At what point did you start to like Shen Jiu?
i was always interested in his character, since the underlying premise of scum villain is that his presence or absence fundamentally changes just about everything. which is really sad, from shen jiu’s perspective– with him gone, everything gets ostensibly better, at least from our pov as readers. ofc, in the beginning we know him only as a pretty despicable person, and so it’s hard to sympathize with him when he’s 1) not on the page, and 2) a person who abuses children and women.
but i also think it’s a book about cycles of abuse, and how a single act of kindness can really change things. so what is it about shen jiu that makes it so hard for him to empathize with others, to the point that he perpetuates the hardships he had to face himself? we get hints of that when shen qingqiu starts wondering about yue qingyuan’s favor of sj, and then more in the 79 backstory and their extras. so it was delving into that that made me start to like shen jiu, and eventually to be very very sympathetic towards how he became as he is, and how terribly trapped he was by his own defense mechanisms.
also, i think it’s a given in the book that bing-ge’s universe is a one in which no one is fulfilled. having hundreds of wives and killing yqy and sj does not make bing-ge whole, or undo what’s been done to him. it doesn’t make his world a better place. by the same token, hurting bing-ge does not make sj whole. they’re caught in this destructive cycle, and it takes some radical kindness– ie, shen yuan– to actually start to fix things.
the tragedy there is that for shen yuan to do that, shen jiu can no longer exist. and the idea of someone who’s suffered (even someone who has also inflicted suffering) never getting any true happiness is very tragic, to me. that’s the poignant part of his story, and what i’m very interested in.
