Scan barcode
A review by daisy923
The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
adventurous
dark
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
PREFACE if there’s anyone that for some ungodly reason goes to my profile bc of this don’t expect many long reviews like this unless I have a fit of madness in which I can actually tolerate writing for longer than 5 minutes, this one is just here bc it’s basically copied and pasted from a previous fit of madness on my tumblr the night before I got surgery so it’s like??? I don’t normally write coherent things I have adhd and almost failed 11th grade English bc I had a breakdown during the poetry and personal essays units. Anyway:
I told myself i wouldnt read it bc i hate teacher/student relationships but I did end up caving and like read it so I’d at least have some idea what ppl were talking about bc I do like a lot of the fanart of it I see. Basically it was so incredibly mid that I couldn’t tell you like anyones names off the top of my head except the main ones, or like 60% of what happened and I just never had the motivation to write a review about it, but I do now ig and I love complaining/reviewing things so yeah.
I told myself i wouldnt read it bc i hate teacher/student relationships but I did end up caving and like read it so I’d at least have some idea what ppl were talking about bc I do like a lot of the fanart of it I see. Basically it was so incredibly mid that I couldn’t tell you like anyones names off the top of my head except the main ones, or like 60% of what happened and I just never had the motivation to write a review about it, but I do now ig and I love complaining/reviewing things so yeah.
Like tbh 80% of it was kind of boring or made me uncomfortable so really I did just skim a lot of it but I did have fun with the other 20% lol ig.. but to start with the bad.. like as i said I hate teacher student relationships so for really a lot of the bingqiu scenes I was skimming and pretending that all it was was just platonic. Like I do like sqq I think he’s funny and I know he’s too dense to figure out that he’s not straight but reading him call lbh (his 14 year old student!!!) a little sheep all the time and babying him and then knowing how it goes just! Makes me uncomfy! Like not everything has to be a romance and it would be much more interesting and not weird to me if this wasn’t a romance between them, even if they only get together when they’re both adults. And don’t even get me started on lbh. Like again. I like him. But he is just a walking red flag like I don’t think there’s anything wrong with writing characters who aren’t like. Healthy perfect people obviously but just idk I don’t like, think it’s cute or funny or whatever to have a character be like you’re mine and no one else’s and that possessiveness is just treated as a joke and something for sqq to just have to accept in the end. just kinda wish that were addressed. And a lot of the scenes that didn’t make me uncomfortable I was just so incredibly bored. If you asked me what happened in any given arc I could honestly not really tell you 80% of the time.
Now let’s get into the ✨misogyny ✨ like I know that’s a given with this genre and author but it’s still annoying. Like I was prepared to really like the little demon girl and the girl with the veil and the other girls but they were just like. There ig. Like HONESTLY….. the best female character imo was lbhs mom and she wasn’t even PRESENT in the actual story. But anyway. One thing that annoyed me is, that they only have one (1) female sect leader, and one (1) female head disciple in the 12 peaks, but they don’t even have the dignity of competing against men to gain these positions, mxtx does the cowardly thing and just makes them heads of an all female sect. All the other sects, which are presumably coed (tho iirc nyy is the ONLY female disciple of sqqs sect and I don’t remember there ever being any female disciples of Jiang cheng 1.0’s sect) are all led by men and their best disciples are boys. It’s so incredibly lazy and annoying. And this female sect isn’t even ranked highly on the peaks either. Like what’s the ranking criteria and why are they ranked so low? Huh? Mxtx? Like I get this is a satire of a really bad stallion novel but seriously? Mxtx? You couldn’t even include one female character in a position of power without also being a servant/subordinate/lower ranked to some dudes? even in sqq's fix-it version? Bc the whole point of the book is to fix pidw but neither mxtx or sqq as an extension of her seemed interested in fixing the rampant misogyny. Anyway and bc like that demon girl was
Also the constant feminizing of sqq. Like again. I know that’s a given with this genre but it’s still so annoying.
Now the WORST offender. That™️ sex (read: rape) scene. No. Bye. Completely skipped as soon as I realized what was going on. Spiritually barfing the entire time.
And to the things I liked. in no particular order:
1) lbhs family and backstory: I rly liked the story of his parents. not sure if some of this counts as spoilers but ill just put it all under spoilies just in case.
2) mobei jun and shang qinghua. Okay I went into this liking moshing from all the fanart and the idea of god marrying the dude he created in the image of the perfect guy while being a weird little hamster of a man himself is super funny, also the demon tits. anyway idk where I was going with that, but! I was rather disappointed that they were barely in the book.
3)
4) system and sqq - hilarious. Next.
5)
6)
7)
8) snek!! He was cute
9) and of course.. airplane bro and cucumber bro. I love them. Everything about them. They’re such clowns.
Anyway 4/10 at best probably bye
Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Rape, Sexual content, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Death of parent