a special internet thank you
to comics wizard Tom Siddell
for bringing this mythological personage to my attention with his internet comic

okay so you guys know about the sun right?

it’s this big ball of fire and explosions that flies around giving people cancer
but did you know there used to be TEN SUNS?
yeah
it SUCKED
it sucked so bad that Di Jun (aka Chinese Zeus)
(aka the father of all these rambunctious suns)
(get it? suns? sons? it’s brilliant)
had no idea what to do
so here’s what went down:

So there’s this really great archer named Hou Yi
and he’s chilling in his heavenly crib with his wife Chang’e
and all of a sudden the phone rings and it’s Di Jun
Hou Yi is like yo Di Jun my man what’s cookin’?
and Di Jun is like my friend the entire earth is cooking
you could fry an egg on a fucking glacier right about now
and it ain’t none of this sous vide bullshit or nothing
this is honest to goodness summer backyard barbecue
except instead of a big plate of watermelon on the back porch
everyone’s skin is melting off
can you solve this problem for me?
and Hou Yi is like you got it buddy

so Hou Yi grabs his trusty arrows and goes outside
and just kills nine out of the ten suns
and then he stares at the tenth sun real hard and he’s like
you best behave, sun
and the sun is like OK DUDE NO PROBLEM
and promptly dives underground and takes the subway home
and Hou Yi is like well that was easy
you’re welcome Di Jun
and Di Jun is like WHAT THE FUCK MAN YOU JUST KILLED 90% OF MY SUNS
I MEAN SONS
WELL I MEAN TECHNICALLY BOTH
and Hou Yi is like dude do you know who you called to solve your problem?
you called Hou Yi the immortal archer
what the fuck did you think was going to happen?
you know what they say:
when the only tool you have is a hammer
every problem starts to look like you can solve it by shooting your friend’s sons
until they explode and turn into mutant birds
(oh yeah, they totally turned into birds by the way)
um i think i may have mixed my metaphors a little bit
and Di Jun is like DAMN RIGHT YOU DID
I AM HEREBY REVOKING YOUR IMMORTALITY
ALSO:
YOUR WIFE’S IMMORTALITY
and Chang’e is like hey what the fuck
what did I do?

so now Hou Yi and Chang’e are both mortal
and Chang’e will NOT stop bitching about it
so finally Hou Yi is like GRR FINE
I will go get us some immortality
so he goes all the way the fuck to the west
and he finds Xiwangmu, the good witch of the west
who gives him a couple pills of immortality
and she’s like careful dude
this is some heavy shit
don’t take too much
and Hou Yi is like sure no problem
and then proceeds to go home and leave all the pills with his wife
while he goes out to shoot some things with arrows

so different tellers of this story ascribe different motivations to Chang’e here
some say she was a greedy twank who wanted all the immortality for herself
some say that there were some robbers and she took all the pills to spite them
some say she got hungry and confused
whatever
the point is Hou Yi isn’t gone for fifteen seconds
before all the pills are in his wife’s mouth
at which point she proceeds to have
THE ULTIMATE OVERDOSE

but instead of throwing up and then dying
which would be SILLY
Chang’e becomes TOO IMMORTAL
and apparently Immortality = buoyancy
so she floats to the moon
and her husband comes home and sees her floating to the moon
and he’s about to take out his bow and try to shoot her down
but everyone is all NO HOU YI
SOMETIMES YOU CANNOT SOLVE PROBLEMS BY SHOOTING THEM
and Hou Yi is like seriously?
fuck
and then his wife lives on the moon with a rabbit forever
and later another guy named Wu Gang gets sent there
he’s like Sisyphus except with a tree instead of a rock
and chopping it down instead of pushing it up a hill

so the moral of the story
is don’t do drugs
unless you wanna wake up on the moon
with nothing but a rabbit and a deranged lumberjack to keep you company
take it from me

THE END.