The original Hua Mulan.
Mulan is a historical and/or legendary figure of Ancient China. Her original published appearance was a poem titled the Ballad of Mulan. It has been adapted into other media since ancient times, with novels, stage productions, and movies all being used to retell the story. The most fandom-relevant of these was the 1998 animated film by Disney, Mulan.
The mini for Mulan is a mini-Hun.
In Canon[]
In all versions of Mulan's tale, she enlists in the Chinese army disguised as a man to keep her father out of the battle, as he is quite old. She gains great fame in battle, which she ultimately retains after her true gender is revealed.
They didn't have disguise generators back then.
The Disney adaptation introduces several differences from the original tale for drama's sake. (Also, annoying cartoonish animal sidekicks, but we won't talk about those.) The enemy force threatening is the Hun army attacking all of China, rather than more local barbarians raiding Mulan's home province. Mulan leaves her family in secret, rather than her father allowing her to take his place after she defeats him battle. The fighting (seemingly) lasts much shorter than the ten years of the original war. Mulan's identity is discovered before the war ends, leading to temporary anger on the army's part; the original Mulan kept her gender a secret throughout the entire campaign. The Disney version also had a crappy DVD sequel no one cares about.
Different sources give different names for Mulan's family. Some early sources use Zhu or Wei, but the most popular is Hua due to the pun it produces. ("Hua Mulan" means "magnolia flower" in Chinese.) Disney!Mulan's family name is Fa, and she goes by Fa Ping while disguised as male.
In Badfic[]
Most, if not all, Mulan-based fics are centered on the Disney movie. Mulan suffers from the usual nonsense, like any continuum. In defiance of the canon ship of Mulan/Shang, Shang is sometimes slashed with other soldiers, or Mulan is bizarrely shipped with Shan Yu. A fairly common trope is to apply actual Gender Bending or transexuality to Mulan, rather than just having her dress as a man, typically through some vague magic brought on by Mulan's ancestral spirits. This can be good or bad, depending on the writing.
Due to the massive gulf of time between the era in which the tale takes place and the advent of fanfiction on the Internet, anachronisms are a very frequent pitfall of Mulan fics. Failure to research Ancient Chinese culture and customs is another frequent problem.
Missions in this Continuum[]
All reports are listed alphabetically by agent name, in the case of agents with multiple missions, or by mission name.
Agents Specialized in this Continuum[]
Agents are considered specialized in a continuum when they have handled at least three missions in the canon. Most of these agents are also active/specialized in other continua. It is often not the agents who decide where their specialty lies, but the Flowers that keep assigning missions to them.
- Agents Cyba Zero and Eagrus Khan, (Department of Technical Errors)
Agents Not Yet Specialized in this Continuum[]
Agents with fewer than three missions in this continuum are not specialized, yet. They probably soon will be.