#professional nerd -> also completely deranged

[twitterdotcom]

sorry i am like really stupid for descole

[gunnerpalace]

How You Fix Orihime and Chad’s Character Development

Star Trek: The Original Series. That’s it, really.

Now, hold on, let me explain!

So let us for a moment assume that Orihime, Chad, and Uryuu as a trio comprise the main cast of “The Humans” in Bleach. Let us then try applying the Kirk-Spock-Bones model onto their trio.

Now, before we go any further, it’s important to note that Kirk was not Zapp Brannigan. That’s bullshit. You can go read a big long essay on the matter if you really want to dive into it. Kirk was not hot-headed, impulsive, or a womanizer. But the relevant bit to our discussion is this:

The existence of Spock, with his easily classifiable intelligence and over-egged rationality, blinds people to Kirk’s persistent, demonstrated, textually-flagged extreme professionalism and competence:

PORTMASTER STONE: Now, look, Jim. Not one man in a million could do what you and I have done: command a starship. A hundred decisions a day, hundreds of lives staked on you making every one of them right.

Stone is not simply discussing nerve (though Kirk has, via training and self-control, developed an extraordinary capacity for operating under pressure). He’s referring also to the vast array of knowledge at Kirk’s fingertips, to his ability to evaluate specialist counsel and make good decisions quickly in a crisis, and to his dedication to and concern for his ship and its people. Kirk is the only one, even over Spock, capable of resisting the influence of a deranging virus in order to protect the ship in “The Naked Time.”

Rash? Kirk is obsessively protective, hesitant to destroy the Enterprise and its crew even when it would be safer for the galaxy for him to do so (“By Any Other Name”). This is in fact about the only time he’s “rash”. He makes an objectively bad decision in order to protect the ship. It’s not a lapse he often repeats, and he almost didn’t allow sentiment to cloud his judgment on this occasion either.

It works out in the end due to Kirk’s cunning, not Spock’s genius. As clever as Spock is, he’s not the superior multi-tasking problem solver. That’s the whole point of Kirk, and Spock respects him and his work. In “The Ultimate Computer,” when technological innovation threatens to replace living captains (Kirk included), Spock is immensely supportive of Kirk. He highlights Kirk’s leadership, suggesting that he, Spock-the-computer-expert, trusts Kirk’s personal judgment more than that of even the most advanced machines:

KIRK: Machine over man, Spock? It was impressive. It might even be practical. SPOCK: Practical, Captain? Perhaps. But not desirable. Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, the starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it, or him.

If Kirk takes a “leap of faith” in situations, it’s because the other choice is to sit still and die. In fact you could argue that it’s Spock who sometimes behaves irrationally in TOS, prioritising Kirk over the safety of the Enterprise in "The Tholian Web," questing endlessly to find him in “The Paradise Syndrome,” and making a desperate last-ditch effort to signal the Enterprise with limited resources (rather than preserving these in order to marginally extend the lives of everyone on board a failing shuttle craft) in “The Galileo Seven” (an episode I hate so much we’d need another damn essay).

[...]

Face it: Kirk is a big nerd who punches people sometimes, but also memorises poetry and has nice chats with Spock’s mom and loves the ship intensely.

Okay, why am I talking about Kirk (and, by proxy, Spock) so much? 

Let’s go back to trying to fit Uryuu, Orihime, and Chad, to Kirk, Spock, and Bones.

You might initially say that Uryuu is obviously Spock. You would be wrong. Uryuu is Bones. Uryuu’s whole thing isn’t logic, it’s principles. He is Mr. Principled. He got that from Souken. It animates everything he does. Sure, he can plan in advance and think things through, but even when he does that he tends to engage in some kinda dumbassery (e.g., fighting against Renji and Byakuya wildly outgunned to try and save Rukia, telling Kisuke to fix up Ichigo, deciding to go to Soul Society whatever the cost, going on a suicide mission to stop Yhwach, etc.) that is motivated by his sense of morality and ethics. He is, among the humans, the voice of common decency more so than he is the voice of rationality.

That means that Chad is Spock. In chapter 35, when Ichigo scored 23rd in their grade, Chad scored 11th. Uryuu scored 1st, and Orihime scored 3rd, so Chad is not absolutely the smartest academically, but he is often much more sober-minded and analytical than they are; he’s also street smart. (Orihime and Uryuu are both prone to flights of fancy; Chad’s only real weakness in terms of distractions is “cute things.”) This carries through in how Chad fights and understands things, which tends to be very cold and analytical. (Consider how easily he cut through Ichigo’s act about not missing being a Shinigami in the Xcution arc, or how quickly he suggested in TYBW to Kisuke that if Ichigo was allowed to do what he wanted, he might run away.)

And that leaves us with Orihime, who must, by process of elimination, be the Kirk of the group. And although that might sound surprising, go back to that final line of the description again: “Face it: Kirk is a big nerd who punches people sometimes, but also memorises poetry and has nice chats with Spock’s mom and loves the ship intensely.” Who does that sound like? Who showed grit and determination and rose to the occasion in the Numb Chandelier fight? Orihime. Who thought fast on her feet after landing in the bizarro-land of Soul Society and came up with the plan of using shihakushou as disguises? Orihime. Even Orihime’s plan to reject the Hougyoku out of existence was fairly decisive. Orihime is, early on anyway, quite capable of coming up with good and objectively correct plans, if ones often thwarted by the narrative.

So, from this, we can say something about how these characters should have developed. Uryuu basically grows about how you’d expect him to, letting go of his (supposed) hatred of Shinigami. Chad and Orihime... don’t. But this model makes it easy to see how they should’ve.

Chad should have become more vocal and forthright with his observations and analyses. He should have become the logical one who suggested plans of action on the basis of rationality, to be informed by Uryuu’s principled nature.

Orihime should have become more mature and decisive, gaining a tighter rein over her emotions but still using her creativity to make clutch command decisions with the input of her peers. Rather than routinely breaking down and thinking selfishly, she should’ve shown sober insight into what needed to be done which balanced logic and compassion; good, clear, and surprisingly nonlinear judgement.

What we actually got from both of them was the exact opposite. Their development went precisely the other direction, the point that when they were hit by the equivalent of a “deranging virus” in the form of Tsukishima’s powers, they both completely folded.

Note that I am not saying they should be identical to these model characters, but that this model provides a means to see roughly where they should’ve gone. Uryuu was The Principled One, Chad should have been The Logical One, and Orihime should have been The Decisive One.

Also, if you expand this analysis out a little bit, this becomes clear too:

Tatsuki:Sulu

Keigo:Chekov

Mizurio:Uhura/Scotty

I’m just saying.

(P.S. Sulu eventually got to captain his own ship, so, I mean, I’m just sayin’.)

[easyfoodnetwork]

The Answer Is Tots

There are two modes of quarantine cooking: project cooking and fuck-it cooking. The Tater Tot satisfies both.

It’s week seven of lockdown, or maybe eight, or maybe it’s actually 25 — time seems to loop, like life is now one of the more unsettling episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Billions of microbes have lived and died in the sticky slurry of your sourdough starter, and the last two loaves turned out gummy and flat. All those beautiful bags of beans taste exactly the same, like beans. The grocery store is out of weird things now, like ice cream with crunchy bits and pecans and soy sauce. Your farm box overflows with obligations to cook vegetables, again, forever, until you or they rot. The complicated dance of unboxing takeout, with as many hand-scrubbings as open-heart surgery, is unbearable. It’s time for tots.

The Tater Tot is the ribollita of the American processed food industry, a dish made of scraps and leavings that is maybe more beloved than the food of whose scraps it’s made. Invented by the frozen potato impresarios behind Ore-Ida in the 1950s, Tater Tots are neat spherical nubbins of potato shavings leftover from making french fries, which are then formed, fried, and frozen. Their natural habitats are Wednesday night dinners and school cafeterias. (Ore-Ida, now owned by Kraft Heinz, holds a trademark on “Tater Tot,” but any tot-like potato ingot applies here.) When done right, the Tater Tot’s crispy, textured exterior yields to a creamy middle, and their small size allows for an endless cascade of crunchy-to-creamy texture while eating. Unlike french fries, which are vastly superior made in a fryer by professionals, Tater Tots are pretty damn good made at home.

There are two modes of quarantine cooking: project cooking and fuck it cooking. The tot, a surprisingly versatile ingredient, satisfies both. For the completely fed up, the Tater Tot in its purest form, as a hot crispy nugget, is a mere ripped-open bag and 20-ish minutes in a hot oven away. They’re delightful with something else utterly uncomplicated like scrambled eggs or a pork chop, or maybe with nothing more than ketchup or a beer. If you want a little variety, you can sprinkle a spice mix on them — maybe Lawry’s Seasoned Salt or Old Bay — or grate some parmesan, or sprinkle some herbs. Now you’ve got fancy tots.

From there, things can get as complicated as you like. Tater Tots are the second-most popular potato item in food service — Nation’s Restaurant News called them “the new potato skins,” a reincarnation we’ve all been anxiously awaiting — and restaurants and food trucks have made an art of gussying up tots with enough wild ingredients until they might feel worth charging $7 for. The most well-known version of tot smothering is totchos, a staple at Mexican restaurants and other nacho-friendly establishments across the northwest, where Tater Tots (or a shredded potato product closely resembling them) are heaped with cheese, salsa, olives, and sour cream. In the food truck and bar food wilds, there are baked potato tots, pastrami tots, longanisa tots, Tater Tot parm, queso tots, bulgogi tots — if you have some kind of creamy topping, fatty meat, and/or cheese, you’ve got loaded tots.

For those maintaining their sanity by cooking elaborate comfort food, tidy rows of Tater Tots crown casseroles, especially the iconic upper Midwestern casseroles known as hotdish. The most basic hotdish is not much more than some ground meat, a canned cream soup, and the kind of vegetables found in the freezer section, topped with tots. But the blogger Molly Yeh, who lives in North Dakota and has a knack for creating playful and thoughtful recipes mashing up her food nerd sensibilities with the Upper Midwestern food culture, has created an impressive array of hotdish recipes with scratch-made roux or surprising ingredients, many of them topped with tots. The chicken pot hotdish and harissa chickpea hotdish might not scream May but they do scream comfort and also: tots.

The more deranged corners of project cooking have plenty of room for tots — they waffle and pizza — and of course there’s the ultimate project: Making them yourself, which will involve cooking the potatoes, processing them into chunks, and deep-frying your tots. Michel Richard has a recipe involving gelatin, which is a very French chef way to approach tots; other recipes allege making your own is more fun than opening a bag. Maybe for some! But the only person I know making her own tots is my friend who lives in rural France and sends us pictures of the goats she meets during quarantine. If you have the good fortune to live near an American supermarket with a non-ransacked freezer case, let your sourdough starter continue to do all the mercurial work in the kitchen, and let the American food industrial complex do what it does best, which is tots.

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2L6mjSv https://ift.tt/2YEmdd3

There are two modes of quarantine cooking: project cooking and fuck-it cooking. The Tater Tot satisfies both.

It’s week seven of lockdown, or maybe eight, or maybe it’s actually 25 — time seems to loop, like life is now one of the more unsettling episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Billions of microbes have lived and died in the sticky slurry of your sourdough starter, and the last two loaves turned out gummy and flat. All those beautiful bags of beans taste exactly the same, like beans. The grocery store is out of weird things now, like ice cream with crunchy bits and pecans and soy sauce. Your farm box overflows with obligations to cook vegetables, again, forever, until you or they rot. The complicated dance of unboxing takeout, with as many hand-scrubbings as open-heart surgery, is unbearable. It’s time for tots.

The Tater Tot is the ribollita of the American processed food industry, a dish made of scraps and leavings that is maybe more beloved than the food of whose scraps it’s made. Invented by the frozen potato impresarios behind Ore-Ida in the 1950s, Tater Tots are neat spherical nubbins of potato shavings leftover from making french fries, which are then formed, fried, and frozen. Their natural habitats are Wednesday night dinners and school cafeterias. (Ore-Ida, now owned by Kraft Heinz, holds a trademark on “Tater Tot,” but any tot-like potato ingot applies here.) When done right, the Tater Tot’s crispy, textured exterior yields to a creamy middle, and their small size allows for an endless cascade of crunchy-to-creamy texture while eating. Unlike french fries, which are vastly superior made in a fryer by professionals, Tater Tots are pretty damn good made at home.

There are two modes of quarantine cooking: project cooking and fuck it cooking. The tot, a surprisingly versatile ingredient, satisfies both. For the completely fed up, the Tater Tot in its purest form, as a hot crispy nugget, is a mere ripped-open bag and 20-ish minutes in a hot oven away. They’re delightful with something else utterly uncomplicated like scrambled eggs or a pork chop, or maybe with nothing more than ketchup or a beer. If you want a little variety, you can sprinkle a spice mix on them — maybe Lawry’s Seasoned Salt or Old Bay — or grate some parmesan, or sprinkle some herbs. Now you’ve got fancy tots.

From there, things can get as complicated as you like. Tater Tots are the second-most popular potato item in food service — Nation’s Restaurant News called them “the new potato skins,” a reincarnation we’ve all been anxiously awaiting — and restaurants and food trucks have made an art of gussying up tots with enough wild ingredients until they might feel worth charging $7 for. The most well-known version of tot smothering is totchos, a staple at Mexican restaurants and other nacho-friendly establishments across the northwest, where Tater Tots (or a shredded potato product closely resembling them) are heaped with cheese, salsa, olives, and sour cream. In the food truck and bar food wilds, there are baked potato tots, pastrami tots, longanisa tots, Tater Tot parm, queso tots, bulgogi tots — if you have some kind of creamy topping, fatty meat, and/or cheese, you’ve got loaded tots.

For those maintaining their sanity by cooking elaborate comfort food, tidy rows of Tater Tots crown casseroles, especially the iconic upper Midwestern casseroles known as hotdish. The most basic hotdish is not much more than some ground meat, a canned cream soup, and the kind of vegetables found in the freezer section, topped with tots. But the blogger Molly Yeh, who lives in North Dakota and has a knack for creating playful and thoughtful recipes mashing up her food nerd sensibilities with the Upper Midwestern food culture, has created an impressive array of hotdish recipes with scratch-made roux or surprising ingredients, many of them topped with tots. The chicken pot hotdish and harissa chickpea hotdish might not scream May but they do scream comfort and also: tots.

The more deranged corners of project cooking have plenty of room for tots — they waffle and pizza — and of course there’s the ultimate project: Making them yourself, which will involve cooking the potatoes, processing them into chunks, and deep-frying your tots. Michel Richard has a recipe involving gelatin, which is a very French chef way to approach tots; other recipes allege making your own is more fun than opening a bag. Maybe for some! But the only person I know making her own tots is my friend who lives in rural France and sends us pictures of the goats she meets during quarantine. If you have the good fortune to live near an American supermarket with a non-ransacked freezer case, let your sourdough starter continue to do all the mercurial work in the kitchen, and let the American food industrial complex do what it does best, which is tots.

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2L6mjSv via Blogger https://ift.tt/2YG0wcm

[easyfoodnetwork]

There are two modes of quarantine cooking: project cooking and fuck-it cooking. The Tater Tot satisfies both. It’s week seven of lockdown, or maybe eight, or maybe it’s actually 25 — time seems to loop, like life is now one of the more unsettling episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Billions of microbes have lived and died in the sticky slurry of your sourdough starter, and the last two loaves turned out gummy and flat. All those beautiful bags of beans taste exactly the same, like beans. The grocery store is out of weird things now, like ice cream with crunchy bits and pecans and soy sauce. Your farm box overflows with obligations to cook vegetables, again, forever, until you or they rot. The complicated dance of unboxing takeout, with as many hand-scrubbings as open-heart surgery, is unbearable. It’s time for tots. The Tater Tot is the ribollita of the American processed food industry, a dish made of scraps and leavings that is maybe more beloved than the food of whose scraps it’s made. Invented by the frozen potato impresarios behind Ore-Ida in the 1950s, Tater Tots are neat spherical nubbins of potato shavings leftover from making french fries, which are then formed, fried, and frozen. Their natural habitats are Wednesday night dinners and school cafeterias. (Ore-Ida, now owned by Kraft Heinz, holds a trademark on “Tater Tot,” but any tot-like potato ingot applies here.) When done right, the Tater Tot’s crispy, textured exterior yields to a creamy middle, and their small size allows for an endless cascade of crunchy-to-creamy texture while eating. Unlike french fries, which are vastly superior made in a fryer by professionals, Tater Tots are pretty damn good made at home. There are two modes of quarantine cooking: project cooking and fuck it cooking. The tot, a surprisingly versatile ingredient, satisfies both. For the completely fed up, the Tater Tot in its purest form, as a hot crispy nugget, is a mere ripped-open bag and 20-ish minutes in a hot oven away. They’re delightful with something else utterly uncomplicated like scrambled eggs or a pork chop, or maybe with nothing more than ketchup or a beer. If you want a little variety, you can sprinkle a spice mix on them — maybe Lawry’s Seasoned Salt or Old Bay — or grate some parmesan, or sprinkle some herbs. Now you’ve got fancy tots. From there, things can get as complicated as you like. Tater Tots are the second-most popular potato item in food service — Nation’s Restaurant News called them “the new potato skins,” a reincarnation we’ve all been anxiously awaiting — and restaurants and food trucks have made an art of gussying up tots with enough wild ingredients until they might feel worth charging $7 for. The most well-known version of tot smothering is totchos, a staple at Mexican restaurants and other nacho-friendly establishments across the northwest, where Tater Tots (or a shredded potato product closely resembling them) are heaped with cheese, salsa, olives, and sour cream. In the food truck and bar food wilds, there are baked potato tots, pastrami tots, longanisa tots, Tater Tot parm, queso tots, bulgogi tots — if you have some kind of creamy topping, fatty meat, and/or cheese, you’ve got loaded tots. For those maintaining their sanity by cooking elaborate comfort food, tidy rows of Tater Tots crown casseroles, especially the iconic upper Midwestern casseroles known as hotdish. The most basic hotdish is not much more than some ground meat, a canned cream soup, and the kind of vegetables found in the freezer section, topped with tots. But the blogger Molly Yeh, who lives in North Dakota and has a knack for creating playful and thoughtful recipes mashing up her food nerd sensibilities with the Upper Midwestern food culture, has created an impressive array of hotdish recipes with scratch-made roux or surprising ingredients, many of them topped with tots. The chicken pot hotdish and harissa chickpea hotdish might not scream May but they do scream comfort and also: tots. The more deranged corners of project cooking have plenty of room for tots — they waffle and pizza — and of course there’s the ultimate project: Making them yourself, which will involve cooking the potatoes, processing them into chunks, and deep-frying your tots. Michel Richard has a recipe involving gelatin, which is a very French chef way to approach tots; other recipes allege making your own is more fun than opening a bag. Maybe for some! But the only person I know making her own tots is my friend who lives in rural France and sends us pictures of the goats she meets during quarantine. If you have the good fortune to live near an American supermarket with a non-ransacked freezer case, let your sourdough starter continue to do all the mercurial work in the kitchen, and let the American food industrial complex do what it does best, which is tots. Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2L6mjSv

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-answer-is-tots.html