#NOT THE CHARACTERIZATION WHERE HE STRAIGHT UP HATES SWK FOR NO REASON

[acoraxia]

me: i miss erlang

fandom: well hey-

me: I Miss Investiture of the Gods Erlang.

[sketching-shark]

So since you’re The Person Anons Go To To Complain About Lego Monkey Kid; I figured I’d get this out of my system while also asking for your two cents.

I don’t think the LMK crew have read JTTW. Best case scenario I think they either got some word of mouth stories and read some wiki articles.

And a lot of this comes down to their characterization of SWK and the way the world treats him.

In the book, SWK has a kingdom of monkey, but they’re YAOGUAI monkeys who are capable of speech, making an army, are enslaved several times, and were straight up referred to as his family multiple times. Meanwhile, the show just… doesn’t acknowledge his subjects? They’re at best represented as regular monkeys who wander around the island, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen SWK or MK interact with them on screen. They’re essentially background dressing.

Then you’ve got the season three episode where SWK has stage fright, which… he never really had any fear of public speaking (even to Buddha himself), and straight up gets into a massive public competition and cuts out his own entrails just to prove another guy isn’t immortal. (Even in their own series, they have confirmed SWK starred in his own movie and did voice acting for a game)

Honestly, I get the vibe that the writers care more about the archetype boxes they can fit SWK into rather then who he really is. The rest of the JTTW crew should still be alive? Well no, we need SWK to be our Hermit Mentor. We’ll just imply they’re all dead (or abandoned him for no reason). Sun Wukong has a family of monkeys? Well we can’t have that! Make them regular monkeys so he’s Truly Alone (and also ignore that he can talk to animals).

Sun Wukong is a king, and has been shown to be incredibly comfortable in his public speaking? Well we can’t have that! Because Macaque is our resident theater kid, and we need them to be Literary Parallels! Nevermind the fact Sun Wukong barely interacted with him in the book, but deeply loved Demon Bull King, and DBK has an actual reason to feel betrayed by him.

I’m not bothered by the changes like Macaque having been his old friend at one point or dead characters being alive or even the choice to not acknowledge SWK’s buddha status (in fact, I enjoy some of these), but it’s… really disheartening to see my favorite character be relegated to Lonely Mentor and Macaque’s Sun. He deserves a lot better then the show is giving him, honestly.

SADFAWEGDFGAD anon that was something I said as a jest but haha wow I guess I'm starting to get a reputation (X_X).

But ANYWAY okay folks you know the drill I sometimes find it fun to be a hater so heads up for that and remember that "don't like, don't read" goes both ways <3.

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But to get to your main gripe anon, now that you've said it I wouldn't be surprised at all if that was the case...like as it is there's already been a number of cases I'm aware of from twitter where members of the LMK crew have put their collective foot in their collective mouth & came across as pretty insulting to Chinese deities for it, & then doubled down with that whole "it's our interpretation uwu" mentality which is, to put it mildly, a kind of shitty thing to do. And in regards to the main monkey himself--and in full acknowledgement of the very blatant hints they've given that there's a lot more going on with lego show Sun Wukong then has been revealed so far, it does at times seem like they're making their version of the Monkey King more in line with the "dumbass monkey who breaks everything" western stereotype than the complex trickster figure you find in the og classic...like of course there are indications that this Sun Wukong may be the one of the more tragic Sun Wukongs out there in that he's been left after the journey with no friends, no companions, no kingdom in any real way, and everyone in the entire world who's met him in person, with a few exceptions, seems to hate his guts. And you could actually refer to Xiyouji itself for explanations on why a lot of that might be: the monkey yaoguai of Mt. Huaguoshan go through centuries of lethal trauma even before the Six Eared Macaque treated them as his personal tools while he was "Sun Wukong," which could have convinced the survivors that the real monkey king had become a wicked tyrant and thus they all ran away in fear; Sun Wukong may have ended up with a case of stage fright from the journey itself because of all the times that Tang Sanzang tortured him for speaking his mind; and Sun Wukong did enrage the entirely of heaven pre-journey before largely becoming an enemy of yaoguai during the journey itself...hell, in the og classic he even starts weeping because after he was banished from the pilgrim group he feels like he has no place he could go :(.

THAT SAID, during the events of Monkie Kid itself Sun Wukong often does come across as a doofus who's doofery gets everyone into serious trouble. Just to give a few examples: him joking around & not focusing during a high-stakes situation is the reason a 4th ring of samadhi was created which got embedded into Bai Longma & eventually into Long Xiaojiao; him lying to Qi Xiaotian & telling him he was going on "vacation" even though he was running around looking desperately for a way to stop the Lady Bone Demon is a major reason she became as powerful as she did; and his entire plan to stop the Lady Bone Demon, massive threat that she is, is presented even by him as flimsy and paper-thin, something made all the worse by the danger the monkie crew was put into in the effort to get the rings & by his refusal to share all the details of it with them until it's too late. And then of course there's the Six Eared Macaque's whole thing where he's violently obsessed with Sun Wukong because they apparently used to be the best of friends before the Monkey King got power hungry, betrayed everyone, and then killed him. So far we haven't gotten so much as a brief flashback that gives Sun Wukong's thoughts about of any of this, so you can see why even if it's not the overarching intent many people would take the message to be "Sun Wukong = sucks." And it's something you see reflected in a lot of the fanart and fanfic around Monkie Kid; practically the only person the Monkey King's ever depicted anymore as being in a good relationship with is Macaque (fandoms tend to hyperfocus on 2 dudes who despise each other but have a more friendly history), many AUs make him an irredeemable selfish asshole, and/or he's being depicted as someone who fully deserves to be yelled at & hated by everyone because of the bullshit he pulled that got everyone hurt. In many ways, LMK Sun Wukong does have numerous similarities to TLJ Luke Skywalker in the way these sequels to their stories made them fail-hermits.

Now of course it must be acknowledged that across the centuries that Sun Wukong has been a popular figure in Chinese culture's he's gone through a TON of different retellings and interpretations. The monkey king has been depicted as everything from a pious and devoted monk to a crude and lecherous yaoguai to a being that is simultaneously monkey, human, yaoguai, and buddha and who is defined above all else by the capacity for great violence, great restraint, and a powerful and active love for those he considers his family. Even so, it is kind of disappointing that even with allowing for the possibility of Monkie Kid still being able to give satisfying answers for why their Sun Wukong acts the way he does, a good part of his lego show portrayal so far has just been him acting like a careless jester with disastrous consequences and, even if he doesn't mean to, hurting one person after another to the point where his actions, even if inadvertently, even if largely against his will, played a big part in helping the Lady Bone Demon almost succeed in her attempt to destroy all of reality.

Like...how do you even try to atone for that?