#really has made me turn off the game and Johnny and Liu tbh

[beyond-far-horizons]

Okay the game's been out for a few days now, but spoilers!

While it has significant good points, am I allowed to say now how angry and disappointed I am by how Liu aka the devs treated our queen?

I'm glad to see old faces return, I'm so happy for fans who missed their faves for years and yes not every kharacter has to be on every roster...

But FFS, this is a reboot of MK1! The original game Sonya was the first female kharacter for. I love Kitana, love Sindel, really happy to see Mileena finally getting her due, but we wouldn't have any of them if Sonya hadn't done so well for the OG game, if Ed and John hadn't realised they needed a badass lady amongst all those men.

Plus the way NRS handled this whole thing - both the marketing and the storymode - was a mess. Frankly they led Sonya fans on despite knowing how upset fans can get after what happened with Mileena in MK11. I know because I was roped in since May on Twitter. I wish they'd have managed expectations early on, esp in a game we'd expect her to be in. A few kind words at cons, even just a few references in Storymode to explain her absence, it would have been really sad, but not the almost contemptuous erasure we got here.

Worse, it makes the pious, compassionate Liu Kang look awful for just ignoring or erasing one of his best friends and most loyal allies. Earthrealm starts out with no female champion and an overload of guys. And it seems to support all those awful takes that 'Sonya's boring', 'she's just a gun lady' or (and I don't know where they get this one?) 'she's a Tr*mp supporter!' 'She & SF can sit this one out'.

Finally, some of Sonya's lines, moves and roles have been taken and not just in this game. It's heartbreaking to see certain rude fans troll Sonya fans with how 'awful', 'boring' and 'militant' she is, but see people praise/enjoy other kharacters for what Sonya does. You can see from her Kameo how magical, athletic and vivacious Sonya used to be, she wasn't always a hardened military vet played by a fighter who sadly couldn't voice-act. Even then, I still love her as a general, she's always fought for Earthrealm and been loyal to Raiden and Liu, even if the majority seem to forget that.

I'm just fuming that all we get of her is 1 intro hint, an unlockable Johnny's announcer voice talking about her and the awful evil version with Kano's eye at the end for 2 mins. While Johnny has an ex wife and flirts with every woman he comes across, Kenshi partners with Jax, Johnny uses a drone, Kitana has a virtually identical fatality, Li Mei has some of her moves. Now I hear (spoiler) that Cassie - her daughter might be in KP2 without her.

Rant over, I just hope Mortal Kombat 2 (the movie) does her justice and shows NRS and some of the fans what they are missing.

[avi17]

More immortal champion discussion, continued from here bc otherwise it’ll get way too long

@fallen-angel-lucifer

 I've been thinking about that and tying myself into knots while attempting to figure out a fix-it because imagining movie Liu alone breaks my heart. What if Liu Kang saves Kung Lao with some help from the Elder Gods by somehow binding their souls together? Literally making the whole "We die together or not at all." oath real. Do you suppose the Champion immortality would extend to the other? C'mon, Raiden. Make it real. Immortal Shaolin Tag-Team Kombat champions!

You and me both, friend.  To be honest, with his reduced role in favor of Cole in this newest movie, there’s no guarantee that Liu Kang will actually be the ultimate champion this time when the tournament rolls around. But the hole I’ve written myself into with this upcoming WIP is that in this one he is, and he needs to be bc it’s relevant to how things go after that.  So basically my choices are either pretend this isn’t a thing (like every other person writing movie fic tbh), or change something major one way or the other.  Either way, it’s thrown a bit of a wrench in something I finally had at least kind of planned out. -_- I don’t think your suggestion here works for what I’m doing but I would be here for it if somebody wrote it!  Though tbh it only kind of takes the sting out of the fact that everyone else will still age normally and die.  I really just want LK 2021 to have his found family dammit ;_;

@fallen-angel-lucifer

BUT If you want to go for the angst route, there's always reincarnation. Don't know if that idea is any better or if it just hurts more.

Oh no you cannot say that to me though >.> that gives me ideas

@bastardsunlight

In both the original and the netherrealm studios canon, Liu gets smoked before we can see how that would end. In the OG, Raiden inexplicably brings him back as a chain swinging zombie while his soul chases him around and then Armageddon occurs. It is addressed in Defenders of the Realm, but not in the games as far as I recall, save some skins in X that feature a silver haired but otherwise youthful Liu Kang and an aged Kung Lao.

all that to say that I think it should be addressed and the games seem to play fast and loose with it

Hm, fair.  The thing that’s bothering me here is that like...that makes perfect sense within the original conceit of the game, in that the characters are representing different realms or whatever but it’s still a one on one tournament to the death with a single winner.  Idk which game introduced this concept but I think it makes sense within that framework- and that’s not really a framework in which you’d bother to think much about the implications of that.  But trying to turn that into an actual story tends to lead to what we get in the movies, which is a story focused on characters divided more clearly into teams/sides, most of whom live and end up friends.  The part in the 2021 one where they split off into individual fights but still with a team strategy gave me more YYH Dark Tournament vibes than anything else (which might contribute to me liking it XD).  But in that context, after they’ve made a point to bond these characters into a team? Longevity for one person while everyone else stays normal sucks.  And especially in the context of resurrecting Kung Lao, and their whole promise to only die together, it’s just like...depressing, and not in a way that I find fun to think about.  Also that promise doesn’t really make sense in a world where immortality for the winner and only the winner is a thing, since they seem to have established that Kung Lao has a lot of pressure on him to win and defend Earthrealm and all that.  It just seems like it would come up, idk. But also, in the context of a movie where the characters are friends and most of them live, how do you decide who the champion is?  Like, in the 95 one, if Johnny beat Goro and Liu Kang beat Shang Tsung, shouldn’t they then have to fight to see who is the real winner if it’s gonna just be one person?  Shang Tsung was orchestrating shit, but Goro was the previous champion, so those seem like pretty equal victories.  But no, they don’t, because they’re on the same side and that’s what the movie cares about, the good guys won XD But that’s not how a tournament works, unless it literally is a team affair like the Dark Tournament.  So like. I feel like in the context of the movies, if nothing else, you can maybe ignore it, unless any future sequels to the 2021 one decide to make it a thing. I’m really not sure why I’m agonizing this much over kanon compliance for a property that can’t decide what its supposed protagonist’s first name is, but that is unfortunately just who I am as a person.