ad infinitum

The mythological origin of the red string that Hua Cheng uses to link himself to Xie Lian is pretty well-known: the story goes that a lunar deity is responsible for tying red strings around couples, who’d then become destined lovers. The red string is commonly called “the red thread of fate,” it is the invisible but unbreakable bond between people fated to fall in love with each other.

What should be noted is that in Chinese mythology, people are the passive receivers of the red thread of fate; their destined romantic partner is pre-determined by the arrangements of the lunar deity. But in Hualian’s case, the red string is technically Hua Cheng’s own invention; Hua Cheng actively, and by his own volition, creates an invisible but unbreakable bond between himself and Xie Lian. I will come back to this point later.

To understand the whole idea of “the thread of fate” more fully, I need to introduce the concept of 缘 (yuan). 缘 is a Buddhist term and there’s no equivalent word in English, but it is an important concept to take note of because it’s used countless times throughout the text of tgcf, and it’s a keyword of Hualian’s relationship.

缘 originally means “hem of clothes”, but later came to represent the invisible thread that connects people. If you have 缘 with another person, then the two of you have a natural affinity, which means you’re bound to meet sometime and form a connection, even if you’re continents apart at present. While if you don’t have 缘 with someone, then alienation is destined between the two of you; you may never end up friends even when you’ve lived in the same building for ten years. And there’re many types of 缘 – there’s auspicious 缘and there’s inauspicious 缘 (and many other kinds of 缘 in Buddhism that we won’t go into here). 缘 is as abstract as it is magical.

Now where does 缘 come in in Hualian’s relationship? When Xie Lian run into Hua Cheng after his third ascension, and then Feng Xin and Mu Qing both grew massively suspicious of Hua Cheng,  Xie Lian said to Feng Xin and Mu Qing:

Something the story keeps building up is an idea that carrying resentment is bad, but the sheer deftness of how MXTX deals with this keeps amazing me. 

There’s this ongoing theme about the dangers of resentment that is expressed in multiple ways. Claims about using resentful energy being an unorthodox path that will inevitably lead to ruin and use of that energy damaging the wielder’s mind and heart. The atrocities keeping grudges can lead to. The personal value of letting go of things weighing down someone’s heart.

WWX, the first person to develop a cultivation path based on resentful energy, is one of the least resentful characters in the story. He doesn’t take things lying down and he’ll get angry in the moment, but after things are over, he just…moves on. He doesn’t hold onto his grudges against the Wens. He doesn’t hold onto his grudges against the sects. He doesn’t want some protracted revenge. He just moves on.

On the other hand, the antagonists are the ones who nurture their resentment and their grudges. JGY remembers all the wrongs done to him, big and small, until he finally gets an opportunity for revenge, often drawing in innocent people to use and discard along the way. XY nurses his grudges until he can disproportionately return them – an entire clan for a pinky, an entire temple for capturing him. JC, not satisfied with the siege, keeps torturing and killing WWX by proxy for thirteen years. The sects, similarly not satisfied with winning the war, want to return everything they suffered and more until they finally decide to eradicate the remaining Wens entirely.

The contrast here just keeps inspiring. The story initially sets us up to believe that WWX is bad because he used resentful energy and it corrupted him. Then it twists around to say that no, while resentment is a corrupting force, what corrupts isn’t cultivating with resentful energy, it’s cultivating resentment within your own heart. And this is why it’s so important that WWX can and does use resentful energy, can develop a whole path based on it, without being corrupted himself – his heart remains pure.

@witchy-and-dorky ;u;

They’re in love y’all ;u;

Just a little speculation regarding that very first time Essek agreed to teach Caleb dunamancy. Frumpkin is never far, after all… and I like to think that cat is always up in everyone’s business.

And while we’re here, some bonus Caleb:

- An actual troll, because he is one - Someone from one of the others’ pasts - Little Mister (aka why ashley hasn’t summoned him yet) - Bertrand Bell’s long lost twin OR: - A second, smaller Bertrand Bell - The person the exu crew are looking for idk