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tbh I think the reason luo binghe gets more hate than other mxtx characters is simple: he's the only character where we see the worst mistakes of his life through a perspective that doesn't understand why he made them
no other mxtx character gets that immediacy and that rawnesss. either you hear about their darkest moments secondhand, or you're seeing those moments through their eyes. you feel how desperately xie lian tried to save his kingdom, you grieve with wwx as he sees he murdered jzx
you can excuse their actions because you feel their pain, you know their reasoning. or otherwise you don't truly see the worst things a character does: you *read* that 3000 cultivators got got at buyetian but it's not visceral. they're numbers, easy to write off
or you just get a demon boyfriend delivered fully cooked, already an overlord with a killer aesthetic & stable emotional state, and you don't get his tragic backstory until you know how he's going to end up. sure fxmq freak out at hc but the *reader* knows he never means harm
luo binghe gets none of those advantages. he's introduced as the sweet kid who shen qingqiu *knows for a fact* is going to brutally murder him someday. it is shen qingqiu's literal job to be a cruel, distant master whose murder attempt cements luo binghe's hatred of humanity
shen qingqiu knows luo binghe will never forgive him, because he knows what he did to luo binghe is unforgivable. he *knows* his sweet little sheep of a disciple is dead and replaced by an OP demon lord, because shen qingqiu's the one who killed him
so we see luo binghe as a desperate, confused young man alternately lashing out at the man who betrayed him and yearning for everything to be how it was. we see him hated by society and we agree with shen qingqiu that he's a murderer, beyond remedy.
and then we see that all of that was wrong. we realize that luo binghe is a lonely outcast trying his best, that he never wanted to hurt anyone. we forgive him & fall in love with him the same way sqq does: slowly, and after a mountain of misunderstandings
scum villain doesn't have a final boss who you can point to and go "the OTP's lives were ruined and it's HIS FAULT." bingqiu weren't kept apart by war or a puppetmaster. they fell out because of their own preconceptions, and they had to truly understand each other to get together
more than any other MXTX couple, they nearly destroyed each other, and they had to do the work to put each other back together. that's why the novel gets so much hate, but to my mind, that's what makes it so satisfying
jeez, this threat had like ten retweets when I went to bed. y'all just decided today is Respecting Luo Binghe's Character Arc Hours and that is so valid
