Ceviche: IT'S PRIDE MONTH!!

It’s June. To me, this means two things: A) we’re finally getting some sunshine in Oregon, and B) it’s Pride Month!! And not just any Pride Month, either. If you haven’t heard about President Obama’s proclamation, go read it here. During last year’s Pride Month I was studying in Akita, Japan. I remember the Supreme Court’s decision regarding marriage equality passing while I was over there and being affected more than I thought I was going to be. As a bisexual woman, I wasn’t feeling the heat of not being able to marry a partner I loved yet. Knowing that I could left me more than a little breathless.

That was before this blog, so this year, we’re going to celebrate!

I chose ceviche for our recipe because not only is it a very attractive food with lots of different colors—almost rainbow-esque, some might say—but it’s the perfect sort of thing to serve at a great big, outdoor, summer gathering! Perhaps for your very own pride party, eh?

Ingredients: (it goes without saying all of these should be fresh)
1 small rock fish fillet
1 pound shrimp
5 limes
1 lemon
½ - ¾ tomato juice
1 large sweet onion
1 cucumber
1 tomato
1 avocado
3 jalapeño peppers
1 bunch radishes
2 cloves freshly minced garlic
¼ cup chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon salt
Tortilla chips (not actually included in the ceviche, but a handy tool for eating it!)

First, peel and devein your shrimp. Give them a rough chop if you like. Then, throw your shrimp and your fish into a bowl and juice your lemon and limes over them. Be sure that the seafood is completely covered in the juice. The idea behind ceviche is to cook the seafood with citric acid. If the seafood isn’t completely submerged, it won’t cook correctly. Cover your bowl and place it in the fridge for 30 minutes to cook. The shrimp should be opaque and slightly firm at the end. If at the end of 30 minutes you’re still concerned your seafood might be raw, throw it in a pan for a very short amount of time.

While the shrimp and fish are cooking, you’ll want to dice and combine your onion, fresh tomato, cucumber, avocado, and radishes. Toss in your tomato juice too. Once combined, toss and mix in the garlic, cilantro, and jalapeños to reach the desired level of spice. Be aware that your jalapeños will become stronger the longer they sit in the mixture, so if you plan to let your ceviche sit for a while you may want to hold off. I like my food spicy, so I mixed them all in and enjoyed the flavor.

Once your seafood is cooked and your other ingredients mixed, combine the two bowls together. You can leave the lemon and lime juice in if you like and even throw in some more tomato juice to play with the consistency of the ceviche.  Or you can strain most of it out if you prefer less liquid in your ceviche. Yvonne (yes, the same chef who made my birthday cheesecakes) and I left most of the citrus juice in. It was great day-of, but I would recommend straining it out before eating it again if you store it. I would also recommend eating this at room temperature. I found that if the mixture was too cold I couldn’t taste all of the ingredients as well.

Now, how does this relate to Pride Month, you ask? Aside from the beautiful coloration and apt weather conditions, I picked this dish because it takes time. More than anything, whenever I’ve seen media that wasn’t pitched as LGBT+ from the beginning, the media takes time to introduce the queer elements of their characters.

There are two bits of media I’d like to talk about in that respect, the first of which being Avatar: The Legend of Korra. The series is four seasons long, and in the first three seasons both Korra and her fourth season love interest Asami are presented as heterosexual women. They even date the same male firebender, Mako. Even in the first season, however, Asami and Korra are hardly rivals or unfriendly just because they’re interested in the same young man. Very early on in Asami and Mako’s relationship, before Korra has anything more to do with him than a crush, Asami takes Korra for a drive. This may seem fairly mundane—until you realize that Asami is the heir to a multi-million yuan (the Avatar universe version of currency) technological company. Aside from being a skilled mechanic, Asami is versed in the operation of all her company-to-be’s equipment. As the only non-elemental bender of the group, this is how Asami keeps up with her bender friends in the main story. So when Asami takes Korra for a drive, it’s one hell of a whirlwind, stunt driving scenario, and the two end up friends before the end of Asami’s introductory episode.

It’s unclear if series creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DeMartino meant for Korra and Asami to be romantically involved from the beginning, but regardless of original intent, it was refreshing to see two women interested in the same man not detesting each other over that. There’s an unhealthy trope I see a lot—both in real life and in media—of women viewing other women as competition when it comes to romantic inclinations. Korra and Asami’s avoidance of the trope seems rather apt now, since they become each other’s romantic interest in season four, but the initial avoidance of the trope was one of the things that kept me watching and clued into the fact that The Legend of Korra was going to be as good as its prequel series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

That said, it did take four seasons for Korra and Asami to end up together, and—due to Nickelodeon's archaic views on LGBT+ content—was fairly subtle. At the end of season three, Korra suffers a horrible injury that inhibits her abilities as the Avatar, wielder of all four elements and bridge between the human world and spirit world. She withdraws to her Water Tribe home in the south and corresponds with almost no one. Her only penpal? Asami. And just look at the amount of letters she’s written to Korra!

Korra recovers to an extent by the beginning of season four, but due to the conflicts of the story, Korra and Asami hardly have a moment together that isn’t fraught with plot-relevant tension. At the end of the season, a different, heterosexual couple gets married. Korra and Asami both attend the wedding, and slip off together. There, they have a conversation.

This type of conversation is one that I see many same-sex couples have. It’s one where viewers who do not expect to see a conversation between lovers see only a platonic bond, and viewers who expect to see romance, do. The two are emotional, affectionate, and physically touch each other. They agree to go on a trip together to the spirit realm. Just before entering the portal, they hold hands, turn to each other, and gaze into each other’s eyes with content smiles—mirroring the wedding pose from earlier in the episode.

Konietzko and DeMartino both verified that these choices were intentional and that even though they hadn’t been allowed to include a kiss between Korra and Asami—despite the overwhelming amount of heterosexual kisses in the show—Asami and Korra were indeed canonically in a relationship.

Dark Horse Comics has the rights for The Legend of Korra comics, and we all know the independent Northwest comics company has no issues with including diverse characters! I’m looking forward to seeing Asami and Korra’s relationship develop in the comics, and until that time, we have official art from Konietzko to tide us over.

The second piece of media I want to talk about is, once again, Undertale. Seriously, if you haven’t played it yet, even if you think you’re not a gamer, get yourself a Steam account and buy this baby. If you need convincing or background, check out my first two blog posts about Undertale here and here.

I attribute Undertale’s development as an indie game to be the reason that this game does so many things right. Korra and Asami were stunted due to some pretty unfair corporate calls, but Undertale creator Toby Fox didn’t have to adhere to anyone’s call except his. Due to his creative freedom and the support of his team and backers, Fox was able to include not just one but two same-sex couples in Undertale.

The first is stumbled upon in the course of the main storyline of all Neutral and Pacifist runs of the game. I believe in a Genocide run of the game, they have already fled before you arrive. The couple is a pair of guards tasked with evacuating an area due to a human wearing a striped shirt. They mistake you for a monster and try to escort you out of the area before realizing you’re the human they’re looking for and engaging you in combat.

The thing about combat in Undertale is that you really don’t want to kill anyone—which immediately puts using the “Fight” option in battle out of the question. Instead, you have to “Act.” Actions vary immensely from battle to battle, and if you don’t choose the correct actions from your action menu, the consequences can be severe. The best option is often to “Check” each monster and see what their description says. Often this can help lead to the correct course of action, especially when one is at a loss for what to do. Watch what you have to do in order to win the battle with the Royal Guards.

Think back to Korra and Asami’s fourth season conversation that could be read as platonic by viewers who weren’t expecting to listen to a conversation between lovers. This particular fight, I hear, has given some people a lot of trouble because they simply didn’t know what to do with it—because they weren’t expecting it to be a love confession between two male guards!

What’s important about this initial exposure to a same-sex relationship is that it changes the player’s expectations about situations, characters, and tropes in the game. While the player may have previously only been assuming that characters in the realm of Undertale were heterosexual, either due to the massive brainwashing of our media and culture or through some personal sense of bigotry. Now, they are either expecting to see more diversity amongst the characters or have quit playing in childish outrage.

This lays the stage for the main same-sex couple from Undertale: Undyne and Alphys. There are hints that Undyne and Alphys are interested in each other that the player can see during a Neutral or Pacifist run. The first is during their friendship encounter at Undyne’s house when Undyne is trying to civilly offer the player a drink without acting on her urge to immediately hunt any humans that enter the underground. The options you are given are sugar, soda, hot chocolate, and golden flower tea (obviously the correct option). Undyne won’t give the player anything but tea. However, her reaction when the player selects the soda is noteworthy.

If the player has been to Alphys’s lab, they know that Alphys has a penchant for junk food and soda. However, when I did my first run of Undertale, I completely missed this small hint to Undyne’s affections for Alphys BECAUSE I WASN’T EXPECTING IT!

The game gives you another chance to catch on, though. When taking Mettaton’s quiz in Alphys’s lab, his last question is “Who does Doctor Alphys have a crush on?” Being the hubristic thing I am, I went with option C) The Human. Here’s the thing, though: all of the answers are right! While Mettaton will accept The Human and Don’t Know as answers, because Alphys is obviously very interested in humans and the grand concept of someone unknown in an alternate universe where Alphys has found romantic attachment is completely possible (according to Doctor Alphys’s research). Of course, the best reactions come from options A and B, Undyne and Asgore respectively.

While these two moments in the Neutral and Pacifist runs are there, they can easily be missed. For example, not reading into Undyne’s blush and selecting one of the other three answers to Mettaton’s final quiz question would keep the player from ever noticing any of this! Fortunately, in the true Pacifist ending to the game, the player sees Alphys and Undyne confess their love to each other, and they receive a real happily ever after.

If you want to see the whole adorable story of how that happened, I suggest you hustle over to Steam and get to playing Undertale, my friend. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Happy Pride Month, everybody!

Ice Cream: Expectations

While I was in Japan, I ate a lot of ice cream—especially during the summer months. There were three flavors of ice cream that really struck me: matcha, sea salt, and soy sauce.

If you’ve gotten sea water in your mouth, doused sushi in too much soy sauce, or sampled really thick matcha, you might wonder why anyone would want to make ice cream out of such salty and bitter substances. Those of you who are familiar with the Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbon from the Portland Salt & Straw or any other strange flavor from your local artisan ice cream parlor may be less surprised—but when one hears “ice cream,” one often expects it to be something sweet. These three flavors offered an experience that was far from the one I had come to expect from ice cream.

Matcha ice cream is often served as a soft cream and topped with real matcha tea powder. It can also be found at any nearby Japanese Baskin Robbins in scoops. In comparison to the rich, dark tea taste of the Japan’s matcha ice cream, the green tea ice cream of the States is downright sweet.

Me with matcha ice cream.

Sea salt ice cream is the brainchild of the Disney Sea park in Chiba. Each area of the park is themed after a kingdom from a Disney movie. You can visit the center of the earth, Agrabah, and even Atlantica. Each area has its own theme for the food available. As you may have guessed, Atlantica’s theme is salt. Only “under the sea” is one able to get salted popcorn and the sea salt flavored ice cream that inspired Tetsuya Nomura, the creator of Kingdom Hearts. I had to try the ice cream in order to A) compare it to Salt & Straw’s version, and B) taste what had inspired the blue ice cream bars I’ve been coveting for most of my young adult life. The ice cream from Disney Sea comes in a cute shell and has a fruit center. The ice cream was tasty, and I enjoyed it for the novelty, but if you’re looking for truly delicious sea salt ice cream, I would recommend scheduling a trip to Portland and the Salt & Straw.

Me and two friends at Tokyo Disney Sea eating sea salt ice cream.

The last type of ice cream was the one I didn’t come to Japan expecting to try. I was raised to be the sort of person who will try any type of food once, so when a teacher mentioned soy sauce ice cream to me, I was intrigued. Soy sauce in Japan is far more than just liquid salt. There are different kinds, different flavor combinations, different levels of intensity of flavor. Picking a soy sauce can be as complicated as picking a fine wine. This was reflected by the ice cream. One might have expected it to taste salty. Instead, it tasted like one of those soy sauce coated rice crackers. There was something salty, yet sticky and sweet about it.

My very first soy sauce ice cream.

I want to talk a little about how expectation plays a role in media today—especially when it comes to secret identities and love triangles—or, as with Miraculous Ladybug (aka Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir and Miraculous), love squares.

The two main characters of Miraculous Ladybug are the super heroes Ladybug and Chat Noir (he’s called “cat noir” in the English dub, but you get the idea). These super heroes daywalk as Marinette and Adrian. Now, get ready for the geometry. Marinette likes Adrian, but Adrian as Chat Noir fancies Ladybug, who is Marinette. Sadly, these two have no idea they’re just crushing on the other’s alter ego, and so Adrian is nice to Marinette, but not too nice, and Ladybug is constantly outwitting Chat Noir’s charming (if pun-tastic) flirting. The only thing keeping them from realizing who the other is? Their expectations about their different identities. Adrian’s ladylove couldn’t possibly be someone as ordinary as Marinette, and Marinette’s sweet kind-hearted Adrian could never be so full of bad cat-themed humor as Chat Noir…right? It’s going to be all kinds of fun when these two finally figure it out. Let’s hope it follows Sailor Moon’s example and cinches this particular plot bunny before the end of season one.

Marinette and Adrian visually expressing their love square in the Miraculous Ladybug opening.

Next, I know we’ve talked about Undertale before, but it bears bringing up again. Those of you nostalgic for the 8-bit games of the 90’s will want to pick up this particular little number. I don’t want to say too much, but those of you who have played know the merit of playing this game through twice. You may think you know what’s going on, due to your unspeakable experience with video games and understanding of plot…but that is precisely what the game wants you to think. Undertale is like a wine that gets better with age, because the second time you play it, you’ll come at it with a completely different understanding of the characters, the world, and the story you’re being told.

(This is where those of you who don’t want spoilers for the game should stop.)

For example, let’s talk about Mettaton. The robot celebrity is first met when the player enters the laboratory of Royal Scientist, Doctor Alphys. Alphys makes Mettaton out to be a robot that has gone rogue and is out for human blood. Mettaton then tries to kill the player through all manner of entertainment programs, ranging from quiz shows to cooking shows to Romeo and Juliet type drama—but each time he is about to succeed, Alphys comes through and saves the player. In the player’s final encounter with Mettaton, Mettaton tells the player that Alphys was fooling them the whole time. There was never any danger, and Mettaton would rather entertain humans than hurt them. He just played along so Alphys could pretend to help you.

As a player who has had plenty of villains try to sway my mind with lies, I immediately disbelieved Mettaton. No way he was going to get out of taking responsibility for trying to kill me multiple times just by trying to make out like it had been a game. No way he was going to undermine the bonds of trust and friendship Alphys and I had built by braving his trials together. So I paid him no mind, and I fought him, and I won, and Alphys told me she had one more lie she had to confess to me, and didn’t deny anything Mettaton had said, and when I played the second time around, it was obvious that Mettaton was acting. It was amazing how different my responses to Alphys and Mettaton were. Since my original expectation of Mettaton was that he was my adversary, I read all of his antagonistic text as serious the first time through. The second time, it was impossible to take him seriously.

The moment Mettaton made me laugh most on my second playthrough.

Even though the evidence was there the first time I played through the game, my expectation of what was going to happen overpowered it. And this is just one example of how Undertale uses your expectations against you—a sweet little reminder to keep an open mind.

Now go eat some strange ice cream.

The Holidays: Noodles, Cake, and Fried Chicken, Oh My!

Here’s the thing about Christmas in Japan: It is not the Christmas you know. And don’t even get me started on Hanukkah…

In Japan there are two things that are “traditionally” eaten on Christmas: cake, and KFC. No, you read that right. It doesn’t stand for something else. I am, indeed, speaking of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The reason for this? Christmas is a secular holiday in Japan. One might say that Christmas in the United States or other countries is also a secular holiday, but Japan is secular in a different way. In America, we have some pretty specific traditions regarding decoration, meals, familial togetherness, the spirit of giving, and cookies left out for Santa. In Japan, only children receive gifts on Christmas, and the day is more about couples loving sharing a “Christmas Cake” than the family being together. Christmas isn’t considered a national holiday, so most people usually have to go to work. And as for the chicken? Well, like with hamburgers, it looks like that’s our fault too.

So instead of focusing on the Christmas foods of Japan, I thought perhaps talking about the symbolism of the long New Year’s noodles would be more interesting.

Everything the Japanese eat on New Year’s has some sort of symbolic nature. Here’s a bit about the dishes I won’t be talking about, because the dish I find the most interesting is the one traditionally eaten on New Year’s Eve that symbolizes “crossing over to the new year” with its long noodles. Known as omisoka or toshikoshi soba, this soba noodle soup is made—you already know this if you read the name of the dish—of buckwheat soba noodles. The important part of this dish is that the soba noodles are made looooooooonnnnnnngggggg to symbolize a long life and so that you cut them with your teeth and let go of any hardship from the past year.

I’ve never made soba noodles before, but I have made long egg noodles to celebrate the New Year. Shout out to my good friend Ceili Shannon for hosting the noodle making party and teaching me how. All you’ll need is flour, some eggs, and your favorite spices (I ended up throwing oregano and mace into my noodles—they were delicious). Here’s a quick recipe for making egg noodles. You can twist them into fun shapes or cut them into thin strips. Ceili had a noodle press that flattened out our dough and cut them into noodles at the same time, and it was really convenient if you don’t feel like the hassle of doing it by hand. For those of you who want to make the soba itself, here’s a recipe for the special New Year’s dish.

As for a media tie in… It’s Christmas for me, and almost New Year’s for all of us. Go watch your favorite holiday movie—or if you’re at a loss, may I recommend to you Over the Garden Wall? Completely secular, made up of ten ten minute episodes, and you will watch it twice, have your mind blown, and be so happy to be alive that you’ll open the new year with open arms and determination!—and then binge play Fire Emblem or Undertale or any of those other games in which you should really name your protagonist after yourself for heavy emotional impact, and eat some good food to bring in the new year.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Gyoza: Complete as One Part of a Series

My host mother surprised me with a gyoza making lesson the other day. Here’s how it went down:

Ingredients:  cabbage, chives, ginger, garlic, 1 package of gyoza wraps, ground meat of choice (we used pork, but lots of people use beef).

Seasonings: sake, sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and salt.

1. Check the back of the gyoza wraps to see just how much all of your wraps can hold. This will determine exactly how much of the other ingredients you will need.
2. Mince all ingredients and mix together in a large bowl.
3. Mix seasonings and pour over gyoza filling.
4. Mix again.
5. Ready a glass of water, and open your gyoza wrappers.
6. Make the dumplings!: Place your filling inside the wrapper. Then dip your finger in the water and moisten the edges of the wrapper. Close the wrapper to create a gyoza dumpling. You can try pinching the wrapper as you close it strategically to make little creases in the dumpling.
7. Cook in pans with olive oil in the bottom—covered!—until browned.

Here is a more exact recipe, and here is one with pretty pictures that covers the dumpling making process since I was too busy getting my hands dirty to take pictures.

The thing about gyoza is each dumpling is complete on its own. Served as an appetizer or a side, just one would be completely acceptable—but they’re so tasty that we often want more than one of these delicious dumplings to complement the last one.

And, what with Hanukkah happening as we speak, I’ve got series with stand-alone segments on the mind anyway. My two best examples of media that manages to pull off stand-alone segments are Mushishi and Undertale.

If you ever wondered what a Hayao Miyazaki movie might feel like it if it was packed into a twenty two minute anime episode, you need look no further than Mushishi.  Full of fairytale like mysteries and beautiful Meiji era Japanese nature scenery, the series sets a quiet, peaceful mood that allows the viewer to feel as if they’ve experienced a revelation that lasted longer than one episode of anime. The reason for this is because Mushishi is the story of… well, of the supernatural beings called mushi, really. In each episode a new set of people deal with some sort of effect of the creatures called mushi. Mushi as defined by the show are the most primitive form of life. They are like fairies or ghosts in a way, because not everyone can see them, and they often cause trouble for people without meaning to. The only consistent character is the traveling Mushi Master, Ginko. Because of this, every episode is very dense. There’s hardly any pre-existing knowledge necessary in order to watch each episode—except that Ginko knows a lot about mushi and how to deal with them, but that’s established in every episode anyway when he explains what he does to the new set of characters. There are some episodes that are connected and go further into the past of Ginko the Mushi Master, but every episode is filled with new characters, a different kind of mushi, and its own set of themes.

Mushishi is one of those shows you can accidentally watch out of order or skip episodes on and never even realize it because each episode stands on its own so well. When the second season of the show came out, I accidentally watched the second half of the season before watching the first half. The story is also available in manga form.

Mushishi screen cap. Mushi dealt with appears in the form of a reversed rainbow.

Undertale is a different breed of stand-alone from Mushishi. It seems like a nostalgic RPG when you first start playing. You play as a human child that has fallen into the sealed underground world of the monsters. Your goal is to get back to the surface. However, it very quickly becomes apparent that this game is nothing like the RPGs from your childhood. Whereas in something like Pokémon one would always fight the wild Pokémon and other trainers even if one intended to catch or befriend them, fighting is something you can’t do if you want to get the best ending for Undertale. In order to really understand everything that’s going on in the background of the game, the player must run through the game three times. Fortunately, Undertale is relatively short, and once you achieve the Neutral Ending—because I can almost guarantee that is the ending you will receive on your first run through of the game—it’s possible to run through the game again and get the Pacifist Ending (so called because in order to get it you mustn’t kill any of the monsters you encounter) in less than a day. From there I don’t recommend actually trying to get the Genocide Ending. In order to get that ending the player must kill every monster in the game and actually trigger a certain number of encounters in each area for the sole purpose of killing monsters. Aside from taking a lot of time and effort, there are consequences for completing a Genocide run of Undertale: it is impossible to ever truly receive a Pacifist Ending again.

But in order to truly understand everything that’s going on in the world of Undertale, it’s important to receive all of the information that exists in all three story lines. If you’re personally interested in playing the game and having all three experiences, I would recommend Youtube to you as a resource after completing a Neutral and then Pacifist run.

The reason each run of Undertale stands so well on its own is because of how the responses and futures of the characters and the world change based on the player’s actions. In a Neutral run, Undyne, the strongest monster in the land, will sneer at the player for having killed any monsters at all, telling them that they didn’t need to and that they only did it because it was easy for them. However, in a Pacifist run, she will sneer at the player for putting on a “goody-two shoes” act. In a Genocide run, she simply vows to kill you. Nothing is the same from run to run, and so each play through stands on its own to give the player a new experience and enlighten them to a new facet of the game.

Undyne’s dialogue, prefight on a Neutral run.

Undyne’s dialogue, prefight on a Pacifist run.

Undyne’s dialogue, prefight on a Genocide run.

Now you’ve got two new things you can do on those days when you only have time for a little bit of something. Enjoy your dumpling sized helpings of anime and video games!