#i think this is why i like when he's in sweetbabyangel mode most if he's in an au where he's not a transmigrator or transmigrated very young

[shen-jius-zoloft-prescription]

I love Shen Yuan as much as the next guy, but I think we in the fandom spaces give him a little too much credit sometimes. He's not Shen Jiu levels of absolute bastard, but he's also not great. And this is not me criticizing him!! I just think more people should love him for being the little brat that he is rather than the heroic, universally-kind saint that he decidedly is not.

He was a full-time internet troll whose main hobby outside reading web novels was going on rants in the comments. He uses slurs. Did we all just forget about the slurs? He did not grow out of that, or see the error of his message-board-harassment ways, he just lost his Internet connection. (He probably would have gotten points for being in character if he'd kept it up, though.)

He bends over backwards to protect Binghe, but he doesn't go to those lengths for literally anyone else, ever. He neglects his other students outright in favor of focusing solely on Binghe. He's not great with the disciples, he's just better comparatively enough to make you think he is.

He's amiable enough to build friendships as Shen Qingqiu, but he's not Miss Fucking Congeniality. He's just polite, and passively friendly in super normal ways. "Be nice to martial siblings," and "Don't kill that snake, it's not bothering anyone," are very normal levels of decency, and he gets SO MUCH CREDIT for it, mostly because the expectations for him were set so damn low by Shen Jiu.

I think my main evidence of "Shen Yuan is an asshole, actually" is how he continues to treat Shang Qinghua after finding out they're transmigrators together. Shang Qinghua is just as doomed by the narrative as he is, just as controlled and manipulated by the System as he is, but he's so fucking mean to Shang Qinghua about it, even though he couldn't have possibly known they would end up transmigrated and certainly wasn't responsible for putting them there. He has no empathy whatsoever for the fact that Shang Qinghua was forced to make his magnum opus into porn-riddled slop because he would otherwise have literally starved; spoiled rich boy meets his friend's "I would have starved!" explanation with a very [image of Paris Hilton wearing a shirt that says "Stop Being Poor"] energy. And he just never stops being so fucking mean all the time, about everything, to his best friend. I would not be friends with Shen Yuan if that's how I could expect him to treat me.

(side note that will get its own post: I also think the portrayal of Shang Qinghua throughout SVSSS is an example of Shen Yuan's unreliable narration.)

All this to say, he's a sheltered, spoiled rich boy with layers on layers of issues, who still managed to be exponentially better at his job than the guy who'd earned it in the first place.

And maybe that's what's fun to consider, as least for me, is that his goodness is assumed purely on the comparison between him and Shen Jiu; he was meant to be the Scum Villain, found guilty of all sorts of heinous acts, and therefore he's lauded as a perfect sweet baby angel because he settles for just being a little bit of a bitch, instead.

(Maybe the larger takeaway can be that PIDW is a horrible, wretched, unkind world, and therefore the bare minimum of kindness counts as being truly saint-like. 🤔 But that's also a different post, I think.)