Okay. No... Meizhen is a Bai who based her domain on brutal, terror inducing vengeance against the enemies of her clan. She has grow a lot since joining the Sect and learned the value of treating possible allies with respect, but as far as we know she still desire to slaughter every clan who helped the Sun rebel against the Bai and later murdered her mother. While her domain doesn't cause terror indiscriminately anymore it still revolves around that same goal, she's just smarter and indulgent about it.
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
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Didn't the Sun guy that was subordinate to Meizhens Grandpappy do that on his own? Just throwing that out their, plus the whole conspiracy with her mom murderin the 6th prince is very much unsolved so not much to go on there till we get to sleuthing it up.
Varder
Tired Cultist
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- Hell
Pretty sure she tortured her way through Renshu's goons, who thought they were bound by magical contracts and thus couldn't refuse him. I'd say that's evil alright.
Still the best snek tho.
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- Florida
I'd argue that she was takin vengeance for tryin to poison Zengui when he was about to hibernate which is very justifiable in that instance.
A bunch of the Bai's vassals betrayed them and turned to the Sun when Sun Zhao killed the Bai's White patriarch. The Emperor and the Heavenly Peaks province supported the Suns in this due to their enmity with the Bai which persists to this day. When Meizhen's mother was accused of murdering the aforementioned prince despite having no reason to do so she was executed, not necessarily for being guilty but because the Heavenly Peaks wanted the rising Bai dead. Meizhen based and still base her entire path on making sure this will never happen to the Bai again, which is where her unyielding defense, terror inducing aura and brutal counter attacks come from.
Varder
Tired Cultist
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- Hell
On the goons? And those were not even the same ones. Renshu doesn't give a fuck about their well being - what kind of vengeance is that? Plus, it's been pretty clear that there was no avenging anything, she just needed some info. It was Cui's interlude, if I recall.
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- Third planet from the star named Sol
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I'm pretty sure the magical contract thing ended after Ling Qi outed him to everyone, because she destroyed all the actual contracts and Cai put the lie to the rest.
Varder
Tired Cultist
- Location
- Hell
Oh, right. Kinda forgot that happened. Okay, so maybe they deserved some stern-talking-to, but not Meizhen on a war path.
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- Florida
Not saying your wrong but from her perspective being raised by a literal snake den of backstabbing vipers it was par for the course in her eyes, plus it was also her venting after... the lake incident...
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- Greece
Ok, first, that "as far as we know" may as well mean "it can be assumed because of her background". Far from a certain thing.
Second, desiring revenge for a wrongful execution and for the fact that people left mortals die is hrdly what I'd call villainous. Sure, she may be eating the Bai slant without chewing, but good people can be parts of evil factions.
Thirdly, our domain seems to be based on darkness, isolation and loneliness, yet if we truly analyze it, it is actually based on love, family, and protection. This kind of surface domain analysis does no one justice, especially if Meizhen sees terror as a shield so that people cannot harm her anymore, again, hardly something villainous
Again, I never said she was a moral paragon. Her attack was not moral, but it was justified, she attacked people out to hurt her and her friends, regardless of motive, not innocents. Sure, I morally disagree with that action, but it is not an action I'd call someone a villain for, as it was done for, essentially, protecting Ling Qi and Zhengui.
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So... a scared litle girl who doesn't want to be hurt anymore is comparable to people who actively harm innocents ?
There is a chasm between "moral paragon" and "villain" . The fact that her actions were evil in that instance and would be evil in similar instances does not make her a villain, it just makes her less good, because one must also consider the circumstances and justifications of said actions. Even if they are still wrong (they are, in this case) they do not make someone a villain. She went hog because she was trying to protect others, not because she was sadistic. Zihao and Liling, despite their better qualities, have no such excuses for their worst actions.
If the little girl harms innocents. Which Meizhen has a tendency to do. We're not saying she's a villain in the sense that she is unquestionably evil and the thread is wrong about her. She's still best snek and we love her, but she is and has always been pretty much a villainous archetype. But having a tragic backstory doesn't make someone not a villain since it's practically mandatory for the title. Being traumatized and villainously raised in the past does not excuse monstrous behavior, it merely explains it. To say Meizhen is evil for most interpretations of the word is correct and we do say it, without judgement or condemnation just as most of Ling Qi's friends and herself follow villain archetypes.
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- Florida
By that logic there is literally no good person in that world considering the amount of insane things that there are and what needs to be done, specially now with the barbarian attack.
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- Greece
A villain archetype does not make one a villain. God knows how many stories had the dark evil race or the sadow using dude or the horned guy being actually the good guys, or no different from everyone else.
Of course being scared does not excuse the actions of harming inno... wait, they were active enemy combatants, nevermind. Well, torture is still wrong... but she didn't do it for fun, she did it to protect Zhengui.
Look, I can call her behaviour in that instance wrong, but its no more monstrous than a person who steals to feed his family. Every single action was taken against perceived enemies for perceived protection and was not underscored by the kind of insanity or hubris that makes this perception unreliable.
I hate to do this to a person who is using an argument that helps mine... but torture is especially bad because the target is helpless (not to be confused with innocent) , the behaviour deliberatedly as painful as possile and the information unreliable. Its quite different than most wartime necessities.
Varder
Tired Cultist
- Location
- Hell
You talk like villains don't usually have legitimate reasons to do what they do. Like, do you believe that a villain is someone who does bad shit because they are cruel or sadistic? So apparently Sauron is not a villain. And Jafar. And Darth Vader. And Magneto. And Davy Jones. Well, I disagree. Having reasons doesn't excuse your actions. Doing evil shit for good reasons makes you evil.
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- Location
- The Space Between
I mean. The same excuses can be used for Liling or Zihao. Liling grew up to fight Bai and Bai are treacherous. How do you beat a machiavellian? Do you play their game? No. You jump the table and smash their head to mush.
of course, Liling swiftly found out what happens when you fail to play the social game. Words are very important in a violent society. Keeps things ordered and understandable. Law of the Jungle is chaos.
Zihao is willing to murder if he can get away with it, because the only kind of war is Total War. Ain't no middle ground with these bad-guys. They'll do whatever it takes to crush you, so you have to be the same.
Of course, this is a totally unnuanced view and understanding. There are no barbs, no human existential threats to Heavenly Peaks, there are only other humans living in this deathworld and how you treat them is going to be how they respond. If you go in with the mindset of Total War they will adapt and commit to the same. It's not a guarantee that these other cultures also believe there is no war but Total War.
Can you say the same, Imperial?
honestly the only character that didn't come across as complex/nuanced was NastyBat. But that was because most of us have collective trauma from people/characters like that we've experienced blindsiding us in life/stories and the RR rewrite is *so* much more correct in terms of tone.
nobody is evil or good in a deathworld per se. I believe it's more helpful to think of it like: There are successful groups, and failing groups. If you don't succeed, the world kills you. If you do succeed, the survivors will tend to agree that your ends justified your means. It's a very unfortunate and relativistic morality but it's necessary to view it in that lens when there are explicit existential threats to humanity lurking about waiting for us to be too weak to fend them off. Everyone entrenches in their traditional Ways even if those "Traditions" have been slowly warped overtime into failing and ailing anachronisms that are actively antagonizing those in the region.
the proof that the traditions have been warped or misinterpreted is that there was a golden era, and now there is mass struggling, and the knowledge base available to pull from is largely the same. It's not the fault of the elders or the traditions themselves, it's the fault of the interpreters that are getting it wrong. That is why I seem to have a bias against tradition/familyhistory. It's because the traditions clearly had a golden age where they worked very well, and are currently falling into mass disrepair. My money is that some non-whites had incomplete understanding when they tried to implement the old traditions, and they slowly became less and less functional.
Golden Fields currently looks like what any given province would look like in a mass-fail-state. Apocalypse, loss of knowledge and ways and traditions, rampant and persistent death.
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She was beating up and torturing laborers, not combatants or saboteurs. Or at least there's no evidence they were; the scene we have is some disciples being ambushed while gathering materials. As far as I can recall, Renshu never seriously employed human combatants.
Her motives do not make her a good person, really. Practically everyone has "good" motives. Granpa Sun led a ruinously self-destructive crusade against the jungle barbarians, genocided a whole bunch of them, and abandoned hundreds of thousands to millions of mortals to die back in Thousand Lakes. He did it all for revenge, for his family, to end what he viewed as an existential threat. None of that frees him from the moral consequences of his actions, and he's solidly in the murky regions of "gray" there, at best. Which is what people are saying about Meizhen.
- Location
- Florida
Nah its fine just poking a hole in an idea.
She aint evil mate, she was in a bad place mentally and frankly if were ignoring all those shades of gray between black and white welp then I guess there's gonna be no helping with our little sis turning into another raving mad lunatic bent on world destruction now is there?
Bai Meizhen views torturing enemy mooks as a moral virtue to aspire to though. Like, I think people are forgetting a lot of the broader context around her actions. She wasn't some distraught kid lashing out in desperation. She was a distraught kid lashing out in deliberate premeditation in keeping with her consistently held worldview and values system.
- Location
- Fabulously Rainbow Ireland
Not really? She's just ruthless when dealing with threats/enemies.
That uh happened AFTER Ling Qi revealed the contracts were bullshit, those guys were willingly working for the slime ball at that point (she still went way too far with the "interrogation" even if it was in response to Renshu trying to murder a child (spirit beast but still)).
Which was in service to the goal of stopping Renshuu from harming even more of the people she cared about not just "tit for tat revenge".
Even if they were labourers they were still ultimately contributing to Renshuu's efforts to ruin the people she cared for purely out of spite. They didn't deserve torture but painting them as hapless innocents instead of willing servants of a teenage mob boss who hurt a lot of people and ruined a lot of promising young commoners whose only crimes were "be talented and easy targets" just to enrich himself is going too far in the other direction.
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- Greece
Not quite. There is a difference between having a selfish and/ or harmful reason (greed, lashing out to everyone guilty or not because of a tragedy) and a good reason (protecting your friends, acting on necessity or self defense). Sure, there are reasons that are morally grey or inbetween (attacking innocents to make the world better) but in most cases , people argue about whether the person commiting these crimes is villainous or not. Hypocrisy, also plays a part, morality is way way too complicated to make it a simple calculation
The distinction I made, however, was between a person who only hurts in defense, and people who actively go after innocents, combined with the fact one can be overall good even if they commit some evil actions based upon greater context, and vice versa. Meizhen goes hog against enemy combatants, but only if they are actively threatening her or her friends with.
Liling isn't a villain because she tried to fight Bai in her terms. However, her law of the jungle was not a gambit against Bai, it was against Cai. Cai did nothing but propose not shitting where one eats. She is a villain because she actively tried putting a law of the jungle into effect for no good reason.
Zihao of course is evil not solely because of his mindset, but also because he applies no standards to himself. This kind of action would be wrong but somewhat justifiable if the dude didn't use his guys like pawns and if he didn't view commoners as expendable, but its obvious his morality is self serving.
I also do not believe in relativistic morality. Grey morality yes, but grey morality has shades--some light enough to be good even if not white, some dark enough to be evil even if not black, and some where I cannot say.
You do remember that collecting cultivation material means hunting monsters, yes? She beat up the guys that were sent to sabotage Ling Qi's mission, she didn't beat farmers and crafters.
And I never claimed that one is good or evil solely due to motives or backstory. That said, whether granpa Sun is actually a villain is, too, not yet known. And I do not disagree about the consequences, but at the same vein, paragons of justice had committed actions with bad consequences, that does not make them the villains.
In my book, villainy and heroism do not exist in a vacuum. That does not mean that I think background or intent justifies everything. But if you manage to raise yourself above your backround and your world, you are heroic, while if you fall below them, you are villainous. Bai keeps raising herself above it. Zihao and Liling keep sinking below it. Similarly, altruistic intend helps, while hubris (I know best...even when I am proven wrong) or selfishness (in the colloquial "I want it all no matter who I hurt" way, not in the "I actually want good things for myself" way Ling Qi uses it) also factor in.
- Location
- Fabulously Rainbow Ireland
He also tried to MURDER us (or at least cripple us) just because we were friends with Meizhen and he wanted to make her suffer emotionally.
So screw him.
It's weird you're denigrating him as a mob boss while justifying Meizhen's mob tactics of beating the shit out of the other guy's 'legit' employees. You're basically saying it's fine to beat someone up working as, say, a dishwasher, so long as they're aware the restaurant they work for is owned by the mob. Bit much for me.
That's not how I remember the interlude, at all. Evidence they were guys sent to sabotage Ling Qi's work?
- Location
- Greece
Eh, I am explicitly letting that pass because I do not want other people's answer to be that Meizhen acted similar against Renshu's helpers, or that "in his wyes we were evil", or that he did it for strategic reasons.
Context? Ling Qi had trouble turning in missions because there was a Renshu campaign to sabotage her, Meizhen went on the hunt, Ling Qi had no more problem.
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- Castle
Eh, no?
There is a fair amount of materials for cultivation that can be picked on the wild or grown. Ling Qi did a few missions where she got things from nature and even placated some trees for some of their fruit
Even the first post in FoD shows a cultivator farmer growing some magic herbs
I don't think that follows. After he messed with one mission, with no evidence of any involvement other than worms mind, we changed our own behaviour to minimize risks of interference. Took fewer/different missions, the ones with the least chance to get interupted.
The one time we see on-screen, she's targeting random herb-pickers iirc.