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star-going-supernova · 3 years

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So. Madison Russell. Godzilla vs Kong. Welcome to my ted talk.

From a writing perspective, they totally wasted her character. She, Josh, and Bernie were almost exclusively used just as a method of showing the audience what was happening "behind the scenes" at Apex. Pouring the whiskey on the computer was about the only thing of note they did, and even that didn't do much. Mechagodzilla was only slightly hindered by it, and if they'd just written Kong and Godzilla differently in the fight scene, they could have skipped the whiskey part entirely. They could have done so much with having people "on the inside" but Monarch as a greater organization barely had any presence at all, which negated the need to have people on the inside.

Maddie's steadfast insistence that Godzilla wasn't a bad guy at the beginning had so much potential, but it became the conspiracy thing instead. It felt less like she wanted to prove Godzilla wasn't turning against humans, and more like she and her new conspiracy friend wanted to crack open a shady organization, which was frustrating. If they wanted to depict her as someone who was forced to become competent at a young age, which was part of the serious, intense vibe I got from her, instead of the inexplicable personality shift, they should have showed her doing something to help. Getting in contact with her dad/Monarch, giving them evidence to begin a city wide evacuation outside the Apex Hong Kong HQ, messing something up or making it harder for the Apex people to get Mechagodzilla up and running—just, anything.

The fact is, we had Maddie being very proactive in KotM. Stealing the ORCA was the game changer. Instead of taking that to the next level in GvK and giving her an opportunity to continue that aspect of her character—that is, being someone who refuses to sit by when she can do something to help, even if it’s dangerous—they rendered her obsolete.

The movie wouldn't have significantly changed if you took her character out. If Bernie went by himself and ended up in Hong Kong, nothing would have changed, because Maddie didn't do anything of personal importance. She went from being an active character in KotM to being a passive one here, which are a pet peeve of mine. If you saw my post about what I liked and didn’t like about Godzilla (2014), that might sound very familiar.

It would also have made so much more sense if she developed a love for studying Titans instead of focusing on conspiracy theories. Plot-wise, it would have given her claim to her dad that Godzilla was being provoked more credence, and could’ve opened an interesting dialogue between them to reinforce that she knows what she’s talking about. Monarch was obviously still a big part of their lives, given that Mark had rejoined, so it would’ve been the perfect opportunity for Maddie to pursue a Titan-related future.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved Jia, and wouldn’t want to take her out of the movie or even diminish her presence in it. In fact, I think they should have focused on Jia, and only on Jia.

Hear me out: Godzilla vs Kong should’ve been split in two. A Part 1 and Part 2 situation.

For Part 1, we keep a lot of the GvK canon, especially the Kong-centric stuff. Include even more scenes showing us that he’s protective of Jia, don’t just have Dr. Andrews say that he is. Have him defend her from something dangerous, maybe even from some humans. Include their backstory, how he saved her during the storm. And start it even earlier, before Godzilla attacks Apex the first time. Keep the whole Hollow Earth plot, keep the fight scene in the ocean, keep the discovery of the temple and the axe.

And on the Godzilla side of things, start earlier on that as well. Keep the other Titans in, have humanity tentatively believing that a time of great peace is upon them. Their mere presence is restoring the planet. There was an emphasis of nature, particularly in relation to the Titans, in KotM that I really think they should have included more of in GvK to better tie the two movies together, if only they hadn’t swept all the other Titans under the rug. They wanted a movie about a fight, not about the Titans. So, undo that. Show us a little of what Mark does, do a sweep of the other KotM cast (cameos at the very least) to show how they and Monarch are working to uphold that peace post-Boston. I’d also have loved to see Boston itself, too, five years later.

Instead of giving us a Generic High School scene, show Maddie learning about the Titans alongside the experts. Bring back the wonder and amazement she had when she saw Mothra for the first time, when she reached out and touched her. She’s second generation Monarch, make that mean something. When Maddie took the ORCA to Boston, she had a conviction. She couldn’t not have. She was there in part to lure Ghidorah in, but I can’t even pretend to believe her plan ended with that. She knew Godzilla would come.

That sort of belief is hard to kill, and if death via Ghidorah wasn’t enough to scare her off, no way anything else in those five years afterwards did. Her belief that Godzilla is good survived to GvK, and should’ve been a main focal point of her character. Godzilla attacks Apex—she and every other Monarch person who has spent years studying the Titans knows something is up.

Keep Mark’s character development regarding his opinions on Godzilla. He believes Maddie when she says something has to be wrong, not just because he trusts his daughter, but because he looked into Godzilla’s eyes and saw more than just an animal.

They’re in Part 1 only minimally, just to establish their presence and how they feel about Godzilla destroying Apex. The focus is clearly on Jia and Kong’s side of events.

Sorry, but I’m leaving Josh out and seriously dialing back Bernie’s role. Instead, the character we follow inside Apex is Ren Serizawa. We see his motivations, his ambitions, and he becomes a character with more than just a few lines. Does he resent Godzilla? Or does he resent his father, too? Serizawa’s sacrifice was willing, after all. He was no accidental casualty.

Part 1 ends in the Hollow Earth, with Ghidorah taking control of Mechagodzilla on the surface. Alter the timeline just enough so that Godzilla has only just arrived to Hong Kong, and Kong’s still in the Hollow Earth. The final scene is Mechagodzilla emerging into the city as the sun rises. The post-credits scene is our KotM cast in the Argo, location unknown, watching a screen with Mechagodzilla on it.

Part 2 begins with a reveal: Ren Serizawa isn’t dead.

Backtrack. This part focuses more on the Godzilla side, and Monarch. It’ll have flashback scenes from the five years between KotM and now, showing exactly why Monarch as a whole firmly believes Godzilla is reacting to something instead of being anti-human all of a sudden. The Titans are not inherently malicious; destruction is a side effect of their size, no more, no less. He earned his title of King in KotM—make it mean more than just trying to make Kong “bow.” Make him a protector, a guardian. He’s nature’s balance. By definition, he must protect humans as well.

What Monarch needs to figure out is this: what is he trying to protect them from?

They investigate Apex in search of the answer, but knowing from past experience the sort of things Godzilla gets proactive about—the MUTOs, Ghidorah—Monarch mobilizes. They prepare for another fight, at Mark’s instructions. He witnessed both San Francisco and Boston firsthand, even if the former was from a civilian standpoint.

Godzilla has more hunt scenes. He targets a second Apex lab after his ocean fight with Kong, telling Monarch that they’re on the right track.

Maddie, being a minor and not dragged into the thick of things (yet), has to stay home. Remembering the podcast she sometimes listened to, when the topic was focused on the Titans, she tracks Bernie down, and he tells her about what he saw: the eye.

The two of them go to the ruined Apex building and discover the eye is gone before getting caught. With Monarch currently breathing down their necks, they recognize Maddie to be Mark’s daughter and take her to Hong Kong. Sorry, Bernie, but that’s mostly as far as you’re involved. Timeline-wise, this is roughly when Kong puts the axe in the temple floor and Godzilla blasts a hole to the center of the earth. Monarch is following Godzilla, but they’re behind a bit thanks to the tunnel shortcuts. They’re still unaware that Maddie has been kidnapped and is en route to Hong Kong.

This is also when Mechagodzilla gains a life of its own. Walter Simmons is killed and Ren Serizawa becomes trapped in the link to Mechagodzilla, serving as the bridge between the robot and Ghidorah’s mind. Ghidorah is essentially controlling MG by controlling Ren, who is controlling MG. Make sense? He’s the puppeteer’s puppeteer.

We reverse some things. Godzilla fights MG first, gets beat around but not as much as in GvK because he isn’t fresh out of a different fight. Kong returns to the surface through the tunnel Godzilla created, having carried the one remaining HEAV out himself, because Nathan Lind has never flown one before and doesn’t know how they work. Kong wants to protect Jia, and Ilene Andrews and Nathan Lind are very lucky that Jia likes them.

Mechagodzilla sees Kong and takes off, and Kong decides now would be a great time to fight Godzilla, who’s having a pretty bad day. Monarch arrives, and half of them split off to follow MG while the rest stay to try and deescalate the situation. Other than Godzilla faring slightly less well, the fight goes mostly the same as in the movie, except for one big difference: one of the Monarch crafts pick up Jia and Co, and she’s able to get Kong’s attention from the back of an Osprey well enough to tell him to stop fighting. There’s a bigger threat out there, and Godzilla definitely needs to be okay enough to fight it. Either they work together, or they reschedule.

She’s very stern about it, and though no one’s really sure what the two Titans decide on, they stop fighting. They leave together to go after Mechagodzilla, who is currently being slowed down by Mothra, because she deserves to be in this movie. The other Titans basically hinder Mechagodzilla as much as possible as it rampages, telling Godzilla where it is. Monarch finally figures out that it’s heading for the nearest entrance to the Hollow Earth, right around when they also figure out that Ghidorah is involved. With Dr. Andrews and Nathan Lind’s input, they theorize it intends to take more of the power source down there to further strengthen it.

They do their best to clear the cities in its path, evacuating as many people as possible. It’s all they can do. As in the past, they must trust Godzilla to do the heavy lifting. Around the same time, an assistant tells Mark that some guy named Bernie called and is asking for him. This is how he finds out Maddie was taken to Apex’s Hong Kong location.

Meanwhile, the Apex guards and Maddie finally arrive to find the facility abandoned and damaged, MG gone, and Simmons dead. The guards more or less split, leaving her there alone. Maddie, being Maddie, goes deeper until she finally discovers Ghidorah’s skull and Ren Serizawa inside, trapped in his own head with Ghidorah. It’s killing him.

He’s aware enough to have a conversation with her. They argue about the Titans. He wants Godzilla destroyed out of anger over his father’s preference for Titans, rather than his own son.

(“You’re not the only one with ghosts!” she yells at him. “You’re not the only one who resents a parent for putting Titans ahead of you when you needed them!” He chokes out, “I do not resent my father—” “Coulda fooled me. Why else would you be spitting on his sacrifice like this? Who are you trying to help, huh? All the other kids out there who are losing their moms and dads because you let Ghidorah out? Sorry, mister, but the last time someone did that, your dad paid the price.”)

Ren is getting worse. He’s going to die if he stays in the link much longer, but he can’t disconnect. Maddie, looking around, gets to work on something. The camera slowly pans around to show that there’s a second pilot seat, back-to-back with Ren’s. It would allow for seamless switching between pilots without MG ever not having someone at the controls.

Even with the other Titans’ help, Godzilla and Kong are unable to stop MG from going through the tunnel and into the Hollow Earth. Monarch is unable to follow, because of the gravity issue. They’re both tired from the journey and their fight, especially Godzilla. This is their last chance. If Mechagodzilla reaches the power source, it’s all over.

The fight doesn’t go in their favor. They’re both bad at working together, so their attacks are uncoordinated at best, actively hindering each other at worst. Kong gets flung off a mountain and MG pins Godzilla. Even thought he caught himself, Kong isn’t going to make it up in time to help him.

Maddie puts on an identical pilot setup, and with Ren’s instructions, switches the link over to herself, freeing Ren. He collapses forward, immediately falling unconscious from the release of the strain. Fighting past the pain and overwhelming presence suddenly in her head, Maddie does what she does best: she causes Ghidorah problems.

She screams, and it echoes like a roar through his skull.

In the Hollow Earth, Mechagodzilla stumbles.

It’s the beginning of the end. She can’t control it or even really stop Ghidorah, but she gets in his way as much as possible, giving Godzilla and Kong the edge they need to finally get their act together and use some teamwork to take Mechagodzilla down. They destroy it and return to the surface before parting on amicable terms.

After too long, Mark arrives at Apex with a whole team of people. Ren Serizawa is found comatose but alive, and he’s quickly removed for medical attention. Though Maddie’s also alive, there’s something else clearly wrong. She’s still wired into the piloting gear, stiff and unseeing, as if she’s frozen. Her eyes are open but distant, pupils virtually gone from how constricted they are, and her jaw hangs open slightly. Despite how tense her body is, she’s limp. Nothing they do wakes her up, even after getting her out of the skull.

They wheel her out on a gurney to where a handful of Ospreys landed, but as they leave the building and step out onto the roof, they find Godzilla has returned. He watches them, and he’s exactly as aware as Mark remembers.

(“She tried to help you,” Mark calls out to him. No one knows exactly what happened in the Hollow Earth, during the fight, but the scene in Ghidorah’s skull was telling. “No, she—she did help you!” For the second time in her life, Maddie put herself in Ghidorah’s path and, ultimately, won. Only this time, her victory came with a price.)

Godzilla snorts before leaning over the roof’s railing, moving toward the gurney. The humans all back away, even Mark, though he doesn’t go far. Spines humming, eyes flaring blue, Godzilla rumbles deeply.

On the gurney, Maddie stirs.

Later, much later, after Maddie and Jia have met—heaven help everyone else, honestly—they sit together on the edge of a pier over the ocean, Jia leaning comfortably against Maddie. It’s quiet. They’re alone, watching the sunset. A heavy footfall behind them, the feel of the vibration trembling through the wood, makes them turn around. Half concealed in the brush at the edge of the island’s foliage, Kong stands, facing them.

They both wave before standing. They sign goodbye to each other, then part ways. As Maddie walks away to a waiting Osprey, we see behind her as Kong crouches to allow Jia to climb into his palm before vanishing into the forest.

The Osprey takes off over the calm ocean. It has a different design than most, with a large door set in the side instead of at the back, more like an ordinary helicopter. It’s open as they go, Maddie secure inside as she stares out. A smile spreads across her face as jagged spines slowly breach the ocean’s surface, easily keeping pace with the Osprey, which lowers to be closer to the water.

For just a moment, in the fading light, Maddie’s eyes almost shine blue. The screen goes black to the sound of Godzilla’s roar.

#GvK Spoilers #whoops this got long #long post #Star's Stories #kinda #Star's Thoughts about Stuff #life and times of star

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smog1423 · 3 years

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Tagged by @star-going-supernova . Thank you uwu

Rules: Name 5 of your most favorite scenes from each MonsterVerse film and 1 scene that you don’t really care for/dislike. Then tag 3+ others who’ve at least seen GvK.

Godzilla (2014):

1. Powerplant scene

2. Reveal of the male MUTO / Just a bit disappointed Bryan Cranston’s character died.

3. Hawaii / Can I just like put all of Hawaii, from the submarine, to Godzilla , to the airport. ALL OF IT.

4. Godzilla roar at Fem!MUTO / I wish I could’ve seen it in theatres.

5. Godzilla murkin’ the MUTOs / *chefs kiss*

Don’t care about: Train scene / It’s just, meh.

Kong: Skull Island (I really don’t remember the names of the characters)

1. Japanese and American soldier encountering Kong.

2. Entering Skull Island and Kong beating their shit in / It’s just so fun to see these peeps get bodied.

3. American soldier dude with sword

4. Napalm scene / Kong gets lit, and Samuel L. Jackson gets smushed.

5. Guy who’s been stuck on the island comes home

Dislike: Dude strapped with explosives getting slapped by the Skullcrawler / I got sad.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

1. Maddie touching Mothra in the temple

2. Godzilla approaching Castle Bravo and putting on a light show

3. Ghidorah on the Volcano

4. Serizawa sacrificing himself

5. Burning Godzilla

Dislike: Vivienne dying / It can explain itself.

Godzilla vs. Kong

1. Boat ride / From Jia and Kong’s interaction, to the fight.

2. Hollow Earth reveal

3. Mecha G killing Walter

4. Godzilla going alligator mode / Monke gets bodied

5. Godzilla and Kong working together

Dislike: Conspiracy theories / All of it, Bernie’s cool but, NO!

I was already planning on watching all of them in order and in one sitting eventually, but yeah my memory isn’t great. Definitely need to do it soon.

I don’t really know anyone, and the lack of any social interaction I have is a bit depressing but whatevs. First text post in like forever. woo

#look at me doing things #I had fun though #godzilla #monsterverse

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kaijuworldorder · 5 years

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MI22 At the Movies:

Now that I’ve seen it twice and had some time to think about it more, I’m finally ready to share my spoilery thoughts. Short version: I really liked it, and will for sure have to reshuffle my Top 10 Favorite Godzillers now!

Anyway, SPOILER TIME…

WHAT I LIKED

More Neat Worldbuilding: I really enjoyed getting to see more of Monarch’s inner workings, and expanding on the Hollow Earth stuff discussed in Kong: Skull Island, and…the fucking lost civilization of Mu???? We also see some really cool ideas regarding Titan biology and the complex ecosystem they inhabit, like Godzilla lighting up his dorsal spines as a threat display, which is a genius idea that I’m surprised no other film in the series has ever done, and Mothra and Godzilla’s symbiotic relationship (more on these later). And finally there’s the ORCA, which is both a nice expansion on Joe Brody’s research into bioacoustics from the first film and…maybe a stealth reference to Project T?

The Story: much as I love the 2014 Godzilla, one weakness of that film I will admit to is that its story lacked focus, jumping back and forth between Monarch and the military’s attempts to track/contain the monsters and some other guy who wants nothing to do with it and only becomes involved by accident or narrative convenience. This film doesn’t have that problem, with the human narrative running pretty parallel to what’s going on with the monsters. The plot may be a little thin, but who cares? It does what it needs to do. That post-credits scene also some…interesting implications, and I really want to see the MonsterVerse continue after Godzilla vs. Kong so we can get some kind of follow-up on it.

The Characters, Mostly: the puny hew-mons feel more compelling to me this time around, though some of them don’t don’t get nearly enough to do. Mark is a believable broken sad dad, stiff and shouty though he may be at times, and his arc of going from “kill all the monsters” to “leave the good ones alone” is nice. Emma is a good layered antagonist who gets a few good redemptive moments late in the film, and Maddie is a way better kid character than this series has had in some time, instantly care-aboutable and never grating. Alan Jonah…or…Jonah Alan…whatever the fuck his name is…Charles Dance’s character is a pretty interesting villain, though I wish he and his S.C.A.L.E.-esque crew of ecoterrorists got a bit more focus. The Monarch crew are pretty fun and memorable as well, although I didn’t catch a lot of their names. Jokey McChucklefuck annoyed me at first, but grew on me before the end. Science Beardman is OK too. The Doctors Chen don’t have a ton to do, but are likable enough and a really inventive way to include the Little Beauties and still keep things somewhat grounded. Soldier Lady is also pretty cool, and you can tell they wanted Danai Gurira but couldn’t get her. In terms of the returning cast, Serizawa gets more to do this time around beyond his gig as a kaiju eiga Dr. Loomis, including a tear-jerking echo of his heroic sacrifice from the 1954 film, only this time it’s to save Godzilla instead of kill him; I grew to love his character in this film, and he’ll be sorely missed in future installments. Graham does not get much to do, and I’ll get into that in a little more detail later, but I appreciated her presence nonetheless. Admiral Bad-At-His-Job is…still bad at his job, but you get the sense that he’s just trying his best.

Big Fella: Godzilla himself being great, of course, goes without saying, but I’m gonna talk about him anyway because he deserves it. While I adore the 2014 Godzilla design, the little changes made for KotM are very nice. The classic “maple leaf” spines return, with big crackly veins of Cherenkov light (what can that mean?) when he’s getting ready to spit, and he even gets a bit more of a club tail like the old Showa era suits. He keeps his expressiveness from the previous film, naturally; you can feel how pissed he is when Ghidorah shows up. Like I mentioned before, Godzilla lighting up his spines as a threat display is a fantastic idea. The way his eyes glow when he’s charging his atomic breath is also a neat callback to Godzilla: The Series. By the end of the film, he even gets to trot out that edgy alternate mode that certain elements of the fandom just can’t fucking let go of, Burning Godzilla. While I can’t say I particularly like Burning or the film it originally comes from, it’s handled really well here; the way everything around him starts catching on fire and melting is a nice touch that the makers of Godzilla vs. Destroyah could probably have included if they’d actually given a shit. The big nuclear pulses he fires off during this are impressive and cool, though Spiral Fire is notable by its absence.

Mothra: the Queen of the Monsters isn’t in this film as much as I’d like, but when she does get her time to shine (literally and figuratively), she’s pretty goddamn great. The bioluminescence really makes this version of Mothra stand out compared to her previous incarnations, and her design has really grown on me now that I’ve seen it in motion. She kinda does a role reversal from GMK, powering up Godzilla after Ghidorah fries her, and finally gets to use her stinger. I really like the idea of her species and Godzilla’s species having a symbiotic relationship as mentioned earlier, though I wish that had been fleshed out a little more; as it is, it kinda gets paid off without really being set up. Still cool, though.

OH SHIT, IT’S A BIG BIRDIE: Rodan really stole the show for me. He’s got a great design and is so chock-full of personality, a cocky bully who’s a sniveling coward underneath, immediately switching sides once things go bad for Ghidorah, kind of like 1970s Gigan. His moves after he emerges from the volcano as he battles the jets are impressive, and that reference to The Giant Claw he does is also pretty great.

King Fucking Ghidorah: This just might be my favorite incarnation of King Ghidorah ever. His expressiveness, overt (almost cartoonish) malice, how he commands other monsters to do his bidding, that sick wing-lightning shit he does, keeping the outer space origin, the heads being so full of personality and briefly arguing with each other, super-fast healing, his music being a prayer to the number three…all-around fantastic depiction of ol’ KG.

NEW FRIENDS NEW FRIENDS: some people would call the new Titans “uninspired” or “generic”. I would call those people “fuckheads”. Woolly mammoth/sloth/munky hybrid Behemoth is great, a simple but well-executed concept, and I need a toy of him like two weeks ago. Scylla, a cross between Krabby and Omastar, is a pretty good creepy-crawly. Mountain boy Methuselah is scarcely seen, but seems like a nice Angilas stand-in, with echoes of the early G14 “Rokmutul” concept or the Earth Eater from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Finally, there’s a new MUTO with spiky armor, and if you know me, you know how much I love the MUTOs, so I was delighted to see her.

The Action: there’s way more kaiju rasslin’ this time around and it’s pretty great, with Godzilla and Ghidorah locking horns multiple times and taking part in a fantastic tornado-tag match at the end with Mothra and Rodan fighting in the sky. It’s flashy and exciting, while never losing the sense of scale and weight seen in Godzilla’s 2014 outing.

The Visuals: YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING, UNLIKE WB’S SHITTY G14 BLU-RAYS. I really like this film’s use of color; it may not be as saturated as, say, Pacific Rim, but it’s a nice contrast with G14′s more muted, subdued color palette; now that the whole world knows that monsters exist, we can bring everything out of the shadows. The cinematography is also excellent. Ghidorah perched on top of the volcano howling his alpha call with a cross in the foreground, Serizawa making his way up the pyramid steps, Rodan and the other Large Lads bowing to Godzilla at the end as he roars triumphantly…these shots feel just as iconic to me as the head rising over the hill on Oto Island.

The Music: Bear McCrary’s score is so fucking good. I do miss Alexandre Desplat’s cues for the 2014 film, but Bear is more than a worthy successor. Hearing the classic Godzilla March and Mothra’s Song mixed in nearly brought tears to my eyes, and that cover of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Godzilla” is a real banger. The original material is fantastic as well, most notably the new Rodan and Ghidorah themes. All that hype chanting of the monsters’ names along with the music gets the blood pumping. It’s just so FUCKING GOOD I LOVE THIS FUCKING SOUNDTRA

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE SO MUCH

Stuffing Vivienne Graham Into The Fridge: this bothered me. It wasn’t movie-destroying like The Assassination of Mako Mori by the Coward Steven S. DeKnight, but it’s still a big dumb misstep in my opinion. Admittedly Graham didn’t really do much in either this film or the previous one, but like…why not give her more to do, then? Instead, they just kill her off, Serizawa’s sad for like 5 minutes, and that’s it. This seems to be a disturbing trend in Legendary monster movies: female character from the first film who’s well-liked by the fandom gets killed in the sequel to briefly fuel a male character’s angst and then is never mentioned again. Plus wouldn’t “it’s been an honor” have meant more coming from her than from Jokey McChucklefuck? If they pull this same shit with Madison or the Chens in Godzilla vs. Kong, I’ll be big mad.

Critical Ass: the ticking-clock element of “oh man, Godzilla’s gonna explode due to the excess radiation Serizawa fed him” during the final battle felt really clumsy and tacked on. His massive intake of power could just as easily be explained as something Mothra did, since he didn’t change into Burning form until after she sprinkled her pixie dust on him. If Burning Godzilla happened because of the nuke, why do we see Mothra’s wing patterns and hear her call when Godzilla does the nuclear pulse? Is it like a little of column A, little of column B type of thing? And of course the meltdown never actually adds up to anything, Big G’s totally fine afterward. This is something that probably should have been rewritten, or even cut altogether.

FINAL ASSESSMENT: despite a couple of things that didn’t work for me, I kind of love Godzilla: King of the Monsters a lot. It’s a real love letter to the series, and deserves to do so much better than it’s doing. See it in theaters while you still can, if you haven’t already.

RATING: 4½ charred Red Sox hats out of 5

#godzilla king of the monsters #review #mi22 at the movies #godzilla #kwo at the movies

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godzillajuniorreborn · 5 years

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Godzilla King of the Monsters review

In memory of my father. Even though we didn't always see eye-to-eye, without him, I would've never become the fan of Godzilla I am today. Thanks, Dad.

Here it is, my belated review of the recent American Godzilla movie that serves as the sequel to Gareth Edwards' 2014 cinematic reboot and the third installment in the Monsterverse. I saw this movie on Sunday with my mom and brother. Let me just say this to the critics who bashed this movie. I am so sorry this movie doesn't pander to your standards. I'm sorry this movie doesn't exactly have a hidden agenda for you to latch on to. I'm sorry this movie was made for the fans of Godzilla and Kaiju in general. But, you should have known, after seeing the trailers, this movie was going to be a monster slugfest. I also find your critiques very hypocritical since you're more willing to bash this movie yet give praise to the MCU despite those movies not being in the realm of reality. With that said, let's get on to the review.

Story: Five years have passed since mankind bore witness to the rise of Godzilla and the very staggering realization that monsters do exist. Now, humanity is aware of the gigantic beasts known as Titans. However, a dark plan to overthrow humanity and return the rule of Earth to the Titans is underway as an eco-terrorist and rogue Monarch agent let loose a powerful, dragon-like Titan locked away within Antarctica named King Ghidorah whose very presence can summon Category 6 hurricanes all over the world. As humanity faces a worldwide monster apocalypse, Monarch finds itself in a race against time to stop the evil Ghidorah as Godzilla and the other Titans, including the lepidopteran Mothra and the pterosaur-like Rodan, are on a collision course for a battle to decide the fate of the world and who reigns on top as "King of the Monsters".

Let's start with the cons. Just a warning, there WILL be spoilers:

1. The pacing: The first half of the movie feels like it goes a little bit too fast. In the first thirty minutes, we are introduced to Mothra, Ghidorah's awakening in Antarctica as well as his first battle with Godzilla, Rodan's introduction, Godzilla getting incapacitated by the Oxygen Destroyer, and Ghidorah taking control over the other Titans. Luckily, the movie slows down in the second act and allows the audience to catch their breath.

2. Not a lot of Titans: Despite the movie having a total of about twenty Titans, the only ones to get any screen time dedicated to them are the Main Four (Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah) as well as four new monsters (Behemoth, Scylla, Methuselah, and Bosmuto). That's a total of eight Kaiju out of at least twenty with the majority either being names on computer screens or a cameo from Kong. In addition, Rodan and Mothra don't appear that much in the film, mostly taking a backseat to Godzilla and King Ghidorah.

3. Some scenes feel incomplete: For example, there is a scene where Madison (Millie Bobby Brown's character) steals the ORCA, a device meant to communicate with Titans designed by her mother and father, and she does so with little to no effort at all, despite it being a key component in Alan Jonah's (Charles Dance's character) plans. You'd think for such a key instrument, he'd have someone at least guarding it. Heck, in the novelization, there's one guy protecting it who Madison takes out with a taser. In the movie, Maddie just swipes the device with no opposition whatsoever.

4. Emma Russell's Plan: In this movie Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), after losing her son Andrew to Godzilla during the Battle of San Francisco, apparently went mad and decided to give the planet back to the Titans and is working with Alan Jonah, a former army colonel turned eco-terrorist to set about bringing forth a Kaiju apocalypse by setting loose the Titans from their hibernation and having them fix the planet's ecosystem. Yeah, while it is obvious she's being driven by five years worth of grief and she's not in the right mental state, here are two things wrong with her plan (Heck, even Jonah who is the film's main human villain calls her out on this.):

The Titan you have spear-heading this operation is a three-headed dragon who we later find out is from space and was so feared, ancient people refused to go into depth about him (which should be a major red flag that nobody wants to even acknowledge his existence).

Emma says the radiation brought up from the Titans results in new plant-life. Okay, this lady clearly hasn't heard of the effects radiation has on plant-life. Three words: Red. Forests. Chernobyl.

Granted, she kinda gets proven right, for as soon as the Titans are free, the world gets better, but, she was still willing to kick-start global genocide. When a former British Colonel turned eco-warrior is calling you out on your crap, then something's gone wrong.

Now, the pros:

1. The four main Kaiju: Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah are all perfectly realized. As much as I loved the 2014 reboot, I felt like Godzilla could've had a few more scenes to it to flesh out his character. Here, Godzilla is the main character and we get a better grasp at his personality: a weathered, determined king who feels the weight of keeping the natural order in balance on his shoulders. Speaking of personalities, the other three Toho Kaiju have their own distinct personalities, though one gets a category on his own (and I'm pretty sure you know which one) with the stand outs being Rodan who has a hot-headed rogue feel to him but tends to showcase his loyalty to the current Alpha Titan while Mothra is purely benevolent and seems to have a touch of Anguirus' personality with her being loyal to Godzilla alone. I also think this may be the most aggressive incarnation of the Goddess of Peace since GMK.

2. King Ghidorah: The 1991 Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah film was the first Godzilla movie I ever saw, thus King Ghidorah was the first Godzilla villain I saw and he was TERRIFYING. I mean, he's a three-headed dragon the size of a building, that alone is scary. Michael Dougherty succeeded in reminding me why Ghidorah was a nightmare of my childhood. This version of the King of Terror is the most evil I've seen of the character, even more so than Grand King Ghidorah (and that's saying a lot considering that version of Ghidorah was willing to kidnap kids so he could suck them of their life-force as a snack). I like how each of his three heads have their own personalites; the center head being the cold, calculating, arrogant leader, the right head is smarter yet also more aggressive, and the left is an over-achieving, psychotic manchild that has to be kept in line by the center head. In addition, this is the one film villain of 2019 who is evil just for the sake of being evil. There is NOTHING worth sympathizing over. For starters, he's an alien dragon (Yeah, that's right, alien.They don't mince words on that either.) who wants to terraform Earth into his own liking (and it's implied he's done this to other planets as well). He has no conscience, no sympathy, no empathy, and no mercy. He's evil. Nothing more, nothing less. Putting it simply, Ghidorah is that one villain whom you're going to love simply on the grounds of how despicable he is.

3. The Music: The score for the movie by Bear McCeary is excellent. In addition to the classic Ifukube themes for Godzilla and Mothra, it also gives themes for Rodan and Ghidorah that fit them with Rodan having a fast-paced, bombastic theme and Ghidorah having a theme with the Heart Sutra as part of his leitmotif that makes him feel all the more demonic. I also like the heroic theme given to Monarch.

4. The Human Characters: IMO, I found the human characters surprisingly likable and engaging. They were fleshed out (well, much more than you'd expect in a typical Godzilla movie) and had their own story arcs. My favorite characters would have to be Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe), Ilene Chen (Zhang Ziyi), Alan Jonah, and Rick Stanton (Brad Whitford). Rick especially since his jokes are actually pretty good. I also like Alan considering he's not your typical Godzilla human villain who wants to use the Orca and turn the Titans into weapons of war, rather, he comes off more as a Miyazaki villain like Kushana or Lady Eboshi, in that he has good intentions (he's sick and tired of humanity's nonsense and it would be better if the Titans took back the planet), it's just his execution of this plan involved the near extinction of human civilization and the reliance on a three-headed, psychotic dragon from space. Also, Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) is pretty much the anti-Haruo Sakaki. He holds a grudge against Godzilla, but even then he knows it's downright suicidal to try and fight him and, in the end, realizes the Big G's the only thing standing in the way of Ghidorah's machinations. Heck, some of his actions save more people as opposed to Haruo whose blind hatred towards Godzilla got people killed.

5. NO! POLITICAL! AGENDA!: Seriously, am I the only one sick of seeing overly PC elements in movies nowadays? I mean, I get it, there should be more representation, but when those themes bring a film to a screeching halt, it feels more like propaganda posing as entertainment. Luckily, KOTM doesn't do that. If anything, it sticks closer to the themes of the Godzilla franchise (coexistence with Nature and what not) and the only political jab it made was a mention of a Titan attacking Stone Mountain. However, it's so brief and so quick, you'd miss it and it wouldn't change a damn thing. Heck, the only actual politics in the movie is a conference scene you'd expect to see in a Godzilla film. Not only that, but none of the main female characters (Emma, Madison, Ilene etc) are Mary Sues, not even Mothra who is the most powerful of the main female leads (yes, Mothra is technically a character) is all powerful. Emma, despite her stupid, STUPID plan, is clearly not thinking straight due to five years of mourning her son and going extreme with Serizawa's belief of the Titans bringing balance to Earth clearly isn't helping. So, yeah, this movie isn't trying to get Woke points, it's trying to tell a story.

6. The Action Sequences: Aside from one scene, most of the action in this movie is probably some of the best out of any Godzilla film, heck, it's some of the best action I've seen in a Kaiju movie in general. And, trust me, if the anime Godzilla trilogy left a bad taste in your mouth (not that I blame you), you can rest comfortably that we get a proper fight between Godzilla and King Ghidorah. Also, this is the first time we get to see Godzilla and Ghidorah really go at it.

Overall:

This movie was exactly what I wanted to see from an American Godzilla film. It was also the nice little pick-me-up after the utter disappointment that was the anime Godzilla trilogy. Frankly, I think Kong better have something up his sleeves when he and Godzilla have their cinematic rematch next year.

#ooc #godzilla #godzilla: king of the monsters #king ghidorah #rodan #mothra #monsterverse #review

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minaminokyoko · 5 years

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Godzilla: King of Monsters: A Spoilertastic Review

To get straight to the point for some of you, yes, thank God, this movie is better than Godzilla '14.

For one, the title character is not only in the movie for a decent amount of time, they don't constantly cut away from the action and the film is properly lit so that even in night scenes and scenes with heavy rain, our lizard boi is fully visible. He also is kicking some ass and taking some names, and that's what we came here to see. Thus, it's immediately better than its predecessor.

However, a big problem with the movie is the humans. Not the supporting Monarch team, mind you, but the "family." This is one of the most poorly written families I've seen in a while. It's just baffling. They are very, very unlikable people. You don't really get to know them much, and moments where you do, you just don't like them. They are not easy to root for. It's a very similar problem to a lot of other disaster movies, where they pick a bunch of high strung, angry, selfish people as your leads to the point where you're kind of rooting for the disaster to get them, and that's sadly the other half of this film.

In short, they do the kaiju stuff well, but the humans drag the movie down a couple of enjoyment levels, if you ask me. Let's get to it.

Overall Grade: C

Spoilers ahead.

Pros:

-Godzilla and the other monsters look and sound great. They truly feel like their title: Titans. The movie does a good job of offering scale and giving you different perspectives to understand the size and scope of these creatures, and it's very cool to see some of them in the flesh while others are just named. They name-dropped Kong three times that I counted, but he's still Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Movie, which is irritating, but I also think that's for two reasons: (1) they need to build the hype train and sadly this movie is not on track to do well, as evidenced by my theater only having about eight people total in it opening weekend, and they need all the help they can get if they truly want to turn this into a franchise (2) they want to give him and Godzilla an entire rivalry film to themselves instead of just making him an extra here in this movie. Give them the room to breathe and be rivals in their own film rather than just shoehorning Kong into this debut of the other kaiju. But back to my point, the monsters all feel corporeal and intimidating. I really liked Mothra's design in particular. She looks gorgeous and is kind of the Ugly Cute variety of monster. I very much enjoyed seeing these creatures with some good effects given to them (although there are a few spots where it could look better, but WB struggles with this a lot, I've noticed) and the sounds they make are tremendous and impressive.

-The monster fights are pretty solid. I do admit that Pacific Rim kind of raised my bar for kaiju fights even though I know it's not the same story, but that to me is the perfect balance of human characters who are actually likable and useful versus giant monsters. I think it just should be a good blueprint for how to run the show if you're advertising giant monsters blowing up shit and beating the stuffing out of each other. I think the monster fights in King of Monsters are paced well and you can mostly understand where they are in relation to each other and how evenly matched they are. There were also smaller, neat details like seeing Mothra in her larva state then evolve into her adult form. That's very cool and creative and I enjoyed that little detail. The final smackdown with Godzilla and Ghidorah was a good monster mash, and I appreciate them giving it time and not cutting away. Godzilla's finishing move was 100% badass. Kudos to the big Lizard Boi, and kudos to Mothra for coming to help her lizard boyfriend as well against Rodan.

-The Monarch team is dicey at best, but the humans actually did more than just following him around like in Godzilla '14. It was actually a smart idea to introduce the ORCA and the concept of trying to at least either soothe or summon the monsters. I liked it a lot, and it was relatively realistic. We as a species are stupid and would of course try nukes first, but once they learned that these things actually feed on radiation and it makes them stronger, then they would be forced to find alternative options. It allowed the human characters to finally be truly relevant and not just dumb, wide-eyed spectators (although, God, there was a lot of that in this movie) and it gave the whole thing a sort of story.

-Just like the previous movie, Ken Watanabe gave a performance this movie did not deserve. He's just one of those actors where he's so seasoned that even though God knows this movie's script is not fucking Shakespeare, you could still tell that he cared a lot about the project and was easily the best actor hands down.

-I'm glad Emma dies. Fuck her. Thank you for having the teeth to not try and give her some shitty redemption that she wouldn't have deserved anyway. Thank you for sticking to your guns and doing just like Deep Blue Sea and letting the person responsible for all that death take the final bow for her shitty fucking actions.

-This has nothing to do with the canon, but I had a really cool idea: what if Last Action Hero Bad Guy is Tom Hiddleston's character from Kong: Skull Island? Wouldn't that be fucking neat?! It just occurred to me that since Hiddleston's character was probably in his 30's during the 1970's, he'd be in his 70's during this film and he's a tall, thin British dude. I would love it if we got some kind of backstory reveal that something happened that caused Hiddleston's character to turn against Monarch. Wouldn't that be a good idea for a second Kong movie? Seeing the hero turn to the villain for the sake of saving the planet? Man, I like that idea a lot, but that's me.

-I was glad to see Ziyi Zhang return to a big screen movie. I liked her and felt bad about what happened to her career, so it was cool seeing little bits of story, especially about how Asian cultures do in fact consider reptiles to be helpful and not hurtful. That was a neat little mythos thing for me.

Cons:

-As mentioned above, I hated this fucking family. This family is just unbearable. I know the film is ham-fisted in its attempts to deal with loss and tragedy and a broken home, but there is a way to do that. There is a way to write characters reconciling and putting aside a rough history to come together. This is not the way. It's so sloppily written that I was throwing my hands up in exasperation at certain points. They are so unlikable. You see so little of their home life, first off, that there is no real connection to get to know them. This is a common problem in action movies these days, too--they don't know how to set the stage and just rush into action. It's true we come to action movies for action, but that doesn't mean we don't also want to enjoy the characters we're spending time with. We know it's fully possible to have action packed movies with well-written leads. It's been done for decades, so this movie has no excuse for why the three family members are aggressively terrible. Emma is a selfish, thoughtless bitch and her motivations make zero sense. Mark is just an angry ex-alcoholic who just barely is relevant enough to be in the story. Madison is damn near a blank slate daughter archetype with little to offer except to be something to rescue. Even with one brief flashback of when they were happy, we're not given a reason to root for them because you never get to know them and the few character traits they do display are just awful. For that reason, we're gonna give Emma her own bullet point to explain why she is just the worst.

-Emma's motivation is completely ass-backwards. Going the eco-terrorism point makes no fucking sense for what happened to her. Hear me out. I can see what this movie was going for, and I know it's kind of an odd comparison, but what they ended up with is basically blonde Thanos. Fuck this woman. Fuck this woman for deciding that she's right and millions of other people need to die because she thinks she is right about something, and she was fucking wrong. 100% fucking wrong. It made no sense that because Godzilla killed your kid, you're gonna slaughter tens of thousands of other kids to "restore the earth" and make it some kind of utopia. You're gonna subject innocent lives to torture and death and trauma in the hopes that titantic animals you cannot at all control and barely understand will raze everything to ashes and then shit can grow again. This is some deeply white people shit, too. Sorry to pull that card, but yes, this is a full-on white people mentality of doing something that will hurt everyone else BUT YOU and thinking you have the right to make that fucking decision. She and Maddie were somewhere safe, and she told her ex-husband to go somewhere safe too, and then she pulled a trigger that killed millions of fucking people whose only crimes were existing. That environmentalist message was utter shit. Is the earth overpopulated and polluted? Yep. But the fucking solution is not to kill half the goddamn population. The solution is to work together and overthrow the corrupt people keeping us from finding realistic ways to solve the problem, not wiping out half of humanity while you sit in a goddamn doomsday bunker sipping coffee and congratulating yourself. The crazy thing is this blonde Thanos bullshit did not need to happen. Last Action Hero Bad Guy was perfectly fine in this role of basically the kaiju version of Ra's Al Ghul. It made sense for him to be like, "ay, fuck y'all for killing the earth, let's let the monsters have it back and then clean up afterward." All you had to do was keep it the way it was presented to us: he kidnapped her and the kid and forced them to help wake up the monsters. There was no need to for this idiotic Deep Blue Sea nonsense of her agreeing with him and somehow setting it up. Which, by the way, made no goddamn sense because he kills all those innocent scientists in the lab at the beginning of the movie. Did she know he would do that? If so, fuck her. Fuck her in the ass sideways for killing her own teammates. She could have met him somewhere else. What was with the guns and shit if she's the one who came up with this dumb idea? I hate everything about this character and I am glad she died in the end because she was as much a fucking monster as King Ghidorah.

-The dialogue in this movie is atrocious. Look, I get it, it's a generic action movie. But come on. There were seriously points where I just rolled my eyes or threw my hands up in exasperation because there were just so many Captain Obvious comments or unfunny one-liners thrown back and forth. It's painful to endure some of this shit. The "humor" in particular really hurts, because you can see they put pauses after certain lines where they think the audience is laughing, and trust me, no, we were NOT laughing. Stupid shit like telling a character to "hold on" as a fucking maelstrom is trying to blow them away or just other dumb filler dialogue that makes me wanna slap my forehead. It's egregious.

-The Monarch team is still kind of as stupid as the last movie. Not completely, but they were reaching hard in certain cases and they still felt useless. One example that drove me insane was when Godzilla went back to his bachelor pad to recharge, they then say this is where he comes to heal...and then proceed to nuke that shit. And I'm like...bitch, whatchu gon' do now if he gets hurt?! You're just gonna find him and nuke him every single time he's hurt?! What the fuck kind of plan is that? I get that the movie writers wanted a sense of urgency, but that was such an idiotic way to accomplish something needed for the plot. They introduced a cool concept and then eliminated it immediately. Oy. Another example is Mark's dumbass screaming for Maddie like she can possibly hear him at Fenway Park with fucking Ghidorah and Godzilla literally fighting right on top of the stadium. Are you kidding me? My God, Mark is stupid. He did the same thing when he ran into the base with a fucking pistol screaming her name and letting the armed mercs know exactly where the hell he was. I am shocked his dumbass didn't get immediately picked off. Moron.

-Sarigawa's death was some full-on nonsense. Fuck you for killing the only credible actor in the entire movie, and what's worse is that it very much feels like a person of color dying for the sake of some goddamn white people. Because, yes, folks, I'm sorry, this is a white woman's fault. All this shit is because a white woman wanted to be Thanos and now this awesome dude has to sacrifice himself. Fuck off. I hate this point in the story, even though bless Watanabe for giving us the only credible emotional scene in the entire movie.

-Even though she was barely a character, I disliked Sally Hawkins biting it randomly in the first third, and not getting much reverence. No, we didn't know shit about her, but it felt like the movie just said "fuck it" and moved right along like it was no big deal. I don't know why they even bothered.

-How in God's name did they somehow "sneak" Ghidorah's whole ass head out of fucking Boston with no one noticing? It's a giant dragon head! How did you fucking do that and no one saw you bring it all the way to Mexico? I swear to God, this movie is filled with plotholes. I'm fine with them setting up Mecha Ghidorah or just cloning him all over again, but why couldn't it just have been in Boston and they just snuck in during the dead of night and moved it somewhere nearby? That thing is gigantic and it's a hard pill to swallow that they just left without anyone noticing it.

EDIT: A fan corrected me that this was the head that Godzilla ripped off before the end fight, so the above point is invalid. Nice catch! Thank you!

-Nitpick: Did Mothra die? That was unclear. I hope not. She's the Queen. I'll have to ask some Godzilla fans to explain what they thought happened after Ghidorah blasted her in the final fight.

-Nitpick: Good God, these human characters survive shit that would easily kill a normal person and it is a little bit grating on the nerves to suspend your disbelief this hard.

-Nitpick: I hate it when monsters the size of fucking buildings somehow notice tiny ass humans enough to bother giving them their attention or even their ire. "An ant has no quarrel with a boot." I hated it in '98 Godzilla and I still hate it. Something on that scale should not even vaguely bother with one tiny human being, but that's me.

I know I have some very heavy criticisms, but this is still a decent flick if you're just going to shell out for a matinee showing. The monsters are great and entertaining and there's plenty of fighting to go around that is worth a peek, especially the end fight with Ghidorah and Godzilla. It was pretty cool to see in IMAX as well, but I leave that up to you folks if it's worth it.

Kyo out.

#godzilla #godzilla king of monsters #movie review #film review #warner bros #kaiju #monsters

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michaelmyersmalewife · 5 years

Text

LEVIATHAN | 14. The Coronation | MASTERLIST

words: 5k+

A/N: early chapter update because some family business came up so i'll be pretty busy for all of friday; with that aside, i cant believe we're already at this point,,,it all went by so fast and i cant wait to share the ending with you next monday !!

you can also support this fic on wattpad & ao3

Madison watched as her parents began to repair the ORCA.

It had been a long time since they had been together, and even longer since they had worked for a common purpose. It was weird, seeing them like this. It reminded her of how it was before - before they lost Andrew, when her father was sober, and before her mother lost touch with reality. They were becoming almost completely in sync, both working like crazy but somehow not getting in each other's way.

"You sure about this?" her mom asked.

"It's the only way to save him," her dad replied. "We fix it, get on the Osprey, and draw that thing away from Godzilla. Buy him time to get back on his feet."

Her dad connected a wire only to be met with a sharp snap of electricity. The ORCA's cracked screen flickered on for a second before turning back off. He cursed, looking at the device's inner workings with a confused gaze.

"Well this is new."

"I, uh, made a few changes while you were gone."

The Regulator, impatient, pushed her way through them, hands flying to work on the ORCA.

"Could you patch that cable there?" she said, eyes not leaving the jumbled mess of machinery as her mother joined her.

"And who are you?" her dad asked incredulously.

"That's not importa - no, the red one not the white!"

"Okay, okay!"

"You sure this thing is gonna work?" one of the Monarch soldiers asked.

No one bothered to answer. In fact, they were so caught up in their work that they probably hadn't even heard him. Her mother held up a piece of wire for the Regulator to solder, and Emma's hands flew straight for it like a machine.

"If you replace this five-pin, I can reset the transmitter and everything should work as normally as possible." the Regulator said.

No one had a chance to say anything in response before the ground began shaking again.

Behind them, Ghidorah was already on top of Godzilla, his heads snaking around his body. The heads at his side wrapped around him like coils while the center head bit into his neck. The other two followed suit, and with every bite Godzilla's glow grew weaker while Ghidorah's wounds closed up before vanishing completely. That was when Madison saw Ghidorah lift him up, and she could literally see the dragon absorbing the titan's life, Godzilla's internal fire glowing down all three of his throats. Godzilla let out a terrible, mournful cry. He was dying.

Hold on, big guy, she thought.

"Whatever you're gonna do, do it fast." Jodie said in a fearful tone.

"Are you good to go?" her dad asked.

The Regulator nodded. She set the solder, her mother sparked it, and her father flipped the switch.

"That's it!" he said, relief in his voice. "That's it."

Overhead, an Osprey descended toward them, floodlights illuminating the wreckage they stood amongst.

Her mom turned to her, gently holding her head in her hands and pressing a kiss to her forehead. Madison wasn't sure how to feel about the sudden act of affection, but there was too much that needed to be said, and there wasn't time for all of it.

"I love you, Maddie," her mother said. "I'm sorry."

All of the hurt, her feelings of betrayal, felt like a knot in Madison's stomach. A single sorry couldn't undo all that had been done, but it felt a little better now. It was a start.

"I love you too." she replied.

Madison knew that it was never going to be the same again. She could never go back to that kid who thought her mother had it all together, knew everything, understood what was best for everyone. No more than she thought of her father as perfect. But that was for the best, right? To finally live in reality and not some idealistic world she had created for herself.

The Osprey touched down, almost immediately her father ushered her toward it. Shortly after, Jodie and the two Monarch soldiers carried the wounded third aboard the rescue craft. Her mother held back, joining the Regulator in fiddling with the ORCA.

"C'mon, Emma, let's go!" her father shouted.

"Take her!" she yelled back, still messing with the controls. "I still have to activate it."

Her father gave her a skeptical look.

"I'm right behind you, just go!" she insisted before turning to the Regulator, the taller woman firmly grasping her wrist.

"Mom?" Madison called after her.

Before she could realize what was happening, Madison felt herself being lifted in her father's arms, suddenly finding herself coming closer to the Osprey. Over his shoulder, she saw her mom and the Regulator activate the ORCA, its heartbeat starting once again.

"Mom!"

That was when she saw the Regulator give her mother a strange look, shaking her head so lightly that Madison hardly noticed it. She mouthed something to her mother before finally she let go of the ORCA, taking a few hesitant steps backward before running toward the Osprey. Madison felt her mother's hand press itself against her back, fingers squeezing the fabric of her jacket.

In the distance, she heard a shriek. One by one Ghidorah's heads detached themselves from Godzilla, dropping his limp body to the ground and swung around, searching for the source of the sound they had come to hate. The only remaining threat to his rule.

Elena froze mid-step, just as she was about to board the Osprey.

All three of the monster's heads were trained on them, and with a terrible speed that shook the ground, he knocked down everything that was stopping him from getting to the ORCA. While they had managed to buy time for Godzilla, they were starting to run out of time themselves. Elena had already been face-to-face with this thing enough times to know that she didn't want to be in that position again. Ever. But while every inch of her body told her to run and hide, she felt nothing but hatred for the creature. Hatred and rage.

Fight it, she thought, thinking of Godzilla even though she knew there was no way for him to hear her. Madison believes in you, and goddammit so do I.

But that was when Ghidorah began to gallop, leaving buildings as nothing but piles of rubble.

"Maddie, thank god." she heard a woman with short black hair say as she lead them aboard the Osprey.

A white-haired man with glasses herded them inside before giving the pilot a thumbs-up. As they each buckled down, Elena almost did a double-take as a woman with long black hair pulled aside in a braid sat across from her, right next to the short-haired woman. They looked exactly alike, and they even seemed to mimic each other's movements. Looking around, taking a mental head count, Elena's brows furrowed.

One of them was missing. It didn't take long for her to realize it was the Regulator. Had she been left behind during the rush to be rescued?

"Hold on!" she yelled to the pilot.

Unbuckling herself, she moved to the front of the Osprey. Out of its doors, she saw that Ghidorah's pace was only quickening, more full of rage than ever. Elena's skin began to prickle.

"We gotta lift off, now." a woman in a military uniform responded. If Elena was remembering right, she wore the marks of a colonel.

The pilot obeyed the order from their superior, and the Osprey began to rise. But the Regulator still wasn't on board. Elena moved over to the door, reaching her arms out so that she could pull her up when she got there. She still wasn't moving, glued to the ORCA's side.

"Just grab it!" she yelled over the Osprey's whirring.

It was then that the Regulator's eyes met hers, and as she glanced back at the dragon barreling toward them, maws gaping and ready to tear the Osprey asunder - with them inside it - Elena had made a brutal realization.

If they stopped their lift-off to wait for her to get on board, none of them were going to make it. Even if they managed to get just a few yards off the ground, it wouldn't even matter if the ORCA was on board. Ghidorah would follow its sound wherever it went, and Elena knew that he was faster than their sorry little Osprey.

And if the ORCA was turned off, he'd follow them anyway - or rather, he'd follow her and Madison. And then he would return to finish off Godzilla.

She saw the Regulator's lips form words, she saw the smallest of smiles appear on her face. Sad and serene all at once.

Elena understood.

Walking away from the slowly closing door, she watched as the Regulator stepped into the jeep that Madison's parents had arrived in. As she drove away into the ruins of Boston, the Osprey rose higher. And as she suspected, Ghidorah turned to follow her, seemingly forgetting about the Osprey altogether.

Give him hell, she thought.

Sitting back down, Madison turned to her.

"Is she..?"

"She's setting things right."

_____

"It's alright," she said, knowing they couldn't possibly hear it over the sound of the Osprey and Ghidorah's stampede. "Just let me have this."

For so long, she had kept her feelings locked away where they could never interfere. Follow orders or be discarded. That was her life, the only life she was allowed to know. But standing in the ruins of the human city, it all came back to her with a frightening ease.

Never in her life had she had the courage - the willingness - to act. But this world, it stood apart from the other innocent planets she had been complacent in destroying. It stood a chance. And she'd be damned if she wasted the opportunity to right her wrongs, no matter the cost.

She saw Elena nod with that same serious face she always wore, brows knit together. Only this time, she bore a lopsided smile as a look a realization grew on her face.

Though no words had been exchanged, the Regulator had seen the same thought in Emma's eyes, but it was something she couldn't allow. She couldn't imagine being the one to live while someone who had been tricked so deviously into an unforgivable crime was the one to die. It was just the next logical step. She knew no one would stop her. Why would they? Up until then she was just another pawn in the Controller's game, a little toy soldier that could easily be replaced. And she was perfectly fine with the thought of dying. She had found a purpose, something she had chosen to do on her own terms.

She just wished she could've thanked Elena for that opportunity.

Taking the ORCA into her hands, she rushed to the car parked just outside where Madison's house had been. Laying the humming machine on the passenger seat, she started the engine and slammed her foot on the gas.

Taking a quick glance back, she saw that her plan was working. Ghidorah had taken a sharp turn, dismissing the Osprey and coming directly after her. His eyes shined in the dark, his usual draconic smirks replaced with furiously bared teeth.

Not this time, she thought. Never again.

She didn't know how far she would get, but she hoped that it would be far enough. The Osprey was already close to vanishing under the cover of smoke and ash that wafted through the air and into the clouds. Hoping that it would be enough was all she could do at that point.

But none of that would matter if Godzilla didn't wake up.

Was he dead? The last she had seen of him, he hadn't been moving, limp like a three-hundred-foot ragdoll. If he was, there was nothing they could do. Ghidorah was unstoppable - not even the Controller had power over the dragon. At the very least, if Elena and the rest survived, maybe they could find some way to stop him from tearing the world apart. Even though a part of her knew she wouldn't be around to see it all carried out. But she was undoing some part of the terrible damage she had allowed to take place, and though it couldn't possibly atone for the countless worlds before this, it was the most she could do. And that was alright with her.

The Regulator dodged piles of rubble, swerving down roads that weren't blocked by what used to be buildings, trying to stretch the time was surely running out.

She couldn't stop herself from looking out of the car's mirror, and just as she sped down a narrow path of skyscrapers she saw him. He was right behind her, no more than a meter or two away. His trilling shook her bones, and with each thud from his galloping the car jumped a few inches off of the ground. He was getting faster, as his middle head stretched farther from between his brothers and snapped his jaws at the car, barely missing her by mere feet.

Spinning the wheel, she went careening down a pile of burning debris before entering a flattened area. It was the end of the line.

At that moment, Ghidorah pounced into the air, wings kicking up smoldering rubble and knocking over a building with one misplaced flap of his wings as he hovered close behind. Her face bunched up into an expression of pure frustration as she pushed the pedal all the way down.

As he glided, the left head shot a bolt of lightning her way, striking the pavement just beside her. With an annoyed shriek, the right head tried next, toppling over the top half of a skyscraper as it fell right in front of her. She didn't have the chance to swerve out of the way as the middle head opened his jaws, sending a bolt of yellow lightning directly at the small, banged-up car that scrambled down the blocked road like a trapped mouse.

Everything flashed white.

The Regulator closed her eyes, let go of the wheel, and took a deep breath as a pain unlike anything she had ever felt jolted through her body, twisting every nerve and lighting up her skin like a match. It was like being shot with one of the stunners dialed to a hundred.

But the agony didn't last long. As it faded, she felt herself spin along with the car, rolling, bounding until finally it became propped against something. All she could hear was the sound of fire crackling all around her and the beat of Ghidorah's wings.

Opening her eyes, she found that she had been completely thrown from the car, pieces of glass and gravel imbedded in her skin. Not that it meant much to her. Everything was hurting, but everything was numb at the same time. But that was alright. It was just fine. Rolling over, she stared up at the Golden Demise that crouched low to where she lay, sniffing and snarling.

His signature sneer was back, something self-righteous and proud glinting in all of his eyes. But there was nothing about him that could frighten her in that moment, for there was nothing else he could possibly do to her.

Behind him, her eyes could barely make out a reddish-orange glow growing in intensity from behind him. It was different from the burning city around her. It was alive. Setting her head back down on the gravel, she smiled.

"Long..live....the king." she breathed.

Time to restore balance.

_____

As the Osprey rose above the battlefield, Jodie's gaze tracked the jeep where the strange woman inside vanished behind the thick cover of smoke or piles of debris before reappearing.

She hadn't known who she was, but she had seen her face somewhere before. It didn't quite click with her where at first, but as she watched the little car race out from behind a crushed building, it suddenly came to her. She was the merc that from Antarctica, the one that was holding an unconscious Elena. Why she had a sudden change of heart, she didn't know. But she did know that she had helped Madison and Elena, and that was enough for her to silently cheer her on.

That is, until Ghidorah swooped down on her like a hammer, blasting the jeep with his lightning. Energy wracked all around it, and the car went flying. After seeing Ghidorah drop low to the ground, heads slithering toward where the jeep had stopped, Jodie looked away.

"Jesus," Stanton exclaimed, pointing over her shoulder. "Look."

She didn't want to turn back to the inevitable demise of some stranger, but something about his tone made her eyes follow to where he was pointing. Jodie suppressed a gasp, hand flying to cover her mouth.

She was half-expecting to see Godzilla rising from the crater, but instead it was something else, something smaller but far, far faster than the old lizard ever was. Hovering low, wings pressed flat against his body as he dove, was Rodan.

Like a flurry of dancing flames, he burst out the side of a building, barreling into Ghidorah at full force and knocking him off of his path. With a screech, he swooped up, spreading his wings as he came back around like a boomerang.

Ghidorah was on his full defensive now, heads swiveling around to prepare for another attack. His left head wasn't so lucky, as Rodan flared his talons, digging into the dragon's head and hooking himself onto his horns. The left head let out a shriek as the flying reptile's claws dug into his eyes before the right and center heads focused their lightning into a concentrated beam of energy, shooting the firebird square in the chest.

He drew back, landing on the top of a half-demolished building. Squinting through the smoke, Jodie saw that the injury he had obtained during his tussle with Mothra was still glowing, but not even that stopped him from going back at the dragon. The center head let loose another bolt while the left thrashed in pain, trilling and screaming as his brothers fought in his stead.

Stretching out his neck to take a bite out of Rodan's leg, he dodged, weaving out of the way before he banked hard, aiming for the right head like a ravenous hawk. Ghidorah was fast, but Rodan was faster. With one quick swoop, his talons found purchase on the right head's snout, digging deep into his mouth and clawing up toward his eyes. But he couldn't get far, as he felt the center head's teeth wrap around his leg.

With one strong tug, the center head ripped Rodan from his attack, throwing him into a building, shattered glass cascading down on both of them.

Ghidorah looked down at the bird with a burning fury, lightning building in their necks as the center head nipped at his brothers, tugging the left one by his horns to correct his aim. As each of their maws opened for the finishing blow, Jodie saw something.

It was far behind the dragon, but the space where Godzilla's body lay was now an empty crater, smoking pouring from the ignited rubble within. Jodie stood up, bracing one arm against the Osprey's half-open door.

"There.." she found herself muttering, too wrapped up in the scene playing out before her.

Everyone's gaze followed to where she was pointing. Behind her, Madison was leaning out of her seat with wide eyes.

Massively wounded, Godzilla had pulled himself up and out of the crater, staggering toward Ghidorah as the dragon prepared to take out the already injured titan below him. His steps were slow, uncertain, but as he waded through the remains of Boston his strides built up in strength. And as he regained his power, he was glowing a bright red now, pulsing with an inner radiance that leaked through his scales like lava, light spilling from his eyes as if his body was the core of a star about to go supernova. All around him, everything within his immediate radius began to melt, the heat waves coming off of his body distorting the air around him. Rearing his head back, Godzilla roared.

Madison had thought she had seen true power back in Antarctica, when Ghidorah had first awakened with all the bottled rage of an angry god. But looking at Godzilla, the dragon seemed far from powerful. Finally, she heard his voice right at the front of her mind, and she couldn't help but grin.

Checkmate, asshole

It was then that Ghidorah's center head whipped around, hissing as the rest of his brothers turned their attention to the massive heatwave behind them. Rodan took his chance to slip out from under his talons, flapping his wings to get as high into the air as he could.

With an insulted trill, Ghidorah's middle head spit out a stream of lightning, but the titan just took it, hardly even flinching. He continued stomping forward, the bright red pulsing around him growing brighter and stronger. The dragon backed away, taking a single tentative step back as Godzilla's pace was unimpeded. Ghidorah, unwilling to back down completely, let out three simultaneous shrieks, flaring their horns in defiance as his necks struck out like snakes.

Despite his wounds, the titan never slowed, only stopping to curl into himself as the pulsing around him grew so bright Madison thought he was about to explode. And in a way, he did. The scutes on his back crackled with light, blue streaks mixing with the thermonuclear red. The pulses running up and down his spine became so fast they were blinding. She had to shield her eyes when the pulses condensed, expanding into a massive wave of radioactive energy.

For a brief second, squinting through the light that filtered between her fingers, Madison could have sworn she saw something within the wave, something like gossamer wings flying out of Godzilla's back and toward Ghidorah. Mothra's chittering cry echoed in the back of her mind.

The wave phased through Ghidorah, knocking him down as it burned straight through the thin flesh of his wings as if they were nothing but paper. In a single moment the dragon's wings had been stripped down to the bone. Ghidorah let out an agonizing scream.

On his back, he braced himself up, focusing all three heads on the titan that still lumbered ever closer and letting loose three concentrated beams of lightning. But that did nothing to stop him, if anything, it was only fueling him.

Godzilla released another wave of radiation, and as it expanded around them, the center head recoiled, the screams of his brothers filling the air as the left head was stripped of his scales, sinew and muscle burning away until there was nothing left but bone. The right head disintegrated completely, wilting like a flower from Godzilla's atomic radiance. Their cries died out in an instant as Ghidorah slumped to the ground, writhing like a snake. It was odd, seeing the dragon so small compared to Godzilla. Ghidorah's remaining head screamed.

Taking a step forward, Godzilla's foot collided with his chest, caving it in as the bomb within the titan set off, creating a blinding dome of light over what was once Boston.

Madison's eyes slammed shut as she felt her parents shield her from the light, desperately hoping that they were out of range. As the shock wave from the blast expanded, the Osprey rattled something within the craft sparking and nearly shutting off before starting again, getting swept up into a thermal and continuing its retreat. Everything was still a little shaky, but at least they weren't dead.

Godzilla? Madison opened her eyes.

She was greeted with a mushroom cloud lifting from the skyline, or what remained of it. Gradually, the cloud began to lift before clearing below. Through the smoke, she could see that almost all of Boston was gone, a wasteland of charred ruins. Streets were burning, the steel beams that held up its skyscrapers were twisted and melted.

Her eyes narrowed, trying to discern where exactly the two titans were only to find no sign of either. Had they been destroyed? She could still feel his connection, it was waning just a bit, but it was there. He had to have made it. He had to.

Then, something shifted beneath the wreckage, something big. As the thing emerged, Madison waited for Godzilla's signature dorsal spines, but instead a pair of golden horns appeared, followed by a draconic face. Her stomach dropped.

Ghidorah's head continued to rise from the smoke, further and further until she saw something..weird. His neck didn't look right, as it wasn't the slender serpentine neck she was used to. It was then that she understood, as Godzilla rose above the ruins with Ghidorah's only remaining head in his mouth.

Madison flinched when the dragon's eyes snapped open, seeming to stare just past her. Following his gaze, she saw Elena. The two were locked in one last stare-down. The woman felt a sharp chill run down her spine, but she stared back, jaw tightening as she watched him desperately try to wriggle free from Godzilla's jaws. Shaking it like an alligator would, Godzilla shook the head from side to side until a familiar blue glow built up in his mouth. The whirring from his atomic breath grew quicker and quicker until Ghidorah's entire head was glowing electric blue. With one last trill, Ghidorah's head was ripped apart as the titan's fire erupted through him and into the air.

As the blast died out, Godzilla jittered, shaking his head as a little bolt of lightning crackled in his mouth. He turned his head toward the Osprey.

Told ya everything would be fine, Madison heard him say.

She tried to hide the smile forming along her face. No one else in the Osprey seemed as amused.

Godzilla had won. They had one. But the world was changed forever. So many cities had been left in ruins, and even more people had died. Despite feeling a glimmer of relief, Madison knew that things weren't just going to bounce back to the way they were. Maybe they never would.

But maybe that was as it should be.

If her mother was right, and with Ghidorah gone, the world could rebuild. The places ravaged by titans would flourish, and maybe someday the smoking remains of Boston would become a sprawling forest. She found herself not minding that at all.

Though, she had to admit, she hadn't wanted it to happen this way. But there was no going back now. It was the dawn of a new world, or the return of a very old one. Hopefully, she thought as she huddled closer to her parents, resting her head on her father's shoulder, they could all find out how they fit into this new era. Together.

Jodie jumped, relaxing after finding that it was Gill who had bumped her arm with her own. She gave her a half-smile, reaching for her hand. Smiling back, she grabbed it, squeezing as they stared at the morning sun poking out from the horizon.

Seeing Godzilla silhouetted by its rays, she thought back to what Chen had said about dragons and redemption. Maybe there was something to that. Sure, they might still have a long way to go to reach the coexistence from Serizawa's vision, but something about this battle felt like a reset. A new start.

"Good thing he's on our side." Stanton remarked.

"For now." Chen replied.

Madison bristled at that comment. He wouldn't turn on them, right? She knew that humans haven't exactly had the best history with Godzilla, but he had fought on their side.

Right?

"Look.." she whispered, unsure if she had said it out loud or to the lizard.

As the smoke faded away into the wind, everyone in the Osprey saw what had grabbed the girl's attention. Even Godzilla seemed to turn to where she was pointing.

Behind him was another titan, one that resembled a cross between a woolly mammoth and a ground sloth, complete with long, sweeping tusks that hung low to the ground. It was ambling slowly, and nothing about it seemed aggressive. Blowing out a puff of air from his nostrils, Godzilla continued to turn as two other titans - one with six long legs and the other resembling a bull with a mountain on its back - continued stalking toward him as well.

But there was more.

Jodie recognized them all, or at least most of them. A hunchbacked MUTO was ambling toward the group, followed by a flock of leafwings native to Skull Island. And quickly gaining on the herd was a Titanus Anguirus, Mokele-Mbembe, Kumonga, Sekhmet, Varan, Kamacuras...dozens of titans with names she couldn't remember fast enough all converging in one place. It struck her as odd. Ghidorah must have called them in, but his cavalry was much too late. Godzilla's gaze roamed over them all as he continued to turn, taking them all in. Sizing them up.

Then, Rodan had swung back around, having saved himself from Godzilla's meltdown. He landed before him, letting out a screech as his wings outstretched toward Godzilla. The firebird didn't sound defeated, or afraid. It almost sounded like he was genuflecting. Like he was in the presence of royalty.

But Godzilla didn't seem too trusting, and rightfully so.

Battered and bruised, the titan was still ready to fight. Letting out a hot puff of air from his nostrils, he snarled. Rodan seemed taken aback, pausing for a moment before laying his wings on the ground in submission. He was bowing.

And one by one, the other titans followed suit, each bowing in their own way.

The sun's first rays filtered from behind him, almost seeming to cast him in a golden halo of light.

This planet does not belong to us, Jodie thought, watching as the titans welcomed their new king. It was something she often heard among her peers, a quote from one of Monarch's earliest founding members - Bill Randa. And now, looking out at the primordial scene before her, she couldn't agree more.

"This is Godzilla's world." Jodie said. "We just live in it."

Godzilla threw back his head and roared until the heavens shook.

#godzilla #king of the monsters #godzilla king of the monsters #kotm #godzilla fanfic #leviathanfic

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jess-oh · 6 years

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Reflection

Hello!

I was super tired yesterday so I didn’t get to write my reflection but it’s Thursday morning now so here I go!

I was feeling pretty stressed out yesterday but I also kinda prided myself in my ability to maintain such a busy schedule! I wanted to go to school this morning so help out with the chalk but I was in a really bad mood and just wanted to take this time to relax and get some errands done and other stuff that I failed to do last night. I got home around 10:30pm or 11pm, watched the rest of “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” with Rhyarna and Emily, and then knocked out about an hour later. I started my day off with class at 9am with Monique for Negotiation Skills so I left around 8am. I was pretty intimidated by her at first since she has such strict absent/late policies! I absolutely have to do all my homework on time for that class AND be on time! So I better always be early! But as the class progressed, I got to know her better and she’s actually a really cool person and I respect her a lot as a teacher! I’m looking forward to what I can learn from her! At the end, we were tasked with debating a specific prompt and while my team didn’t do so well at first, we saved ourselves towards the end. Makes sense tho bc we were against an RA! After that, I chilled in SDI for a bit with Joyce and ate my cold pizza for lunch. Then, I headed to 623 to return my masking tape and headed to class for Graphic Design III with Dawn! And I saw Thor again so I was happy. We had class as per usual and she introduced a new project to us! Basically, we have to choose one organization and try and rebrand them by learning about who they are, their purpose, style, and so on. I contacted Jubilee, Poke Burrito, and Joy Yee. I’m hoping to run with Jubilee but it seems unlikely but we’ll see! But I do need to have interviews done for them soon. If they don’t e-mail me back by Saturday, I think I’ll just call and/or go into their restaurant myself. I’m honestly not super hyped to rebrand a restaurant but I do want to explore the nonprofit sector. Maybe I’ll look into some more nonprofits tonight and continue contacting them. The Buddy Project has a pretty terrible design and because I know Shar, my chances of getting into contact with them are much higher! So maybe there! After that, I got a pizza bagel from the first floor since I knew I would be starving by the time I got off my shift at work. I was originally going to attend the SOC meeting but Amanda, one of the new workers, had to urgently take care of her mom and asked if someone could cover her. I know there will be more SOC meetings in the future so I checked with the other board members if it was fine and then I went. I watched the Adventure Time finale during my break before and IT WAS SO GOOD WOW. It could’ve been better but when Finn said, “I always thought I would go out saving someone” and Simon replied, “You don’t get to choose how you go.” I FELT THE FEELS. THE DESPERATION IN FINN’S VOICE! THE SOMBER TONE FROM SIMON! WOW. SO SAD. That was so #deep and really symbolized the end of the show with Finn’s very near death experience. He wouldn’t be able to die a hero’s death inside of Golb, his literal life purpose. Wow. And BMO’s song got stuck in my head. I don’t really understand the lyrics tbh but it’s such a chill, relaxing tune.

We’ll happen Happening, happened, we’ll We’ll happen Happening, happened, we’ll We’ll happen Happening, happened

so cute. I was pretty confused at the new characters in the intro at first but it was really sweet. They were basically descendants of Finn and Jake from a long time ago. Only BMO survived bc they’re a robot. Cute. I was so excited to tell Thor once I saw him at work!

While there, I was pretty bored bc there was only one ceramics class there. I got along pretty well with Skylar, one of the new workers, though we didn’t get to talk much since we were working on different sides. I guess that shift is all the newcomers so I’m a little worried but I’m sure the techs will help them a lot along the way. And they work other shifts to get used to the grind as well! Kenji’s paperwork didn’t go through though so I didn’t get to see him. And lowkey, I’m so used to working the morning shift that I forgot what you had to do for closing! But now I know today, lol. I laughed with Maddie at dumb puns and our discovery of other Godzilla monsters whilst trying to look into the megalodon. Maddie mentioned that she would love to deep sea since and I claimed that I would never because of how scary the creatures are down there. Then I showed her a picture of my comparison of Nate to the mayor of Whoville and she laughed so hard because she could see it too! I’m not crazy! I do want to tell him! One day.

But yeah, this morning I just “took the day off.” I rolled out of bed “late,” took out the trash, did my dishes, made my bed, cleaned the drain, wrote my reflection, took a shower, and so on. I’m happy with my progress for the day today. I am. Now, I just need to get into the habit of reading 1 Samuel whenever I have the chance! I want to really try to study for my team. I know it’s just a “fun game” but I have to at least try.

#reflection

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maddierussell04 · 2 years

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About my Godzilla storyline

So in case you're wondering, my fanfics are called Cold Blooded King and Godzilla : Alpha Blood

It's very heavily centered around Madison and the main idea original was gonna be a King Kong story like the 2005 remake but with Monsterverse Godzilla and Maddie.

Things spun around and I shifted my main focus towards it and added many more elements and essentially it became a second timeline to the Monsterverse, jumping off from King of the Monsters with only minor retcons.

Cold Blooded King had Madison find out and unlock ancient powers that humans had that would equal them to Titans. My idea was whatever gave the Titans power (and I don't mean just the radiation as there seems to be more to it) surely could've given humans similar powers, just over time as Titans and humanity had separated we lost them. Now that they are getting connecting again like in King of the Monsters, they started to appear again, Madison is the first because she and her parents had been near the Titans for some time and such was chosen to become the first human Titan since many millenia. I obviously added more explicit fantasy elements that were implied by Kotm and it's Novel, especially with Mothra, who outright has control over the afterlife as her soul wanders there and keeps in check that the energy in it keeps being understurbed.

Madison gets chosen due to what she did in the temple and Boston and is set to be the successor to Mothras power.

Basically this idea came from a bunch of old and new Toku, where human sized heros would be able to fight against Kaijus (I also now realized it kinda became like Raiden from Metal Gear Rising). I also had the idea from Ant Man, where while he is shrunken down, he still keeps the same amount of strength he would have if he was normal sized. While Madison is not gonna change size, it is the same principle that she has the power of a Titan compromised down to a human sized target.

Where was I, ah and Motrhas God rays kinda play into Madisons overall look, as she now manifests an aura around her, one with wings like Mothra making her look a bit like an angle and one with Godzilla plates and tail around her back. They aren't physical, but they do sign that she is using her Titan strength.

In Cold Blooded King it's mainly about unlocking and finding that power while she tries to cope with the situation and what happened in KotM.

I should have mentioned, Godzilla does take her away onto Skull Island, where there is another temple that looked like Mothras back in Kotm.

He sensed Mothras presence around Madison, as she was again in Castel Bravo as he got woken up by a rogue Titan, and while not exactly knowing her or anything what was gonna happen, he took her instinctively, as Monsterverse Godzilla had shown so far that he is very reliant and working on them.

I started writing in late 2019 and finished it in early 2021 and Alpha Blood is only on Chapter 10 now, so yeah I'm a little slow even if it's a passion project (has to do with some personal stuff).

After that we skip one year into Alpha Blood, which I'm currently writing and can be found on Ao3 and Fanfic. Net, which is more my take in Godzilla vs Kong (a movie I didn't enjoy much admittedly) with the things I had set out.

Future stories are gonna be a bit different, even if they are still inspired by other Godzilla movies and such.

#godzilla #madison russell #godzilla king of the monsters #alpha blood #cold blooded king #monsterverse

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star-going-supernova · 3 years

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So the one thing I was really curious about with Godzilla is his relationship with humans. Unlike Kong and Jia, Godzilla doesn’t have a human that can not only understand him, but one that Godzilla would actively protect. Do you hope to see that in future movies or are you more comfortable implementing it in your own works?

Ooh, that’s a really interesting question! To me, one of the reasons Kong and Jia worked so well was because of how humanized they were able to make Kong. Not just with the sign language, but he, more than any other Titan we’ve seen so far, has similar body language to us. Like when Jia convinced him to fight with Godzilla, he had this total rolling eyes, reluctant huff sort of look. Very much the body language of someone giving in to a request they aren’t totally in agreement with.

Additionally, because of his size and shape, again similar to humans, he was able to have more contact with Jia. One of the biggest... not issues, really, but something I often had to work around while writing WTWTA, was Godzilla’s size. It made it difficult for him and Maddie to have any close conversations and stuff, unless he was lying down or she was sitting on him. Kong can reach Jia while sitting, and he’s capable of crouching down to get closer. It makes it easier to show that sort of relationship.

Kong in general has also been shown to directly interact more with humans. I’m not sure if there’s a real reason behind that, like Godzilla having used to be more of a bad guy than MonserVerse is making him out to be. He’s well known for grabbing and holding onto women, which is not a sentence I ever expected to write. So his and Jia’s relationship seems like a natural progression of the protectiveness he’s shown other humans in the past, both in the MonsterVerse canon and outside it.

And I understand that, y’know. For most people, reconciling a friendship between a giant monkey and a little girl who can communicate through sign language is easier than a giant, laser-breathing dinosaur-lizard thing being friends with a human. Kong and Jia’s friendship draws from reality, making it familiar to us. He even looks gentler, with his more rounded shapes and being hairy and soft looking, in contrast to Godzilla’s more imposing silhouette with his jagged spines and hard scales. We’re supposed to see Kong and Jia and not really think much of it. That’s how they made it believable in the movie. What’s so crazy about a monkey and a girl being friends, right?

All that to say, I would love to see Godzilla get a human friend in canon, like Kong and Jia are. But at this point, even if they did give him one, I don’t think I’d be happy with it. I’ve written too much of my own version of that, using an existing character who, given her severely diminished role in GvK, I can’t see coming back as a main, main character. I’ve made countless expectations, and even if I freely admit that I wouldn’t expect MonsterVerse to do anything similar, I would still be disappointed when it’s inevitably different from how I’ve written it. They would do it “wrong.”

Godzilla getting a human friend sadly isn’t something I expect to see in future movies, though some part of me always hopes just to get a little scrap of indulgence. Unfortunately, the MonsterVerse writers seem too focused on continuously backtracking to make Godzilla the bad guy, again, to bother making him a character “good” enough and “safe” enough to have a human friend. They had such a good opportunity with Maddie, both in KotM and GvK, but boy, did they let that slip by.

Fanon has shaped my expectations irrevocably, but I’m not upset about it. I’m very comfortable writing it myself, because I get to write it the way I want it. If I’d had my way with Jia and Kong, there would’ve been a lot more physical contact. That little girl would’ve climbed all over him, she would’ve given him hugs as best as she could, and he would’ve done at least one thing that really proved his protectiveness over her. As someone who adores family of choice stories, familial relationships, and lots of physical expressions of love—especially between unconventional characters, like a Titan and a human child—I’m happy to go all in when I write my stories. Unfortunately, movie makers are almost always more cautious about that sort of stuff, which, yeah, is frustrating.

If they did it, though, and did it well without making it out to be a joke or turning it around to prove a human can’t be friends with Godzilla, that’d be awesome. Especially if it opened more doors into similar stuff. I’d be thrilled if we started getting more monster-human friendship movies, where the friendship isn’t treated as freaky or unnatural. But at present, I’m more than happy to write the content I want to see in the world.

#i answered a thing #taylorman2274 #GvK Spoilers #whoops this got long #long post #Star's Thoughts about Stuff #life and times of star

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star-going-supernova · 4 years

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Okay! I’m trying to go through my asks (some of which I’ve been sitting on for literal ages, I’m so sorry to everyone who I haven’t responded to yet!!) to try and spark my writer-brain, so here’s a bunch regarding the teeny tiny titans AU! I’ll probably do this again, and they’ll be under the ‘many things’ tag down there if anyone would rather avoid them.

Having never had a pet before, I honestly can’t say if having one would be helpful! If I had a terribly boring pet, probably not, but I’d like to think I could at least take some sort of inspiration from them!

For Godzilla, literally any time Mark is keeping Maddie’s attention (and clearly gloating about it) would make him become the most demanding little attention seeker in existence. Like those cats who sit on keyboards. Godzilla would sit on Mark’s keyboard if he thought he could get away with it.

Same deal with Kong, tbh, only when it’s Godzilla hogging Maddie’s attention. The rest are too chill to do anything drastic most of the time, unless one of them turns it into a challenge or something.

Although, Maddie mentions visiting a butterfly house one time, and Mothra is like excuse me.

Sounds about right, to be honest! If Mothra can’t sit on Maddie’s head no matter what form she’s in, then what even is the point, y’know?

Thank you!! I’m glad you like it! So, Anguirus, possibly. It’s been quite a while since I wrote for this verse, but I know someone requested adding him in, so his introduction is in my list for potential future chapters. Beyond that, I unfortunately don’t plan on including any other Titans from the original films, like Gamera or Jet Jaguar.

They’d be cautious at first, and in general, they’d treat them like every other human who’s not Maddie. Serizawa would 1000% put in the effort to prove himself trustworthy, and with Maddie’s seal of approval, I could see that happening relatively quickly. He would most enjoy just sitting among them, happy as a clam to see these Titans relaxed and just… living. Not fighting or anything (not seriously, at least), just having a good time. I think he’d really like that being allowed to witness that, and know that these great creatures plainly enjoy life.

Vivienne, just because I think this would be absolutely hilarious, would show up at the beach house one day, show no apparent awareness that having a small hoard of mini-Titans running around is unusual, and would talk to them as if she expects verbal responses. Like, just has one-sided conversations with whichever Titan happens to be sitting on the couch next to her.

Impressed with this, they all accept her into the small group of humans they like. Serizawa’s taking notes and Mark is despairing (one normal friend, that’s all he asks for). Maddie’s delighted that she’s not the only one who talks to them like people anymore.

And Mothra would absolutely turn into a ball of fluff with wings. Maddie’s laughing too hard to do anything about it.

Not intentionally! I like writing these little goobers as intelligent, but their minds just don’t quite work the way humans’ do. No hacking for them. Best I can see happening is them stumbling upon a device with the email already open, and they just keysmash until they accidentally hit send.

This is from way before I posted the first chapter of First Contact, but that’s where all the stories of their meetings will go! I have some already figured out, while others are still very much up in the air.

I swear, I’ve seen something like that before. Funny as this would be, I don’t think I’d ever end up writing a scene like this. If the Titans had somewhere to be as quick as possible, they probably wouldn’t even think of taking a car (or figure out how to work one). They’d just return to their full-size forms, and RIP to any city standing between the non-fliers and their destinations.

#i answered a thing #many things as a matter of fact #EternaLight #anonymous #mr buttonhead #teeny tiny titans verse #life and times of star

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star-going-supernova · 4 years

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I'm running out of words to use, but that heartbreaking and beautiful (yes, again!), and I'm loving this AU even more. Question: when Quinn called Maddie Dove, what did she mean? I'm still learning english, sorry. By the way, can tell us more about the heart-dragons in this AU, their bonds with their owners and their history? Unless you're still writing this, please take your time to answer, no pressure! Oh dear, I'm falling in love with dragons all over again (and with birds too)! - EternaLight

Thank you!! I’m glad you’re enjoying it!

“Dove” is Quinn’s nickname for Maddie, like the way I usually have Godzilla call her Pup. It just kind of happened while I was writing Quinn’s dialogue for the first time, and I decided I really liked it, so I kept it. Don’t apologize, friend, and I hope this answered your question!

I’d love to tell you more about the heart-dragons! A few weeks before a child’s fifth birthday, a little bird’s egg appears in their bedroom on a tiny pillow. It’s perfectly timed so that on the morning of the kid’s fifth birthday, the egg hatches and their heart-dragon (in bird form) enters into the world. In line with typical daemon rules, they can change between different bird forms while their bonded is still a child. Most settle around a decade later.

Heart-dragons go back and forth between their bird form and their dragon form, but only once they’ve settled. Until then, there’s no dragon form, and they can switch between different bird species. So, prior to chapter one of Scales and Feathers, Quinn couldn’t become a dragon. In Maddie and Quinn’s case, Quinn settled eight years early because of a traumatic event (Maddie nearly dying). It’s unusual, but near-death experiences are one of the few causes of a heart-dragon finding their forever form before they’re meant to.

A heart-dragon can wander away from their human to a pretty decent distance, though the further they go, the more uncomfortable they both feel. They’re always able to find their human, and vice versa. If a person dies, their heart-dragon follows within seconds. They don’t share injuries, though they can feel echoes of each other’s pain. Killing a heart-dragon often results in the death of their human, but not always. If the human survives the broken bond, they feel empty and bleary and are only alive in the most technical sense.

A human shares an emotional (and in some cases, mental) bond with their heart-dragon. Heart-dragons can choose to let themselves be heard by other heart-dragons, but humans are unable to hear any heart-dragon besides their own.

Heart-dragons seem to have been around forever. No one’s really sure how they work or where they come from, but its one of the universe’s mysteries that people are generally content to leave alone.

If you have any other questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them! I really love this AU.

#i answered a thing #EternaLight #fic: Scales and Feathers #life and times of star

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star-going-supernova · 4 years

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Sometimes, I just need to ask you crazy questions. So, after reading "Runaway" this came to me: what if Maddie, sometime after her parents divorced and she went with Emma, didn't want to be with her mom but with her dad instead? And that kind of made Mark not hate Godzilla anymore after learning what Maddie thinks about the King after San Francisco? How much things would've changed because of that in the KoTM events? - EternaLight

Haha, I don’t mind crazy questions, friend, so don’t be afraid to ask! I, uh, might have gone a little overboard with my answer though, whoops.

We’ll say for the sake of things that Maddie stays with Ilene at Castle Bravo for a little while so her parents can figure things out without her getting caught in the crossfire (or entirely forgotten). Maybe Ilene chewing them out is enough of a wake-up call that Mark starts to get a better, more steady handle on his life earlier. I have a lot of different opinions on his character and the ways I portray him, but we’ll say that here, he makes a sincere effort to let go of his resentment. His daughter, who really enjoyed both her stay at Castle Bravo and all the Godzilla talk, deserves that much.

Maddie goes with Emma but Mark insists on being a more, well, present presence in her life. In the movie, it sounds like they haven’t seen each other for quite some time, and Maddie tries to hide that she was emailing him, but whether he didn’t reach out until then or Emma tried to limit contact, I’m not sure. Regardless, here Mark makes sure Maddie doesn’t have the chance to feel ignored again. Maybe he makes it so she can stay with him for a week every month or something at least.

Either way, I’m gonna say that Maddie spent her ninth birthday with her dad and that’s when she asks if maybe she live with him instead. She’s a little tired of the moving around, of the not knowing where she or Emma will be next week, of the strangers and interns who have to watch over her.

Mostly, she’s tired of playing second fiddle to the ORCA, and she tells him that.

The ORCA? Mark thinks. Contact with the Castle Bravo has been sporadic and never very work-oriented, so he hasn’t heard about Emma’s project before.

And Mark—who has tried to be more open-minded from the beginning, who listened to his daughter’s thoughts on the Titans, and who has several crayon drawings of Godzilla currently hanging on his refrigerator—does two things.

First is have the custody agreement altered so Maddie spends most of her time with him, visiting Emma when she’s not too busy (which isn’t often). The second is to share his concerns with his old Monarch friends.

“The ORCA is dangerous,” he says, but this time, he adds, “not to humans, but to the Titans.” One device, one person, shouldn’t have that sort of control. What if it falls into the wrong hands and the Titans are made to do terrible things? He imagines how upset Maddie would be if Godzilla was forced to obey some puppeteer.

People pay attention, especially since he tells those who know how much Maddie likes Godzilla. Things change, are noticed, and maybe it’s not enough to completely prevent the events of KotM from starting, but it is enough.

Emma isn’t assumed to be a traitor, because Mothra’s hatching plays out mostly the same, just minus Maddie. Monarch is ready to intercept Jonah’s crew at Antarctica, preventing them from releasing Monster Zero. They’re all brought back to the States, and Mark and Maddie are there because of course Maddie wants to see for herself that her mom’s all right.

But since they don’t know she’s working with the terrorists, Emma escapes with the ORCA and manages to set Rodan free, simply skipping to the next phase of their original plan. It’s not nearly as much of a disaster as KotM. Isla de Mara is still destroyed, and a lot of good people in Monarch are killed. When Godzilla shows up, he knocks Rodan around a bit, not trying to kill him as he would have Ghidorah, and Rodan backs off. The Oxygen Destroyer is never launched.

When Mothra emerges from her cocoon, she heads off to beat Rodan up herself. Emma manages to evade capture, and in the mess of the aftermath, finds Maddie and takes her. She uses her daughter a little bit as a hostage, but her main motivation for snatching her is because she wants Maddie to be safe while the Titans rampage. Maddie tries to talk some sense into her, but Emma’s too deep now. Emma says she’s doing this so Andrew’s death wasn’t meaningless, and Maddie demands to know what all the newly childless mothers out there would think about her reasoning.

They stop for a minute so Emma can figure out the best route to take to avoid being caught. Maddie can’t get out of the handcuffs, but she does manage to escape the car. The road they’re on is at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean on one side with nothing but trees and grass on the other. There’s no one else around for miles, but if the most she can do is delay her mom and give Monarch time, then she will. Maddie runs down the road back the way they’d come, listening to Emma shout as she scrambles to follow.

Maddie makes it a decent distance, considering her hands are cuffed behind her back, when the calls of her name suddenly stop and a shadow falls over her.

Towering up over the cliff is Godzilla, one hand very deliberately placed on the concrete between Maddie and her mom.

(Turns out, a Titan is prone to remembering the one kid who has ever tried to give them brownies. Who knew?)

Monarch arrives soon after, having been tracking Godzilla. With Rodan sufficiently cowed, Jonah and his people locked up, and Emma and the ORCA recovered, further disaster has been averted. Mark and Maddie go on to a lot more time at Castle Bravo now, which was quickly expanded to include space for Mothra to land on.

And if Maddie was determined to give Godzilla brownies before, back when she was seven, then she’s twice as determined now. Even better, Mark is eager to help.

#i answered a thing #EternaLight #Madison Russell #Mark Russell #Godzilla #hc/au rambles #If You Give a Titan a Brownie AU #life and times of star

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