on hua cheng's morality and self esteem
on my first read of the book, i was actually convinced that hua cheng was this amoral asshole but that's just what he WANTS you to think. hua cheng actually cares a lot about ghost city (founded to combat the injustice of ghost persecution btw), he just downplays his achievements in front of xie lian because he doesn't want to 'trick' him into liking him. he also sees any accomplishments as a direct result of dianxia's influence so it would be wrong to take credit for them. perhaps hundreds of years of playing the part of the terrible calamity skewed his perception of himself even further.
in his introduction in heaven, they say how he would "Sometimes... carry out a massacre in cold blood, and sometimes he would do odd acts of kindness" (page 157, book 1) which makes me wonder what heaven defines as "cold blood." he visibly dislikes the man who bet his daughter's life and mentions killing several tyrants. in creating e'ming, he nearly destroyed himself in order to save those mortals. on the casino in ghost city, "If I don’t control a place like this, then someone else will. I’d rather that person be me." (page 107, book 2.) he has a very strong sense of justice that he hides under 3 million layers of arrogance.
xie lian gets the ability to tell if he is lying early in the book and sees him for who he really is. they're very similar in that they have this drive to do good in the world but think about it and go about it in very different ways. hua cheng even mentions that it doesn't matter how you go about saving the common people, and that xie lian over-complicates what is right and wrong and should do what he wants... but he wouldn't turn that logic on himself :/
anyway
**this is my reading btw if anybody wants to have a discussion im 100% down
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PACIFICA NORTHWEST ! ! and you’ll never guess who she’s yelling at…
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The best thing about BSD Lucy Montgomery is that she is trying so hard to live her fairy tale dream, like asking Atsushi to save her from the Guild and all that nonsense.
Instead, she just gets beaten by him once when they're enemies, gets out of the Guild on her own, and has to save that sorry boy's life over and over again.
Like, sorry, Lucy girl...you're not the damsel in distress in this fairy tale. You're the prince charming who had a bit of a villain arc and now is doing good out of sheer spite and stubborness. Better luck next arc?
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