Zhu Hong 祝红

Player Information
Name: Emily
Contact: Colortheory on Plurk

Age: Appears to be in her early- to mid-20s.  Let’s say 24.  
History:  Many millennia ago, a spaceship crash landed on the earthlike planet of Haixing.  The occupants were an alien race of people who quickly learned to adapt to their new world.  Half of those aboard fused their cells with plants and animals, becoming the ancestors of the various Yashou tribes.  The others retreated deep underground, where their bodies developed individual mutations to survive the harsh environment.  These people became known as the Dixingren (“People from Dixing”).  

For a time, the three peoples—the Dixingren and Yashou aliens, and the humans already living on Haixing—lived in harmony.  Then, 10,000 years ago, a series of meteor strikes changed everything.  The force of the strikes changed the planet itself and resources became limited.  A certain group of Dixingren rebelled against the other peoples and a fierce war broke out.  The united armies of the humans, Yashou, and friendly Dixingren beat back the rebels with the help of four great weapons, called Hallows.  Peace was declared under these terms: the Dixingren would return underground and stay there, the humans would be allowed to live on the surface, and the Yashou tribes would stay neutral in any future conflicts.  This treaty held for 10,000 years.

Zhu Hong was born and raised in a forest outside of Dragon City, in the village of the Yashou Snake Tribe.  The show doesn’t tell us much about her early life, but her father was a Snake Tribe member who left the village to see the city and live amongst the humans. After his death, Hong was raised by Fourth Uncle, the Snake Tribe leader.  Beautiful and clever, Hong was the darling of the Snake Tribe and was expected to settle down, get married, and live a productive life in the village.  She had other ideas.  Like her father, she wanted to live amongst the humans in the city.  It took a lot of convincing, but eventually Fourth Uncle relented and allowed her to leave. Once in the city, she met Zhao Yunlan and found herself all but instantly head over heels in love with the handsome and charismatic chief of the Special Investigations Division. Though Zhao Yunlan showed no signs of reciprocating her affections, Hong joined the SID anyway and worked as its secretary for years, while her uncle back home grew increasingly impatient for her return. 

One day, a particularly heinous murder at the local university brings Zhao Yunlan in contact with Shen Wei, a mysterious young professor.  Shen Wei captures Zhao’s attention in the way Hong never could.  She becomes jealous and resentful of the infatuation between the two men, especially when Zhao somehow manages to convince Shen Wei to join the SID as a consultant.  Soon after, Hong learns the secret that both men have been keeping from the rest of the team: the mild-mannered professor is actually an immensely powerful Dixingren named the Black Cloak Envoy.  Hong slowly warms to Shen Wei, even though she’s still heartbroken that Zhao will never love her. 

The team work together to solve a series of brutal killings all linked to the four Hallows.  It is soon revealed that Shen Wei’s identical twin brother, Ye Zun, is the mastermind behind all of the violence.   Ye Zun wants to unite all four Hallows to bring the Dixingren to the surface, kill all humans and Yashou, and rule over everything. Typical evil villain stuff.

Hong, Zhao, and Da Qing (a rare cat Yashou) go to the united Yashou tribes to both convince them to join the fight and also use a secret passage to Dixing that only a certain Yashou artifact, the Sacred Wood, can open.  Zhao uses knowledge he acquired during a quick jaunt to the past a few episodes before to make the Sacred Wood bloom again after centuries of dormancy. Because the Sacred Wood is in Hong’s possession, she is elected leader of the united Yashou peoples.  Zhao totally planned this, because he’s a crafty bastard like that.

Hong can’t take office just yet, though: there’s work to be done. Ye Zun has to be defeated.   Zhao and Guo Changcheng go into the portal first to rescue Shen Wei and save the world, but they are quickly captured.  The other members of the SID, including Hong, leap into the portal to rescue them and fight Ye Zun, which doesn’t last very long because they are soon overpowered.  A dying Shen Wei uses his connection to Zhao to corrupt and kill Ye Zun, and the whole of Dixing is destabilized.  In the confusion, a badly injured Zhao becomes separated from the rest of his SID colleagues.  He knows that he is about to die and that he needs to sacrifice his life to light the Guardian Lamp (one of the Hallows) and bring peace to the universe. 

Hong and the rest of the SID come across his body moments after the sacrifice. He lies slumped against some stairs, the now-lit Guardian Lamp near his hand. There’s no bringing him back: Zhao Yunlan is gone.

They take the corpse of their fallen leader and escape, grief-stricken, back to the surface to participate in the clean-up and reconstruction of Dragon City.

Personality:  On the surface, Zhu Hong is a brash, stubborn, and opinionated young woman.  Of the two main female characters in the show, Hong is depicted in direct opposition to the much more traditionally feminine Wang Zheng.  Instead of wearing floaty, ethereal dresses like Wang Zheng does, Hong wears trousers, biker jackets, and pantsuits in strong colors to match her blood red lipstick.  In fact, the only time she’s seen in dresses or skirts is when she is acting as a honey trap for a face-stealing Dixingren and when she is trapped in a dream and tries to become more ladylike.  Instead of heels, she wears serviceable (though still very fashionable) flats.  This is a visual representation of who she is as a character: someone who values practicality, ass-kicking, and looking good while doing it. She is diligent and a hard worker and doesn’t suffer fools lightly—if Zhao Yunlan makes a call that she disagrees with, she lets him know about it.  Volubly.

Within the SID, Hong takes the role of the slightly bossy older sister, teasing the other characters (especially Lin Jing, who’s the main target of her scorn but is also one of her closet friends within the SID) but also fiercely protective of them.  When Guo Changcheng accidentally orders a sex doll to serve as a vessel for Wang Zheng, Hong joins in on the laughter (primarily at Xiao Guo’s expense) but stops when she sees how upset Wang Zheng is.  She then takes her only female colleague under her wing and bundles her up in clothes from her own extensive wardrobe so that she won’t be exposed to sunlight during the trip to the northern mountains and yells at any of the men who dares criticize the move.  Similarly, when Lin Jing is fired by Zhao for being a spy, her intense loyalty to her friends supplants her loyalty to her boss. She gets visibly upset at Zhao and moves protectively towards Lin Jing, offering to help him gather his things and walk him out. Her loyalty towards her friends even supplants her loyalty towards her own tribe for much of the show; Hong refuses to return to them multiple times because she wants to be with the SID.  

And Zhao in particular. 

In one episode part way through the series, Shen Wei describes Hong as someone who looks mature on the outside but is still an immature young woman with a fragile heart on the inside.  There is truth to that.  Throughout the show, one of Zhu Hong’s defining characteristics is her unrequited love for Zhao Yunlan.  She joined the SID because of him and actively changed herself to become someone she thinks he would like better.  When she is trapped in a dream, Hong’s ideal world becomes somewhere where Zhao Yunlan is waiting for her, just off-screen.  She totters around in sky-high heels, despite the pain they cause her, while wearing an uncharacteristically feminine dress because Zhao Yunlan once told her that he wishes she were more ladylike.  Similarly, she reveals in the dream that she forces herself to eat human food because she wants to seem more human for him.  She desperately wants him to notice her and return her love for him. She may be tough on the outside, but she’s deeply insecure on the inside.

When Shen Wei makes the comment about Hong’s maturity/immaturity, it’s after Hong reacted territorially to Shen Wei’s presence in SID.  She’s resentful that Shen Wei has managed to win Zhao’s affections where she never could. 

However, as the series progresses, Hong grows up and comes into her own.  Following her escape from the dream (with Zhao’s help), Hong begins to come to terms with the fact that he will never love her back the way she loves him.  She never stops loving him, and that becomes something of a strength.  When Zhao goes to Dixing to save Shen Wei and begin the final battle with Ye Zun, she declares that she’s spent years chasing after him and she’s not going to stop now: she intends to join him in the fight.   Her newfound maturity also serves her well in coming to terms with her identity as a member of the Snake Tribe.  The Sacred Wood sprouts in her hand, declaring her leader of the united Yashou peoples.  Following the final battle and Zhao’s death, Hong returns to the Yashou and is shown in the “one year later” portion of the epilogue serving as an effective leader, moderating negotiations between the three tribes. 

Abilities: Zhu Hong isn’t human, she’s Yashou: part of a race of animal (or plant) hybrid aliens living on Haixing.  Hong is Snake Tribe, meaning she’s a snake shapeshifter and has snake powers.  We’re only shown her snake tail once in the series due to production and budget constraints, and we’re aren’t given much information about her ability to transform. However, the novel that serves as source material for the show expands on this.  In it, Hong’s snake form is tied to the full moon.  In the days leading up to it she starts only consuming raw, red meat.  On the day of the full moon, she’s absent from work—presumably because her transformation is at its fullest extent.  After that, she spends three days with a snake’s tail, reptilian eyes, and a forked tongue before she reverts back to passing as a human woman. 

The main snake power that Hong portrays in the show is mind control.  She is initially not very skilled in it, but practices on random men (mostly delivery guys who come to the SID offices) until she feels competent at it.  However, when she tries it on Shen Wei to keep him out of trouble (before his true identity as the Black Cloak Envoy is revealed), he turns it back on her and convinces her to never use the skill again.  So she doesn’t.  Therefore, she will retain the ability and could potentially use it in the future, but will feel a strong sense of revulsion at doing so.

Hong is also a highly competent martial artist and has strength far greater than what would normally be typical of a woman of her size.  She is shown bursting out of rope constraints fairly easily and holds her own against whatever Dixingren monster of the week she’s up against.  Also, late in the series she gets something of a power up and her punches and kicks glow with the same red snake magic as her eyes when she uses her mind control powers. So there’s that.

Strengths: Loyal, intelligent, resourceful, caring, does not suffer fools lightly 
Weaknesses: Stubborn, brash, territorial, insecure, occasionally immature 

God/Shinki: God
Why?: Towards the end of the show, Hong really begins to come into her own as a leader.  She proves to be very capable at giving orders and rallying support behind herself, and helps lead the charge into Dixing to rescue Zhao Yunlan, Guo Changcheng, and Shen Wei. Putting her in a leadership role in Heaven would allow her to expand on that.  Also, I want to play with the dynamics of memory and authority, since she will be in a position of comparative power over the shinki Zhao Yunlan and Da Qing (her bosses) instead of the other way around.
Top 3 Choices: 1) Nüwa – One of the Chinese mother goddesses, often depicted as half woman, half snake 

 
God Type:  Zhu Hong is going to be the kind of goddess who answers prayers and tries to help her followers, but not without a little bit of tough love.  Rather than solving all of their problems for them, I can see her working with them to solve their own problems. 
Power:  Poison manipulation.  Hong can create and manipulate venomous substances to use as a weapon, or to aid in defense.  These poisons can range from temporarily incapacitating the target (causing confusion or temporary paralysis) to killing them.  She is also invulnerable to most poisons. 

http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Poison_Manipulation 

Writing Sample

“Lin Jing, cut the technobabble crap.   Explain it in language we can all understand.”

Apparently that means…a popcorn maker.

Zhu Hong stares at the bulbous contraption with obvious skepticism.  Lin Jing’s track record for inventions is less than stellar; the things he builds are just as likely to blow up in his face as they are to actually work.   And yet, here it is.  A popcorn maker, with the smell of only marginally burnt popcorn wafting from its inexplicable roundness.  A waste of time and resources?  Certainly. But, Hong tells herself a little forcefully, she’s always down for popcorn. Human food is delicious.   She likes eating human food.   

It’s only during the full moon that she allows herself to fully give in to her urges.

Shouting from somewhere above her head tells her that Chief Zhao’s meeting is going about as well as any of his other meetings.  Hong stuffs another fistful of popcorn in her mouth and goes back to her computer to finish typing the report that Chief Zhao demanded from her this morning.  There will, without a doubt, be an annoyed official hurrying down the stairs any second now.  Then a door will slam and Zhao Yunlan himself will grace them all with his damnably beautiful presence.  He’ll insult the popcorn maker and threaten to cut Lin Jing’s salary for the millionth time.  After that, he’ll go after Xiao Guo for his latest ineptitude.

And then he’ll leave, off to Dragon City University.  Off to him.

The professor.    

Hong’s stomach tightens into an uncomfortable knot, and her fingers press hard against the keyboard.  No one notices.  An irritated official comes down the staircase muttering darkly to himself, a door slams, and Lin Jing loses his bonus once again.  

A typical day.