I Should Put Something Clever Here

You’re never too old to be in a fandom.

You’re never too old to play video games.

You’re never too old to listen to music.

Ingredients 

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour (195 grams)

1 ½ teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa (60 grams)

1 ½ cups brown sugar (300 grams)

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

¾ cup sour cream (170 grams)

5 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

¾ cup hot coffee or water (170 grams)

Pudding

1 ¼ cups sugar (250 grams)

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (60 grams)

½ tablespoon corn syrup or golden syrup (10 grams

1 ¼ cups water plus another ¼ cup

¼ cup cornstarch (30 grams)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces (42 grams)

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Frosting

1 cup heavy cream (230 grams)

3 tablespoons corn syrup golden syrup (60 grams

⅛ teaspoon salt

12 oz bittersweet chocolate

¾ cup sour cream (170 grams)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter or salted butter (28 grams)

¼ teaspoon vanilla (optional)

Instructions 

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease 2 8x2-inch round cake pans, line with parchment, grease again and dust with flour.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder in a bowl and whisk for at least a minute or until very well combined.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, egg, egg yolk, sour cream, oil, vanilla, and ¾ cup hot coffee (or water) until smooth. Add the dry ingredients and beat by hand with a heavy duty scraper until blended.

Divide batter between prepared pans. Bake cake until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Transfer pans to a wire rack; let cakes cool in pan. Invert onto a plate, then invert again.

Pudding Mixture

In a large saucepan, combine sugar, cocoa powder, corn syrup and 1 ¼ cups of water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, whisking occasionally.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk the remaining ¼ cup of water and the cornstarch. Whisk the cornstarch mixture into the cocoa mixture in the saucepan and return the mixture to a boil, whisking constantly. Cook, whisking constantly, until thickened, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in butter and vanilla.

Pour into a bowl and whisk for a few minutes to help it cool. Cover with plastic wrap, lightly pressing the plastic against the surface to prevent a skin from forming. Let cool at room temperature for about 20 minutes, then chill until it thickens a bit (45 minutes).

Assembling Cake

Using a long serrated knife, cut the cake layers in half horizontally. Reserve the worst looking layer for crumbs.

Place a cake layer on a flat service. If you are planning freezing, you may want to do this on a big sheet of plastic wrap. Spread with half of the cooled pudding. Stack on a second layer of cake, remaining pudding, then the final layer of cake. Wrap the cake tightly in plastic and freeze overnight. If you don't want to freeze overnight, just wrap and chill for a few hours.

On assembly day, use the frosting below to cover sides and top. Crumble the reserved caked layer and put crumbs all over the top and sides. Chill for a few hours if you can to let everything meld.

Frosting - Allow 2 hours for this. I only needed about ⅔ of the recipe

Bring cream, syrup, and salt to a boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat.

Remove from heat and add chocolate. Stir until the chocolate melts, then stir in the room temperature sour cream, and butter. You can add vanilla if you like.

Transfer to a medium bowl. Let frosting sit at room temperature for about 1 ½ hours, stirring every 30 minutes or so. Stir to combine cooler outer edges with warmer center, then chill another 5 minutes if you need to (I did not). Use to frost the cake.

Adams third child, Seth: What is that?

Seth:

!!! 

me, falling in love with every woman I see whose purpose is to eat and be pretty:

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Lin is the only other major character who looks human throughout the movie - I’m not certain she started out human, but I suspect she may have, and may have fully traded away her humanity. I do think it’s significant that she, unlike Chihiro and Haku, doesn’t reclaim her name at the end of the story.

She’s the first bathhouse worker who is kind to Chihiro, helping her get her clothes and navigate her first work assignment and sneak food. One of the core themes of Spirited Away is finding your footing in a new and terrifying place, and Lin and Haku are key allies in Chihiro’s struggle to gain the skills and self-assurance she needs in order to thrive.

Lin’s human appearance helps us and Chihiro feel more sympathetic towards her . Her familiarity with the system of favors and bribes makes her appealing as a role model who can demystify Chihiro’s new environment for her. Unlike the more inhuman occupants of the bathhouse, Lin looks like someone Chihiro could become in the future, and that’s a good thing! She’s living proof that the bathhouse is not such a monstrous and scary place. Because Lin treats the bathhouse like home, Chihiro begins to see it as a home, too.

And once Chihiro starts to think of the bathhouse as her territory, she realizes that she has agency in this place as well. She uses its rules to her own advantage to free Haku and herself.

And that is the point of Chihiro’s journey in Spirited Away: it’s a metaphor for starting over in a new place and overcoming fear of the unfamiliar. After all, the frame story is Chihiro’s family moving to a new city. At the beginning of the movie, Chihiro is despondent, unhappy to be leaving her old friends behind. By the end, after making it through the spirit world, she’s taking a much more active role in helping her parents settle into their new home.

Because Chihiro has a mentor and friend, she learns how to survive and even do well in the Bathhouse. It’s because of Lin that Chihiro is able to not accept her place within this system and instead fight back, and in the end to make things a little better for everyone.

There’s something there about community, and easing the path for those who come after you. Lin doesn’t regret her choices because they were the best choices she could make, and that’s okay. It’s not a tragedy. She got as far as she could get, and because she did, she’s there to help Chihiro get farther. 

Also, if it was the waitstaffs literal job to talk to my dietician and see if there was an alternate hamburger that cost less than $540, or if my dietician had records saying the hamburger was covered and the restaraunt didn't get the memo.

Also, please highlight where in the post I say I yelled at anyone.

where in the post I say I

yelled at anyone.