#what is happening with all these new... kaiju stuff??

[ruubesz-draws]

WHAT IS THIS YEAR!??! A YEAR OF KAIJU???

Anyway, welcome back GAMERA!!

I have no idea how to draw Gamera :')

#gamera #gamera rebirthed #godzilla #kaiju #he's back... #HE'S BAAAACCCKKK #wth #what is this year #what is happening with all these new... kaiju stuff?? #I am confusion #but also excitement #aiufguasdhbciasdn #meme #do not repost #my art

[kaijutegu]

This is a really good question! Here's what will happen after New Girl gets here.

First, I leave her mostly alone for a couple of days. I give her constant access to fresh water, but I don't feed until Day 3. This gives her time to get settled and acclimated; the stress of the move can cause GI distress, so for the first couple of days, nothing in the stomach. The stress from regurgitation would be more detrimental than the stress of being hungry. Day 3, some nice, digestible food: egg. Day 4, we start introducing greens. Day 5, we have our first vet check!

Now hopefully there's some poop on Day 4, because this is a wild-caught animal, and she will have worms; that's just a given. When you eat raw, rotting meat in the wild, you get worms. My trapper doses them all with Panacur when he catches them, but the fecal sample will have more information on what specific parasites are present and what else is needed. If no poop for the vet check, that's ok, just collect some whenever it happens and take it on over and they'll do the fecal when they can.

At the vet check, they'll do a blood draw and a full blood panel. The vet will palpate all over, feeling for lumps and masses, and they may do some imaging. With a Florida feral, one thing you don't have to worry about is metabolic bone disease, so an x-ray might not be necessary. However, an ultrasound is a good idea with females. New Girl is very young and likely didn't have a partner during the last breeding season, but it's worth it to have a look at the reproductive tract to make sure there aren't any red flags or weird masses.

The vet will also do the standard exam stuff- listen to the lungs, check the reflexes, listen to the heart. They will also check tongue flicks and try to do a visual dental exam. That might not happen at the first visit, though! One of the things I had Kaiju trained to do was let me open her mouth. A voluntary open mouth behavior is something I really want to teach New Girl.

After the vet check, she'll still be on a fairly limited diet, variety-wise, until she's eliminating consistently and we've finished the inevitable course of meds. If all goes well, we'll do a course of fecal tests to ensure that any active parasite infection is gone, and then it'll be annual checkups from there on out!

#13lizardsinatrenchcoat #reptiblr

[freezing-kaiju]

ALRIGHT, IT'S TIME!

THE SECOND RYUKI-AND-BLADE-ACCOMPANYING ANIME POLL IS NOW HERE!!!

SO, MEET YOUR CHALLENGERS!

AJIN Demi-Human

We start with a dark horror and possibly scifi about ethics in science, immortality, and an outlaw fugitive alien plot as a boy finds himself part of a group of immortals declared legally inhuman. While I have some misgivings about Oh No I Was Secretly A Creature All Along plots, I do fucking love horror and there’s a lot of ways for those plots to hit hard in the trans and gay and autism organs and be really important!!!!

Dimension W

The New Tesla Energy Corporation has monopolized the fourth dimension and the coils that connect to it. A duo of bounty hunters, one human and one robot, make money via repossessing illegal coils and seek out the answer to the mysteries within the dimension. I really wanna watch this one for a few reasons, the primary one of which is 'there are multiple fat women'. It seems to have freaks and weirdos and fun times, and its comedy is emphasized more than most of the other ones on this list so it might give some needed levity!

Kyoukai no Kanata

A bumbling monster hunter with blood powers meets an immortal via trying to shank him and ends up in an arrangement where she'll keep trying to kill him to boost her confidence while hunting monsters in what I hope is a monster-of-a-week show that came highly recommended by a friend as her favorite anime, or one of her favorites, so i have high hopes! Script's by the hibike euphonium guy and the power system seems quite interesting!

Air

A puppeteer (if he’s as good as Sakon will remain to be seen) stops his Road Trip To Meet A Golden Sun Jupiter Summon to stay for a bit in a town and, as happens to anyone who stops for too long, gets attached to the place and also meets a girl who might be said jupiteresque being. My friend informs me that it's gorgeous, sounds amazing (so I'll make sure to get clips), and has "nice sad vibes"!!! And it’s…listed in a “provincial horror” listing… hoho

Heike Monogatari

A child who can see ghosts and the future walks tirelessly through the tragedy of the war between the Taira and Minamoto families before the dawn of the first shogunate. It's wildly beloved by a friend of mine, and also centers a historical event i know some but not all about and definitely need to know more about the Taira side of. Seems like a beautiful drama, one I could lose my heart over.

SSSS Gridman

Digital kaiju! Digital hero! Digital amnesia! A monster of the week show about an unknown amnesiac summoning and merging with Hyper Agent Gridman to fight digital, possibly virtual monsters while making friends(?) in the real world! It's the one thing Tsubaraya Productions has that isn't Ultraman, and I expect some tokusatsu vibes from it along with the mecha stuff, i've also heard it has gay girl megatron??

Akudama Drive

It's a prison break and crime story set in a tech dystopia, starring a scene girl shoplifter, and featuring a bevvy of unpersoned convicts in what seems like an excellent ensemble clusterfuck!!! The Danganronpa crew made this thing! It's also beloved by a friend of mine, and I've heard it'll be a generally excellent tragedy of a time

Canaan

A reporter gets saved from assassins by a woman she might do yuri with, and the summaries I’ve found seem to imply a plot about terrorism and mystery! It’s a Type-Moon work that isn't part of the fate, tsukihime, OR melty universes! It might still have magecraft, but it's tagged sci-fi too, and a type moon take on scifi sounds interesting... it’s also based on. *checks wikipedia* a…perfect-Famitsu-score visual novel for the Nintendo Wii. So I might need to dig out some old hardware to watch this thing. For fun’s sake!

Killing Bites

A guy unintentionally becomes the underground wrestling promoter of a ?werewolf? Woman who murders his friends and wins him a shitload of money. The end goal? According to the summary, control of the economy!!! This was recommended as garbage and good lord I need garbage so much good god I need to put some trash inside of me.

#kj grabs a megaphone #kj watches anime #polls #IF YOU WANT TO VoTE MULTIPLE OPTIONS PUT IT IN YER TAGS

[gardenofchrome]

Pacific Rim Headcanons #5

How PR characters would comfort you if you had a bad day

Requested by @screechinginthevoid: ty <3

.・゜✧﹒☁﹒✧゜・．

Raleigh+Yancy: Both would immediately notice and immediately get you stuff like your favorite ice cream and a fluffy blanket. They would tell you funny stories about each other, trying to take your mind off of your day. They would also tell you things their mother used to tell them to make them feel better: "Ca va aller" (it's going to be ok), "Quoiqu'il arrive, je t'aime et je serai toujours là pour toi" (whatever happens, I love you and i'm always going to be here for you). Eventually, you fall asleep and the brothers carry you back to your bed.

Mako: She would take you down to the kwoon training room and spar with you to take your mind off of it. Afterwards you guys go down to the Shatterdome cafe and you vent to her about your frustrations.

Chuck: Would take you up to Striker (or your Jaeger) and talk about your guys day. Nearly beats up whoever caused your bad day.

Herc: You vent to him about your day and he gives you a hug, telling you about his bad days and what he does to deal with them. Max runs up to you guys and Herc lifts him up so that he could give you lots of licks.

Don't drool over Y/N! ...Sees something pretty and he gets all wound up.

Stacker: When you tell him about your bad day, he tries to comfort you a little. He makes sure that whoever caused you to have a bad day is punished: extra paperwork, assigning them the worst duties in the Shatterdome, etc.

Newt: Immediately notices and drops everything and you tell him about your day. He would try and make you feel better by insulting the person(s) that caused you to have a bad day and told you to get some rest. You decide to stay with him in the lab as he goes on a small rant about the new sample he just got- part of the secondary brain of a kaiju.

Hermann: Awkwardly tries to comfort you, before deciding to start explaining the project he was working on to distract you.

Tendo: Would crack a few cringy jokes (dad jokes, flirtatious lines, etc.) to distract you. It works as you laugh and slightly cringe at the quips. You two then go on break and head up to the tallest catwalk and talk as you watch a Jaeger get repaired.

.・゜✧﹒☁﹒✧゜・．

#pacific rim #kaiju #chuck hansen #headcanon #hermann gottlieb #for you #raleigh becket #yancy becket #mako mori #herc hansen #stacker pentecost #newt geiszler #pacific rim headcanons #jaeger #tendo choi #x reader #mecha #giant robots

[twisted-wonderland-shenanigans]

Hello! I've been kinda stalling sending this for absolutely no reason, but I'm gonna do it today because it's going to rot in my brain if I don't. Actually, maybe you've done this ask before? Idk, my brain is all scrambled up rn but I'm gonna ask this anyway cause why not

What would happen if Yuu got their period in the Kaiju!AU? How would the Kaiju react?

I can imagine Grim and Crowley freaking out, trying to figure out what's wrong with Yuu. And all the while, Yuu's like, "What are you guys doing? Hey, stop bombarding me! Personal space! What- why are you guys sniffing me!?" And since Yuu doesn't understand what they're saying, they can't answer them on why they smell like blood. Or it the scenario could work with any other of the Kaiju's, too

Wait, how would Yuu even get menstrual products anyway? Do they get them from Sam?? How would they even get those type of products from Sam??? Maybe he get some of them from that wreck of a lab from the beginning somehow? Idk, but I thought it'd be a fun idea

Yeah, this is all I have rn since my brain is cranked all the way up on slow mode today. I hope you have a good day and goodbye! (Oh, and this can be a gender neutral thing with Yuu just being AFAB)

WARNING: Menstrual cycle discussion under read more! Will be using they/them pronouns since gender neutral/AFAB was requested.

Oh goodness, being in the Kaiju AU is going to be a little more difficult for Yuu whether they��re female or AFAB. 😂 Between staying in Crewel’s den or at Crowley’s nest, it’s tricky to get the supplies that they need or communicate to the Kaiju that this stuff they’ve piled up is necessary. Given that Grim does understand what Yuu is saying though, he is able to help at least get that point across…when it suits him anyway (if Yuu makes even more of a fuss than usual, he’ll translate for the others).

I’ll go ahead and explain that—at first—Yuu had to get a bit creative with their monthly cycle once it actually hit. I’d imagine that their body might temporarily shut down that function due to the stress of their new environment, being surrounded by giant monsters that could literally level mountains with a swipe, and the near constant sense of impending doom—even if they’re safe with the guardian trio. This is good for Yuu as it gives them time to finally venture out of the den with Grim to explore the other facilities as it would take a while before they can get back to the original lab.

Luckily for Yuu, the closest facility—although abandoned—was still in good condition and had most of the supplies that they’ll need. In fact, this is where they found the music player that Grim thought was a chew toy! So imagine the sheer excitement and relief Yuu would have the moment they found not one, not two, but a whole crate full of pads, tampons, period cups, and even extra unopened packages of underwear!

You might be wondering why there was so much. Well, because there are female researchers on the teams and the island is not exactly in the most convenient of places, which means that getting supply drops are far and few. Especially when you have creatures that aren’t the Kaiju who can and will attempt to attack any vehicle that comes near the island. I’ll get a bit more detail on the island’s setup and whatnot, but that’s a bit of context on how Yuu is essentially set when it comes to non-perishable items that could be used for a comfortable existence on the island of behemoths!

Sam may have found a few crates of other supplies that had been washed up, but it’s not like he knows what they’re used for unless he observed the humans using the tools out in the field. Even so, Sam will know when Yuu needs something and will make sure to have them available on his next visit. How else did he know to bring a bed when Yuu wanted something comfortable to sleep on?

Now, as for how the Kaiju would react when Yuu finally starts their cycle. If you were expecting Crowley to be freaking out over Yuu’s health like he did in the Twisted Monsterland AU, you’d be mistaken. He does get flustered, but more like a “my tiny human is too young to mate!!!” sort of way while Crewel just sighs at his theatrics. They would be concerned to notice if Yuu’s cycle causes them a lot of pain and discomfort, but luckily the facilities have plenty of painkillers and antibiotics that are available—all that’s required is MIRA to access the appropriate amount needed to get Yuu through their current cycle!

Surprisingly, Grim becomes more protective over Yuu whenever they’re around the other Kaiju. Whenever he notices that they’re uncomfortable (whether they just took painkillers or they’re exhausted or some other feeling they get during this time), he will pick them up or curl around them to purr up a storm and hiss at whoever comes near too fast.

He’s swatted at the first years more than once. 😆

The other Kaiju boys would be confused as to what’s happening. Sure, they know about cycles on an instinctive level (and they understand what it means), they’re just more confused as to the frequency. Do humans not have specific mating seasons? Eventually it does get to the point where they know to be less rowdy when it’s that time of the month, either bringing Yuu their favorite treats or snacks that they managed to get (and once it became clear that one particular fruit tasted exactly like chocolate pudding to Yuu, it became a staple) or taking naps with them. Yuu is going to be one very comfortable human once they figure out a good rhythm to manage things!

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but there's more than one way to survive in the wild, and with MIRA at Yuu's side, their chances of survival were better than they were before! UvU Also fun fact, there really is a fruit that tastes like chocolate pudding! 0v0

#twisted wonderland #twst #twisted wonderland kaiju au #twst kaiju au

[dangthatscrayz]

heyhey! im loving your slay the monster au so far, and i was wondering what the names for the monster would be in the chapter 3s? like what is the burned grey’s version of The Smitten called? same for all the other monster vessels

Tysm I love the support!

Like a sane person I’m up at almost 3 am typing this.

Also I’m probably going to add more chapters and endings for the other routes for funsies

But here’s the whole list of names and chapters just because

(Btw unless you kill the monster expect it to just slay itself like how in the actual game if you slay the princess yoru stuck in the voice until you do something and since all of them want to leave they just hit that slay button)

Chapter 1’s:

The hero (if you don’t bring the blade)

The captor (if you bring the blade)

The contrarian (step off the path)

Chapter 2’s:

Literally all the same as in the game minus ‘the voice of’ part

Chapter 3’s:

The Betrothed (I got plans for the smitten’s burned grey route it’s gonna be kinda crazy based on the name)((the voice of the damsel is just going to be hauling everything and since she’s controlling everything now, no sane decision will happen))

The Hunter (the hunted third chapter where if you die to his claws now the roles reversed from him being the scared animal to now being the one hunting the player)

The Empty ( if you kill the cold again or just go out and kill the cold after he asks to escape you come here similar to the spectre and wraith routes but less ghosting but still kind of not really tangible activity is happening)

The Bewildered (if for some reason you decide to hand the knife to the opportunist will stab you and like the witch did in the thorn chapter get so confused that he doesn’t even want to hurt you anymore he just doesn’t know why you did that or why he wants to hurt you anymore)

The Truth (basically the wild chapter)

The Rebuilt (the broken’s apotheosis, the voice of the tower is hyping up her new priest/pet/whatever he is to her)((do expect to be King Kong style yoinked by this kaiju and carried out this forest))

The Resistant (no matter how many holes you make in the stubborn body he somehow keeps getting up, he does not look very healthy after some point)((eye of the needle version of the stubborn btw))

The Savage (if you somehow screw up on the broken or stubborn chapters you end up here and like the fury in there game your options are ‘dying or dying’ goodluck, when the pristine cut comes out I’ll definitely update this)

The Cacophony (like in the moment of clarity for the paranoid all the voices are here.)

The Cheater (the cheated starts playing dirty therefore now a cheater idk what to say, it’s in the name)

Chapter 4’s:

The Winner (the cheated is the only one with a chapter 4 unless I add more later or the pristine cut comes out)

Also I wanted to add here that chapter 1 will always be grey (not the contrarian he doesn’t play by any rules anyways), every chapter 2 has added 1 color to the monster, chapter 3 has 2 colors in its monster, and every chapter 4 will add another color. I wanted to add some other elements of other monsters in it paralleling how in the og game the more voices you get each chapter. Like the betrothed will have some elements from the cold since that’s who you get if you kill the princess in the og game. Also some other additional stuff like extra eyes to look extra biblically accurate and because it’s hard to make a monster look more monster with each chapter so I’m doubling down on stuff like limbs and eyes so it looks kind of like there’s more than one in there

The voices for the third chapters like you saw with the witch in the current route the princess voices are also going to be swapped around to fit the personalities more.

#slay the princess #slay the princess au #slay the monster au #stp #stp voices

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Kaiju Week in Review (July 9-15, 2023)

It was hectic, but I think I enjoyed this year's G-Fest more than the last. My friend Alana and I went all-out with our costumes (to the point of a rare costume parade skit with the lovely Battra on the left). Dad debuted his unbelievable Oxygen Destroyer replica in the model contest, which became part of my Dr. Serizawa costume on the last day. I met up with @kyodaikino, @bog-o-bones, @zagorudan, @spankzilla85—and The Boy Who Cried Godzilla on Saturday, in what I believe is the first time two Wikizilla staff members have been in the same room. The Pickwick selections got me to visit twice for the first time in ages; truly, a visible projection of Godzilla (2014) is unmissable. I missed half of Kiyotaka Taguchi's new Daikaiju Bugon short while getting an autograph from TJ Storm, but I did pick up a Blu-ray of his Female Weapon 701 (and took copious notes during his Q&A... no, he wasn't announced as a guest, he just showed up). Flight complications foiled Yumiko Shaku's first panel, but it was standing room only for her second, which was one of the best guest interviews I can remember from the con in a while. Oh, and @bog-o-bones miraculously snagged me her last autograph ticket.

The teaser for the next Toho Godzilla film, Godzilla Minus One, was released in such close proximity to the con that it didn't get a panel. As with Shin Godzilla, Toho isn't playing coy with the monster's design, but is leaving it (and another famous director, Takashi Yamazaki) to shoulder much of the weight of promoting the film. We don't even know the cast yet! Minus One takes place during the Allied occupation of Japan; uncharted and quite provocative territory for a Godzilla film. Toho International President Koji Ueda explained the title thusly: "Japan, which had already been devastated by the war, faces a new threat with Godzilla, bringing the country into the 'minus.'" Toho International will distribute the film in the United States on December 1, a record turnaround time for a G-film. Going off the major theater chains posting about it, Minus One might actually receive a wide release, which hasn't happened to a Toho entry since Godzilla 2000.

Cleopatra Entertainment has announced corrections to the numerous subtitling issues in its Shin Ultraman Blu-ray and DVD releases which should be rolling out more-or-less now. They're also shipping replacement discs (by request) to folks who wound up with the original versions.

Toho International will be launching an online American store for Godzilla merch, which will hopefully make this stuff a bit easier to collect, both in terms of cost and ordering. They're promising "a mix of items from the Japanese Godzilla Store as well as international exclusives."

Keizo Murase's Brush of the God has again been delayed, this time to an unspecified date in 2024, but they softened the blow with another great-looking teaser.

#godzilla #gfest #godzilla minus one #kaiju week in review #kaiju #shin ultraman #brush of the god

[kemonododo]

Ruby Gillman is getting pretty mixed reactions here on Tumblr and I can’t help but think it was that god awful trailer’s fault.

First off it really put a lot of focus on the interaction between Ruby and Chelsea, setting them up as rivals, so people got really excited for that relationship when in-fact they’re not the main focus of the movie. The main relationship drama is with Ruby and her mom, who I don’t even think appears in the trailer. Chelsea is very much just an antagonistic villain to be an antagonistic villain. There isn’t much depth to her, which there’s nothing wrong with (people love villains who are just dicks) but a lot of viewers went in expecting her to be more fleshed out.

Likewise, the trailer just shows the climax. We see Chelsea rampaging and destroying stuff as a big kaiju mermaid and we think “ok there has to be more. They wouldn’t just spoil the ending, there is something they aren’t showing us.”

Except they just did, yeah it’s a straight up spoiler, if you watch the trailer you know exactly what is happening. So again, viewers went in excited to see something new but instead it was like watching a movie after reading the wikipedia synopsis. This especially sucks for the people rooting for a Chelsea redemption, which they sort of hint at in the movie, because if you had seen the movie without the trailer it’d come off as it’s supposed to: Chelsea is manipulating Ruby. But having seen the trailer, it instead just gives you a bit of hope for a subversion only for it to end exactly as they said it would.

IDK, I have a feeling that this movie will grow a bit of a cult following over time, maybe not a big one but I can see it pulling a Treasure Planet sort of thing where people randomly remember it and go “damn that movie was pretty good, sucks that the company buried it.”

Anyways, RIP to all the people shipping them, go watch Nimona if you need your gay fix.

#ruby gillman teenage kraken #dreamworks

[bluedot-blog]

Holy hell, new Doctor Who 60th Anniversary trailer? Let’s goooooo!

Alright, thoughts (mostly chronological):

Looking very cinematic, seems like RTD is going all out for his second go at showrunner

Making sure that new viewers know who Donna is with a quick flashback and expository dialogue, very nice, seems like it’ll be done fairly naturally, like with what happened to Rose

DoctorDonna causing things to happen to her again possibly? I know it sent ripples back in time, so maybe it sent ripples forward too

Beep the Meep is a puppet!

Donna automatically calling any alien a Martian. Love it

Doctor using a forcefield(?) to block incoming fire instead of just the enemy inexplicably missing

Very creepy Neil Patrick Harris

Classic villain being recognised as someone who hasn’t shown up in ages.

Beep the Meep is a very expressive puppet! Or is that cgi? I can’t really tell. No matter which way it is, it’s very good

Donna remembers the Tardis? But isn’t exploding? Interesting. I’d like to see how they got there

Remembers that the Tardis is alive and feels emotion, unlike in Resolution

Donna being Donna

Tardis being airlifted again like in DotD, but this time the Doctor gets to ride in the copter. Nice to see Kate remembering that

UNIT got an upgrade after (i think) going bust. I can’t quite remember why that happened

“How do we fight the human race?” Ooh big scale bad stuff. Mass mind control? Something messing with their DNA?

Tardis acting in self defence? Maybe activating shields so no one can enter? Interesting plot point

Bisexual split in the skin of reality

Toy maker instantly recognises the Doctor even after regeneration. Instantly lets us know he’s smart and evil

London becomes Hell on Earth, beautiful cgi

Angsty Tennant, oh how I’ve missed you

Kaiju Toymaker, very fun. I don’t actually know much about him as a character, or what his powers are, other than what I could gather from this one comic I read where he was recaptured and put into a pocket universe

Ooh, the weight he puts into those words. “I don’t know… if I can save your life this time…” Very powerful, can’t wait for that scene

Gatwa + regeneration sfx. I wonder what’ll happen to cause the regeneration. It’s a tossup between sacrificing his life to stop NPH and sacrificing his life to stop Donna from melting into goo from mental overload

Where is that descending piano line at the end from?

Very strong music throughout the trailer. Feeling good about the OST of the specials

Why does this only have 6,400 views after 2 hours?

#doctor who #doctor who 60th anniversary #science fiction #trailer #david tennant #catherine tate #donna noble #ncuti gatwa #special interest #bbc studios

[driftwithme]

Where is my not romantic fic where Chuck and Mako join the recruitment at the same time just to find out Raleigh fucking Becket is one of their trainers.

Maybe Yancy got hurt earlier but didn't die and Raleigh got stuck on ground until they both recovered enough to pilot again??? Idk. Or maybe things were pretty good at that point and given the Becket success rate they were invited to take a brake and help train the new cadets, to pass along the experience to the future Mark-5 pilots.

In my mind it happens around 2019. Striker construction got delayed and Scott is not a criminal (or an asshole), so he's still piloting Lucky Seven with Herc. Chuck doesn't have to join at freaking 16 years old and Mako is there to play the rival part, simply because I'd enjoy greatly seeing their competitive sides fire up each other while Raleigh tries and fails to figure out what's going on.

Yancy is 24 years old, Raleigh is 21yo, Mako and Chuck are both 16yo but they'd graduate almoat with 17yo. Thry are the youngest duo to graduate at the Academy, beating Raleigh old record.

Now, 'cause I love the drama: Raleigh is there working with the Jaeger Assault Specialist instructor. In this scenario let's believe that the instructor saw the way the Beckets used improvisation to surprise attack the kaijus and convinced Pentecost to teach that too to the cadets. Somehow it worked. Pentecost is not very happy (he's pretty sure he'll have to deal with way more insubordination in the near future), but he can't deny the stats and maybe MAYBE feeling the way of the cadets in their hands would help the Beckets grow up and get their shit together.

He is both regretting it with all his will and thankful those fuckers did their job right as he watches Raleigh and Mako fall down from the sky after killing Otachi, but we're 6 years too fast.

Back at Jaeger Assault classes.

The thing is that both Mako and Chuck are kinda geniuses at that. Even from their first simulation. They were the only two to kill the respective kaiju in their first simulation. This is because 1) at this point they the rivalry is intense, 2) they're both nerds that spend the previous week watching jaeger fight videos to study the kaijus, 3) they grew up around three of the best pilots in the program.

Raleigh doesn't know any of it, of course. He hasn't meet Herc yet (Manila happens later in 2020 in this fic) and he has no way to know about Stacker history with Mako. Buuuut our loved Raleigh is a bit too blunt at this point in time, so he congratulates them, not without warning them about how that first win meant nothing in real life. So what if they are a bit ahead of the rest? Things would even out in no time. With a real kaiju you have no footage to study, no way to predict the movements of an algorithm. Impressive, but it's just the first day.

He doesn't say it in a mean way, of course. The accident that hurt Yancy changed his perception. He doesn't want the kids to get cocky like him and commit his same mistake. The instructor is actually very happy to see him talk like that and reinforces what he just said. The problem with this? He accidentally humiliated Mako and Chuck in front of the other cadets. Mako is upset and determined to prove is not only theory, but real skill and great decision making from her part. Chuck is another story; Raleigh is his enemy and he must destroy him. Aka he wants to humiliate Raleigh back and prove he is superior than any past pilot.

Bonus points is Raleigh is hella charming and equally soft in his puppy way, not at all the bragging rockstar everyone was expecting. Like yes, there's a bit of that, but he also sits with the cadets and answers their questions and makes them laugh. He tells them some embarrassing stories of him and Yancy to show them how even the active rangers have to deal with normal stuff. When he talks 'bout other pilots, he is respectuful yet sincere. He is a terrible flirt but so endearing. And he is handsome handsome, okay?

It's not a romantic fic so it leads nowhere, but Mako and Chuck have a bit starstruck even if they hate the man a little. Actually they both like Yancy the better as a friend or co-worker because he is a bit more mature. Whenever he visits Chuck and Mako almost glow with mischief. They love when Yancy makes his brother look childish, when he corrects him or makes him blush of embarrassment too.

If only Raleigh wouldn't laugh like an angel afterwards so they could enjoy their victory in peace.

Raleigh is not there for their final simulation or their graduation because Manila happens. Yancy is healthy, G. Danger is repaired and Raleigh is excited to show off all he learned training with the cadets. Scott gets badly hurt, enough to end his career, but he's alive. The Beckets made it again, Herc is grateful to no ends and while Herc appears around the bar for a while to celebrate with the rest of the teams, they talk about the possibility of not repairing Lucky Seven and straight up going for Striker with Chuck as the co-pilot.

The Beckets don't return to Kodiak Island after that. They got back to Anchorage and after some months, face Knifehead. If Yancy dies, rhen well... The story could be almost the same except everyone has history now. Or maybe Mako convinces Raleigh to stay now that they are more like friends and he keeps teaching at the Academy as Mako leads the G. Danger restoration program.

If Yancy doesn't die but he can't pilot again, the. maybe Mako joins the fight sooner with Raleigh while Yancy teaches cadets. Now, if Yancy doesn't die and can pilot, and if we say Scott can pilot too, then maybe we can get Mako and Chuck co-pilots of Striker.

It all depends.

#pacific rim #pacrim #pacific rim 2013 #pacrim 2013 #raleigh becket #mako mori #chuck hansen #yancy becket

[monsterblogging]

Okay so obviously Kaiju cults are a thing in the Pacific Rim world, but I'm wondering if there wouldn't be "normal" cults as well? Like, do you think there was some kind of... general cult boom?

First of all, I'm sorry I didn't answer this sooner; I started writing this and then saved it as a draft, and totally forgot about it. I really hope this isn't too late!

So, people in the world of Pacific Rim are living through times that would strike many as apocalyptic. Even if they aren't directly impacted by kaiju, they'd be aware of what they were and what they were doing. Additionally, many people would be economically impacted by everything from iron becoming far scarcer (much of it being redirected to create jaegers; then the wall), plus any product shipped overseas skyrocketing in prices due to massively inflated insurance rates on cargo ships.

Kaiju would create such a seismic shift in everything from people's comprehension of the universe and their place within it to their own personal economic circumstances that the world would be ripe for a general cult boom.

Cults and sketchy movements centered around making money and getting your ideal life would thrive. You'd find a number of get-rich-quick scams promising the secrets of wealth and success if you just follow these ancient secrets that Jesus and all the wise philosophers were toooootally talking about; you just gotta pay money for the books, instructional videos, seminars, whatever.

Just as they are in the real world, a lot of people would be into stuff like manifestation, the Law of Attraction, and the Law of Assumption, which are marketed as personal empowerment, but actually sell victim blaming, and in the case of the Law of Assumption, solipsism. You'd find a number of people claiming that nobody actually dies in kaiju attacks unless you choose to believe that kaiju are real and people are getting killed.

You'd also see a rise of activity within any group with any kind of opinion on the apocalypse whatsoever. In real life, Evangelical Christianity and New Age have been rising in popularity because both of them are very good at preying on the emotionally vulnerable in seemingly-apocalyptic times. (Despite their hatred for each other, these two movements are basically two sides of the same toxic coin; EG, both are millennialist, both have a conspiratorial worldview, both are heavily influenced by New Thought, and both are bent on global assimilation.) It's not hard to imagine we'd see something similar in the Pacific Rim universe.

You'd also likely see cultlike movements around new technological innovations touted as means to solve the problems created by kaiju, similar to how cryptocurrency and so-called AI have been touted as means to solve a gazillion problems they aren't actually capable of solving, and have true believers swept up in a bunch of unjustified hype. Given the massive focus jaegers have in this world, it could happen that there's a movement of people who see jaegers as the ultimate future in civil and military defense. These people would be in favor of the kind of military/police state dystopia we see in Pacific Rim: Uprising.

You might also see cultlike adoration of some wealthy yet sketchy tech figure who promises solutions to the kaiju problem, similar to how Elon Musk has a cultlike following.

Like basically, if people in the Pacific Rim universe act anything like people do in the real world, there'd be all kinds of cults pop up, with varying degrees of relation to kaiju and jaegers.

#pacific rim #pacific rim speculation #pacific rim worldbuilding

[hermannsthumb]

Could you do the prompt 60 our friends have been hosting a secret santa for years but I just got your name for the first time and I finally feel comfortable giving you this thing I bought for you two years ago 

60. our friends have been hosting a secret santa for years but I just got your name for the first time and I finally feel comfortable giving you this thing I bought for you two years ago

from winter prompts here

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!! i’ve been a little busy with some irl stuff so it was so nice to have some writing time finally :) enjoy a short little fic about some dumb boys

------------------------------

“This isn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated,” Hermann says.

He bestows a very, very rare smile on Newt, the sort that makes Newt feel a little warm under his collar, and which only makes an appearance after he’s had a decent amount to drink at whatever Shatterdome party Newt’s managed to talk him into that weekend. This sort of sentiment is high praise from Hermann, to be quite honest, so Newt will take it very, very enthusiastically. He slings an arm around Hermann’s shoulders with a grin and pulls him in close. Hermann goes a little rigid, but relaxes quickly—another win. “Thanks, dude,” he says. “Glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

It’s the annual holiday party this weekend, which is ominously less crowded than it’s been in previous years. Newt knows—with an uncomfortable, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he’s doing his best to avoid—that this is almost definitely because they’ve lost half their staff the past year to either kaiju attacks or random budget cuts, but it’s depressing him to think about it, so he makes a point not to. Bright side, more chances of getting Hermann (who hates crowds) to tag along with him now. Newt loves bringing Hermann to parties, because it means he has someone to bitch to and if they’re both tipsy and feeling ridiculous enough they’ll make intense eye contact for a while and maybe very slightly almost kiss. Hermann always ignores him the next day and pretends it never happened, of course, but it always rocks pretty hard anyway. Maybe one day they’ll actually seal the deal. “I wouldn’t go that far,” Hermann says.

“Okay, fair,” Newt says. “I’m glad you’re not...miserable?”

“Acceptable,” Hermann says.

He smiles at Newt, and Newt smiles back, plucking at the shoulder of Hermann’s sweater. It’s his festive sweater, the one he wears to the New Year’s party every year too, even though it kind of just looks like a normal sweater (except a little more sparkly, like he got glitter on it once and never managed to wash it out), so Newt’s not really sure what makes it festive. He’s never felt like pressing the question, so he’ll probably never know. It is pretty cute on him though. Anyway, there’s more important stuff to think about now—Hermann’s giving him the kind of big doe eyes that usually precede Newt almost-getting a little kiss. Maybe tonight will be the night. But instead of giving Newt a little almost-kiss, or a real little kiss, Hermann just says, suddenly, “I picked you for the exchange.”

Newt blinks at him. “Oh. You did?”

Hermann nods.

“Cool,” Newt says. “But, um, isn’t that supposed to be, like, a secret?” He thinks that’s kind of the point of it all. Hermann doesn’t usually participate in the gift exchange, though, so maybe he just doesn’t understand the rules. Newt’s own pick was a LOCCENT tech he’s only ever spoken to once or twice in his whole time here. He kinda half-assed it a little with a gift card for the last coffee chain still standing within driving distance of the base, but those guys seem to run on caffeine, so whatever, it won’t go unappreciated.

“I was getting impatient,” Hermann says. “Anyway, I’m meant to give it to you tonight, aren’t I? Shouldn’t really matter when.” 

Newt wonders if the gift is a kiss. He’s just tipsy enough to ask Hermann if it is, and maybe flutter his eyelashes a little, but then Hermann pulls out a small snowflake-patterned gift bag from beneath the table and pushes it at Newt. He looks very pleased with himself. “I confess,” he says, “that I’ve had this for some time.”

So apparently Hermann is very into gift exchanges. “That excited, huh?” Newt says.

He picks at the tissue paper: Hermann did a messy wrapping job, so it’s sticking out unevenly and torn in places, but it adds to the charm, to be honest. He can imagine Hermann sitting at his desk after hours and trying and failing to do his usual meticulous job of things. Hermann shakes his head. “Er, not quite. I purchased it for you—” He clears his throat. “Well. Do you remember a couple years ago, I broke that coffee mug you were fond of? The silly one, that changed colors?”

Newt makes a face at the memory. It hadn’t been one of their better moments—they’d each been awake and hard at work for over forty-eight hours at that point, and Hermann’s hands had been trembling so badly when he fixed them instant coffee that he’d knocked the contents of the kitchenette counter into the sink. The mug had shattered almost instantly. Newt had started shouting at him almost instantly, too, and Hermann shouted back, and they hadn’t spoken for a week afterwards, too hot-headed and pissed off. It had sentimental value, is all (just some dumb underwater scene with fish that appeared when you poured in something hot), or Newt wouldn’t have been anywhere near as pissed. Or like, pissed at all. He got it from the aquarium when he was a dumb kid starting his first semester of college. “Ugh,” he says, “don’t remind me.”

He plucks out the tissue paper and tosses it to the side. Inside the bag is a mug. Not, in fact, the mug that Hermann broke, but one in the same vague wheelhouse, an underwater scene dotted with little fish and scratched with age. Hermann is looking at him with barely-concealed glee. “I found it online,” he declares. “The exact same one. It took me a bloody long time to do it, too, so I hope you’re pleased with it, though I confess—” He goes a bit pink in the face. “Er. Well, this was technically some time ago. A year. Or two. Right about when I broke it, really. Only I was a bit cross with you,” he continues, quickly, “so I didn’t want to give it to you, and then far too much time passed, so I decided to simply wait for the right excuse. Is it alright? Do you like it?”

Newt picks the mug up. It’s nothing at all like the old one, really, and Newt’s not even really convinced this one changes colors, but Hermann looks so excited that Newt knows he can’t even think of confessing that. Instead he smiles and nods his head. “I love it, Hermann,” he says, and it’s not a lie. “It’s perfect.”

Hermann almost sags with relief. He looks like he might hug Newt, and then like he might take Newt’s hand, but he settles with an awkward, lingering pat to his shoulder. Newt thinks he might be a little in love with him. “Very good, then, Newton,” Hermann says. 

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag

[puntastic-artist]

uhhhhh so...

I used to be in the Eddsworld fandom annnnd I may or may not have made a Lab AU for it back in say... February? I've been trying to get back into it now that it's being continued.

So here's some references I did as well as some stuff I wrote and drew for the AU

SYNOPSIS:

The main four have been captured by a mad scientist a few months after the PowerEdd fiasco. The doctor wanted to run experiments to see the strange abilities these four have, because of his belief that there was something supernatural going on behind the scenes, he lured them in and experimented on them as much as he could. He captured the neighbors and the other Red Army members as well. They eventually all escape into the outside world again but the lab is trying to find them and bring them back for more testing. Can the boys go back to living their normal lives? Hopefully the answer will be yes.

CHARACTERS

Edd Subject 544

Edd was the first to be taken, he was the most valuable one the Doctor wanted to see. His ability to withstand radioactivity and use it so his body would be able to use it in a healthy way was quite remarkable to him. So much so he injected a type of radioactive sludge into his body to circulate around his system and activated his super powers yet again. As a result he needs to use his superpowers in moderation or else he'll lose energy and will have to rest to regain it back. If he doesn't then he'll become ill and his over worked body will try to get the radioactive goop out of him, beginning with green nose bleeds, then fatigue, and finally illness. The goop also heals his wounds faster than humanly possible. Broken bones get healed in a matter of minutes and scratches are barely even there for a second.

Matt: Experiment 3122

Matt was the final one of the main Four to be taken. The doctor considered him "useless" in regards to his research on the other 3, but wouldn't let materials go to waste, so he decided to experiment on him by testing how much the human body could adapt. Matt had his entire lower half removed and replaced with the most bizarre animal part, a giant fucking fish tail. The doctor wanted to see if he could make something both cold and warm blooded work together with this and see just how much the human body was capable of. Sure enough Matt adapted with some scientific aid and now he's horrified about what happened to him. So much so he cries whenever he sees a new scale on his face. He just wants to go home.

Tom: Experiment 253

Tom was third to be taken by the doctor. The doctor was the only one to notice that the monster had to come from somewhere, and he came to the conclusion that Tom had something to do with it. Tom turned into his monster form as he was being taken. Because of this finding the Doctor began testing his limits, so much to the point Tom is now permanently stuck in a half monster form, he's not fuzzy or furry at all, this man is all Kaiju lizard scales. Tough, rough, and scary Kaiju scales.

Tord: Experiment 2584

Tord was the second one to be taken. The doctor wanted to test how much he could expand his knowledge in weaponry after witnessing Tord's skills on the battlefield. If he's truly a world class soldier and mechanic then surely he can be... Upgraded in a sense. As a result, Tord was given robotic limbs to test out just how much of a war machine he could be, and now he's slowly being upgraded into "The World's Unstoppable Soldier" and had plans to give Tord even more robotic parts until someone destroyed them. He's currently unaware of who destroyed them but we have a guess as to who it is.

Eduardo: Experiment 541

Originally captured alongside Edd, Eduardo was given the same treatment as Edd, unfortunately his abilities have manifested in a different way and his body works completely differently. Eduardo has the exact same abilities as Edd does, but he's more unstable than him, more often than not causing more usage of his powers and becomes easily ill, while he's physically stronger than Edd, he becomes weaker, faster. The doctor has no further plans to correct this and instead plans on witnessing future fights.

Mark: Experiment 3181

Mark is a fairly intelligent man, unfortunately his intelligence ment all but nothing to the doctor, and Mark was tested for more human adaptation experiments, going a little bit farther than Matt, making his own body parts and attaching them to Mark, thusly he became an Arachne. A fairly intelligent creature for sure. That doesn't mean Mark likes it though. He's absolutely terrified of spiders and I don't think he appreciates being made into a giant spider.

Jon: Experiment 1054

Jon was definitely one of the last few to be taken by the doctor. Due to limited resources the Doctor decided to be rather... Merciful on him. Using the last of his current resources to do one last human adaptation experiment, he's seen how humans can adapt to Land and Water, albeit with scientific aid, he wanted to see if he could make him adapt to the air. While the outer work is considered minimal compared to Mark and Matt, his innards have been changed considerably to make him light weight. Removing as many "unnecessary" parts of the body as possible. Jon can still function but he's trying to only see the positives in the situation.

Pau: Experiment 611

Pau was the strongest and most resilient Test subject, even when getting taken he wouldn't stop fighting, taking down 6 lab employees, so as a form of "Mercy" and "Respect" the doctor used his materials and turned him into a basilisk. Replacing and sewing whatever he could to make him into another monster to use down the line much similar to Tord. Pau has to be restrained when enduring experiments and being in his containment cell. He isn't hostile towards his cellmates, but will not hesitate to try and bash someone upside the head if they're part of the lab.

Pat: Experiment 610

Pat is one of the greatest pilots of all time, a fantastic man, but unfortunately wasn't strong enough to help himself and his other two men, Yuu and Pau, despite this he kept trying but was never able to properly help the others. Out of "Pity" the doctor decided to "Help" him and make him stronger by turning him into a Gorgon. The snakes on his head and Pat work together to keep themselves alive, the snakes help him he helps the snakes, he's able to sense vibrations in the ground and has to wear socks to keep him from sensing them. He can turn people to stone but can't do so unless he directly looks them in the eyes, unless they wear contacts or glasses.

Yuu: Experiment 511

Yuu, oh poor Yuu. The doctor had captured him along side the other 3. After he was captured he commissioned Bing and Larry (who didn't know what they were getting paid for) to create a few clones of Yuu. Thusly replacing each part of his body to become a stronger version of itself, every part that was "Perfected" by the clones he took and modified Yuu, making him into a Frankenstein type of monster. He is still the same Yuu we know but he's in consistent distress and existential dread as he acknowledges that he's made of different body parts.

#punny's art #punny's sketches #au #eddsworld #ew edd #ew tom #ew matt #ew tord #ew neighbors #ew red army #ew!lab AU

[mobumi]

Spring 2024 Anime watchlist

1. Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master

I've watched all 4 episodes and it's brilliant so far! I didn't expect to like it this much. I saw the trailer a while ago and I was immediately intrigued so i waited for this to come out. I wasn't disapointed in the slightest! I'm not too keen on period drama usually, but this one is so captivating.

2. Bartender: Glass of God

A big surprise. Didn't expect much other than a slice of life about a bartender, but it has actually a very interesting plot and it's so so good! I'm on episode 4, very excited for the rest of the series!!

3. WIND BREAKER

I'm definitely biased with this one because i read the manga and i got very attached to its characters! At first i wasn't so sure, the manga didn't interest me much, but i bought the first volume to give it a try and it was better than i expected. Since it's not something i'm usually attracted to, it kinda has been my guilty pleasure ever since. The anime did it justice so far so i can't wait to see more of it adapted.

4. Oblivion Battery

I'm a huge fan of sports anime, especially when it involves baseball (i love Ace of Diamond, Ookiku Furikabutte and One Outs, to name a few) so this anime was one of my most anticipated! Well, after watching all 3 episodes, i think not everyone will be into the humor and i saw some people saying they disliked Kei, but i just love it? It's hilarious and really entertaining, there's so much potential with this show, i can't wait to see more!

5. Kaiju No. 8

Well, it's a big budget "mainstream" anime, of course it will get my attention like everyone else, but it's mostly beacuse i read the first volume of the manga that i was interested to see the anime. It's fun, the classic shonen formula, no suprises here, but i enjoyed it i guess...

6. Tadaima, Okaeri

Cute anime, though i'm not a big fan of omegaverse, it's nice to watch. I needed at least one slice of life in my list and this one was the perfect addition! I like it, it's different and sweet. Nothing extraordinary, but definitely worth a watch.

7. Viral Hit

I'm watching it, but i don't know what to think about it... It's not bad, but it's a little bit weird and ridiculous. It's kinda similar to Weak Hero Class 1 and has many themes used before in the manhwa genre, though i think it delivered what it was meant to do. I'll give it a couple more episodes to be fully engaged.

8. Demon Slayer: Hashira Training Arc

It's not out yet, but I watched the first episode at the movie theater (it was a special release in France) like two months ago i think? It wasn't enough and nothing really happened in this episode so i'm waiting to see more once it comes out!

9. Go! Go! Loser Ranger!

I've only seen one episode. It's a new concept for me, it got my attention, but the first episode bored me a little. Maybe i wasn't really in the mood. I'll watch a second episode to form a better opinion! The concept is interesting!

Anime still airing that I'm watching:

Dungeon Meshi

I'm in love with this anime to be honest! I wasn't really sure at first because i'm not into fantasy anime, but i was truly impressed by the storytelling and the characters' journey. Definitely a must watch!

Ninja Kamui

I enjoy watching this anime, but i have to admit that they lost me with the mecha stuff. I'm still going to watch it though, and i'll totally finish it when i can. It's over next week so i'm going to watch all the remaining episodes that i still haven't watched yet.

Anime that I still have yet to start:

Black Butler: Public School Arc

The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio

GIRLS BAND CRY

Whisper Me a Love Song

#here is finally my spring watchlist #it's coming a bit late but i still wanted to share it #anime #anime watchlist #anime review #yatagarasu #the raven does not choose its master #bartender glass of god #wind breaker #oblivion battery #boukyaku battery #kaiju no. 8 #tadaima okaeri #viral hit #demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #go go loser ranger #sentai daishikkaku #dungeon meshi

[kaijuworldorder]

Gadzooki + Konky Donk: The Empire Magazine review

Oh shit I was supposed to post this weeks ago and forgot, oops. Anyway, having seen Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire a second time and solidified my opinion of it, yeah it's pretty good! Major glow-up from the previous entry. It's not perfect and is no less stupid than its predecessor, but it's the kind of dumb movie that I like, one that doesn't go out of its way to insult my intelligence or annoy me. The things that worked about Godzilla vs. Kong are here only way more, and the things that sucked are mostly not here. There's just enough substance that my adult self is happy, and all the mindless wild spectacle that makes kWo Junior cheer and want to bash action figures together. Adam Wingard said in an interview that his aim was to make a modern-day Toho Champion Festival movie, and I think he succeeded. I'm no longer nearly as worried about the future of the MonsterVerse as I was. 4 stars, check it out if you haven't yet.

There's the short version. Under the cut, I'll get into specifics of what I liked and what I didn't. If you're still wanting to see GxK and somehow haven't yet, I recommend doing so before reading on, because I spoil a lot of the movie here.

WHAT I LIKED

Big-time Inhumanoids vibes. The tone, the “journey into a subterranean world to stop evil monsters from taking over Earth” plot, Skar King being kinda like Metlar personality-wise and living in a horrible lava hell, the wacky pseudoscience and power armor (well, just a gauntlet but you get the picture), the gruesome violence…I half-expected the end credits to sound like this. GxK is the closest I think we will ever get to a big-budget theatrical Inhumanoids motion picture, unless a miracle happens and Hasbro decides to give a shit again and buys back the rights. For those who aren't familiar with Inhumanoids: get familiar with it, you’ll thank me later.

Rebecca Hall's new hairstyle. Yeah.

Bernie no longer sucks. Way less grating and unfunny, doesn't parrot fascist talking points every goddamned second, and the sense of wonder he shows upon seeing the Hollow Earth for the first time really won me over.

Jia. One of the previous movie’s strongest aspects in my opinion, particularly her dynamic with Kong, and that holds true in this picture as well. She gets a good deal more to do, shows off more range, and her whole emotional arc in this hits just right for me. Feeling alone even though you’re not, feeling like you don’t fit in anywhere, thinking there must be something wrong with you but you can’t put it into words…these are things I can relate to all too well. And I won’t lie, I choked up when she chose to stay with Andrews at the end.

Unfridging the Iwi. The previous film’s most egregious, unforgivable misstep has been walked back, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s also good to see the Iwi having a more active role in the story, instead of basically being window dressing like in Kong: Skull Island, which as much as I love that movie was kind of a problem. It helps that the Hollow Earth Iwi are just extremely cool. Love the crystal spears, the gravity pyramid and all their other Sufficiently Advanced tech. They’re like if Seatopia weren’t horrible assholes, or if the Nilai Kanai were in a better movie. I like 'em!

Dentist! A thing I love about the MonsterVerse is how it comes up with creative stuff involving kaiju that no other movie has ever really thought to do (e.g. Godzilla flashing Chellen-kov LIGHT from his spines as a threat display). I also like that it shows how the world has changed in response to the emergence of Godzilla and the others—how culture, the economy, politics, and general day-to-day life have shaped themselves around these creatures. Trapper exemplifies both of these things really well. I doubt I would ever have come up with the idea of a kaiju veterinarian, let alone written a scene showing how a dental procedure on a 300-foot ape would work, but I'm so grateful for that level of worldbuilding. He’s also just a goofy weird guy and I like him.

Golden Earring "Twilight Zone" needle drop. One of my favorite songs of all time is in this movie and I know it's kinda stupid to pop for things like that, but goddammit I loved it.

Kong’s arc. There’s just something really satisfying about finally seeing a King Kong who isn’t the last of his kind. Plus he gets a Trendmasters accessory robo-glove gimmick, which is just stupid enough that I'm into it.

Monster rasslin'. I do wish the fight scenes had more weight and scale to them, but goddamn, they're just so much fun and visually engaging. I can't dislike a movie where Godzilla does a vertical suplex.

Sucko. I love this horrible little ugly-cute weirdo/giant ape version of Rock Howard, and not just because “hehe funni mokney” or the bit where Kong uses him as a blunt object to clobber those other assholes. I got genuinely invested in him and Kong bonding, as he realizes that barely anyone in the Skar King’s domain ever showed him genuine kindness before. He is good and can stay.

The Skar King. Fantastic love-to-hate-him scumbag villain, chock-full of personality. You really want to see Kong and Godzilla kick this guy’s ass, and his cruelty and tyranny getting paid back in full at the end is so satisfying. The only thing that really sucks about him is his uncreative name. Like come on, “Hanuman” was RIGHT THERE, especially since the Whipslash can totally stand in for a tail.

Skar King’s soldiers. I love these Lost City of Zinj-ass motherfuckers. They're nasty and fun and I want action figures of them yesterday, so hey uh, Playmates, maybe get on that? Not like you'd have to spend a ton of money either, just reuse the Ferocious Kong and Skar King body molds and make a couple new heads, splash some red paint on em and voila, instant gorilla warfare. That one balding ape with the fucked-up eye who Sucko kicks off the pyramid to his death might require some new tooling, but nothing major.

Shimo. It's nice to have an antagonist monster who isn't evil, and is still alive at the end of the picture. We don't often get reptilian monsters not named Godzilla that are babyfaces, and ice powers are rare in Toho kaiju circles. She's just a breath of fresh air, with a simple but effective design and a genuine emotional hook; I really felt bad for her when the Skar King was bossing her around and basically torturing her, and the joy she feels at her freedom from his control transcends onto me, the viewer.

Mothra is so fucking back. She makes her presence felt, she doesn't die this time, and she gets a little more to do here than in King of the Monsters, which I appreciate. I still say she ought to have a solo spinoff movie; she's Strong and Cool™ enough to stand on her own, and there's so much more you can do with her than just being Godzilla's conscience and bestest pal.

Tiamat. It was nice to see her in motion finally instead of just being relegated to tie-in comics that the movies ignore 99.9% of the time. Shame we’re never gonna see her again.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

Junkie XL's score. Soulless and unmemorable hackery, just like his work on Godzilla vs. Kong. The Skar King motif sounds like he started to compose something and then just gave up. He also has a Jimmy Hart version of "Mothra's Song" to accompany the previous movie's Jimmy Hart Godzilla theme, and it's just as lame. Bring back McCreary or Desplat, please and thank ya.

AVP-wi. As much as I like the Hollow Earth Iwi, I’m a little annoyed that the Iwi are now apparently the only ancient monster-worshiping culture there has ever been. It feels dumbed down, and limits what future stories in this setting will be able to do.

Godzilla Evolved. Boy oh boy do I have a lot to say about this, none of it good. Godzilla's new look is way too busy and overdesigned with all these spiky greebles all over him that make him look more like a Monster Hunter boss than the King of the Monsters, and his proportions physically hurt me to look at. Where did all the internal organs in his torso go to make his waist that slim? What the fuck is up with his arms? Why are there dorsal spines growing out of his elbows and forearms? It just doesn't look right. I get that they're trying to evoke the Godzilla 2000 design with the giant pink spines and slimmer body proportions and the spikier and slightly greener skin (it's even got the same feet) but it just isn't done that well, and besides, if I wanted to see that design, I'd watch that movie. It’s just fucking up the cohesion of the Legendary Godzilla design and eroding its visual identity even more, dragging it further and further in directions it wasn’t meant to go in a cynical capitalistic move to sell new toys. I said it in 2019 and I'll say it again: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Moreover, it's 100% cosmetic and doesn't actually affect the movie at all in any meaningful way, it's just Dragon Ball-style "new color = stronger" power creep. We keep being told how much more powerful Godzilla is now, but we're not shown any evidence that there's a significant difference. It doesn't feel like there's anything Evolved Godzilla does that regular Godzilla couldn't or hasn't before. He doesn't act any different or display new abilities. His new thagomizer and Batmanesque arm spines? Never uses 'em, they're just more surface greebles to clutter up the design. Why make changes like that if you're not gonna do anything with them? Hell, the only new trick Godzilla shows off in this, the classic blue Nuclear Pulse, is something he uses before he evolves! And then he never does it again after that! Even the atomic breath color change is meaningless. We're told it's stronger than before, but again, we never actually see that; it doesn’t seem to do any more damage to monsters or buildings than the old one did. Sure, it burns away Shimo's ice storm at the end, but Godziller burned a tunnel all the way through the fucking Earth with the regular blue breath in the last movie, so it doesn't really feel like something he needed a new form to be able to do. I don't believe for one second that Godzilla Evolved was necessary; there's not enough real difference between it and Original Flavor Godzilla to justify its existence. I realize that's probably unfair of me to say since I don't know if or how much anything that would've helped illustrate the difference better may have been part of the movie before but got cut for time, but to me at least, the effect on the finished film is that Most Powered-Up New Godzilla® just feels like a palette swap in a video game, and that's not great. Maybe instead, oh I dunno, you could have Godzilla have a rough time and just barely win against Scylla in Rome instead of wasting her in seconds, Final Wars-style? Maybe have a little flashback to the ancient war of Godzilla vs. Hanuman & 700 Big Gorilla, like show him barely surviving that, so we get an idea of what he's up against? Then when he powers up, we can buy that he's stronger now, like a sense of progression or something. Instead, what we get is basically a Hong Kong martial arts flick if it showed the hero doing a training montage and then beating all the bad guys, but didn't show any of why he needed to train in the first place, e.g. the bad guys kicking his ass. It's a payoff with no setup. I assume this is probably a side effect of Godzilla in New Empire being what immature people with bad opinions claim he was in Godzilla (2014)—a guest star in his own movie—so there might not have been a way to avoid this problem without significantly altering the pacing, but like…could they have at least fucking tried?

#godzilla x kong the new empire #monstrous monologues #kwo at the movies

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Atlantis Attacks Part 1

1989

Ah, geez, here we go again.

Another event made out of linked annuals. Several different writers trying to stay on the same vague page.

Silver Surfer, Iron Man, X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, Punisher, Spectacular Spider-Man, Daredevil, Avengers, New Mutants, X-Factor, Web of Spider-Man, West Coast Avengers, Thor, and Fantastic Four.

Spider-Man still being greedy and dipping into the event three times.

Like Evolutionary War, I'll try to cover the whole event. I'll cover the non-Avengers material in a pretty cursory manner and the two Avengers annuals in more depth.

I'm here to Avenger, not look at Spider-Man hogging all the screentime.

But while working on this post I've discovered that fourteen annuals is just too many pictures to fit in one post so I'm breaking it up into two.

Silver Surfer through Avengers, New Mutants through Fantastic Four. So each post has an Avengers annual.

Let's see if Atlantis Attacks manages to string a bunch of annuals together into a half-decent story or at least manages it better than Evolutionary War.

I have zero knowledge of this event but I'm pretty sure this Atlantis Attack... isn't Namor's fault.

Scary to consider but that's the truth.

how SHARPER than a SERPENT'S TOOTH

We weirdly kick off the event with the character who least wants to be involved.

You'd think that Punisher would least want to be involved because he hates it when superhero stuff interrupts him shooting people but no. Somehow Silver Surfer wanted to be involved less.

Several galaxies away from Earth, Silver Surfer is doing what he do, surfing through space, when he loses control of his board.

It keeps trying to fly a certain direction and he finds green crap coating the bottom of the board that he can't remove.

He eventually just lets the board fly where it likes so he can figure out what the hell is going on.

The board takes him to a green dust cloud so Silver Surfer uses his power cosmic to reincorporate the cloud.

It turns out that its GHAUR GODLORD OF DEVIANT LEMURIA.

Since Silver Surfer doesn't know who that is and since Ghaur is a villain, he gladly exposits his backstory.

He was a priest of Deviant Lemura (from the Eternals book!) and when the Deviant leader Brother Toad led the Deviants into a disastrous defeat against the Eternals, Ghaur decided something drastic had to be done to give the Deviants hope again.

But the Deviants were portrayed as being always chaotic evil at this point so the thing he did to bring hope to his people was stealing power from the Dreaming Celestial and growing kaiju sized.

The Dreaming Celestial wound up taking over his brain and forced him into trying to dig it up. So the Eternals made a Uni-Mind, ripped out Ghaur's soul, and blasted it into space.

The Silver Surfer happened to fly through the soul cloud and here we are.

Silver Surfer decides Ghaur is bad news and kicks his ass.

I mean, it's actually a big action scene that goes back and forth but Silver Surfer kicks his ass. Ghaur realizes that he's getting his ass kicked in a pointless battle that has nothing to do with his sinister plan and fucks off.

Silver Surfer watches him go and decides, eh. He doesn't want to get drawn into Earth stuff. He uses his powers to send a warning to whoever manages to hear it (Dr Strange and Talisman) but he has his own business to take care of and Earth has plenty of people who can clean up the mess Silver Surfer accidentally dumped on their doorstep.

Man, you are a jerk sometimes, Norrin Radd!

But that's the story of how Silver Surfer wanted to be in this event so little that he bowed out of the story halfway through his own annual.

Meanwhile, Ghaur goes to Earth and pays a visit to Lemuria.

Not Deviant Lemuria. There's a reason why I keep calling it Deviant Lemuria and its because there's another Lemuria that's populated by mermen.

Merman Lemuria was actually introduced before Deviant Lemuria, for the record.

Ghaur finds Llyra, a teal lady and old Namor foe.

He proposes that they team-up because the Serpent Crown whispered to him when he was a space cloud and Llyra has been the prime agent of the crown here on Earth 616.

So, the Serpent Crown.

It is a hat that looks like snakes that has great power because the evil Elder God Set used it as a vessel for his power when he had to flee Earth to avoid a shitstorm he started by eating a centaur and doing the first murder.

It was introduced in a Namor story so has a lot of ties to his lore and also as a general evil artifact that bounces around the Marvel universe. It's even been in Avengers!

Because Ghaur is a villain, he exposits the history of the Serpent Crown to Llyra, who probably knows most of it already.

When Set created the Serpent Crown, he somehow created it throughout the multiverse. People that found and wore it because rulers of their world.

The Avengers had one of their punch-ups with the Squadron Supreme when two Crown wearers collaborated - Earth-616 Roxxon President Hugh Jones and Earth-712 US President Rockefeller.

If you're curious, that took place in Avengers #144, 147, 148, and 149.

It was pretty good. Patsy Walker became Hellcat during that story.

Hugh Jones got both crowns when the Avengers brought one back from Earth-712 but the Thing thwarted him and took the crown to be safely stored at Project Pegasus.

Where the crown corrupted the scientists to using dimensional cannons to summon Serpent Crowns from across the multiverse to join together into a giant Serpent Crown which threatened to resurrect Set.

But Spider-Man with a cosmic cube, Dr Strange, Scarlet Witch, and the Thing destroyed the Giant Serpent Crown, preventing Set from returning to the physical plane.

Woo.

But now Ghaur has a plan to bring about the triumph of the Serpent Crown and resurrection of Set.

But he's not going to tell us the plan yet. We have to wait.

(I'm getting deja vu of Evolutionary War.)

TWO IF BY SEA

The Atlantean attack on the surface world beings -- and an Avenger must DIE to stop them!

So, it's going to be Namor, right? Iron Man isn't currently an Avenger. I mean, every Avenger is an Avenger but he's currently trying to get the West Coast team to hire him back on.

In event plot land, Ghaur and Llyra bring their plan to Attuma, who currently rules Atlantis.

Ghaur actually goes over his plan! Which makes Atlantis Attacks already more forthcoming about its plot than Evolutionary War was!

Ghaur and Llyra are going to re-assemble the Serpent Crown and help Set manifest on Earth. When Set takes over the world, he'll definitely give it to his most loyal servants and Ghaur is offering Attuma a chance to get in on the ground floor.

All he needs is Attuma to use his armies alongside Llyra's Lemurian rebels to weaken the surface world. Especially the United States.

Attuma agrees, as long as Llyra's forces are put under his command, which she agrees to.

Meanwhile, our title boy Iron Man is shadowing some Maggia (a legally distinct Mafia) mini-subs, trying to find out why Maggia activity has been spiking lately.

The mini-subs are following a Completely Normal ship.

Flying above the ocean, Namor is trying to find the monster babies his monster wife had. Remember those? When Marrina turned into a giant sea monster and then died? And Captain Marvel lost her powers? Anyway, Namor is still looking for the babies.

He stops by the Completely Normal ship and asks if they've seen any sea monsters but the Completely Normal ship is Actually Hydra and they assume he's onto them.

They launch an attack on Namor and then blow up the ship when the Coast Guard shows up.

Iron Man joined in to help Namor when the Maggia subs fled due to the commotion.

So now Namor and Iron Man decide to work together to figure out what Hydra is up to and go to visit Tony Stark.

This lets me find out why Tony was acting weird in Avengers West Coast.

In Iron Man #242, Tony was shot and paralyzed by a stalker.

Tony Stark: "I got involved with the wrong lady. She was a bad sport. But a good shot!"

Out of his armor, he's confined to a wheelchair. So he's been spending more and more time in the armor and less and less time as Tony Stark. Which worries Rhodey.

Anyway, Tony decides to go with Namor to Panama because that Hydra ship was registered down there.

(Coincidentally, that's also where the Atlantis Attack plot is today, womp womp)

Namor spots signs of underwater military movement on the sea floor and goes to investigate that while Tony finds the building the Hydra ship was affiliated with.

Iron Man smashes his way through the building and learns from the Hydra boss that they've created a new designer drug that they're going to give away for free to make everyone in America addicted so Hydra can take over.

So Tony kills the guy, I think?? Geez, Tony.

Iron Man: "Probably shouldn't have done that. But I guess everyone gets a little self-indulgent now and then."

Geez.

Iron Man sets the warehouse on fire to destroy the drugs, which should set back Hydra's plans.

He goes looking for the other Hydra ship, full of drug cargo, when Namor reunites with him.

Namor exposes the Atlantean troops as they were trying to move in secret through the Panama canal by hiding under ships.

It is so funny to me that Atlantis Attacks is just another thing happening while Iron Man is trying to deal with the Hydra drug plot which is something that interrupted him trying to figure out what the Maggia is up to! Stuff keeps interrupting the last thing he was doing!

The Hydra ship tries fleeing so Iron Man asks Namor to go after them while he keep fighting the Atlanteans. WITH MICROWAVES. TO BOIL THE WATER INSIDE THEIR HELMETS.

Attuma orders the Omega rocket be fired at Iron Man or at whatever. It actually flies towards a tanker ship so Iron Man blocks the rocket with his body to save the crew.

The Atlanteans try to shoot Iron Man while he's down but fighter jets from Albrook Air Base come in and start shooting them mermen.

Iron Man thanks them and flies off to go help Namor but Hydra blows up their ship again, seemingly blowing up Namor.

Iron Man: "I'm going to do everything I can to uncover what's goin on between Hydra and the Maggia! I swear, Namor -- your death will not have been in vain!"

This early on in the plot, I like that the heroes still don't know what's going on. They've stumbled into the early stages of Atlantis Attacks and Iron Man gives no further thought to it compared to what he already had on his plate.

MOVING ON!

DOUBLE X CROSS

Mr. Jip? That sounds like a slur. It's not, as far as I can find out. But I don't like it.

Anyway, lets get right into the plot and then into the macguffin hunt.

The Serpent Society was hired by Ghaur and Llyra to collect four mystical artifacts. One of the items, a jeweled Cro-Magnon skull was held by a scholar of black arts called Mr. Jip.

That's him on the cover.

He doesn't appreciate being robbed so he bodyswaps Diamondback and Dazzler, for some reason.

And he doesn't like what Ghaur and Llyra are up to. So if the X-Men gather the artifacts for him, instead, he'll put Diamondback and Dazzler back in the right bodies.

Like a lot of bodyswap stories, this sucks.

Diamondback almost immediately tries to sleep with Wolverine with Dazzler's body. And spends most of the rest of the time trying to eat or smoke things Dazzler doesn't want in her body.

Anyway, the X-Men don't want to go on a macguffin hunt and since they're in the Outback era, they have a magical man who can send them wherever they want to go.

But when they try to get Gateway to send them to Mr. Jip, they instead wind up split into different teams, sent to beat the Serpent Society to the artifacts.

Dazzler-in-Diamondback and Wolverine end up in the Savage Land, where Dazzler is catty because she thinks Wolverine was going to sleep with Diamondback-in-Dazzler because the DinD snuck into Logan's room.

She runs off on her own and gets captured and is a huge burden.

Thanks, the X-Men Annual. Thanks for that.

Wolverine winds up rescuing her and fighting Puff Adder, Asp, and Boomslang almost all by himself.

Dazzler does use Diamondback's marksmanship to conk Puff Adder in the noggin when Puff Adder has Wolverine in a bear hug.

And they find the little stone race idol that they're looking for and get teleported away.

Colossus, Rogue, and Havok wind up teleported to an abandoned shopping center in Lima, Ohio and fight Anaconda, Black Mamba, and Coachwhip.

Once Havok breaks out of Black Mamba's illusion, he explodes all the potato chips at her with his plasma powers. That's pretty funny.

Once all the fights are done, they find Rock Python having just found the artifact.

But he surrenders it to them when he sees he's surrounded and has no backup.

This group of X-Men also get teleported as soon as they touch the thing.

Longshot, Diamondback-in-Dazzler, Psylocke, and Storm get teleported to Iceland to find a specific rock on a beach full of rocks.

Cottonmouth, Black Racer, Rattler, and Bushmaster also show up to look for a rock and everyone gets into a fight.

Longshot finds the specific rock, because lock powers. But Rattler causes a rockslide trying to get the rock and accidentally buries himself and Longshot.

Diamondback doesn't give a shit about Longshot and grabs the rock, getting the X-Men and her teleported to Mr. Jip's lair.

He swaps Dazzler and Diamonback back to their own bodies and the X-Men begrudingly turn over the three artifacts.

Wolverine threatens Mr. Jip when the guy dismisses their worry over Longshot, so the magic man magics Longshot to them. He had luckily fallen into a hole and wasn't crushed.

Then Sidewinder, former leader of the Serpent Society, teleports in, and he and Diamondback snatch the artifacts.

TWAS A RUSE.

Diamondback was working for Sidewinder all along and manipulating the Serpent Society for him.

(Sidewinder gives the Serpent Society 10% of the profit. Considering they failed to secure any of the artifacts and they ousted Sidewinder from the team he formed, that's not bad.)

They teleport off to sell the artifacts to Ghaur and Llyra. Mr. Jip gets annoyed at how pointless this entire adventure was and teleports the X-Men back home.

Once they're gone, he bemoans not being able to prevent Ghaur's plan, since it is going to make Dagger (of Cloak and) a target. And perhaps... Storm too.

Which is echoed when Diamondback and Sidewinder sell the artifacts to Ghaur for one chest of sunken treasure. Once the two snake-themed villains are gone, Ghaur implies that they have plans for Storm.

And the magical artifacts? Lemurian alchemists being using them to recreate the Serpent Crown!

I'm impressed that each annual so far has progressed the story in a unique way.

ABOMINATIONS!

Uh oh, Liefeld drew this annual. I flip to the first page and Ghaur is way off-model.

Ah well.

So with the artifacts the Serpent Society found last time, Ghaur has begun reconstructing a giant Serpent Crown.

But he's got other shit going on too.

His Lemurian ally Llyra has gone on a mission to free the Abomination from a Colorado jail.

(Huh. Why is this called Atlantis Attacks when its more Lemurians who are attacking? The Atlantean troops that were caught sneaking through the Panama Canal even get called a Lemurian attack force when the events get referenced. EXPLAIN THE TITLE, please.)

Llyra brought Abomination to New York and meets with Ghaur.

Abomination is still being controlled by Tyrannus, aka the lastest Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus, and he wants out.

With Lemurian technology and the high voltage lines that ran to where Avengers Mansion used to be, Tyrannus is freed from Abomination by shuffling him into Emil Blonsky and Emil back into Abomination.

This wins Team Set an alliance with Tyrannus. Who I guess has stuff to offer? And also an Abomination, since he'll obey them since they can get him out of the gamma body.

Except the strain of the transfer messed up Emil's mind and now Abomination is rampaging mindlessly.

Also, the massive energy surge alerted both Spider-Man and She-Hulk who were nearby.

(In She-Hulk's case, because she was yelling at J Jonah Jameson for his shitty views on the homeless. Eesh.)

The two heroes fight Abomination but have some trouble. He's Hulk level and they're pulling their punches to avoid endangering any bystanders.

At some point, She-Hulk gets knocked unconscious briefly. Ghaur, who stuck around to watch how things played out, has identified She-Hulk as a strong lady who could be useful as "an excellent bride -- for the great god Set!"

And the creeper burns a snake mark onto She-Hulk's neck while she's briefly knocked out from Abomination punches.

She-Hulk wakes up, gets back in the fight, and throws a gasoline tanker at Abomination, which causes him to stumble off a bridge and fall onto a boat.

The two heroes decide they'd really rather not go chasing him. So they don't.

Very heroic, you two.

Two days later, a disguised Tyrannus visits a federal prison outside Washington DC to propose a deal to an imprisoned Viper.

The bad guys are still networking and the good guys still don't know what's going on.

Plus, the implied role that Storm and Dagger (and now She-Hulk) have in Ghaur's plan is as "brides of Set."

The plot thickens and by thickening, exists.

KNIGHT FIGHT

Despite the cover and the title, Moon Knight don't really fight in this. In fact, they seem pretty enthusiastic to work together. Marc even takes Frank home to see his mansion.

What they do fight is snake people, or sneople.

Moon Knight sees a man eat a gerbil in a pet shop. For some reason, this makes him suspicious and he decides to look into it. Marc follows the guy to an estate run by Save Our Society, a non-profit dedicated to curing drug addicts.

At the same time, Punisher is on the trial of a drug addict named Ralph Newton who killed a woman for her social security check. But when he checks Ralph's usual drug den, the guy isn't there. In fact, Ralph told his drug buddies that he was going to go straight and get the drug addiction cure from the Save Our Society clinic.

The two heroes run into each other when staking out the clinic and decide to team up.

Very alarmingly, they find everyone in the clinic are snake people and comic book fight scene ensues. The heroes easily having the advantage because the cold weather is making the sneople sluggish.

The two go back to Moon Knight's mansion to research and plan.

They learn that former Hydra leader Viper was released from a federal prison last month by a Dr Tyrone.

Wait, that happened a month ago? So, the Amazing Spider-Man annual was a month ago??

Anyway, the two storm the SOS estate Moon Knight scouted earlier.

Fighting the sneople is harder because they're wearing thermal packs that keep them warmed up. But harder is relative.

Viper surprise injects Punisher with drugs and then flees in a rocket when Frank goes totally nuts.

Moon Knight calms down the drugged out Punisher by showing him his shiny moonerangs and then takes him back to Spector Manor to detox.

These two are such good murder friends to each other.

They go their separate ways at the end to deal with separate business but mention they should team up again sometime.

So I'm not sure what this adds to the story. Definitely something.

Viper is making snake people, presumably for Ghaur. She escapes from Punisher and Moon Knight with plans to improve her process.

Some backup stories in the annuals have been recapping the entire history of Set and the Serpent Crown. Set did have snake people serving him in earlier times so maybe Ghaur is setting the stage for Set's return in that way too.

And now we return to Spider-Man taking more than his share of this event.

The SERPENT in the SHADOW

I wonder if team-ups are the theme of this annuals event. Minus Silver Surfer the broody loner.

Namor teamed up with Iron Man in his annual. X-Men teamed up with Diamondback. Spider-Man teamed up with She-Hulk. Punisher teamed up with Moon Knight. Now Spider-Man is teaming up with Cloak and Dagger. And looking ahead, I see that Spider-Man will also be teaming up with Daredevil.

The man is truly hogging more than his share of this event. Three annuals and also appearing in Daredevil's annual? Save some for the rest of us, Parker.

Anyway, this annual also clears up the timeline. Maybe.

Spider-Man mentions that the fight he had against Abomination was a week ago. The Atlantian/Lemurian attacks on the surface are apparently still ongoing. So either Viper's operation in the Punisher annual was in the future or Moon Knight misspoke.

Anyway, plot.

Spider-Man is looking into a Save Our Society non-profit event. Initially to take pictures to try to sell but later when he examines one of the photos, he recognizes a Sons of the Serpent tattoo on one of the SOS staff. Since the Sons of the Serpent are basically the Marvel version of the KKK, Spider-Man is very curious to see what connection they might have to the similar sounding Save Our Society.

I mean, it could just be that this dude is a reformed ex-Son of the Serpent who can't afford to have the tattoo lasered off. But, no, that's not the case.

Cloak is also looking into the Save Our Society event but because he's wondering if the SOS miracle cure to drug addiction can cure his addiction to siphoning life energy from Dagger. Which he both wants and doesn't want because he's afraid that if their powers didn't require them to hang out, she'd have no reason to be with him.

Aw, buddy, she likes you for you, most of the time I've read you two!

Cloak gets defensive when Spider-Man gets in his business and also near Dagger (because she's blind right now, she threw some light daggers at Spider-Man because it sounded like he was hurting Cloak). But the misunderstanding fight is just so they can team-up later.

Ghaur identifies Dagger as another potential bride of Set and orders Tyrannus to put the Mark of Set upon her.

Tyrannus is happy to do so because he has his own plans that plays into.

Apparently, when he's not in Abomination's body, Tyrannus has SUPER CHARISMA MIND CONTROL. He's able to easily lead Dagger away and also control Cloak when he comes looking for her.

He sends Cloak to steal the ancient Book of Kell from a museum. The book is an ancient text of the Sons of the Serpent cult and contains secrets that will make Tyrannus mightier than Ghaur.

Since he now has what he needs from Cloak, Tyrannus sends a huge number of more transformed snake people to kill Cloak.

Cloak nearly gets overwhelmed but gets saved by a mystery figure.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man investigates the lower levels of the Save Our Society building and finds a "cured" drug addict turning into a snake person.

We learn here and from Tyrannus' conversation with Cloak elsewhere in the issue that the addiction cure is a serpent serum Viper created. It does cure chemical addiction in its early stages but then it turns you into a snake people.

And from Ghaur's exposition when he decides that Dagger is one of the Set Brides, we learn that "serpent worshipers" are required for Set's resurrection.

So that's why they're making sneople.

Tyrannus surprises Spider-Man and SUPER CHARISMAS him into compliance.

Tyrannus: "You're like everyone else in the world, addict and non-addict alike. You want easy answers. You want simple solutions. You want someone to tell you what to do. And that someone, my pet... for now and ever more... is me."

This took a turn.

"A Friend in Need..."

So quick bit about Daredevil's status quo at the mo.

He's having a rough time.

Post Born Again, he had started to put his life back together when Kingpin knocked his legs out from under him again by sending Typhoid Mary into his life. Daredevil was beaten nearly to death and THEN went through Inferno where a vacuum and a dentistcoptruck demon tried to kill him. Having lost all his friends and his law clinic so decided to leave New York and travel around for a while. I think he also french kissed Mephisto somewhere in there.

So Daredevil is traveling around Monroe Falls, New York when he encounters some snake people attacking a guy who won't stop prying into what happened to his friend Wally, who joined Save Our Society.

Daredevil saves the guy but refuses to help him break into the treatment center.

At least until Dr Strange (who had been faking his death, for Dr Strange reasons) comes and asks him to help do something about a growing evil he's sensed in... whaddayaknow... the Save Our Society treatment center.

Also happening in world's colliding, Viper comes to the Monroe Falls SOS center to re-group after Punisher and Moon Knight busted up her last base.

Tyrannus (Dr Tyrone) says she's welcome to use this center until she can get back on her feet but then he pulls a double cross on her. And on Ghaur.

With the book he had Cloak steal and with Viper as a sacrifice, he's going to summon Set early and get all the good servant brownie points before Ghaur can.

When Daredevil (following Strange's request) breaks into the center to create a distraction, Tyrannus sends his hypnotized "pet" Spider-Man to stop the intruder.

He seriously has a collar and leash on Spider-Man and calls him a pet. When I said this took a turn, I meant it.

Even though acting under mind control makes Spider-Man fight at less than peak performance, he's still bouncing Daredevil off the scenery and drowning him until Matt decides he wants to live and knocks the wall-crawler out.

The Book of Kell Tyrannus is using doesn't summon Set but instead a snake demon servant of Dormammu.

Tyrannus figures a snake demon is a snake demon and turns the full force of his CHARISMA to control it but this frees Viper and she shoves Tyrannus into the pentagram to get om nom nom'd by the demon.

Dr Strange banishes the demon. Then for good measure, magically cures everyone of the snake serum, turning them back to normal and inadvertantly depriving Ghaur of all those sneople he needed.

We don't really learn more about Ghaur's big plan except that it will require a sacrifice. But this completes the subplot of Tyrannus planning his own thing within the bigger scheme. And follows up on Viper.

Eh. I really hope we get some more Atlantis in Atlantis Attacks soon, though. Like Evolutionary War, there's been a lot of drugs and not a lot of the thing promised in the title.

And that brings us back to Avengers!

AVENGERS ASSEMBLED

Which means we'll be slowing the pace down a little since Avengers is what this liveblog is actually about.

Sorry every other book I skimmed through on my way here.

(This is also the point where the cast balloons so large that I literally can't tag everyone. Just this Avengers Annual has over twenty characters...)

After working on it since the end of the X-Men Annual, Lord Ghaur and Llyra have completed their giant Serpent Crown.

In fact, it's the best Serpent Crown. Bigger and stronger and more indestructible than that other one that broke.

With the crown complete, it begins to emanate power. Which is felt by any who have worn the crown previously. We see Viper, the Thing, Scarlet Witch, mysterious armored figure from the Spectacular Spider-Man issue, and Quasar reacting to the crown.

Ghaur and Llyra call Attuma to tell him to get on that Atlantis Attacks thing already.

The attack on the surface world to keep the surface militaries and heroes distracted.

Attuma acts all gung ho about it when on the video phone with Lord Ghaur but has privately started to doubt his role in this plan. He's the big conqueror of Atlantis and all so why does he feel like a subordinate in this partnership?

He decides to take a back seat and let his lieutenants Tyrak, U-Man, Lord Arno, and Krang carry out the attacks.

So the Atlantean fleet launches and splits to attack four targets. Cape Canaveral in Forida, Fort Hamilton army base in New York, Langley Air Force base in Virginia, and the Shoreham Nuclear Plant on Long Island.

So basically just the East Coast. Well, this is the Avengers East Coast book. Although the cast list has the Avengers West Coast cast too.

The Avengers (Captain America, Sersi, She-Hulk, Quasar, Thor, and robot Human Torch Jim Hammond is here for some reason) get the reports of the attacks.

They wonder if just the six of them can handle four Atlantean armies. But luckily, this is the Every Avenger is an Avenger era and if there's any situation that calls for a mass muster, it may well be this.

And for some reason, Wasp, Dr Pym, Tigra, and Mockingbird arrive in a tiny panel on the next page.

What, they didn't fit in the big, two-page spread?

Well... Tigra doesn't?

She's still feral and locked in a cat carrier according to John Byrne so he later declares her presence in this annual didn't happen.

She's definitely in this issue and she does stuff but try to remember that you're just imagining it.

This is a pretty big crowd but we immediately cut it down a little. Quasar and the Thing are feeling under the weather (unbeknowst to them, because of the influence of the mega crown) so they're told to sit this one out.

The remainder break into four teams to tackle the four problem areas.

Black Panther, Invisible Woman, She-Hulk, and Mr Fantastic will go to Shoreham.

Robot Human Torch, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, the Hulk, and Sersi will go to Langley.

Dr Pym, Tigra (except she's not here, stop making things up), Hawkeye, Thor, Black Widow, and the Wasp go to Fort Hamilton.

And the Vision, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Mockingbird, and Iron Man go to Cape Canaveral.

I guess Hawkeye decided to leave the Great Lakes Avengers at home. I'm sad but also glad because I don't have to tag them.

And I also guess that Monica Rambeau got her powers back? Apparently in a Giant-Size Special one-shot Captain Marvel book? Nice. Now put her back in charge of the Avengers. She was cheated.

Team This Is Just A Fantastic Four of Invisible Woman, Black Panther, Mr Fantastic, and She-Hulk invisibly land the Fantasticar at the nuclear power plant and take the guards by surprise.

Silly hat wearer Lord Arno blind fires and manages to hit She-Hulk, despite telegraphing it so far as to yell that he's about to fire.

She-Hulk has been remarked to be acting subdued in this issue, presumably because of the Mark of Set that was secretly put on her during the Amazing Spider-Man issue.

Either way, she gets zapped and bonks into Invisible Woman, who is jarred into dropping the invisibility so an open battle it'll have to be.

Lord Arno identifies the group as the Fantastic Four ('cause it's the most Fantastic Four possible grouping you can make out of All The Avengers give or take a Ben Grimm who is out sick). And Lord Arno doesn't take the Fantastic Four lightly and immediately summons in his biggest gun.

Hey!

It's Orka, the giant Atlantean with the bad outfit. I forgot how stupid those 'teeth' around his face looked.

But it's fitting that he's involved. He was in that other Avengers Serpent Crown story, on loan to Roxxon. He beat up the entire Avengers team until Moondragon annoyed Thor into releasing even more true power. Because Thor unconsciously holds back a lot on Earth so he can hang with the Avengers?

So this guy is a tough guy and this group doesn't have a Thor.

But he's knocked on his ass two pages later with the combined efforts of She-Hulk and Black Panther picking up a random Atlantean gun.

Seeing Orka go down so quickly, Lord Arno panics and orders RETREEEEAT.

Meanwhile, a Quinjet arrives at Langley Air Force base. Wonder Man, Robot Human Torch, Hulk, and Sersi jump out and leap right into action, leaving Scarlet Witch to park the damn thing.

Wonder Man flies through the Atlantean anti-aircraft guns. Because an underwater people would definitely have anti-air.

Hulk jumps out of the Quinjet with Sersi clinging to his back and crashes through the Atlantean airships on the way down.

And I think Sersi turns herself into a rock to crash into the ground?

Scarlet Witch (after parking the Quinjet) uses her hex powers to alter the probability of two airships crashing into each other as yes.

Wonder Man tells her to take it easy because she's been out of sorts today and she tells him off for trying to mother her. Even tells him that "they're not giving out Quicksilver Awards" which manages to zing Pietro and he's not even here.

I guess giant dudes are a necessity because Tyrak (Attuma's chief spy who has a lot of abilities not related to spying like being super buff) grows giant to fight the Avengers.

Hulk and Wonder Man go to fight him as the two punchiest dudes there. But it is Robot Human Torch who strikes the biggest blow, by melting the device Tyrak was using as a power source, making him bwee-bwee-bwee shrink down so Wonder Man can knock him out.

Meanwhile, Scarlet Witch passes out from over-exerting herself. She falls right into Lord Ghaur's clutches.

He declares her another bride of Set and puts the Mark of Set on her.

What is that now...? She-Hulk, Dagger, and Scarlet Witch? With Storm suggested as another target?

Anyway.

Sersi uses her power of transmutation to turn half the Atlantean soldiers into human soldiers? Or just transmutes their outfits and skin so they look like human soldiers?? Anyway, it gets them shooting each other.

Then Moondragon and Rick Jones show up in a very baffling cameo.

I know this is one of those every Avenger ever situations but Rick Jones isn't an Avenger and isn't even an active part of this story!

Seriously. Moondragon is basically using him as a gun. She's used her mind powers to tap into Rick Jones' latent destiny force power. Remember that stuff that ended the Kree/Skrull War at least for a bit? That stuff. Moondragon uses it to knock some dudes down.

Kinda not even worth showing up for two panels, you two.

Hulk even scolds Moondragon for ruining the good time he was having and tells her to go home.

So that brings us to group 3, headed to Fort Hamilton.

Dr Pym and Tigra in Rover, the ant-head shaped airship that thinks Hank is neat, Thor and Wasp flying under their own power, and Hawkeye and Black Widow on Hawkeye's Sky-Cycle.

I love Rover. It's a shame that more hasn't been done with him up until this point.

The Atlanteans fire at the Avengers as they arrive over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

Thor lands and starts whirling his hammer to blow Atlantean soldiers around. But then they shoot him with an off-panel weapon.

Which wouldn't be a big deal except for Wasp pointing off-panel and going "what's that pointed at Thor?!"

C'mon.

U-Man (or Unter-Wasser Mann, apparently) leads a group of soldiers to charge on the Avengers.

But Hank just. Uses Pym Particles to shrink the entire army.

Okay, so Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Wasp help. And Tigra scoops them up.

Apparently Hank whipped up Pym Particles for everyone.

THIS WOULD INVALIDATE SO MANY TOUGH FIGHTS.

HANK, WHAT THE HELL??

Also, Thor notes that despite leading the charge, U-Man somehow vanished without a trace.

Also also, what? No giant guy this time?

And time for group 4, the final group. Captain Marvel, Captain America, the Vision, Mockingbird, and Iron Man.

Vision fists people, as he is known to do. Captain America throws his mighty shield and all who oppose his shield must yield. Mockingbird bonks people with her battle staves. Iron Man does flying hip thrusts to knock Atlanteans down. And Captain Marvel uses her energy trail to bowl them over.

NOTABLY. Captain America muses that the Vision he's fighting alongside is not like the robot-man he came to know. And that "it could chill a man to the very bone!"

I'm glad someone seems to care. WEST COAST AVENGERS.

Captain America gets the idea to start breaking the Atlanteans' helmets when he throws his mighty shield. Mockingbird follows suit and the Atlanteans deprived of their helmet water run back to the ocean.

Breaking all the helmets individually would take a while so Vision and Iron Man combine forces to blast the whole army with thermal energy.

Captain Marvel could easily have been added to this effort. Just saying.

The whole army flees into the ocean and then... they all get eaten by a sea monster?

????

Captain America: "In some bizarre, inexplicable way... it looks like the ocean has claimed its own!"

Be more alarmed by this!

A maybe explanation for this is the mysterious armored figure that shows up and decks Krang, the leader of this particular army. Then he beats the shit out of him.

I wonder who this mysterious guy is who has past history with Krang.

Maybe it's Raphael of the Ninja Turtles. He is red and angry.

Over in Atlantis, a messenger reports the defeat of all four of the armies to Attuma.

Attuma shouts that he knew this whole plan was folly and made no sense!

(Then why did you sign on?)

But having decided this Atlantis Attacks idea was flawed from the start, Attuma starts to wonder why Lord Ghaur and Llyra insisted on it. What are they really planning? And is there anything Attuma can do to screw them over??

Back at Avengers Island, several of the Avengers assemble to discuss what's been happening.

Wonder Man worries that although Scarlet Witch seems recovered from whatever was making her ill, she's still not acting like herself.

Captain America says that whatever is going on, there's nothing the Avengers can do except be ready for whatever the next move is going to be.

And since they totally have downtime right now, they should look into some of the strange occurrences of the recent past.

Presumably the other annuals.

But unbeknowst to them, the missing U-Man swims towards Avenger Island with more Atlantean troops.

Dun dun dun, continued in next week's post!

Follow at @essential-avengers and maybe like and reblog. I read through fourteen annuals in one week before discovering they couldn't all fit in one post. I'm exhausted.

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