Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

At its best, this book sparkles with those moments that are so recognizable but so hard to express: the suffusion of love you feel on accomplishing a goal with a person you love, the despair of failed creative work and brushing off a bruised ego, the self-consciousness of being 22 and feeling like you should know more than you do, the awkward tearfulness of knowing a long-term relationship of your twenties has run its course. These vignettes are marked by the vulnerable honesty Zevin allows her characters to express.

However, these moments come a little too few and far between. Rather than lingering in these emotionally intense everyday events, Zevin relies too much on rare and traumatic life events or inexplicable lack of communication to add drama to the novel and redirect her characters' lives. Seemingly for no reason other than to ensure Sadie and Sam are at odds while creating their game, Both Sides, Zevin has Sadie create an entire fiction in her mind about how Machiavellian Sam is and then rather than having a conversation with her supposed best friend about it, the relationship simply deteriorates for over a year. Sadie keeping her relationship with Marx a secret from Sam feels similarly unnecessary. With so much secrecy and resentment between the characters, I began to doubt the veracity of their friendship. Perhaps it was merely mutual respect for each other's brilliance, shoe-horned into a friendship because society does not have a better model for this sort of relationship, but I do not think that was the story Zevin aimed to tell.

It isn’t just the characters that lack honesty with each other: Zevin withholds information from the reader for no real purpose but for heightened melodrama. We learn two thirds of the way through the novel that apparently the two characters had each been grappling with romantic interest in each other the entire time. Why not weave this tension into the story, allowing the reader to incorporate this information into their understanding of the characters? The same holds true of Sadie's secret abortion, something we only much later learn inspired her design for her first published game, Ichigo. Perhaps the intention is that we, the reader, only discover this information at the time that the friends discover this information about each other. But the result is that we feel like we don’t really know either of the characters.

Part of this unfamiliarity is the narrative perspective; we switch from person to person, from past to present to future, without much change in narrative voice (I felt a renewed appreciation of David Copperfield’s adult reflections on stories told through the eyes of his child self). Even side characters like a hospital nurse, become point of view characters. But I never really felt “in” someone’s head; there was a lot of “Sadie felt” or “Sadie worried” type of story-telling.

It’s a very millennial book. There’s nostalgia for the 90s and 00s — those pre-internet days where you could create without being self-conscious of the critics online and struggle in puzzles without being able to look up solutions, when low graphics expectations enabled three kids to pull together a game over the course of 8 months. But at the same time, it was very conscious of the discourse of the 2010s and 2020s, although without adding much new (with the exception of Sam’s defense of charges of cultural appropriation). It makes sense, the author is a millennial, its highest accolades have come from millennials.

I discovered the author’s husband is in the indie film industry, and this made a lot of the videogame aspect of the book click for me. Where my gaming experience comes from highly competitive or mechanics/puzzle-driven games, the videogames of the novel seem to be completely void of mechanics, with discussion focusing on themes and artistic choices and plot — much like auteur film creation. It was in the discussion of the design process, in the characters’ reactions to critics, in the complex relationship between the characters and the works they create, that I thought the author brought the most new insight to the table, likely because she herself is so immersed in this world.

Perhaps because the landscape of a relationship that spans romance, collegiality, and friendship has so much potential, I found the creation and resolution of the love triangle to be rather facile and cliche. One of the guys dies, but don’t worry, his DNA lives on. My “script doctor” of the book would be to streamline the plot (the mass shooting and the witnessed suicide seemed overly dramatic, and the author had little new to add to these conversations), rewrite the character arcs that rely on people not being honest with each other, and have the three characters recognize that love for each other can be multi-faceted and complex and doesn’t need to fit into a box (just like Ichigo's identity).

Dota 2 The International 7 Viewing Party

"The Echo Slam is there from Gh, the Omnislash - the damage output is too big! With the scythe, Sccc is gone for 2 minutes! The chain frost is bouncing back, Kaka is trying to hide himself but right now it's all Liquid, Liquid, LIQUID! They have taken down four,  you'll get the buyback from the Venomancer. Gh with the force staff - he won't even die for this! Liquid lose nothing but take everything from Newbee!"

- TI7 Grand Finals, Game 3

Not going to lie, I'd been looking forward to TI7 pretty much since TI6 ended. Not just for the great games (which were awesome), but because I think making dota 2 themed food is really fun, and it's nice to have friends understand what my weird-looking desserts are supposed to be. (Check out my TI5 and TI6 posts!)

My favorite from this year ended up being the Lotus Orbs, which are little puff pastry rolls with apple and cherry.  (Get the recipe here!)

The most time consuming dish was definitely the Monkey King Mischief Cupcakes, but I loved how these turned out! I made vanilla cupcakes topped with green vanilla buttercream for the radiant side of the map, and chocolate cupcakes topped with chocolate buttercream frosting for the dire side of the map. I topped them with little edible Monkey King disguises - clarities, couriers, iron branches and trees. Half of the cupcakes are secretly stuffed with banana ganache - if you eat a banana stuffed cupcake, congratulations, you found Monkey King!! (If you're up for the challenge, I have a somewhat more detailed set of instructions and more photos here!)

Dota 2 Monkey King Mischief Cupcakes

"But the Monkey King was born for mischief...and offending the gods never gets old."

- Monkey King hero bio, Dota 2

"Does that clarity look suspicious to you?"

Don't you hate those games where you're chasing down the enemy Monkey King who is at 100 HP, you turn the corner, and then he's gone? Is he on top of that tree? Is he the tree?

For the Dota 2 players who have spent far too long trying to get flying vision of Monkey King, and for the Monkey King spammers who love chilling out in iron branch form for the fun of it, these cupcakes are for you.



Each of these cupcakes is topped with an edible version of some sort of Monkey King mischief disguise: a hard candy clarity, a chocolate and pretzel tree, or fondant couriers and iron branches. But how do you know which of these are just innocent iron branches abandoned on the ground, and which are actually Monkey King in sneaky disguise?

Half the cupcakes are secretly stuffed with banana ganache.

Which was delicious. I was unlucky enough that neither of the two cupcakes I ate during my TI7 Grand Finals viewing party contained a Monkey King filling, but as the chef I got to lick the bowl after stuffing the cupcakes, at least. I suppose I could have stuffed all the cupcakes, but I think that would have defeated the purpose of the cupcake.

We arranged the cupcakes in the shape of the Dota 2 map. Half the cupcakes are vanilla topped with green buttercream frosting. The other half are chocolate cupcakes topped with chocolate buttercream frosting.

Assembling the Cupcakes

Dota 2 Chocolate Pretzel Wards

"A form of half-sentient plant, often cultivated by apprentice wizards."
- Dota 2 flavor text

Full disclosure, this is my third attempt at making something that looks like observers and sentries. For the fifth Dota 2 The International (TI5) tournament, I made yellow and blue cake pops, with little eye balls. They were pretty cute, but - confession - I discovered I don't actually like cake pops. I found them a little too sweet, especially since my Dota 2 spread already included a bunch of sweets that I thought tasted better and more closely resembled the in-game item, like the lotus orb apple pastries and the aghanim's scepter madeleines. 

For the sixth The International (TI6) I tried to go healthier. I candy-coated apples in yellow and blue. Again, the aesthetic was sort of eyeball-on-a-stick, which isn't all that accurate for most ward cosmetics. The apples probably had better nutritional content, but I found it difficult to get a sufficiently bright candy coating, so I think they looked more like eyeballs-on-an-apple than proper wards. 

This year, I decided to throw out the USDA's nutrition guidelines. I wanted to mimic the default ward cosmetics with multiple little yellow or blue eyeballs on a single twisty sort of branch. I didn't want them to be too finicky since I had a few other time-consuming Dota 2 food projects to work on, so I came up with these chocolate and pretzel wards. M&Ms are about the right size and color, taking out a lot of the work from my previous attempts. Also, as far as I can tell from streaming Sumail and Arteezy, Eminems are very appropriate for Dota 2. 

I'm really pleased with how these turned out. They are super quick to put together and look quite recognizable! To really get the wizened wood effect, I probably should have used milk chocolate instead, but I think dark chocolate is so much tastier! 

Ingredients

Dota 2 Lotus Orb Apple Pastries

"The jewel at its center still reflects a pale image of its creator."

- Flavor text from Dota 2 item descriptions

This imagining of an edible lotus orb is actually my second attempt. Last year I made "Lotus Root Orbs," which were little spheres made out of lotus roots. They were finicky, and not particularly tasty, but I thought the name was pretty funny (and I love creating pun-based foods).

For this year's The International, I decided to go with an approach more similar to the Magic Sticks or the Aghanim's Scepters, where the dish in question looks visually like the in-game Dota 2 item. Lotus Orbs appear to be white petals surrounding a shiny pink core. I toyed around with a couple of ways to make edible flower structures - I even considered savory lotus orbs made from onion flowers. I wanted an option that would be relatively easy to serve at a buffet-style snack table over the course of a 3-6 hour Grand Finals series, and that would consistently produce an attractive dish without being too finicky. In the end, this laundry list of criteria turned out to be best served by apple roses.

If you've ever watched a recipe gif, you've probably seen one for apple roses. There's good reason for their popularity - they look impressive, they're easy to make, and they only require a handful of ingredients. To turn these into lotus orbs, I dusted the "petals" with powder sugar to lighten the petals and added maraschino cherries to the center. With the added pop of color, I think the resulting dish actually looks more adorable than your run-of-the-mill apple roses, and is a pretty good match for a Lotus Orb. And is, of course, delicious.

Lotus Orbs may just be a situational item for most heroes, but I think these are core for any Dota 2 menu.

Ingredients

Dota 2 Handpainted 3D-printed Jakiro

My flames grow hotter

My ice grows colder

Our wings grow stronger

- Jakiro Voice Responses, Dota 2

The freezing flame, the scalding cold

Jakiro is my most played hero. At my level of play in Dota 2, a support that can easily harass in lane, help your team take towers, zone in teamfights, clear waves and disable channeling spells or chain-stun works out pretty well. I'm therefore disappointed that this hero doesn't get a little more attention from Valve in terms of hero re-works and cosmetics.

Dota 2 The International 6 Viewing Party

I had so much fun making Dota 2 snacks for The International 5 last year, so I had many months of anticipation building up for the TI6 finals (not least because of the amazing games in the preceding two weeks!).See what we came up with below!

Dota 2 The International 5 Viewing Party

They're all together. PPD - here comes the ice blast, ready for the dunk in from Universe, it's a disastah! CDEC, they're going to get wiped from the face of the earth -except for Aggresif, he'll jump out. But the wombo combo perfectly hits from Evil Geniuses and they will take Roshan.

- Six million dollar Echo Slam & Ice Blast, EG vs CDEC, TI5 Game Finals game 4

What's a Dota viewing party without Dota consumables? On the menu, we had all your basic starting items: wards, clarities, salves, tangoes and magic sticks. For those brave enough to conquer Roshan, there was of course cheese!

Dota 2 Chocolate-Coated Pretzel Magic Sticks

A simple wand used to channel magic energies, it is favored by apprentice wizards and great warlocks alike.

- DotA 2 flavor text

Like the tango fruit salad, this dish looks surprisingly good for how easy it is to throw together. The one trick is to not use water-based food dyes (I completely failed at this my first attempt), which causes the chocolate melt to form a weird goop.

Dota 2 Aghanim's Scepter Madeleines

The scepter of a wizard with demigod-like powers [and a delightful lemon-y flavor].

- (Modified) flavor text from Dota 2 item descriptions

Madeleines are a sort of french sponge cake with a characteristic shell shape. This shape looks conveniently like the jeweled part of an Aghanim's Scepter, the spell upgrading item from Dota 2. With a few crafty additions, they make adorable little Aghanim's Scepters for a Dota 2 eSports Viewing Party. I tried to dub them "Aghaleines" but the name didn't catch on.

Dota 2 Sheepstick Lamb Kabobs

Turns a target unit into a harmless critter for 3.5 seconds.

- Dota 2 item description text for Scythe of Vyse

In the words of my friend (imagine, if you can, that these words are being said through a mouthful of lamb), "Oh, I get it, sheepstick because it's sheep on a stick." As far as Dota 2 food puns go (and I've cooked many), this one was pretty tasty.

Dota 2 Tango Fruit Salad

“Forage to survive on the battlefield.”

– DotA 2 tango flavor text

A salad so tasty, your mid will demand you pool them four tangoes.

Tangoes are an essential starting item for most heroes and laning strategies in DotA 2, so a The International Viewing Party would hardly be complete without it. This salad looks amazing, is easy to put together and serves as a healthy choice at a videogame-themed snack table. Despite blowing the minds of a redditor or two, balling kiwis and melons is surprisingly straightforward. To make this dish look even more like a tango, I served 3-4 fruit balls on small curly leaves like frisée leaves.

Dota 2 Clarity Sangria

Clear water that enhances the ability to meditate.

– DotA 2 item flavor text

I haven’t tried whether this blue sangria enhances my meditation, but it certainly complements watching DotA. Use an inexpensive white wine. If you don’t have curacao blue, you can replace with regular triple sec and blue food dye (or green, if you want to make salves instead!).

Pokemon Poffins: Keep Stirring!

What I like best about creating food from fictional sources is trying to figure out how to faithfully translate the fantasy world into a real life or modern kitchen’s methods and ingredients. For example, for my Game of Thrones Venison Stew I avoided using flavor-boosting additives like tomato paste or soy sauce that would not have been present in a Westeros castle kitchen. I got a kick out of making Redwall ‘Unnymoles, because the general recipe is laid out clearly in the books. I think these restrictions pose a fun problem to solve.

When I heard about Pokenom, a Pokemon-themed month-long recipe link-up, I searched for some sort of Pokemon food inspiration. Most of the Pokeverse food is fairly simple – fruits, juices, honey… Poffins struck me as a fun project to try because there is an entire Pokemon episode where the gang goes to a poffin cooking class!