#sqq: you're a transmigrator?

[disgracefulthings]

Qi Qingqi: Isn't it weird how nearly everyone we know had awful families

Liu Qingge: That is weird

Yue Qingyuan: And those of us who don't, it's because we have no family to speak of

Shen Qingqiu: It's like we're being tormented by a very lonely god

Shang Qinghua: Well excuse me! Maybe if I was loved as a child then I would probably know how to write about a loving family!!

Peak Lords: ...

Shang Qinghua: ...is what the lonely god must be thinking...

[rhiangalaxy]

We all know very well that it's SQQ with the harem not Bingmei 😭

[ID: A Scum Villain OC and Canon crossover doodle. On the left is SY!Shen Qingqiu looking down with a flustered expression as he waves his handfan as if trying to cool himself off as he says "I can't have feelings for Binghe! He's supposed to have a harem of wives!" On the right is the oc Liang Yingyue, with her arms crossed with an amused expression responding "I'm about to blow your mind" A caption pointing to her says "Knows damn well that LBH is not after any of his wives now" End ID]

[starry-bi-sky]

no context snippet for a "SY is SJ" au i thought of at 1am last night, because i am a firm believer of the "amnesia doesnt erase your trauma it just erases the context of it" agenda.

(although in SY's case he DID kinda forget that trauma.. at first. it's coming back to him. the system gave him a grace period. there that's my excuse)

crossposted on ao3 too in case anyone wants to read it there instead

--------

Shen Qingqiu is painting again.

He's found himself doing that a lot lately, now that he's out of seclusion and Binghe is in the bamboo house, squirreled away into the side room where the Head Disciple should be. Painting is, of course, a logical course of action for a peak lord to do! Especially one such as himself, the Peak Lord of Qing Jing, which was basically the peak of the creative arts.

But— well, he wasn't expecting to find himself liking it so much. Or doing it so often. Painting in the style of the time period is a lot easier to learn than he expected, and it gets him B-points for in-character actions! Who knew the Original Goods was such an artist of the time? He had such an evocative way with his brush, he should know — he's found some of his works!

(They were tucked away like a dirty secret in the back of his closet, locked away in a qiankun chest that Shen Qingqiu found the key to far too easily. He’ll admit to being a little disappointed in the Original Goods’ predictability — a false bottom in the vanity, really? Anyone could find that!) 

This brought him to his next issue; he was getting headaches, and he thinks, perhaps, just a little, that the Original Goods' thoughts and feelings were bleeding into him. Just a tad! And he was certain it was the Original Goods too, because— because, well…

He keeps flinching. You know how you’re walking down a public but otherwise empty hallway, and turn the corner and nearly run right into someone, and your heart jumps three spaces to the left and back? Subconsciously you knew there was a chance you were going to see someone, but their sudden appearance still startles you? 

Yeah, that. He keeps experiencing it with Binghe. He about jumps right out of his skin whenever Binghe emerges from the side room or the kitchen, even though he knows his disciple is there! And he knows it’s not a habit from his old world, because Shen Qingqiu lived with three other siblings in the house, and always knew to expect someone to be right around the corner. 

And he knows, especially so, that it’s not a habit from his old world, because along with the mini heart attacks that come with Binghe’s presence in the bamboo house, is the discomfort. A distinct yet indistinguishably vague feeling of unease that comes with sharing a living space with someone. The kind that makes his hackles rise like a particularly disgruntled and cornered street cat. 

Again, he grew up with three siblings! That could not be coming from him. It has to be an Original Goods feeling slipping in, and it was really getting in the way of things! How was he supposed to give Binghe a sense of belonging and a better upbringing if his presence in the bamboo house made him feel horribly exposed?

Some days, he just can't escape the gnawing feeling of dread in his chest when he returns to the bamboo house at the end of the day, knowing full well that it will soon be accompanied by someone else. Even if that someone was Binghe. 

That feeling of a lack of privacy makes his skin crawl and his shoulders lock up to his ears with every step. It was inconvenient; annoying. 

It was utterly unscientific, it was his house! And it was only Binghe, who, currently, is a harmless little white sheep! There was no darkened protagonist here, come to tear his limbs off. There was nothing to be so… tense about. 

It does nothing to stop the little swooping his heart does when he opens the door to, sometimes, Binghe already there, kneeling at the table like a dutiful disciple as always.

Oh, and that's not starting on his steadily increasing dislike of physical touch. It had to be something to do with the ludicrous amount of layers he wears and the modesty standards of the time period — and, also, of course, the Original Goods' own aversion to it.

He knows he's never felt so uncomfortable in another human being's presence before! Sure, he wasn’t the most social of people in his old world, but he still remembers being able to leave the house and be among the masses with relative ease. Here, though, was an entirely different story. His personal space bubble seemingly doubled, no, tripled in size, and it was irking him quite unhandily. 

The worst offenders were the Peak Lord meetings, it had to be. Navigating through the sea of disciples, cultivators, and visitors on Qiong Ding was a nightmare enough on its own — lessened only by the fact that said mountain occupants parted like the red sea when they saw him coming — but sitting in a secluded room with eleven other people, majority of whom still disliked him despite his turnaround? Awful.  

The proximity between him and his martial siblings isn’t even that bad, either. He has plenty of elbow room and in fact, would need to make an effort to reach out and physically touch anyone on either side of him. But, still!! Too close!! 

Shen Qingqiu made the conscious decision to sit as close to the door as his own comfort would allow, but not so close that he couldn’t see it — he tried that once. He doesn’t want to speak of the incident. The stress alone will give him heart palpitations. 

(He, pointedly, doesn’t want to think about the time he arrived at a Peak Lord meeting and found the Long Ning Shou Peak Lord sitting in His Chair either. Shen Qingqiu has never been particularly territorial about ‘assigned seating’ before, up until that moment. While he’s proud to say that he didn’t do anything to Chen Qingxuan for sitting in his spot, he’s mortified by how childishly petulant he felt about it for the rest of the meeting. He’s pretty sure everyone could sense his sour mood.)  

Why, just a few days ago he nearly bit a poor disciple's head off during martial lessons when they accidentally tumbled into him after a series of spectacularly fumbling footing. The child had been so horrified and apologetic that Shen Qingqiu remembered to reel himself back in time and merely scold them, rather than tear their skin right off with a tongue lashing.

But— enough about such stressful things! Shen Qingqiu was painting, and when he was painting, Binghe knew not to bother him, and to not let anyone do so either. Lest they all be dealt with a moderately grumpy Shizun. 

(His emotions may be as volatile as a hormonal boy lately, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t know how to keep them in check!! He still had a reputation to keep.)

His studio offered him a sense of privacy and solitary that not even his bedroom allowed him — for Binghe could knock on his bedroom door to alert him for whatever needed his attention, and while he could do the same to the studio, the fact remained; a Shizun interrupted during his precious studio time, did not, a happy Shizun make. 

There were silencing talismans painted into the walls — courtesy of the Original Goods — that Shen Qingqiu really quite appreciated. It allowed him the peace of mind to do things his face could not allow him outside of it— and that is, he got to muse aloud to himself, and hum songs from his old world that he couldn't anywhere else. Some songs that he still knew the lyrics to, he was happy to half-sing under his breath.

It had to be a form of meditation, it had to be! With how much peace and grounding it brought him, it couldn't be anything but a form of meditation.

Currently, he was just letting instincts lead his brush strokes while he hummed a melody from some myth musical he stumbled across a few weeks before he died. The songs had been so catchy that he had most of them all but memorized! He's tried repeating the instrumentals on his guqin and ruan with varying degrees of success.

Painting helped kill his migraines the most. As it stands, he’s had a killer one hammering at his skull since this morning. Bad enough to the point that he nearly snapped at poor Binghe during breakfast, and the child could all but sense the sour mood radiating off his master, and in turn had been silent and subdued until he left. 

Aish, that child… Shen Qingqiu hasn't quite quelled the guilt in him. Something about that awful subservience rankled him in a way he couldn’t explain, making him want to recoil and snap out at the same time. Something dark and deep in him had reared its head, wanting to reach over and shake Binghe for it. 

He'd been horrified by his own thoughts, and then locked himself in his studio for the rest of the day.

Even in death — or wherever the Original Goods was — he was still making things difficult! It was only natural that Binghe would go quiet and careful at the sight of Shen Qingqiu’s bad mood, he used to beat the boy at whim for imagined slights! He’ll have to reassure Binghe better that he wasn’t going to hurt him. 

Bah. He was supposed to be painting, not thinking about things that made his head pound worse or his mood dampen more! He didn't want to think about Luo Binghe right now — a surprise, even for him! — he wants to focus on the scent of ground ink and paints, and his own soft humming.

He blinks, once, twice, and focuses on the painting. It happens, like now, that he would zone out and paint entire landscapes, people, whatever, without realizing. It was always a guessing game of what he's made when he lets his mind wander. Some of things he painted were merely of Qing Jing, other times— 

— a burning red fire, encased on canvas, hangs off his eyelashes. And following it, the ensuing qi deviation he'd shoved off. —

Other times aren't worth mentioning.

He's painted a boy this time, a young one, with dark skin and even darker hair, and a smile that isn't quite right. There's a beauty mark right above the corner of his lip, artfully placed, as if it had been hand-placed by an expert craftsman. The boy's upper face remains unpainted, as if he’d been born without eyes. Yet, even without them, the boy looks completely serene and non-judgemental. Mn, no, perhaps more accurately he looks passive? Peaceful? 

Shen Qingqiu can feel his gaze, missing as it is, burning into him. He frowns immediately. His headache no less lessened, in fact— he thinks it's gotten worse. There’s a horrid familiarity about the boy in the painting, like a word poised on the tip of his tongue that he can’t quite place. "Don't look at me like that." He says aloud, bah, he hadn't meant to! But it’s not like there’s anyone to hear him. "Don't you know who I am?" 

En, no, it’s placating. That’s what it is. The boy is placating him. How unscientific! Unneeded; ridiculous. Why would he paint a boy trying to placate him? He was a scum villain, and a grown man!

The painting says nothing, as it ought to, it was only wet ink and dry parchment. Shen Qingqiu's ears burn anyways, and his eyes drop down to the smile on the boy's face. 

He finds that he deeply detests that smile on his face, it disgusts him. 

It disgusts him in the way only sheer incompetence can, a burn of irritation that bubbles up every time he saw an objectively wrong take in the PIDW comment section. As if he can't believe someone would look at him, a scum villain such as himself, and still be able to smile like that.

More than that, it's not right. That smile. It's— there's something wrong with it. Which can't be right, Shen Qingqiu hardly makes a mistake when he makes these trance-made paintings. But there is, he’s looking at it right here. He hates it. That awful smile. It's so— so… insincere. If you're going to smile at him, at least mean it, eh? Doesn't he deserve that much?

Long, slender fingers dip into the small wooden paint bowl beside him and lift back up, dripping wet ink onto the side table, and then onto the floor, across the last two layers of his robes that he always strips down to in here.

He reaches for the canvas to— to what? Smear that stupid smile off that boy's face? Mould it into his own image, back into place like the way it should be, paintbrush be damned? That wretched child, smiling at him like that. That smile is too straight, too perfect. It's mocking him.

Where is the tilt? The slant in it? That boy always smiled with an off-kilter turn of his lips, crooked, that made him real the same way blood in the mouth did, and now he's not, and it's wrong. He will wipe that smile off the boy's face himself if he must, if only to get him to wear anything else—

There is a knock on the door, gentle, hesitant. Only his cultivator hearing is what allows him to pick up on it. Shen Qingqiu's head pounds terribly at the sound. It makes a screeching sound go off in the back of his skull, like an abrupt kick to the teeth. His jaw clacks together on pure adrenaline as he regains the sense to not snarl wordlessly.

Didn't he say not to interrupt—?

His ink-stained fingers snap back, a gunshot recoil that sends splatters of ink flying and splatting coldly against his face. His nails dig painfully into the soft flesh of his palm, and Shen Qingqiu gathers himself back into his lofty cultivator persona with a single breath and a ramrod straightening of his spine. His ears ring horribly. "What." He calls, perhaps a little too coldly.

"Shizun?" Binghe says softly, and the sound of that child's voice is like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. Recognition hits him, and the guilt crawls back in at his earlier irritation. "Forgive this one for interrupting, but Yue-shibo is here."

Shen Qingqiu is still staring at his painting, but the boy’s smile burns behind his eyelids like a fire. It takes half a beat for him to respond; "…Alright," he says, and stands up, "prepare some tea, Binghe. And use the ginger root this master owns, he has a terrible headache."

He walks around the stool, fingers still dripping black, and plucks his robes up from the chair he draped them over. His head still hurts, and there’s a peculiar ache in his heart. He takes his time putting his layers back on, vindictively tying each button and knot leisurely. 

Surely Yue Qingyuan has the patience to wait for this one after he so rudely arrived unannounced, hm?

[emoyuuta]

new game: imagine shen yuan but instead of reading pidw he read a terrible written textbook and he still cursed the author for their shitty writing and then died. but now he isekaied into that textbook. what is he doing now

[lambiesvault]

Pre transmigration cumplane where:

Shen Yuan is an avid cosplayer because hell, he's got money and time to burn and he's got a hyperfixation, abeit a bit questionable.

Airplane who sometimes goes to fan events and cons undercover to spy on what fans are saying and brainstorm ideas for new chapters, and since no one knows what he looks like he can get away with it. (He based LBH off himself so.. revealing that would be embarassing)

Now imagine, SY knows he can pull off Shen Qingqiu best because he looks a bit like him and screw him, he likes the scholarly look, it looks good on his slight frame. Airplane on the other hand, is built like LBH, dorito waist and all, curly hair that goes past his shoulder and the prettiest (pathetic crybaby) brown eyes to ever brown eye.

Airplane is listening into a heated group discussion when the speaker turns around and bumps into him. "You're hot." Airplane says panicking because holy fuck. Shen Yuan looks exactly how airplane envisioned SQQ, there's even a mean glint to his eyes, the posture is ridiculously perfect. Mean scholarly teachers is ver much his type. Besides mobie jun.

"I like your take on Binghe-" Shen Yuan responds because goddamn, that's clearly a Luo Binghe cosplayer and in modern clothes too??????? Clothes that cling to his figure? Good shit.

Cut to them fucking nasty style before exchanging socials. Real ones and not the accounts they use for PIDW stuff. Nope. Not doing that because they both got embarrassing fandom/authorship secrets to keep.

[mr-squiggley-poufs]

Thinking about a magical scenario where Li Yu and Shen Qingqiu meet and compare transmigration stories

-----

Li Yu: Oh, so you got wife plotted by your scamming system too?

Shen Qingqiu: Wife plotted? Wouldn't that be for the wives? I don't know what you're talking about, I've never been wife plotted.

Li Yu, staring at the harem of men who are in love with Sqq: Right....

------

Shen Qingqiu: So what kind of beautiful harem does your tyrant prince have?

Li Yu: ....none? It's just me

Shen Qingqiu: Well obviously, I meant in the original work

Li Yu: Still none?

Shen Qingqiu: Ah, a man devoted to his wife, a noble protagonist indeed

Li Yu: Male concubine, not wife

Shen Qingqiu: Your novel was a BL?????

Li Yu: Yours wasn't??????

------

Shen Qingqiu: So let me get this straight - you turned into a fish?

Li Yu: Yep

Shen Qingqiu: Like, one that was present in the original work?

Li Yu: Nope, completely new fish

Shen Qingqiu: Then at least a noble fish, such as a koi?

Li Yu: I mean, eventually, yeah

Shen Qingqiu: Eventually?

Li Yu: Well originally I was a carp from the kitchen, then I unlocked the koi achievement and turned into a koi

Shen Qingqiu: .......what the fuck

---------

Shen Qingqiu would absolutely call Li Yu a faggot and then upon it being pointed out that Shen Qingqiu is also married to a man, he would be like "nonono I'm different"

[astralsfrost]

AU where SY and SQH are transmigrated into a A/B/O Fanfic of PIDW instead of the actual novel. Both have loud complaints about their secondary genders and a surface level understanding of how said genders work.

SQH presenting Alpha when he would prefer being a Beta or Omega because being an Alpha leads to one too many tense situations with other Alphas while trying to work, or snide comments 'You're an Alpha? Really?'

While (Closeted Gay) SQQ is horrified to learn that the scum villain is an Omega and in turn that means he is fully capable of getting pregnant. Don't even get him started on the whole concept of having heats, his thin faced self is grateful for the plethora of suppressants he finds inside the Bamboo House that he definitely doesn't take too much of.

So what happens when two modern men with a vague understanding of ABO discover that there is another transmigrator on the peak? That there is someone else who doesn't want others to know about their secondary gender?

They scent each other of course!

In the most awkward, insult filled way ("UGH! That means you have to nuzzle my neck!" "You think I want to touch you?! I would rather choke to death, AGAIN!")

They fully believe that others will assume they are the opposite secondary gender than what they presented as, it's a full proof plan! No one will suspect a thing!

Except everyone on the peak now thinks that they are sleeping together, and no one wants to comment on whatever the fuck that is

[littleewhitelotus]

HI SAW YOUR REQUEST I'M GOING INSANE, I WANT YOUR TAKE ON REVERSE SVSSS WHERE SQH & SY ARE DEMONS AND MBJ & LBH ARE THE CULTIVATORS PLEASE IF YOU'RE UP FOR IT 🥺

HIII you know I LOVE your ideas and there is literally so much going through my head right now for this AU you don't even know!!!!

Ice Prince Shang Qinghua and Bestial Demonic Overlord Shen Qingqiu

Rogue (travelling) cultivator Luo Binghe and Huan Hua Palace young master Mobei-Jun.

LIKE OUGH! imagine binghe with a similar backstory to his canonical one, except after the washer woman's death, he gets found by his travelling cultivator father and his cousin and gets taught cultivation. They eventually have a falling out (insert either the most stupid or the most angsty reason imaginable) and Binghe goes out on his own. He decides to mimic his dad's personality for ease with dealing with customers. He has been on the hunt for years for an elusive remnant of the race of Heavenly Demons And then MBJ! Where the original HHPM (in this case I guess linguang jun?) drops kid MBJ off in between a bunch of demons, and when MBJ manages to fight them off he uses this to kill his uncle and gain power of HHP. Because of the fact that his uncle pretended to like him, MBJ hates people who put on acts (yes I need MBJ and LBH to hate each other for funny reasons lol) and hates demons. And dont get me started on SQQ. Imagine Shen Yuan wakes up one day as an eldritch horror and has since then been masquerading as a demon. He honestly just wants to explore the world of PIDW and it's monsters, but meanwhile he accidentally forms an empire and a harem ("I was just providing shelter! And everyone is so nice..."). While he has been good at holding a humanoid form, fingers and toes are still tricky, so he has kept his tentacles. At the very last SQH, who woke up one day in the middle of a very familiar northern desert after dying and was shocked. what surprised him even more than being transmigrated, was that everyone viewed him as royalty?? so he puts on an act of being an incredibly nervous (is indeed very nervous) and incompetent leader but knows everyone in both realms and manages to dodge each and every assassination attempt. And the worst thing?? he hates the cold.

[tk-duveraun]

SY transmigrates but the system tells him he's going into SQQ and he gives that a hard pass, so it drops him in the body of a little demonic lizard in the Endless Abyss and then says "well since you right want to participate, you're on your own" and leaves him.

Which, rude.

So SY is an Abyssal Lava Gecko. They live in lava floes and nest in caves made by air bubbles forming in the lava and then cooling enough to solidify into walls. They don't need to eat, they photosynthesize off of the intense heat, but if they do eat, they produce venom powerful enough to paralyze a heavenly demon.

They're also all of 4 inches long.

Nevertheless, SY starts cultivating furiously so that wren LBH gets dropped in the Abyss, he's powerful enough to survive outside of the lava without starving or getting eaten himself.

He succeeds.

Sort of.

He finds the crater from LBH falling in, conveniently for him, it's next to a river of lava. This is less convenient for LBH who is unconscious and getting crispy.

As a lizard, he licks LBH's face to wake him up. He doesn't wake LBH up, but ingesting HD blood pushes him past his cultivation bottleneck!

Yes!

He transforms into a human!

...

He's only 4 inches tall.

[lizhly-writes]

hi, i'm here to cross-examine liushen for a couple minutes. i'm SURE i can write a compelling liushen fic if i tried. it's not like shen qingqiu and liu qingge are uninteresting, so this should work. i should totally be able to do this.

first thought is perhaps a roleswap of some kind...? maybe if you switch the transmigrator roles between them? but i'm leery getting rid of shen yuan's transmigrator role, because that's a pretty big part of what makes him shen yuan... (though this does lead to a possibly interesting liujiu case where shen jiu is the transmigrator also and maybe they both want to kill lbh?)

wait! WAIT! what if we kill shen qingqiu.

liu qingge kills shen qingqiu during his qi deviation. shen qingqiu manages to save liu qingge and snap him out of it, but at the cost of his own life. liu qingge wakes up perfectly sane and with a body at his feet in lingxi caves. he is wracked with horror and guilt. he might not have particularly liked sqq, but that didn't mean he wanted the guy dead. after the demon invasion thing, he confesses to shen qingqiu's death, and everyone's like 1) well you were out of your mind 2) he probably tried killing you first 3) we didn't like him that much anyway, it is finnnne. yue qingyuan pardons lqg. yue qingyuan, by the way, is having a terrible fucking time right now, but pshaww we don't care about him.

anyway. liu qingge. he's having a shitty shit shit time too. he goes to sleep and has terrible nightmares -- memories of what really happened in the lingxi caves, of sqq trying to help him, of killing sqq over and over and over --

someone shakes him awake.

liu qingge startles and instantly draws his sword, because hey, bai zhan war god, it ain't the best idea to startle the guy if you want to stay alive.

of course this isn't really a consideration if you're already dead.

liu qingge wakes up to shen qingqiu's slightly-transparent face looking down at him.

that's right. this is a story in which liu qingge drags around shen qingqiu's ghost!

[confuzing]

SQH doesn't really talk to Liu Yuan until after the wedding, once he's away from the twin scary dogs of LQG and SQQ. Of course LBH is the ultimate scary dog, but he usually ignores SQH unless absolutely necessary.

So you can imagine his shock when he walks in on Liu Yuan talking to his snake and hears this:

LY: I'm so sorry you aren't venomous honey, I know you want to murder people so so bad. I'm pretty sure Airplane mixed up 'poisonous' and 'venomous' honestly which-

SQH: WHAT

LY: Hello??

SQH: You- Airplane???

LY: *suspicious* ... ...Proud Immortal Demon Way?

SQH: You're a transmigrator?!? Actually that totally explains why you're here when I definitely didn't write about you...

LY: Wait. You wrote?

SQH: Yeah, I'm the author- were you active in the forums? Maybe I know your username?

LY: ...Peerless Cucumber.

SQH: ... ... Oh no.

LY: Do you have any last requests before I kill you with my bare hands you hack?

SQH: Don't do that??

LY: Request denied!

--------

Liu Yuan: You don't understand, I am catching All the Wife Plots.

SQH: Oh noooo....

Liu Yuan: We've been married three months and we've collectively been dosed with aphrodisiacs more times than I can count, I've been kidnapped twice, and poisoned like six times. I'm living in fear of waking up with amnesia or some shit.

SQH: Sounds like I need to round up antidotes.

LY: That would be great but I Cannot Help You, I don't wanna get stuck in a crystal for a decade or something.

SQH: That wouldn't happen!

LY: It happened to wives 231 and 98.

SQH:😬

[andhumanslovedstories]

chapter eleven of what feels like the most soap opera ass fic I've ever written and then just a bunch of thoughts about writing it, which contains vague spoilers for my plans:

The inception of the fic basically went like this:

haha lol i'd be fun if sqq got real mad at the state of education

what would need to happen in this fic that doesn't happen in canon to motivate him to do something about it

oh shit he didn't unlock OOC so he has to figure out how to be his coddling indulgent self (which he's in denial about) while also being shen jiu

But the thing that really made the story get so much bigger in scope was when I was reading a fic with yqy coming clean to sj, and sj being like, "GASP. I forgive you." And I was "I simply do not believe that this is how it would happen." And I would have moved on with my life, but then I thought, "but like how would it happen." And more importantly, how could this conversation happen within the canon timeline but still involve Shen Jiu, the person this information affects.

The OOC idea and the need for Shen Jiu to be present in this fight scene came together to be like "what if sqq got sj's memories so he could rules-lawyer his characterization more accurately, and ends up being furious on sj's behalf?"

(This, btw, is why I knew I had to get much fonder of YQY and get a much better understanding of his character. When a pillar of your fic idea is a character getting ripped into for his choices, it is sooooooo easy to for it to come off as the author yelling their personal opinions or for it to be completely flat character bashing. Neither are interesting to read or write! Hence the crash-course in YQY appreciation, so now he gets his own emotional arc too. Everyone gets a goddamn plotline.)

Meanwhile I was also thinking about the implications of downloading another person's life into your head. If you have their memories and their body, are you them? What makes you not them? I didn't know! I sort of just kept writing and posting with the assumption that I'd figure something out, which I've finally nailed down btw. That's a relief! Also kinda the fun of WIPs where you're building the railroad track as you're on the train. I end up fanficing my own fanfic. Once stuff is posted, that's the canon, and I look at it and think, "if this was a book I was reading, what is the way I would extrapolate what's there to make a new but coherent story?"

That's why my outline becomes pretty useless after a while. The big picture doesn't change too much--I know roughly where all the major characters are going to be emotionally by the end of the story--but I discover the path I'm going to take there. Which usually means adding stuff. Liu Qingge wasn't going to get a POV, and now every chapter I'm like "fuck am I building a throuple". Ming Fan will have waaaay more a story line than I originally conceived. Early on, I was like "eh I'm not going to go too far into the brothel stuff," and can you guess what is going to be coming up prominently in the next few chapters? God help me.

Actually, there's only one major part of the outline that I cut: Shang Qinghua. He was originally very prominent early on, but turns out having the literal Word of God in a story about slowly discovering backstory is difficult to reconcile. So sadly, he doesn't get a real role. If you're curious, the original plan for him was that SQQ would realize he's a transmigrator much earlier in the canon, but the System would be like [shen jiu would not tell shang qinghua he is a transmigrator. ooc] which would lead to this series of SQQ trying to figure out how he can communicate around this. SQQ at a peak meeting being like, "do you think these DEMONS are PROUD of having made their WAY to us IMMORTALS?" while SQH is like, "AM I HAVING A STROKE?"

What's some other stuff about this fic? I've got a lot of thoughts bottled up, in part because I'm kinda snobby tbh in how I post. I'm like "*pushes glasses up my nose* the author's takes on the story should not be unavoidably present when reading the text" so I don't like to use ao3's author's notes. It's ridiculous and not a standard I hold anyone else too, but whenever I find myself wanting to address something in the notes, I know I must feel insecure about that part of the story. So either fix it or don't draw attention to it. But this is fine, you have to come here for this. This is DVD commentary.

My favorite part of writing this fic has been balancing Shen Jiu's character. As I'm fleshing out his sad backstory, I've been wary of essentially woobifying him. Reducing him to just someone who greatly suffered is so boring and flat. He NEEDS to suck. Or more accurately, he needs to be a very imperfect victim. Exasperating at his mildest, despicable at his worst. (Truthfully, I do think I can and should make him worse. Luckily this story is nothing but flashbacks to him at his worst so there's plenty of opportunities.)

This whole mental breakdown section has been an interesting balancing act because it's explicitly about how bad Shen Jiu's life was and now how bad Shen Qingqiu's is. It's the point at which I had to decide how torturous his time at the Qiu manor had been (me and Shen Qingqiu really discovered that together). On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the absolute worst saddest brutalist ideas I had for this era in his life, I'd say I settled on about a 7. Most of it is backstage in my head, but once I locked that down, I could start figuring out how much was bleeding through.

Anyway, it's been fun writing the angstfest of the last few chapters, but oh my god am I ready for a tone shift. There's usually jokes in my works, even the saddest bits, but jokes relieve tension which is the opposite of what I was going for. I didn't want any humor in the YQY conversation, then you have to keep not joking for a while to get the point across. There's still a lot of planned emotional shit, but I'm happy to not be wallowing for a while.

AND GOD AS MY WITNESS THIS STORY WILL NOT BE LONGER THAN 20 CHAPTERS. MAYBE IT'LL EVEN BE LESS!! IT IS DEFINITELY NOT GOING TO BE A WHOLE CANON REWRITE. PROBABLY!! IF TIANLANG JUN HAS ANY SIGNIFICANT SCREEN TIME, PLEASE KNOW THAT I HAVE FAILED.

[cautiouslyyyoptimistic]

Everytime SQQ mentions how much of a lazy pretty boy he is an alarm in my head going "NO NO FALSE THATS SO WRONG" goes off in my head. Like, you're lying!! You're such a lier!! The moment you transmigrated you jumped head first in going above and beyond with your second life!! You know how I know?

...He hasn't done it because he had a twisted hobby inflicting corporal punishment upon the great male lead, but because he just couldn't endure it any longer. After taking over Luo Binghe's education, he'd mulled it over and decided that since he was to be a role model and worthy teacher, he ought to at least do some proper teaching. This way, after they fell out in the future, he would be able to utter the phrase, "Within a master-disciple relationship lies the grace of knowledge passed down," without reddening from shame before the words left his mouth. Volume 2 pg. 234.

SQQ went above and beyond, and honest to goodness, BECAME an actual attentive teacher. A good one at that apparently! His students adore and respect him, his colleagues see no fault in his teaching, no faults found among his community for years!

And we have proof that his teaching paid off with Luo Binghe specifically. Because earlier in volume 2 there is this whole thing about Shen Qingqiu being particular on teaching Binghe proper footwork and how to outmaneuver his enemies, which then cuts to Binghe using these particular skills against Shen Qingqiu and he's like "shit! He's using the stuff I taught him against me! And doing it flawlessly!"

Like, he didn't have to go all in and *literally* become a teacher/scholar/peak lord hybrid like SJ, and then also do every aspect of it ten times better. For funsies. For the immersion. But he did. Lazy my ass!

I mean, we already knew that SQQ was a lying lier who lies, but heres another example lmao.

[mentallyunstablethembo]

Ok but hear me out.

Give me a Shen Yuan that was sick in his original body, ye? Nothing too special, I know, but please stay with me on this one-

Make him transmigrate, like he does die, he does get transported into the other world, but it's not as SQQ/SJ.

He has his own original body, maybe he looks a bit more like a xianxia character to fit in, maybe he looks drop dead gorgeous, sure!

But he's still sick

His sickness is still with him, and it's getting worse

Like, SY is actively slowly but surely dying, while maybe he befriends TLJ, SXY and ZZL (if he transmigrates pre-canon) and the three are trying to help him.

Maybe he meets a child SJ and takes him with him, so the poor child watches the only person that cares for him, actively dying.

Maybe he somehow becomes a beloved friend, peak lord or anything that makes the Cang Qiong sect adore him, and therefore be willing to find any cure for him.

Heck, maybe he's a powerful yet sickly and fragile demon!

Maybe he's even apart of the northern realm with MBJ, idk!

But the one thing stays the same.

Sy is dying.

Maybe it's not noticeable at first, like you'd take one look at him and sure, maybe he a looks a bit more tired, a bit paler, maybe even a bit thinner than what's considered healthy. Maybe he let's out a caugh here and there, some completely normal things.

But then there are those small (sometimes rather big) fits where his illness acts up.

Ones where he curls up on the ground, gritting his teeth in exctruciating pain as he coughs out blood, maybe he faints, maybe he has any other symptoms.

And then it gets worse, his health escalates, maybe he can't walk anymore as he's slowly losing his motor functions, maybe he's getting much weaker, his breathing worse as he feels like he's suffocating. Heck, give him any curse marks and stuff too, while you're at it, maybe even without-a-cure!

Point being, SY is dying, and there is no cure.

His death is fated to happen, while he's just waiting and wasting away, he's not that upset either (maybe a little bit).

Give me an au where SY is the mentor, the parental figure of all the sect leaders and demons, give me an au where SY is such a sweet and kind hearted person, one who still loves beasts and demons and everyone, yet is also slowly but surely being poisoned by the very air he's breathing, his body shutting down and wasting away as he's waiting for death, while everyone weeps.

Everyone is trying find a cure, maybe make one too, yet it's all in vain.

SY dies, he no longer has to endure the suffering of his pains, his illnesses, and while he passes away, he leaves behind many mourning a precious and beautiful soul.

[waitineedaname]

I've finally done what I inevitably do for nearly every fandom i get into: I've made a deranged spreadsheet tracking some linguistic element in a piece of media! this time it's tracking the usage of swears in Scum Villain. if you're curious, here's the full spreadsheet, but I'll write up my findings here

some notes on my methods!

I differentiated between internal and external use. external use is pretty straight forward, that's just dialogue said out loud. for internal use, that's when it's used in the narration. obviously, this is skewed towards Shen Qingqiu as our primary POV character, but occasionally the narration dips its toes into other characters' perspectives, so I kept that in mind and assigned the usage to whoever seemed most relevant in that snippet of narration. also, in the case of the transmigrators, I also counted speech directed at the System as internal because they're less likely to self-censor when talking to the System because no one else can hear them

this was done by searching for specific words and their variants in online copies of the official English translations of all four books. there are a bajillion different swears in the English language, but I tried to focus on the most common/most likely to be used. also, since I was searching for the words manually, there are going to be some that are missed because they're written out abnormally, like lengthening the word for emphasis (eg. fuuuuuuuuuck) or censoring it (eg. b- [BLEEP]). side note, i don't know why the hell SQQ ever censors anything since he seems pretty comfortable thinking some pretty foul things without censoring them, but whatever.

now for the results! data breakdown under the cut

in total, of the swears I searched for, there's 286 swears across all four books. book two is the most vulgar, with 82 swears, and book three is the least, with only 52. book two also has the most variety (14 different words) and book three has the least variety (only 10 different words)

perhaps unsurprisingly, out of these 286 swears, SQQ's internal narration is responsible for 200 of them. his most used swear is "fuck" which appears 106 times in total and 86 times from SQQ (internal) specifically

following SQQ (internal) in the rankings is Shang Qinghua (internal) at 30 in total. his most used swear is "fucking." after that is SQH's external dialogue (14 swears, most used is "fuck") and then SQQ's external dialogue (11 swears, tied between "fuck" and "fucking"). considering how much he swears in his head, I think SQQ is exhibiting a surprising amount of restraint when it comes to swearing out loud!

aside from the transmigrators, the most vulgar side character is, surprisingly, Shen Jiu! he gets two internal uses of "fuck" and two external swears ("shitty" and "damn"). these are all from when he was younger, so perhaps this is a habit he broke when he got older and had to present a particular image as peak lord

the only other side characters who swear are Sha Hualing (internal), Bingge (internal), Linguang-Jun (external), Qiu Jianluo (external), and Ming Fan. all of them only swear once except Ming Fan, who gets two (one internal and one external)

of the 18 swear words I tracked, SQQ used all of them except one. the only person to say "bitch" is Ming Fan, out loud. #MingFanMisogynyMoments

SQQ does, however, have a monopoly on motherfuck/motherfucker/motherfucking, goddammit, dumbass, dick, and pussy. damn dude, you kiss your disciple with that mouth?

pre-transmigration, Shen Yuan swore three times in one forum post, those being "fucking," "damn," and "ass."

most usages of "ass" are for emphatic purposes, like "Relax, my ass!" Both SQQ and SQH really enjoy this construction lol

despite volume two being the most vulgar, it has the least variety of speakers! SQQ is responsible for all but two of those swears, the other two belonging to Sha Hualing and Ming Fan. volume four has the most variety, likely because it just involves a wide variety of characters

and that's my data roundup! go forth and use this as a resource when choosing how to insert swearing into your SVSSS dialogue <3

[sillygoofyqueer]

CROWYUAN PEAK LORD REACTIONS PART TWO!! (part one heree) My workload was surprisingly brutal from learning today, so I've been slogging through it just to talk to all of you <3 LET'S DO THIS SHIT: Liu Qingge: Okay, come on, we know this guy. He will just register the demonic features and pull out Cheng Luan with NO hesitation, only to be held back by no less than three of his martial siblings as they try and say "nah, nah, he chill he chill, goddamn it!!!" He almost refuses to believe this because holy shit they've been manipulated by this DEMON and he's immune to it because he's been in contact with so many demons. Then he has a conversation with the demon and is bombarded with many questions about his hunts and SOMEHOW gets roped into promising to bring SY the carcass of the next beasts he hunts so that SY can explain their weaknesses in incredible detail to him. (He still thinks that maybe he too has been manipulated and bewitched, but that's at the back of his mind when SY SMILES at him) Shen Qingqiu: God, he hates this little demon thing - everyone else is drawn in by his weak charms, but NOT Shen Qingqiu. Oh, he sees past the disguise, he knows that this little...creature is plotting, is waiting for them all to let down their guards - but he WON'T. Just because his martial siblings are utter, blithering idiots, doesn't mean HE is. He will remain resilient and strong and-- what do you mean Shen Yuan is making himself comfy on Qing Jing Peak??? What. What do you MEAN he feels safe enough to be alone with SQQ and doesn't care about the rumours surrounding him because "they're tame in comparison to the things he hears about other demons"????!?!?!?! That's it. This demon is too silly to be wandering around by himself, who knows who would take advantage of his stupidity - ATTIC WIFE TIME (/j/j/j) Yue Qingyuan: This demon likes Xiao-Jiu, therefore he's chill- HOLD ON WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHEN JIU SMILES AT HIM ALL THE TIME?!?!? Yue Qingyuan is very pleased that Shen Jiu has a....*through gritted teeth* friend, at least he has someone to talk to - ALL of the peak lords like Shen Yuan??!? All of them?? HOW. SY has to teach YQY his ways because it has been impossible for him to get his shidi all in one place without them killing each other, and now they're all just...chilling with SY? With minimal arguments?? Damn it. (This is a joke, I think he'd be pretty pleasant with SY, but I wanted to make a funny read on the guy's reaction) ((I think Shang Qinghua is an enigma because they're both transmigrators and he'd just be like "YOOOOO, YOU'RE THE IDEA I DROPPED!!"))