Scum Villain Self Saving System

kristsingto

1 year ago

i hope you'll stay

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svsss scum villain self saving system bingqiu

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kristsingto

1 year ago

The reason I find Shang Qinghua so fascinating is because his life is terrible and familiar

What little facts we learn about his pre transmigration life is:

1. He was estranged from both his parents as they were much more invested in their new families

2. Because of that it's implied he was neglected. We only know for sure that while his dad paid his tution and living expenses he often "forgot"

3. He ended up writing proclivity based on what the comments liked or disliked because he was pandoring as it was his main source of income and because of that

4. He deliberately farmed hate comments because that was still engagement

But what we can infer about his life from the other characters is so much more

Luo Binghe: Luo Binghe is constantly hurt as a child by adults and people in authority who should be taking care of him. So he has attachment issues, trust issues, and in the original novel ends up in a lot of meaningless heterosexual sexual encounters that are devoid of emotional depth but let him play caretaker and accept affection as shallow as it can be. He also spends a good portion of his existence in dreams

Luo Binghe is obviously a self insert power fantasy. Through him Shang Qinghua was able to get revenge on those who hurt him and be powerful. But because Shang Qinghua (who may or may not have known he was gay) was filling his novel, that he has once dreamed of being art, with sex to please a bunch of straight men...no wonder the sex was devoid of emotion and left Luo Binghe as fundamentally hollow inside unable to fill the void in his soul. Because while PIDW paid the bills it was emotionally unsatisfying to Shang Qinghua

Luo Binghe is also written to be manipulative and I think that's a dark version of Shang Qinghua's need to fill a role and be what people need of him

Which brings us to:

Yue Qingyuan: Yue Qingyuan always has a smile on his face and strives to be pleasant and to fix problems between other people even when he's rejected for it and he constantly is failing to reach those he really needs to. Too afraid to speak his truth even as he has a sword of Damocles hanging over his head

This is the the other side of Shang Qinghua's people pleasing. This is a child who feels he has to fix his parents divorce and feeling like it's his fault. This is Shang Qinghua never feeling good enough

Original Shen Qingqiu: Shen Qingqiu is able to be the petty spiteful bitch Shang Qinghua always wanted to be. Shang Qinghua in canon often mutters spiteful hate filled comments towards those who treat him bad but he doesn't often say it to anyone directly until the ascension. Because Shang Qinghua doesn't feel he can get away with it

Shen Qingqiu is also a conduit for the rage I'm sure Shang Qinghua has towards his half siblings. Those are ugly feelings that he can't express to the people in question. If you've been hurt and deprived and you see someone getting what you needed but never had, well it fills you with anger at the innocent party.

It's possible to swallow that rage down and recognise it's not the fault of the person recieving what you needed. But it's an ugly emotion that has to go somewhere. And I think all of Shang Qinghua's ugly feelings like that pre transmigration went to Shen Qingqiu

Shen Qingqiu can be spiteful and two faced and elegant and nasty in a way Shang Qinghua couldn't be. Which is why he had a complicated backstory

Mobei Jun: we know he's Shang Qinghua's ideal man. Both in what he's attracted to (whether he realises it or not when he wrote him) and what he wants to be

So what does that tell us?

It tells us Shang Qinghua wants to be strong and he wants to not feel

He wants to take the trauma of his childhood and close off from the pain he feels

He wants to be ice. He wants to be stoic and unbothered and strong enough that pain doesn't reach him

Now we know that Mobei Jun in SVSSS does have feelings he's just very bad at expressing them. But to Shang Qinghua he's endlessly cool and untouched and untroubled

We learn so little of Shang Qinghua directly but because he's author of the world and from ways he reacts to characters and situations we can infer so much

And he's so hurt and lonely and lacking in self worth

And yet the narrative doesn't get any kinder to him. Post transmigration he is bullied by the system and by his peers and by Mobei Jun and he's always fighting for survival

Because both lives have been about "smile, do what you're told, survive"

But his extras end with his ideal character protecting him, treating him kindly, and agreeing to make him noodles. And Shang Qinghua feels safe enough in that moment to be demanding and ask for what he wants!

And anyone who has been neglected and emotionally abused can tell you that asking for what you want is a big fucking deal

I will have been married 18 years this November and I still cannot tell my husband (who is great) what I would like for dinner half the time because in my head I am not allowed to ask for stuff (I'm working on it)

Shang Qinghua goes through so much shit (and we don't even learn his name from his first life)

But his happy ending is him finally asking for something for himself and getting what he asked for without complaint

And what he's asking for is what killed him

He's so interesting and I can't get over how much is there but hidden in the other characters

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shang qinghua svsss scum villain self saving system other people's meta

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kristsingto

1 year ago

i don't think we talk enough about the two most mysterious characters in the whole novel:

the author and the reader, airplane shooting towards the sky and shen yuan.

yes, we know a lot about Airplane and Shen Yuan's lives post-transmigration, and we got a few details of their first lives, but those details are so scarce that to this day we still theorize about what was going on with them. we don't even know Airplane's birth name.

what we know is how different their economic and family situations were: shen yuan had a loving family and enjoyed the life of a rich second-gen, while airplane's parents divorced, he was unloved and neglected and struggled to make a living.

airplane lived off his novel, and shen yuan lived to consume them.

and i think that this happens because this two characters hide themselves behind The Story. Author and Reader use the Story to forget about themselves; or at least the version of themselves that they suppress, because there's a lot of underprocessed and internalized trauma and pain associated to it.

this is much more obvious in shen yuan, as his emotional repression has been talked about a lot already. even after the extras there are a lot of things that he'll simply shove into a mental box to never touch them again, but the same goes for airplane. I'd argue his case is worse, because his two lives have been so difficult.

airplane submerged himself in the world of his novel while he was writing, and then literally when he was forced to live in it.

escaping into the novel, first figuratively and then literally, was necessary for airplane to keep himself alive. his novel allowed him to live and gave him a goal, something to live for and be proud of. he made a story that was wildly popular and that had lots of people talking about it. pidw was such a big hit it inspired more novels that followed on its steps. he was so drunk on the attention, enjoyed it and craved it so much, he'd go to read what his fans talked about in the forums.

this is the way the author escaped into the story, because the story gave him money and a twisted form of adoration and attention, the only he could aspire for.

there's a very good meta by @/inefectualdemon did a great meta about how PIDW could be seen as a reflection of Airplane's traumas, personality and worldview, and how you can infer a lot about how he portrays this characters and their relationships with each other.

shen yuan too participated in this form of escapism, just from the other side of the equation; it's not normal to read a novel in 20 days and get so obsessed with you die ragging about it. why is a guy who seems to have everything he needs, a loving family and a stable life, losing himself into the world of a novel he claims to hate?

i'm of the opinion that shen yuan's issues have to do with his lack of purpose in life, but i'd also argue that they may be related to his blatant sexual repression that derives the extreme compulsive heterosexuality and homophobia we see reflected in his narration. he's obsessed with sex, but with "straight" sex, so it's okay to read about it. it's okay to think about dick if it's in the context of heterosexual sex. it's okay to think about the protagonist's attractiveness and beauty if he immediately tags it with a "that's why women fall for him".

so, going back to the main point. i think that, just as the world of pidw reflects airplane's inner world, the way shen yuan relates to it and projects himself into it and its characters, says a lot about his elusive inner world.

(it's getting long, so continue under the cut)

at the end of the novel, shen yuan thinks that pidw, with all its plotholes filled and backstories revealed, is just tragedy after tragedy; for airplane, this is just how the world works from his point of view. there's no end to the tragedy, there's no happiness simply because he himself has never experienced it.

shen yuan's solution to the tragedy and cruelness of the world is kindness and understanding; airplane's is apathy.

another example: shen yuan admires yue qingyuan for his dedication, reliability and kindness; he sees him as good old brother, subconsciously projecting and relating to him in the same way he did with his real older brothers. this is not to say his feelings are not genuine; they are, but they arise from his own need to have that type of siblings relationship again. that's why he's so invested in cang qiong, among other things.

but how does airplane view yue qingyuan? a kind fool, someone who's easy to take advantage of. yue qi is the boy that failed to save his most important person (for a good reason, apparently) and yue qingyuan is the adult that allows disciples to be abused to assuage his own guilt.

the way shen yuan treats kids and teenagers, the way he perceives the women as aesthetically beautiful, and distant from himself, unless they fall in the category of family. the way he makes a point to comment on the appearance of every man he meets, specially the ones that reflect his own repressed tastes.

shen yuan care a lot about everything, from the plants to the monster to the people in pidw; he struggles trying to force himself to believe they are not real, that this are just novel characters, and fails every time (well, except when it came to binghe's agency, ironically). airplane is the complete opposite. almost everything in pidw was his own creation, and he can live through the tragedy and death unperturbed (well, with a couple of exceptions), unless this one character he got attached to gets in danger, in which case he'll do everything to save them. mobei-jun is the character that cracks airplane's shell of apathy. he cares so much about him it almost gave him a heart attack.

pre-transmigration, airplane escaped into his novel out of need; post-transmigration, he's apathetic, sometimes even resentful of his fate, but mostly doesn't care unless it's related to his own survival.

pre-transmigration, shen yuan view everyone as characters that served a purpose in the story; tropes and archetypes. but post-transmigration, as early as the demon invasion, he is incapable of viewing the characters as fictional, and is deeply affected by what happens to them.

we joke about svsss being fanfiction of pidw, but if we look deeper into it, isn't fanfiction a reflection and projection of the fic writer, a way to reinvent the story in a way that resonates with you? don't we sometimes have a love-hate relationship with a popular media that inspires both admiration and criticism in us?

this was a very long-winded way of saying how intrigued i am by airplane and shen yuan's lives pre-transmigration, the things that made them into Airplane and Peerless Cucumber, the way both Author and Reader escape and project themselves into the story, and how this is a reflection of who they are.

if you read until the end, thank you! :D and let me know what you think.

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svsss scum villain self saving system shang qinghua other people's meta

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