#mk95 liu kang

[mrstsung]

Ok here's a cute one for my liu kang self ship au

*i love making these lil babyz*

Liu-liu proposes 💖🥺

The chosen one....chooses <3

*Maybe now he can be left tf alone and live quietly in peace with someone!?!* maybe lao takes over finally and liu kang can fucking retire. Or at least be a master and mentor without him becoming a god to fucking do it?! Like he didn't need to do that to help ya know? Fucking nrs fucking over a perfectly good guy,for what? Plot? Money? Liu kang deserved better. And by better i mean retired from the main narrative. Let my boy get married to a sweet honey and left tf alone. And it doesn't need to be kitana,sonya,or any mk main lady. It can legit be someone not on the roster,just a kind,nice sweet ordinary(ish) person. Ffs

Anyways. Liu kang self ship au. Where liu kang settles down in his chill af apartment,has a honey boo thang and loves them,and teaches at the wushi from time to time and NOTHING BAD HAPPENED!

(Used a base)

[yourthirdparent]

when will we as a society talk about this

[laiosynth]

mk95 screencap redraw

hes silly <3

[cringefailgirlfriendjohnnycage]

The difference between movie Raiden and game Raiden is that movie would do a kick flip on your kitchen island and game wouldn't know what a skateboard even was.

The difference between movie Johnny and game Johnny is movie has a braincell and game would do a kickflip on your kitchen island.

The difference between movie Liu and game Liu is that movie would do a kickflip on your kitchen island out of spite and game would do a kickflip on your kitchen island because he thinks it's cool.

The difference between movie Sonya and game Sonya is movie Sonya would probably be able to be convinced to do a kickflip on your kitchen island and game will give you dirty looks if you tried.

The difference between movie Kitana and game Kitana is movie would criticise you for doing a kickflip on a kitchen island and game doesn't know what a skateboard is.

[yourthirdparent]

OUGH AND I COULD BE MK95 LIU KANG..... (i couldn't be because he would never be on tumblr even if it had existed in his day but STILL)

oh my god what if i made a movie liu kang sideblog

you guys i really like liu kang

[ryukang1995]

Most of you know how I ship Liu Kang with Sonya Blade, at this point.

I also mentioned in the past how it doesn't matter which version or timeline it is, whether it'd be Midway, NRS, Legends, 2021, or even 1995.

Here is a collage by me showing exactly just that.

Of course, some of you know that Cameron Diaz was the original frontrunner to play Sonya in MK95, but dropped out because she broke her wrist during martial arts training.

And that's how Bridgette Wilson was cast in the role, only to be replaced by Sandra Hess for the sequel.

While some have debated on whether or not Cameron would have worked as Sonya, I do feel she definitely could have worked with the right material and training.

With that being said, Bridgette and Sandra did fine with what they were given.

It doesn't matter who would have been playing Sonya, I still would have shipped her with Liu Kang, regardless.

I know most people prefer Liu Kang with Kitana, and Sonya with Johnny Cage.

I do like Liutana (other than the Legends version), but I am more mixed on CageBlade, mostly down to me not liking later depictions of Cage (ex.: the Legends films again). The 1995 version of CageBlade can stay though because Linden Ashby rocks.

Even so, I still like the idea of Robin Shou's Liu Kang with Sonya, whether it'd be Bridgette, Sandra or even Cameron (as it was going to be).

I definitely have done fan art and collages of Robin with all three of them in the past, and it definitely won't stop.

I truly feel that Liu Kang deserves love, whether it's from Sonya, Kitana, or even someone from another franchise (ex.: Orchid from Killer Instinct).

That's all for now.

[avi17]

The many incarnations of Liu Kang

Bonus:

(They don't let him sit with them)

[chosenone1960]

Stop calling me that

Rev asking me how I didn't realise he was transgender like the scars from his surgery are what I'm looking at here

[evaporated-milf]

mk95 as tumblr posts - x

[thunderdilf]

//ATTENTION EVERYONE

[sirens]

Johnny Cage and Liu Kang in the 1995 film are about the same clothing size. They’re eye-to-eye and have somewhat similar builds. Chosen One(tm) has no bags, Johnny has a TON of bags. Johnny wears one (1) outfit. Chosen one has SEVERAL. 

HMMMMMMMMMM

I’m saying Liu Kang is wearing Johnny Cage’s clothing is what I’m saying. It’s very homoerotic. 

[bastardsunlight]

So there’s a ton of like ???? @ Lao’s hat and his ability to project balls of light, teleport, and use the spirit of the Great Kung Lao (GKL hereafter, save like once because I think I’m funny). I’m among the curious, so I figured what the hey, why not make it up!

[[MORE]]

Aight so we know GKL was a monk who hit things good. He messed Tsung up and then lost to Goro, tragically. He didn’t use The Hat™, as far as we know, but we really haven’t got much more info on him during that tournament than the flashbacks we have in Conquest which, while delightful, only really aligns with MK95 and, tangentially, Annihilation, where our Kung Lao doesn’t exist—GKL’s ancestor in that continuity is Liu Kang—and ONLY that continuity so jot that down.

We know Kung Lao is an extremely gifted warrior. He can do all kinds of crazy supernatural garbage and no one ever questions it. We can sort of guess from there that, while his power is obviously rare, it’s not unheard-of. It’s possible GKL may have had SOME of those abilities, but who knows? What we DO see is Kung Lao being a young, skilled monk in a company of other monks in whom he takes great pride. He’s extremely dedicated to the cause of the Wu-Shi academy as a whole, the temple of Light, and of course, the White Lotus Society. As a monk, too, he would be very comfortable and familiar with spiritual things—shit like meditation and mantras and such, but also the weirder shit, like the powers some of his friends possess, Kenshi’s mind-reading garbage and his ancestral demon sword horseshit, for example. I love Kenshi I’m just givin’ him a hard time.

Is Kung Lao telekinetic? Maybe. But I think that doesn’t quite explain the pressure balls (that also glow?) he can summon and project, or the presence of his Stand, The Great Kung Lao(‘s ghost).

Kung Lao is gifted at birth with the innate talent of spiritual projection. Everyone has a spiritual “aura”, a sort of weak forcefield that surrounds them. It doesn’t stop much (unless one knows how to MAKE it become a shield) and is really kind of just part of our anatomy—it’s the intuitive thing that tells you someone is staring when you’re not looking. It’s not quite a soul, but it IS the part of us that lets us know we’re in the room with a living human being, even if they’re, say comatose, and also alerts us when their soul has departed.

Kung Lao can not only project his outward quite a long way, he can also shape and control it. As a youth, he learns these skills by trial and error, because the monks can only teach him so much—the fundamentals, that is—of spiritual control. I would say it’s a safe bet that most of the Wu-Shi instructors have a fair amount of spiritual projection and control, but not like he does. He reaches out far enough that his spiritual pressure, for lack of a better term, touches the spirit of GKL in the Realm of the Honored Dead and compels him to depart that realm and aid his ancestor. Likely, he is more than happy to assist, given how he died and Lao’s current goals/predicament. When GKL combines his spiritual reach with Kung Lao’s you have the effect of what looks like telekinesis with the hat. Kung Lao can throw it and it will return to him without stopping, or he can stick it in something and summon it. Sometimes, it even disappears, with or without him, only to reappear where he needs it. Kung Lao’s spiritual control is so strong, he can move between physical spaces through the spiritual plane (aether) that rests alongside Earthrealm (and all realms), where distance is strange and physics mean very little.  

[yourthirdparent]

his room is so funny why do you have a bike on the wall. why is half your shit crowded in that one corner like it's a college dorm. why do you have a basketball.

[sxvethelastdance]

Okay so, shoutout to @bastardsunlight​ for letting me bomb them with my infodump analysis on a particular trait of Liu Kang’s character that has stood out to me upon analysis of something he said in MK11 that caught my eye. After Liu’s fight with the Revenant Jade he says this: 

“You will not test my faith.”

This got me asking the question of what extent Liu Kang’s faith reaches when compared to someone who’s more prone to expressing doubt, friend or foe. Doesn’t matter.  Now the thing about the Mortal Kombat universe is that the gods ARE real. They have an ‘active’ relationship with the Earthrealmers through Raiden and Fujin. So the faith aspect comes less from a religious context and more from the trust and belief that accompanies having faith in someone or something to do right by you. Even characters like Quan Chi have their own twisted version of faith, trusting Shinnok to reward his loyalty and service. Liu Kang himself doesn’t expect a reward for his faith in the NRS adapation, he seems to practice his beliefs because they extend to him the comfort and explanations that lot of people who engage in this seek. Belief systems are often how people make sense of the world and how they cope with their struggles. This is how Liu Kang deals with his. Faith, or a break from it, seems to be the primary way he reasons with his surroundings in all these different versions of his character. 

More under the cut:

Disclaimer: I’m not religious/do not possess a faith myself. Take this all with a grain of salt. 

In the Netherrealm continuity version of Liu Kang’s character, we see that a good deal of what he does is characterized by his faith in Raiden and by extension: The Elder Gods. He's been a student of the Wu-Shi Academy since infancy, he doesn't carry the trauma of losing his parents and then Chan like MK95 Liu, or implied abuse like the 2021 film version of Liu Kang, has no ties to the outside world, just his community. The temple Elders and Raiden were almost 100% transparent about what he would have to face growing up, communicating an approximation of the expectations that would fulfill his responsibilities to the realm. Liu Kang grew into his duty and thus formed an attachment to it. A part of his identity's tied up in that responsibility, that quality of wanting for nothing because he represents an ideal. He is humble, calm, and faithful to his principles.  He follows Raiden’s lead throughout Mortal Kombat 9 and trusts that what they do under these conditions will give them the answers that they’re looking for. When he and Raiden go to visit the Elder Gods during the last quarter of the game, Liu Kang is faced with the Gods themselves. He has the opportunity to observe them and their priorities, to see that they aren’t here to do right by the people he has sworn to protect. The cracks continue to form in the foundations of his faith as more bodies pile up, until it all comes to a head on the rooftop as Shao Kahn begins the realm merger.  Raiden begs, “Have faith in the elder gods, have faith in me.” and Liu Kang finds that he can’t. It’s cost them too much. It’s that pivotal moment where Liu Kang breaks from his faith and chooses his own way. Ultimately, this is what costs him his life when Raiden accidentally kills him while fending off Liu Kang’s attack. 

It gets even more interesting when you compare this version of him with his Mortal Kombat (1995) counterpart. When we meet that version of Liu Kang it’s immediately obvious that he’s broken from the faith he was raised into. He recognizes Rayden’s status as the god of thunder and in the offhanded way that one would recognize say, an old religious text. Something you know about, and aren’t particularly mystified by because it’s been hammered into your skull for as long as you’ve been alive. Liu knows the stories and the value that they have to people like his grandfather, but it’s something to acknowledge and move along with. The man is burnt out, that much is clear. The movie shows us from the outset doesn’t quite believe in the Gods anymore, that perhaps something happened to make him ask questions of the community’s principles, the ones he inherited by way of cultural osmosis. At some point in his adult life, Liu Kang was confronted with the age old dilemma of ‘seeing is believing’; and when he didn’t see anything, he didn’t believe. So he left to a place where he could be somebody, anybody BUT the chosen one. Which ended up saving his life because otherwise Shang Tsung would’ve swooped in on that technicality and taken him instead of Chan. 

Now what I’m not saying here is that Liu Kang’s faith, religious or otherwise is a character flaw, or that the only reason MK95 Liu survived is that he didn’t believe anymore. No, what I am saying is that MK95 Liu was at a place with his faith where he could handle it if it things fell short of his expectations because he’d already steeled himself for it, where NRS Liu Kang was thoroughly hurt by what looked like confirmation that the foundations of everything he believed in were cracked, that his faith was misplaced. That it cost him everything. He died right on the cusp of realizing a fundamental truth. It’s one thing to die in battle because that’s what you signed up for, that’s the role you were groomed for. It’s another to die when you finally began to ask yourself ‘What AM I fighting for? Who made this decision?’. Then dying for nothing! Nothing at all! Your death wasn’t the absolute that you were told it as by the elders every day of your life either. The realm survived without you. You weren’t... Important. Nothing you did mattered. The rules don’t exist in any meaningful capacity, the elder gods don’t particularly care, you are alone. It’s no wonder his revenant is so bitter! The man set himself on fire to keep everybody warm and now is doomed to burn in the hereafter for it.

Mortal Kombat (2021)’s version of Liu Kang’s faith is a little bit more complicated in my eyes. This depiction of him is more openly faithful than the others. He essentially acts as Raiden’s assistant, wears prayer beads and covets them at difficult moments, frequently meditating. It looks like he uses his faith as a coping mechanism. There’s also another thing to consider, when we look at his past:

Kang has seen the absolute worst of the world, the nitty, gritty, and grimey. The first years of his life were spent suffering abuse as an orphan. It’s implied that he was a victim of human trafficking, which carries another set of implications entirely. Bo Rai Cho did him the kindness of bringing him to the temple, and I’m sure that the Masters did him an even greater kindness of introducing him to techniques that would help him find something resembling peace in himself. But it takes something else to secure someone’s faith in a system when one’s been through the ringer like that:

Trust. And who is it that he trusts more than anyone in the Order of Light? Kung Lao. They were paired up together, presumably to provide him with a peer that he could trust to treat him properly after years of mistreatment (perhaps it was difficult to trust adults with such a fraught history). And Lao did it! He gained his trust! The Liu Kang that we see in the present day is strong in his conviction that what they have committed to is what’s right for themselves, he is fine to save a world that wouldn’t save him if the chips came down to it. His faith in the divine balance isn't blind here, there’s an emphasis on practice. It’s my understanding that it DOESN’T come naturally to him, which sort of adds meaning to the act of believing because it’s a choice. He knows it’s a choice. That faith comes from a place of gratefulness and agency. The way that he talks about Kung Lao, how he builds him up as this amazing figure (at the slightest detriment to recognizing his own talents) tells us that he found something there worth believing in, and that it all started with believing in him. 

For all the shit he's seen, one thing rings true: The world is worth saving because Kung Lao is in it. 

[cringefailgirlfriendjohnnycage]

Johnny: Thanks dad

Sonya:

Liu:

Kitana:

Raiden:

Johnny: Why's everyone staring at me

Kitana: You just called Raiden dad. You said "Thanks dad."

Johnny: What? No! I said "thanks man"

Raiden: Do you see me as some sort of father figure Cage?

Johnny: No! If anything I see you as a bother figure, because you're always bothering me

Liu: Don't talk to your dad like that

[videogamesincolor]

Kitana is def. Asian, the fantasy equivalent of Japanese to be exact (just like Scorpion), and that extends to Mileena (as her literal clone).

(Anyone jumping on posts discussing this going, "but Mileena/Kitana are [insert MK fantasy race here]!!!" are being willfully obtuse about a game literally built around Chinese and Japanese genre films and mythology.)

Sisi Stringer is a Black woman, and she also has Asian parentage (no specifics), but she's not "monoracial" Japanese if that's the aim here. The casting choice is a classic case of industry colorism and featurism.

Stringer is "not too Black", and "not too Asian" to irk white audiences, and can still be used to say "close enough" (ah-la Netflix). She's an easy target for Gamers who'll hyper-fixate on her Blackness in the negative (often behind the pretense that they're being critical of the casting, when it's just plain anti-Blackness), but knowing nothing of her Asian heritage.

This wouldn't be the first time a Mortal Kombat film (specifically) failed on casting. Raiden and Kitana are both portrayed by white actors (Christopher Lambert and Talisa Soto) in MK95 despite being Japanese characters. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's Shang Tsung is Chinese (the character was based on David Lo-Pan from Big Trouble in Little China).

Kano started out Japanese but was whitewashed in MK95 (and later installments of the game) because his sprite in the arcade games was a white man. (Most Asian or Black/Brown characters, with exceptions, were all portrayed as white in the Arcade/3D era of games as well.)

Jade is canonically Black, but she was portrayed by a Russian/Buryat actress in MK Annihilation. Before that, Jade's sprite in the arcade games was simply a white model (for Kitana and Mileena) with her skin tone darkened (basically digital Blackface). The same thing happened with Tanya as well.

The precedent set by Mortal Kombat's inception gives anyone who handles the IP a blank check for racism and erasure without a second thought (and fandom will defended them tooth and nail, again, on the basis of "but representation").

MK11 is really the only game in the franchise to reach even a close approximation of "accurate" portrayals of its Black and Brown characters (not named Liu Kang and Jax Briggs) on account of its photorealism (and face models). Even then you can be critical of their casting choices (appearance and vocal wise).

It's not hard to do better, and I was hoping this film would at least do that, but folks jump on the path of least resistance without a second thought anyway.

If Raiden is still depicted as white (despite his origins) in 2019, then the issue is a need to center whiteness above all else. If Kitana and Mileena are Japanese, and you choose a Black Biracial actress that's hitting the non-threatening "commercial friendly" quota in your film, then you still haven't done your job. It's basically akin to how Amandla Stenberg continues to be miscast in films about characters with specific appearances and heritage.

I don't doubt there were Japanese actors they could've cast (Hiroyuki Sanada is a dead giveaway), but the industry does its best to do the bare minimum whenever possible (especially when actresses of color or international actresses are involved).

It's disappointing, but par for the course with this franchise as a orientalist fantasy game created by white guys.

I could've sworn Mileena was Asian, just like Kitana. You can't tell me there wasn't Asian people available for those roles.

[cringefailgirlfriendjohnnycage]

Sonya: Can you keep an eye on Johnny please? He's gonna say something stupid to the wrong person and get punched.

Liu: Sure! I'd love to see Johnny get punched.

Sonya: Try again

Liu: I will stop Johnny from getting punched.