#i think only after Wukong comes back from the continent they would start using actual cloth for clothes | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sketching-shark · 3 years ago

Note

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.

#lmk macaque #monkie kid macaque #6 eared macaque #monkie kid #lmk sun wukong #qi xiaotian #lmk monkey king #sun wukong #monkey king #journey to the west #jttw #fandom criticism #lmk

115 notes · View notes

brightlikewukong-archive · 8 years ago

Text

Really LONG CHARACTER SURVEY. RULES. repost, don’t reblog. TAGGED. No one TAGGING. Whoever wanna do it

BASICS.

FULL NAME : Sun Wukong NICKNAME : Sunshine AGE : 18 BIRTHDAY : April 14th ETHNIC GROUP : Vacuoan NATIONALITY : Vacuoan LANGUAGE / S* : Common, dialect of Vacuoan commonly spoke in the main city SEXUAL ORIENTATION : Bisexual ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : Demiromantic RELATIONSHIP STATUS : Depends on the verse. CLASS : Lower middle HOME TOWN / AREA : Vacuo CURRENT HOME : Mistral PROFESSION : Huntsman in-training

PHYSICAL.

HAIR : Short, choppy, blonde hair EYES : Grey NOSE : FACE : LIPS : Thin COMPLEXION : Tanned BLEMISHES : SCARS : A few here and there mainly on his arms TATTOOS : N/A HEIGHT : 6′ WEIGHT : 186 lbs. BUILD : Muscular FEATURES : A blonde furred simian tail roughly 38 inches in length ALLERGIES : Slight pollen allergy USUAL HAIR STYLE : Swept up in the back, top and sides swept forward USUAL FACE LOOK : Relaxed interest. USUAL CLOTHING : White button up, left unbuttoned except in the most dire of circumstances, and jeans with the legs rolled. Wraps from his knees to a couple inches from his ankles. Black and red gauntlets. A round golden pendant with a monkey engraved on it on a black cord. Black and yellow sneakers.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S : Going blind / deaf. Abandonment. Restriction of freedom. ASPIRATION / S : To become a Huntsman To help his parents. POSITIVE TRAITS : Curious, quick wit, caring, flexible, honest NEGATIVE TRAITS : Reckless, impulsive, tactless, stubborn, shameless MBTI : ENFP ZODIAC : Aries TEMPEREMENT : Sanguine SOUL TYPE / S : Hunter ANIMALS : Dog VICE HABIT / S :

FAITH : Agnostic. GHOSTS ? : Yes. AFTERLIFE ? : Yes. REINCARNATION ? : Not really. ALIENS ? : Yes and no. POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : ECONOMIC PREFERENCE : SOCIOPOLITICAL POSITION : EDUCATION LEVEL : High school

FAMILY.

FATHER : Tián Wukong MOTHER : Mei-Xing Wukong SIBLINGS : Yueliang Wukong EXTENDED FAMILY : Maternal aunt, uncle, and cousin in Mistral; paternal uncle in Vacuo NAME MEANING / S : The Wukong family has names relating to the sky and celestial bodies. HISTORICAL CONNECTION ? : While the rest of his family doesn’t have names tying to historical figures, Sun himself is a reference to Sun Wukong from Journey to the West.

FAVORITES.

BOOK : Superhero comics MOVIE : Pacific Rim 5 SONGS :

Caravan Palace - Lone Digger

Studio Killers - Ode To The Bouncer

Adam Lambert- For Your Entertainment

AronChupa - Little Swing

Parov Stelar - Catgroove

DEITY : N/A HOLIDAY : Something akin to Halloween MONTH : May SEASON : Summer PLACE : Tie between home in Vacuo, and the student lounge at Haven WEATHER : Sunny days with only a slight cloud overhang, and a breeze that makes the heat a little more bearable. SOUND : Idle chatter and music SCENT / S : That minty eucalyptis smell TASTE / S : Drupes FEEL / S : Being pressed close against someone ANIMAL / S : Cats and dogs NUMBER : 3 COLORS : Green, blue

EXTRA.

TALENTS : Stealing, free running, making a pest of himself when he feels like it, carrying / picking things up with his tail, dancing BAD AT : Cooking anything involving cheese, understanding subtlety / social norms, TURN ��ONS : TURN OFFS : HOBBIES : Tabletop, free running, clubbing TROPES : Adorkable, Animal Sterotypes, The Leader, Lovable Rogue AESTHETIC TAGS : QUOTES :

FC INFO.

MAIN FC / S : ALT FC / S : OLDER FC / S : YOUNGER FC / S : VOICE CLAIM / S : GENDERBENT FC / S :

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 : if you could write your character your way in their own movie , what would it be called , what style would it be filmed in , and what would it be about ? A1 : Journey to the West. In all seriousness, I honestly don’t know? I could be predictable and say an action adventure, but tbh no clue.

Q2 : what would their soundtrack / score sound like ? A2 : A mixture of calming measures that lead into something more upbeat and pumped.

Q3 : why did you start writing this character ? A3 : Originally to roleplay with a friend of mine, and eventually with my boyfriend when he made a Scarlet. Sun is my Type when it comes to characters I roleplay, so it was kind of an automatic, no thought reaction when I told my friend I’d make a Sun blog.

Q4 : what first attracted you to this character ? A4 : ..... his tail. No judging. I loved the fact that he had a tail and his fighting style involving a staff and gunchucks. It instantly drew me to him, and his personality and interactions with other characters sealed the deal.

Q5 : describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse. A5 : He gets barely any time to show his more serious side. We’ve seen a bit of it, like when he asked Blake if she had told her friends her story about her White Fang involvement, and in vol 3 when he called after Ruby as she left the airship, and in trying to talk Ruby and Weiss out of going back into the school grounds to find Jaune and Pyrrha. I wish he had more time to actually show that instead of being tossed to the side as comic relief.

(*spoilers* We’ve also seen it when he yells at Blake to grab the scroll from Ilya, showing he’s attentive and smart enough to know when one priority takes precedence over another. ie going after the scroll that Ilya was protecting versus trying to capture her )

Q6 : what do you have in common with your muse ? A6 : Going by strictly canon information, we both live away from our families. And by that I mean a damned good distance away that makes it incredibly difficult to see them. We’re both easy going jokers, preferring humor and lightning a tense situation. Easy to get along with, willing to help friends through all sorts of situations, and also willing to speak up if we think an idea is dumb as shit (looking at u Weiss and Ruby and ur ‘going back into the helltrap of a school for Jaune and Pyrrha). Of course, I throw some of my own experiences into how I write Sun to make things more manageable for me, and also give him more depth.

Q7 : how does your muse feel about you ? A7 : I can’t say for sure, but I think that we’d get along pretty well.

Q8 : what characters does your muse have interesting interactions with ? A8 : Honestly? I’d say anyone. Sun’s very honest around people he knows and trusts, which can lead to some interesting conversations and interactions when he says the first thing that comes to mind. I’ve discussed some pretty interesting interactions with Sage , and he’s had a few interesting times with Scarlet, Flynt, Neptune, Neon, and Ciel.

Q9 : what gives you inspiration to write your muse ? A9 : Usually my own good mood, music, or chatting about various scenarios with friends.

Q10 : how long did this take you to complete ? A10 : D a y s and I wish I was joking

*For simplicity sake, using unspecific languages. Common referring to a common language spoken throughout the world, and you will take my headcanon that the Kingdoms / continents all have their own language or dialect from my cold, dead hands.

Also not comfortable answering turn on/offs.

#musings #fucking took me long enough #im rly bad at answering some of these rip my life

4 notes · View notes