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ninja-knox-ur-sox-off · 7 months

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No one:

Absolutely no one:

Me: i think pre-journey Sun Wukong is an alcoholic

Hello yes, as previously stated, on my first re-read of jttw, this time reading it out-loud to my brothers and I gotta say i’m noticing WAY more this round. It’s slow going but we just read chapter 5 and I have not stopped thinking about it. (This is completely unedited and written in one sitting after cleaning for like four hours so forgive me for my grammar mistakes or any misremembered stuff, I’m swirling thoughts around in my head like orange juice in a wine glass.)

Chapter five is when he gains the title of Great Sage Equalling Heaven, gets the job of peach watcher, eats said peaches, crashing the banquet, drinking the wine, eating the pills, heading back to FFM, heaven surrounding Flower Fruit Mountain and basically laying siege and the subsequent battle. All the Yaoguai generals get captured and the only ones who are left are The Great Sage and his monkeys. As I’m reading this out loud to my brothers, I notice there’s a tone shift. To be honest I thought I was imaging it but MAN this is where Monkey King changes. Like, up to this point, he’s been pretty chill in all honesty. He’s thrown his weight around, he’s been a little unhinged, but there’s been a childlike wonder about him and just a genuineness in everything he does. He’s loved learning, he's loved people, he’s loved making friends. Even at the start of the chapter, he just loves hanging out with the celestial deities that they don’t think he should be socializing with, hence why they give him a job.

And the rest of the chapter he’s just drinking. He just keeps going and going and laughing and laughing. And he shares the wine with his monkeys and his demon brethren and when heaven comes knocking and his monkeys are panicked he waves them away. The mountain is surrounded? We’re being threatened? It’s fine, it’s fine, have another cup! Have another cup! He keeps drinking until they break his door down, and like a drunkard he stumbles to his feet yelling about how rude that is and goes and beats them easily. Because he’s so immortal now he can drink as much as he wants and get drunk enough on immortal wine that he should be dead but all it does is make him more and more immortal and more and more drunk. He’s different at this point. The tone shift is the most prominent when he comes back and his monkeys tell him all the yaoguai sworn brethren and their armies and people have been captured. They cry and then they laugh because he is unharmed as ever and they’ve lost everyone else. And from once caring about the community and those under his rule, suddenly the Great Sage’s reply is that it’s fine because no monkeys were taken. Let’s eat and sleep. And drink. He has no concept of when or how to stop. He drinks wine.

Then he gets his hand on the immortal wine. And, listen. He’s already gotten the peaches by this point. He’s a little off already, but he still has that just… lack of object permanence that he always has when he’s in heaven, but he still seems pretty Monkey King. Up until the wine. Then things start to shift. He gets his hands on the immortal wine and he gorges himself on it. He’s already taken the best of the best of the peaches and left the rest, likely because they can’t compare. And now he’s gotten the best of the best wine. The best of the immortal, celestial, heavenly wine. You cannot get better. And he just keeps drinking it. He drinks until he’s so drunk he gets lost on his way back to the peach orchard. He’s so drunk he stumbles into Lao Tsu’s palace and just… eats immortal pills like fried beans. Just pops three gourds of it into his mouth one by one until they’re gone. He was so drunk that once he starts to sober up, he panics a little. He panics and he leaves. He runs back home because he knows he’ll be in trouble. And when he gets back home, a couple centuries have passed and they throw a party like always to welcome him back, having been dutifully waiting for him the whole time. And he tastes the wine and it’s disgusting to him. His monkeys tell him he’s tasted heavenly food and wine, nothing on the mountain can compare to that now. And without even a second thought, he goes right back to the place he just fled from, just barely sobered up, and he steals a bunch of the wine that he didn’t get to and brings it back.

I wonder how much of chapter 5 he spends drunk out of his mind. Just barely sober enough to process his mountain is at war again. He’s so immortal by this point, it’s no wonder he’s so confident he’ll win. He probably feels as immortal as a thousand suns and moons. A couple thousand demons are nothing in the face of that. It’s fine. He was already loud and confident in his power by this point. I still can’t believe the Jade Emperor just put a monkey right next to the most delicious peaches ever and didn’t expect him to eat any of them. Like, genuinely bro wdym you didn't see this coming. That’s like giving a kid their favorite cookies and saying to look after them but don’t eat any of them without giving them an end time frame of when the watching ends or telling them if they get to eat any or not. I have such a rudimentary understanding of jttw at times, I’m not a super deep thinker, I do think about stuff, but other people’s takes are definitely gonna be more complex that mine. Reading chapter five and remembering when he was nabbed and escorted to the afterlife, I can’t help but look at this monkey and think maybe he would have done a few things differently if he was thinking clearly. Because I don’t think he was entirely there during chapter 5. I think he wasn’t focused or thinking about anything beyond beating the guy in front of him and getting back to another cup of heaven. It feels like Sun Wukong is missing. He’s still there, he’s powerful beyond comprehension, but it feels like he’s missing. His return to his monkeys after a battle doesn’t really feel triumphant. I have such a visual of him descending in his armor and looking like a god, untouched and pristine. But he remains untouched, even by their reports of their allies being captured. He feels untouchable.

Most of this is just me rambling, but clearly Sun Wukong had an alcohol problem before chapter five when he pretty much drank himself to an early grave then fought his way back to life. With Immortal wine though, there’s none of that need to end, there’s no hangover, just bliss. And boy does it show. I’m not sure if this was intended in the writing but OUGH I haven’t stopped thinking about the change that comes over Sun Wukong when he gets his hand on the wine. When he’s in heaven that’s all that matters. All that matters is that he has the best of the best. His monkeys are always there and praising him if he ever wants to come back. He doesn't even bother to think about how his absence affects them. He cares that he wasn’t invited to a party. He cares about his monkeys, we know this. But by gosh if he doesn’t feel like an untouchable deity in chapter 5. No wonder this dude felt like he could take on Buddha. I don’t think there’s a minute during the Havoc in Heaven where Sun Wukong is sober. He’s drunk on the agony of immortality. It’s in his bones and not even a furnace used for that very thing can burn it out of him. Sun Wukong is a hundred thousand suns and moons.

But Buddha is everything.

And that’s how he’s beaten.

I’d say a couple hundred years is enough for some of that immortal wine to burn through that monkey’s system. It’s putting him in a, albeit very harsh, time-out. It makes a lot of things make some more sense when I’m thinking about it from the view of an addict. The circlet is about self control. Once he has it, once he’s more at peace, it vanishes on its own because he doesn’t need it anymore. He doesn't need that 30 days sober chip taped onto his forehead to remind him every time he sees his reflection in a bottle. Sun Wukong is very smart, but he doesn’t really bother with self-control. It gets in the way of having fun. He drank wine and didn’t bother with any inhibitions or self-restraint. He did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted however he wanted with whoever he wanted. Why control himself or his cravings or killings or anything of the sort? Drink more wine! Laugh! Have fun! Meet people! Come get drunk with him! Why bother with decorum or etiquette or anything of the sort? He’s fine with how things are until people start to look down on him, and then he feels the need to prove they can’t do that.

Okay, I’m rambling now and thinking about the potential of modern retellings with this kind of approach so I think I’ll end it here for now. I’m just thinking very hard about alcoholic Sun Wukong and am going slightly insane over it. Yeah, other people have probably pointed this out before, it’s probably so common, it’s just my first time really thinking about it and I find it so heckin neat. WHAT A GREAT BOOK YOU GUYS. Alright, enough of that for now, I’ve gotta get ready for bed and do prep stuff for tomorrow so, have a goodnight you guys, Knox out o7

#knox rambles #Sun Wukong | Monkey King #journey to the west #jttw #alcoholic swk #me on my absolute nonesense #im sleepy now #and thinking of modern aus #i have cleaning to do and sleep to get goodnight #ngl i feel like im reading it for the first time this round its really neat #okay peace out

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