#…I have my priorities straight

[lavaflowe]

JTTW BOOK CLUB

CHPT 7-9

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

Chpt 7

•”All this was probably refined in his stomach by the Samadhi fire to form a single solid mass” I know other deities can use the fire but I’m wracking my brain for when it used before(this point) specifically- My understanding was the furnace refined the immortal elixirs and fruit- I’m going to assume Laozi is just theorizing and doesn’t know what actually happened

•Diamond body….👀

•Erlang gets absolutely DRIPPED out, he earned it FR

•eyes permanently irritated by the smoke churned up the the Xun trigram, someone get this man some eye drops

•he is extra pissed

•HE JUST BODIES LAOZI IM YELLING😂

•”this cosmic being fully fused with nature’s gifts passes with ease through 10,000 toils and tests”

•Big war form out to beat serious ass, he’s not jokin bitch

•” bright and luminous; ….illustrious pearl of mani he is indeed” MMMMM comparing him to a mani- a flaming (wish granting) jewel is hilarious 💀

•Tathagata bringing in the big guns (himself)

•”how tf do you know The Way and not know who I am?? And you’re so….violent” I can sense the side eye

•I wonder if Wukong has previous incarnations?? Buddha says he just reached human form this incarnation but if his rock was there at the beginning of creation, wouldn’t his soul be ‘baking’ (for lack of a better term) the whole time until he hatched?

•” and with a total lack of respect he left a bubbling pool of monkey urine” Iconic moment LMAOOOO

•smart for Wukong to leave a momento- too bad it didn’t matter lol

•ah so he was jumping to visit the pillars again, not run away(supposedly)- he’d rather prove he’s right than escape💀 that checks out

•monkey has been squished, it is now party o’clock

•are you allowed to give the Buddha drugs if it’s an offering? Like wine??🤔 “wtf is this allowed? Wtf”

•”Wukong is wiggling out”

“Dw, take this”

*slaps tag on the mountain like flex tape*

•enough room to breathe and move his hands- I would lose my mind

•Molten copper & iron pellets mimic punishments in hell (just learned this🙏), shedding the Karma like water -I feel like 500 years is pretty good tbh considering everything

Woe molten metal and iron upon ye

Chpt 8 + 9 under cut:

Chpt 8:

•lots of lovely poems in this chapter

•a paragraph recap of the past 7 chapters

•wonder what Feast of the Ullambana Bowl is? (the notes say it’s a mass for the dead and is also know as the Ghost festival, practiced by Taoists and Buddhists)

•”the Chan mind shines bright like a thousand rivers’ moon; true nature’s pure and great as an unclouded sky.”

Lovely poem, and I’m beginning to realize this book is very heavily focused on the Chan school, which I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on sooner? White-Robed Guan Yin is a Chan specific form, usually depicted in their bamboo grove

•Tathagata reveals his 3 baskets of scripture after everyone is done presenting their poems, feels almost like he suggested the celebration to announce these

•Each basket corresponds to scriptures of Heaven, Earth, and the Damned- a total of 15,144 FUCKING SCROLLS

•oooo Guanyin poem!! “ a golden body filled with wisdom, fringes of dangling pearls and jade, …dark hair piled smartly in a coiled-dragon bun. With brows of new moon shape and eyes like two bright stars, her jadelike face beams natural joy. …Her orchid heart delights in green bamboos; her chaste nature loves the wisteria. The living Guanyin from the Cave of Tidal Sound.”

•5 Talismans: Embroidered Cassock that will protect him from falling back into the Wheel of Transmigration, a 9 ring priestly staff that will protect him from poison or harm, 3 tightening fillets- the Golden, the Constructive, and the Prohibitive Spell.

•Guanyin thinks this will take about 2 to 3 years💀 hooooo boy….

•FLOWING SAND RIVER!!! MY 2ND FAV BOY!!!

•Green and Black complexion, Gleaming eyes like the lights beneath a stove, forked mouth with teeth like knives and swords, and disheveled red hair

•like that Wujing is using a priest staff he def took from one of the monks he ate lol

•Wujing fighting Moksa for his life only to drop everything to apologize and talk to Guanyin LMAO

•MOKSA PICKS HIM UP BY THE COLLAR AKFKAKDJDJ

•ah, so Wujing didn’t reincarnate, he was changed, STABBED OVER 100 TIMES EVERY 7 DAYS AND FORCED TO COMMIT CANNABILSM SO HE DOESNT STARVE AS PUNISHMENT- THATS JUST LOVELY😭

•I like the interpretation that he could have been trying to signal a coup by breaking the crystal cup

•Guanyin hearing about Wujing’s string of skulls: it’s a surprise tool that will help us later

•BAJIE TIME

•this idiot bro “HOW DARE YOU TRY TO GET FLOWER PETALS IN MY EYES!!” “IDIOT THAT WAS GUANYIN” “…Guanyin is here??” “LOOK UP”

•Wuneng is reincarnated, he got beat to death in Heaven for hitting on Chang’e LMAOOOOO GET REKT

•ah yes, casually mentions killing his pig family and then his life of eating humans. Lovely.

•AO LIE TIME

•I committed a little accidental arson, please bail me out

•Damn, he got a really short intro

•interesting that Guanyin id’s the Peach Banquet as Wukongs fall from grace. I would def agree with this- eating the peaches like he did was extremely reckless and the beginning of the end imo

•”who tf is talking shit up there”

•No one has ever visited Wukong, I’m guessing the Guards were horrible company

•I like how both Guanyin and Sanzang try to give Wukong a religious name- Guanyin is very happy to hear he has the Wu- prefix as well lol

•arrived in Chang’an, let the hunt begin

Chpt 9:

•Chang’an bb, all blooming flowers surrounded by 8 rivers (DAMN, that’s a lot of water)

•Guangrui got first place in the examination, good for him UwU

•SURPRISE WIFE

•”gave the girl to Guangrui as his bride” UM I THINK SHES THE ONE WHO GRABBED HIM LMAO

•Guangrui has some fated beef with these two random boatmen, Liu Hong and Li Biao- states that he was destined in a previous incarnation to be enemies with them, is this a result of bad karma?

•NOOOOOO MY GUY GUANGRUI

•Liu Hong reminds me of Liu’er Mi-*gunshot*

•since they’re at the bottom of the Hong river, which Dragon King is this?

•Golden Carp coming in clutch, nice

•LADY YIN IS SO METAL LETS GO “she hated the bandit so bitterly that she wished she could devour his flesh and sleep on his skin” DO IT GURL, KILL HIM

•damn, too bad she’s pregnant with Sanzang….dw Girl I know you would kick his ass otherwise…

•there goes his toe…

•get named River Float idiot

•damn bro chill, that wasn’t very monk-like of you

•homie got called an orphan and cried JAKDJSJFJ I FEEL BAD

•she didn’t even check the toe I THOUGHT SHE DID- WHAT WAS THE POINT LMAO

•nvmnd

•I guess licking the eyes is better than spitting on them…sigh…

•GODDAMN THEY RIPPED LIU HONG AND LI BAIO APART….good for them, deserved in fact

•Lady Yin committing suicide even after she was reunited with her husband makes sense, as there was a trend where wives whose husbands died or they were assaulted, killed themselves. This was show loyalty to their husbands and add weight to their claim of SA- Lady Yin’s husband coming back does not change the fact that everyone knows she was forcefully married :((

(I use the term ‘trend’ only as a way to describe the rise and fall in wife suicides tied to either a husbands death or as a response to SA)

[berrysquared]

Fishy

[bryverros]

pretty sure both photos are from dallas’s ig (the first one definitely is, don’t remember where the second one’s from)

[mariposiel]

Here’s some more LMK meme drawings because apparently, I have no self control LMAO

[yourslimeybuddy]

don’t ask me what i’ve been doing this is all i can give you

[0yorixu]

quick redraw instead of studying for exams :D

[error0mindunretrievable-blog]

I'll be real an unexpected broken phone incident occurred and I'm low on funds to feed my bad habits shit in the dark but any penny helps hahaha

[redconverseismypersonality]

True love wasn't when I cried to Night Shift. True love was the queer ships I randomly stumbled upon on a Tuesday morning.

[fujunfuren]

FRANKLY SPEAKING (2024)

[blhtgobsessed]

working my first day at a new place tomorrow morning but here i am at 2AM reading top gun fanfics

[retributory]

gx is so crazy how do you explain to someone with a surface-level understanding of what yugioh is that the series after dm features a hermaphroditic dragon-demon card spirit fusing their soul with the main character, who also has apparently been continually reincarnating for 100s of years with the card spirit's primary goal being to protect him, and when they embrace to fuse he says they shall never part again because they will forever and always from that point on be one jointed soul and body, and also he commits a borderline genocide against the card spirit race (???) and straight up kills some of his friends (they get better), and also there's a character who got his leg broken during an archeological dig and they replaced the broken bone with a dinosaur bone (???) and now he's like part dino and has fucking dino dna (?????????) and they send him to space as his dinosona to destroy a satellite that is about to destroy the earth (????????????), and also one of the teachers in the school (seto kaiba's duel school for dueling) is a homunculus and when he dies his soul (???) gets eaten by his cat and for the rest of the series he is living (?) inside of the cat's body, and also on top of all that theres a cool rival character as expected of a show targeted towards young boys who looks cool but in actuality he's lame as hell like he canonically stinks like shit cause he doesn't wash his clothes and he joins a cult and they get him out of the cult by reminding him that his real personality is being a rancid little stinky smelly bastard loser and no one likes him and he spends the entire series getting completely dunked on and also his main archetype is these things:

and then you have to concede that at the end of the day it is still an anime for a children's card game designed to sell the cards so if you ever try to explain the impact this had on your developing mind at 7 years old you'll sound sick

[slightlyhopefulromantic]

i dont know that ive ever noticed that kasimir wears a green sweater before coloring this in

[moonlightperseus]

it BETTER move kipperlily from an A+ to a failing grade once it gets out she’s killed TWO of her own party members

[wyvspike]

guys, the magnus archives is a podcast-

[kindnessoverperfection]

ADHD really does put everything at equal levels of importance, huh? Like I'll have an email I need to write that'll take maybe 10 minutes, and getting that done will alleviate 6 months of stress. Then I'll notice a sock on the floor I need to put away. Then I'll get the strong conviction that it's up to me to cure cancer. And my brain will tell me that I need to do all of them at once, start and finish them all in the time span of 0 seconds, and my executive dysfunction will throw up its hands and do none of the above.

[wren-of-the-woods]

Netflix: Here's an elaborate new story, full of interesting plot, special effects, and lots of characters for you to enjoy :)

Me, every time without fail: