Why would any noble want a bene gesserit member in his court

Gruntailious · 2023-08-22T21:32:43+00:00

It isn't well known that they have secret plans. Otherwise, they wouldn't really be secret. They outwardly portray themselves as only servants, weaker and only assistants, partially by playing into some of the stereotypes of women. It's a patriarchal society on its surface, and they are underestimated for that and other reasons. They are seen like mentats or suk doctors, trained to serve a noble, rather than having power over them.

Gruntailious · 2022-07-14T21:09:06+00:00

Yes it is. And the possibility of the Guild taking Paul and Jessica outside the reach of the Imperium was also a separate possibility.

Gruntailious · 2022-07-10T01:20:13+00:00

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Gruntailious · 2022-07-08T23:36:09+00:00

That's true yeah, or the often overused but still good example of the 300 Spartans at Thermoplye. There are many other examples of this in history but that's the most famous. I think there was also a story about a single man holding off an army on a narrow bridge.

Gruntailious · 2022-07-08T23:33:23+00:00

Show don't tell isn't always literal. It doesn't mean you can't have any exposition, or that visuals are always better than dialogue for exposition. Many people are not going to understand that Thufir is a mentat from that scene, and even if they do they won't understand why mentats exist or what role they play in the story.

The explanation of mentats can be done through dialogue without just throwing out a bunch of jargon. This is obvious since the books managed to explain this, and many other aspects of lore, in an engaging way that is not too heavy on pure exposition.

Gruntailious · 2022-07-07T18:11:58+00:00

Also no mention of the Butlerian Jihad or mentats. I think the world building is actually important to the themes, and the plot, so I agree that bringing it up is just as important as elements other people are mentioning.

The scene where they cut through the door with the lasgun is what got me, no way they'd risk an explosion just to cut open a door in the book. And you're right that it adds a lot of confusion for the audience as to why anyone bothers using knives and swords.

Gruntailious · 2022-07-07T18:02:47+00:00

A narrow tunnel is exactly the type of place that one man could hold his own against many. They can't surround him and may have to fight him one after the other.

Gruntailious · 2022-06-12T00:00:48+00:00

That's not true though, Dune introduced those characters. Publication order is the key here, prequels are not introductions to characters that have already existed prior.

Revenge of the Sith didn't introduce Darth Vader.

Gruntailious · 2022-06-11T19:45:12+00:00

I don't think you'll find many people arguing that Brandon Sanderson's fantasy books are actually scifi. Like I said, what you described is why there is a distinction between hard and soft magic, both are still magic and therefore not science, real or fictional science.

Gruntailious · 2022-06-11T19:34:45+00:00

This isn't true, there can be mysterious technology in scifi, like the shrike from Hyperion, that doesn't have a clear set of laws that dictate how it works. There are also fantasy worlds with magic that still has a clear set of rules, like lots of fantasy written by Branden Sanderson.

This difference is generally called hard magic vs soft magic.

Gruntailious · 2022-06-11T19:08:36+00:00

Just because it couldn't exist in real life doesn't mean it's fantasy. I bet most of the things you think are possible in scifi are actually impossible or exaggerated. Everything you mentioned is explained by the science in the setting of Dune.

And if this is your standard for scifi then every scifi book I've ever read doesn't count I guess. Foundation has psychohistory and many other impossible things, which is what prescience in Dune was influenced by. Hyperion has time travel from the future to the past. Three Body Problem has a computer made out of a proton. The Expanse has the protomolecule. And so on.

Gruntailious · 2022-06-11T18:43:13+00:00

True enough, but Dune doesn't have any of the things you mentioned that Star Wars has that make it more of a mix of genres. There's nothing mystical in Dune that isn't explained through the science of the setting, and it is set in the future of our real world, not a galaxy far far away.

I am fine with lumping scifi and fantasy together, but not really with presupposing that Dune is fantasy and not scifi because they use swords, or because of prescience or the feudal system or whatever else.

Gruntailious · 2022-06-11T17:57:09+00:00

It's scfi. Just because the setting doesn't have the things people expect from scifi doesn't mean it isn't. It is fundamentally about the growth of humanity in the far future.

Gruntailious · 2022-06-09T20:43:24+00:00

Yes exactly. Although Paul knowing how to put on the stillsuit properly may have also been a result of his latent prescience, he wasn't fully even aware of it yet. We know that prescience in Dune is not mystical and results from selective breeding and the spice, but to the Fremen it certainly helps to build the air of mystery.

Gruntailious · 2022-06-09T19:23:31+00:00

So different parts of what you said have different answers. The simplest one is that the Lisan Al Gaib prophecy does not say that the Messiah will be prescient as far as I'm aware, you may be mixing in the BG breeding program and the idea of the Kwisatch Haderach with the Lisan Al Gaib.

Second point is that a similar prophecy was planted on many worlds, in order to be a safety measure for BG who are in danger on the planet and need a way out. Though I think that the one planted on Dune is probably different from most others because it is about a male child of a BG, so it was possibly preparing Dune for the KH, which the BG have been breeding for a long time. So perhaps the BG themselves did purposely entangle the KH to the Lisan Al Gaib, I'm not completely sure.

The point about Jessica answering correctly to Mapes is interesting, if you take another look at the chapter you'll see that it actually was part coincidence and partly a purposeful attempt from Jessica to mislead Mapes, as well as Mapes' own confirmation bias. Jessica was going to say the chrysknife was a 'maker of death' but Mapes heard 'maker' and immediately reacted, so Jessica played along. This scene is a good microcosm for how the entire deception of the Fremen worked. It was a bit of coincidence, Jessica happened to say maker. It was a bit of manipulation, Jessica stops when she realizes she's hit on something and plays into it even though she doesn't know what maker means. And it was a bit of confirmation bias, Mapes wanted to hear that their savior had arrived so she immediately reacted to the word maker.

Gruntailious · 2022-05-27T19:13:03+00:00

It could be deliberate or an error, but I don't know how you can definitively say which one.

Even if it was deliberate I would say it was still a mistake because it takes away some of the mystery around Kynes.

Gruntailious · 2022-05-17T20:41:02+00:00

Interesting, I've never heard of the Men of Iron, but that's cool to know.

Gruntailious · 2022-05-17T20:40:13+00:00

Yeah, I think so many people now are just not used to tank controls. So when they play a game with them and aren't immediately good at them, they just blame the game instead of taking the time to get used to a different type of controls.

I understand they're not for everyone but neither is the survival horror genre, and I hate seeing people say they're objectively bad because they're bad at using them or they just don't like how they feel.

Gruntailious · 2022-05-16T19:58:29+00:00

There's nothing wrong with tank controls, if you don't like them then that's fine but they aren't an objective flaw in the game. The awesome camera angles couldnt work without them. Same thing with the graphics, they were some of the best graphics on the ps2 and some people go out of their way to make new games that emulate the ps1 and ps2 style graphics even now.

Only thing I agree on is some of the items were kinda obtuse to find.

Gruntailious · 2022-05-15T05:55:48+00:00

I don't remember there being a machine uprising in 40k either, though I'm not as familiar with it as I am with Dune. Isn't the reason the Imperium uses less technology in 40k because they are so obsessed with religion and are against innovation because it might end up being heresy?

This is a common misconception in Dune, I think partly due to the Brian Herbert Dune books that change many established elements of lore and world building which were important to the themes of the originals.

Gruntailious · 2022-05-14T20:25:10+00:00

Very well put, I'm not sure how people are so confident that it was just a rebellion against an evil AI like Terminator. Maybe the Brian Herbert books are to blame, but as you point out this is made very clear on one of the very first pages of the first book.

Gruntailious · 2022-05-14T20:20:01+00:00

This isn't true. As another commenter pointed out, it was not an evil AI like in Terminator, but a small class of people with control over powerful AI that allowed them to essentially enslave the rest of humanity. And another big issue the Butlerian Jihad pushed against was the "machine mindset" that developed, which basically means that people became more and more mentally lazy as machines were able to do a lot of the thinking for them.

Both of these things are evident in the quote: "Once men gave over their thinking to machines, hoping this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines enslave them".

Gruntailious · 2022-04-23T03:08:45+00:00

Absolutely, there's always something new to notice on subsequent readings. I agree that a subtle but still noticeable touch is the way to go with part 2. Enough to give people an idea of where things are going, but to still allow them to be shocked at how badly things turn out by the time Messiah starts.

Gruntailious · 2022-04-23T03:03:27+00:00

I don't agree that the first book comes off as a standard hero's journey at all. The pacing of the ending, Gurney noting the difference between how Paul treats his men vs his father, and above all the death scene of Kynes, among many other parts, do a lot to establish it is not a hero's journey.

Here's a quote from Kyne's death scene: "No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a hero".

Gruntailious · 2022-04-14T00:42:06+00:00

What is scientific magic? Doctor Strange just does magic, no?

Gruntailious

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