1. Introduction
[1.1] The fandom for Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's first novel, Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong (The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System; SVSSS), on Tumblr expresses a variety of disability headcanons. Headcanons are a fandom-specific term for personal, original narratives created by fans, for fans. Headcanons are distinct from canon, the original source, and from fan fiction, as these concepts may or may not be written in a narrative form. Headcanons are also distinct from fanon, which refers to a widely popularized fan theory, one that often supplants the canon text in the fandom at large. In this article, disability is defined broadly, encompassing physical disabilities, neurodivergence, cognitive disabilities, and mental health struggles. Chronic illnesses are also included under the larger umbrella of disability, as many diagnoses require similar societal accommodations and create similar barriers to full social participation. Personal beliefs about disabled characters, or imagining abled characters as disabled, provide catharsis and relief to disabled fans. Fan practice is an understudied arena for disability studies, but in many ways fandom embodies the nothing-about-us-without-us ethos that animates disability activism because it is produced by fans, for fans (Charlton 2000). Although fandom is sometimes considered an escapist hobby, the stakes of representation are often deeply personal and political. Many of these posts are guided by an embodied model of disability theory that examines the complex intersections of social prejudice and inaccessibility as well as the lived, physical reality of disability (Kafer 2013). Using this model of disability theory in their conceptualizations of Shen Yuan's life, before and after his transmigration, gives their headcanons depth and a ring of truth. As well, translating contemporary theory through fandom creates the potential for greater accessibility, particularly for people who may not have access to formal training in critical disability studies.
[1.2] Fans have long been acknowledged as transforming canon through their creative work (Jenkins 2014). Fan texts are not a monolith, and the line between personal headcanons and widely spread fanon can sometimes be unclear. However, in addition to the transformative work of creation, there is a spectrum of attitudes on how important canon actually is. This means that while some fans look for validation from their reading of the original text, others implicitly or explicitly reject canon's authority. Finally, on a metatextual level, these posts show the diversity of approaches towards fandom and authorial intent.
[1.3] I explore how fans conceive of Shen Yuan as chronically ill in their Tumblr posts. The tension between canon and many of these fan writings is particularly clear due to the heightened and personal stakes of representation for many disabled or otherwise marginalized fans. Analyzing these Tumblr posts shows how the social aspect of fandom has created new paradigms and new relations to canons as Tumblr allows for the proliferation of fandom cultures on the platform (Klink et al. 2020). Thus, fan practice on Tumblr is a particularly productive arena to examine how disabled people produce and share meaning around disability and representations of disability.
2. Methodology
[2.1] To track fandom engagement with the headcanon of disabled or chronically ill Shen Yuan, I began by using Tumblr's search feature to look for posts tagged with "chronically ill Shen Yuan." I used the hashtags "chronically ill Shen Yuan" and "disabled Shen Yuan." I then read through these tags, trying to find as many positions as possible. I created a master list of thirteen authors and posts that reflected a spectrum of opinions. Next, I drafted request letters, giving my personal background as a disabled fandom researcher, my enjoyment of SVSSS, as well as an overview of the project. I clearly stated a date by which a nonresponse would mean an assumption not to include their posts, and a description of the licensing agreement used by Transformative Works and Cultures. I used Tumblr's built-in messaging function to contact authors. Depending on individual user preferences, I sent either an ask or a direct message to ten of the thirteen users I initially compiled. I received ten responses, nine positive and one negative. I continued messaging with most of the authors after the initial contact to provide further clarification about the project and how I would include their posts. Once I received final approval, I annotated each post, drawing on commonalities between the users' writings. The posts ranged from short, clear statements of individual adherence to the chronically ill Shen Yuan headcanon, personal identification with disabled Shen Yuan, narrative outlines and plots for stories involving disabled Shen Yuan, and perhaps most importantly, a respectful and long essay on the lack of canonical basis for this popular headcanon within the text of the novel. Despite including posts that argued for and against this headcanon, it was not my intention to litigate an objective, canonically centered truth, but to use these posts as a way to examine how fans engage with disability in fandom.
3. Disability headcanons and SVSSS
[3.1] Mo Xiang Tong Xiu is one of the most popular authors in the danmei genre, which centers on romantic and/or sexual relationships between men. SVSSS (2021–22) follows Shen Yuan, an avid fan of the character Luo Binghe and the fictional cultivation web novel Proud Immortal Demon's Way, or PIDW. (Cultivation is a genre where characters are able to perform feats of strength through fantastical martial arts.) After Shen Yuan's untimely death, his soul is transferred from our world into the body of Shen Qingqiu, PIDW's first major antagonist. Knowing the original Shen Qingqiu is tortured to death because of his cruelty to Luo Binghe, Shen Yuan is determined to save his own life by helping Luo Binghe become an unstoppable emperor married to hundreds of beautiful women. Shen Yuan's kindness and support instead make Luo Binghe fall in love with him. A crucial turning point in their relationship occurs when Shen Yuan jumps in front of an attack meant for Luo Binghe, getting poisoned in his place. Shen Yuan is torn between the consequences of not following the original narrative, his fear of the fate in store for him, and his own buried feelings. By the end of the novel Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe finally learn to understand each other and themselves. The narrator ends the novel by saying that their real love story has just begun.
[3.2] The fandom for SVSSS is focused on the main character, Shen Yuan. There is precious little information about Shen Yuan's life before he is in thrust into the role of Shen Qingqiu, and the only information that the narrative gives us is that he is a "modest example of a second-generation rich kid," or the child of family wealth, who had "idled his life away" while his older brothers inherited the family business, and he doted on his younger sister (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu 2021–22, 21). The smoking gun for the headcanon that he was chronically ill or disabled was the initial fan translation, which stated that Shen Yuan was "waiting around to die," according to Tumblr user zykamiliah (https://www.tumblr.com/zykamiliah/696105334493888512/chronically-ill-shen-yuan-is-fanon) (note 1). Fandom ran with this idea, and thus chronically ill Shen Yuan was born.
[3.3] These headcanons about Shen Yuan's pre-transmigration life are intensified by his poisoning functioning as an allegory for chronic illness. Early in the novel, while protecting Luo Binghe from harm, Shen Yuan is hit with a poison named Without-a-Cure, and many fans consider his resultant enduring symptoms to be analogous to a chronic illness. The poison causes physical weakness, pain, the inability to cultivate at random, and an increased risk of death due to a flare-up. The novel also uses words like "flare-up" (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu 2021–22, 47, 48, 52, 119), "frail" (210, 281), and "invalid" (308) in both the narrative voice and Shen Qingqiu's own perspective. These word choices strengthen the associations with chronic illness, which often strike at random, are made worse by exertion, require continual management, and create limitations. Many authors combine their personal theories around Shen Yuan's pre-transmigration life and the canon events of the novel to make rich texts for disability studies, as they combine creative writing, the persuasive essay, social media posts, and critical theory into a distinct genre of fan writing, deserving of study with the same rigor as fan fiction and fan art.
[3.4] Disability studies recognize the ways life writing helps to create more accessible futures in part through the stories we tell and the worlds we imagine (Garland-Thomson 2007). Eli Clare (2015) does much the same in his poem "Tremors," which valorizes a disabled sexuality. When this disabled life writing approach is applied to fandom studies, inserting disability into the text challenges the underlying societal assumption that characters are able-bodied unless stated otherwise. Furthermore, bringing disability into the narrative changes both the character and how the narrative itself engages with its core themes (Finn and McCall 2016). Shen Yuan characterizes himself as lazy and without ambition in the text of the novel, but if one imagines that Shen Yuan has experience with a chronic illness, his self-perception also allows both the writer and the reader to engage with how our society relates to work, wellness, and self-worth. The recognition of how disability changes the canon narrative of SVSSS is a foundational element of many of the Tumblr posts studied in greater detail below.
4. Individual worlds: Multiple readings, multiple texts
[4.1] The use of textual basis for a headcanon is a continuum, with analysis based strictly on what is written in the main narrative at one end, and idiosyncratic, noncanonical readings at the other, with many falling somewhere between those two poles. As there is so little information about any aspect of Shen Yuan's pre-transmigration life, many of the posts fall on the personal end of the spectrum. Many of these writers state that they found disabled Shen Yuan relatable and interesting because of the widespread perception that he was disabled in his first life. In their Tumblr posts, authors' personal feelings about Shen Yuan and their own lives are further intertwined, by constructing these headcanons through their own experience of disability. Tumblr user shakespeariancryptid writes, "Honestly gotta say I really enjoy that headcanon that Shen Yuan is chronically ill and kinda uses PIDW as an outlet/distraction. Because like, same hat little guy!" (https://www.tumblr.com/shakespeariancryptid/725950858913792000/honestly-gotta-say-i-really-enjoy-that-headcanon). In addition to focusing on the identification of similar struggles, this quote also stresses the affectionate, personal connection through the phrase "little guy." The shared behavior—deeply engaging with fandom—is assigned a similar motive, whether there is textual evidence or not, and this forms the basis for shakespeariancryptid's narrative about Shen Yuan. This choice also recontextualizes Shen Yuan's life by adding greater significance to why PIDW might have mattered to him. Tumblr user toffeecoco1 writes, "i have me/cfs (all but confirmed) and grappling with that has been miserable, so yknow what? shen yuan has it too. we can suffer together" (https://www.tumblr.com/toffeecoco1/745670448978771968/on-one-hand-i-dont-love-the-chronically-ill-shen). In this post toffeecoco1 doesn't bother with establishing a canonical basis for why Shen Yuan might share a diagnosis with her; the important thing is imagining that he does, to better handle her lived experience. Finally, Tumblr user bfdreaming writes that "Shen Yuan gets to be a person. Chronically ill!Shen Yuan gets to be a person that has struggles like mine. The acknowledgment of his humanity is the acknowledgment of mine" (https://www.tumblr.com/bfdreaming/712036204196118528/i-know-chronically-illshen-yuan-is-just-fanon). They continue, "Like... Buddy. Friend. Pal. Homebound people exist. Homebound SY [Shen Yuan] makes me feel seen like no other character ever has." The intensity with which bfdreaming expresses identification with this headcanon shows how fandom has the potential to serve needs that a source text cannot, because the personal stakes and the poster's imagination are creating relationships and identifications that transcend the source text. This is one reason that this fanon is so durable regardless of its relatively small support in the actual novel.
[4.2] However, not all headcanons need to center the personal. Tumblr user sauntervaguelydown argues that headcanoning Shen Yuan as chronically ill gives fans "a little something more to grasp onto with the character" and that this headcanon is "much cooler than the authorial intent" (https://www.tumblr.com/sauntervaguelydown/723843217753276416/shen-yuan-being-chronically-ill-is-one-of-those), without directly relating it to their personal life. In saying that the headcanon gives fans something more, it implies that interest in disabled characters and representations of disability is relevant to all fans, not just disabled fans. This is a positive development that suggests that fandom can create a desire to learn about and empathize with diverse experiences. Finally, in emphasizing fandom's ability to modify or discard the intention of a given text in favor of an alternative interpretation, in this case, one that actively centers disability, it allows people to think about and discuss disability without needing to offer up personal disclosure to participate. This is significant as it refutes the idea that disability is something that needs to be proven, often by personal medical disclosure, to be believed. While there can be power in sharing, implicitly making it a requirement has the potential to reify ableist understandings of the disabled experience.
5. Theorizing Shen Yuan
[5.1] Disability theory is an evolving discipline. The earliest models of disability activism focused on viewing disability as a fundamentally social problem and arguing that with adequate accommodation and social acceptance the disabling reality of certain conditions would no longer be a problem (Shakespeare 2010). Later intersectional disability scholars argued that in addition to the social reality of disability, the physicality of pain and limitation, even with accommodation and a lack of social stigma, is a necessary part of any reckoning with the reality of living as a disabled person (Kafer 2013). The filtering of contemporary embodied models of disability theory through fans' conceptualization of Shen Yuan is expressed through a post by fanfiction-artist-prototype, who writes that "I feel that some of the people who rib at the chronically ill as shen yuan headcanon for never having a consensus for what exactly is wrong with him have never had a chronic illness" (https://www.tumblr.com/fanfiction-artist-prototype/728900034795552768/i-feel-that-some-of-the-people-who-rib-at-the). Here, the discourse around whether or not Shen Yuan should be seen as disabled is connected to the experience of many people with chronic illness who struggle to get a diagnosis while experiencing significant health problems. The post succinctly expresses the continued force that medical institutions play in the lives of disabled people and the social expectation that disabled people prove their disabilities in ways that abled society recognizes as valid. Thus, the argument about how to view a fictional character becomes a window on the embodied reality of many people with disabilities. In building out a narrative and character from this premise, fandom shows a specific kind of world-building and imaginative play that allows for deep, personal connections to characters and experiences.
[5.2] Contemporary disability also engages with the tension around being cured. In the fantastic world of SVSSS, Shen Yuan magically being cured of his poisoning and thus his chronic condition is a key plot point. In imagining Shen Yuan as disabled in his first life, fans have complicated the ableist narrative of a magical cure in multiple ways. Fanfiction-artist-prototype imagines what it might feel like to be free from pain, after the final cure of Without-a-Cure, and then being suddenly placed back into their former sick body from their first life (https://www.tumblr.com/fanfiction-artist-prototype/728840519919255552/thinking-of-a-silly-shen-qingqiu-shang-qinghua). Fanfiction-artist-prototype uses the fantastical to express the fear that remission is fleeting, as well as the desire for one's partner to truly be able to know their struggles and vulnerabilities, things that one might fear would reduce their partner's opinion of them, and be loved more. Additionally, since both Shen Yuan and another side character who the author also headcanons as disabled are sent back together, the post further imagines a shared support network during a traumatic experience. The post's happy ending of deeper knowledge, love, and community because of, rather than in spite of, disability gives greater stakes to how the novel discusses a cure.
[5.3] Ineffectual-demon has a different take on Shen Yuan's thoughts about a cure, focusing on his pre-transmigration life. They imagine him fantasizing about the original PIDW Luo Binghe's ability to magically cure his chronic illness through physical intimacy (https://www.tumblr.com/ineffectualdemon/739498524315697152/not-going-to-lie-if-there-was-some-dude-who-cured). The author posits that this would be very attractive to Shen Yuan, as it would be to the author. In presenting a magical cure as a common fantasy, the post also gestures to the ways in which this fantasy can be as harmful as it is understandable because its magical nature makes it always out of reach. The danger of asking these kinds of questions is that it makes closure and acceptance of disability fundamentally more difficult (Clare 2015). Both fanfiction-artist-prototype and ineffectual-demon's divergent headcanons around Shen Yuan's experience of a cure mine the concept for significant drama and highlight the scenario's ability to explicate the experience of pain and caregiving.
6. Conclusion
[6.1] Crucially, none of the disability headcanons that I have highlighted need to be the correct one, nor do any of the headcanons I found argue that they should be. My perspective as a fan and as a scholar of fandom studies is not to argue which is the more valid interpretive strategy but to look at what fandom as a practice can do for its participants. Nevertheless, despite the inherent free play that fandom allows, there is a strong desire, certainly one I've felt myself, to highlight a single, most correct, canonically supported read of any text, character, or relationship. Indeed, many of the posts I've highlighted express this tension between the community standard of valuing multiplicity and the desire to be proven right by the text as written. In their tags on their post, Tumblr user fixielixie writes, "#hate that people debunked it #shoulda let us live in the fantasy" (https://www.tumblr.com/fixielixie/662697660451553280/sickly-shen-yuan-is-the-only-fanon-everyone-thinks). The tags imply that the kind of disabled character that parts of fandom have collectively imagined through the character of chronically ill or disabled Shen Yuan is a fantasy, too good to be true, and that the debunking happened soon after the official translation. At the same time, this also shows the resilience of these headcanons as they remain an important part of fandom through the present, as shown by Tumblr user opal-apples's assertion that they continue to base characterization off these headcanons regardless of their canonicity (https://www.tumblr.com/opal-apples/696523687454801920/there-are-a-few-things-in-the-sv-fandom-i).
[6.2] Acceptance of headcanons also allows for nuance and ambivalent opinions on headcanons as a genre. Toffeecoco1 and sauntervaguelydown both acknowledge that while sometimes commonly accepted fanon can be annoying, or less interesting than the text itself, this particular reading is one of their exceptions to this general rule. Even zykamiliah, who wrote the most thorough and evenhanded debunking of this headcanon, begins by acknowledging the importance that headcanons play in fandom and is value neutral. They place their authority claims specifically in the text as written, to argue that while this can be an idea in fandom, it is not supported by the text. Keeping their interpretation closer to the author's intended meaning is an equally valuable interpretive strategy, which can lead to equally powerful writings on disability and fandom.
[6.3] Continuing to bring disability and fandom studies together asserts the possibility of disabled futures outside the rhetoric of tragedy, pity, and loss by asserting disabled people's presence in all walks of life. For fandom, bringing disability studies into it allows for an examination of the circumstances of production and the fundamental relationship between fans and their source texts. As an activity that can be engaged with wherever, fandom, particularly media criticism and writing, offers ways to be part of a community and create communal relationships and positive models that are enhanced by an understanding of disability studies and an inclusion of disabled voices. When one examines the way that fans reject the authority of canon on a conceptual level, it increases the level of control fans are taking in their transformative works. For disability studies, one of the strengths of fandom is its ability to be spread widely and reach a wide audience. The ways in which many of these posts engage with critical theory point to the ability of disability critical theory to be put into practice in everyday life. Finally, on a metatextual level, the variety of views on a particular subject presented on a horizontal axis models the nonhierarchical approach used in disability studies for many who may not be able to access formal disability studies texts and critical theory.