#It's always fun to see people interpreting how Wukong feels about this

[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. 

[spotsupstuff]

Your Fruit Twins Au where they're brothers is one of the most well-detailed AUs I've seen in the fandom and I like it lots! I enjoy reading and looking at everything about it when I can; both the art and writing. I also don't ship Wukong x Mac with reasons, too. Mostly due to their context from the book. I read you also don't ship them for complicated reasons. I'm just curious why on the full story, but I understand if you don't answer. Anyhow, cheers to your work ^^

AA!!!! Im so glad you find the detailness of the au good!!! N that you enjoy it!!!!!!!!! Means a lot, its a lot of fun to work on it <3

Well, my whole perception on shippin those two is, on the very base of it all, a big No cuz just like you I hold onto n respect the context of the book a ton. My opinion about the whole thing is heavily influenced by the chinese peeps here on tumblr- they essentially made up my whole opinion for a good while, cuz, after all, they know better than I do when it comes to their own damb culture. Plus, after reading SEM's chapter + looking around the internet to see how some other peeps interpret his role in the story, I find it... incredibly disrespectful n kinda shitty to take away the important religious meaning of his existence as embodiment of the "two mindness". N as Ive said in a different post before, I sorta lean more into the eastern faith than what is generally regarded as the western faith, so yanno

N thru this religious/philosophical meaning of him, pairin him up with Sun Wukong is Either like pairin two sibs together, or, honestly, pairin up an offspring with their mother if we aliken what the fuck went down with them to biology- seeing as SEM came out of SWK. Myths n legends r just weird like that n the book has a big myth/legend feel to it

But!

I've seen Other chinese peeps on other platforms either not minding them being paired up or actively shippin them. There's always going to be a wide pool of opinions on a topic, especially with such a giant audience as people who grow up with the Journey. After seein that there Is indeed a wider pool of opinions about this in the homeland of the book, Ive felt like I can kinda chill out with the metaphoric fist clenching and barking bout the whole situation (n proceed to more freely develop my own opinion)

Im not an asian, so I simply do not have the emotional connection to these characters like chinese people do and thats where the ones on tumblr base Their understandable and incredibly valid resentment (idk if thats the right word) from. They have a deep-rooted idea of those two that cant be shaken n there IS no reason to shake it at all either. Not having any of those things as a foreigner and seeing that its more of a loose situation, makes Me specifically more "eh, whatever I guess?" bout it

[I AM however not of an american/anglo-saxon roots either and even though my Own culture/folklore has been thru, basically, a genocide (that may or may not be still on-going honestly -pained sigh-), I understand the importance of the culture thats being kind of doubted/stained by sh@dowpeach. I do Get it to a certain fundamental level, yanno?]

N so because of the lack of connection to the specifically asian culture + still knowing how much it hurts to have ur culture disgraced + the wide pool of opinions From valid sources (the story's homeland's people) + the fact that sometimes interpretations will just simply vary from the source material n LMK has showcased multiple times that it is not interested in tracing the Journey's footsteps to the last letter, my final opinion on the ship is "Not for me, chief, das kinda yucky (but I guess I can't exactly jump your throat for it like I would with more blatantly direct incest)"

THOUGH I DO GOTTA ADMIT after the season 3 finale, after That One Scene, my No is stronger cuz if that wasnt a display of sib culture (+ what Xiaotian said) then Im a fuckin donkey

[frostiifae]

Part 2: Top 5 Favorite Characters to Write.

Sighhh. You really do know how to make me happy, don’t you?

1. Eirika.

"Tana will not stop talking about you," Eirika hissed. "She has been miserable, you know, and she goes on and on about you like you're the only thing in her life worth living for. 'O Eirika, if only you could have seen what I saw! She showed me such beauty in the heat of battle and I fear I will never see it again! O Eirika, do you think she will become the greatest fighter in Magvel? I wish I could learn alongside her!'"

Marisa lowered her arms. She tried to speak, but words didn't come to her, and she trailed off; Eirika stopped, panting, glaring.

"Is this what you are afraid of?" Slowly Eirika caught her own breath, too, calming herself. Her bangs had drifted back into her face, meaning her hair was surely a mess by now; still she brushed it aside. "That Tana will try to kill you?"

"Every employer has," Marisa mumbled, looking down and crossing an arm over her stomach. "It is only a matter of when."

"That is..." Eirika trailed off, despairing. How could anyone live like that? "Marisa," she said, softly and seriously. "On the honor of Renais, and the power of the Sacred Stone, I swear that you will always be a friend and ally to Renais and welcome within her borders."

A little while back, I was scrolling through my works list on Ao3, and I noticed that I write about Eirika an awful lot. She’s in a third of everything I write! Eirika is fun to write about for two reasons; one, she’s a fully-formed character as she is, a wonderful and likeable person, who still has a lot of personal growth to explore. There are so many different ways you can interpret her character and different forms of growth to explore, but despite that, you’re still starting from the basis of a very charming, charismatic, kind-hearted woman who honestly wants to do the best she can for everyone around her.

Secondly - well, she’s very charming and charismatic, she’s very elegant, and yet not without those adorable little flaws here and there. It’s fun to write about Eirika being a gay mess for Julia in Cinders. It’s fun to write about her treading the line of depravity in HTL (and other things). The sequence I quoted here is at the end of a sword fight she has with Marisa to try to help Marisa open up about her feelings. She’s so multi-dimensional and adapts so well to so many situations, where you get to explore both how she responds, and how other people respond to her own influence - in fact, she’s so flexible that I had a really hard time picking a single segment to show here! I just love her, and part of me wonders if I’ll ever stop writing about her. Thank you so much for showing her to me.

2. Phobos.

"You don't need me," Emily promises. "And I don't need to be saved. I've survived long enough now."

Naomi is stunned - so much so that she almost doesn't react, as Emily turns and steps forward. Her panicked cry is late, her lunge towards Emily is late. But Phobos is not stunned, and Phobos acts much quicker and moves much faster than Naomi.

She - she, the horde of spiders, the Outsider, the concept of Fear - she does not think, she does not hesitate; there is no internal resolution or promise being upheld. This is an instinct, nothing more or less. But when Emily teeters, on the verge of giving away her balance and allowing gravity to take hold of her fate, she looks down, and what she sees is not the ground far below her. What she sees she can't quite understand. Her brain tries and fails to arrange it in shapes she recognizes; there are pieces there, pieces of things that look like they might have been familiar, but altogether it can't be parsed.

What she sees is Phobos lunging beneath her to try to catch her. What she sees is an infinite yawning cavern of twisting, tangled webs, bursting from one another in fractal patterns, growing unimaginably large and shrinking unimaginably small. What should have been a fall of a few hundred feet becomes an abyss light-years deep, stretching before her, around her, past her, behind her, encompassing her. There are legs. There are eyes. She can't count them. They're all watching her. They're scrambling in her way. That is Phobos, to Emily's eyes. That's all she sees before her mind can't take anymore.

Of course my OCs are some of my favorite characters to write about, and - once I’ve established them all better - I’m sure they would all overtake my top 5, which may or may not be kind of boring.

But so far, Wishes is a story about Phobos, and I fucking love Phobos. I have always adored her, even before she took this shape, even before I committed to “fear” as the axis around which her character evolved. There are so many things I want to say about her that I can’t just yet, but for those of you who have been reading Wishes, I’m sure this comes as no surprise. Phobos is wonderful and I’m excited to do so much more with her.

3. Rei.

Rei is pursing her lips. She tries her best to take this all in, and parts of it do process. That Rei has to succeed, so that the deaths of the rest of the world are not in vain; yes, she knows this. That Naomi was meant to die, and Rei violated that destiny... she knows this too. But...

...but no, she can't accept the rest of it. She shakes her head. "I won't let them die for nothing," she whispers. "But that's not enough for me. I won't let anyone die at all. I won't let you, or Eliza, or Gwen, or anyone else from the Seed - they've all come this far, even if they can't wake up on their own anymore, and I won't let any of them die."

"Y-You can't..." Naomi laughs brokenly. "Rei, you can't..."

"I'm not a child!" Rei shouts, her fingers digging into Naomi's shoulders. "This has been my goal from the beginning! This is why I saved you, Naomi! Not so you could throw your life away in service to me here, because I love you and I want you to live! If you die there's no fucking point to any of this!"

"Rei," Naomi breathes. Her voice is faint, a trace of her laughter still lingering in it, hanging in bittersweet awe. Rei is aware she is tearing up too. She has to consciously stop herself from saying what comes to her lips next - Naomi does not need to know that she's died before - that's - it's not important, it's not important because she's going to save this one.

"I'm not like you," she is hissing, not sure whether she's angry or sad or terrified or relieved, but whatever it is, she is so full of it she could burst. "I was raised for this! This is my life's purpose! If I die to achieve it, I will die happy! I didn't survive twenty years of knowing the world was about to end just to make compromises and half-measures at the final moment, Naomi, I swore to myself that I would save everyone and I'm going to save everyone, okay?! That includes you! ESPECIALLY you!"

...*sighs dreamily* I love Rei...

Rei is the culmination of half of my favorite things that any character can be. She is responsible. She is kind. She is ambitious. She knows in her heart that she is going to save the world. And she is so, so not ready for what will happen to her when she does.

I don’t want to say anything more than that, but hopefully the snippet above - technically a spoiler - helps illustrate who she is and why I love her so much.

4. Ahri.

But that wasn't new for Noxians, they did a lot of things that Ahri didn't understand, and there was nothing that bothered Ahri as much as not understanding humans, even though she revelled in how strange and mysterious and unique they could all be, because it gave her hope that she could be her own different brand of human, a special human with ears and tails that reminded her of an unhappy past she had overcome, she liked that, and she liked to believe that she didn't have to be perfect or normal, or to make sense to other people, but it was hard to be convinced of that when other people laughing at you hurts so much, and although she could build herself up all she liked when she was alone, and although she got so much encouragement from Wukong, who said that being a human wasn't very special and that Ahri was wonderful for being Ahri, he was such a sweet nice person and she was very happy to know him, but when you're in the moment, excited to be normal and to do normal things and humans just scoff and laugh and push you aside, it hurts in a way that nice words can't fix, it hurts in a way that breaks your hopes like glass, and you try to cobble them together again but you just cut your hands and look foolish.

And then there were the Noxians, who were a whole different kind of unusual, where Ahri was strange in a way that made people laugh and ignore her, Noxians were strange in a way that made people hate and fear them, but Ahri wondered if that would be so bad, because at least that was a reaction, at least there was respect there, and Ahri longed to be respected. What kind of idiot human would ever turn down free food at a festival? She knew even Wukong would find that very weird, and Ahri didn't know how to explain that, but she had just desperately wanted to be normal and to do a normal human thing, and instead of being allowed to do that, her intent and desire was assumed, and she was given a gift she didn't want, without anyone asking her what she actually wanted, and she wished they had just looked afraid of her, because then she could impress them, and she could do her human thing and be done with it, and she was sure she would be just as lonely that way, but it would be better at least, she wouldn't be questioning who and what she was supposed to be, or whether this whole magic body thing was really just an awful cosmic joke.

...No, Ahri, you can't think like that, because this body is all you have now, and without it, there's... there's nothing.

She stopped and leaned up against a tree, breathing raggedly, her tails curling around her protectively, both hiding her and sheltering her from the cold. Calm down, Ahri...

At this point, it’s not really fair to say that the character I wrote in the Resurgence of Noxus is the same as the Riot Games character, Ahri (and not just because of her retconned background). But, regardless, I love this fox very dearly. Just because I’ve put a lot of distance between myself and League as both a player and writer doesn’t diminish any of my feelings for her.

To me, Ahri is (was) a very powerful symbol of my own struggle as a trans person. She is someone who was born as something she didn’t want to be, who spent her life watching and pining after the people who were what she wanted, and who was only granted half of her wish and then forced to be happy with that as a result. Ahri’s struggle to accept herself as she is and to find beauty and meaning in the ways she’s different from other humans is something I find myself coming back to in my own mind over and over.

In my early attempts at writing Ahri, I used long winding paragraphs and run-on sentences as a form of characterization, something about her that differentiates her from other people without her realizing why. I think it was a mostly successful experiment, but I’m sorry if it makes her a bit tough to read, hehe.

5. WA2000.

"How - isn't... it?" WA's voice cracked partway through [her sentence]. She sniffled, hiding her face. "Listen to me...! How... how isn't this a defect?" She sniffled again, curling up. She was crying now. "I'm a gun that starts sobbing uncontrollably if you make her even think about killing one particular human. Weapons can't get sentimental! Otherwise they can't do their job!"

I have spent comparatively little time with WA2000 as a writer. I have no published works involving Girls’ Frontline. I just have a few little projects - as I’m sure almost all writers do - that are personal and private and I keep on a back burner as something to come back to when I’m bored. You, Ellie, will probably recognize this quote.

As I’ve mentioned in other asks today, I love stories about AI trying to come to terms with the reason for their existence, while also gaining agency over their own emotions and forming their own desires and goals and relationships. WA2000 is just the perfect microcosm of all of those struggles. I think a lot of people see her as just That Really Pretty Tsun Android, but just like all genuinely great tsundere characters, there’s a very deep-seated reason for her acting that way, and watching her struggle with it and... slowly, ever so slowly overcome it... is one of the most beautiful things in the world to me.

Even if I don’t ever publish anything with WA in it, I’m really excited to do more with this character and with the themes she embodies.

[sketching-shark]

I think we should start a protection squad (although they don’t need it because they can protect themselves) for Sun Wukong and Guanyin

“Begone monkie kid fandom trying to down grade these really interesting characters with interesting personality’s and backstory ( the both of them like seriously Guanyin backstory is so cool) to a villain wile trying to justify your angsty backstory (that are no where near as cool as monkey who fights gods and Person who has 1000 arms and heads to help people in need) for the actual villain”

So who wants to join

Me:*raises my hand*

Ps: sorry if I got Guanyin backstory wrong am not an expert on it.

Haha okay so some critiques on the jttw & associated media western fandom & fandom in general coming up, so please skip this upcoming text wall if you don't want to encounter my undoubtedly ~devastating~ words (i.e. don't like don't read as people love to say, & if I have to be inundated with images of my notp every time I go into the sun wukong tag then I imagine people can be chill with me expressing my opinions & giving people fair warning that I WILL be critiquing common fandom trends, but no need for you to see that if you don’t want to. Cool? Cool.)

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PFFFFFTTT oh man there are many times when I feel like signing up for such a protection squad...when it comes to the current western jttw & Sun Wukong fandom I do feel like I'm often swinging at a rapid pace between "well it's fandom & people are allowed to make the stories they want" & "I am once again begging my fellow monkie kid enthusiasts (& sometimes creators) to do more research into the og classic/show it more respect so you can avoid any potentially offensive/off-the-mark misunderstandings of the status & cultural context of the characters in their country of origin (I promise it's super interesting & I can provide you with links to free pdf copies of the entire Yu translation, i.e. the best one ever created, so feel free to ask!) & maybe also stop constantly stripping away all the nuance of Sun Wukong's character for the sake of either making him an entire asshole so your little meow meow can look completely innocent in comparison and/or making the monkey king's entire life & character revolve around said meow meow."

Like I get that fandom's supposed to be a kind of anything-goes environment, but one thing that honestly seems to be true of a lot of fandoms--and the western one for Sun Wukong & co. is certainly not immune from this--is that there often seems to be a kind of monoculturalization at work in what stories are created & what character interpretations are made popular. Across a multitude of fandoms, you frequently see basically nothing but the exact same tropes being made popular & even being insisted on for the canonical work (especially hasty redemption arcs & enemies to lovers these days), the exact same one-dimensional character types that characters from an original work keep getting shoved into, the exact same story beats, etc. And I get it to an extent, as fandom is generally a space where people just make art and fic for fun & without thinking too hard about it & without any pressure. 

This seems to, however, often unfortunately lead to the mentality that it’s your god-given right to do literally whatever you want with literally any cultural figure without even the slightest bit of thought put into their cultural, historical, and even religious context, even (and sometimes especially) when it comes to figures that are really important in a culture outside your own. For such figures--even if you first encounter them in a children’s cartoon--you should be a little more careful with what you do with them than you would with your usual Saturday morning line-up. It of course has to be acknowledged that there exists a whole pile of absolutely ridiculous & cursed pieces of media that are based on Journey to the West & that were produced in mainland China, but for your own education if nothing else I consider it good practice for those of us (myself certainly included) who aren’t part of the culture that produced JTTW to put more thought into how we might want to portray these characters so that at the very least (to pull some things I’ve seen from the jttw western fandom) we’re not turning a goddess of mercy into an evil figure for the sake of Angst(TM), or relegating other important literary figures into the positions of offensive stereotypes, or making broad claims about the source text & original characterizations of various figures that are blatantly untrue, or mocking heavenly deities because of what’s actually your misunderstanding of how immortality works according to Daoist beliefs. Yet while a lot of this is often due to people not even trying to understand the context these figures are coming from, I do want to acknowledge that the journey (lol reference) to understand even a fraction of the original cultural context can be a daunting one, especially since, as I’ve mentioned before, it can be really hard & even next to impossible to find good, accessible, & legitimate explanations in English of how, for example, the relationship between Sun Wukong and the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China & according to the Buddhist beliefs that define the original work. 

That is to say, I do think it’s an unfortunate, if unavoidable, part of any introduction of an original text into a culture foreign to its own for there to be sometimes a significant amount of misinterpretation, mistranslations, and false assumptions. There is, however, a big difference between learning from your honest mistakes, & doubling down on them while dismissing all criticism of your misinterpretation into that abstract category of “fandom drama.” The latter attitude is kind of shitty at best and horrifically entitled at worst. 

Plus, as I’ve discovered, there is a great deal of interest and joy to be drawn from keeping yourself open to learning aspects of these texts & figures that you weren’t aware of! I can say from my own experience that I’ve always really enjoyed & appreciated it when individuals on this site who come from a Chinese background--and who know much more about the cultural context of JTTW than me--have taken the time to explain its various aspects. It often leaves me feeling like woooooaaaahhhhhHHH!!!! as to how amazingly full of nuanced meaning JTTW is like dang no wonder it’s one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels. 

And I guess that right there is the heart of a lot of my own personal frustration and disappointment with the ways that fandoms often approach a literary work or other piece of media...like don’t get me wrong, a lot of the original works a fandom may grow around are just straight-up goofy & everyone’s aware of it & has fun with it, yet the trend of approaching what are often nuanced and multi-layered works in terms of how well they fit and/or can be shoved into pretty cliche ideas of Redemption Arc or Enemies to Lovers or Hero Actually Bad, Villain Actually Good etc...well, it just seems to cheapen and even erase even the possibility of understanding the wonderful complexity or even endearing simplicity that made these works so beloved in the first place. Again, I feel like I need to make it clear that I’m not saying fandom should be a space where people are constantly trying to one-up each other with their hot takes in literary analysis, but it would be nice and even beneficial to allow room for commentary that strives to approach these works in a multi-faceted way, analysis & interpretations that go against the popular fandom beliefs, & criticism of the work or even of fandom trends (yes it is in fact possible to legitimately love something but still be critical of its aspects) instead of immediately attacking people who try to engage in such as just being haters who don’t want anyone to have fun ever (X_X).   

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Anyway, I know I didn’t cover even half of the stuff you brought up in the first place anon, but I don’t want any interested parties to this post to suffer too long through my text wall lol. I was asked to try my hand at illustrating Guanyin, but as with you I’m nowhere near as informed as I should be about her, so I want to do more research on her history and religious importance before I attempt a portrait. I’ll try my best, and do plan to pair that illustration with my own outsider’s attempt to summarize her character. From what little I do know I am in full agreement that her backstory is so incredibly amazing...just the fact that she literally eschewed the bliss of Nirvana to help all beings reach it, and even split herself into pieces in the attempt to do so (with Buddha granting her eleven heads and a thousand arms as a result)...man, I can see why she’s such a beloved & respected deity. 

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 As for what western fandom commonly does with everyone’s favorite god-fighting primate...I can talk about this at length if there’s interest, but for this post I’ll just say that I guess one lesson from all of this is that for all the centuries that have passed since Journey to the West was first completed, literally no one drawing inspiration from the original tale in the west (lol) has come even slightly close to being able to equal or even capture half the extent of the nuance, complexity, religious, historical, and cultural aspects, and humor that define Wu Cheng'en's story of an overpowered monkey who defied even Buddha.

So thank the heavens we'll always have the original.