For the record

[china_shop]

I did a promo for Guardian at our local mini-fancon over the weekend, and afterwards several people said they'd seen fannish activity for it around the place but hadn't realised it was SF. When I posted about this yesterday, someone else said the same -- they didn't realise it was SF until they watched the first episode last week.

(Clearly we need more Dixing powers in our fanart, gifs and general discourse! ;-)

(Particularly since we had the usual discussion at the con about the lack of fandom-friendly procedurals these days, and how the rise of prestige TV has kind of killed juggernaut fandoms. At which point I piped up that Guardian beautifully spans both: there are enough monster-of-the-week cases that you can make fanworks in the spaces between, but it's arc-y enough to be satisfying in this age of narrative continuity. Win-win!)

Anyway -- question for fans of the drama: did you know it was SF before you started watching? For myself, I honestly can't remember.

Comments

[umadoshi]

For myself, I honestly can't remember.

Same! I know I knew very, very little about it.

[teaotter]

I read some of the discussion about Chinese censorship, so I knew it was sci-fi but didn't know what the sci-fi elements were, if that makes sense.

[naye]

Yeah, I'd heard it summarized as "gay supernatural romance", and knew that there was a "Special Investigation Division". I also knew about Chinese censorship re: the paranormal, so was aware of the "aliens!" figleaf. XD

[qikiqtarjuaq]

I was actually drawn in to the show because it was promoted to me as a sci-fi procedural with amazing chemistry between the leads! This was back when it was just beginning to air, so maybe the promotions of the show have evolved since then.

I kinda wish they played up the alien angles more, but I enjoyed the thinly veiled supernatural cases regardless.

[extrapenguin]

I only picked it up because I was spoiled for the time travel, so, yes. *g* Had I not known it was science fiction, I wouldn't have picked it up. I think I saw naye chat about it but scrolled past (but managed to osmose the bad ending), and then went to poke through the Yuletide requests to see if there were any cool prompts to write, and boom, time travel mentioned.

[anotherslashfan]

I knew nothing going in and had in fact confused it with Nirvana in Fire to boot >_<. Then I forced myself to watch slowly because I had started reading the novel in Chinese and was afraid I wouldn't finish reading if I watched the show first - so my impression was always muddled and I filed it under "supernatural" instead of scifi.

[abyss_valkyrie]

Now that you mention it,I didn't either! We should obviously icon/draw Shen Wei with his powers and the labs more often!

[trobadora]

I knew. I knew next to nothing about the plot, but I wouldn't have checked it out if I hadn't known the genre. (Things that aren't SF, fantasy or detective stories are generally a hard sell for me. And SF is my favourite genre.)

[sakana17]

I didn't know when I first heard of it and first saw people I followed mentioning they were watching it. In fact, for a while, I got it confused with a standard American police procedural that didn't have any appeal to me, and I was very puzzled as to why it seemed to be developing fannishly. Then bonibaru showed her vid at a con--I missed seeing the vid, but my friends who did all told me you HAVE to watch this show, it seems like something you'd like, and IIRC at least one person said it seemed to have fantasy elements in it, but that info didn't stick with me until ranalore posted about the show. Then I knew it was SF/fantasy and was ready to dive in.and have not surfaced since :)

[tsubame_17]

I can't tell you if I really knew about SF. I through "OH! a slash chinese novel do it for/from China?! What are they going to do?!"
I don't think too much in the universe if the fanservice is good ( and I don't need much for that, I create it so...)

[firestar]

Idk if I knew it SF at the time, but given the person reccing it to me has been a friend through many fandoms there's a pretty good chance I did. About all I remember from being recced it, though, is having Shen Wei pimped at me because she knows me WELL and also Da Qing as 'a cute catboy who wears bells around his neck' that she thought I would probably like as well. She absolutely was not wrong. XD