She's a good chocolate

I love dark chocolate. 72% with crushed, salted almonds is my go-to. Mint is an acceptable substitute when my best is unavailable. I've tried without success to find dark chocolate that is spicy yet tasty but have yet to succeed. (I only eat chocolate with endangered species on the wrappers. I am not killing too many gorillas in my analogy.)

If you had asked me two years ago, I would have assured you that I hated dark chocolate. I did for around thirty years of my life. What changed was simple: someone left dark chocolate almond bark with me that otherwise would have gone in the trash. My German genes refuse to let me waste food, even if I was apt to hate it.

The bark was delicious. I was finally ready to like dark chocolate. My tongue had matured with age. Since that bark, I had spent $60 buying bars to eat one square at a time.

The other day, Amber brought home a dark chocolate bar a coworker's daughter was selling to raise funds for band. I broke off a square and set to the task of savoring.

It was revolting. It was exactly what I hated about dark chocolate. All at once, I understood. I hadn't become ready for dark chocolate. I had discovered what dark chocolate is.

As a child, someone had given me inferior chocolate. That bitter, waxy bar became my exemplar for dark chocolate. That bar was the reason that I was certain I hated dark chocolate when I merely hated bad chocolate.

There were indications I did like dark chocolate, even so. I loved few treats better than the gobs of chocolate chip cookie dough I could steal when my mother had her back turned during baking. I would end up with a bag of opened chocolate chips, of which I would eat a few morsels. That is dark chocolate, and a far better recipe than donation bars. I still would have told people, Toll House on my breath, that I hated dark chocolate.

I didn't pay any attention to anime for a long time because I was exposed to the American, censored and edited dubs of Sailor Moon and found its fanatics too much to bear. It was only with Daniel and Amber that I gave it a chance and discovered that there were some amazing shows. While turning my nose up at anime, I would seek out anything Miyazaki put out. That somehow didn't count.

People boast to me they do not like the fantasy genre. They say this to my face, over my table of books at events. They reference how some novel with too many Significant Nouns, the sort where a wizard tasked Gobbits with surrendering a necklace to River Gloom, had bored them. They tried to read one, it soured them, and now they hated all fantasy.

They will say this in Doctor Who t-shirts, an Avengers symbol on their keychain, a tattoo for the Rebellion on their wrist. They hate all fantasy. They say this with Toll House on their breath.

It isn't as easy as giving them a handful of dark chocolate almond bark or its literary equivalent. Pointing out that they -- and culture -- actually love the fantasy genre would get me nowhere. They meet with a scoff how many commonplace properties are fantasy, how some are high culture, how they would like it if they tried it. They hate fantasy and will use a Port Key to vanish to a Supernatural convention if I try to convince them.

I can't blame them too much. While some dark chocolate is revolting, you can learn this at a sniff. With a novel, you spend ten dollars and are chapters in before you know a hack wrote it. With enough of that, you assume that is all fantasy ever was. I am skittish around anything that has dragons on the cover, even if I know firsthand how little the cover often has to do with the content.

I can't know how many things I hate because I had a bad experience and decided I discovered all I needed to know. With food, I am generally willing to give a second chance to something I did not like once, though I try to get a higher quality version. (Sorry, cilantro, you are soapy.) With a low buy-in, I give it a shot. Those whose palates have grown accustomed to the trash, or who never tasted better, are poor guides.

Soon in Xenology: Sanity. Writing. Summer.

last watched: Black Mirror
reading: What the Hell Did I Just Read?
listening: Damien Rice