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cant-blink · 2 years

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Shin Ghidorah Finally Admits His Feelings to Mothra

Shin Ghidorah has taken some massive steps with his feelings towards Mothra lately, some good, some bad, and some.... HIGHLY questionable in-betweens. Especially now when kaiju breeding season has begun, but that’ll be for the next post...

For now, here’s the part where Shin finally puts his heart on the line.

Shin Ghidorah hasn’t been on the planet long enough to quite understand the customs. And that includes the idea of a true love...

... Until he fell for Mothra over the course of many months of development. He’s never felt such a way towards another creature before. I mean, he’s designed by his creators to form bonds with individuals and obey them. But this is different somehow. Tis not quite the same as the friendship he’s forged with his Masters.

Mothra is an Earth creature, so he logics that he must partake in Earth creature customs in showing that he desires her. He made her extravagant gifts, and for once, they’re not horrifically made with body parts!! Mothra adored it.

Shin even risked a nuzzle and kiss, before flying off to what was near-certain death, leaving Mothra confused and baffled by this odd Ghidorah behavior.

Shin lives, of course. And after recovery at Mothra’s place, Shin asks Mistress Femuto and her mate, Gigan, “What is the most.... ‘romantic’ spot on this planet?”

“France,” Gigan said. “But only Paris, by that tower thing. Everywhere else there sucks.”

“That’s only for humans, really,” Femuto added. But she starts poking the Ghidorah.

Shin has always confided to Mistress Femuto, tis how the bond between them built to where he regarded her as ‘Mistress’. So at her prompting, he FINALLY admits that he has 'fond’ feelings for Mothra, but he wasn’t quite sure if she knew or if she returns those feelings.

After all, he’s a Ghidorah and not a particularly appealing looking one, especially compared to Monsterverse Ghiddy or his counterpart, Showa Ghiddy. Besides, Mothra probably has had plenty of Earth suitors before. He asks if a chance even exists that they could be together.

Femuto, excited at the idea of a Ghidorah falling in love, assures him that, yes, he definitely has a chance. So go get her, tiger~

So with that, Shin settles on a spot to take Mothra, a place where the water and sands glow blue. Blue is Mothra’s favorite color, he knows, this place seems perfect.

Now Mothra always takes Shin out on field trips to see the planet, an attempt to teach him that this world is to be cherished, not destroyed. So on their next ‘lesson’ trip, he requests that Mothra shows him this place. He was curious to see it. She agrees and takes him to check it out.

‘Tis where he learns the blue glow comes from living creatures and he wants to kill them all on instinct. But he resists. Not just because Mothra has been teaching him not to give in to those instincts (with varying success), but because he knows the beauty of these little creatures were key here.

Funny, these little things were the second time he decided something was too beautiful to kill on sight...

The scene is set and he repeats the question he asked Femuto.

“I suppose I should ask upfront, rather than potentially waste my time.” he starts.

“Ask what?”

“What’re the chances of you seeing me as something more than a student to take on these field trips?”

..............

“You mean...” Mothra starts. “Like a friend?”

“I don’t wish to just stay ‘friends’, Ms. Mothra.”

.................................................

Finally, she speaks. “I had my suspicions.” Shin’s tails both give a small flick at the lack of a direct answer, but the moth continued. “When you gave me that gift. It was so beautiful and full of detail. But not a single part of it was horrific and terrifying and... bloody. That’s not like your usual gifts to everyone else. That’s when I had those suspicions.”

Another tail flick from Shin but he says nothing.

“I still love it, by the way, I clean those gifts everyday!” she beamed. At Shin’s continued silence, she flies and lands delicately and carefully onto his spiny back. “You’ve shown me that you’re willing to open your mind to new possibilities. Always so kind to me.”

Finally, he lets out an amused breath through his nose. “Funny you say that, when I first came to this planet, my impression of you was less than ideal.”

“I know...”

“And I made all attempts to avoid contact with you unless absolutely necessary. At one point, I even considered you as a potential replacement after Master Ichi took my favorite toy away from me. Your wings would’ve made for a wonderful addition to my art studio...”

“............”

“But you’ve since shown me things, many things. You’ve helped me so much when I was struggling to find my purpose in life. You stuck with me even when everyone else ran away. I suppose it was inevitable, that my growing fondness would turn into something... more.”

He lets out another breath. “I figured that all this time, I’d be wasting my efforts. Plus, Master Ichi likely will not approve of this. It’s most un-Ghidorah-like.” But what was Ghidorah-like were his next words and the edge that came with it. “So I ask again, Ms. Mothra. Am I wasting my time? Wasting my time with you? Wasting my time with these little blue things that I ought to be killing right now?”

........................

The fact she wasn’t answering for that long moment was starting to hurt, and that pain was starting to make the dragon angry. But before that anger could boil over, he felt Mothra flutter off his back and she flies in front of his middle head, hovering there and meeting his eyes.

“No,” she says softly, but with confidence in her own words. “You’re not wasting your time.”

The unknown pain in his chest disappears, replaced with a weightless feeling not unlike when he flies through gravity manipulation. He didn’t know what this feeling was, but he liked it. A lot. He leans his nose closer against her face and she hugs his snout in her claws....

.... Until a human starts playing Careless Whisper by George Michael in the background and Shin promptly Gravity Beams him to ashes.

Shin Ghidorah and Mothra. Such opposite individuals in their view points and personality. Shin isn’t sure what he’s doing; in his half-billion years of life, this is the first time he’s done anything like this. But he wishes to, as Mothra would call it, cherish it for however long it lasts...

#ghidorah #king ghidorah #mothra #mosudorah #godzilla #kaiju #shin #shin ghidorah

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tyrantisterror · 3 years

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I did a four part series of trivia posts when ATOM Volume 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us! came out, and that was pretty fun! You can see that set of trivia posts here if you’d like. I thought it’d be fun to do another now that ATOM Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! is out - just one this time, because a lot of the trivia I talked about with Volume 1 still applies.

I’m gonna divide this into two sections: non-spoiler trivia, for things that really don’t give a lot of plot points away, and spoiler trivia, for things that DO give away major plot points. I recommend not reading the spoiler trivia until after you’ve read Tyrantis Roams the Earth!, for obvious reasons, and will put the spoiler trivia under a cut.

Ok, let’s go!

- So if you read ATOM Volume 1, you probably noticed that the book is split not only into chapters, but “episodes,” which consist of four chapters a piece. It’s kind of a nod to how the series owes a great deal of its DNA to various monster of the week shows, with Godzilla: the Series and The Godzilla Power Hour being obvious influences. It also allowed me to pepper in some illustrations and cheesy b-movie style titles into each volume.

- The first “episode” of Volume 2, Tyrantis in Tokyo, pays explicit homage to the giant monster movies of Japan, perhaps even moreso than the chapters that came before it. Given how much Japanese media influenced ATOM - from tokusatsu like the Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman franchises to anime like Digimon and Evangelion (hell, the title of this episode itself is a tip of the hat to Tenchi Muyo by way of one of its spinoffs) - it kind of felt obligatory that Tyrantis visit Japan and pay his respects.

- Tyrantis in Tokyo also fits in a tribute to another staple of Atomic Age pop culture: Rock and Roll.

- Kutulusca, the giant cephalopod that appears in Tyrantis in Tokyo, is one of the oldest kaiju in this series, dating back to the first iteration of Tyrantis’s story that I put to paper back in 2001 or so. It’s changed a lot since then, but its fight with Tyrantis goes more or less the way it originally did.

- Old Meg, the giant placoderm/shark, and Nastadyne, the bipedal beetle, both owe their existence directly to Deviantart’s Godzilla fandom. Old Meg originated as a dunkleosteus monster I submitted to a “create a Godzilla kaiju” contest held by Matt Frank, while Nastadyne is based on a Megalon redesign I made during the “redesign all the Godzilla kaiju” phase of DA’s kaiju fandom.

- The second episode, Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace, gets dark as we visit the USSR, which had enough REAL horror with atomic power in its history to make creature features seem a bit defanged by comparison. It’s probably the episode with the strongest horror elements - ATOM’s always been influenced by Resident Evil, and this is probably where that influence shows the most strongly.

- It also features the first fully robotic mecha in the series, the mighty Herakoschei! Its name is a combination of “Heracles” and “Koschei the Deathless,” with the former part being added by its Russian creators to make it seem a bit more international as they offer it to the U.N. in hopes of gaining aid for a very extreme kaiju problem they’ve developed.

- Most of Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace takes place in the Siberian Monster Zone. Its name is a reference to the Lawless Monster Zone in Ultraman, which is such a cool fucking name I wish that I wish I could go back in time and steal it.

- The next episode, Tyrantis’s Revenge, is... full of spoilers, so we’ll move on for now.

- The penultimate episode, Tyrantis vs. the Martian Monsters, is a love letter to MANY different sci-fi stories that involve life on Mars, though the most prominent of them is of course The War of The Worlds (one of my top 3 favorite books) and its various adaptations. From its tentacles sapient martians, the tripodal leader of the titular monsters whose name includes the word “ulla” which is uttered by said sapient martians, the plant monster made of red vines, the cylinder-shaped spacecraft the Martian monsters are sent to earth on, the copper-skinned stingray-esque flying martian who shoots lasers from its tail, and the fact that every chapter title in this episode is a quote from the book, the H.G. Wells influence is STRONG.

- The final episode, Invasion from Beyond!, is shamelessly inspired by Destroy All Monsters, although there’s a dash of “To Serve Men,” Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and The Day the Earth Stood Still mixed in as well. It’s also sort of a tribute to my first “published” bit of a kaiju fiction - a rewrite of Destroy All Monsters that included EVERY Godzilla monster that had appeared at the time, which my middle school self wrote back in 2002 or so for Kaiju Headquarters, a kaiju fansite I’m not sure exists anymore. Invasion from Beyond! is just as ambitious (but hopefully better executed) as my DAM Remake, with dozens upon dozens of different kaiju duking it out, earthlings vs. aliens.

- There were three different documents I made to outline the final battle of Invasion from Beyond! It’s the largest episode of the series so far and more than half of it is that fucking fight. My inner child is pleased, though, so hopefully you will be too.

Ok, that’s all I can share without spoilers. READER BEWARE WHAT FOLLOWS BELOW THE CUT!

JUST MAKING SURE you know that SPOILERS will follow from here on out. Read at your own peril! YOU WERE WARNED!

(I’m gonna start with lighter ones just in case you scrolled too far and want to turn back)

- There’s a number of explicit Spielberg homages in ATOM Volume 2, from a “we need a bigger boat” joke during a chase with a giant shark to the fact that Invasion from Beyond! opens with a group of people flying to an island of monsters to review whether or not it should get more funding.

- When Tyrantis appears in the first chapter, I snuck in modified lyrics of The Godzilla Power Hour’s theme song. “Up from the depths”... “several stories high”... “breathing fire”... “its head in the sky”... Tyrantis! Tyrantis! Tyrantis!

- The two rock bands in Tyrantis in Tokyo have real life inspirations ala Gwen Valentine, albeit a bit more muddled than hers. The Cashews are inspired by The Peanuts (see what I did there), while The Thunder Lizards are a mix of The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper. I wanted The Thunder Lizards to be more akin to the myth of a famous rock and roll band than the reality - less the real Beatles and more the Yellow Submarine cartoon version of them.

- The song The Thunder Lizards write for Tyrantis was written to fit the tune of “The Godzilla March” from Godzilla vs. Gigan, though ideally if someone made an actual song of it it would be its own song. I got the idea from Over the Garden Wall, which used the Christmas song “O Holy Night” as a a starting point for “Come Wayward Souls.”

- Perry Martin, UNNO reporter and peer of Henry Robertson, is a nod to Raymond Burr, with his name being a combination of two of Burr’s most famous roles: Perry Mason, and Steve Martin from Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956).

- Dr. Rinko Tsuburaya is a few homages in one. Her name comes from Rinko Kikuchi (who played Mako Mori in Pacific Rim), while her last name is obviously in homage of Eiji Tsuburaya. Her being the daughter of an esteemed scientist is inspired by Emiko Yamane from the original Gojira.

- Nastadyne’s Burning Justice mode is named after a similar super mode from various Transformers cartoons, though it’s more directly inspired by the Shining/Burning Finger super move from G Gundam.

- Martians sending kaiju to different planets via shooting them out of cannons (with or without cylinder spaceships around them) is another War of the Worlds shoutout. So is martians living on Venus after their homeworld was made uninhabitable, actually.

- Kurokame’s vocalizations are described as wails in explicit homage to Gamera. His name can be translated as either “black tortoise” (a reference to the mythical guardian beast Genbu, which can also be construed as a Gamera reference thanks to Gamera: Advent of Irys implying Gamera and Genbu are one and the same) or a portmanteau of the Japanese words for crocodile and turtle - “crocturtle.”

- Burodon’s name is just a mangling of “burrow down.” It also sounds vaguely like Baragon, who Burodon is loosely inspired by. AND, since Burodon is sort of a knockoff/modified Baragon, that kinda makes him a reference to various monsters in Ultraman!

- The final battle of Tyrantis in Tokyo is sort of a hybrid of the finales of Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster and Destroy All Monsters.

- The Japanese kaiju teaching Tyrantis the art of throwing rocks at your enemies is both a joke on the prominence of rock throwing in Japanese kaiju fights AND the tired trope of an American hero learning secret martial arts from a Japanese mentor ala Batman, Iron Fist, etc. In this case, the secret martial art is throwing rocks at people.

- When introduced to Herakoschei and its pilot, we are told that the strain of piloting this early mecha is so intense that many pilots have died in the process, with the current one passing out on more than few occasions. This is of course a Pacific Rim homage - sadly, no one invents drifting.

- Herakoschei’s design is a loose homage to Robby the Robot and Cherno Alpha, because big boxy robots are cool.

- The Writhing Flesh and ESPECIALLY Pathogen are both hugely influenced by Resident Evil and The Thing. Giant body horror piles of raw flesh, tendrils, mismatched mouths and limbs may be a bit outside the main era of monster design ATOM homages, but they fit the themes and bring a nice contrast.

- I came up with Pathogen long before Corona but MAN it definitely feels different in 2021 to have a giant monster whose name is a synonym for disease driving other creatures crazy in a quarantine zone than it did when I plotted out the story in 2016.

- The chapter title “Hello, Old Foes” is a riff on “Goodbye, Old Friend”

- Minerva, the kaiju-fied clone of Dr. Lerna, is meant to be an homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which is a genuinely good giant monster flick. I am sure many of you will also believe I included her because I’m a pervert whose into tall women, but you’d be wrong! I included the seven foot tall Russian mecha pilot Ludmilla Portnova because I’m a pervert whose into tall women. Minerva’s inclusion was just coincidental, I swear!

- Since Promythigor is a play on the archetypal ape kaiju to contrast Tyrantis as a play on the archetypal fire-breathing reptile kaiju, their fight has a lot of nods to King Kong movies. Promythigor attempts the famous jaw-snap maneuver of Kong (with less success), J.C. Clark paraphrases the “brute force vs. a thinking animal” line from the King Kong vs. Godzilla American cut, and Tyrantis slides down a mountain to knock Promythigor off his feet in a reversal of Kong doing the same in King Kong vs. Godzilla.

- Tyrantis sliding down a mountain on his tail doubles as a Godzilla vs. Megalon homage.

- Though Promythigor is the archetypal Ape and Tyrantis the archetypal Fire-Breathing Reptile, I think it’s fun to note that in some ways, Promythigor is the Godzilla equivalent in their matchup, and Tyrantis the Kong. Promythigor has a slight size advantage, was scarred by humans performing unethical weapons technology, and is associated with violent explosions. Tyrantis is a good-at-heart prehistoric beast who humanized in part by his unlikely friendship with a human woman.

- Of course, in the context of the famous quote from the American cut of King Kong vs. Godzilla, they remain in their archetypal lanes. Promythigor is the more intelligent of the two (though not necessarily wiser), and Tyrantis is in many ways a brute reptile. Their battle is a rebuttal of sorts to the assertion that Kong is the “better” animal because he is closer to human. Promythigor’s near human creativity and emotions don’t make him the kinder/more benevolent monster, but instead fuel a very self-centered and destructive attitude that makes him the far more dangerous threat. On the other hand, Tyrantis, who is less intelligent, limited in communication with others by his reptilian mindset and instincts, and simple in his thoughts and desires, is nonetheless a sweet creature that is easily dealt with when others consider his animal needs and mindset. There’s a quote from Hellboy I love that probably sums up all of my writing thus far: “To be other than human does not mean the same as being less,” and that’s what the matchup between these two in particular tries to illustrate: the “less” human Tyrantis is nonetheless more benign than the “more” human Promythigor.

- Kraydi the psychic lizard began life as a soft sculpture I made of the Canyon Krayt Dragon from The Wildlife of Star Wars. The sculpture didn’t look much like the illustration, but I liked how it came out, and so I made it an original monster named Kraydi (see what I did there). Figuring out an explanation for that name in ATOM’s world was possibly the most difficult kaiju naming task in the series, but it worked out in the end.

- Kraydi and Promythigor having psychic powers is a result of my time on Godzilla fan forums in my middle school years. Most of the forums had OC kaiju battle tournaments, and SO many of those kaiju had a wide array of beam weapons and psychic powers just to win the tournaments by beam-spamming and mind controlling their foes into oblivion. There’s a special kind of rage you get when your original creation is beaten by “Fire Godzilla” because he has a genius level intellect and the power of unstoppable telekinesis. Kraydi began as (and still is I suppose) my attempt to do a psychic kaiju well, while Promythigor’s villainy being tied to psychic powers being forced on him is sort of my passive aggressive commentary on people foisting powers on a monster without any real thematic reason for them.

- Henry Robertson and Dr. Praetorius chewing out the laziness of people giving kaiju completely unaltered names of mythic beasts will probably be seen as a jab at the Monsterverse and/or the numerous writers in the kaiju OC scene who do the same, but it’s ACTUALLY a jab at my past self, who had DOZENS of kaiju whose names were just Greek mythological figures verbatim. There are dozens of kaiju named Hydra, Scylla, Charybdis, Chimera, etc., past me, try to make the names stand out! Oh wait you did. I mean, don’t pat yourself on the back too much, you still went with “Mothmanud” as a canon name and never came up with something better, but, like, good on ya for trying I guess.

- Dr. Praetorius takes his name from the evil mad scientis in Bride of Frankenstein, who basically has all the wicked traits that Universal’s Frankenstein downplayed in their take on Dr. Frankenstein. Ironically, ATOM’s Dr. Praetorius is a bit less evil than his fellow mad scientists in ATOM. I really like how his character turned out, he surprised me.

- Isaac Rossum, the pilot of the USA mecha Atomoton, is named for Isaac Aasimov, whose robot stories are to robot fiction what Lord of the Rings is to high fantasy. His last name is a reference to Rossum’s Universal Robots, which is where the word “robot” came from.

- The unfortunate pilots of MechaTyrantis in ATOM Volumes 1 and 2 are all nods to Jurassic Park. John Ludlow = John Hammond and Peter Ludlow, Ian Grant = Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant, Dennis Dodgson = Dennis Nedry and Lewis Dodgson.

- A good way to pitch Invasion from Beyond! would be “what if the staff and monsters were able to fight back when the Kilaaks tried to take over Monsterland?”

- Ok, here’s a fun joke that no one will get but me because it requires a very specific chain of logic based on some obscure and loosely connected nerd bullshit. There’s a rocker in ATOM’s universe named Sebastian Haff, right? One of his songs, “Darling Let’s Shimmy,” is referenced right before a mothmanud larva emerges from the ground in both ATOM Vol. 1 and 2. Ok, so, in the Bubba Hotep, an aging Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff claims he is actually the real Elvis Presley, having changed places with the real Sebastian Haff as a sort of Prince and the Pauper deal that went wrong. Got that? Ok, so, in UFO folklore, a common joke is the theory that Elvis didn’t die, but was rather abducted by aliens (or he actually WAS an alien the whole time - the whole “Elvis didn’t die, he just went home” joke in Men in Black is a good example of this). Ok? Ok. So, in ATOM’s universe, we can surmise that their equivalent of Elvis, whose name is Sebastian Haff, WAS abducted by aliens, and that his song “Darling Let’s Shimmy” is subconsciously influenced by his repressed memories from his time aboard the Beyonder spaceships, which is why it accidentally awoke a Mothmanud larva in Volume 1. There’s a lot of bullshit jokes I put into ATOM, but this is perhaps the bullshittiest of them all.

- One of the most common bits of feedback on ATOM Volume 1 I got was “I kept waiting for something to eat Brick Rockwell, he’s such an asshole.” And I had to smile and go, “Oh, yeah, guess he never got his, huh?” the whole time without letting on that he was going to die here all along!

- Dr. Lerna and Brick Rockwell’s nature as foils to each other is probably most apparent in Invasion from Beyond!, where both are given fairly similar situations - a nonhuman approaches them with a solution to a global crisis - and react to it very differently. I worry that some people may think they both made the same choice and got different results, and that that’s hypocrisy on my part, but I hope I wrote it so you can see how their choices and situations actually differ in key ways, and why their decisions, while similar on the surface, are ultimately very different, and thus result in almost opposite outcomes.

- So, when I planned out this book in 2016, I swear I didn’t know about the Orca from 2019′s Godzilla King of the Monsters. Having the plot hang around Dr. Lerna deciding whether or not to use a sonic device to rouse all the kaiju to save the earth was not INTENDED to be a Monsterverse reference - it came about from me looking at Pathfinder’s take on kaiju, who are all explicitly influenceable by music, and thinking, “Oh, wow, music and songs DO have a major connection with kaiju in a lot of media, I should do something with that.” Whem KOTM came out a few days after Volume 1 came out I realized I was kinda fucked here, because the comparison was definitely going to be made, but I’d also set this all up already and you can’t just change suddenly to avoid looking like a copy cat and make a good story, so... I dunno, I leaned into it a bit, but it is what it is.

- While most people will probably think they’re a reference to the Reptoids of UFO folklore, the Reptodites are more inspired by the Dinosapien of speculative evolution fame and, even morso, by the Reptites from Chrono Trigger. Me wanting to avoid the “lizard people control the government” conspiracy theory trope is one of the main reasons why Reptodites have this non-interference clause with humanity.

- Lieutenant Gray is a bunch of different humanoid aliens rolled into one - a little Hopskinville goblin, a little classic gray, a little this one weird alien with five-fingered zygodactyl hands, etc.

- There’s some Beyonder Mecha in this volume that are basically kaiju-fied versions of the Flatwoods Monster. The species that built them ALSO engineered the Mothmanuds, because connecting Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster is fun!

- Pleprah is, obviously, a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater.

- Tyrantis’s brush with death, in addition to being so very anime, was inspired by my dad outlining how mythic heroes often have to travel to the underworld/land of the dead before they can finish their journey. It’s one of the plot points that I’ve had planned for this series since middle school.

- I’m sure some will view it as hackneyed and corny, but as a person who’s battled with depression for decades, having Tyrantis’s choice to live be the big heroic turn of the finale was very important to me. Tyrantis incorporates elements of a lot of imaginary friends I made as a kid, and in many ways he’s kind of the face of my more positive side in my head. He’s been telling me to choose to live for a while, and while maybe to an outsider it may seem hackneyed, it’s just... very Tyrantis. He chooses life and kindness in the face of pain and struggle. That’s Tyrantis.

- Tyrantis’s powered up form is called “Hyper Mode,” which is another Gundam reference. Originally it was a lot gaudier and involved him turning gold like a fuckin’ Super Saiyan. I opted for something a little more toned down here.

- Also, speaking of KOTM references, I decided to make Hyper Mode Tyrantis’s final duel with Pathogen be a sort of foil to Burning Godzilla’s final bout with Ghidorah in KOTM. Instead of ravaging the city, Hyper Tyrantis’s pulse of energy rejuvenates his fallen allies, and as a result he is “crowned” not out of fear for his supremacy in the wake of killing a powerful enemy, but in gratitude for his kindness. See? Leaning into it!

- And now I can finally reveal that Yamaneon is ATOM’s equivalent of The Monolith Monsters - that is, a kaiju that is also a mineral. I took the “strange continuously growing rock” thing in a very different direction, though, as unlike The Monolith Monsters, Yamaneon is actually alive.

- At various points in the pre-writing process, either Promythigor, MechaTyrantis, or both were going to die fighting Pathogen. I ultimately decided to let them both live, with MechaTyrantis even getting his flesh and blood body back, because I think it’s more interesting and thematically consistent that way. They get a chance to heal their wounds by changing their ways.

- The Great Beyonder and Dorazor both almost didn’t make the cut, as I felt they didn’t have the same pull as villains that Pathogen, Promythigor, and MechaTyrantis did. But then I thought that could actually be the gag - build them up as the final boss, only to have Pathogen take their crown. I want to explore post-face turn Dorazor a bit more, though. We’ll have to see about that in a later volume.

- Volumes 1 and 2 make up what I call “The Ballad of Tyrantis Arc” for ATOM. I call it that because Tyrantis’s storyline in these two volumes was patterend after Chivalric ballads like Yvain the Knight of the Lion. Tyrantis, a heroic warrior who is kind but dumb of ass, learns of strange goings on outside his home and investigates. During his journey into the unknown he falls in love with a powerful woman, whose favor he tries to win. Through happenstance he is separated from his love and, distraught, wanders around fighting various foes to prove his worth, before finally returning to his love a better hero. Invasion from Beyond! could even be seen as a sort of Morte d’Artur, with Tyrantis and a bunch of other kaiju heroes (including Nastadyne and Kemlasulla, who are built up as Hero Kaiju of Another Story) take part in a huge battle that threatens their idealic kingdom (of monsters).

- Volume 2 isn’t the end of ATOM, but it’s designed to work as an ending if you want to tap out here. As a reader I feel a definitive ending is important, but as a writer I’m always tempted to revisit my beloved characters, so I feel giving closure while leaving a few doors open for possible future adventures is a good compromise between these positions. There will be more ATOM stories, some (but not all!) following Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna, but if you want to know that Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna get an ending and the resolution to their arcs such a thing promises, here you go. An ending, if not THE END.

#The Atomic Time of Monsters #A.T.O.M. Trivia

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archangeldraws · 3 years

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Ghiddy of course X’D

favorite thing about them: They're a three headed golden dragon and each head has a different personality. It's three dudes in one package!

least favorite thing about them: That they always get their ass handed to them and they either die or run away like a coward. Even when they're the good ones! (which sadly only happened in one movie)

favorite line: Ichi: What's cracking, G?/ Ni: Yeah man, I'm straight!/ Kevin: Why do you have to be so mean? D'X (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcmGu3Ph3Yk)

brOTP: Ghidorah and Rodan/ Ghidorah and Gigan

OTP: I like many ships with Ghidorah, but I'll take my Ghidira ship for this X'D

nOTP: Shipping Ghidorah with a human (especially Maddie)

random headcanon: Ichi actually likes cute things. Hence why he's nicer to Kevin than to Ni (though he loves both his brothers) and he really loves strawberries in my anthro/gijinka au. He's kind of a tsundere

unpopular opinion: I'd actually love to see them win an epic battle for once in the end!

song i associate with them: King Ghidorah sings a song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpV3hFUftj8&list=PLGDuUy-IWBjUvwTy3cbqjgNZr0E9L9H9B&index=2)

favorite picture of them:

#characters ask game #ask game #King Ghidorah #golden-universe

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thesilkenlair · 4 years

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(Casey Here!)

As much D&D as I play, you'd imagine I would eventually get around to illustrating some of their most iconic monsters! Which is to say, the ones that I personally find the most iconic. Which is to say, the ones I memorized when I was reading my dad's monster manual at age nine. Purple worm - Sandworms never go out of style. I've seen a lot of rad designs for this bugger over the editions, but I favor the slightly less reptilian older takes for this particular critter. It's kinda basic, but sometimes that's what you want. It's like a shark or a crocodile: Just flat out unchanged across the ages. Hook horror - I've heard it rumored that Gygax used a small Gigan figure to represent this monster. I can't verify that, but it definitely sounds right. Hook horrors are one of the very first things you meet when you play around in the caves, and they kind of remind me of the Father Deep monsters of the Hork Bajir homeworld that way. Mind flayer - Mind flayers! Basically, take all of your Dracula conventions and dip them in a fresh coat of Lovecraft. There's that old "decadent aristocratic upper caste system who literally eats the poor, but still somehow comes across as less evil than the actual real life 1%" setup that will never stop being relevant. Though personally, I see mind flayers as the first alternative for folks who want to play that monster-who-feels-the-urge-to-eat-their-friends-but-refuses-to-do-it shtick but don't want to deal with vampire baggage. You know, the furry option! ... Slimy? Rubbery? Do we have a word for anthro-cephalopods? I'm only a casual furry. Gelatinous cube - I'm not apologizing for giving this one a slot. Froghemoth - So, back when I participated in my very first long-term campaign, I played a druid. You've met Talia before. Naturally, I was chomping at the bit for the day I finally got to turn her into a froghemoth, and celebrated the day my wish was finally granted and she was allowed to chug human-supremacist-cultists like popcorn. Yeah, okay, the froghemoth is one of the classic vore-monsters. But it's a charming design in its own right. Kind of a freaky Hanna Barbara critter, like you'd see Space Ghost fighting. No matter how many artists draw it, they can never shake that inherent goofiness that third edition tried so hard to purge. I would probably cram them somewhere onto Fronterra if I was sure they were public domain. As is, I'm 99% certain that this is what Visser Three turned into when he ate Elfangor. Tarrasque - D&D's original kaiju! Kind of just takes the name and nothing else when it comes to its mythological origins, but I don't mind. The Tarrasque is that endgame "let's test the players" final boss monster... Or at least it's supposed to be. My DM reskinned it for our final Pathfinder session, and one of the PCs still nearly killed it in a single turn. Also, he let Talia turn into one, so maybe Pathfinder is just bullshit? Regardless, the Tarrasque has one of those simple, iconic designs. I've heard rumors it was based on the concept art for Fallout's deathclaws, and like the Gigan-figure, I can't verify this in any way. With its reptilian features, twin horns, spiny carapace and grabby fingies, it has an undeniable lizardlike quality that I can't help but find charming. Kinda feels like a more refined version of Zilla? Though for an insatiable eating machine, I notice a lot of artists give it very little belly to work with. Come on, this guy eats entire cities! Give him somewhere to put it! Rust monster - An icon of icons, the rust monster! Drawing its origin from a bizarre Chinese "dinosaur" toy, later designs have made it more insectoid in appearance, but never feeling QUITE like anything Earthly. It's the four limbs. Between the four limbs and the tail, it's hard to tell if it's an arthropod mimicking a vertebrate or the other way around. I'm pretty sure this is part of what inspired my ossaderm creatures for Fronterra. Also, Ryla can turn into one in our campaign. I have no shortage of havoc to wreak when the opportunity comes. Behir - Dragons in D&D are kind of... extra. Godlike beings, paragons of whatever personality trait they represent. Whenever there's something uber powerful in D&D, it gets compared to dragons. It makes them kind of unapproachable. Behirs provide all the essentials of a dragon - Serpentine body, scaly skin, horns, sapience, breath weapon, taste for human flesh - wrapped up in a smaller, weirder, IMO cooler package. You know, your Lambton Worms. A lot easier to port in and out of adventures, a lot less of an event when they show up, but still a formidable force in their own right. I like the behir. The behir knows how to taunt me just the right amount. Bulette - Another Chinese "dinosaur" figure monster, the bulette is actually another one I associate with Talia. Whenever we faced a problem that didn't have a glaringly and immediately obvious solution, she would turn into a bulette, whether it was for beating up robots, digging through obstacles, trampling smurfs, navigating labyrinths, distracting slashers with cute dog tricks... it was kind of her signature form. But shenanigans aside, the bulette is just an excellent monster. While the "land shark" shtick may be common, there's a lot more going on with the bulette's design. It's rumored to be a mad wizard's creation, as he combined a snapping turtle with an armadillo and mixed in a helping of demon blood to taste. Personally, I always considered that to be a neat little rumor to flesh out the world, but never assumed it to be true. The bulette just feels too naturalistic for that. Like some kind of protomammal or crocodylomorph, or weird triassic monstrosity. Magic and demons and dragons and so on DO affect the ecosystem. I always figured the bulette was just something that evolved to compete in this new biosphere. Owlbear - This one, on the other hand, I fully believe the "mad wizard was bored" explanation. Another chinasaur critter, the owlbear is frequently made fun of. What makes it scarier than a regular bear? It can't fly, so why have owl parts at all? Why trade fangs for a beak in what is at best a latural move? Well, first of all, fuck you, owls are creepy motherfuckers, and that alone is enough to justify it. But secondly, that's part of its charm. Besides some improved vision, the owl DOESN'T make it more dangerous. What makes the owlbear dangerous is that it's an insane, Frankensteinian monstrosity roaming uncontrolled through the wilderness! It doesn't need weaponry, its sheer temperament is enough to make it a worthy opponent. Sure, the practical threat might not be hugely above that of a bear, but storytelling isn't about numbers. Any asshole can go outside and get eaten by a bear. The owlbear is part of this world. The owlbear is a reminder of what magic can do. Someone somewhere actually made this thing, for whatever reason, and now the world is irrevocably changed because of it. Owlbears go beyond practicality. They bring the lore! Also, bears don't have very good eyesight, so the big owl eyes probably make them better hunters. Flumph - Is that a Japanese-style martian? Do we just have aliens in D&D? Dear lord, I love them! Okay, the flumph has got a sizable hatedom. And that hatedom can eat my ass, because the flumph is precious and perfect just the way it is! Flumphs are designed as a sort of sidekick-type creature. They're not very good fighters, but they bring knowledge and lore to the table. Whether they're aliens from some far off star, seeking your aid to prevent catastrophe, or psionic natives of the Underdark eager to bask in your positivity and hopefully stick it to the tyrants they're forced to share real estate with. My group generally treats them as straight up aliens, benevolent but strange. Course, we're all pretty strange, so we get along just fine. Otyugh - Okay so, the aberration creature type implies that this is something from another world that doesn't belong. And yet otyughs, which are aberrations, are an essential part of this world's ecosystem? Okay, I can buy the idea that an alien organism adapted to our world and is now a key part of it. Fronterra's got a TON of that. It just feels like after a point, the otyugh would be considered a beast? Otyughs are great. Every ecosystem needs a decomposer, and every fantasy story needs at least one dive into the sewers. Otyughs provide both, and are intelligent enough to keep the plot moving if it hits a snag. There's always going to be garbage, refuse, carrion, decay, things that need to be broken down and processed. Carrion crawler - The carrion crawler is pretty similar to the otyugh in that it's technically not considered a beast, and therefor must have its origins elsewhere, but feels so integrated into the ecosystem that it just feels like it belongs. They usually can't talk, so they're not just reskinned otyughs, but I still consider them pretty essential. Otyughs find a singular spot where waste is dumped and shovel it down at their leisure, while carrion crawlers skulk through the tunnels, actively seeking their food. The crawler got one of the most radical redesigns on the transition from second to third edition, but I can't really choose a single favorite. The oldschool tentacle-faced cutworm looks like it could be a real animal, while the googly-eyed Halloween decoration feels like it could be from another world, merely having set up shop here. Could there name apply to two wholly different creatures? If so, then I'm not sure which one mine would be considered. I kinda mashed them together into something that doesn't quite feel like either. But I like it for what it is. Maybe I'll sneak it onto Fronterra. Aboleth - Tentacled, telepathic sea creatures who turn humans into slimy minions, who remember everything their race has ever seen, and who are always plotting something behind the scenes. Yeah, the aboleths really crank up the Lovecraft elements. Actually, between the mind flayers, the flumphs and the aboleths, even the most oldschool D&D covered quite a few essential Lovecraftian bases. The flayers are your corrupt yet still recognizable humanoids who can be considered truly evil, the flumphs are benevolent-yet-bizarre guardians who know more than you, and the aboleths are the truly unknowable, sinister intellects. The fact that they can barely function on land honestly only adds to that, IMO. They're inherently difficult for a party to reach, and they offer some nice underwater adventure seeds. Not enough adventures go underwater. There's this perception that the ocean is bad for storytelling because so many writers lack the creativity to make it work. I wanna run an underwater adventure now. Beholder - Icon of icons! THE D&D monster! The beholder! Paranoid, jumpy, always five steps ahead and twenty steps perpendicular! Beholds are fun in just about every way. Between their wacky, diverse designs, their elaborate lairs, their eccentric personalities, their bizarre powers, you're never gonna run out of fun with beholders. Remorhaz - It's always been a thing that bothered me with environment-based monsters. Why does the ice monster who lives in the cold use ice as a weapon? Aren't most of the things it encounters going to be resistant to the cold? Sure, a cone of cold will still kill a polar bear, but a lot of the monsters in the tundra are outright immune to cold. A while dragon's not going to get much use out of its breath weapon fighting frost worms and frost giants. That's one reason the remorhaz sticks out to be. We have an icy tundra beast whose insides are a scorching furnace, which it can intensify and weaponize as it sees fit. Which also conveniently explains why its design - a sort of cobra-esque centipede - invokes warm-weather creatures, despite its icy environment. It's a nice subversion of the usual tropes, plus it's just a memorable, cool looking critter to begin with. On a smaller note, the remorhaz feels like a good loophole for Ryla's "no cold weather morphs" rule. Turning into something elementally affiliated with ice is no good, but a non-magical monster that survives the cold by superheating its insides? That seems perfectly viable to me!

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popwasabi · 3 years

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The monster of “Shin Gojira” is government incompetence

I know it doesn’t feel like it but we’re just three months away from March again.

It’s been almost a year now since the beginning of quarantine, when the world had to be shut down due to the escalating nature of COVID-19 and things have…largely only gotten worse.

In the US specifically.

On March 13th we had 2,204 cases of COVID in the United States and a total of 49 deaths. Today we have 14 MILLION cases across the country and currently 274,000 plus deaths. To put that in perspective we have nearly as many cases of COVID in the US alone as there are people in the cities of Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago combined and we’re experiencing a 9/11’s worth of new deaths every day.

This is not even to mention the economic strain the pandemic has put the country under. Lockdowns and quarantines, without supplemental income to bolster those losses have led to closures, massive unemployment, people running deeply behind on their rent, and crushing debt for many if not buried in medical costs from being infected. Common people are trying their best to navigate a year unlike any other and are largely floundering with little to no help in sight.

And all this can be chalked up to one culprit in particular: our government’s incompetence.

(Remember all that fuss made about “breadlines” in the global south back during grade school?)

From the beginning when this virus first reared its ugly head in 2020, not enough was done to prepare the country for what would come next. Call it hubris or American Exceptionalism, but our government just was not taking it seriously as the President boasted cases would just “disappear” after late February and our leaders largely pretended it either was a) not a big deal or b) would never be a big deal.

Nearly nine months later senate Republicans still think another massive bailout for the nation’s richest coporations is the way to go, all while giving us $1,200 band aid for our troubles.

And make no mistake, the Dems have hardly been guiltless during this crisis themselves.

(“It’s a biiiiiig club, and you ain’t in it...” ~ George Carlin.)

As we see other countries largely find ways to navigate around COVID and create a safe environment where some normalcy can be maintained it becomes increasingly clear to anyone who isn’t a psychopath that the US has grossly mishandled this threat from the beginning. It’s a slow moving disaster that could’ve largely been avoided if our leaders gave a damn and it feels increasingly like we’re all just going to get the virus at some point because there’s virtually no structural safeguard in place to protect us.

This lamenting of the futility of our government’s response to crises is the central theme of one of my favorite monster movies of all-time; “Shin Gojira” (or “Godzilla Resurgence” for American audiences). Directed by “Neon Genesis Evangelion’s” own Hideaki Anno, “Shin Gojira” tells a similar story of a literal slow-moving disaster in the form of titular atomic fire lizard rising from the Pacific Ocean to decimate Japan once again and how the government poorly responds to it.

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For most Americans, Godzilla is something of a joke as a movie character.

He’s Japan’s version of King Kong, a great fire-breathing reptile for thousands of random Japanese to scream “AAAAHHH! GODZILLA!!!” at while a man in a rubber suit knocks down model buildings for two hours. For several decades, he was even a bit of a superhero for children; the good monster who fought bad monsters like King Ghidorah, Gigan, and Hedorah.

The newer American remakes by Legendary Studios have not done much to change this perception. In these films, Godzilla is again depicted as a “titan” for the people doing battle with the bad titans set with people in mo-cap suits duking it out in front of greenscreens that create elaborate cities for the monsters to stampede through.

It is just not that deep to most people and who could blame them? Godzilla is cheap popcorn escapism for most audiences and most of his films see him as such.

(“Wait you mean to tell me this isn’t serious theater??”)

But Godzilla has a much darker origin, however. 1954’s original “Gojira” isn’t some cheap monster flick; it’s an allegory for the atomic bomb and the terror it brought upon the people of Japan. At the time of its release the Japanese hadn’t really reckoned with what happened in WWII, it was a source of deep shame and horror and it broke the spirits of many back then. After an atomic bomb test accidentally radiated the crew of a Japanese fishing boat in 1954, director Ishiro Honda became inspired to create the King of the Monsters after Japan’s own government largely mishandled the fallout. The film was a huge hit and Japanese audiences were moved by the dark allegorical nature of the story.

With “Shin Gojira” Anno brings Godzilla back to this grimmer tone. He was inspired by the events of 2014’s Fukushima nuclear plant disaster and how the Japanese government once again failed to act in a major crisis. Through his 2016 film, Anno aimed to depict the slow moving nature of a developing disaster quite literally with the character of Godzilla and how a crisis can only get worse and worse if left largely unchecked by those tasked to protect us.

(Hardly Hideaki Anno’s first forray into movies about crises, of course, but that’ll be for another write-up. Stay tuned...)

Godzilla begins in “Shin Gojira” as a small, destructive, but ultimately killable lifeform as he appears in the waters off Tokyo Bay. His beady, soulless eyes, tadpole like form, oozing putrid toxic blood everywhere through his malformed gills are pretty gross and Anno directly references Fukushima as the beast creates a tidal wave as he makes his way toward land in the opening sequence.

Meanwhile as Godzilla causes horrific damage to the city in this small (comparatively to earlier films) but powerful form, the Japanese Government tries to put an end to it. But as they try to address the escalating nature of the problem, bureaucracy gets in the way at every turn. Through the use of fast cuts and dark humor, Anno creates his own “Dr. Strangelove” set of scenes as Japanese politicians scramble from one board room to another to weigh options in cold math against the very real people who are fleeing for their lives as they debate with one another. Anno, doesn’t go out of his way to depict anyone as explicitly the villain here, but he does make it very apparent that when government officials refuse to accept the reality of a crisis people die. In a scene that is played partially for laughs, that feels all too relevant and frankly on the nose now, the Prime Minister addresses Japan on TV by assuring the people that there is “no way” Godzilla can make landfall and everyone will be safe. Moments later he is interrupted on live TV as Godzilla has in fact made landfall.

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(Yea and he’s one ugly motherfucker in this movie too...)

Early in the film though, as Godzilla has done already immense damage in his adolescent form, Japan’s government has a chance to kill the monster once and for all by mobilizing the Japanese Self-Defense Force (JSDF) a move, that if you are not familiar with Japanese politics, is rife with concerning optics. The moment comes where Japan’s government can pull the trigger and kill the threat once and for all but in another, darkly humorous, turn of events decide not to as some nearby citizens who could be caught in the crossfire become a hazard for the JSDF. Godzilla goes back into the sea from there and Japan is left to pick up the pieces.

In the early months of the COVID lockdown, things appeared to slowdown. From about April to June, those states that took the virus seriously at the start saw some plateauing of the daily cases. While hardly a victory, things at least appeared to be going in the right direction. Then inexplicably in July a bunch of states declared premature victory and began reopening back up in certain areas such as gyms, salons, and some restaurants. I wouldn’t say we had the virus on the ropes but we were trending generally in the right direction (though nothing was really being done about loss of employment and cancelling rent and evictions, of course…). So, in a moment when the government could’ve kept trying, mostly at least, to do the right thing they failed to keep going and pull the trigger.

And just like in the movie, COVID (ie: Godzilla) came back stronger and even worse than before.

(Again, just the ugliest motherfucker...)

After the JSDF failed to kill Godzilla in the opening act, the big guy returns later on in the movie having evolved into his more indestructible final form. Where the JSDF’s weapons may have had an effect before they find their tanks, helicopters, and other military hardware have no effect on Godzilla now. It is too late to stop what is now inevitable. Godzilla walks literally through it all, causing waves of destruction with each step and Japan’s government watches in horror as they lament their failure to stop him when they had the chance.

This failure comes to its ultimate head in the final moment of this sequence when Godzilla revs up his dorsal fins and unleashes his horrifying atomic breath. It’s more powerful than anything he has done previously and absolutely wastes Tokyo in a brilliant display of raw destruction that is honestly one of the best most terrifying sequences in Kaiju filmmaking ever.

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Godzilla is best used in cinema when he is a titan-sized walking metaphor for the destruction that happens when governments fail their people. Where the recent American Godzilla depicts him as a force of nature, like a walking hurricane, Ishiro Honda and Hideaki Anno see him more as a vengeful God coming to punish the wicked for their sins or, in the case of the government, their incompetence.

If COVID is a metaphor for anything this year, it is a microcosm for a wide range of problems that go unaddressed for too long by our leaders and only given notice when it’s far too late. Climate Change continues to get worse and worse each year as I am quite literally choking on ash as I type this due to yet another wildfire in the California area. The riots that erupted over the summer and continue to go on in response to the gross militaristic, overfunded, and racist structure of law enforcement in this country are the result of decades of not doing the right thing to curb the problem. The reason we are by far the worst equipped first world country to handle this crisis right now is quite literally due to years of gutting our social safety net, slashing our wages, and privatizing our health insurance.

Though there is a wide range of Japanese specific politics in the film, “Shin Gojira” is an unfortunately timeless film for people who have suffered from leaders who fail to act in moments like these. It shows what happens when our government drags its feet on transformative legislation and actual measures that can save lives. It criticizes our leaders for choosing to save themselves in the moment, with performative optics, over helping their own people. It argues that the results of bureaucratic red tape and bad politics will always end in disaster for its citizens. And most relevantly it states that governments have a duty to stop a crisis in its infancy before it’s too late.

“Shin Gojira” is a perfect monster film for the year of COVID and distressingly accurate to the way the US has mishandled this crisis from the beginning. Everyday, more and more people suffer and die because our leaders have failed to act in an unprecedented time, whether it’s the usual suspects who think any government social service is “cOmMuNiSm” or the feckless cowards who twiddle their thumbs and shrug each time a conservative tells them “no.”

We are far past the stage where this can be solved the easy way anymore and though there are still many proven ways to help the common people right now, it unfortunately feels like 2020’s Godzilla cannot be stopped…

Yea, things will totally get better in 2021, guys...

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butterflyinthewell · 4 years

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I’m going to tell you the story of why I love Godzilla.

When I say not to make fun of an autistic person’s special interests, I say it from a place of deep understanding and pain. For me, an autistic SpIn is like being in love, or (for the aro folks out there), it’s like being with your best friend ever and it just feels so comfortable and good.

Sooooo in January my dad mentions wanting to watch KOTM with me. Any excuse to watch KOTM is good, so of course I jumped on it. We watched Godzilla KOTM. It’s the movie I spent all of 2019 talking about from January to May. I got it for Christmas 2019 because mom knew I was going to want it as soon as the first roar hit the screen in the theater. (I took her to see it as a Mother’s Day gift, she liked it too.)

Lemme tell y’all something: when I was a young kid, my dad got me into Godzilla. Starting when I was around 5, he told me the stories of the movies he’d seen (the whole Showa era and Godzilla 1985). So I knew about Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Minya, MechaGodzilla, Gigan, Hedorah, Megalon, etc long before I ever saw them.

My dad said “these are important characters.”

Then he started renting the movies when he felt I was old enough to not be scared by them (age 7 in 1987) and pointed out who was who.

And my first ‘real meeting’ with Godzilla was the same as the people in 1954, when he popped his head over that hill and roared that haunting sound I never forgot, and I was hooked forever.

I loved it. I loved all of it. Dad warned me about the ending of the ‘54 movie, so I wasn’t surprised by it, but I still cried! He got me over it by showing the the rest of them, as if to go “see, he’s okay!” Then dad warned me that Godzilla was ‘the bad guy’ again in Godzilla 1985, but didn’t tell me how it ended. I was reaaaaally upset when he fell into that volcano. I probably cried about it for three days. That scream still hits something in my soul.

My favorite childhood Godzilla movie is Godzilla’s Revenge. It’s the first Godzilla movie I ever owned. I loved Ichiro’s dreams of making friends with Minya, outsmarting his kidnappers and standing up to his bullies. I even tried to pick up Monster Island using a little portable am/fm radio I had as a kid. It didn’t work, all I got was static, but I sure tried! 😋

I wanted to be an island lady like Saeko from Son of Godzilla who could call monsters for help. I wanted to be a cyborg like Katsura, except I would use MechaGodzilla to make friends with Godzilla instead of trying to hurt him.

Anyway...

Dad’s interest in Godzilla stuff kinda dropped away as the 90s hit and my autistic traits began to make me deviate more and more noticeably from my peers. I had seen all the Showa era movies, so he stopped telling stories because there weren’t any more to tell.

My love for Godzilla carried on into the Heisei era and beyond. Dad acted like I should “leave that crap behind” when I kept buying movies and talking about them to him. He didn’t want to watch them with me or look at pictures in the Godzilla Compendium I picked up.

I didn’t stop my enthusiasm for Godzilla, I just stopped sharing it with dad. I kept at it through high school. I sobbed over Godzilla vs Destroyah because I thought that was the end of the franchise, and I can’t even mention what happened to Godzilla in that movie. If you’ve seen it, you know.

In the year 1998 the rumblings for the ‘98 movie started around New Years, so of course I made noise about going to see it. Because GODZILLA, y’all!

Well, dad surprised me and took me to see Godzilla ‘98 when it came out. I had been bugging about going to see it and he kept giving me a hard no, then had me convinced we were going to a baseball game that night instead. I did nothing to disguise my boredom or hurt in the car, and it broke when we pulled up to the theater. Okay, he pulled a fast one on me and he said I did an emotional 180 spin, but it was worth it. (I still like that movie, but I don’t call that creature Godzilla. I call him Zilla or GINO instead.)

Literally right after that my dad would get mad if I talked about Godzilla. He griped that I was “so obsessed with that stupid monster” and that I needed to grow up. I was almost 18, and I had, just not the way HE wanted, I guess...

Godzilla 2000 came out. Dad grudgingly took mom and me to see it, and I finally got to live my dream of seeing a legit Toho Godzilla movie in theaters. I was yelling and clapping (as were other people) and just had a huge blast. In the car, he told me to knock it off when I talked excitedly about what I liked in the movie. He slapped down all talk of Godzilla.

I still continued to be a fan. When more Millennium era movies came out, I grabbed them when I saw them on the shelves. I got everything from Godzilla vs Megaguirus to Godzilla: Final Wars in a little Japanese shop my dad found near where he worked at the time. I was in my early 20s then. I also got some figurines from that store: a Heisei era Mothra, a Heisei era King Ghidorah and a Millenium era (Final Wars) Godzilla. Dad rolled his eyes when I walked out with them in my arms.

And so began his weird pattern of indulging my interest, but getting upset at me if I talked about it. I was discovering the online fandom at this point, so I had another outlet, but still, it used to be our thing, and his behavior really stung.

I only discovered there were more movies in the Millenium era becuse I happened across GMK on HBO and realized I didn’t recognize that Godzilla suit or the setting.

Then I missed the ending because of a very badly timed phone call. But I was like “omg more Godzilla movies...hey dad, can we go to that shop?” (And then I was like a dragon with treasure when I came home....)

I grabbed the two Kiryu movies first because a certain fanfic author in the fandom had written some Mechagodzilla fanfics where Kiryu (Kiryuu in her stories) was sentient and sexy af. The idea of the original Godzilla being brought back as a robot was amazing and that author basically took the idea and ran it to another level. She’s the reason I headcanon the 54 Gojira as Heisei Godzilla’s dad.

ANYWAY, I got all caught up on the Godzilla movies and blew up to a boiling fan girl froth when the 2014 movie got advertised.

I took mom to see that becuse dad’s Parkinson’s had advanced so far that he couldn’t go out much anymore. Mom likes Godzilla movies and sci-fi in general. While she’s not as into it as me, she enjoys them for the entertainment. We both liked G2014, so I got it for Christmas.

We watched it with dad as a family, he said it was okay.

Through 2016 and 2017 I was rattling on about Shin Godzilla. Got that as a late 37th birthday gift because it came out on dvd a few days after my actual birthday. I watched it for the first time with dad, and he complained the whole time and kind of ruined the experience for me, which pissed me off. HE was the one who wanted to watch it with me, now I wish I watched it alone instead.

2019 came, KOTM happened. So that brings me to sitting down to watch it with dad. I was excited see his reaction to the monsters he introduced me to in childhood realized with modern cgi effects and all. I love seeing things that remind me of happy times in my childhood, and I thought those memories were fond for him, too. So I watched, waiting for him to recognize Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah.

He said nothing when they came onscreen. I got engrossed in the movie and sort of forgot about it, but when it was over I bounced up and asked, “Wasn’t it cool to see the guys you told me stories about when I was 5?”

I thought back while I waited for him to answer. I thought back on the stories, the fun and the movies.

I thought back on how my love for this character has grown, and how in KOTM it was physically realized in that painful moment when Ishiro Serizawa looks up at Godzilla with such reverence and lays his hand on his snout. I feel like that was Dougherty telling all the fans he sees their love for Godzilla and gives them that one singular, intimate audience with the big guy through Serizawa. Because who wouldn’t want to give him a pat on the nose and thank him?

The director of KOTM understands what Godzilla means to the fans. He understands how they feel and what they want. In my mind he gave it in spades.

But my dad...

My dad, the man who taught me enough to get me into Godzilla forever, looked at me in the eyes and said, “I don’t remember any of it. They’re not that important anyway.”

“These are important characters.” Much younger dad said to much younger me.

“They’re not that important anyway.” Older modern day dad said to older modern day me.

I thought my heart had stopped and my soul fled through the floor. This franchise, these characters he brought to me with such enthusiasm, something that grew into a lifelong love, meant nothing to him. It was as if he gave me a diamond and later told me it was worthless glass to him. Godzilla was and still is a huge part of my life and who I am, and dad acted like this “us” thing I thought we bonded over during my childhood didn’t matter to him.

It’s almost like he expected me to take passing interest and then move on, but because I’m autistic and because I relate to Godzilla so much, my interest turned into love and respect for the character, what he represents and the messages he has sent throughout the years.

Part of who I am is shaped, literally, by Godzilla, something that started because my dad told me he existed. And in a sentence my dad took that root from my childhood and ripped it out because he decided it was a worthless weed.

It’s not my love for Godzilla that was ripped out. It’s the love I thought my dad felt for me when he was telling me all those stories and showing me the movies. I’m sharing this because I love Godzilla, because I love what he represents and means to me, and I thought my dad shared it with me for the same reason. This is a very autistic thing...I’m sure autistic readers can feel my love for Godzilla just by reading this.

I thought my dad did, too, once.

But no. There was no love at all like I thought there was, so I was not pouring my love into an ocean that still existed, I was throwing it into a black hole.

Dad didn’t care to remember Rodan, or Mothra, or King Ghidorah. He didn’t care to remember what all that meant to me during my childhood because he doesn’t and never has cared about my feelings.

He doesn’t care about my feelings.

He wants me to shut up about Godzilla.

I will not.

I love Godzilla. I don’t need dad’s approval anymore. I will turn 40 this year (2020) and there is no stopping what began 35 years ago. The plant that grew around the root dad planted is shaped like me now, and like Biollante I will keep blooming because Godzilla was my first love fandom-wise and that admiration and love for him stands on its own.

Dad no longer has a say.

But, my God, my dad has this remarkable ability to tell me something is important when I’m young and then claim it isn’t so many years later. He’s done it for a lot of things, but hearing him say Godzilla isn’t important after instilling his importance into me at a young age just...gutted me...and it gutted me as much as the time he asked me what I did to make kids bully me when I was being bullied as a teen.

I got bullied because I’m autistic. I existed. He said it was my fault for being that way. I was a newly diagnosed teenager when he said that. It was 1995, ironically, the same year Godzilla vs Destroyah came out.

And I was an adult when he ripped at that root of Godzilla he planted in me.

Godzilla was the last part of my childhood that he hadn’t sunk his abuse into, but he finally did in January of 2020. Now there is no part of my life untouched by his emotionally abusive crap.

It shouldn’t hurt like this. I feel ridiculous to be hurt so deeply, but I can’t keep pretending that I’m not hurt by it anymore.

I will get over it. My absolute love and respect for Godzilla is something my dad can never destroy no matter how much he tries to shit talk about it. I’ve let him ruin so many things, but not Godzilla.

Godzilla will never be a trigger for me. He is an anti trigger. On this day of April 19, 2020, I’m realizing he is the protector my dad failed to be.

To all parents of autistic kids, be careful that you don’t belittle the things you said were important when they were young. Don’t introduce something that becomes a special interest, say it’s important and then belittle it when they grow up.

Even if you don’t think it’s important anymore now, even if you think it’s silly now, even if you didn’t know they were autistic at the time and would dive in like that, it may still be important to them.

It may become their safe place. It may become treasure.

Don’t try to destroy that safety. Don’t treat it like trash.

#actuallyautistic #special interest #godzilla #emotional abuse #gaslighting #dad issues #swearing #ableism #gifs #long post #tw emotional abuse #tw gaslighting

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ckret2 · 4 years

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Ghidorah & Gigan Crash the Opera

It's hard for a blade-covered chicken-penguin cyborg and a three-headed snake-cat-bat dragon to get opera tickets.

But it's fine, Gigan has a plan: convince the ticket seller they're VIPs.

... Or, failing that, plan B: mug somebody.

Written to an anon’s prompt: "Hello! If ye be currently accepting ghid/gigan prompts rn (honestly love the ship too), how about the destructive duo crashing an opera performance or something like that? Love your work!" and to @soundwavereporting‘s prompt “Something for either rodorah or Ghidorah/Gigan? :D” from ko-fi.

This is part of an ongoing series of KOTM-verse one-shots. If you don’t wanna read the others, all you need to know is: Ghidorah was originally three dorats (small winged feline/lizard pets) who were turned into a monster by Xilien aliens; after Ghidorah escaped the Xiliens and before they arrived on Earth, they worked as world-destroying mercenaries and occasionally teamed up with Gigan; Ghidorah objects to being named so Gigan mercilessly nicknames them; and Ghidorah and Gigan have mutual semi-secret crushes. Links to the other fics are in the source at the bottom of this post.

###

"Where are the lines?" the triple threat asked. Gigan watched as they stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to peer at the ground around their feet, and then toward the opera hall. "We can never remember our seating footprint," they said, a tad more irritably, "how are we supposed to calculate it?"

Every planet that served as an interstellar hub eventually had to deal with the fact that intelligent aliens came in as many different sizes as planets themselves did. Some planets carefully planned separate neighborhoods and business districts to cater to different sizes ranges, segregating aliens out by height; some catered only to aliens their own size, leaving any aliens too large or small to fit in to fend for themselves.

Stellae Binariae XI's entertainment venues took full advantage of easily-retractable furniture to provide seating for as wide a variety of sizes as possible. A standard bench was designed to hold ten aliens of the most average size in the local interstellar community. Benches were retracted into the ground to provide a seating space for aliens too big to fit on one, their seats assigned based on height—tallest in the back to avoid obstructing each other's views—while seats for standard-sized and smaller aliens were set up into bleachers in the front. The large aliens had their ticket prices calculated based on the number of benches one of their seats would take up—their "footprint"—while smaller aliens' ticket prices were calculated based on the number of standard seats they took up. The very smallest could pack together ten to one seat and see a show on a single ticket, as long as they didn't mind sitting in the front.

Gigan and his buddies, however, shelled out hundreds of times more than the average customer for the honor of sitting on the floor in the back.

"This isn't some cheap second-run theater, they don't have lines," Gigan said. The three of them were used to that theater chain that printed rectangles on the lobby floor you could stand inside to guesstimate your footprint. "Stop looking so cranky, someone's gonna think we're here to burn the opera house down."

"We are cranky, it's late. We're tired."

By their standards, "late" was "any time past sundown." Gigan sent a ripple of brighter red light from one side of his optical visor to the other in an attempt to imitate eyes rolling. "It's barely nighttime," he said. "Anyway, you suck at using the lines, you always buy twice as much space as you need."

"We do not. We get the smallest space we can stand inside."

"You always include your wings! You tuck your wings under you when you sit, you don't need that much space."

"We don't want to be crowded. What do we do if we get to our seat and it's not enough space?"

"You could stretch out on my lap?" Gigan said, the absolute picture of innocence.

They smacked his leg with the side of a tail. "Be serious."

He kind of was, but he wasn't going to tell them that now.

The Eburnean Opera House was, Gigan suspected, the only venue on Stellae Binariae XI that not only accommodated aliens their size but also was fancy enough to mandate a minimal dress code even for aliens with a license proving nudity was the cultural norm for their species—which, of course, having no ties to their home worlds, neither Gigan nor the trio had a license for anyway.

(Gigan—after what felt like an eon's worth of wheedling and a mountain's worth of gold bribery—had gradually persuaded the trio to give him enough of their shed skins to patch together a snazzy-looking vest and pouched belt. The three of them, for the sake of not getting any more dirty looks than they were already bound to just because of their size, had elected for the evening to conform to the cultural mores of one of the more influential species in this solar system, which considered any body parts in excess of a standard bipedal plan to be signs of an impending budding and therefore taboo to expose in public. They'd wrapped up in sheer red shawls—stolen tents—and draped two as veils over Front-And-Center and Righty's faces, leaving Lefty unobstructed and thus in charge of observing the world on their behalf. They all looked very fancy and felt very uncomfortable. Although Gigan was digging the belt pouches.)

Most facilities that prided themselves on their exclusivity tended to exclude bodies that didn't fit in the local cultural limits for normalcy, size included. But this two-thousand-year-old structure, from what Gigan had heard, had been sponsored by and named for some big patron of the arts—with "big" meaning both "famous" and "huge." That was probably only the reason they'd be let in the door at all.

No discounts for being the size of the guy they named this place for, though. An average seat in this place probably costed as much as one movie usually did for Gigan and friends. He was about to drop a small fortune on seats.

Worth it though, if he got to take the triple threat to their first opera.

"Don't worry about your footprint," Gigan told them. "I know what size you are, I'll buy your ticket."

"If you don't give us enough space, we will sit on you." They paused. "Don't look so happy about it."

"Happy? You're seeing your own reflection off my beak. You wish you had an excuse to take a seat on this." He gestured at himself.

He wasn't sure which head scoffed, but he'd put money on Righty.

As usual, they skipped most of the line to the tickets by casually pretending they didn't notice it as they stepped over it. Gigan crouched down to smirk at the knee-height ticket seller. "Hey!"

The ticket seller looked up at him disapprovingly, clicked a button at his desk, and waited while the entire box office slowly elevated to eye level with Gigan. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, we're here to get tickets for, uh, The Devil in Love?" In his peripheral vision, he could see all three heads perk up. Yeah, he thought so. He hadn't told them which opera he was going to take them to. This one, as far as he could tell, was their favorite—certainly, he constantly caught them singing songs from it.

"What name are your tickets being held under?"

"No no, we don't have them yet," Gigan said. "We're here to purchase."

The ticket seller's look of disapproval deepened. "We don't have spare seating for guests of your stature the day of a performance," he said. "Nor usually the month of a performance."

"Oh, no worries, you've got room for us. We're VIPs, see," Gigan said. "Here. Our credentials." He rummaged in a hip pouch on his belt until the magnetic back of his tablet stuck to his scythe, pulled it out and tapped with the tip of his other scythe on the screen, and held it out for the ticket seller to inspect.

He looked skeptically at the page Gigan had pulled up. "This is a news article about a planet being destroyed?"

"It sure is," Gigan said, leaning in with a faux conspiratorial hush to his voice. "And we're the monsters that destroyed it. Like I said, pal—we're VIPs. And we're willing to make ourselves very immense problems if we don't get to see this show."

Getting the picture, his buddies raised their chest and arced their necks to surround the ticket seller's box, doing their best to loom threateningly. "Threatening" didn't take much effort for them.

The ticket seller looked between them and Gigan. "Ah. Yes. I understand. Shall I call someone to escort you? He gestured with a flourish toward one of the larger stickers mounted on the box office window. It said "Zone Family Security."

Gigan's back went straight "Oh! Y—y'know what? You guys look like you've got a pretty busy night, we can... we'll come back when it's less crowded."

The ticket seller nodded smugly.

The trio stared at Gigan in disbelief. "What?"

"Come on!" Gigan leaned against Righty, slung an arm around their shoulders, and didn't make any efforts to be gentle as he dug his scythe into Lefty's neck. "C'mon, c'mon, it's fine. Let's go."

"What is it?" Lefty tried to peer at the sticker as Gigan tugged them away. Front-And-Center ducked around Righty to give Gigan a baffled look through his veil. "We're not running from security guards?"

"It's not just security, it's Peacelanders," Gigan hissed. "We don't mess with Peacelanders."

"Why?" "How tough can they be, they're called Peacelanders." "We wanna fight 'em." They tried to turn back around.

Gigan dug his scythe in harder. "Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh. No. We are not fighting the Zone family."

"So we're just going to leave without seeing the show?!" "After we got all dressed up?"

Gigan grabbed for the nearest head—Righty, as it happened—and tugged him over so he could whisper to him quietly enough that the sound couldn't carry to the ground. "Of course we're not leaving," he hissed. "I promised you an opera, didn't I?" He nodded toward a narrow alleyway—well, to them it was a narrow alleyway; to most other aliens it was a broad empty street that was blocked off with a sign that said Opera Access For Gigantic Patrons. "We're just not going in the front door."

###

"Seriously, why are you so tired?" Gigan asked, leaning away as Front-And-Center let out a massive fang-exposing yawn. "It's only a couple hours past sunset, you should be fine." And they'd only been waiting on the rooftop of the warehouse neighboring the alleyway for about half an hour.

"Ih's cloudy," Lefty said through a yawn of his own; Gigan elbowed him to get him to turn his face away. Now Lefty was gonna set off Righty and Righty was gonna set off Front-And-Center again. "We're always sleepy when it's been cloudy a few days." (And there was Righty's yawn.)

Gigan shook his head. "I swear that's the biggest irony of your lives," he said.

"Hmm?"

"The Golden Demise! Superpower number one: automatically summons hurricanes with every flap of their dread wings. Superpower number two: solar powered." (He noted, smugly, that Front-And-Center had just yawned again.)

"'The golden demise,' what is that?" "Did you just make that up?"

"I'm trying to think up a title for you guys to market yourselves under. Not a name," he knew how tetchy they were about the idea of being named, "just—something customers can look up if they wanna find you."

"Customers already find us."

"More would find you if they had a name they could search for instead of 'hey, we want this merc that's really good at flattening planets, no idea what they're called, ring any bells?'"

That earned Gigan a double snort. Fronty said, "'Golden demise' sounds pretentious as hell."

Gigan leaned away and gave them an exaggerated up and down. "You are pretentious!"

"We're sophisticated," they said pretentiously. Gigan hooted.

"Anyway," Righty said, weaving between the other two to lean closer to Gigan, "that's not the biggest irony of our lives."

"What, you've got a bigger one?"

"Yes," Righty said, mischief glimmering in his eyes.

"Okay." Gigan waited. "You gonna tell me what it is?"

"No," Righty said.

Gigan waved Righty off in a way that very nearly decapitated him, and leaned against Lefty. "So what's Righty's big irony."

"I dunno," he said cheerfully.

"What?"

"He won't tell us."

"What?!" Gigan flung up his arms in disbelief. "You can hide things from each other?"

"He can." Front-And-Center tapped his horns against Righty's. "We're not so good at it."

"Why do you even have that ability?"

Righty said, "Solely and exclusively to torment you."

"I'd believe it," Gigan grumbled. His attention was caught by the gate at the alleyway's entrance as it slowly rolled open. "Oh," he elbowed them, "here we go." A luminous ivory-colored slug riding on what looked like a parade float progressed down the alleyway, accompanied by practically an army of small quadrupeds wearing glowing jewelry that matched the slug's off-white glow. "Between slimy here and its entourage, they've gotta have a big enough seating footprint for the four of us, right?"

They leaned forward, their heads tilting thoughtfully. "If it plans on sitting on its big skateboard," Fronty finally said.

"I can't imagine it'd get off, where would they stow it?" Gigan stood. "Okay, showtime. Get your battle faces on."

Lefty shook his head to loosen up his neck, Front-And-Center stretched his jaw with a hiss that made his veil flutter, and Righty snapped his fangs a couple of times. "After you."

Gigan slammed down in front of the little parade, clashing his scythes together. "Good evening!" The triple threat hit the ground behind the parade, hissing static and sparks. Between them, the tiny bipeds clustered up around their slug, who rippled fearfully. Cheerily, Gigan said, "Wonderful night for an opera, isn't it? My friends here and I were hoping to go, in fact, but they didn't have spare seats for us. Imagine!"

He pointed at the slug, the tip of his scythe almost near enough to slash its quivering throat. "I don't suppose you have spare tickets, do you?"

###

Gigan pulled the curtain aside. "Nice! A private box!" He pulled down a cushion scaled to his size from the wall, dropped it on the floor, and plopped down. "Now this is real luxury. We wouldn't get this with orchestra section tickets." He pulled up the drinks and snacks menu on the touch screen at the front of the box. "Concessions too! Do you think they deliver or do we have to pick them up?"

They sat on the floor with their legs folded under them, crossed their wings on the box railing, and Lefty got to work scoping out the facility while Front-And-Center and Righty peered curiously at the stage. "Were concessions covered in their ticket price?" Fronty asked. "Or are they purchased à la carte?"

"À la carte, listen to you. You're almost starting to talk like people." Gigan elbowed them. They whapped him from behind with a tail. He must be on thin ice; the spikes almost got him that time. "No prices listed, so who knows. But we didn't have to buy tickets, so we can cover it."

With his mandatory survey of the room finished, Lefty twisted around to inspect the menu too. Righty asked, "Any fossil fuels?"

"Didn't see any in the snacks, but I haven't gotten to the drinks menu yet."

"Any samplers?" Fronty asked. Lefty butted Gigan's shoulder, "I want tapas."

"You'll just lick everything."

"You can eat what we don't like."

"What, after you lick it?" But despite his protests, Gigan scooted over to let Lefty take over the touch screen. He uncurled one wing to poke at the screen with the tip.

If there was a way to order, they couldn't figure it out from the touch screen. They decided someone was probably supposed to come around to take their order. By the time they started wondering where their waiter was, the lights dimmed, and so they settled in for the show.

###

For the first fifteen minutes, the trio was enthralled. Front-And-Center and Rightly flipped up their veils and all three stretched out of the box, watching with rapt attention as the performers on stage sang the opening numbers, quietly rattling their tails to the beat of the music.

Then Righty's attention drifted, followed by Lefty's. By the half hour mark, Fronty's attention was wandering as well.

At about forty minutes, Gigan gave; for all that he appreciated operas as one of the finer things life could offer, he didn't go to them for the entertainment so much as he did for the social cachet. This one sure wasn't doing anything for him, and if it wasn't doing anything for his friends then he could skip the rest. He elbowed them and scrolled a single word across his optical visor: "BORING?" One of them clicked his tongue in the affirmative. Gigan jerked his beak toward the curtain. The next time there was applause, they took the opportunity to cover the noise of their exiting the box.

"They just stood there singing at each other." "We at least expected dancing!" "And where did they get the lead contralto, she's clearly got her wings tuned to sing at equal temperament when the whole orchestra is using just intonation."

"Okay, I was with you but then you lost me."

They offered a triple sneer. "We could sing in tune with the marimba section better than her if we were using a tesla coil."

Gigan held back a squawk of laughter.

The right two shook their veils back down in place. "Let's raid the concessions stand, come back for the ingénue's solo, and blow this place."

"Blow like leave it or destroy it?"

They tilted their heads, considering the question. "Leave it," Front-And-Center decreed. "We can see a better show later."

Here Gigan had been afraid he'd turned them off to opera forever. "Hey, at least we saw this one free." They started down the spiral ramp to the ground level. "It'll be easier to afford the next one."

"We've got to find a cheaper way to get tickets. Think they'll notice if we keep mugging people for seats?"

"Maybe we can slap leashes on you and claim you're my support animal," Gigan joked.

They looked thoughtful.

"Oh no."

"Is this one of the states where support pets get their seating footprint for free?" "It's about half of Stellae Binariae XI now, right?"

For a moment, Gigan allowed himself to bask in the fantasy of locking three collars around the willing throats of a monster that could slaughter him without a second thought. It was a very nice fantasy.

But no. Playing at being a pet was one thing. He could get into it if it was just playing. Under the circumstances, though, he was pretty sure that would just go further to convince the trio that they were pets. How many centuries had he spent now trying to get them to treat themselves like people?

"Not gonna work," Gigan said. "We'd have to get documentation to prove your species is used as support animals."

"We were support animals," Lefty said, and Righty quickly clarified, "We weren't, we weren't trained for that. Our species was." Fronty said, "We're not about to call home for proof, though."

"Well, there goes that idea."

As they reached the bottom of the ramp, they slowed down. The way off the ramp was blocked by a small party standing in the lobby talking together: the giant slug they'd robbed earlier and its entourage, and several bipeds of wildly varying heights with matching silver armor and glowing eyes... Oh. Oh. Hoo boy. That was the Zone family. Gigan froze and held out an arm to block the trio from walking forward. They walked into it with a clang of metallic scales on metallic scythe.

The whole party in the lobby turned to look at Gigan and friends.

They stared back.

Gigan croaked, "Hey! Funny running into you, we just, uh... wanted to ask if you wanted to switch for the rest of the show? We're heading out early." In his peripheral vision, he could see flickers of yellow electricity as lightning slowly worked its way up two of the trio's throats. Gigan elbowed them.

The tallest of the Zones turned to the slug and said, "Are these the muggers who stole your tickets, Madam Goddess Eburnea?"

"Eburnea!" Gigan said, his voice going even higher. "As—as in the Eburnea that the Eburnean Opera Hall was named after?"

The Zone nodded slowly.

Gigan slowly nodded back. Then turned to the trio and said, very calmly, "Fly for your lives."

###

They made it out in one piece.

And the opera hall almost did too.

(And Gigan accidentally cut off his own belt with his abdominal buzzsaw. Now he had to drape it around his shoulders like a scarf.)

Eburnea's devout worshippers agreed to drop charges, if they agreed never to set foot in the state again and each prostrated themselves before Eburnea a thousand times.

Gigan wasn't sure how the triple threat managed to convince Eburnea that each one of their bows counted for three; but as they wandered around loudly griping about how long Gigan's was taking and debating (out loud, which meant they were only doing it because they wanted him to hear it) whether they should just fly off and leave him behind, he kind of hated them for it.

But not really.

###

The four of them retreated a couple of states away, found a neighborhood with some buildings built to accommodate their size, and grabbed seats at an outdoor table in front of a closed cafe as they pondered what to do with the rest of their night.

Fronty and Righty tossed their veils back to wear like scarves, no longer concerned about who they offended if they didn't have a fancy show to go to. Fronty scrolled through the tablet Gigan had loaned them looking for somewhere interesting that was still open and could accommodate their size, Lefty took in the street around them, and Righty leaned in toward the other two, gaze vacant, mentally withdrawn inward.

Gigan used to think that when their attention went three different directions like that, it meant only one of them was focused on the task at hand; but over time it had dawned on him that they did that because there was no reason all three of them should have to stare together at the same object when each of them already saw what the other two saw. Fronty went through the tablet, and because of that Lefty and Righty could consider the available options. Lefty looked around, and because of that Fronty and Righty knew what the street looked like. Whatever Righty was pondering, the other two were no doubt tuned in to.

And meanwhile, the outsider tagging along on this little committee meeting, Gigan sat backwards on a chair at the next table and watched them.

Sometimes, when they were in motion, looking at them was like looking at three marionettes someone had spray painted the same color, snipped apart at the joints, and tossed into a washing machine with a window in front: an anarchic tumble of shapes and body parts that never quite seemed to connect to each other in any logical way.

But then, sometimes when they were still like this—sitting on a chair turned sideways, leaning one side against the back, their feet curled up in the seat, their wings crossed on a table and taking up the entire surface, a single street lamp illuminating them in orangish light from the side—he saw them all as one continuous, sinuous, glorious shape.

Sitting behind them, the light shining straight through the sheer fabric delicately wrapped around their shoulders and back, he could trace the entire length of their left and right spines with his optic: from their napes nearly hidden beneath their crowns of horns, down the centers of their necks, over the curves of their upper back where their spines crossed through two sets of powerful muscles, down to the point where their spines narrowed toward each other along the small of their back, over their hips, along the length of their tails to their twin barbed rattles... He could see the slightest asymmetries around their spines, the evidence of ancient surgeries: the way their right upper back was a little bit wider and their left upper back hunched a little bit higher; the scarred lump near the base of the right tail where part of one spine had been grafted to another; the cleft between the vestigial shoulder muscles in the middle of their back where their middle spine dipped in and vanished from view. Their dull gold glowed in this light.

Gigan couldn't remember what his body had looked like before he'd been a cyborg—if he'd ever known what it had looked like. But he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that before he'd had scythes, he must have had some sort of—of fins, or vestigial wings, hell, maybe even tentacles—something like that at the end of his arms. Something that tapered to a soft point that could feel. And he knew that because when he looked at them like this, he craved so badly to run his whatever-he'd-had-down their back, tracing alongside each row of barbs that ran down their spines, all the way from the napes of their necks to the tips of their tails. But all he had was scythes.

"There's karaoke a short flight away. Open all night," Lefty reported without glancing at the tablet. Righty added, in that slightly dazed voice he sometimes got when he was exiting the triple threat's inner mental landscape and reconnecting with the real world, "We'll have to duck to get through the doorways, but we should fit."

"What're the drinks like?" Gigan asked.

"Let us check." After a moment, they grumbled, "Overpriced."

"For us, or in general?"

"In general."

He made an annoyed buzz. "We'll jack some rocket fuel on the way over."

"That works." They stretched their wings, slid off the chair, and waited for Gigan to retrieve his tablet.

"So, what's tonight's playlist going to be?" Gigan asked as he checked the map to the karaoke bar. "The opera we missed?"

They considered it. "No." "We're feeling more like cheesy war songs."

"Ooh, haven't heard the death growls in a while. Better get a private room."

He stowed the tablet in a pouch and they took off.

###

(Replies/reblogs are welcome & encouraged! Check the “source” link below for my masterlist of KOTM fics in this verse, as well as my AO3 and Ko-fi links.)

#ghidorah #king ghidorah #gigan #godzilla #kotm #ghidgan #(if nobody else has made a ship name then I'LL DO IT)#fanfic #my writing #(also featuring: cameo appearance by Zone Fighter and family)

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tigerkirby215 · 4 years

Text

5e Beowulf the King of the Ring build (Skullgirls)

(Artwork from the Skullgirls Wiki)

Finally, the tiger’s come back to Skullgirls!

Judging by the immense (and I mean intense, like a comedic amount) of likes on my Isaac build either there’s a really dedicated Skullgirls fanbase on Tumblr, a really dedicated group of people who wanted to see an Echo Knight build, or I just got insanely lucky. Regardless consider this a test of sorts, but that isn’t to say I don’t want to come back to Skullgirls!

Beowulf was always my favorite character in Skullgirls, having a very unique kit with a focus on brawler-esque grabs (I mained Bella before Beo was added so I’m all about that grapple trash) with the hype mechanic to boost them, and the chair throwing giving you different “stances” which was just fantastic. I’m still nowhere near good (especially since I haven’t practiced SG in ages) but the story as old as time of the hero slaying the great beast translates well into any form, including D&D!

GOALS

Chair we go! - Beowulf doesn’t fight fair; he fights to put on a show. Wrestling isn’t fake and we’ll have to use everything we have available to us, including our fists, the environment, and of course The Hurting!

Hypeman - We’ll need to get the crowd on our side to really get a fight going, even if that crowd just consists of our party.

Wulfamania runs wild! - Beowulf is a grappler above all else, and we’ll need to be able to grab our foes and slam them into the ground! Because grappling is historically very useful in 5e.

RACE

Beowulf’s the man that bested the beast and Variant Humans can best many a foe. You get +1 in two Ability Scores of your choice: choose Strength and Constitution to be the best in the ring. You also get a Skill of your choice and a Language of your choice. For your language go for Giant obviously since you were around for the Gigan wars, and for your skill of choice choose Persuasion to hype the crowd up!

Variant Humans also get a Feat and Tavern Brawler is perfect for a brawler who may or may not be in a tavern. You can increase your Strength or Constitution by 1 (I opted for Strength) and get proficiency with Improvised Weapons along with a d4 Unarmed Strike. But most importantly you can attempt to grapple an enemy with your Bonus Action after hitting them with an Unarmed Strike or Improvised Weapon. I think you have more than enough chair training to say that it isn’t an improvised weapon for you anymore but you can still grab something off the sidelines and smash it over your opponent’s head before grabbing them.

ABILITY SCORES

15; STRENGTH - Have you seen those biceps? Beowulf bested a Gigan, and he didn’t do it by sitting down for tea.

14; CHARISMA - You’re a warrior of the people, and the people love you.

13; CONSTITUTION - Taking hits to the face from a girl with a punching hat takes some durability.

12; DEXTERITY - Beowulf hops around the battlefield with... some grace.

10; WISDOM - While he’s known to keep a level head Beowulf is prone to angry outbursts.

8; INTELLIGENCE - Your job is to make chair puns, wolf puns, and hit people with a chair while howling like a wolf. Annie’s right about one thing: you’re no genius.

BACKGROUND

There’s no Wrestler background in 5e but Gladiator comes pretty close, and I’m starting to notice that I use the Gladiator background quite a lot. Regardless you get proficiency in Acrobatics and Performance to float like a bee and dance like a butterfly... wait did I get that wrong? You also get proficiency in a Disguise Kit for pallet swaps, and a musical instrument of your choice: “microphone” isn’t on the list for a mic drop, but your theme has a pretty pronounced electric guitar so a Lute is pretty close.

Your feature By Popular Demand proves that even old dogs can still do their tricks. By fighting in the ring for the people of New Meridian you can get a place to stay the night and some good food. What’s more is that after seeing you fight the people will remember why you were the hero they needed in a time of darkness, and treat you like a proper champ! Gotta love the people!

(Artwork by oh8 on DeviantArt)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - BARBARIAN 1

Starting off as a Barbarian because no duh; you’re wearing ornamental furs and a sweater. That’s what Unarmored Defense equal to your DEX plus your CON is for!

You get proficiency in two skills of your choice: Athletics are an obvious must and while you don’t have dog personally Animal Handling will let you act like a dog? (But it’s mostly for other skills we’ll get later down the line.)

But of course the main feature of a Barbarian is their Rage, letting you get into the Wulf zone as a Bonus Action. You have advantage on Strength checks and saving throws, do increased melee damage, and have resistances to Slashing, Piercing, and Bludgeoning damage while raging. I’d just chock that up to good blocking and sick combos. Your rage lasts for 1 minute but you have to either hit or be hit every turn to keep it up, and you have a limited number of them per Long Rest.

Also in terms of weapons I’d say a folding chair could pull double duty as both a weapon and a shield. Hrunting was a sword but I’d flavor The Hurting as a Shield and Sledgehammer, or possibly a Maul if you’re more into big damage die.

LEVEL 2 - BARBARIAN 2

At level 2 Barbarians get Reckless Attack, allowing you to ditch the chair for a giant severed arm. (Note: you can’t use a giant severed arm as a weapon though I’d personally say that a Glaive or something similar would do the trick.) Fighting recklessly gives you advantage, but also gives enemies advantage to hit you.

You also get Danger Sense, giving you advantage on Dexterity checks against things you can see. Makes sense since you can block a barrage of gunfire with a folding chair.

LEVEL 3 - BARD 1

What? Did you really think we’d ignore the class of the people with the fighter of the people? I may be arrested for my many war crimes of not choosing Bard at level 1 and multiclassing into a spellcaster as Barbarian, but while you can’t cast spells while Raging you can end Rage with a Bonus Action to start casting again. But seeing as Bardic Inspiration isn’t a spell you can still use that while enraged to hype up the crowd while you’re in the fray! The crowd of course being your party, who you can give a d6 to add to an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw. Beowulf is a really good assist! You have a number of inspirations equal to your Charisma modifier which come back after a Long Rest.

Regardless you do still get Spellcasting as a Bard. You learn 2 cantrips of your choice: Dancing Lights will let you set up some arena lighting for your pitiful human eyes, and Vicious Mockery is a contractual obligation as a Bard. Hype up the crowd by making them turn heel on your opponent!

For your spells of choice Charm Person will let you use your heroic good looks to get someone on your side, and speaking of heroics Heroism will let you or a bud stand up to the Gigans. Disguise Self can be good for some pallet swaps if your Disguise Kit isn’t working, and Healing Word will let you further “hype” up the crowd.

You also get proficiency with one skill and one musical instrument of your choice. If you want to be the man you’ve gotta play with Big Band, so a Horn would be a good choice of instrument but truthfully it doesn’t matter. Likewise your skill proficiency really doesn’t matter so pick whatever the party needs. (I personally opted for Insight.)

LEVEL 4 - BARD 2

At level 2 Bards get Jack of All Trades, letting you compensate a bit for your sub-par mental skills with dumb luck, because the hero is always at least somewhat proficient. (Half proficient, to be exact!) Remember that Jack of All Trades also applies to Initiative checks, which is good because our Dexterity is rather sub-par at the moment.

You also learn another spell at this level and Longstrider will let you dash a little more to lay down The Hurting. You can also give your allies a d6 of health whenever they heal during a short rest with Song of Rest. This ability already scaled poorly and considering that this is a multiclass build it’s really not going to give you much. But it’s there!

LEVEL 5 - BARD 3

Third level Bards can choose their College and what better school for a hypeman than the College of Glamour? Glamour Bards can use their Bardic Inspiration on Mantle of Inspiration, giving a number of creatures equal to your Charisma modifier 5 temporary hitpoints and the ability to move up to their movement speed as a reaction. I’d chock it up to setting up your allies for a good assist.

In addition you get Enthralling Performance: if you perform for at least a minute you can attempt to charm a number of creatures equal to your Charisma modifier. If they fail a Wisdom save they’ll idolize you, and stop anyone from hindering you. They won’t go out of their way to fight for you but for the hour they’ll be completely infatuated with you, and if it fails they won’t know anything happened so you can try again after a Long Rest.

You also get Expertise in two skills (Athletics and Persuasion will keep you as the king of the ring) and another spell, but we’ll leave the spell choice for now.

LEVEL 6 - BARD 4

At 4th level you get an Ability Score Improvement, or rather a Feat! The Athlete feat will greatly increase your mobility in the ring and also increase your Strength by 1.

You can also learn another cantrip along with another spell (or two, since we skipped the spell last level.) For your cantrip take Prestidigitation for more real wrestling special effects, and we can now take second level Bard spells: Suggestion will let us further influence the crowd (or an enemy) with simple one word suggestions (duh), and for our other spell how about something fun? Gift of Gab from Acquisitions Incorporated will let you make sure you say nothing dumb on camera.

LEVEL 7 - BARD 5

5th level Bards get Font of Inspiration, allowing your Bardic Inspiration to come back on a Short Rest to keep the crowd hyped! And speaking of Bardic Inspiration your Inspiration die increases to a d8, and your Mantle of Inspiration now grants 8 temporary hitpoints instead of five.

You also get access to third level spells now and Catnap will guarantee a good night’s sleep, even during a Skullgirl attack. Or you could take an actually useful spell: I don’t own you.

(Artwork by El-Wolfgang on DeviantArt)

LEVEL 8 - BARBARIAN 3

It’s time to properly throw down now! Third level Barbarians can choose a Primal Path and Path of the Totem Warrior gives you all the excuses you need to dress up in a wolfish fursuit! To start off you can cast Beast Sense and Speak with Animals as rituals thanks to Spirit Seeker; not too in character but hey that’s why I told you to take Animal Handling proficiency.

But of course the point of Totem Warrior is your Totem Spirit: resist the urge to pick Bear for once and instead pick the totem of the Wolf of course! The Wolf totem makes it so that your allies have Advantage on any enemy within 5 feet of you while you’re raging: Beowulf is a great assist and this is extremely useful to keep the damage up, especially if you have a Rogue or Paladin in the party. And speaking of Rage you can now do so 3 times per long rest.

LEVEL 9 - BARBARIAN 4

4th level Barbarians get an Ability Score Improvement and it’s time, it’s time; it’s time to max out our Strength for the hardest hits with The Hurting, as well as your fists!

LEVEL 10 - BARBARIAN 5

5th level Barbarians finally get that Extra Attack I’ve been blowing off for awhile, along with Fast Movement, allowing you to hop around the battlefield with 10 feet of extra movement while not wearing Heavy Armor.

LEVEL 11 - BARD 6

Now that we can throw a punch on our own it’s time to keep the crowd on our side! Glamour Bards get Mantle of Majesty, letting them cast Command as a Bonus Action without spending a spell slot for a full minute. Remember that you can’t cast while Raging but you can only use this one per Long Rest anyways, so get the crowd hyped before getting into the thick of things!

Speaking of spells you know what hurts more than a chair being thrown at you? A flaming chair being throw at you! Heat Metal lets you heat up The Hurting (or something else that’s made of metal) to do 2d8 fire damage, and keep doing that damage on following turns as a Bonus Action. In addition the target has to succeed on a Constitution saving throw or drop whatever you heat up, but even if they succeed they’ll have disadvantage due to the heat! Remember that this spell has unlimited range so you’re more than welcome to sit in the back taunting your foes while they experience the proper Hurting.

Oh and you get Countercharm which is poo poo garbage. True champs don’t get Charmed or Frightened anyways, and they wouldn’t waste their time with a pep-talk when you can just tap out.

LEVEL 12 - BARBARIAN 6

6th level Totem Warriors get the Aspect of the Beast and I’m actually going to suggest picking Bear this time for better throws thanks to an increased carrying capacity and lifting capacity, and Advantage on heavy lifting and breaking. You lift Big Band up like he’s a small street performer. This works even when you’re not raging, but you can also Rage four times per Long Rest now.

(Artwork by StripedMidget on DeviantArt)

LEVEL 13 - BARBARIAN 7

7th level Barbarians get a Feral Instinct for Advantage on Initiative checks and the ability to Rage during a Surprise round. First hit advantage is important!

LEVEL 14 - BARBARIAN 8

8th level Barbarians get an Ability Score Improvement, or rather a Feat to keep our enemies down. The Grappler Feat gives you Advantage against any enemy you’re grappling and allows you to pin your opponents for your allies to hit ‘em while they’re down.

Is grappling largely a joke in 5e? Yes. Is level 14 way too late to get this Feat? Yes. Wouldn’t you just be better off with an ASI instead? Yes. Is this in-character? Yes. Are you allowed to take this feat earlier? Yes. Are you allowed to change the build? Yes.

LEVEL 15 - BARBARIAN 9

9th level Barbarians get Brutal Criticals, rolling one additional damage die when they get a crit. So if you’re using a Warhammer you’d roll the weapon’s damage die again, but for a Maul you’d only roll another d6. So now might be time to swap to a Warhammer or something similar. Regardless of your choice you’ll be doing a lot of damage, especially since your Rage damage increase is now a +3 on hit.

LEVEL 16 - BARBARIAN 10

10th level Totem Warriors can Commune with Nature as a ritual thanks to Spirit Walker. Again not really in-character but you can chat with the nun at the church for help with your giant now-sentient arm.

LEVEL 17 - BARBARIAN 11

11th level Barbarians can fight even if they’d normally be knocked out thanks to Relentless Rage. If you drop to 0 hitpoints while raging you can make a DC 10 Constitution save to stay at 1 hitpoint instead. Every time you do this the DC increases by 5 but it resets back to 10 at the end of a Short or Long rest. Remember to tap out if the heat gets too heavy so you can regenerate some red health in safety.

LEVEL 18 - BARBARIAN 12

12th level Barbarians get another Ability Score Improvement and you’ve got a few options: want better spells? Increase your Charisma. More health, armor, and saving throws? Constitution. I personally opted for CON but feel free to build however you please.

You can also now Rage 5 times per Long Rest.

LEVEL 19 - BARBARIAN 13

13th level Barbarians further improve their Brutal Criticals to roll two additional damage die, meaning that a crit will do 4 times the damage if you’re using a weapon that only rolls one damage die. Let Wulfamania run wild at your table when you hit that big crit!

LEVEL 20 - BARBARIAN 14

14th level Totem Warriors get their final boost thanks to Totemic Attunement and honestly any of the options work: Bear is good for survival, Elk will let you knock some foes down with a Gigan arm, Tiger will let you combo better, and Wolf will let you lay down the general smackdown. Wolf’s obviously the most in-flavor but build your own Beowulf; if there was a one-size-fits-all guide for fighting games we’d all be at EVO.

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Say your vitamins and eat your prayers - Hey guys: did you know that Barbarians are tanky? Despite your Constitution modifier not being overly impressive you have around 200 health to throw down with.

The Big Bad Wulf is your hookup - You’ve got a lot of combo starters for your teammates, even when you’re not ready for them. Being able to still be useful while unarmored and unarmed is great, and a lot of your class abilities will give openings for your allies to fight.

Everything I say is a catchphrase! - You’re even useful outside of combat with strong people skills and Jack of All Trades rounding out your weak points.

CONS

How many of you am I dealing with? - Multiclassing with such a MAD class like Barbarian is bound to run into some problems. Along with a heavy investment in Feats both your Constitution and your Charisma are subpar as a Barbarian / Bard. You can put on some Medium armor as a Barb to compensate for the low CON mod (with the small downside of not being too in-character) but you’re still going to be lacking, and might need some Magic Items to compensate.

Runnin' wild - Multiclassing a Barbarian and a spellcaster is a very, very odd choice. You can’t cast spells while Raging and while you can still use your Bardic Inspiration and Mantle of Inspiration they’re rather limited and there are likely better options.

I told ya it ain't real! Go home, kid - Every time I make a grapple build I have to say the same thing: grappling in 5th Edition is largely a joke and unless you have a DM who’s willing to increase the potency of grappling it might be better just to ditch the grabs for more raw damage.

But the hero of the Canopy Kingdom can do more than just throw people around. You’re 287 pounds of something and you’d better use that something to beat a whole family of Gigans. Throw down and get the crowd hyped, and never throw in the towel. Just make sure your manager is scheduling good fights for you: don’t want to do anything insane.

(Artwork by u/Kortland12 on Reddit)

#DnD 5e #dnd #dnd build #dnd bard #dnd barbarian #bardbarian #skullgirls #skullgirls beowulf #dnd multiclass

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smokeybrandreviews · 4 years

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Smokey brand Select: Heavy is the Head

There is a criminal lacking amount of material about Godzilla on this blog. I feel ashamed that i have so haphazardly neglected the Big G. I've spoken about this before, but Godzilla means a great deal to me. I didn’t have the warmest of experiences during my childhood so i cherished the ones that weren’t horrifying. I’m melancholy for a reason and a lot of that can be traced back to my unkind environments as a kid. Godzilla is tied to many of those good memories i was able to glean off the darker circumstance of my halcyon days. I’ve seen every movie and own about half of them. It occurs to me that there are, like thirty of these things and, with the release of the what might be the final Monsterverse movie on the horizon, Godzilla vs. Kong, i wanted to take a look at the entire catalog. I wanted to revisit the films and choose what i believe to be the best in the franchise.

10. The Return of Godzilla

This was probably the first Godzilla movie i ever saw in my entire life. The second is actually on this list a ways down but this one left a massive impression on me. It was gorgeous, lavishly produced, and completely different than the film i had just watched. Not in the sense of tone, they both are on the darker side of the Goji spectrum, but this is the first time i witnessed the “death” of a Godzilla and it f*cked me right up. I remember weeping about that for days. Imagine my surprise, years later, when i found out that Godzilla 1985 was the start of an entire era of Goji films. This thing is actually a direct sequel to the 1954 Gojira film, ignoring everything in the Showa era. As such, it takes a ton of cues from that film, not only the tone, but visually as well. This Goji is like an updated version of that Goji and it really shows. I initially saw this film in the re-cut, Americanized, version Godzilla 1985. It was fine. I was a kid so i didn’t even know about the way the US butchers foreign film yet. As an adult, i made it a point to watch the original Japanese version and i can say, hands down, that version is the superior watch. I’d say check both out, Godzilla 1985 and Return of Godzilla if you’re a Goji fan but Return is definitely the better of the two.

9. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

This is the first appearance of Kiryu, the third Mechagodzilla. You’ll notice that Mechagoji makes a ton of appearances on this list. That’s because it’s films are some of the best in the entire franchise, hands down. Plus, it’s my all-time favorite Goji villain. This particular version was our introduction into the loose continuity of the entire Millennium era. This saw Goji in a ton of one-shot type and experimental narratives. The only two story lines actually connected were this film and it’s direct sequel, Tokyo S.O.S. I chose this one over it’s follow-up because of the raw emotion i felt seeing the best design of Mechagoji ever captured on film, for the first time. Kiryu is a masterpiece and i loved every second it was onscreen. The narrative is an interesting one, too. It’s not top-tier but, for the Millennium series, it’s pretty ambitious. Objectively, Tokyo S.O.S might be the better film, but this one made a great first impression. If you see one, you have to see the other. They’re kind of a set.

8. Godzilla: Final Wars

Oh, Final Wars. Your ambition is only matched by your absurdity. Look, final Wars is Endgame before other was an Endgame. It’s the cap to the entire Godzilla franchise to that point, kind of like how Destroy All Monsters was supposed to close out the Showa era. We saw how well that worked, just like this “conclusion.” This thing is unapologetic fan service, rife with the campiest of performances. I mean, the Xilliens in this are a direct reference to the original, would-be world conquerors from Planet X, first introduced in 1965. I love that sh*t! It’s chock full of Aliens, Mutants, Monsters, and more! Almost every Goji villain gets a cameo, including the first US attempt at a Goji adaption, Zilla. Gigan got an updated design that was just gorgeous, King Ghidorah gets a promotion to Kaiser, and Monster X is introduced as it’s own thing. That initial design was absolutely filthy and immediately made my top five Goji villain designs. Speaking of designs, Final Wars Goji is my favorite version of the King, Slim, mean, and breathtakingly regal in statue, it was dope seeing this suit in action, even if it was the only time.

7. Godzilla: King of the Monsters

I’m a huge fan of the new Monsterverse being woven together by Legendary over here in the States. So far, I’ve enjoyed every release, even Kong: Skull Island. I don’t like King Kong. Never have. It’s a rather offensive allegory when you think about but that’ a discussion for another day. This is about the latest release of Legendary’s universe; King of the Monsters. Like Final Wars and Destroy All Monsters before it, this film is kind of a celebration of the Goji franchise as a whole but with a Yankee twist. For the first time, we get to see what classic Toho monster look like, filtered through a modern Hollywood lens and, let me tell you, it is a sight to behold. I was already on board for the Godzilla reveal a few years before but Mothra and Rodan killed it. Those designs were amazing, particularly Mothra. She seemed like a proper threat and not some mascot. I loved it. That said, and this might be blasphemy among the fandom, but the Monsterverse version of King Ghidorah is the best goddamn version of the monster ever captured on film. This motherf*cker is smarmy, conceited, arrogant, and just plain awesome. The design, the personalities, the cruelty; It’s everything a challenger to the Throne had to have and Legendary nailed it. The movie, itself, is kind of weak in the narrative department, mostly as a knee-jerk reaction to the heavily human story of the initial Godzilla release, but the monster action is premium.

6. Godzilla vs. Biollante

Among the fandom, this is considered the very best Godzilla movie in the entire franchise. I wouldn’t go that far but i can’t deny the objective quality saturating this film. It gets right what so many of these movies get wrong; The human story line. That aspect of the story, rather than feeling like something tacked on for perspective, is integral to the overall narrative. It’s rare for that to occur and this film was the first time experienced it, myself. This is easily the best film in the Showa era but it took some time for it to be seen as such by the entire fandom. Initially, people hated this movie. They hated Biollante and wanted to see old monster with new tech. They got their wish and those films are kind of bogus. Heisei closed out strong with Space Godzilla and Destroyah, but that was after a series of mediocre retreads. Toho should have followed their instincts and moved forward with the new look they pushed with Biollante. She was dope and deserved better initially. and, yes, Biollante is female. That’s part of that integral human story i spoke of before.

5. Terror of Mechagodzilla

The second appearance of Mechagodzilla was one for the history books. The bionic monster was just a ferocious, just as menacing, as his initial outing but even moreso here. Terror is less heavy that the first time we saw Mechagoji, but it’s still got a ton of blood on it’s hands. This thing skews closer to the darker Showa outing but never really gives you pause like those other films do. No, it;s true to the narrative established a year before and tends to be an exercise in violence the whole way through. I really like this film and it has one of the best stories in the Showa era. It's not as tight as it’s predecessor, which is on this list, but it does a spectacular job with what it has.

4. Godzilla

So this is the first of several adaptions of the the initial Godzilla encounter. This particular one, is the first appearance of the Big G in the Monsterverse. The 2014 Godzilla film is derided for having next to no Godzilla in it, but that didn’t bother me too much. Of course you want all Goji, all the time but that makes for a lousy film. King of the Monsters did that and it is vastly inferior, narrative wise, to this flick. This film, while Godzilla-starved, does accomplish that rare thing Biollante was able to pull off and so few others in the franchise seem to do; Make the human narrative relevant. This sh*t does that exceptionally, even if they kill off the best character in the entire goddamn movie, almost immediately. Still, after Bryan Cranston bites the dust, i was still on board. A lot of this movie feels like a test run for what comes later but what a Beta it turned out to be. As a film, Godzilla is amazing. I loved the narrative, the characters, and even the monster action, what little there was initial. I really hate the MUTO. They’re kind of corny looking, a little generic, but the best designed of all the US Titans. All of the US Titans are gross looking. All of them. Great movie though!

3. Gojira

The first appearance of Godzilla and the most harrowing tale in the entire franchise. The name Godzilla is actually a misnomer. Goji’s original name was Gojira, which basically means “whale ape’ but this was mispronounced by Americans as Godzilla, thus the moniker we use today. Gojira is the correct, Japanese name, for the King of Monsters but people, worldwide, recognize Godzilla more so it’s been accepted as the proper name. Now that that little tidbit is out of the way, let’s get into the many, MANY, different cuts of this film. Similarly to Return of Godzilla, this one was recut, had scenes added with a well known US actor, dubbed, and released under the title Godzilla: King of Monsters! I’ve seen both versions and there each have their merits but the aggressive bleak tone and tragic narrative of Gojira make for a truly emotional viewing experience. Godzilla isn’t a monster in this movie, he’s literally the physical personification of that devastation inflicted upon Japan, by the atomic bomb. This film is Japan mourning the death of their great country. This is Japan reflecting on their sins. It’s an incredibly raw, violently bleak, take on such content, easily held in the same vein as Schindler’s List. That’s not hyperbole either, this film hits the same as that one. The US cut is good as a film but lacks a lot of that genuine Japanese energy. Gojira does not and of the tow, this one is far superior. both version are absolutely required viewing if you’re trying to get into Godzilla.

2. Shin Godzilla

I love Shin Godzilla. I was mad hyped when Toho announced they were going to release a proper Goji film after some years and even more on board when i heard that Hideaki Anno was going to be in charge of it. Dude is the principal architect of my all-time favorite anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion, so i knew there was going to be a brilliance to this flick not seen in the entire franchise. The take on Godzilla being a manifestation of how crippling bureaucracy and tradition clot the Japanese culture was not lost on me. This is another one of the Goji flicks that puts precedence on the human story and it does that so goddamn well, i was stunned. Look, i loved film and, as a film, this thing is outstanding. I get that it can come across as plodding and slow paced, but you have to understand, it’s showing you, real time, what it’s like to move through the Japanese government. All of that red tape, all of that inaction, is a noose around Japan’s neck and you get a real understanding of that. Not only does this thing have great direction and exceptional performances for a Japanese product, that Shin Goji design is absolutely horrifying. It’s wholly original, brilliantly executed, and easily my second favorite in the entire franchise. I love this movie and everything it represents. Shin Godzilla is absolutely required viewing for the Goji fan.

1. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

I alluded to this before, but Mechagoji is my favorite Godzilla villain of all-time. This film is why. Terror was the second Godzilla movie i had ever seen. It was the first VHS i ever bought with my own money. I remember, vividly, the emotions i felt watching this mechanical monstrosity decimate both King Shiisa and Godzilla. Mechagodzilla was a legitimate powerhouse and it demonstrated that with every assault on Tokyo. I mean, he shows up, and damn near rips Anguirus’ face right the hell off! We saw blood, so much blood, spew from Goji’s best friend and it was truly heartbreaking. Angie just scuttled away in defeat, inflicting almost no damage to the violent impostor and, from there, it was just a massive show of power. Unlimited power. Narrative wise, it’s actually one of the best, most coherent stories in the entire franchise. In my opinion, it could give Biollante a run for it’s money but most would place is a step behind. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is my favorite Goji film and required viewing for any fan of the series.

Honorable Mentions: Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs Gigan, Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster, Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Destroyah, Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out attack, Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S, Godzilla Raids Again

#Smokey brand Select #Godzilla #Gojira

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smokeybrand · 4 years

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Smokey brand Select: Heavy is the Head

10. The Return of Godzilla

9. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

8. Godzilla: Final Wars

7. Godzilla: King of the Monsters

6. Godzilla vs. Biollante

5. Terror of Mechagodzilla

4. Godzilla

3. Gojira

2. Shin Godzilla

1. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla

#Smokey brand Select #Godzilla

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nekkyousagi · 5 years

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Out of all the kaijus that Godzilla has faced, both good and bad, which is your favorite?

Oh no, now that I’ve learned about so many of these kaiju, I think I have several favorites. The main classic opponent/villains are must favorites, of course. Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah...

But out of the ‘new to me’ kaiju opponents Godzilla went up against, from the movies I’ve recently seen, I’d say my favorites are:

Biollante *sobbing*

Kiryu [Mechagodzilla 2003] *gross sobbing*

MUTO [they both are awesome but Hokmuto is my most fave of the two]

Final Wars Gigan

maybe Orga???....it was so bizzare and unique...and that ending omg

A few others maybe, but these are the ones that stand out as some of my favorite opponents...I still have the Showa Era to watch so I’ll wait on those. And I have favorite allies and good kaiju too, but I’ll save that for another list.

#usagi replies #godzilla #kaiju #toho monsters #mechagodzilla #biollante #gigan #orga #heisei godzilla #millennium godzilla #godzilla movie marathon

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cant-blink · 3 years

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My Gigan’s Backstory

Gigan hardly knew his real parents. He still has memories of them, vague memories deep in his data banks. He knew enough to have imprinted on his own kind; he knows he’s a space-duck.

His Masters, the Nebulans, has taken him from his nest before he was even old enough to leave it. They took him in, fed him, raised him. They took lots of pictures of him, in all his babu floof glory, and made sure to save those photos for future use...

Gigan as a babu was damn near the cutest thing in existence, a cottonball with a face. He would instinctively seek cuddles for warmth and would waddle after anyone he laid eye on, chirping and peeping the entire time. He quickly won the hearts of every Nebulan that came in contact with him, and a great bond was formed between him and his adoptive ‘family’.

But good things don’t last long in my universe and when Gigan began approaching pubescence, he became increasingly more aggressive and violent. Tis a normal part of space-duck development, as the young start to learn how to hunt and fight amongst themselves.

For Gigan, though, this natural change would become anything BUT natural. His Masters not only placed him in complete isolation in a ready-made enclosure, but also placed a ‘mind-control’ chip in his brain. A weak one, just there to ensure he doesn’t turn that aggression towards them. They deprived him of physical company, but still spoke to him through the chip. Although obviously, the conversations were rather sparse and one-sided. Most of Gigan’s days were spent sleeping or restlessly pacing around the enclosure. His only source of entertainment was when the Nebulans would teach him how to ‘hunt’. Aka, to attack anything that went through The Door.

The Door was Gigan’s only contact with the outside world beyond his enclosure. The Nebulans would give him whatever he needed through The Door. Food, toys, or (his favorite) live prey to serve as both. He lived like this for many years, until he was a fully-grown adult. Then the Nebulans, his ‘parents’ that he came to look up to, told him that it was time for the Change. He didn’t know what this entailed, but he was excited and ready for this Initiation!

He was put under, and the modifications were made to his body, his senses, his brain. They took his natural weaponry and made them even more deadly by coating them in powerful alien alloys. They gave him power, in the form of lasers, fire, flight, teleportation, and a buzzsaw implanted into his chest. They gave him knowledge in his brain, able to access whatever information he could possibly desire (that they already had on record, of course). And most importantly....

... They downloaded his baby pictures into his memory bank. Just to humble him a bit, remind him of how cute he was.

Gigan was quite overwhelmed at first. His body stayed mostly the same in appearance, but the changes made took some getting used to. After giving him recovery time in his room, this overwhelmed feeling only increased as they FINALLY began letting Gigan out of his enclosure to practice in a training room.

This overwhelmed feeling quickly went out the window when he learned he was going to fly for the first time. He also began learning how to control his powers, and he took to the lessons pretty well. So many new ways to kill his prey, it’s great! He loved every moment of it!

Once he mastered his skills, he was finally allowed to venture into the real world to carry out missions. Much death and destruction was waged at his claws, all in the name of ‘peace’ as the Nebulans called it, and he loved every moment of it. After being confined to his room damn near his entire childhood, it was like he was able to release all that pent-up aggression on something other than his prey. And once it was all over, and his mission was a success, he would retire back in his enclosure and rest. Despite having been a prisoner in there for the longest time, he still took comfort in his nest.

He was content living with his Masters for a while; he had food and shelter, and a purpose in carrying out whatever missions the Nebulans sent him on.

But as time went on, he began to find that he wanted something more. He didn't know what he was missing, but something was wrong. There was a need in him, ever since he grew to adulthood, that he couldn't fulfill. It got so bad that just the sight of anything colored gold got him bothered and only agitated his aggression further.

Taking note of Gigan's increasing frustrations and unhappiness, the Nebulans came to the conclusion that he must have a mate. He deserved it and they pulled strings to obtain the finest specimen they could find, only the best for their pet space-duck! Importing the specimen, they let her into his room using The Door, and for the first time since being taken from his parents, Gigan saw another of his own kind. The Nebulans had their hopes up, for the interaction seemed peaceful as the two curiously met. All Gigan had to do was fluff out his feathers, fan his sails, and strut his stuff!

But that never happened. For this bioweapon did not court her and instead tried to force himself on her. It’s typical behavior for male space-ducks without a mate, but to not even try courtship? What's worse, when the female rejected his advances (who did this cyborg asshole think he is?!), Gigan only got increasingly more violent and with his enhanced strength and weaponry, it got real bloody really fast.

So fast, the Nebulans couldn’t even stop it from happening when Gigan killed his potential mate. It was horrified silence from the roaches, as their beloved pet finally found release on the corpse. He continued this until he tired himself out and turned to cannibalizing the remains.

Now that... was not normal.

But maybe the Nebulans did something wrong? Perhaps using The Door triggered Gigan to view her as a toy, as live prey? They tried again, and again, with different locations but with the same results. If anything, Gigan only learned how to keep his toy alive for longer. Kept in isolation most of his life, and trained to choose violence at every opportunity, Gigan had no real social skills among his own kind. His instincts to court and breed like a normal space-duck was severely stunted and the Nebulan’s repeated efforts only really reinforced in Gigan’s psychopathic mind that other creatures existed for his own personal pleasures.

They did come to accept that trying to breed their prized weapon was a lost cause. If anything, they’ll reward him with an opportunity to mate if he does a good job at his missions. Whatever makes him happy.

This arrangement made him very happy, and for a while, he thought he needed nothing more in life.

But one day, was the day something new awakened within Gigan.

It was an unusual mission; the Nebulans wanted him to help them capture a target, alive and unharmed. Their target was another bioweapon, just like him, created by a long-extinct race and flying around the cosmos destroying worlds. That kind of power could be useful, and best of all: it came with a mind-control chip of its own.

His name was Ghidorah. King Ghidorah.

The pictures did not do this dragon justice, as Gigan and the Nebulans tracked down the mind-control chip’s signature, and found the massive asteroid. From it, emerged the three-headed dragon. The GOLDEN three-headed dragon with MASSIVE sails that caught the light beautifully.

Setting his eye on the creature woke something in Gigan, for the very first time. He... He WANTED this creature, all to himself. Alive. And he can have him, once they brought this creature into Nebulan control. That was all the motivation he needed.

The battle was a dangerous one. The dragon’s intentions to kill were obvious, and for once in his life, Gigan had to hold back. He had one goal in mind, to incapacitate the dragon and bring him into Nebulan captivity. A swift and powerful strike to the middle head was all that was needed to finish the job.

The Nebulans went right to work with that mind-control chip. Gigan wanted something else, but was forced to sit out while the dragon was prepared. And when they finally did meet, the dragon spoke not a word to him. He just needed time to adjust, the Nebulans reassured the cyborg. They’ll be spending plenty of time together once their plan was ready to set in motion.

Their first mission was to Earth, to dispose of a creature called Godzilla. Ghidorah apparently already had run-ins on this planet, but was swiftly outnumbered. But now with Gigan at his side, surely the odds will lean in their favor.

And it very well nearly did. Together, Gigan, Ghidorah, and the Nebulans almost killed Godzilla.

Until...

Something went terribly wrong. All of a sudden, Gigan lost contact with the Nebulans, for the very first time. The mind-control chips in both kaiju was de-activated, and Gigan was left on his own. Unfortunately for Godzilla, Gigan was no innocent victim under the control of malicious aliens. Mind-control or not, he functioned largely of his own accord and he quickly resumed torturing the fuck out of Godzilla.

Even dragging him to Ghidorah’s feet like a proud suitor showing off prey.

Which Ghidorah promptly rejected and punted the fat Earth lizard away...

That’s okay, it was funny watching Godzilla fly anyway.

However, it quickly became obvious that Ghidorah was no team player and had a great disdain for Gigan. He made little effort to involve himself in the fight, beyond warding off Anguirus’s advances. This hatred even seemed to outweigh his beef with Godzilla as Ghidorah ignored his Earth-side enemy to argue against Gigan. Such vitriol from the dragon for what was an accidental collision- Wait, this wasn’t about Gigan accidentally flying into him. No, Ghidorah was blaming HIM for this whole entire mess?! THE FUCK!!

This argument costed them the mission, Gigan attempting and failing twice to retreat back to the Nebulan ship. Only when Ghidorah was allowed to retreat did Godzilla finally let the cyborg flee alongside him.

It was a bitter blow to Gigan’s ego; not only was his attempt to impress such a beautiful mate a complete failure, but he never lost a mission so miserably. But things go from bad to worse, when Ghidorah followed him back to the ship and to his horror, proceeded to destroy it. Revenge for keeping him hostage.

It was at that moment Gigan had to choose, between his Masters, who were essentially his parents, or this beautiful dragon that he wanted so badly but whom didn’t seem to return the favor...

He chose his Masters and, despite being injured, he rushed to defend the ship with everything he’s got. Ghidorah seemed reluctant to engage in teeth-to-claw close combat, and when the hydra saw that it would take more than Gravity Beams to keep this cyborg at bay, it was what allowed Gigan to chase him off. The Nebulans were safe...

... For now.

For it was barely over a year later, after yet another failed Earth mission with an ally named Megalon, that Gigan returned to his Masters even more damaged than last time. And that’s when Ghidorah, lying in wait for the perfect opportunity, decided to strike.

The Nebulans were defenseless and a weakened Gigan could do nothing but watch as his Masters were destroyed. His home... The sight of it all was horrific, and yet... somehow beautiful, seeing this dragon’s full destructive power unleashed first-hand. After the carnage, Ghidorah turned to him, regarding him with six blood-red eyes. Gigan was ready to go down fighting, but to his surprise, the dragon turned and flew off into the void. Leaving him alone for the very first time.

His mind-control was lost completely. No orders, no reassurance that everything was okay. Nothing but silence. With everything he’s ever known gone, Gigan knew not what to do. Is this what it feels like to finally leave the nest? Was he ready?

........

Of course he was. His Nebulan ‘parents’ taught him all he needed to know in life, and he went forth to make his own path. He forged his own way, making a living as an assassin and a pirate. He met with old friends, recruiting Megalon into his crew, and made new ones, meeting a grumpy ol’ centipede. He also took those same friends and threw them under the bus when the law finally caught up with them.

He was totally going to come back for them, honest....

His career as an assassin came to an end, however, when the worst day of his life happened. It was like any other, coming to meet those who wanted a job done. However, this turned out to be nothing more than a means to trap the cyborg and put him through another Change...

This one, for the worst, as it completely stripped him of his space-duckness, his feathers gone, his sails tainted red. His new ‘Masters’ wishing to enslave him...

Needless to say, it didn’t end well for them, when they learned the mind-control chip was only ever mild and served more as a means of communication than anything. The Nebulans never needed complete control, like Ghidorah’s mind-control chip was designed for. They had Gigan’s loyalty because they were all he’s ever known. Like hell, he’s letting his freedom go for some no-name low-lives who think they’re hot shit.

Still, the whole experience left its mark. He quit the idea of working as an assassin, and went full-time pirate. Taking out all the anger and frustration on innocent ships, innocent worlds. Stealing their most important resources to sell on the underground space-market. Accumulating riches in the most dishonorable of means.

But every so often, the thought of a dragon would enter his mind. Those gold scales, those massive wings, a complete disregard for life. Everything he could ever want in a mate...

... He would have extra fun with his victims whenever he got that bothered.

Until one day, he decided he was finally going to act on those desires, make those fantasies a reality. He had the tracking information on Ghidorah, he just needed to catch up to him. Not too hard when the dragon would spend so much time destroying any life-bearing worlds he came across.

When he finally did meet his Master’s killer once more, he... didn’t really know what to do from here. His new Final Wars form made him a freak; even if he were to do a proper courtship, he was certain it wouldn’t be successful. Maybe play off his new look like it was an intentional change, something he labeled a “work-in-progress”?

Would Ghidorah even recognize him?

Turns out, yes, yes he did. Despite Gigan’s attempts at friendly re-introduction, Ghidorah seemed just as hostile towards him as before, making it clear that he was still holding a grudge against the cyborg. But the dragon never really escalated that hatred into an actual fight.

This was something he can work with.

And he was nothing if not persistent. Unlike all those other females the Nebulans would try to pair him with, this one was special. He wanted him, forever and not just for the night. For that, he knew he had to earn Ghidorah’s forgiveness. Maybe then, the dragon will be willing to give him a chance.

Worst case scenario, he still remembered how to activate that mind-control chip...

#gigan #ghidorah #king ghidorah #godzilla #gigadorah

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galionne-vibin · 5 years

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I must ask, what did you think of Godzilla vs Gigan? That was my first ever Godzilla movie so I’m sentimental towards those Kaiju. Especially Anguirus of course...

Sorry I took so long to respond!

Well for starters, it was really fun! I never thought I’d appreciate something like suit acting but the more Toho Godzilla movies I watch, the more I do.

-Seeing Godzilla and Anguirus talking with the little speech bubbles was... An experience. This was my first real introduction to Anguirus and I gotta say he’s pretty entertaining (his backwards jump into Ghidorah is one of the funniest thing I’ve ever seen). He and Godzilla make a really good duo, even if Goji seems kinda bossy (”Hurry!” “Do it quick!” “Check the immediate area!” Like geez man give him some space, poor Angui)

-This was also my first introduction to Ghidorah (outside of KOTM) and he’s just... He’s just... Funky as hell. I love him. Watching his spaghetti noodle necks wiggle around brought me great joy. 10/10 would pat him on all his heads.

-GIGAN-!!! I didn’t expect the blades on his stomach to be an actual freaking buzzsaw?? I thought it was just... Well I don’t know but I didn’t think it could actually spin! Also the way he beat up Godzilla until he was bleeding was savage.

-Goji was pretty cool, although I gotta admit I tend to be more in interested in the other kaijus, since he’s in basically every movie... (But still a very good boy)

-I... Didn’t like the human characters. Or at least I didn’t care for them. The Nebulans had an interesting backstory but I don’t remember anything about the normal humans. Except the one dude with his corn on the cob. But I’d still take Goro, Hiroshi, Rokuro and the Seatopians over him any time. The over all plot was still quite interesting though.

All in all, even if Godzilla vs Megalon is still my favorite, Godzilla vs Gigan was pretty damn great too.

#ask #decade-dungeonmaster #godzilla vs gigan #godzilla #gigan #king ghidorah #anguirus

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dragonzzilla · 5 years

Text

Godzilla: Prince of the Monsters

Since this was originally an ask I sent someone else, I’m copying the content onto a separate post so it can be its own thing. I had the craziest dream about a Godzilla cartoon, and it was like a mix of TFA (one of my favorite Transformers continuities) and Godzilla. The story was about a younger Godzilla who hasn’t yet become King of the Monsters, showing his rise to the top.

Godzilla (The Hero): An up-and-coming Titan making waves in the world. Compared to other incarnations, this Godzilla is younger and less experienced, but powerful still. While Godzilla Junior could easily fit into this role as the son with a great mantle to bear (which can pack a load of narrative potential in its own), I feel there’s also value in making Godzilla something new and never seen before. Without a heritage, everyone has reason to underestimate him; he has to fight to earn every scrap of respect normally owed to his character. Either way, Prince of the Monsters shows his journey to becoming that king we know and love, as he learns to trust others and discover the depths of his power.

Anguirus (The Fixed Point): Godzilla’s first real opponent but also his first ally. A curmudgeonly Titan, he’s been around the block a few times, and fought plenty of battles (and lost his fair share). But no matter how many times he gets knocked down, he always gets up again; it’s a point of pride for him. He’s tough as old leather and about as cuddly as a cactus, but isn’t totally heartless. He takes a liking to Godzilla and decides to show him the ropes and how to pick himself up and keep fighting.

Rodan (The Lancer): A hot head with a chip on his shoulder the size of a continental plate. Both of his parents died in Ghidorah’s conquest of Earth, and he’s been out for blood ever since. However, he lacks the foresight to effectively rebel against the occupation, making him more of a nuisance than an actual threat. A punk through and through, he’s irreverent but brave (to the point of folly). He quickly becomes the Lancer to Godzilla’s Hero, often butting heads over who should lead, but slowly they come to respect one another and become fire-forged friends.

Mothra (The Heart): The former protector of Earth. Compassionate even to humans, Mothra kept the peace between Earth’s Titans for many years until Ghidorah came. She was gravely injured in her battle with him, surviving only due to the timely intervention of Rodan’s parents. When she disappeared soon after, it was widely assumed she had perished from her wounds, but she yet lives, albeit a shadow of her former glory. Ghidorah permanently crippled her, and even now she can only muster a shadow of her former power. Unable to fight directly, she took to quietly fomenting the seeds of resistance in both humanity and the Titans, with only modest results. But she sees in Godzilla the makings of a successor. A foil to Anguirus’s practical wisdom, Mothra seeks to temper Godzilla’s tempestuous and sometimes selfish nature by teaching him morals and principles.

Ghidorah (The Big Bad): An intergalactic despot and self-proclaimed ruler of the universe. Impossibly ancient and immensely powerful, he singlehandedly conquered most of the known universe, with the rest falling into line out of fear. Every civilization fears him, but some choose to serve him willingly to avoid his wrath. Ghidorah came to Earth many years ago, striking down its defender, and installing Gigan as its proxy ruler. He’s the distant big bad villain that is built up over the course of the series, the ultimate foe. Although every civilization knows of Ghidorah, his origins are shrouded in mystery… while his true nature continues to elude everyone…

Gigan (The Starter Villain): A cybernetically-enhanced Titan with a vicious streak ten miles wide, and Ghidorah’s overseer on earth. When Ghidorah came to his homeworld, he fought him not out of obligation to protect his planet, but because he saw a new victim. Though Ghidorah trounced him, he spared Gigan because he saw in him the soul of a mercenary, and ordered his minions to see to Gigan’s injuries. While initially to save his life, Gigan has augmented himself further to make himself a more efficient killer. But don’t let the sophistication of his augments fool you: Gigan is little more than a petty thug. He will fight dirty, and has more than enough options at his disposal. He serves as the first real villain for the G-Team, but remains a recurring villain as he is repaired time and again, until finally reaching the form we see in Final Wars. His repeated humiliation and failure gives him a burning hatred for the G-Team, so he’s easily the most personal villain.

Megalon (The Reluctant Villain): The guardian Titan of an ancient civilization located in the pacific ocean, and Gigan’s main muscle. Well-meaning but easily swayed, he upholds Ghidorah’s regime out of a misguided attempt to protect his people from Ghidorah’s wrath. Plays the Kronk to Gigan’s Yzma. Megalon’s infamous drill hands are in fact the result of a painful augmentation at the hands of Gigan, who convinced him to the procedure. He eventually joins the side of the heroes, destroying his augmentations that symbolize his allegiance to Gigan and Ghidorah. (I am a sucker for “evil minion who’s shown kindness and turns to the side of good).

“Mechagodzilla” (The Mirror Boss): Similar to the anime trilogy, Mechagodzilla starts out as a living mass of nanometal, but it isn’t explicitly made in Godzilla’s image. Driven by a learning computer, the nanometal being replicates the form of whatever Titan it faces (it assumes the forms of the rest of the G-Team too). However, its battle with Godzilla would result in the destruction of its AI, leaving the metal inert and in the form of Godzilla. Humanity would later recover it and modify it to their purposes to aid the resistance effort against Ghidorah.

Orga/Millennian (The Mad Scientist Gone Wrong): Ghidorah’s top geneticist, sent to Earth to study what makes Godzilla so powerful. An amorphous and shapeshifting being, they joined Ghidorah’s cause for the chance to experiment on other life in their pursuit for physical perfection, using whole worlds as their petri dish. Millennian became fascinated with Godzilla’s unique make-up and in their impatience to acquire his strength, took an unstable formula which horribly mutated them, turning them into the misshapen Orga. Locked into a single form and robbed of the tools to fix it (and much of their former intelligence), living as Orga is torture for a mercurial being like Millennian. They can assume their old form for short periods of time, but it requires intense concentration, and before long they revert back to primitive Orga. Think of Jekyll and Hide mixed with TAS Clayface. However, he succeeds in sending a sample of Godzilla’s DNA back to Ghidorah, which leads to the creation of…

Space Godzilla (The Dark Mirror of the Hero): Ghidorah has acquired much forbidden knowledge and science over his eternal life, and frustrated by the incompetence of his servants, he creates a new monster using a sample of Godzilla’s DNA, but in his image. This “perfected” Godzilla possesses much of the strength of the original, but the malice of Ghidorah. He was only meant to strike down Godzilla, but he soon developed an agenda of his own, becoming a threat to everyone. Thematically, he is a picture of what Godzilla could have become, had he not learned to see value in others and learn restraint: a new tyrant

Other Titans would appear of course, these are just the important ones I’ve thought of so far. Humanity is still a factor, I just haven’t thought of any human characters yet. As for themes, I’m not afraid to admit it’s a grab bag of my favorites: found family, the responsibilities and pitfalls of power, learning that no one is an island, and the transformation of a brash youth into a wise leader.

Oh, and it’d be 2d animated, because anything less is lame.

#godzilla #prince of the monsters #kaiju #fanfic #concept #I really wish I knew more people who are into Godzilla

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