names for sqq

Something that causes endless problems in talking about Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: the names for the people who are Shen Qingqiu. Both of these people have other names that CAN be used to refer to them, but both characters very deliberately distance themselves from that other name. I feel fine referring to them as Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan when talking about their pre-canon history when they were actually going by those names, but when talking about them after each of them goes "nope :) I'm sqq now :)" it doesn't feel quite accurate to me, you know?

But if you refer to both of them as sqq, it's so easy to confuse which of them you're talking about!

I love narratives that deal with characters with complicated relationships to their identity, so I have run into these kinds of Name Problems more than perhaps the average fan does. But in previous fandoms where I've run into this broad type of problem, there's usually something that feels reasonable to use to refer to each character as a whole, even if they use different names in different circumstances or times of their life, or even if multiple characters use the same name.

I default to using "Shen Qingqiu" to refer to the person who used to be Shen Yuan, and "Original Shen Qingqiu" to refer to the person who used to be Shen Jiu, but I can't always tell if others are using the same parameters, and especially if they're approaching the fandom from different directions in terms of what character they're obsessed with, I could see them making different choices than me.

So it's a problem when trying to successfully communicate with other fans.

Anyway. Yes I AM still obsessed with svsss and spend hours most days thinking about it and/or reading fic, why do you ask