#and you should definitely start here

[isabelleofnorcal]

Which Godzilla movie should I see first?

Everyone wants to know: where should I start? Sure, we could come up with watch order lists and all of that. But the series has 33 36 movies in it. So, here's every Godzilla movie with a rating of how good of an idea it is for it to be your first Godzilla movie.

Every movie is rated on a scale of 1 (absolutely not) to 5 (excellent movie with no prior knowledge of Godzilla required).

I'm going in release order.

Buckle up!

Godzilla 1954 - 5 First movie is both very good and has no continuity with previous entries because there are no previous entries. This is always a good first choice for Godzilla.

Godzilla Raids Again - 3 Not as good as the previous one. Follows directly from the previous one. You should always watch the Godzilla 54 before this one.

King Kong vs. Godzilla - 4 (1962 Japanese, avoid the '63 American version at all costs) Doesn't follow directly before the previous one, though Raids again does explain why Godzilla is in an ice berg at the beginning of the movie.

Solid movie, good if you want to start with Godzilla fighting another monster in a big showdown.

Mothra vs. Godzilla - 4 This is a weird place to start, it kind of assumes knowledge of both Mothra and Godzilla. The only keeping it from being a 3 is that it's really, really good and that might overcome continuity concerns.

Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster - 3 This movie is where Godzilla becomes an anti-hero and you should watch the previous movies + Mothra and maybe even Rodan to appreciate it. It's a really good movie, but it's just not enough. It's like if Infinity War was your first MCU movie

Invasion of the Astro-Monster - 3 We're in the middle of the Showa era now. Godzilla is fully a good guy and Toho has their own little monsterverse going now.

At the end of the day, there are just better choices.

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep - 4 This is a bit surprising, but it's the start of some stand alone island adventure w/Godzilla. It's very representative of other Godzilla movies. If you like it, you'll like other movies in the series. If you don't, you might still like the best ones

Son of Godzilla - 4 Another stand alone island adventure. Representative of the series as a whole, but not the best of the series.

Destroy All Monsters - 2 This was meant to be the end of the series. To many references to other movies. Best saved till later.

All Monster’s Attack - 2 This is a straight-up clip show staring a little kid. Not bad, but best saved for when you're watching every movie in order or some other similar project.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah - 4 Good movie. Personal favorite of the 60s/70s era, which likely inflates my score. But it's a good stand alone and has a strong message. Also, the director was told he'd never make another Godzilla movie, but he was a producer on Godzilla 2014.

Godzilla vs. Gigan - 2 This movie is really a back door pilot for a Jet Jaguar series. It good enough on it's own, but it's just not a good enough example of a Godzilla movie to justify anything higher even though it's not bogged down in continuity.

Godzilla vs. Megalon - 3 An ok enough stand alone. Has aliens, manga artists with hot girlfriends. But that's really all it has going for it. Not the worst place to start, but unless your watching with someone who loves this movie specifically, I'd pick another one.

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla - 3 Solid stand alone. It's a late entry, but I think it stands out. Not bogged down in continuity. But like Megalon, I wouldn't suggest watching this first unless it was with someone who liked this movie specifically.

Terror of Mechagodzilla - 2 It's the capstone of the Showa era. It's the last Godzilla movie for Ishiro Honda, and the last movie directed by him before going to work with his old mentor, the legendary Akira Kurosawa.

Honestly, this should be last Showa move you watch.

Return of Godzilla - 4 Technically in continuity with Godzilla 1954, but all you really need to know is that Godzilla attacked Tokyo 30 years earlier, which the movie helpfully explains.

It's a weird choice, but not a bad one.

Godzilla vs. Biollante - 3 Follows directly from Return of Godzilla and is closely tied to it, even as it has no returning cast members.

Godzilla vs. King Khidorah - 3 Not bogged down in continuity, but very much unrepresentative of the series as a whole, even as it does a good job or representing early 90s Godzilla movies.

You'd be better off starting from Return of Godzilla and watching in order till Destoroyah

Godzilla vs. Mothra - 3 We're starting to get some continuity here that might cause you to get lost, but I don't think it's enough to bump down to a 2. Again, you'd be better off starting at Return and going to Destoroyah.

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II - 2 Not a sequel to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (that would be Terror of Mechagodzilla, see above) but a sequal to vs. Mothra above. And, by this point, we've got recurring characters and a full-blown 1-a-year series going on.

Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla - 2 The title alone should make you want to watch it, but you should hold off till you've see the other movies in the Heisei series starting with Return. Sorry!

It's the capstone of the Heisei series AND it makes direct references to the 1954 movie. You will be lost if you start here. This movie is actually good, so I'm not giving it a 1.

Godzilla (1998) - 4 First American Godzilla and it's not great. The writing terrible, the acting worse, but it's just a huge amount of fun.

Will make whoever sees it curious about the Japanese films though!

Godzilla 2000 - 4 Honestly, the most solid entry point to Godzilla that isn't 1954 Godzilla or Shin Godzilla. There's no origin, Godzilla is an anti-hero and it's fun. It's theoretically in continuity with 1954, but it barely matters.

Godzilla vs. Megaguiarus - 3 It has a black hole gun. Add 1 to the "should I start with this movie" score if that's your thing.

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack - 2 Not bogged down in continuity per se, but it references a lot of previous movies. Best for Godzilla buffs or if your watching all the movies.

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla - 3 Fine movie, a little to pro-military for my tastes but I saw it in the theaters recently and still enjoyed it. No major continuity issues, but not the best example of the series as a whole.

Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S. - 2 In direct continuity with the previous movie. Kind of expects you to get all the references. There are way better choices.

Godzilla Final Wars - 2 A love letter to the Showa era. A 50th anniversary film chalk full of easter eggs and refs to previous Godzilla/Toho films.

You should watch every Showa era movie first, and then wait a year before seeing this. It's a great movie, but it requires nostalgia

Godzilla (2014) - 5 Good movie, no reliance on previous movies. It's only mark against it is that it's a Hollywood movie, not a Japanese one.

If you like this, you almost certainly like other Godzilla movies.

Shin Godzilla - 5 Excellent movie and requires 0 previous knowledge of other Godzilla movies. Has easter eggs for the fans, but they're not obvious and you will miss nothing if you don't know what they are.

Godzilla: Planet of Monsters - 1 First anime Godzilla and it sucks. To be avoided by anime fans and Godzilla fans alike. Requires no prior knowledge of Godzilla but the movie is so different from the every other Godzilla movie in the series, it's a terrible first movie.

Godzilla: Planet of Monsters - 1 First anime Godzilla and it sucks. To be avoided by anime fans and Godzilla fans alike. Requires no prior knowledge of Godzilla but the movie is so different from the every other Godzilla movie in the series, it's a terrible first movie.

Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle - 1 I could rate this lower, it's my scale after all, but I'm not going to. It's a direct sequel to Planet of Monsters and was teased at the end of the fist film.

I'm obviously not going to recommend this as your 1st Godzilla movie.

Godzilla: The Planet Eater - 1 Everything I said about City on the Edge of Battle applies to this movie as well.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters - 4 In a perfect world, you should probably see both Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island first, but fuck it. This movie is fun an awesome.

Godzilla vs. Kong - 4 Sure, it's a direct sequel to Skull Island and King of the Monsters, but let's face it, you want to see two famous monsters fight. And you want it Hollywood style.

And you should have that.

Gonna be honest with you, I can't imagine someone watching Godzilla vs. Kong and not becoming a Godzilla fan for life.

[moonkhao]

WE ARE | EP16

[couch-house]

it is with a heavy heart i must announce the fankid-enjoyer has made another fankid 😔 this is comet... ive been playing with him for a while. he's a couple years younger than johnny jr and umm well I'll tell you more about him later. when i post the other pile of drawings i have of him.

[blackhholes]

teen wolf meme: [3/5] motifs -> resurrection

It's different now. I think dying did something to him. It did something to me, too. But none of it was good.

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[tyrianludaship]

is it fair to call people like this "hack writers" if the only way they find a relationship interesting is when it involves pedophilia, incest, cannibalism or necrophilia?

[koko2unite]

[okurrroye]

OK BACK uP cause wt- you mean to tell me Hermes is literally the god of thieves and these idiots think a child of Ares stole the masterbolt???

[chaos-bringer-13]

Jazz's little. Her parents are super cool. They're ghost hunters! It sounds like something from a movie about future and scientists and supernatural beings and cool-looking tech. They have cool-looking tech at home. It's even cooler than tech in the movies.

Jazz also has a little brother. He's stupid but he's hers, and she will protect him from anything. Her brother is very small, he needs someone to protect him and teach him about the world.

She knows about the world. She understands their parents much better than him, and she can tell her brother when they shouldn't be distracted. She knows when they're upset and irritable, and she knows when they're too excited and being near them is dangerous because of all the inventions.

Jazz does a very good job keeping her little brother safe.

---

Jazz goes to school. Her teachers say that she's very smart, the best student in class, and very mature. Her parents are proud of her - when she manages to distract them from ghosts. Her brother is still kinda stupid and doesn't know how to properly fight food, but she's always there to protect him, because that's what older sisters do.

Her classmates seem to think that she's weird though. Some of them say mean things and call her a teacher's pet and a show-off. Jazz isn't sure why they think so because she's always trying to be friendly but maybe she's doing something wrong. She goes to the school library and finds a book about people and their communication.

It's a very interesting book.

---

Jazz is almost a teen. She's gotten better at communicating with people. The school library ran out of psychology books, and Jazz now has to go to the city library but that's fine. Human brain fascinates her.

She's been feeling like something is wrong about her though. She even thought that she was going crazy for a little bit. That probably wasn't true because she didn't match any symptoms but she was still worried.

Someone told her that being so good at lying and faking face expressions is not okay. That's probably not true, Jazz is pretty sure almost everyone can do that. Or maybe she's just being a prodigy again. It's a very good thing to be able to do after all. She can hide her emotions from her family when she's feeling sad. She wouldn't want to worry them, would she?

She'll have to research it.

---

Jazz is a teen. She now knows that her parents aren't actually that good. It's something that was really hard to accept but it did explain everything. Her parents are kinda bad at being parents, and they also don't really listen when she tries to explain it to them.

It's okay. She's almost an adult and Danny has her. She can take care of herself and her brother.

She learns everything she can about being a parent and a therapist and tries to use her knowledge. It's hard, but she's a Fenton, which means that she's very smart and determined. She pushes through, and trains on her classmates and herself.

In the evening she writes about her feelings in a journal. It's very important to be aware of her feelings because that's the first step to dealing with them.

She's experiencing sadness. And anger, actually, even though she doesn't like to admit that.

She writes "this family is a fucking mess" in her journal and then covers the paper with ink until the sentence is absolutely unreadable.

---

Jazz is sixteen, and her stupid parents opened the stupid portal, which means that they're even worse than usual. It's pretty much okay when they're just stuck in their stupid lab, making some stupid weapons. It's not that okay when they're out of the stupid lab, because they get their stupid inventions all over the stupid house, and stupid food comes to life, and she has to protect Danny from both their stupid weapons and stupid hotdogs, and oh god everything is so stupid.

She's experiencing anger.

She's also acting perfectly calm and almost cheerfully.

Jazz hates how perfect her fake smile is in the mirror.

---

Jazz is seventeen. She wants to put her headphones on and listen to some loud music. Jazz can't do that, because she gets anxious if she can't hear what's happening around her. She needs to be fully aware of her surroundings because she needs to be able to protect herself and her brother if weapons against ghosts become weapons against children again.

She thinks that it's not okay.

The house smells of ectoplasm, so she'll be extra careful when opening the fridge.

She thinks that she shouldn't know how ectoplasm smells.

Jazz should probably also warn Danny: her little brother's gotten better at fighting food but doesn't notice the smell of ectoplasm. Funny, considering his ghost sense.

Funny, considering that her brother is a half-ghost.

That her brother died.

That she failed at protecting him after all.

Jazz stops breathing to prevent herself from crying, and doesn't need oxygen for a few minutes too long.

Maybe she failed at protecting herself too.

---

Jazz is turning eighteen next month. Her parents are all of a sudden more attentive and caring, as if that can change their almost-absence during her whole life. She doesn't like their attention because she doesn't know how to deal with it. She doesn't even really think of them as parents anymore.

She thinks of them as a threat.

Once she's eighteen, she's gonna try to move out, and she's going to take Danny with her because it's not safe to leave him here. Maybe after she gets a good job and saves some money, she'll even get into therapy.

Jazz thinks that she needs therapy.

She's been having Bad Thoughts lately, and she doesn't write them down in her journal. Jazz stopped writing anything in there ever since she found out that Danny is a ghost. She just couldn't risk anyone finding that journal.

Jazz isn't sure if she should call those Bad Thoughts intrusive. They scare her, and they're Bad, but it could be just her normal thought process.

It's still definitely not normal.

---

Jazz is eighteen. Her parents are very excited, whispering to each other about how they found a perfect present for her, some surprise that she's gonna love.

She doesn't care.

Her little brother is late from school, and it's weird, because he was also super excited about giving her his present.

She's worried.

Her parents brush off her concern, say that Danny probably just got distracted talking with his friends. They don't listen when she says that Danny wouldn't get distracted like that on her birthday because he's not them, he actually cares about her, he doesn't forget her birthdays, and something has to be wrong for him to be that late.

They don't listen to her at all.

She's angry.

Her parents are excited and talk loudly about how they wanted to find a perfect gift for their favourite daughter, and how they managed to do it because they love her so much. She hates when they're excited. It only leads to problems.

They bring her to the lab because of course they do, why would they make a gift that is normal and isn't kept in the lab, right? They usher her in, so obviously proud of themselves.

She hates them.

And she hates them much, much more the next second, because the gift is her little brother in his ghost form, strapped to a table, unconscious and injured, and the smell of ectoplasm is strong in the lab because of his green blood dripping on the floor.

There's a cold part of her that analyses her feelings and tells her what emotions she's experiencing, and that part is very aware of thick black smoke of wrath twirling and twisting under her skin. It's suffocating, and she stops breathing as it invisibly fills her lungs, scared of letting it out.

There's a perfectly fake part of her that keeps the smile on her face as her parents gush about how hard it was to catch the ecto-scum, and what they can do to it - together with Jazz because they wanted to share this with their amazing daughter.

Jazz is black smoke of rage under perfect glass of calmness when she grabs Fenton anti-creep stick. The smile she learned to fake under any circumstances doesn't falter when Jazz brings the baseball bat down on her father's head. It grows a little bit wider when she hits her mother, because Jazz learned to smile brighter when she's hurt or sad or scared or angry - experiencing any "bad" emotion actually.

Jazz is angry when she grabs her weapon.

Jazz is furious when she kills her parents.

Jazz is worried when she checks her brother's wounds.

Jazz feels nothing when she rigs the portal to blow, walks out of the house and presses the button.

She is her parents' genius daughter after all, and she did listen when they were telling her about their inventions. Maybe it would have taken longer to do, but she had Bad Thoughts, and they probably weren't just intrusive after all, because she did what they told her and made it very easy to make a bomb out of a portal. Just in case. Her parents were a threat, and Jazz was smart enough to prepare to dealing with threats, and she was smart enough to make it look like the threats dealt with themselves.

She really hoped she wouldn't have to use that button though.

---

Jazz is nineteen. Her sort-of-friends at uni offer to go to a restaurant, and she tells them that she doesn't celebrate her birthdays. There's a noise of all of them saying that maybe she should try, noise that she really should have expected, because humans are always so excited about any holidays, it's hard for them to understand that someone might not like them. It's not hard to stop that noise though. They shut up very quickly when Jazz says that she had "a very traumatic event" on her birthday.

Good. She doesn't like loud people.

Jazz goes home to her little brother. He's sad because his parents died in an awful explosion a year ago. He's still trying to smile because it's also her birthday, and Jazz is very happy that he's bad at faking a smile.

It means that he won't end up like her.

Jazz hugs her little brother, and he gives her a little present that she adores, and then they sit in silence and eat some takeout. It's very nice.

She never tells Danny that their parents died before the explosion, and that the explosion wasn't an accident, and that their ghosts did form after that because of all the ecto-contamination they had, but she made sure this wouldn't become a problem. She never tells him what she's done, because that would hurt her little brother, and she would never let anything hurt him.

Jazz will protect her little brother from anything.

[cranberrymoons]

.

[bunnyboy-juice]

spent the first hour and change at work deleting some old files and am having a grand ol time laughing at myself for not realizing i was a lesbian sooner

[corvidcall]

i very rarely get a sense of satisfaction from completing tasks. ive heard people say this is an ADHD thing, but idk. personally i think i might just be bad at being alive

[justarabidlittleyingzhao]

Every fandom gets a middle age. It's not defined by time. It's defined by the emergence of fics and art that explore hugely divergent What Ifs.

It's a growing rejection of the ironclad This Is How xyz Character Is, and a desire to explore something new. Maybe an idea that was always secretly thought about, but no one was confident enough before to risk.

A fandom's middle age is when there begins to be a shift away from 'But Canon?!' to 'What Canon.'

If a fandom can get through the initial need to keep replicating the same version of Canon (or as is more often the case, Fanon), this middle age often produces more interesting and dynamic and nuanced creations.

[thelassoway]

Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso » Ted Lasso 3.01 Smells Like Mean Spirit

[plantb0t]

WAIT. FRENCH? FRENCH??? THEY MADE TAAKO FRENCH????

[capn-twitchery]

very funny to me that my art is associated with cartoony doodle style/sketchy stuff now when in my last community like, 4 years ago, my art was known more for detailed stuff

my art has done a wild 180 over the last few years!! (and i'm having a blast with it😌)