what people don’t realise is that, when it comes to kookaburras, you don’t have a choice about whether your feed them or not. they’re gonna eat your food.
see i know that we all like to make fun of luke skywalker, hick farmer from the back of nowhere, thinking that shooting womp rats with the space equivalent of his dad’s old rifle is somehow sufficient preparation for taking down the death star; but i love the idea that actually womp rats are six foot abominations of teeth, spines & poison and bulls-eyeing them is actually excellent preparation for the rebellion. think about it: swarms of six foot rats, and some skinny kid with an outdated weapon taking them out, cool as paint. hardened soldiers whisper scary stories to each other, about the monsters who scavenge in the sands, stripping a camp of everything living in five seconds flat, and luke just saying oh, womp rats? they’re nothing. great with a bit of butter and some toast.
REMEMBER THAT HE TOLD WEDGE, “THEY’RE NOTMUCH BIGGER THAN TWO METERS” LIKE THAT’S SOME MINOR INCONVENIENCE
BIGGER THAN TWO METERS
Wedge: So, you’ve been to Tatooine
Han: Yeah
Wedge: Womp rats?
Han: Sure. Chewie uses ‘em for bowcaster practice. Kinda gamey tasting. Sandy colored fur, lotsa teeth, little over two meters…
Wedge: Luke wasn’t lying???
Luke (head inside X-wing panel, tinkering): Why would I make THAT up?
Honestly, I’ve always thought that farm work on Tatooine, unintentionally, must have provided a fairly excellent groundwork in establishing Luke’s baby Jedi skills outside of an academy context.
There are of course the aforementioned womp rats, which are both terrifying and a fantastic way to develop shooting skills.
There’s beggar’s canyon for piloting. And if Phantom Menace brought us nothing else, it actually showed us the living death trap that is beggar’s canyon. He’s not like zipping around the Grand Canyon, he’s literally goofing off in a place that killed off a shit ton of professional pod racers. So needless to say, Luke’s had a chance to develop scary good reflexes, information processing, and spacial relation skills.
The Lars’s economic status means that they had to make do with ancient, crap equipment. Luke would have learned how to make incredibly fine tuned repairs, and keep shit going forever. And sure, he never built a C3PO or a pod racer, but honestly, if he found the materials to do it, he probably would have used them in a moisture collector.
And there’s even combat experience. From what we know about Tatooine, a farm like the Lars Homestead, would have been at risk for attacks by raiders, Jabba’s goons, and any of the terrifying hellbeasts that populate that planet. It’s not like Jedi temple training or anything. But Luke definitely learned to be cool under pressure, even when outnumbered or with really old, shit equipment.
I would just like to note that in The Old Republic MMORPG (set three thousand years before the movies) the womp rats are not only two meters long, covered in spines, with teeth as long as my hand, and sometimes DISEASED
BUT THEY ALSO ATTACK IN PACKS
You think you just pissed off ONE rodent as long as you are tall? Oh no. It’s calling ALL SIXTEEN OF ITS FRIENDS
AND THEY ARE ALL AIMING TO BITE YOUR CROTCH OFF.
*THAT’S* what Luke grew up sniping to keep them away from the droids and moisture vaporators. *THAT* (and Beggar’s Canyon) is what prepared him to take down the Death Star.
Womp rats are bad news.
My favorite thing is that they are just one example of how Luke doesn’t know he’s from a Death Planet until he leaves it.
i’m just going to reblog this so you can all enjoy the excellent commentary about my space son who is equal parts sunshine and tempered death
The second best pun I’ve ever encountered in the wild was when I was walking down the street in a “hip” part of Seattle and saw a couple of Budweiser cans thrown into a bush. And I said to a random stranger walking nearby “damn, the local beer harvest is really poor this year”. And the random stranger responded “give it time, they’re only buds”.
Someone was in Bruce Wayne’s office, and there was no graceful way to avoid them without making it obvious that he knew they were in there. There was a smell in the air like mulch and roses.
He had no frame of reference for what would constitute a normal amount of things to notice, and so chose to err on the side of oblivious moron.
If there’d been a smell like marzipan dipped in bleach, he might have chosen differently.
“Heya, Mister Wayne,” Harley Quinn greeted, sitting on his desk. She waved as much with her feet as her hands. He closed the door behind him.
Bruce considered his response. Hopefully his momentary indecision with regard to his facial expression could pass for surprise, or confusion, or fear. “Hello, Dr. Quinzel.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not with Jay no more.”
“She’s with me,” Poison Ivy said.
“Hello, Dr. Isley.”
“I really prefer Ivy.”
“Dr. Ivy,” he corrected.
“Doncha love the way he says doctor?” Harley asked Ivy.
“Charming,” Ivy said. She did not sound charmed.
“I told her we oughta come talk to ya,” Harley explained, “on account of you’re a real nice guy an’ all.”
“Thank you?”
“I was just going to kill you,” Ivy added.
“Thank you. For not doing that.”
“Isn’t he just like a puppy?” Harley asked, pressing her hands to her cheeks.
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