Porridge Leftovers

 Welcome back, Dungeon Meshi Maniacs!  How have your breakfasts been?  Have you enjoyed days and days of porridge?   I know I have.  Why?  Because a cup of porridge makes SO MUCH food!  Thankfully this slime really enjoys porridge. Sticks to your...not bones?  Gooey center?  Either way while I do enjoy a hearty porridge I'm more of an oatmeal person.  Porridge is just so chewy!  Does my big fat mouth need that much of a workout in the morning?

But you aren't here to talk all things barley.  You want to hear about the monster we ate this week.  Which, of course, was regular old porridge.  Quick memory DMMs will recall there was a monster we could have eaten this week if it weren't for a weenie deadbeat.  The wonderous mermaid!

Delicious! Who knows what insane cooking method we could have explored if this didn't get vetoed.  But Mermaid Crispy Fritters were not to be so we'll just talk about the mermaid itself today. Though I gotta admit, DMMS. This week is rather hard for me to write.  It's not that I don't like mermaids! Far from it.  No, the problem is they are a little too popular.  What could I say that hasn't already been said?  Every culture has their own spin on the half human half fish.  Some more fishy than others!

No telling how many sailors that beauty lured to their deaths!  Most myths line up in with mermaids being bad luck and love eating seamen.  There, I made the obvious joke and you did nothing to stop me. Happy?  Low hanging fruit aside the wild mermaid is not something you'd want to encounter! I could get deep in the weeds on what makes a mermaid tick but I really want to avoid turning these updates into a Wikipedia copy & paste job.  Chances are really high you already know everything there is to know about mermaids anyway. Why?  Oh, I can think of one scarlet haired reason.

I'm not going to lie, DMM's.  1989 was an important year for your old dungeon cook, Nih. Nintendo released the Game Boy cementing me as a handheld gamer.  The Berlin Wall was torn down being the first news thing I remember actually watching. And, most importantly, Disney released the Little Mermaid to theaters. Far more important than Germans getting out from under the USSR!

I watched the Little Mermaid for the first time in the local movie theater.  Similar to how Ariel was always underwater the front two rows were always flooded with what I hope wasn't raw sewage!  Hepatitis wasn't something kids worried about which meant I saw a film that had a major impact on me.  It was the first time that something inside said, "Yes, you have a sexualty" as I watched Ariel move and sing.  That voice quickly followed up with, "And it's going to be complicated" as I found myself wondering why I felt a real kinship with the character.  Hearing her sing Part of Your World put me down a long path that I really didn't reach the horizon to until about three years ago!

Oh, and I have also spent a life collecting whatever I could get my hands on too. Ariel was such a formative character for me!  This isn't all good, DMMs.  While The Little Mermaid was loved by all non-weirdos in 1989 there were those that didn't care for the film.  People like my 4th grade school librarian who felt the Disney version strayed too far from the original Hans Christian Andersen version.

I get that traditionalist will always complain about the Disney version of any fairy tale.  They usually claim the original versions teach kids valuable lessons about how dark and terrible the world really is.  In this instance I have to side with the animated version.  Why?  First off who wants a story where a young lady feels excruciating pain whenever she takes a step?  And that she continuously dances for a prince who can't tell she's hurting? Gross.  But for me the ending in the original was a little deus ex.  The mermaid chooses not to murder the prince in his sleep and turns into seafoam, since mermaids don't have souls.  Sad but this was all established in the story.  Instead of foaming out she turns into an airspray and goes into heaven where she will eventually grow a soul.  People love to say the old fairy tales were dark but even they like a happy ending!  Give me a story where the happy ending is earned rather than handed out because the author couldn't think of a way to get there naturally.  Also, the sea witch in the animated version is responsible for awaking a lot of things in others.

That's enough visiting the past, DMMs.  Time to look to the future!  Join me next week as I attempt to cook one of the best foods around.  And try to not burn my house down doing it!