After Being Abducted by the General Chapter 193 Discussion

Making this review because another review gave a low rating for xenophobia and genocide without any context.

To be clear, I don't like xenophobia or genocide in modern day settings, but it's a non-issue in historical settings, and I see this kind of novel as a historical fiction.

The setting for the story takes place in both ancient and turbulent times, so referring to outsiders as "barbarians" is pretty common back then as China quite literally saw itself as superior and the center of the world. Neighboring countries were even expected to "pay tribute" to China's emperor, that's how big China was in ancient times. It's not just China that saw outsiders as barbarians, even surrounding nations like Japan called outsiders "barbarians." There is more to Chinese history, and the history of Asia in general but not gonna rant about that here.

Given the fact that conflicts could erupt at any time between one's home country and the "barbarians" for ownership of fertile lands, plus the internal conflicts within the nation, showing kindness to your enemies by sparing them is cruelty to yourself. It'd be a great place to insert some kind of Art of War quote here.

Basically, you can't protect your citizens and raise your military power by being a gary stu. If you don't kill, then you get killed. Not to mention, if you show weakness to the very enemies that killed the friends and family of your soldiers, that will inevitably evoke resentment and foster a lack of trust with the soldiers. And as a reminder, you kind of need loyal soldiers to protect what you're defending from outsiders and those internally who are waiting to strike at you. After all, if you are the leader and you die, your subordinates and your people are the ones who will suffer as prisoners of war. They could be killed or ens*aved, living inhuman lives worse than death. Typically speaking, prisoners of war will never have a good time.

Now for the specific spoilery details that review brought up;

Spoiler

1. MC and ML commit genocide against 2 different ethnic groups, one of which had already joined their country and had established roots and families for 11 years.

The one ethnic group that submitted to the emperor/country (lets call them group A) still ens*aved the country's citizens after being allocated land and silenced any news about it from spreading outside. The other ethnic group (group B) tried to take advantage and collude with group A to attack home country's border military and take over. It's one group's right to attack and annialate as much as the other side's right to defend/attack/annihalate. It's war, do you want them to play nice? Turbulent times. What can you do.

2. To paraphrase: MC is a hypocrite who sympathizes with common people, feeling for the untrained forcefully conscripted farmers, and common folk being taken advantage of by the military, but he has no qualms with wiping out the opposing military full of able-bodied men.

Well the able-bodied men are from the opposing military who actually confront the MC's own military. Those who are actually in the military should be prepared to die unlike the unfortunate forcefully conscripted canon fodder farmers. Losers in the war become prisoners of war. What happens to prisoners of war? Execution and s*avery are common endings. Additionally, who would have time to weed out resentful soldiers from the losing side on a tight schedule under the pressure of turbulent times? If you let them all go without inspecting, at worse you are opening your arms to getting retaliated against.

Also, in ancient China, it's common for entire families and their next 3 generations to suffer the consequences of one person's mistake. Perhaps they all get executed, perhaps they and their decendants live under scrutiny for some crime one relative committed 50 years ago. They weren't strict to just outsiders, they were also strict to their own citizens.

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You can't read stories like this through a modern lens, and as a fluff lover, this story isn't that harsh imo.

Taking all that into account, would you still want an MC in a turbulent-times historical setting to be a gary stu? If yes, this is not the novel for you.