Hmm, now I'm curious about what kind of takes on Ye Zun you have in mind, because I wonder if we're talking about different things. I've read very few Ye Zun stories and don't really have a good sense of how he's typically portrayed by the fandom, but I certainly think he's meant to be taken seriously!
Yeah, my impression is that some people just not take him seriously as a threat, treating it like it could have easily been resolved, which is not how I see it at all. (And not just because it undermines the gravitas and impact of the ending ...)
But I see what you mean now - thanks for writing it all out like this!
The way the series is filmed makes it hard for me to picture the "war" we keep hearing about, because it seems like the enemy army can't possibly consist of more than a couple dozen people, based on the evidence we see.
Yeah, that's a problem especially with the invasion at the end, and with the YOHE episodes as well, which also suffer from "five people tussling" syndrome. *g* I entirely understand your point there, and I agree that much of it is budget-related. Personally I don't have a problem taking that as, essentially the TV version of a stageplay, with all the associated unrealistic smallness, and mentally scaling it up to what makes sense in context, but I completely agree that it can be distracting sometimes!
it doesn't look like "we're just showing you the tip of the iceberg," it looks like that's really the size of the crowd
Thinking about it, I guess I'm taking it as neither, really, more as a degree of unreality/symbolic representation? I'm just thinking out loud here, puzzling out how my own mental approach works, LOL. I would have loved a more "tip of the iceberg" approach if they couldn't manage an actual crowd - I definitely prefer a more realistic style in general.
So we don't really get a sense of Ye Zun commanding some terrible army -- just a few individual puppets who are all a bit ridiculous and comic-book-villain-y, like Zhu Jiu.
To some degree I'd say the comic book villainy, and other comic book stuff, is built into the whole scenario with the Black-Cloaked Envoy already, and I don't find Zhu Jiu all that ridiculous, but I know he elicits that response in a lot of people. *g* Now that you say it, though, I think part of my own feelings may in fact be genre-related, not just because of the masked superhero aspect but also because "mutants" slots right into that genre in my head, mainly individual people wreaking havoc with their individual weird powers ... I hadn't thought of Guardian's structure in quite those terms before; thank you for making me think about this!
In terms of geographical range, their scope seems very limited, especially since (as far as I remember) we never get even the slightest mention or clue about the existence of such things as international travel or foreign cultures. Dragon City is treated as if it were the only place that mattered.
Yeah, agreed, there's a lot more scope for worldbuilding there, and they could have alluded to a great deal more even if they didn't have the budget to show much.
Obviously, the action of the story takes place in Dragon City because that's where the clash happened 10,000 years ago, where Shen Wei was buried, and (I guess?) the only place with portals to Dixing. But for me there isn't enough canonical worldbuilding to make sense of the way Ye Zun is talked about as a threat to Haixing at large.
Yeah, as far as we know there are only two portals, both created by Ma Gui, and one of them (the one in Snake Yashou territory) was inactive. So the SID and the government departments that deal with such things and the lab researching Dixing powers being in Dragon City makes sense on that front. But there's no ... idk, no intermediate step between "Dragon City" and "the whole planet" when it comes to the stakes - it's incidents endangering individuals in the city, and the city itself, and then suddenly "invasion!" and "planet in danger of collapsing!"
How major a city is Dragon City? Are there other countries in this world? Does Dixing extend underground all over the world? Is Dragon City the only place affected by Dixing's existence?
Those are very good questions, and ones I would have loved to see explored! As far as I can remember, it does say that Dixing's population is far smaller than Haixing's, so Dixing itself probably doesn't extend all that far, but even so, all we ever get to see is a few streets, the palace, a field of ruins, and the volcano. Budget, I know, but damn do I wish they could have really gone wild there!
Should there be, I don't know, international conferences about what's going on here, or some kind of attempt at military intervention or something, instead of just Zhao Yunlan's little team trying to singlehandedly save the entire world?
FWIW, my impression is that the government (which is either the government of one country or a world government, LOL, we don't even know that much!) is keeping knowledge of Dixing very contained, and the ministry in Dragon City is essentially acting on its own. The Haixing lab was an attempt by them to find a way to counteract the (perceived or real) threat, whereas they were all too willing to undermine the SID and get them out of the way when they weren't cooperating the way the Xingdu Bureau wanted, so IMO in the end whatever they'd done it would still have been Zhao Yunlan's little team on their own, just with even more government interference to get around. *g*
I feel like we need more suggestion, whether via dialogue or props or whatever, of what kind of world is supposed to be out there beyond the little we actually see, so we can get a sense of what's really at stake if Ye Zun comes to power.
That would have been lovely! I wonder if part of why Dixing worldbuiding is comparatively thin is because in the original novel, and possibly still in the original script for the drama, it's all supernatural and Dixing isn't Dixing, but literally Hell. Given censorship requirements, all that had to be removed, and they did a brilliant job with making it into aliens and mutants - I really love the additional themes they managed to build into the drama that way, around immigration and bigotry and such - but perhaps something fell by the wayside there in terms of worldbuilding? Idk.
There don't seem to be any contingency plans, or much organization on the Haixing side.
I'm not sure what that would have looked like, tbh, because I feel the SID did everything they could, given that they had very limited resources and were hampered by their own superiors getting in the way of things, and were constantly battered by Ye Zun's attacks even before they reached (supposedly-)global levels ...
But this is a case where I feel like fic writers have to do more than the show did, add more worldbuilding, give the people of Dixing more presence and agency, show the SID planning more, maybe researching more, doing more behind the scenes, etc., to convey the intended scale.
It's certainly easier to do it in fanfic than on TV! *g* But yeah, I very much appreciate it when fic does all that, because I want that, all of it!
But I guess what I'm saying is that to me, maybe Ye Zun's plot actually feels a bit too personal? I would have liked to see more evidence of how his power and influence extend (or are expected to spread) beyond just the damage we see inflicted on our heroes and their small part of the world.
It didn't feel that way to me (because *gestures above re: stageplay and genre and all*), but that makes perfect sense to me. Thank you again for explaining, that's been very helpful to me in thinking things through and understanding where people are coming from!
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Yeah, my impression is that some people just not take him seriously as a threat, treating it like it could have easily been resolved, which is not how I see it at all. (And not just because it undermines the gravitas and impact of the ending ...)
But I see what you mean now - thanks for writing it all out like this!
The way the series is filmed makes it hard for me to picture the "war" we keep hearing about, because it seems like the enemy army can't possibly consist of more than a couple dozen people, based on the evidence we see.
Yeah, that's a problem especially with the invasion at the end, and with the YOHE episodes as well, which also suffer from "five people tussling" syndrome. *g* I entirely understand your point there, and I agree that much of it is budget-related. Personally I don't have a problem taking that as, essentially the TV version of a stageplay, with all the associated unrealistic smallness, and mentally scaling it up to what makes sense in context, but I completely agree that it can be distracting sometimes!
it doesn't look like "we're just showing you the tip of the iceberg," it looks like that's really the size of the crowd
Thinking about it, I guess I'm taking it as neither, really, more as a degree of unreality/symbolic representation? I'm just thinking out loud here, puzzling out how my own mental approach works, LOL. I would have loved a more "tip of the iceberg" approach if they couldn't manage an actual crowd - I definitely prefer a more realistic style in general.
So we don't really get a sense of Ye Zun commanding some terrible army -- just a few individual puppets who are all a bit ridiculous and comic-book-villain-y, like Zhu Jiu.
To some degree I'd say the comic book villainy, and other comic book stuff, is built into the whole scenario with the Black-Cloaked Envoy already, and I don't find Zhu Jiu all that ridiculous, but I know he elicits that response in a lot of people. *g* Now that you say it, though, I think part of my own feelings may in fact be genre-related, not just because of the masked superhero aspect but also because "mutants" slots right into that genre in my head, mainly individual people wreaking havoc with their individual weird powers ... I hadn't thought of Guardian's structure in quite those terms before; thank you for making me think about this!
In terms of geographical range, their scope seems very limited, especially since (as far as I remember) we never get even the slightest mention or clue about the existence of such things as international travel or foreign cultures. Dragon City is treated as if it were the only place that mattered.
Yeah, agreed, there's a lot more scope for worldbuilding there, and they could have alluded to a great deal more even if they didn't have the budget to show much.
Obviously, the action of the story takes place in Dragon City because that's where the clash happened 10,000 years ago, where Shen Wei was buried, and (I guess?) the only place with portals to Dixing. But for me there isn't enough canonical worldbuilding to make sense of the way Ye Zun is talked about as a threat to Haixing at large.
Yeah, as far as we know there are only two portals, both created by Ma Gui, and one of them (the one in Snake Yashou territory) was inactive. So the SID and the government departments that deal with such things and the lab researching Dixing powers being in Dragon City makes sense on that front. But there's no ... idk, no intermediate step between "Dragon City" and "the whole planet" when it comes to the stakes - it's incidents endangering individuals in the city, and the city itself, and then suddenly "invasion!" and "planet in danger of collapsing!"
How major a city is Dragon City? Are there other countries in this world? Does Dixing extend underground all over the world? Is Dragon City the only place affected by Dixing's existence?
Those are very good questions, and ones I would have loved to see explored! As far as I can remember, it does say that Dixing's population is far smaller than Haixing's, so Dixing itself probably doesn't extend all that far, but even so, all we ever get to see is a few streets, the palace, a field of ruins, and the volcano. Budget, I know, but damn do I wish they could have really gone wild there!
Should there be, I don't know, international conferences about what's going on here, or some kind of attempt at military intervention or something, instead of just Zhao Yunlan's little team trying to singlehandedly save the entire world?
FWIW, my impression is that the government (which is either the government of one country or a world government, LOL, we don't even know that much!) is keeping knowledge of Dixing very contained, and the ministry in Dragon City is essentially acting on its own. The Haixing lab was an attempt by them to find a way to counteract the (perceived or real) threat, whereas they were all too willing to undermine the SID and get them out of the way when they weren't cooperating the way the Xingdu Bureau wanted, so IMO in the end whatever they'd done it would still have been Zhao Yunlan's little team on their own, just with even more government interference to get around. *g*
I feel like we need more suggestion, whether via dialogue or props or whatever, of what kind of world is supposed to be out there beyond the little we actually see, so we can get a sense of what's really at stake if Ye Zun comes to power.
That would have been lovely! I wonder if part of why Dixing worldbuiding is comparatively thin is because in the original novel, and possibly still in the original script for the drama, it's all supernatural and Dixing isn't Dixing, but literally Hell. Given censorship requirements, all that had to be removed, and they did a brilliant job with making it into aliens and mutants - I really love the additional themes they managed to build into the drama that way, around immigration and bigotry and such - but perhaps something fell by the wayside there in terms of worldbuilding? Idk.
There don't seem to be any contingency plans, or much organization on the Haixing side.
I'm not sure what that would have looked like, tbh, because I feel the SID did everything they could, given that they had very limited resources and were hampered by their own superiors getting in the way of things, and were constantly battered by Ye Zun's attacks even before they reached (supposedly-)global levels ...
But this is a case where I feel like fic writers have to do more than the show did, add more worldbuilding, give the people of Dixing more presence and agency, show the SID planning more, maybe researching more, doing more behind the scenes, etc., to convey the intended scale.
It's certainly easier to do it in fanfic than on TV! *g* But yeah, I very much appreciate it when fic does all that, because I want that, all of it!
But I guess what I'm saying is that to me, maybe Ye Zun's plot actually feels a bit too personal? I would have liked to see more evidence of how his power and influence extend (or are expected to spread) beyond just the damage we see inflicted on our heroes and their small part of the world.
It didn't feel that way to me (because *gestures above re: stageplay and genre and all*), but that makes perfect sense to me. Thank you again for explaining, that's been very helpful to me in thinking things through and understanding where people are coming from!