#hsav meta

[fistfuloflightning]

Hong Xiu’s death is for HSAV what Gwen Stacy’s death was for the Spiderman comics. It was the death of innocence for the story, the point of no return, because up until that point it was relatively lighthearted with little in the way of stakes, and the events that followed were just an avalanche that had been held back for far too long, and all the more devastating for it.

[fistfuloflightning]

#This couple is good but I'm a little sad about them#In fact for YHQ anyone could be in XYA place#I mean#In the original he kept a portrait of Princess Yunnin in his bedroom all his life#whom they didn't even really know and who was just kind to him because she was a good person#He did not have time to really know the love for her so he just sought solace in a huge number of women#At the same time with XYA they at least spent a lot of time together#so he could no longer so easily put aside feelings for him for the sake of others#He is a man who literally has nothing left in his life but revenge so he is ready to become obsessed with anyone who is kind to him#It's sad#Come on#a man who still has at least some meaning in life will not try to die on the battlefield after his love has refused him

how dare you leave this in the tags! Because you’re 100% right. i mean, in the og novel he built his empire partly in revenge and partly out of his way of paying restitution for failing to save Yongning. In the new timeline he builds his empire to fulfill XYA’s dream lol. But it could just be he finds kindness attractive. But yes. Regardless of his reasoning behind picking his true love, he definitely put everything he was into XYA—it’s not healthy but there’s always beauty in tragedy. But at least this time the man gets a happy ending.

So, we have a MC with obvious suicidal tendencies, who finds himself in terrible circumstances, a ML who is desperate and has lost everything, who is depressed for most of the book, sounds like fun reading for the evening

The main characters of the novel "How to survive as a villain", Yan Heqing, and Xiao Yuan in the body of the Emperor of the North and in their own body

I'm reading this story for the second time, and for the second time I'm crying on the best arches

[pilmyeol]

the little box he keeps is the direct counter to that idea, also. its physical proof that someone loved him. xiao yuan hesitates to keep the jade hairpin in his box because even if he can accept that hong xiu and eunuch zhao loved him, theyre exceptions to the rule. no one as important as yan heqing could ever truly care about him. but he puts it in the box in the end because he so desperately wants to be loved by him.

[pleuvoire]

bgfhbkgdfgbfdg wait this guy’s family want him to grow up as the cold ceo love interest of a het romance webtoon that’s so hilarious. wrong genre buddy

[fistfuloflightning]

Just thinking about this the other day, but maybe the reason Xiao Yuan keeps getting transmigrated each time he dies is because he doesn’t die naturally/takes his own life. If he died of natural causes (meaning his role in life is completed) then that would be the end. But in the modern world and then again as the Emperor he ends up committing suicide, therefore cutting his own story short before it could come to its natural conclusion. Which might mean that if it happened again, he would be transmigrated again, into a different body again like a reset.

But whatever the reason, it’s pretty clear the Powers That Be want him to live a long good happy life.

[fistfuloflightning]

I honestly think their reasons for killing themselves come from very different places tbh. SQQ yeets himself to stop LBH from self destructing because he knows he’s the only thing that will work (something something mutual obsession and only my death will break him out of his crazy…? while his core is breaking/he breaks his core?? Idk I don’t really remember, and I still honestly don’t understand his reasoning)

XY on the other hand is forced to it because his very existence is a problem. He’s the defeated emperor of a conquered nation—he can’t remain alive since he’s still seen as a figurehead of the Northern Empire (see Xie Chungui and the fanatic at the Altar of the Heavens o.O), and if anyone from Southern Yan kills him he’ll be seen as a martyr and might spur the Northern Empire to rise up again and destroy what little peace YHQ won by unifying everything. But if he killed himself, then he is sending the message to his people that there is no point in resisting. And his greatest wish was for YHQ to unify the countries and bring peace and this was the only path that would allow for total peace.

(I do also have a link to the best fan translation if you want to go that direction instead of buying the frankly expensive translation?)

xiao yuan 🤝 shen qingqiu

killing themselves fucking constantly

[fistfuloflightning]

Something I found interesting in my last reread was how certain scenes were changed from the novel to the manhua, particularly the differences between the Record of the Four Kingdoms, the novel Xiao Yuan is transmigrated into. Long story short I personally I think Qin Yu and Zhou Yu (the og!emperor) deserved each other.

in the novel!verse Qin Yu betrays Zhou Yu and flees the city without looking back when Southern Yan attacks:

But in the manhua Qin Yu stays by his emperor’s side until he dies, playing their song one last time on the steps of the burning palace. It’s his choice to stay beside Zhou Yu.

I’m curious why this change was made, since it just makes Xiao Yuan look bad when he dismisses him shortly after his transmigration, because it’s clearly stated that Qin Yu genuinely loved Zhou Yu in the manhua!verse, enough to want to die with him. And Xiao Yuan (who knows RofFK inside out and is aware that Qin Yu loves the emperor) in Zhou Yu’s body bluntly tells him thank you for your long years of service to this company, we don’t need you anymore, here’s your severance package.

I understand why they did the dismissal the way they did but he treats Qin Yu so coldly like he wasn’t aware the concubine loved the emperor when he is very much aware, and Xiao Yuan can do sensitive. He just doesn’t here. It would make more sense in this scene if they’d kept the whole ‘Qin Yu betrayed the Emperor’ angle and have Xiao Yuan cut ties because of that as part of his long-term plan to have as few people die, including himself. But he frames it as trying to set Qin Yu free, yet does it as coldly and impersonally as possible.

Either way, it’s prime real estate for some angsty fic which I live for.

[pilmyeol]

thinkin about how xiao yuans family treated him like a fictional character and the only way hes gonna be able to break free of that is by accepting himself as a real part of the fictional world he lives in

[pilmyeol]

xiao yuans family convinced him completely that any love he ever had would feel fictional and one sided so when he has something genuine and reciprocated he doesnt think its real

[pilmyeol]

90% of the conflict in hsav stems from the fact that xiao yuan doesnt feel like he has any meaningful control over the world he lives in, no matter what world hes in at the time

[pilmyeol]

at the end of his life xiao yuan had basically resigned himself to living lovelessly. like in his own eyes there was literally no one who loved him and so he was unlovable, and even after hong xiu proved him wrong by dying for him he just cant shake the idea that no one who knows him could love him. this is why hes so fucking stupid about yan heqing :)

[pilmyeol]

even after hes figured out that hes gay xiao yuan still feels like yan heqing is too “pure” to be into men like every time someone implies that theyre together xiao yuan brushes it off because he thinks the protagonist is somehow above being attracted to him.

[pilmyeol]

yan heqing and xiao yuan both defy their familys expectations for them to fall into crappy fiction tropes. with xiao yuan ive talked about this before but it took me longer for yan heqing because we dont have as much of his backstory. anyway yan heqings familys feelings about him in the snow leopard story are eerily similar to xiao yuans family in the first two chapters, but where yan heqings family learns not to put him into boxes, xiao yuans family insists on turning him into a trope, which leaves him traumatized

[pilmyeol]

like even when yan heqing gives xiao yuan a hairpin he KNOWS is something yan heqing would only ever give to someone he truly loves, xiao yuan still views himself as a placeholder for when yan heqing starts a “real” relationship

[pilmyeol]

xiao “could it be that what i feel for yan heqing is a fatherly love” yuan........ so close yet so far 😀

see the thing about that line is that even though hes realized he has some sort of deep feelings for yan heqing, hes still trying to distance himself from him. if were gonna talk about this though we also need to talk about xiao yuan seeing fatherly love as something distant in the first place

[pilmyeol]

honestly xiao yuan is kind of similar to adachi before he could read minds except adachi masks with awkwardness and xiao yuan masks with confidence