selfindulgentbitch

It's hard to believe all the traffic here now. Hope it stays, though I'm going to miss Tumblr. I loved the visual format and it was great for lurkers even though the functionality was non-existent.

Anyway, fandom is nice, but food is better :)

Magical Garlicky Tofu

I've been looking for tofu recipes that non-tofu fans will like and that aren't too much work. I thought this one was delicious, spicy and sweet, and it uses ingredients I tend to have around. For the tofu, I soaked it in a hot water brine (4 cups water and 1/4 cup salt) for 15 minutes, dried on paper towels for 15 minutes, cut into 1 inch cubes, and coated them in a few teaspoons of cornstarch. Then I baked in a 400F oven on one side for 15 minutes, flipped them, and baked another 15 minutes before coating in the sauce. I highly recommend the scallion and sesame seed topping too.

I'm thinking I could make a lot of tofu at once and then reheat later in the week, which would cut the work considerably.

If you're interested in the hot water brine, see America's Test Kitchen on youtube.

Why do s it that no one who writes Harry Potter can resist the urge to make Draco Malfoy powerful? Even the ones who resist the urge to make him heroic have to give him power over one of the true heroes. People, he was very powerful for much of the series. You don't need to level Harry to write good Draco. The opposite, in fact.

Vid Title: Hoping Machine
Vidder:Eunice
Fandom:Harry Potter
Summary:"To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever." JKR (Sorcerer's Stone)
Reccer's Comments:Some of my best loved vids took me several listens before I really latched on. The song was written by Woody Guthrie and is sung by Jay Farrar. I think giving it a few listens before watching the vid can help if you're not familiar with it. But, again like my most favorite vids, the song just seems to be written for the images Eunice chose. The phrase "let your plans come out of mistakes, These are the plans and nothing can tear down, Made out of things that have already been torn down" is everything that is tragic and uplifting about Harry Potter, both the character and the story.

Vid Title: Can't Go Back Now
Vidder: such heights
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Summary: But in the end, the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself
Reccer's Comments: This is Willow, her journey, her missteps, her outright dishonorable choices, the wrongs done to her, and her amazing personal strength, resilience, and love. It's how we all move from childhood to adulthood with the added kick of the magnitude of the supernatural power she has. For good or bad, she can't go back.

xposted to vidrecs.dreamwidth.org

Staking out my theory in advance of the season finale: Hannibal wants Will to become a killer like he is because that's the only way he can both be known/seen by Will and be safe from discovery. Will becomes the ultimate serial killer bestie through Hannibal's careful torture. That Will loses everything he values about himself during this process is completely irrelevant.

I'm not attached to any one fandom. This is a real first for me. I began wit Earth 2 in the olden days and Star Trek when it was as still on Usenet. But there isn't any one fandom that has be obsessed.

I like the Hobbit, but I haven't been blown away. Network tv is usually mediocre at best and the last all-consuming fannish stuff I remember, like BSG, disappointed me terribly. I want a fandom! ::pout::

I still love HP, of course, but I'm not very interested in the various pairings by themselves. I want real meat in that world.

I've been reading a lot of Hobbit fic and it strikes me that I've not seen fic where Thorin (Dis, their people, etc) sees the possible loss of Fili and Kili as a loss the royal family is simply required to bear. In other words, the obligation of the royal family to its people.

I find Tolkien's love of noble people who are simply better than the rest of us problematic in lots of ways, but it is part and parcel of his world and a large part of the mythologies, legends, and histories he was drawing upon. The obligations of the ruler to the ruled are explicit in this ideal world and I can't see how Thorin would even think to himself that his heirs wouldn't participate.

Thorin's storyline involves a lot of lust after material possessions, but it springs out of a noble desire to fulfill his duty to his people, to provide for them and by returning them to their home. And that duty belongs to Fili and Kili, too. I think Thorin and Dis are very aware this may end in death and that they both were raised to believe that their lives and that of their children belong to their people. But the overwhelming trend in fics that I see is Thorin and/or Dis acting more like modern parents, afraid of losing the boys, angsting over their involvement. It just doesn't fit how I see Tolkien's warrior kings of old.

So, of course, the exception that proves the rule
Sons of Durin by Inkling
http://archiveofourown.org/works/595550

I'm trying to be better about reccing works that I really like. I read so much that most of it gets lost in the flood. And beyond that, stories with summaries that could be awful tend to be overlooked and I want to help them stand out a bit.

This Hobbit fandom fic is a short retelling of the Hobbit with a female Bilbo. Short is important because too many fics retell the story when it doesn't add anything and often drags the story down. It also focuses on Briar (Bilbo) and her relationships with her family, Shirefolk, and Thorin and this Thorin's character development acknowledges that finding love along the way to Erebor would change him, at least a little.

Silly Trinkets by The Feels Whale (miscellea)
http://archiveofourown.org/series/35687

These are great stripped down posters for each of the books. Poignant and I wouldn't mind having them in my writing space.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/116690319/the-harry-potter-collection-11x17-size

I picked up earlier works in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga when Baen was giving them away. I liked it well enough and bought Cordelia's Honor for background.

It started out strong, but I was disappointed by the end. Cordelia is a cipher to me and possibly a stupid one. Why did she love him? Did she have any thoughts whatsoever about her status on Barrayar? Did she like being valued only as a gestator? Feel any desire to improve the lot of women in general? Culture shock? Boredom? Did she miss her mom? Hate her mom?

And why would a 33 yr old woman be concerned about being "too old" for kids? Especially when they gestate kids in containers? The world just felt very poorly thought out and it has that claustrophobic feel of bad romances where the characters have no feelings outside of that one relationship and everything else is subordinate. And yet her love for him is based on what? Their common hobbies?

But it was my first book of the new year. 2013 = 1 so far