It can be an intimidating process trying to come up with a way to AU your character from their canon into another universe, which is why the AU Worldbuilding Meme is here to help you! Post a comment here to:
Brainstorm with others about adapting events into the game universe!
Discuss possible impacts of a Pacific Rim setting on your character, and how in-game elements may affect them similarly to in-canon elements.
Look over the AU Handbook and coordinate and discuss the impact of various events on the world over the last seven years.
Help each other flesh out and build past relationships and history for purposes of this game.
Please be respectful within this space, and take the chance to get some excellent brainstorming done together! Please direct AU worldbuilding questions requesting mod response to either the AU Handbook or the P.A.Q./F.A.Q. Thank you!
It should be! Germany has some exposure to the North Sea, but that's connected to the Atlantic Ocean, which hasn't had Kaiju activity at this point in time. They'd definitely stand to have financial impacts and probably love the industry relating to the Jaeger programs (also the names), and the novelization of Pacific Rim introduces the questionable plan of building an underwater wall (??? no really what) preventing Kaiju from swimming around the Diego Ramírez Islands (South America) or Cape Agulhas (Africa) to hit the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Meanwhile California seems to be a matchstick state. I might have missed these in novels, but what were the Yamarashi and Clawhook attacks like in terms of casualties?
Everything is pretty detail light when it comes to the numbers of fatalities in Yamarashi and Clawhook attacks. We know they're far less heavy hitting than Trespasser, who racked up tens of thousands of dead in a several day rampage (even more than that, looking at the regions it traipsed through and how people were dying in the aftermath as well, due to Kaiju Blue).
My presumptions would be looking at several hundred in Yamarashi's attack, staying conservative due to the trajectory taken as stated on the Wikia. For Clawhook, low thousands due to an inability to properly evacuate the city in time.
Considering these creatures are designed as biological tanks attacking heavy population centers, and these ones did manage to make some semblance of landfall, lives were lost. Far fewer than initial attacks, with less nuclear fallout and subsequently less overall structural and property damage than would otherwise be present. Cities are being saved, but the loss of life still continues due to the fact these creatures have no initial focus past the destruction of inhabiting life.
Anyone else planning to play PPDC personnel/K-Science nerds? I'm thinking that this guy has probably been with the organization for several years, most likely with one of the Asian branches.
Yaichirou is too young for it, but I'm thinking his dad was PPDC personnel in the Tokyo shatterdome. Want to say they've met each other through that connection? Yaichirou would be around 15 when his dad got the job, so he'd be nice and bratty.
Excellent! What's Tenpou like, personality-wise and work-ethics-wise? I saw one of those Saiyukis ages ago but I've forgotten everything and mistook Tenpou for Hakkai, so yup. Just want to get a handle on how they would've gotten along.
Yacihirou's big thing is basically an obsession with responsibility and following in Papa's footsteps so he'd vocally disapprove of unprofessional weird habits. He's also super uptight and easy to rile up, so if Tenpou's the type to mess with a bratty kid, Yaichirou would make a great target. Bonus points because Papa Shimogamo is a peacekeeper and if dad tells Yaichirou to behave, he has to grin and bear whatever shit Tenpou dishes out.
Hahahaha, they're going to get along beautifully. Tenpou is an unwashed, chain-smoking, narcoleptic compulsive hoarder with his head in the clouds who is surprisingly very competent at what he does. Basically the opposite of Hakkai in personality and behavior! Yaichirou would hate him (at least at first), and he would definitely mess with a bratty kid (but in an annoyingly vague way so Yaichirou wouldn't be completely sure if he was being teased or not).
Oh man, what fun they will have... Yaichirou likes to assume the worst about people, so he'd definitely think Tenpou's teasing him. That said he'll probably eventually have some super grudging respect for Tenpou. Not that he'll be happy to see him here. Also Papa died a year or so before game starts, so it's up to you whether or not Tenpou knows about that.
If you want another kid that Tenpou might recognize, Kou's family is influential enough that he could have been hanging around the Tokyo shatterdome from time to time as well. Not as frequently as anyone whose parents would have been staff, just along the lines of when important meetings might be taking place. He would have been 11 when the Kaiju attacked and 12 when the shatterdome was established.
He's a snarky, playful kid but he has a good upbringing so he wouldn't have caused any trouble. Sorry I can't offer you any actual co-workers or anything. But if you're interested we can come up with some silly interactions they might have had.
Excellent. Hmm...Kou likes food a lot so he could've been found in the cafeteria sometimes. And he's interested in sports so he might've also been around to watch athletic practices. He's not a child genius or anything but he's fairly smart too, so probably most of the operations around there would have been interesting to him.
He'd behave properly and politely especially if his father or his father's associates were around, but he loosens up right away when no one who will judge him for just being a normal, cheerful kid is looking. Especially since those meetings probably took ages.
Ooh, Tenpou would have hung around in both the cafeteria and the gym (he's more athletic than he looks!) That sounds cute~ Uncle Ten-chan has a huge soft spot for lonely kids which gets him killed in canon.
Sweet. In that case they'll get along just fine! Hmm...what else can I tell you that might be good to know?
Kou was a daydreamy kid. He's sensitive but he tends to keep that mostly to himself. He's generally cheerful and tries to lighten the mood for others too. He's friendly and easy going. All sorts of things he's technically not supposed to be, given family status. But he straightens up in a hurry when his family or other important public officials are around. So Tenpou might be one of the few to have seen the transition if you like. 'Cause he'd have just been playing and checking things out while no one was looking.
Sooo I am thinking of apping Luke fon Fabre as the son of a corrupt politician resulted in a lot of lives unnecessarily lost when kaiju defense/planning for the city (some fictional place north of LA) was funneled to an illegitimate contractor. Subsequently people hate his family's guts and his father was probably killed by a vigilante out for revenge. MOSTLY JUST LEAVING THIS NOTE HERE in case anyone wanted an excuse to be from the same city and maybe know about the scandal/hate luke's guts.
This is certainly something Andrea could be aware of from on the news, considering she's originally out of the LA area (and was piloting out of the LA Shatterdome until recently), if you'd be down for that! Big frowns at everything that had happened, less of anything held on Luke outside of the association and a sort of humor in having him end up being Drift Compatible after all that.
Yay =3c TBH he will be happy to be in chile with people from all over the world who mostly hopefully weren't paying attention to scandals in the american media...
If you want she could even be one of the pilots who stopped the kaiju that hit their city? big hero to anyone who apps from this section of the timeline.
Poor Luke! He'll learn there's probably too much interest in different parts of the globe in what the United States does, but not instant recognition that he'd be more used to from back home.
That attack happened in 2018 for them? In that case, it'd be possible, since 2018 was when Hydra Corinthian was finished. It'd have probably been Hydra Corinthian's first Kaiju Action in the field. Let's go ahead and go with that!
If it's in the news, can Franziska know about it? I still haven't figured out most of Fran's AU and how much of a giant puppyeater her AU father will be, but I'm sure she reads the news either way.
Oh absolutely! Anyone who paid any attention to political scandal in America probably at least heard of it. The trial was probably a big deal. Whether or not she recognizes luke on sight or just his family name depends on how closely she followed it. Most of the focus was on his father, but the spoiled brat who crashed that Porsche daddy bought him with bribe money definitely got dragged into the media more than a few times.
Okay, so, Mike's canon has some things that will mesh well with Pacific Rim, but I still have some questions.
Spoilers below just in case anyone actually wants to watch the trainwreck that is Mike's canon!
In his canon, after being sent to military school for behaviour issues, he was selected via nepotism for an experiment and was mind-merged with a sentient AI that proved dangerous - as in, it went haywire and killed a lot of people while he was still merged with it. After that happened, he was taken captive by his own higher-ups and injected with some neon-greeny serum that erased years from his memory, but left with a computer chip embedded in his forearm under a tattoo that has his classified files on it.
My questions are these:
Would it be better to take Mike from before or after he's forcibly made amnesiac? And if the answer is 'after', how should the AI incident be couched? It does have probes that go into the brain, so I could see it as a possible Jaeger-tech experiment with neural spikes and his memory being erased so he couldn't tell anyone about it, but the chip still being evidence that it happened. If the answer is 'before,' he's more of a blank slate, and a lot of his canon wouldn't really apply.
When you're thinking him over, which of the two is more interesting for you? It'd be possible to work it either way, with the AI he's involved with canonically being a Jaeger-tech experiment trying to either bypass the compatibility issues currently faced in the Pons system, or creating artificial means of allowing single pilot Jaegers (but still finding that the AI couldn't stand in to make up for what a two-pilot brain bridgte could handle.)
If he comes in after the AI breakdown, then the system in place that does alter memories could be justified as being used or tripped to cause short term memory loss that's reinforced by some additional means (maybe via the chip left in him). If he came in before, he has most of that in the front of his mind, which would alter his behavior and expectations (or so I'd expect).
Which is more interesting for you to play around with ICly?
To play him with the amnesia is closest to canon and I'm more comfortable with that, I admit, but this is definitely something I wanted to run past the mods since it makes some calls on behind-the-scenes NPCs and the like.
I do, however, think I didn't state some things clearly. I was wondering on him going to the Jaeger Academy straight out of military school instead of having had the altercation with the AI, and that's what I meant as blank slate and a lot of his canon not applying.
With him having gone through amnesia, there's the possibility of story hooks with his nightmares and possibly some faint memories from what happened - not enough to really pin anything down without mod approval, of course, and maybe even a higher-up wanting to make sure that their amnesia-zapper keeps working, but if that's overstepping, I can go the other way just as easily.
I see! Yes, with a better understanding, I still feel it'll be fine either way. What would make sense to me would be a military development of an alternative means of handling stress load (such as in the Pons system) or a next generation self-aware AI and human interface to control something like a Jaeger system ultimately that fails, or else was hoping to assist in creating people who end up being Drift Compatible via this exposure. What they got was more than they wanted and basically uncontrolled (however you want to play it), and in an effort to salvage any part of the project, they messed with a memory alteration system and sent Mike along to see if the Drift Compatibility bonus actually worked out... though they also wouldn't know if that was nature vs nurture, mores their pity!
Which is one spin on something like that working, for sure, and is something we'd be willing to work with. Having an insider on the PPDC be keeping an extra close eye on Mike to make sure things are staying on track and he's not a threat or liabillity to the other project (failed as it may be) should work fine, and future story hooks that can tie into these things would be interesting to see!
Would anything along those lines be palatable to you? It doesn't need to be specifically what's said above. That's more a suggestion than a mandate! Knowing that something like this is okay, what would your proposal to adapt his history to this game universe be?
I'm glad I asked. Some stuff like this, it's so much better to be safe than sorry.
For his history, this is what I think I'll go with:
Mike grew up in the sole company of his mother, not knowing his father, and thanks to his mother's austerity, he grew up bullied. Instead of just taking it, though, he started to fight back against the bullies for his own sake and the sake of the other underdogs that were being picked on. His mother never stood up for his behaviour and, instead, sent him to military school. When he shipped off, he told her he'd never see her again.
While Mike was in military school for his behaviour issues, Trespasser hit San Francisco, and he lost track of his childhood sweetheart, Sarah. (This leaves it open if anyone wants to app Sarah later.) He went directly from military school to the Jaeger Academy, and that's where he was tapped by Sarah's father, a computer genius named Charles Graiman, for the AI drift compatibility experiment. It would, after all, make finding pilots so much easier if an AI could take the place of a second pilot.
Unfortunately, the AI had ideas of its own and actually took over Mike's mind, using him as its own weapon to kill the people who had experimented on it. They were able to subdue Mike via tranquilisers and separate him from the AI, which was then decommissioned. Graiman's last act was to push for Mike to be allowed into the jaeger program as he had proven his potential, and offered his own retirement following the incident as incentive for them to let him stay.
The only hitch was that Mike knew what they'd done, and the experiment wasn't exactly something that anyone was supposed to know about. So they used a serum that was known for enhancing susceptibility and implanted a chip under the skin of his arm that would keep the memories at bay, then hid the implantation scar with a PPDC tattoo. As far as Mike knows, he got it after his Academy graduation after a night of drunken revelry before shipping out to Valparaiso.
He'd still have some nightmares based on those memories, but he makes himself write them off as inspired by the attack from watching Trespasser take San Francisco. That's better than the other option.
That's where he would enter the game, probably with an unknown watcher at the Valparaiso dome to make sure those memories stay gone. How's that?
This all sounds like it'll work out fine in the game universe! Downtime between when he's out of the Alaskan Academy and pulled in for Valparaíso can be explained exactly how they explained Raleigh's in the film: by not being explained at all really "yeah we let him wander off and work the highly dangerous wall for five years it's all good!"
Stacker Pentecost was probably the official who signed off on Mike's reintroduction to the program, though to what degree he knows on how far Graiman's experiments went, and to what ends, will likely stay an unknown area until if/when it becomes relevant. Having an unknown watcher in the Shatterdome should be easy enough, so altogether, everything sounds good to me.
For all the training it takes to have a jaeger pilot, it seems like they let 'em wander off easy, doesn't it? But thank you so much. Now to start drafting my app. (:
Yuri is being apped as a transfer in from the Alaska academy. He was there for six months and was kicked out/"reassigned" as part of a disciplinary action resulting from some Trouble (a fight or something) that is sort of undefined until I fill in the blanks with CR!
So anyone also coming in from Alaska let me know if you want to know Yuri/know of him/seen him around/DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR HIM GETTING BOOTED. Yuri has a huge issue with people who lack social responsibility or people who abuse their power so whatever trouble he got into probably involved one of those two issues.
For U.S./World news and technology nerds: I'm having Guy Cecil as the son of a super-wealthy, super-high-profile corporate/military family from Los Angeles that got completely decimated in a massive, thousands-dead tragic explosion that no one could figure out the cause of. (IT WAS POLITICAL FOUL PLAY) Anyone is free to play with ANY of this if it sounds fun!! (and let me know if it's too specific / i'm overstepping!)
His dad ran Hod Inc, a powerful military technology development corporation who were reputed for huge public charity efforts and investments in peacetime military tech application for public welfare (this part was not very famed outside of the US, but super famous inside. To the rest of the world, they are definitely most remembered for blowing up. That is mostly what they are remembered for in the US too, nowadays...). When the Kaiju hit, they were then part of American contributions to Jaeger technology. In 2015 during the major push for Jaeger construction and pilots, Guy's mom and sister, both U.S. Marines (Mom a decorated hero), were drift compatible, a perfect match with the family company being involved in Jaeger tech construction! Until tragedy struck, and the whole of Hod - along with the entire industrial sector and a chunk of residential - was leveled in a massive explosion and fire, killing thousands, including the entire Gardios family but Guy. Rumors were flung all over the place - Hod was irresponsible with safety, or Hod flew too close to the sun with something they were trying to do with the Jaeger, or foul play was involved. Guy moved in with ~friend of the family~ fon Fabre, and essentially dropped out of public view, with a very brief resurface during the POLITICAL SCANDAL (see Luke's comment).
Guy is enrolling under his mother's not-famous maiden name, Cecil, and the last time his face was in the news he was 15 and sooty! But staff in the know probably know he's the Gardios heir with a chip on his shoulder, and obviously anyone who drifts with him will figure it out... and tech nerds can know about Hod's stellar tech prowess (and probably suspect foul play the most, if they were also involved in development, 'cause Hod's rep and tech were STELLAR).
AHAHA ALSO I HAVE A QUESTION. I've tapered it down from canon, but Guy has a major anxiety trigger reaction to close proximity to girls - is that still ok (only male sparring partners etc, PROBABLY ONLY GETS IN IF HE CAN DRIFT WITH A DUDE?), or are signs of situational PTSD considered an unacceptable psychological imbalance for a pilot? (i figure it isn't due to the pilots in the movie, but the girl thing...)
Yes, it is okay! Given how it's a large part of what Guy has to deal with in canon, it makes sense for it to carry over in the AU, though I will mention that as with any incapacitating anxiety, Guy will be expected to be working on handling this particular anxiety so that it isn't considered a crippling one in order to make it out of the JA program as a whole. (I.E. someone with claustrophobia would be expected to get a handle on their anxiety and fear, someone with a fear of drowning to do the same. Not to eliminate these fears or anxieties, but to develop a toolset for handling them so that their knee-jerk reactions aren't fight-or-flight in ways which aren't useful for people who will be required to be pretty bulletproof.)
ICly, there's a large group of very qualified professionals to help aid in gaining those skills and offering guidance in getting a handle on the anxiety. When the mentality of the program at large is to produce pilots who are capable of Drifting with more than one partner, part of the expectation on Guy would be that he work on finding a means of handling and controlling his anxiety. OOCly, it may work out that the only people he ends up being Drift Compatible with are male, which is fine! The IC expectation is such that he works on finding coping mechanisms in the structured environment of the Shatterdome and the Ranger program. As long as he's performing well in those environments, how he otherwise handles himself outside of them will be considered his business.
In other words, he may end up finding he has a means to cope with his anxiety triggers in close proximity with women when he has a structured means for interacting with them, but finds it still flares up in casual, unstructured environments.
Does that feel workable for you? Does it make sense why that would be the IC expectation from the PPDC?
That is all totally workable to me! It sounds like something I'd love to play, so it's perfect. OOCLY I would not want to limit to only male Drift Compatible candidates at all, but was unsure if that element of his character would ICly be considered too high-risk. Guy forms many of his deepest, most critical bonds and partnerships with women, and fights alongside them - in this case, it'll only be his insecurities, and lack of knowledge, that make him doubt he's able to be Drift Compatible with a woman in this AU! Guy working through the process of professional help and guidance for his PTSD and the character arc that will result sounds amaaaazing, and sounds like a perfect AU equivalent of what happens in canon. Thank you very much!
Anybody else coming from Japan? Kou will be keeping his canon life in a small town (not Inaba but a real town that is similar enough) but since his Daddy is rich he's done some traveling around and been to some boring social things and business conferences, etc. So there's a chance he could've bumped into some of your dudes if you like.
Yes! Yaichirou will be in Kyoto until he's 15, at which point he moves to Tokyo with Papa's PPDC job. Papa was a city councilman in Kyoto so Yaichirou's probably been to his fair share of social events and business conferences. He takes them super seriously though. If Kou is bored at them then he obviously has no ambition and doesn't think about the future enough.
Hahaha. Kou acts the part the best he can in public, because he genuinely cares about his family and the impression they want to make. But when he's not under a spotlight he definitely blows raspberries all over the whole affluence and traditional culture deal. To him it's a duty, but it's definitely not one that he enjoys.
He'll be 16-almost-17 when the game opens, so old enough that he was being seriously groomed to take over the family until his baby sister was born. Because of this he's sort of adrift as far as what he's supposed to do with himself at the moment (like in the game) so the whole thing leaves a bad taste in his mouth until he gets that sorted out for himself.
Oh hey, so if they never met outside those fancy events then Yaichirou might actually really like him and be in for a nasty surprise when they meet at the shatterdome. Which do you prefer? Either option is viable.
Yaichirou is 19 at game start, btw. At their age, that 2-3 years can definitely matter.
SO I GUESS I AM APPING A SECOND. assuming that is allowed?? I think it's allowed. I hope so.
anyway. Simon of Gurren Lagann fame. THE ROUGH BACKGROUND right now is he and Kamina were from a small mining town in canada, and after a kaiju attack squished their town killing their parents kamina forcefully dragged Simon to the academy in alaska insisting they were drift compatible obviously and they were going to kill all the kaiju together. A confused and distressed simon followed and blah blah stuff happens a couple years later they are indeed piloting a jaeger, probably based in Nagasaki.
After a year of piloting together Kamina dies in a particularly brutal attack, and after dealing with his grief in his own way, Simon takes up the encouragement to enter the academy in chile to seek out others he can be drift compatible with cuz he's not done fighting Kaiju
Simon will be about 20 (i'm moving around timelines in this AU cuz obviously simon wasn't piloting a jaeger at 13) a veteran pilot, somewhere in the middle of his arc to becoming the badass who can destroy the heavens with his drill, and of course had all of the fame that comes with being a ranger tho honestly he always was kind of obviously in kamina's shadow.
AND SO BASICALLY OBVIOUSLY TOUCH BASE ME IF YOU WANT TO HAVE KNOWN HIM either from his time in the alaskan academy (would've been around 2018) or his time as a pilot (2019) or if you were just fans of his and kaminas (jaeger name pending).
Late to offer this up but anyone from Alaska is welcome to have seen Yancy around during the times he would've been there.
He'd have been friendly in general for people who came across him but fairly distanced from the academy program due to the differences in the way Alaska was run. But he could've been spotted or approached in the cafeteria.
Kate is from New York. Much like in canon, her dad is incredibly rich because of the company Bishop Publishing, for those people who pay attention to books.
Kate might have been seen in some fancy parties, but she generally flies pretty far under the celebrity radar. So if there are any other rich kids, they have probably been in touch.
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academyooc2014-01-26 09:38 am
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My presumptions would be looking at several hundred in Yamarashi's attack, staying conservative due to the trajectory taken as stated on the Wikia. For Clawhook, low thousands due to an inability to properly evacuate the city in time.
Considering these creatures are designed as biological tanks attacking heavy population centers, and these ones did manage to make some semblance of landfall, lives were lost. Far fewer than initial attacks, with less nuclear fallout and subsequently less overall structural and property damage than would otherwise be present. Cities are being saved, but the loss of life still continues due to the fact these creatures have no initial focus past the destruction of inhabiting life.
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Yacihirou's big thing is basically an obsession with responsibility
and following in Papa's footstepsso he'd vocally disapprove of unprofessional weird habits. He's also super uptight and easy to rile up, so if Tenpou's the type to mess with a bratty kid, Yaichirou would make a great target. Bonus points because Papa Shimogamo is a peacekeeper and if dad tells Yaichirou to behave, he has to grin and bear whatever shit Tenpou dishes out.no subject
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He's a snarky, playful kid but he has a good upbringing so he wouldn't have caused any trouble. Sorry I can't offer you any actual co-workers or anything. But if you're interested we can come up with some silly interactions they might have had.
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He'd behave properly and politely especially if his father or his father's associates were around, but he loosens up right away when no one who will judge him for just being a normal, cheerful kid is looking. Especially since those meetings probably took ages.
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which gets him killed in canon.no subject
Kou was a daydreamy kid. He's sensitive but he tends to keep that mostly to himself. He's generally cheerful and tries to lighten the mood for others too. He's friendly and easy going. All sorts of things he's technically not supposed to be, given family status. But he straightens up in a hurry when his family or other important public officials are around. So Tenpou might be one of the few to have seen the transition if you like. 'Cause he'd have just been playing and checking things out while no one was looking.
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it's ok dad can have ruined lots of lives
more people should hate luke
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If you want she could even be one of the pilots who stopped the kaiju that hit their city? big hero to anyone who apps from this section of the timeline.
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That attack happened in 2018 for them? In that case, it'd be possible, since 2018 was when Hydra Corinthian was finished. It'd have probably been Hydra Corinthian's first Kaiju Action in the field. Let's go ahead and go with that!
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Spoilers below just in case anyone actually wants to watch the trainwreck that is Mike's canon!
In his canon, after being sent to military school for behaviour issues, he was selected via nepotism for an experiment and was mind-merged with a sentient AI that proved dangerous - as in, it went haywire and killed a lot of people while he was still merged with it. After that happened, he was taken captive by his own higher-ups and injected with some neon-greeny serum that erased years from his memory, but left with a computer chip embedded in his forearm under a tattoo that has his classified files on it.
My questions are these:
Would it be better to take Mike from before or after he's forcibly made amnesiac? And if the answer is 'after', how should the AI incident be couched? It does have probes that go into the brain, so I could see it as a possible Jaeger-tech experiment with neural spikes and his memory being erased so he couldn't tell anyone about it, but the chip still being evidence that it happened. If the answer is 'before,' he's more of a blank slate, and a lot of his canon wouldn't really apply.
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If he comes in after the AI breakdown, then the system in place that does alter memories could be justified as being used or tripped to cause short term memory loss that's reinforced by some additional means (maybe via the chip left in him). If he came in before, he has most of that in the front of his mind, which would alter his behavior and expectations (or so I'd expect).
Which is more interesting for you to play around with ICly?
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I do, however, think I didn't state some things clearly. I was wondering on him going to the Jaeger Academy straight out of military school instead of having had the altercation with the AI, and that's what I meant as blank slate and a lot of his canon not applying.
With him having gone through amnesia, there's the possibility of story hooks with his nightmares and possibly some faint memories from what happened - not enough to really pin anything down without mod approval, of course, and maybe even a higher-up wanting to make sure that their amnesia-zapper keeps working, but if that's overstepping, I can go the other way just as easily.
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Which is one spin on something like that working, for sure, and is something we'd be willing to work with. Having an insider on the PPDC be keeping an extra close eye on Mike to make sure things are staying on track and he's not a threat or liabillity to the other project (failed as it may be) should work fine, and future story hooks that can tie into these things would be interesting to see!
Would anything along those lines be palatable to you? It doesn't need to be specifically what's said above. That's more a suggestion than a mandate! Knowing that something like this is okay, what would your proposal to adapt his history to this game universe be?
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For his history, this is what I think I'll go with:
Mike grew up in the sole company of his mother, not knowing his father, and thanks to his mother's austerity, he grew up bullied. Instead of just taking it, though, he started to fight back against the bullies for his own sake and the sake of the other underdogs that were being picked on. His mother never stood up for his behaviour and, instead, sent him to military school. When he shipped off, he told her he'd never see her again.
While Mike was in military school for his behaviour issues, Trespasser hit San Francisco, and he lost track of his childhood sweetheart, Sarah. (This leaves it open if anyone wants to app Sarah later.) He went directly from military school to the Jaeger Academy, and that's where he was tapped by Sarah's father, a computer genius named Charles Graiman, for the AI drift compatibility experiment. It would, after all, make finding pilots so much easier if an AI could take the place of a second pilot.
Unfortunately, the AI had ideas of its own and actually took over Mike's mind, using him as its own weapon to kill the people who had experimented on it. They were able to subdue Mike via tranquilisers and separate him from the AI, which was then decommissioned. Graiman's last act was to push for Mike to be allowed into the jaeger program as he had proven his potential, and offered his own retirement following the incident as incentive for them to let him stay.
The only hitch was that Mike knew what they'd done, and the experiment wasn't exactly something that anyone was supposed to know about. So they used a serum that was known for enhancing susceptibility and implanted a chip under the skin of his arm that would keep the memories at bay, then hid the implantation scar with a PPDC tattoo. As far as Mike knows, he got it after his Academy graduation after a night of drunken revelry before shipping out to Valparaiso.
He'd still have some nightmares based on those memories, but he makes himself write them off as inspired by the attack from watching Trespasser take San Francisco. That's better than the other option.
That's where he would enter the game, probably with an unknown watcher at the Valparaiso dome to make sure those memories stay gone. How's that?
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Stacker Pentecost was probably the official who signed off on Mike's reintroduction to the program, though to what degree he knows on how far Graiman's experiments went, and to what ends, will likely stay an unknown area until if/when it becomes relevant. Having an unknown watcher in the Shatterdome should be easy enough, so altogether, everything sounds good to me.
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So anyone also coming in from Alaska let me know if you want to know Yuri/know of him/seen him around/DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR HIM GETTING BOOTED. Yuri has a huge issue with people who lack social responsibility or people who abuse their power so whatever trouble he got into probably involved one of those two issues.
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His dad ran Hod Inc, a powerful military technology development corporation who were reputed for huge public charity efforts and investments in peacetime military tech application for public welfare (this part was not very famed outside of the US, but super famous inside. To the rest of the world, they are definitely most remembered for blowing up. That is mostly what they are remembered for in the US too, nowadays...). When the Kaiju hit, they were then part of American contributions to Jaeger technology. In 2015 during the major push for Jaeger construction and pilots, Guy's mom and sister, both U.S. Marines (Mom a decorated hero), were drift compatible, a perfect match with the family company being involved in Jaeger tech construction! Until tragedy struck, and the whole of Hod - along with the entire industrial sector and a chunk of residential - was leveled in a massive explosion and fire, killing thousands, including the entire Gardios family but Guy. Rumors were flung all over the place - Hod was irresponsible with safety, or Hod flew too close to the sun with something they were trying to do with the Jaeger, or foul play was involved. Guy moved in with ~friend of the family~ fon Fabre, and essentially dropped out of public view, with a very brief resurface during the POLITICAL SCANDAL (see Luke's comment).
Guy is enrolling under his mother's not-famous maiden name, Cecil, and the last time his face was in the news he was 15 and sooty! But staff in the know probably know he's the Gardios heir with a chip on his shoulder, and obviously anyone who drifts with him will figure it out... and tech nerds can know about Hod's stellar tech prowess (and probably suspect foul play the most, if they were also involved in development, 'cause Hod's rep and tech were STELLAR).
AHAHA ALSO I HAVE A QUESTION. I've tapered it down from canon, but Guy has a major anxiety trigger reaction to close proximity to girls - is that still ok (only male sparring partners etc, PROBABLY ONLY GETS IN IF HE CAN DRIFT WITH A DUDE?), or are signs of situational PTSD considered an unacceptable psychological imbalance for a pilot? (i figure it isn't due to the pilots in the movie, but the girl thing...)
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ICly, there's a large group of very qualified professionals to help aid in gaining those skills and offering guidance in getting a handle on the anxiety. When the mentality of the program at large is to produce pilots who are capable of Drifting with more than one partner, part of the expectation on Guy would be that he work on finding a means of handling and controlling his anxiety. OOCly, it may work out that the only people he ends up being Drift Compatible with are male, which is fine! The IC expectation is such that he works on finding coping mechanisms in the structured environment of the Shatterdome and the Ranger program. As long as he's performing well in those environments, how he otherwise handles himself outside of them will be considered his business.
In other words, he may end up finding he has a means to cope with his anxiety triggers in close proximity with women when he has a structured means for interacting with them, but finds it still flares up in casual, unstructured environments.
Does that feel workable for you? Does it make sense why that would be the IC expectation from the PPDC?
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late like a white rabbit sorry bro
He'll be 16-almost-17 when the game opens, so old enough that he was being seriously groomed to take over the family until his baby sister was born. Because of this he's sort of adrift as far as what he's supposed to do with himself at the moment (like in the game) so the whole thing leaves a bad taste in his mouth until he gets that sorted out for himself.
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Yaichirou is 19 at game start, btw. At their age, that 2-3 years can definitely matter.
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anyway. Simon of Gurren Lagann fame. THE ROUGH BACKGROUND right now is he and Kamina were from a small mining town in canada, and after a kaiju attack squished their town killing their parents kamina forcefully dragged Simon to the academy in alaska insisting they were drift compatible obviously and they were going to kill all the kaiju together. A confused and distressed simon followed and blah blah stuff happens a couple years later they are indeed piloting a jaeger, probably based in Nagasaki.
After a year of piloting together Kamina dies in a particularly brutal attack, and after dealing with his grief in his own way, Simon takes up the encouragement to enter the academy in chile to seek out others he can be drift compatible with cuz he's not done fighting Kaiju
Simon will be about 20 (i'm moving around timelines in this AU cuz obviously simon wasn't piloting a jaeger at 13) a veteran pilot, somewhere in the middle of his arc to becoming the badass who can destroy the heavens with his drill, and of course had all of the fame that comes with being a ranger tho honestly he always was kind of obviously in kamina's shadow.
AND SO BASICALLY OBVIOUSLY TOUCH BASE ME IF YOU WANT TO HAVE KNOWN HIM either from his time in the alaskan academy (would've been around 2018) or his time as a pilot (2019) or if you were just fans of his and kaminas (jaeger name pending).
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He'd have been friendly in general for people who came across him but fairly distanced from the academy program due to the differences in the way Alaska was run. But he could've been spotted or approached in the cafeteria.
He likes cadets in general so it's all good.
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Kate might have been seen in some fancy parties, but she generally flies pretty far under the celebrity radar. So if there are any other rich kids, they have probably been in touch.