YMMV / Boxers & Saints

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Was Little Bao a Working-Class Hero, or Knight Templar?
  • Was Father Bey a Sinister Minister who hated non-Christian religions and sided with even less moral followers, or a Good Shepherd who was genuinely charitable? His denouncing of the Chinese as barbarians and heathens in need of conversion stems from a report of infanticide that he seemed to have mistaken for religious practice, and he was reassigned to China because he bothered his corrupt superiors.
  • Were the entire Boxers group empowered by Chinese deities or their own zeal driving them to extreme?
  • Was Vibiana a Woobie or a Creepy Child?
  • Was Mei-Wen a truly compassionate figure, or a hypocrite? She treats a few injured Christians, but otherwise doesn't object to massacring Chinese converts. It's possible she initially had no problem with the latter and only later came to regret her actions, unlike the others.
• Moral Event Horizon: When Little Bao killed the girl from the train in revenge for his brother, it all went downhill.
• The Woobie: Vibiana suffered abuse from her family due to being a fourth daughter that made her a bad omen according to Chinese values. Various accidents, including her ill-fated attempt at wood chopping that nearly killed her grandfather and accidentally destroyed the statue of a deity, caused further rifts between her and her family. Her reason for converting to Christianity was that the local mission treated her as family. Finally, a member of the Boxers put her to the sword for her refusal to give up what she holds dear.

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