though she be but little, she is fierce

I uh, just want to point out that many people go through horrific child abuse and awful lives and do not come out trying to murder children for havinf loving mothers. That's uh. The default, actually. And yes he did try and murder the kid read the extra it's his pov and everything 👍 (never mind i;m including it further in)

And i need to point out that Shen Jiu doesn't exist to be 'what Shen Yuan might have been'. He exists to be an imperfect victim. A man who did awful things. But was far more complex than 'just evil'. He isn't an everyman where anyone would have done the same any more than yue qi was. That isn't his narrative purpose in SVSSS.

Other comments afded to this take include:

"[Shen Yuan] was an internet troll who harassed an author" - leaving mean chapter comments isn't harassment. We have no evidence he ever said anything cruel to the author directly outside of the comments on the chapters.

"[Sheb Yuan] campaigned to have a chatacter's dick chopped off" - yeah a character. A fake person. My cats all these people are not people they're narrative devices and he was talking about a narrative device in a revenge fantasy. He knows these people aren't real.

Which brings us to: Shen Yuan doesn't try to save rhe kids at the alliance conference. This one is legit, but it ain't Shen Jiu shit. It;a not a thing Shen Jiu did.

See, an important part of SVSSS is SQQ figuring out that this world is REAL. He hasn't, at this point. He perceives everyone as characters in a narrative - just like he did before he arrived. *EVEN HIMSELF*. His journey to recognizing the personhood of everyone around him including himself and how it changes things is actually kind FUNDAMENTAL to his behavior in the book and his famous levels of denial.

He did not think he had the kind of agency that could change anything and he doesn't emotionally accept those kids aren't NPCs yet.

That's. That's kinda part of the point. Realizing he could have done different things doesn't come until FAR too late. Years down the line.

Guys this is very bad media literacy but also very bad understanding of human nature. Different abuse victims do, in fact, respond differently and "murdering children" is in fact FAIRLY RARE.

From "Chapter 24: Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu" (book 4, seven seas translation)

"Luo Binghe was using the incorrect cultivation manual that Shen Qingqiu had handed him; he should have long since died bleeding from the seven apertures, his body rupturing down to his bones, skin, meridians, tendons, and flesh. But not only had this failed to come to pass, Luo Binghe’s cultivation was steadily improving.

Furthermore, Shen Qingqiu had told Ning Yingying thousands of times to stay far away from Luo Binghe and that she wasn’t allowed to get involved with him. So why did he see them every day, whispering together before his eyes?"

The idea that *anyone* could become like that - literally murdering a kid and we are told elsewhere it ain't the first time - if they eent through the same abuse is ridiculous.

Also thinking that "this is what shen yuan would have been like in different circumstances" denies the idea that *different people will change the story in different ways* which is part of the book. All you need to do to see that that IS a theme is look as Shang Qinghua - out there, getting his man. He had EXACTLY THE SAME LIFE as *his* origonal, but was a different person. Shen Yuan would never be Shen Jiu. Shen Jiu is his own fantastic mess of a man who made his own choices and is his own character in the narrative with his own narrative role. You really couldn't just shoehorn anyone in to his life early enough and get the same result. He's god's special little punching bag of hate. Sure he;s likely intended to play a pidw cycles of abuse role; and those are real, people do learn to hate each other and perpetrate cruelty.

But uh. Generally they don't get abused and then start murdering kids. Cannot sufficiently stress how special our evil little wet cat is on this one.

You can like a character who did bad things that others wouldn't have. It is ok to do that. You don't have to try and be like "well shen yuan would ahve done it too," shen yuan is his own mess of a character who yes also doesn't recognize his own agency but suffers from his own litiny of character traits. He wouldn't have acted like that because it is a story and that isn't the purpose of his character. But also real people don't work like that either. Just because someone's an internet troll who likes to do media analysis on the side on novel forums or whatever doesn't mean they'd kill kids out of paranoia and hate if you abused them in the same way as someone else who did that. C'mmon. Let Shen Jiu be his own character with his own fuckups rather than undermining real human abuse victims eh? Many people come out of abusive situations in to their lives and change. Going through the same abuse seldom leads to identical results.

To be fair, my mother often said anyone who went through all the abuse she did would be like her. It's not true but she did say it. Lots of people who do terrible things say that. And sometimes people believe them.

It isn't true. Different people react differently to the same situation. And no one is doomed to perpetrate the cycle of abuse.