Snowflake Challenge 2024 #6

Challenge #6

In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. . Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


I want to talk about The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System by MXTX, and more specifically about the main character Shen Qingqiu’s personal arc.

I believe that many a good comedy has a genuine story as its outline and adds the humour during the execution. SVSSS is such a comedy: It's ridiculous, it's hilarious, all sorts of wacky things happen - but the bones underneath are sincere.
The theme I see in this novel and want to focus on is a person's place in the world and their capacity to make a difference.

Shen Yuan is introduced to us as a person who doesn't accomplish much. He spends his time lazing about, criticizing others while producing nothing much himself (if you are familiar with Anton Ego’s speech in Ratatouille, it applies here quite well). He contributes nothing to society.

Then after his death and transmigration he gets thrown into someone else's life in a world that isn't his, and he treats it as such: He is an outsider who has no influence. And he's not wrong!
At least at first. Over time, he has increasing opportunity to both change his own fate as well as meddle in others'.
But he doesn't realize this. Shen Qingqiu is so caught up in the idea that he is part of a pre-written story that can and will not change in any fundamental way that he fails to see all the ways he has already changed the world, the impact he had and has on the people around him.

And that impact is mostly positive: His disciples have grown into competent, self-sufficient adults. Liu Qingge is alive because of him. So is Zhuzhi-lang. Luo Binghe fell in love with him.

There are things he cannot change, most importantly being forced to push Luo Binghe into the Abyss. But there are still many things he can do. And a million acts of kindness over years add up to more than one act of cruelty: Luo Binghe still loves him, and forgives him.

It takes Shen Qingqiu the whole novel to understand this. Realizing the impact he has on the people in his life is a major arc of his character and, to me, a major theme of the story.

It's a theme that suits well a transmigration story such as SVSSS and I love to find this sincerity in a goofy comedy.