Ahem. Yeah. Q is not easy when you're dealing with character names. Though, somewhat absurdly, it would be easier for me if I was trying this at some future date after I've written a couple of other fan fiction projects I have planned. But I haven't, so...I'm having to cobble together a post about characters who have been quite minor in what I've written so far. Even worse, one of the characters is exclusively from something I haven't edited and posted yet, and two others get a lot more for me to talk about if I use their appearances in things I haven't edited and posted yet. 😰 (More and more proof that I may have decided on this theme without quite enough due thought...)
Oh well.
Let's get into it, then.
I guess we can start with the one that's oldest. In 2012, I hated my NaNoWriMo project so much that upon its completion I closed the file and didn't open it again for almost ten years. At which time I read it to comfort myself that my new project was better than it was...only to feel like in many (most?) ways my new project was actually worse. To provide myself a constant reminder that my skills seemed to be atrophying rather than improving, I posted the whole novel, unedited, to AO3.
In that novel, the heroine's culture is kind of a hybrid of Chinese and Japanese, but the names are all Chinese, sourced from a writer's aid book on character names from different cultures/languages. (Though rereading bits and pieces of it now that I have more knowledge of how Chinese names work, I'm not sure if I should say "I made mistakes" or just that I had that fantasy world's names work differently than Chinese names do, despite the names being linguistically identical.) The heroine's childhood friend and kinda/sorta childhood sweetheart is named Qiu Yun.
He's a sweet guy, a bit ruled by his passions, and gets himself killed in battle for the heroine's sake.
There's, uh, not really a lot more to say about him than that.
So...
After that, chronologically, there's no other Q names until I started writing Mo Dao Zu Shi fanfic, since Q names are not common in most languages. (Unless one wanted a character (nick)named Queen. Which technically some of my Suikoden fanfics had, since Queen is the name of a character in Suikoden III, but I'm endeavoring not to go back that far in selecting works for this.)
As to the MDZS characters with Q names, unfortunately my own rules prevent me from using Wen Qing, about whom there's lots to say, since I'm going by the "whatever name is used first in speaking about them" meaning that for MDZS characters you have to use their family name, unless they haven't got one.
Which is why I can use a-Qing for this, because she only has that name. (Why MXTX put two different women with the given name Qing in the same book is a question, but not one I have any answer to. Though the Netflix subtitles on the live-action version decided to get around that by changing a-Qing to a-Jing.) Unfortunately, though I have some fics planned where a-Qing will play a much larger role, she basically only has cameos in the ones I've written so far, and one of the ones she cameos in hasn't been edited and posted yet.
In canon, a-Qing is a fun character, and very much the type I've always enjoyed. She's a smart-mouthed teenage thief, but also something of a con artist, in that she tricks people into believing she's blind, so she can also get hand-outs as well as using her alleged blindness to avoid (at least some of) the suspicion whenever something she's stolen is noticed to be missing. The way she accomplishes this is that, somehow, she was born with pure white eyes, so she looks blind even though she can see. (This was not the case in the live-action version. For some reason, there she had normal eyes, so it's unclear why in the world she would have chosen the blind routine.)
Anyway, in the 1980s alternate universe MDZS fic "The Way You Tease," I had a-Qing show up very late in the fic, when Mo Xuanyu is fleeing for his life from people who want to murder him. He's trying to get on the first bus out of town...
He glanced over at the bus that was slowly accepting passengers. “I need to get on the bus to Detroit,” he said.
“I’ll be glad to sell you a ticket to Detroit, but you know you can’t take that animal on board the bus, don’t you?”
While Mo Xuanyu was frozen by this uncomfortable realization—what would happen to Princess if he just set her loose here?—a young woman’s voice suddenly shouted “How horrible!”
The girl in line behind him made her way up next to him, tapping a cane in front of her as she walked. “Would you really part a poor little blind girl from her seeing-eye dog?” she asked, aiming her big, pure-white eyes at the man, even as they began to tear up.
As the people in the line behind them began to mutter, the clerk swallowed heavily. “Oh, fine,” he sighed, “but you need to put a proper seeing-eye harness on that animal, little girl!”
“Of course!” she replied, with an astonishingly chipper smile, considering she had been on the verge of tears only a moment ago.
“That’ll be two tickets for Detroit, then,” the clerk said, punching in the fare before Mo Xuanyu could reply. Not that he could have very well denied that the girl was with him after that little display.
“I’ll just hold onto big brother’s arm on the way to the bus,” the girl said, smiling widely as she latched onto his arm with unnerving precision.
What could he do but help her over to the bus, still holding Princess’s leash in the other hand? Thankfully, Princess didn’t seem to take exception to the girl—she was always the most friendly of the dogs, even to people who hadn’t fed her—so there weren’t any problems until they got to the bus itself, where Mo Xuanyu had to uneasily explain that his blind sister needed her seeing-eye dog, and that the man at the ticket counter had said it would be all right.
They were allowed on board, but very reluctantly, and they had to sit all the way at the back…
…and they had no sooner sat down than Mo Xuanyu noticed that the girl was counting a large and suspiciously familiar stack of bills.
“Give that back!” he snapped, snatching it away from her. “How did you—when did you rob me?” he asked, even as he put the money back in his wallet.
“You’re about as observant as a tree stump,” the girl told him, sticking her tongue out at him. “It wasn’t hard.”
“And how could you cou—wait, you’re not really bli—!”
Her hand clamped down over his mouth before he could finish the word. “Don’t tell everyone that, moron!” she hissed in his ear. “You wanna get your dog to Detroit or don’t you?”
“Yes, of course I do,” Mo Xuanyu admitted, sighing.
“Then you can just hush up about my eyes.”
“How do you make them look like that?”
“They’ve always looked like this,” she said, shrugging. “It comes in handy. No one suspects the sweet, little, blind girl of robbing them.”
“Then why are you getting on a random bus with a total stranger?”
The girl blushed. “Okay, so sometimes they do suspect the sweet, little, blind girl.”
Mo Xuanyu laughed. “I bet it’s more often than just sometimes.”
“Anyway, why were you getting on a random bus with a dog wearing the girliest collar I’ve ever seen? Or did you really buy a pink sequined collar for your dog?”
He sighed. “No, I didn’t, and no, she’s not my dog. But she likes me better than her old mistress, don’t you, Princess?” He scratched behind the dog’s ear, and she licked his hand.
“Eew, do you have an unsavory relationship with it?”
Mo Xuanyu blanched. “What? No!”
Half the people on the bus turned to look at him at his outburst, and the girl burst out laughing. “You’re pretty funny, gege.”
“My name is Mo Xuanyu.”
“You can call me a-Qing,” she said, taking his hand. “So…where are we going?”
“The bus is headed for Detroit.”
“I know that. But is that where we’re stopping?”
“I don’t recall asking you to accompany me anywhere.”
A-Qing cackled, and elbowed him gently. “Does gege want to have to give up his little Princess in Detroit? Or would he rather get to take her with him on the next bus he boards?”
He sighed. “I’m headed for California,” he said.
“Ooh, sounds perfect! Nice warm nights in case I can’t steal enough for a good place to sleep.”
“A girl your age shouldn’t sleep on the streets.” She couldn’t be a day over sixteen, if she was even that old. And she was a pretty little thing; straight men would probably be lining up to take advantage of her if her eyes didn’t look like that.
“Aw, is gege worried about his little sister?”
Mo Xuanyu scowled. “Well, if you don’t want a friend, then—”
“No, I—a friend sounds nice,” she admitted, with a very genuine smile. “I’ve never really had one.”
“Me, either,” he admitted. “But I’m hoping I can start over in San Francisco.”
“Sounds fun!”
Aside from a little bit further dialog, that's the extent of her appearance in the work, though. Her other cameo is in my most recent short fic, currently titled "Last Loop," which I talked about in the post on Lan Wangji. This is a very different a-Qing, because she's much, much younger.
Baoshan-sanren walked down the path towards the village, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Despite the reputation that the normal folks gave her, even she could not be fully self-sufficient on her mountain, not with young disciples to feed and keep healthy. But this village was good at keeping secrets; in the centuries since she starting depending on them for the few things she could not produce herself, she had never had them betray the secret of her presence to the rest of the world.
Thus she was taken by surprise when a small child in the road toddled over to her. The child was exceptionally small, at most two or three years old, and appeared to have been born blind, and yet the child smiled up at her, its grimy little face aimed directly at Baoshan-sanren’s. “The nice gege sent this,” the child said, holding out a folded letter towards her.
Perplexed, Baoshan-sanren took the letter, and found that it did indeed have her name written on the outside in a very poor hand. She opened the letter warily. “Great immortal, I beg you to take in this little girl. Her name is a-Qing, and her parents have refused to love and care for her ever since she was born. They look at her eyes and think she is cursed because she looks blind and yet can see as well as you or I. They had not yet abandoned her when I rescued her from their home, but they would have soon, and they had already begun abusing her physically. I don’t know if she has any gift for cultivation, but she is quick-witted and has a good heart. If you bring her back to your mountain, I know she and Xiao Xingchen will become like brother and sister straight away. Please take pity on this poor child, and protect her from the evils of this world. Even if you won’t raise her yourself, you must know someplace in the lower world that would take her in and care for her properly despite her abnormal eyes.” It was signed as being from “one whose mother owed you everything in her life.”
This child…this letter…
It wasn’t the child’s pitiful state that most engaged Baoshan-sanren’s interest. Any number of temples would raise the girl despite the color of her eyes.
But how did the writer of the letter know the courtesy name she had selected for her most recent disciple? She had not yet told it to anyone, not even the boy himself. The mystery was enticing, and she would surely never learn its solution if she sent this child away.
Other fics I hope to write someday that will feature a-Qing more prominently are mostly of the "what if Wei Wuxian raised himself alone in the streets and had a whole crew of other homeless children following him" variety. 🤣 Oh, and while we don't technically know that a-Qing's family abandoned her, considering she's already living in the streets and stealing to feed herself by the time she's about twelve--plus the fact that she doesn't seem to have a family name--I think it's safe to assume that they did in fact abandon her. Possibly in more of a "her parents just died and her relations think she's to blame because of her weird eyes" scenario, but since we're not told what happened in canon, I figured I was free to invent this particular backstory.
Moving on past a-Qing, there's the Qin Clan, of which in canon we know of three specific members: the head of the clan, Qin Cangye, his wife Qin-furen, and their daughter Qin Su. (Omitting some spoilers here, obviously...*cough*) All three of them are mentioned extensively in the final chapter and epilogue of "A Hidden Road" but aren't actually actively present as characters. (In the original novel, only Qin Su was an active character; the others are absent characters spoken about by others.)
However, in the stupidly long Jiang Cheng fic I spent the last year working on, Qin Cangye does actually show up as a character. He first appears in the late stages of the Sunshot Campaign, while the various clan leaders are trying to figure out how best to win the war. So at that stage he's mostly all business, except in one moment where Jiang Cheng and his aunt (heiress to the Yu Clan) have just left the room and so certain of the men are gossiping about how terrifying his aunt is.
“She reminds me precisely of Yu-furen,” Jin Zixuan said. “The resemblance is uncanny.” He frowned. “Not that dissimilar to the way my mother behaves towards my father,” he added in a much quieter voice.
“Oh, is that why you broke off your engagement to Jiang-guniang?” Qin-zongzhu asked, laughing. “Afraid that she’ll end up becoming like her mother?”
Jin Zixuan avoided his gaze, looking troubled. “Of course not.”
“You know, my own daughter is about your age,” Qin-zongzhu went on. “I think a-Su would make you a fine wife. She’s as kind and gentle as any girl could be—and well refined and noble enough to be the future mistress of Golden Carp Tower.”
“Jiang Yanli is no different,” Lan Wangji said. He didn’t entirely approve of Wei Ying’s nearly obsessive relationship with his shijie, but now that he had spent more time in her presence, he could easily understand why Wei Ying had become so attached.
😅 Problematic. 😅 (But fortunately Qin Cangye does not get his way, and Jin Zixuan still ends up with Jiang Yanli.)
Anyway, after the Sunshot Campaign is over, then Qin Cangye starts displaying more distinct behavior...in the form of always doing and saying whatever would be best for the Jin Clan. The word "puppet" is often applied to him, in fact. (And since this is an AU of the drama's canon, where "puppet" was applied to a type of enemy...)
“As the seat of a former Great Clan—and the home for more than a century of the leader of the cultivation world—Qishan should not be ceded to any but one of the Four Great Clans,” Qin-zongzhu said. As always, he was every bit as much of a puppet as anything Wen Ruohan had ever unleashed on the battlefield.
It's only very late in the fic that we get any insight into Qin Cangye as a person beyond "loyal lapdog of Jin Guangshan." (His conclusions below about Jin Zixuan and Jin-furen are flat-out wrong, btw, and the reader is very well aware of this...as is Jin Guangshan.)
Lately, Qin Cangye had found himself summoned to Lanling so frequently that he had decided to leave the clan in the care of his head disciple and simply shift his household to Lanling until matters settled down at Golden Carp Tower. Strangely, his wife refused to accompany him, saying that the air in Lanling disagreed with her, and that she would prefer to remain at home, running the clan in his place. Privately, Qin Cangye was a bit concerned that she might be having an affair, but hopefully his disciples would notice if she was having a man visit her chambers at night while he was away.
He didn’t have time to worry about his own family, in any case. Jin Guangshan’s family was in shambles, and everyone had to help him try to pick up the pieces. It had been so long since any news had reached Lanling about either Jin-furen or Jin Zixuan that no one had any doubts: both had clearly died of their illness, and Jin Guangshan simply couldn’t bear to admit to his losses. Worse still, Jin Zixun had publicly died a horrible death, cursed by some malicious individual, only to be posthumously accused of having cast the curse himself. On top of those losses, Jin-zongzhu had sent for two of his illegitimate sons, only to have one disappear from his family home and the other to…well, Qin Cangye wasn’t sure if that Meng Yao was refusing to heed his father’s summons out of spite at the way he had been treated in Nightless City or if Lan Xichen was for some reason refusing to allow him to make the journey to Lanling. Of course, Jin Guangshan had far more than just those two bastard sons to call on, but most were of origins almost as shameful as Meng Yao’s, while not displaying his intellect or skill, making them far from appealing as potential heirs. At least the vanished boy, Mo Xuanyu, had come from a good household, but that only made his disappearance all the worse.
To think that Jin Guangshan, the peerless head of the illustrious Jin Clan could be reduced to such a miserable position that his own court was now pitying him! Qin Cangye could barely stand to see his dear friend in such a sad state, and yet he had no choice but to attend on him day after day, watching him eat himself up with suppressed rage.
Ultimately, I suppose, he still very much has the "loyal lapdog" mentality, but with a bit more dignity than the other loyal lapdog characters. 😅
Finally, the last Q character is an original character in that same super-long fic. In the course of that fic, I needed Wei Wuxian to have some disciples of his own, to teach his new techniques to. (Unlike his new techniques in canon, these ones are not considered deviant, so he doesn't need to keep them secret for his own protection. Also plot reasons required him to teach them to others.) One of those disciples is named Qi Xing.
Wei Wuxian turned his gaze towards Deng Enlai and Qi Xing. “I know you two both have your golden cores already, so I presume you learned to fight before coming to Lotus Pier?”
Deng Enlai nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, shifu, I learned at the temple before I came to study from you!”
“I don’t know any proper sword skills,” Qi Xing said. “As with the rest of my cultivation prior to joining the Jiang Clan, I only learned bits and pieces here and there from wandering cultivators. But I do know the basics of using a sword like normal men do.”
“You’ll want to study the sword from Jiang Cheng, then,” Wei Wuxian said, nodding. “I’m sure he won’t mind another pupil.” He paused, frowning. “Well, probably. I might have to teach you if he’s in a bad mood. But I’m better than he is at the sword anyway, so that’s fine.”
None of the OCs who are his disciples have a lot of time dedicated to them, so it was hard to characterize them much at all, but I did manage to do a bit of characterization. One of them, Zhao Yongrui, is ten years older than Wei Wuxian, and thus a veteran in almost all things, and due to a childhood trauma involving having been briefly possessed, he's quite serious; he's a former member of the Zhao Clan, so he's fully trained in cultivation. Deng Enlai is a few years younger than Wei Wuxian, extremely eager, lacking in experience in almost all things, and likely to run into a situation without giving it proper consideration first; as mentioned in the quote above, he had training at a temple (like Song Lan did) rather than in a cultivation sect. Qi Xing I tried to make a bit in between them as a character: he's around Wei Wuxian's age, and has a moderate amount of experience in most things (probably more than he should for his age, given the Sunshot Campaign), and tries to be reasonably calm and collected; he was a wandering cultivator before joining the Jiang Clan, and had only ever been trained by other wandering cultivators. There's not a lot to say about him, though, being an OC added because the plot required it.
Oh, except that he had this to say about seeing Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen in combat:
“I was fighting the fierce corpses, so I didn’t see all of it, but what I did see was quite something! Those two are amazing, shifu! I’ve got to admit, if I wasn’t able to study under you, I’d want to study under them.”
Anyway, as I said at the start of the post, I'd have more to say on Q-named characters in the future, because (as I mentioned on the F post), I definitely want to write a My Time at Sandrock fic at some point, in which case I would be able to talk about Qi.
He's fun. 😆
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