Combination Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day

[petronia]

Rice wine soup: my philosophy is that if you're going to make this stuff, make it tooth-rottingly sweet and eat a smaller portion. It turned out we didn't have flour for tangyuan, though, and it never occurred to me to buy them pre-made because we never do - what I care about is the osmanthus syrup anyway. XD; So I used, uhh, bubble tea tapioca.

Chocolate cookies: I forget what these were called in the book. They turned out to be the Danish butter biscuits that come in a tin, basically, only with cocoa - sort of smoky-tasting. Good basis for cookies'n'cream type desserts I'd imagine... next time, stick a chocolate chunk in the centre, sprinkle with crystallized sugar, and give them 12 minutes instead of 10.

***

Darker Than Black: in lacewood's comments a few days back, discussing how DtB was one of the few anime series with a reasonably non-faily and nuanced portrayal of foreigners; Chinese characters in particular (going as far as knowing subversion, eg. sticking Kirihara in the cheongsam and buns instead of Alice). Then again, it had better be, considering it's an immigration/xenophobia parable. XD; Just not as overt as - say - District 9, due to viewers being kept in the dark for 20-plus episodes as to what anyone's motive or provenance is. But there aren't many non-gaijin Contractors in Tokyo, that much is evident.

Then there's the OAV ep, which... I don't know what to say. XD;;; BNF PROTIP: IF YOU MEET A MASKED, SUPERPOWERED ASSASSIN IN ACTUAL REAL LIFE MEATSPACE, DON'T BASE YOUR GARY STU ON HIM

Nnnh have to confer with T re whether we're watching Ryuusei no Gemini. Meanwhile Amber's chara settei made me so nostalgic for C.C. I've picked up Geass R2. That shiz qualified in shark jumping at the Olympic level from episode one but whatev, I really love seeing that rabid little weasel Lelouch get wound up like a ticky toy.

Comments

[nojojojo.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen lacewood's comments; can you link to them?

I could never figure out whether Hei was actually Chinese or just playing a Chinese student as a cover so no one would pay much attention to him. Also whether the whole team's names were codenames or actual (because Mao, Yin, and Huang sound Chinese to my USian ear too). But then I haven't seen the OAV, and haven't seen the series past ep. 24 or so.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

In the post re: Black Lagoon (http://lacewood.livejournal.com/171789.html) (which has a couple of extremely stereotypical Chinese characters - though it's a broad-brush, pulp genre hommage sort of series - and one very non-stereotypical Chinese-American).

Hei = Black
Bai = White
Mao = Cat
Yin = Silver
Huang = Yellow

Hei and Bai/Pai are actually Chinese as far as I can tell. The rest are codenames (Yin is Scandinavian, which was not readily apparent until her backstory came up; Huang is Japanese, and Mao is... who knows XD;). I assumed their Syndicate was a Chinese organization until it became apparent that whatever the main characters thought their Syndicate was, was irrelevant anyway.

[motorbike.livejournal.com]

DTB never quite kept my attention, but moonsheen convinced me to marathon to the end of S1, and I was sort of glad I did? I liked Hei a lot, I think there's a future for his sort of character type in a Southwestern retelling where Hei is from Mexico. The ending was kind of OMEDETO!!! but satisfying once it was explained to me. Race consciousness obv was set to max, as you said. Mostly pretty subtle (!), but at times (charmingly?) ham-fisted since show wasn't actually produced by gaijins. For a moment I thought Hei's penalty was preparing a traditional Chinese meal and in that moment I honestly believed show would go there, orz.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about it too - it's good, but not moe-moe. Yanno. My secret life as a drift-racin' Japanese police inspector.

Storm (The Beer Chick) totally made out like a bandit on the remuneration front.

[arboretum]

So I used, uhh, bubble tea tapioca.

snort. awesome. I would eat that, no prob XDDDDDDDDDD
we've never made tangyuan before; we always just buy it. my favorite are the kind with that sweet sesame stuff in...

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

Bawling, did the tangyuan turn out okay...