#I also have the perhaps not terribly healthy habit of ploughing through my tiggers out of resentment for them

[plan-d-to-i]

So, I've never read SVSSS and it has some characteristics that don't appeal to me so they make me doubt if I should give it a try. Anyways, I'm always curious about this SJ dude... isn't he the one that is supposed to be main villain in the 'novel' the protagonist read and also the one he transmigrated into? But then, isn't he just some kind of tool for the protagonist just like mxy is for wwx? Only a body, an "empty vase" in our eyes as readers, whose real soul disappears once the protagonist takes over him and we don't know about his whereabouts anymore and it's like we aren't supposed to care about him anyway? Or is it that I'm wrong and he STILL IS important for the plot?

Ah, I hope this question isn't annoying 😅 I know that I should just read it if I want to know but I'm always confused about this matter in particular...

Not annoying at all. I think the thing about svsss is that someone's experience reading it is completely reliant on how they approach the book. If they approach it as something not terribly serious, a satire of a particular genre that is meant to subvert it, something that is ultimately a mostly lighthearted read, with some substance but not the same weighty themes as mdzs then they're going to have a good time (barring potential personal triggers).

*Spoilers ahead*

Shen Jiu does start out as an 'empty vase' sort of concept since he's the body/character in the story the mc transmigrates into, but then, as the novel progresses, the mc uncovers things about him and his character is fleshed out. He's still an antagonist, who emotionally, mentally and physically abused a child but due to the reveal of terrible circumstances in his youth and then some quite horrific reaping of what he sowedand more people's reaction to the character can differ pretty wildly. The author cleverly acknowledges this in the book via an observation by the mc:

“Shen Qingqiu [the mc] could understand Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky’s [the author of the original work] outline-chopping tendencies a little bit more. If he actually wrote this type of character [Shen Jiu] with his original backstory, it would definitely be an arduous and thankless task. If you said he was scum, he was also pitiful; if you pitied him, he was undeniably ruthless. A character who was both scum and wretched was usually a godly body and prime disaster area for fights to break out. Might as well chop him down into a bare-faced cheap character for the protagonist to stomp under his foot—easier to write and more satisfying for the readers.”

He's still a baddie in the end, it's just that with awareness of his sad back story it becomes easy for people to fall into the pitfall of feeling bad enough for him that they want to find excuses for his actions. Some just project on him and use him as a self insert this is visible in a lot of fanfics w this character. For me I just appreciate that he's not an annoying, whiny asswipe turd lord, in the way jiang cheng is. He's not born to privilege, quite the opposite. He doesn't try to shift blame for his circumstances on others, on his tragic past, on his trauma but rather acknowledges the role his own nature played in sealing his fate and accepts his comeuppance. In other words he's as ruthless to himself as he is to everyone else. Which is why I say he's one of the villains I rather enjoy.