Tuesday DE: Z?

[bjornwilde]

My brain decided I needed to write, like, before Tuesday officially started, so I am up at oh-god-why? Might as well get today's DE up before I go battle my sleep again.

Let's pretend your character(s) is going to cook and they have a recipe. How do they go about it? Do they follow the recipe to the letter? Is the end product editable? Do they start with the recipe but drift off brand as they go along and as inspiration hits? Do they power skim the recipe and then jump in, adapting the recipe as they will? Do they read the recipe and scoff, knowing they can do better?

Now how is the above different if you flip their assumed cooking skills?

Comments

[sassgaardian]

Loki is* learning to cook Midgardian food in canon, and seems to be getting pretty good at it. I think he approaches new recipes very meticulously, taking the time to actually learn how they're supposed to work before he starts experimenting. Things like spices and flavour profiles are a pretty advanced concept, coming from a world where flame-roasted boar is about as complicated as it gets.

*or was, back when he had a good writer. We don't talk about certain arcs.

[bjornwilde]

This is "Loki: Agent of Asgard"? I haven't gotten to reading that but meant to.

[sassgaardian]

Yes. It's a pretty short run. Only 17 issues, in three acts. At its core, it's about him coming to terms with being a murder weapon, and trying to move past it and become his own man. Which happens between heists, prison breaks, and casino robberies.

... look, he's really bad at being a hero. But bless him, he tries.

[bjornwilde]

Honestly, I love flawed heroes who are trying their best. Plus extra crafty characters are my jam. I know the series was one I'd enjoy, my budget just kept me from it. I loved him as kid Loki, and how the modern Loki was in the build-up to War of the Realms, so win-win as far as I'm concerned. :)

[sassgaardian]

Some of the stuff in War of the Realms was handled really strangely, but honestly it's all better than that dumpster fire that was Vote Loki. I refuse to believe that mess is main continuity, and shan't be acknowledging its existence.

[bjornwilde]

So his actions in the event were OoC? I kind of thought they were but wasn't sure. I think I need to reread it now that I think of it.

[sassgaardian]

Yeah, the whole thing was. It came right off the heels of AoA, and ignored a year and a half almost of character growth. The whole thing is about how he wants to be a hero, and step out of the box he’s been forced into, and then a few months later, he went right back to the kind of nasty behaviour Old Loki was up to pre-Siege, but watered down and without vivisection.

In the end they tried to spin it as him doing the whole thing to work some emotional drama out, but like. There was literally just a year and a half of him doing EXACTLY that. It was so pointless.

[bjornwilde]

That is disappointing and I think I recall wondering just what he was up to since he was supposed to be at least trying to be better. Disappointing Aaron did that too him in an otherwise amazing cross-over.

[sassgaardian]

Yeah, the whole thing was just weird. I have a lot of gripes about it that go just beyond the incredible backsliding, but it's basically the Ninja Turtles 3 of the fandom. It doesn't exist.

That said, they're doing it in the show, which is so eehhhhnnn. But they're also doing it with 2012!Loki, who is still a ball of anger and rage, so it might actually make more sense. And not being released several months before the most stressful election in modern American history might help it as well, especially if they take out the whole disgusting birther plot. Seriously, fuck that subplot all the way.

[zenigatcha]

Zenigata is a remarkably capable cook for someone who lives off cup noodle 90% of the time. He doesn't get the time to, but when he goes all out. He knows a lot of recipes from home, and he's learned local cuisine (French) to get by when specialized ingredients. He knows what he loves by heart and how to make it perfect or alter it by sight, smell and taste. French food, though, he follows instructions. He doesn't get a lot of time to cook that, so he doesn't experiment much there.

Lan Zhan cooks like a Lan: to the recipe's letter, no deviations. He doesn't particularly enjoy it -- this is just sustenance, not food eaten for sensual pleasure. He eats to live, that's all.

Zuko? Cook? Are you fucking mad? He only knows how to make tea and that's because Iroh made him work at a tea shop as a cover job, and also to do ceremony as a calming ritual (it didn't stick through his youth, obviously.)

[bjornwilde]

Jess burns her coffee when she is only taking care of herself. If she is cooking for someone else she is much more careful and will follow the recipe. She will still likely not do a good job simply because she doesn't have the techniques and skills, which most recipes don't include. If she had the skills, she'd be power skimming the recipe and then going off on her own to improve it.

Tybalt is a cook it over an open fire kind of guy but will give a cat's hunter focus if he is making the recipe is for someone he cares about or is trying to impress. There is one particular scene where Quentin is teaching him out to make coffee with a coffee maker that is just adorable.

[thebattycakes]

Cisco reads the recipe and scoffs, because why would he cook when there's Speedster Take-Out (or Door Dash when he can't wheedle Barry into a food run)? Held at gunpoint and forced, Cisco could certainly follow a recipe and turn out something people can eat, but he'd only do so on the very rare occasion.

Barry is very domestic and can cook quite well. He doesn't do it a lot because his schedule is generally pretty busy and he lives in a tiny apartment with a crappy kitchen and cooking for himself is like catering an event. Sometimes though, he'll borrow the kitchen at the West home and make dinner for Joe and Iris and/or his friends and then Barry is very comfortable in the kitchen. He's also a chemist so he tends to follow recipes pretty strictly (although he does "power skim" in that speed reading is totally a thing), only diverging when it's something he's very familiar with and usually that's to make changes either his Joe, Grandma Esther or maybe his mom have made.

Matt very rarely cooks and when he does it's all basic fair that doesn't require a recipe. If he had the inclination to, he could figure out all of the ingredients that go into something, but he's not very likely to ever use that for reverse engineering, or hit the kitchen with a recipe card.

Logan can make certain things very well, but all of those things are in his head so he doesn't need a recipe and would only try one out if convinced by the kids or something. Then he would spend the time eyeballing ingredients, throwing stuff together and standing back when the kids wanted to make changes or do things themselves. In the end Logan would put away whatever the end result is, palatable or not, because as everyone knows he's a giant marshmallow hiding underneath the guise of a grumpy old man.

[snarky_spider]

Jess pokes the marshmallow with a stick.