Malsperanza

Someone on Reddit mentioned a fic where Xie Lian goes to a trauma therapist. I'm not usually a fan of modern fics or post-canon stuff, but the idea that Xie Lian - who does not ever talk about his psychological or affective issues with anyone - would be a candidate for therapy was so completely absurd that I kind of liked it. Kind of like the premise of The Sopranos. I feel that this idea could be mined almost endlessly, for the LOLz.

So here goes:

Therapist: The goal here is to confront past trauma and come to terms with it.

Xie Lian: Oh, I've already done that. I'm OK with it, TBH. I just ... well, my partner says I talk in my sleep and have bad dreams.

Therapist: Tell me more about the traumatic events.

XL: Well, there was the time when I made a mistake and accidentally caused a plague that wiped out most of my country's population.

Therapist [makes note]: I see.

XL: But I got over it. And then one time I got stabbed by swords 100 times until my body was mush. That was pretty unpleasant.

Therapist: But you survived that?

XL: Oh yes. I'm immortal, so ... [shrugs]

Therapist [jots note: delusions of grandeur]: Still, the memory bothers you?

XL: I guess so. Not that much really. But the whole thing with White No-Face has been on my mind. Because of the way he pursued me for so long, centuries and centuries.

Therapist [jots note: paranoid schizophrenia? narcissistic personality disorder??]: Who is White No-face?

XL: This guy who persecuted me and who turned out to be the emperor and my mentor, which was pretty upsetting. Very upsetting. Sometimes, really, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I just came across this comment from a podcaster in the true crime space whose work I really admire:

"The worst thing we can do as a society is hold people accountable for our assumptions about them. That is now the ethos of our culture." [Josh Hallmark, "Thoughts & Feelings: 0619," December 19, 2024, https://www.patreon.com/posts/thoughts-0619-118292692 ]

Yeah, he's talking about the ways in which listeners (or readers, or really any kind of engagement in social media) infuse someone's content - or that person - with assumptions about them, ignoring or adding contexts, and then critiquing the content based on that imposed frame. And that the Internet (and I daresay the Age of Trump) has accelerated and amplified this repulsive, toxic tendency. It's a kind of false critique. That is, we are all free to bring our own perspectives and interpretations to any creative work - including our mistaken interpretations. A work of art is in the public realm and is always subject to those revisions. That's the whole of fandom in a nutshell.

But hand in hand with that goes the obligation to be critical thinkers, which means understanding which aspects of our interpretation are in the original text, and which are ours. We absolutely have to hold people accountable for what they say and do. But not for what we claim or wish or fear they had said and done.

One of the things MXTX does so well is to blur the line between narrator and internal monologue. Scum Villain is almost entirely written from SQQ's POV, and we know that he is a classic unreliable protagonist. But it's not 100% true that SVSSS is entirely from SQQ's POV. There are several places where the book goes head-hopping and we get other people's internal monologues. Since this isn't signaled or called out in any way, it leaves the reader without real clarity about what is narrator and what is POV. One example comes quite early on, when the young LBH fights a series of duels with the demons during their invasion of Cang Qiong Mountain. We briefly get the POV of his combatants. This may just be a sign of MXTX's imperfect command of her form (she wrote the book when she was in high school ffs), or it may be deliberate.

Either way, this squishiness means that the reader can't be sure that there is no omniscient narrator who is suppressing or providing info that SQQ might not have. In addition, we have the System's interference in the novel, which is not exactly omniscient narrator, and not POV character either. And then there's SQQ's own tendency to lie to himself. He is unreliable not only because he neglects to mention certain things, but also because he is so un-self-aware that he doesn't know some things even from inside his own POV.

[Later, in Heaven Official's Blessing, MXTX wields the tools of narrator omniscience and narrator omission much more smoothly. We get a narrator who seems to be confidently omniscient and honest. Yet we can see - only on reread - how much salient info is omitted at crucial points. Exactly what happened in the past. Exactly why Xie Lian ascended. Exactly who Hua Cheng is. And then we have the unreliable Xie Lian, in whose POV most of the book is given. XL isn't unreliable because he lies (he doesn't lie); nor because he's ignorant or unself-aware (he is neither); but because he prefers not to tell anyone - including us - more than he needs to. He's very private, and he plays his cards close to his chest. He has a wicked sense of humor, but enjoys himself entirely in private and alone.]

So in SVSSS the line isn't necessarily a clear one. Further, the confusion on the part of the reader may not be a mistake or misreading - it may be provoked deliberately by MXTX. That's because in the greater scheme of the book, MXTX is intentionally putting us in the same role with respect to SVSSS that SQQ has with respect to Proud Immortal Demon Way. That is: we have our preferences about the protagonists and antagonists and our opinions about the quality of the writing, the inclusion of episodes for reasons not required by the plot (starting with the introduction of the System as a character in the book, separate from The Narrator, and separate again from MXTX).

That said, some readers do misread or interpret in ways that the text doesn't really support. But they're allowed to do that because the book is so deliberately confusing, and because the theme of the book is Fandom and its quixotic relationship with the Text.

It's an incredibly layered and complicated setup.

One thing I've noticed about MXTX readers (and maybe Danmei readers in general) is that they fall in love with the version of the book they like and want, and then tend to read through that lens. This may mean taking info as "fact" when it's really just the opinion of the POV character, and not reliable.

Which of course is Shen Yuan's problem with respect to PIDW in the first place. MXTX is amazingly savvy about her readers and not shy about parodying us too.

MXTX likes to leave certain things to our imagination, and several of them periodically lead readers to wonder what the missing info was. Two are especially intriguing:

What was Hua Cheng's password?

What did Hua Cheng's murals depict?

I think these can be grouped together because they both point to some aspect of Xie Lian that lives rent-free in Hua Cheng's mind: that is, Xie Lian's incredible sexual appeal.

The password: we'll never know, but we do know that it embarrasses Xie Lian hugely, and there's really only one thing that ever embarrasses Xie Lian. This is a guy who has no problem declaring publicly that he's impotent, and a rag-picker, and other things that would humiliate most people. But his own sexual allure freaks him out and triggers an extreme modesty reaction. Especially if it's coming from Hua Cheng.

So we can go to town about the password, and imagine whatever NSFW phrase about Xie Lian is most likely to make him want to hide under a rock ... and also turns him on with delight. (Hint: in SVSSS the phrase "heavenly pillar" turns up a few times.)

The murals: I don't think we need the murals spelled out - it's pretty easy to guess what they depict. Hua Cheng became a talented artist when he was still a kid - he made a drawing of Xie Lian to replace the missing temple idol when he was about 12 or 13. He has only one subject for his art: Xie Lian Xie Lian Xie Lian. And since he doesn't expect that anyone else will ever see his mural, he can indulge his fantasies.

And here's where we have to look at what religious belief means to Hua Cheng. Now, we know that Hua Cheng considers Xie Lian his god - he literally worships him. So any image or effigy of Xie Lian is, for HC, literally a religious image to be venerated. At the same time, HC's particular way of venerating XL is a mixture of religious fervor and sexual desire. (That combo is actually pretty common in religious imagining, from the sexuality in Hindu sacred texts to depictions of Jesus Christ as a nude and very sensuous man, etc.)

When, at the end, HC and XL get together as a couple, this deep belief doesn't leave Hua Cheng. Every time he rails his god, he's praying to him. And the more dominant he is, the more it delights XL, who plays up the drama of helplessness to the max. There is no one in the universe less helpless than Xie Lian, so HC's form of worship is pure pleasure for him - a freedom from all responsibility.

So painting the murals is a kind of devout religious experience for Hua Cheng, one that sustains him during the long period when he can't find Xie Lian and doesn't know if he'll ever find him again. Painting the images is a kind of prayer, like lighting incense. Only, of course, Hua Cheng probably doesn't simply bow to the images he has painted, but does other things too. They are, basically, the most elevated, intense kind of NSFW fan art. (Leave it to MXTX to really understand fandom and its obsessions.)

The murals are undoubtedly celebrations of Xie Lian's beauty, sexual allure, and - possibly - images of sex acts in the manner of some Hindu temple sculptures. They are there for Hua Cheng to pour his devotion into, and also for his relief during the centuries of his lonliness.

The book is a multilayered parody. Most obviously it satirizes stallion novels, but it also lampoons danmei novels, as well as provocatively teasing/parodying readers and fans of both. The parody of stallion novels is blatant, but the danmei genre is also held up to humorous critique.

How many danmei novels totally decimate the romantic aspect - the pining and longing and deep emotional connection and all the other elements for which the genre is famous - by making the protagonists so completely mismatched and so completely sexually incompetent?

One doesn't even know he's gay and is appalled at the idea. The other is just a clumsy kid whose beauty and physical prowess do not save him from being the world's most inept lover. Their sex life is one episode after another of discomfort, awkwardness, and miscommunication, all glued together by their love for each other.

We are confident that eventually, offscreen, they will start to really enjoy sex, but the secondhand chagrin and embarrassment in the meantime is hilarious.