Chapter Text
Hello! As I said above, this fic is finished! This “Chapter” is really just a glorified author’s afterword with a few extras: some notes about process, some details & explanation of a few things in the story, and a few brief notes about what are functionally deleted/post-credit scenes.
I would have simply dropped this into the author’s notes in the previous chapter, but a great many of you remain subscribed to this and I wanted to let you know it’s officially wrapped. For that, I’m grateful—sorry to leave you hanging so long!
The author’s notes about process, evolution of the story, why I chose to end it at the end of chapter 6, etc. will be first, followed by bits and bobs about deleted scenes. If you want to skip the author’s notes stuff, you can go straight to Extras.
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I typed out a whole thing here about how this fic is different from stuff I usually write (aka really gruesome and messy and dark) and then had to delete it when I realized that I wrote several very dark things for TGCF shortly before I wrote this. So now I am having a moment of realization that, perhaps, working as an RN in emergency & inpatient during the most brutal part of the pandemic while simultaneously going through a painful breakup fucked me up more than I realized. Who knew. Sorry to all of my blorbos, but writing you in extremis is good therapy, no?
This fic is heavily inspired by both some RL things (patients I cared for, less so my personal life, thank god) and by the movie “The Babadook.” The latter, aside from all the silly LGBTQ icon nonsense, is also a brick-shittingly scary horror movie that I highly recommend, 20/10.
I—obviously—went back and forth on where to end this story. When I initially planned it, the scene at the end of chapter six was the final scene, and the intended stop point of the fic, but for whatever reason—probably because, despite other dark stuff I’ve written the past few years, I don’t historically write chaptered horror stories—I struggled with leaving things “unresolved” despite what felt very much like a natural end point. I tried several times to write an additional chapter to this fic, but after multiple attempts, all I’d accomplished was roughly 20k in total of incoherent, disconnected nonsense. (Picture me bent over my keyboard, muttering, “What is a chapter? A miserable little pile of scenes” like a gremlin.)
Ultimately, I decided to let the story be what it really is: a horror story. Most horror stories, when done well, provide rather less closure and wrapping of details than they do an emotional sucker-punch (and if you’re lucky, some catharsis). And that was what I had wanted to write, really; the misery, the unease transforming into frustration and then terror, all the pain and distress and trauma hurtling towards a disastrous explosion and final release. Turns out I didn’t particularly want to write all the bits of picking up the pieces.
So I’m letting this fic end with many a horror story’s natural finish: the final girl survived the brutal encounter with the monster, and even managed to save her beloved; the survivors confessed their feelings, embraced, and even got to kiss before curtain fall! Much better than most horror movie protagonists fare, honestly.
Speaking of the monster, since several of you asked: the System was something between a tulpa and a heart demon. (Also a metaphor, like so much in Scum Villain.) The System did not cause SQQ’s curse, but was perfectly happy to use it against him. And as for what SQH’s System is… I really have no idea.
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These are notes for a few scenes I’d tentatively plotted out post-fic. Most of them turned out to be either much, much more work to write than I wanted, or I couldn’t figure out how they worked, and/or they would have felt tonally different than the rest of the story, or lessened its impact, etc… but if you were curious, well, here you go. If you prefer to only read what’s written, consider them to be idle musings and non-canon.
- The corpse of the System doesn’t magically disappear, although SQQ expected it to. Having to figure out what to do with the corpse is awkward and weird and embarrassing to have to explain, but is helpful to point at when trying to justify to the rest of the sect why they shouldn’t blame Binghe for all the horrific things that happened in the, like, 48 hours this fic takes place over. Turns out when something fucks up your life bad enough that everyone else can see your near-death experiences, it isn’t actually invisible! Huge if true.
- Liu Qingge proves his mettle (and that he listens when his shixiong confesses painful things to him on a medical gurney) by putting himself between BingQiu and YQY when the sect leader tries to strong-arm SQQ into coming back to the sect without Binghe, despite SQQ swearing up and down that he’s fine and does not need rescuing. (The altercation really only ends because SQH essentially blackmails YQY over the years of accounting, building plans, and maps that he’s taken to hiding in his qiankun pouch, increasingly paranoid over being outed as the spy he is.)
- Eventually LQG and Binghe get to be on chill enough terms to spar regularly, though that takes quite some time. SQQ is happy to have a friend he can rely on, and Binghe needs the enrichment.
- Binghe heard way too much of the talk between SQQ and the System to not eventually get at least partial answers out of his Shizun about Shizun’s past life. Binghe is also way too smart to not figure out SQH was also from Shizun’s original world, and then terrorizes the poor hamster whenever he gets a chance.
- I tried like 8 times to write out a conversation between SQQ and SQH and gave up in despair. The only part worth mentioning is that eventually SQH lets slip that the Thorn of True Feelings curse was originally called “Broken Heart Disease” in an early draft (which is both a real thing and, incidentally, was the working title of this fic) and SQQ nearly had an aneurysm about it.
If I had managed to find a way to include it, the only scene I would have liked to be in the rest of the fic is this:
SQQ and Binghe are preparing for some event or meeting—it hardly matters what, except that it’s at least a year after the end of the fic—but SQQ is nervous about rocking the boat and deviating from “the script” even though the System and his curse are both gone. He sequesters himself in a private room to collect himself, and watches his shadow grow and darken and move of its own accord, until it’s twice his height with glowing yellow eyes.
Binghe: *comes into the room and wraps his arms around SQQ’s waist* How is it today? *staring at the shadow, which he can evidently see just fine*
SQQ: *takes a deep breath and leans back against his husband* …a little fussy, but not too bad.
Binghe: *hugs him a little tighter* If the meeting goes badly, this disciple is more than happy to simply take Shizun somewhere he will be more appreciated. *clearly only half-joking*
SQQ: *laughs* This master will keep that in mind. *watches the shadow with his husband until it slowly shrinks back to a normal shadow, then finishes getting ready for the meeting with his husband’s help, and leaves together with him to meet the rest of the group*
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That’s about it. Thanks so much for reading!
twitter: @serproblematiq