Zack Stentz

1: I finally got my account back. 2: A thousand apologies to all of you, especially anyone who got the phishing messages and might have been hacked in turn. 3: Bring me the head of Coach Antonia.

@GeorgeWarwick12 @romanhelmetguy There’s a lot of overlap, but my understanding is they’re mostly the original Anatolians who converted, with a bit of Turkic admixture.

@MuseZack @romanhelmetguy When they did a genetic study of Turks didn’t they find them to be Armenians and Greeks?

The Ottoman Empire started to decline because the Sultan fell in love with a hot young Slavic woman who had him wrapped around her finger and made him disinherit his firstborn and appoint her drunk idiot son his successor. This is still how 50% of businesses fail to this day.

@insanenoodlyguy @Marklord117 @Ghostlore_game “Many machines on Ix. New machines.”

@Marklord117 @MuseZack @Ghostlore_game That was the flaw of Dunes Premise given form in the Meta itself: somebody is always going to make another robot eventually.

A hugely underrated aspect of the Dune universe's appeal is how Frank Herbert built a world where people zip around the galaxy in spaceships but then fight each other with swords and knives. It makes everything 50 percent cooler than a world of ray guns and robots.

@theLUCASTDS @Ghostlore_game The Bene Tleilax and their genetic experiments are the creepiest part of the Dune universe by far.

@MuseZack @Ghostlore_game This gets weirder and weirder the further into the books you go Eventually they’re breeding human chairs for goodness sake

@Aliathewhite Giving one faction (the Spacing Guild) a monopoly on interstellar travel so that even warring parties were forced to charter space on their ships to reach each other was another great way Herbert shaped his fictional universe.

Herbert drew heavy inspiration from the Roman Empire, with the Spacing Guild's Heighliners functioning like the giant cargo ships and galleys of ancient Rome. Back then, crossing vast seas wasn't quick or easy like it is today, only certain people, with the right resources or connections, could make those journeys.

@fripper509 I remember Thufir or another character marveling that even as the richest House in the galaxy, the Harkonnen had to have burned 50 years of spice profit and then some to finance their surprise attack.

@MuseZack Small point: the Baron went into a large amount of debt to finance his trap. He tells Beast Rabban to squeeze the planet for all it's worth because of debt. Then he was going to install Feyd as a savior figure and aim for marriage to one of the emperor's daughters.

@SleeplessSW Yes, there are nukes ("family atomics") but with huge restrictions on their use that if violated make every other royal house obligated to make war on you.

@MuseZack Don't they use nukes to take out the shield generators or something?

@_Mizzet_ Yeah, Herbert wanted to depict a galaxy of sclerotic, warring feudalism and came up with some clever in-universe reasons to justify it.

@MuseZack It’s also a connection to the rise of fascism and the romanticization of an idealized past. Even the cool factor of Herbert’s world has political underpinnings

@PedroRivie95096 Herbert using the spice-oil analogy where a people realize they were sitting on top of the most valuable resource in the universe but were being exploited by others for it becomes even more explicit in later installments.

@MuseZack Again, I havent read the book, although I do know Herbert's experience in colonial affairs did develop distaste for it. However, a colonial group imposing a system on an indigenous one where the former profits off the latter's assets more than the latter is still not an alliance

@Ghostlore_game Yep. Herbert's very 1960s California interest in human potential was well-served by banning any computer more advanced than a Texas Instruments calculator.

@MuseZack No computers too

@Swarthy_Pierre @dblasphemy The sound guns were the biggest misstep in the Lynch film, which I otherwise have come to love.

@dblasphemy @MuseZack He didn’t want people kung fu fighting throughout the film.

@SavageBruski Giving the Spacing Guild a monopoly on interstellar travel so the only way you can attack your rivals is by literally renting space on their starships was another great touch.

@MuseZack Yep. The great convention and several of the technological interactions basically prevent the use of WMD's and biological attacks beyond limited use of poison. It's very personalized warfare.

@PedroRivie95096 It's muddled a bit because Villeneuve is a French-Canadian lefty, but the implication is that Leto was offering the Fremen more of an equal alliance with the Atreides, while the Harkonnen in contrast had been cruel to the point of genocide.

@MuseZack I didnt read the book either, but in both films, maybe even more so in Lynch's, the Atreides had the same colonial structural attitude of the Harkeonnens: the fremen's land wasn't theirs; the assets were to benefit the Atreides colonizers, not the fremens; & Letos calld the shots

@Anusien Exactly. The difference between sci fi and fantasy is that in sci fi you come up with at least a half-assed explanation for why your world works the way you want it to for dramatic purposes.

@MuseZack IMO all the explanations why are total nonsense he made up just so he could have sword fights in space. But like, sword fights are cooler than gun fights, so we accept it.

The tragedy of the first half of the book (& first movie) is that Leto sees the trap and has a good counter for it--make an alliance with the Fremen, who are great fighters & way more numerous than everyone thinks--but the Harkonnen use their wealth to spring the trap early.

The whole reason the Emperor wants to take out the Atreides is because Leto was popular & well-liked by the other Houses but also because Duncan and Gurney were training the best of the Atreides fighters at levels to rival the elite Sardaukar.

@KingTychoiii Yes, Herbert comes up with multiple clever reasons like this and sand worms being drawn to shield vibrations to make everyone sword fight instead of shoot at each other.

@MuseZack They HAVE rayguns, but they arent used a whole hell of a lot because ray guns interact with shields causing something akin to a nuclear explosion

@mattwriteguy One thing I wish the films had gone into was how lasgun+shield=very bad result for everyone involved.

@MuseZack Caution book shit: There are energy weapons. They are just unreliable and dangerous on Arrakis… but a lasgun duel isn’t as cool as an imperial knife fight to the death, nor is it anywhere as personal. Paul fights Feyd knowing they are blood kin, and not hesitating.