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!

Oyakodon: Today I am Thankful for my Family

November is coming to an end, and I'm thinking about Thanksgiving. Of course, making a turkey dinner in Japan is a little difficult, but there is a dish that seems to convey the idea of family and makes a meal of itself. Oyakodon (親子丼) or, in English, “parent and child donburi” is a dish that uses both chicken meat and eggs. The use of both chicken and eggs together is where this dish pulls its name from. Some of my western friends thought this was creepy, but I thought it was rather sweet. It reminded me of all the family—both that of blood and that of heart—I have back home that I'll be missing this year.

Here's the way I made oyakodon with my host mother, Motoko Okada:

Ingredients:  4 onions, 3 carrots, 3 small green peppers, 1 small chicken, 5 eggs.

1. Julienne and sauté all veggies (in order of appearance). Add sake, some chicken stock (dried) and a bunch of water and simmer for a bit.
2. Marinate chicken with ginger, onions, garlic, salt, and sugar for a nice taste. Best if done the night before.
3. Remove chicken from marinade and grill.
4. Mix eggs and cook separately.
5. Once everything is cooked to taste, lay ingredients over a bed of rice and serve.

Here’s another recipe too, if you find my hurried notes too inexact.

It felt right to make this with a maternal figure during this time since it’s still Thanksgiving in my silly American heart even if the people in Tokyo aren’t celebrating it. But it got me thinking… How often do we see healthy familial relationships in media? Can you count the number of them you’ve seen in the last week? Are you only using one hand? Yeah…

When I first heard the name oyakodon and was told what it meant, it actually immediately reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from Fire Emblem: Awakening.

Those of you familiar with the Fire Emblem series will remember the support system of the previous games that allowed you to build relationships between your army’s units. But in Awakening, the support system also allows the player to meet the offspring that result from the romantic support links. These children travel back to a time before their parents have conceived them in order to prevent the tragic events of the future they come from—in which most of their parents have died and the world has been overrun by darkness and chaos due to the Fell Dragon Grima—in order to attempt to save their parents and to build a future in which they can all live happily together. When Chrom, the main character of Awakening, meets his daughter Lucina and hears her story, he reacts not as a soldier or as the Exalt, leader of the country of Ylisse, but as a father—and it is so much more emotionally powerful than any declaration of war he could have made on Grima.

Those of you less familiar with niche JRPGs will remember The Incredibles. Part superhero movie and part family romcom, each member of the Parr family has a pretty “incredible” power; Dash has enough speed to allow him to play as many pranks as a young boy could think of; Violet’s invisibility and force fields allow her to admire the world of high school without ever having to worry about stepping foot in it; their mother Helen’s ability to stretch makes her more than flexible when it comes to balancing house work, her third baby, and the rest of her family; and Bob’s colossal strength should be more than any father could ever need in order to protect his family. In a way, these powers reflect the things we as normal viewers might stereotypically wish we had in our everyday lives. Wouldn’t it be great to be fast enough to get away with pranks? To not have to worry about what might happen to you going out on a Saturday night regardless of what you were wearing? To be able to stretch far enough that you could be in three places at once? To be strong enough to protect everyone you loved?

But the point that is very quickly made is that no matter how incredible someone is, no one is ever strong alone. From the beginning of the movie, Mr. Incredible starts losing to the machine that Syndrome made. It’s not until the entire family starts working together that they’re able to defeat both the robot and Syndrome. The toll it takes on Mr. Incredible when he thinks his family has died is also indicative of how important familial bonds are to us. The Incredibles really drives home how much of a superpower familial love is.

Now, those are conventional families portrayed by media. When it comes to less traditional forms of family, Steven Universe and Gravity Falls have it made.

Steven  of Steven Universe is the offspring of Greg, a human, and Rose Quartz, a sentient alien rock called a Gem that we would typically gender as female on sight. Because of his dual lineage, Steven has a very interesting familial structure. His mother gave up her physical form so he could be born. Steven lives not with his father (although his father does run a car wash nearby) but with Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst—all of whom are also Gems—as one of the team members of the Crystal Gems. It was decided this would be the best living situation for Steven because only other Gems could possibly hope to teach him to control his own Gem powers.

When the series starts, the viewer knows very little about Gems. As the series continues, we learn that they come from all sorts of situations and backgrounds, and that the Gems Steven’s mother led to earth are considered radical in their ways of doing and thinking by “homeworld” Gems. We learn that Amethyst was artificially made, that Pearl would be restricted to servitude instead of being allowed to engineer, create, and fight the way she does as a Crystal Gem team member, and that Garnet—who is made up of two other Gems that are in love—wouldn’t be allowed to exist as a fusion of these Gems. Steven’s family is full of diversity. It is the acceptance, communication, and love the characters exhibit in every episode that keeps it going and allows them to fight off homeworld Gems still hoping to invade and colonize the Earth.

Gravity Falls is a show that balances relationships between blood family members and non-blood family members more brilliantly than any other piece of media I’ve ever seen. 

The series centers around a pair of fraternal twins, Dipper and Mabel, who get shipped up to their Grunkle (that’s Great Uncle turned into one word for the purposes of a joke in the series) Stan’s tourist trap The Mystery Shack in Gravity Falls, Oregon for the summer. Once there they meet Soos, the handy man of the shack, and Wendy, one of the gift store attendants. The only people related by blood are Stan, Dipper, and Mabel, but when the apocalypse happens in Gravity Falls as the series finale, and Dipper, Soos, and Wendy break into the Mabel’s dream prison to save her, they are referred to as “The Pines Family” by their adversaries.

And that description is not inaccurate. Series creator, Alex Hirsch, recently discussed a couple of the relationships between the characters on The B Movies Podcast, saying how he really made it a point to fill relationships that are usually fraught with tension with love instead. This is evident in key relationships, such as the twins themselves and the father and son type relationship Soos and Stan have as well.

It also seems to fit, because no matter what happens in the show, Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Soos, and Wendy always get through it together.

And if that’s not enough to convince you how powerful and important the portrayal of warm, loving familial relationships is, refresh yourself with this scene from Lilo and Stitch:

Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are, whatever you celebrate, whatever language you speak. I hope your loved ones are near and that you can see them today, because life is heavy and life is hard and it’s so much lighter when they’re there to help you through it. May you find many a loving portrayal of family in your media and in your living room this coming holiday season.

Noodles From Tomorrow

Food. There are a lot of things we silly humans have in common, but a need to feed oneself is one of the most unifying. Although, depending on culture and available materials, what one consumes can be very different from what one’s neighbor does--an observation I would like all of you, dear readers, to remember applies not just to the food we’ll discuss here, but also to culture and media.

But back to what we have in common: Ramen.

Of course we would start with ramen. You laughed at the title of this blog, or you wouldn’t still be reading. You’re expecting noodles, and we’re all acquainted with this particular food whether as gourmets or college students who couldn’t afford anything else for dinner. American, European, Japanese, or Chinese (where the soup actually originated from, btw) we have our own versions of this soup. For an irrefutable example of this, please refer to episode 2 of Space Dandy, entitled "The Search for the Phantom Space Ramen, Baby" or "Maboroshi no Uchū Rāmen o Sagasu Jan yo" (幻の宇宙ラーメンを探すじゃんよ).

In all seriousness, though, this soup is so popular that Shinichiro Watanabe’s portrayal of a galactic ramen culture—complete with ramen bowl themed space stations that serve everything from strange blue globs to Fullmetal Alchemist puns in a bowl—doesn’t come off as far-fetched. Perhaps because the soup can be easily customized to suit many different palates.

Often thought of as a Japanese soup, ramen actually hails from China. Much like their writing system, Japan took the concept of this Chinese soup and modified it to suit themselves. This is why you’ll almost never see “ramen” written in hiregana--katakana is used for “foreign” words, and the name of this soup comes from China, which is why every banner and advertisement for ramen reads ラーメン.

An already modified soup lends itself well to continued modification. Let’s break it down shall we? What is ramen made of? Noodles, water, seasonings... anything else?

At its core, no. That’s it. That’s the essence of ramen. Simplistic, yes, but a fantastic foundation to build off of.

Slices of pork, a soft boiled egg, and three leaves of Nori seaweed plus a miso based soup broth are the key components of this particular ramen. With only these few modifications an adequate foodstuff is turned into a satisfying meal. Most ramen shops offer customers ways to customize their ramen, both on the menu and off. Usually, a ramen shop will ask customers to choose their broth base (the standard choices are miso, pork bone, and salt/soy sauce) and sometimes even noodle type (if you’re getting really fancy). But even after the ramen is served there are choices to be made! Restaurants often set out jars of seasonings, ranging from chilies to seasoned vegetables to Japanese pickles, that can be added to one’s ramen to further modify the flavor. This kind of ramen is a common breed in Japan, but not something that’s impossible to find outside of the country. For those of you on the West Coast who live in the Portland area, there is a particular ramen shop that may be of interest to you.

This is the Kakuni Ramen from Yuzu. Yuzu is a cozy little restaurant just outside Beaverton and definitely worth the trip--it’s native approved as you’ll often over hear bits of Japanese conversations when you enter, and will definitely be greeted by the hostess’s call of “Irasshaimase!” Be sure to go with someone who’s been before or have very specific directions (and definitely a reservation or time to wait if you’re taking more than three) because not only does the restaurant not have its name posted anywhere, it’s usually packed. Although everything on the menu is great (and I encourage you to try anything that calls to you) the real selling point of the Kakuni Ramen is that it’s made with pork belly. But don’t be fooled: this isn’t Portland’s spin on ramen! It’s a Japanese recipe, but still decadent enough to rival your go-to comfort food, so throw those ideas about all Japanese food being healthy right back out the window.

In fact, there are several instances of ramen being used like comfort food in manga and anime--let’s not forget how much energy Dandy put into finding the perfect bowl of space-ramen, or the story about being moved and comforted by the taste of ramen he was told by the ramen-making alien once he found it. However, one of my favorite, more mundane examples of ramen as comfort food is the way ramen is used in the manga What Did You Eat Yesterday.

What Did You Eat Yesterday is the story of Shiro and Kenji and the daily challenges they face as a middle aged gay couple in Japan, such as what to have for dinner. In this particular chapter, Kenji is spending the New Year alone because Shiro’s parents have asked him to come visit for the New Year. Normally, in a relationship as committed as Shiro’s and Kenji’s (cohabitating in the way that Shiro and Kenji do is the societal equivalent of marriage in Japanese gay culture since Japan doesn’t recognize gay marriage) when Shiro is invited home the invitation would extend to his spouse—but since Shiro’s partner is a man, both Kenji and Shiro are unsure if the invitation includes both of them, and Shiro ends up going home alone. One would expect poor Kenji to be sad. Instead he makes ramen for his New Year’s meal.

In Japan there’s a tradition of eating long soba noodles on the New Year to bring long life and good fortune. Before Shiro leaves for his parents’ house he offers to prepare toppings for Kenji’s New Year’s soba, but Kenji turns him down.

Here we see Kenji customizing his ramen just the way he likes it, showing off the versatility of this particular dish once again. But we also see him using it as a way to deal with Shiro’s absence. Since he can’t eat Shiro’s cooking on the New Year, and prepared toppings would only remind Kenji that Shiro can’t be there with him, Kenji takes the opportunity to cook and indulge himself in a meal he could never get from Shiro. The reason this is one of my favorite examples of ramen as comfort food is because Kenji took a potentially sad situation and turned it into an opportunity to really be with himself for a while.

In this sense, the New Year’s meal of ramen instead of soba seems like it will bring Kenji more luck because it’s helped him to stay confident about his relationship in the coming year.

And that’s why we all know ramen. It’s quick, it’s customizable, it’s comforting, and above all damn is it delicious. Try investing in some quality ramen noodles from a specialty store and making your own variations on this dish. Who knows, you might just create your new favorite meal!