Dude No Listen Love Isn't Real It Can't Hurt You Bro I Swear

I have many thoughts about SVSSS. Are they coherent? No, but here’s another one. I’m been thinking a lot about Shen Yuan’s feelings toward Binghe lately. Specifically, his progression of feelings towards falling in love with him romantically. In the context of SVSSS series siblings, MZDS and TGCF, and also outside of it. And, I just have to ask, when tf did it happen?

I’m going to speak briefly on some spoilers here so beware if you haven’t completed the series.

Obviously I don’t think there was a definable moment in MZDS and TGCF where it showed who fell in love at what exact point except for Hua Cheng, maybe. Especially because Xie Lian and Wei Wuxian could be unreliable narrators. But Shen Yuan, imo, was the worst of them. Which caused me grief on several occasions, bless. But this also affected how the audience could see the progression of Shen Yuan’s romantic feelings bc he wanted to stick his head so deep in the sand about it. Clearly, the audience could tell that by the time Binghe was thrown in the abyss that Shen Yuan loved him, yes. Even though Shen Yuan was in denial about how hard he was grieving him, MXTX clearly let the audience have context on how the lie detector determined that was a lie. However, we never get much context on when that love for Binghe turned romantic.

Reminder, this is my opinion based off of reading SVSSS once and given myself a month or two to digest it. I personally believe from the time they reunited after the abyss and then onwards, Shen Yuan never had the chance to formulate a romantic connection with Binghe with all the misunderstandings, denial, near death, and actual deadly experiences in the way. Okay, yes, feelings never wait for the right context or situations BUT let’s ignore that for now.

I could argue right here and now it wasn’t until after the end of the “story” that Shen Yuan allowed his romantic feelings for Binghe to flourish. That he could sort through his feelings and actually engage with Binghe in a romantic context (which is an Herculean task in itself). He never had the time or space for it before with everything that was going tf on.

Me too, me too.

anime_irl

scum villain is fun because there's so many porn tropes but then again there's also the horrors (thinking about how shen yuan's siblings calls to him have gone unanswered for weeks, maybe even months, until one of his family members, probably his little sister, decides to pop in to check on him, maybe with a container of home cooked dumplings and a jokingly soft "just making sure you haven't died, yuan-ge" only for her to find his rotting corpse, slumped over the computer almost as if he just fell asleep while reading again and would wake up soon to groan and shrug off her concerns and tell her about the new chapter of that novel he hates so much,

krkrkrkr this is so cursed I can’t-

when your vessel is not hollow.

feeding us so well as usual love u

I have a really long post explaining the svsss iceberg cooking in my drafts rn please be patient for it

can’t wait to be a part of it !!!!

Ah yes, the Tcf fandom.

My favorite place where we all get emotional and cry over Cale, enjoy him getting bleed and absolutely tired of his "I'm a trash" thing!

Come on Barbie let’s go party

Ayo thank you for your contribution to society and world culture through the SVSSS iceberg, now if you don’t mind can you please explain it? I’ve been in the fandom a while but I swear I’ve never heard of some of these

Sure! Explanations will be sorted under the cut:

SHEN YUAN TIER:

- all items in this tier are either surface level details from the source material or

- daily bingpup is a popular fandom meme (used in the metal gear sense lmfao) started by @ kamkamquats on Twitter that's pretty self explanatory: kam draws and posts a bingpup picture every day! The archive is available here.

I probably should have made this point just bingpup, as I believe his origins precede kam's art, but she certainly boosted his popularity significantly, and now her art and bingpup are canonized with the publishing of the 4th volume English translation of the novel, so I thought it was a fun point!

LUO BINGHE TIER:

- Feynite's au collection: an extremely popular collection of alternate universe fics written by legendary Scum Villain fic author Feynite.

- Scum Villain is a tragedy: an interpretation of the books that poses that from every other perspective besides Shen Yuan's, Scum Villain is an incredibly depressing tragedy.

- Luo Binghe is Airplane's self insert: "Don't asky why Luo Binghe wasn't the embodiment of [Airplane's] ideal man; Luo Binghe's use had primarily been to fulfill his desire to be a badass and get revenge, as well as his desire for wanton [this section has been censored]" (The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System volume 4, page 163).

- Shen Yuan died on his birthday: Shen Yuan's death date is never given in the original novels, but in the first scene of the donghua when he dies while at his computer, you can catch a glimpse at the date reading September 21st (both his birthday and the day svsss was published!)

- Shen Qingqiu's canon fursona: binghe compares sqq to a crane multiple times in the story but is depicted as a cat in fandom much more frequently, leading people to joke about how the fandom disregards his "canon" fursona in the same way bingpup is much more prevalent than sheep binghe.

- Shen Qingqiu can knit: there's official crossover Christmas merchandise that shows all of the mxtx couples participating in different holiday activities: wangxian are decorating a tree, hualian are baking cookies, and shen qingqiu is knitting a scarf for luo binghe.

- Luo Binghe's birthday: Luo Binghe is actually the only main mxtx character that doesn't have a canon birthday. He's noted in the books as being born on "the coldest days of the year", but it's debatable whether this is late December or early January, and there's no specific date from this that we can confirm is his birthday.

- sv manhua's indefinite hiatus: much to the excitement of starved fans, a Scum Villain manhua began publishing in 2019. It ran for a grand total of 3 wonderful weeks before being unceremoniously put on indefinite hiatus because of drama within the fanbase stemming from rumors that the artist/company drawing it actually hated scum villain. It has yet to return.

SHEN JIU TIER:

- Moshang's horrible first time: MXTX stated in a Q&A interview that neither Mobei-Jun nor Shang Qinghua enjoyed their first time having sex together.

- Shen Qingqiu invented maxi pads: the "scum villain pad commercial" is a commercial from the first season of the donghua depicting an exchange where Ning Yingying is self conscious about going out on her period because her sanitary supplies aren't cute, so Shen Qingqiu magics her up some maxi pads.

- Shen Yuan read mpreg yaoi: "#18 Peerless Cucumber [Expert]: Upthread, keep cool. This forum has a lot of Green JJ sisters 😎" (The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System volume 4, page 145). / "''Great Master' Liu! Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky didn't write a green Jinjiang mpreg novel!'" (The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System volume 4, page 295).

- Shen Jiu transmigrated into Shen Yuan: A somewhat popular theory in the fandom that when Shen Jiu died, he transmigrated into modern day Shen Yuan the same way Shen Yuan did to him.

- Cursed monkey island: Cursed monkey island is/was a private discord server made up of very og sv fans that was known for outputting somewhat dark/off-color/weird fics for each other, often with funny porn spoof names and niche concepts. The first fics from there were published in 2018, while the last fic in the collection seems to have been published in 2022, so they might still be active, but I'm not sure.

- Moshang has a 20 year age difference: Shang Qinghua died at at least age 20 (probably older) and since he transmigrated into a baby, he has 20 extra years of consciousness from his first life on the PIDW native characters, who he meets when they're both teenagers in the Airplane extras. Though physically the same age group, he would've been mentally somewhere around 30-40 years old at this point getting bullied by teenagers.

- The microwave: some of the first previews released for the donghua were static turnaround videos of the 3D models set to elevator music -- after these dropped, it was radio silence on the show's status for a long, long time. Fans called these previews "the microwave" because of the static rotation of the models and referred to the time it took for the donghua to come out as "defrosting it in the microwave". There's a fair amount of art/memes from this time period featuring the characters literally inside microwaves, even to the point where people made microwave-themed SV merch. When the donghua finally came out bingqiu were declared "free from the microwave" and a wave of fanart of them destroying microwave prisons emerged.

TIANLANG JUN TIER:

- Wangxian have read resentment of chunshan: in the mdzs audio drama extra episode "Accompanying you to sleep - Lan Wangji", Lan Wangji takes care of a drunk Wei Wuxian by getting him ready for bed. Towards the end of the episode, Wei Wuxian asks Lan Wangji to read him a bedtime story. Lan Wangji says he isn't good at telling stories and Wei Wuxian suggest he reads him The Resentment of Chunshan (bingqiu fanfiction). Unfortunately, Lan Wangji had never heard of it before and thereby could not ASMR it.

- Six Balls x Zhuzhi Lang: a rarepair (also called bamboo balls) written by the lovely Alex here.

- Shen Qingqiu has the protagonist halo: a theory/headcanon suggesting that when Shen Yuan transmigrated, the role of protagonist and subsequent protagonist halo left Luo Binghe and transferred onto him. Often used in angst canon divergences wherein due to the lack of a protagonist halo, Binghe dies from an event he otherwise would have survived because of his story invulnerability.

- Shen Yuan's sister found his dead body: an angst headcanon centering around the idea that Shen Yuan's sister found his dead body rotting in his apartment after he died- very good art made about this here!! (Gore/blood cw)

- Who is zhuzhi lang's dad: we all know zhuzhi-lang's dad was a big snake but what kind of big snake? How big? Why did his mom fuck him? all important questions heavily debated about in this fandom.

MOBEI JUN TIER:

- Every ship is cumplane: we already know Luo Binghe is Airplane's self insert, and Mobei-Jun's cold demeanor is somewhat reminiscent of Peerless Cucumber's tsundere wife-isms, making bingqiu and moshang arguable proto-cumplanes. However, we can go further and argue because Airplane created the entire world of PIDW, all of it in a way reflects him and his feelings, therefore meaning that because it loves Shen Qingqiu and Shen Qingqiu loves it back, every possible PIDW asset x sqq is cumplane in its basest form.

- Original donghua designs: the first pv for the donghua actually featured slightly different designs for bingqiu, which were then changed later in production! You can see the original ones here.

- PIDW is real: someone actually posted PIDW on jjwxc so you can get the real Shen Yuan experience.

SHANG QINGHUA TIER:

- Shen Yuan penetrated into the body of the scum villain: there is a listing for the svsss donghua on Amazon prime video (though no episodes are actually available) which features this banger summary:

 An ordinary youth, Shen Yuan, after reading the novel "Arrogant Gods and Demons' Journey", triggers the mysterious system so that he crosses into the book world and penetrates into the body of villain--Shen Qingqiu. Shen Qingqiu's disciple, Luo Binghe, is the main character of the novel.

- Airplane's foot fetish:

Tumblr

toxic people are funny, actually

Shang Qinghua is canonically into feet

HELP??? PLS I CAN’t- I HATE AND LOVE HOW ACCURATE IT IS

wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Moshang

Wwx and xie lian having a moment of contemplative silence thinking about the dads they lost and binghe just walking in like "DO YOU FUCKING WANT MINE? PLEASE TAKE HIM. HE KEEPS TRYING TO GET MY HUSBAND TO SLEEP WITH MY COUSIN. IVE TRIED TO KILL HIM 7 TIMES BUT HE WONT DIE."