#also i cannot write concisely yikes

[deathsusanstohelit]

some thoughts about a sangcheng arranged marriage au in a cql-inspired verse (no yin iron bc i don’t feel like figuring out how to make that work) that i probably won’t write but have been thinking about a lot: 

First the set-up for the au: 

NMJ, LXC and JGY are all aged up a bit, this changes things

Meng Yao has spent longer in the Nie Sect and met LXC regularly, this brings more opportunities for NMJ to notice ppl being jerks to JGY and defend him, thus this JGY is more secure in his position and the 3zun dynamics are less dramatic 

since NMJ is a bit older, he is able to stand up to the Wens right after his dad’s death (which now happens right before the Gusu lectures so NHS doesn’t go to Gusu) 

bc of LXC’s alliance with NMJ, Cloud Recesses is attacked during the lectures (JC gets injured and helped by Wen Qing) so war starts sooner with the Jiangs and Lans involved from early on 

Meng Yao kills Wen Rouhan earlier this time (and without hurting NMJ) and then fucks out of the Wen clan to join the Jin Sect and gets (reluctantly) promoted and renamed during the war 

Wen Xu and Wen Chao aren’t dead yet so they fight over who should be in charge and war is less destructive bc of their internal conflict 

in the chaos, Wen Qing separates from the rest of the clan with her own disciples and flees to Dafan with help from WWX and friends (Dafan Wens survive, since no clans were slaughtered, most ppl are willing to leave them alone after the war) 

post-war, alliances develop 

since there was no need for demonic cultivation, WWX doesn’t push LWJ away and LWJ eventually confesses some time post-war, they’re a bit of a mess but figuring things out. however

Madame Yu doesn’t want WWX to get married before her oldest and Jiang Yanli’s and Jin Zixuan’s engagement never got broken up so now there’s a delay for the wangxian marriage while JYL and JZX court (takes forever bc JZX is a disaster) 

still the Jiang Sect has strong alliances forming with the Jins and the Lans through betrothals (and a friendship with the Wen remnants) 

Meanwhile, 3zun become sworn brothers and now Nie Sect has strong ties to the Lans and Jins 

The Jiangs and Nies both notice the lack of official alliance between them and NMJ wonders how to ensure an alliance that matches the strength of sworn brotherhood/marriage 

‘hey da-ge what if you married me off to that hottie jiang cheng?’ goes nie huaisang 

‘if i what’ says nie mingjue 

so NMJ isn’t sure about this but NHS is pretty insistent that it’s a good idea and so when NMJ sends off a letter to Jiang Fengmian about alliances, there’s a paragraph in there about a potential marriage and so... the plot ensues... 

general plot outline/thoughts under the cut

both NMJ and Jiang Fengmian only agree on the idea if JC and NHS court before fully committing to the marriage 

JC gets this message and is just.. resigned to a political marriage with someone he doesn’t know 

WWX is a little offended on his behalf but wants to meet NHS 

(meanwhile, NHS’s reasoning: JC is attractive, a good warrior, known to be honorable, has good relationships with his siblings and disciples. also NHS just thinks he’d make a better spouse than a sect heir. and also yes he’s been nursing a bit of crush watching JC at inter-clan meetings/competitions since the war, what of it, this is a political decision, ugh da-ge leave it alone) 

but the Nie Sect is hosting the next competition/night hunt and NHS greets the Jiangs as a good host 

so NHS gives the Yunmeng sibs a tour around the Unclean Realm and hangs out (drinks with) JC and WWX during the downtime 

(NHS, externally: *nervous but friendly, trying not to push*)

(NHS, internally: help how do i convince the hot guy that we could be good life partners and also to make out with me) 

(JC, a disaster bi ace-spec, internally, on first meeting: oh shit he’s pretty)

(JC, after hanging out with NHS a bit: oh no the pretty boy is also... fun? i know this marriage is just for Politics and NHS didn’t pick me because he likes me but because i’m a good political choice, no one ever picks me, but fuck he’s pretty and nice and fun i’m dying)

(JC, externally: *keeps unintentionally saying something too mean and then kicking himself*) 

(WWX, internally and externally: haha NHS don’t hurt my brother but also you’re amazing, please lend me your porn collection i need to know how to seduce LWJ better) 

NHS during the night hunt: *eye-fucking JC*

JC during the night hunt: ‘guys i think NHS is judging me, he must be worried i’m not worth marrying’ 

jiang yanli, the only emotionally intelligent one: “a-cheng...” 

anyway obviously this dynamic continues for a heinous amount of time, through dates in Yunmeng and Qinghe where NHS gives JC beautiful paintings and praises JC and JC swings wildly between putting his foot in his mouth and doing nice things like buying NHS a new fan, all the way up into JYL’s and JZX’s wedding 

(JC has a new understanding of Jin Zixuan now and hates it) 

i want there to be a plotline where JC (who is not good at reading NHS until after this incident) gets to see how sharp NHS can be. (maybe like someone saying something mean about jiang yanli at her wedding, not to her face, and NHS reveals this fuckers personal secrets?) whatever it is, NHS navigates it easily and JC finally realizes how smart and how vicious NHS is and how good at politics he is 

obviously this realization leads to more JC angst-ing bc he’s like ‘i knew this marriage was just a political move but now i Know it was a political move, i can’t believe my feelings mean nothing’  

normally this is where the betrothal temporarily falls apart in this kind of au but i think NHS is smart enough and good enough at reading JC by then to finally realize he has to just has to be active for once and make a move

so like JC is sulking at Lotus Pier and NHS swans in with another gift, and it’s another gorgeous painting but this time it’s of JC and NHS is like ‘this is how i see you’ and JC is like ‘what’ and NHS tells him that he’s admired JC for years and has liked spending time with him and would like to get married please 

JC goes ‘what’ 

there’s probably a bit of yelling but NHS can respond to that 

definitely ends in makeouts 

at some point they talk it over and NHS is like ‘yes it was political move but we didn’t need a marriage to seal an alliance, i wanted to. you seem like you’d be good at the whole leading a sect of warriors thing and i’d be happy to sit back and plan parties and quietly manipulate anyone who tries shit. i’d like to have that with you.’ 

JC: ‘oh. good. you should do that.’ 

NHS: ‘wasn’t that the plan?’ 

anyway a lot of people were expecting this to blow up somehow and are surprised when JC and NHS actually want to get married: madame yu thought NHS was too weak for JC, WWX thought JC might scare NHS away at first and later worried NHS might not actually be interested, NMJ liked JC but didn’t know if he’d be good for his brother, JGY didn’t realize how serious NHS was, etc 

only like jiang yanli actually thought that things would work out 

and then they get happily married 

(...and NHS and Madame Yu have some kind of quiet competition over who’s in charge that eventually ends with her respecting him but that’s another story) 

[battlestar-royco]

Hey I’m interested in hearing more about your thoughts on asoiaf. How do you find the writing wonky and things like that

I’ve already talked about it a bit on this blog before, if you wanna check out some posts about why I think ASOIAF is overrated and problematic, and why I don’t like the Daenerys plotline: x x x

But I could talk about books forever so here we go. To preface, when I say “overrated,” that doesn’t mean I dislike the series. It’s grown on me, solid 3.5-4/5. I just mean that it gets unwarranted credit and attention for doing a lot of the same things for the fantasy genre as other contemporaneous writers are doing. The hype is probably what set me up to think ASOIAF was only on the better side of good rather than AMAZINNNGNGNGNGNG like everyone says.

So, my overarching issues are:

I didn’t begin to love any characters until ASOS. I only continued reading after the first two because the show was gaining popularity and other people were reading it. While I did enjoy AGOT, I was only meh about ACOK. ASOS blew me out of the water, but AFFC lost its way and I’ve been “currently reading” ADWD for five years.

I don’t mind the amount of narrators; GRRM distinguishes between his narrators amazingly and the range of POVs makes the world seem bigger and realer. HOWEVER, I cannot fucking stand being in the heads of some abhorrent characters just because GRRM wants to make a ham-handed point about misogyny or colonization. (Some examples are Theon and whatever the fuck his uncles are named and Daenerys. I hate Theon’s and the other IB POVs, and I could live without Dany.)

I really don’t care for GRRM’s writing style. It’s so extra and repetitive. If I have to read “fingers of blood” one more time I’m gonna throw hands. Just cutting words for concision could have reduced the first book by fifty to a hundred pages.

GRRM is known for his shocking deaths but I don’t think the shock factor is what makes the story good at all. It honestly makes the books weaker at points. The first few times, the deaths made complete sense for the characters and the story, but after awhile it gets tiring. Most readers want someone to root for, not to be apathetic to all the characters because we know they’re all going to die.

Also, GRRM is a white dude dealing with issues of misogyny, racism, imperialism, etc, and he started publishing the books in the 90s, so there’s A LOT of just… absolutely fucking yikes treatment of women, queer people, POC, and other minorities in the books that I wish I could put in a garbage disposal.

Specifically (vague spoilers for all the books):

AGOT did a good job of establishing all the characters and the stakes, but the worldbuilding is so ambitious that it only starts making sense on a second read. The world itself is thoroughly built and convincing, but it’s nowhere near my favorite fantasy world because of its excessive -ism/-phobia and basic medieval Europe-ness. Plus, the pace is glacial until they all get to King’s Landing about 200 pages in. The same thing goes for ACOK. These two books didn’t do much for me. I liked the Starks and I wanted them to be back together, but tbh I don’t find the Lannisters or the Targs all that cool. They’re a bunch of incestuous assholes trying to kill each other and I don’t find that relatable or anywhere near as compelling as a mourning family trying to piece itself together during a war.

ASOS made everything better. By this book, I finally felt settled with all the characters and the world and GRRM’s style, and things were actually happening. Jaime, Arya, Sansa, Cat, and Jon’s ASOS arcs are among my favorites in the entire series. This book still has its sluggish parts, but the pace and the emotional weight made it worth it.

AFFC… hm. I understand why people like this book, but at the same time I think it’s on the same level as ACOK for me. In this book, the subtle themes and central drama between the three main families (Stark, Lannister, and Targ) disappears in favor of Dorne and Brienne subplots. The Sandsnakes (from the books) and Brienne are cool, and I understand that GRRM is trying to represent the aftermath of war with them, but it was way too over the top and unfocused compared to the page-turner stakes of ASOS and the latter halves of G and C. GRRM seems to be interested in all these new characters when the rest of us just wanna know if the Starks are ever going to see each other again, if Dany will ever get the fuck out of Meereen, if the Lannisters either finally fall or redeem themselves, etc.

What I’ve read of ADWD hasn’t impressed me much so far. Again, I can’t reiterate enough how much Dany’s plotline and point of view as a white colonizer in an Asian/African fusion setting make me uncomfortable. Aside from some of the most bizarre and offensive depictions of POC in fantasy through a white girl’s perspective, her love/sex life exclusively consists of 30+ year old men sexualizing and infantilizing her. I find that abhorrent and unnecessary. Tyrion is equally as hard to take in this book, seeing as he’s mostly throwing himself a constant pity party (he does this in every book, but this one is the worst) while meandering around Essos with characters who have just been introduced five books in. The Ironborn POVs are just unneeded, boring, and overly misogynistic because I guess GRRM is trying to make a statement or whatever. Most of the Starks–my personal favorite characters–are absent in this book, and the Lannister twins only get a handful of chapters. The only narrator I’m genuinely interested in is Jon, which is ironic because I was indifferent to him until ASOS.

TL;DR I’ve pretty much only ever been invested in the Starks but GRRM is obsessed with adding unnecessary new POVs. While he tries his best to deal with issues like sexism and racism, he ultimately fails in certain respects due to his hypersexualization of young women and exoticization of cultures of POC. He needs to regain control of the story.

[the-poutine-routine]

Hi! In your opinion what is the difference on tecnical side between tessa/scott and davis/white? I know that before the comeback they were equal in terms of victories. Their styles are pretty opposite and this is clear, but since i'm new fan of this sport i'd like to know more tecnical aspects about this rivalry. Also which is the strongest rivals between d/w and p/c? (sorry for the poor grammar, english isn't my first l

Hi anon!

First of all, I am sooooooo sorry for taking so long to get back to you on this, I don’t really have an excuse other than laziness, and for that I cannot apologize enough. Secondly, your grammar is so much better than mine is most of the rime, so there is absolutely no need to be apologizing! Finally, you ask an excellent question, so I guess we should get into it! (as always, I am no expert, so this is all based on my own observations etc. and could be, and most likely am, very wrong about everything)…

So I guess the difference between Tessa and Scott and Meryl and Charlie at least really comes down to the country they started out in. Because they trained with the same coaches for so long (and up until both of their retirements / pseudo-retirements), the actual differences in the technical aspects style of their programs are pretty subtle. However, there are actually some pretty big differences in the skating styles of skaters who learned basic skills in Canada and those who did so in America (this is easier to see in disciplines like synchro and ice dance where the majority of he programs aren’t made up of jumps and spins). 

I apologize in advance for any of this being super confusing, because it’s a little hard to explain but I will definitely try my best. The main thing that it comes down to for the difference between these two styles is knee bend. So the Canadian style tends to have a somewhat softer up-and-down knee bend. Between each new step (strokes, different portions of crossovers, etc.), skaters will straighten their knees ever so slightly which creates this rising and falling motion (think breathing but through your knees… I don’t know… that probably doesn’t make sense…). The American style, meanwhile, tends to be a lot more uniform in motion, staying down in the knees rather than lilting up and down. In addition, the American style often tends to include large, sharp movements of the extremities, while the Canadian style often focuses on a strong core and being able to move the limbs outward from that base. (This last difference can be seen particularly well in the juxtaposition between dw and vm, particularly post-comeback vm.) Neither one of these styles is necessarily better than the other, they’re just different ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Building off of this, a really interesting comparison would be between Sochi era Tessa and Scott, Sochi era Meryl and Charlie, and post-comeback Tessa and Scott. So my main thing about this comparison, would I guess go under skating skills if we’re looking at the component score; and this “thing”, as I guess I’m calling it, is the neatness of the feet. Foot placement is a HUGE thing in ice dance (or at least used to be), especially when you’re coming up through the ranks and testing your compulsory dances. For example, there are very specific places on one boot, where the other skate is supposed to be placed when doing certain steps like mohawks or choctaws. Furthermore, the feet are generally a lot tighter or closer together when performing steps in ice dance than in other disciplines. Between Sochi era Meryl and Charlie, and post-comeback Tessa and Scott, neatness of feet is one area of skating in which I personally saw a huge difference. While dw, have a tendency to wide-step (feet not super close together), vm have insanely neat feet, with each step they do placed extremely deliberately. 

Another major difference between the two, comes down to lifts. Meryl is tiny. Tessa is small of course, but Meryl is really something else. As a result of this, Meryl and Charlie tend to have a lot more acrobatic lifts; lifts that you might see in pairs if only Charlie would straighten his arms, where Meryl is in some sort of difficult position that exhibits her flexibility and Charlie is supporting her fully. Whereas Tessa and Scott tend to have lifts that require just as much strength from Tessa as they do from Scott.

When it comes to edge quality and actual skating skills, however, I think dw and vm are very well matched, which I think is part of the reason why dw were able to remain vm’s top competition for so many years.

As you may have guessed, my opinion is that dw were a lot stronger competition for vm than pc were. Now, I’m going to be totally honest here, I don’t think pc suck. I actually do think they’re a very good ice dance team, despite wrongly being constantly scored at the same level technically as vm. My main issue when it comes to them, however, is consistency. Although it’s not like they screw up elements majorly from competition to competition, throughout each of their programs they often have a couple extensions where their (well… Gabi) knees aren’t totally straight, or an edge that isn’t quite as deep as it could be. It’s almost like these basic skills aren’t as engrained into their brains as they could be, and thus if they come to a difficult part of the program, they maybe let their basic skills lapse a little bit. From other parts of their programs, however, it is clear that they are capable of hitting these edges or extensions, yet at this point in their career, it doesn’t seem to me that they are leaving it all out on the ice (even if their scores show differently) as Tessa and Scott and Meryl and Charlie were at the end of their careers. ( I don’t know if this is intentional laziness or just because they need a bit more time to practice their skills… but I’m not really going to dwell on that)

So to answer your questions in a much more concise way, anon… There isn’t a huge technical difference between Tessa and Scott and Meryl and Charlie. Both have excellent skills, however, I definitely do think that post-comeback Tessa and Scott would have without a doubt out-skated Meryl and Charlie simply due to the exactness(…?) and smoothness of their skating. That being said, you are right in that the main difference I see between the two teams is stylistic, rather than on technicalities (huge props to you for noticing that, by the way, you say you’re a new fan, but wow… good eyes). If it wasn’t clear already, I definitely think that Meryl and Charlie were not only stronger, but also more longstanding, rivals to Tessa and Scott than Gabi and Guillaume were (but also, I’m American and may or may not be a former dw stan so I’m sort of biased…). 

Thank you so much for your excellent questions anon! I apologize for writing an extremely boring and incredibly long and nonsensical response… yikes… ok time to shut up. Have a lovely day :)