ShadowTrick AU (I guess we're calling it that)

A chance at Monkey King love, except disguised as a human ?? ♥️

-Which Mei convinces Sun Wukong to finally put himself out there and start dating because he's been very lonely. (Dead reincarnated friends and a bitter ex friend doesn't help either)

-At the same time Macaque tries to make it up to MK and friends by redoing the whole Shadowplay, no tricks and magical lanterns included. That would soon be a lie.

- Since no one but MK knows about Macaque's human form they go along with it. MK decides to give it a chance. But Wukong ends up tagging along too. MK starts seeing red flags of a shit show starting.

-Upon first sight of Macaque's elegant black and red robes and his beautiful fluffy black hair (seems familiar) Wukong falls in love at first sight. Following Mei's advice he proceeds to try to ask him out.

-Macaque, amused but also pissed at the fact Wukong is falling for some human, decides he would play an elaborate long con trick and go along with it. He plans to make the date as miserable as possible, making Wukong feel like shit. Then revealing himself at the very end to laugh at his face.

-MK, about to watch the horrors of a car crash and the only person who knows the truth tries to stop him. Saying it'll break his heart. Macaque's like "YEAH THAT'S THE POINT"

-However shenanigans ensue and Macaque is faced with more problems then actually catching feelings back for Wukong.

More on this at 8 bsjdbd

By no means do this now, but if you ever get the time recommending some good shadow fanfiction would be cool?

(Art by Michael Walsh)

Because fanfiction can be a touchy subject, I feel like I need to add a big caveat upfront that I don't endorse or necessarily agree with every single aspect of a fanfic take on the character, nor do I expect others to agree with mine for that matter. I've written Shadow fanfic and taken liberties aplenty with the material, and will probably take more if I get back on that saddle. This is just par for the course when it comes to fanfic. I’m not trying to be judgmental, I just wanna put this out here to try and prevent misunderstandings if possible.

There’s really not that many Shadow fics out there to begin with (especially not after the Conde Nast webpage purges of the 2000s) and not that many that I’d even particularly recommend, I’ve read pretty much all of them still available online as is. I’m gonna leave out some things that could reasonably be called published fanfiction, like the Tales of The Shadowmen stories featuring the character, and stick purely to what you’d find online. So here goes some of my recommendations

Works written by Cryptix / @oldschoolcrimefighters: I've said this before and don't think I can say it enough, but @cryptix23's posts on The Shadow's pulp magazines were one of the biggest deciding factors in making my liking for The Shadow turn into, *gestures at that masterpost on top of my blog, this. I owe her a debt I can never really repay for showing me the heart of this character in a way nobody else had, just by pointing out what was in the source material all along, and particularly regarding info on the agents where there was nowhere else to be found. I still greatly enjoy reading her own fics for the character and how she depicts the dynamics between the agents and The Shadow, and how much color and life they inject into these adventures. 

The Nexusverse Shadow / works written by evillurks: You can find some of the prompts written via their Deviantart account Shadowtricker. This one is a lot harder to find in it’s entirety and I think some pages for it are non-existant outside of the Wayback Machine, I compiled as many as I could find in a couple of Word docs for personal reading and probably missed several. It’s on livejournal and comprises a couple hundred (maybe over a thousand) posts of a Shadow RP blog, based around the idea of a somewhat aged-up version of The Shadow still living and active in the 1980s, interacting with an AU version of Myra Reldon (the protagonist more often than not) as well as other characters and worlds through a sort of multiversal crossover dimension thing. 

I haven’t had time to read all or even most of the long-form RP stories published but I have read most of their short snippets and I can definitely recommend them. These feels the most like Shadow pulps out of any of these I’ve read, there’s certainly a case for this to be the best version of Myra Reldon (taking everything that worked about the pulp version and doing it better) to the point I kinda default to this as my frame of reference for Myra at times, and though it’s not a high bar to clear, it’s the best take I’ve seen on a “The Shadow in modern times / out of his own time” concept, letting the character age and adapt to different times for better or worse, and still remain recognizably distinct and fiercesome.

Kimberly-Murphy Smith’s Shadow saga: Quoted this one briefly in another post. Will reiterate that, yes, there are aspects about this take on the character that I do find very disagreeable to the point I feel the need to point it out, but all in all: This basically takes the movie version of The Shadow and thoroughly combines with the radio, pulp and comics versions, as well as the other iterations of the movie story such as the James Luceno novelization and the Kaluta/Goss comic, and somehow makes it work.

It’s the best take there ever was on specifically the “movie” version of The Shadow because it’s structured entirely around making the inserted movie changes into a fleshed out character and universe for these things to be in. It did maybe the best job anyone had ever done, until Matt Wagner, of combining and editing all the separate takes on The Shadow into something cohesive and entertaining, as well as making his relationship with Margo work. I like it enough that it even went a long way in redeeming the movie characterization for me. It also did the one thing I absolutely think Shadow fanfics / modern works should be doing, which is introducing new agents aplenty to the fold that don’t overlap with the established supporting cast. 

Der Dunkle Adler by Keith Holt: A short one, it takes place in a German tavern in WW1 with soldiers sharing stories about encounters with the mysterious flying ace with a boogeyman reputation. Really good premise, really good execution, solid ending, this is the one that inspired me to do my own take on The Shadow’s war years (although not how I’d “canonically” handle it, for the most part).

Identities and the 8th Wonder by Matt Dennion: It’s The Shadow vs King Kong told through the perspective of his 3 main identities, as Lamont Cranston shows up to Carl Denham’s exhibit, The Shadow frantically struggles solo to save people from Kong’s rampage despite being completely powerless to do anything but temporarily distract Kong, and then, as The Black Eagle, he works alongside G-8 and his team to put down Kong for good. Not the only time I’ve seen this premise done and usually this kind of “spot the cameo” exercise bores me, but this one stuck with me for a long time as an excellent display of The Shadow fighting despite being hopelessly outmatched in a way he’s never been before, spinning plans and traps on the fly against an unsurmountable menace destroying his city, making mistakes (even fatal ones) in trying to save lives, and finding a way to overcome the odds and help save the day, to a grim resolution unusual for Shadow stories. It’s a little The Spider-y and in a way that works really well for me. 

Never to be Cheated by @saphura: Another short one. I like the premise, I like the prose, I like the characterization, the concept’s intriguing, very solid all-around and I tend to appreciate the more explicitly supernatural takes on The Shadow that emphasize the ring and it’s weird significance. 

The Life of an Agent series by Greg Daulton: This one sort of provides a bit of backstory for the main agents by showing how they could have met and joined The Shadow. I don’t have much to say about it but it’s pretty allright, more interesting as kind of a shorthand to get to know the agents a little better. 

Lineage by Matt Dennion and Tom Kurtz: It’s The Shadow, Batman, and Zorro (both the original and a descendant) battling across four decades to foil Ra’s al Ghul’s master plan. It’s this big epic that does a couple of things I do find interesting, namely 1: I think Ra’s al Ghul being the arch-villain of several different established characters (and even killing one of them), with big names and legacies in their own right across the decades works pretty well in selling him as a big immortal threat to the world at large, 2: I kinda like the idea of Shambala being presided over by god-like figures from different mythologies, I mostly hate Shambala conceptually and in entirety to begin with so anything mildly interesting for it is a plus 

In His Shadow by JanEyrEvanescence12: This one falls more on the “very loose reinterpretation of a lot of things and plenty of concepts I find brutally disagreeable, but it does some things interestingly enough that I still think it makes for a pretty allright read to go back to, and because it’s fanfic it’s easy to look at it more for what it is” side of things. It’s unfinished and I wouldn’t even particularly recommend it for it’s story, more so for it’s imagination and some of what it’s doing to reinterpret the character. 

Strange Bedfellows by Zath Chauvert: Cute, simple, conceptually pretty funny, and I’m giving away the twist here as is, but the Phurba becoming sort of Lamont and Margo’s weird dog monster, that likes Margo and still kinda hates Lamont, is pretty great.

More shadowpeach doodles (some partially for shadowtrick AU including human!macaque)

Bottom is a family AU from dodomaruu on twitter! Please check it out !

Plot twist in Shadow trick, Wukong knew along it's Macaque, but only because he used gold vision instead of seeing the obvious signs.

~ROLL CREDITS~

Starring Sun Wukong as "Actually pretty smart" bachelor

I was thinking about that in mind and how the story could play out like that. It could be swk is so oblivious that it takes the long con route. Or he figures it out pretty quickly and the rest is history (anger, denial, etc)

But swk usually has no reason to use Gold Vision unless there's like an imminent danger or he has to find the truth or something. If it's just around regular humans/demons I'd say he would respect their privacy unless necessary.

Just like macaque is in denial of liking wukong, I feel like wukong would be in denial first that he likes the things in his lover that also remind him of macaque , and then that his new love is macaque even if it's get more and more obvious

OH HAVE U READ MY SCRIPT ALREADY- JKJKJK WE'LL SEE

Hiiii, I followed you here and on Twitter. I love your art style, it's so beautiful, and your AU shadowtrick. I hope to see more shadowpeach. I wanna ask, do you take requests or commission? If commission then I want to see it, plz and thank you.

Have a nice day~

I want to do commissions soon but I'll need to focus more on my work flow and my new art set up. But I'll be happy to take a shadowpeach request if you're ok with a small sketch!