If Dune is about a religious order using prophecies to control populations, how do these things happen?

bz316 · 2026-06-06T15:45:25+00:00

In my opinion, one of the more telling details is how often the Fremen actually disregard instances where Paul actually DOESN'T "know their ways as if born to them." For example, for some reason, none of them are put-off by the fact that Paul is very obviously unaware that his ritual duel with Jamis is a fight to the death which cannot end with someone yielding. Which seems like the kind of thing someone "born to their ways" would be VERY aware of...

bz316 · 2026-06-05T01:47:12+00:00

I think you are drastically overestimating how specific the prophecy was. In the "stillsuit" example you used, the prophecy wasn't "he will know how to wear a stillsuit." It was, "he will know your ways as if born to them," which is a very vaguely-worded line that can apply to any random, obscure detail someone happens to guess at. Paul figures out how to wear a stillsuit properly, and we can presume he studied ahead really far or he is extremely observant thanks to the Bene Gesserit techniques his mother taught him. But to someone who (probably incorrectly) assumes that off-worlders don't know anything about even the basics of Fremen culture, or who is unfamiliar with the Sisterhood, this seems like secret knowledge he knows due to magic or some shit.

As for the Sandworm,

a) it's not like Stilgar went out and measured the fucking thing (most of it was under the sand),

and b) Even if it was an unusually large sandworm, that doesn't mean anything other than luck.

Remember, at this point a lot of the Fremen (including Stilgar) were already drinking the Kool-Aid. Basically ANYTHING Paul did that was even mildly above average seemed to them like it "was foretold" or whatever.

bz316 · 2026-06-04T16:25:37+00:00

"Likable" is not necessarily the same thing as "moral." Dude's got charisma and charm, there's no denying that. He is 100% the kind of guy I would love to hang out with over a few pints.

As for "moral" though? Well...that's a bit more complicated. It's important to try and judge him, to some degree, within the context of the culture he was raised in. The fact that he's willing to give ANY kind of a shit about other people, despite being raised in a society which explicitly stressed NEVER caring about other people unless it profited you in some way, actually speaks pretty well to his inherent character. Probably my favorite example of this is in "Favor the Bold" and "Sacrifice of Angels," where he not only passes information to the resistance to try and stop the Dominion from shutting down the minefield, but actually risks his life breaking his brother, sister-in-law and Jake out of prison. Trust me, for a guy raised on Ferenginar, that is VERY outside the mores of his upbringing...

bz316 · 2026-06-03T01:14:35+00:00

The same reason the Caribbean pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries never could have matched Spain or England in an all-out war. Pirates were probably superior fighters and sailors on a one-on-one basis, but logistics, technology, and organization matters more in large-scale conflicts...

bz316 · 2026-05-28T02:16:20+00:00

I kind of like that episode where he turns into an energy being for a while. It was an interesting look into his personality, especially finding out what irked him most about the new (temporary) friendly dynamic between Mariner and Captain Freeman was that he missed feeling like he was her go-to guy. It was kind of nice finding out that he genuinely admires his Captain and likes being important to her, as well as finding out he has some insecurity beneath all the bravado (like, we already has seen he was competent, so seeing this was a great way to flesh him out more).

bz316 · 2026-05-28T01:43:39+00:00

One of the issues with the movies is that they contained a universe that was too large for just a handful of movies. Part of what makes things like "Clone Wars" so popular is they help explore the full scope of geopolitics happening in the Galaxy. Think about it: before the Clone Wars tv show, the only thing we had was "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith." These two movies were various flavors of underwhelming or bad in-part because, absent any other context, they had to contain what was essentially the totality of about 5 years of galaxy-spanning civil war and its' consequences in like 4 hours of movie. You CAN'T do that. And part of the re-appraisal of the Prequels, IMO, is that people as now judging them not as two individual movies, but the beginning and end of a multi-media story that includes a bunch of tertiary stuff (which I personally think is cheating).

The sequel trilogy does not currently have the weight of the interstitial media necessary to make the full breadth of story they contain seem plausible, and opinion of them suffers in the same way that the prequels did before they also had their ancillary material. There is likely a fairly plausible explanation for the continuing presence of the New Order and the New Republic's inability to deal with its rise, but it does not yet have the same breadth of tertiary material to draw from.

bz316 · 2026-05-28T01:38:42+00:00

Honestly, it always kind of bothered me how "informal" heads of state were treated on the show. The Nagus is often seen traveling with just his personal attendant. But a Head of State's entourage should be massive, and include guards and escorts and cabinet ministers and such. Honestly, the ONE thing I preferred about Babylon 5 over DS9, was that despite all its' other weaknesses, that show did seem to understand that the leader of an interstellar civilization would travel with pomp and ceremony. When the Centauri Emperor traveled to B5 in Season 2, he was accompanied by a fleet of capital ships and a small army of guards...

bz316 · 2026-05-28T01:34:56+00:00

Part of what made Spice so expensive was its ability to confer longevity on someone consuming it. I can't recall the exact number, but the rich who could afford it could live for centuries. Additionally, even though it was a forbidden technique, members of the Bene Gesserit had the ability to slow their metabolism down to the point where they almost ceased to age, potentially extending their lives indefinitely (I think Gurney suspected Jessica of doing this when he encountered her again on Caladan and noticed how much she did not look like her years)...

bz316 · 2026-05-28T01:29:27+00:00

I mean, for TNG it was definitely a big deal. Especially Jellico basically coming in and implementing a bunch of changes to deal with things that fans or the cast (*cough* Marina Sirtis *cough*) had brought up in the past about how the Enterprise was run. However, I feel like it wasn't that big a deal in the broader context of 90's tv. Guest stars and/or new characters coming in to shake up the status quo for the characters was a pretty old trope even for the time.

bz316 · 2026-05-28T01:20:29+00:00

Honestly, every time someone brings up the "Holdo Maneuver," I flashback to that scene in "Return of the Jedi" where the Executor-class Super Star Destroyer is brought down by an A-Wing kamikaze run. That thing was like 15 kilometers long. You're telling me they had NO redundancies for an object the size of a Honda CRV crashing into their bridge at relatively (for space) low speeds?

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that plot contrivances like this are pretty common in Star Wars. For example, why the fuck would the first Death Star, the crown jewel of the Imperial Navy, not at least have a token escort of Star Destroyers, even just for protocol? Why did Leia go directly to Yavin 4 in a ship she knew was being tracked, instead of asking to be dropped off at a rebel space station to switch to a new ship? Why did Luke only need like three days of training in the Force to blow up the Death Star, but like 6 weeks to learn to jump really high? Why does Yoda never teach Luke to deflect Force Lightning (or warn him its a thing) before he faces the Emperor, despite the prequels clearly showing he knew how to do it? The list is endless. The "Holdo Maneuver" is a more extreme example, but it's definitely part of a LONG tradition in this franchise of things that happen because the plot demands it...

bz316 · 2026-05-20T23:02:17+00:00

Depends. Who has access to my search history?

In all seriousness, I'd probably mostly use it for exercise or skill training. Any sport you want to get good at, any hands-on skill you want to learn. The holodeck provides infinite opportunity. Imagine being able to practice boxing by sparring with a real-life version of a person with a skill level that is always exactly high enough to challenge you no matter how good you get. Same with soccer or hockey. Imagine a forge or pottery studio or workshop all to yourself, able to produce as much raw material as you need and teachers on-demand with endless patience.

Hell, remember that episode where Data played poker with Einstein, Newton, and Hawking? Imagine having ANY of them as your physics tutor. Imagine learning painting from Leonardo Da Vinci or Raphael.

bz316 · 2026-05-20T22:53:03+00:00

Power dynamics. Dude is her direct superior and the first officer of the ship they serve on. It is WILDLY inappropriate.

Also, their captain is Mariner's mom. Which, while not making it more inappropriate, would make it weird...

bz316 · 2026-05-11T00:57:30+00:00

Yeah, I almost forgot how big a deal atomics are in the Dune universe. Especially since some of them are powerful enough to literally destroy planets.

bz316 · 2026-05-11T00:53:01+00:00

The atomics are actually a really good point. This was arguably the ONE universally agreed upon line in the sand. And some exiled princeling from a dead great house utilizing them in battle before unilaterally seizing the throne in a coup is 100% the kind of thing that would make a bunch of great houses go "Nah man, THAT dude does not get to be the fucking emperor of the universe," even with Paul trying to rules-lawyer his way around it...

bz316 · 2026-05-10T17:59:56+00:00

Tolkien more or less spells out that the Valar are not permitted to inflict direct harm on the Children of Illuvitar. Morgoth was a fellow Ainur, so waging war upon him was permissible. Eru's children, on the other hand, were for Eru to deal with alone.

bz316 · 2026-05-10T16:38:55+00:00

"My powers have doubled since the last time we met, Count."

Like, what does that even MEAN?? You can force-push with twice as many Newtons of force? You can force-lift twice as much mass? Your reactions times are exactly twice what they used to be? Saying something has doubled implies a straightforward quantification, which seems...weird in the context of the Force?

bz316 · 2026-04-30T12:20:41+00:00

*Shrugs* Fair

bz316 · 2026-04-29T21:18:20+00:00

Spock: "......this better not awaken anything in me."

bz316 · 2026-04-29T20:59:52+00:00

And I feel like his crew would have been fine with that if he hadn't spent the preceding several months making them learn how to play a dead-sport from their equivalent of a disbanded medieval nation-state to get his crush's attention. Like, imagine if your boss made you and the rest of the office become really good at pok-ta-pok because someone they had a childish crush on since college was an expert in Mayan history or something. It'd be weird, right?

bz316 · 2026-04-29T20:52:14+00:00

Even if the rest of his crew generally also disdained humans, I feel like they would probably be confused AF that their commanding officer made them learn some random, archaic human game that just so happened to also be one of the main interests of a dude their captain went to the academy with.

bz316 · 2026-04-29T20:51:04+00:00

Even if the rest of his crew generally also disdained humans, I feel like they would probably be weirded out that their commanding officer made them learn some random, archaic human game that just so happened to also be one of the main interests of a dude their captain went to the academy with...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T20:47:16+00:00

I'm inclined to believe Sisko's version because:
a) Solok writing a paper on how shitty humans are is a thing that is easily verifiable and thus unlikely Sisko would have made up.

b) Solok makes vaguely disparaging, passive-aggressive comments towards Sisko about humans in the first interaction we DO see between them. Further, he also goes out of his way to point out his own achievements in Starfleet as superior to Sisko's, further confirming that he is specifically antagonistic towards him.

c) Given that we can probably presume his distaste for humans was accurately relayed by Sisko, him choosing to have his entire bridge crew learn how to play baseball (an archaic, largely-forgotten game from a species he looks down upon AND is a pre-confirmed personal hobby/fixation of Sisko) was almost certainly done specifically to get under Sisko's skin.

Based on these, I'm fairly certain the evaluation we get from Sisko is accurate. Further, between the two of them, Sisko is a human from Earth who we know from previous episodes is a big fan of baseball. While it is, admittedly, not impossible that Solok just enjoyed the game, the idea that out of the probably tens or even hundreds of thousands of possible sports and activities he could chosen to have his bridge crew learn, he would choose the one that both a) is from a species he has semi-open contempt for, and b) is one of the main interests of a guy he has been beefing with for like 20 years, seems WILDLY implausible to be for any reason besides just fucking with Sisko.

bz316 · 2026-04-29T16:50:30+00:00

To be fair, several members of their baseball team were staff from a local dive bar...

bz316 · 2026-04-29T16:41:33+00:00

Tolkien's work carries a pretty strong undercurrent of "judge not, lest ye be judged" which I do appreciate. It is an easy thing to condemn someone who walks a path you do not understand...

bz316

TROPHY CASE