SECOND FANTASY BOOK: CHAPTER 7

My binge writing has allowed me to reach the seventh chapter of my second fantasy book. In this chapter, I will write about the interactions between the future brides and grooms the night before their wedding. I have been to a few weddings in my lifetime including my sister’s and I know how epic they can be. I will be incorporating that exhilarating atmosphere into these scenes. I will keep you updated on any further developments.

SIGN LANGUAGE COMPLETE!!!

Guess what?! I have just passed my American Sign Language Class! This class was TWO YEARS worth of material, which is a type of class I never tackled before! By passing this class, I have completed my Foreign Language requirements to graduate from my university! I’M FREE!!! I am about to start binge-writing while watching the Extended Editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings!

GOTCHA PORK ROAST

Last night, I discovered a new anime called Food Wars, which pretty much embodies my love of both cooking and eating. Some of the recipes looked so good that I wanted to know if they existed in real life. I started with the Gotcha Pork Roast, which was the first epic dish that was presented in the whole series. Over the course of summer, I will be trying many recipes including this one. I found the recipe:

INGREDIENTS: “Pork” Roast:

3 1/2 cubed russet potatoes

3/4 cup finely chopped Eringi mushrooms

3/4 cup finely chopped onion

2 packs thick cut bacon

2-3 sprigs fresh rosemary Baker’s twine

Watercress for garnish

Salt and Pepper to taste

 

Sauce:

Sweet sake soy sauce (to taste)

1/2 cup red cooking wine

2 Tbsp butter

This recipe, as beautiful and complex as it looks, is actually extremely simple! First skin and cut your potatoes up into small cubes and steam them for 10-12 minutes until they are soft and squishy. In a separate pan, saute your onions and eringi mushrooms together with some extra virgin olive oil until the ingredients are golden brown and soft. Mash your potatoes by hand (or with a potato masher) and mix in your sauteed veggies. Prepare your bacon wrap by laying out your bacon strips on a baking pan with tin foil or a baking rack. Create the heart of your dish by molding your mashed potatoes into a loaf like shape. Place on your bacon strips, and carefully wrap the bacon around the potatoes. You’ll need to add strips to the ends and on top to fully encapsulate this beautiful concoction. Use your twine / string to tightly wrap the Pork Roast so it does not fall apart while it bakes. When your done, break up your rosemary into small sprigs and pin it against the string and the bacon wrapped mashed potatoes. Bring your oven to 300 F and bake for 35-45 minutes until your bacon is golden browned. Broil on high for 3 minutes afterwards to make it extra crispy. Meanwhile, prepare your sauce by combining a half cup of wine, sweet soy sauce, and butter in a frying pan and let it all bubble up and combine and reduce. When that’s done, you can pour it directly onto your Gotcha Pork Roast! Remove your pork roast from the oven, cut the string off, pour your reduced red wine glaze on top, and add garnish with watercress. ENJOY!

YANDERE CHARACTER

Since I will be trying to give my future superhuman series a manga feel, I will be basing some of the characters after the classical types of manga characters. For example, I am thinking of making the female lead a Yandere character. A Yandere character is a character who has strong romantic feelings for another character yet is mentally unstable and engages in acts of extreme violence. It was common for many Yandere characters to be female. The two most prominent examples of Yandere I can think of are Lucy from Elfen Lied and Shiro from Deadman Wonderland. Both of these characters were deeply in love with the male leads of their respective stories and they both suffered from multiple personality disorder. In addition, both Lucy and Shiro were sadistic psychopaths who engaged in mutilation and mass murder. Personality-wise, they possessed a Jekyll and Hyde mentality with their normal personalities being gentle, innocent, and sweet while their dark sides are sadistic, cruel, and bloodthirsty. That will be the mindset I will give my female lead for my superhuman series.

SUPERHUMAN SERIES: FREAK CHARACTER

One thing I have noticed in almost every anime and manga I have seen is that there seems to always be a character or multiple characters who were psychological freaks. These characters were so crazy that they would do things that sane people would consider disturbing or inhuman. For example, Juzo Suzuya (picture above) was one of many freaks in Tokyo Ghoul that he disturbed pretty much everyone around him, but he was also terrifyingly deadly when it came to taking down his enemies. Another example would be Kenpachi Zaraki and Mayuri Kurotsuchi, who were both crazy freaks who were completely crazy and possessed a perverse joy in what they do. I am thinking of staying faithful to this anime/manga tradition and create a character in my superhuman series who is as much of a crazy freak as these other characters.

MY SUMMER CELEBRATION

To celebrate the completion of my sign language class and to jump start my creative juices for my writing, I will binge watch the extended edition of both The Hobbit Trilogy and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The reason for this is because whenever I write, I would do so while watching one of these films. I do this because the fantasy elements, music, battle scenes, and camaraderie among the characters helps me concentrate while writing. I have not written anything in months so if this does not resuscitate my imagination then nothing will. It always pleases me and my pit bulls whenever we visit Middle-Earth even if my pit bulls bark whenever they see either orcs or Nazgul.

VIKING/ANGLO-SAXON PARTY

In my second fantasy novel, at the end of every day of the wedding’s tournament, the great hall will provide over 70 course meals, all kinds of entertainment, and joyful people from all across the northern kingdoms. The entertainment will consist of jugglers, acrobats, as well as bards singing songs of the heroes of their respective kingdoms. There will be cauldrons of mead and countless barrels of wine. To give you a glimpse of the atmosphere of this medieval reception party, allow me to share this video from the 2007 version of Beowulf, which pretty much depicts how my ancestors threw a party.

MEAD HALL

My Viking and Anglo-Saxon ancestors tended to celebrate inside of mead halls, which were the precursors of great halls of medieval castles. To provide you with a more vivid picture of what the interior of Magnus Keep looks like in my fantasy series, the great hall would look like a mead hall where the king of Umbran would invite their barons and knights to celebrate multiple occasions. This mead/great hall will be prominently featured in my second fantasy book especially after it was renovated.

MEAD

A common beverage from the Viking and Anglo-Saxon eras is mead, which is an alcoholic drink that is seasoned with fermented honey. Because of the usage of honey, mead tends to have various levels of sweetness. I am thinking of including mead in my second fantasy book during the epic wedding that will take place at the beginning. The type of mead that I will be including will possess a fiery-sweet flavor and a heavy yet smooth texture.

MUTE CHARACTER

For some time, I thought of including a character who is mute in my second fantasy book. They would only be able to speak in wheezing, incoherent whispers and only their family and bodyguards would be able to understand what they are saying. I got the idea of an old movie I saw years back in which an old mobster could barely speak and could only be understood by his enforcers. Like that mobster, this character will be a high-ranking individual in society. Also, this character will be wickedly frightening with a sword.