idk man

....

If this was about the little lolli girls in anime calling people onii-sannnn you wouldn't have a problem with it would you. Or like in kdramas when the girls say oppaaaaa and the bros say hyunnnggg but you have a problem with "gege" whut.

The fetishization discourse really needs to end. Its bascially a bunch of people throwing that word around for arguments sake. Fyi it doesn't make you look smart.

When people look at characters in any type of fiction, they will make up scenarios and headcanons. Because thats what fanon does... A sane person isn't going to go up to random strangers and be like omg i ship you guys I really wanna see you guys have sex. The ones arguing about this being fetishization is basically claiming this. Which is absolute bullshit.

Jesus christ someone doesn't know how to read past context. It's not religious zealous love. This chinese web novel is first off not part of the white culture and second its not about the indoctrination of thinking god or jesus or whatever can do no wrong. (In novel the gods in question did a lot of wrong yet they still became gods).

Hua chang that guy you hate, sees all the flaws in xie lian but still loves him. He is only devoted to him as a person, because what he said helped him through whatever he wanted to get by. He took his words to heart and became infatuated with him.

If you want to believe it only be about religious devotion than hua cheng would have wanted to ascend and become a god that he dearly looked up upon. But he didn't. Why? Because shocker, he is so enhammered by xie lian that he'll rather strip away that privilege than have xie lian disappear. And last time I checked, being devoted to god doesn't make someone want to have sex with them or make fanarts of them doing the d. Hua cheng literally despises how people used xie lian as a punching bag for them to vent their frustrations, but as a god you're suppose to take that ridicule. Hua cheng despised the system for the gods, and strived to take xie lian away from that belief in which he succeeded cause they live in the mortal realm. If he only cared about the "religion aspect" he would have wanted xie lian to continue living in the heavenly realm and love him as a god from afar.