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The random person I have tied to a chair in my basement: "Mmf mmf mmf!"

So, first: as I alluded to, the Guzu Lan sect in Mo Dao Zu Shi are extremely Buddhist, in a way that's unmistakable if you're at all familiar with East Asian religious culture. It's mentioned several times that the founder was a monk, and details like the vegetarian diet and ban on alcohol and the rule against killing any animal inside the sect make it even more obvious. They aren't making the disciples fully live like Buddhist monks, but it's not that far off, including the presence of an extremely long list of very particular rules. This is the context in which both Lan Finishing School and the Wens' attack on the Cloud Recesses exist. In many places with a strong Buddhist presence in the culture, it's not especially unusual for many young men to spend a year or two as a monk to get some Proper Morals hammered through their heads; conversely, there are many, many instances throughout history across many countries of Buddhist monasteries, as institutions that sometimes hold significant wealth and power, being targeted for religious persecution that tries to wipe their monastic tradition out. The Lans are really, really Buddhist.

Anyway a few years ago some poor bastard found that the way the novel depicts the experience of living in an insular community with lots of strictly enforced rules about proper conduct for moral and spiritual development resonated with their experience growing up in Orthodox Judaism, and wrote an AU fanfic, inspired by the historical Kaifeng Jews, where the Lan sect are Jewish.

People went insane.

And to reiterate: I get it. The Lans are so Buddhist. The Vibes are, you can recognize immediately, so weird. Someone Is Wrong On The Internet.

But also... I get it. The thing is, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu is a good writer. She is incredible at depicting the messy nuances of her characters' emotional lives, and Lan Wangji struggling with how the same highly regimented sect culture that forms the foundation of so much of who he is and what he cares for and which he's had to defend over the smoking ashes of his home has also brutally hurt him and everyone he loves is not, in fact, something no one has ever experienced feeling outside of a bunch of Buddhist Taoist sword wizards in fantasy historical China. And also, there were, in fact, literally more Jewish people in ancient China than there were hot peppers, and that didn't stop hot peppers from appearing in the novel.

But for some totally mysterious and utterly inexplicable reason, a whole bunch of people who had never previously been concerned about cultural erasure when a whole bunch of people were writing fanfiction in which the characters from ancient China live in the United States of America in the modern day and the Gusu Lan sect are fundie Christians were suddenly really concerned about how absolutely terrible and racist it was for someone to write fanfic, labeled as an AU, where the vibes were weird. For, you know, no particular reason.

And so they harassed the author off the internet! Though a fair number of people saved copies, because of the, you know. Author getting antisemitically dogpiled.

Americans:

From Wikipedia: A graham cracker is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour.

The next ingredient (which is also extremely traditionally American but slightly more variable) is typically Hershey's chocolate, but you could probably swap this out in the UK with any plain chocolate bar.

Last ingredient is big marshmallows, the kind you do the chubby bunny challenge with, like the size of your thumb and twice as thick.

A proper s'more, the most traditional possible variety, involves to graham cracker squares, two slab segments of Hershey's chocolate, and one to two marshmallows depending on your preference for filling and gooeyness. You put a slab of chocolate on one of the graham cracker squares. Your marshmallows should be toasted, usually over a campfire but if you're doing them at home over a gas stove burner is fine, but the fire part is critical. You can toast them to whatever degree you like, some people like them nice and golden brown but still kind of firm in the middle, me personally? I want that bitch to CATCH ON FIRE, I want it gooey and sticky as hell in the middle, crispy and burnt on the outside. Slap that motherfucker on your graham cracker and chocolate square, top with the other one so your marshmallow and chocolate are sandwiched together by graham cracker on the outside. You do this with your freshly toasted marshmallow because ideally it will be hot enough to start to melt the chocolate so it sticks to the marshmallow and the graham cracker and, combined with the gooey marshmallow, it keeps the whole thing together, and for that reason some people will let them sit for a hot second to let the melting process happen (especially if like me you have chocolate on BOTH graham cracker squares, not just one, because you're a sugar fiend), but if you are a young child you do not have that degree of patience and you eat that shit immediately, unmelted chocolate and all. Consume your summer camp delight like a tiny club sandwich, get gooey sticky marshmallow and chocolate all over your hands, and enjoy.

The first is that you don't pull the marshmallow off the roasting stick and somehow put it on the chocolate. Your staging area will look something like this, with the graham crackers and chocolate already set out (though not usually on the fire like this, for us it was always someone's lap or a picnic table or something)

And when your marshmallow has reached appropriate roasting perfection, you use the graham crackers to slide it off the stick.

and ideally, as a CHILD you are using a literal stick. Like you walked around and spent time looking for The Perfect Stick off the ground while the adults set up the fire. It has to be thin enough the marshmallow will fit, sturdy enough that it won't bow, long enough that you won't burn yourself roasting your marshmallow. And preferably doesn't have a lot of bark that's sloughing off, OR so much bar sloughing off you can peel it all back and get to the clean stick under it. If you're smart, you might stick the tip into the fire first to "wash" it/burn off anything that was still lingering, but. well, most kids don't.

When you bite in, the marshmallow and chocolate SHOULD ooze out all over you. If you don't kinda look like this eating it, you've probably done it wrong:

You find a spot, not above all the logs where everyone sticks their marshmallows by default, but at the heart of the fire. Ideally between a couple logs already glowing gold. Something like here:

Below the leaping flame. Near the logs. There's probably only one or two spots good enough for this on any given fire, but that's okay because everyone else is up above. They will get their marshmallows faster. They will be either firm or burned or both. That's not your goal.

Rotate the marshmallow slowly. Ideally come in at an angle so the part closest to the flame is the side, not the tip. The spot closest to the fire is the spot that turns a crispy golden brown, and you want that everywhere, on the tip and around the circle.

You keep going, slowly turning, for several minutes. Several people will rotate in and out of the higher sections, getting their fast delight. Eventually, your marshmallow will start sagging badly, risking falling. Maybe it does fall and got start over. But eventually it will be golden brown all over, and so liquid it no longer clings to the stick. It is ready, finally.

You say "who hasn't gotten one yet?" And deposit it onto their waiting graham crackers and chocolate. You've made an excellent marshmallow. It isn't for you. Get another while you're over by the bags and go back to the heart of the fire.

That's your evening. One, slow, perfect marshmallow at a time, given to whomever still wants s'more. You're making art for children to stuff into their mouths cheerfully. You're watching the movement of the fire and the heat of the logs, like you would if you were maintaining it — maybe you would be, maybe you were the one who built it — but right now that's not the goal. Let someone else put more logs on, while you take only the one stick and find the best spot for it to live.

You will, eventually, finish a marshmallow and find that nobody moves to accept it. Maybe they're all eating right now, or maybe they've gone through so many they're hesitating. Eat your masterpiece then. Enjoy it, the hardest and most perfect result from a fun and beautiful moment. Go back in for another, until you've run out of marshmallows and the fire is too low or until even you are done with s'mores, until you have made enough.

This is a nice sign to look at. 10/10 for composition.

I think I should write a guidebook to go along with it.

No guidebook yet, but hopefully I'll get around to it.

*organic fungicide and my bag of plant food

**my community garden plot

***root rot and drowned root systems