lady-hachimitsu

[lady-hachimitsu]

Hanfu photoset via Coser小梦, Part 10/?

Coser小梦 portrays the Chinese mermaid called Jiaoren/鲛人. According to “In Search of the Supernatural/搜神记”, a 4th-century compilation of Chinese legends about ghosts and spirits, Jiaoren lived in the South Sea, spent their days weaving cloth, and if they cried, their tears would turn into pearls (x). See more Chinese mermaids here.

[lady-hachimitsu]

Demon Shen Jiu is such a fun idea though.

Especially if he himself doesn't know. Like imagine, Yue Qi finds this abandoned baby and the baby is REALLY OBVIOUSLY not human. But this also enables Shen Jiu to survive being abandoned at such a young age -- a human baby would die without adequate nutrition or care, but demons are a little more resilient. Baby Demon SJ has a way more forgiving digestive system and can move under his own power from a much earlier age. By the time he's a year old he's hunting his own rodents and small birds, and has to be stopped from biting and mauling anyone he doesn't like. Which is most people. Qi-ge develops amazing reflexes.

Why do the slavers tolerate a demon baby hanging around? Maybe it's really not all that uncommon. Demons come across the borderlands from time to time, and are as liable to abandon their kids or die or etc as anyone else. It's maybe an open secret among slavers that demon-blooded kids are a better investment, even, because they can survive for longer on less. The only downside is if they don't ever look human enough to pass as human, because that limits potential buyers, but that's only relevant when the slavers are trying to sell them. For the purposes of having a network of street kids stealing and grifting and spying and etc, it's fine. A lot of the slavers themselves started out as demon-blooded street kids with no other options.

But in SJ's case, he pretty quickly starts passing as human. Mostly because he's quite strong, and he's convinced that he's the same as his Qi-ge, so he makes himself the same. Makes his hands look the same and his teeth look the same and etc. It's largely subconscious, and once he starts doing it, it becomes automatic. SJ forgets that he's a demon in the way that most people don't retain their earliest childhood memories -- although he remembers that some of the slavers were demons.

Then of course there's the question of why didn't the Cang Qiong cultivators notice?

A few options. One is that whatever kind of demon SJ is, it's really good at mimicking humans. Another is that he's only part demon, and like Luo Binghe, fully capable of handling both kinds of cultivation. So once he starts learning spiritual cultivation, even from a heretic like Wu Yanzi, he doesn't seem different from any other recruit with a patchy education on the subject. Anything else odd about him could be easily attributed to his exposure to Wu Yanzi and his wicked practices.

Although full demon SJ is a fascinating idea. (Also, it could contribute to all those qi deviations -- he's trying to cultivate AND "fake" human cultivation at the same time, I doubt Qing Jing's techniques are totally compatible with everything going on there even without the psychological turmoil.) Like I'd imagine Airplane wrote that SJ was abandoned on the streets as a baby, and the system was like "hmm he probably wouldn't survive that?" and then in some nine billionth wife arc, Airplane also creates a variety of demon that can fully pass as human (for some identity conflict with a prospective wife), even to the point of fooling human cultivators and demon-detecting tools. So the system just ties these two disparate pieces of world-building together in order to patch a critical plothole (Airplane doesn't know anything about babies). Which has the side effect that Shang Qinghua doesn't even know that SJ became a demon!

And SJ himself doesn't know. The only person who knows is Yue Qi.

Obviously this wouldn't come up much in PIDW, but it could be pretty funny in the SVSSS timeline. YQY just sitting there through the whole Luo Binghe being a half-demon reveal, wondering if he should say something. Subsequently being the most absolutely chill about the whole demon reveal thing anyway. Like he's definitely not upset that Luo Binghe is a demon, or part demon, and the multiple people who try to make a point about it just run afoul of his impenetrable smile and get nowhere.

Then eventually Yue Qingyuan decides that he should probably tell Bingqiu that Shen Qingqiu is a demon. For like, safety purposes if nothing else. He's kept the secret so long also for safety purposes (even if someone put Shen Qingqiu under a truth compulsion he wouldn't be able to admit to being a demon, because he himself doesn't know!), and he's done tons of stuff to prevent anyone ever finding out (although Xiao Jiu is so talented that he didn't have to do much), but Luo Binghe is the demon emperor. That changes things. If Shen Qingqiu is going to be visiting the demon kingdoms regularly then there's a chance something could reveal the truth unexpectedly, and that would probably be worse.

So Yue Qingyuan sits down and has a very serious discussion with Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe about how Shen Qingqiu is actually a demon, was just the cutest little demon baby in fact, here he drew a picture from memory of what Xiao Jiu used to look like before he learned to look more human, and also how a lot of slave kids and slavers and people who fall through the cracks in society have demon ancestry, some more recent than others, and Shen Qingqiu always retained a certain discomfort around his own kind because of the adult slavers who sold him off, and etc etc.

[lady-hachimitsu]

Preindustrial travel, and long explanations on why different distances are like that

I saw a post on my main blog about how hiking groups need to keep pace with their slowest member, but many hikers mistakenly think that the point of hiking is "get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible" instead of "spending time outdoors in nature with friends," and then they complain that a new/less-experienced/sick/disabled hiker is spoiling their time-frame by constantly needing breaks, or huffing and puffing to catch up.

I run into a related question of "how long does it take to travel from Point A to Point B on horseback?" a lot, as a fantasy writer who wants to be SEMI-realistic; in the Western world at least, our post-industrial minds have largely forgotten what it's like to travel, both on our own feet and in groups.

People ask the new writer, "well, who in your cast is traveling? Is getting to Point B an emergency or not? What time of year is it?", and the newbies often get confused as to why they need so much information for "travel times." Maybe new writers see lists of "preindustrial travel times" like a primitive version of Google Maps, where all you need to do is plug in Point A and Point B.

But see, Google Maps DOES account for traveling delays, like different routes, constructions, accidents, and weather; you as the person will also need to figure in whether you're driving a car versus taking a bus/train, and so you'll need to figure out parking time or waiting time for the bus/train to actually GET THERE.

The difference between us and preindustrial travelers is that 1) we can outsource the calculations now, 2) we often travel for FUN instead of necessity.

The general rule of thumb for preindustrial times is that a healthy and prime-aged adult on foot, or a rider/horse pair of fit and prime-aged adults, can usually make 20-30 miles per day, in fair weather and on good terrain.

Why is this so specific? Because not everyone in preindustrial times was fit, not everyone was healthy, not everyone was between the ages of 20-35ish, and not everyone had nice clear skies and good terrain to travel on.

If you are too far below 18 years old or too far past 40, at best you will need either a slower pace or more frequent breaks to cover the same distance, and at worst you'll cut the travel distance in half to 10 or so miles. Too much walking is VERY BAD on too-young/old knees, and teenagers or very short adults may just have short legs even if they're fine with 8-10 hours of actual walking. Young children may get sick of walking and pitch a fit because THEY'RE TIREDDDDDDDDDD, and then you might need to stay put while they cry it out, or an adult may sigh and haul them over their shoulder (and therefore be weighed down by about 50lbs of Angry Child).

Heavy forests, wetlands and rocky hills/mountains are also going to be a much shorter "distance" per day. For forests or wetlands, you have to account for a lot of villagers going "who's gonna cut down acres of trees for one road? NOT ME," or "who's gonna drain acres of swamp for one road? NOT ME." Mountainous regions have their traveling time eaten by going UP, or finding a safer path that goes AROUND, so by the time you're done slogging through drier patches of wetlands or squeezing through trees, a deceptively short 10-15 miles in rough terrain might take you a whole day to walk instead of the usual half-day.

If you are traveling in freezing winters or during a rainstorm (and this inherently means you HAVE NO CHOICE, because nobody in preindustrial times would travel in bad weather if they could help it), you run the high risk of losing your way and then dying of exposure or slipping and breaking your neck, just a few miles out of the town/village.

Traveling in TOO-HOT weather is just as bad, because pushing yourself too hard and getting dehydrated at noon in the tropics will literally kill you. It's called heat-STROKE, not "heat-PARTY."

And now for the upper range of "traveling on horseback!"

Fully mounted groups can usually make 30-40 miles per day between Point A and Point B, but I find there are two unspoken requirements: "Point B must have enough food for all those people and horses," and "the mounted party DOESN'T need to keep pace with foot soldiers, camp followers, or supply wagons."

This means your mounted party would be traveling to 1) a rendezvous point like an ally's camp or a noble's castle, or 2) a town/city with plenty of inns. Maybe they're not literally going 30-40 miles in one trip, but they're scouting the area for 15-20 miles and then returning to their main group. Perhaps they'd be going to an allied village, but even a relatively small group of 10-20 warhorses will need 10-20 pounds of grain EACH and 20-30 pounds of hay EACH. 100-400 pounds of grain and 200-600 pounds of hay for the horses alone means that you need to stash supplies at the village beforehand, or the village needs to be a very large/prosperous one to have a guaranteed large surplus of food.

A dead sprint of 50-60 miles per day is possible for a preindustrial mounted pair, IF YOU REALLY, REALLY HAVE TO. Moreover, that is for ONE day. Many articles agree that 40 miles per day is already a hard ride, so 50-60 miles is REALLY pushing the envelope on horse and rider limits.

NOTE: While modern-day endurance rides routinely go for 50-100 miles in one day, remember that a preindustrial rider will not have the medical/logistical support that a modern endurance rider and their horse does.

If you say "they went fifty miles in a day" in most preindustrial times, the horse and rider's bodies will get wrecked. Either the person, their horse, or both, risk dying of exhaustion or getting disabled from the strain.

Whether you and your horse are fit enough to handle it and "only" have several days of defenselessness from severe pain/fatigue (and thus rely on family/friends to help you out), or you die as a heroic sacrifice, or you aren't QUITE fit enough and become disabled, or you get flat-out saved by magic or another rider who volunteers to go the other half, going past 40 miles in a day is a "Gondor Calls For Aid" level of emergency.

As a writer, I feel this kind of feat should be placed VERY carefully in a story: Either at the beginning to kick the plot off, at the climax to turn the tide, or at the end.

Preindustrial people were people--some treated their horses as tools/vehicles, and didn't care if they were killed or disabled by pushing them to their limits, but others very much cared for their horses. They needed to keep them in working condition for about 15-20 years, and they would not dream of doing this without a VERY good reason.

—

UPDATE January 13: Several people have gotten curious and looked at maps, to find out how a lot of cities are indeed spread out at a nice distance of 20-30 miles apart! I love getting people interested in my hyperfixations, lol.

But remember that this is the space between CITIES AND TOWNS. There should never be a 20-mile stretch of empty wilderness between City A and Town B, unless your world explains why folks are able to build a city in the middle of nowhere, or if something has specifically gone wrong to wipe out its supporting villages!

Period pieces often portray a shining city rising from a sea of picturesque empty land, without a single grain field or cow pasture in sight, but that city would starve to death very quickly in preindustrial times.

Why? Because as Bret Devereaux mentions in his “Lonely Cities” article (https://acoup.blog/2019/07/12/collections-the-lonely-city-part-i-the-ideal-city/), preindustrial cities and towns must have nearby villages (and even smaller towns, if large and prosperous enough!) to grow their food for them.

The settlements around a city will usually be scattered a few miles apart from each other, usually clustered along the roads to the city gates. Those villages and towns at the halfway point between cities (say 10-15 miles) are going to be essential stops for older/sick folks, merchants with cargo, and large groups like noble’s retinues and army forces.

Preindustrial armies and large noble retinues usually can’t make it far past 10-12 miles per day, as denoted in my addition to this post. (https://www.tumblr.com/jadevine/739342239113871360/now-for-a-key-aspect-that-many-people-often-ask)

[lady-hachimitsu]

Do you have any recommendations for danmei novels that are at all like SVSSS in tone? Or MDZS?

I have already read TGCF, but while I enjoyed it, the extended downward spiral without as many mental breaks from cutting to happier times proved to me a bit much for me.

I also tried 2ha but bounced off it hard as the POV character is just too unlikable at the start (even knowing why he's like that courtesy of tumblr spoilers couldn't save the unpleasantness of his POV).

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think I’ve read any book that quite hits the same spot as svsss while having similar quality. The only novel I can think of is that’s similar in feel is Peerless Immortal Surrounded by Demonic Disciples, but the writing quality kinda sucks. Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know feels like it has a similar comedic tone to svsss, but that’s about it with the similarities. For mdzs recs, First-Class Lawyer, Copper Coins by the same author, and Record of the Missing Sect Master comes closest. These have MCs that are most similar in personality to Wei Wuxian without also having that extended downward spiral with minimal breaks that you mentioned.

The thing about mxtx’s writing is that I think her most unique skill amongst the writers of cnovel I’ve read with serious topics is her ability to weave humor into dark moments of the story to give reprieve from the pressure without completely breaking the momentum. A lot of stories either end up dropping the humor as the plot gets serious or adding too much humor, causing the somber moments to seem goofy and unserious. However, if you want stories that are mostly humorous with a few moments of somberness expertly woven in, then I’d suggest Ascending, Do Not Disturb and The Times Spent in Pretense.

[lady-hachimitsu]

I’m not in the ‘Hua Cheng is secretly an eldritch horror’ camp but I’m also not in the ‘Hua Cheng is nothing less than devastatingly handsome’ camp either. I’m in the middle, vaguely unsettling camp. The Uncanny Valley camp. Yes, this man is very attractive but there are certain things he does that make it look like he’s trying to mimic being a human. The ‘98% of people have seen this man in their dreams and no one knows why’ camp. The ‘what a nice young man…but I’m pretty sure I didn’t see him blink once during that twenty minute conversation’ camp. Yes, he’s debonair and classy but sometimes if you see him out the corner of your eye, something seems slightly … off, but you can never place it. By the time you fully look at him, he’s already looking at you with a polite smile and it’s back to normal. You can’t help but feel like you’ve just been warned not to get much closer though.

[lady-hachimitsu]

And this is why you switch to DuckDuckGo. :/

[lady-hachimitsu]

GUYS. DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN WRITE CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE FICS ON AO3

[lady-hachimitsu]

We all know and love the AUs where either SY!SQQ or SJ!SQQ get dosed with truth serum and hilariously clear up a bunch of stuff, but consider:

Yue Qingyuan accidentally gets truth serum-ed, said truth serum removes all brain to mouth filters and makes him voice his thoughts a loud.

Not only would this probably lead to him reconciling with SJ and just speaking about the damn cave incident, but also be unbearably honest to everyone else.

I cannot imagine ANY of the peak lords would be able to look at him the same ever again, we all know this man is deeply unhinged and SJ-co-dependent deep to his soul.

Mu Qingfang would probably have to deal with the worst of it as he frantically tries to find some cure so that they don't have to collectively hide their sect leader and stop him from saying real unhinged stuff

[lady-hachimitsu]

Fantasy Sociology (what would it do to agriculture if there was dragons)

Fantasy Psychology (the mental effects of having certain patterns of thoughts that generate fireballs)

Fantasy Biology (what if u had lighting sacks in yr cheeks)

Fantasy Chemistry (these r the elements and what u can do with them)

Fantasy Physics (orbital mechanics and magical floating rocks: a guide)

Fantasy Mathematics (its just normal mathematics)

[lady-hachimitsu]

btw this isn't a vague/subtweet (post?) or anything but just so y'all know, there's a way to mark things as "inspired by" on ao3

you don't have to just put it in the notes!! very cool under-utilized feature

[lady-hachimitsu]

UNDERUTLISED SHEN TWINS AU DYNAMIC:

Shen Jiu: desperately trying to seem like a noble scholar by having scholarly achievements Shen Yuan: keeps randomly dropping mind blowing scientific information he learned back in primary school but never thinks to write papers on them Shen Jiu: yoink

[lady-hachimitsu]

beast peak's shixiong 🐲✨

[lady-hachimitsu]

guys, listen, crossover idea: scumbag system vs. anastasia

SQQ successfully completed his 'suicide', LBH is devastated and clutching his corpse, SQQ makes his 'escape' into the growing mushroom body... except SQH made a liiiitle mistake:

SQQ's new body didn't take 5 years to grow, no no. It only took like a month. But, maybe due to the rush, maybe due to the fertiliser, maybe because SQQ blew up his own golden core right before his 'death'...

SQQ lost his memories during the soul transfer.

So now Shen Yuan, a freshly deceased 20-something with no System found himself in the world of his most (loved)hated novel as some random NPC. After all, not like he could recognize his new face (face being a mix of SY and SQQ), neither does he have a not-so-friendly eldritch abomination / System in his head to tell him who he is. And upon first waking, he has crawled out of soil like some knock-off zombie with no personal belongings so no hints there either.

Shen Yuan assumes he's some random rogue cultivator and starts to make a life for himself.

Meanwhile...

Luo Binghe is slowly going crazy, losing himself to his mourning, as his underlings get more and more frantic because Sad Binghe has a tendency to spread his 'sadness' around and makes the demons bloody feel his displeasure, when Sha Hualing gets a wonderful, bright idea:

If her boss misses his Shizun so much, why don't they try to find a replacement for him? One that looks just like the dearly departed old man. Oops, that didn't work. But that's ok, let's find someone who looks and acts like the Lord of Qing Jing Peak.

Discount SQQ: "Binghe, it's me! Shen Qingqiu!"

Sha Hualing & Mobei-Jun: "..."

And then?

Then they stumble across unsuspecting SY who wandered into the demonic planes in search of fun(dangerous) critters whose sketch and description he can add to his growing bestiary.

And man, this guy might not look exactly like Shen Qingqiu, but he acts like him. So much that even even they start to sort of believe it might be his weird reincarnation or something. Even the family name is the same!

They have to bring this guy to Emperor Luo. Maybe this guy won't get killed on spot and their boss will freaking chill for a minute.

Cue Shang Qinghua nervously biting his nails in the background and wondering why his Bro doesn't recognize him, or anyone else.

Luo Binghe, after exchanging three sentences with 'discount sqq', doesn't quite believe it's his (amnesiac) Shizun, but decides to keep him around anyway as he rides hard on nostalgia train. He can always use this guy as a teething toy and body pillow as he waits for a hint on how to get to the Holy Mausoleum to resurrect his real Shizun.

And Shen Yuan? Wonders what sort of fresh hell this is and whether he fell into some weird PIDW fanfic instead of the original because why is the blackened protagonist hugging the scum villain's corpse and why tf is he gay??

[lady-hachimitsu]

I've seen plenty of AUs for SVSSS with different transmigration targets (Shen Yuan transmigrates as YQY, LQG, or even MQF are all AUs I've seen multiple times) but one I have NOT seen which I think would be hilarious is Shen Yuan transmigrating as Shang Qinghua or swapping roles with Airplane. Primarily I want to see Shen Yuan applying his hyper focused tunnel vision to sect logistics. This will either be the best or worst thing that has happened to Cang Qiong.

[lady-hachimitsu]

I love binggeyuan so much.

I love when it's just this random guy with no particular skills besides ranting online about his special interest (a shitty porn novel that he reads for the plot) accidentally domesticating a demon lord from said novel by approaching said demon lord with the attitude of a white lady taking home a coyote that she found on the side of the road cause it was just a "poor lost puppy".

[lady-hachimitsu]

Wait for the master.

[lady-hachimitsu]

Xue Yang fixed the fucking using tiger tally in what like 2 years at most??? As a fucking street kid??? And with shitty notes??? I feel like this isn’t talked about enough—

like at 16 he re-constructed the most powerful weapon in the cultivation world—

It’s like if you gave Jason from middle school an unfinished nuke and told him to fix it with only quora answers as his guide AND HE DOES IT