Also published in Kaiju Ramen #10.
The kaijū fandom is full of people and voices that grew up in different environments and encountered different situations while developing themselves as people. One of these people is Donny Winter. Donny is an artist who grew up dealing with individuals that chose to bully and pick on people. But, Mr. Winter didn’t let their words and actions get the better of him, he remembered and used the Godzilla films of his childhood to help endure and persevere into the successful person he is today. Donny is happily engaged to his partner and teaches English at a college. Donny has also published two books of poetry available for purchase now on Amazon. In his past time, he has started a very well-regarded internet show that kaijū fans probably know him by, “Growing Up With Godzilla” which has featured special guests like comic book artist Matt Frank and even internet personality Monster Island Buddies.
I had the privilege to interview Donny about his work on his internet show and as a creator in general. So, without further ado, please enjoy this interview!
The Interview
DW – Donny Winter
ET – Elijah Thomas
ET: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another interview! This time I get to interview somebody who… has a lot to say and a lot of amazing ideas. So, without further ado, here is Donny Winter.
DW: Hello! Thank you for having me. I adore my Kaiju Ramen family, so I am excited to sit down and have this conversation with you.
ET: Thank you so much for coming on here and giving me this opportunity to interview you.
DW: Well, of course. And thank you for the outlet, I… I think it’s important for fans to collaborate and to engage with one another, on the creative front. So, like any opportunity I get to have conversations about what I do. always…I always try to take those opportunities, it’s important.
ET: So, to start off for anybody who doesn’t know who you are, could you please introduce yourself so everybody will know where they can find you, who you are, and what you do.
DW: Well, my name is Donny Winter. I’ve been in the Godzilla fandom online for a very long time, since, like the early 2000s. I remember the old message board days… those old message board days, where we all just gathered together, and we were just kind of in this chaotic isolation of just message boards. Right. But I began the fandom writing Godzilla fanfiction and then that transitioned later on as I found other outlets to doing YouTube… Fast forward to now, I have my own Godzilla podcast called “Growing Up With Godzilla” that has somehow turned into something pretty cool, and it’s been very much a full circle moment because I’ve always wanted to create and do long form projects. So “Growing Up With Godzilla” kind of became the ideal project for me to do so.
ET: So, it’s a basic question, but it’s important. For the record, what’s your favorite kaijū film?
DW: Kaijū in general? So, it doesn’t have to be a Godzilla film… My favorite kaijū film is probably “Rebirth of Mothra” (1996). Rebirth of Mothra, I feel like is one of the most underrated kaijū films out there. It is, of course, geared toward children. If you go into watching it, thinking that in your mind, I think it’s a little bit easier to absorb it and process it. But the film, like the whole Mothra trilogy, [is] very whimsical, great music, interesting characters, even sometimes the children can be interesting characters, surprisingly. And we get great kaijū fights in those films, like the whole first film, like 75% of that film is just one giant kaijū battle. It’s great.
ET: Donny, what is your relationship to the Kaiju genre and how did it send you down the path of content creation? You brought up how you wrote Godzilla [fan fictions] and that led into writing, which eventually snowballed into the YouTube channel. So how did all of that come to be?
DW: Well, I think for me, kaijū films became an escape, especially during a difficult time in life. When I was a kid, I was bullied quite a bit and eventually, in high school and college, I came out as gay and I just really felt misunderstood a lot of the time. Godzilla films became like that comfort for me where I could escape somewhere, right?
I could… witness these characters overcoming obstacles. And that kind of translated to me as, “Well, Donny, you can do this too. You have to go to school the next day to deal with these horrible people who are treating you horribly. If Godzilla can overcome this obstacle, then you can definitely overcome what you’re about to deal with as well.”
It kind of instilled in me just this sense of resolve if that makes sense. But later when I branched into writing Godzilla fanfiction… that added to the outlet, I was able to retreat to my own world where I could, create characters, create stories, add to stories that already exist.
And there are so many memories of just spending hours and hours until the wee hours of the morning writing fanfics and losing myself in them. At a certain point, I think kaijū films gave me a little bit more of a purpose, storytelling is important to me. And with “Growing Up With Godzilla“, for example, my goal with it is to try to help people share their stories, [and] their connections with the character. Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, have a remarkably interesting relationship with Godzilla. We have different entry points into the franchise, right? So, I think it’s important for us to share those experiences because our histories in relation to the franchise seem significant to me, at least.
ET: You mentioned that you found your calling growing up and in high school. Before that, did you want to create content or was that something you learned about yourself in high school?
DW: Before the fanfiction era of [my] life, there was a point in time where I got into Godzilla when I was a kid. The first Godzilla film was the original “Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla” (1974). Both of my parents were huge Godzilla nerds. So, my little brother and I very quickly gravitated to the giant dinosaur-esque creature… At a certain point, I went through this phase where I loved drawing a lot. I don’t draw anymore, mostly because I don’t have the patience, but I started creating my own comic books. I found ways to make crossovers between Godzilla and Pokémon… I’m fairly sure I have a Rebirth Of Mothra series in comic book form that goes up to like 15 because it shouldn’t have ended at three in my child opinion.
ET: When I was going through all your videos, I noticed that there was more than Godzilla.
DW: Yes… decided to do a playlist called Bullying My Story of Survival, where I broke down like the decades of bullying that I had experienced to draw awareness to it and of course, it led later on into me having more conversations about mental health… Even in “Growing Up With Godzilla“, if you watch various episodes of the show, you’ll note that there are certain points where like guests and I end up having conversations about how Godzilla impacted our mental health or how we may have come to terms with our identity because we watched some sort of perseverance happening in a Godzilla film.
ET: Your first kaijū-focused video was 11 years ago, and it was titled, “IDW Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1“. Did you expect that you would go from just that to where you are now?
DW: Well, at that point in time, like I think on YouTube, I was just trying to find ways to branch further into the Godzilla fandom, through that outlet. And back then, YouTube was a bit newer, right? So, I really didn’t have a direction when it came to like Godzilla, but like looking at then versus now. I developed more of a love of long form creative projects, a podcast is obviously very much a long form creative project… it requires a certain level of commitment, right? At that time in my life, I was just like throwing up videos here and there. I didn’t have any creative focus where I wanted to kind of like flesh, something out, you know? So, I did not expect it to be the way it is now. However, I am happy that I have found a focus which is a bit relieving.
ET: I saw [this] on your website under publications. What is or was “Kaiju Galaxy”?
DW: So, Kaiju Galaxy still exists in 2004, being on a bunch of different message boards. I just noticed that people were mean. So, I was like, you know what? It can’t be that difficult to make a message board. So, I decided I’m going to make my own message board. I called it Kaiju Galaxy, and for like the first year, it didn’t really amount to anything. But then like in 2005, it blew up and it ended up getting like 3 to 400 members and Kaiju Galaxy from like that, from that span to like 2008 or so. We prioritized fan creativity, fanfiction, fan art, and poetry. Kaiju Galaxy [is] an incredibly significant part of my life as a fan, especially in the 2000s. It was represented at G-Fest for a number of years.
I’m glad that I could help people find an outlet, for me [it] was just enjoying fan fiction writing as a long form outlet, kind of like what we were seeing with podcasting. So, I loved it. I don’t write as much Godzilla fan fiction as I used to, and I miss it significantly.
ET: In the world of filmmaking and YouTube. It’s very easy to get lost in your work… [and] struggle with making time. How have you dealt with time management and making time?
DW: I think it’s a question that every creator needs to ask themselves periodically. I used to really struggle with time management because either I would overwork, or I would just set it on the backburner. The biggest obstacle that I’ve dealt with over the past decade, especially with teaching, is certain career areas do require a lot of creative energy, right? Teaching is one of those areas. So, I would find myself getting so depleted creatively where like in my mind, I would want to write a fanfic or do a YouTube video or anything like that. But because I didn’t associate with being as productive as work, I would always kind of set it on the backburner. I had to completely reorient how I viewed my creative outlets.
There’s this sense of profound existential emptiness that people experience because they don’t have those outlets. So, I had to think about it. I successfully managed to work myself through it, through journaling a lot, because I would ask myself questions like, why am I not prioritizing my creative life? and what is that doing to me? I guess that my biggest piece of advice for anybody in that type of predicament would be… acknowledge how important your creative outlet is to you and associated with being as important as working or breathing or feeding yourself.
ET: Beyond just being creatively drained. What obstacles in your life have challenged you as a creator and what has inspired you?
DW: I think some obstacles that have challenged me periodically would be, you know, myself getting in my own way. There is a point in my life where, for example, my mental health got in the way of being a creator, and I didn’t use my outlets to kind of help me gain some sort of catharsis, like… my mental health would get in the way of me doing anything… I think when we get to this point where we kind of just internalize everything, like we’re not really, at least for me, like I wasn’t budging, right? So, once I started talking about it, more like connecting it with my YouTube videos, connecting it in my commentaries about Godzilla and stuff like that, I was able to work myself out of that stagnancy and into productivity.
ET: Is there anything that your audience sees that they have conceived like this view of your channel, or you that you like? If so, what is it?
DW: I think… I hope that my audience sees that there is depth, right? And that beneath the exteriors that we have, like there are a lot of things that go unnoticed because we might be afraid of being minimized or we might be afraid of being misunderstood. And the truth is, if you are ever especially misunderstood, like maybe you say something that doesn’t necessarily articulate well, like be accountable for it. And, you know, explain yourself and correct it.
I guess I would hope that my audience also sees the fact that all of these conversations require, I guess, some degree of wisdom/emotional self-awareness.
ET: What would you define as the Donny Winter style?
DW: For YouTube, my style is, I would argue, intellectual banter. I really love having fun with people, having conversations with them, but also having like a level of emotional, intellectual depth to a conversation.
When it comes to poetry, my style is definitely free verse. And I would say that I’m very much a nature poet. I love weaving nature in. Even in my Godzilla related poems, you’ll notice that fanfiction, stylistically speaking to the Donny style in fanfiction, humanizing the Kaiju to a certain extent, like you don’t want to humanize them too much, because the point of a kaijū is being, you know, this strange, inhuman beast, right? However, kaijū [are] characters, they have motivations, they have desires, they have needs. [In my] fanfics, I really want to emphasize that because my goal is to make kaijū those characters that people can connect with in some way, right?
ET: How have your peers that you’ve collaborated with or maybe not collaborated with yet, how have they impacted you as a content creator?
DW: Well, they’ve helped me grow as a person because I would say that most of my collaboration has come through “Growing Up With Godzilla”, each episode… feature[s] a guest and learning other people’s stories and listening to their experiences and how they entered the Godzilla fandom, how they fell in love with the franchise and what the franchise did for them.
It’s helped me develop a better understanding of my own history and my own relationship with the media as well. And it’s been very humbling. It’s been very empowering.
ET: What lessons would you tell a new content creator, whether they are doing kaijū or just fanfiction or writing or poetry or maybe even art, what would you tell a new creator?
DW: That’s a good question. The first thing that I would tell them is there will be many instances where you will feel like giving up, whether it be lack of use, someone telling you that they don’t like your work or just people not believing in you. Regardless, don’t allow any person like that to extinguish that creative spark that you have, because I firmly believe that the world deserves to witness what we have going on in our interiors. I feel like if you rob the world of that, you’re also sabotaging yourself in a certain way, right? Because we gain something through content creation, through art, through fanfiction writing, any of that, that is an examination of the human experience, but also like it is a legacy of sorts, right? Like we’re putting ourselves out there in some way, like we’re taking pieces of ourselves and putting it into what we create. I think that is just a validation of existence.
The other piece of advice I would give would be…You have to make time for your creative outlets. If you don’t make time for those things, you’re killing yourself in a certain way and it’s not fair to you to deny yourself the opportunities to express or to create.
I would say my last piece of advice is always to be open to constructive feedback, don’t allow yourself to grow as a creator, which is like the easiest way to fall into writer’s block or stagnancy in some way. And you never want to become, you know, angry at your creative outlets, right?
ET: Thank you, Donny, so much for coming on today.
DW: Thank you for allowing this outlet for so many people. It’s very important. So, allow us to thank you!
Donny is present on social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Like his YouTube channel where you can view his ongoing series “Growing Up With Godzilla” that’s currently in its second season you can find him by simply searching his name. If you’re interested in checking out Donny’s poetry, you can find his two published books Feats of Alchemy, Casting Seeds, and Carbon Footprint by Alien Buddha Press on Amazon. He also has an entire series of poems that focuses on the mad scientist doctors from the Godzilla franchise you can read on Kaiju United.
Donny also wanted to let the readers know, “If you see other creators out there doing podcasts, subscribe to them, follow them because many of us, we may not have big platforms, but with what we put out there, I think that having that content to consume is very enriching for the fandom.”
