PLAYER NAME: Drake CONTACT: Discord: SilverDrake#1436 HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Referred by CellarSpider#9984/PaleAntiquarian
CHARACTER: Shen Yuan/Qingqiu CANON:The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu CANON POINT: Halfway through book two, after his death by self-detonation but before his resurrection in the fungal body.
BACKGROUND: Shen Yuan was born in a world like ours, in China at some point between the mid-80s or early 90s. His parents were wealthy enough to afford to have four children despite China’s One Child Policy, and as the third son with two highly motivated and capable older brothers Shen Yuan never felt like he had any reason to struggle or achieve anything in particular, as long as he didn’t embarrass himself or his family. He grew up to be a lonely, disaffected, and deeply closeted adult, who spent all his time binging webnovels alone in his apartment until the day he suddenly died of food poisoning, while raging-posting over the inglorious ending to his latest hyper-fixation.
For the sake of convenience I treat July 2015 as the date of his death, as that was the month his home canon began serialized publication on the internet. However, Shen Yuan’s death was not the end of his story: he woke up in the world of the book he’d just finished reading, Proud Immortal Demon Way, in the body of one of the most important characters. In fact he’d woken up in the body of the protagonist’s immoral and abusive mentor, Shen Qingqiu.
Imagine how scary it would be to fall asleep while watching the prequels and wake up to discover you’d possessed Sheevy P, and now a disembodied voice in your head is telling you that it’s your job to mentor Anakin Skywalker and fix the plot. That’s the burden that was dumped on poor Shen Yuan’s shoulders. Obviously he was terrified of the ignoble demise that eventually awaited him (and Shen Qingqiu’s death was both more final and bloodier than Palpatine’s!) but it took him an entire volume and four long years in-story to come up with a way to escape: he’d die a second time, but with a back-up body waiting to receive his soul just off-screen! And then he’d run away to the far edges of the world map and keep his head down for the rest of forever, living a quiet and peaceful life beneath the protagonist’s notice.
(Obviously it doesn’t work out that way in the book.)
In volume two, an angry and betrayed protagonist confronts Shen Qingqiu (secretly Shen Yuan), and the two of them eventually come to blows. However, protagonist Luo Binghe has taken to carrying around a powerful but extremely cursed sword, which is doing major harm to his body and spirit. Halfway through their fight Shen Yuan realizes that Luo Binghe is on the brink of a complete mental, spiritual, and physical breakdown, and seeing his chance to pull a classic “Villain does a good deed in the 11th hour and redeems themselves before dying” maneuver, embraces Luo Binghe and destroys his own spiritual core, pouring all of his body’s magical energy into Luo Binghe’s body and reversing the breakdown. He dies in Luo Binghe’s arms, content that he has made his escape from the plot and that the protagonist can now forget his grudge against his wicked teacher and achieve a glorious destiny.
(It definitely doesn’t work out like this in the book, either – but that’s not relevant to this application. <3)
ABILITIES | POWERS: - Knowledge of the concept of the multiverse as a basic fact of reality. Encyclopedic knowledge of the fantasy genre and associated tropes, including real-world media (Shen Yuan has canonically read Harry Potter); ability to draw workable conclusions about his observed reality through comparison to fiction. (I wasn’t able to find any specific rules about 4th-walling in the game info, but my personal policy is to always talk things out with other players and follow their preferences before letting Shen Yuan 4th-wall through in-game dialogue. IC-wise he tends to be extremely cagey about the subject, so as to avoid offending anyone or triggering an existential crisis.) Basically instead of having Shen Yuan enter the game with a bunch of fancy powers already in place, my interest is in having him gradually empower himself over time by pursuing relationships, collecting special items or equipment, and studying the setting’s magic system.
PERSONALITY: Shen Yuan is his own most unreliable narrator. He would describe himself as lazy, arrogant, overly-particular, and somewhat ridiculous. Of these only the last one has any significant basis in reality. Actually Shen Yuan is extremely intelligent in all matters except emotional awareness, with a strong drive to protect his friends and those weaker than him. He has an enormous capacity for love and affection, but he’s so out of touch with his own feelings that he tends to under-estimate his own importance in other people’s lives, frequently leading to misunderstanding and heartbreak. He is artistic and scholarly, and after living for seven full years in a xianxia world his manners are an odd and frequently jarring mix of “real world internet troll” and “flowery lord of a cultivation sect.” He has a tendency to slip into melancholy when things go badly for people he cares about, and he’s so deep in the closet that he’s besties with Mr. Tumnus.
INVENTORY: Pffft, items? He’ll be lucky if he shows up in Akhuras with clothing. The only thing from PIDW that might have had any use to him in-game would have been his sword, Xiu Ya – but it broke when he detonated his core. Oopsie!
NOTES: Shen Yuan comes with a small content warning for internalized homophobia and both transphobic and misogynistic opinions. Although he outwardly treats women no differently from men (indeed, a young woman under his care grew up to be an insightful and reasonably powerful cultivator) his internal monologue may sometimes allude to concepts other players may find upsetting. My personal policy is to avoid using slurs and instead play up the comedic side of his closeted status: he can’t be homophobic if he never realizes people are being gay in his general vicinity, after all! As his CR circle develops I will discuss this further with players interested in pursuing closer relationships with him, and develop a plan from there. It’s never my intention to spoil anyone else’s fun, and I know everyone’s ability to tolerate these issues when they come up in fiction is different.
IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? A plot-heavy intro sounds like a lot of fun, but if there’s nothing available I won’t complain about a plot-light intro instead!
Shen Yuan | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System
CONTACT: Discord: SilverDrake#1436
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Referred by CellarSpider#9984/PaleAntiquarian
CHARACTER: Shen Yuan/Qingqiu
CANON: The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
CANON POINT: Halfway through book two, after his death by self-detonation but before his resurrection in the fungal body.
BACKGROUND: Shen Yuan was born in a world like ours, in China at some point between the mid-80s or early 90s. His parents were wealthy enough to afford to have four children despite China’s One Child Policy, and as the third son with two highly motivated and capable older brothers Shen Yuan never felt like he had any reason to struggle or achieve anything in particular, as long as he didn’t embarrass himself or his family. He grew up to be a lonely, disaffected, and deeply closeted adult, who spent all his time binging webnovels alone in his apartment until the day he suddenly died of food poisoning, while raging-posting over the inglorious ending to his latest hyper-fixation.
For the sake of convenience I treat July 2015 as the date of his death, as that was the month his home canon began serialized publication on the internet. However, Shen Yuan’s death was not the end of his story: he woke up in the world of the book he’d just finished reading, Proud Immortal Demon Way, in the body of one of the most important characters. In fact he’d woken up in the body of the protagonist’s immoral and abusive mentor, Shen Qingqiu.
Imagine how scary it would be to fall asleep while watching the prequels and wake up to discover you’d possessed Sheevy P, and now a disembodied voice in your head is telling you that it’s your job to mentor Anakin Skywalker and fix the plot. That’s the burden that was dumped on poor Shen Yuan’s shoulders. Obviously he was terrified of the ignoble demise that eventually awaited him (and Shen Qingqiu’s death was both more final and bloodier than Palpatine’s!) but it took him an entire volume and four long years in-story to come up with a way to escape: he’d die a second time, but with a back-up body waiting to receive his soul just off-screen! And then he’d run away to the far edges of the world map and keep his head down for the rest of forever, living a quiet and peaceful life beneath the protagonist’s notice.
(Obviously it doesn’t work out that way in the book.)
In volume two, an angry and betrayed protagonist confronts Shen Qingqiu (secretly Shen Yuan), and the two of them eventually come to blows. However, protagonist Luo Binghe has taken to carrying around a powerful but extremely cursed sword, which is doing major harm to his body and spirit. Halfway through their fight Shen Yuan realizes that Luo Binghe is on the brink of a complete mental, spiritual, and physical breakdown, and seeing his chance to pull a classic “Villain does a good deed in the 11th hour and redeems themselves before dying” maneuver, embraces Luo Binghe and destroys his own spiritual core, pouring all of his body’s magical energy into Luo Binghe’s body and reversing the breakdown. He dies in Luo Binghe’s arms, content that he has made his escape from the plot and that the protagonist can now forget his grudge against his wicked teacher and achieve a glorious destiny.
(It definitely doesn’t work out like this in the book, either – but that’s not relevant to this application. <3)
ABILITIES | POWERS: - Knowledge of the concept of the multiverse as a basic fact of reality.
Encyclopedic knowledge of the fantasy genre and associated tropes, including real-world media (Shen Yuan has canonically read Harry Potter); ability to draw workable conclusions about his observed reality through comparison to fiction. (I wasn’t able to find any specific rules about 4th-walling in the game info, but my personal policy is to always talk things out with other players and follow their preferences before letting Shen Yuan 4th-wall through in-game dialogue. IC-wise he tends to be extremely cagey about the subject, so as to avoid offending anyone or triggering an existential crisis.)
Basically instead of having Shen Yuan enter the game with a bunch of fancy powers already in place, my interest is in having him gradually empower himself over time by pursuing relationships, collecting special items or equipment, and studying the setting’s magic system.
PERSONALITY: Shen Yuan is his own most unreliable narrator. He would describe himself as lazy, arrogant, overly-particular, and somewhat ridiculous. Of these only the last one has any significant basis in reality. Actually Shen Yuan is extremely intelligent in all matters except emotional awareness, with a strong drive to protect his friends and those weaker than him. He has an enormous capacity for love and affection, but he’s so out of touch with his own feelings that he tends to under-estimate his own importance in other people’s lives, frequently leading to misunderstanding and heartbreak. He is artistic and scholarly, and after living for seven full years in a xianxia world his manners are an odd and frequently jarring mix of “real world internet troll” and “flowery lord of a cultivation sect.” He has a tendency to slip into melancholy when things go badly for people he cares about, and he’s so deep in the closet that he’s besties with Mr. Tumnus.
SAMPLE: 1. https://spiderparlour.dreamwidth.org/5338.html?thread=166106#cmt166106 Crossover PSL with CellarSpider (Kahl’s player) and a mutual friend. “Luguang” is a courtesy name I invented for AUs where Shen Yuan as a xianxia native, rather than occupying the body of Shen Qingqiu, but his personality is the same.
2. https://alloriginalheavenlypillar.dreamwidth.org/421.html?thread=75429#cmt75429 A version of Luo Binghe invades the real world and latches on to Shen Yuan like a very horny limpet. Also features Shen Yuan’s complete inability to notice when someone is hitting on him, even when they’re doing it with a 2x4.
3. https://deercountry.dreamwidth.org/196521.html?thread=35673513#cmt35673513 A thread I did with Peter Graham (from the movie Hereditary) in the deer_country rpg. Dialogue-heavy and features Shen Yuan in a mentorship role, which he always enjoys.
INVENTORY: Pffft, items? He’ll be lucky if he shows up in Akhuras with clothing. The only thing from PIDW that might have had any use to him in-game would have been his sword, Xiu Ya – but it broke when he detonated his core. Oopsie!
NOTES: Shen Yuan comes with a small content warning for internalized homophobia and both transphobic and misogynistic opinions. Although he outwardly treats women no differently from men (indeed, a young woman under his care grew up to be an insightful and reasonably powerful cultivator) his internal monologue may sometimes allude to concepts other players may find upsetting. My personal policy is to avoid using slurs and instead play up the comedic side of his closeted status: he can’t be homophobic if he never realizes people are being gay in his general vicinity, after all! As his CR circle develops I will discuss this further with players interested in pursuing closer relationships with him, and develop a plan from there. It’s never my intention to spoil anyone else’s fun, and I know everyone’s ability to tolerate these issues when they come up in fiction is different.
IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? A plot-heavy intro sounds like a lot of fun, but if there’s nothing available I won’t complain about a plot-light intro instead!