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sid_guardian2022-09-11 12:15 pm
china_shop) wrote in sid_guardian2022-09-11 12:15 pm
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Some rambly meta about Dixing Powers
I wrote some meta for Shadaras for guardian_wishlist 2022 (first posted to Gdocs).
Prompt: Worldbuilding and/or Meta: Dixingren Powers
Any headcanons about how they work! Are they lineage-related? What powers them? Who gets them, and how are they awakened? Are some kinds of powers more common than others?
Slightly tangential to your Dixing powers prompt, but I was thinking about how hands are so important for wielding dark energy. There are a few Dixingren who exert their powers in other ways (eg, Zheng Yi with her voice, the Master of Nightmares via eye contact), but mostly we see characters draw power from the aether into their hands, we see them shoot bolts of dark energy with their hands, and we see them manipulate fire, electricity, gravity, poisonous gas, water, etc, with their hands. Shen Wei writes messages and summons his dao that way, too.
(Would the web novelist’s work have had the same tragic consequences if he’d used speech-to-text software?)
(And is there anyone who can shoot dark energy from other body parts? What if someone perfected the art of using their knees? Possibly a bit gauche, but it would be a really neat surprise attack in a fight! Also, what about disabled Dixingren? I love the idea of people having developed alternatives, being able to work their powers with their feet or elbows or chins.) (For that matter, I guess Ye Zun kind of uses his nose? Though that’s to pull rather than push. ;-p)
Anyway, I assume most people use their hands because it allows for better control and aim. But alternatively, maybe there’s a common Dixingren mutation that results in having a specialised energy-manipulating organ in the palms of the hands. (Don’t mention this possibility to Professor Ouyang at the Department of Supervision research lab!)
I also assume that dark energy, when used in its pure form (rather than powering other Dixing abilities like the Master of Nightmare) has its own momentum. For bolts of energy/projectiles, people just shoot it straight out, but when it’s going to be used in a static way—for example, dark energy radar (Shen Wei), healing (Shen Wei, Zhu Jiu), or on-the-spot explosions (the Dixingren who blew up Zhao Yunlan’s mother and himself)—the user forms a spinning globe of energy.
In the scene where the Envoy intimidates Tan Xiao into revealing his electronics and admitting he’s not Dixingren, the Envoy makes a globe and uses that to remotely power a choking coil around Tan Xiao’s neck and lift him to dangle above the ground.
I feel like this energy globe formation probably takes a certain amount of control. (I’m not sure we ever see Ye Zun doing it? And it’s unclear, in ep 14, if Zhu Jiu is healing himself with a globe or just smushing a handful of diffuse energy on his wounded arm. (Oh, hey, maybe the energy-globe concentrates the power, and the diffuseness is what Zhu Jiu is finding so frustrating?))
Interestingly, Shen Wei can diagnose and heal without making an energy ball first: he does it to Zhang Ruonan (ep 3), Wu Tian’en (ep 5), and Zhao Yunlan (eps 16, 20, and lots of other times).
I wonder if it’s easier to manage if you slow the energy down first, though. Maybe Shen Wei has to use a globe to heal himself in his office in ep 2 because he’s pretty much exhausted his reserves with his dramatic display on the rooftop?
He consistently uses energy balls for dark energy vision/radar. (Oh, maybe he acquired the dark-energy vision power from a blind person?) And he's ambidextrous in this regard: we see him make a globe just in his right hand and just in his left.
In the mirror dimension (ep 6), Chu Shuzhi can’t access his power, but Shen Wei can portal in and restrain and suspend the Mirror Girl. Is he able to use his powers where Chu Shuzhi can’t because he’s so powerful overall? Or is it that he instinctively learned the Mirror Girl’s power and neutralised it in some way? Given what he told Zhao Yunlan, that he’s not more powerful, he just has more knowledge at his disposal (ep 15), I suspect the latter.
And finally, I was thinking about the nature of Chu Shuzhi’s strings. What are their properties?
We know they have a very high tensile strength: in ep 10 he uses them to break/move rocks, creating an entrance into the Hanga caves. They’re like Spider-Man’s webbing!
And they’re visible and distinctive enough that the hospital attacker in ep 2 recognised them. When Chu Shuzhi manipulates his puppet, are there implied/invisible strings? Or maybe the puppet thing is a different way of using his power.
Mostly Chu Shuzhi uses his (visible) strings to grab people directly and slam them into things, knocking the people unconscious (I don’t think the strings themselves induce the unconsciousness) or to grab objects to use as shields.
The strings disappear as soon as they’ve done their job, conveniently blinking out of existence, and I think it’s reasonable to interpret this ephemerality as one of their characteristics. Otherwise wouldn’t Chu Shuzhi have restrained the Shadow Man (end of ep 1) instead of just knocking him out?
But after a training session (ep 14), when Guo Changcheng skips away, Chu Shuzhi unwinds a broken/frayed strand of energy cord that’s been left wrapped around his fingers, suggesting Xiao Guo actually broke the cord this time instead of just swatting it away. Somehow, that strand persisted, so the cords must have some physicality to them.
(Also of note: when Chu Shuzhi’s training Guo Changcheng in ep 8, he says he uses less strength with him.)
The one time I can think of Chu Shuzhi using his strings on someone outside of a fight or training situation is at the end of ep 4, when Da Qing is unconscious and the face-stealer’s girlfriend starts to raise a cloud of poisonous gas. On Zhao Yunlan’s cue, Chu Shuzhi grabs Da Qing with his cords (looping his string around Da Qing’s waist) and pulls him to safety. Other than that, it would make sense if there were specific legal constraints on who Chu Shuzhi can fight with his strings in Haixing, I think, be that only Dixingren, only criminal Dixingren (a redundancy, in Haixing), or just only people who are a threat.
I wonder if the Envoy’s black energy ropes are a variation on Chu Shuzhi’s strings. Shen Wei uses the ropes to restrain people (eg, the Mirror Girl) and to choke Tan Xiao, and they seem a relatively stable manifestation of dark energy. Perhaps rather than copying Chu Shuzhi’s power outright, which might be disrespectful given they’re Chu Shuzhi’s family heritage (cf Dorinda’s fic, Some bright place), Shen Wei devised his own version, with slightly different properties.
END
guardian_wishlist 2022 (first posted to Gdocs).Prompt: Worldbuilding and/or Meta: Dixingren Powers
Any headcanons about how they work! Are they lineage-related? What powers them? Who gets them, and how are they awakened? Are some kinds of powers more common than others?
Hands
Slightly tangential to your Dixing powers prompt, but I was thinking about how hands are so important for wielding dark energy. There are a few Dixingren who exert their powers in other ways (eg, Zheng Yi with her voice, the Master of Nightmares via eye contact), but mostly we see characters draw power from the aether into their hands, we see them shoot bolts of dark energy with their hands, and we see them manipulate fire, electricity, gravity, poisonous gas, water, etc, with their hands. Shen Wei writes messages and summons his dao that way, too.
(Would the web novelist’s work have had the same tragic consequences if he’d used speech-to-text software?)
(And is there anyone who can shoot dark energy from other body parts? What if someone perfected the art of using their knees? Possibly a bit gauche, but it would be a really neat surprise attack in a fight! Also, what about disabled Dixingren? I love the idea of people having developed alternatives, being able to work their powers with their feet or elbows or chins.) (For that matter, I guess Ye Zun kind of uses his nose? Though that’s to pull rather than push. ;-p)
Anyway, I assume most people use their hands because it allows for better control and aim. But alternatively, maybe there’s a common Dixingren mutation that results in having a specialised energy-manipulating organ in the palms of the hands. (Don’t mention this possibility to Professor Ouyang at the Department of Supervision research lab!)
Momentum
I also assume that dark energy, when used in its pure form (rather than powering other Dixing abilities like the Master of Nightmare) has its own momentum. For bolts of energy/projectiles, people just shoot it straight out, but when it’s going to be used in a static way—for example, dark energy radar (Shen Wei), healing (Shen Wei, Zhu Jiu), or on-the-spot explosions (the Dixingren who blew up Zhao Yunlan’s mother and himself)—the user forms a spinning globe of energy.
In the scene where the Envoy intimidates Tan Xiao into revealing his electronics and admitting he’s not Dixingren, the Envoy makes a globe and uses that to remotely power a choking coil around Tan Xiao’s neck and lift him to dangle above the ground.
I feel like this energy globe formation probably takes a certain amount of control. (I’m not sure we ever see Ye Zun doing it? And it’s unclear, in ep 14, if Zhu Jiu is healing himself with a globe or just smushing a handful of diffuse energy on his wounded arm. (Oh, hey, maybe the energy-globe concentrates the power, and the diffuseness is what Zhu Jiu is finding so frustrating?))
Interestingly, Shen Wei can diagnose and heal without making an energy ball first: he does it to Zhang Ruonan (ep 3), Wu Tian’en (ep 5), and Zhao Yunlan (eps 16, 20, and lots of other times).
I wonder if it’s easier to manage if you slow the energy down first, though. Maybe Shen Wei has to use a globe to heal himself in his office in ep 2 because he’s pretty much exhausted his reserves with his dramatic display on the rooftop?
He consistently uses energy balls for dark energy vision/radar. (Oh, maybe he acquired the dark-energy vision power from a blind person?) And he's ambidextrous in this regard: we see him make a globe just in his right hand and just in his left.
The Envoy’s power
In the mirror dimension (ep 6), Chu Shuzhi can’t access his power, but Shen Wei can portal in and restrain and suspend the Mirror Girl. Is he able to use his powers where Chu Shuzhi can’t because he’s so powerful overall? Or is it that he instinctively learned the Mirror Girl’s power and neutralised it in some way? Given what he told Zhao Yunlan, that he’s not more powerful, he just has more knowledge at his disposal (ep 15), I suspect the latter.
Chu Shuzhi’s strings
And finally, I was thinking about the nature of Chu Shuzhi’s strings. What are their properties?
We know they have a very high tensile strength: in ep 10 he uses them to break/move rocks, creating an entrance into the Hanga caves. They’re like Spider-Man’s webbing!
And they’re visible and distinctive enough that the hospital attacker in ep 2 recognised them. When Chu Shuzhi manipulates his puppet, are there implied/invisible strings? Or maybe the puppet thing is a different way of using his power.
Mostly Chu Shuzhi uses his (visible) strings to grab people directly and slam them into things, knocking the people unconscious (I don’t think the strings themselves induce the unconsciousness) or to grab objects to use as shields.
The strings disappear as soon as they’ve done their job, conveniently blinking out of existence, and I think it’s reasonable to interpret this ephemerality as one of their characteristics. Otherwise wouldn’t Chu Shuzhi have restrained the Shadow Man (end of ep 1) instead of just knocking him out?
But after a training session (ep 14), when Guo Changcheng skips away, Chu Shuzhi unwinds a broken/frayed strand of energy cord that’s been left wrapped around his fingers, suggesting Xiao Guo actually broke the cord this time instead of just swatting it away. Somehow, that strand persisted, so the cords must have some physicality to them.
(Also of note: when Chu Shuzhi’s training Guo Changcheng in ep 8, he says he uses less strength with him.)
The one time I can think of Chu Shuzhi using his strings on someone outside of a fight or training situation is at the end of ep 4, when Da Qing is unconscious and the face-stealer’s girlfriend starts to raise a cloud of poisonous gas. On Zhao Yunlan’s cue, Chu Shuzhi grabs Da Qing with his cords (looping his string around Da Qing’s waist) and pulls him to safety. Other than that, it would make sense if there were specific legal constraints on who Chu Shuzhi can fight with his strings in Haixing, I think, be that only Dixingren, only criminal Dixingren (a redundancy, in Haixing), or just only people who are a threat.
The Envoy's dark-energy ropes
I wonder if the Envoy’s black energy ropes are a variation on Chu Shuzhi’s strings. Shen Wei uses the ropes to restrain people (eg, the Mirror Girl) and to choke Tan Xiao, and they seem a relatively stable manifestation of dark energy. Perhaps rather than copying Chu Shuzhi’s power outright, which might be disrespectful given they’re Chu Shuzhi’s family heritage (cf Dorinda’s fic, Some bright place), Shen Wei devised his own version, with slightly different properties.
END
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absolutely didn't want you to post it as meta somewhere on dw just because it's easier to comment this way <3(For that matter, I guess Ye Zun kind of uses his nose? Though that’s to pull rather than push. ;-p)
*snickers*
Anyway, I assume most people use their hands because it allows for better control and aim. But alternatively, maybe there’s a common Dixingren mutation that results in having a specialised energy-manipulating organ in the palms of the hands. (Don’t mention this possibility to Professor Ouyang at the Department of Supervision research lab!)
It's certainly the body part we're most used to manipulating anything with! So it makes sense that if Dixingren use physical gesture to ground their manipulation of energy, using hand motions is simplest. (Which leads me to wonder: are the gestures necessary or simply convenient? Is it a sign of skill and practice to manifest energy manipulation effects through purely mental effort?)
(Oh, hey, maybe the energy-globe concentrates the power, and the diffuseness is what Zhu Jiu is finding so frustrating?)
The globes condensing the power makes sense to me! It makes me think about condensation/clouds; there's moisture in the air everywhere, but we mostly only notice it when it coalesces into the visible forms of water vapor/rain/dew/etc. Or the way light moves through prisms, and how they refine it; perhaps the globes make it easier to find/manifest the correct effect in a specific direction? (Instead of flailing aimlessly and hoping it'll work.)
maybe [Shen Wei] acquired the dark-energy vision power from a blind person?
I love this idea! :D And I wonder what the world looks like to someone whose only visual is dark energy?
Given what [Shen Wei] told Zhao Yunlan, that he’s not more powerful, he just has more knowledge at his disposal (ep 15), I suspect the latter.
Yes, that's what I'd assume as well! If your primary power is Learning, then being able to quickly comprehend the effects of a given power and selectively neutralise (or bypass) them makes sense.
They’re like Spider-Man’s webbing!
Spider-Chu, Spider-Chu~~~ (now I'm like, (part?)spider yao csz would be a fascinating AU!)
[On the Properties of Chu Shuzhi's Strings]
I suspect it takes effort to maintain the strings, so CSZ makes them disappear once they're no longer needed. Which means that it might've just been more convenient to KO the Shadow Man instead, if they didn't need him conscious, and that GCC broke his strings and CSZ's surprise means he didn't want to banish them until he figured out what had happened?
Thank you again for all these wonderful thoughts and all the great screenshots you provide to illustrate them! <333
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Which leads me to wonder: are the gestures necessary or simply convenient? Is it a sign of skill and practice to manifest energy manipulation effects through purely mental effort?
I feel like, if that were the case, we'd see Shen Wei doing it? (Though actually, now I think about it, the gestures are probably because it makes for better tv. *g*)
The globes condensing the power makes sense to me! It makes me think about condensation/clouds; there's moisture in the air everywhere, but we mostly only notice it when it coalesces into the visible forms of water vapor/rain/dew/etc.
Ohh, yes, nice analogy. Though that makes it really interesting (to me) that Shen Wei didn't use a globe on Wu Tian'en, or any of the times Zhao Yunlan was hurt...
Spider-Chu, Spider-Chu~~~ (now I'm like, (part?)spider yao csz would be a fascinating AU!)
Hee! It really would! <3
I suspect it takes effort to maintain the strings, [...] and that GCC broke his strings and CSZ's surprise means he didn't want to banish them until he figured out what had happened?
Oh, yeah, that makes sense! Maybe he makes them linger more during training, because seeing the effects is part of how he judges GCC's progress? :-)
So very glad you enjoyed it. Thanks! <3 <3 <3 <# <3
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I have more words in my brain but I'm not sure my brain can come up with them right this moment, but one thing I wanted to mention was in episode two the hospital attacker is stopped by what I always assumed was a shield that Chu Shuzhi created. I always wondered if it was created as one string widened or if it was something like a latticework of strings, though it didn't look latticework to me!
Either way, I love the meta here about powers and hands and everything!! :D A wonderful write-up!!
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but one thing I wanted to mention was in episode two the hospital attacker is stopped by what I always assumed was a shield that Chu Shuzhi created. I always wondered if it was created as one string widened or if it was something like a latticework of strings, though it didn't look latticework to me!
Ohhhh, yes! To me, that always looks like the barrier Zhao Yunlan sees in his apartment when Shen Wei is cooking. I always wondered about that. I love the idea of it being one string widened -- how cool!
<3 <3 <3
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But awesome awesome meta about hand movements and powers :D
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I can absolutely, absolutely related! *hearts*
<3 <3 <3
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Ooh, hmm. That suggests that it requires conscious effort to clean up the strings, versus the alternative, that it requires a conscious decision to have them persist. I don't know where I fall on that, but it's a lot of fun to think about. <3
Thanks!
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