lord what have we done

—

the whole thing that kicked this entire story off was this incidental thing i heard kronii say when i finally tuned into her stream after literal years. she said she was never someone who voiced her appreciation, and instead opted to do small actions instead. it made me think that she’d probably be the kind of person who’d walk into someone’s room with a pile of peeled fruit before quietly walk away.

and then i realized that’s what my parents did to me.

peeled fruit on platters. home cooked meals after a long day. plucking away fishbones in whole fish. cracking open crab legs and leaving behind the meat. that one time mom made me strawberry jam so early in the morning after i told her the day prior i wanted to try making it because we had just bought a fresh box of strawberries. what a beautiful language. what a beautiful way to show love. and how i love love.

—

the general idea and kronii.

when i initially wrote this story, i was really operating off of vibes. i didn’t have a direction of where i wanted to go. i genuinely just wanted to write a story where kronii cooked for the girls and her love showed in every dish that she made, but she never verbalizes the sentiment. it just shows. i was also very inspired i’ve seen it by olivia dean. it’s a song where she describes instances of love, both the good and the bad, in her every day life. but never once does she ever name the emotion. you just know because you feel it, and i wanted to try my hand at it.

but then as i began to write the story i felt like…i dont know, i felt like i needed to have something else to it. but i wasn’t sure what it was missing. there was a general idea i had in the background of my mind where the girls had actually stepped down from their positions as Council, but it was always supposed to be the backdrop against the cooking. eventually, as i continued to write and draft and plan, it just naturally came more to the forefront. and cooking became a bit of a double act for kronii. 

yes, she does it to show her love and affection for the others. but i also think she also does it to feel some level of control. to lose herself in the menial tasks of preparing and cooking. kronii never struck me as someone who would improvise while cooking (well actually, she can’t cook irl but that’s despite the point), so i think the methodicalness of the cooking segments made sense. but finding ways to break up the monotony of the cooking with description and character interaction felt hard without a greater plot. so it all kind of blended together, whether i realized it or not.

i still think, at its core, this is a story where kronii shows her love. yes, she shows her love to the others. but slowly, she shows love to herself with the guidance of the others. i love characterizing kronii as someone who is emotionally constipated because reaching that level of catharsis with her is so yummy. even then, i don’t think she ever reaches the peak of that catharsis—rather, i feel like the emotional “peak” of the story is more of her finally breaching that hurdle into realizing that it’s simply okay to feel like shit. or something like that.

when i was writing this story, i was in the middle of a transition of leaving my position at one facility to go to another facility. i succinctly told it to my friend (shoutout to you velveeta cheese) the best:

“i mean i love the work i do as a [insert career here] and i love the team that i worked with and while my bond with them hasnt changed, i dont see the same structure and people as i do, im still adjusting to this new position in a new world and it’s like uncomfortable and i doubt that im like. doing anything right or if i made the right decision and i think kronii would also be in a similar position”

grief and moving on…what funny feelings they are.

—

i genuinely don’t know what the fuck i’m saying, im just trying to sound smart and make it all fit together. i feel like sometimes i rawdog my stories, look back, and think “oh it all turned out!” and i think that’s sometimes the beauty (and pain) of it all. that’s it. sometimes writing is your figuring it all out as you go along, and when you look back at you work, you realize you had all the pieces together. you just needed them all in the right place.

there’s something almost profound in the act itself.

—

below are my thought processes for each segment.

sana.

i wanted to have a sweet breakfast for sana because, duh, it’s sana. kronii never struck me as a sweet breakfast girlie, but i think she’d do it for sana.

initially i thought about Sana having cinnamon rolls because it’s a classic sweet treat for breakfast, but i thought it’d be waaay to sweet for Kronii. also, it’d be too much work. kronii and i, we ain’t about to do all that.

i made a lot of french toast in my time during undergrad. it’s my favorite breakfast item, but more often than not i find myself disappointed by the way diners make them. it doesn’t feel interesting enough, or maybe i’m just picky af. i used this recipe a lot and so it was the inspiration for what’s used in the story.

i was still getting a feel for my narrative and it shows, i think. but i think the softness of spacetime is so nice to write. im biased though. spacetime is my comfort ship. those are my girls. 

and i miss sana very, very much.

fauna.

the raspberry-hibscus tea they used was a blend i fell in love with one summer. it was this brand that i used a lot, and it was so so yummy. i’d drink it every night before i slept when i was having trouble sleeping, and it’s knock me out like a baby. i’ve never drank it cold like they do in the story, but it just sounds like it’d be refreshing. a funny thing: while i was writing, i was wondering if their glass cups would crack from the thermal shock. im sure your typical glass cups would and ideally, you’d steep the ice in the fridge. initially, i would have kronii fast-forward time to try and cool off the tea faster before adding ice, but then i realize she would probably “age” the tea versus actually cooling it. so in the end, i stopped caring about thermal shock and told myself that their tea set is made from pyrex glass LOL.

i’ve had cucumber sandwiches during tea time only once before, but they’re a nice, delicate, and light snack to have. a lot of recipes ask for mayonnaise but fauna is vegan, so i just planned to omit it. i based kronii’s off of this recipe more than anything.

i think i rewrote this segment the most LOL because i genuinely didn’t know what i wanted to do. at this part of the story, the idea that kronii and the others had actually stepped down from their positions as council started to really take shape. at first i was pretty against it, because i wanted it to be more of a backdrop rather than the focal point, but in the end i just ended up running with it. no point in corralling a story in a direction it doesn’t want to go in.

mumei.

oooh, mumei. moomers. she felt like someone who would have the heaviest lunch and still somehow have room to eat for dinner. i decided on steak bc at the time of writing, i was majorly craving it. no specific recipe for this—i just based it off the way my dad prepares it. that’s my favorite recipe, out of everything i could find :)

the dipping sauce they used was from a tiktok LOL. my ex and my ex-roommates put me on, and it’s been my favorite thing to eat with steak. sometimes i just straight up crave the sauce too.

the combination of fish sauce, chili, cilantro/coriander, and sugar is a popular condiment in southeast asia and goes by a variety of names. jeow som in laos. colloquially known as crack sauce in certain diasporas. those are the only ones i know of just off the top of my head.

this particular dish feels like a riff of nam tok, a grilled beef/steak dish originating from thailand/laos. i have yet to eat nam tok for myself, but i hope i do. learning about the origins, variations, and changes that influence the food i love…all of it feels very precious. we hold a lot of our cultural and personal history in foods, and i want to learn more.

mumei uses these cutlery holders bc i was trying to find a funny antique that she could use at the table. the dachshunds look so stupid, tacky, and cute—so mumei core. there’s a bottle opener in this kit but i changed it to be a wine opener instead. the thought of a dachshund wine opener is hilarious. for the utensils, they were inspired by this particular set of mother-of-pearl handles. the handles are much more white than any other color, but the spirit is still there. initially i wanted a gemstone-handled set, but some of them looked quite gaudy. also, i’ll do anything to have a small raden juufuutei cameo.

i dont think i ever properly say it, but mumei is a little magpie with antiquities because she feels like she can collect the stories of people, her subjects, and keep them forever. i think in her lore, mumei keeps a journal to remember things? and i’d like to think that once she steps down as guardian, she starts hoarding antiques as a way to cope. i think sana’s and fauna’s ways of grieving are relatively…i guess, obvious compared to mumei.

it was around this point in the story where i was beginning to transition facilities. this is where the whole segment of grief, grappling with it, and the mixed relief and discomfort that comes with leaving something you love but simultaneously know is bad for you really starts to set in. it really informed the last two sections for sure.

bae.

bae loves strawberries, so it felt like such a gimme to have strawberries and cream. i shared this once before with a friend that i no longer talk to, but she had made fresh whipped cream. the texture of homemade whipped cream is so addicting. i used this recipe as a basis for the whipped cream.

even with a more concrete idea of where i wanted to go with this story, it took me a bit to get through this portion. i had a hard time imagining what the whole conversation between bae and kronii was going to be like, but in the end, i like where i ended up. i wanted to emphasize bae’s role as the former leader of council here. granted it’s an older piece of lore (it’s the one true lore, i dont care what cover says on the official website), but i think that even if they have stepped down as council, the dynamic would still be there. despite being chaos incarnate, bae has always felt rather…grounded, both as a character and as a person. there’s a part of me that things she’s a lot more emotionally mature than the others - perhaps even the most emotionally mature. to me, chaos is more than just the sheer unpredictability of the world. i think that chaos is also what comes after a realization. when your foundation is shaken and you have to take drastic measures to make sure you get yourself back together. the tower in a tarot card deck, so to speak.

i wanted to give kronii that moment. i hope i managed to convey what i wanted, especially in the context of such a light meal.

this is the first time in the story where kronii gets help, while cooking. a representation of bae’s role in this narrative.

also, as an aside: the last thing bae says in this chapter is a riff off a bible verse: i am that i am. spoken by god to moses in the burning bush, it’s supposed to communicate the omnipotence and ever-presence of god.

as former gods, i feel like this was just a funny little thing they’d say.

irys.

in the tarot deck, following the tower is the star. in the wreckage and calamity following the tower’s fall, the star is a reminder that hope still exists, no matter how bleak everything seems right now. irys is supposed to be hope descendent. like bae, this felt like such a gimme.

when i first drafted out the story, i was initially going to have irys have a whole-ass meal - a sandwich with glazed peaches, prosciutto, burrata, arugula, and a decadent balsamic glaze. when i first made it, i forgot the pesto but my god…it is so fucking yummy…please try it, if you have the ability to!

anyways, i decided against to use the meal because it felt like it’d be too insane to have a whole meal before HOT POT out of all things, so i decided that it’d be better for irys to help prepare the ingredients with kronii rather than eating a meal. i think it was a natural consequence and build-up following bae’s.

it’s kind of ambiguous whether or not irys is still hope descendant because, technically, she wasn’t a part of council. she was just an entity close intertwined with them and humanity. i think it’s very much up to the reader whether or not she is.

writing their banter was my favorite part of this chapter because they’re so annoying.

the stuff they prepare are some of my favorite things to put in homemade hot pot. the preparation part of hot pot with friends was always one of my favorite parts. the conversation, the jokes, the heart-to-hearts i’ve had during preparation…all of it are cherished memories to me. i think it’s very apt that hope would be the one to share that with kronii.

hot pot.

there’s nothing else for me to add. i don’t really have a recipe to provide or anything like that. i just prepare the soup bases with the little sheep hot pot mix and then chuck whatever i want in there.

it’s one of my favorite meals ever. hot pot is just so communal, so loving, so intimate. nothing beats cooking for the people you love, cracking jokes and cold ones over bowls of hearty soup, and gorging yourself on beautiful cuts of meat and fresh veggies. it’s truly a peak experience.

this part of the story is short, partly because it’s the conclusion and i didn’t want to spell everything out - and also because i was starting to reach the end of my stamina of writing. but i hope that whatever sentiments i’ve been trying to communicate thus far, it would have reached the reader by this point in time. and funnily enough, even though kronii calls irys a creep for people watching, she ends up watching the others move about as they clean the kitchen. small moments of continuity i tried to call back to.

—

every meal that i’ve included in this story is a meal, or some variation thereof, i’ve shared with someone before. in a way, this story is very personal to me in so many fronts. the food shared. the feelings kronii goes through. my own journeys of loss and grief and letting go and moving on. i vaguely tweeted about this story on my twitter here. it’s just so funny and coincidental, how it all played out. the time capsule of it all. that’s what i’ve always thought of my writing, anyways. a time capsule of who i am right now, in this current point in my life. 

the first time i wrote a cooking fic for hololive was for trip’s first howrito tournament back in 2022 (if you’re reading this, hi trippy). it’s called hors d’oeurve. while writing this story, i found myself rereading hors d’oeuvre as reference for how i used to do things. instead, i found reflections of the person i once was, where i was in my life, remnants of my dreams, my aspirations, my goals. sometimes i grieve the person that i was, and what that person was capable of doing. but life continues on. things change. we let go.

and love that’s shared is never wasted.

—

thank you for reading.

and happy fifth anniversary to our time warden.