The Godzilla Cringe Thread

[Executive Hamster]

There is a lot of shit to unpack. Lets first point something out.
1. I think the stigma against children's shows is stupid. Animation is art. Adventure time is amazing. Avatar the Last Airbender is my favorite show of all time. Steven Universe was amazing...for the first two seasons (no, its not because they became more openly LGBT as the show progressed, Im liberal as fuck, its just that the writing sucked) .... I don't see any issue with adults being into kid shows, because all of those shows I listed are quite mature in their writing, for the most part. The obsession with MLP is weird to me, its not a super intelligently written kids show, its like a show for little little kids, specifically for young girls. So grown men being into that is weird to me, but ultimately, its harmless.

The problem is that bronies specifically are a certain way. Plenty of cartoons have toxic fanbases, but Bronies are a whole other level of degeneracy. Not all are like that, sure. One of my closest friends is a brony. He is fine. But when I say "brony cringelords" I'm referring to the type of people that jerk off to horses and accuse actresses of the show to their faces of playing characters that are molesters. And from my experience, the majority of bronies I meet are this second type.

And when I say shippers that make it their whole personality, Im talking about a specific type of person I see. People who make blog pages and Instagram pages for their ships, and their stupid ship name. The type of people who bullied Lauren Zuke off of twitter. A specific type of person. I don't believe I ever implied that those people represent every brony or every shipper, and if I did that was wrong of me, but I personally find these things cringe because of the actions of these groups.

I hope I summarized my points somewhat decently.

EDIT: Also, to add. My opinions on shipping and bronies are my personal opinions. I would never tell these things to a shipper or a brony unless they asked, and even then, im going to keep it brief. Im not here to ruin other people's fun, but this is the cringe thread after all and I find it cringe.

[edgaguirus]

They're animals. Godzilla and friends are not emotionally complex enough characters for shipping to work for them. That doesn't mean shipping as a whole is strange, if you wanna ship Captain Gordon with Ozaki then go full steam, but it's an aspect of greater overall "fandom" that just has no business being in one focused solely on giant wild animals destroying metropolitan areas.

How about Godzilla and Komodothrax? We never see any mating behavior other than a courtship dance, but that Godzilla dances with her and guards her eggs like he's daddy shows that kaiju can exhibit emotional complexity.

[UltramanGoji]

Regarding the Brony stuff...let's take that to another thread. It's veering towards off-topicness.

How about Godzilla and Komodothrax? We never see any mating behavior other than a courtship dance, but that Godzilla dances with her and guards her eggs like he's daddy shows that kaiju can exhibit emotional complexity.

That's not very complex. It's simple, instinctual animal behavior. And it's a far, far big difference for two giant mutated reptiles to be together than a giant mutated reptile and a giant mutated insect, for example.

[JAGzilla]

There is a lot of poop to unpack. Lets first point something out.
1. I think the stigma against children's shows is stupid. Animation is art. Adventure time is amazing. Avatar the Last Airbender is my favorite show of all time. Steven Universe was amazing...for the first two seasons (no, its not because they became more openly LGBT as the show progressed, Im liberal as skreeonk, its just that the writing sucked) .... I don't see any issue with adults being into kid shows, because all of those shows I listed are quite mature in their writing, for the most part. The obsession with MLP is weird to me, its not a super intelligently written kids show, its like a show for little little kids, specifically for young girls. So grown men being into that is weird to me, but ultimately, its harmless.

The problem is that bronies specifically are a certain way. Plenty of cartoons have toxic fanbases, but Bronies are a whole other level of degeneracy. Not all are like that, sure. One of my closest friends is a brony. He is fine. But when I say "brony cringelords" I'm referring to the type of people that jerk off to horses and accuse actresses of the show to their faces of playing characters that are molesters. And from my experience, the majority of bronies I meet are this second type.

And when I say shippers that make it their whole personality, Im talking about a specific type of person I see. People who make blog pages and Instagram pages for their ships, and their stupid ship name. The type of people who bullied Lauren Zuke off of twitter. A specific type of person. I don't believe I ever implied that those people represent every brony or every shipper, and if I did that was wrong of me, but I personally find these things cringe because of the actions of these groups.

I hope I summarized my points somewhat decently.

EDIT: Also, to add. My opinions on shipping and bronies are my personal opinions. I would never tell these things to a shipper or a brony unless they asked, and even then, im going to keep it brief. Im not here to ruin other people's fun, but this is the cringe thread after all and I find it cringe.

Well, you did say "I just can't think of any situation where shipping isn't cringe", so that implied an all-encompassing view of shippers. If that wasn't your intent, though, whatever. No harm done. And yes, the type of fan that bullies and harasses anyone is the literal worst, and it's a damn shame that they have to make themselves the face of their respective fandoms. And also yes, cringe away! That's what this thread is for. All I'm here to do is ensure that we're educated and cringing responsibly. The last thing the internet needs is another pit full of ignorant toxicity.

And I'll reply to your first paragraph over in the MLP thread in the Media Center so we don't drag this thread off-topic.

[LSD Jellyfish]

I don’t mind shipping of fictional characters in general, but I suppose Godzilla stuff slightly irks me. UG does a good breakdown of why it’s strange on multiple levels (applying emotions and personalities to heavily unique monsters that often intentionally aren’t supposed to be human-adjacent), but a lot of it irks me for another reason. At least with most shipping stuff, it’s based on SOME chemistry/shared screen time etc, and it’s clear why people would want that. But what’s strange to me, is I can’t rationalize any of the thought processes behind specific Godzilla shippings/fan-art revolving Godzilla and Mothra, and it’s always been really bizarre how that line of thinking got into the KOTM.

Like, Godzilla and Mothra have historically been enemies. Prior to KOTM, the only time they were ever on the same team was a temporary alliance to stop Ghidorah in GTTHM and Mothra swooping in just to fight off the Gigan and the Xilliens in GFW. Neither example had Mothra taking any particular interest in Godzilla, beyond a temporary truce for Mothra to stop earth from being invaded by aliens. Worse off, Godzilla has a very high rate of killing Mothra (64, GMK, 2003) or at the very least instantly antagonizing and trying to kill Mothra (66, 92). Even Mothra, the monster with literal translators and clearly capable of higher thought, really has no connection or opinion of Godzilla other than an annoyance. It’s like a ship between an abusive killer and a person trying to fight back because of a reason unrelated to the killer. No actual connections here.

Im surprised no one has brought up the MUTOS here. The Mutos were an actual couple, and for whatever reason, despite how alien looking they were, I’ve seen some non-sexual cutesy highly-stylized fan-art of them together and it’s whatever to me. I get it, because it makes sense.

[mikelcho]

I don’t mind shipping of fictional characters in general, but I suppose Godzilla stuff slightly irks me. UG does a good breakdown of why it’s strange on multiple levels (applying emotions and personalities to heavily unique monsters that often intentionally aren’t supposed to be human-adjacent), but a lot of it irks me for another reason. At least with most shipping stuff, it’s based on SOME chemistry/shared screen time etc, and it’s clear why people would want that. But what’s strange to me, is I can’t rationalize any of the thought processes behind specific Godzilla shippings/fan-art revolving Godzilla and Mothra, and it’s always been really bizarre how that line of thinking got into the KOTM.

Like, Godzilla and Mothra have historically been enemies. Prior to KOTM, the only time they were ever on the same team was a temporary alliance to stop Ghidorah in GTTHM and Mothra swooping in just to fight off the Gigan and the Xilliens in GFW. Neither example had Mothra taking any particular interest in Godzilla, beyond a temporary truce for Mothra to stop earth from being invaded by aliens. Worse off, Godzilla has a very high rate of killing Mothra (64, GMK, 2003) or at the very least instantly antagonizing and trying to kill Mothra (66, 92). Even Mothra, the monster with literal translators and clearly capable of higher thought, really has no connection or opinion of Godzilla other than an annoyance. It’s like a ship between an abusive killer and a person trying to fight back because of a reason unrelated to the killer. No actual connections here.

Im surprised no one has brought up the MUTOS here. The Mutos were an actual couple, and for whatever reason, despite how alien looking they were, I’ve seen some non-sexual cutesy highly-stylized fan-art of them together and it’s whatever to me. I get it, because it makes sense.

And always remember, given Mothra's track record of victories when fighting Godzilla, it proves that it's not always the stronger monster that wins the fight.

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

Whenever someone says the Showa era doesn't have any continuity.

Spoiler:

Raids Again is explicitly connected to the original, King Kong Vs. Godzilla has Godzilla escaping an iceberg, Mothra Vs. Godzilla brings Mothra into the continuity and continues off from it, Ghidorah brings in Rodan and blatantly carries on from the two Mothra films, Invasion picks up from Ghidorah, Ebirah reveals Godzilla opted to go hibernate after his shenanigans in space and battle with Ghidorah. Godzilla Vs. Gigan continues Ghidorah and Godzilla's crystal clear hatred for each other; and of course the Mechagodzilla duology.

It's like the so called "fans" who say it has no continuity have never seen these movies. Or are just _____. Take your pick.

[Executive Hamster]

I think its because the concept of a loose continuity isn't really that common in modern cinema, so people not SUPER INVESTED in all the lore of the Showa films might not catch on to it. Every movie series or expanded universe these days with continuity tends to be extremely careful with all the little details, meanwhile Godzilla has drastic design changes between films and regularly reuses the same actors playing very different characters.

[edgaguirus]

The Godzilla films aren't the only ones to show this. Take FcTW and WoTG. Kumi Mizuno plays a scientist in each, the same one in fact, but the one in FcTW is named Sueko while WoTG names her Akemi.

[Jetty_Jags]

The way I explain it to friends is that they use continuity when it benefits the story. They will establish narrative connections if they want to, but aren't super concerned with contradicting previous entrees to tell the story they want to tell.

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

Godzilla and the other kaiju being referred to as "Titans."

[Voyager]

Godzilla and the other kaiju being referred to as "Titans."

Such a generic name and it really doesn’t convey the uniqueness and majesty of the kaiju. They’re not just big things.

[Legion1979]

Godzilla and the other kaiju being referred to as "Titans."

I remember when Pacific Rim started to popularize the term "kaiju" in mainstream media and I figured that would be used more going forward. Then "titans" came along. And I hate it.

[Dyrakro]

Funny, I always found it neat that the MV called the monsters Titans and distinguished them from the Japanese movies. Not a fan at all how everything big is called kaiju nowadays. To me, kaijus can only be found specifically in Japanese monster movies

[_JNavs_]

Titans fits much better for the Monsterverse.

The masses of Americans know exactly what the Titans are. As opposed to "kaiju"

[Thegarbagemonster]

despite how alien looking they were, I’ve seen some non-sexual cutesy highly-stylized fan-art of them together

Bit of a random question, but what's their alien look got to do with anything? People like all sorts of creatures.

[UltramanGoji]

I don't think calling the monsters "kaiju" in the MonsterVerse movies would sound right...but I also think "titans" is a lame-ass title. Too many things these days use it, I'd have been fine with just calling them "monsters".

[eabaker]

Yeah, "monster" is a perfectly good word. Heck, they even used it in the title of one of the movies!

[Thegarbagemonster]

Yeah, "monster" is a perfectly good word. Heck, they even used it in the title of one of the movies!

I don't think calling the monsters "kaiju" in the MonsterVerse movies would sound right...but I also think "titans" is a lame-ass title. Too many things these days use it, I'd have been fine with just calling them "monsters".

Now you guys are just making me imagine a world in which the film was called "Godzilla: King of the Titans"

[Jetty_Jags]

Now you guys are just making me imagine a world in which the film was called "Godzilla: King of the Titans"

There is in-fact a fan edit of that movie with that title