Someone commented that itās the worship that makes Hua Cheng interesting and that he isnāt blindly devoted to Xie Lian, and that he still has both a snarky side and the ghost king side to him.
And i have a lot to say so Iām going to say it here
The thing is though, he is not a complex character because of what has happened to him or because heās devoted to another character. Heās a shallow character because we donāt really actually know him as a person. Everything about him revolves around xl, and that makes him a one-dimensional character.
Like he obviously has had some sort of a life without Xie Lian but weāre never shown it. Everything about this dude revolves around Xie Lian.
He is blindlessly devoted because we have no reason to believe otherwise. Xie Lian said one line to baby Hua Cheng and this dude decides to follow Xie Lian for over 800 years?
We arenāt shown Hua Cheng growing up, thinking back to the line Xie Lian said and beginning to doubt his devotion to Xie Lian. Even if child Hua Cheng hadnāt felt the warmth of another person being nice to him for a long time and decided to live for him, older Hua Cheng would undoubtedly start questioning whether his devotion has meaning at all. This dude basically became obsessed with Xie Lian just because of one line, and itās believable in his childhood but less believable as he grows up.
I do think his devotion or worship would make him an interesting character if we knew what is up in his head.
But everything about him revolves around Xie Lian.
And this is a lesson to all authors out there:
Trauma or what happens to a character doesnāt make them interesting. Itās how they react to the world around them that does.
We know bits and pieces of Hua Chengās past, we knew he saw Xie Lian suffer and that he challenged the heavenly officials and whatever, but we donāt know what he was thinking.
And how I know for a fact that Hua Cheng is a shallow character is that everytime I read tgcf fanfiction most of the time he is also extremely shallow because most fic writers donāt know what to do with a shallow character.
Him being shallow doesnāt make him uninteresting, it makes him disappointing in canon.
The fact that there might be layers to him that he shows (only in relation to Xie Lian) makes him disappointing. Because he could be an interesting character if more work was put into showing who he actually is.
and like I know Iām not the only one to feel this way because I remember reading a blog post about this that went into more detail about how shallow Hua Cheng is lol.
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
