Fanon wanted: Evil Rebel Leader

[mecurtin]

So, in drama!canon this guy doesn't seem to ever get a name:



This is dumb and we need to come up with something to call him, especially when we're thinking about Ye Zun's backstory and characterization.

1. Is he present in the novel, and does he have a name there?

2. Does Chinese-language fandom have a fanon name for him, either on AO3 or on the other side of the Great Firewall?

3. What names have people come up with in fic so far? In Two circumference uses the name "Sima Tao". Anyone got a better idea?

Comments

[qikiqtarjuaq]

In the Chinese fics I've read, he's just called the Rebel Chief or Boss (老大). It's the approach I took in writing too!

I don't think he exists in the novel, Gui Mian should have a pretty different origin story. But I'm not really deep into the backstory part of the novel yet.

Haha. So I guess I'm not much help!

[mecurtin]

I'm prepared to assume that the rebel group, among themselves, just calls him Boss. And that would be the name Ye Zun would use for him. Is Gui Mian a personal name, or a title? I also see MianMian, but I don't know if that's fanon or novel!canon.

[qikiqtarjuaq]

Gui Mian is literally Ghost Face, and is the origin for the fans' nickname of him as Mianmian.

[naye]

Gui Mian is his name in novel canon - 鬼面. Literally "ghost" and "face", just as Shen Wei was "嵬" (you can see it's the same as the "Gui" character, only with a little spiky crown that's the symbol for mountain). "MianMian" is a cutesy nickname doubling the second character of Gui Mian. Fandom also likes to call Shen Wei "WeiWei" - as far as I know this is a common way of giving someone a cute/affectionate name.

[trobadora]

Hmmm, isn't "rebel leader" good enough if we want to talk about him in the context of Ye Zun's story?

(I mean, it would be useful if he had a canonical name! But he doesn't, and honestly, making up names for minor characters is always a gamble - as a reader, I often end up finding it disorienting.)

[mecurtin]

Not if you want to, for instance, have a story from Ye Zun's POV about the time he spent with them and the abuses he suffered there. Perhaps Ye Zun would just think of him as "Boss"--but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't think "Rebel Leader".

[naye]

In Chinese, they call him 贼酋, zéi qiú, which my subs translated as "Enemy Chieftain". As that is a bit of a clunky appellation, I decided to simply go with Zei Qiu. It's a lot easier than just using a title when he plays a rather large role in your story. (There's precedence, too - technically "Ye Zun" is more of a title than a name? Yè means "night", and zūn is an honorific.)

[mecurtin]

I was pretty sure I'd seen something like that in a fic, and it was from you!

You raise another question: what name to use for Ye Zun before his powers activate. What name did the rebels use for him in the camp, and what name would Shen Wei use in his heart (besides DiDi).

[naye]

I have spent WAY too much time thinking about all this. ♥

But: drama canon is extremely annoying in that it doesn't give us anything other names for Ye Zun. When they're tiny children in the flashback, Shen Wei calls him "didi" the whole time. And then as soon as we see him in the rebel's camp, he's being addressed with "Ye Zun".

In this thread foxghost suggested a name to match 'Wei', taken from an old Chinese poem? Which is a lovely idea if going outside of canon.

[extrapenguin]

Ooh, that's a nice name! Though I suppose anything that sort of matched and had a mountain radical would fit, as Shen Wei explains that his wéi means that he "comes from the mountain". As a more Anglophone-friendly alternative, I've toyed with 嶪, which a) is pronounced yè, so he'd be called Shen Ye and less people would wonder who this OC was, and b) is part of 岌嶪, which has a similar meaning to Shen Wei's 嵬 and 巍.

Alternatively, Dixingren of Shen Wei and Ye Zun's generation are in the stage of ancestral language loss where they don't speak it anymore but still have names using the pattern and words of the old language Dixingren used to speak before assimilating, so any introductions would go like this:
Shen Wei: "Hi! My name is Wrtjheisopfhdafijsöahuteruafhdsköjafbhdjkshalsf!"
Rando: "Uhh... Shen... Wei?"
Shen Wei: "Close enough."

[tinny]

"Hi! My name is Wrtjheisopfhdafijsöahuteruafhdsköjafbhdjkshalsf!"

This is hilarious. ("You won't be able to pronounce it anyway..." :D)


And I love the idea of using Ye.

[extrapenguin]

No but look I've even got half a conlang going on so I can come up with consistent names for Shen Wei and Ye Zun that would be terrible to pronounce! Also the names' meanings!

(Shen Wei's given name is very tentatively "Veifþrkëħtkvëzdrk", in which case Ye Zun's would be "‘iedznrvëzdrk". Their surname would start with "Šëǧn-" I have put perhaps way too much much thought into this. Also the transcription system is probably way too involved, but I hate digraphs.)

[tinny]

You are awesome! *applauds your linguistic diligence*

[galaxysoup]

I don't know enough to Chinese to come up with an appropriately punny name, so I'm just going to put this out there: Rebel Leader's hat has always reminded me of this chicken