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Oct. 23rd, 2019 08:17 pmThe Scum Villain's Self-Saving System is (I think) the first gay wuxia web novel by the author of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation; it is definitely not as good as the latter but it is for sure much wackier ....
So the premise is that our hero, Shen Yuan, is just a long-suffering reader of bad web novels who, upon his tragic and accidental death, immediately gets transmigrated into the role of Shen Qingqiu, the villain of the bad harem web novel he was hate-reading on the day that he died.
My understanding is that 'portal fantasy transmigration specifically into the story of a web novel' is a not uncommon trend in contemporary Chinese fantasy. I don't know how many of them are, specifically, frustratingly mediocre-to-bad novels -- this could also be a very common trend and I'm just not aware of it -- but either way it's kind of amazing. Shen Qingqiu as an evil character in the original book projects a serenely competent image; Shen Yuan does his best to keep this up on the outside while fuming internally about the constant assault of nonsense plot points, and his wildly frustrated sarcastic running commentary is extremely funny.
There's also a deus ex machina system in Shen Yuan's head that prevents him from going dramatically OOC and hands out points for a.) staying in character and b.) fixing plot holes or filling out significant backstory in the original novel. There's absolutely no explanation for any of this, much to Shen Yuan's frustration, but it's all very meta!
Anyway! Shen Yuan's main concern is to alter the plot enough to prevent himself from being murdered in the future by Luo Binghe, the novel's original protagonist: at the point Shen Yuan has entered the novel, Luo Binghe is a cluelessly powerful half-demon sweetheart who's one of Shen Qingqiu's students, but Shen Yuan knows that after several years of Shen Qingqiu's bullying and sabotage, Luo Binghe will fall into the underworld and come out a cold revenge-driven antihero!
Although the deus ex machina system in Shen Yuan's head forces him to subsequently hand out several of Shen Qingqiu's plot-relevant betrayals, Shen Yuan's genre-savviness means that he's perfectly aware that Luo Binghe's plot armor is going to protect him from everything he throws at him, which results in a lot of early scenes like this:
PERIL: [threatens]
SHEN YUAN: oh Luo Binghe can take care of that
OTHER CHARACTERS: how can you let that hapless youth fight that peril, he'll die
SHEN YUAN: oh no, trust me, he'll be absolutely fine
LUO BINGHE: omg teacher no one's ever believed in me like you *__*
SHEN YUAN: what?
LUO BINGHE: nothing! oh hey teacher look I killed the peril!
It takes about half the book for Shen Yuan to realize the inevitable-to-the-reader fact that the various small ways he's been changing the plot have resulted in Luo Binghe completely ignoring all the other love interests scattered around the novel in favor of becoming absolutely fixated on Shen Qingqiu -- and once Shen Yuan does figure it out, he's more chagrined than anything else. He ruined a perfectly good harem novel protagonist, is what he did! Look at him, he's got gay obsession!
And, I mean, one of the stranger things about the structure of the book is that the romance never really ... like, Shen Qingqiu doesn't so much 'fall in love' with Luo Binghe as accept, with a mildly inconvenienced sigh, that if the genre of the novel has well and truly changed to 'gay romance' then he might as well get with the program. Oh, we've come to the bit of the plot when it's time to save the protagonist with the power of love? Ah, well, he always more or less knew this day would come, if we must have the magical healing sex then I suppose we must. It's wildly unromantic but it did make me laugh, so points for you, I guess, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu ...
Like The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, it looks like this book is going to be made into a Chinese tv series. I am if possible even more curious about this than I was the other, because there's enough plot in The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation that it's really not that difficult to sieve a workable non-gay storyline out of it (not that the live-action show that we've been watching has tried very hard -- more on this anon) but the entire point of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System is "protagonist accidentally turns harem novel into gay romance" so how do you censor that?!
So the premise is that our hero, Shen Yuan, is just a long-suffering reader of bad web novels who, upon his tragic and accidental death, immediately gets transmigrated into the role of Shen Qingqiu, the villain of the bad harem web novel he was hate-reading on the day that he died.
My understanding is that 'portal fantasy transmigration specifically into the story of a web novel' is a not uncommon trend in contemporary Chinese fantasy. I don't know how many of them are, specifically, frustratingly mediocre-to-bad novels -- this could also be a very common trend and I'm just not aware of it -- but either way it's kind of amazing. Shen Qingqiu as an evil character in the original book projects a serenely competent image; Shen Yuan does his best to keep this up on the outside while fuming internally about the constant assault of nonsense plot points, and his wildly frustrated sarcastic running commentary is extremely funny.
There's also a deus ex machina system in Shen Yuan's head that prevents him from going dramatically OOC and hands out points for a.) staying in character and b.) fixing plot holes or filling out significant backstory in the original novel. There's absolutely no explanation for any of this, much to Shen Yuan's frustration, but it's all very meta!
Anyway! Shen Yuan's main concern is to alter the plot enough to prevent himself from being murdered in the future by Luo Binghe, the novel's original protagonist: at the point Shen Yuan has entered the novel, Luo Binghe is a cluelessly powerful half-demon sweetheart who's one of Shen Qingqiu's students, but Shen Yuan knows that after several years of Shen Qingqiu's bullying and sabotage, Luo Binghe will fall into the underworld and come out a cold revenge-driven antihero!
Although the deus ex machina system in Shen Yuan's head forces him to subsequently hand out several of Shen Qingqiu's plot-relevant betrayals, Shen Yuan's genre-savviness means that he's perfectly aware that Luo Binghe's plot armor is going to protect him from everything he throws at him, which results in a lot of early scenes like this:
PERIL: [threatens]
SHEN YUAN: oh Luo Binghe can take care of that
OTHER CHARACTERS: how can you let that hapless youth fight that peril, he'll die
SHEN YUAN: oh no, trust me, he'll be absolutely fine
LUO BINGHE: omg teacher no one's ever believed in me like you *__*
SHEN YUAN: what?
LUO BINGHE: nothing! oh hey teacher look I killed the peril!
It takes about half the book for Shen Yuan to realize the inevitable-to-the-reader fact that the various small ways he's been changing the plot have resulted in Luo Binghe completely ignoring all the other love interests scattered around the novel in favor of becoming absolutely fixated on Shen Qingqiu -- and once Shen Yuan does figure it out, he's more chagrined than anything else. He ruined a perfectly good harem novel protagonist, is what he did! Look at him, he's got gay obsession!
And, I mean, one of the stranger things about the structure of the book is that the romance never really ... like, Shen Qingqiu doesn't so much 'fall in love' with Luo Binghe as accept, with a mildly inconvenienced sigh, that if the genre of the novel has well and truly changed to 'gay romance' then he might as well get with the program. Oh, we've come to the bit of the plot when it's time to save the protagonist with the power of love? Ah, well, he always more or less knew this day would come, if we must have the magical healing sex then I suppose we must. It's wildly unromantic but it did make me laugh, so points for you, I guess, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu ...
Like The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, it looks like this book is going to be made into a Chinese tv series. I am if possible even more curious about this than I was the other, because there's enough plot in The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation that it's really not that difficult to sieve a workable non-gay storyline out of it (not that the live-action show that we've been watching has tried very hard -- more on this anon) but the entire point of The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System is "protagonist accidentally turns harem novel into gay romance" so how do you censor that?!
