VIDEO | 04

[patchricide]

[As the camera turns on, your eyes are immediately directed towards a massive pile of leftover Halloween candy spread out over a table. At least, most of it is Halloween candy, and some of it is really good, like those peanut butter cups and little candy-coated morsels. But there's not a lot of quality control here, so some of it is terrible Halloween candy, and some upon further inspection is not Halloween candy at all.]

[In fact, there's some Christmas candies as well, including those really good hazlenut chocolates, and a few peppermints. There's also some of those mysterious strawberry hard candies that old ladies keep in candy bowls, tiny boxes of raisins, and... cough drops? Yup, those are cough drops. At the edge of the screen, a pair of mouse are helping themselves to one of the oddities, a small bag of peanuts like you might find on an airline.]

[And then there's Allura, sitting at the table with a pout of discontent on her face. After all, she had been invited to a Halloween party at the last minute, and she didn't have roommates to stay home on Halloween, so...]

If I had known I wasn't going to be handing out any Halloween candy, I would never have bought so much.

Particularly since I can't feed most of this to my mice. [As if on cue, a bigger, chubby yellow mouse picks up a bag of sour gummies and starts inspecting it — and without looking, Allura reaches over and pulls the bag out of his tiny little paws.] In fact, some of it I'm not sure if I ought to be eating.

This one is made with boiled animal bones, and coated in dried, powdered acid. It's supposed to be so sour that you will start crying in pain. Is this actually supposed to be a 'treat'?

[She gives a long sigh.] What am I supposed to do with all this? No matter how dubious the ingredients are, it seems like such a waste to throw it all away...

Comments

[patchricide]

I think I need to start reading more about what's in the things I eat!

Not just my own food — I almost let my mice eat these! Can you imagine if they had?!

[forgeabettertomorrow]

...Yes. I can imagine it.

[He didn't feed the mice dubious things when they came to see him. Nope. Moving on.]

Yeah, but if you do that you'll never eat anything again. And I don't think you're quite at the stage of needing to do some extreme dieting.

[patchricide]

[He better not have. Platt is about one more sweet treat away from a diet.]

That's not true, there's plenty of Earth foods I will gladly eat! Most of the plant foods here are fine.

[... most.]

In fact, there's a delightful assortment of juices!

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Do...

Do you not eat meat?

[He's trying to think of all the times that they've eaten together...]

[Fruit. Vegetables. More vegetables. More fruit. Fruit juices.]

...Holy crap you don't eat meat.

[patchricide]

I eat meat! ... but.. the other parts of the animals, those are a bit...

[She makes a sour expression, like a kid being told to eat her vegetables.]

And even with meats, I can hardly wrap my head around what they do to them. If you're going to turn meat into paste, why not leave it as a liquid? Why make it into a... meat tube?

[Hot dogs. She's talking about hot dogs.]

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Meat...tube....

I...

Do I need to go shopping with you too?

I'm not trying to be mean, I'm honestly asking because if you read all of the packaging, you're liable to make yourself sick before you leave the store.

[patchricide]

Is it all really that bad??

[She looks at him with dead eyes. Not because she doubts him, but because Earth continues to be Earth.]

[forgeabettertomorrow]

...To be honest? I tend to stay away from the packaged stuff myself. My world didn't have any of this food processing nonsense. I usually stick to fresh produce and the butcher.

... ... ...

Although, there are a few snacks I'm partial to. I never really looked at the packaging though.

[patchricide]

Ours did have processing, but there was always a reason behind it. For example, making it more suitable for space travel. The freeze-dried snacks seem to follow the same logic, but I can only see it running out before long...

What snacks do you like, then?

[forgeabettertomorrow]

I've heard about freeze dried food, but I've never tried it.

Well...as capable as I am at the forge, I actually...suck at baking. It's probably the one thing I could never get the hang of. And as much as I love freshly baked cookies, there's these chocolate sandwich cookies with cream in between?

I can't get enough of them.

[patchricide]

It has a nice crunch to it, but it wasn't as cold as I hoped.

[Why yes, she has tried freeze dried strawberries.]

Really? I haven't attempted baking, but to my understanding, it is mostly chemistry. Reproducing a snack like that at home should not be that difficult..

[She's going to try it. That look in her eyes says she's definitely going to try it.]

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Are you going to try and bake cookies??

[He's excited. He doesn't know if she's doing this just because or if she's baking the cookies for him specifically, but he's more than excited either way.]

Are you going off a recipe? Or are you going to improvise?

[Not gonna lie, he'd love to see what kind of cookies she could come up with.]

[patchricide]

It is usually a very bad idea to improvise with chemistry. Especially since I haven't actually baked anything before...

[So, recipe it is!]

Still, don't you agree that it seems like the best place to start?

[forgeabettertomorrow]

I can't argue with that, but I always preferred improvising. I mean, making mistakes is sometimes half the fun.

[patchricide]

Darin, how much chemistry have you done?

Improvising in chemistry can lead to explosions and other undesirable results.

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Not a lot. It's really not my forté.

I guess you're relieved to hear that, huh.

[patchricide]

... somewhat.

What about your forge, then? You should know that it's incredibly dangerous to simply stick whatever you feel like into the forge, correct? Same concept, except with even less known elements.

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Yeah, well, you try and learn a craft for twenty years without a book or access to a library.

[patchricide]

What? I'm only explaining the concept about why blind experimentation is a risky—

... ... ...

Darin, how many things have you stuck in your forge that you shouldn't have?

[forgeabettertomorrow]

...See, this is a trick question.

Because how else would I have learned that I shouldn't put them in my forge if I never put them in my forge? Ah? Ahhhh?

Check and mate. Thank you.

[patchricide]

I thought that you had a mentor! Did he never once tell you "no, don't do that"??

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Acteon wasn't around all the time.

[patchricide]

And...

Was this after you had to leave home? Or simply one of those times that he would be returning shortly?

[forgeabettertomorrow]

I didn't have access to a forge when I went on the run.

Look, I was young and impetuous! Mistakes happen!

[patchricide]

And this only ever happened when you were young.

[It's not a question, but at the same time, it's like she's waiting for a confirmation on that from his own mouth.]