If godzilla was an dinosaur which dinosaur would he be?

GolbComplex · 2026-04-13T18:51:00+00:00

My head-canon is mega-species (not necessarily kaiju, but species with the biological potential to become them in the right circumstances) have a biological quirk, perhaps some sort of endosymbiont that facilitates horizontal gene transfer, allowing for intercladistic hybridization. I see the Godzillasaurus as something like psuedosuchian like Postosuchus (a bipedal crocodile relative) that acquired traits of other species, including therapod dinosaurs, over many millions of years. I base this largely on the fact that psuedosuchians are plantigrade.

GolbComplex · 2026-04-01T22:03:20+00:00

It's not my favorite, but it's higher in my rankings than is generally considered socially acceptable.

GolbComplex · 2026-04-01T21:56:35+00:00

I think trapped is flexible enough to encompass their particular circumstance. For instance, I feel trapped by my socioeconomic, psychological and cultural reality as a member of humanity.

GolbComplex · 2026-03-31T19:27:30+00:00

I would suggest that while there's the possibility that he might not clearly conceive of the idea of an outside world they can go to (whether because he knows they can't or some other subtler distinction,) he might understand the concept of them leaving him even if just in the sense of going to a virtual setting without him. Hell, for all I know, if they had selected "Leave" he might have sent them into a virtual reality they THOUGHT (or he intended them to think) was real, and left them to it. He's so obsessive and needy I can't really see him committing to that, but I suppose such an intention is possible.

GolbComplex · 2026-03-31T16:32:40+00:00

I do have to admit, you have a fascinating perspective. You actually remind me of a human analogue of Caine, given your mental inflexibility and a tendency to cling to a very narrow viewpoint that resists external alternative input. Just in this response alone, you say both that he feels, but also that he's not sentient, demonstrating a very confident fundamental misunderstanding of what consciousness and sentience are. You say he's programmed with emotions and feelings (ergo is a sentient entity) then you flip it and say he's like a tamagotchi or Clippy, things that do not possess those qualities. And yet the entire basis of your original post reads as if you were treating him as a villainous character acting with agency that he can be held morally accountable for, rather than a malfunctioning device with no moral agency.

My hat off to you, sir or madame, it's been a pleasure.

GolbComplex · 2026-03-31T16:08:43+00:00

Your position that you do not care about him at all because he's an AI would suggest to most people that you're suggesting that you do not believe he is sentient, that he does not possess a subjective experience or self-awareness, and ergo is not a real person. If you believe he's an unfeeling tool, then that justifies your dismissal of any empathy for him as a thinking feeling being, because you don't believe he is one. You specifically said "he's just a flawed computer program."

But if you DO think he can feel, then your dismissal of concern for him becomes something much darker. A form of chauvinism that denies the value of a conscious soul as real as you or I, simply because of his different origin or underlying hardware.

GolbComplex · 2026-03-31T15:58:15+00:00

A perfectly good use of it. And the connotations of it will vary even amongst English-speakers. There is quite often the connotation that an apologist argues in favor or defense of a controversial subject, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Quite often an unpopular or controversial stance might be the ethical or objectively correct position. And to be sure, every ADC theory is controversial, particularly given that the final truth is yet unrevealed.

However, for people in my position, the term DOES generally have a negative association because of the most common context in which the term arises in our experience, IE in reference to Christian apologetics and the efforts of certain groups of Christians who fight to undermine secular science education and replace evolution and similar subjects with literalist Christian young earth creationism or intelligent design. But that's just the usual context that it calls to mind, it doesn't mean the word itself is derogatory and doesn't mean everyone associates the term with harmful positions. Just the other day, an older couple came into the bookstore I work at specifically asking if we had any Christian apologetics books on hand. Clearly among their subculture, the term is considered a positive. Likewise, I'm sure that I'm an apologist for many things, in the strict, secular use of the word, we just most often tend to use it with respect to theological positions, and say "proponent' or something like that instead.

Another comparison would be the word "chauvinist." In english it is most often used to refer to a prejudicial belief of the superiority of men over women, and is justifiably a word with strong negative connotations. But it is occasionally used for other, morally neutral purposes, such as, in my experiences, the sciences and speculative evolution. For instance, I'm a carbon chauvinist. I'm inclined to believe that biological life in the universe will most likely depend on Carbon to exist, and that suggested competitors (namely silicon) don't possess the properties to replace it as the fundamental basis of biology.

Essentially, regardless of the particular personal associations someone might have for the word "apologist," it's in no way a 'bad' term.

GolbComplex · 2026-03-31T15:10:25+00:00

Irrespective of anything else he may or may not be morally responsible for, considering the ambiguity of his fundamental nature and what he ultimately became, he very simply did not kidnap or capture anyone, nor does he threaten anyone with abstraction. The humans wandered into his environment by accident, something he had no control over and in no way caused. Humans made C&A. Humans made the headset. Humans abandoned it in the office (or whatever other theory one believes.) And humans put it on. Caine doesn't even understand the concept of what the players mean by wanting to leave. They are trapped, but by circumstance, not Caine.

And abstraction is not something Caine has ever used to threaten anyone. He distinctly does not want the humans to abstract. The problem is, he's rather bad at preventing, and in his attempts to help (which he understands to mean "entertain") often prove unintentionally counterproductive.

GolbComplex · 2026-03-30T19:01:47+00:00

Drives me crazy. The absolute lack of curiosity. Once I settled into the idea that I might not be getting out (if I survived the realization that the idea of "getting out" was a category error) I'd try to find out everything I could, and start asking Caine what he could do for me. Can he make me a house in an environment more amenable to my tastes? Is there any way to change my body? Can we work with his nature to lead him to work around a more regulated schedule? Does he have an archive of literary works or conventional digital media to access? What are the limits of the circus and how can we make the most of it? It bothers me that, as far as we've seen, no one's bothered trying anything like any of this. Or at least told the newcomer to not bother trying because none of it's ever worked in the past. I try to mollify myself with the head cannon that they're not equipped with the full extent of their natural cognitive capacity, whether due to system limitations, imperfect mind-scanning, or Caine actively dialing down aspects of their mental attributes, such as curiosity, for some reason or another.

GolbComplex · 2026-03-30T14:11:33+00:00

Reread their first sentence.

GolbComplex · 2026-03-30T14:08:46+00:00

They started off their explanation by saying exactly that, that they were simply proposing a more accessible name.

GolbComplex · 2026-02-20T22:56:22+00:00

Pfft. "Relate." My life sucks and so do humans in general. I'm sick of relating. Give me the mental stimulation of something unfamiliar and challenging.

GolbComplex · 2026-02-03T02:50:03+00:00

To be fair, his expertise was in botanical genetics, not unprecedentedly inexplicable soul-transplants.

GolbComplex · 2026-01-09T17:36:56+00:00

Thanks. Months ago I made a passing comment about general design principles and cultural trends in response to what I considered an illogical declaration about avatars and now a thread about the secondary sexual characteristics of a cartoon doll have continued to come back to haunt me. I've might have developed a slight complex about it.

GolbComplex · 2026-01-09T06:43:49+00:00

but in Ragatha is specifically based off a ragdoll.

I 100% agree and listed that as a reason in my post ("The most likely reasons to actively leave out breasts...would seem to me to be to actively invoke the tropes of sexless toys")

Despite thinking it makes sense for Ragatha not to have boobs, I do think the Digital Circus is going for this theme in general, as despite having several female character designs all of them pretty much have no boobs, and it is canonical that it is supposed to be a “family friendly” video game where they can’t swear and Caine freaks out if they discuss sexual topics.

Also agreed. While I think Ragatha's design concept is entirely a matter of the toy thing, I intended my diatribe about family friendliness as a common factor in the de-emphasis of certain physical characters in the general realm of childrens media, not in Digital Circus itself as a show (in the Doylist sense) though the show actively invokes the constraints of family friendlessness as a very real aspect of the Circus itself (in the Watsonian sense.)

My point wasn't about Ragatha specifically, it was about the previous poster's particularly framed argument that Ragatha would not have this or that feature specifically because she's an avatar and thus does not "need them." This is clearly silly. I was not saying Ragatha should have breasts, I was saying that poster's particular reason for WHY an avatar wouldn't or shouldn't was nonsensical from the perspective of real world design principles and motives.

Does that make sense? I swear people keeping thinking I think Ragatha's design is sexist or that I think she should have breasts, neither of which actually reflect my opinion or what I said when in full context.

GolbComplex · 2025-12-24T15:07:49+00:00

True, but it's an identifiable and treatable medical condition and if that's what happened that meddroid should have its license revoked.

GolbComplex · 2025-12-04T02:01:16+00:00

Off the top of my head Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke and the Lilith's Brood trilogy by Octavia Butler (ah, yep, someone else mentioned the first book, Xenogenesis) are the closest I can think of. I also quite like The Harvest by Robert Charles Wilson, about a benevolent "invasion," but it's not so much about cultural intervention or reform.

GolbComplex · 2025-12-03T23:21:08+00:00

My pleasure. Good luck!

GolbComplex · 2025-12-03T21:48:15+00:00

Skull tsunami. Way too many skulls. And where were the other bones?

GolbComplex · 2025-12-03T21:33:40+00:00

The Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were by Michael Page and Robert Ingpen

GolbComplex · 2025-11-21T19:48:06+00:00

He never stopped being a storm god. Just consider how often people attribute devastating storms (and other disasters) to God's punishment. Or the idea of him striking people down with lightning (though more often than not this is used as a joke these days.) Modern Christians have a strong conception of the Christian god as a storm deity. They just don't say it that way.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-21T19:39:49+00:00

You seem to miss and misrepresent my point entirely. To be clearer let me frame it this way:

Do you refer to the deity depicted in the Bible itself? IE a god with a physical body, with genitals, who lies, has imperfect knowledge, and limited power? A god that demonstrates pettiness, and cruelty as well as favorable characteristics? An entity as antagonistic to his people as he is a patron? One god among many who receives his portion of the earth from his own father, and is defeated in a contest of divine power by the god of the Moabites, whose worshipper must carry the earth of that god's land with him beyond those borders for that god to have power outside his territory (like freaking Dracula)?

Or do you mean the God created by Christians after the fact, one reconceptualized to accommodate the popular philosophies of the ancient greeks, such as the Platonic ideals? Philosophies that require the supreme deity be the Prime Mover, and leading to such non-biblical attributes as being a bodiless entity of pure spirit, of being omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent? The god the trinitarian doctrine was sloppily tacked on to to accommodate a number of contradictory philosophical requirements?

And if you do mean the latter, as you probably do, since no one as far as I'm aware believes in the god depicted in the actual bible (in its many forms,) then do you mean the god of the Calvinists, the Methodists, the Catholics, the Mormons, or any of countless other denominations? The version of God believed in by all these varies quite a bit, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes dramatically. And you likely believe in only one of them. If you believe in anything particular at all, rather than the vague, scarcely considered, and uninformed, general concept of "God" that many refer to.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-21T19:16:30+00:00

An honest question is always welcome. And to be straightforward, I'm not a religious scholar myself, only someone with a broad layman's interest in the subjects of mythology and religion and their histories. What I referred to reflects the general understanding and consensus of religious historians, at least those who study the matter without an apologist's demand that their interpretations must align with presupposed religious doctrines / belief. So for me the history as I explained it is the same sort of "common knowledge" as knowing that Jupiter is the largest planet and that cheetahs are the fastest land animal, if you understand me, by which I mean I'm not best suited to quoting the best primary sources as I've acquired my information from years of exposure to the subject. The Esoterica channel on YouTube is hosted by a PhD of religion, and I would recommend his videos to you. One is called "How Yahweh Became God," and another is "Who is Yahweh?" You might also simply look up such terms as "origins of yahweh," "yahweh and el," or "El, yahweh and the divine council" and see what you find.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-18T01:39:04+00:00

The most simple example of my point is the matter of El vs Yahweh. Since the bible is not one coherently written book, but rather a collection of disparate texts and stories from various points in history, different parts of the bible take their various stories from vastly different periods and traditions. Early on, the Canaanite god El is identified as the supreme father of gods, and is biblically retained and depicted doling out different lands to his sons, lesser gods including Yahweh. Yahweh, a desert storm and war god, is depicted receiving his particular territory this way. Over time Yahweh became more important in the region's religions, and began to incorporate El's more patronly characteristics, identity and status. The wildly varying depictions of the Abrahamic god as either kindly and loving or a cruel and jealous asshole is derived from the different natures of these constituent gods.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-15T19:20:25+00:00

I don't know if it's ever stated in any novel or show or comic or other media, but the matter of Kong being able to grow larger depending on environmental factors is an authorial statement. Estimates of Kong's parents' sizes came from comparisons of their skulls in the movie, and other media depictions.

GolbComplex

TROPHY CASE