Pacific Rim: It's a jolly good film...

...BUT it has a few logical flaws.

Pacific Rim, if you were wondering, is a totally fantastic film about a war between humanity and gigantic alien monsters from a parallel universe are attacking our cities at an exponential rate. And so, humanity has decided to fight them with GIANT ROBOTS!

Now, as any sane person with the ability to do a risk/reward analysis, you are probably thinking: "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard to fight giant alien monsters from beyond the veil of time and space."

And you'd be right!

But the movie has enough charm, fun, fast pace, good camera work (it's sad that I need to mention this, you'd think that keeping the camera steady and letting people actually see what is going on would be in Film 101) and sexy Asian chicks and hunky white guys and Idris Elba to make everyone happy.

So, I feel no guilt whatsoever in listing my TOP FIVE ALTERNATE PLANS TO BUILDING GIANT ROBOTS THAT WOULD ALSO BE CHEAPER AND LESS DANGEROUS.

1) Bombs!
Plan: Place conventional ordinance around the rift in enough amount to atomize the giant monsters.
Upsides: Conventional ordinance is really cheap to build - comparatively speaking - and can be set off at remote.
Downside: Ecological damage, no backup in case of failure, possible Tsunamis caused as explosive count goes up in response to Kaiju evolution. 

2) Iris!
Plan: Place a large, thick metal plate over the portal into the other dimension.
Upsides: The monsters will not be able to rematerialized - if the wormhole works in the same way that most theoretical wormholes do - and thus, would be smeared across the cover in a subatomic haze.
Downside: The aliens could just open a portal in a different place.

3) Grinder
Plan: As with Plan 2, but instead of a plate, make it a pair of grinders! GRINDERS!
Upsides: Mulch the monsters as they come out, providing entertainment for everyone involved. Furthermore, recovery of their organs, bones, and such can possibly be enacted.
Downsides: See Plan 2, in addition, salt water corrodes delicate equipment. Even a tough grinder would, eventually, need maintenance and repair, and if it were ever overwhelmed...

4) Guns on Things
Plan: In the film, several of the robots (called Jagers) have projectile weapons mounted on them. Every single time they are used, the guns are quite effective. Take said guns, mount them on smaller platforms, then mass produce said smaller platforms and take down the giant monsters with sheer numbers.
Upside: It is still cheaper than building robots (and, more importantly, building the buildings to house, service and launch the giant robots).
Downsides: Casualties, and as the fight must take place closer to the cities, possibilities of defeat and losing a city are still there.

5) On the other hand...
Plan: SCREW IT, GIANT ROBOTS WOOOOOOOOOO!
Upside: GIANT ROBOTS
Downsides: SCREW YOU, I HAVE GIANT ROBOTS!

Firesticks and Ffffffffffffffffff-

I love Exalted.

And what is not to love? Exalted is a roleplaying game wherein you play reincarnated heroes of an ancient era, fighting to bring back a golden age to a fallen world. It is a game of stark, black and white goods and bads. There actually is some moral grey area here and there, and sometimes, heroes become villains and villains become heroes, but at the end of the day, it is an EPIC in all caps and like fifteen or sixteen exclamation points.

It is a game of swords and ray guns, where you can parry 10,000 mile wide laser beam with a sword, or punch someone so hard that they turn into a sheep.

It is also a game where, for no reason I can determine, almost everyone in the South - one of the four main settings of the game - uses freaking FLAMETHROWERS. You know, the most agonizing, cruel weapon I can possibly imagine is all over the goddamn place. And it's not even used by just the bad guys. There's no evil empire of flame-throwing psychopaths, it's just kind of the style of the time.

And this bothers me. Maybe it is because of a few scenes in a few novels I've read involving people burned by flame-throwers, maybe it is because I have read up on how difficult it is to heal from burns...

But this really bothers me. A sword cut can maim, an arrow can cause horrible agony, and gunshots are not exactly pleasant, but any experienced roleplayer can usually handle them if the GM describes them in the right way.

Nothing can make being burned alive anything but the most torturous, horrific way to go...

And this bugs me enough to make an uninteresting blogpost about it!