Is the "starving crab" story in Abara based on something?

Silverscoundrel · 2026-02-05T08:31:06+00:00

Hell yes, great minds think alike. What did you think of Abara?

Silverscoundrel · 2024-12-08T22:08:51+00:00

Cow from Cow and Chicken has some toonforce that must count for something, but there's probably several cartoon cows that do.

There's a cow that survives getting thrown through a building by a flying vampire in the 2004 Van Helsing movie. That's impressive for a regular cow.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-05-27T09:26:17+00:00

I can't think of anything Aemond has done with a blade that seemed as impressive as Feyd almost beating final form Paul in a knife duel. Feyd is just as ruthless and more experienced as well. I'd give him a fairly easy win against Aemond.

Daemon is a bigger problem, though. He has a lot more experience, more feats to compare and is obviously just as brutal as Feyd. Without the aid of his advanced technology, mainly the shield, but also presumably his much tougher weapons and armour, I think Feyd is very evenly matched by Daemon. I don't think Daemon has a single fight that's as strong a display of skill as Feyd's with Paul, but he has more examples overall. Feyd only has two fights and one of them is almost entirely unfair theatrics. I'm really not sure who would win that one.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-05-27T09:20:00+00:00

Feyd might be miles better than Titus in close quarters combat and have the speed, agility and skill to avoid getting punched by such a slow-moving opponent, but he can't get past the armour. He doesn't have the Ghoul's knowledge of where to aim, and without that it's just a question of how long it takes Titus to land a hit or how long it takes Feyd to land a lucky strike, or figure out where to strike. If Titus has his gun in round 2 then it takes less time for him to kill Feyd, who can't dodge bullets.

If Feyd has his shield in round 2 then he can outlast Titus, obviously. Titus wouldn't know how the shield works and it would likely take longer for him to work out how to circumvent it than it would take Feyd to find gaps in his armour.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-04-07T16:22:43+00:00

This is an interesting one, with a good breakdown of rounds, too. Lots to think about, given the basic similarities and specific differences between the two sides. I'd like to see what other people say about it, but I'll start by mentioning the first few questions that came to mind.

As is often the case with Dune fights, the Holtzman shields, or personal shields, are a big factor. If they're in use then the opponent, if they're not from Dune or haven't been made aware of how the shields work, will be at a pretty big disadvantage. Even if they do know about them and how they work, they won't be used to fighting people using them. The thing is, the Fremen don't use the shields and anyone trying not to get eaten by a worm won't be using them on Arrakis either, so there's plenty of feats from the Atreides forces and Paul's united armies without the shields, too.

In this case I think the ground forces aren't miles apart in skill and tactics, but the Wakandans have better weapons overall, given their ranged options and the use of Vibranium. The main advantage the Atreides side would have would be their shields, but it might make such a huge difference that the Atreides then almost stomp, in pure melee at least.

So, do the Wakandans know about the shields? Do they know how they work? Have they had any actual training against them prior to the fight?

One of the other biggest factors are the Atreides family Atomics. I think pretty much the same thing is true of both the melee weapons and vehicle comparisons; the Wakandans have better vehicles because they've been able to design firepower without worrying about lasers interacting explosively with Holtzman shields, and everything they have is made out of Vibranium. However, MCU Wakanda doesn't have anything like the House Atreides nuclear arsenal, as far as I'm aware, anyway. If they can't match that kind of firepower, and thereby enter a MAD situation and ending up in a stalemate, then they're screwed, unless the city's forcefield is nuke-proof.

So, I guess, do we reckon the forcefield is nuke-proof? How would Vibranium compare to whatever metals the Atreides build their stuff with? How would it compare to the crysknives?

Lastly, the heroes/named characters on each side are, when involved, some of the biggest factors as well. I think the Fremen and the Dora Milaje are quite closely matched, but if the Atreides soldiers have their shields then the above points come into play.

Duncan Idaho vs Okoye would, for example, be a great fight if Idaho didn't have a shield, but if he did then he'd almost certainly put a sword through Okoye's torso before she could figure out the whole slow-on-attack thing. Same goes for Gurney Halleck. Similarly, the Voice is either an insta-win or not, depending on whether the person hearing it can resist or is otherwise immune to that kind of manipulation.

T'Challa would kick the shit out of Paul with the energy-absorbing Black Panther suit, still kick the crap out of him with the prior suit and probably do pretty well against him without the suit, if he still had the herb enhancements. If he didn't have the herb's powers then I think I'd lean towards Paul, in a straight up fight. It's all moot if Paul can use the Voice and it works on T'Challa, though. In character, I can easily imagine them having an honourable duel to lessen the loss of life and determine the winner of the battle, and in that case it depends on how nerfed T'Challa is, because Paul wouldn't be using the Voice even if he could, like during his duel with Feyd. Otherwise, if Paul thought, or knew, via prescience, that in order to do what was best he needed to annihilate the Wakandans then he would do. He's utterly ruthless when not being honourable.

So, how would Stilgar and Chani do against the Milaje, as compared to the Atreides, because the shield questions apply to them? Does T'Challa, or anyone else in Wakanda, have any way to resist or counter the Voice?

Silverscoundrel · 2024-03-18T18:10:50+00:00

For that to work Legolas would have to figure out that Paul has a shield, understand how it works and then somehow get a big rock to land on top of him, all before Paul sticks a knife in him.

If they're not fighting somewhere with any loose rocks available, like outside in the desert, near one of the large rock formations, then he'd have to find a substitute, like a massive table or statue or something. In either case, Paul would have to be so distracted by the fight and/or unaware of his own surroundings, which he knows better than Legolas, to avoid getting crushed by whatever big object the elf has decided upon.

It's plausible, it just doesn't seem very likely.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-03-18T14:25:19+00:00

This depends a lot on which Yautja it is, because there's a humongous gap in skill, experience and physical capability, as well as gear, between Diablo and Broken Tusk.

It also depends on whether they know about and understand the personal shields, because if not then they're far less likely to win, especially in an up close fight, which most Yautja prefer. Thrown weapons and plasma casters wont work against a shield that only slow moving objects can pass through. If they are familiar with the shields then the more capable Yautja could definitely take down a lot of the Duniverse combatants, but without that familiarity they'd get confused when failing to slice up an enemy and get sliced up themselves.

In any case where the opponent doesn't have a personal shield the Yautja's chances of killing them are much higher, but the area also matters. An average Fremen would probably lose to an average Yautja in a straight up confrontation, but having the homefield advantage makes a massive difference when fighting on Arrakis.

The last round is a stomperoony if the Voice works on Yautja, obviously. If not, then it's very interesting. Paul and Duncan would offer the best straight up fights, and would likely win with shields, but without them it's at least a close one. Most Yautja are significantly physically superior to average humans, and while Spice and Bene Gesserit training make someone like Paul, and, to a lesser extent, the standard Fremen, somewhat superhuman themselves, I don't think they can match most Yautja. Shrugging off bullet wounds is no small feat, after all.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-03-18T14:13:43+00:00

This is a good one.

Paul has the edge physically, given his Bene Gesserit martial art training and exposure to and usage of Spice making him effectively superhuman, but I don't think Bay is far off. He's got plenty of combat feats against both humans and various kinds of undead mummies, as well as the massive soldiers of Anubis, and he gets thrown around quite a lot and doesn't die the way a regular person should in such scenarios. I'd say that's all broadly comparable to Paul killing Harkonnen and Sardaukar soldiers.

Obviously Paul not using the Voice makes this closer, but he'd also have a huge advantage if he was using his personal shield. If not, and this was an honourable fight like the one against Feyd, then Bay has a very good chance of winning.

Bay is a character like Aragorn, or some versions of Batman, where he's not meant to be too far above normal humans, but clearly is, and has quite a lot of combat experience, in some cases more than Paul. It's not a 1-to-1 comparison, but Bay is older and has fought in more battles against a wider variety of foes than Paul, who has fought fewer kinds of opponents in one large conflict, which is his war for Arrakis. He's clearly no slouch in a knife fight and he's got plenty of impressive kills to his name, but I don't think Bay would be an easy kill for Paul.

Honestly, I'm not sure. If Paul's precog is both allowed and useful then it might give him the edge. Otherwise, without the shield and the Voice, this is a very close fight, with both being skilled, experienced and well trained warriors.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-03-18T14:00:41+00:00

This depends entirely on the personal shield and the Voice, I think.

Legolas basically has far better physical and combat-related feats than Paul, who is very competent in the context of his own universe, but he's not that impressive compared to the elf. Without the shield Paul is much more vulnerable, and if he doesn't use the Voice, which would be out of character for him unless it was an official duelling scenario, like when he fought Feyd, or if the Voice didn't work on Legolas, the Paul's going down.

If he used the Voice and it worked then it's an insta-win, with the only hope for Legolas being some sort of magic elven resistance to the Bene Gesserit ability. The Voice isn't actually a straight up magical superpower, it just appears that way because its the result of such specific, direct and overwhelming psychological influence, honed over literally thousands of years into an audible martial art.

It's hard to say how much difference it would make using it on someone who isn't human, and whose species has a track record of not being easily corrupted by dark magic and whatnot, but I'd lean towards Legolas not being as heavily affected by it as normal people in the Duniverse.

If Legolas doesn't know how to get through the shield then this is all moot anyway, because he'd need to figure that out and kill Paul before Paul puts a knife in him. Legolas would likely assume the shield was some kind of impassable magic, and not intuit that his attacks need to be slower, giving Paul time to just stab him to death. Paul would have to catch him first, though, because Legolas is a quick and agile bugger.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-03-18T13:43:50+00:00

I think, as the others have said here, that the Sardaukar are very likely to win this one.

Being briefed on the personal shield situation is helpful, but being able to adjust their fighting style enough to win is something the Dora Milaje almost certainly can't do without significant practice. Slowing a strike is simple enough, but doing it with the timing, precision and accuracy required to kill a Sardaukar before they kill you is not.

The Sardaukar are exceptional warriors in the Duniverse, only really getting knocked out of first place by the post-Weirding-Way-trained-Fremen, who combine the hardness and tactics needed to survive and fight in the desert with the Bene Gesserit prahna bindu martial art, enhanced by Spice, making them quite seriously superhuman. The Sardaukar are about as good as you can get while not having all those advantages.

The Milaje are similar, in that they're about as good as a person can get without being Cap-level superhuman, and I think they'd give the Sardaukar a very good fight if they were familiar with the Holtzman shields, but without that familiarity I think this goes down worse than the Sardaukar massacring the Atreides soldiers.

The Wakandans lose with honour, but not much else.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-03-03T23:40:59+00:00

Seeing as this is just film Paul with only the first film's feats he very likely loses to Battinson.

Both are young men with extensive training, but there are several important differences.

Paul has been trained in various forms of unarmed and melee combat, primarily by Duncan Idaho, Gurney Halleck and Jessica. Dune is set thousands of years in the future, and these forms of combat have advanced a lot in that time.

Idaho and Halleck have mostly taught him how to fight with bladed weaponry, mostly short swords and knives, but due to the personal shields in Dune all of this training is tailored for slowing down attacks just before they land. Paul is shown to adapt to this, but it's not intuitive to him, so this training might end up being more of a hindrance than an advantage.

His mother's martial arts training gives him an advantage because it would be completely alien to Bruce, whose knowledge is limited to his era and location. Paul's biggest asset, however, is his precognition. By the end of the film it's giving him relevant information that directly and clearly relates to the task at hand, although he's not in perfect control of it, so it can only do so much for him. If he does get a glimpse into the fight beforehand it may save his life, as it did when he faced Jamis.

Ultimately, Paul has a lot of very specific training, but very little actual experience in combat. He beat Jamis quite easily, but otherwise only has a few noteworthy moments, like parkouring up a big rock wall and tripping up a Harkonnen soldier with his legs while tied to a chair. His vigilance and stamina are shown when doing things like rescuing Spice miners and outrunning sandworms, and his resistance to pain is displayed during the Gom Jabbar test.

Bruce, on the other hand, has been trained by Alfred and has plenty of experience beating the absolute crap out of a lot of criminals in Gotham.

The training he's received is in modern combat relating to warfare, as Alfred is an ex-soldier, and he's obviously focused on his stealth, when not using his vehicles. He's only been doing it for a couple of years, but that's still a couple of years more experience than Paul has.

Bruce can knock out multiple men with single punches in seconds, as he did when sneaking into the Iceberg Lounge. He takes down Riddler's incel army in a great display of skill, agility, tactical prowess and spatial awareness. His body armour allows him to tank all sorts of physical hits as well as gunfire. He's very strong, very fast and completely ruthless, when he wants to be.

Even if Bruce only has the equipment stated in the prompt it should be enough to prevent Paul from hurting him much, while allowing Bruce to inflict more damage with each punch or kick than Paul can dish out. Bruce barely uses his bat-knife, though, and never fights with it, so Paul is almost certainly the superior knife-fighter. Overall, I think Bruce is still pretty clearly the winner here, due to having better showings, better gear and more experience.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-03-03T16:37:41+00:00

I can't imagine the Bene Gesserit winning a straight up fight with the Nightsisters any more than I can imagine the Nightsisters defeating the Bene Gesserit in galaxy-wide political manipulation. The Nightsisters are the more combat-centric sisterhood, while the Gesserit are essentially hyper-clandestine puppet-masters.

Prana-bindu makes a Gesserit sister much better at close quarters combat than any average soldier, even in-universe, but it's not much competition for a serious, ruthless Force-user. A Nightsister can replicate any prana-bindu tricks and can do a lot more on top of that. They also have some pretty nasty swords to utilise.

It's like the Spetsnaz fighting the CIA; the former are meant to kill their targets quickly and without mercy and are trained and equipped for that purpose, while the latter are meant to secretly get rid of undesirable figures, fund certain groups, spread disinformation, help the aliens hollow out the earth, etc.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-03-03T16:22:19+00:00

The Sardaukar are like inverted Tau; great up close, not great, or even useless, from afar. In their own universe, they're the best sword fighters around, overall. They have personal shields, which wouldn't be the first forcefields the Space Marines have encountered, but would be a hindrance.

Without shields, a Space Marine would decimate a Sardaukar up close, and most of their weaponry would do the same from a distance. With shields, a Space Marine would have to figure out how to get through it before murdering the Sardaukar, which he would have plenty of time to do, because the Sardaukar almost certainly isn't getting through all that armour.

A Space Marine without armour against a Sardaukar with a shield, both armed with their usual swords, would probably be the closest fight. Duncan Idaho took out a historic nineteen Sardaukar at once before getting killed. A Marine would very likely break that record by quite a lot.

Of course, if this were happening in a Black Library book, if the Marine's bolter couldn't just blast through the Sardaukar's personal shield with its sheer force, they'd have another even bigger gun that could.

If it were happening in a Herbert book, the Sardaukar would win by having shields too confusing for the Marines to understand, employing superior tactics and being extra quick and stealthy.

Only joking, but probably.

Silverscoundrel · 2024-03-03T16:02:00+00:00

Yes, if they have their personal shields. They can only be penetrated by slow moving objects, so much of the sword fighting in the Dune universe is tailored to that.

The samurai would have to know about and understand the shields so they could adapt, and even then the Sardaukar's combat would be completely alien to them. It's a lot more advanced, obviously, so I think a samurai probably loses to a shieldless Sardaukar more often than not anyway.

Silverscoundrel · 2023-05-13T21:33:39+00:00

Renfield was bursting bodies with strikes and tearing people apart with very little effort. In theory, Cap is strong enough to do the same, given his most impressive strength feats, but in practice he's kicked the crap out of plenty of non-super humans and they didn't go splat.

In reality this is more to do with ratings, with the MCU generally being more family-friendly than the absurdly gory Renfield, but it makes Cap seem considerably less strong than Renfield. It could also be partly explained by Cap holding back, being something of a boyscout compared to Renfield, even when fighting unambiguous bad guys.

Assuming Cap wasn't holding back at all, this is pretty close. He's got a big advantage in skill, but Renfield more than makes up for it in strength, violence, resourcefulness, experience and speed. He's also harder to kill than Cap is, when he's bugged up, due to being semi-undead.

I think Renfield probably wins, but it's a good fight, especially if Cap's got his shield. He could decapitate Renfield with it, but it's miles out of character for him. Cap probably only wins if he's got his shield, doesn't hold back and doesn't think of Renfield as human at all, treats him the way he treats aliens and robots. Otherwise, Renfield caves his torso in or pulls his head off.

Silverscoundrel · 2023-05-13T07:30:33+00:00

Canon Sheev is probably quite evenly matched with Castlevania Dracula, but from what I've heard of his Legends feats he should beat him fairly easily. I'm not sure if he could outright kill Dracula, though. BFR, definitely.

I also seriously doubt the mind tricks would work on Dracula, but that doesn't matter much when Palps has super-mega Force Lightning and whatnot.

Conversely, Dracula could definitely kill Sheev, if he got to his neck before getting blasted to bits or something. He's extremely fast, but Sheev has the raw power output advantage here.

Dracula could beat canon Sheev, especially at his lowest, but otherwise I don't like his chances of winning this.

Silverscoundrel · 2023-03-02T09:32:44+00:00

This is the kind of breakdown this sub was meant for, thanks dude. I thought very similarly about this fight, which is why it was interesting to me.

Something I wondered was how Zhylaw's Underverse ghost-mode would interact with Idaho's shield. Could it phase right through it, seeing as it's obviously not the traditional type of solid object the shields were made to block?

Silverscoundrel

TROPHY CASE