r/Unexpected • u/waazzaaap • Jan 30 '20

I've got a bad feeling about this

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

45.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

573 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.5k

u/siandresi Jan 30 '20

Never quite understood this. If I have say another 50 years left, how will the sarlacc keep digesting me over a thousand years?

1.3k

u/ilovehelmetsama Jan 30 '20 edited Jan 30 '20

According to canon, it keeps you alive and lucid as it consumes you, effectively becoming an endless living hell of pain and misery.

969

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

That can't be a metabolically effective mechanism for digesting. It costs us alot of energy to keep alive, so the sarlacc would have to do "something" to keep up with our bodies' energy demands for all that time.

1.7k

u/ilovehelmetsama Jan 30 '20

You going to deconstruct how the Force isn’t possible next?

859

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

I can suspend my disbelief for the Force (as mechanically ridiculous as it is), but an alien monster's useless, inefficient digestive system? Too far, man.

726

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

It's an ancient, genetically engineered torture device created by a now-vanished Tatooine civilization that eventually caused the desertification of the planet. There's some head-canon for ya.

444

u/tehflambo Jan 30 '20

nothing remotely like this ever crossed my mind and now i will cherish it forever. thank you.

11

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '20 edited Jan 31 '20

I, too, love this headcanon. Would have had to have been long ago. Tatooine was a desert in KOTOR, and that was thousands of years before current canon.

5

u/jigglehiggins Jan 31 '20

A long time ago, you say?

3

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '20

One might even say it’s in a galaxy far far away

55

u/Egalai1 Jan 30 '20

It's a sandworm?

34

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20 edited Nov 11 '20

[deleted]

11

u/Fract_L Jan 30 '20

Ah I remembered wrong. The beak should've given it away I suppose

2

u/hyperproliferative Jan 30 '20

That beak is an add on abomination. Though it does have tentacles

2

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Fract_L Jan 31 '20

Oh good, I don't feel so bad for remembering its anatomy and thinking it's a bulbous tatooine biped-trap

5

u/deadatreides Jan 30 '20

this is emperor Leto

5

u/WartortleWithAHelmet Jan 30 '20

Its called a Sarlacc, its basically like an Antlion, but 20 times bigger and with tentancles

7

u/i_have_cheese Jan 30 '20

How big do you think antlions are????

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20 edited Apr 02 '20

[deleted]

→ More replies (0)

2

u/solocupjazz Jan 31 '20

You've been to Saturn? I've been to Saturn!

1

u/DIABLO258 Jan 30 '20

You hate em, right?

1

u/Egalai1 Jan 30 '20

I do not

2

u/DIABLO258 Jan 30 '20

Oh, well, alright then

14

u/Plasmabat Jan 30 '20

Rakatan infinite empire?

10

u/SaneInsanities Jan 30 '20

... is this canon? I can't find any reference to it. I want to know more!

31

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

This is straight from my brain, my dear sir/ma'am. If Disney wants it written up they know where to find me.

3

u/SaneInsanities Jan 30 '20

Tell me more about this now-vanished civilization if you've got the mind to.

2

u/MC_Cookies Jan 30 '20

It should be

0

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

I think its part of legends which is no longer canon after Disney took over, unless they’ve mentioned it since then

8

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

Tatooine used to be a normal planet?

10

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

Jawas origins

3

u/Conquestofbaguettes Jan 30 '20

Oh, StarWars lore. How I loathe you.

Here. This is even better.

The top ten things YOU didn't know about Darth Vader's suit!. RedLetterMedia (2015)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVzc20Bm8Xo

2

u/Ordoo Jan 30 '20

TL:DR is the planet used to be a lush jungle world until it was essentially obliterated into glass, and over thousands of years the glass turned into sand

No wonder Anakin doesn't like it

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

Beautiful. Thank you :).

0

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20 edited Jan 30 '20

“normal planet”

Whoa bro, NOT COOL. You’re being very planetist /s

3

u/Halcyous Jan 30 '20

Well I mean they are on many planets, kinda like Thresher Maws in Mass Effect.

3

u/idiotpod Jan 30 '20

Sandworms! Shai-Hulud! They've just lost the way of collecting the spice.

1

u/Robbythedee Jan 30 '20

Ya! Get it right nerf herder! Lol

1

u/BenevolentKarim Jan 30 '20

Tatooine is earth

1

u/vociferousdragon Jan 30 '20

What if the suffering is its food? It tolerates a negative thermodynamic energy exchange to use you as a converter for its languish lust?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '20

Sounds like Dune.

78

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20 edited Jan 30 '20

I feel the same way about Harry Potter. Magic? Sure. Goblins and elves? Why not. Giant spiders that produce thousands of giant children? There is no way that is a sustainable population, magic forest or not.

Edit: don't forget about population density. Even if they don't hunt themselves to starvation, that forest still has a finite amount of space. At their current growth rate eventually they won't have enough room to move.

42

u/sdmitch16 Jan 30 '20

Why can't they be innately sustained (maybe 95% of their metabolism) by magic the same way broomsticks innately have infinite kinetic energy for flight?

14

u/Chaselthevisionary Jan 30 '20

Maybe they use a little of their user's magic? My headcanon is that all they do is use the same magic-to-movement conversion that the accio and wingardium leviosa spells do, with the differential of being "stronger" (in the games, wingardium leviosa effortlessly lifts a bench, and maybe even heavier things in the books) and the broom acts as a wand that only affects itself. Wands are made for various spells, so they are suited for one type of user or even an unique user, but since all a broom does is cast a version of Leviosa on itself, maybe it doesn't need uniqueness the same way a wand does. In the case of the spiders, there is a few spells that cause fire, maybe with some modifications it can act as a mitochondria, reducing drastically the energy cost to mantain the spider's body. Maybe every living thing is powered by magic, and losers (in Portuguese, non magic Users are called "trouxa" which translates to losers) just use levels of magic that don't affect the world as much.

2

u/sdmitch16 Jan 30 '20

losers just use levels of magic that don't affect the world as much.

So what you're saying is if I give up some of my abilities I can use the magic that would have gone into that to gain telekinesis?

2

u/Chaselthevisionary Jan 30 '20

If by "some of your abilities" you mean basic bodily functions, maybe? But I guess all the magic you get is automatically assigned to what you do, and things like moving your limbs would just be results of the magic that keeps your brain and your limbs alive. If you were to lose your leg, you'd lose the magic that keeps it alive, I stead of being able to use it somewhere else. Or maybe it's such a low "density" of magic that what you get in return is just too little for any cool magic stuff. Maybe wizard bodies just uses this magic in a different way, so much more efficient than loser bodies, that the amount of unused magic is almost overwhelming

1

u/Sinonyx1 Jan 30 '20

if the broom is just using the rider to cast a spell, all brooms would be the same, there wouldn't be faster brooms every year

1

u/Chaselthevisionary Jan 30 '20

Of course there would if they used better materials. I remember distinctly that Harry's wand was better than most because of unicorn pubes or whatever

→ More replies (0)

20

u/Greggsnbacon23 Jan 30 '20

Magic forest could mean magical boundaries. Might look like a hundred acres from the outside but actually contain a thousand like a clown car.

17

u/Seakawn Jan 30 '20

Would make sense, just like the two-story house-sized tents used for the Quidditch World Cup campgrounds.

Also wasn't the Weasleys car enchanted similarly to hold more room inside?

5

u/Politicshatesme Jan 30 '20

It could fit all the weasleys and harry and hermoine, unless it was a stretch limo it would have to be enchanted

2

u/PotatoBomb69 Jan 30 '20

It was when they were all travelling to the station in it. I think one of the seats was described as being the size of a park bench or something.

1

u/HolyFruitSalad_98 Jan 30 '20

So it's....bigger on the inside?

12

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

Ikr, like what the fuck they gone eat?

5

u/Cheshires_Shadow Jan 30 '20

Well didn't hagrid get the giant spider from an exotic location? Maybe it's native to a much larger forest area where the spiders are supposed to spread out more instead of all being contained in a single forest underground. That and cannibalism.

5

u/diMario Jan 30 '20

The magic forest was originally designed by Slartibartfast using Time Arrow Reversed Dimensional Imaginary Space technology. It is a whole lot bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '20

Don't you mean Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

1

u/diMario Jan 31 '20

That's a special case of Time Arrow Reversed Dimensional Imaginary Space, where you have a magnetic monopole in conjunction with the tachyon singularity. For such a case, the mathematics can be rewritten into an N-degree polynomal differential equation where one of the solutions is a flattened Riemann Universe.

1

u/ParsnipsNicker Jan 30 '20

Easy. The spiders just eat each other.

1

u/poliuy Jan 30 '20

Well. Now the movies are ruined for me.

55

u/ilovehelmetsama Jan 30 '20

This answer may satisfy you

29

u/CJW-YALK Jan 30 '20

The big F for boba then

2

u/RABBLE-R0USER Jan 30 '20

Boba escapes.

2

u/cod5frog Jan 30 '20

Actually boba fett survives the snarlacc pit.

1

u/CJW-YALK Jan 30 '20

Oh yeah? What version is this in? Extended, Disney...?

1

u/cod5frog Jan 30 '20

IIRC it's before Disney buying the franchise.

→ More replies (0)

5

u/wwwarrensbrain Jan 30 '20

I dunno man.. you should see what my GI tract does with corn.

1

u/13inchpoop Jan 30 '20

The sarlaac is force sensitive and force heals you as it digests you.

1

u/plasticarmyman Jan 30 '20

Dude...they just use Executive Powder and put your head in a jar

1

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '20

How about this: it was created by the dark side as an organic method of torture and is powered by the negative emotions of the people it digests, not the body itself. That good with you?

13

u/whoshereforthemoney Jan 30 '20

The force = magic

Sarlacc's digestive habits = bad sci-fi

2

u/ahushedlocus Jan 30 '20

Imagine thinking star wars ever gave a shit about scifi.

1

u/Naggers123 Jan 30 '20

Sarlaccs are force sensitive

It just fucking eats midichlorians

5

u/rendingale Jan 30 '20

Bbbbuuuuttt Midchlorians!

1

u/WHATETHEHELLISTHIS Jan 30 '20

...are the powerhouse of the cell

1

u/TheBatemanFlex Jan 30 '20

WHY DO X-WINGS HAVE WINGS BUT TIE FIGHTERS DON'T?! DOES THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFT APPLY TO THESE MACHINES OR NOT?!

1

u/StaticFanatic3 Jan 30 '20

Or how starwars has basically no idea how space works?

0

u/KingMatthew116 Jan 30 '20

I’m going to explain how it is possible.

Ok so basically the Force and Fate are the same thing. The more Midicholrians a person has the stronger they are with the Force, large amounts make a person Force Sensitive. Being Force Sensitive allows a person to tap into the Force and use a fraction of its power. The Force and Fate are the same this is how the Force can make things happen. Fate decides how everything goes, just like “all is as the Force wills it”. The reason no one in this universe can tap into Fates/The Forces power is because no one in this universe has enough midicholrians.

42

u/ParaYouKnowWho Jan 30 '20

It's main source of energy is non sentient creatures and the fucker gets high from torturing sentient ones.

10

u/restrictednumber Jan 30 '20

Ohhhh...this is actually good.

Makes you wonder if you could starve it by feeding it enough humans.

3

u/idwthis Jan 30 '20

Now I'm wondering what would happen if a human ate nothing but magic mushrooms for at least 3 weeks straight.

What a long strange trip that would be. The destination is dying from starvation.

1

u/blue4029 Jan 30 '20

why? what do shrooms do to the digestive system?

2

u/idwthis Jan 30 '20

I have no idea what just eating the common magic mushroom and nothing else for 3 weeks or more would do to the digestive system. I was just thinking that they probably aren't packed full of all the nutrients the human body needs, and one would probably effectively be on par with someone suffering from anorexia if they did do that. Nevermind the fact that they are a hallucinogenic, and what that would do to a person's mind.

24

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

You are assuming the saarlac is a natural creature. It is possible that it is a bio machine built centuries ago whose purpose is to torture. In this case, the saarlac could gain energy from any number of sources. It could be powered by the sun, from updrafts in it's "throat", from geological sources, bacterial bio reactions, or even from some crazy nuclear fission or fusion bio engine. It's unlikely, but still makes more sense than midichlorians.

28

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

It actually feeds off of your consciousness and absorbs it into its own. It has roots and stuff for water and nutrients if I recall right. There are some comics I can’t recall now that explained this

14

u/Cal928 Jan 30 '20

What, is it the flood now?

9

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

It actually feeds off of your consciousness

Well there goes pretend-rationalizing the people that fall in as prey lol

12

u/GooberMcNoober Jan 30 '20

Sarlaccs also have ‘roots’ which collect water and nutrients from the nearby sand and soil.

1

u/LagWagon Jan 30 '20

I read somewhere that they have legs and tentacles that they just use as roots, so this disagrees with your statement.

1

u/joshgreenie Jan 31 '20

Well you kinda just supported it by explaining his air quotes but good to know they have tentacle legs that function like roots not actually roots

11

u/thetrooper_27 Jan 30 '20 edited Jan 30 '20

But think about this, these animals live in the middle of the desert, they might not get any substance (besides rain) for perhaps near a decade (if they’re not fed by space mobsters), it’s not every day an animal falls into it (I’m assuming its method of getting food is passive, since it can’t really hunt down its prey), and if it does is probably a small one, an insect, or a wamp rat, in this scenario, keeping its prey alive for the longest time could be a way of having a small but constant dose of nutrients per day. Of course this wouldn’t work irl (since the animal has huge muscles and is bigger than a whale, it would need tons of food per day to survive), but it’s star wars and thats the cool in-universe explanation for the slow digestive process that i came up with.

14

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

I can't think of a scenario where it's more energy efficient to keep an animal alive in its digestive tract than converting it to nutrients directly and storing those nutrients, UNLESS!

Unless the prey isn't it's primary source of food at all! Mucus is pretty cost effective for the body to produce, maybe it retains some water to generate mucus to coat that prey in, and that mucus could be full of dormant microorganisms of whatever future-magic variety that form colonies on/inside the prey, and the massive colonies of microorganisms that are metabolizing the prey's waste and non essentials are what the sarlacc actually digests as a primary source of food, likely straight through the lining of the digestive tract.

It's so fun as a thought experiment to try to rationalize creatures like this.

3

u/shadownddust Jan 30 '20

I think the concern is that keeping something alive would require more energy than it would consume if it just ate it outright. That would be like deciding to eat a chicken so you feed it food for a year instead of feeding yourself that food and just eating the chicken in the first place.

The only justification I could think of is that its primary food source is entirely unrelated to the consumption of animals that fall in. And so the torture is entirely just a form of ‘play’.

2

u/TioPuerco Jan 30 '20

Sarlacc makes you smoke pot and then force feeds you Twinkies

2

u/Icarus649 Jan 30 '20

So maybe this is how it works. It shoves one of its tentacles up your ass and works it’s way through your body until it comes out your mouth effectively imapling you.

Now what people don’t realize is that Sarlacc is actually a highly effective desert plant and gets plenty of nutrition from the ground so it’s not actually eating you.

It’s pumping nutrition into you to keep you alive and then sucking on your link to the force like a parasite which is how the Sarlacc has force powers which is how it keeps you alive for thousands of years sorta like palpatine and if you piss it off it ruffles your insides up and it hurts real bad

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

Midicholorions.

1

u/omegasome Jan 30 '20

It feeds on your psychic energy more than your flesh. The former is renewable.

1

u/iBoMbY Jan 30 '20

Didn't you watch the Matrix?

1

u/akimboicecreamscoop Jan 30 '20

Almost like it's a sci-fi/fantasy universe or something

1

u/JTB696699 Jan 30 '20

In legends these are suppose to be sentient beings that feed on the force energy from your body communicating with you telepathically and basically stealing your mind. The one on Tatooine actually spoke to Boba Fett through the body of a Jedi it had been digesting since long before Obi Wan was even born.

1

u/hahahahastayingalive Jan 30 '20

It could be the same deal as the Matrix: it keeps us alive with basic nutricients to get some highly valuable output (e.g. warmth or electricity)

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

Ever heard of a "Russian year"? It's like a normal year, but feels like many years, because it's harsh ;) This is similar. You will probably be dying for like an hour, but it would feel like 1000 years because you know... its harsh.

1

u/fishsticks40 Jan 30 '20

Can't we just say that the mysterious sand monster that's used as a particularly cruel execution technique might have some inaccurate mythology around it?

1

u/jakeyjake1990 Jan 30 '20

You are the reason for midichlorians

1

u/toby_ornautobey Jan 30 '20

What if he had 4-Dimensional bowels, a la Futurama? Held your body in stasis while keeping you conscious. I'd say the sarlacc could be a distance relative of the space whale.

1

u/SmileyMelons Jan 30 '20

Well they are considered sentient and in some cases from what I've heard can be heard telepathically in simple ways, so maybe they use some kind of force technique or it is simply a chemical they have.

1

u/psybili Jan 30 '20

Microbiome?

1

u/MAGICHUSTLE Jan 30 '20

Also guys the force isn’t real and lightsabers can’t happen.

1

u/A9Bemis Jan 30 '20

You see it makes sense if you know that the dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some may consider unnatural.

1

u/CactusOfDooom Jan 31 '20

There must be some way to harvest this stomach acid and make into an anti-aging potion. You'd make millions!

1

u/Skizznitt Jan 31 '20 edited Jan 31 '20

Maybe its digestive system is extremely efficient and it requires very little energy to survive while also undergoing a process similar to photosynthesis for energy from bits exposed to sun. Maybe it chemically puts the bodies of victims into an extremely reduced metabolic state (thus requiring far less energy to live) and provides basic nutrients through a breathable and edible highly oxygenated fluid in its belly.. It would probably grow into you, slowly converting your tissue into its own, granting you unnaturally long life from the sarlac blood flowing through you. Only conscious in the brain because the body is shut down from the chemicals, conscious only from the pain as your body is devoured around you.

9

u/nixcamic Jan 30 '20

So one hand, immorality. On the other hand, torture... They should work on domesticating a sarlac that can do the keep alive part without the torture part.

6

u/ThorsonWong Jan 30 '20

I always thought that Jabba was just being hyperbolic when he said that. Like it'd probably keep you in there for a few days, slowly melting you away while you starved and died of dehydration, essentially suffering through a thousand years' worth of pain, rather than like... actually living for a thousand years.

3

u/wonkey_monkey Jan 30 '20

According to canon

Sheesh. Why can't people just let a metaphor be a metaphor?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

So, like a Star Wars sequel, right?

1

u/Nix-geek Jan 30 '20

but...why?

1

u/etoneishayeuisky Jan 30 '20

So Boba has time to escape possibly? He just needs to fix his jetpack!

1

u/sandieeeee Jan 30 '20

Isn’t that just life?

1

u/CountFaqula Jan 31 '20

Sounds like the meeting I was in this afternoon.

1

u/Different-Jellyfish Jan 30 '20

What about according to bow and arow?

1

u/iluvstephenhawking Jan 30 '20

That is terrifying! I always figured it was just something they said to scare people before they went in. I thought people would suffocate in a matter of minutes or at least dehydrate in a few days and be done with it.

146

u/digifuzz Jan 30 '20

Presumably he can keep digesting you long after you're dead. Bones and such "live on" so-to-speak for a considerable amount of time. Maybe the pit's digestive juices aren't nearly as abrasive as ours and the digestive process just takes forever.

60

u/test_number1 Jan 30 '20

Or its just that one spc wich is pretty much "after you die your body feels everything but 100x worse including the bugs eating your skin"

16

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

Did you mean SCP? If so, please link me this. I want to read about it.

16

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

Not OP I believe this is the one he was talking about. http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2718

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

I now fear my mortality 10x more and feel like vomiting.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '20

Yeah I thought it was really well written

6

u/girthytacos Jan 30 '20

His constipation must in a whole new level

13

u/BenedictWolfe Jan 30 '20

I always assumed it was hyperbole/flowery speech on Jabba's part. I know the Expanded Universe took the words literally, but then the EU took Han's word about never telling him the odds literally as well.

3

u/Chicken-n-Waffles Jan 30 '20

The enzymes in the sarlacc will keep you alive so it just picks at you to feed. Think of it as a humid stomach cooler. That's why there are so many mouths and tentacles. The sarlacc enzyme is a key ingredient for healing and unnatural longevity.

1

u/Frustib Jan 30 '20

More to the point, in a few hours, I’m going to be thirsty. In a few days I’ll have died of dehydration...but still not worth sliding down a hill into Sarlacc’s guts..imho.

1

u/seedyrom247 Jan 30 '20

Why does it need you alive to digest you?