#and THEN it’s thoroughly and completely deconstructed over the course of the next two seasons and it’s SO fascinating

[wurmzirkus]

i’m constantly thinking about the “i hope you don’t think we’d go down without a fight” exchange from securite. you can tell something’s wrong throughout the entire episode as it keeps getting worse and it becomes clearer and clearer what the si-5 are there to do but that line especially hurts so bad. it’s so dismissive. “yes, we know you’ll resist, we know you’ll put up a fight and you’ll struggle against us because you’re people and we’ll never forget that. but it doesn’t matter, because nothing is as important as we came here to do.”

si-5 falls victim to their hubris eventually but when they’re introduced they really do look SO invincible. they come up there with all the answers the heph crew doesn’t have, but they also seem to know everything ABOUT the heph crew. they know about their profound struggle and fight for their own humanity but they file it away right in front of them because... weighed against the big picture, it can’t matter. it’s that ruthlessness in action and it’s so chilling.

[takerfoxx]

Coming to Terms with Homura Akemi, My (Formerly) Least Favorite PMMM Character

Or, How I Learned to Stop Whinging and Love the Emo Meguca!

I have a…complicated history with my favorite anime’s main character (and yes, Homura is the main character. Madoka might be the title character and the show’s POV protagonist, but like most things in this series, that was a clever ruse, and it’s really more about Homura’s journey than Madoka’s). The first time I watched the show, I walked away feeling kind of ambivalent toward her, even mildly hostile. And that’s weird, right? I mean, just look at her! Look how her character arc plays out! She was practically grown in a lab to be my favorite! And you know what? In pretty much any other series she would have been my favorite, no doubt. She would have been a first pick Fav of the Day, the starring character in whatever fanfic I wrote about it, etc. But since the show she premiered in is anything but traditional, the way I eventually came to love each character turned out to be a little…unorthodox.

Now, I’ve gone over most of this before, so sing along if you know the words. My first time watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica went a little something like this:

Episode 1: Blue funny, Pink cute, Yellow badass, Purple mysterious.

Episode 2: Blue favorite, Pink alright, Yellow probably evil, Purple mysterious.

Episode 3: Yellow’s not evil after all, and now is the dead. My bad.

Episode 4: Pink getting all fucked up, SOMEONE SAVE BLUE!

Episode 5: Hate Red for attacking Blue. Kick her ass, Purple!

Episode 6: Still hate Red.

Episode 7: FUCK YOU, BUNNYCAT! Red’s not so bad after all. But someone save Blue!

Episode 8: Aw, hell no, Purple! You don’t threaten Blue like that! You go, Red! You’re pretty cool after…oh shit. BLUE, NO!

Episode 9: GO RED! GO PINK! SAVE BLUE! YOU CAN DO IT, I BELIEVE IN…no.

Episode 10-12: Stuff is still happening with the plot, but I no longer care. My heart has been shattered, all light has gone from the world. My babies are gone. If only they had more time together, if only there was someplace they could reunite, really get to know one another, and go on adventures together…huh.

So yeah, that’s the story of how I fully got on board the KyoSaya train. Obviously, writing Resonance Days only solidified that, and coming across A Happy Dream by angel0wonder, AKA the potato lady AKA @smxmuffinpeddling (wazzup?!?!), pretty much cemented it as my top reigning OTP.

Now, obviously I got invested in the whole story as time went by. Subsequent rewatchings of the show, mainly through convincing people to watch it blind so I can laugh at them when they get to certain scenes (don’t hate, y’all did it too!) and taking part in online discussions really got me into the show as a whole instead of just being confined in my little KyoSaya bubble. But coming to love the other characters for their own merits took some time.

Mami was next. I’ll be honest, I just didn’t care all that much for her during my first watching, mainly due to believing that she would turn out to be evil for the first couple of episodes (I blame Disney and their recent trend of turning almost every kindly mentor/confidante figure into the bad guy lately), and me being more surprised that I was wrong when she died instead of being shocked that she was killed. Again, had nothing against her, that was just my reaction the first time around. However, she was included in Resonance Days because it felt like the logical thing to do, and she turned out to be so much fun to write for that I really came to love and care for her character in general, and her relationship with Charlotte ended up becoming one of my favorite parts of that story.

Madoka honestly took more time. I think the main reason I wasn’t all that invested in her is that she was pretty passive in the series proper while my attention was more on the more proactive side characters. And again, this wasn’t a bad thing! In fact, it was a clever bit of deliberate storytelling, as it’s revealed that she originally was a proactive main-character type, only to unintentionally get relegated to her observer role by the butterfly effect caused by Homura’s time loops. But anyway, the thing that made me turn the corner on Madoka actually also ended up being fanfiction, but not one of my own. Specifically, I came across a popular, yet also somewhat controversial, fic called Persephone’s Waltz (and wazzup, @erinptah!), in which Homura decides to just stop beating around the bush and lock Madoka up in a basement until Walpurgisnacht had passed. And as weird as it sounds, making Madoka a prisoner actually gave her more agency, as the fic really went into detail about the psychological effects of being a kidnapping victim, from the strange rituals to the escape attempts to coping strategies to Stockholm Syndrome to bouts of depression and so on and so forth, all the while never deviating from her core character. It really got me rooting for Madoka and, by extension, invested in her character in canon as well.

That just left Homura.

By then, I had gotten over being a little sore at her for trying to kill Sayaka that one time, and I was interested in where her actions would take the plot. I just wasn’t interested in her, per se, as I hadn’t had an icebreaker moment like I had with the other characters.

And then The Rebellion Story happened.

The Rebellion Story: PMMM’s End of Evangelion

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is often compared its nearly two decade-old predecessor, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and not without reason. Like Evangelion, it took a genre mainly known to be fun and kid-friendly (giant mechs for Evangelion and magical girls for PMMM) and turned it on its head, resulting in a brutal and twisted deconstruction that would end up altering the direction that genre would take for years to come. The key difference is that Evangelion’s brilliance was in many ways an accident, with the bizarre places it went being largely informed both by its troubled production and its showrunner’s personal demons staying bottled up through the early part of the show but letting them loose later on, whereas PMMM was meticulously constructed from top to bottom to become the hand-grenade to the genre that it would become. But in the end, the effects were the same. They even both had a follow-up movie that was not originally supposed to happen that ended up being highly divisive among fans due to the shots they took at the fandom that had sprung up around the original series, even if The Rebellion Story wasn’t nearly as spiteful as End of Evangelion was.

Now, I’ve already gone into at length about how PMMM brutally dissects and deconstructs the Magical Girl genre, and it did it so thoroughly that the genre itself was totally wrenched in a new direction, much like Evangelion did to the Giant Mecha genre. But after you’ve completely taken apart the genre in your first season, where exactly do you go? How do you continue when your work is seemingly done?

The answer: deconstruct yourself.

Much as Puella Magi Madoka Magica went after the Magical Girl genre, The Rebellion Story went after the fandom that had sprung up in the original show’s wake. The first third of the movie gives the fans what they claimed they wanted: a traditional Magical Girl reimagining of PMMM where everyone is alive and working together, everyone is mentally and emotionally healthy, the two fan-favorite ships are just a kiss away from being canon, Kyubey is now a cute and silent mascot that helps out instead constantly manipulating everyone around him, and even the most popular witch is back as a benevolent secondary mascot in a happy friendship with the character she had killed. We see Madoka and the Moemura version of Homura being adorable together, we see Kyoko and Sayaka goofing off, we see Mami cuddling with Charlotte with nary a head-chomp in sight, we see everyone being just being friends and protecting the city from weird but essentially non-threatening monsters. It is basically the summation of a hundred fanfics that had been posted between the end of the show and the release of the movie.

But this is still PMMM, and something is not quite right.

We all know what happens next. Homura starts subconsciously noticing that something is off, she gradually becomes Terminator Homura as she investigates the situation and regains her memories, and the perfect happy world is exposed for the farce that it is. Things collapse, and the truth is revealed: Homura had become a witch that had been trapped inside her own soul gem, those close to her had been lured in to complete the illusion, and of course it is all Kyubey’s fault. Because this is PMMM, and Homura doesn’t get to be happy.

But the movie doesn’t stop with that reveal. Once we learn the truth, it changes targets. It stops deconstructing the fans, and instead goes after something else.

It starts to deconstruct Homura Akemi, its own main character.

Despite her promise to continue fighting on in Madoka’s name to protect the slightly more kind world her beloved had created, Homura had found herself unable to cope without Madoka. Her mission had failed, and without that stabilizing force, despair had slowly crept in, corrupting her from within, to the point where (I believe at least) she had been fighting not to honor Madoka, but in hopes that she would fall in battle and be carried off by her goddess. She had been fighting not in hopes of building a better world, but as a way to seek release from her pain. She had been miserable in Madoka’s new world, even moreso than she had been during her time loops.

And because she had been foolish enough to tell the truth to Kyubey, the little rat had taken the opportunity to use her to set a trap. Madoka had been pulled out of Heaven right into the Incubators’ clutches, and it was all her fault.

Is it any wonder that she had been unwilling to accept Madoka’s salvation during the climatic battle? Is it any wonder that her own labyrinth had featured her own familiars dragging her away to her own execution? Homura hated herself. She hated what she had become, she hated what she had allowed to happen, she hated that she had failed so utterly and completely.

In fact, I’d say that this movie shows something about Homura that I don’t think a lot of people will appreciate me pointing out, and that is as much as Homura was single-mindedly devoted to Madoka, she never really came to know her. I mean, how could she? She only knew Madoka over the course of a few of a few infatuated weeks the first time around, which she then repeated over and over and over again, becoming increasingly traumatized over time. I don’t doubt that her devotion to Madoka is real, but The Rebellion Story does seem to suggest that after a while she was fixated on Madoka as an ideal rather than Madoka as an actual person, something to be protected and possessed rather than as a living, breathing person with her own autonomy.

Now, am I saying that Homura is a bad person and that anyone who felt inspired by her resilience and devotion is wrong? Of course not. Am I saying that anyone that ships MadoHomu is bad, promoting toxic relationships, etc.? Hell no! What I’m saying is that due to everything she’s been forced to endure and fight again, she is a very mentally unhealthy individual, one who is in desperate need of help. And if an actual relationship between her and Madoka is going to realistically work, well, first something  drastic will have to happen to upset her new system and give Madoka her power back, but Homura is also going to need tons of therapy.

As I said before, Homura’s decision to rip Madoka out of the Law of Cycles and turn herself into Homucifer has been pretty controversial, with many people claiming that it betrayed her characterization. To those people, I would say that they never really knew the real Homura Akemi. The show set up an idealized version of Homura, and people had that ideal imprinted in their mind. And I can’t really blame them for that. The show ended on a big, optimistic moment with Homura making a big speech about how she was going to keep fighting in Madoka’s name. It’s all very stirring, and I can’t fault anyone who would feel betrayed by their Homura acting against that promise.

But as a sadistic bastard in another dark show that is now also very controversial once said, “If you think this story has a happy ending, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.”

Homura Akemi Did Everything Wrong, and It’s Okay to Admit That

Even though The Rebellion Story got me interested in seeing where the whole Homucifer vs. Godoka thing would go, I still wasn’t all that invested in Homura as a person. I was entrenched too deep in my KyoSaya world, and everything outside of that was just so much plot. Most of my focus was on Resonance Days, which just didn’t involve her at all.

It took years, but three things finally cracked me out of that shell. The first was writing Walpurgis Nights, of course. Granted, Homulilly was more of a Moemura than Homucifer, but that story really made me dive deep into her innate insecurities, to explore her struggles with self-loathing and her reliance on Madoka for any kind of validation.

The second was watching through a few blind reactions to the series, seeing how other people reacted to her character and the things that they picked up that I had missed. One thing in particular stood out to me: during Homura and Madoka’s first meeting in episode ten, Homura is actually shocked when Madoka casually addresses her by her first name, as no one ever called her by her first name.

And the third might get me some hate, but it was through coming across this little video:

Now, like many things I’ve discussed in this post, this video has been pretty polarizing, with some people outright hating it and labeling it as slanderous character bashing. The clickbaity title certainly doesn’t help, and I can’t say I agree with all of its points. But the video really isn’t the character-bashing piece that it might seem like. Rather, it’s as much a deconstruction of a character that has been heavily idealized by the fandom, pointing out the many mistakes and, while it certainly was not her fault, how she was driven more by a personal need for validation rather than selfless love.

That’s when it all clicked for me, all the little pieces coming together.

Despite how badass she appears to be, despite how unwavering her adoration for Madoka is, Homura Akemi is someone who was broken from the beginning, who was re-broken again and again, who never seemed to make the right choice, who was never allowed to have what she wanted, who was never allowed to win, until she finally snapped and ripped apart the carefully-laid plans and systems that seemed to be set against her.

Homura Akemi did everything wrong, and that is fascinating!

Consider: when we first meet her, she is a young girl who has known nothing but neglect, who has been shuffled around by an uncaring system her entire life, who is physically weak due to a heart condition, who is terrified by any kind of attention and is genuinely perturbed just by being called by her first name.

Of all the tragic backstories in the series, hers is easily the worst. Mami and Kyoko’s characterizations are both defined by having a single horrific event in their respective pasts that took everything away from them, events that shattered their worlds and which they blamed themselves for. But at the very least they had something before the cruel hand of fate reached into their lives. Homura never had anything! Her family is so completely out of the picture to not even warrant a mention! Her heart condition leaves her constantly balanced on the precipice of death and frequently leaves her weak and in pain. She’s never had a real friend, never had anyone close, never had anything that made her feel good about being herself. So when the Arch of Victory witch ensnares her with suicidal thoughts, it doesn’t really have to try very hard.

And then Madoka came into her life. A cheerful, outgoing girl who showed her kindness, one who called her by her name and said that it was pretty. Someone who came to her during the scariest moment in Homura’s life like a guardian angel and saved her. Someone who was everything Homura had ever wanted: kind, humble, encouraging, non-judgmental, loving, powerful, protecting, and the list goes on.

Is there any wonder that Homura became infatuated with her? Not one bit.

But then something terrible happened. Madoka and Mami were faced with the horror of Walpurgisnacht, and it killed them. Finally Homura had someone in her life that made her feel good about being herself, and that person was stolen from her. She had to watch Madoka fail. She had to watch Madoka die. And she just stood by and did nothing.

And it is then that Homura made her first mistake. Kyubey being the opportunistic manipulator that he is, he took advantage of her vulnerable state in order to add another soul to his quota. And of course Homura accepted; who could blame her?

But consider this: Homura could have wished for Madoka to be resurrected. Walpurgisnacht had been defeated; it was no longer a threat! Then the two of them (or three, had Mami been brought back as well) would have been together, fighting side-by-side! I mean, it would have eventually ended in tears anyway, but Homura had no way of knowing that. As far as she knew, she was in a traditional magical girl story that just so happened to have a bad end, one that she could have fixed.

Instead, she wished to be sent back in time to redo her first meeting with Madoka, only this time as a Puella Magi. That way, she could help Madoka and Mami prepare for Walpurgisnacht! She could protect Madoka!

It wasn’t enough just to have her dearest (and only) friend back in her life. Homura wanted to switch the roles. She wanted to protect Madoka like Madoka had protected her. She wanted a reason to keep existing, a mission, a way to prove her worthiness, because she still hated herself and needed something to validate her existence.

But it wasn’t that kind of show. She didn’t have all the information. How could she have known that Kyubey was being deceptive? How could she have known of the truth about witches? How could she have known that her time-looping would make Walpurgisnacht stronger? How could she have known that each loop would alter the timestream, entangling both Sayaka and Kyoko in its web?

Still, she kept trying. She made herself stronger and stronger in hopes that she would be able to stop Walpurgisnacht in time. She tried to warn everyone about Kyubey and the witches only to be disbelieved. She watched the others die around her again and again. She watched Madoka either die or succumb to despair and become a witch herself.

And then it happened.

That all-important timeline, where everything in her changed.

The one where she and Madoka finally successfully defeated Walpurgisnacht, but lost everything else. The one where they laid side-by-side in the ruins and the rain, as their cracked soul gems grew darker and the darker. The one where Homura resigned herself to becoming a witch.

The one where Madoka sacrificed her final grief seed, Sayaka’s grief seed, in order to save Homura. The one where she made Homura promise to go back and prevent her from making a contract in the first place. And the one where Madoka died again, not in battle against a witch, but by Homura’s own hand.

Something inside Homura broke that day, something that was never repaired and never will be. It was then that Homura shed the last remnants of the frightened, insecure girl she had been and became the Terminator-esque warrior that we were first introduced to. Her missions was clear then: stop Madoka from making a contract and defeat Walpurgisnacht by any means necessary. Nothing else mattered.

But despite all her resets, despite all her preparations, despite (supposedly) finally having all the information, Homura still kept failing! No matter what she did, Madoka always made a contract and became Kriemhild Gretchen. And Walpurgisnacht just seemed to be getting stronger.

Finally, in the timeline that encompasses the show proper, Homura learned the reason why. She was doomed from the start. Her own resetting of time was only building Madoka’s karmic destiny, increasing the power of both Walpurgisnacht and Kriemhild Gretchen. The more she went back, the more the universe itself stacked the deck against her, and now it was all but impossible. And what was worse, she had done it to herself.

Just look at her in that second to last episode, when she’s lying there bloodied and broken, when she’s about to go back yet again but stops herself. Just look at her face as her soul gem darkens as literal years of despair seep out of the defenses she had built up around herself. She knew that it was hopeless, she knew that both she and Madoka were doomed, she knew that she was seconds from finally becoming a witch after all of her efforts were for naught, and it terrified her.

But then, just as all seemed lost, Madoka herself appeared to save her, but did so through the last thing Homura wanted her to do. She took all of that karmic destiny Homura had burdened her with and made a witch that shook the very foundations of reality. Witches were removed from the equation, and Puella Magi who had succumbed to despair were simply allowed to pass peacefully instead of becoming monsters. The contract system and the advancements wasn’t removed, and the girls’ wishes weren’t negated. But the cruelest aspect of it was.

And all it cost was Madoka’s existence.

Yes, Homura was saved. Yes, Madoka was spared of dying or turning into Kriemhild Gretchen. But the person that Homura had devoted her entire existence to protecting was gone, and by her own hand. Only Homura herself was left to remember her.

Can you imagine how that must have felt, to be forced to soldier on while bearing the weight of that knowledge, to know that you had ultimately failed in your mission and had to go on without the only person that had ever meant anything to you? Sure, there was that whole “always be with you in spirit” thing, but that is a poor comfort to someone like Homura. Yes, the show ends on an optimistic note, with Homura promising to fight on in Madoka’s name, but it’s often been said that the only thing that give a story a happy ending is where you end it. And while I’m sure that many fans would have loved to believe that Homura had done just that, had fought the Wraiths to the bitter end until she was welcomed into Madoka’s arms, the sad fact of the matter is that reality is rarely ever so simple.

In The Rebellion Story we learn how true that is. Without her mission, Homura was unable to keep herself together, and despair did finally overtake her. But instead of peacefully disappearing and being taken by her love, she had made the fatal mistake of confessing to Kyubey of all people the truth about the way things were.

Now, why would she do that? Why tell Kyubey about the witches and how Madoka had changed things? Did she not suspect that he might do something with that knowledge?

Personally, I think she did. Maybe not consciously, but I feel that deep down inside, she hated what the world had become, not because the Law of Cycles had removed a significant portion of the pain, but because Madoka had to erase herself in order to create it. Yes, deleting witches was a net positive, but it wasn’t the positive Homura had been fighting to achieve. Madoka had made her promise to keep her from making a wish, and Homura had to execute her right after. So I do think that she told Kyubey the truth because part of her was kind of hoping he would intervene somehow and bring Madoka back.

And he did, and he did so though screwing Homura over. Again.

Within the labyrinth contained within her own soul gem, Homura build the world she had always wanted to exist. The endless loops had been washed away, and she and Madoka were fighting together in a joyful magical girl show. She worked so hard to build a place that would make her happy, but in the end she had been unable to accept even her own gift, in part because she subconsciously knew that something was off, but also because she had conditioned to be suspicious anything that seems like it would be working in her favor.

Learning the truth broke Homura yet again. She had done this. She had been the one to admit the truth to Kyubey, and he had used that knowledge to ensnare Madoka once more. Her love was again trapped by Incubators, and it was all her fault. Is there any wonder that while everyone was fighting to rescue her from herself, she was screaming for them to stop while her own familiars executed her over and over again?

Homura’s decision to rip Madoka out of the Law of Cycles and again rewrite reality is a controversial one, and I get that. But when you put aside the cool, determined badass that she presents herself as and look at the whole of her journey then it only makes sense. She was sick of it all. Sick of being manipulated by the Incubators and their contracts, sick of having her desires denied by the Law of Cycles, sick of being held back by her own inadequacies. She was sick of losing, and that was going to end.

The movie is called The Rebellion Story, and that title couldn’t have been more accurate. Because at the end, Homura rebelled against everything: against the Incubators, against Madoka, against herself, against a world that seemed set against her from the beginning. She forcibly seized control, dominating Kyubey and his ilk, ripping Madoka from the Law of Cycles and reprogramming her to be sweet and docile, and even erasing Madoka and Sayaka’s friendship so that Sayaka wouldn’t interfere. In the end, she finally won.

And she still hated herself. Even after overcoming everything and embracing her status as the world’s new Devil, we see her own familiars throwing trash at her.

And that is the Homura I came to love. The icy, mysterious warrior that she was presented as just didn’t do anything for me. But the broken girl who seemed to have the entire world set against her, that had what little happiness she had stolen from her time and time again, that made mistake after mistake as she tried to fight against the unfairness of everything and constantly made things worse, that finally said “Fuck it” and forced the world to bend under her will but still wasn’t happy at the end it all? Well, just look at the stories I’ve written, the kinds of stories I gush about. That is a story I can sink my teeth into. That is a character worth investing in, because she is just so damned fascinating!

Now, I’m not going to say that she’s my favorite character now, but her story is the one I’m the most interested in. And when we finally get that long-awaited follow-up, I’m definitely going to be swooning over any and all KyoSaya interactions and watching what happens to Mami and Madoka with rapt attention, but the bulk of my investment will be in Homura’s story, because in a very strange way, her story feels the most human.

Now I just wonder how many people I’ve managed to piss off.

[caffeineivore]

Commission#4

For @vchanny-og

Prompt: Makoto teaches the girls to cook. To commission me please click here for information! To see what other people are offering up commissions please see here!

The recipe for peanut butter cookies is fool-proof, three-ingredients. Four, if you added chocolate chips. The first time that Makoto had made them, Usagi had eaten two dozen by herself, and when she’d found out how easy they were, she’d begged and whined and pouted until Makoto had agreed to teach her. 

“Mamo-chan would love these, don’t you think? Especially if we add chocolate! And peanut butter is healthy and has lots of protein so he wouldn’t even disapprove!”

Eggs. Crunchy peanut butter. Sugar. Chocolate chips. Parchment-lined baking sheet for 11 minutes at 170 degrees Celsius. 

Makoto lines up all the ingredients on the counter, helpfully preheats the oven to the correct temperature. She goes out to her balcony to check on her plants, and is halfway through dead-heading some leggy basil when the smell of smoke comes wafting through the open door. Thoroughly alarmed, she drops her clippings and runs in, yanks the oven open to find lumps of what look to be charcoal. Usagi’s wail could pass for a fire engine careening onto the scene complete with lights and sirens. 

“I don’t know what happened, Mako-chan! I didn’t do anything except what you asked, and now everything is ruined and there are NO COOKIES and you are probably going to be mad at me!”

With a long, windy sigh, Makoto checks the counter. Peanut butter, check. Sugar, check. Chocolate chips, check-- and if she’s not mistaken, Usagi dumped in about half a cup more than the recipe called for. A bowl of cracked open eggs, yolks almost mockingly bright orange, winked up at her. 

Makoto shakes her head, sends Usagi out to the bakery, and cuts up some peppers and tomatoes, retrieves her snipped basil. It seemed like she’d be having omelettes for dinner. 

**

“So we sear the steak at a high temperature in a cast-iron skillet to take advantage of the Maillard reaction for the sake of optimal flavour.” Ami scribbles some type of complex chemical molecule diagram on the margins of the recipe that she’d meticulously copied from Makoto’s cookbook, and does a few equations, and murmurs to herself. “I suppose that makes sense. The temperature of the cooking surface will exceed 140 degrees Celsius, which will cause the reactive carbonyl group of the sugar present in the molecule interact with the nucleophilic amino group of the amino acid.”

“Yeah. Something like that. And then you finish in a low and slow oven so you don’t overcook the meat. This is an expensive cut of steak-- you don’t want it to be cooked to death.”

Makoto did not care over-much about the complex chemical reactions and science behind the process-- it was enough, really, to know that as long as one controlled the temperature and time, and seasoned the pricey cut of beef simply but well (sea salt, coarse-ground pepper and a few sprigs of rosemary), one could have a fancy date night meal in the comfort of one’s own home. “Medium rare is the optimal doneness for steak, in my opinion. Use a food thermometer, cook it to 54 degrees Celsius, then rest for three minutes before slicing, and you’re good to go.”

“I understand the reasoning behind safe internal cooking temperatures,” Ami muses as she follows Makoto’s lead, carefully wiping down the cherry-red surface of her steak with a paper towel to dry it, then sprinkling on salt and pepper on both sides. “Obviously, you don’t want harmful disease-causing microorganisms to grow within your food product, and it either needs to be too hot or too cold for the bacteria and viruses and fungi to survive. But why are there exceptions to the rule? Your recipe says that a rare steak reaches the internal temperature of 51 degrees, a medium rare of 54, a medium of 58 and so on. Doesn’t that put the person who prefers to eat their steak rare at greater risk? How does a restaurant get around that liability? It’s not as though it can do a medical check of the customer to ensure that they have no history of immunological disorders or gastrointestinal problems. And what about nations which choose to ignore these limits altogether? We serve sushi and sashimi here in Japan, which is certainly not cooked to 62 or highter. The French have their Carpaccio and tartare. The Lebanese have their kibbee nayee, and so on.”

Makoto watches as Ami grinds exactly three shakes of pepper onto each side of her steak, then rolls her eyes. “How does your guy like his steak cooked? That’s all I need to know.”

Ami blushes almost as red as the meat she’s fiddling with. “Umm. Medium rare is fine. And he’s hardly ‘my’ guy. More of Mamoru’s, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’ve already split hairs over the science of cooking. I don’t think I have enough energy to argue over the exact nature of your relationship with the mouthy blond menace. Do you think you can put together a nice green salad to go with these steaks? That way we can get done quicker, and I can make myself scarce before he comes here.”

**

Makoto knows better than to attempt to teach Rei anything too outlandish in the kitchen. Rei is a traditionalist in every sense of the word, and probably would not be caught dead in some hipster gastro-pub serving deconstructed salad of micro-greens topped with lobster foam something-or-another no matter how many Michelin stars and James Beard awards the place might have won. Rei is also reasonably competent with her hands and not particularly accident-prone, so something like steamed gyoza seems right up her alley. Sure, making the filling and dough from scratch is an extra effort, but her friend had never been the type to settle for mediocre and ordinary.

Her first warning that things might not turn out quite so well is when Rei takes a full step back when she sets the food processor on the counter. “What is that?” 

Her tone could only have been snottier had the food processor been possibly coated in dung and mildew and maybe plastered with boy band stickers. “It’s a food processor. So we can easily chop up the chives, grind up the pork.”

“I have a perfectly serviceable set of knives here.” Rei turns up her aristocratic little nose and points to the knife-block, which, to be fair, holds a set of heirloom-quality blades. Trust the senshi of war to know her sharp objects, Makoto thinks drolly, but she acquiesces. “All right. You can mince the chives with that, I guess. But I’m using the food processor to grind the meat.”

They both get to work, and Rei glares at the machine as soon as it starts up as though the noise offended her on a personal level. She’s not bad-- indeed, her cuts are decent even by chef standards, but by the time Makoto has finished up her meat and mixed in soy sauce and ginger and garlic and a pinch of allspice and an egg, she’s only about a quarter of the way done with her chives. Slowly and stubbornly, she soldiers on as Makoto measures out flour and water and a pinch of salt. 

“What in the world is that?”

Now, the question is directed towards the stand mixer plugged into the wall outlet. Makoto doesn’t even dignify that with a response, and dumps in flour, salt and water, lets fly. Sure, she can knead the dough by hand if she wanted to. And stretch it, cut it, roll it out for the dumpling wrappers. And maybe, if he’s very, very lucky, Jun would have gyoza sometime within the next two years. She’s just about ready to start rolling the dough when Rei finally finishes cutting the chives by hand, and dumps them into the bowl of the ground meat mixture, scowling at the way the damp green mince clings to her fingertips. Makoto finishes mixing the filling, then shows Rei, quickly, how to pinch the edges of the dumpling shut. 

She waits until the knives are washed and put away and the pot is simmering before turning to her friend with a mischievous look, tongue firmly tucked in cheek. “Well. I’m sure Jun will appreciate your painstaking work on this meal, doing things the old-fashioned way by hand. He’ll know just how much you care from the sheer effort you went through.”

If looks could kill, Makoto would be buried six feet under complete with an ugly angel-shaped monument and an elaborate wreath of flowers on her grave. She manages to keep a straight face while she takes the dumplings out the pot, then excuses herself. She’s still laughing when she arrives at her own apartment a good half-hour later. 

**

Leave it to Minako, of course, to want to learn the most complicated, exotic dish of them all. 

“I think it would be perfect! He doesn’t eat pork or beef, and I love spicy food, and I know you’ll help me and it will turn out wonderfully!” 

Makoto eyes the recipe bookmarked on Minako’s phone-- very heavily starred on Pinterest, and apparently the handiwork of some world-renowned celebrity chef. “Indian lamb curry, though? That’s… quite ambitious of you, Minako.” Indeed, the list of ingredients is daunting in and of itself, even for a seasoned home cook, and Minako’s idea of gourmet home cooking generally involved cracking an egg over her boiling ramen noodles. 

“Oh don’t you worry. I’ve watched a TON of youtube videos. And cooking reality shows. That Gordon Ramsay is HILARIOUS. And it all goes into the slow cooker, so it hardly requires fancy techniques and knifework and the like. All I have to do is toss everything in there and push a button and spend the rest of my time making myself look gorgeous and sexy, right??”

Makoto eyes the recipe again. She’s pretty sure that Minako has never heard of the term ‘garam masala’ in her life. “Maybe you should at least let me taste it before you serve it. Just in case.”

Six hours later a mostly-decent-looking sample of the dish is placed in front of her. The curry is an appetizing orange-brown colour, and the kitchen smells invitingly of spices. Minako had even taken the time to toss some finely chopped parsley onto the meat for a pop of bright green. Makoto is pleasantly surprised, and gives Minako an approving smile which lasts all of three seconds-- the three seconds it takes to put a piece of the meat in her mouth. She gags, and spits it out. “Oh, GOD! What did you put in this?! It tastes like the Dead Sea… if the Dead Sea were on fire!”

Minako shoots her a wide-eyed look from those baby blues, thoroughly bewildered. “Welllllll… all these videos said to salt with every step of the cooking pricess. So I did. It was probably like close to half a cup of salt total, because I added some after every other ingredient. And then I didn’t have tomato paste so I substituted ketchup. Basically the same thing, you know? And I didn’t have the tablespoon of fresh ginger, so I used a tablespoon of ginger powder, and shelled pistachios look just like cardamom pods for like a tenth of the price, and I used Old Bay seasoning instead of Bay leaves… But the only thing I absolutely couldn’t figure out at all was this ‘garam masala’ stuff! So I left it out.”

Without a word, Makoto dumps the entire contents of the slow cooker into the trash, picks up her phone, and dials the local Indian restaurant, Within short order, two takeout containers are delivered-- an Indian lamb curry, and an accompanying container of cheese naan and rice. 

“Just… put it in your own plates,” Makoto tells the other girl, shaking her head between gulps of water. “The kitchen smells like you’ve been cooking all day. It’ll be our little secret and he will never, ever know.”

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

Video game hardware often serves as a hurdle for developers to overcome. Whether it's running out of memory or figuring out how to translate a player's interactions with a controller into a dynamic 3D world meant to emulate real life, just getting things to work smoothly is an accomplishment in and of itself. But with some games, developers take things further, and the end result can be better off for it.

There have been countless memorable moments in games, whether it's a well-designed boss fight, an unexpected character death, or an awe-inspiring view. But many of the best moments stem from the way games use hardware in unique ways to deliver something unforgettable. In other cases, special hardware or accessories are used to deliver an experience that otherwise wouldn't be possible with a typical controller or keyboard and mouse.

We've rounded up some of our favorite examples of the best uses of gaming hardware, one that saw fans use technology to turn an existing game into something very different, and a few others that were certainly original, if not very good. Be sure to share those that stick out in your memory with us in the comments below.

Metal Gear Solid

For a series chock-full of noteworthy bosses, it's a testament to the creativity of the original Metal Gear Solid that Psycho Mantis remains so memorable. That comes down in large part to the way the sequence utilized the PS1 in ways I had never seen before. The psychic FOXHOUND villain screws with Solid Snake--and the player--by manipulating the PS1. For instance, the screen goes black, which caused me a brief moment of panic where I thought something had gone wrong with my system.

In an even more brilliant moment, Psycho Mantis looks at the save files stored on your memory card and comments on them. He remarks on the number of times progress has been saved in MGS and points out certain games that you have save progress in. (Years later, this led to one of my favorite parts of Metal Gear Solid 4, where Mantis can't pull off the same tricks due to the PS3's hard drive and vibration-less Sixaxis controller.) At one point, you deal with with his powers by switching the port that your controller is plugged into, which I still find an astoundingly bold choice for a game.

Sadly, some of these things were specifically tailored to the PS1 and GameCube versions, and have thus been lost to time if you don't play them on the original hardware. Still, there was nothing quite like getting to experience all of this in the moment without any warning about what to expect. | Chris Pereira

Boktai

Famed designer Hideo Kojima could do no wrong during the late '90s and early 2000s. He won my young heart with the cinematic stylings of Metal Gear Solid and the fast-paced robot action of Z.O.E: Zone of the Enders. So when I found out that his next non-Metal Gear game would be a GBA game that utilized a solar sensor on its cartridge to fuel an in-game mechanic, I was instantly intrigued.

Titled Boktai, the game stars Django, a young vampire hunter on a quest to avenge his father's death. Equipped with his trusty solar powered gun, the Gun Del Sol, Django takes on all sorts of undead foes. This is where the game cartridge's solar sensor comes in; your gun only holds a limited amount of energy, and once depleted, you need to charge it by holding the gun up to the sun. But in order to do this, you literally need to hold the game up towards the actual sun, so the solar sensor can detect its warming rays. Of course, this means you actually have to play the game outside.

Boktai is a strange yet entertaining action-RPG made all the stranger by its solar sensor functionality. I recall spending hours playing the game outside--or occasionally cheating by opening my window to briefly charge Django's gun before retreating indoors to play until I needed another charge. In my experience, the only real drawback to the game is that you couldn't effectively play the game during the colder seasons--for obvious reasons.

I thoroughly enjoyed Boktai's sunlight mechanic as a kid, and it remains a joy to play even now thanks to compelling dungeon crawling and a slew of clever puzzles that took advantage of the game's real-time clock and day-night cycle. To this day, the game remains one of the most memorable and innovative uses of GBA hardware. If you can track down a copy, I highly recommend it--if only to experience one of Kojima's quirkier and more adventurous game concepts. | Matt Espineli

Image credit: donpepe

Sega Activator

Anyone who played console games in the early '90s is well aware of how many gimmicky controllers made it to market. Of the wacky lot of plastic trinkets that cluttered our basements, you'd be hard-pressed to find one as over-the-top as Sega's Activator for the Genesis. The octagonal ring promised to let you punch and kick in the real world and have it translate to fighting games like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter II.

Sounds amazing, right? Well, while not an outright lie, the advertisements for the Activator may have been stretching the truth a bit. In practice, you couldn't simply punch and kick as you would hope; to execute a specific action, you would have to send your hand or foot over a specific part of the octagon. Each section of the ring corresponded to a button on the Genesis controller and contained a light sensor that detected when you crossed its invisible threshold. Imagine waving your palms frantically around your body trying to move your on-screen character, throw a punch or two, or god forbid execute a complicated combo attack, and you can easily understand why the Activator was derided by early adopters (read: suckers) who fell for Sega's brief marketing blitz. It is, at best, an interesting footnote. | Peter Brown

Image credit: SegaRetro

Pokemon Go

People still debate Pokemon Go's quality as a video game, but there's no doubt that it uses smartphone technology in an inventive and powerful way. By utilizing your location and some fiddly but capable AR, the mobile game turns your local area into your very own Pokemon adventure. It means you can explore your own neighbourhood in the same way you explored Kanto all those years ago. It's immediately nostalgic and emotional for anyone who played the mainline games and wants to be the one catching Pokemon and venturing across the land.

To some people, Pokemon Go might just be a throwaway mobile fad, something that went viral overnight because The Internet and that's that. But to others, including myself, it allows us to finally achieve what we'd always wanted: To transport ourselves inside a Pokemon game and be the very best, like no one ever was. | Oscar Dayus

Let's Tap

Let's Tap is a game, but it deserves an entry here for the interesting way it made use of Nintendo's Wii Remote. At a time when every studio under the sun was working on the next great motion-controlled game (bless their naive hearts), former Sonic Team head Yuji Naka conceived a game that utilized the Wii Remote's accelerometer, but without the user having to hold the controller in their hand. Instead, you would lay your Wii Remote face down on a cardboard box, and tap the box with your fingers to interact with Let's Tap's collection of mini-games. These included a Jenga-like deconstruction game, a multiplayer sprint race, and a basic rhythm game, among a few other simple applications.

Let's Tap and Naka get bonus points for originality, but the game failed to make a splash despite its inventive spirit. As former GameSpot reviewer Luke Anderson pointed out, "Let's Tap certainly offers a different way to play, but the games don't completely mesh with the control scheme and, with the exception of Rhythm Tap, could have worked every bit as well with a more conventional control setup." | Peter Brown

Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck

As someone who likes to tease and bug my friends, it makes a lot of sense in retrospect that I had such a great time with Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck, a game all about annoying Daffy Duck. Based on the classic cartoon of the same name (pictured above), which sees an off-screen animator mess around with Daffy, Duck Amuck tasks you with generally tormenting the character. It's a creative idea for a game, but what makes it special is the way in which it leverages the DS hardware.

Some of the ways of interacting with Daffy are pretty straightforward--you use the touchscreen to poke and prod him or to pick him up and launch him off the screen. Where it really blows my mind is in the way that it allows you to physically close the system, something which would normally suspend what you're playing and put the handheld in sleep mode. Instead, the game keeps going, and Daffy shouts out at you, allowing you to continue playing a mini-game using the shoulder buttons. It's a feature that I'm still glad that Nintendo allowed, and it made for an experience I still remember vividly more than a decade later. | Chris Pereira

NeGcon

Namco's legacy took root in the arcade, a place where games and hardware often combined in surprising and unexpected ways. This innovative spirit stuck with Namco; in 1995, it fundamentally reinvented the standard PlayStation controller in hopes of improving the experience of playing racing games at home. The result was the unusual NeGcon controller, which was split down the middle from top to bottom, allowing users to twist the controller's two halves. Compared to the digital inputs of a d-pad or the short throw of an analog stick, this wide range of motion allowed for more finesse when turning the wheel of a virtual car. Despite its odd appearance, the NeGcon found wide support from other publishers and could be used with games like Gran Turismo, Rally Cross, and Wipeout (including Wipeout Fusion on PS2). It's an odd-looking controller to be sure, but it fulfilled Namco's promises. It was such a success, that Namco would follow-up with another racing-centric controller only a few short years later... | Peter Brown

Image credit: Wikipedia

Jogcon

Rather than iterate on the NeGcon, Namco went back to the drawing board for the development of the Jogcon, a controller with a force-feedback-enabled wheel crammed into the middle. It was marketed alongside Ridge Racer Type-4--the final entry in the series on the original PlayStation--but would also be compatible with PlayStation 2 games like Ridge Racer V. Not one to forget its past, Namco allowed you to trick the controller into a NeGcon mode, which allowed for wider support, albeit without the force-feedback feature. While it didn't enjoy widespread success like the NeGcon, the Jogcon still deserves respect for packing force-feedback into a standard controller, allowing players to experience the push and pull of the road without having to invest in expensive and bulky racing wheel setups. | Peter Brown

Image credit: videogameclipcollect

Twitch Plays Pokemon

Okay, Twitch Plays Pokemon wasn't technically a unique use of video game hardware, but it was still one of the most creative moments in recent video game history. It allowed those watching the stream to control the protagonist of a number of Pokemon games, starting with Pokemon Red and continuing with sequels such as Pokemon Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum, among many more. Viewers achieved this by typing in commands--"up," "down," "B"--to make the main character move and perform actions.

As you can imagine, that made actually playing the game very difficult. Trying to beat a Gym Leader, catch an elusive Legendary, or even walk in the right direction is tricky when dozens of thousands of people each have a controller.

However, as we all know, give enough typewriters to enough monkeys and they'll eventually beat the Elite Four, and that we did. And when the moment came that this cacophony of monkeys finally beat the first game, pure joy ensued. We'd done it! Twitch Plays Pokemon had made us the controller and we didn't mess it up. It merely took us a brief 16 days, 9 hours, 55 minutes, and 4 seconds. | Oscar Dayus

Plastic Instruments for Guitar Hero and Rock Band

The plastic instrument revolution led by the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises came and went, but its impact on rhythm games (and games in general) is unforgettable. GuitarFreaks in Japan preceded other instrument-based music games, but it never matched the reach and influence of Guitar Hero. In 2005, developer Harmonix nailed the feeling of shredding in Guitar Hero by simply pairing five notes as frets on the guitar neck with a small lever that acts as the strings in the packaged instrument. The other key ingredient was obtaining hit songs that captured a Western audience regardless of the diverse tastes in rock music, whether it be classic, punk, metal, or indie rock.

Seeing Guitar Hero in action for the first time with the plastic guitar immediately makes perfect sense: follow the pattern on screen and pluck the lever while holding down the correct note(s). In this regard, the game is accessible to those who have never picked up the instrument before but also challenges those actually knew how to play a guitar. The series provided an avenue to not just discover new songs but build a rhythmic connection with the melodies and harmonies of songs you already loved.

In 2007, Harmonix topped themselves with Rock Band, which cranked the concept up to 11. Not only did it retain the intuitive guitar gameplay, but the game included a microphone for vocals, a full drum set, and the option for a second guitar to cover basslines. The game really lived up to its name. It was the perfect blend of karaoke, Taiko Master, and Guitar Hero with the continued tracklist of diverse rock songs that satisfied nearly all tastes in music.

Unfortunately, the genre lost its appeal over time and the accumulation of plastic instruments became a burden for both retailers and consumers. The concept is still more than a novelty; dusting off those old guitars and drums can make a good party great. | Michael Higham

from GameSpot https://ift.tt/2GZ2WId