#which was the sole reason the adepti AND Azhdaha decided to follow him

[spunkykirby]

Didn't the new Chenyu lore solidify Zhongli was always a compassionate person (word for word, Xinyan's lore about pre-Archon War)?

Our precious Neuvillette IS all of that and while nice, you have to also acknowledge he is just as stickler and black and white like Zhongli is when it comes to performing as executors to their concepts. They're literally the same person, just switch "contract" with "law" and they will follow it even if they know certain details are wrong re:sending child Wrio to prison despite him stopping a CHILD TRAFFICKING RING and sending Childe to prison despite LITERALLY declaring him as not guilty 2 seconds prior lol.

Three out of four of those traits/factors can be attributed to 95% of the fandom's most popular and favorite characters (villainous or not, and this INCLUDES Focalors/Furina), so Zhongli isn't more evil-like for harboring those same traits and expressing them in a tolerable manner like them (each and every instance was controlled and he is not expressing these "flaws" in a reckless, villain-like fashion).

"Just to prove a point" sounds incredibly disingenuous/ALMOST like a somewhat biased understatement in an attempt to trivialize the topics at hand to further villainize Zhongli. It was a test curated to determine if the people he was responsible for could hold the risky reigns he's been handling for centuries. Someone responsible would make sure their replacements have a sufficient test and experience before jumping ship and leaving them in a demanding role.

The game literally goes out of its way (re:Three characters directly involved in the plot) to confirm anybody who DIDN'T sign up for this was never in any real unpredictable danger, this test wasn't even at the actual harbor (Keqing stating they couldn't let it reach the harbor in the cutscene). If he were irresponsibly reckless he would've left without a second thought and left the relations between Adepti and Humans forever fizzled and unprepared for Divine conflicts that are guaranteed to come in the future. Are we going to villainize all coaches for testing their athletes now, and every teacher testing students? There is no test without risk, that's just a fact of life.

Once again, what Zhongli embodies is also exactly what Neuvillette embodies, just replace "contract" with "law" and they're still the same thing, Neuvillette takes pride in never making exceptions to what he embodies too 💀

Blaming Zhongli for the Vishap Chronicles makes the least amount of sense in this entire rant, and sounds like an attempt to solely villainize him while ignoring any further context and nuance in the narrative. Where is the sense in blaming someone else for a villain's actions when that villain has full autonomy over what they can and cannot do? If we're going to blame a villain who has their own autonomy and is responsible for their own actions on the person who either stopped them or prevented them from doing their antagonistic things in a certain place (in this example Liyue) then we can blame all the Archons for their own problems that are completely outside of their control. We can blame the Traveler for issues they partook in when they have no control over the villain's actions too (ex:Traveler totally caused Childe to unleash Osial, they are to blame). This makes no sense.

The way "colonized" is used here applies to every country and every Primordial One-centered being in Teyvat then too, INCLUDING all of Fontaine and the humans residing there, so it's not such a unique gotcha in Zhongli's case, otherwise we'd have to villainize literally everyone in the narrative who isn't a dragon.

I wouldn't note on Ashikai being a reliable source either due to the fact outside of Deshret and Remus there is little to no evidence/100% conjecture of anyone else holding onto that title (Decarabian?? Of all characters??). This is the same person who said Zandik (Dottore) had French origins (FRENCH...he's from Sumeru) and noted little to nothing on Zhongli's Chinese motifs despite it being 95% of his character (the title Rex Lapis is solely an English translation by the way, Zhongli canonically has NO Latin ties in Chinese).

Where is the evidence of Zhongli being personally involved with PO and the Dragons besides him maybe being slightly older than Teyvat? When he's noted on being *young* during the Moon sisters era? And if he was, why would Azhdaha bother being submissive to him right off the bat, even worse, becoming BFFs with him when Zhongli was literally trying to kill him and all of his brethren a few years before?? EVERY single archon is part of the modern Celestial system, yet Neuvillette does not look down upon Focalors/Furina for participating in it despite being forced in just like Zhongli was, too.

Zhongli didn't seem that shaken up but that's just my perspective. Dude was literally smiling when Hu Tao said they'd get along, before quickly shaking himself back into Mysterious™ character "oh I actually have to be suspicious" lol he did the same exact thing to Venti last year and barely anybody believes Zhongli is genuinely afraid of Venti.

HP should've activated during Fontaine, would've made it 80x more dramatic. We're due Celestia lore 100%!!

Zhongli evading Neuvillette is like making me both laugh and cry because THE COMEDY IS LOST but also zhongli IS a filthy war criminal bastard and hes also old and neuvillette carries the weight of the pain of his previous incarnations but hes also this little young angry dragon and i NEED them to interact in the endgame(and not in an event) no zhongli and neuvillette will NOT be hanging out together remember that solid rock is shattered by water and the dragon's justice is served Cold.