#across the whole journey they could have gone moooonths between demons

[cave-monkey]

It dawns on me that the journey to the west took 5,040 days exactly, right, and while the book goes from tribulation to tribulation, there were still only 81 of those. And they were missing one when they got there. And some of the tribulations Tripitaka went through happened before the journey even started.

So, even being generous and saying that most of the tribulations that occurred during the actual journey could be said to have taken a few days to handle each, that's still only about 10% of the journey. A tribulation was anything that happened that put Tripitaka in danger or presented any sort of obstacle to him. Anything even remotely exciting would have fallen into that ~10%, and nothing else could have happened, because otherwise they wouldn't have gotten west one moderate inconvenience and/or major trauma short of the prize. (I mean, unless the thing that happened managed to not involve Tripitaka at all in any way, but that's very hard to do when you are all attached at the hip.)

Holy cow they really were just walking. ALL THAT TIME. No wonder Zhu Bajie was stirring the pot at any given opportunity. It was literally the only thing to do.

#jttw personal #how did they not kill each other #I was thinking about this while still picking at chapter 27 #tripitaka was super gullible in that chapter in a sort of inexcusable way but also #it sooooort of makes sense when you think like #statistically #across the whole journey they could have gone moooonths between demons #years even #and suddenly sun wukong's claiming to have killed 3 (they didn't know it was the same demon) in a row in one morning? #even if tripitaka HAD believed him (or just harbored doubts) after the first one how likely was it the second was the case? or the THIRD? #obviously the evidence was in his face but couple the idea that their encounters with demons were actually SUPER rare #with the fact that tripitaka still had major trust issues with sun wukong from the fact he HAD trusted sun wukong previously #only to have that trust pretty solidly broken #and tripitaka's probably operating on a level of 'fool me once' hyper-vigilance against him that actually makes zhu bajie seem reasonable #I mean who are you going to trust? you and your own shitty judgement when you've already been wrong about the guy once before? #or the DEMON who probably knows more about DEMON MAGIC than you? #tripitaka's got TWO expert consults telling him two wildly opposing things but only ONE of them's seriously burned him in the past #(while the third expert consult and tie-breaker is notably abstaining. gdit sha wujing.) #anyway the characterization here is actually really good #tripitaka doesn't know the story framing - WE know something's up because otherwise we wouldn't have a story about it - #but tripitaka doesn't realize he's in a book #and I'm just saying tripitaka is being less foolish than the meta knowledge of being The Reader makes him seem #still a total brat though #he's definitely letting his own pride and hurt (and like...trauma) bias him against sun wukong unfairly #which is something he needs to work on and IS something that he pays for #(even with the bandits: expecting sun wukong to behave to tripitaka's standards of morality prior to TEACHING him those standards) #(wasn't fair. but also when he *tried* to address it sun wukong got angry and took off. and then tried to kill him. so.) #it's just interesting and whoever told this story originally was clearly putting a lot of thought into what it would be like #to actually be in these guys' shoes. Like ugh. HOW is this book so good?