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Neo Rasa posted:Something interesting about that is that the Atreides are Greek, not just looks-wise but the Atreides house claims to be descended from Atreus (father of Agamemnon), Atreides is just the plural in Greek of descendants of Atreus. And the little description of Caladan and how its folks look always made it sound Mediterranean as hell to me. But as far as real life comparisons IIRC he's basically said the obvious that the spice is oil and that the houses are various western powers, but not really more specific than that. I don't think you can necessarily go 1:1 with it. The claim is just that, a claim. They're space nobles who claim a mythic ancestry to bolster their claim to nobility, like nobility has done throughout time. Prior to Paul, no Atreides could explore his ancestral memories, and neither Paul nor Leto II ever bother to confirm the claim because by then they have even better claims as the Kwisatz Haderach and his direct descendent. A lot of Dune is about the stories people make up and tell to seize and maintain power. Being descended from Atreus is just one of those stories and has about as much actual historical backing as the myths disseminated by the Missionaria Protectiva. Arglebargle III posted:It's definitely inspired by Arabia and oil but it's more of a pastiche than a direct allegory. For example a lot of Paul's visions and the sequel Dune Messiah are taken straight from the Omayyad conquest in the 7th or 8th century. It's more about what empire does to people and to society and less about any specific incarnation of it. Apparently, it also draws heavily on Lesley Blanch's The Sabres of Paradise, which is about Imam Shamyl war against Russia in the Caucuses.
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Jan 21, 2020 00:13
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Arglebargle III posted:He references Hitler as a point of comparison for mass death, that's it. And the takeaway from that comparison is that Paul is responsible for orders of magnitude more death and destruction. Clipperton posted:Pretty sure that in either Messiah or Children an Atreides (I want to say Alia) is going through their ancestral memory and Agamemnon makes an appearance I don't recall that, but by that point, the novels have already introduced the idea that humanity's desire to mix its gene pools is the root cause of human conflict, and we're all descended from the terrible people who came out on top in those conflicts. So if Agamemnon really existed, many people in Dune's universe would be descended from him. And that's nothing special. It's like how some large percentage of people alive today can claim they descend from Genghis Khan. It doesn't really matter whether or not it's true. The Atreides prior to Paul have no way of knowing. The only people who would know keep the whole ancestral memories thing secret from everyone, including members of their own order. And they're the same people who go around seeding myths to later exploit, so you can't trust them to confirm or deny. The point is house Atreides claims to be descended from mythic Greek hero Atreus because it gives them a claim to legitimacy. It makes it sound like there is more to them than just being one of the families that owns nukes. PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 02:12
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Arglebargle III posted:The throne room in Lynch's Dune looks like if the Sangrada Familia was made of gold. The art design in it is so good! It took watching the bluray for me to notice, but Castle Caladan is made entirely of carved wood.
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Jan 21, 2020 19:37
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I desperately want the Hawat action figure that came with the cat milking machine as an accessory. What a wonderfully disturbing toy.
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Jan 22, 2020 19:29
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Neo Rasa posted:I'd still say it's an absolute must watch though just for the look and sound. I agree completely. It stands on its own as a gorgeous and stunning production. While it's uneven in its exposition, it's not confusing. The story is straightforward. And even with its issues as an adaptation, it's a wonderful audiovisual companion to the novel.
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Jan 23, 2020 04:33
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Oh that's right, it's Feyd that comes with the cat milking machine. I love that even the toys from that movie seem like they came out of a fever dream.
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Jan 25, 2020 22:39
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Arglebargle III posted:On the one hand, there's clearly a lot of allegory in Dune. On the other hand, I have a hard time believing anyone would call it rote. You have to really drill down to the core elements of the plot to say that it's just a monomyth story. Surely there is a reason that Dune is getting its third screen adaptation while so many 1960s science fiction books about expanded consciousness and heroes with psychic powers are forgotten. There is a rote form to the central plot, but that's part of the point. Paul goes on a hero's journey so Dune can interrogate the nature of a hero. He's a dude who fits himself into a ready-made myth so he can use it to empower his revenge and restoration. He's not a chosen one, but he's made by his and others' hands into one. But that's just one of the many concepts the book is exploring. It's plots within plots, schemes within schemes.
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Jan 31, 2020 04:22
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Maxwell Lord posted:Frank Herbert's main idea was arguing against the "Great Man" theory of history by showing a messianic revolutionary hero who is, inevitably, a product of greater historical forces and movements that he can't control. Of course there's also a lot about ecology and human development (there are strict rules against "thinking machines" in the Imperium, so they're replaced by hyper-trained Mentats and Bene Gesserit, and the Guild need spice to do their advanced hyperspace calculations, hence he who controls the spice... etc.) Yeah. Here's a link to the article where Herbert discusses his intentions. Sure, Intentional Fallacy/"Death of the Author", but Dune's narrative rhetoric clearly supports this intended reading. https://archive.org/stream/OMNI197908/OMNI_1980_07#page/n39/mode/2up BrutalistMcDonalds posted:I think Herbert was also arguing against some of the themes in Asimov's Foundation trilogy. Herbert's writing style was to often take other sci-fi stories and flip the themes around and challenge them. In the case of Dune he was saying that prescience is a really dangerous thing in the hands of a tyrant, whereas Asimov's psychohistorians save the galaxy in Foundation. Herbert had a strong libertarian streak and distrusted centralized governments and technocrats. Yeah, I think you're right. John Grigsby has written a couple of articles about this. PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Jan 31, 2020 |
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Jan 31, 2020 14:52
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WarMECH posted:Feyd doesn't really show up until late in the book so will probably only appear in DUNC: Part 2 if they make it. Duncan doesn't just disappear off screen. Paul sees him catch a slow pellet in the head: "Paul had one last glimpse of Idaho standing against a swarm of Harkonnen uniforms--his jerking controlled staggers, the black goat hair with a red blossom of death in it." Then a few paragraphs later, Jessica says, "Duncan's dead, Paul. You saw the wound." I think this sad anticlimactic death is much more fitting to the story, and I think it would be more effective on screen than some glorious death in an arena.
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Jan 31, 2020 22:44
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The best thing about Doon is how it careens from juvenile to incisive and back, sometimes in the same sentence.
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Jan 31, 2020 22:58
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u brexit ukip it posted:Anticlimactic? Doesn't he die fighting off 19 Sardaukar and mostly winning? He's this awesome knife fighter cutting down dudes left and right and then he just catches a bullet in the head and the story goes on. Silver2195 posted:really makes u think... Herbert's works wouldn't be half as wonderful without all the rambling psychobabble. And the epigrams always relate the their chapters, sometimes just as little jokes.
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Feb 1, 2020 19:01
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Teg is never allowed to have any real power. He's always a tool of the Bene Gesserit. He's who they were hoping Paul and Leto II would be.
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Feb 4, 2020 17:15
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I wasn't counting that, cos it's entirely prediction/prescience. None of the jihad going awry really had any emotional impact on me until Messiah. Yeah, but the prescience is part of the point. Paul foresees that the jihad will be a calamity and even thinks he should try to stop it from happening, but he doesn't because he's as caught up in the legend he's building as the Fremen are. Messiah confirms that Paul was right and is decent enough to be wracked with guilt over it. The jihad doesn't go awry. It goes as planned.
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Feb 6, 2020 00:02
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The jihad has nothing to do with exacting justice for the Fremen. Paul gives the Fremen their vengeance on the Harkonnen and then exploits their skills and devotion to him to subjugate the rest of the empire.
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Feb 19, 2020 16:13
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David D. Davidson posted:Also a big part of the second part of Dune is that Paul realizes that no matter what he does he's going to be the face of a giant violent genocidal war. That's already a thing in Dune itself. There's a point where Paul realizes that the only way left to stop the coming jihad is to kill Paul and every last one of his followers and believers, and that is simply impossible.
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Feb 19, 2020 17:38
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David D. Davidson posted:yeah, that's what I'm referring to. Oh my bad, I took "second part" to mean Dune Messiah and not the second book of Dune. porfiria posted:I never got why in Dune the main fighting style isn’t Monster Trucks—I get why shields obsolete guns, explosives, and lasers (kind of) but what is a dude with a knife going to do about a slow moving vehicle (with maybe some spikes on it etc). Guild shipping costs.
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Feb 19, 2020 19:09
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mennoknight posted:more like 3000 I think. It's more like 4500 IIRC. Leto's peace lasts about 3000 years and Heretics and Chapterhouse are around 1500 years after that.
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Apr 14, 2020 21:57
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The angles in the armor design sorta echo the shield effects from Lynch's Dune. I do hope the imperial court's uniforms are ostentatious, but I'm fine with the Atreides being pretty low key.
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Apr 16, 2020 00:06
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More toned down than gussied up.
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Apr 16, 2020 19:33
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Neo Rasa posted:In the book aren't the Atreides noticeably low key in general? Black uniforms with some red, their emblem is a dark red or green hawk, etc. The only other house that gets major time is the Harkonnen and they're noticeably more ostentatious with the blue on white huge griffon motif and so on. In general the Atreides are in "bad guy" colors and looks in the book while the Harkonnen are the opposite. I never felt Lynch's Atreides uniforms were that ostentatious myself. They looked like military dress uniforms, and they were in the correct colors. But yeah, the Atreides in the book are relatively low key. I think the intention is a contrast between the Harkonnens who are all about empty symbols and the Atreides who are all about symbolic actions. Baron Harkonnen floats around his giant palace and schemes of ways to best use his pawns. Duke Leto hangs out with his troops and works to cultivate his "air of bravura."
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Apr 16, 2020 23:16
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There's that great line where Duke Leto tells Paul something like, "our propaganda corps are among the best." I don't think he's drinking his own Kool-Aid with regard to Yueh, though. No one gets what's going on with Yueh because everyone believes that Suk conditioning is absolute. Even the Baron's goons are surprised that he was able to turn Yueh, and they go on to spread the story that Yueh was a fraud and fake Suk doctor in part because that's more believable than someone figuring out a way to break Suk conditioning.
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Apr 17, 2020 16:17
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Neo Rasa posted:I don't know, I feel like he does to an extent. NO ONE CAN BREAK THE SUK CONDITIONING! Meanwhile look at the reputation the Fremen have at the beginning of the book and how easily he and Duncan make inroads with them. With Yueh breaking so fast, to me "Suk conditioning is absolute" is itself some bullshit propaganda. So I think it's the opposite, they spread the word with the mindset that no REAL Suk doctor would do that. Like by the time they actually get there I think it's more that he's just tired of the life and lets his guard down a bit more than he might normally. He seems to realize a lot of this all at once IIRC. Yeah, it's fair to say that Suk conditioning may be as much a myth as everything else. That's not the same, though, as Duke Leto buying into his own propaganda. But I don't think it's fair to say Yueh broke quickly. I get the impression that Piter had been working on him for a while. And he didn't break the way Piter expected. Yueh doesn't betray the Atreides to save Wanna. He's almost certain she's already dead. He betrays the Atreides to turn them into the vehicles for his vengeance against the Baron and Piter for torturing and killing Wanna. He gives Duke Leto the tooth. He gives Paul and Jessica the equipment they need to survive the desert and meet the Fremen. And there's a sense that he's motivated by the same fatalism that has struck Duke Leto. "You were dead anyway, my poor Duke," he says. And yeah, the lie they spread about Yueh serves to protect the Suk school's interests as much as it serves the Baron's. And also yeah, Duke Leto is definitely tired and letting his guard down. He's clearly aware that he's walking into a trap and is resigned to his death.
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Apr 17, 2020 19:30
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Kassad posted:There's also this bit when Leto first appears in the book and he almost gives a standard pep talk to Paul before catching himself: That part is also fodder for one of the best running jokes in National Lampoon's Doon where characters keep noting their relation to other characters like it's some profound revelation.
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Apr 17, 2020 23:34
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The Weirding Modules also accentuate and foreground the speech and language themes that are in the book. Paul can literally kill with a word.
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Apr 22, 2020 17:31
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sean10mm posted:What they actually show is that they allow ANYBODY to kill with several different words. Yeah, sure. So language is powerful and one can be trained to wield that power through a weirding module. The point is the modules make Paul's "I can kill you with a word" line from the novel literal and not just a reference to the Fremen's loyalty. And Paul still gets to be special. That line from the novel is replaced with "my name is a killing word." And they don't come from out of nowhere. They're called weirding modules to link them to the Bene Gesserit "weirding way" which is demonstrated most prominently in the film by Bene Gesserit using the Voice. And then at the end of the film, Paul demonstrates his mastery of the weirding way by using the Voice to crush Feyd's body without assistance of a module. Sure they undercut the Fremen's prowess. And sure, they're a weird and silly addition. But they're a lot more than just an overly complicated way to get pew pew into the movie.
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Apr 22, 2020 22:33
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Robots being the ultimate enemy is hinted at by Siona's spice vision in God Emperor.
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Apr 30, 2020 01:18
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Zurui posted:yeah....the robots are not the problem so much as the shoddy worldbuilding, terrible characterization, and incomprehensible plot. Yeah, I agree.
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Apr 30, 2020 01:47
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Yeah, sorry if I gave the impression that I thought the nonsense in Hunters and Sandworms was Frank's idea. I was just pointing out that he hinted towards something with robots.
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Apr 30, 2020 02:21
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Horizon Burning posted:the robots were implied to be tools of those who believed in 'machine thinking' not skynet Nah, I think Quinn misses the mark there. Leto II takes Siona out into his desert to show her that the Golden Path is necessary for human survival, that humanity will go extinct without it, not that humanity will fall back under the sway of 'machine thinking', a phrase that is never uttered during that journey. Siona then gets a vision of seeking machines hunting down the last members of humanity who have no escape anywhere.
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Apr 30, 2020 15:23
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Horizon Burning posted:except that leto 2 also says that by making siona immune to prescience and spreading her anti-prescient genes or whatever, it prevents someone (pretty sure he names the ixians) from creating the seeking machines that will wipe out humanity. it's not the robots that are the true enemy, but the people who would create them. machine thinking is said to be what allowed people to create machines that enslaved other humans, killing them is just another step. the whole point is that 'machine thinking' allows humans to do things without thinking about doing it. like, say, creating self-replicating prescient murderbots. but again, not a skynet robot overlord scenario. leto 2 even calls machine thinking "the real danger." Yeah, of course the seeker robots from Siona's vision have to be made by someone. Where did you get the idea I was talking about the Reapers? But the people who make them aren't the true enemy in Siona's vision. Those people are long gone because the robots in the vision are in the process of exterminating all of humanity. Siona's gene doesn't prevent the invention of seeking machines: "Do not fear the Ixians... They can make the machines, but they can no longer make arafel," Leto II tells Siona and Duncan before he dissolves. People are free to do and invent whatever their hearts' desire in the Scattering. Siona's gene protects her descendants from being found by prescience or seeking machines. So no matter what is done or invented in the Scattering, there will always be at least one portion of humanity who can hide from it. Leto's Peace has already prevented humanity's extinction from a number of possible threats. The threat that Siona sees in her vision, the threat that would bring arafel, "the Cloud Judgment of Holy Darkness at the End of the Universe", and thus the ultimate threat to humanity, is seeking machines exterminating humans. The whole point isn't that machine thinking leads people to do things without thinking about their consequences. It's not "oopsies, we created murderbots." The point of machine thinking is that it's an abdication of thought and agency. It's "what does the computer say we should do?" You said, "the robots were implied to be tools of those who believed in 'machine thinking'". But machine thinking isn't some belief system that people adhere to. It's a mindset that people succumb to. There are no machine thinking mastermind behind the murderbots in the vision because people who have succumbed to machine thinking no longer use enough of their own minds to be masters of anything. But more importantly, Siona's vision showing her why she must survive the desert isn't people inventing or unleashing seeker robots; it's the seeker robots themselves. Why, when, and how they are created is immaterial to the threat they pose to humanity.
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May 4, 2020 19:28
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The consensus from what I've seen is that the movie will either end at about the halfway point of Dune, after Paul has killed Jamis and become accepted by the Fremen, or at the end of Book 2, after Jessica has become a reverend mother and Paul shares his vision of jihad with Chani.
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Jun 15, 2020 22:20
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Doesn't happen in the books, and in God Emperor Leto states that the ones that come after him will actually have a kind of animal intelligence (viz: the ones before him don't even have that). He says the new worms will have more ganglia and "awareness" and also talks about how they'll contain a "pearl" of his consciousness, which seems borne out by Sheeana's relation with them in Heretics, so I think it's meant to be something more than animal intelligence.
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Jun 16, 2020 22:53
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MrL_JaKiri posted:I've been listening to the audiobook so can't go back to check easily, but I think the phrase "animal intelligence" was a direct quote Huh, it could be. I didn't see it when I skimmed, but that doesn't mean anything. phasmid posted:The Leto II awareness inside the worms is mostly dormant. Only Sheeana (and maybe later the B.G.) can talk to the Leto part. I'm not sure if dormant is the right word for it. They only respond to Sheeana, but the reasons for that are unclear. And somewhere Leto II likens that fate to a sort of eternal hell.
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Jun 26, 2020 00:44
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phasmid posted:People like a "happy" "ending" and Dune has neither - especially if you read all six books. If you read all six books, it doesn't really have an ending at all. quote:If they decide to continue the story, it'll probably get handed off to second-rate people who don't know the material except that "kids sure seem to like this Dune thing, even though it's just a knock-off Star Wars". So you're saying they'll just use the poo poo from Brian Herbert and KJA's books. 
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Jul 31, 2020 19:34
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phasmid posted:All things considered, maybe that was the best way to go. Yeah, the end result of the Golden Path is the Scattering, humanity spreading out in infinite directions and infinite ways across the universe. The events of books 5 and 6 play out against the backdrop and are ultimately irrelevant to the gajillions of people not involved in the war between the BG and HM. Bringing that conflict to a conclusion that (again) defines the fate of humanity is antithetical to the ending of God Emperor.
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Aug 2, 2020 20:33
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I really don't like that, in part because I think it's wrong to think of the scene in the novel as anticlimactic. It's quick, but that's par for most of the fight scenes in the novel, especially in the attack on the Atreides. In that scene, Duncan is a monster level warrior. He's cutting down Harkonnen left and right, holding the door so his lord can flee. Putting a slow pellet through his head is the only way they can stop him. And it is very important that Paul see him die. Paul admires Duncan the most out of his father's men. He's the closest thing Paul has to a friend. And then Paul sees that friend die abruptly and tragically while selflessly and heroically fighting to protect him. That's why Hayt is a such a mindfuck for Paul. He loved this dude. He saw this dude die to save him. And now this dude is back with weird robot eyes and apparently no memory.
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Sep 4, 2020 05:45
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The ornithopters' wings are articulated, but they don't flap to generate lift. They can just be adjusted into different configurations for different situations and needs. It's like a more complex version of the swing wing designs on some supersonic fighters and bombers.
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Sep 7, 2020 15:19
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Oh dang. I did not remember that. I remembered Paul adjusting the wings, but not the flapping.
PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Sep 7, 2020 |
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Sep 7, 2020 19:35
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We have just folded space from SA. Many shitposts on SA. New shitposts.
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Sep 7, 2020 20:52
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GORDON posted:Modern helicopters have rotary blades to keep it aloft, and jet engines to make them go fast. Do they actually use the jets for forward thrust? I thought they just used jet turbines to power the rotors the way an M1 uses a jet turbine to drive its treads.
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Sep 8, 2020 00:14
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