- Pronouns
- He/Him
Makes sense. I, too, yell my passwords aloud each time I want to do some online banking so that everyone can hear it
On Fluttering Wings [Taylor Hebert in MGLN]
CouchMaster
Fanfic Connoisseur
- Location
- The Bay Area
My opinion is that calling out attack/spell names is cool on its own, and also makes for more interesting writing. It helps make the action flow better.
EiosChronos
Delusional Dreamer
- Location
- Gamindustri
Makes sense. I, too, yell my passwords aloud each time I want to do some online banking so that everyone can hear it
Except you can't really do anything with the spell name except maybe dodge.
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
I can't help but point out that by and large, binding spells don't need to be announced as they're cast...
- Location
- Tokyo, Japan
My opinion? The code words are also tied to their voices, which means unless you can make a perfect copy of a person's voice print, you might be doing a little stupid trick you thought might work.
Also, probably useless to those who don't use voice codes, like War-minded Belkans and guys like Vice (I mean, Sniper through and through?) but still.
- Location
- Beyond the Unknowable Veil
If it turns out Taylor must use words for spells, have her mutter them under her breath. Watch everyone in the area facepalm as they figure out what she's doing.
- Location
- Tokyo, Japan
My take? She'll try to do the smart trick of voicing one thing while thinking another... but screw it up at some point unless has a portion of QA with her all this time.
- Location
- Tokyo, Japan
If she can use those things as her means to deflect others from focusing from what she is doing, that is...... Unless you mean what Taylor is learning is helping her to do that sort of thing. I mean, given what Mariposa is.
- Location
- A room?
Yell. Not tell. Thanks autocorrect. As a distraction I mean. Blerg phone keyboard
eschwartz
Glorious Wordsmith and Author-Whisperer
- Location
- Roundworld
The whole idea of naming a spell before you can use it is hardly without precedent -- this really has nothing to do with anime.
Harry Potter did the same thing, just with dog latin... and included the idea of "nonverbal spells" being a challenging methodology for avoiding the shortcomings being debated here. "Your adversary has no warning about what kind of magic you're about to perform which gives you a split-second advantage." Probably doesn't matter all that much.
Harry *Dresden* lived in a world where incantations simply help focus your mind, and wizards preferably use some non-native language to avoid accidentally casting spells by association in casual conversation, without intending it. Notably, it doesn't matter what you use, as long as it is personally distinctive, because it's a focus mechanism.
Both stories use rather corny incantations, Magical Girl style spell incantations merely manage to be even cornier because they don't bother using pretentious languages.
Other magical traditions include ones where spells get set up in elaborate mechanisms, and bound to some ritual object, only to be activated upon the intonation of some nonsense phrase bound as a trigger, then there is Diane Duane's Young Wizards series where spells are actually very complex descriptions in The Speech (fiction) - Wikipedia of what you want to happen, and sound more like an extremely dry recitation from a technical manual (but you can leave a spell mostly said, then activate it by finishing the last couple of words, if you want to use it quickly and on short notice).
Honestly, I would consider it much, much weirder to *not* have some form of verbal trigger for a spell. Taylor should not be surprised at all, but may optionally complain that the ones people tend to use lack imagination.
Well, no, not even slightly.
Passwords are not supposed to be easily guessable because they are "memorized secrets" used in authentication/identification, and they are there to prove the claimant is not lying. Mnemonics are there to disambiguate ambiguity, and serve as an extension of language (in fact, that's why so many fictional magical traditions make spells literally be a special language). You don't compare calling a couch something simple and easy to understand like "couch", to having a simple, easily guessable password, do you?
Now, granted, if the spell is a proprietary spell loaded with space DRM, there's some rationale to prevent people from knowing about it. But this is probably better accomplished through offloading most of the critical components into an intent-based system not easily duplicated from mere hearing alone, or artifacts with trigger words.
Battle or tournament magic may be special, in this sense, but I'm inclined to think that Mage Sight is more of a risk, and anyway, formulating unique counters to unique magic is not something you do on the spur of the moment, so you'd need to prepare beforehand anyway and in that case you likely know exactly what you're facing even before it happens. At best, you can gain reaction times of a second or two in pattern recognition, but that equally runs the risk of your opponent changing up all the trigger phrases on their combat artifacts, so you *think* you know what you're facing but then you end up reacting to the wrong thing.
...
I'm no expert on MGLN, so it could be this general theory of magic doesn't apply due to unique implementation details of the worldbuilding. Apologies, if so.
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- Location
- Somewhere in the Ashes
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So, reminder to EVERYONE:
Taylor already used a spell name in this fic. Yeah, she didn't say it aloud (she said "bang" instead, which was mostly because Stinger Ray Multishot is a mouthful), but she did use it, back during her first unison with Mariposa.
Second reminder to everyone:
Magic in Nanoha is a collection of equations run through a computer that can affect reality. Spells, attacks or otherwise, are nothing more than computer scripts that perform a given set of equations. Naming your scripts is... I'd say good practice, but I doubt it even reaches that level of non-ubiquity. It's something basically everyone does.
Third reminder to everyone:
Most devices aren't capable of receiving or transmitting telepathic messages. That's restricted to Unison Devices. Storage Devices, Armed Devices, and Intelligent Devices are typically voice-activated.
Taylor already used a spell name in this fic. Yeah, she didn't say it aloud (she said "bang" instead, which was mostly because Stinger Ray Multishot is a mouthful), but she did use it, back during her first unison with Mariposa.
Second reminder to everyone:
Magic in Nanoha is a collection of equations run through a computer that can affect reality. Spells, attacks or otherwise, are nothing more than computer scripts that perform a given set of equations. Naming your scripts is... I'd say good practice, but I doubt it even reaches that level of non-ubiquity. It's something basically everyone does.
Third reminder to everyone:
Most devices aren't capable of receiving or transmitting telepathic messages. That's restricted to Unison Devices. Storage Devices, Armed Devices, and Intelligent Devices are typically voice-activated.
Wait, what? Nanoha and Yuuno communicated by telepathy all the time in the first season. Hayate and the Wolkenritter likewise have what amounts to a telepathic link. The Crash Emulate system used in the Inter-Middle fights to make the competitors feel the injuries they would have gotten if it was real MUST work via Device interface with the mage's brain.
EiosChronos
Delusional Dreamer
- Location
- Gamindustri
I'd honestly say that it makes it easier but can be unnessisary with copious amounts of training. Also, Intellegint Devices have to have some manner of telepathy due to being able to connect to their user's brain.
- Pronouns
- Yes
You're taking the analogy literally. The spells names aren't simple passwords to trigger the spell.
The point is that like easily guessable password shouting an obvious spell name is something fairly stupid that a lot of people do because they're lazy.
EiosChronos
Delusional Dreamer
- Location
- Gamindustri
Well spell names aren't passwords though, they literally are just the spell's name. Spells are described as instructions for a complex energy calculation using mana. Like Nanoha and Subaru both have Divine Buster, but Nanoha uses a Midchieldian spell circle and Subaru uses a Belkin one. Same effect, diferent way of getting there, since Mid and Belkin magic are different. Naming a spell and calling out its name would likely help keep the calculations for different spells seperate in your mind. Also, if Taylor thinks that Stinger Ray Multishot is a long name, she hasn't seen Nanoha's Starlight Breaker Multi-Raid or Teana's Starlight Breaker: Phantom Strike.
- Location
- Somewhere in the Ashes
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yes. Because they're people. Telepathy is something we've only seen from humans, familiars, magical constructs pretending to be humans or familiars, and unison devices, all of which merit the title of person. As much as I love Bardiche and Raising Heart, they're only sort of people.
Uh, no. Peripheral nervous system works just fine, and you can almost certainly access that through the barrier jacket, which is how the Crash Emulate system is said to work.
That's something Unison Devices do, not Intelligent Devices. IDs connect to the user's magic (all devices do that, actually, including Unisons), not the brain. Again, not telepathy, just a mixture of intelligent predictive programming and input sensors.
EiosChronos
Delusional Dreamer
- Location
- Gamindustri
This is straight from the wiki, which takes all its info from the info books
"Because of the very close interoperation between the mage's brain and their Device, both have to be attuned to each other upon the Device's first activation, and regularly recalibrated to ensure optimal performance."
"Because of the very close interoperation between the mage's brain and their Device, both have to be attuned to each other upon the Device's first activation, and regularly recalibrated to ensure optimal performance."
- Location
- Amsterdam
Using an incantation makes spellcasting easier. When Nanoha started out casting spells she spoke the full incantations to them. As she grew more familiar with the spells she reduced this to just the names. (And she did this incredibly fast) Better spellcasters can just resort to using the names or even silent casting. As is shown by Fate and Nanoha not even calling out bursts of bullets in combat and limiting the use of names to bigger spells.
If Taylor had been properly calling out the name of her bullet hell it would have gone easier and been more devastating. (See the difference between Fate's regular Photon Lancer and a full incantation Photon Lancer: Phalanx Shift)
Here is the wiki page for more info: Trigger
If Taylor had been properly calling out the name of her bullet hell it would have gone easier and been more devastating. (See the difference between Fate's regular Photon Lancer and a full incantation Photon Lancer: Phalanx Shift)
Here is the wiki page for more info: Trigger
- Location
- Somewhere in the Ashes
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Wikis aren't reliable. Also, that's citing ViVid manga, chapter one. Give me a minute to check, I smell an unfounded extrapolation.
Edit: Wow. Forget extrapolation, there's nothing there at all. There's a bit in chapter two, but it says nothing about the brain, and context indicates it's more about Vivio's adult form being a mana construct than anything else.
Further edit: Tried a different translation. Still nothing. I'm calling it, this is pure fanon.
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EiosChronos
Delusional Dreamer
- Location
- Gamindustri
I put more trust in the wiki to at least have a base to start in. Plus it makes more sense in my opinon. Accepting it as canon 
- Location
- Somewhere in the Ashes
- Pronouns
- She/Her
And this is how nonsense like magical cores in Harry Potter fanfiction gets started...I put more trust in the wiki to at least have a base to start in. Plus it makes more sense in my opinon. Accepting it as canon
- Location
- Tokyo, Japan
Technically, there are parts that imply that Intelligent Devices can communicate with their users non-verbally, what with Raising Heart setting up the training program for Nanoha to use by sending it to her as depicted in the A's Manga and the Movie 1st.
There is also the mention in the second episode in the First Season that Yuuno makes where he tells Nanoha to carry Raising Heart so she can communicate with Telepathy, though that could simply be Raising Heart supporting Nanoha to use Telepathy and not transmitting for Nanoha. (Nanoha can receive just fine at this point.)
Then again, that is miss "I'm pretty much a Lost Logia due to my dubious origins" Raising Heart, so......
(As an aside, and I call this an aside since I can't directly confirm, apparently a Device can be used to record and play Telepathic messages in the Novel Version of the First Season. Go figure.)
That said, there is a mention of a Device acting as an intermediary for sending Communications, where Klarwind is used to connect with Hayate's cell phone in A's.
There is also a mention in the Magic Dictionaries that Klarwind was used as a 'signal booster' of sorts for the telepathic communications between the Wolks when they are on other worlds, though that doesn't mean a Device can use Telepathy, just that it can be used as a proxy of sorts.
Though, on this part:
The Magic Dictionaries do state that the Triggers involved can be thought based.
There is also the mention in the second episode in the First Season that Yuuno makes where he tells Nanoha to carry Raising Heart so she can communicate with Telepathy, though that could simply be Raising Heart supporting Nanoha to use Telepathy and not transmitting for Nanoha. (Nanoha can receive just fine at this point.)
Then again, that is miss "I'm pretty much a Lost Logia due to my dubious origins" Raising Heart, so......
(As an aside, and I call this an aside since I can't directly confirm, apparently a Device can be used to record and play Telepathic messages in the Novel Version of the First Season. Go figure.)
That said, there is a mention of a Device acting as an intermediary for sending Communications, where Klarwind is used to connect with Hayate's cell phone in A's.
There is also a mention in the Magic Dictionaries that Klarwind was used as a 'signal booster' of sorts for the telepathic communications between the Wolks when they are on other worlds, though that doesn't mean a Device can use Telepathy, just that it can be used as a proxy of sorts.
Though, on this part:
The Magic Dictionaries do state that the Triggers involved can be thought based.
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Cooking with Taylor, Recipe 2: Lemon-Garlic Chicken Thighs (canon, before episode 9)
Stardust Falcon
Legendary Creature - Bird Wizard
- Location
- The Infinite Sorrow
Saturday.
Well, it wasn't called Saturday on Midchilda the same way that their fourth month of the calendar year was not called "April," but it was the first day of the weekend and therefore I would keep on calling it Saturday.
On this auspicious weekend day, I was blessedly, beautifully alone. Nanoha was off conducting training exercises for the TSAB's latest batch of recruits, Vivio had gone off with a pair of girls her age that I assumed were school friends, and Fate was still on her tour of duty.
The only people left in the Takamachi household were Mariposa and myself. It was wonderful.
I had settled into the living room with virtual copies of several introductory level texts on spellcrafting, a reading list that had been firmly suggested to me by my Device, but one that I was happy to dive into.
And dive into it I did. The material itself was fascinating, and it came with practical exercises that were just the right level of challenging to really draw me in. Losing track of time was pretty much inevitable once I got going. Hours passed me by with my head buried in the literature and I was having an excellent day by every metric I cared to use.
In fact, I could've spent the entire rest of the day sprawled out on Nanoha's couch without moving, were it not for...
"We should probably start thinking about what to do for lunch, Taylor."
"It's fine," I responded immediately without thinking, "I'm not really hungry, so-"
My stomach disagreed with me. Loudly.
Mariposa lifted one eyebrow as I turned to face her. "You were saying?"
Right. Fine. Lunch it is.
Fighting down the embarrassed blush spreading across my face, I dismissed my study materials with a wave of my hand, takeout menus from a variety of highly rated establishments across Midchilda manifesting in their place. Before I could start sorting through them to see what grabs me, however, I happened to turn at just the right moment for a single ray of sunlight to hit Nanoha's immaculate kitchen and set the countertops sparkling invitingly.
Unbidden, the Takamachi matriarch's words from before sprang to the front of my mind. "As long as you're living under this roof, this kitchen is your kitchen as well. Don't be afraid to use it to make whatever you want."
But I couldn't, one part of me protested.
It has been a while since I made food for myself. Too long, some might say.
Another part of me pointed out that it wasn't that big of a deal to use the kitchen if I cleaned up after myself.
Yet another part retorted that it my host would surely know either way and probably expected me to ask for permission, even if she hadn't explicitly said that.
My internal debate raged on in silence for a minute until my Device decided to make the decision for me, having sailed into the kitchen and dove directly into the fridge.
"Hey! There's some chicken thighs in here that are expiring soon. You know, it's been a while since I've had chicken..."
...Well, I guess there's nothing for it.
Chicken is an excellent delivery vehicle for a wide variety of sauces and seasonings. A little bit can go a long way with the right preparation.
In this case, a lemon catches my eye as I scan the pantry, so I grab it, along with some garlic, dried rosemary, salt, pepper, olive oil. There's a brief moment where I consider grabbing potatoes as well for a side dish, but laziness strikes me, so I go for the rice instead.
Might as well take advantage of the rice cooker since it's here.
"Mari?" I call out.
Her response wafts back to me from the fridge. "Yes?"
"As long as you're in there, we'll need butter. Parsley, too."
"Got it!"
While my companion fishes around for the rest of the ingredients, I take a moment to review the rice cooker's instructions, and then set it to cooking two servings of rice. Conveniently, once the rice cooker's set, it needs nothing else but time, so I leave it be and turn my attention to the prep work for the chicken.
Pulling it out of the fridge and its packaging now will make a huge difference in the searing process, and so will patting the meat dry. They're little details but the little details make all the difference, no matter what you're working with. After patting the chicken dry, it gets a quick dusting of salt and freshly ground pepper on each side, then I push it off to a corner and pull a skillet with a lid off of the back wall. The bottom of the skillet gets a thin coating of olive oil before being set on a burner at medium heat with a sensor spell set to chime when the oil hits 175.
...I meant 350. I swear. I'm not converting to metric.
Moving on, the time it takes for the oil to come up to temp is perfect for finely chopping the garlic and rosemary and zesting the lemon. Just after I finish that, the sensor chimes, prompting me to throw a couple tablespoons of butter into the skillet, which foam up immediately.
Then I drop the chicken in, skin side down, and listen to it sizzle pleasantly for just a moment before taking half of the lemon-garlic-rosemary mixture and sprinkling it evenly over the exposed side of the chicken thighs. Three minutes later, I lift one of the chicken thighs to check it. It's almost but not quite at the level of char I want, which means it's time to drop the burner heat to a level appropriate for simmering instead. Another thirty seconds to finish the sear pass and I flip the chicken over, sprinkling the rest of the seasoning over the nice crispy chicken skin and then dropping the lid down to cover. Doing it this way means that the higher heat level needed for properly searing the chicken skin doesn't also burn the more sensitive seasoning mixture.
And now we wait for the chicken to cook through while simmering and steaming. I usually figure on it taking about 25 minutes, and I'll turn the pan and move the chicken around twice during that process as extra insurance against any potential sticking.
"We should have a salad with this," Mariposa decides, and with no hesitation at all she's back in the fridge, rooting around in the vegetable drawer for whatever she feels will go well in a salad.
I chop up the parsley and halve the zested lemon, and then turn over control of the knife and cutting board to her before pulling up my study list and looking for something easy to spend the next 25 minutes on.
Several time-passing math practice drills later, the chicken is done, so I throw another two tablespoons of butter into the skillet and juice both lemon halves directly into the skillet as well. A couple seeds do not fall into the pan when I juice the lemon, so I don't need to fish them out, and nobody saw that anyway.
Finally, I kill the heat, toss the skillet a couple times to combine everything, and divide the chicken thighs out onto two plates. The rice is ready, so I divide that out onto the plates as well, and then drizzle the lemon-butter mixture over the top of everything before finishing with a parsley garnish.
Lunch is served.
"Ooh, that looks good!"
My stomach agrees. Loudly.
"Thank you." I say sincerely and without any hint of embarrassment, lifting both plates and bringing them over to the dining table.
It doesn't take either of us long to work through lunch. Cleaning the kitchen afterwards also goes quickly, and soon there's hardly any evidence at all that we'd used the space. In fact, the only way that anybody could have figured out that we'd used the space is if they compared the contents of the fridge before our lunch to the contents afterwards.
Mariposa and I look at each other.
"We should probably..." I begin, somewhat hesitantly.
She completes my thought easily. "...replace what we used."
And so, with a quick network lookup, we depart for the supermarket.
Centuries of research and development into agricultural technologies and magic has rendered 'super' something of an understatement. With vastly improved methods for everything from garden construction to crop selection and growth to harvesting to preservation and storage, the TSAB has long enjoyed the benefits of a culture in which it is possible to deliver essentially any dish or ingredient to anywhere in TSAB space on demand. Thus freed of the shackles of needing to be concerned with whether something is in season and with an incredibly loose definition of "local," supermarkets on Midchilda have long since grown into vast megastructures where the distance from farm to market is measured in 'floors,' and where the list of foodstuffs they can't provide on request is near enough to nonexistent.
I take a deep breath, standing at the entrance of a building labeled Tower Market, my eyes fixed firmly on the doorway, not looking up (and up, and up). Then I force myself to step into the market because I came here for groceries and I am leaving with groceries no matter how overwhelming this building is.
At least they provide a map.
Winding my way through the supermarket is an experience.
Looking at the building from the outside or on its floor plan is one thing. Standing inside of it is quite another. I'm distinctly reminded of a mall department store, except every department is food or something immediately adjacent to food. And it doesn't really sink in just what 'everything is available' means until I find myself wandering through a fresh produce section that is probably just by itself larger than the entire Market Basket that I used to get groceries at, my eyes helplessly wandering over this sale or that special. It's a very good thing that I already ate.
Coming here hungry would be extremely dangerous.
Even so, there's a tiny voice in the back of my mind, a more cheerful and adventurous version of myself, that just can't help but point out that there's an entire universe worth of new things to try and experience. And with my travel times always being zero, do I really have an excuse not to try more?
I studiously ignore the voice of younger Taylor as I focus on sorting through the herbs aisle, looking for parsley. I continue paying no heed to that voice as I work my way down the shopping list. There isn't all that much I need to get, and before long I'm making my way to the self-checkout kiosks, which happen to be situated on the same floor as the kitchenware...
And the kitchen apparel.
There's an apron hanging on a rack, available for purchase. A plain black apron that buttons closed in the back. No fuss, no frills.
...
That same small part of my subconscious cheers as I grab the apron off the rack and hustle over to check out before I can supply myself with an argument against buying it. I justify this to myself by saying this way I can guarantee I won't be forced into that offensively frilly apron Nanoha found for me the last time I had cooked with her.
It is her kitchen, after all. As a guest, I should defer to her policies.
Hours passed by in studious silence after returning from the supermarket, the fridge and pantry restocked with the groceries I purchased, before any of the other Takamachis got home.
"I'm home!" Nanoha announced cheerfully as she stepped through the front door. I had returned to my comfortable sprawl on the living room couch, but I am certain I would've been able to hear her even if I was camped out in the bedroom upstairs.
It would almost certainly be considered rude not to acknowledge her, so I offered up a pleasant "Welcome back."
"Thank you, Taylor," she replied, and from my spot on the couch I couldn't see her but I could practically hear the smile in her voice anyway. "Did you have a good day?"
I take a moment to think about what to say.
"...Yeah, I did. I feel like I made some progress today."
I studiously ignored the small cynical voice in the back of my head that suggested otherwise.
"I'm glad to hear that."
She didn't ask for any elaboration, and I heard her footsteps move out of the entranceway and over to the kitchen, followed by the sounds of dinner prep work being started.
And if she noticed that there's another apron hanging up now, she decided not to mention it, which is fine by me.
I smiled to myself softly, resisted the urge to sigh in contented relief, and quietly went back to my studies.
lemon-garlic chicken thighs
Well, it wasn't called Saturday on Midchilda the same way that their fourth month of the calendar year was not called "April," but it was the first day of the weekend and therefore I would keep on calling it Saturday.
On this auspicious weekend day, I was blessedly, beautifully alone. Nanoha was off conducting training exercises for the TSAB's latest batch of recruits, Vivio had gone off with a pair of girls her age that I assumed were school friends, and Fate was still on her tour of duty.
The only people left in the Takamachi household were Mariposa and myself. It was wonderful.
I had settled into the living room with virtual copies of several introductory level texts on spellcrafting, a reading list that had been firmly suggested to me by my Device, but one that I was happy to dive into.
And dive into it I did. The material itself was fascinating, and it came with practical exercises that were just the right level of challenging to really draw me in. Losing track of time was pretty much inevitable once I got going. Hours passed me by with my head buried in the literature and I was having an excellent day by every metric I cared to use.
In fact, I could've spent the entire rest of the day sprawled out on Nanoha's couch without moving, were it not for...
"We should probably start thinking about what to do for lunch, Taylor."
"It's fine," I responded immediately without thinking, "I'm not really hungry, so-"
My stomach disagreed with me. Loudly.
Mariposa lifted one eyebrow as I turned to face her. "You were saying?"
Right. Fine. Lunch it is.
Fighting down the embarrassed blush spreading across my face, I dismissed my study materials with a wave of my hand, takeout menus from a variety of highly rated establishments across Midchilda manifesting in their place. Before I could start sorting through them to see what grabs me, however, I happened to turn at just the right moment for a single ray of sunlight to hit Nanoha's immaculate kitchen and set the countertops sparkling invitingly.
Unbidden, the Takamachi matriarch's words from before sprang to the front of my mind. "As long as you're living under this roof, this kitchen is your kitchen as well. Don't be afraid to use it to make whatever you want."
But I couldn't, one part of me protested.
It has been a while since I made food for myself. Too long, some might say.
Another part of me pointed out that it wasn't that big of a deal to use the kitchen if I cleaned up after myself.
Yet another part retorted that it my host would surely know either way and probably expected me to ask for permission, even if she hadn't explicitly said that.
My internal debate raged on in silence for a minute until my Device decided to make the decision for me, having sailed into the kitchen and dove directly into the fridge.
"Hey! There's some chicken thighs in here that are expiring soon. You know, it's been a while since I've had chicken..."
...Well, I guess there's nothing for it.
Chicken is an excellent delivery vehicle for a wide variety of sauces and seasonings. A little bit can go a long way with the right preparation.
In this case, a lemon catches my eye as I scan the pantry, so I grab it, along with some garlic, dried rosemary, salt, pepper, olive oil. There's a brief moment where I consider grabbing potatoes as well for a side dish, but laziness strikes me, so I go for the rice instead.
Might as well take advantage of the rice cooker since it's here.
"Mari?" I call out.
Her response wafts back to me from the fridge. "Yes?"
"As long as you're in there, we'll need butter. Parsley, too."
"Got it!"
While my companion fishes around for the rest of the ingredients, I take a moment to review the rice cooker's instructions, and then set it to cooking two servings of rice. Conveniently, once the rice cooker's set, it needs nothing else but time, so I leave it be and turn my attention to the prep work for the chicken.
Pulling it out of the fridge and its packaging now will make a huge difference in the searing process, and so will patting the meat dry. They're little details but the little details make all the difference, no matter what you're working with. After patting the chicken dry, it gets a quick dusting of salt and freshly ground pepper on each side, then I push it off to a corner and pull a skillet with a lid off of the back wall. The bottom of the skillet gets a thin coating of olive oil before being set on a burner at medium heat with a sensor spell set to chime when the oil hits 175.
...I meant 350. I swear. I'm not converting to metric.
Moving on, the time it takes for the oil to come up to temp is perfect for finely chopping the garlic and rosemary and zesting the lemon. Just after I finish that, the sensor chimes, prompting me to throw a couple tablespoons of butter into the skillet, which foam up immediately.
Then I drop the chicken in, skin side down, and listen to it sizzle pleasantly for just a moment before taking half of the lemon-garlic-rosemary mixture and sprinkling it evenly over the exposed side of the chicken thighs. Three minutes later, I lift one of the chicken thighs to check it. It's almost but not quite at the level of char I want, which means it's time to drop the burner heat to a level appropriate for simmering instead. Another thirty seconds to finish the sear pass and I flip the chicken over, sprinkling the rest of the seasoning over the nice crispy chicken skin and then dropping the lid down to cover. Doing it this way means that the higher heat level needed for properly searing the chicken skin doesn't also burn the more sensitive seasoning mixture.
And now we wait for the chicken to cook through while simmering and steaming. I usually figure on it taking about 25 minutes, and I'll turn the pan and move the chicken around twice during that process as extra insurance against any potential sticking.
"We should have a salad with this," Mariposa decides, and with no hesitation at all she's back in the fridge, rooting around in the vegetable drawer for whatever she feels will go well in a salad.
I chop up the parsley and halve the zested lemon, and then turn over control of the knife and cutting board to her before pulling up my study list and looking for something easy to spend the next 25 minutes on.
Several time-passing math practice drills later, the chicken is done, so I throw another two tablespoons of butter into the skillet and juice both lemon halves directly into the skillet as well. A couple seeds do not fall into the pan when I juice the lemon, so I don't need to fish them out, and nobody saw that anyway.
Finally, I kill the heat, toss the skillet a couple times to combine everything, and divide the chicken thighs out onto two plates. The rice is ready, so I divide that out onto the plates as well, and then drizzle the lemon-butter mixture over the top of everything before finishing with a parsley garnish.
Lunch is served.
"Ooh, that looks good!"
My stomach agrees. Loudly.
"Thank you." I say sincerely and without any hint of embarrassment, lifting both plates and bringing them over to the dining table.
It doesn't take either of us long to work through lunch. Cleaning the kitchen afterwards also goes quickly, and soon there's hardly any evidence at all that we'd used the space. In fact, the only way that anybody could have figured out that we'd used the space is if they compared the contents of the fridge before our lunch to the contents afterwards.
Mariposa and I look at each other.
"We should probably..." I begin, somewhat hesitantly.
She completes my thought easily. "...replace what we used."
And so, with a quick network lookup, we depart for the supermarket.
Centuries of research and development into agricultural technologies and magic has rendered 'super' something of an understatement. With vastly improved methods for everything from garden construction to crop selection and growth to harvesting to preservation and storage, the TSAB has long enjoyed the benefits of a culture in which it is possible to deliver essentially any dish or ingredient to anywhere in TSAB space on demand. Thus freed of the shackles of needing to be concerned with whether something is in season and with an incredibly loose definition of "local," supermarkets on Midchilda have long since grown into vast megastructures where the distance from farm to market is measured in 'floors,' and where the list of foodstuffs they can't provide on request is near enough to nonexistent.
I take a deep breath, standing at the entrance of a building labeled Tower Market, my eyes fixed firmly on the doorway, not looking up (and up, and up). Then I force myself to step into the market because I came here for groceries and I am leaving with groceries no matter how overwhelming this building is.
At least they provide a map.
Winding my way through the supermarket is an experience.
Looking at the building from the outside or on its floor plan is one thing. Standing inside of it is quite another. I'm distinctly reminded of a mall department store, except every department is food or something immediately adjacent to food. And it doesn't really sink in just what 'everything is available' means until I find myself wandering through a fresh produce section that is probably just by itself larger than the entire Market Basket that I used to get groceries at, my eyes helplessly wandering over this sale or that special. It's a very good thing that I already ate.
Coming here hungry would be extremely dangerous.
Even so, there's a tiny voice in the back of my mind, a more cheerful and adventurous version of myself, that just can't help but point out that there's an entire universe worth of new things to try and experience. And with my travel times always being zero, do I really have an excuse not to try more?
I studiously ignore the voice of younger Taylor as I focus on sorting through the herbs aisle, looking for parsley. I continue paying no heed to that voice as I work my way down the shopping list. There isn't all that much I need to get, and before long I'm making my way to the self-checkout kiosks, which happen to be situated on the same floor as the kitchenware...
And the kitchen apparel.
There's an apron hanging on a rack, available for purchase. A plain black apron that buttons closed in the back. No fuss, no frills.
...
That same small part of my subconscious cheers as I grab the apron off the rack and hustle over to check out before I can supply myself with an argument against buying it. I justify this to myself by saying this way I can guarantee I won't be forced into that offensively frilly apron Nanoha found for me the last time I had cooked with her.
It is her kitchen, after all. As a guest, I should defer to her policies.
Hours passed by in studious silence after returning from the supermarket, the fridge and pantry restocked with the groceries I purchased, before any of the other Takamachis got home.
"I'm home!" Nanoha announced cheerfully as she stepped through the front door. I had returned to my comfortable sprawl on the living room couch, but I am certain I would've been able to hear her even if I was camped out in the bedroom upstairs.
It would almost certainly be considered rude not to acknowledge her, so I offered up a pleasant "Welcome back."
"Thank you, Taylor," she replied, and from my spot on the couch I couldn't see her but I could practically hear the smile in her voice anyway. "Did you have a good day?"
I take a moment to think about what to say.
"...Yeah, I did. I feel like I made some progress today."
I studiously ignored the small cynical voice in the back of my head that suggested otherwise.
"I'm glad to hear that."
She didn't ask for any elaboration, and I heard her footsteps move out of the entranceway and over to the kitchen, followed by the sounds of dinner prep work being started.
And if she noticed that there's another apron hanging up now, she decided not to mention it, which is fine by me.
I smiled to myself softly, resisted the urge to sigh in contented relief, and quietly went back to my studies.
Serves 2∼3. If scaling up for larger audiences, use a larger pan or multiple skillets as necessary. It is critical not to crowd the pan.
ingredients
instructions
6 Bone-in, Skin-on Chicken Thighs
1 tbsp. Olive Oil
4 tbsp. Butter
3 tbsp. Parsley, chopped
1 tbsp. Rosemary, finely chopped or crushed (about 3 sprigs if fresh)
6 Garlic Cloves, finely chopped or pressed
1 Lemon, zested and juiced OR ∼3 tbsp. Lemon Juice plus ∼1 tbsp. Lemon Zest
Salt and pepper
1 tbsp. Olive Oil
4 tbsp. Butter
3 tbsp. Parsley, chopped
1 tbsp. Rosemary, finely chopped or crushed (about 3 sprigs if fresh)
6 Garlic Cloves, finely chopped or pressed
1 Lemon, zested and juiced OR ∼3 tbsp. Lemon Juice plus ∼1 tbsp. Lemon Zest
Salt and pepper
- Remove the chicken from its packaging and thoroughly pat dry with paper towels. Season on both sides with salt and pepper. Allow the chicken to sit at room temperature for up to 15 minutes.
- In a 12-inch skillet with a lid, heat the olive oil on medium-high to 350°F (175°C). Add half the butter to the heated oil. It should begin foaming immediately. Swirl to dissolve the butter.
- Place the chicken thighs evenly around the skillet, skin side down, and allow to sear until the skin is golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes.
- Mix together the rosemary, garlic, and lemon zest. Spread half of this mixture evenly on the non-skin side of the chicken thighs.
- Reduce the heat to medium low. Flip the chicken thighs skin side up, spread the remaining lemon-garlic mixture evenly on top of the chicken skin, and cover.
- Allow to simmer until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 160°F (70°C), about 25 minutes, turning the pan and chicken thighs occasionally to prevent sticking.
- Add the remaining half of the butter to the pan along with the lemon juice. Toss to combine until the butter is melted, then remove from the heat.
- Allow the chicken to rest for 3 to 5 minutes. Residual heat should bring the chicken up to 165°F (75°C).
- Garnish with the parsley and pan sauce to taste. Serve immediately.
Stardust Falcon
Legendary Creature - Bird Wizard
- Location
- The Infinite Sorrow
This originally stopped after the chicken was done but I felt it was kind of short even for something thrown together as a last-second Christmas gift to you, the thread, who I love dearly for sticking with this and with me.
I actually got drafted into making this for potluck. The family enjoyed it, I hope you do too.
Happy Holidays!
I actually got drafted into making this for potluck. The family enjoyed it, I hope you do too.
Happy Holidays!