#Another instance of:

[itsabouttimex2]

Do you think that Tang Sanzang was abusive? I see it in the fandom a lot and it’s pretty contentious

The reason people think that LMK!Sanzang is abusive is because the circlet makes no sense outside the context of Sun Wukong being a borderline supervillain, and using a heavenly restraining bolt (That’s putting it kindly, of course. There’s been comparisons to shock collars, which are unflattering but not entirely unfair. Still, let’s be fair to the intention and not simply the execution of the circlet- it was to keep Wukong from murdering people/running away from the journey.) on someone who has already been punished for his wrongdoings for five full centuries is excessive as best, viciously petty at worst.

Outside of the context of Sun Wukong being a borderline supervillain, I’ll repeat.

I’m going to level right here- I think that in the book, the circlet was entirely justified, and that calling Sanzang an abuser for that is silly. But LMK is not the book, and I think it’s also silly to try and use JTTW-specific writing when people are talking about LMK. What Book!Sun Wukong is not what Show!Sun Wukong did, because the two of them are different characters in different stories. Not only that, but the tone and genre of those stories are wildly different, and I’m so tired of people being willfully ignorant to the fact that LMK is a divergent adaptation.

To start: Sun Wukong did nothing to earn the circlet.

Not in the form of “Sun Wukong has never done anything wrong ever in his life!” but really more so in the form of “Does anything in that picture up above seem wrong to you?”

And if there is something that seems off… good job! You’ve noticed a critical change from book to show!

Among the LMK fandom there’s this misconception that Wukong got the circlet because he assaulted Heaven and tried to take it over, but… no. His punishment for that was being locked under Five Phases Mountain, and then when he was released under the premise of guiding Sanzang, that was it. Punishment over. So, what did Wukong do to “earn” his collaring?

One- Smash a non-threatening tiger’s head into pulp and skin it right in front of Sanzang, then string the fur around himself.

Two- round up six people who are currently not a threat to him and beat them all to death in front of his new master.

Three- admit to his master’s face that he honestly doesn’t even remember how many people he’s killed through his life, without a speck of shame or remorse.

Four: Throw a fit and run away to sulk. I’m not fucking with you- it takes being lectured of all ONE time before he quits and gives up on self-betterment, and has to be talked into rejoining by a draconic king.

In Journey To The West, the Monkey King, well- he’s not that great of a person. In fact, he’s pretty damn bad. And he’s quite blunt about it, too. Old Sun really likes to talk in great detail about how many people he’s killed, eaten, and in general just been an absolute menace to. JTTW!Sun Wukong saw that he needed to convince his master that the girl (actually the White Bone Spirit) he killed was a demon in disguise and decided that the best way to do it was… to level out how many times he had murdered people by transforming into enticing forms.

(Source for content and translation.)

Not a good look for you, buddy.

Under the context of Sun Wukong being able, willing, and quick to murder indiscriminately, oftentimes without explanation or even giving a second thought to alternative options, the circlet as a safeguard makes sense, and Sanzang seems rational to turn to using it because not only is there not really anything else he can do, but because we get to see the Monkey King acting like someone who needs a torture circlet to keep him in check, we give him more slack for doing it.

That’s important!

If (Char A) is going to string (Char B) up with a divine shock collar but still be someone we sympathize and agree with, then (Char A) needs to have a very good reason to do it.

JTTW!Sun Wukong has that reason.

He kills people. He kills people for fun, for food, for pissing him off, for causing him trouble.

But LMK!Sun Wukong is not a killer, he’s not a cannibal, and he’s certainly not the threat that his book counterpart ever was.

When this doesn’t earn you a collar?

When butchering and serving up mortals to a horde of hungry demons more than a mile long doesn’t get you the collar, but leading a bloodless siege on Heaven does?

And speaking of blood!

Here is only one shot of the literal mountains of death that Sha Wujing built! He murdered hundreds, maybe thousands of people! And he was still going for more!

When this doesn’t get you a collar? When murder and butchery and the eating of mortals doesn’t get you a collar? When mountains of death don’t get you a collar?

But this does?

Well. That makes Heaven seem a little less reasonable.

Now, this isn’t me saying Wukong should’ve been let off the hook for trying to take over an entire realm, nor be given an immediate pass for ransacking the heavens! He caused trouble, stole things, and made a mess of the whole place! And then he led a siege against it!

No, this is me saying that the writing has accidentally predisposed the audience to think of the Celestial Realm as sort of. Well. Biased to themselves. And that could work, if the show was willing to explore it!

Is a realm’s first duty to itself, regardless of how bad things are down below? It is just incredibly hard to maintain protection of a mortal realm when it’s so much wider and more expansive than their own? Do they question if deities should even be expected to involve themselves in the lives of mortals? Do they think it’s wrong to interfere in mortal affairs? Is there a vague non-interference clause to prevent both good and evil from tipping the scales? Do they literally just not have time to help more than by the bare minimum because their heavenly duties keep them busy?

That sort of exploration could easily lean to people sympathizing with them; and thus by extension the very monk who carries out their will by journeying with his disciples, but they don’t.

In general the Celestial Realm is entirely predisposed to their own (mostly) idyllic happenings, and every time we go there it’s populated with generic armored jobbers or copy-pasted background NPCs… when it’s not gapingly empty and bare.

When the Celestial Realm legitimately is incompetent, faceless, empty, and weak? It accidentally lends sympathy to the Azure Lion’s cause by kind of… proving him right?

So not only does the Brotherhood’s act of rebellion seem less bad by manner of nearly emptying the Celestial Realm of competent/sympathetic figures, it also seems almost justified. All we ever see these guys do is stuff their faces, lose their fights, stand around doing nothing, or fuck around in heavenly leisure while the realm below is inundated with demonic threats that they never interfere to help with!

If it hadn’t been for the “Actually Azure was delusional all along and also the Jade Emperor’s power isn’t made for him!!” twist then really, what exactly is so bad about someone saying “This realm has lounged in luxury long enough!” and then deciding to take it over to help the little guys who are getting eaten by the dozens?

(I mean, just take Azure and replace him with someone like MK, with the same justification and goal, and you can imagine a lot of the fanbase agreeing, right?)

(Even Nezha, much as I adore him, only gets involved when his realm is involved first, not out of the desire to protect innocent life!)

So, when you cut away almost all of the bad things that Sun Wukong has done, accidentally make the rebellion he was partaking in seem legitimately fair by making the target incompetent, strip away the methods by which Wukong establishes his character to Sanzang that justify his willingness to use a divine implement of torture, make two of his brothers worse in comparison without giving them equal methods of restraint?

Well. The intention might not have been for him to be abusive, and I think intentions are important to keep in mind!

This is clearly not meant to be a victim of abuse. Sun Wukong’s love for his master and brothers is played entirely straight. He’s supposed to be uplifted and bettered by his relationship with them. He adores and loves and misses them.

But it’s not wrong to feel iffy about the execution, either.

Because the writers did take out all the justification behind Wukong getting his circlet. They did have Sanzang snap the circlet onto Wukong before the monkey got a chance to make any mistakes, essentially stringing him from one punishment into the next without giving him a chance to see that the first punishment has changed or helped him grow. They did make his brothers far more violent and deadly than him and not address that.

And it’s not wrong to have a worse view of Tang Sanzang as a result of that! It’s not wrong to have a negative perspective of the monk when you look at his actions from an LMK perspective, because LMK!Sanzang is NOT the same as JTTW!Sanzang, and he simply does not have the same justifications behind his actions that the book version does.

I don’t think he was abusive, at least. But I also wouldn’t blame someone for having a negative view of him.

TLDR: Intentions good, execution somewhat iffy.

[elizabro]

please consider how you engage with aaron bushnell's death. you may react to it as you will, but it's crucial to remember that his death was specifically a call to action. it was not meant solely to shock but to draw attention to a vast moral hypocrisy: that to many, a soldier dying in a campaign backed by the U.S. government is noble, even if the soldier kills innocents to do so, even if the cause is morally bankrupt--but this? this is insanity. a man taking his own life, on his own terms, in an attempt to help others while hurting nobody else, is somehow less rational and more horrifying than the mass killing of civilians.

of course aaron's death was horrific. but as he said beforehand, it is realistically no more horrific than what's happening in gaza. if we can't stomach this, then why can we stomach children being bombed? thousands being starved? for all that self immolation is, it brings death in a matter of minutes. it is a fraction of the amount of pain, fear, and grief that people in gaza are experiencing. it's just that we are able to quantify it. and this tiny, quantifiable sliver of horror is still so unbelievably awful. how can anyone bear to think about anything else when this horror is happening a millionfold in palestine? this is the question aaron bushnell was asking. and he wanted you to face it, head-on, watching him burn to death.

I've been seeing people make fanart. minimalist graphics to sell on t-shirts. to commodify his death, to mythologize it not a day afterwards, is not only in poor taste but a hindrance to his message. the answer is not commodification, nor is it defeatism, nor is it rejoicing in his death. if you want to honor aaron's legacy, take action. channel your horror and your outrage into making a material change. this wasn't about him. this was about palestine. remember that it was always about palestine.

[akanemnon]

This is what peak friendship looks like

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[meltedmush]

Binghe oyster with shizun pearl inside all shiny and happy

The greatest treasure 🥺

[the-magnus-protocol]

Congrats to Gwen for getting to say the first “Fuck” of the series

[fantasydoctor]

big fan of the stupid weird alien tongue thing actually. not sorry.

(silly meme picture under the cut)

[littlegreen]

well to me what happened after the shift is that buck spends approximately 3-4 hours telling eddie about everything that happened with bobby and hotshots and athena and the motorcycle and stopping traffic while eddie makes them. soup. and it’s so late by the time buck is done talking, he’s starting to fall asleep so eddie’s like “do you want to just stay here?” and buck does. obviously. and then at like 8 in the morning the next day, while buck and eddie are debating what they should have for breakfast he gets a text from tommy asking if he saw that they landed a plane on the 110.

[jewish-microwave-laser]

i feel like we can say both "i'm glad more hostages were brought home safely" and "i wish nobody got killed in the process of bringing those people home." it's not even self contradictory, it's saying "i don't like when people get hurt" yk

[weavingwater]

The idea that children love fairy tales because fairy tales treat them seriously and do not shy away from the violence and danger the world has in store strikes me as very correct, but the fact it is generally expressed as "it is dangerous to go alone in the woods because there are wolves there"... gives me pause.

To begin with, this is just one fairy tale narrative (little red riding hood), which is thus elevated to the rank of "quintessential fairy tale" (debatable at best); secondly, this is a (deliberate?) misrepresentation of the tale's *actual* danger, which is the wolf specifically *as it lowers the child's defenses by impersonating her grandma after eating her*. It's not about the child being attacked by a wild wolf in the forest, it's about the horror of using familiar and comforting surroundings within the family sphere as a decoy (the plan is quite an elaborate one, too). And finally, this ties into my main remark, which is that in many fairy tales (a majority? I don't know), the danger children (or more generally fairy tale protagonists) face is less related to a foreign monster than the family itself: snow white, obviously, but also hansel and gretel - abandoned in the forest by their parents, twice!; rumpelstiltskin: the heroine was sold to the king by her lying, greedy father, and risks being executed by her master for most of the tale; donkey skin (self-explanatory); bluebeard (similar forced marriage situation); cinderella (and all the cruel step-mother stories in general...) - also self-explanatory...

Fairy tales tend to admit freely that families and parents can be actively harmful to children, whose perspectives the narrative centers; which is a (well-known) fact that makes everyone uncomfortable Always. So I think it's disingenuous at best and dangerous at worst to act as though the violence comes from the wolves outside and not the family inside.

[dlartistanon]

Mumu gives off little mermaid vibes, but Saria is leagues below Eric when it comes to likeability and for being thankful and actually thinks about the girl who saved his life

[forged-in-kaoss]

[teal-tealwren]

coming up for air

[behindallthings]

What do you admire about Sid?

He's an amazing person. Obviously. I think everyone says that. He's fun to be around. He's just a great guy. He's like a friend, like your friend. Whatever you like about your best friend or one of your closest friends.

[hajimedics]

tried my hand at drawing my fairly oddparents ocs in the show's art style

[infamous-if]

sorry for the delay! I underestimated how slow my writing got due to the strain but its coming 🫡

[leonardalphachurch]

kai: yeah so once at blue base we were all drinking and tucker started hitting on me but i was on my period and he always gets weird about that so i told him i would only sleep with him if he kissed church cuz i thought he wouldn’t do it or church wouldn’t agree to it. but then they did?? so i had to give him a handy. but the thing is like they were both really into it like really into it but they wouldn’t admit to it sober. so i kinda felt like it was my duty to keep making tucker make out with church every time we got drunk. cuz yknow church needed the rebound after his girlfriend exploded or whatever and tucker needed to do whatever the guy version of lez out is… does that answer the question?

Counselor: …………….. Yes, I, think we got all the information we needed. Thank you for your… enlightening insights.