#apologies for the wait! i started a job abd its busy

[hongluboobs]

given that it looks like the family's been 'smooshed' to be closer together (Jia Huan going from half-brother to just a brother) my current theory is that Daiyu and Baochai are the younger sister and sibling mentioned (though I'm not sure which is which, ie. who was made NB).

I think Jia Huan remains a half-brother in Limbus!

He only has one line in this game, which I'll put here:

It makes sense to assume they're full brothers because Hong Lu calls Jia Huan "brother" but in the book Bao-yu still refers to Jia Huan as brother at some point. (I would go find this in the text but as you can imagine it is a PAIN to find the word brother in a 5 volume 2000+ page text)

Jia Huan's use of "your family" instead of "our family" is another clue! Because Book Jia Huan is a half-sibling via a concubine he isn't considered as much of a part of the family as a child by marriage like Bao-yu would be.

There's still some wacky stuff going on with Hong Lu's family, though! Limbus Jia Huan is an older brother, which is Interesting because he's a younger brother in the book.

(The clarification of age is only in the korean/japanese text, but it does exist!)

I'm going to bring up all the mentions of Hong Lu's sibling now, because there are a few (I may have missed some in the IDs, I don't have an easy way of checking them)

These tell us... Pretty much nothing that I can really go off of. The interesting thing is the first quote seems to reference a moment in the book where Jia Huan cheats at cards, but because he's an older brother now who knows.

Bao-yu does have both younger and older sisters in the text, and then his younger brother is Jia Huan but we've established he's the older sibling in limbus. Sister and younger sibling are both plural in the third example so there could be some compression of the family here but I don't have a lot to go off of.

I have NO idea what they are going to do with Bao-chai and Dai-yu because there's that awkward classic lit adaptation problem of "these characters are related, but at the same time their romantic entanglement is very important to the story. We are adapting this through a modern lens where it is not the 1700s and being engaged to your cousin is bad, actually!" and honestly? I don't want to make any calls until we for sure know more about their relationship. They could be going the full family angle for Hong Lu and retcon the marriage, or have it take place in a different part of the story where it hasn't happened, or similar.

In the text, Bao-chai and Dai-yu are Bao-yu's cousins, not siblings, and with the wedding being one of the most important scenes in the book I really have no idea what will happen. Hong Lu is described as a bachelor/unmarried in Limbus but honestly, I don't know if I believe him on that one. If they do retcon/not mention or adapt the marriage they could very well collapse parts of the family tree, I'm just relatively wary of if they Do Not do that.

A pet theory I've had is that the younger sibling could be Hong Lu's way of coping with his childhood through detachment. (as in: the younger sibling is Hong Lu, but the past Hong Lu who had to deal with Everything growing up). I don't really have proof for this aside from some small things in the book and thinking it'd be an interesting way for things to be adapted in Limbus. Bao-yu's childhood is already rough for a variety of reasons in the book, but putting him in the city would make everything much worse so I could see it happening. The use of "sibling" is so interesting because it's a deliberate choice to not gender it and so it could be anything!

Apologies for the wait on this one! I have school and work again and I haven't been as Hong Lu brained because I've been making my way through ruina again but it was fun to drop some stuff like this! I'm really curious to how they will adapt his family and honestly Red Chamber as a whole because it is so thematically rich and there's a lot of stuff you can tie to the themes of Project Moon's games!