#also i think it's funnier if they keep the swk & lemh relationship closer to the og classic of

[sketching-shark]

Why do people defend six eared macaque lol I don’t think he actually deserves to have a redemption arc after everything he’s done in monkie kid and the og novel lol.

WATCH OUT BECAUSE I'M ABOUT TO BE MEAN TO A MONKEY ON MAIN but hhhhhh I'm guessing it's partially a result of the current culture-wide obsession with/insistence on redemption arcs no matter what & the way that redemption arcs are increasingly used as a stepping stone to get two characters who hate each other into a romance.

In this particular case I also think Monkie Kid so far only showing Macaque's side of the story in regards to his relationship with Sun Wukong & its depiction of the monkey king as a deeply flawed individual whose actions could easily be interpreted as him just being an unthinking fumbling dumbass who never grew out of his unthinking fumbling dumbass ways also lends itself to fandom-ish tendency to brush aside the bad actions of the blorbo d'jour so that their eventual inclusion into team good guy seems less jarring. Like if Macaque sucks but SWK actually sucks even more then in context Macaque has the moral high ground & as such he can't justifiably be called out for anything by SWK or can't be called out by any other character unless they're also going after the monkey king. And indeed in Monkie Kid we've had SWK get yelled at by many character for being stupid & destructive & I don't remember that ever happening with Macaque outside of Qi Xiaotian's "What's wrong with you?!" after the shadow simian had just uhhhh kidnapped & mind-controlled his loved ones before forcing them to beat up Qi Xiaotian while he watched and laughed (X_X).

I've also seen a number of people argue that Monkie Kid and Journey to the West should be considered two completely different stories and fair enough to some extent (like yea SWK probably shouldn't have the past of smashing tons of humans and yaoguai into "meat patties" in a children's cartoon lol). Buuuuuuut I do suspect that a lot of this stance is about justifying a rewrite so that Macaque could be an innocent monkey before getting involved with SWK rather than dealing with the violence he deliberately chose to inflict on the Mt. Huaguoshan monkeys & SWK himself in the og classic. In addition, I do think that, especially for a western audience, a lot of people simply DON'T KNOW about what the Six Eared Macaque did in Journey to the West. Like I've said before that one of my current favorite parts of being in the online JTTW fandom is seeing people go from "oh people are exaggerating about the monkey king's trauma" to "oh dang actually the monkey really did go through it" after they've read some of Wu Cheng'en's work, but my general sense is that at present many people know about these characters through Monkie Kid more than through Journey to the West, and as such aren't aware of the stuff LEMH pulls or even that his entire thing was making himself SWK's doppelganger in an attempt to murder-replace the monkey king and get all the glory for completing the journey for himself. Any translation of a work often means that a lot of context will be lost, and I think that can be particularly true when you're only aware of/been exposed to a child cartoon manifestation of a character, especially if you don't have access to at least a good translation of the work they originally came from.

ANYWAY those are my general impressions about the matter, and I still maintain that lego show Macaque would be best served by either staying a shifty dude or having a "redemption without forgiveness" narrative arc in which he does decide to become a better person but does so without being forgiven by team monkie for everything he put them through. If anything such an arc might help him start developing into his own character rather than forever remaining the jerk violently obsessed with getting one over the monkey king.

#monkie kid six eared macaque #monkie kid #monkie kid sun wukong #also i think it's funnier if they keep the swk & lemh relationship closer to the og classic of #macaque being viciously envious of the monkey king & the monkey king being like #'jealously is a disease binch get well soon' *bonks you to death*