No, but seriously

[branchandroot]

Am I the only one bewildered by Guardian fanon that Shen Wei must never have tasted anything as concentratedly sweet as a lolipop before Zhao Yunlan introduced him? I mean, concentrated sweets are not a modern phenomenon, and straight honey is at least as intensely sweet as modern hard candy. And if we go with an assumed cultural base of the show's originating culture, well, both honey bees and sugar cane arose from Southeast Asia. Chinese desserts historically incorporate both honey and cane sugar, including straight-up hardened sugar syrup.

If anything shocked Shen Wei about that (besides the essential point of having someone shove something in his mouth) I'd expect it to be the flavoring, not the sweetness.

Comments

[winter_blossom]

A lot of the fanon about Shen Wei bewilders me, tbh. Though this one does have some canon basis behind it. It seems plausible enough to assume that Dixing didn't have concentrated sweets back then (they seem to lag behind Haixing, development-wise, plus normal plants don't grow underground), but Shen Wei seems to have spent a lot of time on Haixing even as a child, so he'd have encountered Haixing sweets, at least? Though what with the meteor strike, such luxuries would have been in short supply, so maybe not.

But, yeah, the point of the whole lollipop scene wasn't anything to do with the taste/novelty of candy. After all, it was a metaphor for "lightening up enough to try out new things, even if they're things you didn't think you fancied before." Since Shen Wei canonically doesn't like sweets but loved the lollipop because it was Kunlun's gift to him. (Also, there had to be some basis for the lollipop wrapper-encased pendant!)

[branchandroot]

/That's/ the part of the moment I love best, yes. That Shen Wei has enough affection for this crazy man in his life to accept the gesture.

I think the assumption that the meteor knocked the whole world back to subsistence-level is one of the things that gets to me, actually. We know they retained enough technology to create the Holy Tools in that same generation, and even if food production /was/ back to hard-scrabble for some reason, unless every (many and varied) source of sugar was destroyed, we'd still be seeing it in food preservation. Salt and sugar are the two biggies, there.

Honestly, this is probably part and parcel of my discontent with a lot of the common YOHE world-building.

[glymr]

You can comment on the original post, I don't bite. :)

To clarify, I never thought Shen Wei's reaction was due to the sweetness specifically (Like you, I figured it was a natural reaction to having something shoved in one's mouth!) But I did think he probably found it startlingly sweet.

However, you make some compelling points. I hadn't considered the wide availability of honey and sugar cane in Southeast Asia. Canonically, though, I think an argument can be made that neither of those would be things that young SW would have a lot of access to in a post-meteor-strike world. Or if either of them were, they would be a very rare sort of treat. It's something I think about sometimes, how different our palates must be compared to those of our ancestors, given that we eat so much sugar/corn syrup/etc compared to people even just a few hundred years ago. Not to mention the wide availability of every kind of spice and flavoring imaginable!

[branchandroot]

*waves hands* It wasn't your post in particular, so I didn't want to grumble on you! This is one that's been building on me for a while.

The amount of sugar that goes into nearly every element of the current Western diet is certainly off the curve (thank you, corn lobby), but one thing you can count on pretty much every culinary culture, at every stage of development, to have discovered is the local sources of sweet. If you're far enough north/south, it may be a seasonal food, but it's only when you get into /serious/ subsistence-level ecologies that it's all that rare.

*reins her foodways enthusiasm in* Anyway! What I'd absolutely buy Shen Wei being startled by, tastewise, is the... let's call it the /sharpness/ of the sweetness in a modern hard-candy. The flavorings used to mimic 'fruit' are often pretty acidic, and that would be quite different from the richer sweetness of honey or actual fruit or fruit preserves.

[china_shop]

If anything shocked Shen Wei about that (besides the essential point of having someone shove something in his mouth) I'd expect it to be the flavoring, not the sweetness.

Yeah, I wondered about artificial flavours, particularly acidic ones, but I don't know anything about prehistoric diets so I tend to fall into handwaving and la la la... :-)

[branchandroot]

Well, we're pretty sure booze existed ten thousand years ago. XD

But honestly, these people had /interstellar travel/. Even if they were hammered by ecological disaster I'd bet on a patchwork of "totally lost this" with "extremely sophisticated the other". The three things I'd count on retaining or immediately figuring out some way to re-acquire are alcohol, food-onna-stick, and sweets.

(Which is why I just stick my fingers in my ears and la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you about the whole making wine to feed the branch thing, because no, really, seriously, alcohol is one of the very oldest inventions we have archeological evidence of.)

[ranalore]

Generally, I think people are going by Shen Wei's backstory of how recent the meteor strike was, and the privation he suffered before pretty much immediately becoming a child soldier, and drawing the logical conclusion that honey and sugar cane are in short supply in YOHE. Honey, at least, lasts a while, and some food storage may have survived the meteor strike, but I imagine any such supplies are saved for medicinal and preservation applications during wartime. I don't think it's impossible he's tasted something as sweet as the lollipop before. I just don't think it's likely.

That said, I agree that what surprises him in that scene is someone shoving something in his mouth, and probably the artificial flavor.

[branchandroot]

That's taking the idea that they completely lost star-faring level technology at face value, though, and they retained enough to create the Holy Tools in the same generation. (This is also, incidentally, why the implication that there are no other ranged weapons just /grates/ on me, because really? Really?)

[ranalore]

That's taking the idea that they completely lost star-faring level technology at face value

Not really, because we do see, for instance, Ma Gui applying a substance to Zhao Yunlan's cut hand that instantly heals it. That's in addition to the Hallows. It just appears, and Shen Wei's backstory seems to confirm it, that what tech and high-level resources remain have been corralled by a narrow group of people for focused purposes. Then, Zhao Yunlan gives his mini-speech about there being so many flavors for Shen Wei to taste other than the bitterness of his young life, and Shen Wei doesn't contradict him, which further reinforces the idea that the lollipop is an extremely rare treat. Though, I realize I misspoke last night, which is what I get for commenting late. I do think Shen Wei had sweets as a very young child, before his parents died. I'm just doubtful that he's had any since then, until the lollipop.

Although, you've got me thinking, because sugar is so valuable for food preservation. If their tech could in any way be applied to, say, re-populate the fly and bee population from amber-trapped specimens following the meteor strike, that would not only assist in re-establishing edible flora, but re-establish sources of sugar. Which would also go a long way toward once again producing alcohol, which I agree it's extremely unrealistic they don't have, since it's not like it spoils (maybe it was just a particular type of wine needed for the sacred branch, which didn't exist before Zhao Yunlan suggested it). Unless the meteor managed to hit every village/home supply of beer and noble's cache of liquor—in which case, it would have wiped out all the people too—alcohol would still be around.

This is also, incidentally, why the implication that there are no other ranged weapons just /grates/ on me

I auto-fanspackled this the first time through, so I didn't even notice it until my first rewatch. There's a degree to which I can say, okay, most of the skirmishes we see in YOHE are at such close-range that there's no reason for anybody to be pulling out recurves, but for things like the ambush of Ye Zun and his men in the woods, why aren't Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan being supported by archers? I get that there was no budget, but even just one guy with a crossbow would have told us that yes, ranged weapons exist.