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Ghost Leviathan posted:Feels like this article is missing a lot of things; that Frank Herbert's politics were a lot more idiosyncratic, that his inspirations for Dune are a lot more specific than just general Islam and Middle Eastern history, and seems to have only seen the movie and maybe read the first book, not looked at the sequels and how they deal with it. At least they do get that Paul is both TE Lawrence and the Prophet Muhammed in his various acts and roles.
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Jan 3, 2022 22:50
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Halloween Jack posted:I can't get past how badly written it is. It feels like a term paper padded to meet the minimum length. I don't know why you would expect any different in the 2020s.
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Jan 3, 2022 23:20
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In the past year or so I've noticed a huge spike in literally sophomoric writing from people who are supposed to be professional academics, journalists, and/or people who have a writing job because they can write. If you're rich enough, The Atlantic will publish your dumbest nephew.
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Jan 3, 2022 23:40
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vessbot posted:Hi, thread joiner here. I only read the first book and saw the new movie. I really enjoyed the conversation from a few dozen pages back about the motivations behind the fief transfer. I actually got the sense that things had changed. All the monumental structures on Arrakis seemed really old, even the abandoned terraforming station. It seemed like this society was coasting on very old accomplishments.
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Jan 4, 2022 00:13
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Arglebargle III posted:I actually got the sense that things had changed. All the monumental structures on Arrakis seemed really old, even the abandoned terraforming station. It seemed like this society was coasting on very old accomplishments. There was a purposeful effort to show how humanity was stagnating through the architecure shown throughout the movie. My favorite example is how on Caladan at points you can see water damage/seepage on some of the walls
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Jan 4, 2022 01:29
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Someone described it as walking around inside their own tombs, which I thought was a great insight.
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Jan 4, 2022 01:38
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Halloween Jack posted:In the past year or so I've noticed a huge spike in literally sophomoric writing from people who are supposed to be professional academics, journalists, and/or people who have a writing job because they can write. If you're rich enough, The Atlantic will publish your dumbest nephew. At one point I aspired to be published in the Atlantic, then I realised Caitlin Flanagan is a tenured writer there and that I needed to rethink my goals.
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Jan 4, 2022 02:05
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Halloween Jack posted:In the past year or so I've noticed a huge spike in literally sophomoric writing from people who are supposed to be professional academics, journalists, and/or people who have a writing job because they can write. If you're rich enough, The Atlantic will publish your dumbest nephew. The only people who've been allowed to become journalists have been failchildren ever since it started being all about unpaid internships.
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Jan 4, 2022 03:45
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Odoyle posted:I remember visiting this website in the before times https://web.archive.org/web/20030220143317/http://www.rendezvouswithrama.com/ This is a pro-click to waste a few minutes. They had Moebius on board with Rama!?! 
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Jan 4, 2022 05:41
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vessbot posted:Hi, thread joiner here. I only read the first book and saw the new movie. I really enjoyed the conversation from a few dozen pages back about the motivations behind the fief transfer. That’s funny, I’ve always thought the setting of dune, with its absurd economics and warfare, seemed very small. Notionally there are trillions of people or whatever, but they lose a war to a couple thousand mega ninjas. Incidentally that’s also how I feel about lotr, where the paucity of economics makes the whole thing obviously fake. It’s confusing to me that these two books are so famous for their “world building”
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Jan 4, 2022 06:27
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DeimosRising posted:That’s funny, I’ve always thought the setting of dune, with its absurd economics and warfare, seemed very small. Notionally there are trillions of people or whatever, but they lose a war to a couple thousand mega ninjas. Incidentally that’s also how I feel about lotr, where the paucity of economics makes the whole thing obviously fake. It’s confusing to me that these two books are so famous for their “world building” All this poetry and linguistic nuance is boring! It needs more people sitting around discussing bond interest rates and tariffs!
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Jan 4, 2022 07:11
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DeimosRising posted:That’s funny, I’ve always thought the setting of dune, with its absurd economics and warfare, seemed very small. Notionally there are trillions of people or whatever, but they lose a war to a couple thousand mega ninjas. Incidentally that’s also how I feel about lotr, where the paucity of economics makes the whole thing obviously fake. It’s confusing to me that these two books are so famous for their “world building”
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Jan 4, 2022 07:17
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sebmojo posted:Someone described it as walking around inside their own tombs, which I thought was a great insight. I love this
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Jan 4, 2022 07:22
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Buttchocks posted:All this poetry and linguistic nuance is boring! It needs more people sitting around discussing bond interest rates and tariffs! Another thing the prequel trilogy doesn't get enough credit for!
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Jan 4, 2022 08:26
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DeimosRising posted:That’s funny, I’ve always thought the setting of dune, with its absurd economics and warfare, seemed very small. Notionally there are trillions of people or whatever, but they lose a war to a couple thousand mega ninjas. I'm not a history buff but numerical superiority seems to only be important when fighting another army and not when you occupy stuff. One single mega ninja would be enough to intimidate hundreds of people into obedience, that's how conquering stuff works.
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Jan 4, 2022 10:51
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DeimosRising posted:That’s funny, I’ve always thought the setting of dune, with its absurd economics and warfare, seemed very small. Notionally there are trillions of people or whatever, but they lose a war to a couple thousand mega ninjas. Incidentally that’s also how I feel about lotr, where the paucity of economics makes the whole thing obviously fake. It’s confusing to me that these two books are so famous for their “world building” That's kinda on purpose, I'm pretty sure. Like, the ranks and organisation of the noble houses is deliberately meant to emulate feudal lords with their fiefdoms rather than planetary civilisations, and probably emphasising how the rulers are still basically playing war games with these people with little regard for their wellbeing. Also that warfare between houses is deliberately limited and almost ritualised, with the extremely high prices the Guild charges meant to be a bottleneck for how large-scale warfare can get, also emphasising how surprising it is that the Harkonnens AND the Emperor go all in on crushing the Atreides, spending the equivalent of decades of GDP on it. Grendels Dad posted:I'm not a history buff but numerical superiority seems to only be important when fighting another army and not when you occupy stuff. One single mega ninja would be enough to intimidate hundreds of people into obedience, that's how conquering stuff works. Also yeah, having sheer numbers can be helpful but a lot about advanced warfare is force multiplication, and merely throwing bodies at a problem only gets you so far. Like, the whole reason the Emperor is afraid of the Atreides is because they have troops who are well trained and loyal, almost as much as his own personal death troops, and not needing an entire nightmare prison planet to train them on. While the Fremen have massive numbers on Dune, lots of experience and a huge home turf advantage.
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Jan 4, 2022 13:07
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Grendels Dad posted:I'm not a history buff but numerical superiority seems to only be important when fighting another army and not when you occupy stuff. One single mega ninja would be enough to intimidate hundreds of people into obedience, that's how conquering stuff works. That's sorta how colonialism worked, substitute "has a Maxim gun" and/or "smallpox killed 90% of the population first" for mega ninjas and mentats and poo poo..
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Jan 4, 2022 13:07
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Also if you don't gently caress too hard with their day-to-day life most people in the galaxy won't give a poo poo if Paul's the new emperor. "Hey, there's a new emperor and we worship him and his name is Muad'Dib so he's also your god now expect updated pictures on money in the next decade or so." "Uh, oh okay thanks. Tell Maude we say hi."
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Jan 4, 2022 13:36
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The most important part of colonialism, if you're looking to retain and exploit the natives (rather than wipe them out), is to pick out about 10% of them and give them privileges. They will then value those privaliges very strongly. They'll be terrified that if they step out of line or go against your will that they'll be cast back down. At that point, you don't even need to beat and brutalize that 10% anymore, beyond one or two people year to prove their fears can still come true. They will do absolutely anything to please you, including helping you beat and brutalize the other 90%. The principle has been applied everywhere on earth and has always worked. It even still works when the privilege is as meagre as "we'll gas you last".
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Jan 4, 2022 13:59
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Arglebargle III posted:I actually got the sense that things had changed. All the monumental structures on Arrakis seemed really old, even the abandoned terraforming station. It seemed like this society was coasting on very old accomplishments. Obviously everything is about to change as we join the story, but I'm about the setting going in.
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Jan 4, 2022 14:39
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Baron von Eevl posted:Also if you don't gently caress too hard with their day-to-day life most people in the galaxy won't give a poo poo if Paul's the new emperor. Sure, but Paul's Jihad kills billions. And this is in a society that was already so tense that everyone has nukes and even the Actual Emperor with an army of the Baddest Dudes had to go through back channels to get poo poo done for fear of reprisal. I think the galaxy is poised to give extreme amounts of poo poo, but the Fremen just roll over them. "Hey, remember when you were sort of afraid the Sardaukar would come to your planet and rough you up if you stepped out of line? Well here are the people who ate the Sardaukar for lunch, and they are religiously pissed at you and your entire civilization. You can fight them and die or we can tell the guild to stop serving your planet and vanish out of human society forever. Or surrender, I guess. No one ever picks that one, but Muad'Dib tells us to put it in anyway, maybe as an insult we think? Such a cool guy."
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Jan 4, 2022 14:54
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DeimosRising posted:That’s funny, I’ve always thought the setting of dune, with its absurd economics and warfare, seemed very small. Notionally there are trillions of people or whatever, but they lose a war to a couple thousand mega ninjas. Incidentally that’s also how I feel about lotr, where the paucity of economics makes the whole thing obviously fake. It’s confusing to me that these two books are so famous for their “world building” Some of this is probably the LOTR movies' fault. In the books, economics is not exactly front and center, but things like farms and roads exist. On film, the dominant human empire is one (1) city of extreme density plopped in the middle of what seems to be thousands of square miles of untouched grassland. But really this is endemic. Star Wars is another example - it's a galaxy of billions of stars, most of which are said to have inhabited planets. The Sith lord who wants to conquer the galaxy orders up a little over a million clone soldiers. Typically a ratio of one solider per thousand planets is considered a little thin, but who am I to judge. It would have been much more realistic to say that in fact for Goldilocks zone reasons (or whatever) maybe there really are only some thousands of inhabited planets. Really this would be the way to go for most galaxy-scale space opera SF, although few do it. At some point though, I'm willing to just say that the worldbuilding Dune does is not really about logistical minutiae, it's about weird people taking huge amounts of drugs and doing interesting things. Good enough.
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Jan 4, 2022 15:17
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I think the way the empire in Star Wars is spread really thin and couldn't exert direct control over every planet is one of the things that makes the universe interesting. The best stories in Star Wars to me have always been those that make it clear that the state (whichever one it is at the time) is exceptionally weak, and most people simply do not care who's running things really. Space fascism endures because most people are broke and most planets are really provincial.
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Jan 4, 2022 17:08
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Shanty posted:Sure, but Paul's Jihad kills billions. And this is in a society that was already so tense that everyone has nukes and even the Actual Emperor with an army of the Baddest Dudes had to go through back channels to get poo poo done for fear of reprisal. I think the galaxy is poised to give extreme amounts of poo poo, but the Fremen just roll over them. I can't remember if it was explicitly mentioned, but I always assumed that the Fremens just went planet to planet and fought them one at a time, not all at once since Paul basically having the Spacing Guild under his thumb. No fear of reprisal if they literally can't get to you. It's not like people could do anything besides wait their turn to get rocked. And some planets did use
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Jan 4, 2022 18:09
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Cognac McCarthy posted:I think the way the empire in Star Wars is spread really thin and couldn't exert direct control over every planet is one of the things that makes the universe interesting. The best stories in Star Wars to me have always been those that make it clear that the state (whichever one it is at the time) is exceptionally weak, and most people simply do not care who's running things really. Space fascism endures because most people are broke and most planets are really provincial. Yeah in Star Wars it’s quite obvious that the central governments are very weak, and the shift from the republic to empire is minor both because of their ideological coherence, and because most people aren’t even sure things like Jedi and stormtroopers exist. They’ll never see one. Captain von Trapp posted:Some of this is probably the LOTR movies' fault. In the books, economics is not exactly front and center, but things like farms and roads exist. On film, the dominant human empire is one (1) city of extreme density plopped in the middle of what seems to be thousands of square miles of untouched grassland. The movies are definitely “worse” in that sense, but the books are pretty sparse too. I don’t actually think that’s a problem - despite the way his fans have taken them, those books aren’t really about “world building”. They’re largely modeled on premodern genres that don’t emphasis realism or the culture and economics of the lower classes at all. It’s just always been weird to me that people glommed on to it as some kind of travelogue of a functional alternate reality. Buttchocks posted:All this poetry and linguistic nuance is boring! It needs more people sitting around discussing bond interest rates and tariffs! Idk what you’re talking about I didn’t say it was bad. I also don’t think you know what economics are Shanty posted:Sure, but Paul's Jihad kills billions. And this is in a society that was already so tense that everyone has nukes and even the Actual Emperor with an army of the Baddest Dudes had to go through back channels to get poo poo done for fear of reprisal. I think the galaxy is poised to give extreme amounts of poo poo, but the Fremen just roll over them. Right, they explicitly DON’T fight a ritualized war of small numbers and limited rules of engagement. They’re not exploiting a technologically inferior population by replacing and co-opting their ruling classes. They fight a gigantic scale war of conquest and extermination with billions of casualties apparently by being good at knives, mostly. It’s deeply silly, but unfortunately not funny.
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Jan 5, 2022 00:17
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How many inhabited worlds are there in this universe? Billions could be genocide or it could be small battles against house armies on hundreds of thousands of worlds.
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Jan 5, 2022 05:10
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The key thing about the Imperium is that it's very unstable. It depends entirely on the extraction and distribution of Spice, from the nobles using it to live long to the people using it to expand their mind powers to the Guild using it so that hyperspace travel can exist. There's sort of a sense that something had to give eventually, but at the same time nobody wanted to disturb the order of things because they have too much to lose. (Though the Atreides were slowly building support and influence that could have been used against the Emperor- and so, ironically, the Emperor trying to squelch that is what sets this whole chain of events in motion.)
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Jan 5, 2022 10:12
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The Fremen aren't just using knives. A big point is that Paul explicitly moves the Imperial seat of power to Arrakis, cutting out the middleman, and emphasising that he has the galaxy by the balls because he controls the source of the magical space cocaine that the entire society needs to function.
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Jan 5, 2022 12:23
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Baron von Eevl posted:How many inhabited worlds are there in this universe? Billions could be genocide or it could be small battles against house armies on hundreds of thousands of worlds. I think the only way a 13 year jihad with a few million Fremen at most gets to those numbers is if only a tiny fraction of worlds openly rebelled and they got very nuked to oblivion. The Dune universe is small enough that each planet is owned by a ruling family who has a seat in the landsraad and the landsraad is small enough that a regular non-mentaty human can more or less keep track of who is in it.
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Jan 5, 2022 12:26
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Alchenar posted:I think the only way a 13 year jihad with a few million Fremen at most gets to those numbers is if only a tiny fraction of worlds openly rebelled and they got very nuked to oblivion. IIRC that's pretty much what happened, the Fremen legions are explicitly noticed to have flat out glassed some planets.
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Jan 5, 2022 12:40
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Ghost Leviathan posted:IIRC that's pretty much what happened, the Fremen legions are explicitly noticed to have flat out glassed some planets. I don't think there are more than a few offhand sentences about it in the original trilogy. The point is it makes more sense to see the Jihad as more a series of hyper-brutal put-downs of isolated rebellions, rather than a reconquista that spread outwards from Arrakis and 40k style had to pacify every single planet in its way.
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Jan 5, 2022 12:51
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Alchenar posted:I don't think there are more than a few offhand sentences about it in the original trilogy. The point is it makes more sense to see the Jihad as more a series of hyper-brutal put-downs of isolated rebellions, rather than a reconquista that spread outwards from Arrakis and 40k style had to pacify every single planet in its way. Oh yeah, iirc the point is that the Emperor was quite tolerant of religion and culture diversity so long as people paid their taxes and random isolated monasteries weren't causing him any trouble, while the Fremen could not be talked out of brutally suppressing anything going against the word of Muad'Dib.
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Jan 5, 2022 13:00
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Buttchocks posted:All this poetry and linguistic nuance is boring! It needs more people sitting around discussing bond interest rates and tariffs! For example, as ASOIAF goes on, people start talking more and more about food shortages. They had a series of civil wars, then less than 20 years of peace before another civil war, and armies mostly just eat and do nothing productive. Whereas in LOTR, it's hard to imagine elves farming at all.
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Jan 5, 2022 16:44
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Halloween Jack posted:Including the social realism of economics in a setting doesn't have to mean boring conference room scenes. Well in the books there’s a lot more farming than in the movies. Remember The battle of the Pellenor Gields in the last movie where the Rohirrim fight the Elephants on a big empty plain? In the book that takes place on a massive sprawl of farm land with them having to maneuver around walls and stuff. Or that the dark and lava’y parts of Mordor are fed by huge slave plantations to the south. And depopulation caused by famine and plague are recent events in-universe.
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Jan 5, 2022 19:18
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Halloween Jack posted:Whereas in LOTR, it's hard to imagine elves farming at all. Now that you mention it, Bilbo's exploitation of the maritime trading network supplying human-produced food and wine to the elves is a key plot point in the Hobbit.
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Jan 5, 2022 23:47
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Tolkien finished his work. Gurm kept writing food descriptions until he got hungry then went to the kitchen after book 5 and never came back.
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Jan 7, 2022 08:58
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Captain von Trapp posted:Now that you mention it, Bilbo's exploitation of the maritime trading network supplying human-produced food and wine to the elves is a key plot point in the Hobbit. Riparian, not maritime. How embarrassing for you
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Jan 7, 2022 14:58
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sebmojo posted:Someone described it as walking around inside their own tombs, which I thought was a great insight. Whoever posted that must be wise, brave, and handsome.
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Jan 8, 2022 21:11
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whenever I see someone eat with their hands (or do it myself) I think about Skarsgard in this movie just horkin away like what's his face from Lord of the rings
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Jan 9, 2022 03:36
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I wish I could enjoy anything as much as the Baron enjoys mackin on fried spice balls or sandworm meat or whatever with his mortal enemy paralyzed and nude only a few feet away
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Jan 9, 2022 03:38
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