Question: your favourite Dixing worldbuilding?

[china_shop]

What are some of your favourite pieces of worldbuilding about Dixing, from canon, or your own or someone else's fanworks?

Some of mine are:

1. Dixing has a glass factory. (I don't know if I or nnozomi came up with that; maybe we both did in parallel? Maybe someone else did first?)


2. The Dijun's throne being a relic of the spaceship. (I read that in a fic; anyone recognise it?)


3. The various wildlife possibilities, including keeping moles as pets.


4. “In the age of light there were feast days every week or two. Since the Hallows were lost, we only really observe the oldest holidays.” Lao Chu twirled the point of his knife against his fingertip; no blood resulted, so it couldn’t have been as sharp as it looked. [...] “Night of the Ancestors, the Bitter Melon Festival for the harvest – though most of the crops are blighted now – and Hei Pao Shi Day.” (From here.)

Comments

[trobadora]

Pretty close to canon, yeah! Also, Wu Tian'en is an old man in the present, so he seems to have aged at a normal rate as well. I wonder if it runs in families? I thought it might be tied to power levels, but Zu Ma doesn't seem to have been that overpowered before he got the Merit Brush power-up ...

[china_shop]

Do we know what Zu Ma's power was? Maybe something to do with games?

[trobadora]

No, I don't think we're ever told?

[yaaurens]

I would assume something to do with controlling people/things? Since he was affected by the Merit Brush, which only seemed to strengthen what was already there (or bring out latent abilities).

[china_shop]

Yeah, that's why I wondered whether it might be game-related. He could only control people in the context of the game, so maybe his original power was to understand/pick up/win at games, and the Merit Brush let him use people as his playing pieces?

But good point that it might have been mind control. /o\

[yaaurens]

I like the idea that the Merit Brush let him turn more things (real life) into a game, since iirc, we see that at least some of the people "in game" were aware and Did Not Want to Be There (I'm thinking of the Russian roulette nurse in particular). So maybe it's not straight up mind control, but there's definitely some kind of control going on!

[china_shop]

Yeah, I guess if Dr Feng had his healing power awakened, but the flipside was his unwittingly draining the life force from random people, then maybe Zu Ma had his game-related power awakened, and the side-effect was controlling/co-opting people's life force or will.

Which now is making me wonder whether the Merit-Brush-boosts that Sha Ya and Ya Qing received also had unfortunate side-effects that we didn't see...

[trobadora]

With how heavily boosted Sha Ya got by the end, I feel like it should have come up if there had been severe side effects?

(Maybe the side effects only occur with awakening a power, not with boosting their strength? Idk.)

[china_shop]

Yeah, maybe. Or maybe Sha Ya's side-effects are innocuous and don't affect other people. Like, she just makes thunderstorms more intense? Maybe the rainstorm was her fault. ;-p

[trobadora]

Haha, yeah!

Either way, what happens with the miracle doctor doesn't seem to be typical for the Merit Brush's work. The deadly side effects might be more due to the nature of his power itself ...

[china_shop]

Yeah. It has powerful side-effects, but not always harmful. (Which makes sense. Otherwise, why would Ma Gui have invented it like that?? ;-p)

[trobadora]

Either controlling people in some small way or controlling games sounds most likely, agreed!