Guardian: a primer

(Yeah, I know I abandoned DW in January mid-meme. Sorry.)

If you're on Twitter at all, you've probably heard about Guardian, a Chinese TV show about superpowered alien hijinks and two incredibly beautiful men who work together to protect the world and are in love. One of them has an oral fixation. The other wears short skirts incredibly nice suits and pined for the oral fixation one for ten thousand years. That's basically all you need to know.



So what is Guardian anyway?

Guardian the TV show is based on an m/m paranormal romance webnovel by the same name (Chinese name: Zhenhun) by Priest. I can find no better way of describing the novel itself than this tweet:

peelesscucumber: "chinese ghostbusters there's literally no better way to describe it. modern setting. anyway imagine pining for a guy for 10,000 years only to find out he's a hoe."

The TV show gets rid of the paranormal elements and replaces them with aliens (this is a Chinese censorship issue), tones down the gay to the level of plausible deniability as far as censors are concerned, and casts a couple of really incredibly gorgeous people in the lead roles:



OK but how gay is it really?

This is by far the most F of AQs. It's... really gay. They don't kiss. They don't declare their romantic love for each other. But those are the only missing pieces. It's not like a "slashy" show like SGA or Sherlock or Supernatural where the showrunners are careful to stay on the no homo side of the line. Instead, it's more like the last two seasons of due South, where the primacy of the two leads' relationship is consistently reinforced. The line these showrunners tread is what's the most gay it can be and still be allowed to air on Chinese television, not the no homo plausible deniability line we're used to. There's so much touching, so much teasing, so much sacrifice for the sake of the other

The book the show is based on is an explicit romance.

Where do I find it?

You can find the ongoing English translation of the book on Wattpad here: Guardian by Priest. Keep in mind that the translation is not complete and it is unclear when it will be finished.

You can find the show (with English subtitles) in this Youtube playlist: Guardian It consists of forty 50-minute episodes.

If you watch the first few episodes and find yourself hooked, I recommend using software to download the episodes from Youtube to your hard drive and downloading subtitle files from this DW post. [UPDATE: this post now links to a folder where you can download the episodes instead of ripping them from youtube.] The official subs are inconsistent in quality and I find they get remarkably worse around episode 9, so I found it worthwhile to use solo's much better ones.

Where is the fandom?

The fandom is all over the place! Tumblr and twitter, of course, are full of Guardian fans. There are lots of vids on the AO3 and youtube. But most importantly, you should check out sid_guardian, a very busy community with tons of resources, including many super helpful and educational posts about China.

Is there fic?

There's SO MUCH FIC. Of course you can go to the AO3 and browse the tag, but to get started, I recommend Isweedan's Non-Comprehensive Guardian Reclist, which is organized according to which arc the fic is set in. If you don't want to be spoiled, I highly suggest you wait until you finish the show to read the last part of the slides or to go off on your own to the AO3.

There was also a recent fic exchange with a lot of wonderful fic posted: 520 Guardian Exchange

Guardian fandom tag on the AO3

Are there any content warnings?

There is some violence. In episode 1 there is a(n unsuccessful) suicide attempt. In episode 3, there is an offscreen rape and the episode deals with someone taking revenge for it.

Are there any important spoilers?

Highlight to read:

Unfortunately I do have to report that the show does not have an unambiguous happy ending. The characters sort of die, but their souls remain alive and they reaffirm their made-for-each-otherness. Overall, the ending is very hopeful.

OK Masha, this was a really long post, but I'm still not convinced

Fine:



Read this entry on Dreamwidth. ( comments.)