#post-abraxas genocide route

[hrodvitnon]

If we’re talking apathy, I personally think the one most likely to succumb is Shimo, in a world where Ozzy is gone for good.

I think I voiced this earlier, but I’m skeptical that Shimo would survive losing Ozzy again. I think it would be far too much for her to bear a second time, especially rationalizing his downfall as her own personal failure. If it doesn’t kill her, I think the next logical outcome would just be total dissociation. She wouldn’t care about the Genocide. She’d basically have the mental state of post-genocide Goji. And it’d only be made worse by Titans like Abraxas and Mothra begging her to stop Goji before there’s no going back, but she just can’t bring herself to do anything anymore.

If he is alive, then I think it’s 50/50 which side she ends up on. She could throw in with Goji in the name of protecting other Titans from the space shrooms, or could go against him after she gets some sense talked into him.

Ah, yeah, good point.

OOF. Yeah, that's not ending well...

[narcissa-black-supermacy]

Please tell me more about the whole generational trauma thing, cause its not talked about enough and I'm genuinely interested in what else you have to say about this <3

tumblr swallowed my entire reply :'') so i'm starting over and hopefully this time it will be shorter and more to the point

for the sake of this post, I am diving the characters into the following generations:

GT Gen (Golden Trio): Harry and his friends, Draco, the Weasley kids, Nymphadora etc

M Gen (Marauders): The MWPP, Black sisters, Snape, Lucius Malfoy etc

TR Gen (Tom Riddle): Riddle, Wal & Orion and their siblings, Abraxas Malfoy, Lyall Lupin, Effie and Monty Potter

E Gen (Elders): Dumbldore, Pollux and Arcturus Black, etc

There are several aspects to the kind of trauma I am talking about. There are more, of course, but I believe these are the main ones:

The Witch Hunts: often brushed off and disregarded as irrelevant due to how "old" they are. However, witch hunts in the UK haven't ended until the very end of 17th century/beginning of 18th. It was a literal genocide by the entire muggle population of Europe against a tiny minority of Wizarding families, so much bigger than all the wars put together. Considering we are told that the average life expectancy for wizards is much older than muggles (between 120 and 140 I believe, but in PS we are also told there are wizards as old as 500 and 700), the TR and E generations would grow up in families who still remember that. They are told stories how their great grandparents were burned at the stake. It's a lot of cultural and historic baggage for any family who lived through that and survived.

20th Century Wars: The Global Wizarding War (1910 to 1945); the First Wizarding War (1970 to 1981); the Second Wizarding War (1995 to 1998 on paper, but in reality the fear in tensions never really disappeared between 81 and 95). This goes beyond just terror and murder, this is persecution of followers (think of DEs knocking on every pure-blood's door like ding dong do you have a minute to talk about our Lord and Savior), this is living in constant fear that your loved ones might not return home, and certain generations (like Gen TR) literally knew no peaceful time at all, they were just tossed from one war to another.

Bloody Purity Culture: Stems from point 1 - witch hunts. This is the most by-the-book, typical, generational trauma response on a larger scale. When a minority group gets persecuted to the point of near genocide, the most natural reaction is to be hostile to the "oppressor" group and to distance yourself as far away as possible. The obsession with blood purity is deeply routed in the fear that if they let muggle-born kids in and muggles find out about the Wizarding World once more, history might repeat itself. Gens like E and TR have actual living relatives who still remember that.

Physical and Corporal Punishment at School and at Home: as I talked about it more deeply in the original post, it is mentioned by Filch that just like in the muggle world, Hogwarts had a corporal punishment system for a pretty big chunk of the 20th century. Phineas Nigellus Black was actually the Headmaster up until 1925, so it is likely that he either enstalled these laws, or enforced existing ones, which hints that the situation at home for most families like the Blacks was not any easier.

Use of Unforgivables at Home for Punishment/Training: The Unforgivable Curses actually were not categorized as such up until early 18th century, so the parents and grand parents of Gen E grew up with Unforgivables being used freely at home if not for punishment, then at least for resistance training. This kind of practice does not just die out upon being outlawed, it usually takes several generations, so we can safely assumed that Gen E and TR both grew up with curses like Cruciatus and Imperius being used at home at least for durability training, especially considering they were growing up in times of war.

So since I am a big fan of visual data, I even made an Excel table for you:

As you can see, Gens E and TR are the peak of generational trauma in this timeline. Especially TR, who lived through all three wars, fought in two of them at least, and also witnessed living memory of witch hunts, corporal punishment at schools and use of Unforgivables at home. It is no coincidence that Tom Riddle came exactly from this generation.

The thing about generational trauma that most people don't realise, is that when you grow up in a war, it's not just you - it's everyone, so nobody ever gets treated. When everybody has PTSD, then nobody really has PTSD, right?

These things leave lots of issues in people, each reacts in their own way to it, and this does not go away with one generation, even with lots of hard work and treatment, which neither generation ever got, except for maybe GT when it's finally all over.

This is why I'm so against painting characters like Dumbledore or the elder Blacks as strictly bad - these are deeply traumatised generations that carry previous gen's burdens as well as their own, they never had the chance to get treated, and it reflects on their kids as well.

[hrodvitnon]

I think it depends on how crazy Genocide ends up being and how badly it affects all parties involved. Like, I think it would seriously suck for Mothra to have to watch Goji go ham on humanity and wipe the planet clean, but I think the deciding variables is what happens to all the other Titans as a result.

If the impetus for the cleansing was Xenilla coming early or Ozzy not surviving (which I'm pretty sure it was one of these last I checked), then I don't think Goji would be the only one to go nuts in some way.

We haven't really considered what say, Shimo or Battra would look like in this timeline, so I think it's hard to say for sure where Mothra would be at the end of this bloody path.

If memory serves, another factor in whether or not Genocide Route happens is if humanity takes samples of the Space Crystal Cordyceps and wants to use them in some capacity, despite seeing what it did to Ozymandias, and Godzilla's trauma from that whole sordid affair with his poor brother. (Whether Ozzy lives or dies is also an important element, akin to the Adult Timeline/Fallen Hero Timeline split in Ocarina of Time based on whether Link defeats Ganon or dies.)

I think it's safe to say that Shimo would not react well to Godzilla nuking humanity, and might have a trauma reaction of her own; she's already been imprisoned by one ruthless Titan bent on a path of destruction, but of course there are big differences between Godzilla and Skar King, though she wouldn't realize it in the heat of the moment. (GxK's events possibly being concurrent with the Xenilla Arc wouldn't help matters.)

[hrodvitnon]

In that context of Ozymandias surviving, it's worth noting that the Genocide Route is ABSOLUTELY still possible. The motives would be different, but the result isn't. (In the original, Goji's grief-stricken and furious that humanity wants to use the Fungus as a weapon. Here, that fury is still there-and the grief (albeit not as strong-and more focused on how much his brother is broken by the Fungus), but Godzilla's driving thoughts are now "I WILL NOT LET HUMANITY INFEST MY BROTHER AGAIN."

Go figure that even after witnessing what the crystal fungus can do to a member of Godzilla's species let alone one that's EVEN BIGGER than him, much less the aftermath of what the body is like after the fungus is expunged, some idiot might still want to test the space fungus and end up paying for their curiosity/hubris with the lives of everyone around them.

[hrodvitnon]

You know, now that the reasons for the Genocide Route have been fleshed out, I'd love to see Coexistence and Genocide Godzilla both meeting up. (It would probably be upsetting for Coexistence Godzilla, because he absolutely understands his counterpart's reasons-and it shows how close he could have been to ending everything, had one thing been different.)

Coexistence!Goji: You reek of blood.

Genocide!Goji: Yes. It's strange to see the world like this again. What it used to be.

Coexistence!Goji: How many?

Genocide!Goji: Too many... but enough.

Coexistence!Goji: For what reason?

Genocide!Goji: Mankind desecrated my brother's remains. Bad enough to pollute the world they live in, to meddle with Ghidorah's blood... but one of my own blood and plates, my clutch-brother, the best of my kind?

Coexistence!Goji: Ozymandias was...?

Genocide!Goji, visibly tearing up: ...I remember wanting my clutch-brother back. But not like that. Never like that. Why couldn't they just leave him be? Why couldn't I...?

Coexistence!Goji: Is there any of your Mankind left at all?

Genocide!Goji, sighing: Yes. They are under the protection by their new gods. They will recover in time and are in no danger from me. They will pass on the grudge, though. What will you do? Kill me?

Coexistence!Goji: No. I understand why. I understand what led to it. I don't... I don't blame you.

Genocide!Goji: I wish you did.

Coexistence!Goji: The way I heard it, I came here expecting to see an old beast ready to fall over dead under the weight of whatever plagued him. But I don't see him. Return to your home in peace.

Genocide!Goji: ...is this one of those human... "quips"? Or pity?

Coexistence!Goji: Neither. Go home. You won't trouble me and I have no reason to bother you. Whether your mankind wants you or not, something may well happen that will force them to need you.

Genocide!Goji: That would be the way of things, it seems.

Coexistence!Goji: And we are not the sort to back down from a good scrap. I suspect there's one more fight left in you. Spend it well.

Genocide!Goji: And who are you to give me orders?

Coexistence!Goji: *cracks a hand across Genocide!Goji's face*

Coexistence!Goji: I say so because you and I are the same! Had things been different here, I would have walked your path and spent the rest of my years wallowing in despair and regret!

Genocide!Goji: And you'd be wise not to. Not to turn on Mankind, or cling so desperately to regret that it takes what you used to be and eats it. My advice to myself.

Coexistence!Goji: Appreciated. And now here is my advice to myself, Self. When the time comes, relight the fire in your heart. Fight hard. Die well. As it once was and how it should be again. Now get out of here.

[hrodvitnon]

I imagine that Biollante!Maddie at one point steps fighting Godzilla and almost loses-but not because she's weak, or because Godzilla wants to kill her. Rather, he asks her a question: how would she feel if humans desecrated her brother's remains to use as a weapon? It causes her to freeze up and Godzilla to gain the upper hand in the conflict-because she doesn't know how she'd react. Godzilla doesn't kill her and eventually stands down, but that question haunts Maddie for a long time.

Good addition! Apologies, forgot about this between work and the trailer dropping, heh.

[hrodvitnon]

Would Biollante!Maddie try to stop Genocide Godzilla?

She can certainly try, and she's got the sheer chutzpah to get in Godzilla's way when he's on the warpath ready to inflict genocide on the human race. And Godzilla likes her, she's the spunkiest damn creature he's ever met even before she became a Titan, but he can't bring himself to hurt her; she'll do everything in her power to stop him and make him see reason even if it is too late, lashing her tendrils around him to halt Godzilla in his tracks until he just gets angry enough to fight back -- not to kill her, never, but to knock her out just long enough to get out of her reach. He knows she'll never forgive him.

[hrodvitnon]

Oh, yeah. With all this added nuance, then Goji has very understandable reasons for going on the Genocide route. Honestly, I'd be surprised if he DIDN'T snap after all that. (In the Coexistence route, he still has a mental breakdown from everything, but his family helps him through it.)

(Therapy saves the day!)

[hrodvitnon]

dea for the Genocide Route. Maybe Goji was only intending to do a certain amount of damage to humanity, and not wipe them all out-but that damnable voice, the overlay of his brother's voice and that damnable parasite, kept pushing him further and further down the path of destruction. (Basically, make it ambiguous as to whether Goji is just hallucinating from the trauma, or whether what's left of Xenilla is attempting something resembling Indoctrination. It would be left up to interpretation.)

I do like the nuances going into how the Space Crystal Cordyceps are really the big game changer for AbraxasVerse; the Genocide Route isn't just Goji going "fuck humanity in particular," it's also the result of him going through an intensely traumatic experience that can impact him in such a way that one can still feel bad for him even while he's going through with his path of destruction.

[hrodvitnon]

Goji Family/Shin thoughts

-Mothra Leo and Ladon are hot-headed in very different ways. Mothra Leo’s more Shonen Protagonist, while Ladon’s more “generally. ce kid with a hair-trigger temper and a Boiling cesspool of rage due to trauma”.

-When Shin is adopted, he has to play the Only Sane One/Voice of Reason most of the time. (He doesn’t get mad very often-but when he does, his siblings immediately drop everything to calm him down.)

-Shin finds sapient terrifying, but he doesn’t hate it: he has a family now, and they’re helping him with the pain. He just wishes he didn’t have to go through hell to find his new family.

-Been putting thought into the False Titan concept. What if the reason they’re typically disliked is because the Titans view them as parasitic destroyers? (Not all are, but False Titans cannot regulate internal radiation: they drain it from areas and and either blast it all out for stability or meltdown, making wastelands. Some Titans misconstrued them as parasites as a result. (Granted, some ARE parasitic, but not all of them.)) So when Goji adopts Shin, some of the other Titans question his sanity.

Dagon is accepting of Shin at least-and Ozzy is too under the Space Crystal Cordyceps. (They can sympathize with Shin. Also, Ozzy respects him for being the level-headed sibling, and sympathizes withbeing the wranger of a hot-blooded sibling who just wants to FIGHT.)

-Abraxas is the Cool Auncle. While all three like both aspects, Leo and Ladon prefer the Viv side, while Shin likes to listen to San’s stories of other worlds. (San omits a lot of the destruction.)

-Personality-wise, Shin is surprisingly gentle and non-confrontational. He will fight, but he prefers not to, and focuses more on protecting his family than fighting the enemy. (This only partially because he’s constantly in pain: the other part is that he doesn’t want to cause lasting damage, or make anyone else go through what he went through.) So he’s trying to find ways of using his Offense-based arsenal in defensive ways.

-Post-Genocide Route, the three are all horrified for different reasons. Shin gets wanting to exterminate humanity, but he doesn’t approve of Godzilla’s actions because they were borne from despair and trauma and not a clear head-and it hurts him to see his father hurting so badly (not too dissimilar to how Shin himself was when they found him-except they can’t fix this). Ladon and Leo, meanwhile, just don’t get it at all, and are processing what happened differently. (Ladon’s lashing out and Leo’s slightly in denial while trying to protect the survivors.)

---

Good thoughts all around! I do like the added layer of why False Titans would be stigmatized by regular Titans and that Goji adopting Shin isn’t something that others typically approve of.

[hrodvitnon]

Here's a little fun(?) scenario for you.

The setting: we've got an alternate timeline where the Titan attacks on Hawaii, Vegas and San Francisco in 2014 never happened. In the 2020s, the Titans are still more or less asleep, the public is still none the wiser to monsters being real, and Monarch is still in its dusty, "retreaux" aesthetic from the 2014 film and Kong: Skull Island. Also, Joe Brody is still alive and he's been a Monarch operative for years.

Then Monarch and the world are thrown into global calamity which sets fire to the masquerade, when multiple active Titans spontaneously appear around the world, both familiar and not familiar.

None of these Titans are the ones native to THEIR world: it's a bunch of Titans from various alternate Abraxasverse universes that have all been summoned to this universe, and they begin gathering into two factions.

On the Hero/Protector faction, we've got:

Abraxas/Monster X from Abraxas canon

Godzilla from the Genocide Route future timeline

Mechagodzilla from the Unpossessed!Mechagodzilla universe, with his world's Ren in tow

Biollante!Madison from the Biollante!Maddie universe

Weredragon!Vivienne from the Dragon AU

And the bad guys are:

Five-headed Ghidorah (Ichi, Ni, San, Vivienne as Shi, Madison as Go) from the Shi AU's Go Timeline

Ni-Emma Russell hybrid creature from the Shi AU post-epilogue

Rodan from the Apex Wins universe (this version of Rodan is covered in scars and very embittered from what an Apex-led humanity did to him and the other Titans for years, which makes him even more susceptible to Go!Ghidorah's enthralling than he already was)

Oh, cool! Interesting that Genocide Route Goji's on the protector side, but considering canonically he's attuned enough to the Earth that he can probably recognize this is not his world that any thoughts of nuking humanity will be stalled, especially considering what the opposition is. Go Timeline Ghidorah (most of them anyway) might realize the potential slaughters that come with them finding a way to control multiverse travel.

Monster X/Abraxas, Bio!Maddie and Dragon Vivi I figure will all understandably be confused and horrified by the implications going on (to say nothing of the enemy faction); maybe Dragon Vivienne is especially scared because something like Go Timeline Ghidorah could very easily kill her, which could lead to an almost Rurouni Kenshin-styled "I can't die! Someone I love is waiting for me!"

But regardless of what happens we all know who will save the day: Joe Brody!

[hrodvitnon]

Weighing in on the Bagan/Destroyah stuff with some ideas of my own, because I've heard people mention it a few times:

What if Bagan and Destroyah were divided between routes? Like Destroyah being exclusive to Genocide and Bagan being solely a Coexistence Endgame threat. Here's my thought process for each:

Destroyah fits Genocide perfectly, I think. Godzilla would most likely fight him years after his rampage- and I think it's really telling his final fight would be against a monster created almost solely by a weapon humanity designed to kill him. I almost see Destroyah as a sort of humanity stand in- a grotesque monument to Godzilla's most horrific sin, made up of trillions of microorganisms, perhaps symbolic of everyone he slaughtered, born of perhaps many Oxygen Destroyers humanity kept up their sleeve in case a situation like a rampaging Godzilla happened. However, they were unable to kill Evolved Godzilla, and humanity was wiped out by the billions. It's almost like a karmic inversion of the classic Godzilla tale: where he is a metaphor for humanity's sin of harnessing nuclear energy into a weapon, and Destroyah is a metaphor for the sin of Genocide. Something else important: I think this should be a solo fight for Godzilla. As much as it would hurt Mothra and Abraxas and his family deeply to know that he would not come home from this fight, everyone kinda knows the weight of sin is something he alone must bear and atone for- even if atonement means death, which it ultimately does. It also marks a designated endpoint for Genocide, which I think really suits it as The Bad Ending® (Good Endings in games usually let the characters have a long life for making the proper choices, it's karmic sure but also narratively satisfying. Bad Endings... don't do that). I mean, you totally could have Destroyah be in Coexistence- but major reason why I don't really vibe with it is that he would kind of need to be the end of a major character (basically universally agreed to be Godzilla- it kinda just makes too much sense not to), but a Godzilla death in Coexistence just seems- weird to me. Sorry if this is blunt but like- why? What purpose would it even serve? Thematically he would've been fighting tooth, claw, and nail to build a good relationship with humanity and be a stalwart defender of the planet- despite horrific PTSD from Ghidorah and Xenilla, had taken so much shit from humanity and their crazy bullshit but refused to give up on them and go all murdery, and if Ozzy's alive there'd be the added aspect of him having to save him back when that all happened. I'm not sure how satisfying it would feel to only reward him with a heroic death when all of Coexistence points to a hard-fought happy ending where he gets to grow old with a humanity he's made peace with and a reunited family by his side (ikik; there goes tosho again with his 'no akctually this character should be allowed to live' crap. When's he gonna grow a pair and start letting people die in his HQs? Idk man maybe being a jjk fan has given me an aversion to deaths in stories or something, but to me characters are the beating heart of a story and I value them functionally in writing above every other aspect of a narrative- so whenever I want to kill one off I make sure I have a damn good reason to do so, as a lost character is directly trading off any later plots that could be written with them. lmao death rant in the middle of what's supposed to be a shorter ask, tbh normal behavior of mine at this point)

Ok, Bagan. Gotta credit my guy @zerm2v0hg for a lot of inspiration on this front, as lots of stuff here draws on their posts about Endgame-Abraxas stuff. Like Zerm mentioned he could have more of a personality compared against Des, which I think would suit him as a more sinister antagonist in Coexistence- a more cunning foe the Titans must overcome as opposed to the Icon of Sin lookalike in the other timeline who only cares about sweet bloodshed. A very important detail about Bagan is also that he's canonically made up of both Ghidorah and Godzilla's cells. So- what if this ends up being Ghidorah's next form? One of their asks did mention Ghidorah coming back to destroy London (to further fuck up Vivi, as if she needs further fucking up lol). This could be a kind of Composite Form of his that combines Ichi, Ni, and San's intelligence into a single mind for greater efficiency, merging both his and Godzilla's biology (or- semi-crack idea, he could see himself as kind of like a twisted offspring of Ghidorah and Godzilla; semi-crack because he'd call himself the son of Ghidorah and Godzilla and the entire cast would just deadpan at him while Godzilla tries not to retch at the thought of having a kid with Ghidorah). Either way, Bagan's big gimmick is his Shapeshifting power, where he modifies his body into different forms at will, like a controlled evolution- similar to what Shin does just way faster and efficient at killing his enemies. I feel like you'd need a full cast of fighters to take something like this on- as there's no way he'd be able to counter everyone at once, so when he swaps to counter one person someone else takes point against them, giving the others time to shine against him. Him being a new version of Ghidorah could also be kind of a progress report of how far the world and Titans has come since Boston- and even Russia.

I approve of Bagan and Destoroyah being Route exclusives. It's kind of like Pokemon! But with DEATH AND DESTRUCTION.

[hrodvitnon]

Some More Abraxasverse Headcanons (2/2), about the Scarred Ones and Zohar's consequences

5. Because of 4. in the previous post, Mothra is fiercely no-nonsense about anyone deliberately messing with the natural Zohar in the Realm Below.

6. Maybe yet another last straw or next-to-last straw which makes Godzilla decide to do a hard reset on civilisation in the Genocide Route is because humans in that route started messing with the planet’s Zohar in the Realm Below again, after Apex’s actions and after the war against the reemerged Scarred Ones.

7. As much as Kong finding the Scarred Ones and slowly learning the truth about them is yanking of the dog’s chain, he might get a slight silver lining at the end of the resulting conflict. Kong’s influence, the Scarred Ones’ losses past and present, and the Scar King’s ongoing decisions might eventually lead to a minority of Scarred Ones defecting to Kong’s side against the Scar King and his loyal majority.

8. After the war against the Scarred Ones, any future antagonistic human factions or organisations trying to use the Zohar for their own ends and unleashing a new Titan threat in the process, instead of tampering with the Realm Below’s natural Zohar, use synthesised Zohar like Apex did; taking advantage of the readings that Apex Cybernetics’ drones originally took from the natural Zohar, which have unfortunately gotten out into the world after Apex’s downfall despite Monarch’s best efforts, as well as gathering whatever top-of-the-line lab resources Apex originally used to do the physical synthesising.

8.5. Ooh, now there’s a dark thought. Half a decade or more after the war against the Scarred Ones, there’s a new high-end black market trafficking synthesised Zohar, the stuff that can make Titans… :O

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Synthesized Zohar on the black market has the potential for some crazy shit happening in the AbraxasVerse, and I am HERE for it... also, I don’t know how familiar you are with the Xeno Meta Series (Xenogears, Xenosaga, Xenoblade), but let me tell you something that is serendipitous as HELL.

The idea of synthesized Zohar is actually kinda funny considering where the naming inspiration for it came from... it’s also from Xenogears, but for those who haven’t played Xenosaga, there’s the Original Zohar which was discovered on Earth and is probably older than the Big Bang, and twelve Zohar Emulators that have been used in experiments that... end about as well as you’d expect. Like, “an entire planet and 1.5 billion people vanishing and turning up again as a gigantic alien monster thing” well. Just touching an Emulator even while wearing protective gear can cause you to vanish from physical space. Factions across the ‘saga ‘verse have been scrambling for control of them for a long time.

And much like how the Scarred Ones use pieces of the AbraxasVerse Zohar to empower their weapons and themselves, or synthesized Zohar could power Mechagodzilla (and Kiryu I think? Time to reread The Clash of Silver), the Zohar of Xenosaga has been used to power “Relics of God” (like giant super-powered mecha). The really funny part about this, though? It’s established in Xenosaga Episode III that a certain “People of the Zohar” protected the Zohar and the Relics of God for generations and arrived on a certain planet after a long journey. The planet has a new name thanks to galactic government nonsense, but its real name... is Abraxas.

Intentionally or not, all roads lead to Xenosaga, it seems!

[hrodvitnon]

More Post-Abraxas Genocide Route ideas (Pt. 2)

(Cont. from Pt.1)

Okay, so next let me throw out some thoughts of my own on the Post-Abraxas Coexistence/Genocide Titans other folks on here have talked about, throw some more ideas about them in the blender for people to chew over!

With Gigan, your earlier post about how there was probably the odd surviving lifeform on all those other alien worlds that Ghidorah conquered and turned into its endless-storm-planet trophies came back to me, and I'm thinking: maybe an Abraxas-verse version of Gigan is a survivor from one of those alien worlds. Maybe it was an Alpha Titan on that world before Ghidorah attacked, and it avoided starving to death when Ghidorah turned the skies into a sunless, neverending tempest of yellow lightning. Or maybe Gigan was a bioweapon-beast created by an alien civilisation on the attacked world, in a failed attempt to defend themselves against Ghidorah, kinda like Anigoji Mechagodzilla's origin.

Either way, when Ghidorah was done razing Gigan's homeworld and moved on into space looking for its next target, Gigan followed. Maybe Gigan has a kind of religious worship for Ghidorah; maybe Gigan wants to kill Ghidorah as part of his programming or as revenge for the destruction of Gigan's homeworld but knows he doesn't have the means to kill Ghidorah on his own; or maybe Gigan is just a Titanic parasite who only arrives on Ghidorah's planetary conquests after Ghidorah has finished with them, feeding on whatever scraps are left there. So Gigan is like the reversal of a pilot-fish, following Ghidorah's trail from newly-made storm-world to newly-made storm-world over the eons, and he's been hanging back for thousands of years since Ghidorah came to Earth and has failed to turn it into the next hurricane-covered trophy. Then when Gigan senses Ghidorah's final defeat, that's when Gigan moves in to make landfall on the planet...

And now some ideas for Destoroyah. To fit with how the Monsterverse's shift towards portraying the kaiju more as forces of nature than as embodiments of the atomic age, maybe Destoroyah is an ancient Titan like Godzilla but... older. Specifically... what if mainstream science, just like it got it wrong when it said there's nothing but rock and magma between the Earth's crust and inner-code; also got it wrong when it said nothing more advanced than a few large worms lived on Earth during the Precambrian. What if before the Oxygen Catastrophe 2 billion years ago, the Earth had an entire other biosphere of complex life on its surface, and it's from this time that Destoroyah originally hails. Making Destoroyah the oldest known Titan in Earth's history, and he's regarded by the cast when they find out about him as being one of the first Titans - Destoroyah is to Titans kinda what En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse is to mutants.

Maybe the Oxygen Destroyer was the only thing that caused Destoroyah to stir because its unique energy, though deadly to all forms of modern terrestrial life, is more akin to the Micro-Oxygen that fed Destoroyah and creatures like him in their Precambrian environment. And maybe the O.D. somehow gave the awakening Destoroyah what he needed to adapt his biology to a post-Oxygen Catastrophe world and begin terraforming/xenoforming it to better suit his primordial tastes.

Considering how Mothra in particular seems to be a rather supernatural Titan, and how Destoroyah's Precambrian home is to the modern Titans what the Elder Gods are to Cthulhu... maybe Destoroyah has an affinity with the cycles of life and death and reincarnation that goes way beyond even Mothra's powers, and this is how Destoroyah draws Emma's consciousness into himself upon her death to act as a major part of his hive mind, to make himself perfectly-adapted for re-conquering the new world once he's done stirring from the O.D. blast and he's fully awakened after a few decades.

And now onto Battra. Maybe in the Post-Abraxas Genocide Route, he had a part in the start of Godzilla's genocide. Maybe a few years before Godzilla decided to nuke humanity back to the stone age, Battra was fought and killed, but Battra's radioactive remains seeped into Godzilla upon death just like Mothra's in KOTM. And instead of empowering Godzilla, it enabled Battra's spirit to linger within Godzilla. Having a more-than-mind-control effect on Godzilla, not truly possessing him or forcing him to do anything against his will, just influencing Godzilla's decision-making and impulses over the years, bringing Godzilla to the point of solving the human problem the way Battra thinks Godzilla should have solved it as soon as the atom bombs had awoken him.

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These... all of these are good ideas, and I especially dig the Cthulhu-esque take on Destroyah.

[hrodvitnon]

Even if Shin does ultimately reject Destoroyah's offer, he would be tempted. Destoroyah is like him; they were also a victim of humanity's follies that made their existence a living hell. They're both False Titans. (That said, he's very likely to reject their offer, as ir would mean his friends would get hurt, but he is tempted.)

I can't help but imagine it like this:

Destroyah: But it is not too late... can you not see the value in our friendship? Imagine the powers I can give you. If I desired, I could improve you... transform you into something more efficient. Join me, and we can rule together.

*zoom in on Shin's face*

Shin: Nah.

[hrodvitnon]

Ok, picture this: After Mothra is done talking with Goji, who she realizes is just as much of a mess as the rest of them although the manages to hide it somehow, she goes off to meet with Monster X.

Monster X is delighted to see her, but things quickly turn serious. Monster X doesn’t respond much at first, content to sit and listen as Mothra explains how her visit with Godzilla went; that he’s so tired and and not himself, that when told his allies and family don’t hate him he doesn’t seem to believe it.

Monster X isn’t so cold as to mock another’s troubles and feels guilty for roaring at Godzilla’s presence, essentially telling him to stay away. They haven’t admitted it for some time but they miss the Big Guy, and they’re adamant in teaching their humans to not resent Godzilla for his actions. Mothra encourages them to try responding the next time he calls out to someone, even if it’s as small as saying hello. Monster X doubts they’ll hear his call, but they keep an ear out all the same.

After some time passes they hear a call in the earth, and for the first time since their last interaction, Monster X answers.