Everything about Even Rainfall
A Complete List of How the Story Would've Ended!
Wanted to put out a complete list of everything I planned to explore if I had continued this comic, before my brain files this away into long term memory. this story had a HUGE 3rd arc that I just couldn't finish. but I wanted to lay everything down here and attach it to the end. Below you'll find explanations to story tie-in's, plot holes filled, and some excerpts from dialogue I scripted for future chapters.
If you have any remaining questions, don't hesitate to ask below in the comments! Thank you all again for supporting this story.
Art above was done by the amazing @runningwithscizzorz
SPOILERS BELOW!
Full Comic Here.
THE MAIN STORYLINE
Ru's brother is actually dead, beheaded by Monkey King. You can see on her tablet there are faint marks that show Hu Li's death date, similar to an ancestral tombstone. Several times in the story, Ru kept the tablet close and away from people seeing it up close (until Redson.)
Ru CAN change into her tigress form, just chooses not to (for reasons we will explore below!) A couple times in the story, Macaque would bring this up, and would be met with uncertainty by Ru. She uses the tablet to keep her storm powers in, although by changing to her tigress form, she could bend the storms to her will WITHOUT a tablet.
The Chapter Titles in the Comic all add up to a poem that describes Ru's backstory. Before I get into the meat of her story, here's the full poem below. Each color variation is one chapter.
THE MEANING OF THE COMIC TITLE
"Even Rainfall has Shadows" alludes to a Chinese Proverb that says "If there are no clouds there will be no rain." I wanted this to be shown subtly through the comic, where in order for Ru to push herself to her absolute limits of her powers, she had to go through an internal storm of stress, anxiety, and fear of facing her past. An He passing was meant to be the midpoint of that storm.
After An He passed, I planned to have Mac and Ru have a duel to decide who would be the one to kill Wukong. Macaque insists on this because his trust was shattered after Ru unintentionally triggered his traumatic past with her Encore at the Theatre in chapter 10. Although I planned to rewrite this, I wanted Macaque to grab hold of her tablet in the battle and finally be able to see up close, the markings of Hu Li's death.
Desperate to get a one-up on Macaque, after their battle, Ru would take up Lady Bone Demon's offer given in Chapter 11 to work for her. She would become her first vessel, inserting her power into Ru's brain to try and get her to turn into her most powerful form: the Tigress Demon.
Ru resists, much to LBD's disappointment. She quickly realizes she can't get Ru to change into a tiger for her to control, so she resorts to using Ru as leverage to lure in Macaque, and gain access to his body.
NOTE: LBD's influence on Ru's brain would cause her to have a couple flashbacks to her past, as the Bone Demon's powers sifted through her memories to find where the "tiger" is hidden. I wanted this to serve as two things; an inciting incident to see what really happened to Hu Li Daxian, and to create conflict in Macaque to choose between getting Wukong, or saving Ru.
I toyed around with the idea of having LBD pit Mac and Ru against each other, and telling them whoever brings them Wukong and MK first will be spared from having their soul turned into a vessel like the Mayors was. This would send Mac and Ru on a competing spree to bring in the Monkey King team first.
Some dialogue sketches are shown below:
In attempt to get to them, Ru and Mac would fight on the ship heading towards the first Samadhi fire in s3. MK would be mistaken that Ru was "protecting" them from Macaque, and since him and Mei were friends with An He through Ru, would trust her (much to Pigsy's suspicion). This would give Ru the upper hand, in which she would attempt to gain MK's trust more and burn the map to the Samadhi Fire. I wanted her to have a conversation about Monkey King with MK as exhibited below:
Ru would also break the news to MK and Mei that An He has passed. I wanted to write Mei throughout the rest of the series as grieving An He, and that element of An He "haunting the narrative" through her eyes. I just wasn't sure how to do it, and with the story scrapped I never explored it further
Macaque would catch up to them in the desert, and during the desert fight, Ru's tablet would be shattered, thus making the only way for her to summon storms again to be in her tigress form (wink wink)
Long story short, they would go back and forth, until the Lantern City, where Ru and Mac finally pause fighting to (shocker) actually TALK about their feelings. Ru confesses that the reason she's so desperate to kill Wukong is because her own inability to shapeshift into a human form as a child is what got her brother killed (more on that later)
I would've wanted Macaque to really listen here, and begin to empathize because he now knows the extent to which Wukong hurt her and her family.
LBD would show up as usual in the show, and start to hurt Macaque, to which Ru, desperate to protect Mac, would tell LBD that she knew about the map to the Samadhi fire all along but didn't report back. I thought about rewriting this part, but I would want LBD to cast Ru out into the city, from high above. Macaque would briefly believe that Ru is dead.
Just after Mei's Samadhi Fire burns away Macaque's LBD-possessed ice, his hearing would become more clear, and he could hear Ru miles away, dragging herself to the beach. He teleports away and finds her, beaten and injured. This is where they would FINALLY lay out everything, and apologize to one another for fearing the intimacy they both wanted so bad. Sketch dialogue of their conversation is below.
After this, Ru would perform one last "encore" using the raindrop method she used during the Shadow Play. It would finally explain to Macaque what really happened in her past and how Hu Li was killed by Wukong, leaving Ru abandoned as a cub. The backstory will be explained below
Banding up with MK and the others, Macaque and Ru would finally come to the final test; battling Wukong under Lady Bone Demon's control. Aghgh I was so excited to draw out this fight scene if I did, I wanted to pull old references to their past trainings, and even have Ru see a crane fly overhead, watching them :D
The final battle is where I would've wanted Ru to change into her tigress demon form, to protect Macaque from being stabbed by a shard of ice. In a split second to save him, she knows she no longer has her tablet to bend the storms, so her tigress form would come out and roar to cast lightning down on LBD.
This is what her tigress form looked like below!
After the battle and defeating LBD, Macaque would finally get a good look at Ru, who having gone for years being feared by others as a demon, is only met with acceptance from Macaque.
They go back to the lair and put up An He's pipa as a memorial for her. They hang out and eat bao buns, and chat on the mountaintop overlooking Megapolis. Below is a sketch of their conversation.
“You were the first person who looked at me and saw me as something more. As more than just… the shadow of the Great Sage. And because of you, my life has been more amazing than I ever thought it could be. And I wasted all that time being too scared to let you in. But all I want to do now is to just… stay here, with you. Share every laugh, every cry, every fleeting moment, full of pain… or joy… I want to do it all with you.
YES THEY KISS. After 2 years of edging fr.
(only drawing I ever made of them kissing below lol. Based on the painting "The Kiss.")
I always imagined the music at the end of Kung Fu Panda 2 when Po reunites with Mr. Ping to play during the scene where they kiss. Super emotional and makes me really wish I could've finished this comic to get to the very end.
The final moments of the chapter are a small flash-forward to future seasons as macaque speaks. Of Mac and Ru hanging out in Wukong’s house with MK, battling Peng with Mei, etc.
In addition, Ru and Mac eating with older MK gang, performing onstage, living on a mountain together, Ru crying on Mac’s shoulder, them getting married, then sitting watching the sunset.
I wanted An He as a crane to show up in the final frame of the comic. As they watch the sunset, the image of her flying over, keeping watch over Mac and Ru. <3
OKAY, that's the MAIN STORYLINE done. Now it's onto Ru's Backstory.
RU'S BACKSTORY
Ru would have a couple flashbacks that explored her backstory throughout the third act. The "trigger" for these backstories would be LBD's influence by attaching ice to her temple and sifting through her brain.
Before jumping into the meat of her backstory, I wanna show off some concepts I did of the Daxian family!
Young Ru
Hu Li Daxian - Fullbody Ref
Yang Yize Daixan (Ru's Cousin) - Son of the Goat Immortal
So the family consisted of Huli daxian *(*虎力大仙), the Tiger strength immortal, Luli daxian (*鹿力大仙) the Deer Immortal, and Yangli daxian (*羊力大仙) the Goat immortal. Her brother, like her, had the power to bend storms, lightning, and rain by striking a tablet.
The Slow Cart Kingdom, aka Kingdom of Chechi was in a severe drought until the immortals saved them by bringing rain to the people. Hu Li brought Ru and her little cousin Yang Yize to live with them, but he hid them in the mountains because they were too young to be able to control their shapeshifting powers. Their demon forms posed a risk for all of them being seen, so Hu Li bans them from ever entering the village as their demon forms.
He hells Ru that if she doesn't get it under control, she'll be shipped out on the slow carts, and will never see them again. She's too young to understand that Hu Li is alluding to the townspeople sending her away, so she immediately assumes it would be a form of punishment if she can't change into a human.
Yang Yize was able to change to a human quite easily, but Ru struggled with it. This caused Hu Li to become more easily frustrated, as being the head priest also demanded his time and energy to keep the weather as perfect for the King as he wanted.
Throughout her backstory, we would see young ru pick up her rope dart as a way to discipline herself.
Eventually, Sun Wukong goes to the town, and Ru, desperate to prove herself to Hu Li that she can protect them, makes a plan with Yize to attempt to scare Wukong away. But they don't get far, as they run into a set of animal traps and are chased down by village hunters.
Yang Yize is caught and slaughtered by the hunters for food (sadly)
Hu Li does the one thing he forbade; he turns into a tiger and scares the hunters away to protect the kids. the Immortals scramble to hide the children away from the town as much as possible.
The noise from the hunters have alerted Wukong to their presence, and the Immortals distract the monkey as Hu Li sneaks past the guards and puts Ru on one of the slow carts that are headed out of the city, away from the Monkey King, and locks her in a cage. He splits his storm tablet in half and gives it to her.
Young Ru believes this is her ultimate punishment for her inability to change into a human, so she cries out for Hu Li as he runs back to face Monkey King. We DO see a flashback to this in chapter 10!
While Ru is being carted out of the Kingdom, Wukong challenges the Immortals to contests, consisting in a showdown of who can produce the most rain. He cheats and beats Huli at a beheading contest, throwing his severed head in the ocean.
Yangli is defeated by Wukong turning the rain to boiling rain (not super painful but just annoying Yangli) enough to kick him against the wall and turn him back into his Goat self. Luli has his (metaphorical and physical) heart ripped out at the sight of his brothers defeated by Wukong, and he throws one last unsuccessful punch at Wukong.
Ru escapes into the mountains, with only her brother’s weapon. Her worldview has drastically changed, and she develops a deep self-loathing for putting her brother at risk, alongside hating Wukong. Since then, she had vowed to never change into a tigress again, as it festered and became a source of shame and resentment.
If you made it all the way to the end, thank you.
holy shiz my fingers hurt from all the typing. I really wish I could've finished this, but like I said in my announcement video, I need to focus on projects other than lego monkie kid. I have immense gratitude for anyone who did support this comic as long as it ran <3
