Alright, I have seen too many terrible takes on the MXTX red-blacks (is that what we call them?) - specifically Hua Cheng and Luo Binghe, so I’m here to clear the air!
Time and time again I see people saying things like ‘Hua Cheng and Luo Binghe are unrepentantly evil!! Hua Cheng and Luo Binghe have no moral compass/outsource their morals’ etc etc, and while I appreciate that they are jokes and they are funny, this does bleed into fandom perceptions of Luo Binghe and Hua Cheng as characters.
(I’m not even going to touch Wei Wuxian this time because the discourse surrounding him is so wild and ridiculous and people most often forget to think about how actions during war differ hugely from actions during peace, and to apply the same lens of morality to both those times lacks any sort of nuance whatsoever.)
Anyway. Let’s start with Hua Cheng.
So you mean to tell me that you think Hua Cheng has no morals. Hua Cheng. As in, idolised the most righteous divine cultivator from the tender and formative age of at MOST 7 Hua Cheng. As in, dedicated his entire existence to that same most righteous divine cultivator for upwards of 800 years without once thinking of repayment Hua Cheng. As in, gouged out his own eye to protect a bunch of strangers and ascended to Heaven for it, and then REJECTED IT BECAUSE IT WAS FILLED WITH IMMORAL HYPOCRITES Hua Cheng?! Hua Cheng is one of the people with the strongest moral character in the series, and the actual backbone and strength to commit to it. The way he defeated 33 Heavenly Officials was cruel, but it was fair, and ultimately it was their hypocrisy and cruel treatment towards his Dianxia that brought about their own downfall. Remember, too, that Hua Cheng is only the ruler of the Ghost Realm because he figured that it was better him than anyone else seizing the immense power of such a position and terrorising people (like Qi Rong certainly would given the opportunity). Speaking of, if Hua Cheng truly were unrepentantly evil, had no moral character to speak of, and would kill innocents without hesitation, we wouldn’t even have a love story, because Hua Cheng would just be Qi Rong 2.0 - and I know some people like Qi Rong (for reasons I truly cannot fathom) but Xie Lian (and I) very much does not.
Now let’s move onto Luo Binghe.
Binghe is a little harder to talk about, because you have two iterations of him - i.e. original Binghe and Bingmei. Original Binghe is probably absolutely deserving of the titles of unrepentantly evil, lacking in moral character etc etc, because who else other than complete nutjobs derive any kind of joy from viciously de-limbing their cruel Shizun?
JJWXC webnovel Bingmei, on the other hand, is a different person entirely from his Zhongdian webnovel counterpart, which is the idea that basically drives the entire conflict from book 2 onwards. His Shizun basically acted like a loving parental figure to him for upwards of 3 years - he very obviously loved Binghe, and Binghe loved, idolised and respected him. When a figure like that suddenly betrays you, it’s incredibly difficult to reconcile with that. What happened at the Immortal Alliance Conference was sudden and unexpected - previously, Binghe was at least somewhat confident in Shizun’s acceptance thanks to the comment he made about the demon race, only to renege on it because he happened to have a huadian? That would be confusing and upsetting to anybody, and Binghe is angry, sure, but he’s also sad, and hurt, and frightened, and altogether it’s like a gut-punch to his self-esteem. What he wants, more than vengeance or to wreak destruction, is his Shizun’s acceptance and acknowledgement again, or at the very least some kind of closure.
Most of what he does after he gets out of the Abyss is along these veins. He never planted the sowers in Jin Lan city, nor did he turn the Huan Hua Palace disciples against Shizun. Most of the stuff he does that makes him seem unrepentantly evil in the books can be attributed to Xin Mo both feeding and exacerbating his insecurities and mental instability, which was initially caused by Shen Qingqiu’s seeming capriciousness in the first place, and which Shen Qingqiu takes responsibility for at the end of the books. So I would say that Binghe deserves more than to be caricatured as cartoonishly evil, too.
janainaart
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
dededos
