Scumbag Actor Screwup System

Chapter 1 - Small Lotus

So there he was, Shen Yuan, pale with makeup that made him look like some sort of sadistic Snowwhite, looking at the poor kid he was supposed to abuse on camera. Fun stuff. He didn't drop out of engineering to do this, but there you go, life at its finest.

He stepped forward, lifted his hand and fake-struck the child. It took all his willpower not to flinch at the anguished cry.

You might wonder what the fuck. But actually, this moment was the result of two months of training and a shit ton of effort done by a misguided studio who thought he would make a decent actor.

Let us recap briefly what went on.

Day 1 - He got into a costume and dissed the main character of novel he was reading

Day 7 - The video was posted on the official Weibo. It went viral.

Day 8 - A petition was started to make "asshole Shen Quingqiu" the official actor.

Day 10 - Weirdos from all over the world signed the petition

So far, so good. Shen Yuan had barely any friends, none outside of discord and certainly nobody would recognize him. So they weren't tagging him on posts or something. He wasn't answering spam messages, just watching from afar as if it were happening to someone else. He could distance himself from it, after all studios wouldn't really listen and hire a non-actor just because he cursed on camera and people liked it, right? He'd almost forgotten by day 20.

Day 22 - He got the letter.

Looking at his bank account, the meager amount left on his trustfund and the stupid code he was trying to debug to finally get paid he did the most logical thing he could think of and went on reddit.

"How does one go about getting an agent to be an actor???"

The post didn't get him tons of karma, but it did the job, he found help. User "SystemOfAnUp32843" got him a contract with her talent agency and became his manager. She did the hard stuff: negotiated his contract with the studio, helped him get acting lessons, got him fillers (he got weird stuff put under his skin so he'd become handsome) and pretty much whipped him every day in order for him to train the jell-o he called body so it'd look less like a melting scarecrow.

Shen Yuan actually turned out half decent. Didn't get muscles, just a bit toned, he was still a bit scrawny but you do what you can. He looked kind of aristocratic, his face had a refined air after makeup. And with the lessons he even managed to remember lines and say them in a convincing way! Maybe he could pass as an actor. Or so he hoped, he really wanted that money.

If only he'd remembered he had to hit a child before signing the contract.

"So here we are on the first day of filming, with cute little Luo Binghe, " the lady in charge of making the social media videos was talking merrily, and a 7-year-old tiny Binghe was being adorable, as expected. Not that he blamed the kid, he was a pro for sure.

"And our fan chosen villain, Shen Qingqiu," the attention shifted to him.

"Please, no," he mumbled. The lady seemed to delight in the answer.

"How does it feel to be on set?"

"My only comfort is that I will eventually die," he replied wryly. His manager had told him to be an asshole on camera, did suicidal asshole count? Seemed like the public liked him to be a bastard.

"Oh dear, you are a bit grumpy, aren't you? Don't you want to say something nice to your fans?"

A knight in shining armor came before he could tell them they were masochists with poor taste.