What happens in the journey to the west part in your CS!AU?
I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED BECAUSE I SPENT HOURS FIGURING OUT THE LOGISTICS OF THIS SWAP AND HOW IT WOUKD AFFECT THE TIMELINE AND CHARACTERS!!! Basically, the pivotal moment of this au that changes LITERALLY EVERYTHING- Is the moment where Wukong made to guard the peaches. Instead of getting drunk, eating the peaches, and stealing the pills, he was instead the most valued guard in the orchard. The responsible nature he’d shown had made the Jade Emperor decide to entrust him with leading the Journey To the West, gifting him immortality so that there wouldn’t be any casualties. Sun Wukong is given two peaches, one which he takes for himself, and one which he gives to Macaque, as he decides to take Macaque with him on the journey. (This is very fucking important and another pivotal moment which changes our canon timeline.) Wujing, now being a river prince (as he swaps places with Ao Lie) acts as the guide. With Ao Lie, a dragon guardian of the mountains, tagging along. Macaque takes the place of Zhu Bajie in this, meaning Bajie is left to his own devices and never really getting redeemed as he does in the original journey (this plays into Pigsys role in the canon timeline) Tripitaka is swapped with Wukong, being a monk that falls into temptation too easily.
And you may be thinking “But how does he train tang if he’s not mortal and Tang is his reincarnation?” And to that, I say FUCK OFF I’M GETTING THERE.(/lh) Much like how in JTTW, Wukong was meant to reach try self restraint before the fillet could be taken off, Tripitaka was meant to learn,, basically the same thing, learning to not give into selfish desires and instead exist selflessly. Tripitakas own “golden fillet” in this au would be uh,,, possession, basically. As a monk that gave into temptation too easily, and being an earthly reincarnation of the golden cicada, Tripitakas own soul would become more and more like the golden cicadas each time he fell to temptation. If he never learned to exist selflessly, he’d lose himself and become the omnicidal god once more, basically. However he reached enlightenment and learns blah blah blah and because of that, (mixed with accidentally erasing his name from the book of Yama) he gets to keep a soul of his own, while the Golden Cicadas is expelled to live through its other earthly reincarnations, one of them being Tang. And that’s basically how the Swap affects the JTTW timeline and how it trickles its effects into our Canon timeline