the ship work. To my eyes, the actual formula is this:

Character A x Character B 1) What they have in common that is central to the overarching plot (or their character's individual plot) or theme. 2) A concept that is central to them or their story in which they are polar opposites 3) Bonus points if their character or overarching plots eventually close the gap on the differences between them OR swap entirely.

The similarities and differences are not limited to one each. Let's go through some examples.

Wicked (Musical): Elphaba x Glinda

1) What they have in common: Magic. Both women are interested in improving their skills at magic, one is naturally gifted, the other wants to learn. Or, they both arguably want to be at the center of important events. These desires force them into proximity with each other. 2) Concept central to their story or themes in which they are opposite: Popularity. Elphaba is so unpopular that it's almost comical, whereas Glinda is THE popular girl. There's a song about it and everything. This concept has thematic resonance throughout the story of Wicked, which enagages with themes of popularity, personal presentation, propaganda, and societal injustice. By putting Elphaba and Glinda on either side of the concept of "popularity" we can more deeply explore these themes.

Arcane: Jayce x Viktor

1 ) What they have in common: Science. Science brings these two together into the story and they share the same level of obsession with it. It drives their desires in the world.

2) Concept central to their story or themes in which they are opposites: Physical ability, or arguably, how they are received by others. Jayce is extremely physically able and appears to be something of a generalist who is good at everything he touches. Viktor by contrast has a degenerative illness sapping his life away. He is also introverted and a specialist, more interested in deep-diving into science. He doesn't go outside his lane.

3 ) How the concept swaps: By the end of S2, however, Jayce and Viktor have swapped on who is the able-bodied one. Jayce has been horribly injured and is a ragged shadow of his once "Golden Boy" image, whereas Viktor becomes a beloved popular figure as the Commune Leader and healer of the undercity, he is fully able bodied and indeed enhanced by magic and science (we learn for the worst). This swap is central to Jayce and Viktor's themes of human imperfection being beautiful.

Pacific Rim: Newt x Hermann

1 ) What they have in common: Science (noticing a theme in the ships I like?). Both Newt and Hermann are obsessed with science and, on a more nuanced level, science as a way of saving the world.

2 ) Concept central to their story or themes in which they are opposites: their approach to science. Newt is chaotic and free-spirited, Hermann is methodical and buttoned up in a classic "Odd Couple" pairing.

3) But, by the end, they learn to overcome their differences and, indeed, by the second film they've even swapped places apparently on who is the chaotic one and who is the "buttoned up" one.

The Sandman: Dream x Hob

1 ) What they have in common: Immortality. They visit each other periodically every century in order to talk about Hob's life.

2 ) Concept central to their story or themes in which they are opposites: Approach to life and/or power. Dream is at least passively suicidal at the point he meets Hob whereas Hob wants to live forever. Also, Dream is extremely powerful as a god whereas Hob is just a human being, though he has moments where he has more or less power as a person. While these two never swap in their desire to live, the desire to live is central to their interplay with one another, which allows them to explore the deeper themes of the story of what does it mean to live forever, whether you want to or not.

Eh, I could go on but I'd be more interested to see how others apply this to their ships and to hear from others.

[agentwrongcat]

Uncomfortable confession: I'd never actually watched Pacific Rim until today, just seen numerous gif sets and meta online. So I'm terribly late to the party and I was spoiled on most of the plot points, but why did no one warn me about the gift that is Ron Perlman? (In this movie specifically, I already knew he was a great actor in general)