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If I’m going to look at an appendix, I want facts. Not conjecture, and definitely not someone injecting their own thoughts and feelings into someone else’s work and presenting it as fact.
Using Vol.8 seven seas since it’s complete, let’s take a brief look at some of the character descriptions I personally found the most galling:
Pei Xiu: “…His ascension to godhood occurred because he led the charge to slaughter the Kingdom of Banyue, and his exile from godhood occurred because of his morally dubious attempts to save his childhood friend Banyue from her fate of eternal punishment.” —Appendix: Characters. Vol.8
Morally dubious? Since when is slaughtering an immeasurable amount of innocents over the course of 150+ years considered “dubious” by moral standards? And that’s assuming that he was actually trying to “save his childhood friend”
Let’s look at the facts. Pei Xiu, although he cared for Ban Yue, sent her to infiltrate Banyue which directly caused her death.
After succeeding in his scheme, he ascended. But he had a mess of resentful ghosts that were unliving proof of his war crimes.
In order to maintain his squeaky clean image, he routinely fed living people to the ghosts in an attempt to disburse their resentment.. quietly.
Did this help Banyue? No. It actually did the opposite. She spent 200 years being hunted down and hung over the sinners pit in an endless cycle of pain and suffering. Not only that, but Pei Xiu used her snakes, which further dragged her name into the mud and (ironically) fueled the ghosts anger and hatred for her.
So how.. just how.. does the Official Appendix Character Description get away with saying “…because of his morally dubious attempts to save his childhood friend Banyue from her fate of eternal punishment.”??
[I didn’t use quotes from the story because it would make this post congested, but the details are in Vol.1 Ch.10 about 86%]
You know what? I was going to continue ranting, like how He Xuan has almost no factual content or backstory yet practically ships him with Shi Qingxuan like “maybe he likes her idk 🤷♀️” and his unknown relationship with Hua Cheng. Instead it could have said at least something about Scholar He..
It’s a reoccurring thing that sometimes comes off as absolute fanon and sometimes comes off like they’re trying spin a picture or soften a character to a more sympathetic light.
That’s the only reason I’d ever look at an appendix, I’m not here to read your drivel!
\rant