#which the entire point of Scum Villain as a story

[mikkeneko]

watching Jiang antis go, as a Scum Villain reader, never ceases to be kind of wild

[fan-fan-tastic]

MEME FULFILLED PROPHECY

Despite being a mass of potholes and quite repetitive, PIDW is very popular, popular enough to have a community of fans. This means not only having fanart, fics and even merchandise, but also an entire culture, with fandom lore and yes, even memes.

One of those was “When Mobei-Jun gets married” it was used to indicate something that would never happen, like “when hell will freeze over” or “when pigs will fly”. It was so popular that there were even some variants, like “it happen at Mobei-Jun’s wedding” or “when Airplane marries Mobei-Jun off”

Shen Yuan really liked this meme because it was supported by canon: there had been several scenes where after a fight, Luo Binghe would look over the spoils and let his right hand man pick a boon. Despite the ever-present trembling maidens, Mobei-Jun would always pick a weapon, or in an instance an ancient relic that had once belonged to his clan. So yeah, Shen Yuan used it pretty often, once he even let it slip out IRL, but luckily no one got the reference.

He even used it once in a thread that went viral: it was a pointless debate over OP’s incorrect interpretation of an arc. Shen Yuan was clearly right, he even had quoted several chapters to prove his point and so the other user had resorted to personal insults. OP had typed something like “You are ridiculous! When will you admit that you are actually a fan of the novel and not an hater?!” To which Shen Yuan had responded with “When Mobei-Jun gets married”

Now, this should have ended the discussion in Shen Yuan’s favor: the meme usually got lots of likes regardlessly of the context, and so he would have won the debate.

But OP for reason had decided to tag Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky himself.  “Great Master Airplane, would you marry Mobei-Jun if it means getting Peerless Cucumber admitting that he likes your story?”

To everyone’s surprise the author (sleep deprived an high on caffeine and energy drinks) actually did answer “Damn, I would marry Mobei-Jun for free”.

True to his writing style Airplane dropped the bomb to never addressed it again. That comment had started another meme, although less popular than the other about Mobei-Jun having been married the whole time to the author himself and the ship AirplaneXMobei became the most popular for the character. There few fans that had written crackfics had been insufferable about it, even resurrecting the ‘I shipped X before it was cool’ format just to flex.

After transmigrating into the scum villain and masterfully avoiding the original good’s fate, Shen Yuan one day receives an invitation to a wedding, accompanied by a mission by the System that just says ‘True to your word: User must respect the vow he once made’. Shen Yuan immediately understands what this is about: he would rather jump into the Endless Abyss than do that.

[spockandawe]

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System is a story about being unlovable and self-perception and the tragedy of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's about a story that Shang Qinghua writes, about this kind of damage being passed down from one generation to the next, and the man himself reflects these issues directly, yes, but they seep out into the entire universe he creates. At the beginning, this was the story he wrote, cut off and left adrift and quietly rejected by his own family, in an attempt to scrape by. In the original draft, Binghe would have been left alone and immortal, never truly loved, with everyone he tried to grasp and keep slipping through his fingers as he was the only one left, with his surroundings reflecting his inner emptiness. But then, Shang Qinghua lost that first draft, and he's left with a rushed, sexed-up story that's financially successful in a way that he knows the original story he wanted to share never would have been. It's about feeling certain that nobody actually wants who you really are, and watching that inner feeling come true around you.

Because this story is about Shen Jiu too. Nobody embodies this tragedy as viscerally as Shen Jiu does, and it's telling that his backstory is one of the critical elements of that lost story than Shang Qinghua never actually got to write. He starts out as a slave kid on the streets, he has no value as a person and is aware of that, and pours everything he has into his relationship with Qi-ge. By everyone else, his confidence and ambition are treated as punchlines, whether he's a toy/pet to the Qiu family, or a tool to his scam artist master after making his escape. But it's deciding that Qi-ge abandoned him that really locks this damage into place. There's nothing Yue Qingyuan can give him that will convince him that the gift is the result of care, rather than guilt. There's no achievement that makes him feel secure. It becomes a tragic feedback loop where his standoffishness and abrasiveness damage his interpersonal relationships to the point where in an ambiguous situation, he's offered less and less credit, until he's simply handed over to a torturer. And it's a situation that was built, in part, by his own actions, because he passed a lot of his own pain down to Luo Binghe.

Luo Binghe's situation is the most textual, in the story we get. He was set adrift in a river moments after being born, where he would have died if not for a fortunate rescue. Even after being adopted, it was a difficult childhood. His mother loved him, but she was torn away while he was still young. And Shen Jiu was a teacher who chose him, but then was particularly and viciously cruel to him. Even in the novel timeline, when Shen Yuan gets thrown into the picture and starts pampering him as soon as he can get away with it, a lot of damage has already been done. The abyss plot point does more, and Shen Qingqiu's fear of his canon fate does more and more. Binghe has been internalizing these rejections from the start. He's not interested in hearing about his birth parents until he's forced to listen, and the cracks show multiple times, right on the page, when he speaks about how nobody would ever want him, or choose him. Even after Shen Qingqiu has made it very clear how much he cares and is willing to sacrifice on his sake (which is a whole other kettle of worms, binghe's decreasing ability to cope with people (shen qingqiu) being hurt for the sake of protecting him, and his growing certainty that caring about him is something intrinsically harmful to others), even after Shen Qingqiu leaves Cang Qiong with him, Binghe barely manages to propose marriage before scrambling to backtrack, because it's not something he can conceptualize having for himself, and he's terrified that it's too much to ask.

But it's interesting that Shang Qinghua's struggles are drawn out for arguably the longest. He has a rough time of it, in both his lives. Even after making it into Cang Qiong Mountain Sect on his transmigration adventure, as the author of the universe in question, he's still shunted off into the most overworked and underappreciated of the peaks. Him hurling himself into shameless begging to survive dangerous situations like meeting Mobei-jun is a more clever characterization than I think it appears at first. And it's funny, right? But it becomes more and more of a sad kind of funny as we get all the way into the extras, and he's totally clueless that Mobei-jun is placing his entire life in Shang Qinghua's hands until it's already happened and they're both in an incredibly dangerous situation. Now, some of this is definitely on Mobei-jun, who is hilariously bad at communication, even in this cast of clowns, but it's also really sad that Shang Qinghua wrote his ideal man, and is confident that this person wouldn't even give someone like Shang Qinghua the time of day. It does genuinely move me that Mobei-jun still fell hard for him, but in a really sad, upsetting way, if that makes sense? And even after Mobei-jun has (barely-verbally) been like 'I trust you above anyone else to protect me when my uncle comes to kill me, and I'm so confident in your abilities that I don't think I even need to explain myself,' afterwards, when Shang Qinghua runs off, he's shocked when Mobei-jun comes looking for him.

I adore how often cnovels include extras after the end of the story proper, but my relationship with the svsss ones is odd, because most of them just emotionally shred me, and I finish the experience on a more melancholy note than I would have initially expected. We get all of Shang Qinghua's personal context and experiences in this part, it's where we get the marriage proposal, and it's got all of Shen Jiu's pov sections. It's also got Zhuzhi-lang, another character who either disappeared in the lost draft or who Shang Qinghua never wrote, who embodies this lack of self-worth even more bluntly than the others, and it's got the universe crossover with canon!binghe, who's still grasping after the experience of being loved, but is gripping so hard that he squeezes the life out of the relationships he tries to keep. These ideas are important in the story proper, but the extras are what take the idea of 'it's silly to think that i would ever be loved' and go after it like a dog with a squeaky toy. Seeing this crop up for one character would be fun, seeing it come up so many times, including for the author character himself, is intentional.

[danmeiconfession]

I love SVSSS, but I am very sure that somewhere half way in MXTX decided to fully change her plans for the story, which turned it into an inconsistent mess that is making people constantly argue now about the characterisations and themes in the novel.

Because the story starts out as a satire and points out that SY is a shitty internet hater and neet, who is designed that way to make fun of these super hateful reddit bros. Yet halfway in that whole part of his personality just never gets mentioned any more and he never learns anything either or changes his behaviour.

Same with how MXTX throughout the whole story makes all these points about SJ actually not being the scum villain he was painted to be in PIDW. Like having SQH mention that he is a virgin, him never having lusted after women, it being revealed that he did not kill LQG, and such stuff. Yet it actually never gets acknowledged at all from SY as the POV character or the story itself.

And don't even get me started on the inconsistent mess that is YQY's entire characterisation.

So my only guess is that MXTX did genuinely start out with the satire idea and that SY was supposed to be the butt of the joke. As in "Hateful and transphobic reddit bro who objectifies young women has to take it up the ass after becoming a bottom in a BL, lol! 🤪"

But halfway in she wanted it to actually become a proper BL, but has written herself into a corner with SY's character flaws and also the justification of him being in SJ's body when SJ wasn't a scum villain like claimed. So she simply dropped these plot points. Otherwise I can not understand the huge inconsistencies. And also why she always seems to ignore SVSSS's existence.

.

[howlingday]

Thinking back on the idea of RWBY and rogue galleries in general, which comic book rogues do you think would be interesting to see Team RWBY (and JNPR/ORNJ) go against?

Obviously some villains would be flat out ridiculous (Superman's, Hulk's, etc.), but others, like the Spiderman or Batman villains, seem like they have potential...

Both rogue galleries are accustomed to teenage heroics yet are still susceptible to being defeated by them.

Some members are flat out crazy (Joker, Electro, etc.) and will probably get trounced without mercy while others are WAY more sympathetic in spite of their villainy (Curt Connors, Clayface, Mr. Freeze, etc.) adding a "human" twist that RWBY isn't exactly used to.

I mean can you imagine Blake, a faunus, trying to call the Lizard or Clayface monsters despite them not wanting their horrendous appearance?

Or Weiss trying to stop Mr. Freeze plunging beacon into the Ice Age despite the fact that all he wants to do is save his wife who brings warmth to his lonely existence?

What do you think?

When it comes to RWBYs own rogues gallery, it's not hard to find a set point on who fits who best.

For example, starting from the beginning, there's Vale's criminal underworld run by Roman Torchwick. I'd consider this

GANG-LEVEL

Street thugs, ne'er-do-wells, and general human scum who will lie, cheat, and steal, doing whatever it takes to survive. These are villains on the same level as most of Gotham's worst of the worst; Joker, Penguin, Scarecrow, Riddler, ordinary humans with slightly above average physical skills. But, it should be noted that these are also villains who have tricks up their sleeves. Tricks like, well, a trick cane... or Joker Venom.

But after the Fall of Beacon, we reached a new level of threat that gives us a broader perspective. These are the villains who have went beyond the ordinary and into the extraordinary, bringing with them a dangerous arsenal of weapons, skills, and super-powers that make them a threat to even the most skilled fighters. In honor of this, I choose to classify them as

HUNTSMAN-LEVEL

Superhumans, supervillains, and super pains in our backsides, these are the kinds of baddies that definitely make a Death Battle list. Villains like Tyrian Callows, Adam Taurus, Arthur Watts from RWBY get put up against super-criminals like The Scorpion, Shredder, and Doctor Doom. These would be tough fights for RWBY and would require help from the other side to assist. I'm thinking entire stories with them as the big bad guys. There's some kind of superhuman skill they have that makes them more than just a threat, but a super threat.

Speaking of Big Bads, going beyond the scope further are the enemies that are way too much for RWBY and would actually the fun of writing these universe together. Yeah, I'm talking

EXTINCTION-LEVEL

Thanos, Darkseid, Salem; you know them, you fear them, and there's a reason for both. These are the final bosses of their own franchises, and the reason for that is pretty clear. Planets? Dusted. Galaxies? Peanuts. Life? Meaningless. Resistance? Futile. However, my biggest problem with these villains for RWBY is they're too big. Like, these guys just blink, and the worst thing that could happen to our heroes is just the start. So, yeah, don't expect me to write anything serious with these players anytime soon.

---------------------------------------------------

Now, as for sympathetic VS merciless, it kinda depends on the situation they're in.

For example, Basil Karlo, Clayface, was a famous actor who desperately wants to regain his original appearance. Sympathetic. However, I can also see Weiss freezing him without hesitation because he's trying to kill a doctor who can't fix him.

Dr. Kurt Connors would be similar with Blake, as you said, but I feel she would also feel no hesitation in putting him down. She might draw some parallels between him, and another seemingly passionate man driven over the edge into becoming a monster.

Honestly, these are both interesting scenarios, and I'd like to do more with them if I get the chance (COUGH, COUGH, 70 ASKS) but we'll just have to wait and see until then.

Keep up the good work and thanks for the food for thought!

[justatalkingface]

The Problem With Endeavour's Redemption Arc Part Two: The Burnin-ing

So, awhile ago, I talked up the biggest problem with Endeavor's redemption arc (to sum up all my talky words in one sentence, it's that no one cares about anything he did, so it's hollow and empty), but I've decided to touch on the other major problem: the redemption itself isn't actually that great.

People keep saying this is so well written, or it's the best handled abusive parent arc in manga, and that's not wrong, but it's not exactly saying much, either.

The thing is that manga, historically, and especially shonen, is shit with handling abusive parents well. It either is never addressed, is forgiven almost instantly, they die to get forgiveness, or some combination of these things. So, yeah, Endeavour actually feeling sad, and not being instantly forgiven by his entire family is far beyond that.... but that's because the bar is so low you can walk over it. His story hasn't gone far enough past that point, yet. It hasn't actually acknowledged the shit Endeavour has done, and had him truly grapple with his sins.

To start with, the first problem is when it starts: when Endeavour becomes the Number One hero. There are two different concerns here: the first is that, simply, this isn't him making the right choice. The fundamental problem of Endeavour is that he has two priorities, his job and his family, and that every time, every time, he's chosen his career over them.

After Kamino, he realizes he needs to stop being such an ass and be with his family. This is shown to us as him growing as a person, but he hasn't resolved that conflict, is the thing, he still hasn't chosen his family over his career. It'd be one thing, for example, if one of the (many) family members he discarded was put in danger, and he had this realization that he needs to spend time with his family. Or, if Shoto was severely injured, and it clicked in his mind that this wasn't his prized possession, his means to victory, but his son, a living person he brought into this world and thus was responsible for his happiness... but that's not what happened. His career simply peaked, and he had nothing more to strive for. The conflict was taken away from him, which means he still hasn't chosen his family over his job, there's just nothing stopping him from spending time with them, no All Might to train to defeat, no obsession for him to feed. He's basiclly handed this start, instead of earning it, it's fucking easy mode, and he still hasn't overcome his most fundamental problem of his own shitty priorities because he has no reason to.

The other problem is that, from his own perspective, that this was a crippling loss for him. Sure, he's Number One Hero, but he wanted to surpass All Might more than get that position, even if it was through a proxy, and now? He can never get that, the opportunity is gone, All Might, as he understood him, that impossible obstacle to surpass, is gone. To Endeavour, this is having his dreams shattered and rubbed into his face, because he can't beat All Might, hell, he can't even beat the person who beat All Might, because he didn't even lose! His goal, that he spent his entire life single handedly pursuing, is gone.

And on the face of it, that's not actually a bad thing; defeats are a time honored way of a character growing. The problem is he had a crushing defeat and realized that he was a horrible dumpster fire of a person. He didn't fail to, for example, save someone, or help someone, he didn't have his face slapped with how horrible he was, he personally failed. That? That is a very specific formula. That is the formula for a bad guy redeeming themselves.

Endeavour's redemption is coded in a way similar to that of a villain redeeming himself, starting from the bottom and building himself back up, but as I've mentioned before, Hori doesn't want Endeavour to be looked at as scum. He starts it off with a set up that says, 'this guy has to crushed as a person so he can start over', but as time passed, he's been propping up this idea that, 'No, no! He was a good guy all the time! No bulli! He's just a misguided nice guy!'

Let me expand on this a bit. For the longest time, any fanfic with Endeavour in it would almost certainly have him as a pure monster, someone with civilian casualties, who burned Dabi himself, all sorts of things. No one, I think, ever disagreed with the idea Endeavour did horrible things, just the degree of what he did. Nowadays, Endeavor fans look at that and basiclly go, 'Read the manga', and there's a non-zero amount of them going, 'Endeavor did nothing wrong!', which I hate.

The thing is, until recently point, our only real look at Endeavor as he originally started as was the Sports Festival, where, on national television, surrounded by civilians, he howls like a rabid animal at the sight of Shoto using his flames before monologuing about how Shoto will have to fulfill his, Endeavour's, ambitions. Where we see him meet the All Loving All Might, and show the energy of, 'I'd stab you to death if I thought I had a fucking chance of it working'. Where he runs into, after searching for him, Izuku, a literal child, and basiclly dismisses his entire existence as fertilizer for Shoto's growth.

Sports Festival Endeavour is a monster, is the thing. There are no redeeming features, nothing to emphasize with, or even a hint of professionalism; he's just someone so obsessed with being the best that he's lost his mind to it. Why wouldn't such a man accidentally kill villains? Why wouldn't he burn his own son if he found that child was inferior? After, he clearly only sees his children as tools in the first place; what's wrong with throwing a defective one away?

People say he'd be super careful with his reputation, that of course he would act perfect on the job, but we don't see that. We someone who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, no matter who he offends, no matter what enemies he maktes, no matter who he hurts, no matter who he kills. Is that heroic? No, but I think people forget is that is the point with a lot of early MHA; heroes are imperfect, the institution is corrupt, and being a hero has become wildly disconnected from acting like a hero. Moreover, that even if he does something bad, the general public will treat it like a celebrity scandal, rather than something about law enforcement abusing their power, with all the implications therein. With that set up, before Hori suddenly drop the 'heroes never kill bit' that came post war (and so must be distrusted on general principles), I could easily see some people dying to Endeavour, accidently or (unknown to them) otherwise, and the public being upset but ultimately accepting it, and with some cheering him for it.

This is the person that Hori started with: a single minded pursuit of success and power in the shape of a human being, the manifestation of everything wrong with heroics, and I feel like a lot of his newer fans forget that. This view of him as someone who would casually harm someone comes from a very real place.

And it's not that such a person isn't redeemable; Dragon Ball, for example, turns Vegeta, a mass murderer, into a better person. Part of the reason he gets away with it, true, is the fact DBZ morality is kinda questionable, and there are no authorities to bring him to justice for his crimes, but at the same time Vegeta grew as a person immensely over the years. The problem is Hori starts from this, and then pivots into him just.. meaning well, being misguided.

And here's where we ultimately tie back in with my first big Endeavour post, because he hasn't reached the bottom in the way the story told us he should.

He hasn't lost anything with his coworkers, who still respect him as a hero, he hasn't lost anything with his family because he had already lost all of that years ago, knew it, and just didn't care until that moment. He feels like he's at the bottom, sure, but in terms of his career he's better than ever. Shoto started re-engaging with him before Endeavour had his big realization, carrying the heavy work of starting their reconciliation because... reasons, even though he hated the man originally, and so Endeavor walks into a bridge to his family built for him already, on the heels of a choice he didn't have to make.

Not too long ago, in story time (probably a month or two?), he was howling, again, about Shoto daring to leave him on read. His wife had decided he was changing not because he talked to her (because, lest we forget, she was still so traumatized by him he couldn't), not because of what she's seen him do, not because he apologized, but because of a flower. Dabi has devoted his life to ruining Endeavour, but no one cares about what his father did, and the story itself has backed away from what fans originally believed to make it clear that no, while Endeavour clearly abused him, Dabi is horrifically scarred and left for dead not because of Endeavour, but because of his own actions and he was so sad about it, honest, even as he moved on to Shoto.

What has Endeavour lost? What has he sacrificed, beyond, what, buying another house with his vast wealth? His relationship with his family has improved, but so much of it is because of them, bending over backwards to bring him back into the fold. He gets them back on his side, ultimately, not because he's improved, but because he's acting like a hero, and nearly dies, and they all suddenly realize they love him after all. The problem is the reason for everything, the cause of his abuse, is because he was acting like a hero in the first place. There's still no reckoning with that fact, even though he's getting everything he wants: his family, a successful career, even the knowledge that he (some the fuck how) has grown strong enough to drive back All For One, even though back in Kamino the man treated Endeavor like an ant.

If this redemption wants to be real? Let him lose. Make him give up something (and not just his life, like so many abusive parents in fiction before him, to retroactively absolve all his crimes), make him make a choice, a real choice, if being a hero is more important to him than being a father. Not him being crippled, and thus unable to be a hero, saving him from having to chose yet again, not just sacrificing himself to save Shoto, like so many of us suspect is coming, because not only is that giving up on the hard work of changing, it's still just him doing his job, still him refusing to make a choice, because that's both the action of a father and a hero. Make more than one of his family (and the one he already wrote off as dead) refuse to forgive him. Give him a wife who refuses to accept his changes, because why would she? What reason does she have to think better of him? Give him a son and heir who doesn't come back to him to him for no apparent reason to apprentice under him, but instead continues to isolate himself from his father, even if he's not longer rabid with hate but is simply apathetic to the very idea of Endeavor's existence.

In other words, make him do more than just stop his abuse, because at the end of the day, that's what his redemption feels like sometimes: he stopped hitting them, verbally at least (and for Shoto and his mom, physically), and like beaten dogs they're coming back to him, still hoping to get that love and acceptance.

[ethanhuntfemmefatale]

your personhood in DR1 post just made me realize the connection between "your story is written" Entity/Gabriel and "we all made the choice" Ethan and I'm about to start chewing on wallpaper

ok so this ask makes me so insane!!!! and i have so many thoughts about ethan and choice in general specifically in terms of the way he treats people. so if you'll indulge me kind asker i have a bit of a rant

this is the topic for another post really but i have. some difficulty reconciling the new IMF lore with the ethan we meet in MI1 (whose first in-character line is 'get rid of that scum', which doesn't exactly indicate a nuanced relationship with crime and criminality) that being said!! i think the main way that i can read ethan having a criminal past/having been given the "choice" in MI1 is in his general relationship with the idea of second chances. from the very beginning so much of ethan's character rests on the idea that he keeps giving people the option to be good. He keeps extending trust, sometimes up to the point of irrationality. even putting himself at greater personal risk to allow others the chance to be better than he thinks they are. for example, everything that happens with Claire. or for another example, his plan in the climax of MI1 hinging on kittridge being a rational man, and luther being a deeply good one. this side of ethan is so so present in DR1 in his relationship with Grace, and also in his one deeply interesting scene with the White Widow (i really need to make a post about my thoughts on that very complicated and fucked dynamic). Ethan's process of team-building, of bringing people into his orbit, is shown to be basically just...giving them The Choice, in small ways, over and over. The choice to help him, to trust him, to not betray him--the choice to be honorable, to be good, to defend people, to be radically selfless in the way that Ethan is, or to try to protect the greater good in their own way....Ethan extends those choices again and again, even when he has no reason to believe the person will do better. Even with someone (a criminal, a disavowed agent, an arms dealer) who he has reason to believe is dangerous--even someone who has betrayed him or hurt him before. As he gets older, more renowned, more powerful, more tired, he gives people those choices for longer, holds out even longer than he would have in earlier movies. this is an essential part of who ethan is.

and getting into the other side of your ask--i think the tendency of the past few movies to set Ethan against villains who embody "inevitability" or "fate/destiny" is really interesting and speaks to some intentional effort to highlight the way that ethan works as anathema to all that stuff. i've been thinking about this and i feel like one really revealing interaction is the line of "if anything happens to them, there is nowhere I will not go to kill you--that is written" because ethan has seen a lot of this fate/inevitability stuff and from what I can tell he doesn't put too much stock in it? I think he hasn't especially since rogue nation, when they defeated lane for the first time, the first "inevitable" villain. what ethan believes in, more than fate or destiny, is people--he believes in his team, he believes in himself, he believes in those around him. Not that they will win, but that they will try. Ethan isn't a force of destiny in himself, he can't promise to protect Grace the way he promises to protect Benji in Fallout (and ultimately fails). But he knows he will try, even die trying, to protect her. I'm trying to put these pieces together and I'm not sure I've figured it out entirely but I think that idea of 'your life will always matter to me more than my own' combined with 'the choice' is kind of where all of this comes together. Ethan cares more about giving the people he cares about the opportunity to be good than he does about his own safety. or even the mission. and over and over that quality of his, his capacity to keep trying and keep extending his hand and keep offering people the choice to be good, ends up really fucking helping a lot of people. and unraveling all the "fated endings" that are thrown at him.

i'm not sure i've really covered all of this or figured this out entirely. but these are some thoughts for you <33 thank you for the ask as you can see it really got me thinking!!!!

[musicalresolution]

Round 2 C Match 1

Propaganda under the cut

The Confrontation

there’s really great duality in the overlapping parts and you learn a bit more about Javert and the ending is just OUGH LOVE IT

Who doesn't love a fight in musical form? It just makes the emotions that much more intense.

The overlapping parts are so good and the song is addicting to listen to. I love how Javert is so stubborn in his part while Valjean’s seems to be looser in a way. And also the Javert low note at the beginning changed me as a person. And…. there is soooo much tension.

firstly, the makeup of the song. it’s lyrics are amazing and work so well with both parts layered over each other. layering two different strands of dialogue over each other can be extremely difficult to work into a beautiful song. the song “achilles come down,” for example, overcomes this challenge with simply changing the filters on one part. “for the first time in forever (reprise)” from frozen simply has one small part layered. but “the confrontation” manages to have the entire song (other than the tiny intro) be two separate simultaneous parts and it still flows well and sounds AMAZING. it’s so much fun to sing as a duet and a fun challenge to try to sing both parts at once as best you can.

secondly, what it means. it shows how despite everything, jean valjean wants to reason with javert instead of fighting, and that javert seems almost afraid to forgive or help him. it also lets us see a more vulnerable part of javert, giving our villain heart and character. javert has suffered so much and found so much hope in being inflexible and never changing that hes terrified of change, or in the fact that someone bad can be really a complex person. he says the lines “men like you can never change, men like me can never change” and “i was born inside a jail, i was born with scum like you, i am from the gutter too”. just a few lines show us so much on why he behaves the way he does and it’s heartbreaking. it also shows how valjean KNOWS his strength and power, and he threatens javert with it. but when he’s beaten him, the choreography of the musical shows valjean simply leaving javert there instead of hurting him.

the vocal parallels between Javert going down on “you’ll wear a different chain” and Valjean going up on “my race has not yet run” literally I’m so obsessed w this song I can’t

Lily's Eyes

Lily's Eyes is a beautiful and haunting duet sung between two brothers about their love for the late Lily Craven, but they aren't singing it to each other which is what makes it so brilliant.

It's a song of both triumph and unrequited love and the layering of the two voice parts (Mandy Patinkin's soaring tenor with Robert Westenberg's resonant baritone) is stunning. It's here we learn about the antagonist's motivation, it's here that Mary Lennox's presence really starts to affect the rest of the household. It's a sort of reprieve from the chaotic storms enveloping the plot at this point in the story, and it is packed with *so much emotion*.

"Imagine me, a lover..." "I longed for the day, she'd turn and see me standing there..." "...Would God have let her stay!!"

[kyluxtrashpit]

So, as some of you may know, I've been playing bg3 for a while and @nivaliente gave my an insane idea that has not left me alone and thus is happening now lmao (and I've already started the play through 😅). For those unfamiliar with the character creator, the face options are very limited so this was genuinely the best I could do. His hair also covers his scar, thus the bald pic, but it is what it is. And I’ve lost my mind, so I’m kinda alternating between my Durge and him cause why not

Here's my ruleset for this playthrough (behind a cut cause it got a bit long lmao):

The concept is we're just going to take him right from star wars canon, post-TFA, to somehow ending up on the nautiloid (so like. Idk maybe after being rescued off Starkiller he took a shuttle ahead to Snoke and it got waylaid). So he knows nothing about anything (as far as the game allows at least) and we're using post-TFA characterization, so he's in his peak 'doubts and instability' era

He’s a paladin with oath of the ancients to represent the jedi but I broke the oath as soon as I could (that made sense), so he's an oathbreaker, since you can't start as that

We're also doing Tav, not Durge, even though Durge suits him a lot, simply because I want to stick with my 'literally straight from canon' background

DREAM GUARDIAN OG REN

We're also going to pretend he can't see the map/nav points cause my boy would just run from main objective to main objective and do 0 side objectives, which would be a Problem levelling wise lmao. I still expect him to refuse to get involved with some (okay, probably a lot of) things, but I need him to encounter as much as possible if we don't want to be insanely underlevelled the whole time and make it impossible for bad-at-strategy-games me to get through the game lmao

I'm not planning any of my decisions with him, because Kylo would never plan out his decisions lmao. We're doing largely just raw rp based on what dialogue I think makes the most sense for him (regardless of consequences 😅). That also means that all decisions will be based on what he knows and discovers and figures out about possible ways to resolve a situation. So if I know something he hasn't found out, I will not use that knowledge to help him. I expect this will lead to some Non-Ideal situations (though who knows, maybe it'll help him in some ways lmao)

This also means that if I know he would want x to happen, but the thing he would say would lead to y happening, I will let him fumble into that. Kylo's entire life story is about doing things that never had a chance of resulting in what he actually wants to happen so. It's really the most in character I could be lmao

The exception to this will be in cases like. Where he would want to kill an NPC but there's no 'attack' dialogue unless you take this one specific route that doesn't match what I think he would say, simply because I don't want to glitch anything by killing those NPCs out of combat. So there will be an occasional fudge there

And with the dialogues, we’re gonna pick the closest in vibes, cause even early on there’s a lot of times where I’m like ‘well I don’t think he’d say any of these things’ so. We’re going with what we’ve got and that’s the best we can do

I'm also not going to do anything that's like 'well Kylo is a villain, so we'll just click all the evil options'. We're picking what I think he would actually do, or as close as I can get at least, with no regard for what the outcome will be in terms of either my or his preferences

I'm not planning any romances, but if one just Happens, well, we'll go from there (I do headcanon Kylo as gay though, so male options only, he will turn down the women if/when they offer)

I am gonna try not save scum so much (keyword being ‘try’ lmao) just to kinda make it more realistic but I’ll still probably do it sometimes

The one thing I am gonna do that's technically ooc is, if he does fight the goblins (I'm kinda expecting him to, he's gonna fight everyone lbr - boy is not the alliance making kind of person), I will at least try to spare Minthara (I didn't get a chance to on my first run and on my second run, I'm not at Moonrise yet so I don't actually know if I did it right). This isn't because Kylo would, this is because I'm very worried about how many companions we're gonna have near the end of the game lmao. I am expecting to lose at least a few 😅 So we're just gonna pretend that she managed to survive a seemingly fatal blow, something that happens in star wars literally all the time anyway

Also I’m kinda breaking characterization to recruit most of the companions in the first place, given Kylo isn’t much of a ‘well let’s buddy up’ kind of person so. Instead of like ‘good luck with that, I don’t need any company’ we will largely make/accept offers to buddy up cause otherwise we would be playing this game entirely with hirelings and that’s no fun lmao. He's also not really the type to chat away with them either, but we need some interactions here to make anything happen so. Gotta fudge some things for the sake of an interesting playthrough

I am including some of my personal headcanons into his characterization, like I see him being the type to prefer animals to people, so indiscriminate animal violence is something I don't agree with him doing (yay, Scratch is gonna be okay!). Self-defence only. I also think that while he doesn’t necessarily like children, he doesn’t like to see bad things happen to them (especially if those things remind him at all of things that happened to him)

And I think that pretty much covers it? Idk how many people would be interested in hearing about his adventures, as idk how many on this side of my internet activities have played, but I might post a bit depending on how things go. I am expecting a wildly chaotic neutral sequence of events skdskdsl

[itsfandompeople]

Red Hood and Batman on ethics

This is a short story I made. Please do not use it in your own stories, it will really piss me off.

“No Bats, you don’t get it! If I take one piece of scum off the street permanently, you won’t later find, say ten dead bodies of children that were trafficked by them!” Hood growled at the dark shadow facing him. “Hood. If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world remains the same.” Jason grimaced behind his helmet, uneasy about the way Batman said his chosen name, remembering how he once similarly said, Robin, disapproving, benching him for even the slightest mista-No. Not going down memory lane tonight. “Yes, but if I were to kill a hundred killers (which I have by the way) then it goes down by 99!” He rejoined, angry at his momentary weakness. Red Robin interjected, “That’s… not mathematically incorrect…” “See! Even your little birdy agrees!” Jason said, still not sure how to feel about his replacement. Even if he decided not to go through with his plan for Titan’s Tower, it was a near thing. Any moment the green could rise again, and he might do what he swore to never attempt. No more dead robins. “That's not really what I said,” Drake replied uneasily. “Nor do I think that you are entirely wrong in that argument. Think about it B,” he continued as the big bat tried to stop him. “If the right person, who could be trusted to not lose their minds, could kill rapists and murders without becoming one themself, then while they are still a killer they are more like the military in that respect, rather than any of the villains we fight right now. Of course, that is obviously still wrong, but not as wrong as leaving them to reenter the streets after they escape.” “...” Jason and Bruce stared at Red Robin, wondering if he had been possessed at some point. “Ummmmm… not gonna lie that’s pretty much how I think. I may be a killer, but then there are fewer psychos out there. One self-contained killer versus 100 psychopathic murders and rapists.” “Red Robin. What did I say about conversing with Hood.” “Not to. But if we can’t get him to stop using our logic and morals, why can’t we get him to stop using his?” “Well. That is not gonna happen. But kudos to the attempt, pretty well thought out for a shrimp like you.” Jason snarked at the trio. Robin still hadn’t moved from where he was shielded by Batman and Red Robin, not speaking either. “Batman, let us defeat this cretin and throw him in Arkham. Perhaps next to the Joker, as he seems to admire him so much.” Robin suddenly joined in from behind Bruce, apparently deciding not to listen to their father either. Jason did not hear B’s reply, too busy fighting down the panic attack at his name, and the thought of hearing him day and night. If that happened, he would go crazy, lost to the green. Suddenly, he dodged a Batarang aimed at his throat and snarled. It seemed the temporary truce (or rather the bats trying to miraculously convert him to their pathetic ideology) was over. “See ya idiots.” he laughed, forcing down his anger and panic as he swung away, easily evading the traps they had set earlier. “Maybe next time.”

[cynicallyneutral]

Arrives holding the entire tales of series

So!! If you're interested in jrpgs, I would highly recommend the Tales of series, specifically Tales of the Abyss (my fav) and Tales of Symphonia are good starting points. Symphonia is on a bunch of platforms (most notably steam) and Abyss is on ps2 but easy to emulate ✨ I would also personally recommend Tales of Zestiria for the characters bc I love them dearly (but the gameplay is.. not so great haha)

Also if you want I'd like to recommend the anime Sirius the Jaeger just bc it's my comfort show sjxk and it's only 12 episodes so easier to commit to

And.. also,, only if you want,,, idk how much you read but all three series by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu are my favorite thing rn bc this genre of Chinese fantasy isn't one I've read before and also!! They're queer romances :D (with also their whole other plot going on so you can enjoy excellent story that is also romantic) I would specifically recommend starting with Heaven Official's Blessing (my personal fav) or Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation!! As I feel those have more solid romantic relationships and they're easier to enjoy maybe?? The third (but first published lol) is The Scum Villain's Self Saving System which I always recommend as being funny bc the main character's narration is very humorous but it's also. God there's so much tragedy and hh but anyway

So yeah there's a dump of things I like if you'd like to try any of them out ajdksk sorry this ended up so long

ooh tbh ive always wanted to try and get into the tales series, i believe there was an anime for tales of zestiria and and i wat hed a few eps before…unless i dreamed that all up??? lmaoooo, i’ll add them to my long list of games to buy lmaoomdfhfjfj tbh i already have a few games that i bought and havent played yet, god forbid i bought both the swsh like 2 or 3 years ago and havent played it djvbcjcj

the art style is nice whoaaa and thr protag..i assume??? looks so cool i would watch it for them hhh, ill try tomorrow!!

those series i keep seeing on twitter bc of my mutuals, ive always been curious what they were taking abt but it seems like a long series……..i dont know if i have the brain capacity to even start them waaah, i hope to check them out someday tho, rn im just…0 braincells

thanks for all the recs!!! i’ll be sure to make a note of them all 💛💛💛💛

[petrichoraline]

chapter 3

pt.1

''she's the protagonist's woman'' aw dw babe you will be his too, give it time

soo what im hearing is sqq will have to get ''down and dirty'' to be cured which is a hilrious thought until i remember what part of the story we're at and then i realise theres zero chance of that happening

i really thought lbh had magical sperm so compared to that, absoring poison seems very logical and plausible....his sword isn't a leaf blower, it's a vacuum cleaner. roger that.

''circulate your spiritual energy with someone'' ... is this not what the back of the book called an euphemism for sex? am i wrong?

''for someone in a scum villain role to be poisoned and still able to live....'' okay but why DOES he live, what's the reason he's surviving this and why is he there in the first place? ever since i got that the system is, quote, ''🙃'', im super suspicious

yue qinguan shut your mouth i know you left for a reason bitch ''if i knew ..i wouldnt have left the mountain'' AS IF

twelve peak lords still seems like a dangerously large number of people to know a secret tbh

i want to trust yqg as much as yuan does, but i dontttt and i know i shouldnt, my theories so far are that he either changed because of sqq's change OR he's also someone from the outside world

''dependable family'' yes i would love to believe that but ive watched cql and one thing i cant believe is 12 whole peak lords not going for each others throats at some point

sqq is entirely too naive, he thinks he knows a lot cause hes read the novel but he is definitely in the dark

[alljamesbondgames]

James Bond Jr. (SNES)

Original Release: 1992

Developer: Grey Matter

Publisher: THQ

Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Another game based on the James Bond Jr. cartoon, this one developed by Grey Matter. While sometimes different games of the same name shares some elements, such as level themes or rough story, this one is completely different to the James Bond Jr. NES game. The SNES version is a mixture of a platformer and a scrolling shooter.

One interesting thing is this didn’t even start out as a James Bond Jr. game, it was originally a SNES remake of Grey Matter’s NES Captain Planet and the Planeteers game, but due to company changes an license issues, they ended up re-tooling the work they had done into a new licensed game.

You start off in a temple level, hunting for the villain Dr. Derange, you barely have time to figure out the controls before you reach the first vehicle segment – and I’m not exaggerating about the time, it really is less than 20 seconds.

You might expect a short but simple minigame, but it’s surprisingly long. If you played it perfectly, it will take 5 minutes, which doesn’t sound long, but you will die. A lot. There’s a ton of projectiles flying around and one hit kills you. You can get a shield that will protect you from a few hits, however that doesn’t protect you from the environment, with some very narrow sections to navigate, slightly bumping any pixel will kill you.

Your helicopter moves extremely fast, and the sprites are so large that you don’t have any time to react to anything. Instead, this section is a long trial and error as you get a bit further each time, having to memorise the entire route to react before things appear on screen. You have two weapons: a shot that fires completely forward.

Back to the main gameplay, you now have three acts of a temple level, punching natives and SCUM soldiers. Exploring the level you can find dart guns and explosive drinks cans to use as grenades. along with other powerup, such as springy shoes to jump higher.

The gameplay itself is pretty solid, and the graphical style is quite nice. There are hidden areas to explore but the route to the end is fairly simple. One problem is, once again, the size of the sprites. James Bond Jr is kept firmly in the middle of the screen throughout the levels, which means the gaps for jumps reach the edge of the screen, often with enemies hanging on the edge, not visible until you’re mid-jump, yet also so close to the edge that if you don’t use your dart gun before jumping, you’ll take damage.

Once you defeat the boss, it’s onto the next stage. All three stages follow the same structure: a vehicle section followed by three short platforming levels. This one is a speedboat section as you head to Venice, and this part is a lot of fun, dodging gondolas, shooting enemies and making jumps, collecting a power up that makes you jump even further. At this point I was thinking that, after the rough start, fun vehicles with some decent platforming would make the rest of this an alright game.

And then you get the inevitable sewer level, notorious for always being terrible levels. This one is no exception, with confusing layouts, really annoying bats and lots of awkward jumps to make. While the developers avoided the same problem with getting stuck in levels as the NES game by having the shoe power-ups be permanent, they end up making the same mistake here. In this level are ice power ups, these are limited in number.

These are used to freeze pools of toxic waste, allowing you to cross over. Use too many against enemies (or use them on the wrong pools) and you’ll have to restart. There’s also some really annoying door traps. They’re just a grey line and if you walk over them, they repeatedly slam James Bond Jr, draining his health.

Get through there and you reach the next area, this vehicle section is a plane which functions exactly the same as the helicopter in the first stage. It’s not quite as frustrating as the first one, so at least it’s over quicker. You’re then on the final level.

Which, naturally, is a slippery ice level, because everyone loves those. Thankfully, part way though you get some rocket boots, letting you fly around the level, along with being able to find a ring that fires lasers that help immensely with the final boss.

James Bond Jr. is an average platformer, but hampered by visibility and a few awful vehicle levels. It looks quite nice, with some good animation throughout, but for the most part is a fairly forgetful game.

[thequestdad]

OK. Finished Resident Evil (new netflix series) following on from my post yesterday.

(Re-pasting the original post below with the new opinions included).

I'm a big fan of the games, and thought that largely every single film they have brought out in some way has sucked.

(except apocalypse which I loved)

The last live action film was abysmal, aside from some admittedly stellar set design, and the ludicrous amounts of Easter eggs to find. So sufficed to say, I went into this with some skepticism.

Did a bit if research, and it is NOT a continuation of the live action films starring Mila Jovovich, its actually set in a quasi Canon realm in which the events of the first 3 games happened, and are used as backstory elements for the show (to the point where so far only one character from those games has actually been in the show).

Now, the new series.

Largely, its a slog to watch. There are flashback segments to show the events before the series, that is 50% teenage drama/detective stuff, 50% Insight into Umbrella at this stage of the story.

The rest is "current" events in the story, long after the zombie apocalypse has happened. Most of this I have actually enjoyed so far, and there's a fantastic "DOOM"esque sequence where one of the characters just goes god mode, that was genuinely fun to watch, and a fun homage to the often ludicrous action sequences of the 4-5-6 era of the games.

I've tried to be objective as possible, but it's very hard to shake the Resident Evil name, and all the things the series evokes with it. I think honestly it would have been a good zombie series, or one at least with some potential, but it's not a good resident evil series.

There are some fucking dumb decisions made by the supposedly super intelligent protagonist and antagonist that have me yelling "why?" Into the great beyond.

That said, 3 actors did a fucking phenomenal job, and honestly are the reason I'm glad I stuck it out to the end of the series.

1. Paola Nuñez - Evelyn Marcus

Paula does a fucking amazing job as Evelyn Marcus, perfectly charming and threatening in equal measure, a powerful and uncompromising woman hiding the same insecurities and vulnerabilities that make any great villain.

2. Lance Reddick - Albert Wesker

Lance Reddick's performance is outstanding despite the fact in terms of the games and other films/series, strictly speaking, it isn't the Albert Wesker we all know. Without giving too much away, he plays a few different versions of this character, and does a brilliant job of illustrating their differences. (Though be warned, one is hilariously, borderline cringe level of Cheesy, but this is mercifully for a single scene. So it doesn't take away from his otherwise great performance)

3. Turlough Convery - Richard Baxter

OK. This character was a surprising delight, and a clear fucking favourite for me in this series.

Baxter....isn't in shape. Like myself, he's a rather rotund character, he works for the bad guys, he's a scum bag.

But he's also delightfully snarky, tongue in cheek, and a secret, certifiable BADASS.

All 3 of these characters were flecks of gold in the toilet water prison vodka that is this series.

I'd give the series at its best a 5/10. 3 of those points are entirely due to the above 3 performances. The other 2 points are for the few good references sprinkled in, and the geuinely well done depiction of a couple of the classic Resident Evil enemies.

Just sadly, the overall plot and baffling character decisions take a lot away from these things

[bao3bei4]

fan language: the victorian imaginary and cnovel fandom

there’s this pinterest image i’ve seen circulating a lot in the past year i’ve been on fandom social media. it’s a drawn infographic of a, i guess, asian-looking woman holding a fan in different places relative to her face to show what the graphic helpfully calls “the language of the fan.”

people like sharing it. they like thinking about what nefarious ancient chinese hanky code shenanigans their favorite fan-toting character might get up to⁠—accidentally or on purpose. and what’s the problem with that?

the problem is that fan language isn’t chinese. it’s victorian. and even then, it’s not really quite victorian at all. 

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fans served a primarily utilitarian purpose throughout chinese history. of course, most of the surviving fans we see⁠—and the types of fans we tend to care about⁠—are closer to art pieces. but realistically speaking, the majority of fans were made of cheaper material for more mundane purposes. in china, just like all around the world, people fanned themselves. it got hot!

so here’s a big tipoff. it would be very difficult to use a fan if you had an elaborate language centered around fanning yourself.

you might argue that fine, everyday working people didn’t have a fan language. but wealthy people might have had one. the problem we encounter here is that fans weren’t really gendered. (caveat here that certain types of fans were more popular with women. however, those tended to be the round silk fans, ones that bear no resemblance to the folding fans in the graphic). no disrespect to the gnc old man fuckers in the crowd, but this language isn’t quite masc enough for a tool that someone’s dad might regularly use.

folding fans, we know, reached europe in the 17th century and gained immense popularity in the 18th. it was there that fans began to take on a gendered quality. ariel beaujot describes in their 2012 victorian fashion accessories how middle class women, in the midst of a top shortage, found themselves clutching fans in hopes of securing a husband.

she quotes an article from the illustrated london news, suggesting “women ‘not only’ used fans to ‘move the air and cool themselves but also to express their sentiments.’” general wisdom was that the movement of the fan was sufficiently expressive that it augmented a woman’s displays of emotion. and of course, the more english audiences became aware that it might do so, the more they might use their fans purposefully in that way.

notice, however, that this is no more codified than body language in general is. it turns out that “the language of the fan” was actually created by fan manufacturers at the turn of the 20th century⁠—hundreds of years after their arrival⁠ in europe—to sell more fans. i’m not even kidding right now. the story goes that it was louis duvelleroy of the maison duvelleroy who decided to include pamphlets on the language with each fan sold.

interestingly enough, beaujot suggests that it didn’t really matter what each particular fan sign meant. gentlemen could tell when they were being flirted with. as it happens, meaningful eye contact and a light flutter near the face may be a lingua franca.

so it seems then, the language of the fan is merely part of this victorian imaginary we collectively have today, which in turn itself was itself captivated by china.

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victorian references come up perhaps unexpectedly often in cnovel fandom, most often with regards to modesty.

it’s a bit of an awkward reference considering that chinese traditional fashion⁠—and the ambiguous time periods in which these novels are set⁠—far predate victorian england. it is even more awkward considering that victoria and her covered ankles did um. imperialize china.

but nonetheless, it is common. and to make a point about how ubiquitous it is, here is a link to the twitter search for “sqq victorian.” sqq is the fandom abbreviation for shen qingqiu, the main character of the scum villain’s self-saving system, by the way.

this is an awful lot of results for a search involving a chinese man who spends the entire novel in either real modern-day china or fantasy ancient china. that’s all i’m going to say on the matter, without referencing any specific tweet.

i think people are aware of the anachronism. and i think they don’t mind. even the most cursory research reveals that fan language is european and a revisionist fantasy. wikipedia can tell us this⁠—i checked!

but it doesn’t matter to me whether people are trying to make an internally consistent canon compliant claim, or whether they’re just free associating between fan facts they know. it is, instead, more interesting to me that people consistently refer to this particular bit of history. and that’s what i want to talk about today⁠—the relationship of fandom today to this two hundred odd year span of time in england (roughly stuart to victorian times) and england in that time period to its contemporaneous china.

things will slip a little here. victorian has expanded in timeframe, if only because random guys posting online do not care overly much for respect for the intricacies of british history. china has expanded in geographic location, if only because the english of the time themselves conflated china with all of asia.

in addition, note that i am critiquing a certain perspective on the topic. this is why i write about fan as white here⁠—not because all fans are white⁠—but because the tendencies i’m examining have a clear historical antecedent in whiteness that shapes how white fans encounter these novels.

i’m sure some fans of color participate in these practices. however i don’t really care about that. they are not its main perpetrators nor its main beneficiaries. so personally i am minding my own business on that front.

it’s instead important to me to illuminate the linkage between white as subject and chinese as object in history and in the present that i do argue that fannish products today are built upon.

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it’s not radical, or even new at all, for white audiences to consume⁠—or create their own versions of⁠—chinese art en masse. in many ways the white creators who appear to owe their whole style and aesthetic to their asian peers in turn are just the new chinoiserie.

this is not to say that white people can’t create asian-inspired art. but rather, i am asking you to sit with the discomfort that you may not like the artistic company you keep in the broader view of history, and to consider together what is to be done about that.

now, when i say the new chinoiserie, i first want to establish what the original one is. chinoiserie was a european artistic movement that appeared coincident with the rise in popularity of folding fans that i described above. this is not by coincidence; the european demand for asian imports and the eventual production of lookalikes is the movement itself. so: when we talk about fans, when we talk about china (porcelain), when we talk about tea in england⁠—we are talking about the legacy of chinoiserie.

there are a couple things i want to note here. while english people as a whole had a very tenuous knowledge of what china might be, their appetites for chinoiserie were roughly coincident with national relations with china. as the relationship between england and china moved from trade to out-and-out wars, chinoiserie declined in popularity until china had been safely subjugated once more by the end of the 19th century.

the second thing i want to note on the subject that contrary to what one might think at first, the appeal of chinoiserie was not that it was foreign. eugenia zuroski’s 2013 taste for china examines 18th century english literature and its descriptions of the according material culture with the lens that chinese imports might be formative to english identity, rather than antithetical to it.

beyond that bare thesis, i think it’s also worthwhile to extend her insight that material objects become animated by the literary viewpoints on them. this is true, both in a limited general sense as well as in the sense that english thinkers of the time self-consciously articulated this viewpoint. consider the quote from the illustrated london news above⁠—your fan, that object, says something about you. and not only that, but the objects you surround yourself with ought to.

it’s a bit circular, the idea that written material says that you should allow written material to shape your understanding of physical objects. but it’s both 1) what happened, and 2) integral, i think, to integrating a fannish perspective into the topic.

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japanning is the name for the popular imitative lacquering that english craftspeople developed in domestic response to the demand for lacquerware imports. in the eighteenth century, japanning became an artform especially suited for young women. manuals were published on the subject, urging young women to learn how to paint furniture and other surfaces, encouraging them to rework the designs provided in the text.

it was considered a beneficial activity for them; zuroski describes how it was “associated with commerce and connoisseurship, practical skill and aesthetic judgment.” a skillful japanner, rather than simply obscuring what lay underneath the lacquer, displayed their superior judgment in how they chose to arrange these new canonical figures and effects in a tasteful way to bring out the best qualities of them.

zuroski quotes the first english-language manual on the subject, written in 1688, which explains how japanning allows one to:

alter and correct, take out a piece from one, add a fragment to the next, and make an entire garment compleat in all its parts, though tis wrought out of never so many disagreeing patterns.

this language evokes a very different, very modern practice. it is this english reworking of an asian artform that i think the parallels are most obvious.

white people, through their artistic investment in chinese material objects and aesthetics, integrated them into their own subjectivity. these practices came to say something about the people who participated in them, in a way that had little to do with the country itself. their relationship changed from being a “consumer” of chinese objects to becoming the proprietor of these new aesthetic signifiers.

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i want to talk about this through a few pairs of tensions on the subject that i think characterize common attitudes then and now.

first, consider the relationship between the self and the other: the chinese object as something that is very familiar to you, speaking to something about your own self vs. the chinese object as something that is fundamentally different from you and unknowable to you. 

consider: [insert character name] is just like me. he would no doubt like the same things i like, consume the same cultural products. we are the same in some meaningful way vs. the fast standard fic disclaimer that “i tried my best when writing this fic, but i’m a english-speaking westerner, and i’m just writing this for fun so...... [excuses and alterations the person has chosen to make in this light],” going hand-in-hand with a preoccupation with authenticity or even overreliance on the unpaid labor of chinese friends and acquaintances. 

consider: hugh honour when he quotes a man from the 1640s claiming “chinoiserie of this even more hybrid kind had become so far removed from genuine Chinese tradition that it was exported from India to China as a novelty to the Chinese themselves” 

these tensions coexist, and look how they have been resolved.

second, consider what we vest in objects themselves: beaujot explains how the fan became a sexualized, coquettish object in the hands of a british woman, but was used to great effect in gilbert and sullivan’s 1885 mikado to demonstrate the docility of asian women. 

consider: these characters became expressions of your sexual desires and fetishes, even as their 5’10 actors themselves are emasculated.

what is liberating for one necessitates the subjugation and fetishization of the other. 

third, consider reactions to the practice: enjoyment of chinese objects as a sign of your cosmopolitan palate vs “so what’s the hype about those ancient chinese gays” pop culture explainers that addressed the unconvinced mainstream.

consider: zuroski describes how both english consumers purchased china in droves, and contemporary publications reported on them. how: 

It was in the pages of these papers that the growing popularity of Chinese things in the early eighteenth century acquired the reputation of a “craze”; they portrayed china fanatics as flawed, fragile, and unreliable characters, and frequently cast chinoiserie itself in the same light.

referenda on fannish behavior serve as referenda on the objects of their devotion, and vice versa. as the difference between identity and fetish collapses, they come to be treated as one and the same by not just participants but their observers. 

at what point does mxtx fic cease to be chinese? 

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finally, it seems readily apparent that attitudes towards chinese objects may in fact have something to do with attitudes about china as a country. i do not want to suggest that these literary concerns are primarily motivated and begot by forces entirely divorced from the real mechanics of power. 

here, i want to bring in edward said, and his 1993 culture and imperialism. there, he explains how power and legitimacy go hand in hand. one is direct, and one is purely cultural. he originally wrote this in response to the outsize impact that british novelists have had in the maintenance of empire and throughout decolonization. literature, he argues, gives rise to powerful narratives that constrain our ability to think outside of them.

there’s a little bit of an inversion at play here. these are chinese novels, actually. but they’re being transformed by white narratives and artists. and just as i think the form of the novel is important to said’s critique, i think there’s something to be said about the form that fic takes and how it legitimates itself.

bound up in fandom is the idea that you have a right to create and transform as you please. it is a nice idea, but it is one that is directed towards a certain kind of asymmetry. that is, one where the author has all the power. this is the narrative we hear a lot in the history of fandom⁠—litigious authors and plucky fans, fanspaces always under attack from corporate sanitization.

meanwhile, said builds upon raymond schwab’s narrative of cultural exchange between european writers and cultural products outside the imperial core. said explains that fundamental to these two great borrowings (from greek classics and, in the so-called “oriental renaissance” of the late 18th, early 19th centuries from “india, china, japan, persia, and islam”) is asymmetry. 

he had argued prior, in orientalism, that any “cultural exchange” between “partners conscious of inequality” always results in the suffering of the people. and here, he describes how “texts by dead people were read, appreciated, and appropriated” without the presence of any actual living people in that tradition. 

i will not understate that there is a certain economic dynamic complicating this particular fannish asymmetry. mxtx has profited materially from the success of her works, most fans will not. also secondly, mxtx is um. not dead. LMAO.

but first, the international dynamic of extraction that said described is still present. i do not want to get overly into white attitudes towards china in this post, because i am already thoroughly derailed, but i do believe that they structure how white cnovel fandom encounters this texts.

at any rate, any profit she receives is overwhelmingly due to her domestic popularity, not her international popularity. (i say this because many of her international fans have never given her a cent. in fact, most of them have no real way to.) and moreover, as we talk about the structure of english-language fandom, what does it mean to create chinese cultural products without chinese people? 

as white people take ownership over their versions of stories, do we lose something? what narratives about engagement with cnovels might exist outside of the form of classic fandom?

i think a lot of people get the relationship between ideas (the superstructure) and production (the base) confused. oftentimes they will lob in response to criticism, that look! this fic, this fandom, these people are so niche, and so underrepresented in mainstream culture, that their effects are marginal. i am not arguing that anyone’s cql fic causes imperialism. (unless you’re really annoying. then it’s anyone’s game) 

i’m instead arguing something a little bit different. i think, given similar inputs, you tend to get similar outputs. i think we live in the world that imperialism built, and we have clear historical predecessors in terms of white appetites for creating, consuming, and transforming chinese objects. 

we have already seen, in the case of the fan language meme that began this post, that sometimes we even prefer this white chinoiserie. after all, isn’t it beautiful, too? 

i want to bring discomfort to this topic. i want to reject the paradigm of white subject and chinese object; in fact, here in this essay, i have tried to reverse it.

if you are taken aback by the comparisons i make here, how can you make meaningful changes to your fannish practice to address it? 

--------------------

some concluding thoughts on the matter, because i don’t like being misunderstood! 

i am not claiming white fans cannot create fanworks of cnovels or be inspired by asian art or artists. this essay is meant to elaborate on the historical connection between victorian england and cnovel characters and fandom that others have already popularized.

i don’t think people who make victorian jokes are inherently bad or racist. i am encouraging people to think about why we might make them and/or share them

the connections here are meant to be more provocative than strictly literal. (e.g. i don’t literally think writing fanfic is a 1-1 descendant of japanning). these connections are instead meant to 1) make visible the baggage that fans of color often approach fandom with and 2) recontextualize and defamiliarize fannish practice for the purposes of honest critique

please don’t turn this post into being about other different kinds of discourse, or into something that only one “kind” of fan does. please take my words at face value and consider them in good faith. i would really appreciate that.

please feel free to ask me to clarify any statements or supply more in-depth sources :) 

[janecrockeyre]

scum villain is a greek tragedy disguised as a regular tragedy disguised as a comedy disguised as a danmei

this is going to be long, and this is only PART ONE.

a.k.a, Analysing the plot of Scum Villain’s Self Saving System through Aristotle’s Poetics, because I Have Mental Issues

Part One: Introduction and the Tragic Hero

Scum Villain’s Self Saving System is a tragedy disguised as a comedy, unless you’re Shen Yuan, in which case it’s a mixture of a romance and a survival horror. It's a fever dream. It's a horrible, terrible book that made me feel new undiscovered emotions when I finished reading it. 

The thing is... SVSSS shares characteristics with some of the most famous tragedies in the West, such as Oedipus Rex, Medea, Antigone, the Oresteia... if you haven’t read these, I’ll explain everything. But the gist of my argument is this: SVSSS is the perfect tragedy. In triplicate. 

Tragedy as a genre is old as balls and so it has meant slightly different things to different people over the last few thousand years. I'll be focusing on ancient Greek tragedy, which was performed at the yearly Festival of Dionysus in Athens during the 500-350s BC (give or take a hundred years). Aristotle, when writing about this very specific subset of tragedy, had no idea that one day Scum Villain would be written, and then that I would be using his work as a way to look at Shen Qingqiu’s Funky Transmigration Mistake. Anyway!

Greek tragedy greatly influenced European dramatic tradition. I have a lot of opinions about white academics idolising and upholding the classics as the "paragon of culture" but I'll withhold them for now. I have no idea if MXTX has read Greek tragedy or not, so don't take this as me saying they are writing it. 

In my opinion, tragedy is a universal human constant. We are surrounded by pain and hurt and none of it makes any sense, so we seek to process that pain through drama, art, literature, etc. We want to understand why pain happens, and how it happens, and try to make sense of the senseless. The universe is cold and cruel and random. Tragedy eases some of that pain. 

On that note: Just because I am analysing Scum Villain through a Greek lens doesn't mean that it was written that way. I'm pasting an interpretation onto the book when there's probably a very rich and deep history of Chinese tragedy that I just don't know about. If you ever want to talk about that, please, god, hit me up, I would love to learn about it!! 

Anyway, tragedy. MXTX is excellent at it! Mo Dao Zu Shi? Painful dynastic family tragedy. Heaven Official's Blessing? Mostly romance, but she managed to get that pure pain in there, huh? 

But in my opinion, Scum Villain holds the crown for the most tragic of her stories. MDZS was more of a mystery. TGCF was more of a romance. Neither of them shy away from their tragic elements. 

Scum Villain would fit right in between the work of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. How? Let me show you. Join me on my mystery tour into the world of "Aristotle Analyses Danmei..."

Part One: The Tragic Hero

What is a tragic hero? Generally, Greek tragic heroes are united by the same key characteristics. He must be imperfect, having a "fatal flaw" of some kind. He must have something to lose. And he must go from fortune to misfortune thanks to that fatal flaw. 

There are two (technically three) tragic protagonists in SVSSS and all of them are tragic in different but formulaic ways. Each protagonist has their own version of “hamartia” or a “fatal flaw”. 

Actually, hamartia isn’t necessarily a flaw - rather, it is a thing which makes the audience pity and fear for them, a careful imperfection, a point of weakness in the character’s morality or reasoning that allows for bad things to happen to them. For example, in Oedipus Rex, the king Oedipus has a “fatal flaw” of always wanting to find the truth, but this isn’t exactly a flaw, right? Note: this flaw can be completely unwitting, as we see with Shen Yuan. It can also be something that the protagonist is born with, some kind of trait from birth or very young. 

Shen Yuan

Shen Yuan’s “hamartia” is his rigid adherence to fate and his inability to read a situation as anything but how he thinks it ought to be. He believes that Bingmei will grow into Bingge, and it takes several years, two deaths, and some truly traumatising sex to convince him otherwise. 

Shen Jiu

Shen Jiu’s fatal flaw is his cruelty. It is his own sadistic treatment and abuse of Binghe which directly leads to his eventual dismemberment. This is kind of a no-brainer. Of course, it isn't all that simple, and as an audience we pity him for his cruelty as much as we fear it because we know it comes from his own abuse as a child. This just makes him even more tragic. Delicious. 

Luo Binghe

Luo Binghe’s fatal flaw is a complicated mix of things. It is his position as the “protagonist” which compels him to act in certain ways and be forced to suffer. It is his half-demonic heritage, something entirely out of his control, which sets in motion his tragic reversal of fortune when he gets yeeted into the Abyss. He also, much like Shen Yuan, has the propensity to jump to conclusions and somehow make 2 + 2 = 5. 

As well as having their respective “flaws”, all three protagonists match the rough outline of a good tragic hero in another way: they are in a position of great wealth and power. Even when you split the different characters into different “versions”, this still holds true. Yes, Luo Binghe is raised a commoner by a washerwoman foster mother, but his dad is an emperor and he also ends up becoming an emperor himself. 

Yes, Shen Jiu is an ex-slave and a victim of abuse himself, but Shen Qingqiu is a powerful peak lord with an entire mountain’s worth of resources at his back. 

Shen Yuan is a second generation new money rich kid. 

Bingge is a stereotypical protagonist with a golden finger. Bingmei is a treasured and loved disciple with a good reputation and a privileged seat by his shizun’s side. 

In a tragedy, having this kind of good fortune at the beginning of your story is dangerous. Chaucer says that tragedy is (badly translated into modern english) “a certain story / of him that stood in great prosperity / and falls out of high degree / into misery, and ends up wretchedly”. If we follow this line of thinking, a good tragedy is about someone who has a lot to lose, losing everything because of one fatal point of weakness that they fail to address or understand. 

If we look at Shakespeare, this is what makes King Lear such a fantastic tragic protagonist. He is a king in control of most of England, who from his own lack of wisdom and excess of pride, decides to split his kingdom apart to give to his daughters, favouring his murderous, double crossing progeny, and condemning his only actually filial daughter to death. He loses his kingdom, his mind, and his beloved daughter, all because of his own stupidity.

This brings us to:

Part Two: Peripeteia

This reversal of fortunes is called peripeteia. It is the moment where the entire plot shifts, and the hero’s fortunes go from good to bad. Think of it like one of those magic eye puzzles, where you stare at the image until a 3D shark appears, except you realise the shark was always there, you just couldn't ever see it, waiting for you, hungry, deadly, always lurking just behind that delightful pattern of random blue squiggles. 

Each tragic hero has their own moment of peripeteia in SVSSS, sometimes several:

Shen Qingqiu

In the original PIDW, SQQ’s peripeteia presumably occurs when he finds out that Bingge didn’t perish in the Abyss but has actually been training hard to come and pay him back. There’s really not much I’m interested in saying here - as a villain, OG!SQQ is cut and dry, and the audience doesn’t really feel any pity or fear for him. As Shen Yuan often mentions, what the audience feels when they see OG!SQQ is bloodlust and sick satisfaction. There is also the trial at Huan Hua Palace, which I will talk about in Shen Yuan’s section. 

Shen Yuan (SQQ 2.0)

One of SY’s most poggers moment of peripeteia is the glorious, terrifying section between hearing Binghe for the first time after the Abyss moment, and getting shoved into the Water Prison. 

“Behind him, a low and soft voice came: “Shizun?”

Shen Qingqiu’s neck felt stiff as he slowly turned his head. Luo Binghe’s face was the most frightening thing he had ever seen.

The scariest thing about it was that the expression on his face was not cold at all. His smile wasn’t sharp like a knife. Rather, it showed a kind of bone-deep gentleness and amiability.”

This is the moment of true horror for Shen Yuan, because he knows what happens next: the plot unfurls before him, inevitable and painful, and he knows that death awaits him at Luo Binghe's hands (lol). Compare it with the bone deep certainty with which he faces his own downfall during the sham of a trial later in the chapter (I’ve bolded the important part):

“In the original work, Qiu Haitang’s appearance signified only one thing: Shen Qingqiu’s complete fall from grace. [...] Shen Qingqiu’s heart streamed with tears. Great Master… I know you’re doing this for my own good, but I’ll actually suffer if she speaks her words clearly. This truly is the saying “not frightened of doing a shameful deed, just afraid the ghost (consequences) will come knocking”!”

After the peripeteia is usually the denouement where the plot wraps up and the threads are all tied together leaving no loose ends, but because this tragedy isn’t Shen Yuan’s but the former Shen Jiu’s, it’s impossible to finish. 

Shen Yuan cannot provide the meaningful answers that the narrative demands because 1) he doesn’t have any memory of doing anything, and 2) he wasn’t the person who did them. Narratively, he cannot follow the same path as the former SQQ because he lacks the same fatal flaw: cruelty. 

This is why Binghe doesn’t kill him - because he loves him, rather than despises him. And this is why Shen Yuan has to sacrifice himself and die for Luo Binghe in order to save him from Xin Mo: because the narrative demands that denouement follows peripeteia, and SQQ’s fate is in the hands of the narrative. 

(Side note: I believe that this literal death also represents the death of OG!SQQ's tragic arc. The body that committed all those crimes must die to satisfy the narrative. SQQ must die, like burning down a forest, so that new growth can sprout from the ashes. After this, Shen Yuan's story has more room to develop instead.)

It must happen to show Bingmei that SQQ loves him too. And this brings us to Bingmei.

Bingmei

Bingmei has two succinct moments of utter downfall. The first is a literal fall - his flaw, his demonic heritage, leads his beloved shizun to throw him down into the Abyss. From his point of view, SQQ is punishing him simply for the status of his birth. He rapidly goes from being loved and cherished unconditionally, to being the victim of an assassination attempt. 

He realises that he is totally unlovable: that for the crimes of his species that he never had a hand in, he must pay the price as well: that his shizun is so righteous that no matter what love there was between them, if SQQ sees a demon, he will kill it. Even if that demon is Bingmei. 

The second moment is when SQQ dies for him. Again, from his point of view, he was chasing after a man who was struggling to see him as a human being. Shen Qingqiu’s death makes Bingmei realise that he has been completely misunderstanding his shizun: that SQQ would literally die for him, the ultimate act of self sacrifice from love: that SQQ loved him despite his demon heritage. 

Much like King Lear holding the corpse of his daughter and wailing in sheer grief and pain because he did this, he caused this, Bingmei gets to hold his shizun's cold body and cry his eyes out and know that it was his fault. (Kind of.)

(Yes, I’m bringing Shakespeare into this, no I am not justifying myself)

Maybe I'm a bit sadistic, but that scene slaps. Let me show you a comparison of scenes so you get the picture. 

Re-enter KING LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms; EDGAR, Captain, and others following

KING LEAR

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:

Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so

That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!

I know when one is dead, and when one lives;

She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;

If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,

Why, then she lives.

[...]

 KING LEAR

And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.

Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,

Look there, look there!

Dies

Versus this scene in SVSSS: 

Luo Binghe turned a deaf ear to everything else, greatly agitated and at a loss of what to do. He was still holding Shen Qingqiu’s body, which was rapidly cooling down. It seemed like he wanted to call for him loudly and forcefully shake him awake, yet he didn’t dare to, as if he was afraid of being scolded. He said slowly, “Shizun?”

[...]

Luo Binghe involuntarily held Shen Qingqiu closer.

He said in a small voice, “I was wrong, Shizun, I really… know that I was wrong.

“I… I didn’t want to kill you…”

PAIN. SO MUCH BEAUTIFUL PAIN. Yes, I know Shakespeare isn’t Athenian, but he was inspired by the good old stuff and he also knew how to write a perfect tragedy on his own terms. Anyway. I’ll find more Greek examples later.

This post was a bit all over the place, but I hope it has been fun to read. Part Two will be coming At Some Point, Who Knows When. This is a bit messy and unedited, but hey, I’m not getting paid or graded, so you can eat any typos or errors. Unless you’re here to talk to me about Chinese tragedy, in which case, please pull up a seat, let me get you a drink, make yourself at home.

ps: if you want to retweet this, here is the promo tweet!