Shang Qinghua

OOC Information
OOC Information
Name/handle: Rose
Discord contact: rosebriars
Other contact: Rosebriar

Pronouns: they/them
Permissions link: https://airplaneskyward.dreamwidth.org/261.html
Other characters played: Lucia Corina
Do you have a reserve for this character?: Yes

IC Information
Canon: Scum Villain's Self-Saving System
Character: Shang Qinghua
Canon point: After the events of SVSSS, but before he and MBJ have actually gotten properly together, so he doesn't have any kind of self-assurance there.
Canon intensity: Man what AREN'T the stakes. People get dismembered! Shang Qinghua has pretty much spent most of his life waiting to be murdered by his favorite character, because that's the canon ending for the background cannon fodder character he transmigrated into! And even when he likes him, Mobei-Jun is sort of... violent, because he's a demon lord. And there's all kinds of demons that skin people and eat people and try to murder all humans and stuff. Also the sex pollen plants and other aphrodisiac poisons and succubi and stuff everywhere, due to the genre of the original novel.
World information: Xianxia ancient china, pretty much. High fantasy, flying on swords, cultivators, demons. Not a ton in the way of technology. However! He's a transmigrator from regular modern earth circa 2015! So he also knows that milieu, if a bit faded by this point because he's been in PIDW for like... sixty years or something at this point.
Character biofacts: He's probably mentally about eighty in terms of lived experience by now. Physically... his body is about 60, but he looks about 20 due to being an immortal master. He's a male human cultivator.
About the character:
"In truth, this person's appearance could have been considered proper and handsome, it was just that in his every word and action there was an inescapable air of sleaziness."

Shang Qinghua is incredibly self-serving, in fair part because he transmigrated into a background cannon fodder character doomed to die. Doomed, in fact, to be killed by the king he served, Mobei-Jun, the ice demon that Airplane SHooting Towards The Sky had written as his ideal man in Proud Immortal Demon Way. Mobei-Jun is basically the only competent male character that Luo Binghe doesn't kill off to remove the competition/who isn't a villain in the original Proud Immortal Demon Way.

Okay, let's rewind. Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky was the pseudonym of a Chinese millenial who wrote a popular and terrible stallion webnovel called Proud Immortal Demon Way. PIDW was famous for its world-dominating half-demon protagonist with dozens of wives, constant face-slapping of pathetic villains, and lots and lots of 'papapa' (sex scenes). PIDW also contained a lot of aphrodisiacs and weird monsters. At one point while reading comments about the novel and laughing at the haters (like Peerless Cucumber, his most dedicated anti-fan), he spilled his instant noodles, accidentally kicked the power cable out, lunged to plug it back in so it wouldn't lose the day's writing, and was electrocuted and died.

He was reborn as the baby that would one day be Shang Qinghua, with an unforgiving transmigration system that required that he facilitate the plot as written. He had to join Cang Qiong Shan Sect, he had to become Peak Lord of An Ding, he had to let Luo Binghe be taken as disciple by Shen Qingqiu and then abused by him. And he had to become the scum spy servant of Mobei-Jun.

When he was a teenager, he was part of a group of An Ding peak disciples that was attacked by Mobei-Jun. He survived by quite literally clinging to Mobei-Jun's thighs and swearing eternal devotion. He couldn't bring himself to kill the injured demon when he fell unconscious from his prior injuries, couldn't bring himself to hurt the man he had designed to be perfect, destroy something so beautiful, so he hauled him back to town and hid him in a room in an inn and nursed him back to health. As soon as Mobei-Jun woke up, confused and defensive and really despising the feeling of owing his life to this random human, he started physically and verbally abusing Shang Qinghua and never really stopped. (But like, demons also express affection by beating you up, so it's like. Look this is a weird and unhealthy relationship but Shang Qinghua does think his king is sexy when he's mean, and Mobei-Jun isn't trying to be abusive by the time he falls in love with Shang Qinghua.)

When Luo Binghe was fourteen, Shen Qingqiu fell into a qi deviation, and Shen Yuan aka Peerless Cucumber, who had choked to death swearing at the ending of Proud Immortal Demon Way, transmigrated into his already an adult cultivator body. Shen Yuan managed to knock the plot off track enough that Shang Qinghua actually had some freedom, for the first time in decades. (Also, someone to talk to who knew what the internet was!)

Because the plot was changed, he hopes that his death at the hands of Mobei-Jun was averted--especially since he's never betrayed his king the way the original character would have!--but he's not actually confident about it. He's still kind of terrified that his king is going to decide he's done with this useless spy and summarily execute him at any moment. He's also fairly desperately besotted with his king and has no idea that his feelings are returned, because he's oblivious and because Mobei-Jun kind of fucking sucks at communication, not to mention the barrier of different cultural norms between demons and humans.

Shang Qinghua, due to living under the looming threat of his own grisly murder for decades, values basically nothing above his own skin. There is not really any level to which he won't debase himself if that's what it takes to survive. He's able to portray a respectable Peak Lord if he's in circumstances he can predict, but if things go off the rails he gets nervous and he babbles. The man is an anxious wreck and a motormouth and a fool.

Pre-transmigration name (fanon I just made up): Shang Beida, making him the other half of a really terrible joke about universities. It's not the same characters as the name of the university, though. It's 背打. Still 尚 for the family name. (So, pre-transmigration he's 尚背打 which can be read as like 'to esteem learning to calculate by heart' because I don't think someone would actually name their child after a university and post-transmigration and post-promotion to peak lord he's 尚清华 'to esteem clear magnificence' or some shit which is actually the same name as the university, airplane, you hack.)
Abilities: He can perform inedia, so he doesn't actually need to eat, though he loves to snack and would definitely prefer to eat, and he doesn't practice inedia with enough regularity to keep it up forever. He can write talismans with various spiritual effects. He's not awful with a sword, but anyone actually dedicated to fighting is probably better, and also he would rather just run away. He's very good at accounting and logistics. And writing thousands of words of really bad fiction a day. And looking pathetic. And pretending to faint.
Noteworthy items: Spiritual sword (which I have fanon named Kao Ci 靠 trust/depend on 词 words), seals (carved jade pendants) that would ordinarily summon backup from his peak or his king. Assorted qiankun pouches carrying emergency supplies--traps, talismans, talisman making supplies, aphrodisiac cures, general poison cures. A set of plain clothes in case he needs to disguise himself.
Mixed gender room ok?: yes
Player content notes/squicks: cockroaches and syringes
Anything else: He has a transmigration system, but I didn't really have any ideas what to do with it, and his system was never actually helpful to him anyway, so I just had it go on standby mode after he woke up on the ship. It could potentially be reactivated at some point, though, if there was something interesting to be done with it.
Voice samples: https://pluviooc.dreamwidth.org/682.html?thread=114858#cmt114858
https://pluviooc.dreamwidth.org/682.html?thread=137130#cmt137130
https://pluviooc.dreamwidth.org/682.html?thread=97962#cmt128170
https://pluviooc.dreamwidth.org/682.html?thread=114602#cmt138922