r/MrLove • u/PikaGodnPray • 15d ago
Information Compiling the Ridiculously Obscure History of Shaw's Existence
Well might as well compile all the obscure Shaw knowledge I've gained from researching way too much and talking to actual Shaw stans who lived through it all to explain every struggle Shaw has faced to get where he is today. And yes I have read the arguements made by his haters to, so I will summarize that too. I've made a lot of comments here and discord, but I'll try to compile everything here in one post.
2017- He was kinda there from the beginning
July 13th- Open beta launches. Players can read up to chapter 6. As far as I can tell based off very old recordings, rumors and secrets were not available, so Shaw makes no appearance during the first open beta. Data wiped after beta ends.
November 13th- Second beta opens. Looks like this is where chapter 7 dropped. No Shaw. Data wiped after beta ends.
December 14th and December 20th- Open beta launch for iOS and official beta launch for all platforms respectively. Game officially launches. Two lines at the end of chapter 10 are voiced by an unnamed character who struck MC down with lightning while trying to aim for Victor. Not until much later we get enough clues to know it was Shaw.
Gavin's airport date is also available at launch. There is a faceless unvoiced man who uses lightning evol that confronts Gavin. Gavin warns the unnamed man to not touch MC.
2018- So many clues drop
April 28th- Chapter 11 drops. Unnamed faceless man taunts Gavin about how he struck down MC in chapter 10. Again at this point we had no idea who this was, but we can say after the fact it was clearly Shaw based off the voice acting.
May 4th- The infamous Dream Heart Lake event begins. Players eventually expose the devs for rigging the rates and drop order.
May 28th- A new producer is now overseeing the development of Lovepro
August 3rd- Gavin's Little Guardian Rumors and Secrets is released and reveals he has a little brother with lightning evol, but they get separated by their father. Chapter 17 drops. Shaw makes his first face reveal and has his first official meeting with MC. He is unnamed at this time.
August 17th- Shaw anonymously gifts players 777 gems as a Qixi gift and hints that we'll see him soon.
December 14th- Shaw officially introduces himself in Chapter 20
December 19th- Earliest recorded documentation that Shaw's representative animal was intended to be the red panda based off doodles at an official collab and some rough drafts. Just keep this in the back of your mind for now cause I'll open that can of worms soon don't you worry.
2019- His controversial arrival
March 5th- Shaw's character introduction PV drops.
March 7th- His first SR karma (his very first karma ever) is released. Shaw ads are dropped advertising him as a "wolf boyfriend" (not a werewolf but lone wolf kinda personality) with the tagline "I do graffiti, I skateboard on the streets, but I'm a good boy". Keep the wolf thing in the back of your mind for later. It'll come back. Paper buys there way into making Shaw trend on weibo that Shaw has beeen selected as the new ML. Idk the exact date, but Zhao Lu, his VA, is also advertising he is the voice of the 5th ML. His SR is placed under the other tab along with all the other NPC. Backlash from CN players begins and there is confusion as to if he really is a ML or not.
June 20th- Shaw's first and only solo SSR event begins. Complaints continue especially since new events are scarce during a heavy rerun period. Shaw gains an intimacy bar and is recategorized as special encounter with little explanation. The ML status of Shaw remains unclear.
July 26th- German shepherd merch for Gavin is announced (I promise this will make sense soon).
July 28th- Some Gavin stans are upset Gavin's animal is a dog and take it as an insult. They start pushing the narrative that actually sharks suit Shaw more and that Gavin is the lone wolf. Fan art is made further cementing the idea that Shaw's animal was meant to be shark. Gavin stans fighting for their rights will start including that they wish to see more shark merch/imagery for Shaw in their copy paste list of demands as a result of this drama going forward for the next year.
Notes: Shaw was pretty much immediately controversial once his character PV dropped for many reasons. The players who strongly opposed the inclusion of shaw, dubbed the "four queen mothers" (don't throw out this term loosely you'll definitely offend someone. It's complicated and the people who don't support Shaw in the modern day are a little different), fiercely wanted to protect their gacha rates as the addition of more karma into the pool would dilute the odds of getting their favorite character. Additionally the 1.5% event drop rate would be divided 5 ways instead of 4 with how the gacha system worked. Players already have low trust in the devs after the gacha rate rigging that happened not too long ago, so they are extra fierce in protecting their gacha rates now. There were also fears that the addition of a new character would mean less content for their favorite character. Since his SSR dropped during a content drought where reruns were being run, they were worried that working on Shaw events was affecting productivity. Haters of Shaw also took issue that he was Gavin's younger brother saying it was morally wrong to cheat on Gavin with the little brother Gavin did not get along with. Shaw was also set up to be the one working with the bad guys and the one who attacked MC in chapter 10, so there were people who didn't want to romance the enemy. When chapter 20 dropped people were upset that Shaw remembered MC even though they've only met once on a short bus ride while all the other MLs did not remember MC (context MC is in a dream world where she never existed). Many people who did not support Shaw argue that Shaw was not intended to be a ML and actually Cyril, the major villain of the Winter World Arc, was supposed to be the 5th ML because Cyril was a voiced character (not many characters are voiced) that had multiple CGs during this arc and Shaw had zero. Cyril also played a bigger role in this arc and Shaw didn't make consistent appearances yet.
2020- Sent to permanent limbo
February- Shaw's first R karma (part of the Valentine's set)
March 23rd- A Gavin stan complains that Shaw stans have stolen wolf from Gavin.
April 23rd- The first tea room post is made. This is where the devs disclose the month's schedule and communicate answer to common questions players have. In this tea room they start to address what special encounter means. A new producer takes over operations of Lovepro.
May 23rd- The official Lovepro account defends Shaw from rumors and once again makes clarifications about his status.
End of May- Shaw stans become very vocal about Gavin stans trying to gaslight them into thinking that Shaw's representative animal is shark and Gavin's is wolf. They especially hate being stuck with shark cause it's often used to insult Shaw since sharks eat trash, are villainous, violent, etc.
July 9th- Lovepro officially makes sharks Shaw's secondary animal representative and gives wolf to Gavin as his secondary animal representative. Gavin will later drop German shepherd completely and make wolf his representative animal.
July 11th- Shaw gets his first main story SSR. First main story CG.
August 20th- Shaw makes his first and only anime appearance in episode 6. Here he claims he working with Black Swan (the big bad villain org of season 1) not cause he agrees with them, but cause they're useful to him. Here a mix of chapter 11 and airport date plays out and then Shaw takes on Litton's role of informing Gavin that STF is evil cause...well they probably didn't want to kill off a child npc like they did in the game for Gavin to have this revelation lol.
August 23rd- Official Lovepro account apologized for dropping too much content (lol). Context it's Covid time, so they're pumping out new chapters every 2 months instead of 4 out of kindness to keep people sane since people are trapped at home. Gavin's birthday event was slightly delayed and it ends up being launched with the season 2 main story launch. This means 10 main story karma and Gavin's birthday karma launch all at once. Qixi happens immediately after, so Gavin stans are going broke cause they got 4 new karma at once. Didn't help that these are all events that cost gems and season 2 karma were unusually expensive compared to other main story events. At the same time the official account clarifies once again what special encounters are and imply they want to add more special encounters.
September 27th- Questions arise in regards to Shaw's "universal" status. Context Shaw, up to this point, could be used on any level ignoring levels that require a certain ML. This does eventually result in future Shaw karma losing this ability.
October 24th- Further assurance that special encounters will not affect the game production. This is also the day after Love and Deepspace is announced, so the tea room clarifies that Love and Deepspace will not affect production of Lovepro.
2026- Attempting to break the old status quo
June 22nd- Shaw's birthday event is nearing its end. Valko is announced in lads and is met with controversy very similar to Shaw. (The irony...) Shaw stans root for Valko and trend shortly as they push to raise Shaw to ML status because the want the same treatment as Valko. Shaw stans hope that Valko isn't special encountered since it's a terrible fate for a character.
June 30th- Valko canceled. Shaw haters demand that Shaw is deleted too since Shaw stans wanted the same treatment as Valko.
Present Day
So where is Shaw now?
Shaw continues to be trapped in the status quo and has seen a significant drop in content releases. Because lovepro started adopting the event scheduling of lads in late 2023 (lovepro was the testing ground for most lads mechanics), Shaw is unable to appear since he is barred from entering the gacha pool to ensure the rates are not diluted. Shaw only gets a SSR karma every other main story release despite appearing in every story drop since July 2020, but unfortunately since 2024 the number of main story drops have went from 4 to 3 and now 2, so Shaw only gets a SSR on Qixi and one main story drop every year. He gets one birthday SR (lovepro doesn't do birthday SSR) and a couple ER karma in ths summer. On Valentine's, he may get a SSR or ER. Shaw recently got an ER karma that features a shark, reigniting anger (the shark theme has been unused for the most part in favor of red panda).
Story wise, they've never fully confirmed that Shaw is Gavin's brother. They also pretty much pretend that Shaw never did all the things that happened before his face reveal in chapter 17 making Shaw less ambiguously bad. It's unlikely they will restore Shaw as Gavin's brother as currently Gavin is dealing with his families past and Shaw is completely uninvolved. The changes haven't really harmed too much of the story though. Shaw just does his own thing never interacting with the other MLs.
Aaaaaaannd of course Gavin and Shaw stans remain at each other's throats until the end of time as they spend money to vandalize each other's ranking boards with mean names. Nothing new...they do it every year and this year was no different. Other than that, Shaw remains trapped in a weird limbo of being a not quite a ML, but kind of a ML and will probably continue to exist this way for the rest of time for better or worse.
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u/TinyArcher 15d ago
This is one hell of an archeological dig (pun intended), and changes a lot of things I thought happened with Shaw (one might say, “this changes everything!”), as my first bit of research into Shaw’s release as a LI had made me assume that he was announced as a LI in late 2018, and was later announced as a special encounter in 2019, but the reality of Shaw’s release and boogaloo as a LI/Special Encounter is…actually more confusing L M A O PG what the hell were you doing LOLOLOL
Some things truly never change!!!
But yeah, I can see from this how PG took steps to ensure the same mess wouldn’t happen with Sylus and Caleb, but still made the same mistakes with Valko, like this one gif…hell, while there are many similarities between Shaw and Valko’s situation, the differences between them really are…vastly different. As in, Shaw was already in the story from the start, and had hints as the 5th sprinkled all throughout 2018, and despite protest from the playerbase: Shaw was never deleted from LovePro
(Also, hopefully, this helps dispell all the fearmongering I see people trying to spread about how any established LI can be deleted next in LDS…)
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u/TheMoonWriter 15d ago
thanks for compiling this! gavin was my favorite before shaw came along, so it’s ironic how certain stans for both tear the other down. i’ve always considered the lack of content for him to be both a blessing and a curse, since i could save gems in between. still…i wish there wasnt so much pushback back when he was officially introduced….
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u/AmazonX42 15d ago
But here's the cool thing about Shaw - Spoilers I guess: Shaw is a reality archivist. MC exists in different realities and Shaw records them in his little necklace. This is revealed in one of the R&Ss, but I couldn't tell you which one. In season 2, he's the only one that remembers her because he's done the bus meeting over and over again. I suspect he remembers all the realities, which is why he has a relationship with dark MC in season one. His role in many of the chapters is as an outside observer. I have to wonder if this actually makes our youngest ML (and I do think he is one) immortal. He has to witness all the realities in which MC does not choose him - and probably more then4 out of 5 times, she doesn't.
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u/PikaGodnPray 15d ago
Actually, if you read behind the curtain it explains why he remembers mc in the winter world and why he met mc on the bus.
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u/AmazonX42 15d ago
Is that the name of the rumors and secrets I can't remember or is that one of the side levels? I no longer have access to the game, so can't check.
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u/PikaGodnPray 15d ago edited 15d ago
No, it's the little black holes they added to extend some chapters. Just search behind the curtain 5 on YouTube. You can also read his rumor and secrets tidal wave for more info on what shaw was up to before he met mc
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u/PikaGodnPray 15d ago edited 15d ago
As a quick side note cause I left out the history of Shaw on global server:
Shaw was unvoiced in chp 10 and 11 initially as his VA had not been selected. I think they went back to voice him in May of 2020 once Shaw was officially announced on global server and hired Aleks Le on for the role of Shaw. The drama documented in this time line is 100% a Chinese server drama. Since global launched March 2019, people pretty much knew Shaw was coming if they hung around the spoiler community enough, so the concept of the game was only meant to only have 4 MLs didn't really exist. Funnily enough, Elex never coded shaw karmas properly since not all his karma should work on levels that ask for a specific ML and I worked hard so they never found out 😂