#but Wukong gets yelled at and hated by the characters and fandom for doing FAR LESS HARM

[redysetdare]

You guys don't understand I cannot watch s4 of lmk because if I have to sit through the story acting like Macaque is all fine and dandy and redeemed while it and the fandom actively demonizes wukong i will fucking lose it.

[sketching-shark]

Free my man zhu bajie. He doesn’t deserve lmk fandom maltreatment (this doesn’t include zhu da chu. I can make another post about him but this is specifically for zhu bajie from the hit classic:journey to the west.

I dont vibe w the switched up the lmk fandom has to zhu bajie bc of s4. Like oh yall hated bc “he was lazy and make mess” but one good interaction w tang and now fandom is like “tang new bf!!” The audacity to reduce him like that

Being a zhu bajie stan is rough out here. Most dont gets him right in the western fandom esp the lmk fandom.

If you’re going to argue with me about Zhu Bajie aka Zhu Wuneng aka marshal Tianpeng of the heavenly reeds’ character, you better have actual sounds reason and evidence or else im discounting your arguments. Do not make baseless assumptions and make it a whole reason why this character suck. Dont be like this.

Be better. Zhu bajie did not work hard to be renounced like this. Be a zhu bajie fan. BE LIKE ZHU BAJIE. HE KNOWS WHAT ITS LIKE TO BE OVERWORKED AND WANTING BREAKS. The journey would be too serious and short if it weren’t for everyone unapologetic for being him: zhu bajie.

Give this man his flowers.

Monkie Kid spoilers & complaining below so usual drill don't like don't read

Huh tbh anon I wasn't actually aware of the Monkie Kid fandom saying anything particularly bad about Zhu Bajie mainly because he seemed to be one of those characters that's mostly ignored on account of being A) almost entirely absent in the cartoon itself and B) all but confirmed dead asfgerrwf. Also in all honestly it actually can be pretty easy to develop a negative opinion about the og pilgrims when you're dealing with simplified portrayals of who they are and why they act the way they do; as is it takes them +1400 pages to reach enlightenment in the og classic, and a LOT of that is dedicated to exploring different sides of them and presenting their backstories, and given that Monkie Kid's episodes are like 10 minutes each and largely concerned with other characters well that's just not something it's had time or interest in showing, even with short references to Zhu Bajie working hard to become a better person. That said, I do have some memory of people writing about about Zhu Bajie being bad on account of the times he convinced Tang Sanzang that Sun Wukong was in the wrong and got the monkey a session of headband torture times which so far Monkie Kid hasn't shown but only hinted at happening, buuuuuuut then again given the extent to which Flying Bark has made the Monkey King a destructive bumbling clown even back during his journey & warlord days chances seem good that he actually was in the wrong for whatever thing he did that got him a brain squeeze even if the headband was a vicious overreaction, & given the amount of fanart out there of lego show SWK getting punched and yelled at for justified reasons I've stumbled across while not even looking I have a feeling a good chunk of the fandom implicitly agrees (X_X). But yeah, full agree anon that shit's rough out there in the western jttw-adjacent fandom for the og pilgrims :(

[bittersweetmelodie]

cycle

Fandom: RWBY Pairing: Blake Belladonna/Sun Wukong, past Blake Belladonna/Adam Taurus Summary: Because she’s too good at running away, and they’re too good at being left behind; a Blake character study of sorts. Warnings: The first part touches on the relationship between Blake and Adam, so warning for violence, I guess? 

Ao3

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and places belong to Rooster Teeth

A/N: asdfjkl, I was supposed to post this last week and I!!! I’m so bad with deadlines, omg. I think I sold my soul to finish this, guys. I actually wanted to add more, but I’m so tired right now. 

“Adam, stop!” she yells as she brings Gambol Shroud up to block him. But his attack is so powerful that she is forced to dig her heels into the ground to stop herself from being blown away. It seems like their relationship has always been like that – him constantly pushing and pushing and pushing, and her digging her heels uselessly into the ground and trying not to be blown away by the sheer force of him. And she hates it.

He doesn’t give her a chance to recover from the blow before he is bearing down on her again, his sword pushing hard against her own. “How do you expect to win a war fighting like that, sweetheart?” In one swift movement, he knocks her off her feet and flips his chokutō, slamming the hilt into her stomach with so much force that it sends her flying.

She lands roughly, her face hitting the mud, the rain pouring down relentlessly around her. She struggles to breathe through the blood dripping from her nose, and the metallic taste in her mouth as she pushes herself to her hands and knees. She brings a hand to her nose and stares at the blood on her fingers, her head spinning. Blood dribbles down her chin and she watches dazedly as red splatters the ground, mixing with the mud, before being washed away by the rain.

“Get up, my darling” he orders, his voice calm, as he levels his sword at her. “We aren’t done yet.”

She knows she can’t win, because if he really wanted to, he could easily slice through her katana with his blade. Their battles always end the same way, with her bleeding and broken on the ground, and him standing above her. But it’s like she wants to prove that she can do it, prove that she’s strong enough, and she tries to push herself to her feet, spots swimming in her vision. Pain surges through her and she blacks out, only for a minute, but it’s long enough for her to stagger and fall back to the ground. 

When her vision clears, she finds herself staring at Adam’s mask, and she can’t tell if he’s concerned for her well-being, or if he’s satisfied with how beat up she is, and that scares her.

He pulls her into his arms, and the gentleness of the action is such a huge contrast to the violence of their fight that she nearly startles out of his arms. “I’m sorry. Did I push you too far?”

It’s not the first time he’s asked her that question; it isn’t the first time he’s pushed her to the point of aura depletion during a fight, and she’s sure it won’t be the last. Her answer is always the same. “No,” she whispers. 

She screws her eyes shut and hisses in pain when he brushes his hand against the bruise on her stomach. She clings to him and wonders when things had changed, when it went from him telling her ‘I’ll always protect you’ to her wondering if he would protect her from himself.

Because most of the scars and bruises on her body are from him. It had been gradual – first, it was just a backhanded slap that left a mark that lasted for a couple minutes, then it was a punch a cross her jaw that left a bruise that lasted for a few days, then it was a slash across her arm that left a scar that’s still there today. He doesn’t wait for the bruises and scars to go away before new ones take their place. She hadn’t noticed then, because it had always been in the context of a spar, but she can see it now in the scars on her arms, her back, her torso. She can see it in the blood she coughs out days after their fights are over and done.  

She lets him press a kiss against her lips, and if he’s a little rougher than he usually is, she doesn’t say anything. He pulls her to him, his nails digging painfully into her back, and bites her lip hard enough to draw blood.

She kisses him back, and there’s a sense of urgent desperation, because she’s trying so hard to remember why she fell in love with him. She’s trying to hold on to the last strands of what they used to be – what he used to be – but it feels like trying to hold sand, and he’s slipping right through her fingers.

She stands on the edge of the train car, golden eyes boring into the face of his mask.

She’s conflicted, because this is Adam. Adam, who took care of her when her parents left, and she refused to go with them. Adam, who told her, once upon a time, that he would always love and protect her, who held her as she cried after her first kill. Adam, who told her she was everything he ever wanted and that they would make the world a better place together.

This is Adam, who wouldn’t hesitate to throw her against a wall, or slam the hilt of his chokutō against her, despite knowing that she has almost no Aura left. Adam, who took out his anger on her when a mission didn’t go as he planned. Adam, who pushed and pushed until she couldn’t push back anymore. Adam, who would pull her into his arms after a rough fight, and whisper comforting words in her ear. Words that made her feel like maybe the person she fell in love with is still in there somewhere.

But he changes. She knows it in the bruises that line her body, and the scars hidden beneath her clothes. She knows it in the way he doesn’t hesitate to attack, hurt, kill innocent people, all to make a statement. She knows it in the way he holds her, rough and aggressive and painfully tight.

She changes too. She knows it in the way guilt pools in her stomach and eats away at her conscience, even as she justifies his actions to herself. She knows it in the way his kisses start tasting bitter and wrong on her tongue. She knows it in the way he doesn’t let her take his mask off the way he used to, like he’s trying to hide who – what – he’s become, and she doesn’t think she’ll recognize the person underneath anymore.

She’s tired of watching him kill innocent people, tired of lying to herself, of justifying his actions and of pretending that nothing is wrong. She can’t stand this endless, pointless cycle of pain – they fight, she bleeds and hurts and cries, they kiss and make up, and it starts all over again. He’s not the person she fell in love with, and the White Fang isn’t an organization of peace. Not anymore.

So she reaches up and draws Gambol Shroud, her hand tightening around its hilt. “Goodbye,” she says with a note of finality in her voice. She brings her weapon down, separating the two train compartments. And she feels like she’s severing herself from Adam, from the White Fang, cutting all emotional ties. But that’s a lie. She knows that he’s been too big of a part of her life for her to be able to completely separate herself from that, and there’s a sinking feeling in her chest that tells her she hasn’t seen the last of him yet.

She watches him drift further and further away until he finally disappears. There’s a bittersweet taste in her mouth, and a hole in her chest, because she’s glad – so, so glad – that she escaped, but the White Fang was her entire life. And in spite of everything, she still feels guilty for leaving Adam (her mentor, her partner, her lover), for leaving Ilia, for leaving her family. But she hasn’t felt this free in a very long time, and she thinks she can probably live with the guilt.

The first couple weeks are the hardest. She is so used to having Adam and Ilia at her side, and suddenly they aren’t there anymore. She didn’t realize how much she’s come to rely on Adam during fights, and defending herself against Grimm is a lot more difficult when it’s just her. And she’s so full of negative emotions – with fear, and loneliness, and doubt – that she seems to be constantly surrounded by Grimm.

She learns to defend herself because her life depends on it. An ursa teaches her to never turn her back to the enemy, because Adam is not there to watch her back anymore. A boarbatusk and a nevermore teach her to be aware of her surroundings at all times, because Adam is not at her side, and there is nobody to defend her but herself.

She doesn’t really know what to do with herself. She’s been a part of the White Fang for as long as she can remember, and it’s all she’s ever known. She can’t go home; the guilt weighs too heavily on her, and she can’t face her parents yet, not after the angry words she threw at them in a fit of rage, not after all the things she’s done.

She applies for Beacon Academy, because Huntsmen and Huntresses are noble, brave and selfless, and she has to do something to undo some of the violence that she had a hand in creating.

There’s nowhere she can go where people won’t judge her for the ears on top of her head, so she dons a bow and wears it like a shield, hiding who she is and what she’s done, and hopes she’s making the right choice.

Learning to work with a new partner is a struggle. Adam has been her only partner ever since he taught her how to fight, and she isn’t as in sync with Yang. She and Adam have fought together for so long that they can read each other like a book, and fight like they’re a single entity. No words are ever needed; she can look at him, and know exactly what he’s going to do next. He’ll give her a nod, and she’ll know what he wants her to do. But everything about Yang is new and different, and she doesn’t know if she can trust her to have her back.

Learning to fight as a team is even harder, and learning to trust them is harder yet. She doesn’t sleep for her first few nights at Beacon – how can she, when she’s surrounded by people she barely knows, and there’s nobody to keep a lookout? It takes her a week and a half to be comfortable enough around them to get a full nights’ rest. The first time Yang casually throws an arm across her shoulders to point something out to her, she draws her weapon and very nearly takes off her arm.

But as the days turn into weeks, and the weeks into months, she learns and grows and heals, until fighting with the rest of Team RWBY starts to become like second nature, and they start to become something of a family to her. She starts to take down some of her walls; she stops looking for something in the shadows that isn’t there; she stops jumping at every small sound. She even lets Yang pull her into a group hug with very little resistance.

But there will always be some walls that she’ll never take down. There are parts of her that she will never willingly let her teammates – her friends – see.

She meets a boy with sunshine in his hair and gold in his heart, who shines brighter than anybody she’s ever known. And she thinks his name – Sun – is befitting, because he radiates warmth and happiness.

She learns about him in bits and pieces over tea and coffee at the quaint little teashop off the docks of Vale; he’s like an open book with nothing to hide. She never has to ask, but he tells her anyways.

She learns that his team is the first real family that he’s ever really had, and even though they’re crazy, he loves them, and would do anything to make sure that they’re safe. She learns that Sage is their team mom, that Neptune is afraid of water, that Scarlet is an annoying idiot.

She learns that his favourite colour is blue, like the ocean on a sunny day. She looks at him, and swears she can see the world reflected in his eyes, and she thinks her favourite colour might be blue too.

She learns that, unlike her, he’s an early riser; he likes to wake up before sunrise and watch the sun come up, because he likes watching the world light up. She thinks it’s fitting, because that’s what he does – he makes the world a brighter place. She remembers Adam telling her once that he likes watching the sun set, because it’s like the world is being cloaked in shadows. And she thinks maybe that’s fitting too.

She knows that he cares for her in a way that’s different than the way he cares for Neptune, or Scarlet, or Sage – he wears his heart on his sleeve, and looks at her with stars in his eyes and treats her with a gentleness that shouldn’t exist in a person who has gone through as much hardship as he has.

She tries to keep her walls up for fear of corrupting him, but he can take them down so much faster than she can put them back up again. So she tells him stories too, not her whole history, but she shares bits and pieces.

She tells him about her parents, how her father is one of the bravest people she knows, and how her mother is one of the sweetest, but she doesn’t tell him about how they left the White Fang, or how she called them cowards (she’s sure he won’t judge her for it, but she’s not sure if she’s ready for him to know that much).

She tells him about how her team, while not her first, has slowly become a family to her. She tells him how Ruby is the baby, even if she is the leader, how Yang would do anything to protect them, how Weiss is strong and independent, despite how she was raised.

But she doesn’t think she’ll ever tell him how much he actually means to her, because he is everything that is pure and bright and good, and she thinks she might break him if she tries to hold him with her bloodstained hands.

She stands on the roof of a nearby building, watching helplessly as Grimm continue to destroy Beacon (her home, she vaguely registers), and she clenches her fist. She’s been standing there for the past five minutes, because she doesn’t want to go. She hadn’t expected to make friends when she applied to Beacon, but there are people here that she loves more than her own life, people she doesn’t want to leave – Ruby, Weiss, Yang. Sun. She feels her heart clenching at the thought of Sun, but it only cements her decision to leave. Adam’s words still echo in her head, and the image of Yang’s severed arm is still fresh in her mind. She can’t put any of them in that kind of danger.

She crouches, ready to make another jump, but she falters when she hears somebody calling out to her. She didn’t think anybody had seen her leave.

“Blake!” Her name echoes and reverberates through the quiet of the night.

She would know that voice anywhere, could pick it out in a crowd of thousands of others, and right now, she thinks it might be the only voice capable of making her stay. She turns, and their eyes meet, blue and gold colliding for just a moment, but that’s all it takes for her to pause. Because, even from 50 feet away, she can see the desperation on his face as he tries to reach her.

He lifts an arm to reach for her, and he opens his mouth, his lips forming her name, and his stance is all too familiar to her. It’s that moment on the train all over again – she’s running, leaving behind everything that she knows, and the one person who might have an inkling of a chance of persuading her to change her mind is trying to get to her. But Sun isn’t wearing a mask, and his face is honest and open, and somehow, that makes it all worse. Because it’s a reminder that this time, she isn’t choosing to run – she’s being forced to leave to keep her loved ones safe.

She forces herself to tear her eyes away from his, because she’s afraid that if she watches him a second longer, she’s going to lose all her willpower, and give in to her desire to talk to him. Turning away from Sun is one of the hardest things she’s ever done, but she can’t give him the chance to catch up, because he might be the only person who would be able to convince her to stay. He has too much power over her, and she’ll melt in his hands. She would probably give him anything he wants – he only has to ask – and she can’t take that risk.

With a heavy heart, she takes a deep breath and jumps off the roof, his desperate plea following behind her. She can hear him scrambling to follow her as she disappears into the Emerald Forest, but she’s always been too good at running away, and he’s too good at being left behind.

This time, she doesn’t say goodbye.

Sun crashes back into her life when she least expects it – on a boat, thousands of miles from shore, in the middle of a Grimm fight – and she’s not sure why she’s surprised to see him – he would probably follow her to the ends of the earth to make sure she’s safe (and she loves him for it, but she wishes he wouldn’t).

The relief comes first, washing over her in waves. Sun is alive. He was fine when she last saw him, but with Adam’s threat lingering, a million and one things could have happened to him in the time between her running away, and now. So she is relieved to see, with her own eyes, that he is unharmed.

Then it’s fear, because he’s here, and that means he’s not safe. He’s never going to be safe if he’s with her. Because this boy – this boy who spreads warmth and happiness wherever he goes, who can light up an entire room with just his smile – would die to save a girl who isn’t worth saving. She can already see his unconscious body in the back of her mind, and it fills her with cold dread. She can’t let that happen.

Then it’s anger, because she doesn’t know how else to handle the fear. Her words are sharp, and meant to hurt; she’ll do anything – absolutely anything – to keep him away from her, even if it means he will hate her for it. Having him hate her is better than having to see him get hurt because of her. But of course her anger doesn’t work – he always did have the uncanny ability to see through her rough exterior.

It isn’t until much later, when the Grimm has been defeated, and the passengers reassured, that she feels the warmth spreading through her. The hollow feeling of loneliness has been eating at her for the past couple weeks since she left Vale. She didn’t realize that between her team, Sun, and his team, she hasn’t truly been alone for a long time, and now that she is, the silence that surrounds her is deafeningly loud. It’s nice to have somebody to talk to again, and Sun has always made her feel warm and safe and protected.

“Well, I’m coming with you.” He says the sentence like it should be the most obvious route for him to take – to follow her, and protect her – and she doesn’t understand what he sees in her that would be worth risking his life for.

She opens her mouth so say something – to say you can’t come, it’s not safe, or to tell him off, to say something that will make him hate her – but he’s looking at her with eyes the colour of the ocean, and she swallows her words. She was right; he has too much power over her – he makes her weak, and she can’t say no.

She’d been right to be scared, because now he’s bleeding out in front of her, his life fading, his breathing shallow, and his blood flowing from his wound like a river, staining her hands and sleeves a red so deep that she thinks she will never quite get rid of it.

She tears through the night with Sun in her arms, leaving a bloody trail behind her. With each passing second, with each drop of blood that hits the ground, the panic and fear in her throat builds, and she feels like she’s suffocating. By the time she reaches her house, his face is ashen, and she can barely hear his breathing. Please, she thinks, please, please let him be okay.

“Mom! Dad!” she means for voice to come out much louder, but there isn’t enough air in her lungs, and she can barely manage more than a strangled gasp. She stumbles over the front steps and falls to her knees, desperately clutching Sun to her chest.  

Fortunately, her parents heard her crashing through the front door, and they come running. Her father takes one look at the boy dying in her arms and takes him from her shaking hands to lay him on the couch. He removes Sun’s bloodied shirt to get a better look at the wound.

Kali hands her Sun’s shirt (Sun’s blood-soaked shirt) and moves to obscure her view of Sun’s unconscious body. “Your father and I will take care of Sun’s wound. Why don’t you clean his shirt? If we don’t wash it now, it’ll be impossible to get out later.”

She numbly takes the shirt with frozen fingers and walks over to the kitchen sink as if she’s in a trance. She turns on the water and fills the kitchen sink without really thinking about what she’s doing, and submerges the shirt. But the tears blur her vision, and all she can see is the redness of his blood seeping into the water.  

She sobs quietly to herself, her shoulders trembling violently, as she tries desperately to rub the bloodstain out of his shirt, but no matter how hard she scrubs, she can’t seem to get rid of the deep, deep red. She drops the shirt into the bloodstained water and sinks to the ground. She stares at her shaky hands, the blood water dripping down from her hands to her arms, and she wants to laugh at the irony of it, because now she has Sun’s blood on her hands, both figuratively and literally.  

She doesn’t know how long she sits on the kitchen floor with tears running down her cheeks before her mother comes into the kitchen to get her, a tired smile on her face.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says. She kneels down next to Blake and gathers her into his arms. “He’s going to be fine.”

“I – I did that to him,” she whispers, stumbling over her words. “I did that.”

“No, sweetheart, no.” Her mother says, shushing her. “This is not your fault. You weren’t the one who stabbed him.”

But I might as well have, she thinks. She sobs into her mother’s shoulder as her mother combs her hand through her hair and whispers comforting words into her ear.

Sun wakes a few days later in the early afternoon, and her heart nearly leaps out of her chest, because he’s alive. She knows he’s alive, but hearing his voice somehow makes it more real.  

He wakes with a lecture about how she’s being stupid and selfish by pushing her friends out, and what is basically a promise to protect her, regardless of what might happen to him.

She’s glad that her mother falls through the door when she does, because if she hadn’t, she might have done something stupid; she might have leaned over and kissed Sun, she might have told him she loves him. And doing that would be dangerous. That’s one more person Adam can use against her; it’s one more reason for Sun to throw himself in front of her.

He wakes to the news that there is a war brewing, and Adam is standing right in the middle of it. This is a crossroads for her, and she has a choice to make.

She can keep running, just as she’s doing now. She has every reason to stay away. Because Adam’s words still haunt her nights, and the image of Sun’s lifeless body might be permanently burned into her mind. Every fibre of her being is screaming at her to keep him away. She can’t risk losing him. Not again.

She glances at Sun, and is surprised to see the fiercely determined look on his face. Haven, she remembers, is where he attended school, and if his team was his first real family, then Haven might have been his first real home.

So she can keep running. Or she can go to Mistral and fight against the White Fang. Because this war is so much bigger than her history with the White Fang, her history with Adam. There are so many people at risk, people who might die if she doesn’t do something. After all, isn’t this what she’s been training for?

She stands, her hands clenched into fists, and all eyes are on her. She’s done running. She’s done letting her fears control her, done letting Adam’s words dictate her every move. She can’t keep running from her past and her mistakes; it’s finally time she does something to fix some of what is wrong with the world. And she’ll start with the White Fang.

“No,” she says, her voice hard. “We’re not going to destroy the White Fang. We’re going to take it back.”

This time, she doesn’t run, because she feels like she can take on the world with him at her side.

She wakes up to sunlight filtering in through her window, and Sun’s feather-light touch on her bare back, tracing lines and patterns, like her back is a canvas, and he’s drawing a picture. She hums contently as she lets her face drop back onto her pillow, basking in the warm glow of the early morning sunlight.

“Where did you get this scar?” he asks quietly, running a finger gently along a jagged line on the small of her back. He does this a lot – asks about her scars so they can string together the story of her life. But she has so many that there are days when she thinks there will never be enough time for her to tell him about all of them.

She mumbles something into the pillow before pushing herself up onto her elbows and twisting around to see what he’s talking about. “Ursa attack,” she mumbles, her voice still hoarse and grainy from sleep. “It was stupid. I turned my back to it for just a second, and it got me. It was right after I left the White Fang, and I guess I was too used to having Adam there to watch my back. It was just different, fighting by myself, without a partner.”

He presses a soft kiss to the scar and moves on. “What about this one?” He traces a scar that runs from her right shoulder, across her back, all the way down to her left hip.

She stills, because she knows exactly which scar it is, and where it came from. She knows what the scar looks like without having to look in a mirror: a thin, clean line that looks like it was made by the edge of a sharp object.

“Blake?” he asks, his voice concerned, when she doesn’t say anything.

“It was from Adam’s sword,” she finally says. She turns to face him, and his eyes are hard, his jaw clenched. She swallows the lump in her throat. It’s an old scar now, probably almost the colour of her skin and mostly faded, but it won’t ever really disappear. Kind of like Adam, who is nothing but a faded and distant memory, but he’ll always be there.

She closes her eyes and takes a shaky breath. “We had a mission that went wrong in every possible way, and he was –,” she takes a deep breath and gathers the sheets in her hands, clutching them tightly. “He was really angry. It was one of our worse fights, if I could even call it that.” She laughs hollowly, the memory causing her chest to tighten. “It was mostly him attacking, and me trying to defend myself.”  

His hand stills and he goes quiet, the rage rolling off him in waves. “I hate that he did this to you,” he mutters as he brushes his hand along her back. “I hate that –”

“I know, Sun,” she murmurs, shushing him. She hates them too, hates what they stand for, hates what Adam did to her, but they are a part of her, no matter how much she wishes they aren’t.

He presses a soft kiss to her right shoulder blade, where the scar starts, and trails butterfly kisses down her back, along the entire scar, and the action is so tender that it makes her throat close up. “You are more than the scars on your back, or what he did to you. You’re beautiful, Blake” he says, lips brushing against her skin. “Even with the scars. Or maybe because of the scars – they’re proof that you were stronger than him, proof of all the things that you overcame to become the person that you are today.” He leans up and presses his lips against hers. “And I love every part of who you are.”

She smiles against his lips and leans into the kiss. “I love you too.”

Sun makes her feel beautiful again. He traces her scars and kisses her bruises, and treats them like a map. And, in a way, she supposes they are a map, because each scar has a story, and they come together to paint the picture of her life. He leaves bruises too, draws his own map on her skin, not the kind that you get in a fight, but the kind you get along with whispered sweet nothings and entangled limbs, between sweat-soaked sheets, and she thinks maybe having a map on her skin might not be so bad.

A/N: Rotations started and my licensing exams are at the end of May, so I won’t be actively writing until then. Sorry guys!

[sketching-shark]

Why do people defend six eared macaque lol I don’t think he actually deserves to have a redemption arc after everything he’s done in monkie kid and the og novel lol.

WATCH OUT BECAUSE I'M ABOUT TO BE MEAN TO A MONKEY ON MAIN but hhhhhh I'm guessing it's partially a result of the current culture-wide obsession with/insistence on redemption arcs no matter what & the way that redemption arcs are increasingly used as a stepping stone to get two characters who hate each other into a romance.

In this particular case I also think Monkie Kid so far only showing Macaque's side of the story in regards to his relationship with Sun Wukong & its depiction of the monkey king as a deeply flawed individual whose actions could easily be interpreted as him just being an unthinking fumbling dumbass who never grew out of his unthinking fumbling dumbass ways also lends itself to fandom-ish tendency to brush aside the bad actions of the blorbo d'jour so that their eventual inclusion into team good guy seems less jarring. Like if Macaque sucks but SWK actually sucks even more then in context Macaque has the moral high ground & as such he can't justifiably be called out for anything by SWK or can't be called out by any other character unless they're also going after the monkey king. And indeed in Monkie Kid we've had SWK get yelled at by many character for being stupid & destructive & I don't remember that ever happening with Macaque outside of Qi Xiaotian's "What's wrong with you?!" after the shadow simian had just uhhhh kidnapped & mind-controlled his loved ones before forcing them to beat up Qi Xiaotian while he watched and laughed (X_X).

I've also seen a number of people argue that Monkie Kid and Journey to the West should be considered two completely different stories and fair enough to some extent (like yea SWK probably shouldn't have the past of smashing tons of humans and yaoguai into "meat patties" in a children's cartoon lol). Buuuuuuut I do suspect that a lot of this stance is about justifying a rewrite so that Macaque could be an innocent monkey before getting involved with SWK rather than dealing with the violence he deliberately chose to inflict on the Mt. Huaguoshan monkeys & SWK himself in the og classic. In addition, I do think that, especially for a western audience, a lot of people simply DON'T KNOW about what the Six Eared Macaque did in Journey to the West. Like I've said before that one of my current favorite parts of being in the online JTTW fandom is seeing people go from "oh people are exaggerating about the monkey king's trauma" to "oh dang actually the monkey really did go through it" after they've read some of Wu Cheng'en's work, but my general sense is that at present many people know about these characters through Monkie Kid more than through Journey to the West, and as such aren't aware of the stuff LEMH pulls or even that his entire thing was making himself SWK's doppelganger in an attempt to murder-replace the monkey king and get all the glory for completing the journey for himself. Any translation of a work often means that a lot of context will be lost, and I think that can be particularly true when you're only aware of/been exposed to a child cartoon manifestation of a character, especially if you don't have access to at least a good translation of the work they originally came from.

ANYWAY those are my general impressions about the matter, and I still maintain that lego show Macaque would be best served by either staying a shifty dude or having a "redemption without forgiveness" narrative arc in which he does decide to become a better person but does so without being forgiven by team monkie for everything he put them through. If anything such an arc might help him start developing into his own character rather than forever remaining the jerk violently obsessed with getting one over the monkey king.

[sketching-shark]

LMK fandom: Oh, what do we do about this guy who has nothing but hurt Xiaotian, tried to replace Sun Wukong and his crew, hurt Tripitaka and ordered servants to cannibalize a monkey? Oh I know! We’ll turn him into our little meow meow~ he’s so innocent and Sun Wukong is obviously the villain!

What doesn’t help is this idea is perpetuated by multiple fan fic writers and artists for some reason. Especially some aus they make that turn SWK into a bastard for the sake of the story rather than considering cultural context and thinking they should be respectful.

And almost everyone lets them get away with it just because the art or fanfic is good and they get so popular that no one can point what is actually wrong without feeling like they’re going to get attacked.

I'm starting to feel like my blog is the one anons go to specifically to vent their frustrations about the Six Eared Macaque in his lego monkey show form & the associated fandom lmao. But I guess this makes sense, as I’ve had fun quasi-dragging him before & will in fact use this anon submission as an opportunity to have my own, to put it academically, bitch fest about not just this fandom's favorite protagonist-traumatizing meow meow, but about the way villains are often treated in not just fanon, but increasingly in canon works as well. But same policy as with the last anon; I'll post my opinions below the cut, and as fandoms love to say, don’t like don't read if you don't want to see me dunking on the six eared simian & common fandom tendencies towards villains.

Oh man I would say where would you even begin with this but anon you’ve pretty much started yourself with my main gripe with a lot of ways that the Six-Eared Macaque is portrayed in fandom; there seems to be this unspoken agreement that his acts of violence towards Sun Wukong, Qi Xioatian, and Qi Xioatian’s loved ones are either to be framed as somewhat or totally justified, to be immediately forgiven/excused, or to simply & completely be ignored. Like friends maybe this is just me not seeing the proper posts but while the fandom is inundated with art and fanfics of Macaque as a generally decent individual & a true member of team good guy, I have yet to see one person address the fact that this monkey literally kidnapped & mind-controlled Xiaotian’s best friend and father figures & forced them to brutalize Xiaotian while ol’ Six Ear looked on and laughed (X_X). Like this kind of fandom villain treatment is definitely not something that’s solely at work for Monkie Kid, but it is kind of nutty how fandoms will swing between yelling that people should be allowed to like villains without even mild critique, and then will just flat-out not address the villainous behavior, and will even bend over backwards to frame even characters who committed genocide as just poor innocent widdle victims who need a hug. At its worst, I’ve even seen tons of people in a fandom get really angry at other people who don’t like a villain, and will even start accusing those people of hating real-life mentally disabled or abused individuals all because they don’t like the fandom’s favorite literal war criminal. The Monkie Kid fandom is FAR more chill & better than a lot of other fandoms I’ve come across in that regard, but that is an exceedingly low bar, & the tendency to woobify certain kinds of villains-- as with Macaque and the extreme emphasis on his bad boy/sad boy thing--is very much at work.  

 I’ve also talked before about a kind of monoculturalization of certain character interpretations and story beats in fandoms, and one of the more popular ones that seems to be applied to Macaque a lot is the “hero actually bad, villain actually good” cliche, as observable from the general fandom assumption that Mr. Six-Ears he wasn’t even slightly lying or remembering things through a rose-tinted or skewed lens when he gave his version of his and Sun Wukong’s past. Like at this point it seems the possibility that people WILL NOT even consider is that Sun Wukong never did & still doesn't care that much about the Six Eared Macaque (in JTTW they weren’t sworn brothers & in Monkie Kid the only thing the monkey king really said to Macaque before attacking him was a pretty contemptuous "Aren't you ever going to get sick of living under my shadow?," & responds to his "beloved friend" getting blown up with "You did good, bud" to Qi Xiaotian, who did the exploding), or that their original fight may in fact have mostly been instigated by Macaque. After all, to repeat what this anon summarized & what I've said before about their original JTTW context (& in an example of the things that do feel like it's often lost in translation) is that the Six Ear Macaque was a villain not just because he beat up the Tang Monk, but because he wanted to take over Sun Wukong's entire life and identity so he could have all that glory, prestige, and power for himself. To quote the macaque himself from the Anthony C. Yu translation, "I struck the T'ang monk and I took the luggage...precisely because I want to go to the West all by myself to ask Buddha for the scriptures. When I deliver them to the Land of the East, it will be my success and no one else's. Those people of the South Jambudvipa Continent will honor me then as their patriarch and my fame will last for all posterity." And in order to do this, the Six Eared Macaque had apparently made Sun Wukong's "little ones," his monkey family, his captives through either trickery or force, and gotten a number of them to take on the appearance of Tang Sanzang and the other pilgrims. It's also made clear that in very direct contrast to Sun Wukong, he doesn't care about these monkeys beyond how they might serve him. In fact, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey posing as him the Six Eared Macaque not only all but immediately replaces him with another, but also "told his little ones to have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines." So this monkey is not only willing to risk the lives of a lot of other monkeys for his own personal benefit, but is also a literal cannibal. And yes yes, I know a lot of people have argued that Monkie Kid shouldn't be considered a direct sequel to JTTW & that's fair enough (for example, Sun Wukong probably shouldn't be smashing anyone into a meat patty in a children's cartoon lol). And of course, it needs to be noted that there are a buttload of really out there & really cursed pieces of media based on JTTW & that were created in China. Yet the above description is the oft-ignored in the west original facet of the Six Eared Macaque's character. And it is this selfishness, entitlement, and treatment of other individuals as tools for his own self-serving ends  that is, from where I’m standing, still very much present in Monkie Kid. Like besides repeatedly going out of his way to physically and psychologically traumatize Xioatian, with the last episode Macaque seemed to be going right back to his manipulative ways. I’ve seen people frame their last conversation as Macaque softening to Xioatian a little bit, but personally that read a lot more like that common tactic among abusers where even after they’ve hurt you they’ll dangle something you want or need over your head (in Macaque’s case, the promise of desperately needed training and information about a serious looming threat), with the implication that you’ll only get it if you do what they want you to, such as, in this case, Xioatian going back to Macaque as his student even after having been so terribly hurt by this monkey, which would give Macaque power over Xiaotian and probably Sun Wukong as a result. And it is this violence and manipulation that it seems the fandom at large has tacitly decided shouldn’t even be addressed, instead leaning more towards a (and this is an exaggeration) “Six-Eared Macaque my poor meow meow Sun Wukong has always been bad & has always been wrong about literally everything” reading. 

And while it is the case that I am not Chinese and feel that as such it would be best left to someone who actually comes from that background to provide more context into how common interpretations of the Six Eared Macaque from China may clash really badly with the stuff the western fandom creates, it also must be noted that, as much as we all want to have fun in fandom & in spite of all the out-there versions of JTTW from China, we westerners should recognize that there is a very long and very ugly history of western countries stripping other cultures’ important religious and literary works for parts & mashing them into their own thing while implying or even insisting that what they present provides a true understanding of the original piece. And while I trust most individuals in regards to Monkie Kid are able to step back and think “this is a lego cartoon and not a set guide for how I should understand JTTW” (especially given the insistence that JTTW and Monkie Kid should be considered there own separate works) there does nevertheless seem to be something of a tendency to take the conclusions people come to, for example, about Sun Wukong’s characteristic in his lego form & then assume that’s just reflective to Sun Wukong as a totality. I imagine a good portion of this is due to people not reading JTTW & especially to not having easy access to solid information or answers about JTTW’s many different facets (like geez awhile ago I was trying to get a clear answer on what is considered the most accurate translation of the names of Sun Wukong’s six sworn brothers & got like 5 different responses lmao), but that tendency to take a western fandom interpretation & run with it instead of doing any background research or questioning said interpretation is still very much at play. As such, & as made prominent in the way people have been interpreting the dynamic between Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque in the lego monkey show, tbh it does seem kind of shitty for western creators & audience to sometimes go really out of their way to ignore all of this original cultural & narrative context for the sake of Angst (TM) in Macaque's favor, demonizing Sun Wukong, and shipping the monkey king with his evil twin (X_X).

And speaking of which, even beyond the potential inherent creepiness & revulsion that can be inspired by this specific ship given common interpretations of the og classic's original meaning (again, it's my understanding, given both summaries of translated Chinese academic texts I've been kindly provided with, my own reading of the Anthony C. Yu translation of JTTW, & vents from a number of Chinese people I've seen on this site, that the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China as having originated from Sun Wukong himself as a living embodiment of his worst traits, hence why only Buddha can tell the difference between them & why the monkey king is much more slow to violence after he kills the macaque), I'd argue that in the face of all the uwu poor widdle meow meow portrayals lego show Macaque is, especially if you include JTTW's events, still in the role of “Sun Wukong but worse” as he is very much a violent & selfish creep. Like he was basically running around in JTTW wearing a Sun Wukong fursuit, but there he had the sole reason of wanting to replace Sun Wukong wholesale so he could have all the good things in the monkey king's life without actually having to work as hard for them. But if you combine that with Macaque now claiming that he used to be best friend with Sun Wukong in his pre-journey days (something that's made funny from a JTTW context given that that status actually belongs to the Demon Bull King lol), his original violence has now blown into this centuries long and really unhealthy obsession with the monkey king. Like he's apparently gone from wanting to literally be Sun Wukong to being so obsessed with getting revenge on Sun Wukong that he's got basically nothing else going on in his life. Like he's only appeared in two episodes but...does he have any friends? Any family? A career or even a hobby that DOESN'T center the monkey king? Anything at all outside of his "get revenge on and/or kill Sun Wukong/use his successor as my personal punching bag” thing? Like dude! That is extremely creepy and extremely bad for everyone all around! As I’ve said before, this seeming refusal to see beyond the past or to do something that doesn’t involve Sun Wukong in some capacity is a trait that makes Macaque an interesting and somewhat tragic villain--he even seems to be working as Sun Wukong’s reflection in a mirror darkly, with lego show Sun Wukong pretty clearly not being able to heal from his own past which is hinted to be defined by one loss after another, and with Monkie Kid even kind of having these two characters somewhat follow their JTTW characterizations in that in the latter half of the journey Sun Wukong often gets sad & starts crying in the face of what seems insurmountable odds (& Monkie Kid Sun Wukong does seem to be hiding some serious depression behind a cheerful facade), whereas the Six-Eared Macaque retains a worse version of Sun Wukong’s pre-journey characteristic of getting pissed and lashing out if things don’t go his way--but it’s also what would make any current friendship or romantic relationship between these monkeys horrific. Although to be fair even the fandom seems to recognize this in an unconscious way, in that a lot of the art & fanfic seems to swing erratically between them kissing & screaming at each other in yet another example of bog-standard fandom adulation of romanticized toxic relationships lol.  

At the end of the day, of course, this is nothing new. You'll find versions of this dynamic across a ton of fandoms and now even canonical work. And as such, I can only look at this kind of popularized relationship dynamic with a kind of resigned weariness whenever it pops up, & my frustrated question with the popularity of this kind of pairing is the exact same one that I have for a multitude of blatantly toxic villain/hero ships, given common fandom discourse & the tendency to either ignore or justify the villain's actions & demonize the hero: if you're THAT convinced that everything is the hero's fault, if you believe THAT much that the hero is the one in the wrong for the villain's pain and their subsequent actions, then why are you so set on them not only becoming a romantic pair, but framing this get-together as a good thing? Like I know we contain multitudes but that's waaay too many contradictions for me to wrap my head around. And it definitely doesn’t help that one branch of underlying reasoning behind this kind of pairing seems to be the ever-present “you break it, you fix it” mentality, where the assumption is that if you’re in a failing, abusive, and/or generally toxic relationship (platonically or romantically), if you put in enough time and effort & attempts to compromise, you’ll be able to restore/have the relationship you dreamed of, even with someone who hurt you really badly. And this assumption isn’t limited to fandom: I’d even argue that it’s everywhere in the culture, hence why a lot of people feel like they “failed” if they have to get a divorce or make the choice to leave an unhealthy friendship. Personally, I feel like people could really benefit from more stories about how it is not only the case that the people you hurt don’t owe you their forgiveness & you can still become a better and happier person without the one you hurt in your life, & that while it can be really hard it can also be a good thing to leave a relationship, even if it’s one that once meant a lot to you. 

  But in all honestly, from my own perspective this kind of pairing is starting to read far less like enemies to lovers and far more like a horrible fantasy where you can pull whatever shit you want, even on the people you "love," & never be held accountable for your terrible behavior or even have to consider that maybe you were in the wrong. It's another facet that makes me larf every time I see people insist that fandom is an inherently "transformative" or "progressive" form of storytelling like friends you are literally just taking status quo toxic monogamy & rebranding it as somehow beneficial & romantic (X_X).

But as to anon’s last frustration, it is hard to know what is the appropriate response with this kind of thing...like for my own part I’m keeping my frustrations to my blog & now increasingly to posts that you would have to click on the “read more” button to see what I have to say, but I totally get the hesitation to give even a mild critique to big names in a fandom. Like I've now seen it happen repeatedly where someone who has a big name in a fandom will make something that's kind of shitty for one reason or another, someone will message them with some version of "hey, that's kind of shitty, you shouldn't do that," and the typical response is either to blatantly ignore the issue completely, or more popularly to make a giant crying circus that seems deliberately geared towards stoking emotions on both sides of the, for example, fiction does/doesn't affect reality issue so that something that didn't even have to be that big a deal gets blown out of all proportion, with the big name often framing what often started out as a very mild critique into a long crying jag about how the initial response to their kind of shitty thing was so mean/cruel and they're just a poor innocent & that YOU'RE the true racist/sexist/bigot etc. if you don't agree with their opinion. It must of course be noted that there have also been numerous instances of people taking it too far the other way & sending not just big names but smaller creators literal deaths threats over stuff like innocuous ships which like holy hell bells people that’s a horrible thing to do. But for the big names at least, the end result of all this fighting is usually that once the dust has settled they have more attention/fame/money/power in the fandom than before, and with anyone who might have a problem with their stuff feeling afraid to voice their opinion lest they be swarmed by that person's fans. In that way fandom does often seem to increasingly be geared towards presenting an “official” fandom perspective about various facets of a piece of media instead of allowing for a multitude of interpretations, and with criticism, no matter its shape or form or how genuinely warranted it may be, being hounded out of existence. I feel like a lot of this could be made less bad if there wasn’t this constant assumption & even drive to think that a different interpretation of or criticism of your favorite work of fiction or your fanwork isn’t a direct claim that you are a thoroughly loathsome individual (& maybe also if people cultivated an enjoyment of learning things about important works from a culture outside their own, even if what you learn clashes with your own initial understandings), but I guess we’ll see if that ever happens. 

So these are my general thinks about the Six Eared Macaque’s current fandom meow meow status & some of my bigger gripes with fandom tendencies as a whole. I stand by my idea that the most interesting & beneficial route for Macaque moving forward would be a kind of “redemption without forgiveness from the ones you hurt” arc--as I think was done pretty excellently with the character Grace in Infinity Train--and if for no other reason than gosh dern this monkey really needs to cultivate some sort of identity beyond his “Sun Wukong but worse” persona.