Entirely for @hellmandraws‘ amusement, and to defend America from the charge of being “weakass babies” I’m going to liveblog eating licorice candy.
okay first of all, the packaging. there’s a cartoon monkey ecstatically making love to a candy monkey. Perhaps an indicator of the orgasmic bliss I’m about to experience. 12/10. my hopes, like the people who designed this bag, are obviously very high
the candy looks like rocks and not jaunty little monkeys. huge disappointment. I had to recreate stonehenge to rally my flagging spirits. 2/10
First taste: wow this is salty! I think I actually like this. I love anise so I’m pretty sure this is going to be a trip to flavortown. 8/10 me rn:
OMG THE SALT WORE OFF IT’S SO MUCH WORSE THAN I EVER IMAGINED.
IT’S LIKE EATING A SHOE.
IS THIS CANDY?
IS THIS WHAT MAKES SCANDINAVIANS SO POWERFUL?
I’m chewing and it won’t go away
it’s stuck to my teeth, I’ll be tasting this forever. shards of this will be discovered in my teeth when my body is excavated from an archeological dig tens of thousands of years in the future. somehow the smell has traveled up through my nasal cavity and all I can sense, hear, or experience is licorice. the world is an empty vessel filled with remorse and the cloying smell of decay. I’m at the nadir of my existence. -100/12
somehow, here, standing at the edge of eternity, the darkness that consumed me birthed me anew. I’m not only ready for another candy, I’m eager. I can, nay I must, immediately eat another
oh wow it’s salty! 8/10
this time I’m ready for the salt to wear off.
I WAS NOT READY
the flavor this time was different, and somehow so much worse. instead of the leather of a shoe, it was like eating an entire shoe factory. the industrial rubber of the forklift tires, a hint of diesel as secretive as a volkswagen scandal, a soupçon of hot tin roof, the sweat of non-unionized labor, and a pervasive sense that while we’re all in this together, some of us are more all in this than others. 1/10 throw off your shackles, taste buds
I can’t believe it but I’m into this. I like this. shocked and disgusted with myself, I shove 2 more into my mouth concurrently.
conclusion: I’ve become addicted to licorice candy. what is in this. how do I get more. I hate this? I hate this. I willingly admit I’m a weakass baby. 100/10 will cycle through destruction and rebirth willingly and with open eyes, albeit it with teeth that will never again be clean.
Yesssss, an excuse to talk more about Bodhi. What a delight!
Fair warning, I haven’t actually read a lot of the EU canon, so I’m not trying to be consistent with it.
Headcanon: Bodhi Rook was not conscripted into the Empire, he enlisted. But he enlisted because it was the best option of a bunch of bad ones. His world didn’t have enough money, didn’t have enough jobs, didn’t have enough future for him to stay. He didn’t want to leave, but there was only one good option he could see and he took it. He did his best to be responsible, support his family and his home, but slowly, slowly, he was stripped of his cultural ties. His accent flattened, letters home were delayed, Jedhan robes traded for a uniform. Everything that showed he was anything other than the Empire’s worker.
His hair is his small breath of defiance, grown out as soon as he had enough freedom that it wouldn’t be lopped off by a vengeful flight instructor.
Heartcanon: Bodhi is an adrenaline junkie and a halfway decent stuntrider. There’s a reason he wanted to fly fighters, and it wasn’t because he loved killing. He’s addicted to the kick of grav-pull, and inclined to take quite a few more risks than are otherwise sensible.
Gutcanon: He has a sister. I can trace where this one came from, for me, for a while Wookiepedia said that he did, citing the R1 novelization. Turned out the novel was talking about somebody else, but I still like it. She’s named Ananda (which, yes, I know, is a male name, but to my Americanized ears, still sounds very female). She’s older, but not by much, maybe a year or two. By the events of R1, I imagine they aren’t in contact – maybe she’s died, maybe she’s more politically radical and after a bitter argument stopped speaking to him.
Junkcanon: Bodhi’s a switch – he’ll roll over for the right person, but he’s got steel that comes out for the right person too.
Spleencanon: Okay, look, we can all agree that Bodhi is a bit…jittery…in the movie, right?
The movie where he was fleeing a giant military-industrial complex.
And then was tortured.
And locked in a cell.
When he knew there was a planet killer on the loose.
And then watched that planet killer blow up his hometown.
And then was dragged off to help a dude he met like, five minutes ago, kill the guy who made enough of an impact on Bodhi to convince him to defect.
And then thrown into the Rebellion who…PROBABLY wouldn’t murder him but there are a lot of senators that look like they would sell him out for two sticks of gum and a gold star from Palpatine.
And then Chirrut says, “She wants to fight.” And Bodhi says, “So do I.”
GOOD LORD THERE IS SO MUCH FIGHT IN HIM. So, yeah, the spleencanon is that Bodhi is, in fact, incredibly risk-tolerant and his jitter/chatter is a very SENSIBLE outlet to an extremely difficult situation, and had he lived, he would have been an absolute badass.
Wait, no, what am I saying HAD he lived? Clearly he lived.
Frankenstein enters into a body building competition and finds he has seriously misunderstood the objective
FOR THE LAST TIME, FRANKENSTEIN WAS THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR
…a doctor who built a body.
For what is possibly the first time in the history of pop culture somebody actually really specifically does mean the doctor… and someone tries to correct them.
Rebellions are built on hope 