Yknow thinking about it becoming a supreme must come with the most insane ADHD/Adderall/Cocaine fuelled multitasking stamina because what do you mean Hua Cheng was looking for Xie Lian, building and running a city, making 10000 statues, learning how to use multiple weapons, creating spells and learning every interesting fact known to man while also hunting down Mu Qing and Feng Xin like a jingle bell SlenderMan and just being a menace to the heavens in general.
What do you mean that He Xuan was operating hundreds off spy’s who all worked in heaven, creating a revenge scheme that would make Edmond Dantès stand up and clap, hanging out and befriending walking friendly tornado Shi Qingxuan, eating any dangerous ghost to absorb its powers, creating bone snakes and a Resident Evil level of a lair, fighting for territory from Shi Wudu outta spite and taking year long naps in between.
What do you mean Bai Wuxiang was operating multiple clones, ruling the heavens, creating the scariest curse known to man, torturing a random 17 year old cause he said Yolo and hosting the ghost hunger games every 400 years or so because he got a headache.
TGCF is actually insane because if you zoom out, it’s just a story where,
Xie Lian tries very hard to mind his own business, and the universe repeatedly responds with personalized suffering. Like this man ascends, immediately messes it up by caring too much, falls, gets humiliated by everyone who once adored him, lives as a scrap-collecting disaster god, and still somehow goes around saying “it’s fine :)”. Sir. It is not fine. It has never been fine.
And then there’s Hua Cheng, who saw one boy fall off a wall, got saved once, and said “okay cool, this will now define my next 800 years.” No hesitation. No therapy. Just raw, industrial-grade devotion. He doesn’t believe in gods. He believes in this one guy, specifically, and frankly that’s worse.
The funniest part is that Xie Lian genuinely thinks Hua Cheng is just a little intense. Like yes, your most devoted believer is a ghost king feared across realms, wears red like it’s a warning sign, kneels like it’s a lifestyle choice, and would burn the world down on your behalf but sure, he’s just enthusiastic.
At its core, TGCF is not even a romance. It’s a case study on how devotion is sometimes quieter than love and sometimes absolutely unhinged. Hua Cheng never asks to be loved back. He just stays. Xie Lian never asks to be worshipped. He just exits.
Meanwhile the Heavenly Court is running on pure audacity. These people watched Xie Lian get destroyed for being kind and still have the nerve to act shocked when Hua Cheng shows up like a walking consequence. “Why does he hate us?” I don’t know. Maybe because you publicly ruined the only person he ever loved? Just a thought.
Feng Xin and Mu Qing are out here having the world’s longest, messiest miscommunication arc. They care. They care so much. They are also deeply allergic to saying it out loud. So instead we get centuries of tension, resentment, loyalty, guilt, and vibes that scream “we should’ve talked about this 800 years ago.”
And Jun Wu, oh Jun Wu standing there like the embodiment of “this could’ve been avoided if you’d gone to therapy instead of committing atrocities.”
We are a consumer economy. Shareholder economics bleeding companies, illegal mergers of businesses, and focusing only on the ultra-wealthy hoarders to trickle down, is a failure.
so we know from daisuke that kazumasa sakai was originally written as a physically abusive drunk, but that his character was changed significantly to humanize him a bit more and make him more complex (good choice, writers)
this would mean that kazumasa being physically abusive toward jin is not necessarily canon in the game
HOWEVER....
i think there is quite a bit of subtext in the game to support that interpretation of kazumasa's and jin's relationship, at least to some extent
(analysis under here)
my first piece of evidence for this, and the most obvious, imo, is both jin and shimura's reactions when shimura hits jin after jin defies him for the first time at castle shimura:
from shimura's reaction, he knows IMMEDIATELY that he fucked up. it's truly an "oh shit, we're never coming back from this" moment. and jin's look of betrayal is so potent. my feeling is that shimura knew about kazumasa's abuse and tried to shield jin from it as much as possible, which is one of the reasons why they became so close later. so shimura hitting jin in that moment defies the very basis of their loving uncle-nephew dynamic, AND it gives extra strength to jin's later pronouncement: "i am not your son. i am the ghost."
potential translation: "i won't let you treat me the way my father did. i'm breaking out of this inherently abusive system. fuck you."
more evidence is jin's dialogue with masako in the tale "the family man": they're looking for kajiwara, a man who purportedly abused his wife and daughter
masako laments that the wife and daughter returned to kajiwara even after she provided them with refuge from him. jin, in contrast to masako's disbelief, responds with understanding:
"it's not always easy [to leave your abuser]. especially when you think they'll change."
he could have said: "it must not be easy," or "it must be hard"; but no, he seems to be speaking with authority here; he has lived it, he understands it from personal experience. he knows how it is to love and respect someone while fearing them, to want to get away from them but to be unable to--especially as a child who was repeatedly told that he should honor his father, that he was his father's heir, that one day jin would be the next lord of clan sakai and that he should look to his father for guidance
then, when masako and jin finally confront kajiwara, he admits to killing his wife and daughter; jin, usually very stoic, is furious to the point that even masako (the impulsive one) has to hold him back
i used to think this emotional reaction was just a product of jin's commitment to shimura's "code" breaking apart by this point in the story, but now i wonder if it isn't also something more...
there may be more moments that point to this interpretation, but these are the ones that stand out to me
so uhhh more beefleaf then? one of my favorite themes is the diversity between ming yi and he xuan forms and how the interaction with qingxuan have a different dynamic depending on whom we seeing right now
Thank you everyone who helped me out yesterday by tossing some coins my way!
Please take this art with Dianxia as a gratitude :)
(btw, this is one of the CGs from my tgcf fan visual novel)
