Have you ever read a truly bad book, start to finish?
You know the kind I’m talking about. Not the kind of book you can just walk away from. The kind that has just enough interesting or compelling elements to keep you hooked, or just enough mystery to make you want to get to the end. But then you reach those final pages, and the loose ends remain loose, the compelling elements have been left alone, and what you really want to do is just chuck the damn book across the room. (Those of you with e-readers will understand the unique heartbreak of knowing you can’t throw it even if you really, really want to.)
It’s terrible, right? That frustration of knowing that there was something there, something good, and it all just went to waste. Maybe you’re a fanfiction writer and you immediately take to your word processor. Maybe you tell everyone you know. Maybe you don’t even have the chance to do any of those things because you almost immediately drop dead, realizing to your horror that the last thing you’ll ever read is this terrible, terrible book…only to wake up in the world of the horrible book you just finished, your shiny new body that of the primary antagonist: a man who ends up with a fate quite literally worse than death.
Okay, that last one’s a little specific.
Welcome to The Scum Villain’s Self Saving System (usually shortened to SVSSS, because that title is awfully long). SVSSS was originally serialized on the Chinese website JJWXC, and was the debut of its author Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (a pseudonym that commonly gets shortened to MXTX). Serialized web novels like this are common in the Chinese publishing industry; readers are encouraged to give feedback with every new installment in the chapter’s comments (and boy, do they). A lot of Chinese dramas, such as the internationally popular Joy of Life and Nirvana in Fire have their roots in popular webnovels. Authors and commenters generally use pseudonyms. Writers don’t get paid much, even when their work is adapted and translated, and there’s a heavy pressure to write to the market.
The beginning of SVSSS introduces you to one such novel, Proud Immortal Demon Way. It’s an action-adventure “stallion novel1” that started with an intriguing premise and engaging lead and deteriorated by its final chapters into incel wish fulfillment. The hero, Luo Binghe, starts as an innocent young man, unaware of his mixed demon and human heritage, looking for a place to belong; by the final, infuriating lines, he’s a snarling, cynical warlord, with close to three hundred squabbling hot wives hanging off his every word and desperate to do his bidding. Interesting plotlines have been left in the dust in favor of repetitive sex scenes and the lead solving every problem with his overpowered magical sword. Reader Shen Yuan is disgusted with the whole enterprise and infuriated that he wasted so much time on such a terrible book. And then he drops dead.
Shen Yuan has to avoid not one, but two bad ends.
As his consciousness fades, he hears an unfamiliar voice, almost like that of a machine reader…
[Activation code: “Dumbfuck author, dumbfuck novel.” System automatically triggered.]
He wakes up in the early pages of Proud Immortal Demon Way, when the novel’s hero is still relatively young and not yet on the path of destruction that he undergoes later. The bad news is that Shen Yuan is in the body of Shen Qingqiu, a character he knows quite well: he’s the “scum villain” who tormented and betrayed the protagonist Luo Binghe, eventually throwing him into an abyss and almost killing him. (Luo Binghe eventually takes violent and painful revenge.) Not wanting to suffer his predecessor’s gory and miserable fate, he immediately starts plotting for the best way to cling to the protagonist’s thighs2 and save himself. But that unfamiliar, disembodied voice informs him that he doesn’t have permission to get too OOC3. He has to stay within the parameters of the novel or he’ll be returned to where he came from: the moment of his death. Shen Yuan has to avoid not one, but two bad ends.
Shen Yuan/Shen Qingqiu has to think fast, inhabiting the haughty shoes of a notorious martial arts master. He has the advantage of knowing the general shape of the plot, but he doesn’t have all the details memorized, and as soon as he starts making changes — especially after he unlocks that prized OOC module — the ground begins to shift under his feet. Soon he’s in uncharted territory, on multiple levels. It was one thing to be shouting about plotlines you didn’t like as Peerless Cucumber, perennially irritated commenter. It’s quite another to be faced not with a set of words on a page, but a set of disciples and martial brothers with their own needs and desires. Shen Yuan figures out that he’s made an impact on the plot pretty quickly; it takes much longer for him to start recognizing that being in the book is changing him, too. It’s longer still before he realizes that the whole genre of the work he’s in has undergone a shift.
This is the point at which I step back from the plot a bit to give you some context. The world of Proud Immortal Demon Way is in a fantasy genre generally called ‘xianxia,’ an evolution from wuxia that usually focuses on immortals and supernatural beings. The immortals can be inhuman beings, like demons, or “cultivators,” once-ordinary humans who have transcended most illness and injury.4 Everyone is usually extremely pretty, and cultivators have magical abilities like being able to fly balanced on their swords or using music to heal and fight. A lot of times they have cool spiritual weapons, including and in addition to their swords.
There are subgenres within xianxia, as well as a good deal of overlap with other genres (just as Western fantasy has things like “romantasy” or a fantasy-parody blend like Terry Prachett’s Discworld). SVSSS usually gets described as both xianxia and danmei, with anything about “stallions” left long behind5. Danmei focuses on romantic love between men and is closer to what Japanese publishing calls “BL”, a genre that usually gets stuck somewhere in queer fiction or romance (or both) in the US. It is often written by and aimed at women6.
One of the pleasures of reading SVSSS is watching the narrative lurch closer and closer to danmei until even Shen Yuan has to accept he’s in a love story. Because we’re in Shen Yuan’s head, even readers unfamiliar with the expectations of the genre can see what’s being set up, and what’s about to be knocked down (I’m especially fond of some of the early chapters where one or the other of Luo Binghe’s future wives is introduced, and Shen Yuan watches the future lovers interact, waiting eagerly for sparks to fly…and not much of anything happens).
The other great pleasure of SVSSS is just how funny it is. The System that controls Shen Yuan’s life cheerfully exhorts him to [Please continue to work hard!], peppy and positive no matter how much Shen Yuan rages at it. His frustration as the plot he thought he knew spins out of control is delightful. MXTX mixes in silly physical comedy, dramatic irony, and gets a lot of humor and suspense out of the tension between narrative and metanarrative. She both embraces the silliest cliches of her genre and cheerfully upends them, sometimes in a single plotline, and jokes pile on while she’s at it.
This is MXTX’s first novel, and it shows at times; the novel isn’t super tightly plotted (though, of course, she gave herself a clean way out with the framing structure of a man trying to save himself from a badly written webnovel), and it lacks the character depth she reaches in the later Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/Mo Dai Zu Shi, her best-known work in the West. (MDZS was adapted into the CDrama The Untamed/Chen Qing Ling, which was a pretty big international hit.) And the usual caveats apply when you’re reading something that’s this id-focused. The only sex scene is intentionally uncomfortable, on multiple levels; there’s more than one reference to the original bones of the former stallion novel and the sexual harassment/assault of several characters; and the main relationship is between a mentor and student (though the whole ‘super powerful half-demon’ and ‘person transmigrated into a book he’s aware exists as a book’ mean that trying to map them out on any realistic scale is a real fool’s errand). But if you can get on its wavelength, it’s a blast.
The best way to experience the story in the US and Canada is through the official English translation published by Seven Seas, which has the main story in three beautifully-produced paperbacks7 with an additional volume of extras. The translation flows well (which, unfortunately, is not true of the other two MXTX books officially translated into English) and there’s both a character and vocabulary guide in the back, particularly useful if you’re like me and not particularly familiar with xianxia or Chinese-language novels. SVSSS also has two official adaptations, an aborted manhua (comic) and an animated adaptation that only ran for one season.
- A Western reader took a look at these “stallion novels,” and concluded they’re just as bad as they sound. ↩︎
- The translator notes that this is a Chinese idiom similar to ‘riding their coattails.’ It feels a bit like a double entendre, though, doesn’t it? ↩︎
- “Out of Character,” of course. ↩︎
- Cultivators are based (very loosely) on real Taoist spiritual practices. A lot of popular Chinese fantasy, especially current fantasy, is based around the idea of cultivation and can take place anywhere between the Warring States period and the Qing dynasty (475 BCE-1636 CE), with many writers, including MXTX, mixing and matching elements. It’s similar to the sort of British-ish vibes a lot of Tolkien-inspired fantasy has. ↩︎
- Almost everything, anyway. Luo Binghe retains some of the classic stallion novel lead qualities, like his big magic sword and his big…magic sword. ↩︎
- While I addressed in last week’s essay that there doesn’t need to be any deeper explanation or justifications for this, I should note that the readership for danmei certainly goes beyond straight, cis women. This should especially be kept in mind when you’re picturing Chinese authors and readers, who have good reason to keep their orientations private. The official live-action and animated adaptations of MXTX’s work have generally made the romantic couples Very Good Friends, and there are rumors that she spent time in prison for her writing. ↩︎
- They are a bit expensive but they’re lovely, with gatefold covers, original illustrations, and some other pretty touches that make them feel worth the extra cost. It’s also just nice to encourage bringing over more international hits with decent quality translation. ↩︎
Such an engaging review. There’s a lot here: making fun of people who both skim read (thus missing detail) and think that they could do better (forgetting that devising the actual storyline is a ton of hard work), an allegory of both how reading changes a person, and how every reading will change the meaning(s) of a book.
Thank you! (In Shen Yuan’s defense, he does manage to make several notable improvements!)
Excellent and very enticing review. I’d seen this mentioned so many times, but I’d never osmosed the full outline of the plot, and this kind of isekai-like setup is catnip to me. And of course now I’m trying to think about what bad books a sudden death could have stuck me in over the years ….
It really is fun. I definitely didn’t see all the twists and turns coming!
Also, because I’d forgotten – you can get a pretty hefty excerpt of the first volume (I did the Amazon preview), which will give you a great idea of the translation/voice.
Great write-up, and despite the (very well-delineated) specific cultural background the genre of “stallion novel” suggests to me that a similar concept could play out with men’s action fiction, the Mack Bolans of literature.
I thought a little of Gor on the Western side of things. Someone stuck in the adversary role of a Tough Guy Action Novel would be really fun, though. Shen Yuan spends a lot of time gambling on the fact that the male lead essentially can’t lose, and you could definitely do that would a Bourne or Mack Bolan.
Part of what did make comic book meta Deadpool funny (for a time…) was the character getting stuck in, like, 60s/70s Spider-Man issues and making fun of the campy/soapy material.
When Moonlighting was good, they hit the balance just about perfectly.
This is more Gwenpool-y, I think. Genre savvy only takes you so far.