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Tertius Oculum posted:Yo can I just get an Arnold Palmer? It’s a Space Arnold Palmer though so it makes you a superhuman golfer that can perform amazing feats of Golf Math, the math one does with golf.
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# ? Feb 3, 2020 15:29 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 23:59 |
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:i don't mean to get all political, but i think it's interesting dune appeals to people with wildly different political views, while i've understood herbert to be pretty conservative or at least libertarian minded in a very pacific northwestern kind of way. i would probably guess it's due to the intensity of his vision, which is probably the most we can ask of a writer (along with being, like, not a lunatic) wasn't god emperor a big brother type of analogy?
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# ? Feb 3, 2020 15:35 |
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God Emperor is so weird. It blows my mind that it’s many people’s favorite entry. I admit the whole golden path thing went totally over my head at the end so that was a bit deflating, but Leto’s extemporizing gets so so so tiresome, especially when you know that it’s all sort of bland platitudes. It’s also real weird to have the book be almost entirely centered on the antagonist, and give short shrift to Siona. The balance was off.
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# ? Feb 3, 2020 15:42 |
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Jewmanji posted:God Emperor is so weird. It blows my mind that it’s many people’s favorite entry. I admit the whole golden path thing went totally over my head at the end so that was a bit deflating, but Leto’s extemporizing gets so so so tiresome, especially when you know that it’s all sort of bland platitudes. It’s also real weird to have the book be almost entirely centered on the antagonist, and give short shrift to Siona. The balance was off. By most literary measures God Emperor is not good, but it is weird, and genuine weirdness is about as uncommon in scifi as good writing.
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# ? Feb 3, 2020 23:55 |
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Honest Thief posted:wasn't god emperor a big brother type of analogy? he gives humanity the big daddy perfect god-king we always wanted for 10,000 years so we collectively get so sick of it that rejecting authoritarianism becomes etched into our genes sadly, he would probably have voted trump had he lived. you see the signs of chud brain rot in the later books, like a major character being a rabbi because judaism is so awesome it hasn't changed in 20,000 years his gender essentialism is mostly saved from being totally loathesome by the fact that he thinks women are better than men, but he's also only able to write exactly one female character and it shows when he tries to have multiple women as viewpoint characters Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Feb 4, 2020 |
# ? Feb 4, 2020 03:28 |
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Also the dude needed to stop trying to make Duncan Idaho happen. I think by the last books his relevance was he was immune to the antagonists magic gently caress powers or some poo poo. Like why is this nobody that never accomplished anything in thousands and thousands of years of clones still showing up in the future?
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# ? Feb 4, 2020 15:35 |
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If Herbert stayed alive long enough to finish the final book in the DUNE saga we would have learned that it was, after all, the story of one Duncan Idaho and the friends he made along the way.
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# ? Feb 4, 2020 15:41 |
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Hodgepodge posted:he gives humanity the big daddy perfect god-king we always wanted for 10,000 years so we collectively get so sick of it that rejecting authoritarianism becomes etched into our genes He also seemed to think that if male power fantasy characters existed, the result would be a complete horrorshow for both themselves and everybody else (Paul, Leto II.) At least until you get to the later books where Miles Teg is awesome at everything and dies and is brought back to do more cool poo poo, I think. sean10mm fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Feb 4, 2020 |
# ? Feb 4, 2020 16:55 |
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Miles Teg's only flaw is that he has no flaws.
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# ? Feb 4, 2020 17:10 |
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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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Mulva posted:Also the dude needed to stop trying to make Duncan Idaho happen. It's been years and years since I read em, but don't the later books imply that the Tleilaxu were mucking about with the thousands of years worth of clone cells they had from him? Or is that only in the KJA abominations? I do like how mundane Idaho is. He's just a chill dude, and every godlike superhuman needs a chill dude to be chill with.
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# ? Feb 4, 2020 18:21 |
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Mulva posted:Also the dude needed to stop trying to make Duncan Idaho happen. Aside from being a measuring stick for how much things have changed between books, the joke with the character is that he's supposedly a one-of-a-kind bad rear end knife fighter and that fact is never relevant. In Dune he's gets to be cool for a hot second before being shot. In Messiah, he's only useful to anyone because Paul liked the guy when he was alive the first time. In Children, he provokes a fight, which would be the thing he's good at, only to purposefully get himself killed to provoke a political situation. In the later books, he's useful primarily because he's been cloned enough that he's become a well understood template human. He's supposedly this exemplar of human skill but he is always someone else's tool. Edit: I probably should have spoilered this. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Feb 4, 2020 |
# ? Feb 4, 2020 18:26 |
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I liked the part of the book where Teg goes super saiyan then spends like eight hours at an all you can eat buffet because calories exist and he burned a million of them
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# ? Feb 4, 2020 20:49 |
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RBA Starblade posted:I liked the part of the book where Teg goes super saiyan then spends like eight hours at an all you can eat buffet because calories exist and he burned a million of them Was that the part where like while he's there some dude's babbling to him for hours about his new plant house and how it's taking too long to grow and then it ends with him just getting sick of everyone and massacring everyone?
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# ? Feb 4, 2020 20:59 |
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Neo Rasa posted:Was that the part where like while he's there some dude's babbling to him for hours about his new plant house and how it's taking too long to grow and then it ends with him just getting sick of everyone and massacring everyone? I don't remember that but I wouldn't be surprised
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# ? Feb 4, 2020 21:03 |
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While the books certainly convey the impression that Frank Herbert's mind was disintegrating from heavy drug use, and that assumption would be reasonable for a new age sci-fi author who gained acclaim in the late 60s and then coasted on it through the 70s and 80s, I can't find any evidence for that supposition. In fact Frank Herbert didn't start making real money off of Dune until the '70s. He wrote something like 20 novels over his career and some of them were apparently pretty bad. Oh well!
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# ? Feb 4, 2020 22:53 |
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Arglebargle III posted:While the books certainly convey the impression that Frank Herbert's mind was disintegrating from heavy drug use, and that assumption would be reasonable for a new age sci-fi author who gained acclaim in the late 60s and then coasted on it through the 70s and 80s, I can't find any evidence for that supposition. In fact Frank Herbert didn't start making real money off of Dune until the '70s. He wrote something like 20 novels over his career and some of them were apparently pretty bad. The Godmakers is a fascinating early work of his because its basically "what if Dune, except written in the style of Asimov's kid books."
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# ? Feb 4, 2020 23:18 |
Hodgepodge posted:he gives humanity the big daddy perfect god-king we always wanted for 10,000 years so we collectively get so sick of it that rejecting authoritarianism becomes etched into our genes
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 10:26 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:It's been years and years since I read em, but don't the later books imply that the Tleilaxu were mucking about with the thousands of years worth of clone cells they had from him? Or is that only in the KJA abominations? Yeah the Duncan in Heretics and Chapterhouse is supposed to be ghola made of the cells of all the other Duncans.
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 15:01 |
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I never could get into anything after the first book.
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 19:32 |
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Spun Dog posted:I never could get into anything after the first book. My vague recollection is that the style of the books changed a lot after the first one, but it's been forever since I've read any of them but the first one. I think my reaction to the sequels was that they were OK time wasters but not on par with the first one. e: Apparently the stuff with his kid's name on it is all garbage for morons but I never read any of it.
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 19:58 |
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I think I would recommend Messiah to anyone who really enjoyed Dune. If only because the Tleilaxu are so neat. It’s also by far the shortest in the series and the most direct sequel. And if you really enjoyed Messiah I’d recommend Children, but after that you’re on your own.
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 20:01 |
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Sorry, double post
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 20:01 |
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Messiah is good if you liked Paul's metaphysical train of thought in the original Dune, because there's like twice as much of it and in a shorter book.
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 20:06 |
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Yeah, Messiah is barely even a novel - more of a connecting story between Dune and Children. It's a good quick read but doesn't function well on its own. Children is a great third act but you can see the wheels coming off the wagon (especially in Alia's bits).
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 20:20 |
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I see the first two books as pretty much equal in quality, with a slow drop-off afterwards that leads to a nose-dive when the Sons of Herbert take over. The first book, along with many other plots, is about Paul's ascension into godhood through spice, religion and prescience. What is god, and can man understand or even become him? The second book is a mirror of the first, but in the complete opposite direction. How does one go about killing an omnipotent god?
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 20:39 |
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Messiah is where we get most of the cool stuff on prescience, religious fanatacism, and Paul losing control of the forces he unleashes. Which is what Herbert and his fans tend to describe as "the point" of Dune. Except its not in Dune. Its in Messiah. If you hear about this things and only read Dune you're gonna be dissapointed. It's like telling a joke without the punchline.
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 21:52 |
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The "prescient trap" is a pretty clever way of locking Paul down.
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 22:13 |
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Messiah is where we get most of the cool stuff on prescience, religious fanatacism, and Paul losing control of the forces he unleashes. Which is what Herbert and his fans tend to describe as "the point" of Dune. That’s not true. There’s probably a half dozen times in Dune where the jihad is invoked and Paul realizes he’s powerless to stop it. Messiah definitely addresses it more head on, but it’s mentioned as early as Paul’s first meeting with Stilgar in Sietch Tabr
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 22:24 |
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Zurui posted:Yeah, Messiah is barely even a novel - more of a connecting story between Dune and Children. It's a good quick read but doesn't function well on its own. Children is a great third act but you can see the wheels coming off the wagon (especially in Alia's bits). Yup. I basically consider Dune to be a trilogy, the rest of the books are sorta separate. Messiah is such a great followup to Dune, Herbert dealt with the sci-fi problem of what you do with an omnipotent hero in a fun way that I haven't seen matched in any other series.
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 23:12 |
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Jewmanji posted:That’s not true. There’s probably a half dozen times in Dune where the jihad is invoked and Paul realizes he’s powerless to stop it. Messiah definitely addresses it more head on, but it’s mentioned as early as Paul’s first meeting with Stilgar in Sietch Tabr 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. Schwarzwald posted:Aside from being a measuring stick for how much things have changed between books, the joke with the character is that he's supposedly a one-of-a-kind bad rear end knife fighter and that fact is never relevant. In Dune he's gets to be cool for a hot second before being shot. In Messiah, he's only useful to anyone because Paul liked the guy when he was alive the first time. In Children, he provokes a fight, which would be the thing he's good at, only to purposefully get himself killed to provoke a political situation. In the later books, he's useful primarily because he's been cloned enough that he's become a well understood template human. I just remembered that Idaho tries to take down Moneo, and this 60 year old bureaucrat completely clowns on him without breaking a sweat.
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 23:14 |
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Didn't Herbert basically write Dune and Messiah together?
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# ? Feb 5, 2020 23:56 |
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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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I'm skeptical that even the second half of this movie will get made, given Blade Runner's performance. The first half will likely be a epic and beautiful bomb, leaving people to wonder what could have been. It'll be Jorodowsky's Dune all over again. That said, I'm probably more interested in seeing Dune:Messiah adapted to the big screen than the first novel. Face dancers, stone burners, the Tleilax, and omnipotent intrigue all backdropped by an unstoppable holy war. It takes the themes of the original, turns it on it's head and somehow amplifies the crazy all the way to 11. e: Gholas. TheOmegaWalrus fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Feb 6, 2020 |
# ? Feb 6, 2020 00:20 |
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TheOmegaWalrus posted:I'm skeptical that even the second half of this movie will get made, given Blade Runner's performance. The first half will likely be a epic and beautiful bomb, leaving people to wonder what could have been. It'll be Jorodowsky's Dune all over again. I'm not that much more sanguine than you, but I do think it stands a better chance than Blade Runner because of the ensemble cast, and the fact that seeing the film Dune won't require any familiarity with the story. BR2049 is a sequel to a cult film that preceded it by 35 years. Dune also presents as an epic, optimistic fantasy tale, which is more palatable than a dreary, cynical detective film. I agree with you about Messiah though. As long as Dune is going to be split into 2 films, Messiah would make a great third act.
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# ? Feb 6, 2020 00:43 |
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Emperor: Battle for Dune is clearly the best adaptation of the material. I don't even know if I'm kidding.
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# ? Feb 6, 2020 01:09 |
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Failson posted:Emperor: Battle for Dune is clearly the best adaptation of the material. It really is legit good, the design of the Ordos folks is great too!
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# ? Feb 6, 2020 01:17 |
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I was just browsing a Dune wiki and stumbled on what I guess is an unmedicated schizophrenic who wants to invoke Templar law and take over the franchise so he can save it. https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Templars:_Predecessors_to_the_Zensunni quote:
on another page https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Earth/DE quote:<Literally; I, Robin Harrison Hart, took over the DUNE franchise, honorably with intentions to make it better. It is copyrighted to Templar laws, so it can't be touched by their copyright issues. We will be polite, and we won't promise more than that.> Rando fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Feb 6, 2020 |
# ? Feb 6, 2020 02:44 |
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Jewmanji posted:Dune also presents as an epic, optimistic fantasy tale, which is more palatable than a dreary, cynical detective film. I think it stands a better chance than BR2049, but Villeneuve is a very restrained and considered director regardless of the content. I'm very sure it'll be good, but can 100% see a mass audience rejecting it as too slow or pretentious or not fun enough or whatever. Dune has a ton of marketable qualities based on the story alone. There's all the used future and space magic poo poo Star Wars copied, and there are Houses like in Game of Thrones, and superhuman martial arts stuff like The Matrix, and Poe Dameron and Khal Drogo and Thanos and Drax and Zendaya are all there...like, there's a garbage version of this story created by JJ Abrams that'd probably do pretty well. But we're getting the Villeneuve version, so it'll be beautiful and well-made and take the themes and characters seriously and actually be cinematic, and also maybe nobody will care and it'll be a $200M flop. ...I'm realizing how thoroughly the post-2016 political situation has crushed my dreams and made me cynical. I want to believe but reality keeps disappointing me.
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# ? Feb 6, 2020 02:44 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 23:59 |
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Is there a good Dune or Dune-like Tabletop RPG?
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# ? Feb 6, 2020 03:07 |