https://retrospring.net/@byakuyakoku/a/113907902060589441

"grief is just love preserving" is such a beautiful way to put it actually. and my opinion kind of aligns with that as well. hu tao's harshness towards her father wasn't a coping mechanism by any means. hu tao has no need to "cope" with death, her situation with her father was never a paradox to what we knew of her philosophy before. I've seen far too many people suggest that her bluntness is a coping mechanism but that entirely reduces something so important to her character - her agency when she deals with grief. she says so clearly when she speaks of him that its precisely because he's her father that she chooses not to hold back. she isn't instinctively or reflexively reacting to loss or trauma, nor is she dealing with any kind of unresolved grief over said loss.
maybe what I'm saying isn't very agreeable but its just how I saw it. her criticism of her father is her means of keeping his memory alive. when we mourn the dead, we tend to get caught up in blind reverence and forget the very human things that made the person prior to their death. not that its wrong, but its just not how hu tao functions.
and that's also why I always re-emphasize that there's meaning packed behind every single one of hu tao's actions, even in her whimsy. its her intention, its her choice. and there is no doubt that among all this, she hurts that her father placed her and her grandfather over his duty, contributing to so much death that could've been avoided. the "trash-talking" is her way recalling the values her father failed to uphold as gatekeeper. and these are the same values she holds herself accountable to.

also its not that death doesn't cause her pain. yes, she feels melancholic and wistful. yes, at one point, loss must have been hard to let go (like it was demonstrated with her grandfather's death). but I don’t want people to get caught up in this understanding of her as someone who’s happy on the surface and secretly miserable because I've been seeing this takeaway too much. she feels grief but doesn't let it overwhelm her. she’s so strict on the rules of life and death because she believes death is a necessary closure. The whole point of what she said of her father isn't that she's still deliberating loss but instead she knows how to process it. hu tao is willing to let go of anything should her duty as a psychopomp require it. But I also don’t want to attribute all her philosophies to her role as a mediator of life and death.
It takes psychological fortitude to realise death the way she does. a lot of this comes down to her as an individual.

In any case, I have actually got a public account but I just made it around 2 days ago. I was lowkey tired of being a priv account. hu tao's my favoritest character ever I was hoping being public would allow me to get involved in discussions more