So, the poll is finally over — and it is time to reveal The Truth! (Well, eight truths and one lie, to be more precise.) Let’s get to it!
9th place: “having extremely bad sex was instrumental for saving the world” TRUE
We are starting with the least voted for option, that nevertheless bamboozled 208 people (3.3% of voters). Yup, sorry to everyone who thought a gay romance novel couldn’t possibly have bad sex. We console ourselves with the fact that it was bad for thematic, plot, and character reasons.
8th place: “straight harem novel protagonist experienced a gay awakening” TRUE
First, let me apologize to everyone for my apparently ambiguous grammar. It was meant as “the protagonist of a straight harem novel”, not “a straight protagonist of a harem novel”.
Anyway, this happened! In fact, you could say this happened twice!
You see, Scum Villain is a story of a transmigrator — a guy who died and woke up in another world. More specifically, in the world of a straight harem novel he read, in the body of a villain, Shen Qingqiu. At the time our transmigrator MC entered the world, though, the protagonist of said straight harem novel was still in his teens. So not yet a murderous antihero, and not yet a harem master, but an orphaned child who up to then had a very difficult life. And encountering a man who was kind to him, believed in him, and even protected him at the cost to himself… the protagonist of a straight harem novel fell hard.
Yup, “straight harem novel protagonist” actually refers to the male lead of Scum Villain, Luo Binghe. And, despite what 239 of our voters (3.8%) thought, he did have a gay awakening — this is basically the premise of the novel!
But wait, there’s more. In one of the extra chapters, the original version of Luo Binghe ends up in the world where our transmigrator has changed things, and accidentally swaps places with our Binghe. To the OG’s shock, the villain he tortured and killed over a hundred years ago is not only alive and kicking in this world, but is… nice to him? ?? ????? ??
…So, after a couple of days it takes Shen Qingqiu to figure out that it’s not his Binghe being moody because he got injured but a whole wrong guy, the OG straight harem novel protagonist is also not what he used to be. And beseeching this kind version of his villain to come with him.
So yeah. This happened twice.
7th place: “character who thinks ‘beat them up 3 times a day’ is flirting got his man” TRUE
Honestly, this was one of the most entertaining options to watch — both in how its placement in the poll changed, and the chaos it somehow wrought among actual Scum Villain fans in the notes.
Besties… I can’t believe you forgot Mobei-jun’s iconic “love advice”. I can’t believe you thought this was about Liu Qingge. (Also I’m pretty sure someone thought this was about Binghe and said they’ll fight me if I claim this option is true. They get a free pass however because I think being ready to rip throats for Binghe is about the sexiest quality a Scum Villain fan can have.)
Anyway — yeah, this happened. Mobei-jun and Shang Qinghua, a.k.a. MoShang, are a canon side couple.
Sorry to the 287 of our voters (4.6%) who were like ‘i hope the fuck not?!’. In Mobei-jun’s defense, he is a demon born and raised, and that’s a ~Demon Culture Thing~. Also, more than a few things happened between him saying that with his full chest and riding into the sunset with his love interest. (Well, the love interest was riding; Mobei was pulling the cart.) And he had an unfair advantage of being his love interest’s literal ideal man… but more on this later.
6th place: “character played hot potato with his own half-naked corpse” TRUE
This option has suddenly pulled ahead of its closest competitor at around 4500 votes, but for what? Despite what 295 of voters (4.7%) thought, this also happened in Scum Villain. Sometimes you (a transmigrator) set up a spare body for yourself because you think the protagonist is going to kill you. And then you die (not via getting murdered). And then you come back to life in a new body. And find out that the protagonist has apparently been keeping your old — dead — body in perfect condition for 5 years in hopes of reviving you. And then during a comedy-of-errors-esque sequence of events you end up catching your own dead body, the clothes on which have come undone. And you understandably freak out and toss it to someone else. as if it was a hot potato.
5th place: “3 different demons made one character drink their blood on 5 separate occasions” TRUE
So first, I guess, I need to explain what’s the deal with the demon blood. A particular subset of demons, called heavenly demons, have a unique ability to manipulate their blood, even when it’s outside their bodies. And, importantly, inside someone else’s. This can be used to track the person down, to hurt them, to heal them… (And for sex, actually, but somebody has neglected to mention this to our half-demon ML.)
Anyway, there are three heavenly demons around, and all had made Shen Qingqiu drink their blood once or twice. No, the blood doesn’t have an expiration date — but since he happened to change bodies a couple of times…
So, to the 319 people (5.1%) who thought the blood drinking was either too weird or too normal to be true: nope, our MC is the world champion in demon blood chugging.
4th place: “character's dad is a fan of a famous porn ballad starring his son and son-in-law” TRUE
Despite the fervent hopes of 5.6% of voters (351 of them!), this one is also true.
You see, the main couple’s unhinged behaviors have captivated certain creative minds, and so there’s a ballad about them. That is very popular. And very horny. In fact it’s deadass explicit RPF.
And it just so happens that Luo Binghe’s absentee demon father (in his defense, he was imprisoned under the mountain) (not to defend him too much though, once he comes back he’s a total jerk to his son), Tianlang-jun, is a huge aficionado of human culture. Books, plays, songs, you name it. And he has an especial fondness for raunchy romances. You know, exactly like a porny ballad that just so happens to be about his son and his son’s crush.
Which is how our MC ends up in a situation where his uh-it’s-complicated’s dad asks him “have you slept with my son?” and he’s like “what? no” and the dad just starts humming a song that’s about them fucking. His life is so difficult (schadenfreude).
Whew, so far so good, right? We only have the top 3 left, and the false option hasn't come up yet! And yeah, I gotta say, for a book as wild as SVSSS, the fact that six options were correctly identified as more likely to have happened than the fake one is already big. Good job!
Though, I regret to tell you, that’s where our lucky streak ends. So, allow me to present…
3rd place: “a succubus fortune teller told MC at least 5 men are in love with him” FALSE
Wait, you might say, but haven’t you defended this option before? I have, but only from the accusation that the number in it is somehow false. Excuse you, I have counted the men several times to be sure!.. that the number adhered to the popular fanon.
The story behind this option is that I thought long and hard to come up with something wild enough to match the energy of the book. In the end, I used something that happened in canon as base, spiced it up with something from fanon readings, and mashed it together in a way that (I thought) would be obvious to any reader as blatantly false — but could still snag a few unsuspecting dash osmosis in-laws. What I learned was that the SVSSS fandom didn’t read the extras enough times.
Okay, so What Is The Truth!
The truth is: a succubus fortune teller made a divination about MC’s destined partner (not who was in love with him, but rather who he had a red string of fate with), and accurately described the ML to him… without once mentioning that he was a man. (Making her prediction virtually useless to Shen Qingqiu, who at the time ID'd firmly as a straight guy and didn’t even consider this possibility... and also thought that Luo Binghe was the most heterosexual man ever, in view of the oversized harem from the original work.)
So, as you can see, the entire second half of this option was just me bullshitting. If you are one of the 387 voters (6.2%) who caught this — kudos to you!
This out of the way… time to crown the victors of our ‘he couldn’t Possibly have said that’ tournament.
Without further ado, I present to you: Shang Qinghua and Shen Qingqiu, our unparalleled transmigrator duo!
2nd place goes to Shen Qingqiu, our beloved main character, with the option “MC told ML that if he was his mom, he would never abort him” (TRUE)
I would love to say it makes sense in context. And, well, it makes some sense in context. But also there are reasons Shen Qingqiu won a “character we most want to study like a bug” tournament against everyone else from all three of the author’s novels a while back, and this line was one of them. (Not even the wildest thing on his resume, tbt, but my favorite weirdo moment of his wasn’t a good fit for the poll.)
Okay, so the context for this one. At a certain point in the story, the male lead, Luo Binghe, learned that his birth mother had apparently taken the poison that would kill her unborn child (him) — in exchange for her own freedom. He already had abandonment issues up to his ears, and this was yet another thing to chip at his already shaky mental state. Eventually, after A Few More Things piled up, he had a mental breakdown of, ah, potentially world-ending proportions — and that was what it took for Shen Qingqiu to realize how miserable Luo Binghe had been the whole time, and how deeply he was hurt by Shen Qingqiu’s own actions over the course of the novel. So Shen Qingqiu resolved to (finally) take steps to show Luo Binghe that he is loved and wanted. Among other things (yes this is where our least voted option happened too), he did his best to convince Luo Binghe that his birth mother actually wanted him — that she wasn’t trying to abort him, but only took that poison to escape, and must’ve drawn all of its effects into her own body to prevent it from harming her child.
It’s only that… our most special guy decided to start that statement with: “If *I* were her…”
Anyway, as many as 478 of our voters (7.6%) unfortunately didn't believe he could have possibly said that.
And finally, the 1st place — continuously since as early as 900 votes! — goes to Shang Qinghua with, “character told his love interest to call him ‘daddy’. not for kinky reasons” (TRUE)
Oh, yeah, to explain: Shang Qinghua, a.k.a. Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, is the second transmigrator — that our MC susses out at about 1/3rd of the story. When confronted, it turns out that he is not just another reader, but in fact the author, stuck in the world of his own novel.
For this reason, he sometimes refers to other characters as his ‘children’ — usually in his head or when talking to his fellow transmigrator.
But then at one point, when he is venting his frustration with a certain demon’s behavior (see 7th place option) to said demon… who also happens to be his most beloved ‘ideal man’ OC… he, among other things, snaps: “I’m your dad! Call me daddy!”
…Meaning, ofc, something like ‘I created you!’ So, yeah — not for kinky reasons. just for totally normal author-god reasons.
With this, Airplane-bro has swayed 543 voters (8.7%) from the right path! Put it on his list of crimes next to child endangerment.
Soooo… this is it! This has been a blast. I loved seeing everyone’s responses! Especially non-readers trying to logic out the unlogicable. I love you guys. Read Scum Villain 🫶
