#im so so sorry. about the monks but also about exposing anyone to mpreg 💀

[999-roses]

here's a... ship? trope? Thing. that I don't 100% get but find fascinating. full respect for folks out ther making art and content, and generally engaging in this... genre. trope.

【和尚的爱情】 [The Romantic Love of Monks]

Monks. The Chinese Buddhism flavor of monks, where they shave off all hair, denounce worldly possessions and family ties, and join a monastery. Specifically, these guys are committed to celibacy. Yeah on a logical level I'm like yeah, ok, this is a particular flavor of star-crossed lovers trope. But, I still, I.. it's too wacky funny to me. I.. I can't with the shiny cue-ball heads, PLEASE.

and there's. so much gorgeous art created. for this. uh genre? (Unfortunately it's typically m monk x f lead, and my limited exposure has yet to bring monk-flavored BL to my attention. I'm 100% certain it exists out there though.)

Anyway here's some popular media renditions of this, er, genre-trope. Please pray for my soul as I descend:

From Journey to the West, Tang Monk/Queen of the Kingdom of Women (西游记 - 唐僧/女儿国国王) (my rating: famous and classic, but there's something off about every rendition I've seen)

the 3rd installment of the HK Monkey King film series basically circles around shipping 唐三藏 with 女儿国国王. The Chinese movie title is 西游记：女儿国. There's some re-imagining/writing revisions from the source material, Journey to the West. The AMVs are spicy and the music is fire, and holy heck does the script/director want them to get together. The movie is corny, 孙悟空 is downright unhinged, the cg parts are too much, the pacing/tone is all over the place... a lot of this movie is weird. It's got mixed reviews but all the youtube comments love it idk.

ok but also... that second poster/playbill 💀🤣 (the text at the top is a pun on 好运来 -> 好孕来) (to explain: the mpreg is canon in the og jttw, if you drink the waters from 母亲河 you get pregnant. That concept gave me nightmares as a child.)

and here's a wonderful cover/mix by JJ Lin. The original song 女儿情 appears in 1986 Journey to the West :

the song is POV the Queen of the Kingdom of Women in full pining mode for Tang monk. And the mix-insert of 菊花台? Seamless lyric inclusion. chef's kiss. I think someone else singing an arrangement based off of JJ's made it into the 女儿国 movie mentioned earlier.

2. Green Snake/Fahai (青蛇/法海) (my rating: based)

There's the recurring retelling insisting on pairing Green Snake with the Fahai, the Buddhist monk that traps her sister White Snake in the pagoda in the traditional telling of 白蛇传. Here's a fan AMV on youtube & a fan AMV on bilibili. Both take clips are from the 1993 HK movie 青蛇. Honestly? This is the ship I endorse the most and have the least issues with (love 妖x人/妖x仙 dynamics but also in some retellings 法海 is also 妖). Regardless, the 1993 film is a masterpiece, I wholeheartedly recommend a watch (and in Canto if you can find the original audio. I don't like the mandarin dub's audio mixing).

3. Faithful to Buddha, Faithful to You (不负如来不负卿). (my rating: cursed) UMMM this one is wonky with age and time travel making it questionably problematic so uh, you're warned.

This story started off as a webnovel and later got a live action series (afaik live action isn't finished?). For some unknown reason I watched it when the first season was airing... and... Forget that whole "getting together with a sworn-to-celibacy monk" thing being taboo, now we're time traveling and meeting said monk when he's 13 to become his tutor, and a few months later in your time, you time travel again to when he's 26. (FMC doesn't have feelings for him until she meets him when he's an adult but. Girl. This is still too weird okay?)

4. 少林降魔 Vanquishing the Demon (2020) (my rating: spicy [purely based on seeing an AMV])

this movie is solidly xianxia, and it looks pretty enough I'll watch it eventually. But, waow, this AMV clip. I think it made me understand how this genre!trope fits solidly into hopeless romantic/star-crossed lovers territory.

I'm probably missing a bunch of other pieces of media there's a looot of AMVs with clips from either CG donghua or video game cinematics but UM yeah hello. I didn't know this was such a thing. I'm not explicitly out there searching for BL monks okay *old man hacking cough* but I hadn't really found any... yet. The end result of my dive is... I guess I now find monks just a little sexier now, FML