The colors aren’t the same hue and tone, but they’re both shades of red and seem to blot out the figures cast in their light...
Was the red color in Sha Dali’s flashback more than a representation of the violence of the memory and how much it hurt? Was Ao Lie there during the attack and burning up from the Fire of Samadhi, casting everything in a red glow? If they weren’t in immediate promixity to Ao Lie, the light that did fall on them would have looked different.
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YEAR OF THE DRAGON
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Edit: why is tumblr ruining the quality of my art they’re blurry as hell :( it’s fine when I look at it on the website tho I think it’s just the app being terrible
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I’ve had the thought before that Sun Wukong doesn’t use his whole strength when fighting because he’s holding a lot of anger and doesn’t want to lose control.
Thinking more about Sha Dali and the parallels between him and Sun Wukong strenghtened that headcanon. They both have scenes where their eyes are glowing, they’re about to punch somebody with so much power it’d kill their target, and they stop at the last possible moment because they don’t want to hurt them!
Mind you, these scenes are as much parallels as foils to each other because of very different circumstances.
(Huntsman triggered Sha Dali’s trauma, which caused his rage to spike in an uncontrollable surge and the almost-attack on Huntsman.
Sun Wukong was possessed White Bone Spirit, conscious but helpless during the attack, and if he felt any anger, it was certainly not aimed at Qi Xiaotian who is the last person he’d want to hurt).
But both of them avoid fighting when necessary. Both of them hold back. Both of them try to appear less threatening than their past reputations. Bloody reputations that were born because they injured / killed many as a warrior / a soldier.
And we know from Sha Dali that he changed his life because he didn’t want to be that person anymore. He wanted to become a better person. He doesn’t want to get violent not only because he’s changed, but also because he fears - with good reason! - that he could slip back into that mindset. It’s through no fault of his own but the risk exists either way.
To apply that to Sun Wukong:
I headcanon that he hides a massive well of rage. He’s afraid he’d slip back if he got involved too much in battles. That something could cause him to revert to a much worse version of himself.
His rage comes from feelings of resentment, feelings of being cheated out of what he thinks he deserved.
From his suffering in his past. Being hurt by others, sometimes as retribution, sometimes just because they resented him
The anger that the promised change for him, for all of the pilgrims, apparently amounted to nothing. That all that he had done for the journey, all the hard work, all the consequences, ended with him being alone, all former friends and family lost or distant to him.
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