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xparrotI'm sick and can't concentrate enough to write so have been musing on Guardian instead, as you do, apropos of ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
brush_and_lantern 's current monthly theme, and have a question about Dixingren.
In the Guardian novel, being an urban fantasy, Shen Wei is a ghost/ghoul monster from hell. In the drama, which had to be "science fiction" due to censorship banning magic in modern settings, he and his people are (according to last-minute rewrites of the show) Dixingren, aliens who landed on the planet of Haixing and then mutated to develop dark energy abilities.
But if they are aliens, how close are Dixingren to the (apparently human) Haixingren? One would expect them to be a completely different species (or phylum! or kingdom!!), but in grand comic-book tradition they overtly appear physically identical to the Haixingren, and they may be able to interbreed (the characters speculate that some people, such as the web novelist in ep 7, might have Dixing genes, implying some Haixingren have a Dixing ancestor and so might develop powers). So do Dixingren actually have any physical differences, other than the superpowers?
Now, as a fanfic writer, I say hell yes, of course they do; what is the possible reason for making them aliens unless there are differences to explore? I'm biased, obviously; I love speculating about alien anatomy/biology and keep writing fic with Shen Wei being very non-human in ways that I doubt canon intended but entertain me.
There are more minor details. Like, in the novel Shen Wei as a soulless hell creature is cool to the touch, and some drama fic likewise have it that Dixingren are cooler or warmer than Haixingren. At least for me, I include this not because I think the drama's Dixingren are actually ghosts, but because I enjoy Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei having such distinct reminders of their being of two worlds, and also temperature differences are *ahem* hot...
Such differences raise interesting questions about how to distinguish Dixingren -- e.g. if they did have a different basal body temperature, infrared cameras could detect it. And indeed, it seems like the SID does have ways to physically identify Dixingren -- in episode 2 when the TK guy goes to attack Li Qian in the hospital, Lin Jing watching on the lab cameras gets an alert on his computer and reports, "This person's vital signs are very abnormal." (这个人的生命表征似乎特别异常). That he has an alert set up for this implies that Dixingren do have noticeable physiological differences from Haixingren -- at least some Dixingren, or some of the time, perhaps when they're actively using their powers? Likewise in episode 12, Lin Jing's scan of Shen Wei registers zero brain activity -- which could be a nod to his soulless existence in the novel, or could mean Shen Wei messed with the scan in some way, presumably because it might detect anatomical difference that he was trying to conceal.
But as far as I know, the show never explains exactly what those differences are. Minor body temperature variances is one type of sign that could be scanned for at a distance with current technology, so seems a likely possibility -- at the same time raising questions like, when Zhao Yunlan is trying to figure out Shen Wei's secrets, why doesn't he try more of such tests?
(My personal headcanon is the one I used in my own drama canon fix-it AU -- that the Dixingren aren't aliens at all but humans who were affected by the spaceship/meteor that crashed, gaining superpowers, and then were rejected by their people and over millennia the story became that they actually had come from the stars. It would explain why they look identical to Haixingren, speak the same language, have a similar culture. And any physiological differences that do exist are just due to the effects of dark energy. Frankly I assume this was the original story in the drama, and then it was either too fantastical or too much like X-men so they went all-in with the aliens? Which I will take, because hell yeah, aliens!)
ETA:qikiqtarjuaq suggests a different interpretation of the opening to explain why Haixingren, Dixingren and Yashou all seem so similar, that might be what the drama was actually going for?
brush_and_lantern 's current monthly theme, and have a question about Dixingren.In the Guardian novel, being an urban fantasy, Shen Wei is a ghost/ghoul monster from hell. In the drama, which had to be "science fiction" due to censorship banning magic in modern settings, he and his people are (according to last-minute rewrites of the show) Dixingren, aliens who landed on the planet of Haixing and then mutated to develop dark energy abilities.
But if they are aliens, how close are Dixingren to the (apparently human) Haixingren? One would expect them to be a completely different species (or phylum! or kingdom!!), but in grand comic-book tradition they overtly appear physically identical to the Haixingren, and they may be able to interbreed (the characters speculate that some people, such as the web novelist in ep 7, might have Dixing genes, implying some Haixingren have a Dixing ancestor and so might develop powers). So do Dixingren actually have any physical differences, other than the superpowers?
Now, as a fanfic writer, I say hell yes, of course they do; what is the possible reason for making them aliens unless there are differences to explore? I'm biased, obviously; I love speculating about alien anatomy/biology and keep writing fic with Shen Wei being very non-human in ways that I doubt canon intended but entertain me.
There are more minor details. Like, in the novel Shen Wei as a soulless hell creature is cool to the touch, and some drama fic likewise have it that Dixingren are cooler or warmer than Haixingren. At least for me, I include this not because I think the drama's Dixingren are actually ghosts, but because I enjoy Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei having such distinct reminders of their being of two worlds, and also temperature differences are *ahem* hot...
Such differences raise interesting questions about how to distinguish Dixingren -- e.g. if they did have a different basal body temperature, infrared cameras could detect it. And indeed, it seems like the SID does have ways to physically identify Dixingren -- in episode 2 when the TK guy goes to attack Li Qian in the hospital, Lin Jing watching on the lab cameras gets an alert on his computer and reports, "This person's vital signs are very abnormal." (这个人的生命表征似乎特别异常). That he has an alert set up for this implies that Dixingren do have noticeable physiological differences from Haixingren -- at least some Dixingren, or some of the time, perhaps when they're actively using their powers? Likewise in episode 12, Lin Jing's scan of Shen Wei registers zero brain activity -- which could be a nod to his soulless existence in the novel, or could mean Shen Wei messed with the scan in some way, presumably because it might detect anatomical difference that he was trying to conceal.
But as far as I know, the show never explains exactly what those differences are. Minor body temperature variances is one type of sign that could be scanned for at a distance with current technology, so seems a likely possibility -- at the same time raising questions like, when Zhao Yunlan is trying to figure out Shen Wei's secrets, why doesn't he try more of such tests?
(My personal headcanon is the one I used in my own drama canon fix-it AU -- that the Dixingren aren't aliens at all but humans who were affected by the spaceship/meteor that crashed, gaining superpowers, and then were rejected by their people and over millennia the story became that they actually had come from the stars. It would explain why they look identical to Haixingren, speak the same language, have a similar culture. And any physiological differences that do exist are just due to the effects of dark energy. Frankly I assume this was the original story in the drama, and then it was either too fantastical or too much like X-men so they went all-in with the aliens? Which I will take, because hell yeah, aliens!)
ETA:
qikiqtarjuaq suggests a different interpretation of the opening to explain why Haixingren, Dixingren and Yashou all seem so similar, that might be what the drama was actually going for?
