music, my photography,and whatever.

i am open wounds

on palms

Oracle eyes singe

bloody hands to hand

shakes me wildly

lammed in flame

i wake to

the lion closing in

Your homeboys change sometimes 

And the thoughts rearrange in their brains sometimes 

It’s too hard dealing with the pain sometimes 

A couple years ago I might have had a solid answer for you, but my opinion on the matter has become kind of fluid.  On the one hand, I think that there’s enough cross pollination between different giant monsters in fiction - Kong partially inspires Godzilla, Godzilla inspires Gorgo, kaiju like Manda and King Shisa take inspiration from myth, et cetera - that you could make a pretty argument for them all belonging to the same archetype.  

At the same time, an argument can be made that the way East Asian giant monster movies characterize their monsters is fairly unique - Godzilla, Gamera, and Yongary have far more in common with each other than they do with, say, Gwangi or the giant ants from Them! when it comes to how they’re characterized and their exact role in the narrative.

So how do you define “kaiju”?  I’m not exactly sure.  I’ve heard a lot of different arguments that all make valid points, and I don’t think I’m enough of an authority on the matter to make the call.

I do think there are some bare minimums we can agree on, though - namely, I think a kaiju must at the very least be a monster whose immense size is one of its primary monstrous attributes.  A lot of monsters are big, but a kaiju has to be a monster whose bigness is one of the traits that defines it as a monster.  Jason Voorhees is tall, but that’s not the first trait that comes to mind when defining why he’s monstrous.  But Godzilla?  Godzilla’s bigness is one of his defining attributes.

“Stan” is basically internet shorthand for a fan who is incredibly devoted to the person/media they are a fan of.  Hilariously, while many people use the phrase to express undying devotion (”I stan Harry Potter” or whatever), the origin of the phrase comes from an Eminem song about an obsessive fan named Stan whose loyalty to Eminem eventually turns to hatred when Eminem doesn’t live up to the hype Stan has built up around him.  Most people who say they “stan” something or are a “stan” of something don’t intend to include the “my loyalty will turn to hatred” bit, but given how fandoms on tumblr generally turn out, it’s really an apt comparison.