#literary villains

[girlintodust]

tortured soul

[oscarwildin]

the academic trinity of “damn it, richard”

[lintwriting]

How to Write a M/M Romance: Scum Villain's Bingqiu

Where Masculinity and Teacher/Student Intersect

Teacher Student Romance is the APPEAL, NOT a Plot Convenience

Easily the most problematic part about Scum Villain (beyond the dubcon papapa to save the world) is the teacher/student relationship baked into the main romance of the work—the one between Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe. Not only is it pervasive, it's not even brushed aside for the reader to forget about, the way the problematic aspects of other medias often are.

In fact, unlike the way age is brushed aside in fantasy dramas that have "teenage protagonists" for marketing reasons, such as The Vampire Diaries or Re:Zero, where the age is only there to draw in a teenage audience and otherwise the characters act like young adults, Scum Villain's Teacher x Student is purposely highlighted in a way that makes it clear that the dynamic is part of its main appeal.

For one, Luo Binghe's main form of address for his romantic partner is "Shizun," calling him teacher in a super respectful, almost worshipful way. This is the opposite of weakening the unbalanced dynamic. It's elevating the Teacher/Student power imbalance (in ways that make the reader suspect it's a kink thing for Luo Binghe LMAO).

For two, Shen Qingqiu is cognizant of how bad it looks to be called Shizun in a romantic context, feeling textually weirded out when it happens during romantic relations. Despite this, most of the ways he shows affection to Luo Binghe are very paternalistic (milf-coded), such as scolding him in fond exasperation or kissing him on the forehead like a father. In addition, Luo Binghe is specifically noted for not having older male authority figures in his life other than Shen Qingqiu, as his adopted mother was a single woman and his bio father could not care less about the son his late wife gave up her life for (seemingly for no reason, BUT I'll get to that in a different meta) (AND despite ample evidence that he CAN be a good father to Luo Binghe's cousin).

And while one aspect of it is that the Shizun/disciple dynamic is a genre-wide trope thanks to the influence of the early work, The Return of the Condor Heroes, wherein the Confucian taboo of the teacher/student romance is a source of tension and excitement within the novel, I wouldn't say that that's the whole of why Scum Villain (SVSSS) emphasizes the teacher/student romance.

Why are We Hot For Teacher: Return of the Condor Heroes vs Scum Villain

For one, within Return of the Condor Heroes, the romance is between a male student and a female teacher (because it's a het novel, lol), but SVSSS is a BL novel and wouldn't necessarily need to play into such tropes to create this "taboo"-evoking tension.

A lot of BL novels already play into the way being gay is marginalized or frowned upon to accomplish this, for instance, SVSSS's author's latter work, Mo Dao Zu Shi (MDZS) (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation), wherein the main character has compulsory heterosexuality.

For two, the dynamics of the Return of the Condor Heroes is playing with heteronormative ideas about the roles of men and women in romance. It's notable that the student is the male lover, and the master is the female lover in this relationship, playing with non-traditional ideas about who is submissive and who is dominant—while simultaneously using it to reaffirm traditional pursuer/pursued dynamics.

This male pursuer/female pursued dichotomy is not usually explicitly stated within media as that can seem sexist and clunky, rather it is usually implicit and portrayed through various contrivances. Xiaolongnu is a "cold beauty" who therefore must remain pure/aloof, which is accentuated by her role as a teacher, and while she is "dominant" as the teacher setting the terms for their relationship, it's mostly to emphasize the lengths that Yang Guo, the student, would go to pursue her. He becomes extra romantic for pursuing her while accepting her lead on choices like separating for 16 years.

In addition, the teacher/student relationship is a contrivance that affirms society's implicit bias about gender by giving textual, non-gendered excuses for the man to pursue. In this case, it would be an abuse of a teacher's power for Xiaolongnu to make the first move. Thus, traditional gender dynamics where men are the ones pursuing women are reaffirmed without making clunky statements about gender, even through nontraditional dynamics like a teacher/student relationship where the woman is dominant.

But, again, SVSSS is a BL, so the two main characters are both men, meaning there is no societal answer on who should be pursuer and the pursued. However, it is notable that SVSSS does play with this same dynamic of "cold, aloof teacher" and student who would go to extreme lengths to pursue them, while also purposely describing Luo Binghe as the "peak of masculinity."

This is where we start getting into SVSSS's intersection between Masculinity and the teacher/student relationship.

Because while although Condor Heroes uses the teacher/student relationship to affirm the heteronormative dichotomy of the male pursuer/female pursued, SVSSS's usage of this dynamic is in service of satirically demonstrating the "acceptable" avenues of affection when living as a man (since there's no women, and they're both men lol).

Teacher/Student Romance as a Way to Escape Restrictive Masculine Gender Roles

Teacher/student dynamic is a huge aspect to SVSSS because it’s a way to escape the masculine gender roles critiqued within the work. This is on the face of it obvious. Shen Qingqiu lets Binghe act bizarrely clingy under the assumption that he’s merely taking care of a filial or needy child. The understanding that "masculine men have to be straight" and the understanding that "Binghe is the most manly person within the novel as the stallion protagonist" intersect to ensure that any affection between them is strictly platonic, which is a double edged sword.

Because Shen Qingqiu allows Binghe close to him with the reassurance that Binghe HAS to be straight (a surprisingly common way for straight men to interact), that means that as Binghe ages, his access to affection will also get cut off, since he's supposed to be aging out of the role of a clingy student and into the role of stallion protagonist.

This is even grafted onto the scum villain/protagonist dynamic, as exactly at the point where Binghe's on the cusp of becoming an adult, Shen Qingqiu is forced to be the opposite of affectionate and become the villain by throwing him down into Xianxia hell. Which, to him, means that he's killed his baby student and replaced him with a stallion protagonist out to take him out.

So when Binghe becomes an adult, he loses access to affection along two axises within Shen Qingqiu's mind. The first being that he's now vengeful stallion protagonist out to get him throwing him away, which is the explicit reason Shen Qingqiu rebuffs him. And the second being that he's now a straight adult man who isn't supposed to get affection from his old teacher, which is also a factor.

This loss and transformation into a protagonist causes him to become insane to almost comical proportions, indiscriminately killing people and so distraught that at any point he's liable to self-destruct—all because he's constantly being rebuffed when seeking affection from his teacher, who thinks he wants to take him out for throwing him into hell. It's notable that any time Shen Qingqiu rejects him, Binghe lashes out in an almost stoic anger, rather than with the vulnerable crybaby tears that Binghe used as a kid. All this is highlighting the consequences of toxically masculine gender roles—where a severe lack of emotional vulnerability creates only violence and status as ways to express yourself, leading to severe emotional issues.

Now this is where it gets to the satirical aspects. Because all that before is pretty angsty and not very funny, but Scum Villain is a comedic satire. This is because it's not from the perspective of Luo Binghe—it's from the perspective of Shen Qingqiu.

The Point of Scum Villain's Meta

To all of this, Shen Qingqiu is totally oblivious, as he is still under the impression that everything was platonic. Which I'd argue he SHOULD be, considering that Binghe was a young student in his care that he was only trying to groom into being nice, person not into a sexual relationship 💀💀. Now, the ethics of fiction about raising your spouse is a whole other issue outside of the scope of this discussion, but within the universe of Scum Villain, where we know his intentions, he gets the pass from me!

The reason Shen Qingqiu is oblivious is because one, as the most terminally online hater on the Internet, he's read about stallion protagonist Luo Binghe way before transmigrating into the story. And the Luo Binghe of the original story was a miserable sack of shit who got an unhappy ending despite being the peak of what masculinity "should" be.

A harem of women to show his virility, a stoic facade, and a constant stream of face slapping for hundreds and hundreds of chapters. He's an alpha male to the point of farce because Airplane needed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of teen boys on the internet—Andrew Tate's main demographic. It's not just a satire of YY novels—this, too, is part of Scum Villain's critique of toxic masculinity.

The second reason Shen Qingqiu is oblivious is because he's homophobic, sexist, heteronormative, etc. etc. etc. He was an INTERNET TROLL for a reason. And while people like to joke that he was a feminist king on the forums, I feel like it's more in line with the themes of the story to take him reading this schlock at face value because it's part of Scum Villain's trap! Anytime you feel like complaining about Scum Villain's hack writing, you're one meat bun away from an uno reverse card. The instant you start complaining, the author can hit you with a "Cucumber-bro calm down," and BOOM you're done! Never comment again!

And this is so effective because none of us want to be an un-self-aware, terminally online, trash-reading hater like him.

So, the satire of the novel is taking this kind of guy—both the Andrew Tates of the world and his basement dwelling followers—and wondering "Would gay sex fix them?" And the answer is YES, WHICH is HYSTERICAL to play straight in a romance like this. It's "Fellas, is it gay to like women?" but make it into an actual romance.

On a thematic level, being gay is indeed antithetical to a masculinity that upholds having sex with tons of women as the ideal, so it's doubly poignant for this closeted gay man to realize that the only thing he needed to do to live was to accept himself and the people around him by giving up his need to fit them into boxes—both on a meta "they're not fictional characters to him anymore" level, but also on a "toxic masculinity shouldn't define us" level.

Climaxing

The old Shen Qingqiu is dead. Long live Shen Qingqiu. Gay sex to save the world. Luo Binghe is back to his crybaby self. All is well in the world.

One thing I love about this teacher/student romance that it portrays Bingqiu afterwards as really happy and in love. Logically, nothing about that makes sense — 45 year old stepfather marries 25 year old stepdaughter from a bad home who idolized him, even while he acts like he's embarrassed to be around her and encourages her helplessness—but it makes perfect sense because it's a perfect marriage between all these different layers.

The "bird leaving the nest" conflict

Qingqiu is allowed to be affectionate with a scary adult Binghe because Binghe can be both a clingy student and an adult

2. The scum villain/protagonist conflict

Binghe never wanted to kill Shen Qingqiu, only to be loved by him.

3. The comphet conflict

Binghe never intended to go out and get a harem of women as a sign of masculine status, he just wants to be gay with Shen Qingqiu.

4. The "should I treat them like real people or fictional characters" transmigrator conflict—

Binghe is a real person separate from the character of Luo Binghe because he's no longer that unattainable masculine ideal—he's human and happier for it.

All solved with a student/teacher relationship in service of critiquing toxic masculinity. Now that's economical writing!

(I love the inclusion of the original Luo Binghe meeting them in the Extras, and that Luo Binghe is pretty evenly matched with him. I feel like the idea that someone "is automatically stronger with the power of love, and therefore that's why love is better" is pretty shallow, as it plays into the toxically masculine idea that strength is all that matters. Luo Binghe may not be stronger than the toxically masculine ideal version of himself, but he doesn't feel the need to be because he's happy the way he is. And his ideal self is jealous of him for that—not vice versa.)

On their own, these resolutions would probably still feel as creepy as Lolicon, but in the context of critiquing masculinity, it makes a lot more sense. Masculinity, I think, fascinates as a writing tool because there's a lot of mini tools baked-in its structure, like Shen Qingqiu's comedic plausible deniability thing, as well as assumptions about power.

For instance, since Binghe is quite literally the God-emperor of his world, it feels more like a kink thing for him to call Qingqiu Shizun, and not like he's actually less powerful than Shizun in their dynamic. His bouts of learned helplessness come off as traditionally feminine Sajiao, NOT like the learned behavior of creepy pick-me pedophilia. It's like a cat showing its belly, because we all know it's a murder machine showing its vulnerable side out of trust, not because it feels the need to degrade itself. So, while his behavior emphasizes the Teacher/Student imbalance, the reality is that he's doing it mostly for kinky reasons and that the two of them are on a pretty level playing field. It's extremely funny when people joke that he and Qingqiu are the same age due to all that time Qingqiu spent dead, because they are Not Wrong.

Problematic Kinks

Romance fiction is usually about ways to get certain needs met in ways that would never be possible in real life, which is why a lot of it is problematic. Virginity kink is not about real life virgins, but the idea that your partner is guaranteed to think you're competent in bed. Bodice ripper stories do not reflect the reality of getting raped, but is more about the idea of getting sexually satisfied with none of the shame of "being slutty" for desiring sex, since it was "against your will." Or they're about controlling the fear of getting raped within this safe romantic fantasy where everything turns out all right. Or various other things because kinks are personal.

Shen Qingqiu is the perfect example of this, where he functions as a great insert for female readers who might have shame around sexuality, since he's a "prude" without actually being one, hence his parallel with Xiaolongnu. Instead, he's just comedically under the misconception that he's straight or that Binghe's only platonically in love with his teacher—that's why he's always ashamed and putting on airs. It's a comedic/unrealistic version of comphet, so you don't gotta think about purity culture while reading your silly little stories.

And Luo Binghe is the self-insert fantasy of readers with daddy issues. His strict father who criticized him all the time actually secretly thought he was the bestest-westest, most handsomest boy in the whole wide world, and there was a secret understandable reason he had to be mean to him, and he secretly loves when he acts like a crybaby because that just means an excuse to pamper him.

And while in real life, many of these would be incredibly dysfunctional—within fiction, we can make these fantasies work anyway. If your romance manages to hit at one of these underlying desires in a fantastical way, you've got a hit with one audience of people! Whether that be by making them EVEN MORE dysfunctional (papapa to save the world) or by having them somehow communicate it out into a healthy dynamic (the extras, presumably).

All this to say, if you're a man frustrated with your love life, all you need is a gay, milf-y male teacher to ruin your life.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

literary & character tropes (pt. 5)

Tropes - themes, motifs, plot devices, plot points, and storylines that have become familiar genre conventions

All writers manipulate language to create certain effects. At the level of individual phrases and sentences, the skillful use of tropes is key to creating writing that’s fresh, memorable, and persuasive.

Ancient Evil: A character, concept or thing that's old and evil.

The Blind Seer: Are blind, and yet they can see more than we can, metaphorically speaking, by using heightened senses, divination, or some type of magical powers to gain knowledge of the world around them. It is a recurring theme in mythology; Justice is blind, Odin plucked out an eye to gain knowledge, and the Graeae had had only one eye among three of them. Time and time again, the sacrifice of sight is shown to result in greater cosmic knowledge.

Bloodbath Villain Origin: The villain's Start of Darkness began with sudden mass murder.

Botanical Abomination: A strange, incomprehensible organism that looks like a tree or other plant, but they came straight out of a forest from your nightmares.

Changeling Tale: Babies who are abducted by fairies and replaced.

Chronoscope: A chronoscope or time viewer is a device that uses images that show past or future events like a television. They can sometimes also cause time travel. They are common in sci-fi, and often take different forms.

Goo-Goo-Godlike: An all-powerful child who doesn't know any better.

Hide-and-Seek Horror: A game of hide-and-seek is played for horror.

The Omniscient: A character that knows everything. Either literally everything, or simply everything worth knowing under the circumstances. Beings with this ability tend to be background characters that the reader is told little about.

Reading Tea Leaves: Tasseomancy (alternatively known as tasseography or tassology) is a form of divination that interprets patterns in tea leaves, coffee grounds, or wine sediments. The method involves the quarant (the person getting their fortune told) being provided with a cup of a particular drink (Tea, Coffee and Wine being the most common forms). They are asked to drink from a specific cup, leaving a small amount for the leaves and/or pulp to gather. The leaves/pulp then form a variety of shapes, from animals to inanimate objects, even mythical creatures and specific people. These shapes hold symbolic significance, their presence spelling things ranging from good fortune to omens of doom.

If these writing notes helped with your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

More: Literary & Character Tropes

[entropy404]

You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

[lurkinginnernarrator]

Shen Yuan who is literally so good at deception, not for cool reasons though— he just got really good at being sneaky from hiding his obses— ahem. Enjoyment of certain piece of media.

[everythingseasoning]

You know what really gets me about all villains is that at one point they were just kids who were so neglected, kids who didn’t understand how to process and make sense of their extreme, traumatic, complex situations … At some point that monster you hate so vehemently was an abused, scared, lonely and confused child, an innocent person— somebody who simply ended up doing their best, doing what they knew how to do — doing something we all could’ve ended up doing, had we grown up with their brain chemistry in their shoes. We all just know what we live, and live what we know. You can’t blame a child for not knowing better. I even argue that you can’t blame adults for not knowing better, if they were never taught, never pulled from the darkness. It doesn’t excuse their actions. I am not justifying that. But this explanation just makes the whole situation so, so, sad.

And if you disagree or agree, or both, you can reblog with your thoughts :) I welcome discussion. But please. Use critical thinking and compassion.

[icemankazansky]

I am BEGGING (some of) you to learn what a literary foil is:

Examples:

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[amicus-noctis]

“A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.” ― Georges Bataille

Painting: "The Kiss" by Ambrogio Antonio Alciati

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

Apt words regarding "nuanced antagonists" that MXTX was well aware of and how they're discussed by fandoms . Yes they are allowed to be scummy while having depth and still be antagonists and this is explored in her very next work with Jiang Cheng and not being relegated to being simply stepped on by the protagonist as a useless character only with no integral part of his own to themes.

When written within the bounds of the original genre, this kind of character was extremely difficult to handle. You could say he was scum, but he was also pitiful. But if you tried to acknowledge his pathos, his ruthlessness was real too. Characters that were both scummy and tragic always drew aggro, and they were a hotbed for wank, leading comments sections to devolve into massive flame wars. Better to hack him down into a formulaic asshole and let the protagonist step on him. Easier to write, and the readers would find it satisfying as well.

Scum Villain Self-Saving System (Seven Seas Faelicy)

[wisteria-lodge]

What do you think leads some people to prefer fictional villains and anti-heroes to the good guys? I've had this preference ever since I was a little kid watching Rugrats, thinking Angelica was the best. My favorites usually have that "edge" and it isn't based on sorting. Loki, Vegeta from DBZ, Jayne, Draco, Magneto, the uncle in Teen Wolf, Zuko, the Phantom, etc. Sometimes when a character is redeemed (Itachi, Zuko), I actually lose interest. If it matters, I think I'm a Snake Bird.

This is a big question, with a lot of potential answers. I'll throw a few out there, see if anything resonates.

Structurally, villains tend to be more active. The villain does a thing, and the hero reacts to it (tries to fix the problem, restore things to how they were, etc.) Since we like watching characters who want things, do things, and make decisions - that can make the villain a lot more fun to watch than the much more passive hero. Also, there's a lot more structural pressure on the hero to be - relatable, likable, able to carry big emotional beats. This can (unfortunately) lead to heroes who are kind of Bland, Generic Everymen.

Related to this - if you yourself are not your culture's idea of an Everyman, then chances are the villain might actually be a lot more *relatable* than the hero. A lot of the guys you listed are a disenfranchised minority of some sort. Magneto is Jewish, the Phantom is disfigured, Zuko is a poltical exile, Loki is an ice-giant (which counts.) Even Draco is honestly quite femme-coded, unlike Harry or Ron.

I think villains work really well as power fantasies. I *like* Superman as a character, but being him seems exhausting and unrelatable. But being that charismatic, powerful asshole... there's so much *freedom* there, it's fun to think about. I honestly think is why characters like Rick Sanchez and Walter White get such disproportionate amounts of love and identification from their fans. I think this is why a lot of people loved BBC!Sherlock, who is SO much more of an asshole than the original Sherlock Holmes.

Things like pettiness, cowardice, vanity, pride, short-sightedness, cruelty.... like these are such an important part of the human experience, and when they're explored in art it's often through the villain or antihero. You see a good performance of a villain in a Shakespeare play, and it's very - oh shit, I recognize those impulses, that's me and my grimiest and stickiest. Engaging with that can be a really cathartic, really rewarding experience.

[bubblesxo]

I’m sorry but the flat way that the fandom tackles the Enji Todoroki problem is so blegh. Yes, how he treated them (especially Shouto—we don’t 100% know if Touya’s training was the same, especially because he actually liked his training) was wrong, the way he treated his wife was wrong, the way he ignored his other kids is wrong. HOWEVER, him cutting Touya off from training was NOT 100% wrong. Should he have treated it more delicately? Yes. Should he have been more considerate to his kid? Yes. Should he have gotten him some kind of therapy to help him cope with his obvious mental issues? Also yes. But cutting him off from training when he gets hurt doing so and it’s unavoidable is NOT wrong. He was trying to prevent exactly what happened in the end. Maybe he could have revisited it a few years later when training isn’t all Touya is and looked into support items, idk, but Enji’s approach was the right decision in the wrong way.

[lala-blahblah]

I will never make this because it would be for an audience of one (me) but ever since reading "If we Were Villains" (story about serious drama kids in college who perform shakespeare and deal with a murder) I have been entertaining the thought of a crack fic crossover with High School Musical The Musical The Series where the staff decides they will no longer put on shakespeare after the tragic accident that happened at Thanksgiving, because Shakespeare plays would only increase the tension and drama. So they hire Ms. Jen who decides their spring play will actually be High School Musical (which exists in the 90s in this universe) and it ruins the vibe so much that everyone gives up on being dark and mysterious because they're universally pissed at Ms Jen for making them learn choreoraphed basketball dancing.

[velvet-script]

"Love is madness, but maybe madness is the only thing that makes sense." — Butcher & Blackbird

Some people love softly. Others love like a blade to the throat.

[goldenspirits]

Marco and Polo TVGLOW are very... Queer coded, in a way that I cannot quite articulate. They just hit that "Hays Code Era Queer Coded Villain" spot in my brain, you know?

[sangrefae]

i feel like it must be said that i very much enjoy mithrun, he's one of my favorite characters, but the way the community at large handles him with safety gloves as if he'll break at the slightest criticism is very frustrating considering his role in the story is that of an antagonistic force