poorlittlesange | rubi app;

PLAYER

Player Name: ray!
Pronouns: she/her
Are you over 18? ohyes.
Contact:

ragweed
Current Characters: n/a
Triggers: animal cruelty (specifically anything that has to do with cats), eye trauma

STATISTICS

Character Name: Jin Guangyao (courtesy name--this is how he will introduce himself and the name he will respond to in-game); Meng Yao (birth name; may come up in his app when discussing his past, or in exposition in tags, but he will not introduce himself this way); Lianfang-zun (title given to him after his accomplishments during the Sunshot Campaign)
Character Canon: Chinese book series 魔道祖师 (pinyin: Mó Dào Zǔ Shī; English: Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation).
Character Age: early 20s
Canon Point: shortly before Nie Mingjue's death.
Link to History: Link
Skills:

Eidetic memory. Jin Guangyao possesses a photographic memory and is capable of remembering very minute details about everyone he meets.
Musician. Jin Guangyao is a gifted musician, and in all version of his canon seems to possess a natural talent for the guqin. Aided by his photographic memory, he is able to recall instructions perfectly after only one lesson, and can memorize written music after reading it only one time.
Espionage. During the Sunshot Campaign, Meng Yao spends at least two years undercover in Qishan as Sect Leader Wen Ruohan's chief torturer. To maintain his cover, he regularly kills and tortures Sunshot-allied cultivators, including cultivators of the Qinghe Nie. However, he also risks his life daily to pass key intelligence to the Gusu Lan Sect Leader, Lan Xichen, to bolster the position of the Sunshot forces.
He is a self-taught martial artist--more information is provided below.

Abilities:
Jin Guangyao is a cultivator. This is a glossary of terms for most things that will come up vis-a-vis Jin Guangyao's spiritual/power-based abilities as a cultivator. His 'power level', to be blunt, is low when compared to the core cast, but when compared to your bog standard human or rogue cultivators without a sect, he is still going to be more resilient, slower to tire physically or mentally, faster to heal from injuries, and capable of using spiritual weaponry without passing out from exhaustion. Specifics from MDZS:

Cultivators use their spiritual power to augment their martial arts. This glossary of terms contains the same sort of general information about martial arts practiced by cultivators within the broader genre. As with Jin Guangyao's cultivation, his lack of formal education in childhood places him at a disadvantage when it comes to outright martial combat with other cultivators, but he is nevertheless capable of drawing upon his limited reserves of spiritual energy to enhance his qinggong. Basically, his natural grace and agility far outpace the capabilities of the average human. Specific to MDZS:

Chord Assassination Technique.
Swordsmanship. As a result of his time spent serving as Nie Mingjue's right-hand man on the Hejian Front during the Sunshot Campaign, Jin Guangyao is familiar and competent with the traditional forms of Qinghe Nie Clan swordsmanship. He also is familiar with the Qishan Wen Clan's martial techniques (Nie Mingjue Disapproves -1000).
Spiritual Weaponry.

Curse Mark: Wilk. It looks like a spill of dark ink across the inside of his right wrist and spiders its way across portions of his forearm.

CHARACTERIZATION

FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES:
(NB: When discussing events in Jin Guangyao's life that happen before he receives his courtesy name, it is common practice in fandom to refer to him by his birth name of Meng Yao.)

FIRST EVENT: Meng Yao was born and raised in a brothel in Yunmeng, where his mother, Meng Shi, was forced to work as a sex worker. As a result, Meng Yao grew up a frequent victim of and witness to violence--towards himself, his mother, and other sex workers within the brothel, but he also believed, as his mother did, that Jin Guangshan would one day return for them both. This did not happen, and his mother died in the brothel after being seriously ill for many years.

SECOND EVENT: After Meng Shi's death, Meng Yao travels from Yunmeng to Lanling City to seek out his father, as had been his mother's dying wish. The short and not at all sweet summary is that once he arrives, he is immediately kicked down fifty stone steps from the top of Jinlintai's pavilion down to the very bottom, because he sadly showed up on the same day as Jin Guangshan's legitimate son's birthday. This cruel rejection by his father is the first of many, but it becomes the impetus for his decision to work even harder to earn Jin Guangshan's approval and recognition.

THIRD EVENT: Meng Yao first encounters the Sect Leader of the Qinghe Nie, Nie Mingjue, on the Hejian front during the Sunshot Campaign. After Nie Mingjue overhears cultivators from his own sect shaming and disparaging Meng Yao behind his back for seeking out legitimization from Jin Guangshan, Nie Mingjue aggressively confronts them for their unrighteous behaviour. He promotes Meng Yao a short time later in acknowledgement of his exemplary performance on the battlefield and in attending to Nie Mingjue's other needs as an assistant and deputy.

FOURTH EVENT (tw for a feigned suicide attempt):During their time on the Langya Front of the war, Nie Mingjue witnesses Meng Yao coldly killing a Jin Sect captain–an ally. To Nie Mingjue, Meng Yao's emotional defence of his actions stand in contrast to the cold manner in which he killed his superior, which fortifies Nie Mingjue's belief that Meng Yao's initial behaviour was the result of deception. This conversation ultimately results in Meng Yao tricking Nie Mingjue into believing that he is going to turn himself in to Jin Guangshan to face 'justice'. To escape, he feigns mortally wounding himself, then seals Nie Mingjue's spiritual power when Nie Mingjue attempts to heal him.

PHILOSOPHY: Per an interview that author MXTX gave in 2022, Jin Guangyao's core philosophy is ultimately about survival. To paraphrase (in English), MXTX described Jin Guangyao as "the type of person who will always bow, rather than break." And we see a lot of Jin Guangyao doing exactly that, figuratively and literally: he bows to the cultivators who call him the son of a prostitute and refuse to drink tea from teacups he has 'tainted' with his touch; he bows to tyrants and to aspiring tyrants, like Wen Ruohan and Jin Guangshan, respectively, because to stand up to them could get him killed.

DESIRES: Jin Guangyao is a character whose principle motivation and raison d'être is to fulfill his mother Meng Shi's lifelong dream for him before her death when he was a teenager: to claim his birthright by having his father recognize him as a legitimate son with a place within the Lanling Jin line of succession. Achieving this goal is not about vanity or pride for Jin Guangyao. It is about filial piety, and is also his only reliable path forward out of a life of poverty.

FEARS: Fundamentally, Jin Guangyao is insecure about his place in the world (understandably!) and afraid of almost everyone around him. These are the negative character traits that most define him; his ruthlessness and cruelty are often a direct reaction to having his deeply-seated fears and insecurities triggered by plot events or other characters, and they are the driving force behind nearly every key decision he makes. He is transparent about this fact to the people who are closest to him, namely Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue. I particularly lean on this quote from Jin Guangyao to Nie Mingjue when I write his character:

“You think that I should be afraid of nothing? Well I’m afraid of everything, even other people.”

This quote comes from a section of the text that is also useful for illustrating how Jin Guangyao's fear of losing his father's support--and, as a result, his already tenuous position in cultivation society--propels him down an increasingly dark and self-destructive path. The more deeply entrenched and entangled Jin Guangyao becomes in the bloody work of realizing his father's ambitions, the more impossible it becomes for him to ever find his way back out of that darkness.

GAMEPLAY

SUITABILITY: Jin Guangyao is at his most fun for me to write when I am forcing him to endure situations that make him so uncomfortable that he is constantly fighting the urge to climb out of his own skin, because that is when he is at his most interesting. With all his deeply-seated Issues around sex and sexuality courtesy of the circumstances of his birth, Rubi is a perfect fit for him. But I also love that so many characters in the game are villains or antagonists in their respective canons. In that respect I think he will be in good company. He's also naturally ambitious, and will be drawn to opportunities for political intrigue and maneuvering! Given that Jin Guangyao is a natural little diplomat whose ambition is both one of his greatest assets, as well as his Achilles' heel, I would love to see him embedded in mod and player plots.

SAMPLE:

MONSTER: Jin Guangyao's inner beast takes the form of a large huli jing, a nine-tailed fox spirit/demon from Chinese mythology that in folklore is frequently associated with trickery, deceit, and an inherent lasciviousness, which Jin Guangyao himself would find absolutely horrifying and repellant (so perfect for tormenting him, basically). When fully transformed he will be comparable in height to an adult bull moose, but with a physique that more closely resembles a South American maned wolf: long, slender legs, very large and rounded ears, a narrow, pointed muzzle, etc. The only additional spot of colour on his body will be a single splotch of bright red pigment between his eyes, where his red cinnabar mark would be when untransformed.

This is how I envision the stages of his transformation manifesting:

Stage 1: No physical changes, but mentally and emotionally he's like this. (No changes to his core abilities. Just an extra stressed out little guy.)
Stage 2: Small-scale physical changes. After a month spent trying to suppress his increased irritability, aggression, and sexual desire, Jin Guangyao's physical features become uncannily vulpine: large (or, well, larger) eyes with dark red irises and vertical slits for pupils; noticeably elongated canine teeth and nails. On the whole, however, he still looks more or less like a human man, and can likely pass for one in a crowd as long as no one looks at his eyes and teeth too closely. (Ability changes: slightly improved speed, agility, dark vision, and perception.)
Stage 3: More dramatic physical changes. After two months, Jin Guangyao's appearance is noticeably more animalistic, including the ears, eyes, sharper teeth and claws, and nine tails of a huli jing. He is taller, with longer, more willowy limbs that are covered in a layer of soft, fine white fur. ~~look i'm not saying he'll look like a furry but i'm also not NOT saying it~~ (Ability changes: moderately improved speed, agility, dark vision, perception; bite strength and scratching damage.)
Stage 4: Fully transformed, he takes on the shape described in the summary paragraph. As a huli jing, Jin Guangyao wears all of his deeply repressed rage and fury on the outside, rather than tamping it down beneath the polite and obliging veneer he presents to the rest of the world most of the time. He is likely to seek out anyone who has treated him disrespectfully while in this form, driven by the compulsive need to avenge slights against his honour, as well as his mother's--something he was never allowed in his own canon, unless he resorted to deceit, trickery, and murder to make it happen.